Insight Editions · No. 130
Ibn ʿArabī's Religious Pluralism
Levels of Inclusivity
Faris Abdel-Hadi
Faris Abdel-Hadi examines Ibn ʿArabī’s accounts of revealed and non-prophetic religions, mapping how exclusivist and inclusivist positions coexist across different levels.
A study guide to Ibn ʿArabī's Religious Pluralism by Faris Abdel-Hadi. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
About the Book
Faris Abdel-hadi's Ibn ʿArabī's Religious Pluralism: Levels of Inclusivity (Routledge, 2025) asks how far the religious pluralism of Ibn Arabi (d. 638/1240) extends. Its answer is that he is an exclusivist and an inclusivist at once, depending on the level at which one reads him, and that the levels can be mapped.
In one sentence: for Abdel-hadi, Ibn Arabi's image of the sun of Muhammad's Law outshining the stars of earlier religions describes two things at once, the annihilation of those religions' authority and the subsistence of the religions themselves within that light, and once this double movement is seen, room opens within the Muhammadan Law for Jews and Christians, sun-worshippers, sages' laws, inventors of spiritual paths, honest strivers, and finally the gods themselves.
A close textual study, chiefly of The Meccan Openings (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya) and The Bezels of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam) and their commentators. It sets out from the oft-cited sun-star passage and builds a framework from Legenhausen's "nonreductionist pluralism". Half the book treats revealed religions; the other half turns to religions and laws that are not prophetic, a subject the author says research has largely neglected. Running through it is a sustained reply to Gregory Lipton's Rethinking Ibn Arabi.
Readers who have met Ibn Arabi as a universalist, or as a hardline jurist, will find both pictures qualified with texts. Students of Islamic law will find the jizya, abrogation, ijtihad and the prostration of veneration discussed through an Akbarian lens. Students of philosophy will find a genealogy of the Arabic word namus from al-Farabi and the Arabic Aristotle to the Futuhat.
The argument at a glance
| Part | Book chapter | Main question |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 | Introduction | What do pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism mean, and why is the sun-star passage the key? |
| Part 2 | 1. The Way of the Muhammadan Message | In what sense is Ibn Arabi an exclusivist? |
| Part 3 | 2. Subsistence and the Jizya | How do earlier religions survive within Islam, and what does the jizya mean? |
| Part 4 | 3. A Response to Lipton | Does inclusion depend on humiliation, and is the doctrine of beliefs only political? |
| Part 5 | 4. Sun-Worshippers and Polytheists | How does Ibn Arabi treat a religion that is not revealed? |
| Part 6 | 5. Non-Prophetic Laws and Ways | What place do sages' laws and invented paths have? |
| Part 7 | Conclusion | What are the levels of inclusivity, and how might the gods be included? |
Start with the sun-star passage and its diagram in Part 1; every later chapter refers back to it. Parts 2 and 3 are a pair, annihilation then subsistence, and are best read together. Part 4 can be skipped by readers not interested in the debate with Lipton, though it gathers four key texts. Parts 5 and 6 form the book's original contribution on non-prophetic religion. The Conclusion's final section is a sketch of future work rather than a settled result.
Part 1. Between Exclusivism and Inclusivism
The Introduction asks one question: to what extent do Ibn Arabi's writings lend themselves to a pluralistic interpretation? It defines its terms, surveys the scholars on both sides, proposes a "nonreductive" way of reading, places Ibn Arabi among premodern thinkers who faced the same problem, and sets out the method that runs through the whole book.
1.1 A liminal space
The book opens with a scene from the travels of Ibn Battuta (d. 779/1377). A Byzantine king who had given up his throne for a monastery meets the Moroccan traveller on the road, learns that he has been to Jerusalem, and lays his hand on the Muslim's feet and passes it over his own face. Ibn Battuta writes: "I was amazed at their belief in the merits of one who, though not of their religion, had entered these places."
Abdel-hadi takes the scene as a figure for the whole subject. In such moments, he writes, "there is a surreal ambiguity that defies facile or explicit categorizations" of the Other. The same ambiguity, he argues, underlies the writings of Ibn Arabi (d. 638/1240), whose own meeting with a pagan group of sun-worshippers invites readers into a similar space. It is unusual, he notes, for a thirteenth-century Muslim secure in his identity to show interest in a people whose beliefs could hardly be more alien to his own. From that meeting outward, Ibn Arabi's discussions of religious diversity unfold with many shades and possibilities, and the author's aim is to uncover "multiple levels of pluralism" in them. These layers are "stratified": they lie on a continuum and resist simple categories.
1.2 The question and its terms
The author gives three working definitions, deliberately simple:
| Term | Working definition in the book |
|---|---|
| Pluralism | Acknowledging a multiplicity of different beliefs as a given fact of existence, and the extent to which one accepts them, either as corresponding with one's own or by granting the holder of a different belief the right to disagree |
| Inclusivism | More or less a synonym of pluralism: the extent to which one confirms another person's beliefs from a different sect or religion |
| Exclusivism | The extent to which one does not identify with another's belief system and rejects it, either its truth and epistemological value or the believer's right to practise it |
Each term is used with an eye to its soteriological weight, that is, whether a believer from another system is thought to be saved in the Hereafter. So there are at least three areas of concern: ontology and epistemology, ethical and social considerations, and soteriology.
The book's position is stated at the outset. Ibn Arabi cannot be read in a simple or reductionist way; both his inclusivist and his exclusivist views must be taken into account. But the two are "not equally proportional to one another." Once his exclusivist concerns are accounted for, the author argues, Ibn Arabi "leans towards the side of inclusivism."
The author gives two reasons. First, the debate over Ibn Arabi's pluralism is far from settled, as the continuing disagreements show. Second, there are real gaps in the literature, some caused by researchers' errors that need correcting, others simply because no one can cover a corpus that is, in his words, "intimidatingly enormous." The work is by nature ongoing and collaborative.
1.3 The state of the field
What was once taken for granted, that Ibn Arabi leaned toward some sort of religious pluralism, is now doubted. The author links this to a wider trend of placing Sufism in its social and historical setting and dismantling the static assumptions of Orientalism and Perennialism. He agrees with Carl Ernst's caution against attributing fixed essences to religions. The trouble, he says, is that such efforts sometimes "fall prey to the very vice universalists are criticized for": they decontextualize Ibn Arabi and speak for him. The quest for a "historical" or "political" Ibn Arabi "ends up being just another caricature." He suggests two causes: the critics are often not specialists in Ibn Arabi's huge and difficult works, and they are attacking a simplified form of pluralism, unaware that other kinds exist.
Exclusivist readings: Timothy Winter
The author grants that Winter makes "a persuasive case for a benevolent supersessionism in Islam," and that abrogation is a real concern, since Ibn Arabi mentions it himself and it entails invalidating other religions at least to some extent. But Winter's footnote on Ibn Arabi, citing two sources to balance his "less eirenic statements," is described as generally incorrect:
- The first source, the Tadhkirat al-Khawass, is wrongly attributed to Ibn Arabi and belongs to the Hanbali Abd al-Samad al-Qadiri. Its style and content differ greatly from Ibn Arabi's, as James W. Morris noted, and the two oldest manuscripts name al-Qadiri. Its promotion as Ibn Arabi's work seems aimed at safeguarding his orthodoxy.
- The second, from the Muhadarat al-Abrar, has Ibn Arabi allegedly "describe" Christians as polytheists (mushrikun). But the work is a collection of narrations and edifying literature. In the section on the raid against Byzantium the Prophet's companions call the Byzantines mushrikun; "it is not Ibn ʿArabī who uses this term conclusively."
In his detailed discussions of the People of the Book, Ibn Arabi does not conclude that the Byzantines are mushrikun. Indeed a contradiction would arise if he did: in the much-neglected Chapter 275 of the Futuhat he argues that the jizya is levied only on muwahhidun (those who affirm God's unity), and Christians and Jews pay it. Here he appears to reject the Maliki position of his own homeland, which accepted jizya from almost anyone, including polytheists.
On Winter's essay "Realism and the Real," the author agrees that a simplified pluralism defeats itself, but corrects the claim that Ibn Arabi "accuses" Christians of unbelief in the Fusus. Ibn Arabi does call such belief kufr, but kufr is also al-sitr, to conceal or cover over, and he draws on a whole family of Arabic words for covering. In the Futuhat he writes that "God attributed kufr to them, as a way of establishing an excuse for them, for they have not associated with Him (fa-innahum mā ashrakū)," since the polytheist "is the one who makes another god [as a separate entity] apart from God." Christians took Jesus's humanity (nasut) as a locus of divine disclosure. The excuse is soteriological but also concerns the permissibility of their worship; Ibn Arabi uses the term tathbitan, confirming their way of worship, as he does with the pagan sun-worshippers. "Excuse" still implies something is amiss: they "combined covering up [or disbelief] with error". But it is not absolute disbelief.
Winter concludes that a pluralist reading of some passages would be no more than "a moment in his playful discourse." The author replies that the Shaykh's discourse is unified and often consistent, that his pluralist readings extend "far beyond a simple moment," and that they have concrete legal (shar'i) consequences which Winter has not considered.
Reductionist frameworks and the word "valid"
The author objects to the "hackneyed word" validity. Asking whether other religions are valid, true or salvifically effective sets up a rigid dichotomy that no longer helps. The test case is the passage most of the debate turns on, translated by William C. Chittick: as the blazing sun overwhelms the stars and absorbs their light, so Islam's emergence overwhelms the other religions and absorbs their rulings, "but with the important caveat that these religions/stars do not disappear." Does their preservation make them valid, invalid or abrogated? The binary cannot say.
Nuh Keller wrote a rebuttal of Chittick's reading of the passage. Denis Gril mentions in passing that the Prophet's mission "includes all previous traditions, at the same time that it abrogates them as laws". The author's claim is that Chittick and Keller "present two separate sides of the same equation," and that only by bringing them together can Ibn Arabi's intentions be understood.
Keller also cites the Egyptian interpreter Mahmud Ghurab, who argues that the absence of pluralism is evident in Ibn Arabi's written creed. Ghurab, better known for dismissing the Fusus as full of forged passages, rejects pluralist readings that treat Ibn Arabi like the "joker of playing cards". Yet Ghurab quotes a passage (also in Chittick's Sufi Path of Knowledge) distinguishing those who prostrate to other than God at His command, like the angels to Adam, who are felicitous, from those who do so without His command, like the idol-worshippers of Quraysh, who are wretched. Neither Ghurab nor Chittick mentions the third way in the same passage: rahbaniyya, usually rendered monasticism, which for Ibn Arabi in a wider context denotes "sagehood", the counterpart to revealed laws, that is, non-prophetic laws made by wise minds or inspired luminaries. Chapters 4 and 5 of the book develop it.
Behind such critiques lies the notion of wahdat al-adyan, the unity of religions. Su'ad Hakim and Abd al-Baqi Miftah both show it cannot be attributed to Ibn Arabi. But, the author observes, "even if we know what sort of pluralism Ibn ʿArabī does not accept, then it still does not tell us about what pluralism he does accept."
Akbarian pluralism: the other side
Reza Shah-Kazemi treats Ibn Arabi's plurality as obvious and cites him widely to promote interfaith dialogue, within a Perennialist framework, resolving conflicting truth claims through the idea that multiplicity reveals God's infinite faces. Sajjad Rizvi has argued that epistemologists will find such a presentation hard to take seriously, since its claims are difficult to test.
The author offers a simpler example from law. When jurists (mujtahidun) rule on a matter, there may be only one right answer, yet those who err are rewarded and their rulings respected, because Muhammad said every mujtahid has at least one reward. Hence the maxim kullu mujtahid musib: "Every striver hits the mark." Strangely, God thereby mandates laws "that He did not reveal and that He does not consider correct." Abd al-Karim Jili even likens the error of the Christians to a kind of ijtihad.
Vincent Cornell urges Muslims toward a "liberal theology", using Jili as an example, but the author notes that Cornell does not mention abrogation, a major and, for most Muslims, legitimate cause of doctrinal difference, though Jili accepted it like any Muslim. Carl-Albert Keller, troubled by Ibn Arabi's letter to the Seljuk Sultan Kayka'us (d. 1220) urging discriminatory measures against the Christians of Anatolia, writes: "It is the tragedy of his faithfulness toward Islam that he was unable to work out different practical consequences of his spiritual insight." The author answers that it could equally be argued that it was because of his faithfulness to Islam that Ibn Arabi made room for the sun-worshippers he met in Anatolia.
Comparative studies and rahbaniyya
Comparative studies in an Akbarian spirit, such as The Tao of Islam, Sufism and Taoism and Common Grounds between Islam and Buddhism, have been fruitful, but passages where Ibn Arabi directly engages other traditions still need study. Samuela Pagani notes that he is exceptional in giving rahbaniyya a universalist approach to ethics: "By making the institution of rahbāniyya the paradigm of all legislation founded by the sages, Ibn ʿArabī gives this notion a significantly vast scope." Franz Rosenthal wrote an early overview but missed the philosophical legacy of the term namus (non-prophetic law), which, the author argues, goes back to al-Farabi (d. 339/950) and concerns the earliest Greek thinkers. Beyond universal ethics there is the permission given to other communities to invent their own ways of worship, which the author calls ijtihad al-ibtida'.
Exclusivist critics attack a simple pluralism and miss the more complex kinds; inclusivist admirers assume pluralism and read it through a Perennialist lens. Neither side has mapped the many concrete possibilities Ibn Arabi actually envisages, which should not be reduced to single categories such as "valid" or "invalid".
1.4 Nonreductive pluralism
The author's compass comes from Muhammad Legenhausen's "Nonreductive Pluralism". A reductive pluralist argues that all religions share the same core and are reducible to it. An "equality pluralist" holds that all religions save equally; a "degree pluralist" that they share the same elements to different extents. John Hick holds equality pluralism, but Legenhausen and Winter point to the contradiction: a believer forced to grant every other religion salvation must disregard basic principles of his own, such as the Catholic tenet "There is no salvation outside the church."
A nonreductive pluralist accepts the differences between religions without dissolving them into a common factor. An Islamic approach of this kind may reject certain doctrines but respects a religion's right to make its claims. Not knowing the other's intention in forming doctrines Islam cannot accept, the Muslim is encouraged to remain humble, and cannot be absolutely certain that God will not save those of other faiths.
The author adapts the term. He does not use Legenhausen's definition as such but applies the phrase to Ibn Arabi himself: exclusivist and inclusivist readings can both be reductive if they ignore opposing evidence. In his view Gregory A. Lipton's analysis "is clearly a reductive exclusivist approach that bypasses the Shaykh's more pluralistic discussions." A nonreductive reading combines both sides: Ibn Arabi "is obviously exclusivist with regard to the abrogating nature of the Law, but he is also clearly inclusivist where the Law makes room for the beliefs of other people, in particular ways."
1.5 Premodern companions
A modern framework alone is far from Ibn Arabi's world, so the author glances at premodern thinkers who faced religious diversity, with the caveat that every figure cited also held exclusivist views of some kind.
| Figure | Idea noted in the book |
|---|---|
| Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 672/1273) | In Fihi ma Fihi, the impossibility of erasing religious diversity; differing ritual prayers with a unity of faith; the many hajj roads from China, Europe, Syria, Persia, India and Yemen that all reach the Ka'ba |
| Shams al-Din Tabrizi | Abrogation as the succession of fruits: when a new fruit comes, the taste of the previous one does not remain |
| Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadani (d. 525/1131) | "Real unbelief" beyond all duality; wayfarers who have arrived transmit the principles of every religion |
| Mahmud Shabistari (d. 740/1339) and Lahiji (d. 912/1507) | The idol as a receptacle of God's theophany; the one who sees only its form is himself the infidel |
| Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 606/1209) | Constant vision of God's self-disclosures; a "prophet-saint" in Ibn Arabi's typology |
| Suhrawardi | A lineage of sages from Plato to the Persian sages; a world of images, as in Ibn Arabi |
| Mulla Sadra (d. c. 1045/1635) | The finality of mercy; conceiving God as carving an idol |
| Aziz al-Din al-Nasafi (d. c. 1282) | God's delimited face and His absolute being; most people worship a constructed god |
| Muhibb Allah Ilahabadi (d. 1058/1648) | Prophets as worshippers in different places facing one qibla; light coloured by stained glass; bubbles that are only water |
| Dara Shikoh (d. 1659) | Identified the Vedanta with the Unity of Being and translated Upanishads into Persian |
| Abd al-Rahman Chishti (d. 1094/1683) | Read the Bhagavad Gita through the Unity of Being; Krishna as a mirror of God |
| Shah Wali Allah (d. 1176/1762) | Prophets as doctors dosing each community; laws suited to each people's constitution |
| Abd al-Karim Jili (d. 832/1428) | Ten sects, each worshipping God through Essence, Names and Attributes |
| Haydar Amuli (d. 787/1385) | Circular diagrams of 73 sects with the saved one at the centre |
Several of these merit closer notice. Hamadani writes: "From my perspective, every religion in the world is at root correct since the principles of the religions have been transmitted by wayfarers who have arrived." Corruption comes when someone "who has not at all traveled the path takes control of a religion". This matches Ibn Arabi's idea of the mujtahid as a spiritual traveller. Shabistari's couplet runs: "If Muslims knew what idols were, they'd cry / that faith itself is in idolatry." Lahiji's reading rests on Qur'an 2:115, "Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God", and on the Akbarian idea of loci of manifestation and their self-disclosures (tajalliyyat), each unique and unrepeatable. Ibn Arabi himself says a Muslim must face the Ka'ba in prayer, yet "if he believed that the face of God is not in every direction toward which he turns, then he would be an unbeliever or ignorant." His "Circle of Religion" ties the multiplicity of Names to the multiplicity of religions: "Each revealed religion is a path that takes to God, and these paths are diverse. Hence the self-disclosures must be diverse."
