Kande Utte

Peace, one and all…

Here is a qawwali song I very much enjoy.  I hope you do too, insha Allah.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Kande Utte

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

A Reality to be Experienced

Peace, one and all…

God is not a concept to be proven or disproven.  Rather, God is a reality to be experienced.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Do ‘They’ Exist in Reality?

Peace, one and all…

‘Here is the reason for the postponement of this second volume: if all divine wisdom should be made known to the slave at once, the benefits in it would leave him unable to act, and the infinite wisdom of God would obliterate his comprehension.  He would not be able to cope.

This is why God makes a little of that infinite wisdom into a toggle which can be put into the nostrils, to lead him like a camel towards the necessary action.  If he were not to inform him of those benefits, he would not move at all, because knowledge of the gain to be made is what motivates human beings, who say, ‘For the sake of this, I will do what is right’.  If He should pour infinite wisdom down on him, the slave would be unable to move, just as a camel will not walk unless a toggle is put into its nose of an appropriate size – if the toggle is too big it will just slump down: ‘There is nothing, the storehouse of which is not with Us.  And We only send it down in a fixed measure’ [Quran 15:21].  Without water, clay cannot be made into a brick, nor can it become a brick if the water is excessive.  ‘He has raised the sky and He has set up the scales’ [Quran 55:7].  He gives everything in the right proportion, not without measurement and calculation, apart from to those people who have been transformed from their physical forms, becoming the ones referred to when He says, ‘He provides without calculation for whomsoever He chooses’ [Quran 2:212].  Whoever hasn’t tasted will not yet be aware.

Someone asked, ‘What is a lover?’  I answered, ‘You will know when you become like us’.  True love cannot be measured, which is why it is said to be an attribute of God in reality, and applicable to the slave only metaphorically.  ‘He loves them’ – this is the totality; ‘and they love Him’ [Quran 5:54] – do ‘they’ exist though in reality?’
(Masnavi, Prologue to Book 2)

Disparate Reflections

Peace, one and all…

The beginning of knowledge draws to a close in the art of relationship.  That is, intellectual reflection leads on to the realisation that our actions impinge on others, and that therefore we have an obligation before the face of others.  Ethical action is both the fruit and the testing-ground of knowledge.  Furthermore, knowledge and action, understood within the all-encompassing context of God, produce `ilm, or spiritually-informed praxis.  Thus `ilm should guide our hand in all that we do, and in all that we seek to honour.

Because of this, honouring the ‘other’ cannot truly occur unless and until that other is allowed to present themselves and their reality, in their own way.  ‘Honouring’ as a metaphor must therefore be a dialogue of contexts, as the ‘other’ context and my own come together as fully realised, independent wholes.  In a sense, they must become parents to a new, mutually shared context.  This move towards interdependence becomes relationship, which is to create something new, a third space of newly shared meanings.

Lover, beloved and love itself move in a never-ending relationship to one another.  Sometimes I am the lover and sometimes I am the beloved.  In other words, these are roles which each person, each world, must take on for the uncovering of life in all its fullness.  Lover and beloved come together and a child is born to them: love itself, pure and gleaming.  This child of love transforms lover and beloved, freeing them from the specificity of their assigned roles, allowing them thereby to also become love itself.  Love is the child, it is also the parent, in that it guides and liberates those it touches.

I seek relationships based on equality and so I must confront issues of power and control, of inequality, both within and beyond myself.  I must realise that life is not mine to conquer, to control or to own.  All of us are gioven opportunities to hold the initiative for a while, until the time comes to pass it on once more.  Injustice is thus an attempt to hold on to that power, that movement, beyond right and to the exclusion of others.  As I am discovering, the unregenerate human soul is a slippery customer – maintaining control even as it strives to appear meek and selfless.  So it is then that control is, at best, a fleeting illusion, a misunderstanding of the way things really are.  Like King Canute, I stand upon life’s shore and like that king of yore, I have no control over the tides of the sea.  Life obeys its own laws, and not my imaginings.  The world marches to a different drum altogether: la hawla wa la quwwata illa bi Allah (‘there is no power or strength except in God’)

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Love’s Never-Ending Road

Peace, one and all…

The fields of knowledge are wide and hidden within them are many gardens to beguile the eye and delight the mind and soul.  We are charged with entering those fields, and with bringing forth a good and useful harvest.  We are charged with learning, so that we might thereby become more than we are.  We are charged with learning so that we might become what we are truly meant to be.

Learning is a blessing and a treasure: it is our human birthright and also a privilege, a visible sign of God’s mercy.  Through knowledge we grow.  Through knowledge we traverse these fields of life.  And yet, when we have reached the end of the very last field, we come to another shore entirely.  We are confronted there by the infinite oceans of feeling, of spirit, of love.

As I am slowly beginning to discover, knowledge is like the earth and love is like the sea.  Sometimes, that sea strides to earth and snatches us away from ourselves.  And sometimes, the sea carries us back to the place we began from, transforming the road ahead into a pilgrimage of love.  It is as though the whole of knowledge were a billion miles wide and yet merely the first step on love’s never-ending road!

