Muslim Cosmology: Mystic Participation and Spiritual-Psychic Energy

Authors

  • el-Sayed el-Aswad

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.66362/iji.v1i4.16

Keywords:

Gulen, hizmet, hosgoru, jihad, Ibn ‘Arabi, muslim/Muslim, mysticism, Original Sin, Rumi

Abstract

This is an anthropological study of the hierarchically ordered Muslim cosmology with its seen and unseen spheres. Cosmology and mystic participation in Islam are manifested, for instance, in Sufism (tṣawwuf). This paper proposes that the connection between the visible and invisible spheres of the Muslim cosmology is embodied in the Sufis’ bodily rituals, mystic participations and esoteric beliefs resulting in spiritual-psychic energy. Muslim cosmologies are ethnographically addressed within the views and values of Muslims living in Egypt. Muslim cosmology is infused with deeply significant mystic dimensions according to which there exists, beyond the cosmos’ material reality, another imperceptible cosmos that is viewed as more real and more authentic. Muslim cosmology is contingent on models of spirituality, sanctification, illumination, unification and creation without nullifying mundane activities.

References

Ashur, Said Abd al-Fattah. 1998. Al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi: Shaikh wa Tariqa. Cairo: Al-Haiya al-Misriyya lil-ktab.

Berger, Peter L. 1999. “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview.” In The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by

Peter L. Berger, 1–18. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Bunzel, Ruth L. 1985. “Introduction.” In How Natives Think. Translated by Lilian A.

Clare. Pp: v-xviii. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chittick, William C. 2007. Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.

Corbin, Henry. 1969. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Translated by Ralf Manheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press.

Dissanayake, Ellen. 1979. “An Ethological View of Ritual and Art in Human Evolutionary History.” Leonardo 12 (1): 27-31.

Dumont, Louis. 1986. Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 1987. “Death Rituals in Rural Egyptian Society: A Symbolic Study.” Urban anthropology and studies of cultural systems and world economic development. 16 (2), 205-241

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 1994. “The Cosmological Belief System of Egyptian Peasants.” Anthropos, 89 (4/6): 359-377.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2001. “The Ethnography of Invisible Spheres.” AAA Anthropology Newsletter (Middle East Section) 42 (6).

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2002. Religion and Folk Cosmology: Scenarios of the Visible and Invisible in Rural Egypt. Westport, CT: Praeger.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2003. “Sanctified Cosmology: Maintaining Muslim Identity with Globalism.” Journal of Social Affairs 24 (80): 65–94.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2004. “Sacred Networks: Sainthood in Regional Sanctified Cults in the Egypt Delta.” In Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam, edited by Georg Stauth, 5:124–41. Bielefeld, Germany: Universität Bielefeld.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2005a. Al-Dīn wa al-taṣawwur ash-shabī lil-kaun: Sinario al-ẓāhir wa al-bāṭin fi al-mujtama‘ al-qarawī al-miṣrī. Cairo (Al-Qahira): Al-majlis al-‘Ala lil-thaqafa.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2005b. “Creation Myth: Cosmogony and Cosmology.” In Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore: A Handbook, edited by Jane Garry and Hasan El- Shamy, 24–30. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2006. “Spiritual Genealogy: Sufism and Saintly Places in the Nile Delta.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (4): 501–18.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2010a. “The Perceptibility of the Invisible Cosmology: Religious Rituals and Embodied Spirituality among the Bahraini Shi‘a.” Anthropology of the Middle East 5(2): 59–76.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2010b. “Dreams and the Construction of Reality: Symbolic Transformation of the Seen and Unseen in the Egyptian Imagination.” Anthropos 105 (2): 441–53.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2012. Muslim Worldviews and Everyday Lives. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

el-Aswad, el-S. (2013). “Images of Muslims in Western Scholarship and Media after 9/11.” Digest of Middle East Studies, 22 (1), 39–56.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2016a). Political challenges confronting the Islamic World. In The state of social progress of Islamic Societies: Social, Economic, Political, and Ideological Challenges, edited by Habib Tiliouine & Richard J. Estes. 361–377.

Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2016b). “State, Nation and Islamism in Contemporary Egypt: An

Anthropological Perspective.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 45 (1–2), 63–92.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2017. “Cosmic and Psychic Energies in Islamic Tradition: The Soul (rūḥ) and the Self (nafs).” Paper presented at the 37th Annual Conference of Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. March 29th – April 1st, Encinitas, California.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2019a. “Keys to al-Ghaib: A Cross-cultural Study.” Digest of Middle East Studies 28 (2): 277–295.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2019b. “Al-Ghaib (the Invisible and Unknowable).” In Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, edited by D. A. Leeming, 2: 1-4. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200245-1

el-Aswad, el-S., Sirgy, M., Estes, R., & Rahtz, D. (2020, December 17). “Global jihad and International Media Use. ” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford University Press. https://oxfordre.com/communication/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-1151

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2021. Rethinking Knowledge and Power Hierarchy in the Muslim world. In Knowledge, Authority and Change in Islamic Societies: Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman, edited by Alan. Fromherz and Nadav Samin, 147-161. Leiden,

Boston: Brill. el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2022. “Mawq‘ al-dīn fī al-‘aql al-maṣry” (The Place of Religion in the Egyptian Mind). Ahwal Masrya 11 (84): 79-84.

el-Aswad, el-Sayed. 2023. “The Invisible Other: Rituals and Egyptian Perception of the Unknowable. Anthropology of Consciousness, 34 (2): 434–453,

Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by William R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic.

Herzfeld, Michael. 2001. Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Heinen, Anton M. 1982. Islamic Cosmology: A Study of as-Suyūṭīʾs al-Hayʾa as-sanīya fī l-hayʾa as-sunnīya, with Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Ibn Hisham, ‘Abd al-Malik. 1978. aḷ-Sīrah al-Nabawiyah (Sirat Rasūl Allāh). Cairo, al- Qāhirah: al-Maktabah al-Tawfīqīyah.

Ibn Kathir, Isma‘il Ibn ‘Umar. 1937. Tafsir al-Qur'an al-‘Aẓīm. Cairo: Dar Iḥyā’ al- Kutub al-‘Arabiyyah.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. 1964. God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies.

al-Jilani, ‘Abd al-Qadir. 1992. Revelations of the Unseen (Futūḥ al-Ghaib). Translated by Muhtar Holland. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Al-Baz Publishing.

Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 1985. How Natives Think. Translated by Lilian A. Clare. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: B asic Books.

Mahmud, Abd al- Ḥalīm. 1993. Aqṭāb at-tasawwuf: al-Sayyid al-Badawi. Cairo: Dar al- Ma‘arif.

Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine. 2004. Al-Sayyid al-Badawi: Un Grand Saint de l’Islam Egyptien. Cairo: IFAQ.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1964. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for its Study by the Ikhwan al-Safa’, al- Biruni, and Ibn Sina. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1988. “Shi‘ism and Sufism.” In Shi‘ism: Doctrines, Thought and Spirituality, edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamed Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali Reza

Nasr, 104–20. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Netton, Ian Richard. 1989. Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology. London: Routledge.

Netton, Ian Richard. 2000. Sufi Ritual: The Parallel Universe. Richmond, England: Curzon Press.

Rappaport, Roy A. 1979. Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. Richmond, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sahlins, Marshall. 2022. New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

al-Shaʻrāwī, Muhmmad M. 1998. al-Ghaib. Cairo: Akhbar al-Yawm

Tambiah, Stanley J. 1973. “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts: A Point of View.” In Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, edited by Robin Horton and Ruth Finnegan, 199-229. London: Faber & Faber.

Tambiah, Stanley J. 1990. Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, John B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Trimingham, John Spence. 1971. The Sufi Order of Islam. Oxford: Clarendon.

Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications

Downloads

Published

2024-03-15

How to Cite

el-Sayed el-Aswad. (2024). Muslim Cosmology: Mystic Participation and Spiritual-Psychic Energy. The International Journal of Islam, 1(4), 22. https://doi.org/10.66362/iji.v1i4.16

Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.