Muhibb Allah, asked by Dara Shikoh how a governor should treat Hindus, answered that a ruler's first concern should be the safety and peace of all God's creatures, believers or not, because all creation is God's manifestation, an echo of Ibn Arabi's argument that God did not single out believers for His mercy. A passage of the Persian Jug Basisht holds that the Brahmins share the path of the ancient sages and differ, if at all, only in terminology and language. Ibn Arabi could not have known the Indian sages, but he says that "every city, place, and clime, in accordance with what was demanded by the constitution and nature of those areas", had sages who guided people. Like Ibn Arabi, Mir Findiriski still held to abrogation.
On Jili, the author criticizes Fitzroy Morrissey, who follows Lipton, for concluding that for Jili only the Muslims will be saved. Morrissey omits a line from Chapter 63 of the Insan al-Kamil, translated by Cornell: "There is not one sect [mentioned here], except that God has created [from each sect] people for the Fire, and people for the Garden." Jili also gives the example of the people of the intervening periods between prophets, who are judged by their deeds regardless of creed.
On Amuli's diagrams, Henry Corbin observed that the saved sect is not a 73rd wedge but sits at the centre, reachable from every wedge, so that members of every sect can be saved on reaching the centre. The author urges caution, since Amuli's plainly exclusivist statements are passed over in Corbin's reading.
Turning to Seyyed H. Nasr, the author notes the correspondence between the "relatively absolute" and the Akbarian delimited god of beliefs (al-ilah al-muqayyad), with the absolute godhead (al-ilah al-mutlaq) above all belief systems. In Perennialism this means all religions are equally valid paths; but, as Lipton rightly says, Ibn Arabi does not accept, legally, that other religions save independently of Islam, as abrogation shows. The author departs from Lipton on how this is so. He also cites a couplet of Ibn Arabi quoted by Tilimsani: "The creatures have knotted many a belief, concerning the Divinity /And I believe in everything they do!" No creature is wholly wrong about what it worships, though it may not know how it is God; one can hit the mark and remain ignorant.
1.6 Method: the sun and the stars
Ibn Arabi's writing is fragmentary: his themes are scattered across thousands of pages, rarely gathered in one chapter, and passages taken alone can be made to support either side. Yet they do not necessarily contradict each other, because "an underlying but subtle unity" joins them. So a key passage tends to act as an anchor. Here it is the "sun-star" metaphor that describes how all revealed laws relate to Islam. When the sun rises the stars cannot be seen; but they have not disappeared, only been overpowered. Ibn Arabi does not say exactly how this works. He concludes that the other laws are not rendered null by abrogation: that, he says, is "the opinion of the ignorant."
For Ibn Arabi, abrogation (naskh) is therefore not simply a legal instrument but "literally a cosmic event." To understand his pluralism one must understand abrogation, its first cornerstone; his metaphysics is the second. The first chapter investigates what earlier scholarship neglected: the "mechanism" by which cosmic abrogation occurs, found by cross-referencing similar descriptions throughout the Futuhat and looking for what is constant in them.
Cross-referencing yields not one mechanism but two working at once, or two halves of one: annihilation and subsistence. In most passages something is annihilated in one form and subsists in another. The stars are annihilated by the sun's light, and at the same time preserved. "It may sound rather simple, but surprisingly no one has pointed out this obvious dynamic."
1.7 The plan of the book
| Chapter | Focus | Reading it supports |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Muhammadan Way | Annihilation; the divine and Muhammadan messages; no human is exempt from responding to Muhammad | Exclusivist |
| 2. Mercy and the Jizya | Subsistence; the jizya as superlative mercy; humbling in Qur'an 9:29; inclusion beyond the jizya | Inclusivist |
| 3. Rethinking Ibn Arabi? | The two-part method applied to Lipton's reading | Critique of reductive exclusivism |
| 4. Sun-Worshippers and Polytheists | The meeting in Anatolia; ijtihad, rahbaniyya, a myth of polytheism's origins | Non-Abrahamic inclusion |
| 5. Non-Prophetic Laws and Ways | The nawamis, their Greek and Farabian lineage, the people of the intervening periods | Inclusion of laws not revealed |
| Conclusion | Levels of inclusivity; the inclusion of all divinities | Synthesis |
The first three chapters establish whether the Shaykh acknowledges any pluralism; the last two explore the forms it takes. On one side all human beings are included under the Muhammadan Law; on the other, the same Law has many ways of including other communities by taking their beliefs into account. The author describes the tension between the two poles as "the catalyst for creative possibilities." In summary, the first three chapters describe the inclusion of the revealed laws, Chapters 4 and 5 the inclusion of religions that are not divinely revealed, and the Conclusion "the inclusion of all divinities."
The author uses the critical edition of the Futuhat by Abd al-Aziz Sultan Mansub, which he rates above the 1858 Bulaq, the four-volume 1910 Cairo and the unfinished Osman Yahia editions. Mansub identified no fewer than 23,000 differences between the two older editions; one example turns the people of thought (ahl al-fikr) who include al-Farabi into the people of unbelief (ahl al-kufr). For the Fusus he uses Mahmud Erol Kilic's edition based on the oldest copy, dated AH 630. Because secondary literature on this topic is thin, the book works mainly from primary texts, and it leaves aside detailed engagement with Chittick's work on belief, which it treats as already thorough.
Part 2. The Muhammadan Way
Chapter 1 is the first half of the book's method. It takes the celebrated passage on the sun and the stars, reads it beside four other passages that use the same image, and finds two processes running together: annihilation and subsistence. This chapter treats annihilation, the side that supports an exclusivist reading, and shows how it matches the doctrine of abrogation and the universal reach of Muhammad's message.
2.1 Annihilation and subsistence
The paired Sufi terms fana' and baqa' have their origins in the Qur'an. Annihilation usually refers to the disappearance of things or qualities, such as blameworthy traits; subsistence to the praiseworthy traits that follow. The two are concomitant and relative. Chittick puts it this way: "Annihilation always means annihilation from some specific mode of lower consciousness and simultaneous subsistence through a specific mode of higher consciousness." One of the main forms is witnessing God's face: annihilation from witnessing the universe and subsistence in witnessing God. The author also mentions annihilation in the love of the Messenger, in which, during a brief extinction, it is Muhammad who speaks through the aspirant, as happened with the Emir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri.
The chapter's thesis: in the sun metaphor, annihilation corresponds to abrogation, by which Muhammad's Law abrogates all previous prophetic and non-prophetic laws. Subsistence refers to a mode of being after annihilation. Annihilation is therefore not absolute.
2.2 Chittick and Keller
The debate is captured in a letter by Nuh Keller to one Abd al-Matin, rebutting Chittick's arguments in Imaginal Worlds. The passage at stake, in Chittick's translation, reads in part:
For Chittick this means Islam has validated the religions that preceded it, and he appears to reject the established doctrine of abrogation. Keller argues the passage shows the opposite. His objections:
- Incompleteness. The sentences that follow matter. In Keller's translation: "So all paths return to look to the Prophet's path (Allah bless him and give him peace): if the prophetic messengers had been alive in his time, they would have followed him just as their religious laws have followed his law." The passage goes on to Muhammad's "Comprehensiveness of Word", the Praiseworthy Station and his being sent to the entire world.
- "Sent to the entire world." For Keller the phrase bi'thatihi al-'amma "plainly contradicts the professor's suggestion that Ibn al-ʿArabī does not believe that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previously revealed religions."
So for Keller the passage is little more than the ordinary creed that God's messengers and their messages were true.
The author answers on both points. Chittick's full translation of the whole chapter exists elsewhere, so he did not need to hide anything. And Keller's completion does not resolve the problem of the sentence "They are not rendered null (bāṭil) by abrogation." If abrogation does not make other religions false or pointless, they must have some value. And if the idea were as ordinary as Keller thinks, why would Ibn Arabi bother to recall it? Shahrastani said something similar: "Beware! You must not consider the abrogation (naskh) of the ritual laws their nullification (ibṭāl); it is their perfection." Still, the author grants merit to Keller's objection, and proposes that both readings can be reconciled once two simultaneous processes are seen in the passage.
2.3 What abrogation means
Before turning to Ibn Arabi's own verification (tahqiq) of the concept, the author gives the classical meanings. For the Shafi'i jurist al-Juwayni (d. 468/1085) and his commentator al-Mahalli (d. 864/1460), abrogation means to "efface" (al-izala), the way the sun effaces a shadow. It also means to "transfer" (al-naql), whence "copying" a text into a new book. From the same roots comes tanasukh, the transfer of a soul to a new body; into a plant it is faskh, into a rock raskh. Ibn Arabi also links naskh with maskh, metamorphosis: a complete change of form in which the entity keeps its substance. The legal definition involves the divine address (khitab) and obligation (taklif). Abrogation repeals a ruling addressed to a group, and here whole laws of earlier communities, making their obligations obsolete.
| Sense of naskh | Image | Where it returns in Ibn Arabi |
|---|---|---|
| Effacing (izala) | The sun removes a shadow | The sun hides the stars |
| Transferring (naql) | Copying a text into a new book | Lower light taken into higher light |
| Metamorphosis (maskh) | Wood becoming coals | One entity, a new form and a new ruling |
2.4 Four sun passages
Most of the relevant passages are in Chittick's Sufi Path of Knowledge and Self-Disclosure of God, whose translations the author calls "highly reliable and accurate". All four concern light of varying intensity and what happens when a greater light meets a lesser one.
First passage: light is not burned by light
An advanced wayfarer fears annihilation before the "Facial Glories" (subuhat), the radiant lights that burn away whatever they meet. Once he realizes his own being cannot vanish, he moves from the Station of Fear to the Station of Abandoning Fear, because his being coheres with God's Being as light with light. Ibn Arabi writes: "The 'glories' are lights, and light is not burned away by light." He cites the poet al-Nabigha: "You are the sun, and the kings are stars – when you rise, none of the stars appears." And he comments: "No entity of theirs has gone, but no entity of theirs is manifest." The sun rules in the manifest affair, the stars in the nonmanifest affair included in the Most Magnificent Light. The author notes that Ibn Arabi likewise connects Muhammad to the cycle of the Name the Outward (al-Zahir) and the other prophets and religions to the cycle of the Inward (al-Batin).
Second passage: burning as change of state
"So by 'burning away' is not meant nonexistence, but rather the change of one entity's state as seen by the viewer." The wood that is burnt is called coals, "though the substance is one", and "the stars keep their brightness in themselves, but we do not perceive it because of the weakness of perception." Elsewhere Ibn Arabi says that "the Real does not make the entities of things non-existent," though relative non-existence comes from Him as taking away and transferral. This connects with the doctrine of the immutable entities: the entity is one despite the diversity of its forms. But its property (hukm) has irrevocably changed, as when a solid turns to liquid. This is why hukm means both legal ruling and physical property.
Third passage: annihilated for the witness
Here Ibn Arabi treats annihilation and subsistence directly. For one who witnesses God alone, things are annihilated in his state, "But the situation in itself exists as it was. In itself, nothing is annihilated". The stars vanish from the gazer when the sun rises, and he thinks they have been annihilated, "but in actual fact they have not been annihilated." Of the Sufi views he concludes: "So, for the Folk of God, disagreement is agreement, because they shoot from a single bow." The author compares Ibn Arabi's own account of becoming "a face without a nape", seeing in all directions so that sides existed for him only as a mental construct, as the Prophet could see those praying behind him.
Fourth passage: no light but the sun's
Discussing God's acts and the servant's, Ibn Arabi takes the opposite view: the stars have no light of their own and are loci of disclosure for the sun. If the one addressed by the Law had no relation to the act, "the whole sharīʿa would be a game". The servant's relation to the act is "a subtle phenomenon of power included within the divine power". Reason perceives the divine power, the senses do not; "All the light belongs to the sun". So Ibn Arabi holds two cosmologies: the stars are "all self-luminous (mustanīra), not drawing their lights from the sun", or they never had light at all. The second fits maskh: sun and stars are one entity differing in form. The author finds no clear preference; Ibn Arabi seems to accept both.
The image in law and in error
The metaphor even enters Ibn Arabi's jurisprudence. In Chapter 68 of the Futuhat, on purity, one who has bathed has also wiped, because bathing contains wiping as sunlight subsumes starlight. Inwardly, doubts are filth and faith is water: the light of faith subsumes all kinds of knowledge, so nagging suspicions should be drowned in the ocean of faith. In contrast stands pseudo-abrogation by the ego. King al-Zahir Ghazi told Ibn Arabi of his revulsion when an ascetic adviser ruled that he could fast Ramadan in any month he liked, against the explicit Qur'anic command.
Something is annihilated and something remains. The lower light loses its light in relation to the higher, from the viewer's side, while keeping it in itself, or else it is shown never to have had light apart from the higher. Keller attends to the first movement, Chittick to the second. "Both are needed."
2.5 The divine message: a law for every community
Annihilation corresponds to the Muhammadan message (al-risalat al-muhammadiyya), which governs all people and, since Muhammad was sent as a mercy to all the worlds, the whole of creation. Behind it stands the wider divine message (al-risalat al-ilahiyya). Ibn Arabi cites the Qur'an: "For every community (umma) there is a messenger" (10:48) and "There is not a thing that crawls on the earth or flies with its wings except that it is in a community, like yourselves" (6:38). The Prophet said of dogs, "They are one of the communities." Hence "the divine message (al-risālat al-ilāhiyya) encompasses all the communities, small and great." Every community comes under a divine address "upon the tongue of a warner sent to it, from it and within it."
The term is not common in his writings, but the idea runs through the Futuhat. Non-human groups have message, prophethood and sainthood. The revelation to the bees (Qur'an 16:68-69) is something instinctual, given by their configuration; it is the same revelation that moves a suckling to its mother's milk. Prophethood "flows through every existent thing", though none but certain angels are called prophet or messenger. Even infants and animals carry divine obligations through "inward messengers" within themselves.
The author gathers supporting images:
- The gharqad bush, which at the end of time will hide the Muslims' enemies when all else speaks, and which the Prophet cursed; a curse implies some form of obligation.
- The rock that Moses struck for running off with his clothes.
- The stone in Qushayri's Risala that weeps from fear: "Since the moment I heard God, Most High, say 'A fire, whose fuel is men and stones', I cannot help weeping out of fear!"
- Solomon's threat to the hoopoe unless it "brings me a convincing excuse!"
- The beasts that believed in Solomon and received a share of the human mercy of the basmala.
- The angels, tasked though they do not disobey: for protesting Adam's creation they had to bow to him and fight at Badr, and Muhammad will intercede for them too. Being made of light, they receive only commands, not prohibitions, which pertain to bodies.
- The cosmological letters of the alphabet, which have messengers, prophets, saints, believers and a Pole.
For humans the message began with Noah, the first messenger. Before him people were free to enter any law they wished. Earlier prophets could also rule against each other's law, as Khidr did when he killed the youth, following a legitimate law of another messenger. After Muhammad, a prophet-saint may not rule by private opinion, but one saint's ijtihad may differ from another's, just as "a Shāfiʿī's ruling goes against a Ḥanafī's ruling, but both of them are the Law of Muḥammad". Many laws are contained in one overarching Law.
2.6 The Muhammadan message
Within this vast scheme, the Muhammadan message obliges all human beings to answer Muhammad's call. Ibn Arabi is explicit about abrogation: Muhammad "abrogated with his sharīʿa whatever God willed to be abrogated from the previous laws and kept whatever God willed be kept. This is with regard to specific rulings (al-aḥkām khāṣṣa), not the principles (uṣūl)."
The cycles of the Inward and the Outward
Chapter 12 of the Futuhat sets out a cosmology of divine Names, each with its cycle. Time came to its end with the Name the Inward for Muhammad's sake until his body appeared, when the ruling property passed to the Name the Outward. "So the ruling property was his inwardly in everything that appeared in the laws, at the hands of the prophets and messengers". Muhammad existed as spirit before his body, as the Hadith says: "I was a prophet when Adam was still between clay and water." All prophets are deputies of the Muhammadan Reality, and all revealed laws are disclosures of the one Muhammadan Law. When he appeared outwardly, "his Law abrogated every law that the Name the Inward manifested, by the authority of the Outward."
After this, "There remains no legal ruling (ḥukm) ... for any of the religions, in the eyes of God, except for what the Muḥammadan Law confirms." When he appeared, all lights were included in his light, all rulings concealed in his, "all the laws became subservient to him (anqādat); and his mastery, previously hidden, became manifest." Jesus's descent at the end of time to rule by Muhammad's Law confirms it: "the entire world, which prescribes the Law for humans and jinn, is Muḥammadan because there is no divine law today other than the Muḥammadan Law". Muhammad's mastery (siyada) over this world and the next is the subject of Chapter 10.