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

I Came to Your Door

Peace, one and all…

I came to your door
all unknowingly
and still,
you did not turn me away.

Turning this way and that,
in my unfortunate state,
I found my way to you,
to find your hand already outstretched.

You spoke into the very heart of me
and I felt the breath of heaven:
‘Come back to life,
and walk beneath the sun once more’.

I am yours beloved friend.
Let the world think whatsoever it will:
should a grain of sand ever be ashamed
of the beauty of the rising sun?

Abdur Rahman, 17th March, 2009

Look Up and See!

Peace, one and all…

Look up and see
the angels gathering above the roof tops,
gazing down
at this strange world of ours.

Look up and feel
the angels caressing our hands and faces
each time
we speak a word of hope.

Look up ibn al-sabil and then,
look down into the depths of your soul;
can you not feel
the tender hands of heaven?

Abdur Rahman, 17th March 2009

Unity and Duality

Peace, one and all…

Self and Other are the two central pillars of the human world.  Human life turns endlessly around these two opposites, as though they were the magnetic poles of human existence.  And indeed, so they are, in all truth.

Human understandings of life are based on dualities, on the analysis and assimilation of opposites.  At the fringes of each person’s knowledge lies an indistinct and uncertain realm, where language fails and meanings shift: however much we might learn and know, we cannot be anything other than fundamentally human.  In other words, self and other only take us so far, because reality is ultimately based on another principle entirely – on overwhelming oneness, on radical wholeness.  This is why human knowledge falls short, because it is based upon an incomplete understanding of the nature of things.  This is also why human beings themselves mis-apprehend things, because beneath the last layer of ‘self’ and beyond the last veil of the ‘other’ lies the oneness and infinity of the Divine.

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Questions of Dialogue

Peace, one and all…

I went along to a meeting of the Valleys Faith Forum last night.  A Muslim woman from Cardiff came and gave a talk about the potentials and difficulties of inter-faith dialogue.  The paper itself was interesting and so too was the subsequent discussion.  One issue that seemed to emerge in a number of different ways during this discussion was the nature of inter-faith work: is it merely to reinforce pre-existing ideas and identities; or is it also to challenge them? 

These are important questions and for me at least, go right to the heart of what it means to dialogue within and beyond our own faiths.  More generally, these questions relate to the very nature of discussion itself: why do we talk with others?  What do we expect from these encounters?  How should these conversations be undertaken?  Where should they begin and where should they end?

I have no ready answers to these questions, but I realise their significance.  After all, unless we ask these questions of ourselves (and me of myself), how can we ever hope to be certain of our real intent?  And, as the Prophet himself said (alaihi al-salatu wa al-salam):

‘Actions are (judged) by intentions, so each man will have what he intended…’

So, with God’s aid and permission, I intend to explore this topic more fully.  With this in mind, I’m currently reading the excellent Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims Studying the Bible and the Quran Together (edited by Michael Ipgrave).

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Truth is Wherever You Want it

Peace, one and all…

‘We entered the house of realisation,
we witnessed the body.

The whirling skies, the many-layered earth,
the seventy-thousand veils,
we found in the body.

The night and the day, the planets,
the words inscribed on the Holy Tablets,
the hill that Moses climbed, the Temple,
and Israfil’s trumpet, we observed in the body.

Torah, Psalms, Gospel, Quran -
what these books have to say,
we found in the body.

Everybody says these words of Yunus
are true.  Truth is wherever you want it.
We found it all within the body.

(Yunus Emre, trans. Shaykh Kabir Helminski and Rafik Algan)

Sham Sufi Qawwali Group

Peace, one and all…

Here’s a really beautiful qawwal I found on You Tube, peformed by a qawwali group from Afghanistan.  Enjoy and may God bless all who pass by.

Sham

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Visiting Mevlana, insha Allah

Peace, one and all…

Insha Allah, in little over a month my family and I will travel to Turkey on our first overseas trip together.  God willing, we will rest in the sunshine and take in some of the sights and sounds of southern Turkey.  We hope to visit some good friends of ours and then, during the middle of our time there, we hope to journey on to Konya, the adopted home and final resting place of Hazrat-i-Pir Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (may God sanctify his noble soul).  May God grant us the grace to visit Mevlana’s house.

Personally, I am really looking forward to this trip, and to visiting Rumi in particular.  In some ways, it feels similar to shortly before our trip to Mecca on umrah (which was almost 10 years ago)!  There is a similar mixture of hope, anticipation and nervousness that I felt before we landed in Saudi Arabia.

May God bless our trip and may Hu keep my family and I safe on His path.

Ya Allah!

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

The Tent of Adab

Peace, one and all…

In His noble book, Allah Subhanahu wa’a Ta’ala (the Glorifed and Exalted)relates a short episode from the life of prophet Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam):

‘Has the story reached you of the honoured guests of Ibrahim? When they entered his dwelling and said, ‘Peace!’ He said, ‘Peace, to people we do not know. Then he turned quietly to his household, and brought forth a fat [roasted] calf, and placed it before them, saying, “Will you not eat?”‘
(51:24-27)

 

This passage relates part of the wider story of Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam).  In these passages, we see Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam) greeting some unknown visitors.  Shortly afterwards, we learn that these visitors are actually angels, charged with two important missions; firstly, to deliver the good news of a child to the elderly Sarah and Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam) and secondly, to announce God’s imminent judgement on the city of Sodom, in which Ibrahim’s relative Lut (Lot) lived (alaihim al-salam).

