23 Saturday Jul 2011
Posted in Being human, Identities, Kindred Spirituality, Music
Peace, one and all…
Here are some positive vibes from Galliano, one of my all-time favourite bands. The music is beautiful and the words are true. Enjoy, and may all that you do this day be blessed with every goodness.
57th Minute of the 23rd Hour
Welcome to the Story (Peace Go With You Mix)
Golden Flower (featuring Omar)
Prince of Peace
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
30 Friday Jul 2010
Peace, one and all…
Al hamdu lillahi ala kulli hal. Praise be to God in every condition and state.
I have been in London for the past three weeks, taking an intensive Arabic course with the Ibn Jabal Institute. Ma sha Allah! It has been as interesting and as challenging as I hoped it would be. I am looking forward to grounding what I have learnt in further study, insha Allah. As this is my last weekend in London before I return home, I took this opportunity to visit the Study Society in West London. It has a regular Mevlevi turning group and my intention was to attend one of their beginner’s classes. As God willed, on this occasion the class wasn’t meeting. Instead I was invited to a small Rumi study group. Praise be to God for His every blessing. It was a beautiful evening. We sang a number of my favourite Turkish ilahis and shared a number of profound poems of Hazret-i Mevlana (God sanctify his noble soul). Discussing these poems and the issues they raise in a supportive, sharing environment (in sohbet in other words) was wonderful, and doubly so for being unexpected.
During our sohbet we touched on the themes of love and death. Our older sister spoke of the death of her brother and then made a revealing and for me, important comment: ‘Now that he has passed on, he is always in my heart, where he is never in pain’. This struck me as significant. Our sister had clearly gone beyond my own recent realisations about love and death. I felt an instant connection with her words, and a brief expansion of perspective. Perhaps love is the only thing that survives us in this world. Perhaps the love we strive to manifest is the real reason for our actual embodiment.
May our love be ever sanctified. May all those we love live on in our hearts. And may we, in our turn, live on in the hearts of those we love.
Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alamin.
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
30 Friday Jul 2010
Peace, one and all…
Recently, I have found myself wondering about love and death. Specifically, what happens to our love when we die? Or, more personally, what happens to the love I feel for my wife and children, for my parents and sister, and for my friends and family, when I die? Does it merely evaporate? If it does, what purpose does love serve? And if not, what happens to our love when we leave this mortal world?
As these thoughts were turning themselves over in my mind yesterday, I had a sudden moment of realisation: the love I feel for my children will pass on to them when I die. That is, if I am able to live as love demands, my love will remain in my children’s hearts – like a tiny hidden pearl. And in their turn, insha Allah, they will pass on this love to their children, and so on into the future – thus will love be nurtured and maintained. I find this realisation profound for several reasons. Firstly, I am reminded that whatever may happen to ‘me’ after my death my love will live on. Secondly, I am also reminded that I myself am a product of the love of those before me – most obviously my parents, but also all of those who came before me. I am merely a link in an ever-unfolding chain. Thirdly, our love is what makes us truly human; indeed, it is our most quintessentially human quality. We are made to love, to manifest love, to become love itself – in all that we are and do. Huuu….
And Allah says in His Noble Book:
‘And your Lord has decreed that you not worship except Him, and to parents, good treatment. Whether one or both of them reach old age [while] with you, say not to them [so much as], “uff,” and do not repel them but speak to them a noble word. And lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy and say, “My Lord, have mercy upon them as they brought me up [when I was] small” (Surah Isra 17:23-24)
Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alamin.
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
15 Friday Aug 2008
Peace, one and all…
I am currently reading Nabil Matar’s excellent and interesting Islam in Britain 1558 – 1685. I have enjoyed reading this work. I love history and the author offers a thorough-going treatment of his topic, engaging fully with the primary sources as well as with modern scholarly literature. Interestingly, he situates his work within broader discussions of the relationships between the Christian and Muslim worlds, or between ‘west’ and ‘east’. Here is what he has to say:
‘In light of the Muslim impact on English commerce and society, it is not surprising that in their early modern relations with the Muslims, English writers did not express the authority of possessiveness or the security of domination which later gave rise to what Edward Said has termed ‘Orientalism’ … for only after the Ottoman Empire began its militart and intellectual decline in the eighteenth century did Europeans proceed to draw, paint, poeticize and imagine the Muslims in the way they liked. Only then did the lands of Islam become material for orientalist ‘construction’ and for continental and British colonization.
In the period under study, however, Britain did not enjoy military or industrial power over Islamic countries. Rather, the Muslims had a power of self-representation which English writers they had either to confront or to engage … Although many English and Scottish theologians and writers vilified and misrepresented Islam and Muslims in their works, they realized that Ottoman military power had a forceful impact on them and that the lands of Islam were beyond colonization and ‘domination’.
Nevertheless, twentieth-century historians and literary analysts of the English attitude toward Islam have ignored this element of power which Renaissance Britons associated with Muslims and through which they defined their relationship with them …
Herein lies the importance of the Renaissance perspective on Islam in Britain: from the King at Whitehall to a slave in an ‘Algerine’ bagnio, from the university theologian to the cabin boy, Britons recognized that they could not ‘take possession’ of the ‘Turks’ (pp. 11-13).
As an immediate reaction, I think this is a point well made by Matar. To assume the continued existence of essentialising tendencies is to essentialise both the ‘east’ and the ‘west’. That is, it is to remove both from historically contextualised analysis.
This book offers some challenging food for thought. As an Englishman and as a Muslim, I find myself challenged by some of the historical realities discussed here. Specifically, the fact that sailors from ‘the Barbary Coast’ were raiding the southern and western coasts of Britain – primarily as slavers it seems – makes me reflect in new ways. Being a white male has meant that I have come to learn about history from a certain vantage point. Although wealth and social class are often overlooked as key factors within English society, I am aware of the operation of white privilege. Looking at the events through another prism refracts things in new and unexpected ways. It draws out all sorts of awkward questions, some of which include: what relationship does social class, gender, religious belief, race, ethnicity and the power relationships inherent within such labels, have with my own self-identity? To what extent am I the person I am because of, or inspite of, such things?
These are important questions, and ones I cannot currently answer. Ahh … yet more food for thought then! Indeed, the path to true humanity leads through all sorts of interesting (and sometimes difficult) places. And to God returns all things.
At any rate, there are other aspects to the book that I have enjoyed. Insha Allah, I will reflect more fully on them at a later date.
Related post:
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
