Rumi's Tolerance Between Pluralism and Exclusivism

 

 

Rumi's Tolerance Between Pluralism and Exclusivism* 
                  Dr. Mustafa Çevik
             mustafacevik02@hotmail.com

 

Abstract:

Rumi is a leading personage in the intellectual-mystical tradition of Muslims. His thoughts which were based on sufism might be considered some form of humanism and  are even today taking very seriously by by many different people in all of the world. Thes appeal might be thought his embrachign whole humanity. Humanistic thoughts of Rumi are commented sometimes as ‘religious pluralism’ which was shaped by English philosopher John Hick.  According to his theory the capacity of man doesnt have the power to define and understand the religious truth.  Therefore the human mind can only try to understand God and his relation to the universe, but never can be sure whether his thoughts about God are true or not. So, it is worthwhile to study  Rumi’s tolerance towards religions from the perspective of religious pluralism. In this paper the religious pluralism will be discussed from the mainstream Islamic understanding and futher from the perspective of Rume’s writigns. Further we will analize wether religious pluralism is compatible with Islam in generel and with Rumi’s writings in particular. Finally it will concluded that Mevlana is not a religious pluralist in the strict sense of te world but might be considered as the religiously tolerant towards other religions and creeds.  

Keywords: Mevlana, rumi, religious pluralism, John Hick.

 

 

         In recent years religious pluralism has been a popular subject and has been the subject matter of many writings. The concept has been used to denote to mean the dioalog between different faiths. One might add that religious pluralism is something more than dialogues between religions and tolerance to other’s faith. The dimension we discuss here will be on whether pluralistic theology is possible or not with references to Rume’s writings. Since the main problem of religious pluralism is it’s relativism concerning the “truth.” Further it has an inclusive attitude towards all theologies which suppose that all of the religions lead to salvation and to the religious truth.

One can summarize the ‘religious pluralism’ with the postulate that all religions are the same and all of them can help us to take to God. Although some religions are monotheistic, some are politeistic and even some don’t have a concept of God, a religious pluralist can insist that none of the faith are superiour to others.           

One of the main claims of religious pluralism is with the Kantian concept is numen, that is to say he is annown or annowable. In other words God is ineffable. So, all of our claims about God all are subjevtive. John Hick defines religious pluralism as follows: “divine reality is necessarily known to us in the forms made possible by our own conceptual resources and spiritual practices”^[1] To him the “ultimate reality is in itself beyond the scope of human description and understanding… and the known God of the scriptures and of church doctrine and worship conceived and understood in our limited human terms.”^[2] Hick’s understanding is based on the claim that man’s mind can’t understand the reality of God. Hick claims that the Real is ineffable because, in his view, experience is, “as such, a matter of delusion and projection”. And he also claims; they mediate “a real contact with a higher reality”.[3]  For him the human is the real actor of all mental activity. This is the main postulate of Hick’s claims.

But Hick also says that “the figure of Jesus is central to Christianity, and I share essentially the qur’anic understanding of him as a great prophet rather than as the second person of a divine Trinity incarnate. (I do not however share the historical belief that Jesus did not die on the cross). The Qur’an is deeply opposed, as a form of shirk, to the idea that God has a son, and I share that view when ‘son’ is understood in its literal biological sense.”[4]  Here we can ask why Hick sees the Islamic theological understandign better? Because he thinks that the Islamic understanding is more rational to him. We can see that “Hick adopts a Wittgensteinian perspective on the nature of religions, conceiving of them as cultural-linguistic systems (language games) making possible corresponding forms of life, experience, and expression.”[5]

Sait Reçber, argues that “Hick seems to face a dilemma in general. On the one hand, he wants to preserve a realistic intuition in saying that various religious experiences/beliefs are to be related to an independently existing Real. On the other hand, he remains rather agnostic about the nature of the Real in that no positive claim can be true of it. This being the case, Hick either needs to give some substantive characterization of the Real or must acknowledge in some way the non-realism of religious experience/belief.”[6] So if all of these are true then, can we say that the atheism is a kind of valid belief in God? Because as Harold A. Netland says to not approve all of the words about God also means to put human into the place of God.[7]                                        

