One Does Not Simply Become an Unbeliever: Disbelief from the Perspective of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani, Yaser Mirdamadi

Disbelief from the Perspective of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani

Yaser Mirdamadi: The common binary of "unbeliever-or-believer" is an erroneous binary. We also have both believer-and-unbeliever and neither-believer-nor-unbeliever.

Disbelief from the Perspective of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani

Yaser Mirdamadi

´The reason for and importance of examining disbelief

´The reason for and importance of examining the views of Ayn al-Quzat

´A glimpse into the life of Ayn al-Quzat

´Disbelief in the common understanding and among the Sufis

´Disbelief from the perspective of Ayn al-Quzat

´The outcome of reprehensible disbelief

´References

Why "becoming seeing through disbelief"?

´"O friend, do you think that becoming seeing through disbelief is a small matter?" (Ayn al-Quzat, Tamhidat)

´An intra-religious reason: From a Quranic perspective, two things bring about salvation (felicity): faith and righteous deeds

´One of the conventional ways of knowing a phenomenon is knowing its opposite, its other, or its like: "Things are known by their opposites, their others, or their likes."

´Disbelief, too, is generally called either the other or the opposite of faith (though we will see that from Ayn al-Quzat's perspective, disbelief is the like of faith, indeed the very essence of faith).

´An extra-religious (sociological) reason: Muslims kill one another with the weapon of takfir (Takfiri groups: ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Sipah-e Sahaba, Jabhat al-Nusra, ...).

´Ayn al-Quzat [says]: "Most often they say: This is disbelief, heresy, and apostasy. Yet they themselves do not know what disbelief and faith are." (Letters, Vol. 2: 52)

Why Ayn al-Quzat?

´"One of the most prominent figures in the medieval history of Iranian intellectual history" (Dabashi, 1999: xvii)

´"In terms of spiritual insight and his tragic end, he is comparable to Hallaj and Shaykh Shahab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi." (Arberry: 1969, 9)

´"He is among the first Iranians who, in his treatises, discussed Sufism and mysticism in the Persian language (in addition to Arabic, the scholarly language of that era)." (Papan-Matin: 2011, 196). In particular, he is among the first Sufis who systematically used Persian letter-writing for spiritual instruction. (Böwering: 1983)

´"He was a mystic with profound spiritual experiences, and at the same time a thinker whose thought possessed extraordinary precision in analyzing issues. [...] Ayn al-Quzat can be considered the forerunner and guide of a long-lasting Iranian tradition that [...] came to be called wisdom." (Izutsu: 1383, 107)

´"Ayn al-Quzat was of a Christ-like disposition and a Mansur-like path." (Masum Alishah, Tara'iq al-Haqa'iq, cited in Böwering: 1983)

An outline of the life of Ayn al-Quzat

´Ayn al-Quzat was born in 490 (or 492) AH in Hamadan and was gruesomely executed in public in the same city in 525 AH, by the order and in the presence of Mahmud, the Seljuk Malik-Shah, on charges of uttering disbelief.

´He was 33 or 35 years old at the time of his execution.

´He has been called a "martyred Sufi" alongside Hallaj and Suhrawardi.

´He came from a Shafi'i family. His father and grandfather were renowned judges of Hamadan.

´From a very young age, he pursued scholarship diligently and very soon (in the second half of his second decade of life) attained a prominent scholarly position and students.

´He was greatly influenced by the works of Muhammad Ghazali and became a student of Ahmad Ghazali in Sufism. He was also (possibly in mathematics) a student of Omar Khayyam. He, in his own words in Tamhidat, also used to benefit from an old Jewish man in interpreting inner revelations.

The tomb of Ayn al-Quzat in Hamadan was a pilgrimage site for Sufis and was destroyed in the Safavid era (Landolt: 2009). Construction of the mausoleum attributed to Ayn al-Quzat began in the solar year 1381 (Papan-Matin: 2011, 194).

Some of the important surviving works whose attribution to Ayn al-Quzat is a matter of consensus are: Zubdat al-Haqaʾiq, Tamhidat, Letters (known as Maktubat, 159 letters), and Shakwa al-Gharib. The attribution of Lawaʾih to him is a matter of debate and doubt.

