Islamic philosophy Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—''falsafa'' (), which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and p ...

, Sufi metaphysics is centered on the concept of or . Two main

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

philosophies prevail on this topic. Wahdat al-wujūd literally means "the Unity of Existence" or "the Unity of Being." , meaning "existence" or "presence", here refers to

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

. On the other hand, , meaning "Apparentism" or "

Monotheism Monotheism is the belief that one God is the only, or at least the dominant deity.F. L. Cross, Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. A ...

of Witness", holds that God and his creation are entirely separate. Some scholars have claimed that the difference between the two philosophies differ only in

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

and that the entire debate is merely a collection of "verbal controversies" which have come about because of ambiguous language. However, the concept of the relationship between God and the universe is still actively debated both among Sufis and between Sufis and non-Sufi Muslims.

Waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of existence)

The mystical thinker and theologian Abu Saeed Mubarak Makhzoomi discussed the concept of in his book ''Tohfa Mursala''. However, the Sufi saint who discussed the ideology of Sufi metaphysics to the greatest depth is Ibn Arabi. He employed the term ''wujud'' to refer to God as the "Necessary Being". He also attributed the term to everything other than God, but insisted that wujud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wujud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun. The issue is how wujūd can rightfully be attributed to the things, also called "entities" (aʿyān). From the perspective of tanzih, Ibn Arabi declared that wujūd belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wujud." From the point of view of

tashbih In Islamic theology, anthropomorphism (''tashbīh''; ) and corporealism (''tajsīm'') refer to beliefs in the human-like ( anthropomorphic) and materially embedded (corporeal) form of God, an idea that has been classically described assimilating ...

(anthropomorphism), he affirmed that all things are wujūd's self-disclosure ( tajalli) or self-manifestation (ẓohur). In sum, all things are "He/not He" (howa/lāhowa), which is to say that they are both God and not God, both wujud and not wujud.Imaginal worlds, William Chiittick (1994), pg.53 In his book Fusus al-Hikam, Ibn-e-Arabi states that "wujūd is the unknowable and inaccessible ground of everything that exists. God alone is true wujūd, while all things dwell in nonexistence, so also wujūd alone is nondelimited (muṭlaq), while everything else is constrained, confined, and constricted. Wujūd is the absolute, infinite, nondelimited reality of God, while all others remain relative, finite, and delimited". Ibn Arabi's doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd focuses on the esoteric ( batin) reality of creatures instead of exoteric ( zahir) dimension of reality. Therefore, he interprets that wujud is the one and unique reality from which all reality derives. The external world of sensible objects is but a fleeting shadow of the Real ( al-Haqq), God. God alone is the all embracing and eternal reality. Whatever exists is the shadow ( tajalli) of the Real and is not independent of God. This is summed up in Ibn Arabi's own words: "Glory to Him who created all things, being Himself their very essence (ainuha)". To call wujud or Real Being "one" is to speak of the unity of the Essence. In other terms, it is to say that Being—Light in itself—is nondelimited (mutlaq), that is, infinity and absolute, undefined and indefinable, indistinct and indistinguishable. In contrast, everything other than Being—every existent thing (mawjûd)—is distinct, defined, and limited (muqayyad). The Real is incomparable and transcendent, but it discloses itself (tajallî) in all things, so it is also similar and immanent. It possesses such utter nondelimitation that it is not delimited by nondelimitation. "God possesses Nondelimited Being, but no delimitation prevents Him from delimitation. On the contrary, He possesses all delimitations, so He is nondelimited delimitation" On the highest level, wujūd is the absolute and nondelimited reality of God, the "Necessary Being" (wājib al-wujūd) that cannot not exist. In this sense, wujūd designates the Essence of God or of the Real (dhāt al-ḥaqq), the only reality that is real in every respect. On lower levels, wujūd is the underlying substance of "everything other than God" (māsiwāAllāh)—which is how Ibn Arabi and others define the "cosmos" or "universe" (al-ʿālam). Hence, in a secondary meaning, the term wujūd is used as shorthand to refer to the whole cosmos, to everything that exists. It can also be employed to refer to the existence of each and every thing that is found in the universe.Imaginal worlds, William Chiittick(1994), pg.15 God's 'names' or 'attributes', on the other hand, are the relationships which can be discerned between the Essence and the cosmos. They are known to God because he knows every object of knowledge, but they are not existent entities or ontological qualities, for this would imply plurality in the godhead. Ibn 'Arabî used the term "effusion" (fayd) to denote the act of creation. His writings contain expressions which show different stages of creation, a distinction merely logical and not actual. The following gives details about his vision of creation in three stages: the Most Holy Effusion (al-fayd al-aqdas), the Holy Effusion (al-fayd al-muqaddas) and the Perpetual Effusion (al-fayd al-mustamirr). Waḥdat al-wujūd spread through the teachings of the Sufis like Qunyawi, Jandi, Tilimsani, Qayshari, Jami etc.Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present(2006), pg76 The noted scholar Muhibullah Allahabadi strongly supported the doctrine. Sachal Sarmast and Bulleh Shah, two Sufi poets from present day Pakistan, were also ardent followers of Waḥdat al-wujūd. It is also associated with the ''Hamah Ust'' ( Persian meaning "He is the only one") philosophy in South Asia.

