1a] Islam and Jesus Christ.

1a]
If you want to take my word for it, you would regard him as one of the
most Christ-like figures in human history, up there with Socrates,
Gandhi andone or two of the greatestsaints of mankind. What made
al-Hallaj a Christ-like figure was total absorption in the life of the
spirit, a realm lying beyond law, and an exploration of a reality that
led him ultimately to claim identity with the divine. But at the same
time, there is in him the unshakable willingness tosubmit to the law,
even unto death. So he dies under the law, as it were, in order to
rise above it, inorder to triumph over the law. Thus, at one time he
used to advise his disciples: "Why go on pilgrimage to Mecca ? Build a
small shrine insideyour own house and circumambulate it in true faith,
and it is as if you have performed the pilgrimage." The tension
between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law endows the
life of Hallaj with a Gospel-like aura, culminating in his trial, his
tragic last days and his heart-rending crucifixion. The model of
sanctity prefigured by al-Hallaj was to survive most notably inside
Muslim mysticism where Jesus was to become a patron saint of Muslim
sufism .
But let me move now to later times. The era of the Crusades, a
two-hundred year war, pitted EuropeanChristian against Western Asian
Muslim armies. And here was a chance for Muslim scholars to point to
the glaring disparity between Jesus, the prophet of peace, and the
barbaric conduct of his so-called followers. In the twelfth century,
Jesus wasonce again reclaimed by Muslim polemics, once again
reinvented, if you prefer, in order to stand shoulder to shoulder
withthe Muslims against his alleged followers. In the battle for the
legacy of Jesus, there was no doubt whatsoever in Muslim eyes that the
true Jesus belonged to Islam. It was in a sense a replay of the
Qur'anic scenario, this time more urgent and dangerous.
As we approach our own days, we observe that many of his earlier
manifestations continue to dominate the spiritual horizons of
contemporaryIslam. Let me speak of only two major images: Jesus the
healer of nature and man, and Jesus the Crucified. To encounter Jesus
the healer, I invite my listeners to take a trip to to the Monastery
of Sidnaya north of Damascus or to the Iranian city of Shiraz. The
Monastery of Sidnaya wasfounded by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in
the 6th century AD. It sits on an outcrop of rock high above a valley.
To this Monastery travels an endless stream of men and women seeking
the blessings and healing of our Lady and her infant son. The vast
majority of visitors are Muslim, who come to this Christian shrine as
did their ancestors for a thousand years.
A visit to Shiraz might come next. Here, the celebrated city, a
treasure house of Muslim art and architecture and a garden-city of
poets and mystics, is home also to a living Muslim medical tradition
of healing, the tradition of the Masiha-Dam , the healing breath of
Christ. This theme is already reflectedin the poetry of the great
Persian poet Hafiz, some seven hundred years ago. Thus, in both the
literary as well as medical tradition of contemporaryIran, there runs
a continuous preoccupationwith the healing Christ figure. For Shii
Islam , which dominates Iran, themartyrdom of Husayn, thegrandson of
the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in 682 A.D. is a central spiritual event.
And for Shii Islam in particular, the life and death of Christis a
parallel spiritual event. The Christ/Husayn analogy is ever present in
the religious sensibility of Shi'i Islam.
I should now make mention of another poet, widely considered the
greatest Arab poet of the twentieth century: the Iraqi Badr Shakir
al-Sayyab. His life was oneof exile, imprisonment, ill health and of
total commitment to the cause of the oppressed; his was a poetry
utterly Modernistin form but utterly classical in diction. In his
verse one will find what isprobably the most memorable impact of
Christ on modern Arabic/Islamic literature. One poem in particular,
entitled Christ after the Crucifixion is a Passion, a vision of Christ
as lord of nature and redeemer of the wretched of the earth.At the
risk of doing violence to its tight structure, I will give only its
first and its final stanzas:
After they brought me down, I heard the winds
In a lengthy wail, rustling the palm trees,
And steps fading away. Sothen, my wounds,
And the Cross upon which they nailed me all afternoon and evening
Did not kill me. I listened. The wail
Was crossing the plain between me and the city
Like a rope pulling at a ship
As it sinks to the sea-bed. The dirge
Was like a thread of light between dawn and midnight,
Upon a grieving winter sky. And the city, nursing its feelings, fell asleep.
I was in the beginning, and in the beginning was Poverty.
:->

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