Is the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh's Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha

Abstract

This article examines the question of whether the created human nature, or fiṭra, is portrayed as mutable in Shāh Walī Allāh's (d. 1762) Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha. I argue that Walī Allāh uses the fiṭra — or the perfection of four qualities that make for human flourishing — to anchor a unified concept of human perfection that can fit different ages without essentially changing. Walī Allāh accomplishes this by affirming the particularity of divine laws and the efficacy of local customs in realising the eternal demands of the human form. More specifically, he posits that established practices can become second nature to a community, enter the divine system of requital, and thus help a people develop the necessary qualities through highly contingent means, all without violating the Qur'anic and traditional claim that the original nature itself never changes. With recourse to some of his other works and potential influences, I conclude that Walī Allāh's conception of the fiṭra accommodates traditional theological assertions regarding the singularity of human perfection, on the one hand, and the possibility of reformed norms, on the other.

I. Introduction

This original nature (fiṭra) is that religion (dīn) which does not differ according to the differing of eras and all of the prophets agree on it.²

When this rightly-guided practice is clearly established the Highest Council raise prayers for those who conform to it and against those who oppose it. When the customary practices are of this type, they are counted as being part of “the original nature (fiṭra) according to which God, may He be Exalted, created human beings”.³

Can and does the fiṭra upon which God created human beings according to sūrat al-Rūm 30 (fiṭrat Allāhi ’llatī faṭara ’l-nāsa ʿalayhā) change? And if it does, how? Islamic thinkers across centuries and schools of thought have spent very little time addressing this question, since the same verse immediately affirms that “there is no change in the creation of God” (lā tabdīla li-khalqi ’llāhi).⁴ In line with this a famous ḥadīth in the collections of Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875) states that while “all are born on the fiṭra” (mā min mawlūdin illā yūladu ʿalā ’l-fiṭrati), their parents “make them” Jews, Christians, or Magians (fa-ʾabawāhu yuhawwidānihi wa-yunassirānihi wa-yumajjisānihi). Although a few have discussed whether it is possible, likely, or even permissible for humans to ‘change’ this created nature, the consensus has been that such change simply does not occur from the side of the creator. In Shāh Walī Allāh's (d. 1762) important work Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha, the fiṭra is a foundational, yet seemingly contradictory concept. It denotes human nature as divinely created and intended, a state in which the four basic qualities of justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity are perfected. Yet at a closer look a tension appears to emerge in this account of the fiṭra: On the one hand, the polymathic scholar seems to posit an unchanging human form and vision of perfection existing within a world of images (ʿālam al-mithāl) since pre-eternity.⁵ On the other hand, he seems to allow customary practices to be counted as fiṭra, in line with his interactive account of prophecy and law tailored to the capacities and character of communities. How does the seeming affirmation of changing human customs as fiṭrī fit into the vision of an unchanging form? Do the boundaries of what constitutes the fiṭra change in this world? And how is such change possible if the worldly human fiṭra is but a reflection of a higher, more perfect form existing in a realm beyond this world? In short, what is Walī Allāh's position on the possible mutability of the fiṭra?

The stakes of this question are evident if we keep in mind the Shāh's legacy of reform in South Asia and beyond. Referring explicitly to the idea of the fiṭra as a concept able to incorporate changing customs, modernists such as Muhammad Iqbal emphasised Walī Allāh's affirmation of human agency, contingency, and the validity of customary practices. Iqbal argued that for Shāh Walī Allāh, “the law revealed by a prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent”.⁶ Given the specificity of the laws that prophets give to people, Iqbal believed that the laws are contingent and limited: they “are in a sense specific to that people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations”.⁷ Although Iqbal's interest in legal change was a particularly modern concern, this example underlines the importance of the fiṭra as a central concept since the early days of the Muslim community.

In fact, the idea that humanity was created in a particular way, or “upon the fiṭra”, not only is deeply anchored in scripture⁸ but has been relevant to a variety of Islamic discourses, from the legal to the theological and the philosophical. As Jon Hoover has noted, the idea of the human fiṭra in the early centuries of Islam was invoked in debates over the destiny of human beings, predetermination, and the ability to affect one's lot in the hereafter.⁹ In classical jurisprudence, arguments about the status of young children (whether Muslim or born to non-Muslims) in the context of inheritance or war made use of the idea that by nature all children are born onto the fiṭra of Islam and thus are to be regarded as innocent.¹⁰ For Aristotelian philosophers in the tradition of al-Fārābī (d. 950) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), the fiṭra played a significant but ultimately unreliable epistemological role as a source of the necessary first principles shared by all.¹¹ Later theologians, such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), argued that it is thanks to the fiṭra that humans have an innate, instinctive knowledge of God's existence that makes rational proofs obsolete.¹² While we thus have a certain sense of the breadth of the fiṭra's relevance in several interrelated discourses, the details of individual thinkers’ conceptions and uses of the notion of a divinely created human nature remain to be explored.

This article argues that the concept of the fiṭra in Shāh Walī Allāh's Ḥujja, as well as in several of his other works, integrates a stable vision of humanity's flourishing with an affirmation of the validity of ever-changing human norms. In short, the reformer argues that the norms and customs that rightfully differ in different ages can instantiate the four qualities that make up the original fiṭra.¹³ Although this position “baptises” as God's eternal will what some might perceive as unreliable or innovative guidelines, these norms and customs can be understood as part of the fiṭra because they have become “naturalised” or fiṭrī in their function, which is to form a person and prompt him or her to submit to God's demands, thus eliciting divine responses in accord with the demands of the original fiṭra. Drawing on Aristotelian thought to illustrate the mechanics of this argument, I show that there is ample precedent for such a process of formation that does not imply a change in the original vision of flourishing itself. I conclude that although Walī Allāh's claim for the value of particular times and circumstances in the process of human reform balances contingency and necessity, particularity and universality, it does so in a way that allows for legal reform without overturning basic theological assertions.

II. The argument for naturalised customs

It is unwise to delve into a discussion of the fiṭra without illuminating the ways in which the concept fits into the general framework of Shāh Walī Allāh's thought. As Marica Hermansen notes at the beginning of the introduction to her translation of the first volume of the Ḥujja, we ought to think of Walī Allāh first and foremost as an integrative thinker. Living through the upheavals of eighteenth-century India, he sought to bring together “the increasingly fragmented and disparate articulations of the Islamic intellectual tradition in his own lifetime”.¹⁴ Thus he explicitly combined philosophical and theological thought with mysticism and a focus on scripture. Against this background, the structure of the Ḥujja could be described as a large funnel, which leads from the metaphysical basis of the universe to the importance of ḥadīth. The fiṭra sits somewhere in the middle of the funnel, connecting divine vision and the creation of humanity. Although the Ḥujja is especially important for its development of a theory of successive civilisations, my discussion of the fiṭra seeks to highlight the interconnectedness of human nature, religion, and law within a universe that ultimately moves towards human purpose and benefit.

