what is islam ? the usual answer to this question involves saying something like well muslims
believe that islam was revealed over 1400 years ago in mecca arabia through a man called muhammad .
now that's answer is known virtually by everyone . i want to approach the question
in a slightly different way through the words of Frithjof Schuon in his classic work "understanding
islam" . he has a much more philosophical approach to the subject and i want to share
his definition of what islam is . he says : islam is the meeting between god as such and man as such
god as such that is to say god envisaged not as he manifested himself in a particular way
at a particular time but independently of history and in as much as he is what he is
and also as he creates and reveals by his nature .
man as such that is to say man envisaged not as a fallen being needing a miracle to save him
but as man a theomorphic being endowed with an intelligence capable of conceiving of the absolute
and with a will capable of choosing what leads to the absolute . to say god it is also to say
being , creating , revealing in other words it is to say : reality , manifestation , reintegration
to say man is to say theomorphism , transcendent , intelligence and free will . these are in our
meaning the premises of the islamic perspective those which explain its every application
and must never be lost sight of by anyone wanting to understand any particular aspect of islam .
man thus appears a priori as a dual receptacle made for the Absolute (with a capital A)
and islam comes to fill that receptacle . first : with the truth of the absolute . and secondly :
with the law of the absolute . islam then is in essence a truth and a law or the truth and the
law . the former answering to the intelligence and the latter to the will it is thus that islam sets
out to abolish both uncertainty and hesitation and fortiori both error and sin . error in holding that
the absolute is not or that it is relative or that there are two absolutes or that the relative is
absolute . sin places these errors on the level of the will or of action . these two doctrines of the
absolute and of man are respectively to be found in the two testimonies of the islamic faith .
the first : No god but Allah (concerning god) . and the second : muhammadan rasulullah (concerning the prophet) .
the idea of predestination so strongly marked in islam does not do away with the idea of freedom .
man is subject to predestination because he is not god but he is free because he is
made in the image of god . god alone is absolute freedom but human freedom despite its relativity
in the sense that it is relatively absolute is not something other than freedom any more
than a feeble light is something other than light . to deny predestination would amount to
men telling that god does not know events in advance (so to speak) and so is not omniscient
to sum up . islam confronts what is immutable in god with what is permanent in man . for exoteric
christianity , man is a priori will or more exactly he is well corrupted . clearly the intelligence is
not denied but it is taken into consideration only as an aspect of will . man is will
and in man will is intelligent . when the will is corrupted so also is the intelligence corrupted
in the sense that in no way could it set the will to rights . therefore a divine intervention
is needed "the sacrament" . in the case of islam where man is considered as the intelligence
and intelligence comes before will . it is in the content or direction of the intelligence
which has sacramental efficiency . whoever accepts that the transcendent absolute alone is absolute
and transcendent draws from this its consequences for the will
and is saved . the testimony of faith (the shahada) determines the intelligence . and the islamic law
(the sharia) determines the will . now i could go on . this book is full of the most extraordinary
penetrating theological psychological insights into the nature of faith itself and of
its christian expression as well . now i don't necessarily agree with everything
that the writer states but he is certainly worth reading for a very
different and refreshing perspective on the nature of islam . until next time