Why Ibn Arabi Today?
Understanding the meaning of Ibn Arabi’s universalism for contemporary world and its exclusivist ideologies
We are living, from centuries in the Muslim world and from around a century in the West, in the times of Ibn Arabi and Rumi as it is they who are at vital for both academic and popular intellectual, spiritual and literary landscapes today. Let us explore something about Ibn Arabi, the most influential Sufi-metaphysician and the greatest exponent of Divine Love in the history of Islam. About him it has rightly been remarked that the subsequent Muslim thought is largely a footnote on him. And he interests almost everyone who cares to think or practise spirituality as he has ample room for all kinds of outsiders – atheists, sinners etc. His dialogues with previous prophets and saints constitute one of the most profound encounters with transcendence and proof of intimations of the higher life of Spirit. His notion of man is most comprehensive in world history.
Ibn Arabi has stated Islam’s claim of finality but in a way that is understandable and appreciable more universally. Let us see why it can’t be resisted or questioned as stated by a contemporary scholar:
Ibn al-‘Arabī notes in Fusus that what is meant by islām is the general notion of ‘submission’ (inqiyād). He also gives the most universal definition of Muhammadan where this becomes, in the words of another scholar,
not a designation of a particular historical community but the very name of universality and perfection. It is the name of a station, theoretically available to everyone, attainable to the select few who travel on and on, perfectly realizing all stations until he arrives at the station of no station in which one has nothing of one’s own and therefore mirrors the Real most perfectly and is not defined by any particular divine name or attribute but brings together all standpoints or stations.
Ibn Arabi delineates the broad contours of the perfections of deiformity. These perfections can’t be enumerated, given that, as he tells us, their archetypes number 124,000, in keeping with the number of prophets from the time of Adam. As Shaykh Isa Schuon notes, the epithets applied to the Prophet apply equally to the Totality and the Centre as Muhammad is a human expression of them. “The name Muhammad itself means the ‘Glorified’ and indicates the perfection of creation, affirmed also in the genesis in the words: ‘And God saw that it was good.’
Shaykh Isa Nuruddin explicates further, “As a spiritual principle, the Prophet is not only the Totality of which we are separate parts or fragments, he is also the Origin in relation to which we are so many deviations; in other words, the Prophet as Norm is not only the “Whole Man” (al-Insan al-Kamil) but also the “Ancient Man” (al-Insan al-Qadim).” Thus understood it is hard to find anyone who is really excluded from the Mercy of the Worlds even if he/she apparently opposes him. Who can consciously afford not to be in awe of the Prophet or deny him? He constitutes our own ideality and that is why must be held dearer than ourselves. Symbolizing/grounding life, any act of blessing life from a smile to plating trees is a form of durood. Every great poem in praise of life/love or anything that truly deserves praise is na’t if our appreciate how poetry itself is a spiritual thing (juzo ast paymeberi, part of prophecy) and Muhammad as the Principle of Manifestation/Pole of Wujud is also the Praised One, in fact the only Praised one as it is being only that is worthy of praise and the Prophet is what unveils/grounds this being.
For those who are not comfortable with God’s vast mercy, Ibn Arabi remarks:
[When you reach this understanding] you will come to know the difference between him who desires the spreading of God’s mercy among His servants – whether they be obedient or disobedient – and him who desires to take God’s mercy away from some of His servants. This second person is the one who prohibits the mercy of God that embraces all things, but he does not prohibit it to himself. Were it not for the fact that God’s mercy takes precedence over His wrath, the possessor of this attribute would never attain to God’s mercy.
Ibn Arabi is able to show that man qua man is oriented towards God and can’t escape the Real. There is only a difference of degree between theists and atheists and none can afford to take gaze away from the Beauty. He says in The Kernel of the Kernel:
He is able to show His Being either within or without; that which is in the image of everything, that which is understandable in every intellect, the meaning that is in every heart, the thing heard in every ear, the eye that sees in every eye, is Him. If He is manifest in this face he is also looking from the other.
What is needed is only receptivity, a polished mirror of the heart and God will teach it. No disputes. Whosoever you think or thinks(s)he has gone astray is welcome. Atheists too have a degree of tawhid, IbnArabi concedes and invites them to be more adventurous and more open to the unveilings of the Real and this invitation he extends to all and sundry. It is almost impossible to disagree or fail to be attracted to God and the Prophet (SAW) as IbnArabi understands them.
Several studies engaging with Ibn Arabi vis-a-vis major modern and postmodern thinkers have been published and well received and it can be said that from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Derrida and Levinas and major theologians, writers and contributors to interfaith dialogue and many wide ranging debates on nihilism, mysticism and the Sacred invoke or respond to certain of his insights. Ibn Arabi is with us, with influential writers (from Gibran to Pamuk) of the world, with major metaphysicians including Guenon and Schuon, with major Muslim thinkers down to Shah Waliullah, MulllaSadra, Iqbal, Nasr and Soroush, with Muslim scholars down to great names in Deoband, Bariely, Ahe Hadith and Nadwah schools, almost all great names in Sufism and Sufi poetry and in Pakistan such influential literary critics as Askari and Saleem Ahmed or Sufi authorities such as Pir Mehr Ali Shah are all influenced by Ibn Arabi. The culture of Islam post Ibn Arabi is deeply coloured by his work and legacy. Islam and Culture literacy requires knowing Ibn Arabi. IbnArabi has no peer in simultaneous subtlety, breadth, width, magnificence, penetrating power, brilliance and encycloepaedic scholarship and prolific contributions. Test your mettle by reading him and engaging with him. There are pygmies who think they have refuted Plato or Aristotle without even trying to read them or engaging with their great legacy that has shaped our culture and tools they have formulated to analyze things. The same is true about most modern rejecters of Ibn Arabi.
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