If the World Is God-Manifest, Why Not Worship Everything?

Baḥr al-ʿUlūm Mullā ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Farangī Maḥallī’s Resolution

Theophanic Metaphysics and the Problem of Worship

The Gnostics of Islam (ʿĀrifūn) posit that God is Absolutely Unconditioned. One of the many profound entailments of this proposition is that God is both Transcendent and Immanent. ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Qāshānī (one of the foremost successors of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī) writes¹:

The Reality called the ‘Essence at the level of Unity (al-dhāt al- ahadāyah) in its true nature is nothing other than Being (wujūd) pure and simple in so far as it is Being. It is conditioned neither by non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred (muqaddas) to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of multiplicity in it.

That it is “conditioned neither by non-determination nor by determination” makes two important claims. Let us first look at the latter. God is Infinite thus cannot be essentially determinate,² for essential determination is antithetical to Infinity in the true sense of the word.³ Hence, God is not conditioned by determination. After the predicates of determination are removed, the question then arises: is God conditioned by non-determination? As we have seen, al-Qāshānī answers this negatively as well, that is, God is not even conditioned by non-determination. This double negation is precisely total affirmation. Al-Ghazālī in Kīmiyā-yi Saʿādat states:⁴

And all is the reflection (پرتو) of the Beauty of His Presence, and all is through Him. Rather, He Himself is all (بلکه خود همه اوست), for no part of anything possesses existence in reality. Rather, the existence of everything is the ray and Light of His Existence.

These remarks by al-Ghazālī are powerfully illuminating of the aforesaid; after all, if God is the Infinite, the Absolutely Unconditioned, and hence Total Affirmation, nothing truly escapes His Infinity. Thus, Mullā Baḥr al-ʿUlūm writes:⁵

The Essence of Allah Most High is the Necessary Existence. He is free from every delimitation, even the delimitation of being non-delimited He transcends. At the level of His Essence, He is neither universal (kullī) nor particular (juzʾī) and His Unity is not a superadded unity (waḥdat zāʾidah). Nor are the Sublime Attributes superadded. He is untouched by every kind of constraint and delimitation. At the level of His Essence, He is One in the sense that He has no partner. The name for His determinations (taʿayyunāt) and modes (shuʾūnāt) is the World (ʿālam). At the level of His Essence He is Transcendent and through His modes and loci of manifestation He is Immanent. Hence, He has two perfections: one is the perfection of the Essence (kamāl-e-dhātī), and the other is the perfection of the Names and Attributes (kamāl-e-asmāʾī wa ṣifātī).

We are thus led to both the expressions of Transcendence and Immanence. The World therefore becomes a theophany, God-Manifest.

Reading the above, a million questions probably have arisen in your mind, but I must remind you that this introduction is not meant to be a full-fledged exposition of theophanic metaphysics, its implications, and how the apparent tensions that may appear to the one standing outside this tradition may be resolved. The purpose of this introduction is simply to set the context for the reader in as few words as possible, so she is better able to understand why the question in the title arises in the first place. To simplify, the folk of this tradition posit that positing only God’s Transcendence or Immanence constricts His Infinity; one hits the mark by positing both. As Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī himself declares:⁶

For those who [truly] know the divine Realities, the doctrine of transcendence imposes a restriction and a limitation [on the Reality], for he who asserts that God is [purely] transcendent is either a fool or a rogue, even if he be a professed believer. For, if he maintains that God is [purely] transcendent and excludes all other considerations, he acts mischievously and misrepresents the Reality and all the apostles, albeit unwittingly. He imagines that he has hit on the truth, while he has [completely] missed the mark, being like those who believe in part and deny in part.

In the same chapter, he further declares:⁷

If you insist only on His transcendence, you restrict Him,

And if you insist only on His immanence you limit Him.

If you maintain both aspects you are right,

An Imam and a master in the spiritual sciences.

At this juncture, the question that we face is: if the World is God-Manifest, then why not worship everything? How is the worship of everything wrong? This objection is not new, it was known to the Gnostics of Islam, and they answered it thoroughly in many a place, but it is the crowning glory of the Many that they keep resurrecting the questions long settled by the true scholars and lordly men. This is especially unsurprising in these anti-traditional times. One of the reasons for this repeated resurrection of long settled questions may be the forgetfulness that comes with generational procession, but it is not under the scope of this essay to inquire the reasons thereof, so let us move forward.

In this essay, we shall only examine the compelling and illuminating resolution of the aporia concerning worship offered by Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (The Ocean of the Sciences) Mullā ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Farangī Maḥallī (d. 1810).⁸ It is said that he was called Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (The Ocean of the Sciences) by Shāh ʿAbd al-Azīz Dehlavī when the latter studied his book Arkān-e Arbaʿah, which deals with the discipline of Jurisprudence (fiqh), and could not but admire it. The ruler of the time also bestowed upon him the title Malik al-ʿUlamā (The King of the Scholars).⁹

Mullā ʿAbd al-ʿAlī’s Resolution: Text and Analysis

I shall quote him verbatim and then analyze his resolution. In his Risālah Waḥdat al-Wujūd, he avers:¹⁰

Question: Since it is established that Allah is manifest in everything among the existents and that everything is a locus of Allah’s manifestation, whether it is sensible or not, the worship of everything should be permissible, because that in reality is the worship of Allah.

Answer: There is no dispute in this that in everything Allah is manifest and everything is a locus of His manifestation.

Nonetheless, worship is performed for one of two reasons. Either it is directed at the essence and individual identity of the locus, or at that Pure Divinity that is manifested therein. The first case is of injustice (zulm) and gross polytheism (shirk-e azīm), and the worshipper is an oppressor and a polytheist. The Prophets were sent to prevent this polytheism (shirk). It is such a great sin that Allah does not forgive it, and the punishment of such an oppressor is Hell. This applies whether this kind of worshipper, due to his ignorance, considers the locus to be a deity besides Allah, or that which acts as a means of reaching Allah. Since, he is, in either case, worshipping that locus qua locus (locus as such)—he is an oppressor, hence a mushrik. And if it is the second case, then the worship is indeed directed to Allah alone; he has merely turned his attention toward the locus, taking it as his qiblah. In this case, it will be seen if Allah has given the permission to make this locus a qiblah or not. If he has given permission, like in the case of the Ka’bah (Bayt Allah), then the act of worship is permissible. Rather, it is obligatory (wājib) and if the permission is not given then it is impermissible to adopt it as a qiblah, [the latter act of adopting the impermissible as the qiblah] yields remoteness from Allah rather than proximity to Him. The reason thereof is that even if the locus is that through which Allah is manifest and Allah alone is determined therein, all the loci are not alike, they differ substantially. Each one of the loci possesses accidental and essential properties that are not found in the other loci. Where it is an essential property of a specific locus that it should not be made an object of prostration (masjūd ilayh), then making it an object of prostration becomes a cause of Divine wrath and punishment. So, whoever directs his worship on such a locus and makes it his object of prostration the wrath of Allah shall befall him; for he commits a forbidden act, the matter which the Sacred Law (Sharī’ah) has explained in full. Therefore, in matters of deeds the criterion of the Sacred Law (Sharī’ah) must be referred to, for the knowledge of the properties (khawāṣṣ) of actions is known only through it. Allah Most High, out of his grace and bounty, has sent the prophets precisely for this purpose, that they should inform His servants of the properties of actions, so that His servants may then choose those actions which are good and beneficial, and avoid those actions which are harmful and injurious. In the course of discussing the intended subject, these matters arose, so they have been explained here. Now we return to the original topic.

Given this response, one can be Muslim and simultaneously adhere to a theophanic metaphysics without contradiction. The question to which it is a response constitutes an immanent critique, namely that, due to the aforesaid entailment, a Muslim cannot consistently believe in theophanic metaphysics and be Muslim. What Mullā Baḥr al-ʿUlūm must therefore show is that this immanent critique does not work, by showing that such a contradiction does not necessarily follow. Mullā Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, as we have seen, affirms that it is indeed Allah who is manifest in everything whether sensible or non-sensible, but negates the conclusion of the objection that the worship of every locus of manifestation is then permissible. To argue against this conclusion, he states that (1) worship is either directed at the locus as such or (2) at God manifest therein.

(1) If the former, then there are further two possibilities: (1.1) it is either that the worshipper of locus as such considers it a deity besides God, or (1.2) something which acts as means of reaching God. Under the theophanic metaphysics, (1.1) is wrong by the very fact that there can be no deity besides God as His Infinity cannot be escaped. (1.2) is wrong, for, like the former, the locus as such is still being considered as in itself worthy of worship regardless if it be thought to be a means of reaching God.

