Self-Interest Is The Lock, Goodwill Is The Key
SELF- INTEREST IS THE LOCK, GOODWILL IS THE KEY
Thank you very much the organisers of this conference. May God guide and bless your efforts.
You are doing what Allah did in His Book the Holy Qur’an in which He All-Gracious calls:
“Whatever He (God) revealed to Noah and to you (Muslims of Muhammad) and to Abraham and Moses and Jesus He instituted as religion for you… say to them (Jews and Christians o Muhammad) ‘I believed in what Allah sent down as Scripture and am commanded to judge justly among you. God is our Lord and your Lord, our deeds to us and your deeds to you- no argument between us, may Allah create unity between us; to Him is the return” (42:15).
I can say only ‘Amen’ to that.
What is equally important though is the amount of goodwill in each of us. Goodwill in religious matters is no less than desiring the discovery of and obedience to the Truth and in the case of each party, namely, Muslim, Christian and Jew this desire and obedience must take the following forms as a minimum:
MUSLIM GOODWILL
Muslim goodwill flows out from the Qur’an throughout. The above verse is just one example. As always it is putting the matter down with both unsurpassed comprehensiveness and brevity- a characteristic peculiar to the Qur’an among all holy scriptures and in fact all statements ever made by men. What do we Muslim want from our Jewish and Christian cousins? Nothing more than a fair recognition that we also are following the same One God of all creation through a similar communication from Him All-Gracious. If they join us in Islam under Muhammad the last and Final Messenger of God as already prophesied in their own scriptures well and good, if not we are also prepared to love and honour them as they are provided they remain pious in their own terms. The above verse covers that as well. We can only wish and hope for their joining us but it is up to them, we cannot force them for our and their Lord said in His Qur’an “There is no compulsion in religion” (2: 256). That we cannot help loving Jews and Christians Allah testifies:
“You (Muslims) are such people who love them (Jews and Christians) while they do not like you. You believe in the whole Book (the Torah, the Evangel and the Qur’an) while when they meet you they may say “We believe (similarly) but when they are to themselves they bite their fingers with ire against you. Allah knows all that are in the bosoms” (3: 119). Witness the bitter statements of the present pope against our beloved Muhammad and by implication, Islam. Such attitudes are not helpful when shown by any party. Islam gave honourable recognition to its elder sisters and expects and deserves to be similarly honoured. Because that has never been forthcoming until now, it is not Islam’s fault that inter-faith relations we are discussing have thus far remained tense and often hostile as well.
JEWISH GOODWILL
Closest to Muslims in practical matters are our cousins the Jews. By our common racial Semitic origin -as far as our commonly believed prophets and our first racial and vastest representatives the Arabs are concerned- we are also close blood relations with them. Unlike Christians we have Law and these respective these Laws and our rituals are quite similar. Yet our relations since the advent of Islam have been deeply problematic if ambivalent. From the beginning Islam did not demand automatic or categoric submission from Jews but almost begged for recognition as a close spiritual (and then also racial) relation. Both were un-understandably denied. The advent of Muhammad (sws) was so much resented by the contemporary and neighbouring Jews that they more preferred an alliance with his pagan adversaries than at least remaining neutral.
What behoves and befits today’s Jewry is correcting this historical mistake and wisely and profitably benefit from the almost the naively and perennially overflowing Muslim preparedness to forgive and forget all offences caused to them by their past best analogues the Jews. Let them just admit the commonality of our beliefs and values and our entitlement to a prophet and a scripture like theirs which prophet and scripture left no stone unturned to find and direct at them by way of compliment and sense of debt until they dissuaded by their active opposition to and insults to Islam became unbearable. How come Muslims who honoured Moses and all prophets as ardently as their Jewish cousins defied their comprehension. Clearly the ball is in the Jewish court and they have to return the goodwill Muslims have been so eager to show. If Muslims quickly became frustrated with and bitter against the Jews that was the inevitable result of the extreme cold-shouldering shown to them from almost the word go. By the testimony of God above Muslims loved and wanted to continue loving the Jews but they would have none of it. Goodwill is called for, it should never be too late.
CHRISTIAN GOODWILL
What happened to our Christian cousins that they could not bring themselves to return the compliments Islam began to direct at them from the word go? The Qur’an could not praise ‘Christ Jesus son of Mary’ more or commend Christian spirituality more. Read if you wish from the Holy Qur’an:
“Closest to (present Muslim) believers in lovingness are those who say ‘We are the Nazarenes (Christians)’. That is because among them are men devoted to pious learning and men who renounced the world who are not arrogant” (5: 82)
Left to themselves without pestering and provocation by their politicians and high priests Christians always got along very well with their Muslim neighbours. That was because, despite the wide differences between their rituals they have had quite similar moral and spiritual values built on loving mercy and genuinely good neighbourliness. In further praise of good, unassuming Christians (as distinct from the arrogant and politically ambitious) Allah said:
“… We sent in their wake (the prophets mentioned) Jesus son of Mary and We gave him the Evangel. In the hearts of those who followed him We put tenderness and mercy…” (57: 27)
As we may note with satisfaction and approval, good Christians, whatever their perhaps forgivable theological differences with us Muslims, are commended to us as our nearest spiritual relations. Pity that some of their leaders did their best or worst to spoil our natural mutual attraction. It must be up to such leaders to explain why they took this path since nearly the beginning. But that this is not the way our relations should stay should be obvious by now. I personally met, befriended and talk with many Christian believers and witnessed how easily we warmed to each other however opposed our theological stands remained. This certainly suggested the fundamental affinity between the unassuming Muslim and unassuming Christian souls despite the artificial theological barriers between them in that while Muslims believe God is One in a straightforward and simple way our Christian cousins are unnecessarily and incomprehensibly burdened with theological shackles chaining them to a theology unprecedented in the time-honoured tradition of our common prophets from Noah down. Apparently at one point in time in the early history of Christianity a mystic pagan element invaded the creed and since then has been causing trouble in and among Christians and between Christians and their two cousins Muslims and Jews.
If dialogue and harmony are required among the three faiths Christians should underplay their Trinitarian claims and emphasise their monotheism more; at least they should not accuse Muslims and Jews of being wrongly monotheistic because they refuse to raise Jesus to divinity; that for them amounts to blasphemy while for Christians to stress their monotheism without mentioning a place in it fior Christ is a small price to pay for the sake of interfaith harmony and affection. Let God and Jesus sort out that problem. Incidentally we find it already sorted out in the Qur’an quite handsomely and unanswerably:
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Consider (o Muhammad) when Allah says ‘Was it you o Jesus who told My servants ‘take me and my mother as to gods under Allah’?. He will say ‘Glorified are You! How can I say a thing I have no right to say? If I told it You would know it… I did not say anything but what You commanded me- ‘worship Allah my Lord and your Lord’. So long as You left me among them I was a guardian over them; once You made me die You remained the Watcher over them. You are the Witness over all things. If you punish them, they are Your servants (after all); if you forgive them then You are the Dear and Wise One (after all- none can interfere) (5: 117- 8)
We pray and most probably Allah will forgive our Christian cousins. None can stop God from what He chooses to do but we rightly expect that He, in His Grace and Greatness will exercise His absolute freewill in the direction of forgiveness. Read if you wish:
“O my servants who went to excess in wronging themselves! Do not despair of Allah’s Mercy. Indeed Allah can pardon all sins without exception simply because He is the very Merciful Forgiver” (39: 53).
Incidentally this last quoted verse should lay to rest all the popular misconceptions among non-Muslims to the effect that the God of Islam, namely Allah (in fact Allah is the God of all and Jesus as an Aramaic speaker called God ‘Allah’, not doubt about it; ‘God’ is an English word) is a very harsh deity. The fact is that at times He projects a harsh image as He does also in the Bible but that is only a show designed to cow any potential wrongdoers and not the Essence of Divinity by any means, which is loving mercy like a very good parent who must at times project harshness for the good of his children who need to grow up in a testing environment for their own good. The above verse, unprecedented in the history of holy scriptures could not be clearer and more categoric on how good and kind the Divine Essence is and absolves Islam of all slanders against it for being a religion of wrath and punishment. In fact it is the religion with the softest interior necessarily protected in a tough exterior which is still transparent enough to show its inner sweet softness to those who care to look carefully enough.
Eventually if success is to be achieved in this conference and in similar future efforts, all efforts must be exerted for God’s Sake which means with full respect and submission to God (one of the Names of Truth) and loving kind goodwill towards all parties. Satanic self-interest masquerading as pious conspiracy should be repented from and jettisoned for good and all efforts be directed to come to a common ground where all derive equal benefit and achieve a common good from where there would be no return: Goodwill is the key!
For the proposed inter-faith dialogue to get anywhere and succeed Islam’s perennially denied merits must be recognised and appreciated. If the traditional misconceptions and misrepresentations continue all may turn into a dialogue of the deaf. I humbly conclude
with a part of the verse I had quoted someway up:
“No arguments among us; may Allah unite us”. Amen.
TIMELESS INCOME - HUMILITY OF BEST SERVANTS
Allah’s best servants are those who only see Him in all and themselves in nothing. This is not a pious and dreamy pie-in-the-sky gift. It is a vision which happens to Allah’s servant at the end of a long and difficult if silent war recorded in no history books of Sufi anecdotes. It is a war of the solitary soul on itself and its weapons are ardent devotions and desperate prayers to the Allah the Only Saviour and Mentor; its ammunition is tears of frustration and its victories are tears of happiness with the Lord.
This vision is not a vision of iconic angels, parades of famous names or exercise of new personal powers over the rest of the creation although these may intervene as diversionary tactics by the Enemy, the Satan who makes his last desperate attempts to contaminate and destroy the servant’s humility and sincerity and make him proud and then bankrupt like himself. It is at this last stage that many would-be good servants are deceived and carried away.
The perfected Vision is seeing that nothing is either created or made to move that way it moves but Allah is fully behind it with no partners in design or helpers in execution. Let us take a practical example: Suppose that a footballer suddenly becomes the most admired one in the world commanding the highest price; he is an incredibly prolific scorer of spectacular goals. Now, is he or he he not justified to be proud? If he was, for argument’s sake, given the perfect Vision he would see that from his genetic inheritance to all the events of his life and the innumerable events from past eternity converging and cooperating and conspiring in his birth and all the later experiences and ‘coincidences’ of his life he had no choice but had to accept each as they came and shaped his form and formed his destiny. So, if a dice can boast of landing with the 6 dots on the top this footballer can also boast! Of course it is one thing to listen to these observations but quite another to appreciate them so much that the same Vision becomes the Pole of one’s life realisations. When that Pole is there all the existential jigsaw finally and magnificently fall into place with a single act of assemblage and all the problems of life evaporate and only bliss and contentment remain.
The sad news is that this deceptively simple and simplistic-looking Vision which means one’s irreversible happy dissolution in Allah is still the greatest and hardest secret to attain and cannot be stolen from its explanations made by somebody blessed by it. Each servant must build it up in his whole soul personally by offering to Allah his whole heart, his whole agenda in life and his whole work in life in the course of which enough toils and regrets, hardships and humiliations, disappointments and shames etc. must be painfully lived through, all of which will be unhelpably accompanied by sighs, sobs and tears, impossible-looking hopes and most awesome fears and only occasional, brief and summary victories when the tears change from that of pain to joy; but soon be servant is back in his laboratory of spiritual quest and research as if nothing happened. But glory and praise be to Allah, better and better things will happen and one day or one night the thousands of alternate veils of light and darkness will be lifted and traversed and the Magnificent Vision of Unity and Most Blissful Tranquility will present itself to the grateful and fulfilled heart of the humblest servant. Then the sweet words shall be heard: “O settled and contented soul. Come back to thy Lord, thou pleased with him and He pleased with thee. Enter thou among My servants, enter thou My Garden” (Qur’an 89:28). Amen.
POWER OR GRACE?
Say wise men: “Everything has its affliction”. For example, affliction of iron is rusting, affliction of eating is overeating. Affliction of religion is hypocrisy etc.”. We may wonder- what is the affliction of spiritual quest?
We may answer- “It is doing it for the obtainment of power instead of……ATTAINING GRACE!
The mistake is usually made at the beginning. It is when one is attracted to a spiritual system like Sufism having heard that Sufi masters attained extraordinary or supernatural powers and are therefore living like solitary kings, in their impenetrable privacy dealing with anything as they like. They hear conversations of other miles away, they see into the secrets of things, people and events and can rescue and destroy, reward and punish etc. both from near and far etc.
I can guarantee that no such powers exist in any absolute sense, in any fullness in any continous way. Normally even Allah’s greatest prophets and the best members of their ummatas are and feel helpless most of the time and can only pray and hope for things they don’t like turn into things they like. Very occasionally though and while in a crises Allah helps them in an extraordinary way by employing one or more of His angels to give help- that was how the battle of Badr was won. Before the Prophet sws had to pray almost to death: “O Allah, if You allow the destruction of this handful of believers today I am afraid nobody will reamin on earth to worship You any more”. Abu Bakr RA was so moved by the Prophet’s sws desperate distress that he grabbed his master and spoke out “Ya RAsulullah, enough, the Throne of Allah has trembled, you will be helped”. And so it was.
Neither wilaya (high states of true belief) nor nubuwwa (prophethood) is a rose garden without thorns. They are mighty responsibilities afflicted perhaps with more handicaps than powers to prevail. Hear the Messenger of Allah “The most intense of afflictions hit the prophets and then the like of them (high believers)”. Was not Solomon AS in charge of winds and jinns and animals and birds and palaces and armies? Yet he had only too many troubles and heartbreaks in his life. Why? Because he simply was a servant as weak as any other servant in front of Allah the True Master of all existence. He Almighty decreed:
“Are people calculating that they shall let be (enjoy themselves) simply because they said “We believed” and not tested? NO! We did test those before them; Allah shall surely know (expose) those who believe and shall surely know the liars” (S. al Ankabut, 2-3)
We beg Allah to spare us from things difficult to bear and help us very mercifully through any trials.
Especially dangerous are powers, in fact so dangerous that many would-be saints fell to their destruction. It is a MESSY business under any circumstances apart from its many terrible dangers. Is there another way?
I am happy to say that there is. It is seeking grace and NOT powers. You know what? Power-holding spirituality is a blue-collar work, you are like a small technician, you do the manual and field work under the direction of the white collars who are your managers and employers. These work almost entirely in and from their minds and do not either dirty their hands or expose themselves to the elements. In spiritual field the white collars are the grace-holding saints. They are Allah’s secret favourites dwelling in His secret chambers. They may be as much poor and weak from an external point of view but inside they are God-rich and God-powerful. I am saying this to mean that aman who is humble enough not to seek either worldly or spiritual powers for handling affairs but constantly begs for Allah’s Grace, himself becomes so graceful that Allah is ever ready with HIS riches to supply him with his needs and ever ready with His powers to protect and promote him. Even unbelieving or bad people feel a need to respect a God-graced man simply because he projects such a harmless, benevolent image surpassing perhaps that of a baby. Inside he is like a pet lion of the DIVINE Realm basking in the luxuries of contentment with little from this world while from outside he is a spring lamb grazing on the smallest and freshest grass.
If we are wise we must be humble and if we are humble we must fo for the grace option in our spiritual growth.
I am humbly saying these seeing that many brothers and sisters cannot finish with miracle stories in which those truly of falsely projecting miraculous feats speak of themselves as “We, we, we…” as if they are royalty. THE PROPHET ALMOST NEVER SAID ‘WE’ but ‘I’- for he was humble.
Even Khidr spoke as “we” because powers make people drunk. Moses did not know what Khidr taught by Allah but in actual fact was greater than a thousand Khidrs simply because he was a messenger of Allah. He spoke of himself as ‘I’ and humbly looked to Allah at every junction of his heroic life of trials, tribulation and crises. About him Allah said “Kana indalllahi wajeeha- He was very prestigious/ beautiful in the Sight of Allah” (S. al Ahzab, 69). Similarly, it was Solomon AS who was the superior of Asaf who had brought the throne of Bilqis from Yemen to Jerusalem instantly. Let a story from sahaba also illustrate this point. During Umar’s time a fire broke out at one end of Madina which threatened to engulf all. Umar RA came to Tamim al Dari RA (who had psychic powers) and almost kicked him up from where he sat and ordered him to get up and put the fire out. Tamim duly obeyed. He walked to the place on fire and from a distance made some sweeping and collecting movements with his arms. At each wave of his arms the fire obeyed like a scared dragon and went out. Who was superior, Tamim or Umar?
All prophets and saints are given their miraculous ways but the really superior ones are given more general and diffuse powers which almost never expose themselves even to the superiors themselves. Allah spares them the cheap and showy version of powers and jealously wraps them up in wraps of grace and almost grace alone. If we want more nearness to Allah we must go for the grace. We must exhort others to go for the grace. We must not too much dwell on explicit powers. We must not cheat our brothers with inferior commodities. If you wonder why in many tariqats almost nobody is going anywhere but are stuck with their bad morals and habits from outside the tariqat, know that they almost certainly joined the tariqat for the wrong reason; they are salivating after powers. They end up getting no powers at all while at times even losing any grace they might have before joining.
It is responsibility of all who know the realities of spirituality to play down miracles and play up the grace which true spiritual quest promises and that should be also the motto of Sufism which after all is the truest spirituality of all when conceived and practised in entirely Qur’anic and Sunni formats. Let us for for such. Amen.
LOVE OF GOD
Love is the greatest and most graceful motivator, as proven by a good parent’s only too willing sacrifices for a child. There is a sad story about an old woman with a wayward, in fact very evil son. The son is a drunkard, a thief, a pathological gambler. Well, everybody knows that a gambler (and nowadays a drug addict) is such a desperate person so denuded of moral restraints that there is nothing he won’t dare and resort to in order to secure his next bet (or ‘fix’ in the case of the drug addict).
Now our desperado in the sad story, having run out of all short-term options for more money to feed his gambling habit, remembers his old mother he had abandoned long ago and for a change raids her home! He asks for the mum’s only remaining jewellery, her two gold bracelets she always wore on her wrist. You see, they were her only capital which she kept for her daughter then living somewhere else with her husband. The mum explains why she cannot give them to the son, pointing out that he had already taken all her money and jewellery and lost them on gambling and that his sister was already greatly victimised by the son’s avarice and that it was ‘over my dead body’. When the son receives this answer he knocks the mum down, presses her down and in his hurry and desperation cuts off her hand with the bracelets just to remove them as quickly as possible. In her tearful dying words the mother whispers “O my son, I know a place where police cannot find you. Go and hide there. I don’t want you to be hanged” (hanging was the punishment for murder then). You see, a mother’s love is till the end and even beyond!
But who gave (good) mothers this unconditional love for their children? And please remember, it is such a universal love that even fiercest animals share it. A lioness’s tender love for her cubs we see in nature documentaries with tearing eyes. A female crocodile, even more fierce than a lioness, does not guard only its babies but even her eggs with more ferocity than when hunting her victims. Can then there be any doubt that love is the strongest and most precious emotion sentient beings experience? Do we now see why all advanced religions sing the glories of love more than any other emotion or mood?
Now God says in His Glorious Koran that He is the Supreme and Source Lover Whose love for His creatures surpasses all love by any creature’s for others, amother or not. From the word go in His Book, the All-Gracious Allah calls Himself “Al Rahman, al Rahim” which respectively mean “The Universally Mercifully Caring” and “The Mercifully Tolerant and Forgiving on Demand”. His anger and punishment are forms of His Mercy in disguise as are those of a good parent. Adopt this faith and emulate God in universal merciful caring and tolerantly forgiving attitude and you are a true believer, a true Muslim (submitter to God) and in fact a full-fledged saint, a holy man or holy woman. If you take this correct view of God you are the wisest of men or woman and you are in for a great spiritual life where nothing this world can throw at you can upset you too much and lead you to bitter feelings or guilty acts of protest and frustration. You become like an ocean, an ocean of love, and oceans cannot be defeated or dreid up by fierce storms or angry currents, however strong.
Most evil and suffering come in this world from the lack of this perspective of existence, that the world is created and run by a Most Gracious and Wise Creator Whose most excellent moral qualities are ours to adopt and live from. Only by living from God can we save our souls from the hell in which live all godless, loveless souls and only by living from God can we bless and save our small place in the world if not the whole world. Amen.
A to Z OF DIVINE GRACE THROUGH THE ACE AND CONSTELLATION OF GRACE MUHAMMAD (sallahu alaihi wa sellem,) - THE EMBODIMENT OF DIVINE LOVING MERCY AND THE LOFTIEST EVER OF CHARACTERS
All praises be to Allah the Supreme Reality and Truth, the Fount of All Love and Compassion, the Single Creator and Sustainer of all existence and Allah’s choicest blessings and most generous greetings be on our master and master of all men (ins) and demon (jinn) and the last, final and greatest of Allah’s Prophets (S) and messengers and on all his other Prophets (S) and messengers and on the house of Muhammad and on all his true companions and on all who followed and are following and will be following him till the end of this world. Amen.
My dear readers, this work by this humble author, namely Dr Saydam Akpinar also
known as sheikh Abdul Ezel, half a century old disciple of the most illustrious Sufi master of our age Sheikh Muhammad Nazim al Haqqani (may Allah sanctify his mighty spiritual secret), is a humble attempt to bring to the world’s attention what a lofty and noble character our and all humanity’s best Muhammad (Allah’s blessing and greetings be on him- b&p for short).
His has been the most successful, most remembered and celebrated historical life and his legacy overtook all legacies of all Prophets (S) before him and he is the Prophet (S) with most following and the faith fastest growing and spreading. In fact all other religions are in decline, may be half of people of Christian origin are atheists now while his faith is going from strength to strength despite its inner and outer enemies’ unintended cooperation in blackening its image, one through insane satanic acts and the other through slander and unconscionable or ignorant condemnation.
