Peace, one and all…
As regular visitors will know, I love Qawwali music. I love its rhythm, as I love its poetry. I love its sound, as I love its performance.
So it is that one of my favourite qawwals is the rightly famous Allah Hoo. Perhaps the most famous version is that sung by Ustadh Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This rendition is rightly praised as a masterpiece. However, I also love the version performed by the equally renowned Sabri Brothers. Whilst listening to this version recently, I heard these words anew as if for the first time all over again:
La ilaha tere Shan Ya Wahdahoo!
My (very approximate) translation would make this something like:
There is no divinity except Your beauty. O Unique One!
Perhaps we might even expand this a little and render it thus: there is nothing worthy of worship except Your beauty.
At any rate, this immediately struck me as a deeply profound thought. In a very beautiful tradition, the Prophet (alaihi al-salatu wa al-salam) said: ‘Allah is beautiful and loves beauty’. For me, God is beautiful and ultimately, it is that beauty that draws me towards Him.
And what should be my response to such profundity? Well, what else could my heart do except leap for joy?
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
