Sufism, sodomy and Satan (Spengler)

Asia Times ^ | 8/12/2008 | Spengler

[mojito]

Sigmund Freud thought that everything was about sex, and he was half right. Rarely is love so spiritual that it does not also stir the loins, for human beings are creatures not only of soul but of body. Although it is thought rude to say so nowadays, different kinds of love belong to different kinds of sex. Not even Hell can resist divine love, J W Goethe showed in the funniest vignette in all literature: his devil, Mephistopheles, is disabled by an obsessive lust for the cherubs sent to claim the soul of Faust in the drama’s penultimate scene. Heavenly beauty, that is, reduces the crafty demon to a pathetic old pervert, in a tableau not fit for a family newspaper.[1]

Goethe’s creepily convincing portrait of a pederastic devil in Faust (1832) drew on the poet’s earlier study of Persian love poetry of the High Middle Ages,[2] where “as a rule, the beloved is not a woman, but a young man”, according to the leading Persian historian Ehsan Yar-Shater. Islamic mysticism (Sufism) of the High Middle Ages is the only case in which a mainstream current of a major world religion preached pederasty as a path to spiritual enlightenment. A vast literature documents this, and a great deal of it is available online.

Sufi adoration of pre-pubescent boys “persisted in many Islamic countries until very recent times,” according to the Orientalist Helmut Ritter.[3]....Sufism has a reputation in Western pop culture as a kinder and gentler branch of Islam. It is not a different kind of Islam, but rather Islam’s mystical practice, to which the adage applies, “by their fruits shall ye know them.”

[mojito]

The always interesting Spengler.

[ModelBreaker]

What an elegant writer the author is.

[livius]

Third, pederasty has become a plague in parts of the West, and widespread abuse of children has occasioned a crisis in the Catholic Church. It is hard to avoid the impression that sexual misbehavior is associated with a retreat from faith in a personal God, namely the Jesus who lived on earth and was crucified and was resurrected, in favor of a mushy and unspecific spirituality - something like Sufism, in fact. Perhaps the same link between spiritual and sexual narcissism is at work in the West.

This is a particularly complex and interesting article by Spengler. It's well worth reading.

[Mercat]

Interesting. We used to call that narcisism meditating on your navel or your “ennymeeny.”

[tnlibertarian]

I thought this was going to be an article about the Democrat Convention.

[khnyny]

From the article: As the psychiatrists explain, pederasty is an expression of narcissism, the love of an idealized youthful self-image.

There you have it! Lol.

[decimon]

Boy-oh-boy, does he go on about this.

[DeweyCA]

FTA: Sufism enjoys a faddish ripple of interest in America, where self-admiration is the national pastime. As opposed to the Biblical God, the cosmos is an unthreatening thing to worship. The universe, after all, is no one in particular, and those who seek to merge their consciousness with no one in particular at the end are left alone with themselves. Worship the cosmos, and you worship yours truly; worship yourself, and it is not unusual to adore your own idealized image.

This reminds me of many hard-core environmentalists. They don't worship the biblical God, and so they don't have the ambition or purpose of serving Him. To try to make their lives seem meaningful, they instead try to save the earth and create a heaven on earth. They, in essence, get to play God. Fits in well with much New-Age thought.

[JmyBryan]

Dissolution of the ego is not exactly a playground for narcissists.

[caveat emptor]

No thanks.

[Tax-chick]

What an elegant writer the author is.

I agree. Whoever he really is, he's got a level of erudition and a gift for prose that's far above average.

[Tax-chick]

Ping to a *really* interesting article. Try the link in Post #10, and then use the “Complete Spengler” choice on the right-hand side of the page to select the article with this title. I don’t know what’s up with the link the Original Poster gave.

(Persian relevance, sionnsar.)

[Frank Sheed]

Fascinating article!!!!!

[dcwusmc]

Lovely prose!

[redgolum]

for later.

[Dajjal]

Spengler bump

[Ciexyz]

Omar Sharif plays a French Muslim in the recent French film Monsieur Ibrahim, where they show a scene of Sufi men dancing in ecstasy in a mosque.

[Tax-chick]

Isn’t it? Spengler always has an original viewpoint and interesting information.

[LomanBill]

Ping

[Billthedrill]

Thanks for the link - that one probably deserves a thread of its own. There was a certain element of tongue in cheek, I think:

...It is a measure of the inherent good-heartedness of Americans that they evince a low threshold of horror. ...That is understandable, but also unfortunate, for America still has a great deal of killing left to do around the world, and might as well get used to it.

...but the basic case is as original as this article, and one hopes, similarly wrong-headed.

As far as pederasty being an expression of love for an idealized self, it is an interesting model, and it explains to a degree the frequent callous disregard of the real humanity of the junior partner in that relationship. What genuine human being could live up to someone's idealized self-image?

It isn't every author that can work Sufi Islam, Persian poetry, Goethe's Faust, and rampant buggery into the same article quite so seamlessly. For some reason I find that vaguely disturbing. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear a reply from a genuine Sufi - the printable parts, that is. (And yes, I read the dirty bits of Faust some years ago and knew exactly what Goethe was implying. How he knew what he was implying is quite another matter, but I doubt it had a great deal to do with Sufism.)

A fine, erudite, thought-provoking essay, IMHO, with whose conclusions I'll have to reserve judgment. There may be a mystic, cosmic element to it, but to paraphrase Freud, sometimes buggery is only buggery. ;-)