AL-HUDA
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
The Three-Step Path to Islamic Reality
by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane
A principal concern
that many people have about the nature, purpose, and policies of
organizational or institutionalized Islam is that the organizers
may focus on controlling the world on behalf of justice, and
then end up pursuing their own power. Indeed, justice is a
framework for social life in Islamic thought, but controlling
the world on behalf of justice or anything else is not. The
only thing we can control is our individual selves in order to
liberate ourselves from selfishness and thereby to commit
ourselves to selfless pursuit of peace and prosperity through
justice.
The second principal doubt that many Muslims have about
organizing for action is that the result may degenerate into a
tribal gathering and expose Muslims individually to attacks by
those, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who seek to control the
world. Indeed, organizing Islamically is designed to create and
strengthen an umma or community based on group awareness and
loyalty, but only in an outward looking sense of respect for
others, not in an inward looking sense of collective
self-worship. Its purpose is constructive pluralism to teach
others and learn from them because we each have so much to
offer.
The term asabiya was used by Ibn Khaldun in both of these
senses. His study of the dynamics of civilization suggested
that collective self-worship or tribalism causes the fall of
civilizations, whereas respect for the sacredness of community
derived from the sacredness of every person in it, and equally
of everyone outside it, is the most powerful force in the
birthing of universal culture and of every civilization built
upon it.
The Islamic mission of group action is to bond personal
spirituality or loving awe of Allah, known as taqwa, with group
action to change the prevailing paradigm of thought in society
and its institutional expressions that may serve as barriers to
justice. Caught in unjust institutions that concentrate both
economic ownership of material wealth and the political power
that stems always from such concentrated ownership, individual
persons may have good intentions, and they may advocate and
provide charity, but they are powerless to promote justice.
In order to promote justice, persons concerned about it must
organize institutionally and must focus on institutional
change. Those who rely on themselves, rather than on Allah,
seek not productive evolution within the thought and
institutions of society but destructive revolution, which can
create the exact opposite of the justice they allegedly pursue.
This sense of group responsibility for social action must be
promoted through cooperative movements and organizations
designed and created to promote what might be termed social
morality, as distinct from personal morality. Personal morality
is the responsibility of every person, of the nuclear family,
and of every house of worship, but social morality is the
responsibility of the larger community and of its voluntary
organizations created to explore the teachings on justice in the
world religions and to perfect existing institutions in pursuit
of a more just society.
This insight on how to bond personal with social morality was
first made clear to me twenty-five years ago at a gathering of
experts from all the world religions sponsored by the Aspen
Institute at Baca, Colorado. The organizer was in the process
of completing a unique community of zawiyas or “monasteries”
from each of the world religions. I was a hidden Muslim at the
time, so I represented the teachings of Native American
religions as I had inherited them from my great uncle, Joseph
Franklin Bever, who was one of the last formally trained imams
in the Cherokee religion. The organizer took me aside and said
that two Tibetan monks had just arrived to inaugurate a
Tantrayana monastery as part of the small town that was well on
the way to completion. She asked me to talk to them for five
minutes or so.
Not knowing what I should say to Tibetan monks, I asked them to
explain to me in five minutes all that there is to know about
Buddhism. They laughed and said that one minute would be more
than enough.
They said that Buddhism follows a path of three steps. The
first is Hinayana Buddhism, which teaches that one should
separate oneself from attachments to the material world. I was
familiar with this as a former Franciscan monk, which we called
the via negativa or apophatic way. The second step, these
Buddhist monks told me, is Mahayana Buddhism, which teaches
that, once one has escaped bondage to the illusory in life, one
should seek union with the ultimate, known as nirvana or
“nothing,” in the sense of “no thing,” that is, the reality that
is beyond illusion. I was familiar with this both from the
Catholic teachings of the via positiva or cataphatic theology
and from a Shi’a ‘arif whom I had met when I lived in Bahrain
five years earlier.
The third step, according to these Buddhist monks, was
Tantrayana Buddhism, which raises one to the level where one is
uncontrollably committed to join with others in bringing mercy
and justice to every person and to the entire world.
In response, I laughed, and said, “I understand you because I am
a hidden Muslim, and I can tell you that in your three-step
approach to reality you have explained everything there is to
know about Islam in less than one minute.”
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