Was Omar Khayyam, the legendary Persian mathematician and poet, an atheist?

“Therefore, whatever [ignorance] comes to man is due to the impurity of his nature; if the veil be lifted and the screen and obstacle removed, the truth of things as they are will become manifest.”

ARMEN FIRMAN

In an article by, B. B. Robinson, it is claimed that Omar Khayyam was an existentialist atheist. Similar statements are being made in various atheist websites as well, and for evidence of this claim, excerpts from his poems (Rubayy) are being given. Even a historian like Philip K. Hitti is saying that Omar Khayyam was a freethinker! Let’s read some lines from Khayyam’s poems first. 

Umar’s Poetry

“The temple I frequent is high,
A Turkish-vaulted dome–the sky,
That spans the world with majesty.
Not quite a Muslim is my creed,
Nor quite a Giaour; my faith indeed
May startle some who hear me say
I’d give my pilgrim staff away
And sell my turban, for an hour
Of music in a fair one’s bower.
I’d sell the rosary for wine,
Though holy names around it twine.
And prayers the pious make so long
Are turned by me to joyous song;
Or, if a prayer I should repeat,
It is at my beloved’s feet.
They blame me that my words are clear;
Because I am not what I appear”

… 

“Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d

Of the Two Worlds so wisely — they art thrust

Like foolish Prophets forth; their words to Scorn 

Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust”

…

“Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! 

One thing at least is certain — This Life flies”

…

 “The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d

Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d,

Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep

They told their comrades, and to Sleep return’d.”

…

Although not an expert in poetry, I believe that judging something so serious like someone’s faith by only reading some lines of their poetry is a bit unfair. I cannot understand how some scholars have made their decision that Omar Khayyam was a pessimistic philosopher, materialist, and strict atheist just by reading his poetry. 

To further explain why the quick jump to conclusions based off of poetry is unnecessary, let us take a look at some of the poetry of other well renown Muslim poets and writers, including Allama Iqbal, the “spiritual father of Pakistan”, and Qazi Nazrul Islam, Bangladesh’s national poet.

Iqbal’s Poetry

Let us first read from Allama Iqbal’s poetry, in where he speaks directly to God: 

“Design a new pattern
Create a more perfect Adam
This making of playthings of clay
Is not worthy of God, the creator
If the pattern is poor
What does repetition achieve?
How can the cheapness of man
Meet your approval?”

Now, would you say that Allama Iqbal, who always strived on the path of Islam, was an infidel?

Nazrul Islam’s Poetry

Qazi Nazrul Islam is one of Bangladesh’s most treasured  poets, also famous for his Islamic poetry as well. A collection of his Islamic poetry made by the Islamic Foundation of Bangladesh has compiled more than 400 pages of his work. Now, let’s look at an English translation of his poem বিদ্রোহী  (Rebel): 

“Say, Valiant,
Say: Ripping apart the wide sky of the universe,
Leaving behind the moon, the sun, the planets
and the stars
Piercing the earth and the heavens,
Pushing through Almighty’s sacred seat
Have I risen,
I, the perennial wonder of mother-earth!
The angry God shines on my forehead
Like some royal victory’s gorgeous emblem.
Say, Valiant,
Ever high is my head!”

…

“I crush under my feet the vain glory of the Almighty!”

…

“Sitting in the burning pit of Hell
I smile as the innocent flower!”

…

Does this make Qazi Nazrul Islam a heretic or an atheist? He further writes in the same poem: “I am insane! I am insane!” So now it should make sense that the same scholars who concluded that Omar Khayyam was de facto an atheist, should also say that “Nazrul Islam was a mad-man! Look, he writes it himself!” Taken from PoemHunter, besides Rebel there is another poem of Nazrul Islam which goes: “Allah is my lord…”. 

The words chosen in a poem and the core meaning of the poem can be very different. They can even be the opposite, therefore judging someone’s faith just by reading their poetry is totally absurd.  

This is especially true because the general consensus is that Omar Khayyam was a poet not a scientist; but actually, he was scientist, not a poet.

Let’s discuss in detail. 

Khayyam: Really a Poet?

A scholar, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, said that the name of Omar Khayyam should be removed from the history of Persian literature because of the lack of any material that could confidently be attributed to him.

But still, he was a poet. The first allusion to Omar’s poetry was done by Imad al-Din Isfahani, 50 years after his death. There are also 25 Arabic poems attributed to Omar by classical scholars. The number of quatrains, according to the writings of contemporary scholars of Omar’s time, are 6. The question then is, how did 6 poems rise up to 1200? The most famous manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian library consists of 158 poems. 

After much analysis, it is being understood that it is probably the poetry of several poets here, including Hafiz, Attar, and philosophers like Al-Ghazali and Ibn Sina. Usually Diwans remain intact for long time, but there are high chances of Rubayy getting mixed and corrupted.

Christensen has worked the most in this field, and announced that 121 poems are of Omar Khayyam’s. But he is unable to give a guarantee even for the 12 poems kept in the first class! These poems were selected keeping in mind the Persian writing styles and Omar’s thinking process. But both the Persian rhetoric and Omar’s thought are disputed. Afterwards, Christensen himself said that it is an impossible task to be sure about the actual poems of Omar Khayyam. Christensen’s work is nothing but a collection of poems with a specific rhetoric and thought process. 

Most scholars, only by reading Omar’s poetry, are giving into the statement that he was a pessimistic philosopher and a materialist, which is very wrong. This problem has risen because of not reading Omar’s non-fiction writing. They only look at the poems because of its fame. Based off of this, we even see Christopher Hitchens making Omar a member of neo-Atheism! 

So, looking at the poems have no value, and let’s instead analyse his non-fiction writing. Before going into this, I would like to clear out that there is a non-fiction work in Berlin by Omar Khayyam on existentialism, and a classical scholar named Najm al-Din Daya describes Omar as a pessimistic philosopher, atheist, and materialist. But after reading the following explanation, I hope no doubts will remain about Omar Khayyam’s faith. 

Omar Khayyam’s non-fiction writings

Umar Khayyam writes himself: “This [Tasawwuf or Sufism] is the best of all ways, because none of the perfections of God are kept away from it, and there are no obstacles or veils put before it. Therefore, whatever [ignorance] comes to man is due to the impurity of his nature; if the veil be lifted and the screen and obstacle removed, the truth of things as they are will become manifest. And the Master [the Prophet Muhammad] upon whom be peace – indicated this when he said: ‘Truly, during the days of your existence, inspirations come from God. Do you not want to follow them?’ Tell unto reasoners that, for the lovers of God [Gnostics], intuition is guide, not discursive thought”.

Historian Ibn al-Qifti writes that Omar Khayyam was once skeptical about faith, but later, became a practicing Muslim, went to hajj, and after coming back visited the mosque day and night. Shams Tabriz (Sufi guide of Rumi) and a few other Sufis didn’t like Omar. This is not abnormal, as Ibn Sina was also called a disbeliever in his lifetime and he always replied back in return. Even the great hadith scholar Ibn Hibban was accused of atheism, and had to leave town. Omar Khayyam went to hajj in order to prove that he was indeed a believer. 

The most important book for Omar Khayyam’s biography is by Abu’l Hasan al-Bayhaqi. He describes the death of Omar Khayyam as such: 

“Ḥakim was studying the Ilāhiyyāt of Shifā and once he came to the section on unity and multiplicity, stopped in order to pray and utter his last words. His companions gathered and he [Khayyām] announced his last will and testament and performed his noon prayer. He neither ate nor drank again until he performed his night prayer. He bowed and placed his forehead on the ground and said: ‘O God, I know Thee in as much as my ability allows, forgive me for I know Thy way is the way towards Thee’, and then died.” 

Shahrazuri describes Omar’s last day similarly. There he further writes that Omar Khayyam was making sujood (prostration) and asking Allah to forgive his sins at the time of his being skeptic. He died at that state, while making sujood.

Conclusion

So if we look holistically at Omar Khayyam’s non-fiction writings, poems, and descriptions made by his contemporary historians, we will be able to understand that he was in no way an atheist and was in fact a spiritual Sufi Muslim. Of course, there will remain a huge debate among scholars in academia about the faith of Omar Khayyam; and the question of his faith will remain somewhat open. But I hope that this article has been able to clear out some of the obscurities surrounding his devotion towards God.

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Sources:

• Seyyed Hossain Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam  (ABC International Group, Inc. 2001) p: 33.
•  Iqbal’s Educational Philosophy, by K.G. Saiyidain, 1938.
• Francois De Blois , Persian Literature – A Bio-Bibliographical Survey: Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (2004), p. 307.
• V. Minorsky, “Umar Khayyam” (translated into Bengali by Humayun Khan) In Islami Bisshokosh (Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, 2nd edition, 2004) vol. 6, pp: 196-201 (the text is translated from Islamic Encyclopedia published by E.J. Brill).
• ‘Umar Khayyam. Risalah-i wujud (Bayadi MS. in the Tehran National Library). Translated by S. H. Nasr.
• Ross, E. (1898). “Al-Musaffariyé: Containing a Recent Contribution to the Study of ‘Omar Khayyam.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 349-366.
• “Ibn Hibban” in Islami Bisshokosh (Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, 2nd edition, 2004) vol. 4, pp: 532.
• Meyerhof, M. (1948). ‘Ali al-Bayhaqi’s Tatimmat Siwan al-Hikma: A Biographical Work on Learned Men of the Islam. Osiris, 8, 122-217.
• “Umar Khayyam” In Islami Bisshokosh (Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, 2nd edition, 2004) vol. 6, pp: 209.

EINSTEIN, IQBAL, AND THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN ISLAM

BY FATIMA ALTAF

Time. A perpetual mystery. An ancient debate. The age-old conundrum that has baffled humanity;  and what humanity has, consequently, been trying to comprehend since the beginning of time (no pun intended!).

Before Einstein came out with his groundbreaking Theory of Relativity that altered the entire face of science as we know, a preexisting notion of absolute time, mainly attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, had predominated scientific thought for at least two centuries.

From the advent of Islam up until the 20th century, Muslim thinkers and philosophers, in their quest for knowledge and truth, took a keen interest in the idea and concept of time — taking pains in trying to solve this ultimate puzzle, attempting sometimes to understand it in light of Quranic teachings and, at other times, making an effort to bring about an amalgamation of ancient Greek thought with Quranic allusions on the subject.

Amongst the modern Muslim philosophers, Allama Muhammad Iqbal has spearheaded the debate around the idea of time, particularly in his work The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Though a great admirer of Einstein and his groundbreaking propositions, Iqbal in fact disagreed with the concept of time propounded by Einstein in his Theory of Relativity. Iqbal was of the opinion that:

“Einstein’s Relativity presents one great difficulty, i.e. the unreality of time. A theory which takes time to be a kind of fourth dimension of space must, it seems, regard the future as something already given, as indubitably fixed as the past. Time as a free creative movement has no meaning for the theory. It does not pass. Events do not happen; we simply meet them.”

               (Reconstruction, Lecture 2)

Iqbal’s disagreement with Einstien’s conception of time does not imply, however, that he altogether disagreed with the entire theory. He deemed Einstien’s theory as being deficient in defining time beyond a physical entity, and that by intertwining time with space, time was converted into a physical entity comprising of a set system of coordinates – a straight line composed of spatial points, much like space:

“It appears to me that time regarded as a fourth dimension of space really ceases to be time.”

It cannot, however, be denied that Einstien’s Time, in certain aspects of the theory at least, does come substantially close to the Quranic conception of time.

The idea of time dilation in the General Theory of Relativity can, in fact, be viewed as evidence of Divine Time being different from serial time. Time dilation, according to the General Theory of Relativity, is the slowing down of time for an observer who is either moving at or near the speed of light or is situated near a massive gravitational field.

According to modern physics, the speed of light is absolute. And interestingly enough, philosophy refers to God as the Ultimate Reality. The Quran repeatedly analogizes God to Light, or Noor, referring to God as the “Light of the Heavens and the Earth (Surah Al Noor)”. Quite evidently, therefore, the absolute nature of light in physics, and especially in the Theory of Relativity, appears not only to validate but to, in fact, complement the Quranic allusions to God as Noor.

Consequently, Time Dilation may be referred to as Divine Time, implying that time for God is very different from what it is for us. God is the Creator of time, and thus moves and exists beyond time, while we, the creation, seemingly move within time. The Quran is explicit on the difference between Divine Time and the human perception of time:

“A day of your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count.”

                The Holy Quran (22:47)

In addition, the following verse of the Quran describes the Velocity Time Dilation, and further emphasises the differences between Divine Time and serial time as experienced by us:

“He arranges [each] matter from the heaven to the earth; then it will ascend to Him in a Day, the extent of which is a thousand years of those which you count.”

               The Holy Quran (32:5)

Klemen Vrankar

The matters mentioned here have been interpreted as angels, and since angels, according to the Quranic description, are creatures comprising of Light, they would undoubtedly be traveling around the cosmos at the speed of light, which would result in the aforementioned Kinematic Time Dilation. Hence a day for God and His angels would be equivalent to a thousand years on Earth from the perspective of a human observer 1400 years ago when the Quran was revealed and people traveled on horses and camels.

Iqbal’s conception of time was inspired by Henri Bergson on the subject. Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was one of the most famous and influential French philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th century. In his famous work Time and Free Will, seen as an attack on Kant’s denial of freedom, Bergson proposed to differentiate between time and space and to segregate them from each other, as opposed to the concept of spacetime posited by modern physics. The immediate data of consciousness, according to Bergson, was temporal, which he called “la duree”, or the “duration”. This Duration, or Pure Duration, is what Iqbal referred to as the immediacy of conscious experience, and as a means of grasping reality as a whole.

According to Iqbal, the self has two sides, the Efficient Self and the Appreciative Self:

“On its efficient side it enters into relation with what we call the world of space. The efficient self… discloses itself as nothing more than a series of specific and consequently numberable states. The time in which the efficient self lives is, therefore, the time of which we predicate long and short. It is hardly distinguishable from space. We can conceive it only as a straight line composed of spatial points… “

The Efficient Self is, therefore, the outward, temporal part of the self, which is in touch with the “real” world as experienced by our sense-perception – the self which exists in space-time. The Appreciative Self, on the other hand, is the inner self, which has the capacity to transcend spacetime.

” … the appreciative side of the self… In the life-process of this deeper ego, the states of consciousness melt into each other. There is no numerical distinctness of states in the totality of the ego… the time of the appreciative-self is a single ‘now’ which the efficient self, in its traffic with the world of space, pulverizes into a series of ‘nows’ like pearl beads in a thread. Here is, then, pure duration unadulterated by space.”

Real-time, or pure time, for Iqbal is experienced by traversing the serial nature of time:

“Pure time, then, as revealed by a deeper analysis of our conscious experience, is not a string of separate, reversible instants; it is an organic whole in which the past is not left behind, but is moving along with, and operating in, the present.”

Time thus experienced as a free movement gives rise to the Quranic concept of Destiny:

” … the future is given… not as lying before, yet to be traversed; it is given only in the sense that it is present in its nature as an open possibility. It is time regarded as an organic whole that the Qur’an describes as Taqdir or the destiny – a word which has been so much misunderstood both in and outside the world of Islam. Destiny is time regarded as prior to the disclosure of its possibilities.”

Just as God exists in pure time, the human ego has the capacity and potential to exist in real time, which happens when we create and design our own world and act as the architects of our own Destiny:

“To exist in real time is not to be bound by the fetters of serial time, but to create it from moment to moment and to be absolutely free and original in creation."