Muhammad's (sws) Innocence And Humility
3. MUHAMMAD’S INNOCENCE AND HUMILITY
New religions have been popping up like popcorns since ages. The process is something like this: A truly inspired man like Moses, Jesus or Muhammad (may Allah’s blessings and peace be on them and on all other true prophets) come forward and report that they have been contacted by Allah through the Holy Spirit and as proof they recite the revelations delivered to them. Some prophets are unable to make much headway in their times and are even forgotten by later generations. Allah, for example, says in His Qur,an that the prophets He mentions in His Book are but a few of all sent by Him. Read if you wish “From among them (our prophets) some We told you (o Muhammad) about while some others We have not told you about” (40: 78). Overall, only twenty eight prophets are named and somewhat elaborated upon in the Qur’an. Those who succeed however are imitated by spiritual crooks at no time and may have to be fought off. In the Qur’anic story abut Moses we read about a crook named Samiry, who, taking advantage of Moses’ absence in the course of one of his meetings with Allah on the mount, builds a cow’s statue made from jewellery he collected from his fellow Israelis and deceived them into worshipping it.
When Moses at last turned up and found his people so misled by a crook he scolded them severely and ejected the crook. During the times of Jesus false prophets were swarming the Holy Land and in fact he was taken as one by some of the Jewish priests at the Temple and accused. After him false prophets never left his believers alone, beginning with a certain ex-Pharisee called Saul who began his career by infiltrating the Jerusalem Church headed by James the brother of late true prophet Jesus and then replacing them as the agent of Jesus Christ thanks to his winning Peter over, the most naive of the twelve disciples. After Saul (who Romanized his name into Paul) only too many self-styled prophets and even messiahs appeared among Christians and this remains even the more the case today. United States is an exhibition ground of new prophets, messiahs and even ‘gods’ and despite some coming to bad ends the industry as a whole is doing great business. True, the speciality is very scandal- and schizophrenia-stricken but both demand and profits are so high that gods, religions and prophets are breeding very fast like rats. But neither US nor Christianity is alone in suffering from delusional or crookish cults: Indian subcontinent has always been their hotbed and its cults are very successful in exporting their products to rich Western countries headed by USA as always. Islam also has had its cult industrialists since the Prophet’s own time: when he was in his death bed there were waiting in the wings three male and on female Arab prophet as his and each other’s rivals.
The hallmark of all false prophets is one and the same: They are not only cheats but also megalomaniacs. True prophets are self-effacing humble servants before God and are never worshipped by their believers but only respected and obeyed, at least in principle. The holy Christ could not humble himself and protest his powerlessness more before his Lord Whom he called ‘Father’ according to Jewish tradition; he denied that he was personally responsible for the miracles which accompanied him and explicitly ascribed them to ‘the Father’. During his last passion he ardently prayed to his ‘Father’ to spare him from the terrible death in front of him and overall was very afraid and distressed, according to Gospel story. Certainly Muhammad’s (sws) story is far better preserved thanks to the special Divine protection accorded to the Qur’an among all revealed scriptures. Let us review some of the verses demonstrating the humility required by Allah from His last and final and greatest prophet and Messenger Muhammad (sws):
“Say (o Muhammad), I am but a human-being like yourselves except that it is being revealed to me that your god is one God” (Kahf, 17).
“Say (o Muhammad), I am not saying to you that Allah’s treasures are with me. Also, I do not know what is hidden (al ghaib). Nor am I saying that I am an angel (exempt from human needs and frailties). I am only following what is being revealed o me...” (6: 50).
“They (your adversaries o Muhammad) say: We are never going to believe you unless you cause a spring to gush forth from the ground or you are given a date palm orchard and a grapevine in a way that streams flow through them in abundance or, as you are threatening, pieces fall down on us from the sky or you must present to us Allah and the angels for us to see or you must have a golden house or you must ascend the sky. Even in that case unless you bring to us a book we can read we will not believe that you did ascend the sky. Answer them: High Exalted is my Lord, I am but a human-being sent” (17: 90- 93).
Interestingly, what the unbelievers demanded from Allah’s true messengers and the messengers in their turn denied having the power required some later believers in these prophets claimed on those prophets’ behalf. For example, Jesus denied having any godly powers and explained the miracles that happened at his request as God’s and God’s alone, saying at one point “I in myself can do nothing, it is the Father Who is doing these things through me”. But some later Christians would have none of it: they insisted that Jesus was God in effect and had even created the universe and would judge people on the Day of Judgment. He could just do or create what he wanted and commanded.
It is transparent to objective historians that Christianity (outside the small Jewish sect founded by the Christ’s actual disciples headed by James the brother of Jesus and lasted about six centuries as the Ebionites) as taught and practiced by the gentile (racially non-jewish) Church since the second Christian century has initially evolved from the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles by Paul and later on from the esoteric and mystical pagan sects swarming all over the place from the Mespotamia to Egypt and North Africa in all of which an element of Trinity, a son god born of a virgin only to die in the hands of his oppressors and then rise from the dead which event becomes the basis of salvation in all who believe in him. The Tammuz, Adonis, the Isis cult... all feature this same trinitarian theology and soteriology (doctrine of vicarious salvation) all of which Jesus Christ could not be more innocent and unaware of. In short, paganising a pure biblical monotheistic religion has a long pedigree and may lie at the bottom of the more ancient Hindu trinitarianism whose joint gods have been Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu.
