Category Archives: Metaphysics

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

The Adversarial Position

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The Adversarial Approach-

The Great Hoax of Modern Times

One of the most commonly accepted truisms of Modern Times is that the way to the Truth is through the Adversarial Approach. So, on the legal front, you have the prosecution and the defense. In politics you have the Democrats and the Republicans or alternatively the left-wing and the right wing. Somehow through the confrontation of these opposites, one is supposed to be able top discern the Truth. This is a deep-seated error in Epistemology. In reality, instead of getting to Clarity and Truth, this approach leads to confusion and animosity. If you don’t understand what I mean, just look at what is happening in America currently. But like lots of consensually held illusions (think of the sun revolving around the Earth lol) they die hard. Partly because much of this conviction is Unconscious.

If you need a concrete example of this process watch the Senate hearings in the United States.These hearings were intended to seek clarity .But instead you have a bifurcation of expressed beliefs. The Democrats have one point of view and the Republicans have another. So what is being set up is a game-the game of who is the best debater. In the end everyone is a loser-especially the public that is just either more partisan or more confused after the event.

Another instance of this can be seen on the news networks. Just watched an interview by Dana Bash (left-leaning CNN) and a Republican senator. Each speaking over the other. Neither of them listening except as an occasion for a gotcha moment that can be played over and over again. The best part is at the end of the interview Dana, who by now has certainly built up a pile of animosity, states in an obviously hypocritical way.”and thanks for coming” Ya right. Now she can make a dartboard out of his picture to be able to release her frustrations when needed lol

There is a strange irony in this adversarial belief-system. We could call this belief, from a philosophical point of view , “Dialectics”. Dialectics claims that from the thesis-antithesis clash we get to synthesis on a higher level.  But that is exactly what Marx and the Communists call their point of view. ”Dialectical Materialism”. So we are on the same plane-the plane of ignorance! Have you noticed that wonderful synthesis in China and Russia LOL?

In the field of Sufi Islam, we are repeatedly warned about this approach. The teacher of my Sufi teacher, Sheikh Abdullah Daghestani, says in his book: ” Argumentation destroys faith” In traditional Islam, one of the four great Imams, Imam Malik was known to walk out of the mosque if some-one started arguing. And in the Quran Allah says:” Man is mostly disputatious” He swt was surely not encouraging this bad tendency!

Now, when I examined my own learning process, I realized that I had learnt very little from discussions with opposing points of view. Mostly those discussions led nowhere and created more animosity than clarity. So I asked myself the question: ”How did I learn?” Yes, I do believe I have learnt a lot in this life journey lol. And the answer came back in an irrefutable manner.” Through listening to people who knew a lot more than me about the subject”! No, not discussing with them, debating with them or even interacting with them! Simple, honest, open-hearted listening. And that shifted my life course on several occasion.

People who are familiar with my approach know that My Epistemology is based not on logic and rationality, certainly not on debating, but on “Seeing”, “Hearing “ and” Feeling”. Let me give you a few examples

1-We will start with Hearing.

Two examples-neither from great scholars. lol In my pre-Islamic days like the people of my generation I had a girlfriend who was both highly intelligent and depressed. Her treating psychiatrist invited me in for a session one week. ( Did he think I was part of the problem lol. Maybe!). I outrightly refused in a way that can only be described as ironic given what followed. ”Psychiatry.That’s a bunch of bunk .It’s not even scientific” was my response. Have come a long way since then. My girlfriend, suitably upset, then went to talk with her also intelligent girlfriend and came back saying:” Me and Miriam decided that you are a “positivist’! I didn’t even know what positivism was! But it hit me hard and I knew I had to find out!

Now, if I had read a little, I could have come back and debated the issue. I could have defended Empiricism and debated her philosophic and Artistic Idealism. But for some reason, I didn’t. Instead, I began a long research project starting with a Sabbatical from medical school-a research project that is continuing up to the present moment. This research has made me question the so-called scientific process. Instead of debating, I heard the Truth of it. And I have not regretted it for one moment.

Another “listening event. I was in California looking to learn about the latest alternative psychotherapies. I didn’t go to Esalen but I went to the Esalen bookstore in Haight Ashbury.There was a young lady serving at the bookstore (probably early twenties) who noticed that I had a non-Californian accent and asked what I was doing in San Francisco.” I’m here to study Gestalt Therapy” I said, somewhat simplifying the process. She then looked at me with utter contempt and said: ”Gestalt Therapy, that’s not where it’s at, man” (typical language of the day lol).I thought to myself: ”This is the dumbest chick I have ever met’(also typical language of the day lol) and decided to leave. But as I was walking out of the bookstore shaking my head in disbelief, I turned around and said: ”Ok then where’s it at?” “Spirituality man, that’s where it’s at”. I walked out of the store still shaking my head ! However, the phrase kept repeating itself in my head like a beloved song from high school. ”Spirituality, man. That’s where its at”. Sure enough, soon after I got back to Montreal I met my first spiritual teacher, a Buddhist Lama sent to Montreal by the Dalai Lama to attend to the Tibetan community in Longueuil! And the rest is history.

Now if I had done what the current zeitgeist would recommend (Discussion? Debate? Conversation?) and debated the issue-spirituality vs. psychology) in all likelihood it would have led to an impasse and bad feelings .Instead, this seemingly banal interaction  led to a life-changing experience!

 

2- Example of Seeing. I am in Jordan. I am out shopping when a Muslim “brother” meets me and invites me to dinner. It doesn’t take long for his small group to go into their Wahhabbi discourse and begin criticizing Sheikh Nuh ,my spiritual teacher of the time. I do my best to defend him (the debate mode lol) and after a few more minutes, I look at the group and say “ I can see no nur(light) in your faces. How am I supposed to believe your words.” And I left. Btw I had a very similar encounter with a Shia group in Montreal!

Example 2- a secular one. I was a Marxist at the time?! I am in a large meeting of left-wingers. All the local bigshots are there! I look around and at the Front Table only to realize that these people are worse than the democratic liberal government under Robert Bourassa. And that it would be a catastrophe to help them into power! End of my career as a Marxist!

3-“Feeling” (Alternatively could be titled “intuition” or “knowledge of the heart) I am in Plateau Montréal -the “in” area of Montreal, still searching. I go to a bookstore dedicated to the works of Alistar Crowley. I knew nothing about him before entering. But I knew it felt weird, very weird and I didn’t stay long. Later I learnt that he was a well-known Black Magician from England. My “feelings” had led me to the right conclusion!

 

Now, there are some prerequisites to achieving these kind of perceptions.. Some people have good instincts to start with.It is like a genetic endowment. Most of us have to work at it . Firstly we must be able to listen. Most people are listening through the veil of their belief-systems. Seeing and feeling are the same. If the ideas do not conform to what is already in their mind, they reject them. Many, many people simply reject anything new or unusual. And they are stuck in that way.

So what can we do to enhance our openness to the Truth. That is the Essence of the Sufi way. We pray, we do dhikr( mediation),we listen to wise teachers. But, most of all, we oppose our nafs (ego).It is called jihad-a-nafs. This is no mean feat. Most of the Muslims I have met don’t have a clue! They think wearing hijab and eating halal meat is enough. But the process of jihad-a-nafs goes far beyond that .It goes to the essential task of character-building. People who do that work seriously are like precious gems as opposed to stones. And you can learn to see them as such.

May Allah be with you on your journey. Sufi Ibrahim Kreps

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

“Facts are Facts” Really!

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Context: A discussion about the state of the American economy after a Rachel Maddow opinion piece on the internet

This discussion involved a couple of old friends, both trained in well-respected MBA schools and with a long history of investment portfolio management( i.e much better informed then me about business and economics!). Both still believe in “facts”- whether they be government reports such as the Labour Board statistics or other economic reports or private company reports. Both are still Empiricists-despite decades of feedback by yours truly about the limitations of that approach lol!

