Charles Le Gai Eaton. RIP.

toomevara

Charles Le Gai Eaton, one of the finest western Islamic scholars (a convert himself) has died at the age of 89. A brilliant writer on Islam, faith and what it means to be a muslim. As an agnostic, I was an avid reader and his writings certainly made me reconsider my spiritual life and relationship with God. A must read for any muslim or any of those, like myself, interested in Islam and the nature of the faith.

His obituary from today's Guardian;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/19/charles-le-gai-eaton-obituary

hivizman

Thanks for starting this thread. I was also sad to read that Gai Eaton had died. I certainly took a lot from his books Islam and the Destiny of Man, Remembering God: Reflections on Islam and King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World. In my view, he spoke to all people, not just Muslims, who believe that a well thought-through religious faith is important in providing a sound foundation for living well both as individuals and as societies.

In recent years, Eaton was out of fashion with the more "Islamist" tendencies because he was strongly associated with Sufism as a way of providing a spiritual backbone to Islam, raising it above what can sometimes appear to be a collection of practices and rules. Perhaps there was a degree of "orientalism" about his approach to Islam, and his writings reflect the concerns of last century, but despite this his books provide a well-articulated challenge to secularist views of the world.

blackthorn

He will be greatly missed, may God enlighten his grave. We lost Martin Lings and Zaki Badawi too, only a couple of years ago. It all feels like an impoverishment, but Allahu alim.

toomevara

hivizman wrote: »

In recent years, Eaton was out of fashion with the more "Islamist" tendencies because he was strongly associated with Sufism as a way of providing a spiritual backbone to Islam, raising it above what can sometimes appear to be a collection of practices and rules. Perhaps there was a degree of "orientalism" about his approach to Islam, and his writings reflect the concerns of last century, but despite this his books provide a well-articulated challenge to secularist views of the world.

Yes there is a lot of truth in that, but for me what's most refreshing when reading Eaton is the lack of reference to political/cultural Islam and the emphasis on an exploration of the spiritual aspects of the faith.

hivizman

There was an obituary of Eaton in The Times earlier this week - link here.

Something that made Eaton at the same time accessible to non-Muslims and an object of suspicion to more extreme Muslims was his association with the so-called "Perennial Philosophy" tradition. This claims that all genuine religions have a common core of principles, but also that Abrahamic religions have both an "exoteric" or outside appearance and an "esoteric" or interior essence. Externally, Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) emphasise a duality between God and creation, in which the goal of humans is to achieve salvation, characterised as a paradise (earthly or heavenly) that appears to be a blessed form of one's current existence. Internally, however, the Perennial Philosophy claims that the goal of all true religions is overcoming the duality of God and creation and achieving unity with God. Hence there is an attraction towards religions (and branches of religion) that stress this goal of unity with God. Some of the followers of the Perennial Philosophy embraced Eastern religions (e.g., Aldous Huxley), but many became Muslims. This includes the French writer René Guénon and the Swiss writer Frithjof Schuon.

Although Islam may appear to manifest the duality between God and creation to the most extreme degree, with a strong emphasis on the transcendence of God, I think that it was attractive to these writers and their disciples because it appeared to be more rational than the Christianity in which they had grown up (doctrines such as the Trinity, Incarnation and Original Sin, which are absent from Islam, tended to be stumbling blocks for those who saw themselves as rational intellectuals, while the personality of Jesus as a prophet of Islam could allow them to hold onto most of their previous beliefs), while providing through Sufism an avenue towards personal transcendence and ultimately unity with the Godhead.

The link between Guénon and Schuon on the one hand and Eaton on the other was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lings"]Martin Lings, probably best known for his biography Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (1983). Lings was in close contact with Guénon when they both lived in Cairo in the 1940s, and he became a Muslim at this time. Lings was responsible for encouraging Eaton to embrace Islam in the early 1950s.

Probably the main representative of the Perennial Philosophy tendency in Islam today is the scholar and prolific writer Seyyed Hossein Nasr, originally from Iran but now based in the USA. He, Eaton and Schuon were regular contributors to Studies in Comparative Religion, and many of their articles may be downloaded from that journal's website.