Voices of Islam (195 page)

The art of clothing is an essentially collective one; it is therefore subject to fl ctuations and obeys, to some degree or other, the psychological law referred to by Ibn Khaldun, according to which conquered people imitate the manners and clothing of their conquerors. Despite this, Muslim dress shows such historical and geographical continuity that one can attribute it only to that positive quality of the
Umma,
the religious collectivity, which moved the Prophet to say ‘‘my community will never be single-minded in error.’’

The gradual disappearance of traditional Muslim costume in favor of modern European dress can be only partly explained by the law of psychology referred to above. This form of ‘‘acculturation’’ does amount to imitating the man who holds in his hands the means of power and success, and modern European clothing has become the emblem of material effi At the same time, a more acute change of direction in the soul is involved. There is a turning away from a way of life entirely dominated by contemplative values with its bearings fi on the hereafter; the aim is to be in the ‘‘here and now,’’ on the level of newspaper events. Modern European dress is welcome in such a perspective, because it expresses individualism, an attitude that stands outside all that is sacred, in the same way as egalitarianism has nothing in common with the self-effacement of the Muslim within the
Umma,
but represents a leveling down, a negation of any
e´lite,
whether of nobility or saints.

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

One could well believe that modern European dress had been expressly invented to destroy the patterns of Muslim life; it makes the ablutions prescribed by the Qur’an difficult and directly impedes the movements and positions of the canonical prayer by its stiff folds. If it is not within its power to destroy the inner value of these rites, it detracts nonetheless from the radiation of their value by the unavoidable triviality of its associations.

The teaching that inheres in the traditional apparel of Islam is, in sum, that the human body, created ‘‘according to the form’’ of God, is a kind of revelation. This is true of man as he was before the Fall, and still is in virtuality, although he bears the marks of his decadence upon him, which love alone forgives. Thus, it is fitting that the body should be veiled at least in part, but not that it should have forms imposed on it that are not its own. To veil the body is not to deny it, but to withdraw it like gold, into the domain of things concealed from the eyes of the crowd.

NOTES

This chapter first appeared in Titus Burckhardt,
Art of Islam: Language and Meaning,
translated by J. Peter Hobson (London, U.K.: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1976; Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, forthcoming in 2008), 83–100. It is reprinted here with minor modifi with the permission of the editors of World Wisdom Books and the Burckhardt estate.

1. For example, a sacred niche in the underground necropolis of Mea Shearim, which is very like a
   mihrab.
   

2. In Hindu iconography also, divine appearances are usually surrounded by an arch representing the cosmos.
   

3. According to this tradition, Zacharias took Mary as a child into the Holy of Holies because he recognized that she was herself the holy tabernacle.
   

9
‌

M
USIC AND
S
PIRITUALITY IN
I
SLAM

•

Jean-Louis Michon

A CONTROVERSIAL QUESTION

‘‘Oh Lord, Show us things as they are!’’ asked the Prophet Muhammad when addressing himself to his Lord.
1
The same prayer was to be repeated over and over by devout Muslims desiring to objectively judge a more or less ambigu- ous situation. It is therefore well placed at the beginning of a chapter on the art of music, as it was understood and is still understood in the countries of
Dar al-Islam.
Few subjects have been as debated or have raised as many con- tradictory emotions and opinions as the status (
hukm
) of music
vis-a`-vis
the religious Law at the heart of Muslim society. In fact, the debate is not yet over and, no doubt, never will be because it concerns a domain in which it seems that Providence wanted to give Muslims the greatest possible freedom of choice and appreciation. No Qur’anic prescription explicitly aims at music. The
Sunna,
the Tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, cites only anecdotal elements, none of which constitutes a peremptory argument either for or against musical practice. The third source of Islamic law, the opinions of the doctors of the law (
ulama
), spokesmen recognized by social consensus, varies widely, ranging from the categorical condemnation of music to its pan- egyric, while passing through various degrees of acceptance and reservation.

To understand how such divergent positions could have arisen and been expressed on this subject in Islamic thought and ethics, it is useful to refer to those interpreters who knew how to take into consideration ideas that were at once metaphysical, philosophical, or theosophical, as well as the imperatives of Muslim ethics, both individual and social. To this category belong the ‘‘Brethren of Purity’’ (
Ikhwan al-Safa’
), whose vast encyclopedia of philosophy, science, and art, compiled in the tenth century
CE
, contains a precious ‘‘Epistle on Music.’’
2

Like the Greek philosophers, the Ikhwan al-Safa’ recognized in terrestrial music the echo of the music of the spheres, ‘‘inhabited by the angels of