Another main claim for religious pluralism is to see that all of the religious understandings are only different ansvers towards the Real.[8] If we perceive religion in this way, one can easly say that the religions dont have divine contents but have secular contents. If we follow the line of thinking in this way, then the conclution is that all religions are human product. Futher we can’t claim a divine origin for any theology anymore. As M. Basye Holland-Shuey says theoretically religious pluralism brings a kind of relativism which makes compare the faiths.  To him the pluralism assums another’s faith as valuable as own faith.^[9]  Then how can a Muslim evaluate another person’s faith and is it possible to adopt a relativist approroact towards to other religions? Hick finds evidents in Islamic sources he basis his claims to the Qur’anic verses and to saying of the prophets. Such as Allah is, “beyand what theyattribute to Him.” (Q 23.91). In the above verse they ‘they’ is taking as a reference to a particular group. Namely to those who say that God has a son (‘son’ being understood as literally). “The Real is what it is, and has the properties that it has, but these utterly transcend the scope of our human conceptual repertoire... In a well-known hadith the Prophet is quoted as saying, ‘whatever you distinguish (about Allah) in the most precise sense it is your own creature and would return to you’, suggesting that our theological distinctions about the nature of Allah arise from our human concepts. Again, in another hadith he says, ‘Think about Allah’s blessings (or attributes), not about His Essence.’”[10] Hick tries to prove that all religious understandings are subjective. But he wants to prove this idea by refering to other verses of Qur’an. For instance he uses the verse “beyond what they attribute to Him” (Q 23.91). Of course we can not say that all our imaginotios about Allah are our mental productions. But we can say easly that many of our beliefs about Allah are derived from Qur’an and all Muslim belive, also Rumi does so. So it is not possible to claim any belief which contradicts the revealed knowledge that is the declaring the unity of God.

In addition, the beliefs that are derived from all religios have same value, a religious pluralists should ask himself the following question: “Why I believe this religion and not the others?” If the religious pluralism is true then there souhld be only one reason to believe in any particular religion. And this could be that a person has been born in that environment. In this case there shouldn’t be any other special reason to believe Islam as a true religion.

But Hick believes that Rumi has equal distance to all religions. He bases this understanding to the sufi tradition. When Reçber says that the Sufi understanding is not the mainstream understanding of Islam Hick Says “Dr Reçber is of course well aware of this strand of Islamic thought. As he says, ‘Ibn al-‘Arabi thus argues for an ontological relativity of all manifestational forms of al-Haqq including various beliefs about al-Haqq formed by different religions or even each believer. Thus he takes various religious beliefs to be somewhat authentic but finite manifestational forms of al-Haqq, which is infinite in nature’[11] He insists however that this Sufi view is not that of the mainstream Islamic tradition. But for those who see religious experience as central to living religion, the Sufi strand within Islam must be important. Among the three Abrahamic monotheisms Islam thus falls within the pattern of a mainstream orthodoxy which tends strongly towards an exclusivist self-understanding, and a mystical stream which points towards a pluralistic understanding of religious diversity – as expressed in Rumi’s famous saying about the religions, ‘The lamps are different, but the Light is the same. It comes from beyond.’[12] 

It is a very impotrant point that from the frame of reference of tolerance it is crucitial that his sense of tolerance towards other religions has bases in the Qur’an. We can not say that this is only for Rumi, but many other muslim sages have expressed a high sence of tolerance to other religions. This tolerance does not extend to the discussions about the nature of God (with Hick expression it doesnt include the discussition of the Real). It is important to add that this tolerance is to define the place of adherets of other religions. Not to discuss the God. Reçber objects to Hick’s understand that the concept Real might correspond to Ibn-i Arabi’s “Hakk”. And says: “Now, it is my contention that although Hick can find some grounds for his religious pluralism in some mystical approaches in Islamic thought, he cannot properly do so by reference to the mainstream understanding of Islam, and particularly to the Qur’an.”[13] And he mantains his claim “it can rightly be argued that the Qur’anic view of God, including His property of being the Real (al-Haqq), is rather exclusivist.”[14] 

It is widely known that Rumi’s thinkign and writigng is porodoxal. He also uses methaphores to express his thoughts in his writings. But we can see in his writings a sensitivity for not only believing in Allah, but also a sensitivity for sects as well. He says, “the diversity of reasoning comes from they nature. We should accept the Sunni’s thoughts. Their beliefs are contrary to the Mu’tazelah’s. They point out that ‘rational power is at the same level at creation. Experience and learning increas or decreases the rational power. In this way a man becames more knowledgeable than the other’, this thought is false.”[15] We can see here clearly that Rumi tries to base his understanding on Sunni’s creed and futher tries to point out his credal sensitivity and this can be understand as a kind of exclusivism. It has been seen that some have distorted his statements and took them out of their contexts.

