It is unfortunate that given the vagaries of history and politics we in the States are not able to easily avail ourselves of the authentic wisdom of the Islamic tradition. With hostile roots tracing back to the Crusades, and extremists dominating current affairs, many of us may wonder whether Islam has any real wisdom to give! At best, we may nod our heads in the direction of the Sufis. But the whole formation of a separate group called "Sufi" is a symptom of aberration in Islam-- a result of Muslims not availing themselves of the holistic wisdom of their own tradition. Compared to the Islam I know the pop-sufism familiar to non-Muslims is watered-down and slightly wimpy. The Islam I know is physical as well a spiritual: full of vim, vigor, life. But it is most certainly not the testosterone-laden aggression of the extremists.

Islam is profoundly and intelligently holistic. Fourteen hundred years ago Muhammad had regular periods of non-ordinary experience, we Muslims would say a revelation, regarding the relation of creation to the Transcendent. That insight is contained in the term tawheed. This untranslatable term is not often encountered by non-Muslims reading about Islam. If it is it may not be grasped in its fullness of meaning. On a basic level tawheed simply refers to Islam's strict monotheism, but it is a much richer term than just that. Isma'il Faruqi writes that "[Tawheed] is a general view of reality, of truth, of the world, of space and time, of human history and destiny." Indeed, it has been described by one writer as one of the richest and most meaning-filled terms in all of Islam. And yet, so unique is the concept that those of us from Euro-American backgrounds may have trouble grasping it. Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim president of Bosnia, writes that Islam cannot even be fully expressed through European terminology. Faruqi writes that Islamic humanism is "radically different" than Greek, Jewish or Christian humanism. If this is indeed the case, then those from Euro-American backgrounds will not grasp Islam without some extra effort. Without an understanding of tawheed, one does not truly understand Islam.

In order to grasp the fullness of tawheed's meaning we must first re-visit the idea of holism itself. I say "re-visit" because most people are familiar with the term, and many have proposed structures for discussing the human-as-a-whole such as using the phrase "biopsychosocial". However, more often than not, this understanding is based only upon intuitive speculation. There is neither real research, nor theoretical sophistication in most writings on the topic of holism.

Newtonian-Cartesian Mechanism

The discovery by Isaac Newton (really, along with others such as Galileo, Bacon, etc.) that the physical world operated according to repeating and identifiable patterns-- "natural laws"-- was a momentous insight that signals a major paradigm shift from superstition to mechanics. From within what we today would call a superstitious paradigm, natural reality was not predictable. The rock at your feet could well be inhabited by some sort of entity and it was quite possible that it could jump out at you at any time. With Newton's discovery the world and reality suddenly looked quite different and lost much of its mysterious qualities. Rather, it was like a giant machine whose discreet, independent parts fit together into a coherent and operational whole. Rene Descartes ("I think, therefore I am.") applied this mechanistic insight to the specifically human realm. Descartes' work, the Cartesian view, is the general paradigm under which we today operate.

The Cartesian view of the human had the effect of setting up and encouraging a dualism. Specifically, a view that the human too was like a machine made up of two main components, the mind and the body. It is from Descartes that we get familiar images and sayings such as "ghost in the machine" and the image of Deity as a "divine watchmaker". The Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic view is astoundingly successful. Its vision has produced everything from compact discs and the stereos to play them, to space shuttles, to the medical discoveries that have resulted in a considerable extension of our average life-span.

By the time of Thomas Jefferson, people were so enamored of the Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic paradigm that attempts were made to devise mathematical explanations of such distinctively human concerns as social justice and happiness. Obviously, such attempts were bound to fail. Distinctively human qualities such as love, justice, and happiness are simply not amenable to the mechanistic approach. This was recognized and anticipated early on by William Dilthey, but so exciting was the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm that he was largely ignored until relatively recently.

Dilthey recognized that science would need to be divided into two camps: the natural sciences and the human sciences. These would entail different methods of observation and different levels of probable certainty regarding their statements about reality. The natural sciences such as chemistry and physics were fine under the Newtonian paradigm (at least until the advent of quantum physics!) and are able to make statements regarding reality with a probable certainty that approaches statements of fact. However, the human sciences such as psychology and sociology could not rely completely upon the mechanistic view in that much of what they observed was non-mechanistic. This also meant that the statements of the human sciences would always be somewhat "soft". Their statements of truth regarding reality would possess less of a probable certainty and would approach the level of fact less frequently than the natural sciences.

