Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) On Islam

ReligionAP: Would you define yourself as a Muslim, and if so, what kind of Islam would you say
you practice amongst the multiplicity of different forms?

Interview conducted by the Affinity Project in January 2006; Published in July 2008.

AP = Affinity Project
PLW = Peter Lamborn Wilson

AP: Would you define yourself as a Muslim, and if so, what kind of Islam would you say you
practice amongst the multiplicity of different forms?

PLW: Well, I've been many things in my life and I don't renounce any of them. But I don't
necessarily practice any of them on a daily basis either. I never renounced Christianity or if
I did, I take it back. I've been involved in Tantric things that I guess you could call
Hinduism, although that's a very vague term. I practice Shia Islam. I still consider myself all
those things but, obviously that's a difficult position to take vis-a-vis the orthodox
practitioners of these different faiths. So, if I had to define my position now in terms that
would be historically meaningful in an Islamic context, I would refer to Hazrat Inayat Khan and
his idea of universalism, that all religions are true. And if this involves contradiction, as
Emerson said, OK. We'll just deal with it on a different level. And the inspiration for this in
his case was Indian synchrotism, between Hinduism and Islam especially, although other
religions were involved too such as Christianity, Judaism and others. This happened on both a
non-literate level of the peasantry and still persists to this day on that level, and also
occurred on a very high level of intellectual Sufism which was almost a courtly thing at
certain times, especially under some of the wilder Mughal rulers like Akbar who started Din-i
Ilahi. So these things have precedents within the Islamic traditions, this universalism, this
radical tolerance would be another way of putting it, but nowadays of course it's hard to find
this praxis on the ground. I can't practice some Indian village cult here, that would be a
little--well I sort of do, you know--but actually (laughs), it's highly personal.

AP: Would you say that it's radically tolerant or radically accepting? I would say that there
is a distinction between tolerance and acceptance.

PLW: I know what you're getting at. Tolerance in this sense is a kind of weak position, and
acceptance would be a strong position?

AP: I would say that, for example, I can tolerate homosexuals, Muslim homosexuals, or I can say
well I accept them in the fold of Islam because they define themselves as Muslim.

PLW: Using the term in that sense, what I mean by radical tolerance is what you're calling
acceptance. In other words it's not just ecumenicalism here. It's not a reformist position.
It's a pretty radical position. And it got Hazrat Inayat Khan in a lot of trouble amongst
orthodox Muslims. This movement still suffers from that today. But in India, there is this
tradition of that, it still persists in India more than in other countries where the
fundamentalist/reformist/modernist thing has swept away the so-called medieval creations which
make up all the charm and difference. That's what they hate.

AP: What is it that interested or intrigued you in Islam in particular? And I believe you were
introduced to it in Morocco, was it?

PLW: Well really, in New York. This goes back to the 60s and my involvement in one of the--I
guess you could say--new religions of that era which came out of Moor Science tradition. I
don't know if you've read any of my stuff on this. So already in New York I was taking an
interest in these things.

AP: And why was that?

PLW: Well, because I got contact into that movement and also began to read Al-Ghazali on the
recommendation of some of the people in that movement and we all became very interested in
trying to find out whether there was such a thing as living Sufism. This was the 60s, there was
no 'new-age' there on the ground. None of these people were so visibly active. Anyway, we
didn't find them. So that was one of my reasons for going to the East.

Keep reading at http://affinityproject.org/interviews/plw1.html
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:33:12 -0500 author: Ramabriga