FROM CHARLES UPTON

Jesus and Muhammad as “Revolutionaries”

  After reading some of what Norm has to say, I was moved to reply to two points. One reply is simply a caution: A dedication of one’s life to “absolute Truth, Love and Justice” can be nothing less than a dedication of that life to the Absolute, to God Himself. Only in God are Truth, Love and Justice absolute; in this relative world, Truth, Love and Justice can only be attained in a relative manner, to a relative degree. On the material plane we must always be careful not to violate Truth in the act of proclaiming it, or Love in the act of establishing it, or Justice in the act of enforcing it. Berthold Brecht said, in one of his poems: “Ah, we who desired to prepare the soil for kindness/ Could not ourselves be kind.” This sentiment would have been more moving and hopeful if Brecht had been followed by a generation or two of conspicuously kind Marxist-Leninists.

  My second comment has to do with Norm’s characterization of Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him, as a “revolutionary.” This is something I used to believe when I identified with the Liberation Theology movement. At this point I am no longer comfortable with it. Jesus’ ministry certainly had a profoundly revolutionary effect on society, but this does not mean that it to designate him as a “social revolutionary” is correct. He was a prophet. And unlike the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, whose delegated role included (but was certainly not limited to) the direct expression of military and political power in a revolutionary manner, Jesus’s influence was theurgic, spiritual and moral, not political. That political consequences flowed from that ministry in later centuries should not blind us to this rather obvious truth.

  Liberation Theology sees the dispossessed classes of the world as the carriers of a prophetic mandate simply by virtue of their oppression. The “poor” who shall “see God” are not just the economically unlucky, however; if they were, anyone could achieve sainthood simply by losing all his or her money in the stock market. They are “the poor in spirit,” those who have lost their lives for God, and found their lives in Him. (The Arabic word fuqara, more or less synonymous with “Sufis,” has substantially the same meaning.) This false identification of material with spiritual poverty is one of the central errors of Liberation Theology. The materially poor can be just as eaten up by sullen, rebellious pride as the rich often are by cruel, oppressive pride - thus Jesus’s teaching of “love your enemies, do good to those who harm you.” Jesus did not identify himself exclusively with the cause of the materially oppressed. He ministered to Roman centurions, Pharisees and the hated tax collectors as well as to prostitutes, laborers and beggars. Though he was critical of the privileged sects and classes - the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians - and silent with regard to the Zealots, the anti-Roman revolutionary terrorists, the point of his social critique was most often directed against those who perverted true religion, not against those holding political power. And his words to Peter on the occasion of his arrest, “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword,” certainly reveal what must have been his fundamental attitude toward the Zealots.  (Jesus’ words applied to the Romans as well - some of whom were within earshot - especially since the Roman name for the capital punishment he was about to suffer at their hands was ius gladii, “judgment by the sword.”)  Jesus told the rich young man that his way to perfection was to give all he had to the poor, but he also required that the lepers “give up” their leprosy, that the 5,000 give up their hunger and neediness, that Peter give up his faithlessness, that the attacked and offended give up their right to just retaliation. He was the enemy not of material riches per se, but of idolatry in all its forms. To Jesus, the common oppressors of both the materially rich and the materially poor were Sin and Death. It was these spiritual powers, not the worldly power of political or economic oppression, that he came to overthrow. It is true that his recognition of charity as the highest virtue did in fact ameliorated a vast amount of material suffering in the following centuries. But the paradigm he taught, and acted from, was not rebellion against the oppressors, but compassion for the suffering.

