SUFI INTERPRETATION OF THE QURAN 47

collective subjectivity of mankind, and not as the objects
of a scientific statement.!

At first sight metaphysical commentary on the
Quran seems to be intellectually superior to the text
itself for the simple reason that the language of the
Quran is religious in form and so linked to human
emotionality and to the anthropomorphism of the
imagination, whereas the commentary directly sets forth
universal truths. But the exegesis suffers from the dis-
advantages of abstract expression while the sacred text
possesses the advantage of the concrete symbol, that is,
the synthetic nature in which a single succinct form
includes meanings indefinite in their variety. Sufi com-
mentators know that the anthropomorphic and, so to
say, ingenuous form of the sacred text not only answers
to a practical need—that of being accessible to the whole
of a human collectivity and so to every man,? but also

1. For instance, when a sacred book like the Quran mentions the motion
of the stars, it does so from a geocentric point of view because this perspective
is natural to man and is also directly symbolic inasmuch as man’s predestined
place is at the centre of the cosmos.

2. ‘“The books revealed as a common law (shari‘ah) use in speaking of
God such expression that the majority of men grasp their most proximate
meaning, whereas the elite understand all their meanings, to wit every
meaning implied by each saying according to the rules of the language used.”
(Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi in the Chapter on Noah of his Fusus al-Hikam)
—*The prophets use concrete language because they are addressing the
collectivity and rely on the understanding of the wise who hear them. If they
speak figuratively it is because of the commonalty and because they know the
level of intuition of those who truly understand... All that the prophets
brought of sciences is clothed in forms accessible to the most ordinary
intellectual capacities in order that he who does not go to the bottom of things
should stop at this clothing and take it for all that is most beautiful, whereas
the man of subtle understanding, the diver who fishes up the pearls of
Wisdom, can indicate why this or that (Divine) Truth should be clothed with
such and such a terrestrial form... Since the prophets, the Divine messengers
(rusul), and their (spiritual) heirs know that in the world and in their communi-
ties there are men possessing this intuition, they rely in their demonstrations
on concrete language, accessible both to the elite and to the commonalty ; thus
one of the elite draws from it at the same time both what the commonalty
draw from it and more besides...”” (Ibid, in the Chapter on Moses,)

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