Only a True lover of God can Appreciate the Value of Devotion.

 

Only a true lover of God can appreciate the value of devotion even though it is directed to gods in which he himself does not believe. The folly of our preachers of toleration consists in describing the attitude of the man who is jealous of the boundaries of his own faith as one of tolerance. They wrongly consider this attitude as a sign of moral inferiority. They do not understand that the value of his attitude is essentially biological. Where the members of a group feel, either instinctively or on the basis of rational argument, that the corporate life of the social organism to which they belong is in danger their defensive attitude must be appraised in reference mainly to a biological criterion. Every thought or deed in this connection must be judged by the life-value that it may possess. The question in this case is not whether the attitude of an individual or community towards the man who is declared to be a heretic is morally good or bad.  The question is whether it is life-giving or life-destroying. Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru seems to think that a society founded on religious principles necessitates the institution. This is indeed true of the history of inquisition Christianity; but the history of Islam, contrary to the Pandit’s logic, shows that during the last thirteen hundred years of the life of Islam, the institution of inquisition has been absolutely unknown in Muslim countries. The Quran expressly prohibits such an institution. “Do not seek out the shortcomings of others and carry not tales against your breathren.” Indeed the Pandit will find from the history of Islam that the Jews and Christians, fleeing from religious persecution in their own lands, always found shelter in the lands of Islam. The two propositions on which the conceptual structure of Islam based are so simple that it makes heresy in the sense of turning the heretic outside the fold of Islam almost impossible. It is true that when a person declared to be holding heretical doctrines threatens the existing social order an independent Muslim state will certainly take action; but in such a case the action of the state will be determined more by political considerations than by purely religious ones. I can very well realize that a man like the Pandit, who is born and brought up in a society which has no well-defined boundaries and consequently no internal cohesion, finds it difficult to conceive that a religious society can live and  prosper without state-appointed commissions of enquiry into the beliefs of the people. This is quite clear from the passage which he quotes from Cardinal Newman and wonders how far I would accept the application of the Cardinal’s dictum to Islam. Let me tell him that there is a tremendous difference between the inner structure of Islam and Catholicism wherein the complexity, the ultra rational character and the number of dogmas has, as the history of Christianity shows, always fostered possibilities of fresh heretical interpretations. The simple faith of Muhammad is based on two propositions – that God is one, and that Muhammad is the last of the line of these holy men who have appeared from time to time in all countries and in all ages to guide mankind to the right ways of living. If, as some Christian writers think, a dogma must be defined as an ultra-rational proposition which for the purpose of securing religious solidarity must be assented to without any understanding of its metaphysical import, then these two simple propositions of Islam cannot be described even as dogmas; for both of them are supported by the experience of mankind and are fairly amenable to rational argument. The question of a heresy, which needs the verdict whether the author of it is within or without the fold, can arise, in the case of a religious society founded on such simple propositions, only when the heretic rejects both or either of these propositions. Such heresy must be and has been rare in the history of Islam which, while jealous of its frontiers, permits freedom of interpretation within these frontiers. And since the phenomenon of the kind of heresy which affects the boundaries of Islam has been rare in the history of Islam, the feeling of the average Muslim is naturally intense when a revolt of this kind arises. That is why the feeling of Muslim Persia was so intense against the Bahais. That is why the feeling of the Indian Muslims is so intense against the Qadianis.

 

            It is true that mutual accusations of heresy for differences in minor points of law and theology among Muslim religious sects have been rather common. In this indiscriminate use of the word kufr  both for minor theological points of difference as well as for the extreme cases of heresy which involve the excommunication of the heretic, some present-day educated Muslims who possess practically no knowledge of the history of Muslim theological disputes, see a sign of social and political disintegration of the Muslim community. This, however, is an entirely wrong notion. the history of Muslim Theology shows that mutual accusation of heresy on minor points of difference has, far from working as a disruptive force, actually given an impetus to synthetic theological thought. “When we read the history of development of Muhammaden Law,” says Prof. Hurgrouje, “we find that, on the one hand, the doctors of every age, on the slightest stimulus, condemn one another to the point of mutual accusations of heresy; and, on the other hand, the very same people with greater and greater unity of purpose try to reconcile the similar quarrels of their predecessors.” The student of Muslim Theology knows that among Muslim legists this kind of heresy is technically known as “heresy below heresy,” i.e., the kind of heresy which does not involve the excommunication of the culprit. It may be admitted, however that in the hands of mullahs  whose intellectual laziness takes all oppositions of theological thought as absolute and is consequently blind to the unity in difference, this minor heresy may become a source of great mischief. This mischief can be remedied only by giving to the students of our theological schools a clearer vision of the synthetic spirit of Islam, and by-reinitiating them into the function of logical contradiction as a principle of movement in theological dialectic. The question of what maybe called major heresy arises only when the teaching of a thinker or a reformer affects the frontiers of the faith of Islam. Unfortunately this question does arise in connection with the teachings of Qadianism. It must be pointed out here that the Ahmadi movement is divided into two  camps known as the Qadianis and the Lahoris. The former openly declare the founder to be a full prophet; the latter, either by conviction or policy, have found it advisable to preach  an apparently toned down Qadianism. However, the question whether the founder of Ahmadism was prophet the denial of whose mission entails what I call the ‘major heresy” is a major of dispute between the two sections. It is unnecessary for my purposes to judge the merits of this domestic controversy of the Ahmadis. I believe, for reasons to be explained  presently, that the idea of a full prophet whose denial entails the denier’s excommunication from Islam is essential to Ahmadism; and that the present head of the Qadianis is far more consistent with the spirit of the movement than the Imam of the Lahoris.

