Is there any evidence of an Islamic State in Islam?

Hamid Akhtar critiques the Khariji perspective on Islamic state:

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The need for a critical examination of Islamic history and an alternative discourse

The backwards forward

Posted by Nadeem F. Paracha

There is an urgent need in the Muslim world to think anew about a lot of issues, not to appease the West, but to co

There is an informative debate show on a local private channel called Alif. The show is mostly about the various philosophies of Islam and their place in Pakistan and rest of the Muslim world. A moderator usually invites up to four intellectuals every week, with two of them usually being ‘moderate’ in outlook while the other two guests hold a more conservative view on the discussed topic.

Even though it is one of the more academically sound Islamic programmes compared to the myopic disasters viewers are bombarded with in this respect, Alif almost always ends up hitting an intellectual dead-end.

The reason for this is the common consensus Muslim scholars of all shades have had on the traditional version of Islamic history. So no mater how diverse their views and interpretations of what constitutes Islamic philosophy and law, they all usually end up with almost exactly the same agreement on Islamic traditions that emerged some time in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, after which the ‘gates of ijtihad’ were said to be closed.

However, many modern Islamic scholars have now started to point out that the roots of political and social problems that the Muslim communities started to face after Muslim imperialism began its decline after the eighteenth century can be traced to the laws, politics and social bearings constructed from the pitfalls of the consensus reached among various Islamic schools of thought on what constitutes Islamic history and tradition.

They believe that this history and the traditions that it cemented stopped being investigated critically and thus ended up creating gaping misconceptions and leaps of logic about what Islam meant and how it was practiced during the Prophet’s time.

In other words, the history of early Islam that is taught to every Muslim child and is taken as the primary source by almost all Muslim scholars and historians was never put to any serious intellectual test and modern investigative methods.

On the other hand, western historians, while investigating the theological history of early Christianity, tried to a understand the ‘historical Jesus’ in place of the ‘theological Jesus’ whom they discovered (and claim) was different from his historical self.

The theological Jesus, they figured, had very little to do with the actual events in history and was more a creation of Christian priests and scholars who appeared almost two generations after Jesus. According to these historians, the theological version of Jesus was formed for political and evangelical reasons in which the person of Jesus was exaggerated and his personality molded according to social and political norms and nuances of the time when early Christian priests were formulating the personality of Jesus through their exegeses of the Bible and the Gospels.

Early Islamic history has hardly ever been treated and investigated in this manner. Some early attempts were made between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, but these attempts were largely the work of Christian apologists who failed to take an unbiased and objective view of the subject and generated their work more as a way to pitch the ‘authenticity of Christian history’ against that of Islam.

However, in the twentieth century, small groups of secular European academics and scholars picked up the pieces and started to investigate early Islamic history using the academic methods historians and anthropologists use to study non-theological history. So far the results have been startling, and many progressive Muslim scholars and historians too have agreed to some of what the rigorous investigations and secular study of early Islamic history has generated.

The most controversial among the investigators was the late Dr John Wansbrough, a leading historian and researcher at London’s prestigious SOAS institute. Though controversial, Wansbrough triggered an academic wave in which a number of respected historians and scholars started studying early Islamic history with the same academic and investigative tools with which historians study the historical context of the Bible and with which general history is studied and its authenticity determined. Wansbrough was at once criticised by Muslim academia for undermining the importance of primary Muslim sources in his study.

Other leading historians in this respect have been Prof. Patricia Crone, Martin Hinds, Michael Cook and Prof. G R. Hawting – people whose critical look at early Islamic history has been largely respected by a number of modern Islamic scholars.

The meeting point where these western academics and many progressive Muslim scholars have managed to reach is the fact that almost all early Islamic history is based on just a single complete biography written on the life of the Prophet. It appeared in 750 CE (by Ibn Ishaq), or about a century and a half after the demise of the Prophet. In fact, this biography has only survived in the writings of Ibn Hisham, who wrote a biography of the Prophet in early ninth Century.

Modern western and Muslim scholars now believe that the accuracy of these biographies is unascertainable because instead of any written documents, Ishaq and Hisham used memorised accounts of the life of Prophet Muhammad (hadiths) as sources.

Historians now view the hadiths with caution, insisting that they cannot be taken as accurate historical sources because they first started to be documented more than a century after the Prophet’s demise.

The reason why early biographers of the Prophet, and early Islamic lawmakers who used hadith accounts to formulate the shariah, could not use any tangible written documents (other than the Qu’ran) was that even a hundred years after the demise of the Prophet there were almost no documented Muslim sources at all about early Islam. Ibn Ishaq’s biography is the only surviving source (written 130 years after the Prophet).

Modern Muslim and western scholarship studying Islam believes that Islam’s progressive evolution was mutated and it became increasingly static after ulema started to compare the human condition of their time with a rather romanticised version of Islam’s early history that was constructed purely on memorised accounts. Accounts that were first put to writing more than a century after the Prophet are likely to have gone through various lapses.

Scholars like Wansbrough, Crone, Hinds, Prof. Ziauddin Sardar, Mohammad Arkoun, and authors such as Irshan Manji, Sumanto Al Qurtuby, and Rashad Khalifa believe most of these memorised accounts of the Prophet and of life under the first four Caliphs were documented more than a century after the Prophet’s demise and then ‘projected back to the time of the Prophet.’

The reason to do so were largely political because at the time Islam was a rapidly expanding imperialist force and needed a politico-religious anchor, especially in the conquered lands that had different (or opposing) faiths as dominant religions.

This tradition was carried across all major stages of Muslim imperialism and the Islamic doctrines were further expanded through scholarly assumptions about life under the Prophet and the ‘rightly guided Caliphs.’ The hadith remained the primary source.

At the decline of Muslim imperialism some time in the late eigteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, the narratives on which much of Islamic history, philosophy and law were constructed during the imperial phase started to seem static, especially in the face of former Muslim powers coming under waves of western imperialism.

Islamic Scholars and leaders appealed for a return to the basics in an attempt to reform Islam and Muslim societies that they now thought had been ‘adulterated’ by their long imperialist exposure to the rituals of other religions.

The hadith still played the primary role in this respect, but many reformist scholars and leaders now chose the more conservative hadiths to transform Islamic law into a harsher article of faith and legislation, believing these would help Muslim societies ‘retain their true identities’ under western imperialism.

That said, there were also reformists who found Imperialist Islamic dictates to have become static and decadent and they wanted to ‘modernise’ Islam by trying to adopt modern western laws and technology.

But since both these strains of Muslim reformists continued appealing to the nostalgia of Islamic imperialism’s heyday, and to the more mythical narratives of ‘perfect Islam’ under the four ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs,’ the historical and legislative doctrines of Islam based on the conservative reformists’ views managed to bag a more attentive audience in Muslim societies. It is out of these doctrines that concepts like Political Islam would eventually emerge. A concept whose more retarded strains are what we now call Islamic militancy and ‘Islamo-fascism.’

Interestingly, Islamic reformists too continued to draw their legislative, political and historical conclusions from eighth- and ninth-century hearsay accounts as if modern society was still responding to medieval impulses.

Consequently, even today many Muslim historians and lawmakers carry on defining theshariah and Islamic history using a history constructed from memorised and backwardly projected accounts of the Prophet.

Most progressive Muslim scholars however, have pleaded for a more investigative look at Islam’s early history without the use of eighth- and ninth-century perspectives. To do that they beseech the need to be much more cautious about memorised accounts based on simple hearsay. They say that the hadith should be used watchfully and, perhaps, only when it supports or expands the teachings of the Qur’an and not as a legislative response to the political and social dynamics of modernity that can only leave Muslim societies hanging in a limbo between mythical historical narratives and modern material impulses.

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.

An alternative discourse

By Ayesha Siddiqa
Friday, 02 Oct, 2009 (Dawn)ntribute to the internal political discourse. –Online

A Few months ago, I met a three-member team from a UK-based think tank called Quilliam. Based in London, the organisation claims to be the first counter-terrorism think tank in the world. It was started by two young Muslims, Ed Hussain and Maajid Nawaz, who were formerly part of the Islamist organisation Hizbut Tahrir (HT). They are now dedicated to weaning Muslim youth away from global jihad and towards peace.

It was interesting listening to Maajid Nawaz who had come to Pakistan to talk about his experience as a member of HT. He said he used to visit Pakistan to recruit people in the military and in government for the global jihad. It was during a period of incarceration that Nawaz said he saw the light and decided to wean people away from jihad.

