'The Quest of Companionship'

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While I's sitting with some my friends and our professor on campus, my professor asked me to read out to him verse # 28 of Surah Al-Kahf, from my pocket size English copy of noble Qur'an. It's a single verse, yet from any point-of-view it is a miracle for its expression and the message within it... It says:

28 | And keep thy soul content with those who call on their Lord morning and evening, seeking His Face; and let not thine eyes pass beyond them, seeking the pomp and glitter of this Life; no obey any whose heart We have permitted to neglect the remembrance of Us, one who follows his own desires [or lusts], whose case has gone beyond all bounds. [Emphasis added]

I'm amazed at this word i highlighted when i look at secular legislators; for whatever anti-God laws they profess and implement are nothing but products of lusts of their lower-self, or of masses they wish to please. Such people i see occupying posts of professors in universities and colleges, writing books and articles 'seeking pomp' through ideas - may we not give them the rank of prophets; nay, we do, God forbid. What more is sufficient to prove to modern man of his utter Decadence and Crisis he finds himself in, yet unwillingly even to recognize it.

Nation-state Idoltary

State is only a mean to provide welfare to its people, where education is free, food and medical services are given at least at a minimum level for people to exist, etc. Read Muhammad Asad's Principles of State and Government in Islam and you'll come to know that an Islamic state does all such and other welfare things to its subjects. And never does a Muslim take a state as the purpose of people, rather for him state is a purpose to attain a bigger purpose. But today, state is given the status, along with democracy (or mobocrisy or hypocrisy), of an idol, something that is (profanely) sacred. Founders are made (psuedo) prophets. People are sacrficed to save virtual interests of those in power in the name of Idol called Nationalism. Why am I shown pictures of Muhammad Ali Jinnah everywhere i go? Why am I considered a profane, in so-called patriots' sense of the term, if I criticize the founders? These are just a nominal examples we gave. Otherwise a whole series of books may be written to expose the practices and ideas of idolators of nationalism and nation-state. May Allah save us from all forms of idoltary, give us an understanding of the term as well.

Call of a genuine social scientist homo islamicus

" I cannot live like a social scientist who compartmentalizes his mind and refuses to study life directly. I cannot mis-treat supra-rational, or super-natural experiences i encounter in my life, and by ignoring them dispose them in favor of this compartmentalization of knowledge. i refuse to follow the current fashions of mind which commit such intellectual sins. i rebel against it." (Highly prosaic, phrases not accurate... me "nalaiq")

- my beloved professor...

Rene Guenon on "Tolerance And Freedom Of Thought"

"Let our meaning be quite clear; we have no intention of blaming practical tolerance as applied to individuals, but only theoretic tolerance, which claims to be applied to ideas as well and to recognise the same rights for them all, which if taken logically can only imply a rooted scepticism. Moreover we cannot help noticing that, like all propagandists, the apostles of tolerance, truth to tell, are very often the most intolerant of men. This is what has in fact happened, and it is strangely ironical : those who wished to overthrow all dogma have created for their own use, we will not say a new dogma, but a caricature of dogma, which they have succeeded in imposing on the western world in general; in this way there have been established, under the pretext of "freedom of thought," the most chimerical beliefs that have ever been seen at any time, under the form of these different idols, of which we have just singled out some of the more important.

Of all the superstitions preached by those very people who profess that they never stop inveighing against "superstition," that of "science " and "reason", is the only one which does not seem, at first sight, to be based on sentiment; but there is a kind of rationalism which is nothing more than sentimentalism disguised, as is shown only too well by the passion with which its champions uphold it, and by the hatred which they evince for whatever goes against their inclinations or passes their comprehension, Besides, since rationalism, in any case, corresponds to a lessening of intellectuality, it is natural that its development should go hand in hand with that of sentimentalism..."

- East and West, p.48

What thoughts do you have?

Children of Iran

It's so sad to know that much of Europeans and Americans have been fed with this strange notion that Islam and Muslims are Bedouin Arabs who are up to destroying Western civilizations (when a part of it is influenced historically by Islamic culture as well), and are terrorists, never miss that designation, more than anything else. I do not blame any European and American for that or any other (including modernist/secularist Muslims!), for I blame their environment and age we live in. Many who have converted to Islam, a large majority has been affect deeply by some or any aspect of Islam that which involves some kind of beauty and serenity either in Islamic tenets or in Muslims, or in Islamic architecture. Despite that people have gross misconceptions, that's what I can say, even about the very outlook of Muslims. A German-Russian convert was telling people that Muslims don't look like dark skinned, dark eyes, black hairy people, b'cause a Muslim can be anyone. Yet here's a little photo-presentation of the children of the so-called 'fanatic' and 'isolated' Iranians, BBC and American media propaganda machinery is so obsessed with.

Courtesy: Flickr.

