38. The Confused Intellect (2)

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‘Yes,’ says our suitably detached secular skeptic, ‘but why should the doings of another kingdom concern Sulaiman or his spies? Why not just ignore them or leave them alone?’

The answer, of course, is that the queen and her people represent more than mere ‘others’, to be denigrated or dominated or, as the skeptic would have it, ignored. The active intellect, identified with Sulaiman (peace be upon him) is exploring the domain of His Lord, the King of kings. Under His heavens and on His earth, whatever we encounter manifest physically will inevitably conceal an inner spiritual reality. The kingdom of Sulaiman is a sign, and what is signified by that is his prophetic knowledge. The report from Saba’ signifies, likewise, the possibility not only of an external rival but of a hidden counterpart to that knowledge – the dark side of the intellect, where Satan, the most educated of GOD’s creatures, is active, adorning our acts and leading us astray. Even among prophets, Satan is at work. (See, for example, Q18:63, 22:52, and 38:41.) If our intellect is not actively seeking the truth, then he will encourage it to serve and submit to counterfeit authorities, symbolized by the queen’s throne and the sun.

In the Qur’an, therefore, the encounter between Sulaiman (peace be upon him) and the queen of Saba’ is not a matter of mere historical interest, a tale of diplomacy or, as many have conjectured, a preamble to a royal marriage. What use is that to us today, or even at the time of revelation, more than a thousand years later than those events? Rather we are witnessing here the active intellect’s discovery of its own dark secret, which AL-LAH deliberately brings forth to guide prophet and reader alike.

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If this were a movie, and we were watching the hudhud reporting back to Sulaiman (peace be upon him), this is the verse where the bird turns away from the prophet – since he does not need to be told Who GOD is – looks directly into the camera, and addresses us the viewers directly.

We, and especially the skeptics among us, need to be reminded what is so very wrong with encountering a people making their prostrations to the sun instead of GOD. The guiding principle and raison d’être of the active intellect is precisely this: AL-LAH – there is no god but He. If you are serving only Him, then you do not prostrate yourself to any other thing. And, vice versa, if you are venerating any other thing without reference to GOD, no matter how great or unquestionable people think it is – one’s race, language, or country, democracy, human rights, science, and other idols included – your devotion to AL-LAH is void. There can be no room for compromise, equivocation, or ambiguity here, however much today’s confused intellects may crave it. Each position negates and denies the validity of the other. The Qur’an is emphatically – and refreshingly – insistent on this point. Say, “O you deniers! / I do not worship what you worship, / And you are not worshippers of what I worship. (Q109:1-3)

This, I believe, is why the queen of Saba’ is mentioned as having an exalted throne, whereas Sulaiman (peace be upon him) is not. By sanctioning or leading this flagrant parody of true worship, she is effectively setting up a counterfeit kingdom within GOD’s Kingdom. Her throne may appear to be mighty, but it is, like the sun from which the power of her rule is supposedly derived, just another material object, a thing.

The real Exalted Throne is not of this or any world; it is inseparable from Who GOD is, like His Face, His Hand, His Knowledge, His Kingdom and so on, and thus is not a thing, just as GOD Himself is not a thing. The term for this in English is metonym, a figure of speech that represents a referent by means of something normally or figuratively associated with it, such as ‘Ottawa’ for the government of Canada, or ‘mitre’ for the clergy. When we glorify the Name of your Sublimest Lord (Q87:1), we are not glorifying something other than Him, though some would argue otherwise. (See the Addendum: Text-Based and Miscellaneous Arguments in Appendix 1.) The Exalted Throne of AL-LAH is a figurative representation of the supernatural moral and legislative authority of GOD Himself.* As such, it transcends space, time, and any other universal constants future ages may discover; it is certainly greater than one smallish star (our sun) among the ten billion trillion that contemporary scientists believe to exist.

* Literalist interpreters of the Qur’an may object to my suggestion that GOD’s Throne has this or that meaning instead of simply accepting the bare reality of some object on which GOD actually seats himself.

I admit the aid to imagination that the Qur’an’s mention of a Throne has in comparison to the references I make to an abstract concept such as His Authority. We are creatures who are habituated to visualization, and ‘Throne’ has that clear advantage over ‘Authority’.

But I would ask the literalists: “If the Throne has absolutely no symbolic meaning, and is simply a gigantic object of some sort that is suspended somehow over the universe, then what use it to you? How could it possibly influence your day-to-day life, enliven your relationship to GOD, or aid in your spiritual development? Meanwhile, the concept of ‘authority’ definitely affects you in countless ways on a practical, daily basis. You make decisions based on it, and view the world by means of the framework that ‘authority’ provides. In other words, ‘authority’ in one form or another is more real for you than ‘Throne’. Do you think that AL-LAH condemns that natural and inevitable preference of yours for the meaningful, however abstract, over something that is concrete, remote, lifeless and utterly meaningless to you?”

We are not, however, commanded to worship the Throne of GOD, but rather the Possessor of all thrones, all suns, and any other exalted objects or ideas that might waylay our miserable intellects. If we have lost Him by enthroning some other god within our hearts, we are truly off the path, for in doing so we lose our own true selves until we can admit Him back: there is no god but He.

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Not every thought of the active intellect is necessarily true. That is the risk – an acceptable and even necessary risk – that the knowledge-seeker must take. He must constantly push beyond the comfort zone of his own mind into the doubtful regions where truth and falsehood are intertwined. These regions are not entirely foreign to him; they constitute the dark areas of the soul, where the self incites to wickedness. Whatever returns from there, in the form of reports, suspicions, and educated guesses, must be interrogated for potential bias, exaggeration, vanity, and self-deception.

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Why does Sulaiman (peace be upon him) decide to communicate by a written message? The wording of it, as we shall see, is curt and concise, and thus easy enough to be memorized and conveyed verbally. And in the Qur’an, all of the prophets are portrayed as oral messengers, confronting their people face-to-face; if they have a written Word to convey as well, they bring it with them, as Musa (peace be upon him) did, rather than send it ahead of them.

The written word is the instrument of the distant and the everlasting. It is one way of manifesting the transcendent – as opposed to the immanent – nature of GOD, and is particularly useful for attitudes that require the greatest possible objectivity from both sender and receiver. As a strategy of self-interrogation, therefore, it has advantages that ordinary introspection or self-talk cannot easily reproduce. Think of how often books or other media that currently offer advice on self-help recommend that we keep a journal, make a list, or in some fashion or another write down for greater clarity what we need to know about ourselves. By communicating with another aspect of our own self in written form, we are establishing the kind of distance we would need if we were dealing with another person, yet without the need to see that person. We are asking that ‘other’ to take the same stance, to be as objective in his or her response as we intend to be. We are, in short, demanding that the ‘other’ come up to the level of impartial, accountable self-awareness that all of us will face on the Day we encounter the book of our deeds and thoughts open before us prior to Judgement.

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