Islamic Mysticism: A Secular Perspective [Hardcover]

One of the most biased aspects of this book is found in the recounting the l991 legal ordeal of Frithjof Schuon, known as the pre-eminent spokesman for the Religio Perennis in the 20th century. The author states that as a result of the allegations of Mark Koslow, Schuon was indicted by grand jury, which is true. However, the author goes on to state that the charges were "mysteriously dropped" even though there was "an abundance of evidence". As a resident of Bloomington, Indiana where these events occured I would like to correct the false information reported in Mr. al-Rawandi's book. Shortly after the formal charges were filed, as soon as the chief prosecutor began to review the evidence, the assistant prosecutor who was in charge of the investigation was fired. The charges were immediately dropped and a formal public apology issued to Schuon. The prosecutor publicly stated that "there is not one shred of evidence" to support the charges against Schuon; that a "miscarriage has occured"; and that Koslow "has come under a very large cloud of credibility". All of these statements may be found in the November 21, l991 edition of the Bloomington Herald-Times newspaper. Further, the same newspaper in its November 26 lead editorial "Schuon Case a Travesty" sharply criticized the prosecutor's inattention to the case while he was out of town running for a state-wide political office. Either Mr. al-Rawandi did not bother to research the facts before falsely supporting this attack on Schuon, or he purposely distorted the facts to support his case. In either case, it seriously calls the credibility of the rest of his book into question.

Written by a failed spiritual seeker turned anti-spiritual polemical secularist, this book lacks the substance and insight possessed by a vaguely similar but nevertheless far superior work of disenchantment, Jeffrey Masson's *My Father's Guru*. Having spent three years attempting without success to follow the Sufi path, Ibn al-Rawandi in this book returns to Sufism but weakly flails about in his efforts to exact from it his revenge. Ultimately his message is that if you are a rationalist and do not believe in spiritual transformation, do not get involved in Sufism. Sound advice--but isn't this obvious?! The bottom line, though, is that a good piece of yellow journalism should at least be a juicy and engaging read. Sadly, this work is by and large flat. So if you want a book on spiritual disenchantment, read Masson. If you want something on Sufism, read anything but Ibn al-Rawandi.

Let me disabuse Fred Donner of the notion that author Ibn al-Rawandi is the same person as Ibn Warraq (author of Why I Am Not a Muslim and Quest for the Historical Muhammad, among innumerable other scholarly titles on Islam). The assertion is false, even preposterous --- and a good indication that Fred Donner has read neither of these authors.

Ibn Warraq (whom I'm honored to call friend) has never claimed any association with Sufism, and in each of his many volumes takes a much tougher and more agnostic view of central Islamic theological points than Ibn Al-Rawandi. Ibn Warraq frequently focuses on the violent and warlike features of Islam, and passages in sacred texts that incite such jihad and violence. Al-Rawandi, while skeptical, is also nostalgic.

There are some similarities between the two: both were horrified by Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 Islamic fatwa seeking Salman Rushdie's death for having written his novel Satanic Verses. Both are self-described ex-Muslims. And obviously, since Ibn al-Rawandi thanks Ibn Warraq for his encouragement, they do know one another and converse.

One enlightening difference, however, is Al-Rawandi's effort to explain, albeit sometimes in the quotations of others, how it is that Muslims perceive their belief and that of others. According to a citation of Frithjof Schuon (the subject of subsequent criminal prosecution and much controversy) --- which comes closest to anything I've seen to describing the "reality" --- is the "curious tendency [of the average Muslim] to believe that non-Muslims either know that Islam is the truth and reject it out of pure obstinacy, or else are simply ignorant of it and can be converted by elementary explanations..." The idea that anyone can in good conscience oppose Islam "quite exceeds the Muslim's imagination precisely because," to him, Islam is entirely coincident with "the irresistible logic of things."

To average Muslims, then, "no explanations are necessary," and indeed, no probing or doubtful questions are allowed or to be tolerated. To Islamic believers, not believing is "not like failing to turn up in church on Sunday," but rather akin to "a traitorous act in time of war." It's making an alliance with an enemy "for whom no good word can be said, an act for which the only appropriate penalty is death."

Furthermore, by way of explaining the appeal of Islam to some conservative intellectual Westerners (who take a romantic view of "The East" and Arabs) "Islam is in fact the last refuge," as they wish "that the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, in short the 'modern world,' had never come about."

Al-Rawandi is also refreshingly skeptical about Sufism, which far too many Westerners believe to be a "kinder, gentler" form of Islam. This supposedly mystical counter-movement, however, is in the author's words "as much a late construct resulting from the Arabs' acquiring an empire as Islam itself." And like Islam itself, Sufism is also "heavily dependent on hadith qudsi, supposedly direct sayings of God not included in the Koran," That is to say, it is antithetical to logical reasoning and fully dependent on total acceptance of Islamic doctrine and an entire tradition without definitive evidence of any kind.

This book is not at all like the works of Ibn Warraq, except that if offers the willing reader much additional material as to encourage healthy skepticism of Islam, and particularly its mystical incarnations.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen