Towards a Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Liberation in Islam (WIP)

India International Islamic Academic Conference (IIIAC) October 8-9, 2016

The Secular age has not brought about the end of metaphysics and/or the liberation of
man from abstract universals as Francis Bacon had wished. Man remains under the tutelage of a
god but in the Secular age it is a god with no name. Man remains beset by metaphysical horizons
but one which speaks in the name of the post-metaphysical a metaphysical horizon belonging
to the unthought, the pre-historical and beyond the realm of contestation (Goodfield 2013):
What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
The euphoric coming of the postmodern age is but an extension of the Modern project as it
remains constituted by an elusive metaphysical horizon yet masquerading as a shift beyond all
grand-narratives. Ironically, what the postmodern project fails to realize is that the very
process of deconstruction is in and of itself grounded in a preconceptual, that is to say, a pre-
determined grand-narrative of its own. To deconstruct is predicated on a construction
grounded interminably on metaphysical grounds; to speak of the death of the author is to make
a metaphysical claim about the mind, being and epistemology. It is from this god, the nameless
second-creator and its elusive metaphysical frontier, that we seek liberation.
There are three levels of liberation which we seek to engage with in regards to any oppressive
order: (1) its metaphysical horizons (2) the political imagination of that order and (3) the
materiality/structures of that order.

(1)
(2) Political
Metaphysical
Imagination
Horizon

(3) Socio-Economic
and Political
Structures

In order to be able to proceed with such an argument, the paper draws on the work of Eric
Goodfield (2013) in assuming that any political theory, including political theories which claim
to be post-metaphysical are grounded in metaphysical assumptions. In exploring the
relationship between the prevailing metaphysical horizons, ontological consciousness and the
ways in which they shape our politico-economic and social structure, I will draw on the work of
Enrique Dussel.
To engage with these different levels of liberation will require a non-conventional approach to
politics. It is our contention that to juxtapose philosophy from politics cannot but lead to the
reification of the existing political relations and thus circumvent the emergence of a radical
politics one of emancipation. It is in opposition to this juxtaposition that this paper has been
written. To engage in critical philosophy is in itself emancipatory moment that moment in
which the oppressed can think through and become conscious of the metaphysical horizons of
the oppressor. However, this conscious does not become critical if it is purely negative. To
negate the immanent, the status-quo, is to presume that there is a transcendent reality beyond the
prevailing oppressive order. The extent to which one is conscious of the transcendent, ones own
metaphysical horizons, is formative in determining the trajectory of any politics of liberation.
The fundamental argument of this paper is two-fold: (1) while anti-systemic political action is
necessary (level three) true liberation cannot but proceed from liberation at the first level: to
liberate oneself from the pre-historical and reified metaphysical horizons that inform the
political imagination and structures of an oppressive order and (2) the Islamic weltanschauung
provides the metaphysical groundwork for true liberation in the face of a fetishized Modern
project. This has implications for the ways in which we understand the tumultuous political
events around us: it is said that political Islam played a formative role in shaping the so-called
post-Arab Spring. The arguments made in this paper, however, imply that Islam has yet to
make its appearance onto the battlefield and that Islamists remained part-and-parcel, if not
facilitators, of an eternalized metaphysical frontier which continues to circumvent the realm of
possibilities at this critical historical juncture in the Muslim world. The emergence of a reformist
Islamic discourse has only served to provide an acquiescent epistemic justification for an
ontology that is incommensurable with the liberatory ethos of the Islamic weltanschauung.
The implicit and explicit assumptions made in this paper are not novel. In articulating a
groundwork for the metaphysics of liberation in Islam I draw on the penetrative insights of Eric
Goodfield, Enrique Dussel, Paulo Freire, Sayyid Qutb, Taqi ad-Din an-Nabahani, Abul Ala al-
Mawdudi and Sherman Jackson. It draws not only on their conceptual interventions but also the
boldness at the heart of their work; the audacity to speak of a new metaphysical frontier.
In section one I will draw on the works of Eric Goodfield to establish a fundamental premise and
assumption that permeates the arguments of this paper; all political thought and subsequently all
political systems are grounded in metaphysical antecedents. Having linked politics and/or the
political to metaphysics, I also demonstrate that fetishism is an act with metaphysical
antecedents, more specifically, that fetishism emerges from the reification of a metaphysical
horizon. In section two, I apply the conclusions of section one to the Modern project and its
operative emanation; the Modern State. Through the works of Enrique Dussel and Wael Hallaq, I
explore the ways in which the Modern State has become fetishized by examining the concept of
the moral and legal in the dominant analytic positivist paradigm. In section three, I attempt
to extrapolate the properties of a critical consciousness which can engage with liberation at the
first level our metaphysical horizons and argue that such properties are intrinsic to the
Islamic weltanschauungs and to do so I explore the Quranic concepts of creation, the
transcendence of God, takkabur (self-sublimation) and tughyan (transgression).
Section One: The Metaphysical Foundations of Fetishism
In this first section, I will address the underlying assumption that informs the argument of this
paper: (1) political thought is inescapably grounded in metaphysical antecedents (2) systems are,
concomitantly, grounded in a metaphysical horizon and (3) fetishism emanates from a pre-
historical imaginative process grounded in the totalization of ones political imagination.
[1.1] The Metaphysical Foundations of Thought
To contend that our proposition (political thought is grounded in metaphysics) creates a
propensity to fall into fundamentalisms is fallacious (argumentum ad consequentiam). The Ad
Consequentiam fallacy is often articulated as follows:
If A is true, then B will occur.
B is undesirable.
Therefore, A is false.

