Warning: ob_start() [ref.outcontrol]: output handler 'ob_gzhandler' conflicts with 'zlib output compression' in /home/windsof/public_html/archives/003860.php on line 1
Winds of Change.NET: Sufi Wisdom: More El-Ghazali
Winds of Change.NET: Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory.

Formal Affiliations

Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto
Euston Democratic Progressive Manifesto
Real Democracy for Iran!
Support Denamrk
Million Voices for Darfur
milblogs
Prev | List | Random | Next | Join
Powered by RingSurf!

e-Syndication

August 3, 2003

Sufi Wisdom: More El-Ghazali

by Joe Katzman at August 3, 2003 1:35 PM

As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. Every Saturday, therefore, we spend some time with the Sufis' "crazy wisdom." This entry is political, however, so I've moved it to Sunday.

Last week's feature from the 12th-century scholar and Sufi El-Ghazali (a.k.a. al-Ghazali) led into a major essay on Islam by our Cairo correspondent, Tarek Heggy. The triumph of El-Ghazali's thought over that of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), he said, set the stage for despotism and the growth of intolerance in the Islamic world.

Today, we go back to El-Ghazali, via a story from khamush.com and an accompanying discussion of his philosophy:

"A human being is not a human being while his tendencies include self-indulgence, covetousness, temper and attacking other people.

A student must reduce to the minimum the fixing of his attention upon customary things like his people and his environment, for attention-capacity is limited.

The pupil must regard his teacher like a doctor who knows the cure of the patient. He will serve his teacher. Sufis teach in unexpected ways. An experienced physician prescribes certain treatments correctly. Yet the outside observer might be quite amazed at what he is saying and doing; he will fail to see the necessity or the relevance of the procedure being followed.

This is why it is unlikely that the pupil will be able to ask the right questions at the right time. But the teacher knows what and when a person can understand."

This is a common description of the Sufi method, and it's an approach taken by many systems of religious mysticism. Idries Shah has commented on this before, including the associated piftfalls.

The difficulties intensify when one takes these approaches into wider venues, without the original checks and balances. Elevated into a template for societal conduct generally, given the added temptations of force, and lacking the controls and traditions present in the Sufi way, El-Ghazali's approach to knowledge invites - and has produced - disaster. That said, there are worthwhile elements in his work. I commend this commentary in particular to the blogosphere:

"Ghazali's way of thought attempted to bring to a wider audience than the comparatively small Sufi one a final distinction between belief and obsession. He stressed the role of upbringing in the inculcation of religious beliefs, and invited his readers to observe the mechanism involved. He insisted upon pointing out that those who are learned my be, and often are, stupid as well, and can be bigoted, obsessed. He affirms that, in addition to having information and being able to reproduce it, there is such a thing as knowledge, which happens to be a higher form of human thought.

The habit of confusing opinion with knowledge, a habit which is to be met with every day at the current time, Ghazali regards as an epidemic disease."

How often do we see that in the blogosphere? More to the point, what's the proper cure? And if you think you know, then before you share it with us in the Comments section I'll add one more question... belief vs. knowledge: how do you tell which is which?


TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.windsofchange.net/windsopcentre-cms/trackback.cgi/1618

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference
"Sufi Wisdom: More El-Ghazali"

Comments
#1 from Catfish and Cod at 3:03 am on Aug 04, 2003

Interesting: an example of this phenomenon popped up just today.

http://popone.innocence.com/archives/001048.html

Bryant (Population: One) on Randy Barnett (Volokh Conspiracy) on Steven Den Beste (USS Clueless).

Thesis: Barnett values Den Beste's analysis over open news.

Counter-thesis: Barnett is prejudiced. But he is demonstrating a greater principle: he's dissatisfied with the spin in the professional press, and his happier with the spin he gets in the blogosphere. This indicates that the blogosphere is producing greater numbers of viewpoints than traditional media are providing.

David Brin's book "Transparent Society" discusses the idea of the disputation arena as a possible fix for desiring self-referential opinion over fact. Look in N. Z. Bear's blog archives as well, for his series with anti-war bloggers where each side tried to answer each other's questions about the war.

#2 from moshood animashaun at 10:14 pm on Jun 18, 2004

Hello,
Am mr moshood animashaun ,The head of marketing department of
OLAM-OLAS NIG LIMITED,we are in to sales of eletronic,generator,Memory Watch.wall clock,and aluminum.
such as televition set.intially we buy our goods from Dubai,
United Arab Emirates,A BUSINESS ASSOCIATE GAVE ME YOUR
WEBSITE TO SEE,INFACT I MUST CONFESS AM SATIFY WITH
YOUR COMPANY ,I BELEIVE WE COULD DO BUSINESS
TOGERTHER,THIS TIME I WANT TO COME TO CAIRO EGPYT AND
DO MY NEXT PURCHASE THIS MONTH,

I WANT YOU TO SEND ME AN INVITATION LETTER AND YOUR
ADDRESS PHONE AND FAX.,MY NAME IS MR MOSHOOD ANIMASHAUN . MY COMPANYS NAME IS OLAM-OLAS NIG
LIMITED,REGISTED HERE IN LAGOS NIGERA,WEST AFRICA.

I HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOONEST, YOU CAN REPLY ME THRU
MY EMAIL ADDRESS,bola2004us@yahoo.com.THANKS.

YOURS FAITH FULLY FOR
OLAM -OLAS NIG LTD
ANIMASHAUN MOSHOOD

Post a comment

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.

Finally, note that a constant onslaught of Trackback spams from auto-generated blogspot blogs has forced Winds to ban the blogspot.com domain from use in comments or trackbacks. If you host on blogspot, consider moving; otherwise, the complaints need to be directed at Google not us.










Archives By Category
-FEATURES: 48 Ways to Wisdom (24)
-FEATURES: Diaries & Roundups (10)
-FEATURES: Military Transformation Uplink (12)
-FEATURES: New Energy Currents (20)
-FEATURES: Reader Highlights (2)
-FEATURES: Regional Briefings (166)
-FEATURES: Sufi Wisdom (158)
-FEATURES: The Bard's Breath (32)
-FEATURES: Winds of Discovery (6)
-FEATURES: Winds of War [WoT] (445)
4 HA: 4th-Gen Warfare (103)
4 HA: al-Qaeda (159)
4 HA: Crime, Organized (26)
4 HA: Evil Exists (110)
4 HA: Intelligence/Spycraft (100)
4 HA: Military (522)
4 HA: Nukes, Poisons, Germs (135)
4 HA: Statecraft (29)
4 HA: War on Terror articles (706)
Best Of... (179)
BIZ: Business & Organizations (132)
BIZ: Economics (97)
BIZ: Energy (72)
CIVIS (231)
CIVIS: Copyright Wars (25)
CIVIS: Drug Wars (18)
CIVIS: Edu-Kooks (76)
CIVIS: Free Societies (291)
CIVIS: Hall of Shame (162)
CIVIS: Hatred Rising (114)
CIVIS: Journalism & Media (405)
CIVIS: Spirit of America.NET (31)
CIVIS: War Within the West (309)
COLUMNISTS: M. Simon (13)
COLUMNISTS: Tarek Heggy (33)
GEO: Afghanistan (78)
GEO: Africa (104)
GEO: Asia (116)
GEO: Aussies & Kiwis (20)
GEO: Canada (68)
GEO: China (86)
GEO: Europe (180)
GEO: France (71)
GEO: India-Pakistan (112)
GEO: Iran (223)
GEO: Iraq (962)
GEO: Israel (247)
GEO: Koreas (64)
GEO: Latin America (63)
GEO: Middle East (255)
GEO: Russia (78)
GEO: Saudi Arabia (64)
GEO: Sudan (36)
GEO: U.K. (70)
GEO: U.N. (60)
GEO: U.S. of A (502)
HUMANITY (88)
HUMANITY: Art & Culture (159)
HUMANITY: Art - Music (32)
HUMANITY: Art - Poetry (6)
HUMANITY: Christianity (52)
HUMANITY: Heroes & Achievements (229)
HUMANITY: History (125)
HUMANITY: Islam (182)
HUMANITY: Judaism (136)
HUMANITY: Love (32)
HUMANITY: Philosophy (49)
HUMANITY: Spirituality & Religion (72)
HUMANITY: Zen & Buddhism (28)
Humour (195)
Misc. (42)
NET: Blogosphere (395)
NET: Cyber-Security (16)
NET: Grid Computing (3)
NET: Spam (24)
NET: The Internet (36)
NET: The Open Source Meme (17)
Personal (191)
SCI-TECH: Biotech & Medical (83)
SCI-TECH: Eco-tech (81)
SCI-TECH: Nanotech (27)
SCI-TECH: Science (111)
SCI-TECH: Space (75)
SCI-TECH: Technology (144)
SPORTS (45)
SPORTS: Baseball (75)
Trends (64)
USA: America Catch-all (19)
USA: Anti-Americanism (6)
USA: California Politics (7)
USA: Conservatives & GOP (32)
USA: Dem Party Renewal (72)
USA: Domestic Issues (51)
USA: Elections (92)
USA: Grand Strategy (15)
USA: Homeland Security (106)
VictoryPAC (3)
Winds of Change.NET (51)

Archives by Date
Winds Blogroll


Powered by:
LighTTPD web server
Ubuntu Linux
Movable Type
Hosted by Pixelgate
Support VictoryPAC
Recent Entries

Support Winds of Change.NET!


Your support & assistance is greatly appreciated, and makes a difference!
The Winds Crew:

Town Founder:
Joe Katzman
joe {at} windsofchange. net
Joe's Normblog Interview

Left-Hand Man:
Marc 'Armed Liberal' Danziger
armed {at} windsofchange. net
A.L.'s Normblog Interview

Other Winds Marshals
'AMac', aka. Marshal Festus (AMac@...)
Robin "Straight Shooter" Burk
'Cicero', aka. The Quiet Man (cicero@...)
David Blue (david.blue@...)
'Lewy14', aka. Marshal Leroy (lewy14@...)
'Nortius Maximus', aka. Big Tuna (nortius.maximus@...)

Other Regulars
'Callimachus' (callimachus@...)
'Demosophist' (demosophist@...)
Rev./Maj. Donald Sensing
'Molon Labe' (molon.labe@...)
'Neo Neo-Con'
Tarek Heggy (tarek@...)

Semi-Active:
Arthur Chrenkoff
'Gabriel Gonzalez' (in Paris)
Tim Oren (tim@...)
Trent Telenko (trent@...)

Posting Affiliates
Athena: Terrorism Unveiled
Chester: The Adventures of Chester
Dave Schuler: The Glittering Eye
Grim: Grim's Lair et. al. Joel Gaines [Russia]
Michael Totten
MILblogging.com: The MilBlogs directory
Murdoc [Military]
Situational Awareness team [Military]
Nathan Hamm [Central Asia]
Randy Paul [Latin America]
Robert Koehler [Koreas]
Robi Sen [India & S. Asia]
Nitin Pai [India & S. Asia]
Simon [China & E. Asia]
Yehudit: Kesher Talk

Regular Topic Briefings:
Andrew Olmsted [Iraq Weekly]
Joel Gaines [Iraq Weekly]
Security Watchtower [GWoT Mon.]
Peace Like A River [GWoT Mon.]
Colt [GWoT Thu.]
John Atkinson [Alternative Energy]
Peter Wolfgang [Alternative Energy]
Omri Ceren [Hatewatch]

Emeritus:
Adil Farooq (adil@...)
Celeste Bilby (celeste@...)
Dan Darling
Gary Farber (gary@...)
Hossein Derakhshan (hoder@...)
T.L. James (tljames@...)
Robin Burk (robin@...)


