Mother Earth
Some short thoughts on the Divine Feminine, nature and Islam
“Take care of the earth for she is your mother. No one does good or evil on her except that she will speak of it (on the Last Day.” Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
“She [woman] is the radiance of God, she is not your beloved. She is a creator – you could say that she is not created.” Rumi
The Vetruvian Man is often described as the iconic image of Western civilisation. If that is true than perhaps it could be said that in Islam the weaving together of the human and the divine would favour the woman. Perhaps a Muslim da Vinci would have been intrigued by a Vetruvian Woman. Camille Helminski writes how Rumi viewed woman as ‘the most perfect example of God’s creative power on earth. As he says in the Mathnawi, “Woman is a ray of God. She is not just the earthly beloved; she is creative, not created.”’ I'm far more interested in the notion of a Vetruvian Woman than a Vetruvian Man. I also like the idea of the drawing being within both a square and a circle. For some reason it calls to mind the geometry in the cubic form of the Kaaba and the circumabulation of the pilgrims in a circle around it. The veiled Kaaba is also portrayed and understood as feminine. I also don't think it is a coincidence that Ibn Arabi met Nizam circumabulating the Kaaba, going on to compose a collection of poetry inspired by her.
The divine feminine is rooted in Islam. Ibn Arabi notes that the word for the essence of God ‘ al dhat’ is feminine and would often refer to God as ‘She’ because of this.
Growing up in a society that uses masculine words like 'seminal' to describe something important and inhabiting a cultural landscape where Eve was a temptress, I loved finding out that in Islam the name of God, al Rahman (the Merciful) and the word for womb 'rahm' are etymologically linked. Both share a root word in Arabic 'R-H-M.' I loved discovering that God was not a "He", that God transcended gendered language. I loved that the Prophet's final sermon emphasised the importance of respecting and honouring women. I loved the hadith that says paradise lies under the feet of mothers. The Christian God is ‘Father’, God in Islam encompasses the feminine. I do sometimes wonder whether some Muslims with a mother wound might struggle more with feeling the all loving embrace of God simply because He is so often compared to a mother in the Islamic paradigm . (Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby is an excellent meditation on fraught mother-daughter relationships. Doris Lessing is also good on this).
Like other primordial, indigenous belief systems, Islam also views the earth as Mother. The Prophet said “Take care of the earth for she is your mother. No one does good or evil on her except that she will speak of it (on the Last Day).”
Ibn Arabi paints a portrait of this Mother Earth:
“[The earth] gives all of the benefits from her essence [dhāt] and is the location [maḥall] of all good. Thus she is the most powerful [aʾazz] of the bodies. . . . she is the patient [ṣabūr], the receptive one [qābila], the immutable one, the firm one . . . Whenever she moves from fearful awe of God, God secures her by means of (mountains as) anchors. So she becomes still with the tranquility of those of faithful certainty. From the earth, the people of faith learn their certainty. Therefore, it is the mother from whom we come and to whom we return. And from her we will come forth once again. To her we are submitted and entrusted. She is the most subtle of foundations [arkān] in meaning. She accepts density, darkness, and hardness only in order to conceal the treasures that God has entrusted to it.”
I found this line particularly moving: ‘From the earth, the people of faith learn their certainty.’ I think many people can relate to feeling a certainty of their faith in nature. Muslims often emphasise the importance of virgin nature in experiencing this but the vast majority of Muslims in this country live in urban environments with many facing barriers in accessing wild places. Gai Eaton admits that ‘a vast number of people in the world today are isolated from nature by an ugly man-made environment from which they cannot escape. But, while those who are lucky enough to live in the midst of beauty need make no effort to enjoy what they have been given, the rest of us have to get down to work and teach ourselves to appreciate the gifts that come our way. No one need make an effort to see God’s presence in mountains, rivers and forests, but to find joy in a single flower or to feel respect for a crust of bread is a different matter.’ I think this is true, like many things in life it sometimes feels like we have to ‘get down to work’ and indeed work harder and smarter to access this reviving capacity of nature. A mallow growing in the cracks of a pavement is simply not going to provide the same sense of calm a forest does. But it's still something. It's still a sign. The tree you can see outside a window when you're in a meeting is still comforting. It might be noticing the jasmine-like scent of a sweet box hedge in a bleak industrial estate or it could be pausing to look up at that large fig tree that sprawls over onto the pavement on Brick Lane.
The other day I found these verses from the Qur'anic chapter titled ‘The Earthquake’, which describes how Earth will speak one day:
"When the earth is shaken with a (violent) shaking, And the earth reveals what burdens her, And man says: What has befallen her? On that day she shall tell her story...." (Qur'an 99:1-4)
These verses called to mind these lines from Blake's poem ‘Earth's Answer’:
“Earth rais'd up her head,
From the darkness dread & drear.
Her light fled:
Stony dread!
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.”