Hermansen's introduction not only situates the central question of this article but also provides our inquiry with a starting point by offering one way of reading the Ḥujja's statements on the fiṭra: as arguing for the concept's mutability or ability to accept things not previously envisaged.¹⁵ Hermansen notes that central to the basic argument of the Ḥujja is a claim the author makes early in the work, namely, that at the level of ideals, an archetypical form of religion (dīn) and nature (fiṭra) are in harmony with each other. However, the stuff of revelations is not dīn itself but rather “actualized manifestations of the ideal form known as ‘milal’”, which take into account the “particular material and historical conditions”¹⁶ of the people who receive them. Building on the interplay of dīn, fiṭra, and revelation, Walī Allāh presents two sources for religious legislation: first, “the universal beneficial purposes for the human species as embodied in its ideal natural constitution”, and second, “those systems of laws (sharīʿas) revealed in response to particular historical circumstances”.¹⁷ Crucially, for Hermansen, these sources are “not initially encompassed in the requirements of the human constitution”.¹⁸ It is here, however, that I believe we must examine her reading of the Shāh's thought more closely, questioning what it means to claim that there are things “not initially encompassed”. I do not dispute Hermansen's claim that for Walī Allāh there are contingent revelations matched to a people in a specific place and time that aim at accomplishing what the original nature can do. Rather, I question whether these contingent ways of improving humanity's lower soul do indeed entail a change to the original nature. I contend that although Walī Allāh affirms the continuous emergence of highly contingent and tailored ways of reforming the animalistic soul (in addition to the most simple or natural ones, which are usually out of the reach of the masses), this does not mean that he considers the fiṭra itself — God's vision for human perfection in eternity — subject to change.¹⁹

Before turning to the details of Walī Allāh's conception of the fiṭra, it is important to follow Hermansen to the final part of her explication of the interrelation of religion, nature, and law: the idea of the maẓinna, or signs. In different eras, different sets of signs direct people to the benefit and harm “of the one true dīn”.²⁰ Some of these signs might be natural, meaning “in accordance with the nature (fiṭra) and purpose of the human race”.²¹ Hence they allow for reward or punishment in the absence of specific religious laws. However, in “the case of the religious laws connected with historical contexts; the religious symbols embodied in their rulings are also derived from particular historical contexts and situations”.²² Most crucially, for Hermansen, these particular rulings arising from historical circumstances can — by the action of the Holy Enclave²³ — become part of the original nature.

These, then, come to have a more general validity at the higher spiritual level and from there come to have an effect on the form of the entire human species which had existed from pre-eternity at the archetypal plane of the World of Images. In this manner a symbol or anticipated source of benefit that is derived from the sharīʿa branch of legislation becomes “naturalized” so that being requited on the basis of these rulings has a natural effect, as well as being based on legislative decrees.²⁴

I agree with Hermansen's basic argument that particular laws can have a more general effect through the actions of the Holy Enclave if the argument is understood to claim not that a novel element (a historical ruling) that was not previously part of the original nature now becomes part of it, but rather that there is a dynamic aspect to religious legislation that is based on the circumstances of a people. Through angelic intervention, these particular laws can be considered to have entered the fiṭra, or to have been “naturalised” into it, as Hermansen puts it.

However, in an earlier article on Shāh Walī Allāh's conception of religion in the Ḥujja, Hermansen clarifies that this naturalisation does not mean merely that particular norms or customs become efficacious on a higher plane by being understood as part of the fiṭra.²⁵ Instead, she argues that customs in fact influence nature. Thus, she writes about the process through which particular laws are incorporated into the original form of humanity:

Such a transformation occurs by negating time, so that these special events may act on the pre-eternal form of the human species altering it so that they become embodied in its ultimate destiny. The effect of obeying the rules generated by these particular circumstances thus becomes naturalised.²⁶

Instead of arguing that a change in an individual has an effect on that individual's destiny through obedience, or merely stressing that particular laws can become part of the system of reward and punishment that arises naturally from more general norms, Hermansen posits that in Walī Allāh's view there is a way for particular legal rulings to shape the archetypal form of humanity that has existed in the world of images since before time. It is this part of Hermansen's claim that I disagree with — the idea that particular circumstances not only become “naturalised” but negate time and change humans’ original form in a way not originally intended by God.²⁷ According to Hermansen,

This type of reasoning is not at all foreign to the tradition of Sufi mysticism, for according to Sufi beliefs, special forces, such as the contracted zeal (himma) of saints can act on the archetypal forms or decrees in the World of Images and thus turn back or alter what had been decreed from pre-eternity.²⁸

I am not in a position to disprove this latter claim, but it would have been helpful had Hermansen explicated in more detail how we might envisage such a theory of change in nature and destiny or how it would fit into Walī Allāh's overall theology — in the Ḥujja or beyond. However, I do believe that the seeming tension between an archetypal, stable human form and the efficacy of customs in the Ḥujja can be solved without positing a mutable fiṭra, something Walī Allāh appears to deny explicitly in several places.

In what follows, I thus re-examine the fiṭra's potential for change in Walī Allāh's wider corpus. My argument agrees with Hermansen's idea that in his view contingent circumstances can affect human nature by realising its basic demands (which is, as I will highlight, no small claim). But I also argue that this “naturalising” process does not have to mean that the fiṭra of Walī Allāh's conceptual framework changes. Rather, I emphasise his insistence that there is indeed an unchanging original human nature that — because it is a broad vision of human flourishing or perfection — allows for the legitimacy of particular historical circumstances and their laws and customs in its realisation. According to Walī Allāh, there is a natural way of life, whose norms naturally elicit reward and punishment (as well as the correlating human feelings). What characterises Walī Allāh's vision is his belief that the operation of this nature as the establishment of four desired qualities (justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity) can and indeed often does take the route of formation through highly contingent laws that incorporate local custom. This is how Walī Allāh conceives of the efficacy of particular historical laws.

Far from wanting to diminish the highly interactive and present-affirming aspects of Walī Allāh's thought, I hope to suggest that this stability of the fiṭra is what allows the flexibility of sharīʿa that he envisions: when he posits the ability of historical norms to elicit divine responses by bringing about the desired qualities, Walī Allāh does not assume a change in form. Flourishing (or the state of the four qualities, or fiṭra) has a determined content but can, and usually has to, work through means particular to a community, place, and age. Customs can have an effect on the human soul; but the fact that they merely can be considered natural demonstrates that their effect is not natural in the same sense that the fiṭra is natural. The ideal nature of humanity for Walī Allāh is one, but the means that allow for the attainment of humanity's ideal state take into account the realities of time, place, and capacity.

