Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari: The Search For
New Modes of Being Muslim
by
SAMAN FAZELI
B.A., Sharif University of Technology, 2013
M.A., University of Tehran, 2016
A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
Of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Religious Studies
Department of Religious Studies
2019
This thesis entitled: Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari: The Search for New Modes of Being Muslim has been approved for the Department of Religious Studies
Aun Hasan Ali
Deborah Whitehead
Alireza Doostdar
Date
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.
Fazeli, Saman (M.A., Religious Studies)
Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari: The Search for New Modes of Being Muslim
Thesis directed by Assistant Professor Aun Hasan Ali
This thesis is a reflection on the works of Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari. The aim of this study is to discuss how Mojtahed Šabestari’s ideas expand the horizons of being Muslim. This thesis specifically concerns one of Šabestari’s major ideas The Prophetic Reading of the World (Qerāʾat-e
Nabavi Az Jahān). In his theory, Mojtahed Šabestari tries to understand the Quran free from all metaphysical presuppositions, as the speech of the Prophet.
In the first chapter, I examine Šabestari’s relationship to philosophical hermeneutics and how
Western philosophy becomes a way to rethink the concept of revelation among Muslims. The second chapter examines the evolution of Mojtahed Šabestari’s thought throughout his works. It aims to show how deeply Šabestari’s ideas are rooted in the Islamic tradition, despite influences from the West. The third chapter discusses the significance of new forms of mysticism in contemporary Iran and how these forms of mysticism construct the significance of Šabestari’s thought. Finally, in the conclusion, I address the significance of the concept of ambiguity in tradition and how Šabestari’s notion of ambiguity stands against Fundamentalism of the state and modernity.
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Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my advisor and friend, Dr. Aun Hasan Ali, whose teachings, knowledge, and kindness showed me the way. Without his help, I would not have proceeded in writing this thesis.
I thank Dr. Deborah Whitehead, in whose seminars the idea of this thesis started to shape.
I thank Dr. David Shneer, whose example as a scholar and a human being gives me hope to proceed.
I thank Dr. Alireza Doostdar for all his insightful suggestions.
Most of all I thank my wife Hasti, for whom I have no words to express my gratitude, and my mother, father, and sister whose kindness is beyond imagination.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1 Chapter 1 - Mojtahed Šabestari, Vaḥy, and the Western Tradition 10 Vaḥy in Modern Iran 10 Montaẓeri’s Treatment of Vaḥy 11
Ṭabāṭabāyi’s Treatment of Vaḥy 13 Soruš’s Treatment of Vaḥy 15 Mojtahed Šabestari’s Conception of Vaḥy 17 God and the Concept of Language 17 God’s Omnipotence versus Human Language 19 The Quran: The Prophet’s Narrative of the World 21 The Hermeneutical Constitution of Vaḥy 22 Mojtahed Šabestari and New Modes of Being Muslim 26 Chapter 2 - “Westoxication,” Islamic Tradition, and the Evolution of Mojtahed Šabestari’s Thought 29 Revolutionary Fervor: the 1960s to the 1980s 29 A Rebirth: 1990s 34 The Existential Turn 40 Mojtahed Šabestari Between Traditions 46
The Last Stage: 2000s 46 Nāṣer Ḵosrow and Vaḥy 48 “Westoxication” and the Islamic Tradition 50 Chapter 3 - Mojtahed Šabestari, Vaḥy, and New Mysticism 52 New Mysticism in Iran 53 New Mysticism and Metaphysical Religion 56 New Mysticism and Nature Religions 58 New Mysticism and Persian Literature 61 The Lover 62
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Mojtahed Šabestari and New Mysticism 64 Religious Experience 66 Mojtahed Šabestari as the Archetypal Lover 69 Mojtahed Šabestari as the Sage of New Mysticism 75 Conclusion 78 Bibliography 87
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Introduction
This thesis is a reflection on the works of the contemporary Iranian philosopher Moḥammad
Mojtahed Šabestari (b. 1936).1 Šabestari received a complete traditional education in the seminary of
Qom under leading authorities such as Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Ṭabāṭabāyi (d. 1981) and Ruḥollāh Ḵomeyni
(d. 1989). After his studies in Qom, he worked in Germany as the director of the Islamic Center of
Hamburg (Imam Ali Mosque Hamburg) for nine years (1970-1978). In Germany, he studied Western philosophy and modern Christian theology. He took a special interest in the ideas of Hans-Georg
Gadamer (d. 2002), Paul Tillich (d. 1965), and Karl Rahner (d. 1984). Šabestari is credited with introducing modern hermeneutics to the traditional centers of learning in Iran. He is also well-known to the Iranian public as one of the leading figures in the Iranian religious reform movement known as
“religious intellectualism” (rowšanfekri-ye dini).2 Through a close reading of his works, I argue that
Šabestari’s thought opens new spaces of religiosity in Iran and new modes of being Muslim.
Around the time of the 2009 presidential election, Iranian society was filled with enthusiasm for political activity. In that environment, a lot of meetings were held by student organizations on university campuses hosting famous thinkers, political activists, and critics. Even though many politically radical meetings and speeches were tolerated by the Islamic Republic in that time, one speech, maybe the least political of all, aroused many hostile reactions and became highly controversial.
1 I follow the Encyclopædia Iranica in my transliteration of Persian. For Arabic, I use a modified version of the same system to distinguish between u and ū, as well as i and ī. 2 On religious intellectualism, see Mahmoud Sadri, “Sacral Defense of Secularism: The Political Theologies of Soroush, Shabestari, and Kadivar,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 15 (Jan 2001): 257-70; see also Kathleen Foody, “Interiorizing Islam: Religious Experience and State Oversight in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83: 3 (September 2015): 599-623.
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On March 2009, at the Isfahan University of Technology, Mojtahed Šabestari delivered a speech titled “Our Expectation of Prophets” in which he addressed several issues, including philosophical hermeneutics and understanding the Quran.3 These issues concern one of Šabestari’s major ideas and theories regarding the Quran, namely the Prophetic Reading of the World (Qerāʿat-e Nabavi Az Jahān).4
According to Šabestari, the Quran itself is not revelation (vaḥy), rather it is the result of revelation. He argues that the Quran is the Prophet’s “reading” (interpretation) of the world. As such, to understand the Quran, it is imperative to free it from any and all metaphysical presuppositions. To understand the
Quran as a text in an intersubjective world, Šabestari argues, one must think of it as the Prophet’s speech.5
As we know, the premodern commentary tradition is based on the assumption that the Quran is the word of God, and this holds true for the majority of modern scholars as well. For Šabestari, this metaphysical assumption actually precludes the possibility of understanding the Quran. What we have before us is a text, and we have to treat it as the speech (both meanings and forms) of the Prophet
3 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Enteẓār-e Mā Az Payāmbarān,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%B8%D8%A7%D8%B1- %D9%85%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D9%BE%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86/ (accessed October 10, 2018). 4 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʿat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%86- %D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%8C-%D8%A2%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C- %D9%88-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%DB%8C-%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA- %D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B2/ (accessed October 10, 2018). 5 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʿat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (2)- Kalām-e Ḵodā va Kalām-e Ensān- Pišfahm-hāye Tafsir-e Āzād Az Qorʾān,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA- %D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86-2- %DA%A9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7-%D9%88-%DA%A9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85- %D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7(accessed October 7, 2018); See chapter 1 for a detailed explanation of Šabestari’s theory.
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(irrespective of its origin). Obviously, the idea that God reveals her words to humanity presumes that the existence of God has been established.6 According to Šabestari, however, in our time it is impossible to prove the existence of God.7 Indeed, the existence of different regimes of evidence problematizes the notion of proof itself. In any case, for Šabestari, it is impossible to understand a text based on the assumption that a god whose existence is not certain has revealed it. Understanding has to take place in an intersubjective space. As Šabestari notes, this does not mean that believing in God is meaningless nor does it mean that we cannot believe that the Quran is the word of God. While such beliefs are meaningful in their own right, Shabestari regards them as matters of faith. Through faith, for Muslims, the Quran can be the word of God, yet to understand it in a systematic way that is comprehensible to everyone, we have to abandon all our metaphysical assumptions.8
For Šabestari, this understanding accords with the dynamics of the first audience of the Quran.
The people to whom Muhammad first addressed the Quran to guide them to faith were not, initially, believers. Nevertheless, they were engaged in a process of understanding the Quran. People listened to
6 Quran 42:11 states, “laysa ka-miṯlihi šayʾ,” which is usually translated as “naught is like unto Him.” In his commentary on this verse, Ṭabāṭabāyi, notes that ka and miṯl both mean like or likeness; two words with the same meaning are used to emphasize the notion that the concept of God is beyond our imagination. However, we have to use our language to describe God. The pronoun “He” that we usually use to refer to God has more to do with our imagination of power-gender relations than our understanding of God. Using the pronoun “she” in the context of Islamic Studies is definitely not less compatible with Islamic theology than “he.” I have used The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary for English translation of the Quran in this thesis; see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard, and Mohammed Rustom, The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: HarperOne, 2017). 7 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Fāyl-e Ṣowti va Matn-e Virāyeš Šoda-ye Soḵanrāni bā ʿOnvān-e Čarḵeš-e Hermenotiki dar Elāhiyāt-e Modern,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%81%D8%A7%DB%8C%D9%84- %D8%B5%D9%88%D8%AA%DB%8C-%D9%88-%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%86- %D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B4-%D8%B4%D8%AF%D9%87- %D8%B3%D8%AE%D9%86%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%D8%A8%D8%A7-%D8%B9%D9%86/ (accessed October 8, 2018). 8 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (2)- Kalām-e Ḵodā va Kalām-e Ensān- Pišfahm-hāye Tafsir-e Āzād Az Qorʾān.”
3 what Muhammad was saying, and after understanding Muhammad’s words, reacted differently to the content of his message: some started to believe that those words were from God while others rejected any attributions of those words to Muhammad’s God.9 By removing all metaphysical presuppositions around the Quran, Šabestari endeavors to reenact history and let people revive their faith in a situation similar to that of the first generation of Muslims who heard the words of Muhammad and chose to believe. However, the major difference between Šabestari’s audience and Muhammad’s audience is that
Šabestari’s audience lives in “a secular age.” As Charles Taylor (b. 1931) states, “the shift to secularity … consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”10
After his speech, Šabestari was lambasted by different groups and individuals. For example, the
Fars News agency published a report on its website with the title “Shameless Revilements” about the
Prophet.11 Aḥmad Ḵātami, Tehran’s temporary Friday prayer leader, referred to Šabestari’s words as blasphemous.12 Even the student organization that was responsible for holding the meeting was dissolved.13 Besides these different reactions and consequences, Jaʿfar Sobḥāni, one of the marājeʿ
(religious authorities), wrote a letter in response to Šabestari’s speech in which he accused Šabestari of
9 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (7),” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA- %D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86-7/ (accessed October 8, 2018). 10 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. 11 ʿAli Asḡar Ramażānpur, “Vākoneš-hā Be Soḵanrāni-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari Dar Isfahan,” BBC Persian website, http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2009/02/090224_si_shabestari_reax.shtml (accessed October 17, 2018). 12 Baḵš-e Siyāsi-ye Radio Farda, “Mojtahed Šabestari va Ettehām-e Kofrguyi,” Radio Farda website, https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f1_Shabestary/1499206.html (accessed October 17, 2018). 13 Baḵš-e Ejtemāʿi-ye Radio Farda, “Anjoman-e Eslāmi-ye Dānešgāh-e Ṣanʿati-ye Isfahan Monḥal Šod,” Radio Farda website, https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f3_islamicassociation_Isfahan/1510314.html (accessed October 17, 2018).
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“westoxification” (ḡarb zadegi), or being fascinated with the West.14 He said that the West planned to discredit Islam by assaulting the sacredness of the Quran and the Prophet’s impeccability (eṣmat). In
Sobḥāni’s words, using philosophical hermeneutics and Christian theology, Šabestari had tried to attack the Prophet’s impeccability.15 Sobḥāni also stated that Šabestari used to attend “Christian theology sessions every night” during his years in Germany and was highly influenced by Western thinkers. In fact, Sobḥāni believed that Šabestari had gone astray due to his fascination with what he had studied of
Western thought. 16 Šabestari later responded to Sobḥāni in a letter in which he mocked Sobḥāni’s claims about his participation in sessions on Christian theology, however, he admitted the influence of
Western thought on his ideas. Šabestari writes:
Mr. Sobḥāni! During the years of residing in Germany, I did not attend Christian classes, neither at night nor in the day. However, I was lucky to have the opportunity, after learning German, to become familiar with modern Western philosophy and Christian theology. Today, I am very glad for that acquaintance… Although I studied Islamic knowledge for 18 years in the seminary of Qom, after that new acquaintance [with the Western thought], I became able to evaluate it [Islamic knowledge] properly…17
In light of Sobḥāni’s rebuke, one wonders whether he would have leveled the same accusation against the likes of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640) and other luminaries of the Islamic philosophical tradition who were explicit about their indebtedness to Greek thought. I mention Mullā Ṣadrā because his
14 The term ḡarb zadegi was first coined by Aḥmad Fardid (d. 1994). It became well-known to public by Jalāl Āl-e Aḥmad’s book Ḡarb Zadegi. See Jalāl Āl-e Aḥmad, Ḡarb Zadegi (Tehran: Ādina Sabz, 2012). 15 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Pāsoḵ-e Mojtahed Šabestari be Āyatollāh Ṣobḥāni: Čerā Zabān-e Tohmat va Taḵrib Gošudeid?” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%BE%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AE- %D9%85%D8%AC%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%AF-%D8%B4%D8%A8%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%B1%DB%8C- %D8%A8%D9%87-%D8%A2%DB%8C%D8%AA%E2%80%8C%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87- %D8%B3%D8%A8%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%DA%86/ (accessed October 17, 2018). 16 Ibid. 17 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Pāsoḵ-e Mojtahed Šabestari be Āyatollāh Ṣobḥāni: Čerā Zabān-e Tohmat va Taḵrib Gošudeid?”
5 philosophy is revered in traditional centers of religious learning in Iran. Why might Sobḥāni himself respect, read, and teach Mullā Ṣadrā when Ṣadrā was influenced by Greek philosophy? What is the difference between the conversation between Islamic and Greek philosophy in the medieval era, and the effort by a Muslim scholar like Šabestari today to create a dialogue between Islam and modern
Christian theology or philosophy of language? What is the difference between reading The Theology of
Aristotle as an Islamic text, and taking inspiration from the likes of Karl Rahner or Paul Tillich to enrich
Islamic traditions? Is there any real difference between Plotinus and Gadamer insofar as our intention is to create a conversation between two traditions? Is it only a question of time such that Plotinus has been naturalized into Islam while Gadamer has not, or is there something more to it?
We have come to expect different traditions to communicate easily. Our world, our modern wisdom is supposed to facilitate a mutual understanding of our diversities. By contrast, mutual understanding is thought to have been nearly impossible in a bygone era ruled by zealotry. The history of exchanges between Islam and the West actually furnishes significant counterexamples to this narrative. Contrary to what we expect from modernity, not only does the West seem incapable of understanding Islam, it has transformed Muslims into monsters.18 Conversely, one might ask whether the West has fared any better in the Muslim imagination. This question is of a great significance for this thesis.
Returning to the question posed above, the difference between the reception of Plotinus and
Gadamer is not simply a question of the difference between their respective ideas. To be sure, from one
18 Sophia Rose Arjana, “Muslim Monsters in Americas,” in Muslims in the Western Imagination, 132–65 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). My use of the term “Muslim Monster” is based on this chapter.
6 perspective, it is just a matter of time.19 But more than that, their different receptions highlight something about our world, a world in which dialogue across traditions, despite globalization, is somehow more difficult.
Šabestari’s inter-traditional dialogue, his reflection on the concept of revelation, and his application of Western philosophy became controversial for many people. It is not only for people who do not welcome the idea of reform in Islam, but even for those who are reformists themselves that
Šabestari’s ideas regarding the Quran and Islamic substantive law (feqh) sound “radical.”20 At the same time, for many people, Šabestari’s thought, particularly his treatment of the Quran and revelation, directly and indirectly, offers reliable ground on which to stand and pursue an “Islamic” life. In different ways, Šabestari’s thought broadens the horizons of being Muslim for Iranians.
Šabestari’s thought might be viewed as a solution to the phenomenon of “aversion to Islam,”
(eslām gorizi) which is becoming increasingly prevalent in Iran.21 A complex phenomenon worthy of independent analysis, it can be understood as a crisis of faith or an emotional response to living under an Islamic state that is incapable of fully providing for people’s material and cultural needs. This aversion is tied to the very specific understanding of Islam imposed by the state, one that seems incapable of addressing people’s questions and therefore leads to a state of crisis. As people experience a crisis of faith, Šabestari offers alternative understandings of Islam and the Quran that have the capacity to provide answers. Šabestari casts doubt on the certainty of Islam, which the state imposes
19 See Ṣādeq Lārijāni, “Falsafa-ye Taḥlili va ʿElm-e Oṣul,” Pažuheš-hāye Oṣuli 2-3 (January 2003): 63-101. This is an example of how foreign ideas come to be naturalized to fill a need. 20 Mohsen Kadivar, “Mojtahed-e Šabestari Piš-Qarāvol-e Now-Andiši-ye Dini-ye Rādikāl,” Vebsāyt-e Rasmi-ye Moḥsen Kadivar, https://kadivar.com/?p=16195 (accessed October 15, 2018). 21 See Alireza Doostdar, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2018), 12.
7 through a range of disciplinary techniques, and offers a new potential Islamic identity to people in crisis.
The crisis is rooted in an identification of the state with Islam, meaning that aversion to Islam functions as a critique of the state. Šabestari offers the Iranian public an alternative way to configure their relationship to the state and Islam, creating the possibility of an Islamic identity that is deeply averse to the machinery of the state.
In the following three chapters, I discuss different ways that Šabestari’s The Prophetic Reading of the World opens such possibilities of religiosity wherein people can identify themselves as Muslims.
Each chapter focuses on Šabestari’s engagement with a specific tradition and examines how his engagement, directly and indirectly, blurs the boundaries between different traditions.22 Uniting different traditions, Šabestari creates horizons of being Muslim that transcend the concept of
“normativity” in Islam. These horizons complicate the idea of being Muslim and add ambiguity to different certitudes that preclude one’s engagement in a discourse about being Muslim. The first chapter examines The Prophetic Reading of the World in light of philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of language. Comparing Šabestari’s notion of revelation with that of several religious scholars in modern Iran, the first chapter shows how the Quran as the speech of the Prophet gains significance for people in Islamic discourses. The second chapter deals with The Prophetic Reading of the World in light of Islamic tradition as Šabestari is a fully-trained Muslim jurist and theologian. By focusing on two important aspects of that tradition, namely Islamic jurisprudence and Ibn ʿArabi, the second chapter shows that The Prophetic Reading of the World does not break with the Islamic tradition. The third chapter examines The Prophetic Reading of the World in light of new
22 On the concept of tradition, see Chapter 2 and Conclusion.
8 manifestations of mysticism (New Mysticism) in modern Iran. Having explained New Mysticism, the third chapter shows how Šabestari creates space, at the perlocutionary level, for New Mystics to participate in Islamic discourses.23 In the conclusion, I explore the idea of ambiguity and its significance for the concept of “tradition.” I show that, by engaging with different traditions and by offering a unique conception of being Muslim, Šabestari creates horizons of ambiguity that stand against modern
Fundamentalism as a desire for certainty. In these horizons of ambiguity, the Muslim Human Being gains a more expansive meaning.
This thesis is situated within the context of Liberalism in the modern Iranian imaginary. It addresses the question of Islam among people who are alienated from the Islamic Republic as “a state that is hardly ‘secular’ in a simple sense and is emphatically nonliberal.”24 By examining questions of normativity, authenticity, and tradition, this thesis is also situated within the field of Religious Studies.
Using Mojtahed Šabestari as a case study, this thesis asks how some practices and ideas becomes normative while others do not; it asks how one theory in a tradition comes to be viewed as “authentic” while another does not. A reflection on the concept of tradition, it asks what makes something part of a tradition while something else is excluded.
23 See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 101-107; see also Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Speech Acts,” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/ (accessed April 19, 2019). According to Austin, a “speech act” has three different aspects: the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary. Šabestari’s locutionary act is what he says, the act of uttering certain expressions. His illocutionary act is to perform the locution and create a force in a specific context. For example, to make an order, a request, etc. The perlocutionary act is the consequences of the illocutionary act. The perlocutionary act cannot be controlled completely by the speaker. It is a function of the particular circumstances in which the illocutionary act is performed. 24 Foody, “Interiorizing Islam: Religious Experience and State Oversight in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 600.
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Chapter 1 - Mojtahed Šabestari, Vaḥy, and the Western Tradition
To begin, I have not translated the Arabic word vaḥy as revelation because the concept of revelation in Christian theology is different from vaḥy in Islam. Revelation (Offenbarung) concerns the revealing of something that was concealed, be it a set of data from God, or the revelation of God in history through Jesus. In both cases, something is revealing itself. However, according to Mojtahed
Šabestari, the concept of vaḥy in Islam does not connote the idea of revealing in any sense. Instead,
Šabestari maintains that vaḥy means a “subtle, quick hint” (al-išāra al-sarīʿa al-ḵafiyya).25
Vaḥy in Modern Iran
To understand Šabestari’s notion of vaḥy, it is essential to situate it within a range of understandings of the term found in modern Iran. First of all, we should pay attention to the semantic range of the term in the Quran. The term has been used in at least five different contexts in the Quran.26
It is used to refer to an inspiration (elqāʾ) in creatures through their instincts, as in Quran 16:68 where we read about God’s vaḥy to the honey bee. It also refers to an inspiration through a dream, as in Quran
28:7 where God inspired Moses’ mother. Vaḥy can also be a temptation, as in Quran 6:121 which states that satans inspire their friends. It is also used with the meaning of signaling, as in Quran 19:11 where
25 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Fāyl-e Ṣowti va Matn-e Virāyeš Šoda-ye Soḵanrāni bā ʿOnvān-e Čarḵeš-e Hermenotiki dar Elāhiyāt-e Modern,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%81%D8%A7%DB%8C%D9%84- %D8%B5%D9%88%D8%AA%DB%8C-%D9%88-%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%86- %D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B4-%D8%B4%D8%AF%D9%87- %D8%B3%D8%AE%D9%86%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%D8%A8%D8%A7-%D8%B9%D9%86/ (accessed October 8, 2018); see also Rāḡib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt fī al-Ḡarīb al-Qurān (Mecca: Maktabat al-Nazār Muṣtafā al-Bāz, n.d.), 668. 26 See Moḥammad Ḥosayn Ṭabāṭabāyi, Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 12 (Beirut: Muʾassisa al-Aʿlamī lil-Maṭbūʿāt, 1970), 292-293.