  The clearest expression of the position Jesus assumed in relation to the political forces of his day appears in the story of the Roman coin. The Pharisees had publicly challenged him to answer this question: Is it lawful to pay the tax to Rome? If he answered “yes,” he would lose his following among the Zealots and their many supporters, since one of their doctrines was that, in light of the cult of Emperor-worship that had been instituted in some of the Roman provinces, to pay the tax to Caesar was literally an act of idolatry - especially since the Emperor’s image appeared on the coin the tax was to be paid with, which, to the traditionally an-iconic Jews, would inevitably suggest a pagan idol. (Muslims share the same traditional suspicion of images, particularly images of the Divinity.) And if he answered “no,” he would have been arrested for sedition on the spot. So they thought they had him. How he escaped this trap was a masterpiece of spiritual and political “street theatre.” First, he asked if anyone present had a Roman coin, thereby demonstrating that he and his followers did not; they were of the poor. When handed one, he asked: “Whose image is this?” The answer, of course, was “Caesar’s” - not “God’s.” “Render therefore unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” he answered, by which he meant: “Anyone who thinks that this is an image of God is an idolator. It is only the image of a man. There is no idolatry in paying the tax, therefore; the Roman state is not God. What we owe to God is immensely more precious than money: He requires of us a ‘contrite heart,’ not ‘the fat of rams.’” (We can see here how this position was perfectly in line with his act of driving the money-changers out of the temple.) So Jesus was able to criticize the Zealots’ idea of the “spiritual” significance of the Roman tax, but in such a way that he was in fact far more critical of Rome, and more accurately so, than even they were. And at the same time he avoided limiting his ministry to a simple rebellion against the worldly powers that be; if he had been arrested and executed as a mere preacher against taxation, the significance of his self-sacrifice as it ultimately transpired would never have been revealed.

  As for Norm’s characterization of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, as a social revolutionary, this was certainly part of his mission. We must be very careful, however, not to confuse the social aspects of a divine revelation brought by a prophet with those revolutions initiated by secular, western revolutionaries and ideologues; the gulf between them is immense, however much the modern Islamicists, in their jealous, imitative hatred of the west, have forgotten it. The passage below gives my own view of the “revolutionary” Muhammad; it’s taken from a manuscript of mine entitled The Virtues of the Prophet: A Young Muslim’s Guide to the Greater Jihad. (Some of this material may also appear in The Book of Character: Writings on Character and Virtue from Islamic and Other Sources, edited by Camille Helminski, published by The Book Foundation, of which Jeremy is Director.):

  Democracy in the west began as an assertion of universal human Dignity against
the rule of tyrants. Dignity is not the sole possession of the king, the aristocrat, the rich man; every human being, simply by being human, possesses a share of that Dignity. In the words of Scottish poet Robert Burns, “A man’s a man for ‘a that.” The “revolution” of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was also democratic, in the sense that it overturned the hereditary power of the aristocracy and made provision for the poor one of the five pillars of Islam. But unlike the secular democratic revolutions of the west, it was based on a true understanding of human Dignity in terms of humanity’s khalifate, our position as God’s fully-empowered representative on earth. In Islam, our human Dignity is inherent, and inseparable from our essential humility, since we are also ‘abd, God’s slave. And because we are slaves of God alone in our human essence, where our true Dignity is rooted - though not necessarily in our outer social relations, where we are necessarily beholden to others - it follows that, in our soul, in our human essence, we can be the slave of no man. 

  Since Islam is not only a religion but also a social framework - or rather a divine
revelation in which, by virtue of the shari’ah, religion and society (ideally at least) are one— the question of social justice is central to the tradition. And the most important question when it comes to social justice is the correct relationship between rights and duties.

  In Islam, man’s essential “right” is to choose God or reject Him; according to the Qur’an, There is no compulsion in religion. (2:256) It is true that human actions are divided into five categories: praiseworthy, permitted, indifferent, discouraged and prohibited. And certainly acts which are praiseworthy, permitted or indifferent could be defined as those we have a “right” to perform. But human conduct in Islam is defined more in terms of duties than of rights. Clearly we have a right not to be oppressed - but since Islam is a religion, our moral duty before God and our neighbor must always come first, which is why our right not to be oppressed is most accurately defined in terms of our duty not to oppress.

  Justice, in Islam, is fundamentally related not to self-assertion, but to Mercy. This is certainly not to say that the oppressed are not enjoined to seek and establish Mercy and Justice, if necessary by militant means. But this jihad to establish a just and merciful society is not to be carried out according to the paradigm of rebellion, where the desires of the dispossessed are asserted over against the desires of the privileged. The paradigm of jihad is not the rebellious assertion of desire, but faithfulness to one’s human duty to God, by which personal desire in the realm of the soul is dethroned, and God established a the sovereign ruler of that realm; and so the greater jihad, the struggle against the self, is the source and archetype of the lesser. Desire is the “pretender,” but God is the true King. Since God is Just, His rule also allows room for the moderate and dignified fulfillment of desire—but this is first an expression of His Mercy, and only secondarily of our rights. Insofar as humanity stands, as ‘abd, before the Absolute Truth, Power and Mercy of God, the concept of “rights” disappears - except for the one truly inalienable right, the “right to be what we are,” the right - which is equally a duty - to embody the fitrah, to be who God made us to be, and commands us to be. Whatever social forces stand in the way of our fulfillment of this command do indeed violate our human rights.

  But humanity is not only ‘abd; we are also khalifa. And as such, we certainly do possess “inalienable rights.” The root of human rights, from the Islamic perspective, lies in the “theomorphic” nature of man: we have the right, as well as the duty, to stand as representatives of God’s Mercy and Justice in this world. And inseparable from this right is the right not to have our Dignity as khalifa violated. We do have the right - which is also a duty - not to submit to degradation at the hands of others, because whoever degrades a human being degrades God’s image on earth. It is possible to suffer oppression with Dignity, as the Prophet did in the early years of his ministry in Makkah; but the time may come when submission to oppression becomes complicity in the degradation of that Dignity, at which point it is one’s duty to assert one’s rights.

  Yet the assertion of our rights must never take the form of rebellion against God - as it did, for example, in the French and Russian Revolutions. God may subject us to material and psychological hardship, but He never violates our essential human Dignity, since He Himself is the principle of that Dignity. And if we really believe this, then we possess the secret which will give us the power to deal with any hardship, any degradation that life throws our way. If we see hardship as coming to us by way of other people’s arrogant and selfish actions alone, we will feel degraded; if we see it as coming by way of impersonal circumstances alone, we will feel oppressed. But if we know it ultimately as coming from no one but God, then we will recognize it as a test, or as purification, or as Justice; our human Dignity will in no way be compromised by hardship and suffering.

  The society founded by the Prophet in Madinah was based on a social contract which included both duties and rights; no society which does not define the rights of its citizens can ever be just. Nonetheless, any truly Islamic social system must be based first and foremost on man’s duty to God; human rights can only be and defined, and pursued, in light of this duty. As khalifa we can and should assert our rights; as ‘abd, we must recognize every right as a gift of God, and be careful not to “bite the hand that feeds us.”

    As followers of the religion of Islam, we do not demand from God the fulfillment of our needs and desires; we obey His commands, and trust in His Mercy. Islam thus includes an aristocratic element to complement its democracy; God is our Lord, and we are His servants, His vassals. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats defined the democratic character as one which struggles against circumstances, and the aristocratic character as one which first and foremost struggles against itself. The democratic element is charitable and sentimental, the aristocratic one honorable and passionate. In Islamic terms, the lesser jihad would thus be democratic and the greater jihad aristocratic. Aristocracy, like democracy, is made up of rights as well as duties, and both democratic and aristocratic elements are clearly visible in the Arabic character, and the character of the Prophet, upon whose example the Muslim character as a whole is based. In relation to others, the Muslim is a democrat precisely because he recognizes the inherent “aristocracy” of the human soul.

  The highest level of Justice requires that we do Justice without demanding it, recognizing that our own demands - on our friends, our family, our neighbors, our employer, or our government—may themselves be the major imbalance in our immediate situation, and the only one we really have the power to put right. A story is told of Dhu l’Nun, the great Egyptian saint. There was a drought in Egypt, and the people implored him to pray to God for rain. He did so, and during his prayer God informed him that he himself was the source of the drought. So he left Egypt, and the rain came.