Sufis know only too well that paganism is more delicious and exciting to simple minds as well as being very suitable for starting a lucrative business on it like shrine visits and worship of any number holies and marketing miracles to order. On top of all, a powerful priesthood is automatically created, otherwise the masses cannot be cultivated as dedicated and loyal customers of a hundred spiritual claims and feats designed by the cleverer folks among them. In most paganisms the political ruler is both the chief priest and son of the Sun God which was the case both in Egypt and Rome. When the paganised form of Christianity won its battle in Rome the Christian priesthood took over everything from the Roman: the bishop of Rome called also the pope took over the title of ‘pontifex maximus’ from the emperors and all the magnificent vestments of the new priesthood and their most rituals and sacraments were also adapted from Roman paganism. The birth day 25 december of Roman Sun God became conveniently the birthday of Jesus. Suddenly Christ, de-judaised and paganised, became a popularly worshipped pagan god together with his mother Mary and soon afterwards hundreds of lesser holies called saints mushroomed all over the Roman world each with their shrines, jurisdictions (like finding husbands for spinsters or curing certain illnesses) all of which provoked travel, trade and tourism- and consolation and entertainment seen as worship.
Some overzealous or fraudulent Muslims also joined in with this kind of thrill and excitement-provoking if blasphemous exaggerations. For example, like the Paganised Christ, the Prophet knew about everything or was ruling the Cosmos. The Prophet could do anything he wished. The whole existence was created from his essence. was ever-present, ever-watching and ever-in charge of all happenings. It does not matter a whit however repeatedly and forcefully Allah as well as His Messenger denied all such claims and ruled out such possibilities. Why such daring is attempted? Because the claimants, I mean the original claimants and their likes in later generations want to prepare a ground for themselves to stand on and declare their own divinity, omnipotence and omniscience! AND SOME ACTUALLY DID!!!.
One, for example, ‘interpreted’ the verse “Wallahu huwa’l waliyyu...” as “Allah is none other than the ‘wali’ meaning the Sufi saint! Another implied that he rose above Allah and found that Allah is not the highest being. Above Him there is a level of being where Allah is not conscious of Himself!!! The game is given away when this man-god prophesies that between his time (c. 7 cent. H) and the collapse of the universe (Qiyama) remained only half the time between his time since the Hegira (emigration) of the Prophet, that is to say the Qiyama was due by 11 century H. We are now in the 15th. His deadline passed uneventfully four centuries ago just like all deadlines stipulated by all false prophets to this day. Modern cults resort to this tension- and stakes-raising millenial and eschatological prophecies which routinely fail to come true and despite the palpable delusion or fraud most believers stay on. Apparently the need for and belief in chosenness by God and the blood-curdling threats faced by those who dare to deny the guru acting as the mouthpiece of God and at times even claiming to be God is such strong a psychological heroin that once hooked release is impossible. Great business line!
Now, why I am saying these? I am saying these because we must appreciate what makes our Prophet Muhammad (sws) the Beloved of Allah precious- It is his realism, practicality, commonsense, humility, goodwill towards all and his heroic efforts for saving us from self-ignorance which is the very cause of ignorance and denial of Allah. Read if you wish:
“For believers are signs (of Allah’s existence and power) on earth and also in their own selves- will they not see?” (51: 21).
When Moses (pbuh) challenged the pharaoh and his cronies, showing them signs from Allah and inviting him and them to recognise Allah as the only god and for the pharaoh to stop posturing as a god “They fought against them (Allah’s signs and proofs) despite their having certainty about them in their hearts, which amounted to wrongdoing and arrogance” (27: 14).
And you know what? History records several clear references to sublime monotheism among many old and great civilisations: Apparently the unity of God surfaced and resurfaced among great ancient nations like the Sumerians, Babylonians and Persians and most definitely among the Egyptians whose at least one pharaoh, namely Akhnaton declared entirely for monotheism and imposed it on all Egypt for a length of time until assassinated for the same reason by the discomfited priesthood. Greece at the peak of its cultural achievement, namely at and around the time of Plato was also moving towards monotheism and Plato’s monotheistic theology served as a model for both Christian and Muslim theologies when philosophy came to dominate the intellectually-oriented thinkers of the two faiths. So Allah must be right when He observes for us that the pharaoh and his elites were well aware of God’s unity but because they preferred to maintain their stronghold over the toiling masses providing them with their wealth, luxury, power and unassailable status they chose to cover-up this true faith and continue to exploit the superstitions imposed on their flocks. And interestingly, the Arabic word for ‘disbelieve’ and also ‘blaspheme’ is ‘kafara’ which means ‘to cover up’!
Now our master and the best of creation Muhammad the Messenger of Allah (sws) never boasted of any divine or quasi-divine qualities or feats but insisted that he was a man just like all of us, with the same limitations, frailties and fallibility. Now this may seem a degrading remark about Allah’s last and greatest messenger. But this is not so. Those who think on these lines are the same wrong-minded people who deform and distort famous persons by what is called in optics in physics ‘empty magnification’. Suppose you are given a photograph where one particular person’s portrait is. The photograph is small, the image of the person in it is poor, not sharp and clear. You may think that by looking at it through a magnifier you will get a clearer image. This is true to some extent but not infinitely so. Suppose your magnifier can only magnify objects up to three times. You will find that although the size of the image is much larger details are not as clear as you hoped. If you are ignorant of physics you may think that by using a microscope which magnifies objects a hundred times you will get more and clearer details. But you will be disappointed: No microscope can put there detail that the photograph could not record. Only the distances between the individual black silver deposits will increase while no new detail will emerge. Let this metaphor serve as a way of understanding that pumping air into people’s image through lies and exaggerations does not make them greater people but only fools the fools considering them. Real measure of a person is in the real details of his character and conduct issuing from that character.
