Abstract
In this chapter I explore how the Islamic tradition has understood Ihsan in the past and in the recent past. I examine how Ihsan has been understood and explained by grand Sheikhs like Ibn Arabi, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyyah and many more classical philosophers, theologians and mystics. I also review the only two substantial books (both in Arabic language) on Ihsan published in the past 25 years, one by a Salafi-leaning scholar from Egypt and another one by a Sufi master from Morocco. The chapter also examines in depth how the Quran and the hadith literature present Ihsan. The goal is to show the depth and complexity of the concept of Ihsan in Islamic thought and sources.
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Notes
- 1.
Their source is Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) companion Ibn Abbas, who said that Al-Husna is Al-Jannah, the paradise. Since I will be using the same edition of each of the Quranic commentaries in their physical form that I am referencing, I will mention them only by the names of the authors, such as Al-Tabari or Al-Zamakshari. I have provided an index of all the Quranic commentaries used at the end of the book. Where necessary I shall however mention volume and page numbers, but for all Quranic references, the chapter and verse will be the main indicators.
- 2.
I did not conduct interviews as such; I listened and when possible I participated in practices. I also basically sat with these scholars, often for hours, and learned from them. Most of the experts that I engaged with, I consider them as my teachers, who taught me the traditional disciplines of Islam. Since I spent time with Western-style modern academics and traditionally trained scholars, my traveling personal University of Islam had a diverse and rich faculty and pedagogy.
- 3.
Such as jurisprudence or Usul al-Fiqh, and Kalam or theological metaphysics.
- 4.
Increasingly in the West, English-speaking Muslims are translating Taqwa as God consciousness, but when I spoke with traditional Muslim scholars in Muslim countries like Morocco, Turkey and Egypt, they consistently explained Taqwa as Khashiyah Allah, or fear of Allah. Consider the exegetical discourse on the adjective Al-Muttaqeen in the Quran (2:2) most commentators explain it as God fearing. Ziauddin Sardar, a prominent British Muslim intellectual, defines Taqwa as God consciousness in his Reading the Quran: Contemporary Relevance of Sacred Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 72, but Abdulaziz Sachedina defines Taqwa as reverential fear of God; see his Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 98. The idea of God consciousness, I believe, incorporates elements of Ihsan into an understanding of Taqwa.
- 5.
The significance of the hadith of Gabriel is evident from its selection in Imam Nawawi’s Forty Hadith (Al-Arbaeen Al-Nawawiyyah), and the eminent scholar himself argues in his introduction that he included in his collection only the most important ahadith that pertain to Islam and can be considered to constitute half of the entire religion. See Ezzedine Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies, An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith (Riyadh , KSA: International Islamic Publishing House, 1992), p. 22. Imam Al-Nawawi placed this hadith at number two.
- 6.
There are some Muslim and some orientalist scholars who contend that Imam Abu Haneefah may not be the author of Al-Fiqh Al-Akbar, but it is a minority view. See Abdur-Rahman Ibn Yusuf (Trans.), Imam Abu Haneefah, Al-Fiqh Al-Akbar (Santa Barbara: White Thread Press, 2007), p. 171.
- 7.
See Ibid., p. 171.
- 8.
See Ibn Taymiyyah, Naseer Al-Din Albani, ed., Kitab Al-Iman (Beirut: Al-Maktab Al-Islami, 1992), p. 7.
- 9.
See Ibid., p. 8.
- 10.
Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1994), p. 171, n. 67.
- 11.
See Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, Self-Purification and the State of Excellence (Mountain View, CA: As-Sunnah Foundation of America, 1998), p. 4.
- 12.
I have visited Sufi lodges in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Singapore and the United States. In my younger days I had visited many Sufi places in India, but then I was not a student of Tasawwuf.
- 13.
All the scholars mentioned here are giants of Islamic intellectual heritage, who are read and revered nearly a thousand years after the passed away. Ibn Taymiyyah is remembered as Sheikh al-Islam (The grand teacher of Islam), Ibn Arabia is revered by the people of Tasawwuf as Sheikh al-Akbar (The Greatest Teacher), Al-Ghazali who enjoys respect and popularity across many Islamic schools of thought is enshrined in the tradition as Hujjat al-Islam (Proof of Islam) and Rumi, he is simply Mevlana—“Our Master.”
- 14.
For a brief introduction to Al-Ghazali’s life and thought, see his intellectual autobiography, Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, Deliverance from Error. See R. J. McCarthy (Trans.), Al-Ghazali’s Path to Sufism his Deliverance from Error (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2000).
- 15.
While reading the Ihya, I used a physical copy of the Urdu translation and the Arabic and English version published on the Al-Ghazali portal on World Wide Web at www.ghazali.org. For the translation in Urdu, see Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Ihya Uloom al-Deen, Allama Faiz Ahmed Owaisi (Trans.) (New Delhi: Maktabah Radhwiyyah, 1999).
- 16.
See the chapter on “Sufi Doctrine and Practice,” in Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 128–149.
