Are we ready to pioneer a global spiritual governing system?? Thank u Muhammad Emmaduddin Cb for this wonderful work... ABSTRACT The failure of “Democracy & secular Visions in PAKISTAN” to bridge global material and cultural divides as well as stem widespread ecological damage has precipitated the need to draw upon the untapped spiritual resources and enduring wisdom of the world‟s great contemplative traditions specially in South east Asia particularly in Pakistan. Drawing from the essential precepts and doctrines of Sufism, This presents a response to the challenges presented by contemporary world politics and global disorder highlighting specially Pakistan, It calls for a consensus based and cooperative approach to global issue of Extremism . based on eight principles stemming from Sufi tradition principles that could become the foundation for a True moderate PAKISTAN. . Sufism‟s vision of Unity , inner freedom, spiritual elevation, and human wholeness can provide a compelling basis for responding to contemporary challenges of a materialist global life Furthermore, its capacity to inspire human solidarity and deeply ecumenical spirituality can greatly expedite the emergence of a global peace culture. However, translating the principles of Sufism into practice within the context of the present world order requires overcoming four interrelated challenges: promoting a global system of checks and balances, strengthening global civil society, promoting human rights and cultural diversity, and developing a broad consensus of peoples and governments. Keywords: 1. Sufism 2. Inclusive epistemology 3. Cooperative global economics 4. Dialogic thought process 5. Social healing 6. Democracy in Pakistan • Introduction With the shrinking attraction of “universal visions” such as communism and other secular ideologies, Sufism can play a vital role in efforts to fashion a new compass and forge a new peace culture for humanity. For too long world‟s leaders have sought to extract visions of humanity‟s place in the universe that were limited to the horizons of positiv ist science. These visions failed to deliver because they could not bridge the tremendous material and cultural divides that define the world today, nor could they provide impetus for an ecologically sustainable future. As a result we now stand in need of new visions -- visions that draw upon the untapped spiritual resources and enduring wisdom of the world‟s great contemplative traditions. At the present historical juncture it is tremendously important that exponents of faith traditions such as Sufism begin to rearticulate essential precepts in ways that respond to the contemporary context of profound human need and deep ecumenism. This essay outlines a Sufi response to the challenges presented by contemporary world politics. This response, which includes a call for movement towards a consensus based and cooperative approach to global issues, is based on eight principles derived from an interpretation of the Sufi heritage: Tawhid as epistemology, reinvestment of spirituality, global citizenship within cultural diversity, “beloved” global community, economics of sufficiency, development as modernization plus humanization, democracy as process not product, and social healing. It is our hope that the principles and priorities suggested below will stimulate inspired discussions around the following questions: What does Sufism tell us about world order? What are the normative and practical implications of Sufism‟s vision of tawhid (unity)? Tawhid as Epistemology It is fitting that we begin our discussion of Sufism and global politics with tawhid a fundamental Islamic theological precept that has been understood by Sufis as a “unity of being” wahdat al wujud We must start with this most essential basis of the Sufi vision and methodology, and then proceed to its existential implications.Through the testimony of such exemplars as Ibn „Arabi, Sufism has developed the view that all being is one, and that the purpose of human life is to know this unity existentially that is, in the midst of action, experience and spiritual practice and not merely to seek distinction or salvation as an individual. Sufism challenges us to discover and live the principle of tawhid as direct personal experience of Reality as the grasping of our relation to the absolute, and as the maintenance of harmony with the universe (see Coates 2002; Izutsu 1983) It challenges us to discover that human consciousness comprises both analytic and intuitive modes, and to see the individual parts of reality as well as the whole of it. It regards the complementary functioning of the rational and the intuitive is a measure of human creativity. When we reconcile the two, we come to terms with ourselves as whole beings. Invoking the unity of existence as suggested by tawhid does not deny the apparent existence of a multiplicity of created things. As Ibn „Arabi has affirmed, tawhid refers us to the overall harmony and patterning of the universe. It is natural law in the broadest possible sense: each individual person has a unique place and special obligation to act in support of this patterning. Sufism proposes that knowledge in the complete sense is transformative knowledge of the unity of existence of unity between subject and object. Doubt remains as long as the object seems different from the knowing subject. Normally we do not feel this relation between knower and known, or recognize that in a deep and profound sense we are what we perceive or see. Yet knowledge