Winds of Change.NET Blogkids & Affiliates

·
The Argus: covering Central Asia
· Canis Iratus: Glen Wishard
· Correct-Amundo: Tech & society
· Discarded Lies: Ev & Zorkie
· The Flying Kiwi: Donovan Janus
· The Glittering Eye: Dave Schuler
· Gumptionology: Nortius Maximus
· Hot Needle of Inquiry: 'Jinnderella'
· Laughing Wolf: C. Blake Powers
· Out The Mazoo: 'Mazoo'
· Power and Control: M. Simon
· Praktike's Place: 'Praktike'
· Random Probabilities: Robin Burk
· Siberian Light: covering Russia
· The Spirit of Man

· Good News From the Front
· WATCH/: covering the war on terror

Archives By Category
-FEATURES: 48 Ways to Wisdom (24)
-FEATURES: Diaries & Roundups (10)
-FEATURES: Military Transformation Uplink (12)
-FEATURES: New Energy Currents (20)
-FEATURES: Reader Highlights (2)
-FEATURES: Regional Briefings (166)
-FEATURES: Sufi Wisdom (158)
-FEATURES: The Bard's Breath (32)
-FEATURES: Winds of Discovery (6)
-FEATURES: Winds of War [WoT] (445)
4 HA: 4th-Gen Warfare (103)
4 HA: al-Qaeda (159)
4 HA: Crime, Organized (26)
4 HA: Evil Exists (110)
4 HA: Intelligence/Spycraft (100)
4 HA: Military (522)
4 HA: Nukes, Poisons, Germs (135)
4 HA: Statecraft (29)
4 HA: War on Terror articles (706)
Best Of... (179)
BIZ: Business & Organizations (132)
BIZ: Economics (97)
BIZ: Energy (72)
CIVIS (231)
CIVIS: Copyright Wars (25)
CIVIS: Drug Wars (18)
CIVIS: Edu-Kooks (76)
CIVIS: Free Societies (291)
CIVIS: Hall of Shame (162)
CIVIS: Hatred Rising (114)
CIVIS: Journalism & Media (405)
CIVIS: Spirit of America.NET (31)
CIVIS: War Within the West (309)
COLUMNISTS: M. Simon (13)
COLUMNISTS: Tarek Heggy (33)
GEO: Afghanistan (78)
GEO: Africa (104)
GEO: Asia (116)
GEO: Aussies & Kiwis (20)
GEO: Canada (68)
GEO: China (86)
GEO: Europe (180)
GEO: France (71)
GEO: India-Pakistan (112)
GEO: Iran (223)
GEO: Iraq (962)
GEO: Israel (247)
GEO: Koreas (64)
GEO: Latin America (63)
GEO: Middle East (255)
GEO: Russia (78)
GEO: Saudi Arabia (64)
GEO: Sudan (36)
GEO: U.K. (70)
GEO: U.N. (60)
GEO: U.S. of A (502)
HUMANITY (88)
HUMANITY: Art & Culture (159)
HUMANITY: Art - Music (32)
HUMANITY: Art - Poetry (6)
HUMANITY: Christianity (52)
HUMANITY: Heroes & Achievements (229)
HUMANITY: History (125)
HUMANITY: Islam (182)
HUMANITY: Judaism (136)
HUMANITY: Love (32)
HUMANITY: Philosophy (49)
HUMANITY: Spirituality & Religion (72)
HUMANITY: Zen & Buddhism (28)
Humour (195)
Misc. (42)
NET: Blogosphere (395)
NET: Cyber-Security (16)
NET: Grid Computing (3)
NET: Spam (24)
NET: The Internet (36)
NET: The Open Source Meme (17)
Personal (191)
SCI-TECH: Biotech & Medical (83)
SCI-TECH: Eco-tech (81)
SCI-TECH: Nanotech (27)
SCI-TECH: Science (111)
SCI-TECH: Space (75)
SCI-TECH: Technology (144)
SPORTS (45)
SPORTS: Baseball (75)
Trends (64)
USA: America Catch-all (19)
USA: Anti-Americanism (6)
USA: California Politics (7)
USA: Conservatives & GOP (32)
USA: Dem Party Renewal (72)
USA: Domestic Issues (51)
USA: Elections (92)
USA: Grand Strategy (15)
USA: Homeland Security (106)
VictoryPAC (3)
Winds of Change.NET (51)

Archives by Date
Winds Blogroll


Powered by:
LighTTPD web server
Ubuntu Linux
Movable Type
Hosted by Pixelgate