 Here is an example: “There are hiddin ladders in the universe from earth to heaven. Every could has stairs, every road leads to another heaven. And everyone unaware of the other. It is like a country with no begining and no end.”[16] There are many different comments on the ‘ladder’ and “cloud”. To istance Şefik Can supposes that every human is in the right way to the Real. For Şefik Can, Rumi does not accuse anyone of unbelief (kufr). And he says that the different religions other than Islam are there with the will of God[17]  Abdulbaki Gölpınarlı holds and expresses similar views in his writigns.[18] We are not sure about the possible meaning of the terms the ‘ladder’ and ‘cloud’. It can be claimed that Rumi might mean mushid by the ladder and the sect and tareqah by the cloud. When Rumi uses the word kafir he uses it in the sunni sense of the meaning.

 word we can see the same mean of Suni understanding of Islam. For instance: “for someone to be a infidel (kafir) or a hipocrite ( munafik) this is by the predetermination and will of Allah. On the other hand if we are pleased to with these then does not mean that we commit a sin? But if we dont accept them wouldnt it be that be commit sin…then what should we believe? I told him that this is by predestination of Allah but it is not with his command and consent”[19] He expresses in another context “in the universe everything attracts something else… kufr attracts kafir; truth attracts the truthfulness.”[20] 

To think like a relativist about God, will  lead to the evapuration of the concept of God. Because to say that everything we say about God is true also means that whatever we say about God may not be true or means we can not say nothing can be said about God. So we can argue that this religious pluralist attitude is not valid from Rumi’s perspective. Rumi’s tolerance comes from his understanding of God who esteems man highly from Rumi’s fatalistic creeds. From this point of view we can say that Rumi’s tolerance should be understood as a teology which contains human love rather than a theory of religious pluralism.

There are three points of departure for John Hick’s religious pluralism which seperate it from Rumi’s tolerance.

First, Hick supposes that God is not perceivable by reason. For him God is numen and can’t be coceiveable. He thinks that there is not a harmony between numen and the Real (Hakk). Because “it requires the postulation of divine noumenal reality underlying and unifying in the diverse phenomenal religions through a common ultimate referent for their different and humanly limited conceptions of the Real.”[21] But Rumi has no doubt in God’s attributes. For example He believes in God’s eternity, simplicity, absolutness etc. and he uses such attribites in his writings. We can not see in Rumi’s writings ambevelant thought about God as is the case with John Hick.

I think that for Rumi it is not possible to imagine God as numen. Since we can perceive God truly he describes himself byp revelation. Rumi like many sufi thinkers uses the concept the ledun (givin knowledge). Ledun, means God’s revealed knowledge to us. But God does not reveal this knowledge (ilm) to everyone. For Rumi man should purify his heart by love and in doing so then he will know God as ­ayn al-yaqin (as we have seen him).^[22] It can be concluded that the concept of Rumi’s God can not be compromised with numen theory of Hick’s which is sthe foundation stone of Hick’s pluralism.

Second, another basic claim of Hick’s pluralism is that all different understandings of God are equal in weight. Here it can be said that a man who believe in hereafter and a man who does not believe can not be equal. The same thing can be said that for a person who believes in the unity of God and the one who believes into the existence of many gods.

The third claim of pluralists is that all theological understanding are ansvers to the Real.[23] But as Sayyid Husayen Nasr says this claim can not be true from Islamic perspective. Since the Islamic understanding of God is mostly derived from the Divine revelation to his Messenger. So if Rumi accept that Islam is an ansver to God then necesserely he should accept that Qur’an is written by humam being not a revealed text. As it is obvious we can not claim this for Rumi. We can see that in his ansver to Reçper that Hick claims that Islam and Rumi’s theology like all other religions are responses to the Divine. But it is commonly accepted in Muslim societies that the Qur’an is not an ansver to the Allah, on the contrary a Divine response to the human.

 Hick doesn’t claim that God, the Real in his words, does not have reality independently of our mind, like Lugwig Andreas Feuerbach’s theory. That brings us to the relativism or a kind of postmodern understanding, although Hick denies this.[24]  Here we think that like every avarage muslims Rumi thinks that all of our judgments about God are derived from the revealed book to the Messenger Mohammad. In connection to this, Rumi’s toleance understanding is towarads different misunderstandings of Islam. As a conclusion we can say that Rumi’s tolerance to other religions and creeds can not be considered as religious pluralism, but only tolerance to other beliefs and creeds.

 

 

Bibliography:

1.John Hick ve Seyyid Hüseyin Nasr’la Bir Mülakat (Religions and Absolute Reality Concept: An Interview Between John Hick And Sayyid Hussain Nasr), tr. Adnan Aslan, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, Sayı 1, Ankara 1997, 175-188.

2.John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).

3.John Hick, http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article11.html

4.Sumner B. Twiss, The Philosophy of Religious Pluralism: A Critical Appraisal of Hick and His Critics,  The Journal of Religion, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1990).

5.Harold A. Netland, Encountering religious pluralism: the challenge to Christian faith & mission,  InterVarsity Press, 2001.

6.M. Basye Holland-Shuey, "Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Dialogue," Evrensel Kilise Birliği’nde verilen bir konferans,  AL, 2002-JAN-13.

7.M. Sait Reçber, the “Hick, The Real and Al-Haqq,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 1, 3–10, January 2005.