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Zachariah signals his people “to glorify morning and evening” when he was supposed to be silent.
Finally, another type of vaḥy is God’s communication (speaking) with human beings, as in Quran 42:51 where we read that God does not speak to human beings but through vaḥy.27 Regarding this last sense of vaḥy as communication, according to the Quran, it occurs in three possible ways: a direct communication between God and humanity; communicating while a veil exists between God and humanity; and communicating through a messenger who conveys God’s vaḥy to a prophet.28
Despite the centrality of the Quran in Islam, this range of meanings does not illustrate the full range of understandings of vaḥy in modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, vaḥy as a Quranic loanword is mostly understood as God’s communication with prophets, more specifically, God’s communication to Prophet Muhammad which resulted in the Quran. However, people’s understandings of the nature of the communication between God and the Prophet, and consequently the nature of the Quran, might differ dramatically. Even among religious scholars, it is not easy to reconcile the different treatments of vaḥy.
The range of the meanings of vaḥy in modern Iran can be envisioned as a spectrum. On the right side of this spectrum are understandings of vaḥy that assign the Prophet no agency; on the left side of this spectrum are understandings of vaḥy that assign the Prophet complete agency. To illustrate these different understandings clearly, the views of three modern thinkers are discussed below.
Montaẓeri’s Treatment of Vaḥy
I locate the viewpoint of Ḥoseyn ʿAli Montaẓeri (d. 2009) about vaḥy and the Quran at the very
27 Ṭabāṭabāyi, Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 12, 292-293. 28 Idem., Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 18, 73-75.
11 far right of the spectrum. Most of religious scholars share a similar understanding of the phenomenon of vaḥy and its relationship to the Quran. This view is usually called the traditional view about the
Quran. In his book Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy, Montaẓeri deals with the nature of vaḥy.29 He explains that the Prophet brought people the Quran exactly as he had received it from God and he did not influence the Quran in any way.30 He argues that, according to the Quran’s verses, the Quran descended to the Prophet in Arabic.31 Accordingly, vaḥy is not just the inspiration of meanings; vaḥy includes the forms of the Quran as well. There are also some verses in the Quran that point to the fact that the Quran or vaḥy is read to the Prophet. For example, in Quran 75:18, 3:108, and 45:6, it is said that vaḥy has been
“recited” to the Prophet. Montaẓeri maintains that the verb “reading” applies to the words not just to the meanings.32 In addition, with respect to the mechanism of vaḥy, Montaẓeri states that at first, the
Prophet receives the reality and meaning of vaḥy at the level of Intellect (martaba-ye ʿaql) through direct contact with the active intellect (ʿaql-e faʿʿāl).33 Then, vaḥy descends to the imaginary realm (ālam al-miṯāl) and the perceptible realm (ʿālam al-maḥsusāt).34 This means that God does not leave the
29 Ḥoseyn ʿAli Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy (Qom: Ḵerad Āvā, 2009). 30 Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy., 42-44; Montaẓeri writes that the Prophet received vaḥy as knowledge by presence (ʿelm-e ḥożuri) that is free from any errors. This knowledge by presence that the Prophet knew as vaḥy is the same as his knowledge by apprehension (ʿelm-e ḥoṣuli) formed after his experience of receiving vaḥy (38-40); on knowledge by presence, see Mahdi Ḥāʾerī Yazdi, The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 31 See Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy, 41. He gives examples from Quran 26:192-195, 16:102, 12:2, 13:37, 20:113, 42:7, 43:3, and 39:27-28, stating that the Quran has come in Arabic from God. 32 Ibid., 42. For instance, Quran 75:18 reads “So when We recite it, follow its recitation.” 33 According to Mullā Ṣadrā, existence is graded and there are three existential planes. The realm of the lowest rank is the perceptible realm which is the realm of material forms. The realm of the highest rank is the realm of intellects that is free from matter and its qualities. The imaginary realm is the realm in between the two realms with respect to its rank, and it is a medium between the two realms. Although beings in the imaginary realm are not associated with matter, they have some qualities of the perceptible realm. The intellect itself has different levels. The active intellect is usually the tenth intellect which is also known as Gabriel; see Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikmat al-Mutiʿāliyat Fī Asfār al-ʿAqliyyat al-Arbaʿat, vol. 8 (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāṯ al-ʿArabī, 1981), 372; see also idem., al-Ḥikmat al-Mutiʿāliyat Fī Asfār al-ʿAqliyyat al-Arbaʿat, vol. 9, 144, 194. 34 Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy, 29-30.
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Prophet alone with some amorphous meanings at the first stage. God, who is able to convey the meanings to the Prophet at the level of Intellect, is also able to form those meanings in other realms of being corresponding to the principles of those realms.35 In this manner, the Quran is present for the
Prophet as the Arabic Quran in the realm of material forms.36 It is important that the Prophet also does not make any mistakes in the process of receiving and conveying vaḥy to people because he is impeccable with respect to both sin and error (sahv).37
Ṭabāṭabāyi’s Treatment of Vaḥy
Having discussed Montaẓeri’s understanding of vaḥy, we can locate Ṭabāṭabāyi’s views on vaḥy somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum. At first glance, it seems that his ideas on vaḥy are similar to those of his peers. In al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, one of the most influential modern commentaries on the Quran, Ṭabāṭabāyi presupposes that the Quran is the word of God. Throughout his voluminous commentary, Ṭabāṭabāyi refers to God as the speaker of the text of the Quran.38
However, in another treatise about vaḥy titled Vaḥy Yā Šoʿur-e Marmuz (Vaḥy or Mysterious
Perception), he elaborates on his own ideas about the Quran and vaḥy.39 In that treatise about vaḥy,
35 Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy, 29-30. 36 Ibid.; if we say that the Quran might change by descending through different realms, according to Montaẓeri, we are claiming that God is somehow incapable of preserving the Quran; here, Montaẓeri is referring to theology. If preserving the Quran is not “impossible” (mumtaniʿ al-vujūd), and God wishes to preserve the Quran, then there is no reason for it not be preserved. 37 Ibid., 42-44; the question of whether the Prophet is capable of sahv was debated by early theologians. See Ibn Bābavayh, Iʿtiqādāt al-Imāmiyya (Qom: Kongera-ye Šeyḵ-e Mofid, 1993), 96. 38 It is important to note that referring to the Quran as God’s word in Ṭabātabāyi’s exegesis does not show his view on the nature of vaḥy and the Quran. First of all, in his exegesis, he interprets the Quran based on the Quran. He believes that if the Quran is the book of guidance, then the Quran itself can guide us toward understanding it. He intends to understand the Quran as it manifests itself in Arabic words. As such, there is no need to abandon this image that the Quran provides of itself as the word of God; see Ṭabāṭabāyi, Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 1, 12-14. 39 Moḥammad Ḥosayn Ṭabāṭabāyi, Majmuʿa Rasāʾel-e ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāyi, ed. Seyyed Hādi Ḵosrow Šāhi, vol. 1 (Qom: Bustān- e Ketāb, 2008), 141-180.
13 there is a significant paragraph that diverges from the traditional understanding of the Quran. He states that “the Prophet perceived the mysterious relations of reality and religion through his perception of vaḥy, and he only spoke in our language to convey the message.”40 The Prophet, according to Ṭabāṭabāyi, is like someone who likens the pleasure (širini) of sexual intercourse to the sweetness of pastry (ḥalvā) for a child.41 He says that having perceived the reality of vaḥy that is different from our intellectual perception, the Prophet uses our language and our intellectual relations to invite people to the path of religion. Given that what the Prophet conveys to people as God’s vaḥy is the Quran, it seems that
Ṭabāṭabāyi considers the Quran something different from what the Prophet had experienced as the reality of vaḥy. Having experienced the reality of vaḥy, he communicates that mysterious perception to humanity through language, which can only approximate the reality of vaḥy, the way sweets can only approximate the intensity of sexual pleasure.42 This treatment diverges from the traditional understanding in which vaḥy and the Quran are identical.43 It is important to note that the Quran, even as an approximation of vaḥy, does not have any errors. Ṭabāṭabāyi states that the purpose of vaḥy,
“which is a train of orders to solve human disputes according to an age’s demands and to provide salvation for human society,” is to reach that society. Therefore, in order not to have errors in this
40 Ṭabāṭabāyi, Majmuʿa Rasāʾel-e ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāyi, vol. 1, 158. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 See also Ṭabāṭabāyi, Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 3, 31-37, 57. As another example, in his discussion on muḥkamāt (clear verses) and mutašābihāt (unclear verses) in al-Mizān fi Tafsir al-Quran, Ṭabāṭabāyi maintains that both kinds of the Quranic verses (muḥkamāt and mutašābihāt) require interpretation (taʾvil). In the Quran 3:3, we read that the muḥkamāt are um al- kitāb (the mother of the book). We also know that the reality of the Quran exists in um al-kitāb with God. If some of the verses of the Quran are um al-kitāb, it means that they do not need to be interpreted because the intention of interpretation, according to Ṭabāṭabāyi, is to return to um al-kitāb. The fact that Ṭabāṭabāyi believes that both mutašābihāt and muḥkamāt are subject to interpretation shows that the Quran as we have it is different from the reality of vaḥy and the Quran.
14 process, the Prophet has to be impeccable.44 The fact that vaḥy and the Quran are not identical does not mean they are different in nature. If vaḥy is from God, the Quran is the word of God: the experience of
God turned into the word of God while they are the same and also of different intensities.45 To be sure, what Ṭabāṭabāyi states is different from saying that the Quran is identical to vaḥy. Therefore, it seems that Ṭabāṭabāyi leaves some space for the agency of the Prophet in conveying vaḥy, however, we cannot be sure how big this space is.
Soruš’s Treatment of Vaḥy
Moving further toward the left side of the spectrum, we can locate Abd al-Karim Soruš’s (b.
1945) view about vaḥy somewhere between the center and the far left. In six articles entitled
Mohammad Rāvi-e Roʾyā-hāye Rasulāna (Muhammad the Narrator of Prophetic Dreams), Soruš explicates his theory.46 According to Soruš, the Quran should be understood as the Prophet’s dreams.47
44 See Ṭabāṭabāyi, Majmuʿa Rasāʾel-e ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāyi, vol. 1, 153-154; Ṭabāṭabāyi maintains that impeccability is related to receiving, conserving, and conveying vaḥy to people. It also requires that the Prophet’s actions correspond with his words because his actions are also a part of his inviting people to the message of vaḥy. “However,” he adds, “in other matters of life, the Prophet is similar to ordinary people.” As he explains the concept of the impeccability of the Prophet, it seems to be different from the traditional understandings. While traditionalists like Montaẓeri consider an absolute impeccability for the prophet in all aspects of his life and existence, Ṭabāṭabāyi understands the Prophet’s impeccability only in relation to vaḥy. 45 See also Ṭabāṭabāyi, Al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. 18, 83- 84. According to Ṭabāṭabāyi, the Quran existed with God in the mother of book (um al-kitāb) before descending as the Arabic Quran. Because what is present in um al- kitāb is beyond our understanding, it has to become something that we can understand. Therefore, the Quran descended in our language so that we could understand it. When we understand the Arabic Quran, our understanding is not different from understanding the reality of the Quran in um al-kitāb. One might ask how is it possible while the Quran in um al-kitāb is beyond our perception? Ṭabāṭabāyi responds that the relationship between our Quran and what is in um al-kitāb is like maṯal (example) and mumaṯṯal (what is exampled). While maṯal and mumaṯṯal are the same, through understanding maṯal, there is no way to perceive the reality of mumaṯṯal. Accordingly, when Ṭabāṭabāyi uses the concept of approximation in the example above about sweetness of intercourse and ḥalvā, it does not mean when the Prophet (or God) approximated vaḥy in our language, the Quran changed. 46 Abd al-Karim Soruš, “Moḥammad: Rāvi-ye Roʾyā-hāye Rasulāna.” Jaras. http://www.rahesabz.net/story/71738/ (accessed December 1, 2018). 47 We can find the basis of Soruš’s theory in Avecina’s understanding of vaḥy. For Avecina, Gabriel is the Faculty of the Prophet’s imagination. See Dānešnāma-ye Jahān-e Eslām Online, s.v. “Jabraʾil,” http://rch.ac.ir/article/Details?id=10297 (accessed December 3, 2018).
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This theory states that the Prophet observed divine meanings through his dreams and he narrated what he had seen or experienced as the Quran. In fact, in this theory, we can say that the meanings are from
God while the words of the Quran are written by the Prophet. Instead of saying that God is the speaker and the Prophet is the listener, Soruš suggests that the Prophet is the observer (nāẓer) and he is the narrator (rāvi) as well. Prophecy does not involve God choosing a person and conveying vaḥy to his/her heart. The Prophet is not the addressee of some propositions from God nor is he a reporter of those propositions; he is the narrator of what he himself has witnessed. The language of the Quran is the language of dreams; it is highly symbolic and sometimes it does not follow the logic of wakefulness. It may even contain paradoxes. The exception is verses concerning aḥkām (legal directives). Soruš states that those verses are written in the language of wakefulness and are the result of the Prophet’s contemplation on his dreams to solve the problems that he sees in the society in which he lives. In
Soruš’s theory, the agency of the Prophet relates to more than just narrating dreams. He was active in the entire process of observing and dreaming. Vaḥy is not something that God conveys to the Prophet’s heart “from outside” while the Prophet is a passive recipient; vaḥy happens “inside” and the role of the
Prophet as the observer of truths is undeniable.48 Now that we have a better understanding of the role of the Prophetic agency in modern Iranian understandings of vaḥy, we can locate Mojtahed Šabestari on the far left of this spectrum.
48 See Soruš, “Moḥammad Rāvi-ye Roʾyā-hāye Rasulāna.”
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Mojtahed Šabestari’s Conception of Vaḥy
Šabestari’s treatment of vaḥy assigns complete agency to the Prophet. For Šabestari, the Quran cannot be understood unless it is unequivocally considered the Prophet’s speech (words and meanings). Though standing at the far left of the spectrum, Šabestari actually connects the two sides of the spectrum and makes it a circle in which Islam can flow in all directions regardless of one’s treatment of the nature of vaḥy. Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy, which will be explained later, allows people to be
Muslim even if they understand the Quran as the speech of the Prophet.
God and the Concept of Language
Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy is built on the premise, drawn from modern philosophy of language, that one cannot speak of the Quran as the speech of God. Šabestari uses Albert Keller’s (d.
2010) conception of language according to which there are five main elements in the performance of language as a system of signs. These elements are the speaker, the addressee, the context, the community of a language, and the content.49 These elements are dependent on each other; if even one element is absent, we cannot talk about the concept of language.50 To make it lucid, Šabestari uses a
Wittgensteinian (d. 1951) example. Assume that we have a parrot who says “hello.” Is it possible for us to understand the parrot’s word as a greeting? Human language needs a human speaker to address other humans who are part of the same community of language, within a human context, to convey a human content. A human context is part of the historical-social life of humans; it is not something that can be
49 See Albert Keller. Sprachphilosophie, 3rd ed. (Munich: Alber, 2000), 42-46; see also Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.” 50 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.”
17 created all of a sudden outside the realm of humanity.51 This is similar to what Wittgenstein says, that language is part of humans’ “forms of life;”52 as such, Wittgenstein states that, “if a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”53 Šabestari argues that, according to J. L. Austin (d. 1960), human speech is a “speech act” performed by a human; “every speech act is part of a set of acts and realities that take place within the life of the doer of the speech and within the historical-social context of that speech.”54
Outside that context, there is nothing to understand. Consequently, Šabestari responds that the parrot has not expressed anything as a speaker within a human context. There is no understanding possible from what the parrot seems to say, for we do not share forms of life.55 Then, Šabestari argues that the
Quran is not exempt from this understanding of language. According to this understanding, maintaining that God is the speaker results in the impossibility of understanding the Quran. If the
Quran is not the speech of the Prophet, is it not some voices that exit from the Prophet’s throat like the voices that come from a loud speaker without any context? What is the difference between those voices and what a parrot seems to say? As such, the only way to approach the Quran as a human language is to consider it as the speech act of the Prophet.
51 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (3)- Piš-Farż-hāye Tafsir-e Āzād-e Qorān (2)- Moqtażiyāt-e Fahm Va Moqtażiyāt-e Imān,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA- %D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86-3- %D9%BE%DB%8C%D8%B4-%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%B6%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C- %D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%B1-%D8%A2/ (accessed October 12, 2018). 52 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 226. 53 Ibid., 225. 54 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (8)- Qorān (Moṣḥaf-e Šarif) Yek Matn-e Tāriḵi Ast,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA- %D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86-8- %D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A2%D9%86-%D9%85%D9%8F%D8%B5%D8%AD%D9%81- %D8%B4%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%81-%DB%8C%DA%A9/ (accessed October 15, 2018); see also Austin, How to Do Things with Words. 55 See Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (7).”
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God’s Omnipotence versus Human Language
Šabesatari’s idea that God cannot be the speaker of the Quran as a text in human language caused a lot of criticisms. One may ask why God, who is capable of everything, is not able to create human speech within a human context? It is true that God does not share “forms of life” with us, however, we face an omnipotent being who is beyond human imagination. In Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e
Vaḥy, which is a criticism of Soruš’s theory, Montaẓeri also responds to Šabestari indirectly. He writes:
… To understand the Quran does not require that the speaker of the Quran be a human, as some other people have stated; rather, what is mandatory is that the speaker be … aware of the mentality of the audience, be the speaker a human, or another being.56
Šabestari views such a criticism as the result of a misunderstanding of his argument. Šabestari’s question is a hermeneutical question concerning how we can have an intersubjective understanding of the Quran as a text. His question is not whether it is rationally possible for a non-human to become the speaker of a human language. This may or may not be possible; however, at the end of the day, we face a human text.57 We should ask how did Muslims come to believe that the Quran is the speech of God?
The Prophet recited the Quran for his people and claimed that those words were not from him. Some people trusted the Prophet while others did not. Nonetheless, the Quran was understandable to both groups. Even the group who trusted the Prophet and believed that the speaker of those words was God listened to the Prophet’s speech and consequently experienced those words as the speech of God. As such, the Quran as human speech was always prior to the Quran as the speech of God. If the Prophet claimed that the speaker of the Quran is God, he was the only person who experienced God as the
56 See Montaẓeri, Safir-e Ḥaq va Ṣafir-e Vaḥy, 145-146. 57 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (8)- Qorān (Moṣḥaf-e Šarif) Yek Matn-e Tāriḵi Ast.”
19 speaker. For everyone else, there is no way to have the same experience. Most of Šabestari’s criticisms come from the attribution of the following assumption to him: no conscious being except for a human being can employ human language to convey meaning.58 Assume that some super intelligent aliens have studied human language and culture. They know everything about humans. They want to contact us and send a message in human language. They create a text (or speech) that everyone can understand.
Can we say that because the speaker is a non-human, we cannot understand the text?59 If we could know about the existence of some intelligent aliens, and were addressed by them, there would be no problem. In the context of human language, we do not talk about human beings as a species. We refer to human beings as beings who live according to specific “forms of life.” A human is a being who understands human contexts, who can make sense of the historical-cultural-social life of humanity.
What is the difference between those intelligent aliens producing contextful speech and human beings with respect to the use of human language? None. Likewise, we can understand the speech of animal characters in novels and fables, for they are animals qua humans. They can enter into our contexts and we can make sense of their presence. The message of an alien who can make sense of our contexts and send a message to us is not an alien message. It is a human message that is sent by some aliens qua human. As such, the Quran even with the assumption that it is the speech of God is actually a human message, the speech of God qua the Prophet.
58 For example, see Arash Naraghi, “Bār-e Digar Mojtahed Šabestari va ‘Māhiyat-e Kalām-e Vaḥyāni,” Arash Naraghi, http://arashnaraghi.org/wp/?p=418 (accessed February 20, 2018). 59 See Arash Naraghi, “Mojtahed Šabestari va Ḥojjiyat-e Mafrużāt-e Ḵodā Nābāvarān Dar Maqām-e Fahm-e Qorān,” Arash Naraghi, http://arashnaraghi.org/wp/?p=464 (accessed February 20, 2018).
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The Quran: The Prophet’s Narrative of the World
As the speech of the Prophet, the Quran is the Prophet’s “reading” (narrative) of the world as
God’s manifestation. It is a narrative of how the Prophet experiences the world, rather than a report about the reality of the world. In this narrative, as a whole, we can notice a message. This message is that the Prophet experiences all phenomena and incidents as appearances and actions of God. By appearance, Šabestari means the Arabic āyat, the Persian nemud, or the German Erscheinung. He defines Erscheinung as “what human beings encounter in their temporal and spatial experience, yet know that it is not the absolute reality, but it participates in existence more or less.”60 The Prophetic
Reading of the world as the Erscheinung of God involves any kind of phenomena including natural phenomena, human beings, human destiny, history, and social realities.61 As an example, the Prophet
“reads” the world at the level of natural phenomena as follows:
Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth; and the variation of the night and the day; and the ships that run upon the sea with what benefits mankind; and the water God sends down from the sky whereby He revives the earth after its death, scattering all manner of beast therein; and the shifting of the winds; and the clouds subdued between the sky and the earth are surely signs for a people who understand (Quran 2:164).
He it is Who brings into being gardens, trellised and untrellised, and the date palm and crops with diverse produce, olives and pomegranates … (Quran 6:141).
Truly God is the Cleaver of the grain and the fruit stone. He brings forth the living from the dead, and He is the One Who brings forth the dead from the living … (Quran 6:95).
He it is Who made the sun a radiance, and the moon a light, and determined for it stations,
60 Mojtahed Šabestari., “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi;” see also Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel, s.v. “Erscheinung.” 61 Mojtahed Šabestari., “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.”