If (2), then the issue is resolved, for, in this case, the worship is indeed directed at God alone, and the locus is merely the focus of attention, i.e., the qiblah. However, there still are two further possibilities, (2.1) it is either the case that God has permitted the locus to be made a qiblah, like in the case of the Ka’bah; or (2.2) that God has not permitted that the locus be made a qiblah. If the former, then it is not only permissible but obligatory (wājib). If the latter, then as already stated, it is impermissible and moreover, has serious metaphysical repercussions. It yields distance rather than proximity to God. This is because even if God alone is determined (mutaʿayyin) therein, not all loci have similar properties. It may be the case that a certain locus has a property that it should not be made an object of prostration, thus, if it is made to be so. Then it will invoke God’s wrath and punishment.

The very fact that Baḥr al-ʿUlūm posits the first case to be injustice and gross polytheism demonstrates that he as an adherer of the theophanic metaphysics of Ibn Arabi does not, for a second, believe that it somehow necessarily entails the worship of all. In fact, he believes that the prophets were sent to prevent precisely this polytheism, and that whosoever performs it is in Hell. Thus, for him, the aporia of worship in theophanic metaphysics is no aporia at all, rather a concoction of ignorant minds regarding something they do not understand. Yes, it is true that all is the manifestation of God, but it does not entail that manifestation qua manifestation is to be worshipped. Rather, what perfectly comes to the fore, in theophanic metaphysics, is that it is God the Supreme Principle of All Who alone is worthy of worship; and He Himself guides mankind through His Sacred Law as to how He should be worshipped, and it is upon the Muslim to follow the Sacred Law.

The Aporia Dissolved

The Muslim Theophanic Metaphysicians totally affirm God’s Infinity and hence believe Him to be both Transcendent and Immanent. The Immanence of God is His appearance as the World, or if you will, the World is the manifestation of God. This leads to an aporia: If God is manifest in everything, then why not worship everything? We then quoted Baḥr al-ʿUlūm’s resolution to this apparent aporia. Then we analyzed this resolution, the main point of which, as I understand it, to summarize, is the following: The objection fails to distinguish between a locus of Divine Manifestation and the intentional object of worship. The very fact that something is a manifestation of the Divine does not render it by itself an object of worship. Moreover, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm’s distinction between the intentional object of worship being the locus itself and the intentional object of worship being God through the locus settles the aporia. In the former, the terminus of worship becomes the locus as such (locus qua locus), whilst in the latter, the locus functions merely as the divinely sanctioned qiblah. The former, therefore, constitutes polytheism, whereas in the latter God alone remains the intentional object of worship.

---

Disclaimer: Material published by Traversing Tradition is meant to foster scholarly inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published articles and subsequent comments do not necessarily represent the views of Traversing Tradition or any employee thereof.

Works Cited:

1. Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts, 25. [↩]
2. To determine something is give it a specific this-character than that-character; a determinate character is by its very nature exclusionary. That which is ‘essentially determinate’, therefore, is not the Absolute/Unqualified. [↩]
3. We use Infinity in the all-comprehensive Metaphysical sense, rather than in the manner modern mathematicians use it. Infinity means that which as no limit, restricting the word by qualifying it, like in ‘mathematical-infinity’ limits it to a quantitative order, so it excludes other orders of reality. Hence, to preserve the true meaning of the word, we must restrict its use to the designation of that which has no limits whatsoever. And since, in the Sufic Weltanchauung, God is the Absolute Unconditioned, viz., that which has no limits whatsoever, the application of the term Infinity suits God only. [↩]
4. Al-Ghazālī, Kitāb Kīmiyā-yi Saʿādat (Istanbul: Hakikat Kitabevi, 2008), 1. [↩]
5. ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Anṣārī Lakhnawī, Waḥdat al-Wujūd, ed. Abū al-Ḥasan Zayd Fārūqī (Delhi: Nadwat al-Muṣannifīn, 1971), 21. [↩]
6. Ibn Al-Arabi, Bezels of Wisdom, p. 73. [↩]
7. Ibn Al-Arabi, Bezels of Wisdom, p. 75. [↩]
8. If you wish to learn about this radiant man, see: https://www.khairabadiinstitute.com/biography/bahrul-uloom. [↩]
9. ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Anṣārī Lakhnawī, Waḥdat al-Wujūd, ed. Abū al-Ḥasan Zayd Fārūqī (Delhi: Nadwat al-Muṣannifīn, 1971), 17. [↩]
10. Read it here: wahdat ul wajood | Rekhta. [↩]