Tag: Principles

  • Rituals versus Principles

    When you practice the customs and rituals of Islam, you will grow closer to people. When you apply the principles of Islamic teachings in everything that you do, you will grow closer to Allah. These are just stray thoughts that occurred to me today. I noticed this in many different aspects of my life, especially in how easily I aligned with people or groups in the community by dressing a certain way, or engaging in specific activities.

    However, when I took exception to something they did as a matter of principle, and I tried to engage with them about it, I received the most terse and abrupt responses, and was not indulged in any open discussions about the issues that I had raised; this despite me having presented objective views and evidence to support my concerns, with them insisting that unless I was an Aalim, Sheikh, Maulana or some other recognised title holder of religious scholarly degree, I would not be allowed to engage with the people in authority to begin with.

    Seems like a far cry from the way in which our beloved Prophet (SAW) engaged with the poorest of the poor on the most sensitive of personal issues without showing them an ounce of scorn or denigration.

  • toobaa:

    Our use of the phrase ‘The Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 699 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe… From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary… 

    —- Bertrand Russel, History of Western Philosophy, 1948

    This is the kind of context that is usually missing, not only in the western media or other spheres of western influence, but it’s also almost entirely absent in the discussions of Muslims when they’re trying to explain the beauty and benefit that Islam has brought to this world. We’re so busy trying to justify our existence relative to every other religion that we become unconsciously apologetic. Worse still is that in the absence of the above realisation, we lose the very essence that made the Muslims respectable in the first place. When Muslims were sincere in establishing the principles and not just the rituals of Islam in their lives, we flourished in every sphere of science, medicine, physics, philosophy, etc. When we became ritualists focused on individual piety, we lost the plot…and have been searching for it ever since. 

    (Source: http://MattTheSamurai.deviantart.com/art/Fire-Masamune-91536135)

  • Today in the masjid at dhuhr time, one of the men forgot to switch their mobile phone to silent, so in the middle of the salaah it rang out with a very melodiously inappropriate tone. Given how long it rang, there obviously wasn’t much urgency on the part of the man to silence it. He eventually did, and in the next rakaah it rang again…and again with little urgency to silence it. And again, just before the salaah was completed, or perhaps moments after, it rang again. And again, no urgency to silence it.

    So it was inevitable that someone would feel the need to speak out against it, at which point an elderly man sitting on a chair in the last row performing his salaah shouted out at the man asking him to switch it off and to ‘get his head sorted out’. Some found this amusing, others didn’t notice, and perhaps others, like me, found this disappointing. I wonder if either of those men realised that at that point they both had become the personification of two of the signs of the hour? One I believe is the raising of the voice in the masjid, and the other being the playing of music in the masjid. 

    But here’s the clincher for me. Both men were fully adorned in the Sunnah dress code, including traditional ‘kurta’ or cloak, head covering as well as full fist-length beards. These are supposed to be ambassadors of Islam, and representatives of Rasulullah (SAW) given their choice to imitate his appearance as closely as possible. But instead, their behaviour was anything but that. Which further affirms my contention with Muslims as having become ritualistic followers rather than true believers. 

    The same kurta-clad men are the ones that drive horribly on the roads, park people in at the masjid during Jumu’ah salaah and swindle their way through business in trying to avoid paying legitimate taxes, or trying to under cut their fellow Muslim business owners. This is of course a generalisation, but unfortunately my experiences to the contrary has been the exception, and definitely not the norm.

    This is just one of the reasons why I have packed away my own kurtas, I’ve stopped wearing specifically Islamic dress on a Friday to the office, and I maintain my beard to a length that is beyond a designer ‘face’ beard, but not quite a fist length either. And I do this deliberately and with conviction in the hope that InshaAllah I may be able to realise the principles of the teachings of our beloved Messenger of Allah (SAW), rather than to succumb to the ritualistic mockery that has overtaken the actions of too many Muslims these days. 

  • On this day of Jumu’ah it will be my second Friday in which I will deliberately avoid attending salaah at my local masjid, and instead, go to another not far from me because it is one of the few mosques in the area that is not embellished with those pagan symbols. I used to be regularly stationed in the first row right in front of the mimbar at Jumu’ah time, and I wonder if my absence will even be noted?

    Wondering about that gives me fleeting feelings of insincerity, which is one of the reasons why I stopped attending the local masjid for salaah. I know that as a matter of principle, I cannot on one hand object to the placement of the pagan symbols on the masjid, and on the other continue to attend salaah with congregation just because I don’t want people in the community to think less of me. I stay four doors away from the masjid, so this is even more difficult than usual. 

    So I’ll carve my niche in the first row of another masjid where I’m not known personally and pray that they don’t also decide at some point to decorate their structure with that vile moon and star combination that has come to represent the ritualistic stupour of Muslims around the world. Even the Haram in Makkah and Madinah is defaced with those symbols without even a peep from the Ummah. 

