Humility, Self-Naughting, and Self-Transcendence

In Islamic ethics, humility (khushu‘/tawadu‘) is essential to servitude to God, as pride caused the sins of Pharaoh and Iblis. Humility can be understood in two complementary ways. In dualistic theology, it means moving away from conceit toward a balanced midpoint, avoiding self-loathing. In Islamic mysticism, based on the unity of being, humility involves vertical self-transcendence and self-effacement before God, where the ego is recognized as unreal, achieving fullness as nothingness before the divine infinity.

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Abstract

Abstract Muslims understand humility (Arabic: khushu‘/tawadu‘) to be inseparable from the servitude to God (‘ubudiyya) that is demanded of them by their faith. The defining place of the virtue in Islamic ethics is underscored by the fact that the sin of the two archetypes of wrongdoing in the Quran––Pharoah and Iblis (Satan)––was pride. With that said, humility can be conceived in two complementary ways in the Muslim tradition. When viewed through the lens of a dualistic theology that separates God from the world, humility involves a shift on a spectrum away from the soul’s natural inclination toward feelings of conceit and self-importance. This movement, however, must halt somewhere near the center-point of humility, and not extend into the domain of self-loathing, since the latter is marked by a narcissism of self-hate and self-denigration, unlike pride, which is marked by a narcissism of self-aggrandizement. In Islamic mysticism, particularly from the vantage point of the doctrine of the unity of being, the movement of self-naughting must continue, but now it must do so vertically, upward, toward self-transcendence, self-forgetting, and ultimately self-effacement in the divinity. Only then is humility obtained in its fullness as a state of nothingness before the all-consuming infinity of God. This is not a nothingness where the ego is abased as much a nothingness where the ego, like a mirage, is recognized to be unreal.