Muridiyya: Disillusioned Piety

The piety of the Murid is modeled upon the passionate skepticism of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), a central figure of the Khurasani theosophical sublimation of the Biblical religion called "Islam."

Built upon a sturdy "peasant faith" that is unconcerned with metaphysical dogmatism, it focuses, instead, upon the here-and-now, not the hereafter.

This is not to suggest that al-Ghazali was immune to dogmatism--far from it; but he promoted a fideistic approach to religion (comparable to that of Montaigne, though, as a scholar of his tradition, he could not simply disregard dogmatics in the same way that Montaigne did). The advice that he gave to the common believer regarding life after death, for example, is as follows:

The counsel which I give you is that you should not look too intently into the details of this matter [i.e., what happens after death] or busy yourself with trying to understand it. Occupy yourself instead with warding this chastisement off by whatever means, for if you were to neglect your works and worship and busy yourself with this matter instead you would resemble a man arrested and incarcerated by a sultan with a view to cutting off his hand or his nose, but who spent all night wondering whether he would be cut with a knife, a sword, or a razor, and neglected to devise a plan which might ward off the punishment itself, something which is the very height of folly.

It is known for certain that after his death the bondsman must meet either with dire punishment or with everlasting bliss. It is this that one should prepare for; to study the minutiae of chastisement and reward is superfluous and a waste of time.

From the Kitab dhikr al-mawt wa ma ba‘dahu, book XL of Ihya ‘ulum al-din by Muhammad ibn Ahmad abu Hamid al-Tusi (al-Ghazali); text translated by T. J. Winter (1989).

The pragmatic effect of this advice is that it affirms the dogmatic "certainties" of the tradition while, at the same time, urging the common believer to avoid speculation about the details. Just as Tolstoy's Nabatov showed no interest in "the question how the world originated...because the question how best to live in this world was ever before him," so it is with al-Ghazali and the Muridiyya. Neither the beginning nor the end matter but what happens in between--in the now.

Wittgenstein defined philosophy as a "battle against the bewitchment of the intelligence by means of language" (Philosophical Investigations). Muridiyya is, in part, a battle against the bewitchment of pious inclinations by means of prejudice, credulity, and wishful thinking.

Pious inclinations are an expression of the humility one acquires through acknowledging weakness, mortality, finitude. The object of pious inclinations need not be that of traditional theism. Indeed, traditional theism, with its anthropomorphic tendencies, is a hindrance to piety so understood. A disillusioned piety resists Feuerbachian projections onto the screen of the heavens and contents itself with angelic aspirations: the cultivation of what Abraham Lincoln termed "the better angels of our nature."

Because the question how best to live in this world is ever before the Murid, her pious inclinations may be described as "disillusioned."