Islam, and religion in general, can be understood as emergent phenomena, subject to psychological and civilizational initial conditions, just as universes are subject to cosmological initial conditions.
The Islam we know, therefore, is only one bubble within a wider space of religious possibilities, or one self-disclosure within a possible series of self-disclosures of an enduring Islamic essence.
If Ibn ʿArabī holds that this universe is one of the self-disclosures of God, then I claim that this Islam we live is likewise a self-disclosure of God — but on the level of history, consciousness, and civilization, not on the level of matter.
In the language of cosmology:
this Islam is one bubble within a broader space of possible religious bubbles.
In the language of philosophical science-fiction:
this Islam is one repetition within a possible sequence of repetitions of the “Star Maker” — that is, God.
Just as this universe is only one universe among the self-disclosures of divine existence, this Islam is only one Islam among the self-disclosures of the divine essence in the realm of consciousness.
The prophetic emergence of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ﷺ within the Arabian Peninsula made tribal social structure, naql or transmission-centered religiosity, existential violence, and fear of metaphysics dominant factors in the crystallization of historical Islam — in the form of an Islam that is predominantly Sunni, later transformed, almost entirely, into a Salafi mode.
I claim that had the mission occurred in another civilizational environment, the Islamic essence would necessarily have self-disclosed in another form — not necessarily better or worse in itself (that judgment belongs elsewhere) — but necessarily different.
Had Muhammad ﷺ been sent in Europe, Islam would have been dominated by European rationalism — something we partially witnessed in the Muʿtazilites and the philosophers within civilizational Islam.
Had he been sent in Persia or India, Islam would have been dominated by Batini or Ishrāqī mysticism — something that historically appeared in Iran and Iraq; Shiʿism itself may be understood as the living self-disclosure of this latent Islamic inwardness.
Had Muhammad ﷺ been Amazigh-Berber in North Africa, I claim Islam would have self-disclosed as a metaphysical Sunni-Sufi synthesis, in which tradition, rational philosophy, and illuminative esotericism would merge in a form closer — in my view — to the spiritual core of Islam. We already glimpse this synthesis in the immense number of major Sufi figures produced by North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and al-Andalus — above all, Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ʿArabī.
We therefore live in one particular Islamic bubble (in the sense of the multiverse). Islam is not one Islam, but a multiplicity of Islams (multi-Islam); Muhammad is not one Muhammad, but a multiplicity of Muhammads (multi-Muhammad). The Star Maker, or God, did not create only this universe, but a multiplicity of universes, Islams, and Muhammads.
Only God — the Star Maker — is one, and the Qur’an is one, because it is the Word of God transmitted by Gabriel to these multiple Muhammads in these multiple universes.
Thus we must distinguish between Islam as a historical crystallization — which is what we live — and Islam as the message of the Star Maker to existence. The true essence of Islam is closer to the plurality of Islams, i.e. to multi-Islam than to this single Islam we inhabit, since that plurality contains this Islam and all the other Islams of the other bubbles.
We emphasize again that the Islams of “multi-Islam” and the Muhammads of “multi-Muhammad” do not necessarily imply simultaneous historical existence, but rather ontological existence within the space of possibility. Just as in cosmology we speak of parallel universes not because they exist in our time, but because their existence is possible and objective within the structure of the laws — and if they exist, they exist in their own time and their own bubbles.
In other words, we live today within a specific historical crystallization of Islam, arising from the coupling of revelation with a particular psychological and civilizational environment. This Islam is not Islam in its absolute essence, but one particular solution to a broader cosmic-spiritual equation. Just as the laws of nature permit a space of possible universes, the Islamic essence permits a space of possible self-disclosures. The Islam we know is one bubble in this space — not the essence itself.
Or, in the language of philosophical science-fiction: we live the n-th iteration of Islam, not Islam itself, just as Isaac Asimov portrayed civilizations moving through historical recurrences in Foundation. In that novel, civilization passes through successive imperial cycles; and we live today at the very beginning of what he called the “1st Galactic Empire.”
For the Star Maker, universes within the multiverse may be conceived as forms of divine time. We live today in Islam number n — the n-th universe, the n-th bubble, the n-th divine moment: the Islam of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, sent in the Arabian Peninsula. It is an Islam dominated by Salaf authority, within which Muʿtazilite, Batini, and Sufi elements managed to survive — an Islam historically crystallized in the form we now inhabit, a form which troubles us because we can no longer clearly discern what within it is invariant and what is contingent. The invariant features are clearly the message contained in the word of Qur’an, not any interpretation.
Then before this Islam there was another Islam, and after it there will be another Islam — just as before this universe (this bubble n) there was bubble n − 1, and after it there will be bubble n + 1.
Further developments of this theory will follow, God willing.
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