Guest post by Jabrail Gadgiev
Among the more remarkable demonstrations of how faithfully modernity preserves the baggage of ancient philosophy is in the subject of dualism.
One of the means in which dualism is described is through a dichotomy between the notions of ‘body’ and ‘spirit’.
The body interests itself only in worldly matters such as family, society and politics, whereas the spirit is involved in religion and the connection to the divine or a greater purpose. Matters of the spirit are to be made the sole focus of one’s life, and as such, the body and all of its contingencies must be disdained and abandoned for the sake of salvation. Such notions may seem appealing to some on the surface, but as with most man-made philosophies, the devil is in the details.
Detachment from worldly life by abandoning one’s family, refraining from work, food, sexual activity, and a “householder” lifestyle in general is a common underlying philosophy across numerous polytheistic religions.
Although all of the widespread examples of these religions eventually adopted laws and regulations instructing laypeople on how to live their lives in a moral way, the ideal path to truth (oneness with the divine, divinization of the self, realization of emptiness, etc.) tended to be through monasticism. In practice, this often meant that a distinct class of ascetic clerics was formed that relied on the productive efforts of laypeople for basic survival and the political authority of kings for lands, protection, and religious legitimacy.
The class of society which came to dictate the moral standards of society was essentially at the mercy of the type of people it was actively trying to discourage: hardworking, industrious householders (in a somewhat uncanny resemblance to feminism). This paradox is noted by the professor of religion Dr. Reiko Ohnuma, who in describing Buddhist monasticism mentions:
“Many Buddhist texts are characterized by a strong renunciatory and anti-family discourse in which the family is depicted as a primary source of attachment, delusion and suffering. Yet to survive, Buddhism also relies on a surrounding lay community that is organized on a familial basis…”[1]
It is notable that in almost every society, the acquisition of goods from householders eventually extended beyond voluntary charity and would be enforced through the political class, in what historians label as “monastic feudalism” across Europe, India, and East Asia.
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The modern liberal concept of maximizing individual autonomy at the expense of marriage, kinship, as well as a disdain for social norms and hierarchies shows a remarkable similarity with monastic ideals, for what appears to be totally contradictory purposes. Bible scholar Bernhard Lang draws a particularly interesting connection in this regard:
“In pre-modern societies … ‘individualism’ as a value was only known to, and practiced by, the world-renouncers such as the Buddhist monk, the Christian ascetic, the cynic philosopher … In a like manner, Mary Douglas argues that ‘to insist on the superiority of spiritual over material elements is to insist on the liberties of the individual’”[2]
The individualism being described here is not merely an acceptance of individual moral accountability or personal relationship with God. Rather, renunciationism of this kind aims to target and de-legitimize the value of all traditional social institutions, by simply not participating in them.
Due to the aforementioned paradox that this creates for societies that accept such religions, the monastic class still promotes the retention of traditional values whilst also being the sole pipeline of salvation for laypeople (who are incapable of reaching a true relationship with God due to their ‘inferior’ lifestyle). But what this ultimately means is that the individual renunciate’s goal is not the establishment of justice, function, or even survival for humanity as a whole, but rather an individual attainment that supersedes all these communal obligations.
One might assume that the comparisons between liberalism and world-renunciation would end there. Reasonably so, as the lifestyle of the austere mountain-dwelling monk and the hedonistic nihilist engaging in orgies and near endless material consumption could not be further apart. But the surprising truth is that the activities of the latter would actually align quite closely to that of world-renouncing philosophies. The Pulpit Commentary on the biblical book of Timothy describes a certain religion of world-renouncers we now know as the Gnostics, as follows:
“…from their principle of the utter malignity of matter, and the elevating nature of gnosis, two very opposite results ensued – one that many Gnostics led very profligate lives; the other that many practiced great austerities in order to mortify the body and its sensual appetites…”[3]
This was no accident, for it is an established pattern of these dualistic philosophies to prescribe both “right-hand” and “left-hand” means of achieving the same ultimate truth, the latter of which includes shockingly antinomian practices for the means of accelerating “enlightenment.”
It should be noted that the point being made is not that the metaphysical objectives of the ancient theistic philosophies are anywhere near what the contemporary secular mind believes, often denying the whole idea of a ‘spirit,’ let alone an attainable divine truth. Rather, the modern individual mimics the activities of their spiritual forefathers, ultimately falling for Shaytan’s plot to humiliate humanity in the same manner.
Islam stands out in the ocean of world-renouncing religious traditions of the ancient world. As the messenger of Allah ﷺ famously declared:
“He is not a believer whose stomach is filled while his neighbor goes hungry.”[4]
This indicates that there is no individual belief while your neighbors and society in general suffer from material hardship.
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This exists along with a plethora of Qur’anic verses and narrations concerning marriage, ties of kinship, social justice, economic participation and the necessity of political involvement through institutions such as Khilafa. Similar statements can be found in whatever remains of the words of all true prophets, even in the Bible, though both Judaism and Christianity fall woefully short in this regard.
