Shaikh Muhammad ibn Yahya Ninowy visits Cape Town Azzawia, 28 January

ATLANTA based scholar and descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, Shaikh Muhammad ibn Yahya Ninowy, visited the Azzawia in Cape Town. The Shaikh was accompanied by his youger brother, Shaikh 'Isa.

In a brief talk the Shaikh said that the phrase “al-adab miftah ul-’ilm” (good conduct is the key to knowledge) was not just a statute, or a construct. It meant that a person had to have etiquette in everything – one’s relationship with other people, one’s relationship to one’s worship, one’s relationship with one’s Creator. Without this context, the application of the axiom was meaningless.

© Shafiq Morton Photos

 

Mass Mawlud Cape Town 2014: colours and textures

THE Mass Mawlud 2014 - a commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad's [pbuh] birthday over 1,435 years ago - took place at the old Green Point Track, where five decades previously the well-known Indo-Pak scholar, Maulana Abdul 'Alim Siddiqui, had addressed 30,000 people.

Special guests were provincial premier Helen Zille, Mayor Patricia de Lille and ANC Deputy International Relations and Co-operation Minister and local ANC leader, Marius Fransman.

 

Fransman saluted the Prophet (pbuh) as a leader of the poor and downtrodden, De Lille paid tribute to the faith and strength of the community and Zille spoke about the universal spiritual light that brought people together.

 

Keynote speaker, Shaikh Muhammad ibnYahya Ninowy, said that all humans were born in a prison called life in which we were all sentenced to death.

 

But the person who embraced the mentality of an inmate would not be successful in the prison. A prophet called Muhammad (SAW) came to mankind and taught us that the sky was not the roof of a cage, but the beginning of something far greater.

 

Society today was experiencing a spiritual drought; faith had been shrivelled up into the dry formats of “do’s’ and “don’ts”, of hollow rituality without substance. This, said Shaikh Ninowy, was not the message of Muhammad (SAW). His message was of liberality, of setting the human spirit free.

Photos  © Shafiq Morton

Ariel Sharon: the Israeli Napoleon who never was

Lebanon: Sharon's bitter legacy
© Shafiq Morton

ARIEL SHARON, former Israeli Prime Minister, has passed on at the age of 85. After a lingering coma induced by a stroke in 2006, his body has finally shut down – and the curtain has fallen on what can only be described as a colourful, if not chequered career.  

Although I never met him personally, Sharon’s presence appeared to haunt me wherever I went in the Middle East. Larger than life, his brazenness has seen him enjoying a career in which a bull in a china shop has seemed like a ballet dancer.

Indeed, no amount of apologetic obituaries will be able to wish away the fact that Ariel Sharon was one of Israel’s most belligerent political figures – the word “political architect” (as used by a US journalist) is certainly inflated language for a man whose solution in 2000 was to suggest the killing of arch foe Yasser ‘Arafat.

Sentimental tributes written about him being an “avuncular figure”, a “warrior statesman” or a “complicated man” wrestling with the inevitability of a Palestinian settlement, are as authentic as Count Dracula being a teddy bear.

The truth is that the arrogantly imperial Sharon was never about peace. “Pragmatic” he may have been, but his chief business was ethnic separation between Israelis and Arabs. As a soldier this meant enforcement by the gun; and as a politician it meant concrete walls, razor wire and illegal settlements.

His response to Ehud Barak’s Camp David talks with PLO leader Yasser ‘Arafat is a typical example of his lack of subtlety. His Al-Aqsa mosque walkabout, accompanied by over 1,000 guards, lit the fires of the second Palestinian intifadah.

As I dig through old notebooks, Sharon’s name crops up time and again. Unit 101, a special “retaliation” force created by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion – of which Sharon was a 25-year old major – features as prominently as the Deir Yasin massacre.

For in August 1953, Unit 101 attacked the Gazan refugee camp of Al-Bureij, killing at least 20 refugees. This was followed by Sharon leading the Qibya massacre in Jordan two months later. This time there were 69 fatalities with the victims, mainly civilians, being dynamited whilst in their homes.

The Qibya attack was condemned by the UN and the US State Department, but no-one was ever held accountable.

Sharon’s trail of destruction did not end there. In Gaza in 1971, as head of the IDF southern command, he’d bulldozed 2,000 homes, rendered 16,000 people homeless and assassinated over 100 resistance fighters.

As a politician his hand was no less heavy. The Negev Bedouin do not have happy memories of him as Agriculture Minister. In 1979 he declared a 1,500 square kilometre area a “national park”, denying the Bedouin access to their ancestral land.

He created a para-military unit called the Green Patrol that uprooted 900 Bedouin encampments and almost saw the extinction of the black goat, whose wool provided material for traditional nomad tents.

But it was in Lebanon that Sharon, as Defence Minister, became a household name. Space does not permit more than a summary background to Israel’s 1982 invasion, essentially aimed at chasing Yasser ‘Arafat’s PLO out of the Levant and neutralising the Syrian presence.

Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Kata’ib Party, had been voted into power with the help of western intelligence. Unfortunately, one of his neighbours was a Syrian agent, who blew him up whilst addressing party members. Sharon’s response to the assassination was to blame the Palestinians.

The PLO had just withdrawn from Beirut and Kata’ib – or Phalangist – forces were in the vicinity of the Sabra and Shatila, which were now defenceless Palestinian neighbourhoods. In violation of a ceasefire accord, the Israeli IDF had reoccupied the area, sealing off Sabra and Shatila.

According to reports, Ariel Sharon and IDF chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, met with Phalangist units, inviting them to enter Sabra and Shatila. Hours later about 1,500 militias under the command of Elie Hobeika moved in. Watched by Israeli forces, and aided by IDF flares, the raping, mutilation and killing began.

All in all, it’s believed that about 2,000 people were massacred by Phalangist forces whilst the IDF looked on. The UN General Assembly condemned the killings as “genocide” and Israel’s own Yitzhak Kahan Commission fingered Sharon. However, Prime Minister Menachim Begin refused to fire him.

I visited Sabra and Shatila some 15 years after the massacre to do research for a book. Although some buildings were still burnt out and pockmarked with bullets, most of the neighbourhood had been rebuilt.

But in the dark and cramped alleys there was still a sombre mood. Those who’d survived asked why nobody had protected them and – unsurprisingly – had emotional difficulty recounting events. In Shatila I discovered that the mosque floor had been dug up to bury the dead because of lack of space.

I visited the main graveyard of the massacre, an open, cold space devoid of tombstones. “Too many bodies,” said my translator, “too many bodies.”

But that was not the end of the story. People kept on talking about a secondary massacre, when hundreds of people had been detained and questioned at the sports stadium, some disappearing without trace.

“There are hundreds of bodies under the Rihab Gas Station,” I was told.

This took me by surprise, for not even The Independent’s Robert Fisk – who had reported on the stadium events – had spoken about this particular graveyard.  Were these yet more trampled ghosts of Sharon’s past? I do not have the answer.

But who exactly was Sharon? The acerbic Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery, describes Sharon as an “Israeli Napoleon”, the ultimate integration of personal and national egocentrism. What was good for Sharon was good for national interest – and whoever wanted to stop him had to get out the way for Sharon, and Sharon alone, could save Israel.

He thought he was well on his way to doing this via Kadima when he met his Waterloo, a debilitating stroke that saw his dream of an ethnically cleansed Israel – with Palestinians finally crammed into Jordan and Gaza – condemned to an inter-space of chronic comatose  incapacity between life and death.

 

Why Muslims should remember Mandela



© Shafiq Morton

 

NELSON Rolihlahla Mandela, the colossus, has been laid to rest. That he affected millions of people during his lifetime is beyond debate.

From the ghosts of District Six to the tight alleys of Gaza, I have personally witnessed the electrifying effect that this man has had on the downtrodden. For them, he represented the possibility of the impossible – the hope of justice being served after decades of struggle.

This is something we need to respect and understand beyond the clichés of self-serving public officials and gravy-train surfers who know little about the values that Madiba – or the ANC – once stood for.

But why we should remember Madiba, firstly, is that because as a faithful and loyal servant of Africa’s oldest liberation movement, he was able to rise to individual greatness above its whole – or as Joel Netshitenzhe has said: Mandela was a man of “unique remarkability”.

In fact, it was this “unique remarkability” that was recognised by those near to him in the early 1960’s. The Mandela of 1990, the man who became president, was nurtured within a circle of close comrades. He became the sum of the sacrifice of those who were around him.

Madiba, of course, acknowledged this – although his tributes to Sisulu, Tambo and others were often eclipsed by his own headlines. Secondly, we should remember him because it was his overwhelming liberality of spirit, his endearing humility and his sense of humanity that created this “unique remarkability”.

Unlike the Afrikaner regime the anti-apartheid movement did not regard us as non-people, or declare the Qur’an subversive in the courts. Whilst some Muslims had been quietist, many had been present in struggle circles – from Ahmad Kathrada and Yusuf Dadoo to Amina Cachalia and the Meers.

In fact Goolam Vahed’s seminal book, Muslim Portraits, the Anti-Apartheid Struggle, lists 385 “A-team” Muslim anti-apartheid activists. Not all ANC (the book profiles, for example, activists such as Imam Abdullah Haron, the PAC’s Gora Ebrahim and Qibla’s Ahmad Cassiem) it does chronicle a proud political heritage.

And on Robben Island – where Madiba spent 18 years – the tomb of the Yemeni-born saint Shaikh Abdurahman Matarah (situated on the northern side of the prison) was a constant reminder of the role Muslims at the Cape had played against Dutch colonialism.

In 1989 Madiba wrote a letter to Shaikh Nazeem Mohamed of the MJC courteously expressing his appreciation of the Muslim community’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle. I saw the letter myself, but the Shaikh would not let me touch it.

He also sent a letter to Shaikh Abdul Gamiet Gabier in 1982 in which he spoke about his upbringing. He also expressed admiration of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, as well as Molvi Cachalia and Imam Abdurahman Bassier, then imam at the Boorhaanol mosque in Longmarket Street.

In 1990, after his release, Madiba made several trips to the Cape. He paid homage to Tuan Guru at the Tana Baru, met local leaders and was the main speaker at the 1994 Tricentenary Commemoration.

Perhaps the most auspicious moment for us was his visit to the Awwal mosque in April 1994. There he stated that religious leadership should form the moral backbone of the new South Africa, and in a moment I’ll never forget, knelt on the ground when the Qur’an was recited.

The images of Madiba in a Cape Town mosque were transmitted across the world. Their impact was massive, for here was a non-Muslim head of state honouring Islam. He even got away with scolding US presidents and honouring struggle ties with Gaddafi, Castro and the PLO.

Madiba was a friend to all South Africans, including its Muslims, who today enjoy freedoms that are the envy of the ummah. Those who might want to carp need to remember that Madiba’s legacy is a South Africa without enemies. Only in Mandela country could a US president shake hands with a Castro.

Debate about whether Madiba should be the beneficiary of Muslim tribute – or even prayerful remembrance – is small minded. Scholars are unanimous that to honour another human being is a praiseworthy thing. That is why the Prophet (SAW) stood up out of respect for a Jewish funeral procession, saying that the deceased was a son of Adam.

He (SAW) had no qualms about allowing the early Muslims to seek refuge from the Quraish in the court of the Abyssinian Negus, then a well-known Christian monarch. “Go to him, for he is a just ruler,” were the noble Prophet’s words. Indeed, history shows us that the Negus was as magnanimous as the Prophet (SAW) in understanding truth and fairness.

The Prophet’s (SAW) letter to the monks at St Catherine’s in the Sinai is another example, in which the Prophet (SAW) extended a hand of friendship and a guarantee of protection in an agreement that stands today.

There was also the instance of Safana, the daughter of Hatim at-Ta’i who was Christian, but renowned throughout the Arabian Peninsula for his charity and good works. Safana was captured in a battle, and mentioned her father to the Prophet (SAW). The Prophet’s (SAW) response was that if her father were present, he would have immediately prayed for his mercy.

What we need to take from Madiba with respect to our Islam is that its traditional theology – whilst acknowledging differences – has always been implacably non-racial and expressly merciful to all. We were created into diverse tribes and nations to know each other, not despise one other, extols the Qur’an in Surat ul-Hujarat.

In acquiring a piece of Madiba memory for ourselves we have to appreciate similarly what he meant to others. As Zelda La Grange his former P.A. tweeted: whether you actually met him, or not, is irrelevant. Any relationship with Madiba was one of the heart.

La Grange was essentially saying that with Madiba there would be no exclusivity, which means that as a community we have to remind ourselves of the greater whole to which we belong. What Madiba demonstrated to the world, and what we can’t afford to forget, is that he saw us as equals.

 

 

Madiba Magic: the parts that make the whole

ONE of the most profound things about Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s release in February 1990, after 27 years of incarceration, was that it opened us to the world after 46 years of isolation. From being the world’s number one nasty nation, we suddenly gained moral credibility and international acceptability.

Our green passport, something of a curse until then, became the invitation to formerly forbidden territories. For me, as a South African journalist, it meant being assigned to conflict, disaster and famine in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

As a stringer who’d covered the anti-apartheid movement and Mandela’s release, I suddenly found my South African-ness no longer a liability. It was refreshingly liberating to no longer have the monkey of apartheid on my back. No longer would I be detained at Nairobi airport.

I was a photographer in those days and I realise now just how privileged I was to enjoy a bird’s eye view of our icon. I was an anonymous face in the media pack, for sure, but it did allow me to get closer than most to the towering presence that was Madiba – his clan name by which everybody grew to fondly call him.

It was noticeable right from the beginning that he had a special aura about him – it was something beyond his dignity, discipline and old-fashioned courtesy. For that reason I will never forget Madiba’s press conference the morning after his release at the residence of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.

On that day he was a 70 year-old, the world’s most famous political prisoner, catapulted from the sedate analogue 1960’s into the hurly-burly of the digital 1990’s. I can recall him looking quizzically at the booms of the TV sound men. He admitted later that he’d never seen such things before.

But what Madiba did that morning in a few moments was to win over the world. When journalists identified themselves, he would engage with them, calling them by their names and saying he was pleased to meet them as he’d enjoyed reading their reports.

Much has since been said about his fondness to engage with people, but perhaps not so much about the steely side of his character. I saw this in a brief, but unguarded, moment at parliament when he and FW De Klerk were set make a joint announcement about CODESA, the negotiations to end apartheid.

I was ducking under the front-row of seats to get a shot before the briefing when I witnessed an exchange between him and FW De Klerk. No disrespect to FW, but I could see who was in charge.

For behind the bonhomie, it was clear Madiba was a hard man you did not want to trifle with. In fact, De Klerk would meet the stinging wrath of Mandela in January 1994 on the issue of “Third-Force” violence, said to have been instigated by the Afrikaner Nationalist government, in the townships.

However, it was when I was abroad that I began to truly appreciate the impact that Madiba had – particularly in parts of the world where people were suffering. For them, our seemingly impossible victory over apartheid was a miracle against the odds that they could embrace as a beacon of hope for themselves.

We sometimes forget that they saw clearly the egotistical brinkmanship of the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Chief Buthelezi (who only agreed to participate in the 1994 elections eight days beforehand), the right wing military threat of the generals, the assassination of Chris Hani and “Third Force” violence – all elements recognisable in their politics. 

It is not for nothing either that Palestinians have embraced the idea of the Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners Campaign in the mould of the anti-apartheid movement’s Free Mandela Campaign of the 1980’s. Madiba’s well-known sentiment, that South Africans would not be truly free until Palestinians were liberated, epitomises his celebrated sense of humanity.

In fact, we have much to think about in terms of Madiba’s contribution to humanity, something that endeared him to so many. Because he was sincere, people believed him. He would sing “Twinkle, twinkle little star” and children would love him. No public figure of modern times can claim to have enjoyed as much universal trust as Madiba.

So when he visited the Awwal mosque in the Bo-Kaap in 1994 to thank Muslims for their contribution to the struggle, and knelt when the Qur’an was recited, he melted one billion Muslim hearts around the world. And in a new South Africa where religions now enjoyed equality, he visited synagogues, churches and temples with the same decorum.

To enumerate the instances I’ve heard ordinary people on foreign shores expressing their admiration for Madiba is impossible. The word “Mandela” has caused smiles from Cairo to Cochin – and, at times, has even opened some difficult doors.

I experienced yet another example of Madiba’s vast sphere of influence in Pakistan in October this year. I met a law student – our guide and interpreter – who was interested in going into politics. Pakistan is a country beset by huge developmental challenges not dissimilar to South Africa’s, and when I asked him why his passion for public life, his confident answer was “Mandela”.

 One thing that Madiba clearly understood was the command of the symbolic gesture. His wearing of Francois Pienaar’s no 6 jersey at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, his tea with Betsy Verwoed, the widow of apartheid master Hendrik Verwoed, have proved to be far more eloquent moments than thousands of well-crafted speeches.

But the most profound thing I’ve witnessed about Madiba on my travels was that whenever he was seen embracing a child in South Africa, he was felt to be embracing another one in Gaza, an earthquake victim in Iran, an orphan in Darfur, a prisoner of conscience in Central Africa, an AIDS victim in Uganda and a bereaved mother in Somalia.

Indeed, to understand the whole of “Madiba Magic” we need to understand its parts and the fact that by one simple action, one man had the ability to inspire and reach out to so many people in so many different parts of the world.