Never read the comments section. Especially when you are a Muslim author, and/or a person of color, never, ever read the comments section.

I read the comments section. (sigh)

Most of the time, the responses (especially here at On Being) are actually lovely, touching, personal, and heartfelt. But there is a specific genre of comment that I have seen as a constant refrain. It’s one of the more common responses I get to my writings.

“I love his spiritual writings, but then he gets political…”

“I wish he would just speak about mysticism, not politics.”

“I like what he has he has to say about being present in the heart, but when he goes off on racism and foreign policy I get uncomfortable.”

This is not a new thing. Much of my life has been about carrying inside me two streams that both nurture my soul. On one hand has been Rumi, Hafez, medieval Sufism: the extraordinary tradition of Divine love that erupts onto humanity. On the other hand have been movements of social justice committed to redemption and liberation. That bookshelf features Malcolm X, Fanon, Edward Said, more recent works of feminism, Cornel West, and critiques of empire.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when I wander into spiritual oceans next to my own — realizing that all oceans are connected — it is usually figures who connect together love and justice that most deeply touch my soul. It is the same Martin Luther King who talks so beautifully about agape and redemptive suffering who is moved to action in Montgomery and Albany, Selma and Riverside. It is the same Desmond Tutu who is a moral compass for the anti-apartheid struggle who embodies the power of forgiveness. It is the same Abraham Joshua Heschel who so beautifully and powerfully spoke about God’s love for the stranger and the marginalized who said that as long as there is war, as long as African Americans are treated as they are, the synagogue and church are forbidden to us. It is the same Pope Francis who washes the feet of inmates who points out the foul stench of capitalism.

I am not sure that there is such a thing as being “apolitical.” The world as we know it is marked by stratifications of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, physical ability, national origin, and more. Even when we do not explicitly discuss these markers, we are still shaped by them. There is no avoiding them.

In every one of these markers, where one stands in relation to these criteria shapes the context in which we write the poetry of our everyday life. So many of us cannot breathe well.

If we seek a life of the spirit, how do we confront social injustice, poverty, racism, sexism, living under occupation, and violence by both states and non-state entities? What do we have to say? Where do we stand with respect to those who find themselves weak and vulnerable?

Desmond Tutu used to say, so beautifully:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

This notion of a holistic justice, that a threat to justice is a threat to justice everywhere — this we have known well. But to ask the Tina Turner question, What’s love got to do with it? Why not treat our current world as a straight-forward political or economic problem?

It’s about bodies. And spirits.

If what touches us about this overflowing love spills over from God’s own being into this world, onto humanity — carrying us back on this ocean of love back to God’s own embrace — then we have to love this humanity. We have to crave humanity. We have to love humanity not merely in the spirit, but also their bodies. We have to struggle against every impulse to bifurcate the human from God, the human from human, the body from the spirit. We have to love every mother who holds a child tenderly, every father who lavishes love, every friend, every neighbor, every refugee, every stranger. And this love moves through our bodies. It is not floating on clouds, or in the ether. This love is an embodied love.

This love shows up in our touch, through our skin. This love oozes out through our smiles, through the love-glances. What is it that Hafez says to us?

I’ve heard nothing
lovelier
Than the words of love
Which linger
Under this azure dome.

It is the scent of my newborn baby and my momma’s cooking that convey this love.

If love is vessel that carries God to us, then it comes to us through our bodies. We have to love the body, honor the body, cherish the body, and protect the body. Don’t ask me about my mystical practice if the citizens of Flint have brown, goopy water. Don’t go searching for a mantra if some of us are living under occupation or have bombs falling on them. Don’t talk to me about love if a fifth of our human population goes to bed hungry at night. We cannot fill each other’s hearts with love if our bellies are perpetually empty.

If we wish to be one with God, we have to be one with one another. We have to want for one another what we want for our own babies.

To love God, we must love humanity.
To love humanity, we have to address the conditions in which we live.
The dignity of human beings matters.
Structures and institutions matter.

Yes, as I age, I may have become a little more “realistic” about not being able to change and redeem the whole world, but let me, let us strive to transform our own hearts, our own bodies, our own homes, our own neighborhoods, our own communities.

This linking together of love and justice goes back to the very heart of the best of the American tradition. On April 15, 1960, the student leaders of the sit-in movement at lunch counters met in Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Under the leadership of Ella Baker, they articulated the statement of purpose for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. They spoke about nonviolence as their motivating philosophy, and grounded that in love. They stated what they sought:

A social order of justice permeated by love.

Justice. Permeated by love. We cannot speak of love without linking it to justice, nor of justice unless it is permeated by love.

It was this idea that Martin King would elaborate on, speaking of the organic connection between love and power.

“Love without power is anemic and sentimental.
Power without love is reckless and abusive.”

Oh, how often we see reckless power, abusive power in our world, when power has been divorced from love. But love divorced from power, from justice, is also anemic. We need to make sure that these two remain forever linked.
This is the message of the Qur’an:

God commands you to love and justice.

Brother West has said it most succinctly recently:

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

Let us go back to those bold and beautiful revolutionary students from the 1960s, the SNCC folks who turned a reluctant Martin King into an anti-war, anti-colonialism activist. They talked about this love that penetrates justice as the agent of social transformation. Here is what they stated back in 1960, about what happens when love is linked to nonviolence as a method. Then, and only then, we see that:

Courage displaces fear;
Love transforms hate.
Acceptance dissipates prejudice;
Hope ends despair.
Peace dominates war;
Faith reconciles doubt…
Justice for all overcomes injustice…
Love is the force by which God binds man to himself and man to man.

From the lunch counters to anti-war activism, these have been the faithful women and men who have insisted on bringing love into public spaces, and linking together love and justice.