Granada, 13th of August
I. Education and Ideology
II. Education and Psychology
III. Education and Community
IV. Education and Politics (Suggestions)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
When I was invited to give a talk, I was not sure if education is really my subject as such. In reality I am currently more interested in a new understanding of politics/ideology in relation to the phenomenon of psychology. But then I saw a connection between these subjects.
I want to talk about an education which is close to us, close to our situation, here and now. My intention is also to propose another understanding of today’s role of communities.
Let me begin with a dedication:
“Upbringing means acquainting young people with the conditions and
educating them about the conditions under which one can live in the world in
general, and then in particular strata of it.” (Goethe)
1. When we talk about education, we automatically move into the political realm. And it is there, of course, that we encounter the dominant ideology, which often works covertly.
2. Today’s dominant ideology is expressed perfectly by Obama’s slogan: “Yes we can!” – meaning, the belief that everything is possible. At the same time it is expressed, as if in reverse, in the widespread cynicism of the masses: “No, we cannot!”
This latter, negative slogan is accompanied in turn by the ubiquitous imperative to “Enjoy!” – itself accompanied by a new, modern sense of guilt that we are not enjoying ourselves enough. Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher points out that “at the beginning of the last century you felt bad ‘enjoying’, today you feel bad not enjoying enough.”
3. The underlying ideology is also expressed by culture. We learn through others what to enjoy, even if we do not ‘naturally’ enjoy it immediately. Take alcohol and cigarettes, for example, which we experience as horrible the first time we take them.
4. Politics today has taken over what were originally free universities, and this means the education of the elite. They are where experts are supposed to be moulded. Slavoj Žižek: “Experts solve the problem of others… those in power.”
5. Real education confronts our real problems (not the problems of those in power) and meets the impossible in another way. It requires thought.
6. This amazing community here in Granada approaches the impossible in a specific way (Mosque, Zakat, Market, School). Naturally, their efforts are confronted by the ideology of the state, and by the ideology of some ‘(br)others’ (who whisper, ‘we can’t do it, it’s impossible, let’s just enjoy life and dhikr’).
Goethe: “I love the one who desires the impossible.”
7. If education gathers together ‘what we learn and teach’, then the main issue is that we always learn through others.
II. Education and Psychology
Why is psychology relevant in this context?
Psychology thinks about the role of ‘others’ in our general development. That is one of the key links, I believe, to education in today’s world.
1. Let us begin by imagining an ideal Muslim community, where all the key institutions are in place. All the people and institutions work together in a form of behaviour therapy. But despite this, things naturally go wrong sometimes.
2. By the 9th century, Abu Zayd had already invented a kind of psychotherapy in his ‘Sustenance of the soul’. He already knew all the key symptoms people suffer. There are spiritual and psychological symptoms. For example: you sit in a night of Dhikr and your knee hurts (at which point, you are your knee!) or you reflect on your last phone bill (at which point, you are your telephone bill!).
Abu Zayd advises us to take these symptoms (anxiety, depression, nervousness and so on) seriously, but with the following in mind:
“We should strongly hold to the conviction that Allah has not created a disease of
the body or the soul without creating its antidote.”
4. Let us jump back to our time. As you know, Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis at a time when symptoms/syndromes were becoming very strong. He believed that the subject was isolated (public/private) and divided (conscious/unconscious) in a society which – as Foucault points out:
“…itself becomes increasingly mad as it locks away the insane in madhouses.”
5. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a student of Freud. Like Carl Schmitt, he had a genius for creating magnetic definitions, and he provided us with key definitions for psychological recognition. Lacan linked the idea of psychoanalysis with politics, philosophy and science. He was impressed by Martin Heidegger’s language philosophy (“Language speaks!”), but did not himself offer a specific philosophy or any other kind of system. He opposed psychotherapy and ego-therapy as not radical enough, at least to solve the symptoms of modern man and the society he lives in.
Lacan provides us with a fascinating thesis:
From a psychological point of view, we order our reality into three registers: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.