Ibn Barthamla and the women of Damascus
Ibn Arabi tells of Ibn Barthamla, a long-lived disciple of Jesus still worshipping on a mountain when Muhammad was sent: "Do you see this monk remaining upon the rulings of Christianity? No, by God!" The law of Muhammad has abrogated it, and the Prophet said, "Were Moses still alive, he could not do other than follow me." As Lipton notes, Ibn Barthamla therefore does not eat pork. Abrogation also rules out syncretism. Ibn Arabi saw women of Damascus take their toddlers to church to be blessed with holy water, with their husbands' consent: "This is the companion of disbelief. Or rather, it is disbelief itself (al-kufr ʿaynhu)!"
Everyone is addressed
"Our position, is that all people, every single (kāffatan) believer, unbeliever, and hypocrite, is prescribed and addressed with [following and applying] the roots of the sharīʿa as well as its branches." The root is faith in all that the Messenger brought: "Faith is a root, and [specific] actions are a branch of that root, without a doubt." Faith in the whole is the "validating condition" for any obligation; belief cannot be partitioned. Because the Qur'an says "the people" must make pilgrimage, the hajj is obligatory on everyone, yet it cannot be accepted before Islam, so an unbeliever will be taken to task for both obligations on the Day of Resurrection.
Chapter 337 is especially explicit. The Prophet was sent kaffatan, a word linked to kifat, the earth that holds the living on it and the dead within it. "Like this", says Ibn Arabi, "does his sharīʿa encompass the whole of mankind. Therefore, no one hears of him, except he is obligated to believe in him." Muhammad was given six unique gifts, among them the All-Comprehensive Words, matching the six directions and the number of the Perfect Man. Every perfect human draws knowledge from the Muhammadan Station, whether under a revealed law or a namus. Finally, earlier scriptures foreshadowed him, so "whoever disbelieves in Muḥammad has thus disbelieved in his [own] prophet and what was revealed to him."
Abd al-Aziz al-Dabbagh (d. 1132/1719), as recorded by al-Lamati: God made this religion victorious over every religion; "from one viewpoint it's abolished the others". Jili: whoever opposes Muhammad after his mission "is astray, wretched, punished in the Fire". The author's comment: "Abrogation, then, is not a peripheral belief to an Islamic understanding of religious plurality. It is key."
2.7 Conclusion of the chapter
Muhammad's religion overwhelms the others as the sun's light effaces the stars. In relation to the sun they cease to function, having no ruling property, for their time has ended, and the other religions are obliged to submit to Muhammad's authority. Al-Dabbagh uses the same image: when Abu Bakr failed to interpret a dream in the Prophet's presence, it was because "other people's lights of knowledge disappear when the Prophet is present".
So when Chittick writes that Ibn Arabi "does not draw the conclusion that many Muslims have drawn – that the coming of Islam abrogated previous revealed religions", Keller's concern is justified. Abrogation is one of the few issues on which Muslim scholars agree, and Islam is a supersessionist religion. Yet what Chittick meant seems clear from the sentence about nullity: if abrogation meant abolishing the religions or treating them as having become false, they are not abrogated. His fault, if any, is lexical; perhaps he should have said there is no orthodox reading of abrogation's exact consequences. "Chittick never claimed that abrogation is completely non-existent."
For every annihilation there must be a matching subsistence. Chapter 1 shows how firmly Ibn Arabi holds abrogation and the universal claim of Muhammad's Law; Chapter 2 shows what remains of the earlier religions in its light, supporting Chittick's view that they "must remain, at least in a certain form."
Part 3. Mercy and the Jizya
Chapter 2 is the second half of the method: subsistence. Annihilation is not absolute; the stars still shine. One expression of their subsistence, though not the only one, is the indemnity tax (jizya) paid by Jews and Christians under Muslim rule. Against Lipton's view that the tax exists to humiliate, the author makes three claims: Ibn Arabi almost always places the jizya against a background of war; its purpose is to preserve lives, show mercy and guide, not to humiliate; and paying it is not strictly required for the religions to subsist.
3.1 What subsists: principles and rulings
The author lists Ibn Arabi's statements from Chapter 1 that the stars remain: "No entity of theirs is gone", "Nevertheless, they do in fact exist". Ibn Arabi does not say what the light of the stars stands for, as against their bodies. The author infers that light represents the ahkam, the legal rulings or properties of a religion, while the bodies represent its usul, such as faith in the prophet who brought it. That is why Ibn Arabi limits abrogation to "specific rulings (al-aḥkām khāṣṣa), not the principles (uṣūl)." On this basis Chittick could legitimately say that other religions are not abrogated in their principles. But Chittick's writing is almost all on the metaphysics of belief, which leaves open how the metaphysics becomes a legal reality. One answer is the jizya.
3.2 Ibn Arabi's idea of the Law
The Law rests on four sources: Qur'an, Sunna, consensus (ijma') and analogy (qiyas). For Ibn Arabi the number four mirrors the universe: the four "mother" Names (the Living, the Knowing, the Willing, the Powerful), the four natures (heat, cold, dryness, wetness), the four pillars of fire, air, water and earth, and the four humours. Every law, revealed (shara'i') or not (nawamis), proceeds from the Name the Lord (al-rabb), which brings order and balance to the cosmos, for the wholesomeness and well-being of the world (masalih al-'alam). The Law appears at the level of the Footstool, below the Throne, where duality begins; there revelation divides into rulings and reports, and rulings into commands and prohibitions.
Shari'a and haqiqa are twins but not equals. The Law is "cut off" in the next world; gnostic knowledge never is. So Ibn Arabi stresses both following the Law and limiting its burden. The Prophet said, "Leave me so long as I leave you!", forbidding further questions that would add obligations. Ibn Arabi comments: "The knowledge of the sharīʿa is the knowledge of a way and a path. It demands a traveller (sālik), and travelling is a hardship, but [the Prophet] wanted a reduction of that." Hence "Everything about which it is silent has no ruling other than original permissiveness (al-ibāḥa al-aṣliyya)." The Law's silence is its plenitude. What one should seek more of is knowledge of God's faces in every creature, "and this is the knowledge of the Reality."
Making new law ended with Muhammad, but ijtihad, the effort to interpret, remains a portion of legislative prophethood. Ibn Arabi strictly grounds it in scripture, rejects personal opinion (ra'y) and juristic preference (istihsan), and forbids taqlid to anyone capable of ijtihad. Chapters 4 and 5 show him using these terms as templates for non-Islamic religions.
| Sense of "law" in Ibn Arabi | Example |
|---|---|
| Any revealed law brought by a prophet | The Torah's law, the Gospel's law |
| The Muhammadan shari'a specifically | Qur'an and Sunna |
| A human legal framework for civil purposes | The nawamis of Chapter 5 |
| A path one travels | A shari'a if revealed, a namus if not |
3.3 The jizya in Surat al-Tawba
The jizya rests on Qur'an 9:29, in the only sura without the basmala, a sign of its background of war. The sura begins by repudiating the treaty with Quraysh after they broke it. Yet Ibn Arabi insists: "If you are intelligent, you will know of the 'mercy enfolded' within this sura". Part of that mercy is the option for the defeated to pay tribute rather than face the results of defeat.
The disputed phrase is the requirement that the payers be "humbled" (wa hum saghirun). Readings vary widely:
| Authority | Reading of the humbling, as reported |
|---|---|
| Some authorities | No more than paying the tax and being the minor party |
| Imam Malik | Subordination to the Muslim state; payment declares obeisance |
| Zamakhshari | Paying on foot while the receiver is on horseback |
| An opinion cited by Razi | The collector may seize the payer's beard or prod him from behind, though this was not the practice of the Prophet or the four Caliphs |
| Ahmad al-Sawi (d. 1241/1825) | No proxy may pay; the payer comes in person "in order to taste meekness (al-madhalla), by being slapped on the neck" |
Ibn Arabi himself writes: "When God places you in charge of the Muslims or protected minorities (ahl al-dhimma), beware of cheating them or bearing any ill will towards them." And: "Do not make a protected minority your adversary on the Day of Resurrection." The author also notes that Tha'laba, refusing zakat, called it "the sister of the jizya", and that the Christian Banu Taghlib objected to the tax's name but paid charity at double the zakat rate.
3.4 The Malikis of Andalusia
Since Malikism was the school of his homeland, the author surveys it briefly. Two points stand out. All discussion of the jizya sits in the chapter on jihad, so it is conceived in terms of war. And there are two kinds: by treaty (sulhiyya) and by force ('anwiyya), the second more stringent.
- Ibn Abd al-Barr (d. 463/1071) and al-Qurtubi (d. 671/1273): the tax falls on every free earning man, not on women, children, slaves, the insane, old men, hermit monks or the poor. Malik accepted it from all unbelievers, even idolaters. Both say little about the humbling; Qurtubi mentions only that the payer stands while the receiver sits.
- Ibn Rushd al-Jadd and his grandson al-Hafid: little interest in the question. Al-Hafid, who met Ibn Arabi when he was in his teens, and Ibn Abd al-Barr contrast zakat, which purifies, with jizya, which abases. Ibn Rushd al-Jadd notes that "hand" can mean strength, or blessing, since sparing their lives is the greatest blessing.
- Qadi Abu Bakr Ibn al-Arabi (d. 543/1148): lists 15 views of "from hand", literal or metaphorical; for him the jizya is a penalty for unbelief. For the Shafi'is, by contrast, it is paid in exchange for the protection of life and property.
The fiqh manuals share little concern with the humbling. They deal with administration: who pays, how much, gold or silver, when, whether converts still pay. A concrete example of humbling appears only much later, with al-Sawi. Archaeology shows a jizya seal, one in the name of Seville, perhaps worn as proof of payment.
- He does not accept jizya from associators (mushrikun), a position closer to al-Shafi'i (d. 204/820).
- For him the jizya is not a fine for unbelief but, again as with the Shafi'is, a payment in exchange for protection of life and property.
- He does not use the Maliki terms for those conquered by force and those who made treaties.
- His writings on the jizya come from the Futuhat and Fusus, completed in Shafi'i Damascus, and his view rests on his own cosmology of Names and the primacy of mercy.
He would have agreed most with Ibn Rushd al-Jadd: "Sparing their lives is a mighty blessing for them."
3.5 Reading "humbled" through the Qur'an
The author reads the word saghar by comparing its uses across the Qur'an, following Ibn Arabi's priority on scripture and on each word. His claim: every verse with this theme involves confrontation, counters satanic tendencies such as arrogance, and aims to guide.
- Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (27:37). Solomon threatens to drive her people out abased and humbled (adhillatan wa hum saghirun). He uses two different words. If saghirun already meant humiliation, the extra word would be needless, so 9:29, which lacks it, arguably does not carry the same sense. Ibn Arabi, commenting on the earth as "lowly" (dhalul, 67:15), says the worshipper's prostration consoles the earth for being trodden by all.
- Iblis (7:13). Here humiliation is real: "innaka min al-saghirin". But it is tied to his arrogance: saghir is the opposite of kabir. Humiliation counters pride.
- Moses and the sorcerers (7:119). Defeated, "they turned about, humbled", and in the next verse they fall prostrate and believe. "There cannot be any guidance where humility is absent."
- Joseph. Zulaykha's threat of prison, abasement, becomes his rescue from seduction, and after the lowest indignity he rises to the highest position. "Genuine humility leads to exaltation."
So 9:29 too concerns aggressive groups among the People of the Book "who believe neither in God nor in the Last Day", in a sura about war, corrupt clergy and persecution. In Chapter 52 of the Futuhat Ibn Arabi says the true essence of a human being is lowliness, poverty and need of God; a flea-bite that makes a man jump out of bed shows how accidental his claims to greatness are. Lowliness need not be negative: it is one of the two attributes through which Abu Yazid al-Bistami reached God's nearness.
On Lipton's translation "humiliation", the author grants that Ibn Arabi held all linguistically possible readings of the Qur'an to be valid and intended by God for each qualified reader. So the translation is permissible. The real question is "whether it is Ibn ʿArabī's own view". Read against the themes of guidance and return to humility, it is unlikely to be.
3.6 The jizya passages
Chapter 10: still Muhammad's Law
Abrogation exists, but "this abrogation did not remove the laws that preceded it from being [Muḥammad's] Law." Included in his rule is what the protected People of the Book follow, as long as they give the indemnity and are humbled. The earlier laws now belong to Muhammad's jurisdiction and cannot be thought of apart from it.
Chapter 12: the night is theirs
In the fourth heaven, the sphere of the sun, lies the command that his law abrogate all others. "No ruling (ḥukm) remains for any of the religions, in the eyes of God, except what it [the Muḥammadan sharīʿa] affirms." Ibn Arabi quotes al-Nabigha's panegyric again and concludes: "The lights of the stars are enfolded in the light of the sun, so the day is ours, and the night alone (waḥdahu) is for the People of the Book when they "give the jizya from their hand, humbled"." Lipton takes the poem very literally. But if following an unconfirmed ruling "goes against" its follower, it is for a reason: caprice (hawa). Ibn Arabi says that "when something is abrogated from a sharīʿa and then someone follows it after its abrogation, this is called 'the soul's caprice'". The rulings of other religions are haqq in themselves and batil only in relation to Muhammad's religion. A variant noted by Osman Yahia says all the laws are "like the sun with the light of the planets" because "they are all ḥaqq from God". Whether someone follows caprice must be judged from circumstance.
Chapter 36: the Christic saint
Because the earlier laws belong to Muhammad, one can worship God in more than one law at once. Chapter 36 concerns the 'isawi, or Christic, saint who inherits from Jesus. Ibn Barthamla now inherits from Jesus within Muhammad's Law and has two rewards, "a reward for following his prophet [Jesus], and a reward for following Muḥammad". The same chapter treats images. Gabriel appeared to Mary as a well-proportioned man (the term is tamaththul, which Eric Winkel renders "image-making"), so Jesus's community adopted icons and images. Muhammad's Law forbade physical images but absorbed the image-making law into the imagination: "Worship God as if you see Him." This is how Christic saints among Muslims worship.
How did a hermit on a mountain learn of Muhammad? Such solitaries walk the path of Khidr, taught by God directly. That is why the Prophet forbade killing monks: "Leave them and pay no heed". The companions who met Ibn Barthamla did not ask him about his religion, "for the Prophet did not command them to ask such questions". Then comes the side-comment on the jizya:
"And if he is one of those who discharges the jizya, we say that the Law of Muḥammad has confirmed (qarrara) his religion, as long as he "pays the jizya"." ... "And how many of such servants does God the Exalted have on the earth!"
The chapter goes on to describe the Christic saint's gentleness: greetings of peace to all beings, even swine; seeing only the best in people; knowing that God loves the snake even when one must kill it. If he is ever harsh, it is by divine command. Preserving lives and religions through the jizya is a form of Christic beauty, and humiliation does not figure in the chapter.
Chapter 337: their portion of the Law
Muhammad was sent with "universality of mercy", and one is deprived of it only by covering oneself, like someone hiding from the sun. "All are his community." Among the sciences listed at the chapter's end is that of "differentiation", which gives rise to the paths. Ibn Arabi asks whether, since the messengers were sent universally, people are one community or not, and whether the ruling that the People of Scripture pay the jizya and remain in their religion is legislated by God through Muhammad. If so, it benefits them: "They thereby complete their obligations (faʿalū mā kullifū), and this is their portion of the sharīʿa. The Muḥammadan Law allows them to remain in their own laws, so they gain happiness in this manner." Those who sin within their own law are treated like any rebel. He calls this a "strange knowledge" that the People of God guard.
The author draws three conclusions. First, the question of one community recalls verses on the necessity of religious diversity; the only one Ibn Arabi comments on explicitly is 2:213, stressing the people's divergence from an original unity. Second, the jizya belongs to the science of separation: where communities are divided by conflict, it is due. The author connects this to the "Constitution of Madina", transmitted to Ibn Arabi through al-Suhayli (d. 581/1185). There the Prophet's pact named the believers and those who joined them "one community (umma wāḥida), to the exclusion of other people," and granted "to the Jews, their religion, and to the Muslims, theirs". No jizya and no humbling were required, since there was no war. So, the author argues, Ibn Arabi "does not necessarily require the jizya payment or the condition of subordinate humility in order for other religions to subsist", depending on the circumstances. Third, the word for "allowing them to remain" is ibqa'uhum, from baqa', subsistence.
| If the communities are judged... | Then | Example |
|---|---|---|
| One community (umma wahida) | No jizya, no humbling; obedience to the pact's terms | The Constitution of Madina |
| Divided by conflict and war | Jizya required; payers protected and confirmed | The situation Ibn Arabi discusses in detail, given his age |
Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731), answering a Turkish accuser, wrote that the People of the Book "are legally (sharʿan) assured of happiness by agreeing to pay the jizya", saving their lives and becoming like Muslims in protection, so that a Muslim who kills a dhimmi is put to death. The religions are annihilated in their independence and subsist in a new state of dependence on Muhammad's authority.
Chapter 275: unifiers who doubt
This chapter, indispensable to the topic, distinguishes associators from the People of the Book. The associator "strikes out" against God and creation and so has no protection from being fought. The People of the Book "do not malign God or creation – I mean the messengers – but they do malign a certain messenger", out of a whim or suspicion, because the truthfulness of the one calling them to Islam "was not proven for them." So they have "a correct basis and support (mustanad ṣaḥīḥ) as far as they are concerned, but not in the affair in itself", and the jizya is levied and they are left to establish their religion. A contemporary Akbarian scholar puts it: "We confirm you based on your doubts, but not the doubts themselves." Ibn Arabi then signals emphasis: "Here is a delicate point, for the one of understanding. It is that their religion is lawful for them through our Law, so that they are confirmed in it." Humbling is not even mentioned.
He adds that the Prophet's face beamed when he heard the Byzantines had defeated Persia, though they disbelieved in him, because their basis was that of the People of Truth. "Hence, the Law excuses them to this extent of what is known about them." The command to "Oppose the ahl al-kitāb" is limited: "Had he ordered us to oppose them completely (ʿala al-iṭlāq), we would have been ordered to oppose what we ourselves were ordered to believe in!" The unbeliever who does not associate "is a unifier (muwaḥḥid) but a disbeliever in the Messenger of God and part of His Book." The author notes the key word ra'a: God watches over them as a shepherd his flock. He also sees here the school of verification (madhhab al-tahqiq), which gives each thing its due and will not label a non-Muslim a complete disbeliever. Ibn Arabi distinguishes later Jews and Christians from Heraclius and the Jews of the Prophet's time, who knew his prophethood yet rejected it. Bahā' al-Din Baytar (d. 1910) later echoed this chapter: the Gospel is included in the Qur'an, so Christians judging by it judge by God's ruling.
Chapter 369 and a poem: the punitive side
Ibn Arabi also presents the jizya as punishment, outward in the loss of wealth and inward "between humiliation (al-ṣaghār) ... and being overpowered (al-qahr)". The author points to the partitive "of those" in 9:29: only some of the People of the Book, rebels who fear neither God nor the Last Day. A poem says: "Fight those whom you find greatly denying their Lord". Humiliation, then, is qualified as punishment, "only one potential dimension of the taxation phenomenon," and arguably a purification, as zakat is for Muslims. Ibn Arabi notes that dhimma means covenant: "If it is a covenant set down by Law, then fulfilling it is its zakāt."
The Fusus: humility and the preservation of life
In the chapter on Jesus, Ibn Arabi writes that "Jesus emerged out of humility (al-tawāḍuʿ), to such a degree that it was prescribed for his community to" give the indemnity out of hand, humbled, and to turn the other cheek. Two points follow: saghar is tied here to the virtue of humility, and if their religion were abrogated absolutely, citing the Gospel command as active would be pointless. In the chapter on Jonah, whose theme is that compassion for God's servants takes precedence over zeal for God's rights, God did not let David build the Temple because of the blood on his hands. Ibn Arabi concludes: "Do you not see the enemies of the Religion, how God has obligated the jizya for their sakes (fī ḥaqqihim), and reconciliation (al-ṣulḥ) in order to make them subsist?" In homicide, too, one relative's pardon prevents execution. The Law prefers to save lives.
Chapter 560: advice before war
The ruler must invite his enemies to Islam before fighting: "Either they respond to his invitation, or else they pay the jizya if they are from the People of the Book." If they incline to peace, it is accepted. Fighting has a limited purpose, that "God's word is uppermost".
3.7 The jizya as superlative mercy
Chapters 179 and 520 reach the heart of the matter. Chapter 179 concerns the station of Abraham, the Intimate Friend. God rebuked Abraham for refusing to feed an idolater whom God had fed for more than 70 years. Abraham then made his generosity universal: "I learned [true] generosity from my Lord. I saw Him not allowing any of His enemies to perish, so neither will I!" The saint of this station universalizes kindness to the obedient and disobedient alike. Ibn Arabi says of this path: "I have entered it and tasted it. I have not seen an easier nor a finer road". And he links it directly to the jizya:
"This is the state of the khalīl, who is a mercy –all of him. If it was not for this divine mercy, God would not have said, "If they incline towards peace, you also incline to it"; nor would God have said, "until they give the jizya". Is this not all so that He might make them subsist [i.e. live]?"
Chapter 520 turns on 6:36. Whoever has not responded to God's call has not truly heard it, and only God knows who did. "Hence God has only set up this excuse for His servants because in Himself [is the deeper intention] that He have mercy on them." Ibn Arabi exclaims: "So how tremendous is God's mercy towards His servants, and they do not [even] perceive [it]!" He cites the Christians of 5:83 whose eyes overflow with tears as an example of those who did listen. Irritated by people who would restrict God's mercy to themselves, he writes: "and praise be to God that I am not one of those who love retribution and vengeance!" Of the verse calling Muhammad a mercy to the worlds, revealed when he wished to curse certain associating tribes, Ibn Arabi says God "did not specify the believer over others, and this is realized in levying the jizya upon the ahl al-kitāb." If the Prophet was censured over associators, how much more for those who are not associators?
In Ibn Arabi's circumstances, then, the jizya mitigated enmity, a mercy that let people remain in their religions while acknowledging Muhammad's authority. The author connects this to the Najran delegation of bishops, reportedly the first to accept the jizya. "If the risāla muḥammadiyya obligates the entire world, it nevertheless "mercifies" it as well."
3.8 Other applications
Praying in synagogues and churches. Jurists disagree. Ibn Arabi interprets inwardly: does God speak to two people at one level? Not given the Divine Vastness. "If we [Muslims] do pray in such places, it is from our Law, not theirs! So understand." The principle is Abu Talib al-Makki's: "God never discloses Himself in a single form to two individuals, nor in a single form twice." Each house of worship represents a distinct disclosure, and Muhammad's all-embracing Law includes them all.
Zakat al-fitr. Ibn Arabi holds that it may be given to poor Jews and Christians: "I am a believer in what the Jew and Christian believe in, in terms of what is true in his religion and Book, by having faith in my [own] Book". For "my Book contains (yataḍamman) his Book, and my religion contains his religion." He plays on the etymology: Christian (nasrani) from succour (nasr), Jew (yahudi) from guidance (huda). If the jizya is collected from People of the Book, "that can be a confirmation, set by the Lawgiver, of their religion", so they must establish it, and their own charity should be accepted.
Establishing the religion. On 42:13, which charges Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus to "establish the religion", Ibn Arabi says the religion of the prophets is one, "and this one religion is nothing but tawḥīd, performing the religion, and worship". He is far more concerned with upholding the religions in worship and God's unity than with subjecting them, as Lipton argues. "Abrogation therefore does not render these religions useless; it only subjects them to Muḥammad's authority."
The religions are annihilated in their former independence: their time of authority ended with Muhammad. They subsist in a new state, dependent on the sun of his religion. The jizya is one way they subsist, set in a context of war, aimed at saving lives and guiding enemies. It is not the only way; the sun-worshippers of Chapter 4 will show a religion that subsists with no jizya and no humbling. The model is one of mercy, "searching for excuses to save people rather than condemn them", without compromising Ibn Arabi's own clear ideas of belief and unbelief.
Part 4. Rethinking Ibn Arabi?
Chapter 3 applies the two-part method to Gregory A. Lipton's Rethinking Ibn Arabi, the most significant recent study of the question. The author credits Lipton's critique of Schuon and his interdisciplinary range, but argues that his "cosmo-political model of subsumption and humiliation" is itself reductive: it misreads the passages on belief, rests on few and decontextualized sources, and leaves out much of the corpus.
4.1 What Lipton argues
Lipton's book, substantially his 2013 doctoral dissertation at the University of North Carolina, argues that Izutsu, Corbin, Chittick and above all Frithjof Schuon took Ibn Arabi's pluralism for granted. Its structuring image is cartography: the mapmaker claims universality while fixing the map's centre, the "hubris of zero degrees", and "the map is not the territory", as J. Z. Smith says. Lipton uses this to dismantle Schuon's claim to universal truth. On this point the author agrees: Ibn Arabi held to the letter of the Law, whereas Schuon saw "Semitic" devotion as inferior; Ibn Arabi "is simply not a Perennialist". The author examines only Lipton's first three chapters, since the last two concern Schuon.
He sums up Lipton's model in four steps:
- Muhammad's religion is absolute and subsumptive. It abrogates earlier dispensations and subsumes all beliefs, declaring the sovereignty of God and of Muhammad's religion through the image of monarchy. Ibn Arabi is not validating beliefs but asserting his own supreme status by encompassing them.
- Followers of other religions suffer perdition for following corrupted scriptures or heretical beliefs,
- unless they pay the jizya in a state of humiliation.
- This is a "qualified subjugation": their willingness to be subjugated qualifies them for salvation. Any pluralism is illusory.
The model rests on a distinction between religion (din), meaning obedience (inqiyad) and recompense (jaza'), and belief (i'tiqad), subjective "knottings" of God. The key verse is 17:23, "And thy Lord has decreed you worship none but Him", which Ibn Arabi reads as an engendering command (amr takwini) that cannot be disobeyed, so that whatever one worships is God. Beliefs are therefore all correct in one respect, but for Lipton only obedience to revealed commands saves. He charges Izutsu with "smuggling" in a Protestant idea of religion as a set of beliefs, and reads the famous passages on belief as "the subsumptive cosmology of power".
For the humiliation, Lipton has two sources beyond four brief Futuhat passages (Chapters 10, 12, 36, 337): al-Nabigha's couplet, with its verb yatadhabdhab, which he translates "groveling", and the letter to Sultan Kayka'us urging full application of the Pact of Umar. Muhammad appears as the "solar king", and abrogation is "a political moment of exclusion".
The model is held together by abrogation, the medieval image of the solar king, and contemporary theories that find politics in every discourse. "To what extent do these theories impose themselves on Ibn ʿArabī and his own words, in order for Lipton's model to make sense? And does this imposition lead to a second reductionism?"
4.2 Subsumption and beliefs
The idea of subsumption is not new. Claude Addas and Michel Chodkiewicz discuss it under prophetic inheritance: Ibn Arabi passes through the inheritance of Jesus, Moses, Hud and others before the totalizing station of Muhammad. But for them it lacks Lipton's political sense, and Chodkiewicz had already treated Ibn Arabi's esoteric politics, which "at least merited a citation."
The real test is the famous warning in the Fusus:
"Beware of delimiting yourself by a specific belief (ʿaqd) and disbelieving all else, for much good will pass you by". "So, be in yourself the primordial matter of all forms of beliefs (muʿtaqadāt) since God, the Most High, is too wide and great to be restricted by one belief (ʿaqd) over another."
For Lipton this merely announces "God's absolute sovereignty". The author replies that no one disputes God's sovereignty and that the passage's purpose must be read from its form. "Fa-iyak" ("Beware") belongs to Ibn Arabi's vocabulary of counsel (nasiha), as in Chapter 560. The passage is about wayfaring (suluk) and guidance. The preceding text concerns the believer's bad manners toward God in rejecting a manifestation of God while thinking himself righteous, a theme also of the chapter on Noah, which shows that our attachment to an ideal god can be as idolatrous as an idol.
What is the "much good" that would be lost? Ibn Arabi recalls 2:115 because it alerts the hearts of the gnostics, "for the servant does not know in which 'breath' he shall be taken." Every breath brings its own task; failing to recognize God in another's belief at that moment means losing knowledge of God. Behind this lies the Hadith of transformation (al-Hadith al-tahawwul): at the Resurrection God comes in a form people do not recognize, they deny Him, He changes into the form they know, and then returns to the first. Whoever does not recognize God's forms here will not recognize them there. The Kitab al-Tajalliyyat warns: "Be warned of the humiliation (faḍīḥa), when the transformation in the forms of beliefs occurs".
Other passages confirm the practical, guiding purpose:
- In a manual on master and disciple, the perfect shaykh appears to the disciple according to the disciple's belief in him, as God appears in the form of each belief.
- "The physical forms have become diverse, so the spirits (laṭāʾif) became diverse, so the ways diversified, so the knowledges diversified, so the disclosures became diverse."
- Sunlight through coloured glass: "The glass, [represents] the hearts; colours are the beliefs. And the Truth (al-ḥaqq) does not change, but this is how He will be seen." Ibn Arabi even advised Fakhr al-Din Razi to attend to the form in which God discloses Himself.
- A poem in the Diwan: "God is greater than what you believe", ending: "If only they had known what I knew, and what / His reality gives, they would have prostrated to Him the first time!"
Morris and Chodkiewicz note that the more beliefs a gnostic has seen or assented to, the greater his vision of God hereafter. Ibn Arabi says the divine Presence accepts every creed except shirk. Lipton ignores this advice from Chapter 73:
"The Men are those who concur with the belief of every believer in respect of that which has conveyed it to him, taught it, and established it. On the Day of Visitation the Men will see their Lord with the eye of every belief." The seeker should "investigate, during his life in this world, all doctrines (maqāla) concerning God" and, once each is affirmed in its own mode, "He should not deny it or reject it, for he will gather its fruit on the Day of Visitation".
And the felicity extends to all: "From here you will come to know the all-inclusiveness of felicity for God's creatures". Mercy, not political structure, is what interests Ibn Arabi here. Chapter 371 adds that at the "Dune of Visions" each person is dyed by the light of the form he witnessed: "he who knows God in every belief, then he has the light of each belief". Confirming others' beliefs is "the Creed of the Most Elite", not of the common believer. The Fusus says that if the believer knew Junayd's saying, "The colour of the water takes on the colour of the cup", he would grant every believer his belief. And the word musib ("correct") recalls ijtihad: "The Real is with the belief (iʿtiqād) of every believer (muʿtaqid), after their ijtihād."
The author concludes that Ibn Arabi does subsume all beliefs as a Muhammadan saint, but that "Ibn ʿArabī clearly has no interest in this subject" of politics in these passages, and that a political structure would not diminish their pluralistic tone.
4.3 Religion and belief overlap
Lipton calls Izutsu's rendering of 'aqd as "religion" "severely misleading". The author agrees "belief" is better but rejects the severity, for three reasons.
- Religio and religare mean binding oneself, exactly the sense of 'aqd as knotting.
- Lipton says i'tiqadat "always" means beliefs. But Ibn Arabi says the Folk of God must know "the doctrine of every sect and creed concerning God in order to witness Him in every form and in order not to stand in the place of denial." Sects and creeds (nihal, milal) shade into religion; Qur'an 6:161 pairs din and milla. A milla can mix revelation with personal preference. Lipton also omits Ibn Arabi's third definition of din: custom (al-'ada). And he ignores the paradigm at the start of a Fusus chapter he himself cites: "The religion is two: the religion with God, and with those who know the Real, Exalted, and the ones who know those who know God; and the religion with creation, which God acknowledges." The second is non-prophetic religion, including rahbaniyya, which God accepts. "Lipton has excluded an entire dimension of Ibn ʿArabī's paradigm".
- In Chapter 460 Ibn Arabi takes obedience as one aspect of religion, the degree of islam, and equates faith (iman) with belief (i'tiqad) and excellence (ihsan) with witnessing. So belief is itself a dimension of religion.
Lipton's "most severe blunders" come in his claim that Ibn Arabi "himself does not include specific, non-Muslim religious communities in his expositions of this idea", and that the discourse on belief is mainly an intra-Islamic critique of theology. Chapters 69 and 72 of the Futuhat describe Ibn Arabi's meeting with the sun-worshippers (shamsiyya) in Greek lands, as the guest of one of their scholars, with beliefs mentioned explicitly. The author also faults Lipton's footnote setting the Mu'tazila and Ash'arites as poles of transcendence and anthropomorphism: the Mu'tazila sometimes went further toward transcendence than the Ash'arites, holding God cannot be seen even hereafter, and the anthropomorphist pole would be the Hanbalis.
4.4 The People of the Book
Lipton writes of an "implied potential for an untold number ... to suffer a prolonged period of 'therapeutic' purification in Hell" for Jews and Christians who do not pay the jizya, without a source. Ibn Arabi does hold the doctrine of scriptural alteration (tahrif), but never damns them for it.
The book turns out to be Lipton's dissertation on Chapter 343, where Ibn Arabi says: "But it may be hoped that the People of the Trinity, because of the state of being odd, which is hidden in the Trinity, will be saved." Lipton infers that the Trinitarians sit between the people of oneness and the dualists, and reads the verbal noun as purification within the fire before release. The author replies:
- Ibn Arabi does not say they sit in between; that is Lipton's inference.
- In Chapter 69, on the funeral prayer, Ibn Arabi tells the one praying to ask God "to free him from [all] punishment (al-takhlīṣ min al-ʿadhāb)", not merely entry to the Garden. If the word implied prior entrapment in Hell, he would not ask readers to pray for it.
- Chapter 275 shows Christians are not mushrikun, or the jizya could not be taken from them; elsewhere God "attributed kufr to them, as a way of establishing an excuse for them". Trinitarians have a "composite unity" and are hoped to be covered by the "composite mercy".
- The "hope" is courtesy toward God; a few lines on, the composite mercy "encompasses the entirety of existent things", and of these groups he says "they are all saved from Hell, praise be to God!"
Lipton also misses a passage in Chapter 369 that does speak of the perdition of Jews and Christians, in the specific context of zealotry, and never cites the Ijaz al-Bayan, Ibn Arabi's most concentrated treatment of the People of the Book, in which he belongs to Islam's polemical tradition. Ibn Arabi tells of a rabbi who said Muslims had no share in unity since their suras begin with the letter ba': "So I replied to him "Neither do you, for the Torah also begins with bāʾ [i.e. beth]." He was silenced".
4.5 The jizya is not the only way
Tax "may be demanded, or it may not. It is not absolutely necessary to his metaphysics." The science of differentiation and the Constitution of Madina show this, and the sun-worshippers, whose worship Ibn Arabi confirms, pay no jizya. The author then gives four passages on the spiritual heights open to people of other religions.
| Passage | What it says |
|---|---|
| Kitab al-Tajalliyyat | "How many a beloved saint (walī ḥabīb) is to be found in synagogues and churches!" and how many hated enemies in mosques |
| On the Companion of the Book | A Jew or Christian who fulfils a command of his Book revealed before its abrogation and renounces the world "attains these waystations (munāzalāt) and [spiritual] influxes (wāridāt), as God wishes" |
| Chapter 88 | A man with no revealed law, probably a philosopher, purified his spirit by Sufi ascetic practice, though the divine stations stayed closed to him |
| Chapter 304 | Whoever realizes poverty reaches the highest station of his category, even if "a Christian, Magian, Jew, or atheist (muʿaṭṭilan)" |
| Ijaz al-Bayan on 2:62 | Whoever of all the groups "sincerely affirms" God's unity and the Last Day and does good has his reward, with no added condition |
On the first, Osman Yahia notes that "how many" (kam) can be a question or an exclamation of quantity; Ibn Arabi uses the exclamation, so the saints in synagogues and churches are many. Ibn Sawdakin (d. 646/1248), his student, explains it as predestination: such saints die felicitous and inherit the good deeds of "Muslims" bound for the Fire. The author adds that Christian saints still receive help from Jesus and Jews from Moses, through the niche of Muhammad.
Chapter 304 makes three points: Islam is the true religion of guidance; anyone who realizes ontological poverty, "whatever his sect or creed!", returns to it, which the author reads as inner submission (islam) merging with the confessional faith; and the passage is joined to a poem against restricting God: the great man "does not claim Him to be shackled, or made master / Or Judaized, Christianized, Magianized". Presumably they do not "Islamify" Him either. The jizya is not mentioned.
On 2:62, earlier exegetes (Zamakhshari, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Qurtubi, following Tabari) add that these groups must first accept Muhammad, or refer to those before his time. Ibn Arabi, following them closely otherwise, omits this condition, which is "conspicuous and certainly remarkable". Out of literal courtesy he does not go beyond the verse. So he conceives of at least one situation where prior belief in Muhammad is not a precondition of salvation, "even when it generally is."
4.6 Humiliation: the poem and the letter
Al-Nabigha's verb
Yatadhabdhab means to oscillate, go to and fro, be agitated, or shake; Arberry renders it "quivering". It also means to drive off flies, or to dry up. "Groveling" is "stretching the meaning." More tellingly, the poem compares kings: if the sun is Muhammad, the stars are the other prophets. Would Lipton have the prophets grovel? Ibn Arabi cites the poem in four other chapters with no mention of groveling. In one, on eclipses, he writes: "we know for certain that the stars appear and rise in their entities and courses, except that the perception of the seer falls short of seeing them". Lipton also says the sun-star passage of Chapter 339 "is only an allusion" to al-Nabigha's poem; but the same image appears in many contexts, and the word indaraja ("included") links it to the zakat al-fitr passage, which has nothing to do with humiliation.
The letter to Kayka'us
Lipton notes that the sultan, enthroned in 1211, wrote for advice in 1212. But he omits two poems in the letter and its setting. Ibn Arabi wrote from Malatya while the sultan was in Antalya, taken by his father Kaykhusraw in 1207:
"I want to see the religion of the Prophet Muḥammad / established and the religion of the falsifiers vanish / For I see only untruth raised, and its folk exalted, whilst the True Religion is most abased (dhalīl)"
The author reads three things here. First, an emotional appeal: the sultan's epithet, Izz al-Din, means "Exalter of the Religion", yet Islam is "most abased". The history matters. Kaykhusraw fell at the Battle of Alaşehir in 1211; Kayka'us's two brothers opposed his succession; he made peace with the Emperor of Nicaea; Christian uprisings followed, one led by his brother Kay Faridun with support from Hugh I of Cyprus; his other brother allied with Leon of Cilicia, until Kayka'us won Leon over. Kayka'us needed Christian support for his maritime ambitions, shown by his taking Sinop in 1214, and concessions likely followed. Muslims were a minority on a new frontier, and the Reconquista was fresh in Ibn Arabi's memory. Visible crosses and processions would embolden a Christian majority against vulnerable Muslims. So the Pact of Umar, "although discriminatory, is also obviously contextual."
Second, Ibn Arabi warns three times against a secret adviser in the king's inner circle, and against a deputy "who became a heretic burning the people of religion"; Mahmud Kilic speculates this was Sayf al-Din Kizil, the Amir of Ankara. Third, the letter sits in Chapter 560 among anecdotes warning against bad counsellors, the opposite of nasiha. It ends with the Religion testifying at Judgement: "In his kingdom, I was abased (dhalīla), my people cut down in his fields!" If there is humiliation here, it is "the absence of independent sovereignty", ensuring Muslims are not abased in civil strife. There is no intrinsic requirement.
4.7 Subjugation
Lipton equates subjugation with subsumption, but no passage he cites uses "subjugation"; indaraja means "to include", and Ibn Arabi uses it inclusively. The proper term is taskhir, discussed in the Fusus chapter on Aaron, where Moses burns the Golden Calf through his "animality", and in Chittick's study of the wisdom of animals: "Know that even though God has subjected and abased the dumb beasts to man, you should not be heedless of the fact that you are subjected to them." We labour to feed and protect them. "So, you have no superiority over them through subjection". The same holds for a king and his subjects.
| Lipton's claim | The author's reply |
|---|---|
| Passages on belief assert political sovereignty | They are counsel on wayfaring and the vision hereafter |
| Religion and belief never overlap | Creed, sect, custom and faith tie them together |
| Unpaying Jews and Christians face purgatorial Hell | No source; takhlis means release, not entrapment |
| Jizya with humiliation is the only path | Saints in churches, Chapter 304, 2:62, sun-worshippers |
| Yatadhabdhab means groveling | It means quivering; the "kings" are the prophets |
| The letter to Kayka'us shows intrinsic humiliation | A response to war, rebellion and threat to Muslims |
| Four jizya passages suffice | Chapters 179, 275, 369, 520, 560 and two Fusus passages omitted |
4.8 Conclusion of the chapter
Lipton's model "ends up being just as reductionist as a more "romantic" and universalist interpretation". He first learned of Chapters 10, 12 and 337 from Chodkiewicz's introduction to The Meccan Revelations, and of Chapter 36 from Seal of the Saints; much of what he retranslates is in Chittick and Ghurab. And he misreads Chodkiewicz, whom he sets against Chittick. In his review of Imaginal Worlds, Chodkiewicz wrote that Chittick "rightly emphasizes (souligne avec raison)" that the haqq never becomes batil, and added that this is "the foundation of the jizya", which integrates the People of the Book into the Islamic order with a validity for their laws.
It rests on the Law and has mercy at its centre. The sun annihilates the stars' lights but preserves the stars. Obedience to Muhammad's authority is required, but paying the jizya in a humbled state is not the only way to give it, still less humiliation. "The Law excuses them to this extent". The jizya passages concern combatant enemies, and the one exception to the rule is when the rights of Muslims are violated, as in the letter to Kayka'us. Any future study must take both annihilation and subsistence into account.
Part 5. Sun-Worshippers and Polytheists
Chapter 4 opens the book's second half, on religions that are not divinely revealed. Its case study is Ibn Arabi's meeting with sun-worshippers in "Greek" lands. From two short passages the author draws a set of Akbarian themes, chief among them that Law and belief intersect, and three legal means by which the Muhammadan Law makes room for other paths: ijtihad, rahbaniyya and the prostration of veneration.
5.1 Who were the sun-worshippers?
Ibn Arabi says he saw many "sun-worshippers" (shamsiyya) in the lands of "Greece" (bilad yunan). The term meant Byzantine lands, often Anatolia, modern Turkey, where his travels took him to Damascus, Sivas, Malatya, Kayseri and Harran. The author weighs the possibilities:
| Candidate | For | Against |
|---|---|---|
| Sabians, as imagined in heresiography | Muslims linked astral worship to them; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wrote on their astral worship; the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum, which Ibn Arabi saw at his teacher al-Mawruri's house, salutes the sun and is full of Greek sages | "Sabian" was often a vague label for any pagan |
| Harranian Sabians | Ibn Arabi visited Harran | Kevin van Bladel argues the community had vanished by the time of Ibn Jubayr's visit, though it may have dispersed |
| Armenian Arevordik ("Children of the Sun") | Christian polemics call them shamsiyya, the same rare word; present in Sivas and Mayyafariqin; possibly Zoroastrian remnants near Mardin and Diyarbakir | Said to worship Jesus as the sun, which Ibn Arabi would hardly omit; the scholar's account is not Christian |
| Manicheans | Emphasis on light | No trace of their dualism |
The author remains undecided: they could be quasi-Neoplatonists, Harranian Sabians or Arevordik, and were probably syncretic. The word might also be a coincidence.
5.2 The two passages
Chapter 69: the scholar at table
In the chapter on the secrets of prostration, Ibn Arabi tells how a scholar from the lands of Greece invited him to a meal. He asked why they associated (ashraktum) their worship of God with the sun. The scholar, horrified, replied: "We do not worship the sun inasmuch as it is the sun. Perish the thought! God is one god." He went on:
Ibn Arabi titles the passage: "It is the prostration of constant striving (ijtihād) and exerting oneself to the utmost (badhl al-majhūd), because of what God's majesty deserves, in venerating (taʿẓīm) and taking pleasure in Him (al-iltidhādh bihi)." The author notes that heresiography also tied Greek thought to light, quoting Heraclitus on "the True Light (al-nūr al-ḥaqq) which is not perceived by our intellects", and that the scholar's stress on one god suggests the influence of Muslim conquest on whatever paganism this was.
Chapter 72: the Preventer
Here Ibn Arabi discusses the Hadith forbidding ritual prayer at sunrise and sunset, though other worship such as circumambulation is allowed. Unbelief cannot be stronger than belief. The Name the Preventer (al-Mani') keeps the forms of worship apart: "By this prevention, God has caused a portion of the divine right (ḥaqq ilāhī) to remain for them". Then he explains the sun-worshippers:
The business, he says, becomes "like the divine Law that abrogates parts of itself": the believers are barred from prostrating at those times, and the sun-worshippers are confirmed in and "singled out for" it. "Hence, it is the effect of belief on belief (īmān fī īmān), not the effect of disbelief on belief."
5.3 What the passages show
These are exactly the "specific, non-Muslim religious communities" Lipton said were absent. The author draws out several themes:
- God is worshipped in every object. Under 17:23, whatever one prostrates to, it is God. Ibn Arabi accepts the scholar's nuanced answer and seeks no argument. The scholar's belief functions as a religion: belief creates a din.
- Belief and unbelief remain real but unequal. Unbelief is weaker than belief and does not block the way to God. Their unbelief is of a specific kind: they "cover" certain attributes of God, not His oneness ("God is one god") or His existence.
- Abrogation includes. Their worship is treated like an abrogated law: forbidden to Muslims, permitted to them. The word ra'a ("observes") also means protects. There is no jizya, humiliation or subjugation, and "the abrogation concept was explicitly used by Ibn ʿArabī to include a non-monotheistic group, not exclude them."
- The barzakh of faith. In Chapter 68 Ibn Arabi says a small drop of impurity in a tank, which changes neither colour, smell nor taste, leaves the water usable, because an invisible isthmus separates the particles: "Water is pure; nothing soils it." Filth "is [rationally] adjacent to, but not in, [the water's] portion". The same Name the Preventer governs this isthmus. So the particle of unbelief in the sun-worshipper's system does not corrupt his particle of faith.
A passage from Chapter 69 seems to cut the other way: burials are avoided at sunrise and sunset because unbelievers prostrate then and Hell rushes to seize them, so a buried Muslim might think it comes for him. The author resolves this in two ways. The passage rests on a Hadith in Sahih Muslim about generic "unbelievers", which differs from meeting real people; and there are two forms of prostration, to something other than God as an object of worship apart from Him, and toward something while intending God, which is veneration. The Greek scholar insisted on the second. The group Hell seizes must worship the sun for its own sake. A methodological rule follows: a single passage on a religious group can easily mislead.
5.4 Ijtihad as a template for all seekers
The title "prostration of constant striving" is deliberate. In law, ijtihad is the effort of an advanced jurist to discover God's intent on new cases. Ibn Arabi widens it: "ijtihād, for us, is undertaking a great effort (badhl al-wasʿ) to obtain the [appropriate] inner disposition (al-istiʿdād al-bāṭin), through which one receives this specific [divine] descent". It was a favour to Muhammad's community, letting jurists and perfected saints stand in the waystation of the prophets: they "were given the power to legislate". A mujtahid who errs "did not err in the truth (ḥaqq)", and earns one reward; one who hits the mark earns two.
Most important for the book, Ibn Arabi extends ijtihad to the principles of faith: "Personal interpretation always has the same legal status, whether it pertains to interpreting fundamental principles (al-uṣūl) or to how these principles are applied (al-furūʿ)." God makes the striver's answer lawful even if it does not match the Truth. But the right is not absolute: whoever learns a later, clear text must abandon his view. The erring mujtahid is like a viewer during a solar eclipse: "there is no burden on him, and he is rewarded", but if the text appears and he holds to his own opinion, "he has no excuse with God; he has sinned."
Jurists differ because each receives from the Muhammadan Station, the Station of Proximity, whether they know it or not, and Ibn Arabi saw on reaching it why they disagree and yet each is right. They are like the prophets before Muhammad, each with his own law: "so the Shāfiʿī has forbidden exactly the same thing that ... the Ḥanafī has permitted". The author contrasts al-Juwayni, who held that every mujtahid in theological roots cannot be right, since that would make Zoroastrians and atheists right. Ibn Arabi agrees from one side and disagrees from another: one hits the mark either as God judged or in God's affirming one's judgement.
So the striving associator is rewarded:
"However the Real, glory be to Him, has regard (rāʿa) for their object insofar as they worshipped only God, not the entities [for their own sake]. Hence, their destination will eventually be to the all-inclusiveness of mercy". Shirk is unforgivable, "But not every associator – rather, only the associators who were sent messengers, or did not give [rational] consideration its rightful due, or strive".
He adds that he held back this inspiration "for 13 months after it came to me, until God, the Exalted, permitted me to write it."
5.5 A myth of polytheism's origins
Chapter 363 offers what the author calls a myth of Ibn Arabi's own making. In non-existence the creatures still heard and witnessed God through their immutable entities. Entering bodily existence, the veil of nature fell over them, but some could not leave what they were used to. The veil is "the habit (aʿtād) of listening, obeying, and worshipping, in the root, only a lord he can witness." So such a person took a visible part of the cosmos, a planet or element, as a lord, "And through it his self was stilled", imagining it nearer to the Real, as the Qur'an reports them saying they worship their gods only "to bring us nearer to God, in closeness" (39:3). "And this was by way of intellectual consideration (naẓr) and striving (ijtihād)." Habit, the author notes, is Ibn Arabi's third definition of din.
Then they saw the prophets bind people to prostration, a direction of prayer and kissing a stone called "the right [hand] of God", and saw veneration of these waymarks tied to felicity. They did not distinguish what was set up for God from what they set up themselves. Ibn Arabi limits his words to "the masters, the first rational thinkers (al-aʾimma aṣḥāb al-naẓr al-awwal)". They were deceived by seeing the "absolute felicity of the mujtahid": whoever sets up a proof in his own estimation "is not taken to task", since "his only intention was to aim for the truth". The Prophet's definition of excellence, "That you worship God as if you see Him," answers the difficulty of worshipping the unseen. "And this is from the hidden mercy of God, and His gentle graces."
The author reads three things in the myth. Polytheism is metaphysically rooted in a primordial longing, and the stilling of the self implies a prior restlessness. It mixes revealed rites with invented ones. And the "first masters" are very likely the earliest Greek philosophers: Qunawi calls them the first sages before Aristotle, al-Farabi "al-a'imma al-awwalun", Suhrawardi (d. 587/1191) the ancients; Shahrastani lists seven "pillars of wisdom" from Thales to Plato. Al-Amiri (d. 381/992) even makes Empedocles a student of Luqman or David, and Pythagoras of Solomon. The author suspects the prophet behind the passage is Idris, whom Ibn Arabi links with philosophy.
Strivers and blind followers
| Type | Status in Ibn Arabi, as the book reads him |
|---|---|
| Striving associator (mujtahid) | Excused; rewarded even in error; ends in mercy |
| Follower unable to investigate | Discharges his duty by asking a mujtahid, even an erring one |
| Follower able but unwilling (muqallid) | Blameworthy: suspends the intellect |
| Associator sent a messenger, or who did not reflect | Shirk unforgiven |
The Greek scholar fits this exactly. His scholars "investigated" (nazar), a corollary of ijtihad. It is not lawful to dispute with a mujtahid at the moment of his striving, which explains why Ibn Arabi shows no wish to convert his host.
5.6 Rahbaniyya: inventing a way
If ijtihad is striving to find God's rulings or the truth, rahbaniyya is a specific kind of ijtihad: creating a new way. The verse is 57:27: "And monasticism (rahbāniyya), they invented it –We did not prescribe it for them –only seeking the good-pleasure of God". For Ibn Arabi it denotes the efforts of all religious groups, especially those without revealed law, to reach God, and in his sense it may be translated "sagehood". The heart of it is invention (ibtida'), praised here, as against blameworthy innovations.