is relational. Ibn „Arabi defined knowledge as perceiving and being that which is. Really to know to realize that we already are whatever we perceive is to be deeply changed. The purpose of real knowing, therefore, is transformation becoming free from illusions, especially the illusion of separateness. Sufism has been defined in many ways, with some authorities seeking doctrinal common denominators and others emphasizing the principle of spiritual universalism. This paper understands Sufism as a non - sectarian, inclusive contemplative tradition that has been nurtured within the context of Islamic mysticism and spiritual culture. The interpretations offered in this paper reflect the authors‟ best efforts to relate historically manifested Sufi ideals to the challenges of our contemporary global reality. - The naïve materialism of the post - Renaissance centuries is no longer working, and must be replaced by a more inclusive epistemology. The deeper we delve into the fundamentals of science, the closer we are to the fundamentals of many of the traditional mysticisms. Sufism enables us to assimilate these insights, an to pursue education and transformation in a free spirit using various methods, combining both linear and intuitive modes of consciousness. We recognize our oneness in a way that radically alter sour way of being in the world. We realize that the most profound knowledge comes from personal integration, which in itself offers a template for integration of humanity at the species level. We begin to value the self as a whole, embracing the unconscious mind as well as the conscious. Sufism allows us to dismiss the idea that scientific empiricism should be enshrined as a substitute for religion, while simultaneously affirming that traditional approaches to spirituality do not need to be “sheltered” from the pursuit of scientific knowledge about human consciousness. Rather, these ways of knowing can coexist, informing each other to produce new insights about human interdependence at the material and social as well as spiritual levels. At the deepest level, we are and always have been one. The divine manifests through the material, and the material exists within the context of the divine. The whole is reflected in the parts, and from parts we reconstruct the whole. Reinvestment of Spirituality Sufism provides compelling testimony to the fact that everything in the universe and in human nature is not fully accessible to positivist science. Many aspects of our inner reality and life, including consciousness itself, remain mysterious. One of the mo st characteristic and mysterious features of the inner life a feature about which Sufism speaks quite articulately is the age old quest of the human spirit toward transcendence, the act of reaching toward an ultimate reality. From a Sufi perspective there is a profound need to re-establish this quest as the foundation of human striving that is, to reinvest spirituality in our collective undertakings. Throughout history, though admittedly for limited periods, various civilizations have demonstrated how spiritual values can engender social progress. At the same time, we would hasten to acknowledge that spiritual values have just as often been corrupted and manipulated to justify actions that represent their antithesis. This in itself, however, should not prevent an appreciation of the historic association between the emergence of just social orders and widespread commitment to spiritual values.Sufism enjoins humanization of the sacred and consecration of the human. The humanization of the sacred means the destruction of idols so that the Reality may live and be known in human life. The consecration of the human means the recognition that sacred activity is not apart from the immediate, the personal, and the interpersonal. We experience the reinvestment of the sacred in our daily lives. Sufism recognizes that spirituality starts with the individual, with our very essence. At the same time, Sufism sees politics as inherently spiritual because our public life reflects our social values. The reconnection of politics to our highest and most worthy values is now the most important task in political life. Even as Sufism allows us to see the world as a single, integrated whole, it also challenges us to perceive that our world is painfully fragmented.There is great suffering, much of which comes from failure to perceive and affirm the reality of our interdependence. Spirituality provides the possibility of experiencing and accepting human solidarity, and most importantly, the wholeness of human life . It is an experience of a sense of unity that overcomes the principle that divides humanity on the basis of religions, genders, and classes. Global Citizenship within Cultural Diversity Sufis have long recognized that cultures are not and never have been monolithic, and have provided powerful examples of how carriers of different cultures can coexist without violent conflict. Contrary to the theses of Samuel Huntington and his counterparts in non Western contexts, cultural diversity is not a security threat. It is the reality of our world, and we need to learn to work with it more effectively. Cultural differences are not only obstacles to understanding; different cultures bear within themselves resources for grappling with fundamental problems of human existence. When we regard culture as a resource rather than as a threat, we begin to change the way we relate to our own traditions and to those of others. Our authenticity ceases