Now how great is Muhammad (sws)? Is his greatness in his reported ascent to seven heavens and his visit to the Divine Presence, for example? This may be enough and everything to an immature, dreamy mind but it means only a metaphor for something far greater and practical to a mature and realist mind. To him this means the Prophet’s expansion and ascent of mind to the wholly spiritual experience of the Divine (Allah) and the attendants of the Divine (His angels and the souls of His best servants) and that is the very best we humbler, less talented souls should and can hope to attain as well. Why do you think the Mi’raj/Ascension of the Prophet lasted only a brief part of a night including the return journey? Because the experience was spiritual and the spiritual contracts and wraps the material like very high pressures reducing the volume of an airport-full of gas to a gallon of liquid. Thinking that Allah’s messenger had to traverse intergalactic, dust- and radiation-infested space of billions of light-years across on a mule is more wonderful than all creation being contracted into a small space and a brief moment and as a result his holy soul contact the Divine Essence which is right there nearer to man then he to himself instead of billions of years of spatial distances having to be travelled. In fact space geometry has no beginnings or ends, no centres or peripheries but is a mental construct of that most wonderful human mind which is informed by the Spirit Allah blew in all of us as a basis for His deputyship (Khilafat al Ilahiya).
Allah’s connection with and nearness to human mind is so strong and immediate that nothing will exist, at least as we know it, without a human mind perceiving it. Real and permanent existence and full knowledge and power, in fact all majesty and glory belong to Allah and of His knowledge only tiny crumbles fall to us and that with His permission. Read if you wish “They cannot encompass anything of His Knowledge except with His permission. In return, He knows more about us than we ourselves can. Read if you wish again: “We (Almighty) are nearer to him (man) than his life artery” (50: 16) and “Allah penetrates between man and his heart/mind” (8: 24).
You see, with such nearness and immediacy of Allah there is no need for any intergalactic travel. The distance between man and his Lord is a negative distance, that is to say, it is less than nil! Do you now see how this makes your job a bit easier, thankfully so? Look for Allah and for all His graces and miracles in yourself and you will find them right there, distanceless, volumeless, weightless but far vaster and grander than the common illusion you call universe! We are not denying the truth of the best reports about the Prophet’s ‘Isra/Night Journey to Masjid al Aqsa and his Mi’raj/Ascension therefrom. What we are explaining is that it has far deeper mysteries going to the bottom of the nature of things which escape the uninitiated or uninspired. From a practical point of view we can give cast iron guarantee of the following: Love and obey Allah and you will smell and taste Him as an incomparable sweetness and satisfaction, an all-consuming love, a matchless awe and reverence in your heart- and act kindly and charitably towards His servants and His angels will encircle (and make tawaf of) you, talk to and comfort you, protect and direct you. Read if you wish:
“Those who say ‘Our Lord is Allah’ and then walk the Right Path- on them angels descend saying ‘Do not grieve and do not fear; instead rejoice with the good-news of the Garden which you have been promised. We are your protecting and caring friends in this world and the next- in there are for you all that your souls yearn for and in there are for you all that you call for- all as hospitality from Allah” (41: 30- 32).
What is the greatest miracle given us? It is a true and behaviourally effective faith. These two qualities of faith are not separate things: they are the two facets of one reality: If your faith is true and genuine you will behave truthfully, justly and charitably at all times. Because this lacks in only too many Muslims we may sadly and reluctantly conclude that most of us have not enough of that best thing in the world, a sound and working faith in the All-Gracious Lord.
Lastly and if it is not yet clear enough, the highest sign of true faith in the True and Perfect God, namely Allah, is humility and in this sense the humblest of all creatures has been none other than Muhammad (sws) the last and greatest messenger of Allah. Closer to him in rank among his nation (ummah) is the humbler of them before Allah and kinder towards his fellow Muslims in particular and to all mankind and animal kind in general. He did not claim either divinity or powers which are believable only when Allah claims them. The Qur’an is only too full of repeated and explicit disclaimers that the Prophet was no god but a man like the rest of us and what distinguished him from us was his incomparably great and magnificent character towering over us and the Revelations from Allah made to him as the worthiest among us to be given them. We owe him all the respect and obedience, love and loyalty as to Allah, for it is Allah Who demanded these from us. He is our indispensable role model in all matters that matter, our supreme teacher and exemplar, our most love- and obedience-worthy master and Allah’s most beloved among all creatures. Unauthorised, unscriptural exaggerations of him do not magnify him but hurt him and both Allah and him His Messenger could not deplore what Christians had made of Jesus more! His greatness lies in his perfection as a human being, a perfection which is eminently desirable and practicable to emulate to any degree except becoming a prophet ourselves. Perfection of humanity is in feeling about believing in Allah magnificently and with this attitude and faith conquering our weaknesses and meannesses more and more by every passing day and it is this noblest and worthiest of moral struggles that make a true faith what it is and worth having and not a myriad of superstitious or power-hungry pursuits for which inflated egos race like Olympic athletes or karate black-belts. Islam’s competitions are about moral excellence and gracefulness of manners, both sincerely, selflessly and charitably pursued. Thrill- and excitement-seekers, miracle-pursuers and claimers make anything but good and true Sufis.
As the Messenger of Allah (sws) claimed nothing in front of Allah, Allah conferred on him all that was conferrable on His servants. We should emulate him in such humility before Allah and Allah may well join us with him. Amen.
THE PROPHET’S (sws) HUMILITY IN ACTION
Despite some occasional flow of wealth and opportunity his way in the last decade of his spotless life the Prophet never inclined to waste and luxury, never demanded royal treatment and never acted proudly or arrogantly. His was the most frugal of lives within reason (no deliberate starvation or exposure or ascetic toil); he talked to freemen and slaves treating them to equal dignity and forgave each and every offence against his person however great. What he never forgave were offences against the majesty of Allah and the interests of His servants even when they were non-Muslims. Slave girls could consult him about their grievances, holding him by the hand and drawing him to a street corner in full public view and he would follow them with humility and attend to their grievances. He even attended to the grievances of animals and would order their owners to treat them well. He hated luxury, pomp, pretence and affectation and nothing in his dress, domestic or social habits or airs gave away the fact that he was an exceptional person but his constant dignity made wonderful by his cool cheerfulness. Said his close disciple and early personal attendant Anas b. Malik “I saw nobody with a more constant smile than the Messenger of Allah”. He was so majestically handsome to look at and so heart warming yet at the same time awe-inspiring. Humility in him became such majesty that all other forms or examples of majesty paled out like moons facing a full sun.
In company he would just sit at any vacant space, he would refuse anybody rise to him or bow to him or offer him any best thing like the best part of a meal or a higher seat. There was nothing with or about him which made him to look like the leader or the mighty one of the group he was associating with except his shining dignity enhanced by his natural, unpretended humility. That he was an extremely exceptional person shone forth when he spoke, for all his speech was spot-on just, wise and captivating. He impressed his companions into deferring to and respecting him enormously by not asking for any special treatment other than for them to recognise that he was the messenger of Allah. That only had to be because he had a very serious job to do. He never kept a grudge nor exacted any personal revenge from even his worst offenders but forgave each on the first pronouncement of an apology and rewarded them on top. He was humble, humble and humble in a most dignified and endearing sense and so innocent at all times that no amount of scrutiny or espionage could catch him committing any act which could be seen less than perfectly honourable and wise. As his cousin and son-in-law Ali said “I have seen none like him before him or after him”. May Allah’s greatest blessings and choicest greetings be on him. Amen.
4. A HOLISTIC DESCRIPTION OF OUR PROPHET(sws)
Elicited and collated from most reliable sources the following physical and moral description of the Messenger of Allah is submitted to the appreciation of my dear readers:
Born in the year 570 in Mecca in Arabia into a tribal and commercial society he belonged, according to the strong and undoubted tradition of the region, to the Ishmaelite branch of Abraham’s offspring as distinct from the Israeli.
He was a member of the Hashimite branch of the Quraish tribe who were both the merchant and priestly elites of Arabs. Merchant in the sense that Mecca being almost totally unsuitable to agriculture its citizens had to survive by trade. Conveniently enough, situated to the middle west of the Arabian peninsula they were ideally placed to serve as a common midway centre between the four most fertile regions of the Middle East: To the West was the eternally fertile Egypt just beyond the Red Sea which was a narrow waterway between Asia and Africa; to the south was the almost equally fertile Yemen which benefited from its trade with fabulously rich India. To the north was Syria, not only fertile in its own right but also very prosperous and advanced thanks to its being part of the great Roman Empire, the thousand year old superpower of the ancient world. Lastly, to the north East was the Persian province of Mesopotamia which, perennially watered by the mighty rivers Tigris and Euphrates, rivalled in fertility all three regions so far mentioned. These four regions, between them, could only contact through the Arabian Peninsula and the Meccan caravan-owning merchants were their almost only hope in communicating and exchanging goods. Despite this enviable position Arabs were by no means a rich nation compared to their great neighbours on the four sides of them: Like all culturally and technically backward nations they hardly earned what their unique position promised them. You see, like all backward tribal communities with no either central or advanced government they fought over their unending tribal claims and disputes, they were largely illiterate and almost totally cut off from and uninterested in the cultural, spiritual and technological wealth of their neighbours.
They accordingly looked up to them almost as superhuman while these admired nations looked down on Arabs as thugs, savages and ignoramuses- all three.
But they had their little noticed and only occasionally appreciated good qualities as well. The top was their incredible hospitality and manliness: An Arab, even when a bandit, could be trusted to act as a very good host to a stranger and even protect him at the cost of his own life. They were also manly; once they made a promise they would rarely break it. Lastly their tribe and clan solidarity was their answer to the imperial or royal civil orders of their neighbours; it protected each and every member of the tribe or clan better than Rome would protect its citizens. In brief here were a people who could, in the hands of a great genius of a common leader, jump two or three millennia and end up at the top of the world’s most civilised and advanced nations league. This leader came in the person of Muhammad!
And he sure arrived. Interestingly enough, he combined in him a great advantage and a great disadvantage as a potential leader of Arabs. His advantage was threefold: One, he belonged of the most prestigious of all Arab tribes, the tribe of Quraish which were especially famous for their decent from Abraham with a credible and well-memorized genealogy and the dynastic custodians of the national shrine the Holy Mosque at the centre of which was the holy Kaaba, ‘the House of God’ believed to be established by Abraham and his first-born son and the ancestor of Arabs in general and the Quraish in particular, namely Ishmael. Two, he belonged to the noblest clan of the Quraish, that of Banu Hashim who had rediscovered Zamzam and looked after the Kaaba and served the pilgrims visiting from all over the place. Three and lastly, he was incomparably wise, well-mannered, handsome and morally impeccable.
What he looked like? He was between tall and of middle height, with a big head, a high cranium as befits a very intelligent man, a roundish handsome face white and radiant as ivory from which two intensely big black eyes with slight blood streaks over their whites looked at one with disarming charm. His eyebrows were thin and long, crescent-shaped and closely-set but not meeting. His body was strongly built, firm and muscular as befits a he-man, his broad chest flush with his abdomen. His two arms were thick and strong ending in graceful if fleshy hands. His legs equally gave an impression of sculptural perfection, strength, balance and poise ending in wide, well-proportioned feet with soles gracefully raised in the middle. He had fleshy lips, incredibly white and elegant if slightly parted teeth and a voice which could only both please and attract respect. He had little body hair other than his strong head hair and beard which were black and moderately curly.
