conceitedself-satisfaction[khwūd-rā’ī],puttingonairs,ostentatiousdisplaysof
ascetic piety [zuhd-furūshī], vaunting one’s learning [faḍl-furūshī], considering
oneself to be holy and sacrosanct, bragging of and setting stock in one’s own
actsofpiousdevotion,superciliousness,mendacity,imposture,deceit,duplic-
ityinone’srelationtoGodandman,cruellackoffeeling[bīdardī],beingwith-
out love and wisdom, and so on. It can be definitively affirmed that no one
anywhere or any time throughout the history of Islamic civilization has ever
gone to battle against hypocrisy [riyā’] with such pugnacity or laboured with
suchzealousdeterminationtouprootthisviceashasḤāfiẓ.^102Hisobsessivehatredofhypocrisy(riyā)isthechiefthemeofhisanti-clericalpoetics
andremainstheprinciplepoliticalreasonwhyheisstill,sixcenturieson,themost
popularbardinhishomeland–the‘Islamic’RepublicofIran,wherereligiousquacks
and sanctimonious swindlers still call all the shots and only duplicitous con-men
adeptintheblackartsofpiousdissimulationcanekeoutadecentliving.
Ḥāfiẓ’spredominantsocialattitudeisanti-hypocritical.Inhiseyes,viceitselfoften
becomes preferable to the pious masquerade of virtue,^103 which is why one finds
himincertainversespetulantlyindulginginakindofRimbaudesquecelebrationof
perversion:
Liftupthetulip-cup:itseyes’drunkennarcissusgaze,
Andsetonmethelabel‘pervert’.Withsomanyjudges
Thataresetoverme,OLord,whoshouldItaketobemyjudge?^104Ḥāfiẓ’scondemnationofhypocrisyasthe‘supremesin’^105 hasmanyantecedentsin
classical Sufi texts, where it is repeatedly condemned as a vice. In hisTheHundred
Fields, the first treatise written in Persian on the classification of the spiritual sta-
tions of the Sufi Path, ‘Abdu’llāh Anṣārī (d. 482/1089) of Herat, the eminent
Ḥanbalite theologian and leading stylist of Persian rhyming prose, characterizes
hypocrisy asshirkor ‘polytheism’–that is, association of other gods with God.^106
Shirkis the worst heresy in Islamic thought. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī
(d. 505/1111) explains that hypocrisy is ‘an act of devotion performed publicly so
that people think that one is especially pious’.^107 Since hypocrisy involves the per-
petuationofanemotionalpretence–theheart’svocationdevotiontotheOneGod,
but the mind’s avocation being a neurotic obsession with society and people–the
Sufisdiscernedhowsuchdissimulationeasilybecomestransmutedintoan‘interior
polytheism’. ‘Know that the slightest ostentatiousness [riyā’] constitutes polythe-
ism’,^108 Imām‘Alīfamouslypronounced.
‘Polytheism’inthiscontextispsychological,notdoxological,relatingtothesub-
tlenotionof‘hiddenpolytheism’(shirk-ikhafī),towhichtheProphetalludedinhis
saying: ‘The creeping ofshirkin my community is more hidden [akhfā] than the
creepingofablackantoverahardrockonadarknight.’^109 Shakespeareexcellently
sumsupthehorrorofthehiddennessoftheschizophrenicpolytheisticperspective,
ḤāfiẓandthePersianSufiTradition 175