by Abd. Lateef Krauss Abdullah
Introduction
What is an education? Is it merely passing on information or does it mean something more? Do we educate today in a way that fulfills the Prophet’s (SAW) command to learn from the cradle to the grave? Do we educate with the intent to create lifelong learners and nurture intellect, making use of all of our God-given capabilities, senses and faculties? In Malaysia today, there is ample evidence that education is not being provided in a manner that adequately prepares young people for a future world that requires of them more than just the regurgitation of facts. This phenomenon, moreover, is not unique to Malaysia but is become all the more prevalent even in the West. Commenting on the demise of the UK education system, Henzell-Thomas (2002) writes:
One of the outcomes of an impoverished arts and humanities curriculum can be a failure to develop effective communication skills. Cambridge University researchers have concluded that in the UK presently, "the amount of time for teaching each day does not allow for a broad and balanced curriculum", and creative subjects such as art, drama and music are being increasingly squeezed out of UK classrooms. In response to the report, John Bangs, Head of Education of the National Union of Teachers, said: "What is shocking about the report is the extent to which arts have been eliminated from primary schools. Tests and targets are wiping out pupil and teacher creativity.”
In a world that is increasingly driven by the ability to think outside the box, to be creative, communicative, dynamic, ingenuitive and self-driven, education must be balanced between hard and soft skills, right and left brain activities, and with the ultimate aim of developing the whole person. However, the current public school curriculum provides very little time and investment for such a balanced approach. The very discipline that can ensure this balance – arts and humanities – is virtually absent from the Government’s notion of education. Ironically, it is the public universities in Malaysia – the IPTAs – that are being targeted to provide the necessary soft skills to their students, in the hope that after a mere four years, students will be adequately equipped to take on the world and put Malaysia ‘on the map.’ This indicates that policy makers recognize the need for soft skills development, yet have chosen to address the problem too late in the developmental trajectory of a student’s life.
"Look at the schools that have the highest test scores on standardized tests. Generally, you will find that the arts are a part of their curriculum. Now, is that just a coincidence? Or is it part of the environment that makes the students more successful in their efforts to learn and compete on standardized tests?" - Derek E. Gordon, Executive Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Soft skills development through the arts and humanities needs to be included throughout primary and secondary schooling for it is the early years where such skills can best be internalized and nurtured before the child becomes hindered by social, cognitive and peer-related obstructions to learning such skills. According to Houston (in Henzell-Thomas, 2002), "arts kindle the imagination, stimulate the brain's connectivity". It is no secret that young children are naturally adept at learning new languages in a very short period of time and as individuals get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to internalize such knowledge. At the primary school age, children are less hindered by peer group pressures and social conformity and tend to be more eager to learn new and different skills. They are less shy and regard such learning as play, making it a more natural activity in which to engage.
The need for arts and humanities in education also represents the all-important need for self-expression in healthy and non-threatening ways. Self-expression is an inherent need for all individuals and it is usually only a question of how the self chooses to, and is able to express itself. This occurs often in negative ways such as the joining of black metal bands, Mat Rempit and the like, where young people – in order to be validated and to understand themselves better – feel the need (often unconsciously) to take on rebellious and anti-social roles. Ultimately, it is their need for self-expression that is an integral part of the identity formation process. Young people need to find out who and what they are and will go to great lengths to discover it. This process often takes the form of ‘showing off,’ taking risks, being rebellious and the like. These types of expression of self, however, are due to the fact that more positive outlets are either not available, are suppressed, or are somehow not going far enough in meeting the need for positive self-expression, where the soul is nurtured rather than the ego. Creative endeavors thus provide a new awareness of one’s inner spirit, which cannot be silenced, and which will eventually be expressed in one form or another. As long as children are given the tools for healthy expression, then there is no time or thought for destruction (Lawson, 2005).
“If I had been given a computer during those intense ‘growing-up’ years, I may have had endless information, but I would not have had the knowledge that, in spite of all the teasing and ridicule, I was really ‘okay’. That inside of me was a spirit worthy of recognition and that through art that spirit could be revealed, acknowledged, shared and even celebrated. Most importantly, art can offer a much-needed outlet for those capped up emotions, which scream for release in a child’s heart. Art in essence is a wonderful vehicle for communication. It’s a way of saying, "I exist and I have something to share with you." (Lawson, 2005)
The arts cannot erase the pains of life. They cannot eliminate criticism and cruelty that many children endure, but they can and do connect children with a strong inner resource, which contributes to a better sense of self (Lawson, 2005). By providing children in their early years with positive opportunities for self-expression such as those provided for through the arts and humanities, led by caring adults, crucial developmental needs can be met in positive and constructive ways. However, it must be provided early on in a child’s life and offered continuously throughout a child’s development into youth and young adulthood.
The Need for Arts and Humanities in a Science-Driven World
The arts make us human. We know from research that only 15% of learners are auditory learners (i.e. absorb information through hearing it); 40% of students are visual learners (i.e. they process information primarily through seeing pictures) and fully 45% are kinesthetic learners (i.e. they learn best through the immediate sensory stimulation of hands-on experience and action). The implications of this are very clear. The best schools do not rely on predominantly verbal instruction, which is one of the main sources of the pervasive boredom which inhibits learning. To do so would not only ignore the learning styles of the majority of people, but also fail to make use of the full potential of the individual human brain (Henzell-Thomas, 2002).
The best schools will always balance the seduction of hi-tech by providing highly stimulating visual and tactile environments, and use multi-sensory teaching techniques. An education system in tune with the findings of contemporary research needs to re-evaluate the place not only of music in the school curriculum, but also the educative potential of movement activities such as dance, which energizes and stimulates the entire mind-body system. Research has shown that test scores in language arts rise in correlation to the amount of time spent in movement activities (Henzell-Thomas, 2002).
This is highly relevant to Malaysian education today in particular, with the focus on science and technology, new discoveries and a populace geared more towards critical thinking. Arts help people, particularly children, develop the skills and motivation to experience the world without hesitation and fear, to engage in new endeavors and seek out new discoveries. Arts help young people to know themselves better through exploring one’s emotions and inner experiences, which increase one’s self-knowledge as well as helping to understand abstract subjects and concepts. Along these lines, most early education practices are filled with arts activities, because they offer the most basic and immediate ways to connect to a young mind by engaging them in a way that is often more kinesthetic, and perhaps more emotionally satisfying, than the "traditional" approach to teaching a text (Gordon, 2007).
Academic Achievement and the Arts
Some evidence of the importance of arts in improved academic performance of students (from U.S.; compiled by Dickinson, 1997):
According to the College Entrance Examination Board, students who studied arts and music scored significantly higher than the national average on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Students who had participated in acting, play production, music performance and appreciation, drama appreciation, and art history, scored an average of 31 to 50 points higher for the math and verbal sections. The Board also stated that students with long-term arts study (four years or more) tend to score significantly higher on the SAT than those with less coursework in the arts.
In 1995, The United States Department of Education reported in Schools, Communities, and the Arts: A Research Compendium, that "using arts processes to teach academic subjects results not only in improved understanding of content but it greatly improved self-regulatory behavior." Barry Oreck of Arts Connection and Susan Baum from the College of New Rochelle observed integrated arts lessons in all major subject areas in fourteen New York City elementary and secondary public school classrooms. They found that "student behavior improved strikingly in such areas as taking risks, cooperating, solving problems, taking initiative for learning, and being prepared. Content-related achievement also rose."
In Needham, Massachusetts (USA) at the John Eliot school, the arts are fully integrated throughout the curriculum, and academic achievement has soared. The Superintendent told Principal Miriam Kronish, "I am absolutely astonished--even dumbfounded--by your results." John Eliot does not cater to superior, talented students and many are economically disadvantaged, but nonetheless their 1992 MEAP (Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program) scores were the highest in the state.
The arts are strong at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia (USA), a magnet school that enjoys a national reputation for consistently high achievement. Its graduates are sought by the most prestigious colleges and universities.
According to the major research study Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student
Social and Academic Development (2002), the most expansive areas where the arts pay off academically are these: first, in basic reading skills, language development, and writing skills. Increases in general academic skills also showed up and would appear to reinforce these specific literacy-related developments. This refers to focus and concentration, skills in expression, persistence, imagination, creativity, and inclinations to tackle problems with zeal. In addition, a wide range of social skills accompanies learning in the arts and engagement in arts activities. These are the sorts of skills and behaviors that, in their absence, parents and teachers have been seen to tear their hair out: positive social behavior, social compliance, collaboration with others, ability to express emotions, courtesy, tolerance, conflict resolution skills, and attention to moral development (Catterall, 2002).
The Role of Arts in Educating Muslims
The best Islamic education must encompass the two traditional categories of knowledge, and the hierarchical relationship between them: revealed knowledge; attained through the religious sciences; and acquired knowledge, attained through the rational, intellectual and philosophical sciences. In the worldview of tawhid (Divine Unity), knowledge is holistic and there is no compartmentalization of knowledge into religious and secular spheres. Both types of knowledge contribute to the strengthening of faith, the former through a careful study of the revealed Word of God and the latter through a meticulous, systematic study of the world of man and nature (Henzell-Thomas, 2002).
The perfection of the Islamic revelation embraces all the diverse aspects of the life of man and roots all of them in the Unity and Comprehensiveness of God. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains, Islamic education is concerned not only with the instruction and training of the mind and the transmission of knowledge (ta`lim) but also with the education of the whole being of men and women (tarbiyah). The teacher is therefore not only a muallim, a 'transmitter of knowledge' but also a murabbi, a 'trainer of souls and personalities'. "The Islamic educational system never divorced the training of the mind from that of the soul." Islamic education ideally aims to provide a milieu for the total and balanced development of every student in every sphere of learning - spiritual, moral, imaginative, intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, emotional and physical - directing all these aspects towards the attainment of a conscious relationship with God, the ultimate purpose of man's life on earth (Henzell-Thomas, 2002).
The Prophet (SAW) said: "God has not created anything better than Reason, or anything more perfect, or more beautiful than Reason; the benefits which God gives are on its account; and understanding is by it, and God's wrath is caused by disregard of it".
Art is – in its ideal form – is the result of the interplay between the cognitive and sensitive imaginations of the human soul (Wan Daud, 1998). Most contemporary art is nothing more than the result of the sensitive alone, and contains little representation of the beautiful soul, which can be seen historically in the great civilizations of the past whose integration of both the cognitive and sensitive imaginative aspects produced the greatest religiously-driven masterpieces in fine arts, scholarship, music and others. Arts from the Islamic perspective must therefore reflect both the cognitive and sensitive imaginative faculties. In the modern Muslim world, this tends to be a weak area of the curriculum. In fact, many Muslim politicians and educational leaders do nothing about the obvious ill-effects of pop culture, yet openly frown upon classical arts for Muslim students.
Yet this is highly relevant to Malaysian Muslim youth today who are bombarded by a steady stream of ‘pop culture’, disguising itself as art. This cultural influence, perhaps more than any other, has created a dichotomy in the eyes of many that religion and art can never go hand in hand and are eternally opposed to one another. The modern art form also known as pop culture, rather than the beautiful soul manifesting itself with the intention of making the world more beautiful and in so doing singing the praises of God, continues to steer young people away from religion and God and entices them to embrace hedonism, materialism, sexual promiscuity and superficiality. Arts are meant to turn people inward, to facilitate self-refinement and support one’s quest for maximizing human potential. True art reflects the beauty, struggles and uniqueness of the human condition and provides meaning to those aspects of life that are difficult to understand and communicate. It is also a vehicle for personal knowing and understanding at a level that incorporates both the sensual and cognitive levels and in so doing, results in a more unified, competent and contented self.
Why Performing Arts?
High achieving schools use the power of drama to enrich the learning experience. Through dramatic enactment in theatre, the student explores the many guises of what it is to be a human being, using a rich array of skills - music, movement, rhetoric, expression and feeling - to tour the landscape of human experience. What is more, what is enacted is more readily remembered (Henzell-Thomas, 2002). According to Gordon (2007), “The arts encourage learning as a process of discovery. We want every student to be a researcher who is asking probing questions—not only demonstrating their knowledge, but also testing and defending the assumptions that they are making. This is something that artists do all the time.”
Performing arts can be a powerful learning experience that can come in a variety of forms: vocal and dramatic instruction, discipline, self-confidence, self-awareness, physical fitness/health, etiquette, cultural expression and sharing, performance experience and martial arts. In a creative drama lesson, for example, students might listen to or read a story or poem, or hear a piece of music, or see a painting and plan how to interpret it dramatically. They might review and if necessary develop a plot, choose characters, create an imaginary setting, then improvise dialogue and action. Together with their audience (of students not in the play) they might critique the performance, decide what was good and what could have been improved, then replay applying the suggested changes. This process is a highly collaborative one, develops quick-witted spontaneous thinking, problem-solving, poise and presence, concentration, self-awareness and both conceptual and analytical thinking skills. Conducting a dramatic performance with students encourages, and even demands cooperation, compromise and commitment--all skills necessary for any work environment (Dickinson, 1997).
Such skills are critical for Malaysian youth today in order to be well-rounded, capable and confident human resources for the nation. The ‘old school’ approach to verbal instruction alone is not sufficient to mold students into being complete human beings, for such methods are too one-dimensional and ignore the human and developmental need for self-expression and experiential learning. Performing arts is a time-tested method to accomplish this goal and it is time to introduce it into the educational life of all Malaysian students.
The Need to Bring Performing Arts to Malay Youth
In 2001, thirty American Muslim boarding school students in Paulsboro, New Jersey, USA conducted a martial arts drama called ‘Hang Tuah,’ based on the classic Malay tale. The school, Taqwa Gayong Academy, was run by a Malay husband and wife team, En. Sulaiman Sharif and Pn. Nurliza Khalid who spent thirteen years in the U.S. educating young Muslims, teaching Silat Seni Gayong and running a variety of small businesses. Taqwa Gayong Academy’s production of Hang Tuah was a first not only for the young men and women that starred in the show, but also for the Muslim American community that the school served. Never before had parents, neighbors and interested community members seen their kids do what they did during that memorable performance.
Donning traditional Malay costumes, ‘Hang Tuah’ was re-created to suit an American audience. All the young people involved in the show were between the ages of 6 and 16. The students, all boarding school students at the Academy, spent 2-3 hours/day for several weeks rehearsing for the show; not including the many months spent prior honing their silat skills. The result was a fantastic display of artistic expression, creativity, music, color and a dramatic martial arts performance unlike any that the audience had ever seen. The effect on the performers was equally powerful. The young people involved, mostly African-American Muslims from poor and high-risk neighborhoods and households, discovered a potential within themselves that they never realized existed. Despite growing up in a world that teaches them that they are useless, ugly, violent and destined for a fruitless life, for the first time in their young lives they felt like they were apart of something beautiful and special. Not only apart of it, but at the very center of it. They came alive in ways that even their own parents never believed they could. It was something to behold for anyone who knew them and the multiple challenges they faced everyday of their lives trying to succeed as young, black, Muslim children growing up in America.
The lesson that En. Sulaiman and Pn. Nurliza learned from this experience was that the performing arts can play a dramatic role in changing young people in positive ways. When used and applied in a purposeful way, to develop young people’s soft skills and enhance their inner sensitivities and competencies, the performing arts can be a powerful vehicle for youth development and education. In addition, performing arts can be used to educate young people in an interactive and fun way about subject matter that they might not otherwise take any interest in, such as history and culture.
