Islam and the West :
A Cultural and Psychological Analysis (Part-I)
Dr. Durre S. Ahmad

 I

Introduction

In a recent widely disseminated article and interview, Harvard political scientist Sam Huntington suggested that future international conflicts will not be so much geopolitical as geocultural and involve a clash of civilizations featuring the "West versus the rest". The idea is not an isolated one and is shared by other foreign policy intellectuals in the United States such a Zbigniew Brzezinski who also believes that international issues are now primarily "cultural and philosophical". A cursory examination of such views indicates that Islam, as religion/culture, is perceived as the foremost protagonist among the "rest":

The conflict among civilizations will be increasingly central: The West and Islam, Islam and Hindu civilizations in India. Islam vs the Slavic Orthodox Russian civilization, China and Japan as civilizations. These are going to be the major entities among which international relations will take place...

By now there are extensive scholarly materials which have attempted to break down the monolithic stereotypes regarding Islam, fundamentalism and the geopolitics of the subject after the end of the Cold War. As one scans this material, however, there is a certain sense of deja vu, leaving one wondering about the capacity of those who teach, to learn themselves. The intellectual enterprise of ‘Soviet Studies’ is a case in point.

In an article about the collapse of the Soviet Union titled "Why Were We Surprised?", (The American Scholar, Spring 1991) W.R. Connors asked a crucial question implicating the western approach to knowledge about such issues; and the academic tendency to view phenomena through the "thin slit of social science" which pays attention to only a very narrow range of factors: data on military force, economics, agricultural productivity and the relationships among leaders. Frequently ignored are:

the passions ... the appeal of ethnic loyalty and nationalism, the demands for freedom of religious practice and cultural expression - these conditions were "soft" or "unscientific" and those who emphasized them could be scorned.

Connors’ views were echoed by a spectrum of intellectuals and academics and are summed up by an extensive editorial in the Wilson Quarterly on the demise of Soviet Studies. As it points out, Soviet Studies had as much to do with the various intellectual positions within U.S. academe as without, in what was the Soviet Union itself. As a consequence of these different, essentially philosophical perspectives (e.g. liberal versus conservative) and despite "prodigious intellectual labours and the prodigious sums spent to make them possible", proponents of different views could not even vaguely anticipate the events which led to the final collapse.

While one applauds the western inclination for doing such academic postmortems, it must also be said that they are nevertheless, postmortems, conducted in hindsight by specialists whose primary task was to gauge and monitor the future. It is perhaps premature to conclude that the ghost of Soviet Studies has returned to haunt the scholarship on Islam. At the same time, there is as yet scant evidence that the experience of Soviet Studies has been absorbed and adapted to the West’s newfound interest in what is now being called "another despotic creed seeking to infiltrate the West".

Once again, economics, and especially politics, dominates the flow of analysis. It remains to be seen also, if this particular endeavour will receive the same degree of academic and research support in universities and think-tanks as did Soviet Studies. With time, the substance of this research effort will become a major indicator of the extent to which any genuine shift has occurred in western intellectual consciousness and its theories and methods of knowledge.

At present, one can say that in the same way that it has taken the social sciences almost 20 years to begin a serious re-examination of ‘development’, it has yet to come to a substantive understanding of religion per se and especially Islam. The current situation cannot be considered anti-Islamic as much as anti-religion, stemming as it does, from the modern academic belief that there is an ‘inconsistency’ between faith and knowledge and thus ‘those who believe cannot think and those who think cannot believe’. As one has discussed elsewhere, this attitude is slowly changing and there is now an openness and even an active return to religion in some western academic circles. However, the direction of this change does not bode well, in one’s opinion, for either the West or the rest - and for women on both sides. While it claims to base itself on a rejection of modernity, it goes on to endorse what one understands as basically a return to fundamentalist Christianity and Judaism.

That the focus in the West has been on Islam’s militant/fundamentalist aspect, in a sense highlights and puts to question many basic assumptions about religion and the approach of modern knowledge systems to the study of religion. On the one hand, Islam has been historically lumped with Judaism and Christianity as part of a particular moral-partriarchal world view labelled ‘monotheism’. Yet, it sticks out like a sore thumb, generating immense passions on both sides of an ever increasing and violent divide the other side of which is precisely those religious systems of which it is supposedly a confused, received, and therefore invented version. The fact is that Islam largely remains to be studied either in postmodern or its own terms, that is, from a framework not only of comparative theology but its specific psychology, as distinct from other religions, each of which infact have also different psychologies.

Paranoia:

In psychological terms, the present relationship between the West and Islam can be considered one of a mutual growing paranoia. Paranoia is a psychological condition par excellence about a real or imaginary ‘other’ and is today one of the few psychopathologies which has not been reduced to a biochemical basis. The dictionary defines paranoia as "a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions, as of grandeur or especially persecution". Both psychiatry and the dictionary define delusion as a "false belief" Without commenting on the peculiarities of modern psychology, according to the definitions, it can be said that both Islam and the West are entangled in a spectrum of "false beliefs" spanning feelings of grandeur at one end, and what is infect the inevitable and logical counterpart of feelings of persecution at the other end.

In the context of its treatment, paranoia is an exceedingly intransigent condition. Therapy relying on the ideal of insight into oneself rarely works, not least because the majority of paranoids are highly intelligent. Given the initial "false belief", whatever the therapist may say and however rational and factual it may be, the paranoid person interprets information which simply confirms the initial belief. The roots of paranoia are thus deeply related to two currently popular intellectual themes: epistemology and interpretation. Indeed, as one considers the official material on paranoia, it seems to be a peculiarly intellectual(s) disease:

The Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics of the American Psychology Association grouped paranoia and paranoid states as psychoses without known brain pathology. It defined them as cases showing persistent delusions, generally persecutory and grandiose, and ordinarily without hallucinations ... Emotional response and behaviour are consistent with the ideas held ... Intelligence is well preserved ... It is characterized by an intricate, complex and slowly developing system, often logically elaborated after a false interpretation of an actual occurrence. The patient frequently considers himself endowed with superior or unique abilities ... older psychiatrists called it monomania ... essentially a disorder of the intellect ... but without general personality deterioration. (My emphases)

Applying these criteria to the mutual paranoia of the West and Islam, there seems little cause for an optimistic resolution between the two. However, since this discourse aims to remain within an analytic framework as set down by the West itself, it will continue to rely on the assumptions of western depth psychology/psychiatry regarding insight, knowledge and change. As a psychotherapeutic endeavour then, this paper is part of a series addressed to the academic/intellectual mentality of both sides. For reasons of both structure and space, the present focus is the West and the nature and extent of Islam as the `other’ in Western consciousness which is not to say that the reverse does not hold. Infect it does. But for reasons related to clarity and different psychological concerns, the stance of the protagonists will be discussed individually.

Rapport and Psychotherapy

The necessity of a common language is a pre-requisite for the psychotherapeutic process. The earliest Freudian model was based on the notion that it was the therapist’s task to understand and `make sense’ of the patient’s condition hence the field of depth psychology. Within the massive enterprise of what constitutes psychotherapy in the West, today it is taken for granted that it is important for the therapist to "speak the language" of the patient, of "entering the patient’s world" and so on, as the first and most crucial step towards successful therapy. The degree of rapport then is inextricably related to the therapist’s ability to speak the language(s) of the patient.

In trying to establish an intellectual rapport between Islam and the West, it is not enough to be simply writing in English in order to attack the West for being prejudiced, hypocritical etc, or then belligerently insisting on a different `indigenous’ vision, stating it, and leaving it at that. While to a certain extent such an attitude can be justified for asserting a post-colonial identity and contrasting vision(s) it presents no solution as to how to bridge the growing polarization between the protagonists. The need for such bridges is becoming imperative in the light of problems which are global in scope such as AIDS and the state of the environment. The pragmatics of human communication are such that simply blaming the other rarely proves to be conducive to dialogue or change. In psychological terms, such an approach is essentially Freudian in which most problems are laid at the door of powerful parental figures which, theoretically, can lead into an infinite regress of blameworthy progenitors. It is also conceptually fruitless since the `other’ is seen only as a protagonist to be either repelled or conquered.

