THE GARDEN OF TRUTH & THE GARDENER HIMSELF

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We were created to transcend the finitude and limitations

of the human state.  The mystery of our life on earth is not only that we are born, live, and die in a journey whose beginning and end we know not; it is also that within this horizontal journey we are given the possibility of wayfaring vertically beyond all the temporal and spatial accidents of our terrestrial existence.  And it is essentially for thye sake of making this second journey that we were put here on earth.  This journey, which takes us to the abode of the One and the Garden of Truth, is the primary raison d'etre of our existence in this world and the end of the journey, the ultimate goal of human life.

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From one point of view, the journey considered horizontally seems to be long, but from the metaphysical point of view, which is based on the vertical dimension, it is nothing other than that single instant when we surrender ourselves to God and begin the path of ascent toward Him.  We were created to know the Garden of Truth and ultimately the Gardener Himself, and to reach it through the full realization of this knowledge.  Sufism is one of the major paths that the Gardener has created, within the framework of Islam, to the Garden.

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Surely there are other paths and Sufism would be the first to attest to the universality of revelation. 

Let us then take advantage of the here and now to travel beyond all times and places, before the hand of destiny removes from us the possibility of that vertical journey, which begins here and now and finally returns to Here and Now.  We travel to the There only to discover that it is Here, and to the future that is beyond earthly time only to see that it is Now.

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To make the journey to the Garden means to go from here to There, and the fruit of the journey is the realization that There is Here.  That is why in the Quran, God addresses the Prophet, "If thy sevant asks thee about Me, truly I am Near."  That Divine Reality, the Gardener, is Near; we have only to realize His Nearness.  As for the Garden of Truth, like the Gardener, it resides at the center of our being.  Happy are those who are able to reach this Garden while they are still in the human state and have the possibility of doing so.

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From THE GARDEN OF TRUTH

The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition

by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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If you act as an instrument of God, whatever comes will not affect you; He will bear it. Then you will be able to finish what you started. You must be the instrument, then He will be the One who is the Doer. That is the point. Evil is everywhere, it is joined with you.
When you set out to do something good, when you are the instrument to do a good duty, the opposite of it, evil, will oppose you. If the “I” sets out to do something, it will be difficult, but if you become an instrument (of God), the weight is His. Then it will be easy. You must think of this. This point is the point of psychology. This is the way you must realize wisdom and truth in your life.
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 Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Sufi Philosopher (d. 1986)

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THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN MUHAMMAD'S TIME

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From A HISTORY OF GOD -
The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
by Karen Armstrong
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Muhammad died unexpectedly after

a short illness in June 632.  After his death, some of the Bedouin tried to break away from the ummah, but the political unity of Arabia held firm.

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[From Wikipedia -  Ummah (Arabic: أمة‎) is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation". It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or (in the context of pan-Arabism) the whole Arab world. In the context of Islam, the word ummah is used to mean the diaspora or Commonwealth of the Believers (ummat al-mu'minin), and thus the whole Muslim world.]
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Eventually the recalcitrant tribes also

 accepted the religion of the one God:

 Muhammad's astonishing success had shown

 the Arabs that the paganism which had served them

well for centuries no longer worked in the modern world.

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The religion of al-Lah introduced the compassionate ethos

which was the hallmark of the more advanced religions:

brotherhood and social justice were its crucial virtues.

A strong egalitarianism would continue to characterize

the Islamic ideal.

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During Muhammad's lifetime, this had included

the equality of the sexes.  Today it is common in the West

to depict Islam as an inherently misogynistic religion, but,

like Christianity, the religion of al-Lah was originally positive

for women.  During the jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic period,

Arabia had preserved the attitudes toward women which

had prevailed before the Axial Age.  Polygamy, for example,

was common, and wives remained in their father's households.

Elite women enjoyed considerable power and prestige -

Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, for example, was a

successful merchant - but the majority were on a par with

slaves; they had no political or human rights, and female

infanticide was common.

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Women had been among Muhammad's earliest converts,

and their emancipation was a project that was dear to his heart.

The Koran strictly forbade the killing of female children and

rebuked the Arabs for their dismay when a girl was born.

It also gave women legal rights of inheritance and divorce:

most Western women had nothing comparable until the

nineteenth century.  Muhammad encouraged women to

play an active roll in the affairs of the ummah, and they

expressed their views forthrightly, confident that they

would be heard.  On one occasion, for example, the women

of Medina had complained to the Prophet that the men

were outstripping them in the study of the Koran and

asked him to help them catch up.  This Muhammad did.

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One of their most important questions was why the Koran

addressed men only when women had also made their surrender to God. 

 The result was a revelation that

addressed women as well as men and emphasized the

absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.

Thereafter the Koran quite frequently addressed

women explicity, something that rarely happens in

either the Jewish or Christian scriptures.

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Unfortunately, as in Christianity, the religion was later

hijacked by the men, who interpreted texts in a way that was

negative for Muslim women.  The Koran does not prescribe

the veil for all women but only for Muhammad's wives,

as a mark of their status.  Once Islam had taken its place

in the civilized world, however, Muslims adopted those

customs of the Oikumene which relegated women to

second-class status. 
 They adopated the customs of veiling women
 and secluding them in harems from
 Persia and Christian Byzantium,
 where women had long been marginalized in this way. 
 By the time of the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258),
 the position of Muslim women was as bad as that
 of their sisters in Jewish and Christian society.
  Today, Muslim feminists urge their menfolk to return

to the original spirit of the Koran.

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THE PROBLEM WITH MISSIONARIES

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It is no accident that the world's

two largest and most widespread religions

include a missionary imperative.

Unlike faithful Hindus, Jews, Taoists,

and practitioners of Shinto, Christians and

Muslims are expected to carry the Good News

and the Islamic call to faith, respectively,

to the far corners of the world. Although they

disagree on the precise nature of God's revelation

and the paths to the ultimate goal, adherents in

both traditions agree that their faith incorporates

a missionary mandate. Far too often in both

traditions, however, a narrow understanding of

mission has combined with cultural imperialism

and military power in ways that destroyed any

witness to God's love and mercy.
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.Examples of missionary-related abuses abound.

The history of the spread of Christianity and Islam

in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas (for

Christianity) is a checkered one at best.

Pick a continent and study the behavior of

those who came in the name of these religions.

Raw power and conquest sometimes dominated

the process. Conversion by force is often inter-

twined with moving stories of people whose faith

and courage changed them and their communities

in many positive ways. Certain missionaries made

life-changing contributions, making possible

greater opportunities in health care, education,

and the economy, but celebrating the positive

doesn't tell the whole story. When missionary

zeal is informed by absolute truth claims

defining who is "saved" and what is acceptable,

the propagation of religion frequently

includes sinister dimensions.

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The California missions system (1769-1834)

as founded and developed by Father Juipero

Serra exemplifies the problem. Serra's piety,

courage, and commitment to evangelize

Native Americans have been affirmed by

his critics as well as by those who advocated

for his beatification in 1988 (a formal step

toward canonization as a saint in the Roman

Catholic tradition). A professor of theology,

Serra left Spain for the mission field of the

new world in 1749. By the time of his death

in 1782, he had walked some twenty-four

thousand miles through Mexico and California

and established twenty-one Franciscan missions.

However noble his intentions, his methods and

close cooperation with Spanish government

and military officials were cruelly devastating

to the indigenous people. The mission was,

in fact, part of a larger strategy of colonization

and conquest. Serra and his fellow missionaries

traveled to new territory with Spanish military

contingents and apparently understood
themselves as agents of both God
and the civil government.
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Serra and others like him viewed the

native population as savage heathens

who had to be disciplined as children.

Their version of discipline would warrant

state intervention and charges of child

abuse in California today. The Franciscans

were convinced that cultural conversion was

a prerequisite to conversion to Christianity.

With righteous determination, "they went

about the task of dismantling what they

regarded as backward traditional lifeways,

social structures, mores, and values of

Indian peoples." Missionaries destroyed

towns, separated families, instituted slavery

and economic exploitation, applied religious

coercion ruthlessly, and carried out various

types of corporal punishment.
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 George Tinker, a Native American seminary
 professor and pastor to Lutherans and Episcopalians
 in Denver, closely examines Serra and three

other highly respected historical missionary

leaders and concludes that they were naive

and possibly unwitting partners in genocide.

Without question, the California mission is

part of a larger pattern beginning with the

subjugation of Aztecs and other native peoples

in Mexico. Franciscans, Augustinians, and

Dominicans carried the enterprise north

into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and

California.
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The uncritical mixing of religious, political,

military, and economic realms in the missionary

conquests of the Southwest offends contemporary

sensitivities and contradicts the cherished

principle of the separation of church and

state. It is far closer to the military, political,

and religious expansion of Islam in the seventh

and eighth centuries. These and missionary

movements in Asia and Africa reflect another

era and outdated worldviews. In different

ways at different times, Christian and Muslim

missions rested on absolute truth claims -

stated or assumed - that theirs was a superior

culture and religion. In fairness to early

Islamic expansion - across North Africa and

into Spain, through the Fertile Crescent and

across Mesopotamia and Persia into India -

there is little evidence of widespread conversion

at the point of a sword.

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From WHEN RELIGION BECOMES EVIL

by Charles Kimball
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THE VERSE OF LIGHT

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The Ayat an-Nur (Arabic: "the Sign of Light" or

"the Verse of Light") is the 35th line of the 24th sura

of the Qur'an, Sura an-Nur. The verse is renowned

for its remarkable beauty and imagery,

and perhaps more than any other verse

lends itself to mystical or esoteric readings

of the Qur'an.
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Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.
The parable of His Light is a niche wherein is a lamp—
the lamp is in a glass, the glass as it were

a glittering star—
lit from a blessed olive tree,
neither eastern nor western,
whose oil almost lights up,
though fire should not touch it.
Light upon light.
Allah guides to His Light whomever He wishes.
Allah draws parables for mankind,
and Allah has knowledge of all things.
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Often employed by Sufis and Muslim Philosophers,

the Light Verse testifies of God as the

"Light of the heavens and the earth".

The short metaphor which follows, is both

visual enough to be grasped by anyone,

and yet suggests realms of meaning beyond any

literal reading of the Book.

This verse is also the primary source

of one of the 99 Names of God:

an-Nur,(النور) "The Light".

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From Wikipedia

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