Perspective And Proportion
7. PERPSPECTIVE AND PROPORTION
Wisdom saturates the heart to keep it fit for right decisions. It also seals the heart to keep out wrong or bad outside influences. You will remember that we had defined wisdom as the ability not to tell good and bad apart but to enable the person to go for the good and not the evil. After all it is not rare among people to know what is good and what is bad and yet go for the bad and abandon the good. A most common example is smoking. Smokers know that it is bad for them yet they are not wise enough to be able to discard the habit. Wisdom makes one very strong inside. A maturely wise person cannot be cheated either by himself or others.
The opposite of wisdom is unwisdom which is more commonly called foolishness. One of the differences between wisdom and unwisdom is a merit which separates the two. A wise person has what we may call ‘a sense of perspective and proportion’. Nobody can be called wise unless he or she has this most precious sense.
Perhaps the most classical example of a lack of sense of proportion is desperate romantic love. World literature, until recently, had as its most popular subject this kind of love. It went like this: Man sees a woman (or the other way round and a bit more rarely) and it is love on first sight. Then the lover cannot forget his beloved even for a single instant. Almost always there is too great a barrier between the two even when the beloved also loves the lover back. The families of the two may be deadly rivals and enemies for example. This is the theme of both that Oriental top example of love story Laila and Majnoon and that top Western love story Romeo and Juliet. Often the lovers are ruined in the end and interestingly that proves to be the most delicious part of the story in the minds of readers or hearers of the story.
For some reason many people love tragedy and almost enjoy being themselves in a tragic situation. It affords them the opportunity to go about and complain. They cannot wait too long before going about and telling everybody about their misfortunes all the while making such pitiful faces and noises that others feel obliged to sympathise or pretend to sympathise with them. Hapless love is not the only kind of grievance they may peddle. Anything they perceive as an injustice or insult against themselves must be wept over and complained about throughout the land. Many such people do not so much enjoy being loved but being pitied. There may also be a masochistic element in their make-up; Masochism is a personality disorder which makes the person equally fearing and enjoying being hurt by others – At a more psychological level a masochist especially enjoys being misunderstood and maltreated despite the hurt involved. That ‘grievance’ adds more ammunition to their arsenal of grievances which they can express to others and get sympathy.
The same applies to hate. Some people are similarly fascinated by and obsessed with hating and being hated. Both symptoms of a personality disorder are parts of a psychological illness called ‘hysteria’. It basically means oversensitivity to all stimuli which makes the patient too excited about things others find not so important or great and over-reaction to those stimuli. For example a hysteric will faint as soon as he or she sees a drop of blood or a mouse. A hysteric may see an innocent, well-meaning joke directed to him as a disguised insult and may get up and fuming with anger and resentment, leave the person who made the joke. However much the person who made the joke tries to explain it as an innocent, well-meaning effort to make the hysteric cheer up and laugh the hysteric will have none of it or will concede the fact only after too much apologies from the joking person. All wisdom-seekers should be aware of any such defective character traits in themselves and in others if they want not to make a fool of themselves.
What is wrong with a hysteric? Basically he lacks a sense of perspective and proportion. Let us take the classical romantic love theme. What is a beloved if not just another human being among so many millions of human beings. Why should those strangely bright eyes of hers or the small black birth mark on her cheek be so devastatingly important a reason to want to get her and even to sacrifice his life for her? By exaggerating certain small or at best only partially important points and remaining blind to many defects makes the lover to delude himself in believing that life without his beloved is not worth living. More ominously the hysterical lover may find murdering a rival lover or the beloved herself quite a justified, heroic act. One song wails:
“If you dare to be another’s instead of mine, by God I will kill you no doubt”. Satan speaking!
Such people suffer from a lack of sense of perspective and proportion. What exactly are these two things?
Perspective is seeing a thing not in stark isolation but in the context of other things surrounding and influencing it. Let’s take Romeo. He refused to admit the overwhelming importance of the mutual feelings of his and Juliet’s families towards each other. He could not bear to consider that a bloody war could break out between the two families. And many other discouraging factors.
As for proportion: Romeo again failed to see that Juliet was just another woman among many and his idealisation of her was a delusion. What was in a woman which would make her such a vital and mortally important necessity to have?