III. The argument for naturalised customs revisited

The Ḥujja's central passage on the naturalisation of customs and the seeming affirmation of a mutable fiṭra is found in the conclusion of the chapter on conventions (rusūm):

When this rightly-guided practice is clearly established the Highest Council raise prayers for those who conform to it and against those who oppose it. When the customary practices are of this type, they are counted as being part of “the original nature (fiṭra) according to which God, may He be Exalted, created human beings”.²⁹

An alternative translation of the last part might be “and when the customary practices (sunan) are [established] like that, they are considered (ʿuddat) part of the fiṭra ‘upon which he created the people’ [30:30]”. The basic claim that Walī Allāh is making here seems to be that certain practices can be counted as or considered part of the fiṭra, not that they actually are so. What is crucial is not only the action of the Holy Enclave in raising a practice (to the level of a fiṭrī practice) but also — as outlined in the chapter on conventions — the firm establishment of the practice. Thus, we learn that a practice is well established when “the people assent to it age after age, and live and die according to it, and their souls and sciences become engrained in it”.³⁰ However, I will argue, on the basis of Walī Allāh's account of (i) the form and content of the original nature, (ii) the process of reward and punishment, and (iii) the workings of the Holy Enclave, that he is not making a statement about a change in the fiṭra itself. Rather he seeks to explain how contingent human customs (sunan) can be considered to realise the fiṭra. As we will see, by a custom's being “part of” the fiṭra he means that it can elicit reward or punishment connected to the demands of the four aforementioned qualities. Both the very general framework that is the fiṭra and the fundamental role of particular places and times in defining human reality make it very reasonable to suppose that customs can constitute ways of realising the divine demand for the perfection of human nature. Such customs, in other words, become natural by eliciting divine responses comparable to those elicited by more universal ways of realisation.

i) The form and content of the fiṭra

When considering the interplay of custom and human nature in Walī Allāh's thought, it is important to recognise that the Ḥujja contains no discussion of a process of change of or influence on the divinely posited form of human nature and flourishing, or what Walī Allāh calls the fiṭra. The Arabic verb in the central passage on customs³¹ is ʿuddat (are considered); nowhere does he refer to “change” or even “addition” with respect to the fiṭra. Instead, he consistently describes human nature as a pure and essential form that is not subject to change and is stable in content. This absent change is distinct from a weaker version of change that is applicable to the human fiṭra as it exists in the world. The latter might include a negative falling away (as in the ḥadīth recorded in Bukhārī and Muslim that says that parents “change” their children from the original fiṭra of Islam to another religion) or the positive addition of self-improvement through the acquisition of qualities and other desirable character traits.

The author describes this process of improvement in chapter 12, “The connection of actions to psychological attitudes”.³² Here we read that actions express underlying states, so that we know the courageous person by his (or her) courageous acts and the generous person by his (or her) giving:

If a person wants to acquire a character [trait] (khulq) that is not in him, there is no way to do so except by being in situations in which it is likely to occur, undertaking actions associated with it, and remembering the attainments of those in the community who are strongest [in this trait].³³

People acquire certain qualities through practice, which is stimulated by situations that ask for certain qualities or what we might call virtues. Situations that allow people to perform and practice these virtues might include going to war or encountering poor people in the market. They can further support the development of the virtues by thinking of others who excel in them. Now, if someone wanted to circumvent this route of practice and instead “summon up for himself the form (ṣūra) of courage and generosity, he would be forced to imagine the form of these actions [i.e. courageous or generous ones], unless it should be that the fiṭra ‘upon which God created the people’ had changed” (my emphasis).³⁴ Here two points are relevant. First, the fiṭra spoken of is that of an individual person, endowed with certain traits which allow that person to perform certain actions but not others (leading to the need to improve). Second, it is clear that the fiṭra is assumed to not change. The verse referred to here (sūrat al-Rūm 30) goes on to affirm that “there is no altering God's creation”, and the fact that Walī Allāh does not offer any thoughts on the possibility, reality, or nature of such a change indicates that he did not consider it likely. The development of desirable traits, and thus the perfection of individuals, does not change their fiṭra.

Acquiring good traits thus does not mean a change in the abstract form of humanity in this world but rather a realising of its demands, just as a negative turn towards another religion in this world does not change the fiṭra but simply leads to a life not in conformity with the human form.³⁵ The idea that God's original vision for human perfection might be amended through historically contingent human customs is not only in conflict with the basic claim of sūrat al-Rūm but also at odds with Walī Allāh's claims regarding human creation, nature, and perfection in the Ḥujja.

Another revealing facet of Shāh Walī Allāh's thought on the matter is his emphasis on humanity's perpetual struggle between its angelic and animalistic natures and thus its constant need of improvement. Whereas angels are wholly good and beasts incapable of goodness, the human being has “two forces”,³⁶ an angelic and an animalistic one. Consequently, the human being is the “only one suited for the imposition of religious obligation and having the capacity for it”, because humanity alone “has the potential of perfection and not the actuality”.³⁷ What humanity hopes for and needs is the means to hold down the animalistic tendencies and develop the angelic ones.³⁸ Beyond this idea of progress, Walī Allāh clearly conveys the sense of a pre-ordained perfection: “God […] looked in pre-eternity at the human species and at man's capacity which he would bequeath to his descendants in the species”.³⁹

This statement compels us to note Walī Allāh's conception of the forms of which the fiṭra is a part. Thus, we read in the second chapter of the Ḥujja that “a non-elemental world exists in which abstract meanings are represented by quasi-bodily forms corresponding to them in quality. There, things take on their materialisation in some form before they are materialised on earth”.⁴⁰ Walī Allāh explains that even things that are often not seen as bodily, such as good and evil, and reason, can be thought of as such and will appear to humans as such on the last day.⁴¹ These forms exist at the level of malakūt, the world of images and angels.⁴² We can say that things exist in the world according to their character or form at the higher level; therefore, earthly habits cannot really “inflect” or change the fiṭra given the hierarchical ordering of worlds. There may be different ways in which humans throughout the ages have used customs to realise the human form in our world, but in doing so they realise a general form posited at a higher level.

Walī Allāh explicates the content of the original nature in a section on humanity's highest perfection, which is guaranteed by humanity's shared nature. Like “iron is attracted to a magnet”,⁴³ human nature strives for this felicity, as “this is the character (khalq) upon which God created the people and the fiṭra upon which he created them”.⁴⁴ It is thus by the fiṭra that humans strive for their perfection. Select mystical individuals are able to attain perfection, but most people attain felicity by “reforming the animalistic side”.⁴⁵ Reform of the animalistic facet of human nature is based on the habituation of the four qualities (khiṣal) of purity, humility before God, magnanimity, and justice, and the “state composed of these [four qualities] is called the original nature (fiṭra)”.⁴⁶ The fiṭra, therefore, is a state defined by these four very generally conceived qualities.

The acquisition of these qualities can take two forms: an intellectual one, in which “a person's knowledge becomes filled with what is suitable for the fiṭra”, with the result that the original nature — that is, the four qualities — is “established in the soul”;⁴⁷ and a practical one, in which humans choose “attitudes, acts, and things which remind the soul of the desired qualities and alert it to them, and which stir it and urge it on”.⁴⁸ This second, practical way of achieving the fiṭra is where Walī Allāh's belief in the efficacy of customs comes in. For him, the practical approach to establishing the qualities of justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity works “either through a habitual connection between [the soul] and the quality, or due to the soul's being the expected place to find the quality by virtue of innate suitability”.⁴⁹ These pathways can be blocked in three ways, one of them being convention (rasm); the others are an overwhelming desire for sustenance and misguided beliefs.⁵⁰

Walī Allāh thus does not regard convention as purely good. As he explains earlier, “these customary practices may also come to include invalid elements and people may come to be deceived in this regard”.⁵¹ However, if they are indeed “true in their basic premise”, they will “lead individuals to their theoretical and practical perfection”.⁵² Walī Allāh's account of the rusūm here and in the section on veils that obstruct the attainment of the four qualities is consistent: if the conventions are good, they move people towards perfection by allowing them to develop and acquire the four qualities needed; if they are not, they block them from such development and thus from “the manifestation of the sound fiṭra”.⁵³ The author concludes his explication of custom with the central statement, quoted earlier, regarding the ability of customs to be “considered part of the fiṭra”.⁵⁴ Clearly, the efficacy and legitimacy of customs play a great role in this system. More important, however, is the ontological relation of fiṭra and rasm, or nature and custom. Rather than simply arising among people, customs are the result either of discovery by wise men or inspiration from God to prophets.⁵⁵ They are disseminated and can become established, but what matters most with regard to the question of their naturalisation is their relation to the fiṭra.

As seen, the original nature for Shāh Walī Allāh is a state made up of four broad qualities, which raises the question how anything, particularly customs, can be naturalised into it. Walī Allāh appears to highlight the way in which particular customs can move humanity towards its highest perfection and can, as such, elicit reward and punishment from God, as well as create a feeling thereof in a person. He holds customs in high esteem, arguing that were it not for “customary practice [most humans] would almost be like the animals”.⁵⁶ But there is an important difference between the function of customs as a way to reform the animalistic side (and thus to move humans closer to their original state) and customs influencing the pre-eternal nature that is the goal of this reform. Walī Allāh's argument points to a distinction between the concept of the perfect human fiṭra and its attainment (or attempts thereat) in this world.

Another indication that Walī Allāh does not envision custom as able to change or add to the original nature is his continuous endorsement of the Qurʾanic and prophetic notion of a stable fiṭra. ⁵⁷ Thus he emphasises the consistency of God's creation by quoting the following prophetic utterance: “If you hear that some mountain has moved from its place, believe it; but if you hear that a man's character (khulq) has changed, don't believe it, for he remains true to what was created (jabala) upon him.”⁵⁸ And, of course, we see him rely on the Qurʾan: “There is never a change in the original nature created by God.”⁵⁹ He reiterates: “This original nature (fiṭra) is that religion (dīn) which does not differ according to the differing of eras and all of the prophets agree on it.”⁶⁰ The context of these quotations is crucial for the direction of my argument, since the latter passage occurs in the chapter on actions that entail reward or punishment. I now turn to that discussion.

ii) The process of reward and punishment

Walī Allāh conceives of four sources of human obligation and requital. The first of these is “the natural requirement of the specific form”,⁶¹ or the fiṭra. Because of the way humans are created, “acts whose spirits are submission to God, purity, magnanimity, and justice” (that is, acts that express the four qualities of the fiṭra) make the angelic nature “thrive”,⁶² thus moving the human being towards ultimate felicity. The other three sources of reward and punishment are direction through the Highest Council,⁶³ the divine laws decreed for humans, and the injunctions of the prophets.

In Walī Allāh's view, no change can occur in the first two sources. The fiṭra made up of the four desired qualities is impervious to change because God has decreed the perfect human form before time. The second source, direction of the Highest Council, works in a fashion similar to sense perception: together with “the form of humanity represented in malakūt”, there are “angelic attendants” who — in accordance with God's decree — allow humans to perceive the effects of their actions.⁶⁴ Shāh Walī Allāh describes this phenomenon as equally unchangeable: the angels emit “beams of delight and happiness” at every good act and “beams of repugnance and anger” in response to bad acts, and “these beams penetrate the soul of that person causing him joy or gloom”.⁶⁵

For our author, flourishing or the perfection of the human fiṭra describes the interaction between the requirements of the form and the actions of the angels as intermediaries between God and humans. Both elicit divine responses and translate them into individual feelings or perceptions.⁶⁶ As Shāh Walī Allāh writes, without the action of the attending angels in malakūt, “the human species could not thrive”.⁶⁷ The human form and its attendants operate together, since “God brought them into being together”.⁶⁸ The attendants constitute the moral perception system that allows humans to feel the results of their actions, just like the “perceptual faculties placed in [the] brain with which [one] feels whatever [one's] foot treads on”.⁶⁹ For the Shāh, “the effect of these angels on us is like the effects of perceptions in our bodies”.⁷⁰ As one is able to anticipate the potential physical results of pain, “likewise instinctive inspirations and natural states shower down on humans and the souls of the lower angels from the angels which are the guardians of human beings”.⁷¹

Unlike the first two sources of divine reward and punishment, which are unchangeable, “requital from the third source [that is, the divine law] […] changes with the variations of the eras”.⁷² Sometimes certain practices make for reward and others prompt punishment; in other times or places, the reverse is true. Although actions that broadly further the four qualities of justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity naturally elicit rewards, this is not necessarily true of more particular divine norms or of human customs. Therefore, the third source anchors the interaction between custom and nature and provides the context for the passage on conventions being “counted as or considered part of the fiṭra”. Again, the locus of requital is in malakūt, but this time the focus is not on the communication between the Highest Council and jabarūt but rather on the interaction between the lower angels and the highest ones, and it thus takes place a level below the second source. The connection between customs, divine laws, and divine responses occurs during an event in malakūt known as “the night of power” (laylat al-qadr), which takes into account the time and place of a community. Thus, Walī Allāh writes:

When a certain time comes, which in the divine law is called “the blessed night” on which “every wise matter will be decided”, a spiritual energy is generated in Malakūt (the angelic plane) which is composed of the determinants of the human species combined with the requirements of this time. (At this time) inspirations filter down from there upon the most intelligent of God's creatures and on the souls beneath him in intelligence, through his mediation. Thus, the rest of the people are inspired to accept these inspirations, approve of them and to support their protector and forsake their opponent. The lower angels are inspired to do good to the one who obey them and evil to the one who disobeys them. Therefore, there ascends from them a coloration to the Highest Council and the Holy Enclave, and pleasure or rage results there.⁷³

During this event, the particular norms of a place or a time become efficacious. They are calibrated into the system of requital and thus become avenues of the fiṭra's realisation, because they determine the actions for which the angels petition for reward and emit feelings of happiness as well as those for which they do the reverse.⁷⁴

Shāh Walī Allāh's argument is thus that divine laws are particular to peoples, places, and times. When the laws are calibrated during laylat al-qadr, good customs are taken into account (a significant claim, as it “baptises” customs into the divine laws).⁷⁵ The point of this process is to mark certain actions as good, subject to the angels’ advocacy and feelings of joy, and others as bad, prompting the angels to petition for gloom. As a result, these actions are added to others that attract reward or punishment naturally, and they become incorporated into the system that is naturally connected to the broader four qualities of justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of customs sanctioned on the night of power as “being counted as fiṭra”, since they are accepted as ways of attaining the fiṭra and as such become part of the system of reward and punishment. However, it should be stressed again that Walī Allāh's position here does not imply that the original nature itself changes. Something's “counting as” fiṭra means that a practice elicits the natural response of the Enclave on the human form. However, this is the case after being calibrated into this system and made to have effects that are natural. They are not originally so. And they do not change the fiṭra itself.

I thus concur with Hermansen that in being counted as part of the fiṭra, these customs acquire the ability to produce the effects that are natural to more basic actions. This extension of effects, however, does not mean the make-up of the fiṭra, which is being sought as the desired human state, changes. The fiṭra is the end goal of the movement towards a human being's flourishing or perfection, which means the realisation of the four desired qualities and control over one's lower, animalistic side. The incorporation of customs into the process through which actions move the human being towards realisation does not mean that the customs travel back in time and change the original nature. Customary practices become “part of the fiṭra” in the sense that an individual's adherence to or dismissal of a custom elicits a response in the form of divine mercy or angelic action, just like naturally occurring causes of reward or punishment do. The destination is the same; the custom has simply been accepted as an additional path towards this goal by the angels’ agreeing to act as traffic police.

Another passage referring to the first two sources of requital underscores Walī Allāh's view that the content of the fiṭra is fixed but that it can be realised through particular practices accepted as avenues towards its perfection. Walī Allāh argues that another way of expressing the fiṭra, or the four qualities, is dīn, since the latter is “nothing other than the essentials of piety and sin”.⁷⁶ In a later discussion of piety and sin we are then informed that at its simplest, piety denotes

every act which a person does as a requirement of his submission to the Highest Council, his being effaced in accepting inspiration from God, and his surrendering himself to the divine purpose. It consists of every act which is rewarded by God in this world or the next […].⁷⁷

What we see here is a strong sense in which the original nature refers to acts that elicit the response natural to the four qualities. Taken together with the absence of references to change and the affirmation of the stability of the fiṭra, this claim demonstrates Walī Allāh's conviction that customs, or established practices, do not in fact change the original nature, since the latter is in essence a concept of the flourishing of the human being.

There are established practices (sunan) that God […] has inspired in the hearts of those who are supported by the angelic light who are dominated by the ethic of the original nature (fiṭra) […]. Thus, they customarily practice them, adopt and teach them and urge to them, so that people emulate them.⁷⁸

Rather than bringing about a change in God's vision of human perfection as ordained in pre-eternity, customs are “naturalised” when they acquire the effect of other fiṭrī practices — namely, eliciting divine reward or punishment.

In Shāh Walī Allāh's conception, customs do not amount to an addition to the original nature and do not create any need for a change. Customs differ, but they share principles that lead to human flourishing and can thus become efficacious:

The people of all the religious communities in all regions of the earth agree on them, despite the distances between their lands and the differences in their religions, due to the decree of consistency of the original nature and a requirement of the species. This difference in the forms of these practices does not preclude (this basic congruence) once there is agreement on their principles, neither does the obstruction of a defective group.⁷⁹

Besides highlighting again the consistency of human nature, this passage, through its emphasis on people's agreement, connects the customs discussed here to those discussed earlier as being “counted as” part of the fiṭra.⁸⁰ Walī Allāh emphasises that all customs uphold a shared idea of piety because they bring about “the submission of the animalistic force to the angelic one”.⁸¹ Thus, such widely shared customs as a belief in God's oneness or fasting are fiṭrī because of their ability to promote the four qualities of the original nature or of ultimate flourishing. They have been deemed efficacious for this purpose and consequently form a part of the original nature just as do the most basic acts of justice, purity, humility, and magnanimity.

We can see, then, that customs are one source of requital operating within natural beliefs (madhhab ṭabīʿī). These are beliefs “which the human specific form provides, and all segments of the nations agree on it, not due to their following the custom of one nation rather than another, or one religion rather than another”.⁸² A natural belief by its very nature thus requites and responds to the fiṭra, whereas customs can act that way but are themselves contingent and changeable. Accordingly, in his description of the conditions of jāhiliyya Walī Allāh refers to a ḥanīfī (monotheistic) religion whose characteristics express the four qualities of the fiṭra and indicate the existence of “a remnant of the rightly guided practice”⁸³ that had been introduced by the milla (actualised version of dīn) of Abraham. When customs are accepted or naturalised, they become another sanctioned way towards the fiṭra.

iii) The workings of the Holy Enclave

A look at Shāh Walī Allāh's description of the Highest Council reinforces the impression that customs share in the original nature by serving as a way of attaining it. Walī Allāh argues that the role of the council is not to change pre-eternal forms.⁸⁴ Instead, the members of the council are “ambassadors and intermediaries between God and His worshippers and they inspire good in the breasts of human beings”.⁸⁵ At the same time they also work in the other direction, “unceasingly pray[ing] for the one who reforms and purifies himself […] so that their prayer is the cause for the descent of blessings upon them”.⁸⁶ And they also, as mentioned above, create feelings of “grief and remorse in the soul” of a person who commits bad deeds.⁸⁷ The members of this Highest Council consist of the most excellent humans and angels, and the very best of them form the Holy Enclave. It is this Enclave that is responsible for revelation by inspiring prophets.⁸⁸

Another place where one can see the interplay between the general form and the intercession of the Highest Council is Walī Allāh's discussion of the tailoring of religious demands to the recipient. Here we read that certain “structuring forces” determine the command that is matched with each person:

Among these structuring forces are the properties of the elements and their natural constituents, the determinants which God put in every specific form, and included are the states of the World of Images and the existence decreed there, before earthly existence. Also among these structuring forces are the prayers of the Highest Council who concentrate their fullest zeal on those who refine their souls and make efforts to reform people, and (their negative invocations) on the one who opposes this. The structuring forces also include the religious laws ordained for human beings which establish obligation and prohibition, for they are the basis of the rewarding of the obedient and the punishment of the disobedient.⁸⁹

Again, it seems clear that although Walī Allāh conceives of a way in which the earthly plane — through the help of the angels — interacts with the images, what exists in this world is the product of a higher realm.⁹⁰ There is no suggestion that things devised on earth move the angels to change anything.

Walī Allāh provides a final indication of the function of the angels in enabling customs to become a means of actualising a set, beneficial destiny for the entirety of humanity in the Ḥujja's section on human nature, mentioned earlier. There we read:

When the time for the creation of the angels came, God knew that the best interest of human individuals would not be fulfilled except through noble souls whose relationship to the species of man would be like the relationship of the intellectual faculty in one of us to his lower soul.⁹¹

Thus, the angels were created “with pure solicitude for human individuals”.⁹² This statement makes clear not only the firm hierarchy of creation, with the humans depending on the angels, and the angels (and the humans, of course) depending on God, but also the fact that humanity's purpose and well-being are pre-ordained. These points support my argument that Shāh Walī Allāh does not endorse the ability of human custom to affect the fiṭra in the sense of changing it.⁹³ Rather, as I have argued, we must read the passage regarding the workings of the rusūm as a description of customs’ potential efficacy in the human reaction to good and bad. Therefore, we ought to understand the idea of customs’ being considered part of the original nature as referring to the function of the fiṭra rather than to its content, and see the work of the Enclave as a means within the bounds of God's vision for humanity.⁹⁴ That my interpretation corresponds to the author's view is indicated by his choice of title for his book: anything with respect to humanity “was only required by His providence towards the species”.⁹⁵ It is God who envisages all things, it is he who directs all that exists in this world.

Nothing asked God to emanate the souls of the Highest Council except the preparedness of the species, and nothing beseeches, asking for this particular divine law at the time of the celestial conjunctions, except the conditions of the species, and “God has the conclusive argument”.⁹⁶

IV. Walī Allāh the reformer

In this section I want to make clear that emphasising a stable but broad conception of human nature as the perfection of four qualities in no way compromises the reforming tendency of Walī Allāh's thought.⁹⁷ The statement quoted directly above shows that for Walī Allāh, the “preparedness” of humans is crucial for them receiving revelation, and, as seen earlier, customs are the predominant way in which the broad vision of flourishing is achieved.⁹⁸ Both preparedness and the importance of customs already indicate the place Walī Allāh accords to particularity and flexibility in his vision of law. In this vein Hermansen notes in her introduction to the Ḥujja that the author's idea of religion is interactive, as it “envisages an interaction between the human material and the actualized form (milla) of the ideal religion which responds to and shapes it”.⁹⁹ Because the actualised form of religion that comes to a people is tailored to the community's specific customs and capabilities, “religion has adapted in its form, beliefs, and spiritual practices to the customs, previously held beliefs and temperaments of the nations to whom it has been revealed”.¹⁰⁰ As Shāh Walī Allāh summarises his position, “the divine laws were matched to their peoples […] according to their capacity”.¹⁰¹ Rather than merely stipulating a purpose to which God has continuously called humanity to return through the sending of successive prophets, the particular instantiations are mindful of their circumstances. As a result, a simple conception of history as most authentic at its onset seems to lose power. Instead, each human age has its characteristics in time and space, and God is indeed mindful of them.¹⁰²

The importance of interactions between the divine and human realms in Walī Allāh's view of religion goes hand in hand with his understanding of prophethood. As he writes, “differences among prophetic missions are due to the differences among the communities to which that prophetic mission is revealed”.¹⁰³ Rather than merely call to repentance, a prophet “will make reference to what remained among them [i.e. the community] from the previous divine law”.¹⁰⁴ The interaction between God, prophet, and community goes so far that our author even speaks of God's having “a connectedness in some sense with time and temporality”.¹⁰⁵ Sometimes the time is so ripe for a new revelation — like spring flowers waiting for the rain to come into bloom — that “the least accidental cause is sufficient to knock at the door of divine generosity”.¹⁰⁶ In moments of such heightened divine responsiveness, the slightest question can occasion a revelatory response, and it is wise, Shāh Walī Allāh advises his readers, not to be too inquisitive lest multiple, highly specific rules be issued that might become a burden for the community.¹⁰⁷

In my view, given the importance of custom and its role in the attainment of the four qualities in his work, our author emphasises the workings of custom and the divergence of laws not just alongside a sense of purpose, hierarchy, and stability but because of it. Like an experienced pedagogue, God uses different methods to help humanity move along its path to perfection. Although a natural way of developing the fiṭra is possible, most individuals and communities are reformed through divine laws that take into account the time, place, and capacity of their subjects. Such a contingency-focused conception of reform does not imply a change in the general make-up of human perfection. Rather, it embodies the opposite idea: particularity in the service of a discernible goal that is larger than any specific circumstances.

The argument in favour of a non-mutable fiṭra does not diminish the legitimacy and efficacy Shāh Walī Allāh attaches to particular customs and hence also does not weaken his commitment to reform and legal change. It is possible to hold both that humanity attains perfection when the four qualities are established in the soul and that one way of attaining such perfection — with the help of the Holy Enclave — is to follow the laws and practices of a particular time and place. That these particular laws, which are formed on the basis of customs, can be as efficacious as more universal acts empowers customs without changing nature. Neither element needs to be “naturalised” into the other; a logical and traditional account of one ideal form of humanity can accommodate a concession to the legitimacy of particularity. Indeed, it might be that Walī Allāh's ability to uphold both positions is exactly what made him not only a reformer but an acceptable one. The idea that the fiṭra itself is mutable would be disruptive to his argument for the authenticity and rightfulness of particular customs, and I see neither a need nor, a real possibility to elicit such an idea from the Ḥujja.

