Crisis of Modern Consciousness

Crisis of Modern Consciousness

Opening

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim

Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen, was salatu was salamu ala sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmaeen

Introduction: The Modern Paradox of Unhappiness

All the indicators of human wellbeing have deteriorated markedly since the 1950s. Despite the fact that in the 1950s Britain was emerging from the catastrophe of World War II, the economy was microscopic compared to today, and the empire was falling apart, people were significantly happier then than they are now.

Women in particular, surveys found, were happier then than they are today. This has provoked considerable soul-searching, with various explanations proposed - none particularly credible.

The BBC concluded that children are now brought up with unrealistic expectations due to mass media and inappropriate culture. But the real reason is understood by believers: human sa'ada (happiness) relates to the state of the soul - security, optimism, direction, meaning, and the value of self-sacrifice things that secularity by its nature cannot supply.

The real problem is a major hole in the British psyche with the collapse of traditional religion and the absence of any credible spiritual alternative.

The Nature of Modern Technology

When we examine the tsunami of gadgets arriving from Western civilization, we will not find greater social stability, human happiness, or self-worth. Instead, we find the possibility of being distracted from the central gap in our consciousness - the gap where spirituality used to be.

Technology increasingly functions to provide distraction and entertainment, preventing us from confronting the catastrophic reality: where there was once meaning and truth, now there is confusion and relativism.

As technology writer Max Frisch observed: "Technology is the method human beings employ to prevent them from experiencing the world." The real world we must engage with to find true ease is the world of nature and the spirit within.

This is not Ishraq (illumination). This is Ghafla (heedlessness) - sophisticated techniques, new cars, iPods, BlackBerries, and gadgets that prevent us from looking into the great abyss of modern anomie and meaninglessness.

The East as the Place of Ishraq

The East remains the place of Ishraq - where serious people still seek meaning. The fact that the East often appears technically behind and structurally decrepit should not be seen as a disadvantage by serious seekers. It is probably a good sign.

If the East lags behind in acquiring meaningless techniques, that is commendable. There are still people who value:

• Leisure and contemplation
• Prayer and meditation
• Time with family rather than endless office hours
• Spiritual wealth over material accumulation

The Impossibility of Moderate Islam

We need a prophetic perception of the modern world to avoid sharing its unhappiness. This prophetic perspective is necessarily radical. There is no intellectually coherent way of being a "moderate Muslim" if that means accepting the underlying logic of the modern world.

Quranic Foundation:

La tansa nasibaka mina ad-dunya

"Do not forget your share of this world."

The fact that we are dissidents within the modern world does not mean we cannot use cars and mobile phones. But our regard for these things is radically different from the secular mind. We regard them as tools and toys, giving them no ultimate significance.

The believer understands that someone who spends less time with family to save for a fashionable car has not understood the Quran. Such a person has put prestige over happiness, acquiring worldly objects at spiritual expense, becoming more agitated rather than content.

The Hadith of Spiritual Alienation

Kun fi ad-dunya ka-annaka gharibun aw 'abiru sabil

"Be in the world as though you are a stranger or a traveler."

(Sahih al-Bukhari 6416)

The context of this hadith is significant: The Holy Prophet ﷺ was resting, and the Sahaba saw marks on his blessed shoulder from lying on rough straw matting. They were distressed and suggested something more comfortable. These were his radical words in response.

True Islamic radicalism in our age does not mean envy and resentment toward those with gadgets, power, and weapons. That is a radical concession to modernity's logic - always a zero-sum game. Those who compete for Akhira know that Akhira, being infinite, has enough for everybody. But those competing for Dunya must be gripped by envy because worldly resources are finite.

The Consciousness of the Traveler

True Islamic radicalism is the consciousness of those who know they are going somewhere far more interesting. This is the consciousness of people who look at generations stretching back hundreds of thousands of years and recognize that their gift of consciousness in this age is pure divine favor.

The fact that we are not dead, not waiting to be born, but coinciding with this stage of temporality is pure gift from Allah. This should fill us with joy like children opening their eyes to see the world's miracle, wishing to rejoice, be innocent, good, and behold beauty rather than seeking what is ugly, dirty, and fleeting.

