Why Annemarie Schimmel knows Islam better

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, " adishakti_org "

<adishakti_org wrote:

>

> > (p.21) AFTERWARDS HE FOUND IT almost impossible to describe the

> > experience that sent him running in anguish down the rocky hillside to his

wife. It seemed to him that a devastating presence had burst into the cave where

he was sleeping and gripped him in an

> > overpowering embrace,...

> > He had this vision during the month of Ramadan, 610 CE. Later

> > Muhammad would call it 'layla al-qadr' (the " Night of Destiny " )

> > because it had made him the messenger of Allah, the high god of

> > Arabia.

> >

> > Muhammad (Prophet For Our Time)

> > Chapter 1, 'Mecca', p. 21-29

> > Karen Armstrong

> >

>

> Three crucial corrections are necessary here:

>

> i) Prophet Muhammad was meditating, not sleeping in the cave. This

> fact must be established as daily meditation is absolutely required

> for those wishing to take part in the present Al-Qiyamah.

>

> " In the historical context, it is well known that the Prophet

> Muhammad received his initial revelation in a cave on Mt. Hira where

> he used to retire for meditation. It was in the solitude of this

> place that he was blessed with the first auditions which forced him

> to go into the world and preach what he had learned: the constant

> change between the khalwa, the lonely place of meditation in the dark cave,

undisturbed in his concentration upon God, and the jilwa, the need and duty to

promulgate the Divine word that he had heard, was to remain for the Muslims—a

spiritual movement of whose necessity Iqbal reminds the believers of our time…

>

> The Prophet's example of retiring into the cave was imitated by a

> number of mystics who lived for long periods in caves. The extremely

> narrow cave in which Sharafuddin Maneri of Bihar (d. 1381) spent

> several decades of his life is only one of the numerous examples of

> this pious custom; Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliorf (d. 1562) also belongs to the

Sufis who, year after year, performed their meditation in a cave, to emerge in

the end filled with an overwhelming spiritual energy. The experience of the

arba'in, chilla, khalwat, forty days'

> meditation in a narrow, dark room or a subterranean place, belongs

> here as well. The intimacy of the experience of God's proximity in

> such a khalwa could lead the pious to address Him in prayer as `On

> Cave of them that seek refuge!' " (Deciphering the signs of God: a

> phenomenological approach to Islam, Annemarie Schimmel, pages 48-9)

>

 

Annemarie Schimmel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Annemarie Schimmel, SI, HI, (April 7, 1922 – January 26, 2003) was a well known

and very influential German Orientalist and scholar who wrote extensively on

Islam and Sufism.

 

She received a doctorate in Islamic languages and civilization from the

University of Berlin at the age of nineteen. At twenty-three, she became a

professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Marburg (Germany)

in 1946, where she earned a second doctorate in the history of religions in

1954.

 

A turning point in her life came in 1954 when she was appointed Professor of the

History of Religion at the University of Ankara (Turkey). There she spent five

years teaching in Turkish and immersing herself in the culture and mystical

tradition of the country. She was a faculty member at Harvard University from

1967 to 1992 and became Professor Emerita of Indo-Muslim Culture upon her

retirement. She was also an honorary professor at the University of Bonn. She

published more than 100 books on Islamic literature, mysticism and culture, and

translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Sindhi and Turkish poetry and literature into

English and German.

 

For her work on Islam, Sufism or mysticism and Muhammad Iqbal, the government of

Pakistan honored her with one of its highest civil awards of known as

Hilal-e-Imtiaz or 'Crescent of Excellence'. She was showered with many other

awards from many countries of the world, including Leopold Lucas Prize of the

Evangelisch-Theologische Faculty of the University of Tübingen and 1995

prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This award caused a

controversy in Germany, as she had defended the outrage of the Islamic world

against Salman Rushdie in a TV-interview.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annemarie_Schimmel