As Sufis what concerns us is our likelihood of being unwise Sufis, hysterical Sufis. In every context hysteria is an illness, is a Satanical trait and should have no place in religious faith or its mystic extension Sufism. Read if you wish:
“O people of the Bible, do not boil over (go into excessive claims and emotions) in your religion” (5: 77).
Why Allah is admonishing people who claim to be guided by Books sent down by Allah through Allah’s Messengers? If we quote this verse in full and another with a similar message the answer can be found.
“O people of the Bible, do not boil over (do not be hysterical, unwise believers) in your religion irrespective of (what) the truth (is). Do not follow in the footsteps of a people who strayed from the right path” (5: 77)
What was their guilt? The other verse explains:
“O people of the Bible, do not boil over in your religion and do not say anything about Allah but the truth: Christ Jesus son of Mary is but Allah’s messenger and His Word He cast into Mary and a Spirit from Him. Therefore believe in Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad) and do not say ‘Trinity’. Abandon this for your own good. He is but One God and above having a child. All that are in the heavens and the earth are His. Allah is enough as an agent (of creation and causation and guidance of everything and everybody) (4: 171)
Where did the Christians go wrong? They went wrong in their hysterical, unwise over-estimation of Jesus Christ who claimed nothing but being a weak servant of Allah albeit one very much in love with Allah and a prophet of Allah. Where did the Jews, the other and earlier group of Biblical people go wrong? In this: they hysterically overestimated
themselves while horribly underestimating others. Allah was only theirs and theirs alone despite having created everything and everybody. If you remember what we had said about hysteria above, especially that bit which describes a too selfish and jealous lover who threatens his beloved to kill her if she dares to be the lover of another you can see my point. What ‘Jehovah’ or more correctly ‘Yahweh’ seems to say to the Jews in that doctored collection called the Old testament is in fact a mirror image of what Jews are saying to Yahweh: “Be only our God, do not dare to adopt other lovers and worshippers from among the gentiles (non-Jewish nations which make up the rest of humanity). We are very jealous about you. You either love only us and please only us or we will be very cross with you!”
From the Christian error we identify a piece of unwisdom, an example of lack of sense of perspective and proportion which led them to grossly overestimate their prophet and as a result saying blasphemous things about Allah packaged in pagan mystic formats. They drove Allah to the background and put Jesus on the stage as the sole performing and captivating idol. He was even been credited with being the creator of the universe and exclusive saviour of mankind. By so inflating Jesus the Christian clerics, from pope or patriarch down inflated their own importance and from that derived both huge political and pecuniary benefits. By nationalising God and disparaging and dismissing non-Jews the Rabbis similarly exaggerated themselves since they could pose as the only repositories of legal knowledge and spiritual gnosis which were exclusively for the benefit of their Jewish flocks who should then thank and reward them for the privilege. Read if you wish:
“O believers! Indeed many of the (Jewish) rabbis and (Christian) priests avariciously eat the wealth of people on false pretences and also prevent from Allah’s Way. Those who thus hoard gold and silver and do not spend them in the Way of Allah (like relieving poverty, imparting true faith and knowledge and enforcing justice)- give such the news of a painful punishment” (9: 34)
We sometimes have similar problems although they never approach the grossness of those of other older religious communities. It is a pity that some among us sometimes fall into the same pits or error, commit the same sorts of unwisdom like theirs. Like what?
Like when we exaggerate the facts of our faith, like when some unwise, hysterical innovators and their followers exaggerate our master Ali and his pure sons and attribute to them almost divinity; what after all ‘infallible’ means? Contrarily they rubbish 95% of Prophet’s companions and may even declare them as apostates and infidels. Such exaggerated responses to things are only too characteristic of hysteria which is one of the main causes of unwisdom in people.
