Miroslav Volf: And children dress like adults to kind of the leveling between them.
Hamza Yusuf: It's very strange whereas if you look for instance at portraits from you know the 15th century 16th century children are always dressed like little adults.
Miroslav Volf: That's interesting.
Hamza Yusuf: So this idea of becoming an adult was so important like getting your first breeches this was a transition for for kids because they wore the shorts, but then they got pants breeches and this was a rite of passage the bar mitzvah the circumcision at 7 entering into the age of discrimination. Even Aboriginal peoples have these rites of passage where you enter into adulthood. I think we have allowed for a sustained adolescence. In some ways Western civilization to me is a very adolescent civilization. We don't have the gravitas the debt then, the depth and weightiness. One of the things that Quran calls humans is “the weighty ones” that there were a weighty species. The frivolity even in our language we've lost gravity in the way we speak. One of the things that that historically I think was very important to people was to speak properly. Even I mean the wonderful Bernard Shaw's play “Pygmalion” even though you know it's obviously the satirical; but the desires of the lower class to speak like the upper class. This desire when we look at a rose what we want to see is the beauty of the rose the more we admire it that the closer it is to our understanding of what a rose is. We have some sense of the perfection of a rose and that's why if it has that that the closer it is to that ideal in our mind why we have that ideal. This is what I feel in our culture the type of inversion that's happened where beauty is scoffed and ugliness is that the fact that people buy clothes that are rags now they wear rags; whereas people in rags always wanted to be able to afford clothes that weren't ragged.
Miroslav Volf: It's interesting I think I mean we can talk about fashion and I'm quite interested in fashion and kind of a spiritual dimension.
Hamza Yusuf: So there's a spiritual dimension I mean our clothes wreak atheism.
Miroslav Volf: [Laughs] that would be interesting to explore, but let me take it just slightly differently because I think it's obviously at least I think it's to the heart of what we think in terms of what one thinks about the good life. One way to conceive of it is to have this kind of ideal almost like ideal types or exemplars into which one inspires. Then the question becomes which is a typically very modern question is what happened with my particularity in this that I was born in this place with these kinds of gifts with these kinds of propensities, with this kind of a kind of a body you want to put me into some kind of a straitjacket and you see the whole this ideal of authenticity. In the Christian tradition you have two impulses and you can see it so that somebody like SCOTUS where you have this general, but you have to also the emphasis on the on the particularity of each one of us. Martin Luther for instance says, “God calls each of us by our name.” That's so significant. Can you talk to me well about significance of my own authentic particularity?
Hamza Yusuf: You know Heidegger has this concept of thrown-ness were thrown in to this world and then we become historical products we imbibe our culture our ideas, the way we articulate all these things and much of it is given to us it's not and therefore we come into this crises. So if we're reflective people that I'm not really an authentic person I'm just a historical product. I think one of the things for me about pre-modern cultures is that what you would find is outwardly there was a lot of conformity, but inwardly and I've seen this because I've been in pre-modern societies Mauritania and West Africa where I was. What I noted was they have an outward conformity decorum which they used to call decorum we don't even use that word anymore. But decorum it's a good Jane Austen word you know decorum-decorum. There's a type of comportment the way we carry ourselves and it's a respect for social norms because society thrives on stability. When there's great change in society there's always turbulence and Technology thrives on rapid change. So this is part of the crises that we have in the modern world is this loss of a conformity to norms. Cultures have norms and they're there for a reason, but we are still individuals and within those cultural norms we have our own personalities. I think one of the things about our culture is that outwardly people are all very different, but inwardly they're actually quite vacuous and similar in a lot of ways.
Miroslav Volf: That's very interesting and this is kind of inward conformity notwithstanding the emphasis or maybe because of the emphasis of distance.
