The wrong questions..

If there’s one lesson I’ve taken to heart in my time at University it’s to not only become content with giving a satisfying answer to a difficult question but to discern whether the question being asked is itself entirely legitimate. This was sometimes a jarring idea for newcomers to grasp and runs contrary to the conventional notions of “learning” whereby a student is simply seeking out some ethereal “knowledge”, untainted by context or interpretation. This is of course now the basis and an essential component of modern social sciences, to challenge the basis in which assumed “knowledge” is founded. This principle, however, is rarely applied to a larger context, and it was around a few years ago that I began to notice that in popular discourses surrounding the ever pertinent topic of the Middle East and Islam, its bad questions, not bad answers which tend to perpetuate a stale, reductionist rhetoric based more on established narratives rather than insightful observation on whatever issue happens to be in the spotlight. In light of the recent fiasco with Sam Harris and Ben Afleq on Islam as a uniquely oppressive religious tendency, I’d like to draw attention to some of the ever prevalent notions surrounding such discussions which are neither substantiated by evidence nor contribute to our understanding of what is no doubt a cardinal issue.  

Whenever popular commentators speak of Islam, whether from an antagonistic or sympathetic perspective, the question that inevitably arises is how best to reform the religion itself or the context (i.e. “Islamic world”) in which it is contained. The assumption being that the current Islamic mentality is somewhat displaced from modernity, stagnant in the face of changing values and the rapid erosion of traditional social institutions. From the new atheist’s perspective; Islam and more specifically its fundamentalist tendency is a relic of a bygone era, the past haunting the present, a bizarre reactionary movement characterised by its total rejection of Western liberal values. Sam Harris refers to the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism as a portal to a medieval mentality. The reformists, perhaps best represented in the west by figures like Tariq Ramadan whose ideology often coincides with that of progressive liberalism as well as identity politics, similarly lament traditional Islamic institutions which supposedly hinder the religion from harmonising effectively with modern society. This liberal reformist movement often co-opts existing progressive paradigms (LGBT, Feminism, and Scientism), arguing cases for Islamic reform in light of said values.

An unfortunate outcome of this thinking is that it unwittingly legitimises claims by Islamic fundamentalists as champions of Islamic orthodoxy while overlooking nuances in the history of modern Islamic thought which have created our current predicament. The undeniable fact that tends to be ignored in popular discourses is that the Islam that proposed by the fundamentalists is itself a product of modernist reformism, not traditional orthodoxy. Much like evangelical Christianity, what can broadly be defined as modernist Islam is barely a hundred years old. While the new atheists and liberal reforms may attack the established clergy for being out of tune with modern thinking, the fundamentalists are attacking the same clergy on the very same basis. This is the tragic irony that places both critics of Islam, proponents of liberal reformism and fundamentalists on the same boat, and it’s one which is constantly overlooked by the tired line that the likes of ISIS championing a “medieval ideology” which in actuality bears about as much similarity to Islamic medieval theology as Pat Roberson does to St. Francis.  

On a possibility of a Northern European Folk Islam

A few weeks ago, I was engaged in a discussion regarding a hypothetical religious evolution that may, under the correct circumstances, take root in the Western world. We light-heartedly threw a concept together that we called "Islamo-Celticism". Celto-Islamism was discarded has echoing too many unfortunate political dimensions which we had no interest in pursuing, although it would be in harmony with the indigenous Islam among Black Americans who often refer to their faith as Islamism (Not the modern political ideology) to differentiate between the more established religious structure of Islam. Islamo-Celticism on the other hand is not an Islam for those of Celtic descent (As is implied by the term Celto-Islamism) but an Islamic framework embedded within a Northern European mode of spiritual expression.

 That is a nativised theology, culturally specific to an assumed receptive Celtic consciousness, or Northern European in general that would initiate a process of simultaneously attacking the internalized social conditions in which Islam demands of converts in the West while wholeheartedly and quite sincerely transposing the theology and metaphysics of the Islamic faith in harmony with a historically authentic synchronicity between dogma and immediate physical spiritual fulfillment. Critiques of Islam in the West often mistakenly attribute the often hostile perception of Islam by the Western public to a cultural problem. In fact, there is little doubt that manifestations of Islam that the public cite as most disagreeable with their sensibilities are those perpetuated by Islamic modernists. Anti-culturalists who champion a literalistic, universal movement at odds with all the civilized people of the world, not least of all Muslims! The problem isn't of a foreign culture encroaching upon the revered traditions of the peoples of Western Europe, but that a movement in the same vein as all the disastrous experiments of the 20th century is ravaging the divine revelation, which can and has expressed itself through a multitude of cultural mediums. As Frithjof Schuon says, "It is not enough to simply think of Metaphysics but to hear and see Metaphysics". And this is precisely what is being denied to Western converts to Islam. 

What is it that we seek then? An Insular Islam, a Monastic-Imami tradition? One may rightly ask whether such a forced fusion of what many may claim as oppositional religious categories is not an oppressive act it itself. A modern symbiosis blind to the systemographical agenda by one category or another which is implicitly favored in such an agreement. It's certainly a legitimate concern although one rooted firmly within a modernist problematisation of local instances of Universal Faiths. Are the blurred identities of the heroic Persian figure of Rostam and Imam Ali in post-Islamic Persian epics, supplemented by trans-historical temporal heroic impulses an implicit reassertion of the superiority of Persian religion over a perceived foreign symbology? The same process is at work in the Albanian envisioning of Skanderberg, the unquestionably Christian warrior in conflict with the Ottomans as the epitomy of the Haydarian essence.We would argue that there is no assumed cultural contention at work here.

Our theology isn't rooted in nationalist appropriation of religion but in the appreciation of the localised traditions developed throughout a peoples history in revering the sacred. Islamo-Celticism,  a primitive, folk-Islam embedded within a culturally North-Western European spiritual symbology. Rather than a superficial bi-cultural amalgam, or a liberal evacuation of an "outdated" theology in favor of an equally burglarized native lineage, an Islamic theology (partially suspended from a strict sociological anatomy) ignores claims to a cultural dichotomy between two supposed mutually exclusive symbolic modes of understanding. I remember visiting a Bektashi Tekke in Albania and seeing the interior decorated with the names of the Twelve Imams and various passages from the Qur'an in Latin script. I don't know why the advent of modernism should act as a legitimate excuse to it's application elsewhere. 

The pseudo-pious path to secular salvation

The increasingly trendy Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is no stranger to controversy, championing two ideological and intellectual traditions, each loaded with enough anti-individualist implications to upset the most tolerant of liberal sensibilities. That is of course, Marxism albeit in a somewhat provocative and unconventional approach and the Lacanian tradition to which he adheres to much more seriously. With two films now under his belt, numerous appearances on News programmes discussing everything from the Egyptian revolution in Al-Jazeera to Julian Assange on Russia Today, Zizek has accumulated a large following among the intellectual left (something he claims to despise) and spawned many imitators with amateur Freudians haphazardly coupling psycho-sexual analysis with the crisis of capitalism, suddenly becoming a prominent phenomena among the left. It is no wonder then that Hamid Dabashi's accusation of Orientalist clichés appearing throughout Zizek's work was met with such distain among intellectual leftists. The issue that caused such controversy was Zizek's position on the Tiger economies appropriation of Capitalism, spelling the effective ideological end of any inherent democratic character contained within it.

Zizek is without doubt a profound thinker, and perhaps the only leftist ideologue worth listening to today if for the simple fact alone that he completely disturbs the ideological entrenchment and uncreatively of the current left by arguing primarily from a non-Marxist perspective and one alien to the antiquated Trotskyist-anti-revisionist rivalry. That being said the limitations to it's usefulness become embarrassingly clear when he steps outside his comfort zone and lays out his often reductionist accounts to a theological or cultural phenomena beyond the scope of his anti-metaphysical mission to arrange the world comfortably within framework of his progressive-Lacanian worldview where any local peculiarities, sacred traditions or historical ambiguities are parodied, used as a sort of intellectual canon fodder to further Zizek's own conclusions by perversely arguing that the numerous traditions of the worlds not only serve to prove the supremacy of Zizek's progressive atheistic socialist worldview, but render themselves useless in the process.

Such is the case in Zizek's "A perverts guide to ideology", where in critiquing Scorsese's The last temptation of the Christ he provokes faithful and faithless alike with the statement that in order to become a true Atheist, one must first become Christian. Whether this is to be seen as part of an already existing tradition among outwardly atheist intellectuals warming up to Christian theology  as Habermas did with the Pope, fascinated by the cognitive substance of religion is unclear. Zizek's position is unfortunately more reminiscent of Geert Wilders in his atheistic appropriation of the Christian legacy of Europe. It's no secret that Zizek is pro-European and yet it seems with the lack of any substantial secular unifying force to call upon, Zizek has opted for a Theo-nationalist reading of Europe as the predecessor to a progressive atheist community.

Zizek's position of the ontology of the crucifixion is in contradiction to both a traditional Christian perspective as well as Freud's position on the primordial patricide and the guilt-obedience complex that lingers on in Christian teaching. So while the crucifixion in Zizek's philosophy is an ultimately liberating moment, heralding the death of God as the proof of his love (resolving the problematic old-testament divinity) and imbuing the believer with the holy spirit, it is in psychoanalysis a mere solidification of the primal obedience brought about by the guilt in having murdered ones archetypal father. Zizek is clearly departing from Freud, following Kautsky in his assessment that the crucifixion was not only atheistic in nature but revolutionary. In fact it reminded me of Ahmad Shamlou's poem where he describes Christ forced to carry the cross as an exemplar of revolutionary responsibility and the crucifixion as the archetypal commitment to a revolutionary cause.

He was relieved
By the mercy he found in his soul
And like a proud swan
He looked into his own purity

The problem lies in reading the crucifixion as a resolution to a problematic theology. And here Zizek's orientalism is somewhat more evident as he laments the morbidity of the distant and harsh Semitic monotheistic divinity as somehow harmonious with the irresponsible, emotional faculty within the believer. "If God exists then everything is permitted". Perhaps it is useful that Zizek is in fact disregarding the dubious "Judeo-Christian" character of Europe by regulating the former to it's actual anti-idealised position in pre-modern Europe as a Semitic morbidity but instead of transcending both Euro-centrist and Orientalist discourses of Semitic monotheism, he lapses into both. This premise rests entirely on God's role as the Big-Other, the non-existent father who is oblivious to his own death.

That is he makes no distinction between the genuinely transcendental and the worldly ideological justification for social change. Zizek explains the monstrosity of 20th century Communism by arguing as many have that the whole affair was more or less religious, in a strict literal eschatological sense and the believer had merely been redeemed as an agent of historical progress. Of course, dialectical materialism is just that, materialism worlds apart from an orientation towards an intersectionary sacred dimension. The aims of the first are undoubtedly worldly with the eventual horizon set on the end of totalizing historical narrative. It is a sort of secular millenarianism which even in it's religious variety is utter heresy given the fact that it transposes divine knowledge to a non-messianic or non-prophetic personality. That is, theology only becomes a morbidity when it's ultimate vision is in commanding a change in the earthly dimension.

As far as Zizek is concerned, what Sufis call Fana fillah, extinction in the sacred or the apophatic Theoria of the Eastern orthodox tradition cannot exist and it is a shame that a former Heideggerian cannot recognise the ontological separateness between the two. Unlike Zizek's position whereby God's death is known but unacknowledged, placing a revolutionary responsibility on the believers shoulders "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace but a sword", the metaphysicists responsibility arises from the death of his Ego, the meditation of the thaumatological moments of his tradition (the resurrection, scripture etc.)  and the acknowledgement of the real which is ironically reminiscent of Lacan's own hatred towards Ego psychology and the need to painfully have the patient acknowledge his own helplessness, however damaging it may be.      

 

"In fear of death, in fear of rot"

It is said that the Prophet told his followers to die before they die. Are we in need of an existential euthanasia? In demanding this the act of Islam, the spiritual submission as understood in the worldly horizon evades the totality of it's temporal revelation. Sharia, the transmitted conditions of transcendental return is mortal after all, it's rulings are constrained by the metaphysical composition of Dunya (what need would we have for return if the oppositions between departure and arrival no longer convey any ontological resonance), but as we consciously die as the Prophet suggested, we project onto a certain possibility which is of course paradoxically avoided in the condition of intentional undeath. Life in death, "حي فل موت". To die intentionally then, is it not a suicide or do the inter-sensory components of the imaginal hierarchy, the shadowy presencing of which we merely mirror as fickled ambivalence assume the determinant of our own martyrdom? And thus, do we avoid the ultimate hubris in appropriating the original function in commanding for ourselves the collapsing of the infinite horizon, through nothing but our own will? 

Is there nothing then, more terrifying in death? The rejuvenation towards the unveiling of the sub-conceit of an established revelation? Surely as Bram Stoker's Dracula would have it, there are far worse things in this world than death? Indeed how can fear what is not only the only certain possibility, but a desired archetypal condition. We have already inverted the projected fatal occurrence into the very condition of our fixation towards it. To fear this condition would only indicate a certain ethereal homelessness, having being hurled into the world and picked up oneself in horrified awareness of recycled time echoing behind him, and urging him onwards off a quickly approaching precipice. Treatment would require a determined yet effortless reorientation towards the finite, or the sacred life that lies on it's threshold. Is it this unknowable condition in the post-Dunya that resolutely defies the subjugation of human reasoning that deserves fearing?         

How can fear, however the ultimate reconciliatory process between initiation and releasement, aesthetic degeneration and horrific rejuvenation, word as idolic injunction and unhindered desire in a violently sanctioned commitment to the nobility of the un-self. The last principle, perhaps. The horizontal blade of the impetuous feminine royalty, refinement in the wilful erasing of boundaries, into sanctified butchery, imposing momentary inter-sensory clarity in gleeful blinding's. The blade raised vertical and inherited among the purified self-obliterated. The vigilant slave, their kohled eyes mirroring their mastery over the inter-perceptuary, the splendid symmetry of their physical form complementing the blade inherited. Unquestionably masculine in virtue though bound and worshiped through the royal birth-giver. This is the nature of the double tipped sword. It is perhaps truly impossible to rationalise the outwardly destination but not entirely in vain to glimpse in the duality of the sacred form. 

We are of course referring here to beauty. Beauty as the symbolic register of the articulation of truth, it's presence in the sensory realm. It is, not however an imitation by whose very nature is incapable of authentic admiration but a bridge unto which we gaze onto the other side and acknowledge the projected possibilities that lay beyond. Beauty is rarely a given though, but a mutilatory ideal. It's conditions must be carved through our moral and sensible boundaries. The void of the sacred light which saturates from within our exclusionary edifices are not, however fear inducing in the sense that we wish to consider here but more momentarily displacing.       

The only condition worthy of fear then should be rot. A Thrownness but not in this world but the after. In the jaded torment, the infinite tearing onto all of ones possibilities there is simply no connection to the past, nor is there a present in which to feel frustrated. One is frantically holding against the shattered threshold. Grounding Is and the conditions unto which one orients his existence in an unfathomable vacuum of anti-Is. Terrifyingly perform useless tricks to pass into an opening, only to be left dejected, confronted by ghosts of performers to which art he may recognise but that he may never see as anything other than an unrepentant elimination.                          
     

