Shadows and Strife

Reflections on the Confrontation of Islam and the West

2007 Harry Oldmeadow & Rodney Blackhirst
Published in Sacred Web 8, 2001
(co-authored with Dr Rodney Blackhirst).

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Introduction
If there was any question that relations between Islam and the West are central to the
times in which we live the question was emphatically removed by the events of
September 11. Such traumatic events make us suddenly and acutely aware again of
the whole history of Islamic/West tension and of the fact that this history is on-going
and shapes not only our politics and religion but the very zeitgeist of the early 21st
century. There are several conflicts in the world today that, in the broader scheme of
things, must be regarded as world-historical in their import, and the Islamic religion
features in most of them. Most notable, of course, is the conflict between the state of
Israel and the dispossessed people of Palestine in the Holy Land. The return of the
J ews to their ancient homeland is in itself a momentous event in the greater cycles of
time, but the fact that this return involves a terrible clash with the Islamic world is an
unavoidable feature of the same cycles. Similarly, the creation of a Muslim homeland,
Pakistan, in the Indian sub-continent necessarily entails a perilous clash with a Hindu
state, India, as the worlds youngest religion confronts the worlds oldest in a formal
confrontation of nation-states. Conflicts in Africa, Central Asia, the Philipines and
even the social tensions created by the settlement of Muslim communities in places
such as Britain, France and Germany, should also be seen as symptomatic of the same
phenomenon.

Since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington there has been a
veritable deluge of news, opinion, commentary, analysis and the like in the
Western media, much of it issuing from politicians old and new, recycled CIA agents,
defence personnel, so-called terrorism experts, Cold War veterans and media
personalities. Much of the material with which the newspapers, television and radio
have been awash might better be described as propaganda (the continuation of politics
by other means, one might say). The following observations and reflections are not
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offered as a sustained analysis of the attacks and their aftermath, nor as a
comprehensive review of Middle Eastern affairs: they should be read rather as a series
of provocations to further analysis and thought. Our aim is to turn attention towards a
wider context in which recent events might be situated and thus be better understood.



The September 11 Attacks, Terrorism and American Foreign Policy
Despite the headlines the attacks on New York and Washington were clearly not the
product of mindless terrorism, senseless violence and pure evil; nor is it
generally helpful to think in terms of sick minds and the like. The attacks were
motivated, considered, deliberate. The fact that they are morally repugnant and that
they have the most horrific human consequences does not make them unintelligible.
The attacks on New York and Washington will indeed seem senseless unless they
are historically located. One of the apparent but perhaps unconscious motives of the
media coverage (with a few exceptions) would seem to be to discourage us from
thinking about this context, and from asking some discomforting questions of our
political leaders both in America and elsewhere in the Western world. Similarly
with White House/Pentagon rhetoric: despite President Bushs repeated assertions,
these attacks are not on democracy, freedom, the American way of life, the
Free World; they are an extreme and grotesque response to Americas perceived
role in the Middle East and elsewhere. To catalogue popular grievances with America
in the Middle East would be a lengthy undertaking indeed, so let us simply note a few
of the more conspicuous in passing: most significantly, Americas blinkered view of
and highly partisan role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the politically ineffective
but humanly disastrous sanctions against Iraq; Americas alliance with a raft of
corrupt and modernized regimes throughout the Arabic world, especially Saudi
Arabia; a jaundiced and highly selective American concern for human rights. No
question, these attacks cannot be understood without reference to deeply entrenched
historical injustices in which, to say the least of it, America has colluded. More
generally it should be noted that the processes of modernization (ie., secularization,
industrialization, urbanization, a liberalization of moral codes etc) and of
globalization (corporatism, free trade, McDonalds in every town and village on the
planetin short, Business as Usual) are closely (and properly) identified with
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America. While abhorring the attacks, anti-globalists everywhere will recognize the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon as highly specific targets relevant to their
cause. (In later times might the World Trade Towers come to carry for our world the
same kind of disturbing symbolism that the Titanic did for the complacent,
hypocritical and hubris-ridden great imperial power of that day?)

Anyone with a dispassionate understanding of international Realpolitik over the
last fifty-odd years cannot be unaware of the fact that the American state (as distinct
from the American people at large) has repeatedly been guilty of the most cynical acts
of subversion and terrorismthe assassination of democratically elected leaders; the
covert sabotaging of properly constituted governments; the support of neo-fascist
dictators, military juntas and murderous regimes; the invasion of other countries and
repeated abuses of their sovereignty; the violation of the Geneva convention and
many UN treaties and protocols; the deliberate killing of thousands of innocent
civilians... the list goes on. Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Cuba,
the Dominican Republic, Panama, to name a few signal cases close to home.

The few voices in the media dissenting, in varying degree, from the prevailing
consensus about the attacks and the appropriate American responseone might
mention Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Robert Fisk, J ohn Pilger, Karen Armstrong
and Edward Saidhave had little apparent effect on majority opinion which cleaves
to a facile Us and Them mentality which is blind to the many infamies of American
foreign policy in both its overt and covert aspects, and is susceptible to rhetorical
sloganeering and posturing. Such a mentality is reinforced by President Bushs
simplistic assertion that all countries must align themselves with the USA or with the
terrorists. As to the attacks themselves, there are those who say Yes, but this is
different: look at the scale of what has happened in New York: one might reply,
What of the scale of the Nixon-Kissinger carpet-bombings of Laos and Cambodia,
countries with which America was not at war? or What of Americas support of
Saddam Hussein at the very time that he was gassing thousands of Kurds? These are
but two episodes in the annals of atrocities which America has either perpetrated or
condoned. (In the end these moral equivalence arguments are probably futile but
these sorts of comparisons may serve to highlight the one-eyed view often taken in
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the Western media, and by Western governments, of state-sponsored violence and
human suffering.)

It might also be pointed out, in passing, that Great Powers almost invariably
behave in this way. Nonetheless, given the official American rhetoric since World
War II (the defence of freedom and democracy, the leadership of the Free
World, the championing of human rights etc) the abysm between its avowed
purposes and its actual foreign policy practice as an imperial power, is hypocritical in
the extreme and thus all the more reprehensible. Again, it goes without saying that
this in no way denies the equally palpable fact that the opponents of America have
also often acted in the most brutal and unconscionable ways. Nor, of course, are these
sorts of political crimes the exclusive preserve of Great Powers and terrorists, as
history repeatedly testifies. Terrorism, and other acts of political brutality and
barbarism, should be condemned and repudiated, no matter where they happen or by
whom they are perpetratedthe American military and intelligence establishments as
much as Stalinist apparatchiks, neo-fascist regimes, African dictators, religious and
racist bigots, Maoist reformers and Western governments, as well as Islamic
terrorists.

None of the above is to deny the basic decency of ordinary American citizens, and
only the most heartless will fail to have been moved by the many examples of
heroism and self-sacrifice we have seen on the part of many New York police,
firemen, rescue workers and others in the aftermath of the September attacks. Nor is it
to fall into the error, much encouraged by demagogues and rabble-rousers
everywhere, of identifying a whole nation of people with the evils perpetrated by their
government. We have heartfelt sympathy for the victims of terrorism everywhere,
including the people of New York and Washingtonone can hardly imagine the
depths of trauma, grief and suffering which will come in the wake of these appalling
attacks. At the same time we are mindful of the continuing sufferings of countless
people in the Middle East, often as a direct result of American policy, and of the
many deaths which will inevitably result from the American military campaign, not
least amongst the vast numbers of Afghani refugees.


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American Fundamentalism
In the public discussion of the attacks and their aftermath there has been a great deal
of loose talk about Islamic fundamentalism (doubtless a highly significant factor
but only very sketchily understood) but little reference to American
fundamentalisma political and psychological phenomenon, but not without
religious underpinnings. What we have in mind here is the hegemonic national
ideology whose most conspicuous ingredients include: a more or less unquestioning
belief in the American way of life as self-evidently superior to all others, associated
with a parochial, self-righteous and quasi-religious national ethos deriving
particularly from white Americas historical origins and from Protestant forms of
religious exclusivism; a political and imperial triumphalism which wants to ignore the
lessons of history (Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis and the like); a
highly sentimental form of patriotism, easily fanned into militaristic adventurism.
Insofar as the latter might be played out in concrete military and surgical
operations, the chances of success would, to say the least of it, not seem promising.
What is absolutely certain is that such operations, successful or not, will only
exacerbate the tensions and hostilities referred to above. The only inevitable, long-
lasting effect will be to incite millions of people in the Middle East and in other parts
of the world to resent America (and its uncritical allies) even more. It hardly needs
pointing out that any military campaign will also, inevitably, entail the killing of
innocent civilians, and that many deaths amongst the huge numbers of Afghani
refugees can be expected. We would do well to ponder Mahatma Gandhis question:
What difference does it make to the dead and the orphans and the homeless whether
the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of
liberty or democracyLiberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are
dyed red with innocent blood.

