The Spiritual Remedy for our Consumerist Materialism and Capitalist Global Culture: An Islamic-Sufi Perspective
By
Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu, New Age Islam
12 October
2022
For Islamic Mystics Or Sufis, Only Love—Loving
God With Our Pure Unbounded Love, Loving All Creatures, Our Ecosystem And This
Universe On Account Of Our Love For God—Is The Sole Pathway Towards Restoring
Our Dignity As Altruistic Human Beings Who Are Created Essentially To Love And
Be Loved By God, The Best Beloved
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We live
today in an extremely consumeristic and capitalistic global culture which is
materialistic, alienating, objectifying and commodifying to our fellow humans,
extremely individualistic, idiotically narcissistic, exclusively egotistic; and
constantly beset with anxiety, shame, guilt, neurosis, mental turbidity as well
as emotional chaos. From the perspective of Islamic spirituality called Sufism,
our present human civilization is under the greatest despotism that it
self-destructively creates upon itself: the dictatorship of egotism—the worship
of one’s greed, vanity and self-importance.
This
contemporary world prides itself in being secular and yet our present
day-and-age worships the most stubborn infantile idolatry of self-deity—worship
of our vain and prideful ego. Our world today is so much enamored with “my” own
name, "my" own welfare, “my” own benefit, “my” own fame, “my"
own power—to the exclusion of others: to the exclusion of our fellow humans, to
the exclusion of our fellow sentient beings, and to the exclusion of God in our
lives! Like Narcissus of old, we have fallen into the fetid and murky spring of
self-praise and have fallen in-love with our own hazy reflection—we now worship
ourselves and on account of this, we have effectively separated ourselves from
others due to our obsession with our egos and our selfish agendas. What is the
solution to this our contemporary human debacle that besets our consumeristic
propensity and capitalistic mentality?
The central
and crucial message of Islamic Sufism is salvation by Love, through Love and in
Love—pure and unbounded love for the Beloved, God Himself. Only our remembrance
of and love for the Beloved can effectively free us from our love of the world
and love of our ego. And only Love is the answer to our longings of
connectedness, because when we are truly and really connected with the Best
Beloved, then we are truly enabled to love our fellow humans, love all beings
in the cosmos, and love the ongoing universe itself.
Sufism is a
faith-ideology and praxis of pure unbounded love for-one-and-all for the sake
of the love of God, the Beloved. A real lover of God is someone who constantly
endeavors to purify one's self from one's selfish ego, someone who strives to
liberate oneself from loving one's own self, so that only the remembrance of
the Beloved’s Beauteous Face is imprinted in one's heart, mind, soul and
spirit.
A true Sufi
does not attribute goodness to one's own self and sees himself as being devoid
of any merit, and is not held in bondage by any forms of self-worship because
he sees that everything that he is and everything he does and possesses are all
due to enabling grace and mercy of the Beloved. Only the Beloved’s Beautiful
Face is worthy of being beheld and adored by the true lover since all beings in
the universe are simply finite mirrors minutely reflecting the Infinite Beauty
of the Beloved. In the words of Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (may Allah's
mercy be upon him): “The real lover (Sufi) sees nothing except Allah. He is
absent from himself but present with Allah.” (See "Advice of Hazrat
Maulana Rumi". Rabat, Morocco: Dar-ul-Arquam, 1987; p.76.)
Loving the
Beloved and loving the Beloved’s creation, whether animate or inanimate,
sentient or non-sentient, may be the most basic remedy for the prevailing
hedonistic materialism, consumeristic capitalism, extreme selfishness, and
narcissistic consciousness of our present day and age. In our obsession with
our false selves, in turning our backs on God, the Best Beloved, we have also
lost our essential self, our own divine origin—our very own fundamental
connectedness to the Best Beloved. In forgetting God and in being enamored with
our individualistic egos, we have forgotten our true self as God’s lover and
God's beloved.
For Islamic
mystics or Sufis, only Love—loving God with our pure unbounded love, loving all
creatures, our ecosystem and this universe on account of our love for God—is
the sole pathway towards restoring our dignity as altruistic human beings who
are created essentially to love and be loved by God, the Best Beloved. This for
me is the relevant answer of Sufism or Islamic spirituality to the crisis of
global unconcern and negligence to our fellow humans, to other creatures, and
to our cosmos. Love is the answer! Love is still the answer: the redemption of
the world and of ourselves is still by Love, through Love, and in Love! Amen, a
thousand times Amen!
----
Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate
Professor-7 of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the
Philippines (UP), Cebu City, Philippines. He was Academic Coordinator of the
Political Science Program at UP Cebu from 2011-2014, and Coordinator of Gender
and Development (GAD) Office at UP Cebu from 2015-2016 and from 2018-2019. His
research interests include Theoretical and Applied Ethics, Islamic Studies
particularly Sunni jurisprudence (Sunni Fiqh), Islamic feminist discourses,
Islam in interfaith dialogue initiatives, Islamic environmentalism, Classical
Sunni Islamic pedagogy, the writings of Imam Al-Ghazali on pluralism and
tolerance, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, Turkish Sufism, Ataturk Studies,
Ottoman Studies, Genghis Khan Studies, Muslim-Christian Dialogue, Middle
Eastern Affairs, Peace Studies and Public Theology.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/spiritual-consumerist-capitalist-islamic-sufi-/d/128161
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