دار بيبليون
PREFACE by Prof. Pierre LORY, of the book “L’Hindouisme et son influence sur la pensée musulmane selon al-Biruni” by Dr Lwiis Saliba
Editions Byblion, Paris, 2009
On the top of Mount Qassioun, which overlooks the city of Damascus, is a sanctuary known as “al-Arba’în”, the Forty (Saints). It contains, among other sacred places, a small cave, the same one where, according to local popular tradition, Cain killed Abel. A crack in the shape of a human mouth still bears witness to Mother Earth’s cry of horror at the behaviour of her children. Thus, at the top of one of the oldest known cities in human history, the murder of the brother is placed at the top of the entire inhabited landscape, like the inaugural beginning of human history.
What this founding murder symbolizes for the history of humanity is not only that humanity is doomed to envy, hatred and violence from the very beginning. Such an observation would be quite banal. The violence designated in the biblical and Koranic narrative is not that of the blow struck, of the blood shed. It is, more profoundly, the mark of the fundamental rejection of the Other in every human being. In order to exist, each individual needs to annihilate the Other, or at least to see him as less existing. This does not mean killing it, but mentally giving it a secondary existence, subordinate to one’s own. Psychology has been able to elaborate on the hatred of the father by the son, or that of the child for his brothers or sisters: the desire to kill, to see the other disappear, takes attenuated forms in games or childish quarrels. More dramatically, the conqueror and the colonist give themselves the right to kill and repress. The colonist despoils the indigenous population by considering them less human than himself. Every society is crossed by these executions perpetrated in the depths of individual and collective consciousness.
This role of annihilation of the other is often based on religion. The spring is powerful: if God, who is the origin of all existence, loves me and helps me because I adhere to his true message, those who do not adhere to my religion are less existing, they are creatures of lesser status, farther from the source of existence, less human at heart. Fighting them therefore becomes a lesser evil. It can even become a good according to some ideologists of religious violence.
Lwiis Saliba’s book opens up a whole new mental universe. It is dedicated to the work of a great Muslim intellectual who devoted great efforts to understanding the other. Bîrûnî – one of the greatest minds of medieval thought and science in the land of Islam – travelled to India and stayed there for many years. He met Hindu scholars and spiritualists. He considered their teachings and practices important enough to attempt to decipher them, and to transmit their quintessence to the Muslim public.
From the point of view of knowledge of the other, Bîrûnî ‘s work goes far beyond the framework of a simple scholarly effort. It constitutes a completely new contribution, a Copernican revolution in monotheistic thought. For approaching Hinduism is not an easy thing from a theological point of view – Islamic as well as Christian. It is easy for theologians to disqualify the animistic idolatry of archaic societies. Hindu religion, on the other hand, is more difficult to avoid. It is the expression of an ancient and refined civilization, one of the most important that men have created. The outward appearance of the temples and practices evokes polytheism, but at the same time the visitor guesses the presence of an immense, oceanic philosophy and spirituality. Most often, travellers and visitors in the Middle Ages described from the outside without being able to explain much. They were all the more embarrassed that neither the Bible nor the Koran – the essential frame of reference for all ancient knowledge – made any reference to the religion of the “Brahmins”. It was difficult to form a precise theological judgment about it. The work of Biruni therefore occupies an exceptional place here. All the more so since Biruni does not content himself with describing the Hindu religion, he goes so far as to mention the influence it would have had on certain Muslim circles, such as the Sufis.
Lwiis Saliba has thus accomplished a most useful and fruitful work by bringing Bîrûnî’s work within the reach of a rather large French-speaking public. He establishes a new bridge between cultural and religious universes that usually do not communicate much. Dr. Saliba is one of those Lebanese intellectuals whose open-mindedness to the world is a fundamental character. For many years, he has been trying to understand the thought and wisdom of India. He has visited India many times, and has familiarized himself with the spiritual doctrines of that country – of that continent. The present book is a further contribution to a better knowledge of the other. It is noteworthy that, for once, this transmission from one culture to another does not take place through the intermediary of the West. In the field of comparative religion, as in other fields, the West has in fact established a monopoly on mediation between cultures. To understand the other, one must go through Western science. The work of researchers such as Lwiis Saliba challenges this monopoly in a very interesting way.
Amin Maalouf, when asked about the Lebanese identity, answered that openness to the world was precisely what, according to him, identified the Lebanese attitude the most. Wouldn’t this be a way for Lebanon to find itself? Lwiis Saliba ‘s work takes on pioneering dimensions here. He announces a new society where, in order to assert himself, Cain will no longer have to kill his brother, but on the contrary understand him, esteem him, welcome him; a society where men would manage to become – finally – human.
Pierre Lory
Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
Scientific Director of the French Institute of the Near East