Tashkīk

Tashkīk or gradation is closely associated with the Sadrian interpretation of waḥdat al-wujūd. According to this school, the reality and existence are identical which means existence is one but graded in intensity. This methodology was given a name of tashkik al-wujud and it thus explains that there is gradation of existence that stand in a vast hierarchical chain of being (marāṭib al-wujūd) from floor (farsh) to divine throne (ʿarsh), but the wujūd of each existent ''māhīyya'' is nothing but a grade of the single reality of wujūd whose source is God, the absolute being (al-wujūd al-mutlaq). What differentiates the wujūd of different existents is nothing but wujūd in different degrees of strength and weakness. The universe is nothing but different degrees of strengths and weaknesses of wujūd, ranging from intense degree of wujūd of arch-angelic realities, to the dim wujūd of lowly dust from which Adam was made.

Opposition to wahdat al-wujud

Sufi metaphysics has been a subject to criticism by most non-Sufis; in

Al-Andalus Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most o ...

, where most of the Muslim scholars were either

Zahiri The Zahiri school or Zahirism is a school of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It was named after Dawud al-Zahiri and flourished in Spain during the Caliphate of Córdoba under the leadership of Ibn Hazm. It was also followed by the majo ...

tes or

Maliki The Maliki school or Malikism is one of the four major madhhab, schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It was founded by Malik ibn Anas () in the 8th century. In contrast to the Ahl al-Hadith and Ahl al-Ra'y schools of thought, the ...

tes preferring the

Ash'ari Ash'arism (; ) is a school of theology in Sunni Islam named after Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, a Shāfiʿī jurist, reformer (''mujaddid''), and scholastic theologian, in the 9th–10th century. It established an orthodox guideline, based on ...

creed A creed, also known as a confession of faith, a symbol, or a statement of faith, is a statement of the shared beliefs of a community (often a religious community) which summarizes its core tenets. Many Christian denominations use three creeds ...

, Sufi metaphysics was considered blasphemy and its practitioners blacklisted.Alexander D. Knysh, ''Ibn Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition''. Pg. 169.

State University of New York Press The State University of New York Press (more commonly referred to as the SUNY Press) is a university press affiliated with the State University of New York system. The press, which was founded in 1966, is located in Albany, New York and publishe ...

: Albany, 1999. Followers of the Ash'arite creed in the east were often suspicious of Sufism as well, most often citing Sufi metaphysics as well. However, it is important to note that Ibn Arabi was influenced by Al Ghazali, who himself was a strong supporter of the Ash'arite creed.

Opposition within Sufism

As a doctrine, ''waḥdat al-wujūd'' was also not without controversy or opposition within the Sufi community, some members of which responded to its conceptual emergence by formulating rival doctrines. One example was ''waḥdat al-shuhūd'', which was formulated by 'Ala' al-Dawla Simnani (1261–1336), and would go on to attract many followers in India, including Ahmed Sirhindi (1564–1624), who provided some of the most widely accepted formulations of this doctrine in the Indian sub-continent. Sirhindi wrote that one should discern the existence of the universe from the absolute and that the absolute does not exist because of existence but because of his essence.

