Ibn al-'Arabi shares no rank with other Sufi masters. He is alone in his unique slavehood. It is of no surprise that many have sought to 'claim' the Shaykh al-Akbar as of their own school of thought. In this article, Shaykh Nuh Keller discusses Ibn al-'Arabi's opinion on the universal validity of all religions.
Written by Shaykh Nuh Keller. From [http://masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/amat.htm].
Ibn al-`Arabi and Contemporary Non-Islamic Religions
As for the abrogation of all religions by Islam, many of us know Muslims who believe the opposite of orthodox Islam, perhaps due to a literary and intellectual environment in which any and every notion about this world and the next can be expressed, in which novelty is highly valued, and in which tradition has little authority. Many have even sought backing for their emotive preference for the validity of other religions from the books of famous Sufis who are far from such a beliefs, such as Ibn al-`Arabi or `Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri. In a recent work for example entitled "Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-`Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity", Professor William Chittick says:
"The Shaykh [Muhyiddin Ibn al-`Arabi] sometimes criticizes specific distortions or misunderstandings in the Qur'anic vein, but he does not draw the conclusion that many Muslims have drawn--that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previous revealed religions. Rather, he says, Islam is like the sun and other religions like the stars. Just as the stars remain when the sun rises, so also the other religions remain valid when Islam appears. One can add a point that perhaps Ibn al-`Arabi would also accept: What appears as a sun from one point of view may be seen as a star from another point of view. Concerning abrogation, the Shaykh writes,
"'All the revealed religions (shara'i') are lights. Among these religions, the revealed religion of Muhammad is like the light of the sun among the lights of the stars. When the sun appears, the lights of the stars are hidden, and their lights are included in the light of the sun. Their being hidden is like the abrogation of the other revealed religions that takes place through Muhammad's revealed religion. Nevertheless, they do in fact exist, just as the existence of the light of the stars is actualized. This explains why we have been required in our all-inclusive religon to have faith in the truth of all messengers and all the revealed religions. They are not rendered null (batil) by abrogation--that is the opinion of the ignorant.'([al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya,] III 153.12[16])
"If the Shaykh's pronouncements on other religions sometimes fail to recognize their validity in his own time, one reason may be that, like most other Muslims living in the western Islamic lands, he had little real contact with the Christians or Jews in his environment, not to speak of followers of religions farther afield. He had probably never met a saintly representative of either of these traditions, and he almost certainly had never read anything about these two religions except what was written in Islamic sources. Hence there is no reason that he should have accepted the validity of these religions except in principle. But this is an important qualification. To maintain the particular excellence of the Qur'an and the superiority of Muhammad over all other prophets is not to deny the universal validity of revelation nor the necessity of revelations appearing in particularized expressions" (Religious Diversity, 12526).
Chittick's claim above that Ibn al-`Arabi "does not draw the conclusion that many Muslims have drawn--that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previously revealed religions" is false, and could have been corrected by a fuller translation of the passage he has quoted from the Futuhat:
"The religious laws (shara'i') are all lights, and the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) among these lights is as the sun's light among the light of the stars: if the sun comes out, the lights of the stars are no longer seen and their lights are absorbed into the light of the sun: the disappearance of their lights resembles what, of the religious laws, has been abrogated (nusikha) by his law (Allah bless him and give him peace) despite their existence, just as the lights of the stars still exist. This is why we are required by our universal law to believe in all prophetic messengers (rusul) and to believe that all their laws are truth, and did not turn into falsehood by being abrogated: that is the imagination of the ignorant. So all paths return to look to the Prophet's path (Allah bless him and give him peace): if the prophetic messengers had been alive in his time, they would have followed him just as their religious laws have followed his law.
"For he was given Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami' al-Kalim), and given [the Qur'anic verse] 'Allah shall give you an invincible victory' (Qur'an 48:3), 'the invincible' [al-'aziz, also meaning rare, dear, precious, unattainable] being he who is sought but cannot be reached. When the prophetic messengers sought to reach him, he proved impossible for them to attain to--because of his [being favored above them by] being sent to the entire world (bi'thatihi al-'amma), and Allah giving him Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami al-Kalim), and the supreme rank of possessing the Praiseworthy Station (al-Maqam al-Mahmud) in the next world, and Allah having made his Nation (Umma) 'the best Nation ever brought forth for people' (Qur'an 3:110). The Nation of every messenger is commensurate with the station of their prophet, so realize this" (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, III 153.1220).
The passage, when read carefully, is merely an affirmation that Allah's messengers (upon whom be peace) were true, and everything they brought was true, which is believed by every Muslim. It further suggests that everything their laws (shara'i' means nothing else) contained has not only been abrogated, but is thereby implicitly contained in the new revelation, in which sense "their religious laws have followed his law." A familiar example cited by ulama is the law of talion, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", which was obligatory in the religious law of Moses (upon whom be peace), subsequently forbidden by the religious law of Jesus (upon whom be peace) in which "turning the other cheek" was obligatory; and finally both were superseded by the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which permits victims to take retaliation (qisas) for purely intentional physical injuries, but in which it is religiously superior not to retaliate but forgive. This is the absorption of the stars' lights into that of the sun, of "what, of the religious laws, has been abrogated by his law (Allah bless him and give him peace) despite their existence, just as the lights of the stars still exist." This is the sense in which Ibn al-`Arabi is interpreting Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami' al-Kalim) here.
What the passage does not say is that non-Islamic religions are valid now that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has been sent with Islam. Professor Chittick's omission of the second half of the passage (which is plainly punctuated in finish by the words "so know this") is puzzling, for it is highly material to the topic, and in spirit and in letter ("because of his being sent to the entire world (bi'thatihi al-'amma)") plainly contradicts the professor's suggestion that Ibn al-`Arabi does not believe that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previously revealed religions. The wrongness of this notion is clear to anyone who reads the second half and knows what the expression bi'thatihi al-'amma means from having read it in similar contexts from other works of the traditional Islamic sciences that formed Ibn al-`Arabi's education.
In fact, one looks in vain in the works of Ibn al-`Arabi for the belief of the validity of currently existing non-Islamic religions, for this is kufr, as Imam Nawawi and the other Imams mentioned above unanimously concur. Traditional Islam certainly does not accept the suggestion that
"it is true that many Muslims believe that the universality of guidance pertains only to pre-Qur'anic times, but others disagree; there is no 'orthodox' interpretation here that Muslims must accept" (Religious Diversity, 124).
Orthodoxy exists, it is unanimously agreed upon by the scholars of Muslims, and we have conveyed in Nawawi's words above that to believe anything else is unbelief. As for "others disagree," it is true, but is something that has waited for fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship down to the present century to be first promulgated in Cairo in the 1930s by the French convert to Islam Rene Gunon, and later by his student Frithjof Schuon and writers under him. Who else said it before? And if no one did, and everyone else considers it kufr, on what basis should it be accepted?
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