When the Forebears Become a Wall Against Those Who Follow

I saw with my own eyes how sanctuaries hallowed over the centuries had become genuine epistemological prisons, in which the heart — the intellect — was denied its original, Lord-given right of direct access to the pure divine text. We were told again and again, in a tone that brooked no argument, that understanding had come to a halt at the ceiling of the first three centuries — as though God, the All-Embracing, the All-Knowing, had stopped supplying humanity with light after that brief moment of history, or as though the noble Book, the mighty Qurʾān, had yielded up all its deepest secrets, leaving those of us who came later nothing to do but repeat and regurgitate what our predecessors had said. This forced confinement of the intellect left me endlessly bewildered. How could a Lord who describes His eternal revelation as “a clarification of all things” (Q 16:89) and “guidance for those who practise Restraint” (Q 2:2), in every time and place, have the understanding of it locked into fixed historical moulds that allow no renewal and no response to the movement of life and the growth of consciousness? I watched the tradition, in some hands, turn from a bridge carrying us towards the truth into thick walls shutting out the light of abstract truth. To insist on confining understanding to that one era is the very height of epistemic Concretion: truth is tied to particular persons and particular circumstances, and the divine text is robbed of its power to abstract, to soar above the limits of matter and time. Instead of being instruments of revival that raise human beings towards their free primordial nature and their direct relation with their Creator, the texts became tools for demolishing, labelling and dividing the servants of God according to their loyalty to historical figures. True faith, in my view, is faith that breaks free of the bonds of space and time to achieve complete Abstraction — faith in which revelation is a living address spoken to me now, in my present moment, not a faint echo reaching me from the depths of the past. The fullness of human sovereignty begins with rejecting this historical guardian over consciousness, and with the certainty that God’s supply of light never ceases, and that the heart — the intellect — is the Balance the Creator placed in us so that we might perceive His ever-renewed light in every verse and in every atom of existence. Hashem Nassar All rights reserved