Peter Lamborn Wilson Interview Part 1 of 2: On Islam

Peter Lamborn Wilson Interview
Part 1 of 2: On Islam

Notes

Interview conducted by the Affinity Project in December 2005; Published in July 2008.

AP = Affinity Project
PLW = Peter Lamborn Wilson

*

Interview

AP: Would you define yourself as a Muslim, and if so, what kind of Islam would you say you practice amongst the multiplicity of different forms?

PLW: Well, I've been many things in my life and I don't renounce any of them. But I don't necessarily practice any of them on a daily basis either. I never renounced Christianity or if I did, I take it back. I've been involved in Tantric things that I guess you could call Hinduism, although that's a very vague term. I practice Shia Islam. I still consider myself all those things but, obviously that's a difficult position to take vis-a-vis the orthodox practitioners of these different faiths. So, if I had to define my position now in terms that would be historically meaningful in an Islamic context, I would refer to Hazrat Inayat Khan and his idea of universalism, that all religions are true. And if this involves contradiction, as Emerson said, OK. We'll just deal with it on a different level. And the inspiration for this in his case was Indian synchrotism, between Hinduism and Islam especially, although other religions were involved too such as Christianity, Judaism and others. This happened on both a non-literate level of the peasantry and still persists to this day on that level, and also occurred on a very high level of intellectual Sufism which was almost a courtly thing at certain times, especially under some of the wilder Mughal rulers like Akbar who started Din-i Ilahi. So these things have precedents within the Islamic traditions, this universalism, this radical tolerance would be another way of putting it, but nowadays of course it's hard to find this praxis on the ground. I can't practice some Indian village cult here, that would be a little--well I sort of do, you know--but actually (laughs), it's highly personal.

AP: Would you say that it's radically tolerant or radically accepting? I would say that there is a distinction between tolerance and acceptance.

PLW: I know what you're getting at. Tolerance in this sense is a kind of weak position, and acceptance would be a strong position?

AP: I would say that, for example, I can tolerate homosexuals, Muslim homosexuals, or I can say well I accept them in the fold of Islam because they define themselves as Muslim.

PLW: Using the term in that sense, what I mean by radical tolerance is what you're calling acceptance. In other words it's not just ecumenicalism here. It's not a reformist position. It's a pretty radical position. And it got Hazrat Inayat Khan in a lot of trouble amongst orthodox Muslims. This movement still suffers from that today. But in India, there is this tradition of that, it still persists in India more than in other countries where the fundamentalist/reformist/modernist thing has swept away the so-called medieval creations which make up all the charm and difference. That's what they hate.

AP: What is it that interested or intrigued you in Islam in particular? And I believe you were introduced to it in Morocco, was it?

PLW: Well really, in New York. This goes back to the 60s and my involvement in one of the--I guess you could say--new religions of that era which came out of Moor Science tradition. I don't know if you've read any of my stuff on this. So already in New York I was taking an interest in these things.

AP: And why was that?

PLW: Well, because I got contact into that movement and also began to read Al-Ghazali on the recommendation of some of the people in that movement and we all became very interested in trying to find out whether there was such a thing as living Sufism. This was the 60s, there was no 'new-age' there on the ground. None of these people were so visibly active. Anyway, we didn't find them. So that was one of my reasons for going to the East.

AP: Well that's one of the things that is associated with Al-Ghazali, especially with regards to the fact that he was considered, or considered himself to be a Sufi. And then I believe that before he had passed away he had become a Sunni. And then he began to take more of a Sunni sort of path, and highlighted nonetheless of Sufism and the spiritual element with regards to the necessity of spirituality, the return to Islam.

PLW: Yeah sure, he was a great intellectual epitome of that position in a lot of ways. But we weren't reading him from that point of view because we weren't reading him from inside Islam. We were reading The Alchemy of Happiness and it was psychadelic. It was like, "Hey, why are we reading this Tibetan Book of the Dead stuff, this is really far out." And it's only years later that I came to see Al-Ghazali as this bastion of orthodoxy within Sufism. And this is how he's perceived in the tradition, you're quite right. But that isn't how we were reading it. And we got hold of a few other things some Ibn Arabi, very little, but we weren't scholars, we weren't Islamologists. There were such people around but they never would have occurred to us.

AP: But obviously in Islam, and I'm sure you're aware of this, is the concept of Ijithad...

PLW: More in Shi'ism.