Response to criticism

Some later Sufis, such as

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi Qutb ud-Din Ahmad ibn ʿAbd-ur-Rahim al-ʿUmari ad-Dehlawi (‎; 1703–1762), commonly known as Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (also Shah Wali Allah), was an Islamic Sunni scholar and Sufi reformer, who contributed to Islamic revival in the Indian s ...

(1703–1762), tried to reconcile the doctrines of ''waḥdat al-wujūd'' (unity of being) of Ibn Arabi and ''waḥdat al-shuhūd'' (unity in conscience) of Sirhindi by downplaying the differences between the two as being based more on terminology than substance. Sufis in the 19th century, such as Pir Meher Ali Shah and Syed Waheed Ashraf, meanwhile noted that the two concepts only differ in that ''wahdat-al-wujud'' states that God and the universe aren't identical.

Accusations of pantheism

The term ''wahdat al-wujud'' as a critical mystical notion was ascribed to Ibn 'Arabi for the first time in the polemics of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), even though he did not employ it in his writings. It is highly controversial among the Wahhabi and Salafi sects of Islam. They accused Ibn 'Arabi of holding pantheist or

monist Monism attributes oneness or singleness () to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonis ...

views incompatible with Islam's pure monotheism. However, according to a number of scholars including al-Sha'rani (d. 573/1565) and 'Abd al-Ra'uf al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621), the books of Ibn 'Arabi have been altered and distorted by some anonymous apostates and heretics, and therefore many sayings and beliefs were attributed to him, which are not true to what he actually wrote. Proponents of waḥdat al-wujūd such as 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, 'Abd al-Ra'uf b. 'Ali al-Fansuri,

Seyyed Hossein Nasr Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian Americans, Iranian-American academic, philosophy, philosopher, theology, theologian, and Ulama, Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. ...

, and Titus Burckhardt disagree that waḥdat al-wujūd is identified with pantheism. Nasr, for example, considers the term pantheism and monism as not equivalent to waḥdat al-wujūd. Ideas similar to pantheism existed since the early stages of Islam. Jahm writes that God is "in heaven, on earth and in every place; there is no place where He is not (...)" and "He is in everything, neither contiguous nor separated.", a position attacked by Ahmad ibn Hanbal.Morris S. Seale ''Muslim Theology A study of Origins with Reference to the Church Fathers'' Great Russel Street, London 1964 p. 62

Wahdat al-mawjud

, wahdat al-mawjud is the concept of the intrinsic unity of all created things. The concept can be viewed as analogous or related to pantheism insofar as it does not account for any separation between the divine and the material world.

Origin

Some believe that wahdat al-mawjud originates from Greek philosophy, such as

Heraclitus Heraclitus (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, ...

' assertion that "God is day and night, winter and summer, many and little, solid and liquid."

Relation to wahdat al wujud

It is sometimes viewed as the opposite of wahdat al-wujud, which frames God as the only true reality, and the material universe as an illusion emanating from God. It is sometimes described as the concept that existence moves towards spiritual oneness, but remains plural. Under this understanding, human beings can become ''

al-Insān al-Kāmil In Islamic theology, ''al-Insān al-Kāmil'' (), also rendered as ''Insān-i Kāmil'' ( Persian/Urdu: ) and ' ( Turkish), is an honorific title to describe Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The phrase means "the person who has reached perfection ...

'' (achieve perfection) and attain the wisdom of God. Others assert that wahdat al-wujud and wahdat al-mawjud are identical.

Al Hallaj

Some associate the concept with Mansur al Hallaj's statement "'' Anā al-Haqq" (I am the Truth).''

Sheikh Siti Jenar

Sheikh Siti Jenar or Sunan Lemah Abang is, according to the '' Babad Tanah Jawi'' ("History of the land of Java") manuscripts, one of the nine '' Wali Sanga'' ("Nine Saints") to whom

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

n legend attributes the establishment of Islam as the dominant religion among the Javanese. His teaching of ''manunggaling kawula gusti'' (union of man and God) gained opposition from Wali Sanga and the Sultanate of Demak.

References

External links

*http://www.hbvdergisi.gazi.edu.tr/index.php/TKHBVD/article/view/890 *http://www.ukm.my/ijit/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/10-Yusri-Mohd-Ramli-IJIT-Vol-3-2013.pdf {{DEFAULTSORT:Sufi Metaphysics Sufi philosophy Monism Metaphysics of religion Nonduality Islamic terminology Hinduism and Islam