In any group he regularly gave the impression of to be the tallest despite not always being so and he walked with poise and dignity as if he was climbing a slightly uphill ground.
He had a very peculiar way of responding to people: when called or addressed he would turn to totally face the person in question and never just turning his head or turning nothing. It made a most endearing effect on persons who called or addressed him.
His moods were serious and thoughtful but never unresponsive to humour. All who saw him for the first time were impressed with the very unusual positive effect he made on them which effect included a hint of fear but melted with affection once he opened his mouth and addressed them.
He never told a lie, he never betrayed a trust, he never gossiped or exposed a shame and he never turned down a request if at all possible to satisfy. All trusted him more than they could trust themselves- with secrets, with money, with anything and everything.
His manners were both unpretentious and most graceful at the one and the same time and his humility and forbearance matched his dignity and truthful speech.
He kept his person, his belongings and place meticulously clean and tidy at all times, brushed his teeth frequently and washed his hands and mouth both before and after eating something. He simply shone with cleanliness and meticulous grooming and simple but spotlessly clean dress. He never kept a personal grudge and never avenged a personal hurt. He forgave his worst enemies instantly once they apologised and avenged only offences against the Truth, like blasphemy and injustice. Even these he could forgive if repented.
At this moment we need not go into details but we will do so insha Allah as we go along.
SONGS OF LOVE AND LOYALTY
My dear respondents, we are now introducing a new section to our productions under PROPHET’S ACADEMY- INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED PRACTICAL SUFISM. In this section we will insha Allah use some Ottoman songs and some original, brand-new songs freshly inspired under the loving mercy of Allah the Most Gracious. We will feel free to mix the two, because what we are after is not boasting of new songs but making the best of old and new material inspired to pious poets over generations and also currently. Through them we will be seeking more wisdom and more cultivation of Divine Love in our humble hearts. Can we really contain and master Allah’s inspirations? Since we are no prophets we cannot claim that but may we not hope that a lot of good, worthy material will not be granted from on High which material is available to all creatures? Let us pray and hope. Old songs shall be marked thus (*) and any new thus (**).
SONG 1 - OLD FRIENDS*
Forgotten one by one/ the old friends, oh the old friends/neither a salam nor any news/ from the old friends/oh the old friends/
Like vague, misty dreams/like birds long migrated/like stones long mossed over/are the old friends, are the old friends/
Many with forgotten names/who knows where and how each are/Now are they in paled pictures/oh the old friends, oh the old friends.
COMMENTARY - This song verbalises a very common yearning in all decent and sensitive people. As we had put in a recent lesson of ours in the Practical Advanced Sufism series the sign that a person is godly, favoured by Allah to be a potential true and good servant, is that person’s loyalty to the persons and memories of all who passed from his or her life and made a contribution to his or her happiness. After Allah and His Messenger the worthiest in the estimation of a good servant are parents, other parent figures like uncles, aunts, teachers... then old friends like locals or classmates and all who left a useful, pleasant mark on his life and character. All these are departments of loving Allah and the stronger and longer-lasting the affection, loyalty and missing of one’s good old friends the more a person’s love and loyalty to Allah and Allah’s love for him or her.
All of us have had friends with whom we had cosy relations but after a long separation and another meeting we found them cold and not interested to say the least and some even plainly hostile and dismissive.
The lesson is this: Look into your heart: is it still filled with youthful affection and a sense of deep missing for your old friends? If so, you may laugh with self-congratulation: you are e genuine person in contact with the Holy Spirit. Or else, are you bored with your old friends as soon as you remember or see them and try to switch off? Then sit down and sob for your bad fortune for you have lost that fresh and succulent centre of true humanity in your being. Let me explain: why do you think a truly godly and pious person searches for Allah all the wakeful and sleeping moments of his life, except when busy with some consuming problem which will not allow a division of attention? Is it not because that person is missing Allah with Whom he or she was before he or she was sent to this life?
Aha, you may ask: What about those troubles our parents, teachers, friends, spouses etc, despite their otherwise good services to us, sometimes cause to us? What about our later disappointments with them? Well, let us be frank: don’t we sometimes dare to accuse even Allah for not being fair to us? Even if we don’t do that consciously don’t we at least occasionally find fault with weather, with our luck etc all of which boil down to accusing Allah of incompetence or wrongdoing without realising it? Lastly, how can we be sure that, if we want to be fair, it is this friend or that relation who is in the wrong against us and not us?
There is a funny Sufi story illustrating the necessity of tolerating friends if we really mean to be friends. The famous Sufi master Zunnun al Misri was imprisoned and his ‘friends’ went to visit him. He threw stones at them, all fled in disgust but one: a humble young student. Remarked the master: I have only one true friend and one true student”. What set apart this young man from others? Why, he was a true friend of Zunnun no matter what, like a mother and especially good brother is loyal to their respective beloved ones- she to her child and he to his brother.
Times are so bad now that although parents remain friends with their children till the end most children do not remain friends with their parents who have grown too old or became too poor. Only rich parents are held in esteem and visited often you know why. If they dare to pass their wealth to their children they risk seeing the backs of their children for the last time.
All in all, true friends are for all time, Allah is the truest of friends, all others may leave you when you become weak but Allah will be with you and look after you if you had been with Him and walked His path of righteousness and charity.
