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Paper short abstract

Drawing on my fieldwork in Francophone Sufi Muslim circles, I explore the Islamic metaphysical perspective on risk in dialogue with posthumanism and existential risk studies. For my interlocutors, threats to humankind originate in a flawed human–world relationship and reflect inner spiritual flaws t

Paper long abstract

How to respond to the contemporary threats confronting humankind? Drawing on my fieldwork in Sufi Muslim circles in Belgium and France, I explore the Islamic metaphysical perspective on risk in dialogue with posthumanism and existential risk studies. For my interlocutors, and in line with the posthumanist approach, threats to humankind originate in a flawed human–world relationship. However, they also understand these external threats as reflections of inner spiritual flaws. In the posthumanist approach, the ontological equality of humans and other life forms offers a way of addressing threats such as the Anthropocene, with human exceptionalism associated with separateness from nature. In the Islamic metaphysical approach, and in my interlocutors’ narratives, however, it is through verticality, or “vertical becoming,” that human beings experience the “oneness of being” and their interconnectedness with other living beings. This process of becoming has a circular dimension, as it corresponds to a return to the Divine. Moreover, it shows how self-knowledge acts as a gateway to knowledge of the world and the divine realm. Finally, “vertical becoming” reveals a “passive” mode of being that complicates the question of human exceptionalism, particularly when viewed from the perspective of the dual nature of human beings as caliphs and worshippers in the Islamic tradition.