The Suspected Tint Of Polytheism Contracted From Conquered Cultures

 

 

THE SUSPECTED TINT OF POLYTHEISM CONTRACTED FROM CONQUERED CULTURES 

 

Muslims are bitterly divided on the matter of whether or not some beliefs and practices prevailing among some muslims, which cannot be satisfactorily traced to Rasulullah’s Sunna (sws) amounts to shirk (polytheism).

 

All considered the question boils down to this:  Do or do not beliefs and practices not heard about or seen during the Century of Felicity (Asr as Saada-  the Prophet’s and his mature caliphs’ era) but adopted and popularised afterwards amount to ‘bid’a (innovation)  at the least and ‘shirk’ (polytheism) at the worst? 

 

On the two sides of this division we again and as always have moderates and extremists.  The extremists on the legalist side brand any new practice like the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid) bid’a and would like to ban them.  Moderates however exercise caution and discrimination.  If the new act is doing unquestionable good it must be approved and appreciated.  Mawlid is a good example. Rejoicing in and praising the Prophet sws can only be superlative good so long as impieties and blasphemy are not involved. Loving and endearing the Prophet sws to others is an act of service (ibada) which has no definite form but is at our discretion. Additionally, if and act intended as a pious and even as entertainment  is not doing any harm (like involving impious acts) it should be tolerated.  A good example is the ‘sema’, music and dance intended as a religious act . Some Sufis developed a music and dance entertainment whose ostensible subject is glorifying Allah and His Prophet (sws) and perhaps also saints (their pious teachers).  Since the Prophet (sws) allowed and perhaps even enjoyed some music, song and dance of both secular and religious kind sema should be no problem. As proof we may quote the Prophet’s stopping Abu Bakr’s intervention to stop two slave girls singing to the tunes of their tambourines in his house on a holy day.  “O Abu Bakr, let the girls enjoy themselves on their day” he commented.  
A second example is his and his companions watching an Abyssinian dance troupe’s performance right in the Mosque.   Our mother Aisha also watched from behind the shoulder of the Prophet (sws) and the Prophet (sws) asked her if she wanted to watch more etc.  If secular dance and music was tolerated why not religious.  After all praising Allah and blessing the Prophet sws are obligatory (farz) ibadah, no doubt.  Such praising and blessing need not be confined to salat (namaz) but can be practiced any time anywhere except impure places and during private impure acts.  So the extremists’ is an overzeal and as all overzeal it can only be from other than Allah.   So, we moderates approve mawlid and sema etc. because they are harmless when impieties are not involved and conducive to reward on account of their involving and including a lot of praise to Allah and His Messenger and blessings (salawat) on the Prophet sws.

 

But it is a sad fact (let us be honest and behave responsibly) that not all innovated practices are so innocent.  What about praying to departed souls of the prophets or saints for example, whether at their graves or elsewhere?  We are not talking about saluting them and praying for them.  These are sunna since the Prophet visited  muslims’ graves and saluted and prayed for them. But can we say “O so and so, you are a friend of Allah. I appeal to you to grant me so and so wish of mine”.  Such direct praying to dead people (even the living in their absence) has been heard and seen many times.  This accusation is a serious one and should be taken seriously.  In the light of the explanations about the genesis and causation of pre-Islamic and Divinely unwarranted practices we had seen that such habits arouse with ancestor worship and then the worship of kings and heroes who were converted into gods and images housed in temples.  When  the Prophet (sws) came it was exactly this state of affairs he found Arabs in.  Now let us ask ourselves an honest question with a honest answer with hand on heart.  Had the Prophet (sws) found that his Arabs were also praying to Abraham and Ishmael in their own right would he approve or disapprove?  Had muslims in Medina begun to pray to him in his absence saying “Ya rasulallah,  let me earn more money today” or “let me marry that woman” or “relieve me of this illness” what would he say?  He would certainly regard people’s praying direct to Abraham, Ishmael or Muhammad sws” as SHIRK, no less because Allah and he the Prophet DID declare Christian’s praying to Isa and Mary as shirk.  Allah in His Qur’an is both only too explicit and frequent in condemning praying to other than direct to Himself as SHIRK.  Read if you wish: 

 

“Mosques are belong to Allah, do not call on to (pray) anybody other than Allah in them” (Al Jinn, 18)

 

“Those whom you call upon other than Allah are created slaves like yourselves (Ibadun
amthalukum).  Call on them and let them respond if you are truthful”  (al A’raf, 194)

 

“Those whom they call on other than Allah are powerless to help you and cannot even help themselves” (al A’raf, 197)

 

Now please do  not think that ‘those prayed to other than Allah’ mean only the lifeless idols.  Allah swt was only too aware of the fact that people all over the earth worshipped their mythical heroes, kings and spiritual masters and prayed to them direct.  These false gods included Krishna and Buddha in India,  Jesus and Mary among Christians.  If prayer to Jesus can be attempted to be explained away that it was done in the belief that he was god and praying to saints was not like that then what about Mary?  All Christians agree that she was not god but a saint and both idolized and worshipped and prayed to her direct and the Allah and His Prophet sws condemned all such practices.  That mythicalized or not among the false gods Allah also meant some people taken to be gods or saints were being prayed to at the time and He Almighty condemned the practice is explicit from the following
“They (the worshipped and prayed to creatures) whom they call on themselves seek means of approaching Allah competing for His nearness,  beg for His mercy and fear His punishment…” (al Isra, 57).  Certainly pieces of stone, wood or lumps of dough (for Arabs also manufactured bread gods which they ate after praying to) are not conscious and intelligent and responsible servants competing for nearness to Allah, fearing His punishment and hoping His mercy in Paradise.  Who are so anxious about and competing for coming near to Allah, earning His mercy and gifts and fearing His punishment if not prophets like Isa and Uzair and saints like Mary and all saints?  That Allah did not impose on inanimate objects and animals any sharia, did not promise them reward and punishment but only to man and jinn is obvious from the ayat

 

“We have offered to the skies and the earth the trust but they were afraid and declined and man took the burden on himself.  How wrongful and ignorant he has been…”  Other than man and jinn all creatures serve Allah automatically and fully and are given no eternal life in another world to come and are subject to no reward or punishment in a future judgment except the fringe and perhaps metaphoric case of “ram with a broken horn avenging the ram which broke it” and then both disappearing for good.   

 

In the Qur’an in its entirety and with full and repeated and emphatic explicitness Allah bans and condemns worshipping and praying to not only idols but also worshipping and praying to  men and jinn.  And  please let us admit that praying to is  an essential part of worshipping.  Allah says “Say (O Muhammad) my Lord would count you for nothing were it not for your prayer” (Az Zariyat 77). 

 

So prayer is the most precious thing servant can offer to Lord and given the above terrible admonitions it becomes even clearer that Allah is only too jealous about having others being worshipped and prayed to.  Had it not been so He Almighty would not use the word ‘salat’ to name the ritual prayer to him.  As well known ‘salat’ means prayer and is the best (afdal) part of worshipping.  How on earth Allah allow this greatest honor due to Divinity to be shown to anybody other than Himself?  This is so full and explicit command that no ifs, buts and qualifying commentaries are admissible.

 

The extremists however ignore this and try to prop up their untenable  position by reference to a few hadith,  in fact mainly one hadith in which a blind man asks the Prophet to help him cure his blindness and the Prophet sws teaches him a prayer which is quite proper and straightforward except one suspicious bit where the man is instructed to insert a clause which effectively means  “Ya Muhammad do it”.   We have hundreds of prayers (supplications) reported from the Prophet sws which never uses such a clause but appeals to Allah direct.  And Allah Who is so appealed to Himself teaches us many supplications in His Qur’an which we should regard the most effective and authoritative set-pieces and examples of praying to Allah.  The best known and the most frequently the Prophet sws used is “Rabbana atina…” which means “Our Lord give us good in this world and in the hereafter and spare us from the torment of Fire”.  To this the Prophet sws seems to have added “Birahmatika ya arhamar rahimin”,  i.e.  “by virtue of your mercy o the most Merciful of the merciful”.  He did not teach us to say “for the sake or honor of so-and-so.  All the prayers taught us in Allah’s Book must be the most excellent and effective prayers and a prayer which praises Allah and asks from Him IN ALLAH’S OWN WORDS SHOULD NOT NEED ANY OTHER IMPROVERS for nobody can improve on Allah.  The Prophet’s adding “birahmatika…” and other reported addings by him like “bihurmati nabiyyika” (for the sake of the honor of your prophet) are the most can be done to please Allah even more.  Direct appeal to anybody however worthy a servant is transgressing Allah’s exclusive prerogative and is inadmissible.

 

In the case of the extremists, to see to what lengths of sophistry and impudence they can go we sometimes come across to this kind of ‘explanation’.   Please listen to a story from a pulpit:
A caravan was setting out from so-and-so place to go such and such destination and the memb.ers visited the local saint to say farewell.  The saint instructed them “If you are attacked  by bandits do not pray to Allah but to me.  Call out ‘ya sheikh so and so! Meded’. I shall come to your rescue”.  

 

The caravan indeed was attacked and some heedless members prayed to Allah direct while the awakened ones called the sheikh. These were saved while those who called Allah were ruined”.  The sermoniser explains “Because those who only know Allah have not enough faith in Him to make Him respond. But saints are easier to access, being visible are more believable and therefore if prayed to the strength of the faith makes the prayer successful”.  Fesubhanallah!  Who knows better, these cultish psychologists or Allah who says
“Tell them: What about when Allah’s torment comes to you or the hour of doom comes? 

 

Would you then call on to anybody else than Allah?  NO!  TO HIM YOU CALL OUT AND HE REMOVES THE THING YOU PRAYED FOR IF HE SO WILLS AND YOU FORGET ALL WHOM YOU ASSOCIATE WITH HIM”  (Al An’am 40-41).   Since these words of Allah are addressed to filthy polytheists who for ages pray to their idols but once in real danger FORGET all those VISIBLE AND THEREFORE MORE BELIEVABLE false gods and call out on ALLAH instead ARE SAVED BY ALLAH while muslims ARE NOT but should better call out to Allah’s supposed associates.  Yes, some sheikhs call themselves ‘ahlulllah’ (the household of Allah) and rightly so provided they do not and we do not understand it as holding automatic rights to move into the shoes of Allah so to speak and receive prayers and grant the needs and desires.  Although such claimants do not claim being God or gods the appropriation of Allah’s privileges and prerogatives say as much. 

 

It is a rule of obscurantism and destruction of institutions to keep a name but empty its contents and pump in air.  For example even the worst dictarorships boast of democratism,  present their state as “People’s Democratic Republic of Banania”, display a well-attended national assembly and hold elections but all is hot air to keep inflated a concept whose whole contents have been stolen. It is like thieves empty a bag of gold but leaving the back filled with rocks so that owners are deceived by its looking as full as ever.  Likewise extremist self-defined and self-styled ‘sufis’ stylise Allah and often prefer the name al Haqq (one wonders why this unprophetic practice.  Has the prophet sws used this name as a substitute for the most glorious and unique Name Allah?   After so anasthetizing Allah and wrapping Him in antiseptic cotton or else calling Him ‘Beloved’ and impudently using sexual metaphors like ‘flock of hair’ or ‘rosy cheeks’ or ‘luscious sensual lips’ and even consummation then the Prophet sws is attacked and denatured by heaping upon him inflated and invented praise after praise until he becomes indistinguishable if not greater than Allah.  In defence they say “One cannot praise and glorify the Prophet enough. So long you do not call him Allah say anything you want in praise”.  Which means it is impossible to  praise prophet more than Allah praised him and wants him praised. Read then if you wish: (and guess in which surah- AL MUNAFIQUN)

 

“When the hypocrites come to you (o Muhammad) they say ‘we bear witness that you are Rasullulah’.  Allah certainly knows that you are His messenger and what is more Allah BEARS WITNESS THAT THE HYPOCRITES ARE LIARS”  (v. 1).