Hamza Yusuf: Yes I read a book on the philosophy of tattoos and one of the chapters in there was “I think therefore I am”. It was this idea of wanting to be you know I think people feel a lot of anonymity and a desire to assert themselves. To me I think one of the main reasons for that I mean god only knows really, but I think personally the problems that we have in our culture is when you don't have caregivers that are devoutly committed to children at an early age I think children lose a sense of self and so they spend the rest of their life trying to assert and establish that. When they're given a lot of care a lot of attention a lot of love when they're young they don't need to be attention seekers.
Miroslav Volf: But also we will live in a kind of market driven culture and often market driven culture rather than simply market culture rich market is an important instrument. Market driven culture often tends to have a quick rate of obsolescence because it also drives. The result is I mean I'm thinking of a phrase from Karl Marx a communist manifesto maybe I shouldn't leave [Inaudible 29:39] okit but I think that document is diagnostically very interesting. “Everything that is solid melts into air” he says at one point and it's kind of a plasticity where one doesn't have a place to stand but you can make it up or you can create stability with certain forms of decorum social emulation. But you can also that there's something about the relationship to divine also that gives this stability. Is that also it?
Hamza Yusuf: I think that's the source of weightiness.
Miroslav Volf: You have Unbearable Lightness.
Hamza Yusuf: Unbearable Lightness of being that's it and and no real connection because you know Kierkegaard's idea that you have to at least establish one true love. You have to really understand hence the relationship between man and woman was so central to these religious teachings certainly in the Abrahamic faiths. I mean I know Christianity has an ideal of for at least the priests and the Cardinals and things an idea of celibacy complete and utter dedication to God. But still it acknowledges the sacrament of marriage. This idea that that this relationship of really unconditional love at best when it's truly a relationship that is how we're informed of love and understanding them and that's why love is so central to the religious teachings. I mean there are a lot of people that criticize Islam. I've seen this in many Christian books you know that it's not a love based religion, but the reality of it is love was always identified as the highest ideal in the Islamic tradition.
There were certain theologians that said you couldn't really love God because God is not of our species and you could only truly love your own species. Ghazali says “Theologians say there's nothing of true religion.”
Miroslav Volf: I like Ghazali.
Hamza Yusuf: Ghazali is great and this is why traditionally the Sufis used the divine essence in Arabic that is is a feminine word and so they use the feminine as an expression in their poetry and Leila what they called Leila and Salma. They use that expression because that erotic love that intense desire. I mean one of the motifs that's really nice I saw last night in the church that we were at one of the motifs in churches and mosques and this very intriguing is the vine. The vine in traditional cosmology the vine is the only willful plant. It has a type of will but it's also got the word in Arabic for erotic love is the same word for the The Binding of the Vine. There is this idea of just falling in love with God.
Miroslav Volf: We talked earlier and I'll tie it with what you just said I think it's very important point. We talked earlier about a need for stability for structures. Often people flee into artificially constructed structures that aren't good for them. So there is kind of rigidity of meaning that's imposed upon them and then flee out because they see how vapid the pleasures which have no particular meaning except satisfying my own limited desires. Presumably I think of it in terms of Christian faith that there's kind of unity there needs to be unity between a meaning which requires certain stability and certain expansion of the self to something larger than oneself and pleasure and some kind of emotional fulfillment or we might say joy as well. Did you see that tension in Islam maybe the people who like to press with the thumb down in order to create those structures and forget about I think you're right somewhere, but the pleasure that the person has in God rather than in the worldly things? On the other hand you've got kind of empty pleasures that lack the meaning.
Hamza Yusuf: I think pleasure is an ancient just problem it's one of the great ideas right just the whole--
Miroslav Volf: Not just problem right? You don't mean it in itself.
Hamza Yusuf: Well it's a problem in that it literally becomes an idol for many people. The pursuit of pleasure is is literate becomes the goal of life the hedonists. There's a lot of it.
Miroslav Volf: That's the empty one.
Hamza Yusuf: That's empty and I think the problem with all pleasures is that they're temporary.