For the claim being made is not a normative claim in the sense that we do not have the capacity
to choose not to return to metaphysics. The claim is bolder; we cannot escape metaphysics and
even the claim that one can indeed escape metaphysical commitments is in itself a metaphysical
claim. If the basis of such a proposition is true, it is valid independently of whether or not this
creates a propensity for fundamentalism.
Furthermore, the contention is self-defeating in that it is, in itself, predicated on a series of
epistemological assumptions inextricably grounded in a conception of metaphysics. These
metaphysical assumptions, held by realist and nominalist alike, cannot escape presuppositions
regarding (1) the nature of our reality and (2) the nature of the mind i.e. what it is and what it is
not (Goodfield). To demonstrate, let us look at the pluralist approach of Isaiah Berlin and his
concept of negative liberty. It is telling that Berlins political treatise Two Concepts of
Liberty ended with a chapter explicating the philosophical justification behind his political
theory, namely, the way in which he addresses the problem of the one and the many as we
will see below, the ordering is not random nor a consequence.
For Berlin, to move beyond conflict, terror and violence would require that one moves beyond
their point-of-origin: metaphysical narratives. Instead, Berlin insisted, we can suffice with
ordinary resources of empirical observation and ordinary human knowledge and that the only
final truth one can arrive at is that there is no final truth that is accessible. In other words, a
plurality of peoples can differ on plurality of positions regarding ethics but what unites all of
these value-systems is a shared inaccessibility to the one. This position, the deflection of
metaphysics is self-defeating on two grounds: (1) Berlins political theory on negative liberty is
grounded on its own metaphysical grounds as opposed to merely ordinary human knowledge
and (2) these metaphysical precedents are masqueraded under the guise of empirical knowledge
and/or liberalism and thus they subvert historical persons to a new but unnamed abstract
universal.
To expand on the first point, Berlins justification of negative liberty are predicated on a series of
epistemological assumptions which Berlin states quite explicitly, namely, that our contingent
human faculties do not require the adequate epistemic faculties needed to discover an absolute
truth. If metaphysics and epistemology were mutually-exclusive categories of thought
Berlins claim might hold. However, as Goodfield explains: metaphysical suppositions affect
our epistemological theories, and our theories about epistemology bears implications for our
metaphysical claims (Goodfield 223). In other words, to make claims about our access to the
metaphysical is not merely an epistemological claim but a metaphysical claim in-itself. To speak
of a capacity or incapacity to access the metaphysical requires metaphysical claims as starting
points; i.e. this is what is or is not a mind, this is or is not what satisfies the criteria of mind-
external reality and relation (Goodfield 223). This critique of Berlin, need not be indebted to
neither a position of realism or nominalism because the critique does not rest fundamentally on a
metaphysical presupposition regarding the known (and thus its accessibility or lack thereof).
To understand the why such metaphysical and epistemological biases persist has little to do with
the actual knower or the actual known or about the thinking involved in either of the two:
:in the exchange between thinker and thought, our thinking is accountable to a pre-history within
which this thought and this thinking are made possible (Goodfield 224)
From the onset, the proposition is predicated on metaphysical assumptions regarding (1) the
being of the knower, (2) the nature of the knowers mind, (3) the nature of the immanent
known and the nature of the transcendent known. In the very act of speaking of a knower
(who cannot fully know) and a reality (that cannot appear to us in-itself). In turn, Berlin does not
extend his theory it is natural ends. If conflict is caused by claims to an ultimate authority, an
absolute reference the historical subject in Berlins utopia becomes that absolute references
whose thoughts are the product of self-creation unmediated by pre-historical conceptual
schemas (metaphysics). Berlins contemporary, John Rawls, makes a similar attempt. But Rawls
differs from Berlin in that he acknowledges that metaphysical and ontological assumptions are
unavoidable. This, however, need not be a problem for Rawls. The problems that inhere in
plurality can be overcome, according to Rawls, by reaching an overlapping consensus on
ethical and political concepts shared by groups with diverging ontological assumptions. Like his
predecessor, Rawls held that the shift from discussions regarding our ontological differences
based on exclusionary final vocabularies to one which acknowledges a shared ethos would
prevent political closure. However, Rawlsian Liberalism is oblivious of two facts: (1) the
problem is not with ontology but rather the ways in which ontological differences are mediated
between its claimants and (2) Rawlsian Liberalisms political, not metaphysical is another
form of occluding the unjustified preference for the ontological content of liberalism over
others in the public sphere. (Yenigun)
Even postmodernist, despite the verbiage of their discourse, cannot escape these metaphysical
antecedents. In his famous The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Jean Francois
Lyotard claims that catastrophic antagonism is literally the rule - an assumption regarding the
ontological figure of nature and/or being through a sublimation of the catastrophic
antagonism to a level of immutability and beyond ontological contingency (Yenigun 39).
This brings us to our second point.
If what we have stated thus far about the relationship between metaphysics and political theory is
true, an attempt to speak of a post-metaphysical political theory is in itself a hubristic claim
which conceals its own weltanschauungs and claims to speak from a zero-point which
amounts to a sublimation of the claimant to a God-eye view.
In the past few decades, political theorist have become more interested in that primordial terrain
of thought that lays beneath our linguistic and ethical presuppositions: the question of ontology.
As Jane Bennett explains, the question of ontology for contemporary theorist was that which
provides the historical subject with The picture of the basic character of nature/life/existence
that informs a theorys more specifically political set of claims, criticisms, and analyses and
describes the turn to ontology as a willingness to make explicit the ontological imaginary that
informs a theorys more specifically political set of claims, criticisms, and analyses.
Thus far, I have established drawing on the work of Eric Goodfield that political thought
cannot escape metaphysical presuppositions. In turn, I have also established that political
systems are also grounded and informed by a pre-historical metaphysical horizon independently
of whether or not its ideologues are conscious of their metaphysical commitments. If any
political thought and concomitant political process is grounded in a metaphysical horizon than
fetishism, we will argue, originates in a pre-historical and reified metaphysical horizon.
[1.2] Fetishism and Metaphysics
Before proceeding to the metaphysical antecedents of fetishism, I will begin by stating
the obvious; the political processes in which fetishism takes its concrete albeit not originating
form.