I, myself, was very fortunate. At a young age I was confronted by a clever girlfriend for being a Positivist( another form of Empiricism) That challenge changed my life-over 50 years ago! But most of the people I know ,educated in the West, still believe in “facts” .In medicine they call that “objective evidence”. In science it is called statistical analysis in peer-reviewed journals .In politics it is whatever suits your political narrative lol

Getting back to Rachel Maddow for a minute, her thesis was that, as opposed to the Trumpian narrative that the U.S. has all the cards in its trade deal with Canada, America was going to suffer more from the tariffs than either Trump or many of the economists think and that Canada might actually gain an advantage in asserting its own independence.

The usual “ad hominem” critique then followed. Rachel Maddow is a well-known leftist with MSNBC , a Trump-hater and on top of it not that well-informed about the “facts”. in this particular dossier. However, despite all of that, her primary thesis may well be correct. Why do I say that?

As those who have been following me for awhile know, I reject the contemporary Epistemology of “objective evidence” and favour an Epistemology of “seeing ‘,”hearing” and “feeling”( in Quranic Arabic that is “basirat”, samiyya” and “fuad”)This way of accessing Reality includes looking at peoples hearts ,listening carefully to anecdotes and “searching the neighborhood” to see what is really going on!

When I apply this model ,I notice the following. Many, many people in both Canada and the U.S. are worried. Only 37% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. I hear more and more stories of people having a hard time finding jobs( I believe this is not only true in Canada but in the U.S. as well).I see more and more stories of small businesses having a hard time with the tariffs. Some are even closing down.” Poppy-cock” say the Empiricists .”The macro picture is unchanged” i.e. more government statistics lol.

And perhaps most of all, Americans are unhappy! They are now divided into Trump-haters, who are unhappy because he is in power and Trump sycophants who are unhappy because they have to embrace his lies as part of the package and embracing lies and denial is NEVER a formula for happiness!

Then there is the rest of the World that is increasingly anti-Trump and anti-American. The Canadians who are avoiding travel to the U.S. and plenty of other countries’ citizens doing like-wise I am sure. Being hated is rarely a formula for success! America which once was a beacon of freedom and success is now seen as tyrannical, bullying and manipulative.

None of this augurs well for the future of America. But so-called “experts” fixated on macro-economic data ” can see none of this! Empiricism and its sister philosophy Materialism has done so much harm! We can see this so clearly in the countries that embraced “Dialectical Materialism’. Now we can see it coming in those countries that have embraced “Scientific Materialism”. God help us all!

 

 

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

The Cause of Suffering

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The Cause of All Suffering-

Individual and Collective.

Context: Looking at the horrible suffering in the world around us.

Byron Katie is a non-sectarian New Age spiritual teacher similar in her evolution to the better-known Eckhart Tolle of “The Power of Now” fame. I attended a couple of her workshops in America in the past. She made  the following statement in front of a mid-sized auditorium.It was like a thunderbolt for me when I first heard it.! “All your problems come from the same place: You believe in the contents of your own mind”. Wow! Ajib. The Truth of it  resonated deep within.

When I then looked at the international situation, I realized that this truth applied to collectivities as well as individuals. Let us see how that plays out.

But before we do, let me situate this statement in a theological Comparative Religion framework. The traditions that understand this statement best would be the Hindi-Buddhist tradition- not my chosen path however. These traditions understood and still understand that the mind (“manas” in Sanskrit ) is not our friend but our enemy!  The reason that the Western traditions are not aware of this is that they have all been corrupted to a certain extent by Greek Philosophy which worships the mind, rationality and logic. Christianity grew up in the midst of this Greek culture(Greek was the intellectual language at the time of Jesus).In much the same area the Jews as well were absorbing the Greek mind-set. We can see this in the elaborate mind-productions of the Talmudists ( third to sixth century C.E) Btw there is no common measure between the statements of the great Jewish Prophets like Jacob and Moses and David and these Talmudic cerebralized scholars-except perhaps their belief in One God Lol!

And finally, the Muslims began translating the Greek texts into Arabic beginning during the Abbasid period and it reached its apogee during the time of Andalusia. For Muslim readers if you don’t believe me, read the hadith and the statements of the Sahhabis and contrast them with any of your preferred scholars and you will see the contrast. And btw ,it was not arbitrary that Allah chose Mohammed, saws, an unlettered man,for his final Prophetic Mission! I have seen the same phenomenon manifest amongst the shuyukh I have studied with and followed. There is an inverse relationship between their level of scholarship and their spiritual hal. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, O admirers of Harvard and Oxford and Al Azhar lol.

Before continuing, it must be stated that these “mind-productions” of the collectivities are also underpinned by very strong emotions. That is why it is often so difficult to untangle them from reality.

Now let us see how this plays out on the international front. Three situations of utmost misery will be highlighted although there are many more-beyond counting!

The Middle East-Specifically Gaza :

Israeli Jewish Thought: “This land was promised to us by God in the Bible. The greatest error of Israel is to push its military to harsh and unusual punishment out of what can only be termed vengeance.

Arab Muslim Thought:” This land is ours. We have settled here for hundreds of years.There is no place for Jews here. The Jews are colonialists from Eastern Europe. Thus: ”From the River to the sea” The greatest error of the Palestinians and the Arabs was to not allow for the legitimate presence of Jews on their territory.

Reality: The Children of Israel and the Arabs have been fighting about this land over and over again since Abraham had two sons-Ismail-the father of the Arabs and Issac-the father of the Jews. That’s about 4000 years! The Jews had been mostly absent for a long time because of political and religious oppression. Now they were called back by Divine destiny (Muslims should not be denying the hand of God in all of this as the concept of ‘qada’ is basic to our religious beliefs!) But the Arabs and Islam have their rights as well. Did Allah not tell us in the Quran that he made many nations-so that they would know each other?!  Bottom Line: the Arabs and the Jews need to make a just arrangement. Everyone outside of the Muslim and Jewish tribal world knows that! But these outsiders are not subject to the same collective, tribal ideologies and sentiments as the latter two.

 

  1. B) The Russia Ukraine Conflict

Russian Thought: Ukraine is not a real nation. They should be part of the Russian Empire as they were in the past

Ukrainian Thought: We are a sovereign country We want to be part of the Western world

 Reality: Russia and Ukraine have a lot in common. They are both adherents to the orthodox Church. They both have a long history of corruption and anti-Semitism. Even their languages sound similar. A suitable arrangement needs to be made that allows for their similarities and differences.

N.B. As a Canadian I think we have a workable model to present to the World-the arrangement between the English and the French Canadians who also have a lot in common and notable differences.(  For the naysayers, we will leave aside for now our treatment of the indigenous people which Canada is trying to come to terms with just as America is trying to come to terms with its history of slavery)

 

The Mass Deportations of Illegal Immigrants in America:

 

 Government Thought: We have far too many illegal immigrants in our country. Many, if not most of them, have criminal records. We need to get them out as soon as possible. We were elected to do that

 

Immigrant Defenders’ Thought

Many of us have been here for a long time. We have worked hard and raised our children here to build a new life. This mass deportation is cruel and unjust.

Reality:

For whatever reasons, America has allowed in more immigrants than they can manage. ( In Canada which has been more honest about this issue, if not more generous, we have no such problem. So America brought this upon themselves) Whatever the reasons, they are unlikely to be of the benevolent nature. Many were allowed in to furnish cheap labour or for a political calculus by the Democratic party who saw future left-wing voters. In any case, they are here. Now that the borders are more or less sealed, America needs to do whatever it can needs  to do about  deeportations in a manner that is judicious, law-abiding and humanitarian. Treating all immigrants prima facie as if they were criminals does a disservice both to the immigrants and to the traditions of the founding of America itself.

As you can see from these few examples, ideology, principles, beliefs with all the emotions that underpin them leads to more and more suffering.

The only solution possible is to observe Reality clearly. Once properly perceived, that Reality will lead to proper decision-making. May Allah help us all !

 

 

 

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Politics

“Lies,Damn Lies and Statistics”

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“Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics”: Multi-Disciplinary Debate

This is from a conversation with an old friend of mine-trained in the Epistemology of MBA school at McGill and Concordia University while I was being similarly brain-washed in  McGill’s medical school lol. See if you can follow the logic/illogic of it. I am responding here to his assertion that according to “the facts’ the Trump initiatives are not having as much effect on the economy as were predicted.

