Wasdom-of-the-East Dept.

* Resurgence of Rumi and Hegelian philosophy Ali-Asghar Mosleh professor at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University, participating in the congress, delivered a lecture on the theme “The Resurgence of Rumi and the End of Hegelian History”. “According to Hegel, humans have experienced all cultural and ideological developments and events in the course of European civilization and elements belonging to premodernist cultures are no longer perceptible. Consequently, the world will never again witness the revival of traditions and elements observable in the premodernist eras” he said. Mosleh rejected Hegel’s ideas by referring to the rise of global interest in the thoughts of Rumi and the abundance of commemoration ceremonies which are now underway in the world for this Persian poet and Muslim mystic.

As you recall, Mr. Bones, Prof. Hegel of Berlin was a great champion of Creative Destruction, that grand key to all 2007 Big Management Party ideology, yet M. Mosleh is of course quite right to insist on "no longer perceptible," for literal destruction of the world's former career is not possible. Blow all that history bunk to invisibly small smithereens, yes, but make the smithereens not exist? No way. Militant stumblebums, like third- or thirteenth-rate spoofies, can make it impossible to recover exactly what "humans have experienced," yet the experience happened for all that, and it had the consequences that it has had.

Any spoofy, or tertiary-academic hanger-on to the dervishs' coattails, who can confuse Dr. Hegel with Neocomrade F. Fukuyama is not exactly an opponent of stature for the Wicked West. What does the Dismantler of the Prophet say about the A. A. Moslehs of that alien and bewildered world of theirs?

By the eve of the revolution the core of the Iranian government was stiff with "doctors." There were thirty-one "doctors" in the last Consultative Assembly before the revolution . . . Thousands of others ... returned with their Ph.D.'s from wonderfully obscure American universities to occupy ... posts in no way connected with the learning, however limited, that they had picked up in the West . . . . &c. &c.

By now is the time is perhaps 1515 hours on the day after the revolution, and presumably most of the "doctors" (shudder-quoted in honour of M. Mossadegh, the CIA's old buddy) have fled to Orange County CA or thereabouts, with only a few stout spirits left around in the heat of the ideological afternoon to travesty Hegel on behalf of the Reformed Rahbariyya. M. Mosleh's flimsiness is nicely encapsulated by "rejected Hegel’s ideas by referring to the rise of global interest in the thoughts of Rumi and the abundance of commemoration ceremonies," which would be sad stuff even if one never approached nearer unto Geist an-und-für sich than high-school logic or rhetoric. To commemmorate some nomen clarum dead eight hundred years does not require anything at all in the way of actually agreeing with the late lamented's particular notions. Even on the supposition there are nowadays genuine Rúmí wombscholars around who piously adhere to something not altogether unlike the Urveröffentlichung, that is scarcely a proof of their own intellectual or ethical seriousness, let alone of the merits of their Master's doctrine. I daresay "Doctor" Mosleh has not a wide variety of mud and straw to pick and choose from for making his ideological bricks, and therefore appreciate why he is tempted not to scrutinize the credentials of Rúmí Revivalists very closely, lest there be almost nothing at all to fall back upon in the way of "Look, even in the Wicked West, some see that we of the Wunnerful East know better!"

Still, "Everything is what it is, why should we wish to be deceived?" "Doctor" Mosleh would be in a far more secure dogmatic position if he wrote off about 99.37% of the Global Rúmí Revival as mere froth and scum and New Age trendiness.[1] It's not going to hold up if he puts any pressure on it, so he ought to cut it out himself before somebody else does so and the Mosleh Doctrine begins to look perhaps unnecessarily bad in consequence. His Dream Palace of the Qommies will have to be much smaller than he'd like, yet what's the use of counting all that ramshackle Rúmí Revival "global" slum as part of it, when it is so plain that the Big Bad Wolf can blow it all down without even breathing hard? [2]


Wherever it may have come from, "the world will never again witness the revival of traditions and elements observable in the premodernist eras" is a beaut! One your right hand, Mr. Bones, you may behold militant GOP extremism revivin' and neotraditionalizin' and wombschoolin' like mad, and ditto to the left with extremist neo-Muslim militancy, yet here along comes a "Doctor" A. A. Mosleh to assure us that what is happening all around is in fact a thing that can happen. Let's thank him politely for his news, of course, and not mention that we could almost certainly have worked it out for ourselves.