Here we may be reminded of the story of Musa. When he asked Allah to show himself (Imaginary), he was asked to look at a mountain (Symbolic). When the mountain disappeared (Real) he lost consciousness...
When Musa came to Our appointed time and his Lord spoke to him, he said, 'My
Lord, show me Yourself so that I may look at You!' He said, 'You will not see Me, but
look at the mountain. If it remains firm in its place, then you will see Me.' But when
His Lord manifested Himself to the mountain, He crushed it flat and Musa fell
unconscious to the ground. When he regained consciousness he said, 'Glory be to
You! I make tawba to You and I am the first of the muminun!'
Al Araf 143
Coming back to education:
Lacan showed in his psychological development theory the phenomenon, the absolute importance of the other. Again, his thinking is very much framed within the three aforementioned Registers (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real). In fact we are – from a psychological point of view – created by others. Even before a child is born, his father and mother discuss him, they talk about their children. The parents are the first ‘others’ he meets.
Mother (Creativity, Safety Zone, Well-being).
The child discovers his subjective being in the so-called ‘Mirror state’ (Lacan, 1936). The moment at which the child realises its own identity in the mirror and deduces its own separateness from the mother, is a key to the child’s future imaginative creativity.
Yesterday I visited the Pablo Picasso Museum in Malaga. Gertrude Stein describes this event:
“A child sees the face of its mother, it sees it in a completely different way than
other people see it, I am not speaking of the spirit of the mother but of the features
and the whole face, the child sees it from very near, it is a large face for the eyes of
a small one, it is certain the child for a little while only sees a part of the face of its
mother, it knows one feature and not another, one side and not the other, and in
his way Picasso knows faces as a child knows them and the head and the body.”
Father (The one desired by the mother, Law, Conventions)
In this idealised model, the father is the one who in language terms represents the law and the conventions of his time, and who introduces the child to the symbolic order. He also actuates its separation from the mother (Oedipus Complex). Within Lacan´s development psychology, what is real is the experience that our imagined and symbolic order, which we haven been introduced to by others and which we seem to move safely, is essentially subjective and fragile.
6. Here, right at the beginning of our existence, we can already discern some of the fundamental educational problems of our time:
a) First problem: Creation of the real man (father) and woman (mother).
b) Second problem: The role of others, friends (Heidegger’s ‘highest possibilities’ and mirrors for yourself) and teachers. And, of course, the role of the ‘big other’ – the State, which intervenes increasingly in upbringing.
c) Third problem: The symbolic relation between man and woman: marriage. When Hajj Abdulaziz, rahimahullah, asked Shaykh Muhammad Ibn al Habib how to keep a marriage alive and successful, he was advised: “Have many guests!”
7. Friedrich Nietzsche described the key traits of today’s education:
“Involuntarily, parents turn children into something similar to themselves – they
call that ‘education’. Deep in her heart, no mother doubts that the child she has
borne is her property; no father contests his own right to subject it to his concepts
and valuations.”
Consequence:
Today we are seeing the privatisation of children by their parents on the one hand (they have become something we do not talk about much) and, on the other hand, the State (‘the big other’) increasingly taking over children’s education. In real terms this means our children and young people will serve certain discourses and learn to speak the logic and content of those discourses.
8. Discourses
Lacan talks about the four / five discourses of today and provides a key insight into their role. Lacan concludes: “Discourses write subjects!”
In other words, Lacan believed that we ourselves do not normally write discourses, or the things we propound; instead we are the product, or subject, of the discourses we learn to speak. Allow me briefly to name these discourses which Lacan defines:
a) The Capitalistic Discourse
This is not really a free discourse, because it integrates everything and everyone, especially its own enemies.
b) The Master Discourse
This is the discourse of the teacher, providing awareness of terminology, such as the difference between signifier and signified. It creates its own language (e.g. Sloterdijk).
c) The University Discourse
Claims to teach objective knowledge (experts) but at the same time hides the masters behind it.
d) The Hysteric Discourse
Takes the form of ‘Breaking News’, teaching people to be mobilized by news as quickly as they forget it. Associates terms (like Shari’at) with events (like terror).
e) The Psychoanalytic Discourse
Makes people aware of the illusionary aspects of the Ego and the world it lives in. You are not even in charge of yourself. Your real longing is unconscious. You speak, expressing the longing of the other.
It is very important to be acquainted with the logic of these discourses.
9. A particular discourse emerges in this context, and that is the work of Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi. He is both unique and significant, for the following reasons:
- Based on reading the text carefully (Qur’an).
- He realises that the reality of the text is not integrated in ruling discourses.
- He repeatedly reflects on the beginnings of our Islamic civilisation.
- He creates his own discourse, being aware of the all-integrating ‘Capitalistic Discourse’.
- He connects European philosophy and literature with the Revelation.
- He recognizes ‘riba’ as the key syndrome of our time.
- He expects the impossible to be made possible, expressing the unity of knowing and acting.
- The aim is to create new subjects, the natural form of ‘I’ and ‘Us’.
III. Upbringing and Community
Before we begin to build buildings, called schools, we should not underestimate the education of being with others.
1. There is a wonderful statement by Shaykh Mortada (about the difference between Ego and ‘I’), which links knowledge of people with people of knowledge:
“People who attend my Dhikr should leave their status (Ego) with their shoes.”
The process, in which the Shaykh leads to real education, is described by Shaykh Ahmad Ibn Ajiba:
“He who knows that Allah is the Real will forget creation as he invokes Him, and will prefer truthfulness (over all else), and through gatheredness he will be absent from separation, through annihilation not longing.”
2. The Dhikr relates also to a paradox: “Die before you die”.
The education of the Dhikr shows itself afterwards, specifically in our renewed attitude towards the ‘impossible’, in our relation to power and in relation to the difference between the ‘Ego’ and the ‘I’.
3. I believe there is a secret in how the circle of community plays a role in the creation of ‘Us’. A few months ago I saw a picture of Shaykh Mortada on Hajj. It showed him together with a group of rubbish men. It is easy to forget that every process, even ones based on religion, creates waste. This waste has to be disposed of and taking care not to treat that activity as profane is a sign of deeper insight. Wherever people gather together, residual waste remains behind in the material sense.
The work done by cleaners, and any other people not seen by others, enjoys a very high status in Islamic practice. All of them together belong to the process of cleaning which not only makes living together more worthwhile but can also form the foundation of genuine community.
From a spiritual point of view, low residue builds up in ourselves, especially when we are thrown together with others. We may pass these residues, or symptoms, on to others, depending on their severity, or we can dispose of them ourselves and create a humus from which roses can grow.
Lacan has an amazing play on words. The ‘sainthomme’ is the one who takes the “synthome” of others and turns it in something active and productive. Reflecting on this reality of our existence creates a deeper foundation than that which casual, non-committal ties of shared opinions can ever be.
IV. Education and practical politics. Suggestions:
1. Intellectual:
“The science of Psychology and Tasawwuf have in common that they are not an ideology, rather they are somehow subversive in relation to ideology.”
There is, I think, a connection to be explored.
2. Political: Community-building is relevant, if it is expanding. Islam needs to be established in towns, not in small, isolated groups. Other forms of community and gatheredness need to be found too. Real Tasawwuf is connected to the Political and turns the impossible into the possible. Zakat, the fallen pillar, must be our first concern here.
3. Educational: We need nothing less than the creation of a new Discourse. We need teachers who are aware of what they are talking about. We are all learning and teaching.
4. Spiritual: Strong longing for a school, college, university by ‘Us’. It is a project which needs us all, it is by nature European and not a national project. Granada has to be understood as our capital in Europe.
……………
When is education really successful? Today, I may indicate it by a Dua:
It is when Father/Mothers make a Dua for their children and they wish them the best. It is when sons and daughters make Duas for their parents and they wish them the best. Then they leave each other in freedom and do what they have to do.
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