When I heard this hypothesis, I immediately heard the inner voice saying ”false” lol and started scanning my experiential  world and the first thing that came to mind was Vermont!

Just one example-the effect on Vermont ! I am sure there are many others-like scientists and hard-working federal employees who lost their jobs without justification and hard-working illegal immigrants trying to build a life in America. Much of this may not show up in the official figures. That’s why I don’t believe those figures are ” The Realty” In fact many of those figures are designed to hide reality rather than expose it! 

 

From AI!( verified by yours truly lol)

Yes, Vermont is experiencing a noticeable decline in Canadian visitors, impacting the state’s tourism and economy. This drop is attributed to a combination of factors, including political rhetoric and uncertainty surrounding tariffs. 

 

 

 

Reasons for the Decline:

  • Negative Political Climate:

President Trump’s rhetoric and trade disputes with Canada have created a negative perception among some Canadians, leading them to reconsider travel to the U.S. 

 Economic Concerns:

Potential tariffs and trade tensions have made some Canadians hesitant to spend money in the U.S., impacting spending habits and tourism. 

  • Shifting Travel Patterns:

Some Canadians are choosing to travel within their own country or to other destinations, rather than visiting Vermont. 

  • Reduced Cross-Border Traffic:

Official data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows a significant decrease in travelers crossing into Vermont from Canada, especially during peak travel periods. 

Impact on Vermont:

  • Tourism Revenue Decline:

Reduced Canadian tourism is hurting businesses, particularly in northern Vermont and towns near the border.

  • Reduced Spending:

Canadian credit card spending in Vermont has decreased significantly, impacting local businesses and economies.

  • Economic Downturn:

Tourism is a vital part of Vermont’s economy, and the loss of Canadian visitors is having a noticeable effect on the state’s overall economic health. 

That’s why, in my Epistemology, personal experience, anecdotes and even hearsay are much more significant than official figures. Wasn’t it one of our Yiddishe ancestors Benjamin Disraeli who talked of” lies, damn lies and statistics” lol Still relevant 150 years later!

 

PS I think you could do us all a service by doing a “deep dive”, as they call it, into many of these official economic statistics to see how they are jerrymandered and manipulated- most of them I suspect.

I am by no means an expert (as if that gave someone any credibility nowadays lol) but I remember hearing about how they generate unemployment statistics! They don’t count the underemployed (part-time people or people not working in the area for which they were trained) So a licensed engineer working as a pizza deliverer is considered fully employed?!  As is a part-time Taco Bell employee! And then they also don’t count those who have given up looking for employment-for whatever reason. Thus the statistics becomes very misleading at best.

So if I want to understand what is going on in employment I watch those people around me looking for jobs and see what happens.

Just ran into an old friend who was trained in heating and air-conditioning but was never able to find a job in that area despite being assured by the trade school he attended that there were jobs for ALL graduates. So he worked at slightly above minimum wage at a finance company for years. Then he lost the job and it took him 18 months and numerous applications to finally get a job as a greeter at Walmart! He seemed happy to get anything he could!

Then there was my Sufi student who entered the job market as an IT programmer. Our prime minister was touting the field and saying Quebec needed many more of them. But each time he applied there were 200 other applicants! Not exactly a sellers’ market lol

Where does that show up in the employment statistics?

I would be interested to see what you find if you really look seriously into how these statistics are generated. I think you will discover a lot of surprises-as I did when I first looked into medical studies and listened to others who had done likewise.

Let me complete my thought here. So, if we begin looking at the employment situation, and start with “the facts” lol( which is what we see on mainstream media all the time) we conclude “best employment situation ever! Lowest unemployment rate ever!” But if we look at it from my Epistemology (my experience and the many people I am in touch with) I would conclude “Difficult, perhaps very difficult employment situation”. Who is right lol? Can there be any doubt?! And then you ask : “Why do people not get it?! Because they are being lied to on a daily basis, since birth! It’s the lie of Empiricism. And it needs to be challenged over and over again if we are to break the spell!

 

Happy Trails to you lol, Joel Ibrahim AKA Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

Data!

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As opposed to the current consensus I see data as toxic! It clouds the heart ,dulls the spirit and stresses the mind. But we need some of it ,not nearly as much as the scientific mind-set thinks, in order to proceed.So I recommend doing what we did in psychopharmacology lol Using the lowest ,effective dose!I call that attitude “Essentialist” and that is where I stand Think about it.

Islam, Metaphysics, Politics, Psychology

Materialism-The Second Scourge of the Ummat

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Materialism: The Second Biggest Scourge within the Islamic Ummat

We have already written about the First Scourge- Islamism or Political Islam. This is the Second. In a way it is the deeper of the two and underpins the first one in terms of attitude. We shall explain this in the ensuing article.

This hadeeth was narrated by al-Tirmidhi (2352) from Anas (may Allah be pleased with him), according to whom the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “O Allah, cause me to live poor and cause me to die poor, and gather me among the poor on the Day of Resurrection.”

This hadith is not saheeh. It is considered gharib which means part of the chain has only one transmitter. That does not by any means mean that it is untruthful! And boy do the ulema have a problem with it- doing all kinds of intellectual acrobatics to not take the most obvious meaning of ”miskeen” which is poverty. So instead they say “miskeen” means humility which is a secondary meaning of the word!

Yet, they know well that the Prophet himself saws lived in poverty , died in poverty and said when he saws visited the heavens that most of the people there were from the poor folks.

So what’s the problem?! There seems to be a current within Islamic fiqh of wanting to justify wealth if not justify seeking it outrightly. Perhaps this is simply to distinguish themselves from the pious Christians who praised and practiced renunciation. But in that approach they seem to forget all of the teachings about greed and worldliness. Remember the four enemies?! One of them is ”dunniya” (worldliness) and a large part of this dunniya is about wealth.

The following sahih hadith should, in fact, close the argument!

Amr ibn Awf reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “By Allah, it is not poverty that I fear for you, but rather I fear you will be given the wealth of the world, just as it was given to those before you. You will compete for it just as they competed for it, and it will ruin you just as it ruined them.”

Or alternatively this hadith Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3158, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2961

One day he (Abdur Rahman Ibn Awf) heard the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) saying to him, “O lbn `Awf, you are a rich man, and you are going to crawl into Paradise. So lend to Allah in order to set your feet free.” Ever since he heard this advice from the Messenger of Allah, he started lending to Allah a goodly loan. He was being warned about the dangers of wealth.

Or from a previous Revelation…Jesus a.s. said  “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” from Matthew 5:3 in the Bible- part of the Beatitudes.

 So what is this materialism that is so endemic in the modern world- including amongst the Muslims? Ever noticed lol? The opulence of the lifestyle of The Saudi Royal family and the kingdoms in the Gulf. The great buildings and towers in that part of the world.The sultanat of Brunei and its petroleum resources. Qatar -its buildings, its institutions it’s attempts to join the Western intelligentsia with its financial perks  and it’s World Cup hosting. The list goes on and on! In this article we will look at three forms of materialism and its implications.

 

  • Obvious Outward Wealth

This is what we just mentioned. No one can miss it!  It is most obvious. And although people like Trump may love it and be obsessed by it, most Muslims are wary. They know the dangers of excessive wealth. The Quran is full of stories of previous empires that had such wealth and then crumbled-sometimes in one fell-swoop catastrophe.