Miroslav Volf: That's where the reference is something outside in a sense you give yourself to nothing you just take everything in.
Hamza Yusuf: I think in a true relationship for instance the relationship between a meaningful relationship with a man and a wife the deepest pleasure is pleasuring the other. I mean there's an incredible thing. I have to believe that that's true in all deeply intimate relations the desire to give the other the gift of pleasuring the other.
Miroslav Volf: So unity of meaning and pleasure is in love.
Hamza Yusuf: I think it is. There's a beautiful verse in the Quran it's exactly said several times it's very common that God is pleased with them and they are pleased with God that this mutuality of of pleasure this idea. In our theology there's a chapter [Inaudible 35:42] has God experiences joy.
Miroslav Volf: Does he?
Hamza Yusuf: Yes.
Miroslav Volf: One simple God and a non compound experiences joy. Tell me about it. We have the same of course in the Quran.
Hamza Yusuf: You might have gotten it from us. [Laughter]
Miroslav Volf: No actually it must have gone around because remember what Jesus said about joy in Heaven when one sinner--
Hamza Yusuf: These are we believe that these are revelations from the same source and therefore they would have the same context. Both traditions influenced one another that's undeniable historically. One of the attributes of God in our tradition is laughter it's not taken literally, but God's love but there are Hadees of the part where it says “Your Lord laughs.” [Foreign Language].
Miroslav Volf: Soughing way or kind of rejoicing out.
Hamza Yusuf: Rejoicing.
Miroslav Volf: Laughing out loud kind of way [Laughs]
Hamza Yusuf: No. For instance there's a hadith a saying of the Prophet Salat says that “God laughs at a man who is is woken up for his dawn prayer by his wife.” What they say in the counter is that he's pleased with that it brings him joy just to see that.
Miroslav Volf: Presumably that's the kind of element of devout life in kind of imitation of God. So pleasure it's seeing the good and beautiful and true. That's one of leisure consistent.
Hamza Yusuf: One of the things you know in the lexicon and cosmos which has different meanings but you know one of them is the world in Greek, but another is order and another is decorum. Then another is moral goodness cosmos it has to do with moral goodness. So this idea of these three great virtues I think are all our traditions share of truth goodness and beauty and for us it's Iman Islam Asan. Iman is the truth the truth of God that we are knowers by nature in our triune nature we’re knowers and we're doers we will things, but we're also makers we produce things with our knowledge and our will. We're meant to know the truth was meant to do the good and we're meant to make the beautiful to produce the beautiful. This is why if you look at surgical tools from the Muslim period in Andalusia you can actually Google this as a [Inaudible 38:39] surgical tools you'll see that they're all beautifully embellished. They're surgical tools but they all had beautiful artwork on them. Why was it so important for pre-modern cultures to adorn everything? They adorned their clothes. Why was lace so important? All their buildings were adorned. Why was wainscoting so important? Why is this beautiful woodwork important? Now this functionalism of modern society which has lost the making of beauty what we call “Asan” it's lost and it's something in us that's lost.
I mean one of the things we say that that what is out there is inside you know that man is a microcosm. Imam Ali said that “You think that you're an insignificant thing and yet in you is the entire universe.” We are the microcosm. One of the things that I see that we're losing on the planet we're not losing cockroaches, we're not losing rats they're thriving, but we're losing Eagles, we're losing lions and tigers and leopards. We're losing these qualities in ourself that are majestic and beautiful and what's remaining is foulness and the filth. So we are ultimately-- if people want to clean up the environment--
Miroslav Volf: Or the consequences of misplaced desire. We could go on for a very long time, but maybe this broader framework of god who provides both the structures of meaning also is a source of pleasure indeed unity of meaning and pleasure in joy in the truth and the beauty and the goodness is a good place to to end. Thank you very much.
Hamza Yusuf: Well thank you Dr. Volf I really appreciate you honoring me by just inviting me and thank you.
Miroslav Volf: You're most welcomed thank you.