Luckily for the two men, the British government was able to provide funding to set up Quilliam. Now they both go around the world with a missionary zeal to spread another kind of message. Their aim is also to bridge the gap between the Muslim world and the West.

The Quilliam team’s trip to Pakistan was aimed at visiting universities where Maajid Nawaz spoke to students about how he was wrong in supporting global jihad. Earlier, the organisation had funded a conference of the vice-chancellors of various Pakistani universities to convince them of the project that Nawaz later undertook.

The organisation is certainly an interesting idea. But it might not take off in the Muslim world because of its inherent shortcomings. To start with, the think tank has no input from within the Muslim world, which makes it a foreign concept. The problem is that a foreign idea tends to attract negative attention. Quilliam seems to represent the foreign frustration at the lack of an alternative discourse in the Muslim world. It has tried to start the discourse by providing these former HT members with a forum.

However, the lack of real contacts inside the Muslim world turns this into a venture without depth. For instance, in their eagerness to establish contacts and work amongst the youth, Quilliam has partnered organisations in Pakistan with little or no credibility. Another noticeable flaw is that since it is unable to get respectable names from the Muslim world on board, the organisation will not be able to achieve much to please its donors. Besides the two names mentioned earlier, there is no significant name on Quilliam’s team that would generate positive attention.

It would be foolhardy to pretend that there is no scope of an alternative debate of ideas in the Muslim world or people are not capable of doing that. Quilliam could, in fact, build itself as a neutral forum to develop ideas across the Muslim world or even between the Muslim world and the West. Surely, a well-funded organisation can make better use of its resources than just telling the HT story.

At a conceptual level there are two issues worth considering. First, an alternative discourse to curb violence will have to see that rebellion within the Muslim world is partly (if not entirely) driven by a post-colonial discourse, especially where the Muslim population is faced with brutality and is struggling for survival. People in such places cannot be dissuaded from fighting militarily until and unless there is also a new discourse on the other side regarding the solution of the problem.

More importantly, in many places the post-colonial discourse dovetails into an anti-imperialist debate. The problem is that religion becomes a tool that people don’t want to abandon because of the absence of an alternative ideology or set of ideas.

Second, it goes without saying that there is a real need for a new discourse within the Muslim world on numerous issues starting from the concept of the state, war and peace to social norms and economic life. Historically, the Muslim world was progressive due to the independence of academic institutions when it came to arriving at new concepts. Even in the recent past institutions like Al Azhar in Egypt were to be taken note of for encouraging new ideas.

However, it is also a fact that the formulation of ideas in the Muslim world has stopped or taken a peculiar direction as far as political thought is concerned. The bulk of the interpretation of religious texts has been driven by the post-colonial ethos of societies and thinkers.

At this juncture, there is an urgent need in the Muslim world to think anew about a lot of issues, not to appease the West, but to contribute to the internal political discourse. Issues such as the link between religion and politics in an Islamic state or war and conflict involving a Muslim state, or the position of non-Muslims in an Islamic state are matters which require a rethink.

It is not that finding a new direction is not possible. For instance, there have been Muslim scholars in the past such as Abd Al-Razik at Al Azhar who came up with revolutionary ideas regarding the political character of a Muslim state, especially in the context of the link between religion and politics. Though his ideas in the 1930s were not pursued as they were considered too revolutionary, there are newer thinkers who have contributed fresh input to the concept of an Islamic state.

It is unfortunate that most of this discussion is taking place outside the Muslim world by Muslim scholars. It needs to be brought into and made part of the mainstream.

Perhaps organisations such as Quilliam could become a forum for the exchange of ideas, rather than just doing what many might regard as a foreign conspiracy. But then, one is also forced to wonder why, despite the riches of the Muslim world, we are unable to create a forum that would allow Muslims to talk amongst themselves and voice new ideas.

Of course Muslim states in the Middle East and the Gulf fund research initiatives at foreign universities such as the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. However, it is important to bring new ideas and discussion to the heart of the Muslim world if a change is to be brought about or if the social and political development of Muslims is the goal. Until new ideas are generated and discussed, Muslims can hardly hope to flourish or progress.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.
ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

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A beautiful Naat: Kalam Imam Zain-ul-Abideen (A.S.)

Recited by : Mian Sheharyar PTV

Hazrat Imam Zain-ul-Abidin was the eldest son of Hazrat Imam Husain (A.S.). His mother was the Persian princess Hazrat Shahr Banu (R.A.).

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Islam, Ziaism and hypocrisy: A matter of faith

A matter of faith —Salman Tarik Kureshi

It is the frightful institutions General Zia-ul Haq promoted and the retrograde educational systems he erected that have polluted the intellectual atmosphere of the land and given birth to today’s bigoted, obscurantist political culture

It is the month we in this part of the world have known for centuries as ‘Ramzan Sharif’, but which we now find corrected to ‘Ramadan-ul Kareem’. The prayer-time congregations at the big mosque near my home, which comprise numerous members of Karachi’s uber-bourgeoisie alongside more ordinary mortals, are significantly larger than usual.

The frequent discourse of the Pesh Imam who leads the prayers here concerns the Houris in Paradise, in praise of whom he becomes quite ecstatic, extolling their various charms in terms that are vividly physical. His other pet topic relates to the valiant warriors in Swat and Waziristan who are battling against the forces of Evil (he is not, let it be noted, referring to the armed forces of our Islamic Republic). He also sometimes speaks of a certain “tall Ghazi” in the mountains, on whom he invokes the Almighty’s blessings.

Some among the regular congregation at this particular place of worship do find these perorations excessive. But the mosque in question was set up by a certain friendly Islamic country (one known to give royal welcomes to former dictators) and is managed by their Consular Office. Its affairs are therefore beyond intervention by mere members of a congregation. Or is it merely the superstitious guilt of our tax-evading, bribe-negotiating elite that ensures the passive silence of the congregation?

This holiest of months also brings to my mind a certain exceedingly pious gentleman of my acquaintance. More than pious, he is regarded by his friends as something of an authority on matters to do with the Faith. Knowledgeable and especially well read, he greatly admires Hazrat Maulana Rashid Gangohi, the outstanding scholar who was one of the founders of the Deoband madrassa. The gentleman to whom I refer is a kindly soul, who can be depended upon for help by others. However, when in the course of conversation I chanced to remark that the most basic virtue lay in kindness towards others, he contradicted me. Kindness, he contended, was reserved for “pious, practicing Muslims”. As for others, they should be given a chance to mend their ways, after which “they would be Wajibul Qatal”.

Another person I chanced to meet — a finance man, no less — feels that people who do not attend Friday prayers “should simply be killed. Slit their throats!”

Now, this kind of sanguinary verbal ferocity is very different from the traditions of quiet piety and gentle acceptance in which most Muslims were brought up. I claim no expertise to suggest whether this or the other is the ‘correct’ version of Islamic thinking. However, there are certainly many scholars who hold that this aggressive literalism, popularly but incorrectly referred to as ‘fundamentalism’, is a doctrinal innovation of relatively recent origin. It is very much a product of the linear, pseudo-logical thinking that has characterised our violent and intolerant age — an age that began with the full flowering of modern imperialism in the nineteenth century and whose baleful cultural and psychic responses have long outlived their origins.

With this kind of intellectual legacy as a backdrop, what kind of political discourse is possible in Pakistan?

Well, as I pointed out in an earlier offering in these pages, the first political statement of the new Pakistani nation, as expressed by its founder addressing the first session of the new parliament, revolved around policy statements on law and order, black-marketing, corruption and nepotism without reference to any kind of ‘religious’ perspective. The latter was dismissed by the Quaid, stating that “All these angularities of the...Hindu community and the Muslim community...will vanish... not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

In the three decades between the Quaid’s death and the overthrow and murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the political debate, one of sometimes cyclonic intensity, revolved around perfectly worldly preoccupations, such as land reform, economic growth, adult franchise, constitutional rule, human rights and the rights of the federating units. Whether Nazimuddin or Ayub or Bhutto was in power, whether he was opposed by Suhrawardy or Mujib or Wali Khan or Bhashani, no specifically ‘Islamic’ nostrum was proposed by way of a solution to national problems. The key political actors all proposed alternate paths to modernisation and propounded contemporary ideologies.

It seems that this kind of ‘Islamic’ thinking was simply not a part of the Pakistani frame of reference, except among a tiny minority. More important, no one accused the other of being a ‘bad’ Muslim, or even thought to suggest that any person was Wajibul Qatal. The Islamic preoccupation (that so seems to obsess us today) was simply not one of the terms of the debate.

But something changed on the July 5, 1977, when we first heard the usurper of the day snarling on the media about his preference for what he called ‘an Islamic system’. It is the frightful institutions he thereafter promoted and the retrograde educational systems he erected that have polluted the intellectual atmosphere of the land and given birth to today’s bigoted, obscurantist political culture and its poisonous fallouts of violent insurgency, terrorism and cold-blooded mass murder.

Now, I am not suggesting that the Pesh Imam I described or any of the well-heeled members of his congregation are even remotely responsible for the horrific waves of violence and destruction continually convulsing the land. But is there not a kind of philosophical connection, a tacit acceptance that such acts of violence, and the war being waged against the state of Pakistan by these elements, are regrettable but somehow ‘understandable’?

While no comparison is being made or even suggested, is it far-fetched to see a kind of rhetorical-philosophical continuum connecting the fulminations of Maulvi Sufi Mohammed to the khatibs of Lal Masjid and still further on to the Pesh Imam I have written about here? Still more disturbing is the silence with which this Pesh Imam’s sermons are greeted by the genteel members of his congregation. Is their/our silence indifference or consent? Certainly, it is a key part of the enabling environment of terror.

To return to 1977, General Zia-ul Haq’s seizure of power was a pivotal point in our history. That seizure was ‘legitimised’ by the courts of this tragic land. The judges who were unwilling to oblige him (and even some like CJ Anwarul Haq of the Doctrine of Necessity fame, who perverted their oaths in his behalf) were removed through a Provisional Constitution Order. Sound familiar? His appalling constitutional innovations and the barbaric laws he promoted were enacted into statutes by the hand-picked, rubber stamp parliament he conjured into being...and then himself dismissed. He promoted and funded the massive multiplication of terrorist-factory madrassas. Even the ‘normal’ educational institutions suffered distortion of their syllabi, toxic textbooks and a total rewriting of the very history of this land of ours.

Finally, there are two points I would invite my reader to note. The first is that this usurper did all that he did against a popular, constitutionally empowered prime minister and parliament and under the shadow of the recently enacted Article 6. Please observe that all proved powerless to stop him.

The second point is that this most retrograde of dictators ruled virtually unshaken for over eleven years...challenged only, but without any diminution of his tenure or his power, by the Bhutto family and the women of this country. It seemed as if he could have been ruling for the rest of our lives. His death was an unexpected, unearned release for the people.

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet. (Daily Times)

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Nadeem Paracha: Secular Blunders

Secular blunders

Nadeem F. Paracha
Sunday, 05 Jul, 2009 | 01:44 AM PST

Instead of containing the Islamist parties, ZABs constitutional concessions only emboldened them. — File Photo

The late President Anwar El-Sadat of Egypt was assassinated in 1981 by a faction of Egypt’s leading Islamist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. The irony is that this was the same organisation that Sadat had purposefully patronised.

He had replaced the charismatic Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser as the President of Egypt after Nasser died in 1970. Nasser had ruled the country as a popular president between 1952 and 1970, leaving behind a legacy of staunch secular/socialist Arab nationalism.

Though Nasser remained popular till his death, the glow of his influence across assorted Muslim and Third World countries was somewhat dimmed when Egyptian and Syrian armed forces backed by the Soviet Union were decimated in the 1967 war against Israel. Though Sadat had helped Nasser in toppling the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, and was also an integral part of Nasser’s socialist/secular policies, he initiated a shift. In Sadat’s view, Nasser’s socialist model could not sustain the new sombre realities that had surfaced after the 1967 war.

Sadat’s move towards the western economic model was welcomed by the country’s urban bourgeoisie, but it was vehemently challenged by the pro-Nasser and left-wing student groups and the Arab media. To neutralise the pro-Nasser and left-wing challenge to his shifting policies on campuses and in the print media, Sadat brought back to life one of the staunchest anti-Nasser and anti-left forces in Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood had been greatly radicalised by its second generation leadership led by the teachings of Syed Qutb. He had posed the biggest challenge to Nasser’s socialism and the regime’s pro-Soviet and secular make-up. However, after Nasser’s death, Sadat tactfully let loose the Brotherhood, using state power to help the organisation infiltrate campuses and the media.

To appease the organisation, Sadat instructed the state-owned radio and TV channels to not only start regular religious programmes, but to also show as many images as possible of him saying his prayers at a mosque. Sadat also lifted the ban on various Muslim Brotherhood magazines and newspapers. All this was done to soften Egypt’s pro-Soviet and Nasserite image and to mollify concerns of the West and Egypt’s new allies such as the oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

Immediately after Egypt’s 1973 war with Israel — in which Sadat (falsely) claimed to have defeated the enemy — he completely pulled Egypt out from the Soviet camp. However, in 1977 when Sadat, in an unprecedented move, agreed to make formal peace with Israel, the Brotherhood became Sadat’s biggest enemy. Eventually, in 1981, he was assassinated by members of the Brotherhood — ironically the very organisation he had encouraged to nullify the perceived communist threat to his regime.

Something similar happened in Pakistan as well. In the 1970 elections, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party had routed the Islamic parties. But by 1973 Bhutto was under pressure from the PPP’s leading ideologues, asking him to hasten the regime’s socialist agenda. In response, Bhutto purged the PPP of its radical founding members. He then came under the influence of the party’s ‘conservative wing’ that encouraged him to appease his staunchest opponents, the Islamists, (especially the Jamat-i-Islami), which had declared the PPP’s socialism as 'un-Islamic.'

Though in private, Bhutto accused the Islamic parties of being 'anti-socialist American stooges,' in public he went along with some of his advisers’ counsel and declared the Ahmaddiyya community non-Muslim, naively believing this concession would appease and contain his Islamist opponents. The truth is, the Islamists were only emboldened by this gesture.

Also, while purging the left-wing radicals in the PPP (from 1974 onwards), Bhutto is also said to have ‘allowed’ the student-wing of the Jamat, the IJT, to establish a strong foothold on campuses which, till then, were mostly dominated by radical left-wing student groups such as the NSF.

Bhutto, like Sadat, had ignored the Islamist challenge to his regime, and seemed more concerned about imaginary 'Soviet/ Indian-backed groups.' His pragmatic indulgence in this regard had the reverse effect. Instead of containing the Islamist parties, his constitutional concessions only emboldened them. Not surprisingly, he was toppled by a reactionary general whom he had handpicked himself, shortly after the Islamist parties unleashed a countrywide movement against the PPP regime in 1976, calling for Sharia rule.

These are just two brief examples of the blunders committed by certain leading secular Muslim leaders that annihilated the over-blown left-wing and secular challenges by regenerating and using Islamist forces against them. This created daunting political and ideological vacuums in societies that were eventually filled by reactionary military regimes, rejuvenated Islamist forces and, eventually, a new breed of extremism — the sort that now worked towards grabbing state power and carving out a theological hegemony, based on mythical and Utopian illusions about an eternal ‘Islamic State.’

Pakistan and Egypt are prime examples; two of the many Muslim republics now desperately trying to reinvigorate moderate and secular forces to open a consensual front against extremism that was once state-sanctioned, to bludgeon opposing secular forces.

One wonders if it is already too late to do that; or if there are any worthwhile progressive sections in society today, in these countries, who can once again demonstrate the same boldness and imagination that they exhibited in the construction of their respective countries’ nationalism before their downfall. (Dawn, 5 July 2009)

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Qasida Burda Sharif - dedicated to the Master of the Universe

In loving memory of our beloved Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (peace be upon him and his progeny)

Introduction: Ya Adhemeen by Ahmed Bukhatir
The Music/Ode: Mawlay by Muhammad al-Husyan
Video by: Hamza Mehmood


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Eid Milad-un-Nabi Mubarak. Mawlid celebrations...

This site has moved to http://criticalppp.com, click this link if you are not redirected
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Khurshid Nadeem: Are Muslim rulers American agents?

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In search of peace: From Middle East to South Asia - By Khurshid Nadeem

The need for intra-Islamic dialogue





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Allama Iqbal: Is he relevant?

A very interesting, critical essay by Yasser Latif Hamdani


Allama Iqbal: Is he relevant?
By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Is Allama Iqbal relevant to us?Given the current turmoil, which has made it abundantly clear that the people of Pakistan desire a truly representative democratic civilian order, the question above has become very relevant. Essentially - this begs four questions that ought to be answered to understand the relevance of Allama Iqbal to Pakistan today.

1. What were Iqbal’s views on democracy and how did they fit into the overall Iqbalian-Ijtehadi Islamic thought ?

2. How and why did Iqbal become the national poet and philosopher of Pakistan ?

3. What has been the nature of criticism of Iqbalian thought in Pakistan?

4. What is the future of Iqbalian thought in Pakistan?

Read on:

http://hotelmohenjodaro.blogspot.com/2009/02/allama-iqbal-is-he-relevant.html
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Obama vows to listen to Muslims: Obama's first interview as president (Al-Arabiya TV exclusive)

Obama's first interview as president (Al-Arabiya TV exclusive)



Obama vows to listen to Muslims
By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: January 27 2009

Barack Obama on Monday night granted an Arabic-language television channel his first formal interview as president – an unprecedented gesture that appeared aimed at offering the Muslim world a sharp contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Mr Obama, who in his inaugural address last week promised the Muslim world a “new way forward based on mutual respect and mutual interest”, told the Al Arabiya television channel that his administration wanted listen to the Muslim world and re-examine America’s “preconceptions” towards the region.

Mr Obama also went further than he had at any point during the general election in speaking openly about his own personal ties to the Muslim world.

“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” he told the Saudi-owned station. “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”

Mr Obama spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, which is widely tipped to be the first majority-Muslim country he will visit within his first 100 days in office.

He pledged his strong backing for the peace brokering efforts of George Mitchell, the former Senator, whom he appointed last week as his special envoy for the Israel and Palestine. Mr Mitchell is expected to visit the region within the next few days.

Mr Obama implicitly conceded in the interview that terms such as “war on terror” had proved counter-productive over the last seven years. “The language we use matters,” he said. “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down. But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.”

Just five days into office, Mr Obama has issued several executive orders declaring an end to torture and closure of Guantanamo Bay among steps including permitting US aid agencies to promote family planning after an eight-year hiatus.

The new president has also appointed envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan.

In the midst of intense negotiations with Congress to push through an $825bn stimulus package, Mr Obama also on Monday offered a big boost to the environmental lobby by unblocking a Bush-era waiver that allows California and other states to impose higher carbon emission standards on industry.

The interview with Al Arabiya is likely to further antagonise conservative Republican critics of Mr Obama, who have already attacked his move to close Guantanamo within a year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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Karbala and the Imam Hussain in Persian and Indo-Muslim literature, including the poetry of Allama Iqbal - By Annemarie Schimmel

For a detailed account of Iqbal's poetry on Ahlul-Bayt (A.S.), read the following article:

http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2009/01/allama-iqbal-on-ahlul-bayt-including.html

....

Annemarie Schimmel, Allama Muhammad Iqbal and the significance of Karbala

In this era of the qehtur-rijal, we needed to have voices such as Iqbal and Schimmel. Instead, we have "scholars" such as Dr. Israr Ahmed and Dr. Zakir Naik who try to play down the significance of Karbala as Haroon-ur-Rashid alluded to in his column in Jang today 6 Jan 2009.

The following is Annemarie Schimmel's article on Karbala and Imam Hussain, based on her analysis of the Indo-Persian literature including the poetry of Allama Iqbal.



Karbala and the Imam Husayn in Persian and Indo-Muslim literature

Annemarie Schimmel
Harvard University
Al-Serat, Vol XII (1986)

I still remember the deep impression which the first Persian poem I ever read in connection with the tragic events of Karbala' left on me. It was Qaani's elegy which begins with the words:

'What is raining? Blood.
Who? The eyes.
How? Day and night.
Why? From grief.
Grief for whom?
Grief for the king of Karbala'

This poem, in its marvellous style of question and answer, conveys much of the dramatic events and of the feelings a pious Muslim experiences when thinking of the martyrdom of the Prophet's beloved grandson at the hands of the Umayyad troops.

The theme of suffering and martyrdom occupies a central role in the history of religion from the earliest time. Already, in the myths of the ancient Near East, we hear of the hero who is slain but whose death, then, guarantees the revival of life: the names of Attis and Osiris from the Babylonian and Egyptian traditions respectively are the best examples for the insight of ancient people that without death there can be no continuation of life, and that the blood shed for a sacred cause is more precious than anything else. Sacrifices are a means for reaching higher and loftier stages of life; to give away parts of one's fortune, or to sacrifice members of one's family enhances one's religious standing; the Biblical and Qur'anic story of Abraham who so deeply trusted in God that he, without questioning, was willing to sacrifice his only son, points to the importance of such sacrifice. Iqbal was certainly right when he combined, in a well known poem in Bal-i Jibril (1936), the sacrifice of Ismail and the martyrdom of Husayn, both of which make up the beginning and the end of the story of the Ka'ba.

Taking into account the importance of sacrifice and suffering for the development of man, it is not surprising that Islamic history has given a central place to the death on the battlefield of the Prophet's beloved grandson Husayn, and has often combined with that event the death by poison of his elder brother Hasan. In popular literature we frequently find both Hasan and Husayn represented as participating in the battle of Karbala', which is historically wrong, but psychologically correct.

It is not the place here to discuss the development of the whole genre of marthiya and taziya poetry in the Persian and Indo-Persian world, or in the popular Turkish tradition. But it is interesting to cast a glance at some verses in the Eastern Islamic tradition which express predominantly the Sunni poets' concern with the fate of Husayn, and echo, at the same time, the tendency of the Sufis to see in him a model of the suffering which is so central for the growth of the soul.

The name of Husayn appears several times in the work of the first great Sufi poet of Iran, Sana'i (d. 1131). Here, the name of the martyred hero can be found now and then in connection with bravery and selflessness, and Sana'i sees him as the prototype of the shahid, higher and more important than all the other shahids who are and have been in the world:

Your religion is your Husayn, greed and wish are your pigs and dogs
You kill the one, thirsty, and nourish the other two. [Divan, p. 655]

This means that man has sunk to such a lowly state that he thinks only of his selfish purposes and wishes and does everything to fondle the material aspects of his life, while his religion, the spiritual side of his life, is left without nourishment, withering away, just like Husayn and the martyrs of Karbala' were killed after nobody had cared to give them water in the desert. This powerful idea is echoed in other verses, both in the Divan and in the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa; but one has to be careful in one's assessment of the long praise of Husayn and the description of Karbala' as found in the Hadiqa, as they are apparently absent from the oldest manuscripts of the work, and may have been inserted at some later point. This, however, does not concern us here. For the name of the hero, Husayn, is found in one of the central poems of Sana'is Divan, in which the poet describes in grand images the development of man and the long periods of suffering which are required for the growth of everything that aspires to perfection. It is here that he sees in the 'street of religion' those martyrs who were dead and are alive, those killed by the sword like Husayn, those murdered by poison like Hasan (Divan 485).

The tendency to see Husayn as the model of martyrdom and bravery continues, of course, in the poetry written after Sana'i by Persian and Turkish mystics, and of special interest is one line in the Divan of 'Attar (nr. 376) in which he calls the novice on the path to proceed and go towards the goal, addressing him:

Be either a Husayn or a Mansur.

That is, Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, the arch-martyr of mystical Islam, who was cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922. He, like his namesake Husayn b. 'Ali, becomes a model for the Sufi; he is the suffering lover, and in quite a number of Sufi poems his name appears alongside that of Husayn: both were enamoured by God, both sacrificed themselves on the Path of divine love, both are therefore the ideal lovers of God whom the pious should strive to emulate. Ghalib skillfully alludes to this combination in his tawhid qasida:

God has kept the ecstatic lovers like Husayn and Mansur in the place of gallows and rope, and cast the fighters for the faith, like Husayn and 'Ali, in the place of swords and spears: in being martyrs they find eternal life and happiness and become witnesses to God's mysterious power.

This tradition is particularly strong in the Turkish world, where the names of both Husayns occur often in Sufi songs.

Turkish tradition, especially in the later Bektashi order, is deeply indebted to Shi'i Islam; but it seems that already in some of the earliest popular Sufi songs in Turkey, those composed by Yunus Emre in the late 13th or early 14th century, the Prophet's grandsons played a special role. They are described, in a lovely song by Yunus, as the 'fountain head of the martyrs', the 'tears of the saints', and the 'lambs of mother Fatima'. Both of them, as the 'kings of the eight paradises', are seen as the helpers who stand at Kawthar and distribute water to the thirsting people, a beautiful inversion of Husayn suffering in the waterless desert of Karbala'. (Yunus Emre Divani, p. 569.)

The well known legend according to which the Prophet saw Gabriel bring a red and a green garment for his two grandsons, and was informed that these garments pointed to their future deaths through the sword and poison respectively, is mentioned in early Turkish songs, as it also forms a central piece of the popular Sindhi manaqiba which are still sung in the Indus Valley. And similar in both traditions are the stories of how the boys climbed on their grandfather Prophet's back, and how he fondled them. Thus, Hasan and Husayn appear, in early Turkish songs, in various, and generally well known images, but to emphasize their very special role, Yunus Emre calls them 'the two earrings of the divine Throne'. (Divan, p. 569)

The imagery becomes even more colourful in the following centuries when the Shi'i character of the Bektashi order increased and made itself felt in ritual and poetical expression. Husayn b. 'Ali is 'the secret of God', the 'light of the eyes of Mustafa' (thus Seher Abdal, 16th cent.), and his contemporary, Hayreti, calls him, in a beautiful marthiya, 'the sacrifice of the festival of the greater jihad'. Has not his neck, which the Prophet used to kiss, become the place where the dagger fell?

The inhabitants of heaven and earth shed black tears today.
And have become confused like your hair, O Husayn.

Dawn sheds its blood out of sadness for Husayn, and the red tulips wallow in blood and carry the brandmarks of his grief on their hearts ... (Ergun, Bektasi sairleri, p. 95).

The Turkish tradition and that in the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent are very similar. Let us have a look at the development of the marthiya, not in the major literary languages, but rather in the more remote parts of the subcontinent, for the development of the Urdu marthiya from its beginnings in the late 16th century to its culmination in the works of Sauda and particularly Anis and Dabir is well known. In the province of Sind, which had a considerable percentage of Shi'i inhabitants, Persian marthiyas were composed, as far as we can see, from around 1700 onwards. A certain'Allama (1682-1782), and Muhammad Mu'in T'haro are among the first marthiya-gus mentioned by the historians, but it is particularly Muhammad Muhsin, who lived in the old, glorious capital of lower Sind, Thatta, with whose name the Persian marthiya in Sind is connected. During his short life (1709-1750), he composed a great number of tarji'band and particularly salam, in which beautiful, strong imagery can be perceived:

The boat of Mustafa's family has been drowned in blood;
The black cloud of infidelity has waylaid the sun;
The candle of the Prophet was extinguished by the breeze of the Kufans.

But much more interesting than the Persian tradition is the development of the marthiya in Sindhi and Siraiki proper. As Christopher Shackle has devoted a long and very informative article on the Multani marthiya, I will speak here only on some aspects of the marthiya in Sindhi. As in many other fields of Sindhi poetry, Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif of Bhit (1689-1752) is the first to express ideas which were later taken up by other poets. He devoted Sur Kedaro in his Hindi Risalo to the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet, and saw the event of Karbala' as embedded in the whole mystical tradition of Islam. As is his custom, he begins in media res, bringing his listeners to the moment when no news was heard from the heroes:

The moon of Muharram was seen, anxiety about the princes occurred.

What has happened?

Muharram has come back, but the Imams have not come.
O princes of Medina, may the Lord bring us together

He meditates about the reason for their silence and senses the tragedy:

The Mirs have gone out from Medina, they have not come back.

But then he realizes that there is basically no reason for sadness or mourning, for:

The hardship of martyrdom, listen, is the day of joy.
Yazid has not got an atom of this love.
Death is rain for the children of 'Ali.

For rain is seen by the Oriental poets in general, and by Shah 'Abdul Latif in particular, as the sign of divine mercy, of rahmat, and in a country that is so much dependant on rain, this imagery acquires its full meaning.

The hardship of martyrdom is all joyful rainy season.
Yazid has not got the traces of this love.
The decision to be killed was with the Imams from the very beginning.

This means that, already in pre-eternity, Hasan and Husayn had decided to sacrifice their lives for their ideals: when answering the divine address Am I not you Lord? (7:171), they answered 'Bala' (=Yes)', and took upon themselves all the affliction (bala) which was to come upon them. Their intention to become a model for those who gain eternal life by suffering and sacrifice was made, as Shah'Abdu'I-Latif reminds his listeners, at the very day of the primordial covenant. Then, in the following chapter, our Sindhi poet goes into more concrete details.

The perfect ones, the lion-like sayyids, have come to Karbala';
Having cut with Egyptian swords, they made heaps of carcasses;
Heroes became confused, seeing Mir Husayn's attack.

But he soon turns to the eternal meaning of this battle and continues in good Sufi spirit:

The hardship of martyrdom is all coquetry (naz).
The intoxicated understand the secret of the case of Karbala'.

In having his beloved suffer, the divine Beloved seems to show his coquetry, trying and examining their faith and love, and thus even the most cruel manifestations of the battle in which the 'youthful heroes', as Shah Latif calls them, are enmeshed, are signs of divine love.

The earth trembles, shakes; the skies are in uproar;
This is not a war, this is the manifestation of Love.

The poet knows that affliction is a special gift for the friends of God, Those who are afflicted most are the prophets, then the saints, then the others in degrees', and so he continues:

The Friend kills the darlings, the lovers are slain,
For the elect friends He prepares difficulties.
God, the Eternal, without need what He wants, He does.

Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif devotes two chapters to the actual battle, and to Hurr's joining the fighters 'like a moth joins the candle', e.g., ready to immolate himself in the battle. But towards the end of the poem the mystical aspect becomes once more prominent; those who 'fight in the way of God' reach Paradise, and the houris bind rose chains for them, as befits true bridegrooms. But even more:

Paradise is their place, overpowering they have gone to Paradise,
They have become annihilated in God, with Him they have become He ...

The heroes, who have never thought of themselves, but only of love of God which makes them face all difficulties, have finally reached the goal: the fana fi Allah, annihilation in God and remaining in Him. Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif has transformed the life of the Imams, and of the Imam Husayn in particular, into a model for all those Sufis who strive, either in the jihad-i asghar or in the jihad-i akbar, to reach the final annihilation in God, the union which the Sufis so often express in the imagery of love and loving union. And it is certainly no accident that our Sindhi poet has applied the tune Husayni, which was originally meant for the dirges for Husayn, to the story of his favourite heroine, Sassui, who annihilated herself in her constant, brave search for her beloved, and is finally transformed into him.

Shah'Abdu'l-Latif's interpretation of the fate of the Imam Husayn as a model of suffering love, and thus as a model of the mystical path, is a deeply impressive piece of literature. It was never surpassed, although in his succession a number of poets among the Shi'i of Sindh composed elegies on Karbala' . The most famous of them is Thabit 'Ali Shah (1740-1810), whose speciality was the genre of suwari, the poem addressed to the rider Husayn, who once had ridden on the Prophet's back, and then was riding bravely into the battlefield. This genre, as well as the more common forms, persists in Sindhi throughout the whole of the 18th and 19th centuries, and even into our own times (Sachal Sarmast, Bedil Rohriwaro, Mir Hasan, Shah Naser, Mirza Baddhal Beg, Mirza Qalich Beg, to mention only a few, some of whom were Sunni Sufis). The suwari theme was lovingly elaborated by Sangi, that is the Talpur prince 'Abdu'l-Husayn, to whom Sindhi owes some very fine and touching songs in honour of the prince of martyrs, and who strongly emphasizes the mystical aspects of the event of Karbala', Husayn is here put in relation with the Prophet.

The Prince has made his miraj on the ground of Karbala',
The Shah's horse has gained the rank of Buraq.

Death brings the Imam Husayn, who was riding his Dhu'l janah, into the divine presence as much as the winged Buraq brought the Prophet into the immediate divine presence during his night journey and ascent into heaven.

Sangi knows also, as ever so many Shi'i authors before him, that weeping for the sake of the Imam Husayn will be recompensed by laughing in the next world, and that the true meditation of the secret of sacrifice in love can lead the seeker to the divine presence, where, finally, as he says

Duality becomes distant, and then one reaches unity.

The theme of Husayn as the mystical model for all those who want to pursue the path of love looms large in the poetry of the Indus Valley and in the popular poetry of the Indian Muslims, whose thought was permeated by the teaching of the Suf'is, and for whom, as for the Turkish Suf'is and for 'Attar (and innumerable others), the suffering of the Imam Husayn, and that of Hasan b. Mansur, formed a paradigm of the mystic's life.