True friendship is possible when friends are truly godly in character although the external behaviour of each may leave a lot desired. All prophets and saints are agreed that it is not so much what formal religious devotions like fasting and prayer you do but how you conduct yourself in relation to other human beings in general and your friends in particular. Be of those who, treasuring Allah and His Messenger become automatically able to treasure all His friends and relations and all other creatures of Allah who do not pose an immediate threat to him or others. Loving and caring for friends with constant loyalty is perhaps the single greatest sign of godliness and may Allah make us godly. Amen.
SONG 2 - MY LOVE IS NOT FOR SALE**
My love is not false, it is not for sale/ It won’t cool off, come wind, rain or hail
It is for Allah and His friends big and small/ Friends prophet or just believer- all
This world’s charms or its charmers magic:/ If they deceive you the end is tragic
“Don’t sell your love, the soul of your faith/ For any price” true sages saith
All such sale is to Satan, the enemy- in- chief/ Whose whole plan for you is pure mischief
If Satan is deceiver Allah is all Truth/You can trust Him to your path smooth
Outmanoeuvre Satan with believer’s wit/ Allah will pilot you, you just work a bit
‘Iblis’ means ‘loser’, for bad investors/Allah is the All-Winner, all losses restores
Loving Him is the recipe for all true success/ It is love for Him only that cannot go to excess
You can’t love Him enough, so keep loving/ In order to reap love keep love sowing
Do not sell, exchange that for any price/ Then from even the lowest you can rise
COMMENTARY - All love ends in frustration except the love for Allah. We may love anything from this world including our children but all such in themselves are insecure and may not be returned.
Let alone unfaithful spouses even our very children on whom we lavished so much love and gifts may take all for granted and abandon us both emotionally and physically. A safe love for our children is loving them for Allah which means you love them with the realisation that Allah made that natural for us but you do not forget that their loving us are in the hands of Allah and not theirs. If you love your children not for your ego (i.e. hoping worldly benefits from them) but for Allah (i.e.expecting your reward for your parental affection and attention to them) then Allah makes you benefit from their existence greatly whether or not they return your love or do any good to you. You see, by loving things for Allah and not so much for themselves guarantees that they cannot hurt you in this world or the next; that is because loving things for Allah is included in loving Allah direct.
Now your arch-enemy or enemy-in-chief, call him what you will is after splitting your love away from Allah and stick it to this world’s attractions, both natural and unnatural. To get you away from Allah he promises you through your ego that it is all this world that matters, that Allah is a myth, your love for Him is futile and what is more exchanging (selling) this love for the pleasures and delights of this world is the best transaction you can make. The delights of this world include wealth, position, fame, sex and the like and if you believe the Satan who talks to you behind the guise of being your world-wise wisdom you would think that you did not have a moment to lose before transacting this sale.
That will be your fatal mistake. As you begin to make the investments the Devil advised you to, an early and even extended false profit graph may begin to rise but along the road it will gather so much filth of haram (illicit gains) and zulm (injustice) that its benefits will act as poisons in your system and your ever multiplying victims cries will reach Allah and bring the whole world on your head sooner or later. God forbid!
Only love for Allah cannot be excessive or loss-making in any real and permanent sense. Any unlikely worldly losses shall only be virtual losses like a good, long-term investor’s investments whose fortunes look bleak to the foolish but perform spectacularly when their cashing-in time arrives with a sudden, rapid and dizzying price rise of his stocks. That is, at the latest and in full when He meets Allah but Allah will often be kind enough to give them a great interim profit in this world as well without deducting from his reward in the next. Two such brilliant investments are zakat and sadaqa.
May Allah make us good and wise investors in His stocks and promises, the greatest of which is loving Him more than anything and anybody else . Mind you, loving the Prophet and believers is loving Allah and no less and no other. Amen.
SONG 3 - YOU ARE NOT WORTHY*
Each season you come and go through my heart/ Laying my heart to waste with a blow hard/
You are not worthy, never at all, of this love, this melancholy
Before saying “hello!” you say “good-bye!”/ You have no faith, I wonder why?/ You are not worthy, never at all, of this love, this melancholy
You are like an empty cup, yea, an empty cup passing from hand to hand/ You are not worthy, never at all, of this love, this melancholy.
COMMENTARY - This world is like an unfaithful, selfish, cheating lover who otherwise look stunningly beautiful and attractive. Mighty worldly desires take their turns (seasons) to knock on our door; in youth they are mainly sexual, later on greed for wealth, ambition for political or bureaucratic office and lastly criminal feats and profits begin to visit and stir us each demanding fulfilment and satisfaction. When in the grip (season) of such one obsession we often find that fulfilment is elusive, repeated tries we make are frustrated and what is worse, even when obtained the thrill is short-lived- that is what “You come and go through my heart” means. The result is a sadly and painfully ruined heart, which is another name for disappointment and disillusionment. After the storm is over one feels that the thrill they briefly so enjoyed left saying good-by before it bothered to say hello- so quick I mean. This world in itself is such an unfaithful object of desire. It is like a bad (a Casanova) man or bad woman (a vamp!). That is what “You are like an cup passing around from hand to hand”. Each downs it but no thirst-quenching drink pours down their throats.
Shall we have no worldly desires and objectives? We surely will. Otherwise we cannot prosper enough to live our faith freely and unmolested and as a result contribute to the well-being of as many needy people as we can and also beat of the enemies of others’ welfare. The problem starts when we contemplate our worldly desires and objectives in themselves and not as means to winning Allah’s pleasure. Will you believe it? When worldly desires and objectives are pursued with Allah in mind they do not only last but deliver far more pleasure. Take a marriage between two loving spouses: If both are godly (muttaqin) their love can survive all adversities because Allah is a party to and a guarantor of their love. What we should not forget though is that mutual attraction should better be in place before a match is made between a man and a woman.
For example the Messenger of Allah (sws) encouraged a man and a woman thinking of marriage to see each other and then consent if they find each other attractive. This of course does not apply when the two already know each other, like our master Ali and our lady Fatima- they had grown up together. Although arranged marriages is the norm among muslims that does not mean that the two persons to marry should have no say in the matter. The Prophet laid the rule to the effect that divorcee ladies should be consulted and their consent obtained before being married to somebody while virgins should also be consulted and if they cannot say ‘yes’ out of shyness their pleasurable silence should at least be noted. If they show signs of distress then the matter should better be dropped. Of course advising them who might be better for them is a responsible parental duty but forcing them is not a right.
Returning to our main theme: A lot of people are stricken by the love of this world irrespective of what Allah says. In this case they will inevitably find that all Allah-excluding ambitions lead to eventual grief and regret except in the case of most unconscionable persons who are more like animals. The rest will be hurt by their godless enterprises, find that the thrills have been too short and too insecure all along and before dying at the latest will sing the line “You are not worthy of this love, this melancholy. We take refuge in Allah from such a sad, a melancholic, a guilty end!
SONG 4 - TAVERNS OF ISTANBUL*
Last night I called at all taverns of Istanbul till the morning/ Looking for you in the lip-marks on the goblets.
COMMENTARY - Among Sufis the beloved is Allah Who is represented on earth by His best servants who are His prophets and saints. Particularly relevant is one’s sheikh (elder, the Sufi teacher) from whom seeker seeks to learn about Allah through human qualities at their best which the sheikh is believed to have copied from the Messenger of Allah. ‘Taverns’ are the dergahs (convents) of the Sufis where the wine of Divine love and awe are served and drunk. Highly talented and sacredly ambitious seekers are so desirous of locating the true master that they may go from dergah to dergah in a big city like Istanbul, that last and longest serving caliphate capital of Islam, looking for the master. Because the master himself must have been drinking from one of the goblets in the Divine serving of the sacred wine the almost love-crazed seeker will inspect each and every one of the goblets used in the dergah in the desperate hope that on one he will detect the individual, distinguishing lip-mark of the master himself and drink from it in the hope that the master’s Baraka will pass to him.
This veneration of the Prophet (sws) through the master is legitimate if it is entirely sincere and motivated only by one’s aching love for Allah and His Prophet (sws). Please consider the following hadiths which are but a few of the many:
“Whenever he came across the Messenger of Allah he used to hug him and kiss his feet”. Another,
“Usaid b. Kudair was a good man with jolly humour. He used to talk to people and make them laugh while the Prophet was around. One day the Prophet hit him on his side. He said “You hurt my body”. The Prophet said “Then retaliate”. “O Messenger of Allah, you have your shirt on” (I was naked on top). The Prophet lifted up his shirt whereupon he (Usaid) hugged the Prophet and began kissing his side repeatedly saying all the time “May my mother and father be sacrificed for you. This was what I meant”. Both hadiths are from ‘Hayat al Sahaba’ (Life of the Companins) by maulana Muhammad Yusuf Kandahlawi, may Allah bless him. Unless otherwise stated all hadiths quoted in this work shall be from him.
SONG 5 - LOVE FOR BELOVED’S SAKE**
I love all you love because I love you/ For me you can do no wrong but all things right do
Blinded by your love I only see the beauty that you are/ No lesser lights me from your light bar
My ‘blindness’ to ‘less than yous’ became my sight/ My weakness in front of you gave me Might
Non-ambition outside you is my consuming ambition/ Let loving you constantly be my condition
So good you are that even fearing you is sweet/ Sweeter than honey or all else indeed
Love to be love needs fearing the beloved most/ Lest the beloved turns away and lover becomes lost/ Beloved’s smile is the lover’s supreme reward/ All smiles he put on faces are for getting that reward.
COMMENTARY - How can one love Allah and not love His works? Don’t you see all lovers cannot wait to praise even the spittle of their beloved? If there are lovers who so much dote on their beloved no matter what the latter do, how Allah can be seen less than any such beloveds? We say that excessive love spoils the beloved and makes a fool of a lover. Yet in the case of Allah we cannot love Him enough let alone to excess. What is more the more we love and the more we dote on Him the more loving and grateful He becomes to us and the more He rewards. He calls Himself ‘al Shakoor’, the grateful thanker for and ample returner of services and compliments and in fact one of His Most Beautiful names is “Al Wadood’, the Ardent, Sociable Lover. He treats His lovers to greater love they can get from nowhere and from none else. So, if you are blinded with His love you are only blinded to those less than Him but are otherwise all Vision, seeing the Highest Truth in the Highest Reality.
Realization of one’s nothingness before Allah does not inspire despair like other senses of inferiority do; on the contrary infinite power beckons you to satisfy all your now purified needs. So your realisation of your weakness becomes your power which no other creaturely power can defeat.
SONG 6 - YOU ARE THE ALL, KNOW YOUR WORTH**
You are the all, know your worth then/ The all because you come from the All and return to Him
If you think God is impersonal think again/ His top creation is personality you and I are in
As our master Rumi said your consciousness is all/ The rest of you is flesh, bone, hair, mucus and gall
Godless men are only intelligent beasts/ Ruthless and faithless, one such on the rest feasts
Salivates, covets, attacks and apart tears/ Of no avail against him are pleadings or tears
Why crime is exploding in most prosperous lands?/ If not education being in beastly hands?
The teaching is that lowly pleasures are all/ From every side to them they us call
All are legitimate: dirty, mean, harmful/ Made to appear so by attacks on us charmful
“You are flesh, eat flesh, you are semen, spread it”/ “Fight for supremacy, that is to your credit
“Survival of the fittest” is the new law of the jungle/”Watch, ambush, spring- your catch do not bungle”
Unaware such are that in them are those jungles/ That all their predations are their real bungles
Unaware that they shall never be the top of the food chain/ They eat to be eaten, all their antics vain
Man you must be under God, rahmat*as your light/ Light may be nil in weight but from it comes all might.
You really only live in cosmic eternal sense/When the consciousness you are become also conscience
(*rahmat means loving mercy and is the supreme attribute of Allah and the most desired of His best servants)
COMMENTARY - Allah informed us in His Qur’an that we are created from this earth and put on it as His deputies burdened with the task of representing Him in His capacity of loving mercy to all His creatures. Accordingly we must view and treat each object and living being in the light of loving mercy which Allah inspired in us. In fact that is the exact meaning of the Divine word that “(After fashioning him from clay) I blew into man of My Spirit” (15: 29). The same verse adds “(and the angels) fell in prostration to him (man)”. Why did they bowed in prostration to man? Because they saw in him the Spirit of Allah. Whoever has in him the Spirit of Allah is an authorized deputy of Allah.
It is this spirit which makes us at our best: a man or woman who is a blessing to have around, to whom others may turn to for consolation, good advice, loyal friendship and many kinds of valuable, free help. Such blessed servants of God are repositories of apparently inexhaustible wisdom and are charming-looking even to some worst people let alone to decent people. In front of them kings and tycoons, scientists and philosophers feel like children and are not ashamed to ask for their advice and blessings. This is what we all may be one day if we believe, follow and try. It is this which makes man a fully real deputy of Allah, a deputy of the Messenger of Allah in his capacity as ‘an embodiment of loving mercy to all creation”(21: 107), sent by Allah in His Capacity of being,’ al Rahman, al Rahim’ (the Universally Caring and Mercifully Forgiving as described in the very first verse of the very first chapter of His Qur’an).
Without this advancement towards the higher deputyship of God (for even the lowest man is a deputy of God in some small and imperfect sense simply because he can change his environment as no other animal can) man is just or almost just another beast living only uneasily socially, always on his guard against fellow human beasts and also on the lookout for predatory opportunities with a selfish ethos at the bottom of it. Whether holy or unholy it is this consciousness of man that makes him what he is; the rest of him is just flesh, bone, skin, hair and mucus as any other animal is. So, know your at least potential worth and act accordingly.
Unfortunately often educators are no better than their pupils and instead of representing God they only represent their morally and spiritually undeveloped selves and incite people to indulge their senses instead of developing their inner selves as God’s deputies and thereby to become embodiments of loving and caring wisdom to the rest of the creation beginning with fellow men.
One of the places we see this misguidance of the public by those having the power to influence them is the media. Let us take the press for example. There are two types of press in ‘developed’ countries: Those papers which sell by their pandering to the lower instincts of the public and those who more responsibly appeal to their higher aspirations. The first save face by one or two regular daily columns where they blast the misbehavers as they see it and offer corrective advice. The rest of the paper is almost all about the titillation of people’s lowest instincts, particularly sexual. Pages are dotted with obscene photographs and equally obscene stories and scandals are eagerly sought out and flashed all over the pages. The second type of paper deals far more with serious issues and almost never with salacious scandals. Nor do they stoop to publishing pornographic photos. Moral mistakes they make but one tends to believe that they are sincerely and honestly stating their educated opinions. So the saying that lower people talk about other people and their lower deeds while higher people talk about ideas and important public concerns must be correct. As regards the highest people, their agenda is God, I mean in a practical and factual sense: they both mean thinking and talking about more thought and behaviour ennoblement of people beginning with themselves and less about gossip about, fault-finding with and beating or robbing others. The nobler a man is in his mind, the more generally in scope and more charitably in intention he thinks and the more ready he is to contribute to the welfare of his social environment, near and far. Public education should be put in the hands of such good people who are both wise and charitable.
When these good souls go unrecognised and neglected the field of social action and education remains in the hands of human semi-devils, who, despite possibly having some good sides to them, have so much bad sides as well that they do what a Turkish proverb says: Trying to repair an eyebrow they gouge out an eye. Allah sent His messengers as public educators first and foremost and true saints are the messengers of the messengers of God and no less. Do you want to tell a true saint from an impostor? The True saint is about imparting more and more morality and graceful attitudes to his audience while an impostor pumps into them glorious- and mind-boggling-looking spiritual and occult garbage whose ultimate aim and product is his virtual personal deification in the eyes of his naive and possibly similarly motivated disciples. Take your pick!
Overall, a public not educated by saintly educators but left at the mercy of an indifferent battery of themselves under-developed spiritual illiterates or semi-literates cannot outgrow their bestiality but remain a group of variously ill-feeling and ill-disposed citizens who are unable to resist lower temptations or control their hotter tempers. Why do you think there are some societies as a whole or some neighbourhoods in towns where violence and crime are endemic, politicians and even ministers of religion are corrupt and traders notorious for their frauds and scams? All these boil down to their not having enough God in them and too much the beast in them. In other words, like untended fruit trees their behaviourial fruits are tasteless and juiceless, hard as rock and encased in skins like old scrap leather. As such, on contact they feel each other like sharp knives and bruising rasps and nurture mutual resentments as a result. In other words theirs are a consciousness without much conscience and by and large they remain not human enough but amount more to flesh, bone, hair and mucus.