When we witness arguments between, say, psychologists and psychiatrists over the physical or cognitive etiology of depression we are in reality witnessing the creative tension between the natural and human sciences. Psychiatrists, as part of the bio-medical establishment, may be inclined more firmly towards a mechanistic perspective. Psychologists, on the other hand, may be inclined to see much more of the total human, thus recognizing the presence of non-mechanistic qualities in human being.

This creative tension and variety of perspective becomes dysfunctional when it is combined with tendencies towards reductionism. Reductionism is a para-logical error rampant in most professions and especially in the various sciences. It is the tendency to reduce all of reality to one's own partial and selective perceptual stance. The recognition of reductionistic tendencies leads directly to the intuitive attempt at devising a holistic perception of the human and the natural worlds. And yet, most of these attempts are still essentially within a Cartesian world-view.

Eric Voegelin's Quaternion Structure

Eric Voegelin was a historian who wrote a massive seven volume study entitled Order and History. It is in this that we may discover actual research-based foundations for valid holistic thought. When we integrate his thought with other twentieth-century thinkers we are able to construct a truly post-Cartesian, holistic model of the human.

Voegelin concluded that all human experience has a four-fold, or quaternion, structure. With some slight adaptations we end up with what is called a "field model" of the human being comprised of physical, social, subjective (or psychological) and spiritual arenas of experience. There are a couple of things to remember when utilizing the Field Model. First, any change in any one pole of the field will necessarily show up as change, however slight, in the other three poles. Second, the four poles are not four separate areas of experience, isolated one from the other. The Field is a whole, we distinguish among these four main arenas of experience in order to organize the complex abundance of human experience. The Field Model acts as a tool to help us organize our thinking and resist the tendency to view any particular part of reality (such as depression) through the filter of only one pole, such as the physical or the psychological.

It is with the Field Model that we are able to understand and incorporate Islam's untranslatable concept of tawheed.

Tawheed: The Holism of Islam

Fourteen hundred years ago, Muhammad-- husband, merchant, father; a kind, meditative and generous man-- claimed that he was a messenger from God. It was during one of his regular meditative retreats that he was roughly woken by some kind of presence that identified itself as the angel Gabriel. Soon after this first of what would be many such incidents Muhammad began his public preaching. His public life (and these non-ordinary incidents) was to continue over the next twenty-three years. For the first thirteen years in particular, he taught tawheed as it is contained in the famous Muslim creed: la ilaha ila Allah. There is no god other than God. Faruqi writes:

Traditionally and simply expressed, [tawheed] is the conviction and witnessing that "there is no god but God." This seemingly negative statement, brief to the utmost limits of brevity, carries the greatest and riches meanings in the whole of Islam. Sometimes a whole culture, a whole history lies compressed in one sentence. ...All the diversity, wealth and history, culture and learning, wisdom and civilization of Islam is compressed in the shortest of sentences-- la ilaha illa Allah ...

On its most simple and foundational level tawheed speaks of Islam's strict monotheism. In this sense it is a limitation on what types of metaphors, analogies and symbols we may use to talk about Deity or the Transcendent. In the Islamic tradition this first shows up as a prohibition against images of God and then extends to certain types of metaphors for our relation to God. By means of this type of prohibition Islam maintains the integrity of the Transcendent as transcendent. It must be spoken of on its own terms, not as analogous to material creation. Tawheed thus has a view of the Transcendent-as-Deity that is neither pantheistic-- "God is everything"-- nor is it panentheistic-- "God is in everything". Rather, tawheed indicates a sense of God as a Unity that is even beyond the numeral one. The word used to describe the tawheedian view of the Transcendent is "ahad". The Arabic word for the number one is "wahid". Ahad, like tawheed, is untranslatable into English. When it comes to talk about God tawheed is a wholly other category of thought that is unfamiliar to most of us in the Euro-American traditions.

The Muslim tradition, of course, asserts that it is this Transcendent Unity-- God-- that is the proper reference point for all human thought and action. The other aspects of life; subjective, social, and physical, must be seen only in light of the Transcendent Unity. This consonant "fitting together" of creation and the Transcendent is the heart of tawheed and can be easily grasped by utilizing the Field Model. Tawheed points to a harmonious and integrated relation among the various components of human experience: physical, social, subjective and spiritual. With this we are able to understand both the positive statements offered by Islam, as well as an understanding of how contemporary Muslim practice is often far away from the tawheedian world-view. Because of tawheed, the healthy Muslim is unable to separate or compartmentalize any aspect of experience away from the Transcendent-- hence the mix of religion with politics, economics, gender-relations, etc. that so often appears skewed in contemporary Muslim practice.