Let there be no doubt that it was the True and Only God, namely ALLAH (which means THE God) who qualified and sent him as His last and final to all mankind with the full and genuine Guidance and the only true and valid religion in order to win over all other surviving or upcoming religions and it is Allah Who is witnessing to that effect. Read from the Qur,an if you wish:
“It is He (Allah) Who sent His messenger with Guidance and the Religion of Truth in order to make it triumph over all religion- Allah is enough as witness: Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (48: 28- 29)
Did he or did he not win? Did he not start from that most desolate, destitute and barbaric Arabia and ended up ruling over the hearts of a quarter of mankind over six continents and is not his religion which is widest believed among its members and is not belief in it both inside and outside his community rapidly growing? Are not all other great religions in decline, corrupted for ages from inside and abandoned in drones as modernity invaded? Advancement of science and technology corroded any faith in other communities among their intellectuals with rare exceptions while among Muslims belief is the rule at all levels of intellectual advancement rather than exception. Our professors, doctors, theoretical scientists, engineers, men of letters... triumphantly and blissfully continue to believe in God and all His Prophets, Prophets like Moses and Jesus and their supreme and final culmination Muhammad (sws) who taught mankind that all true Prophets (upon them all be peace) are Unitarians, i.e., they unified God and humanity, morality and conduct, law and morality, soul and body and worked for the ultimate fraternization of men under one God and one Law: The Law of faith in and service of One Supreme Creator and Cherisher Whose Ultimate Essence is- Loving Mercy.
Before Muhammad (sws) unification of mankind was impossible and each messenger of God had to address his local community and as far and wide as possible at the time which was not much. Allah chose Muhammad to launch the final push for the unification of mankind and lo and behold His religion reached and permanently claimed most of the Mediterranean basin, the whole of Middle East, most of Africa, Central and South Asia and the Pacific and at the rest it is the fastest growing.
What is attracting world’s populations to Islam? The reasons are many. Chief among them are:
1. It has the simplest imaginable creed: LA ILAHA ILLALLAH: There is no god but Allah (i.e., THE GOD). Allah is not a tribal, racial or partial prejudiced in any other way god but the God of all existence and utterly unlike anything He creates. Spiritually- and please stand firm- He is the TOP VALUE in that in human psychology Allah stands for what is the very best and noblest in man! Imagine a man who could not be morally more perfect, conduct-wise most gracious and heart-winning and charity-wise more than prepared to feed and clothe, and shelter and educate and cure and make all-round happy all humanity. This is the supreme man of God Islam defines and aims at evolving from the human raw material of this world. Islam names this universally loving and caring man a ‘believer’ (mu’min) with added synonyms like ‘waliyallah’ (friend of God), ‘muttaqi’ (God-conscious), ‘muhsin’ (gracious), ‘muqsit’ (just), ‘rauf’ (tender), ‘rahim’ (merciful)... any many more names of grace. All racial, national, regional... prejudices are deadly sins, all acts of fairness kindness worthiest of conduct.
2. It is the most science-friendly of religions: it has no war to fight against true science and responsible technology. It is the only- the only- religion whose advent caused an explosion in philosophical, scientific, technological and social advancement until by and from the 8th century to the 18th its philosophers, scientists and technologists were the teachers of whole world. As late as late 18th century Western physicians like Hahnemann the founder of homeopathy could boast against his fellow Western doctors of being able to study medicine in the Arabic originals of the classical Muslim doctors like Avicenna and Rhazes.
Additionally Muslims did not shy off admitting they owed a great deal to classical Greek and Indian scientists: Islam is race-, colour- and culture-blind, its outlook is universal and its quarry of cultural gold-digging is the whole earth. Muslims intermarried universally and managed to live side by side with all faith communities whether among or outside their political borders. After all, Islam was made in heaven as happiest marriages are said to be and it is a marriage of many couples, couples like faith and science, spiritual partiality and tolerance, working for this world and enjoying its legitimate pleasures and working for the happiness of a life to come at only a reasonable and eminently bearable expense of this one. As such, it not only abhors extreme forms of asceticism and sacrifice regarding them satanic arrogance and pride in the form of scoffing at God’s blessings under the guise of piety and advocates in general reasonable and thankful enjoyment of God’s both material and spiritual offers. It is therefore the most easy-going of religions and their most egalitarian, their most business-like and practical. It sets as its aim as full a development of man’s material and spiritual potentials not one spoiling the other. A Muslim saint is an ordinary-looking citizen working at a trade which sometimes includes teaching and mentoring, any decent trade. He is married with children, most usually monogamous; his most blazing quality is humility, affability, politeness, hospitality, fairness and charity. In short, he is a very likeable model citizen from whom no amount of misconduct can be detected by the most thorough espionage. The reason is simple: he lives with, in and from Allah!
3. It is not idealistic and utopian in anything but realistic and pragmatic and natural: it will make any and every concession to realism when circumstances leave no other alternative to protect the five things which it enshrines as basic human life. These five are protection of life, property, faith, honour and offspring. Accordingly the Qur’an allows falsely declaring against Islamic faith when faced with torture or death or other serious threat while the heart remains at peace with Islam. It discourages health-destroying, anti-family, unemployed and self-prescribed or invented pieties and imposes reasonable, socially participating and responsible lifestyle. In one arduous expedition under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad (sws) it was Ramadan and while some of the soldiers were fasting others were not because Islam allowed not fasting during long journeys. Because the non-fasters were cooking for and feeding the fasters the Prophet (S) said that those who served the fasters had derived more merit than those who were served. You see? No vain idealism.
But no religion can create a uniformly pious and charitable community. Man is never perfect nor men are equal in various abilities. This whole world is based on differences in quality and the quantity of each quality. In fact the Arabic word for ‘create an original thing’ is ‘fatara’ which also means ‘to crack, split, separate’. Allah calls Himself “Fatira-ssamawati wa’l ard” which means “The Seperater-Manifester of the heavens and the earth” (6: 14) and explains “The heavens and earth were joined together and We separated them”. Incidentally this fits perfectly with modern cosmology. When a whole is cracked it breaks into many and various things. Will not a uniform block of enriched fissile material, like of uranium or plutonium break into a thousand entities, some lighter elements, some particles and some radiation. Is not the Big Bang theory the current theory of creation? Please compare the creation story in the Bible and the many references in the Qur’an to creation and you will see my point: the Qur’an definitely looks the more science-friendly one.
