Peace IsLame,
My blog is a good place to start (see sig below). One criticism that I have leveled at me (from some parts of the Sufi community as well as from progressives and atheists) is that I don't seem to have a core, summarizable belief system -- I appear to be tackling things one hadith or verse at a time. This is, to an extent, a valid criticism.
In my view, my core belief system IS the Qur'an itself. Even though it appears that I treat the book metaphorically at times (see my posts in this forum regarding women), I don't see things this way. Because I believe, like your average Muslim, that the Qur'an is prescribing a Shariah to govern reality (personal, familial, social, political, heavenly) ... where I diverge with the stereotypical Muslim is in what that "reality" is.
The personal, familial, social and political dimensions of the true reality are, for me, probably not the same kind of thing that many Muslims consider to be reality.
They
do exist for me in the same way that they exist for everyone else -- the chair that I sit on as I write this is a solid object that I happen to have bought at Ikea, just like most of the Muslims in London do. But contained within this chair that I sit on is its precursor, the kursi, the Throne of God. That precursory nature of the Ikea chair provides its ultimate "meaning" for me. If I buy a bottle of milk to make a cup of tea, I do so just like everyone else. But the "meaning" of the milk is ultimately that milk the Prophet gave to the disbeliever, until he was satiated: (in a really circular manner), the "meaning" of the milk is the milk of perceiving the milk of meaning. If I love a woman, I am loving a real woman just like everyone else. But the "meaning" of that love is cosmic: her meaning is as a garment for me as I am a garment for her -- there is no Divine Love "outside" the love of human to human, but rather it exists as a "secret" encoded within this garment-within-garment sexuality.
Obscure?
Put it another way. I believe everything in the Qur'an and follow the Shariah and sunnah to the letter. But what does it mean to insist on wearing short trousers when you don't believe that trousers -- in the ordinary sense -- have an absolute reality? I believe that there are "real" trousers, and keep these short, so I can pray with them -- but these magic invisible trousers are not the same as my Levis. I don't deny there is a link between the two -- my Levis derive any meaning they possess from my magical invisible trousers.
Still no good?
I follow the Shariah on all aspects of life. But I believe we live in a world a bit like the Matrix -- a world of pure information. Everything is a flow of information, like a computer simulation. The shariah does not give instruction on the "fake" computer simulation, but, instead, on the world "outside" the computer simulation -- the real world. The Prophet is a kind of Morpheus figure, offering you a "get out" pill. (We've been talking about getting high here in this thread -- there are similarities and connections in terms of modes of perceiving realities between the religious and the psychedelic, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)
In contrast, your stereotypical Muslim is effectively an empirical rationalist -- a physicist rather than a computer scientist or mathematician -- for them, reality is whatever science (physical or political) says it is. They BELIEVE in the reality of the "fake" computer simulation and deny that there is a world outside this. This is why they are always getting into all kinds of scrapes, trying to find scientific proofs of the Qur'an, bless 'em.
When you "get out" -- you see that there is indeed men, women, slaves, trousers, warfare, milk, chairs and so on -- but their nature is quite different from what the sheikhs (and rationalists) will tell you. When you "get out", the injunction to jihad is obligatory -- because "getting out" is jihad. And the flight to Medina is replicated within yourself -- not mentally, but physically. Because what we live in ordinarily (as rationalists or sheikhs) is mental, while the real is as physical as ... making love.
Note that I do not say "getting out" privileges an elite few over everyone still "trapped within", although it certainly sounds like that. From the perspective of, say, a Richard Dawkins type, if I really believe what I am saying, then I am delusional, perhaps a bit mad. If I were to tell such a person that the reason I believe this is because I had an experience where I met the Prophet himself -- then he would certainly call the white truck -- but most Sufis sincerely believe to have had such an experience, to some degree or another. And, from that perspective, just a judgement is sound. The Sufi would call Dawkins "trapped within" and he would call the Sufi "mad" -- both perspectives are complementary and necessary in fact, for us to enter paradise (and this point is where things get complicated ... see my blog for details.)
I am being slightly playful here, and certainly very approximate. If you give me a specific question, of course, I will try to give you a very specific and serious answer -- so I invite that. In the past, I always get a LOT personally out of the discussions I have with you guys.
Love and Light,
Musa the Tailor
Topic: The Marijuana Thread