Islam the non-religion – 12th Islamic Festival of Mertola.

When we speak of “believers” and “non-believers”, what do we believe in believing or not believing? When we speak of “secular culture” as opposed to “religious faith”, which “culture” and which “faith” do we qualify? When we speak of culture, civilization, religion, common or public opinion, politics, war, peace, homeland, justice, liberalism, globalization, terrorism? What are we talking about? What do we discuss? Why do we fight, bomb and kill? Because of religion? What religion are we talking about and on what grounds, if we don’t even know what religion is?

If we really want to do something on the road to peace in this leaden age in which we live, one of the precautions we must take is to ensure that a critical mass of influential people become aware of the degree of confusion that exists in the public debate on the major issues addressed in the mass media by people who have never given the slightest thought to the meaning of the words they dispute over.

One of the greatest grossnesses of the world debate is the contrast between the human importance of religious activity and the disregard with which the religious fact is despised.

But isn’t this the activity of all fanatics when considering any religion outside their own? Is it not that these so-called secularists’ are in reality believers of a religion hidden behind the mask of politics…?

In these times of concealment of reality, the contribution that the Muslim tradition can dust off is the impeccable thesis on the meaning of the term “religion, which Alfarabi of Afghanistan expounded in Damascus in the tenth century CE.

Alfarabius – which is the Latinized name under which he entered the nascent European university – in his booklet “Kitab al Millat wa nusus ujra” Treatise on Religion and other terms – says:

“Religious society – Millat – and vital commitment – Din – are two almost synonymous terms, and so are the religious code – Shariat – and the tradition-sanctioned norm – Sunna -. In most cases the religious code and the traditional norm indicate and apply only to one of the two parts of the religion: the prescribed actions. But also sometimes admitted views can be called religious code – Shariat-. And in this case code, belief and worship are synonymous terms. Religion’ thus consists of two parts: definition of opinions and determination of actions.”

Alfarabi speaks here of cult and belief in the same sense that J.P. Sartre spoke of “theory and commitment” with respect to communist ideology. Later he discusses the content of belief:

“The opinions that should be shared in religious society – Millat – are three: one deals with the beginning, another with the end, and the third with what mediates between the two…”

From this masterly exposition of principles, aims and projects, Alfarabius unravels the correct meaning of the Koranic terms Millat and Din. Which are the ones that are indifferently translated as religion.

In understandable terms taken from today’s language, we can summarize the Alpharabian perception of the meaning of the term “religion” as follows:

The belief in which we live contains three elements:

A principle that we will call worldview. An end, which is to achieve happiness, and a means, which is the appropriate project to achieve this end.

The ways of seeing the world can be as numerous as the nuances of human idiosyncrasy are countless.

But in the case of the universal belief in the certainty of death. All beliefs are polarized around two certainties that contradict each other without the possibility of synthesis. Unless the pretended synthesis is nothing more than the self-deception of hypocrites. Before the resounding truth of death there are only two opposing opinions: one is that of those who believe only in this life, the other that of those who believe in another ultramundane life. For the former, the longing will be to have the best of this world, for the latter: to obtain the best of this world and also the best of the other.

Following Alfarabi’s method we can establish this hypothesis:

The pursuit of subsistence and freedom from the anxiety of existence are the two basic drives of human activity.

But it is logical that both are conditioned by the particular way in which each individual or human group sees the world.

It is this vision that determines the idea of longed-for happiness, which is what prompts us to imagine the means to free ourselves from the anxiety of subsisting, whether as an attempt at personal liberation or as a social project.

The social project is subordinated to the peculiar vision of the world and of happiness prevailing in each place and climate according to the stage of the civilization process in which its people find themselves and according to the decision-making power of its leaders, the will of its elites and the knowledge of its wise men.

The belief in which we live is the last element that gives reason for the social or individual character of humans.

The belief in which we live is what creates the social bond that manifests itself in the form of social organization, language, ethics, aesthetics, customs and rituals.

The ancient Latin peoples called this web of binding relationships “religion”. Modern Europeans, perhaps because of their preference for worship over belief, called it “culture”, but in this hypothesis both religion and culture should be understood as the project of social welfare transmitted from generation to generation in the form of a firm belief.

In this traditional transmission is contained the belief in which peoples live. This faith in one’s own values is diffused in a subtle way and to a greater or lesser degree both in the mentality of the masses and in the rationality of their elites.