Even some Sunnis are not above being hysterics and falling into errors such disordered personalities fall: They may over-idealise a certain Muslim until they regard him infallible and at the most extreme a faithful apparition of Allah, totally free from human frailties and fallibilities, explaining his any apparent shortcomings and mistakes as guises and guiles of these ‘ideal’ persons as deliberate self-veilings on their part designed to test their worshipful admirers. Then the leader can ask from his follower anything and the follower must come up with it! Such hysterical mentalities and attitudes sometimes re-create the same or nearly same mistakes Jews and Christians fell into including the emergence of spiritual leaders as priestly as Jewish and Christian priests or as monkish as the Jewish and Christian ascetics and that includes the receiving, eating and hoarding of the wealth of people who are somehow taken in by them. After all we have fabulously rich orders every bit as glorious and business-like as small Vaticans with tentacles, suckers and disbursers all over the world. In these respect the Shia have always been ahead of the Sunni though recently the gap may be getting narrower. Sunnis still have to build mosques and mausoleums with solid gold domes as the Shia did, like those obscene gold-clad Buddhist and Hindu temples of Asia.
To have and keep a wise golden heart we must be aware at all times of the dangers of exaggerating, overestimating and overreacting to things and instead keep to the truths as simply stated in the Qur’an and demonstrated in the Sunna and seek our spiritual advancement and elevation on the wings and motors of these two holiest and most practical sources. Only with sanity, serenity and ever-increasing knowledge from and of Allah and His Rasul and faithful application of what we know from these twin sources may and can we grow in purity and humility acceptable to Allah. True sheikhs being far more accomplished than us in this are our best friends as are their worthy pupils and other fellow travellers on this worthiest of paths. By associating with each other, Allah’s such lovers learn more love and earn more wisdom, because love and wisdom are contagious when pursued in common with the similarly minded. “Blessing is in association” said the Prophet. Like with like. Amen.
8. THE DEADLIEST POISON OR THE ORIGINAL SIN
Gold is gold because under all natural circumstances it is incorruptible; there is no natural chemical or physical agent to convert gold into anything else. Heat it, melt it, grind it, try to burn it… it will not become anything else. It can be alloyed with other metals but it will reassert its qualities even in alloyed form, qualities like shine and durability. Something unnatural, something deliberately invented or started by an intelligent, wilful being can spoil gold. Chemists had to invent ‘aqua regia’, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids to convert gold into something which lacks all the shine, durability, malleability (the ability to be made into extremely thin plates or wires) of gold. It is a salt called gold chloride. Happily though, it can easily be converted back into pure gold after some moderate chemical intervention. For example, add some iron filings to a solution of gold chloride and the gold cannot wait to come out as pure as before. ‘Noble’ metals like gold and platinum cannot remain corrupted for long. I apologise to be lecturing in chemistry but we will soon see why.
Now, the first as well as the most repeated story in the Qur’an is the adventure between our father Adam and his incorrigible, sworn enemy Iblis. Until the two came together not a single sin had been committed anytime anywhere in the created world. Why their story is the very first and also most repeated story? Because it explains the whole reason or cause of man’s moral failure before all reasons and failures. As soon as Iblis was made aware of Adam’s creation and that the Creator had asked all heavenly beings, namely the angels and their odd companion Iblis himself to prostrate to Adam Iblis’s top blew off! Why? He was suddenly and instantly attacked by a feeling he or anybody else never knew before:
HASAD, which means malicious envy! Since being gripped with this unprecedented feeling Iblis could never recover from it. Despite his reputation of being the most learned of Allah’s servant to whom even the angels stood salute he could not get over the effects of the deadliest poison which had poisoned him, the poison ‘hasad’! Under its influence he lost his hopeful respect for Allah and turned into Allah’s worst enemy- and man’s for sure.
As such the story of Adam and Iblis (who came to be known by the more common name Satan or Devil in English, for example) has been the TOP METAPHOR AND PARABLE about the condition and moral dangers waylaying and awaiting man. As you may know the Qur’an admits to being full of metaphorical statements and stories (see Surat 3, verse 7), which statements and stories need spiritual interpretation (ta’weel). Although the full and true ta’weel is possible for Allah some skilful ambiguity (as is the case many times in the Qur’an) in the said verse allows us to think that a degree of truthful ta’weel may also be possible for us Allah’s servants whom He kindly blessed with some knowledge and insight. Here is my humble try:
Iblis could be a brilliant soul with a lot of credit to him in the sense of having worshipped Allah for ages until he was the envy of even the angels. For that is the legend. But any gold in his heart contained a secret unhealthy ingredient which eventually, when a trigger was pulled or a button was pressed- say it as you will- exploded and blew all the gold into a debased powder! That unhealthy, sleeping, inactive ingredient was like a volcano awaiting the first subterranean shift to burst into explosive activity. As soon as he scornfully looked at Adam’s humble earthen form while realising that from then on Adam was going to be the favourite servant of Allah (a position Iblis assumed to belong exclusively and permanently to himself) his depth geology (so-to-speak) shook and the dormant trigger made of PRIDE was unleashed- his volcano then erupted to never go to sleep again! While all the angels of the One and Only Lord fell flat on their faces in obedient prostration to Adam Iblis was paralysed with hasad more paralysed than a Parkinson disease sufferer; he was so incensed by Allah’s (according to iblis’s ungrateful and disrespectful) command that he was prepared to accuse and attack Allah directly and frontally. He accused Allah of cheating and misleading him and unrepentant after being challenged and warned by Allah he insisted he was in the right and Allah was in the wrong.
