April 21, 2004
Dave,
Interesting that you should
bring up al-Sadr, since I’ve been trying to decide whether he was worth the
trouble of looking into closer, taking into account the fact that he is likely
to be referred to soon enough as “the late Sheikh al-Sadr” (him having bought
into the Iraqi version of the Hamas Target of the Month Club membership: “A different rocket each month delivered to
your door by your friends at the Western Devils Society!”) It was the name
of his militia (the Mahdi army) that
caught my eye. Is he claiming to be an Imam? The Shi’ites don’t believe it is
possible to have a “perfect state” without the Hidden Imam, (the Ayatollah
Khomeni claimed the same thing. It must be nice to able to just say “Hey, check
me out—I’m the 12th Imam” and everyone buy into it without anyone
even checking your references or anything; al-Sadr isn’t even a full cleric) so
I have to wonder if that isn’t al-Sadr’s play here.
While you are right about the effect that the US has on the
shariah, almost like a demagnetizing pole (soon, sadly, to become a secondary
and less effective pole with the entrance of UN involvement) I think it is
awfully hard to underestimate the effect of the other pole of post-revolution
Iran on the Shi’ites of Iraq. The clerics have not, as a rule, made a very good
case for themselves with the Shi’ites at large, so much so that Iranian
Shi’ites were fleeing into Iraq after
the US invasion (and before there was really any stability in the areas they
were escaping into) just to get out from under the clerics’ thumbs. The Iranian
theocracy has made themselves the classic bad example and, as they tightened
and tightened their control (enforcing more and more strict interpretations of
the shariah,) they also made the case that the strict adherence to the Law was
hardly the answer to anything; they couldn’t even manage to straighten out the
traffic problems in downtown Tehran. (I, for one, must have missed that Sura, “The Implementation of Infrastructure:”
They ask you what became of Yusef
when he was stuck in traffic on the I-95…)
It is because of this as much as anything
that, if al-Sadr is interested in gaining any kind of a crowd, he is hardly
going to enforce an absolutist adherence to the shariah. I do have to wonder—
if he is claiming to be the Imam— what kind of association that claim is going
to have among the Shi’ites; the last guy to make that claim was Khomeni and I
would find it hard to believe the Iraqis found much difference in Khomeni and Hussein
at the end of the day….
The Passion of the Christ
The phenomenon of The
Passion is certainly an interesting thing to witness, primarily because it
seems to be seeping into everything— entertainment news and the industry itself
being only the most minor of arenas— almost like watching a great tide washing
across the world and, once it recedes, nothing seems to be standing the same
way. I mean, here’s Yassir Arafat enthusing publicly about it (I suspect that
Arafat is one of the few people who knows that Jesus was a Jew; what a delight
watching a Jew being tortured for over an hour must have been for the old man.
He probably passed on his Viagra that night…) and indeed all over the Muslim
world the reaction was much the same. At the same time there has been a record
number of conversions to Catholicism this year and so soon after the sex abuse
scandals. Certainly the fact that so many people who went to see the movie and
were so vocal in their acclaim for it were themselves fundamentalist Protestants
who were giving the big Thumbs Up for a film version of the Catholic “Stations
of the Cross” is worth pondering if nothing else.
I was also
struck at how so many rabbis I saw talking about it on the news could have
watched a movie about a man (a Jew, for that matter) being so explicitly
tortured and then murdered and the only thing that bothered them was how badly
it made the Jews look. The very fact that they could watch that happen and be
so unmoved by it almost makes me wonder if they aren’t themselves Pharisees of
a different stripe.
However, certainly, I do see what you are saying about
vacuousness of the entertainment news, but really, look what they have to
report on. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Even if The Passion is a simulacra of the Truth,
it is still the Truth, after all, and compared to that, it draws the substance
out of everything else in Hollywood and elsewhere. Honestly, how would you— if
you had spent your entire adult life toadying up to the Industry and passing
off their every utterance as the “good news”— like to have to stand before the
Truth inherent in The Passion—the
Good News indeed— and make your peace with that? If the entertainment industry
suddenly finds itself somewhat defensive on the subject of The Passion, that should probably come as no great surprise. What
it is left to do when Gibson (from what I understand) releases his films on the
lives of the saints (or was it the apostles?), I don’t know; that horse is
already out of the barn, and apparently screaming about it didn’t work.
Flannery O’Connor
I think I referred to “The
Enduring Chill” as “mirroring” O’Connor’s circumstances, which it does, only
perhaps more refracting those circumstances than reflecting them. It is,
however, about as autobiographical as “Victor Reid” was autobiographical of
you. Understanding as she did from her position just how fundamental human
frailty is, she examined what the consequences were if one allowed oneself
wallow in that weakness. The protagonist is a myopic and hateful little person
who operates as shallowly on the plane of existence as he himself is and yet he
manages to call down the Holy Spirit upon himself, entirely by his own hand.
