“I Am the Truth”

Mansūr Ḥallāj (c. 858 – 26 March 922)
Mansūr Ḥallāj (c. 858 – 26 March 922)

أنا الحق‎  (Anā l-Ḥaqq) “I am The Truth,” said Ḥallāj. It’s one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam.

If he meant that he actually and fully is God, it makes no sense. But based on his life, he seemed to mean: I am united with God himself through love. Ḥallāj even claimed that Satan’s sin was misconception of God’s uniqueness, such that God’s hidden things were utterly incommunicable by any feeble means. Ḥallāj, instead, said, yes, God cannot be completely given in everything he is; but he can give himself in love by loving union with the spirit.

Though this world is a dangerous place and trying to forge ideas without the Gospel is dangerous and hard, passio divinorum – suffering the deep things of God through loving union in the highest parts of the spirit – is not the monopoly of Christians.


One response to ““I Am the Truth””

  1. How Far Along the Spiritual Journey Can Non-Christians Go? | Contemplative in the Mud Avatar

    […] Mansūr Ḥallāj is, from within Islam, a pretty clear example of what Christians would consider contemplative experience. It is hard to find a reason to dispute this. […]

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