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that you might know the number of years and the reckoning [of time] … (Quran 10:5)...62
Šabestari states that this reading of the world sometimes “goes beyond the world and experiences the essence of God as light:
God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is a niche, wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is as a shining star kindled from a blessed olive tree, neither of the East nor of the West. Its oil would well-nigh shine forth, even if no fire had touched it. Light upon light. God guides unto His Light whomsoever He will … (Quran 24:35).63
This Prophetic reading is a religious interpretation of the world. According to Šabestari, it is not that one experiences something and then interprets the content of the experience religiously; rather it is the experience itself that becomes religious. In this sense, interpretation begins in the level of experience.64
The Hermeneutical Constitution of Vaḥy
Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy is most clearly laid out in his The Prophetic Reading of the World. In the introduction of his book Naqd-e Bonyād-hāye Feqh va Kalām, Šabestari writes,
In the article The Prophetic Reading of the World, I have stated that the Quran is a narrative of the world and Muḥammad is its narrator… This narrative is a form of interpretation and understanding, and according to what is stated in the Quran, the Prophet experienced that this interpretation and understating was possible because of the divine assistance (vaḥy). A Muslim is someone who participates in the Prophet’s narrative and narrates the world monotheistically.65
62 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.” For more examples, see Quran 6:60, 6:142, 6:99, 6:96, 6:97, 16:14, 16:79, 22:65, and 30:22. 63 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.” 64 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Matn-e Fārsi, Ālmāni, Va ʿArabi-ye Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi;” see also Richard Schaeffler, Religion und Kritisches Bewusstsein (Munich: Alber, 1973), 166-167. 65 Moḥamad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Naqd-e Bonyād-hāye Feqh va Kalām,” http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/upload/book/Naqd%20Bonyan.pdf /p7.pdf (accessed January 25, 2019).
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Here, Šabestari defines vaḥy as what the Prophet experienced/interpreted as a divine assistance which enabled him to experience the world as a manifestation of God. According to this paragraph, vaḥy is not the Quran itself, nor is it divine assistance per se; it is the Prophet’s interpretation or the Prophet’s hermeneutical experience. In this paragraph, Šabestari is clear that we understand the meaning of vaḥy from the text of the Quran. This means that understanding vaḥy requires understanding the text. As such, the meaning of vaḥy for Šabestari is a hermeneutical question of the Quran. In contrast to
Montaẓeri, Ṭabāṭabāyi, and Soruš who ask the question of the author’s inspirations of the text of the
Quran, hermeneutics is not to “search for another person” or “psychological intentions behind the text;”66 instead, it is to cease to ask the question of intentions. The discussion about the Quran being
God’s vaḥy to the Prophet is a discussion about the author’s psychological intentions or inspirations. In this sense, there is no difference between Montaẓeri’s, Ṭabāṭabāyi’s, and Soruš’s treatment of vaḥy. For
Montaẓeri, this inspiration is the totality of the Quran in form and meaning; for Ṭabāṭabạyi, although there exists a space for the agency of the Prophet, the Quran is mostly the speech of God; and for Soruš the inspiration (or the psychological intentions) beyond the text is the Prophet’s dreams.
Paul Ricoeur (d. 2005) actually provides us with a useful framework within which to understand
Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy. For Ricoeur, what we have to interpret as the task of hermeneutics, if it is not the psychological inspirations of the writing, is “the world of the text.” He writes:
To interpret is to explicate the sort of being in the world unfolded in front of the text… What is to be interpreted in a text is a proposed world, a world that I might inhabit and wherein I might project my own-most possibilities. This is what I call the world of the text, the world
66 Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, ed. Mark Wallace, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 43.
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probably belonging to this unique text ...67
Regarding the first task of hermeneutics, he writes:
[It is] not to give rise to a decision on the part of the reader but to allow the world of being that is the “issue” of the text to unfold. Thus, above and beyond emotions, dispositions, belief, or nonbelief, is the proposition of a world...68
According to Ricoeur, another important task of hermeneutics, after discovering the world of the text,
“is to put the issue of the text before everything else, which is to cease to ask the question of the inspiration of the writings.”69 The world of the text (or the issue) is proposed through specific modes of discourse.70 Ricoeur writes that to understand a text, as a work, as a whole, is always “more than the summations of its partial meanings.”71 The text provides us with a “texture and calls for an interpretation of its inner organization.”72 This aspect of the work, according to Ricoeur, is related to the modes of discourse.73 By applying his hermeneutics to the Bible, Ricoeur explains what revelation means. He writes:
If the Bible can be said to be revealed, this ought to be said of the “issue” that it speaks of_ the new being that is displayed there… If … [it] is revealed, it is to the extent that the new being unfolded there is itself revelatory… In other words, revelation is a trait of the biblical world.74
67 Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, 43; here, Ricoeur is influenced by Heidegger’s notion of Verstehen. He writes, “In Being and Time, the theory of understanding is not tied to the comprehension of others but becomes a structure of being-in-the-world… The moment of understanding responds dialectically to being in a situation, as the projection of our ‘ownmost’ possibilities in those situations where we find ourselves. I want to take this idea of ‘the projection of our ownmost possibilities’ from his analysis and apply it to the theory of the text.” See Ibid. 68 Ibid., 44. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., 39. 71 Ibid., 38. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., 38; for Ricoeur, modes of discourse are similar to literary genres. However, literary genres are for the purpose of classification while modes of discourse are to create a work. 74 Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, 38.
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By using Ricoeur’s hermeneutical framework, we can see that this is the world of the Quran that
Šabestari describes as The Prophetic Reading of the World. Šabestari allows the world of the text to unfold as a whole. This world has been proposed through a narrative as its main mode of discourse. The world of the Quran as Šabestari describes it is a narrative of a world in which everything is experienced as God’s manifestations. Now, we should ask what does vaḥy mean in this world? What does Šabestari mean by saying that according to the Quran, vaḥy is what the Prophet experienced as the divine assistance that enabled him to experience the world monotheistically? This implies two things. First, to speak of vaḥy is to speak of the world of the Quran. Second, it is an interpretation/experience. The insight that Ricoeur provides us with is applicable to some extent to Šabestari’s understanding of vaḥy.
The world of the Quran or the Prophetic Reading of the World is revelatory because it provides the reader with a new existential situation, a new being in the world, that is different from the reality of everyday life. This new being itself is revelatory. In this sense, vaḥy is related to the interpretation of the text, and to the discovery of the world of the Quran. Consequently, vaḥy becomes of a hermeneutical nature. Not only vaḥy but also faith becomes of a hermeneutical constitution. It is important that vaḥy and faith are inseparable. Faith is the result of encountering vaḥy. Faith is not to believe in some propositions, nor is it an immediate experience.75 As Ricoeur mentions, it is a new “attitude.” Ricoeur writes, “It is the attitude of one who accepts being interpreted at the same time that he or she interprets the world of the text.”76 By disclosing the world of the Quran, one is able to encounter vaḥy. Faith is to be interpreted by vaḥy while vaḥy is the result of interpreting the world of the Quran. This is the
75 Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, 46. 76 Ibid.
25 meaning of being Muslim, or having faith. According to Šabestari, “A Muslim is someone who participates in the Prophet’s narrative and narrates the world monotheistically.” To participate in the
Prophet’s narrative and to narrate the world based on the world of the Quran is to participate in an act of interpretation and to allow oneself to be interpreted by the world of the Quran. This is the hermeneutical constitution of vaḥy and faith in The Prophetic Reading of the World. In this sense, vaḥy becomes the hermeneutical relationship between oneself and the world of the Quran. This hermeneutical relationship does not remain in the level of the world of the text. It reaches the world in the level of Husserl’s Lebenswelt (Lifeworld) or Heidegger’s being-in-the-world.77
Mojtahed Šabestari and New Modes of Being Muslim
As I noted earlier, Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy played an important role in the religious atmosphere of Iranian society. It connects the two sides of the spectrum of vaḥy together, making a circle in which different meanings of vaḥy flow and intermingle. It is especially important for people at the far left of the spectrum who cannot make sense of the idea that the Quran is God’s speech. It is undeniable that the Quran has been one of the most important texts for Muslims and, to some extent, a gateway into Islam. This “barrier to entry” that many people face is due primarily to a new set of
“values” of modernity. Changes in the context of life led to a dramatic changes in the “values” by which people sought to live. Many Muslims encountered the text of the Quran and compared the content to the new “values” of modernity. This confrontation happened at two levels: a personal encounter with the text of the Quran, and an encounter with the Quran as a response to Islamic states that maintained
77 See Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, 42.
26 the Quran as their charter of ethics and their source of laws. In these confrontations, many people could not make sense of the Quran as God’s speech. Since the Quran was supposed to be understood as the speech of God, for all times and without any errors, and as the pillar of being Muslim, the modern impossibility of making sense of the Quran for many people resulted in a crisis of Islamic faith. While they began with the assumption that the Quran is the speech of God, their reading of the Quran resulted in a denial of this assumption and an adoption of the belief that it is the word of the Prophet.
Consequently, many people came to identify as non-Muslims while they were still participating in a tradition which was highly Islamic, through different rituals, through their Islamic “readings” of the world, etc.78 While “modern non-Muslims” desired to escape the “Fundamentalism” of religion as one of the major barriers to become modern, they became the voice of “Fundamentalism.”
“Fundamentalists” and “modern people” had one important characteristic in common: both desired to eliminate ambiguity from the context of religion. For both, as an important trait of modernity, clarity was what was intended and certainty was the goal. “Modern non-Muslims” were also drawn to literalism more or less in their encounter with the Quran, besides focusing on the Quran as the speech of God, for modern literalism was a powerful technique to eliminate ambiguity from the text.79 In this atmosphere,
Šabestari’s conception of vaḥy, in which the Quran is the speech of the Prophet, offers such people a way to circumvent the “barrier to entry.” Besides the technical implications of Šabetari’s theory, the character of Šabestari as a “pious Muslim” and his complete traditional Islamic education are also
78 See chapter 3 and the conclusion. 79 “Fundamentalism” as a modern phenomenon is an instance of the pervasive and powerful modern desire to remove ambiguity from life. Literalism is not the only technique by which escaping ambiguity becomes possible. This may happen in different ways and levels. For example, it is impossible to understand Fundamentalism in Iran in light of literalism. Understanding Fundamentalism in Iran may be possible by the concept of “the Guardianship of the Jurist” (velāyat-e faqih), for vali-e faqih has the power to remove ambiguity.
27 important elements in the power of his theory. This theory is not offered by a modern academic who may dislike Islam or by a person who does not have enough knowledge of Islam in its traditional sense.
Sharing the same spot on the spectrum with Šabestari let many people revive their relationship with the Quran and understand it anew.
At the same time, Šabestari does not close off the possibility of thinking of the Quran as the speech of God. The hermeneutical constitution of vaḥy in the Prophetic Reading of the World let vaḥy be simultaneously the word of the Prophet and the word of God. Having started from the left side of the spectrum, one can remain in the level of the speech of the Prophet, while one can transcend the speech of the Prophet and experience the word of God.
By adding ambiguity, Šabestari let the Quran transcend two realms of certainty. One of these realms insists that the Quran is the absolute speech of God and being Muslim is associated with maintaining such a perspective. On the other hand, modern certainty argues that even if there is a God, the Quran cannot be the word of God; as such, Islam cannot make meaning for its modern audience.
Despite their assumed tensions, these two realms follow very similar logics and, consequently, they can easily come to an agreement: one becomes Muslim, and the other non-Muslim. The Prophetic Reading of the World, however, introduces ambiguity into the notion of vaḥy, allowing people to locate themselves on the spectrum (or in the new circle) and partake in discourses about what it means to be
Muslim.
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Chapter 2 - “Westoxication,” Islamic Tradition, and the Evolution of Mojtahed
Šabestari’s Thought
It was Mojtahed Šabestari’s latest conception of vaḥy in The Prophetic Reading of the World that we located at the far left of the spectrum in the first chapter. However, Šabestari’s treatment of vaḥy changed gradually throughout his life and moved from the far right to the far left of the spectrum. This chapter addresses the history of the Prophetic Reading of the World briefly. At important points in the development of Šabestari’s thought, we have to ask two questions to illuminate “the history of the present”: to what and how have Šabestari’s views on vaḥy changed from one moment to another up until the formation of The Prophetic Reading of the World? To do that, it is imperative to engage in other topics other than vaḥy that have somehow affected Šabestari’s world of ideas. By reflecting on his major works, I will argue that Šabestari’s thought is highly rooted in the Islamic tradition, despite influences from Western philosophy and Christian theology. The Prophetic Reading of the World is not presented spontaneously outside the Islamic tradition as the result of Šabestari’s encounter with new ideas from the West.
Revolutionary Fervor: the 1960s to the 1980s
During the 1960s, Šabestari wrote for a magazine named Dars-hāyi az Maktab-e Eslām (Lessons from the School of Islam). It was the official journal published by the seminary of Qom since 1958. In his articles, Šabestari showed no interest in talking about the nature of vaḥy and the Quran. Rather, his major concern during the years between 1965-1968 in that journal was twofold: the necessity of a global
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Islamic government (ḥokumat-e jahāni-ye eslām), and the priority of Islamic law over Western law.80
Although he does not talk about vaḥy directly, Šabestari’s reflection on these two topics provides us with examples on the basis of which we can detect traces of how he thought about the phenomenon of vaḥy. In a discussion on feqh (Islamic substantive law), he argues that the difference between feqh and
Western law is that Western law has been developed gradually through the ages by the works of human beings, yet “feqh has been given instantaneously as a whole through vaḥy.”81 This shows that vaḥy here as the main source of feqh is something different from worldly knowledge discovered by human beings; it is some sort of propositional knowledge that was given to us. In another article, he discusses the importance of establishing a global Islamic government.82 He states that this global government has a charter that is mentioned in the Quran. The first article in the charter, stated in Quran 8:39, is to fight for preserving Islamic society from its enemies. The second article, according to Quran 4:75, is to fight for making the oppressed free from oppressors. He then compares the Quranic charter with the Charter of the United Nations.83 This reading of the Quran is further evidence of how Šabestari understood the
Quran or vaḥy to the Prophet as a statement from God. According to Šabestari, this statement/proposition aims to “produce a right worldview for human beings and correct their
80 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Ḥoquq-e Eslāmi Arzeš-e Jahāni-ye Ḵod Rā Bāz Miyābad,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 9, no. 1 (November 1967): 17-20; idem., “Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-ye Eslām (16): Hadaf-hāye Bozorg,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 9, no. 3 (January 1968): 26-29; idem., “Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-ye Eslām: Maʾmuriyat-e Yek Jāmeʿe-ye Enqelābi,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 9, no. 4 (February 1968): 34-37; idem., “Yek Ḥokumat Barāye Hama-ye Jahān/ Pāya-hāye Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-Dar Eslām,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 7, no. 9 (June 1966): 22-25. 81 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Moqāyesa-i Miyān-e Ḥoquq-e Eslām va Ḥoquq-e Ḡarb (Ḥoquq-e Ḵiyāli)/ Masʾala-ye Jorm Dar Feqh-e Eslāmi Va Ḥoquq-e Ḡarb,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 6, no. 4 (January 1965): 59. 82 Idem., “Yek Ḥokumat Barāye Hama-ye Jahān/ Pāya-hāye Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-Dar Eslām,” 24. 83 Idem., “Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-ye Eslām (16): Hadaf-hāye Bozorg,” 28-29.
30 deflections.”84 The Quran is a statement that is different from all other sorts of statements because it is universal and eternal.85 This is the time that a young Šabestari was studying in the seminary of Qom. He commenced his studies in 1951 and concluded them in 1969. Šabestari was probably influenced by
Ayatollāh Ḵomeyni’s ideas who taught at the seminary of Qom until 1964 when he was exiled by
Mohammad Reza Shah (d. 1980) to Turkey.86
To examine how Šabestari’s views on vaḥy transformed in later years in his writings, we should pay attention to two important incidents in his life after 1969. Living in Germany from 1970 to 1978 as the director of the Islamic Center of Hamburg and learning German, Šabestari had the opportunity to study philosophical hermeneutics and modern Christian theology. Then, one year before the Iranian revolution (1979), Šabestari returned to Iran. After the revolution, he actively participated in politics.
He was elected by the people of Šabestar, his hometown, as a member of the first Parliament (1980-
1984).87 However, he claimed no political roles after this. His career as a politician ended very soon and he became a professor at the University of Tehran.88 Although the experience of studying new ideas in
Germany was of deep significance in the transformation of his thought, the trace of this influence was
84 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-ye Eslām: Pāya-hāye Fekri (11): Falsafa-ye Ḵāṣ-e Eslām Dar Masʾala- ye Hamzisti-ye Maḏhabi,” Dars-hāyi Az Maktab-e Eslām 8, no. 6 (April 1967): 13. 85 Idem., “Yek Ḥokumat Barāye Hama-ye Jahān/ Pāya-hāye Ḥokumat-e Jahāni-Dar Eslām,” 22-23. 86 One of the books that Šabestari published in this period was Jameʿa-ye Ensāni-ye Eslām (The Islamic Human Society); See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, Jameʿa-ye Ensāni-ye Eslām (Tehran: Kānun-e Našr Va Pažuheš-hāye Eslāmi, 1967); in his book, Šabestari argues that the borders of Islamic society must always be expanding: “The result of such a mission is to create a global society governed by an Islamic state;” see Moḥsen Kadivar, “Now-Andiši-ye Dini Dar Irān-e Moʿāṣer: Moṭāleʿa-ye Mowredi Mojtahed Šabestari,” Vebsāyt-e Rasmi-ye Moḥsen Kadivar, https://kadivar.com/?p=16289 (accessed October 15, 2018); Jameʿa-ye Ensāni-ye Eslām was published two years before Ayatollāh Ḵomeyni’s Velāyat-e Faqih (The Guardianship of the Jurist); see Ruḥollāh Ḵomeyni, Velāyat-e Fagih (Beirut: n.p., 1970). Velāyat-e Fagih is about the necessity of establishing an Islamic state during the major occultation (ḡeybat-e Kobrā) of al-Mahdi. 87 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Zendegi Nāma,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%d8%b2%d9%86%d8%af%da%af%db%8c%e2%80%8c%d9%86%d8%a7 %d9%85%d9%87/ (accessed October 17, 2018). 88 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Zendegi Nāma.”
31 barely noticeable in the first decade after his return to Iran. It seems that the mere encounter with new ideas in Germany did not transform his views; he needed one more decade to gradually change.
In 1983, Šabestari published a translation of the first part of Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ’s Mabạḥiṯ fī ʿUlūm al-
Quran, which is a reflection on vaḥy, from Arabic to Persian.89 In his book, Ṣāliḥ describes vaḥy as follows: In the Quran, the word qol (tell) has been used more than 300 times to remind the readers that the Prophet did not influence vaḥy and the Quran is not his word; the Prophet is not the speaker, rather he is the audience; he recited exactly what he received from God for people.90 In the foreword of the book, Šabestari writes that he intended to write a book about the Quran in order to familiarize young people with introductory aspects of studying the Quran. Šabestari continues that when he saw Ṣāliḥ’s book, he decided to translate the book instead of writing a new work. According to Šabestari, Ṣāliḥ was completely successful in fulfilling what Šabestari planned to do.91 We can conclude that in that period of time, Šabestari probably sympathized with Ṣāliḥ’s understanding of vaḥy which was similar to that of the traditionalists. This translation continued to be republished until 1996.92
Although Šabestari’s treatment of vaḥy in the 1980s was still the same as that of the traditionalists, his new attitude toward the West bespoke a significant transformation in his thought.
In an article published in 1984, Šabestari offered a proposal about the relationship between academia
89 Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ, Pažuheši Darbara-ye Quran va Vaḥy, trans. Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari (Tehran: Daftar-e Našr-e Farhang- e Eslāmi, 1983). To see the original book, see Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ, Mabạḥiṯ fī ʿUlūm al-Quran, 17th ed. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿilm lil Malāyīn, 1988). 90 Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ, Pažuheši Darbara-ye Quran va Vaḥy, 40. 91 Ibid., 11. 92 See Kadivar, “Now-Andiši-ye Dini Dar Irān-e Moʿāṣer: Moṭāleʿa-ye Mowredi Mojtahed Šabestari.” Kadivar believes that Šabestari agreed with everything that Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ talked about except for Ṣāliḥ’s treatment of impeccability (ʿeṣmat) which is different from that of Shi’ites. Given that this translation continued to be republished until 1996, Kadivar maintains that Šabestari continued to agree with Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ’s treatment of vaḥy until this date.
32 and the seminaries.93 In that article, Šabestari emphasized two issues: the necessity of the development of a new ʿIlm al-Kalām (rational theology) in seminaries corresponding to new concerns in the modern academic atmosphere, and the necessity of creating space for inter-religious discussions.94 These issues reflect the influence of modern Christian theology and his engagement with comparative theology. In another article, “Aṭrāf va Abʿād-e Gunāgun-e Masʾala-ye Ḡarb,” Šabestari argues that the West is usually described by its connection to materialism, yet the West has other aspects.95 He continues that Muslims should benefit from Western knowledge, specifically the humanities. Šabestari states that it is not knowledge that we can recognize as heretical; it is the human who benefits from that knowledge who might be a heretic; Western knowledge is not endowed with heresy, nor with faith; Muslims can benefit from the Western knowledge and remain Muslim.96 In these articles, we can observe that during the early 1980s, Šabestari tried to make the environment ready to create a dialogue between Islam and the
West. In an intense anti-Western atmosphere, Mojtahed Šabestari started writing about intercultural dialogue between Islam and the West, Islam and Christianity, and the necessity of thinking through the writings of Western intellectuals.97 This attitude was completely opposed to the intellectual discourse and political atmosphere of the society that intended to resist the West and conserve the Islamic heritage at all costs. In 1979, the hostage crisis happened which was a manifest example of such a resistance. In 1980, Iraq attacked Iran, and the Iranian public blamed the West for its support of Iraq.
93 Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Ānča Ḥowza Bāyad Be Dānešgāh Bedahad,” Keyhān-e Farhangi 1, no. 9 (November 1984): 36-37. 94 Ibid. 95 Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Aṭrāf va Abʿād-e Gunāgun-e Masʾala-ye Ḡarb,” Keyhān-e Farhangi 1, no. 6 (August 1984): 17-19. 96 Ibid. 97 See Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Ānča Ḥowza Bāyad Be Dānešgāh Bedahad;” idem., “Aṭrāf va Abʿād-e Gunāgun-e Masʾala-ye Ḡarb;” idem., “Mosalmānān va Masihiyān Dar Jahān-e Emruz,” Keyhān-e Farhangi 3, no. 8 (November 1986): 9-12.