This particular discourse then is based on the assumption that communication is more effective through a common theoretical/analytic language, one belonging to the West. In this instance it is the Jungian method of analytical psychology. Apart from offering a conceptually rich field of ideas, it is suitable since it takes into account widely divergent cultures and religions in its view of collective and individual behaviour. At times, in the course of the analysis, the shortcomings inherent in the theory will be difficult to ignore. Yet, the main purpose is not to do a critique of Jungian theory. Rather, as a first step towards mutual understanding, the aim at this initial stage is to set out the West’s understanding of the psychology of Islam. Even in the context of criticism, it is preferable not to launch into a diatribe on behalf of `the rest’. One of the most distinctive and admirable features of the Western approach to knowledge is a healthy tendency towards self-criticism which is markedly lacking in its opponents. In sum, the effort is to be neither acrimonious nor condemnatory but to communicate, on the basis of facts, the West’s view of Islam as provided by the West itself.

The Other

The term `other’ is rapidly becoming a cliche in sociology and anthropology but in its source context of psychology, it continues to be an important concept. Uprooted from its original matrix and made into a label, the term has been claimed mostly by the rest to bash the West. At the same time, all sides tend to overlook the psychological fact that such a division between `self’ and `other’, serves a crucial function in the advancement of the evolution of human consciousness. That is, the ‘other’ is vital to knowledge about oneself, regardless of whether this self belongs to the West or the rest. As Jung pointed out, the ability to differentiate is the sine qua non of consciousness and all knowledge (including morality) presupposes such a consciousness.

The necessity of differentiation-as-knowledge can be considered a law, functioning as it does at the most basic levels of human perception. The human sensorium can only function on the basis of contrast and difference. There can be no information/knowledge without contrast. For example, subjects placed in a room painted a uniform white with absolutely no present of contrast start experiencing visual distortion and then `blindness’ until contrast it introduced even as a spot of black thereby restoring perspective and balance. The same holds for all the other senses. Similarly, knowledge of oneself, individual or cultural, is possible only in the context of difference, which is perhaps why, since antiquity, the sages have looked to travel as a source of wisdom. Thus, the current negative viewing of the notion of the `other’ is both fruitless and limiting. And the observation that "to understand himself man needs to be understood by another; to be understood by another, he needs to understand the other", is applicable to the rest and the West.

The issue of the other is also close to the heart of the therapeutic enterprise. More than most disciplines, the structure of psychotherapy insists on the recognition of this other. The therapeutic context becomes a microcosmic arena in which different levels of other-ness and their relationship(s) with both therapist are played out on the assumption that these encounters will lead to further insight - and change. At one level, patient and therapist mutually reflect an other. Similarly, most depth psychology theories assume the existence of another–or others–within each individual. The therapist’s training assumes that he/she has developed a knowledge of and therefore a comfortable relationship with the `other(s) within. Based on this sort of self-knowledge, the therapist can assist the patient to do the same.

Thus, for example, the Freudian `id’ and its counterpart of the `superego’ can be postulated as different `others’ which have to be firstly recognized and subsequently brought under the control of the rational `ego’. The jungian approach assumes a host of psychological `others’ which need to be `integrated’ in order for a person to feel whole and `individuated’. To quote Jung:

No one who does not know himself can know others. And in each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When therefore we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude–the very attitude that led us into there difficult situation.

To simply say then, that the West sees Islam as the ‘other’ is to trivialize and render irrelevant what is obviously becoming a serious situation. After all, if the `other’ is basically a matter of difference, the question arises as to how to distinguish the quality of response between, for example, Hinduism as `other’ and Islam?

Setting aside obvious disparities of numerical scale, the question needs a frame of reference which would permit reasonable comparisons. Within psychology and psychiatry, such a frame is provided by The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, the best of the West/Symbol.

Carl Jung: Biography and Background.

Perhaps even more than Freud, Carl Jung remains a controversial figure in western intellectual history. Numerous biographies and commentaries have been written on Jung’s life and work, many of them linking personal events with the formulation of his theories. The wide and intense spectrum of response that he generated can be gauged by a sampling of just the titles of some of these texts. Paul Stern’s C.G.Jung: The Haunted Prophet is a highly critical biography verging on character assassination. A Freudian analyst, Stern saw Jung as a man of bad conscience, an extortionist, a terrible family man not interested in his children who married his wife primarily for his money. Stern is also convinced of Jung’s anti-semitism. At the other extreme is a book by the prolific author, traveller and latter day renaissance man, Laurens van der Post and his Jung and the Story of Our Times. It is Post’s conviction that sooner rather than later, Jung "will be seen for what he is, one of the great turning points in history, already being recognized by the Old and New Worlds". Insofar as Post is not a psychologist, his undoubtedly adulatory tone can be considered a forerunner to the current absorption of the `New Age’ in the West with Jungian and post-Jungian concepts. As Post notes, Jung enabled the opening of a dialogue and a meeting point between East and West. In this sense, Post’s view is perhaps the most widespread and representative for our purpose of a mutually acceptable analytic framework.

A third biography on Jung is by Vincent Brome who like Stern, is a psychiatrist. Academically, however, his approach is far more balanced. Thus in the book Jung: Man and Myth, Brome notes the facts regarding Jung’s bisexual impulses, his forays into adultery and his remaining "unreconciled to Christianity". Yet, there are other facets which are also highlighted. Brome takes care to establish Jung’s academic credentials including the awarding of numerous honorary degrees by prestigious universities across the continents. He confirms what is anyway evident in Jung’s Collected Works of an erudition on a gigantic scale. Brome’s assessment of Jung’s influence on other disciplines is similarly comprehensive. He notes the frequently obscured fact that despite the bitter differences with Freud, Jung’s ideas were to clearly influence psychoanalysis itself. Similarly, his careful consideration of the anti-semitic accusation, exonerates Jung from the essentially Freudian motivated charge.

Jung’s Contemporary Status and Influence

Today, Jung’s obscurity is no longer an issue. While he has yet to have the same impact as Freud on academe, the comparison is perhaps misplaced since in many ways academe has itself undergone a transformation since the advent of Freud. As Brome has pointed out, analogies to Jungian concepts are not difficult to find in fields ranging from anthropology to sociology. The feminist movement and its mostly successful insistence on the centrality of gender and interpretation, owes a substantial debt to Jung.

Numerous writers have described how the quarrel between Freud and Jung can be seen as a battle between the Freudian masculine patriarch and Jung’s effort to restore the lost elements of the Great Mother Goddess. Many books have documented the story of the separation between Freud and Jung as a battle between father and son. The battle, of course, was over the human Psyche, classically a female, and who among the two men had the more appropriate theory and method to formulate a logos of the psyche: Psychology. Half a century later, while the battle continues, Jung stands if not vindicated then at least in a position where a different feminine voice is now an audible contrast to Freud’s masculine one. The dethroning of Freud, with his virulent anti-female bias, has been a major force in the search for alternative explanations of what can be called normal and abnormal. While one has argued that much of what is considered post-Freudian psychology is infect more of the same, the feminist reaction to Freud has at least succeeded in making space for other views, including Jung’s. Which is not to say that Jungian theory is a particularly sympathetic and accurate portrait of the psychology of women. That is another story. This one is about Jung and how he can be considered a symbol of a particular type of geopolitical/cultural consciousness.

Brome’s review of Jung’s influence is important since it reveals long-obscured facts pertaining to a range of contemporary knowledge systems. It illustrates that, unlike Freud whose methods have long been discarded by disciplines other than psychology, Jungian concepts continue to flourish in many fields, albeit unacknowledged. According to Brome, within psychology, Neo-Freudians owe much to Jung whose concept of `individuation’ anticipated the notion of `self-actualization’. Existential analysts are similarly indebted in their theoretical constructs. Painting as a means of insight is today a common therapeutic method and has its origins in Jung’s analytic psychology. Terms such as `complex’, `introvert’ and `extrovert’ inspired even Freud to revise his libido theory. Subsequently, the introversion/extraversion model was employed by Eysenk as one important dimension of personality.

Jung’s early work on word association inspired the Rorschach test and other projective techniques leading to the invention of the lie-detector. His preoccupation with myths, fairy tales, symbols and archetypes led to a new understanding of not only schizophrenia but of the psychological significance of these materials for individuals and entire cultures.

In literary criticism, the cross fertilization has been equally rich. For example, Northrop Frye’s classic text The Anatomy of Criticism is clearly influenced by Jung. Frye’s subsequent and highly influential wrestling’s reflect a continuing deepening of this influence. Similarly, another critical classic, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry by Maud Bodkin is directly derivative in its very title. Jung’s influence is also evident in the writings of Gillbert Murray, J.B. Priestley’s Literature and Western Man, Gottfried Diener’s study of Faust and James Kirsch’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In the artistic domain, an entire aesthetic has been worked out by Phipson based on Jungian principles. Eric Neumann’s analysis of Henry Moore, Herbert Read’s studies of painting and Michael Tippett’s musical criticism are all anchored in Jungian concepts. David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd developed the introversion-extraversion categories in sociological terms. Jung’s views on religions provided lively debates in both Catholic and Protestant theologians and Paul Tillich especially found a reaffirmation of Protestant theology in many Jungian ideas.

As Brome documents, in Europe especially, Jung’s ideas were brought to bear on political philosophy, jurisprudence and even economics. The historian Arnold Toynbee classified many world religions in terms of Jung’s psychological types. Long before Derrida et al, Jung talked of signs, symbols and Semitics. Similarly, Chomsky’s innate structures, Levi-Strauss’ structuralism, and Piaget’s theories are derived from an essentially Jungian methodology:

Extrapolate some of the structures underlying Jung’s thinking–the principle of opposites, of complementarity of phylogentic structures, of feminine and masculine, conscious and unconscious and it is not difficult to find analogies in many fields (p.293)

While Brome’s review attempts to redress the balance of ignorance regarding Jung in the academic world, it does not go into related reasons regarding the reasons for Jung’s obscurity and the explanatory detour can be considered marginal to the purpose at hand (the West and Islam), it does provide a context to understanding western consciousness and certain dominant motifs in its intellectual history.

Freud versus Jung

Starting from his initial position as one of Freud’s most brilliant and devoted disciples, to his subsequent departure from the inner circle of psychoanalysis, Jung’s conception of human behaviour forms the other pillar of the house of psychology which until recently was inhabited primarily be the heirs of the Freudian tradition. Both had the same academic and practical credentials and Jung’s opus is possibly more extensive than Freud’s. Jung’s relative obscurity in academia can be briefly summed up within two broad categories. The first was related to the accusations emerging from the Freudian camp regarding Jung’s alleged anti-semitism which for anyone thoroughly familiar with Jung’s sprawling Collected Works is essentially anti-Freud not anti-semitic. The fact that Jung gave greater importance to factors such as culture, history and religion, coupled with applying certain analytic principles propounded by Freud to Freud himself, were convenient grist for the "anti-semitic" mill.

The second reason for Jung’s obscurity is linked to the inner workings of the disciplines/professions of psychiatry and clinical psychology. Unlike Freud, Jung never gave a specific etiology of neurosis or psychosis. Mental illness for Jung was basically a one-sidedness in the presence of multiplicity. Related to this theoretical frame, the Freudian emphasis on sexuality was for Jung an incomplete and exceedingly narrow view of human behaviour–normal or otherwise. A more comprehensive picture was only possible if the practitioner was aware of numerous cultural and historical factors which also affect psychological consciousness, including the domains of culture, art, religion, and spirituality. The practice of psychotherapy within such broad intellectual parameters without the benefit of a well-structured etiology is not an easy task.

It becomes even more difficult to accomplish when one takes into account the considerable time required to qualify simply as a medical doctor. Thus, it was the Freudian perspective with its singular emphasis on sexuality and the dismissing of religion as "infantile", which was absorbed into the mainstream of the newly emerging discipline of psychiatry. While both Freud and Jung eventually declared that psychotherapy need not be restricted to only medical doctors, the status of psychiatry over all other non-medical forms of therapy, consolidated Freud’s position over Jung. In the last fifty years, until recently, this situation has remained basically the same, especially with psychiatry. Even though the method initiated by Freud, psychoanalysis, is today a crumbling fortress, Freud’s legacy lives on in numerous schools and theories of psychology. Similarly, it would be no exaggeration to say that worldwide, in the public imagination, people are still more apt to recognize and think in Freudian rather than in Jungian concepts. Id, ego, superego are popularly much more `accessible’ than, for example, the concepts of archetype, anima and enantrodromia. But with the advent of postmodernism, this is slowly changing.

Jung, The ‘New Age’ Movement and Religion

The New Age movement and its academic counterpart of Alternatives, suggest a significant change in western attitudes regarding self, other and society. Underlying, and in many instances pre-empting this change, is Jung’s vision of complexity and diversity in human nature and the centrality of a mode of consciousness that can be loosely termed the Feminine and the critical need for western civilization to consider the consequences of what Jung termed its loss of soul. Many of the ideas (and practices) of the New Age movement can be traced to Jungian perspectives on physical and mental health. This historical link is evident insofar as Jung was among the first medical scientists who, as early as the 40s and 50s, suggested that modern man’s search for mental health would be better served by many of the psychological principles underlying eastern spiritual practices rather than mainstream Protestant Christianity or Freudian analysis.

Presently, Jung’s ideas are finding an even larger audience, thanks primarily to outstanding post-Jungian scholars such as James Hillman. The present almost cult like status of the poet Robert Bligh, author of Iron John, and the swirl of debate over masculine and feminine modes of consciousness, are almost entirely due to the writings of post-Jungians such as Hillman. The ubiquitous use of terms such as `soul’, `meditation’, `visualization’, `holism’, `wholeness’, etc, all emerge from a Jungian matrix now dispersed by time and by the sheer volume of concepts it has generated.

It was mainly Jung’s writings on religion and psychology which led him to being called a "new Messiah" and "psychiatrist to God". He made no secret of his enthusiasm regarding numerous aspects of these ‘alien’ philosophies and saw a profound resonance between his own ideas and these traditions. His range and grasp of the psychology of religion is immense, ranging from ancient African beliefs to those of the American Indian, the Chinese, Hindus and other lesser known systems. His personal and cultural milieu assured him of a strong grasp of Christianity and Judaism. The extensive and enormously erudite writings on many aspects of the Jedeo-Christian tradition ensured his being branded anti-semitic on the one hand, and a heretic on the other. Post-Jungians such as James Hillman continue to fight the battle initiated by Jung, especially with mainstream psychology/psychiatry and Protestant Christianity.

All this needed to be set down as part of the attempt to make way for a common ground and language regarding the West versus the rest and especially Islam. As one has tried to show, this ground/language exists in the West and the effort will be to stay within its boundaries. When it comes to understanding other cultures and religions, Jung is a symbol of the best of the West: Liberal, enlightened, capable of being self-critical, always pursuing knowledge regardless of cultural prejudice, and prevailing academic fashion. The present widespread acceptance of his ideas, directly or indirectly, indicate that such a consciousness (i.e. postmodernism) is well established and growing in the West. It is a consciousness which one both relates to and even admires and to which this paper is addressed.

II

The Collected Works of C.G. Jung:

A Content Analysis

The Collected Works of Carl Jung are scholarly and eloquent testimony to his life-long effort to serve as a mediator between the Christian West and other religions. While this may not have been his primary intention, which he maintained was essentially psychotherapeutic and rooted in scientific psychology, The Collected Works can, nevertheless, be regarded as a mediative corpus especially in its use of two broad methods. The first was Jung’s attempt to view religion psychologically. This was based on drawing a distinction between the psychology of a religious person as posed to the "psychology of religion proper, that is of religious contents". For Jung, the content of a religion, that is, issues of dogma and belief, are not a question of `facts’. Most religious assertions are impossible to prove in the usual sense of the word. The study of any religion then must take into account the psychology of its symbols, not just the literal dogma. Thus, religious assertions have to do primarily with the reality of the psyche not physics.

For example, in the process of uncovering the forgotten and neglected world of the Divine Feminine as represented by Sophia and Mary in Judaism and Christianity, Jung repeatedly demonstrated the line between the bias against the feminine aspects of the psyche and the Judaeo-Christian contribution towards this bias. James Hillman and other post-Jungians have carryed this view further, showing how modern systems of knowledge - scientific, and secular-human - are in fact still anchored in the religious worldview of what Hillman calls "Cartesian-Christianism".

One aspect of Jung’s work then, attempts to de-link knowledge not from the Judaeo-Christian tradition as such but from what he perceived were partriarchical accetions and the extreme masculinization of these traditions. From this perspective, the bulk of The Collected Works is primarily addressed to `modern man’, and thus primarily to the West. Jung’s secondary effort was concerned with the religions and philosophies of "the rest". that is, non-western civilizations and cultures. The study of these other modes of religious psychology was done not with the purpose of offering them as a substitute for, what was a Jung, a highly frayed Christianity. Rather, it was to illustrate the correspondence and fundamental harmony between these seemingly alien systems and the sort of Christianity that, according to Jung, had originally existed.