The political space cannot be understood as autonomous space constituted by an aggregate of

individuals. As Enrique Dussel explains, the political field is one of several intersecting and
intersubjective modes-of-living constituted by relations and mediations. It is also an open-space
in that it is not enclosed but is rather immersed in a set of intersubjective networks with other
spaces (e.g. the economic, the social, and so forth). To move beyond the positivist and Liberal
conception of the Political we can thus illustrate the political field as follows: traversed by
forces, by singular subjects in possession of will and a certain degree of power, and these wills in
turn structured within specific universes. For the purposes of this paper, we are concerned with
how these intersubjective subjects mediate power or more specifically mediate the will of
the subject in relation to the Other.

It is precisely at this moment, the mediation of the will vis--vis the structures of power that
render the political space a loci of fetishization idol-making. That is not to say, one ought-to
embrace a philosophy of anarchism but rather it is to recognize that political mediation through
power-relations (e.g. the creation of institutions) is a precarious and necessary evil (Dussel). In
the agential moment in which the power is mediated and intersubjective relations become
objective and normal actions power, as Dussel explains, can be either self-referential or
obediential. To exercise self-referential power is to both exercise power vis--vis the
mechanisms of mediation (the institutions of the state, the security apparatus, culture, etc.) and
be the [normative] origin of that power. To exercise obediential power is to exercise power
whilst not being the [normative] origin of that power. In other words, self-referential power is the
epiphenomena in which a subjective will becomes an objective political mediation it is
institutionalized, normalized and the subjective agential moment through which it first emerged
is forgotten. Enrique Dussel, however, does not explore this concept, the self-referential exercise
of power, to its full end. If, as we have stated above, political thought and political processes are
grounded in a metaphysical horizon than we cannot reduce fetishization to purely a mode of
exercising power. In his earlier works, including Ethics and Community and The Philosophy of
Liberation, Dussel defines fetishization as: the process by which a totality is made absolute,
closed, divinized. (Dussel 95). The Latin facticius and Portuguese feitio indicate that a fetish is
something made by our own hands yet it is made to appear as though it is absolute and divine.
The conceptualization given by Dussel brings to fore the: pre-history within which this thought
and this thinking are made possible (Goodfield 224) by this thought and this thinking we
are referring to the totalization, absolutization and divinization whereas the pre-history refers to
the metaphysical horizons and antecedents which make such processes possible. Every system,
will thus, seek to totalize itself and in doing so it will seek to include any exteriority into its
totality, including God.
From a Quranic perspective, fetishization can also be understood as a form of epistemic
arrogance. The refusal to recognize of ones epistemic limitations becomes epistemic arrogance
(takkabur) when we commit a projective fallacy: projecting our own limitations onto the world.
It conflates a cognitive deficit on our part for an objective feature of what we are trying to
understand and in turn committing the fallacy of deriving an ontological conclusion from
epistemological premises when the explanatory powers of our epistemic mediums are not
adequate in ascertaining that particular ontological conclusion. Epistemic arrogance involves the
fallacious reduction of the ontological (Dasein) to the ontic (sein). In other words, the epistemic
horizons of our human mental faculties become, in and of themselves, the absolute boundaries of
knowledge Ahmet Davutoglu, in his Alternative Paradigms, refers to this as an
epistemologically-defined-ontology which is on contradistinction to an ontologically-defined-
epistemology.

The totalization involves is not only an absolutization of the weltanschaaungs but also all of its
parts.
This has critical implications. It means that our political imagination is circumvented and
informed by our metaphysical horizons the very realm of possibility is informed not by the
boundaries of our ethical, linguistic or political discourses but by the metaphysical frontiers of
the prevailing order and the expansiveness of our own. It follows, that liberation must proceed
from all three levels mentioned in our introduction: (1) metaphysical horizons (2) political
imagination and (3) socio-economic and political structures. How can we begin to think about
liberation on the level of metaphysical horizons will be discussed in section two. But before
proceeding, let us examine the ways in which the Modern State has become fetishized.
The Modern State, as we will demonstrate, is an example of such self-referential hubris which in
denying the metaphysical (i.e. that which is beyond the State) it becomes the ultimate arbitrary
of [falsely-perceived] totalized reality. The ideologization of this elusive strategy of
metaphysical displacement and closure later became termed Secularism. Its epistemic
categories religion/sacred and the secular/political provide the ideological justification a
post-metaphysical politics and subsequently the reification and naturalization of the prevailing
metaphysical horizon.

Section Two: the Modern State as a New God

In bringing the epistemic and metaphysical dimensions of power into context, we can
understand the ways in which the states power is mythical in that it is entirely self-founded
and has no legitimation whatsoever outside its own self-establishment through mythical
inscription.

Wael Hallaq aptly demarcates the Modern State from models of Islamic governance by
explicating five distinctive form-properties of the State. One of these form-properties is the
States self-affirming claim to sovereignty and its subsisting metaphysics. Another critical
feature of the State, largely based on the previous form-property, is its: cultural-hegemonic
engagement in the social order including its production of the national subject (Syed). He
explains that: The sovereign state is "conceived as the efficient agency of its own construction
comparable to the divine creation ex nihilo [from nothing]" and "capable of having or expressing
such an act of will" (p.27).