to depend on replication of past forms and exclusion of outsiders. We become more comfortable with our own distinctiveness, and simultaneously more capable of recognizing the genuine uniqueness of others. We recognize that the whole world needs the whole world to survive and to become more human. In our contemporary world there is an increasing need for some kind of minimal global bonding culture to facilitate the creation of a working, global consensus to address the most critical global issues. Without an ethos of global citizenship that embraces the idea of unity in diversity, we will be unable to work with one another to address these issues, and will deprive ourselves of invaluable resources. Many of the reasons that Western and non Western intellectuals experience discomfort with cultural diversity are epistemological. Because the inelasticity in our traditional ways of seeing and knowing the world is precipitating a global crisis of identity, we need new, synthetic approaches to education that permit us to experience ourselves as global citizens. The global citizen should access “knowing” as a mode of multi perspective consciousness. Education should expand the boundaries of awareness, and open new horizons to individuals in their search for truth, beauty and order. Knowledge should liberate us from our presumptions and illusions. It should liberate our creativity to interact with the magnificent diversity and vibrancy of the many ways of knowing developed by different civilizations. It should enable us to harmonize multiple religious, social and national identities. It should help us to discover that the incommensurable insights of different knowledge systems may be complementary rather than contradictory. The coexistence that global citizenship strives for is predicated upon pluralism. The pluralism necessary to create global citizens should reflect the natural progression of humanistic ethics. Different linguistic, ethnic, cultural, and national entities are all valuable. They flower in unique spaces and manners, whose richness is only understood in juxtaposition with the whole. Cultural diversity creates intellectual possibility.In history, wherever a conscious decision was undertaken to integrate the many forms of knowing, a cultural renaissance has emerged. A dark age for the Western world was ended by a golden age for the Islamic world. In Andalusia, the coexistence of Muslim, Jew, and Christian made it the intellectual capital of the medieval world (Menocal 2002) . The Abbassid capital of Baghdad in the Tenth Century comprised one of the most cosmopolitan cities ever known where Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholars searched for truth in harmony.It is eminently possible to create, restructure and redevelop the realm of education so that each human being can achieve self awareness within a global context. Through creative approaches to education, students can move towards a global context of perception and citizenship without sacrificing their own sense of cultural dignity and identity. Recognizing the presence of truth in every language requires study and a reconsideration of received assumptions, but it need not mean ceasing to speak one‟s own native tongue. Global citizens must walk a tightrope, balancing past with present. They preserve the values and accomplishments of the past while creating new the possibilities for the future. Sufism affirms that spirituality often transcends the socially defined boundaries of religion. Our inner essence abides with our Creator, and is the basis for our broadest and most inclusive involvement with the human prospect. In this respect it is worth noting Sufism‟s historically ambivalent relationship to dogmatic theology. Though most Sufis respected institutionalized frameworks, they radicalized Islam‟s rejection of idolatry to include even excessive ideological attachment to their own beliefs about God and divine will. They used form as a vehicle, never as an end in itself. Moreover, Sufis saw no reason to believe that the circle of divine providence excluded non-Muslims. Sufism sees culture as a resource whose function is to express our humanity in ways that make us more human. Cultural creation is essentially a communal process in which freedom in achieved through collaboration, rather than through a purely liberal and individualistic “doing of one‟s own thing.” The communal nature of human creativity involves a certain amount of discipline, self-restraint, and self-sacrifice. Simultaneously, Sufism sees cultural pluralism and freedom of expression as the basis of existence. Each impassioned mind and informed heart is a powerful source of transformation. Each one of us can participate in the creation of harmonious global institutions and the restructuring of existing ones. Each person can help to transform cultural conflict by reframin g value polarities as value complementarities. “Beloved” Global & Pakistan Community The globalization process is irreversible. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether the world is coming together or falling apart. Unless we are able to foster a new sense of global community specially in Pakistan , the concurrence of globalization and privatization on a world level may leave us in a desperate and chaotic situation that aggravates ethnic and religious conflicts. The existing international system favors the rich who are getting richer an d the powerful who are getting more powerful. The resultant maldistribution of wealth and power is itself a form of disorder. We are confronted with bitter paradoxes: Our world has never been richer than it is today, but the scope and intensity of pover ty is also unprecedented. The peoples of the world have never been closer together and yet they have never been farther apart.Thus, Rosenau‟s notion of fragmegration in this special issue is an especially appropriate description of this state of affairs. Despite these grave problems with globalization, we should not ask how to reverse it. Simply put, there is no possibility of deglobulisation although one should not rule out the search for alternatives to ill effects of the globalization phenomenon Infact, we must ask how we can reshape and redirect globalization. How can we establish institutions and a process of world governance to accommodate both the universalizing and the localizing effects of globalization? How can we deal with the issues of massive inequality, unfair distribution of benefits, and marginalization of tradition and culture? How can we create a sense of global community that gives coherence, meaning, and purpose to our emergent reality of functional interdependence? With guidance from spiritual traditions such as Sufism, our era could become a prelude for one of the most creative and harmonious epochs in human history. Preparation for the journey toward a world community begins with seemingly irrelevant dreams. Dreams are imperfect and subject to contextual, cultural, and historical biases. Yet they open the way for a future in which we can shield ourselves from the disaster of chaos, take steps towards the alleviation of human misery, reduce the burden of the world arms r ace, and decrease the burden of repression on hundreds of millions of people. Sufism leads to a profoundly healing vision of cooperative global politics. Developed and developing worlds North and South become one world. Oppressor and oppressed become people experiencing life in all its vicissitudes. Civilization and barbarism become culture. We learn that there are no developed or less developed states, only individuals and societies in development. The Sufi community is a global community, and the global community is a beloved community. From a Sufi perspective, this global community is possible because all of humankind ( insan) is ultimately one people a single community that transcends creed, caste, class, country, and color. Every human community has received streams of divine truth and revelation. Each civilization has a unique contribution to make to the human prospect, and every culture is intrinsically valuable. Moreover, each culture can benefit from contact and exchange with other cultures: the whole world needs the whole world. Global community means unity in diversity. In nature as well as in culture, Sufism sees diversity as a form of divine blessing or Baraka The whole is reflected in the parts, and “Wheresoever’s you turn is the face of God” The Holy Qur’an ,( 2:115). Rather than prejudice, Sufism calls for attitudes of humility and deep respect. Every individual and every nation or culture is capable of manifesting divine qualities. No individual or community can believe itself to be uniquely privileged or unconditionally favored. Economics of Sufficiency Sufism tells us that inner commitment to a vision of humankind‟s place in the universe which gives priority to ethical thought and values over mere physical existence is a fundamental prerequisite for survival and, ultimately, prosperity on this planet. To this end, Sufism prescribes a cooperative global economics based on love, sacrifice, and cooperation, supporting individual and communal selfreliance, a fair distribution of the earth‟s limited resources, and care for the planet. A cooperative global economy emphasizes sufficiency rather than scarcity. The goal is to produce enough of the right goods rather than as much as possible of everything that can be marketed. The purpose of production is to provide everyone with enough to serve as the basis for approaching the nonmaterial aspects of human life. Human capacities, strengths, motivations, and attitudes become primary economic resources and the foundation of development. Sufi epistemology seeks to expand our vision by placing positivist thought forms in a broader context that permits creativity. These thought forms, which are modeled on Aristotelian logic and linear thinking, have limited our capacity to understand complex dynamics of the world we live in.We complicate problems of world politics when we are unable to perceive context and long range consequences. The natural, biological systems and global social interactions that constitute our world are always more complicated and circuitous than our ideas about them. Using lineal, cause and effect thinking to map a world that is an interconnected, interdependent network of feedback circuits inevitably leads to inappropriate actions that generate unanticipated results. Rather than perceiving the world as a home within which we reside, we “think the world apart” through abstractions that fragment knowledge and encourage damaging relationships to nature and society. ----END--- (Aspiration toward a “beloved community” was a keynote of Martin Luther King‟s activism during the American civil rights movement.) Many Thanks for ABDUL AZIZ SAID & NATHAN C. FUNK for there help . Regards , Muhammad Emmaduddin . Karachi, Pakistan. 0092321.2122237.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:51:33 +0000
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