In the Fusus chapter on Jacob he writes that these "are the laws of the sages (nawāmīs al-ḥikmiyya) that were not brought by a known messenger from God". When their wisdom and public benefit (maslaha) agree with the aims of the revealed laws, God acknowledges them as if He had prescribed them, and puts in their hearts veneration of what they prescribed. The exception in the verse can be read as "severed" (they invented it seeking God's pleasure) or "continuous" (God prescribed it only so they would seek His pleasure). Ibn Arabi accepts both readings, so both ways of reaching God are acceptable.
Ijtihad and rahbaniyya joined
Chapter 198 links them. Just as jurists may differ, rahbaniyya is left for other communities. Ibn Arabi uses the verb ra'a, to guard as a shepherd guards his flock, the same word as the verse's praise of those who observe its right as it should be observed. He writes that ijtihad, ruling in roots and branches, comes from the Breath of the All-Merciful, and that it may also remain among earlier communities, as 57:27 indicates, "and they did not invent it except through their engaging in ijtihād, seeking its beneficial interest (maṣlaḥa)". The Prophet "did not single out the branch from the roots for ijtihād; rather, he generalized". Even one who restricts ijtihad to branches is performing ijtihad, and is rewarded.
In Chapter 367 Ibn Arabi meets Idris in the fourth heaven and says ijtihad in the branches is lawful. Idris replies: "And it is lawful in the roots [too]". When Ibn Arabi objects that doctrines about God then multiply, Idris answers: "It could not be otherwise! The affair accords with [one's] constitution." Shams-i Tabrizi offers a sun-worshipper's courage: "Belief and love provide boldness and take away all fear." The author connects this with Ibn Arabi's teaching that God's succour is not reserved for one creed: so long as no breach enters their faith in battle, it is granted to believers in truth or falsehood.
Monks and dread
Ibn Arabi plays on rahba, dread, and rahbaniyya. Those who set up laws, revealed or governmental, do so from fear of failing the law's limits. Umar ibn al-Khattab, instituting the Ramadan night prayers, was in this sense a rahib, "and God praises the ruhbān (pl. of monk/rabbi) in His Book". In the Kitab al-'Abadila, the saint of Aaron recognizes the world as real and its harms as real, and so adds obligations to protect himself. In the penultimate chapter of the Futuhat:
"The monk (rāhib) is left alone by the ruling of God and is not cut off from Him, nor does he disbelieve in Him". "For they themselves are listeners (sawāmiʿ)" ... "Whoever is fearful (rahiba) is saved (salima) and not ruined."
The author ties this to the Christians of 5:83 who weep at the Qur'an, and to the Hadith forbidding the proselytizing of monks. Just as Muslims are to leave monks alone, Ibn Arabi left the Greek sun-worshipper alone in his own rahbaniyya.
5.7 Qibla and the prostration of veneration
May the sun-worshippers take the sun as their qibla? In a vision Ibn Arabi heard: "He who prostrates himself to other than God by God's command seeking nearness to God and obeying God will be felicitous, but he who prostrates himself to other than God without God's command seeking nearness will be wretched." But there is a third case:
| Prostration | Worshipping the object? | Commanded? | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angels to Adam; Muslims toward the Ka'ba | No | Yes | Obedience and felicity |
| Quraysh to their idols | Yes | No | Wretchedness |
| Toward a created thing, intending God | No | No | "rahbāniyya, they invented it"; God is as His servant thinks of Him |
Ibn Arabi writes: "if he prostrates to another created being without worshipping it, but neither by God's command, that is "rahbāniyya, they invented it" (Q. 57:27)." What was intended was nearness to God, "So this state is not devoid of God". The many qiblas are mercy, since God has no location: angels toward the Perfect Man, Muslims toward the Ka'ba, Jews toward Jerusalem, Joseph's family toward Joseph. The author suspects he would accept Orthodox Christians praying east. On the Day of Resurrection those who prostrated without command will be asked, "Who ordered you to do this?" God "will not tell them, "It is not permissible to prostrate to created beings!"" Joseph's dream of the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing to him came true.
5.8 Conclusion of the chapter
The principles are those of nonreductive pluralism: metaphysical unity and legal facilitation. Every object of worship is God formed by belief, but only revealed forms of worship are soteriologically acceptable in themselves. Belief is not peripheral to the Law; it intersects with it. The Muhammadan Law facilitates other paths through ijtihad in roots and branches, rahbaniyya's invented ways, and the prostration of veneration, which the author compares with the Christian contemplation of icons.
All of it falls under annihilation and subsistence. Sun worship is annihilated by a Law that generally judges solar prostration to be unbelief, yet it subsists under that Law's permissive principles. The myth of Chapter 363 shows a polytheism whose founders and followers are brought under mercy through ijtihad. The author suggests the same reasoning could extend to Hinduism, noting that al-Biruni used Greek religion as a template to understand it.
The sun-worshippers prove the book's claim against Lipton: here is a non-monotheistic community whose worship Ibn Arabi confirms through the categories of his own Law, with no tax, no humbling and no attempt to convert. The key is not a relaxation of the Law but its own provision for striving, invention and veneration.
Part 6. Non-Prophetic Laws and Ways
Chapter 5 completes the study of paths that are not prophetic. Its key term is namus (plural nawamis), law made by sages rather than revealed to prophets. The author first traces the word's philosophical pedigree back to the 9th century CE, then reads the Futuhat passages in which Ibn Arabi gives such laws a real, if limited, place before God.
6.1 A word with a past
The author's opening claim is blunt: the word "nāmūs" "does not belong to Ibn ʿArabī", neither as a term nor as an idea. It carries political, governmental and philosophical connotations that go back at least to the 9th century CE, and the Shaykh must have known them.
The book admits a complication. In one Futuhat scene Ibn Arabi flings aside his host's copy of al-Farabi's Perfect City on reading some offensive material. A reader might take this as proof that the two men have nothing in common. The author calls this a red herring: the terminology Ibn Arabi uses shows that he took it from al-Farabi's writings, or at least from the same philosophical milieu through an intermediary.
Early Muslims already knew namus as a name for the angelic forces, such as Gabriel, that bring revealed laws to prophets. During the 9th-century translation movement, led by al-Kindi and his Abbasid patrons, translators saw that the word roughly matched the Greek nomos, law and custom. From then on it became a technical term bound up with politics (siyasat) and local, non-prophetic legislation.
Al-Farabi's summary of Plato's Laws
Al-Farabi's Jawami' Kitab al-Nawamis li-Aflatun, often called the Talkhis, is one of the earliest explanations of statutory law in Arabic. Following Butterworth, the author notes a fine distinction in it between the lawgiver (wadi' al-namus), who lays down the law and its principles, and the legislator (sahib al-namus), who applies it in detail. Ibn Arabi uses the same terms but does not seem to keep that distinction.
| Theme in the Talkhis | What al-Farabi says |
|---|---|
| Origin | Keeps Plato's myth: the instituter of the laws was Zeus, and Apollo is also named |
| Purpose | Seeking the face of God and the reward of the Last Abode; arranging the virtues so as to reach the divine virtues |
| Content | Common meals, war, wine, marriage, burial rites; the lawgiver must obey his own laws |
| Psychology | People move between pain and pleasure, so the skilled legislator allows festivals, music, dancing and the flute |
| Decay | Laws are lost through floods, plagues, and the lack of proper upbringing (adab) |
| Penalties | The judge punishes with beating, slaying or fines |
On pleasure, al-Farabi is plain: "Had the legislator ordered people to avoid pleasures completely, his nāmūs would not have been rightly established, nor would they cling to it." Like a flute-player choosing the tune for the audience, the legislator speaks to each group only as far as its intellect can follow. The book's summary is that a skilled legislator knows how to make people dance to his own moral tune. Al-Farabi also states that the law is the road to good things, and elsewhere argues that the perfect lawgiver is at the same time a philosopher.
The Arabic Nicomachean Ethics
A 9th-century Arabic translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which al-Farabi is reported to have read, uses namus almost every time it speaks of non-prophetic laws and lawmakers. The author draws four purposes of law from it:
| Purpose | Example in the Arabic text |
|---|---|
| 1. To make citizens virtuous | Legislators make people good by accustoming them to do good |
| 2. To deter vice by penalty | Lawgivers punish whoever does evil; laws set reward and punishment |
| 3. To regulate exchange | Money is so called because it exists by nomos, by agreement, not by nature |
| 4. To establish justice | Whoever contravenes the law is unjust, and the law is just |
The book notes that law is often paired with custom ('adat), which Ibn Arabi accepts as a legitimate source of law.
Other sources
The author then surveys further witnesses to the political sense of the word:
- Qusta bin Luqa (d. 300/912), the Melkite translator, counts governing cities and legislating laws for their people as part of the art of philosophy.
- The Siwan al-Hikma, a 10th-century doxography first attributed to Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani and known through the 12th-century Muntakhab, says Solon (d. 560 BC) legislated the laws, customs and rulings of the Greeks. Asked why he set no penalty for a man who slays his father, Solon answers that he knows no one who would do that.
- Mubashshir Ibn Fatik (d. 445/1053), in the Mukhtar al-Hikam, makes Solon the repealer of Draco's laws and turns Socrates into a lawgiver. When someone mocks his threadbare clothes, Socrates replies: "True laws (nawāmīs al-ḥaqq) are not brought about with new garments." Plato is made to call the free, wise soul a master of natural law, and a saying of Hermes, whom Ibn Fatik identifies with Idris, links laws with God's limits.
- Ibn Sina (d. 428/1037), in his treatise on the divisions of the intellectual sciences, places law under politics and warns: "By nāmūs, the philosophers do not mean what the common people suppose: that nāmūs is trickery and deception". For them it is custom, an established exemplar and revelation. The author notes that Ibn Sina thereby quietly makes revealed law a branch of practical philosophy.
- The Ikhwan al-Safa', decades earlier, devoted a whole section of their epistles to the namus and shar'i sciences, and described a worldly law and a law of the next world without setting them against each other.
- Ibn Rushd, whom Ibn Arabi met as a youth, uses nomos in his commentary on Plato's Republic almost always for non-prophetic legislation.
- Miskawayh (d. 421/1030) reports Aristotle's view that the dinar is a just namus, and explains that in Aristotle's language the word means politics and management.
- Ibn al-Qifti (d. 646/1248) records that Sinan, son of the Harranian Sabian Thabit ibn Qurra, translated a book called The Laws of Hermes and the Verses and Prayers that the Sabians Use in Prayer.
- The Sirr al-Asrar, which Ibn Arabi read, uses the word for the standing of a king, warning Alexander that whoever belittles his law is slain by it.
Whenever Ibn Arabi speaks of non-prophetic laws and the sages (hukama') or rational men ('uqala') who set them up in the periods without prophets (fatarat), he means Greek philosophers, wise men and legislators. This does not stop him extending the same idea to other cultures. The terms he uses, such as wadi' al-namus, are not strictly his; he adds his own metaphysics to them.
The author adds a small sign of the same association. In his commentary on the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, Ibn Arabi gives "lights of goodness" (al-anwar namusa) to a bishopess, one of the "daughters of Rome", equating namus with goodness just as al-Farabi called law the road to good things.
The philosophers, the book says, had their own project of giving the wisdom tradition divine origins, on an equal footing with prophecy. Ibn Arabi rejects that equality, but he accepts that non-prophetic laws are acknowledged by God: "The religion is two: the religion with God ... and the religion with creation, which God acknowledges." Such laws are not instituted by God Himself, but as long as they protect society and people keep to their limits, they are acceptable.
6.2 What non-prophetic laws are for
Ibn Arabi distinguishes "essential revelation", acts of worship as natural as breathing, from "contingent revelation", legal prescription that may or may not be carried out. Contingent revelation is of two kinds. One comes with an indication (dalil) that it is from God: the prophets' revealed law. The other has no such indication: non-prophetic law required by wisdom. God casts it from His Name the Inward, the Wise, "into the hearts of the sages of the era" without their perceiving it. "They ascribe this casting to their own perception", not knowing it came from God, yet they see that its principle is with God, "so they legislate it for their followers amongst the people of their era, since there is no prophet amongst them who has established the proof of his prophethood."
If they keep the legal limits of that law and observe it, God rewards them in this world and the next. Ibn Arabi cites the Qur'anic praise of what the inventors of monasticism observed rightfully, and the hadith that whoever establishes a good custom has its reward and the reward of all who follow it. God confirms the one who sets up a law derived from wisdom just as He confirms the bringer of revealed law. In this world the benefit is plain in family, wealth and honour. In the next, the follower is rewarded even if he never had it in view, as believers will receive what no eye has seen.
Two features stand out for the author:
- The worldly goal. Such laws need not be spiritual at all. Their goal, protecting family, wealth and honour, matches the objectives of the Law itself (maqasid al-shari'a), whose list also includes life, religion and the intellect. Ibn Arabi shares the philosophers' idea of law but swaps their goal of "virtue" for the maqasid, so that shari'a and namus line up through shared aims. Keeping its limits is inqiyad (obedience) and the reward is jaza' (recompense), two of his definitions of religion. Solon, as the Siwan presents him, fits this description well.
- Authority. A sage may say "God says" in his law. If he knows he is a locus of divine manifestation, and that in reality nothing exists but God, God confirms him as truthful and pardons him. If he is veiled from this knowledge, God will judge his intentions: he may have sought leadership first and his people's benefit second, or the reverse. All of this applies only where no revealed law has been established.
Al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731) adds that such laws were framed in the idiom of each time and place, and names Galen (d. 216 CE), "the divine Plato" (d. 347 BCE) and Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) as sages who invented laws and canons.
Medical laws
Why Galen? The author suggests that qanun here means a medical standard, as in the Arabic epitome of Galen's Small Art translated by Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), so medical standards work as a namus. Ibn Abi Usaybi'a (d. 668/1270) records that Hippocrates, fearing his craft would be corrupted, set down a covenant for its teachers (the Oath), a law defining who may learn it, and a set of instructions (wasiya) covering all a doctor needs. The Arabic oath binds the student to treat his teacher as a father, teach his teacher's children without fee, and benefit the patient to the utmost of his ability. Laws, then, can also be the rules of a craft, with something of a guild about them, and the oath, the law and the instructions form one namus. For Ibn Arabi, a sworn oath may not lawfully be broken.
The author adds Khomeini's (d. 1989) reading of the relevant Fass passage, which would make each legal pillar (life, intellect, property, lineage, the Law) a namus in its own right. He also notes that for Ibn Arabi perfect men with their own laws draw their knowledge from the station of Muhammad, as the highest independent jurists do, whether or not they know it.
6.3 Sages, the Lord, and the prophets
What happens when a sage's law meets a prophet's? Chapter 66 of the Futuhat, translated by Chittick, tells an origin myth. God made two kinds of limits and customs. One is "wise regulation", cast into the souls of great human beings, who set down laws in every city and clime as its nature required, preserving possessions, lives, families and kinship. They called these laws nawamis, "since nāmūs in technical usage is the one through whom good comes". Behind the sages stands the divine Name the Lord, who set the limits and inspired them.
Yet their reason takes them only so far. "They had no idea that founding these laws ... brings proximity to God." The intellect can know that God is one and has no likeness. Then a prophet arrives and speaks of the Day of Judgement, Paradise, the grave and the spirits, and describes God with attributes reason finds abhorrent. The sages ask for proof, and when it comes they submit. In the author's words, "the sagacious laws, although valid, are always subordinated to prophetic ones." Prophetic laws are in turn subordinated to Muhammad's abrogating Law.
Rational thinkers and their disciplines
Ibn Arabi calls these sages the "rational thinkers" (al-'uqala'). They follow the prophets' path, busying themselves with their souls through ascetic discipline, inner struggle and retreat, so that the purified heart can receive what descends from the celestial world. These sound like Sufi concerns, but the Shaykh plainly has figures such as "the divine Plato" in mind, and calls Plato a man of accomplished spiritual taste (dhawq).
Where did he get this picture of Plato? The author proposes a link through Suhrawardi al-Maqtul (d. 587/1191), the Sufi-philosopher executed in Aleppo. Both men knew al-Malik al-Zahir Ghazi, the prince Ibn Arabi advised and whom Suhrawardi taught Platonic philosophy until Ghazi's father Salah al-Din (d. 589/1193) ordered Suhrawardi's execution. Suhrawardi called his science of lights the intuition of "the inspired and illuminated Plato". For Jili, Plato was the unique Pole of his age.
Older texts give the same picture of practising philosophers:
- Ibn al-Tayyib's (d. 1043) rendering of the Arabic Proclus on the Golden Verses makes purification and release of the intellect from the body the start of philosophy.
- Pythagoras, in the Golden Verses and the Mukhtar al-Hikam, makes his students keep silence for five years, purify their senses and fast, with men teaching men and women teaching women. The author calls this a communal rahbaniyya.
- Ibn Arabi traces philosophy itself to the prophet Idris. After a 36-day retreat to learn the matter from Idris directly, he concluded that the ancients went wrong by interpreting Idris's words differently, as jurists differ over the Prophet's hadith. In the same vein he calls metempsychosis a "bad interpretation of sound words".
