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I have a colleague with whom I usually interact about the issues that occupy me at MS.
Unfortunately he has turned into a Qur'anist.
When I started using arguments purely from Nobel qur'an then he complained that I am using Qur'an against him.
Yes, you read it right.
He doesn't know what's in his book just like the majority of other failures.
Actually with our experience at SF it is clear that people make their own decisions.
I do not use much pressure on thsi friend because people might crumble.
After that it becomes more pathetic.
So whoever comes with us that is a blessing of Allah.
Whoever parts ways is doing harm to himself only.
For us the theory is the thirteen year period in Makkah.
For the benefit of the pedantic people I am talking about the faith of Islam - Tauheed-Risalat-Akhirat.
Then there is that Hadith by beloved Rasoolallah SAW - that every hundred year a Mujaddid will be born in his Ummah who will revive the teachings of Islam.
We have Deoband for us - a very comprehensive revival of the teachings of Islam.
This sinner has further specialised to the wordly aspects of our life in Rasoolallah saw's Ummah.
Madarsa-Khanqah-Tabligh departments are doing their work.
We have to cover other corners of our spreadsheet.
Let us go about it in a full throttle manner.
I am a fan of Shabir Ally.
That does not mean I am not aware of his shortcomings. Theologically he is not so refined from the point of view of our Akabir.
He disowns the principles earlier than later when it comes to acceptance by the west.
Momentarily this works but sooner or later one has to face the controversial issues.
But that is not the issue on my mind at the moment.
My feeling is that the current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not take such a sanguine attitude towards Islam and Muslims if people like Shabir Ally were not around.
Yet again this post is about Nabeel Quraishi.
He presents himself as an ex-Muslim.
He is a Christian preacher. That makes him a murtad.
Yet Shabir Ally was very affectionate towards him.
See this debate.
My impression is that Muslims should present their view and leave the things there.
To bend over your back to accommodate the non-Muslim sensibilities is not a service to Islam.
Those who are curious yet do not have enough time to waste two and half an hour the Quraishi fellow has come up with the brain wave : If trinity is not there in Bible then tauheed is not there in the Noble Qur'an.
Q: What is Qul Huwallahu Ahad? Is it Tauheed or not?
(1) Q: Why did I go through the complicated route of analyzing every academic discipline in such a long and minute detail?
A: I was always puzzled by people's confidence. I was absolutely clueless about the source of this confidence that people display in social and public life. How they can fight so vehemently even about most trivial worldly things?
Q: What are the findings?
A: Nothing deep actually. For one they simply are acting out of reflex and pure selfish interests. Secondly they have self entitlement. They think they are entitled to good things in life. This in reality is not true. Allah swt has already allotted our sustenance and that too is His favour and we can not demand it as our entitlement.
Q: Any other finding?
A: Yes, I have started saying that in my posts - we have to assert before the world that we are Muslims and we have submitted ourselves to the Will of Allah swt and we want to live according to Islam and Shariah and it is nothing against the rest of the world and we are not apologetic about it.
Q: Aren't both points obvious?
A: Yes.
Q: What is new then? Why spend so much time, energy and effort in discovering the obvious?
A: For one it was not obvious to me. Secondly no one else made it obvious to me.
Q: How can common Muslims be responsible for such a complex discourse spanning over countless academic disciplines - sociology, cultural studies, science, technology, business, commerce, industry, trade, finance, politics and military matters and more?
A: (1) If it is complex then it can not be simple and obvious!
(2) There has to be division of labour. Complex academic analysis is not for all but only for the academics. Ideological issues are the responsibility of the ideologues. Leadership is the responsibility of the leaders. There has to be unity of Ummah and there has to be the division of task.
Q: Who assigned this task to you? What is you authority?
A: Like every individual in Ummah of beloved Prophet PBUH I am an individual and I had the pressure on my conscience to do my duty, Fard-e-Kafaya towards this Ummah. Hence I took up this task.
Q: If it was so simple then why was it not done earlier?
A: There is a time for everything. The task is not simple even academically.
Q: If it is so difficult then how can it be our responsibility?
A: (1) Allah swt did not assure that life will be easy. (2) We only make our efforts while success ultimately comes from Allah swt only.
Q: Is it not true that the problems of Ummah emanate from the fact that we are so far away from the Qur'an and the Sunnah?
A: Most probably that is only partly true.
Q: Why so?
A: Those who do not bother at all about Islam are having such a nice time. Individuals like so many non-Muslim businessmen, societies that do not subscribe to Islam and even countries that are antagonistic to Islam are having wonderful times.
Q: Does it mean the test of non-Muslims will be just like that for Muslims?
A: Allah swt says," Just because you say that we believe does it mean that we shall not test you?" From this we can only conclude that the tests of life are for Muslims. I do not know of corresponding thing for non-Muslims. Of course there are very dire warnings for those who deny Signs of Allah and do not believe.
Q: How come there is so much for those who deny or ignore the Signs of Allah swt - alcohol, drugs, music, body exhibition, gender mixing, pre-marital dating, mixed sports and so on. Why so much restriction only on believers?
A: Allah swt has clarified these issues for us. Either there is no good for us in these things and when there is some good then the harm is more. Hence the deal is a bad one. Why so much lack of confidence in what Allah swt has recommended and clarified for us? Don't you know of people destroyed by alcohol, drugs and life style focused on music?
Q: The number of people destroyed is rather small, why spoil the joy because of exceptions?
A: May be the exceptional people who got destroyed were hoping to be exceptional in other way - to be among those who were saved.
Q: Even Barelwis are using pelvic thrust music for Milad, why make our life dry? After all we obey other things?
A: If they are adopting the western ways then are they not risking being judged with the western people?
Q: Is it some new theory that you are proposing?
A: Most probably every single idea must have already come to some one or else's mind. Thus I claim no oiginality.
To manage contradictions is amongst the most difficult problems of life.
These type of situations, when you have to manage contradictory demands of life, are the ones that make it crystal clear to us that we are treading on the Straight Path that is just like Pul sirat - the bridge in the hereafter.
And there is not one of you but shall come to it; this is an unavoidable decree of your Lord.
The talk is about hell.
When I read the translation for the first time it was very distressing.
Very slowly I did the rationalization. It took me long time to do that.
And it was not that long ago. It was less than a decade ago.
My rationalization is that Allah swt is talking about the Bridge here.
When I checked the translations today then it does turn out to be the case.
Without that explanation above verse is rather devastating.
Only after passing over the Bridge we shall realize from what horror Allah swt has saved us.
"Rumi and Hafez have been the guiding light, Rumi especially, of American poetry for the last five or ten years. " ( Source)
Purpose of life is to spend it according to the wishes of Allah swt.
When you live according to His wishes then it is his obedience, that is worship and that is purpose of life.
That is also Islam and that is also faith, Iman.
In present times we, specially our youth, is overawed by the US and her life style.
Islam is taken as a backward way of life, by our own youth, while the American way of life is considered the more glamorous and worth emulating.
And where is America finding wisdom? In Rumi and Hafez.
Here is another article from BBC on the same theme.
Dear youth, honour your own way of life, Islam. that is what Rumi is.
America is waking up to it. You were born in it.
Make the best of it.
Adopt Islam completely.
Surrender completely to the will of Allah swt.
You shall receive the best of the both worlds.
*****
Why is Rumi a best selling author in the US?
By Jane Ciabattari
21 October 2014
The ecstatic poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born 807 years ago in 1207, have sold millions of copies in recent years, making him the most popular poet in the US. Globally, his fans are legion.
“He’s this compelling figure in all cultures,†says Brad Gooch, who is writing a biography of Rumi to follow his critically acclaimed books on Frank O’Hara and Flannery O’Connor. “The map of Rumi’s life covers 2,500 miles,†says Gooch, who has traveled from Rumi’s birthplace in Vakhsh, a small village in what is now Tajikistan, to Samarkand in Uzbekistan, to Iran and to Syria, where Rumi studied at Damascus and Aleppo in his twenties. His final stop was Konya, in Turkey, where Rumi spent the last 50 years of his life. Today Rumi’s tomb draws reverent followers and heads of state each year for a whirling dervish ceremony on 17 December, the anniversary of his death.
The transformative moment in Rumi’s life came in 1244, when he met a wandering mystic known as Shams of Tabriz. “Rumi was 37, a traditional Muslim preacher and scholar, as his father and grandfather had been,†says Gooch. “The two of them have this electric friendship for three years – lover and beloved [or] disciple and sheikh, it’s never clear.†Rumi became a mystic. After three years Shams disappeared – “possibly murdered by a jealous son of Rumi, possibly teaching Rumi an important lesson in separation.†Rumi coped by writing poetry. “Most of the poetry we have comes from age 37 to 67. He wrote 3,000 [love songs] to Shams, the prophet Muhammad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubayat, four-line quatrains. He wrote in couplets a six-volume spiritual epic, The Masnavi.â€
During these years, Rumi incorporated poetry, music and dance into religious practice. “Rumi would whirl while he was meditating and while composing poetry, which he dictated,†said Gooch. “That was codified after his death into elegant meditative dance.†Or, as Rumi wrote, in Ghazal 2,351: “I used to recite prayers. Now I recite rhymes and poems and songs.†Centuries after his death, Rumi’s work is recited, chanted, set to music and used as inspiration for novels, poems, music, films, YouTube videos and tweets (Gooch tweets his translations @RumiSecrets). Why does Rumi’s work endure?
