"No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind."
--Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
In previous blogs, I began a conversation with Shaykh Qays Arthur, titled, Toward Understanding Islam and Muslims. Currently, Shaykh Qays gives private lessons on worship and Islamic beliefs at his home in Amman, Jordan and via the website QaysArthur.net. In the conversation, we addressed monotheism, including several spiritual aspects on faith and guidance. This blog will address the issue of surrender or submission in Islam, and it will complete the section on faith and guidance.
Surrendering to God requires knowledge, and not just knowledge, but more importantly self-knowledge. In truth, you cannot surrender to God without knowledge. In this blog – I want to first explore the concept of surrendering to God, or submission, which has been misunderstood as nurturing a mindset of blind obedience, an inferiority complex or irrational belief.
Many of the conversations in the Qur'an aim to take us to the threshold of our own mind, the part that lies asleep, so we can stop, reflect, remember and understand. I found the conversations to be quite unique and upon reflection, God removes the masks we wear to expose our inner reality, layer by layer, to help us see ourselves and our arguments with more precision and reflection. Hence, as I explore surrender or submission to God, I will focus mainly on the importance of self-knowledge.
This conversation will focus in on a few verses of the Qur'an. The conversation is quite detailed and requires some thought and reflection. It is not meant for easy quick reading. It is quite long and will be posted in parts. If you can hold your questions til the end, as the conversation will first try to reconcile the previous discussions and then fully explain submission in Islam. I will address civil questions at the end.
Wazwaz: Shaykh Qays, I want to share with you some verses in the Qur'an regarding two groups of people and if we can focus on them for this conversation. Can you share your initial comments on the following?
Shaykh Qays: From my reading the commentary on both, the verses in al-Waqia address a group of people who live in a world of rejection, and denial of the obvious. The Qur'an calls people to reflect on things that they are familiar with that ought to bring them to correct conclusions regarding truth. But people who are bent otherwise don't see it.
So the Qur'an advanced its argument to remind people about what it is that they ought to see by way of meanings as they experience life. One of the things I found interesting in the commentary of the verses in chapter Al-Waqia is how the Qur'an calls people to reflect on the moment of death. This was not an uncommon experience in the past but it has become something of a rarity in contemporary society. Such things as death are taught and seen from a "scientific" point of view. There is no reflection on it. Like living, death, we are taught, goes back to functions of systems: the nervous, circulatory, respiratory systems simply stopped functioning due to some mechanical cause. The philosophical assumption being that the human being is a machine in a universe that is a machine. But the Qur'an speaks to the meaning of it all, beyond the mechanics. And it speaks to people who see themselves not as machines but as human beings who are creatures of purpose and meaning. It calls us back to a distinctly pre-modern mindset based on the grit of real life and, in this case, the death experience. I find this to be something that is extremely powerful and needed.
People now, perhaps more-so the young, need to come back to fundamental questions like that of purpose. Such questions require real knowledge to answer; not trials, studies, and theories. Contrary to what many of us are taught we are not merely machines. This we learn from Revelation, the highest source of knowledge we have. The fact that we are similar to machines in terms of how we function does not mean that is the reality of who we are. The Qur'an calls us to be aware of ourselves, aware of our circumstances, connected to reality; mere machines can't do what the Qur'an asks. Our circumstance - what does it mean? This verse of the Qur'an is calling humanity to look at or rather recall the theater of death, if you will. It reminds us about something that is traumatic and humbling in its certainty, that tells us about our reality, and is worthy of reflection.
