The teaching of the Imam is Paradise
Paradise has two forms:
potential and actual.
The potential paradise is the teachings of the Imam-e-zaman.
It is called a potential paradise
because the momin has yet to put the teachings into practice.
After hearing the call,
the momin accepts initiation,
and then is taught according to their capacity,
stage by stage,
the straight path (batini islam).
But then the momin must overcome their animal natures,
converting evil into good,
and only then is actual paradise achieved.
based on the 1st Lecture of Al-Muayyad (a Fatimid Dai)
Critique
A Short Critique of Meherally’s
“A Brief History of the Aga Khans”
Meherally has devoted an website to propagate information he feels will damage the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim faith. It is from this website that naive anti-Ismaili Muslims get the files that they then post to various newsgroups. Most Ismailis have been very reluctant to engage him in debate since he has separated himself from their faith by violating his oath to the Imam of the Time, Imam Karim Aga Khan IV. Since I am not an Ismaili, tho I am sympathetic to its beliefs and practices, I have no problem taking this critic on. The following are just a few notes concerning Meherally’s text on the History of the Aga Khans (which is actually a short summary of Meherally’s two books attacking the Ismaili faith and its Imam).
One thing right off I noticed about Meherally is his envy over the wealth of the Imam and the Ismaili community. Page after page in his books and articles show an envy that borders on the pathological. He appears to resent having to pay tithes in cash to his religious institutions and feels that other should do the same. Yet all faiths collect funds from their believers in order to maintain their institutions and clergy. He fails to show how these funds are being misused. He merely shows how he dislikes the way they are collected. Considering how much the Imam spends on Third World development, the world would be a much better place if all religions would spend their monies in the same way (see Akbarali Thobhani’s Islam’s Quiet Revolutionary: The Story of Aga Khan IV).
Meherally states that “the Emperor of Persia” did not give the title “Aga Khan” to the current Imam’s great-great-grandfather since he was “an unsuccessful insurgent.” However, all histories, except for Meherally’s , all show that the Qajar ruler did bestow that title to him and even gave him one of his daughters in marriage. He also made him the governor of the City of Qumm. All of this was in compensation for the murder of his father the 45th Imam in 1817 CE. The Aga Khan I did resist the Qajar State in 1837, when an attempt was made to replace him from his acquired governorship of the province of Kirman, by armed struggle. There is evidence that his removal was related to a power struggle within the Iranian Sufi community with the Aga Khan supporting a faction that the ruling Qajar did not. He was pardoned for his revolt, however, and lived in peace for about two years. Then politics forced his hand (and one needs to keep in mind that Persia had numerous other rebellions during this period) and he led a failed uprising and was forced to go to India (this was in 1841 not in 1840 the date Meherally gives). So Meherally gives a very inaccurate account of Aga Khan I’s activities in Iran.
I find it very interesting that Meherally likes to quote Sir Richard Burton even after calling him an “orientalist” and “British Spy.” As for Burton’s comments that the Aga Khans revolt was “ridiculous” that is his opinion and not facts. The Aga Khan was forced to revolt or be murdered like his father.
Meherally makes a big deal that Aga Khan I assisted the British in their colonial undertakings. Many Muslims did the same during that time and the defenders of Sunni Orthodoxy, the Saudi’s, were British and American puppets.
He states that the British gave the Aga Khans a hereditary title of “Highness”. This is not true. This title must be given to each new Aga Khan upon their succession to the Imamate and is not automatically given (this is covered in Akbarali Thobhani’s “Islam’s Quiet Revolutionary: the Story of Aga Khan IV”).
Meherally makes the claim that the Khojah’s were originally Sunni Muslims before the Aga Khans were given authority over the Khojah community by the British Court in 1866. My question to Meherally is if the Khojah’s were Sunni why did they recite ginans in their services? These ginans can be traced back in written form to the 15th-16th centuries and contain religious teachings which Sunni’s would never have recited. Meherally tries in other texts to claim that the ginans were made up or revised to the current state during the last century thus they did not have the Hindu elements before the Aga Khans came. However, the history of the ginans is well documented and their contents can be confirmed as reflecting the true faith of Khojah Ismaili community. There were many split off groups from Khojah Nizari Ismailism ( which split off before the First Aga Khan came to India) and these groups preserved their own ginans which many are identical to the Nizari ones. The ones that are the most identical are those which present Islamic ideas within Hindu metaphors and myths. Of course, Meherally doesn’t like the ginans as they were the main evidence that the Khojah’s were Ismaili and this was confirmed by several court cases in India.
The Khojah’s used Sunnism during the period before the Aga Khan arrived as taqiyya (concealment of one’s true beliefs to prevent oppression). Also the Aga Khan I was practicing taqiyya when he practiced Sufism and Twelver Shiism. Taqiyya has been a historical Ismaili practice and Meherally is well aware of it. He chooses to ignore it to suit his own purposes. In Ismailism the outer form is always an illusion; the center of the faith remains the same. Taqiyya was ended only during the Imamate of the 3rd Aga Khan due to the spread of religious freedom under British rule. The Aga Khan III did not induces new doctrines and practices, he restored to some communities practices that were forgotten during the period of taqiyya. All of the doctrines and practices that the Aga Khan restored can be found in the ginans and in the Iranian Nizari literature on the Imamate written during the late Middle Ages.
I will end my critique now but I could go on and on pointing out the numerous errors which litter Meherally’s texts. I would suggest that those who are interested in Ismaili history to ignore Meherally and study the work of real Ismaili’s. Meherally, while once an Ismaili, is no longer one. Furthermore, he has a major axe to grind against his former faith and therefore is extremely bias against Ismailism. I would suggest reading the already mentioned book by Thobhani as well as anything by Farhad Daftary.
Corbin and Massignon on the “Imam-of-one;s-own-being” by Corvus
There is circulating among the qiyamati faction the legend of the Imam of one’s own being, a saying which comes most
directly from Peter Lamborn Wilson and his post-modern Islamic guerrilla
ontology. The Imam of one’s own being may be traced back to the work of Henry Corbin and his tawil on Imamat,
particularly in the compilation of essays entitled “Temple and Contemplation” (London, 1986) published under the aegis of the Institute for Ismaili Studies, to wit:
“To whom then does the present tawil lead us? To the Imam within, the
secret personal guide of each of us, to the rabb or lord of whom each
faithful vassal is
the knight According to our shaykh, there is an Imam Husayn within each
man: his intellect, whose divine splendour is a light that derives from
the Imam. But
this inner Imam is surrounded by enemies, and these are all the powers
of the carnal soul that issue from from the shadow of the Imam’s
enemies.” (pp.
45-46)
This is not a verifiably Ismaili teaching, the author, Corbin, cites a
work by KarimKhan Kirmani, a later exponent of Shaykhithought of the
19th century.
It is msitaken to presume that Corbin relates his ideas on Imamat from a
perspective of Ismaili “doctrne”.
Corbin’s views are heterodox culling from ghulat as well as 12er and
Ismaili shiism, zoroastrianism, manichaeanism, mithraism, mandaean and other sources. Not the least of which wasCorbin’s own gnosis, and indeed
he was an arif whose understanding of Imam was sublime.
This is where the conflict between the arif and the orthodox comes in:
revisit Hallaj and the orthodoxy of Basra.
Which brings me to another topic:
Apologists assert that Hallaj spoke from a state of ecstatic loss of
control:
In reading Massignon there is nothing t support that claim by orthodoxy.
Hallaj statements about Al Haqq were thought out deliberate and
premeditated, he spoke with a position of authority regarding the nature
of thr Divine and on more than a few occasions.
His ecstasies were the result of his sober realization of Ana ul Haqq,
his statements “ana-ul haqq” are not the result of ecstatic loss of
control and “fana” as orthodox among sufis have tried to maintain.
It is also known that Hallaj traveled extensively in India and Central
Asia and his views may also represent a synthesis of late Manichaean
thought, and Islam. This does not make them less valid since we are
admonished to “seek knowledge even in China”.
But I urge anyone who hasn’t tackled Massignon’s opus on the subject to
do so. I hope to discuss more on this topic.
