Reconstruction: an Overview

A king entrusted his son to a team of scholars and they taught him numerous sciences until he became a complete master in spite of himself. Then the king put a ring in his fist and asked his son to make a guess. The son replied, "What you hold in your hand is round, yellow, inscribed and hollow." Overjoyed, the king asked him to name it and he replied, "It must be a sieve."

"Alas!" Said the king. "You gave all the details that would baffle the minds of anyone, but the small point has escaped you that the sieve will not fit in a fist?"

Remember this story when approaching The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, since the immense richness of that book can easily lead a reader to become overwhelmed with detail and miss the point - even due to the same reason which Rumi ascribed to the prince after narrating that story: 

...the great scholars of the age split hairs on details of all matters... but as for what is truly of importance and touches us more closely than anything else, namely our own self, this your great scholars do not know. They make statements about everything, saying, “This is true and that is not true. This is right and that is wrong.” Yet, they do not know their own self, whether it is true or false, pure or impure.

In my endeavour to understand the Reconstruction, I have tried to list the key statement of each of the seven lectures and the preface. Personally I find it easier to "swim" through this ocean of a book by having this bird's eye-view first. The list is by no means definitive, and other readers of the book may come up with a different set, but I am offering these key statements here for facilitating discussion.

* Preface

Religious faith ultimately rests on a living experience of the king of biological unity implied in the Quranic verse: "Your creation and resurrection are like the creation and resurrection of a single soul." (31:28)

1. Knowledge and Religious Experience

Thought and intuition are organically related. All forms of intuition can be studied systematically, just like other thought processes. In principles, this is even true about revelation (وحی) of prophets even though we may not be practically equipped for carrying out such a study at present.

2. The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience

Systematic study of revelation involves the appreciative side of our self as well as its efficient side.

3. The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer

Our thought can also rise higher than itself and recognize five elements in our conception of God: that He is (a) Eternal; (b) Powerful; (c) Knowing; (d) Creative; and (e) Infinite Ego.

4. The Human Ego - His Freedom and Immortality

Human being is a unity of life that can be best described as an ego (خودی): an intuitive unity that illuminates our consciousness. It is possible for this entity to survive after death.

5. The Spirit of Muslim Culture

The cultural world of Islam has sprung out of the Unitive experience (معراج) of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Its cornerstone is the realization that humanity has outgrown the need for prophet-hood, priesthood or hereditary kingship. Therefore, the birth of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect.

6. The Principle of Movement in Islam

The essence of the Unity of God (توحید), as a working idea, is equality, solidarity, and freedom. The ultimate aim of Islam is a spiritual democracy, for which the present-day Muslims are better equipped than those in any previous time.

7. Is Religion Possible?

In its higher manifestations, religion is neither dogma, nor priesthood, nor ritual but a deliberate enterprise to seize the ultimate principle of value and thereby to reintegrate the forces of one’s own personality.

The lion and you

The following is my re-telling of a parable from the second volume of the Masnavi of Maulana Rumi. 

Think of Jesus whom God gave the gift of reviving the dead, and know it that your soul can also bring back those who have departed from the world. Once upon a time, you will come across a carcass rotting in the wilderness, and you may ask your soul to revive it.

“O God, what’s the matter with this person!” Your soul will say about you. “This person is worse than a corpse, but doesn’t want to be revived and is so much concerned about the corpse of a stranger!”

Well, this is how destiny works: you choose it. Therefore, please do not be too pleased with this story just yet: my wisdom might be the very corpse which you are trying to resurrect at the cost of your own!

Yes, your soul will revive that carcass, which will turn out to be that of a ferocious lion. It will kill you on the spot but it will not eat you.

“Why did you do this?” Your soul may ask the lion, and the lion will reply: “This is a punishment for those who irritate their souls with their foolishness.”

“Why didn’t you eat this prey?” Your soul may ask, and the lion will reply: “I wouldn’t have died in the first place if there were any more food in my destiny.”

My dear child, the lion who will kill even when he isn’t going to eat the prey will be a mere reflection of yourself if you go around acquiring knowledge which you do not need. The Sufi’s book is not composed of ink and letters: it is not but a heart white as snow. The scholar’s possession is pen-marks. What is the Sufi’s possession? Foot-marks!

What is the Republic of Rumi?

The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality (2007) was a book in which I attempted a new approach to Iqbal Studies. Since then, I have realized that the idea can be developed further. 