The essential joy of the believer - the state of ghurba (alienation) - is actually a state of joy. The state of fondness with Dunya, intimacy with worldly things, is always a source of huzn (grief) and roughness in the soul.

The Secret of Spiritual Freedom

This is the secret of the believer in this age: solitude in the crowd, walking through shopping centers with the Holy Quran in mind, looking for people who might need help rather than being sheep in the flock obeying marketing. This is what the Sufis call qadriyya (freedom).

The modern world uses the word "freedom" but cannot supply it spiritually. The modern world is run by money, accountants, and marketers who wish to entrap us in our desires.

The believer in qadriyya looks at desires and gives them due form. He marries, has a car, has children, participates in ways that bring worldly happiness, but constantly looks toward the Hereafter. That is where his happiness is found.

The Challenge of Modernity

There is no common measure between these two anthropologies. When we speak of "modernization of Islam" - a frequently heard phrase - we must ensure this means perpetuating Islam in its radical authenticity within a modern context, not injecting the anti-religious logic of materialistic modernity within Islam.

This is a more dangerous challenge than any the Ummah has yet faced. We know that Imam al-Ghazali faced an age of crisis with rival religiosities threatening Ahl al-Sunnah wal Jamaah beliefs. But today we face something new: a reversion to what the Quran describes as faronic consciousness.

The Quranic Paradigm: Musa and Fir'aun

The collision we encounter today reprises the fundamental human collision between nafs and ruh, exemplified in Quranic stories like Sayyidina Musa and Fir'aun.

Ana rabbukumu al-a'la

"I am your highest lord."

Fir'aun represents the ultimate humanist who wants to put humans in God's place. He asks for skyscrapers to be constructed, saying: "Perhaps I should go up there and look at the God of Musa, but I think he is telling lies."

Fir'aun has magical technology whose magicians amaze him, making him believe he is the greatest lord. This Quranic parable illustrates the ancient challenge materialism poses to Iman.

The Need for Internal Hijra

The modern world cannot be ignored. Even the smallest towns have been overwhelmed by this tsunami, with young people everywhere trapped by advertising and gadgets, listening to the music of Dunya and feeling the consequences in their hearts, relationships, and spirituality.

The type of hijra we must make today - and the Quranic metaphor is always hijra (abandoning, renouncing sin) - must be internal. External hijra seems impossible. There is nowhere the flood has not penetrated.

But the believer is not fazed because he believes in the cyclical model. We are promised renewal (tajdid) through smaller cycles within the larger cycle of prophetic history. The sun sets, but then rises again, because the human soul is not ultimately satisfied with gadgets and false entertainment.

The Story of the Crying Baby

Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi tells of an inexperienced mother with a crying baby. She offers kebabs, bread, an apple - but the baby continues crying because what it needs is milk.

Rumi explains: we all hold a crying baby in our arms - the spirit. The spirit thirsts for the milk of Dhikr Allah (remembrance of Allah). We can offer our consciousness all the gadgets and entertainment, but we will not find nourishment because the soul craves something else.

This is grounds for optimism that the sun will rise again. The believer is always in a state of hope. The Messenger ﷺ loved optimism. Pessimism is a form of despair, and despair is connected to kufr (disbelief).

Modern Physics and Classical Islamic Thought

Even modern physics has challenged the Enlightenment paradigm. Since Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Heisenberg, we work with uncertainty principles rather than calculable cause and effect. Quantum mechanics shows that causality in the conventional sense is not what it seems.

The present is influenced not only by past events but also by future events. Quantum mechanics insists on particles traveling faster than light, traveling back in time and influencing current reality. This means the future already exists - a perspective remarkably consonant with classical Islamic theology.

The Ash'ari view and Imam al-Ghazali's position that causality is a helpful model but not sufficient explanation of reality now appears vindicated. The concepts of qada and qadar (divine decree and predestination) align with modern physics' understanding that the future already exists.

The Deconstruction of the Human Self

Modern philosophy has deconstructed the human persona. We no longer believe in a single, integrated, glorious human personality. Instead, we have a vague, atomized view of consciousness as patterns of recollections and impulses with false linear continuity.

This poses a radical challenge to Enlightenment assumptions about progress, development, and human fulfillment. If modernity has no definition of self, how can it promise self-fulfillment?

The Collapse of Secular Ethics

The modern world makes grave moral claims while operating on materialistic premises. It develops human rights, international law, and regulations preserving human integrity - a paradox many see as increasingly fragile.

A huge superstructure of ethics is built on increasingly flimsy foundations. If the human self is deconstructed into nothingness with no ultimate external validation for values, what supports this superstructure?

The 20th century shows the sudden collapse of secular liberal validations when challenged by different interpretations of human fulfillment - National Socialism, Communism, and great totalitarianisms.

The Path of the Middle

What is required is the Ghazalian way - the way of the middle:

Khayru al-umuri awsatuha

"The best of matters is the middle course."

(Hadith)

This is not the easiest course. It's easy to switch off your mind and uncritically imitate fundamentalist or liberal factions. To be in the middle is the hardest place - the Sirat al-Mustaqim (straight path).

The middle path is not indulgence or moderation in the conventional sense. Remember: moderation in Islamic response to the modern world is essentially contradictory. The believer is still radical, but his radicalism consists in denying the logic that pushes toward extremes.

Under modern conditions, either mindless fundamentalism or mindless conformism thrives. What doesn't thrive is wisdom, beauty, truth, tradition, selflessness, and humility - the rare but undeniable properties of the radical Qalb al-Salim (sound heart).

The Quality of Ghurba

The quality of ghurba (spiritual estrangement) makes it impossible to be moderate in the conventional sense. Our dissidence regarding materialist consumer enterprise makes us radicals, but not superficial, rage-based fundamentalist extremism, nor market fundamentalist extremism.

It is something more profound, based on awareness that we are 'abiru sabil (travelers passing through).

Imam Khalil al-Rumi says in one of his ghazals: "You are like a raindrop falling from the sky upon this world's clay roof, rushing around briefly before disappearing through the gutter."

We are human souls not of this world but from the divine world, coming down upon this clay world briefly before leaving by the same exit - the grave. We are here briefly, but our true home is elsewhere - the heavens.

The Royal Falcon and the Old Woman

"You are a royal falcon in the grip of an old woman" - what we truly are is birds born to soar in higher regions, but we are held by an old woman representing Dunya's harshness. False beauty has entrapped us like an eagle grabbed by a lower principle.

But we manage to escape to "the place where there is no place" (bila makan) - our true home. This is the basic agenda of Islamic radicalism: the perception that we are briefly housed in clay bodies but have nostalgia for the real place, our point of origin - the yawm alast ("Am I not your Lord?").

This nostalgia is a growing chasm within consciousness into which the modern world pours gadgets, music, and distractions that by nature cannot fill that hole.

The True Nature of Islamic Intellectuality

The believer's radicalism consists in being at the middle, using deeper wisdom that has nothing to do with the trivial modern definition of human consciousness or the collapse of the enlightened self. Access to deeper wisdom is ultimately this nostalgia, this yearning for alast and desire for al-qalb al-salim.

'Aql in Arabic means "that which hobbles" - cords wrapped around a camel's legs to prevent wandering. It means setting boundaries to free-floating consciousness, enabling directed, integrated thought and being.

This is not just logic-chopping but involves purpose and hikmah (wisdom). This hikmah enables us, when confronted by modernity's conceptual jungle, to sort true gold from false, constructing Islamic theology that satisfies mind and soul while representing the Ummah authentically to other communities.

Conclusion and Prayer

Only when we return to authentic, wisdom-driven intellectuality will we be an Ummah of da'wah rather than one that endlessly receives.

Rabbana atina fi'd-dunya hasanatan wa fi'l-akhirati hasanatan wa qina 'adhab an-nar

"Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter, and save us from the punishment of the Fire."

We ask Allah to open our hearts to this wisdom so we become people not just of cleverness but of true, deep, inward stillness and wisdom - people who restrain themselves and know themselves so they can understand the world's needs and the rights Allah has over them.

Wa akhiru da'wana an alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh