The unthought in the Islamic tradition is an enormous category. It is a category of so much guidance, so many kernels of truth, and so many seeds of the goodness, virtue, and righteousness that God embedded in the Qur'an and the Prophet embedded in his Sunna. For all practical purposes, however, Islamic thought has for centuries ceased to develop, and so much of our tradition remains unexplored and undeveloped. Take Surah Ar-Rahman (Q 55) in the Qur'an:
The Most Compassionate has imparted this Qur’an [unto man] (Q 55:1-2).
God alerts us from the very beginning that the Most Compassionate (al-Rahman) has taught us the Book. Is this so that you can set it aside and live your life? Of course not. Al-Rahman has not taught you the Book so that you will become self-referential. Not so that your true god, your true master, your true lord is yourself. Not so that your own impulses and emotions will reign supreme without God. Obviously not. But God goes on to alert us that this God cares about us. This God, al-Rahman, knows what compassion, mercy, and goodness are, and this God also taught us the Qur'an. God then goes on to say:
He has created man (Q 55:3).
That same Lord is the One who created you, and He Who created you knows you and knows the way that your heart, your conscious, your feelings, your thoughts, your impulses, and your emotions work. Your Most Compassionate Creator knows all.
He has imparted unto him articulate thought and speech (Q 55:4).
God has also taught you discernment and consciousness. If you think any of your discernments or decisions are beyond the purview of your Lord, then you are sorely mistaken. We then have the reminder:
[At His behest] the sun and the moon run their appointed courses (Q 55:5).
Our existence is intricately measured because the sun and the moon are so carefully and intricately measured, to the umpteenth degree. This meticulous measurement is no coincidence. It is, in fact, essential for our existence. Any kind of deviation, however slight, and we would cease to exist. Do you not understand, then, the extent to which your Lord is intimately interconnected with your existence?
Then comes the challenge of all challenges:
And the skies has He raised high, and has devised [for all things] a balance (Q 55:7).
Your very life on this earth, your entire existence, is contingent on the balance (al-mizan). Reflect on creation, and you will see the balance in everything. You will see it in nature. You can, in fact, learn the idea of the balance from observing the very nature that God has set in motion. If the balance is off, you are off. If the balance is off, creation is off, and you will cease to exist.
so that you [too, O men,] might never transgress the balance (Q 55:8).
So here comes the command. The refrain with a hundred lines under it. God tells us to not deviate from the balance. Do not transgress the balance. Do not violate the scales of justice and equanimity. Do not just pursue your impulses, your emotions, or your self-referential thoughts. In all affairs and in all matters, be just in what you do.
I began this sermon by referring to the category of the unthought in the Islamic tradition. Indeed, if Muslims had reflected upon this idea of the balance (mizan), what they would have been able to extract from it is literally boundless. An idea like this is begging to be unpacked, explored, and further developed. I often play an intellectual exercise in which I like to imagine that the same text or idea existed in a Christian or a Jewish source, and I then imagine what Christian or Jewish theologians would have done with it in our modern age. And what I then see is the extent to which Muslims have failed their own tradition.
Let us take a step back. We know that we are living in an age of unprecedented crisis. Human beings have developed the ability to destroy life on this earth completely, in an instant, through the use of atomic weapons. But beyond that, the average human being today is unaware of the price humanity at large has had to pay for the industrial revolution and for scientific companies to sustain the idea of “progress." The price for such “progress” has been unimaginable levels of pollution, destruction, and the imbalance that we have inflicted and continue to inflict upon our earth. Colonial powers, meaning White countries, have caused unprecedented pollution around the globe. Pollutants like DDT and lead are so rampant that children born all over the world, especially in certain areas in Africa and Southeast Asia, are born with an IQ that is artificially five to 10 degrees lower than those in the developed world. We have quite literally reduced the intelligence of human beings born in other parts of the world so that the developed White world can continue to enjoy the mirage of “progress.”
The imbalance inflicted upon the world has been truly unimaginable, but I want to draw our attention to another element of this imbalance. The Western civilization, the only civilization that reigns supreme today, imagined that it elevated the individual above all else. Whether we know it or not, Thomas Aquinas was inspired by his reading of Islamic sources, and Aquinas developed the concept of salvation through self-justification alone, meaning that the individual, through a personal relationship with God alone, can attain salvation. Immanuel Kant, the famous philosopher, added to this by insisting that the individual does not attain liberation until the individual can rid him or herself of their intellectual contradictions and false paradigms.
So far, so good. But then Friedrich Nietzsche came along, and Nietzsche reached what, in light of the Industrial Revolution, was a near-inescapable conclusion. The individual who is self-referential in terms of their salvation and intellectual liberation cannot attain true freedom, says Nietzsche, unless the individual expels God. For Nietzsche, and other philosophers of his generation, God is a nuisance. God, by being supreme and sovereign, is a serious problem. For how could the individual be truly free if that individual is chained, restricted, and limited by a Divine being? Nietzsche accordingly says that the individual is God; the individual human being must become their own deity. As a sovereign and supreme being, then, God is out, with the idea of Divinity entirely vested in the individual.