Apart from commenting in depth on a range of western and non-western sacred texts, rituals, art(ifacts) and other religious/spiritual/cultural expressions both public and private, the main source of his sweeping comparative vision was again twofold. The first was mythology and its related areas such as folk tales, legends, etc. The second was his foray into alchemy which had long been dismissed in the West as simply a primitive forerunner to the modern science of chemistry. His work in this area can be considered tour de force of academic and scholarly research demonstrating the deep links of this arena with psychological process and transformation. As he has brilliantly shown, much of alchemy was a symbolic representation of certain psycho-spiritual process which form the core of the `message(s)’ of many sacred texts and practices.

It would be no exaggeration to say that in the 20th century, Jung was one of the few western authors who tried to create a vast and challenging conceptual space for a mutual understanding between the West and the rest. And it is this space which offers the best prospect for a continuing dialogue. The parameters then are The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. It consists of twenty volumes. As stated earlier, it is primarily addressed to the inheritors of the Judaeo-Christian worlview. Simultaneously, it is one of the most comprehensive surveys available on the psychological study of religions.

Methodology

Taking Jung as a symbol representing the best of the West, this paper will examine the precise nature of Jung’s understanding of Islam as reflected in The Collected Works. Rather than prematurely imposing one’s interpretation of this understanding the first step is to examine the corpus through empirical means.

One relatively standard technique is of a content analysis. This will be done firstly by noting the numerical frequency of references to Islam in comparison to all the major religions examined by Jung. For example, one can note the frequency of reference to certain primary features which constitute the most visible profile of a religion such as the main person (Moses, Lao Tzu, Mohammad), place (Benaras, Jerusalem, Mecca) and scripture (Vedas, Quran, Torah, Bible). These data can then be viewed from a more comprehensive angle in terms of comparison.

The second, deeper level would examine the substantive nature of all the reference to Islam. Using methods of (con) textual analysis one will attempt to delineate more precisely Jung’s understanding of the psychology of Islam as distinct from other religions, alongwith his grasp of areas of similarity. Such a cross-referential method or a dual analytic level, which takes into account both quantity and quality of knowledge about Islam, would enable one to gauge the extent and depth of Jung’s understanding of the subject. The emergent proportions would indicate the extent to which Islam can be considered the `other’, or in Jungian terms the `shadow’ in western religious and psychological consciousness. The data for the quantitative content analysis have been compiled/identified from the General Index (Vol.20)

Quantitative Analysis of References to Islam.

As the tables indicate, Islam has the least number of references to it in every category. This despite the fact that even during Jung’s time it was the second largest religion in the world and is today moving towards having the most adherents. Apart from the massive amount of material on Judaism and Christianity, combined reference to Indo-Chinese traditions exceed one hundred. Whereas all other religions have entries under related categories, the only related category to `Islam’ is `Arabs’ which consists of 15 references and the names of eight Arab alchemists. Even without a substantive review, the figures indicate a certain lack of interest, indicating that Islam was the least of Jung’s priority in his pursuit of understanding the psychology of various religions.

The order of priority suggested by the figures seems to be constant at the most basic levels. For example, within Jungian theory considerable attention is devoted to different religious rituals and their psycho-symbolic significance. The low priority of Islam in these categories is also evident if a comparison is made, for example, among Passover, Christmas, and the Muslim festival of Eid or the rite of the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Haj. There are two detailed references to Passover, 14 to Christmas, 11 to Easter, many of these extensive. There are no references to any Islamic rite or ritual. Again, in the context of symbols, the cross, for example, has almost an entire page of references as does the `Star’ (of both the Messiah and David). The prototypical symbol of Islam, the crescent, is not referred to even once in this context. Even though within the realm of classical symbols it is highly significant and extensively documented. While there are extensive references to the symbolic significance of the `moon’, none of these is specifically discussed in the context of Islam.

This seeming lack of interest in Islam becomes clearer when one move on to the next level of analysis which is an examination of the precise context and extent to which these 19 references to Islam and its allied concepts occur.

Qualitative (Con) Textual Analysis of References to Islam.

The review is based on the following structure: Apart from Islam(is), all major related concepts will also be noted, such as `Allah’, `Muhammad’ and other names, themes etc. specific to the Islamic religious/spiritual universe. Two broad categories of references can be discerned. The first consist of what can be termed block or passing references. That is, while `Islam’ or `Allah’ or `Muhammad’ is certainly mentioned, nothing more specific is said in what is a general statement about, for example, Yahweh, Allah, Brahma or the `monotheisms’ etc. The second category is when more substantive observations are made. These, in turn, can be examined for positive or negative comments and other insights into the subject.

Before approaching the data, a few points need to be kept in mind. Firstly, while The Collected Works were written over a period of a lifetime, they are arranged thematically. Thus, if some volumes contain no references to Islam, it is by itself no indication of Jung’s lack of interest in the subject. In this case, any conclusions to be drawn must come from the whole and not any one part. Secondly, while the main discussion will be done after the review, the rather technical and frequently arcane nature of many contexts necessitate some brief comments, if only to retain the reader’s interest.

The references can be approached keeping three broad categories in mind: Positive, negative and neutral/indifferent. The last would consist of all those that have been earlier classified as passing, since no conclusion can be drawn from them. It should also be noted that there is one central and repeated reference to Islam. This has to do with an interpretation of the 18th Surah of the Qurān and the figure of Al-Khidr (or Khadir). It is an interesting and insightful analysis regarding certain psychological aspects of Islam. Given the relatively large number of repeat references to it, as well as the positivity which characterises them, this aspect of Jung’s writings will be examined at length after the overall review of The Collected Works.

Vol.5 Smybols of Transformation: Khidr.

(i) An extensive reference to the 18th Surah of the Qurān about the legend of Moses and Khidr. (See detailed discussion). The context is the essay titled `The Origins of the Hero’ and pertains to a series of dreams of an anonymous "Miss Miller" who was the subject of another extensive Jungian analysis titled "The Miller Fantasies". The reference occurs in the course of tracing an association given by Miss Miller about ‘Ahasuerus’ whom Jung links to the archetype of the wandering Jew:

Although the stories about Ahasuerus cannot be traced beyond the thirteenth century, the oral tradition may go much further back, and it is possible that a link with the Orient once existed. There, the parallel figure is Khadir or El-Khadir, the "eternally youthful Chidher" celebrated in song by Friedrick Rē ckert. The legend is purely Islamic. The strange thing is, however, that Khidr is not only regarded as a saint, but in Sufic circles even has the status of a deity. In view of the strict monotheism of Islam, one is inclined to think of him as a pre-Islamic, Arabian deity who, though not officially recognized by the new religion, was tolerated for reasons of expediency. But there is nothing to prove that. The first traces of Khidr are to be found in the commentaries on the Koran by al-Bukhari (d.870) and al-Tabari(d.923), and especially in the commentary on a note-worthy passage in the 18th Surah. This is entitled `The Cave’ after the cave of the seven sleepers who, according to legend, slept in it for 309 years, thus escaping the the persecution, and woke up in a new age. It is interesting to see how the Koran after lengthy moral reflection in the course of this same Surah, comes to the following passage, which is especially important as regards the origin of the Khidr myth. I quote the Koran literally .....(5.194)

There are no other reference to Islam or related categories in a total text of 462 pages.

In an essay `The Type Problem in Classical and Medieval Thought’, Jung alludes to certain aspects of Islamic mysticism (Sufism) in which certain techniques are geared towards rapid psychological and spiritual transformation:

How easily the primitive reality of the psychic image re-appears is shown by the dreams of normal people and the hallucinations that accompany mental derangement. The mystics even endeavour to recapture primitive reality of the imago (image) by means of an artificial introversion, in order to counterbalance extraversion. There is an excellent example of this in the initiation of the Mohammedan mystic Tewekkul-Beg, by Molla-Shah. Tewekkul-Beg relates: "after these words he called me to seat myself opposite to him, while still my senses were as though bemused, and commanded me to create his own image in my innerself; and after he had bound my eyes, he made me gather all the forces of the soul into my heart. I obeyed, and in the twinkling of an eye, by divine favour, and with the spiritual succour of the Sheikh, my heart was opened. I beheld there in my innermost self something resembling an overturned bowl; when this vessel was righted, a feeling of boundless joy flooded through my whole being. I said to the Master: "From this cell, in which I am seated before you, I beheld within me a true vision, and it is as though another Tewekkul-Beg were seated before another Molla-Shah". The Master explained this to him as the first phenomenon of his initiation. Other visions soon followed, once the way to the primitive image of the real had been opened ...... (p.31).

