The Heart Of The Prophet (sws)

 

 

THE HEART OF THE PROPHET

 

INTRODUCTION - The Prophet of Allah (sws) said “Allah does not look (so much) at your forms and deeds but rather at your hearts and intentions”.  The Prophet sws spoke the truth.
It is our heart’s intention that we find out which sort of heart to make our heart so that when Allah looks at it He will be pleased with what He sees.
Please tell me dear reader, can there be a worthier heart to have than the one its Creator delights and therefore resides in it?

Does such a perfect heart exist and if so where is it and how to make it ours?   This essay is about just that.

THE PROPHET’S (sws) HEART - Whose heart can be purer as well as vaster than the Prophet’s?  Had it not been so somebody else with the best heart would have to be the chosen recipient of Allah’s Revelation.  The Prophet’s heart was the purest, strongest and vastest.  Purest because only a pure heart can store Allah’s Revelation without corrupting it.  Strongest because only a strong enough heart can withstand the horrendous impact of the Revelation from Allah. He Almighty said:
“Had we sent down this Qur’an on a mountain you would certainly see the mountain awed and exploded from the fear of Allah” (59: 21).
Vastest,  because only such a heart can contain it and contemplate the Recelation’s depths and possibilities.

Can we make this Prophetic heart our own?  Certainly not fully and not directly.  But perhaps but there is a way of profiting from it with a great profit.  After all Allah testifies that the truths He is revealing to His prophets are available for our hearts to see provided we open them to faith.  That faith is the Prophet’s faith and by sharing our faith with him he shares his heart’s lights and insights with ours for “believers are brothers”

 

THE PROPHET’S   IS A BELIEVER’S HEART, WORRYING AND WISHING - Allah said in the  last but one verse of Surat al Baqara

“The prophet believed in what has been send down to him by his Lord; and so did the believers.  All belived in Allah and in His angels and in His Books and in His messengers. “We do not discriminate between His messengers” they say “We heard and obeyed,  grant Thy ample forgiveness o our Lord. Unto Thee is our return” (2: 285).  

A believer is a believer because he believes without direct witness what Allah revealed,  simply because he or she loves Allah too much to deny His existence or doubt His loving compassion towards His servants.  If and once something is personally witnessed for sure it is no longer faith but fisthand knowledge (yaqeen).  Although faith is not as sure-footed as firsthand knowledge it is more meritorious.  Firsthand knowledge of normally unseen realities is in itself neutral. Iblis has had firsthand knowledge of Allah’s existence, His angels and the paradise and the hell but because he loved his ego and not Allah this certainty gave him no benefit.  In fact everybody deep down knows Allah and recognizes Truth but they are laid waste by Truth instead of saved, because they hate it.

 

This is very important for us:  Our salvation do not come from firsthand knowledge however we yearn for it but from our faith without firsthand knowledge because faith is loving consent to Allah’s message.  You see it is the love of Allah that counts and does the trick.  This love is tested by the deliberate absence of direct witness.
That the faith of prophets are like ours but only incomparably stronger is seen from our master Ibrahim’s  AS  pleading to Allah
“Ibrahim said ‘Lord show me how you revive the dead’.  “Have you not believed?” said Allah. “Indeed but so that my heart is settled”  (2: 260).

 

Then Allah showed him how.   Uzair AS asked a similar question and was satisfied likewise. Musa AS asked to see Allah. He was chastened by what was shown to him instead- Allah shone forth to the mountain which went to pieces from the experience- and Musa AS repented most wholeheartedly. All of which show that all rewards are given us not from having firsthand knowledge but loving faith in Revelation.  The Prophet’s sws pure and beautiful heart was the repository of strongest faith possible for anybody. Rather so must ours be.  In faith there is yearning, there is holy anxiety, there is a constant urge to glorify Allah and pray to Him feverishly and incessantly and especially to offer repentance.  Allah delights in this striving from beyond a veil of His elected servants and piles reward upon reward for them as they keep at it.  Listen if you wish to some of the Prophet’s anxious and arduous supplications:

 

“With the Name of Great Allah Who when called upon comes to help and when asked grants!  O Allah I ask Thee by virtue of my witnessing that Thou art Allah and there is no god but Thee, the Unique, the Self-Sufficient,  Who has neither begat nor was begotten,
O Allah, I ask Thee by virtue of all praises being due for Thee, there is no God but Thee, all alone without partner, the Most Tender and Ingratiating, the Originator of the heavens  and earth,  o Posessed of Majesty and Grace,  O the Ever-Living and Always in Charge.  High exalted is my Lord the Sublime and Highest of Givers,

 

O Allah I ask of Thee forgiveness and indulgence concerning my religion, and my world and my family and my property.  O Allah cover up my shame  and allay my fear;  I am happy with Allah as my Lord and Islam as my religion and Muhammad sws my prophet and messenger.

 

O Allah I take refuge in Thee from gloom and worry and sadness and I take refuge in Thee from powerlessness and laziness and I take refugee in Thee from cowardice and stinginess and I take refuge in Thee from bankruptcy and men glowering at me”.

 

Look at the desperately profuse praises and pious worries and fears and and the general existential anxiety suffusing the Prophet’s heart at all times.  Look at his humble awareness of his humble creaturely status and need in front of the Almighty All-Merciful and his fear of being overwhelmed by debts and liabilities and prospective humiliation by his creditors!  None of the arrogance and holier-than-thou, in fact almost divine claims and pretentions of over-ascetic monks or heavenly ranked and royally robed high priests are seen in him in the least but a pure heart totally oblivious to his worth and over-awed and overwhelmed by the Almighty and All-Majestic!  

 

His admitting his humble worldly needs and fallibilities did not mean that he was interested in this world for its own sake.  But he was aware of his need for and lot of living in this world and the necessity of attenting to its thousand affairs and undergo its thousand sufferings and privations yet his real concern was his standing with Allah and his future in His Providence.  Hear him pouring out his heart in these heart-rending notes:

 

“O Allah,  I ask of Thee equanimity after any  execution of Thy Will and the pleasant coolness of existence after death and the delicious taste of looking at Thy Face and ardour towards meeting Thee without coming to painful harm beforehand or afflicted by misleading confusions.

O Allah I take refuge in Thee lest I wrong others or others wrong me or I trespass others rights or they do mine or I commit a sin or error Thou shalt  not be forgiving.
O Allah I take refuge in Thy pleasure from Thy anger and in Thy indulgence from Thy punishment.  I take refuge in Thee from Thee,  I cannot praise Thee enough, Thou art Thou praisest Thyself”

 

We find the Prophet sws distressed and even terrorized when the first revelation came to him.  It took him a very long time to get used to the idea of a prophetic mission and initially feared demonic possession and at one stage even contemplated and nearly attempted suicide.  This was when following the fist revelations there came a three  year long interruption of it.  Had Allah found him wanting and abandoned him?  Had he done something which made Allah angry with him?  Then came
“By the mid-morning and the night when it descends, thy Lord did not abandon thee nor is he angry with thee.  The later shall be better for the from the earlier.  Thy Lord shall give thee and thou shalt be satisfied. Ha he not found the an orphan and sheltered thee?  And found thee lost and guided thee? And found thee poor and enriched thee?  Therefore the orphan do not oppress and the beggar do not scold and thy Lord’s favour proclaim”  (Surat ad Duha).

 

From such uncertain and anguished beginnings his heart gradually got used to the idea of being a Divinely inspired prophet and and commissioned messenger until Allah gave his heart the full confidence of a loyal and faithful servant and friend:

 

“O prophet, We have sent thee as a witness and a giver of good news and a warner and a caller to Allah and a torch giving light.  Give the believers the goodnews that for them there is in store for them with Allah great generosity.  Do not obey the unbelievers and the hypocrites and bear with their torments;  Allah is enough to put thy trust in”  (al Ahzab 45-48).

 

He finally crowns him with His full sanctification of his status and blessing with full support
“Indeed Allah and His angels shower blessings on the Prophet sws.  O believers you also do invoke blessings on him and greet him with best greetings”  (al Ahzab 56).

 

As he grows older with more and more glorious successes behind him his confidence and happiness naturally increases but his awe, fear and love for Allah also do so.  The very last revelation, namely, Surat al Fath reflects this:

 

“When Allah help arrives and thou seest people flocking to Allah’s religion then glorify thy Lord with His praises.  Indeed He has always been an ardent accepter of repentance”.   As his appointed time drew closer the Prophet sws increased his glorifications for Allah and his holy tongue moved more and more in words of most ardent repentance. 
Fearing that he could die owning a single penny from this world he asked the last few coins under his mattress to be distributed in charity and then and only then he felt ready to meet his Lord, rising his right hand towards the Heaven and uttering his last words “ila rafiq al a’la”,  i.e.

“To the Highest Companion”.

 

THE PROPHET’S (SWS) HEART IS THE SAINTLIEST HEART-  FULL OF RAHMAT. Allah said

“Indeed has come to you a messenger from your own kind.  Anything that hurts  you bears on him mightily. He is only too tender and merciful towards the believers”   (9: 128)
He is merciful even towards the unbelievers.  Allah praises him while appearing blaming him
“You are about to waste yourself with well-wishing despair because they are not becoming believers (26: 3)

He loves people even when they are infidels.  Allah said:
”You cannot lead to the Straight Path whom you love but only Allah can guides whom He will”  (28: 56)

Allah discloses how much rahmat (loving mercy) His Messenger sws represents in His Name:
“We have not sent you but, out of our Rahmat, as a body of rahmat to all beings”  (21: 107)
NO OTHER PROPHET WAS SO DESCRIBED AND PRAISED!

 

LESSONS FOR US - Allah said “In the Messenger of Allah there is a beautiful exemplar for those who expect to meet  Allah and the Last Day and remember Allah often and apleanty”  (33: 21).

So we must study him in all his saving aspects and emulate him.  Since all his saving acts originate from his pure and merciful heart what most concerns us is making his heart ours. 
Like him, for example we must keep trying doing our very best to bring forth in our heart all the potentials of loving kindness towards all creation and more particularly fellow men and most particularly fellow believers.

 

We must cultivate our heart, purifying it more and more and still more hopefully until one day we find in it the secret of “being sent as a body of mercy to all beings”.  Then we have partook something of the Prophet’s heart (sws). 

 

How can we purify it?  You know what a sculpture is and how best it is made.  A rock of suitable shape and size is taken and using various tools like a hammer and a chisel it is chiselled until only the form we want remains unchiselled away.  So were made those magnificent, very life-like Greek and Roman statues of their gods and heroes. 
The model to reproduce the form of is the Prophet’s heart (sws). The crude rock is our heart.  The model is viewed through the Qur’an and the Hadith. The tools for chiselling and polishing are the commandments and injunctions of Islam and the reported ways (Sunna) of the Prophet. Which means all those who want to model their hearts on the Prophet sws need studying the Qur’an and the Sunna  in great detail all their lives as much  as they can.  This becomes much easier and effective when done under the tutorship of an accomplished teacher who has already modelled his heart after the Prophet’s sws.   These are usually sufi saints, I mean the genuine ones.  That is why we need the sufi tariqats,  I mean the true ones.  Finding and joining one may not be easy.  And we cannot afford losing time.  The next best way, pending the joining a true saint,  is reading the best available translations of the Qur’an and the Hadith with most authoritative commentaries included.  

 

But just reading about him will be hardly enough.  We can additionally look out to spot an exemplary scholarly teacher who is endowed with very good manners, well-known for his disinterest in this world,  his piety and his charity.  True and accomplished Sufis make the best exemplars.  Their scholarly knowledge about the moral and spiritual qualities and the Sunna of the Prophet sws plus their long cultivates spiritual connection to him offers us the best bet. 

 

The following are some of the qualities we should cultivate on the Prophet’s (sws) model:   Strongest possible faith (iman sahih), praising Allah whatever happens (hamd), Keeping of commandments in their entirety (taqwa), loving compassion towards all creation (rahmat lil alamin) , especial mercy towards believers (ra’fat) generosity of spirit (karam),  open-handedness (jud),  justice (‘adl),  adding beauty and extra generosity to all good acts (ihsan),  ardour for all commendable acts (himmat),   courage (shaja’at),  indulging the weak’s shortcomings and mistakes (‘afw),   forgiving offences against own person (ghufran),  patience for the sake of Allah (sabr),   gratitude towards both Allah and benefactors (shukr),  steadfastness in the way of Allah (thabat),  truthfulness (sidq) and sincerity for Allah (ikhlas). 

These can only be successfully cultivated when constantly contemplated upon and our hearts monitored for lack or lapse concerning them.  They are very greatly helped by associating ourselves with brothers (or sisters) who have so far been more successful than us.  
May Allah help us to steer ourselves into the Prophet’s (sws) ways and qualities so that we spiritually dissolve and become transformed in him to our highest moral and spiritual potentials.  Amen.

 

 

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SPIRIT - SUFISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM

 

This article purports to help spiritually-minded religious people to understand certain facts about religious understanding, misunderstanding and strife that never let them alone.
In all major religions there are two poles of understanding which take exception to each other:  Those who know  that both the scripture and the saintly teachers mostly employ the language of spirit and  those who think that everything is literally meant. To see how striking is the difference and what are the relative merits of the two attitudes let us take an example from the traditions (Hadith) of the Prophet of Islam (sws).  He said “Had people known the merit in calling the ‘adhan’ (the muslim call to prayer) they would draw swords against each other to call it”.  Now for the skilled in spiritual language what this only means is the following :“Calling the believers to prayer is a wonderful function to gain God’s favour, therefore don’t be lazy about it”.  For the literal- minded it may mean something entirely different and in the worst case it may be  more horrible than ridiculous: “Muslims should race to the mosque to be first to call the adhan and when their paths cross they should attack each other with swords if necessary to win the prize”!  

 

You can apply this to all verses of the Qur’an and all reports of Hadith.  Except for the most practical and explicit statements in both, the language is spiritual and its understanding needs the help of the emotional sensitivity of the heart and the intuitive side of the brain.  That is how we are able to understand the above hadith correctly.  Otherwise the at every adhan time mosques and minarets could be slaughterhouses.  Now please extend this to that never going away phenomenon called ‘fundamentalism’ and see for yourself that this plague affecting all religions is based on a heartless and intuitively blind character make up in certain individuals.  Psychiatrists recognize that there indeed are many individuals whose minds are simplistic and literalistic and have difficulty even understanding and appreciating humour and jokes. So if you verbally joke with one of them like saying “you naughty boy” he will take it literally and be upset.  The extreme case of this literalism is met in the sufferers from autism (a mental disorder from birth).  A minority of autistics are intellectually very brilliant and can even become good mathematicians.  But all suffer from an extreme affective (emotional, socializing) poverty as well as blindness to humour and metaphor. If you say to an autistic “To find a job for you is in the hands of John” he will go and look at the hands of John to see if the job is there.  This feature of autism in a milder form is exactly what religious fundamentalists suffer from. In young children the same literalism is present but the child smoothly advances from that level to being able to appreciate humour and metaphor. Some children however make insufficient progress in that direction and therefore their understanding of religion remains at the level of the literal understanding which is only proper to children.  Therefore if the Scripture says “God made man from clay with His two hands” the obvious picture he gets as an innocent child and he is naturally happy with sticks with  him all his life and he can never understand or love a deeper, metaphoric or spiritual interpretation. 

 

The Flat Earthists among Christians are a good example as are millenialists and other literal apocalyptics. That again is innocent because they cannot know better. And many literal-minded religionists are good-natured sweet believers fearing God and harming nobody and indeed very charitable. They don’t mind others talking or expounding spiritual alternatives but simply listen with a respectful boredom as children would listen to adults talking politics or philosophy. But there is also a criminally-minded kind of literalist.  These rise in anger and attack others who have naturally transcended the literal phase of religious understanding and as spiritual adults are joyfully sailing in the spiritual phase. Feeling left out and suspecting contempt from these ‘adults’ this bad- tempered  oversize child holds a grudge against spiritual adults who for their part may subscribe to Sufi teachers (sheikhs) and help themselves to the more mature material. Also please remember that irrespective of his spiritual infancy the fundamentalist may have a very high IQ and argue his case with great eloquence and pursue it with equally effective action and ruthlessness sometimes bordering  or even landing on murderousness. 

 

So in summary fundamentalism in its aggressive form is based on both a mental and moral defect and needs a lot of tact and vigilance to avoid its wrath. As it is impossible to persuade such believers about the merits of spiritual understanding debates and arguments should better be avoided lest ‘fitna’ erupts.  Lastly it is equally important to note that such spiritual immatures are not only among fundamentalist sectarians but ironically enough among even Sufi rank and file who now understand their sheikh’s description of spiritual things literally and cannot progress for a lifetime beyond their infancy. And again while some of these are innocent, well-meaning and very charitable dervishes some others may be a disgrace to Sufism on account of their fanatical, malicious and aggressive dispositions thereby becoming a headache for their sheikhs and fellow dervishes. Again tolerance, accommodation and forgiveness are called for and all true sheikhs are masters of that.  The motto is “Love conquers, if not, tolerance and charity silences and pacifies”.  We have to live with both good and bad infants and Allah will reward us more for such kindness and resignation than for many other things.  Amen.

 

 

THE ORIGINAL SIN

 

Our Christian Abrahamic faith cousins having pondered long and hard about what condemned man to damnation here and hereafter was a sin committed by our parents Adam and Eve, committed on the instigation of ‘the serpent’ (identified with the Satan).  But what was the sin?  Some argued it was pride (Origen), some was adamant and won:  it was SEX! (Augustine).  Of course sex was almost the exclusive obsession of all Christians grown in non-Semitic soil by the celibate Paul against the wish of the real disciples of the Christ in the Jerusalem Church. It was an obsession in a negative sense, as a crust of phobia enclosing a burning and savage desire for what it otherwise dreaded. When at long last Augustine concluded that it was the ‘Original Sin’ which was inherited from the first couple and committed by all parents since there was a general sense of relief that the mystery of man’s misery was eventually discovered. So, the existing ‘sexophobia’ was canonized and all Christians and in fact the whole mankind was theoretically condemned to hell-  to the great relief of Christian theologians. 

 

Now nobody could afford to ignore the sole salvific role of the Christ and therefore the churchmen themselves as the sole dispensers of salvation. What a theoretical breakthrough it was!  The beauty of it was that nobody could escape the damnation because everyone was born of sexual union. It was the spiritual equivalent of the discovery of the perpetual motion machine in physics.  Then the church had even more justification to prescribe curbs and curses on people’s private parts and lives and love-stricken hearts.  Unfortunately, like all wrong theories it never worked without traumatising people, distorting and misleading their irrepressible sexual urges and barking up the wrong tree for the fending of the Devil and his evil. Naturally the anathema made sex even more attractive and people more ingenuous, innovative and daring in its pursuit.  European towns swarmed with prostitutes of both sexes and churches and monasteries were rocked with sexual. What is more, as soon as modern science began to take root in the West (15th C onwards) the more intelligent and better-informed among the sexually meddled with people avenged the insult against their nature by exposing both the church and its teachings as superstition, oppression and exploitation and as from late 18th C made it to back off, become increasingly desperately apologetic and accommodating to an absurd degree until it could embrace even atheism as legitimate faith and all forms of sexual perversion as noble forms of love.  So what went wrong?

 

We had no clue had not God helped us. In His inexhaustible Kindness He sent His Beloved Muhammad (sws), His Last and Final Prophet-messenger (sws) equipped with His incorruptible Last and Final Message the Qur’an.

 

We hardly turn the first page of this Supreme Bible from God before we find the most authoritative correct answer which tormented and in the end destroyed our Christian cousins.  We discover that if there was an original sin at all it was hardly sex let alone Adam and Eve’s.  The first sinner was none other than ‘Iblis’, the future Devil-Satan. He was the first ever creature to rebel against Allah and for  additionally refusing to recant and repent was cursed by Allah and thrown out. 

 

Now the following is the full brief story assembled and slightly rephrased from the frequent repetitive references to it in the Qur’an.

 

“Allah said to the angels ‘I am about to instal a vicegerent on earth’.  They said ‘Are You going to instal there one who will work corruption therein and spil blood while’ we are (already) glorifying and sanctifying You?”.  Allah said ‘I know what you do not know’.  When he made Adam He Almighty taught him all the names and showing the things to the angels He said ‘Inform me of their names if you are truthful’.  They said ‘We have no knowledge of anything except what You taught us. You are the All-knowing Dear and  Powerful One’.  He asked ‘ O Adam inform them of the names of these’.  When he informed them He said to the angels ‘Did I not tell you that I know all the secrets of the heavens and earth and all that you disclose and hide?”.

Let us take a breath here before we continue with the true story (qasas al haqq).  What do we see here?  We see that  (i)  Adam was designed to represent against and rule over the rest of the creation from his base on earth  (ii) To realize that potentially he was made capable of learning about everything Allah created in the form forming intellectual concepts of everything in existence which was made possible by giving them names.  That is why Allah, after demonstrating to His angels Adam’s prowess reminds them that He Almighty knows all the secrets of the heavens and earth, almost implying that Adam was to be heir to almost limitless knowledge- as Allah’s vicegerent; for that title cannot be a joke  (iii) Whatever their merits otherwise the angels fall short of Adam’s potential degree of accomplishments achievements.,

 

“When Allah said to the angels ‘bow to ground to Adam’ all bowed to the ground (sajda) except Iblis. He was of the JINNI and took exception to obedience to the command of his Lord.  We (Almighty) said ‘O Iblis, what did hold you back from bowing to ground before whom I made with My two hands?”.  He said “I am better than him. You made me from Fire and made him from clay”.  Allah said “How dare you to wax proud in My presence.  Get out, you are expelled. On you is My curse until the Day of Judgment”.  Iblis said “Lord, give me respite and if you grant that then because You have deceived me (of my justified vicegerency rights-  for I have earned them by worshipping You for eons all over the universe) I shall deceive them (of theirs). I swear on Your Glory and Majesty that I shall seduce them and their offspring and few from  among them You shall find grateful to You. I shall come from their right ( deception by false piety) and from their left (seduction by impious temptation)and from their front (false promises about future) and from their back (unjustified boastings about their past and traditionalist prejudice) and I shall indeed (somehow in any case) seduce them. I shall mislead them, I shall drown them in superstition and bewilderment, I shall emphatically bid them to mutilate animals and change the creation of Allah (in the name of science and progress, like in sexual and genetic tamperings- all my interpretations in good faith- Allah knows best)’.

 

Allah said ‘Get down from there. With Truth and by the Truth I say: I will  certainly fill the Hell with jinni and men, of all  who follow you. As for my sincere servants you have no authority and influence on them at all’.  Turning to Adam ‘O Adam, this is your and your wife’s enemy and know him as your enemy. Live in the Garden then and eat whereof you wish but do not approach this particular tree lest you wrong yourselves and come to loss’.  But the Satan approached them with a view to instilling in them a curiosity about their bare bodies.  He said to them ‘Do you know why your Lord banned you from this tree? 

 

It is because lest you become two angels and become eternal residents here. I am indeed your well-wisher’ .  And he swore to them and led them with deception.  When they ate of the tree they became conscious of their bodies and rushed to cover themselves with leaves from the Garden. ‘O Adam’ We shouted out ‘Did I not ban you two from eating of this tree and told you that the Satan was your undoubted enemy?’.  The two said ‘Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves. If You do not forgive and have mercy on us we shall end up as the losers’. ‘Descend therefrom as enemies of each other. On earth you shall have shelter and livelihood for a while. There you shall live, there you shall die and from there you shall be brought forth. (Thus Allah addresses mankind)  ‘O sons of Adam! We have sent down for you dress to cover your bodies as well as for embellishment. But the cover of piety is even better’. These are from Allah’s signs which they would do well to reflect on.  He said ‘O mankind, I will be sending you prophet-messengers raised from among yourselves. Whoever follows them and improves himself I shall bring them back to the Gardens underneath which rivers flow.  There shall be no fear for them neither shall they grieve.  But as for those who wax proud and ignore or refuse My Guidance and deny My signs they shall be among the inmates of Hell. They shall remain therein”.  So what do we see?

 

We see that, as Origen also thought, it was not man’s sexual nature or act but the Satan’s pride that was the very first (original) sin which lies at the root of all evil which began to persecute man from the beginning and which never left him to be.  Please see that the very fist word of rebellion ever was the word of Iblis against God’s command of which was ‘I AM BETTER THAN HIM, FOR YOU MADE ME FROM  FIRE BUT YOU MADE HIM FROM CLAY’.  This is a very explicit confession of pride based on racial/class prejudice!  And why all the angels were able to obey Allah and Iblis wasn’t. Because he was not really one of them but a member of the JINN race, which like men have free will. In Islam only angels are pure enough not to have much desire outside what Allah desires. They may sometimes waver ort wonder a bit but never disobey. That is why they looked like objectiong to God’s making Adam. And what does the whole history as well as today’s fights and wars say?  Why, one or both  parties to a dispute or fight argue that it is the worthier party in some intrinsic sense to whom the goodies should belong.   

 

It is this pride of man in himself which is the root cause of all prejudice and blindness to truth and justice.  Men simply are unable to feel as equals and share equally which means fairly according to needs and contributions. Pride and selfishness is the two sides of the same coin and so long a person cannot outgrow either must remain the slave of both.  But what do we see?  Sometimes the proudest and most selfish people are some among the so-called religious themselves!  That is certainly why they are among the most quarrelsome, warlike and divided groups of people.  Of all people the religious are the most vulnerable to the Satan’s seduction.  Because the Satan fell on account of being too proud to recognize the God-given superiority of Adam he knows from experience that the best way to cause the fall of a religious man is inspiring pride in that man and make him jealous of another  man to whom the Creator gave higher qualities and potential.  We see the best example of this tragedy in the story of Joseph and his brothers.  All were the sons of a true prophet of God and could not have a better education in piety having such a wonderful father and competent teacher.  Yet, because like God their father Jacob held Joseph in greater esteem and Joseph was the one to begin having prophetic experiences the proud and selfish brothers were aggrieved and incensed.

 

Like the Satan they deceived the ones God preferred over them and sought to destroy one and punish the other with the grief caused by that destruction.  Now my humble inspiration and spiritual insight is that (and Allah knows best) had Iblis been humble and sincere enough to God he would bow to Adam in which case he would most certainly share in every blessing Adam was to be blessed with. Similarly if and when a muslim avoids being proud of himself and jealous of someone whom Allah created superior to him in certain respects related to the ambitions of the former this former muslim, to his great relief and delight, will find that Allah will bless him with incredible and most satisfactory blessings on account of his letting the superior created brother get the authority he deserves and him serving under and helping him as best as he can with all sincerity. Allah says “deliver any trusts to those who are worthy of it and when you judge among people judge with justice”.  The companions of the Prophet (sws) initially tended to fight over the political succession to the Prophet after his demise but were sincere enough to Allah, when reminded by Umar, to recognize that the worthiest among them was Abu Bakr as Siddiq (may Allah be pleased with them all). For his part Abu Bakr proved his incomparable class by proposing Umar to take over after his demise which the companions again proved wise enough to accept.  But after the two things took a downward turn and bloodshed became a frequent if not constant part of political succession. As a result the quality of caliphate rapidly deteriorated so that when the sixth successor arrived it was no other than that most notorious Yazid b. Muawia who bloodied his hands with the blood of the Prophet’s grandson Hussein (ra) and entertained thoughts of ‘drinking wine on the roof of the Qaaba’. 

 

Not too late after we find an Umayyad governor bombarding and burning down the Qaaba and killing all who took refuge in the Holy Sanctuary around it.  By that time many companions were still alive and the chief victim of Yazid’s notorious clan was none other than Abdullah b. Zubair b. Awwam (r. anhuma), one of the closest disciple and kinsmen of the Prophet (sws).  Surely the real inspiration behind all these impieties and cruelties was the same Iblis the Satan.  Had muslims recognized sayyidina Ali’s and perhaps also his sons’ merits in the sight of Allah they could have a happy pious caliphate for all these centuries but the Devil wouldn’t let it. 

 

Of course I do not mean like our Shia brothers do that only Ali-Fatima’s offspring were entitled to the caliphate. And neither do I want to quarrel with anybody. Better to leave everything to Allah to judge. To his great credit Ali personally obeyed Abu Bakr and Umar quite selflessly and superbly and treated Othman quite honourably. He also punished all who dared to belittle the former two.  What happened has happened. What remains as valid and as desirable as ever is that muslims need to transcend the egoism and pride which caused the Satan’s fall lest they keep falling from one humiliation to other without rest or respite as the case today is.  The original sin of the Devil which was being self-proud and then envious of the more able candidate of God’s viceregency- this real original sin should be shunned by muslims at all cost.  Sex was neiter the original sin nor it is a sin at all when indulged within marriage. On the contrary it is a rewardable service to Allah according the Law of Islam and its joys are thankable for as well.  The muslim starts his conjugal duty with basmala and the prayer “Praise be to Allah for satisfying me with halal instead of haram” and ends with “Praise be to Allah who created man from a drop of water and made men in-laws and relations. Thanking the Gracious Creator thus the submissive couple then wash themselves from top to toe for Allah’s sake.

 

So, muslim’s problem is not sex. Their problem is the same problem for the rest of humanity: The conquest of the the proud and jealous ego, the resident devil in each and every man, the real culprit of the real original sin. Muslims should be anxious and ever-watchful to detect the God’s elect among them and selflessly recognizing them for what they are beg them to rule over them. As and when this sincerity is attained muslims shall conquer both the Devil and all the corruption he worked on earth.  The Prophet (sws) said “Forty sincere (mukhlis) believers cannot come together but they can and will conquer the world”. Why? Because they shall appear as such an irresistible magnet of compelling holiness that people’s fascination with them shall trigger a mass conversion to Godliness that where it will end only God knows.  Before I am accused of mythical delusions I want to remind my dear readers that I am aware that all the Qur’anic and hadith statements I quoted and expanded upon do not tell and describe and promise things at a level of literalism and simplicity naïve and uninformed minds may think. They tell and describe and promise things, as the holy Prophet (sws) put it “No eyes have seen, no ears heard about and no imagination could ever conjure up”.  They refer to spiritual realities and truths beyond our present level and competence of understanding and are the more real and true for it! To return to our subject we can conclude like this: If people I repelled by Islam and religion in general it is mainly because religion threatens them with decencies and responsibilities their egos are not prepared to countenance; But that may not be all- they may also be partially repelled by those some devilish qualities and actions those so-called religious people fail to drop. Which means the Devil is working among both camps coordinating for a faith-repelling result. So long we keep committing the Original Sin we cannot even repent ourselves.

 

 

THE SATAN AS PRIMAEVAL EVIL

 

The New York and Washington atrocities are neither the first nor the last examples of the unspeakable evil which inhabits man’s deepest recesses of spirit.  Man’s is an inner universe of potentials of most sublime good and most beastly evils.  From Stone Age orgies of massacre and cannibalism to the Holocaust and the Stalinist terror to this last atrocity the primaeval evil streak in man has been boiling over into the open.  This evil is  neither blind nor brainless. It is both dazzlingly visionary and brilliantly studious.  It imagines, studies, plans and executes, all coolly and ruthlessly. It is very proud, very self-important. In fact it feels like god!  Yet it is a false god.  Because it deceives, hurts and destroys both its servants and its victims. Developed religions call this primaeval evil lurking in the pit bottoms of man’s soul the Satan which means the adversary (of the God which is the infinitely noble and constructive potential in man- so far as psychology is concerned; otherwise God is more than that, infinitely more) and Islam calls it also ‘Iblis’ which means a desperado, an outlaw and outcast who is so desperate for ejecting its venom of evil that it will stop at nothing in the way of deceit, treason and savagery to see happiness in any form to be destroyed. 

 

Now, contrary to the evil opinions of some,  insulting and hurting others on the basis of differences of belief  is not an exclusively muslim disease which anyhow affects only a tiny minority of muslims. Northern Ireland is just a stone throw away where mass bombings have a long pedigree and one party calls the Roman pope ‘the Antichrist’. It is a universal illness affecting the votaries of not only religious but also secular belief systems.  Nobody can say that the notorious Nazi holocaust or the equally notorious Stalinist terror were religious frenzies. In fact no religious atrocity in history ever equalled these two secular feats of evil.  What about the ‘killing fields’ in Cambodia which is even more recent,  when and where millions were killed on the altar of ‘revolution’ and skulls were heaped up all over the land, from horizon to horizon?  All these happened in the twentieth century which had its the topping cream in the form of the Balkan atrocities right in the middle of Europe.  So we must see the recent brutalisation of America in this wide context of an universal evil streak and not go overboard in avenging it and punishing the supposed perpetrators.  We must remember and admit that all of us without exception if at different ratios carry the same evil Devil as well as the same good God in ourselves and which way the balance will go and when the evil we ourselves may blurt out without warning only God knows. 

 

Only recently a proper policeman massacred his whole family in a sudden explosion of the Devil in him.  But the fact remains that those responsible for this    n-billionth example of terrible indiscriminate violence must be identified and punished. They may be muslims or non-muslims. That remains to be seen.  We shouldn’t be too sure. Whoever they may be, however, the fact remains that some muslim countries have a very bad press which is sometimes deservedly bad to varying extents. But there are also other very bad countries which don’t get the bad press they deserve because they are too powerful to be crossed. The fact is that there  is something fundamentally wrong and wanting in all human societies and the blame for that must go to the primaeval evil remaining alive and kicking in our souls- all of us. 

 

Local produce Oklahoma bombing wasn’t less evil although its magnitude couldn’t match this last one- and that only for funding reasons perhaps. 

 

It is important to notice that the common thread running through all these religious and secular ideological mass evils is a rabid intolerance of others with different beliefs or forms.  The Prophet of Islam himself was challenged a few times by some flat and bad muslims in his time and not long after his demise both his sons-in-law were assassinated at the hands of such self-congratulating religious correctness fanatics who, quoting chapter and verse and hadith in senses only obvious to themselves condemn and will hurt all muslims who disagree even when the muslim is an Ali, that greatest savant and saint of Islam! In the secular camp, both the Nazis and the Communists had only murderous views of those outside their fold. Nor democracy is a guarantee against political and diplomatic mischief. In the modern case of what some Western societies inflicted on jews were mainly compensated by helping the jews extact the compensatory payment from Palestinian arabs which were total innocent  outsiders to the plight of the jews in Europe. In the twentieth century the civilized Europeans exported their overall liability for the jews to the Middle East in two instalments: one after the First and the other after the Second World War, almost in the spirit of, please forgive the term, ‘let dog eat dog’. 

 

In  this sense jews are as victimized as their Abrahamic (Ishmaelite) arab cousins thanks to the cynicalness of the ‘civilized world’.  I have every sympathy for the jews for all their sufferings in the hands of so many host countries where they took up residence as diaspora but they themselves admit that of all hosts muslim nations have been by far their best hosts. So it is a bitter irony that what was the culpability of Europe was so skilfully excised out and transplanted on to the muslim world.  The deepest and most festering wound has of course been Palestine. Neither thr jews’  mass migration to Palestine not their conduct once there have been wise acts. Despite their apparent ‘victories’ they are living in a kind of hell. What a pity for all concerned. They unfortunately displayed the same fallibility as their supposed Western sponsors who had not yet washed their hands off arrogant colonialism.  Punishing the innocent is inexcusable as a matter of definition. We in the West must understand that before terror can be adequately dealt with all glaring injustices must be got out of the way. True, injustice does not justify indiscriminate terror- but it at least provides a breeding ground for ambitious and murderous exploiters or deranged vehement souls to plant themselves in and flourish.

 

Yes, muslims have their fundamentalists and terrorists but it must be seen that these phenomena are enormously provoked by the injustice caused by the unwise policies adopted by the Western world as well as by the insatiable conquering and grabbing instincts of too nationalistic jews as distinct from the more reasonable. Yes, jews need and are entitled to a homeland as every other nation but this should not be at the expense of nations who owe nothing to them and especially who in the past ages have proven to be their best hosts in their humble way.  It is we in the West who have to foot the bill for the compensation of the jewry and we also stand to foot the bill for the injustice done to Palestinians. Unfortunately it is not easy to devise a formula which will do all the needed justice to all parties involved but this should be the almighty West’s problem and responsibility. In fact our responsibility does not stop even at Palestinian and jewish grievances in our hands- the last being our putting them at each other’s throats.  Our responsibility also extends to the whole Third World which we once colonized and brutalized under the pretext and delusion of ‘civilizing’ them. We disturbed and disrupted their tribal and autocratic systems and traditions but were unable to put in their place anything consistent and workable. What could only come with evolution we tried to impose in contemptuous hurry. They ended up as chimeras born of an unfavourable cross-breeding between Western and non-Western cultures, ever condemned to bad government and grinding poverty.  They also should be compensated and taken out of the mud they are stuck in if we really are to hope for a better world. What better soil to breed irresponsible corrupt dictators who get and stick to power like superglue than by the popular haranguing of the former colonial masters the West?

 

So long as these inequalities, hurts and grievances, resentments and injustices, abject privations and deprivations remain the primaeval evil waiting for opportunities to come out of people and nations will keep reasserting itself and no amount of bombing and strangulating of diffuse and unsure targets heavily populated by innocents will cut much ice- as they didn’t in the past.  So let us tune in and listen to God in us and realizing that we may well bring prosperity and justice to depraved countries with less cost than what needlessly goes to rubbish in Western countries and what goes to the building Armageddon arsenals. We  must avoid knee-jerk reactions and trigger-happy sprees of violence and work more patiently and holistically than until today.  Let’s do some good and bring some justice to our own colonial victims before we declare them beyond the pale. Let all nations begin to try doing good to each other for once instead of constantly cocking up. Let some elements in the West stop their gleeful Islam-bashing. Let some elements among all groups stop America-bashing. All of us are equally fallible human beings. None of us chose where we were born or in what culture we were raised. Let’s turn deaf to the Satan. Let’s listen to Allah for once. Allah says in His Qur’an: “Return evil with good. Then you will see that the one between whom and you there is hostility shall become like a warm friend. None can attain this
Godly spirit) except the patient, none can attain such but the one with a great share (of spiritual blessing)” (41:35). 

 


 

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