 

  • Ideological Materialism

This is what we were talking about in the previous text about the scourge of Islamism or Political Islam. In this form of Ideology the belief is that by establishing a Muslim state i.e. outer Islam, people will submit and become good and pious by default! What Tarek Fatah calls the “Chasing the Mirage”. All the  historical evidence-think Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran -not to mention ISIS! -all those countries and movements that declared themselves  Islamic states and look at their records .Like the previous Materialistic philosophy, Marxism, it has all failed to live up to expectations. For those who need to be reminded Marxism was a form of Materialism, called Dialectical Materialism   It, too, believed in the state as the solution. In that case it called the State “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. And I think it is not unfair to call the Islamic state “The dictatorship of the ulema”. In fact in Iran they call it such “Velayat e Faqih.” (Governing by Jurisprudents)
There is an interesting corollary to this “Materialistic” philosophy. It is often, if not always, coupled to the ideology of Rationnalism. I have often been surprised to hear The Wahhabbis and more recently the Ikhwanis(Muslim Brotherhood) to claim to be the most Rational of Muslims. If they mean “most over-thinking”, “most hypercebral”,”most out of touch with the inner dimensions of Faith and spiritual experience”,then ,for sure lol, they are right. Sheikh Nazim liked to refer to these approaches as “mind-productions” and he taught us to distinguish them from truly sacred knowledge.

Materialists and Rationalists. What I call the “no-nur” people of Faith. Get me out of here!  Anecdote: I was once trapped in Amman by a group of Wahhabbi (Salafis)s who had invited me into their home for lunch.They were very critical of my sheikh of the time, Sheikh Nuh Keller, and of Sufism in general. At first I argued back but then I realized it was fruitless. So in one last attempt to affirm the Truth, I looked at the whole group and said; ”I don’t see any light in any of your faces! So how can I possibly accept your words?” And I ran out .What chutzpah! But I was proud of myself.

 

3)The most pernicious of all aspects of materialism and it’s real philosophical meaning-seeing only the outer (In Arabic that would be “thaheeri”)

Now Muslims are by no means unique in this outlook. We can see it in the atheists and the agnostics. We can see it in the science types (Philosophically called “scientism” or making science into a religion).We can see it in the data crunchers-the government officials, the news reports about polls and economic numbers, demographics, statistics. It is all around us -polluting our thinking as surely as burning coal pollutes the air!

But what form does it take in our religion?! Let us look at a few examples:

: The emphasis on outer form rather than inner essence. How many times during my Islamic career have I been corrected on details of ritualistic practice. ”You didn’t make sure the water went between your toes”, ”your ruku didn’t have enough of an angle to it”. “Your hair is too long”, ”.Your mustache isn’t clipped enough” etc. etc. Not once, not even once, has someone ,outside of sheikh Nazim lol, said to me “your face is illumined” OR the contrary “you are looking darker than usual today” Not once. They don’t notice. They don’t notice the scholars with “nur” in their faces and the scholars (more of them actually) with darkness. Who needs to notice that when you can check how well their nails or their mustaches have been clipped lol

: Then there is the obsession with the hijab! Is it perfect? Does it cover every single strand of hair? Is any of the neck exposed?. And in that obsessional vigilance, the fact that the perfect hijabi lady is exposing every curve in her body below the neck by her tight-fitting clothing is completely bypassed So what is the “hayat” (modesty) that our religion speaks of. Too subtle for many. Too inner a concept.

: And the marriage negotiations. Does he have a good job? Does he own his own apartment? Does the family have money? Is he tall enough? More materialism. How many Muslim ladies have I counselled whose family foolishly pushed them into a marriage that they themselves felt was wrong, because the man had financial stability?!

When I was living in Jordan, I rented an apartment upstairs of a man who had 3 daughters in their mid to late thirties. When I asked them why they were not married, they said their father required their suitors to have a good job, an apartment that he owned and $25,000 in U.S. cash. Very few people, outside of the Royal family lol, could meet such conditions.

On an alternative note, when we were honeymooning in India , we met a family with five unmarried daughters! They claimed their father was too busy with dhikr to arrange marriages for them?! But they seemed quite happy in comparison to the Jordanian ones. I guess they knew that they had avoided a lot of grief lol

And yet, our religion is full of the “inner” in its doctrine and language. In fact, the Quran begins in surat al Baqarah by Allah saying the believers are those who believe in the “ghaib”( the unseen). There is “Iman” (Faith), ”khushua” (sacred humility in prayer), ”tawakuul” (trust in God) .

Particularly in Sufism, we find terms about the inner. We talk of “hal” (spiritual states), ”afiya” (inner well-being), “basirat” (inner vision ) and “samiyya” ( inner hearing) and “fuad( the subtle feelings in the heart), “muhabbat( love)  and “sir”(the mystical secrets). These terms exist all through the sacred texts. But who needs that if you have measurements-concrete, empirical realities  that you can rely on- just like the Materialist scientists?!

God help us to recover our souls and spirits!

 

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Uncategorized

The Epistemology Hierarchy

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“Many scientific-minded persons have even sacrificed their religious and philosophical leanings for fear of uncontrolled subjectivism. By way of compensation for the loss of a world that pulsed with our blood and breathed with our breath, we have developed an enthusiasm  for facts-mountains of facts  far beyond any single individual’s power to survey. We have the pious hope that this incidental ( or intentional for that matter) accumulation of facts will form a meaningful whole. ”  C.G. Jung-Psychology and the East 

At least one intellectual amongst thousands is prescient and get’s it! Kudos to you C.G.!

And to the readers, don’t get scared by  esoteric Greek terms like Epistemology. I wouldn’t use them, myself, unless they were irreplacable – which is the case here!

Epistemology is officially the “Science of Knowledge” .What it really refers to is how we access Reality i.e. how do we figure out what is really going on!. And mostly we are doing it the wrong way! The social consensus is that the way to do this is to gather as much “data” as possible and then to analyse the data via statistical computation and logical analysis. Wrong! This is a very unreliable approach- advanced by the believers in Empiricism and “evidence-based ” conclusions”-the Materialists!

Ever hear that term “evidence-based” lol? It is thrown at us at every turn of the road of knowledge: “Evidence-based ,evidence-based” as if it were the holy grail of Truth. And not only by the bad guys. The good guys like Pierre Kory and Paul Marik and Peter McCullough and Paul Thomas, all of whom I love and respect ALL use it as if it were part of the Ten Commandments. In this article I am going to turn the entire Epistemological edifice on its head and argue that we are mostly going about this the wrong way and I will try to show you why that is and how we can correct course.

So let me explain to you why this is a faulty protocol and what the options are. Firstly  we have to realize that we are socially conditioned  from the git-go, especially in our educational  institutions  to privilege outward knowledge – also known as “being  objective”. And we are taught to be biased against the subjective. And the “subjective ” is denounced as ” subjective”,  “unreliable” ” “anecdotal” ,”unscientific” and all the other curse words our Empiricist thinkers can come up with!

Philosophically this approach is known as Empiricism or Positivism or Philosophical Materialism and it is probably the greatest impediment to finding Truth in the  modern world. For those of you who are scratching their heads at this point and wondering what I am talking about, let me repeat. Our greatest enemy is NOT subjectivity at this point. Our greatest enemy is objectivity, the outward, the measurable! 

 

.As we begin to investigate this denunciation of the subjective, we will see that, actually, the subjective is the more reliable. In fact the ultimate knowledge, the essential mystical knowledge- Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana, Fana,  Marifat-whatever tradition you choose to formulate it in-  is subjective. The ultimate Reality is not the “it”(  (third person, object ) but rather the “I”( first person subject.)  Remember the great Vedantic statement.” Tat Tvam Asi” (I am that.) The end-goal of ALL quests for knowledge is the “I” !  The subject reins supreme. Awesome once you get it

Given this realization how do we locate reality with this new understanding ? Here is the hierarchy!

1) Personal experience first!

I am surely going to be accused of heresy here by my scientific colleagues lol. But that’s O.K. with me. I am much more interested in truth then “political correctness” of any kind-whether political, medical or spiritual.

In fact we all know this. Whenever something is told to us, we check back with our personal experience and see if it fits. Often enough, that is all we need to do! We have just been coerced into believing that our experience is unreliable and we should believe the experts! I think the Covid fiasco has led most of us to begin questioning that trope!

