David Myatt - Return to T he Numinous Way

Return to The Numinous Way?

Being Some Comments Concerning Myngath

What intrigued me the most about your recently published autobiography,

Myngath, was your return to Islam after having developed your own
philosophy, The Numinous Way. This return – considering its importance –
seemed somewhat glossed over. Can you explain why you didn’t go into more
detail?

Basically because I did not want to make excuses for my behaviour, my failure,
my errors. For the weakness which saw me stray from the noble Muslim
guidelines regarding personal behaviour and thus become involved with a
certain lady, and which involvement ended in her suicide.

Also because I know that Allah – Al-Hakeem, As-Sabur, Ar-Raheem – will judge
me and that it is the judgement of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala that matters, not
what some people may think, or believe, or assume about me.

Suffice, therefore, to say that after the death of a certain lady – and following
a years-long interior struggle between humility and pride – I strayed for a
brief while because my pride won; strayed briefly until I was given some
guidance and advice, in private, by some brothers I respected who had become
concerned about me, may Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala reward them.

Thus, it was not in essence “a leaving and a return to Islam”, for I, inwardly,
never renounced my Shahadah. Instead, I had certain serious doubts, which I
sometimes foolishly and rather arrogantly expressed in letters and various
essays; had ceased to follow certain Muslim guidelines, and publicly allowed
myself to become associated with the mystical philosophy of The Numen I had
developed during and because of the years of that personal interior struggle.
Indeed, twice, during this brief period, two people who were not Muslim wrote
to me to enquire if I still considered myself Muslim, and to both I answered in
the affirmative, although I have to admit that at that time I inclined toward a
certain tariqat, the interior way. Furthermore, the more I developed my
philosophy of The Numen, the closer I seemed to come to such an interior way
so that, for instance, what I had termed The Cosmic Being was Allah,
Al-Khaliq, and empathy simply a remembrance of tawadu and Dhikr, and thus
of ourselves as ‘Ibaad Ar-Rahman.

Hence, in a sense – before I received such necessary guidance by learned

brothers – I was possibly moving again in the right direction. Although it is

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also possible, or more probable, given my arrogance, that I would have gone
even more astray were it not, Alhamdulillah, for such guidance.

That development of The Numinous Way sounds most interesting. Would I be

correct in thinking you’ve written about this, and if so, do you intend to
publish these new writings?

There are various scribblings concerning it, yes – but I do not intend to publish
them because they now, like most of my non-Muslim scribblings over the
years, seem to be the work of an arrogant pontificating individual who
mistakenly prided himself on his intellect, his knowledge, and his
understanding, when what he needed was humility – to accept he was just one
error-prone creation of Al-Bari, who should have been content with the
knowledge, the understanding, of being one of the ‘Ibaad Ar-Rahman.

Would it be fair to say that your drift away, however brief it was – and the
interior struggles you mentioned – were caused by you falling in love?

Yes, to an extent – but it was the death of the lady in question, the manner of
her death, my part in it, which led to the three long years of personal,
philosophical, turmoil. I really felt – in the immediacy of the days following
that tragic event – responsible, and that it would be just too easy, not somehow
right, for me to simply rely on Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, and thus ask for
forgiveness; to thus have the burden of remorse, the responsibility, alleviated
or so taken away. I felt I had to work things out for myself – personally come to
terms with the tragedy, and my part in it.

In retrospect, this was arrogantly presumptuous of me. A manifestation of my

still living, thriving, pride. A manifestation of my failure – inwardly, in my very
being – to fully, humbly, submit to only Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala; to rely only
on Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala. Instead, I relied, also, on my intellect – on what
I assumed was my ability to discover, by means of my intellect, learning and
experience, certain answers to questions which perplexed me.

Furthermore, for quite some time I – subsumed with emotions – stupidly failed
to understand the most obvious thing, which was that I should not have strayed
from the noble, the most wise, Muslim guidance regarding personal behaviour
which Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala had given us to prevent such personal
turmoil and such personal problems, and which problems can obscure the
simple trust and reliance on Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala that we should have.
Had I then relied solely on Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala – as, intellectually, I
knew I should – and in my weakness and lust thus found the strength to follow
those noble guidelines, the lady might well not have died.

As it is, perhaps I have acquired, Alhamdulillah, a better understanding of

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tawadu; of what being Muslim means. Perhaps not – for perhaps assumption of
having acquired a better understanding of such things is just another arrogant
presumption on my part.

So all I can do now is remember Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, and trust in

Allah, Al-Aleem, and hope that my pride, my arrogance, my lust – my manifold
weaknesses some of which I have mentioned in Myngath – will not cause me to
stray from such perfect guidance, again.

In respect of such matters, there is real wisdom in these words, from the noble
Quran:

(39:53)

Why did you write Myngath?

Basically because people kept asking me about my past, about my marriages,

and especially about my involvement with National-Socialism and the reasons
why I supported that particular cause for so many decades. As the cliché goes,
it seemed a good idea at the time, although in retrospect it was probably a bad
idea, sheer vanity, even though I tried to be as honest as possible about my
mistakes.

At the end of Myngath you wrote that had “learned the true meaning of both
the numinous and of wyrd.” Can you therefore explain the terms numinous and
wyrd in the context of Islam?

As I wrote in another essay, the term numinous is a synonym for the sacred,
for what is revered and what reminds us of our true nature, as human beings;
what places us in the correct Cosmic context, evident in Tawheed and the
promise of Jannah. Thus, Al-Quran is numinous; all Ayat, all Signs of Allah, are
numinous – reminding us of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala; reminding us of the
beauty, the purity, of Emaan; reminding us of the truth, the perfection, the
numinosity, of the Deen that is Al-Islam.

As Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala says:

“These are the Ayat of the Book [al-Kitab] of al-Hikmah.” 31:2

Interpretation of Meaning

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Our true nature is Muslim, and this nature is manifest in the beautiful
simplicity of the Kalimah Ašhadu an la ilaha illa-llah, wa ašhadu anna
Muhammadun Aabduhu wa rasulu.

As for the Old English word wyrd – often rather incorrectly understood as Fate
or The Fates (more accurate perhaps is the Greek Μοῖραι, as in θάνατος δὲ
τότ᾽ ἔσσεται, ὁκκότε κεν δὴ Μοῖραι ἐπικλώσωσ…) – I meant, in Myngath, what
is implied by the Arabic expressions la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah and
al-qada wa al-qadar.

In summary, the initial draft versions of Myngath were never intended for
publication – I simply circulated copies to a few friends, for comments, and
one or two of them passed copies on to others, and, as often seems to happen
these days, unfortunately, copies ended up on the Internet. So, when I had
finished revising the work, I had to issue the revised work, dated 25 Shaban
1431, myself.

It has been suggested - in a review of your autobiography - that the reason you
ended your relationship with the lady who committed suicide some hours after
you had left, was because she did not want to convert to Islam. Is that correct?

Yes. We discussed, many times and over a period of many weeks, travelling
into the Western Desert, moving to live in Egypt, as I tried to explain to her,
during those weeks and before, the beauty, the numinosity, of the Deen that is
Al-Islam, and how it might be the solution to at least some of her problems.
Obviously, I failed - to explain such things or show them by my personal
example.

Have your – how shall I say? – your recent experiences changed your views
regarding Jihad and supporting the Mujahideen?

On the contrary, they have strengthened my support for the Mujahideen and
those who lead and who advise them (hafizahumullaah) and for the view that I
have inclined toward for over ten years, which is that the kuffar of the West
are probably the most dishonourable, bloodthirsty, conniving, insolent,
hypocritical, people in human history and that cooperation with them in
haram – given their invasion of our lands, their killing, torture, and
imprisonment of our brothers and sisters, their determination to export their
dysfunctional way of life to our lands, and their insolent demand that we bow
down to and accept their Tawagheet, such as democracy, and that we abandon
our duty to implement the hukm of Allah in favour of their fallible kaffir

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manufactured laws.

What continues to annoy me is how the sheeple of the West continue to believe
the propaganda of the hubriati about Al-Islam, the Mujahideen and the
so-called “war on terror”, and continue to support the invasion and occupation
of Muslim lands, and the implementation of so-called democracy by force,
when the governments of the West cannot even solve fundamental problems in
their own lands, such as rampant drug and alcohol abuse, violent crime,
rampant domestic violence against women, racism, the misery and
wage-slavery caused by usury, rampant prostitution and sex trafficking, and so
on, etcetera. Islam has the solution to all these things – or rather, Al-Islam and
the implementation of the hukm of Allah are the solution to all these things.

Hubriati? What do you mean?

The term refers to the privileged oligarchy, the minority, who effectively
control the power in the societies of the West and who accept that the values
and ways of the West are superior, and should be exported to other lands (if
necessary by force, bribery, bullying and blackmail) even if they sometimes
have to pretend otherwise, in public. Some of these people are elected by the
so-called democratic process, some – such as Media moguls and those who run
agencies such as the CIA, are not. Classic examples of hubriati were Bush and
Blair, while a current example is the tame house negro Obama.

According to the hubriati, their savants and the sheeple of the West, defiant
Muslims who seek to do their duty and so implement the hukm of Allah and
who refuse to bow down and accept the Tawagheet of the West, are the enemy;
the new heretics.

The term hubriati effectively defines who such people are – for the hubriati, in
their arrogance, commit the fundamental error of hubris, and confound this
error by their utter hypocrisy and their profane privileged life-style, while they
sanction or support or condone or excuse the killing, the imprisonment, of
‘Ibaad Ar-Rahman – such as the honourable and modest Mujahideen whose
devotion to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, to their duty of Jihad, and whose pure
desire to implement the hukm of Allah, make them examples for Muslims
everywhere.

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In the first part of Myngath – in the Apologia section – you seemed to suggest
that you had at last found an inner peace. Is that correct and is that as a
Muslim?

That is correct, and yes – as a Muslim. For several years after my reversion I
was happy, even content, and arrogantly, in my presumption, assumed I
understood certain things, especially myself. Then came doubt, inner turmoil,
and falling in love with someone I, as a Muslim, should perhaps not have fallen
in love with. All of which seemed to reveal that my basic character had not
changed as much as I had assumed, because of my reversion, that it had.

Now, I seem to have acquired, Alhamdulillah, what I can only describe as a

deeper, a simple unaffected, appreciation of the perfect guidance given to us
by Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala in Quran and Sunnah, and thus an awareness of
just how error-prone, arrant, and pathetic my own answers were. Which has
led me to a deeper, simple, unaffected, love for and respect of the Prophet,
Muhammad, ‫ ﺻﻠﻰ ﺍﷲ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﻭﺳﻠﻢ‬. All of which imputes a desire for Namaz.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that I feel that in Namaz – especially in

Jumaah Namaz – we have the perfect manifestation of the numinous; the
perfect way to remind ourselves of our true nature, as human beings, and the
perfect way to be at peace with ourselves. Thus, Namaz becomes not an
onerous duty, but rather an expression of our very humanity. Wa Allahu Alam.

David Myatt
(Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt)
17 Ramadan 1431

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