tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14073116667663038102024-03-19T01:48:30.796-07:00Surfing Behind the WallLook behind the wall, it's always interesting there...Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.comBlogger275125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-154169087626176972023-11-14T03:54:00.000-08:002023-11-14T03:56:21.147-08:00Marching for Palestine, Cape Town 11 November 2023<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4B_qSCFOVWLGMf15cm72ZIr48GX2hHAOrF-GNxzlNq-ABAGSkpdFlg8GMP1e7_5f3O7r4Cg7MJtCiFO6PAhR6qNrwboFXNg3OGMV5fESwly5xftdPQH_NEhAK9qpPN9LFvc35QdOrgqPFgdQ-E5JcvbnO2lYUOyuo1eG6rPCqF8q_3s6HzxFNrgNuoIF/s4288/_CSC0391CEASE%20FIRE.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2848" data-original-width="4288" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4B_qSCFOVWLGMf15cm72ZIr48GX2hHAOrF-GNxzlNq-ABAGSkpdFlg8GMP1e7_5f3O7r4Cg7MJtCiFO6PAhR6qNrwboFXNg3OGMV5fESwly5xftdPQH_NEhAK9qpPN9LFvc35QdOrgqPFgdQ-E5JcvbnO2lYUOyuo1eG6rPCqF8q_3s6HzxFNrgNuoIF/w478-h303/_CSC0391CEASE%20FIRE.JPG" width="478" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq68VlIrzn_ldDxcMZuKXCn1pYKeWMdnnqzsxTj0MEnE-sPT1nWKh9u11pm3seLIrENznEHOR0Z7UdWdwIeA756rx25Sdw9B0iQbuUadX_TPpYHE5OQWE4Yb6PNmVbSHP17XNOsJGD_pjkyj5OJ7DVbn1HIt6DoWA4nzeBT8R2zx4KuruKI6-vunSCt42o/s4288/_DSC0312mandla11.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2848" data-original-width="4288" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq68VlIrzn_ldDxcMZuKXCn1pYKeWMdnnqzsxTj0MEnE-sPT1nWKh9u11pm3seLIrENznEHOR0Z7UdWdwIeA756rx25Sdw9B0iQbuUadX_TPpYHE5OQWE4Yb6PNmVbSHP17XNOsJGD_pjkyj5OJ7DVbn1HIt6DoWA4nzeBT8R2zx4KuruKI6-vunSCt42o/s320/_DSC0312mandla11.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitLIVouZFEvtz1GTWMlhKd69OCcQ0ci59e6LfeMWpG2Kqq7Yjd9Z81HmM6IPTBtxXWJbhHd_BA-W_YL3qMFhQc8kMYUuTPboVyrxOkdUtRiMazuBL7dX0y2gRk1MP2cQw6mWFQlfG-S6_ZfcMICDPDCRu3X8TQPfSNzwAld40GqYGv6-R_SniyX6JyEFRD/s4288/_DSC0358baby.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2848" data-original-width="4288" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitLIVouZFEvtz1GTWMlhKd69OCcQ0ci59e6LfeMWpG2Kqq7Yjd9Z81HmM6IPTBtxXWJbhHd_BA-W_YL3qMFhQc8kMYUuTPboVyrxOkdUtRiMazuBL7dX0y2gRk1MP2cQw6mWFQlfG-S6_ZfcMICDPDCRu3X8TQPfSNzwAld40GqYGv6-R_SniyX6JyEFRD/s320/_DSC0358baby.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /> Photos copyright Shafiq Morton 2023, <p></p>Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-40749806294665536012023-11-13T05:43:00.000-08:002023-11-13T05:43:26.465-08:00SEA POINT: THE THIN BLUE LINE<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCaSIYY3B0cZyMVSd2_3zqojPh9jfrEXjEnZ-27JhtahoUlJCAEcWI6b9w9WEx66h0Fn-_Rgtpslb_3-R1IPahSo0lAiqmwtLn9MiwbEYb89jn-5QnnLn6MrCO72IsWxrUlISSWC8qg787Uj_ufbgA8xlawOM1weuJUHh5EP1I7hZIKswJNFSDOfZqfy_2/s3826/_DSC0403.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2542" data-original-width="3826" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCaSIYY3B0cZyMVSd2_3zqojPh9jfrEXjEnZ-27JhtahoUlJCAEcWI6b9w9WEx66h0Fn-_Rgtpslb_3-R1IPahSo0lAiqmwtLn9MiwbEYb89jn-5QnnLn6MrCO72IsWxrUlISSWC8qg787Uj_ufbgA8xlawOM1weuJUHh5EP1I7hZIKswJNFSDOfZqfy_2/w575-h359/_DSC0403.JPG" width="575" /></a></div> <p></p><p>THIS PAST WEEKEND was historic. Hundreds of protests across the globe saw millions of people taking to the streets. “Shut it down, shut it down!” cried the world as the Israeli genocide in Gaza continued for the 30th consecutive day.</p><p> While the world’s leaders may try to muddy the truth of a Palestinian Holocaust, people such as Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and the Arab leaders stick their heads in the sand. We can only imagine how history is going to judge their complicity in the 21st century’s biggest human rights catastrophe.</p><p> Space precludes us from contextualizing all the dynamics of the Palestinian question, which embraces the political elephant of colonialism and apartheid.</p><p> This is because the imposition of a so-called “Jewish state” inspired by a nationalist movement (Zionism) over an existing people in 1948 is nothing less than an enforced occupation. The United Nations Partition Decision of 1947, already guaranteeing Zionists 52 percent of a land UN members didn’t own, was already an exception of international law.</p><p> Yet the Zionists were not satisfied with this British-influenced “deal”. The Stern and Irgun gangs – regarded as terrorists by the New York Times – had already begun their ethnic cleansing pogrom. And so by 1948, almost half of the 750,000 Palestinians who would be displaced, had already been displaced. </p><p> And while the modern state of Israel is a political reality today, we have to note that the majority of the Palestinian resistance does not wish for an eradication of the state, but rather, of the toxic Zionism that drips into the veins of racist supremacists such as Benjamin Netanyahu.</p><p> And let it be said – as it has been said so many times before – most discerning people make the critical distinction that Zionism is a political expression, not a faith. Zionism is not Judaism. No one has a problem with Judaism. </p><p> What most of us want is peace, many mooting a unitary state in Palestine where Jews, Muslims and Christians can live together. Jewish identity in the Middle East is constitutionally – as opposed to militarily – guaranteed with no more “security” issues.</p><p> Interestingly, this concept of a unitary state is exactly what Hamas spokespeople have mentioned to me in interviews for more than 20 years, this very same Hamas that the west is so busy trying to demonise as terrorists.</p><p> However, like all citizens of the world, Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation and apartheid strictions they experience in places such as the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. These rights are embedded in Resolution 2625 of the UN.</p><p> But let’s get to the weekend, where on the Saturday, Cape Town experienced its biggest ever march in support of Palestine. As over 150,000 chanted in the streets, Cape Town became one of the many cities around the world raising its voice for justice.</p><p> On the Sunday, a group of pro-Israeli faith groups had applied for a permit to have a gathering (to pray for Netanyahu’s killers?) on the Sea Point promenade lawns near the icon of Madiba’s glasses. For several weekends before, the Palestine solidarity movement had been picketing on the promenade.</p><p> The organisers had predicted a turnout of about 2,500, not even a fraction of what the pro-Palestinian march had attracted the day before. Nonetheless, South Africa is a democracy. Every voice has a right to be heard. But here is exactly where the Sea Point picket became, by default, a battle of white privilege and Cape Flats inequality. </p><p> When I arrived at the picket at about 12.30, I did not have a good feeling. I have covered protest for nearly 40 years. As with all those anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s, I could immediately see that a large, high profile (metro) police presence was the worst possible scenario.</p><p> The police had been instructed to keep a blue line between about 1,000 placard holders and the venue for the prayer meeting, immediately creating hostility from an overwhelmingly peaceful and pleasant crowd. I could see that JP’s finest, like the SAPS of old, did not know the 101 of crowd control: if there are no threats – keep your distance.</p><p> I say this, because in the 1980s on the very rare occasions the police kept a distance and did not interfere, the marches or protests would be peaceful. Unfortunately, people like Major Dolf Odendaal could never understand this. As a result, protestors would get seriously hurt, some even losing their lives.</p><p> My other concern on Sunday was the presence of agents provocateurs, people planted in the crowd to stir things up, and to discredit the protest by causing chaos. Often, these agents infiltrate groups and pretend to be more radical than the radical. Our leaders need to understand that people do not need to attend protests in democratic South Africa with covered faces.</p><p> The other aspect of Sunday, more a subliminal one, was the implicit racism that pro-Palestinian protestors, predominantly Muslim, were an “other” – a boogeyman of sorts, not helped by the governing party’s inability to outrightly condemn the Gaza genocide, thus hurting the people who had voted for it.</p><p> WhatsApp messages I’d heard prior to the Sunday had been dismissively referring to us as “them” – a distinct Bush-type otherism – like our community did not belong on the Sea Point lawns. As one of the protestors told me, “we are also here to populate these spaces our grandparents were denied.”</p><p> The underlying tension, exacerbated by the heavy police presence, was increased when a group of about eight masked youths with a black banner appeared. About 30 metres from the blue line, and next to a van, three Israeli flags were fluttering in the breeze.</p><p> This group took the police by surprise, and approached the Star of David flag bearers, unfurling the banner. One person (unmasked) snatched the one flag and ran away with it. It was after this that the chaos ensued, in which stun grenades were fired. We all know what transpired after that. Police action. Water canons. </p><p>Watching this unfold, I had to ask myself, who was protecting who? And from whom? The prayer meeting – with its imminent promise of whiteness – from “them”, the Muslims? Of course, all life is sacred – but one life can’t be more sacred than the other.</p><p> Some of the protestors would have loved to have seen so many shiny Ratels and blue lines in Manenberg, Bishop Lavis or Bonteheuwel where gangsters shoot their children daily.</p><p> And finally, a word to the youths who approached the Zionist flag bearers. Yes, you are our beloved brothers, and yes, we do understand and appreciate your passion and commitment to the cause of Palestinian justice. But the Qur’an does say, be just…”but don’t let the enmity and hatred of others make you avoid justice (to others)”.</p><p> We need to understand that your actions, while sincere and well-intended, might just have had the opposite effect. Indeed, we have to remind ourselves that the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh] once said that we should try to help our brother, no matter what, lest he become the oppressed one, and us the oppressor. </p><p> However, we are not saying capitulation or deviation from the Qur’anic middle way of justice, peace and truth. It is the enthusiasm of the youth that should feed from the wisdom of the elderly.</p>Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-62818891908558501902021-01-14T23:46:00.003-08:002021-01-15T01:40:58.444-08:00Historical lessons from Spanish Flu’s Black October<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKF3CrhoLq9BtAtVzSnu5ojNST0ZHYwd0RwE4mRubAqmgG40IUlyH6I9w21CUu1c-77rkxXb2tydDqp6_r-tzLBeWQXpX2j-474XT9lR5t7Zlylic4YTBcGh7RtL6IV1H-aAGePc77k8Jx/s620/COVIDPIC.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="620" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKF3CrhoLq9BtAtVzSnu5ojNST0ZHYwd0RwE4mRubAqmgG40IUlyH6I9w21CUu1c-77rkxXb2tydDqp6_r-tzLBeWQXpX2j-474XT9lR5t7Zlylic4YTBcGh7RtL6IV1H-aAGePc77k8Jx/w605-h360/COVIDPIC.jpg" width="605" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spanish Flu emergency ward, 1918.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">COVID 19, a virus with a crown of protein spikes, has been categorised by a number of politically dramatic metaphors that have served little purpose in helping us to understand it. For example, Britain’s Health minister saying we are “in a war against an invisible killer”.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Like George Bush in the war on terror, it is a philological absurdity. We are dealing with a medical question, not an army of invaders in military camouflage. No-one can shoot and kill abstract nouns, let alone a highly infectious virus. In this “war”, the response of world leaders has varied from lockdowns to Donald Trump’s, “I see the disinfectant .” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Since Covid’s unwelcome appearance, social media conspiracy theorists – the one-eyed fundamentalists of our digital age – have run amok on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, becoming epidemiological professors at a mouse-click, and sowing the seeds of mischief and malfeasance wherever they go. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Recently, a well-cycled WhatsApp asserted that SAAF helicopters were spraying the virus over Mitchell’s Plain. And even if – a big remote if – if Covid 19 was cooked up in some lab in Wuhan or at a Bilderberg Conference, it is not the point right now. Our priority is not to chase the bolted horse, but to deal with what’s left in the stable. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">For indeed, what can’t be posted away by our WhatsApp naysayers is the shock and grief of South Africans who have lost their loved ones. Their tears cannot be wiped away by David Ickes claiming Fauci is a lizard. What the naysayers can’t ignore either, is the exhaustion and stress of doctors, nurses, paramedics and public officials. Their fatigue cannot be lifted by blaming Bill Gates. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">In South Africa, in less than a year, we have recorded over one million positive cases and over 35, 000 deaths. Globally, we have seen near 100 million positive cases and some two million fatalities. These are sobering figures.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">However, if we zoom out for a moment and take a wider perspective by travelling back 100 years to the last major worldwide pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-19, we can spot some interesting parallels to Covid, and perhaps learn a few historical lessons. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Described as a strain of the avian H1N1 virus, Spanish Flu was said to be “universally deadly”, infecting 500 million (about a third of the world’s population at the time) and killing up to 50 million (10 per cent of the total) in two years. What is staggering is that more people died from Spanish Flu than all the civilians and combatants in World War One combined. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Whilst the notion of locating a Patient Zero in any pandemic is difficult, it is believed that the first recorded instance of Spanish Flu was in a Kansas military camp. The movement of over 200, 000 troops during the latter stages of World War One from the US to Europe, and the homecoming of infected soldiers, caused a massive spread of the virus. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">The flu earned the moniker “Spanish Flu” because Spain had remained neutral during the war, and unlike the allied countries, did not have wartime media censorship.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Whilst soldiers travelling from different parts of the world fuelled Spanish Flu, the swift spread of Covid a century later is attributed to our high mobility, air travel shrinking the world, and making it fertile ground for viruses to spread rapidly across oceans and continents. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">When the Spanish Flu broke out, the world was ill-prepared. A great war was ending and for those suffering from Spanish Flu’s blistering fevers, nasal haemorrhaging and fluid filled lungs, few pharmaceutical interventions were available. In 1918, there were no anti-virals, no antibiotics, no mechanical ventilators and no flu vaccines. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">The only clinical medication was aspirin, which did more harm than good – as was reported in the Science Daily of 3 October 2009. This was because 30 grammes of aspirin a day was used, as opposed to a safer daily dose. It caused excessive bleeding and what some scientists believe, pulmonary oedema.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">What has been common between Spanish Flu and Covid, so far, has been their mutation (scientifically normal), and their waves of super infection. We are well into a second Covid wave, which has proved some 50 percent more infectious than the first. Spanish Flu dropped off after its first summer, but afterwards it mutated, setting off a deadly second wave.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Social measures taken to mitigate the effects of the Spanish Flu were not dissimilar to Covid today: quarantine, mask wearing, hygiene, lockdowns and a restriction on public gatherings. However, their applications like today, were notedly uneven. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">For instance, the New York Health Commissioner ordered businesses to open and to close at staggered times to avoid overcrowding on the subway, but the city fathers of Philadelphia went on to hold a well-attended Liberty Loan Parade on 28 September. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">In 10 days, there were over 1, 000 dead after an estimated 200, 000 infections. In Saint Louis, Missouri, schools and movie theatres were closed and public gatherings banned. Saint Louis went on to have a peak mortality rate that was only 12 percent of Philadelphia’s. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">South Africa was rated as the fifth hardest hit country with regards to the Spanish Flu (and last year we were ranked in the top ten of total Covid infections). According to local historian Howard Philips, in his book In a Time of Plague, Memories of the “Spanish” flu epidemic of 1918 in South Africa, our Spanish flu spread in two waves. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">The first was via the port of Durban where returning troops and auxiliaries disembarked, spreading it to the rest of Natal and the Witwatersrand. The second was when two ships, also carrying demobilised troops, docked in Cape Town. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">From September to October 1918, 60 percent of the South African population contracted the virus, killing upwards of 200,000 nationwide in six weeks. Philips, using eyewitness accounts, writes that by 7 October the virus had engulfed Cape Town, with dead bodies lying uncovered on pavements from Sea Point into the CBD. An eyewitness, Stan Stone, remembered: </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">“It was like a city of the dead, yes – it was awesome (horrible), it was quiet, you’d never hear a horse-and-cart, very, very, few motor cars, and, you know, you’d miss the horses’ hoofs going round and the rumbling of the wheels on these gravel roads. It was really, really bad, very bad…” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">That October, an infamous black south-easter – a chilly, spring wind that brings in dark clouds and squalls of horizontal of rain – raged through the streets of Cape Town. The worst affected in the city, in what came to be known as “Black October”, were the poor – especially its non-white citizens. Nontombi Mawu reported from Ndabeni:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">“Somebody coming from somewhere fell dead in the street, but I know that in the houses there were 20 or 30 in one house. And in the morning when you come there early everybody’s dead. During the time … there were no dogs barking, there were no fowls crowing, no trains running, everything was at a standstill. Everything was quiet.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Not unlike Covid, the Spanish Flu had a “longer version”, characterised by strange symptoms. An account by Edith Goring says that after the flu, apart from a general weakness that endured for weeks on end, it was also was very difficult to remember any simple thing, even for five minutes: </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">“People whose temperature was very high for days on end, lost all their hair, two or three months later. Fortunately, it grew again.” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Phillips notes that one of the outcomes of the flu was nearly one million children being orphaned nationwide, Cape Town experiencing a big increase in street children. Other social factors that arose were quackery (no WhatsApp then), witch hunts and religious fervour, leading to “prophets” and even the establishment of the Zionist church.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Reading through Phillip’s work, and the comments of those affected by the Spanish Flu, it indicates there are critical issues that will have to be addressed beyond the immediate urgencies. This is because most of the survivors of the Spanish Flu appeared to have displayed classic signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – depression , hopelessness and despair. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Anna Heimbold remembers that after the flu had departed there was “a cloud, a dreadful depression over one all the time”. Popema Mhlungu talks of people just crying.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Some survivors spoke of associations that haunted them for the rest of their days, such as the smell of the fever. Many did not want to remember what had happened.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">And as our government moves towards its ambitious programme of vaccinating 40 million people in 2021, healing will definitely not just be in the double jab of a syringe. We will be a broken nation, not only ravaged by the deadly aftermath of the disease and its socio-economic devastation, but by societal PTSD.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">Despite the bleakness now, there is a light in the dark vortex. Had it not been for modern medical science, the death rate from Covid would have been much higher. Vaccines were developed in record time – less than 12 months – when previously two years for vaccine development was the conventional minimum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">At the end of the bumpy Covid journey, many challenges will have to be faced: children without parents, hunger, homelessness, public health, employment, psychological trauma and the realisation that compassion, and not capitalism, will help solve our problems. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;">The fact is, that like the Spanish Flu, Covid 19 will leave us. For in 1919, Ted Jones woke up one day and noticed that a white cloth had settled on Table Mountain. The south easter was blowing, but this time – thankfully – it was carrying away the cursed germs.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><p></p>Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-24669467440669546032021-01-08T01:30:00.001-08:002021-01-08T01:35:43.500-08:00Stephen McGown, Six Years with Al Qaeda book interview<p> <a href="https://dl.iono.fm/epi/prov_134/epi_967441_medium.m4a?did=6510330d355b7952881883e3f34921ff3ea20e08&p=web&download=1"><span style="font-size: large;">https://dl.iono.fm/epi/prov_134/epi_967441_medium.m4a?did=6510330d355b7952881883e3f34921ff3ea20e08&p=web&download=1</span></a></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFfGL0s_TDls9pkYMOlaDVyDJPqcNo6vRsISWiW-T45DlFvqKzJv9brdGX6UpEeABILXayFa_9umLfL1yAl3uDQUs9Y_ZhYqstQqUYMEsWDqA0W1fsetAaU4dWFlUyIsQ3JBmzvjEt0BR/s475/mcgown.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="619" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFfGL0s_TDls9pkYMOlaDVyDJPqcNo6vRsISWiW-T45DlFvqKzJv9brdGX6UpEeABILXayFa_9umLfL1yAl3uDQUs9Y_ZhYqstQqUYMEsWDqA0W1fsetAaU4dWFlUyIsQ3JBmzvjEt0BR/w495-h619/mcgown.jpg" width="495" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><p></p>Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-58700892522059598192021-01-07T05:03:00.002-08:002021-01-07T05:03:21.143-08:00Seeking a port in a storm: my thoughts on Covid<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF5D9zhdQAAPhRYbEpT3WMmg4E8pRSWlMnbuNxRdxzRY9DI62B4K_J0oU3aGjtiqOA1B1a_CeBnvzOwO8tRtmwJkx_XUM-HpAnrKVdvkJ9f_1A3SDkEjAoPKS6Om9iNovxskr4ES6cGSU/s2048/SERAJ+JANAZAH+BW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF5D9zhdQAAPhRYbEpT3WMmg4E8pRSWlMnbuNxRdxzRY9DI62B4K_J0oU3aGjtiqOA1B1a_CeBnvzOwO8tRtmwJkx_XUM-HpAnrKVdvkJ9f_1A3SDkEjAoPKS6Om9iNovxskr4ES6cGSU/w617-h432/SERAJ+JANAZAH+BW.jpg" width="617" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rebuilding from Covid's most grievous moments. Copyright Shafiq Morton.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">AS
someone who has worked in media for 45 years, I have learnt several important
lessons. One: life is never predictable. Two: as human beings we have feet of
clay, so governments will never be perfect. And three: in the face of
adversity, we can be truly heroic, or lamentably corrupt.</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">These times
have certainly brought out the best and the worst in us – the latter being conspiracy-pundits
claiming that Covid 19 has been caused by the minions of the Digital World
Order, and that we in the media are driving a secret agenda. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fueled
by YouTube clowns such as Alex Jones, WhatsApp professors, instant Google doctors,
conspiratorial trolls and cut-and-paste preachers, the social media world has
proved to be as toxic and as viral as Covid itself. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then
there has been the saga of a “mufti alliance” trying to undermine the edicts of
the MJC and UUCSA. Apart from deeming us all kafir, their chief contribution to
Covid was to embarrass us in the High Court. Claiming (via proxies) that the
lockdown was discriminatory, their lawyers bizarrely used secular instruments
to try to justify the religious – or was it the other way round? </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Admittedly,
the lockdowns have been inconsistent at times. But at least we’ve had a government
that has tried to save our lives – this juxtaposed against the populist
denialism of people such as Trump and Bolsonaro, who have condemned thousands in
the Americas to untimely deaths. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Unfortunately,
we’ve had our very own Trumps and Bolsonaros. They have cited blind <i>tawakkul</i>
as the ultimate panacea to Covid without the prerequisite camel tethering, or
applications of intellect. One particular dolt, in a widely distributed
WhatsApp posting, even pronounced that he did not wear a mask as his coughing was
“not contagious”. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Everything
is due to Allah,” he said, in true Kharijite fashion. And if stricken by Covid,
he was confident he would die a martyr – despite his lack of social distancing,
his refusal to wear a mask and the potential of him becoming a “super spreader”.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the
other end of the spectrum, a rasping Covid patient, intimately familiar with
the ravages of the virus, gave me some simple advice: Shafiq, just keep Covid
out of your house! Beware, once it enters your home, you can’t get it out! Indeed,
an innocent family function attended by less than 20 – but two of them Covid careless
– had seen 10 people positive in less than 48 hours. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I know social
distancing is an anathema to us. But life is the supreme motif of the Shari’ah,
and if our scholars deem that absenteeism from the mosque or large gatherings in
the time of a plague can save lives, then we do it. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of
course, the best in us has been the overwhelming generosity and personal sacrifice
of so many people, quietly and unconditionally serving fellow South Africans,
be they NGO officials, imams, mosque committees, businesses or individuals. Together
with our heroic health workers these people are our backbone, not the reactionary
muftis refusing to wear masks.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the
light of all this, I think we can all agree that there is <i>no-one</i> amongst
us who has not been affected by Covid. According to Muslim Stats SA in early
January, over 1, 500 of us had already fallen to the virus. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For us
survivors, insha-Allah, many challenges face us as we deal with the detritus of
what is left behind. For us going into an uncertain future, it can no longer be
a world for the selfish. It has to be a world for the compassionate. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Neither
capitalism (nor our decrepit political parties) will be able to resolve the issues
of ongoing rich-poor divides, the socio-economic consequences of Covid and the consistently
despoiled environment. What we need is a social contract transcending conventional
power relationships, something to systematically transform the post Covid world.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As Muslims,
I believe we have the means to play a significant role. But there are many
lessons to be learnt first. In his book on European Islam, <i>Travelling Home</i>,
Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad points to <i>tanfir</i>, the repelling of souls by our
repugnant behaviour. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He points
out that the paradigmatic word for Islam is “Mercy”, and then asks how many
times have we allowed our world view to be governed by excessive anger and
fear? If our soul is misshapen by these attributes it will only manifest the unapproachable
and extremist ones via stress, discord and ill-controlled desires. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Nothing
is more subversive and obstructive of God’s cause than offering an ugly
manifestation of the self and claiming it to be Islamic,” he says.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tirmidhi
reminds us: “Allah loves the beautiful”, and the supreme qualifier is that Islam
is of beauty – morally, physically and spiritually. Authentic Muslims love
beauty and are people of beauty. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through
this beauty comes the characteristic of <i>wasatiyya</i>, the middle-reasonable
way, which must not be confused with capitulation to questionable matters. And through
<i>wasatiyya</i> we see the values of <i>hilm</i>, a Prophetic softness <a name="_Hlk60920560">–</a> again not a weakness – that embodies compassion for
the underdog without arrogance, or any sense of ego.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">With the
means of the heart – and our hearts have to be in “right place” – we can
proceed to the Islamic instruments designed to imbue society with equilibrium, and
which could significantly reduce poverty post-Covid. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We might
have heard it before, yes, but there can be no more a critical juncture right now
than for the long-term benefits of Zakah and Waqf to be realised. The World
Bank, for instance, announced in 2016 that the potential reach of Zakah is a trillion
dollars per annum.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">If this could
be invested in the poorest every 12 months without political corruption, it
would not take long to reduce the Gini-Co-efficient. Zakah, a pillar of Islam
and an act of worship, is linked to another vital mechanism, the Waqf. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Based on
a sustainable investment for the benefit of others in the name of Allah, the Awqaf
were so efficient in the Ottoman era that the Caliph in Istanbul had no
municipal accounts – everything from water supplies, to schools, to mosques and
roads to street lamps were run by self-sustaining Awqaf Trusts. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We could
argue that the ideal was reached when there were Awqaf even for the stray cats
of the city and for the man “who leaned against the pillar in the mosque”. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And this
is where the good, reinforced by our beauty of outlook and <i>hilm</i>, should surely
emerge…imagine the day when there could be Awqaf dedicated to the homeless in
our cities, the hungry, the orphans and our schools with a continuous stream of
Zakah transforming the lives of the most vulnerable.</span></span></p></blockquote>
Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-72201928212838780022020-07-12T01:50:00.001-07:002020-07-12T01:50:48.328-07:00Shaykh Seraj Hendricks: tribute to a dear friend<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">THIS is
the one obituary I have never wanted to write, that of Shaykh Seraj Hendricks
al-Marhum, my closest friend, my teacher and my confidante. I was three years
older than him, and I was supposed to pass on before him – but as we always
say, Allah knows best.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We
became close friends 31 years ago. The Shaykh, then just in his post-Afro-bell-bottom
days, was studying to be an ‘alim at Umm ul-Qura’ University in Makkah and
sitting at the feet of the great sage, Sayyid Muhammad ‘Alawi al-Maliki. I was
a long-haired surfer, photojournalist, magazine editor and eclectic activist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was
introduced to him by my late wife, Nur, who was his first cousin, and who had grown
up in the Azzawia in Walmer Estate, Cape Town, with him. She was his first
cousin. He was the nephew of my late father-in-law, Shaykh Ebrahim Hendricks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nur
always referred to her cousin as “Serajie”, and later as “<i>die</i> Shegh” (<i>the</i>
Shaykh). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She
would blow into the room and ask him: “hoevaar <i>die</i> Shegh?” (How is <i>the</i>
Shaykh?) And he would laugh, and say, “niggie, djy is altyd stout, maar gee my ‘n
soentjie.” (My dear cousin, you are always naughty, but come and greet me).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I met
Shaykh Seraj for the first time, in the late 1980s, after he had come back to
Cape Town for the annual summer recess. In those days, he was staying in Salt
River at the house of his late father-in-law, Boeta “Rashiedjie” Abrahams, one
of the Azzawia’s imams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">People
must have thought us an odd couple. Here was a Shaykh-to-be, imbued with Fiqh
and Tasawwuf reflecting a classical tradition, and a salt-stained nobody filled
with the stuff of nonsense. But we seemed to click, and I certainly met my
match in debate, something we would do for hours on end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Shaykh
Seraj was the one person who had read more books than me. And as his
intellectual inferior, I have to confess I was always amazed at how
effortlessly, he could bat my philosophical googlies away. He would stylishly out-quote
me, and like Brian Lara in his prime, dispatch my argument to the ropes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whilst a
passion for Deen was our rallying point, our love of literature, the arts and
the esoteric was our academic playground. I would come in with ideas about UFOs,
he would counter with theories on jinn; I would come in with words of Omar Khayyam
and he would quote me Shakespeare or Imam Ghazali. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We were
both obsessive about history, and he actively supported my writings on Makkah,
Palestine and Tuan Guru – as he supported so many others in their creative endeavours
over the years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a
friend, I tried many times to get the Shaykh to surf, as he tried to get me
into computer gaming (one of his recreational passions). He got me as far as admiring
the graphics of Warcraft, and I got him as far as fish and chips.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Over the
years, we found ourselves sharing many projects and experiences: the United
Democratic Front anti-apartheid movement, Voice of the Cape, Dome Publications,
the Islamic Unity Conference in Washington, the Imam Ghazali Conference in Cape
Town, the soap operas of Muslim Personal Law, the politics of the lunar
calendar, TV productions and the hosting of international guests. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However,
ours was a friendship that could never be a selfish, or exclusive one. He was
an important public figure, a community leader – and he had to be a man for all
people at all times. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And
although I was in the public eye too (for more frivolous reasons), I could see from
a bird’s eye view that people really looked up to him. In three decades, I
never saw him giving anything less than 100 per cent in whatever he did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As media
colleague, Mahmood Sanglay, so aptly puts it: “…he always displayed compassion,
humility and a genuine recognition of the humanity of the other.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In other
words, his warmth of welcome would transcend the artificial, stilted social mores
usually associated with figures of status. He would foreground his own weaknesses
in showing himself to others in a rare combination of humble heart and superior
intellect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I so
admired about my dear friend was this bigheartedness. He would so often
interrupt his own lectures to acknowledge those sitting in front of him, and
lavishly praise their qualities before his. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If the
Shaykh had a weakness, it was his inability to say “no” and his inborn
innocence about the goodness of human nature. He loved people unconditionally,
but there were admittedly times when the demands would become too much, and it
would seriously affect his health. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I harbour
strong feelings about the “commoditisation”, or exploitation, of scholars such
as Shaykh Seraj. I would see this happening at the hands of agenda driven
people, and express my concerns, but the Shaykh – despite the inevitable knocks
– had too many good thoughts to ever listen to me, a cynical journalist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I
write, still numb at his passing, I realise just how much I will miss my dearest
friend. I will miss the tea we would have after the Tuesday classes, the random
discussions we would have from Terrabytes to Tawhid – and of course – the
banter at the Friday lunch table. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It
reminds me that our friendship was about laughter, aspiration, hope and good things.
It was about our families, about the future, the things we still had to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I
console myself with is that the name “Seraj” means a “lamp”. My dear friend,
Shaykh Seraj, was a lamp – not only just for me – but unselfishly for the
thousands of people whose hearts he so lovingly touched. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-76337629070398334732019-12-27T23:27:00.000-08:002019-12-27T23:27:36.166-08:00District Six Mawlud<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-3971704475336902182019-12-03T01:12:00.000-08:002019-12-03T01:24:08.859-08:00The Rohingya, the world’s most persecuted minority<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">WHEN Islam first arrived in this
ancient region, called “Burma” under the British and “Myanmar” after 1989, is
difficult to determine. With China to the north, India and Bangladesh to the
northwest and Thailand to the east and south, Myanmar faces west into the
Andaman Sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The name “Burma” is a British colonial
construct for a country that was plundered for its natural wealth. British rule
lasted from 1824 to 1948, from the Anglo-Burmese Wars to the creation of Burma
as a province of British India, to the establishment of an independently
administered colony, and then finally, to independence in 1948.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The locals called their country
“myanma naing ngan”, the lexical source of the name Myanmar. The British
imperial tongue stumbled over these words and adopted Burma, naming the country
Burma in honour of the Burmans, the dominant ethnic group.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">From the earliest times, Myanmar was
known to seafarers from Persia, Arabia, India, China and Indonesia. It was
renowned for its rubies, sapphire, jade, teak and rice. It was also part of the
overland silk route from India to China. The earliest archaeological evidence
suggests civilisations existed in Myanmar as early as 11,000 BCE.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">It is along these sea routes and
overland passes that not only trade, but culture and faith travelled. The old
Arakan Kingdom, which is our focus, hugs the western coastline as a long finger
of land, abutting Bangladesh in the northwest. The region is divided from Burma
by a range of mountains, the Arakan Yomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The people of Arakan are known as
Rakhine, or Rohingya, with Arakan annexed to British India in 1826. Researchers
say the name “Rohingya” (as well as “Rakhine”) is probably derived from
“Rohingyahang”, an ancient name for Arakan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The Rohingya hail from the Rakhine
State, Arakan, which in pre-colonial times was a distinct region, sometimes one
kingdom and sometimes several kingdoms. They were either ruled by Buddhist
potentates, Hindu kings, Muslim Sultans, or hybrid Muslim-Buddhist courts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Complex history</b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The history of the region is complex,
convoluted and very often layered with multi-ethnic and multi-faith narratives.
The Rohingya are an intimate part of this diverse tapestry, a colourful human
tapestry in Myanmar which has 135 different ethnic groups in a population of
about 55 million.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Some sources claim that the first
Muslim in Myanmar was Muhammad ibn Hanafiyya, a son of Sayyidina ‘Ali, one of
the Righteous Caliphs who ruled after the demise of the Prophet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">According to legends he converted a
cannibal queen, Kaiyapuri, to Islam and married her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The most enduring narrative is that
from the 8th century onwards, Muslim seafarers settled along the coast,
marrying into local communities. This thesis coincides with how Islam arrived
in the China Seas, spreading to northern Sumatra and mainland China.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">To the maritime Arabs and Persians,
the coastal regions of Arakan en route to the Malacca Straits, would have been
well known.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Other sources maintain that the very
first Muslims to be mentioned in the Myanmar chronicles, the Maha Rajaweng,
were the two sons of an Arab merchant, Byat Wi and Byat Ta, in 1050 CE. The
second mention in the chronicles is Yaman Khan, or Rahman Khan, from the days
of King Sawlu (1077-1088), who succeeded his father Anawrahta to the throne.
Anawrahta, the first king of Myanmar, introduced Theravada Buddhism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">It propagated four noble truths: that
existence itself was suffering; that suffering had a cause in earthly
attachment; that there was a cessation of this suffering by striving; and that
there was a path to success by achieving nirvana, or cosmic harmony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Anawrahta’s capital on the Irrawaddy
River became a prominent city of pagodas and temples. Interestingly, Anawrahta
appointed a Muslim-Arab scholar as a royal teacher to his son, Prince Sawlu.
When Prince Sawlu became king, he appointed the son of his teacher as well as
his childhood friend, Yaman Khan, as governor of the city of Pegu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">This cultural intimacy between
Buddhism and Islam from the earliest days is something forgotten in the
contemporary xenophobic narrative of the Rohingya, which has been marred by the
ultra-nationalism of the current Myanmar state; a sugar-coated junta which
claims the Rohingya belong to neighbouring Bangladesh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Ironically, it is this very same junta
that makes a Freudian slip when one of its official publications, Sasana Ronwas
Htunzepho, published in 1997 says, “Islam spread and was deeply rooted in
Arakan (the Rakhine Rohingyan state) since the 8th century from where it
further spread into the interior of Burma.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">An example of this is the old city of
Mrauk U, which literally means “monkey’s egg”. It is a sleepy town today, but
for 355 years, was the seat of the Arakan Empire where Portuguese, Dutch and
French traders rubbed shoulders with the literati of Bengal and Indian Mughal
princes. It was part of the Bengal sultanate from 1430-1531.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">At its peak, Mrauk U controlled half
of Bangladesh, Arakan and the western part of lower Myanmar. Buddhist pagodas,
Hindu temples and mosques were built as the city grew. In fact, the golden city
of Mrauk U became known in Europe as a centre of oriental splendour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Buddhist
rulers style themselves after the Sultans</span></b></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Historians note that the Buddhist
rulers, who took power after 1531, styled themselves after the Sultans, even
giving themselves Islamic titles such as “Shah”, and hiring Muslim civil
servants. They adopted the conical Sufi hats of Isfahan and Delhi. They also
minted coins inscribing the kalimah in Persian and Arabic calligraphy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The Mandalay academic, Dr Ko Ko Gyi,
says, “This was because they (the Arakanese kings) not only wished to be
thought of as sultans in their own rights, but also because there were Muslims
in ever larger numbers among their subjects.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Indeed, there were large scale
conversions of Buddhists to Islam from the 15th to 18th centuries, with the
Mughals taking over Arakan in 1665. Later, when the Dutch were ordered by the
Mughals to quit Arakan, they were afraid of leaving behind the children they’d
had with local women, horrified at the idea of them becoming Muslim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Once a sovereign and independent
entity, and geographically and historically cut off from the rest of the
country, these facts explain the distinctly separate development of Arakan in
terms of its Muslim population. This until the Burmese king, Bodaw Paya,
conquered and looted it on 28th December 1784, taking its regent and 20,000
captives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Thousands of Arakanese Muslims and
Buddhists were put to death. 30, 000 Burmese soldiers destroyed mosques,
temples, shrines, seminaries and libraries. The fall of the Mrauk-U Empire was
a mortal blow to the Muslims, for everything Islamic in it was razed to the
ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In 1790, Hiram Cox, a British diplomat
sent to assist Arakan, or Rohingya, refugees established the town of Cox’s
Bazaar in Bangladesh. This is where many Rohingya still live today, and where
there is the biggest Rohingyan refugee camp in the world with nearly one
million inhabitants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Bodaw Paya’s disruption would seal the
modern-day fate of Arakan and shape Myanmar’s jaundiced perceptions of the
Muslim minority. Michael Symes, the British representative at Bodaw Paya’s
court, described him as “a child in his ideas, a tyrant in his principles, and
a madman in his actions”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Bodaw Paya was an extremist Buddhist
who had proclaimed himself a messianic figure. He even persecuted other
Buddhist sects, deeming the Buddhist sins of drinking, smoking opium and
killing animals punishable by death. His reign was so oppressive that in 1794 the
people of Arakan rose up against him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">When Bodaw Paya sent an army to crush
the revolt, thousands of refugees fled from Arakan into British territory.
Conditions on the Arakan border became so unsettled that in 1795 the British
had to send a representative to negotiate with Bodaw Paya. By 1826, the British
had annexed Arakan to colonial Burma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">1942
Burmese nationalists slaughter Muslims and Buddhists</span></b></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In 1942, during the Second World War,
Japan invaded Myanmar. As the British retreated, Burmese nationalists attacked
Muslim and Buddhist communities in Arakan whom they thought had benefited from
British colonial rule. 40,000 Rohingya and 20,000 Arakan Buddhists were
slaughtered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Britain liberated Myanmar from
Japanese occupation with the help of Burmese nationalists and Rohingya fighters
in 1945. The British recognised the Rohingya Muslims as a distinct racial
group, and promised them autonomy in North Arakan. However, the British didn’t
fulfil their promise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In 1948 tensions increased between the
government of newly independent Burma and the Rohingya, many of whom wanted
Arakan to join Pakistan. The government retaliated by ostracizing the Rohingya,
including the removal of Rohingyan civil servants from their posts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Prior to 1962, and the socialist era, the
government tried to appease Rohingyan aspirations of autonomy with limited
Arakan nationhood. This came against a background of armed resistance led by
the Mujahid movement and the former Qawali singer, Jafar Kawal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">After the military coup of March 1962,
the military regime led by General Ne Win, cancelled plans to grant Arakan
statehood. In February 1963, the regime nationalised all commercial
enterprises. In Arakan, most of the business establishments were in the hands
of the Rohingya Muslims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">If that wasn’t enough, in 1964
Rohingyan welfare organisations were banned. In 1965, the military regime
banned the Rohingyan language from the airwaves. In 1974, the Peoples’ Congress
ratified Arakan as the Rakhine State. It was now controlled by a Buddhist majority
with the Rohingya marginalised.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The discrimination against the
Rohingya is best explained by the military junta systematically – and cynically
– stoking the fears of the demise of Buddhism (89% of the population compared
to Muslims being 4%), and the break-up of the nation due to Islamic insurgency.
This was done to cultivate loyalty in a population resentful of unpopular junta
policies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The narrative that Myanmar needs to
protect Buddhism from Islam is a cheap and tawdry nationalism that has
persisted for over a century. And as with so many dictatorships, 911 would
prove to be a boon for Myanmar’s junta, which in the name of fighting “Islamic
terror” could justify its human rights abuses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><b>Operation King Dragon 1978</b></span></h3>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The fact is that by the 1970s the
Rohingya, the straw dogs of Burmese nationalism, had already become victims of
state-sponsored terror. During “Operation King Dragon” in 1978, military forces
targeted the Rohingya, and were accused of mass detentions, rape, and the
burning of villages. 300,000 people fled to nearby Bangladesh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In 1982, the Rohingya were denied
citizenship under the Myanmar Nationality Law. The junta’s apartheid was
entrenched by imposing severe restrictions on marriage, family planning,
employment, education, religious choice and freedom of movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In 1991, another targeted campaign,
“Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation,” ostensibly directed at squashing the
Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, pushed another 200,000 people out of the
country. These pogroms, now acknowledged as genocide, were to happen again
(post 911) in 2012, 2015, 2016, and would come to an ugly head in 2017.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Space precludes a detailed examination
of the horrors of the consistent Myanmar pogroms, but on 25 August 2017 a group
of young men from a small resistance movement, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army (ARSA), attacked a military barracks with knives and home-made bombs. In
the attack, they killed 12 security force officials.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">International think tanks have alleged
that ARSA has Saudi roots, but its spokesman told the Asia Times in 2017 that
it had no so-called jihadi links, and was a bona fide resistance movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Response to the attacks was regarded
by the UN as grossly disproportionate to the actual security threats posed.
Nearly 300 villages were razed to the ground. This violence, set off by the
military, was accompanied by mass killings, rapes and torture. An estimated
3,000 Rohingya perished, which caused a migration of 700,000 people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In a 2018 report, the UN cited six
senior military figures for possible genocide, naming commander-in-chief,
General Min Aung Hlaing. The UN, which has always been circumspect about using
the word “genocide”, used it in its report.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Since the 2000s there have been two
key personalities complicit in the Rohingya genocide. The first is an extremist
Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, who on the cover of Time Magazine of 1 July 2013,
was described as “The Face of Buddhist Terror”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">He is a member of the 969 group, an
ultra-nationalist movement opposed to what it sees as Islam’s unwelcome
expansion in Buddhist Myanmar. Banned on Facebook, Wirathu is a leader of the
Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, commonly known by its
Burmese acronym, Ma Ba Tha.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The Baghdadi of Buddhism, Wirathu has
coloured his preaching by stoking up Islamaphobic hate. For Wirathu it is the
simple equation of Rohingya swartgevaar, of a Saudi-backed Bangladeshi insurgency,
whose sole purpose is to destroy Buddhism and establish a caliphate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">In January 2015, he publicly called UN
envoy Yanghee Lee a “bitch” and a “whore” and invited her to offer her “arse to
the kalars” (a derogatory term for Rohingya).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of Muslims, he once said, “You cannot sleep next to a mad dog…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Aung
San Suu Kyi</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">He also called Aung San Suu Kyi,
Myanmar’s political leader, a “prostitute”. He has also accused her political
party, the National League for Democracy, of secretly supporting a Muslim agenda.
He has also said if Myanmar officials are brought to book he will be holding a
gun, something totally against Theravada Buddhism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The state has slapped him on the
wrist, even suggesting sedition charges be laid against him for insulting Aung
San Suu Kyi, but he remains at large with the monastic authorities also
seemingly unable to curb him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The most disappointing figure by far
is Aung San Suu Kyi, the former human rights activist and peace advocate, who
whilst under house arrest in Rangoon, received the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Once idolised by millions around the
globe, she has proved to be hugely remiss and beholden to the junta on the
Rohingya question since her election victory of 2015. Her fall from grace has
been spectacular. By August last year, she had been stripped of no less than
seven international awards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;">As Myanmar’s leading public figure,
she has an angered and infuriated the international community on her reluctance
to seriously acknowledge the crisis, which sees the Rohingya as the most
persecuted minority on earth. Sadly, most of the world’s leaders – eyeing prime
jade and teak – have been unforgivably and equally mute as her on Myanmar’s
genocide pogrom, the worst since the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><o:p><i>The article first appeared in the Habibia Diary 2020.</i></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-91650356094443262722019-11-16T11:31:00.001-08:002019-11-16T11:31:31.636-08:00Azzawia Mawlud : feeling happy for the Prophet is faith<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj622GUvGph3SNOrNNOxTrTpoVt3ibVqTsZ7OSXrS2-0TI1ipSigAO9DF_yAH3drSuNkCIwXa-qowlDFIa1N4SUA2alHEuZGfxvbbsnN8T6TtIcYWDSm3lol46-kpNZpBcBt7TcUgXfZuGg/s1600/_DSC0847.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj622GUvGph3SNOrNNOxTrTpoVt3ibVqTsZ7OSXrS2-0TI1ipSigAO9DF_yAH3drSuNkCIwXa-qowlDFIa1N4SUA2alHEuZGfxvbbsnN8T6TtIcYWDSm3lol46-kpNZpBcBt7TcUgXfZuGg/s640/_DSC0847.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: justify;">IT is
strange that the late Mufti Bin Baz’s fatwa forbidding the celebration of the
mawlud is seen by some as the only edict on the matter. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: justify;">This
is strange because there are literally hundreds of legal opinions that differ
with him on the permissibility of remembering the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Yet,
bizarrely, Bin Baz’s solitary view is often seen as Islam itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">These
were the words of Shaykh Ahmad Hendricks, an imam at the Azzawia mosque in Cape
Town, where mawlud was first observed on its premises in 1920 by his
grand-father, Shaykh Muhammad Salih Hendricks. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">Shaykh Muhammad Salih, who passed on in 1945, introduced the Barzanji mawlud, which he brought from Zanzibar, where he spent a year as its chief Qadi, or judge, in 1903. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">To
feel happiness at the birth of the Prophet, said Shaykh Ahmad, was a part of
Shari’ah, or Sacred Law. It was endorsed by Ibn Taymiyya, who affirmed that
people celebrated the mawlud out of joy for the Prophet. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">Joy at
the birth of Muhammad (pbuh) was, therefore, permissible.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">He
added that this was borne out by the experience of one of the Prophet’s uncles,
Abu Lahab. In a validated tradition, it is recorded that Abu Lahab – who became
one of the Prophet’s worst enemies – is granted temporary respite from the flames
of hell due to his celebrating his nephew’s birth, which he did by freeing a
slave girl, Thuwaybah.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">We are
not given to insulting people, stated Shaykh Ahmad, but based on this single
Hadith alone, one would have to doubt the faith of anyone who was not happy about
the birth of the blessed Prophet (pbuh).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">This was
further corroborated by the Messenger of God informing his Companions he fasted
every Monday. Why? Because Monday was the day he was born. This is clear proof
that the Prophet (pbuh) celebrated his own birthday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">That was
the underlying principle: the Prophet (pbuh) celebrated his birthday. How could
there be any other interpretation? This could not mean that remembering
birthdays was forbidden.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Leading
from this, continued the Shaykh, was an accepted notion that the Prophet’s voluntary
fasting commemorating his birthday could be replaced by other praiseworthy devotion
– such as sadaqah (voluntary charity), salawat (citation of blessings on the
Prophet) and dhikr (remembering God) – without contravening the Shari’ah.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Furthermore,
due to the Prophet fasting throughout the year, there was the explicit social
benefit that mawlud could be commemorated at any time, from the month of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Muharram right through to Dhul Hijjah, and not
just be confined to Rabi ul-Awwal, the month of his noble birth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Quoting
the famous scholar, Imam Hajr al-Asqalani, Shaykh Ahmad said that the Prophet
(pbuh) also commemorated historical events. For example, the fast of the Jews
on Ashura, in remembrance of their liberation from the Pharaoh, inspired the
Prophet to recommend that Muslims fast during the first ten days of Muharram, which
marks the beginning of lunar New Year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">As for
those who patronisingly accuse us of mimicking Jewish or Christian customs: we fully
respect their festivities, but the truth is that we act on our own principles and
beliefs, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Shaykh
Ahmad continued that the Holy Qur’an has ordered us to be happy with Allah’s Mercies,
with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) – the first light of His Creation being the
first one created by God and the last one sent by God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">As the
Qur’an states, “(O Muhammad)…have we not sent you except as a Mercy to the all
the Worlds”. Surely this was proof enough to celebrate his existence?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">In
another instance, Allah calls the Prophet a prophet of “deep caring and mercy” in
the most praiseworthy language possible, in terms not used for any other
prophet, at the end of Surat ul-Tawbah (the Chapter of Repentance and Return).<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Therefore,
it is highly recommended to show happiness at the life of the Prophet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Shaykh
Ahmad stated that Surat ul-Hujjarat, an excellent chapter on outlining noble human
conduct, also ordered us to honour the Prophet (pbuh). For instance, we are
told: “Do not raise your voices above the voice of the Prophet…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Then
there was the verse exhorting us to perform salawat, the constant citation of
peace and blessings upon the Prophet, as practiced by the Angels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Shaykh
Ahmad went on to say that naysayers would often evoke the idea that because the
Prophet did not practice something in his lifetime, it would not be permissible
after his lifetime. This was a fallacious argument, and not one accepted by any
credible faqih, or legal scholar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Besides,
if this principle were to be applied, on one level we would still be riding
donkeys and praying in mosques without loudspeakers. On another, we would not
be able to practice the tarawih prayers during Ramadan, for instance, regarded
by Sayyidina ‘Umar, as a “bida’h hasanah”, an acceptable innovation in Islam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Nor
for that matter, would we be reading the current version of the Qur’an, its
sections gathered together after the Prophet’s earthly demise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Furthermore,
the notion that if the Prophet left off something it became forbidden, was as equally
fallacious as the idea that if he didn’t practice something in his life it
became unlawful. Shaykh Ahmad recalled the incident when the Prophet refused to
eat roasted lizard. When quizzed by his Companions, he replied that he didn’t
eat it because it wasn’t to his taste, not because it was haram. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Shaykh
Ahmad said that the practice of the mawlud was regarded as a bida’h, yes, but a
bida’h hasanah. It was a permissible practice for whom the innovator of a “new
Sunnah” would get a due reward from the Divine for its benefits to others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">So
what do we do on the mawlud? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We make
salawat, the citation of peace and blessings upon the Prophet, said Shaykh
Ahmad, adding that salawat was an integral to forgiveness and invocation, and
that the Prophet himself had said that a person who did not make salawat was a
spiritual miser.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">All
the mawlud kitabs reminded us of the Prophet; they reminded us in soaring
verses about his life and his qualities. So how could they be haram?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">We
should imbue the values of the Prophet (pbuh) by getting as close to him as possible
by remembering his qualities, his life, his miracles and his mercies. This
should inspire us to strive to do our best for mankind; to do this without
anger, arrogance or aggression, but by being humble and compassionate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">For
this reason, every component of the mawlud is Deen, the practice of our faith.
What protects us from the fitnah, the great mischief, of our times is our love
and link to the Prophet (pbuh). We should make the salawat repeatedly until the
very essence of the most merciful of mankind takes root in our souls, said
Shaykh Ahmad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyaKB0NJUsu23cFZ1AADHkBuobjHvP_3AVzNsNqMEULMOLnG4XOiuUkKial_H8RIPph832wK2CIJEK41sZ1JXDfj0OOJD1bxlBSh9wBU3Z3qqgQeH4kDPgZrXmTffUspv2_ZbVEeLAUxS/s1600/_DSC0583.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyaKB0NJUsu23cFZ1AADHkBuobjHvP_3AVzNsNqMEULMOLnG4XOiuUkKial_H8RIPph832wK2CIJEK41sZ1JXDfj0OOJD1bxlBSh9wBU3Z3qqgQeH4kDPgZrXmTffUspv2_ZbVEeLAUxS/s640/_DSC0583.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Preparing for the mawlud.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6bdhBaP0Kuvg5iXMjHKug50cmND-2A-THBXOSOLBk2i2ykEWVPOxAlnTUs-4qsLD5v4CuxS-PKmPrX7bAgQrcL2VQWm7tQgLGaonKKk6uOZMbIOV7Ed3EenEEkRXtl4DwLbDSsOEPZYh/s1600/_DSC0633.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6bdhBaP0Kuvg5iXMjHKug50cmND-2A-THBXOSOLBk2i2ykEWVPOxAlnTUs-4qsLD5v4CuxS-PKmPrX7bAgQrcL2VQWm7tQgLGaonKKk6uOZMbIOV7Ed3EenEEkRXtl4DwLbDSsOEPZYh/s640/_DSC0633.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perfuming the Zawiyya with buhur.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs-LEHqbGHOitVaiCr-5348djh7WN6kmiBj6aU4kT7PFjzRu68R4KuhywS_0OKdjYxVlxFqj2Tzu6VhDN2DzsIOsZ1JiQwwJoPzf0DRUJw4yrLTG6L8O6RfKuL17wpcuYpD2CRHfSfPbt/s1600/_DSC0664.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs-LEHqbGHOitVaiCr-5348djh7WN6kmiBj6aU4kT7PFjzRu68R4KuhywS_0OKdjYxVlxFqj2Tzu6VhDN2DzsIOsZ1JiQwwJoPzf0DRUJw4yrLTG6L8O6RfKuL17wpcuYpD2CRHfSfPbt/s640/_DSC0664.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">King Protea for the best of mankind.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxA95uWcgWQc2FmWquvLDYx1DrFvefhFfUbKwulsiWKpAt-FMC1K2s7Q1x6udCcoxiMhvz5QvpbNphO44mh9xB1svTWni9X_mGK-zFgREWo0CcDhpviKK_BeJN_UIswVfnn2ZwcDOHAMiK/s1600/_DSC0788.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxA95uWcgWQc2FmWquvLDYx1DrFvefhFfUbKwulsiWKpAt-FMC1K2s7Q1x6udCcoxiMhvz5QvpbNphO44mh9xB1svTWni9X_mGK-zFgREWo0CcDhpviKK_BeJN_UIswVfnn2ZwcDOHAMiK/s640/_DSC0788.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shaykh Ahmad Hendricks addresses the occasion.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimproKo1F3v_vQVX7JrLiS0qsUTOZFCmAj_wfOgvGrLEGfHDwX9knK93xtahjeEr2vXj7msBU_TAVEvk9jkmy5exEdaZmHfgj5EwXtvnallA8JJPPNgQrgRCngDuxelYai6tuID7O6xxJS/s1600/_DSC0795.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimproKo1F3v_vQVX7JrLiS0qsUTOZFCmAj_wfOgvGrLEGfHDwX9knK93xtahjeEr2vXj7msBU_TAVEvk9jkmy5exEdaZmHfgj5EwXtvnallA8JJPPNgQrgRCngDuxelYai6tuID7O6xxJS/s640/_DSC0795.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Listening attentively.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJtwhuG17e3gBpuvhguYkV5glpnx0cK_PO_wdtZZIa5SlNPzaT5kDZU4fi1F81Bg3sGAC0DtAc3RBrh1VgBRHdIs5kii7irqz_-zgdzmOlsv0gEMBb_u35lhkCeIPnm5Jxw_01e9H0ZeK/s1600/_DSC0814.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJtwhuG17e3gBpuvhguYkV5glpnx0cK_PO_wdtZZIa5SlNPzaT5kDZU4fi1F81Bg3sGAC0DtAc3RBrh1VgBRHdIs5kii7irqz_-zgdzmOlsv0gEMBb_u35lhkCeIPnm5Jxw_01e9H0ZeK/s640/_DSC0814.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reciting verses on the Prophet (pbuh). <br /><br /><i>Photos copyright Shafiq Morton</i></td></tr>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-36571415358862130662019-11-12T02:40:00.000-08:002019-11-12T02:50:22.038-08:00Prophet's Birthday Centred on Mercy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">God has Mercy on the Merciful</span></i></b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 21.3333px;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></span></div>
<span style="text-align: center;">THE
Dai'rat us-Salihiyyah Dhikr Circle, led by Hajjah Naeema Manie, celebrated its 16</span><sup style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: center;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; text-align: center;">
annual Mawlud un-Nabi (the birth of the Prophet Muhammad) at Grassy Park mosque
this month.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; text-align: justify;">Attended
by nearly 500 women exquisitely dressed in white, riwayats (accounts of the
Prophet’s life) were recited as well as verses from the Qur’an together
with dhikr (the melodious remembrance of Allah).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Keynote
speaker was Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, imam at the Azzawia mosque and a well-known
local scholar, who framed his informative talk around the concept of mercy and
the famous Prophetic axiom: “The merciful will be shown mercy by the Most
Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth, and Allah will have Mercy upon
you.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">According
to Hendricks, who quoted from Imam al-Ghazali to reinforce his point, the whole
ethos of humankind had to be supported by mercy; mercy combined with a wise use
of our God-given intellect that things such extremism, hate and marginalisation
were not part of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>being Muslim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
Dairat us-Salihiyyah Dhikr Circle meets on a weekly basis and is involved in
various outreach programmes throughout the year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sh Seraj addresses the gathering.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; line-height: 14.72px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>©</i></span></span></b> Shafiq Morton<i> & </i>Dai'rat us-Salihiyyah 2019</span></td></tr>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-1503623148080508652019-11-12T01:51:00.006-08:002021-01-19T23:07:28.745-08:00Yes, we are Uyinene<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">A
tribute to Women’s Month</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">ATTACKS
by men on women – an endemic problem in our society condemned by all but still in practice –
has shot to prominence due to the particularly tragic homicide of University of
Cape Town student, Uyinene Mrwetyana.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Mrwetyana,
a bubbly 19-year-old first year film and media studies student, went to the Clareinch
post office to inquire about a parcel, but was told by the accused – a 42 year old clerk Luyando Botha – <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to come back later
because the electricity was off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">She
returned, and Botha now alone at the post office, assaulted and raped her.
According to the police, her spirited resistance caused him to bludgeon her to
death. He later burnt and dumped her body at Lingelethu West in Khayelitsha.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Uyinene’s
horrifying demise had been preceded by </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">the cold-blooded shooting of 25 year-old champion boxer, Leighandre Jegels, by an ex-boyfriend (who had a restraining order against him), and Meghan Cremer, an avid horse rider, killed by three men known to her who tied her up and took her car.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Uyinene’s brutal murder </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">awoke the nation, reeling from
gender violence, into an unprecedented outpouring of anger and grief. A march
to parliament saw police minister, Bheki Cele, booed by an impassioned crowd
when he tried to address it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">For
South African women traumatised by violence, Uyinene’s killing has proved to be
the final straw – and the gauntlet has been thrown to government to act with
real purpose and genuine political will. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">But
the sad fact is that the killings will continue, because South Africa is a
world leader in what is known as “femicide”, the murder of women by men. South
African Police Service figures reveal that in 2017-18 one woman was killed
every three hours. And if that statistic doesn’t jar enough, 15.2 women out of
every 100 000 will be killed in South Africa this year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">The
World Health Organisation has our murder rate of women at 4.8 times higher than
the global average, and out of 183 countries, we are fourth on the league of
shame – only after Honduras, Jamaica and Lesotho. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Tragically,
much of our gender violence brews in deprived environments. Angry, hungry and unemployed
males, emasculated by their lack of skills, a lack of education and crippled by
economic despair, are very often perpetrators. Due to their low self-esteem,
violence creates the only power dynamic they know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Sadly,
the latter is not just confined to the poor. Gender violence can be a middle-upper-class
thing too, the recent convictions of sociopathic wife-killers Jason Rohde and
Rob Packham in Western Cape courts, an established case in point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Of
course, whatever I say cannot lift the very real grief and calm the justifiable
fury so many South Africans are feeling right now. But it is in such moments of
darkness that I become grateful to know Islam – not in the patronising sense of
thinking it makes me better than anyone else, no. That is not the case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Rather,
my consolation is in the sense that our history shows us how gender violence
and gender apartheid were done away by the Prophet Muhammad (SAW). By changing
perceptions on women through his wise actions, the Prophet (SAW) ensured that
women did not have to be the victims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">He
forbade the practice of female infanticide practiced by the Arab tribes,
especially in times of drought. This cruel custom of burying baby girls alive,
so that there could be more boys, came to an end in the 7th century. The
Prophet (SAW) also prohibited the social isolation of women during their haid,
or monthly courses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Then the
Prophet (SAW) broke the patriarchal mould, and all the stereotypes, by not only
working for a business woman, Sayyidah Khadijah, but marrying her after she had
proposed to him as an older woman. This would set the trend later on when women
would play a central, and affirming, role in the development of Islam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">For
instance, the ways of the Prophet (pbuh) would drive out the notion that women
had to play specific roles in society when he did his own housework, mended his
clothes and fixed his sandals. Wives are the truest witnesses to exactly whom
their men are, and Sayyidah A’ishah once said in response to a question that at
home, the Prophet (pbuh) embodied the mercy of the Qur’an.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">The
Prophet even used to comfort the slave women of Madinah and Makkah. And at a
time of great stress – when the Companions were angry with him after he signed
the Treaty of Hudaibiyya – it was his wife, Umm Salama, who consoled him, and
gave him the advice that broke the impasse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">When
it came to war, it was Nusaybah bint Ka’b, a nurse who took up a sword to
defend the Prophet (pbuh) at Uhud, who became one of Islam’s fiercest battle
commanders. In the field of knowledge it was Hafsah, another wife of the
Prophet, who was entrusted with keeping the first compilation of the Qur’an.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">There
are just so many shining examples of how women were at the forefront during the
establishment of Islam, contributing economically, socially, militarily and
academically. This is what always gives me hope. Allah tells us in the Qur’an
that women are the partners of men, and that men are the partners of women, and
that men and women are equal before the Divine Court. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">And as
I conclude this, there is a consoling image in my mind. It is of a radiant
Uyinene, freed from her earthly bonds and liberated from her injustice, being
reassured by the noble Prophet that all is going to be fine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-27000312859172832612019-03-14T02:54:00.002-07:002019-11-12T01:39:33.409-08:00BOOK OF LETTERS FROM CAPE SLAVE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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BOOK OF LETTERS FROM CAPE SLAVE</h1>
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Book details Muslim scholar Tuan Guru’s life and a glimpse into the lives of the oppressed</h2>
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LETTERS penned by one of the Cape’s Muslim icons, Tuan Guru, have offered evidence of colonial rule from the perspective of the oppressed.</div>
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Usually the colonial narrative, and ultimately South African history, has been informed by writings of those who ruled. But these letters, which have not been made public before, share a different first-hand experience of the Cape in the late 1700s.</div>
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Author Tuan Guru was a Muslim scholar who lived in Bo-Kaap.</div>
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He was born Abdullah bin Qadi Abd al-Salam in 1712 and was part of the royal family in Tidore, an Indonesian island.</div>
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He was popularly known as Tuan Guru, which means Master Teacher.</div>
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When Dutch colonisers landed in Tidore they banished members of the royal family, including Tuan Guru (who was 68 at the time), to the Cape when occupying their land.</div>
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Local author and journalist Shafiq Morton used the letters as research for <span style="background-color: transparent;">his latest book, From the Spice Islands to Cape Town: the Life and Times of Tuan Guru.</span></div>
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The book details the icon’s life until his death in the Cape at 95 in 1807.</div>
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Tuan Guru is buried in the historical Tana Baru cemetery in Bo-Kaap and his descendants still live in Cape Town.</div>
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“One family showed me Tuan Guru’s kitaabs (Arabic for books), and in it we found the letters.</div>
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“We then had it translated and we were blown away,” said Morton.</div>
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“We were able to see the personality of Tuan Guru coming through.</div>
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“He was a very patient man and had a very steadfast character.</div>
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“He makes his feeling about the Dutch plain. They were his oppressor.</div>
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“He wrote duas (prayers) in Arabic and Malay against the Dutch, who would smile when the slaves recited the duas, not knowing the meaning of the words.</div>
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“The biggest thing I had to do with this book was to decolonise myself.</div>
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“The tragedy in researching history is that even in Indonesia our sources are colonial. It’s all written in Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and English.</div>
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“I had to look at those sources and re-interpret them. I had a very lopsided narrative.</div>
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“I had to start looking and thinking about what it was like for the slaves.”</div>
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Morton said Tuan Guru’s aim was to uplift the slave community’s spirit through faith and education during very tough times.</div>
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Tuan Guru, a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad, had spent his life teaching others about Islam.</div>
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He had also hand-written the Qur’an at least five times while in the Cape. One of these copies is held at the Auwal Mosque in Bo-Kaap, where he offered Islamic lessons.</div>
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“His way of getting back at the colonial authorities was to educate the community. Slave conditions at that time were dire. He had to lift his community out of that.</div>
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“He was a social activist who knew if he built up a community that it would be a form of resistance.</div>
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“His school started with over 300 pupils in Dorp Street. It was a madressa, (Islamic school) but was open to all.</div>
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“The community that he was bringing together came from African countries, India, the local Khoisan and Europeans.</div>
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“Every nation on Earth was coming to the Cape and he brought everyone together at his school. This shows you why the Cape Muslim community is so unique. It is a mixture of everybody. You will see faces from everywhere in our mosques.</div>
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“Tuan Guru should be given the freedom of the city (Cape Town) for his contribution. He started the (multi-racial) rainbow nation.”</div>
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The book’s publisher, Awqaf South Africa, said it is part of its Leaders and Legacies series, which “aims to honour our past and present leaders”.</div>
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Awqaf chief executive Zeinoul Cajee said the book series will focus on people who “made the ultimate sacrifice against Dutch and British colonisers and slave masters” as well as anti-apartheid activists.</div>
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“When history books are written, they are invariably written from the perspective of the powers that be.</div>
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“Their intention is always to portray themselves as superior beings and others as an underclass.</div>
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“They drive the idea that their history is important, their heroes are important. They would love the history of the oppressed and underclass to be obliterated, as if they had no history. We need to change that.” From the Spice Islands to Cape Town: the Life and Times of Tuan Guru launches on March 17 at the Centre for the Book in central Cape Town.</div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-35717539195330473612019-03-13T03:52:00.000-07:002019-03-13T03:54:09.933-07:00Dhairat us-Salihiyya double birthday celebration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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THE Ad-Dhairat us-Salihiyya Dhikr Group in Cape Town held an auspicious commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad's birth at Masjid ul-Khair in Mitchells Plain recently. It was also a celebration of the birthday of its Shaykhah and leader, Hajjah Naeema Manie.</div>
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A special guest of honour was Shaykh Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Ninowy of the Madinah Institute, who gave a short talk. Also present were the mosque imams, Shaykh Riyad Fataar and Shaykh Zaid Fataar and Hafiz Mahmood Khatib. </div>
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In a touching ceremony, Hajjah Naeema asked Shaykh Ninowy for the traditional baya (oath of allegiance). In response, Shaykh Ninowy said he would not only give Hajjah Naeema his ceremonial hand, but give her ijaza (permission) in all the Sufi Orders he is permitted to practice.</div>
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The moving mawlud was concluded with exquisite birthday cakes given to Hajjah Naeema and Shaykh Ninowy by the members of the Dhikr Group.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeYrCfMc2KdCRl7Bq91VZPGS3qPuS2NqqCXKcPyQBCdnxbD_I582MAQCFcwBFpSeVeuQ4vxrTpd5NKaK-gq-_1DZR1J-XOJ-yk-Z350roK3FW1WZku0def8NYkT7rUpmHTHIIFmnhc1UaM/s1600/_DSC1652.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1188" data-original-width="1600" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeYrCfMc2KdCRl7Bq91VZPGS3qPuS2NqqCXKcPyQBCdnxbD_I582MAQCFcwBFpSeVeuQ4vxrTpd5NKaK-gq-_1DZR1J-XOJ-yk-Z350roK3FW1WZku0def8NYkT7rUpmHTHIIFmnhc1UaM/s640/_DSC1652.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shaykh Ninowy gives his ijaza to Hajjah Naeema.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Masjid ul-Khair's beautiful interior.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The crowd stands for the final verses of the salawat, greetings of peace on the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh].</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From l-r: Shaykh Zaid Fataar, Shaykh Riyad Fataar, Hafiz Mahmood Khatib and Shaykh Ninowy.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shaykh Ninowy delivers his talk.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hajjah Naeema reads the riwayat, the verses of the Barzanji Mawlud, or devotional poem.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A large crowd attended bedecked in white with green scarves..</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From l-r: Hafiz Mahmod Khatib, Hajjah Naeema and Shaykh Ninowy.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cutting the cake.</td></tr>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-84851796993078304622019-02-01T01:52:00.005-08:002021-01-19T23:09:58.965-08:00#Cliftongate, the real legacy of Cape Town's Clifton beach<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The pristine sands of Cifton. Courtesy flickr.</td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">#CLIFTONGATE – or whatever one wishes to call it – provided us with our guaranteed year-end dose of racial drama. Every year, it seems, crowds at our beaches set off the nation’s racist trolls. Come Christmas, and like the Grinch, the Penny Sparrows of this world rush out to play.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">#Cliftongate occurred on a balmy late December evening when the Secretary General of a prominent political party – the one that doesn’t support Israel – was asked to leave the beach by a private security company, the one that allegedly has links to the Cape underworld.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Exact reasons for this distinctly apartheid-style forced removal are fuzzy. Some reports say that there was an issue with crime, and that for unspecified ‘safety reasons’ the beach had to be cleared by 8 pm. The central question is why this was done by a private company, and exactly on whose authority.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Another political group – say ‘red designer overalls’ – protested a day or so later, as did another grouping, which ritually slaughtered a sheep on the beach in a traditional cleansing ceremony. Matters became Kafkaesque when counter protests centred on animal rights, ignoring the principal issue, human rights.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">It underlined that Clifton, originally called Skoenmaker’s Gat (after a 17th century Dutch East Company deserter), is a sign of our post-apartheid disorder of historical ignorance, amnesia and privileged arrogance. An absolute postcard of a beach, Clifton is hugged by the sandstone and granite cliffs of the Twelve Apostles, or the Hoerikwaggo range. </div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Clifton’s Riviera profile belies the fact that it was originally where the Goringhaiqua Khoe of Camissa, or Table Bay, gathered shellfish, collected fresh water and sheltered in the caves above Second Beach. This was part of a route via the established Camps Bay and Oudekraal settlements (destroyed by the Dutch in the 1659 Khoe war) to Hout Bay, where the Gorachoqua lived.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">The runaway slaves, who rallied around the Sufi masters, Tuan Sayyid Jaffer and Shaykh Nurul Mubeen in the 17th and 18th centuries, would have been informed by the Khoe of this passage to their former Oudekraal pasturage, where its rocky terrain, deep gullies and thick fynbos would have made it difficult for Dutch officials to capture them.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">There is little institutional memory of this, other than hundreds of scattered graves on the mountain slopes and the well-known tombs of Tuan Sayyid Jaffer and Shaykh Nurul Mubeen. There are no plaques, or any other attempts at the commemoration, of what Clifton and the whole area once signified.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Today, the coastal strip from Sea Point to Hout Bay enjoys a ‘Peter Stuyvesant’ imprint of wealthy mansions and Top-Billing sunsets, where any sense of history and heritage is as meaningful as the last sipped Campari. </div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Historically, then, Clifton is a gloomy narrative of colonial land theft and socio-economic disempowerment, the signature forgotten event being the wrecking of a Portuguese slaver, the Sao Jose Paquette, on its pristine shores on 27 December 1794.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">The ship had returned from a slaving expedition in central Mozambique. It had over 400 slaves chained in its hold as it embarked on its four month journey to Brazil. When the Sao Jose rounded the Cape after 24 days, it found itself facing a raging south-east gale. As it beat around the Maiden’s Cove headland, and made for the wind shadow of Clifton, it struck a rock and started to sink.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">The Sao Jose was only 100 metres from the shore. But with over 400 slaves cowering in its dank hold, there was a problem. The ship was going down fast. The crew and captain had to hasten to liberate its human cargo. This was not chivalry. It was business. Living slaves were precious capital, dead slaves were not.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">By the time the Sao Jose finally sank under the icy Atlantic, there were still 211 people shackled to the bottom of the ship. Two days later, the surviving slaves were sold to the highest bidders under the trees on the Grand Parade.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">All of this would have been known to the community of the time. Indeed, the sadness at the treatment of the Mozambican slaves at Skoenmaker’s Gat would have reverberated throughout the underclass of Cape Town.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Indeed, our people would have understood well European flippancy on the value of their lives. The fiscal Denaus, a company agent, had frequently raided their homes. A thoroughly spiteful character, research reveals that he had confiscated a letter from General Craig authorising Tuan Guru to build Cape Town’s first mosque.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">The colonial authorities had condoned it, but clearly the Penny Sparrows in the streets of 18th century Cape Town had not, and Tuan Guru would have to perform the Friday prayers in the Chiappini Street quarry as a protest, the mosque only officially opening years later.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">#Cliftongate, the saga of the Sao Jose and the gentrification of the Bo Kaap are all related. They are designed to bury our history and our heritage – a socio-economic airbrushing – where the ignorant and moneyed can pleasure themselves to death at our expense.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-13221414998920895212018-12-18T02:29:00.000-08:002018-12-18T02:29:00.726-08:00District Six Mawlud<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-12990182661770147522018-12-10T04:51:00.000-08:002018-12-10T04:51:16.689-08:00Cape Town women celebrate Prophet's Birth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOrfuWXAndiEiah9XSSV_7rURnV-mWlmIqUnKba2Dwkoeeaoh0LHJ-whU1SZcdAJB9gjxHL7TlixTgh4PUOIW8wYT8QJEWtbe28MvgF1cZS_6djJ9Kpll3Li7ise_fORb-JTdqfHq13DmJ/s1600/_CSC0915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOrfuWXAndiEiah9XSSV_7rURnV-mWlmIqUnKba2Dwkoeeaoh0LHJ-whU1SZcdAJB9gjxHL7TlixTgh4PUOIW8wYT8QJEWtbe28MvgF1cZS_6djJ9Kpll3Li7ise_fORb-JTdqfHq13DmJ/s640/_CSC0915.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hajjah Naeema Manie leads the Ad-Dai'rat us-Salihiyyah Dhikr Group.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">THE Ad-Dair’at us-Salihiyyah
Dhikr Group celebrated its 15th birthday on its annual commemoration – or mawlud
– of the Prophet Muhammad’s blessed birth at the Grassy Park mosque on 8
December. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Founded by Hajjah Naeema Manie
under the auspices of Shaykh Seraj and Ahmad Hendricks of the Azzawia in Cape
Town, the group’s name derives from their grandfather, Shaykh Muhammad Salih (1871-1944),
who introduced not only Imam al-Ghazali to the Cape in the 1920s, but also the
Barzanji Mawlud, which has now been performed at the Azzawia for nearly 100
years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Imam al-Sayyid Ja‘far bin Hasan
‘Abd al-Karim al-Barzanji al-Husayni (1716-1764),</span> <span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">was</span> <span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">a Sayyid (Prophetic descendant)
of Kurdish extraction, who</span> <span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">was
a mufti of the Shafi‘i school of legal thought in Madinah. He was an imam and teacher
in Masjid an-Nabawi from 1746, and was also an ascetic Sufi, talented linguist
and poet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Imam al-Barzanji compiled two poetic
works on the Mawlud. The second, and more popular one which is recited in Cape
Town, is entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Iqd al-Jawhar fi Mawlud
al-Nabiy al-Azhar</i> (The Jewelled Necklace of the Resplendent Prophet’s Birth).
It describes in exalting accounts – or riwayats – the Prophet’s sublime
qualities:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">The
full moon has risen above us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">With
his rising all other moons have been eclipsed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">The
like of your beauty we have never seen – the face of your joy and rapture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">You
are the sun, you are the full moon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">You
are light upon light<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">You
are the great elixir of life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">You
are the flaming lamp of our breasts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">O
my beloved, O Muhammad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">You
are the bridegroom of the East and the West…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">Shaykh Muhammad Salih, who
studied under the luminaries of his time in the Holy City of Makkah for 17
years, was appointed the Qadi – or chief judge – in Zanzibar on his way home
circa 1916. It is in Zanzibar that Shaykh Muhammad Salih first heard the Barzanji
Mawlud being recited. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">He took it to Cape Town where
his students developed the unique, melodious style of reciting the mawlud that
we hear today. In the early days, there used to be two riwayat ‘teams’, who
would read the 18 riwayats in one night – an exacting task.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">The Ad-Dair’at us-Salihiyyah
Dhikr Group also performs at the Mass Mawlud in Cape Town and other venues, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has a Muharram programme, conducts its weekly
dhikr gathering and has outreach programmes in Ramadan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-33323197030745893642018-11-20T04:23:00.003-08:002021-01-11T03:10:32.614-08:00Kashmir, the beloved motherland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPD2nxHXAxIQLaCxAugN-CTysg2OGNMVW9RZIIE0S6Q_cybKl7gtYxUbUEoruzKJlfQ2Z2fo2AsLfAe_8tKhJmEnFZwOe9V6RIanNEHNWk2sfZ7K97f5V74HOaJzm8etDVy-MJFbTgjKW/s1600/Kashmir4-750x445.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="750" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPD2nxHXAxIQLaCxAugN-CTysg2OGNMVW9RZIIE0S6Q_cybKl7gtYxUbUEoruzKJlfQ2Z2fo2AsLfAe_8tKhJmEnFZwOe9V6RIanNEHNWk2sfZ7K97f5V74HOaJzm8etDVy-MJFbTgjKW/s640/Kashmir4-750x445.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Breathtaking in beauty, but spoiled by geo-politics, the tragic story of modern-day Kashmir.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">WHEN
the fourth Mughal Emperor, Shahenshah Jahangir or Mirza Nur al-Din Khan
(1605-1627), was on his deathbed, one of his courtiers had asked him what was
his most ardent desire. His rasping reply had been, “Kashmir, only Kashmir.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
Mughals had annexed the territory in 1586, and Shahenshah Jahangir had fallen
in love with Kashmir, using it to escape the oppressively hot and stuffy
summers of his palace in Delhi. Indeed, for any visitor, Kashmir’s traditional
hospitality and picture postcard beauty are intoxicating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">“Gar firdaus
bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast,” Emperor Jahangir is
reported to have said after his first visit to Kashmir, “If there is heaven on
earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">François
Bernier (1620-1688), a physician to the Mughals and the first European to enter
Kashmir, commented in 1665 that it surpassed in beauty everything that his
‘warmest imagination’ could anticipate. A sixth century Tang Dynasty Chinese
source describes Kashmir as being ‘enveloped on all sides like a precious jewel
by snowy mountains’, with a valley in the south that serves as a gate to the
kingdom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Buttressed against the Hindu
Kush – or the western Himalayas – which soar to nearly 8,000 metres, geographical
Kashmir has a northern mountainous zone consisting of the Hindu Kush, the
Karakoram and the Himalayas, the rugged Ladakh district to the east and the
valley region to the southwest. The Indus River, which flows through Pakistan
into the Bay of Bengal, rises from the Siachen glacier in the Karakoram.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Central position</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">By virtue of its central
position in Asia, Kashmir commands a strategic location: it is bordered by Afghanistan
to the northwest, the Sinkiung-Uighur region of China to the east, Pakistan to
the west and India to the south. It also stands on the centuries’ old Central
Asian trade route, and long caravans used to trek annually between the plains
of India and the high, snowy reaches of Central Asia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Kashmir enjoys a rich and
variegated history. It is one of the homes of Sanskrit,</span><b><span face=""arial" , "sans-serif"" style="background: white;"> </span></b><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">oldest-known</span>
human language.</span><b><i><span face=""arial" , "sans-serif"" style="background: white;"> </span></i></b><em><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Sanskrit</span></em><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"> is regarded as the argot of Hinduism, where it was said
to be a means of communication by the Hindu gods, and then used by the ancient
Indo-Aryans. Sanskrit was also the written language of the Buddhists, who moved
into Kashmir from China. </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Kashmir is the only region to
have a complete written historical record going back well over 3,000 years, the
historian Kalhana recording its dynasties. This led to the 11th century Islamic
scholar and geographer, Al-Biruni, to remark that the Indians to the south lacked
a sense of history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Kashmir was known to the Greeks
via Alexander the Great. The Roman historian, Ptolemy, mentioned it in his writings.
Genghis Khan’s armies swept through in the 12<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century, depopulating
vast tracts of countryside. Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror having razed
Delhi to the ground in 1398, contracted boils when he travelled into Kashmir,
and had to traverse the Hindu Kush in a palanquin, instead of his horse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Kashmir, translated from the
Sanskrit, means a land dried up of water: ‘ka’ (water) and ‘shimeera’ (to dry
up). Tradition says that Kashmir was originally a lake called ‘Satisara’ that
was drained by the great saint of ancient India, Kashyap.<span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">Interestingly, modern geological
science reveals that Kashmir was once a lake.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In a letter sent to Maharajah
Hari Singh on 27 October, the Governor-General of India, Lord Mountbatten
accepted the accession, saying, ‘it is my Government's wish that as soon as law
and order have been restored …the question of the state’s accession should be
settled by a reference to the people.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">That ‘reference’ – despite
Indian promises of a plebiscite by Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947 – has
never come, and 70 years later, it is still an open question as Kashmir lurches
from crisis to crisis, and India and Pakistan from war-to-war, the indigenous civilian
population suffering the brunt of systematic state terror. It has taken a heavy
toll, with 41,000 people having died due to clashes in the past 27 years alone,
at an average of four conflict-related funerals per day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsDtHOKBja1QTVQFS9iWW4-EkdEfxrX952ujtDUSG-RgNwkP_kgnPmH1g7PZL134Kda_iBfwP3mQchmp6InkX9zyrywYR3a9htpQnljYuG2BtJuvOPZ9EsD3hPow1ye2QauzTxCziLoVd0/s1600/kashmire+protest57b59e5dd5959.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1500" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsDtHOKBja1QTVQFS9iWW4-EkdEfxrX952ujtDUSG-RgNwkP_kgnPmH1g7PZL134Kda_iBfwP3mQchmp6InkX9zyrywYR3a9htpQnljYuG2BtJuvOPZ9EsD3hPow1ye2QauzTxCziLoVd0/s640/kashmire+protest57b59e5dd5959.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Resistance against occupation in Kashmir has taken a heavy human toll. <i>Pic: csspmspk.com</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">The Indian army, seen as an
unwelcome occupying entity, has been fingered in numerous human rights reports.
Significantly, no army officer has ever been prosecuted in a civil court for
crimes against civilians, or human rights abuse, in Kashmir.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In 1993, Human Rights Watch reported
that Indian security forces had assaulted civilians, tortured prisoners,
summarily executed detainees and killed civilians in ‘reprisal attacks’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Resistance fighters had also targeted
civilians, but to a far lesser extent than Indian security forces. In fact, an
examination of human rights reports shows up a litany of mass killings,
massacres, enforced disappearances, suppression of freedoms and rape used as a
weapon of intimidation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">This year, the United Nations,
in its first ever report on human rights in Indian and Pakistan-administered
Kashmir, said that there was an urgent need to address past and ongoing human
rights violations. Justice had to be delivered to all people in Kashmir, who
for seven decades had suffered in the deadly conflict. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The 49-page report details
human rights violations and abuses on both sides of the Line of Control, and
highlights a situation of chronic impunity for violations committed by security
forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">“The political dimensions of
the dispute between India and Pakistan have long been centre-stage, but this is
not a conflict frozen in time. It is a conflict that has robbed millions of
their basic human rights, and continues to this day to inflict untold
suffering,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein
in a damning indictment, rejected by the Indian government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">However,
despite the abuses and the killings, Kashmiris carry on with their daily lives.
As the blogger, Moazam Iqbal, writes:</span> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">In the midst of all
this, life goes on. People go to offices, bazaars, on picnics, weddings,
schools, banks. People laugh, cry; they get angry, all felt as anyone else (in
the world) feels. And yeah, in cricket matches, we support Pakistan. NOT
because we are Pakistanis, NOT because we want Kashmir to be part of Pakistan.
We just like to see the (Indian) army guys in grief (lol)…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Kashmir was a Hindu and Buddhist stronghold for centuries until the advent of Islam. The Ummayad general, Imad al-Din Muhammad ibn Qasim, was the first to enter Kashmir in the early 8th</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> century, this after establishing himself in Pakistan’s Sind and Multan districts.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> The Ummayads made their last attempt to occupy Kashmir during the Caliphate of Hisham (724-53), but failed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Mahmud of Ghazni, originally from southeast Afghanistan, also made attempts to subjugate Kashmir by force in 1015, and again in 1021, but like the Ummayads, could make no headway.</span> <span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">However, by the time of the Ghaznavid invasions, Muslims had permanently settled in Kashmir.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div><h4 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Sufis</span></h4><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">It is to the Sufis that the people of Kashmir became attracted to, luminaries such as Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman, who arrived from Turkistan circa 1324. His shrine is located in Srinagar at a place called ‘Bulbul Lankar’. A local myth about the Shaykh is that he would become so engrossed in prayer that a nightingale (a bulbul) would sit on his head.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In Kashmir, there were six main Sufi Orders: the Qadiriyyah, the Suhrawardiyyah, the Kubrawiyyah, the Naqshbandiyyah, the Nurbakshiyyah and the Rishiyyah. While the first five originated from Iran and Turkistan, the sixth one – the Rishiyyah – was an indigenous development. ‘Rishi’ is originally a Sanskrit word denoting ‘sage’, but understood generically as Sufi.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">An important 16th century chronicler, Abul Fadl, wrote that the most respected people in Kashmir were the Rishis. He noted that they followed Shari’ah, and did not denounce other faiths. He added that they ‘did not have the tongue of desire’, and planted fruit-bearing trees so that the public could obtain benefit from them. They abstained from meat in deference to the Hindus, and did not marry.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Among Rishis, the most famous was Shaykh Nur al-Din, affectionately called ‘Nandrishi’. He preached communal harmony, non-violence and tolerance. His shrine – visited by Hindus and Muslims alike – is located in Chrar-e-Sharif, a small town adversely affected by the ongoing conflict. Also a famous poet, Shaykh Nur al-Din once wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">We belong to the same parents.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">Then why this difference?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">Let Hindus and Muslims (together)<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">Worship God alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">We came to this world like partners.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">We should have shared our joys<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; line-height: 18.4px;">And sorrows, together.<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Historically, the relationship between the more expansive Sufis and the conservative ‘ulama has not always been cordial. But whereas Sufis were often pushed to the margins, in Kashmir they were dominant. This empowered Shaykh Nur al-Din, for instance, to condemn Mullahs who recited the Qur’an for money, as hypocrites and criminals.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Kashmir would experience Muslim rule from 1339 until 1819, a total of 480 years. The founding Mir Shah dynasty would be followed by the Mughals in 1586, the Afghan Durrani Empire in 1747 and the largely secular Sikh Empire in 1819, who took over Kashmir until its defeat to the British in 1846.</span></div><h4 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Colonialism</span></h4><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The era of 19<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century colonialism would tear Kashmir apart. With its natural beauty and economic promise, Kashmir would become a contested territory, its local inhabitants the biggest victims of a continental power struggle, now between Britain’s colonial stepchildren – India and Pakistan. China would annex a chunk of its eastern flank, Aksai Chin, during the Mao era.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Today, Kashmir is a partitioned state, and the Kashmiris – like the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Rohinghyas – are a partitioned and marginalised people. India controls 43 per cent of its territory, Pakistan 37 per cent and the Republic of China 20 per cent. The population of Jammu (occupied by India) is 12 million, Azad (occupied by Pakistan) four million. Aksai Chin, which is a high altitude desert with acidic soda lakes, is largely unpopulated.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The Indian occupied sector has two capitals, Srinagar (summer) and Jammu (winter), whilst Azad Kashmir has Muzaffarabad as its chief city. The economy of Kashmir is somewhat moribund due to the conflict, though tourism is still its main money spinner, together with agriculture and handicrafts such as carpets and the famous Kashmiri shawls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Politically, the ultimate Kashmiri injustice – and the roots of today’s conflict – are to be found in 1846 when Gulab Singh, an influential noble in the court of Ranjit Singh Dogra of Lahore, would buy Kashmir from the British East India Company as a personal fiefdom for 75 lakhs (about R 1.4 million) in the Treaty of Amritsar. It seems to have been a really good ‘deal’ for some 2, 22,236 square kilometres of ‘real estate’, also involving an annual payment of one horse, twelve goat shawls and three Kashmiri scarves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><div><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Muhammad Iqbal, the famous Pakistani poet who was of Kashmiri descent, sadly lamented what he aptly called ‘the sale of Kashmir’:</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">‘</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">T</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">heir fields, their crops, their stream/ </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Even the peasant in the vale/ </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; line-height: 18.4px;">They sold, they sold all / Alas,</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; line-height: 18.4px;"> ho</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; line-height: 18.4px;">w cheap was the Sale!</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">’</span></div><div><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Lieutenant Robert Thorpe, an officer in the British-India army of Kashmiri parentage, wrote in his 80-page book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cashmeer Misgovernment,</i> that the Treaty of Amritsar was a wanton outrage, a gross injustice and an act of tyrannical oppression. He died in Srinagar in 1868, under suspicious circumstances, and is regarded as the first anti-occupation martyr in Kashmir.<o:p></o:p></span></div><h4 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Protests</span></h4><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Gulab Singh’s accession to power was greeted with massive disquiet, as he was a Hindu regent foisted upon a Muslim majority, with resentment not only building up in Kashmir, but also neighbouring Pakistan. In 1931, the first mass protests began, sparking local resistance and Pakistan calling for Muslim-dominant areas to enjoy autonomous rule.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">By 1947, the grandson of Gulab Singh, Mahajarah Hari Singh, could no longer contain the simmering discontent. People in the Jammu Province engaged in the historically forgotten, and deliberately ignored, indigenous Poonch uprising. The Muslim Poonchis of western Jammu liberated large areas from the Maharaj's control, creating what would become Azad Kashmir. In the upheaval there was a spate of inter-religious violence, resulting in the deaths, and possible massacres, of thousands of Muslims.</span> <br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">On 26 October,</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;"> </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">Mahajarah Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession. It granted Delhi dominion of Kashmir without the consent of the people, and the Indian army marched into Kashmir, never to leave. The agreement was regarded by India as legal under the provisions of its Independence Act, but as outright fraud by Pakistan leader, Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Indeed,
tap into the heart of any Kashmiri and the desire for freedom beats proudly in every
chest, young or old. To most Kashmiris, India and Pakistan are the same – two ego-driven
countries fighting over a piece of land that doesn’t belong to either of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Go
into the streets of Srinagar, Jammu, Muzaffarabad – or any town or village from
the Hindu Kush to the lowest valley – Kashmiris will tell you that in this
battle, it is Kashmir and the Kashmiris who have suffered, not India or
Pakistan. They want the conflict to end. They want peace and stability, law and
order, economic development. And, finally, one thing is made abundantly clear:
no one is going anywhere, Kashmir is the beloved motherland. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The article first appeared in the Habibia Mosque Diary 2018-19.</span></i></div>
Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-79824724855900904542018-11-20T00:11:00.002-08:002018-11-20T00:12:43.805-08:00Saudi Arabia: the devil we know, and the one we fear<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NU4V6yZBonawgV0t2Blb9oNaGP5uYciQaz0isSzb2a5u2mpDSmGa-Azs8mcqbSD1bzaeR0HHGQuNpmDEPpxVS-3rugVoNXVMy5VOwTXlJIu6Sh16__uOWPvJlGOupu6flQmugDXUcgtu/s1600/MadinahMariyyaCopt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1600" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NU4V6yZBonawgV0t2Blb9oNaGP5uYciQaz0isSzb2a5u2mpDSmGa-Azs8mcqbSD1bzaeR0HHGQuNpmDEPpxVS-3rugVoNXVMy5VOwTXlJIu6Sh16__uOWPvJlGOupu6flQmugDXUcgtu/s640/MadinahMariyyaCopt.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The house in Madinah where the Prophet's son, Ibrahim, was born to Mariyah al-Qibt (Mariah the Copt). In 1997 it was was a pile of rubble.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
WHEN I first visited Saudi Arabia in the 1980s it was like
no other place I had ever travelled to. I landed in Jeddah early one January to
perform an ‘umrah, the minor pilgrimage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was anxious, but starry eyed just as any first timer to the homeland
of Islam would be.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have the fondest memories of my first ‘umrah, but it also
educated me about the house of Sa’ud. Outside my hotel in Makkah, which was
opposite the Bab ul-Salam gate, I would see the morals police, the mutawwi’un,
in action. One day, they forcibly dragged a hapless, squirming pilgrim out of a
phone booth during the call for prayer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The indiscriminate demolition of Makkah and Madinah in the
name of progress had just commenced, and there were still lots of the old
buildings with their exquisitely carved wooden mashrabiyyah. In Madinah, I
could walk a few minutes from my hotel and still find shaded date palm groves.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It was on the ziyarah, the visit to the historical sites of
Madinah, that the shocking truth emerged. The sites were in a state of neglect
and entry to them was often forbidden by padlocks. In any other country, other
than Saudi Arabia, these precious historical places would have been preserved.
It was like the pope locking up the Sistine Chapel, or the Orthodox Church allowing
the Holy Sepulchre to fall down.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Here, in Saudi Arabia, they were being deliberately allowed
to go to dust before being bulldozed into oblivion. Over the next two decades,
we would see over 300 sacred sites disappear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But then, Saudi Arabia is a country named after a family
that is only accountable to itself. The abridged history is that in the late
1700s the house of Sa’ud joined forces with a wayward and shunned cleric,
‘Abdullah ibn al-Wahhab, to stamp its tribal authority.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The wily Bedouin chieftain, Ibn Sa’ud, realised that Ibn
al-Wahhab’s innovative reduction of Islam to primitive absolutes could be the
opiate of his ikhwan, his camel cavalry of half-naked desert brigands. They
would go on to conduct massacres across the region in the name of faith, but in
reality political ambition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It was Ibn al-Wahhab, condemned by even his own family, who
deemed that honouring historical relics and sites was polytheism, and that they
had to be destroyed. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s dictum was as blunt as a cudgel: you
were either for him, or against him – which meant that being an infidel, your
blood became permissible. This was a violation of the Qur’anic principle –
reflected in Chapters 2 and 109 – of live and let others live.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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On my first visit, I was exposed to Saudi society via family
ties. It was through them that I learnt there were Hijazis, who unlike the
Saudi Najdis, were descendants of the Prophet, the Quraysh and the four
Caliphs. They were people who hailed from the western regions, which included
Jeddah and the Holy Cities. They were not Saudi, and hated being called so.
They would celebrate the Prophet’s birthday (banned by the authorities) in
secret.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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I remember mentioning the name of the king in a restaurant
and being immediately silenced. “Don’t ever do that again!” urged my host. He
explained that a neighbour’s son had publically criticised the royals. He had been detained and had disappeared
without trace.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Indeed, as appalling as it may sound, the question arises as
to why we should ever be surprised by the fate of the dissident journalist
Jamal Khashoggi, brutally mudered inside Istanbul Saudi Embassy? Fear and
loathing – and enforced disappearance – has been on the Saudi street for
decades, at least since the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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After a second visit to Saudi in 1997, and witnessing
further scorched-earth obliterations of our Islamic heritage, I initiated a
series of programmes called ‘Notebooks from Makkah and Madinah’ on Voice of the
Cape, and then wrote a book of the same name in 2005.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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In it, I warned of our fast diminishing heritage and the
growing monster of Saudi extremism injecting itself into the Sunni mainstream.