60
Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

God and by the elite of his servants.’’ ‘‘The rhythm produced by the motion of the musician evokes for certain souls residing in the world of generation and corruption the felicity of the world of the spheres, in the same way that the rhythms produced by the motion of the spheres and the stars evoke for souls, who are the beatitude of the world of the spirit.’’ By reason of the law of harmony, which reigns over all the planes of existence, linking them according to an order at once hierarchical and analogical, ‘‘the caused beings belonging to secondary reactions imitate in their modalities the first beings, which are their causes
...
from which it must be deduced that the notes of terrestrial music necessarily imitate those of celestial music.’’ Like [the Greek philosopher] Pythagoras, who ‘‘heard, thanks to the purity of the substance of his soul and the wisdom of his heart, the music produced by the rotation of the spheres and the stars,’’ and who ‘‘was the first to have spoken of this science,’’ other philosophers such as Nichomus, Ptolemy, and Euclid had ‘‘the habit of singing, with percussive sounds produced by chords, words and measured verses that were composed for exhortation to the spiritual life and described the delights of the world of the spirit, the pleasure and the happiness of its inhabitants.’’ Later came the Muslim conquerors who, when given the signal to attack, recited verses of the Qur’an or declaimed Arabic or Persian poems describing the paradisal delights reserved for those who died while fighting on the path of God. When resorting to music, when inventing the principles of its melodies and the constitution of its rhythms, the sages had no other goal than ‘‘to soften hardened hearts, to wake the negligent souls from their sleep of forgetfulness and the misguided spirits from their slumber of ignorance, to make them desire the spiritual world, their luminous place and their journey of life, to make them leave the world of generation and corruption, to save them from submersion in the ocean of the material world and to deliver them from the prison of nature.’’

How, under such circumstances, can it be explained that music could become an object of reprobation? Because, explain the Ikhwan, even if music is good in itself, it can be turned aside from its natural and legitimate ends: ‘‘As for the reason for the interdiction of music in certain laws of the prophets
...
it relates to the fact that people do not use music for the purpose assigned to it by the philosophers, but for the purpose of diversion, for sport, for the incitement to enjoy the pleasures of this lower world.’’ Thus, that which can become reprehensible is not music itself but the use to which certain people put it. ‘‘Be watchful while listening to music, so that the appetites of the animal soul do not push you toward the splendor of nature. Nature will lead you astray from the paths of salvation and prevent you from discourse with the Superior Soul.’’
3
This warning issued by the Ikhwan goes along with the teaching given a century earlier by the Sufi Dhu’l-Nun the Egyptian (d. 861
CE
): ‘‘Listening (
sama‘
) is a divine influence that stirs the heart to see Allah; those who listen to music spiritually attain to Allah, whereas

Music and Spirituality in Islam
61

those who listen to it sensually fall into heresy.’’
4
In the same way, the Sufi ‘Ali Hujwiri (d. 1071
CE
) wrote in his
Kashf al-mahjub
(The Lifting of the Veil), ‘‘Listening to sweet sounds produces an effervescence of the substance molded in man; true, if the substance be true, false, if the substance be false.’’
5
Such was, generally speaking, the attitude of the philosophers and

theoreticians of music, as well as that of the majority of Sufi and a good number of canonists. Aware of the benefits of the art of music, they did not show themselves less circumspect as to its utilization, distinguishing between noble and vulgar genres, and between sensual melodies, ‘‘useful’’ melodies, and the like.
6

However, numerous jurists went much further and, seeing the sensual usage that could be made of the practice of music, concluded that music itself was evil or at least that it involved more disadvantages than advantages and had, therefore, to be banned from society. Poetry that was sung and the use of instruments gave rise, they said, to corrupting excitations of the soul, which turned the individual aside from his religious duties, encouraged one to seek out sensual satisfactions and bad company, and pushed one into drunkenness and debauchery. Such jurists went so far as to say that the public singer, even if he or she sings the Qur’an to arouse pleasure in his listeners, could not be heard as a legal witness. They also maintained that it was lawful to break musical instruments.

For the jurist and moralist Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894
CE
), who wrote a short treatise on the ‘‘Censure of Instruments of Diversion’’ (
dhamm al-malahi
), singing and music were condemnable distractions of the same type as the games of chess and backgammon.
7
Later, the Hanbalite jurist Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201
CE
) was to show himself to be just as severe
vis-a` -vis
music, which evil human nature, ‘‘the soul which incites to evil’’ (
al-nafs al-ammara bi al-su’),
according to the Qur’an (Qur’an 12:53), has a tendency to seize upon in order to anchor man in sensuality. ‘‘The spiritual concert (
sama‘
) includes two things,’’ he wrote in
Talbis Iblis
(The Dissimulation of the Devil). ‘‘In the fi place, it leads the heart away from refl n upon the power of God and from assiduity in His service. In the second place, it encourages enjoyment of the pleasures of this world.’’ Furthermore, ‘‘Music makes man forget moderation and it troubles his mind. This implies that man, when he is excited, commits acts that he judges reprehensible in others when he is in his normal state. He makes movements with his head, claps his hands, strikes the ground with his feet, and commits acts similar to those of the insane. Music leads one to this; its action appears to be like that of wine, because it clouds the mind. This is why it is necessary to prohibit it.’’
8