Not coincidentally, the aftermath of the September attacks brought into new focus
many of the reasons why the USA is perceived as the enemy of religion and tradition.
For several weeks the world was exposed to a heavy-handed grieve-or-else posture
supported by an unprecedented outpouring of American patriotism and the peculiarly
jingoistic excesses that characterize it. That this saturation of American sentimentality
was well-nigh inescapable anywhere on the planet served to underline just how
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pervasive is the reach of American media culture; there are school children
throughout the world who know more verses of God Bless America than their own
national anthem. Indeed, people felt the attacks acutely because, wherever there is
television and cinema, many will know the famous streets of Manhattan better than
they do the streets of their own big cities. No one calculates what manner of evil
conspires to flood the world with this information, starving it of the Wisdom and
Truth that is the primordial birthright of all people.

American jingoism also appears, to those not under its direct sway, as a form of
enthusiastic quasi-religious fundamentalism with its roots in American Protestantism.
President Bush invoked a key Biblical text of the American Protestant tradition, He
who is not for me is against me... (implicitly and impiously transposing the authority
of Christs words to the USA itself) and appealing to deep Christian impulses in the
face of the Muslim attack. Extraordinarily, Bush even resorted to the use of the
word crusade to describe the American response, a resurfacing of old rhetorical
patterns that most liberals thought had long ago disappeared from discourse in
civilized nations. This was reinforced with much reckless talk about evil and
stark outlines of the battle of good against it the very calling-card of any
simplistic, fundamentalist view of the world and our times. The aftermath of the
attacks showed up all manner of instances, great and small, of modernity/tradition
problems with the US blithely filling its role as agent of the modern.

When the Western media describe the position of Osama Bin Laden as a guest in
Afghanistan, for instance, they question the legitimacy of this guest relationship and
invariably print the word guest in quotation marks. In fact, in this case, it seems,
Osama Bin Laden has aformal guest relationship with his Afghan hosts. Modernity,
knowing only the casual and superficial relations of atomized individuals, cannot
appreciate why it is no easy matter to turn over aguest; a guest, in traditional cultures
and cultures still illuminated by traditional values, is no mere casual acquaintance; the
guest relationship is profoundly important. It becomes obvious that the West no
longer knows what a guest is. In another report, suspected hijacker Muhammad Attas
will is supposed to have contained the instruction: Do not allow women at my
funeral. I do not approve of it. Modern-minded readers, unfamiliar with traditional
patterns of grieving, will denounce this sexism, not recognizing the statement as an
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injunction against professional women mourners (wailers). These and other small
differences and misunderstandings are underlined especially by the ill-chosen name
for the war on terrorism, Infinite J ustice, which had to be withdrawn after the US
authorities were informed that Infinite J ustice is, to Muslims, the preserve of Allah
alone. It is salient that those in command of US power had no qualms about using the
title to describe their cause and apparently never even guessed such a title might have
religious implications. It is not just self-righteous to think one is yielding Infinite
J ustice, nor is it just an insensitivity to some peculiar Muslim theology; it shows a
total insensitivity to thereligious per se, and hence an utter failure by the Americans
to appreciate the nature of the mentality that is opposed to them, and why. It is hard to
imagine a worse faux paux in the circumstances. For the Americans to answer the
September 11 attacks with a claim of Infinite J ustice would serve to confirm in a
stark way the claims of all those who have declared war on them for their alleged
godlessness or because they are the Great Satan, embodiment of hubris.

Whatever immediate causes and motivations lay behind the September 11 attacks,
from a traditional perspective the events must be situated in this broader framework.
In political terms the significance of the events can be exaggerated. They merely
represent the passage of strife to continental USA, but that strife has been manifest
elsewhere for a long time; it is not something new. What is new is that Americans are
suffering, and the worlds media is flooded with Americas shock at this change in
their fortunes. However, on the ground, throughout the worldoutside of the media
matrixfew people were surprised and many, conspicuously those in Islamic
countries, were pleased. Bullseye! said a taxi driver to a reporter in Cairo. On
September 11 we saw a considerable escalation of the strife of our times, but that our
times are strife-torn, and that Islam features in this strife, is no shock in itself. Few
will admit it but anti-globalists everywhere feel some measure of ambivalence about
the attacks. Similarly, religious people of whatever faith are empathetic to the human
tragedy of September 11, but at the same time human nature loves to see the proud
humbled.



Islam and the West
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Islam claims to be both the last and the first of the worlds great spiritual orders and
while its very name means peace there is no question that it plays a providential
role in challenging the modern world to confront primordial spiritual realities and so
is, as its critics never tire of saying, inherently warlike. In a well-knownwe could
almost say infamousHadith, the Holy Prophet said that, from the time of the advent
of historical Islam, to the end of days, there would be no peace in the world. The
peace of Islam is the peace that surpasseth understanding, not a secular or
sentimental peace. Islam is in the world to remind us that our destiny will not be
fulfilled in a false peace, and that there will be strife in the world for as long as men
cleave to counterfeit absolutes. We can never be satisfied with a false peace, any more
than false worship can ever satisfy our souls. Islam is a militant and uncompromising
spirituality that insists upon this. More than other spiritual orders it addresses the
problem of warfare. It finds warfare a constant in the human condition and wisely
attempts to regulate it, direct it to noble ends and, finally, internalise it, making it an
agent of self-transformation according to the well-known distinction between the
lesser or outer Holy War (jihad) and the greater or inner Holy War, the war against
the most pernicious of all counterfeit absolutes, the self.

In our times this inherent militancy of Islam has been sharpened against the West
and against the whole project of modernity that is associated with it. Most recently,
with the collapse of communism, the West has promoted a vision of a global order
united by capitalist economics, American culture and liberal, secular values, a vision
of the people of the world united around a McDonalds hamburger, a Coca Cola
peace. This utterly horizontal vision of the world threatens traditional ways of life
everywhere, and it is not surprising that it encounters resistance, but the stiffest
resistance comes from Islam which insists that such a world is not thetelos to which
the whole history of the human race has been inevitably progressing and which insists
furthermore that a more noble destiny awaits man if he has the courage to be true to
himself. Islams leadership in the struggle against the New World Order and its
horizontal vision of our future is part of its providential role in this current cycle of
time.

The roots of the American ideologyan ideology that seems so incapable of
understanding Islam, especially as a pan-national force in todays worldin
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Protestantism, and the whole Protestant background of America, is especially
fascinating in the present context because Protestantism, in its deepest impulses, is
historically the Christian response to the challenge of Islam. The central fact of the
remarkably discontinuous tradition of Christian civilization is that the rise of Islam
was a shock from which the Christian tradition never fully recovered. The whole
trajectory of the West, and especially its history of successive ruptures from the well-
springs of Tradition, should be seen in these terms. These are the inner mechanisms of
the current world-cycle. Events such as September 11 lay them bare. Frithjof Schuon
mentions this relation of Protestantism to Islam in Understanding Islam, where he
describes the Protestant nostalgia for the primordial Islamic perspective, but it is
not a theme developed in his writings. It is appropriate to develop it here.

For a deeper understanding of recent events and events that no doubt lie ahead it is
important to remember the common roots of Islam and Christianity and to think of
Islamic and Western civilizations as two sides of the same thing with Islamic/West
tensions (as the Algerian scholar Hichim Djait put it) as a battle raging in a single
system. Within this single system Protestantism (especially in its Calvinist forms) is
the ultimate Christian response to Islam or, to borrow ideas from scholars like
Norman Cohn, it is like a shadow, the tails side of the coin. It is this that explains
the remarkable similarities between Islam and Protestantism as religious typologies.
Both, for instance, as the sociologists will tell us, are religious movements developing
out of urban trading classes, from a grappling with a literacy revolution with an
emphasis on The Book, a rejection of priesthoods and of celibacy, a repudiation of
images, and so on. The parallels between Islam and Protestantism are numerous and
remarkable but rarely explored. (Histories of the Reformation often overlook the
importance of the threat of the Turks at the time. The Reformation was when
Christendom finally broke out of the Crusade approach to tackling Islam and
decided to reform itself into an urban trading outfit to match the infidels.)

