in an attempt to sum up Ibn Arabi’s understanding of the role of animals in creation. In other words, what is the rightful and truthful situation of the animal realm? How can we as human beings give to animals their rights?
Ibn Arabi has a great deal to say about this issue, so I can only make a few quick comments. I am drawing from the section of Chapter 198 on the twenty-fifth letter, and from Chapters 357 and 372, both of which announce in their titles that they will address the nature of bahå’im, 'the dumb beasts'.
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The word for animal in Arabic...
is hayawån, 'living thing'.
Given that each of the twenty-eight letters is governed by one specific divine name, one might guess that the divine name related to animals would be al-hayy, the Alive, or perhaps al-muhy¨, the Life- Giver.
This is not the case, however.
And the reason is not too difficult to understand.
Ibn Arabi tells us repeatedly that everything in the universe is in fact alive, but that the life of most things is hidden from our sight. This is so because life is presupposed by every divine quality. Knowledge, power, desire, mercy, justice, and so on have no meaning unless they are the qualities of something that is alive.
In other words, God must be alive to know, desire, and act. It follows that life permeates all divine attributes. Hence, life also pervades all creatures, because creatures are simply the traces and properties of the divine names.
Ibn Arabi writes:
The name Alive is an essential name of the Real – glory be to Him! Therefore, nothing can emerge from Him but living things. So, all the cosmos is alive, for indeed the non-existence of life, or the existence of something in the cosmos that is not alive, has no divine support, but every contingent thing must have a support. So, what you consider to be inanimate is in fact alive. [Fut¬håt, vol. 3, p. 324, line 20]
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In Ibn Arabi’s way of looking at the universe...
áll things are living words...
articulated in the Breath of the All- Merciful.
This is to say that the divine life and the divine mercy are in fact the same thing. When God says in the Quran, 'My mercy embraces everything' [6:156], this means, according to Ibn Arabi, that 'He has mercy on the cosmos through life, for life is the sphere of the mercy that embraces everything' [Fut¬håt 2:107.25].
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Elsewhere he explains...
that everything in the three visible realms – that is, minerals, plants, and animals – is under the control of the angels called 'souls' [nufus]. By means of their souls, all creatures receive life from God and also know Him.
People refer to things as 'animals', that is, hayawån, 'living things', only when they perceive the obvious signs of life. But, says Ibn Arabi, áll are pervaded by life, so they speak the praise of their Creator from whence we do not hear. God teaches them things through their innate disposition [fitra] from whence we do not know.
So there remains nothing wet or dry, hot or cold, inanimate, plant, or animal...
that does not glorify God with a tongue specific to its kind.
[Fut¬håt 2:678.14]
~bron~
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