92. Karen Armstrongexists between our ordinary world and God's. Even those who
were not trained mystics became aware of this world in
dreams or in the hypnogogic imagery that can surface as we
fall asleep or into a trance state. When a prophet or a mystic
had a vision, Suhrawardi believed, he had become aware of
this interior realm, which could correspond to what we call
the unconscious mind today.
This type of Islam would have been unrecognizable to
Hasan al-Basri or Shafii. Suhrawardi may have been executed
for his views but he was a devout Muslim, who quoted the
Quran more extensively than any previous Faylasuf His
works are still read as mystical classics. So are the books of
the prolific and highly influential Spanish theosopher Muid
ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240), who also urged Muslims to dis-
cover the alam al-mithal within them, and taught that the way
to God lay through the creative imagination. Ibn al-Arabi's
books were not easy and appealed to the more intellectual
Muslims, but he believed that anybody could be a Sufi, and
that everybody should look for the symbolic, hidden meaning
of scripture. Muslims had a duty to create their own theopha-
nies, by training their imaginations to see below the surface to
the sacred presence that resides in everything and everyone.
Every single human being was a unique and unrepeatable
revelation of one of God's hidden attributes, and the only
God we will ever know is the Divine Name inscribed in our
inmost self. This vision of a personal Lord was conditioned
by the faith tradition into which a person was born. Thus the
mystic must see all faiths as equally valid, and is at home in a
synagogue, mosque, temple or church, for, as God says in the
Quran: "Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah."'
Thus there had been a religious revolution after the
demise of the caliphate. It affected the humble artisan as well
as the sophisticated intellectual. A truly Muslim people had
come into being, who had learned to endorse the faith at a