Ah, okay, one last reply before I am away from this forum for a bit.
I can see how its an enticing way to view the world - everything is beautiful because its got God fingerprints over it.
Do you believe in the traditional history of how the Quran came about & the life & times of the prophet?
Certainly not!
In a particular sense, I believe that the Prophet is a purely imaginary, literary character, like Hamlet or Luke Skywalker (But another way of putting that is that we are purely imaginary, literary characters while he is a "real" person.)
For example, check out my version of the Banu Qurayza massacre:
http://thegoodgarment.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-lesser-jihad/Taking Martin Lings further, I believe the whole story is too obviously a case of a Jewish joke that got taken the wrong way.
So how do you interpret uglier things in history (e.g. Aisha being 9) & the atrocities that Muhammed carried out (wars, murders etc).
The betrothal at 6 and the marriage at 9 are classic pieces of Jewish numerology:
http://thegoodgarment.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/aisha’s-marriage-a-hyper-salafi-perspective/Aisha -- as she is described in the hadeeth -- is also a kind of literary character.
There probably was also a "real" Aisha, like you are "real". But her nature is irrelevant because it is the literary aspect that what counts (not the least because it's all that we've got of her!).
Not just the things recorded in the hadith, but by the objective history e.g. the conquest of Arabia during the prophets lifetime?
Clearly something went on there -- although we really have some pretty poor records. I'm sure it is very interesting for historians, but irrelevant from the Sufi perspective.
I mean -- we could imagine several pictures of the conquest and Muhammed's role in it, historically. Perhaps there was an alliance between Arabs and Jewish tribes that got out of control -- and Muhammed was a fictional hero invented by Rabbis to keep the pact together, which later soured. Something along the lines of the Hagarism theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagarism:_The_Making_of_the_Islamic_WorldI find it an appealing historical theory -- not because it is accurate (I've got no idea what went on historically as I am not an historian) -- but because it is so different from the other theories -- that it makes us aware that any speculation about that time is just that - speculation.
Well, another historical theory is a more Shia position, which is that Muhammed was primarily a mystic and charismatic visionary who was abused by a bunch of political opportunists. He had absolutely no power of his own and was treated as a kind of court jester -- but with a charisma and poetry that helped get groups together. But when his use was over, the opportunists censored his will and kicked his daughter to death (not the mark of a powerful politician).
Alternatively, there is a more standard position, which is that he was a general-poet, a great military strategist who used poetry to rally the troops for his own material gain (and no one kicked his daughter to death, she died naturally, it was all one happy family).
But for me, it really doesn't matter. History is useful, but irrelevant to Sufi reading.
And coming back to the Quran being true - why do you pray 5 times a day if you see the Quran like a a nursery rhyme. I am sure if Jack & Jill nursery rhyme said Jack prayed one time a day, then you wouldnt pray just the once. And if you see it as something different, then how do you know its not manmade?
Oh I don't read any
commandments in nursery rhymes, nor in the Qur'an or sunnah. I don't obey the shariah in that sense
The shariah (wherever we find it) is not commandments but, rather, laws of how the mind/body/universe/soul is constructed that, when read correctly, allow us to realise what these things actually are.
So in this sense, I would be praying 5 times a day irrespective of whether I appeared to do so "physically" to a passer by -- because a 5-fold submission is how I understand the body to be constituted as a cosmology. Similarly, as a Sufi reader of Jack and Jill, I would never read a "command" within it -- but, in reading the rhyme as a Sufi -- extracting the light from it -- I would, like Jack&Jill-as-Adam/Eve and Hajar, being climbing
up the hill (Safa) then falling
down (to Marwah) again in my search for "water" -- because ascend and descent are, for me, the nature of the human soul. Not a command, but a sort of metaphysics that I can't avoid following (like the law of gravity rather than a state law).
TT
Topic: Islame re-reads the Quran