DANCING
FOR ALLAH
Although its principal division is
into the Sunni and the Shiites, there is as much complexity in the
Islamc world as there is in the Buddhist or the Christian. Also,
as in these other religious traditions, there is also a monastic
heritage emphasizing what the Prophet called the al jihad al akbar--the "greater struggle," which is within
oneself. Perhaps originally inspired by contact with India,
Sufism was a mystical tradition within which individuals attempted to
achieve a heightened sense of the presence of God in this
lifetime. There has always been a marked diversity in Sufism, and
for many Muslims the Sufis, who often incorporate elements from other
traditions, are often thought of just as heretics who should be
repressed. This is particularly understandable since some of the
language characterizing mystical awareness stresses a unity with the
divine that, especially for the Muslim, seems to compromise the idea of
God as completely other than any created reality and for that reason
beyond the possibility of direct experience. What for Hindus is
the secret teaching of tat tvam asi is precisely the opposite of what Islam
proposes: we are not God ourselves but instead persons who must submit
to God (the meaning of islam). Instead of seeing Sufi
communities as representing an ideal for the more spiritually
inclined--what would be true with monks in Buddhism or
Christianity--there is a strong tendency, as with the present Iranian
government, to see them as dangerous to a true faith and so, in a
theocratic order, politically unacceptable as well.
Among the most fascinating
expressions of Sufism has been the dervish tradition of Turkey.
Individuals engage in a whirling dance lasting for hours that is meant
to lead to a trance state, and often this is arranged as a tourist
attraction. The term "dervish" itself is from a Persian word
describing ascetics who, like Theravadin monks or the early Franciscan
friars, were mendicants (beggars), and it reflects the central notion,
common to all monastic traditions, that the individual seeking
spiritual progress must not be attached to physical possessions.
In looking at the dervishes, we might
note that there is a continuity in religious expression that transcends
other cultural differences. What we see with those who dance to
become closer to Allah is also what we see in tribal dances or in the
syncretic Voodoo tradition of Haiti. The experience becomes an
end in itself even if nominally its goal may be something else.
It is above all something personal, and to that extent it may bring
Bergson's two sources of religion--the maintainance of a social order
and the search for transcendence--into conflict. In an
introductory course we have not really had a chance to explore all that
this means, but one side note is the link between the austerity of a
monk and the appeal to those already less favored in a social setting.
In India the life of an ascetic
transcended caste distinctions so that even today in the cities those
otherwise at the bottom rungs of the ladder are able to survive on the
streets as mendicant fakirs
(from the Persian word for "poor")--sometimes legended indviduals lying
on a bed of nails or otherwise testing the human capacity for
pain. Although monasticism plays no role in Judaism today, in the
time of Jesus there were the Essenes known to us through the Dead Sea Scrolls, and there is the speculation that the
carpenter's son Jesus, given the manner in which he assembled a
close-knit group of followers who had rejected family ties and normal
worldly ambitions, either was a product of Essene training or was
deliberately emulating it. The Italian Francis of Assisi came
from a more prosperous family, but he took on a beggar's robe and
presented a lifestyle that initially aroused suspicion in Rome because
of his group's similarity to the French "poor men of Lyons," the
heretical Waldensians. Ascetics can be threatening because
in the very effort to achieve a greater spiritual growth they may be
seen as compromising the standards of the society in which they
live. This need not be on a religious basis, of course (Diogenes
and the other Cynics of ancient Greece were mendicants without any
religious portfolio, the "hippies" of their time declaring themselves
doctors of souls), but when God is invoked there can often be a
heightened sense of danger.
One of the things to think about is how
religious traditions see a link between worldly prosperity and
spiritual growth. Hinduism, as we saw, makes a distinction
between the world of the householder, who is encouraged to pursue
success and pleasure, and the world of the ascetic, but with the
concept of reincarnation there is no particular incentive for ordinary
individuals to think they should withdraw from the ordinary world, or
at least not do so until they are relatively advanced in age.
Judaism and Islam have not seen being poor as in any way a more secure
path to heaven, and Christianity has not been consistent in its
message. One variant in the Christian approach has been that of
John Calvin and the tradition that inspired the Puritans of New
England: although God predestines a soul to heaven or hell regardless
of the individual's actions, a "sign of election" is worldly prosperity
(although, in what has come to be known as "the Protestant ethic," this
combined with the rejection of what today we call conspicuous
consumption so that wealth was not to be spent but invested).
This is obviously a question to think through on a very personal basis:
how do you see the link between spirituality and material
advantages? Would you agree that to be "enlightened" you need to
reject trying to become well off materially?
American sociologists have cited the link
between social status and a congregation's silence in services.
The poorest Americans are often the loudest with the Holy Rollers and
the Southern Baptists as examples. The more affluent a group, the
quieter it becomes, so that among American Protestants the least
"noise" would be with the Episcopalians, who may participate in singing
hymns but do not otherwise raise their voices in church. If you
are a church-goer yourself or you have close relatives that are, do you
think this generalization reflects your own experience? Would you
be inclined to agree with Robert Coles that those who are most
oppressed in a society use religious expression to reestablish their
sense of personal worth, as though by being filled with the Holy Spirit
(or ridden by the gods, as in Voodoo) compensates for what happens to
them otherwise? (Think how this reflects Karl Marx's observation
that religion is "the opiate of the masses").