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Conclusion: Corporeality and Sacred Power in Islam
- The University of North Carolina Press
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C O N C L U S I O N Corporeality and Sacred Power in Islam Let the human perish, how thankless you find him! From what did [God] create him? From a sperm God created and empowered him Then along a smooth path guided him Then brought him to death and entombed him. Then, if God wills, from the dead God raises him. —Qur'an 80:17-22 The Qur'an returns insistently to the human body to remind us of our frailty yet also reminds us of its resilience. The body that we take for granted and hold autonomously upright was once not so strong—it was just a spermazoid, requiring many further acts of empowerment to even grow into anything approaching a powerful human body. After a short time, the body itself after coursing its smooth path, will again revert to the microscopic life forms that gave rise to its complex organization as it passes through death and is entombed. But this very fragility gives the Qur'an a stage on which to illustrate the potential of life after the grave: then, if God wills,from the dead God raises foim.This concluding chapter focuseson tombs and graves as the site of intra-Muslim debate over the nature of the body. It highlights both gravethreats and the hope of renewed life, which are the twin poles between which Sufis chart their course in our modern period. The verses above come from one of the most amazing chapters of the Qur'an, entitled "He Frowned." The Prophet Muhammad's wife, A'isha, said that if any chapter of the Qur'an could be wiped out, Muhammad had wished that it would be this short chapter, which addresses him as the one who frowned and chastises him for his behavior with a blind man. The old and feeble man came seeking some knowledge about the new religion of Islam, but his arrival interrupted an important gathering of Arab tribal elders, powerful and rich men who, if they had embraced the religion, would have greatly strengthened the community, as it was under dire threat. Muhammad had done what almost anyone would do to look out for the welfare of his community through practical means: he ignored the blind old man and continued to engage with the tribal strongmen. He frowned and turned away when a Hind man came his way. How do you know if [his heart] might bepurified or recall [God] and by recollection be rectified? For those who are called wealthy,you attend to them closely and don't bother if they are purified! Yet from one who comes toyou hopeful, fearful and clearly humble,you letyour attention beshunted aside! (Q8o: 1-12). In these, the harshest words directed toward the Prophet, the Qur'an admonished him with a reminder (dhikra), the revelationitself.It reminded him not only of his own error but of the fragility of the body, the imminence of death, and the inevitable moral recompense at resurrection. The body and the graveare closelyassociated in this moral discourse.What one does in this world with the body generates a kind of moral energy that is stored up in potential, to be released as kinetic motion only once the body unravels and one passes beyond the graveinto another realm.To keep one's deeds positive takes a persistent consciousness of the next world as already present, even though this world has not yet been left behind. The Qur'an chides the Prophet for being momentarily distracted from the insight of such consciousness. Sufis understand that the warning is not just to the Prophet but to all human beings; the revelation moves quickly from addressing him, as one who frowned and turned away, to addressing each of us in let the human perish, how thankless you find him! Between letting the human being perish and cultivatingthe insight to perceivethe innate potential for goodness in each, Sufi teaching both embraces death and hopes for renewed life in each breath. The goal of the Sufi tradition is to encourage Muslims to confront death at the individual level and to build exemplary communities that promote selflessness and concern for others at the communal level.The Sufi tradition was also crucial in perpetuating the common life of Muslims by passing on ideals of virtue and the means to reach them at the social level, so that Islamic societies might find their spiritual vigor ever renewed, despite the vicissitudes of war or the...