Despite the considerably rich psychological material, no connections are drawn between it and Islamic symbols, imagery, theology. Instead, the reference is to "a Mohammedan mystic". Nevertheless, it cannot be considered a negative reference and can be categorized either as positive or neutral. This is the only reference in a total text of 555 pages.

Vol.8. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.

There is one reference to Islam, in the essay "Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology". It is difficult to assess the connotations in terms of positive/negative, though from the Muslim point of view it can be considered negative, insofar as it alludes to the absence of `reason’ in Islam which is mentioned alongwith other historical facts of a negative nature. In either case, it remains an essentially passing reference, since it does not substantiate the observation on Islam:

Truth that appeals to the testimony of the senses may satisfy reason, but it offers nothing that stirs our feelings and expresses them by giving meaning to human life. Yet it is most often feeling that is decisive in matters of good and evil, and if feeling does not come to the aid of reason, the latter is usually powerless. Did reason and good intentions save us from the World War, or have they ever saved us from any other catastrophic stupidity? Have any of the great spiritual and social revolution sprung from reason - for instance, the transformation of the Greco-Roman world into the age of feudalism, or the explosive spread of Islam? (p.355)

This is the only reference in a total text of 531 pages.

Vol.9 (Part-1) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.

(i) This text contains the most substantive reference to the Qur’ān/Islam in The Collected Works. It discusses the 18th Surah (`The Cave’), as descriptive of a psychological process of transformation in the essay "A Typical set of Symbols Illustrating The Process of Transformation". It will be discussed separately, after the main review.

(ii) A footnote citing a German scholar citing the Arab astronomer Abū Manؤūr who say symbolic parallels in astronomy with lives of Christ and Mohammad. The text of the footnote: "The light of Mohammad has the form of a peacock and the angels were made out of the peacock’ sweat...." (331 n)

Vol.9 (Part-II) Aion:Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self.

(i) A footnote citing the German scholar Harnack’s work on the `Clementine Homilies’, a collection of gnostic-Christian writing of A.D.150. It is an intriguing footnote, unfortunately not carried through:

Harnack ascribes the Clementine Homilies to the beginning of the 4th century and is of the opinion that they contain "no source that could be attributed to the 2nd century". He thinks that Islam is far superior to this theology. Yahweh and Allah are unreflected God-images, whereas in the Clementive Homilies there is a psychological and reflective spirit at work. It is not immediately evident why this should bring about a disintegration of the God-concept, as Harnack thinks. Fear of psychology should not be carried too far (p.54 n)

(ii) A block/passing reference to the advents of "Judaism, Christianity and Islam" as seen through astrology (p.76)

(iii) An interesting series of footnotes about Islam and Mohammad in the essay "The Prophecies of Nostradamus". They are significant for their mostly pejorative connotations of Islam, by various western medieval authors/astrologers, and Jung himself. The first footnote:

(a) ....The quartile aspect between Mercury and Mars "injures" Mercury by "martial" violence. According to Cardan, (some astrological symbols) signify the "law of Mahomet". This aspect could therefore indicate an attack by Islam. Albumasar regards (the symbols) in the same way: "And if Mars shall be in conjunction with him (Jupiter) it signifies the fiery civilization of the pagan faith" (that is Islam). On the analogy of history the evil events to come are ascribed to the crescent moon, but one never reflects that the opponent of Christianity dwells in the European unconscious. History repeats itself. (p.95 n)

(b) A footnote to Nostradamus’ statement "Then the beginning of that year (1792) shall see a great persecution against the Christian Church than ever was in Africa". Jung’s note states that this was "when Roman Christendom succumbed to Islam" (964n)

(c) Quoting Nostradamus:

".... a mighty one will come after Mahomet, who will set up an evil and magical law. Thus we may surmise with credible probability that after the sect of Mahomet none other will come save the law of the Anti-Christ"(9.97)

(d) A passing reference, not followed through "The year 589 foretell Islam, and 1189 the significant reign of Pope Innocent III...."(99).

(e) There is one reference to Mohammad in the essay on the "Prophecies of Nostradamus". "...it is possible that Nostradamus calls the Antichrist who was to appear after 1792, the "second Antichrist" because the first had already appeared in the guise of the German reformer (Luther) or much earlier with Nero or Mohammad....." (p.102)

(vi) Discussing how Europe accepted Christianity only at the point of the sword of Roman legions, thereby abandoning paganism, but which is held back only by a "thin wall":

"...Doubtless the spread of Christianity among barbarian people not only favoured, but actually necessitated, a certain inflexibility of dogma. Much the same thing can be observed in the spread of Islam, which was likewise obliged resort to fanaticism and rigidity...."(p.175).

(v) Footnote mentioning "Qur’ān and 18th Surah" (III n).

None of these references in a text of 269 pages can be considered substantive. At best they are all passing/block and hence neutral though they can be construed as negative, e.g. Mohammad as anti-Christ, and the "fanaticism and rigidity of Islam":

(i) Passing/block reference... "The meaning of and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam...) (p.257).

(ii) In the famous essay, "Woman", Jung tried to explain Christian psychology and its tendency to self-righteously judged Nazi Germany: "...The Semitic experience of Allah was for a long time an extremely painful affair for the whole of Christendom... "(p.298) This is not followed through.

(iii) Two passing references to Khidr as "a human personification of Allah" (0.328). The second is more significant:

...Living in the West, I would have to say Christ instead of "self", in the Near East it would be Khidr, in the Far East Atman or Tao or the Buddha, in the Far West may be a hare or Mondamin and in cabalism it would be Tifereth. Our world has shrunk and it is dawning on us that humanity is one, with one psyche (p.410).

(iv) In a review of a book by Keyserling there is a reference which is not followed through" "....In order to find the criterion for contemporary events Keyserling harks back to the rise of Islam...." (p.497)

(v) In the essay "The Dreamlike World of India", we get– apart from the 18th Surah– perhaps the only other psychological statement on Islam albeit in a context of calling a "cult" what was even in Jung’s time, a world religion. Given his perception that the "beauty" of the "Islamic Eros" is universally invisible and " all too jealously guarded", the great religious researcher, it seems, was either unable on uninterested in probing the secret. After giving a rich description of Hinduism and his personal reactions to the Indian landscape he states:

In comparison, Islam seems to be a superior, more spiritual and more advanced religion. Its mosques are pure and beautiful, and of course wholly Asiatic. There is not much mind about it, not a great deal of feeling. The cult is one wailing cry for the all-Merciful. It is a desire, an ardent longing and even a greed for God; I would not call it love. But there is love, the most poetic, most exquisite love of beauty in these old Moguls ... I marvel at that love which discovered the genius of Shah Jehan and used it as an instrument of self-realization. This is the one place in the world where the - alas - all too invisible and all too jealously guarded beauty of the Islamic Eros has been revealed by a well-nigh divine miracle... The Taj Mahal is a revelation. It is thoroughly un-Indian. It is more like a plant that could thrive and flower in the rich Indian earth as it could nowhere else. It is Eros in its purest form; There is nothing mysterious nothing symbolic about it... the Taj Mahal is the secret of Islam...(p.519-20)

(vi) Stretching the framework of categories as far as possible further, there is, finally, one reference to `mosque’ in the context of different experiences of sacred space:

...One breathed a sigh of relief oneself when one emerged from the haze of an orthodox church with its multitude of lamps and entered an honest mosque, where the sublime and invisible omnipresence of God was not crowded out by a superfluity of sacred paraphernalia (p.132)

There is also one reference suggesting that certain features of mosque architecture are derived from Christianity. (p.155) Except for the comments on the Taj Mahal and a mosque, the references can be considered passing ones. The comments on the Taj allude to significant Jungian concepts such as ‘Eros’ that are not examined upon further here or elsewhere in The Collected Works. Similarly, the notion that Islam has "little mind to it" is not elaborated upon. Jung’s intrigued and rapturous response is really not explored further either in contrasting traditions or even with Hinduism which, at the outset, he distinguishes from Islam.

