Islam
Islam is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God, and the teachings and normative example (called the Sunnah composed of Hadith) of Muhammad, often considered by the adherents of Islam as the last Prophet of God. In addition to referring to the religion itself, the word Islam means 'submission to God,' 'peace', and 'way to peace'. An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim. Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable. Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed at many times and places before, including through the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Muslims maintain that previous messages and revelations have been partially changed or corrupted over time, but consider the Qur'an to be both unaltered and the final revelation from God. Religious concepts and practices include the five pillars of Islam, which are basic concepts and obligatory acts of worship, and following Islamic law, which touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, encompassing everything from banking and welfare, to warfare and the environment.
Most Muslims belong to one of two denominations; with 80-90% being Sunni and 10-20% being Shia. About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, 25% in South Asia, 20% in the Middle East, 2% in Central Asia, 4% in the remaining South East Asian countries, and 15% in Sub-saharan Africa. Sizable communities are also found in China and Russia, and parts of the Caribbean. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world. With about 1.5 billion Muslims, comprising about 21-23% of the world's population, Islam is the second-largest religion and one of the fastest-growing religions in the world.
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MOZART AND SHAYKH AHMAD
The years from the 1770s to the 1790s were the last years of Mozart’s life and the first years of the adult life of Shaykh Ahmad.(2) They were the years of the French Revolution, the beginning of modern history and the reign of terror before the rise of Napoleon. Mozart created in the last years of his life(1775-1791) an almost incomparably rich legacy of works for keyboard, beginning with the six solo sonatas of 1775 and extending to such pieces as the final Concerto in B flat, K. 595, from 1791.(1) My prose-poem here attempts to examine what defies comprehensive elucidation by any scholar or poet--the specificities of the lives and the brilliant repertoires of these two geniuses, these two men gifted beyond all measure. Both of their lives remain complicated puzzles in their respective worlds of classical music and Islamic mysticism.-Ron Price with thanks to (1) William Kinderman, Mozart's Piano Music, Oxford UP, 2006; and (2) Nabil’s Narrative, Wilmette, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1974(1932) , pp. 1-3.
His contemporaries found the restless(1)
ambivalence and complicated emotional
content of his music difficult to understand;
and the ‘ulamas professed themselves unable
to comprehend the meaning of his mysterious(2)
allusions, but that movie enthralled audiences(3)
and emblazoned the Amadeus theme blatantly,
claiming as it did a grand storyteller----license
to embellish that tale with a fictional ornament,
a surrealistic distortion, a metamorphosis, of a
life, the life of mirabile dictu Amadeus Mozart.
How does one characterize an unexplainable
phenomenon, the mind of a musical savant?
A rather ordinary turn of mind, silly jokes, an
irresponsible way of life distinguished him in
society; and yet what depths, what worlds of
fantasy, harmony, melody, feeling concealed
behind this unpromising exterior in which we
now freely interpret his biographical-psyche..
And the Shaykh from the town of Ahsa in the
district of Ahsa in the northeast of the Arabian
peninsula, luminous Star of a Divine guidance
who arose with unerring vision, fixed purpose
and sublime detachment at the age of forty to
prepare the way for a new Revelation of God---
what can we say about this controversial mystic,
this imaginative writer on metaphysical planes?(4)
1 Mozart
2 Shaykh Ahmad
3 Amadeus, a film directed by Milos Forman, released 1984.
4 Juan Cole, “The World as Text: Cosmologies of Shaykh Ahmad
al-Ahsa’i,” Studia Islamica, Vol. 80, 1994, pp.145-163.
Ron Price
30 March 2009
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A HETERODOX AND SEEMINGLY NEGLIGIBLE OFFSHOOT OF SHI'I ISLAM
It is impossible to assess the relevance of what will one day be the architectural archive of the Baha'i Faith, say, in two and a half thousand years. What will be the story told of these generations of the half-light in this first century of a Formative Age when a heterodox and seemingly negligible offshoot of an insignificant sect of Shi’i Islam finished its transformation into a world religion? What will they say of the architectural achievement that helped to give form and beauty to the institutionalized charismatic Force that was about to play a crucial role in the establishment of a global and peaceful civilization?
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FLOWERS IN CRANNIED WALLS
The poetry of America, some have said, is in its bridges; the poetry of Christianity is, following a similar line of emphasis, in her churches; the poetry of Islam in her Mosques and of the Baha’i Faith in what has come to be known as the eighth wonder of the world, its Handing Gardens, located precisely 530 miles due west of Babylon whose Hanging Gardens were one of the legendary seven wonders of the ancient world. Poetry, of course, grows out of many flowers in the various crannied walls of countries, religions and locations where flowers grow, as Tennyson put it:
FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
-Alfred Tennyson, 1809–92.
Some of my internet posts on Islam are found below:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55669&sid=e7760a0fd639c81a8fbbe6de5e8f54b8
http://forum.bismikaallahuma.org/showthread.php?t=1189
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=160105
http://uiforum.uaeforum.org/archive/index.php?t-2232.html
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MATRIX
The film The Matrix was released in Australia the very week I taught my last classes as a full-time professional teacher, April 8th 1999. I had been teaching for thirty years. I won't summarize the details of the plot and all the characters. But some of the theme is as follows: a fundamental discovery is made about the world that it doesn't exist. It's actually a form of Virtual Reality designed to lull people into lives of blind obedience to the system. People obediently go to their jobs every day without knowing that Matrix is the wool that has been pulled over their eyes. The reality of life is that people are slaves. The rebels want to crack the framework that holds this Matrix in place thus freeing humankind. Some believe a messianic One will lead a social uprising; this messianic One will possess both mind power and physical strength. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 4 November 2006 with thanks to Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, March 31st 1999.
The world has been in a great sleep
from which it is slowly waking
thanks to that messianic One
and the uprising has begun
silently, unobtrusively, for
the revolution is global and
out of man's control--it is also
spiritual--having begun within
the Shaykhi school of the Ithna-
Ashariyyih sect of Shiah Islam.
But don't tell anyone--it's the
best kept secret-non-secret in
the world and it is slowly rising
from the obscurity in which it
has been shrouded for 160 years.
Ron Price
4 November 2006
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"Justice, Fairness and the Meekness of God" by Susan Stiles Maneck. An essay which speaks indirectly about islam from a Baha'i persepctive:
Justice is an important concept to Baha'is. We speak of it as the "best-beloved of all things." We think of the coming of the Baha'i Revelation as the "advent of divine justice." But there have been various ideas as to what this concept means. Where some insist that the Baha'i Faith stresses justice over mercy, (1) others would associate Baha'u'llah's concern for the oppressed with Liberation Theology. (2) This paper looks at the concepts of justice and fairness as they are found in the Baha'i Writings, examining how they relate to the responsibilities laid upon the rulers, whether Baha'i or civil, but even more especially as it relates to the learned, be they clerics, scholars or members of the Institution by that name. The thesis of this paper is that Baha'u'llah's concepts of justice and fairness can only been rightly understood against the background of His own willingness to endure suffering and sacrifice in manner which transcended the supposed dichotomy between justice and mercy. At the same time, this introduces a very different dynamic for overcoming oppression than the one typically promoted in Liberation Theology or other social-political forms of resistance.
Some Baha'i apologists have compared Christianity unfavorably to the Baha'i Faith, (3) applauding the fact that the Baha'i Faith supposedly favor justice over mercy. In connection with this, the famous passage form the Hidden Words is often cited:
O SON OF SPIRIT!
The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not
away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I
may confide in thee. By its aid thou shall see with thine own
eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of
thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy
neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to
be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My
loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes. (4)
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1. This appears to have been the theme of the 1998 annual meeting of the Association of Baha'i Studies German-Speaking which was entitled "Religion Between Mercy and Justice." The announcement of the conference made this implied critique of the so-called Christian emphasis on mercy as compared to the supposed greater emphasis on justice in the Baha'i Faith. "In a society which is dominated by Christian thought, the Mercy of God is given far greater importance than His Justice. The designation "Houses of Justice" already gives a glimpse of the importance attached to this attribute of God in the new world order and in the Golden Age."
2. See for instance "Baha'u'llah and Liberation Theology" in Revisioning the Sacred (Los Angeles, 1997.) Pp. 79-98.
3. See for instance Udo Schaeffer in The Imperishable Dominion (Oxford: 1983, pp. 180-81) Schaeffer blames Martin Luther for the devaluation of justice in Protestant Christianity and writes the following: "The low estimation of justice in Protestantism, the recourse to the freedom of a Christians and the one-sided emphasis on love, the evangelical antinomian element was a rich breeding ground for the dissemination of anarchical ideas." He goes on further to complain, "the central value of justice has lost it place in the world of order. Love has infiltrated the dwelling place of justice. Love has its rightful place in the life of the individual and in personal relationships, but it is presently being misapplied in the sphere of the social order." I think this misrespesents the Christian position. Luther never denied the need for justice and law in the social sphere, he simply denied it any sotierological role. (For a further discussion of Luther's view of antinomianism see Luther and the False Brethren, Stanford: 1975 pp. 156-79.) Far from devaluing justice, the bulk of Western Christian theology (both Catholic and Protestant) has held since Anselm, hat the crucifixion was the only means by which the Mercy and Justice of God could be perfectly balanced. I would think that from a Baha'i standpoint the problem with this formulation is not that it devalues justice, but rather that it makes God's activity bound by human conceptions of His attributes rather than acknowledging "He doeth whatsoever He willeth."
4. Baha'u'llah, Hidden Words, Arabic 2.
For the rest of this essay and many of Maneck's other essays go to:
http://susanmaneck.com/