Disbelief in the Common Understanding

Ungrateful, denier of Islam, concealer of the Truth

From a jurisprudential perspective: original disbelief (disbeliever at war and disbeliever under protection) and disbelief of apostasy (innate apostate and national apostate)

Types of disbelief in terms of content: 1- Disbelief of denial (does not know God and does not confess to God's divinity): pure disbelief 2- Disbelief of rejection (knows God but does not confess to God's divinity), 3- Disbelief of obstinacy: knows God, confesses to God's divinity, yet in practice remains a disbeliever out of hatred and malice, but not hypocrisy 4- Disbelief of hypocrisy: outwardly confesses to God's divinity but does not believe it in his heart (Björkman).

Disbelief in the Understanding of the People of Sufism

The Sufis considered a type of disbelief to be complete and true faith, a state in which the individual becomes a disbeliever in all but God, and this "other than God" includes the Sharia as well (al-Tahanawi: 1996, 1357). True disbelief is the annihilation of the servant.

Aziz al-Din Nasafi in the book The Perfect Human: "O dervish, the corresponding meaning of disbelief is covering, and covering is of two kinds: one covering is that by which they do not see and do not know God, and this is the disbelief of beginners, and this disbelief is blameworthy. The other covering is that by which they do not see and do not know other than God, and this is the disbelief of those who have reached the end, and this disbelief is praiseworthy."

Disbelief from the Perspective of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani

1- Disbelief in the sense of ingratitude and failure to give thanks for divine blessings, which is blameworthy: "The gratitude of the heart is to know Him as the Bestower of blessings; whoever does not know is a disbeliever." (Letters, vol. 1: 261)

2- Disbelief as a doubt that is a prelude to the quest for faith, which is praiseworthy, "divine disbelief": "Wait until the successful one is admitted to doubt [...] the people of doubt are dear [...] doubt is the first station of the wayfarers, and until one reaches doubt, there is no quest" (Letters, vol. 1: 309) "Look closely until you gain sight through the first disbelief [innate ignorance]. Then walk the path! until you attain the faith of the common people. Then strive! until you gain sight through the second disbelief [doubt in the faith of the common people]. Then seek earnestly! until you find the faith of the elect. Then after this, if you are fortunate, you will gain sight through the third disbelief [the stage of annihilation] within your own being." (Letters, vol. 1: 479)

"Whoever is a seeker of the knowledge of certainty, the first condition on his path is that all the creeds of the world appear equal in his sight. And if he perceives a difference between disbelief and Islam, this perception of difference will be an obstacle on his path of seeking, preventing him from reaching the desired goal." (Letters, vol. 2: 251)

Only true faith brings eternal salvation, and faith is attained through a loving spiritual wayfaring, and wayfaring emerges through seeking and abandoning habit, and seeking and abandoning habit come through disbelief and doubt.

"Disbeliefs are many, for the stations of the wayfarer are many. Disbelief and faith are, at every moment, a condition and necessity for the traveler." (Tamhidat)

3- Disbelief as self-deification (worship of the ego's desires: absolutizing one's own preferences), which is blameworthy: "They say it is such and such, and it ought to be thus and so. In the view of the scholars of religion, these thoughts are disbelief and are equivalent to 'I am your Lord, the Most High'; for He wills, out of His perfect pre-eternal knowledge, that rain should not fall, and you say, 'If only rain would fall.' Thus you have seen your own opinion as superior to His opinion, and have considered yourself above Him" (Letters, vol. 1: 401).

4- Disbelief that is the very essence of faith: the dark divine light (the Iblisian reality), Iblis as the manifestation of the divine name al-Mudill (the Dark Light). "There is a station in love where separation is better than union. Iblis is also in this station. He was the unique one of existence, the master of those separated, the secret of predestination, the beauty mark of pre-eternal beauty, the teacher of the angels" (Letters, vol. 2, paragraphs 654-8).

"Suppose Iblis leads the people astray; who created Iblis with this attribute?" (Letters, vol. 2, paragraph 9).