- 17.
See, for example, Abdul Hamid Al-Ghazali, The Inner Dimensions of Islamic Prayer, M. Holland (Trans.) (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1983).
- 18.
See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1975), p. 95.
- 19.
See, for example, John Renard, Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), p. 56.
- 20.
For his observations on the difficulties in understanding Ibn Arabi, see William Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-Arabi’s Cosmology (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. xi–xii.
- 21.
For example, verse 2:117, which says: “Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”
- 22.
See William Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-Arabi’s Cosmology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 21.
- 23.
Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God, p. 82.
- 24.
This reading of Ibn Arabi’s use of the metaphor of the mirror is based on the readings of Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God, p. 82. Also see Ibn Al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, R. W. J. Austin (Trans.), (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 35.
- 25.
See Abd al-Qadir Al-Jilani, The Secret of Secrets, Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti (Trans.), (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1992), p. xlvii and p. 51.
- 26.
See Jawid Mojaddedi (Trans.), Rumi: The Masnavi, Book One (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 6.
- 27.
A brief biography and translations of some of their poems of most of these poets can be found in Mahmood Jamal, Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi (London: Penguin Classics, 2009).
- 28.
See Mahmood Jamal, ed., Islamic Mystical Poetry, p. 139.
- 29.
See Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 179.
- 30.
Observations in parenthesis are mine.
- 31.
See Sheikh Muhammad Bin Hassan, Al-Ihsan: An Ta’budu Allaha Kannaka tarahu Fa In Lam Takun Tarahu Innahu Yaraka (Mansoura, Egypt: Maktabah Fayad, 2010).
- 32.
Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, Al-Ihsan (Casablanca, Morocco: Matbooaat Al-Afaq, 1998).
- 33.
For a thorough, lucid and systematic discussion of what is the Salafi orthodoxy, how it has emerged and evolved, see Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: HarperOne, 2007), pp. 45–112.
- 34.
His biography is available on the World Wide Net at http://yassine.net/en/document/4729.shtml.
- 35.
See Farrag Ismail, “A Salafi Tremor in Egypt,” Al-Arabiya News, June 02, 2011. On the World Wide Web it can be found at: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/02/151576.html.
- 36.
See p. 30 of Sheikh Hassan’s Al-Ihsan.
- 37.
See, for example, Ibid., pp. 213, 419 and 451.
- 38.
Ibid., pp. 9–10.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 30.
- 40.
Ibid., pp. 330–342.
- 41.
Ibid., pp. 431–438.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 657–658.
- 43.
See Sheikh Yassine, Al-Ihsan, p. 27.
- 44.
See Ibid., p. 304.
- 45.
See Ibid., p. 257.
- 46.
See Ibid., p. 17.
- 47.
See Ibid., pp. 17–21.
- 48.
For a very useful summary of Sheikh Yassine views on Sufism and social activism, see Henri Lauzière, “Post-Islamism and the Religious Discourse of Abd-al-Salam Yassine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37.2 (2005): 241–261.
- 49.
Sheikh Yassine refers to 2:195 and 3:134. The phrase Allah loves those who are Muhsineen—those who do Ihsan occurs in three more verses in the Holy Quran, 2:148, 5:13, 5:93.
- 50.
See Sheikh Yassine, Al-Ihsan, pp. 110–116.
- 51.
For example, see the extraordinary and voluminous translation in four volumes of Rumi’s work, a landmark in Western studies of Islamic mysticism, Reynold A. Nicholson, Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi (London: Gibb Memorial Trust, 1926). Another example is R. W. J. Austin’s translation of Ibn Arabi’s Fusus Al-Hikam. See R. W. J. Austin, Bezels of Wisdom (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980).
- 52.
See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1975), and also see Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1985).
- 53.
Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1994).
- 54.
This is volume five of a seven-volume Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine. See Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, Self-Purification and the State of Excellence (Mountain View, CA: As-Sunnah Foundation, 1998).
- 55.
See Ibid., p. 25.
- 56.
See Ibid., p. 35.
- 57.
See Ibid., p. 43.
- 58.
See Ibid., p. 31.
- 59.
See Ibid., p. 31.
- 60.
See Muqtedar Khan, “What is Enlightenment? An Islamic Perspective,” Journal of Religion and Society 16 (2014).
- 61.
Muqtedar Khan, “Future of Islam in America: A Uniquely American Sufism,” Ijtihad, January 22, 2016.
- 62.
See Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, Trans. Alexander D. Knysh (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 2007). Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi, The Doctrine of the Sufis, Trans. A. J. Arberry (Lahore, Pakistan: Suhail Academy, 2011). Al-Qushayri does discuss quote the entire hadith of Gabriel in his discussion of Muraqaba, which is a dimension of Ihsan, on p. 202. Indeed, he writes about all elements of Ihsan without talking about Ihsan.
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Khan, M.A.M. (2019). Ihsan: Classical and Contemporary Understanding. In: Islam and Good Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54832-0_4
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