Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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ThebeautyoftheFriendhasnoveil

Normaskhercharmcanconceal;

Justletthepathway’sdustfirstsettle

Andthenyou’llcatchaglimpseofher.

Butyouwhowon’tdesertthecourt

Ofhumannature,howhopeyou’llevertake

AstepupontheSufiPath?^97

For these reasons, being veiled from these mysteries of creation and the spiritual

life,theasceticisamoral,psycho-spiritualandmetaphysicalpolytheist.^98

BacchanalianPiety:Ḥāfiẓ’sCounter-EthicandRiposteto

HiddenPolytheism

TobeGoodonly,istobe

ADevilorelseaPharisee.

WilliamBlake^99

Ḥāfiẓ’s anti-clerical invectives to a large part assail the insidious invisible vice of

hypocrisy. In the phenomenology of religious experience, hypocrisy is always por-

trayed as the most deeply hidden of the vices. In these lines fromParadiseLost,

depicting Satan decked out in an angel’s habit, accosting the archangel Uriel who

guardsthegateofParadise,Miltongivesanexcellentdescriptionofthehiddenness

oftheviceofhypocrisy:

Sospakethefalsedissemblerunperceived;

Forneithermannorangelcandiscern

Hypocrisy,theonlyevilthatwalks

Invisible,excepttoGodalone...^100

Ḥāfiẓ’s considered hypocrisy in the form of the ostentatious display of religious
piety to be the worst moral evil. He understood, as Khurramshāhī stresses,
‘hypocrisy[riyā]tobetheMotherofallEvil[ummal-fasād].Allthroughouthislifehe
thought it his personal duty to struggle against it in all its varieties and shapes,
whether cloaked in the robes of members of exoteric legalistic Islam [ahl-isharī‘at]
orconcealedbeneaththegarmentsofSufipiety[ahl-iṭarīqat].Ḥāfiẓ’sentireDīvānis
one long manifesto of opposition to religious hypocrisy.’^101 In Ḥāfiẓ’s moral theol-
ogy,Khurramshāhīcontinues:

The sin most destructive of Islamic piety and most dangerous to humanity

is hypocrisy [riyā]. The moral range of the sin of ‘hypocrisy’ in this respect

Ḥāfiẓextendedbroadlytoincludesuchvicesasself-righteousness,smugness,

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry