Tag: moon

  • From Father To Son

    I watched a movie tonight that was probably the most accurate portrayal of the life of an average Muslim family in South Africa. The movie is called Material, and sets out to depict the struggles of many Muslim Indian families that are ruled by a firm-handed man. The authenticity of the characters, the script, and the setting made it feel as if it was a chapter taken out of my own life, although I can’t lay claim to having nearly as meaningful a relationship with my own father. Perhaps the familiarity with the themes is what hit home for me, but I think it’s more than that.

    I often feel a twinge of guilt when I speak plainly about my relationship with my father, but like it is said, speaking ill of the dead only hurts the living. My intentions are never to malign him, nor to earn sympathy from anyone that bothers to listen, but describing my relationship with my father as a relationship at all feels somewhat unnatural. There are a few traits that I have quite unwittingly inherited from my father which includes my sharp tongue, my cynical nature, and my uncompromising approach to matters of principle. Perhaps a part of my dark humour was also inherited, but very few see that side of me, so it probably doesn’t count.

    The truth is I’ve often wondered what it must be like to have a father to turn to when in need of advice, or perhaps just a sounding board steeped in wisdom. How must it feel to be able to stand up and be counted for your accomplishments knowing that your father is standing in the crowd feeling a sense of pride about what you made of the little that you had to start with. I was clothed, fed, and I had a roof over my head, and for that I will always be grateful. Unfortunately the duties of a father don’t stop at that point. The basics only provides the shell, not even the foundation.

    I’ve often assumed that only once I grow to understand what drove my father to be the bitter and angry man that he was, will I be able to subdue similar demons on my part. I wondered if he was perhaps misunderstood, or if he himself did not understand the source of his rage or his bitterness, but even if that were true, I see the damage in my siblings that leaves me loathe to make excuses for much of what he did. I’ve always maintained that the best gift a parent can give their child is the gift of a healthy self-esteem. Everything else in life becomes bearable, or even easy, if we have a sense of self that is founded in a childhood that was indeed a childhood.

    I’ve never known the true embrace of a father, not physically, nor emotionally. It’s an emotion that I’ll never experience the pleasure of, nor will I ever experience the pleasure or the consoling comfort of knowing what it’s like for him to be proud of me, or my achievements. My very strong streak of obstinate rebellion in the face of criticism took hold at an early age. I realised very early in life that nothing came easily. Every handout or hand-up was inevitably attached to an expectation of reciprocation, not always in equal measures. There was little encouragement to pursue anything meaningful beyond what I was innately capable of. I was barely in standard nine (11th grade) when I recall having a conversation with my mother about wanting to move out because I refused to put up with the toxic environment that we called home any longer.

    When the father in that movie showed his son the door, and arrogantly encouraged him to use it, I had very vivid flashbacks of similar moments in harsher tones, with significantly more colourful language, including the moment when I was shown the door when I was barely 6 years old as punishment for forgetting my jacket outside. Somehow moments like those, moments that shaped my character in ways that I would only realise much later in life, always seemed to happen on cold winter nights. The moment when my ex-wife flew into a rage and threatened mine and my daughter’s lives, or the moment when I stared at the beautiful moon through metal grids mounted at least twenty feet above me as I paced around the courtyard of the holding cells on the coldest night that year, each leaving scars and traces of wisdom that only the school of life can teach.

    My resilience, tenacity, compassion (albeit well hidden), and patience, I get from my mother. Reflections like these are what dissuades me from writing that book. My story is not unique, and in that fact alone there is much to be sad about, not celebrated. It sometimes feels as if writing about it romanticises it in a way that undermines the cruelty of it all. I guess, if nothing else, I’m grappling with whether or not I have a story to tell, or if the story only needs to be written so that I can finally rid myself of it.

  • Muslims and Diana, Goddess of the Hunt

    Here’s a classic article to demonstrate the ignorance of Muslims today. The article discusses one of my pet peeves, which is the adoption of the moon and star as symbols of Islam. It confirms my previous statements about its unsavoury origins and also confirms that it is directly adopted from Diana, goddess of the hunt. 

    Here’s the part that proves the ignorance I’m talking about. Further down the page, after the facts are presented around the origins of these symbols in Islam, and after confirming the use of flags and no symbols during the time of Rasulullah (SAW) and many centuries thereafter, they provide a poll to allow people to vote for their preferred symbol of Islam. 

    The results indicate an overwhelming majority still selecting the symbol of Diana as the symbol of Islam. This is just sad.

    To further demonstrate how far gone we are, take a look at the live video feed from Makkah during the prayer times, especially Taraweeh. Notice the people that walk nonchalantly through the rows of people praying without any concern at all. Notice how many are walking between Saffa and Marwa as part of their Umrah, and instead of focusing on the deed at hand, they’re jumping up and down with cell phones in their hands waving at the fixed cameras mounted along the route. 

    I guess it’s not as bad as the guy I saw having a good old chat on his cell phone while making tawaaf in his designer sunglasses at night, but it’s still quite disturbing.

    Sorry for the rant, but it’s disheartening to see Muslims behave this way, and then we wonder why we’re trodden over throughout the world? Why we can’t even take care of our own in our own back yard? Why we’re constantly reaching out to the UN and US to assist us instead of turning to Allah and rectifying our ways? We’ve lost the plot. But one thing that’s never in short supply is our criticism of each other’s performance of the rituals of Islam, because that is all we have the intellectual capacity to focus on. 

    We’re as pretentiously pious as the non-Muslims are materialistically distracted. 

  • About that moon sighting…

    The sweetness of this month of Ramadaan is always tainted at the beginning and at the end because of the stubborn insistence and double standards of the people that proclaim themselves  to be the leaders of the Ummah. Their very own offices will release perpetual salaah time tables that can be used throughout the year, publish calendars that include to-the-minute exact times for starting and ending fast, all based on scientifically calculated methods, while still insisting that the moon for Ramadaan cannot be accurately predicted and therefore must be sighted with the naked eye.

    But the ridiculous double standards don’t stop there. They go on further to accept that if someone in another part of the country sights the moon, we can accept that as sufficient proof that the month of Ramadaan has started and therefore we can act on that. However, what they fail to acknowledge is that once again, a double standard exists. On the one hand, they’re trying to leverage off the permissibility of acting on the sighting of the moon in another town close to your own, but fail to acknowledge the practicality of the time taken for travel between the two towns during the time of the sahaba relative to our own experiences now. 

    For example, in South Africa, if I’m living in Johannesburg and the moon is not sighted in time for Esha salaah, it is common practice to check with the Muslim communities in Cape Town if they possibly sighted the moon since sunset is usually 45 minutes to 2 hours later than Johannesburg. Given that they’re on the coast with low humidity, their skies are considerably clearer as well making the conditions perfect for sighting the moon. However, Cape Town is 1200km (750 miles) away, which means that it would have been physically impossible to travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg in a single day on horseback or camel back or any other means of transport available during the time of the sahaba. In case I’m not making sense here, the double standard that I see in this is simple. We’re willing to exercise the leniency of making news of a sighting from another town a permissible indicator to start Ramadaan, but we’re allowing scientific/technological progress to be the basis on which we confirm it? Put differently, we’re happy to apply one part of the Hadith while relying on modern technology to fulfil the means. 

    There’s a verse in the Qur’an that always echoes in my head when this debate comes up. It says in Surah 21 verse 33:

    Sahih International

    And it is He who created the night and the day and the sun and the moon; all [heavenly bodies] in an orbit are swimming.

    Muhsin Khan

    And He it is Who has created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, each in an orbit floating.
    Yusuf Ali

    It is He Who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: all (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course.

    Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what will happen to this earth if the moon suddenly floated in an orbit disproportionate to that of the earth or the sun? Yet we’re willing to abide by calendars that tell us to-the-minute when to start and when to stop performing each salaah, but still insist on having pointless debates about the sighting of the moon whose cycle can be predicted as accurately as the sun?

    In the interests of unity, the Sunnah is that we follow the majority opinion of our community so that we don’t create divisions. For this reason only do I continue to follow the decisions published by our local masjid. But I pray that in time, this issue as well as the insanity around the use of the moon and star symbols will become a thing of the past and that Muslims around the world can move beyond the pettiness that erupts every single year without fail just because we can’t separate principles from rituals and apply them consistently. Insha-Allah. Ameen.

  • Those Wonderful Symbols of ‘Islam’

    The joy of symbols. So here we have a mosque with a paving design that incorporates the Jewish symbol which is the Star of David. To my knowledge, it is widely accepted that:

    1. The five pointed star is the star used by various Christian kings, including King Richard (if I’m not mistaken) who was being celebrated with his symbols adorning Istanbul alongside the crescent of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Army. 
    2. The six pointed star is the Jewish symbol for the Star of David
    3. The eight pointed star is the one used most prominently by Arabs as can be seen in the motif designs of middle eastern architecture

    Interesting that these facts have little to no impact on Muslims who adopt them blindly and defend them jealously. 

  • What’s your reason?

    The moon and star symbols were never used during the time of Rasulullah (SAW), nor during the time of the rightly guided caliphs thereafter, and not even for a few hundred years after the demise of Rasulullah (SAW). So what’s your excuse for using it? Because you found your forefathers doing so? Or because the corrupt house of Saud uses it to deface the two most sacred mosques?

    Does the fact that it stems directly from pagan worship have no effect on you? Or do you think that it’s ok to adopt such symbols and apply it differently, whilst being passionately vocal about other so-called innovations and subscribing to sects that never existed during the time of Rasulullah (SAW) or the chosen generations that followed?

    Are you actively contributing towards the double standards that plague the Ummah? Or is everything assumed to be ok because there’s so much worse that we could be doing? I find it weird that some can go around condemning others for grave worship of Muslim ‘saints’ and other sins while at the same time proudly using the pagan symbols to confirm their identity as a Muslim.

    Why is it that no one is willing to engage on this? Is this the proverbial elephant in the room for the Ummah? 

  • The Crescent of Stupidity

    Oh noooo….this is wrong on so many levels! Please, I’m begging every single one of you. Google it, Bing it, Yahoo it, or just pick up any old history text book that deals with Islamic history and the Ottoman Empire, and please please please pay attention to the fact that the crescent was adopted into Islam directly from Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt! This has no relevance in Islam. It stems from pagan worship and in no way represents anything Islamic. Wallahi, I am not making this up. 

    Please, please, please just take a few seconds to Google the origins of the moon and star in Islam and you will see that I am not making this up. Our insistence on sighting the moon of Ramadaan as opposed to calculating it further entrenches this idea in people’s minds that the crescent symbol is somehow related to that ritual, but it’s not. It never has been, and most importantly, it was never used during the time of the Prophet (SAW), the rightly guided caliphs, nor the numerous generations that followed for a few hundred years! 

    Audhubillah! Please abandon the use of this symbol. It has no benefit whatsoever and only creates links between Muslims and Pagans, and nothing else. If you wish, you can find more info under this tag of mine. Please, discourage the use of these symbols wherever you see them. May Allah save us from this horrible innovation. Imagine performing salaah while you have the symbol of Diana embellishing everything around you, including our mosques, homes, prayer mats, etc.!

    Astaghfirullah!

  • Sighting versus Calculating the New Moon

    the72sects:

    It might be a bit premature for a post like this given that Ramadaan is still a few months away, but this issue has been playing on my mind for a long time now. I was reminded about it again just now when I was delayed in my performance of my Dhuhr salaah, which nearly overlapped with the time for Asr. How did I know it almost overlapped? Not through measuring the length of the shadow of an object relative to the object itself, or from going out to try to determine the angle of the sun. I identified the overlap like almost every other Muslim these days, and that is that I looked at a perpetual salaah timetable that has been published by various Islamic bodies throughout the world, and that is available on the internet, on my mobile phone and in various printed formats. 

    So we’ve got access to this amazing wealth of knowledge that we know only stems from Allah because Allah has established this universe in due proportion with an order about everything. It makes everything predictable if we only apply our minds. Everything except the weather of course. And women. But I digress. 🙂

    Despite knowing the exact minute when the moon will be born, and despite knowing exactly how old it has to be before it is possible to be seen with the naked eye, we still insist on the physical sighting of the moon to establish the beginning of a new lunar month, when we go from day to day and establish our salaah according to a calculated timetable! Is it just me or is there a distinct contradiction in that? The moon sighting sagas has not only made the Muslims a laughing stock of the world on more than one occasion, but it has driven divisions in communities because of the ridiculous debates that rage around it.

    So in our collective wisdom, in South Africa for example, we agree that if the moon is not sighted in Johannesburg, but it is sighted in Cape Town, then the Muslims in Johannesburg are allowed to commence fasting in line with the people in Cape Town. So I ask myself this simple question; during the time of Rasulullah (SAW), how would it have been possible for a message to be sent in a single night from one town to another town to confirm the sighting of the moon when those towns were in fact days of travel apart? So is this then yet another contradiction in the practice of insisting on the sighting of the moon for Ramadaan?

    It simply doesn’t make sense. All it does is it confirms yet again the ridiculous gap in knowledge of those that perpetuate such logic because once again we fail to note the difference between ritual and principle. Ritual would be the sighting of the moon. Principle would be the changing of the month based on the birth of the new moon. Both of which is clearly guided by the measurements defined by the Sunnah. If these measurements can be accurately confirmed without the use of the naked eye, then the same way that we don’t look for the distinction between a black and white thread at the time of dawn to commence Fajr salaah, we should not be looking for the crescent of the new moon to confirm the commencement of a new Islamic month. When we get this right, the ridicule in the below image can finally be put behind us, so that as an Ummah we can stop being distracted with such ridiculous pettiness and instead focus on the real issues that face the Muslims today. 

  • My struggles with those symbols

    It feels like I’ve come almost full circle in my contemplations regarding that dastardly symbol that grates me each time the thought flits through my mind. After reading a post on Tumblr this week, I was suddenly faced with the realisation that perhaps my response to this matter has been one of extremism rather than purposeful reason.

    My contempt for the moon and star as symbols of Islam has not abated. But my resolve to separate myself from the community based on this contempt that I feel is wavering. I maintain my position regarding the double standards and hypocrisy demonstrated by many Ulama of South Africa. I have not engaged with others outside of this country, but I have no reason to believe that the mainstream views will be equally distastefully biased towards the popular vote rather than the principled reality. A reality that dictates that the moon and star are symbols of paganism adopted directly into Islam from pagan roots and has never had any reference to any Islamic practise either during the time of Rasulullah (SAW) or after. 

    But this is clear to me, and is therefore not at the core of my uneasiness tonight. The post that I read this week on Tumblr spoke of unity in the Ummah and what acts were overlooked although known to be incorrect at the time of its occurrence, in favour of maintaining such unity. These acts were overlooked by learned companions (RA) in their endeavour to maintain unity above all else. Suddenly, with this in mind, my decision to remove myself from the gathering at the local masjid out of protest against that horrible symbol affixed to the minaret and dome seems to be an act of extremism rather than conscientious objection. 

    I used to feel assured that my position was correct and my behaviour justified. I’m now left with only the feeling of surety regarding my position, but no longer my behaviour. I’m starting to doubt if staying away, and avoiding the difficult discussions with the trustees is in fact the correct way to deal with this, and more importantly, if it is a justifiable response to what is a bid’ah but not necessarily a major act of kufr. 

    May Allah guide me in this matter. Ameen.