Prejudice Of The West Against The Rest

 

 

PREJUDICE OF THE WEST AGAINST THE REST

 

 

Riches always bring leisure and leisure breeds both science and licence. Once upon a time geography was almost the only factor which determined a people’s economic rise, cultural sophistication and often also political and military power. All great civilisations of antiquity flourished in the well-watered areas in warm climates where food supply could not only be adequate but even so bountiful that large classes of people could busy themselves with things other than farming and animal husbandry and instead, given the leisure, acquire information and build up power unavailable to those who remained bound to manual labour.

 

Egypt in the West, Mesopotamia in the Middle and India and China in the East all demonstrated this fact. When these advanced civilisations were flourishing over about three or four millennia the lands of Europe were home to savage tribes unable to advance much beyond hunter-gatherer level of economy, some witch-doctor science and little literacy worthy of the name. The cold and too rainy climate, too dense vegetation and too plentiful natural food supply made advancement in science and civilisation unnecessary as it did in central Africa where a too hot and too rainy climate caused a similar lack of need for advancement. All animals seem to act in a way shortening the distance between themselves and their food and other needs and if Europe and Africa had areas where food hanged from the trees and sprang from the soil and animals asked to be hunted for food people had every reason to pick up the food and then play and dance. And also war, war because all animals engage in territorial wars. Among savage populations wars are unplanned, abrupt encounters when one group accidentally finds another infringing its territory; among more advanced populations wars erupt after long periods of mutual suspicion, grievance and preparation but may be conducted equally unscrupulously as among the savages.

 

Be as it may, racial or group prejudice has been as old as the socialisation of humanity. It is based on the common animal instinct for taking a selfish safe course when faced by another person or group of persons who are unfamiliar or dissimilar. That safe course is regarding the other potentially dangerous showing responses ranging from mere cold shouldering to disparaging to physical attack. This instinct is so fundamental that even in a university psychology department a foreign psychologist may be viewed with disdain by his or her native colleagues who conveniently forget all their psychological objectivism and insights in the face of the sense of unease a stranger causes. In the late Soviet Union supposedly based on racial equality and solidarity the Russian element routinely looked down on the non-Russian and especially the Asiatics like the Central Asian. Obviously ideological or scientific  pretensions do not much survive an encounter with the ‘other’. 
Given these facts it must be easy to understand why the modern Western nations have never matured into true and fair humanitarians but except a small minority of truly enlightened and matured souls they cannot help at least secretly thinking and acting from their racial and cultural prejudices. The recent hardening of attitudes towards Turkey on the part of many member nations of the European Union as well as the similarly recent arousal of Christian and secular prejudices against Islam until the Prophet of Islam was openly disparaged demonstrate how difficult it is to outgrow one’s ‘time honoured’ prejudices despite all one’s claims to objectivity, universality of outlook and fairness.

 

At the bottom of the arrogance of the West lies its economic and political success as it once lied at the bottom of the arrogance of the East. The economic and political success rose on conquest and robbery on both sides in their respective returns because conquering and robbing the weaker animal is again a law of biology. What the West is unaware of or forgetting is that all the basics they needed to build their present advanced and powerful state were learnt from the East through the ancient Greeks who observed and studied great civilisations like those of Egypt and Persia or from the Phoenicians who sailed to most European ports, started trading posts and colonies all around the Mediterranean shores and even dared to colonise the British Isles, especially Ireland. Europe’s main plank of culture, namely Christianity is a product of the East and arrived through Greeks again who at the time were almost another Eastern nation.

 

To this day something glaringly oriental still characterises the Greeks; that is because their homeland lied more in the East from Anatolia Eastwards and Southwards than in the peninsula called Greece: throughout their history far more Greeks lived in Asia Minor (Anatolia) and Syria than Greece proper and the Roman Empire which they took over from the Italians and based it at Constantinople (Istanbul) was a typical Oriental power sharing more with the Persians than with the Western Romans which soon afterwards collapsed as a power. All these reminders leads us to the correct view that today’s West is the most recent bleep in the history of civilisation and ten times longer bleeps passed in the East before the location and turn of bleeping came to the West. And it may not remain there for long. Already Japan looks more than a worthy relocation ground and China is almost calling out “I am soon arriving with a vengeance”. The Pacific nations to the south of China are already becoming economic legends while the West is getting both geriatric, sclerotic and in its ever diminishing younger generations increasingly dissolute and imbecile. Is there a way out for the West as well as the East from their respective ruts?