Since having returned to Malaysia in 2002, En. Sulaiman and Pn. Nurliza have been educating local youth through their own private tutoring and tuition center in Pulau Pinang. After four years, they have observed that the nature of the current education that young people are receiving is not complete. Malaysian students, particularly the Malay students, are weak in a number of soft skills and social competencies. They attribute this, at least partially, to the government education system’s virtual abandonment of arts and humanities programs. Without these crucial programs, young people lack critical outlets for positive self-expression, self-exploration, self-awareness, speaking skills, critical and creative thinking and a host of others. These observations by En. Sulaiman and Pn. Nurliza are reinforced by scientific research. As Catterall (2002) explains:
“While motivation to achieve in school comes in various forms in the literature and across the compendium's studies, probably the most central is a tendency for the arts to promote both certain competencies for children who struggle across the curriculum as well as genuinely grounded feelings of competence and engagement. Feelings of competence and engagement can impact outlook and approach to schoolwork more generally -- and research on the arts finds impacts showing both increased attendance and fewer discipline referrals. And the limited number of studies we found addressing special needs populations show that arts activities associate with particularly important outcomes: writing and reading skills, oral language skills, and (of great importance to struggling learners) sustained attention and focus.”
Arts are thus an integral component of education for the development of competences and soft skills using developmentally-appropriate methods.
Conclusion: The Gayong Amerika Performing Arts Academy
To respond to this challenge, En. Sulaiman and Pn. Nurliza are proposing a new performing arts program to integrate arts back into education for Malaysian youth. Though the program will target Malay youth, it will be open to all young Malaysians ages 7 and up. The Academy will hold regular youth-led dramatic performances with its members geared around pertinent themes, relating to contemporary social issues or even historical issues that have relevance to today’s youth. Whatever the theme, it will be relevant to youth with the intention of educating them about their world, other people and themselves.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS…
References
Catterall, J.S. (2002). Book summary: Critical links: Learning in the arts and student
social and academic development. New Horizons for Learning Website. Retrieved
February 24, 2007 from: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/catterall.htm.
Dickinson, D. (1997). Learning through the arts. New Horizons for Learning Website.
Retrieved February 28, 2007 from:
http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/dickinson_lrnarts.htm.
Gordon, D.E. (2007). A conversation with Derek Gordon. Why Arts Matter. The
Kennedy Center – Artsedge Website. Retrieved February 27, 2007 from:
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/3270/.
Henzell-Thomas, J. (2002). Excellence in Islamic education: Key issues for the present
time. The Book Foundation website. Retrieved October 5, 2005 from:
http://thebook.org/tep-articles/excellence.shtml.
Lawson, S. (2005). Why art is essential in our public schools. Passion4art Website.
Retrieved March 2, 2007 from: http://passion4art.com/articles/pubschool.htm.
Wan Daud, W.M.N. (1998). The educational philosophy and practice of Syed
Muhammad Naquib al-Attas. ISTAC: Kuala Lumpur.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Six Difficult Things....
"A man is never granted the degree of the righteous before six difficult
things become possible for him: the first, that he closes the door of ease
and open the door of difficulty; the second, that he closes the door of
honour and open the door of humiliation; the third, that he closes the door
of comfort and open the door of effort; the fourth; that he closes the door
of sleep and open the door of wakefulness; the fifth; that he closes the
door of wealth and open the door of poverty; the sixth; that he close the
door of imagining the future and open the door of readiness for death."
- Hazrat Ibrahim Adham
things become possible for him: the first, that he closes the door of ease
and open the door of difficulty; the second, that he closes the door of
honour and open the door of humiliation; the third, that he closes the door
of comfort and open the door of effort; the fourth; that he closes the door
of sleep and open the door of wakefulness; the fifth; that he closes the
door of wealth and open the door of poverty; the sixth; that he close the
door of imagining the future and open the door of readiness for death."
- Hazrat Ibrahim Adham
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Letter to a Would-be Mujahid
By Imam Zaid on 14 December 2010
Recent developments have forced me to put some things on hold to write you this letter. You might ask how I know you. I have met you at student events, in mosques, and at conferences. I have listened to your arguments and I have made my counter arguments. Oftentimes, my arguments have been somewhat formal. I figured I would write you a letter, since that is a lot more personal and less formal. Perhaps this way you will be more inclined to listen.
To begin with, whenever you are criticized for your bloody, anarchistic ideology, you point to the bloody abuses of the American war machine or their Zionist accomplices. This diversionary tactic on your part does not impress serious and thoughtful people. It is simply an abdication of your moral responsibility. It is as if you are saying you reserve the right to violate established Islamic principles, such as those guaranteeing the protection of innocent life, because the American military or the IDF do no respect innocent Muslim life. That would be a credible argument if the American military or the IDF claimed to be operating on the basis of Islamic principles. They don’t, but you do. I hope, without further elaboration, you can immediately sense the moral dilemma you are creating for yourself.
Along those lines, please allow me to remind you of something else. Your misguided attempts to kill and maim innocent Americans only make it easier for the American military to kill more Muslims with greater impunity. Your actions help to create a political climate that removes any moral restraint from the actions of the American military, the IDF and soon the forces of India’s increasingly Hindu nationalist armed forces. You see, fear is a very potent emotion and when it is carefully manipulated it can lead to very irrational politics. That most extreme form of those politics is called genocide.
Fear can be especially dangerous when it is combined with another emotion, insecurity. You are so divorced from reality that you probably haven’t noticed that a lot of Americans are extremely insecure right now. Especially, the white middle class or what is left of it. They don’t know if they will soon lose their homes, if they will have a job tomorrow, if their money will be in the bank next week, if they will be able to send their children to college or if their retirement funds will be stolen or totally devalued. Those insecurities combined with the spectre of the “Muslim terrorist next door” are a lethal combination that a group of people called demagogues is exploiting to justify an all out war on Muslims.
Those demagogues use the fear of you to prevent people from building the kind of grassroots, popular, movements that are necessary to challenge the corporate rape of our society and from challenging the destructive logic of permanent war. For example, remember the growing movement to challenge the new invasive TSA screening procedures at airports? Did you notice how it disappeared after the would-be mujahid in Portland allowed himself to be trapped into the scheme to blow up the Christmas tree ceremony? Do you think the timing was accidental? It is a shame that you and your ilk are so mindlessly complicit in such schemes.
Now you think the mujahideen can win an all out war against the Americans. Look at what the mujahideen are doing to them in Afghanistan. Sorry, but Afghanistan is not what all out war looks like. I’ll give you a clue what all out war looks like. Remember a couple years ago when the Israelis were bombarding the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Muslims, for all of their courage, couldn’t do anything except appeal to outside powers to stop the carnage? Or a few years before that when Jenin was flattened? Think of the scale of that devastation expanded to encompass all of the major cities of the Muslim world. Imagine America unleashing a new generation of “tactical” nuclear weapons being designed to be used specifically against Muslims targets raining down on Muslim capitals and there is no Muslim strategic deterrent available to stop it. AK-47s and RPGs will be of no avail. Imagine the calls to human rights organizations to stop the slaughter finding no ears to hear them because the neo-fascist forces your stupidity has helped to unleash have swept those organizations away in its maddening torrent.
I have heard you counter that such an argument is a manifestation of a lack of faith. God has promised the believers victory. Indeed, He has. However, it is very pretentious of you to assume that someone who murders women, children and innocents with blazon impunity in the Name of God are the believers that victory has been promised to. He has promised the believers victory, but that promise is not unconditional. God is not going to give victory to people who murder in His Holy Name.
I applaud your courage, but how it manifests itself puzzles me. You have the courage to fly halfway around to world to engage in an armed struggle, but you do not have the courage to knock on your neighbor’s door to explain Islam to him or to give him your take on world affairs. I am also baffled at how you can smile in his face, but are ready to blow him up if he happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. What calculus do you use to assume he would not be amenable to your message? What has he done to you to be the target of your bloodlust?
You claim a refined understanding of Islam, so refined that you can make grave decisions concerning life and death, decisions with huge strategic implications –yet you seem to perceive nothing of the divine wisdom of your being in this country. You have an opportunity to be an educator at a time people are looking for a new way. You have an opportunity to be a guide at a time people are looking for a new direction. You have an opportunity to provide a source of spiritual solace at a time people are confused, angry and afraid. You have an opportunity to be a fierce advocate for truth at a time when lies are transforming the image of your religion and the direction of your country. You have the skills, the command of the language, the knowledge of the people to do all of that and more, but you choose to run away from this battle to join one you do not even know who the commander is.
Did I say that? “To join a battle you do not even know who the commander is.” No! I didn’t say that. Do you think that if the FBI can send fake mujahids into mosques all around America to find confused, vulnerable Muslims, develop fake bomb plots, with fake bombs, for very real political objectives, the CIA couldn’t do the same thing abroad? No, wait a minute. Didn’t the CIA build the Afghan mujahideen network? Didn’t what’s his name, Zbigniew Brzezinski, describe the Afghan operation as the CIA’s finest hour?
They would never use fake mujahids, operating through fake websites, to recruit confused and desperate Muslim youth to engage in operations that keep the climate of fear alive, would they? They wouldn’t do that to keep support for bloodsucking, treasury-draining wars alive at a time when there is no money for the poor, the elderly, health-care, education, infrastructure or investment in the green economy. No! It’s preposterous. Those would be psychological operations (psych ops) and that would be cheating. America never cheats, we’re the good guys!
I apologize, I’m tripping. On a serious note, I hope you don’t one day end up feeling as stupid and abused as young Antonio Martinez or Mahomed Osman Mohamud, the Somali kid in Oregon, are probably feeling right now. They have been tricked, deceived, used, and abused by fake mujahids and then thrown in a dungeon to rot for the rest of their lives. Do you think your fate will be any different? Don’t be a fool.
Sincerely,
Imam Zaid Shakir
Recent developments have forced me to put some things on hold to write you this letter. You might ask how I know you. I have met you at student events, in mosques, and at conferences. I have listened to your arguments and I have made my counter arguments. Oftentimes, my arguments have been somewhat formal. I figured I would write you a letter, since that is a lot more personal and less formal. Perhaps this way you will be more inclined to listen.
To begin with, whenever you are criticized for your bloody, anarchistic ideology, you point to the bloody abuses of the American war machine or their Zionist accomplices. This diversionary tactic on your part does not impress serious and thoughtful people. It is simply an abdication of your moral responsibility. It is as if you are saying you reserve the right to violate established Islamic principles, such as those guaranteeing the protection of innocent life, because the American military or the IDF do no respect innocent Muslim life. That would be a credible argument if the American military or the IDF claimed to be operating on the basis of Islamic principles. They don’t, but you do. I hope, without further elaboration, you can immediately sense the moral dilemma you are creating for yourself.
Along those lines, please allow me to remind you of something else. Your misguided attempts to kill and maim innocent Americans only make it easier for the American military to kill more Muslims with greater impunity. Your actions help to create a political climate that removes any moral restraint from the actions of the American military, the IDF and soon the forces of India’s increasingly Hindu nationalist armed forces. You see, fear is a very potent emotion and when it is carefully manipulated it can lead to very irrational politics. That most extreme form of those politics is called genocide.
Fear can be especially dangerous when it is combined with another emotion, insecurity. You are so divorced from reality that you probably haven’t noticed that a lot of Americans are extremely insecure right now. Especially, the white middle class or what is left of it. They don’t know if they will soon lose their homes, if they will have a job tomorrow, if their money will be in the bank next week, if they will be able to send their children to college or if their retirement funds will be stolen or totally devalued. Those insecurities combined with the spectre of the “Muslim terrorist next door” are a lethal combination that a group of people called demagogues is exploiting to justify an all out war on Muslims.
Those demagogues use the fear of you to prevent people from building the kind of grassroots, popular, movements that are necessary to challenge the corporate rape of our society and from challenging the destructive logic of permanent war. For example, remember the growing movement to challenge the new invasive TSA screening procedures at airports? Did you notice how it disappeared after the would-be mujahid in Portland allowed himself to be trapped into the scheme to blow up the Christmas tree ceremony? Do you think the timing was accidental? It is a shame that you and your ilk are so mindlessly complicit in such schemes.
Now you think the mujahideen can win an all out war against the Americans. Look at what the mujahideen are doing to them in Afghanistan. Sorry, but Afghanistan is not what all out war looks like. I’ll give you a clue what all out war looks like. Remember a couple years ago when the Israelis were bombarding the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Muslims, for all of their courage, couldn’t do anything except appeal to outside powers to stop the carnage? Or a few years before that when Jenin was flattened? Think of the scale of that devastation expanded to encompass all of the major cities of the Muslim world. Imagine America unleashing a new generation of “tactical” nuclear weapons being designed to be used specifically against Muslims targets raining down on Muslim capitals and there is no Muslim strategic deterrent available to stop it. AK-47s and RPGs will be of no avail. Imagine the calls to human rights organizations to stop the slaughter finding no ears to hear them because the neo-fascist forces your stupidity has helped to unleash have swept those organizations away in its maddening torrent.
I have heard you counter that such an argument is a manifestation of a lack of faith. God has promised the believers victory. Indeed, He has. However, it is very pretentious of you to assume that someone who murders women, children and innocents with blazon impunity in the Name of God are the believers that victory has been promised to. He has promised the believers victory, but that promise is not unconditional. God is not going to give victory to people who murder in His Holy Name.
I applaud your courage, but how it manifests itself puzzles me. You have the courage to fly halfway around to world to engage in an armed struggle, but you do not have the courage to knock on your neighbor’s door to explain Islam to him or to give him your take on world affairs. I am also baffled at how you can smile in his face, but are ready to blow him up if he happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. What calculus do you use to assume he would not be amenable to your message? What has he done to you to be the target of your bloodlust?
You claim a refined understanding of Islam, so refined that you can make grave decisions concerning life and death, decisions with huge strategic implications –yet you seem to perceive nothing of the divine wisdom of your being in this country. You have an opportunity to be an educator at a time people are looking for a new way. You have an opportunity to be a guide at a time people are looking for a new direction. You have an opportunity to provide a source of spiritual solace at a time people are confused, angry and afraid. You have an opportunity to be a fierce advocate for truth at a time when lies are transforming the image of your religion and the direction of your country. You have the skills, the command of the language, the knowledge of the people to do all of that and more, but you choose to run away from this battle to join one you do not even know who the commander is.
Did I say that? “To join a battle you do not even know who the commander is.” No! I didn’t say that. Do you think that if the FBI can send fake mujahids into mosques all around America to find confused, vulnerable Muslims, develop fake bomb plots, with fake bombs, for very real political objectives, the CIA couldn’t do the same thing abroad? No, wait a minute. Didn’t the CIA build the Afghan mujahideen network? Didn’t what’s his name, Zbigniew Brzezinski, describe the Afghan operation as the CIA’s finest hour?
They would never use fake mujahids, operating through fake websites, to recruit confused and desperate Muslim youth to engage in operations that keep the climate of fear alive, would they? They wouldn’t do that to keep support for bloodsucking, treasury-draining wars alive at a time when there is no money for the poor, the elderly, health-care, education, infrastructure or investment in the green economy. No! It’s preposterous. Those would be psychological operations (psych ops) and that would be cheating. America never cheats, we’re the good guys!
I apologize, I’m tripping. On a serious note, I hope you don’t one day end up feeling as stupid and abused as young Antonio Martinez or Mahomed Osman Mohamud, the Somali kid in Oregon, are probably feeling right now. They have been tricked, deceived, used, and abused by fake mujahids and then thrown in a dungeon to rot for the rest of their lives. Do you think your fate will be any different? Don’t be a fool.
Sincerely,
Imam Zaid Shakir
Monday, March 14, 2011
Red Sea Opened Once Again...
Red sea opened once again
Egyptian revolution, Quranic teachings:
Yasmin Mogahed Egyptian writer
Thousands of years ago when Prophet Musa (Moses) stood in front of the Red Sea, a tyrant and his army approached from behind. Some of those in Musa’s midst began to divide. Looking ahead, those people saw only defeat: “And when the two bodies saw each other, the people of Moses said: ‘We are sure to be overtaken.’”(Qur’an, 26:61).
All in reverence
But Musa had different eyes. His eyes were spiritual eyes that saw through the illusions of worldly hardship and defeat. With a heart connected to the Most High, looking at the same seemingly impossible situation, Musa saw only God: “(Moses) said: ‘By no means! My Lord is with me! He will guide me through!’” (Qur’an, 26:61-62) And indeed Allah did just that:”Then We told Moses by inspiration: ‘Strike the sea with thy rod.’ So it divided, and each separate part became like the huge, firm mass of a mountain. And We made the other party approach thither. We delivered Moses and all who were with him; But We drowned the others.” (Qur’an, 26: 63-66).
Today in Egypt, we are standing in front of yet another Red Sea- a tyrant and his army are at our back. Today, there are some who see only defeat. But, there are others whose eyes are looking through the blockade to the path and the hope beyond it. Today in Egypt, there are some who are saying:”Indeed my Lord is with me, He will guide me through.” One might wonder why, at such a critical time in history, we would retell an ancient story.
Why would something that happened thousands of years ago be relevant today? The reason is that it is not just a story. Nor is it ancient. It is an everlasting sign and a lesson for all time.
In the very next ayah, Allah says: “Verily in this is a Sign: but most of them do not believe.” (26:67) It is a sign of the Reality of God and the secrets of this world. It is a sign that tyranny never wins and that obstacles are only illusions, created to test us, train us and purify us. But most of all it is a sign of where success comes from. And it is a vision of what that success, against all odds-at a time we think we’re trapped, defeated, and powerless-really look like.
Living art of the dead
Peaceful demonstrators who overthrew Hosni Mubarak pray at Liberation Square instead of resorting to violence Some might ask why, if we are indeed on the side of God, does victory not come easily? Some might wonder why God doesn’t just give the righteous victory without immense struggle and sacrifice. The answer to this question is also given by God. He tells us: “And We did not send a prophet in a town but We overtook its people with distress and affliction in order that they might humble themselves (reach a state of tadaru..’).” (Qur’an, 7:94) Here, Allah says that the purpose of the affliction is to reach a state of tadaru.
Tadaru is humility before God - but it is not just humility .To understand the concept of tadaru, imagine yourself in the middle of an ocean. Imagine that you are all alone on a boat. Imagine that a huge storm comes and the waves become mountains surrounding you. Now imagine turning to God at that point and asking for His help. In what state of need, awe, dependency and utter humility would you be in? That is tadaru.
Allah says that He creates conditions of hardship in order to grant us that gift. God does not need to make things hard for us. He creates those situations in order to allow us to reach a state of closeness to Him, which otherwise we’d be unlikely to reach.
That priceless state of humility, nearness and utter dependence on God is what the Egyptian people have been blessed with today. God is great. But Allah mentions another purpose for these hardships and struggles. He says:”And We divided them throughout the earth into different groups. Of them some were righteous, and of them some were otherwise. And We tested them with good [times] and bad that perhaps they would return [to obedience].” (Qur’an, 7:168).
In Sura ali-Imran, Allah tells us:”If a wound hath touched you, be sure a similar wound hath touched the others. Such days (of varying fortunes) We give to men and men by turns: that Allah may know those that believe, and that He may take to Himself from your ranks Martyr-witnesses (to Truth). And Allah loveth not those that do wrong. Allah’s object also is to purify those that are true in Faith and to deprive of blessing those that resist Faith. Did ye think that ye would enter Heaven without Allah testing those of you who fought hard (In His Cause) and remained steadfast?” (Qur’an, 3:140-142).
Here, Allah describes the purpose of hardship as being tamhees. Tamhees is the same word used to describe the heating and purifying of gold. Without heating it up, gold is precious metal-but it’s full of impurities. By performing tamhees, a process of heating, the impurities are removed from gold. This is what God also does with the believers. Through hardships, believers are purified-just like gold.
And so too are the Egyptians being purified. Only days before the uprising, the world had considered the Egyptian youth a lost cause. We believed they had lost their direction and their purpose and chosen to live their lives on the streets, catcalling girls, or at internet cafes smoking hookah. Through this hardship, the Egyptian youth have been brought back from the dead.
Now, these youth are standing on the streets in defiance of tyranny, on their knees praying, and with their hands facing the sky, calling on their Lord. The same people who just days before barely prayed, stand today in front of military tanks to bow down to their Creator. Only days before the uprising, the tensions between Egyptian Muslims and Christians had grown to an all-time high. Today the Christians and Muslims stand side by side in defense of each other and their country. The same people who did not trust each other the day before their ‘heating,’ have come together as brothers and sisters, as one body, to defend their streets, their homes, and their neighbourhoods. And through this hardship, a person who only days before lived for his cell phone, sheesha, and cigarettes, has become willing to sacrifice his own life to give freedom to his people.
Allah tells us in the Qur’an: “Say: ‘Who is it that sustains you (in life) from the sky and from the earth? Or who is it that has power over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulates all affairs?’ They will soon say, ‘(Allah)’. Say, ‘Will you not then show piety (to Him)?’” (Qur’an, 10:31) It is Allah who brings the living out of the dead. He has brought us back from the dead. Don’t think for a moment that a single moment of this is not happening with a purpose-a deep, profound and beautiful, liberating purpose.
For decades the Egyptian people have lived a life of fear. But when you let fear control you, you are a slave. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people from this slavery, by making them face-and overcome-their greatest fear. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people by allowing them to look their oppressor in the eye and tell him, and the whole world, that they will no longer live in fear. And so whether Mubarak stays or goes, lives or dies-it doesn’t really matter.
The Egyptian people have already been liberated. Hosni Mubarak is irrelevant. He is nothing but a tool by which God carries out His plan for the Egyptian people and for the entire Ummah. A tool to carry out His plan to purify, beautify and liberate the Egyptian people and the Ummah. And whether we are in Egypt today or not is unimportant. Egypt is just one limb of our body. The purification of Egypt is a purification of the whole body of our Ummah. It is the purification of you and me.
It is our chance to ask ourselves to what are we attached. What are we afraid of? What are we striving for? What do we stand for? And where are we going? When a body is in a deep, deep slumber-a coma-it is only out of His infinite mercy that He sends us a wakeup call. It is only from His infinite mercy that He sends to us life where there was once only death. We were heedless, so He sent us a sign. We were asleep, so he woke us up. We worshipped this life, and preferred our material possessions to the liberation of a soul attached to, and afraid of nothing but Him-so He freed us.
How many people will experience something like this in their lifetime? How many people will experience the opening of a Sea, the humbling of a tyrant? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves why we were chosen to see it? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves what we were intended to learn, change, transform? Because if we think for a moment this is all just about the people of Egypt, then we have desperately missed the point. We were asleep, and Allah chose to wake us.
We were dead and Allah wants to give us life.
We were conditioned to believe that our enemy was outside of ourselves. That he had power over us. This is also an illusion. The enemy is inside of us. All external enemies are only manifestations of our own diseases. And so if we want to conquer those enemies, we must first conquer the enemy inside ourselves. This is why the Qur’an tells us: Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they first change what is in themselves.” (Qur’an, 13:11) We must first conquer greed, selfishness, shirk, ultimate fear, love, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah. We must conquer (love of this world -the root of all our diseases and all our oppression.
Before we can defeat the Pharaohs in our lives, we must defeat the Pharaoh inside ourselves. So the fight in Egypt is a fight for liberation. Yes. But liberation from what? Who is truly oppressed? Are you and I free? What is true oppression? Ibn Taymiyyah (ra) answers this question when he says: “The one who is (truly) imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him.” (Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Wabil) When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.
And so when we fight to free Egypt, on a grander and realer scale it is a fight to also free ourselves. It is a fight to free ourselves of the tyranny of our own nafs and desires. A fight to free ourselves from our own false attachments and dependencies, from all that controls us, from all that we worship-other than Him. It is a fight to free us from our own slavery. Whether we are slaves to the American dollar, to our own desires, to status, to wealth, or to fear-the purification of Egypt is a purification of us all.
That is why the formula for true success given to us in the Qur’an consists of two elements: Sabr (patience, perseverance) and Taqwa (fear of God alone): “O you who have believed, persevere and endure and remain stationed and fear God (alone) that you may be successful.” (Qur’an 3:200).
So if we watch Egypt today as if it is only a spectacle happening outside of ourselves, without cleaning, examining, and really changing ourselves and our lives, then we have missed its purpose. After all, it isn’t every day that a sea is opened before our very eyes.
Egyptian revolution, Quranic teachings:
Yasmin Mogahed Egyptian writer
Thousands of years ago when Prophet Musa (Moses) stood in front of the Red Sea, a tyrant and his army approached from behind. Some of those in Musa’s midst began to divide. Looking ahead, those people saw only defeat: “And when the two bodies saw each other, the people of Moses said: ‘We are sure to be overtaken.’”(Qur’an, 26:61).
All in reverence
But Musa had different eyes. His eyes were spiritual eyes that saw through the illusions of worldly hardship and defeat. With a heart connected to the Most High, looking at the same seemingly impossible situation, Musa saw only God: “(Moses) said: ‘By no means! My Lord is with me! He will guide me through!’” (Qur’an, 26:61-62) And indeed Allah did just that:”Then We told Moses by inspiration: ‘Strike the sea with thy rod.’ So it divided, and each separate part became like the huge, firm mass of a mountain. And We made the other party approach thither. We delivered Moses and all who were with him; But We drowned the others.” (Qur’an, 26: 63-66).
Today in Egypt, we are standing in front of yet another Red Sea- a tyrant and his army are at our back. Today, there are some who see only defeat. But, there are others whose eyes are looking through the blockade to the path and the hope beyond it. Today in Egypt, there are some who are saying:”Indeed my Lord is with me, He will guide me through.” One might wonder why, at such a critical time in history, we would retell an ancient story.
Why would something that happened thousands of years ago be relevant today? The reason is that it is not just a story. Nor is it ancient. It is an everlasting sign and a lesson for all time.
In the very next ayah, Allah says: “Verily in this is a Sign: but most of them do not believe.” (26:67) It is a sign of the Reality of God and the secrets of this world. It is a sign that tyranny never wins and that obstacles are only illusions, created to test us, train us and purify us. But most of all it is a sign of where success comes from. And it is a vision of what that success, against all odds-at a time we think we’re trapped, defeated, and powerless-really look like.
Living art of the dead
Peaceful demonstrators who overthrew Hosni Mubarak pray at Liberation Square instead of resorting to violence Some might ask why, if we are indeed on the side of God, does victory not come easily? Some might wonder why God doesn’t just give the righteous victory without immense struggle and sacrifice. The answer to this question is also given by God. He tells us: “And We did not send a prophet in a town but We overtook its people with distress and affliction in order that they might humble themselves (reach a state of tadaru..’).” (Qur’an, 7:94) Here, Allah says that the purpose of the affliction is to reach a state of tadaru.
Tadaru is humility before God - but it is not just humility .To understand the concept of tadaru, imagine yourself in the middle of an ocean. Imagine that you are all alone on a boat. Imagine that a huge storm comes and the waves become mountains surrounding you. Now imagine turning to God at that point and asking for His help. In what state of need, awe, dependency and utter humility would you be in? That is tadaru.
Allah says that He creates conditions of hardship in order to grant us that gift. God does not need to make things hard for us. He creates those situations in order to allow us to reach a state of closeness to Him, which otherwise we’d be unlikely to reach.
That priceless state of humility, nearness and utter dependence on God is what the Egyptian people have been blessed with today. God is great. But Allah mentions another purpose for these hardships and struggles. He says:”And We divided them throughout the earth into different groups. Of them some were righteous, and of them some were otherwise. And We tested them with good [times] and bad that perhaps they would return [to obedience].” (Qur’an, 7:168).
In Sura ali-Imran, Allah tells us:”If a wound hath touched you, be sure a similar wound hath touched the others. Such days (of varying fortunes) We give to men and men by turns: that Allah may know those that believe, and that He may take to Himself from your ranks Martyr-witnesses (to Truth). And Allah loveth not those that do wrong. Allah’s object also is to purify those that are true in Faith and to deprive of blessing those that resist Faith. Did ye think that ye would enter Heaven without Allah testing those of you who fought hard (In His Cause) and remained steadfast?” (Qur’an, 3:140-142).
Here, Allah describes the purpose of hardship as being tamhees. Tamhees is the same word used to describe the heating and purifying of gold. Without heating it up, gold is precious metal-but it’s full of impurities. By performing tamhees, a process of heating, the impurities are removed from gold. This is what God also does with the believers. Through hardships, believers are purified-just like gold.
And so too are the Egyptians being purified. Only days before the uprising, the world had considered the Egyptian youth a lost cause. We believed they had lost their direction and their purpose and chosen to live their lives on the streets, catcalling girls, or at internet cafes smoking hookah. Through this hardship, the Egyptian youth have been brought back from the dead.
Now, these youth are standing on the streets in defiance of tyranny, on their knees praying, and with their hands facing the sky, calling on their Lord. The same people who just days before barely prayed, stand today in front of military tanks to bow down to their Creator. Only days before the uprising, the tensions between Egyptian Muslims and Christians had grown to an all-time high. Today the Christians and Muslims stand side by side in defense of each other and their country. The same people who did not trust each other the day before their ‘heating,’ have come together as brothers and sisters, as one body, to defend their streets, their homes, and their neighbourhoods. And through this hardship, a person who only days before lived for his cell phone, sheesha, and cigarettes, has become willing to sacrifice his own life to give freedom to his people.
Allah tells us in the Qur’an: “Say: ‘Who is it that sustains you (in life) from the sky and from the earth? Or who is it that has power over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulates all affairs?’ They will soon say, ‘(Allah)’. Say, ‘Will you not then show piety (to Him)?’” (Qur’an, 10:31) It is Allah who brings the living out of the dead. He has brought us back from the dead. Don’t think for a moment that a single moment of this is not happening with a purpose-a deep, profound and beautiful, liberating purpose.
For decades the Egyptian people have lived a life of fear. But when you let fear control you, you are a slave. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people from this slavery, by making them face-and overcome-their greatest fear. Allah has liberated the Egyptian people by allowing them to look their oppressor in the eye and tell him, and the whole world, that they will no longer live in fear. And so whether Mubarak stays or goes, lives or dies-it doesn’t really matter.
The Egyptian people have already been liberated. Hosni Mubarak is irrelevant. He is nothing but a tool by which God carries out His plan for the Egyptian people and for the entire Ummah. A tool to carry out His plan to purify, beautify and liberate the Egyptian people and the Ummah. And whether we are in Egypt today or not is unimportant. Egypt is just one limb of our body. The purification of Egypt is a purification of the whole body of our Ummah. It is the purification of you and me.
It is our chance to ask ourselves to what are we attached. What are we afraid of? What are we striving for? What do we stand for? And where are we going? When a body is in a deep, deep slumber-a coma-it is only out of His infinite mercy that He sends us a wakeup call. It is only from His infinite mercy that He sends to us life where there was once only death. We were heedless, so He sent us a sign. We were asleep, so he woke us up. We worshipped this life, and preferred our material possessions to the liberation of a soul attached to, and afraid of nothing but Him-so He freed us.
How many people will experience something like this in their lifetime? How many people will experience the opening of a Sea, the humbling of a tyrant? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves why we were chosen to see it? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves what we were intended to learn, change, transform? Because if we think for a moment this is all just about the people of Egypt, then we have desperately missed the point. We were asleep, and Allah chose to wake us.
We were dead and Allah wants to give us life.
We were conditioned to believe that our enemy was outside of ourselves. That he had power over us. This is also an illusion. The enemy is inside of us. All external enemies are only manifestations of our own diseases. And so if we want to conquer those enemies, we must first conquer the enemy inside ourselves. This is why the Qur’an tells us: Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they first change what is in themselves.” (Qur’an, 13:11) We must first conquer greed, selfishness, shirk, ultimate fear, love, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah. We must conquer (love of this world -the root of all our diseases and all our oppression.
Before we can defeat the Pharaohs in our lives, we must defeat the Pharaoh inside ourselves. So the fight in Egypt is a fight for liberation. Yes. But liberation from what? Who is truly oppressed? Are you and I free? What is true oppression? Ibn Taymiyyah (ra) answers this question when he says: “The one who is (truly) imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him.” (Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Wabil) When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.
And so when we fight to free Egypt, on a grander and realer scale it is a fight to also free ourselves. It is a fight to free ourselves of the tyranny of our own nafs and desires. A fight to free ourselves from our own false attachments and dependencies, from all that controls us, from all that we worship-other than Him. It is a fight to free us from our own slavery. Whether we are slaves to the American dollar, to our own desires, to status, to wealth, or to fear-the purification of Egypt is a purification of us all.
That is why the formula for true success given to us in the Qur’an consists of two elements: Sabr (patience, perseverance) and Taqwa (fear of God alone): “O you who have believed, persevere and endure and remain stationed and fear God (alone) that you may be successful.” (Qur’an 3:200).
So if we watch Egypt today as if it is only a spectacle happening outside of ourselves, without cleaning, examining, and really changing ourselves and our lives, then we have missed its purpose. After all, it isn’t every day that a sea is opened before our very eyes.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Gaddafi, who is the Devil now?
by Nazim Baksh
Source: Nazim Baksh Blog
Feb 28 2011
There are two portraits on this page. Both are Libyans but a world of difference separates them. I believe one is the image of piety, the other, despicable evil. The image on the right is Sayyid Muhammad Idris Al-Mahdi As-Sanusi. He was born circa 1889 in Jaghbub when Libya was part of the Ottaman Khilafah. He was the first and only King of Libya. Those who knew him said he prayed Tahajjud every night and was outwardly pious. In 1969 the man on the left, Muammar Al-Gaddafi, who has over 200 spelling of his name and whom the world will soon forget, staged a military coup and toppled Sidi Muhammad Idris. At this time Sidi Muhammad was in Turkey seeking medical treatment. After the coup the King was granted asylum in Egypt. He died on May 25, 1983 at the age of 94. He was buried in Madina Al-Munawwarah in the company of the best of God’s creation. His grandfather was the founder of the Sanusiyah Brotherhood (Tariqa). After Sidi Muhammad’s father died in 1902, he became the leader of the Sanusiyah Tariqa and its active leader when he 16. Following the Italian invasion of Libya in 1922 he was forced into exile in Egypt where he continued to lead his people.
During WWII the exiled King recruited Libyan fighters to aid the Allied forces against Nazi Germany and the Axis. In 1947 he returned home and in 1949 the United Nations determined that representatives of three provinces should meet in a national assembly to decide their future. The assembly met and decided on a constitutional monarchy and offered the reign to Sidi Muhammad. In 1951 Libya declared its independence. The army rose up against the King dubbing him “Idris Iblis.” Those were the famous words of Gaddafi, “Idris wala Iblis,” meaning he would rather the Devil than King Idris.
Shaykh Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass
A senior member of the 1969 coup along with Gaddafi was a young army Major named Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass. He was my first serious Arabic and Islamic studies teacher. In those years he was the Libyan ambassador to Guyana (1977-1981), the country of my birth. Shaykh Ahmad was a pious man. He was a learned scholar, charismatic, generous, patient and kind. The youth of Guyana loved him and his regular weekly classes drew teenagers from remote regions of the country. Many travelled long distances risking their safety to attend his weekend classes in Georgetown.
Shaykh Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass
The elders respected him, but he was a stranger they never really got to know. He played cricket with us, but preferred soccer. He ate what we ate and sat on the floor to teach us the rules of Tajwid. In return, we taught him many Guyanese terms. He fell in love with our poor tropical third world country and was so involved in the affairs of its community that he adopted an orphaned infant raising him as his own. He and his wonderful wife didn’t have any children.
I never saw him get angry. He was a Hafiz of the Quran and recited it every night in prayers. Long after bedtime we would hear him reciting verses of the Quran from memory. He fasted every Monday and Thursday. He followed the Maliki Madhab, but knew enough of the Hanafi fiqh and adopted it in prayers so as not to cause disunity in our small vibrant community. He stood up when the majority of Muslims would stand to send Salat and Salam on the Prophet during the annual Mawlid celebrations. He considered Gaddafi’s Green Book garbage and it was. I knew that when I was 15-years-old.
After the 69′ coup, Shaykh Ahmad came to see Gaddafi for what he was, a tyrant who did not deserve what he coveted. Convinced that the real “Iblis” was about to turn Libya into hell on earth, he spoke out and was jailed. Unable to keep him incarcerated, Gaddafi assigned him to a host of diplomatic positions in Denmark, North Yemen, Somalia, South Yemen, Malaysia and finally Guyana. Ten years after the coup Shaykh Ahmad formed the Islamic Salvation Front for the Liberation of Libya. He was determined to correct the mistake of 1969 by force if necessary.
He quit his position as ambassador in 1981 and left Guyana. None of his many students who are now community activists in Florida, NY, Toronto and throughout the Caribbean, would ever see him again. I was the sole exception. At the ISNA conference in Sept. 1983 I met Shaykh Ahmad in Indianapolis. He was serious. Intense. Scarry in some ways. He was in the company of many Libyan men and some ‘shy’ Americans whom I later realized were masters at the dark art of espionage. I was 19 and none of it made sense to me at the time.
What became evident much later was that in the shadows of the Islamic conference Shaykh Ahmad was planning a coup. King Idris would have been proud of the moral backbone of this son of Libya who so hated the injustices of Gaddafi that he was determined to oust him. King Idris died that same year and knew that Gaddafi was conducting a brutal campaign of assassination against hundreds of opponents to his regime. Human Rights organizations accounted for Libyan ‘Ulema who were killed by Gaddafi, many during the Hajj in the most sacred Islamic cities. Eight months (May 8, 1984) after ISNA, Shaykh Ahmad and a group of armed fighters staged a failed coup at Bab Al-Aziziya. Media reports said they killed 30 bodyguards of Gaddafi but did not succeed in getting him. Shaykh Ahmad was killed and Newsweek printed a picture of him with a story that hinted at the possibility that the men might have been betrayed.
What he started 30 years ago and ultimately gave his life to achieve, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Libyans, have sacrificed their lives trying to complete. I heard an Imam in Tripoli use the mimbar today (Feb. 25) to remind worshippers that the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is reported to have said: If you disapprove of your leaders do not raise your voices nor your swords in protests, otherwise you should be killed (i.e. capital punishment).” Someone should have reminded the young Colonel Gaddafi of this in 1969. It’s a little too late now.
Source: Nazim Baksh Blog
Feb 28 2011
There are two portraits on this page. Both are Libyans but a world of difference separates them. I believe one is the image of piety, the other, despicable evil. The image on the right is Sayyid Muhammad Idris Al-Mahdi As-Sanusi. He was born circa 1889 in Jaghbub when Libya was part of the Ottaman Khilafah. He was the first and only King of Libya. Those who knew him said he prayed Tahajjud every night and was outwardly pious. In 1969 the man on the left, Muammar Al-Gaddafi, who has over 200 spelling of his name and whom the world will soon forget, staged a military coup and toppled Sidi Muhammad Idris. At this time Sidi Muhammad was in Turkey seeking medical treatment. After the coup the King was granted asylum in Egypt. He died on May 25, 1983 at the age of 94. He was buried in Madina Al-Munawwarah in the company of the best of God’s creation. His grandfather was the founder of the Sanusiyah Brotherhood (Tariqa). After Sidi Muhammad’s father died in 1902, he became the leader of the Sanusiyah Tariqa and its active leader when he 16. Following the Italian invasion of Libya in 1922 he was forced into exile in Egypt where he continued to lead his people.
During WWII the exiled King recruited Libyan fighters to aid the Allied forces against Nazi Germany and the Axis. In 1947 he returned home and in 1949 the United Nations determined that representatives of three provinces should meet in a national assembly to decide their future. The assembly met and decided on a constitutional monarchy and offered the reign to Sidi Muhammad. In 1951 Libya declared its independence. The army rose up against the King dubbing him “Idris Iblis.” Those were the famous words of Gaddafi, “Idris wala Iblis,” meaning he would rather the Devil than King Idris.
Shaykh Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass
A senior member of the 1969 coup along with Gaddafi was a young army Major named Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass. He was my first serious Arabic and Islamic studies teacher. In those years he was the Libyan ambassador to Guyana (1977-1981), the country of my birth. Shaykh Ahmad was a pious man. He was a learned scholar, charismatic, generous, patient and kind. The youth of Guyana loved him and his regular weekly classes drew teenagers from remote regions of the country. Many travelled long distances risking their safety to attend his weekend classes in Georgetown.
Shaykh Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Zarruq Ehwass
The elders respected him, but he was a stranger they never really got to know. He played cricket with us, but preferred soccer. He ate what we ate and sat on the floor to teach us the rules of Tajwid. In return, we taught him many Guyanese terms. He fell in love with our poor tropical third world country and was so involved in the affairs of its community that he adopted an orphaned infant raising him as his own. He and his wonderful wife didn’t have any children.
I never saw him get angry. He was a Hafiz of the Quran and recited it every night in prayers. Long after bedtime we would hear him reciting verses of the Quran from memory. He fasted every Monday and Thursday. He followed the Maliki Madhab, but knew enough of the Hanafi fiqh and adopted it in prayers so as not to cause disunity in our small vibrant community. He stood up when the majority of Muslims would stand to send Salat and Salam on the Prophet during the annual Mawlid celebrations. He considered Gaddafi’s Green Book garbage and it was. I knew that when I was 15-years-old.
After the 69′ coup, Shaykh Ahmad came to see Gaddafi for what he was, a tyrant who did not deserve what he coveted. Convinced that the real “Iblis” was about to turn Libya into hell on earth, he spoke out and was jailed. Unable to keep him incarcerated, Gaddafi assigned him to a host of diplomatic positions in Denmark, North Yemen, Somalia, South Yemen, Malaysia and finally Guyana. Ten years after the coup Shaykh Ahmad formed the Islamic Salvation Front for the Liberation of Libya. He was determined to correct the mistake of 1969 by force if necessary.
He quit his position as ambassador in 1981 and left Guyana. None of his many students who are now community activists in Florida, NY, Toronto and throughout the Caribbean, would ever see him again. I was the sole exception. At the ISNA conference in Sept. 1983 I met Shaykh Ahmad in Indianapolis. He was serious. Intense. Scarry in some ways. He was in the company of many Libyan men and some ‘shy’ Americans whom I later realized were masters at the dark art of espionage. I was 19 and none of it made sense to me at the time.
What became evident much later was that in the shadows of the Islamic conference Shaykh Ahmad was planning a coup. King Idris would have been proud of the moral backbone of this son of Libya who so hated the injustices of Gaddafi that he was determined to oust him. King Idris died that same year and knew that Gaddafi was conducting a brutal campaign of assassination against hundreds of opponents to his regime. Human Rights organizations accounted for Libyan ‘Ulema who were killed by Gaddafi, many during the Hajj in the most sacred Islamic cities. Eight months (May 8, 1984) after ISNA, Shaykh Ahmad and a group of armed fighters staged a failed coup at Bab Al-Aziziya. Media reports said they killed 30 bodyguards of Gaddafi but did not succeed in getting him. Shaykh Ahmad was killed and Newsweek printed a picture of him with a story that hinted at the possibility that the men might have been betrayed.
What he started 30 years ago and ultimately gave his life to achieve, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Libyans, have sacrificed their lives trying to complete. I heard an Imam in Tripoli use the mimbar today (Feb. 25) to remind worshippers that the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is reported to have said: If you disapprove of your leaders do not raise your voices nor your swords in protests, otherwise you should be killed (i.e. capital punishment).” Someone should have reminded the young Colonel Gaddafi of this in 1969. It’s a little too late now.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
4 Reasons to Change the Way We View Education
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
4 Reasons to Change the Way We View Education
Mary Hickcox
Activist Post
The way in which we view education has a lot to do with our past; how we grew up, societal influences, and the way we were schooled ourselves. It is the legacy that we pass on to our children. Tragically, the current way our education system is engineered, it appears our children seem doomed to be unsuccessful.
We live in a time where our schools are failing, our children are unhappy and overworked, and the current system becomes more obsolete every year. Something needs to change if we want our children to be happy, and our country to be successful, once again. The system we have now was built on a fault line and it has become increasingly evident that the cracks are growing exponentially. It isn’t too late to change that model.
We could talk about how to improve schools, maybe more money or less political involvement, but in the long run those are not the things that stand in the way of our children’s futures. What stands in the way is an archaic mindset build on false education and an inability to look past the norm. With our country in a dire economic situation with mass joblessness and stifled innovation, it is time to step outside of the box that public education has put us in to find solutions.
1. Our schools are failing miserably: That's not to say that some students do not do well in public school and end up happy, but statistics do not lie. At an annual average cost of over $10,000 per student, the U.S. is lagging behind countries that don’t spend half that much. Money does not appear to be the problem, so throwing more into a broken system is just adding fuel to the fire. No Child Left Behind has been a total failure, where states are suing the federal government over this catastrophe. NCLB puts extreme emphasis on tests -- as if still trying to churn out worker bees -- yet, the U.S. ranks far below most industrialized nations. We seem to be wasting money letting political agendas decide what is best, rather than the parents or teachers who know what children need.
Unsettling Education Statistics
Students are not faring well on national assessments. The most recent NAEP assessments indicate that less than one third of U.S. fourth graders are proficient in reading, mathematics, science, and American history.
More than half of low-income students cannot even demonstrate basic knowledge of science, reading, and history.
U.S. eighth graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries on mathematic assessments and 18th in science.
U.S. twelfth graders ranked 18th out of 21 countries in combined mathematics and science assessments (Source: The Heritage Foundation)
History shows that modern-day schooling started with the Industrial Revolution, but many still refuse to accept that the people who funded its inception did not have children’s education as their main priority. Men like Rockefeller and Carnegie wanted good obedient workers to take the jobs they needed filled. They didn’t want free-thinking students to reach their potential; they wanted a large dumbed-down class, just disciplined and smart enough to show up on time and work their factory jobs.
John Taylor Gatto, teacher for over 30 years, NY Teacher of the Year, bestselling author, and homeschooling supporter, states: “The secret to American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, nor is it supposed to. Schools were conceived to serve the economy and the social order rather than kids and their families….that is why it is compulsory.” This is a system set up for all the wrong reasons, and it is a system whose goals were set deep inside of ulterior motives and still are today. Maybe schools are not the best places for our children to gain knowledge.
2. Our children are unhappy: Our children are unhappy, overworked, and not learning what they need in order to be successful. The first thing that needs to change is how we define that word success. We hear it all the time used as a measure of how our children are doing in life, but what if the way we define success has been wrong all along? What exactly are we as parents supposed to focus on? Is happiness even on the radar screen when success is discussed?
It seems most parents these days get so caught up in competition that they can forget that our ultimate goal should be our children’s happiness. Who's to blame them, as we are all conditioned to survive in the rat-race dog-eat-dog economy. But this ultra-competitive model seems to make school an unhappy place, as a record number of children are now on mood-altering drugs to handle their pressure-cooker lives. It is a place where strangers with corporate-government mandates are controlling the minds and bodies of our children.
We cannot expect our children to be free-thinking independent adults if they are kept under lock and key, segregated by age, fully controlled by rules, and forced to learn a federally-mandated curriculum. It is an institutional and cold conditioning of the mind. Americans have been taught to think of the word success as being dependent on excelling at school, but it seems societal success is more dependent on knowledge -- and the two are not synonymous. If we can change our thinking about success then it can equal happiness -- the ultimate human success.
In 2007, for the first time, UNICEF did a study on the wellbeing and happiness of children in 21 industrialized nations. The US and UK, two of the wealthier nations on the list, came in dead last. This alone should raise some eyebrows and prove the point that our children are not happy, and that more money is not the answer to the problem.
