Seeking the Light Fantastic…

Celebrating the birth of the Prophet.

IN SUMMER when you travel from the city centre to Sea Point, you’ll always feel cool air wafting off the Atlantic. And on baking evenings – when people migrate to Sea Point’s lawns to escape the heat – it’s difficult to leave.

This reminds me of Madinah, a sanctified city, for which the Prophet Muhammad
made copious prayer. Madinah effuses one with the cooling presence of the Prophet in the same way the Cape Atlantic does.

“O Allah, make us love Madinah as much as we love Makkah, and even more,” was the Prophet’s invocation. Indeed, there is not a visitor who does not long to return to Madinah – a fertile, palm-fringed oasis that attracted wandering Jews nearly 2,000 years ago.

These tribes migrated to Madinah in 70 CE after the final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. They trekked there to await a prophet who’d liberate them from the Diaspora. Ka’ab al-Ahbar, a rabbi who became Muslim, was once asked what the Torah had told the Jews about the expected prophet. He replied:

“We find him named the son of ‘Abdul-Allah, his birthplace Makkah, his place of migration Madinah …we find him neither coarse of speech nor rowdy in the market place. He does not return wrong with wrong, but instead forgives and pardons.”

Because of the Prophet’s clemency, Madinah is imbued with immense peace. It is not a noisy place. Its inhabitants are known for their gentleness. This is ascribed to the tradition that no-one must raise their voice in the presence of the Prophet.

As Dr Mostafa Badawi, a resident of Madinah, has written: “Madinah is a universe unto itself…each atom of it vibrant with a life intensified by the immense blessings of the Prophet…”

Even the soil of the city has special properties. I can remember going to a quiet spot near Quba to collect small bags of clay. Called the Turab al-Shifa’ (the Healing Clay), it had been used by the Prophet to heal sickness.

It has always led me to believe, like Mostafa Badawi, that even the dust of Madinah has barakah, or blessing. The Companions certainly thought so, and have been recorded as saying that when the Prophet entered the city, everything became illuminated.

“There has come to you from your Creator a Light…” says Allah, the Highest, informing us of the Prophet in Surat ul-Ma’idah (The Table Spread).

Indeed, it was Sayyidina ‘Ali – the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law – who said that the Messenger of God was light before he became form. This incandescence, this nur, travelled through the backbone of Adam, the first prophet, into the DNA of the Quraish.

These Hijazi Arabs knew that they were carrying the genes of a prophet. Sayyid Muhammad ‘Alawi al-Maliki reports that scholars could detect no marital impurity – and not even a hint of paganism – in at least 500 of the Prophet’s direct ancestors.

Nizar, the son of Ma’ad, saw the nur of the Prophet centuries before he was born. Ilyas even heard the labbaik – the invocation of the Hajj – in his spine. And so powerful was the Prophet’s pre-natal presence that Ka’ab gathered the Quraish and warned them of his coming ten generations before his noble birth .

This light moved to the forehead of ‘Abdullah, the Prophet’s father, and then to the womb of Amina, his mother. And when the noble Prophet was born (miraculously circumcised and in the position of prostration) Amina was able to see the palaces of Syria in the blaze of light that followed.

Of course, this radiance is not like an LED display. The Prophet was not a lamp in the literal sense, and whilst his knowledge was figuratively illuminating, his body did at times emit spiritual luminosity.

These instances are regarded by the scholars as miraculous signs of his elevated status. Sayyidah A’ishah did see beads of the Prophet’s sweat brighten a darkened room, and the Companions did witness flashes from between his incisors when he spoke.

The significance of this, as we’ve already said, is that the Muhammadan Light was the first light to be shaped. “I was light in the hands of my Lord,” is the axiom of the Prophet that supports Sayyidina ‘Ali’s account.

In my view, the Prophet is imbued with four different kinds of light: firstly, primordial fitrah (the nur of being something before Creation); secondly, the light of outer, or material knowledge; thirdly, the light of inner, or heart knowledge; and fourthly, the light of final prophethood.
But, that is not all.

For added to this extraordinary radiance is a shimmering, unimaginable cloud of divine creatures originated from pure light. They surround the Prophet at all times. These are angels praising, protecting and extolling the honour of the blessed Prophet.

His soul alive in his grave, the salutations of every Muslim are carried to him by another angel – and returned tenfold – no matter where believers find themselves. Other angels show him the deeds of his community, about whom he cares for and prays constantly.

These angelic beings are rivers of colour; every dawn 70,000 descend upon the Prophet’s noble grave in Madinah, and at every sunset they ascend to be replaced by another 70,000. No same group of angels ever returns.

But on the Day of Resurrection these angels will surround the green-robed Prophet astride the buraq, his prophetic steed, in rows upon rows. It will reflect a majesty that will defy earthly imagination.

It is at that moment that the Prophet, Allah’s most praised one, will be granted the Maqam al-Mahmud (the Station of Intercession) in fulfilment of his special request – that he be allowed to ask for the relief of his people.

For us in the ranks of humanity and the jinn seeing our imperfections, this will be a glimmer of hope. In the same way Adam, the first of conscious mankind, saw the Prophet’s blessed name inscribed on the Divine Throne when he first lifted his head, our hearts will be filled with awe.

Bela Bela: the pot that boils

Bela Bela, near Warmbaths, is Tswana for "the pot that boils". It is an apt description for the geo-thermal water that percolates through the earth's crust at extremely high temperatures. Bela Bela is also part of the lowveld, a region with a moderate climate and rich soils which support a plethora of game. With its wide expanses and spectacular summer skies, its a good place to visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of Orientalism and other Madmen

IT was Edward Said, the Palestinian exile and scholar, who cracked the nut on post-colonial prejudice in his seminal work of the 1970’s, Orientalism. In it he exposed what he regarded as institutionalised racism against Arabs and North Africans.

In essence, Said argued that western scholars had looked at the east with a jaundiced eye. Predicated by notions of superiority, western academia had misunderstood, misrepresented and misread what constituted the cultural and theological discourse of the Arab and Muslim world.

For western scholarship of the late 18^th century (when Orientalism gained impetus after Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded Egypt) the term meant someone who studied the Levant. It was a Latin-derived word referring to the sun’s rising in the east – in this case the eastern Mediterranean region between Anatolia and Egypt.  

Whilst Said has had to withstand academic attack on his work, his central thesis has stood the test of time, despite its alleged errors; this due to the fact that many of those outside the Arab and Muslim tent have visited it with extreme prejudice and conjecture. What Said did was to successfully, and uncomfortably, expose their arrogance.

A butt of Said’s public invective was Bernard Lewis, a British-American historian. Lewis, a professor at Princeton University, was the first to promote the idea of an ‘inevitable’ east-west clash, the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’. This was picked up by US neo-con, Samuel Huntington, in his sinister treatise on post Cold War politics.

Lewis’ methodology, argued Said, was a case of puffed-up agenda-driven intellectualism. It was based on a western-minded self affirmation that merely enhanced US and European imperialism – and Israeli hegemony.

Lewis (an advisor to Bush and Cheney) had replied that Orientalist study had done nothing to further western control. He asked how deciphering the past could contribute to this. The famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, shrewdly accused Lewis of having a short memory on the impact of western meddling and its political cock-ups in the Middle East.

I interviewed Bernard Lewis in the 1990’s and found him to be a courteous, if not formidable subject. Assured of his views, he was not easily put off his stride – though I did feel that Said and Chomsky had rattled him more than I ever could.

I was reminded of Orientalism the other day, for after writing about the roots of the extremist Wahhabi group, ISIS, I was accused of ignorance and depravity. That I did not fit the jihadi mould of an AK47-toting extremist had apparently upset my critic, who commented:

“[Muhammad]…vomit (pbuh)…what the hell do you know about what happened more than 800 years ago? Shafiq you are brainwashed…all you have is your faith and identity (which is obviously confused)…and that makes you oppose all who are different from you…you are vile…”

I saw this cyber tantrum (from someone with a name ending in ‘itz’) as Orientalism. I saw it as Orientalism, not because of its crassness, but rather because there appeared to be discomfort with the notion that ISIS – the godchild of Ibn Abd ul-Wahhab – didn’t represent mainstream Islam. Later exchanges seemed to indicate that my Muslim-ness precluded me from being qualified to comment on Islam anyway!

It led me to re-examining Orientalism, and discovering that its landscape has been dotted with madmen, eccentrics, theological claptrap and flashes of genuine scholarship for centuries.

One of the first recognised Orientalists was Ramon Lull, a Franciscan from Majorca, who saw his life work as the conversion of Jews and Muslims. A scholar of considerable note, he was influenced by Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, and called for the introduction of Arabic into European university syllabuses.

Obsessed with martyrdom, he visited North Africa three times to convert Muslims. On the last occasion he was stoned by angry townsfolk who’d finally got tired of his incessant provocation. Licking his wounds (he didn’t get martyred) he found his way back to Majorca where he passed away in about 1314.

John Wycliffe, the first to translate the bible into English circa 1324, wrote that Islam was like the Catholic Church – ‘violent, corrupt and greedy’. It was the Catholic Church, and not the Muslims, who dug up his bones 40 years after his death and threw them into a river.

In 1356 Sir John Mandeville, a travel writer of French identity – who claimed to be an English knight ­– wrote in Mark Twain fashion that the ‘coffin’ of the Prophet (SAW) floated in the air, and was suspended by magnets. The Ka’bah in Makkah was filled with idols that killed any bird that alighted on it.

The Frenchman, Guillame Postel, was regarded as a madman. He believed that Hebrew was the primary Semitic language. He was a linguist par excellence. In Istanbul he learnt Arabic so fast his teacher thought he was a demon, and when he departed for the Holy Land in 1549 with a grey beard, it’s said he miraculously returned with a black one.

Curiously, for his era, he believed in the supremacy of women and said that Muslims should be regarded as ‘half Christians’. He was impressed by the east and wrote that “all things we hold in the west as of extraordinary edifice are like mere shadows of oriental excellences.”

The author Robert Irwin says that Postel was driven by a fear of Islamic hegemony, a pathology that is noticeable in many western societies today that seem to think that the ‘Muslims are coming’.

Another French Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, could not speak Arabic. On the other hand, the Englishman David Margoliouth could talk for an hour without notes in classical Arabic on the splendours of ‘Abbasid Baghdad. Margoliouth also clumsily said that the Prophet (SAW) was an epileptic.

Yet another fascinating Orientalist is the Hungarian Jew, Ignaz Goldziher, who studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo and who later concluded that Islam was better than Judaism or Christianity. However, his view of Hadith – that they were later fabricated – did not endear him to the Muslim community. Goldziher is said to have influenced another Orientalist, Louis Massignon, and Bernard Lewis.

Space, and lack of material, precludes discussion on the Russian Orientalists and perhaps even the Chinese. But suffice it to say that our very own home-grown Cape Town Orientalist, ID du Plessis (who enjoyed a close relationship with apartheid's PW Botha and who 'studied' the local Malay community), fits the Edward Said model of Orientalism like the proverbial glove.

Naqshbandi Shaikh in Cape Town

THE next guide in what is called the "Golden Chain" of Naqshbandi Shaikhs, Shaikh Muhammad 'Adil al-Haqqani, briefly visited the Cape with his brother, Shaikh Bauhideen. The previous Shaikh of the Sufi order, Shaikh Naazim - who was based in Lefke, Cyprus -  passed away in May this year, aged 92.

Shaikh Muhammad, who is renowned for his humility and who is the eldest son of Shaikh Naazim, only started giving public addresses when his father fell seriously ill. This, in spite of the mantle having been passed on to him in 2011. During his visit, Shaikh Muhammad spent time with his followers, conducting the Jumu'ah - or Friday prayers - in the townships where the Naqshbandi have been working for several years under the leadership of Shaikh Yusuf da Costa.   

Shaikh Muhammad

ShaikhYusuf da Costa

Sh Yusuf da Costa,Shaikh Muhammad and Shaikh Bauhideen

Dhikr at the Azzawia in Cape Town

Enjoying the Thursday evening in Cape Town

Sh Muhammad, 'Isha Sunnah prayer. 

Du'ah

Young and old

Crowd enjoying dhikr, remembrance of Allah

Shaikh Muhammad enjoys recitation of nasheed.

Shaikh Bauhideen, addressing Islamia College Hall function

Bay'ah with the Shaikh, Islamia.

Women take bay'ah

The entourage.

Newlands Forest

Newlands Forest, sheltering under the south-east face of Table Mountain in Cape 

Town, is a place of great tranquility, changing seasons and textures. 

© Shafiq Morton Photos

Understanding Isis

Shakir, Wahiyib, the one man who shows his face.
An ISIS "enforcer".
Photo courtesy www.telegraph.co.uk

WHO exactly is ISIS or Da’ish – or to give it its latest acronym – the IS?  The Islamic State in Syria (or the Levant), which governs a self-proclaimed Caliphate in the conflict-torn zones of Syria and Iraq, lays claim to a holy war against imperialism.

Due to its distorted understanding of Shari’ah, over 100 of the world’s top Islamic scholars (including the Muslim Judicial Council) have roundly condemned ISIS. Even Al-Qaeda has disowned the organisation.

To say that ISIS is a disturbing development in a region already teetering on the brink of apocalyptic disaster is an understatement. ISIS’s chillingly staged YouTube clips have assaulted all standards of decency.

And whilst ISIS has elicited justifiable denunciation, this doesn’t really explain who it is. This is because reportage on ISIS is occurring without any contextual framework.

For this, we first go to the 7^th century when a group in Iraq broke away from the Islamic mainstream. Known as the Khawarij – literally “those who go out” – this sect embraced a stark and simplistic theology in which a merciful deity became a vengeful one.

Interestingly, the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh] had predicted the rise of the Khawarij. He even said that its offspring would emerge in our times, and that their understanding of religion would not descend below their collar bones.

The Khawarij believed that anyone who did not subscribe to their worldview was an unbeliever, a sinful kafir who could be killed.The early Caliphs had to put down the Khawarij by force.

In the late 18^th century, Muhammad’s [pbuh] prophecy would bear fruit when a central Arabian scholar, Ibn Abd ul-Wahhab, would claim to be a renewer of Islam. He would preach that his view was the only authentic one, and that anybody disagreeing with him was an unbeliever whose blood was halal.

Spurning over 1,000 years of classical knowledge, he was duly ignored as a crackpot until Ibn Sa’ud – a chieftain craving political power – realised he could harness ‘Abd ul-Wahhab’s rabid discourse to unite the disparate Bedouin tribes.

Ibn Sa’ud rallied the Bedoiun tribesmen, known as the “ikhwan”, under the banner of neo-Kharijism, or Wahhabism. It was tactically convenient, because anybody disagreeing with him could be put to the sword.

The Wahhabis over-ran the Middle East, smashing historical tombs, vandalising libraries and dismembering thousands of Shi’ah and Sunnis in Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. 

The Ottomans, who then ruled the Levant from Istanbul, sent Egypt’s Ali Pasha to deal with the Wahhabis. When his forces razed the Sa’udi capital Da’riyyah (modern-day Riyadh) to the ground in the 1830’s, there were wild celebrations in Cairo.   

It was only after the fall of the Caliphate in 1923 that the Wahhabis were able to regroup and conquer the Arabian Peninsula.The emergence of the Sa’udi monarchy in the 1930’s witnessed the conquest of the Sharifs, Prophet Muhammad’s descendants, who’d ruled western Arabia for centuries – and who, to this day, resent the Sa’udi dynasty.

The self-declared Sa’udi monarch, ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz, had to face a restive constituency as his ikhwan were suspicious of modernity. The Sa’udi saving grace was oil wealth; it allowed dissident energies to be diffused into the marketing of Wahhabi ideology worldwide. But not even this was enough. In 1979 there was a rebellion in Mecca.  

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Reagan administration’s harnessing of the mujahadin, saw Saudi Arabia co-operating with the Pakistani secret service and the CIA. Hundreds of militants, who would otherwise have filled the prisons, were conveniently dispatched to fight communists.

In Pakistan, the Saudis bankrolled thousands of Wahhabi religious schools, which would in turn spawn the Taliban. The US and Saudi-sponsored mujahidin, whom Reagan ironically compared to the country's founding fathers, were destined to form the core of Al-Qaeda after the Afghan conflict.

This narrative is a missing link, for after the war Shaikh Abdullah ‘Azzam – the godfather of the Afghani jihad – was assassinated for refusing to issue a decree that the holy war be expanded beyond Afghanistan. Ideologically, it marked a critical turning point, for a suspect in ‘Azzam’s killing was Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, destined to be one of Usama bin Laden’s closest confidantes.

The internationalisation of the Wahhabi jihad is well known, but its underlying reason for focusing on the US is less acknowledged. This happened when Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait in 1990. Usama bin Laden offered to settle the matter with Al-Qaeda, but was spurned by the Royal family, who went with the American alliance.

The sight of US boots, on what Al-Qaeda regarded as holy soil, became a bridge too far. It marked a rift between Bin Laden and the Saudi state, and the extremist Wahhabi genie was effectively let out of the bottle.

Al-Qaeda (initially a database of foreign Afghan fighters) never went beyond being an ideological franchise played for its propaganda value. Few, if any, of the Wahhabi groups in Asia, Africa and the Levant ever had direct contact with Al-Qaeda central.

More significantly, these movements flowed into political vacuums caused by dictators and imperialist meddling. Iraq is a case in point where former US pro-consul, Paul Bremner, will go down in history as the primary purveyor of Iraq’s woes.

Bremner arrived after the invasion and fired some 250,000 Baathist forces, some of whom were competent bureaucrats. By obliterating the organs of state, and indiscriminately destroying its infrastructure without even a wink at transitional justice, Bremner summarily flushed Iraq down the toilet.

With Gulf States sponsoring jihadist groups due to fears of a “Shi’ah crescent” descending upon them from Syria and Iraq, the picture is almost complete. Disgruntled Baathist elements – some of them Saddam’s killers – have joined the jihadist groups, which have coalesced under ISIS.

Essentially a group of the disaffected led by the vengeful, ISIS is said to number no more than 100,000 men. But it does have money, arms, territory and media savvy. And that is what makes it a formidable foe right now. ISIS has thrown down the gauntlet, and from here on in, it’s a case of fasten the seatbelts.

Taj Hargey: a rebel without a pause

That Dr Taj Hargey, the well-known gunslinger of Islamic contumacy, is back in town is more than obvious. He has been feted by talk show hosts, has garnered headlines and got social media buzzing.

His establishment of an ‘open mosque’ in Wynberg that he says will welcome all – irrespective of gender, shade of belief and sexual proclivity – may look good on paper, but the baggage that it carries via Hargey and his ‘religious revolution’ is decidedly overweight.

The pity is that those who’ve entertained his bombast about liberality have no institutional memory of him. Hargey – a native of Cape Town – may have a doctorate in religious studies, but his is a career that has been plagued by conflict and controversy.  

Hargey, no academic slouch, earned his first degree in History and Oriental Studies in Durban and his doctorate at Oxford before moving back to Cape Town to lecture at UCT. He also opened a bookshop in Claremont.

That was in the 1980’s when the Cape-based Muslim Judicial Council was fighting a bitter, drawn-out case in the High Court with a sect called the Qadianis, or Ahmaddiyyas. They were objecting to being labelled as unbelievers by then MJC president, Shaikh Nazeem Mohamed.

The Qadiani sect, regarded as apostate by Sunni scholars worldwide, was founded in India in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian. Scholars say he claimed to be a manifestation of prophethood – a violation of the central Islamic creed that Muhammad is the final messenger.

The conflict is that whilst constitutionally, the Qadianis do enjoy rights to practice their beliefs, Sunnis balk at the insistence of the Qadianis that they are Muslims, when according to their doctrinal evidence, they are not.

Dr Hargey became embroiled in controversy when he stepped into the dock as an ‘expert witness’ in the MJC-Ahmadiyyah case. Rumours that he was selling pro-Ahmadiyyah literature in his shop are believed to have contributed to his leaving UCT for the US.

In the US he ran into trouble collecting money to establish an anti-apartheid newspaper. An investigation by the Austin Business Journal revealed it never went beyond being a title. Hargey was criticised by media experts at the time for claiming it would be South Africa’s first Black-owned publication.

The story, also run by the Cape Town-based South in April 1990, revealed that Hargey’s business card listed the address of an NPO, the Open House Cultural and Welfare Society at 221 Landsdowne Road, in Cape Town. 

Directors listed by Hargey on its letterhead did not check out. One was identified as Mandla Tyala, a South African journalist studying under a Harvard Fellowship. A surprised Tyala denied being a director.

When confronted, Hargey said the person was actually a Moses Tyala who was travelling in the Ciskei. Another person, a Cape Town man, who was listed as the society’s treasurer also denied any involvement with the society.

Hargey’s next port of call was Britain where he formed the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, becoming its self-appointed imam. He was declared a heretic by a local publication, the Muslim Weekly, and Hargey successfully sued it for defamation in 2009.

It was in Britain that Hargey carved out a reputation for his disavowal of the niqab, the face veil, supporting moves for its banning and even expressing approval of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts to prohibit it.

And whilst Hargey’s observation is correct that the veil is a ‘Persian invention’, it is his ardent revulsion of it that proves the blatant contradiction of his calls for true religious liberality and non-sectarianism.

Hargey has infuriated British Muslims by labelling the Indo-Pak and Arabic communities as tribally archaic. He has said that British mosques are filled with ‘Neanderthals’ harking back to the 7^th century.

However, it is his posing on the fringes of Islam as a mainstream practitioner that is perturbing. Hargey’s spurning of Hadith (validated prophetic axiom) which underpins Islamic law together with Qur’an, confines over 1,400 years of classical endeavour to the dustbin, and is more reflective of extremism than moderation.

His insistence on conducting marriage ceremonies of Muslim women to non-Muslim men (Muslim men can marry Christians and Jews) has been regarded as gratuitously provocative. His religious justification, for an issue better resolved in a civil court or by Islamic legal experts, is spurious in terms of him saying the Qur’an does not broach the subject.

Hargey’s determination to establish his religious revolution in Cape Town, widely regarded as having one of the most tolerant of Muslim communities, has perplexed many. Cape Town’s mosque platforms are amongst the freest in the world and women, for the most part, can pray in its 150-plus mosques and serve on the committees.

Hargey’s missionary zeal for an ‘open mosque’ is by far his clumsiest contradiction. Mosques, by their very nature, are places of open worship. People do not stand at the doors asking patrons about their sexuality, ideology or identities. Islam is not a confessional faith, but one of private intimacy between the individual and the Creator.

By actually identifying congregants as Sunni, Shi’ah, gay or Sufi in the name of liberality and non-sectarianism, Hargey is calling for unnecessary social discrimination that in turn can only lead to the danger of unwanted social tensions. It is an article of faith that Muslims are enjoined not to look into another’s heart.

The question of gender equality, of women being involved in mosque activities, is an old chestnut. The prophetic model was one of interaction. Many of the top Islamic scholars of the Middle-Ages proudly listed women teachers, who were prominent in Andalusian universities well before the European Renaissance, in their certificates.

Finally, it is hoped that cool heads will prevail in yet another contrived Taj Hargey saga. What he has suggested is nothing new. Al-Quds mosque in Gatesville and Claremont Main Road mosque are but two institutions which have had an open door policy for as long as he has been controversial.

Indeed, Cape Town may not be perfect, but it’s certainly 100% better than say, Kabul or Karachi, where everybody knows Dr Taj Hargey will not dare to set foot.