So as to bring  all of this back to the ground level, let me give you one concrete  example where both the “good guys” and the “bad guys ” got it wrong- the question of masks! Even the ultimate villain of the Covid debacle-Fauci- flip flopped on this one. Why did they get it so wrong? Because they didn’t have any quality studies that showed positive efficacy for masks. The fact that Orientals have been using that method of protection for decades didn’t matter. The fact that doctors and nurses were pleading for that form of protection(Remember: “PPE. We need PPE!”) in the hospitals and still use masks to protect themselves in various situations didn’t matter! But -no good studies, their ultimate Epistemology , told them they were useless!

So here comes the subjective. That annoying, irritating, contrarian reality of personal experience, to the rescue. I got Covid 5 times during the pandemic! Each time I was NOT wearing a mask! And I never got sick while wearing one. I also remember the famous Harvard professor of Law Alan Dershowitz  showing his more or less airtight mask on Fox News and saying that despite having several risk factors and flying all around the country, he, too never got sick with Covid( He was clearly more disciplined than me about his mask-wearing behaviour lol). For me THAT is a data point-in fact an example of the second level of Epistemology-the Anecdote!

Another example, in a different dimension: the n.d.e.rs ( near-death experiencers)..Once they have seen the other side there is no  longer any doubts. Any of the  “scientific” attempts  to discount their experience through neuroscience, neurotransmitters, E.E.G. results, doppler ultrasounds, cerebral hypoxia, endorphins leave them cold They have experienced Reality! No amount of neuroscience can talk them out of it! No amount of theological postulates can change their beliefs. The Sufis call it Haqq al Yaqin( The Certainty of Truth). Once you have it , you cannot turn back. And “science” as we know it, looks so pitiful from that vantage point!

2) Anecdotes!

Those most maligned of entities in the “scientific ” mind-set.! ” “Oh, that’s only anecdotal” they like to chime. Wrong ,again! Anecdotes are awesome. If we look at our own experience, we use them all the time. A friend says: “I went to the Bahamas for vacation this year .And I loved it”. No more Miami and Cuba this winter. Bahamas it is. Someone says to an eager male “My wife has a friend from work that I think would make a good partner for you”. We’re off and running lol. No obsessional searches on Tourism websites for the best winter getaways. No joining up the latest dating app and scrolling through hundreds of profiles(the scientific comprehensive”(another dirty word in my vocabulary). We’re into it. Let’s go! 

Let me give you a couple of other examples. When the possible link between vaccines and autism came out, I was sceptical at first. I searched through the Pubmed literature and could find nothing compelling. I even, mistakenly, told my sheikh of the time who had asked me the question that I didn’t see anything to worry about. Mistake which I tried to correct several years later. By that time many of his murids had figured it out themselves, so they didn’t need my advice. Then a patient came to see me .She had a husband who was in all likelihood a functional autistic. But her son was a more serious non-verbal screaming, head-banging type and that was the reason she needed therapy.

She told me  the following: ” I knew my son was not well the moment he was born. So it’s not from the vaccines. But I participate in a support group for mothers of autistic children .In that group we are 14 mothers. our of them swear that their babies were completely normal until they had one of the many vaccines on the schedule. They regressed quickly within a few days and have never been the same since !” 4/14! Bazinga! End of story. Over the years despite all the manipulation and pressure and gas-lighting the research has proved this to be true. But they are still trying to hide the reality behind vacuous statements like “Vaccines are Safe and Effective” Liar ,liar, pants on fire lol  Instead the institutions in place are trying to set fire to the practices of the doctors who have discovered the Truth!

So we now have RFK jr.( Secretary of Health) who  has stated that by August, through honest. scientific analysis, he will have the answer?! But we already know! Listen to the mothers, listen to the clinically astute doctors, listen to the aware teachers. Listen to the highly credible Dr. Andrew Wakefield, one of the first to discover the connection. We already know! I get that RFK jr. has to prove it-for political reasons! I get all the forms of objections he is receiving and btw will continue to receive. But we already know! All this “scientific” mental gymnastics is unnecessary! But we are not there yet in our Epistemology!

Another anecdote. The O.J. trial- for those of you who have been around for that long! Seemed quite clear from the beginning. But when I heard the following anecdote it was “Bazinga” again. Or for the science buffs who love Archimedes it was Eureka lol.! When a long-time friend of O.J. heard the news of the murder he exclaimed without a moment’s thought:” He finally did it!”. Case closed, for me anyway. T hen the long, long trial in which the lawyers managed to confuse the jury with more and more “facts” and he was acquitted! What a travesty. What a disillusioning proof against “due process”. Due process is a sham  actually. We can see that with the Trump deportations. We can see that with the poor black and Hispanic people who are defended by public defenders who have neither the time nor often the capacity to do a proper defense. And we can see that with the length of time it took them to catch up with Jeffrey Epstein of more recently with Pudd Diddy!

Third anecdote: When Covid had barely started in the middle of January 2020, Luc Montagnier the Noble-prize winning virologist looked at the gene sequence and said; “no doubt! This has to come from a lab”. That was it! Case Closed . Then the entire French medical establishment attacked him, as they did Didier Raoult ,one of the first successful treaters of Covid. “Oh, he’s old ,demented beyond his prime.” Liar, liar, pants on fire”. At that point the whole world was on fire-thanks to American “gain of function” research that was transferred to China. No, not the Chinese Virus, the American one, Trump. Reproduced in China like everything else-good or bad- that comes from America. A pirated copy of the genetically transformed Corona virus-made in the U.S.A.! No tariffs required lol

As you can see, it’s quite simple actually or as Erving Polster used to say to us in his Gestalt Therapy seminars: “It’s simple ,but it’s not easy”. Right on Erving! When I told my Nobel-track science cousin that for me three credible anecdotes were worth more than 100 double-blind studies, she said she was not shocked .But, I’m sure she was! Denial is one of the most toxic wea[pons in the plots of the villains. And denial is endemic in our so-called democratic society- which is becoming more and more authoritarian. Reality that is also being denied!

3)Reports on the Ground  We will use medical contexts here although it can equally well apply to many other situations- like business and travel and spiritual seeking. So during Covid there were people, admittedly a minority and more likely nurses than doctors, who saw what was going on. These reports “on the ground” have to be from people with good observational skills and a non-ideological mind-set. The “vaccines are safe and effective” people, the “follow the protocol or the algorithm” people, the obedient rule -following people(read doctors lol) will not do! .But if we can find these fore-runners ,we can get valuable information. Unfortunately ,most of the people on the front lines are already “brain-washed” by their education. The “We need large-scale double blind randomized trials confirmed by the Cochrane Data-base ” people are of no use here. By the time they arrive at their conclusions, the crisis is over! And that is exactly what happened and is still happening to some extent with Covid. The others, the clear-minded observers are at risk to lose their jobs and their professions, unfortunately. and that adds in another layer of complexity!

4  ) Using Basic Principles of Science .Like no vaccines during pregnancy-an age-old principle that was completely overthrown during the Covid hysteria.

But let me give you a simpler example of how this works. I was at a Passover seder at my parents house when one of their Christian friends started coughing spasmodically. The conversation went like this

“What’s going on, Henry”

“I have this terrible cough and none of the doctors can figure out what is going on”

“So what did they do about it?’

One of the specialists I went to see had seen an article where this kind of cough could be caused by Hiatus Hernia. And so I was operated on! A four-hour long surgery that took me weeks, if not months, to recuperate from!”

“Did it help?” I ]enquired. “Not at all All it did was give me digestive problems on top of my cough”

” Look Henry, cough is a respiratory symptom. Let me refer you to the Royal Edward Chest Hospital” (too good a service for our medicare system so terminated and merged with another inefficient service at our superhospital since).Subject for another article!

So the next week he went. Was seen quickly, was diagnosed with asthma! Given anti-asthmatic meds and his symptoms were gone! Simple biology. Cough does not come from the gut. It comes from the Respiratory system. Problem solved.

5) Scientific Studies- Last AND least in my Epistemology-despite the social consensus! Why is that? I have written a more elaborate piece on this in my article( on this blog) called “Science, Scientism and Studyism” -the latter being my own term for The Cult of Studies lol Here is a brief resumé of the problems with studies!