As the title suggests, the book is a sweeping panorama of world religions and deserves careful scrutiny for what it may have to say regarding Islam. The book is devided into nine sections. Part 1 consists of what are known as "The Terry Lectures" given at Yale in 1939, and deal with principles of Jungian psychology and the study of religion. Its only reference to Islam is in a passing/block context, of religions being similar yet different:

(i) ... a definite framework with definite contents which cannot be combined with or supplemented by Buddhist or Islamic ideas or feelings...(p.9).

Part-II is titled "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity". In this section there is considerable background material regarding Egypt and Greece. The one reference here is typical of the western tendency to lump Islam with Judaism simply on the basis of some obvious common elements: "...modern anti-trinitarianism has a conception of God that is more Old Testament or Islamic in character than Christian..." (p.153). There is also a line referring to "early Christianity and the rise of Islam" (151) Neither of these are followed through.

Part-III is an analysis of the "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass". Part-IV consists of three prefaces written to books on religion by various authors. Part-V consists of two essays: "Psychotherapists and the Clergy" and Psychoanalysis and the Cure of Souls". Part-VI consists of the famous and controversial "Answer to Job", which discusses elements of the psychology of Judaism. None of these carry any type of reference to Islam.

The Second half of the book is devoted to "Eastern Religions" and consists of three parts. The first consists of essays on "Yoga and the West", a forward to Suzuki’s "Introduction to Zen Buddhism," and essays on "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" and the "Holy Men of India". The third and final part of this section is an extensive foreword to Richard Willhelm’s translation of the "I Ching". There is just one reference to Islam in the essay on Yoga and the West. It is a passing one, in the historical context of the Renaissance and the by then well-established split between science and philosophy in the West.:

At the time, there arose a widespread and passionate interest in antiquity stimulated by the fall of the Byzantine Empire under the onslaught of Islam. Then, for the first time, knowledge of the Greek language and Greek literature was carried to every corner of Europe. As a direct result of this invasion of so called pagan philosophy there arose the great schism in the Roman Church– Protestantism which soon covered the whole of northern Europe (p.530-531).

Here again, the connection between `paganism’ and elements of Islam are ignored, despite the fact that medieval authors frequently saw Islam as a `pagan’belief system. Thus, in a text of a more than 600 pages, suggesting a comprehensive approach to religion– East and West– there are exactly four references to Islam, not a single one of which is remotely substantive. Drawing on all related categories the situation remains the same, that is, they are passing/block references:

i) "...Buddha and Mohammad ... Confucius and Zarthustra..." (p.10)

ii) "...The importation on a mass scale of exotic religious systems...Abdul Baha, the Sufi sects, Ramakrishna..."(861).

iii) In a comment on the Nazis: "...our blight is ideologies– they are the long awaited Anti-Christ.... National Socialism comes as near to being a religious movement as any movement since A.D.622..". (A footnote informs us that A. D. 622 is the date of the Hejira, Mohammad’s flight from Mecca and the beginning of the Moslem era. (p.488 n)

iv) "... ‘God’, can just as well mean Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Shiva..." (454)

Summing up the review for (Volumes 1 through 11) the emergent picture of Islam contains mostly blank spaces, in the sense of an overwhelming number of passing/block references. The one exception is the analysis of the 18th Surah in Vol.9, which will be discussed separately. The only other substantive reference to the Islamic Eros as epitomized by the Taj is not followed through, nor is the subject referred to in any of the other volumes. Simultaneously, there are a number of passing, negative references such as Islam’s "rigidity and fanaticism" and Muhammad in the same conceptual category as Nero, Anti-Christ, Hitler.

Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

Taken collectively, Volumes 12,13,14, namely, Psychology and Alchemy, Mysterious Conjunctions and Alchemical Studies, can be considered Jung’s magnum opus. The three texts form the core of his theories about the psyche as derived from the alchemical traditions. As he recounts in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the task of retrieving the alchemical texts was foretold in a dream in which he discovers a library of ancient manuscripts. Fifteen years later, Jung realized that he had unwittingly amassed a similar collection of books on the subject of alchemy.

While many Jungians find Jung’s alchemical writings an embarrassment, it would be a gross distortion to present him without this aspect of his work. Jung devoted the last 30 years of his research on this subject, published perhaps a quarter of his printed pages on alchemical texts and themes, and said in his autobiography that it was alchemy which provided the true background to his psychology. As Hillman states:

Alchemy is thus not merely of scholarly interest and a separate field of research, nor is it Jung’s quirk or private passion. It is infect fundamental to his conception of personality structure.

Most Westerners, including many Jungians, are unaware of the profound and living alchemical tradition in Islam. This ignorance is due to the general decay and decline to the point of extinction, of alchemy in the West. Hence, infect, the significance of Jung’s researches into the subject. In any case, there is firstly no doubt that Islam has an ancient and highly developed and active alchemical tradition. Secondly, there is also no doubt as to the historic role played by the Arabs who were of course, Muslims, in the (retransmission of many types of knowledge– including alchemy– going back to the Greeks and Egyptians. As is evident from Jung’s own work, significant alchemical text by European authors which he ‘decoded’ are largely drawn from Arabic writings on the subject. Thus, at one level Jung was well aware of the highly developed alchemical tradition within Islam, as well as its considerable strong links to the West. At least eight Arab authors are cited in this connection. Yet there are absolutely no psychological insights regarding Islam.

The fact that, by and large, Jung’s alchemical studies do not go further back than the 12th century still does not explain this neglect. Nor can it be explained on the grounds that his focus was the European/Christian psyche, since one needs to keep in mind the all-important context of a general psychology of religion. Thus, while he was able to skillfully extrapolate connections between western alchemy, Judaic/Christian beliefs and psychology, and even Chinese alchemy and religion, there is a complete absence of similar connections between Islam and alchemy. Certainly, there are numerous nods of acknowledgement to ‘Arab’ sources in the footnotes, but remarkably no comments as to how these were, as they undoubtedly are, embedded in the symbols of Islam. These points become evident on a closer examination of reference to Islam in the three volumes.

(i) A passing/block reference in a sentence on "...a world religion, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam" (p.19)

(ii) Two references to Khidr and the 18th Surah. (See detailed discussion in the same context.). ".. In Islam, the plan of the `temenos’ with the foundation developed under the influence of early Christian architecture into the court of the mosque with the ritual washhouse in the center....".(p.118).

(iii) A footnote on the "Muhammedan legend of the rock in the mosque of Omar, at Jerusalem....." (390n).

(iv) A reference to "mosque/Koran" in the dream of a female patient. Surprisingly, neither is picked up in the subsequent analysis:

"....we go in. The interior resembles a mosque, more particularly, the Hagia Sophia: no seats, wonderful effect of space, no images, only framed texts decorating the walls (like the Koran texts in the Hagia Sophia.)..." (p.138)

Apart from these, there are a good number of references to prominent Arab alchemists such as Kalid, Abdul Qasim, Geber and Senior. Some of them are central to Western alchemy since the 12th century. However, none of them are linked psychologically with Islam. Naturally then, the obvious links between Islamic alchemy and Greek philosophy also remain unmentioned and unexplored. For example, in the essay "Religious Ideas in Alchemy":

... in the writing of the Church Fathers the south wind is an allegory of the Holy Ghost, presumably because it is not dry. For the same reason the process of sublimation is known in Arabic alchemy as the "great south wind" .....when therefore Abu’l Qasim speaks of the fire as the "great south wind", he is in agreement with the ancient Greek view that Hermes was a wind-god. (p.383).

There are, thus, numerous references to Arabs/Arabic/Arabian alchemy; mostly in footnotes, but also other extensive quotations from Arab authors in the text. Yet, not a single one is directly or indirectly linked with the symbolic imagery or psychological aspects of Islam and alchemy. Instead, the main focus is Christianity and Judaism. This neglect becomes even more evident insofar as other religions, apart from Judaism and Christianity, are examined in varying detail for their alchemical symbolism, such as the Chinese and Hindu. Thus, in the entire 483 pages of a text on the psychological aspects of a range of religious and alchemical traditions, there is infect, not a single substantive reference to Islam.

Vol. 13 Alchemical Studies

There are two references to Arabs and Arabian alchemy, illustrating the point made earlier.