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This fomented enmity toward the West. Resisting the West was even the case for the Leftists who were opposed to the Islamic Republic and whose goal was to fight global imperialism. Even for the nationalist liberals who had a better relationship with the West, the memory of the 1953 Iranian coup that overthrew the Prime Minister, Moḥammad Moṣaddeq (d. 1967), with support of the West was not easy to forget. Moreover, in every conspiracy theory, the West has been the first suspect. It is not odd at all to hear from some people who dislike the Islamic Republic the story that Ayatollāh Ḵomeyni was an agent of the West or that he was paid by the West, usually England, to lead the revolution. Some influential books were also published by traditionalists to critique the West and its values. Ḡarb Zadegi
(Westoxification) by Jalāl Āl-e Aḥmad (d. 1969) was a popular example of such a trend which was published in 1962.98 Another example was the publication of Āsiyā Dar Barābar-e Ḡarb (Asia Versus the
West) in 1978 by Dāriyuš Šāyegān (d. 2018) which was a philosophical critique of Western nihilism and a reflection on its impact on the East.99
A Rebirth: 1990s
By creating a dialogue with the West, in the late 1980s, we can see Šabestari’s intellectual rebirth in the publication of a series of articles titled Din va ʿAql (Religion and Intellect) which were published between 1987 and 1989.100 In these articles, we can observe two things: the appearance of philosophical hermeneutics (most importantly, Gadamer’s ideas) for the first time in his writings one decade after his
98 See Jalāl Āl-e Aḥmad, Ḡarb Zadegi. 99 See Dāriyuš Šāyegān, Āsiyā Dar Barābar-e Ḡarb (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 2012). 100 See Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Din va ʿAql (1),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 4, no. 6 (September 1987): 12-14; idem., “Din va ʿAql (2),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 4, no. 8 (November 1988): 20-23; idem., “Din va ʿAql (3),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 4, no 12 (March 1988): 10-11; idem., “Din va ʿAql (4),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 5, no. 3 (June 1988): 10-13; idem., “Din va ʿAql (5),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 5, no. 9 (December 1988): 28-29; idem., “Din va ʿAql (6),” Keyhān-e Farhangi 6, no. 2 (May 1989): 14-17; idem., “Din va ʿAql, Soḵan-e Āḵer.” Keyhān-e Farhangi 6, no. 5 (August 1989): 14-15.
34 return to Iran from Germany, and Šabestari’s transformation from an apologist for establishing an
Islamic state to a critic of the Islamic Republic. The new ideas that Šabestari studied in Germany seemed to serve as a good source of inspiration for Šabestari to use, yet what led him to realize the necessity of a thorough inspection of his own ideas was his experience of the Islamic Republic. Working as a part of the state for several years, Šabestari found his old ideas inefficient and harmful in practice.101 His dreams about an Islamic state, which for Šabestari meant enforcing Islamic law (feqh) came to be viewed as naive. Then, he started criticizing his old ideas about feqh.102 Criticizing feqh was one way for Šabestari to critique the Islamic Republic.103 The gist of the articles Din va ʿAql was that the laws jurists extract from the Quran and Sunna based on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (oṣul-e feqh) are not
101 See Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Čerā Dowrān-e ʿElm-e Oṣul va Ejtehād Separi Šoda Ast,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%DA%86%D8%B1%D8%A7- %D8%AF%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%88%D9%84- %D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AF-%D9%81%D9%82%D9%87%DB%8C- %D8%B3%D9%BE%D8%B1%DB%8C-%D8%B4%D8%AF/ (accessed 25 January, 2018); idem., “Naqd-e Bonyād-hāye Feqh va Kalām;” idem., “Agar Dāʿeš Az Faqihān Beporsad,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%A7%DA%AF%D8%B1- %D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B9%D9%90%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D8%B2- %D9%81%D9%82%DB%8C%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A8%D9%BE%D8%B1%D8%B3%D8%AF/ (accessed 25 January, 2018). 102 See Mojtahed Šabestari, “Čerā Dowrān-e ʿElm-e Oṣul va Ejtehād Separi Šoda Ast;” from the 1980s to the 2000s, Šabestari distanced himself from feqh more and more to the degree that at the end, he announces that no longer is feqh meaningful in our time. Feqh, which was once a powerful tool employed to govern Muslim societies, no longer has the potential to respond to human needs. He argues that feqh has to be superseded by modern systems of legislation. 103 Šabestari knows well that the Islamic Republic is more a modern state that uses all the tools of a modern state to survive than a society that is governed by means of traditional feqh. The constitution is also written based on modern models, rather than according to the jurists’ legal opinions. Although there are many situations which are influenced by feqh in Iranian politics, Šabestari sees feqh as more of an excuse for the state to claim that something, a program, a book, a statement, etc., is contrary to Islamic laws and principles; see Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Tafsir-e Ḥoquqi-ye Qānun- e Asāsi Tanhā Rāh-e Ḥākemiyat va Nejāt-e Kešvar Ast,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%B1- %D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82%DB%8C-%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%88%D9%86- %D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B3%DB%8C-%D8%AA%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%87- %D8%AD%D8%A7%DA%A9%D9%85%DB%8C/ (accessed 14 February, 2019). For Šabestari, this is how feqh becomes an obstacle to achieving freedom of speech and thought, which are vital. According to Šabestari, freedom is vital in order to make sense of “religion.” Without freedom, faith (imān) is meaningless. Feqh becomes an obstacle not only to freedom, but importantly to faith itself; see Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, Imān va Āzādi (Tehran: Ṭarḥ-e Now, 2000).
35 sacred.104 What a jurist infers (estenbāṭ) from sacred sources is inseparable from her/his presuppositions.
These presuppositions, which are rooted in temporal human knowledge, direct the inference of legal norms from sacred sources.105 Jurists who think they infer God’s law from the Quran actually create laws which, instead of being sacred, are reflections of their own presuppositions. At this time, the influence from Gadamer on Šabestari’s thought is undeniable. Šabestari’s intention is not concerned with what jurists do or what they ought to do but, in Gadamer’s words, “what happens to” them “over and above” their “wanting and doing.”106 Therefore, Šabestari’s critique here does not concern the method that jurists use to infer laws, rather, it is about the conditions that make the truth possible. According to
Gadamer, a jurist’s understanding of a text “is to be thought of less as a subjective act than as participating in an event of tradition, a process of transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated.”107 For Gadamer, tradition is an environing lingual atmosphere within which the reader is situated. Understanding is not a method like the scientific method in the natural sciences.
Understanding is also not a method that a jurist, for instance, applies to an object like the Quran and turns it into objective knowledge as God’s law.108 Rather, there is something else at stake. In Gadamer’s words,
being situated within an event of tradition, a process of handing down, is a prior condition of understanding. Understanding proves to be an event, and the task of hermeneutics
104 Mojtahed Šabestari, “Din va ʿAql, Soḵan-e Āḵer,” 14. 105 Ibid., 14-15. 106 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), xxvi. 107 Ibid., 291. 108 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 308.
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consists in asking what kind of understanding, what kind of science it is, that is itself advanced by historical change.109
In this stage, Šabestari applies hermeneutics to the question of feqh. The hermeneutical question here is not about our understanding of the Quran as a text; it is about a jurist’s understanding of the Quran as a sacred text. The difference is that here the Quran is vaḥy, and Šabestari problematizes the relationship between a jurist and the text while both the jurist and the text are situated within a tradition, in a Gadamerian sense, which presupposes that the Quran descended from God as vaḥy.
However, in The Prophetic Reading of the World, the last stage of Šabestari’s thought, the hermeneutical question is how an understanding of the Quran becomes possible at all without the assumption that the Quran is the word of God.
In 1996, Šabestari published Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat (Hermeneutics, Scripture, and
Sunna).110 What he had started as a project in the articles Din va ʿAql in 1987 was published in a more detailed way in that book ten years later. This book comprised Šabestari’s speeches, writings, and interviews since the late 1980s and represents an important stage in Šabestari’s thought. Under the influence of philosophical hermeneutics, in Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, Šabestari deals with the process of understanding the text of the Quran.111 Although modern hermeneutics were not new to
Iranian audience at this time, Šabestari’s book was very important because it was the first time that someone applied modern hermeneutics to an Islamic context.112 In his book, Šabestari encourages the
109 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 308. Moreover, besides this issue, the concept of power is of great significance to reflect on the idea of truth. The concept of power is absent from Šabestari’s analysis of truth. 110 Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat (Tehran: Ṭarḥ-e Now, 2006). 111 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 17-31. 112 In 1991, Bābak Aḥmadi published his book Sāḵtār va Taʾvil-e Matn (Structure and Interpretation of Text) on hermeneutics. See Bābak Aḥmadi, Sāḵtār va Taʾvil-e Matn (Tehran: Markaz, 1991); See also Kadivar, “Now-Andiši-ye Dini Dar Irān-e Moʿāṣer: Moṭāleʿa-ye Mowredi Mojtahed Šabestari.”
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Islamic seminaries to study and incorporate philosophical hermeneutics to complete the topics of
Islamic Jurisprudence on interpreting texts.113 While in the articles Din va ʿAql, Šabestari criticizes jurists who think they infer sacred laws from sacred sources, here in Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, Šabestari states that Islamic Jurisprudence is a kind of human knowledge, and jurists have to accord their presuppositions with the knowledge of their time, as historically jurists had adopted the knowledge from their own time.114 One of the most important pre-understandings of the Quran has always been one’s treatment of the Quran and vaḥy. This is how Šabestari addresses the question of vaḥy from the
113 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 33. 114 See Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 53. Updating presuppositions should not be confused with the concept of dynamic feqh (feqh-e puyā) which emphasizes the significance of time and place for inferring laws from sacred sources. It is important that feqh in Iran has been more dynamic than rigid. The most important example is the establishing of the state and the problem of velāyat-e faqih which would not have been possible through using a rigid notion of feqh. Although Ayatollāh Ḵomeyni emphasized the significance of traditional feqh, his approach to feqh was not completely traditional. Āyatollāh Ṣāneʿi (b. 1937) attributes dynamic feqh (feqh-e puyā) to Ḵomeyni (see Ayatollāh Ḵomeyni’s fatwa about transgender rights). However, Ṣāneʿi finds the term feqh-e puyā basically artificial. He believes that feqh for Shi’ites has always been dynamic, as Šeyḵ-e Ṭusi (d. 1067) and Allāma Ḥelli (d. 1325) changed their legal opinions from time to time in different works. Ṣāneʿi states that feqh for any jurist who is just (ʿādel) is dynamic; otherwise it is not feqh. He states that sometimes a faqih’s legal opinion is able to convince people, or his/her opinion is close to that of the public, and sometimes it is not. For example, according to Ṣāneʿi, when a faqih says that diya (blood money) for men is higher than for women, the faqih has inferred this from the sources, and a faqih (like Ṣāneʿi) who states that diya is equal for men and women does likewise. Ṣāneʿi believes that dynamic feqh does not mean that a faqih is influenced by the opinion of people or a new context. If Ṣāneʿi thinks that men and women should have equal rights, the source of this equality for him is the Quran and Sunna, not modernity and people’s opinion. In this case, the two faqihs with different legal opinions are not different in terms of their methods, yet their understandings of the sources are different. For Šabestari, however, the equal rights for women and men is not something that is inferred from religious texts. We live in an era in which distinguishing between men and women in terms of rights is meaningless. It is part of the human experience, and faqihs should absorb this as a necessary pre-understanding. Šabestari also criticizes the scholars who intend to show that human rights, for instance, is compatible with Islam, or completely Islamic. Šabestari states that human rights are not Islamic. Nevertheless, Muslims have to accept and adopt those rights as valuable achievements of humanity. This is one of the points that separates Šabestari from the movement of “religious intellectualism,” for the effort to show that Islam and modernity are compatible, or Muslims can derive human rights from Islamic sources, has been a major goal of “religious intellectualism” (rowšanfekri-ye dini). See Mohammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Ḥoquq-e Bašar Eslāmi Nemišavad, Ammā Mosalmānān Bāyad Ān Rā Bepaḏirand,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A8%D8%B4%D8%B1- %D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%DB%8C- %D9%86%D9%85%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D8%B4%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7- %D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86/ (accessed 16 February, 2019); see Yusof Ṣāneʿi, “Ejteḥād-e Puyā: Goftogu,” Pāyegāh-e Eṭtelāʿ Resāni-ye Ḥażrat-e Āyatollāh al-Oẓmā Ṣāneʿi, http://saanei.xyz/?view=01,02,09,4146,0 (accessed 16 February, 2019).
38 vantage point of feqh. In Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, he analyzes the most important pre- understandings of the conception of the Quran and the speech of God in the Islamic tradition. In the ninth and tenth chapters of Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, Šabestari compares the pre-understandings of the Quran among several groups including scholars of hadith, Ashʿarīs, Muʿtazilīs, philosophers, and mystics.115 He intends to show how different understandings of the Quran take place in particular
“horizons” which are the result of one’s historically situatedness.116 Šabestari states that despite the differences between Ashʿarīs’, Muʿtazilīs’, and philosopher’s treatments of vaḥy, there is one thing that they have in common:
Vaḥy as God’s speech is a set of information and propositions about the world of existence. God intends to communicate with prophets in order to give them some sorts of knowledge and truths which are impossible to be attained by humanity without God’s help. The Quran
115 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 103-144. 116 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 103-104. In his reflection on different understandings of God’s speech, Šabestari starts with Islamic philosophers. He explains that Islamic philosophers did not attribute speech to God in any sense. For philosophers, it is not the speech that we can attribute to God, rather what we can attribute to God is a kind of “causing to understand” (tafhim) that takes place by the mediation of the active intellect (ʿaql-e faʿʿāl) (112, 138); the speech might be attributed to God figuratively because the origin of the speech, which is the active intellect, does not act without God’s permission (138-139); on the contrary, Ashʿarīs and Muʿtazilīs did not want to offer a theory which was not compatible with the prima facie meaning (ẓavāher) of the Quran. The Quran attributes speech to God in about 37 different verses, and Ashʿarīs and Muʿtazilīs had to somehow solve this problem. Ashʿarīs supposed that being speaker (motekallem) is an eternal attribute (ṣefat-e qadim), or an attribute of essence of God (see ibid.); on the other hand, Muʿtazilīs believed that the speaker is the doer (fāʿel) of the speech, and not one who is the speaker in essence. As such, God is the speaker because she creates speech (ibid.); these different pre-understandings and presuppositions about the speech of God led Ashʿarīs, Muʿtazilīs, and philosophers to different paths of understanding the Quran. Just as an example, according to Šabestari, Muʿtazilīs stated that if the Quran is the speech of God, to understand her speech, we have to be aware of her attributes and intentions. They also added that since speaking is an attribute of action of God, we can maintain that speaking (or language) is a human phenomenon, with specific human contracts (movāżeʿa). As Šabestari points out, Muʿtazilīs started to examine vaḥy as “God’s report of herself” in a human framework. Despite the fact that vaḥy is a miracle, it does not offer anything beyond the borders of human language which is a human phenomenon. As such, the content of the Quran is comprehensible through human reasoning. Šabestari notes that the Moʿtazelite thought on understanding a text could be found in the works of Qāżi ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 1024) (Ibid., 114-115); see also Qāżi ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mutašābih al-Quran, ed. ʿAdnān Muḥammad Zarzur (Cairo: Dār al-Turāṯ, 1966); Ibid., al-Muḡanni fī Abvāb al-Tawḥīd va al-ʿAdl, ed. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn (N.p.: n.p., n.d.); Šabestari states that the theory that Qāżi ʿAbd al-Jabbār offers about the process of understanding is comparable to that of Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834) and Wilhelm Dilthey (d. 1911), the founding figures of modern hermeneutics. In his theory of understanding a text, Qāżi ʿAbd al-Jabbār focuses on passing through speech and approaching the speaker (intentions and attributes of the speaker), and examining the speech as a historical phenomenon (movāżeʿa); see Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 114-117.
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is a set of propositions, and interpreting the Quran is to understand the knowledge that is brought to us by vaḥy. The better and more exact one understands that information, the better the Quran is interpreted. The information in the Quran is a vaḥy per se (vaḥy fi nafsehi) which exists independent from the interpreters’ works.117
The Existential Turn
After talking about different pre-understandings of vaḥy in different schools of thought,
Šabestari deals with the pre-understandings of Ibn ʿArabi (d. 1240), one of the most influential figures in philosophical Sufism. According to Šabestari, Ibn ʿArabi was the first one in the history of Islam who offered a different understanding of vaḥy.118 Šabestari notes that Ibn ʿArabi’s understanding had three important characteristics: Firstly, he talked about the continuity of vaḥy. Secondly, he distinguished between two different kinds of prophecy (nobovvat), legislative (tašriʿi) and non-legislative (ḡeyr-e tašriʿi); he confined the seal of prophecy (ḵatm-e nobovvat) only to legislative prophecy.119 Thirdly, dissimilar to others, he did not use the concept of vaḥy as a kind of knowledge that exists per se for everyone in the Quran.120 The gist of Ibn ʿArabi’s theory, according to Šabestari, is that whether or not a speech is vaḥy is related to how it affects human beings. In Šabestari’s words,
It is possible that a particular speech becomes vaḥy for a specific person but not for the others. To realize whether or not a speech is vaḥy, we should not ask if that speech breaks natural laws; rather, we should ask what that speech does with human beings that other
117Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 139-140. The major difference between Ashʿarī’s and Muʿtazilīs’ treatment of vaḥy and philosophers’ is that for Ashʿarīs and Muʿtazilīs, the speech is created directly by God (be it an attribute of essence or action), but philosophers do not agree because this is not possible in the circle of causality. 118 Ibid., 140. 119 The majority of the prophets were considered to have non-legislative prophecy. Only five prophets who are called ololʿazm including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, brought new šariʿats (what God legislates for people). Muslims usually believed that Muhammad was the last prophet (the seal of prophets) and no prophet, whether legislative or non- legislative would come after him. Consequently, vaḥy as the sign of prophecy ceased absolutely after Muhammad. However, according to Ibn ʿArabi since non-legislative prophecy continues, vaḥy also does not end. 120 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 140.
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speeches do not. Vaḥy is speech which is “absolutely other” (be kolli soḵan-e digar).121
Šabestari understands being “absolutely other” (be kolli soḵan-e digar) as not simply different from other kinds of speech in the sense that the content or the origin of the speech is different.122 He uses this expression with respect to its effect in the sense that vaḥy affects human existence, and makes it other.
Vaḥy changes the existence of the interlocutor to another level which is not comparable to other existential situations. This is why vaḥy is absolutely different. Here, vaḥy is not simply a proposition or some knowledge that the Prophet received and others could understand as well by interpreting the
Quran. Vaḥy became vaḥy for the Prophet because it transformed his existence. For others, it could become vaḥy only if it had such an effect.123 It is important that here vaḥy does not exist per se as some propositions in the Quran; it takes place and becomes possible when it causes a specific existential situation for its interlocutor. In Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, Ibn ʿArabi defines vaḥy as follows:
What is vaḥy? It is a hint (išārat) that becomes the surrogate of the phrase (ʿibārat). [Unlike the phrase] that passes through the phrase to the meaning …, in išārat, no passing happens from one thing to another. Here, the hint is identical to what is hinted to. In vaḥy, understanding (fahm), understood (mafhūm), and causing to understand (efhām) are of a single reality, and vaḥy happens very fast. If you do not understand the unity of the three realities, you are not the receiver of vaḥy… Vaḥy is a speech which has such a characteristic. Because of this, when God speaks through vaḥy, angels become unconscious. As when God spoke to Moses with vaḥy, Moses fainted. The effect of vaḥy of God in the interlocutor’s soul is very rapid and pervasive, and no one knows this but mystics… The dominance of vaḥy over its interlocutor is much stronger than the control of the interlocutor over her soul (nafs)… Thus, you, friend! Whenever you thought that you received vaḥy from God, look at your soul. See if you have a condition of doubt or objection inside. If you are still able to think, reason, and analyze, be aware that you have not received vaḥy. However, if what you receive, destroys you, and makes you blind and deaf, and becomes a veil between you and your thought and reasoning, and commands you fully, be aware that you have received
121 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 140. 122 In his explanation of vaḥy, Ibn ʿArabi does not use the phrase “absolutely other.” Šabestari uses this phrase from Karl Barth (d. 1968)’s conception of God as the “wholly other.” For Šabestari, what Ibn ʿArabi states resonates with Karl Barth’s understanding of the speech of God. By using this phrase, Šabestari also refers to Rumi’s “other thing” (čiz-e degar) in the verse, “if you want the other thing, my other thing came.” 123 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 140-141.
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vaḥy.124
Šabestari’s reading of this passage is very significant. For Ibn ʿArabi, vaḥy is not a phrase (ʿibārat) that implicates the meaning that the speaker intended to convey. It abolishes the phrase and affects the interlocutor at another level. If phrases convey propositions as intended meanings, vaḥy is an existential meaning which appears after being affected by the absolute power of an experience that transforms one’s existence to another horizon. This experience is not limited to the Prophet. As
Šabestari points out, according to Ibn ʿArabi, to understand the Quran, not the exterior but the interior, could be vaḥy as well.125 Vaḥy has not taken place only once for the Prophet; it is a continuous process and will continue forever. Hence, understanding the Quran is not to discover the meanings and knowledge that exist in the Quran as such. Rather, understanding is to participate in a similar existential experience.126 Corresponding to this understanding of vaḥy, faith (imān) is not simply to acknowledge the veracity of some propositions as Truth, and to struggle to accord with those propositions heartedly and practically. Faith follows vaḥy as an experience that causes a new existential situation. Faith is to transform to another horizon which is not comparable to anything. According to Ibn ʿArabi, it is a horizon of unconsciousness and a distancing from oneself in which one becomes blind to her ordinary existence and becomes sighted again in another existential plain.127
Šabestari’s reading of Ibn ʿArabi on vaḥy indicates a very significant turn in his treatment of vaḥy. If Šabestari, similar to the majority of Islamic thinkers, used to see vaḥy as sets of propositions offered by God to humanity, here we can see the second stage in his treatment of vaḥy. We refer to this
124 Ibn ʿArabi, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, vol. 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, n.d.), 78. 125 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 143; see also Ibn ʿArabi, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, vol. 1, 279-280. 126 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 143. 127 See Ibn ʿArabi, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, vol. 2, 78.
42 stage as the existential turn. It is important that the year that Šabestari published his book Hermenotik,
Ketāb, va Sonnat, i.e. 1996, is exactly the year he ceased republishing his translation of Ṣāliḥ’s book.