The inward eye
“He’s a poet of joy and of love,†says Gooch. “His work comes out of dealing with the separation from Shams and from love and the source of creation, and out of facing death. Rumi’s message cuts through and communicates. I saw a bumper sticker once, with a line from Rumi: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.â€
“Rumi is a very mysterious and provocative poet and figure for our time, as we grapple with understanding the Sufi tradition [and] understanding the nature of ecstasy and devotion and the power of poetry,†says the poet Anne Waldman, co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where she is a professor of poetics. “And the homoerotic tradition as well, consummated or not. He is in a long tradition of ecstatic seers from Sappho to Walt Whitman.â€
“Across time, place and culture, Rumi's poems articulate what it feels like to be alive,†says Lee Briccetti, executive director of Poets House, co-sponsor of a national library series in the US that features Rumi. (It’s currently in Detroit and Queens and heads to San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta and Columbus in 2015.) “And they help us understand our own search for love and the ecstatic in the coil of daily life.†She compares Rumi’s work to Shakespeare’s for its “resonance and beautyâ€.
Coleman Barks, the translator whose work sparked an American Rumi renaissance and made Rumi the best-selling poet in the US, ticks off the reasons Rumi endures: “His startling imaginative freshness. The deep longing that we feel coming through. His sense of humour. There's always a playfulness [mixed] in with the wisdom.â€
In 1976 the poet Robert Bly handed Barks a copy of Cambridge don AJ Arberry’s translation of Rumi and said, “These poems need to be released from their cages.†Barks transformed them from stiff academic language into American-style free verse. Since then, Barks’ translations have yielded 22 volumes in 33 years, including The Essential Rumi, A Year with Rumi, Rumi: The Big Red Book and Rumi’s father’s spiritual diary, The Drowned Book, all published by HarperOne. They have sold more than 2m copies worldwide and have been translated into 23 languages.
A new volume is due in autumn. Rumi: Soul-fury and Kindness, the Friendship of Rumi and Shams Tabriz features Barks’ new translations of Rumi’s short poems (rubai), and some work on the Notebooks of Shams Tabriz, sometimes called The Sayings of Shams Tabriz. “Like the Sayings of Jesus (The Gospel of Thomas), they have been hidden away for centuries,†Barks notes, “not in a red urn buried in Egypt, but in the dervish communities and libraries of Turkey and Iran. Over recent years scholars have begun to organise them and translate them into English.â€
800 years ahead of the times
“Just now,†Barks says, “I feel there is a strong global movement, an impulse that wants to dissolve the boundaries that religions have put up and end the sectarian violence. It is said that people of all religions came to Rumi's funeral in 1273. Because, they said, he deepens our faith wherever we are. This is a powerful element in his appeal now.â€
“Rumi was an experimental innovator among the Persian poets and he was a Sufi master,†says Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early and medieval Sufism at Rutgers University and an award-winning Rumi translator. “This combination of mystical richness and bold adaptations of poetic forms is the key to his popularity today.â€
The first of Rumi’s four main innovations is his direct address to readers in the rare second person, says Mojaddedi. “I think contemporary readers respond well to this directness.â€
Second is his urge to teach: “Readers of ‘inspirational’ literature are drawn to Rumi’s poetry.†Third, “his use of everyday imagery.†And fourth, “his optimism of the attainment of union within his lyrical love ghazals. The convention in that form is to stress its unattainability and the cruel rebuffs of the beloved. Rumi celebrates union.â€
Mojaddedi has completed his translation of three of the six volumes of Rumi’s masterwork, The Masnavi. It is, he said, “the longest single-authored emphatically mystical poem ever written at 26,000 couplets, making it a significant work in its own right. It is also arguably the second most influential text in the Islamic world after the Qu'ran.†The original Persian text was so influential that in Ottoman times a network of institutions was devoted to its study.
