The Poets and Islam

The Poets and Islam

 

By Abubakr Rieger

 

A short talk given at Wolfsburg Islamic Centre on Sunday 2nd September 2007 to mark the occasion of the Mosque�s one-year anniversary.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Of course, if I undertake to present the relationship between the German poets and Islam in the space of 20 minutes, I am bound to fail. But this implies at least that such a relationship exists � and that it is much too complex and too multi-faceted to sum up in just a few minutes.

There is no doubt that the dialogue between poetry, thought and belief is once again taking on a deeper importance. It has always been a central issue, and still is. Right back in 1814, Goethe wrote in his West-Eastern Divan, �The actual, the only, the deepest theme of world and human history, beneath which all other themes are subsumed, remains the conflict between rejection and belief.�

It may be no coincidence that the subject of religion is once again gaining in import. The religion we belong to appears once again to be one of the decisive questions, especially in the field of integration. The situation in Germany, in terms of simple figures, is as follows:

� 16 million Muslims in Europe � 3.4 million of these Muslims live in Germany � of those, 84% wish to live permanently in Germany � More than 600,000 Muslims already possess a German passport � 77 conventional mosques and more than 2000 prayer rooms exist in Germany � 123 large mosques are currently at the planning stage in Germany.

It would be na�ve to believe that such an enormous integration process could take place without any difficulties whatsoever. But then again there are voices that deny absolutely the possibility of integrating Islam into our polity. For example, Wehler, a philosopher of history, published an article in the taz newspaper in 2002 entitled Das T�rkenproblem � the Problem of the Turks � and sparked a debate which rages on bitterly to this day:

�The example shows that it just doesn�t work. Germany does not have a problem with foreigners, it has a problem with Turks. This Muslim diaspora is in principle impossible to integrate. The Federal Republic of Germany has, since its formation, coped gallantly with an immigrant population of what is now ten per cent. But at a certain point there comes a limit to what one can expect of a complex society.�

This typical position is one which I would dispute, and that on a very personal level. If you will permit me this example � I myself and my children, who all were born as Muslims, represent the error in the argument of Mr Wehler and anyone else who claims that Europe is incompatible with Islam.

Cannot my son Yusuf, who was born in Weimar, a German Muslim, be integrated into this Europe? Only because he, just like every other Muslim, prays, fasts, or will one day pay Zakat and take the journey to Mecca, inshallah?

If, like Ibn al-Arabi, we recognise the identity of a person by his language, then it is of course absolutely scandalous not to welcome the young Muslims who live here � who often speak better German than Arabic or Turkish � just as one would welcome my children as German Muslims.

When we hear Huntington speaking about a �Clash of Civilisations�, then, as far as Islam is concerned, we may be witnessing what will be an epoch-making misunderstanding � but hopefully not.

The question which is in fact relevant to that is: �Is Islam actually a culture at all?�

It is my conviction that we must refute this idea absolutely. Islam brings forth cultures; filters and influences cultures; but is itself not a culture. You can be an American, a German, an Afrikaner, an Asian or an Eskimo � belong to the most diverse of cultural environments � but still be a Muslim as well.

To reverse the argument, so to speak, one of the important contributions European Muslims must now make is to filter out actively those incidences wherein Islamic life is culturally hijacked and transgressed against in Europe. This applies especially when culture is at times too quickly �sold� to us as Islam.

To mention one example, the wearing of the Burka is, for a German Muslim woman who practices Islam correctly, fully untenable, both culturally and Islamically. A study of the centuries-long periods during which Islam flourished in Al-Andalus shows that dress code was not only dealt with flexibly, but changed frequently � especially among women. Even at the time of the Moors there were probably more important things in life.

We meet here today in this beautiful mosque, and one of the intentions is to indicate some of the spiritual inspiration that can emerge between thinkers and believers. By inviting each other in this way we are also doing the opposite of what terrorists and ideologues do, who must fear, avoid and fight against the Other in order to preserve their own identities.

Unfortunately, Islam and terrorism are today mentioned in the same breath, a fact for which we have the nihilism of suicide bombers to thank. But while we appreciate fully the debate which has been ongoing since 11 September, we should call to mind the observation of the thinker Peter Sloterdijk:

�We have in fact sanctified terrorism. One has only to think of the book Powers of Ten, in which we witness a journey through the cosmos � from the biggest to the smallest � in which the same image is retained, but enlarged each time by the power of ten. First you see heaps of galaxies, then the Milky Way, Earth, a country, a city, a garden, then a couple lying there on the lawn. Finally the camera zooms into the microscopic world, bringing forth to our vision the elementary particles. We experience the power of enlargement in three dimensions. Something very similar is now happening with Terror: pinprick-sized effects in real life are being magnified by our media to take on the format of interstellar phenomena.�

Today let us take another perspective; let us think for once positively about the relationship between Islam and Europe, but not, of course, ignoring the problems of integrating millions of different Muslims. Let us simply hope together that the relationship between Germans and Muslims is viewed more and more not just as normal, but in the traditional manner of a forging of links.

After all, if we think about Islam in Europe then we must immediately recall the great cities and places of European culture. One only has to think of Sarajevo, Cordoba and Weimar. Weimar especially, that city of German classics which is so close to the German heart, prefigured the encounter between Europe and Islam in the great figure of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Manfred Osten wrote an apt summary of this old-new dialogue with Islam in the Neue Z�rcher Zeitung on 22.05.2002:

�A dialogue of an excelling modernity? Goethe was clearly aware of the cultural schism between Islam and the West at an early stage, and the concomitant necessity for the Great Dialogue. It may be that his attempt at such a dialogue, the cycle of poems entitled West-�stlicher Divan or West-Eastern Divan which he wrote in 1814, must be viewed under Nietzsche�s verdict that Goethe was �an incident without further consequences in the history of the Germans.� Even today, many German scholars encounter his intercultural stroke of genius with reservation. And yet, by writing this book all those 200 years ago, Goethe did nothing less than prepare the ground for the dialogue with Islam. The strategy which he pursues is based on a thorough examination of what is apparently foreign, which for him leads to recognition, indeed in the conviction that the Qur�an is the most important religious document in the history of mankind alongside the Bible.�

What really interested Goethe about Islam? This is a fascinating question, and still an open one. Goethe, the genius of his century, certainly found in Islam a confirmation of his longing for unity and his deep belief in Destiny.

To mention but one example, in his famous conversations with Eckermann, Goethe admires the integral Islamic approach to education.

�...What is remarkable are the teachings with which the Mohammedans begin their education. As the foundation of their religion, they establish in their youth the conviction that man cannot encounter anything but what an all-guiding Divinity has long ago decreed; this equips and reassures them for their entire lives, and leaves them needing little else.�

Goethe therefore identifies belief in Destiny as the actual link between all believers. He continues....

�... there is basically some of this belief in each and every one of us, without us having been taught it. �The bullet that does not have my name on it will not hit me,� says the soldier in battle. And how should he keep up his courage and spirits under extreme danger without such confidence? ...[It is] a doctrine of a Providence which remains aware of the smallest detail, and without Whose will and permission nothing can occur.�

With these beautiful words, Goethe confirms the connection between people who, according to him, are anyway better described as open-minded citizens of the world rather than narrow-minded nationalists.

Goethe, the creator of the West-Eastern Divan, who famously �did not reject the suspicion that he himself was a Muslim,� reveals himself as knowledgeable even of the Islamic methodology of thought. He reminds us as Muslims that when it comes to our Revelation, we think not dialectically but in terms of the whole.

Goethe argued:

�The Mohammedans thereupon begin their teaching of philosophy with the doctrine that nothing exists about which you cannot say the opposite. They exercise the minds of their youth by having them find and articulate the contrary opinion of every proposition, which inescapably leads to great skill in thought and speech.�

He then continues to reflect on this superiority of Islamic thinking:

�Then, once the opposite has been claimed about every proposition, doubt arises as to which is actually true. But they do not tarry in doubt. Rather, it drives the intellect to examine more closely and to ascertain; and, if performed correctly, from thence derives that certainty which is the goal in which man finds complete reassurance. You can see that this teaching is lacking nothing, and that for all our systems we are no further on, and that absolutely nobody can get anywhere with them.�

It is precisely this intellectual confidence, this relishing in intellectual engagement, a composure and self-assurance in the face of contradiction, that we Muslims now sometimes lack. Only in the active engagement with thought, argumentation and the contradictions of modernity can we as Muslims find and preserve our own intellectual position. That, at least, is the counsel of the poet of old.

Of course, language and the capacity for language are essential for an encounter of this kind here in Germany, the land of poets and thinkers. And which Muslim parents would in fact not want their children to speak our language?

Indeed, sometimes it is the language of the Other that helps us to comprehend what is of value to us. For example, our world-famous poet Rainer Maria Rilke had the following quite beautiful insight defining the nature of religion:

�[...] Religion is something infinitely easy, simple. It is not a knowledge, not a content of feeling [...], it is not a duty and not abstinence, it is not a limitation. Rather, it is in the perfected expanse of the universe: a direction of the heart. [...] When the Arab turns to the east at certain times and prostrates himself, that is religion. It is hardly a �belief�. It has no opposite. It is being moved naturally within an existence through which the wind of God blows three times daily, by being at the very least: supple [...]

This openness of Rilke�s is today truly exemplary. And the enthusiasm is certainly mutual and not restricted to the German language. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to Lou Andreas-Salome on 19.12.1912 from Ronda in Andalusia:

�..I am reading the Qur�an here and am in awe, awe, awe � and once again my love of Arabic is awoken.�

Is it anything other than this awe that we Muslims now want to convey in our mosques? An awe of Destiny, an awe of language, an awe about creation. And perhaps also an amazement at the common human ground which all great poetry reveals to us again and again, regardless of confession.

It is precisely this awe which is opposed by the experience of nihilism � whose basic experience, according to modern German philosophy, is boredom. Only if our mosques are open, our prayers, thought and actions are alive, will we ensure that our young people do not become bored in our mosques.

Ibn al Arabi, another great European figure, considered boredom something quite inconceivable in Islam. His motto is truly Greek: �Everything flows�. For this reason I would like to conclude with this philosophically important extract from Ibn al-Arabi�s Meccan Revelations:

�Some people do not know that Allah reveals Himself anew in every moment, and that every one of these revelations is different from the last. If somebody is lacking this perception, he may dwell endlessly in a single revelation [of Allah], the witnessing of which seems prolonged to him. He is then overcome by boredom, yet boredom in this dwelling place is a lack of reverence for the Divine, since �they are dubious about the new creation� in every moment (Qur�an 50:15). They imagine that the situation is not changing, so a veil is drawn in front of them and this causes a lack of reverence, once Allah has withdrawn from them knowledge about themselves and about Himself. They therefore imagine that they are the same in every moment.�

Thank you very much for listening.

 

Source: http://www.abubakrrieger.de/page.cgi?key=11&nr=686