Download Jumblatt, Religion, and Tawhid:

Jumblatt, Religion, and Tawhid:
(Selected from “Jumblatt: The “Teacher, The Leader”)
By Dr. Nazek Abu-Ilwan Abed
Kamal Jumblatt (1917-1977) was a Druze philosopher who makes every Druze proud.
Jumblatt left a rich heritage that answers the major concerns for the uplifted spirits. In
addition to the multi-faceted roles in his life, Kamal Jumblatt was a very religious person.
The mystery of man’s origin had always amazed him. Trying to discover the Truth, he
referred to and studied different religions of the world. “Man must seek the essence of
Reality through religions, but he must also transcend them”.
In the beginning, his introduction to religion was through the religion of his parents, The
Tawhid Faith, whose followers are called The Druze. The Druze school of thought started
in the year 1017 A.D. as a result of the “intellectual ferment within the various
philosophical and theosophical schools that had emerged during that era in the East”.
Historically, The Druze Faith—Tawhid—is an Islamic sect that started at the beginning
of the eleventh century AD. It meets with cosmic Unitarianism in great religious and
spiritual trends all through history. In its monistic essence, this faith is inclined towards
the unity of Existence where people and land are related completely to the Creator. They
are linked to the content and not to the shape, to the spirit and not to the body, and to the
vivid movement of apparent existence toward the real Existence.
The Druze Faith, “Tawhid”, embodies the knowledge of the Unity of God, the meaning
of the divine Message, and the goal of all knowledge. “The Druze Faith preaches the
essential unity of all things and all beings, the substantive unity of the universe in its
physical and spiritual form.” Jumblatt says.
Through the Druze faith, Jumblatt understood the essence of other religions, and by
understanding other religions he appreciated his faith more. Jumblatt was highly
influenced by and proud of it. He says, “We are a people with five thousands years of
history behind us…” Trying to define The Tawhid Faith, he also says, “Our religion is a
meditative one…It’s an inclusive way to know the Absolute.”
Jumblatt appreciated his Druze background and religious Druze men in general. He
describes the initiates as simple wholesome people who aspire to sanctity. The Druze are
an alert and lively people who act with great dignity and courtesy. A Great Druze figure
has little concerns for his physical image or appearance, since it is all a superficial matter.
Jumblatt believed, “Appearances are only appearances after all.”
Describing an encounter with a Druze “Sheik” or sage, Jumblatt says while the world is
full of sleepwalkers, so few are truly awake. In the presence of a Druze sage, one is
awakened to the true Self and can thus be said to be awakened in the Sage. It is this great
Awareness that gives the sages their luminescent aspect.
Jumblatt comments, “I loathe the idea of being tied to any closed society, whether
religious or otherwise. I believe Man is the race of God. Man must seek the essence of
Reality through religions, and then he must only transcend them. This is the typical Druze
way of thought, neither narrow nor formalistic, liberal in spirit and free of all
messianism.”
Jumblatt describes the Druze faith as:
- The essence of knowledge.
- The unity of the universe in its spiritual, natural, and physical dimensions. It is the
religion of contemplation.
- A religion of spiritual ascetics, a religion of ethics as much as of knowledge, based on
the Greek philosophy.
Jumblatt admired the high principles of his father’s religion as he admired other
religions’ principles and ethical inclinations. He found common bases and resources
between all of them. For him, all religions were unified in their pursuit of the Truth, and a
Druze is somebody who believes in the unity of all the religions of the world, whether the
rite be Christian or Buddhist, Moslem or Hindu.
He always believed, “All of us, in truthful inclination and equality, are Moslems and in
fraternity and love, are Christians.”
Jumblatt continues to extract similarities between the Druze beliefs and that of the
Rosicrucian’s, especially in their devotion to Pythagoras and in their belief in the
transmigration of the soul; “There is no real death; there is only a change of corporal
garb.”
Understanding the underlying meaning of the Greek philosophy helped Jumblatt to
understand and analyze the true meaning of the Druze faith that he considered as an
extension to the Greek ancient philosophy that enlightened the Druze Books of Wisdom.
Jumblatt says that the Druze inherited in their sacred hidden books the philosophy of
Pythagoras [497 B.C.], Socrates, Plato, and the new Platonism. So, he urged to “Tawhid”
or monotheism by gathering all religions and surpassing them all by the purity of
mysticism that is reached through love and transparency. In this, again, he says that
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religions have different titles and names, though
they have the same meaning that does not change nor differ. All together, they are
indications that guide us to “Tawhid” and to the passion with God and with love itself.
How happy the soul will be if each one of us accepts the other and reads what each
religion offers and reveals, not only in the minds, sentiments, and words of its founders
and leaders, but also in the way they live where simplicity and spontaneity dwell in the
hearts forgetting to which group they refer…
Religion, according to Jumblatt, is a spiritual exercise that purifies the inner world and
helps the person to approach the truthfulness, visualizing the beauty of the Absolute and
melting in it. The profound religion leads us to approach God.
So, to understand religion, people have to reason and observe. The essence of religion is
to adore the One in the variety of beings.
Jumblatt has discovered mysticism in Islam, as well as in Christianity and Hinduism. He
discovered that people are brethren and are equal in spiritual and moral values. By
surpassing rites and metaphysics, people are led to be liberated from all that veils them
from being realized as free conscious beings. By this consciousness, Man has excelled
over all other creatures in his evolution.
To Hinduism Jumblatt compares his own faith, the Druze Faith, because the followers are
liberated from all superficial rites. They are not preachers and to call them “Muwahhidin”
will fit since it fits anyone who understands and lives the essence of any religion.
Jumblatt says that religion is the estate of God. The goal of real spirituality and religion is
to be absolutely liberated from weakness, vice, and the societal idles. The aim of Man is
to be realized, and ethics is the essence of religion. Concerning heaven, Jumblatt says,
“Heaven cannot be found unless you look for it. Its entity is of the same nature of the “I”
that the person wants to recognize. So heaven does not exist outside the “I…The
kingdom of God is in your inner self”.
Concerning prayer he writes, “What is preached in temples and mosques and ritual
celebrations…it all means a gathering and only a preparation for the truthful prayer. The
truthful and spiritual prayer is the link of the eternal with the eternal, the capability with
capability, and the light with the light, by considering religion as an essential contribution
to the elaboration of an ideal society.”
The purpose of any religion is not to impose superficial rites, but rather to inspire true
and sincere paths to reach the reality of existence, to reach God.
“God’s presence is dictated by the extent to which egoism is abolished and absent in us,”
Jumblatt said. “Those who are pure in heart attain the ultimate reality of existence.” God
shines beyond what is seen, beyond what is known, and beyond knowledge itself.
God is Peace, and Jumblatt’s concept of God deals with the Essence, surpassing the
external to experience and understand that peace. Some people, due to their limited
awareness of themselves, tend to understand the real concept of God strictly by
interpreting the explicit meaning of the different names given to God. That is superficial
since names are dead letters, but understanding the Essence is power, is knowledge that
uplifts man towards perfection. As Gandhi (1964) said that God may be called by any
other name so long as it connotes the living Law of Life; in other words, the Law and the
Lawgiver rolled into one.
God is the Truth, and there is nothing beyond this truth. God is the essence of all beings;
the essence by which He is realized. Truth is eternal, and so is God.