“From the evil of an envier when he envies”. Envy is a disapproved characteristic both constitutionally [in the human] and in the shari‘ah. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “Al-Hasad eats up good deeds as the fire eats up firewood.”1 One of the men of knowledge2 said, “Al-Hasad is the first act by which Allah was disobeyed both in heaven and on the earth. As for in heaven, Iblis envied Adam, and as for in the earth, Qabil killed his brother, Habil3, because of envy.”
Learning Communities
The modern age is rooted in the ‘People of the Book’. Ibrahim Lawson has used the term ‘learning community’ for any formal or informal, gathering and configuration of people for the sake of learning together, in person or online, not necessarily led by a charismatic figure or ‘teacher’, but on a model of shared or distributive leadership, and whether for a brief or longer period of time. The monastery is possibly an example of that, although because of its monasticism and celibacy it is not a suitable model for us. In the Middle Ages the monasteries were the noisiest of places because of reading. Then something happened:
“Silent reading is a recent invention. Augustine was already a great author and the Bishop of Hippo when he found that it could be done. In his Confessions he describes the discovery. During the night, charity forbade him to disturb his fellow monks with noises he made while reading. But curiosity impelled him to pick up a book. So, he learned to read in silence, an art that he had observed in only one man, his teacher, Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose practised the art of silent reading because otherwise people would have gathered around him and would have interrupted him with their queries on the text. Loud reading was the link between classical learning and popular culture.”
(Ivan Illich, Vernacular Values)
A new relationship to text was born, as well as a new kind of ambitious individual, someone who wanted knowledge for himself not for his brethren, whose questions on the text were experienced as an intrusion and an interruption.
More than a millennium later it was Luther (1483 – 1546) who began an utterly new age, and we say this admitting the fundamental corruption of Catholicsm, but, with all its failings, it was a tradition and a transmission. For Luther it was about text. In that sense he prefigures the wahhabis and salafis. Gadamer said:
“Luther’s position is more or less the following: Scripture is sui ipsius interpres (its own interpreter). We do not need tradition to achieve the proper understanding of Scripture, nor do we need an art of interpretation in the style of the ancient doctrine of the fourfold meaning of Scripture, but the Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text: the sensus literalis.”
(Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method)
That was inevitable given the false foundations of Catholicism in Hellenic Pauline Christianity. The Reformation was bound to happen, but it never came to grapple with the real foundational cracks.
The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had already brought what moved everything forward. A Book indeed, but a Qur’?n-recitation that is sung – “He is not one of us who does not sing the Qur’?n”. “Sing – yataghanna” is a wonderful word with the sense also of ‘enriching oneself’ or ‘freeing oneself of need’. And the Book/Recitation is paired with Sunnah, which saves it from becoming merely a text. It was transmitted in Companionship, the distinctive mark of our Messenger, peace be upon him. Other Prophets had followers or even disciples, but he had Companions. Not only did they accompany him, but they accompanied each other. And the tradition has been transmitted by companionship generation to generation, from that day to ours, not purely by texts and the enormous hermeneutical strategies that are then needed to deal with them, and not merely in learned institutions such as the madrasah, however noble.
Nevertheless, the world we are in is as it is, and it proves necessary not just to unlearn the mess of the modern technological world but first to learn what it is we have to unlearn. Heidegger observed:
“Especially we moderns can learn only if we always unlearn at the same time. Applied to the matter before us: we can learn thinking only if we radically unlearn what thinking has been traditionally. To do that, we must at the same time come to know it.”
(Heidegger, What is Called Thinking)
Perhaps we can modify our original thought thus: the way forward is in learning/unlearning communities.
Equity
One hesitates to posit a basic principle of a just non-usurious economy since the history of ‘principles’ and most particularly ‘Islamic principles’ as interpreted by modernists, has been a dismal one. Thus, in their view, very wide principles, both usul and qawa’id, over-rule actual fiqh judgments. Bearing that in mind, one principle we might mention is equity, most often symbolised by the scales of justice. Usury and injustice occur when the scales are out of balance and one party takes more than the other. Riba is simply an increment.
Wholes and Parts
“…for the madhhab of Malik is to examine what leaves someone’s hand and what it then receives, and the means, i.e. what is in between, is nullified…” (Al-Qawanin al-Fiqhiyyah, Sales, 5A.)
As someone who lays no claim to authority or expert status, I cite with some reluctance my own track record in studying with others, translating, editing, typesetting and publishing works on the Islamic sciences, doing so not to challenge others’ expertise or the need for expertise, but as evidence of a concern that is life-long.
A little historic overview
The image of the usurious Jew is a repellent one from the Middle Ages, redolent with the anti-Jewish prejudices of the Christians of the time, but, in fact, the story is much older than that, and had, by the Middle Ages, become almost redundant.
The Art of Community
The Art of Community
Zakat and Awqaf in the future of Islam in England1
“He has laid down the same deen for you as He enjoined on Nuh: that which We have revealed to you and which We enjoined on Ibrahim, Musa and ‘Isa: ‘Establish the deen and do not make divisions in it.’ What you call the idolators to follow is very hard for them. Allah chooses for Himself anyone He wills and guides to Himself those who turn to Him.” (Surat ash-Shura 42:13)
Establish the deen and do not make divisions in it.
At the beginning there is genuine wonder that there is anything whatsoever rather than nothing at all. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy, but gradually it turns into “I wonder what? how? why?” That leads to the cataloguing of existence – think of Linnaeus and his classification system for plants, and the work of Darwin, think of the detailing of the picture of the physical elements and so on, and the mapping and naming of the stars and galaxies. The next step is that the cataloguing becomes subject to our need to use the world, itself the result of our seeing the world as something to be used. That gives us the modern technological world. When we talk about technology in this sense, it is not about the machines and gadgets, for they are neither here nor there. But it is about man and society become machine, with a contrary trajectory of machine being brought to converge with humanity. Governance, medicine, education and policing have become automated ways of processing human beings to produce something.
Khutbah Eid al-Fitr – Norbury Park, London – 2024
The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur’an was sent down as guidance for mankind, with Clear Signs containing guidance and discrimination. Any of you who are resident for the month should fast it. But any of you who are ill or on a journey should fast a number of other days. Allah desires ease for you; He does not desire difficulty for you. You should complete the number of days and proclaim Allah’s greatness for the guidance He has given you so that hopefully you will be thankful.
The practice is that we repeat the takbir from the moment we leave our homes to go to the place of prayer until the imam comes to lead the prayer. We do that because of the guidance Allah has given us in allowing us to fast this month and obey Him and so that hopefully we will be grateful.
Guidance is twofold: first, it is that He has made truth and falsehood distinct in His Noble Book and in the Sunnah, and this is also the Furqan or discrimination mentioned at the beginning of the ayat. In other words, guidance is to make right and wrong, truth and falsehood clear
But guidance has a further meaning, which is that He has enabled us to understand this, to accept it and to obey it, for how many people there are who know things but are unable to act by them? It is because of Allah’s guidance that we are able to obey Him.
Throughout the month we recited after every four rak‘ats of tarawih:
‘Praise be to Allah who has guided us to this! We would not have been guided, had Allah not guided us. The Messengers of our Lord came with the Truth.’
We do not think that we are special people, but that rather we have a caring Lord Who, for reasons best known to Himself, chose to lead us out of darkness and kufr and allowed us to be Muslims, and allowed us to obey Him and guided us to that. That obedience of ours is a gift from him.
Allah has promised those of them who believe and do right actions forgiveness and an immense reward. (48:29)
The right actions He has made obligatory on us are these prayers, the fasting of Ramadan, the zakat and hajj. They are a part of the contract.
Who is truer to his contract than Allah? Rejoice then in the bargain you have made. That is the great victory.
Allah promised us the Garden if we are true to our contract with Him. So He has gifted us Islam and the ability to worship Him and then He will reward us for that obedience with forgiveness of our wrong deeds and entrance into the Garden. Should we not be grateful? And if we are grateful that very gratitude of ours is His gift to us:
Shaykh Mu?ammad ibn al-?ab?b said in a qasidah:
“Praise belongs to You O Possessor of forbearance, pardoning and veiling of wrong actions
And my praise is one of Your greatest blessings, O Vast in goodness.”
For Allah says:
And when your Lord announced: “If you are grateful, I will certainly give you increase, but if you are ungrateful, My punishment is severe.”’ (14:7)
One of the things for which we must be most grateful is that He rescued us from the darkness of kufr – ingratitude – and enabled us to be grateful for that.
It is He Who calls down blessing on you, as do His angels, to bring you out of the darkness into the light. He is Most Merciful to the believers.
A part of gratitude is that you must not underestimate what you do. The establishment of the five salat and confirmed Sunnah prayers such as the Witr, without thinking of tahajjud night prayers and other extra prayers, is an enormous thing. Fasting the month of Ramadan from dawn to sunset and the Sunnah fasts of ‘Arafat and ‘Ashura’, without looking to recommended fasts such as Monday and Thursday, is an enormous thing. Giving the recommended proportions of wealth in zak?h is something extraordinary even without extra acts of sadaqah. Making the Hajj pilgrimage to Makka once in a lifetime if one is able to do that is vast. In other religions, the only people who do things like these are devotees and monks. People in other religious communities who do what ordinary Muslim men and women do are considered to be saints of great piety.
Allah says:
You are the best nation ever to be produced before mankind. You enjoin the right, forbid the wrong and believe in Allah. (3:110)
Allah praises you as the best nation. It is true. You do enjoin things that are right and you do forbid things that are wrong, and you do believe in Allah. You fit the ayat. Thank Allah for creating you, providing for you, giving you upbringing in ways that were subtle and not always obviously conducive to the place you have arrived at now. And thank Him for praising you for the qualities which He created in you or taught you.
Many of us recite the du‘a:
“You fostered our growth by the graciousness, kindness and subtlety of Your lordship with an upbringing that even illuminated intellects fall short of grasping.”
Many who have come from kufr into Islam, have come from broken homes, single parent families, with careworn mothers trying to make ends meet or from completely dysfunctional families, and suffered all sorts of setbacks in their lives. Many can also say that it was precisely those things that in some way set them on the path they are on today. The way that Allah guides people is genuinely counter-intuitive but it is also genuine.
People always want to know the story of how someone became a Muslim, but that is not the true story. Rather they should ask: how was it that Allah guided you? In what way did that happen?
Suhayb ar-Rumi narrated that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “The affair of the mu’min is amazing. All of his affair is good for him, but that is for no one other than the mu’min. If some good fortune occurs to him he is grateful and that is good for him. And if some bad fortune occurs to him he is patient and that is good for him.”
And people often have iman before they have Islam, even if they are unable to put a name to it or know its parts.
If we stop with the gifts we have been given and merely enjoy them, even if we do so gratefully, we will not have expressed full gratitude.
Allah, exalted is He, says:
So when you have finished, work on, and make your Lord your goal!
When you finish one action, move on to another. When you finish one stage, then move on to the next. Growth is a natural law of existence. And, in its time, growth stops and there is decay and old age. As in the individual so with a society.
The worst temptation for a community is that they will simply manage the community and become narcissistic. As we heard, Allah said:
You are the best nation ever to be produced before mankind…
This word here translated as ‘produced’ is ukhrijat. It comes from the verb kharaja ‘he went out’ and ukhrijat means ‘made to go forth’ or ‘made to go out’. An intrinsic part of this ayat that praises the Muslims is that we have been ‘made to go out to people’ but not just as individuals but as an ummah, a community, a nation. A nation or a community has leadership. The leadership lead the Muslims out to people since otherwise they will not be the best community or the best nation. And that is also the meaning of the English word ‘education’ – ‘to lead out’. So the leader is an educator and the educator is a leader.
Now we have emerged from the cave-retreat of Ramadan, it is time for us to go out to people, commanding the right, forbidding the wrong and believing in Allah.
Self-knowledge
In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful, and may Allah bless His Prophet and Messenger Muhammad and his family and companions and grant peace
Dars for Saturday 16th December København
This year marks a century and a year from the day of the final dismantling of the khalifate, and thus the rise to total dominance of the Judaeo-Christian world order, not comprising two ‘Abrahamic religions’ but two archetypal distortions of the revelation. The first was the Jewish accommodation with power, with subjection, and the centrality to it of legalisms and rituals, and the embrace of usury and banking. The second was the Christian accommodation with power; the Roman oligarchy offered them the seat of power if not its reality, and they accepted, and so the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire were born. Their dominant features were theology and metaphysical speculation which they took over from the Greeks.
Continue reading “Self-knowledge”Americanism
My oh my, America!
Not so much a place but a state of mind – manifest destiny perhaps, something that everyone on both sides of that deeply divided psychic condition subscribes to, whether explicitly or implicitly – and because of the looking glass world in which we live, much of the world too has become America. So when it sinks into civil strife because of reasons peculiar to it, the rest of the world adopts that strife as its own. And how much both parties to the strife concur on the basic premises. No one has ever heard the sound of one hand clapping.
Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi on Israel
by Dr. Riyad Asvat 5/11/2023
In 2014 Shaykh Abdalqadir, rahimahullah, said: “The removal of Hamas will change nothing. There still remains a nation divided by its two contrary elements …” The nation he is referring to is Israel. The first element is that the citizens of Israel suffer from post-concentration-camp-psychosis disorder. The Shaykh explained it as follows: “The apparent ease with which educated middle-aged men and women daily on television not only approve but call for the massacre of women and children next-door in Gaza is simply not explainable rationally. It is part of this psychosis.” The second element is: “the Israeli inability to deal with matters by military practice. Bombing and droning are acts of cowardice. The Israelis cannot role-play militarism.” Israel cannot deal with the people it rules over with honour, justice, bravery and nobility. The Israeli political class and armed forces have none of that. They never conquered Palestine, they acquired it by stealth, theft, lies and fraud. Behind it all are business corporations, the worst of which are banks and the deadly sin of riba, that is, fractional reserve banking, interest and derivatives. What exactly did the Israelis steal? According to Islamic law the whole country of Palestine including the natural resources within its territorial waters.
Shaykh Abdalqadir says: “Absurd little Israel, with its multi-racial citizens who insist that they are Jews and the descendants of Sayyidina Ibrahim, may Allah be pleased with him, although their own scientists have admitted that this is a fantasy (see The Myth of the Jewish Race by Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai), brought into being by known terrorists, the Stern gang and so on, governed over its short history by these terrorists, and finally fighting a war against the indigenous people of their land under a terrorist named as such by their own judiciary while they embark on a genocide of the native people. Palestinians, the Arab Navaho!”
How is absurd little Israel able to slaughter thousands of Palestinians, be accused of war crimes, have United Resolutions passed against it and be able to continue genocide with impunity? Shaykh Abdalqadir explains that: “1945 saw the creation of the ultimate nihilistic phase of kufr. It aspired to a world government, a world police and already laid the foundations of a world bank and single currency. The nation state was over and now the world was governed by a totally unelected oligarchy represented by three zones of power, commodities, media and financial, while the third of these represented the inner circle of power. Current events show us that all the nations lie subservient to the Oligarchic Triad while Israel remains the ideological and imperialist entity which has survived and continues above and beyond the ruin of the national states.” Israel was created as a military base to secure energy supplies for the financial and industrial centres of the oligarchs in Europe and America. The United Nations Organisation was formed to provide global governance, that is, one world government and this has been achieved now in a most subversive way. Let me explain.