                                    “The best form of justice is succoring the oppressed.”
                                                                            ~~ Hazrat Ali

FROM JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS

The term ‘revolution’ has come up in various recent communications, culminating in Charles Upton’s essay on the “revolutionary” spirit in relation to Jesus and Muhammad (peace and blessings upon them).

I’d like to comment on the meaning of this word and reflect on its primordial denotation before subsidiary meanings became reified over the passage of time.

The word ‘revolve’ comes from Latin ‘revolvere’, meaning to ‘roll back, unroll, come back to the original point, return’. Its derivative ‘revolutio’ came into English via Old French, initially with the meaning of ‘complete reversal’, and only later in the 16th century with the sense of ‘violent overthrow of government’.

The Indo-European base from which Latin ‘volvere’ comes is ‘wel’ or ‘uelu’, meaning to ‘curve, roll, unfold’, and its derivatives usually refer to curved, enclosing objects, as in English ‘vault’ and also in ‘vulva’, which denoted a ‘cover’ in Latin (the corresponding Greek word was ‘elutron’ meaning ‘sheath’ or ‘cover’). 

The word ‘develop’ from the same root means to ‘unroll’ or ‘unwrap’ and the word ‘envelop’ to ‘curve or wrap over’. The word ‘waltz’ (from Old High German ‘walzan’) comes from this root, and you can see why when you observe the fast waltzes of the 19th century, with their head-spinning ‘turning’ and ‘revolving’ which must have given waltzing couples such a frisson of delight, in the same way that the ‘turning’ of the Mevlevi Sufis presumably brings a more rarified ‘delight’. The word ‘well’ comes from the same source, and means ‘rolling water’ or ‘spring’.

What is immediately striking about the primordial root sense underlying these words is that of beneficence, mercy, and joy: a covering vault, a well, a scintillating dance.

This sense of beneficence is derived from the fact the original meaning of ‘revolution’ is not to overthrow governments in the name of “progress” and “development”, nor even in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”, but to “turn back to the original point”, which is none other than to walk the path of “return”, to re-orient ourselves towards our true Origin and Center, that which is made “in the image of God” (the words ‘origin’ and ‘orient’ come from the same root, Latin ‘oriri’, to ‘rise’). This is the true meaning of ‘revolution’. It is also expressed in the Arabic word ‘tawba’ (to turn round) and in the Greek word ‘metanoia’, which is misleadingly translated as ‘repentance’ in most versions of the Bible, but which actually means ‘transformation of the Heart/Intellect’ (‘meta-nous’). Note that New Testament usage of the word ‘metanoia’ is strongly influenced by the Old Testament Hebrew word ‘sub’ (‘turn back, return’. (See my note below).

Only this ‘turning’ ultimately connects us to the Source of Beneficence, Grace, Mercy and Joy, and it is instructive to note that the names of God in Arabic referring to the Beneficence, Grace and Mercy of God (ar-Rahman and ar-Rahim) come from the root RHM which also means ‘womb’, the merciful ‘vault’ which covers, protects and nourishes.

The true ‘revolution’ is a radical, transformational turning about. This is ‘radical’ in its true sense of relating to the ‘root’ (Latin ‘radix’) or origin, and not in its later subsidiary sense as referring to political activism. Turning to one’s origin is neither facing to the front (seduced by the myth of “progress” and “development”) nor to the rear (incarcerated in regressive dogmatism or drowning in nostalgia for past times) but facing always to the CENTER, which is the ‘ORIGINal point’ indicated by the meaning of the word ‘revolution’.

Only by facing the Center can we act to create beneficent revolutions in the world. A revolution, whether reactionary or forward-looking, whether theocratic or secular, not centered in that essential ‘tawba’, can only spread corruption in the earth. Worst of all is the kind of apparently God-centered ‘revolution’ propagated by those who have been supposedly ‘born again’ (which is another phrase purporting to indicate that very ‘tawba’ or ‘metanoia’) but who have confused emotional states with radical transformation of the Heart/Intellect, and substituted malignant narcissism for love of God.