Beyond the Ḥujja

The argument I have put forward here fits well with the evidence from Walī Allāh's other works, which yield a similar picture: Walī Allāh speaks of a single, unitary fiṭra while affirming human-divine interaction and local variations of custom. As in the Ḥujja, Walī Allāh's endorsement of the possibility of reform and of multiple ways of achieving perfection in these writings does not mean that he accepts change in the ultimate vision of human beings and their flourishing. Instead, as in the Ḥujja, he distinguishes between the earthly attempts of people to perfect their fiṭar and the ideal form that exists beyond time and which they hope to attain. Thus, in the Tafhīmāt al-Ilāhiyya he writes with respect to the relation of the fiṭra, prophethood, and human diversity:

Know that prophethood is subordinate to the fiṭra. And just as forms of knowledge and perception may enter the depth of man's heart and soul, and on them is built what he is given to see in visions, so that what he sees are apparitions in accordance with what is stored [in his knowledge and perception] and nothing outside it, likewise, all people and regions have a fiṭra they were created upon. All their matters are built upon it. Thus, finding ritual slaughter repulsive and believing in the eternity of the world are the fiṭra that the Hindus were created upon; the validity of ritual slaughter and the belief in the createdness of the world are the fiṭra that the Arabs and the Persians from among the children of Shem were created upon. When a prophet arrives [among a people], he considers their beliefs and practice. Whatever is in accordance with the cultivation of the self he reinforces and guides them to; whatever is opposed to the cultivation of the self he forbids to them […]. Prophethood, then, is like the levelling and refining of a thing and its making the best it could be, irrespective of whether that thing is wax or clay. And the fiṭra and religion are, at the level of substance, the wax and the clay […]. The essence of prophethood is refinement of the soul through belief in the veneration of God the Exalted, concentration upon Him, and seeking what will save one from God's punishment in this world and in the Hereafter, [that is], from a bad requital.¹⁰⁸

While the prophet takes into account the individual realities of a people (or what might be described as their different fiṭar), his overall aim is the perfection of the self through whatever means are appropriate to the particular context. In this process, the human fiṭra, like religion, can be moulded or fitted to differing eras and circumstances. In fact, this passage describes different people as having different fiṭar according to which they perceive certain things and understand God and his worship. However, it is telling that the metaphor Walī Allāh uses for the fiṭra is wax or clay. Although these materials can be formed and altered, their essential substance does not change. Likewise, the ultimate goal of attaining the four qualities remains the same for Arabs, Persians, and Hindus even as they pursue different, contingent paths to attain this goal. The metaphor affirms both Walī Allāh's belief in the flexibility of the fiṭra, which can accommodate different practices and beliefs among people as “natural”, or fiṭrī, and his conviction that the essence of the fiṭra, the flourishing of human beings through the development of the four central qualities, is fixed. Like clay or wax, the fiṭra can fit itself to differing circumstances without undergoing fundamental change.

Shāh Walī Allāh's Alṭāf al-Quds further supports my argument that he envisions a diversity of ways in which the broad framework of the fiṭra can be attained. In this work, too, he asserts that the four “virtues” of nature are unchangeable and, although quite broad, underpin all forms of human improvement:

God has drawn man's attention towards the cultivation of four cardinal virtues. If you think carefully, you will find that all kinds of goodness are merely an elaboration of these four virtues; conversely, all types of sin are merely an elaboration of their opposite characteristics. These four virtues are precisely the ones which all the prophets have exhorted the people to imbibe. There can be no question of any change or abrogation with regard to these virtues. If there is any difference in what the various Lawgivers say about them, this is only a matter of their outward form, not their real substance.¹⁰⁹

In this work we also learn of the function of the angels, whose primary activity again takes place in the world of ideas. Walī Allāh argues that the angels not only broadly interact with humans but also can intervene on their behalf or “contrive a stratagem to save someone from destruction”.¹¹⁰ Instead of suggesting that such intervention could influence or change the human form, he clarifies that it focuses on making people “aware of the real situation by means of dreams or voices”.¹¹¹ Further, in a discussion of prophecy, he asserts that religion can “appear in new forms according to the requirements of the circumstances”.¹¹² Again, there is no mention of nature (or even customs) changing.

Wālī Allāh's Lamaḥāt conveys a similar sense of divine-human interaction and the efficacy of prayer. Lamḥa 42 declares that “sometimes, when the heavenly and earthly causes unite for their appearance, the patterns [that is, angels] are given what they have been pleading for”.¹¹³ The angels are surely able to be “a cause for the descent of the grace of God”, and there is even a reference to their influence on providence: since “God has two providences according to every particular order”, the assembly of angels can steer things in certain directions.¹¹⁴ Additionally, we read that everything is always changing, like a phoenix.¹¹⁵ The entire “universe is one body, always changing in its states and everlastingly moving with modal motion”.¹¹⁶ However, at every point God is steering the developments, holding “the balance in His hand”.¹¹⁷ There is thus a universal order of predestination, yet God looks “after every soul and every cause, particularising everything with its required condition”.¹¹⁸ As in his other writings, Walī Allāh thus affirms the changeable nature of the universe without making any mention of a change in or renewal of divine intentions in this “universal administration” of changeability.¹¹⁹

The Lamaḥāt's discussion of the workings of revelation also shows that changeability and stability go together for Walī Allāh. First, he emphasises that “God knew well in eternity that if people are created in such-and-such composition and their administration is given such-and-such celestial shape, mischief will unavoidably spread among them, and they will follow the improper course in many of their affairs”.¹²⁰ No custom is a surprise; instead, every community receives that which helps it achieve its purpose. Second, Walī Allāh holds that God always sends the right person to the right people, since “God knows the Law suitable to the Age”.¹²¹ Similarly, his discussion of God confirms not only the tailoredness of His grace, “which descends according to every condition and time”,¹²² but the fact that His will is always realised on earth, “even if earthly causes are not favourable”.¹²³ All of this is based on the assertion that “God possesses infinite knowledge of every event” and that “if He were to suppress this and expand that, it would be this, and if He were to suppress that and expand this, it would be that, and so on ad infinitum”.¹²⁴ In the Lamaḥāt Walī Allāh thus confirms the fluidity of the world and the fact that God knows and orders everything that occurs.