The true test of a religion’s merit is the degree of realism, egalitarianism, life- and welfare-assertion it represents. Islam is the most realistic of all religions given its reasonable creed, its eminently practicable and serviceable Law, its realism in the face of new challenges and its insistence that top piety is top sociability and charity in a fully practicable format. It is also the most egalitarian: there is no churchman and layman, no nobility and commonality, no black and white race, no imposer and imposed; it is basically democratic in the sense that all Muslims, if they so wish, can join the political process and speak their minds and run for office, as demonstrated by the political proceedings which followed the demise of the Prophet (S). The community debated the political succession and after a match of rhetoric a successor was elected. Sure it was a simple democracy but it worked only too well. To begin with, it did not remain as the election process: all citizens had easy access to the elected ruler who took pains not only to be accessible and responsive to all and sundry but to live as simply and frugally as the average citizen, enjoying no props and luxuries of office. So good and lovely a regime does not exist today, given the improvements and sophistication time could allow are taken into account.
With all above as background what we want to state and demonstrate in this essay is that spiritually most edifying and ennobling and socially harmonising and integrating nature and aim of Islam as best represented by the conduct, attitude and in general the working example of Muhammad drawing exhaustively on the definitely most authoritative source of sources the Qur’an which our mother and the Prophet’s (S) favourite wife Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her, RA for short) who summarised the Prophet’s (S) character when she said “It was the Qur’an”. We will also draw upon the more reliable part of the Hadith, those researched and largely agreed-upon reports on the Prophet’s (S) life, conduct, comments and advice as well as his best companions.
Our search and analysis of the greatness o the Prophet (S) shall be in matters in which we can emulate him realistically and not in matters of myth, miracle or hyperbole but of the character of the Prophet (S) a lot of which is for infantile cultivation unsuited to mature minds who are after ways of perfecting and ennobling their character. Instead we need to study the character of the prophet (S). After all the Prophet (S) defined his mission in no uncertain terms when he said “I have not been sent but in order to build up the complete edifice of the graces of noble character”. This is exactly and entirely what we ourselves are after. Those aiming at physical miraculous feats shall be disappointed here and will have to look elsewhere. Pursuing miracles is not a pious ambition and even when successful (which can never be except as satanic accidents at cross purposes with Divine Favour) and has no salvific (salvation bringing) value whatsoever but is conducive to eventual self-destruction.
For example, it does not excite us so much to read or hear that a tree bowed or a camel spoke to the Prophet (S) but it excites us very much to learn that the Prophet (S) forgave all his worst enemies once he conquered them and they submitted to him. Only in such acts of great human grace we can find our ennoblement of character and the motivation to perform the pious and gracious acts which will save us in the judgment of Allah. This website therefore is for mature minds sincere and serious in absorbing the golden qualities of the Prophet’s heart among which humility for and before Allah and towards all servants of Allah except when fighting for Allah and all the rest of sterling qualities like truthfulness, fairness, loving mercy, thorough charity, consideration and good manners, loyalty and courage in front of testing challenges etc are. The picture which will insha-Allah emerge from this study will portray a man so beautiful, so magnificent, so magnanimous, so constructive, so much a realist, so charitable, so tolerant, so dependable, so kindly forgiving and so spot-on wise... that it will become clear to all sensible and sincere students that here we have a man the human race never saw before or after him and so perfect that he can never be excelled. Please read and hand on heart you decide.
THE NOBLEST SOUL - THE NOBLEST SOUL FOR SALVATION
AN UNPRECEDENTED EXPLORATION OF MUHAMMAD’S (sws) HOLY SECRET
INTRODUCTION
History records many spiritual guides some of which are credited with founding a great world religion. Often this is an exaggeration. Not only the biographies, sayings, actions and conduct ascribed to these leaders look at least partly unhistorical and instead legendary and mythical but a careful study of these dubious sources often fail to establish that the persons in question intended or succeeded in a personal sense to found and name a new religion. Before we explain this statement it may be the time to add that deliberately designing and naming and founding a new religion either under an entirely new name or halfway between the name of a long established religion and the new cult is rather a new phenomenon.
A good example may be Mormonism. This claims to be a new form of Christianity. A certain American lad called Joseph Smith claimed that he had met an angel who led him to the discovery of a new bible inscribed on gold foil. It dated from a lost tribe of Israel who had found its way to America. A prophet of this tribe met Smith and delivered to him the said revelations. Interestingly the resulting ‘bible’ is entirely modelled on the mainstream Christian bible and is similarly crammed with tribal details and biographies, genealogies, good, bad or silly deeds of very many persons with strange names, myths, narratives, exhortations, poems and apocalyptic and eschatological material. Whatever its merits and demerits this new ‘Christian cult’ or religion can be wholly credited to the said Joseph Smith who called himself a prophet although it was a bit modified by his successor Bigham Young who led his Mormon flocks to a new Jerusalem at Utah where they founded the Salt Lake City which is still thriving spectacularly. Another similar founder of a new religion is Rev. Moon and still another Ron Hubbard (Scientology). Only very many more have similarly been founded by as many persons throughout the ages. On the Islamic side Bahaism is certainly the most recent and moderately successful example.
Perhaps surprisingly to the less well informed, none of the traditionally well-known and widely followed prophets founded a religion as the above- named examples did. Moses did not found Judaism, Jesus did not found Christianity and Muhammad did not found Islam. What they claimed was that they were not founding anything but was renewing what they already found in place and functioning for centuries. Moses was not changing the faith Noah or Abraham represented, Jesus could not more own up to Moses and to the Law Moses was given (Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah/Law of Moses. I came not to abolish but to fulfil it. The heavens and the earth may pass away but not a single word, a single letter or a tittle of it shall pass away, said he)and Muhammad was eulogising and repeating and improving upon both with God’s permission and help, a mission the same God, namely Allah Who sent all three above named messengers in their respective turns and times. Mind you, Jesus spoke Aramaic and in Aramaic God is called Allah like in Arabic, so Jesus, like Muhammad (sws) invited people to Allah.