Through speaking about Ibn ʿArabi’s understanding of vaḥy, Šabestari in fact offers his own understanding as well. Besides the fact that he offers a special reading of Ibn ʿArabi that reflects his own thought, Šabestari talks about the advantages of Ibn ʿArabi’s view over other understandings of vaḥy. At the end of the tenth chapter of his book Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, Šabestari recognizes similarities between Ibn ʿArabi’s treatment of vaḥy and that of Paul Tillich. Without providing any explanations why their understandings are similar, Šabestari ends the chapter as follows:
When we read the discussion of reason and revelation in Tillich’s Systematic Theology, we get amazed by many similarities between their treatments of revelation (vaḥy). As if travelers of the path of truth, at the end, meet with each other in one destination, no matter what their religion, what part of the world they are from, and in which era they have lived.128
From this paragraph, we can understand that Šabestari not only sympathizes with Ibn ʿArabi’s understanding of vaḥy, but also with Tillich’s. The significant transformation in Šabestari’s thought which I referred to as the existential turn resonates highly with new ideas in modern Christian theology, and Šabestari himself acknowledges this resonance. This existential turn could be found in the works of the scholars like Tillich, Rahner, Pannenberg, etc. Šabestari states that the first stage of understanding revelation in traditional Christian theology was to think about revelation as propositions or sets of data that God gave human beings. He adds faith entailed the acceptance of those propositions; revelation comprised a set of statements compatible with every aspect of reality, and faith meant admitting the
128 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 143-144. See also Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).
43 absolute authority of those propositions. As such, faith was nothing but an opinion.129 Šabestari continues that after this stage, we can see a transformation in the treatment of revelation; revelation no longer was the revealing of information by God; revelation was an event/situation/incident through which God revealed himself in history to humanity by means of Jesus. Šabestari argues that the result of this historical incident for humanity was no longer to convey data to humanity from God, but was to influence and transform human existence and let humanity be born again. He adds that the revelation of God in history did not cease after a historical incident; it is a continuous process in every moment of history.130 In The Courage to Be, we can see the existential turn in Tillich’s understanding of faith and revelation.131 Tillich states that faith is a new being in the world, one that reacts to nonbeing manifested in three kinds of anxieties: the anxiety of death, the anxiety of meaninglessness, and the anxiety of condemnation.132 Faith, for Tillich, is not an opinion; it is a new state. It is a state, or a kind of courage to be that makes human existence invulnerable to the anxiety of despair, the most radical experience of the different types of anxiety.133 He writes:
Faith is not a theoretical affirmation of something uncertain, it is the existential acceptance of something transcending ordinary experience. Faith is not an opinion but a state. It is the state of being grasped by the power of being which transcends everything that is and in which everything that is participates.134
129 See Mojtahed Šabestari, “Fāyl-e Ṣowti va Matn-e Virāyeš Šoda-ye Soḵanrāni bā ʿOnvān-e Čarḵeš-e Hermenotiki dar Elāhiyāt-e Modern.” 130 See ibid.; for example, the continuity of the revelation of God is the literal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To be clear, I am not making any normative statements about Christian theology here; this is Šabestari’s opinion about different stages of Christian theology, not mine. 131 See Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). 132 Ibid., 40-54. 133 Ibid., 54-55. 134 Ibid., 172-173.
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Maintaining faith as a new being in the world, and a new existential situation, resonates with Šabestari-
Ibn ʿArabi’s treatment of vaḥy and faith as “absolutely other,” which transcends human existence and awakens her in another world, a process that never ends.
Besides Tillich, Rahner is also important for understanding the existential turn in Christian theology. Rahner states that there are two kinds of revelations: categorical and transcendental.
Categorical revelation is the traditional understanding of the concept. However, for Rahner, the most important aspect of God in Christianity is his grace. Due to the fact that God is gracious, revelation cannot be limited to only one group of people who have access to the content of Christian theology.
God has to offer his grace universally and this grace includes a universal revelation.135 Inspired by
Heidegger, Rahner defines a new existential called the “supernatural existential.” The supernatural existential entails a sort of situatedness in and being thrown into the world. The supernatural existential enables God’s universal offer of grace that is God’s transcendental revelation. It is an existential situation for human beings in which they can respond to the offer of grace and to the universal revelation.136 Similar to Šabestari-Ibn ʿArabi’s treatment of vaḥy, revelation is continuous, and takes place in a different existential.
135 In fact, this is quite similar to the justification for the existence of a divinely appointed and impeccable Imam in classical Shii theology. See Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī, Kašf al-Murād fī Šarḥ Tajrid al-Iʿtiqād, ed. Ḥ. Ḥasanzadeh Āmolī (Qom: Muʾassasat al-Našr al-Islāmī, 1422 AH), 490-495. 136 Daniel Donovan, “Revelation and Faith,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, ed. Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 83-85. The word existential refers to Heidegger’s existenziell, which is usually translated to existential in English.
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Mojtahed Šabestari Between Traditions
It is very important to note that the existential turn in Šabestari’s thought was not simply the result of his encounter with new ideas in Germany. Šabestari’s work is not that of a mail carrier, transferring and applying some ideas from one context to another. As Šabestari mentions, Ibn ʿArabi’s point of view about vaḥy has been absorbed by many Sufis in history.137 These ideas were historically available to a Muslim audience, specifically to Šabestari who studied Ibn ʿArabi and Islamic mysticism as an important part of the curriculum of Shi’i seminaries under the supervision of eminent scholars of this tradition, such as Ḵomeyni and Ṭabāṭabayi, before moving to Germany. It seems that his encounter with new ideas in Germany resonated with what he had studied before and he began to transform deeply under the influence of both traditions. However, since making dialogue between different traditions, and opening space for inter-religious discussions has been a significant goal for Šabestari, he emphasized the Western influence more in his speeches to public. He also wanted the secular Iranian audience, who may not have and may not like to gain any familiarity with Ibn ʿArabi, for instance, to participate in his discussion, given that for many, the label “Western” carries a great deal of authority.
The Last Stage: 2000s
After this existential turn, Šabestari approaches his last stage of his thought. For example, in
Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din (A Criticism of the Official Reading of Religion), which was published in 2002, Šabestari offers a new understanding of vaḥy which is very similar to what is offered in The
137 Mojtahed Šabestari, Hermenotik, Ketāb, va Sonnat, 143.
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Prophetic Reading of the World.138 In that book, the idea of vaḥy as a source of an existential transformation gradually becomes of a hermeneutical nature, which was explained in the first chapter.
In Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din, Šabestari defines vaḥy as the experience of the Prophet that something helped him in bringing the speech.139 He states that, we have to consider the Quran as the
Prophet’s speech. In that book, Šabestari just states this understanding in several interviews and does not elaborate on it. It is the beginning of what Šabestari developed as a theory in The Prophetic Reading of the World 4 years later.
Throughout his life, the conception of the Quran changed dramatically for Šabestari, from being sets of eternal data and propositions from God, to the potential speech of God that may open new horizons of being for humanity, to the speech of the Prophet. As we saw, all these changes took place within the context of the Islamic tradition, although in a dialogue with Western philosophy and
Christian theology.
Even The Prophetic Reading of the World which was criticized by many people as Western is not foreign at all to the Islamic tradition. The Prophetic Reading of the World has remarkable similarities with Nāṣer Ḵosrow (d. 1088)’s treatment of the Quran in his book Zād al-Musāfirīn.140 One year after the publication of the first part of The Prophetic Reading of the World in 2006, Šabestari notices a similarity between Nāṣer Ḵosrow’s “theory about the Quran” in Zād al-Musāfirīn and parts of his theory.141
138 See Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din (Boḥrān-hā, Čāleš-hā, Rāh-e Ḥal-hā) (Tehran: Ṭarḥ-e Now, 2002). 139 Ibid., 166. 140 Nāṣer Ḵosrow, Zād al-Mosāferin, 3rd ed, ed. Moḥammad Baḏl al-Raḥmān (Tehran: Asāṭir, 2012). 141 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Naẓariya-ye Nāṣer Ḵosrow Darbāra-ye Qorān,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D9%86%D8%B8%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%87-
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Nāṣer Ḵosrow and Vaḥy
In the seventeenth chapter of Zād al-Musāfirīn, “on the speech and the inscription of God,”
Nāṣer Ḵosrow writes that, “ignorant believers who say Gabriel spoke to the Prophet by voice and words
… stopped at the outward of the speech.”142 He argues that the speech of God has to be her inscription
(ketābat). He continues, “since it is necessary for all people to hear the speech of God, it is necessary that God’s inscription is always present in the world. As such, this inscription that is the speech of God had been present in the world before humans came into it.”143 Among people, there was one (the
Prophet) who was special in reading God’s inscription to people.144 In another part of the chapter,
“stating that the speech of the Prophet is the speech of God,” Nāṣer Ḵosrow continues,
Then, the Prophet spoke to people based on this inscription, and said what I am saying is the speech of God. And he was right, for what he said was said from the inscription of God, and the inscription is from the writer of the speech, and what the reader of the letter reads from the inscription is from the speech of the writer of the speech. Hence, it is right that what the Prophet said from God was the speech of God, while God did not have voice, mouth, and tongue, as ignorant people said… Then, we say that the creator of the world is the writer, and the world and whatever exists inside it is her writings, and the Prophet is the reader of this writing, and the speech of the Prophet is the speech of God, for he has said it because of this inscription… And the Prophet who read the divine inscription to all people who cannot read it has the same supremacy as the readers of human letters have over the unlettered… And we say that no one has read this scripture which is the creation completely, since there is no boundary for the meanings in this inscription. Each of the prophets has read part of this inscription …145
As Šabestari himself notices, this passage shares a great deal in common with his theory on the Quran
%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B5%D8%B1%D8%AE%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%88- %D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87-%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A2%D9%86/ (accessed October 15, 2018). 142 Nāṣer Ḵosrow, Zād al-Mosāferin, 198. 143 Ibid., 204. 144 Ibid., 206. 145 Ibid., 217-218.
48 to such an extent that it seems like Nāṣer Ḵosrow paraphrased the gist of Šabestari’s The Prophetic
Reading of the World ten centuries earlier. Here, similar to Šabestari, Nāṣer Ḵosrow understands the
“issue” of the text of the Quran as experiencing that “existence is God.”146 For the Prophet, the world was a book written by God, manifesting her attributes and names. The Prophet experienced/read the world as the continuous presence of God and her actions. As Nāṣer Ḵosrow states, this reading could not contain all the truth, for it was a reading and a complete reading of the world is not possible.147 The
Quran was the Prophet’s speech, for according to Nāṣer Ḵosrow, God did not have any speech as we may imagine as humans. The speech of God was not an Arabic speech for the people who were addressed by the Prophet in his time. The speech of God had to transcend the limitations of language, faith, and culture, since the audience of the speech of God has to be everyone and the speech itself has to be universal. While Rahner, as we saw, states that God due to his grace reveals himself to everyone regardless of faith in another existential and offers his continuous transcendental revelation, Nāṣer
Ḵosrow sees the world as the existential in which God is revealed continuously to everyone regardless of faith. God speaks in the language of existence, and one who is able to read the book of existence is able to respond to the offer of God, to read the world as her inscription. The world becomes the speech of God for one who is able to transcend the world and discover what is concealed in the very revelation of God, in her “inscription.”
146 See chapter 1. 147 See the same idea in Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.”
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“Westoxication” and the Islamic Tradition
While Sobḥāni accuses Šabestari of “westoxication,” and exiting the Islamic tradition, as we saw in the introduction, Šabestari’s thought actually comes from a profound reading of the Islamic tradition.
The tension between Šabestari and the likes of Sobḥāni can be understood in their treatments of the concept of the Islamic tradition. Alasdair MacIntyre’s (d. 1929) reflection on the concept of tradition provides us with an insight to reflect on Šabestari’s relationship to the Islamic tradition. In After Virtue,
MacIntyre reflects on the concept of tradition in contrast to that of Edmund Burke (d. 1797).148 He writes,
What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not…
We are apt to be misled here by the ideological uses to which the concept of a tradition has been put by conservative political theorists. Characteristically such theorists have followed Burke in contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradition with conflict. Both contrasts obfuscate. For all reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought, transcending through criticism and invention the limitations of what had hitherto been reasoned in that tradition; this is as true of modern physics as of medieval logic...
Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed, when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is already dead...149
For Šabestari also tradition is not something dead, meaning in contrast to the notion of conflict to gain stability. Šabestari “inherits” a history, wherein he is situated, and outside that history, there is nothing to understand. His engagement with that history does not mean to keep a full package of tradition unchanged as it was handed down from the past. Rather, his engagement with tradition means to dialogue with it and connect it to the present, a present that is inevitably affected by other traditions.
148 See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 149 Ibid., 221- 222.
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In this sense, Šabestari’s engagement with different ideas from different traditions is part of his
“reasoning” within the context of the Islamic tradition. In the process of reasoning, by his participation in different traditions, such as philosophical hermeneutics, Christian theology, philosophy of language, etc., Šabestari embodies ambiguity in the boundaries constructed to separate Islam as a Burkean phenomenon from other living traditions. By adding ambiguity to the concept of tradition, Šabestari reminds Muslims of the fact that this history that we have inherited as the Islamic tradition is the result of a “historically extended argument,” criticism, and the embodiment of conflict.150 what we have inherited today is not the result of Muslims’ escape from the influence of different traditions through history and the effort to keep unchanged what was handed down from another past. As such, the
Prophetic Reading of the World is at the heart of the Islamic tradition.
150 See MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 222.
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Chapter 3 - Mojtahed Šabestari, Vaḥy, and New Mysticism
In previous chapters, we discussed Mojtahed Šabestari’s ideas on vaḥy. We saw that his theory
The Prophetic Reading of the World expands the horizons of being Muslim. The Quran as the speech of the Prophet is a narrative of the Prophet’s world in which Muslims can participate and based on which they can narrate their own world. Being Muslim is to adjust one’s “attitude” toward the world in whatever context that the world is experienced. Contexts change, yet a Muslim finds the meaning of being Muslim in a continuous act of interpretation and re-adjusting to the new context. In modernity, a powerful way of re-adjusting to the new world and of responding to an “ultimate concern” passes through different engagements with mysticism. Modern engagements with mysticism are also widespread in Iran. The new engagements with mysticism in Iran exemplify the significance of The
Prophetic Reading of the World and the significance of expanding the horizons of being Muslim.
This chapter addresses the question of mysticism in contemporary Iran.151 It comprises two parts. The first part examines why it is important to rethink mysticism as a lived experience in Iran. I give voice to “silent mystics” whose words are lost in a tumult created by different powerful religious/mystical discourses. These people who do not have the power to present themselves as religious (or Muslim) come to believe that they have no right to participate in religious discourses.
Nevertheless, they report having powerful experiences that come to be interpreted as mystical. In this
151 I have used mysticism as a translation of ʿerfān. ʿIrfān is an Arabic word that means knowing and an ʿārif is someone who knows [God]. In modern Persian, the word ʿerfān (mysticism, gnosis) refers to a mystical attitude toward religion. Similar to the word mysticism in English, in order to refer to different mysticisms, the word ʿerfān is accompanied by different adjectives, such as Islamic, Indian, Jewish, etc. As such, ʿerfān is more general than Sufism (taṣavvof) which refers only to Islamic mysticism. In this sense, Islamic ʿerfān (or just ʿerfān) incorporates Sufism, but not as a distinct phenomenon within ʿerfān. The words mysticism (ʿerfān) and Sufism (taṣavvof) are used interchangeably. For instance, in the eyes of people, a Sufi is also an ʿāref.
52 chapter, I refer to them as New Mystics. The second part examines the significance of Islamic mysticism in Mojtahed Šabestari’s thought, and how New Mysticism constructs the significance of Šabestari’s The
Prophetic Reading of the World, despite the fact that his intellectual project is primarily philosophical.
I argue that because New Mysticism is a salient feature of the contemporary Iranian religious landscape,
Šabestari comes to be viewed as a sage of this particular form of mysticism, despite the fact that he explicitly eschews a mystical reading of the Quran.
New Mysticism in Iran
Although it is hard to define, New Mysticism has some identifiable characteristics. It is the response of one who feels empty, lonely, and abandoned and all of a sudden hears “the reed flute singing a tale of separation” from the depth of one’s existence.152 It is presented as an existential transformation, a new existential attitude toward the world which enables one to experience what is beyond the exteriority of the world. It is a hope for such transformation in the midst of the banality of modern life.
The Persian blogosphere furnishes interesting examples of how New Mysticism is manifested in contemporary Iran. Although its manifestation is observable in daily encounters with many people in different social circumstances, “personal notes” (del-nevešta) are a good window into this world because they reflect profound desires that might be withheld in daily interactions. As an example, in her blog,
“Samira” writes to her God:
Hello to you who are both the spirit and the world. I have been thinking about writing to you for several days, but I did not know what it was that I could not tell you orally and had to write. Nevertheless, I told myself when I start typing, it would come itself… I do not know
152 See Rumi, Maṯnavi-ye Maʿnavi, ed. Towfiq Sobḥāni (Tehran: Sāzmān-e Čāp va Entešārat-e Vezārat-e Eršād-e Eslāmi, 1994), 3. The opening of the Maṯnavi reads that, “Listen to this reed flute how it complains, telling a tale of separations.” “Bešnow az ney čon ḥekāyat mikonad/ Vaz jodāyi-hā šekāyat mikonad.”
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what to do for you to like, become satisfied with, find me. Yes, it has been a while since I have kneeled down in front of you, since I have cried; I just intended, but I did nothing how you like. I was occupied with the world … All these caused me to notice that I am too incapable, too ignorant, too poor, and a lot of other things. Every night, I talk to you for hours … I fall asleep and tomorrow I see that I am in the same spot… I desire for a leap, a big leap, a jump, and a fly.153
While a deep and thoroughgoing analysis of this text, and many more like it, is beyond the scope of this thesis, we can offer some brief remarks. In this example (and one could cite many more from all walks of life), one notices a desire for a separation from everyday life and longing for a more “real” experience.
It seems that such feelings of emptiness and longing for something beyond the banality of life spring from a profound sense of alienation from modernity. This response to the emptiness, this hope for a transformation, which I call New Mysticism, is noticeable in Samirā’s desire for a “big leap” over the mundane.154
We can underline some of the most important characteristics of New Mysticism: the importance of a personal experience of God; the centrality of love, intuition, and nature; and the
153 Samirā Tābeš, “Be To Ke Ham Jāni va Ham Jahāni,” Šams al-żoḥā: Vebsāyt-e Rasmi-ye Samirā Tābeš, entry posted April 11, 2019, http://www.stabesh.ir/1398/01/22/%D8%A8%D9%87-%D8%AA%D9%88-%DA%A9%D9%87-%D9%87%D9%85- %D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%D9%88-%D9%87%D9%85-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C/ (accessed April 14, 2019). 154 As another example, in another blog, “Pegāh” describes her feeling of being abandoned and her desire for a change in a life in which happiness is hard to get in less “religious” language: “Sometimes, when you extend your arm to reach something to make you happy, there are not many things around you, or let me say there are a few people around you. This does not mean that the people in our life are not good people; the problem is that, these days, they are occupied with themselves and their lives. So, inevitably, you reach out to what you have, your beliefs that you have made effort for and have created … There should always be places wherein you have an authentic feeling of being human. There are some beliefs in the depth of your heart, that you have to fight not to lose them… Otherwise, [your] soul would have cracked under the burden of all this quiescence. I write with a hope for days that will come and I smile for the beliefs which still remain in the depth of my heart…” See Pegāh Amini, “Barāy-e Eḥsāsi Nāb,” Del-Nevešta-hāye Pegāh, entry posted August 14, 2011, http://pegah632.blogfa.com/post/233 (accessed April 14, 2019). Here, again there is a desire for an “authentic” experience beyond one’s life, and a hope for a transformation. In the description of her weblog, Pegāh adapts a poem by Seyyed Ali Ṣāleḥi (b. 1955) to say the following: “When wind blows, when it rains, you should pass through the songs of children. Forget about your umbrella, come to my home in a cold sunrise (pegāh), wet and exhausted, … give your eyes to the coolness of a handful of limpid water, see differently.” See idem., “Darbāra-ye Veblāg,” Del-Nevešta-hāye Pegāh, http://pegah632.blogfa.com/ (accessed April 14, 2019). Here, again New Mysticism as a hope for a transformation to a more real experience is manifested in the metaphor of washing one’s eyes to see differently.
54 relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. New Mysticism also differs from the categories of
Sufism (taṣavvof) and ʿIrfan (or theoretical gnosis, ʿerfān-e naẓari) as experts understand them or as they are defined in textbooks. In Sufism, there is an emphasis on the social aspect and hierarchical nature of Sufi orders, while ʿIrfan refers more to the Shi’i category of theoretical gnosis (or philosophical mysticism) as it is taught in Shi’i seminaries and is highly related to the mystical school of Ibn ʿArabi.155
Simin Dānešvar (d. 2012), one of the most influential novelists in contemporary Iran, describes her understanding of mysticism as follows:
It means that one lives, …one has eyes but does not see the bad, has ears but does not hear the bad, has a tongue but does not say the bad, and beside all of this, one is intuitional. This means that one has a special mystical state… a metaphysical state. By metaphysical, I mean the relationship that one experiences with the world, the human, and the origin of the world. Its highest level is to believe in one God… I believe in that unknown God, and I experience her manifestations in the world and the human… Her manifestations for me are love, friendship, hope, and freedom…The manifestations of that eternal God for me is the light, the scent of flower … and innocence. However, I hear the voice of God in silence better.156
Dānešvar’s description of mysticism reflects all the characteristics of New Mysticism mentioned above. In her description, we notice the absence of technical concepts of Sufism and ʿIrfan. In contrast to Sufism, New Mysticism is not concerned much with sociality, affiliation with orders, or the master- disciple relationship. For the most part, it is based on a personal relationship with the divine. There is also no reference to the classical figures of ʿIrfan, the mysticism of the traditional centers of Shi’i learning (ʿerfān-e ḥowza). As we notice here, New Mysticism does not presume a belief in God; it is what may be experienced in the highest levels of our encounter with the world and nature through intuition,
155 On ʿIrfān, see Ata Anzali, Mysticism in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2017). On Sufism, see Carl W. Ernst, Sufism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2011), passim. 156 Hušang Golširi, Jedāl-e Naqš Bā Naqqāš Dar Āṯār-e Simin Dānešvar (Tehran: Nilufar, 1998), 163.
55 which does not concern rationality, and through experiencing the relationship between the human, the world, and God. The human is a mirror reflecting the world, and they both reflect God. God manifests herself and love is the first manifestation. Moreover, it does not incorporate Islamic rituals and observances. Those involved with New Mysticism may consider “exterior aspects” of religion irrelevant to being Muslim, choosing instead to focus on interiority, or “the gist of Islam,” which is to be a mystic.
New Mysticism and Metaphysical Religion
It is impossible to grasp New Mysticism fully without attending to its relationship with metaphysical religions as powerful religious discourses in the religious landscape of the contemporary
Iranian society.157 By metaphysical religion, I mean the phenomenon that Catherine Albanese identifies in American history through four characteristics: the importance of mind, the correspondence between worlds (microcosm and macrocosm), movement and energy, and a yearning for solace, comfort, therapy, and healing.158 Although New Mysticism and metaphysical religion may share some characteristics, such as the importance of mind and a correspondence between the worlds, in some respects, they are very different.159 If metaphysical inquiries in Iran in the past century, as an important part of Iranian religious life, aimed to “rationalize” the supernatural, New Mysticism is precisely opposed to the pervasive rationalism embedded in modern life.160 New Mysticism does not seek to be
157 See Doostdar, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny. 158 See Catherine Albanese, A Republic of mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 13-15. 159 New Mysticism, like metaphysical religion, in Iran has a history. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss their histories. It is important that metaphysical religion and New Mysticism in Iran have different geneologies. Despite the similarities between them, each one has developed and responded to modernity in its own way. Here, I have compared New Mysticism with metaphysical religion to contrast them regarding their relationship to “rationalization” and their responses to modernity. 160 See Doostdar, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny, 3-8.
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“scientific” in accordance with the logic of our world. Rather, it yearns for the opposite, that is to find a refuge from the power of modern rationality. Modern rationality, with its implications, makes it difficult for many to approach the question of religion as a rational issue. This is not because they are not rational, rather this is because they think that religious reason would be vanquished in an encounter with powerful, totalitarian, modern reason. They need to silence their reason to have a chance to listen to the reed flute’s tale of sorrow and separation in the depth of their existence. They want to exit the circle of reason temporarily and experience love due to the occasional feeling that “the people of reason are dots of the compass of existence; love knows that they wander in a circle.”161 This desire is highly reflected in the poetry of Sohrāb Sepehri (d. 1980), one of the most influential poets in contemporary
Iran. By the creation of his mystical world of poetry, Sepehri becomes an important manifestation of
New Mysticism. In a poem, he writes that “love is the journey to the light of the dancing solitude of things.”162 Instead of reason, love is the only path to becoming aware of the reality of things. He also “gets depressed, like a cloud” to “see Ḥuri, the next door mature girl, who studies feqh under the most scarce elm on earth.”163 Sepehri here refers to the absurdity of ignoring the experience of sitting under the most
161 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, ed. Qāsem Ḡani and Moḥammad Qazvini (Mašhad: Nikā, 2007), 136. “ʿĀqelān noqṭa-ye pargār-e vojudand vali/ ʿEšq dānad ka dar in dāyera sargardānand.” The importance of religious experience in New Mysticism is undeniable. Religious experience is a complicated concept with a long history. It is impossible to examine all aspects of religious experience and its relationship to New Mysticism fully in this chapter. Although there is a long history of the importance of religious experience in Islamic mysticism and Sufi literature as main sources of inspiration for New mysticism, the influence from Western thinkers like Scheleiermacher who considered experience as the most important aspect of religion is undeneible. Here, I just focus on the significance of religious experience in New Mystisim as it is related to Sufi literature and Persian poetry. However, there is an important history running from Schleiermacher through William James and 20th century proponents of mysticism that may provide interesting contrasts or parallels to reflect on the concept of religious experience in New Mysticism. 162 Sohrāb Sepehri, Hašt Ketāb (Isfahan: Goftemān-e Andiša-ye Moʿāṣer, 2010), 196. “Va ʿešq safar ba rowšani-ye ehtezāz-e ḵalvat-e ašyāst.” 163 Ibid., 242. “Man ba andāza-ye yek abr delam migirad, vaqti az panjara mibinam, Ḥuri- doḵtae bāleḡ-e hamsāya- pāy-e kamyāb-tarin nārvan-e ruy-e zamin feqh miḵānad.”
57 scarce elm, and the sense of love that may spring from it, and instead paying attention to feqh, which is a symbol of reason in his poetry.
New Mysticism and Nature Religions
Nature religion is also another important aspect of contemporary Iranian religious life, and is closely related to New Mysticism. In her book Nature Religion in America, from the Algonkian Indians to the New Age, Albanese defines nature religion as follows: A religion formed around nature as its symbolic center and “the cluster of beliefs, behaviors, and values that encircles it.164 By nature, I mean the physical world outside human beings, and more importantly, the world that is in contrast to the urban and civilizational manifestations of human history, be it completely separate from those manifestations, like the moon, or even mixed with them, like a toad who sings in a park besides a busy highway. One of the most important manifestations of the mystical view of nature in contemporary
Iran manifests in Sohrāb Sepehri’s poetry. He writes:
And a god who is hereabout; in gillyflowers, under that tall pine, on the consciousness of water, on the law of plant.165
We were sitting under a willow; I picked a leaf from the branch above my head; I said: Open eyes. Do you want a sign better than this?166
Life is not empty; kindness exists, apple exists, faith exist; yes, we have to live until red poppy
164 See Catherine Albanese, Nature Religion in America, from the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 6-7; she points out that there is not a single and particular expression of nature religion in the US history; rather, there are nature religions in different moments, which led to different understandings of nature (ibid., 8-13). I think this is also the case for Iranians’ treatment of nature; on Iranians’ treatment of nature, see Hossein Kamaly, God and Man in Tehran: Contending Visions of the Divine from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2018). 165 Sepehri, Hašt Ketāb, 170. “Va ḵodāyi ka dar in nazdiki ast: lāy-e in šabbu-hā, pāy-e ān kāj-e boland. Ruy-e āgāhi-ye āb, ruy-e qānun-e giyāh.” 166 Ibid., 233. “Zir-e bid-i budim. Barg-I az šāḵa-ye bālā-ye saram čidam, goftam: čašm rā baz konim, āyat-I behtar az in miḵāhid?”
58
exists.167
The love that Sepehri finds in nature leads him to experience the supernatural. He does not need anything more glorious than a leaf or an apple to see that life is beautiful and full of wonders. His mystical perspective toward nature even defines his relationship to being Muslim:
I am a Muslim; my qiblah is the rose; my prayer mat is the fountain; my turbah is light; plain is my prayer rug; I perform my ablution by the beats of windows; in my prayers, the moon flows, spectrum flows, stone is visible behind my prayer: All the particles of my prayer are crystallized; I perform my prayer when I am called to prayer by the song of wind, from the top of the minaret of a cypress…168
Despite the significance of nature as a gateway to mystical experience, nature is not the most significant center around which New Mysticism revolves. Nature is very important insofar as it may become the appearance of the sacred for one who is able to see beyond the natural. In this sense, nature is a sign as well as a veil. To experience the significance of nature as a sign pointing to the supernatural, one should overcome the very nature of nature which is its naturality. Then, one gains insight into what is beyond the gateways of the natural. In that moment, the experience of listening to a toad singing near a noisy highway may transport one to another state, wherein there is neither the toad nor the highway, there is only a strong ambiguous feeling of belonging to somewhere else. The significance of nature is primarily rooted in two mystical/Islamic insights: that all existence, including nature, is God, which is reflected in the doctrine of Oneness of Being (vaḥdat-e vojud), and also everything in the world continuously praises God.169 This theme is frequently reflected in Persian classical literature. As an
167 Sepehri, Hašt Ketāb, 221. “Zendegi ḵāli nist: mehrbāni hast, sib hast, imān hast. Āri, tā šaqāyeq hast, zendegi bāyad kard.” 168 Ibid., 170-171. “Man mosalmānam. Qebla-am yek gol-e sorḵ. Jā-namāzam češma, mohram nur. Dašt sajjāda-ye man. Man vożu bā tapes-e panjara-hā migiram. Dar namāzam jariyān dārad māh, jariyān dārad ṭeyf. Sang az post-e namāzam peydāst: Hama ḏarrāt-e namāzam motebalver šoda ast. Man namāzam rā vaqti miḵānam ka aḏānaš rā bād gofta bāšad sar-e goddasta- ye sarv…” 169 See William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Cosmology (Albany: State University of New
59 example, in the Golestān, Saʿdi (1210-1291) writes,
Do you know what that nightingale told me at dawn? “How are you human while you know nothing of love? If you do not have a taste, you are an ill-humored animal while [even] camels are excited and dance for Arabs’ poetry (song).” … Everything that you see roars in praise of God. A heart knows this meaning that is like an ear. Not only do nightingales on flowers praise God, every thorn on a flower is a tongue to praise God. …170
Having become able to hear the voice of nature praising God, a mystic is directed to another state wherein she may see no one but God. In that state, “the speech of water, the speech of soil, and the speech of mud” become perceptible “to the senses of the people of heart.”171 In this sense, the song of nature (for instance, a toad’s song) that transforms one to another state and opens new horizons of being is vaḥy itself.
New Mysticism as it was described above is a construct that helps us reflect on widespread and different experiences of individuals in response to a modern life that, despite their variety of form, have many commonalities. In this sense, New Mysticism is simply a manifestation of a global phenomenon.
In Iran, however, people engage with this global phenomenon in a uniquely Islamic idiom, one that channels the tropes and archetypes of a long literary tradition of Persian mysticism. What makes New
Mysticism part of an Islamic discourse is its references to Sufi literature and the fact that Islamic readings of the world are strongly embedded in the culture within which people live and experience
York Press: 1998), 3-16. Besides the influence from Oneness of Being (vaḥdat-e vojud) in Islamic mysticism, the prevalence of such ideas in contemporary Iran is also due to the popularity of other philosophies from different parts of the world and more importantly Indian philosophies like Advaita Vedanta. 170 Saʿdi, Kolliyāt-e Saʿdi, ed. Moḥammad ʿAli Foruḡi (Tehran: Hermes, 2006), 105. “Dāni ča goft marā ān bolbol-e saḥari, to ḵod ča ādami-I kaz ʿešq bi-ḵabari? Oštor ba šeʿr-e ʿarab dar ḥālat-ast va ṭarab, gar ḏowq nist to rā, kaž-ṭabʿ jānevari … ba ḏekraš har ča bini dar ḵoruš ast, del-i dānad dar in maʿni ka guš ast; na bolbol bar golaš tasbiḥ ḵāni-st, ka har ḵār-I ba tasbiḥaš zabāni-st.” This theme has been repeated frequently in classical Persian literature. 171 See Rumi, Maṯnavi-ye Maʿnavi, 133. “Noṭq-e āb va noṭq-e ḵāk va noṭq-e gel/ Hast maḥsus-e ḥavās-e ahl-e del.”
60 the world.172
New Mysticism and Persian Literature
Classical Persian mystical literature is an important model for New Mysticism. The significance of this literature is emphasized in the weblogs that have become sites for the expression of New
Mysticism. For example, in a blog post, Samira speaks to her God:
I do not know how to write about this… However, I have to confess that I came to you in the first day for my need, due to the loneliness, due to the anxiety that I felt since I was a kid, and you gave me a lot. I always disliked theology (dini), the Quran, and Arabic [in school]. I liked poetry. You showed yourself to me through the poetry of Sa’di, Rumi, Ḥāfeẓ, and Ḵayyām; you told me that “in every breath, there is two gifts,” and “no one’s hand and tongue is able to thank her.”173 … I did what I thought was your obedience… Rumi had said that “hey people who are on your way to hajj, where are you? God is here.”174 Yes, I saw you in different beings, and I admired you a lot…Would you give me love?175
In this example, we can see that some works of literature take on the role of scripture in New
Mysticism. Here, classical Persian literature is treated as the most important source to gain religious meaning, even superior to the Quran. God “showed” herself to Samira through the poetry of Sa’di, Rumi,
Ḥāfeẓ, and Ḵayyām. She quotes Saʿdi and attributes Saʿdi’s words to God, where she addresses God and says that “you told me” that “in every breath, there is two gifts…”176 Although considering Saʿdi as scripture is unusual, the idea of the specific works of Persian literature as scripture is more prominent.
172 This does not mean that New Mysticism has not been influenced by other mysticisms, such as Indian, Jewish, American, etc. Rather, New Mysticism incorporate different elements from different parts of the world. However, it requires an independent study to examine its relationship to other mysticisms. 173 Saʿdi, Kolliyāt-e Saʿdi, 3. “Dar har nafas do neʿmat mowjud ast va bar har neʿmat šokri vājeb; az dast va zabān-e ka barāyad, kaz ʿohda-ye šokraš ba dar āyad?” 174 Rumi, Divān-e Kabir-e Šams, ed. Badiʿ al-Zamān Foruzānfar (Tehran: Ṭalāya, 2005), 247. “Ey qowm-e ba ḥaj rafta kojāyid, kojāyid? / Maʿšuq hamin jāst, biyāyid, biyāyid.” 175 Samirā Tābeš, “ʿEšq Miḵāham,” Šams al-żoḥā: Vebsāyt-e Rasmi-ye Samirā Tābeš, entry posted January 24, 2019, http://www.stabesh.ir/1397/11/04/%d8%b9%d8%b4%d9%82-%d9%85%db%8c- %d8%ae%d9%88%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%85/ (accessed April 14, 2019). 176 Saʿdi, Kolliyāt-e Saʿdi, 3.
61
For example, in his dissertation, Lynch focuses on the Maṯnavi by Rumi as scripture.177 Literature becomes of the nature of scripture providing the New Mystic with vaḥy, not as God’s propositions offered to humanity, but as the experience of a new being in the world, as the result of one’s existential transformation to the realm of the “wholly other.”178
The Lover
For New Mysticism in Iran, however, there is no work of literature closer to the concept of scripture than the poetry of Ḥāfeẓ. It is hard to find an Iranian home without at least one copy of Ḥāfeẓ.
Iranians use it for divination, more than they use the Quran, they put it at the table of haft-seen in
Nowruz besides or instead of the Quran, and they gather, stay awake, and read Ḥāfeẓ every year in Yalda night (the longest night of the year) as an important ritual.179 Persian mystical literature in general and
Ḥāfeẓ in particular as scripture provide New Mysticism with the archetype of the lover. The most important characteristic of the lover is that s/he abandons reason in favor of love and s/he sees and experiences the beloved everywhere. The lover is mad (divāna), but s/he knows the secrets better than the people of reason. As Ḥafeẓ points out, if the people of reason knew “how happy” the mystic lover is
“in the fetters of her/his hair,” they would abandon reason and become mad too.180 We can find a lot of examples showing the necessity of abandoning reason (aql-e jozʿi) in favor of love (and experience) in
177 See Matthew B. Lynch, “A Persian Qur’an?: The Masnavi-e Ma’navi as Scripture” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2018). 178 See chapter 1 and chapter 2. 179 On the iconic functions of scriptures, see James W. Watts, “The Three Dimensions of Scriptures,” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 2, no. 2 (March 2008): 135-159. Watts writes, “Something is still missing in the scholarship on scriptures, namely research on its iconicity. Scriptures are icons. They are not just texts to be interpreted and performed. They are material objects that convey religious significance by their production, display and ritual manipulation.” See ibid., 138. 180 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, 15. “ʿAql agar dānad ka del dar band-e zolfaš čon ḵošast/ ʿĀqelān divāna gardand az pey-e zanjir-e mā.”
62 order to reach the friend. For instance, Hafez says, “Do not frighten us by the ban of reason, bring wine; that watchman (reason) is nothing in our province;”181 “the fire of the tavern burnt the house of my reason;”182 “rinse your books if you are one of our schoolmates, since the science of love is not in books.”183
This archetypal lover transcends Iran and enters into the moral fiber of Persianate cultures like India.184
The priority of love in the dualism between reason and love is a living experience among many people, since Persian Sufi literature is not an elite genre far removed from the living culture. Classical Sufi literature has strongly taken root in the Persian language. When one speaks Persian today, they participate to some extent, wished or unwished, in a lingual tradition that actually flourished by and culminated in Persian literature that is mostly mystical. The power of love as the most invaluable is present in the layers of language and mentality of New Mystics.185 A good way to think about the importantance and the power of the archytipal lover, as “irrational,” is to notice criticisms of the lover as the reason of the “decline” of Muslim countries, since the past century. They claim that the archetypal lover made Muslims’ selves irrational, passive, and indifferent to social and political affairs. Mysticism came to be understood as the opposite of everything that a society needed to make “progress” and
181 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, 57. “Mā rā ze manʿ-e ʿaql matarsān va mey biyār/ Kin šaḥna dar velāyat-e mā hičkara nist.” 182 Ibid., 21. “Ḵāna-ye ʿaql-e marā ātaš -e ḵomḵāna besuḵt.” 183 Ibid., 116. “Bešuy owrāq agar ham dars-e māyi/ ka ʿelm-e ešq dar daftar nabāšad.” For more examples, see Kaẓem Dezfuliyān, Šarḥ-e Golšan-e Rāz (Tehran: Ṭalāya, 2003), 78 where Maḥmud Šabestari (d. 1340) in Golšan-e Rāz writes, “Reason cannot survive the light of that face; to look at that, find another eye.” “Ḵerad rā nist tāb-e nur-e ān ruy/ boro az bahr-e ān čašmi degar juy.” See also Rumi, Maṯnavi-ye Maʿnavi, 892: Rumi says, “Reason is blind and deaf in the trade of love; there is no one crazier than love.” “Nist az ʿāšeq kasi divānatar/ ʿaql az sodāye ʾu kur ast va kar.” See also Rumi, Divān-e Kabir-e Šams, 427 where Rumi states that “reason is the fetters on lovers and seekers, my boy; break the fetters, the way is clear and clear;” “ʿAql band- e rahrovān va ʿāšeqān ast ey pesar/ band beškan rah ʿayān andar ʿayān ast ey pesar.” As the last eample, see Rumi, Divān-e Kabir-e Šams, 116; “love has already reached to the seventh sky when reason starts thinking; love has already arrived at the top of Safa mountain before reason can find a camel for going to hajj.” “ʿAql tā tadbir va andiša konad/ Rafta bāšad ešq tā haftom samā.” 184 See Ralph Russell, The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of My Moving Pen (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2015). 185 On significance of poetry in Iran, see Dariyuš Šayegān, Panj Eqlim-e Ḥożur: Baḥṯi Darbara-ye Šāʿerānegi-ye Irāniyān (Tehran: Farhang-e Moʿāṣer, 2018).
63 become modern. The existence and persistence of these criticisms shows how powerful the archetype of the lover is.186
Mojtahed Šabestari and New Mysticism
Having discussed the most important characteristics of New Mysticism, we can now move on to showing that there are some aspects of Šabestari’s writings that resonate with New Mysticism.187 The
186 In Asrār-e Ḵodi, Muḥammad Iqbal (d. 1938), the Indian poet and philosopher, criticizes “the doctrine of self-abandonment taught by the great Persian mystic (Ḥāfeẓ). He states that when one abandons one’s self, as the final goal of mysticism, she/he does not care whether or not one’s country is colonized; see Muhammad Iqbal, The Secrets of the Self, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: The Macmillan Company, 1920), xiii; in his book Parda-ye Pendār, Ali Dašti (d. 1982), an Iranian senator and writer, criticizes the pervasive anti-rationality in Sufism. He thinks all the discussion on supernatural wonders “performed” by Sufis (kerāmāt), like walking on water, or flying through air, etc. which could be found in mystical sources, shows the depth of “irrationality” embedded in this tradition; see Ali Dašti, Parda-ye Pendār (Tehran: Jāvidān, 1983); in his book Ṣufi-gari, Aḥmad Kasravi (d. 1946), a famous Iranian historian, also describes Sufism as the major historical reason for passivity, laziness, and lack of spirit in Iranians. He believes Iranians will not make progress, unless they heal the disease of mysticism that has historically poisoned their mentality; see Aḥmad Kasravi, Ṣufi-gari (Tehran: n.p., 1943); this view also reflected in Iranian contemporary literature. Jen Nāma, a novel by Hušang Golširi (d. 2000), is about a person who faces the reality that the earth is not flat and not the center of the universe. He comes back to his hometown and finds old books belonging to his uncle on occult sciences and mysticism. He intends to perform a mystical ritual to change the position of earth and make it the center of the universe again. In this ritual, he has to sacrifice his cousin. In this novel, Golširi wants to show a society that resists “rationality” heartfully, and does not want to become “modern;” see Hušang Golširi, Jen Nāma (Stockholm: Baran, 1998). 187 First of all, it should be clear that I am just talking about a resonance between New Mysticism and Šabestari’s thought. Although there is some evidence, especially in the blogsphere, showing that New Mysticism may actually incorporate Šabestari’s thought, I am not making any statements about the actual relationship between New Mysticism and Šabestari’s thought. Even though Mojtahed Šabestari’s question in The Prophetic Reading of the World is basically philosophical, the role of Islamic mysticism in his thought is undeniable. The influence of mysticism on his thought, however, does not take place at the level of methodology, meaning that Šabestari as a philosopher does not intend to understand the Quran through a mystical intuition nor does he share mystics’ presuppositions about the Quran. As Šabestari states, “it is possible to be associated with mysticism, without relating to “the mystics’ metaphysics of linguistics.” Mystics’ metaphysics of linguistic refers to their assumption of the speech of God that Šabestari does not maintain. Referring to Insān al-Kāmil by Abd al- Karim Jili (d. 1424), Šabestari states that for mystics the speech of God is a speech that is stated by a human being in the state of absolute unity (jamʿ al-jamʿ) with God. As such, the speech of God is the manifestation of God as speech through a human being. According to Jili, “the Quran is the essence that dissolves all the attributes [of God] in itself; as such, it is the manifestation of the names [of God] that descended to the Prophet; … and descending means that the Truth of God in its perfection was manifested in his (the Prophet) body.” See Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (2)- Kalām-e Ḵodā va Kalām-e Ensān - Pišfahm-hāye Tafsir-e Āzād-e Qorān;” see idem., “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (8)- Qorān (Moṣḥaf-e Šarif) Yek Matn-e Tāriḵi Ast;” see also ʿAbd al-Karim al-Jili, Insān al-Kāmil, ed. Ṣalāḥ ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAwiżat (Beirut: Dār al- kutub al-ʿilmiyyat, 1997), 116; on the state of jamʿ al-jamʿ, see Ibn ʿArabi, Futuḥāt al-Makkiyya, v. 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, n.d.), 516-517; Ibn ʿArabi defines the state of jamʿ al-jamʿ as “the absolute annihilation of senses to whatever is not God (516).”