That has been the trajectory of Western thought since Nietzsche. Of course, there have been philosophers here and there of a Kantian orientation, or others inspired by Aquinas, who have tried to pull the rope back and say that the individual cannot be entirely self-referential, nor can they entirely be their own god. The individual cannot just self-define their sense of a higher power. But these efforts, compared to the overall momentum of Western thought, have been marginal and negligible. The world we live in today is a Nietzschean world, a world in which God is a myth, in which God is entirely dependent on and derivative from the thought processes of the autonomous and sovereign individual. There is no Divine law. There is no Shari'a, no adab, no ihsan, and thus no balance. What I feel to be right is right, regardless. Justice and fairness do not enter into the equation. That is the modern world in which we live.
Do not kid yourself. This is true not just in the West, but across the entire globe. Immediately before this sermon, I was listening to the news that Israel, after laying siege to yet another Palestinian hospital, has now burned the Kamal Adwan hospital down and assaulted the medical personnel. It has become a repeated pattern of violations by Israeli forces. Or consider ongoing events in Syria. We simply cannot avoid the numerous testimonials of people who have been released from Syrian prisons. The testimonials are horrific. They are beyond what any human being can withstand. Gang rapes. Rapes of children. Testimonials of women raped as the Qur'an is playing, so as to create an association in their minds between being sexually assaulted and the words of the Qur'an.
There are several points to note. One, if God has willed that you witness or experience this kind of trauma first-hand, then you sadly know that what you are hearing from these prisoners in Syria is not exceptional, for you yourself have gone through everything you are hearing. Two, you are struck by how hedonistic and, in fact, sacrilegious and blasphemous the torturers are. They regularly curse God and mock the Prophet. They are not in any way motivated or influenced by Islam. They make a point to tell you, "We will violate you and your God can do nothing about it." But you are also aware that this is itself, again, not exceptional. This is how torturers are in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and, I am sure, Iran. When you step into that space, there is no god but the human hierarchical leader. God does not exist. The balance does not exist. The world is thoroughly self-referential.
It is exactly like the Israeli forces burning the hospital. It is easy to speak of the balance when there is no reason to deny, defy, and challenge the balance. But what about when you claim to be fighting a War on Terror? For that is, indeed, what the Syrian government was saying. That is what the Egyptian government says. That is what the Israeli government says, and it is also what the U.S government says. Everyone says it. When you claim to be fighting a War on Terror, you are self-referential and there is no God and there is no balance. Then, in a true sense, you are a Nietzschean.
Third, I am struck by a phenomenon that I have seen no one address or perhaps even notice. Not too long ago, all movements of opposition and resistance to injustice and imbalance were led by religious scholars (shuyukh). Yet there is something in Syria that I have already seen in other countries. In Syria, one is struck by the relative absence of the clergy and religious scholars in the stories of torture and opposition. When we look at Islamic forces in Syria, we see someone like Abu Muhammad al-Jolani and his followers, and we are immediately struck by the absence of the representatives of Shari'a on this earth.
What does that tell you? The defenders of Shari'a, the defenders and representatives of the voice of God on this earth, the representatives of the balance, have either abdicated their responsibility or they have been killed off and silenced. In every sense, then, although we do not realize it, the Muslim world has become Nietzschean. It has become self-referential. If my feelings are hostile to the Shi‘a, I justify it. If they are hostile to Sunnis, I justify it. My feelings and my impulses come first, and everything else can wait.
In a bygone age, the scholars of God would study all the evidence and arrive at a balanced, measured opinion that would act as a guidance to people so that they do not become Nietzschean and self-referential. So that their god is not just their higher power, be it their mother, their father, their feelings, or their impulses. So that people have God as a constant reality in their life. But we all now chase after the idea of “progress,” as insane and false as it is. For what progress is there in the destruction of life on this globe? What progress is there in the destruction of social networks and community bonds that used to mitigate the ability of the state to commit injustices like we today witness all over the Muslim world?
We have destroyed, and destroyed, and destroyed. We have become Nietzschean. We have become self referential. We have become, in a word, godless. The “unthought” in Islam is that God has given us a literal gold mine in the idea of the “balance” and in the opening words of Surah al-Rahman:
The Most Compassionate has imparted this Qur’an [unto man]. He has created man. He has imparted unto him articulate thought and speech (Q 55:1-4).
God is telling you, "I am with you. I know you need the balance, and this balance can only be preserved and protected through My Divine presence in your life. I am the Lord and the Sovereign, not you. Not your feelings or your self-referential thoughts." But where are those Muslim scholars who can turn the unthought into a living reality for all Muslims?