We find the same story related in the Book of Genesis:

As I was reading these verses recently, I was struck by the profound teaching they contain.  As I reflect upon them more fully, I begin to understand them as a description of prophetic adab.  And, because the prophets (God’s peace be upon them all) are our teachers, their example must also become my own way.  That is, visitors to my home must be greeted warmly and in an open-hearted manner.  They must be offered rest, shelter and food.  They must be honoured, and then offered easy-going, appropriate conversation.

‘The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.  He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.” “Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” (Genesis 18:1-5)

In both accounts, Ibrahim’s first act, upon seeing the visitors, is to offer a warm and heartfelt greeting.  The Quran has Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam) give his visitors the salam, whilst the biblical account has Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam) ’bow low to the ground’.  In both accounts, we see Ibrahim (alaihi al-salam) accutely concerned to greet his visitors, even though he clearly doesn’t know them.  His next act is to have food prepared, and not just any food, but a fat calf, according to the Quran.  Once they have accepted his hospitality and have ‘washed their feet’ according to the Genesis account, they explain the purposes of their visit.

 

Strangely, I found exactly the same idea recently in a sayin attributed to Hazrat Nizamuddin Awliya (God sanctify his soul).  God willing, I will add it here as soon as I can find the book in which I first read it.

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

The Water of Life

Peace, one and all…

‘Look at yourself, trembling afraid of
nonexistence:
know that nonexistence
is also afraid
that God might bring it into existence.
If you grasp at worldly dignities,
it’s from fear too.
Everything, except love of the Most Beautiful,
is really agony. It’s agony
to move towards death and not drink the water
of life’
(Masnavi, 1.3684-3687, trans. Shaykh Kabir Helminski)

You are not a Single ‘You’

Peace, one and all…

‘When you fall asleep,
you go from the presence of yourself
into your own true presence.
You hear something
and surmise that someone else in your dream
has secretly informed you.
You are not a single ‘you’.
No, you are the sky and deep sea.
Your mighty ‘Thou’, which is nine hundredfold,
is the ocean, the drowning place
of a hundred ‘thous’ within you’.
(Masnavi 3.1300-1303, trans. Shaykh Kabir Helminski)

Friends

Peace, one and all…

‘Friends, how many of us have them?  Friends, ones we can depend on…’

Thus begins one of my favourite ’80s rap tunes, ‘Friends’ by Whodini.  Relationships are the essence of life, and so friendship, in all its forms, is integral to life itself.  Moreover, since God is al-Wali (the Protecting Friend), friendship stretches beyond the purely human realm, moving onwards into the fullness of the Divine.

What does it mean to have a friend?  What is friendship?  How should we choose our friends? How do we maintain and strengthen our friendships?  What do our friendships say about us? 

Given the importance of relationships, such questions strike right to the heart of what it means to be human.  The older I get, the more significant my friendships become – to the point that I feel that my own personal salvation will depend upon being able to show friendship to everyone I meet.

Whodini: Friends

And my last prayer is praise of God, the Sustainer and Friend of All Being.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

Thinking About Freedom

Peace, one and all…

True freedom is not the ability to fulfill my every passing whim.  True freedom is the ability to choose a course of action without compulsion.  After all, God says in His glorious book: ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (Quran 2:256).  Freedom is the ability to make full and open choices, without being driven by the physical, mental,  social, political, economic, religious and cultural contexts in which I live and move.  True freedom is the ability to act and to accept the consequences of that act, whatever they might be.

True freedom is not therefore external.  It does not come from outside of ourselves.  Rather, it emerges from deep within.  Nor does the existence of external law necessarily inhibit our freedom.  A law is only a law if we choose to follow it.  Not that law necessarily equates to compulsion (which is something I have begun to learn only recently).  True law is thus guidance in our dealings with one another.  That is, law (like freedom) must be put into practice if it is to live.  Law must be engaged with as a living force; it cannot maintain its vigour if it is treated as merely a set of dry, poorly understood rules.

Strangely, the more I move towards freedom, the more conscious I become of my limitations, the more aware of consequences I become – especially in the inter-personal realm.  I could act in that way, but actions bring questions: what are the consequences of that act: who do they affect?  Who do they injure?  Am I expanded or lessened by this deed?

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman

You Closed My Book

Peace, one and all…

You Closed My Book

You closed my book of poetry
and turned me to gaze
into the depths
of my own raw soul.

I heard Your love-reproach in the dark,
whispering into my heart
as a song of hope
in all those times of starless gloom.

‘Take My broom to all the dusty corners
of your soul, ibn al-sabil;
for what beloved could make a home
in such a ragged cave?’

Abdur Rahman, 12th March 2009