64 world of the Quran as Šabestari describes it in The Prophetic Reading of the World is mystical. Šabestari’s narrative of the world of the Prophet is rooted in Ibn ʿArabi’s mystical cosmology. As we have noted in the first chapter, according to Šabestari, the narrative that the Prophet gives us of the world has a message. Šabestari understands monotheism (towḥid) as the message of the text. Monotheism for
Šabestari is not simply the belief that there is only one God. Monotheism is to experience/live the world monotheistically.188 Monotheism is to experience that, according to Šabestari, “existence is God.”189
What Šabestari offers as the meaning of monotheism is similar to the doctrine of Oneness of Being
(vaḥdat-e vojud) that is attributed to Ibn ʿArabi by his critics and followers.190 In the introduction to his classic commentary on Ibn Arabi’s Fuṣuṣ al-Ḥikam, Dāvod Qeyṣari (d. 1350) states:
A thing does not manifest, neither in the intellect (ʿaql) nor in outside (ḵārij), but by it [Existence]; as such, it [Existence] surrounds everything with its essence and the basis (qivām) of things is due to it. If Existence does not exist, nothing exists, neither in the intellect nor outside it; it is their basis, rather it is identical to every thing.191
Given that in Islamic mysticism, mystics refer to God as Existence, what Qeyṣari states about Existence is similar to Šabestari’s understanding of the world of the Quran. According to Qeyṣari, Existence is a single reality without any notion of plurality. However, Existence manifests in different appearances,
“in the apparel of” her “attributes and names.”192 In this sense, the meaning of monotheism is to understand oneness in plurality, and at the same time, plurality in oneness. The oneness is the oneness
188 See Mojtahed Šabestari, “Qerāʾat-e Nabavi Az Jahān (1)- Kalām-e Nabavi.” 189 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Elāhiyāt-e Mosalmān Budan,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%DB%8C%D8%A7%D8%AA- %D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%86/ (accessed October 10, 2018). 190 On Oneness of Being see Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Cosmology, 3-16. 191 Dāvod Ibn Maḥmud Qeyṣari, Šarḥ-e Fuṣuṣ al-Ḥikam, ed. Seyyed Jalāl al-Din Āštiyāni (Tehran: Šerkat-e Entešārāt-e ʿElmi va Farhangi, 1996), 14. 192 Ibid., 17.
65 of the essence, and the plurality is about manifestations of the single reality. This is the meaning of existence being both revealed and concealed.193 Existence is revealed in her appearances while she is concealed in her essence. In The Prophetic Reading of the World, the Prophet experiences the world as the manifestation of one single reality. In this narrative, nature is significant because it leads one to the singular reality. This mystical insight that is articulated in the doctrine of Oneness of Being is a sine qua non of Persian Sufi literature. It is particularly reflected in the archetype of the lover who sees no one but the beloved.194 This way, Oneness of Being becomes a bridge between The Prophetic Reading of the
World and New Mysticism. For both, the world, and most importantly nature, becomes vaḥy.
Religious Experience
Šabestari’s emphasis on religious experience may also resonate with New Mysticism. In his encounter with “three kinds of reading of tradition,” i.e. the method of Karl Barth (d. 1968), Rudolf
Bultmann (d. 1976), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), among Christian thinkers, Šabestari sympathizes with Schleiermacher’s. Barth ignores “the historical distance between modernity and the
Christian tradition” and argues that one could listen to God’s message in one’s heart, despite the different realities of life in modernity.195 Bultmann looks forward to a “secular theology” and intends to
“demythologize” the tradition by putting away the elements from the tradition which are incompatible with modernity.196 Schleiermacher, on the other hand, focuses on religious experience within the tradition. Tradition is of a great significance, for “tradition is a river in which religious experience
193 See Quran 57:3; “He is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward; and He is Knower of all things.” 194 See Aḥmad Ḡazzāli, Do Resāla-ye ʿErfāni Dar ʿEŠq (Savāniḥ al-ʿUššāq), ed. Iraj Afšār (Tehran: Manučehri, 2006). 195 Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, Taʾammolāti Dar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din (Tehran: Ṭarḥ-e Now, 2005), 37-40. 196Ibid., 40-43.
66 floats.”197 In this sense, a human being relies on her personal experience of the divine, while tradition is the context in which those experiences become possible.198 According to Šabestari, this reading of tradition is a “human reading,” meaning that it starts from the experience of being human and reaches another realm which is non-human. In contrast to this reading, there are readings which are “non- human.” Those readings start from somewhere else, beyond humanity, and reach humanity at the end.199
For Sabestari, Schleiermacher’s emphasis on religious experience resonates with his understanding of
Ibn ʿArabi’s conception of vaḥy. Šabestari notices this conflict between a human and a non-human reading in Islamic tradition as well. While the majority of thinkers offer a “non-human” reading of Islam, by starting from the fact that the Quran is the present speech of God for humanity, Ibn ʿArabi provides
Šabestari with a “human reading” of vaḥy. As we noted in the second chapter, for Ibn ʿArabi, the realization of vaḥy is based on a personal experience. Vaḥy becomes vaḥy through a human encounter with and an experience of something that opens new horizons for one beyond the realms of humanity.
As such, the basis of being Muslim, even if it is the Quran, is a religious experience. Šabestari also notes the importance of religious experience in al-Ḡazzāli’s (d. 1111) al-Munqiḏ Min al-żalāl.200 In his discussion on prophecy, al-Ḡazzāli states that we cannot understand the phenomenon of prophecy by observing that Moses, for instance, transformed his staff into a snake; one is able to understand prophecy who experiences the same “fire” that a prophet experienced in her/his heart.201 Given that miracles are a
“rational reason” to prove one’s prophecy, al-Ḡazzāli puts religious experience against reason and
197 Mojtahed Šabestari, Taʾammolāti Dar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din, 43-45. 198 Ibid., 47. 199 Ibid. 200 See al-Ḡazzāli, al-Munqiḏ Min al-żalāl (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995). 201 Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din (Boḥrān-hā, Čāleš-hā, Rāh-e Ḥal-hā), 176.
67 focuses on personal experience as the way to get religious insight. Šabestari, influenced by
Schleiermacher and mystics like Ibn ʿArabi, focuses on religious experience as the most necessary part of religion.202 Šabestari emphasizes the transrationality of the question of God. Using “the cloud of unknowing” metaphor from an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English,
Šabestari states that there are always clouds of unknowing between God and human.203 As such, a human never knows who God really is. She has to just move through those clouds with a sense of trust that arises from her love for God.204 This resonates, for Šabestari, with what Ḥāfeẓ says: “No one knows where the house of the beloved is, what we know is that a call from a bell [of a caravan] is heard.”205 Not only does Šabestari highlight that the question of God is not a rational question, but also he underlines the significance of love as the main source for trust. In this view, faith (imān) is rooted in love, in putting absolute trust in something about which one can never be sure. This narrative resonates highly with
New Mysticism. The speech of God is manifested everywhere and the New Mystic can experience vaḥy through love and intuition.
202 Šabestari understands the religious reform not as reforming vaḥy, but as reforming the religious experience in our time. The importance of religious experience could specifically be seen in Šabestari’s treatment of religious pluralism. Religious pluralism is to believe that all the truth is not with one within a specific tradition. Others also may access parts of the truth. The problem here is that when one thinks that what she believes is not all the truth, it may be contradict the very nature of religion that is supposed to be absolute. As such, religious pluralism may result in a state of relativism. However, Šabestari thinks that if one thinks of religious experience as the essence of religion, the problem of relativism would be resolved. Since, religious experience is an experience of the absolute under the veils of language, history, and culture. In this sense, an experience is the appearance of the absolute while it is not the absolute itself. Different faiths may approach the absolute through different manifestations of the absolute while they know that their experience does not have access to all the truth. See Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din, 174-175. 203 See The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Evelyn Underhill (Scotts Valley: CreateSpace, 2017). 204 See Mojtahed Šabestarei, Taʾammolāti Dar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din, 111-113. 205 “Kas nadānest ka manzelgah-e maqṣud kojāst/ In qadar hast ka bang-e jarasi miāyad.” It is unlikely that Ḥafeẓ authored this ḡazal, but it is widely regarded as one of Ḥāfeẓ’s gazals. Qazvini-Ḡani’s Ḥāfeẓ does not include this ḡazal.
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Mojtahed Šabestari as the Archetypal Lover
In New Mysticism, the archetype of the lover offered by Ḥāfeẓ as scripture is easily transposed onto Šabestari’s thought. In the following paragraphs, I will explain how this transposition takes place.
Before explaining how, it is necessary to make a few important points as parts of my argument. One of the most important challenges of New Mysticism is to reconcile between its desire for the character of the lover and the critiques of the lover as the main barrier to becoming modern, as New Mysticism longs for both. The lover in Ḥāfeẓ can transcend the myth of passivity, and overcome the passivism/activism dichotomy by resolving this tension in a single character. In Ḥāfeẓ, passivity takes place in a more profound existential plain, while activism is to react to political-social problems. The lover is passive due to their self-abandonment. This passivism manifests in the level of what is beyond Ḥāfeẓ’s power to change, in the level of the cosmos. This aspect manifests in a strong sense of fatalism in the poetry of
Ḥafeẓ as a surrender to whatever the beloved desires.206 For example, we read that “we drank whatever she/he poured in our goblet.”207 Similarly, “the goblet of wine and the blood of heart (adversity), each one was given to someone; in the circle of fate, everything is like this; in the affair of rosewater and rose, it was the eternal decree, that this (rose) becomes the lovely of the bazar, while that (rose-water) sits behind the veil.”208 However, Ḥāfeẓ may sometimes feel that he does not want to be a passive surrender.
For example, we read that “I will mess with fate if it goes against my desires; I am not one who is helpless before the cycle of the world.”209 Although we do not expect Ḥāfeẓ, as a poet, to provide us with a
206 See Moḥammad Moʿin, Ḥāfeẓ-e Širin Soḵan, ed. Mahdi Moʿin (Tehran: Ṣedā-ye Moʿāṣer, 1996), 486-490. 207 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, 26. “Ānča ʾu riḵt ba peymāna-ye mā nušidim/ Vagar az ḵamr-e behest ast va agar az bāda-ye mast.” 208 Ibid., 115. “Jām-e mey va ḵun-e del har yek ba kasi dādand/ Dar dāyera-ye qesmat, owżāʿ čonin bāšad/ Dar kār-e golāb va gol, ḥokm-e azali in bud/ Kin šāhed-e bāzāri, vān parda nešin bāšad.” 209 Ibid., 209. “Čarḵ bar ham zanam ar ḡeyr-e morādam gardad/ Man na ānam ka zabuni kešam az čarḵ-e falak.”
69 consistent picture of his world, he provides us to some extent with such a picture. We can see that the active aspect of the lover’s personality, as not surrendering, manifests specifically at the level of social relations. At this level, Ḥāfeẓ becomes a harsh critic of hypocrites and double-faced “religious” people in his society who do not believe in what they claim. There are many examples of Ḥafeẓ’s criticisms toward hypocrisy in his society. For instance, he states:
The preachers, who show off in the prayer niche and pulpit, when alone act differently; I have a problem, ask the wise person of the assembly: Those, who tell people to repent, why do not they repent themselves?210
Ḥāfeẓ, drink wine, live like a libertine (rend), and enjoy; but do not make the Quran a snare of deceit, like others.211
The fire of asceticism and dissimulation will burn the harvest of religion, Ḥāfeẓ, throw off this woolen cloak and go away.212
Drink wine; if you are attentive enough you see that Sheik, Ḥāfeẓ, mufti, and watchman all dissimulate.213
They shut down the tavern, Oh God, do not approve of that, since [instead] they will open the house of hypocrisy and deceit.214
The dialectic between the wise critic and the mad lover who thinks only of the beloved is one of the most significant aspects of Ḥāfeẓ’s poetry, and a major reason for the significance of Ḥāfeẓ in New
Mysticism.
Under the influence of modern discourses of Islam/mysticism, Ḥāfeẓ can be read as if the mystic is against the “religious.” Western media distinguishes between two kinds of Muslims: “Bad Muslims”
210 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, 140. “Vāʿeẓān kin jelva dar meḥrāb va menbar mikonand/ čon be ḵalvat miravand ān kar-e digar mikonand/ Moškeli dāram, ze dānešmand-e majles bāzpors/ Towba-farmāyān čerā ḵod towba kamtar mikonand?” 211 Ibid., 15. “Ḥafeẓā, mey ḵor va rendi kon va ḵoš bāš vali/ Dām-e tazvir makon čon degarān qorān rā.” 212 Ibid., 279. “Ātaš-e zohd va riyā ḵarman-e din ḵāhad suḵt/ Ḥāfeẓ, in ḵerqa-ye pašmina beyandāz va boro.” 213 Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfeẓ, 142. “Mey ḵor ke šeyḵ va Ḥāfeẓ va mofti va moḥtaseb/ čon nik bengari hama tazvir mikonand.” 214 Ibid., 143. “Dar-e meyḵāna bebastand, ḵodāyā mapasand/ ka dar-e ḵāna-ye tazvir va riyā bogšayand.”
70 who are often affiliated with “orthodoxy,” who are prone to radicalization and violence, and “good
Muslims” or Sufis who are harmless because they seek peace.215 In this narrative, Sufism is a sect within
Islam rather than a universal aspect of the lives of Muslims. If “orthodox” Islam as a religion is “violent” and wants to demolish global peace, Sufis are a marginal minority group who care about their own business and can live harmlessly along with modern people—they are the ideal modern subject.216 This image of good Islam/bad Islam is reflected in Western Persian language media. Media like BBC Persian is often considered the most “trusted” media by many people. The more many Iranians lose their trust in media affiliated with the state, the more they put trust in Western Persian language media to hear the “true” news. These media define concepts like Sufism for their audience and construct and emphasize a discourse that distances Sufism from the main frame of Islam. Here, I want to provide three examples of how this narrative is diffused by the media. The first example is about a report by BBC
Persian of a symposium held in Kabul in November 2015. The report describes the theme of the symposium as “literature and mysticism, lessons for safety (peace).” It argues that Mysticism could be a
215 See G. A. Lipton, “Secular Sufism: Neoliberalism, Ethnoracism, and the Reformation of the Muslim Other,” The Muslim World 101 (July 2011): 427-440. 216 These kinds of attitudes toward Islam, which are the continuation of Western colonial worldviews, not only distort the historical meanings of Sufism and being Muslim, but also influence the modern treatments of those concepts. These narratives not only do distort the reality of the lives of many “orthodox” Muslims in the world, but also change the reality of lives of Sufis in Muslim countries. While these narratives construct the image of the “Muslim Monster” in the West and make life agonizing for many Muslims who live in the West, they also push Sufis in the Muslim world into margins by constructing the meaning of Islamic orthodoxy. However, due to the historical absence of an official institution like church, the concept of orthodoxy never existed in Islam in the way that it was imaginable in Christianity. For example, see Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, “Āqā-ye Qāżi al-Qożāt, Eslām Kelisā Nadārad,” Vebsāyt-e Šaḵsi-ye Moḥammad Mojtahed Šabestari, http://mohammadmojtahedshabestari.com/%D8%A2%D9%82%D8%A7%DB%8C- %D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B6%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B6%D8%A7%D8%A9- %D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85-%DA%A9%D9%84%DB%8C%D8%B3%D8%A7- %D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AF/ (accessed 9 April, 2019). Historically, Muslims have lived different Islamic lifestyles, including a Sufi style, none of which were the “orthodox” version while the others were anti-orthodox. Even if we could imagine the concept of orthodoxy in Islam, Sufism would have been the orthodoxy for a noticeable part of the history of Islam. It would be difficult to draw up a list of ten well-known Muslim scholars from the past who were not affiliated with Sufism in some way. Even the maligned Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) was associated with a Sufi order.
71 model for the problem of safety and peace in Afghanistan “given that mysticism was historically the reason of peace in Afghanistan.” Sufism had a sort of “tolerance and laxity” (tasāmoḥ va tasāhol) that could be used as a model in the society and in governance. Underlying tolerance in Sufism implies that
Islamic orthodoxy is, on the contrary, not tolerant.217 Another article by BBC Persian is about the conflict between Gonābādi Sufis and the Islamic Republic in Iran. The article understands the problem as the historical conflict between Sufis (ṣufiya) and the people of sharia (ahl-e šariʿat). This implies that being
Sufi is different from being Muslim in which sharia is important.218 My last example is about a report of an explosion in a Sufi shrine in Punjab, Pakistan in April 2011 by BBC Persian. In the last paragraph of the report, it reads, “the majority of people in Pakistan are Sunni Muslims; however, many respect Sufi leaders.”219 Again, the paragraph implies that Sufism is a separate sect in Islam, and being Sunni and
Sufi are of different natures. Ḥāfeẓ, by his critique of hypocrisy, can be read as if it is a criticism of today’s
Iran. It becomes the voice of many Iranians in our time who feel that the “religiosity” of the state is nothing but deceit and hypocrisy. Under the influence of powerful modern discourses, Ḥāfeẓ, as the archetypal image of the mystic who becomes the voice of many Iranians to criticize the state, comes to be read as if he stands against the non-mystic. Despite the fact that Ḥāfeẓ mostly criticizes the dissimulator and insincere Sufis in his time, he is read in accordance with the modern desire, to mean the critique of non-mystics. As such, the characters of zāhed (devout) and ʿābed (worshiper), as the
217 See Reza Moḥammadi, “Adabiyāt va ʿErfān: Jānmāya-hāye Farhangi-ye Šarq va Dars-hāyi Barā-ye Amniyat,” BBC Persian website, http://www.bbc.com/persian/blogs/2015/11/151118_zs_reza_mysticism_literature_security (accessed April 8, 2019); see also Alix Philippon, “‘We are Peace-Loving People.’ Sufism, Orientalist Constructions of Islam and Radicalization,” in Bringing Back the Social into the Sociology of Religion: Critical Approaches, ed. Veronique Altglas and Matthew Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 189-214. 218 See “Darāviš-e Gonābādi va Kešmakeš Bā Ḥokumat-e Iran: Gāhšomār,” BBC Persian website, http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-features-43125911 (accessed April 8, 2019). 219 See “Enfejār Dar Ziyāratgāh-e Ṣufiyān Dar Panjāb ‘Čehel va Yek’ Nafar Košta Barjāy Gozāšt,” BBC Persian website, http://www.bbc.com/persian/world/2011/04/110403_pakistan_explosion (accessed April 8, 2019).
72 major targets of his criticisms, are stripped of any associations with mysticism. In this sense, Ḥāfeẓ, the ethical mystic, stands against the unethical non-mystic (who is religious).220 The view about mysticism and Islam as two opposite phenomena resonates with a significant segment of Iranian society. For many people, the state is the representative of a “bad” version of Islam, a version that is not founded upon a mystical reading of Islam. Accordingly, people identified by their affiliations with the state are usually not recognized as mystics (ʿāref), even if they are somehow related to mysticism, or at least try to claim that they are, by people who are opposed to the state. In this view, mysticism stands against the state due to the belief that it has to be absolutely moral. As such, for many people who are opposed to the state, it is very hard to accept the fact that Ayatollah Ḵomeyni, for instance, was a mystic or was influenced by the Islamic mystical tradition. Despite the image that the state’s media tries to give of the personality of Ayatollah Ḵomeyni as a virtuous mystic, and despite the fact that Ayatollah Ḵomeyni was one of the most influential scholars of mysticism in the seminary of Qom, and despite the mystical master-disciple relationship that existed between Ayatollah Ḵomeyni and his followers, many people who are opposed to Ayatollah Ḵomeyni and the state may view his personality as one absolutely opposite to the personality of a mystic that is supposed to be “kind,” “non-violent,” and “forgiving.”221 As
220 As an example of this reading of Ḥāfeẓ, see Samirā Tābeš, “Ḡazal-e 80: ʿEyb-e Rendān Makon Ey Zāhed-e Pākiza Serešt,” Šams al-żoḥā: Vebsāyt-e Rasmi-ye Samirā Tābeš, entry posted September 6, 2018, http://www.stabesh.ir/1397/06/15/%D8%BA%D8%B2%D9%84-%DB%B8%DB%B0-%D8%B9%DB%8C%D8%A8- %D8%B1%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%85%DA%A9%D9%86-%D8%A7%DB%8C- %D8%B2%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%AF-%D9%BE%D8%A7%DA%A9%DB%8C%D8%B2%D9%87- %D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%B4/ (accessed April 14, 2019). Samira in a blogpost provides her “free reading” of a poem by Ḥāfeẓ. This poem reads that, “Do not reproach the libertines (rendān), oh devout of a pure nature, for other’s sin will not be written as yours.” See Ḥāfeẓ, Divān-e Ḥāfez, 62; “ʿEyb-e rendān makon ey zāhed-e pākiza serešt/ ka gonāh-e degarān bar to naḵāhand nevešt.” Samira writes: “This poem is a mystical poem in which Ḥāfeẓ speaks sarcastically with devouts (zāhedān) and the religious (maḏhabiyun) who reproached him.” The word maḏhabiyun that is equal to the religious accompanied by zāhed implies a notion of religion without love (ḵošk-e moqaddas). 221 As an example of the mystical image of Ayatollah Ḵomeyni in the states’ media, see “Soluk-e ʿErfāni va Emām Ḵomeyni,” Portal-e Emām Ḵomeyni web site, http://www.imam-
73 an example, in an interview by Radio Farda, Ḥasan Yusefi Eškevari (b. 1950) was asked to imagine holding a party to which he invites several important historical figures. Then, he was supposed to imagine what the figures would tell each other at the party. In his imaginary party, two of the guests were Ḵomeyni and Rumi. Eškevari says that “Rumi would ask Ḵomeyni, ‘You were a mystic, you liked poetry, what happened to you that you became violent after being a mystic?’”222
Mojtahed Šabestari can also unite passivism/activism in his works for New Mysticism. Besides the fact that Šabestari has mystical aspects for New Mysticism (vaḥy in nature, and the significance of experience), his work is also a significant critique of the Islamic state, and mostly a critique of its dissimulation. He is read as a mystic who provides people with mystical insight to lead them to a state of existential surrender facing the cosmos, while he does not remain silent as a human living in his society facing injustice, similar to the character of the lover offered by Ḥāfeẓ.