The most instructive will be taking Muhammad’s (sws) claim: He said he was revealed to by the very same God who had revealed a faith and a law to Moses and to Jesus after Moses and now to him Muhammad- that the only valid religion (way of salvation) was recognising the unity of God, believing in Him and in His infinite goodness and power and justice and serving Him through becoming good and just towards all servants of God as long as they would accept it and preaching to all on these lines. This attitude was called ISLAM which meant both submission and peace and therefore taken together Islam meant achieving peace both in one’s heart and in one’s human society through thorough submission to God Who represents the very best in a sane and wise person’s mind and heart.
For their prophetic guidance services none of these three greatest prophets asked any reward from their audience or followers. They did everything they did for them for God’s beautiful face’s sake and nothing else. All died poor and all left behind them no victims but grateful mourners. Whoever Moses (pbuh) and Muhammad (sws) punished they punished on behalf of Allah.
Because God’s religion can only grow over time the teachings of Jesus Christ were both a confirmation of and improvement upon those of Moses and the teachings of Muhammad have been a confirmation of and improvement upon of both Moses and Jesus. My dear readers do not have to take my word for this claim: as we move on, the validity of this claim, with the help and by the permission of God, will be amply clear and convincing.
This website shall explain and demonstrate what true faith in and true obedience to God means. It will take God’s last and final true prophet and messenger to mankind as the main example, research into his character and conduct, attitude and aspiration and his undoubted success which no other prophet could achieve so fully on such universal scale and be blessed by the protected authenticity of his heritage and legacy which heritage and legacy survive intact in two great literature: The Qur’an (wrongly spelled as ‘Koran) and the Hadith, that massive collection of primarily and largely the Prophet’s and secondarily and to a lesser extent and import, of his disciples’ acts and sayings.
We need not tarry more: All our claims we made so far and much more in similar vein will insha Allah (God willing) shall rise like a hundred thousand suns from behind the dark horizons of ignorance and drench the dear readers in their most nourishing and blessing light. Then and only then the true worth of Muhammad (sws), that most slandered and image-distorted claimant to Divine messengership whose almost exclusive victimisation among all prophets point to a phobia among his detractors who are either victims of ignorance or mortal jealousy.
1. LET THE QUR’AN DO THE GROUND WORK
The Holy Qur’an begins with this brief chapter called ‘al Fatiha’, or ‘Introduction’:
In the Name of Allah, the Universally Loving Merciful and Mercifully Forgiving:
All praise is to Allah, the Lord of all worlds and all mankind
The Universally Loving-Merciful, the Mercifully Forgiving
The Master of the Day of Judgment
Thee we worshipfully serve and from Thee we seek help
Please guide us to the Right Path
The Path of those whom Thou hast blessed
Not of those who deserved wrath, nor of those who went astray. Amen. (Q, Ch.1)
Please look at this brief introductory chapter of Allah’s Last Message to mankind, namely the Qur’an and tell me whether any message claiming Divine authorship could ever make more lofty and to-the point introduction to and intimation of its aim.
Let us analyse it a bit: The Inspiring Spirit of the Qur’an firstly presents the Author’s credentials. That is not in a vainglorious and pompous spirit but in a spirit of through and through grace. The Author is motivated by His loving mercy directed to the entire creation and in the case of sentient and responsible creatures like men He declares upfront that He is and shall remain mercifully forgiving towards them in response to all their doings provided they just ‘sane up’ (my coinage) from their sinful lapses and with sincere sorrowful repentance turn to their Creator. This interpretation is confirmed many times in the Qur’an, one of which reads: “When those who believe in our verses come to you tell them: Peace be on you! Your Lord imposed on Himself loving mercy- whoever among you commits an evil without realising and then repents and reforms himself let him know that Allah is mercifully forgiving” (6: 54). Please note that no intermediaries or vicarious sufferers are necessary! These kind of invented means of salvation are invented so as to maintain a parasitical class of salvation merchants who rise and fatten at the expense of the rest. No wonder most of them under pompous titles and in royal dress and premises rule over thousands and millions, depending on their equally invented and imposed jurisdictions. The Qur’an recognises and endorses no such parasites and in fact exposes and condemns them in no uncertain terms. Read if you wish:
“O believers, in fact most of the priests and monks consume the wealth of people on false grounds and mislead people from the path of Allah. Those who thus hoard wealth...” (9: 34).
But His loving mercy is not particularised at forgiving repentant sinners instantly and fully. He has a far vaster, in fact universal loving mercy which blesses all creation. Yes, there is some, in fact a lot of suffering in this world, but compared to the amount of pleasure the suffering is the exception and not the rule. Why do we have suffering? We all suffer from time to time and it has little to do with material poverty but much to do with ignorance, especially spiritual and psychological ignorance. Only too many materially well-off people suffer as badly as anybody else although their riches conceal and their diversions allay it. The reason why they suffer is that they are spiritually ignorant destitutes. For example, there are some young women who fall into severe depression and may commit suicide simply because they think they are not thin enough. Others withdraw from social contact and become lonely misfits simply because they are unaware of what happy opportunities and satisfactions social life may supply. All in all, social misfits are unaware of God’s wisdom and loving mercy and inflict on themselves an ignorant revenge they have no power to inflict on others who seem happier. Some go ahead and do inflict vengeful acts on others including total strangers and innocents. These are nowadays called anti-social thugs. Lastly, too much power, that is an amount of power not balanced by enough psychological maturity corrupts the power-holder and we get tyrants and dictators. Allah’s message to whole mankind, namely the Qur’an, purports to replace that ignorance with knowledge and with self-understanding which automatically lead to the understanding of others. Read if you wish:
“It is He (Allah) Who, together with His angels, showers blessings on you in order to take you out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge and understanding- He is so loving merciful towards the believers! The Day when they join Him their greeting shall be ‘Peace!” and He has prepared for them a gracious reward” (33: 43- 44).
As we acquire more spiritual knowledge and thereby refine and enlighten our minds and hearts our mutual love and charitable cooperation increase and sufferings to which men are liable to can be addressed and removed more. Suffering can never be entirely removed from our lives: it has a mission ordained by our Wise and Resourceful Creator- Who can enjoy rest if not after some hard toil, who can enjoy a meal if not after some hungry time, who can enjoy health as well as somebody who became ill and recovered? Who can enjoy a togetherness more than one who was separated from his mate for a painful while? We should realise that creation is based on the creation of differences and opposites and without these two there can be no creation let alone perception and consciousness in general. What can be more human than one needing something, the other satisfying that need and both feeling happier as a result?
As creatures, suffering is part of our lot and our Creator sees to it that we learn both from experience and any Divine Guidance through His messengers: Wise and inspired souls can never do without either if we want real and enough mental and spiritual development . The Qur’an is supplying a lot of this.
Secondly, the Qur’an is personified in a particular man named Muhammad the Messenger of Allah. The proof that this is so is the hadith (report) that when our mother Aisha was asked about the Prophet’s character her reply was “Don’t you read the Qur’an? The Qur’an was his character. So let us make this discovery in our Chapter Two.
2. THE CHARACTER OF MUHAMMAD (sws)
Allah says all the following, among many others in the praise of His messenger:
1. “You are not, thanks to your Lord’s blessing, a madman (as your adversaries would have it). Indeed for you there is an inexhaustible reward. Indeed you are of a great character”(68: 2-4). How great we will soon see.
2. “Such a messenger has come to you from among your ranks, to whom your any suffering causes great distress. He is tender and lovingly merciful towards the believers (9: 128)
3. (O Muhammad!) We have not sent you but as an embodiment of loving mercy to all mankind (21: 107)
Because Muhammad (sws) was inviting people to outgrow their tribal or national prejudices, recognise that they were equally created by the one and same God Allah Who is out to teach to and prescribe for them the same true faith and universally valid and uniform set of laws and moral values which were entirely about equality, justice and mutual charity his too tribe- and social class-prejudiced adversaries called him a madman. Not only that was untrue, but on the contrary Muhammad was a mighty great character filled with noblest brotherly feelings about and aspirations for his fellow human-beings whom he wanted to see equal brothers and sisters. He might argue with and exchange some angry or resentful words with his uncomprehending, haughty adversaries but when it came to believers he could not be more tender, caring and loving. Lastly, he was not particular to his tribe which was the Meccan tribe of Quraish but was full of care and concern for all mankind from one end of the world to the other. He was an embodiment, that is to say an incarnation of Allah’s infinite loving mercy towards all mankind. This last point about Allah may be best documented by the verse “O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female and made you into races and nations so that you recognise, treasure one another and exchange civilities. Without doubt the noblest among you is the most pious of you (and not of this race or class) (49: 13).
The Prophet (sws) explained more “Neither Arab is superior to non-Arab nor non-Arab is superior to Arab. Superiority of human quality is based on piety alone”. With one stroke fifteen centuries ago this greatest and most enlightened of man introduced the universal equality of men on the one hand and showed them the goalpost of competition: They should compete in attaining highest morality and gracefulest manners. The Prophet could not be more specific about what was meant by his being sent as an embodiment of loving mercy to all mankind: His mission was summarised in this saying of his: “I have not been sent but for me to build up the most complete edifice of noblest morality and gracefulest manners”. Who can spot a single another man known to history who could come even half way to such statement and intent of a mission? The next greatest prophet Jesus Christ, as far as judged by his sayings in the gospels came nowhere near Muhammad in the clarity, nobility and universality of his statements of mission, nor his career came anywhere near Muhammad’s God-driven and God-victorious achievement. While Muhammad’s Law (Shariah) beat by a far margin that of Moses (Torah) in perfection and scope, Sufism the spirituality of Islam outclassed the spirituality of Christianity by light-years.
One has only to read the Sufi classics and Christian monastic classics and become aware of the unbridgeable gap of both quality and quantity. Neither the Old nor the New Testament are an answer to the Qur’an in majesty and fairness, nor any saint in any other tradition outside Islam can match the practicality, grace, elegance and the gnosis of Sufi masters and without doubt the greatest ever poet of Divine love is Rumi who said “I wish I could be the speck of dust on the feet of Muhammad”. Why do you think Muhammad is the most slandered and maligned of all religious leaders among non-Muslims? Envy and jealousy. Because he is the Joseph of the prophetic brotherhood and the Cinderalla of the monotheistic sisterhood comprising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is not that Moses or Jesus could ever dislike Muhammad- they can only be loving brothers serving the same God with the same Noble Aim. On the contrary, like all spiritually mature souls they could only love and agree. The war is between the jealous misguided followers of each master but mostly the followers of the older faiths against the youngest. So Allah says “O believers, you will be hearing lots of teasing and hurting words from those given the Bible before you and from the polytheists. If you keep patience and conduct yourselves piously this then is the most precious of conduct (3: 186).
We may now proceed to analyse and demonstrate what a perfectly practical humane character was Muhammad and how we portray him from the reliable information at our disposal in Hadith literature and see whether Providence provided another example of a man as thoroughly and realistically anywhere near to perfection as Muhammad. Far more is known about him than all classical religious prophetic figures put together and this alone should be enough to show whom God elected as His chosen final and universal messenger to all mankind as the Qur’an the Book of God testifies in so unambiguous terms.