Now “the good guys” -RFKjr,  Paul Marik , Peter McCullough would like us to believe that the only problem with scientific studies is corruption of one form or another-whether it be financial or academic ambition or political bias. But I beg to differ! So let us go through the different problems and pitfalls  in “the scientific” approach.

  1. The initial intellectual bias of the authors. When I was asked to teach a course at McGill in research in psychiatry I found an article by a brilliant researcher who showed that in the previous ten years none of the most read papers came to a conclusion opposite to what one would have expected knowing their track record in academia! ( unfortunately I have not been able to relocate this article but for the curious you are welcome to research it and get back to me .It was probably published in the late 70’s or early 80’s as I taught this course in the mid-80’s. So this problem has been going on for a long time! And there are no signs of improvement. In fact, it seems that scientific fraud has been increasing rather than decreasing!

2) The hidden and less hidden financial and academic motivations of the companies, institutions and universities financing this research. (Btw this is what most of “the good guys” are focused on. Not realizing that there are deeper ,more intrinsic problems in the scientific model) Everyone knows how hard it is to get financing for studies about non-patentable, natural remedies. But come out with a new class of pharmaceuticals(Try GLP1 agents for example lol) and the money is flowing feely.

3)The constant bugaboos of Statistical Analysis-selection bias and confounding variables- errors you will find in even the most sophisticated of studies published in the most prestigious of peer-reviewed studies. One of the best examples of this is the waves of propaganda against benzodiazepines. In most of the studies the benzo group is already more at risk than the comparator .This is very important clinically  as the alternative (often SSRIs) have considerably more troubling side effects. Yet they are still “the gold standard” in treating anxiety.

4) The law of Diminishing returns in data collection. Just as The New Age thinkers would remind us; “More is not better” Despite what the statisticians tell us! The prestigious medical journal Lancet had to retract a hydroxychloroquine study when it became evident that the data was not only faulty. It was fraudulent. But when the editors saw the huge numbers of cases reported ,they became as excited as an adolescent boy seeing big breasts for the first time! How could they resist lol?!

5) Sophisticated randomized, double-blind studies are VERY expensive. We can only study in that matter a very small selection of decisions that medical doctors face in their practices on a daily basis. It is NOT a reliable source of information for most of our practice.

6 )The studies are statistical. But medical practice is individual-case by case. If a medication is 60% effective, like many of our antidepressants, how do I know whether my patient will be in the 60% or the 40%. And how do I even know how well she or he corresponds to the treatment group in the studies which may have excluded all kinds of comorbidities that my own patient has?!

We could easily go on and on. But let me summarize by saying that we need to seriously challenge the Cult of Science. It has brought us some benefit but also MUCH harm.( If you need proof, think of all the deaths being caused by missiles and explosives and drones -all developed by science! Also almost every single carcinogen in the Environment-from glyphosate, to pesticides to radio-frequency waves  and other EMFs as well as formaldehyde and other chemicals in our construction materials was  all developed by science! So be sceptical. Don’t join the Cult! Think it through .Develop your inner vision, your Ear of Truth and your heartfelt intuitions and see where that leads you  I am available if you need further guidance. Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

Important Addendum: I realized after completing the first draft of this article that I had forgotten a very important source of Knowledge- Trusted Sources! That is largely because I was focused on medicine and science. After the Covid debacle, there were very few sources I could consider reliable .Even the most prestigious scientific journals like Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine were playing games with the data. Let alone the so-called authorities like Fauci and the heads of CDC and FDA. Nothing reliable there!

However, in the domain of spirituality, we cannot ignore the real sources. We cannot rely only on ourselves. When I confronted one of the major players at the annual FLCCC (now IMA) conference with his lack of spiritual content, he gingerly  took out a small cross from beneath his undershirt and said: “I have a personal relationship with Jesus” .” That’s not enough, Chris” I said .We need a teacher, an intermediary. I forgot toi mention that even Jesus needed someone to initiate him-John the Baptist in his case! .Our Prophet Mohammed saws was invariably accompanied by the angel Gabriel on his journey. And Moses had his brother Aaron. So bottom line, despite the modernist agenda of individualism, we can’t do it on our own- not in this domain for sure!

That doesn’t mean we can always trust the Sources either. The books of Moses were only written down several hundred years after the revelation, the Christian texts that we have are written in Greek-not the language of Jesus. And even in Islam with the most reliable and authentic of the books ,the Quran, the scholars and the translators play around with its meaning in a way that is distorting and misleading.

Our spiritual teachers that we love and trust are themselves fallible as well. On my own path, my first Sufi Muslim teacher turned out to be breaking many rules of Shariah with the female murids. My second teacher Bawa Muhyideen was so transcendent in his state that his worldly advice, especially about marriage, was mostly wrong.S heikh Nazim ,who is probably the person I learnt most from in this life and carried the most palpable form of Love I have ever seen, was notoriously bad in his medical advice lol. And my last teacher ,who was obviously in a very high spiritual rank, was unable to break out of his ethnic background to be able to advise  people from other backgrounds on their path.

So even there, with some of the most spiritually advanced beings on the planet, we need to exercise our judgment and discernment if we are to avoid painful consequences. May Allah guide us and protect us! Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Modern Living

“Judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judged”

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Judge not, that ye be not Judged”

The Heresy of Moral relativism!

Triggering Event: I was in a local commercial establishment discussing the relationship problems a faithful Christian was having with her Muslim ethnic partner. I began to describe the characteristic peculiarities of that particular ethnicity when she interrupted me with the famous:”we shouldn’t be judging and Judge not that ye be not judged” from the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus.

I knew something was wrong with that reaction but didn’t know how to frame it .And then it came to me(Despite never having been a Christian I do know a fair amount about that religion and it’s history lol).”Wait a minute. What about when Jesus knocked over the tables of the sellers at the Temple and said: “It is written, ”My house shall be called a House of prayer but you are making it into a robber’s den” “Was he not judging?! And how about when he saved the harlot from being stoned saying;” He who is without sin throw the first stone( judging all the people around).But better still in the follow-up that most people are unaware of he added” You are free to go but sin no more”! Is that not judgment?! She was stunned into silence. No one had ever questioned that statement to her before. And many, many others are in the same situation!

As I was returning home I realized there was much more. What he had said to his principal opponents the Pharisees.” “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26). Is there no judgment there.?!

We have a similar problem in Islam. People turn the Islamic idea “Husn al Dhann”(Having a good opinion ) into a prohibition of thinking bad or correcting others. But we know at the same time that a central principle of our religion is “Amr bil Maroof wa Nehi al Munkar” (enjoining the good and prohibiting evil).How can we do that if we cannot even notice and affirm the evil of something?!

So what is going on here?! On the most rudimentary level of explanations, we can say that “religious” people are cherry-picking their scriptures .So the Christians are choosing one statement of Jesus and ignoring many aspects of his behaviour. And the Muslims are ignoring all the faults of human beings that Allah underlines in the Quranitself..Allah says that man is disputatious, often corrupt, impatient,weak,  blind deaf and dumb etc., etc. Are we to ignore all of that in favour of one statement about “having a good opinion” that mostly refers to Allah himself, not man.

So contrary to that cherry-picked “judge not that ye be not judged” we MUST develop judgment and discernment. Otherwise how can we decide what is good and evil-how we must behave. Without judgment,we find ourselves in a moral wasteland-like much of the modern world!”It’s all good ,man”. ”Chill out.Don’t hassle it”. That is the language of modernisn-of moral relativism. If the person wants it and likes it, then it must be good. Everyone needs to develop their own code of ethics. Really?!

A telling anecdote.Many years ago, when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth lol,I was a camp counsellor One of my associates who I became friendly with, let’s call him Paul for now, was a young fellow with a cheerful personality who played guitar and looked like Bob Dylan.We lost contact after camp and I didn’t hear from him for awhile .Later,I met a friend of ours who said to me: ”Did you hear, Paul is daed” I was in shock! “What happened?” I asked. He then relayed the following story.Paul got caught selling drugs and was facing trial for the offense .His father was a Superior Court Judge in Quebec so he was hugely emabarassed! At the time he was living in a Buddhist collective. I think you get the type by now.