Tawheed contains five principles regarding reality and three methodological principles that form the foundations of Islamic science. Of course, this is built upon the foundation of our awareness of, and response to the Transcendent Unity.

Tawheedian Principles Regarding Reality

1. The Transcendent is utterly so. Tawheed indicates something other than pantheism or panentheism. It restricts our symbolic, analogical or metaphorical discourse about the Transcendent in order to maintain its integrity as transcendent. In the Qur'an the Transcendent (understood as God) is wholly unique. God cannot be compared to anything created. Creation and God are completely different, and while God is all-knowing of creation, God is not part of creation, nor is God in creation.

2. The relation between the Transcendent and the mundane is understandable. In spite of this existential-ontological separation of the Transcendent Unity from the variety of creation, the actual relationship between the two can be understood by people. Information regarding this relationship is provided by the Transcendent itself in the form of revelation. For the Muslim, the Torah, Gospels and Qur'an are all revealed to us by God. However, revelation is not strictly necessary for proper understanding. We are endowed with a natural reason that is able to "figure out" the proper ordering of this arrangement and conclude "TAWHEED". The Qur'an continuously urges us to look at the patterns in creation (i.e. "natural law") which will bring one to a proper understanding. In healthy Islam good science and authentic religio-spirituality go hand in hand.

3. Human life is meaningful and purposeful. Authentic meaning and purpose in life is found in the proper relation between the human and the Transcendent. The purpose being the struggle to embody the tawheedian-world view by bringing all parts of our experience; physical, social, subjective and spiritual into a consonant "fitting together" with the Transcendent Unity. It is in this struggle that human fulfillment is to be found.

4. The human is able to embody this understanding. This principle is contained in the familiar, if misunderstood, Islamic concept of "jihad". No, it does not mean "holy war". It means "the struggle of good against evil." Jihad includes not only just wars of defense against aggressors and oppressors, but also the struggle against our "lower self" (called the nafs) as well as the use of mere words in support of social justice. Part of the proper understanding of the tawheedian world-view includes a directive to embody or incarnate the world-view. In other words, jihad is physical, social, subjective and spiritual.

5. Humans have freedom. It is the individual who is responsible. While healthy Islam undoubtedly is able to recognize and incorporate psychological issues as an explanation for human behavior, it does not accept too many psychological excuses for the person who fails to engage the "issue of Deity" in all seriousness, or one who, with understanding, rejects the tawheedian world-view. Each unique individual is responsible for his or her own jihad and is free to engage in the struggle. This is in spite of psycho-social concerns which, after all, also get integrated under the tawheedian world-view. The Qur'an clearly rejects as invalid arguments often used today to explain away behaviors such as blaming abusive parents or pleas on behalf of respect for following traditions simply because they are our traditions.

Tawheedian Principles Regarding Methodologies

As already said, in healthy Islam good science and authentic religio-spirituality are two sides of the same coin. Tawheed addresses the basics of a scientific methodology with three principles:

1. Rejection of all that does not correspond with reality.

2. Denial of ultimate contradictions.

3. Openness to new and/or contrary evidence.

Such principles could be utilized by today's scientific community who often exalt their theories at the expense of the pursuit of truth. The Muslim scientist explores and observes reality as does the non-Muslim scientist, but the tawheedian world-view fosters a greater theoretical flexibility-- it does not degenerate into scientism. In the above discussion of the Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic view we see how a slavish adherence to the mechanistic theories of reality led to the absurd pursuit of a mathematics of justice as well as of other distinctively human, non-mechanistic concerns. Dilthey had presented a case against the mechanistic view as holding true for all aspects of reality, but the establishment scientists were not open to such evidence. From within a tawheedian world-view the scientist knows that reality always goes beyond us and our theories. Reality transcends us in its abundance and complexity, and yet the tawheedian scientist knows that there is indeed a "unified theory" that includes not only physics, but all of the sciences, both human and natural. Muslims call this theory "Islam" which does not properly denote a religious tradition, but an existential act of submission to the Transcendent Unity, and the integration of all other aspects of our lives with that act .

Today we see the explosion of a politics of separation. Ethnic and religious groups clash bloodily in various parts of the world. The Euro-American traditions have yet to truly address issues related to race and ethnic groupism. Perhaps we will shed the centuries of ingrained prejudice and look clearly at that youngest member of the Abrahamic tradition. Islam has concepts and categories of thought that, if grasped, can surprise and delight those who think the Abrahamic tradition is only Judeo-Christian. It is not. Our true legacy is Judeo-Christian-Islamic.