Din al fitra: the root of Religious tolerance.
Reza Shah Kazemi
an extract from the book ‘the spirit of tolerance in Islam.’
The primordial or immutable nature of the human being is at one with the quality expressed by the word hanif, the root meaning of which is to swerve or incline continuously towards something. The hanif is therefore one who is by nature and disposition permanently oriented to the oneness of ultimate on all levels – doctrinal, spiritual and ethical; he is a ‘monotheist’ in the most profound sense of the term. In the Quran, the hanif par excellence is the prophet Abraham, with whom the cycle of Semitic monotheism was inaugurated. But this is only one of the cycles of revelation, pertaining to one of the ‘sectors’ of humanity; the Quranic perspective has in view all the cycles of revelation which pass through all sectors of humanity. Seyyed Hossein Nasr elucidates the way in which this universal view of revelation enters into the articulation of the ‘spiritual anthropology’ of the Quran, and how this anthropology is closely related to the claim that Islam does nothing more than re-establish, in a fresh idiom, the primordial or immutable religion. The terminality of Islam rejoins the primordiality of ‘Adamic’, not just ‘Abrahamic’, faith; the terminal and the primordial bear witness to what is immutable in the human spirit:
The spiritual anthropology depicted in the Quran makes of prophecy a necessary element of the human condition. Man is truly a man only by virtue of his participation in a tradition… Human history consists of cycles of prophecy, with each new prophecy beginning a new cycle of humanity. Islam also considers itself to be the reassertion of the original religion, of the doctrine of Unity, which always was and always will be. That is why it is called the primordial religion (al din al hanif); it comes at the end of this human cycle to reassert the essential truth of the primordial tradition.
The hanif is often defined, in polemical fashion, as one who is neither Jew nor Christian. This point of view is based on the following verse: ‘Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian; rather, he was a hanif, one who had surrendered [or: ‘a Muslim’], and was not one of the idolators’ (3:67). Narrowly interpreted, this verse appears to contrast negatively the state of the hanif with the confessions of the Judaism and Christianity, and to stress Abraham’s status as a Muslim, one who has submitted to God as a true monotheist. But the verse can also be read as an allusion to the primordial state, the fitra, which is both ‘pre-religious’ (symbolized chronologically within the Semitic world by the fact that Abraham comes before the Jewish prophets and before Jesus), and ‘supra-religious’, in that the fitra goes beyond all formal or institutional religions and by that very token comprises them all.
The fact that the quality of the hanif is coupled with that of the fitra is clear from Q 30:30. The hanif is one who is faithful to the fitra, being oriented to the fundamental nature of absolute reality, such as this reality fashions the entirety of the creation, including, crucially, the nature of the human soul. That is, the hanif is permanently disposed in view of the Fatir, the Creator: ‘Indeed, I have turned my face towards Him who created (fatara) the heavens and the earth as one by nature upright (hanifan); and I am not one of the idolators’ (6:79).
The hanif is one who inclines permanently to the fitra, the natural ‘stamp’ impressed on the soul by al-Fatir. This ‘impression’ made by the divine substance upon human nature is indelible, whatever be the religion or lack thereof imposed upon the soul by its environment: ‘Every baby is born according to the fitra; its parents make him a Jew, a Christian or a Zoroastrian’, the Prophet said, indicating that all formal religion is something of a secondary ‘superstructure’: the immutable infrastructure of the soul is the fitra, and this is primordial religion, or religion as such. The success of Islam or any other religion depends on the degree to which this fitra is cultivated and brought to fruition. In light of this view of the human soul, it should be clear why we stated earlier that the kind of wholesale barbarism inflicted in the name of ‘civilization’ upon indigenous people deemed ‘savage’ by European conquerors in the Americas has no parallel in Islamic history. One recalls Imam Ali’s exhortation to Malik al Ashtar, cited in the previous chapter: ‘Infuse your heart with mercy for the people in your charge, have love for them and be kind to them. Be not like a ravenous beast of prey above them, seeking to devour them. For they are of two types: either your brother in religion or your equal in creation.’ Similarly, the second caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, upon hearing of the mistreatment of a Christian by the son of ‘Amr b. al-As, conqueror of Egypt, severely rebuked him in a letter, saying: ‘O ‘Amr, would you enslave a human being born to be free?’
Islam sees itself as the restoration of the din al-fitra, or as Seyyed Hossein Nasr put it in the above citation, al-din-al-hanif. This primordial faith cannot be confined to Islam, understood as a historically conditioned confession; nor can it be restricted to the sphere of Semitic monotheism, despite the fact that Abraham is the supreme exemplar of the hanif. As Bosnian scholar Nevad Kahteran explains: ‘What the hanifiyya model in fact denotes is the Abrahamic wisdom bestowed [by God] on the eternal heritage for the life of the world and permanently entrenched in the foundations of the Judeo – Christian – Islamic tradition’. The universal and the primordial wisdom of Abraham which unites the three branches of Semitic monotheism is to be seen as embracing all faiths, because it is one with faith as such: it cannot then be restrictively identifiable with such and such a faith.
This primordial faith defines the essential nature of the human being as such: it cannot be the monopoly of such and such a human being. Triumphalism, and the intolerance and pride it generates, cannot easily find a home in a climate dominated by such a perspective on the fundamental nature of each human being. Rather, tolerance on the religious plane is the outcome of the fundamental respect due to the human soul as such, as fashioned by the Creator. Again, we observe the way in which tolerance emerges as a basic corollary of Muslim faith: respect for what God has implanted in the soul of each human being – and which thereby come to constitute its immutable and inalienable substance – generates tolerance at all levels.
an extract from the book ‘the spirit of tolerance in Islam.’
The primordial or immutable nature of the human being is at one with the quality expressed by the word hanif, the root meaning of which is to swerve or incline continuously towards something. The hanif is therefore one who is by nature and disposition permanently oriented to the oneness of ultimate on all levels – doctrinal, spiritual and ethical; he is a ‘monotheist’ in the most profound sense of the term. In the Quran, the hanif par excellence is the prophet Abraham, with whom the cycle of Semitic monotheism was inaugurated. But this is only one of the cycles of revelation, pertaining to one of the ‘sectors’ of humanity; the Quranic perspective has in view all the cycles of revelation which pass through all sectors of humanity. Seyyed Hossein Nasr elucidates the way in which this universal view of revelation enters into the articulation of the ‘spiritual anthropology’ of the Quran, and how this anthropology is closely related to the claim that Islam does nothing more than re-establish, in a fresh idiom, the primordial or immutable religion. The terminality of Islam rejoins the primordiality of ‘Adamic’, not just ‘Abrahamic’, faith; the terminal and the primordial bear witness to what is immutable in the human spirit:
The spiritual anthropology depicted in the Quran makes of prophecy a necessary element of the human condition. Man is truly a man only by virtue of his participation in a tradition… Human history consists of cycles of prophecy, with each new prophecy beginning a new cycle of humanity. Islam also considers itself to be the reassertion of the original religion, of the doctrine of Unity, which always was and always will be. That is why it is called the primordial religion (al din al hanif); it comes at the end of this human cycle to reassert the essential truth of the primordial tradition.
The hanif is often defined, in polemical fashion, as one who is neither Jew nor Christian. This point of view is based on the following verse: ‘Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian; rather, he was a hanif, one who had surrendered [or: ‘a Muslim’], and was not one of the idolators’ (3:67). Narrowly interpreted, this verse appears to contrast negatively the state of the hanif with the confessions of the Judaism and Christianity, and to stress Abraham’s status as a Muslim, one who has submitted to God as a true monotheist. But the verse can also be read as an allusion to the primordial state, the fitra, which is both ‘pre-religious’ (symbolized chronologically within the Semitic world by the fact that Abraham comes before the Jewish prophets and before Jesus), and ‘supra-religious’, in that the fitra goes beyond all formal or institutional religions and by that very token comprises them all.
The fact that the quality of the hanif is coupled with that of the fitra is clear from Q 30:30. The hanif is one who is faithful to the fitra, being oriented to the fundamental nature of absolute reality, such as this reality fashions the entirety of the creation, including, crucially, the nature of the human soul. That is, the hanif is permanently disposed in view of the Fatir, the Creator: ‘Indeed, I have turned my face towards Him who created (fatara) the heavens and the earth as one by nature upright (hanifan); and I am not one of the idolators’ (6:79).
The hanif is one who inclines permanently to the fitra, the natural ‘stamp’ impressed on the soul by al-Fatir. This ‘impression’ made by the divine substance upon human nature is indelible, whatever be the religion or lack thereof imposed upon the soul by its environment: ‘Every baby is born according to the fitra; its parents make him a Jew, a Christian or a Zoroastrian’, the Prophet said, indicating that all formal religion is something of a secondary ‘superstructure’: the immutable infrastructure of the soul is the fitra, and this is primordial religion, or religion as such. The success of Islam or any other religion depends on the degree to which this fitra is cultivated and brought to fruition. In light of this view of the human soul, it should be clear why we stated earlier that the kind of wholesale barbarism inflicted in the name of ‘civilization’ upon indigenous people deemed ‘savage’ by European conquerors in the Americas has no parallel in Islamic history. One recalls Imam Ali’s exhortation to Malik al Ashtar, cited in the previous chapter: ‘Infuse your heart with mercy for the people in your charge, have love for them and be kind to them. Be not like a ravenous beast of prey above them, seeking to devour them. For they are of two types: either your brother in religion or your equal in creation.’ Similarly, the second caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, upon hearing of the mistreatment of a Christian by the son of ‘Amr b. al-As, conqueror of Egypt, severely rebuked him in a letter, saying: ‘O ‘Amr, would you enslave a human being born to be free?’
Islam sees itself as the restoration of the din al-fitra, or as Seyyed Hossein Nasr put it in the above citation, al-din-al-hanif. This primordial faith cannot be confined to Islam, understood as a historically conditioned confession; nor can it be restricted to the sphere of Semitic monotheism, despite the fact that Abraham is the supreme exemplar of the hanif. As Bosnian scholar Nevad Kahteran explains: ‘What the hanifiyya model in fact denotes is the Abrahamic wisdom bestowed [by God] on the eternal heritage for the life of the world and permanently entrenched in the foundations of the Judeo – Christian – Islamic tradition’. The universal and the primordial wisdom of Abraham which unites the three branches of Semitic monotheism is to be seen as embracing all faiths, because it is one with faith as such: it cannot then be restrictively identifiable with such and such a faith.
This primordial faith defines the essential nature of the human being as such: it cannot be the monopoly of such and such a human being. Triumphalism, and the intolerance and pride it generates, cannot easily find a home in a climate dominated by such a perspective on the fundamental nature of each human being. Rather, tolerance on the religious plane is the outcome of the fundamental respect due to the human soul as such, as fashioned by the Creator. Again, we observe the way in which tolerance emerges as a basic corollary of Muslim faith: respect for what God has implanted in the soul of each human being – and which thereby come to constitute its immutable and inalienable substance – generates tolerance at all levels.
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