In an insightful article authored by brother Bheria on the subject of Islamic paradise and dualism, reaches the following conclusion:
“In Islam, the body is not a hindrance to the soul. It is a vehicle of moral and spiritual action.”[5]
And this is precisely the point that should be driven home.
The Muslim is not just an individual trying to attain a spiritual goal: he is a vehicle of moral action in this earthly life, with responsibilities and obligations to his fellow man. One of the greatest of these obligations is demonstrated in the emphasis of Jihad in place of renunciationism, with the Messenger of God ﷺ reportedly having said:
“Every nation has its own form of monasticism, and the monasticism of my nation is striving (الْجِهَادُ) in the way of Allah.”[6]
And Allah Almighty knows best.
Notes
[1] Whitaker, Justin. “The Closing of the Monastic-Lay Divide in Modern Buddhism.” Buddhistdoor Global, December 29, 2021. https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/the-closing-of-the-monastic-lay-divide-in-modern-buddhism/
[2] Lang, Bernhard. “The Sexual Life of the Saints: Towards an Anthropology of Christian Heaven.” Numen 34, no. 1 (April 1987): 149–71. p. 152.
[3] Arthur Charles Hervey, “1 Timothy 4,” in The Pulpit Commentary, ed. H. D. M. Spence-Jones and Joseph S. Exell (BibleSoft, 2010), comment on 1 Timothy 4:3, Bible Hub, accessed July 27, 2026, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/1_timothy/4.htm.
[4] Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, Al-Adab Al-Mufrad, hadith no. 112, Sunnah.com, accessed July 27, 2026, https://sunnah.com/adab:112.
[5] Bheria, “The ‘Islamic Paradise’: A Perpetual Challenge to Philosophical Dualism?,” Muslim Skeptic, July 2, 2025, https://muslimskeptic.com/2025/07/02/islamic-paradise-philosophical-dualism/.
[6] Ibn Abi Shaybah, Al-Musannaf, hadith no. 20480, Tohed.com, accessed July 27, 2026, https://en.tohed.com/hadith/musannaf-ibn-abi-shaybah/20480/.
This misguided essay, based on what can only be assumed as good intentions at best, counterproductive and self-destructive errors at worst, merits a response. ‘Perplexing’ is appropriate, but in reference to the argument that it makes instead of any underlying ‘connection’. The essay’s misunderstanding and/or misreading actually confuses issues of grave importance.
Christian monastic orders once had an influence on western civilization: that would be prior to the reformation. Can the author (or the editor[s]) honestly answer the question “has a spirit of ‘individuality’ flourished more PRIOR to the reformation, or afterwards,” in the affirmative? Are notions like ‘sola scriptura’, the concentration of political and legal power and authority in a more and more secularized ‘state’, industrialization, deracination, and the permissiveness of a more usurious socioeconomic regime the hallmarks of a LESS individualized culture and society? And was ‘monasticism’ the cause of it, or were these pernicious trends born of other influences?
A Muslim might say this is being overly fastidious. I think that such a cavalier attitude would be naive and self-defeating in the long run. For the monastic orders, acknowledging all of their faults, were the institutions that undergirded the part of ‘western’ culture that was actually GOOD, and has now almost completely disappeared: the commons. The commons, a third category of property between the ‘private’ and ‘public’, was the conceptual and normative element that made the best of western civilization flourish. It held the rapacious spirit of rent-seeking, profit at all costs, exploitation, and the cancerous ethos of continual and constant ‘growth’ at bay for centuries. The commons, the capitalist’s target of privatization, the marxist’s obstacle to attaining the totalizing power of the state; the commons, cousin to the ‘forum’, ‘fuero’ in the Iberian peninsula, ‘gōng tián’ (公田) in the middle kingdom, the opposite of ‘individuality’, the space of communal-consciousness, charity, and social capital, and the polar opposite of ‘liberalism’. This element of the ‘commons’ thrived in the west as a direct influence of the monastic orders. It has disintegrated with their receding influence.
There is one more point to be made. The ‘commons’ has an Islamic analogue, though it is obvious that the Islamic one is superior in every way. This is ‘waq’f’, property that is neither private nor public, but rather the property of the Ultimate Reality, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. Coincidentally enough, the sacrosanct status of ‘waq’f’ worldwide is being eroded, in almost the same way that ‘the commons’ once was. And it is not legions of monks and nuns who are undertaking this demolition.
You seem to be misunderstanding the argument that was made. The claim is not simply that monasticism inevitably leads to liberalism in society. Rather, the point is that the underlying ideology of both monasticism (for monastics) and liberalism (for all of humanity) are fascinatingly similar and that cannot simply be chalked up as mere coincedence. I mentioned in the article that monastics practice a particular lifestyle but preach communal values like marriage and family because they recognized the necessity of those things. But they did not endorse nor practice it themselves.