The positivist conception of law, in this respect, is a case in point; a self-referential logic of
political power which emanates from a pre-historical self-referential metaphysical horizon. As
the scholar of Islamic law explains, the very positivist distinction between law and morality
is grounded in a hubristic secular epistemology. To extend Hallaqs observation further, I will
contend that this hubristic secular epistemology is informed by an underlying hubristic and
elusive metaphysics. Nowhere is this hubris more clear that in the work of British legal theorist
John Austin:

that all human laws ought to conform to the Divine law. If this be his meaning, I assent to it
without hesitation [because] the obligations they impose are consequently paramount to those
imposed by any other laws, and if human commands conflict with the Divine law, we ought to
disobey the command which is enforced by the less powerful sanction; this is implied in the term
ought; the proposition is identical, and therefore perfectly indisputable it is our interest to
choose the smaller and more uncertain evil, in preference to the greater and surer. If this be
Blackstones meaning, I assent to his proposition, and have only to object to it, that it tells us just
nothing.

For Austin, there is no dispute that human-law ought-to conform to divine law and is perfectly
indisputable. But, in responding to Blackstone, Austin argues that law does not become law
on the basis of its normativity, that is to say in reference to an external episteme and thus on the
basis of certain metaphysical precedents, but rather by the sheer fact that it exists. And if a
particular injunction is law then it ought-to be imposed.
To probe Austin, more yet, the Modern projects conceptualization of law, one [perhaps the
Muslim subject] might ask; how would analytical positivism deal with a situation in which one
possessed access to both divine law and human-law? The Qurn explicitly posits this question:
Then is it the judgement of [the time of] ignorance they desire? But who is better than Allah in
judgement for a people who are certain [in faith].
If, according to Austin, they are both law by virtue of them existing then we would have to
assume that they are of equal epistemic value however this would contradict Austins earlier
rapprochement with Blackstones claim that the imperative to conform to divine law is
perfectly indisputable. This becomes all the more problematic when the divine law self-
consciously negates the authority of human-law. Let us suppose, as some Muslim ideologues
have argued, that the prohibition of adhering to man-made law is in itself a [negative] law
according to Austin, this law is legitimate yet other laws, man-made, are also legitimate. To
purpose of these questions is to explicate and bring to fore the quandaries created when trying to
engage with Modern theories of law from an Islamic epistemological perspective. This, brings to
fore another problematic; how can we discover divine law?
Secondly, if there is a God, the will of that God is more complex than that of man and mans
cognitive faculties. We are left with the problem of adequation namely that the explanatory
powers of our mental faculties cannot account for what is the will of God even if reason is
universal and uniform amongst men. Contemporary philosophers refer to this problem (our
inability to ascertain metaphysical truths) as cognitive closure. Modern political philosophy, in
some cases explicitly, justifies the autonomy of reason and the sovereignty of the created-
relative by adopting a Secular ontology, that is to say, an ontology which posits that the world
is not traversed by an active divine-will at the very least within the political space. This
ontology is incongruent with the Qurns ontology which establishes the supremacy of God in
both the samaa (the heavens) and the ard (earth): And it is Allah who is [the only] deity in
the heaven, and on the earth [the only] deity. And He is the Wise, the Knowing.