So one day he went and bought a large knife. And in the spirit of the Samurai,I guess, he plunged it into his heart and bled to death.The father was called to the scene to witness his dead son surrounded by his own blood.One of the Buddhist students there,surely in the throes of youthful foolishness ,then said:” Don’t hassle it man .It’s only corporal existence?! Talk about misinterpreting scriptures?! I guess you can do it with any tradition!

So what is this judgment that we so are in need of? It is, in fact,the basis of ALL moral and spiritual development. It is our moral and behavioural compass.It is what Adam and Eve were taught from thev tree of the knowledge of good and evil(Biblical version).Necessary for earthly existence-but not in heaven.Without it we are reduced to the level of animals-probably worse as our sadistic and perverse elements are beyond the animals capacity.We pray that God/Allah give us good judgment and the strength to exercise it in all areas of our lives! Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Politics

The Middle East-Read the Signs (Ayat)

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The Middle East -Reading the Signs (ayat)

Over the entry of the zowiyya of Sheikh Abdullah Daghestani r.a. in Damascus is a sign in Arabic that says: ”Learn to read the signs”.
During our last Quran study group, in which we were looking at Surat al Imran ayats 90-120, the word “ayat” came up at least eight times. Yet in the 60 pages of commentary in the  voluminous tafseer of “Marifatul Quran” I could not find a single comment on the significance of the term “ayat’!

Yes, we know ayats refers to verses of the Quran. But it’s meaning is far wider than that. Alternative meanings according to the Arabic dictionary are “wonder’ and “marvel”. So , yes, ayats are a form of miracle A message from our Lord as to what is really going on. But the scholars and the ummat seem to prefer to minimize their importance. I have yet to hear a Jumma khutbah in which the idea is mentioned.

Now, in the Western world, we have a different conversation. I was taught in public school (The McDonalds of education lol) that if the weather was consistent with what was going on in the plot, it was “sympathetic fallacy”.i.e it was just a literary trick and had no reality to it! So essentially the academics were ‘dissing’ the significance of signs. What else could we expect from them?! Other skeptical people would talk about “coincidence” and “superstition”-so seeing ayats becomes a form of ignorance-primitiveness.The only exception I know of, and perhaps one of the principal figures responsible for opening our minds to this idea was C.J. Jung-the famous Swiss psychoanalyst. He called this “synchronicity”- much to the dismay of his colleagues and especially his teacher-Herr Sigmund. ”Poppycock”, “magical thinking”, “superstition” all kinds of derogatory comments directed at this discovery.

Then along came James Redfield and his book “The Celestine Prophecy” and people started paying attention again.. He received these teachings, apparently, from a Shaman in Peru. And Shamanism was just gaining popularity and credibility in the Western world. So it became “cool” once again to talk about “signs”. No longer just the province of psychics, clairvoyants and astrologers.

For Muslims we have Surat 41:53: “We will show them our signs in the horizons and within themselves”- Should the Muslims not be paying attention?! What got me started on this question, once again, is the current conflict in the Middle East! The signs are everywhere! The first people that should be in a position to read them are the Muslims! Although it is highly likely that the concept exists in the Bible,. I don’t remember it being covered in Christian or Jewish teachings. It is certainly not a central theme of Sunday mass or of Rabbis speeches on the Sabbath. So where are the Muslims on this issue?! Not to be seen-especially if it involves Palestine!

Before we get into the specifics of the current signs in the Middle East, let us do what the psychoanalysts recommend and interpret the defenses first.! What prevents us from seeing the signs and then acting on them? Let us look at some examples.

1- Desire. A woman (or man for that matter) falls in love with a member of the opposite sex. She (let’s use the female example here) sees early signs of aggression in the potential mate- as well as  selfishness. Whenever she proposes an alternative idea to him, he gets easily upset. He shows up late for every date-usually he has some lame excuse like the traffic or an “important” discussion with a friend. The signs are everywhere but she goes with the desire (he turns her on)! Mistake!

2- Plans. On my first trip to Europe with my medical school friend, Alan, we met a couple of American girls in the south of Italy who looked really rattled. I asked: ’What happened?”One of the ladies said: ”we got a lift from some men in a car and they assaulted us. I knew we shouldn’t have gotten into the car, as they looked shady to begin with” said one of them.  “Then why did you accept the lift?” I asked. ’Well, we had an itinerary and we didn’t want to be late for the next stage of the journey”. Very common mistake-following the plan rather than the reality

3-Belief Systems and Ideology A Muslim man shows up for a psychotherapy session in obvious pain. ”What is going on?” I ask.” I am having very intense pain in my knee” “You shouldn’t be here” I say “You need an orthopedist, not a psychiatrist at this point. Let me see if I can locate one” “But I want a Muslim orthopedist” he says.” No, I respond sharply.” You need a competent orthopedist. If you want Muslim teaching you can go to the Imam at the mosque. But what you need now is a reliable joint and bone doctor”

4_ Excuses, excuses. When someone refuses to pay attention to the signs, they often have excuses-highly rationalized excuses.  Yes, I know this guy is irritable but perhaps he is just nervous as we are just starting to get to know each other”. “Yes, I know I am too sick to travel but I planned this trip a long time ago, so I am going ahead with it.”” Yes, everyone told me not to go ahead with this relationship (sometimes the signs are screaming at you lol) but I want to go ahead with it anyway.

P.S. Another synchronicity. As I was writing this article I heard a documentary on the radio about the Quebec city bridge collapse in 1907. 75 workers were killed, mostly indigenous people,33 from the local community in Kahnawake near Montreal. The workers had noticed that their rivets were not holding and some of them had noticed bends in the iron. ”No problem” said the engineers(the rationalists in any building project!)Who cares about the signs when the plans that appear feasible are present. The result of these “oversights” (good word lol. Looking over the Reality) can be fatal ,as in this case!!

By now, you are probably asking:” What does all of this have to do with the Middle East?! So here we go

The Jews had been returning to the Holy Land all through the 19th Century. By the mid 1800s they were the majority in Jerusalem. And this accelerated after Theodore Herzl’s call for a nation in 1897 and then again after the Balfour Declaration in 1918.. There were probably tensions already in the 19th century between Jews and Arabs but the first large-scale violent event occurred in 1921 with the Jaffa riots- where 47 Jews and 48 Arabs were killed .Interesting statistic btw.Equal numbers of death.The Palestinian cause has been so badly managed that in recent times the proportion is more like 10 times the amount of Arabs killed and in the current conflict in Gaza it is approaching 40 times .What progress?!

We are now more than 100 years into this conflict! During this 100-year period, the Arabs have lost three wars- 1948, 1967, and 1973; they have had thousands of casualties, now more or less doubled during the current conflict in Gaza, lost much territory and underwent unimaginable amounts of tragedy and misery. Yet, nowhere are there indications that they are reading the signs! Instead, they are doubling down in terms of violence and hatred. This is certainly NOT the sunnat of our Prophet saws who went from victory to victory including over the Jewish tribes in the area! Time to say: “ Our approach is not working”! Instead, what we hear is “From the river to the sea” i.e. “Get rid of them”. Hasn’t worked for 100 years but no reason to reconsider!

To keep this within the Islamic perspective, think of the trajectory of the early Muslims. As soon as they were given Divine permission to fight, they were mostly victorious. They won at Badr with the help of angelic forces and were on the verge of winning at Uhud when some of their soldiers broke rank- a painful lesson for the community but one well-taken. After that, there were mostly victories, expanding numbers of converts, expanding territory. Almost the perfect opposite of what has been happening to the Palestinians. I have yet to hear of anecdotes of angels helping out Hamas and Islamic Jihad. God forbid!

And why might this be?! My first response would be:” They are not following the signs”. Instead, they are following their mental images, their desires. ” From the river to the sea” they repeat. Then they show us maps with no Israel on it, just Palestine. Sorry guys, that is NOT the Reality-maybe in your wishful imagination but not on the ground. And on the ground is the Will of Allah, whether you like it (which clearly you don’t) or not.