 

            The cultural value of the idea of Finality in Islam I have fully explained elsewhere. Its meaning is simple: No spiritual surrender to any human being after Muhammad who emancipated his followers by giving them a law which is realizable as arising from the very core of human conscience. Theologically the doctrine is that: The Socio-political organization called “Islam” is perfect and eternal. No revelation the denial of which entails heresy is possible after Muhammad. He who claims such a revelation is a traitor to Islam. Since the Qadianis believe the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement to be the bearer of such a revelation, they declare that the entire world of Islam is infidel. The founder’s own argument, quite worthy of a mediaeval theologian, is that the spirituality of the Holy Prophet of Islam must be regarded as imperfect if it is not creative of another Prophet. He claims his own Prophethood to be an evidence of the Prophet-rearing power of the spirituality of the Holy Prophet of Islam. But if you further ask him whether the spirituality of Muhammad is capable of rearing more prophets than one, his answer is “No.”. This virtually, amounts to saying: “Muhammad is not the last Prophet; I am the last.” Far from understanding the cultural value of the Islamic idea of finality in the history of mankind generally and of Asia especially, he thinks that finality in the sense that no follower of Muhammad can ever reach the status of Prophethood is a mark of imperfection in Muhammad’s Prophethood. As I read the psychology of his mind he, in the interest of his own claim to Prophethood, avails himself of what he describes as the creative spirituality of the Holy Prophet of Islam and at the same time deprives the Holy Prophet of his ‘finality’ by limiting the creative capacity of his spirituality to the rearing of only one prophet, i.e., the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement. In this way does the new prophet quietly steal away the ’finality’ of one whom he claims to be his spiritual progenitor.

 

            He claims to be a ‘buruz’ of the Holy Prophet of Islam insinuating thereby that, being a ‘buruz’ of him his ‘finality’ is virtually the ‘finality’ of Muhammad; and that this view of the matter, therefore, does not violate the ‘finality’ of the Holy Prophet. in identifying the two finalities, his own and that of the Holy Prophet, he conveniently losses sight of the temporal meaning of the idea of Finality. It is, however, obvious that they word ‘buruz’ in the sense even of complete likeness, cannot help him at all; for the ‘buruz’ must always remain the other of its original. Only in the sense of reincarnation a ‘buruz’ becomes identical with the original. Thus if we take the word ‘buruz’ to mean “like in spiritual qualities” the argument remains ineffective; if, on the other hand, we take it to mean reincarnation of the original in the Aryan sense of the word, the argument becomes plausible; but its author turns out to be only a Magian in disguise.

 

            It is further claimed on the authority of the great Muslim Mystic, Muhyuddin lbn-i-Arabi of Spain, that it is possible for a Muslim saint to attain, in his spiritual evolution, to the kind of experience characteristic of the prophetic consciousness. I personally believe this view of the Sheikh Muhyuddin ibn-i-Arabi to be pscyhologically unsound; but assuming it to be correct the Qadiani argument is based on a complete misunderstanding of his exact position. The Sheikh regards it as a purely private achievement which does not, and in the nature of things cannot, entitle such a saint to declare that all those who do not believe in him are outside the pale of Islam. Indeed, from the Sheikh’s point of view, there may be more than one saint, living in the same age or country, who may attain to prophetic consciousness. The point to be seized is that while it is psychologically possible for a saint to attain to prophetic experience, his experience will have no socio-political significance making him the centre of a new organization and entitling him to declare his organization to be the criterion of the faith or disbelief of the followers of Muhammad.

 

            Leaving his mystical psychology aside I am convinced from a careful study of the relevant passages of the Futuhat that the great Spanish mystic is as firm a believer in the Finality of Muhammad as any orthodox Muslim. And if he had seen in his mystical vision that one day in the East some Indian amateurs in Sufism would seek to destroy the Holy Prophet’s finality under cover of his mystical psychology, he would have certainly anticipated the Indian Ulema in warning the Muslims of the world against such traitors to Islam.