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aspect of this great civilization has not attracted the attention
which, in my view, it deserves. It created a divide between the
Persianized sophisticated and pleasure loving upper crust and the
pious and the ordinary Muslims, a rift which has not healed despite
Islam's insistence on equality. This rift could have proved fatal
for Islam, especially in the context of the introduction of the
Aristotelian rationalist poison into Islamic philosophy, if
the state had acquired the kind of power it now enjoys in society.
Islamic society has survived because over much of its history the
state has been so marginal to it.
The gulf between Islamic exoterism as
represented by the ulema and Islamic esoterism as represented by the
Sufis of different orders is too wide to be glossed over. The great
Ghazzali sought to reconcile the two but his success could in the
nature of things be only limited. But the fact stands out that the
two together have ensured the survival of Islam. Without the ulema,
Islam could not have protected its external defences and without the
Sufis, Islam would have lacked the capacity for self-renewal and
been reduced to a mausoleum. There is an inner dialectic in Islam,
which the modern man, indoctrinated by the West, is unable to see.
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