 

 

A TIME- AND LOCTION-INDEPENDENT, UNIVERSAL HUMANE CIVILISATION IS REQUIRED

 

We need not to remain at the mercy of our animal instincts because we are more than animals in the usual sense of the term. #More than any other animals we can investigate and find out what the other is like and up to. To begin with, we can learn the language of the other person or tribe or nation or we can find and employ interpreters and translators. Secondly we have one asset no other animal has- an imagination. Our imagination enables us to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person and see in what position we stand towards him as regards the justice of a situation. Unlike animals again we have a concept of morality which is developed in the course of our interactions with the members of our group, be it our family or tribe. Through praises and rewards on the one hand and reprimands and punishments on the other we are inculcated a range of psychological conditioned reflexes and an inner censor we call conscience. Conscience is one of those wonderful products of social life which begin with most selfish motives and end up as a most sublime inner institution. It is like man’s creation beginning from the soil and water and hopefully ending up as a saint. The helping food of the rose herb may be manure but what resemblance manure has to the perfume and handsomeness of roses which eventually form on its branches?

 

Incidentally we may note the exactly similar process of religious inculcation initially basing itself on the entirely selfish fear of a hell and lust for a paradise and hopefully ending up as highest morality now totally based on real loving mercy, their lowly origins long lost from the system. We can give examples of the sublimation of lowly origins to heavenly perfection in even the material world. What is the origin, for example, a smoothly flying and ‘comfortsful’ passenger plane if not some metal ores, some messy minerals like petroleum from which both its plastic parts and fuel is made of and some labour by a species of animals who happen to be more intelligent and ambitious than other species of animals with which these aircraft manufacturing animals share all the messy, bloody and filthy physiological habits from eating to defecating? The engineers and workmen may work from meanest incentives but does that stop the sublimity  of their joint product?

 

Incidentally explanations as these should stop all the critics and dismissers of spiritual arguments and motivations in their tracts. For example, atheistic philosophers savour very much explaining away a belief in God as caused by our primitive fears, especially the fear of death as well as our primitive and selfish hopes, especially a blissful immortality since we fear death so much. They are forgetting that religious faith being based on such lowly instincts leads to religion itself being an unworthy product. What such people need to know and understand, among all sciences, is chemistry of which I am happy to be a graduate and a master. Refusing to credit religion as worthless is similar to refusing water because ‘it is nothing but’ a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, both extremely simple as well as often dangerous substances. Imagine such a foolish thinker refusing to drink water. Yes, taking the Qur’an as an example, we do see in it how its Author employs most primitive fears and lusts to build up a case for His accreditation and service but the end result is like that delicious and life-sustaining water chemically produced by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. It is again like those most pleasing roses being produced by wet and foul soil. Despite their beginnings which could not be humbler both material and spiritual products gain a legitimacy and incomparable worth of their own. Among spiritual products is religion and its supposed origins do not reduce an iota from its worth as the ultimate product of whatever origin. Will you please try to see this?

 

Of course we cannot deny that misuse of religions can and did a lot of harm to human relations whether inter-personal or international and keep doing so. And among the harmful abuses religions may be used for is racism. But this needs not be the case if the religion concerned is non-racist to begin with. In fact a good religion should be universal, non-racist in its outlook and both Islam and Christianity, among them representing about half of humanity fit this description. These two most advanced and universal of religions, used sensibly and decently, can go a very long way to ameliorate the spiritual imbalances and the resultant unhappiness of mankind.  Instead we find both largely misrepresented and abused. 

