Religion of Love

My heart has become capable of every form;
It is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka'ba
And the tables for the Torah and the book of the Qur'an.
I follow the religion of Love, wherever way
Love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith.
Ibn al-'Arabi

I studied this poem in a poetry class at the American University in Cairo and recently came across it once more in the introduction to The Essential Writings of Gandhi. The love poetry of Ibn al-'Arabi always has a double meaning, one literal the other esoteric. Much of his poetry was charged for being overly lustful, yet many scholars, such as William Chittick and Frithjof Schuon, believe his love poetry to transcend romance between man and woman and described a deeper love between humankind and God. These lines from the collection, Interpretor of Desire, I feel reveal the true nature of his poetry to be more than just lustful words. Instead, his poetry describes a philosophy of oneness in being and love for all mankind.

In our world today, religion's exclusivist nature has led to fear, manipulation and war, when in actuality, all religions share the universal characteristic of love for others. Humankind's inability to recognize the universiality of all religions, is in my opinion, the root of conflict today. Any system of exclusivism or hierarchy creates the dichotomy of us and the other. If this dichotomy, this manner of dividing mankind could be replaced with a recognition of the unity among man, conflict in this world would cease to exist.