While this story does reflect some of O’Connor’s life, it appears to me like an
exploration of an avenue she did not take, certainly (and I would imagine, by
her own admission) by the grace of God. Understandably you haven’t read any of
O’Connor’s work, but I think she would be the last person to take blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit lightly. Her sarcasm was reserved for only her
subjects; herself as much as anyone.
“Ever since
there have been such things as novels, the world has been flooded with bad
fiction for which the religious impulse has been responsible. The sorry
religious novel comes about when the writer supposed that because of his
belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete
reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his
particular theology have already done the seeing for him and that his business
is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself
as little dirty in the process as possible.”
—Flannery O'Connor,
“Novelist and Believer”
Sūrat al-Kahf: Musa and Khidr
Oh man, here I backed off
the whole “Mary and the Spikenard” conversation because I knew it would take
pages on end for me to backfill where I stand on the whole Jesus phenomenon
before I went any farther and now you go and bring up “The Cave” (al-Kahf.) Sigh. Oh well. Let me get my waders on
and let’s get down to it, though I have to say “good eye” on the similarities
between that part of Sura 18 and the story about Jesus and his companion; I
hadn’t noticed that. And you are right about “It ain’t Scripture.” Jesus in the Eyes of the Sufis is not,
by any stretch of the imagination, Scripture. Nor was it meant to be. Dr.
Nurbakhsh, having been run out of Tehran in the early 80’s and ending up in the
US, found himself taken aback by just how little both the (modern) Muslims and
the Christians understood concerning what role Jesus played in Islam. He set
out to collect— from what books he had with him— those traditional stories
about and pertaining to Jesus in both Sufi and Muslim literature. They are
still, at best, teaching stories. While I suspect that some of those stories
(in some form or another) may have originated in early Christian cults that are
no longer with us, that is still just a suspicion. I just can’t pass up sending
along a good story when I see one.
Thankfully, I have an article that I’m just going to send
along by Irfan Omar to save me the trouble of having to type most of the stuff
in there myself (not to mention hunting through a few hundred books to find all
the relevant information.) So, hey, I’ll see ya on the other side of the
article, eh?
Now to just back off this a
considerable distance, (so why, you might ask, did I send it? Payback for Chasing YHWH, perhaps?) there is a great difference between
those who “practice sufism and those that study it.” I find all of this very
interesting in a “hmm that’s interesting” sort of way and I can come away
sometimes with a great deal information relative to my path, but that is about
all. Sufis are absolute monotheists and take the prayer la illaha il Allah (“There is no god but God”) absolutely as well.
Angels, devils, the Adversary and Khidr himself are all manifestations of God
and though these manifestations generally are associated with specific aspects
of the Divine and thus beg a specific response to God, they are still
manifestations only and one should not become enamoured of them. That is a good
way to find oneself worshipping a snake puppet, or worse.
However, looking (strictly) at the Sūrat al-Khaf, there is
one thing that jumps out at me regarding Khidr and it is him saying (18:83):
“So, I did not do that of my own
accord.
This is the explanation of things
you could not bear with patience.”
which frames the knowledge that he
bears from God. Khidr is a servant of God and in these acts he has no will
contrary to God’s Will. And the substance of God’s Will, the full import of it,
can only be known (if it can be fully known) over the course of time. But even
while understanding the import of that Will, it is not necessarily bound (as
you put it) by “conventional morality.” Because God isn’t bound in that manner,
nor can His actions be judged in that way. Like most people (like Moses) this
is where the source of friction lies in their relationship with God; it’s all
fine and good until something God does strikes us as “unfair.” But we have no
cause to judge Him, by any yardstick. Moses, again and again, came up against
this and it was ultimately what barred him from the Promised Land. He could not
allow God’s Will without judging it. He could not bear it with patience. This
is, to me, the knowledge that Khidr bears in this story.
Well, I guess I’ll shut it down now. Congratulations on the
Eisner nomination. I guess they don’t have a Best Epic Graphic Novel That
Everyone Used to Love and Now Are Deeply Deeply Offended By Award yet. Maybe
when they have a few more contenders in the field, they’ll address this
oversight. And then deny you the nomination. I hate that this is the way these
things work out, but this is the way
things work out. Be thankful it didn’t bankrupt you like Moby Dick did Melville or something equally appalling.
God
Bless,
D.B.
Little