Section Three: Liberation, Critical Consciousness and our Metaphysical Frontiers

[3.1] The Foundations of Critical Consciousness
If we take as our basis, the following critical proposition: all thought, including political thought,
is grounded in metaphysical antecedents then we can proceed to state the following in regards to
the consciousness involved in the process of liberation:
A negation of the political system cannot amount to an authentic negation if it does not
predicated on the negation of the metaphysical horizon that system; its origin(s) for the political
system is the operative emanation, as Qutb explains, of a weltanschaaungs (Belkeziz). To negate
the metaphysical horizons of the system must be preceded by a consciousness of that
metaphysical horizon and it is precisely this moment, that revelatory moment of consciousness,
that a system is detotalized and defetishized. Before proceeding, it would be of some benefit to
bring together and summarize the forthcoming argument; the axiomatic Islamic declaration of
Iman (faith) is constituted by two mutually-constitute declarations la ilaha, a negation of the
fetishized being and ila Allah, an affirmation of the total exteriority and absolute transcendence
of God, the Creator. The affirmation of an absolutely anterior and infinite Being who created the
world from ex nihilo amounts to an authentic and immutable negation of all systems for they
become fundamentally contingent in their very ontological figuration. This negative and
affirmative process also affirms that the only ultimate and ontologically-grounded hierarchy of
differentiation (and thus valuation) is that of the Absolute-Creator and the relative-created. I
argue below that this hierarchy of differentiation and valuation negates all other temporal
hierarchies that inhere in the metaphysical horizons that inform all processes of
Othering/Differentiation. It should be restated however that my objective is to only provide
the groundwork and broad theoretical contours for such a thesis.
[3.2] La Ilaha ila Allah: the Negative and Affirmative Dimensions of Liberation
In turn, there are two processes involved in liberation on the level of metaphysical frontiers a
negative process and an affirmative process as per embodied in the Islamic declaration of Iman:
la ilaha ila Allah the statement, ila Allah, the affirmation of belief in Allah is preceded by a
negation: ila Ilaha there is no god.
The former involves an authentic negation of the totality of a fossilized system an Atheism
which does not declare the death of a God (and thus reifiy its own nameless God) but rather
an Atheism towards a particular being which claims to be god but is not. It is a rejection of that
god the god of the system. To begin with a posture of Atheism is proceed from the
consciousness that no temporal system is immutable and divine a posture which Dussel refers
to as pure atheism and in turn future system is immutable or divine.
The tawhidic paradigm provides us with two axiomatic metaphysical assumptions which allow
us to adopt a position of pure atheism towards the system. An authentic negation of all systems
requires the recognition of an absolute exteriority an infinite other that is anterior, in its
ontological sense, to all systems. The recognition of an absolute exteriority inheres in the
Islamic concept of creation and the concept of God. The concept of creation assumes that God
created the world the totality of all possible realities from ex nihilo. In other words, both the
second-creator who created the world-of-meaning which we live in today and the creation of
those second-creators (the systems) are both contingent.
Consequentially, God is the only unconditioned being and all systems, on their most fundamental
level (their ontological figuration) are contingent: the metaphysical theory of creation is the
theoretical support of liberative revolution; it is the most thorough going deposition that no
system is eternal, because everything, even the sun and the heart, is contingent (it could be non-
existent) and possible, unnecessary (at a given time it was not) (Dussel 100). To negate the
totalizing claims of the State is to deny the finality of history, it is to deny the Liberal mythos
that we have reached the end of history and opens the possibility that a new order can prevail.
The metaphysical concept of creation in Islam extends to the Islamic concept of God and the
ways in which the God-man relations define the nature of both God and man. The Islamic
weltanschaaungs takes as its starting point the Absolute transcendence of God. As Sherman
Jackson points out, the transcendence of God, in Islam, is complemented by the axiomatic claim
that only God is transcendent not simply a vertical beyondness but a beyondness that speaks to
the complete noncontingency of Gods selfhood (Jackson 181).
The metaphysical theory of creation and the Absolute noncontingency of God provides us with a
new theoretical and operative binary one which we can claim is the only absolute and ultimate
binary and hierarchy of differentiation: the Absolute-Creator and the relative-created
(Davutoglu). To affirm this hierarchy-of-being is to de facto negate all temporal hierarchies of
valuation among the created-relative.
[3.3] Idolatry in the Quran
This amounts to seeking recognition elsewhere, besides the master, as an Islamic metaphysics
demands that one sets his gaze onto that sky that horizon- beyond the master gaze. It demands
that we see, with our own eyes, what the master cannot see; a new metaphysical frontier It is a
metaphysics which enjoins that we recognize that the master is a man but only a man and that I
too am a man and only a man. To recognize the ontological contingency of both the master and
the slave involves a process in which one distinguishes between two forms of creation:
creation in the ontological sense, that is, of our corporeal being from ex nihilo (the First-Creator)
and (2) creation in the social-sense (the second-creator[s]), that is, the construction of our
world the world-of-meaning grounded in a self-referential metaphysical horizon. It follows,
that our ultimate contingency is to the First-creator and not the second-creator in that the very
act of social-construction is contingent both on the First-creator and the metaphysical horizons of
the second-creator. In short, it is to distinguish between the Absolute-Creator and the relative-
created as being the only absolute hierarchy of valuation and being. This, however, does not
mean that there are two gods. Our metaphysics demands that Allah is both the Creator in the
absolute sense and the Creator in the world-of-meaning: And it is Allah who is [the only]
deity in the heaven, and on the earth [the only] deity. And He is the Wise, the Knowing
(Quran; 43:84).
Thus, the origins of transgression (at-Tghyn) is a self-referential episteme grounded in a
reified metaphysical horizon (and thus also self-referential), that is, Tghyn in its multifarious
forms (political, social, economic and so forth) emerges when the ontological is domesticated:
the Absolute-Creator is domesticated by the created-relative. Being and/or Reality (in the
ontological sense) becomes that which lays within the horizons of the ontic. Concomitantly, this
involves the creation of self-referential1 and exclusive categories-of-differentiation and valuation
between the created-relative. In an explicit critique of these self-referential categorizations the
Qurn declares:

They are not but [mere] names you have named them - you and your forefathers - for which
Allah has sent down no authority. They follow not except assumption and what [their] souls
desire, and there has already come to them from their Lord guidance. (In hiya illa asmaon
sammaytumooha antum waabaokum ma anzala Allahu biha min sultanin in yattabiAAoona illa
alththanna wama tahwa alanfusu walaqad jaahum min rabbihimu alhuda).

Idolatry, in the Qurn, is the product of a false ontological consciousness which transforms the
subjective into an objective being. In Quranic terms, idolatry becomes the natural product of
Tghyn which linguistically means to exceed ones limits and on the basis of the
aforementioned tawdic framework, to exceed ones epistemic limitedness and contingency and
elevate oneself about man or as Syed Mustafa Ali puts it: An artefact (man-made object) that
has power over others by being transformed from a subjective concept to an objective thing

The natural result is Tghyn which emerges from a social and imaginative process. Before
proceeding, what is Tghyn as per defined within the Qurnic semantic structure? The
linguistic meaning of Tghyn, according to the Linguist Scholar Ibn Fris comes from the root
word tagha: to exceed the boundary, for example: Indeed, when the water overflowed, We
carried your ancestors in the sailing ship (Inna lamma tagha almao hamalnakum fee aljariyati).

Jawdat Said explains:

The Qurn warns that those who cross the boundaries of justice into oppression by
dominating and overpowering others (the verb "tagh" is significant since many people,
including even Arabs, do not always understand the relationship between the verb "tagh" and
the term "tght," ...) "spread (heap) therein corruption (mischief)."(89:11-12). The story of
Pharaoh and Moses is the paradigmatic story in the Qurn of both tyranny and "speaking to
power." Mentioned numerous times, the name Pharaoh ceased to be simply the name of an
individual and became instead a symbolic reference to all domination that violated the
precepts of equity. "Truly Pharaoh elevated himself in the land and broke up its people into
sects, dominating (depressing) a group among them: their sons he slew, their women he
enslaved. He was indeed one of the (class of) corrupters (on earth)."(28:4)
And goes onto to say:

1
By which we mean categories which do not refer to objective referents external to the enunciator.
This verb was also used in relation to the tribes A'adand Thamoudin addition to Pharaoh. The
longest dialogue in the Qurn between a prophet and his people is the dialogue between
Moses and Pharaoh. The Pharaoh was mentioned in the Qurn more than 70 times and Moses
over 100 times. The struggle of the prophet Moses was with one of the greatest and most
domineering civilizations, which has left us the pyramids, as symbols of the power they
possessed.