Iqbal and Imam Hussain

But there was also another way to understand the role of Husayn in the history of the Islamic people, and importantly, the way was shown by Muhammad Iqbal, who was certainly a Sunni poet and philosopher. We mentioned at the beginning that it was he who saw the history of the Ka'ba defined by the two sacrifices, that of Ismail at the beginning, and that of Husayn b. 'Ali in the end (Bal-i Jibril, p. 92). But almost two decades before he wrote those lines, he had devoted a long chapter to Husayn in his Rumuz-i bekhudi (p. 126ff). Here, Husayn is praised, again in the mystical vocabulary, as the imam of the lovers, the son of the virgin, the cypresso of freedom in the Prophet's garden. While his father, Hazrat 'Ali, was, in mystical interpretation, the b of the bismi'llah, the son became identified with the 'mighty slaughtering', a beautiful mixture of the mystical and Qur'anic interpretations. But Iqbal, like his predecessors, would also allude to the fact that Husayn, the prince of the best nation, used the back of the last prophet as his riding camel, and most beautiful is Iqbal's description of the jealous love that became honoured through his blood, which, through its imagery, again goes back to the account of the martyrdom of Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, who rubbed the bleeding stumps of his hands over his blackened face in order to remain surkh ru, red-faced and honoured, in spite of his suffering.

For Iqbal, the position of Husayn in the Muslim community is as central as the position of the surat al-ikhlas in the Holy Book.

Then he turns to his favourite topic, the constant tension between the positive and negative forces, between the prophet and saint on the one hand, and the oppressor and unbeliever on the other. Husayn and Yazid stand in the same line as Moses and Pharaoh. Iqbal then goes on to show how the khilafat was separated from the Qur'anic injunctions and became a worldly kingdom with the appearance of the Umayyads, and it was here that Husayn appeared like a raincloud, again the image of the blessing rain which always contrasts so impressively with the thirst and dryness of the actual scene of Karbala'. It was Husayn's blood that rained upon the desert of Karbala' and left the red tulips there.

The connection between the tulips in their red garments and the bloodstained garments of the martyrs has been a favourite image of Persian poetry since at least the 15th century, and when one thinks of the central place which the tulip occupies in Iqbal's thought and poetry as the flower of the manifestation of the divine fire, as the symbol of the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai, and as the flower that symbolizes the independent growth of man's khudi (=self) under the most difficult circumstances, when one takes all these aspects of the tulip together, one understands why the poet has the Imam Husayn 'plant tulips in the desert of Karbala". Perhaps the similarity of the sound of la ilah and lala (=tulip), as well as the fact that lala has the same numerical value as the word Allah, e.g., 66, may have enhanced Iqbal's use of the image in connection with the Imam Husayn, whose blood 'created the meadow', and who constructed a building of 'there is no deity but God.'

But whereas earlier mystical poets used to emphasize the person of Husayn as model for the mystic who through self-sacrifice, finally reaches union with God, Iqbal, understandably, stresses another point: 'To lift the sword is the work of those who fight for the glory of religion, and to preserve the God-given order.' 'Husayn blood, as it were, wrote the commentary on these words, and thus awakened a sleeping nation.'

Again, the parallel with Husayn b. Mansur is evident (at least with Husayn b. Mansur in the way Iqbal interprets him: he too claims, in the Falak-i mushtari in the Javidnama, that he had come to bring resurrection to the spiritually dead, and had therefore to suffer). But when Husayn b. 'Ali drew the sword, the sword of Allah, he shed the blood of those who are occupied with, and interested in, things other than God; graphically, the word la, the beginning of the shahada, resembles the form of a sword (preferably a two-edged sword, like Dhu'l-fiqar), and this sword does away with everything that is an object of worship besides God. It is the prophetic 'No' to anything that might be seen beside the Lord. By using the sword of 'No', Husayn, by his martyrdom, wrote the letters 'but God' (illa Allah) in the desert, and thus wrote the title of the script by which the Muslims find salvation.

It is from Husayn, says Iqbal, that we have learned the mysteries of the Qur'an, and when the glory of Syria and Baghdad and the marvels of Granada may be forgotten, yet, the strings of the instrument of the Muslims still resound with Husayn's melody, and faith remains fresh thanks to his call to prayer.

Husayn thus incorporates all the ideals which a true Muslim should possess, as Iqbal draws his picture: bravery and manliness, and, more than anything else, the dedication to the acknowledgement of God's absolute Unity; not in the sense of becoming united with Him in fana as the Sufi poets had sung, but, rather, as the herald who by his shahada, by his martyrdom, is not only a shahid, a martyr, but at the same time a witness, a shahid, for the unity of God, and thus the model for all generations of Muslims.

It is true, as Iqbal states, that the strings of the Muslims' instruments still resound with his name, and we may close with the last verse of the chapter devoted to him in the Rumuz-i bekhudi:

O zephir, O messenger of those who are far away
Bring our tears to his pure dust.

Published by the Muhammadi Trust of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Reproduced with permission by the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project
team

.....


Biography of the author:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Annemarie Schimmel

Born April 7, 1922 Germany
Died January 26, 2003
Education Doctorate of civilization and languages, doctorate of religious history.
Occupation Iranologist, Orientalist, Islamic studies, Sufism studies, Iqbal studies

Annemarie Schimmel, SI, HI, (April 7, 1922 – January 26, 2003) was a well known and very influential German Orientalist and scholar who wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism.

She received a doctorate in Islamic languages and civilization from the University of Berlin at the age of nineteen. At twenty-three, she became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Marburg (Germany) in 1946, where she earned a second doctorate in the history of religions in 1954.

A turning point in her life came in 1954 when she was appointed Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Ankara (Turkey). There she spent five years teaching in Turkish and immersing herself in the culture and mystical tradition of the country. She was a faculty member at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992 and became Professor Emerita of Indo-Muslim Culture upon her retirement. She was also an honorary professor at the University of Bonn. She published more than 100 books on Islamic literature, mysticism and culture, and translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Sindhi and Turkish poetry and literature into English and German.

For her work on Islam, Sufism or mysticism and Muhammad Iqbal, the government of Pakistan honored her with one of its highest civil awards of known as Hilal-e-Imtiaz or 'Crescent of Excellence'. She was showered with many other awards from many countries of the world, including Leopold Lucas Prize of the Evangelisch-Theologische Faculty of the University of Tübingen and 1995 prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This award caused a controversy in Germany, as she had defended the outrage of the Islamic world against Salman Rushdie in a TV-interview.


Works by Annemarie Schimmel

* As Through A Veil
* And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety
* A Dance of Sparks: Imagery of Fire in Ghalib's Poetry
* A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry
* Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (1991-1992 Gifford Lectures, online)
* Gabriel's Wing: Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal
* Mystical Dimensions of Islam
* Rumi's World : The Life and Works of the Greatest Sufi Poet
* Look! This Is Love
* The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddinn Rumi
* Islam: An Introduction
* Islamic Calligraphy
* Make A Shield From Wisdom : Selected Verses from Nasir-i Khusraw's Divan
* Ernst Trumpp;: A brief account of his life and work
* The Mystery of Numbers
* Islam and the Wonders of Creation: The Animal Kingdom. (2003)
Read more...

Mujrai Khalq Main In Aankhon Ne Kia Kia Dekha

Muharram 1430 A.H.

A tribute to Imam-e-Aali Muqaam Imam Hussain (A.S.)

Salam-e-Aakhir
By Shafqat Amant Ali



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Do we need science or Islamic science? What do pro-liberal and pro-jihadi Pakistanis think?

Ghost of TK says:

December 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm


Beardo’s are cargo-culters. Look at Ajmal Kasab (who I did think at the time looked like a pacific islander) … this is a man who allegedly joined some group only so he would gain ‘valueable expereience’ in his robbery career. I’m sure he had a beard, he watched a lot of hypnotic jihadi videos of other saps prepping to go to the gallows, leaving sappy messages for their families etc etc.

But this ‘mujahid’ has no understanding of what he does. He is fodder. but it is not just him, the organization and the leaders thereof, are also fodder, of their handlers, (ISI? ) who are then in turn fodder for foreign power’s strategic (30-50 year plans) maneuverings. So he did blindly what he was asked to do, and like a whiny little b!tch, he sings like a canary when a military boot is up his a##.