Prof. Hegel is as remote from the likes of a "Doctor" Mosleh as the moon from a moth, but still, it's kind of fun to imagine what he'd make of it all from Down There Below, could some intrepid journalist come asking for comment. I am not quite sure what he'd say. He might consider a Global Rúmí Revival no more pertinent to Weltgeist than Herr Krug's pen, and perhaps that is most likely. Still, he might take the line that a world full of Global Rúmí Revivals and suchlike trendy rubbish is excellent evidence that he was working along the right lines all the time. Hegel's own age was not without a sort of first draft of GRR-like phenomena, after all. It is usually referred to as die Romantik. Did not the brothers Schlegel go all swoony and moony -- but yet remaining sufficiently akademisch as well -- over unheard-of far-fetched Aryan stuff? True, theirs was the "wrong" Aryan crew, the Sanskrit crew, but I can't see why the Masnaví mightn't have done as well had they stumbled over that first instead.of Vedas and Upanishads.[3]


There's not much more to this dog-and-pony show -- "the international congress held to commemorate the 800th birth anniversary of Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi" -- that is up to even "doctoral" standards, except perhaps the following:

* Rumi’s unfavorable view towards philosophy “Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi had a limited knowledge of philosophy,” Nasrollah Purjavadi, philosophy professor at the University of Tehran said during the session on wisdom and philosophy held on the sidelines of the congress. Studies reveal that Sufis, including Rumi, harbored a chronic dislike for philosophy since the 11th century AD, when a division arose between Greek philosophy and the wisdom of the Quran. Although Rumi alludes to some philosophical notions in his works, he condemned philosophy in Fíhi Má Fíh, [M. Púrjavádí] concluded.

Now here's some Secret Spoofy History for you, Mr. Bones! Evidently in Centuries I-IV/VII-X "Greek philosophy" and "Qur’án wisdom" were good friends, but then one party or the other said something unfortunate and the relationship broke down. Even a short summary ought, it seems to me, to explain which party uttered the Deplorable Word, even if it doesn't actually quote it. [4]

It appears that 1 Muharram 401 fell in August of A. D. 1010, which is not exactly an obvious discrimen temporum for unmystical annalists. Perhaps the Saljúks may pass for especially Qur’án wise, yet they did not show up for another generation.






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[1] Certainly I'd be glad to dispense with 99.37% of the silly things that grave anti-idealist philosophers, and cheap political twistifiers, and cocktail-party twits, and innocent victims of Big Party wombschoolin' have said about poor Prof. Hegel. However "Doctor" Mosleh would be perfectly entitled to find that a bad exchange, seeing (1) that most of the tripe and baloney I can spare him is anti-Hegelian, and (2) pretty well all of it exists inside the pale of the Wicked West. Apart from Russia before 1850 or 1860, it would be hard to find any Lesser Breeds Without who have ever taken much interest in Hegel either pro or contra. To find even a single LBW who ever proposed to make the Berlin philosopher so grand an Emersonian "representative man" as "Doctor" Mosleh wants to make of the Konya adept is more than I can manage. Evidently there are limits to this species of tomfoolery: "The trouble with them in the Wicked West is they all think like Hegel" is so utterly baseless a claim that even the ideological con artists pass it by.


[2] That is mostly the ought of M. Pascal: "Doctor" Mosleh should first essay to think better, that's the principal thing. (My suggestion that shoddy thinking tends to discredit one when it becomes generally detected is admittedly a bit vulgar and subpascalian. Still, that does seem to be the case, does it not?)


[3] Professional spoofies almost invariably claim in every age and clime that their Magic Way is a universal way, a grand "spiritual" panacea. Like most of what they claim, 'tis a very doubtful business. Prof. Hegel might have accommodated Muslim Spoofery under die Romantik to a considerable extent, but precisely on the grounds that it was not the sort of thing any decent Old Euro was at all likely to meet on the streets of Jena in the year of disgrace 1806/1221.

Even the shallow flimsinesses of "Doctor" A. A. Mosleh of Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai "University" could be used as a stick to beat Hegel with, should they ever fall into competent hands. The accused was undoubtedly a bit too sure that he had enough materials at hand to be able to hegelize to some purpose, whereas nowadays anybody this side of Wombschool Normal U. can point out serious lacunae with the greatest of ease. If the charge is rarely brought, I suppose that silence mostly indicates that scarcely anybody wants to hegelize nowadays in the Wicked West, "we" are all quite content to regard History as Junk, so to speak, as a heap of miscellaneous unsorted and unsortable lumber, a wilderness of local colours with not much in the way of line and design. (I speak of those of "us" who get past the Big Management Party's dogma, of course, of us who would never sink to a cheap and trashy "That was then, but this is now," let alone to Their Ford's original wordin'.)


[4] "Qur’án wisdom" seems decidedly an instance of gharbzadegí to me. But God knows best.