Apophatic Theology and concealment in the Islamic tradition

 

 

 

It’s revealing that the tired and mundane discourse on Islam, whether in its parental protectionist British variant or as a principled concern in the case of North America revolves entirely around a largely unchallenged dichotomy between a “moderate” and “fundamentalist” Islam. This has no doubt alarmed Muslims that found themselves caught in an imaginary crisis, an inauthentic dialectic alien to what are serious challenges to the Islamic faith as a whole. These essentialist distinctions that the likes of Mahmood Mamdani have beautifully challenged and conscious attempts to fabricate a critical juncture in Islamic history whereby the two irreconcilable poles emerge which unlike Orientalism which can be said to be a misguided obsession with extrapolation, is a more insidious and an explicit messianic imperative to throw the veil over the crumbling legacy of Descartes by subjecting the world’s second largest ( and until recently untouched by this “reformist” tendency) religious tradition to the same destructive fanaticism that has afflicted western Christianity. Some in Western Muslim communities have struck to reclaim the label “fundamentalist”, itself an inapplicable label to Islamic sects, quite rightly defending reactionary theology as the most legitimate mode through which the sacred can be experienced. The problem however lies in refusal to ground the reaction in a traditional Islamic theology, instead championing the literalist and puritanical reformist streak which ironically resembles more closely the imagined “fundamentalism” of the neurotic analysts in the west than it does any fundamental truths within Islam.

 

This week, the Jihadi plague which taints all it bloats into from its host in North Syria have declared a new blasphemy which surpasses even apostasy and heresy. A child was promptly executed for joking about the prophet to whom the perpetrators loudly proclaimed, “he who insults god is given three days to repent, and he who insults the prophet is executed immediately”. This is wholly significant, not only in that it is the now official doctrine of those most in a position to produce Islam in recent times but in that it effectively translates into the mass consciousness of Muslims in the West who as we are all familiar, wholly obsessed with the prophet and not as an ideal, or principle but as threatened idol whose provocation requires a relentlessly hostile defence. Are Muslims playing the “Muhammad card” in the same way Fr. Richard Rohr locates the elevation of Christ from the Trinity to a pseudo-pagan titan as a serious error within Christianity? Indeed, the comparability of the Cross and by token the trinity and the Shahada as the revealing of the celestial hierarchy through the meeting of the eternal with the historical and the association of both symbolisms with the masters of their respective eras (Christ and Muhammad) is no new phenomena. Is this then a Romanisation of Islam? I believe the actual process is far more degenerative and while the distortion of the trinity in Christianity wasn’t enough to vanquish the transfiguring light of the eternal Christ, the segregation and elevation of Muhammad from the Shahada risks collapsing the language of Islam entirely.

 

Two points must be clarified before proceeding, given that Muhammad’s position in the hierarchy isn’t quite comparable to “The Son” in the trinity despite their celestial correspondence to the Universal intellects. The “elevation” of Muhammad from the Shahada is actually degradation given that the prophets while both human (nasut) and spiritual (lasut), is not the latter incardinated into the former. The Shahada operates within the realm of faith and sustains the hududs (horizons) of the celestial realm; therefore a manipulation of any exoteric component of the Shahada disrupts and nullifies its ontological significance. The Heideggerian notion of “World withdrawal” is useful in illuminating the process in which the symbolic prophet is reduced to a totem and robbed of the significance of his recognition. The declaration of faith is catalogued and museumised, and although it is not historical in the sense that it is still projected into present possibilities, it is in danger of losing its function in “opening” or clearing. In removing Muhammad from the two negations and affirmations, they have not removed Islam from Muhammad but instead removed Muhammad from Islam. Within the authenticity of Muhammad within the Shahada, as the master of divine inspiration then the figure is reduced to an aesthetic, an undead apparition, driving men to relish in a highly eroticised violence as offering to this alien intruder of the Islamic tradition.

 

Some Sufi orders in their wisdom recognised the fallacy in presentation of the historical figures of Islam in the literalist tradition as Nasut. The Bektashi’s for example through their upholding of the concept of Haqq-Muhammad-Ali both conceal and clear the space of Gnostic revelation. Though this is often misunderstood as Trinity, it occupies the same space in the realm of faith among similar horizons in the celestial realm. The saying of the Prophet;

 

“Ana madinat al Ilm wa Ali babu’ha (I am the city of knowledge and Ali is the gate)”

 

 Is evidence of the vital importance in recognition and veneration of the hududs in the understanding of concepts and symbolisms pertinent to the realm of faith. Also at the first, this seems a hopeless descriptive endeavour to codify the divine, it is given it’s dualistic revelation a far more conservative a cautious approach than the literalist tradition which disrupts the exoteric manifestation through anthropomorphising the divine without thought to the dimension  of lasut within these phenomena. An opening line in a Bektashi nefes should explain the inseparability of the historical figures of Islam more clearly:

 

“God forbid that anyone should see them as separate from one another. Muhammad is Ali, Ali Muhammad”

 