It was a very lonely space. No one seemed to care enough, and there were few
voices speaking out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It is my view that we in the Muslim world – greedy for royal
handouts since the 1970s and often compromised by them – are chiefly
instrumental in our own decay and intellectual demise. Future generations will
go on pilgrimage and not find any heritage; nor will they have any sense of our
history, or understanding of our rich academic and legal traditions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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But now the dollar donations are drying up, and Saudi Arabia
– with its missionary zealots having foisted an Arabised curse called Wahhabism
upon us all – has to face its own demons, Al-Qaeda and ISIS blow-back, a youth
bulge of 60% and a gathering clamour of domestic discontent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, a callow 33 year-old seen
as a benign reformer by deluded journalists such as Thomas Friedman, has not
proved to be the man of the hour as everybody had hoped for. He has turned out
to be a despot, prone to political impulsiveness and brutality, particularly in
war-torn Yemen – which has been reduced to mass starvation by his intervention.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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For Saudis right now, their future is bleak – and presents a
curious Hobson’s choice of two devils:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the one we know, and the one we fear. The one we know is the royal
family being able to hold the country together with genuine reform, despite its
internal divisions, and albeit with very frayed authority in a country where
the centre has to hold.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The second, the one we fear, is what I call the ‘Syria-Libya
option’. This will be an uprising met by bloodshed and a failed state scenario,
with the central Najdi tribes and jihadi groups turning on each other in a bloody
battle for diminishing resources. In the latter scenario, the oil price will
most likely rocket to beyond 300 dollars a barrel, and plunge the world deep
into economic crisis.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The only positives are that the US, Saudi Arabia’s biggest
ally, can no longer afford to look the other way, and that the world – because
of the enforced disappearance of a journalist – is finally seeing Saudi Arabia
for the pariah state that it has always been. And as calls for Crown Prince Bin
Salman’s head grow louder, we can only hold our breaths and hope for the
best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small; mso-spacerun: yes;"><i>Also published in Muslim Views, Cape Town.</i></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-5173366246216377752018-11-06T04:48:00.001-08:002018-11-06T04:59:04.830-08:00Celebrating Riverside: the Caravan of Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFoTW4inxqD_aBEk6Kx4SzjdVADaGnfinFuN_Hm6fBmGloGEgPxf9l4aPFnSf7YuT5PjI_a0V4Ljyt61uZ5m70R9dRQ5StddjDNUqFfVmW1lW1og8X-NZLdIIYQSdeMkfEe5IO9nAnToRU/s1600/_DSC1454rr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFoTW4inxqD_aBEk6Kx4SzjdVADaGnfinFuN_Hm6fBmGloGEgPxf9l4aPFnSf7YuT5PjI_a0V4Ljyt61uZ5m70R9dRQ5StddjDNUqFfVmW1lW1og8X-NZLdIIYQSdeMkfEe5IO9nAnToRU/s640/_DSC1454rr.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riverside mosque, on the banks of the Umgeni in Durban, first built by Sufi Saheb in 1895. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">TODAY
we commemorate the 50</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">anniversary of the Group Areas Act at
Riverside, "The Rise, the Fall and the Resurrection of the Habibia Soofie Darbaar".
The Group Areas Act was a particularly hateful aspect of apartheid legislation
that displaced and divided millions of South Africans.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Riverside,
on the banks of the Umgeni River outside Durban, was chosen by Hajji Shah
Goolam Mohamed Soofie Siddiqui – or Sufi Saheb – in 1895 to be a spiritual
oasis for a people in need of solace. From here, Sufi Saheb would bless the
community with eleven mosques, 13 schools and an orphanage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sufi
Saheb, as we all know, arrived here from Hyderabad on the inspired orders of
his Shaykh, Hazrat Khwaja Habib ‘Ali [ra].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On
a personal note, Riverside has always been a place of calm and consolation –
especially when I stayed in Durban in 1986 after the 1985 uprisings. The legacy
of Sufi Saheb is a great one, a living one – alhamdullilah – which makes me equally
humbled to be in his presence, and in your presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In
today’s talk I have decided to take a historical approach to explain in context
why we are here today, and what lessons the Group Areas Act teaches us about
ourselves in our challenging world. My talk is entitled the “Caravan of Love”.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: center; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "wingdings"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 72pt; text-align: center; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "wingdings"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">v<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AS WITH all stories, we start with ‘one upon a
time’, for once upon a time – before Donald Trump – we were a mobile species migrating
freely across oceans, land-bridges and continents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">We were
migrating for many reasons: because of changes in climate; in search of better
grazing for our herds; to avoid famine and to avoid poverty. And, naturally, we
were migrating to escape oppression; and of course, being human, some of us were
migrating in search of wealth and power. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Colonialism
– the godfather of apartheid – was also a migration, but it was the practice of
acquiring control over another territory, occupying it with foreign settlers,
and then exploiting it economically at the expense of the locals. Israel is the
best surviving example. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
motivating factor for the colonial expansion of Europe, which mutated into
apartheid in South Africa, was the extraction of minerals and resources that Europe
did not have, such as gold, oil, spices, iron-ore, diamonds and cotton. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Therefore,
the exploration of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French and the British – from
the 15<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century onwards – was a race for goods, raw materials and
wealth. This would lead to the European Industrial Revolution, urbanisation, mass
production and the French Revolution</span> <span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">of
the late 1700s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">Orientalism</b></div>
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<b style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">The New
World explorers, ironically often guided by Muslim navigators, saw themselves
as racially, religiously and economically superior. This Orientalism can be
traced back to a series of edicts issued by the Vatican from 1452 until 1508. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In
1452, the Pope authorised Portugal to attack, conquer, and to subjugate
Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ wherever they could be found. In
1508 it sanctioned the Spanish to do exactly the same. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
hard facts of history (we are not being anti-Catholic) tell us there was a determined
drive into what Prince Henry the Navigator called the ‘Arab Sea’. The Pope’s
keen interest was based on the Vatican wanting to retain its political grip on Europe.
The Pope, the ‘supreme leader’, was being seriously challenged by Protestant
breakaways and the Ottoman Empire. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">What I
have briefly described here provides us with the early historical context of
our eventual South African experience. Southeast Asia, India, North America, South
America, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and Africa
would be all subjected to European expansionism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">To
this effect, the Portuguese reached the Cape in 1488. The Portuguese met Khoi
resistance and wisely stayed away, but the Dutch East India Company landed in
1652 to use the Cape as a replenishment station for its fleets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
Dutch might have been Calvinist and anti-Catholic, but they did, however, share
the same cultural chauvinism as the Catholic conquistadors. The British took
over from the Dutch at the Cape in 1806. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Out of
this – and I am simplifying things greatly – arose a group of discontented Dutch
settlers. They spoke a form of Dutch borrowed from the streets called
Afrikaans. The British presence at the Cape made the Dutch settlers feel
marginalised. This would spark the Great Trek of the 1830s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">As a
result, large ox-wagon trains pushed into the South African hinterland in an
exodus said to have Biblical proportions. The reality was land seizure and
bloody conflict with local houses such as the amaXhosa, the amaTshatshu, the
amaPondo and the amaZulu. In South Africa, like Palestine, there was no land without
a people for a people without a land.</span> <span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Nonetheless,
this did not prevent the Afrikaners from establishing Boer Republics in the
Free State and Transvaal.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<h4>
<b style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">Afrikaner as a 'chosen people'</b></h4>
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<b style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"><br /></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Stephen
du Toit, a founding member of the secret Afrikaner Broederbond, penned the idea
in the </span><i style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">Afrikaner Patriot</i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> of 1876 that
the Afrikaner was a distinct nation – or ‘volk’. It had a fatherland, South
Africa, and its own language, Afrikaans. The Afrikaner was a chosen people. The
destiny of the volk, he said, was to rule South Africa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The Boer
republics lived peaceably alongside the British until 1867 and the disruptive discovery
of diamonds and gold. The first Boer War was waged in the Transvaal Republic in
1880, and the second nation-wide one from 1899 to 1902. It saw the Afrikaner
crushed by the ‘scorched earth’ policies of Earl Kitchener, who razed Boer
properties to the ground and established ‘concentration camps’ for surviving
women and children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Some 25,000
men were exiled to St Helena island, and over 25,000 (mainly children) would
perish in the South African camps. Up to 100,000 blacks would also be interned,
with an equally alarming number of fatalities. Time, unfortunately, does not
allow us to explore this aspect of our history further.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">As
evidenced, the Afrikaners suffered deeply, experiencing great poverty after the
war. But the dream of the volk did not die. The atrocities of the Boer War gave
Afrikaner Nationalism impetus, as did Hitler’s rule of anti-Jewish terror spur Nationalist
Zionism, two neo-colonial projects that were both given life in 1948. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Barry
Hertzog led the Afrikaner National Party in the 1915 and 1920 elections under
the Trump-like slogan, ‘South Africa first’ – for which we have to read ‘white
first’. In the 1924 elections, he defeated the South African Party led by General
Jan Smuts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In
1934, the United Party was formed by a merger of Prime Minister Hertzog’s
National Party with the South African Party of General Smuts. In 1939 things
came to head when Hertzog refused to commit South Africa to Britain's war
effort against Nazi Germany, and resigned. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In
1948, after the Second World War, the National Party wrested power again at the
ballot box. It immediately embarked on an ‘Afrikanerisation’ process of
economic empowerment. It saw the birth of the Reddingsdaad Fund and the creation
of SANTAM and the Volkskas Bank, now known as ABSA. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In the
meantime, there had been other developments – particularly in KwaZulu Natal.
For between 1860 and 1911, over 150, 000 contracted labourers from India had arrived
in Natal to work in the cane fields, this after the local peoples had proved resistant
to the idea.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">No context given</span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">I feel
that there has been insufficient interrogation as to why these Indian labourers
would be prepared to work in a distant land. It baffles me that no context has
ever been given as to </span><i style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;">why</i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> Indian
workers would actually agree to come to South Africa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">British
economist, Angus Maddison, tells us that in the early 1700s India had been the
richest country on earth, providing 27 per cent of global income (compared to
Europe’s 23 per cent). After colonialism, this percentage slipped to three per
cent. From being one of the richest countries, India went to being one of the
poorest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">What
hit India hardest during the Raj era of ‘state capture’ was a series of
famines. In 1769, the Bengal famine wiped out 10 million, one-third of its
population. The Chalisa famine of 1782, which affected the regions of Punjab,
Delhi and Kashmir, experienced 11 million fatalities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In 1792,
the Madras, or ‘Skull’ famine, wiped out 11 million in Gujerat and Hyderabad. The
Agra famine of 1837 decimated nearly a million, and the Eastern Rajputana one
in 1860, two million. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">What
these human tragedies tell us is that by the time Indian labourers set sail for
Durban, already over 33 million of their countrymen had perished – a social
catastrophe bigger <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scale</i> than the current Syrian, Rohingyan,
Uighur or Yemeni crises. These famines would wipe out nearly 20 per cent of the
total population, with famines in India resulting in more than 60 million
deaths up until the early 20th century.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">So I
believe the migration to South Africa by the Indian community came on the back
of man-induced famine. Ironically, this was not caused by a shortage of food,
but by racial arrogance and bad governance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Florence
Nightingale</span> <span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">and</span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Nobel Prize winner,
Amartya Sen, assert that the famines in the British era were due to the
undemocratic nature of the Empire, and its inability, or unwillingness, to
provide infrastructure to transport food. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><b>White resentment</b></span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">But
things would be challenging in South Africa too. Growing white resentment at
Indian presence and economic activity, something that had begun as early as
1885, resulted in the passing of the Asiatic Land Tenure Act of 1946. Indians
had not been affected by the 1913 Land Act, which had restricted black South
African land ownership, and destroyed its middle class.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The Asiatic
Land Tenure Act denied the right to purchase property in areas controlled by whites.
Furthermore, Indians were only allowed to lease land in these controlled areas
for trading purposes. The act, as we all know, came to be called the ‘Ghetto
Act’, a precursor to its bigger brother, the Group Areas Act. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
Group Areas Act was promulgated on 9 July 1950 and it became the geographical
driver of apartheid. It divided up cities and towns into racially segregated suburbs
and townships. Places such as Sophiatown, Cato Manor and District Six became icons
of community memory. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">It is
difficult to know exactly how many South Africans were affected by forced
removals. Some estimated figures are three to four million, but these numbers
can never measure the amount of suffering, psychological trauma and social devastation
that went with it – and still haunts us today in the violence and anger we see
in poorer areas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><b>Bantustans</b></span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">And of
course, we cannot forget the Bantustans. They were legislated in 1951. Bantustans
saw over 80% of the population confined to 13% of the land. The Group Areas Act
became a writhing Medusa’s head, an ‘Afro’ of hissing legal snakes. From 1952
to 1984 the Act was changed, or amended, a staggering 18 times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">A
paper delivered by GM Naicker at the Natal Indian Congress of 1956 provides us
with salient details of forced removals in Durban. Indians were to be
dispossessed of 4,608 acres of land and 3,873 dwellings. Nearly 58,000 Indians
and 81,000 Africans would be affected in urban areas, and 7,000 outside the
city. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Briardene,
Prospect Hall and Riverside are also mentioned in the paper. 6,000 Indians and
5,000 blacks had to be moved off 480 acres and out of 400 dwellings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
heart-breaking news that Riverside, like so many established communities, would
have to move would have been shattering. I struggle to find words to describe
it. The image of the Moghul-style gateway to Riverside lying in ruins is a
hugely poignant image. To lose your home is the most devastating blow any human
can suffer. I remember my first visit to Riverside being tinged with a sadness
that seemed to rise up from the soil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dCvdotmPd_SHgpNuETYUVVfMSktIxYw5r2aTHbXpUnmtErqgF8WAPug5K5V2aexZfm_skKgkLF8xRUt9Y74WDi9Zulq-bQwDjytxzqolqqeZ9VI8Hu3IQqKm7ShGGsZ-qR6pbTHrFMgA/s1600/_DSC1460.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dCvdotmPd_SHgpNuETYUVVfMSktIxYw5r2aTHbXpUnmtErqgF8WAPug5K5V2aexZfm_skKgkLF8xRUt9Y74WDi9Zulq-bQwDjytxzqolqqeZ9VI8Hu3IQqKm7ShGGsZ-qR6pbTHrFMgA/s640/_DSC1460.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Riverside gateway. Bulldozed in 1968. Resurrected in 2010 with some of its original pieces.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">I can
only imagine the hard work that must have gone into preserving the memory of
Sufi Saheb during those troubled years, when we had a government that wanted to
bulldoze our very souls into the ground. Our prayers are with all those who
never allowed the legacy of a great man to be forgotten.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Finally,
I want to take us to modern times, the era of instant material gratification,
social media bigotry, Facebook racism, religious extremism, fake news, massive geo-political
upheaval and widespread economic stress. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Indeed,
things may look bad, but there is still a lot to look forward to. My Shaykh,
the late Sayyid Muhammad ‘Alawi al-Maliki, once told us – that despite the bad
things in the world – there were good things too. We are not a people of
pessimism, he would always say. We are a people of hope. I know that Sufi Saheb
would agree with this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">As a
Muslim community in South Africa, I feel that we have a glass that is half
full, as opposed to being half empty. Firstly, take a look around you. We were
not in Bosnia’s killing fields during the 90s. We are not in genocidal Burma. We
are not in a Uighur camp. We are not in Gaza, Syria, Yemen or Libya. Nor are we
fighting terrorist stereotypes in the right-wing democracies of US and Europe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Today
we are free to have a social function here today. I am free to give a speech.
The imam is free to pray. Nobody will shoot us, teargas us or ask us to
disperse. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><b>We enjoy more freedom and more recognition than any other community </b></span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">I have
travelled in the Muslim world, as well as to some of these democracies. I can
assure you that in South Africa – as 4% of the national population – we enjoy
more freedom and more constitutional recognition than any other community I know. But there is a
price we have to pay. It is called active citizenship.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
late Maulana Igshan Hendricks, former head of the Cape Muslim Judicial Council,
was a great believer in what he called the ‘fiqh of citizenship’, the relation
of a Muslim to a non-Muslim state. Ebrahim Rasool, former US ambassador, has
spoken about us living in a ‘Dar ul-Shahadah’, a place where we can practice
our faith without interference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Their
views are supported by the famous Mardin Fatwa of the 13<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th </span>century scholar,
Ibn Taimiyya, which fully condones the principle of Muslim minorities living
under friendly rulers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">However,
our freedoms are granted to us on the condition that we honour them. It means
we have to respect other beliefs and dignify other races. We have to keep our
public leaders accountable. We have to look after the poor. We have to house the
homeless. These are all things that apartheid, and the Group Areas Act, tried to
take away from us: our humanity, our tolerance and our freedom to think.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In
fact, the maqasid – the purposes of the Shari’ah – show us exactly how to be
citizens. Shari’ah, or Sacred Law, was never instituted to punish people (which
so many mistakenly believe), but rather – as Imam Jawzi and so many others have
said – as a relief, or a mercy. For that reason, the maqasid are: the sanctity
of life, the sanctity of faith, the sanctity of family, the sanctity of wealth,
the sanctity of the intellect and the sanctity of the human character. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">This
is Shari’ah, this is citizenship – not the cutting of limbs, the burning of
mosques, the bombing of shopping centres, or calling others kafir and demeaning
other peoples because they are different to us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">What
we have to understand is that in South Africa, democracy is not the end point,
or the end game. It the mere starting point on a continuum of human growth, economic </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">empowerment and education. It is understanding our diversity as a strength. It
is not being divided and ruled. It is creating a society underpinned by inclusivity.
For it to succeed, South African democracy has to be a work in progress. We
need to understand that.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><b>Ghettoised identities</b></span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">To
guarantee our freedoms, we have to move away from our ghettoised identities, for
they were imposed upon us by colonial and apartheid masters – we did not choose
them. We did not choose to be called Malay, Indian, Coloured, white or black.
South Africa is the very place where we shouldn’t have to indulge in this crude
minority or majority discourse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">What I
mean by this is that we are South Africans, first and foremost – black or
white, Jew, Hindu, Christian or Muslim. We are able to say that we are South
Africans first because we have a Constitution that guarantees our identity. We
do not share the insecurities of other communities around the globe. Therefore,
we do not need our sectarian identities to define us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">I
believe that Hazrat Badsha Peer – who spread faith to those in the street – and
Sufi Saheb – who built institutions – would agree with us today, 50 years after
the horrors of the Group Areas Act at Riverside. These were men, great Sufis,
who did not see the straightness of our hair, the colour of our skin or our
social position. These were men more concerned about the state of our hearts. And
their love for us all was an unconditional love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">I
think love is a good departure point, because it was love that apartheid tried
to deny us. We are all from Adam [as], and his prophetic light has passed
through the DNA of all humanity to the Prophet Muhammad [SAW], a mercy to all
peoples and to all things. For as the distinguished Andalusian Sufi, Ibn al-‘Arabi, has said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My heart is open to every form: it is a
pasture for the gazelles, and<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a cloister for Christian monks, a
temple for idols, the Ka’bah of the<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pilgrim, the tables of the Torah,
and the books of the Qur’an. I practice<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the
religion of Love; in whatsoever direction His caravans advance, the<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">religion
of Love shall be my religion and my faith.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhumZrBr2MbYMQF1bbvI9DVZfu1ODlXQ6xzpV2zP510bmpccpFe1LHT7G6o12O05L3GbhoZMX1-Wtp3qMwNXY0ChtnwJXAOl2pMzI-vkjGi_LRfDmHyFomVlAUAUps6Duz7pN1AXbLyS13N/s1600/_CSC1491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1122" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhumZrBr2MbYMQF1bbvI9DVZfu1ODlXQ6xzpV2zP510bmpccpFe1LHT7G6o12O05L3GbhoZMX1-Wtp3qMwNXY0ChtnwJXAOl2pMzI-vkjGi_LRfDmHyFomVlAUAUps6Duz7pN1AXbLyS13N/s640/_CSC1491.jpg" width="448" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The graves of Sufi Saheb and his beloved mother.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12mSR1oZTzIPCcotG7i6JRK-cd1eCgbCisHN5-m6WAZrgZ8e1OU-_XSqLfOhLE2IfDU098kmgZqjMaEeeazVnrycqjVvFxYocpQOefpkPxE29LYrf0w8-Lj2XerumtgpjILhZv_Y5_Ayt/s1600/_DSC1444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1144" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12mSR1oZTzIPCcotG7i6JRK-cd1eCgbCisHN5-m6WAZrgZ8e1OU-_XSqLfOhLE2IfDU098kmgZqjMaEeeazVnrycqjVvFxYocpQOefpkPxE29LYrf0w8-Lj2XerumtgpjILhZv_Y5_Ayt/s640/_DSC1444.jpg" width="452" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The maqam, or burial place of Sufi Saheb, Durban, South Africa.<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm15hP1M9CrZb4GGFkeJ-SJ0rzv-KkILQEOSeCR4mYIMexMJ1jBeUmOgo74HhyphenhyphengXeYghXLAPXEcnDAeYwySPhI75q34h8ijwJnWhmfOeJRkucrREmSE5tLtp54ofZen2-Xqn2kPYoTxMwP/s1600/_DSC1404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm15hP1M9CrZb4GGFkeJ-SJ0rzv-KkILQEOSeCR4mYIMexMJ1jBeUmOgo74HhyphenhyphengXeYghXLAPXEcnDAeYwySPhI75q34h8ijwJnWhmfOeJRkucrREmSE5tLtp54ofZen2-Xqn2kPYoTxMwP/s640/_DSC1404.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riverside today. <br />
<br />
<i>All photos © Shafiq Morton 2018.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-33698109728553193832018-11-06T02:26:00.002-08:002018-11-06T02:29:26.627-08:00Review: remembering Allah, but being told not to<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXKNnGZHm5i7BlcQwOvhYxnS9uIX-tj9_llB-UuXaeZU9OBVJITA_XSonV7Jfon0f_7vGk7hyX_UZiG4pOFUlLMN8MEMYoqTAou9F-LpmLvt9H33QfzZkfivWoX4LTzqLyASvtQ8t1zLa/s1600/REMEMBRANCE+DA+COSTA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1079" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXKNnGZHm5i7BlcQwOvhYxnS9uIX-tj9_llB-UuXaeZU9OBVJITA_XSonV7Jfon0f_7vGk7hyX_UZiG4pOFUlLMN8MEMYoqTAou9F-LpmLvt9H33QfzZkfivWoX4LTzqLyASvtQ8t1zLa/s400/REMEMBRANCE+DA+COSTA.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">IT is
a damning indictment on the state of things when Shaykh Yusuf da Costa notes in
his introduction to </span><i style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">The Remembrance of
Allah Almighty, </i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">a translation of</span><i style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">Imam
al-Mundhiri’s work on the subject, that dhikr has become a dying tradition due
to Wahhabi acolytes in our midst condemning congregational dhikrs.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">His
view is more than anecdotal. For his observation is based on outreach into South
Africa’s cities and towns over the last decade. This gutting of communal
tradition has toxic side-effects, like the lure of drugs and gangsterism – and as
in the apparent case of Verulam – homage to the Islamic State.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">In
this work, which has a useful commentary by Mustapha Muhammad Amarah, the
reader is shown the textual proofs for the value of remembering Allah, as well
of some of the more celebrated dhikrs themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Imam
al-Hafiz ‘Abd al-‘Alim al-Mundhiri was a 12th century master of Prophetic
tradition. This makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Remembrance of
Allah Almighty </i>a weighty contribution, now accessible in English.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">It is
a soothing read – and a highly recommended text for our local imams – that
offers us cool waters of hope and consolation. From its first pages, we are
presented various traditions on the merits of dhikr, directly from the lips of
the Prophet [SAW]. Ibn Mundhiri, for example, quotes Ibn Jabir reporting that
the Prophet [SAW] had once said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><i>“A
human being does not commit a deed that could save him more from punishment
than the remembrance of Allah Almighty.” It was asked (by the Companions): “Not
even fighting in the way of Allah?” To which the Prophet [SAW] replied: “Not
fighting in the way of Allah, even if one hits with one’s sword until it breaks
up.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">After
establishing the merits of dhikr, the author takes us to the tahlil, ‘la ilaha
illallah’ (there is no God except Allah), a simple proclamation easy to recite,
but loaded with reward and benefit. Ibn Mundhiri quotes an overwhelming amount
of sources on this subject, but a Hadith concerning the Prophet Nuh [as] stands
out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">According
the Prophet [SAW], Nabi Nuh had told his sons to recite the tahlil, saying that
its utterance (with sincerity) would have massive import, so much so that if it
were to be placed on the scale of the heavens and the earth, it would outweigh
them. Further traditions talk of the tahlil providing relief, and the promise
of Paradise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
author also introduces the reader to various dhikrs – all known to us – that
are recommended to be recited at certain times of the day. What stands out in
the text is that Ibn Mundhiri does not overload us with long works. Every brief
dhikr that he recommends finds an equivalent in validated sources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">For
example, the author spends some time elucidating on the merits of simply
reciting ‘la hawla wala quwwata illah billah’ (there is no Power except from
Allah). We are told, via tradition, that it is the door, the treasure – and in
one case –one of the trees of Paradise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">“(Create)
the vegetation of Paradise for its water is sweet and its soil is rich, so
create many of its plants,” the Prophet [SAW] tells his Companions about the
qualities of ‘la hawla wala quwwata illah billah’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Ibn
Mundhiri elucidates the merits of the istighfar, the process of humbling
oneself and asking for forgiveness. Again, his treatment of the topic is
accessible, understandable and clearly set out. In the commentary, we are
informed that istighfar is an ointment; it stops Iblis in his tracks, it offers
solace, and it removes the rust of the heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">Ibn
Mundhiri provides plenty Qur’anic evidence of the blessings of dhikr, and some
of its rewarding characteristics. For instance, he quotes the verse from Surah
Talaq: “For those who fear Allah, He prepares a way out, and He provides for
him from (sources) he never could imagine…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">This
verse was revealed after one of the Companion’s sons, ‘Awf, had been captured
and the Prophet [SAW] had told him to recite ‘la hawla wala quwwata illah
billah’. The revelation had come after ‘Awf had been able to free himself and
escape with a herd of camels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
book concludes with a section featuring the futuwwa of numerous scholars
endorsing the act of communal dhikr, as well as the performing of dhikr aloud
in congregation. The proofs in support of it are overwhelming, from all schools
of thought and all persuasions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The
book concludes with a section by Shaykh Gibril Haddad, which explains the
permissibility of uttering the word ‘Allah’ on its own, something criticised by
the reductionists as bid’ah. His final words, which conclude the translation of
Ibn Mundhiri’s work, are symptomatic of exactly why <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Remembrance of Allah Almighty </i>has been presented to us:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">“The
time of Al-Qiyamah (the Last Days) is approaching now. Hundreds of signs have
appeared and one of them is that people leave the glorification of God. And
sufferings rain down upon them. Then they ask for treatment by drugs. All
illnesses go away by glorifying the Lord. Through your love for the Lord you
will reach health, pleasure and happiness, here and hereafter.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The Remembrance of Allah
Almighty</span></i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"> is a
welcome and timely addition to our literature of understanding Allah, and is a
must for your bookshelf.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Available at Timbuktu Bookshops,Cape Town. </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Or call 27-74-859854</span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-62404543695121716352018-09-02T22:56:00.001-07:002018-09-02T22:56:44.493-07:00Once upon a pot...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2a_G9u0rdvAOAmUNwxAPoY79ifBVvqHhqB3ddkaZt-v8wxg2vYd_CsLDsgCfANfr3U1gP_qRveFxUok3CFkkf83FpENbebSXwtVO3VnzP5XLelZlSudZiWDuCDeSmnyZacWL6cLWE6cxf/s1600/_DSC1186cc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1503" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2a_G9u0rdvAOAmUNwxAPoY79ifBVvqHhqB3ddkaZt-v8wxg2vYd_CsLDsgCfANfr3U1gP_qRveFxUok3CFkkf83FpENbebSXwtVO3VnzP5XLelZlSudZiWDuCDeSmnyZacWL6cLWE6cxf/s640/_DSC1186cc.jpg" width="600" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a small daisy, flowers all year, but enjoys Spring. Up close a feast of colour and subtlety.</td></tr>
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NATURE, which is a cyclical process of being and essentiality, has an astonishing way of doing her thing. Bountiful rains this winter in Cape Town have nourished, and replenished, the drought-dry soil. But what is interesting here is that all these pictured plants grow in pots. They endure sizzling heat in January, gaspingly hot gale-force winds in February and the challenges of water restrictions in March - and yet, against all odds, they survive. And when one bends close to these plants, and listens, and looks, an amazing micro-world of purpose emerges. Each species is intent on reproduction, growth and sustenance. And each species has its own unique way of doing things, from dazzling colours, hooked stamens laden with pollen, to hairy stems preventing insects from climbing on them to reach fruit. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqvVxMEh-tPGs_tIzi6j_SSP73igHhjDK9zEyTg-UwT0PY_rDgVeMQ73C3QOU2whVLZFzWwBLcEXN0DX-G0WPDb5Pw2lkRacQePh4oKWJ0Ggl0kFnJdI0gWTCeWShuT2PgDseEPQklixM9/s1600/_CSC1157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqvVxMEh-tPGs_tIzi6j_SSP73igHhjDK9zEyTg-UwT0PY_rDgVeMQ73C3QOU2whVLZFzWwBLcEXN0DX-G0WPDb5Pw2lkRacQePh4oKWJ0Ggl0kFnJdI0gWTCeWShuT2PgDseEPQklixM9/s640/_CSC1157.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A forest of scented lavender.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzawdUIUrfBqBv69PeU1s2_mR-9EOGRGtx8J1BWPXoLIzDoCjgejg7EEPHG4GUS2MFzf-RqT4ki5Nvk4QwIxv0GlEefLlxGrpk81wg-Yu8KrX25sGYPxbIveQ9ojs5gkQZbjUhHcVZIbd9/s1600/_DSC1092.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzawdUIUrfBqBv69PeU1s2_mR-9EOGRGtx8J1BWPXoLIzDoCjgejg7EEPHG4GUS2MFzf-RqT4ki5Nvk4QwIxv0GlEefLlxGrpk81wg-Yu8KrX25sGYPxbIveQ9ojs5gkQZbjUhHcVZIbd9/s640/_DSC1092.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flowers hardly bigger than a human thumb put out signals for bees.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNSWS6_K_KjEMZVX93v3cBpNMqnBNVvfEBpKp2wQ60kZ8IDI9aM6z75C4VxsoZiQsb4bSygOWZXXYYlO2xocikpcUfmSWPuiOWf_84z3A6_KjWP13N-FO72PXvmEyILcj2ZFctQP5h-l3-/s1600/_DSC1191.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNSWS6_K_KjEMZVX93v3cBpNMqnBNVvfEBpKp2wQ60kZ8IDI9aM6z75C4VxsoZiQsb4bSygOWZXXYYlO2xocikpcUfmSWPuiOWf_84z3A6_KjWP13N-FO72PXvmEyILcj2ZFctQP5h-l3-/s640/_DSC1191.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geranium. Tough and hardy, but in blushing colour.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihgYAyvuHLvfoqmNUU8RHO8Wik9tnBD60cvEKysUtZSDUrDSNVzMB9SiAG6476jNUaW1PIEjYPtbCaQ7nuN4kQSTUMsw3cA6XiWfQbUTknTsUxmFac0jn5jMu4iRMExHF-FKajvrO5B_3N/s1600/_DSC1257.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="992" data-original-width="1600" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihgYAyvuHLvfoqmNUU8RHO8Wik9tnBD60cvEKysUtZSDUrDSNVzMB9SiAG6476jNUaW1PIEjYPtbCaQ7nuN4kQSTUMsw3cA6XiWfQbUTknTsUxmFac0jn5jMu4iRMExHF-FKajvrO5B_3N/s640/_DSC1257.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The humble nettle. Let if flower and see its beauty, hooked stamens waiting to embrace pollinating insects.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNuhrYP0Rzxw4ArURFcqmywje6vpKwNjOpE7WbwZbw3AkiO31to3i7ixxU6cQog9vWzOM9z6lcUutTsWCNNc_KaDVYKCg29kBzXVoow2gdPz04t3raVn8-Y8drKgb4nTIJXBSUImYJuBb/s1600/_DSC1222.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1037" data-original-width="1600" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNuhrYP0Rzxw4ArURFcqmywje6vpKwNjOpE7WbwZbw3AkiO31to3i7ixxU6cQog9vWzOM9z6lcUutTsWCNNc_KaDVYKCg29kBzXVoow2gdPz04t3raVn8-Y8drKgb4nTIJXBSUImYJuBb/s640/_DSC1222.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cherry tomato vine. Hairy stems telling caterpillars to buzz off.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzGOhocv7O6JuI4npD0XKLuqXvz4iy7iI3H0u0Glf3EQoWZw1Uma0Waiz0uwS5c0xhyphenhyphenk9rFKfMeSCrEURHVFHahi8CcPxv5TZjtsAGF2uEJNdrTAftIlWzEqV4XP5uAwziXdGfn6Nw_w2G/s1600/_DSC1127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzGOhocv7O6JuI4npD0XKLuqXvz4iy7iI3H0u0Glf3EQoWZw1Uma0Waiz0uwS5c0xhyphenhyphenk9rFKfMeSCrEURHVFHahi8CcPxv5TZjtsAGF2uEJNdrTAftIlWzEqV4XP5uAwziXdGfn6Nw_w2G/s640/_DSC1127.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A spiky succulent putting out a tender Spring message.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5RfWMaEzql8YhI76U_9dS4Fht9QAkQH70l6E5PvmP7NiLLklYxn1mCw8ROROe62faZZT8EhECrLaX1wIwRgsnJ3RU2KkxgsberH-_8UJztRTx7GyhawwdKYML_VjYLC31dfr_v2I8JU1s/s1600/_CSC1042.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5RfWMaEzql8YhI76U_9dS4Fht9QAkQH70l6E5PvmP7NiLLklYxn1mCw8ROROe62faZZT8EhECrLaX1wIwRgsnJ3RU2KkxgsberH-_8UJztRTx7GyhawwdKYML_VjYLC31dfr_v2I8JU1s/s640/_CSC1042.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perfumed jasmine after a shower.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTDJLrbnzzJOSkk7JHdQF6zdw9Qj0vvCLiuRUZT1wgpcL6Drgb05XLScOz411XY8I7HZItomVaVdIW-HXjoosyLzpXIrXIF6KdeJ8I_mUUImWEO24R_28CxFeNUt_ZPMztpnzxf259OTvW/s1600/_DSC1197.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTDJLrbnzzJOSkk7JHdQF6zdw9Qj0vvCLiuRUZT1wgpcL6Drgb05XLScOz411XY8I7HZItomVaVdIW-HXjoosyLzpXIrXIF6KdeJ8I_mUUImWEO24R_28CxFeNUt_ZPMztpnzxf259OTvW/s640/_DSC1197.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birds hover, waiting to catch unwwary insects.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe1S-9qiUjxO-27s83D5TUcsVanJ2lewVjk62WcDnPWGD0M9H3y5BdI-wTkWzsJzbTi829n3kxqZ_vC6bk8RPx5T64-RYwRCQ_ZxD0RQIbCUHARpO6rTdf_lgvWhMYff4pyRFPCO4MTHA6/s1600/BUTTER2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1600" height="454" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe1S-9qiUjxO-27s83D5TUcsVanJ2lewVjk62WcDnPWGD0M9H3y5BdI-wTkWzsJzbTi829n3kxqZ_vC6bk8RPx5T64-RYwRCQ_ZxD0RQIbCUHARpO6rTdf_lgvWhMYff4pyRFPCO4MTHA6/s640/BUTTER2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hibiscus after rain.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62GbpTzz8kNT0KUe6Btr0iK9kWpECGrbIeS9zMab3QKOHrFSNXDItZNjPaIt3MpZ0uxbjmN-CO8rdfOQkxeetRMmJEdU_vmyao5qkz0cmn704dF_sdH-J5u_F0I_FSM0lKnIZtVOSuuiH/s1600/_DSC1205.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62GbpTzz8kNT0KUe6Btr0iK9kWpECGrbIeS9zMab3QKOHrFSNXDItZNjPaIt3MpZ0uxbjmN-CO8rdfOQkxeetRMmJEdU_vmyao5qkz0cmn704dF_sdH-J5u_F0I_FSM0lKnIZtVOSuuiH/s640/_DSC1205.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edible nasturtiums with a seductive blossom.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMboUIvpMEvCHXRrphLOkdDmtgEBlXLyJXSjTzxQeMvDJo_x1-WdtsCIo6b_WpDJR8-BWM6ZIqMvn3rfJA_sSiuoyUdLjemmivH79GNvLpMAmTl9m79UR-3wAWjww44sHaWXGUPaHdLT-W/s1600/_DSC1266.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1600" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMboUIvpMEvCHXRrphLOkdDmtgEBlXLyJXSjTzxQeMvDJo_x1-WdtsCIo6b_WpDJR8-BWM6ZIqMvn3rfJA_sSiuoyUdLjemmivH79GNvLpMAmTl9m79UR-3wAWjww44sHaWXGUPaHdLT-W/s640/_DSC1266.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geranium flower head, ready to explode.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1x1au4K5TjzP_VROSHJf8TvsQmOqAlCXJHrfaDF7ZrovP235vCwhDoFRexR7GobX7XMqzumFTwB4WKG2KwRh8B7lOoBK26OUX3acvpb56f1HjqLWhq0Hp8sPhJknwyYRd35RTfzgLG7bF/s1600/_DSC1125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1x1au4K5TjzP_VROSHJf8TvsQmOqAlCXJHrfaDF7ZrovP235vCwhDoFRexR7GobX7XMqzumFTwB4WKG2KwRh8B7lOoBK26OUX3acvpb56f1HjqLWhq0Hp8sPhJknwyYRd35RTfzgLG7bF/s640/_DSC1125.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sweet mint.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQc0f7-V5vukpTQtmuL3OI2x0j1UnGdjrT46GKxF1GLF0rLL_78GUwAnwqGD5DaHc8syJG3eHWR1Wm8HlSvgruTCeY4I6TGHnJDPl30r46ego7UvYiFswvnXlEOPkAgpwMF1hisonC_JKj/s1600/_DSC1201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQc0f7-V5vukpTQtmuL3OI2x0j1UnGdjrT46GKxF1GLF0rLL_78GUwAnwqGD5DaHc8syJG3eHWR1Wm8HlSvgruTCeY4I6TGHnJDPl30r46ego7UvYiFswvnXlEOPkAgpwMF1hisonC_JKj/s640/_DSC1201.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spring is a season of extraordinary growth.<br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype","serif";">©</span>
Shafiq Morton 2018</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-46940490455326672382018-07-23T01:58:00.002-07:002018-07-25T01:06:47.995-07:00Supporting BRICS, the only way to economic progress<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>In a world fast being polarised
by rich-poor divides and Trumpism, South Africa hosts the 11<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> BRICS
summit at a critical juncture in our history</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A SUFI sage once proclaimed that Creation was perfect, but man wasn’t. The world of
people, he said, was not faultless. The earth was not created that way. If
peace treaties were made only between friends, our enemies would devour us. If
we were flawless in character, we would not need friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However,
he added, our challenge was to reach out. We had to make a difference where we
could, appreciating that we were as imperfect as the next person, and needed to
work on our own souls; this all before we criticise others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nelson
Mandela – a true world statesman imbued with the wisdom of suffering – profoundly
realised the above. When ‘instructed’ by western interests to spurn the company
of people such as Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro after 1990, he replied that he
would not abandon his friends, those
who had helped the anti-apartheid struggle in its greatest hours of need.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In
some quarters, pragmatism is called realpolitik, traditionally defined as ‘<span style="background: white;">a system of politics based on practical, rather than moral consideration</span>s’.
However, in the case of Madiba, realpolitik became practical politics based on
moral principles, whilst fully understanding the existing realities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">BRICS, a body consisting of
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – and representing the rump of the
developing world – is such a case in point. Each country’s politics may raise questions,
depending on one’s view, but the over-arching principles of BRICS are far greater
in import than localised issues. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The stated goals of BRICS – the promotion
of technological information, the primacy of education, economic co-operation, the
closing of the gap between developing and developed nations, climate change and
the establishment of a development bank – are all vital issues for over one-third
of the world’s poorest populations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To understand BRICS, we have to
contextualise its founding rationale. It was born on the fringes of the G8 Outreach
Summit in 2006, where disappointment was expressed at its failure to rectify its
economic model for managing the global economy, especially in the light of its lack
of success in significantly closing the poverty gap.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A child of the 1970s during the
neo-conservative Reagan and Thatcher years – especially after US President
Nixon had de-linked the dollar from its gold standard – it was felt that the G8
had failed to satisfactorily address pressing global economic issues. The
summits had begun to attract thousands of anti-globalisation protestors, who
felt the system had failed them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first BRIC summit was held in
Russia in June 2009, with South Africa invited to make up a vital African
component in 2011. South Africa would host the fifth BRICS summit in Durban in
2013. Interestingly, South Africa was invited to BRIC – not because we would
complete the most convenient acronym <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘BRICS’
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Economist</i> once chauvinistically
suggested – but because at that time South Africa had the continent’s biggest
economy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The term ‘BRIC’ was originally
coined by Goldman Sachs in 2001 after a study on the global economy concluded
that China and India would eclipse the Euro zone and the US in terms of
economic power by 2050. Today BRICS represents 20 per cent of the world’s GDP
in a growth area serving 40 per cent of the world’s population.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white;">Themed as </span>‘BRICS in Africa: Collaboration
for Inclusive Growth and Shared Prosperity in the 4th Industrial Revolution’,
BRICS members meeting in South Africa will be reflecting on issues such as the global
order, inclusiveness, trade and the New Development Bank, a BRICS initiative to
break the fetters of the IMF and the World Bank, particularly resented in the
developing world for their crippling interest rates and unsympathetic pre-loan
conditions. <span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The 11<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> BRICS summit will also be a golden opportunity for President Cyril Ramaphosa to
map out the country’s vision, especially after the moribund and unproductive
Zuma years, and to draw Africa closer to BRICS and long-term infrastructural
development for our marginalised communities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To say
that this will be a critical summit is something of an understatement. For
lurking in the political background is the phenomenon of Trumpism and Euro-zone
right wing-ism – the lawless triumphalism of corporate business marginalising
the poor; this seen in a cavalier disregard for global warming and gross militaristic
misconstructions of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like
any multi-state body, BRICS may certainly not be without its own inner tensions,
but its overall long-term vision in galvanising the developing forces of the
world cannot ever be underestimated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-48706491515205257042018-03-03T02:12:00.000-08:002018-03-03T02:12:03.461-08:00Mowbray Mawlud <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-57381974973608078002018-02-19T01:14:00.000-08:002018-02-19T01:15:25.753-08:00Cape Town’s water crisis: we are not alone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo Shafiq Morton</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt;">THIS piece is not about the blame game, triggered by the ‘worst drought in living memory’. Nor is it about the arrogance and the rank incompetence of our city authorities, who only woke up when they realised that they would be the first administration in the world to run out of water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No, this is not about the DA and its cloying attempts to shift the blame, and nor is it about the ANC, intent on scoring points against the DA. Locked into five-year election cycles that have ignored long term planning, our political parties have simply dropped the ball.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The point is; water affects every South African citizen. We are a water-stressed country, and water has to transcend party differences.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today’s status quo – the city of Cape Town unilaterally installing water restriction devices that have never passed SABS or NRCS muster – is the equivalent of a chain store blaming its customers for its poor service, and then forcing them to purchase inferior goods as a result. It is no wonder that the public is angry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bureaucratically, Big Brother now fully controls our water, and we are now captive to the big business of water reticulation. Then there is the fact that plans to heighten dam walls, clean alien vegetation and maintain channels in the catchment areas were either never done, or simply neglected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The great shame, the why of the water crisis, is that government and council have ignored a host of water experts – sometimes even their own – for decades. In fact, the first caution about water in the Western Cape was issued in 1970. The second warning, the result of research in 1990, said that we could run dry by 2007.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In 2005, a local company, Grahamtec, offered to install a R2 million desalination plant at the V & A Waterfront at its own expense to showcase the cost effectiveness of desalination. The city turned it down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since then, South African manufacturers have struggled to get local tenders, despite the fact that their plants have been installed internationally in places such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia, and successfully helped to wean Singapore off the Malaysian grid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then there has been the whiff of corruption: suspensions at the state owned Umgeni Water. Our own desalination plants re-labelled overseas and offered back to us at four times the price. Israeli desalination technology, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">copied from South Africa,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> being considered the cure all </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">– from </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">so-called water experts, who have exhausted the West Bank aquifer, pirated Syrian water from the occupied Golan Heights, nearly drained the Dead Sea – and who have covered the land with alien, water guzzling pines. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But back to the why of the water crisis. In 2007, water researchers issued another warning; this time saying that if current demand continued, Cape Town would run dry by 2012-15. Michael Muller of the SA Water Institute reported that the council was ‘arrogant and over confident’, saying that our water would last until 2022.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To its credit, the city did institute some measures of saving. But as we all know, that was not enough to get through our latest drought cycle – which began in 2015, largely due to the El Nino phenomenon, a change in the surface temperature of the Pacific.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The earth’s ocean currents and weather systems are all inter-linked, and El Nino – or its effeminate twin La Nina – shifts the trajectory of frontal systems, causing droughts in some regions and flooding in others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For countries such as Australia, Brazil, India, Spain, South Africa and the US, the complex El Nino/La Nina effect has meant drought. For other regions of Asia and the Caribbean, it has meant torrential rainfall and high-strength cyclones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The harsh reality is that parts of Asia, the Americas, Australia and Africa are all severely water-stressed. In Brazil, over 800 metropolitan areas have become water-stressed; Perth and Melbourne in Australia face similar challenges, and Barcelona – not unlike Cape Town – went to the brink.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is all happening on a planet – which is covered 70% by water – but where only three per cent is potable, and of that, another 50% is locked up in glaciers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As a surfer who has monitored the weather keenly for five decades, and who as a radio presenter has done a daily weather report for 20 years, I can safely say that our climate is slowly changing over the long term.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whilst our cycles of dry and wet years have more or less remained consistent within the limited bands of predictability, there have been shifts. For example, kelp – a cold-water organism – has encroached further into False Bay due to fewer westerly winds, which warm the sea after the cold upwelling of the southeaster.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our weather systems – admixed with the side effects of global warming – often result in more extreme frontal incidences, such as the Peninsula’s near-cyclone of June last year and the hurricanes of the Gulf.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, at the end of the day, water crises are rarely a matter of rainfall, but more a case of bad human management. In this, we are certainly not alone. For us to survive, there is a need for a more a more holistic understanding, and environmentally sensitive approach, to water catchment. People should not be punished, as in Cape Town, for going off the grid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, whatever happens, our precious water resources must not fall into the hands of greedy privateers, which occurred in California. It is the duty of the state to provide water for us all – without discriminating against the poor, for whom the bucket queues of Day Zero are already a daily occurrence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>An edited version was first published in Muslim Views.</i></span></div>
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1407311666766303810.post-34138161098169263202017-12-20T01:04:00.003-08:002017-12-20T01:08:41.059-08:00Prophet is remembered in Cape Town <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Time for reflection. Mawlud 2017.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">THE Ad Dai'rut us-Salihiyya Dhikr Circle, led by Hajjah Naema Manie, held their annual mawlud - the commemoration of the Prophet's birth - at the Ahmedi mosque in Victoria Rd, Grassy Park, Cape Town. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The packed mosque was addressed by Shaykh Ziyad Fatar and Shaykh Muhammad Allie Khalfe, who both spoke about the noble aspects of the Prophet Muhammad and his life, which was one of clemency, mercy and respect for all. The riwayats - verses - of the famous Barzanji poem on the life of the Prophet were recited in the unique, melodious Cape Town style.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the conclusion on the event, members of the dhikr circle traveled to the Madinah Institute Mass Mawlud being held at the Century City Convention Centre. Founder of the Institute, Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya al-Ninowy, said that the Prophet was an "imam" for those lost, grieving or undergoing trial. "The Prophet, bless him, is a mercy for all," he said, adding that Capetonians should never abandon their tradition of reciting the Barzanji mawlud.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hajjah Naema hands out roses, a sign of love.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mosque was filled to capacity.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yellow roses were favoured by the Prophet.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The elderly enjoy the occasion.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmn-7Uylac96InLN9AP8SsgfB-5JaOyblhlinMQdtEmYZM1tqPG2UxVrcCHyFgTKB75Z-6XjlM36C5tIXG5eQ69MkD6MwyKxuLm6Bzga3sHzdowP7M0RkUib-JnGJZ7FR2DHdvYGJlsL2U/s1600/_CSC0221.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1053" data-original-width="1600" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmn-7Uylac96InLN9AP8SsgfB-5JaOyblhlinMQdtEmYZM1tqPG2UxVrcCHyFgTKB75Z-6XjlM36C5tIXG5eQ69MkD6MwyKxuLm6Bzga3sHzdowP7M0RkUib-JnGJZ7FR2DHdvYGJlsL2U/s640/_CSC0221.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Commemorating the Prophet [saw].</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX8O1N_o1rZhAP120x7QjLxanxBZb1BNeJUcry19YBEsO9D3PYsjpFBMLqj4iS9rvQ48OuQicvoRjU9qQ9RxJ9aoZgDBkCYaCJRox0FRIw4bAaE1egtJC4lC-yWAITncxYgu2SbUmyIuUl/s1600/_CSC0178.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1063" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX8O1N_o1rZhAP120x7QjLxanxBZb1BNeJUcry19YBEsO9D3PYsjpFBMLqj4iS9rvQ48OuQicvoRjU9qQ9RxJ9aoZgDBkCYaCJRox0FRIw4bAaE1egtJC4lC-yWAITncxYgu2SbUmyIuUl/s640/_CSC0178.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sh Ziyad Fatar.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1hArfy0GmAqBg5pHh7mhA_r7gNXNize2qKLjw-jsWwjUKd0yPuLNRk-ET58eS91GEzRYCzhZpGqEP3VFeo8Z8PlsZ137qjLCaiRqJy45aiGJ0TFvwNoI5ntu8OaEL6DGFE5sHeZXvrZsR/s1600/_CSC0099.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1063" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1hArfy0GmAqBg5pHh7mhA_r7gNXNize2qKLjw-jsWwjUKd0yPuLNRk-ET58eS91GEzRYCzhZpGqEP3VFeo8Z8PlsZ137qjLCaiRqJy45aiGJ0TFvwNoI5ntu8OaEL6DGFE5sHeZXvrZsR/s640/_CSC0099.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The rows.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgGDnppZ1QGhRhyBnR6OkitbvpiiguYlTbP537shcn3emqQPZc7q7MyGQy3_KKZUod8RE-Ykz_WBDADC4ulSKIED_LcwQNW8baCYdcMozf7K4IW2p1KEN8Y2MV57B_IkQVfebrcn1MSLK/s1600/_CSC0282.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1063" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgGDnppZ1QGhRhyBnR6OkitbvpiiguYlTbP537shcn3emqQPZc7q7MyGQy3_KKZUod8RE-Ykz_WBDADC4ulSKIED_LcwQNW8baCYdcMozf7K4IW2p1KEN8Y2MV57B_IkQVfebrcn1MSLK/s640/_CSC0282.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hajjah Naema leads the recitation.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GQsnMibDxOF4oq-6Srovh6hZT5LjQV8UkaoZMDQ2xBCuzO__-sTK6IFx53WDfKF7BujB4NlLGQLgA3RQAkmUVtk4-_rq4FWL8Zm0eysoFzt2aAO55ob9wskYZiyUxFJ-KSbsxBiFvzXn/s1600/_DSC0261.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GQsnMibDxOF4oq-6Srovh6hZT5LjQV8UkaoZMDQ2xBCuzO__-sTK6IFx53WDfKF7BujB4NlLGQLgA3RQAkmUVtk4-_rq4FWL8Zm0eysoFzt2aAO55ob9wskYZiyUxFJ-KSbsxBiFvzXn/s640/_DSC0261.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Du'ah.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqF3CQv3X1wmkRPaZIgC_8rqFK3vgZqD_FVOeVETYQZu9wI9IghzIdC1fNM-KbCh03cRWXBCwodKsy3htK5MYzbHIW5GrVlG6MicL9D54xRymoWbhbcSXRPek4YyRnkNTd8fyyaSLBtM3N/s1600/_DSC0148a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqF3CQv3X1wmkRPaZIgC_8rqFK3vgZqD_FVOeVETYQZu9wI9IghzIdC1fNM-KbCh03cRWXBCwodKsy3htK5MYzbHIW5GrVlG6MicL9D54xRymoWbhbcSXRPek4YyRnkNTd8fyyaSLBtM3N/s640/_DSC0148a.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sh Allie Khalfe.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCL77FqLvFHewuCvzFWm47vccTgcIoYWndNBEFF4ta3t72V3JTHTlrW8OSd3Cy_0q9cCHLAld4Xs90K5sGnGELtP4e8GFFhJNQjS-7UnNYsXjtRryLffQgH_y_dFjGRFQeQdtIRwkwMuS8/s1600/_CSC0326.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1600" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCL77FqLvFHewuCvzFWm47vccTgcIoYWndNBEFF4ta3t72V3JTHTlrW8OSd3Cy_0q9cCHLAld4Xs90K5sGnGELtP4e8GFFhJNQjS-7UnNYsXjtRryLffQgH_y_dFjGRFQeQdtIRwkwMuS8/s640/_CSC0326.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hajjah Naema.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgZKDtcFVyaxbwngVC5aYau7wgquuHuZI6S-8apiSKKYse6sRg0S9iRm4toiCxByzorolI-nd6-r1g2Z-90hlsAWC2Tn1kR2NpPNy8NEq-BjBgqREk8LggfdBgsZahGnDSXWFJqhES630/s1600/_DSC0382.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgZKDtcFVyaxbwngVC5aYau7wgquuHuZI6S-8apiSKKYse6sRg0S9iRm4toiCxByzorolI-nd6-r1g2Z-90hlsAWC2Tn1kR2NpPNy8NEq-BjBgqREk8LggfdBgsZahGnDSXWFJqhES630/s640/_DSC0382.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mustafa Atef from Egypt dazzled with his poetic voice.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDjby5lWLoxkzCfkxaI00zc_t_5nvvPHHB3qaFTdl9owFFKV5eT8l89Sj31g-8rYJ7e90LPf6SytEKXvjlqeNhNq851lgjCLcldX-SHXBstQ_R8mJGKhHWqsbZStY-rdpztF3ksDceQ4i8/s1600/_DSC0488.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDjby5lWLoxkzCfkxaI00zc_t_5nvvPHHB3qaFTdl9owFFKV5eT8l89Sj31g-8rYJ7e90LPf6SytEKXvjlqeNhNq851lgjCLcldX-SHXBstQ_R8mJGKhHWqsbZStY-rdpztF3ksDceQ4i8/s640/_DSC0488.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A packed auditorium is reflected on the screen.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHTjgkkpAnxxyraGn5wyTwol2mLQX_E1APSWz5M-lWjxSdqakMUj7F4kaL6V496aaVPYK708S3aXw7-bvHJ8LegDNkXJb67pExp6ORXZFTCvLwrUIRsbXLi9Zb3DMFLdAHJ7l-ck6WUaOd/s1600/_DSC0482.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHTjgkkpAnxxyraGn5wyTwol2mLQX_E1APSWz5M-lWjxSdqakMUj7F4kaL6V496aaVPYK708S3aXw7-bvHJ8LegDNkXJb67pExp6ORXZFTCvLwrUIRsbXLi9Zb3DMFLdAHJ7l-ck6WUaOd/s640/_DSC0482.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reciting the Barzanji at Century City.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVwWCAYs8YDNbNx49iQlcFGg8CCcmMM2UPVI9Z9ExT_VtIP6FKnAd-WkPsTDlAWQeZh6Ir-g_3_L-GWIM5O_w6shMoBaPk8SqVjXonw-zsWOanCBU4ajx_e5mMOK3vGQnoh960XrsFJbiX/s1600/_DSC0555.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVwWCAYs8YDNbNx49iQlcFGg8CCcmMM2UPVI9Z9ExT_VtIP6FKnAd-WkPsTDlAWQeZh6Ir-g_3_L-GWIM5O_w6shMoBaPk8SqVjXonw-zsWOanCBU4ajx_e5mMOK3vGQnoh960XrsFJbiX/s640/_DSC0555.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Group presents Shaykh Ninowy with a specially baked cake.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUTZHXGbWCYYmok7WPa_zmlkZjfmWSKVQnYgsnbcslOZMq5RKgMTVx4PSVZUzNsImuUlnP49tR7NJg1EQz3GpV6tKNAz5eOb1ctTFAWQZAtZxq-br_tOZlKpLrJdLseACwPcGrskK7bRs9/s1600/Sh+Ninowy+Mawlud+17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUTZHXGbWCYYmok7WPa_zmlkZjfmWSKVQnYgsnbcslOZMq5RKgMTVx4PSVZUzNsImuUlnP49tR7NJg1EQz3GpV6tKNAz5eOb1ctTFAWQZAtZxq-br_tOZlKpLrJdLseACwPcGrskK7bRs9/s640/Sh+Ninowy+Mawlud+17.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sh Ninowy addresses the crowd.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YcFDQ6YCfKH0FmZ3dXyJKGCoPNuonbzH-pXeSHiaEierI7KV_nCrWDAi8J59JSpNaRoZPkqGq4BhG484yqZp6oqiNcfUZbrPtHRP0qzhC-km9NQoWP-KiF8_mZfayQBlUtFBWn9xe-xf/s1600/_CSC0193a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1010" data-original-width="1600" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YcFDQ6YCfKH0FmZ3dXyJKGCoPNuonbzH-pXeSHiaEierI7KV_nCrWDAi8J59JSpNaRoZPkqGq4BhG484yqZp6oqiNcfUZbrPtHRP0qzhC-km9NQoWP-KiF8_mZfayQBlUtFBWn9xe-xf/s640/_CSC0193a.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Contemplation.</td></tr>
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<i>All photos copyright Shafiq Morton and Ad Dai'rat us-Salihiyya Dhikr Circle.</i><br />
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Shafiq Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08604613344326042590noreply@blogger.com0