Global Warming Is Real-Economies Must Shrink

 

 

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL- ECONOMIES MUST SHRINK

 

Doubts about the reality of global warming are gradually dissipating and its most adamant opponent USA is slowly seeing the light. We should not only see the light but also that the writing is on the wall.

 

What is global warming and how it is coming about? I believe we can answer this with almost mathematical certainty. It so happens that in the course of the last one and a half century we people have advanced too fast in technological and production terms which production naturally ended up as both consumption and waste. The Industrial Revolution began in this country and spread, first slowly to other Western European countries and their extension North America. From the last decades of the 19th century to the end of the Cold War in 1990, that is to say for about a hundred years the West increasingly produced, consumed, wasted and dumped thousands of kinds of stuffs throughout of which period this part of the world acted as an unstoppable and uncontainable heater and polluter of all three world resources- air, water and soil. To see what this means let us imagine that in a small town almost half of the homes are keeping a big fire going on in their gardens and house fronts, day and night, all year long for many years. Will not the place feel like the Sahara Desert in the summer and Florida in the winter?

 

If enough water is not found will not the ‘Florida’ also turn into Sahara Desert? Also, will not the air the residents breathe poison them with its excess carbon dioxide, some carbon monoxide, a lot of smoke (dangerously rarefied particles of carbon and other raw organic compounds- all of which are carcinogens) and lastly enormous amounts of heat? This is basically what has been happening all round our global home with new competitors like the giant China hurrying to catch up with the West with such haste that it could not care less how polluting and wasteful its massive production drive is proving. What is the cause of this glorious-looking sorry and sordid race? It must be man’s greed. What is the cause of the greed? It must be man’s spiritual ignorance.

 

A spiritually ignorant person is one who does not know that his happiness more depends on amicably accommodating others and thereby living in an affectionately peaceful and mutually charitable social environment than beating others at various competitions until he gets more and others get less. Why USA resisted signing the Kyoto agreement? After all Americans have most and best scientists who should know that global warming is a real phenomenon, a real threat. It could only be, I think, to gain time, let other industrial nations foot the bill for industrial shrinking and competitiveness and let then USA join the rest, still as their richest. AS for China, it will not listen, it thinks it cannot afford to listen until it catches up and hopefully excels the rest. The reason is another plank of spiritual ignorance: nations, like persons, do not trust each other and ‘to be on the safe side’ each keeps its cards to its chest while also is to ready to cheat whenever it can.

 

But all will lose and lose only too badly in the end- unless some sensible change of heart occurs. Already sea foods are scarce and barely edible. Many species are going or about to go extinct. Water may soon be more precious than petroleum. We may have to use masks through which to filter the air we breathe. Rubbish mountains and their dissolved extensions in all bodies of water like seas and rivers as well as their air-borne decomposition products are devastating our genes in a slow process of bio-chemical decay. Where all these will end if not in our biological degeneration and equally fearfully, behaviourial degeneration. I would not be surprised it the next world war (if there will be one) be fought over relatively cleaner parts of the world and later on over the colonisation of the space beginning with the moon and then Mars etc. A loot of brutal killing will have to be committed as living space and resources shrink.  Is there a remedy to all this?
I think there is. In fact there are two remedies which can only work together and not singly.

 

The first remedy is moral and spiritual regeneration. I believe the reason behind unstoppable growth in the consumption of all kinds of commodities and services is people’s ever-soaring moral and spiritual bankruptcy. The less people think about and believe in moral and spiritual values and instead follow their pressing animal instincts calling for indiscriminate satisfaction the more production and pollution we will have to create. Let us take sex. People in rich countries are increasingly becoming sex maniacs. Increasingly marriage is becoming a  shrinking space for sexual gratification which desire is abnormally on the increase to begin with; now, apart from married sex (if at all opted for) there is increasing promiscuity, homosexuality, prostitution, pornography and most ridiculous and disgusting of all mechanical sex toys! All these provoke industrial production and therefore  waste of natural resources and thereby pollution. Once upon a time most people used to find peace of mind and pleasant consolation in their religious faith and rituals. Because religious faith has been almost deliberately and systematically eroded by those who rule us people had to switch industrial alternatives for the same need of peace of mind and pleasant consolation- the drugs! As a results the swarms of consolation-dispending priests went into decline and are being replaced by drug gangs with even more ominous threats than abuse of religion. In some parts of big cities whole neighbourhoods may be in the grip of drug mafias and their residents in the grip of drug addiction. The easy and lucrative drug profits are going a long way in bribing or cowing public officials into accommodating the drug barons. No wonder the tide of drugs are proving impossible to stop. To me at least it is obvious that some dusting up and updating our good old religious beliefs and rituals is called for- if it is not already too late which may be the case.

 

The other measure is the shrinking of national economies. One very obvious and pretty easy measure is limiting the burning of all fuels by eliminating energy-wasting appliances from old-fashioned light bulbs to unnecessarily big transport vehicles. It we take the family car, is it not the case that what a four or five seater car with a 1200cc engine cannot reasonably do which a tank-like 4x4 monster can? Speed? Driving more than at 70mph is already illegal. Why should then we have cars which can reach speeds in excess of double that? Is it not ridiculous, childish vanity which regards cars more as toys than practical necessities? Have not all this got to do again with our moral and spiritual values? Why not find our pleasure in making our environment and fellow humans safer but must need wasteful and dangerous cars to feel happy?

 

Similarly, why hundreds of millions must fly billions of miles around the globe to have an annual holiday in a distant land thereby almost defecating into our already degraded atmosphere and not find visiting friends and relations in another town a satisfying enough holiday? Items on which massive economies can made are innumerable and as a result industrial production will have to drop sharply all over the world. But this will not lead to real poverty; on the contrary it may lead to greater prosperity and better heath because a lot of things we make and consume are not really necessary. We can do with far less if we are intelligent and sensible and feel responsible.

 

Lastly we need a juster world if we want to avert future wars. By reducing our unnecessary consumption items we can divert some of our wealth to our poorer fellow-humans in other countries. As they recover and prosper crime and terrorism gripping their societies will have to come down: comfortably employed and entertained nations with a just order need and therefore breed not many terrorists.

 

The conclusion is: We stop waste and race for indiscriminate, irresponsible economic growth, learn to live within not only economic but also ecological limits so that we may return to good health and look to a safe future here on this earth rather than reach a point in time we will have to slaughter each other for living space or die out as a species because we made our global home uninhabitable.

 

 

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE GUIDES TO GOOD

 

In the past lessons we have learnt to appreciate one of the greatest miracles of the world, not only of Islam, and the miracle is the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him).  Unlike the prophets before him (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all) and any other human being for that matter, the Prophet Muhammad (sws) and his story and message has been saved from myth and blasphemy, the type that continues to degenerate the reputations of such noble servants like Nabi Isa and the Buddha (peace be upon them both). Muhammad’s (sws) memory is comprehensively and beautifully preserved for all those who care to look in the right places.  Furthermore, “no man, repeat no man ancient or modern has been the focus of such consuming, obsessive and adoring interest,” which has effectively allowed for any man studying him to do so “with such thoroughness, comprehensiveness and never diminishing persistence… designing and launching a great number of new sciences and academic disciplines with an absolutely modern flavour.”  Wonderful examples of the preservation of the loving memory of the “Seal of Prophet’s” (sws) lye in the sincere and scrupulous work of Ulama and Saints who composed ‘salawats’ on him which continue to influence our feelings and attitudes towards the prophet, where Insha’Allah, our respect increases and our egos disappear, if at least for a moment.  The salawat to be discussed here is the ‘Dala’il Al Khairat’ written by the Sufi scholar Imam Abu Abdullah Muhammad Sulaiman as Jazuli.

Dala’il Al Khairat’ means ‘Guides to Good’ (pious feelings and deeds.)  They are divided into a chapter of prayers which relate to each day of the week and if read regularly and faithfully among other magnificent prayers, it would be a wonder how anyone could “fail to be moved so much as to move mountains with his or her faith (The most difficult and necessary mountains to move are our bad habits which doom us to a life of hell here and hereafter).”

 

The opening prayer begins with a sincere acknowledgement of Allah’s Greatness and Benevolence, “there is no real capability and real power except with Allah” and we seek refuge in Allah.  The prayer then thanks Allah for gracing us with such a wonderful messenger, the Prophet Muhammad (sws) whose legacy remains unspoiled today, and we pray for him and ask Allah to “bless him and grant peace to him and his family and his companion-disciples.”  We pray to Allah that we may be as nice a human being as he, “make me aware of what is due to him…make me successful in following him and standing with him and reflecting his good manners and his ways… and favour me with his vision and make me happy with his conversation and remove from me vain pursuits.”  These few lines cannot even give a slight appreciation of the opening prayer.  When reading it you are praising Allah, giving blessings to the Prophet Muhammad (sws) and those who are believers and who do good, and also seeking refuge in Allah by reciting all that He can save you from, “so that no one occupies the throne of divinity in my heart but Thee and I become exclusively attentive and responsive to Thy Presence and become one of the enjoyers of Thy special friendship…Amen.” 

 

Monday’s prayer begins with heartfelt blessings to the Prophet Muhammad (sws), as well as genuine accounts of his gifts and characteristics, “the Seal of the Prophets and the leader of the Godly and the messenger of Lord of all worlds, the witness, the bringer of good news, the caller to Thee with thy permission, the light-giving torch,” and we plead and pray that Allah does not “deprive (us) of seeing him but grant (us) his company and let (us) die as one of his nation.” But the prayer then proceeds to bless millions more including the Prophet Muhammad’s (sws) “wives and his offspring and on all prophets and messengers and near angels and all good servants of Allah to the number of rain drops in the sky.”  The words go much deeper to the point where one can be overwhelmed with a momentary comprehension of even a little of what Allah has created and allowed us to know off, for we pray that Allah spreads his blessings “to the number of stars in heaven and Thou countest them and shower blessings on Muhammad (sws) to the number of breaths of all souls since Thou createst them and shower blessings on Muhammad (sws0 to the number of what Thou hast created and Thou shalt be creating and Thou hast encompassed with Thy knowledge and many times over.”  We then pray for our own salvation; for Allah to “cleanse (our) heart from grudge and jealousy… to act justly,” and then beg for forgiveness for Allah “art vast in forgiveness” and we then seek his protection “from Devil-inspired anxieties and save me from him, O Beneficent, so that he is left with no influence on me.”

 

Tuesday’s prayer would probably bring a feeling of relief in the hearts of many.  We begin by taking refuge in Allah from evil and as we recite, “It is Thou Who knoweth and not us, Thou art the Knower of all that is invisible,” it is as if all this time of worrying (for me anyway) was silly when all I needed to do was trust in Allah.  That everything is not as complicated as we make it out to be.  All we need to do is trust and by trust we surrender and then what harm can come to us when the only great harm is to turn our backs to Islam?  And as if knowing this, the prayer continues to highlight all that one could find troublesome in this world as we pray that Allah “have mercy on (us) regarding this age of corruption and the unscrupulous people extending their hands towards (us) and oppressing (us)” and instead allow “a castle of innocence (to encircle us) until (we) meet Thee in security.” As with the previous prayers, we shower blessings on the Prophet Muhammad (sws) and his family and believers in words as beautiful as those before, “O Allah bless the one whom with his blessing burdens are fast unburdened... O Allah bless the one whom with his blessings both the old and young are pardoned.” The prayer ends with the truth- a declaration with Allah is the only “Praiseworthy Magnificent One.”

 

The more we praise the Prophet Muhammad (sws), the most perfect of human beings, and the more we become aware of what made him so, the more we will want to be like him, the more our egos and vain desires will Insha’Allah be destroyed and the more humble we will become so at least we can say we tried to find peace in Islam, and be good Muslims, a gift greater than any other. Wednesday’s prayer does just this.  We begin by praying to Allah that he “showers blessings and peace on our Master Muhammad the unlettered prophet and on his wives the mothers of believers and on his offspring and all household, such ample blessings and peace.”  These prayers are extended to the other prophets as well, “Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and Jesus and all the prophets and messengers in between.”  We then pray for the angels, “O Allah shower blessings on our master Gabriel and Michael and Israfel (Rafael) and Azrael and the carriers of Thy Throne and the near angels and messengers- may Allah’s blessings and peace be on them all.” Soon after, the appreciation of the Prophet Muhammad (sws) begins as does the realisation that if we could have even half of his qualities, we would be truly blessed, for what can be greater than being “the friend of Allah?”  The prayer sincerely refers to the prophet (sws) as “the best of creation and most beautiful of them…most merciful and generous… (a) most perfect and pleasant character, nearest and dearest to Allah among His creatures… the beloved of Allah, the pure one of Allah, the friend of Allah, the devotee of Allah… the handle of Allah for people to hold on to… the key to the loving kindness of Allah for all… the truest of all speakers, the most saving of all intercessors… the truthful… the holder fastest to his Lord’s commandments, the carrier of all burdens loaded… the most loyal… the most faithful… and the most thankful.”  These are to name but a few, forcing you to look at yourself and how you live your life and make your decisions and how close you compare to what is expected, the prophet (sws) being the finest and most useful measure.  How then does one’s ego, one’s faith and trust in Allah and one’s conduct in daily life compare?

 

Thursday’s prayer connects well with Wednesday’s.  Perhaps after acknowledging the miracles of the Prophet Muhammad (sws), we then pray for him and at the same time pray for ourselves.  For Allah to “keep us alive in his ways and manners and make us die as one of his nation and among those benefiting from his intercession with Thee,” for Allah to “light up his light and make permanent his miracle” for our sake at least, for “we have believed in him without seeing him and do not (want to be) separated from him,” especially not on this earth where he stands as one of the only glimmers of hope and pure beauty, essential for what little humanity there is to remain.  Those included in this prayer, and perhaps every prayer we make, are those who are without doubt most important to us- our parents.  May Allah “show kindness to (our) parents as they showed to (us) when (we) were small and all Muslim men and all Muslim women whether dead or alive and all that are still to come.”  The prayer ends the way all prayers should end, “Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.”

 

Friday’s prayers calls out to Allah with “all the Great Names of Thine which Thou names Thyself, what I know of them and what I do not…and what all Thy prophets and messengers and saints called out to Thee that Thou showers Thy blessings on Muhammad and on his family and companions… and every time any soul breathes in and breathes out…to the number of rain drops and drops in Thy seas… to the number of everything Thou created… O Allah bless him until no more blessings remain to bless with.”   Such love and devotion for one individual cannot be matched.  The prayer ends with blessings and pardons for “believing men and believing women whether dead or alive… who follow (the companions on the right path) in good faith to the end of the world.  Praise be to Allah the Lord of the Worlds.”

 

It is in Saturday’s prayer where you can truly appreciate Imam Abu Abdullah Muhammad Sulaiman as Jazuli’s faith and love for Allah, the prophet and all believers.  One of the main purposes of this extraordinary collection of prayers is for Allah to inspire and help us like he helped Imam Jazuli “drive out from (our) hearts all doubt and hesitation about this Noble Prophet and make his love in (us) dearer than all (our) relations and friends,” the ultimate aim that we too can become friends of Allah, and as close to Allah our “Owner and Lord and Protector and Hope” as the Prophet Muhammad (sws) was. So that we to, “all believers men and women, dead or alive” may be favoured enough to receive His Forgiveness and saved from the Fire, and receive the gift of “looking at (His) Noble and Gracious Face on The Day of Rewards,” for Allah is the “Strong, Powerful and Sublime.”

 

Sunday’s prayer is full of blessings and well wishes for the Prophet Muhammad (sws) who “saved the people from ignorance and fought the people of blasphemy and error and invited to Thy Unity and endured terrible sufferings in guiding Thy servants,” and yet his faith and love in Allah only increased, so we implore Allah “to give him what he prayed for and make him attain his desire and grant him the means and the privilege and the exalted rank and Praised Station Thou promised him.”   The prayer then asks Allah to  “shower (His) Blessings on (His) near angels who glorify (Him) day and night without losing enthusiasm” for they are the “witnesses over (Allah’s) creation… carriers of Thy throne… Thy hosts raises and preferred over the rest…innocent of disobedience and meanness and purified of defects and affliction…(may Allah) multiply their virtues and make us worthy of their asking pardon from Thee for us.” We then pray for all the Messengers of Allah and finish by blessing “the most praised” Prophet Muhammad (sws), “the one with beauty and grace, delightful and perfect, with high worth and light and a tongue full of thanks and grateful heart,” as well as his family and companions, “what beautiful helpers they were!”

 

Having become so completely aware of the miracles of the Prophet Muhammad (sws) we pray that by “our invoking blessings and peace on him (will) fill with joy our hearts and make easy our affairs… disperse our gloom…accept from us our repentance and wash away our evil inclinations… purify our tongues and abate our savagery and pity our loneliness.”   We pray for Allah to help us become more like the Prophet Muhammad (sws) so that we to may be noble servants.  We plead that Allah forgives us for the “hardness of our hearts and the abundance of our sins and the extent of our vain desires and the corruption of our behaviour and our laziness towards Thy obedience.” It is extremely difficult to separate this prayer and still make it as passionate in its “pitiful and miserable and tearful begging,” and one of the most beautiful lines for me is, “At Thy Door we stand, please do not turn us away… please do not leave us empty-handed.” These prayers can drive one to their most “humble state in front of Allah and our affair is no secret to Him…(and) we can then do nothing but run to His forgiveness,” for Allah is “the Most Magnanimous and the Most Tender and Merciful, Oh the Most Merciful of the Merciful” and finally our faith, love and trust in Allah is reaffirmed, and in our hearts there exists a new freshness and resolve,  “Allah is enough for us and there is no capability and power except with Allah. Ameen.”

 

 

TREASURES OF SALAWAT ON RASULULLAH sws

 

Alhamdu lillahi rabbil alameen wassalatu wassalamu ala sayyidina wa nabiyyina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmaeen.

 

Allah azza wa jalla said in His Qur’an “Indeed Allah and His angels shower blessings on the Prophet.  O believers you also do shower blessings on him and greetings in full measure”  (Surat al Ahzab*)

 

What is this blessing which in Arabic is called salat with its plural salawat?
Why it is so essential a farz (obligatory) devotion-  it is farz no doubt because Allah is commanding us to do it.

 

Incidentally we may note that this word salat is the very same word which we translate as prayer or namaz.  So the question arises: Why Allah calls sending blessings on the Prophet sws salat?   It is definitely not the same thing as the prescribed 5 times a day salat.  What is more that salat is FOR Allah (lillah) while salat in the sense of blessings is ALA (on) Muhammad sws.  So there must be some difference as there is a similarity.

 

Ulama interpreted ‘salat ala Muhammad’ as Rahmat when it is from Allah, Help when it is from His angels and  well-wishing from us the ummah. But I humbly think that we can improve a little bit on that as well as combine them into a single act of blessing.  It is this:
“Allah and His angels are constantly busy helping Rasulullah sws to succeed in his holy mission.  O believers you also help him to succeed”.

 

Now this must be a very grand vision, in fact the cardinal cosmic spiritual vision because it illuminates as nothing else the central position of Rasulullah sws in the Plan (Qadar) of Allah for the salvation of humanity. Because of that unique and indispensable role Allah is helping him, His angles are put to task to help him and it behoves the believers in Allah to help him to spread the message of Allah and make it triumph in the hearts of all mankind including of course those already believing in a necessarily imperfect way and to an imperfect degree,  for faith in Allah is unfathom-able and inexhaustible simply because Allah is so.

 

But how much believers can do, being themselves so weak and imperfect? Why, if they cannot do much with their limited powers and defective means they may do with their ‘himmat’.  What is himmat? It is zealous effort borne on the part of one who has more love than power and attempts to make happy the beloved by daring do go beyond his apparent means come what may. 

 

Since our subject is salat on the Prophet sws which we defined as helping his holy cause and since salat essentially means prayer then salat on the Prophet must mean praying Allah with great zeal to help the Prophet sws save mankind.  That is why when the sahaba asked the Prophet to tell them how to send salat on him he replied:  Pray like this:
“Allahumma salli ala muhammadin wa ala ali muhammadin kama sallayta/barakta  ala ibrahima wa ala ala ibrahima innaka hamidun majid” which means “O Allah,  bless Muhammad and his family with your help as you blessed with your help Abraham and and his family. You are the One worthy of praise and full of majesty”.  Here ‘family’ has two levels of meaning.  First is Rasullullah’s blood relations and second is his ummah. We alhamdulillah are his spiritual family.  This salat is the most important salat because it is the one recited in each and every salat prayer (namaz).  The reason why it ties the blessing of Muhammad sws to the blessing of Abraham is because Allah sees all prophets and the messages they were sent with the same and would like all religious nations (ummats) on earth to realize this and come together in one faith and under one Law.
I hope by now it becomes glaringly clear that the whole business of salawat is asking Allah our and everybody else’s Lord to help his Messenger and us his ummat to bring about universal peace by making  total submission to Allah (Islam) win all out.

 

But a prayer to be heard and accepted it must come from as great a depth of the heart as possible.  To pray for the success of Muhammad sws in a zealous enough way we must love and value him so much that our prayers must make the Throne of Allah tremble in response.  Then how to muster such great love?

 

Why? We must study the beloved.  The Qur’an is about him as much as about anything else.  So we must study the Qur’an at as much great breadth and depth as possible for us. We must study Hadith the same way. Then we must study Rasulullah’s very best followers the awlia Allah, if possible from closest quarter-  that is why we join a tariqa; in there we constantly either see or contemplate the sheikh.  And sheikhs turn around and teach us and order us to say as much salawat as possible. In one particular case one sheikh, namely maulana Sulayman Jazuli (16. C) went so far as to collect all salawats he could in a single book he aptly named ‘Dalail al Khairat’ (Leaders to all Good) and it so impressed all awlia and ulama that it became required reading in many tariqats and definitely in ours the Naqshibandia. 

 

As we said salawat is invoking blessings of Allah on Rasulullah sws and this becomes  most acceptable and effective when we muster a tremendous amount and level of love for the Rasul sws.  Of course that depends on the amount and level of love for Allah Himself for He made and sent him.  So all salawat in the Delail are wrapped in wonderful praises of Allah first and His Rasul second but inseparable.

 

Look if you wish at these quotations of the opening prayer to Delail:

 

“Above all defects and shortcomins is Allah,  all praises are deserved by Him.  There is no god, Allah is the Greatest of all. There is neither ability nor power except in Allah.  High Exalted is Allah and He is enough for us”
“O Allah, I approach You by saying blessings on Muhammad our noble master your servant and Your prophet and Your messenger, the master of all messengers,  in obedience to Your command and in confirmation of him and in intense zeal towards him and appreciating his worth and his standing with You.  He is worthy of all this may Allah bless him and grant him peace.  My God,  for the sake of the worth of Your prophet Muhammad sws in Your Sight and his standing with You and Your love for him and his  love for You and for the sake of the Secret between You and him I beg You to bless him with Your help and grant him the peace he needs and his family and companions with him.  O Allah increase manifold my love for him and make me intimate to his rights and ranks and help me follow him and keep his good manners (adab) and and ways (sunna) and make me meet him and support me with seeing him and make me fortunate by his conversation with me and lift from me the obstacles, and interests and intermediaries and veils blocking me from him and attach my ear to his delicious discourse, make me capable of learning from him direct and capable of serving him”.  AAAAMEEEN!   How magnificent! 

 

This is supreme sufi discourse,  eminent sufi gnosis which is a total immersion and dissolution in love.  Then comes hundreds of best imaginable and most glorious and moving praises of Allah and and His Prophet sws and his family and companions and other prophets and most plentiful and variegated invocations and greetings on them.  The reader’s mind is so much stretched and exapanded as to span all heavens and earth and contain all that is between them and also flows into the angelic domains (malakut) and goes to sajda at the feet of ‘al Arsh’ ,  the Throne of Allah.   Read if you wish:

 

“O Allah shower blessings on Muhammad (sws) and on his wives and his progeny and his companions and all prophets and messengers (upon them be peace) and all good servants of Allah to the number of rain drops from the sky since You have raised it and to the number of what grew from the earth since You laid it out and bless Muhammad (sws) to the number of stars in the skies and You know their numbers and bless Muhammad (sws) to the number of breaths of souls since you created them and bless Muhammad (sws) as many times as the number of what You already created and what You will be creating and what Your knowledge encompass and many times over. O Allah bless Muhammad (sws) and all of them above as many times as the number of your creatures and as much as it will please and satisfy You and to the weight of Your Throne and to the number of your words” .  Mind-blowing!

 

The supplicant does not also forget himself the desperate sinner and devastated lover.  Read if you wish the following which perhaps is the most comprehensive and moving appeal to Allah imaginable except the prayers Allah taught us in His Qur’an and Rasulullah sws in his Hadiths. This salawat can only be inspired from a very high station:
“O Allah bless Muhammad with a blessing of such excellence that as our reward You will save us from all terrors and disasters, and effect for us the satisfaction of all our needs and cleanse us of all our evils and raise us to highest spiritual ranks and make us attain the very highest aims of all the best acts in life as well as after death”,  by your loving Mercy , o You the most Merciful of the merciful”

 

I hope it is now clear why saying blessings on the Prophet sws is such a wonderful devotion to prize and perform.  It is directed at saving the whole mankind and no doubt it will save the devotee before anybody else. Subhana rabbika rabbil izzati amma yasifuna wa salamun alal murselin wal hamdu lillahi rabbil alamin.  Amen.

 

 

A HOPEFULLY TIMELY CALL FOR AN ABRAHAMIC PEACE
RECENT RELIGIOUS STRIFE - AN ADMONITION TO ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ON HOW THE (D)EVIL IN US SMOTHERS THE G(O)OD IN US

 

As always but nowadays more than since the Medieval times the three major Abrahamic religious groups, namely Jews, Christians and Muslims seem to be closing towards a dangerous confrontation.  And the fact is that all three groups are being hijacked by the misguided fanatics among them. The majorities in each seem just bored and perplexed, for majorities are always ‘mind your own business, try to get along with the rest as best as you can’ types. For them faith is a private matter and each is entitled to nurture his or her own belief as an absolute human right and practice its dictates to an extent not exceeding the limits of keeping peace between and among all groups. And this is what happens most of the time. In other words peaceful co-existence has been more the case than warring but on those occasions when warring became the case the pain and damage inflicted on the warring parties and especially the losing sides have been catastrophic.

 

If religion is about beliefs and a world view culminating in compelling values and ideals than we must add to religions as we know them all ideologies which aim at mass conversion and application. As such votaries of ‘secular’ ideologies like nationalism and socialism left nothing unaddressed and exploited than the some votaries of religions. The most recent three worst examples of such religion-like ideologies have been Nationalism, Socialism and their queer hybrid National Socialism more known as Nazism. All stand accused of terrible atrocities no religion can match and despite their collapse at their respective centres they still live on as shadows and dwarfs of their former selves like sleeping viruses. Only yesterday Nationalism was rapaciously ravaging what was Yugoslavia, only the other day Socialism was converting Cambodia to killing fields. The Crusades and Mongol invasions were hardly more atrocious than any of the above movements which were run by modern people in the age of ‘enlightenment’ and science! So much for the civilising effects of science and ‘enlightenment’!

 

Now we are again back to square one: international injustices are again feeding extremism and terrorism on all sides involved. If Muslims, for example are throwing up a terrible if tiny minority of extremists who express themselves in terrorist acts their provokers both preceded them and are countering them in conducting terror campaigns with the added power of modern technology as a result of which far more innocents perish than the guilty.
Because at the root of contemporary terror is a religious theme reincarnated from Medieval inter-faith rivalries I am proposing to discuss this matter in religious terms.

 

The present position is this: Jews have been persecuted for ages and their most recent plight under the Nazis has been the worst ever. Not even the Roman destruction of the Temple and dispersion of the Jews after thorough massacres was worse than the Nazi atrocities. Unlike Romans, had Nazis succeeded we would have not a single Jew among us today. As such, whatever our faith or ideology, provided we remain human, the extermination of any race or human group can only cause us unbearable grief and indignation. Thanks God that Nazis, as the very worse offenders in the whole human history, did not succeed.

 

Yet the nations who embraced and implemented Nazism could not be forgiven and then made into good friends and partners sooner. Even the children of their victims are now good friends of the children of Nazis. It has been a case of forgive and forget in other words.

 

But there is another group of people who has never been forgiven let alone accepted. This group are the Muslims. They represent a religion which claims to improve upon its two elder Abrahamic sisters, namely Judaism and Christianity and like Cinderella Islam never intended to offend her two elder sisters.  On the contrary it went out of its way to approve of them in what she believed to be their original forms in the sense that it regarded what Moses and then Jesus originally taught and served an example for was just like Islam which Muhammad taught and exemplified. Each of the three founders taught the unity and perfection of God and offered laws intended to bring justice to and loving kindness among all concerned. Again, each in turn made wars to establish the just order they believed in and if war for whatever reason is a crime all have been equally criminal at times.

 

The Bible is full of stories of religious warfare which occasionally involved the wholesale massacre and plunder of non-Jews while Christian history including the papal are no less full of atrocious religious wars which were given the name ‘crusade’. Crusades were not directed against Islam alone; they were even more practiced with all the savagery of inter-faith wars on the European (often fellow Christians and Nordic barbarians), Asian, African and American ‘pagans’ as a result of which all these continents are now either near fully or significantly Christian. Given this record of Christianity one wonders in what way the Medieval Islamic conquests or jihad could be singled out for highest condemnation. After all, Islam never forced and fully converted any nations it conquered and as a result of this easy-going tolerance all major religions it conquered, namely Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism… survived massively under Islam’s canopy. The only total conversions happened in lands conquered by Christianity as the cases of Europe and the Americas amply show. Tolerance towards non-Christians, so long it was the Middle Ages and pre-Modern times, was nil! “Embrace the cross or die” was often the choice offered to the vanquished.

 

But let us suppose for argument’s sake that all three Abrahamic/monotheistic religions are equally guilty of persecuting others. Let us also put on our pinkest optimistic and humanistic glasses and view the contemporary international scene. Aren’t all three sister religions being infested by similarly bad apples and warring for similarly misguided aims. Let us begin, out of respect, with the oldest sister Judaism.

 

Like the other two communities Jews are equally badly divided among themselves and have thrown up their own unthinking, unstinting and atrocious fanatics. In fact they have two sects of fanatics. One is the Zionist and the other the Orthodox. The Zionist sect is secular, nationalistic and often also atheistic and theirs is more or less like the recent Serbian nationalism- like the Serbs they plotted and worked and mercilessly killed first for a homeland and then for a greater Israel. They are so proud and ambitious that they can  countenance no criticism whatsoever but must respond by a chilling and anathematising ‘anti-Semitism’ accusation and punish the accused as mercilessly as killing all who stand in their way for whatever reason. Their ideology comes first and any democracy or human rights consideratios only a poor second. Opposed to but also sufficiently suppressed by them are the Orthodox Jews who argue that it has been a sin to create Israel whose creation had to wait the advent of the Jewish Messiah. As such they lead a dubious and precarious existence among their secular nationalistic brethren. Strangely though, these Orthodox Jews cannot wait to colonise more Palestinian land forgetting that their Messiah did not yet conquered it for them. As a result of this dichotomous behaviour they as much force the hand as they resist the nationalists. Let us remember how much trouble it was to evict these unauthorised settlers from their newly squatted lands. They also have had their share of terrorists: some machinegunned Palestinians while the latter were worshipping at the disputed holy sites.

 

The second sister Christianity did not lag far behind in implementing her prejudices and implementing her belligerent instincts. First it conquered and colonised almost all Muslim lands and ‘persuaded’ a lot to adopt modern Christian ways down to the form of government and to some extent modes of living and dressing. In the process a lot of slaughter has been necessary in which the conquerors were always the good guys and the conquered the villains. The last bad act of this sister has been her overall the dominant support for the oldest sibling entirely at the expense of the youngest; the whole Christendom sided with their ex-victims the Jewry in the matter of Palestine so much so that many entirely humane and just objections by many Western Christians availed nothing for bringing more balance to the treatment of the two disputants of the conflict, namely Arab and Jew: when it came to the crux, the Jew was always forgiven or bailed out.

Now the third and youngest sister Islam. She has been no less fanaticism-  and terror-ridden than her two elder siblings. Please do not misunderstand me: ordinary mainstream Muslims as well as their more reputable clerics have been as humane, reasonable and sociable as any mainstream Jew and Christian. You see, all trouble come from maladjusted, too angry and too ambitious malcontents in each community, who, despite being a small minority, act out their fantasies as convincedly, deludedly and determinedly as a Don Quixote and while the silent and decent majority look helplessly on, they write the history of their community and by extension of the world. And the Koran puts it only too explicitly and bluntly: “Like this did We (God) appointed the big ones of each community from among their criminals for them to conspire therein. They are in fact conspiring against themselves but are unaware” (6: 123) implying that they will either be exposed and felled in this world or damned eternally in the next or both fates together.

 

The first kind and longest-lasting terror among Muslims have been the terror by Muslim against Muslim. First was the horrible Kharijite sect which flourished as early as from 30 years after the demise of the Prophet. They claimed, as always, representing the true Islam and then fought against all the rest with a bitterness, savagery and cunning needed to be seen to be believed. It was they who assassinated one of the top saints and darlings of Islam, namely Ali the cousin, son-in-law and righteous successor of the Prophet, and thousands of other good Muslims afterwards. Another fanatical terrorist group were the Carmathians (Karamita) who brutalised the Islamic community for about two centuries. Their sacrileges included the raiding of the Kaaba during the pilgrimage season, killing the pilgrims by tens of thousands, plundering their properties and even stealing and carrying away the ‘accoutrements’ of the Kaaba including the sacred black stone.  Then came the notorious Assassins sect which began as a theological heresy and ended up a mafia specialising in contract assassinations. The list is long and almost uninterrupted and the phenomenon of terrorist sects survive to the present day in newer and newer reincarnations.

 

Lastly, Christianity has been no less infected with heretical, fanatical and terrorist sect-breeding: only yesterday one sect was blown up in fire and smoke at Waco, Texas and Klu Klux Klan is still alive if not in too good health. From mass-suicide to massacre many Christian heresies and terror groups (one very recent reincarnation being Nazism with its approving pope) came and went and still come and go. If things are not as bad in Christianity as in contemporary Islam it must be because it is not the Western Christians who are at the receiving end of the world’s injustices but perhaps often on the inflicting end. All of us must stop seeing ourselves as angels and our alternatives as devils. We must listen to the true Torah, the true Gospel and the true Koran which truly says “(O Jews, Christians and Muslims) for each of you We charted a way and a law, therefore compete ye in piety and charity- it is God Who will judge among you on the Day of Judgment on matters on which you used to differ”.

So we must be realistic, as just and as humane as we claim and need to be and must learn to see things in context and see also our own equal faults and culpabilities and thereby help bring peace between the three Abrahamic sisters by curbing our mutual prejudices and provocations and cultivating the noblest dictates of our respective faiths until the required habit and practice of mutual respect and charity are attained by all of us. Amen. 

 

 

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