We can live without facts

Winter is getting more cold day by day, night by night, with all its enjoyable mysterious beauties, sometimes quite stern. And as it is becoming difficult for a frail being like me to survive sitting on my desk well outside the warm and charming blanket-shell, late at night, I am getting on with my little 'research' project (although nothing is that unknown) on the TV-consumption-patterns and life priorities of early teen school kids. So naturally, being a victim of university conditioning, I's inclined to consume a term called 'fact' obsessively. Amidst this escalating 'faith' of an immature mind in the soundness of statistical data to know what 'current climate' is, and to make future decisions, comes an almost rescuing 'revelation' once again by my one of favorite writers, philosophers and thinkers Seyyed Hossein Nasr, he says to the effect, just making adding detail to his advanced argument (not mentioned here):

"(As per modern science) Phenomenon are facts, and not ayats or signs of Allah. ... One of the fundamental doctrines of Islam is that all phenomenon are ayat ullah, signs of God. ... There is no word for fact in major Islamic language, Arabic or Persian. So we can live without facts. (Smiles)"

From his lecture, Islam, Science and Cultural Values, delivered at the Library of Congress. See free video here.

Futurism? We're already 'doomed'

Gai Eaton (Hasan 'Abdul Hakim) writes in his King of the Castle: Choice & Responsibility in the Modern World, "...Obsessive concern with the future of the human race is a uniquely modern phenomenon. ... The Muslim does not easily forget that, as men and women, we are all 'doomed' since we must surely die, and that societies, civilisations and worlds are equally mortal: 'Everything that is upon the earth passes away, and there remains only the Face of thy Lord, infinite in Glory and infinite in Bounty.' Eternity is One; and One alone is eternal."

Yet the absurdity that has befallen on Muslim, for which he struggles now-a-days, makes the very idea of death unlikable to him.

The Harm Principle: 'Mein nay kisi ka nuqsan tou nahi kia'

'Mein nay kisi ka nuqsan tou nahi kia (I haven't harmed anyone) is a classical Urdu expression' that is often used to legitimize one's wrong doing, especially if it is a sin in the eyes of Islamic law.

What is interesting to note that the same thing is at the heart of secular moral paradigms, what we know as John Stuart Mill's invention of the harm principle. Harm principle was invented so as to replace God and religion from a being's life. That a being no more needs any religion to guide himself; the only guiding principle s/he needs is the harm principle, i.e., if his/her actions harm anyone, s/he must avoid doing it, but if s/he does something, e.g., watch a nude picture, that doesn't harm anyone else in the society, then it is perfectly moral and permissible to be done. He has not commited sin by seeing nudity, or such other acts which are condemned strongly by his/her religion. If a secular, God-less mentality follows this principle, it doesn't matter to me, but when I see a lot many believers following the same principle with such a conviction unimaginable, it treads my heart. But it should not.

Yet I have to ask: Whom do you harm as Muslim for those sins Mills would've perceived as perfectly ethical? I can tell you: You harm yourself, you harm your Prophet, saw. Does anyone else need to be harmed? But. As if to add the plight of human beings of modern age, such absurd principles are taught in an enchanting manner in our universities by professors whom we deem and welcome as great saviors, "He just did a Ph.D from (wherever)." Satan is most widespread than ever, it seems to be. May Allah save us from the ideologies and philosophies that legitimize sins. Aameen!

Latest innovation of moderns: Man marries video game character

I am a bit depressed at this news, not because "the modern", central character of this incident, is my brother, but what can possibly happen to my own brothers (people), b'cause of the gaming culture? Let's mask ourselves with morbid expressions so as to repel any illusions that may arise by this incident: "[Whoever] reports on the marriage in Japan between a man known as "Sal9000" and [whatever videogame character] in the Nintendo DS simulating game love plus"? Simple, a man has married a video game character, or at least he wishfully thinks, proving how ignorant he is of the soul of marriage!

Who could have done this in whole human history than those human creatures forgetful (ghafil) of the very purpose of life? This incident is a product of a particular civilization, a mind-set, of a different category of human psyche, of an age Rene Guenon termed as the Dark Age. There's nothing but darkness in it, opposite to the light of Ruh Allah, Jesus, pbuh, the symbol of pure spirit. Yet we, people of my society, wish to go there, visit their lands and buildings and structures; yet they're enchanted by the outward charms of a hollow, deeply disturbing civilization.

From childhood, we are here fed with the images of a paradise that is West, or Westernized societies. It is considered to be a big achievement to be one of them, to be there. How foolish! I've been a victim of this misunderstanding too, I only wish to unlearn it. This incident is a nice reminder, and a little helpful too in this process of knowing the nature of things, and living according to it. Allah hu Akbar!

