The following comments by the great British sufi writer Martin Lings have a contemporary relevance in light of the ongoing conflict between secularity and religion in France, especially with respect to Islam:

“Guenon seems to have had no further contact with the Hindus and no doubt they had returned to India. Meantime, he had been initi­ated into a Sufi order which was to be his spiritual home for the rest of his life. Among the ills which he saw all around him he was very much preoccupied with the general anti-religious prejudice which was particularly rife among the French so-called intelligentsia. He was sure that some of these people were nonetheless virtually intelligent and would be capable of responding to the truth if it were clearly set before them. This anti-religious prejudice arose because the representatives of religion had gradually become less and less intelligent and more and more centered on sentimental considerations. In the Catholic Church especially, where the division of the community into clergy and laity was always stressed, a lay figure had to rely on the Church, it was not his business to think about spiritual things. Intelligent laymen would ask questions of priests who would not be able to answer these questions and who would take refuge in the idea that intelligence and pride were very closely connected. And so it is not difficult to see how this very anti-religious prejudice came into being especially in France.”

The quote is from the Introduction to The Essential René Guénon: Metaphysics, Tradition, and the Crisis of Modernity, by Rene Guenon, and edited by John Herlihy. © 2009 World Wisdom Inc

Categories: Islam, Life in the West