As new translations come into print, and his work continues to resonate, Rumi’s influence will continue. His inspiring words remind us how poetry can be a sustaining part of everyday life.
I have hinted a few times earlier the following.
I have been in this world like Alice in Wonderland.
Completely awed, amazed, open mouthed, surprised, astonished and at a loss of words at people's confidence.
How confidently they pursue their views, their objects.
How gigantically they feel self entitled.
I have been completely clueless.
It has taken me nearly half a century to know the answer.
And I am ashamed for that.
And iI had saught all help that I could lay my hands upon.
No one could help me.
Not a soul.
Common people, Scholars, Elders.
None.
I had break my head against the stone wall for all these decades.
To many people the answer would be obvious but no one could pin point it to me.
Of course, as it turns out, the blame too will be hurled back at me for not putting my querry clearly.
That is what this world is. Deceptive, selfish and self-righteous.
I assure you - don't trust it. It has an agenda but will not admit it.
And when you end up in a loss because of it then it will blame you for it.
Just like Iblis, the Satan.
The answer has the simplicity of the enlightenment of Buddha, if we can call it enlightenment.
"What is the cause of Death?", Buddha asked.
"Cause of death is Life", he concluded.
This almost looks like a disappointment but in is enlightenement in its own way.
This much can be concluded without fear of contradiction.
My personal conclusion too is similarly easy.
The secret of people's behaviour is that they are simply selfish and driven by their greed.
Their avarice, covetousness and cupidity.
We live in a selfish world.
This is obvious and I should be really ashamed of not giving it sufficient attention from the beginning.
Allah swt does say, "Verily you love wealth dearly."
So this has not been a secret for fourteen hundred years.
But no one told me about selfishness being the driving force for people.
Not my Muslim seniors including the experienced ones.
I had heard very vehement discources on Fitrah not changing. No one talked about selfishness and its all pervasive presence in society. Including Muslim society.
Non-Muslims are much better in this department.
And that is a matter of collective shame.
Unless I have got the things terribly wrong. My fears are worse. i fear that reality is what I suspect.
We Muslims have not paid sufficient attention to this issue.
In any case no one amongst knowledgeable Muslims emphasised the effects of selfishness sufficiently to me.
Hindus take ambition, a trait closely connected to selfishness, as a negative aspect of personality.
Modern liberal west has Richard Dawkins who has written the ultra famous book the Selfish Gene.
I have spent a full decade with the best of Muslim mystics and heard not a single word about selfishness - positive, negative or perspective wise. Most unfortunately.
No wonder we have no credible defence, let alone refutation, of Richard Dawkins.
This is not a note in favour of altruism. I have not reached very clear cut conclusions in these matters.
But I am certainly surprised that as custodians of Haq, the secret of this world and the hereafter, we should have missed on an issue that is of so crucial an importance as people being driven by selfish interests. Yasir Qadhi did not tell us about it, Nauman Ali Khan did not, late Dr Israr Ahmed did not, Zakir Naik did not, Maulana Tariq Jamil Sahab DB did not, Pir Zulfiqar Ahmed Sahab Naqshbandi DB did not.
At individual level I shall not call it a let down.
I shall not say that Dr Zakir Naik let me or us down.
I shall not say that late Dr Israr Ahmed betrayed me or Ummah.
At collective level I shall assert that our intelleigentsia, both modern and theological, let us down and betrayed.
It is not an individual fault. It is case of collective failure of us as an Ummah not to realise this so critical an aspect.
Of course, once again, the blame can be hurled back at me, "Why did you not realise such an obvious thing yourself?"
I accept the accusation with all humility at my disposal in spite of the fact that I do not assert any claim to be any expert on the issues of Deen. My position is firmly of a Salik.
At the end it will be Munafiqat to not talk about the solutions.
In reality we are not talking about an epidemic.
No, not at all.
This is not a case of an epidemic.
It is certainly a gross reality that must be absorbed in our experience that people are driven my their selfish interests while all the time they might be claiming very lofty ideals on their side.
Freud said that sex is all that drives man. He got it wrong but that is a different issue. Sex is extremely powerful force but that is not all there is.
Similarly selfish interest is an extremely strong driving force in this world.
In most of the people that is the only driving force.
We better acknowledge it.
Then take that into consideration in every affair of our worldly life.
This puts some burden on us and a lot of responsibility.
That we must bear with equanimity - Sabr demands that.
Once that is done, I suppose, we are through this so deblitating an issue.
And I apologize in case i have tired anyone, that was not my intention, I was only communicating my agony.
This cannot be undone and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
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