Not only that; he also threw a challenge to Allah: let me be until the Day of Resurrection and I will show you what a bad choice You made in promoting Adam over me. I shall so tempt him and his offspring that You will not find their majority thanking you for the favour. Allah in His Wisdom let him try his hand in misleading men and women and at this Iblis did an excellent job. He will only fail when Allah forgives so many people whom Iblis thought he had ruined completely that he will see his mistake and miscalculation and that will be enough hell for him! What can punish a maliciously envious person to realise in the end that his object of malicious envy made it to full and final happiness despite all the wrongs that object of envy committed en route, committed thanks to the seductions of the envious person in question? It is like slandering and even driving to prostitution the darling fiancée of a prince who, having been exposed to all the mistakes or misfortunes that beautiful woman somehow committed, still to see that she was the woman he chose for himself from the beginning and all beatings and tarnishings she suffered did not alter the fact that HER HEART WAS ESSENTIALLY GOLDEN while the true cause of her apparent fall was a maliciously envious enemy very skilful in laying traps along the route of otherwise good women. When this extremely battered but still beautiful woman finds her away to the Royal chamber and the executioners are sent to execute her enemy this enemy will be so devastated that no execution will be necessary: he will be found to have thrown himself into fire so hot that it will overpower the temperature of the fire of shame and anger he will be burning with!
Hasad is not rare among any group of people including us Muslims. It is the most destructive of human traits; it may destroy not only one of the parties involved, namely the envious person or the envied one, but both. Did not Iblis destroy both himself and nearly destroyed Adam? Why do you think- leaving aside less pretentious Muslims- why do you think some imam is envious some other imam, some alim is envious of some other, some ‘sheikh’ is envious of another ‘sheikh’ and Muslim rulers throughout history have been almost routinely envious of one another? Many rulers stooped to the level of allying themselves with non-Muslim rulers to bring about the downfall of other Muslim rulers. Is that not often the case among many Muslim rulers call them kings (muluk or sultans) or presidents? Do not many of them take their turn to ally with non-Muslim powers to harm the interests of other Muslim rulers or countries? If the Muslim world today is a shadow of its former self the cause must be, to a large extent, sought in the mutual malicious jealousies among Muslim rulers. Certainly aware of this Allah admonishes:
“Obey Allah and His Messenger and do not fall into disputes lest your spiritual power departs” (8: 46)
Rasulullah warns “Do not entertain mutual feelings of enmity and malicious envy but be true brothers o servants of Allah”. Again “Malicious envy eats away all good acts like fire eats away wood” and again “Malicious envy destroys faith”. The person with hasad is no longer a believer in Allah even if he keeps praying and fasting for example- as simple as that.
Since our primary or even exclusive aim through these articles is diagnosing our illnesses of the heart and seek cures for them let us study ourselves. What is the sign that you have some hasad in you heart? The main sign is resenting the perceived good fortune of another Muslim, which perception automatically translates into resenting Allah’s choices which resentment amounts to accusing Allah with injustice. I am saying ‘perceived’; what may look like good fortune to us may not be there to begin with or it may be so ‘adulterated’ with misfortunes that would drastically diminish its any joys . I can assure my dear readers that perhaps 95% of such perceptions of pure good fortune in others are false. Unknown to us each Muslim brother and sister suffers from a big catalogue of grievances and frustrations which drastically reduce his or her enjoyment of any bigger wealth or higher position of brighter handsomeness he or she appears to enjoy. All Muslims big and small, rich or poor, worldly accomplished or frustrated have their almost inconsolable secret griefs and in many cases also their secret, unjustified envies and jealousies of others. Only those who substantially brought near to Allah and taught to despise this world’s goodies can achieve a significant degree of contentment with their Lord and what their Lord brought about in the world they live, giving genuine praises and thanks. Read if you wish:
“Few are the thankful among My servants (34: 13). Now guess what:
Each of us suffer from HASAD to the degree that we regard our lot in life not worth thanking Allah much. To the degree that we think others have been unjustly more fortunate than us we must suffer from that deadliest of spiritual poisons- the malicious envy!
