Acceptance as an Open Door of Mercy: Riḍā in Islamic Spirituality

Abstract

There is no religion that does not start from the premise that "something is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark," to make use of Hamlet's suggestive expression: mankind has lost its connection with the principle of its being and disharmony has ensued. This state of affairs, that religion claims to remedy, may be deemed to result from a sense of radical "otherness" symbolized, in the Abrahamic traditions, by the loss of the blissful unity and proximity of terrestrial paradise. In this paper we propose to show that the Islamic concept of ridā, particularly as it has been conceptualized and practiced in Sufism, is none other than both the means and the end of this re-connection with God and human beings as acceptance of "otherness." The Quranic idea of Divine ridwān provides both the transcendent model and the infinite counterpart of this human virtue of acceptance.