Another discussion could emerge here on the nature of ‘development’, which, as I have shown, comes from the same root (‘volvere’) as ‘revolution’. True ‘development’ is an ‘unwrapping’ of what is already within us, which is, as the Qur’an tells us, created “in due measure and proportion”, already “perfectly set up” for us. “By the Soul, and the proportion and order given to it; and its enlightenment as to what is wrong and right; - truly he succeeds who purifies it. And he fails that corrupts it!” (Qur’an 91: 7-10). In the same way, human ‘character’ is what is already ‘stamped’ or ‘etched’ upon us in accordance with the divine prototype or pattern. The word ‘character’ comes from Greek ‘kharakter’, a derivative of the verb ‘kharassein’, to ‘sharpen, engrave, cut’, and hence was applied metaphorically to the particular impress or stamp which marked one thing as different from another - it’s ‘character’. 

The essential revolution is the Path of Return. In one sense it is therefore the antithesis of a conception of revolution characterised as an “onward march”, which is nothing more than an ideological fixation based on the illusion of forward “progress”. However, it is also the antithesis of an equally ideological conception of revolution characterised by a reactionary and regressive “backward march”. The choice between being “modern” and “medieval” , between “progressive” and “conservative”, is ultimately a false choice. When people begin to understand that true revolution and true radicalism is neither of these, and when they can begin to understand the nature of reality in a way which goes beyond such misleading dichotomies, then they might reclaim for themselves the true revolutionary spirit and transform themselves. If working from that Center within themselves, reforming and revolutionary individuals, parties and centers can undoubtedly promote greater justice in the world, and I have the greatest respect for institutions like the Center for Economic and Social Justice which aspire to reform institutions to create a more just world. May they be guided by God to hold to the Center, and to sustain a revolutionary vision which turns neither forwards not backwards, neither clockwise nor counter-clockwise, but revolves always around that Center, which is outside of time.

Salaam
Jeremy

NOTE

The note below, from a paper I gave at a conference at Edinburgh University last year, offers more detailed commentary on the word ‘hamartia’, ‘tawba’ and ‘qibla’.

The original “concrete” and “poetically evocative” meanings behind the Greek words hamartia and metanoeo are not generally retrievable because their respective meanings are now fixed in translation as “sin” and “repentance”. The word hamartia means “missing the mark or taking the wrong road” and metanoeo does not merely denote a feeling of regret, or even of changing one’s mind, but of a complete turning round, a conversion, an irrevocable alteration in the direction of one’s life. New Testament usage of the word metanoeo is strongly influenced by the Old Testament Hebrew word sub (“turn back, return”). Both hamartia and matanoeo therefore relate in a very concrete way to the underlying concept of ‘orientation’. (Significantly, the word ‘otientation’ is itself related to the word ‘origin’, both being derived from Latin oriri, ‘to rise’).  The meaning of metanoeo also corresponds closely to the Arabic taba, which, although often translated by Arberry and other Qur’an translators as “repent”, also has the concrete sense of “turning”. The concept of orientating oneself in the right direction, which is none other than turning back to one’s Origin, is also expressed by the Arabic word qibla, the direction faced by Muslims in prayer. This is derived from the verb qabila, ‘accept’, which often refers in the Qur’an to God’s acceptance of “repentance” (e.g. yaqbalut tawbata in Qur’an 9:104). In its deepest sense, the word qibla refers to the inner orientation of the spiritual seeker to the central point of Divine Unity within the qalb (Heart). Significantly, both qibla and qalb are numerically equivalent in the Abjad system which attaches numerical values to letters of the alphabet in Semitic languages.

also see the two articles by Rabbi Michael Lerner in this issue which discuss the same topics:  Moments for Fear, Moments for Hope http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=591_0_31_0_C  and Why America Needs a Spiritual Left http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=592_0_31_0_C  and What Is the Contribution of Religions Towards Peace by Imam Feisal Abdal Rauf http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=571_0_31_30_C