Waarin ik mezelf geen boeddhist meer noem De historische relatie tussen boeddhisme en islam; vooral die in Azië maar ook voor hier van belang. En een soort artikel over soefi

Ik ben geen boeddhist (meer)

Vijftien jaar geleden heb ik 'toevlucht' genomen tot de Boeddha, de Dhamma en de Sangha. En met trots noemde ik mezelf 'boeddhist ', na jaren lang me tot de identiteit 'agnost ' te hebben beperkt. Het laatste jaar werd het 'atheïstisch boeddhist', als variant op Stephen Batchelor's 'secular buddhist ', geïnspireerd door het concept 'dual belonging ' (tot meer dan één religie behoren).
Hoewel ik nog steeds in dukkha, anicca en anatta geloof (= denk dat het waarheden zijn), vind ik het te weinig om daar een hele religie aan te hangen. Ik ben gewoon weer een ongelovige.

Maar ik blijf nog wel over het boeddhisme schrijven: de beste van alle onmogelijke religies.

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De BUN heeft niets van zich laten horen

M'n vorige blog bevatte een open brief aan het BUN-bestuur met het voorstel publiekelijk van zich te laten horen in de discussie over het populisme en de islam.
Dat hebben ze dus niet gedaan.
Afin, de verkiezingen zijn voorbij en de discussie gaat een nieuwe fase in, het populisme is niet weg en de islam nog minder.

[Zeer recent, nog geen uur geleden, heeft Leon Roijen een uitgebreide reactie geschreven op deze blogtekst. Dat moet ik nog rustig lezen, t.z.t. schrijf ik een commentaar er op.
Update 20 maart :
Een reactie geplaatst. ]

Los van de actualiteit ga ik verder me te verdiepen in de (spirituele) islam en in de relatie boeddhisme-islam.
Bijna alle literatuur hierover is Engelstalig; ik ga m'n citaten hier niet vertalen. M'n rechtvaardiging hiervoor: dit is voor de elite.

Trouwens: wie er ook steeds irrelevanter wordt, dat is het BoeddhistischDagblad. Er gebeurt al zo weinig in boeddhistisch Nederland, en dat weinige nieuws pikt het BD niet op. Deze bijvoorbeeld over Dhammakaya Nederland . Behalve als het uit Tibet of uit kippenhokken komt.
Begrijpelijk dat Paul van Buuren is gestopt.
En nog eenpijnlijk dingetje: de website van 'Vrienden van het Boeddhisme' noemt het BoeddhistischDagblad 'bevriend', terwijl VvB-secretaris Kees Moerbeek (in een verwijderde reactie) gemeld heeft niet meer in het BD te willen schrijven.

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Waar raken boeddhisme en islam elkaar?

Deze titel is al meteen dubbelzinnig: alsof het om een gevecht gaat.
Maar tegelijk is het een geografische vraagstelling: in welke landen komen beide voor en hoe is daar hun wisselwerking.
In Azië wel te verstaan; over de situatie in Nederland heb ik niets interessants te melden wat betreft de relatie islam-boeddhisme.
Maar tegelijk is dit artikel relevant voor Nederland: de islam zit - bij velen in de verdomhoek; hetzij door het gedrag van sommige moslims hetzij door de vrouw- en homo-vijandige (en andere) opvattingen van de religie zelf. Tegelijk zijn de meeste moslims hier net zulke tobbers als de meeste inwoners van Nederland. Ook mensen met onbegrijpelijke opvattingen verdienen de compassie van de boeddhist, toch?

Literatuur

Het meeste over de relatie is geschreven door moslims, boeddhisten lijken nogal onverschillig.
Eén boeddhistische auteur - en een vooraanstaande, gespreksgenoot van de dalai lama - is Alexander Berzin; van hem heb ik een aantal teksten geciteerd in mijn blog uit 2015
Een ander artikel is opgenomen in de bundel 'Islam and Buddhism Relations from Balkh to Bangkok and Tokyo ' Bron: Special Issue on Islam and Buddhism
Namelijk het hoofdstuk 'Historical Survey of the Buddhist and Muslim Worlds’ Knowledge of Each Other’s Customs and Teachings '
Hier wil ik van twee andere artikelen de samenvatting opnemen.

Islam and Buddhism door Imtiyaz Yusuf

"ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Islam's view of Buddhism as a non-theistic tradition, the history of relations between these two traditions, themes and issues in Muslim-Buddhist dialogue, and the implications of such dialogue for the contemporary religious scene. While Muslims and Buddhists have coexisted in different parts of the world, their exchange has been largely political, military and economic, instead of doctrinal, and only a few scholars have studied the relations between the two traditions in any detail. The contemporary dialogue between Buddhism and Islam takes many forms. Some converts to Buddhism attempt to overcome the ethnic divides between Buddhists and Muslims and attempt to engage in a purely spiritual dialogue, leaving aside the historical and political relations between the two traditions. The history and state of Islam-Buddhism relations and dialogues is subject to different factors of doctrinal, ethnic and political nature."

'Muslim-Buddhist Relations Caught between Nalanda and Pattani ' uit januari 2015

"CONCLUSION
  'There will be no peace among the nations without peace among religions.‛   Hans Kung

The issues of Nalanda and Pattani affecting Buddhist-Muslim relations need to be approached, analysed and understood historically and critically and not disinformation using theology/ doctrine, ethnography or terrorism perspectives. It leads to misunderstanding, breeds conflict, obstructing coexistence as multi-cultural citizens in modern states. Same is true about the Bamiyan Buddha episode.
The rise of Asia and amidst existence of mutual ignorance between contemporary Muslims and Buddhists there is an urgent need for initiation of Muslim-Buddhist understanding and dialogue. It is time to move away from Buddhist-Muslim dialogue of ignorance by building Muslim-Buddhist understanding and dialogue which helps transcend local, regional and international tensions between these two majority ASEAN religious communities. The ASEAN Muslims who have been living along with the Buddhists for centuries need to take this initiative on their own and not wait for lead from their Middle Eastern religious co-brothers for the latter have no historical or religious experience of engaging with Buddhism at religious, social, cultural and even political levels. It is only a tourist attraction for them. Otherwise, the ASEAN Muslims will soon face the rise of Islamophobia with an Asian face from Yangon to Tokyo or may be it is already here. Engagement in ASEAN Muslim-Buddhist dialogue will contribute to building peace and resolving Buddhist-Muslim ethno-religious conflicts. It will aid in the construction of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (see Asean 2014) which is an integral part of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) (Yusuf 2014). Or both the communities will continue existing in the dialogue of misunderstanding and mutual ignorance which is detrimental to their own survival.
Today, no religion is an island and dialogue not exclusivism is the way to the present and future interconnected, interlinked virtual world. For the teachings of compassion, mercy and love lie at the heart of all religions. "

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Nog wat anders, een artikel dat ik de titel zou kunnen geven van:

Is Rumi echt zo schattig (zo niet-moslim) als boeddhisten denken dat hij is ?

In m'n blog over boeddhisme en islam uit juli 2015 schreef ik: "Er zijn vormen van Islam beoefenen die veel makkelijker (hoogstens op een andere manier moeilijk) zijn voor een boeddhist als ik. Bijvoorbeeld de Soefi. ..."
Zonder het te weten, deed ik daarbij mee aan een eeuwenoud misverstand. In tegenstelling tot wat veel westerlingen (liefhebbers van de poëzie van Rumi bv) denken, is er helemaal geen scherpe tegenstelling tussen de orthodoxe islam en het soefisme, die twee zijn met elkaar verbonden.

Verhelderend was voor mij het artikel van G. A. Lipton , 'Secular Sufism: Neoliberalism, Ethnoracism,and the Reformation of the Muslim Other '.   Bron: Lipton
Alleen de titel al, laat de elementen daarvan even tot u doordringen: (2) neoliberalisme;(3)ethnoracism; (4) de Moslim-andere; en daaraan vooraf: (1) Seculier Soefimse, dat moet de Batchelor-fan extra aanspreken. (spoiler-alert: het soefisme is helemaal niet seculier).
Bijna onmerkbaar want in heel rustige wetenschappelijke taal maakt Lipton hierin heel harde opmerkingen. Een paar daarvan:
"Yet since 9/11, America has been undergoing a full-scale revival of outdated
Orientalist tropes that equate Sufism with a universal faith resembling a Kantian or
philosophical Protestantism, thus separating it from its historical interconnection with
Islamic normative practice. As Russell McCutcheon observers, current US neoliberal
discourse positions a so-called “contemplative, compliant mystic” against a “fanatical
Islamist.”McCutcheon further argues that such discourse functions in order to produce an “Americanized” or “compliant Islam” that is “open not only to the values of modern, free market investment, private ownership, and liberal democracy, but, more specifically, open to the US’s unrivaled power to have its national interests direct the course of  'global events.' Indeed, Dalrymple’s closing statement in his Op-Ed piece on Park51 is just one of many examples. He states: '[T]he West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists.' In order to bolster this assertion, Dalrymple makes recourse to one of many post-9/11 foreign policy reports promoting Sufism as a potential ideological ally to American strategic interests.
The conference report entitled “Understanding Sufism and its Potential Role in US
Policy” encapsulates such discourse nicely. Published in 2004 by the conservative think tank the Nixon Center, the report repeatedly asserts that the problem with Islam today is reducible to a battle between tolerant Sufis and intolerant fanatics. It tellingly describes this battle as a “struggle for the very soul of Islam” between “syncretism” and “fundamentalism.” Setting aside the irony that the category of “syncretism” has been commonly employed derogatorily by Orientalists, the circularity of the dyadic logic here holds that Sufism is tolerant because it is based on sources other than Islam, while Islam is intolerant because Islamic. The Nixon Center report thus attempts to divorce Su¯fi piety from Islamic normativity, asserting that “Scholars of Islamic law demanded that Sufis follow shariah, but many Sufis saw the code as nonessential, choosing instead to use the rational capabilities which they believed the Qur’a¯n advocated.” " (p 432/433)
...
"In a similar vein, the neoconservative RAND Corporation think tank has published three separate reports since 2003 all dealing with strategies that its initial report refers to as 'religion building' through “assisting constructively in Islam’s process of evolution.' Here, the report declares that in order for such 'evolution' to occur, Muslims must “depart from, modify, and selectively ignore elements of original religious doctrine.' Saba Mahmood describes RAND’s self-proclaimed evolutionary assistance as a type of proselytizing “secular theology” that seeks 'not the dissolution of religion but its rearrangement [. . .].' As in the Nixon Report, Sufism plays an important part in the religion building strategy of RAND, which encourages promoting the “popularity and acceptance of Sufism” by propagating 'Su¯fi influence over school curricula, norms, and cultural life.” Collectively, the RAND reports endorse Sufism as an alternative ideology that supports 'moderation and toleration, along with opposition to political activism [. . .].' Indeed, RAND’s advocacy of such politically 'compliant mysticism' seeks to produce what Mahmood refers to as an “enlightened religious subject' who is an “autonomous individual believer' — a believer 'who owes his allegiance to the sovereign rule of the state rather than structures of traditional authority.' " (p 434/435)
...
"The most comprehensive iteration of secular Su¯fi discourse to date, however, has
been fashioned by the self-identified neoconservative, Sufi-Muslim author and journalist Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz’s work is frequently cited by RAND in order to showcase a so-called “European Islam” that is favorably attuned to Western neoliberalism.
Schwartz’s most recent book, tellingly entitled The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, fully develops the idea of Sufism as a West-friendly, European Islam that is notable for its rejection of Islamic norms and its proximity to Christianity.
In The Other Islam, Schwartz uncritically adopts a nineteenth-century Orientalist
historiographical position that understands Sufism as an Islamic appropriation of
Christian mystical and monastic traditions. Indeed, he cryptically refers to such a 'view of the historical relations between Islam and the West' as 'a secret history of the
interreligious linkage of Europe and Asia in the past thousand years.' The fruits of
such a hidden past, according to Schwartz, have given rise to Sufism as an 'alternative' to “the stagnation imposed in Islam today by radical ideology” — an alternative that
evinces “tendencies toward an exalted spirituality, love of Jesus, and resistance to
Shariah-centered literalism " (p.436/437)
...
"Because of his historical proximity to Byzantine Christianity, Ru¯mı¯ is similarly used by Schwartz to represent a proto-European Islam. Ru¯mı¯’s toponymic connection with Anatolian Rome, or “Ru¯m,” is thus extended to mean not simply “the Anatolian,” but more imaginatively “a man living in a place still filled with Christian influence” and 'an individual turned toward Europe.' Indeed, Schwartz goes so far as to say that 'Ru¯mı¯” could even be “the European” or “the Greek” — not by birth, but by temperament.
It may not be by chance that Ru¯mı¯ and his 'love of love' are so attractive to Westerners; he represents a generation of Sufis drawn to Western culture. By pressing Ru¯mı¯ into such a 'European' and 'Greek' mold, Schwartz’s discourse perpetuates the Orientalist commonplace locating Sufism as epistemologically and philosophically indebted to Christian and Hellenistic thought rather than to Islam itself.
Moreover, by reorienting Ru¯mı¯ towards a 'Christian' Europe in tandem with a supposed ultimate concern of 'love,' Schwartz turns Ru¯mı¯ away from an 'Islamic' Asia whose implied overarching characteristic is fanatical intolerance. Thus, for Schwartz, the Western “attraction” of such a construction of Ru¯mı¯ represents a mode of European secularism, which ... has its source in Christianity, but now simply emphasizes 'love of love' beyond formal religion. Indeed, as Ernst observes, 'The most popular forms of Sufism in Europe and America are those that minimise or ignore any form of Islamic identity. Ru¯mı¯ is the best-selling poet in America precisely because he is seen as going beyond all religions.'
Like all of the post-9/11 discourse surveyed above, Schwartz too puts forth a clarion call for a strategic alignment between Sufism and the US, similarly asserting that 'Sufism could prove important as a source of Muslim allies against extremism.' He asks: 'As the confrontation between fundamentalist and spiritual Muslims broadens, how will Westerners and Sufis help each other win their common battle against Islamic radicalism?' " (p 438)
...
"The post-9/11 American secular Su¯fi discourse that I have analyzed here constructs a particular image of a universal Sufism that is tolerant because it is antithetical to normative Islam. The fact that this discourse wholly neglects, or at best glosses over, the long history of Su¯fi militancy lies beyond the scope of this present article. My concern, instead, has been to show how such discourse specifically functions in dyadic opposition to the phenomenal forms of Muslim practice, thus marking those who engage in such devotion as needing reform. The projection of secular Sufism as an alternative and compliant Islam in the current US geopolitical strategy of 'religion building' follows the Western history of secularism. Contrary to the ideological image of the separation of church and state, secularism has 'historically entailed the regulation and reformation of religious beliefs, doctrines, and practices to yield a particular normative conception of religion (that is largely Protestant Christian in its contours).' " (p 439)
...
"The current American construction of secular Sufism is based upon similar universal conceits of tolerance and authentic, private spirituality; yet, like its European predecessor, this discourse is in reality founded upon a time-bound Kantian ideology notable for its racial historicism and its intolerance of religious formalism. In such discourse, Muslims—and even the majority of Sufis—who maintain Islamic normative beliefs and ritual practice are understood to be spiritually immature (i.e., 'primitive') and are therefore labeled 'fundamentalist' and 'fanatical.' Mainstream Muslims are thus denied the very tolerance that they themselves are said to lack. As Brown trenchantly remarks, it is indeed a form of cultural imperialism that insists on “a set of liberal principles that others cannot brook without risking being bombed. " (p 440)

Veel en lange citaten. Maar het is ook nogal wat, wat hier gesteld wordt: dat Amerikaanse conservatieve denk-tanks bewust, bv via het boek van Brown,  proberen (in de VS) de reëel bestaande islam te vervangen door een lievere versie, beter verenigbaar met de dominante christelijke cultuur: het soefisme,  en (daarmee) minder terroristisch van aard.


En ook dit artikel: 'Sufism in Western Scholarship, a Brief Overview ' door Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh. Bron: Sufism in Western Scholarship
Zij stellen dat als de trend van steeds meer precies onderzoek doorgaat, "... abandoning some of its older presumptions about the nature of the tradition’s relation with Islam, as well as about Islam itself, and also by taking seriously the contributions of specialists in the Islamic world, we shall move to a more comprehensive, nuanced and accurate understanding of the theoretical, poetic, literary, and cultural richness of the tradition. We shall also be in a better position to appreciate the manner in which Sufism has formed an integral part of Islam for centuries, being none other than Islam’s own ‘‘science of the soul,’’ or as Ghazali preferred to say, the ‘‘jurisprudence of the heart’’ (fiqh al-qalb), and that it has served to provide the lifeblood and sap for the inner life of pious Muslims, from court officials to peasants, from erudite scholars to popular preachers, for centuries, despite the protests of fundamentalists and Islamists, most of whom neither have any serious training in the classical sciences of Islam, nor are aware of the intellectual history of the religion that they seek to preserve. " (pag.363)

Leesvoer, ik ben nog lang niet aan een afgeronde beschouwing toe, want er is zo ontzaglijk veel te studeren over sufi, het is zo'n rijke bron.
Zie bv dit boek 'Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations ' onder redactie van Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Bron: Spirituality .

Hoef ik me, ook als ik me niet meer zo met het boeddhisme wil bezig houden, toch niet te vervelen.