Episode Transcript
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Foreign hello everyone. Assalamu alaikum. My name is Eunice Mirza and welcome to the Islamic Mary and a Common Word podcast. A Common Word podcast focuses on Islam and inter religious studies. It is inspired by the quatic verse 364 which calls the people of the book to a common word and a common word initiative. Held in 2007 in Amman, Jordan, it interviews scholars, activists and practitioners in the realm of bridge building, peace studies and social justice.
Today I talked to my good friend and professor, Paul Heck. Paul Heck is someone I know from Georgetown. When I studied in graduate school, I was in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies while Paul was in the Department of Theology.
When I was a graduate student, I was interested in meeting up with him and learning about his different ideas about Islam, Christian Muslim relations and religious pluralism. I was always fascinated by his desire to go beyond the text and orientalism to get to know people and learn about them on their own level. I ended up actually traveling with him to Morocco as part of initiative to study religions across civilizations, and we had the opportunity to visit various religious sites as well as nonprofit organizations. I was fascinated in his recent turn in his scholarship regarding emotions in Islam. He's written so much from skepticism to Sufism to jihad, so I want to sit down with him and understand what had prompted him to move in this direction. My interest in emotions in Islam is connected to Quranic figures. As I study more biblical and chronic figures, I'm fascinated in how the Quran speaks about their various emotions, their anger, their sadnesses and their fear. For instance, in the story of Mary, Maryam in the midst of her giving birth to Jesus, Isaac, a voice reassures her from below and says, do not be sad or grieve. Your Lord has provided a stream at your feet. The divine voice here in the Quran is affirming Maryam's sadness, her pain and her anguish, and encouraging her to act in a face of desperation. Here is my interview with Paul Heck.
Hey everyone, Assalamu alaikum. I'm Yunus Mirza and welcome to the Islamic Mary and a Common Word podcast. So for today, I'm very fortunate to have a good friend and mentor, Paul Heck, here on the show, and he'll be speaking about emotions in Islam. So, Paul Heck, welcome to the show.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Thank you very much, Yunus. It's a delight to be with you.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Paul is someone I've known for a long time and I know him through Georgetown, through the theology department, and we've done some global exchange as well as some common research interests in Christian, Muslim Relations and pluralism. So, Paul, could you introduce yourself Specifically, can you speak about your spiritual biography? How did it lead you to your academic profile?
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Sure. Great.
So I did my PhD in Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago.
I'm now a professor in the Theology department, Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University since 2004.
But, yes, my study of Islam and religions in general has been very much part of my spiritual journey. That's not always the case with scholars, or maybe it is, but I acknowledge it very robustly that those things go together.
Knowledge should always have an effect on our soul, our inner life, our character.
And it does, even if we don't acknowledge it. But in any event, I'm a Christian, a Catholic, a happy Catholic.
And, you know, I went to England after my ba. I did my BA in Classical Literature, so Ancient Western literature, Greek and Latin. And then I went to England, and like many other young Americans, the idea is, well, let me do a year or two abroad and come back and go to law school or business school and then make a lot of money. But when I was over there, I started meeting a lot of people. You know, Britain brings a lot of students from Commonwealth nations, and so I started meeting a lot of people from different religions that I hadn't met before. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, which was actually Jewish majority, and so we were kind of a minority as Christians. That's not usually the case in America. But in any event, I was open to religious pluralism, I think, because of that. And then when I was in England, I was a foreign student, foreign graduate student, and I was put in housing with other foreign grad students, and they were Hindus and Muslims and all sorts of things. And it just was a window on the world. I again, grew up in this sleepy suburb, and especially the Muslims.
We lived together, and we were just friends at first. You know, we did things together, we cooked together, we took trips together, picnics and whatnot, hung out together. And I was really just kind of impressed and edified by their character and their devotion. And so, you know, that kind of led me to think about who am I and what do I believe and what are my convictions and what are my devotions? And so that began a journey.
And, yeah, then I ended up studying Islam. And so for me, it's always a question of beneficial knowledge.
Sometimes we study things and other people can use them for other projects, sometimes to control, you know, sometimes for power.
And so it's always a question is, why are we studying what we're studying? And so as a Christian who's very involved in the study of Islamic, for me it's like, how is this knowledge that I'm pursuing beneficial knowledge? You know, how is it beneficial knowledge? How is it bringing about more fruitful life giving relations between Christians and Muslims and others? So that's kind of it in a nutshell. And I think, you know, you've got to be both a scholar, but also, you know, have a foot in the camp, you know, of religious communities. You know, I think some scholars, like, okay, well, I'm neutral, I'm objective, I'm far away. But you know, the thing I'm trying to do always leads me into Christian Muslim relations out there in the world. And there's all sorts of, you know, things going on today that are challenging Christian Muslim relations.
And so, yeah, how can I bring that journey to, to those relations in a way that brings about more life, more, more happiness, you know, for everyone?
[00:07:04] Speaker A: All right, excellent. Yeah, I really love that narrative and I identify with that point also going to grad school and the idea of knowledge as beneficial knowledge and kind of speaking to your soul and your being. So could you speak about your position at Georgetown? So one of the things we try to do in this show is connect the theoretical, the personal and, and the practical. So you're someone who is personally invested. You talked about yourself as a Christian, talked about your spiritual biography, but you're also involved with institutions and programs. So could you speak more about your professorship at Georgetown University, specifically the classes you teach, the programs you contribute to, and the graduate program that you advise?
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. So again, I've been here since 2004, Department of Theology and Religious Studies. I'm affiliated with the Arabic and Islamic Studies department and, you know, also other units here at Georgetown.
And yeah, I teach at both the graduate and the undergraduate level. And so my graduate courses Training PhD students in the study of Islam. So that's what I do at the graduate level.
And we have a doctoral program, it's unique in the country in terms of its dedication to the study of religious pluralism. What does that mean? And people have different approaches, sociological, anthropological, theological, so on and so forth. So in any event, at the graduate level, I'm teaching like courses on Islam and political theology or Islam and spirituality, really the kind of the tradition, the heritage known as Sufism, Islam and Christian Muslim relations.
So it's really that focus on Islam at the graduate level, the undergraduate level, I'll speak to in a moment, but just to kind of make a point about my graduate teaching, I'M trying to invite students to kind of pursue the study of Islam, whether they're Muslim or non Muslim in a theological sense. So how does the study of Islam help you understand God more fully? And it's interesting. I think the Muslim students who take my classes appreciate that and they're a little bit surprised because, you know, a lot of departments for Islamic studies in the U.S. they're, they're still kind of under that orientalist kind of framework and positivist or empiricist. And you study this as kind of an objective phenomenon, as a kind of social political phenomenon out there. And you never like, say, well, what does this mean for our understanding of God?
And so I know that's something that I think students at Georgetown, whether they're in my department or not, appreciate, appreciate this idea of thinking about Islam in that.
Yeah. In that sense of who we are and what we're doing in the world.
So that's one thing. And then at the undergraduate level, you know, we're in an interesting moment. So when I got here, it wasn't too long after 9, 11 and everyone was wanting to take Islam courses. Intro to Islam or Islam and X, Islam and Y. And I did that for a while. But then I just noticed the development of the non affiliated students that has really skyrocketed in the last couple decades, the post religious students. And so I really don't do much on Islam at the undergraduate level because I find that the undergraduates, they're not interested in religion per se. You know, what Jews believe and practice, what Muslims believe in practice, but they're interested in ideas of a theological nature.
So at the undergraduate level I'll do like a course on the common good and we'll look at that across various traditions and you know, Islam will be in the mix, but it's, you know, thinking more broadly. Or a course on religious liberty, a course on spiritual discernment and humanistic literature. You know, how can we find God in humanistic literature? So the challenge is how to teach theology at a moment when students aren't religious. Right. Or are, you know, I would say some of my courses, courses, you get 40 to 50% of the students who have no religious affiliation and weren't raised in any religious tradition. And you know, so the last few years I've started teaching a course on atheism and that's my most popular course at the undergraduate level. So, you know, I mean, Georgetown students, you're a product, you know, you've got to meet Georgetown students where they're at and so, yeah, and the atheism course is really fascinating for many of the students because they think they know what it is. They, you know, they just assume, well, you know, atheism means to be a scientist, you know, and it's just so much more complex than that, from existentialist atheism to Marxist communist atheism. I mean, the last couple decades, there's been a real spiritual turn in atheism. And so you have all sorts of books on the spirituality of atheism or spirituality for atheists. So, yeah, those are kind of what I do at the graduate level and then the undergraduate level. I hope I got to your question with those responses.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: No, definitely. And I can speak to you as a graduate advisor and mentor, and we've traveled to Morocco. And one of the things I love about your teaching style is the sohba, as you know, the idea of companionship. And not everything has to be within the classroom, but it can be outside the classroom as well and in terms of experiential learning. So could you speak about your recent article? And I've been following your work for a long time. You, you're prolific.
It ranges from, from skepticism to Sufism to Christian Muslim relations. So I'm really fascinated about this kind of new turn. How does it build off your previous work? And I've also been really interested in the concept of emotions in Islam, specifically because a lot of the biblical and chronic figures, you know, I just wrote a book on Mary, Maryam, and they talk about emotions. Don't be sad, you know, the idea of happiness, be joyful and so forth. And these are all things that you discuss in your article. So, yeah. So could you speak about how this recent turn builds upon your previous work?
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's see. Maybe I can make three points here or four. We'll see how it comes out.
But first of all, yeah, my work has ranged from, as you mentioned, skepticism, political theology, Sufism, now emotions, Christian Muslim relations. What's the through line? And so one thing I've been trying to do, yeah, I mean, when I was a PhD student in the 90s, you could really only study Islam in Oriental studies or Near Eastern studies programs. And so I've really wanted to bring Islam into dialogue with trends in religious studies at large. Right. And so to get Islam out of that kind of box of Oriental studies. And, you know, Orientalists have made all sorts of good contributions. But so, you know, when I did my book on skepticism, right. At that point, it was assumed that, well, skepticism is only something that you find in ancient Greece and modern Europe, you know, it's only rational people, right? And yet it's a universal phenomenon. And so I wanted to really do that book on skepticism to show how skepticism has worked in Islam over. Over the centuries, that it's part of Islam too. Muslims have doubts too, right?
What does that mean? And the same thing, even with Sufism, which for a long time the study of Islam kind of marginalized Sufism, it wasn't seen as reasonably respectable. It was seen as kind of this mumbo jumbo archaic stuff, mysticism. And you can find that among Muslims and non Muslims as well. And so, you know, I wasn't a pioneer, but I think I was, you know, trying to continue this effort to show that no, Sufism is really rationally compelling in many ways, and it's a core part of Islam. And yeah, I mean, Sufism can be all over the place if you look at the, you know, the tradition through the centuries. But I've been wanting to show how, yeah, likewise with the skepticism, we can think about Sufism, the spiritual heritage of Islam, and bring it into dialogue with the study of spirituality and other traditions and likewise with political theology and now emotion. So, you know, I noticed, you know, in 2015, I was invited to NYU Abu Dhabi to give a talk on sorrow in Islam. And I was just amazed at how little there was on emotions in Islam, whereas in Judaic studies or Christian studies, you just had a lot more. And so again, I'm like, okay, well, we need to bring Islam into conversation with the study of these things that are happening in religious studies. But, you know, because Islam was so trapped in Oriental studies for a while, it was kind of methodologically a little bit, you know, behind these developments.
So just to say that, I mean, secondly, I mean, I've also been committed to the idea that we need to do more real work to show that religion isn't just about beliefs and practices specific to the believing community, that human nature is also part of religiosity. And you can find that in the Christian tradition, the natural law tradition. You can find it in Islam with fitra and so on. And so, like, emotions, you know, are part of human nature. And so, like, how are they part of one's religiosity? You know, we often separate emotions, emotionality from religiosity. And like, well, being religious is about believing in the doctrines and following the, you know, the teachings. But how are people's emotions part of the religious experience, the religious venture, and not just as some kind of new thing, but you know, the more I read and I tend to, you know, focus on the classical period of Islam, I was just, like, amazed at how much classic classical scholars were talking about emotions.
Yeah.
And I guess just the one last point or third point before maybe we get into the details is, you know, I'm really interested in ethics. That's a big part of my work. Ethics across these various topics, whether it's political theology, whether it's Sufism, et cetera, et cetera, the ethical element is always there. And when I was in grad school, like, the. The works on ethics were like, well, it kind of was reducing ethics in Islam to the commands of Sharia, to the.
And, you know, as if that, you know, well, Muslims are ethical, like when they line up with the commands or the rulings of Sharia, you know, and there's something there, of course, that's important. But my own interactions with Muslims, the Sahba, Right. I mean, Sahba companionship, you know, I mean, how can I really say I know Islam if I'm not able to be in dialogue or be in companionship with Muslims and to listen to what's going on with them? And, you know, over the years, you know, beginning with my friendships with Muslims in England and then, you know, in the Middle east, it was just clear to me that their ethical life wasn't reducible to commands and rulings. Right. That there was something more there. And we've. Seen. We've seen in the last couple decades a lot of scholars developing the ethical heritage study our knowledge of the ethical heritage in Islam beyond that kind of reduction. And so that's what I was trying to do to show that we have to also study emotions to understand the ethics of Muslims, the interiority, the emotional interiority, and how Muslims are understanding that, assessing that in view of their.
Their ethical goals.
So, yeah, that would be like the third reason, I guess, I got into emotions.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: I love that point, especially the idea of seeing Muslims as humans and with emotions. Right. Because I do agree, I think sometimes Islamophobic discourses is all about the law and the Sharia and commands, but the idea of a human as being someone who's happy and sad and sorrowful. So I love that, how you've gone in that direction. So now could you, maybe we can kind of dive in now into your academic work and maybe you could walk us through the article.
What are the various sections? What is your basic premise and argument? How is it different from previous scholarship on the topic? So you kind of already alluded to this, that when you started in 2015, there wasn't a lot of work. Since then, there has been some work on emotions in the Quran and. And so forth. So maybe you could speak a little bit about what you're contributing and then go through the article section by section.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Yeah, right. So I guess I would return to one of the points I just made and the idea of emotions and the ethical. The ethical dimension. So you've had, Yeah, a number of articles by various scholars in recent years, but they tend to kind of focus on this idea of emotional communities. Right. And so, you know, emotions are something that attach Muslims or also you find this in the study of emotions and other religious traditions. So they're not just kind of, you know, bringing this framework to Islam, but the idea that, you know, it's about your emotional attachment to a community. And so emotions are a way to get people to be, you know, to go along with what the community is all about. Right.
And I'm trying to nuance that, and there's certainly something to that.
Emotional attachments are about communities. And so. But this framework of emotional communities, and that's what it's all about. And it's much more subtle than that. And so I wanted to show how Muslims are kind of discerning what is the spirit in my emotion. Right. I mean, I can be sad for different reasons. You know, I can be sad because, well, you know, someone stole my car and I'm sad at that loss. Right. Or I can be sad because, well, the world just seems like a wretched place. Right. Or I could be sad because I see someone suffering and my sadness is about compassion towards them.
So what is the spirit that's in the emotion? Right. And how have Muslims been discerning that? Right.
Again, you know, I can weep for different reasons. I can weep to deceive you. We call it crocodile tears. Or, you know, I can weep again because, you know, I've lost something, or I can weep compassionately, mercifully for others. And so what is the spirit? Or, I mean, if scholars aren't comfortable with that term, you could say the ethical tone in the emotion. Right. And how is that emotionality not just bringing Muslims together in some fused emotion, emotion, community. Right. But how is emotionality empowering them ethically?
And, you know, you could say strengthening the ethical project in Islam. Right. There's always that. For example, in Islam, you should hang out with the good people, the Akhiyar. Right. You know, Sahbat al Akhiar or Mujal Asat al Akhiar and so on. And so forth. But how do the righteous people, the exemplars, how do they transfer their ethics to you? Right. Well, you know, you have kind of emotional bonding, right?
And this is what I call ethics transference. So, you know, and it should make sense to us. If I want to be a good doctor, I can't just read books, Right. I need to kind of shadow a doctor and kind of, you know, follow their bedside manner and how they're a doctor and kind of absorb some of their ethical positionality or their ethical dispositions, I guess, is the word, you know, and that's going to make me a better doctor, right, When I kind of observe and absorb some of their ethics. So that ethics transference is.
But it needs emotions, right? It needs emotions. So Muslim communities, they're coming together and, you know, they feel that sahba or, you know, common emotional bond that brings them together, but then they're transferring ethics to one another. And, you know, I mean, other communities do this too, I guess. Yeah, that's kind of the focus there is to get beyond that framework of emotional communities and to say, no, it's not just, well, this is a way to incorporate a Muslim into the community. And then, oh, he should be sad at what the community's sad about, or he should be happy at what the. No, he's. He might be, but he's also discerning. Right. He's, you know, because. Because emotions, as I mentioned, can have different spirits, different ethical tones. Right. And so that's. That's what I'm trying to contribute to the study of emotions in Islam, that. That ethical dimension. So I hope that was clear and then we can get into some of the details, if you'd like.
The article was originally a lecture. I was invited to give a lecture on emotions in Islam In, I guess, 2022 in Erlangen, Germany. And then, yeah, it kind of turned into this long article, about 70 pages or so. I look at a number of emotions. Joy, sorrow, weeping, anger, or rage, fear, hope and love. Right.
And these are emotions that all people have. But I kind of looked at it from that side, so, you know, it's a fascinating journey. Each one of these emotions could be a book. And I imagine as the field develops and kind of continues to explore this topic, hopefully, you know, future PhD students will work on these emotions singularly. There's just so much in each one.
I mean, you know, for example, you could look at the emotion of sorrow.
And, yeah, Muslims are really thinking about it. But just a preliminary point there.
They're really drawing on the Greco Hellenistic tradition. And so again, to show how Muslims are doing these things in ways that are specific to Islam, but they're also part of a greater human civilization. And, you know, so like, by the time, like Muslim scholars were thinking about sorrow, the whole Greco Hellenistic philosophical tradition not only had been translated into Islamicate languages and Arabic especially, but had been absorbed into those traditions. So that, like, Muslims were thinking about those Greco Hellenistic categories, but in a way that was kind of Islam specific. So, for example, right. I mean, they came up with three categories of what sorrow means.
So, you know, one would be a little bit more Platonic or Neoplatonic. So sorrow is about a state. It's a holla. I'm sad because I'm.
I'm somehow separated from my divine beloved. I'm separated from God, right? And so I'm in this, you know, world, this world that's passing, ephemeral.
And so it would be right for me to be sad because I'm separated from my ultimate goal, to be in paradise.
Now, that might sound a little bit simplistic at first, but it's actually a very rich part of sorrow in Islam because sorrow is a way for us to be realistic in the world. Muslim scholars were very clear about, oh, yeah, joy is important, but don't be too joyful because otherwise you'll be naive about what the world is all about. And sorrow in all traditions is.
Is a purgative emotion. It purges us from being too attached to the world. And so sorrow over this world that's passing. And, you know, goodness is, you know, sometimes there, but sometimes evil, you know, wins in the end. And so it helps for, you know, a deeper emotional balance with that ethical sentiment.
You know, others looked at sorrow as, no, it's a bad thing.
It's a disturbance in the soul. Right. And so this is more the stoic tradition that's kind of now working its way through Islam. And so, like, you know, I mean, these people wouldn't have said, well, you can get over sorrow entirely, but, you know, you should see it as a disturbance. And so it doesn't have religious value per se, as in the first case when it's a challah, it's an actual state, a spiritual state, but here it's a disturbance. It's an ittirab. But you need to be. You need to bear it patiently, right? You need to, you know, so the virtue is in the sabr that you bring to that emotional disturbance.
And yeah, I mean, the key issue here is that you don't want it to disturb your.
Your. Your ritual actions, right. That, you know, in the middle of prayer or, you know, it just over, you know, over overcomes you, overwhelms you, your. Your sorrow. And so you need to bear it patiently. So that's more of a stoic. And then finally you get a bit of an Aristotelian current running through Huzan, sorrow in, in the Islamic tradition. And so here it's neither like a religious virtue in itself as it is the first case, and it's. It's neither a kind of, you know, problematic. But if you engage it with sabr, with patience and endurance, then it can be a religious virtue. But with this one, it's a movement, it's a harakah. And it could be good or it could be bad, but you've got to discern that. You've got to.
What is driving that emotion, that sorrow? Is it sorrow over? Well, you know, I'm not earning as much money as I'd like. Or is it sorrow because of my sins, or is it sorrow because of the state of the ummah? Right.
And so that sorrow could be a religious virtue, but it could be, you know, a religious vice or, you know, not something that the religion would affirm. And so, I mean, that just one case of Huzn, you can just see how Muslims are trying to think about this. And, you know, they've got a philosophical heritage behind them, but they're also thinking about it in terms of the goals of Islam, you know, getting to paradise or at least being oriented to paradise rather than this world, and, you know, or making sure it doesn't undermine the goals of my ibadah, my worship, or, or in the third case, just. Right. I mean, how is this helping me grow religiously? If I see that it's part of this emotionality, a movement in me. Right.
If it's more directed towards goodness, Right.
Sorrow for sins or sorrow over the state of society, or is it directing me in a negative way? I could go on and on, but I don't know if we should get to another emotion. But that's a nice example of how Muslims are discerning, you know, so this is, again, it's not just about, like, this is a way to get you to obey your community and to conform to your community, that your emotions are being used to discipline you. Right. That's an. Often you hear that out there, that emotions are.
Emotionality is a way that leaders in a community discipline Muslims or, you know, you can find that kind of scholarship in Reference to other religious traditions.
And look, there is some of that. I don't wanna deny that that's what humans do. They sometimes use our emotions for power. I mean, we can see it in today's politics here in our beloved nation, right? How people use, you know, they stir up rage, they wanna get people angered, you know, to get them to line up with certain political, partisan, you know, policies.
And so look, you know, Muslims are like everyone else, and you have some of that, but the overwhelming tradition, and especially the scholarly work, the ulama over the years, they're more like, how are these emotions working such that they're aligning us to being, you know, good Muslims.
So I don't know if you want me to continue with Joy or some of the other ones there, or if you have another question to go deeper in that.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Oh, no, that's. That's great. I mean, I think folks can look at the article and go through all the emotions. But I'm really fascinated about this point of sorrow because when in, I think, Christian Muslim relations, a lot of people focus on love as a common theme and Islam as a religion of fear. And so the idea of sorrowness is really interesting. And you also have a really fascinating discussion on weeping. So I don't know if you could maybe speak about that as well and how that connects with sorrow and.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, whatever. We can get into the weeds of, like, Christian Muslim understandings of how we know that God loves us or how we know that God is pleased with us. And this idea of Rida, you know, rida Allah, how do we know God favors us?
And, you know, is that an individual thing? You know, in Christianity, some people emphasize individual salvation going to God, you know, even if your community as a whole or society as a whole is not, you know, it's about the individual. And then other Christian communities, it's more kind of a collective. A collective journey. It's the church as a whole or even the world as a whole. Either we're all going to God or none of us is Right. And so you see some of these things in Islam as well. Yeah, how do we know?
And so, yeah, interesting part of it is the emotional calculation. What can our emotions tell us about, you know, whether we're being pleasing to God so, you know, to go to weeping. And then maybe I could also say some things in that regard regarding Joy.
But, you know, so a lot of the scholarship on weeping in Islam as well, look, you've got all this stuff in the literature and saying, you know, well, Muslims should weep for their sins. They should weep for their sins. The noob. The noob, Right. You should weep for your sins and that hopefully God will forgive you.
And yeah, it's more that individual thing. Right, and there is that. There is that.
And yeah, both in classical Islam and today, you have that sense of people weeping for their individual sins and then God forgiving them.
But what I started to notice, you have these, like, scholars in classical Islam saying that, well, if someone weeps and that person is a righteous person, that when that person weeps, let those believers around him when they see him weeping, their sins will be forgiven too. Right?
And this is that collective salvation that you find in Christianity and Islam. And, you know, so especially the righteous person who is, as it were, a focus of God's mercy. But then it has a spillover effect, as it were. Right? And so it's really interesting. And so you have some, you know, more theoretical discussions of this. But then, you know, I found a number of historical reports where it seems that it's actually happening that, you know, so, like, some people would say, well, the preacher who's worse, who's. Excuse me, the preacher who's weeping on the minbar, right. Or. Or after. Well, I mean, he's not supposed to weep during the sermon, but afterwards when he's, you know, down in the mehrab and, you know, and he starts weeping and. And then people should weep in response. Again, that emotional community, a way to. A way to get you to be, you know, to line up with the community, but it's much more complex than that. And so, like, yeah, he's kind of transferring a baraka to them, right? Through the emotions. Again, it's not just emotions that the community is doing together, but it's ethics transference, right? And so he's transferring that emotion to them. And so, you know, the thing about it is, it's very interesting because sometimes Muslims like, well, no, this guy's not a righteous guy. And he's weeping, and I think he's weeping just to pretend that he's righteous. You know, that look at me, I'm weeping for the Ummah's sins, or I'm weeping for our community sins. And. And so, like, Muslims are discerning. You know, it might not be this, like, you know, super theoretical, highly reflective. It's just what we do. And I mean, we notice this. We all do this. I mean, that person is kind of having an emotional moment. Is that like just social drama or is that. Because there's a really powerful ethical state in their soul, and then I might be affected by that. And so this idea that the righteous person, when they weep, that's attracting divine mercy, and that's then shared as a public virtue, not a private feeling, a public virtue.
And then others can get into that blessing, that baraka. Right. And when they respond to the weeping, again, if they discern this guy's really righteous, it's that emotional connection that's then allowing the ethics transference to happen and then, you know, people appropriating it in their own way.
I mean, so this is a wonderful point for Christian Muslim dialogue. Like, wow, you know, yeah, the details are different, but, you know, we all see this emotionality kind of as a way to appreciate God's mercy and not just in that kind of collective sense, but God's mercy as renewing us, renewing our souls. Right. And, you know, I mean, a psychologist will tell you that, you know, tears can be cathartic, you know, even aside from religion. Right. But, you know, this is kind of nature, as I said before, human nature, but working within kind of the purposes of religion. Right. The maqasid. The maqasid. The deen. So it's, it's, it's, you know, it's the human nature that a psychologist might analyze apart from the maqasid, the purposes of the religion. But, but now we're seeing how nature, in this case, weeping in a cathartic sense is also kind of helping the community appreciate their process of being redeemed. That would be Christian language. And so, you know, I don't want to impose that on Islam, but it does seem to be a renewal of people's humanity in that religiously purposeful sense. And so this tajdid al khalk, Right. Often you hear tajdi the deen. Tajdi the deen, the renewal of the religion. And that's important, of course, but emotions, yeah, are really very interesting ways in which God renews us and therefore we can enter more deeply into our life with God. And I guess just one last point there. When we think about religious pluralism and Christian Muslim relations, it really depends on how we understand religion. If you say religion is just, you know, doctrines and teachings, right. Then akam. And that's it. Well, dialogue is going to be limited, right. Because, well, you know, there's certain things in Christianity that Muslims don't accept and certain, you know, and so it's going to end pretty quickly sometimes. But the thing is, it's human nature. When you see that part of that as part of religiosity, right? Like an image I use of religion is like everyone sitting in a valley, right, Looking up different mountains, right? And so you've got Muslims and Jews and Christians. They're all in that valley of human nature.
And, you know, that's religion and one mountain. You know, the Muslims are looking up one mountain, and that's Islam and Jews are looking up one mountain, and Christians are looking up, you know, so, you know, there's really those significant differences that, you know, aren't really gonna be ever, you know, dissolved or, you know, and they shouldn't be.
But yet part of religion is all of us being in that valley together in our human nature.
And I think there's just wonderfully productive ground there for Christians and Muslims and Jews to really see one another as part of our shared moral concern.
Right. You know, sometimes, you know, these interreligious relations are about coexistence and tolerance, right? To sama. Right? But no, I want to see, like, geez, if that Muslim is sad or joyful, right? I mean, I want to share that emotionality and vice versa.
I mean, because this is a human nature thing, and yet we're also understanding it in religious terms. And so I think this is something that could actually deepen and bring about more this beneficial knowledge such that this Christian, Muslim relations scene, rather than, okay, we kind of, you know, meet up at these conferences and, you know, we coexist. But no, I think we need, you know, God. I would say God, Allah is asking for more.
He's asking us to look at one another as part of, you know, I should look at the Muslim, the Muslim should look at me as part of their moral circle, right? Their moral circle, that I'm morally bound up with them.
There was this odd situation in Morocco. I want to say it was 20, 18, 19, a tragic bus crash in the south of Morocco, and students, about 30, 40 students who were killed, just awful. And I posted on my social media how sorrowful I was at this and that this really. I mean, it's just one of those moments, you know, God, how could you do this? And we're just, you know, I mean, it's getting into anger too. We haven't talked about that emotion. We might not have time. Readers can look at the. Or the audience can look at that part of the article. But when I posted that, Muslim friends were just amazed that I would share their sorrow as a Christian, you know, And I'm like, yeah, I mean, this is what it means if these things are part of religion too.
They should really bind us deeply in this moral sense with all fellow humans, because it's coming out of that human nature. Right. That fitra.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Okay. That's amazing. And I love that point about the connection because I feel that too, when you. Sometimes we go into interfaith or interreligious dialogue, it goes straight to the theology about Jesus, the prophet or son of God. And, and it's hard to sometimes go around that. But connecting on a more emotional level, I think is. Could be a lot more fruitful, as you suggest. And maybe you already alluded to this, but maybe you could speak about joy, especially since we talked about sorrow and weeping. And then maybe we could come to your conclusion, because I think you're making a super important point and you say a key benchmark when it comes to emotions in Islam is righteousness.
So could you maybe talk a little bit about joy since we talked about sadness and sorrow and then really your conclusion about connecting emotions with righteousness?
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that's a, That'll be a nice segue between joy and righteousness. And so to go back to that point of like, how do we know that God is pleased with us? That rada.
And I think you've got a bit of, a bit of a backlash today that over the last several centuries, maybe too much emphasis was placed on sorrow. Excuse me. And so you do have some.
Some scholars who are wanting to kind of remove sorrow, that we should be joyful. And, you know, and so there's a healthy impulse there to kind of maybe rebalance the relationship between sorrow and joy. But I think they're also overlooking some of these scholars today who are wanting to downplay the sorrow and kind of play up the joy that. I mean, classical scholars were talking about joy all over the place. And just one point, Yunus. I mean, the literature on emotions is almost as large or maybe as large as the literature on Sharia.
That's incredible. I mean, that shows that the classical scholars realized that this was as much a part of Islam as the Akam. And of course they were seeing how these things were mixing together. The Akhlaq were never far from the Akam and vice versa. And then the emotions and their relation to ethics. So just wanted to make that side point of the vastness of this literature and classical Islam across these emotions. So, yeah, so joy, there was always this debate because like the Quran says, calls people to be, you know, to have joy in God's grace and mercy, FADL and rahmah. But these are often like, well, that's Like, I only can really know that, you know, when I'm in paradise, I can only know that God is pleased with me when I get into Jannah. And until then, I'm not certain.
The key thing here is the idea of al Farah birida Allah, right? So I shouldn't be, you know, gloating pridefully, joyfully about my worldly possessions right now. You know, as we'll see in a moment, Muslims weren't like, saying, you, you know, can't enjoy life in the world.
But yeah, there was like, again, what's the spirit or ethical tone in the joy? Is it pride you're joyfully proud about? You know, I can, you know, throw a big banquet and, you know, invite the whole neighborhood and look at how great I am.
And so, yeah, this stuff in the Quran about Farah really led Muslims over the centuries to think, okay, how can we know we're doing Farah correctly? And again, there was diversity. So some of them, you know, I know that I'm taking joy. My joy is in the joy of God's favor when I really reject this world, right? This is Farah az zuhud, Farah azuhud. So it's the joy of being ascetical or renouncing the world, feeling free of the world. And. And that's like a, you could say a realized eschatological joy that I'm getting a taste of the joy to come, that joy that I feel at rejecting the Dunya because it's a joy that's showing. I'm really oriented to the Akhirah right now. For a lot of people, they weren't satisfied with that. That just seems a little.
I want to enjoy life, you know.
So another thing was Farah al Wasal, the idea that in my nightly prayers, right? I mean, the Quran refers to the people of the evening, Ahlulelah. And you find that in certain literature that people who are up at night in this kind of intimacy with God, the najwa ummunajat and then the uns, the intimacy with God that they have this Farah al wasaal, this joy of feeling connected to God, right? And so they're also doing that realized eschatological. You know, I don't have to wait until I get admitted to Jannah to take joy in God's rida. You know, this is. This is how do we know joy? How do we know God's ridda now and take joy in it now, right? And not just like, okay, we just gotta shut down and wait till I Get to Jannah, right? And then another one would be Farah al Ihsan, the joy in doing charitable works for others. There's just some wonderful reports that talk about, you know, a guy who's going to go on pilgrimage and spend a lot of money, and then the local righteous guy says to him, you want a better way to get. To get to righteousness. And, like, because you could do the pilgrimage, but maybe you're doing it for yourself, you know, and maybe it won't really give you that righteousness. You want a better way. Take that money that you're going to spend on pilgrimage and give it to the orphans, you know, and the caretakers of the orphans. And that's going to be a guarantee of bir and God's rida. That's going to be a guarantee that you have that righteousness that God is pleased with. And then you can take joy in it. And then the proof of it, this report says the proof that this is Allah is because it gives joy to the orphans. Right? And this is recalling a hadith, you know, Min Adam al Amal Idkhaal Suroor al Mu'. Min, Right?
The greatest of works is to bring happiness to others. Right.
And, you know, so that's the Farah al Ihsan, but then you also have Farah of.
It's when you're in a community that's free of evil, Right. So, you know, as the centuries went by and, you know, Muslims are like, you know, the world is the world, the Dunya. And so they would form these communities, these pious communities. And. And like, when we're together in the community, we can live the Husson al Akhlaq, the noble character, Right. It's tough to live that in the world. Maybe in the world I can, you know, stick to what I have to stick to the. But it's just tough to live out that noble character in the world. And so I kind of need training in my pious community.
And. Yeah, so you could do anything. It could be. You have people saying, I feel joy when I write letters to my brethren in the community or when I. When we have a meal together, it's doing all these things that we do in the world, very worldly things, you know, correspondence with friends and a meal. But when we do it with Husson al Akhlaq, when we do it, and the power of evil no longer has hold over us in any way.
And that's great joy. And so we know, because we know that God will be pleased with that.
So, yeah, that kind of all ties into the righteousness is. Is, you know, I mean, it's about righteousness is about, you know, a lot of ways to think about it. But it's about what attracts divine favor or what causes divine favor.
And certainly the Akam are important and, you know, Bir al Walidayn, you know, the kind of honoring the parents and all of these things.
But this emotional world also is helping Muslims understand their emotionality and the ethics that are connected to it in different ways, very, you know, very diverse ways, but in a way that's really helping them see that, yes, God is pleased here, God is pleased with us and with me. And it doesn't mean it's, you know, end of story. Right. Some Christians say once saved, always saved. And, you know, you might get a little bit of that in some kinds of Islam where people think, now I'm beyond Sharia or something like that. But in general, no, it's a journey until, you know, until the grave. But at least it's helping Muslims. That joy, if it's really the joy of Islam, it's the joy of knowing God's pleasure in me, in us, God's favor. But that means we're righteous.
And so, I mean, Muslims have had wonderful reflections on the causality of righteous. And with this article, the whole ethical stuff, I mean, yeah, I mean, the end goal of ethics in Islam is righteousness. And so I just wanna, in this article, you know, put the spotlight on how emotions are part of Muslims understanding their growth in righteousness and, and their appreciation of how God looks at them favorably.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: All right, excellent. This has been remarkable and so many fruitful in so many different ways. And I think you've spoken to this already. And to conclude, what are the implications of all this? And I think the example that you gave of you expressing sorrow and that bus accident in Morocco and there's so many examples like that all over the world. But.
Yeah. What are some other specific ways that your work is advancing Islamic studies, Christian Muslim relations, interreligious studies, pluralism, as you talked about, Is there anything else you'd like to share and anything specifically you're working on right now?
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Right, yeah, I mean, just the things that you mentioned, trying to enrich, advance the study of Islam, especially methodologically.
We still get that Orientalist heritage and it's not a bad heritage. Some people really knock it and a lot of good things happen, but we need to also move forward.
So from that perspective, trying to move the field forward methodologically in particular. And yeah, in terms of Christian Muslim relations or I hope. I mean, the article and previous article on tears that came out, the ethics of weeping in Islam. I hope those are useful for Muslims to take to their relations with other religious traditions, not just Christianity, because they're focused on Islam. But, yeah, I mean, the bottom line here is I think this will help us see that we're not moral strangers, that we're not moral. We're not religious strangers.
If we include human nature, emotions, we're not moral strangers. And that's really important these days.
Yeah. What I'm working on, I'm going back to one figure in the 9th century, Jahid.
I looked at him a lot in grad school. I think when you get to my point in your career, you start to, like, think, wow, I studied that guy really thoroughly in grad school, but actually I didn't know him too well. So I've got a little project on Jahid, who was kind of not a fan of emotions.
He was more about, you know, rationalist theology. But he was very, you know, a seminal figure in the civilization of Islam. And so I'm doing that.
But, yeah, I've got a book coming out on Christian Muslim relations.
It's in Arabic, so maybe you or someone else would like to translate it into English. Sometimes my books, you know, they're in English, and then they'll get translated into some other language. This one's in Arabic.
Al Haqa Akar Rabbaniyya Fil Al Aqat Al Masahiya Wal Islamiyah. The.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: The.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: I don't know the divine truths or divine realities in Christian Muslim relations. And yeah, there's a whole chapter there on Farah, but it's not about emotions. It's about a lot of other things. But there is one chapter on joy.
Yeah. And then also, I mean, atheism. I've got a project I'm working, so I'm kind of, you know, again, at this point in my career, sometimes you move beyond your specialization. And I've been teaching this course and I feel maybe I have something to say at the initial stage, and maybe it'll be an article. I don't know. We'll see. But I'd like it to be a book because this is another thing. In America, it was such a politically divisive moment. And religion is often. It's often like religion versus non religion or religion versus atheists, or people who want religion in the public sphere and people who want it out. And I think there's a lot more to that story.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: All right, excellent. I look forward to looking at that more closely. So, Paul Heck, thanks so much for being on the show.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: My pleasure as always. Thank you, Yunus.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: And that was my interview with Paul Heck. So many things stood out to me in that interview. First, the idea of, or when you sit down and talk with Paul, you see that his understanding of Islam is not simply talking textual or historical, but it develops out of real contact and relationships with Muslims. This is something I noticed when I traveled with him and also attended many of his lectures and programs. That he wants a genuine relationship with people and that relationship is built on emotions. He tells that tragic story of school children who died in Morocco and how he made that post on social media that attracted someone to attention. He wants to connect with people beyond that of texts and theology, but also that of sadness and loss. Secondly, this relationship with people, with real life Muslims, have led him to explore emotions. And in his article he speaks about so many different emotions from the idea of sorrow to grief to joy. And this is really foundational and even transformative because many times when people look at Muslims, they see them as rule based or only focusing on doctrine. They don't necessarily see them as real people in terms of having their own hopes and fears. If you read any novel or watch any film, the protagonist is someone you can identify with. They have certain insecurities, they have certain challenges, and they also have certain hopes for the future that the audience and reader can identify with. With Paul's work, we see that we can connect with Muslims as well as Christians and people of all faiths on a more human level. Of the various emotions that we feel. This is really revolutionary in terms of inter religious and interfaith dialogue. Oftentimes in those settings we sit down and we talk about scripture and theology and there's always an impasse that's reached that we cannot necessarily connect on certain doctrines or creeds. However, as he mentions, the idea of interreligious dialogue, or dialogue in general, has a new horizon if it's connected to the idea of emotions. All of us have felt the different range of emotions from that of fear to joy to sadness.
And lastly, his point about emotion is connected to the overall goal of Muslims becoming righteous. I agree with his central thesis that oftentimes in Islamic studies, emotions is connected to the idea of conformity, of trying to be similar to the larger group and getting in line. However, as Paul describes, emotions, yes, is connected to the Ummah and the larger community was also connected to becoming close to God.
Many of the prophetic figures in the Quran, they speak about their fears and and God emerges and reassures them that he's there and will be with them. And this idea of becoming a righteous and moral and ethical individual is central to the Islamic message, and any discussion on emotions should be connected to that goal as well.
Thank you for listening to the Islamic Mary and a Common Word Podcast. I would encourage you to order my book the Islamic Mary, which has been out for a couple months, has gained a large readership and I had several people reach out to me that they've included it in their course curriculums as well as book clubs and discussions. I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. We see a increased listenership across the various platforms. I encourage your friends, students and colleagues to listen to this podcast. Some of my professor friends have reached out and said they're including it as part of part of assignments. Students like a variety of different readings and things to listen to. Also, we're over 10 episodes of the Common Word podcast and almost 100 episodes of the Islamic Mary Podcast. You can go through that library and see interviews, monologues, chronic commentary, as well as discussions regarding Quranic and Biblical figures. You can review this podcast. Reviewing this podcast encourages other people to listen to it. It helps them find it on their feeds. And you can visit my website and join my newsletter to learn more about the Salamic Mary Book Tour as well as this podcast. Thanks once again and take care.