AP: ...the fact that it is the duty of every Muslim, male or female, child or eldery, to strive to get to know more about Islam, more about the world, etc., as much as s/he can. Is that one of the things that interested you as well is that it's sort of an infinitum of desire to learn, to know what is the responsibility of every single individual--not just a particular scholar--and therefore removing the element of authority that exists within Islam?

PLW: I don't know whether I grasp that very fully in my initial contacts with the thing, because I wasn't reading Islam, I wasn't reading Sufism per se. So in other words these dialectical aspects that you're pointing out here were not so clear to me at the beginning. They're very clear to me now, I could almost say in a retrospective position, which I might take now. In that sense yes, obviously, this is one of the key elements that makes certain aspects of Islam interesting to certain aspects of anarchism, that precise thing which is often being called 'democracy.' Sociologists would label this as a 'democratic tendency' within Islam as compared to other religions and they would point out that the Ulema, although technically speaking do not occupy an authoritarian position, in practice often do. And especially now.

AP: Why do you think that is? Why do you think that turns out?

PLW: Well, I don't know. It's like the old saying, Sufism was once reality without a name and now it's a name without reality. We could talk about this in a completely Islamic way as the corruption and decline of the true original Islam, which for Sufism is not fundamentalist but is Sufi. The real origins are mystical origins. That's just the sociology of institutions from a secular point of view, what we're looking at is that institutions that become authoritarian, especially when they last for thousands of years. Yes?

AP: Yeah.

PLW: We could go on, we could go into Maxine Rodinson's critique of Islam as not having enough of a doctrinal framework to really be considered as opposed to capitalism. Have you read him?

AP: No, I haven't read him on Islam but I think with regards to the aspect of the anti-capitalist sentiments that exist within Islam, particularly with a pillar of Islam which is Zakat and the way of Islam...

PLW: And again, Shi'ism adds 'social justice' to the pillars, so if you combine those two you get as Ali Shariati did, you get the possibility of an Islamic socialism with strong non-authoritarian tendencies.

AP: Would you say an Islamic socialism or an Islamic anarchism?

PLW: No, in his case socialism. He did not go all the way to anarchism. He was interested, I think, in some anarchist thinkers but he didn't see that as... he was looking for something practical for Iran, I think, and as much as possible he embraced Sufism and anti-authoritarianism. His movement didn't, particularly; I'm talking about him as an individual thinker whom I find quite interesting and even sympathetic in a lot of ways. And I'm sorry I didn't get to know him when I was in Iran.

AP: Tell me, would you see the nodes of intersection that could become, in sort of Deleuze and Guattari's terms, lines of flight between Islam and anarchism? What do you see between both these movements?

PLW: Well, in my own work, I've tended to concentrate on the heretical penumbra. Extreme Sufism, Ishmaelism. If orthodox Sunni Islam is going to be taken as the norm, then this is not the norm. I would question this whole picture, but it is the picture of Islamology so let's just go with it and say, as I myself have said in subtitling my books on Islam and heresy, 'On the Margins of Islam,' and I think it's here in the penumbral aspects, the illumination around the dark body, that the interesting intersections occur. Now I was criticized in Fifth Estate by Barkley, for talking about Sufism as an anarchistoid element in Islam. He proposed a sort of Islamic puritanism and its democratic structure as something closer to anarchism. I was respectful of his critique, but on the other hand I had to disagree. I find the whole puritannical thing unsympathetic. It's freedom on every level that I'm interested in, not just freedom in the assembly. So this I find amongst the wild dervishes.

AP: Well it's the aspect that, if there's no compulsion in religion, how can there be compulsion with regards to anything?

PLW: And it's not often written because of the dangers of writing some of these things. It's expressed in poetry, poetry has the license for this. And you can say, as Mahmud Shabistari said, if Muslims only understood the truth they wouldn't become idol-worshippers. Did he get away with it? I don't think they killed him, because it was poetry.

AP: There's a lot of songs, too.

PLW: Yeah, because all Persian and Urdu, and I suppose Arabic poetry too, if it's written in a traditional meter, it can be sung to traditional modes. And certain meters are connected to certain modes. So you even have the tune already laid out. And then it's just up to you to do interesting variations on it. A Bardic reality which lacks into the Elizabethan period in the West.

AP: I spent some time with Naqshbandi Sufis in Montreal. What astonished me was that after a particular period of time, spending time with them, when I was actually considering embracing more of the Sufi elements that exist within Islam, I was a bit taken back by the issue of the Bayiah, which is the allegiance and the quest for allegiance. What do you think about that?