In the current climate it is not surprising that Samuel Huntingtons Clash of
Civilizations scenario is making a comeback. However, to understand Islam/West
relations one must appreciate that it is not a clash of polar opposites but of contending
similars. A recent commentator asked: But why has all the trouble of the crusades
and the whole history of enmity between Islam and Christendom been heaped upon
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the USA? It is a good question. There is more to it than just the fact that the USA is
an historical extension of European civilization. It is the nature of American
Protestantism and its influence upon American ideology that really clashes with
Islam, and they clash because, at their deepest levels, they are contending similars.

To sustain this view, of course, we must, as with traditionalist thinking generally,
regard Protestantism (Calvinism especially) as, in a sense, an aberration or a
perversion of the Christian tradition, a pathology created by the irritant Islam (within
the single system). To put it plainly, the threat of Islam twisted Christianity out of
shape. Perhaps this was a movement of providence, potential in the tradition from the
outset, but nevertheless it disturbed the equilibrium of Christian civilization which,
beginning in the Middle Ages, but more obviously from the Renaissance onwards,
began to lurch from crisis to crisis and revolution to revolution. The historical reality
of Islamno one denies Muhammad was an historical manpushed Christian
thinking towards an historicized understanding of Christianity (which, properly
understood, is, as it was throughout the Middle Ages, more mythological than
historical). Similarly, contact and rivalry with the Muslims, and especially the Sufis,
in Spain, Sicily, the Crusade States and at other points introduced new patterns of
piety into Christianity that disturbed profoundly the ancient patterns and that
ultimately gathered into the enthusiasm of the Reformation. Protestants conceive of
J esus and his disciples in ways that would be much more fitting to Muhammad and
his Companions. This is not true of traditional Christian pietyCatholic, Orthodox,
Copticonly of Protestantism, and Calvinism especially. More obviously, who can
fail to notice the ways in which Protestants treat the Bible and how this reflects the
way Muslims treat the Koran? In traditional Christianity, of course, the Bible is a step
removed from Gods Word which is Christ Himself, the Incarnate Logos; it is merely
a record of the witness of the Logos, not the Logos Itself. In Islam, the Koran (and not
Muhammad) is the Incarnate Logos. In Protestantism, this function in the theology is
given (perversely) to the text of the Bible itself. To exaggerate the point:
Protestantism is a Christian imitation of Islam, a Christianity adapted to Islam. The
identification of America as the Great Satan, and converse Western portrayals of
various brooding, turban-clad villains as the personification of living evil, take us
very deep into a schizoid single system that is defining world events and the
trajectory of our times.
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Islamic Fundamentalism in Perspective
Needless to say, those behind the attacks are themselves guilty of hubris in thinking
that God is on their side. Islamic fundamentalism is itself a symptom of modernity
and represents a profound disequilibrium within the bosom of modern Islamthis is
an essential consideration in any traditionalist assessment of recent events. In many
respects Muslim fundamentalism is the very inverse of the modern traditionalist
movement, inasmuch as the latter has strong roots in Islam. Both, it must be said,
are an expression of the modern urge to return to primitive roots, conscious that
modernity has cheated man of his nobility, but whereas traditionalists seek a renewal
of the spiritual kernel of the Islamic faithand by extension all faiths (which
converge at their esoteric centre), externalist fundamentalism constructs a fictitious
primitive simplicity in the image of its own limitations, and the result is acute
particularisms that manifest in practice as grotesque intolerance. The Talibans
wanton destruction of Buddhist statues and the marking of Hindus for their own
protection are just two examples from the months prior to September 11. The
Wahabism that is apparently behind the recent attacks is, let us remember, intractably
opposed to Sufism and all esoteric aspects of Islam, has expelled the Sufis from the
Holy Prophets own land, closed the shrines of the saints, imposes terrible strictures
upon the pilgrims to the Holy Places and, in fact, has drawn Islam in its spiritual
heartland towards an empty externalism since the misnamed Islamic Reformation
of the 18th century. The events of September 11 remind us once again that, in these
troubled times, political reactionaries and literalists, not authentic spiritual masters,
speak for Islam on the world stage. In this context it is understandably difficult for
people in the West to appreciate that Islam has any inner dimension at all.

The term fundamentalism is itself somewhat problematic: who, after all, can
object to a return to the fundamentals of the religious tradition? Nor should we make
the mistake of conflating religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism. As the editor of
this journal recently noted, the term disguises a host of complexities (Sacred Web
7). The Taliban and other such groupings should more precisely be seen as
manifestations of Islamic externalism or literalism, a form of Islam which is lop-sided
in its adherence to a rigid dogmatism and formalism, and, consequently, is generally
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hostile to the esoteric traditions of Islamic mysticism, evidenced by the antipathy of
many of these groups to the Sufi orders.

Terrorism of the kind we have seen this week is clearly quite incompatible with the
actual teachings of the Prophet and of the Islamic tradition. Both suicide and the
taking of innocent lives are unequivocally prohibited by The Koran whilst jihad is in
its fullest sense a spiritual ideal of self-conquest, and on the material and social plane
can only constitute a defensive war to protect the faith and the faithful. There is no
doubt that the vast majority of Muslims feel the same kind of moral revulsion over
these attacks that the rest of the world does (though, as we have noted, this is often
admixed with ambivalent feelings arising out of a detestation of Americas role in the
contemporary world). There are extremists and bigots in every country, every culture:
to judge the whole of Islam on the basis of this or that terrorist group would be akin to
judging Christianity not on the basis of its teachings or its finest exemplars but by
those fanatics and hate-mongers who betray its teachings while purporting to act in its
name. History, alas, is replete with examples of such treachery and we need not look
too far in the contemporary world to find itin Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans,
the Indian sub-continent, J apan, America.

The terrorist attacks seem to have been used to declare open slather for all
manner of racists, bigots and cranks to ventilate their own poisonous forms of
ignorance, hatred and prejudice in the media. Here in Australia the tabloids and
commercial media, in particular, seem quite happy to accommodate such rantings
while radio shock-jocks pour more fuel on the fires of hatred and intolerance. At this
very tense time it is imperative that citizens in the Western world express our
solidarity with and support for our fellow citizens who belong within the fold of Islam
and/or who are of Middle Eastern background. No doubt, in the sort of climate
created by these events, many J ewish folk will also be feeling apprehensive about the
possible re-ignition of a virulent but temporarily latent anti-Semitism in many parts of
the world. It is especially incumbent on J ews, Christians and Muslims of good will
everywhere in the world to create bonds of fellowship and mutual respect. One way in
which this can be done is by focusing, amongst other things, on the vast common
ground shared by these great Occidental monotheisms, not least in the ethical domain.

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Exotericism, Esoterism and the Problem of Religious Pluralism
At times like these we would do well to return to the teachings of the great spiritual
figures and ask ourselves what light they might be able to shed on these events, on
our responses, on our ways of understanding ourselves and our world. One thinks of
the great foundational teachersMoses, J esus, Muhammad, Gautama Buddha, Lao
Tzu, Guru Nanak to name a fewand of more recent leaders and thinkers who have
confronted some of the deepest moral-political dilemmas of our time, such as
Mahatma Gandhi, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, Nelson
Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. (Why, it might be asked, have the Dalai
Lamas sober and thoughtful reflections received such scant media attention whilst at
the same time people like Dr Kissinger are given apparently endless air-time and
press space?) We should also remember the mysterious power and efficacy of prayer,
meditation and ritual observance in these dark times: these practices can bring
incalculable benefits in ways which we do not understand. Let us also not forget the
redemptive power of the hermit, the monk, the recluse, the bodhisattva, the nun, the
sannyasi who, in Thomas Mertons words, out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty
to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or resentment, withdraw into the healing
silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to
others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the whole world.

In the intellectual domain, what is needed, perhaps more than ever before, is a
proper understanding of the metaphysical basis of the essential unity of all integral
religions. For some time past it has been a commonplace that we are living in an
unprecedented situation in which the different religious traditions are everywhere
colliding. In the last few centuries European civilisation has itself been the agent for
the disruption and extirpation of traditional cultures the world over. Since then all
manner of changes have made for a smaller world, for the global village. Now we
are confronted with apocalyptic scenarios envisaging the clash of civilisations, of
new holy wars and crusades, of the violent confrontation of militant
fundamentalists and the forces of modernity. In this context, the question of the
relationship of the religions one to another and the imperatives of mutual
understanding take on a new urgency for all those concerned with fostering a
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harmonious world community. In an age of rampant secularism and skepticism the
need for some kind of inter-religious solidarity also makes itself ever more acutely
felt.

As to the fate of the religious traditions, three obvious possibilities present
themselves in the face of the processes of modernisation and globalisation, each
disastrous for humankinds spiritual welfare: intensifying internecine theological
and/or political warfare; the disappearance of the religions under the onslaughts of
modernity; the dilution of the religions into some sentimental, universal pseudo-
religion. If these malignant possibilities are to be averted we need a proper
understanding of what Frithjof Schuon has called the transcendent unity of
religions. Crucial to any recognition of this unity is the ability to discern the
distinction between the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of the great religious
traditions, Christianity and Islam amongst them, and thus to forestall the terrible
excesses of religious literalism. (This was the subject of an earlier article in Sacred
Web 5). Recall this passage from Frithjof Schuons The Transcendent Unity of
Religions (1975 ed, 9), one which takes on a new resonance in the present
circumstances:

The exoteric viewpoint is, in fact, doomed to end by negating itself once it is no longer
vivified by the presence within it of the esoterism of which it is both the outward radiation
and the veil. So it is that religion, according to the measure in which it denies metaphysical
and initiatory realities and becomes crystallized in literalistic dogmatism, inevitably
engenders unbelief; the atrophy that overtakes dogmas when they are deprived of their
internal dimension recoils upon them from outside, in the form of heretical and atheistic
negations.

It is precisely these principles and insights which are so often overlooked by those
groups and movements gathered together under the loose canopy of
fundamentalism, wherever they be found.

At a time when the outward and readily exaggerated incompatibility of divergent
religious forms is used to exploit all manner of anti-religious prejudices the exposure
of the underlying unity of the religions is a task which can only be achieved through a
trans-religious understanding. The open confrontation of different exotericisms, the
vandalism visited on traditional civilisations everywhere, and the tyranny of secular
and profane ideologies all play a part in determining the peculiar circumstances in
Shadows and Strife 15
which the most imperious needs of the age can only be answered by a recourse to
traditional esotericisms. There is perhaps some small hope that in this climate and
given a properly constituted metaphysical framework in which to affirm the
profound and eternal solidarity of all spiritual forms the different religions might
yet present a singular front against the floodtide of materialism and pseudo-
spiritualism (Schuon, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom).

The philosophical question of the inter-relationship of the religions and the
moral concern for greater mutual understanding are, in fact, all of a piece. We can
distinguish but not separate questions about unity and harmony; too often both
comparative religionists and those engaged in dialogue have failed to see that the
achievement of the latter depends on a metaphysical resolution of the former
question. A rediscovery of the immutable nature of man and a renewed understanding
of the sophia perennis must be the governing purpose of the most serious comparative
study of religion. It is, in Seyyed Hossein Nasrs words, a noble end... whose
achievement the truly contemplative and intellectual elite are urgently summoned to
by the very situation of man in the contemporary world (in Philosophy East and
West XXII, 1972, 61). These words, written three decades ago, are all the more
compelling in the current climate. The sophia perennis, ultimately, can lead us to that
light that is neither of the East nor the West (the Koran). It is the light towards
which we are beckoned by the great mystics of all traditions, the light that moved
Rumi to say

I am neither Christian nor J ew nor Parsi nor Muslim. I am neither of the East nor of the West,
neither of the land nor sea...I have put aside duality and have seen that the two worlds are
one. I seek the One, I know the One, I see the One, I invoke the One. He is the First, he is the
Last, he is the Outward, he is the Inward.