    Reminds me of the hypocrisy of the masses in the Arab Spring! Chanting Allahu-Akbar with every rocket and every bullet fired, and then demanding a secular government! So let’s bow our heads in prayer when worshiping Allah, raise our hands to recite the takbeer, and then prostrate beneath a dome that is adorned with the symbol of Diana, goddess of the hunt, often accompanied by her fellow kaafir King Richard whose star is also emblazoned across the flags of many a ‘Muslim’ nation. 

    Seems we’re an Ummah of Muslims, but not many Mu’min’s. May Allah save me from complacency and excess in this matter. 

  • The day we question the sincerity, intention and motivation of our own leaders as much as we question this about the western nations, that is the day that the Ummah may arise from its slumber, Insha-Allah. Until then, we will continue to follow blindly, establish our identities ritualistically, and be oblivious to the principles and logic that Islam has blessed us with. 

  • Hypocrisy Perfected

    They say that the fear of ridicule breeds the most repugnant of cowards. So then the most repugnant of cowards must surely breed the most despicable of hypocrites. And I fail to see how hypocrites can be happy or fulfilled people.

    I find that so many times we’re too willing to sacrifice what we want for ourselves under the guise of being martyrs for the greater good. But that greater good is rarely subscribed to by those for whom we claim to pursue it. Yet our self-pity, or is that self-destructiveness (read cowardice) prompts us along that very same path that robs us of our own peace or happiness, all the while convincing ourselves that we’re doing it to make someone dear to us happy, which should inevitably make us happy.

    But it doesn’t. Because rarely, if ever, does anyone reciprocate such sacrifices. If they do, it’s usually for someone else that they’re also trying to please or ‘make happy’ and as a result, we end up in a vicious cycle of unfulfilled aspirations of securing the love and adoration, if not at least appreciation of those we deem deserving of our sacrifices, only to discover that we’ve lost the essence of ourselves in the process while they were trying to please someone else.

    I’ve always believed that we act out of duty rather than conviction when the guilty martyr in us triumphs over our courage to be true to ourselves and just to our souls. There’s less risk in having to face the consequences of a bad decision that may leave us exposed or vulnerable, and infinitely more cowardly comfort in the knowledge that if someone betrays us, we can blame them for their dishonesty and feel justifiable pity for ourselves. Justifiable or not, that pity will never leave us feeling fulfilled, loved, or appreciated. It will leave us seeking fulfilment from others, and we will disguise that yearning as willing sacrifices for those we love, but it will never bring us any closer to being true to ourselves.

    There’s a fine line between being selfish enough to sustain our own soul’s desires, and sacrificing enough to selflessly contribute to the life experiences of others. Being human lies somewhere between being a narcissist and a martyr. And hypocrisy has no part to play at all.

  • When Will We Awaken

    I received an e-mail from someone earlier today about a certain Dr van der Hoven from the Netherlands that supposedly did some research about the effect of reciting the word ‘Allah’ compared to the recitation of other Arabic words. This e-mail has been doing its rounds for some time now, but this time I decided to see if there was any way to determine the authenticity of this claim.

    So I Googled it and was not surprised at all by the results. The exact same article was published on numerous Islamic web sites as if it was a testament to the relevance of Islam and the truth about our way of life. I am a Muslim first and foremost, but the last time I checked, Islam taught us to verify the accuracy of information about others before we repeated it…and for good reason as well. As can be seen from this article, we’re so desperate to prove to the West that we’re on the right path and that they’re missing the point or the truth or both, that we’ll grab the tackiest piece of information without question just to satisfy our own doubts.

    Yes, doubts! We’re so doubtful about our beliefs that we search for miracles every chance we get. We need these miracles to confirm our faith, as if faith is supposed to be based on miracles that we can witness in our own time. What is wrong with us??? We went from being the greatest nation, greatest culture and most revered group of human beings to being the most punished, abused and helpless nation on earth. There was a time when everyone else imitated US! Now we’re like mad dogs looking for the scraps of the icons of the West so that we can appear to be ‘with it’ or ‘accepted’ or ‘cool’. We’ve become despicable in so many ways.

    We used to teach the world about hygiene and manners and truth…now they’re teaching us after they took the accumulated knowledge of our pious and knowledgeable predecessors and adulterated it to make it appear as if they were responsible for it. The contribution of Muslims to every great endeavour is lost to history because we have very few, if any scholars that are capable of being ranked amongst the great Muslim intellectuals of the past. We established civil societies, human rights, social and welfare structures and amazing architecture when the rest of the world was still experiencing the Dark Ages.

    What are we now? A group of weak excuses that have to resort to suicide bombings, guerilla warfare and politicing just to make a point. I respect and honour the brave Muslim men, women and children that are fighting to defend the lives that are being abused and trampled on by the corrupt politicians of the West. But that wouldn’t be necessary if we had leaders with backbone. Leaders who practised and understood the PRINCIPLES of Islam and not just the literal interpretation of the traditions and Quranic injunctions and enforced it when it suited them.

    The honourable Sahaabah (companions of the Prophet Muhammed S.A.W.) spread Islam to parts of the world that couldn’t even understand a word they said. But people saw their ways and admired what they stood for, because their behaviour was exemplary. Just the way they carried themselves was a good enough example for people to immediately realise that their way of life was superior.