Sunna & The condition of Modern Society

"When we take on the Sunna, and reject flawed patterns of behaviour which have been shaped and guided by the ego and by fantasies of self-imagining, we declare to our Creator that we accept and revere the profound revelation of human flourishing exampled by the Best of Creation. Every act of the Sunna which we may successfully emulate declares that our role model is the man who had no ego, and to whom Allah had given a definitive victory over the forces of darkness. Modernity holds out lifestyle options centred on the self, and on the lower, agitated possibilities of the human condition. Every word of every magazine now breathes the message of the nafs: explore yourself, free yourself, be yourself. Buy a Porsche to express your identity; dress in a Cacharel suit to make a statement about yourself; be seen in the right places. The result, of course, is a society which pursues happiness with great technical brilliance but which puzzles over spiralling rates of suicide, drug abuse, failed relationships, and ever more aberrant forms of self-mutilation.It is a society in denial, a society in pain.

"By taking on the Sunna, a human being accepts a deep and total reorientation. For the Sunna is not one lifestyle option among many, simply an exotic addition to the standard menu. The Sunna tears up the existing menu by defying its assumptions. By living in the Prophetic pattern one pursues a paradigm of excellence that demonstrably brings serenity and fulfillment, and hence silences the babble of the style magazines. Living in credit, knowing one’s neighbours, and holding the event of the Mi‘raj constantly in view, confers membership of Adam’s family of khalifas. Living in debt, chasing mirages, and serving the nafs, renders the human being a definitive failure. We can be higher than the angels, or lower than the animals."

Abdal-Hakim Murad, Seeing with Both Eyes (Text of a Lecture given at a Cardiff conference in May 2000).

By modern society I mean modernity that which goes opposite to the sunna of Prophet, for it is not theo-centric, but anthropocentric, where man is the center of everything.

Learning Islam from the "Objective" International Standard Universities?

About the "grey" thing

"Beware the darkness in the grey areas."

-Abdul Hakim Murad

What I think this aphorism of Shaykh Abdul-Hakim Murad refers to really is what Islam is all about. According to a hadith, it's Islam to abandon things of doubtful nature (of which we have no certainty of its being either halal or haram). It, on another plane, may be a criticism on the general notion of the Muslims that many things lie in the "grey," implying ,as I have observed in my society, that all such things that lie in the grey area between clear Truth and clear Falsehood are things too much complicated to decode that easily, and hence should be left to the 'reason' to suggest the final answer. Practically, the obedience to reason here is by and large nothing but the obedience to our lower self/desires. I have generalized this mental attitude on the basis of observation of only a handful of the brightest people of my society, who are most literate of worldly and religious affairs, well only knowers of the later domain, and may not be the doers necessarily. 'Masses follow the brightest'. (That's a principle I a brilliant friend of mine told me, who is a president of a student organization called ESEF.) Therefore, when truth is obscure we should not tend to overlook that it is darkness that veils light from our sight, which is not a positive element in the equation.

"Boys will be Boys"

Theory of liberation of women and equality of sexes really needs to be revised today. i become more and more convinced of its fallibility the more i study and analyze the nature of the sexes in the light of scientific and anthropological data, and the aftermaths of the so-called liberation movement of women in West. It seems quite clear to me, the result has been more of another kind of enslavement of the female sex with catastrophic consequences for the society at large, a crisis which humanity may never have witnessed before. Shaykh Abdul-Hakim provides a candid, objective analysis of these issues, while also providing Ummah with the critique of Islam on gender-based issues, which if misunderstood at the hands of Western education/prophets of modern education who are storming the lecture rooms iof our "up-to-date," "INTERNATIONAL STANDARD" universities and colleges, can have severe consequences for Muslim community. Shaykh Abdul-Hakim Murad writes:

"I have been asked to offer some comments on gender identity issues as these impact on Muslims living in post-traditional contexts in the West, and particularly as they affect people who have traded up to the Great Covenant of Islam after an upbringing in Judaism or Christianity. The usual way of doing this is by examining issues in the classical fiqh, and explaining how Islam’s discourse of equality functions globally, not on the micro-level of each fiqh ruling. That method is legitimate enough (although as we shall see the concept of ‘equality’ may raise considerable problems), but in general my experience of Muslim talk on gender is that there is too much apologetic abroad, apologetic, that is, in the sense not only of polemical defence, but also of pleas entered in mitigation. What I want to do today is to bypass this recurrent and often tiresome approach, which reveals so much about the low serotonin levels of its advocates, and suggest how as Western Muslims we can construct a language of gender which offers not a defence or mitigation of current Muslim attitudes and establishments, but a credible strategy for resolving dilemmas which the Western thinkers and commentators around us are now meticulously examining.

Let me begin, then, by trying to capture in a few words the current crisis in Western gender discourse. As good a place as any to do this is Germaine Greer’s book The Whole Woman, released in 1999 to an interesting mix of befuddled anger and encomia from the press."

Read the rest of the article here. Its really interesting and eye-opening.