 

That they used to greet the Prophet sws in extraordinary ways with the intent of mocking him in their hearts is regretfully seen from the word of Allah
“…When they come to you (o Muhammad) they greet you with such greeting as even Allah never did and then say to themselves why Allah is not punishing us for what we said…” (al Mujadila8).

 

Although one commentary is that this referred to Medinese jews visiting him and saluting him “as saamu alaika” (death to you) instead of “as salamu…” this seems a bit off center because the clause “lem yuhayyikallahu bihi” i.e, “with what Allah did not greet you” implies that it was something expected from Allah and Allah is not supposed to greet His rasul like that at all.  And the general tenor of the preceding and succeeding ayats gives an impression of a war of nerves and an attempt at insulting the Prophet sws (hasha lillahi) by fooling him.  Which in fact fits with the verse above in the Surat al Munafiqin.  

 

In what way the extremists are distorting and inflating the Prophet sws?  Without saying he is Allah (although some extra extremists did also that as they did to Jesus before and Ali after the Prophet sws)  they qualify him with all the qualities of majesty of Allah except creating creatures.  Otherwise he dispenses in the universe as he wishes because for him there is nothing that he cannot see, hear and tackle as of automatic right.  From the Presence of Allaj to the center of the earth everything is known by him and available for dispensation.  All the powers and assets of universe are his to handle as he pleases etc.  But as for proof none is available except dreadful demands and threats of damnation if not believed with tale after tale of the Prophet’s dispensation to scare the hell out of you.  Don’t we remember this style from somewhere?  I think yes we do. Everything sounds so similar, in fact almost identical to dot and comma to the Christian claims about Jesus with the exception of including the Prophet into godhead and that is because Islam is too clear about and too unforgiving of such excess. 

 

The reality is that Allah desribed and delineated His Messenger (sws) only too clearly and unambiguously for the designs of the hypocrites. Let us see some of the extravagant claims demolished by Allah.

 

That the Prophet sws knows the ghaib (secrets of existence and universe etc), holds all the keys to Allah’s bounties and orders around heavenly hosts as the master of both worlds  see for yourself and please tell me how more explicit and categoric Allah could be anticipating in His miraculous knowledge all such pious palavers or hypocritical attempts to derail Islam as Christianity was derailed before it.

 

“I (Noah) am not telling you ‘With me are the keys to Allah’s treasures’.  Also I do not know the ghaib.  Nor am I saying that I am an angel.  Also I cannot say about those whom you despise (poor and humble believers around me)  that Allah will never grant them any good ’.  Allah knows better what is in their hearts.  Had I done so I would have done wrong”  (Hud, 31).

 

Of course all prophets are same as Noah in their basic qualities and status.  What they know is only received from Allah by wahy as and when the time comes for it-  nothing before, nothing after.  That does not of course mean that they have no underlying gnosis nor spiritual and psychic powers worthy of their rank. They have more than any non-prophet believer ever can although there may be specialist sciences some saints know exclusively like Khidr’s ilm of knowing absent or future things and being authorized to act accordingly or Asaf’s (attendant of Solomon AS) powers of teleporting objects instantly.
Another argument is that the Prophet sws despite his death is still busy with seeing, hearing and controlling everything. Well let’s see

 

“Consider when Allah said (will say) O Jesus son of Mary , was it you who said to MY SERVANTS that take me and my mother two gods under Allah?”.  He said (shall say) ‘Glorified are You, it does not befit me to say something for which I have no right to say. Had I said it You would know.  I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS IN YOUR SELF WHILE YOU KNOW WHAT IS IN MY SELF.  You are the thorough Knower of all secrets. What I told them was what you had commanded me which was ‘worship Allah My Lord and yours Lord.  I WAS AN OBSERVER OVER THEM SO LONG I WAS AMONG THEM. WHEN YOU BROUGHT ME TO MY TERM (gave me death) YOU REMAINED AN OBSERVER OVER THEM.  IT IS ONLY YOU WHO OBSERVER OVER  EVERYTHING”  Maida 116-117).

This glorious ayat in fact solves more than one problem. Namely
Contrary what exremist Sufis say no servant of Allah is annihilated in Allah so that not two selves but one self, that of Allah remains in Whom the sufi attains ‘baqa’ (eternal permanence).  A mighty prophet like Jesus with whom Sufis are so enamoured especially says even when He meets Allah after the world is destroyed, all are dead and VEILS ARE LIFTED FROM EYES and Judgment begins “I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS IN YOUR SELF WHILE YOU KNOW WHAT IS MY SELF” clearly referring to TWO selves and not one.  I shall in sha Allah tell you in a moment how such delusions or palavers arise.

 

A prophet does not see and hear what is going on in this world after his death let alone intervene.  Thus Jesus (pbuh) tells to Allah “I was an observer over them (my ummah) only so long I was physically among them as their prophet. But once you gave me death You remained as the Observer. In fact it is ONLY YOU Who observes everything.  Could it be clearer?

 

He said “Allah is my Lord and yours.  Only Him you and I  must worship”.  And please remember, worshipping’s best part is DUA.  If you make dua to a person however high ranked with Allah you render the very best thing to a creature which thing is only due to the Creator.
 

 

THE ORIGIN OF SOME SUFI FORMS OF GNOSIS

 

Now let me tell you with the help and permission of Allah if He so pleases why such extremists who go as far as BANNING praying to Allah and demanding that we pray to their sheikhs why they are saying so assuming that they do not mean evil but are only deluded.
Sufism is an attempt at increasing our certainty (yaqin) about Allah so that we become able to worship Him with real conviction and commitment.  What a beautiful aim!

 

But extremists are those who do not know how to go about him. Learning from pre-Islamic psychic inventor-innovators like the monks and yogis they take upon themselves ascetic as well as mind altering practices which so bend the mind that in the end ANY AND EVERY DOGMA CAN BE VERIFIED BY PERSONAL OBSERVATION.  As a result the Yogi attains certainty about his six armed and three-headed serpent gods,  the Christian monk attains certainty about the Trinity and especially the glories of the Son as the actual ruler of everything while the American Indian Shaman sees the jaguar god asking from him ten more children to be sacrificed next Thursday at His altar. All are feel blessed and privileged by the Divine Intimacy granted them.

 

Modern applied psychology has recognized that it is quite possible to perfectly convince suitably sensitive and vulnerable persons to ANYTHING and make them sacrifice anything by the use of certain physical and chemical methods.

 

Among them are:  Systematic starvation, sleep deprivation, social isolation,  physical discomfort like exposure to cold, heat, skin irriation or static and unnatural postures for a long time and even  sustained infliction of various kinds of pain.  These are among the physical means and have been employed by yogis and monks since time immemorial and taken over by some Sufis, especially in Asia where Hindu and Buddhist as well as Shamanic culture preceded Islam’s arrival. 

 

Among the chemical means have been the use of hallucinogenic drugs like cannabis and opium in Asia and mescal buttons in Americas (mescalin) and alcohol more universally.  On the milder side has been carbon dioxide which some Sufis gratefully adopted.  What they call breath control (habs e nefes) consists of sufi suppressing his exhalations long enough for carbon dioxide to accumulate in his lungs which gas is a soporific (makes drowsy) and halluginogenic. Because he sat there in search of inner experiences sooner or later and especially when coupled with other ascetic and monastic methods as above he will come to experience the suitable hallucinations which will be so lucid with so profound-looking significances that he will be convinced what he is supposed to be convinced.  Mishaps however cannot be ruled out and terrible experiences may drop in instead and losing one’s mind as a result cannot be ruled out.  That is why they say only suitable subjects must be initiated into a Gnostic training by a suitable expert guide.  All boils down to systematic brain washing and certainty about all creeds, dogmas and ideologies can be  manufactured to order. 

 

Aware of this danger many Sufis insisted that adepts must both stick to the Sharia and reject inner experiences which contradicts Islamic dogmas and commandments.  How pathetic!

 

The fact however remains that the experiences are eminently tasty and addictive as certain drugs are.  No wonder many dervishes and sheikhs have a constant underlying euphoria about them which makes them very charismatic while in behavior they sometimes fall far below what is expected from a good muslim. Bouts of boasting,  enriching himself and his family and turning them into a prosperous dynasty handing down the titles, thrones and gifts and compliments- paying subjects  and portfolios from father to son or son-in-law. Many ‘princes’ and ‘princesses’ of the dynasty project as worldly images as anybody and take the spiritual clients for granted etc.  All of which gives the sorry impression that this is just another business providing a service to the public at a real but inofficial cost. 
But is that all?  Isn’t there a real Sufism which deserve our respect and really helps us to come closer to Allah and prove it by our much, very much improved morals and manners? 

 

 

THE BIG QUESTION

 

After this we must ask-  is Islam perfect as founded by our Prophet sws or not or must we import beliefs and practices from other traditions to improve upon it? Put more practically are  practices like salat, zakat, sawm (fasting) and hajj and PRAYING ALLAH IN THE WORDS AND THE WAY HE TAUGHT US IN THE QUR’AN as well as like the Prophet’s own prayers recorded in books like al Hizb al A’zam, when sincerely and devoutly done, enough to achieve salvation and granting of our wishes if Allah wills or not?  If anybody says ‘no!’ and adds that it is better to appeal to saints instead of what Allah and His messenger taught then this really becomes a great lie (shattat).  Of course on top of all these canonical (shar’ey) practices we must also do social acts like charity, obedience to laws and respect for institutions and pleasant good manners and honesty in all dealings and generosity of spirit- all of which are Islam’s commandments and the Prophet’s Sunna- if such a full list of Divinely and Prophetically taught and exemplified set of pious practices done with faith and sincerity will not save us by the grace of Allah then nothing will;  innovated or imported false ways will certainly not be enough and instead they will be destructive. So what about the sufi claim that one must submit himself to a murshid (spiritual director)? 

This is altogether different and is an extension of submitting to Rasululullah (sws) by proxy.  To see how let us imagine a situation where a number of tabe’en (muslims of the generation after the sahaba) go to a disciple of the Prophet sws and ask him whether he will accept them as his disciples to teach them the ways of Allah and His Prophet sws on the grounds that as a disciple of the Prophet sws they believe that he is the best teacher they can find. What they call their teacher is immaterial (sheikh or master or…).  So long as they defer to him and accept his lead and believe that he being one of the Prophet’s brighter and nearer disciples his prayers and intercession in their favor must be effective we have a master-disciple group which can be nothing but legitimate. Such a situation I can say to be very blessed and that having a teacher who we have every reason to value and trust does help us a very great deal. And that is the only justification of Sufism.  In fact the sahaba became the sahaba thanks to their good fortune of having the most perfect of guides the Prophet sws around.  Simple reading of religious manuals and imitating ordinary muslims cannot give the brilliant results a good sufi arrangement. Could the Prophet guide them as well as he did by being in their company had he guided them isolated on a mountain top from where he would send them letters about Islam?  No way.
So association is necessary. And Sufism is the association of teacher and his pupils. How should this be and what is its merits?  That is next.

 

 

CORRECT SUFISM

 

Correct Sufism is a sincere and well-informed effort on the part of extraordinarily talented and pious muslims teaching and guiding others who want it by playing for them the role of the Prophet sws with good intentions without pretensions.  This leader is called a sheikh because it has always been  a legitimate title of respect for not only tribal elders but also teachers among arabs and later all muslims.  Also it is not wrong to believe that the sheikh, obviously being the most knowledgeable and pious of the associates may have status (darajat) with Allah and unusual help from Him (karamat).  Allah promises darajat to His good servants as well as miraculous help.
That some Sufis get it wrong does not mean that those who get it right must be condemned as well.

 

The correctness of a sufi association should only be judged on the basis of its success in improving its members in piety which includes both the adequacy of their religious devotions like regular canonical salat (5 daily prayers) and a noticeable and sustained improvement in the morals and manners of the disciples. If they are getting coarser and crazier by the day then the association is one of asses and not saints. Full stop. 
Lastly a correct sufi association does not promote silly innovations or exaggerate extra-canonical rituals which give an image of a circus or other entertainment company.  What can be sillier as well as more horrible than, for example, the disciples cut and bleed themselves in a frenzy,  dance themselves to exhaustion and produce horrible shrieks and noises or go into catalepsy or freeze into postures for days none of which is part of the Prophetic Sunna but the sunna of pagans of the most primitive witch-doctor or shaman cultures?  Allah sent His Messenger (sws) to calm us down,  harmonise and rationalize our behavior,  discipline our manners into eminently soft and pleasant good manners with distinct social wisdoms behind them and make easy our devotions to Allah by distancing us from savage make-believe rituals and prescribing for us calm, sane and dignified forms of worship based on both bodily and mental purity and constructiveness.  But a question remains.

 

WHY SOME SHEIKHS AND TARIQATS WHICH SEEM QUITE BLESSED AND HOLY SEEM TO ENDORSE SOME OF THE WORRYING INNOVATIONS ABOVE:   I believe there may be two mutually exclusive reasons,  viz.’

 

A.   The bad reason is the sheikh himself believes that practices like  praying to living or dead persons direct are legitimate and effective.    Even worse is believing that praying to persons  instead of Allah is the correct option.   This is kufr no doubt.
The forgivable  and perhaps relatively commendable reason may be that thee sheikh is trying to win non-muslims to Islam who,  because of their too strong attachment to their pre-Islamic beliefs and practices they will have to be written off unless a gradual  approach is made.   A justification of such a well-meaning tactic may be gleaned from at least one ayat and one hadith.  The ayat is the one in Surat al Yusuf.  Allah swt is telling us in there that Yusuf (Joseph) AS, when he unknown to his father and brothers were made the minister of imperial wealth under  the King of Egypt needed to retain his young brother who  had arrived to collect rations in the company of his older brothers.  But he was sure he could not retain him legally. So he asked his guards to clandestinely put a royal cup  in the baggage of the young brother to be ‘discovered  as stolen’  later on and the boy arrested.  It was part of a pious plan of reuniting the family.  Allah explains  this good conspiracy  as follows:

 

“Thus we have conspired for Yusuf.  He could not otherwise retain his brother under the king’s law.  We raise the ranks of whom we will.  Above all knowers there is a knower” (Yusuf, 76).

 

Once the people are won imperfectly and provisionally to Islam then it may be a  matter of time before at least some of them come to know better and join the Islamic orthodoxy.
The hadith is “War is stratagem”.  To win a war the most effective strategical element is deceiving the enemy.  Which war can be more difficult yet also most vital then winning people to Islam when a direct, frontal and honest attack won’t do?
We think that most unorthodox features tolerated by many otherwise reputable sufi tariqats have this reasoning behind them and by the judgment of the very first hadith in Bukari “Acts are to be judged by the intentions behind them”.

 

 

MUTUAL STANDS OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY AND TRUE ISLAM

Yes, there is something we may call true Christianity and another thing we may call true Islam.
To see what true Christianity is we must fist define what the term Christianity should mean. It must mean following the historical man Jesus son Of Mary which Jesus both Christians and Muslims have been recognising as the promised Messiah prophesied in the Jewish holy scriptures and expected by them to come and deliver them. Both the New Testament and the Koran fully agree on this.
What was the message and to what amounted this holy man Jesus, a prophet of and messenger from the One True God all Abrahamite peoples recognise?

 

It was this: He diagnosed the illness of the people of his times as unfaith, hypocrisy and inequity and invited them to repentance and promised them salvation if they repented and followed him as God’s messenger.  To support his claims he demonstrated mighty miracles no prophet could demonstrate before him and on this point both the Gospel and the Koran could not acknowledge his holiness and nearness to God more.  The Koran calls him Christ Jesus son of Mary, a Spirit and Word from God, dear and near to God and born of the blameless virgin through the agency of the Holy Spirit, dear and near to God and blessed at birth, blessed throughout his life and blessed at death and at resurrection!
But the Koran also points out to some serious mistakes later followers of the Christ made. Over a few centuries they evolved an increasingly unrealistic and even to some extend blasphemous image of him, particularly misunderstanding and misrepresenting the term ‘Son of God’ as something like a genetic reproduction of God in a man which neither the Jewish traditions nor their universalised and reformed new edition Islam could accept.
You see, in Jewish tradition God is called ‘Father’ and god’s most favoured, most saintly servants are called ‘son of God’.  So God says to his dear servant David:

 

“David, thou art my son and today I have begotten thee”.  In the Gospel the ancestors of Jesus are counted and when it comes to Adam “Who was the son of God” clause is added. As Christianity spread among the Greek and Roman pagans these pagans being quite habituated and addicted to human-like gods who eat, drink, talk, walk and breed to produce sons and daughters these pagan ideas slowly diffused into the new Greek and Roman convert’s theology and cosmology and they ended up with an idea of a Trinity where the two members were God the Father and God the Son!  This has been a total and radical break with Abrahamic Unitarian tradition and Jews and Muslims could never accept and forgive this.

 

In fact Jews went to an opposite extent and denied not only the divinity of Jesus but even his prophethood and Christhood. To this day mainstream Jews, especially the so-called orthodox, regard him an impostor and can not hate him more. They accuse of and ridicule Christians for worshipping a blasphemous Jew!
What do the Muslims say though?  Let the Koran speak:

 

“Remember when the angels said “O Mary! God is giving you the good tidings of a Word from Him, whose name shall be Christ Jesus son of Mary, illustrious in this world and in the Hereafter and one of those brought near to God… She said ‘How can I have a child when no mortal has touched me?’  He replied ‘Just like that: Allah creates what He will.  Once He decrees a thing He only has to say to it “Be!” and it is!”.  He God will teach him the Bible, wisdom- both the Torah and the Gospel and will make him a messenger to the Children of Israel to say to them “Lo! I came to you with a Sign from your Lord- I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird and I breath into it and it becomes, by God’s permission a real bird. I heal the blind and the leper and raise the dead by God’s permission… God is my Lord and your Lord, therefore worship Him alone- this is the Straight Path” (the Koran, 3: 46- 51)  But all the same God warns:

 

“O people of the Bible! Do not go overboard in your religion and do not utter anything about God except the truth:  Christ Jesus son of Mary was only a messenger from God and His Word which He cast into Mary and a Spirit from Him. Therefore believe in God and all His messengers (who never deified anybody) and do not say ‘Trinity’, DESIST!  That is better for you. God is only One God. Far too Sublime is He to have a son. All in the heavens and the earth are His and God is enough to rely on (no other being is needed to save people).  Neither the Christ nor the nearest angels will disdain being slave servants of God. Whoso will be so proud as to disdain worshipfully serving Him all such He will assemble to Himself; then whosoever were believing and doing good works He will reward them and add more from His generosity but those who were proudly disdainful them He will punish with a painful punishment and they shall find no protectors for themselves against God.  O Mankind! Now the proof from your Lord has come to you (in this Koran); We have sent you a clear, unmistakeable Light (the Koran, 4: 171- 174)

 

Nowhere in the Gospel Jesus (pbuh) is reported to claim that he was God in any sense. Instead he personally worshipped and prayed to God whom he sometimes addressed as ‘Father’ which was quite usual in popular Jewish tradition and meant nothing literal.  Otherwise he would have committed clear blasphemy. God in His Koran points out to this when He Almighty All-Wise says “It is not the case that a human being once God gives him the Scripture and prophethood (as He gave Jesus) and then this man turn around and say to people ‘Be my worshipping servants in addition to being God’s;  on the contrary he will say ‘Be men of the Lord by virtue of your constant teaching and your study of it.  Nor would he instruct you to take angels and prophets for lords and patrons; what! Would he bid you to commit blasphemy after you have submitted to the true faith? (the Koran, 79- 80)

 

There are far more references in the Koran as to where Christians went wrong over ages and corrections for the same.  All in all, the same and only God Who had sent Moses and Jesus and in fact all prophets sent also Muhammad (Blessings and peace of God be on them all) and he proved his case with the excellence of the Koran given him and his unprecedented success as a prophet and messenger of God.  Jews reject him simply because he is not a Jew like themselves and Christians reject him because he rightly finds fault with their creed and together with Judaism Islam criticises the expulsion of the Law from Christianity. Ironically enough it was not the Christ who abolished the Law; in fact Jesus both kept it and could not defend it more. His true disciples also obeyed the Law.  It was denigrated and abolished by Saul of Tarsus who just claimed authority to represent the Christ on the basis of an experience he claimed to have had, the one on the road to Damascus.  That such a previously so vile an enemy of the Christ and a ruthless persecutor of the followers of Christ could now be believed to represent the Christ and abolish in Christ’s name the Christ never tampered with but personally observed and commanded his disciples to observe is the weakest point of traditional, that is to say post-Jesus and his disciples faith.  An ex-enemy suddenly changes his spots and cancels all the the real historical Christ taught and practiced on an authority only he Paul can witness! 

 

Islam’s position is that both the absolute, non-complicated unity of God has to remain as it was in the Old Testament prophets and also that the Law had to be kept for all time to come and the true, historical Jesus Christ could not agree more:
“It is easier for the heaven and the earth pass away than for one particle of a letter of to be abolished” (Luke, 16: 17)  Saul/Paul could not disagree more! 

 

Given all the above, Islam when it came through Muhammad sws set the whole record straight. It corrected the Jews by affirming the truth of Jesus as the Christ and it corrected the Christians by pointing out the error they made in making the Christ God and the error they made by abolishing the Law of the Prophets.
These elements obviously amounts to a toolbox which repairs all the cracks between the three Semitic religions, namely, in historical order Judaism, Christianity and Islam and God says as much:

 

“Say (O Muhammad): O people of the Bible, come ye to an agreement between us and you that we shall worship none but God and shall ascribe no partner to Him and none of us shall take others as lords beside God”.  If they turn away then say to them “Bear witness that we have already submitted to God on these terms”  (the Koran, 3: 64)

 

Christians criticise Islam for allowing polygamy forgetting or failing to appreciate that all prophets of God had sanctioned it on the authority to Divine Law revealed to them.  Polygamy has never been a commandment but just an allowance in order to replace the irresponsibility involved in illicit and often secretive sexual access to more than woman on the part of men, replace this almost inevitable evil by a fully publicly-blessed and fully responsible extra marriage so as to remedy the inevitable surplus of marriageable women seeing than mortality among male children have always been higher than the female and also wars and other dangerous toils like hunting decimated males more than females. Among Christians this desperate imbalance always fed adultery and fornication until today all imaginable sexual perversions and sins are uncontrollably exploding.  Only a small minority of Jews and Muslims have been to maintain more than one wife-  the wealthy and powerful minority of men who could otherwise debauch and fornicate like their Christian counterparts that is to say kings, lords, tycoons and believe it or not higher priests!

 

 Popes are known who maintained illicit harems and produced multiple bastards while monasteries have been often notorious for the sexual relations between their inmates with abortions and disposed of bastards being common if hushed up knowledge among all and sundry.  The favourite criticism among Christians against Muhammad (sws) has been his polygamous practice which they explain as the result of his sexual lust. This could not be farthest than the truth.  He lived monogamously until he was 51 and produced six children from that marriage and remarried after the death of his wife not a young or beautiful woman but another old lady and a destitute one at that. After his emigration to Medina where he succeeded to establish a Muslim community he married, over the next nine years nine other women; all except one were widows and most came from poverty and were old. Despite having proven his fertility before he did not produce a single child from all these marriages which must indicate what a low place sex played in the contraction of these marriages. His intentions were charitable throughout on top of the fact that in those times and since time immemorial polygamy carried no stigma whatsoever among the peoples of the world, except perhaps the then barbaric West where need for more women was met by a dozen forms of illicit exploits with aborted foetuses and abandoned bastards being the cost.  Their most holy majesties the kings for example, almost regularly bedded the women of their lords and many other damsels on top and were sometimes succeeded by their well-known bastards! Bishops and even some popes did not lag far behind.

All the women of Muhammad (sws) survived him and as long as they lived they served as spiritual tutors to countless men and women in the capacity of their ‘mothers’ as the Koran put it.  The prophet’s sense of shame and sexual decency was so legendary that his contemporaries observed: He is shier than a virgin behind seven veils!  He stood more to praise and pray God than sleep at nights and shed tears as he did so and had his feet swollen from the exercise.  In one particular case his object of compassion were the Christians; he recited the following verse of the Koran a hundred times while praying throughout the night, wetting and soaking his prayer mat with his tears:

 

“When God asks on the Day of Judgment ‘O Jesus son of Mary, was it you who told my servants “Take me and my mother as two gods beside God?’  He replies ‘Glory be to Thee. It is not for me to utter a thing I have no right to. If I used to say it then You would know it. You know what is in me ad I do not know what is in You. You and only You are the Knower of all secrets. I spoke to them only what You commanded me, that is ‘Worship God my Lord and your Lord’. I was a witness over them so long I dwelt amog them. When You took me away You remained the Witness over them. If you punish them, they are Your slaves; if You forgive them it is because You, yea You are the Mighty and Wise Judge (4: 118)

 

You see, he very much hoped and prayed that God would forgive them! He lived like a pauper in the fullest sense and died penniless because he could not wait to give away in charity what cash or assets would come to his hand, being barely able to wait for the morning before he could give them away.

 

His last public act was to be taken from his death bed to the pulpit of his small mosque from where he addressed people for any among them to come forward and make any claims against them they could so that ‘he would not have to face his Lord with others’ rights on him’.  One claimant asked for a  retaliation. He said “While once inspecting our battle lines you had touched my belly with your stick to tell me move back which touch had left a bruise mark on my skin. I want to do the same to you in retaliation”. Ignoring the shock his congregation displayed he calmed them down and took the men to his bedroom to retaliate. The man explained that his own belly was bare when he was touched and demanded that the Prophet (sws) also bares his which he did. Then the man knelt and kissed the corresponding spot on the Prophet’s (sws) belly sobbing with gratitude and saying “I hope by touching your skin I shall be spared the hellfire”.

The Prophet (sws) soon died. Having  gone through a long fever and; his last act was raising his hand towards the heaven which fell back after he uttered the words “To the Highest Companion”.  

 

 

BELIEF, MORALITY AND CIVILISATION
HISTORICAL BACKGOUND AND THE PRESENT SITUATION

 

As far as the human history we know goes back we find civilised and savage societies living in their separate ways. The oldest known literate and settled civilisation is that of the Sumerians who flourished in 4,000 BCE. They were later rivalled and then replaced by peoples of neighbouring areas the main ones being the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Persians, the longest surviving being the Egyptians. Theirs ended by Hellenisation with their subjugation to Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE and that Hellenic Egypt came to an end with its conquest by Islam in the seventh century CE. Of less well known antiquity has been the Chinese and Indian civilisations, but they also are very ancient and perhaps as brilliant is quite likely. After all the modern form of world history is only a recent product and the Western scholars who built it up from their studies, excavations and deciphering the alphabets and reconstructing of those many ancient languages written and spoken by those civilisations is an incomplete affair and every day is bringing to the surface more buried and forgotten items of relics and information. True, Herodotus (5th century BCE) and other ancient historians have left writings on many of the named civilisations but they could not be enough to yield all the information modern historians have been building up since about two centuries.

 

What is also equally important is to note that all these ancient civilisations were local affairs and there was not a widely if not totally and uniformly shared human civilisation as today. We are talking now of a global civilisation often wrongly seen as the mere spread of the Western by which we mean that shared by Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand the last three being the immigrant extensions of Europe. It seems that, unlike today, the world outside the Eastern Mediterranean basin and east and south Asia were inhabited by mainly illiterate, tribal and hunter-gatherer peoples whom the above civilisations either did not know about or if they did and could reach them treated them like they would treat animals.

 

Today we still have some such primitive outsiders to our civilisations but even these are on their way out as communications are improving with all parts of the world and even the most primitive races surprise us with their intelligence in the sense that any genetic differences they have from the more advanced nations do not cover items having a bearing on intelligence. A young person from any of these primitive races adopted by an advanced society may develop normally and can become as intelligent as any child in the adopting society. For example, even as recently as a few decades ago some Western racists were insisting that non-white races and especially the blacks were of low intelligence which could not be improved by any education. They have been proven wrong. We now know that given the chance a black African, an Australian aborigine or an Andian ‘red-skin’ can succeed in any educational, professional and artistic capacity as any other member of any other race. 

 

Actually both the Chinese and Japanese often seem to be more intelligent than their ‘white’ counterparts and especially the success of Japan in catching up and at places excelling the West in many areas of scholarship and production is here for all racists to see. We do not mean that the Japanese are proven to be the superior race. That also is a temporary illusion. The actual fact is that overall the human beings are one species and their potentials as individuals are not based on the races we divide them into but are uniformly distributed at all levels although local and transitory eminences are not lacking among them. These last differences are more results of extra-genetic factors than the genetic: a culture may be more encouraging of academic or artistic achievement while another more so of religious or belligerent. Change the culture and so change the products.  
The theses of this essay are two and one is to explain and remove all racial and cultural prejudices, as far as they are unjust, against the lowly regarded races and cultures. The other is demonstrating that this present global civilisation of ours are based on more contributions from the races outside the West and may contribute more not in too distant a future until the global civilisation can no longer be seen as Western-based.
Apart from these two theses we also have a moral task: we believe we can demonstrate that this Western civilisation is nowhere a pure blessing but it may be regarded, overall, an increasing curse for all humanity. Let us then see how it goes.

 

 

THESIS ONE- RACIAL PREJUDICES ARE BOTH MISINFORMED AND UNHELPFUL

 

If we know something about history to speak of we find that today’s racist attitudes are direct descendants of yesterdays and no new phenomena. Beginning from the West again, for thatis our home, we find that in all Western countries there is one big o small party of racist calling themselves ‘nationalist’, like the present British Nationalist Party or BNP. Actually many nationalist parties do not use the adjective ‘nationalist’, some prefer to hide behind adjectives like ‘conservative’, ‘christian’, ‘true path’ etc. Again their level of racism varies: some base themselves on a single ethnic group out of many in their country while some keep their umbrella broader and admit, for example, all ‘whites’ of whatever origin. This more the case in immigrant countries, like United States of America where all whites of European origin are admitted and any non-European white-looking others may be excluded; after all, until recently Jews were not welcome in racist parties however white and even blond they could be. Their origin was outside Europe, were designated as Semites and not as Arians, therefore their skin colour, if there at all could not save them. The thesis of all racists is that they are the most well-endowed race, a race of highest intelligence an ability and therefore endowed with a right to rule away and if necessary dispose of other races. The whole Nazi theory boiled down to this: it was so narrow that it barely allowed the British and the French- being German was always preferable and it excluded the slavs who could not be whiter and blonder. They called the Polish and Russians, for example, ‘subhuman’ and would not hesitate to treat like animals if necessary. The Japanese followed suit in seeing themselves as the chosen race.

 

Actually such racism is not new. The recent worst victims of Nazis, namely the Jews- indeed surprisingly, can be said to be the first and most categorical racists. Their cultural and spiritual seedbed the Old Testament is basically a racist document and even more so is their other main and parallel literary production the Talmud. They are the sons of God and as a whole, namely as Israel, they are not only the son but the first born of God. They looked on the rest of humanity as ‘the others outside us’, a single block of ‘goyim’ or ‘nations’ all of whom God disfavoured to the advantage of the Jews. Of course this belief at this categorical was not entirely universal among them. There have always been some more realistic and conscientious Jews who could recognise the basic equality of all men before God and see election more on personal merit grounds than racial. The story of Ruth is one example of this rare universal and correct view among the Jews of old: though a Moabite woman and not a Jewess, Ruth finds favour in the eyes of the Jews into which she somehow married. Because she featured in the ancestry of David, the very glorious king of Israel, she caused a lot of controversy but could not be dislocated. See how important was to be Jewess and not of any other race!

 

Similarly both the Greeks and their pupils the Romans called all nations outside themselves ‘barbarians’, from the notion that their speech were unintelligible and sounded like the barking of dogs! How kind, isn’t it? The Romans themselves were called barbarians by the Greeks and found with them partial favour after they accepted them as their teachers and emulated them in many matters.

 

Pre-Islamic Arabs also looked on themselves as the elite of humanity and called the rest as ‘ajam’; like the word ‘barbarian’ it derives from the concept of unintelligibility. This prejudice is so common throughout history and so much alive still that we find it almost daily in conversations we overhear or written materials we read. In Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel ‘From Russia With Love’ we read 007 arriving at Istanbul airport and noticing Turkish officials whose speech was like ‘barking’.

 

Why this almost universal tendency to see those who do not look and talk like us as inferior unless they have something we envy or hope to be given? I think we need look no farter than the animals whose most advanced species we are. Both solitary animals, like a male tiger and animals living in groups like the deer hate the invasion by others the territory or space they regard as theirs. Just walk towards a herd of deer in a park which have them graze in the open and a big male with a tree of horns will walk towards you with a threatening body language. A tiger establishes a range or territory for itself and will not allow any other tiger or other predator to roam and hunt in there. The reasons must be at least two: food supply and safety. We humans, especially when we are at the tribal stage of civilisation, fear people outside our tribe, for tribes are known to fight over food supplies like all animal herds do. Each tribe wants to control a piece of territory or if nomadic a number of food and water spots so that when it comes to the worst the tribe can be sure that they have some survival amount of both.

 

This instinct being programmed into our animal’s genes we all are wary of strangers and jealous of rivals. We all feel that we must at times fight as violently as we can given the fact that we may be attacked by others for various reasons. The stranger, the one who speaks unintelligibly but with obvious intelligence, the one whose strengths and intentions are inestimable, that dark unknown of a human-looking figure sets our nerves on their alarm and caution mode and advises us to attack before being attacked if and when the unexplained approach of the stranger continues. All animals behave like that and we are a species of animals. Animals my not be able to advance beyond this level of socialisation and solidarity but men can and must do. Racism is an almost exact duplication of very limited ability of animals to socialise and it is a shame for any human group to get stuck nearly there.

 


 

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