We wish you a blessed Ramadan, and Eid, for 1440 Hijri (2019) Groups and Organizations fall apart, and they can self-cannibalize. This post will deal with that subject, using Frithjof Schuon’s Maryamiyya Tariqa as a tragic case study.
Back in June 2017 we briefly chatted with Souliman Sousi. During our conversation the topic of the controversial near implosion of the Traditionalist/Perennialist Maryamiyya sufi tariqa in Bloomington Indiana came up, and N. Wahid Azal’s research on this. Souliman suggested that we reach out to Azal over the Net, and encourage him to actually publish his research in Lebanon or Egypt. Or, at the very least, to put it out as a free pdf on the web if he’s afraid of liability. At least this way more people could examine it with open eyes.
But more importantly Souliman taught us something vital as far as how to spot gatekeepers and front-men for certain groups and their interests. He used the Maryami Schuonites as a perfect case.
Mark Koslow is well known as the man behind the early 1990s partial implosion of Schuon’s tariqa in Bloomington Indiana. The fallout that luridly hit the press included Koslow’s adultery with one of Schuon’s ‘spiritual wives’, false yet purported allegations that Schuon sexually abused underage girls, un-Islamic practices involving ritual nudity, and other strange things. A criminal investigation ensued, and the affair cast a public shadow over the last years of Schuon’s life.
Strangely, two decades later various researchers into that historical incident ran into a wall from the most unexpected of places: Mark Koslow himself. A few researchers who made inquires with him reported that Koslow warned them, paradoxically and unpleasantly, of getting too close. These researchers expected to run into an obvious gatekeeper; a well known local businessman, confidant of Schuon, and important figure in World Wisdom Books’ community, who has been known to issue legal threats against anyone treading too closely to the subject. But few would suspect Koslow of all people trying to ward people away. For Koslow remains a public and open critic of Schuon, and is the reason these allegations were exposed in the first place.
These researchers came away with the perception that strange as it seems Mark Koslow could actually acting as a gatekeeper for the Maryamiyya’s interests. Or at least the interests of a few individuals managing the Maryamiyya’s legacy in the wake of Schuon’s passing away and the distancing of people like Hossein Nasr from the Bloomington community.
While we discussed this brother Soulaiman made an observation: Any group that closes in on itself ends up cannibalizing itself. He explained further the process of self-cannibalization is memetic, philosophical and political.
Two chief points can be made.
Point one: consider the dysfunctional dynamics that happen when families close their doors to the outside world. Try to imagine it this way: picture a quirky family that closes its doors to the whole world. They eventually end up creating their own enclosed little world. At a certain point they go nuts. For example, picture in your mind the Addams Family from the TV show and films. Lovably quirky, insane, and it’s hinted quite unhealthy inbred. The Addams Family were fun though. The trope pops up in darker ways. In the literary world look at the disturbingly shut-in family found in the dark and deviant fictional universe of V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic series of novels.
This trope from fiction has a real basis in reality. There are countless instances of real-life families closing their doors to the world, and in effect self-cannibalizing at a certain point. A harmless recent example is the family of eccentric artist Gottfried Helnwein, and their quirky exploits in Gurteen Castle. Or the Russian Lykov family, from the Old Believers sect who spent 42 years completely isolated from human society in an uninhabited stretch of Siberia’s Abakan Range, and whose story was first documented by the journalist Vasily Peskov in his 1994 ‘Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family’s Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness.’
A more tragic example are the Allens and Kathans who lived in a small hamlet in New York State’s Saratoga County, and whose story was first documented in the 1975 documentary ‘The Hollow’. These 200 intermarried blood relatives kept a distrustful and paranoid distance from the outside world , and it wasn’t until the late 80s/early 90s that outside agencies were able to help the residents weatherize their homes and install indoor plumbing. A more horrifying recent example is the recently discovered inbred family of 40 discovered living in horrific squalor in south of Sydney Australia, in a hidden remote valley in the bush. This clan began with one brother and sister, grew to 40 adults and children. Many of whom were found to have developmental disorders, or be unable to communicate.
Something similar happens to some religious groups and sects; tariqas, jamaats, firqas, you name it, if and when they shut their doors to the outside world and go inward.
The second point is, a major factor behind Schuon’s group’s implosion was creedal. Imagine that creed, or Aqida, is a sort of metaphorical hot ‘third-rail’ so to speak. It’s possible to get fried on it.
First picture the Creed as three train rails, the third being an electrified hot-rail. If you touch that that hot-wire and are not prepared then you are going to mentally and spiritually fry.
What are the three rails?
- First: you must BELIEVE that there is no god but Allah firstly. In a word Monotheism. If you don’t get that one then you end up doing irreparable memetic and psychic damage to yourself. This results in behavior that further compounds the damage.
- Secondly, you must believe that Muhammad is his Messenger. The general Muslims manage to get this one, it is a vitally important rail.
- Thirdly, where most fail, you must believe that the dajjal is his antithesis. And further, you must believe that the dajjal is out there. He exists, and he is an active agent.
In other words belief in the truth and reality first of Allah and secondly of Muhammad’s mission are absolutely vital. But they are not enough. The Shahadatayn has a third somewhat hidden aspect. This aspect is the second face of the coin of ideological conflict. Most never get this, and don’t see the danger in neglecting it.
What is important here is the belief that there is something or someone out there actively working, opposing you, and keeping you from it. This conflict is necessary. It is necessary because if there wasn’t a conflict we would all turn into fat pigs without intellectual and ideological resistance. We would become a world of fat cows and sheep.
Now, interestingly enough, in a sense Rene Guenon’s creed actually implicitly included this conflict. On rare occasions it came out quite explicitly in Guenon’s writings, with less or more precision. Rene Guenon was deeply interested in what he saw as the metaphysical implications of eschatology. And at times he had a practical concern with the dajjal as a phenomenon and the activities of the Shayatin, or devils.
Rene Guenon believed in the real-world existence of organized agents and plotters whose activities were part of a counter-current against divinely revealed religion, metaphysics and tradition. He saw the dajjal’s manifestation as the open end-game, of sorts, of this stream. Guenon’s writings betray an absolute conviction that there active forces were at work politically, socially, and spiritually to oppose what he saw as the divine path. And he believed some of these agents were human, and others were non-human or infra-human and non-physical. But he gave them all agency and activity.
This belief formed a major part of Guenon’s thesis in The Reign of Quantity, and it also pops up in his works covering the history of Theosophy and Spiritualism. In fact he spent the last years of his life in Cairo quite paranoid about the activities of certain members of France’s Occult and proto-New Age milieu whom he believed were part of this current. This is well documented. Pointing it out isn’t to endorse Guenon’s belief system. But it does show Guenon’s attitude in opposition to Schuon’s. Schuon’s followers have reasons and explanations for this, but they are not sufficient from the perspective we are looking at.
Rene Guenon, however imperfectly, managed to steer clear of the third rail. His creed somehow included aspects of all three without getting fried, so to speak. Guenon was convinced there were both spiritual and human entities and elements actively plotting against religion and, indeed, actually against himself. For him, in the end, it was personal.
Something that is also well documented is that at one time Rene Guenon stopped his practice of referring European Muslim converts and Sufic aspirants to Frithjof Schuon’s care. He began to actively warn people to stay away from Schuon, and became quite wary of him.
Where did Schuon fail? Leaving alone other aspects of his esotericism that have real problems, let’s focus on the idea that Rene Guenon could have believed that on some basic level Frithjof Schuon was an operative against him. In fact, let’s consider that idea ourselves.
There are documentary indications that Rene Guenon believed or at least suspected that Schuon was an operative against him. That someone sent Schuon to Guenon as an operative against him. There is a known incident in which Schuon wanted to influence Guenon to stop considering and speaking of Buddhism a false religion. Knowing Guenon’s suspicions he sent a young and naive Martin Lings and Whittal Perry to Cairo with gifts for Guenon and instructions to argue and ultimately persuade Guenon to that effect.
Did someone send Schuon as an operative against Guenon? Orthodox Traditionalists and Perennialists would take offense to the idea. But it should be considered. We are leaving the cards on the table. The important thing is that Guenon himself suspected this.
Now, there’s a deeper possibility that we will not delve deeper into for now. This is the possibility that Schuon himself was simply but a persona. In other words he was a hat or mask, so to speak, worn by the dajjal.
The idea of the dajjal’s ‘hats’ or ‘masks’ is vital to more deeply understanding the work this site deals with. So too is the idea of a ‘candidate.’ In other words, that certain historic or legendary personas are Candidates to being considered as masks of the dajjal.
From Ibn Sayyad or Ibn Sa’id in Medina at the time of the Prophet, to the Taliban’s Mullah Umar. From Balaam Ben Beor on an ass harassing the Israelites, to Saul of Tarsus riding an ass to Damascus and claiming to see Jesus, after having Simon murdered, and thus becoming the non-apostle ‘Paul. To the mysterious Rogui Bou Hmara, (Abu Hamara: Jilali ben Driss Zirhouni al-Youssefi). Whose late 19th and early 20th century intrigues and conspiracies in Morocco while riding his ass around the countryside causing fitan and securing some lucrative minerals concessions for the Europeans, forms an intriguing part of history.
Bou Hmara is an interesting case on its own, and something vital for a student of the work of Fitan, Malahim, and the Dajjal to deeply examine. Interestingly enough the Rifi Amazigh, or Berbers, had no illusions that the man they were dealing with was quite possibly or likely the dajjal. The older generation of Riffians openly spoke of this before dying out, and memories of his machinations and fitnah still exist in the region. Or on a literary front you have men like, Marlow, Bacon, Shakespeare, and many more.
The key idea is that you cannot have 100% certitude that a certain individual is the dajjal. But there are patterns of activities and ideas that can lead you to suspect and assume that a certain person is a candidate for the dirty job. Recognizing these patterns is a critical aspect of this work, something Soulaiman has quietly shared for well over 20 years.
From this perspective, that of being a candidate, in many ways Frithjof Schuon would seem to ‘fit the bill’. We will stop for now, but in part 2 we will examine this deeper.