8.J.Hick’in “Response to Dr Reçber,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 1, 3–10, January 2005.

9.Rumi, Mesnevi, Çev. Veled İzbudak,MEB Yayınları, İstanbul 1988, Cilt III, s. 125.

10.  Şefik Can, Mevlâna"ya göre; Din, İman Ve Küfür’, 5. Milli Rumi Kongresi,  http://akademik.semazen.net/author_article_detail.php?id=1159.

11.  Abdulbaki Gölpınarlı, Divan-I Kebir I. Cilt, önsöz, İş Bankası Yayınları, 2007 İstanbul.

 

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*This paper published in Sosyal Bilimler Araştıra Dergisi, 16. issue, ISSN: 1304-2424, 2015. 

[1] John Hick, http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article11.html. And also see: Dinler ve Mutlak Hakikat Kavramı: John Hick ve Seyyid Hüseyin Nasr’la Bir Mülakat (Religions and Absolute Reality Concept: An Interview Between John Hick And Sayyid Hussain Nasr), tr. Adnan Aslan, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, Sayı 1, Ankara 1997, 175-188.

[2] John Hick, http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article11.html

   [3] John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p.102.

[4] Jonh Hick, “Response to Dr Reçber,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 1, 3–10, January 2005. p. 11.

[5] Sumner B. Twiss, The Philosophy of Religious Pluralism: A Critical Appraisal of Hick and His Critics,  The Journal of Religion, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 533-568.

[6] M. Sait Reçber, the “Hick, The Real and Al-Haqq,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 1, 3–10, January 2005, p. 4-5

[7] Harold A. Netland, Encountering religious pluralism: the challenge to Christian faith & mission,  InterVarsity Press, 2001, p. 57-65.

[8] Dinler ve Mutlak Hakikat Kavramı: John Hick ve Seyyid Hüseyin Nasr’la Bir Mülakat (Religions and Absolute Reality Concept: An Interview Between John Hick And Sayyid Hussain Nasr), tr. Adnan Aslan, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, Sayı 1, Ankara 1997, 175-188.

[9] M. Basye Holland-Shuey, "Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Dialogue," Evrensel Kilise Birliği’nde verilen bir konferans,  AL, 2002-JAN-13.

[10] Hick, 2005, p. 12.

[11] Hick, 2005, p. 14.

[12] Hick, 2005, p. 14.

[13] M. Sait Reçber, “Hick, The Real and Al-Haqq,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 1, 3–10, January 2005, p.6.

[14] Reçber, ibid, p. 9.

[15] Rumi, Mesnevi, Tr. Veled İzbudak, MEB Yayınları, İstanbul 1988, Vol. III, s. 125.

[16] Rumi, Mesnevi, Vol. V. S. 210.

[17] Şefik Can, Mevlâna"ya göre; Din, İman Ve Küfür’, 5. Milli Rumi Kongresi,  http://akademik.semazen.net/author_article_detail.php?id=1159.  p. 20-21.

[18] Abdulbaki Gölpınarlı, Divan-I Kebir I. Cilt, önsöz, İş Bankası Yayınları, 2007 İstanbul, p. ixxxi.

[19] Rumi, Mesnevi, Vol. III, p. 110-111.

[20] Rumi, Mesnevi,  Vol. IV p. 133.

[21] Sumner B. Twiss, The Philosophy of Religious Pluralism: A Critical Appraisal of Hick and His Critics,  The Journal of Religion, Vol. 70, No. 4, 1990.

[22] Rumi, Mesnevi, Vol. I, p. 279.

[23] Dinler ve Mutlak Hakikat Kavramı: John Hick ve Seyyid Hüseyin Nasr’la Bir Mülakat (Religions and Absolute Reality Concept: An Interview Between John Hick And Sayyid Hussain Nasr), tr. Adnan Aslan, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, No: 1, Ankara 1997, 175-188.

[24] John Hick, http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article11.html. In order to prove that his theory is not a kind of reletivism and postmodernism Hick refers to Rumi’s tolerance: “It is sometimes said that religious pluralism is a product of post-Enlightenment western liberalism. But this is a manifest error, since the basic pluralist idea predates the 18th century European Enlightenment by many centuries. It was taught by such thinkers as Rumi and al-Arabi in the 13th century, and Kabir, Nanak, and many others in 15th century India. Indeed it occurs in the edicts of the Buddhist emperor Asoka in the 2nd century BCE. So far from its having originated in the modern west, the fact is that the modern west is only now catching up with the ancient east! Indeed even within Christianity itself there were expressions of religious pluralism long before the 18th century Enlightenment.” Look at the same articles. Also look at: Harold A. Netland, Encountering religious pluralism: the challenge to Christian faith & mission,  InterVarsity Press, 2001, p. 57-65.