Why do you think the Messenger of Allah did not entertain any hasad towards anybody but only very many people- and to this day- felt maliciously jealous of him? It was because he never complained about his condition as regards his worldly fortunes- he in fact thanked for any bits of it big or small. He attached no importance to any worldly fortunes outside his most basic and innocent needs; he simply begged from Allah for minimal sufficient worldly maintenance (rizq) and thanked anything given in that respect. His enviers on the other hand instinctively felt his purity which they themselves found impossible to attain- for they loved this world too much. Hence they felt, like their master Iblis, they had to undermine him. So enviably pure and humble and spiritually brilliant and morally perfect he was. So humble that, can you imagine, he could not even crave for prophethood but it was thrust upon him from the Heaven. Read if you wish:
“You used not to expect this Book being revealed to you. It only came down (on you) as a piece of mercy from your Lord” (28: 86). Read also:
“Thus have We revealed to you the Qur’an in the way of implementation of Our Will. Otherwise you used not to know at all what the Book nor what faith was (25: 52)
What do we see? The Prophet was humility, unpretentiousness itself. What is more, Allah reinforced His Prophet’s humility and unpretentiousness, reminding him that all the merits and gifts he received were from Allah’s loving mercy and not earned. He simply was not expecting to receive revelation, what revelation was in fact and even what faith was. And that did not contradict his greatness about which Allah said “You are indeed endowed with a great created character” (68: 4) and also “We have not sent you but as a body of loving mercy to all the worlds” (21: 107)
You see, the more the Messenger of Allah stuck to humility the more Allah raised and praised him! The last thing such a great soul can experience is hasad and that is because the last thing this same soul, this wisest and most golden of hearts cannot do is complaining to Allah about his worldly lot. He only complained about his enemies and their plots simply because they blocked him from achieving his noble aim as quickly and greatly as he would like- would like for Allah’s Sake I mean. Read if you wish the following prayer flowing from his bleeding heart more saddened by the influence of bleeding from his body, because he was chased out of the town of Taif by stoning and had to take refuge and rest in an orchard having been thoroughly exhausted and frustrated. He poured out both tears and words:
“O Allah, to Thee I complain about the weakness of my strength and smallness of my means and my lowliness in the eyes of people. O the Most Merciful of the Merciful! To whom art Thou entrusting me? To an enemy full of angry prejudice against me or a relation in whose hand Thou put my fate? Still, if Thou art not angry with me I do not mind except that Thy protection is wider and more comfortable for me. I take refuge in the Light of Thy Gracious Face with which is illuminated the heavens and because of which all layers of darkness light up and the affairs of both this world and the next are made well- so that Thy wrath does not become due for me or Thy anger does not descend on me. Thine is the right to be apologised to and placated until Thou art satisfied and pleased. There is no means or power except with Thee. O Allah please take care of me like taking care of a baby” (My God, what a prayer!)
How pure was and is the Messenger of Allah! But that does not mean that he was naïve. He was the wisest of men and wisdom, as we have previously noted, bars all naivety.
Full of insight into man’s spiritual condition and heart look how the Beloved and Chosen One of Allah diagnosing a person buried in hasad. The Messenger of Allah prays:
“O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from a conspiratorial friend, his eyes watches me and his heart monitors me; when he sees something good in or from me he buries and conceals it while if he sees something bad in or from me he publishes it far and wide”.
What a terrible ruiner of souls hasad has been and will continue to be. It was the Original Sin if there ever was an original sin and not the Christian concept of it is the right candidate for this unenviable status. May Allah help us to empty ourselves of all hasad and also protect us from the effects of hasad of others. Amen.