Wahdat-al-Wujud and the politics of polytheism

[Padishah]

Wahdat-al-Wujud and the politics of polytheism
http://higher-criticism.blogspot.com/


Wahdat-al-wujud was an idea developed by the inestimable twelfth-century scholar, Ibn Arabi. Translated literally, wahdat-al-wujud means unity of being, but it can also mean unity of finding. The object of this 'finding' is God, and the finder seeks to remove the veils that stand between himself and God so that the perfect level of certainty is reached. This doctrine forms an integral part of traditional Islam, but finds its most explicit expression in the mystical discipline known as Sufism.

The veil is often used as a metaphor for either emotional obstacles or worldly distractions. Even certain Sufi rituals are not spared. For example, poverty is a well-known circumstance that many Sufis choose to place themselves in. Thus, it is often said in Turkey [1]:

Sharia (Islamic Law): yours is yours, mine is mine
Tariqa (The Sufi path): yours is yours, mine is yours too
Marifa (Gnosis): there is neither mine nor thine

However, poverty must not be regarded as a goal in and of itself, or else it becomes a veil along the path toward God. From the outset, wahdat-al-wujud's chief concern has been with God, or more specifically, with attaining an existential awareness of the Divine Unity. Poverty is nothing more than a condition bequeathed by God to test a person's trust in Divine Grace. Some authorities assert that the more God loves a person, the more He will test him. Hence, we find that the Prophets, being nearest to God, are made to suffer the most.

Since the veils relate to the Divine, they are an infinite number of them. The proper attitude of the seeker is that of bewilderment. The state of finding is said to be directly parallel to the state of not finding, since it is humanly impossible to overcome infinity. This kind of paradox is hardly novel, as evident by this saying from Abu Bakr, the first caliph of Islam.

...the incapacity to attain comprehension is itself comprehension. [2]

Because there is a verse in the Quran that states, wherever you turn, there is the face of God [3], the seeker understands that everything he witnesses and experiences is a divine manifestation of God's Eternal Will. But taking this idea too literally would lead the seeker into anthropomorphism; the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to God. The seeker knows that just as all is God, all is not God.

If such is the case, what does finding God entail? The problem lies in the vagueness of the question. It should instead be re-phrased as: "How do I remove the veils that prevent me from finding God?"

Muslim cosmology is divided into two worlds, the seen and the unseen. The Quran makes it clear that,

With Him are the keys of the Unseen. No one knows them save He. [4]

Hence, none knows God but God Himself. Because of this, our question can be further refined as: "How to remove the veils that prevent me from being God?"

The question is not as radical as it appears. After all, proximity with God has always been an overriding goal of the nominal believer. In a famous hadith, it is striking that the measure of distance is used as a metaphor for the degree of closeness between the believer and God.

If my servant draws nearer to Me by a handsbreadth, I draw nearer to him by an armslength, and if he draws nearer to Me by an armslength, I draw nearer to him by twice that distance. And if he comes walking to meet Me, I come running to meet him. [5]

And the culmination of such a journey has always been understood by scholars to be union with God. For example, Imam al-Ghazali states in his Ihya [6],

I want union with him...

Before Imam al-Ghazali, the great Shaykh Junayd Baghdadi had been even more explicit:

Love between two is not right until the one addresses the other, 'O Thou I' [7].

It would be a grave mistake to dismiss the likes of these scholars as mere pantheists without first understanding what is actually meant by union or wahdat-al-wujud. The latter term does not only have an apparent meaning, but also an inner meaning that cannot be discarded. As mentioned before, wahdat-al-wujud not only means unity of being but also unity of finding. Thus, the ostensibly radical question "How to remove the veils that prevent me from being God?" is in essence, "How to remove the veils that prevent me from finding God?" In an intimate study of Ibn Arabi's thought, William Chittick clarifies that,

Being precedes knowledge as in the world; nothing knows until it first exists. [8]

I wrote this article not because I have a particular affinity with Ibn Arabi's thought, but because I came across another article written by a Muslim who pompously accused wahdat-al-wujud of being polytheistic. In the Islamic sense, polytheism is known as shirik and involves the worship of multiple gods, something that is conspicuously missing in wahdat-al-wujud.

It is not unreasonable to demand restrain where the charge of polytheism is concerned, since history attests that factions like the followers of Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab had been all too ready to use that label to justify the persecution and outright murder of fellow Muslims.

Notes:
[1] Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p99, The University of North Carolina Press, 1975
[2] William Chittick, Ibn Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination, State University of New York Press, 1989
[3] The Holy Quran, 2:115
[4] The Holy Quran, 6:59
[5] al-Bukhari, Sahih, Book 97, Section 50, Hadith 1
[6] Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum ad-Din, 4:117
[7] Fariduddin 'Attar, Tadhkirat al-Awliya. Edited by Reynold Nicholson. Reprint, London and Leiden, 1959
[8] William Chittick, Ibn Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination, p4, State University of New York Press, 1989