His writings demonstrate that Walī Allāh's thought combines a stable human form, a hierarchical cosmology, and a purposeful divine administration with particular revelations, divine-angelic-human interactions, and the fluidity of the universe. The reason for this balance, as Johannes Baljon argues in his reading of the Lamaḥāt, is that forms “are phenomena defined by the limitations of time, place and condition”.¹²⁵ Although time and space may be transient, the space-time continuum in which the forms exist means that “the universe is preserved from chaos”.¹²⁶ This point supports my argument, for had Walī Allāh really envisaged that contemporary practices could cause a change in the fiṭra itself, he would have had to explain himself well with respect to the possibility of cosmic chaos.¹²⁷

Beyond Walī Allāh

A precedent for Walī Allāh's push for a balance of stability and change, particularity and universality, in the attainment of human perfection can be found in the work of Aristotle.¹²⁸ The concept of habit is central to Aristotle's discussion of human nature and the virtues. In the Nichomachean Ethics we read that habit plays a role in the attainment of virtues and can, because it is so powerful, become a kind of nature: “For the very reason why habits are hard to change is that they are a sort of second nature.”¹²⁹ Similarly in the Rhetoric, Aristotle writes that “that which has become habitual becomes as it were natural; in fact, habit is something like nature, for the distance between ‘often’ and ‘always’ is not great, and nature belongs to the idea of ‘always’, habit to that of ‘often’”.¹³⁰ Thomas Aquinas, a Christian reader of Aristotle, also envisions an interrelation between nature and habit in which the latter does not change the former. He argues in his Summa Theologica that although nature is a useful analogue for habit (or habitual customs and practices), nature is not habit, nor habit nature.¹³¹ It is true that specific virtues (and vices, for that matter) acquired through habitual practice can become like a second nature, making certain actions feel natural or producing a feeling of improvement in one's nature through the attainment of these virtues. However, the primary nature of humans in a state of perfection (that is, the telos) does not in fact change. Rather than make a hasty comparative argument, what I wish to do here is to highlight the logic of ethical formation common to all three of these thinkers: the perfection of human character is achieved through an ethical formation that occurs in particular times and circumstances. The habits that lead to such a formation come close to nature and might even be described as a second nature in their functioning and their experience by the actor. But despite their functional similarity, the difference between the original nature and the habits remains intact. Nature does not change.

Finally, a brief look at a source more directly related to Walī Allāh's life and thought is helpful in underscoring the possibility of accepting the coexistence of stability and fluidity rather than positing a changeable fiṭra on the basis of an affirmation of particularity and contingency. For Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640), everything is in flux or substantial motion (ḥaraka fī ’l-jawhar).¹³² This includes human beings, who are subject to constant development culminating in the hereafter. As Eiyad al-Kutubi writes, for Mullā Ṣadrā “human beings possess a form that transforms from one mode of being into another through its substantial motion”.¹³³ However, “this is not to say that human beings have many forms; rather, they have one form from the beginning to the end that has the capacity to develop into higher forms”.¹³⁴ The reason for Mullā Ṣadrā's insistence on both change and stability has to do with the relation between intellectual and substantial form:

Every material substance has a flowing, renewed nature, and it has something that is stable and persistent […]. The status of the natural forms is like that since they are continuously renewed in respect of their material temporal existence in which they have an existence that is gradually changing and not stable. [At the same time], they are stable and enduring with respect to their intelligible existence and their immaterial Platonic forms that exist in God's knowledge.¹³⁵

Thus, the substantial, changeable form derives from the intellectual one that exists in God's mind and is stable. When human beings change and develop, their form provides them with stability.¹³⁶ This is because, as al-Kutubi notes, “when a substance moves and intensifies its mode of existence, it does so within the limit of its intellective form”.¹³⁷ In other words, there is substantial motion, but it is directed towards a final purpose; and this applies to both particular species and the cosmos as a whole.¹³⁸ At the same time, Mullā Ṣadrā affirms the eternity of the forms in God's mind. According to Ibrahim Kalin, the basis of this argument is that “in a clearly Platonic fashion, entities retain their essential identities through their eternal forms in God”.¹³⁹ Mullā Ṣadrā thus foreshadows Walī Allāh's assertion that change, flexibility, and fixed forms coexist. Permanence and universality through the existence of forms at a higher ontological level grounds the idea of substantial change rather than hindering it.¹⁴⁰

This brief excursus into the writings of other influential thinkers on the question of nature and habit shows that there is a precedent for Walī Allāh's embrace of a balance of particularity and universality, contingency and necessity. A reading of the Ḥujja as affirming both a stable fiṭra and the validity of customs for forming that fiṭra fits well into a tradition of thought of which Walī Allāh must have been at the very least aware.

Some consequences of my argument and a conclusion

My concern in this article has not been simply to call into question the idea of a mutable fiṭra in the Ḥujja. Instead, engaging Walī Allāh's understanding of the archetypal and worldly fiṭra and its relation to law and custom has larger implications. Modernist arguments for legal reform are directly affected by the question of the relation of customs and nature, and so are changing attitudes with respect to the sharīʿa's cosmological and ontological position. Further, it seems clear that debates over the relationship between human nature and the human telos as divinely envisaged, as well as over the relationships between stability, change, and progress, are of interest beyond the Ḥujja. So far, I have merely attempted to shed light on one possible strand of thought with which Walī Allāh might have been engaging. In order to appreciate his particular concept of the fiṭra and its relations to its predecessors and its successors it would be helpful to understand the kinds of works he read. Additionally, it might be illuminating to examine early commentaries on the Ḥujja. Such a historical inquiry into the curriculum of Walī Allāh's time is possible, but it lies beyond the scope of the present article.

In conclusion, although I agree with Hermansen's view of the role of custom in general in Shāh Walī Allāh's Ḥujja, I contest her argument's most radical implication — namely, that Walī Allāh grants customs the ability to effect changes in humanity's original nature. While multiple avenues remain to be investigated, I wanted to offer an alternative to Hermansen's explanation and raise the possibility of a crucial distinction in Walī Allāh's thought. As I have shown, there is no sense of change in his account of the fiṭra but rather a firm emphasis on unity and stability. Walī Allāh does stress that the universe is in motion, prayers are efficacious, and customs are crucial to the development of laws. However, we have also seen that his cosmology is hierarchical. The entire universe moves towards a purpose, and each of its parts towards their own. That purpose is fixed. In the case of humanity, it consists of a return to a flourishing obstructed by humans’ animal nature, and it takes place through the cultivation of the four key qualities. General acts promoting the four qualities are efficacious for that purpose, but God also enlists customs and divine laws in this enterprise. Becoming calibrated for divine requital is a way in which practices can be understood to become part of the fiṭra: they help their subject develop the qualities needed for flourishing. However, this transformative process does not seem to change the fiṭra that is the goal of the process. In this reading of Walī Allāh, neither the possibility of reform nor basic theological doctrine is compromised. With his carefully crafted stance, he does not merely hold humans’ general purpose and their particular circumstances together but separate. Rather, the broadness of his account of the qualities that make up the original human nature and the particularity of his account of prophecy work in the service of each others.