Now available: A Soaring Minaret

Laury Silvers, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto, is the author of the newly released A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism. The book traces the development of early Islamic mysticism and metaphysics through the life and work of theologian Abu Bakr al-Wasiti. Today we're offering you a teaser of the book, via Laury's introduction. Enjoy!

Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Musa al-Wasiti (d. ca. 320 AH/932 ce) was an unpopular shaykh. He had the knack of alienating almost anyone with his exquisitely honest observations on the divine-human relationship. When a man asked Wasiti if his good or bad deeds will matter on the Last Day, Wasiti bluntly informed the man that God creates one’s bad deeds and then punishes one for them. Despite being theologi- cally sound in its particulars, Wasiti’s explanations for positions such as this one do not make them any more comforting. It is not hard to imagine why he may have been driven out of nearly every town he visited and died with only one known devoted companion. But these same statements are also praised in the classical Sufi literature for their uncompromising eloquence and theological sophistication. Several biographers depicted his habit of calling people to account with his sublime if forceful expressions by naming him “a soaring minaret.”


Wasiti’s legacy is a number of firsts: He was one the first students of the great Baghdadi Sufis, Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd (d. 298/910) and Abu al-Husayn al-Nuri (d. 295/907–08). He may have been the first of them to migrate east and establish the Baghdadi Sufi tradition in Khurasan. He was among the first Sufis to articulate a complete metaphysics in keeping with developments in early Ahl a-Hadith theology. Wasiti’s thought anticipates important discussions in later Islamic metaphysics, demonstrating that questions concerning ontology and ethics were being explored with subtlety and rigor from the earliest period onward. Moreover, his sayings offer insight into the development of theological norms in the period just prior to the rise of Ash`arism. Finally, he was one of the first Sufis to compose a Qur'an commentary. Although the original text of his commentary is now lost, Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412/1021) included Wasiti’s work in his compendium of Sufi glosses on the Qur'an, Haqa’iq al-tafsir and its appendix Ziyadat haqa’iq al-tafsir preserving his thought and establishing his influence for the later tradition.


Part One is Wasiti’s life told as a story about the development of Sufism in the formative period. The account of Abu Bakr al-Wasiti’s studies, travels, and teaching—especially the story of his Qur'an commentary and its transmission—takes us through the beginnings of Sufism in Baghdadi Ahl al-Hadith culture, the spread of Ahl al-Hadith culture and Baghdadi Sufism East to Khurasan, the consolidation of Baghdadi Sufism and the Khurasani interiorizing traditions by Sulami’s day in the fifth/eleventh century, and finally the contribution of Khurasani Sufism to the rise of the Sufi orders in the sixth/twelfth century....


Part Two turns to an analysis of Wasiti’s understanding the nature of the divine reality. As is typical of nearly all classical Islamic theology, no matter how intellectually detached or theoretical the language may sound, one primarily seeks to understand the divine reality for the sake of conforming one’s own nature to God and His will. In keeping with the theological trends of his day, Wasiti stresses God’s utter incomparability even as he affirms God’s self-manifestation through creation. Wasiti is at pains to preserve the proper boundaries of God’s incomparable Essence such that even as one recognizes God’s manifestation of His attributes through the creatures, one also affirms that the creatures possess nothing of those attributes. Wasiti’s position is seemingly at odds with the goal to conform one’s nature to divine reality. By denying human agency, he claims all human activities, even worship, are “indecent acts.” But in Wasiti’s way of looking at things, abandoning agency is nothing other than conforming to the divine nature and will.

Religious Zionism and the Messianic Clock

Today we are pleased to introduce a guest blogger: Motti Inbari, author of Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple?, which explores radical and messianic movements in Israel seeking to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

Below, Motti describes what went into his research and introduces some of the key concepts he explores in the book. ___________________________________________________

For the last ten years I have been studying active messianic movements in contemporary Israel. I joined End of Days cults, I interviewed prophets, and I demonstrated at the gates of the Temple Mount. I witnessed the strength of millenarian expectations, followed by the failure of prophesies and the subsequent decline of messianic faith. I studied people who are at the fringe of society—some in regard to the religious mainstream, others also saw themselves as an avant-garde of a much wider political phenomenon.

So, what’s a secular Jew like me doing interacting with people so enchanted by religious dreams and aspirations? Truthfully, I was drawn to this study by accident. In 1994 as a junior freelance journalist I was assigned by my editor, together with my wife who was also a reporter, to bring a story about a strange new phenomenon. A rabbi named Uzi Meshulam who lived in a small town near Tel-Aviv had organized a violent demonstration with his followers. The police put the home under siege for 47 days and eventually broke into the compound. As journalists, we came to the conclusion that this group was fueled by acute messianic expectations which encouraged them in their violent behavior; they believed that the messiah would come and rescue them.

At the same time I had started graduate study at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The affair interested me for further investigation, so I decided to take a course on messianism. I enrolled in a seminar with Jonathan Frankel and I wrote a paper based upon what I had witnessed during the unfortunate affair.

In 2001 I enrolled for a Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Under the supervision of Jonathan Frankel and Menachem Feidman I started a new project which became my book, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple?
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Revolutionary Messianism

My research looked at several contemporary movements within religious society in Israel—Religious Zionists, Ultra Orthodoxy and the Chabad hasidic movement—that advocate building the Third Temple as the zenith of a messianic process leading to the establishment of a Torah State. Those movements are revolutionary by their nature and they seek a total change within the structure of the state of Israel. They do not anticipate Redemption as a process that will come by miracles or by Godly intervention, but they demand human action. They focus on the Temple Mount because they believe that the Third Temple is a strong enough symbol to lead people to action. Their aim is to touch the fundamentals of faith of every Orthodox Jew—the desire for the third Temple is a part of daily prayers and it symbolize the religious foundation of those who see the state of Israel as the “first step of our redemption.”

During my studies I learned that those fringe movements are the leaders of a radical ideological change within mainstream rabbinic authorities of the Religious Zionist camp. Why is this so?

The Temple Mount Dillema

Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in rabbinical rulings that permit the entry of Jews to the Temple Mount. It began with the precedent-setting ruling of the Council of Yesha Rabbis (from Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip) in February 1996, which permitted Jews to enter certain areas of the Mount, with a call to each rabbi who agreed with the ruling to go up to the Mount together with his congregation. The only limitation was to observe the restrictions regarding purity when doing so.

Since the reopening of the Temple Mount to Jews in November 2003 (it had been closed because of the Al-Aqsa Intifada), one can see the practical expression of this decision since every day now many Jews go up to the Mount, most of them members of the "nationalist yeshivas," for a visit and silent prayer. According to information published by then minister Tzachi Hanegbi, during the year following the reopening of the Temple Mount, more than 70,000 Jews have visited the site.
This phenomenon represents a genuine revolution in religious behaviour. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews have been considered impure due to contact with dead bodies, and therefore they are forbidden to enter the area where the Temple stood. This state of impurity can be changed into one of purity only with the help of the ashes of a red heifer and, as we know, such an animal no longer exists. Moreover, the exact dimensions of the Temple have been lost as well. We don't know on which parts of the Mount the Holy of Holies was located, since, the Temple Mount is much larger than the dimensions of the structure itself. Therefore, it was ruled that the Temple Mount should not be ascended. According to halakha (Jewish religious law), anyone who enters the mount will be punished by karet—a death sentence carried out by God. This decision has been reinforced in innumerable rulings. One was handed down by the chief rabbinate after the capture of the Mount during the Six-Day War in 1967, when Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, then head of the ultra-nationalist Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, joined its call. And this custom is followed by the vast majority of ultra-Orthodox rabbis.

How is it that so many observant Jews behave in opposition to such a prohibition? How can it be that the religious law on such a central issue has been breached, and that Orthodox rabbis permit something that is concidered by most authorities as prohibited?The answer can probably be found in the manner in which the religious leadership is attempting to deal theologically with the crisis that the peace processes creates for them. In order to understand them, we need to understand the religious attitudes of many members of religious Zionist movements toward the State of Israel: Almost since the inception of the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement, there have been many Orthodox Jews who didn't consider the establishment of the state a goal in itself. The activist messianic faction of religious Zionism called the Zionist process at'halta degeula (the beginning of the Redemption); Zionist activity was interpreted as something secular that would eventually bring about, without the knowledge of the secularists, the fulfillment of the religious goal of the Return to Zion, namely, the establishment of the religious kingdom and a renewal of the rites on the Temple Mount.After the Six-Day War, the enthusiasm that ensued swept religious Zionism into the settlement movement. The victory in the war led many to believe that total Redemption was about to begin, and so they went out to capture the land by establishing the so-called facts on the ground.But since the peace agreement with Egypt, and even more so since the peace process with the Palestinian Authority, the leadership of religious Zionism is in a state of crisis, and faces a religious dilemma: How can one identify the beginning of Redemption in a state that is returning territory to Arabs and becoming increasingly secular? How can one identify the process of Redemption in the uprooting of settlements? This dilemma gave rise to the counter-reaction of a strengthening of the desire for the Temple Mount and of greater commitment to the goal of rebuilding the Temple. The fear of the upcoming changes, which included talk of giving the Temple Mount over to Palestinian rule, has led to moves that are designed to prevent them. In order to "prevent" the Redemption from being lost because of the behavior of the State of Israel, which is unaware of its destiny in this historical drama, permission was found to enter the Temple Mount and establish “facts on the ground.”The breach of the rabbinical decision that forbids entry to the Temple Mount demonstrates that strict religious law can be updated in accordance with changing political circumstances.

Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount portrays radical and messianic movements in Israel that wish to, and at times, are making preparations to rebuild the Temple. It is offering the readers a context to understand the place of such groups within the larger Israeli, and global realities of our time.

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Dr. Motti Inbari is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. His book is available now here. Also of note: A few months back, Haaretz Daily published a review in English on the original Hebrew manuscript.