Haz: Was Marx a Muslim? Islam and Dialectical Materialism (PART 1) - Infrared Show Clip 🚀 Infrared Content Catalog

yo what up

hello hello can you hear me yeah hey

what's up are you like a believing

muslim

um

this is a hard question to answer uh

let's just say i've

regained a and developed a special

relation to islam that's so much so that

i can't say i'm just an atheist i see

i i do identify as a muslim yeah

fundamentally i do i do but in terms of

being a good muslim who follows the

precepts of the religion in an orthodox

way uh no obviously not but i do i do

would identify as a muslim yeah 100

yeah but like in not any dogmatic or

binding way i'm assuming

no but in a deep spiritual literary

artistic aesthetic and cultural sense

i'm fundamentally a muslim yeah because

so the contention that i was thinking

about was you know beca if you think

about it

islam and then you have the other

abrahamic confessions

they sort of

contradict dialectical material

and i was trying to think about it

what i would have to say to that is that

i'll tell you what i embarked were you

able to hear me this whole time in case

it cuts out yes yes

i'll tell you why i came to appreciate

islam again personally speaking right

um obviously my muslim background is a

huge factor so i can't discount that and

say that it's just

completely um i wanted to

reevaluate and study marx's views on

religion which were so important for the

development of marxism uh the context of

the young hegelian uh rejection of

religion in general right

and to me

what became very obvious to me was

speaking about the whole thrust of

marx's humanism in general

and the development of dialectical

materialism as such was that

at the time within 19th century europe

because of the peculiar development of

western christianity

as well as the development of european

culture

there came to be this association

between

christianity and this kind of

spirit so christianity was associated

with

the um

sphere of thought philosophy statehood

and spirituality and you know higher

things

and that was contrasted to the secular

and material world which was associated

with judaism and jewish people because

in the old testament is when god creates

the world so he goes about the muddy

business of

you know making the dirt and the world

and the earth and forming it

uh and he's you know and then later on

with with christianity marx calls it the

sublime thought of judaism right it

becomes uh

spiritual and for marx these are

different forms of the estrangement of

one humanity so remarks basically he's

saying humanity is uh

isolating the material aspect of itself

and divorcing itself from itself on the

other hand it's isolating the spiritual

aspect of itself in the form of religion

and also isolating itself from itself so

then we get to a paradox when marx

writes about the jewish question and

when marx writes about the jewish

question why it is that in europe there

is a jewish question in europe at the

united states europe like

after we're secularizing and we're you

know we're christians dealing with a

christian sorry we're secular

progressives

dealing with this christian state

what about jewish people like what is

their stat like jewish people for

example don't have any

religious rights recognized

and the state is inherently christian

and marx is responding to a guy

his name is

i can't believe i forgot this bruno barr

so please yeah sorry guys take points

away from me if i forgot this

if i got that wrong bruno barr

he's responding to him because bruno

barr is basically saying why are jews

protesting against a christian state

when even we atheist progressive

whatever people

even we don't have rights in this

christian state

what you know why are

like what is this peculiar thing about

them that makes them so

you know different and and so special or

whatever right i guess that was kind of

the idea

so when marx is responding to this

marx basically comes to the conclusion

that

and he basically foresees european he

basically like

anticipates european anti-semitism and

all this kind of stuff basically says

that

in marx's view i don't think it's

necessarily correct right i've talked to

jewish religious people as well who

don't agree with marx here but

he's speaking something true for his

time right which is not so much about

the jewish religion or jewish people but

about the development of his own

philosophy

and

for him the christian state

on the one hand

um

because it has a worldly incarnation is

inherently hypocritical right it

pretends to be spiritual and religious

and fundamentally

you know about religion but on the other

hand it has to concern itself with the

material realities of statehood thereby

defaming both

desecrating both this function of

statehood and christianity

yeah as a religion

said

it profanes both basically right the

christian state profanes both this is

marx's view

and then he says um

in the case of um

the jewish people i'm sorry i didn't

really remember the whole

text in order but

he's actually saying that

judaism is targeted or has a special

condition because it is the religion of

material humanity it's the religion of

real humanity not imagined humanity but

the real state of humanity here and now

all of the anti-semitic tropes

associated with jewish people like

huckstering and

you know

being merchants who are greedy and

doing everything for money

he's saying this is what our world today

is about

right where the christian state is

hypocritical

this is just honesty

it's marx's view obviously there's like

a kind of anti-semitic

problematic whatever association but

the fundamental point

is that in marx's understanding of

religion

he sees it as the contradiction

between the spiritual and the temporal

the world the heavenly

and the secular

uh the head and the body and the spirit

and the matter right

yeah

so if box was a materialist does that

mean he goes about by saying okay uh

let's just reject all the spirituality

and reject all of uh

the holy aspect

and just go to the material because

that's the only thing that's real

well no because for marx

that would be defaulting into what you

would call vulgar french materialism

right

yes which is precisely not the

dialectical materialism it was the

one-sided french materialism

which rejected rejected that matter so

to speak

was internally inconsistent and was

contradictory so dialectical materialism

was basically mark saying

was marx basically trying to uh

sublate this contradiction between

judaism

and christianity or between religion and

the secular world in a sense or between

hegel's idealism and french materialism

what do you want to call it by basically

saying that

there is something about matter itself

that gives rise to

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uh spirit and reflection and all this

kind of things right this is a these

themselves attest to some deeper truth

at the heart of material being itself

which marx identifies as humanity

as humanity and self

now to me what was so peculiar about

this is on the one hand it's not

uh

it's it's neither christianity nor

judaism basically right and as i

continue to study

uh islam while reevaluating this uh

newfound understanding of marx

what if marx was just converting to

islam basically right

because this is the islamic view the

islamic view is

one of dialectical materialism more or

less the islamic view is that matter

they and and you can

replace matter with the word essence

because they mean the same thing

the essence or what they call divinity

god is neither heaven nor earth so to

speak um

sorry yeah

or not or let's say the human being

cannot only focus on heaven or earth the

human being is some kind of dialectical

unity of both from the islamic

perspective right and the essence this

is what i wanted to get to the essence

of humanity is the divine creation right

it comes from

the divine that's the essence of

humanity

well if for marx

for mars what is the essence of humanity

right because marx talks about humanity

as the essence of uh man right but what

actually is that well this is where

things can get open-ended if you have a

non-dogmatic view

when marx says man is the highest

essence for man

we have to ask

what is man is marx ray is marx creating

a statue of man and saying let's worship

that statue no because marx himself is

says we cannot prescribe

a predefined form to man because man is

something we must

discover in the form of our devotion

and our duty to uh

mankind and marx's famous word uh famous

maxim is work for humanity

that's what for marx it means to be a

human being work for humanity

to me

if we ask the question what really is

the essence you can easily translate

and expound this into the language of

religion particularly for me personally

the muslim religion such that uh the

real essence of man is

sorry this is not a good way to put it

um the real

metaphysical i would i suppose i would

say essence of man

somehow comes

from the divine or is divine maybe

yeah and well that's really interesting

uh so in that sense god does not refer

to some kind of snapshot of the human

mind

or snapshot of humanity it's just a word

we described to refer to this kind of

fundamental metaphysical essence i guess

i would say

yeah no but i would like a point of the

metaphysical absolute

yeah

well actually um

that's very interesting because you were

saying that he was trying to sublate

these uh

he was trying to play judaism in

christianity and you're saying that at

this site of reconciling we can discover

islam i'm very interested in this

because you can uh also think about

think about gnosticism

gnosticism also

takes this um divine essence

and uh you know

sort of compresses it into this

general broad term of the human right so

and islam if you if you didn't know

islam was very influenced by gnostic

gospels and gnostic texts a lot more

than the dogmatic christian orthodox

church

now

there's there's one point to be made

which i think there's some sort of

conflict between marx and islam

uh

i think the ultimate conflict is

marx

reduces this essence

to the entirely human level while islam

uh

at least

at least to a point of um

i mean it's not exactly idealism it's

not exactly idealism but it sort of

conceptualizes this divine as in essence

that um

it has ontological priority yeah yeah

upon man and i and i was thinking well

how

how could you reconcile you know these

two

for me the key lies in what is man if

marx is

ascribing the essence the highest

essence for man is man the question then

is begged of what is man

and for marx man is the way in which man

works for

humanity the way in which man lives the

way in which man

reproduces himself the way in which man

and reproduces himself doesn't only mean

in some one-sided vulgar sense in the

entirety of the world of man the

entirety of his way of uh attending to

his own existence and reproducing

himself

to me

the ontological implications of that

have are remain open right uh if man is

the highest essence

of man

and if we are not ascribing man with

predetermined and predefined qualities

all we are really saying is that uh it

is in some more fundamental devotion

that we acquire our humanity

specifically in the devotion to your

fellow man

right

but yeah to really be devoted to your

fellow man

um without regressing into some kind of

perversion necessarily requires

uh you to have an open-minded open-ended

sense of what man is what is the essence

of man himself

and where does that come from and what

does that mean

and what is its real being right what is

its being what is the ontological

implication so to speak to me i think

divinity has a place here like for

example i think the islamic view

is that it is in our duty to our fellow

man it is in what we do in this world

that we manifest our devotion for

example to god

yes our reverence and our worship and

our

and we do take time set outside of the

daily business of attending to this

world

to devote strictly to god in the form of

prayer and in the form of

the religious prescriptions and duties

but to me what if this

these merely our ways of attending to

the excess that inevitably arises in

this world of humanity that demands us

to

reflect upon and recall our our own um

basically meaning so to speak right

like

the way in which

i guess the way in which it requires us

to recall upon this kind of in

infinity of our past infinity of our

origins and infinity of our

being in a sense right how do we attend

to the question of our being our own

being like what actually are we where do

we come from and so on and by the way

but in religion when you look at it it's

actually not a

an idealist answer the answer is not uh

we should tend to these higher platonic

four

that's actually a perversion i agree

with you actually i would go so far as

to say and this has actually been my

thesis the whole time

marx has not attacked religion

he has attacked philosophy

yeah we must draw the distinction

between religion and philosophy because

religion is a more fundamental feeling

it's a more fundamental way of worship

it's a way of

relating to the divine whereas

philosophy is the is the uh expounding

of this way into consciousness

right so when you reduce this to the way

in which it is expounded into

consciousness you're

you're uh abstracting from the vital

essence of religion

and you're turning it into a dead idol a

dead form in a way

yeah no i mean if you look at for

example let's talk about early christian

tradition that was not at its heart an

idealist motion you weren't

contemplating the form of christ in the

early traditions it was all about a

communal first of all it was communal

right it was a communal relationship

between these small christian

communities but there's a more important

point to be made

when christ the incarnation of god the

incarnation of god upon that dies upon

the cross

i think for the early christians it's

not a matter of this ideal

point of sacrifice has been you know

released onto the world but rather

the the

suffering of material subsistence and

the divine essence have sublated in this

moment of pure sacr in this moment of

pure suffering in this

you know and you know to me

it seems vulgar to equate the material

with the divine which is my basic view

materiality must be understood as

divinity

but here's what i why i say this what

does material mean

the material is ultimately about the

real the essence

right that's what the material the

content the real content the real

essence the real reality basically

behind the form the form is ephemeral

it's the form is temporal

the form is what is transient it's the

essence that is the real thing behind

this right material is the same thing as

essence now what has happened in the

history of western philosophy is that

the material has been confused with the

substance

now the word substance

in western philosophy it comes from

spinoza the philosopher's spinoza or

spinoza

the substance is a materiality already

latent with a form so this is what most

people mean by material when many

religious scholars and religious

thinkers say

the material world they mean the

substance substantial world because by

material they are not referring to like

these kind of they're real right they're

not referring to this kind of mystical

real and whatever they're referring to a

material always already and

undialectically

latent with form or

uh given with form they're referring to

a material already given form

but material is really material it is

really the materiality of form right

it's not a form itself it's

the material of the form when you're

referring to something material you're

not referring to like some ultimate form

or ultimate substance you're referring

to something that is necessarily

indescribable on the terms of form

that's why it's material so to me that's

really the same as divinity in a sense

i think even in the uh islamic

especially even in the islamic sense of

divinity for because in islam very

specifically is uh the monotheism

according to which

the

so to me the beauty of islam to me this

is really why i'm a muslim

and i think ali i think at least i think

this is why i'm a muslim maybe it's just

because my background and i have that

bias but this is really what reminds me

of why i'm a muslim

to me at the same time that islam

rejects any

description

of

absolute uh

supremacy of any kind of form in the

form of an idol or a depiction of god or

anything like that islam still retains

this view in contrast to the extent of

my knowledge i could be wrong in

contrast to judaism

according to which this world and all of

the beauty of this world and all of the

forms within this world

don't exist are the very manifestations

in a way

of the divine in the form of creation

like this is where we

possess some kind of connection this is

what reminds us of the divine this is

where we possess some kind of connection

and almost like in a sense divinity

flourishes through the form while at the

same time

being irreducible to it you're saying

that's pertaining to the form to the

various forms right of the natural forms

or even the human forms like

these things remind us of the uh what

would be the correct word

the grace and the

sublimity of god basically mercy that's

the only good word yeah i mean um

to me other religions still retain a

distinction between

like god is necessarily withdrawn from

the world

and more or less after he's done

creating the world he's just kind of

indifferent to it right and he's not

really like in this world with us

in any kind of way

and that's i'm that's not to say he's in

the world which would be like a

heretical false statement but

we relate to god through the world

is my understanding of the islamic view

are you familiar with the 99 names of

allah yeah yeah of course

so okay so

you just said uh you just

raised a very interesting point because

when the scholars

spoke of the 99 names

they came to this

they came to this um

uh die you could say almost a

dialectical conflict where they where

the description of god's nature

was directly

present

in the world and so

the scholars said well wait a second god

is not in the world how does his nature

exist

in this world

well the response after a lot of you

know deliberation was that

well actually

the it's not that god's nature is in

this world but the form of god's nature

exists within this world

owned only to

in a way

qualify the divine the form of god's

nature exists in this world what

corresponds right precisely it's precise

and the 99 names are one of the biggest

reasons i even brought up the example

because it's one of the best

examples of what i'm trying to talk

about the french thinker jacques lacroix

he had a word for this that would make

sense to americans basically right it's

called the non-all

and it's coming from marx by the way a

dialectical view the non-all basically

is

it's not a part of it but it's all of it

at the same time

yeah i like no no i love lakan and i

really like that idea of lacan um

to me the islamic god is in a sense not

all in that sense

yeah he is he is in a sense not all

because the 99 names though they do not

possess the fullness

actually they somehow correspond

entirely to god yes precisely precisely

that we muslims do not say there's a

secret form

that you know a secret name that's out

there that we just don't know

yeah the reason we have to say there's

99 of them is because

when you you can name

when you name god you are doing so

within this world

and thereby god is acquiring

the form of god is acquiring an

existence in this world yeah and these

forms are infinite yeah exactly

it's demonstrating the relationship the

dialectical even dialectical materialist

relationship between content and form

what is the essential conflict in the

dialect the essential conflict in the

dialectic

is we have these these dual opposing

contradictory

objects right

and then but the the contradiction is is

in a sense the thing

yeah

yeah yeah

you know so this is why also and this is

also another sense in which for me my

being a muslim is uh an indispensable

part of being a marxist letter is

without islam my marxism leninism

has no object right

it's because to me it's very clear to me

that when i through the past few years

have made these connections and

discovered these things it became clear

that we live in a pre-muslim world

in a sense like our world has not yet

drawn out to the consequences islam has

for humanity or modern tries to say for

modernity i should say

and it has changed my perspective on

modernity as a whole and islam's place

within it to me

it's a matter of a kind of lost

modernity and a lost enlightenment which

again began with my investigation on

marx's jewish question his work the

jewish question as i was looking for

answers to understand islam from a

marxist perspective and to me uh

both

the west as well as the muslim world at

large

have not awakened to this kind of new

religious era of islam