The continuity of the belief that justifies the social project is maintained by the memory of myths, by the sound of chants, by the fulfillment of rites or by the reading and re-reading – re-legio – of the books that each people believes contain the reasons for their way of being and their way of being in the world.

These memories contain either revelations or fragments of memory that come to us from the time of dreams. But in the case of canonical books – revealed, juridical, historical, classical, or simply consecrated by an ancestral use – we speak of chosen, re-read and re-elected books that religiousize without being subjected to criticism or choice of part. The word religion was given these three senses: for Cicero it meant to re-ligate, for St. Augustine to re-read, for St. Thomas to re-elect. Religion does not support a re-vision.

The revision of “the books” heralds the germination of a new intellectual vision of the world that presages a revolutionary change.

Decisive changes in the course of history occur only after a complete reversal of the belief in which we live. The gentile followers of Jesus son of Mary, peace on both of them, adopted the Alexandrian Jewish term “metanoia” “change of the self” (nafs) to describe the experience of their conversion from paganism to Mosaic monotheism. Without this metanoia, all the changes that may occur in the mental field occupied by ideas will only bring revolutions that, after a change of political elites, return to the same desperate situation that motivated the revolutionary attempt.

It is becoming more and more dangerous to ask about the foundation of the ideal of happiness that justifies the present degradation to the point of corruption of the things of this world.

But it is even more difficult to answer with certainty whether this beautiful and perfect state of well-being that we all long for is likely to be realized in this world, in the other, in both, or in neither.

The right answer depends on the right question…. Visions are answers to the way we look at the world and existence.

Longings are questions about the uncertain destiny of our personality in the sphere of non-existence. Visions and longings form the warp and woof of human projects.

From this secular web of illusions and ethical desires depends the aesthetics of the highlights, drawings and colors, which confer their singular style to the variegated social fabric in which the characters and behaviors of human beings are intricately woven.

The Qur’an says: “…it is true that Allah does not change what a people have until they have changed what is within themselves…” (C XIII-12) .

The “non-religious” definition of the term “religion” is extremely important. But what seems difficult is simple if we apply the right method. It is necessary to define “religion” from outside the religious debate, avoiding above all dialectical criticism. It will be necessary to make an effort to witness the facts by looking objectively at the inveterate religious attitude of human beings.

In the social environment that produces the belief in which modern deistic-consumerist man lives, there is no awareness of this problem. A change in the perception of the world is necessary to open minds to the understanding of the need for a change in the social-political sphere that overwhelms us. And it is necessary that this new perception becomes history. For which this consciousness that we want to save must represent a value for the present so that its content is integrated into the current field of existence.

The usefulness of these conferences, in my opinion, can only be found in the defense of the religious values that belong to the ancestral heritage of all humans, in the face of such tendentious opinions about religion as those that can be read in the stupid pamphlets “THE END OF HISTORY” or “THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS”. To make a common front in defense of the dignity and nobility of the prophetic tradition of humanity, which today is relegated to the attic of history, means to work on the path of peace that concerns us all.

And I would like to say goodbye with the words of a great Hispanic Muslim of the 11th century, Ibn Hazm the Andalusian:

“All my life I have striven to find one goal in life that everyone without discussion would recognize as excellent and worthy of striving to reach. I have found only one: to get rid of anxiety…to dispel anxiety is the goal on which all nations agree. When I came to this great piece of wisdom…I began to search for the way that would truly enable me to dispel anxiety…I found it in only one thing: in the action of turning to Allah Almighty and Wise with good deeds done with an eye on eternity…. “

“Therefore we must realize that there is only one goal that is worth making an effort to achieve. And that is: to put an end to anxiety; and only one way leads to it and that is the service of Allah Most High and Most Merciful. All else is misguidance and absurdity.”

“…do not use your energy except in a cause nobler than your ego. Such a cause can only be found in Allah Himself, the Almighty: to proclaim the truth, to defend the right of women, to reject every humiliation that your Creator has not imposed on you, to help the oppressed…. Anyone who uses his life energy in pursuit of the vanities of this world is like one who exchanges gems for gravel.

There is no nobility in men without faith. The intelligent man knows that the only adequate price for selling his soul is a place in paradise.”

Grenada, 21-Saban-1424
18-October-2003