"Muhammad would not have been complete without Iblis, nor would obedience have taken form without disobedience, nor disbelief without faith" (Tamhīdāt)

Muhammad is the manifestation of the divine "Attribute of Beauty" and Iblis is the manifestation of the divine "Attribute of Majesty."

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's (544-606) alternative theory for resolving the problem of Iblis and divine omnipotence.

"Have you ever seen a Muslim who is an unbeliever? By the beauty and majesty of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, all believers have become unbelievers, and no one is aware of it." (Tamhīdāt)

Disbelief, in itself, is the foundation of belief / One cannot become an unbeliever easily.

5- The Station Beyond Disbelief and Belief: "Disbelief and belief, above the Throne, have become two veils between God and the servant, for one must be neither an unbeliever nor a Muslim" (Tamhīdāt), nevertheless:

In love, the sign is losing reason and life / It is emptying oneself of both worlds,

Being sometimes an unbeliever and sometimes a believer / Is to make do with these two stations forever.

The Ultimate Fate of Blameworthy Disbelief

"The greatest torment is for the unbelievers, for He [God] will reveal Himself to them; then He will cast the fire of longing [...] into their hearts. After that, He will veil Himself from them, and they will remain veiled; this shall be hell." (Tamhīdāt)

God will afflict the unbelievers with love on the Day of Resurrection, then abandon them and subject them to separation and parting, and this shall be their torment. But the believers have already endured the trial of separation in this world, and now their paradise shall be union with the Presence of the Soul of the World.

Conclusion

The common binary of "unbeliever-or-believer" is an erroneous binary. We also have those who are both believer-and-unbeliever and neither-believer-nor-unbeliever.

Disbelief (in the form of doubt and denial) is a requisite of faith.

One who has no disbelief has no quest, and one who has no quest is a worshipper of habit, and a worshipper of habit is deprived of the truth of faith.

In this Ayn al-Quzatian consciousness of disbelief, excommunication (takfīr) fundamentally loses its color (and not based on situational expediency).

References:

Arberry, A. J., trans. A Sufi Martyr: The Apologia of ‘Ain Al-Qudat Al-Hamadhani.” London: George Allen, 1969.

Böwering, G., ‘Ayn-al-Qozat Hamadani, in Encyclopaedia Iranica (1983), pp. 140-143.

Dabashi, Hamid. Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of ’Ayn Al-Quḍat Al-Hamadhānī. Richmond: Routledge, 1999.

Landolt, Hermann. ‘Ayn al-Qudat Al-Hamadani The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Third Edition), 2009, Brill Online, ed. Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson. (E.J. Brill).

Björkman, W. ”Kāfir”, Encyclopedia of Islam, First edition (1913-1936), Edited by M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. Creation, Existence and Time, translated by Mehdi Sarreshtehdari, Tehran: Mehrandish, 1383.

Papan-Matin, Firoozeh. Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani. Iranshenasi. Year 26, No. 1-2, 2011, pp. 191-208.

al-Tahānawī, Muhammad Ali. Mawsūʿat Kashshāf Iṣṭilāḥāt al-Funūn wa-l-ʿUlūm, Beirut: Nashirun, 1996.

Sajjadi, Seyyed Jafar. Farhang-e Estelahat va Ta'birat-e Erfani, Tehran: Tahuri, 1370.

Nasafi, Aziz al-Din. Ensan-e Kamel. Electronic version.

Hashemi, Mandana. The Category of Disbelief and Belief in the Thought of Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani and Rumi, Faslname-ye Takhasosi-ye Adabiyat-e Farsi, No. 33, Spring 91. pp. 193-211.

´Ayn al-Quzat, Tamhidat, electronic edition.

´Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani, Nāmeh-hā-ye ʿAyn al-Quzāt Hamadāni (three volumes), vols. 1 & 2: edited by Alinaqi Monzavi and Afif Osseiran, Tehran: Manuchehri, 1362 [1983]. Volume three edited by Alinaqi Monzavi, Tehran: Asatir, 1377 [1998].

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One Does Not Simply Become an Unbeliever: Disbelief from the Perspective of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani

Date of lecture: Saturday, 2 July 2016 – 12 Tir 1395

Location: Paris, "Rahman Association"

Speaker: Yaser Mirdamadi