More thoughts on visiting Islam...

I was recently asked to revisit a piece that was submitted in my local newspaper. It was a good opportunity as the original piece was quite sanitized of any attempt at critique. A local newspaper is not the place for such a piece. So I highlighted the positive aspects of my experience, a bit glowing, perhaps, but still true.

In retrospect, my conclusions remain. I have recently been re-reading the Qur'an and am still moved by its power. Yet that critical view returns instantly. I am unable to surrender my Biblical context and thus the Qur'an seems skeletal in light of the Biblical stories and their variants laced throughout the pages of the Qur'an.

The Bible tells stories; the Qur'an makes statements. The Bible gives the characters life; the Qur'an does not. I think it is this that is so troublesome.

The Islam I grew to love was the Islam of Western scholars, usually of a more "gnostic" bent. Scholars such as Henry Corbin and Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) dig into the "heretical" stream of Islam and it is here that I find great power and beauty. In fact, I find this one of the strengths of the Islamic current through history.

The power is found in the way the "heretical" strains of Christianity made their way East and would interact with Muslims as they moved out of Arabia and created a very fertile and living tradition that falls outside of the pale of both Christian and Islamic orthodoxy. It's more fun there.

I say this with a caveat: I'm quite "fundamentalist" in what is considered Christian orthodoxy. This isn't in a militant sense as I'm not about to argue with someone about orthodoxy or condemn alternative views.

But I can't embrace what are, from this orthodox perspective, many of the "new age" or "me-centered" Christologies so rampant and popular in today's media. They seem sappy when compared to the deeper things of Christian theology.

As for "my" Islam, it is probably because I maintain an intellectual distance from "actual" Islam that I am able to absorb some of it into my current spiritual path, not as a hybrid or in a syncretist fashion but as an appreciation, a little flavoring, if you will, to my current path. It still provides a viable critique to the excesses of modern day Christendom. Even the "free" worship style of non-denominational churches becomes, after a while, ritualistic.

Four songs, pastor steps out and gives a little "oomph" to worship more, the greeting/guest book, one more song during the offering and the message followed by an altar call and prayer. Same series of events every Sunday. It too is a ritual, safe, comfortable and yet still a ritual. It's the nature of any organized body and is a grounding element in the lives of human beings. Otherwise, you have chaos (and even chaos will, as science has shown, reveal patterns over time).

So Henry Corbin's Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis and Peter Lamborn Wilson's Sacred Drift or even Muhammad Asad's Message of the Qur'an will continue to enlighten in a way that very few Christian books are able to, perhaps because it brings into sharper contrast the Christ of faith, thus making it more clear what is chosen when maintaing a more "orthodox" Christian faith.