Curiously the Muhammad of both traditions is the transfiguring light (as is Christ); the relationship between the resurrector (Qa’ism), the prophet (Nur al Nabi) and the gate (Bab) is worth meditating on. Is this however Apophatic? Or is it at least more so than the current dominant trends within Islamic discourse? Perhaps a more general Sufi tradition not exclusive to any particular Sufi sect is more convincing, that of Dhikir (remembrance). As Henry Corbin explains, many forms of Dhikir consist on the repetition and meditation of the first statement of the Shahada, that is the negation (Nullus Deus) both as a guard against the Nafs (ego) by rejecting all claims and pretence to divine authority or immunity. Borrowing again from Heidegger, it is the unconealment of the Shahada which conceals and the exclusive power of the one paradoxically conceals its nature. We cannot simply disclose anything we wish from the Shahada nor can we ignore its esoteric function, what are not present lies in an unimaginable cosmic abyss.

 

It is in this sense that we should perhaps repeat and meditate upon the first principle of the declaration of faith “La ilaha” before we are ready to carry the burden that the affirmation entails.             

The Gothic-Ghulat Manifesto

Written for the Moorish Orthodox Church, late 2012

The Gothic-Ghulat Manifesto

 

By

Isaac Nejem

 

“Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same Garden after me — in vain”

 

 

Since the works of Horace Walpole, specifically The Castle of Otranto first introduced, or arguably reintroduced a veneer of dreadful romanticism in western literature, the sort that had been abandoned  by the totalising cultural phenomena we now know as the renaissance, a literary juncture was established where the horrific undertones, proto-anti humanist rhetoric and a more cynical interpretation of human behaviour could be explored and elaborated, much to the disgust of the intellectual establishment. Frustrated with the banality of renaissance romanticism as well as the rigidity and narrowing scope of early realism, a artistic tradition was born that was at once heretical and religiously obsessed, morbid yet aesthetically fascinating, fictional and yet embracing of a politically and socially sarcastic tradition.

 

            It is without doubt that the tradition of gothic fiction, and much later, the gothic sub-culture remained fixated within religious, particularly catholic symbolisms, iconography and even artistic expression. Early examples of this on-going relationship include Lewis’s “The Monk” which became one of the first literary examples whereby a member of the religious clergy portrayed the primary antagonist. The apparent “anti-religious” provocation, however, over shadowed a very genuine artistic attempt to return to a literary tradition whereby the symbolic order held significant importance. The horror in “The Monk” lay not in some fantastical, primal fetishisation, instead emphasising the unknowable forces that reside both internally as well as the forces that lay outside human control, forever meddling among us.

 

            Since its beginnings as a neo-romantic literary movement, the “Gothic” has come to signify a particular interpretative tradition within popular culture, particularly with the turn of the 20^th century and the exploration of the more horrific themes of interest to the brooding cultural pioneers, tragically stranded in the modern while remaining firmly fixated with the past.

 

            Keeping in mind the “Gothic” in this particular instance refers to that very interpretative tradition rather than the thinly veiled anti-Catholic social commentaries of the likes of “The Monk”, one can draw parallels between what is often seen as the Islamic equivalent of the religious aesthetic focus of Gothic literature, that is Shi’ism. At first, one may question the legitimacy of such a comparison, given the disparate historical circumstances surrounding the two, as well as the inherent difficulty in contrasting a religious sect with a 18^th century European literary movement, one which never felt the need to offer such a commentary in the first place. Yet to limit the “Gothic” to such a euro-centric sphere of influence would surely to injustice to the tradition itself. Surely there is more to “The Monk” and “Dracula” than Castles, monasteries and monsters.

 

            Indeed, as I’ve suggested above dark romanticism is at it’s a core a meditation on the dynamic interplay of tradition and religion, all within an encompassing aesthetic focus. There can never truly be a rationalist, atheist Gothic creation, the only possible exception being Lovecraft who may have delved into the Islamic tradition more than is realised, by forsaking the centrality of Earth and our species as dictated by Chriso-centric worldview, and juxtapositioning the human perspective among a myriad of unknowable horrors. While Sufi (particularly within the Sunni tradition) esotericism may be compatible with this arguably post-gothic thematic, the same cannot be said for the heterodox Shi’i cultural tradition whose immediate and mystic principles are far closer to Shelley than to Lovecraft.

 

            In this admittedly brief analysis, I’ll outline instances of similarity in the Ghulat Shi’i tradition (that is the heterodox sects who often deified Imam Ali or the following Imams) and key themes within the Gothic principle with the intention in opening an alternative mode to think of the Ghulat faiths as well as the Gothic subculture. Firstly I will consider the prevalence of a “deathly aesthetic” as an essential condition of Shi’i cultural expression, particularly the beautification of death as a principle among the living in the philosophy of Imam Ali, as well as some theological meditations on esoteric significance of tombs are all that is related to graves. Secondly, the idea of a romantic theology will be discussed, keeping in mind the spiritual significance of a glorious ancestral past (often associated with Iran) with an individual’s elevation to the spiritual light. Finally, in a subversion of the Gothic has the profane, the tradition of religious profanity as adherence, that is the utilisation of blasphemous and macabre symbolisms in Shi’i-Sufi literature as a Gnostic strategy to overcome the falsities of orthodoxy.

