Daily Times

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the 20th century analytic philosopher and ascetic, once said that the honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He looks as though he were walking on nothing but air and his support is the slenderest imaginable. Yet it really is possible to walk on it. The question of religion and its significance is not only a societal and communal one but, at the same time, a deeply moral and individual one. It involves dealing with the nature of life in its totality and death, all in the purview of God. The religious experience must be understood to be, before it is anything else, a solemn and solitary act that requires contemplation and thoughtful study. Yet the exercise described here is one in which all fanatics, extremists, zealots and terrorists fail unequivocally.

When the sword of religion is brandished with blind certainty and with complete disregard for the very sanctity of life it set out to ensure, it indicates rather, to my mind, a crisis of faith of the modern world rather than an abundance of it, and a complete inversion and misunderstanding of the true principles of any religion. This is because none of those who subscribe to extremist and violent views on religion have ever gone through the necessary mental and spiritual labour to appreciate what faith truly means — that much is self-evident. If their reasons are not outright material or political, they are fallacious and twisted, and based on either complete ignorance or little knowledge, which is equally dangerous if not more. People were surprised when one of the individuals behind the Safoora massacre was seen to have had such a ‘normal’ upbringing and education from all the ‘good’ schools and colleges but an education in business is merely vocational training. It does not teach you how to grapple with the complexity of the religious experience, which is a very human thing and thus requires some philosophical introspection and investigation.

Of what drives these people, we can only surmise. At times, what individuals seek is meaning and purpose, not just economic or political gain. The failure of a society to define (and from time to time redefine) the common aims towards which it is directing its collective efforts means that there will be individuals who often resort to strange ways to find meaning. Meaninglessness is the disease of our age and it is in such an environment that any blindly self-affirming, radical ideology that offers meaning will flourish. But, given that it stems from a place of insecurity, it must always resort to violence since it cannot stand on its intellectual merits alone. In other words, the adherents of such an ideology fail to walk the tightrope of religion.

They say there is no zealot like a convert and that no reactionary who has turned to religion has ever sought to understand its essence. They do not put themselves through the necessary theological inquiry and discipline that is required. Because that is much more difficult than picking up a gun and, rather than dealing with your internal contradictions, removing any sign of difference altogether, so that the only word that remains is your own.

This also means that it is not the very idea of religion itself that is to be blamed. One does not throw out the baby with the bathwater. In my experience, I have yet to see the truly self-aware person and seeker of truth disregard religion and what it means to people all over the world with a cursory examination. From some of the most imaginative scientists and theoretical physicists to philosophers and poets, no one who is in tune with the unknown and the mystery of life and nature, even if they should be entirely secular in their outlook, has ever failed to acknowledge the value that it holds. For those seeking to understand the nature of all that is, one does not go higher than that discipline we call metaphysics and on that the German philosopher Hegel has remarked, “Metaphysics is essentially rational theology.” In a slightly similar vein, the Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali argued that philosophy has no truths of its own to offer, but only questions. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree, these are unsettled questions and must be pondered on, and “passed over in silence”, as Wittgenstein would have liked, if one cannot give a definitive answer.

The capacity for doubt is the sign of honest intellect and a lack thereof is observably the mark of fanatics. This does not mean that intellectual doubt and faith cannot coexist. Rather, doubt is the wellspring from which both knowledge and faith spring forward and faith itself is not a static thing. Kierkegaard has written, “But anyone who comes to faith (whether he be greatly talented or simpleminded makes no difference) won’t remain at a standstill there. Indeed he would be shocked if anyone said this to him. Just as the lover would be indignant if someone said he had come to a standstill in his love, for he would reply, ‘I’m by no means standing still in my love, for I have my life in it.’”

Even the greatest and truest of believers must have their doubts. In fact, that is precisely what makes their faith great. The Muslim philosopher and theologian known as Ibn-e-Sina once acknowledged his own scepticism in the following verse:

“Although my heart made much haste in this desert

It did not know a single hair, but took to hair splitting

In my heart shone a thousand suns

But it did not understand the nature of a single atom.”

Sadly, the Muslim world has come a long way from debating the nature of reality in the form of the most complex theological and philosophical arguments to doing away with reason altogether, and descending into cultural and intellectual stuntedness and violence. And since violence is the downward spiral into that night already devoid of stars, as Dr King once said, one finds it difficult to see an end to its vicious cycle in the near future simply by responding with violence. Far too much of religion has become political and far too much of it has chosen to draw strength from a locus of hate rather than peace and goodwill towards all of mankind. The burden of failure is not simply a collective one but must be borne especially by the highest thinkers of the religious community in their role as spiritual guides. In the end, it is the man of faith in our own times that walks on the tightest of ropes.

The writer graduated in Philosophy from LUMS. He writes on anthropological and social-political issues in Pakistan