Of a dream, of love, of Sunnah

I dreamed some nights ago in which everything was covered in the darkness of night. i saw a a gang of three children advancing somewhere. i intercepted them and as i came close to them, i observed the youngest one, the most beautiful one. i felt a desire out of my heart, out of love to meet and greet him; so i approached him and like my Prophet cradled him in my arms and tried to kiss him on his cheeks to fulfill, as i said, a natural desire. I kissed him on his right white, fluffy, creamy cheek. But one kiss couldn't suffice. i kissed him, i kissed him again, and i kept trying to kiss him the best way i could until that dream was over, but the fragrance, the awe, the feeling of that most pure form of love is still persistent somehow, no matter how dim... (My bureaucratic instinct tells me that it should made be as a public policy to kiss every child an elder may find on a street, otherwise s/he be punished for being too human.)

When i woke up, i realized, firstly, the usefulness of two lips; secondly, about this particular sunnah (or way) of Prophet Muhammad. (He kissed children walking in streets. Cradled them in his arms, conversed with them, and showed his love for these spiritual teachers, as Hamza Yusuf calls them.) How supreme the sunnah of my Prophet, the Leader of the Poor. Now i weep, I weep for how ignorant i've been of his way, his way of love; now i feel and appreciate the rank of the Prophet, now i understand his Message. Of living according to our fitra. May Allah keep us attached to the way of Prophet, may we become like him...

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.

Know your worth...

...and don't boast. This is the sunna of our Prophet.