In short, it means two things:

• The message of Iqbal is relevant today. It can be helpful in finding solutions which can be acceptable to the masses and not just the experts - quite possibly in many cultures of the world.
• Iqbal's message is a reinterpretation of the message of Rumi for our times.

The promise

What will be gained? The benefits can be at the national level as well as international.

At the national level, a society which adopts the ideals presented by Iqbal may discover "Marghdeen", the ideal world proposed by Iqbal where no one is needy or destitute, where knowledge is not used for exploitation and where a unity exists between spirit and matter. Iqbal presented this ideal world in his epic Javid Nama (1932), and from a careful study it may be realized that this is not just another utopia. It is achievable, provided that we are willing to reconsider some of our perceptions about things:

جہانِ تازہ کی افکارِ تازہ سے ہے نمود

کہ سنگ و خِشت سے ہوتے نہیں جہاں پیدا

Internationally, the message of Iqbal holds the promise of peace and harmony with better understanding between the masses and the educated elite, and between societies in the world. In Iqbal's own words:

The object of my Persian poems is not to make out a case for Islam; my aim is simply to discover a universal social reconstruction, and in this endeavor, I find it philosophically impossible to ignore a social system which exists with the express object of doing away with all the distinctions of caste, rank and race; and which, while keeping a watchful eye on the affairs of this world, fosters a spirit of un-worldliness so absolutely essential to man in his relations with his neighbors. This is what Europe lacks and this is what she can still learn from us.

(In my book, I tried to imagine this “universal social reconstruction” through an allegory, ‘A Parable Never Told’).

Iqbal Studies

A better understanding of the work of Iqbal is the way to begin. Marghdeen Learning Centre (MLC) has been added with the support of Iqbal Academy Pakistan.

An online certificate course, ‘Introduction to Iqbal Studies’, is offered four times a year at MLC. The course is certified by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. It is promoted internationally by Dr. Iqbal Society of North America (DISNA) and in Pakistan by Topline Publishers.

A new syllabus

I am convinced that the complete scope of Iqbal Studies can be realized only if we readjust our understanding of five areas to the vision of Iqbal. These areas are history, literature, political science, religion and science (together) and education.

Hence, the next step may be the development of a new syllabus in which various subjects are approached with the help of the guidance provided by Iqbal.

It might be more desirable to start introducing this new syllabus through informal and non-formal education. Marghdeen Learning Centre has also started offering courses in some of these areas. Self-Development through Iqbal is a certified course which offers a new introduction to literature with special focus on Javid Nama but also includes sections on Nezami, Attar, Rumi, Shakespeare and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Another course, History According to Iqbal, is likely to be offered in January 2012.

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The making of Rumi

Jalaluddin was born on September 30, 1207 AD in Balkh (Afghanistan) to a family of religious scholars. After wandering through Persia and the Middle East he settled in Konya (Turkey) and died there on December 17, 1273 AD.

Up to the age of 40 he was known mainly as a great scholar but then came Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish. It is said that Rumi asked him questions. The answers were simple, but so deep, that he went into trans and was transformed completely. This happened in 1247, eleven years before the fall of Baghdad. Factual accounts may not do justice to the spiritual intensity of Rumi´s experience, and it seems that for this reason some members of the inner circle came up with two parables.

The first tells us that Rumi was sitting with a heap of books and lecturing to his pupils when Shams came and irreverently questioned him about his work. Rumi replied, "These are matters of intellectual import and you won´t understand." Shams looked at the books and they got burnt, but at Rumi´s protest he pulled them from the ashes, unburnt, and said, "These are matters which you won´t understand."

The other parable places Rumi by the side of a pond. Instead of burning the books, Shams throws them into water. On Rumi´s protest he pulls them, dry and unharmed. The dialogue is almost the same as that in the first parable.

Both stories seem to be pointing at the same thing: there comes a time in the life of seekers when they must give up their knowledge in order to be alone with themselves. A source of deeper knowledge is then discovered within, just like books coming back from ashes or from water. However, the first step is to let go: burn the books or drown them, so that you may transcend your learning and be yourself.

"I say over to you the message of the Sage of Rum: Knowledge, if it lies on your skin, is a snake; knowledge, if you take it to heart, is a friend.” Read more about the meeting between Rumi and Shams Tabriz in Secrets and Mysteries (1915-17) by Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal 

More information, facts and resources about Rumi can be found at the official website of his descendants, Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi.