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SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR

BIOGRAPHY

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is one of the main proponents of the traditional religious

perspective, including the traditional Islamic point of view. Nasr was a University Professor of

Islamic Studies at the George Washington University and President of the Foundation for

Traditional Studies. He was a leading member of the “Traditionalist” or “Perennialist” school

and was also recognized as a leading spokesman for Islam not only in North America but also

world-wide. Besides, he was also a lifeling student and follower of Frithjof Schuon and writes in

the fields of Islamic esoterism, Sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.1He has

contributed so many ideas and works to the study of religion.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born in 1933 in Tehran, Iran, eight years into the reign of the

founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, whose policies were designed largely to bring Iran

into the modern world. His father, Seyyed Valiallah had been born in 1871, but he only married

at the age of sixty, and Seyyed Hossein was the first of his two sons. Both sides of the family had

produced scholars and Sufis going back for generations. Seyyed Valiallah was trained as a

physician and became the chief administrator of the ministry of education from the end of the

Qajar period well into Pahlavi times. He was deeply involved in the transformation of the

educational system along modern lines.2

By the time he was three years old, he was already beginning to read and write. He began

to learn Quranic verses, Persian poetry and history especially sacred history. He also has both the

1 Taken from http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/authors/Seyyed-Hossein-Nasr.aspx. Retrieved on 22/09/10 2Ibid

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Islamic tradition and the western philosophical and scientific traditions, as well as with other

religions and traditions. The environment in which he grew up, therefore, exposed him at a

tender age to philosophical, theological, and spiritual discourses. Such childhood experiences

apparently kept him in constant contact or union with his roots, namely, traditional Islam.

Nasr is well known and highly respected intellectual figure both in the West and the

Islamic world. An expressive speaker with a charismatic presence, Nasr is a much required after

speaker at academic conferences and seminars, university and public lectures and also radio and

television programs in his area of expertise.

He began his illustrious teaching career in 1955 when he was still a young and promising,

doctoral student at Harvard University. He has trained different generations of students over the

years since the Iranian revolution in 1979, specifically at Temple University in Philadelphia from

1979 to 1984 and at the George Washington University since 1984 to the present day.3

Nasr speaks and writes with great authority on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from

philosophy to religion to spirituality, to music and art and architecture, to science and literature,

to civilization dialogues and the natural environment. Among his famous and influential works

are An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (1964), Ideals and Realities of Islam

(1966), The Encounter of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (1968), Islam

and The Plight of Modern Man (1975), Sufi Essays (1973), Science and Civilization in Islam

3 Taken from http://www.nasrfoundation.org/default.html. Retrieved on 20/09/10.

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(1968), Knowledge and Sacred (1981), Islamic Art and Spirituality (1987), Traditional Islam in

The Modern World (1987), and A Young Muslim’s Guide to the Modern World (1993).4

The Study of Religion in Contemporary Society

Introduction

The study of religion in contemporary society that approached by Nasr is useful

examining for two reasons. First, it encompasses and accepts all revealed religions and their

sacred quality, whereby this approach is differs with current approaches in religious studies

because it acknowledges all religions.5 He believed that this approach is really hooked with the

religion’s essence which would give absolute value to anything that is sacred. Due to this matter,

the sacred atmosphere can be created in which the acknowledgement of the uniqueness as well as

the diversity of all traditions can be given.

Second, it addresses and deals with how Islam and Muslims can accommodate the

existing reality of other religions, in which the peaceful religious world community can be

achieved through this approach.6

4 Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Nasr. Retrieved on 06/09/10. 5 Haifaa Jawad, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and the Study of Religion in Contemporary Society, in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.,p49 6 Ibid.,p50

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Religion and Contemporary Society

There are two factors that appear to be a response of approaching of Nasr to the study of

religion in contemporary society which are the spirit’s degradation in the modern world, and the

interpenetration of religious forms. These two factors going to be discussed in this paper deeply.

The Spirit’s Degradation in the Modern World

Nasr has looking the underlying causes of uncontrolled materialism and the widespread

of atheism that characterized by the modern world. In order to evaluate these underlying causes,

Nasr stresses that one must turn to the sources of traditions and give an effective response to the

intellectual challenges forwarded by the modern world. According to Nasr, it lacks of clarity, of

purpose, and of principle which might cause the cutting off from the transcendent.7 Since the

modern world being apart from the intellectual certainty that comes from revelation alone, it is

compelled to formulate a science that is based on doubt, the capability of philosophy is in the

state of stagnancy, and a culture that has no connection with the purpose of ultimate life. In the

midst of such chaos, modern humanity has lost the capacity to appreciate the sacred and has lost

sight of the essential and the eternal in the quest for attaining modernity’s transient and

superficial trapping.8

Within the context of the Muslim world, in Nasr’s view, the virus of modernism not

threatening Islam only, but also to any civilizations that created by Islam over the centuries. The

7 Ibid.,p56 8 See Haifaa Jawad, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and the Study of religion in Contemporary Society.,p57

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actions of the West in continuing the philosophy, cultural, artistic, political, economic, and social

domination of the Muslim world has weakened the traditional Islamic institutions as well as the

fundamentals of its own tradition.9 It is simply means that western modernism has penetrated

both the culture and the religion of Islam. Islam itself according to Nasr has been distorted by

those who have assimilated western paradigms of modernism and progress. This is a form of

troubling that derived from the impact of modernism on Islam and its civilization and for Nasr,

the defending all of the sacred traditions including Islam is surely needed and important in order

to save our religion and tradition. We have to make a preparation in each single thing so that we

can confront all the intellectual challenges posed by the modern world wisely. He asserts that,

the modern world is the world that no longer tied to the transcendent and the immutable

principles of its own tradition, and a world in which westerners and their adherents in the East

can no longer appreciate the sacred. Hence, it is really important and crucial to assert the

traditional Islamic view on contemporary issues that are currently being debated. Contemporary

interpretations of Islam being confused and distorted since it have been added to those of the

classical Orientalists.10

Besides, Nasr raises a consistent challenge to the principle elements of modernist outlook

throughout his writings. In his writings, he not just attacks atheism and secularism, but also their

motives behind everything, for instance progressivism and evolutionism that need to be rejected

as well.11 The identifying and rejecting of these false ideologies, either it roots or branches are

necessary because based on Nasr’s assumption, it has a high potentiality to destroy Muslims and

Islam. Nasr believed that, one of the principle roots of the modern western mentality’s

9 Ibid.,p57 10 Ibid.,p57 11 Ibid.,p58

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predicament is its excessive reliance on rationalism. The reason become the priority and replaces

everything which is sacred and traditional.

On the other hand, Nasr consistently opposes change, reform, or anything that would

negate the transcendent and immutable principles.12 He rejects everything that does not have

connection and relation with the traditional principles because it is far from the transcendent and

vain. For him, the structure of reality does not change; the change is only human vision and

perception. It can be said that Western philosophy has lost a sense of the permanence of things.

In fact, the reality has been reduced to a temporal process, which he identifies as a

desacralization of knowledge and a loss of the sense of the sacred. The loss of the sacred aspect

of knowledge means that a choice will present itself for every significant field or domain of

human activity and thought. It is either to choose a form of knowledge and a way of thinking that

focuses on change, multiplicity, and outwardness, or to choose one that integrates change within

the eternal, multiplicity within unity, the outward facts within inward principles.

Thus, to overcome this problem according to Nasr is by going back to the old method in

which desacralized reason has been brought to bear on sacred traditions and then to revive an

awareness of the sacred quality of knowledge.13 Meaning that we don’t have to put forward

reason on our traditions and not make it as a sacred and we have to refer our traditional method.

Such sacred knowledge is not the exclusive preserve of Islam, but is to be found wherever there

is loyalty to the sacred origin of any revealed tradition. It is not only in Islam that we can find

that sacred knowledge, we also have to find it in other religions as well because all religions are

revealed religions.

12 Ibid.,p58 13 Ibid.,p59

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Since modernism placed the pressure on tradition, we have to find the way out of this

predicament. In order to go away of this which suggested by Nasr is to understand the modern

world deeply and to respond to its challenges through the knowledge of the tradition in its

fullness.14 The intellectual challenges posed by modernism can only be responded intellectually

without any critical judgments.

The revival of the wisdom was lying at the heart of each sacred tradition.15 This is termed

the perennial philosophy, which underlies all expressions of sacred knowledge, and offers the

best remedy to modernism’s pretensions. In other words, the revival of the wisdom is meant by

the perennialists as a remedy to the plight of modern man. The perennial philosophy has given

the response to the modernism after the modernism claimed to have discovered new and better

way of living, acting, thinking, and being. In order to reply upon the modernism, the perennial

philosophy says that the supreme ideals of life and thought are beyond time and space, being

situated in the eternal wisdom of the Divine, a wisdom that is made accessible through revelation

and its continuation in tradition.

THE INTERPENETRATION OF RELIGIOUS FORMS

People nowadays know much better about the people of other faiths and currently the

scale of confrontation of the different belief system is wider than before. The question of how to

relate to other faiths thus assumes major significance.16 There are different views on religion in

14 Ibid.,p59 15 Ibid.,p59 16 See Haifaa Jawad.,p60

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accordance with their religious views. According to secularists, all religions are relative; there is

no religion either absolute or true. Dogmatists say that their particular religion alone is true and

thus absolute, meaning that all others are false. While for Nasr, he has his own view. He asserts

that all religions are relative when compared with the Absolute, of which they are just different

expressions, and thus lead one back to the Absolute.17 In fact, they are absolutely necessary,

despite their relativity. Thus, the people have to acknowledge not only the validity of their

religion or belief system, but also to be tolerant and open to the values revealed by other

religions.

In this context, Nasr believed that there is a need for a science that can do justice to the

study of religion. For him, this science is the perennial wisdom lying at the heart of all religious

traditions.18 He defines it as:

“It is a knowledge which lies at the heart of religion, which illuminates the meaning of religious

rites, doctrine and symbols and which also provides the key to the understanding of both the

necessity of the plurality of religions and the way to penetrate into and understand other

religious universes”.19

This is knowledge seems very important and available to the intellect is contained at the

heart of all religions or traditions. It has always being a main point of dealing with universal

principles among the people.

17 Ibid 18 Ibid.,p61 19 See Haifa.,p61

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In his writings, Nasr stresses that within the context of Sufism, the issue of religious

pluralism can be solved for Muslims. As for the adherents of other faiths, it can be facilitated

within the context of the perennial philosophy. In attempting to solve the problem of religious

diversity, Nasr suggests that all religions are forms of the everlasting truth which has been

revealed by God to humankind through various agencies. For him, there is no other forms can

totally express the essence of the Absolute, and that every true, revealed religious form expresses

something of the Absolute.

Hence, according to Nasr, when the values of tradition are rediscovered the salvation of

humanity become possible. Thus, he claims that the perennial philosophy constitutes a proper

ground for the study of religions, because it is able to give full consideration and appreciation of

each religion’s sacred qualities, since it believes the sacred is the highest value.20 Hence it is

more appropriate than any other approach. Nasr also asserts that the sacred knowledge contained

within the perennial philosophy requires a sacred quality in the knower and, therefore, seeks to

have an impact upon the existential life of the seeker after truth.

20Ibid.,p62

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CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Nasr was corrects in claiming that the modernity has penetrated our Islamic traditions and

it would lead to the destroying of Muslims and Islam itself. We have to make a preparation in

facing their challenges so that our traditions can be defended.

However, Nasr insisted that all traditions and religions are equal because religions are

only the manifestation from the same Absolute. God is Absolute, other than God existing in this

world is not absolute. It is simply mean that there is no religion either absolute or true. The

absoluteness of religions is relative to each. For example, the religion of Islam is relative to

Muslim, the Christianity is relative to Christian and so on.

In order to accept this opinion, we have to back to our sources which are Quran and

Sunnah. We have to see what the Quran and Sunnah say about other religions. We have to

acknowledge and be tolerant with them because Quran was highlight about their religions and

Islam teaches us to be a good to everyone as long as they do not harm us. But it does not simply

mean that we have to make them as equal as our religion which is Islam. It cannot be that all

religions are true and equal because God (Allah) only accepts one religion in this world which is

DÊn al- ×anÊf.

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CONCLUSION

The idea that expressed by Nasr in this context was very interesting. It is contrasts with

other Muslim philosophers because his idea really encompasses and acknowledges other

religions and traditions. Nasr was very consistent in giving his opinions and ideas. For him, in

order to facing the Modernist’ challenges, we have to be serious and make well- preparation. He

also asserts that we have to back to our tradition in order to solve the problem that created by

Modernists, and he also claims that it is actually traditions that give us the progression and better

life, not the modernity.