-
Chapter 15. ‘‘Purify My House’’
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
15. ‘‘Purify My House’’ One of the Messenger traditions relates that the first mosque to be built on this earth was the one in the Bekka valley, which God sent down as a sign of His covenant with Adam, when Adam was banished from Eden and began his earthly life.1 The second was the mosque on the Holy Mount, the Further Mosque, erected forty years after the first.2 Both were built in accordance with God’s will and humanity’s submission to it. Before the Fall, all the worlds were humanity’s mosque; everything in them was as God ordained when He bestowed them on humankind. This relationship between God as Lord and humankind as servant was signified by the central place of the inviolable in the world and the human heart. These were identical—the forbidden tree or the Holy Mosque,3 and the inviolable center or the human heart, two houses open only to God. But since God creates all things anew at every moment in time, it is forbidden to accept any image before Him. God’s ‘‘I am’’ means that all other gods are forbidden to us. Making gods means incising or engraving images of anything in heaven, on earth or in the waters; and praying to or serving them is also forbidden. Whenever a person turns to God, one image is destroyed and another accepted. But no image can be allowed to take the place of God, even for an instant. 58 / The Mosque Since no image can be God, cleansing the heart of that image, acknowledging that the heart is forbidden to all but Him, means turning toward God. Full submission to Him is freedom; in it the inviolable heart finds reality, for all things perish except His Face. When humankind disobeyed the ban on approaching the outward center, the inviolable nature of inner and outer was riven apart into the signs in the outer world and the signs in the selves. Our turning toward God prompts us to renew the covenant written at the core of our being by saying ‘‘Yes’’ to God’s question ‘‘Am I not your Lord?’’ Keeping that covenant entails submission to God’s will in orientation, thought, and deed. The covenant, therefore, requires one to accept God’s commandment to make and keep pure the center of the world, thus ensuring pureness of heart and oneness in multiplicity. This opens the way for us to recall and reaffirm that all things come from God, and not to recognize any god but God in anything—neither in our selves, nor in worldly phenomena, nor in our handiwork. In that covenant, however, there remains the possibility that we may forget, or turn toward non-Self. Our will can accept and implement , or can reject and disobey. For both mosques, there have been times when human souls were made pure and when they were benighted , and their condition reflects this state of purity or darkness. In Abraham’s day, both temples were in ruins. In the Recitation, God speaks of the purification and building of the First Mosque: And when We settled for Abraham the place of the House: ‘‘Thou shall not associate with Me anything. And do thou purify My House for those that shall go about it and those that stand, for those that bow and prostrate themselves, and proclaim among men the Pilgrimage.’’4 The purification of the Holy Mosque means returning it to its original purpose: that of bearing witness to Oneness as the source and destination of all existence. Recognizing and acknowledging that the [54.163.62.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:27 GMT) ‘‘Purify My House’’ / 59 Holy Mosque is a sign of return is a consequence of purifying the human heart, since there is no peace but Peace. Restoring the self’s primal nature means renewing its link with primal Peace. Whenever the heart loses direct contact with the Spirit, it becomes benighted, defiled and frustrated; and when human individuals reach this state, they introduce gods other than God into the Holy Mosque and the Further Mosque. The human heart becomes obsessed with these gods, and with the violence and destruction that are the inevitable consequence. As humans, we are at constant risk of forgetting; and whenever we forget, human purposes in thought and deed—worldly phenomena, in other words—become our gods. We forget that all things come from God and that there...