PLW: Well I've written about this. A very important influence has been the whole Uwaisi tradition, which is the anti-guru tradition within Sufism. This is based on the idea that you can seek initiation on the spiritual plane, such as in dreams or like the the Uwaisis in Turkey were actually influenced by Shamanism, they would actually meet magical animals or ghosts who would initiate them, and Julian Baldic wrote a nice book about this called Imaginary Muslims...

AP: I'm assuming those magical animals were not Djinn.

PLW: Well yeah, sure they were Djinn. And some of the Djinns were believers, too. Dealing with Djinns is not like necromancy, in the Christian West. Dealing with Djinn can be white magic, quite easily. This is why hermeticism is an easier time within traditional Islam than it has been within traditional Christian cultures.

AP: Where do you see Islam going, especially post-9/11? Where do you see Islam going on its own, and I'd like to hear your comments on what you expect that, for example, what Islam can bring to the table that something like anarchism can not bring to the table? Or vice-versa?

PLW: Well that's sort of crystal ball stuff, which has to be taken with a grain of salt (which is also crystal). I don't see much good ahead in Islamic culture or in the Western culture so it's hard to compare them in that sense. Sufism and radical tolerance and all these ideas seem to be on the retreat in the Islamic world. At least as we look at it from here. My finger is not on the pulse of the East here, but I'm looking at what's going on in America where you've got all these people publishing books called 'What's Right with Islam.'

AP: Or Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, that sort of thing.

PLW: I'm already so sick of this. And the liberal Muslims, why are they trying to make Islam in the image of reform Judaism? Why not pick something more exciting, like Sufism? As far as I can tell, these people are ignorant of Sufism and if they know anything about it, they agree with the reformers that it's a medieval ecretion that should be swept away.

AP: Do you believe it's an aspect of literacy that occurs here in the West, especially the new generation of Muslims, that they are born into a Muslim family, their family had migrated to North America, and they essentially know this thing which is called Islam but they sort of take it for granted apart from the ritualistic aspects or cultural aspects that exist within it. They never really truly identity with Islam, all they get is the surface level.

PLW: There are several interesting things going on in this respect. The Muslim punk movement, with Michael Muhammad Knight, he told me recently that his imagination seems to have started to come to life. There are actually Muslim punk bands and there weren't when he wrote the book, which is wonderful. And I hear from people like you're talking about, college students who suddenly realize that they've got roots, and these roots are interesting. But they can't stomach all this crap that's going on, so some of them find their way to my work.

AP: The other side of the coin with regards to college students, from what I've seen, is they actually turn the other way. They become very religious, very pious all of a sudden, and they start to develop a very hard line as to what is there in terms of Islam, and the concepts of Islam, and become very alienating to other Muslims and the people around them.

PLW: I was thinking of that in terms of 'image magic.' It's very hard to struggle against global image. Now we have this global image of Islam. Whether it arouses waves of hatred or desire, that's what we got. To be able to situate oneself even in a critical position to the image is so difficult, much less to exist outside it. That takes some wellspring of Himma. It's so difficult when you're on your own. Islam is a very communitarian religion and to be on your own, yes you can in theory, everyone is their own Imam in theory, but in practice with the sociology of institutions at work, it's so difficult to move against that sludge.

AP: What do you think it will take to break down that sociology of institutions. Do we need another Malcolm X or Elijah Muhammad to come about with reformed knowledge, or does it come with opening up zones or spaces and people become nomads coming in and out of those spaces, and Islam.

PLW: All those things would be nice. It would be nice to have some voices coming from the Islamic world that aren't either fundamentalist or anti-fundamentalist. It would be nice to have voices come from the Islamic world that remember something about the movement of the social, and haven't just given up on it before this wretched fundamentalism. It would be interesting to have young Muslims in America and England and France where it's at least possible to speak, to start working on these alternatives which we don't even know what they are. Maybe they're these seeds, but we can't talk about anything that's actually sprouting. That would be very difficult.

AP: What could Islams learn from anarchisms?

PLW: Phrased that way, we might be able to work with that question a little. The spiritual element within anarchism is already such a tiny minority, both intellectually and historically. It does exist and we could even talk about the Catholic workers, and I do consider myself a part of it, but it's an almost inaudible voice even within anarchism. And again, if we're talking about the wild dervishes within Islam, well most of these guys are living in the Middle Ages, and for their sake I hope they manage to succeed in continuing to do so. But they don't have anything to learn from anarchism, they're practicing it. And anarchists don't particularly have anything to learn from them, it would just be sort of nice to take inspiration, to cross-fertilize while retaining the differences. No ghastly unity, like the ideals of fundamentalism and capitalism, but to embrace difference.

AP: Let's say those dervishes would not be required to identify as muslim anarchists, or as anarchist muslims, but rather retain their identity.

PLW: It would be so historically difficult to make up some hybrid like that, just as it is so historically difficult to deal with the idea of gay Islam. Gay is the wrong word. It's just not a concept in the Islamic world. Really it means shallow Westernization, and naturally that's resisted. The strategy is wrong. The strategy should go to the Sufi love poetry, that's what the strategy should be. And these wacko 19th century pseudo-scientific Greek terms like homosexual and these lifestyle labels like gay should just be ignored.

AP: Should we go back to an oral tradition in Islam, if people aren't reading to the extent they should, is it better to stand on a box and talk to muslims, or go to the mosque to open these forums for discussions. The problem with that is if they don't like what they hear, you become visible.

PLW: Islam is a missionary religion and always has been. We could talk about Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, it's hard to find other such intensely missionary religions, so it would be hard to separate out the element of Tablee’kh, of propaganda of the faith, from any view that Islam might have of itself.

AP: How do reconcile that fact of Tablee'kh, which specifically came out from places like Pakistan, and which you actually see here in North America. You'll have these moments in Toronto or Montreal and they knock at your door in compulsion of religion.

PLW: Well it would be nice if there were counter-organizations, but I don't really see much evidence of it. Maybe you're more in touch with the fine currents here, which I imagine someone has to be on the line to be in touch with, and it would be nice if something would emerge, in terms of a counter-Tablee'kh, I don't know. Agit-prop? And it would have to be couched in Islamic terms. And that's why I'm saying that Sufism could be so important. And it's being ignored by all the counter-moves against Islamism.

AP: With regards to Muslim scholars in the West, I'm not sure you're familiar with Dr. Tariq Ramadan? He's married to the granddaughter of Hassan Al-Banna who started the Muslim brotherhood in 1948. He lives in Switzerland and migrates between Switzerland, France, England, and he often comes to North America and was supposed to teach in the States. As he was about to come in, the Department of Defense or Homeland Security forbid him from coming in. He's done some work on commenting on the left and the aspect of co-operatives as alternatives to capitalist space and organization. The issue with his work is, as far as I know, the lack of exposure to anarchisms. Have you read anything by him?

PLW: I haven't so I can't comment, but it'd be nice if he would read some Charles Fourier. But dream on, right?

AP: How do you feel about post-structuralism and whatever influence it might have on Islam?

PLW: Well I just wrote a little review of this book on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. I didn't actually see the whole commentary, only Foucault's part, in First of the Month in New York, and I pointed out that it's true that Foucault was quite wrong in assessing the Iranian Revolution, and he had seen Ali Shariati as much more important than he actually turned out to be, sadly. His critics, including Maxime Rodinson, who wrote a very perceptive and not-nasty criticism, but a strong critique that really demolished Foucault's position.

AP: How did he get caught up in the Iranian Revolution? How did it happen to him, of all people?

PLW: He thought he had missed all the other revolutions and this was his chance. Just like Genet who went to the Palestineans in part because 'at least there's something, this is a chance.' Romanticism, and I'm a romantic myself, I sympathize. I compared the two, Genet's book with Foucault's work and said that desire had played a part in both cases. When he got to Tehran they were marching in the street and shouting two names: Ayotallah Khomeini and Sharati. Later on, of course, there was only the one name. By then he realized how wrong he'd been and shut up on the subject. But my point was that he had been wrong but for the right reasons. His heart had been very good on this. His head had let him down. My heart also went out to him, even though I never went through a period of romanticizing the Iranian Revolution because I saw it up close, on the ground and I realized it was in control of the mullahs right from the start. I had to shed a little tear for Foucault and his lost love.

AP: How do you feel with regards to the issue of violence and pacifism in Islam? Do you believe that the concept of "suicide bombings" ... well 9/11 is quite a different example from Palestine... but I'd like to hear you comment on both.

PLW: The only thing that really occurs to me that I can say on this is to point out how fascinating it is that the Hasan Al-Sabah archetype keeps turning up over and over again. If only Burrows were alive now, what a kick he would get out of this. He did realize that Khomeini was the sort of Hasan Al-Sabah type, which he was. And of course Osama is also, even though he's a Sunni which makes the comparison a little weird. Nevertheless, that's the archetype. He disappears up into the mountains and is never seen again. Believe me, he'll never be seen again. He'll live forever because of that. With the long white beard and sending out the Fedayeen to sacrifice themselves. It's an archetype that apparently just keeps popping up in Islam.

AP: I recently did a class talk with regards to Islam and sacrifice. It's interesting to see how the tactics have evolved with Iraq, 9/11 and Palestine. In Iraq the use of footage and videotape, the image and lighting that Deleuze talks about when he's discussing Bergsonian cinema, the aspect of the imagination colliding with reality. It places the viewer in the person who is being sacrificed. The use of the technique in Palestine, when they leave footage behind; now I'm not saying hostage-taking is the same as what happens in Palestine, the two are different in terms of the context, but do you feel sympathy with Palestine and what goes on there?

PLW: I was remembering what happened with Karlheinz Stockhausen after 9/11, when he blurted out his statement about what a fantastic work of art it had been, and I believe the poor sucker is still hiding out somewhere from the fallout of making that statement. But I thought the statement was so obvious, it was a work of art. It was meant to be image manipulation and it succeeded fantastically well.

AP: Like propaganda of the deed?

PLW: It was a viral image, just absolutely did the total Burrowsian thing from the grey room into everybody's head instantly. In a situation like that, it's so difficult to sort out ethical and even moral strands. When you're just being swamped with the grand illusion, the Orwellianism to the degree that would have made Orwell keel over in a dead faint. It's just a gargantuan behemoth of imagery, and it's got everybody.

AP: Do you think it was intentional to get that sort of image to the people?

PLW: Intention is such a.... who cares, does it even matter?

AP: Well I think it does, like Islam says that all actions are but by intention.

PLW: I mean, clearly these people are media mavens. If they hadn't read McLuhan, it must just have seeped into their unconscious through the dreamworld or something. They're manipulating the image, of course they are. And so is the U.S. It's an image war. That's why Baudrillard said about the first Gulf War, a statement he got in so much trouble for, saying it never happened. Which I presume he didn't mean to belittle the deaths and suffering that actually occurred, but he was talking about this aspect of this Manichean spectacle of clashing imagery. Which is sometimes the same imagery which makes it even more complicated. So it's really kinda hard to even answer your question. Yes, I've always been sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestineans. How could one not be? But to say that I have any kind of political insight into it, no.

AP: With regards to the aspect of Islam and desire, let's talk about desire and homosexuality. How do you feel about there being no path with regards to desire, in an Islamic framework. Islam says that not everything you desire can be fulfilled, for example alcohol, hashish or homosexual activities. Do you think a re-interpretation takes that apart?

PLW: You could do this in an Islamic legal context, but would have to call in Ishmaelism and certain kinds of Shiaism, Sufism and so forth in order to do it. I think the way you would do it would be to point out there is no hierarchy in Islam. There's no Pope to call on his cardinals in this. A Fatwah can be issued but whether anybody follows it is a voluntary process. If you issued a Fatwah based on hermeneutic exigesis, on esoteric interpretations of Quran and Hadith, it'd be a question of whether you had the Ummah, whether the community would accept those Fatwahs. Right now we see that it's not likely. Although I understand there's a so-called gay mosque in Toronto, and I wish them well, but that would be the way it would have to be done. Unless we're gonna talk about social disintegration. And again, I think it would be worthwhile talking about this in order to avoid this schizophrenia in the very use of a term like 'gay Muslim.' Gay is about a consumerist lifestyle, and if that's what they're interested, then I'm not sympathetic (terribly). I mean do what you want to do, you know, it's like gay marriage; from an anarchist perspective this is all big head-scratcher, you know what I'm saying? Are we asking permission of the state here or what?

AP: Well it goes back to Lacan, you never escape the structure or image that society has placed for you... the politics of demand... you always go back and forth in circles.

PLW: It's why language is important. What theory is supposed to be about.

AP: Did Muslims waste a lot of time by trying to apologize for 9/11, trying to teach people about Islam to get away from stereotypes of the terrorist Muslim...

PLW: You tell me. Has there been any improvement as a result of these efforts?

AP: There's a lot more reading going on.

PLW: Yeah, but reading of what? Like we talked about.

AP: A lot of people are actually reading the Quran.

PLW: A lot of my teachers say it's a mistake to start with the Quran. Listen to it in Arabic, get the spiritual vibe but save the text for later.

AP: Particularly with regards to the Quran being used by people, who don't know much about Islam, to bring out the elements they consider hateful against Jews and Christians.

PLW: You've got the Christians reading the Quran saying "It's all full of violence!", and unfortunately no Muslims came back with a reading of the Bible but some liberals did it for them. From a scriptual perspective it's always a double-edged sword, which is another reason to leave the Quran for later.

AP: Do you think that Islam, if reinterpreted, would constitute a non-Western form of anarchism? Anarchism that existed before the term was coined?

PLW: I question the idea of non-Western. A lot of people consider Islam one of the Western tradition. After all, it goes all the way up to France. Yes, you can talk about 'the East' in the spiritual sense, but you can take it in the large sense of the whole monotheist tradition which is a kind of Eastern Mediterranean tradition, and also involved Judaism and Christianity, then how do you separate Islam and call it Eastern and the others Western? That would be a difficult road to hoe. Maybe pre-modern? Would that be a better word?

AP: Sure.

PLW: So like a pre-modern form of anarchism, like how the anarchists always look for their forebearers in the Tao Te Ching or what have you? Yeah. There's certainly some elements there that you could play with.

AP: That interpretation of pre-modernity would really be post-modernity, cause what's pre-modernity?

PLW: Yeah. And theory now, everything is up for grabs. This is the postmodern ecstacy, everything is up for grabs. If we don't allow it to fall into a posty-constructionist apathy of relativism. But look on it as a kind of positive thing.

AP: The possibilities. I think looking for more practical relations, in terms of looking at local Muslim communities and speaking with them about the anarchist tradition.

PLW: We're talked about some of the possible points in a constellation that could be presented already.

AP: The aspect of consensus, of social solidarity, of acceptance...

PLW: You could put the emphasis on those things, pre-modern aspects, and you could talk about what we could call medieval aspects, like the wild dervishes. And between those two poles, perhaps something interesting would begin to spark.

AP: How would you deal with those legalistic people who would...

PLW: That's what I said, you get Fatwahs based on an esoteric position as you could, for example from a Shi'ite or Ishmaeli authority. Or someone who is both Sufi and orthodox, like an Algazel, that's the kind of position that's so sadly missing. If that kind of position existed in Islam in a normative way, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

AP: I think certainly with regards to Sufism, you pointed out with Al-Ghazali particularly, I think it's the aspect of spirituality being blended in or returning back, but unless you get something out of it it just becomes repetitive.

PLW: That would be a good definition of Sufism, you just gave. In this sense it's not a separate tradition of Islam. The Orientalist view of it being that is wrong.

AP: What about the adoption of techniques of innovation? How do you feel it would...

PLW: Well that's Bidi’a, and we can't call it that, we have to call it Ijtihad, then we can do it.

AP: But once again, Umar always said that sometimes there are good Bidi’as and sometimes there are bad Bidi’a.

PLW: Did he say that?

AP: Yeah. Sometimes there are good innovations and sometimes there are bad innovations. I recall the story of Umar and a woman standing up and correcting him, because he had a particular point of view with regards to something… for example with Taraweeh prayers. Taraweeh prayers did not occur during the time of the propet, per se. It was a good Bidi’a in the sense that they prayed during Ramadan, and then the prophet didn't show up the next day. Everyone was worried and they knocked on his door, and they said well you can pray Taraweeh on your own or you can pray it with Jama’a. And if you pray it within Jama’a then well, that's good, but you can pray it on your own.

PLW: This was during the lifetime of the prophet? After the lifetime of the prophet, it becames more problematic, almost synonymous with sin or heresy.That's why you need the Shi'ite ideas of the Noor Mohamed, something that shines through the consciousness of the collectivity--Messiah as collective--the radical view of certain Shi'ites. This could all be done, but the power points for it just don't exist, apparently.

AP: With regards to Shi'ite Islam, and the political apect and the concept of the Khalifa or the hidden Imam (Mehdi).

PLW: Corbin points out you have this hyper-authoritarian structure, based even on blood, but suddenly it flips into esotericism and you can talk about the Imam of one's own being. That's how you do that. Then you combine that with Sunni 'democracy' and come up with an interesting model. Then it's not just ethical culture for Muslims.

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