The self-referential act of imputing false categories of differentiation between the created-
relative is encapsulated in the Qurnic concept of takkabur which means to sublimate oneself.
In narrating acts of takkabur, the Qurn illustrates examples in which man or jinn arrogated not
against God but against his fellow man or jinn. The two archetypal tughat and acts of takkabur
provide manifest examples of such:

Iblis first act of kufr was his takkabur over Adam by differentiating himself from Adam on the
basis of Iblis being made of nr (fire) whereas Adam was made from tn (clay): He said: I
am better than him. Thou createdst me of fire, whilst him Thou didst create of clay. (Qala ana
khayrun minhu khalaqtanee min narin wakhalaqtahu min teenin). Or am I [not] better than this
one who is insignificant and hardly makes himself clear? (Am ana khayrun min hatha allathee
huwa maheenun wala yakadu yubeenu). In defending his claim Firawn goes onto claim: And
Pharaoh called out among his people; he said, "O my people, does not the kingdom of Egypt
belong to me, and these rivers flowing beneath me; then do you not see? (Wanada firAAawnu
fee qawmihi qala ya qawmi alaysa lee mulku misra wahathihi alanharu tajree min tahtee afala
tubsiroona). And for those reasons the Qurn declares: "Truly Pharaoh elevated himself in the
land and splintered up its people into factions, taking advantage of a weak group among them:
their sons he slew, and he kept the women alive, for he was indeed a maker of mischief." (Inna
firAAawna AAala fee alardi wajaAAala ahlaha shiyaAAan yastadAAifu taifatan minhum
yuthabbihu abnaahum wayastahyee nisaahum innahu kana mina almufsideena).

Takkabur is then the act through which hierarchies of differentiation are totalized and made
absolute amongst the created-relative a breach in the Absolute-Creator and relative-created
hierarchy. The Quran refers to this as a state of fitnah.

[3.4] On Fitnah as a Cognate Institute

The Qurn describes this epiphenomena as fitnah. Throughout the Qurn the term is
used to detonate two different forms of testing: (1) Gods testing of man and (2) mans testing
and trying of other human-beings. This second category refers to a situation in which these
categories become normalized and transcend and become the foundations of a natural order i.e.
the normalization and cognate and socio-political institutionalization of servitude. The origins of
man-man exploitation become invisible the signifier disappears.

Fitnah, is thus a conscious-forming psychological state that is graver than physical forms of
servitude in which these categories and modes-of-domination are not rendered perceived as
normal. This becomes all the more clear when we consider that the Qurn uses the term Fitnah
and not idtihad (oppression), tadhib (persecution), and inshiqaq (sedition) in describing the
modes-of-domination which emanate from psychological servitude and declares that: Fitnah is
worse than Qital (wa l-fitnatu ashaddu mina l-qital). This epiphenomena is also demonstrated
in the Qurans engagement with Muhammads antagonist in its attack on the prevailing
dominant culture of the time: the religion of the forefathers.
Conclusion

As I hope to have demonstrated, the proposition that every political thought and concomitant
system is grounded in metaphysical antecedents has critical implications for the ways in which
we think about liberation, emancipatory politics and the prevailing order. If the proposition is
true, we cannot but begin to think about our own metaphysical antecedents and the ways in
which they circumvent or expand our political imagination in other words the ways in which
our metaphysical horizons condition our political horizons. In a humble attempt to put this
proposition in that context, I have attempted to extrapolate the metaphysics of the concept of
liberation in Islam by examining God-man relations. However, thus far, we have spoken in
largely abstract terms. It is critical that further work be done on the operative emanations of such
a project; what does it mean in relation to the State and the question of seizing State power? If all
systems are contingent and our metaphysics negates the totalization of any system then what
would an Islamic political system look like? Furthermore, if our political thoughts are grounded
in metaphysics then what does this tell us about the relationship between Islamic movements and
the Left both of whom seek a post-Capitalist order? These questions remain unanswered.

References

Goodfield, Eric Lee. Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory. Routledge, 2014.
Print.

Davutoglu, Ahmet. "Islamic Paradigm: Tawd and Ontological Differentiation." Alternative

Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. 1st ed.
Lanham: U of America, 1994. 261. Print.

Khatab, Sayed. "What Early Muslims Meant by Jahiliyyah." The Political Thought of Sayyid
Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyyah. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2006. 254. Print.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. God and Man in the Qur; Semantics of the Quric Weltanschauung. 1st ed.
Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistics Studies, 1964. Print.

Jackson, Sherman A. Islam and the Blackamerican: Towards the Third Resurrection. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

Hallaq, Wael B. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament. 1st
ed. New York: Columbia UP, 2013. 256. Print.

Dussel, Enrique D. Philosophy of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985. Print.

Hesse, Barnor (2011) Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Postracial Horizon. The South Atlantic
Quarterly 110(1): 155-178