Gregory A. Lipton

“For Schuon, Ibn ʿArabī, like many Muslim mystics, succumbed to a “Semitic” propensity for a subjectivism that lacked the enlightened objectivity necessary to consistently discern the transcendent formlessness of essential truth from religious particularism. Yet such enlightened objectivity is, according to Schuon, inherent in the so-called “Aryan” metaphysics of Vedanta and Platonism. In fact, Schuon’s discourse regularly presents as self-evident the metaphysical superiority of a direct and active Aryan “intellection” over that of a so-called passive Semitic “inspirationism.” Thus, rather than a transcendent and symbolic nomenclature innocent of its discursive history of racism — as Schuon’s loyal devotees often claim — in what follows I throw into relief how Schuonian universalism harbors a buried order of politics ironically constituted by and through long-held European discursive strategies of racial exclusion. Such strategies are not simply empty linguistic survivals but, instead, substantively inform the core of Schuon’s metaphysics, providing the impetus to denude Ibn ʿArabī of his own Islamic exclusivism and distill from him a Vedantic essence — that is, a pure esotericism capable of transcending the so-called “Semitic” veils of exoteric religious form. As such, Schuon effectively de-Semitizes Ibn ʿArabī in order to legitimize his own Aryan ideal of authentic religion, the religio perennis.”
― Gregory A. Lipton