 

A deathly aesthetic

 

            Death as a literary theme is perhaps most often associated with the Gothic genre, perhaps unfortunately so since it tends to obscure the richness and diversity of its use as well as elements of the Gothic unrelated to mere obscenity and mortal dread. Yet for its over-association, there is no doubt that death features prominently in the Gothic, both as a source of great anxiety and fascination. Whether in Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligea or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, both of which have greatly diverging views on the use of death but both of which force the reader to consider death in an alternative light, albeit a dark one at that. Whereas Poe’s death challenges the assumption of the absolute finality in the departure of a character, Shelley almost ironically warns the reader on a scientific obsession with the prolonging of life. Just as Gothic culture’s preoccupation with death can arguably be traced to the religious origins of the Christ on the cross and it’s fetishisation throughout European history, so to can we find a similar process in Shi’i cultural history which includes a far more tragic narrative considering the lack of a redeeming resurrection in the case of the martyrs in Karbala, placing the blame on the believers as well as the perpetrators. Every year, this event is commemorated and re-enacted in a similar manner to the Christian passion plays yet the mourning of Muharram is no mere dramatisation but a realisation of the eternal tragic circumstances that the faithful remained bound too. The individual mourner finds himself within a tragedy in a vaguely Shakespearean sense where he/she plays the part of an anti-villain, symbolised as the collectively imagined people of Kufa who refused to follow Hussain to confront the Umayyad Empire, and in doing so sealed his horrid fate. The believer remains displaced by the contradictory circumstances of his position in relation to the Imam, declaring his allegiance to the fallen Hussain with the words “Labaik ya Hussain” all while acknowledging the impossibility of such a statement given the temporal barrier he/she faces. Hamid Dabashi locates the mourners of Muharram within a Shakespearean lens declaring that for the Shi’i, the “time is out of joint, O cursed spite that ever they were born to set it right”.

 

            This visual and performative meditation on death is applicable to all Shi’i, and is by no means limited to the Ghulat sects who arguably contain fewer of these immediately visceral displays of tragedy and death. In analysing the philosophical and literary manifestations of these ideas, it would be best to start with a Gnostic reading of the words of Imam Ali and how those influenced a culture fixated on a beautification of deathly expressions of faith.

 

“Death is more intimate to me than the breast of a mother is to a suckling babe” Imam Ali

 

To die in this sense, is of course to be interpreted entirely esoterically and in conjunction to what would become the Sufi idea of self-obliteration or Al Fana fi Ilah (extinction in god). In Shia theology, there is a prevalent motif which states the believer must die before his death, to walk with one foot firmly in the grave thus partially awakening the sleeping divinity within ones Nafs (soul). As the Imam himself is documented as saying, “he who knows one’s Nafs knows one’s lord”. It is interesting then that the Imam should bring our attention to the image of the mother and the suckling babe since the process of death as self elevation works symbolically through a Freudian lens whereby the desire of the child to remain in the weaning stage represents the death drive inherent in all individuals, that is the desire to return to the mother’s womb and revert back in an inanimate state. So to, the believers desire to embrace death is to return to some transcendental state, from the perspective of those on this plain of understanding, inanimate but as the Qur’an reminds us; “nay for they are alive but ye perceive not”. In keeping with the idea of death in Gothic literature as a challenge to the finality of passing, we can think of death in a Shi’i scope in a deconstructed sense, since our approach is from that of he who is already dead.

 

“I am the death of the dead” Imam Ali     

 

Jacques Derrida believed the concept of the “undead” to be a useful concept in the binary deconstruction between the dead and living. Whereas the Vampyre can be thought of as the personification of a guilt ridden anxiety between lovers on separated by death and life, or the modern Prometheus as the disgusting transgression of mankind which makes the thinking of the undead a horrid endeavour, the undead in Shi’i theology shortens the gap between the world of spirits and the worlds of bodies, existing only partially as a fluctuating image in the realm of visible perception. The Persian philosopher and mystic Mushin Fayz Kashani thought of this immeasurable gap between the bodily world and the spiritual as being located of separate ends of an intermediately plain which he calls the world of archetypal images. This universe while being the object of material and intellectual perception exists only from the Quranic “Nur”, and is best thought as a “duality of dimensions”. It is through this dimensional correspondence with symbolisations in the human imagination that spiritual interties become corporealised. It is from this sphere the Imams visit in corporeal form in the highly symbolised imaginings of men. It is interesting then that many have hypothesised the Vampyre from a Jungian perspective whereby the Vampire archetype is the fetishisation of the Shadow, the unconscious irrational projection which the ego fails to recognise. Of course, unlike Christianity which rejects the idea of God as responsible for what is understood as evil, the concept of Tawhid which even the Ghulat sects hold sacrament necessitates this manifestation of the divine as we are reminded in Surat Al Nur;

 

“Or else they are like shades obscure over a vast ocean,

Enveloped by the waves,

Above which are waves,

Above which is fog;

Darkest shades piled one upon the other.

If he stretches forth his hand, he can scarcely see it.