Now on the Jewish side, they, too are NOT reading the signs. For them it is more difficult as they seem to be succeeding?! They have won all the wars and suppressed all the uprisings! They have built an economically prosperous, modern society. And they have largely maintained a functional democracy! Yet ,they live in constant fear (the inner signs) of terrorism, of attacks from all sides, including Hizbollah in the north. There is increasing opposition within their own country and abroad to their land grabs in East Jerusalem and the West bank and the country is becoming increasingly divided politically-except paradoxically during war time. So they are not really doing well.

So what is their excuse? They keep citing “anti-Semitism” as the reason. But that ,too, is an excuse. Why the anti-Semitism? Are they not feeding it?! Is there not more and more animosity to their cause, including amongst their allies in America? They too need to read the signs or they will be heading to their own “nakba”.

The reader would now be entitled to ask me how I read the signs lol. Ok.I will oblige. The Jews returning to the Holy Land is part of Divine Destiny. Theodore Herzl himself saw Moses in a vision approving of his mission. Many of the Christians have come to the same conclusion. Even the Islamic hadith that Hamas likes to use in a hateful way about Muslims killing Jews in the end of time, implies that the Jewish people have returned. Otherwise the Muslims would have no-one to kil! .Is this hadith prescriptive as Hamas would like to suggest? I beg to differ. Rather it is predictive, Prophetic if you wish, of exactly what is already happening. The question is :”can we prevent future death and destruction?” And I believe the answer is “yes”.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” as the saying goes to conclude what the signs are indicating IMHO. All the forces outside the principal combatants have the same idea. After 4000 years of tribal conflict the Jews and Arabs have to arrive at a peace agreement that will honour the rights of both sides. We are no longer living in a world where you can wipe out the other tribe with impunity! There have been many proposed agreements in the past-1937,1947,1951,1980,2006 etc, etc. The Jews have often accepted them, the Arabs have consistently refused- preferring their wishful, nationalist agenda without accommodating the other side. But things are starting to change. First was Egypt and then Jordan who were willing to compromise for peace-despite the protestations of the Palestinians. And now there is the UAE and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So some Arab states are coming to their senses and realizing that peace has all kinds of advantages and war only benefits the prideful and the self-destructive. We are not that far away!

At this point, probably the greatest obstacle to peace is Iran-a country run as a cult of conflict and self-destruction ever since the advent of Ayatollah Khomeini (“Death to America. Death to Israel”) However, if the Jews and Arabs are able to arrive at an agreement that satisfies all the other parties, the Iraninas should be sidelined. They are, for now, like a parasite that feeds on the illness in the host agent. Once the agent is healthy, the parasite either leaves or dies. And perhaps the people of Iran ,most of whom dislike their own government, will end up replacing them. Inshallah.

I hope that helps open your mind and gives you hope for the future. Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim

 

Islam, Metaphysics, Modern Living

The Problem of Shirk

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The Problem of Shirk (Idolatry))

Especially relevant in the light of the current chaos at university campuses

Each of the major religions has an idea of what is the greatest sin. For Christianity it is pride. For Buddhism ( I particularly like this one!) it is ignorance. And for Islam it is “shirk”!

Now what is shirk? The official translation is “making partners with Allah”. But somehow that translation doesn’t quite work. After all ,who goes into business with God?! Maybe a few priests and rabbis and Imams lol but that is another matter. So what ‘shirk” really means is setting up other priorities in one’s life-other than God. After all, doesn’t the Bible itself tell us : ”You must love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy soul”( Matthew 22:37-39) Well, most people don’t do that! -people from all the different faiths. So there is a problem!

And why is that?! Usually because they have other loves, other priorities-sometimes conscious ones and sometimes unconscious. So let us look at two categories of “shirk”.

Obvious Shirk

There are a few obvious forms of shirk-ones that are easy to detect and easy to denounce:

1-The first is love of money and material goods. This is the most commonly denounced one. I like to call it “economic paranoia”-where everything bad comes down to greed. As was said in the famous quote by president Bush, the elder: ”It’s the economy stupid”. So we get the all too common refrain ; ”Why did America go into Iraq-For the oil”. “Why have the doctors in Western countries been acting like fools during the Covid. It’s the money” Supposedly that answers everything. However ,I like to remind people, especially Christians, that greed is one of the 7 cardinal sins!  There are six others to be alert to.

Then again, for some people, it IS all about the money. And that is indeed a big problem.Now this “greed shirk” has a number of extensions which sound kosher-like “financial planning” for individuals and “GDP enhancement” for governments. They sound virtuous But scratch the surface and that too often comes down to greed!

2_ Then there is Power and Social Status. You can ask yourselves why there are so many people running for electoral office. Do they not see what a terrible job that is? And they often use the excuise that it is for “public service” which may be true-but only for a minority as far as I can see. For example, in the Covid vaccine debacle, there has only been one politician in America, Senator Ron Johnson, standing up for the Truth. All the others, many who must be aware of what is going on, are silent.They don’t want to jeopardize their position!

3_ Nationalism. It is rampant everywhere-American nationalism(“we are the greatest country ever”!)  Really?; Zionism( “only the Jewish people count”) ;.Arab nationalism(we see where that has led to in the Middle East) and locally French-Canadian nationalism( as long as you speak French, you’re good! As if lol). People with the least bit of insight and objectivity have seen through this one.

But then there are the more subtle forms of idolatry-one’s that whole swaths of people, if not the entire world, have embraced. They seem commendable, but once you scratch the surface, you see the corruption.

Hidden Forms of Shirk

1-The Cult of the Intellect– Of all the forms of idolatry ,this is probably the most potent and the most insidious one..This “cult’ is based on idealizing and idolizing the human mind. The Buddhists and Hindus have been onto this problem for a very long time and developed forms of meditation to get beyond it. But the three major Western religions have bought into it” whole hog”(pun intended!).Ever since the time of the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle but many others, spread their unholy messages and were translated into Latin and Greek and Arabic, the scholars of the Western traditions have been imbibing this contamination -often without realizing it. Even great Talmudic scholars and Islamic ones like Al Ghazzali, have drunk the kool-aid. Al Ghazzali, despite his critique of philosophers for not believing in Revelation, then goes onto say that Logic is a valid science. They have even integrated it ( as” mantiq”) into the Isalamic sciences! Where did they get that from?! Where can you find that in the Quran and sunnat? Do they not get the wisdom in the fact that our Prophet saws was unlettered. No! They are all people of the Western Enlightenment” which is actually “Endarkment”

So we can see this cult in our Universies, in our so-called “Objective Science” , in our government institutions. And many,many people have integrated it into their personal lives-often at great expense to themselves and the people around them!

2-Relationship: No, this is definitely NOT relationship with God, but usually refers to intimate partners. P.S. I am in the midst of attending a summit on Zoom called “Healing Relationships” led by Terry Real,who I greatly respect as a psychologist- but definitely not as a spiritual teacher.

The extreme example of this cult of relationship may well be the Hollywood Romance but there are many, many more subtle variants.

So we get politicians resigning to spend more time with their families. They are probably lying as they have learnt to do in Democratic politics but that aside. It is now considered acceptable to give up your vocation, your life mission if you wish, in favour of your family and relationships. Men have been cowed into submission (ever noticed lol) and women empowere4d into tyranny-all in the name of relationships!

3 – Family. Now this is particularly noticeable in Eastern cultures -like the  Islamic ones I am currently in touch with.. How many times have I heard ”bir walidayn”(filial piety) and “Rahim Wassila”(maintaining ties to extended family))in Muslim discourse .Ironically the Quran says “ihsan walidayn” (being good to your parents ) rather than “bir walidayn” .Why? Because families can be ignorant and abusive. Because I have seen many Muslim parents marrying their daughters to nasty partners -often through the first shirk of materialism! ”He has a good career and money in the bank, so he must be a good partner” Really?! I have seen Muslims so absorbed with their family interactions that they forget to pray! Is that part of our religion?! I have seen people waste hours and hours socializing with their families with no noticeable benefit. Is that part of our religion. Certainly not! It is a hidden form of shirk!

Think about it, Sufi Ibrahim