But you know they’re supposed to die, not be “poster boys for jihad” which he, unwittingly, is.

This is the LAST kind of jihad, and the LAST kind of “mujahid” that one should aspire to be (in my personal opinion)… I’m not trying to play Ghamdi here, but seriously,

If you want to go to the moon, what do you do first? Do you build the cockpit first? hanging in the air or do you build the rocket first? but before you do that do you build the launch pad and the engines first? But wait! before you build the launch pad, you have to have the knowhow to build the complex that will support the launching activity…. all this leads back to one place.

A place of learning. Thinking. Exploring.

It leads back to the basics: Iqraa.

So, if you’re rearing to subdue europe and the west (now china, india and russia — since our youth are so feisty) … you get your a$$ back in the library.

The biggest jihad right now is building schools and libraries. I believe that to dissipate the nation in armed conflict now is criminal and exactly what your enemies want.

And I’m not talking about universities where the ‘research’ is all about “Optics based on Quran” and “covalent bond breakup in the light of the HOly Quran”

Seriously, Quran is not a science book. It is a guideline. Stop using it as a recipe book, politics knowhow book, physics, chemistry, aviation, and medicine book FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Even the Muslims of the 10th century had THAT MUCH sense! No wonder the streets of Multan look in worse shape than the streets of Moen-Jo-Daro… and that shit’s been in ruins for 4000 years.

All because we’re ignorant, and we won’t face up to it.

So, this is why I’m against beardo’s. They attract our young to their doom with a simplistic, therefore seductive, but ultimately WRONG analysis of the situation. I’m not against beards, but the beardo’s have got to go!

I think Chris Rock’s analysis of “Blacks vs. Niggiz” (someone needs to do a “Muslims vs. Beardo’s” version of this) sortof kindof explains my sentiments on this issue.

...

beardos, you are not capable of having a serious conversation for ONCE? without regurgitating the BS that you are indoctrinated with?

Your starting point is an Islamic State and you want to ak-47 your way to it, and if you build schools (madrassah in arabic) you also want to use it as a tool, as a means to a violent end. THEN and ONLY THEN will you start the real work of society building. Until then, everything is fair game… killing, raping the country, destroying a perfectly good muslim country where people are pretty much free to practice Islam. All that gone for your HOMO fantasy land you call the islamic state.

What I’m saying is totally different. I’m making a distinction between, Islam, Muslims, Political Islamists, and freeking nutbag beardos.

You are accusing me of lumping everything together, not because I DID, but because you DIDN’T bother to comprehend and consider what was said.

.......

shandana Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
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@jazoo
You think those islamist who happened to be in Baghdad, Tashqand, Bukhara etc etc are the same as we do have now in Swat and related areas……Have you been there?
Do you really have an idea what kind of people they are?
Just ask some body who lives there or I guess you live there then you might be one of them otherwise it is not possible for any sensible person to support taliban.


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texasboy Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
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@TK,

brilliant rebuttle mate, unfortunately our narrow-minded friends are too afraid of acknowledging their own weaknesses. Which makes it even harder to have a rational conversation with them… its always Ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem..

what islam (yes, ISLAM) needs is a reformation, i firmly believe anything left to human beings for interpretation cannot be without errors.

Iqbal wrote a dissertation on “reconstruction of religious thought in islam”… it is exactly that we need… a renaissance, a crash evolution in mentality that would put both religious zealots on par with social science and technology..

and honestly, i contend that it will require a massive and concerted effort from our religious community to come out of their bubble and make a case for universal morality (which by the way is the bedrock fo islam), and human rights.

i firmly believe that islam and science dont clash, but we need to try a different lens, a different prism to look to find common ground.

The first step in getting to that common ground is promoting education. and iqbal (who we too hastily neglect) showed us that way.
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Marcvs_Tacitvs_Cicero Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
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@GoTK, jazoo

Come on TK, lay off jazoo. Point out a single thing that he said that was factually incorrect. I think you baboo brigadiers have wisdom in your ankles (aql gittan ich). Muslim scientists have been the beacon of light throughout the downy mist of centuries.

Ibn Jubeir invented chemistry, Ibn Sina invented medicine, Ibn Rushd invented Optics, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood invented Jinn fired Power Plants and Mulla Fazlullah invented vaccination against polio vaccines (kaBoom!)

http://www.chowk.com/articles/4544

TK, your line of argumentation is disingenuous and dishonest. You say that Muslim scientists from the medieval era were different from the Muslim scientists of the modern era? How so?

Muslim scientists in the 12th century were dealing with the problems of polio and how it can be treated. Jamia Haqqania in Swat’s Center for Disease Dissemination has discovered that a carefully positioned improvised explosive device on the road frequented by lady health workers is a very effective vaccination and Islamisation technique.

Muslim scientists in the 11th century were struggling with the question of the global time and now a conference in Doha Qatar has discovered that Makkah is at the center of the world and Makkah Standard Time (MST, aka Mystery Science Theater) should be the new time standard.

http://al-amana.net/home/2008/04/23/scholars-call-for-making-makkah-core-point-for-world-time/

And once again, opening schools and libraries is the job of the SECULAR GOVERNMENT (which we know to be haraam)and this poses no dilemmas for the Mujahidin. For them Jihad is enough. They are ready to face death, destruction and disembowelment in interesting ways. They are not frightened of death. (Only of classrooms, libraries and laboratories)

So, leave jazoo alone. He has true taqwa and may God guide him to the right path (hopefully aided by GPS).

Verily, there are signs in this for those who see and hear. And such sight and vision comes only when your beard ratio is greater than 12, ankle ratio is less than 5 and your atr kills within a 2m radius.

LEGEND:
beard ratio=alf/bay,
where
alf=height in ft,
bay=beard shareef length in ft

bankle ratio=jeem/daal, where
jeem= length of calf covered by shalwar shareef in ft,
dal=length of calf covered by juraab shareef in ft


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Ghost of TK says:

December 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
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@Marcvs_Tacitvs_Cicero: hahaha! that was funny man! I think you nailed it right here:

For them Jihad is enough. They are ready to face death, destruction and disembowelment in interesting ways. They are not frightened of death. (Only of classrooms, libraries and laboratories)

@jazoo: (this is a rant, and is going to make the least amount of sense)

I’m not conflating Islam, Islamism and Talibanism/Algayduh’ism. I have serious issues with the Islamist project but that project is well-defined (at least in theory - though it’s unattainable). I have a major problem with blind-faith beardo’s who are “muddahi sust, gavaah chust” type people. They are more muslim than Islam. They are illiterate, uncompromising, unthinking chasing after a mirage which isn’t there.

And the Islamists are fooled by this “raw emotion and energy” of the crazies. What I’m trying to say is that even though Most “islamists” support the taliban-style actions, what they are ignoring is that this taliban mentality (beardo interpretation of Islam) is actually FATAL to their project!

The pseudo-mujahid actions like the counter-productive shit in Kashmir or in Mumbai most recently is only an aid in a ratcheting action against the muslims and muslim nations.

This is NOT helping anyone, it is only helping those whose strategic aims it fulfills (that’s my contention and I’m sticking with it).

Please, remind me of ONE victory that the Islamists have had in the last 60 years which has NOT ultimately led to humiliation and disaster for the Muslims as a whole?

And Please, you can’t count Hizbollah. They are NOT beardo’s. I don’t even count them as “islamists”.

Egypt? against Jamal Abdunasir - Guess who is in Control of Egypt — USA
Jordan - USA
Saudi Arabia (and the pseudo kingdoms) - USA
Pakistan - USA
Afghanistan, its jihad etc. — USA
India / Kashmir — Kashmir’s cause has been equated with “terrorism” and the issue is on the back burner. The jihadi camps on the other hand are on the front burner.
Iraq - OMG USA again
Algeria - After all the killing, PRO USA though the West is complicit in denying the democratic right of the Islamists, but what did they do after the denial? back to slaughtering like the old times….

I don’t need to go into the track record of Algayduh and the Taliban (drug smugglers, school burners, just fvcking idiots to the max!!!)

So the pattern is very predictable:

Islamists, and now beardo’s are LURED into toppling stable, nationalistic government in the name of “Islam”, once the task is finished, they are discarded like disposable condoms and become enemies of state. The autocratic “leader” then proceeds to rule in a tyrannic fashion, and the Islamists are left to morph into beardo’s because of their disillusionment.