 

Christianity is failing because it is mishandled by its professional practitioners the clergy from pope or archbishop or patriarch down. Both Judaism and Islam correctly refuses to create and obey a priesthood simply because power brings in its wake corruption and religious power is as culpable political power in this. We cannot avoid having politicians and a political government we can avoid priests and church government ruled by priests. The word church originally only means a congregation and not a building where the congregation meets. That should be called a church house. The same applies to the Jewish synagogue and Islamic jama’at from which the word ‘jami’ as a synonym for mosque comes.   Unlike in Christianity, in both Islam and Judaism the leadership of a congregation goes to the person, at least in theory, to a number of them who is the most learned and exemplary in the religion concerned. Because of this lack of a strict hierarchy and strict organisation nobody can stop a group of Muslims or Jews to have a mosque and to ask anybody to act as their preacher and prayer leader. This goes a very long way in avoiding the abuses the Christian system fosters. Religious leaders should grow and be adopted casually and naturally provided the educational and training standards are centrally controlled whenever large congregations with serious educational needs are involved. Otherwise infighting, abusive and often financially corruption-prone cults may proliferate.    

 

 

WHAT SUFISM IS ABOUT

 

Dear interested reader, may God’s peace and blessings be on you!
Sufism’ as a name is the Westernized term for the Arabic original “Tasawwuf” which can be translated to mean a combination of all the following: An effort at self-purification and spiritual and therefore moral elevation through pious action and inspired wise insight into God’s Message and also into the perfect character and conduct of His Last and Final Messenger, namely our master Muhammad- may God’s Peace and Blessings be on him and all the true prophets before him like our masters Noah and Abraham and Moses and Jesus Christ all of whom and more are celebrated in Islam, the bedrock of Sufism. Amen.

 

 

WHAT IS ISLAM

 

Allah’s Last and Final Revelation to mankind has been the Qur’an (Anglicized as ‘Koran’) which means an All-Inclusive Recitation because its root verb qara’a means both to gather and to recite. It accordingly gathers all sacred knowledge in an eminently recitable form which is a strange yet very beautiful combination of supreme eloquence and irresistible musicality. The words and their flow simply captivate any listener who then feels he cannot have enough of them. It simply is the greatest symphony ever to hit men’s ears while its meanings overflow with deepest wisdom and immediate practical as well as rational utility.
Now this Bible of all bibles was reserved for revelation to Allah’s last and final messenger to mankind, namely our master Muhammad (B- Benediction) whose position and privilege were accordingly resented by God’s enemies who since are denigrating him, his Qur’an (Q) and Islam that issued from him and it.

 

 

WHAT SUFISM ACTUALLY MEANS

 

There are two kinds of religious people- those who feel they can make do with an external understanding and application of their faith and those who, being more sensitive and of an spiritually amorous disposition look for love in it, a love for what is holy and esoteric and morally uplifting and spiritually fulfilling until all worldly desires are tamed and a constant and incredibly pleasurable consciousness of the Holy and Divine come to possess them as nothing else.

 

To attain this heavenly state of mind the obstacle in its way must be lifted. Once that is out of the way the ascent is unstoppable and incomparably pleasurable.
The obstacle is a wrong understanding and therefore the abuse of our selves. Allah explains in His Qur’an:

 

“By the (human) self and by What fashioned it and then made it aware of its wrongs and its rights- surely whoever purifies it prospers and surely whoever messes it fails” (Q. 91: 7-10) 
To become aware of the mess we are already in we must appreciate how much we are responsible for our unhappiness and bad luck and also the unhappiness we inflict on others. We must realize that, although not all, a lot of our sufferings are self-inflicted. We thought wrongly, chose wrongly, and spoke wrongly and acted wrongly. We have been either ignorant or selfish or both in all such cases. We made enemies for no good reason and lost friends for no good reason either. We need a kind and level of understanding and faith which will help us to see and assess things more correctly and to do what is most conducive to most happiness to greatest number of people, with ourselves as the top beneficiary in the purest and most honourable sense. And that is exactly what our own true happiness depends on and that is exactly what true human greatness is. Happiness comes from kindly and happily making others happy in a justified sense including ourselves.   
This level of faith and its accompanying consciousness can be attained only with the prescription Allah gives in His Qur’an:

 

“Those who say our Lord is Allah and then follow the straight path (to His Pleasure)- on them angels come down saying ‘Do not fear and do not be sad but instead rejoice with the Garden you have been promised. We are your protecting and guiding friends in this world and the next- in there are all that your souls can ever thirst after and in there are all that you can ever call for- as a hospitality from the Mercifully Forgiving One”.
“Whose word is more graceful than one’s who invites to Allah- and for his part does good works-  saying ‘I am one of the submitters to Him” (i.e. a muslim)?
“Good and evil are not the same- return evil with good and you shall see that the one between you and him is hostility shall become as if he is a warm friend. None can attain this (level of purity) but those who keep patience (on the path to Allah) and none can attain it but one with a great share (of spiritual talent and goodwill) (41: 30- 35)
What is the promise to such greatly gracious and industrious God-oriented-souls and what is the price and the reward on the payment of that price? Again Allah as the Highest Authority speaks:

 

“Beware that for the caring friends of Allah there is neither fear nor shall they ever grieve. They are those who have been believers and keeping to piety. For them are the good-news in this world and the next- Allah’s Words admit no change: this, yea, this is the greatest possible salvation and success” (10: 62- 63)

 

You must have noted the surprisingly simple, clear and precise definition of sainthood contained in the few verses quoted so far: It is clear that there is nothing strange, obscure and impracticable in this business of sanctification, that is to say, personal inner purification. It is not conferred on by men who are anything but saints nor has it to be official. It is a transaction between the Lord and his eligible servant who may never come to be known as a saint and additionally who could not care less. He (or she in all cases) enjoys such special relationship with his Lord All-Gracious and All-Caring Friend that he needs no other incentive nor even a mention or recognition by anybody. How much purer can man be? Inside him Paradise already is! Allah’s Glorious Blessing Gaze and Enrapturing Breath on his face is! He needs no proof for his faith. He is Himself the proof!

 

 

THE DEVICES AND MEANS OF SUFISM

The device is a Sufi order in which aspiring saints come under the tuition of an accomplished master often licensed by his own master. This greatest of all arts and sciences can hardly be obtained without a master who already mastered them by paying the price in effort and sacrifice and service.   Such a master is called a ‘sheikh’ which simply means an elder. The disciple is called a ‘murid’ which means an aspirant. The order itself is a Tariqa which means a path. All the same, pretenders abound.  Please do not judge Sufism by the standards of behaviour some claimants to it leak.

 

 

THE ULTIMATE SECRET

The ultimate secret of Sufism (that is to say, full-blooded Islam) is already registered at the head of this article and reads “BismillahirRahmanirRahim”. It is the very first verse of the Qur’an and it is repeated 114 times throughout it, usually at the head of each chapter except one. It both appeals to and describes God in a both succinct and full way as no other existing bible does; it means “In the Name of Allah, the Universally Caring, the Mercifully Forgiving”.
To see what Islam and therefore its essence Sufism means we must take into account another verse and then a saying (hadith) of the Messenger of Allah (sws) (B).
The verse is “We have not sent thee (o Prophet) but as an embodiment of our Loving Mercy to all mankind, all creation” (21: 57). The hadith is “I am not sent but in order to build up the complete edifice of all the noble elements of high morality and graceful good-manners”. Here we are!
A believer is supposed to attain such an excellence of morals and manners that he or she will reflect Allah’s attitude and intentions stated in the above-quoted magnificent verse: To become someone full of loving care and merciful forgiveness towards all people on earth and to all that are subject to man.
Only this man or woman is a Muslim (a total and loving submitter to Allah) and only a Sufi who attained this attitude and awareness and total good manners has succeeded in his or her quest. As a result, only such are saints, loving and caring friends of Allah, guardians of humanity and Allah theirs. Amen.