(i) The first is the context of four categories of sources used by Jung. Category I is titled "Texts by Ancient Authors’, consisting of mainly Greek texts and "those transmitted by the Arabs..." The second group is texts by early Latinists: "The most important of these are translations from the Arabic.. to this group belong certain texts whose Arabic origin is doubtful but which at least show some Arabic influence... of Geber and the Aristotle and Avicenna treatises". This period extends from the 9th to 13th centry. The third group is by later Latinists from 14th to 17th century. The last group of texts is in modern European languages upto the 18th century. (p.206)

(ii) The second reference to Arabs is a passing one: "Connections between Greek and Arabic alchemy and India are not unlikely" (p.231). This is not followed through.

Other than these, there is no mention of Islam in the entire book, except an indirect one regarding Khidr and the 18th Surah(p.321)

This book is a masterpiece of research and psychological insights. However, the nature of the references to Islam continue to reflect an attitude towards Arabs and Islam in which glimpses of substantive information regarding Arabs are rarely connected in a meaningful manner with psychological insights, racial or religious. The word ‘Islam’ does not appear once in the entire text of 599 pages. Following are all the references in the spectrum categories:

(i) A footnote refers to the Qur’ān Surah XIX regarding Marry giving birth under a palm tree. (418 n).

(ii) A footnote: ‘the stage appears as the emblem of `Mahomet Philosophus’. (p.159)

(iii) "...In Athens the day of the new moon was considered favorable for collaborating marriages, and it is still and Arabian custom to marry on this day; sun and moon are marriage partners who embrace on the twenty eighth day of the month" (p.129).

(iv) The only reference to the Ka`ba, is not followed through, even though it is complex and profound symbol in Islam:

In Arabian tradition Adam also built the Ka`ba for which purpose the angel Gabriel gave him the ground plan and a precious stone. Later the stone turned black because of the sins of men (p.398).

The following group of references firstly clearly allude to the significant impact of `Arabic’ (i.e. Islamic) alchemy on the Western tradition of not only scientific knowledge, but also gnosticism and most importantly, health and healing rooted in a specific spiritual Weltanschauung. Secondly, they also allude to the direct link between the Greeks and Egyptians on the one hand and Gnostic Christianity on the other as mediated by the ‘Arabs’. Yet, the line between the transmission of these knowledges is not once connected to their matrix of Islam:

(v) "... The Johanine interpretation of Christ as the pre-wordly Logos is an early attempt of this kind to put into other words the "meaning" of Christs essence. The late mendievlists, and in particular the "natural philosophers" created a new nature myth. In this they were very much influenced by the writings of the Arabs and of the Harrites, the last exponents of Greek philosophy and gnosis, whose chief representative was Tabit ibn Qurra in the tenth centry (p.142).

(iv) "The physicians and natural philosophers of the Middle Ages nevertheless found themselves faced with the problems for which the church had no answer. Confronted with sickness and death, the physicians did hesitate to seek counsel with the Arabs and so resuscitated that bit of the Ancient world which the Church thought she had exterminated for ever, namely the Manteau and Sabean remnants of Hellenistic syncretism. From them (Arabs) they derived a’sal sapientia’ that seemed so unlike the doctrine of the Church....(p.243)

(vii) ...In the face of all this one is driven to the conjecture that medieval alchemy, which evolved out of the Arabic tradition sometimes in the 13th century,... was in the last resort a contamination of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost which never came to very much in the church...(p.318)

Islam and Alchemy

The preceding statements clearly indicate Jung’s thorough understanding of the history of western alchemy and its fertilization and "resuscitation" through Arabic texts. The General Index contains a separate section on ‘Arab Alchemical Writers’ cited by Jung, many of whom he called "classical authorities". (p.288). They include Abul Qasim, El-Halib, Geber (Jabir) Kalid, Magus, Nadi, Senior, Rhazes and Al-Iraqi. As Jung states about the most significant roots of Hermetic philosophy in which alchemy is embedded:

In the oldest alchemy known to the West the Hermetic fragments were handed down mostly through Arabic originals. Direct contact with the Corpus Hermeticum was only established in the second half of the fifteenth century, when the Greek manuscript reached Italy from Macedonia and was translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino. (Volume 12. p.390)

While Jung indeed acknowledges, but mostly indirectly, these historical elements of the Judaeo-Christian alchemical and spiritual universe, he was content to regard the `Arabs’ simply as such. This may have been appropriate (albeit at a stretch) if he had been involved in documenting a sort of secular history of alchemy, which was patently not the case. His principal focus was psycho-spiritual, devoted to illustrating the parallels between alchemical language, a given religion and psychology.

As Hillman points out, Jung saw alchemy as a "pre-scientific psychology of personality disguised as metaphors". Alchemical formulation such as `lead’, `salt’, `sulphur’, `mercury’ correspond with different psychological and archetypal experiences and figures. The processes that go on in the personality are also depicted in alchemy as a series of operations. According to Jung, by `projecting’ what were essentially unconscious contents/ideas onto (or into) various (alchemical materials/elements, the alchemists generated a process which in todays popular parlance could be called `consciousness raising’. The names of many of these processes have found their way into clinical psychology: Projection, dissolution, sublimation, fixation, condensation were all alchemical terms. The two main ones - solution and coagulation - are another way of stating the main work of psychotherapy: taking apart and putting together, analyzing and synthesizing. Thus, methods which modern analysis believes it has invented for furthering personality development were already known to alchemy as description of psychological processes, not ideals (such as making gold) to be attained literally.

The main point is that throughout the three texts under review, the connections between religion and alchemy are considerable. This is evident even in the thematic arrangement of Psychology and Alchemy (Volume 12). It is divided into three areas having the following headings:

(i) Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy.

(ii) Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy.

(iii) Religious Ideas in Alchemy.

In this overwhelmingly religious context of the study of a system knowledge and its relationship with western psychology, alongwith considerable familiarity of key Arab sources, there is no mention of the religion which informed the heart of this Arab enterprise, that is, Islam. An even more unusual aspect is that the majority of the Arab sources cited by Jung considered themselves, and are considered by scholars of Islamic culture, as being deeply influenced by the spiritual teachings of Islam.

In keeping with the history of this scholarship, Jung also confirmed the connections between Egyptian and Hermetic philosophy on the one hand and its "resuscitation" by the Arabs and subsequent transmission to the West on the other, As Burckhardt has pointed out, the expression ‘alchemia’ could have been derived from the Greek "chyma" (smelting and casting) or from the Arabic "al-Kimiya" which is said to come from the ancient `keme’ - reference to the `black earth’ which was a designation of Egypt and which may also have been a symbol of the alchemists’ `prima materia’

In the book Alchemy, Burckhardt shows how it was possible for alchemy and its mythological background to be incorporated into the three monotheistic religions. The main reason was that the cosmological perspectives of alchemy were in resonance with the cosmologies of these religions. The cosmological background was taken over, alongwith the craft, simply as a science of nature (physics) in the broadest sense of the term. The process is similar to the way Christianity and Islam appropriated the Pythagorean tradition in music and architecture, and assimilated the corresponding spiritual perspective:

By its assimilation into Christian belief, alchemy was fecundated, while Christianity found in it a way which, through the contemplation of nature, led to a true gnosis. (p.18).

What Jung failed to discern is the deep resonance between Islam and the Hermetic perspective, even though he was aware of the contributions of the Arabs to what he called the "resuscitation" of European thought. As Burckhardt states:

Even more easily did the Hermetic art enter into the spiritual world of Islam, the latter was always ready to recognize any pre-Islamic art which appeared under the aspect `wisdom’ (‘hikmah’) as a heritage of earlier prophets. Thus in the Islamic world Hermes Trismegistos is often identified with Enoch (Idris). It was the doctrine of the "oneness of existence" (Wahdat-al-Wujud) - the esoteric interpretation of the Islamic confession of faith - which gave to Hermitism a new spiritual axis, or in other words re-established its original spiritual horizon in all its fullness ... (p.18, 19).