He on whom God sheds no light, no light has he.” 

 

For a chapter so often remembered for the “light upon light”, one may too often overlook the “Dark upon dark” as an essential component in understanding the divine. It’s interesting to note the concept of Black light is important in the understanding of Iranian Shi’i Sufism but we shall leave this component out for a later analysis.

 

In keeping with the theme of the deathly aesthetic in both the Gothic and Shi’ism, one simply can’t ignore the role of architecture in embodying the pleasure of a heightened emotional state in a permanent reflective structure. The word gothic itself largely lends to the architectural legacy of the medieval Gothic which had found a new appreciation in its revival during the 18^th century. The Gothic ruins scattered across an otherwise unspoilt countryside or the lordly manor of an eastern count serve to amplify a sense of decay and a certain futility in the face of the supernatural. The use of religious buildings, despite often espousing a certain anti-catholic sentiment, was more effective in invoking a sense of awe and insignificance. The esoteric symbolism of tombs is just as widespread in the Islamic world, and not limited to any particular sect. The largely Sunni Mevlevi orders attire is entirely bound up in graveyard symbolisms, from the tomb shaped headgear to the white robes worn by corpses, the Mevlevi dervish wears his death to the bodily world in his uniform while remaining attentively awaken to the transcendental realm in Zikir and Semma. For this study, we’ll consider the work of the Iranian theological innovator Shaykh Ahmad Al Ahsai, founded of the Shaykhi School which would later develop into the post-Islamic faith, Babism. The tomb understood esoterically by Al Ahsai is thought to be revealing of the innermost essence of an individual in life. The spirit and subtle body is fixed within the higher plane of the degrees of time. The example of sleeping it utilised as the entrance into the autonomous archetypal realm, at least temporarily. Therefore while the tomb in classic gothic literature may be a strategy to capture an ecstatic state in stagnated horror, the tomb in heterodox Shi’ism projects these states by way of manifestations of spiritual and bodily properties in the imaginary and transcendental realms.                      

 

 

 

The value of traditionalist ethics

 

I’ve become rather obsessed with death recently. Not quite as a morbid musing, nor a lamenting reflection but more as a transcendental state; that is a threshold which recognises no division between truth and its allegorical transcriptions in the realm of perception.  That primordial drive of eternal return, to recognise the self in relation to the seemingly inanimate and to strike forth into the darkness in as every bit of freedom as a corpse. This sentiment is more or less present in most pre-modern cultures, but I’d like to draw attention to two particular cases; that of the Bushi warrior aristocracy of Japan and the deathly aesthetic present in Shia Islamic ethics. In the Hagakure (In the shadow of leaves), the classical of the Japanese warrior classes written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Samurai retainer turned Buddhist Monk; the freedom in death is stressed in the first chapter.

                “If by setting ones heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body is already dead, he gains freedom in the way. His whole life will be without blame and he will succeed in his calling”

Yet far from constituting a rejection of life; or a license for the glorification of misery, murder and morbidity, the deathly aesthetic is nothing more than the unification of the scattered relics of practical existence and the reorientation towards an authentic state. Tsunetomo explains;

                “We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thing dangerous line”

 

The way as death, or the affirmation of life?

An interesting method in which to interpret this seemingly nihilistic statement is perhaps in contrast to Nietzsche’s appeal to noble ethics as life affirming as opposed to the tempting solace found within medieval Christian values. The comparison is problematic given the formers explicit embracing of death and Nietzsche’s hatred of the idealised aesthetic but in negating the materially defined opposition between life and death, the two espouse a similar set of ideals. Nietzsche of course took issue with the slave ethic at the heart of western moralities obsessive need to relegate the cause of suffering to the sufferer himself. The process in which the individuals will is perverted into a regressive, self hating paradigm is in itself a great act of will, or as Tsunetomo might have put it “making our logic according to what we like”. Tsunemtomo’s “frivolous sophisticates” who dream up excuses for cowardice and Nietzsche’s priestly class who champion a perverted order may be seen as one in the same.

                 “One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive”    

That isn’t to say however, that the Bushi conception of death is identical to the Greek-rooted idealised affirmation of life. The two are qualitatively separate, although both noble in character. The Bushi not only transcends the immediacy of his material existence in the embracing of a warrior morality but forcibly reorganises his existence towards an unknowable horizon rather than a philosophical ideal.

 

                “A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams”

I feel the Japanese gentlemanly ideal is in stark contrast to the western, not in the same sense as classical nobility is to secular mysticism but in its anti-philosophical outlook; and the rejection of binary oppositions, empirical reasoning or even the closest western equivalent of chivalric sentiments. Is there perhaps a middle ground between the Greek and Japanese tradition? I believe there is, and that it is most visible within the ethical discourse and Gnostic philosophy espoused by the first Shi’ite Imam, Ali Ibn Talib, which reflect both pre-Islamic notions of Futuwwa (chivalry) and a philosophical disposition towards a deathly aesthetic.     

Imam Ali's deathly aesthetic

            “Death is more intimate to me than the breast of a mother is to a suckling babe” Imam Ali

I’ve written before on Imam Ali’s philosophy in my Gothic-Ghulat manifesto, and so in the interest of not repeating myself, I’ll briefly summarise the interpretations behind these aesthetic sentiments. The death in this sense, is more explicitly esoteric and has more in conjunction with the Sufi ideal of self obliteration “Al Fana fi Ilah” (extinction in the divine), than the seemingly Bushi conception of death as utterly irrational but necessarily threshold. The two, however are relatable in their rejection of the unauthentic, whether the frivolous concern of the “sophisticate”, or the egotistical attachment to the world and the enslavement of the soul to realm of immediate perception. In Shia theology, there is a prevalent motif which states the believer must die before his death, to walk with one foot firmly in the grave thus partially awakening the sleeping divinity within ones Nafs (soul).

                “The world is an abode for which annihilation is ordained, and for its people departure from it is decreed”

Both discourses are concerned with the awakening of the soul, the setting sites on the horizon of death and in kierkegaardian terms, the recognition of the wholeness of existence in this mortal boundary. Imam Ali’s philosophical orientation towards death had much to do with his very classically Gnostic adoration of the universal intellect as the initial cosmic principle. This should not, however be understood in the post enlightenment sense of the intellect as the capability to logically deduce the real from sensory perception alone. Rather it was more in harmony with the Greek intellectus, which implies the capability to directly contemplate transcendental realities. Thus, the universal intellect is tied to the conception of the soul, which can become a battleground in the struggle towards the total orientation towards the real.

                “The ultimate battle is that of a man against his own soul,

                He who knows his soul, fights it”

 This is remarkably similar to the Bushi ideal of true victory as the victory over the self. Indeed, both the Bushi ideal and the teachings of the Imam stress kindness, restraint, mercy and good character but not for their own sake. Such actions are not of the altruism that the likes of Nietzsche despised, but a strict adherence to the tracedental real. This brings me to the point of this essay, to ascertain whether these values, of the warrior aristocracy are of any use in today’s world.

Rescuing noble values

There is little doubt that the modern world exists within the shadow of Kant. A messianic imperative to bring the world under a certain uniformity, one which upholds positivist logic. The needs to eliminate other alternatives to this vision lie at the heart of Kant’s perpetual peace theory. His successors, particularly John Rawls went on to have significant philosophical influence on American foreign policy, one that has been particularly damaging. This imperative triggers a neurotic need to crusade in the name of the ethics of pity; an unyielding adherence to the consciousness of the masses, and the establishment of eternal truths as justification for these actions. The sovereignty of man is abandoned as are noble ethics in favour of a moral fanaticism. The Bushi code acts as a check against this deontological principle;

 

                “To think that being righteous is the best one can do and to do one’s utmost to be righteous will, on the contrary, bring many mistakes. The way is in a higher place than righteousness.”

 

      Kant’s vision of perpetual peace, is a kind of Imperial morality in its totality, the obsessive need to reconstitute its broken core in the unification of its peripheral extremities, and the relegation of the noble individual to a mere recipient of reason. Nowhere in the aristocratic ideals of the Bushi or the Gnostic chivalry of the Imam can there exist a concept which rejects the sovereignty of man, or regulate a warrior to the realm of the homo sacer.  Indeed, a noble ethics requires the seeking out of similar characteristics in the enemy, necessitating a respect unheard of in modern times.

 

Chivalry

                “The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends”

Returning to the theme of Gnostic chivalry, we see that Imam Ali was one known for his harshness towards his closest allies and respect towards his enemies, a characteristic which eventually cost him his life. At the battle of Siffin during the first Islamic civil war, the forces of Ali had largely overwhelmed the opposing forces led by Muawiyah who had rebelled against Ali’s appointment as Caliph following the murder of the third Caliph, Uthman. The conflict itself had it's origins in the divide between an practically minded Imperialising tendency championed by the pre-Islamic Arab old guard and the belief that the Caliphate must revert to a spiritual order given the non-Arab mawali converts to the religion. Muawiyah had built a support base in Syria and with their backing, refused to give the baya (oath of loyalty) to the new Caliph, forcing Ali into a military confrontation. On the eve of victory, however, Ali’s forces broke off their attack when Muawiyah ordered his troops to hoist Qur’an’s on spears with the message “Let god decide”. Despite personal reservations, Ali agreed to withdraw his forces and enter into negotiations, expecting his opponent to return the honourable gesture as was common in pre-Islamic warfare. Ali’s gallantry had not only spared the opposing force, but by recognising the autonomy of the Syrian elite severely hindered his ability to rule undisputed and without further incident. As we have seen though, Ali's philosophy was based on a noble ethics, guided by transcendental principles as opposed to lust for immediate material gains.        

This is perhaps the ethics that should be of value today; those decisively irrational, recognising the sovereignty in the enemy and fixated upon the unknowable horizon. As opposed to the Imperial philosophy of Kant, in it's totality and uniformity, a feudal or pre-Imperial ethic could be considered. An individualist path which stresses the romantic roots of the warrior aristocracy as a will to power in it's own right while at the same time, recognising the chivalrous potential not in the sense of righteousness for it's own sake, or in service of a ethics of pity but in eternal awareness of the boundless vision.