Given that Šabestari is read as mystical, his opposition to the state can be read as the opposition between mysticism (good Islam) and the state’s Islam (bad Islam), similar to the modern reading of
Ḥāfeẓ. In his works, Šabestari offers a “human reading” of Islam, a reading which is in contrast to “the official reading” of the state.223 This dichotomy between two different readings of Islam may resonate
khomeini.ir/fa/n25600/%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B3_%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C_%D8%A7%D8%B 7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B9_%D8%B1%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C/%D8%A7%D8%AE%D9%84%D8%A7% D9%82_%D9%88_%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%86/%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%88%DA%A9_%D8%B9%D8 %B1%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C_%D9%88_%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%85_%D8%AE%D9%85%DB%8 C%D9%86%DB%8C_%D8%B3_ (accessed April 8, 2019); on the significance of doctrinal Sufism (theoretical Gnosis) in Ayatollah Ḵomeyni’s thought, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today,” The Journal of Iqbal Review 47, no. 2 (April 2006): 37-73. 222 see Ḥasan Yusefi Eškevari’s (b. 1950) interview with Radio Farda, “Porseš-e Mowlānā az Ḵomeyni Dar Mehmāni-ye Eškevari; In Ḵošunat Rā Az Kojā Avardid?” Radio Farda website, https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f7-mizban-e21-yousefi- ashkevari/28206310.html (accessed April 8, 2019). 223 See Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din. According to Šabestari, “the official reading” imposed by the state has led the society to a state of crisis. Šabestari understands this crisis as people’s crisis of faith. He writes that the “official reading” creates the crisis due to having two characteristics: First, the official reading argues that Islam as a religion
74 with the modern imagination of the dichotomy between a “good” and a “bad” Islam or, as I argued before, a mystical and non-mystical versions of Islam. Šabestari’s narrative puts what is understood as mysticism in his work against Islamic jurisprudence as the core of the non-human reading of Islam.
Šabestari constructs a tension between mysticism and Islamic jurisprudence, while in reality the tension is somewhere else. Šabestari criticizes the Guardianship of the Jurist (velāyat-e faqih) as a legal subject that is rooted in Islamic jurisprudence, while for Āyatollāh Ḵomeyni, velāyat-e faqih was basically a mystical notion.224 The tension between “rationality” of Šabestari and mysticism of Ḵomeyni comes to be viewed as the tension between mysticism and Islamic jurisprudence.
Mojtahed Šabestari as the Sage of New Mysticism
New Mysticism can construct the significance of Šabestari because his work has everything that
New Mysticism needs. New mysticism needs to find a way to participate in the realities of modernity, and to respond to the reed flute’s tale of separation heard from the depth of human existence. The New
Mystic needs to negotiate their relationship with the different worlds s/he inhabits: a localized world in which one has to face political-historical impositions as the reality of life under the Islamic Republic, and also a much more expansive reality as one struggles to negotiate one’s identity in relation to a global
has political, economic, and legal systems by which one can live in all ages through the application of Islamic jurisprudence. Second, it says that the role of the government among Muslims is to execute Islamic laws (6). Šabestari believes that this image of religion that wants to look at religion from the perspective of God is “unreal.” In many aspects, this image does not accord with the realities of our world. We, human beings, approach God and based on our spiritual needs, and our experiences, define our religion. In this sense, religion belongs to human beings not God. Religion is a spiritual path for humans and maybe the most significant existential aspect of human life. However, due to its significance, it cannot supersede other aspects of human existence. Religion cannot supersede science, philosophy, and art. Rather, a human being lives a religious life having all these different aspects. The official reading of Islam puts God against the very notion of the humanity of a human being, against her freedom, while religion is to cause the humanity of a human being to blossom, to free a human being from existential crises; see Mojtahed Šabestari, Taʾammolāti Dar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din, 81-84. 224 Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din, 15-18; see also idem., Imān va Āzādi, 23-32.
75 human world, as everyone, as a human being, despite their locality, shares this space. One has to simultaneously experience two modes of existence (local and global), and to respond differently, even contradictorily, to problems associated with each mode. Facing the reality of life under the Islamic
Republic, the New Mystic has to defend modernity and its values. This is mostly due to the government’s opposition to “modern values.” On the other hand, facing the realities of the world on a global scale, the
New Mystic gets alienated from modernity, feeling abandoned and empty. In a state of commotion, one needs to alleviate the pain of modern certainty whispering there is no meaning. The New Mystic faces a problem: S/he has been alienated from what s/he profoundly desires. S/he looks forward to the appearances of modernity such as democracy and human rights while s/he has already been alienated from the context in which those appearances will be realized.
Šabestari may provide New Mysticism with the opportunity to negotiate the problems of both mode of existence. On the one hand, as a modernist, Šabestari sees “modern values” as the necessities of living in the world. Unlike “religious intellectualism” that intends to make the experience of modernity Islamic, Šabestari wants to separate those realms (Islam and modernity) completely. For
Šabestari, human rights and democracy do not have to be Islamic to gain significance for Muslims.225
Human rights or democracy is to live in the world as human beings, and mysticism is to respond to an ultimate concern, to a profound existential crisis beyond the world of human beings.
225 Šabestari states that even the Prophet did not want to make his world “Islamic.” He accepted many things as they were in his society. Take marriage, contracts (ʿuqud), etc. as examples. Šabestari notes that this idea that everything in history has to be sacred comes from a specific reading of Christianity. In Christianity, history is sacred because God is literally present in history. For this, secularism created a state of crisis for Christianity. On the contrary, for Muslims, history was always secular, even for the Prophet. To experience the world monotheistically is different from the world being Islamic. To experience history as the manifestation of God does not need to make history sacred. Rather, it requires to abolish the plain of history that is a veil to see what is beyond. See Mojtahed Šabestari, Taʾammolāti Dar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din, 52-55; see also idem., Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din, 117-122.
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On the other hand, New Mysticism seeks to overcome the emptiness of modernity by participating in religious discourses. In contrast to the concept of religion as a modern fundamentalist concept, which seeks to remove ambiguity from the concept of religion, New Mysticism desires ambiguity. Emphasizing “the clouds of unknowing” between humans and God, Šabestari adds ambiguity to the concept of religion for New Mysticism. One can folate into the clouds of unknowing and overcome all the certainties by going through the clouds of ambiguity, the clouds that will never get thin and no one could see through. Moreover, by adding ambiguity to the concept of scripture,
Šabestari also lets New Mysticism connect to the poetry of Ḥāfeẓ, for instance, as part of an Islamic discourse. If the Quran as scripture is the Prophet’s reading of the world, the poetry of Ḥāfeẓ and Rumi are also Ḥāfeẓ’s and Rumi’s reading of the world, even if they are of a lower rank. As such, scripture gains a more expansive sense. The absoluteness of the Quran as the speech of God makes an absolute distance between referring to the Quran as the speech of God and referring to a work of literature like
Ḥāfeẓ as a mystical text. By adding ambiguity to the concept of vaḥy and treating it as a source for existential transformation through which a new mode of being in the world is experienced, Šabestari paves the way for New Mystics to view works of literature (as well as nature) as a form of vaḥy, and allows them to become part of an Islamic discourse about vaḥy and God's speech. A New Mystic can participate in an Islamic discourse because s/he is connected to scripture which provides an Islamic reading of the world. By creating ambiguity in the concept of the speech of God, Šabestari overcomes the modern distance between mysticism (literature) and Islam (the Quran), and brings them close again. As such, in the light of the mystical reading of Šabestari, the New Mystic could participate in an
Islamic discourse, instead of participating in a discourse that is merely mystical.
77
Conclusion
“Intolerance of emotional and cognitive ambiguity seems not only to be a characteristic of the personality of the ethnically prejudiced; it also appears as part of the explicitly stated ego-ideal of exponents of the Nazi ideology in professional psychology.”226
Islam has incorporated a multitude of traditions across time and space. This diversity makes it difficult if not impossible to identify a specific phenomenon called Islam that can be conceptualized.
This difficulty notwithstanding, as a field of study, Islam must have a referent. For this referent to be useful, it should incorporate the range of subjects that Muslims have experienced as Islamic, such as the wine poetry of Ḥāfeẓ, the modern Salafi movement, Sufism, Muharram rituals, the love poetry of
Rumi, and much more. In an admirable effort to do so, Shahab Ahmed argues in his book What Is Islam?
The Importance of Being Islamic that the notion of contradiction is the key to understanding Islam.227 He states that, in the process of meaning-making, Muslim selves have, “an intimate and profound relationship with and sensibility to contradiction.”228
Although Ahmed’s insight is essential to this thesis, I prefer not to use the word “contradiction” for two reasons. First, the notion of contradiction assumes the existence of a basic statement or assumption in relation to which another statement or assumption is judged contradictory. By assuming the existence of a primary statement or assumption, we necessarily engage in a discourse about the authenticity of one of our assumptions and inauthenticity of the other. One might ask, for instance, in
226 Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950), 464. 227 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). 228 Ibid., 366.
78 what sense the wine poetry of Ḥāfeẓ contradicts the belief that wine is forbidden in Islam? It is hard to conceive of a contradictory relationship between them without first positing some normative Islamic content. They are contradictory only insofar as the prohibition on wine is understood to be the norm, and wine-drinking the aberration. But as long as some Muslims have a specific relationship to both, the two can exist in harmony.
Second, two phenomena are contradictory only insofar as they belong to the same world, the same existential. For example, the realm of the unseen (ʿālam al-ḡayb) and the realm of the seen (ʿālam al-šahāda) are not contradictory realms because, in each case, human experience is confined to one of the two existentials.229 Similarly, wine poetry and the prohibition on the consumption of wine belong to different modes of being: the poetic and the legal.
Instead of contradiction, I propose ambiguity as the key to understanding Islam. While wine poetry and the prohibition on wine may belong to different worlds, the relationship between them is best thought of as ambiguous.230 As such, the concept of ambiguity, rather than contradiction, is more helpful in our efforts to conceptualize religious traditions, including Islam.
229 Take, for example, Mullā Ṣadrā’s view on mental existence. According to Mullā Ṣadrā, we can say, from the viewpoint of primary essential predication (ḥaml-e avvali-ye ḏāti) that “a particular is a particular.” At the same time, from the viewpoint of common predication (ḥaml-e šāyeʿ), we can say that “a particular is not a particular.” According to Mullā Ṣadrā, there is no self-contradiction because here we have different modes of predication. “There are normally eight kinds of unity which must obtain for there to be contradiction between two propositions: unity of subject, unity of object, unity of time, unity of place, unity of actuality or potentiality, unity of part of whole, unity of condition, and unity of relation. To these has been added “unity of predication.” Mahdi Ḥāʾerī Yazdi, Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics, ed. Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad, trans. John Cooper, (Leiden: Brill Academic, 2017), 90. 230 Every single relationship that we draw between a desire for wine and the prohibition of wine is an act of interpretation. The relationship that we draw here is fundamentally different from the relationship between x and y in a statement like x + y = 3. If we emphasize a notion of contradiction between a desire for wine and the prohibition of wine, we necessarily engage in a literalist understanding of our discourses. Wine-drinking might be interpreted in a lot of different ways. For example, one might say that wine as a source of ecstasy leads to experiencing the love of God. At the same time, refraining from wine could be viewed as a sign of love for God. Eventually, refraining from wine also leads to a state of pure love or ecstasy. Ultimately, the two are identical.
79
Not only is religion fundamentally ambiguous, it is the goal of religion to create ambiguity. It is ambiguous because it deals with the realm of the unseen, and it creates ambiguity because it is a response to the great certainty in human life; the certainty of death as an absolute is a deep source of anxiety. By making the certainty of death and non-being ambiguous, religion opens new possibilities for human beings to live in other existentials and overcome this great anxiety.231
The concept of ambiguity is helpful in understanding the presumed tension between religion and modernity. The excessive modern desire for certainty quashes the idea of “religion,” which is fundamentally ambiguous, yet, ironically, creates a dominant and pervasive space for Fundamentalism, be it al-Qaeda or the practice of binge watching, as a modern, “extreme” religion opposed to any notion of ambiguity.232
Ambiguity is also a significant aspect of lived traditions, of how people understand their relationships to a specific tradition. The language that people use to describe their relationship to a religion reveals that traditions are amorphous entities without clear boundaries. For example, Persian- speakers often describe their engagement in religion in a way that is similar to the way they describe colors. One might be “very Muslim” or “not too Muslim.” Just as red is not a discrete phenomenon in the world, religion can be experienced in ways that are similar to spectrums of color. Shades of color may overlap and, at some points, even create new colors. This ambiguity is the key to understanding people’s
231 This, however, does not mean that religion is always related to the realm of the unseen; rather, the example merely illustrates the notion of ambiguity with respect to a very specific understanding of the term “religion.” The notion of ambiguity as it relates to religion could be explained in many ways and in many directions. For example, Disney World as a “religion” is ambiguous because it does not have a referent in “reality”; it is “hyper real,” a simulacra of reality. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994). 232 See Kathryn Lofton, “Binge Religion: Social life in Extremity,” in Consuming Religion, 16-33 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
80 relationship to any tradition, including Islam. Ambiguity is what makes different people part of different discourses of Islam, part of “the Islamic tradition.”
By tradition, I mean a “living tradition,” as MacIntyre says.233 In this sense, traditions comprise different discourses that people are born into, share, adapt and change by means of embodying narratives from those discourses in order to construct their selves. A tradition comprising narratives is a “historically extended, socially embodied argument, an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”234 Different narratives may “embody continuities of conflict,” as
MacIntyre states.235 Different discourses, if they belong to the same world, can cause states of conflicts within a tradition. But what if they are not from the same level or the same world. Take Islamic architecture as an example. Islamic architecture might be more than a category that refers to a specific kind of architecture which was developed through history by Muslims. The powerful spaces created by
Islamic architecture can be a spatial discourse, an embodiment of a historically extended argument, that can powerfully affect one’s “narrative-self.”236 In this sense, Islamic architecture is Islamic, as much as, Islamic literature, painting, philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, Sufism, etc. are Islamic. All of these fields are strongly part of the Islamic tradition as discourses in which people participate and relate their past and future through their present.237 However, these different discourses can hardly create states of conflict with respect to each other. Different discourses from different worlds make the certitude of
233 See chapter 2. 234 MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 222. 235 Ibid. 236 For instance, the amalgamation of specific styles and colors used in tiles of a mosque may be the embodiment of the discourse of taʾvil (interpretation, moving from one plane to another) in Islam. Through an act of taʾvil, the space created by drawings on tiles as a whole may be experienced as being in a primordial state, a heavenly garden, before the “separation.” See Dariyuš Šayegan, “Taṣvir-e Yek Jahān Yā Baḥṯi Pirāmun-e Honar-e Iran,” in Āmizeš-e Ofoq-hā, 61-66 (Tehran: Farzān Ruz, 2009). 237 See Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1986), 14.
81 other discourses ambiguous. Then, they can be referred to, or be lived, simultaneously. In this sense, the Islamic tradition embodies ambiguity. Conflicts in a tradition is one way to partake in a discourse of ambiguity.
The Islamic tradition provides people with a diverse, ambiguous context to live Islamicaly. It is the context in which being Muslim becomes possible. However, to participate in an Islamic tradition does not necessarily make one Muslim. Take Islamic philosophy as an example. Different people with different faiths may participate in Islamic philosophy, as historically, we have witnessed the participation of Jewish scholars, for instance, in Islamic philosophy. Due to this inter-religious participation in Islamic philosophy, some authoritative volumes on Islamic philosophy chose as their titles something other than Islamic, for instance, Arabic.238 This is because of treating Islam as a
“religion,” as a “faith,” and something different from a tradition, while there seems to be no real difference between modernity, for instance, and Islam as two traditions. If a “Muslim” participates in a
“modern” tradition, for instance, by participating in a modern election, does their participation in the modern tradition contradict their being Muslim?239
238 See Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic, 10. As an example of a book on Arabic philosophy, see Peter Adamson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 239 Mojtahed Šabestari distinguishes between two understandings of tradition: “religious” and “anthropological.” He states that Christianity inevitably came to be understood as a “religious tradition.” The Christian tradition began with “God informing of himself in history,” or “God’s presence in history.” The Christian tradition continued with the emphasis on the continuity of that revelation. As such, any participation in the Christian tradition was understood as a participation in a tradition which was fundamentally religious. On the contrary, Šabestari states that we cannot find such religious meaning of tradition within Islam. He states that Islam was always a “human” tradition, which came to be interpreted as religious. Šabestari states that modernity as a tradition created a state of conflict for the Christian tradition, because modernity developed in relation to, and in confrontation with, the Christian tradition. The most important conflict was that a non- religious tradition encountered a tradition which was absolutely religious. He thinks that the idea of the conflict between modernity and Islam as two contradictory traditions comes from this specific reading of the Christian tradition. He thinks there is not such a problem as Islam and modernity, as it was conceivable in the relationship between Christianity and modernity. To be clear, this contrast between the Islamic and Christian tradition is Šabestari’s contrast, not mine. See Mojtahed Šabestari, Taʾammolāti bar Qerāʾat-e Ensāni Az Din, 29-31. Despite this understanding of the Islamic tradition in Šabestari’s work, it is not easy to understand how he articulates his relationship to the concept of tradition, and specifically
82
Although the Islamic tradition is broad, being Muslim, by constrast, is often a limited space. If we accept the ontological possibility of a field of study that takes Islam as its subject, we can say that
Islamic Studies has mostly been about the study of history and literature. Consequently, the concept of the Muslim Human Being has been entrapped in a world created by history and literature. The Muslim
Human Being is indeed historic and literary. Even though there are no boundaries in light of which
Islam could be identified as a distinct epistemological realm, through some scholars’ participation in history and literature to reflect on Islam, the image of the Muslim Human Being as the representative of those worlds has been created. The Muslim Human Being, by acting in her historic-literary world, describes the boundaries of the world she represents. These boundaries become “hyperreal,” and we experience the Muslim Human Being as if she is defined by the boundaries.240 However, she was the one who invented those boundaries, the one who exists in our historic-literary imagination. This historic-literary imagination is reflected in the works of the scholors of Islam who think that Islamic orthodoxy was formed in the past, in a formative stage, as something complete and untouchable. Those scholors participate in a discourse of authenticity. As such, in contrast to the stated objective of Islamic
Studies, the discourse of good/bad Islam also permeates Islamic Studies and constrains the possibilities
to the Islamic tradition. Although I argued that Šabestari’s work is at the heart of the Islamic tradition, he sometimes distances himself from the tradition. Sometimes he sees the tradition as sets of choices and elements that he can freely choose from. He states that the tradition is useful mostly because it is the main source for gaining religious experience. In this sense, one can keep some aspects of the tradition by choice and get rid of the rest. Despite his notion of Islam as an “anthropological” tradition, and as not in a state of conflict with modernity, the concept of tradition in his work to some extent becomes of an ideological nature that stands against modernity. He decides to put away some aspects of the tradition in order to become modern. This understanding of tradition is very different from what I considered as the meaning of tradition in this chapter. 240 “Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept… It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it… The desert of the real itself.” Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1.
83 of being Muslim by offering and then insisting on an oppressive unitary image of a universal Muslim
Human Being, narrowing the horizons of being Muslim. Consequently, the shrunken Muslim Human
Being has been lost in the context of her growing tradition.
Rather than engaging in a rhetoric of authenticity, this thesis argues for methedological value of ambiguity. By reflecting on Mojtahed Šabestari’s thought, as an example, it addresses the question of how boundaries that define a tradition might change, how new understandings of traditions open new spaces for people who live on “the boundaries” to be incorporated in religious discourses. It is a reflection on the conceptions of inclusion and exclusion as they relate to a specific tradition. Through understanding the works of Šabestari, I argue that ambiguity functions as a vital factor for people to live a religious life, as we saw in our discussions on vaḥy, tradition, and mysticism. I argue that Šabestari’s thought expands the concept of Muslim Human Being. It lets the Muslim Human Being engage in different aspects of the Islamic tradition not only as being Islamic, but also as being Muslim. To participate in The Prophetic Reading of the World is to participate in the Islamic tradition with different discourses, for different discourses are different readings of the world somehow inspired by the
Prophet’s narrative. “To live the world monotheistally,” as the meaning of being Muslim, needs a hermeneutical engagement with different aspects of the world, different aspects of the tradition. This is not just a mere act of abstract interpretation. Despite the fact that Šabestari only focuses on religious experience, this hermeneutical engagement cannot be separated from the embodiment of the narratives that read the world Islamically and are used to create one’s narrative of self. This embodiment may include rituals, icons, books, nature, the Quran, etc., as different embodied narratives.
Even the significance of Ḥāfeẓ for New Mysticism as an important part of the tradition is not just being
84 a “river full of religious experiences.” Ḥāfeẓ gains significance mostly because of its materiality as a book or an icon in the lives of New Mystics. Although New Mystics participate in Ḥāfeẓ’s narrative of the world, and may experience the world based on that narrative, the significance and necessity of Ḥāfeẓ as the Divān of Ḥāfeẓ is undeniable. One’s engagement in those embodied narratives, which opens horizons of being, which transforms one’s existence, in a state of ambiguity, in a state of conflict, is not just participation in the Islamic tradition; it is the core of being Muslim. As such, Šabestari broadens the Muslim Human Being to fit the broadness of Islam, its context.
By expanding the idea of a Muslim in a way that matches the broadness of Islam, the ambiguity embodied in tradition flows into the notion of a Muslim Human Being. Different aspects of tradition function as the “call of a bell,” (bāng-e jaras) inviting the Muslim Human Being to begin her journey, without knowing the source of this call. This is the state of “confusion” (ḥeyrat) that Šabestari, referring to Ḥāfeẓ and Rumi, recognizes as the result of one’s encounter with “the word of God,” a word that is not only what the Prophet states, but speech (or a call) heard everywhere in the world of tradition if it opens horizons of ambiguity for the Muslim Human Being.241 This is similar to what Rumi states in the
Maṯnavi: “Sometimes it is manifested this way, and sometime just the opposite; religion’s job is but confusion (ambiguity); not confused in the sense of looking the other way, confused in the sense of being sunk in and drunk with the friend.”242
This ambiguous space of being Muslim is of great significance. Part of this significance is due to the fact that more people (New Mystics, for instance) can participate in discourses of being Muslim, as
241 Mojtahed Šabestari, Naqd-i Bar Qerāʾat-e Rasmi Az Din, 142. 242 Rumi, Maṯnavi-ye Maʿnavi, 15. “Gah čonin benmāyad va gah żedd-e in/ Joz ka ḥeyrāni nabāšad kār-e din/ Na čonān ḥeyrān ka poštaš suy-e ust/ Bal čonān ḥeyrān va mast va ḡarḡ-e dust.”
85 we saw in previous chapters. However, Šabestari’s perlocutionary authorization of New Mysticism, for instance, demonstrates something more important: the resilience of religion in the face of the certainties of modernity and, moreover, the intense oppression by a powerful state. New Mysticism and
Šabestari show us that the certainties of modernity and attendant Fundamentalism have not succeeded in eliminating the need for ambiguity in the concept of religion.
86
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