On Belief and Disbelief: The True Meaning of Idolatry

By Karima Vargas Bushnell

At a recent Progressive Muslim gathering, we got onto the subject of stereotypes and superficial judgments, including the way some people are always surprised that a non-African American would be a Muslim.

“And if you’re a convert, they always think it’s because you’ve rejected Christianity,” I added. “But I didn’t choose Islam over Christianity, I chose it over Hinduism.” This produced a general laugh and our discussion leader, an Islamically learned young man who used to practice one of the nature religions, said in a friendly way, “I used to be a polytheist too.”

After the discussion was over my mind kept returning to this remark the way your tongue returns to something stuck stubbornly between two teeth. “I was never a polytheist!” I thought. In discussing my connection with Hinduism elsewhere, I had written, “For years I identified myself as a bhakta yogi: one who prays through tears, music and poetry, in ecstatic devotion. But I was uncomfortable with the need to pick an ishta deva, a form of deity. My Beloved was the Unique, not one of a selection.”

So for me, yes, taking shahada was a rejection of polytheism. I was never a polytheist, but I don’t believe the Hindus are polytheists either, at least the more deep-thinking ones. Religious scholar Huston Smith writes, “It is clumsy to confuse Hinduism’s images with idolatry and her many images with polytheism. They are but runways from which man’s heavily sense-embodied spirit can take off for its flight ‘of the alone to the Alone.’”

At an intercultural conference a few years ago, one Muslim scholar remarked, almost impatiently, “The Hindu ‘gods’ are like the 99 Names in visual form!” And then there’s the common Hindu prayer quoted in Huston Smith’s World Religions:

Even village priests will frequently open their temple worship with the following beloved invocation:
Oh Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations;
Thou are everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou are without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.

Though the western scriptures tell us not to bow to statues, is this necessarily the most common or dangerous form of idolatry? Have you ever noticed the holy hush that reigns in large financial institutions? Does anyone doubt that millions of people are now worshipping the gods of money, possessions and earthly power? The gods of the mall and the stock market? It seems possible that someone who appears to worship God in some objectified, outer form is “faithful,” while someone who would never dream of bowing to a statue of Buddha or Shiva—but who moves through life cruelly, with a cold, uncaring heart—is “unfaithful.”

A colleague of mine from Laos shared the following instructions from Buddhism:

BE GOOD
The law of Kam states that for everything you do, every action that you take, there is a direct consequence.
It is you and you alone. No one else plays a role in contributing to your outcome. There is no such thing as coincidence.
Every cause has an effect, be it good or bad.
The nature of the outcome depends on your actions. Therefore you should try to do good deeds.
Meditate regularly, give to charity, follow the right path, try to keep company with good people, keep your thoughts pure.
The results will bring you happiness and you will succeed in attaining all that you desire.

Surely this is very close to Islamic teachings. And of course there’s no conflict with Islam in honoring the great world religions, since Islam teaches, “And every nation had a messenger,’ (Qur’an 10:47), “And every nation had a guide,” (Qur’an 13:7) and, “To every nation We appointed acts of devotion which they observe.” (Qur’an 22:67)

For every one of you did We appoint a Law and an open Way. If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single people, but (His plan is) to test you in what He hath (separately) given you; so strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is Allah; it is He that will show you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute. (Qur’an 5:48)

Yet when we become flexible and open, we run the danger of traversing a ‘slippery slope.’ During the same discussion at the meeting, we got onto the ever-recurring subject of the veil—is it “a little piece of cloth,” far less important than the actions of the hand and the intentions of the heart? Or is it a vital sign and symbol of obedience to God? One physically and spiritually beautiful sister said, “I don’t want to judge anyone. But I don’t want to say it’s okay not to wear it because . . .” She stopped, perhaps searching for the words to explain. “Because then the whole thing might just fall apart?” I inquired. “Yes!” she replied.

Once you start tinkering with Divine commands, nibbling away at the edges of things, who knows where it will stop? “Well, this doesn’t really matter, and I don’t have to do that, and the other is purely symbolic anyway . . .”

Yet it’s possible to drive yourself crazy by being too strict in your observance. You make wudu and then you sneeze, and you make wudu again and suddenly you have to go to the bathroom and you make wudu again and then the sun starts coming up so you have to wait, and then you realize you have to run to work, and you never make fajr prayer at all. There’s an interesting story in Struggling to Surrender by Jeffrey Lang where the conscientious Muslim author (a U.S. convert) washes for prayer in the bathroom at work, then realizes that stepping on the dirty floor with bare feet will break his wudu. But so will putting on his shoes. He solves the problem by putting paper towels under his feet and moving slowly towards the door. In the doorway he suddenly confronts his boss, who stares at the author as he stands, inches away, water dripping from his nose and hair, shuffling slowly forward, barefoot on two paper towels. Quite an absurd thing to visualize. It’s not that we shouldn’t be willing to look ridiculous for God—of course we should—but is this really the point?

Sometimes such trains of thought might tempt one to take the view of some brothers and sisters—that thinking at all can lead to heresy, that we should all just shut up and follow the rules—but that’s not what Islam teaches. Islam teaches, in the ahadith and other places, that, “Whoever goes out in search of knowledge is upon the path of God until he returns,” and “The search for knowledge is incumbent upon every Muslim man and woman.”

Yet it’s not true, as the less thoughtful type of New Agers seem to think, that anything will do: It’s all God, so what you think or do doesn’t matter anyway, and beliefs are merely a matter of choice and personal preference. This way of thinking can make the awesome choices before us seem trivial. Islam calls us to the great and dangerous task of total submission to the Beloved of Hearts—a submission which doesn’t make us weak and servile like submission to earthly powers, but makes us strong and real and alive.

Islamic scriptures tell us that at every moment, every being is either consciously or unconsciously praising God. Every living being is pursuing nearness to Allah, consciously or unconsciously. Those who desire power or beauty or knowledge are seeking divine aspects such as Allah al-Qadir, Allah al-Jamil or Allah al-Alim. Though they may be seeking these eternal attributes in ways so distorted as to amount to perversion (seeking power through tyranny or sadism, or beauty through the materialistic collecting of goods or lovers, or knowledge through studying and teaching the most life-denying theories), this does not change the fact that they are seeking them. If this is the case, the goal of life appears to be to praise Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala—through thoughts, words, and actions—consciously rather than unconsciously.

As we travel ‘the maze of thoughts and molecules’ that is this life, we can take truth wherever we find it and make it our own. Only Allah knows the true Muslims, the ones who are truly submitting to Him and earning His favor. We can only hope to be among them, seeking justice and peace for all by fearlessly confronting every earthly power. I’ll close with another ancient prayer from India:

Lead me from the unreal to the Real
Lead me from darkness to the Light
Lead me from mortality to Immortality
Om, peace peace peace

As-salaamu alaykum, wa Rahmatullah, wa barakatuhu!

Karima Vargas Bushnell (M.A., intercultural relations) has studied world religions all her life and formally embraced Islam in 1993 through her teacher, the much loved Sheikh Nur al-Jerrahi. She's been a hippy, a court reporter, a fiddle player, a college instructor and long ago sold beer and hotdogs at the Santa Cruz auto races. Her play, “Voices on the Waves,” was published in MWU!