- The Arabic Plotinus describes leaving the body and finding oneself part of the divine world. Qunawi (d. 673/1274) compared his own experiences to those of the ancient philosophers, and Peter Kingsley sees a prophetic side in Parmenides, whose incubation parallels the self-burial of Khalid bin Sinan, a "prophet" of the Fusus.
During the fatarat, Ibn Arabi says, such thinkers receive angelic inspiration and "touches" cast into their thinking, not their innermost selves. They impose what they receive on people and even kings, with no shirk in it. This is the "beautiful innovation" God praises in 57:27. The author calls this a grade of inspiration a degree below revelation, brought by lower angels and not by messenger-angels like Gabriel. It agrees with the Greek view, repeated by al-Farabi and al-Biruni, that the laws came down from Zeus or Apollo.
Ibn Arabi makes one exception for a rational man without spiritual discipline: Averroes, who kept the Prophet's practices with care, revered God and believed in His saints. Otherwise purification is required, and it works even for outsiders. "When someone who did not believe in the revealed laws joined us in ascetic practices", Ibn Arabi writes, his contact with the pure spirits began to flourish, giving him a spiritual (not divine) emanation that purified him. The author is tempted to identify him with Muhammad al-Baskari of the Durrat al-Fakhira, who held "the doctrine of the ancients" yet joined the Shaykh's ascetic practice, and on whom Ibn Arabi finally invoked God's pleasure.
Non-prophetic law protects lives, lineages and wealth, and that is its whole lot. Revealed law adds the realities of the next world: unveilings, ascensions, divine knowledge and converse with spirits. "So there is no weapon or fortress more protective than doing works prescribed by the sharīʿa", Ibn Arabi concludes. The sage's law is protected, but "you must cling to the purifying prophetic divine Law."
Even secular learning can be a way to God, though it more often veils Him. Ibn Arabi names calculation, geometry, mathematics, logic and natural science: "But none of these is a science that does not have a denotation of God and a way leading to Him." He says that Ibn Sid, in his Book of Circles, taught the Pythagorean doctrine of proving God's unity by number. The author reads Ibn Sid's way as a Pythagorean namus held within the Muhammadan Law.
6.4 Politics, character and invention
The science of politics
Ibn Arabi's politics of wisdom (al-siyasa al-hikmiyya) is the sage's law seen from the side of human nature. He gives an example from his own life. With a stubborn person who does the opposite of whatever he is told, good counsel may mean pointing him the wrong way, so that out of spite he does what is good for him. Ibn Arabi says he did this with some people. "This is a hidden counsel; not everyone perceives it, and it is called the science of politics". The author dares to call it quasi-Machiavellian: cunning, but for the greater good.
The noble character traits
Those who perfect the noble character traits (makarim al-akhlaq) are under a law of God whether they know it or not. Ibn Arabi cites the Prophet's saying that he was sent to perfect the noble character traits, and Abraham, called "a nation" before his revelation: "so he is upon a sharʿ from his Lord even if he is not aware of it." The case of Hakim ibn Hizam makes it concrete. God rewarded it, and Ibn Arabi closes with a challenge: "So the sharīʿa, if you have not understood, is like this. Otherwise, you have not understood it!" Since a namus is "a cause of good", the author concludes that Hakim had in effect instituted his own way.
Invention
Rahbaniyya rests on invention: "rahbāniyya, they invented it". Invention happens in the imagination, where everything is created; it is a bringing-forth with no prior model. Ibn Arabi's summary of the Fusus, with Jami's commentary, says the second religion, deemed valid by God, aims at what God wants from His own law, the perfection of souls in knowledge and works: "So whoso observes it as it should be observed, seeking the good-pleasure of God, has attained salvation". The book links this to the Greek scholar of Chapter 4, who called his invented rite "glorification".
Two poems carry the theme. In one, on the spirit of Surat al-Hadid, Ibn Arabi divides the shar' into that of the messengers and that of the sages, both protected, though the sages do not know it was God who taught them. In the other, "Invention is a law most verdant". The author unpacks the wordplay: mar'iyya means pastures where animals graze, a guarded road, and something lawfully observed, so invention is a green path whose many possibilities seekers may graze upon.
Ibn Arabi also distinguishes the two. Those who invent acts of worship and observe them rightfully, seeking God's pleasure, are in a law revealed from God, since that law permits them to legislate new practices. The sagely laws are a different thing. So rahbaniyya stands in an isthmus between revealed and non-prophetic law, sharing features of both.
| Revealed law | Rahbaniyya | Sagely namus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | God, through a messenger | Human invention permitted by revealed law | Inspiration the sage takes for his own reasoning |
| Scope | This world and the next | Acts of worship seeking God's pleasure | Worldly welfare: lives, wealth, family |
| Reward | Full | Rewarded, per Q. 57:27 | Rewarded, even unforeseen, in the fatra |
6.5 Every community has had a law
Ibn Arabi's text reads: "There is no group (ṭāʾifa) except it is either under a divinely revealed law that issues judgments (nāmūs sharʿiyy ḥukmiyy), or a law that institutes wisdom". "Thus, the laws encompass all communities", in line with Q. 35:24, which says a warner has passed among every community. A warner is either sent by God's command and Will, like a prophet, or by His Will alone. In the second case God tells His warning to come into being in this servant, and "That servant finds the warning within himself, not knowing from whence it came." Whoever honours his law and keeps to its limits, seeking God's pleasure, has acted well (ihsan), worshipping as if he sees God or knowing that God sees him. The Theology of pseudo-Aristotle offers a parallel figure in Empedocles, who came down to rescue confused souls and called people back to their higher world.
What of those whose "bad work" is made to look beautiful to them (Q. 35:8)? If they truly strove (ijtihad) to the limit of their capacity, they have given the matter its due and earn one reward; the bad work becomes, for that striver, a beautiful one. If they did not strive, they are in God's Will, but must never despair of His mercy. Belief and unbelief are both universal: everyone believes in something and disbelieves in something else. God has coupled bad works with adornment, which makes this the most obscure question in existence. "And unto God is the end of the roads", and the definite article takes in all roads.
The "lion" who walks those roads alone and excuses creation is, the author thinks, Ibn Arabi himself; Amir 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri saw him in a dream as a lion. A passage Chittick has translated twice says the people of unveiling know where every doctrine comes from and assign it its place: "They offer an excuse for everyone who holds it and do not declare him in error."
The people of the intermediate periods
Normative Islam excuses three groups, who are given their own test on Judgement Day: children, the insane, and the People of the Intermediate Periods (ahl al-fatra). In one passage Ibn Arabi sets out God's two roads of legislation: an angel sent to a prophet or messenger, whom people must believe, and inspiration breathed into "the rational thinker of his time" when the paths have been effaced. Such a man protects lives, wealth and honour, sets limits, warns, and threatens slaying, beating and fines, and God rewards him among the People of the Intermediate Periods. Where a messenger is present, all this is forbidden.
Here the angel breathes into the sage's heart, not just his thinking, so the author suspects a second kind of sage. He also argues that this passage leans on al-Farabi's Talkhis, directly or through an intermediary. The penalties are the same three: al-Farabi leaves it to the judge to punish "with beating (ḍarb), or slaying (qatal), or fining (gharāma), or their likes." The Talkhis also argues that penal codes prevent corruption and dissent, and stresses careful political speech, which matches Ibn Arabi's note on how the sage arranges his speech.
So the "rational thinker of his time" is most likely a Greek lawgiver. Ibn Fatik, and al-Biruni after him, recorded the seven sages accurately: Thales, Solon, Pittacus, Periander, Chilon, Cleobulus and Bias, with variants that add Epimenides, Anacharsis and Myson. Al-Biruni adds Draco and Minos. What unites them is their role as lawgivers (nomothetes, that is, wadi' al-namus).
Why it still matters
If the fatra ended with Muhammad, why does Ibn Arabi return to it so often, and what of the sun-worshippers, who lived after him? The author answers in two steps. First, certain rulings, among them ijtihad and rahbaniyya, are left to other communities under Muhammad's Law, so the laws continue in a new "form". Second, each law is a level of existence (maratib al-wujud). When Muhammad's Law arrives, the forms of the levels vanish, but the levels are absorbed into his "inward", as starlight is absorbed into the sun. Wood that becomes coal has not ceased to be wood.
The book finds support in Ibn Arabi's own life. He and the saint Ibn Saydabun each went through a fatra, a period without the communications they used to receive; in Sufi usage, fatra also names a slackening of spiritual fervour. The historical fatra is gone, but its inner level remains, just as Muslim saints still find Christic, Mosaic and Abrahamic realities within Muhammad's Law.
Five degrees of rational unity
Chapter 67 of the Futuhat lists five ways a person without a prophet may say "No god but God" by rational knowledge rather than faith, which comes only with a prophet:
| Degree | Basis | How |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | His self | God's self-disclosure to him shows his existence comes from another: the unity of the Essence |
| 2 | His attribute | Rational inference from being: his knowledge of God's unity |
| 3 | His Lord | He sees that the Real is Being itself, and things draw their being from it |
| 4 | His Lord's Attribute | "Lord" needs a "lorded over"; we are the root of God's Names, and "He who knows himself, knows his Lord." |
| 5 | His state | With every door closed, he turns to God by necessity |
The first two look to the self, the next two to God, and the last is accidental.
Thirteen levels of the people of the fatra
Chapter 10 gives a fuller list for the period between Jesus and Muhammad, including people who do not believe in God at all.
The author notes that Judaism and Christianity count here as "true sects", despite Ibn Arabi's sometimes harsh criticism of them. The four damned groups share one fault, failing to strive. Atheists and associators who used their reason, however weak it was, have a chance: "The blame lies in refusing to fully utilize" one's capabilities. Amir 'Abd al-Qadir agrees that God forgives the associators of the fatra for their ignorance: "there is no harm in saying that the People of the Intermediate Period were associators" while holding they are not accountable or punished. Ibn Arabi even excuses followers whose leaders investigated and erred. They believed truly, and "They intended only the road to salvation; they did not intend what would ruin them."
- Revealed laws, held under Muhammad's authority through abrogation.
- Non-prophetic nawamis: political laws protecting life, wealth and family, and craft laws such as medicine's oath and standards; also angelically inspired laws, those who free the spirit, and divinely sent "warners".
- The noble character traits, under God's law whether known or not.
- Rahbaniyya: inventing a path to seek God's pleasure.
- Ijtihad: striving to the utmost, by which followers are excused for their leaders' errors.
- The five degrees of rational unity and the thirteen levels of the fatra, nine of them saved.
The author calls the scheme suggestive, not conclusive. Because Ibn Arabi speaks of laws in "every city, place, and clime", he argues that the idea reaches beyond Greece, to Confucius and Chuang-Tzu, the Indian rishis and Samkhya teachers, Mahavira's path of nonviolence, and the Bushido codes beside Islamic chivalry (futuwwa).
Part 7. Conclusion: Levels of Inclusivity
The conclusion does two things. It sums up the five chapters as a single argument about levels: the inclusion of revealed laws, then of non-prophetic laws. It then sketches a final and widest level, the inclusion of the divinities themselves, as a pointer to future work.
7.1 What the book has and has not claimed
The author is frank about scope. Ibn Arabi's corpus, the Futuhat above all, is too large for a complete survey of his pluralism, and that was never the aim. The aim was to set the basic terms on which any researcher should approach him and to show that his pluralism is real. Whatever exclusivists may think, there is a degree of inclusivism in his writings that cannot be ignored; the question is how far it reaches. Throughout, the book assumed that Ibn Arabi cannot be read simply, and that calling him just an exclusivist or just an inclusivist would be naive.
The framework was the sun-star passage. Its double mechanism of annihilation and subsistence, which the author says earlier readers had not noticed, was joined to Legenhausen's term "nonreductionist pluralism".
| Chapter | Finding |
|---|---|
| 1. Exclusivity | The divine message reaches all creatures, minerals and bees included, but the message to humans and jinn is Muhammad's, and all will answer for their response to it. From the side of annihilation, abrogation is real, and where the Law and its obligations are concerned the Shaykh is an exclusivist. What is annihilated is the other laws' authority and independence, their "light", not their entities. |
| 2. Subsistence | The religions survive like stars in daylight, their rulings absorbed into Islam's light and rearranged. The jizya is one way, framed by Ibn Arabi as mercy, and "humbled" is best confined to war. Chapter 275 makes the point explicit, and Ibn Arabi holds it obligatory for other communities to uphold their own laws. |
| 3. Against Lipton | Four passages include other religions without any mention of the jizya: Jewish and Christian saints; obedience to one's own book; the poor in spirit of any sect, atheists included; and the commentary on Q. 2:62, which leaves out the usual condition of belief in Muhammad. Law and belief intertwine, and the doctrine of beliefs reaches non-Muslim communities such as the sun-worshippers. |
| 4. Sun-worshippers | Ibn Arabi confirms their worship with Islamic concepts (Law, abrogation, faith, prostration, ijtihad), resting on Q. 17:23. Ijtihad and rahbaniyya emerge as the means of inclusion, and the first rational thinkers and their followers are forgiven. |
| 5. Nawamis | "The religion is two." Sages' laws, inspired by angels in their thinking or their hearts, are accepted when they serve the same goals as the Law. The term namus points to Greek philosophers and lawmakers. |
Chapter 275 is the author's prize find: "Here is a delicate point, for the one of understanding. It is that their religion is lawful for them through our Law, so that they are confirmed in it." Yet the inclusion always sits under the umbrella of the Muhammadan Law, even when it takes others in.
On Lipton, the conclusion is sharp. The doctrine of beliefs is not mainly a political theology that subjects lesser religions to a "solar king", nor only an intra-Islamic critique of theology. Lipton also left out a whole side of Ibn Arabi's definition of religion, which takes in human interpretations of revealed law, civil legislation, and even idolatrous worship. The warning "Beware of delimiting yourself to a specific belief" has a political edge, since the Muhammadan Law governs all religions. But it also asks us to confirm each believer in his belief so as not to deny God's forms at the Resurrection: "Lest you lose much good!" The author calls Lipton's model incomplete and problematic, and says Lipton clearly has not read these complex writings carefully.
The logic behind the diversity
Why do discussions so full of legal concepts keep returning to the metaphysics of diversity? The author's answer is that Law and the metaphysics of beliefs work in harmony. The polytheistic striver is mistaken, but God wills him to show the marks of misguidance under the Law's protection, so that the many belief systems display God's many Names. God is not unjust in this, since the fixed entities themselves demand that freedom. A passage translated by Chittick says punishment waits on a messenger whose proof is clear to each person, "because of the diversity of human dispositions", which is itself a mercy.
Two further points from Chapter 5 recur here. Customs ('adat), Ibn Arabi's third definition of religion, overlap with the Greek nomoi. They are valid sources of law because they are rooted in the pre-existent time when people were accustomed to witnessing their Lord. And several of his terms have older owners: Suhrawardi before him saw Plato as a man of dhawq, and the phrase makarim al-akhlaq appears earlier in a treatise by Ibn Abi'l-Dunya (d. 894).
Ibn Arabi's writings strongly invite an inclusivist and pluralistic reading because of the sheer variety they hold of spiritual categories, kinds of sainthood, groups of rational thinkers and acceptable ways to God. But that reading must stay within the exclusivist framework of Muhammad's universally abrogating Law. His pluralism is marked by sympathy: he wishes the best for everyone, finds as many excuses as he can, and never gives up his own standards of right and wrong.
Ibn Arabi even hopes to intercede for everyone: "God promised me intercession, on the Day of Judgment, for whoever falls within my sight; those I know, and those I do not know." The author takes this to mean untold numbers of people, of every sect, receiving some benefit, rather than untold numbers suffering a purifying perdition. He adds a caution about a famous couplet. The lines in which the poet says he once denied his companion whose religion he did not share, attached to the poem "My heart is capable of receiving all forms", come from Haydar Amuli's Muhit al-A'zam and were not used by Ibn Arabi himself, though they fit his refusal to deny another's belief.
7.2 The widest level: including the divinities
The author offers this as a sketch for a later book. At first he promises two examples, later three; the conclusion gives the following.
The gods are one God (Fass Nuh)
The Fass of Noah turns on the pair tanzih, God's incomparability (Holy, Exalted, Great), and tashbih, His similarity (Generous, Forgiving). Rational philosophers and theologians "purify" God at the expense of the similar attributes the prophets revealed, and that very purifying delimits Him, which is itself a kind of tashbih. In the Fass, Noah stands for tanzih. His people, whom Ibn Arabi turns into perceptive gnostics, guard tashbih through their idols Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq and Nasr, in which God's face appears. But the idols cannot save without a prophetic law.
| Noah | Muhammad |
|---|---|
| First messenger | Last messenger |
| Furqan: separates the gods from his way | Qur'an: from a root meaning to gather, it joins the layers of reality without rejecting them |
| Brought only tanzih | Q. 42:11 joins both: "Nothing is like Him", yet He is Hearing, Seeing |
Ibn Arabi says that had Noah brought one verse of the Qur'an, or even half, his people would have answered him. They drowned and were made to "enter a fire", which some commentators place inside the water itself. Then comes the verse that they found no helpers apart from God, which Ibn Arabi reads literally: God was their helpers, and they perished in Him forever. Tilimsani (d. 690/1291) says it outright: "It is as though he said [quite simply]: God succoured them. This is contrary to what the masters of exegesis (āʾimma al-tafsīr) have said." Jandi (d. ca. 700/1300) explains that God helps them by transforming Himself into the forms of their beliefs, recalling the hadith of God's transformation at the Resurrection. Most commentators, who follow Jandi, leave this out, Jami excepted. Jami says God disclosed Himself to them in the forms of their helpers, in the plural.
The author draws the conclusion that he admits is perhaps unspeakable: within Akbarian metaphysics, it was Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq and Nasr who came to the rescue of Noah's people, rewarded for refusing to abandon God's disclosures of similarity. God showed Himself as each god until they saw there is no god but God: one god behind countless masks. This, he says, is how Ibn Arabi reads Q. 38:5, in which the gods are made into one god.
Giving God a form in the imagination (Fass Shu'ayb)
The Fass of Shu'ayb comments on Q. 50:37, a reminder for whoever has a heart, or gives ear while witnessing. Ibn Arabi contrasts those who "imprison" God in their beliefs (taqyid, binding) with those who "release" Him (itlaq, from the root of mutlaq, absolute). The heart, with its limitless capacity, frees; the gnostics "know their lord in every form, from the lowest to the highest". The intellect ('aql) is linked to 'iqal, the hobble that keeps a camel from wandering, and does not accept God's many disclosures.
| Group | Relation to God |
|---|---|
| Companions of the Heart | Gnostics who never deny God in any form, and so worship the Absolute God |
| Companions of Thought | Bind God to one belief by reasoning: an imprisoned god |
| People of Faith | Follow the prophets' reports of tashbih and "give ear"; they witness through the imagination |
The prophetic definition of ihsan, to worship God as if you see Him, and the hadith that God is in the direction of the one who prays, point to the Presence of Imagination. In his long commentary, Amir 'Abd al-Qadir calls it the widest of presences. God forbids only physical images, as idol-worshippers make: "As for imagined forms (al-ṣūra al-mutakhayyila), He has permitted them". Indeed He wants worshippers to be present with Him, and God is with each witness in the form that witness imagines. The Amir notes that whoever says this is accused of disbelief and heresy and has his blood declared lawful.
First, anyone of any religion may perceive God in any form within the imagination and the heart, even where Islam finds physical icons or statues problematic. Second, a convert need not wholly abandon earlier conceptions of the divine. What is given up is the idea that a god exists apart from the all-comprehensive Name Allah. A Christian or Hindu convert could perceive Jesus or Krishna in the ritual prayer, knowing them to be Allah or His manifestations. The author grants that this may shock, and recalls the Amir's warning about how rational thinkers would react.
As many paths as believers
Since every creature is unique, under God's name the Vast, there are as many paths to God as there are individuals. Chittick sums it up: "There are as many paths of Allāh as there are" breaths of the creatures, each leading to a different Lord, a different divine name. Ibn Arabi ties belief to constitution (mizaj). Philosophers lean toward tanzih and an abstract, distant God; many lay believers lean toward tashbih and need God in concrete terms. Hence "God sent down the revealed Laws according to these levels, so that the divine bounty would include all creatures."
| Group | Verses sent for them |
|---|---|
| Those who know God by negation | "Nothing is like Him" (Q. 42:11) |
| Those who give Him perfect attributes "in the direction" of incomparability | He encompasses all in knowledge; He is the Hearing, the Seeing; He knows everything |
| Those who grasp Him only by similarity | The All-Merciful sat upon the Throne; He is with you wherever you are |
"But he who has a perfect constitution embraces all these beliefs. He knows where they come from and where they go, and nothing of them is absent from him." No one's way of conceiving God is wasted or simply false; there is a place for everyone.
The book closes on Ibn Arabi's good opinion (husn al-zann) of God and creation, through a saying of his teacher Abu Ishaq Tarif. Whoever praises him, Abu Ishaq says, describes him with the praiser's own goodness, and so is a saint. Whoever speaks ill of him has been shown his faults by God's light, and so has insight and is a saint too. "So I see nothing, O brother, other than a saint of God."
Who's Who
The people who matter for following the book, grouped by the role they play in its argument. Dates are given only where the book prints them; where it prints two different dates, both are shown. Descriptions say what part each figure plays in the book, not who they were in general.
Ibn Arabi, his circle and his commentators
| Name | Dates as printed | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Arabi (Muhyi al-Din) | d. 638/1240 | The subject: author of the Futuhat and the Fusus, whose sun-star passage frames the study. |
| Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi | d. 673/1274; also 673/1273-4 | His foremost student and stepson; compared his own experiences with those of the ancient philosophers. |
| Ibn Sawdakin | d. 646/1248 | Direct student; commentator on the Kitab al-Tajalliyyat. |
| Abd al-Karim al-Jili | d. 832/1428; also 811/1409 | Later Akbarian; calls Plato the Pole of his age and is read, against Morrissey, as inclusive. |
| Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Jandi | d. ca. 700/1300 | Fusus commentator: God helps Noah's people by taking the forms of their beliefs. |
| Afif al-Din al-Tilimsani | d. 690/1291 | Fusus commentator who reads the verse of the helpers against the exegetes. |
| Dawud al-Qaysari | d. 751/1350 | Fusus commentator cited in the book. |
| Abd al-Rahman Jami | d. 898/1492 | Commentator on the summary of the Fusus; God appears to Noah's people as their helpers. |
| Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi | d. 1143/1731 | Fusus commentator; names Galen, Plato and Aristotle among the makers of laws. |
| Amir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri | d. 1300/1883 | Devoted follower; excuses the associators of the fatra and defends imagining God in worship. |
| Haydar Amuli | (Muhit al-A'zam, d. 787/1385, as printed) | Source of the couplet often added to the poem of the heart capable of every form. |
| Ibn Barthamla | Christian convert who keeps his faith in Jesus within Muhammad's Law and gains two rewards. | |
| Muhammad al-Baskari | Companion in ascetic practice who held "the doctrine of the ancients". | |
| Abu Ishaq Tarif | Teacher whose saying that all who know him are saints ends the book. |
Rulers and contemporaries
| Name | Dates as printed | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Kayka'us | d. 1220 | Seljuk sultan to whom Ibn Arabi wrote urging the conditions on Christians. |
| Salah al-Din Ayyubi | d. 589/1193 | Ordered the execution of Suhrawardi. |
| al-Malik al-Zahir Ghazi | Prince advised by Ibn Arabi and taught by Suhrawardi; the proposed link between them. | |
| Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi al-Maqtul | d. 587/1191 | Called Plato a man of dhawq before Ibn Arabi did. |
| Fakhr al-Din al-Razi | d. 606/1210 | Wrote on the astral worship ascribed to the Sabians. |
| Jalal al-Din Rumi | d. 672/1273 | Companion of Qunawi; among the savants who address religious diversity. |
| Shams Tabrizi | d. 1247; also d. 1273? | His teachings show him confirming the doctrines of others, much as Ibn Arabi does. |
| Ibn Jubayr | d. 1217 | Traveller whose visit to Harran bears on the Sabians. |
Philosophers and sources on law
| Name | Dates as printed | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Plato | d. 347 BCE | "The divine Plato": sage of spiritual taste and source of the Laws. |
| Aristotle | d. 322 BCE | His Arabic Nicomachean Ethics sets the four purposes of law. |
| Galen | d. 216 CE | Physician whose medical standards act as a namus. |
| Solon | d. 560 BC | Lawgiver of the Greeks and the model "rational thinker of his time". |
| al-Farabi | d. 339/950 | His summary of Plato's Laws is the likely source of Ibn Arabi's penal triad. |
| Qusta bin Luqa | d. 300/912 | Melkite translator linking philosophy with legislation for cities. |
| Thabit ibn Qurra | d. 288/901 | Harranian Sabian whose son translated the Laws of Hermes. |
| Miskawayh | d. 421/1030 | Reports Aristotle's saying that the dinar is a just namus. |
| Ibn Sina | d. 428/1037 | Places law under politics; denies that namus means trickery. |
| Mubashshir Ibn Fatik | d. 445/1053 | His Mukhtar al-Hikam lists the seven sages and makes Socrates a lawgiver. |
| Hunayn ibn Ishaq | d. 873 | Translated the epitome of Galen's Small Art. |
| Ibn Abi Usaybi'a | d. 668/1270 | Records the Hippocratic Oath as a namus. |
| Ibn al-Qifti | d. 646/1248 | Records the translation of the Laws of Hermes. |
| Ibn Abi'l-Dunya | d. 894 | Used the phrase makarim al-akhlaq before Ibn Arabi. |
| Ibn Rushd (al-Hafid) | Met by Ibn Arabi as a youth; uses nomos for non-prophetic law; the one rational man excused spiritual discipline. |
Jurists and exegetes
| Name | Dates as printed | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| al-Shafi'i | d. 204/820 | Founder of a school whose rulings show the Law's built-in diversity. |
| al-Qurtubi | d. 671/1273 | Exegete of Q. 57:27 on monasticism and leadership. |
| Ibn Abd al-Barr | d. 463/1071 | Contrasts zakat, which purifies, with jizya. |
| al-Nawawi | d. 1277 | Shafi'i jurist cited by the Amir on visiting the graves of idolaters. |
| Ruhollah Khomeini | d. 1989 | Reads each legal pillar as a namus of its own. |
Modern scholars
| Name | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Gregory A. Lipton | Author of Rethinking Ibn Arabi; his solar model of subsumption is the book's main foil. |
| William C. Chittick | Translator and interpreter; stresses that Ibn Arabi does not draw the abrogation conclusion many Muslims draw. |
| Carl-Albert Keller | Stresses the exclusivist side; with Chittick, "two separate sides of the same equation". |
| Legenhausen | Source of the term "nonreductionist pluralism". |
| Henry Corbin (d. 1978) | First serious analyst of Ibn Arabi's two diagrams of the sects; also among the readers Lipton says took pluralism for granted. |
| James W. Morris | Noted that a text promoted as Ibn Arabi's is by another hand. |
| Butterworth | Translator of al-Farabi's summary; source of the lawgiver and legislator distinction. |
Synthesis
This closing section steps back from the chapters. It collects the book's main lessons, sets out the frameworks that recur from one chapter to the next, weighs the method, and shows how the parts connect. Everything here restates the book; the editor adds arrangement, not facts.
Ten takeaways
- Neither label fits alone. Ibn Arabi is an exclusivist where the Law and its obligations are concerned, and an inclusivist in many other respects. The author's question is not whether he is a pluralist but how far his pluralism reaches.
- The sun-star image works in two directions. The stars vanish in daylight, which is annihilation, yet they are still there, which is subsistence. Abrogation, read this way, removes the authority and independence of earlier laws, not the religions themselves.
- Abrogation is real. All humans and jinn are bound by Muhammad's message and will answer for their response to it. The book does not soften this.
- Subsistence is real too. Earlier religions remain under Muhammad's jurisdiction. In Chapter 275 of the Futuhat their religion is lawful for them through "our Law", and they are obliged to uphold it.
- The jizya is mercy, not a precondition of salvation. Ibn Arabi frames it in terms of divine mercy, and the author confines "humbled" mainly to war.
- Law and belief are interwoven. The doctrine that God appears in the forms of beliefs is not separate from the Law, and it reaches non-Muslim communities such as the sun-worshippers.
- Striving earns reward. Ijtihad lets a mistaken striver, even a polytheist, be excused and rewarded; failing to strive is what condemns.
- Invention is permitted. Rahbaniyya, the monks' invented path praised in Q. 57:27, lets seekers without a law, or who have lost one, make their own way to God's pleasure.
- The religion is two. Beside revealed religion stands the religion of creation that God acknowledges: the sages' laws (nawamis), which serve the same aims as the Law and earn reward.
- Even the gods are taken in. In the Fusus, God helps Noah's people in the forms of their idols, and the believer may give God a form in the imagination. This is the widest level, offered as a sketch.
Recurring frameworks
| Framework | Where it appears | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Annihilation and subsistence | Introduction, Chapters 1 to 3, Conclusion | Lets a single passage say both that other laws end and that other religions survive |
| Nonreductionist pluralism | Introduction, Conclusion | Refuses to sort religions into a simple valid or invalid |
| Levels and degrees | Chapters 4 and 5, Conclusion | Ranks rather than flattens: sages, fatra groups, three groups of believers |
| The isthmus (barzakh) | Chapters 4 and 5 | Places things between categories: belief beside unbelief, rahbaniyya between revealed and sagely law |
| Tanzih and tashbih | Conclusion | Explains why beliefs differ and why each has its verses in revelation |
| Mercy (rahma) | Throughout | The motive behind the excuses Ibn Arabi finds for others |
A closer look
- A wide base of texts, including neglected chapters of the Futuhat (275, 10, 66, 67) and the Fusus commentators.
- A clear organizing image, the sun and stars, applied consistently.
- A real contribution on non-prophetic religion, which the author says research has largely neglected, and a careful genealogy of the word namus.
- Candour about limits: the author calls his schemes suggestive, not conclusive, and his last section a sketch.
- Several identifications rest on inference the author marks as such: the sun-worshippers' identity, the link to Suhrawardi through Ghazi, the Greek lawgiver as "rational thinker of his time", and the debt to al-Farabi.
- The extension to Confucius, the rishis, Mahavira and Bushido is the author's projection from "every city, place, and clime"; Ibn Arabi names none of them.
- The final suggestion that a convert might perceive Krishna in prayer goes well beyond the texts quoted, as the author half admits.
- The polemic with Lipton is at times sharp; readers may wish to weigh Lipton's own account alongside it.
How the parts connect
| From | To | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 (sun-star passage) | Parts 2 and 3 | Annihilation in Part 2, subsistence in Part 3 |
| Part 3 (jizya) | Part 4 (Lipton) | Whether inclusion depends on humiliation |
| Part 4 (beliefs) | Part 5 (sun-worshippers) | A non-Muslim community inside the doctrine of beliefs |
| Part 5 (ijtihad, rahbaniyya) | Part 6 (nawamis) | Invention and striving extended to sages' laws |
| Part 6 (levels of the fatra) | Part 7 (levels of inclusivity) | From ranking people to ranking kinds of inclusion, up to the divinities |
Ibn Arabi places every religion under the sun of Muhammad's Law, and in the same breath lets each one go on shining within it. Revealed religions keep their laws by the Law's permission. Sages, inventors of paths, honest strivers and even idol-worshippers find excuses and rewards through ijtihad, rahbaniyya, the nawamis and divine mercy. At the widest level the gods themselves turn out to be God's forms. The pluralism is real, but it is ranked, and it always sits within the exclusive frame of the final Law.
Glossary
Terms as the book uses them, written without diacritics in the editor's text. The meanings given are those the book gives or the sense in which it uses the term; they are not wider dictionary definitions, and the list is limited to words that matter for following the argument.
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| ahl al-fatra | The People of the Intermediate Periods, who lived when no prophet was present; excused and tested on their own terms |
| ahl al-kitab | People of the Book, chiefly Jews and Christians |
| 'adat | Customs; one of Ibn Arabi's senses of religion and a source of law, matching the Greek nomoi |
| ahkam | Legal rulings and properties; the "light" of a religion that is absorbed into Islam's light |
| annihilation (fana') | In the sun-star image, the passing of earlier laws' authority and independence |
| barzakh | Isthmus; something that stands between two things and shares in both |
| din | Religion, defined through obedience (inqiyad), recompense (jaza') and custom |
| dhawq | Spiritual taste or intuition, attributed to Plato |
| fatra (pl. fatarat) | A period without prophets; in Sufi usage also a slackening of spiritual fervour |
| hukama' | Sages; the makers of non-prophetic laws |
| ihsan | Acting well: to worship God as if you see Him |
| ijtihad | Striving to one's utmost; earns reward even when mistaken |
| i'tiqad (pl. i'tiqadat) | Belief; God appears in the forms of beliefs |
| jizya | Tax paid by protected communities, read by Ibn Arabi in terms of mercy |
| makarim al-akhlaq | The noble character traits, under God's law whether known or not |
| maqasid al-shari'a | The objectives of the Law: life, religion, intellect, wealth, family and honour |
| namus (pl. nawamis) | Law; for Ibn Arabi chiefly the non-prophetic law of sages, a "cause of good"; also the angel of revelation |
| naskh | Abrogation of earlier laws by Muhammad's Law |
| nonreductionist pluralism | Legenhausen's term for a pluralism that does not reduce religions to one valid or invalid category |
| rahbaniyya | Monasticism; the invented path of Q. 57:27, and by extension any path invented to seek God's pleasure |
| shamsiyya | The sun-worshippers Ibn Arabi met in "Greek" lands |
| shari'a | The revealed Law; for Ibn Arabi, Muhammad's Law encompasses all others |
| siyasa hikmiyya | The politics of wisdom: guiding people through knowledge of their nature |
| subsistence (baqa') | In the sun-star image, the survival of earlier religions within Muhammad's light |
| sujud al-ta'zim | Prostration of veneration, as distinct from prostration of worship |
| tanzih | Declaring God incomparable |
| tashbih | Declaring God similar |
| 'uqala' | Rational thinkers; the sages who found laws by reason and inspiration |
| wadi' al-namus | Lawgiver; the founder of a non-prophetic law |
About this book
Ibn ʿArabī's Religious Pluralism: Levels of Inclusivity by Faris Abdel-Hadi, 2025. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
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