Reviewing the history of alchemy, Burckhardt confirms some of Jung’s historical observations but more importantly, he articulates what seems obvious but was nevertheless not evident to Jung:

....Alchemy made its entry into western Christendom through Byzantium, and later, and even more richly, through Arab dominated Spain. It was in the Islamic world that alchemy reached its fullest flowering. Jabir Ibn Hayyan, a pupil of the sixth century Shiite Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, founded in the eighth century A.D. a whole school, from which hundreds of alchemical texts flowed forth. No doubt it was because the name Jabir had become the hallmark of much alchemical lore that the author of the `Summa Perfectionism’, a 13th century Italian or Catalan, also assumed the name in its Latinized form of Jaber. (p.19)

Names such as Jabir (Geber), Al-Iraqi, Avicenna etc, are, in the context of Islamic civilization, prominent not only as spiritual alchemists but also as scientists and philosophers. However, as Nasr has suggested, with the possible exception of Rhazes, these individuals functioned from within a profoundly Islamic Weltanschauung. He reiterates: "we must remember that ancient and medieval man did not separate the material from the psychological and spiritual in the categorical manner that has become customary". Jung’s rediscovery of alchemy in the 20th century arrived at a similar conclusion, indeed, he was one of the first western scientists to highlight the dangers inherent in the contemporary separation of the material and spiritual. Hence his impassioned appeal for a different type of religious psychology more suited to the emotional and mental condition of modern Westerners.

Writers such as Burckhardt and Nasr confirm the historical aspect of Jung’s research but also place the same information in its crucial religious context. Nasr’s review of the alchemical tradition can also be considered a `who’s who’ of Jung’s explorations into the subject:

In Arabic or Islamic alchemy, which arose soon after the rise of Islam in the first/seventh century, and has a continuous tradition until today there is a very large number of texts, written during the past twelve centuries and dealing with all phases of the art. The most important corpus is that of Jabir ibn Hayyan, the alchemist, who become the greatest authority on the subject not only in the Islamic world but also in the West, where as "Geber" he became universally accepted as the leading authority.... By the sixth/twelfth century, following the translation of alchemical texts from Arabic into Latin, interest in alchemy grew in the Latin West, continuing into the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries. The earlier Latin text however is the "Turban Philosophorum", which was translated from the Arabic; among the earliest students of alchemy who wrote on the subject one may mention Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold of Villanova, Raymond Lully, and somewhat later Nicolas Flamel. (p.244)(My emphasis).

It is on the basis of such well-established historic linkages that Sufism -- the most popular and widespread form of Islam -- claims men such as Lully, Bacon and many other medieval scientists and philosophers as being Sufis (and thereby Muslims) or certainly having been deeply influenced by Islam. While this may not be the right place to enlarge on this little known aspect to the present relationship between Islam and the West, it is nevertheless worth noting that such claims to a mutuality of vision are more frequently forthcoming from Muslim writers rather than the West.

The point here is not to suggest that Jung’s forays into alchemy do not give `credit’ to the Islamic/ Arabic contributions in this domain. Strictly speaking, this would be impossible since, by an large, he does reaffirm these seminal connections, albeit mostly through footnotes. The question is not so much credit for the Islamic spiritual perspective but of an absence of meaningful connections vis a vis Islam and alchemy, whereas these connections are brought out in contexts of other religions. Given the unavoidable links between religion and alchemy, and given the highly significant contributions of the Arabs (i.e. Muslims), there is virtually no substantive reference to Islam throughout the three volumes on alchemy, religion and psychology.

One raises these points not in order to be churlish or to insist on such academic issues regarding citations/acknowledgement. Regardless of Jung’s neglect, other western writers have been more accurate regarding the role of Islam and the history of alchemy. Nor is one implying that this was somehow an intentional omission by Jung in keeping with the perceived western bias against Islam. The issue is not one of credit or prejudice but knowledge about Islam in the context of substantive psychological materials (and insights about them) which are inextricably a part of religion - and the stated Jungian endeavour. Basically, the texts communicate nothing about Islam, one way or another. But since it is impossible to discount the role of the Arabs in this field, one is left with the impression that their contribution was akin to that of holding the hot potato (of alchemy) until it was cool enough to be lobbed back to the rightful owners in Europe as they emerged from the Dark and Middle Age. This view, of seeing Islam and Muslims as unthinking ("no mind") and therefore simply mechanically holding and `preserving’ alchemy through a certain period in history, is symptomatic of the West’s attitude about other branches of knowledge which the Arabs conserved, explored and developed during this period. There is nothing to explain what was present psychologically in Islam which encouraged and resonated with this quest for preservation and exploration of different knowledges. Thus, whether alchemy or other disciplines, one is left with the `role’ of the Arabs but not Islam, and the impression is of a passivity, devoid of anything other than a mechanical wait-to-pass-it-on attitude.

Such a neglect takes on added significance when one considers the fact that unlike the Christian West, alchemy as a science of the soul has been an uninterrupted, living tradition in the Islamic world or, as Nasr states, a "continuous tradition up to today". While such facts may be of no significance to a sociologist or political scientist, they are pertinent in the context of Jung’s survey of alchemy and its connections with religion and psychology.

To sum up: The preceding review of The Collected Works upto Volume 14 reflect the initial level of content analysis regarding Islam. Both levels indicate not so much a prejudiced view but one giving the lowest priority to Islam in terms of scholarly attention. Compared to other religions and especially Judaism and Christianity, Islam remains at best a shadowy impression with many of the references to it primarily in the form of footnotes. Hardly any significant statements are to be found either on Islam per se or in the context of comparison with other religions.

The shadowy impression of Islam is especially evident in the three texts on alchemy. Since there is scant Islamic material, one cannot conclude that prejudice dominates Jung’s understanding. Naturally then, there is little evidence thus far of any substantive understanding of the religion in terms of its symbols or psychology. In short, there is what can be called a neglect or lack of interest in the subject. Before trying to analyze this lack of interest, one needs to conclude the review of the remaining texts.

Volume 15 The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature

No reference to Islam or related categories.

(i) "The Christian doctrine of original sin on the one hand, and of the meaning and value of suffering on the other, is therefore of profound therapeutic significance and is undoubtedly far better suited to western man than Islamic fatalism". (186)

This is the only reference to Islam and it is not followed through with any illustrative examples. One can note that firstly the notion of Islamic fatalism is a stereotypical one reminiscent of Edward Said’s observations in Culture and Imperialism about colonialism in terms of ‘action’ versus the `passivity’ of the colonized. More significantly, this stereotype of passive/acceptance, ‘fatalism’ is in direct contrast to the present portrayal of the Islamic fundamentalist as a violent, agitative agent.

Volume 17, The Development of Personality

No reference to Islam or related categories.

Volume 18, The Symbolic Life

This volume consists of miscellaneous writings, notes, lectures, speeches, radio/press interviews. In a sense it is a distillation of many of Jung’s views. It consists of 820 pages. The nature of reference to `Islam’, `Arabs’ and `Mohammed’ are as follows:

(i) In the transcript of a seminar to the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, London, just before World War II. Prior to expressing his views on Islam, Jung spoke of the shadow within Christianity and the need for the West to accept, as Christ did, "the least of our brethren". For Jung "Christ..carried through his hypothesis to the bitter end..."

How was Christ hewn? In the greatest misery. Who was his father? He was an illegitimate child - humanly the most miserable situation: a poor girl having a little son. That is our symbol, that is ourselves; we are all that ... that is modern psychology and that is the future...(p.281)

The future which Jung spoke of was a psychological, not necessarily a literal future. Strange for a man who otherwise saw the two as inextricably linked. But perhaps it is not so strange when the text is considered further:

... Of course the historical future might be quite different, we do not know whether it is not the Catholic Church that will reap the harvest that is now going to be cut down. We do not know that. We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god). That can be the historic future.....(p.281)

In the discussion following the seminar, there is another exchange which illustrates the point at hand:

The Bishop of Southward:

Would you say the same of the Nazi or the Mohammedan, that they are right to go on their faith?

Jung:

God is terrible. The living God is a living fear. I think it is an instrument, as Mohammad was for that people....(p.281)

We shall return to this observation subsequently. For the moment, one can note that in an overall context of very few substantive statements on Islam, Muhammad and Hitler are closely linked in the European imagination.

(ii) A general/passing reference, reflective of Jung’s tolerance towards other religions:

"... Nor should one doubt than the devotees of other faiths, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on, have the same living relationship to "God" ...(p.663)

3. A passing reference: ‘Yahweh and Allah are nomads ... the Christian God a triad...".(1611)

(iv) The final reference to Islam is in the context of a letter to a Father Bruno, in response to the latter’s queries regarding the figure of Elijah who, according to Islamic tradition, and Jung, is a variant of the archetype known in Islam as Khidr. The figure of Khidr infect forms the basis of the only substantive comment by Jung on Islam in the essay "On Psychological Re-birth". (Vol. 9). It is the only motif in Islam to which Jung did give considerable attention. Khidr is mentioned in five of the 18 texts.

(To be Continued)