It works like clockwork. You can fool any emotional Muslim boy into killing himself in the name of Islam. The best weapon against Muslims is the fvcking Jihad by Individual doctrine.

Every single time you conduct your damn jihad, Muslims lose another foothold in this world.

By the time beardo’s are done, we’re going to be like the mongols. drifting in the world like nomads, or gypsies… our enemies used our own philosophy against us and we weren’t smart enough because we were too frikking un-lettered.

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Ghost of TK Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
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@jazoo: Please stop calling it “Islamic Science” … Science is Science. Do you call a truck an “Islamic Truck” or a computer program “Islamic Computer Program” ???

In any case, if it will satisfy the “Islamic Fetish” of some people, All exprimental science stems out of the additions of the ‘experiment’ by Muslim scientists to the Greek knowledge.

This is what science is now and without it it is a farce.

I find it interesting that those who find the sunni, salafa, head-severing, blood-curdling, school-burning “Islam” of the salfi nutbags (bloodthirsty enemies of the Shia sec) attractive, have NO QUALMS in presenting the achievements of the Iranian state as their own.

Nice try @jazoo ! But you support Taliban, who came out of the same stinkhole ie; “Saudi” arabia , that popped out the evil child called Saddam’s Iraq. Iraq which got used as a condom at the “ungal of Saudi kings” and at the behest of Uncle Sam… almost exactly like another muslim nation (ring a bell? ITS YOU SILLY! YOUR”E THE ONE GETTING F***ED! YOU! PAKISTAN!)

This is what I call the “intellectual framework” … or “some kind of framework” that is needed behind a state. This is what Iranian state has behind it. This is exactly what the Pakistani state and its horrible hell-spawns like Taliban DONOT HAVE!

“Taliban” who think they’re going to glorify Islam as they drag us all down to the pits of hell, the meatgrinders at the other end of which they would meet their real masters and string-pullers — the zioinsts, the americans, the russians — were they in any shape to recognize the architects of their destruction that is. But they’d be “tasty burger” when all is said and done.

“Would you like fries with your Somalia Burger?”

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jazoo Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
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@Ghost
Islamic science or call it whatever you like.
whats big deal in name–Call it beardo science as long as they know when to build “Cockpit”.
You are assuming things about me.
Show me where I support Taliban–There are few posters here I feel they support Taliban but they are scared to open themselves.
If I have to support Taliban I would do so right on your non beardo face.
I do not hate Taliban & I do not hate you either.
Accepting Taliban as reality is not supporting them.
Your hate mongering is not result oriented–you spew your poison & think that you have done a service to community.
Because you can not live with them list your non beardo plans.
What part of country you will keep for yourself & your non beardo imbeciles.
Would you give them Peshawar & Sawat–who will take Quetta.
Would you like to keep Karachi, Lahore & Multan(perhaps your hometown)–what about Pindi–Perhaps half Pindi should go to Lal Masjid & half to nincompoops like you.
You think writing too many posts without any sense & spewing anger is your achievement–who cares if you are angry.
Get yourself & your act together be positive–a senseless & meaningless poisonous post which only contaminate the minds of readers is achievement for those who are playing you & with your emotions & you are being played unknowingly.
You are not alone–there are many mental midgets like yourself on this very forum who are willingly being played.
When Imam Ali(as) got upper hand on Kharjiettes, his companion ask him to eliminate them–he strongly refused–Thats where we get the light from.
Be positive & show some character.

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Ghost of TK Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
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@jazoo: The point is that the thing being stereotyped by that orientalist dude is not “islamic science” .. it is just science. it is research done using the scientific method (look it up or you prolly already know).

Science is science. Some of the Islamic countries are doing it. Iran, Malaysia are topmost. They also happen to be democracies with reasonably strong social structures and political institutions.

I guess you’re not a salafi. Fine. All I’m saying is that people conveniently take credit for science without making the distinction. There is a reason that Iran is surviving the american onslaught in a much better way, while we are acting like whores for americans (including allowing attacks on Iran from our territory — which washington conveniently forgets) and also getting treated like it.

Our scientific research institutions have been destroyed by “beardo’s” for lack of a better term. These are the IJT kan-tutta’s who have made it IMPOSSIBLE to do any kind of academic work in most universities.. and in their wake we see other student wings doing exactly the same things… You will see how Insaaf Student Federation starts using AK47’s .. there is NO way around it. IJT will kill your people and they will fight you where they’re best (not in debate but on the street with ak47)

Anyways, we and especially the people who believe in armed-islamic-revolution (ie; the taliban - in the real sense) can take credit of the Iranian achievement just because it happens to be a Muslim country.

The methods used by the two groups are wildly divergent. Iranians have a plan. Sunni salafists have NO PLAN (except of course JEEEHAAAADD!!!!)….

Like the mounty python knights of the round table, they charge the castle walls with swords… make trojan horses but forget to GET INSIDE them etc. etc.

It just shows a tendency to put education and learning in low regard. Something the prophet put in high regard.

I don’t have a problem with indigeous resistance against the western troops in Afghanistan. I think suicide tactics are counter-productive but whatever. But to do the same shit in Pakistan is un-acceptable.

who’s using these people? ISI, RAW, Mossad who knows. ISI is about as islamic an organization as RAW… so … if ISI can create a horde then so can RAW … some molvis are for sale. and it is very easy to fool a crowd which doesn’t look beyond Beards and loud protestations in support of Islam (actions may be diametrically opposed but ignorance protects them from the discomfort of knowing.)

So, the only hope we got as ‘whatever’ is in schools and libraries. Not as sexy as strapping one’self with Jew supplied RDX, but this is the ONLY Way to ANY KIND OF GLORY.

peace!

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jazoo Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
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@Ghost

Its Islamic Science when you determine age & time of ensouling embryos from Quran.

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Ghost of TK Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
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@jazoo: no offense but you sounded like a jamatia to me…;)

Also, what you gave as an example of “islamic science” is actually an example of application of Islamic jurisprudence to demarcate an area of scientific research

So, by way of example, the atomic discoveries are not “jewish science”. Even if the jewish religion set some guidelines on what areas are to be explored or permissible to explore. (they did not.)

For example, on the tech side, some jews follow sabbat (saturday?) and to observe it they cannot use telephone but they have some weird way around it in which no electrical contact is made but the connection is made through a coil when the reciever is lifted(I saw in documentary) …

This will be an example of application of jewish jurisprudence to a technical situation. But we cannot call it “Jewish Technology”

Also, Born-again christians think that the soul enters the body at conception (?). They want to put limits on stem cell research based on that RELIGIOUS understanding. So, the Iranian limits are “too lax” for the Bush type chrisitans.

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Shirkuh Says:
December 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
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Did Jazoo sound like a jamatia?
I think Jazoo is a KATARRRRRRR jamatia

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azoo Says:
December 25th, 2008 at 7:21 am
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I am not Jamatia.
But I am against stereotype bigotry.
We are made believe here JI & IJT are responsible for current situation of our nation on the contrary their part is minimal in our dilemma as compared to secular powers Military & Politicians, those mostly all along sitting on podium of monarchy for last 61 years are not beardos.
Jamat should take credit for her crimes only but to make them whole sole incharge of our destruction is bigotry.
Now we are talking as no political party has its terrorist representation in Universities & Colleges–When I said they do I was labeled as Jamatia.
And I do not like hypocrisy either, many at heart a Taliban but they will go to any length to get along with the trend on this forum which is predominantly an anti mulla forum.
There are three type of followings here–one is Zombie like because some big pens are anti mulla so anti mulla must be a right choice.
Other is shrewd following–One who must be counted should get along the trend, these are Talibani anti mulla.
Third it has become a fashion to curse mulla & be counted as intellectual. I have seen many suomoto self claimed intellectuals born recently because they can curse in style.
I am Muslim & a dual national Pakistani & I am not jamatia.
I have seen Pakistanis fighting on trivial issues in Pakistan Day parade in NY–we are fully charged with negativity which we can see on this very forum as well.
Many nations small & big celebrate their days in NY but no one fight like us–they show grace & dignity when they are abroad even India, their parades are very discipline.
So man is hungry for recognition & look for things he could feel proud of–I personally could not find any reason to feel proud as Pakistani but I must say I really felt proud as Muslim.
Nothing make me feel more proud than my religion & my affiliation with Mola Ali & Imam Hussain–we have very strong & rich database which make us a thinker not a Zombie.

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