Another study was conducted in 2009 by the American Psychological Association to survey stress levels in children; they found some alarming information. To start, it showed that stress levels in adults and children have risen dramatically over the past few years, but even more upsetting is that parents seemed mostly clueless to the fact that their children were stressed at all. What were the main issues causing stress in children? Worry about grades, about getting into college, and family finances top the list. These problems are causing children to experience headaches, nausea, and trouble sleeping. If our goal is happiness, the school system is again, a failure.
3. School has become obsolete: The last 10 years has seen more technological advancement than in the entire century before. All of the world's information is now literally available in the palm of our hands. Almost the entire world’s wealth of knowledge is accessible through the Internet and integrated into our everyday life. Small improvements have occurred to incorporate this new lifestyle, but not nearly enough to catch up with the rest of the world. In fact, some researchers suggest that students would be better off with self-directed learning using the Internet, because we all learn better when it is something that we are interested in.
The current system is repetitive, memorization and test driven, and downright boring. It’s a place that resembles prison where, “Very little of what is taught is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is actually used," as John Holt states in How Children Learn. Couple that with the fact that 50% (technological knowledge) of what is learned in the first year of college is worthless by graduation, and you just have to ask yourself: What is the point? And can’t we do better than this? Our children not only deserve better, they require better in order to compete in a market with nearly 10% official unemployment.
College seems to be less cost-effective every year. Rising college costs put our children in insurmountable debt due to the lack of viable employment. Tuitions have skyrocketed in the past few years (Harvard University is now $60,000 per year). To make matters worse, universities are now making kickback profits from credit card companies, while graduates aren’t even able to find jobs. With over 1/3 of college graduates now taking low-skill jobs, and over 65% graduating with crippling debt, it is now legitimate to question if college is the right path to put our children on.
4. The wrong people control the system for the wrong reasons: “The education system was deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace 'manageable.'" -- Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, Sr. Policy Advisor for the US Dept. of Education, and whistleblower on government activities to deliberately dumb our children down.
She also notes that the system is set up to make good consumers, as well as standardize people to keep them predictable and easy to control. Does this sound like something you want to support? Do we really want our children controlled and held back in life?
The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 were the first steps toward a large government role in education. What people failed to realize was that the money from these Acts became obligations to play by their rules and it continues today. Because the Feds were financially supporting the schools, they could control what was taught, thus bringing another facet of American life under their control. This is proven again and again when we see how difficult they make it for people to choose alternative education options for their own children.
It is clear that the purpose of school has become to serve corporations and government. This is evidenced most recently when we learn that BP played a role in writing the environmental curriculum in California. I think we all can agree that public schools should only serve the taxpayer's families and their children's best interests -- not the corporations that write the curriculum. When the day comes that the people in charge make families (and not greedy corporations) the priority then maybe, just maybe, our children will be learning what is really important, rather than learning how to serve the very people who set up this failing system.
Conclusion
In a time when our economy desperately needs more innovators, how can we change education to expand the potential of each child? It seems we must do some things we did NOT learn in school: Question assumptions about education; think for and believe in ourselves; speak up against what we know is wrong; and challenge what we've been taught to believe is right. It is each parent's right and responsibility to decide the best way to guide their child to maximum human potential.
It seems that our modern world provides all of the tools to support a child's natural curiosity to drive their own education. Homeschooling and unschooling may be the most powerful form of revolt against an establishment which is terrified of individuals that question authority and refuse to be good little worker bees. John Holt said it well: “To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves . . . but most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” We also must begin to trust our own abilities as parents to guide our children toward happiness and independence, not to blindly trust the failed government standards that have resulted in anxiety and stress conditioning.
It is time for all of us to look outside the box for solutions to our education system to ensure our children's happiness -- this should be deemed the ultimate success.
Author Mary Hickcox is an unschooling advocate, mother, and life guide to three sons (11, 7, 3).
Related Articles:
The Deschooling and Unschooling Movement is Growing
Hope Lost
4 Reasons to Change the Way We View Education
Mary Hickcox
Activist Post
The way in which we view education has a lot to do with our past; how we grew up, societal influences, and the way we were schooled ourselves. It is the legacy that we pass on to our children. Tragically, the current way our education system is engineered, it appears our children seem doomed to be unsuccessful.
We live in a time where our schools are failing, our children are unhappy and overworked, and the current system becomes more obsolete every year. Something needs to change if we want our children to be happy, and our country to be successful, once again. The system we have now was built on a fault line and it has become increasingly evident that the cracks are growing exponentially. It isn’t too late to change that model.
We could talk about how to improve schools, maybe more money or less political involvement, but in the long run those are not the things that stand in the way of our children’s futures. What stands in the way is an archaic mindset build on false education and an inability to look past the norm. With our country in a dire economic situation with mass joblessness and stifled innovation, it is time to step outside of the box that public education has put us in to find solutions.
1. Our schools are failing miserably: That's not to say that some students do not do well in public school and end up happy, but statistics do not lie. At an annual average cost of over $10,000 per student, the U.S. is lagging behind countries that don’t spend half that much. Money does not appear to be the problem, so throwing more into a broken system is just adding fuel to the fire. No Child Left Behind has been a total failure, where states are suing the federal government over this catastrophe. NCLB puts extreme emphasis on tests -- as if still trying to churn out worker bees -- yet, the U.S. ranks far below most industrialized nations. We seem to be wasting money letting political agendas decide what is best, rather than the parents or teachers who know what children need.
Unsettling Education Statistics
Students are not faring well on national assessments. The most recent NAEP assessments indicate that less than one third of U.S. fourth graders are proficient in reading, mathematics, science, and American history.
More than half of low-income students cannot even demonstrate basic knowledge of science, reading, and history.
U.S. eighth graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries on mathematic assessments and 18th in science.
U.S. twelfth graders ranked 18th out of 21 countries in combined mathematics and science assessments (Source: The Heritage Foundation)
History shows that modern-day schooling started with the Industrial Revolution, but many still refuse to accept that the people who funded its inception did not have children’s education as their main priority. Men like Rockefeller and Carnegie wanted good obedient workers to take the jobs they needed filled. They didn’t want free-thinking students to reach their potential; they wanted a large dumbed-down class, just disciplined and smart enough to show up on time and work their factory jobs.
John Taylor Gatto, teacher for over 30 years, NY Teacher of the Year, bestselling author, and homeschooling supporter, states: “The secret to American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, nor is it supposed to. Schools were conceived to serve the economy and the social order rather than kids and their families….that is why it is compulsory.” This is a system set up for all the wrong reasons, and it is a system whose goals were set deep inside of ulterior motives and still are today. Maybe schools are not the best places for our children to gain knowledge.
2. Our children are unhappy: Our children are unhappy, overworked, and not learning what they need in order to be successful. The first thing that needs to change is how we define that word success. We hear it all the time used as a measure of how our children are doing in life, but what if the way we define success has been wrong all along? What exactly are we as parents supposed to focus on? Is happiness even on the radar screen when success is discussed?
It seems most parents these days get so caught up in competition that they can forget that our ultimate goal should be our children’s happiness. Who's to blame them, as we are all conditioned to survive in the rat-race dog-eat-dog economy. But this ultra-competitive model seems to make school an unhappy place, as a record number of children are now on mood-altering drugs to handle their pressure-cooker lives. It is a place where strangers with corporate-government mandates are controlling the minds and bodies of our children.
We cannot expect our children to be free-thinking independent adults if they are kept under lock and key, segregated by age, fully controlled by rules, and forced to learn a federally-mandated curriculum. It is an institutional and cold conditioning of the mind. Americans have been taught to think of the word success as being dependent on excelling at school, but it seems societal success is more dependent on knowledge -- and the two are not synonymous. If we can change our thinking about success then it can equal happiness -- the ultimate human success.
In 2007, for the first time, UNICEF did a study on the wellbeing and happiness of children in 21 industrialized nations. The US and UK, two of the wealthier nations on the list, came in dead last. This alone should raise some eyebrows and prove the point that our children are not happy, and that more money is not the answer to the problem.
Another study was conducted in 2009 by the American Psychological Association to survey stress levels in children; they found some alarming information. To start, it showed that stress levels in adults and children have risen dramatically over the past few years, but even more upsetting is that parents seemed mostly clueless to the fact that their children were stressed at all. What were the main issues causing stress in children? Worry about grades, about getting into college, and family finances top the list. These problems are causing children to experience headaches, nausea, and trouble sleeping. If our goal is happiness, the school system is again, a failure.
3. School has become obsolete: The last 10 years has seen more technological advancement than in the entire century before. All of the world's information is now literally available in the palm of our hands. Almost the entire world’s wealth of knowledge is accessible through the Internet and integrated into our everyday life. Small improvements have occurred to incorporate this new lifestyle, but not nearly enough to catch up with the rest of the world. In fact, some researchers suggest that students would be better off with self-directed learning using the Internet, because we all learn better when it is something that we are interested in.
The current system is repetitive, memorization and test driven, and downright boring. It’s a place that resembles prison where, “Very little of what is taught is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is actually used," as John Holt states in How Children Learn. Couple that with the fact that 50% (technological knowledge) of what is learned in the first year of college is worthless by graduation, and you just have to ask yourself: What is the point? And can’t we do better than this? Our children not only deserve better, they require better in order to compete in a market with nearly 10% official unemployment.
College seems to be less cost-effective every year. Rising college costs put our children in insurmountable debt due to the lack of viable employment. Tuitions have skyrocketed in the past few years (Harvard University is now $60,000 per year). To make matters worse, universities are now making kickback profits from credit card companies, while graduates aren’t even able to find jobs. With over 1/3 of college graduates now taking low-skill jobs, and over 65% graduating with crippling debt, it is now legitimate to question if college is the right path to put our children on.
4. The wrong people control the system for the wrong reasons: “The education system was deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace 'manageable.'" -- Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, Sr. Policy Advisor for the US Dept. of Education, and whistleblower on government activities to deliberately dumb our children down.
She also notes that the system is set up to make good consumers, as well as standardize people to keep them predictable and easy to control. Does this sound like something you want to support? Do we really want our children controlled and held back in life?
The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 were the first steps toward a large government role in education. What people failed to realize was that the money from these Acts became obligations to play by their rules and it continues today. Because the Feds were financially supporting the schools, they could control what was taught, thus bringing another facet of American life under their control. This is proven again and again when we see how difficult they make it for people to choose alternative education options for their own children.
It is clear that the purpose of school has become to serve corporations and government. This is evidenced most recently when we learn that BP played a role in writing the environmental curriculum in California. I think we all can agree that public schools should only serve the taxpayer's families and their children's best interests -- not the corporations that write the curriculum. When the day comes that the people in charge make families (and not greedy corporations) the priority then maybe, just maybe, our children will be learning what is really important, rather than learning how to serve the very people who set up this failing system.
Conclusion
In a time when our economy desperately needs more innovators, how can we change education to expand the potential of each child? It seems we must do some things we did NOT learn in school: Question assumptions about education; think for and believe in ourselves; speak up against what we know is wrong; and challenge what we've been taught to believe is right. It is each parent's right and responsibility to decide the best way to guide their child to maximum human potential.
It seems that our modern world provides all of the tools to support a child's natural curiosity to drive their own education. Homeschooling and unschooling may be the most powerful form of revolt against an establishment which is terrified of individuals that question authority and refuse to be good little worker bees. John Holt said it well: “To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves . . . but most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” We also must begin to trust our own abilities as parents to guide our children toward happiness and independence, not to blindly trust the failed government standards that have resulted in anxiety and stress conditioning.
It is time for all of us to look outside the box for solutions to our education system to ensure our children's happiness -- this should be deemed the ultimate success.
Author Mary Hickcox is an unschooling advocate, mother, and life guide to three sons (11, 7, 3).
Related Articles:
The Deschooling and Unschooling Movement is Growing
Hope Lost
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Perfect Harmony and Equilibrium
By manifesting all the Divine Names without a trace of Lordship and thereby displaying perfect servanthood, perfect man becomes, one might say, totally ordinary. In him, nothing stands out, since he flows with all the created things in perfect harmony and equilibrium. He is like a tree or a bird in his ordinariness, following the Divine Will wherever it takes him, with no friction, no protest, complete serenity, no waves. He is so much at ease with the continual flux of secondary causes that he remains unnoticed by his contemporaries. There may be outstanding spiritual masters who attract disciples through their teachings and miraculous gifts, but the most perfect of the masters are never noticed except by those whom God chooses and guides.
- Ibn 'Arabi
- Ibn 'Arabi
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf on the Egyptian Revolution
The lack of an ideology, for me, is the most refreshing aspect of this uprising. The stale rhetoric of “Islam is the solution” that has marked countless demonstrations for decades is absent. The pathetic socialist slogans of the Libyan revolution as well as the Syrian and Iraqi Arab nationalist slogans are all conspicuously absent. Islam is not a political ideology and hence does not offer a political solution per se; basic morality in politics is the solution. Most Muslims would be content living under Finnish or Swedish forms of governance, with a few adjustments to the sexual liberties in those countries, and feel as if it were the time of Saladin, given that they are committed to eradicating poverty and hunger, serving the aged, and even ensuring rights for dogs and cats. If you torture a dog in Stockholm, you go to jail. In the jails of Egypt, people can be tortured with impunity by dogs of the state....
....Islam is not an ideology, political or otherwise. It is a revelation from God that explains and reminds people of their duties toward their Creator in honoring and worshipping God with gratitude for the gift of life and all the concomitants of that gift, and of their duties toward their fellow creatures as unique and protected creations of God. Those duties are well described in all the Books sent by God and enshrined most succinctly in the Ten Commandments. Politics involves making sure the mail gets out, allotting appropriate monies for public works, and ensuring the security of a people from internal or external threats; all of these can be done without recourse to any specific religious tradition.
...The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, left no specific system of government; rather, he taught “constitutional” principles upon which governance should be based. Many of those principles, quite revolutionary at his time, have become common coin for most people today: the idea of equality among races and gender, the concept of economic justice, and the right of an individual to be protected in his person and property from unjust search or seizure. These are constitutional principles accepted by most governments today; whether they are practiced or not is another matter. There are, however, two clearly articulated aspects of governance that do have relevance in any state run by Muslims. The penal code of Islam was developed specifically for an Islamic polity, but only a few actual punishments are agreed upon, and the circumstances of its various applications are highly nuanced in Islamic legal texts, with an aim to avoid their implementation whenever possible. The gross and often perverse so-called “Islamic punishments” meted out today-invariably on the poorest and most helpless in societies-have nothing to do with the Prophet’s teaching, peace and blessings be upon him. Commercial law is, undeniably, another developed area in Islamic law that has implications in the running of a state.
- Excerpted from "When the Social Contract is Breached on One Side, It’s Breached on Both Sides"
....Islam is not an ideology, political or otherwise. It is a revelation from God that explains and reminds people of their duties toward their Creator in honoring and worshipping God with gratitude for the gift of life and all the concomitants of that gift, and of their duties toward their fellow creatures as unique and protected creations of God. Those duties are well described in all the Books sent by God and enshrined most succinctly in the Ten Commandments. Politics involves making sure the mail gets out, allotting appropriate monies for public works, and ensuring the security of a people from internal or external threats; all of these can be done without recourse to any specific religious tradition.
...The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, left no specific system of government; rather, he taught “constitutional” principles upon which governance should be based. Many of those principles, quite revolutionary at his time, have become common coin for most people today: the idea of equality among races and gender, the concept of economic justice, and the right of an individual to be protected in his person and property from unjust search or seizure. These are constitutional principles accepted by most governments today; whether they are practiced or not is another matter. There are, however, two clearly articulated aspects of governance that do have relevance in any state run by Muslims. The penal code of Islam was developed specifically for an Islamic polity, but only a few actual punishments are agreed upon, and the circumstances of its various applications are highly nuanced in Islamic legal texts, with an aim to avoid their implementation whenever possible. The gross and often perverse so-called “Islamic punishments” meted out today-invariably on the poorest and most helpless in societies-have nothing to do with the Prophet’s teaching, peace and blessings be upon him. Commercial law is, undeniably, another developed area in Islamic law that has implications in the running of a state.
- Excerpted from "When the Social Contract is Breached on One Side, It’s Breached on Both Sides"
Spectrum of Various Islamic Scholars Views on the Egyptian Revolution
February 9th, 2011 3 Share Print
A wide spectrum of the views of various scholars’ views on the Egyptian Revolution.
Mufti Abdurrahman ibn Yusuf
The main thing we need to realize is that until we become worthy of having decent people above us, then no decent person will come above us. The Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “However you are, that’s the type of people that would be put above you.” Whatever is happening in the Muslim world is also because of our sins.
Look at the current day leaders today- you think you and I can do better than them once you’ve got that power and force? I think the simple way to understand that is, how much do we do in the position that we are in right now? In the limited power we are in right now. Are there people you owe money to and you haven’t give it to them yet? Think about it. Are there people you’ve wronged and not sought forgiveness for? Do you have some hatred in your heart for somebody and you’ve not been able to rectify it?
You see we are all sinning according to the scope we have. And the more scope you have the bigger the sins can be. We are sinning and weak in the limited scope we have and if we are given more scope, our sins will just increase.
In Sahih Bukhari, from Abu Musa al-Ashari that the Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “Allah gives rope to these oppressor, but when he then does seize them, then there is no escape.”
Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
Shaykh Hasan al-Yusi spoke against the Sultan of Morocco: ”I just break the dishes made of earth, while you break Allah’s dishes- you break human beings.”
Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba of Senegal opposed the French and the moment the French put the chains on him, Allah gave him his spiritual opening. The French took him on a ship and forbade him from praying on the ship- the Shaykh stepped off the ship and began praying on the water.
Mufti Ali Gomaa
There is, however, always reason for hope and optimism. As the Quran teaches us: “With every difficulty, there comes ease.” It is with great national pride that I affirm my confidence and trust in the Egyptian people to retreat from violence and aggression to peace and calm. At that point, our nation will have to engage in some profound introspection and soul-searching to make sense of the new state of affairs. Until then, however, the lives and welfare of our countrymen - regardless of their political beliefs - must be our first priority.
There is no denying that we are on the edge of a new period of Egyptian political and social life. The youth of our nation have organised en masse to make their voices heard, and to demand changes. They have demonstrated great resolve in their pursuit of fundamental reforms. There is no doubt that reform is a necessity. Indeed, I have long called, through the Misr El Kheir Foundation, for comprehensive reforms in economics, health and social solidarity.
Imam Zaid Shakir
The vast majority of the people of Egypt have peacefully protested to make their voices heard. They are saying loud and clear, “We demand our dignity, we demand the right to choose our leaders in free and fair elections, and we demand that the wealth our land produces stays in our hands.” These are demands that should resonate with every American. Time will tell how far we have strayed from our foundational principles.
None of us can pretend to know what the Almighty has decreed concerning the outcome of this affair. However, we do know that He hates oppressors. May God bless and protect the people of Egypt and keep them in His care.
And we desired to bestow our grace upon those oppressed in the earth; to make them the leaders and to make them the rightful heirs. Qur’an 28:5
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Having said that, I believe we should maintain a good opinion of the scholars who either take a position or choose to remain silent-a valid option during fitnah. We must recognize that personal ijtihad in difficult times is to be respected. The Mufti of Egypt is an honorable and pious man; he understands the complexity of the situation, the dangers of instability, and the tragedies that can quickly arise when conflagrations take a life of their own. Moreover, his position is certainly consonant with a traditional approach that was taken by many of the great scholars of the past. While some may not agree with his opinion, Muslims should respect religious authority, acknowledge a scholar’s right to it, and not assume we know anyone’s intentions. God alone is the Judge of men’s hearts.
Fitnah is worse than killing, according to the Qur’an, and in this case, the fitnah is persecution. The Egyptians have been persecuted for too long, and while traditional scholars since the days of the early fitnahs have sided with stability in order to prevent bloodshed that often resulted in worse situations than the ones being opposed, in an age where peaceful protest is the only rational means of a people to redress the wrongs of their government, the scholars should not only support but acknowledge this change in the world. The situation in the Middle East is intolerable, and as John F. Kennedy rightly remarked, “If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.”
3 Responses
Noor says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:53 pm
TJ Winters points to the example of Shaykh Ahmed Bamba, who in my estimation is the only person to have lead by his example and charisma a non violent campaign for self determination in the Muslim World. I think looking at today’s scholars one’s sees the various stances taken from our past. The seemingly lone stance of Imam Ahmad during the Minha, the death in prison of Abu Hanifah and the flight of Sufyan al Thawri for the complacent Alid support of political change. The persecution of Imam Shafi’i in the Yemen and Iraq, with fanaticism eventually the cause of his death in Egypt. We do not remember those who took no stance. Ibn Taymiyya for all his creedal faults is held high for precisely his willingness to participate in the struggle against the Tartars, while Al Ghazzali is doubted for his silence on the Crusades.
Where is the public counsel of the Ulema? Mufti Abdurrahman stated, “The main thing we need to realize is that until we become worthy of having decent people above us, then no decent person will come above us. The Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “However you are, that’s the type of people that would be put above you.” Whatever is happening in the Muslim world is also because of our sins.”
I wonder if his position would remain the same when discussing the Khilafate of the Ottomans, Abbasids, Ummayads or any of the petty dynasties of later times. I wonder if that hadith is applicable to the successors of the Prophet(saw)? Tough questions that the restrictions and waywardness of the bulk of Sunni Polity have had a difficult time answering. In a day and age when we no longer are dynastic its important to realize whom the Ulema serve. Nizamuddin Auliya stated, “When the ruler comes to my front door, I leave out my back door”. When the Tuglug emperor demanded his audience upon his return from a campaign he coined the now famous phrase, “Delhi is still far away”. The tyrant died before reaching the city. Saadi in his Gulstan states a story about the tyrant Hallaj. He came to a Holy Man and asked for him to supplicate for him. The Sage responded, “Oh Allah kill him now!!!”. When asked why he responded, “by dying now you cannot commit more sin, and we will not have to put up with your sins anymore”. While Democracy or constitutional reform will nor erase injustice or implement some rarefied idea of an “Islamic” state, it will, if successful, give an ounce more freedom that has not existed in our lands……ever. Moreover it will allow Ulema to be more than mere chattels of the state, and insha’allah Islam to be taught outside of political grievances.
A wide spectrum of the views of various scholars’ views on the Egyptian Revolution.
Mufti Abdurrahman ibn Yusuf
The main thing we need to realize is that until we become worthy of having decent people above us, then no decent person will come above us. The Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “However you are, that’s the type of people that would be put above you.” Whatever is happening in the Muslim world is also because of our sins.
Look at the current day leaders today- you think you and I can do better than them once you’ve got that power and force? I think the simple way to understand that is, how much do we do in the position that we are in right now? In the limited power we are in right now. Are there people you owe money to and you haven’t give it to them yet? Think about it. Are there people you’ve wronged and not sought forgiveness for? Do you have some hatred in your heart for somebody and you’ve not been able to rectify it?
You see we are all sinning according to the scope we have. And the more scope you have the bigger the sins can be. We are sinning and weak in the limited scope we have and if we are given more scope, our sins will just increase.
In Sahih Bukhari, from Abu Musa al-Ashari that the Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “Allah gives rope to these oppressor, but when he then does seize them, then there is no escape.”
Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
Shaykh Hasan al-Yusi spoke against the Sultan of Morocco: ”I just break the dishes made of earth, while you break Allah’s dishes- you break human beings.”
Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba of Senegal opposed the French and the moment the French put the chains on him, Allah gave him his spiritual opening. The French took him on a ship and forbade him from praying on the ship- the Shaykh stepped off the ship and began praying on the water.
Mufti Ali Gomaa
There is, however, always reason for hope and optimism. As the Quran teaches us: “With every difficulty, there comes ease.” It is with great national pride that I affirm my confidence and trust in the Egyptian people to retreat from violence and aggression to peace and calm. At that point, our nation will have to engage in some profound introspection and soul-searching to make sense of the new state of affairs. Until then, however, the lives and welfare of our countrymen - regardless of their political beliefs - must be our first priority.
There is no denying that we are on the edge of a new period of Egyptian political and social life. The youth of our nation have organised en masse to make their voices heard, and to demand changes. They have demonstrated great resolve in their pursuit of fundamental reforms. There is no doubt that reform is a necessity. Indeed, I have long called, through the Misr El Kheir Foundation, for comprehensive reforms in economics, health and social solidarity.
Imam Zaid Shakir
The vast majority of the people of Egypt have peacefully protested to make their voices heard. They are saying loud and clear, “We demand our dignity, we demand the right to choose our leaders in free and fair elections, and we demand that the wealth our land produces stays in our hands.” These are demands that should resonate with every American. Time will tell how far we have strayed from our foundational principles.
None of us can pretend to know what the Almighty has decreed concerning the outcome of this affair. However, we do know that He hates oppressors. May God bless and protect the people of Egypt and keep them in His care.
And we desired to bestow our grace upon those oppressed in the earth; to make them the leaders and to make them the rightful heirs. Qur’an 28:5
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Having said that, I believe we should maintain a good opinion of the scholars who either take a position or choose to remain silent-a valid option during fitnah. We must recognize that personal ijtihad in difficult times is to be respected. The Mufti of Egypt is an honorable and pious man; he understands the complexity of the situation, the dangers of instability, and the tragedies that can quickly arise when conflagrations take a life of their own. Moreover, his position is certainly consonant with a traditional approach that was taken by many of the great scholars of the past. While some may not agree with his opinion, Muslims should respect religious authority, acknowledge a scholar’s right to it, and not assume we know anyone’s intentions. God alone is the Judge of men’s hearts.
Fitnah is worse than killing, according to the Qur’an, and in this case, the fitnah is persecution. The Egyptians have been persecuted for too long, and while traditional scholars since the days of the early fitnahs have sided with stability in order to prevent bloodshed that often resulted in worse situations than the ones being opposed, in an age where peaceful protest is the only rational means of a people to redress the wrongs of their government, the scholars should not only support but acknowledge this change in the world. The situation in the Middle East is intolerable, and as John F. Kennedy rightly remarked, “If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.”
3 Responses
Noor says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:53 pm
TJ Winters points to the example of Shaykh Ahmed Bamba, who in my estimation is the only person to have lead by his example and charisma a non violent campaign for self determination in the Muslim World. I think looking at today’s scholars one’s sees the various stances taken from our past. The seemingly lone stance of Imam Ahmad during the Minha, the death in prison of Abu Hanifah and the flight of Sufyan al Thawri for the complacent Alid support of political change. The persecution of Imam Shafi’i in the Yemen and Iraq, with fanaticism eventually the cause of his death in Egypt. We do not remember those who took no stance. Ibn Taymiyya for all his creedal faults is held high for precisely his willingness to participate in the struggle against the Tartars, while Al Ghazzali is doubted for his silence on the Crusades.
Where is the public counsel of the Ulema? Mufti Abdurrahman stated, “The main thing we need to realize is that until we become worthy of having decent people above us, then no decent person will come above us. The Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, “However you are, that’s the type of people that would be put above you.” Whatever is happening in the Muslim world is also because of our sins.”
I wonder if his position would remain the same when discussing the Khilafate of the Ottomans, Abbasids, Ummayads or any of the petty dynasties of later times. I wonder if that hadith is applicable to the successors of the Prophet(saw)? Tough questions that the restrictions and waywardness of the bulk of Sunni Polity have had a difficult time answering. In a day and age when we no longer are dynastic its important to realize whom the Ulema serve. Nizamuddin Auliya stated, “When the ruler comes to my front door, I leave out my back door”. When the Tuglug emperor demanded his audience upon his return from a campaign he coined the now famous phrase, “Delhi is still far away”. The tyrant died before reaching the city. Saadi in his Gulstan states a story about the tyrant Hallaj. He came to a Holy Man and asked for him to supplicate for him. The Sage responded, “Oh Allah kill him now!!!”. When asked why he responded, “by dying now you cannot commit more sin, and we will not have to put up with your sins anymore”. While Democracy or constitutional reform will nor erase injustice or implement some rarefied idea of an “Islamic” state, it will, if successful, give an ounce more freedom that has not existed in our lands……ever. Moreover it will allow Ulema to be more than mere chattels of the state, and insha’allah Islam to be taught outside of political grievances.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Muslim Converts Lost in Translation
by Peter Gray
Source: Alt Muslimah
Jan 29 2011
Converts to Islam are important ambassadors for American Muslims; increasing their participation should sit high on the priority list of the larger Muslim community. Although many improvements have been made in convert outreach, far too many who are new to the faith lack a strong sense of authenticity as Muslims, and consequently end up slowly disengaging from the religion. Unfortunately the messages they receive from other Muslims often reinforce their alienation.
Changing the way we talk about Islam could go a long way toward cultivating a sense of belonging among these brothers and sisters, and deepening their personal connection to Islam. Whether we were born as Muslims or embraced the religion later in life, we are all students of faith. We may not realize, however, that those who have newly accepted Islam may look to us for guidance, taking our opinions to heart. In this sense, we sometimes become teachers for our fellow Muslims.
One trait shared by successful teachers is the ability to introduce new material without using technical language. By employing clear, familiar terms to lay out a new idea, the concept no longer appears foreign and inaccessible to the listener. This method works just as well in mosques as it does in classrooms, but Muslims rarely use it when “teaching” Islam.
When discussing religion, we tend to sprinkle our speech with Arabic terms and references to the Qur’an. Many of these words have been absorbed into languages like Urdu and Indonesian, but none have made their way into English. What might be a natural way of speaking for some Muslims can leave a convert struggling to keep up. While there is no need to start saying things like “Insha’Allah” (God willing) in English, minimizing theological jargon would do a lot of good.
The Qur’an reminds us that in religion, substance trumps terminology:
Say: “Invoke Allah (God), or invoke Ar-Rahman (the Most Gracious): by whichever name you invoke Him, [He is always the One- for] His are all the attributes of perfection.” (17:110)
Just as God remains unchanged by the names we use, so too do the principles of His religion. Even a single adjustment, like substituting “God” for “Allah,” will introduce a concept or message to a convert in a much more intimate and personalized manner.
Tellingly, it was the words of a non-Muslim that brought me back to Islam when I was faltering in my faith. On a whim one day, I bought a copy of “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time” by Karen Armstrong. The entire book was brilliant; I was most affected, however, by Armstrong’s analysis of a verse from the third chapter of the Qur’an. I had read this verse before, but never with the translation she used:
For if one goes in search of a religion other than self-surrender unto God [Ar. “Islam”], it will never be accepted from him, and in the life to come he shall be among the lost. (3:85)
Armstrong then goes on to say:
This verse is often quoted to “prove” that the Qur’an claims that Islam is the one, true faith and that only Muslims will be saved. But “Islam” was not yet the official name for Muhammad’s religion, and when this verse is read correctly in its pluralistic context, it clearly means the exact opposite. (p. 87)
Armstrong’s analysis opened my eyes to the reductive way I had been thinking about Islam. In my mind, my religion boiled down to five pillars: belief in God and allegiance to Muhammad (“shahada”), prayer (“salat”), fasting during Ramadan (“sawm”), charity (“zakat”) and pilgrimage to Mecca (“hajj”). Being a Muslim, I assumed, simply meant following these pillars. Armstrong’s simple observation made me realize that “Islam” extends far beyond a checklist of rituals. To Muhammad’s companions, the word signified a state of being – not an institutionalized religion.
At that time, I was what some would call a non-practicing Muslim; after an early spell of enthusiasm, I had stopped praying, reading the Qur’an and visiting the mosque. Looking back, I see that my struggles reflected a larger problem in the Muslim community.
Many converts’ spiritual stagnation comes from the perception that Islam is cut-and-dry. Too many of us see our religion in purely legalistic terms, reducing it to a formula in our minds. As a result, we tend to present Islam to converts as if it were a pre-packaged product rather than a journey of growth and introspection. God forgive us – we have turned Islam into Islam™.
As a new Muslim, my spiritual “starter kit” basically consisted of the promise of paradise, a list of commandments and a glossary of Arabic words. This sustained me in the beginning, but before long I started to feel like an actor, mindlessly parroting lines from a script I barely understood. Instead of expressing Islam’s eternal values in my own life, I was trapped in a performance of someone else’s.
Language played a key role in my crisis. Concealed behind Arabic names, timeless ideas felt like artefacts to me, stripped of their relevance and narrowed in scope. As an English speaker, for example, it was easy to imagine the word Islam as representing only the formal name of a specific, monotheistic belief system. The English phrase “self-surrender unto God,” on the other hand, felt much more expansive and struck a powerful chord with me. Maybe there was more to this religion than I thought.
After finishing Armstrong’s “Muhammad” I began reading the translation of the Qur’an that she used, Muhammad Asad’s “The Message of the Qur’an.” These two books profoundly changed my faith by forcing me, for the first time, to place Islamic concepts in my own idiom, rather than resign myself to rigidly predefined ideas and rituals. “Translating” Islam into familiar terms left me with a much deeper attachment to this self-surrender.
Arabic will always remain important to our religion, and all Muslims should learn the language, not only the alphabet and grammar, if possible. However, we should not mistake the message for its medium. The Qur’an was revealed in Arabic so that Muhammad’s people would understand it. Too few of us follow this principle when communicating with converts. Overused and poorly explained, Arabic terms have become a barrier to their faith. If we learn how to talk about our religion in a more nuanced way – in English, we can give new Muslims an Islam that truly speaks to them.
Source: Alt Muslimah
Jan 29 2011
Converts to Islam are important ambassadors for American Muslims; increasing their participation should sit high on the priority list of the larger Muslim community. Although many improvements have been made in convert outreach, far too many who are new to the faith lack a strong sense of authenticity as Muslims, and consequently end up slowly disengaging from the religion. Unfortunately the messages they receive from other Muslims often reinforce their alienation.
Changing the way we talk about Islam could go a long way toward cultivating a sense of belonging among these brothers and sisters, and deepening their personal connection to Islam. Whether we were born as Muslims or embraced the religion later in life, we are all students of faith. We may not realize, however, that those who have newly accepted Islam may look to us for guidance, taking our opinions to heart. In this sense, we sometimes become teachers for our fellow Muslims.
One trait shared by successful teachers is the ability to introduce new material without using technical language. By employing clear, familiar terms to lay out a new idea, the concept no longer appears foreign and inaccessible to the listener. This method works just as well in mosques as it does in classrooms, but Muslims rarely use it when “teaching” Islam.
When discussing religion, we tend to sprinkle our speech with Arabic terms and references to the Qur’an. Many of these words have been absorbed into languages like Urdu and Indonesian, but none have made their way into English. What might be a natural way of speaking for some Muslims can leave a convert struggling to keep up. While there is no need to start saying things like “Insha’Allah” (God willing) in English, minimizing theological jargon would do a lot of good.
The Qur’an reminds us that in religion, substance trumps terminology:
Say: “Invoke Allah (God), or invoke Ar-Rahman (the Most Gracious): by whichever name you invoke Him, [He is always the One- for] His are all the attributes of perfection.” (17:110)
Just as God remains unchanged by the names we use, so too do the principles of His religion. Even a single adjustment, like substituting “God” for “Allah,” will introduce a concept or message to a convert in a much more intimate and personalized manner.
Tellingly, it was the words of a non-Muslim that brought me back to Islam when I was faltering in my faith. On a whim one day, I bought a copy of “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time” by Karen Armstrong. The entire book was brilliant; I was most affected, however, by Armstrong’s analysis of a verse from the third chapter of the Qur’an. I had read this verse before, but never with the translation she used:
For if one goes in search of a religion other than self-surrender unto God [Ar. “Islam”], it will never be accepted from him, and in the life to come he shall be among the lost. (3:85)
Armstrong then goes on to say:
This verse is often quoted to “prove” that the Qur’an claims that Islam is the one, true faith and that only Muslims will be saved. But “Islam” was not yet the official name for Muhammad’s religion, and when this verse is read correctly in its pluralistic context, it clearly means the exact opposite. (p. 87)
Armstrong’s analysis opened my eyes to the reductive way I had been thinking about Islam. In my mind, my religion boiled down to five pillars: belief in God and allegiance to Muhammad (“shahada”), prayer (“salat”), fasting during Ramadan (“sawm”), charity (“zakat”) and pilgrimage to Mecca (“hajj”). Being a Muslim, I assumed, simply meant following these pillars. Armstrong’s simple observation made me realize that “Islam” extends far beyond a checklist of rituals. To Muhammad’s companions, the word signified a state of being – not an institutionalized religion.
At that time, I was what some would call a non-practicing Muslim; after an early spell of enthusiasm, I had stopped praying, reading the Qur’an and visiting the mosque. Looking back, I see that my struggles reflected a larger problem in the Muslim community.
Many converts’ spiritual stagnation comes from the perception that Islam is cut-and-dry. Too many of us see our religion in purely legalistic terms, reducing it to a formula in our minds. As a result, we tend to present Islam to converts as if it were a pre-packaged product rather than a journey of growth and introspection. God forgive us – we have turned Islam into Islam™.
As a new Muslim, my spiritual “starter kit” basically consisted of the promise of paradise, a list of commandments and a glossary of Arabic words. This sustained me in the beginning, but before long I started to feel like an actor, mindlessly parroting lines from a script I barely understood. Instead of expressing Islam’s eternal values in my own life, I was trapped in a performance of someone else’s.
Language played a key role in my crisis. Concealed behind Arabic names, timeless ideas felt like artefacts to me, stripped of their relevance and narrowed in scope. As an English speaker, for example, it was easy to imagine the word Islam as representing only the formal name of a specific, monotheistic belief system. The English phrase “self-surrender unto God,” on the other hand, felt much more expansive and struck a powerful chord with me. Maybe there was more to this religion than I thought.
After finishing Armstrong’s “Muhammad” I began reading the translation of the Qur’an that she used, Muhammad Asad’s “The Message of the Qur’an.” These two books profoundly changed my faith by forcing me, for the first time, to place Islamic concepts in my own idiom, rather than resign myself to rigidly predefined ideas and rituals. “Translating” Islam into familiar terms left me with a much deeper attachment to this self-surrender.
Arabic will always remain important to our religion, and all Muslims should learn the language, not only the alphabet and grammar, if possible. However, we should not mistake the message for its medium. The Qur’an was revealed in Arabic so that Muhammad’s people would understand it. Too few of us follow this principle when communicating with converts. Overused and poorly explained, Arabic terms have become a barrier to their faith. If we learn how to talk about our religion in a more nuanced way – in English, we can give new Muslims an Islam that truly speaks to them.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Abandon Your Anger
A sober-minded man said to Jesus,
"What in this existence is hardest to bear?"
"O dear soul," he replied, "the hardest is God's anger,
from which Hell is trembling as we are."
"And what is the protection against God's anger?"
Said Jesus, "To abandon your own anger at once."
-- Mathnawi IV: 113-115
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
"What in this existence is hardest to bear?"
"O dear soul," he replied, "the hardest is God's anger,
from which Hell is trembling as we are."
"And what is the protection against God's anger?"
Said Jesus, "To abandon your own anger at once."
-- Mathnawi IV: 113-115
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
GOD'S WIKILEAKS: Ready or not, all secrets will be revealed
by Hamza Yusuf
To God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and the day on which the end of time will happen, a day on which prattlers will lose out. And you will see every people kneeling; every people will be summoned to its record: "Today you are being repaid for what you used to do. This record of Ours speaks about you in truth; for We have been transcribing what you have been doing." As for those who believed and did good works, their Lord will admit them into divine mercy. That is the evident success. And as for those who scoffed, were not My signs recited to you, yet you were arrogant, and were sinning people? And when it has been said that the promise of God is true, and there is no doubt about the end of time, you have said, "We do not understand what the end of time is; we suppose it merely speculation, and we cannot be sure." And the evils they did will be manifest to them, and what they used to sneer at will have surrounded them.
– Qur’an, 45:27-33
No matter what a Man’s foul character may be,
Though he imagines it is concealed from the people,
It shall be revealed.
– Zuhayr b. Abi Sulma, Favorite seventh century Arabian poet of Umar b. al-Khatab
In the seven years I spent with Mauritanians who are Bedouin people of the Sahara, what struck me most about them was the transparency in their lives. They live without walls, and hence what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung termed the "shadow self," which holds our repressed weaknesses and darker side, seems wholly absent from their personalities. I never saw the Bedouins hide anything from me. Even when they go to relieve themselves, it is often in open space. Once I was with a particularly gruff Bedouin, and in the middle of our conversation, he turned around, walked a few paces from me, and, taking cover with his outer robe, he dropped his pants, squatted, urinated, cleaned himself with sand, returned, and continued the conversation.
Bedouins are entirely comfortable in their skin and completely unself-conscious. If I intruded on a Bedouin without warning, he did not suddenly become nervous or uneasy; he remained calm. Even after many years in "civilized" society, Bedouins retain an uncanny openness. Their homes in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, always have open doors. A hungry person, upon smelling food being served, will sometimes walk in from the street, eat a meal with them, say little, and depart as unobtrusively as he appeared.
In societies that have walls, closets, and private bathrooms, we develop a keen sense of privacy early on. We also do things in private that we would never do in company. Some of us develop profoundly dark sides; a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality seems quite common in modern society. When we read the statistics in books like Pornified, we can only be horrified at the pervasiveness of people watching pornography; the man next to us in the grocery store line might return home only to settle in for "kiddie" porn on his home computer. Do an online search on registered sex offenders, many of whom are pedophiles, and you might find one living down the street from you. Too many people are hiding things. Wives often know the truth about their "upstanding" husbands, and men may have far more secrets than women, who undeniably have their own share.
So what's all the fuss about Wikileaks? These wikipeaks into the unseemly side of the American Empire have caused quite a stir – and quite a backlash. Julian Assange was arrested for what may end up being trumped up sexual charges in an obvious attempt at distracting people from the real story. The U.S. Attorney General is seeking excuses to bring charges against Assange for what the American media does routinely. Clearly, the war is on. Luke Skywalker-like hackers are whittling away with Wikileaks at the Empire, and the Empire is striking back.
What intrigued me is not so much what is revealed – after all, many of us knew, didn't we? And so far, the crimes and transgressions revealed are not as severe as what the earlier Pentagon Papers revealed. But they are far more disturbing. The recent release of diplomatic cables shows the duplicitous nature on a daily basis of the inner workings of American diplomacy – the "shadow self" of America. Our government demands transparency from corporations and from its citizens in detailed tax returns. Employers do background checks on us, and our credit histories and medical records are routinely reviewed by strangers. Even our time on the internet is now monitored in many places; our phones are tapped with judicial consent. So why should our governments, especially in democratic societies, be exempt from what is routinely done to us? They are public servants, aren't they?
Well, the fact of the matter, as the Wikileaks exposé so cogently reveals, is that they are not serving us – they are serving the Empire's corporate profit-making, its selling of arms, and its oil interests that fuel our cars and their private jets. The corruption in dealing with Afghanistan, highlighted in these recent leaks, had initially shocked some people. But, all things considered, Afghan corruption pales by comparison to our own corruption on Wall Street, not to mention Main Street. Despite the moral depravity we witnessed in the recent financial scandals, everything is back to business as usual. The fat cats are once again doling out multimillion-dollar executive bonuses with our bailout money, as if the party never ended. Our mail boxes are again being stuffed with those same ridiculous credit card offers that had stopped a couple of years ago. The banksters are back in business, thanks to Henry Paulson, Larry Summers, et al. who cleaned out the national treasury in broad daylight, while Congress and the Senate applauded their patriotism. Unbelievable. Jesse and Frank James are no longer robbing them as outlaws: they're on the board of directors. Al Capone must be turning over in his grave.
But something deeper is at work here. "We will show you Our signs on the horizon and within themselves, until it becomes clear to you that this is the truth; is it not enough that God is a Witness unto all these?" (Qur’an, 41:53). The computer has become the Achilles' heel of the secret keepers. They have to use it, and they depend on it, not only to hoard their secrets but to monitor and surveil the rest of us. The inherent weaknesses in the system are now enabling whistleblowers and hackers to bring some of their dark secrets to light. Until now, the defenders of the Empire used the secrets as they wished. Former vice-president Dick Cheney, for instance, had no qualms about using classified, top-secret information in outing Valerie Plame, the CIA agent. This was a retributive act against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, who wrote a New York Times Op-Ed on the false information that Cheney and George W. Bush were promoting about sales of nuclear materials from Niger to Iraq. So when it suited him, Cheney used his own "wikileaks," but now that the ball's in the other court, suddenly they're crying, "Foul."
So leaks can obstruct justice, and leaks can redress wrongs – a double-edged sword, indeed. More leaks are said to come, and I for one am looking forward to it. It is good to see them squirm and scurry, as they feel, in their cockroach shadow lives, the light of the sun beginning to penetrate their subterranean worlds.
The Qur’an has its own "leaks" and clearly demands utter transparency. The Pharaoh's private conversations are recorded as well as the hidden statements of the Prophet's enemies, not to mention some of the family intrigue in the Prophet's own household. People with integrity have nothing to hide. Like the Bedouins, their transparency is their shield.
When the great and pious Filipino historian and Qur'an scholar Cesar Majul was dying, he remarked to his son, "I want you to know, I have never done anything in my life that you would be ashamed of." Now that's a real deathbed confession of a saint. Murabit al-Hajj, my own teacher, has lived a life of utter transparency. I slept in his tent for months. During that time, I saw him rise every night three hours before dawn and recite the Qur'an in night vigil. I never heard him say anything unkind or unflattering about anyone. A cousin of his who has known him for seventy years affirmed this as well. Murabit al-Hajj never complained or criticized the weather, the food, the company, or any of the hardships so evident in the lives of West African nomads. Once, a man from Geru, a nearby village, saw Murabit al-Hajj in a dream in which he was praying naked. Embarrassed, this man went to a well-known dream interpreter and told him the dream but not the identity of the naked man. The interpreter said, "That could only have been Murabit al-Hajj because I don't know anyone who prays in a completely pure-hearted state other than him."
We are born naked because we are without sin, but we are raised naked because we will be without secrets. The Prophet, peace be upon him, lived an utterly transparent life. Even his bathing habits are described by his wife. Nothing about his life is hidden from us. No split in his personality, no shadow developed by keeping unspeakable secrets, for he is the transparent man. No shameful Wikileaks necessary in his government or family life. God meant for his life to be an open book, as he is an exemplar for leaders until the end of time. Leaders are the servants of the people, and they should never fear public opinion or the light of day. They should be concerned only about doing what is right and lawful.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, wanted to keep private an opinion he had shared with Zaid, his ward and companion, about Zaid's difficult marriage that the Prophet, peace be upon him, had facilitated. However, the Qur'an revealed the confidential statement he had made to Zaid: "Remember how you said to the one God had blessed and you had favored, 'Keep your wife and be conscious of God,' then you kept to yourself what God would reveal, as you feared the people, though God is more worthy of your fear" (33:37). The Prophet, peace be upon him, did nothing sinful in wanting to conceal the conversation he had with Zaid. He was concerned that people would attack his character if they learned of his impending marriage to Zaynab, who was married at that time to his "adopted" son (through a pre-Islamic form of adoption that the Qur'an would later proscribe). People were unaware that Zaid and Zaynab's marriage was an unhappy one because Zaynab wanted to be wed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, and had only accepted the marriage to Zaid due to the Prophet's request of her to do so. So the Prophet, peace be upon him, had kept the matter quiet for fear that if people knew, it would detract from and undermine his essential spiritual message to the people. However, the Qur'an "leaked" this private conversation to the people through the very source of the conversation. Aishah said about the above verse, "Had the Prophet hidden anything from his revelation, it would have been this verse due to the heavy impact it had upon him." This "leak" was clearly designed to reveal the utter sincerity of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and his complete and total truthfulness and transparency about his own personal life as well as everything revealed to him. The Qur'an says to all of us:
If you are on a journey and cannot find a scribe, then let pledges be taken. And if one of you entrusts another one with something, let the one entrusted return his trust, conscious of God, his Lord. And do not conceal testimony; whoever conceals it is a sinner at heart. And God knows what you do. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth belongs to God. And whether you reveal what is in your selves or conceal it, God calls you to account for it. And God forgives whom God wills, and God punishes whom God wills, and God has power over all things. (2:283-284)
The Day of Judgment is the day when nothing is concealed. All secrets are to be revealed. The Qur'an informs us that a "digital book" (kitab marqum) contains all the actions of the evildoers in perfect order, and another "digital book" contains those of the righteous. Everyone on the Day of Judgment will have a full trial, but before the actual reckoning, we will all have to endure the ‘ard, which is the review of one's entire life with nothing omitted except those actions for which we repented and for which the repentance was accepted. Wikileaks is nothing in light of what will be revealed on that day. Tyrants will see all of their dastardly deeds, hoarders must carry all they hoarded, liars will be exposed, and traitors will have flags of treachery furled from their backsides announcing their vileness. What a day!
America prides itself on transparency. MBA students learn in school the necessity of fully transparent corporations, where the books are all in order, and nothing is hidden. Taxpayers are told to reveal all in their tax forms. And yet, there is a double standard, as the government reveals little until fifty years later, long after the secret-keepers are dead, when documents are declassified. The Federal Reserve, a private institution of bankers that controls our nation's money, has never been audited. Yet, we the peons can be audited with impunity.
We need more whistleblowers, not less. And we need to exalt the ones who, with honor and courage, risk everything so the truth can be known. Daniel Ellsberg had the courage to blow the whistle on the Pentagon in 1971, and now the Luke Skywalkers of the day are attempting to do it again, revealing the utter hypocrisy of our public "servants" who seem to serve only themselves and their corporate paymasters. We need a far more open and transparent society if we are to flourish. If a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" means anything at all, the people must not only be informed of what is being done in their names, they must also demand of their public servants full accountability.
A close friend in Arabia informed me recently that the Wikileaks revelations have created utter contempt for America in the region, and sadly the respect that was once there despite all the shortcomings of America is now largely gone. While it is hard to restore respect once lost, if it is ever to be regained, the place to start is this: admit one's mistakes and redress one's wrongs. Many of us live in profound denial of why America is perceived so poorly around the world. Even many Europeans look on us with disdain. Envy undeniably plays some part, but to suggest that envy is the only reason is a poor excuse – it is an attempt by a nation's ego to avoid the painful realities of imperial arrogance and the hubris of power. The ancient Greeks believed that arête, virtue, elevated human beings, but hubris brought them down. Hubris, in their understanding, resulted in até or reckless behavior, which unleashed nemeses, the divine forces that laid the haughty low.
I do not wish that upon my native land or fellow citizens, as I am a multi-generational American, and desiring disaster for people is not in my nature. But without real repentance and a change of business as usual, I don't see any other possibility. The Wikileaks controversy is another wake-up call among many to this nation. Perhaps if some of those apathetic and ill-informed people in America addicted to the pipes of the pied piper leading them into the cave of shadows and ignorance would forgo seeing Jackass in 3D and other mindless films at the multiplex and actually pay attention to these developments, some good might come of it. Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Continental Congress, was asked by a woman what kind of a government they had settled on. He is reported to have replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." Openness and transparency, not to mention admitting wrongs and redressing them, are all necessary to restore the republic that has clearly been damaged and profoundly threatened.
To God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and the day on which the end of time will happen, a day on which prattlers will lose out. And you will see every people kneeling; every people will be summoned to its record: "Today you are being repaid for what you used to do. This record of Ours speaks about you in truth; for We have been transcribing what you have been doing." As for those who believed and did good works, their Lord will admit them into divine mercy. That is the evident success. And as for those who scoffed, were not My signs recited to you, yet you were arrogant, and were sinning people? And when it has been said that the promise of God is true, and there is no doubt about the end of time, you have said, "We do not understand what the end of time is; we suppose it merely speculation, and we cannot be sure." And the evils they did will be manifest to them, and what they used to sneer at will have surrounded them.
– Qur’an, 45:27-33
No matter what a Man’s foul character may be,
Though he imagines it is concealed from the people,
It shall be revealed.
– Zuhayr b. Abi Sulma, Favorite seventh century Arabian poet of Umar b. al-Khatab
In the seven years I spent with Mauritanians who are Bedouin people of the Sahara, what struck me most about them was the transparency in their lives. They live without walls, and hence what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung termed the "shadow self," which holds our repressed weaknesses and darker side, seems wholly absent from their personalities. I never saw the Bedouins hide anything from me. Even when they go to relieve themselves, it is often in open space. Once I was with a particularly gruff Bedouin, and in the middle of our conversation, he turned around, walked a few paces from me, and, taking cover with his outer robe, he dropped his pants, squatted, urinated, cleaned himself with sand, returned, and continued the conversation.
Bedouins are entirely comfortable in their skin and completely unself-conscious. If I intruded on a Bedouin without warning, he did not suddenly become nervous or uneasy; he remained calm. Even after many years in "civilized" society, Bedouins retain an uncanny openness. Their homes in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, always have open doors. A hungry person, upon smelling food being served, will sometimes walk in from the street, eat a meal with them, say little, and depart as unobtrusively as he appeared.
In societies that have walls, closets, and private bathrooms, we develop a keen sense of privacy early on. We also do things in private that we would never do in company. Some of us develop profoundly dark sides; a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality seems quite common in modern society. When we read the statistics in books like Pornified, we can only be horrified at the pervasiveness of people watching pornography; the man next to us in the grocery store line might return home only to settle in for "kiddie" porn on his home computer. Do an online search on registered sex offenders, many of whom are pedophiles, and you might find one living down the street from you. Too many people are hiding things. Wives often know the truth about their "upstanding" husbands, and men may have far more secrets than women, who undeniably have their own share.
So what's all the fuss about Wikileaks? These wikipeaks into the unseemly side of the American Empire have caused quite a stir – and quite a backlash. Julian Assange was arrested for what may end up being trumped up sexual charges in an obvious attempt at distracting people from the real story. The U.S. Attorney General is seeking excuses to bring charges against Assange for what the American media does routinely. Clearly, the war is on. Luke Skywalker-like hackers are whittling away with Wikileaks at the Empire, and the Empire is striking back.
What intrigued me is not so much what is revealed – after all, many of us knew, didn't we? And so far, the crimes and transgressions revealed are not as severe as what the earlier Pentagon Papers revealed. But they are far more disturbing. The recent release of diplomatic cables shows the duplicitous nature on a daily basis of the inner workings of American diplomacy – the "shadow self" of America. Our government demands transparency from corporations and from its citizens in detailed tax returns. Employers do background checks on us, and our credit histories and medical records are routinely reviewed by strangers. Even our time on the internet is now monitored in many places; our phones are tapped with judicial consent. So why should our governments, especially in democratic societies, be exempt from what is routinely done to us? They are public servants, aren't they?
Well, the fact of the matter, as the Wikileaks exposé so cogently reveals, is that they are not serving us – they are serving the Empire's corporate profit-making, its selling of arms, and its oil interests that fuel our cars and their private jets. The corruption in dealing with Afghanistan, highlighted in these recent leaks, had initially shocked some people. But, all things considered, Afghan corruption pales by comparison to our own corruption on Wall Street, not to mention Main Street. Despite the moral depravity we witnessed in the recent financial scandals, everything is back to business as usual. The fat cats are once again doling out multimillion-dollar executive bonuses with our bailout money, as if the party never ended. Our mail boxes are again being stuffed with those same ridiculous credit card offers that had stopped a couple of years ago. The banksters are back in business, thanks to Henry Paulson, Larry Summers, et al. who cleaned out the national treasury in broad daylight, while Congress and the Senate applauded their patriotism. Unbelievable. Jesse and Frank James are no longer robbing them as outlaws: they're on the board of directors. Al Capone must be turning over in his grave.
But something deeper is at work here. "We will show you Our signs on the horizon and within themselves, until it becomes clear to you that this is the truth; is it not enough that God is a Witness unto all these?" (Qur’an, 41:53). The computer has become the Achilles' heel of the secret keepers. They have to use it, and they depend on it, not only to hoard their secrets but to monitor and surveil the rest of us. The inherent weaknesses in the system are now enabling whistleblowers and hackers to bring some of their dark secrets to light. Until now, the defenders of the Empire used the secrets as they wished. Former vice-president Dick Cheney, for instance, had no qualms about using classified, top-secret information in outing Valerie Plame, the CIA agent. This was a retributive act against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, who wrote a New York Times Op-Ed on the false information that Cheney and George W. Bush were promoting about sales of nuclear materials from Niger to Iraq. So when it suited him, Cheney used his own "wikileaks," but now that the ball's in the other court, suddenly they're crying, "Foul."
So leaks can obstruct justice, and leaks can redress wrongs – a double-edged sword, indeed. More leaks are said to come, and I for one am looking forward to it. It is good to see them squirm and scurry, as they feel, in their cockroach shadow lives, the light of the sun beginning to penetrate their subterranean worlds.
The Qur’an has its own "leaks" and clearly demands utter transparency. The Pharaoh's private conversations are recorded as well as the hidden statements of the Prophet's enemies, not to mention some of the family intrigue in the Prophet's own household. People with integrity have nothing to hide. Like the Bedouins, their transparency is their shield.
When the great and pious Filipino historian and Qur'an scholar Cesar Majul was dying, he remarked to his son, "I want you to know, I have never done anything in my life that you would be ashamed of." Now that's a real deathbed confession of a saint. Murabit al-Hajj, my own teacher, has lived a life of utter transparency. I slept in his tent for months. During that time, I saw him rise every night three hours before dawn and recite the Qur'an in night vigil. I never heard him say anything unkind or unflattering about anyone. A cousin of his who has known him for seventy years affirmed this as well. Murabit al-Hajj never complained or criticized the weather, the food, the company, or any of the hardships so evident in the lives of West African nomads. Once, a man from Geru, a nearby village, saw Murabit al-Hajj in a dream in which he was praying naked. Embarrassed, this man went to a well-known dream interpreter and told him the dream but not the identity of the naked man. The interpreter said, "That could only have been Murabit al-Hajj because I don't know anyone who prays in a completely pure-hearted state other than him."
We are born naked because we are without sin, but we are raised naked because we will be without secrets. The Prophet, peace be upon him, lived an utterly transparent life. Even his bathing habits are described by his wife. Nothing about his life is hidden from us. No split in his personality, no shadow developed by keeping unspeakable secrets, for he is the transparent man. No shameful Wikileaks necessary in his government or family life. God meant for his life to be an open book, as he is an exemplar for leaders until the end of time. Leaders are the servants of the people, and they should never fear public opinion or the light of day. They should be concerned only about doing what is right and lawful.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, wanted to keep private an opinion he had shared with Zaid, his ward and companion, about Zaid's difficult marriage that the Prophet, peace be upon him, had facilitated. However, the Qur'an revealed the confidential statement he had made to Zaid: "Remember how you said to the one God had blessed and you had favored, 'Keep your wife and be conscious of God,' then you kept to yourself what God would reveal, as you feared the people, though God is more worthy of your fear" (33:37). The Prophet, peace be upon him, did nothing sinful in wanting to conceal the conversation he had with Zaid. He was concerned that people would attack his character if they learned of his impending marriage to Zaynab, who was married at that time to his "adopted" son (through a pre-Islamic form of adoption that the Qur'an would later proscribe). People were unaware that Zaid and Zaynab's marriage was an unhappy one because Zaynab wanted to be wed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, and had only accepted the marriage to Zaid due to the Prophet's request of her to do so. So the Prophet, peace be upon him, had kept the matter quiet for fear that if people knew, it would detract from and undermine his essential spiritual message to the people. However, the Qur'an "leaked" this private conversation to the people through the very source of the conversation. Aishah said about the above verse, "Had the Prophet hidden anything from his revelation, it would have been this verse due to the heavy impact it had upon him." This "leak" was clearly designed to reveal the utter sincerity of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and his complete and total truthfulness and transparency about his own personal life as well as everything revealed to him. The Qur'an says to all of us:
If you are on a journey and cannot find a scribe, then let pledges be taken. And if one of you entrusts another one with something, let the one entrusted return his trust, conscious of God, his Lord. And do not conceal testimony; whoever conceals it is a sinner at heart. And God knows what you do. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth belongs to God. And whether you reveal what is in your selves or conceal it, God calls you to account for it. And God forgives whom God wills, and God punishes whom God wills, and God has power over all things. (2:283-284)
The Day of Judgment is the day when nothing is concealed. All secrets are to be revealed. The Qur'an informs us that a "digital book" (kitab marqum) contains all the actions of the evildoers in perfect order, and another "digital book" contains those of the righteous. Everyone on the Day of Judgment will have a full trial, but before the actual reckoning, we will all have to endure the ‘ard, which is the review of one's entire life with nothing omitted except those actions for which we repented and for which the repentance was accepted. Wikileaks is nothing in light of what will be revealed on that day. Tyrants will see all of their dastardly deeds, hoarders must carry all they hoarded, liars will be exposed, and traitors will have flags of treachery furled from their backsides announcing their vileness. What a day!
America prides itself on transparency. MBA students learn in school the necessity of fully transparent corporations, where the books are all in order, and nothing is hidden. Taxpayers are told to reveal all in their tax forms. And yet, there is a double standard, as the government reveals little until fifty years later, long after the secret-keepers are dead, when documents are declassified. The Federal Reserve, a private institution of bankers that controls our nation's money, has never been audited. Yet, we the peons can be audited with impunity.
We need more whistleblowers, not less. And we need to exalt the ones who, with honor and courage, risk everything so the truth can be known. Daniel Ellsberg had the courage to blow the whistle on the Pentagon in 1971, and now the Luke Skywalkers of the day are attempting to do it again, revealing the utter hypocrisy of our public "servants" who seem to serve only themselves and their corporate paymasters. We need a far more open and transparent society if we are to flourish. If a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" means anything at all, the people must not only be informed of what is being done in their names, they must also demand of their public servants full accountability.
A close friend in Arabia informed me recently that the Wikileaks revelations have created utter contempt for America in the region, and sadly the respect that was once there despite all the shortcomings of America is now largely gone. While it is hard to restore respect once lost, if it is ever to be regained, the place to start is this: admit one's mistakes and redress one's wrongs. Many of us live in profound denial of why America is perceived so poorly around the world. Even many Europeans look on us with disdain. Envy undeniably plays some part, but to suggest that envy is the only reason is a poor excuse – it is an attempt by a nation's ego to avoid the painful realities of imperial arrogance and the hubris of power. The ancient Greeks believed that arête, virtue, elevated human beings, but hubris brought them down. Hubris, in their understanding, resulted in até or reckless behavior, which unleashed nemeses, the divine forces that laid the haughty low.
I do not wish that upon my native land or fellow citizens, as I am a multi-generational American, and desiring disaster for people is not in my nature. But without real repentance and a change of business as usual, I don't see any other possibility. The Wikileaks controversy is another wake-up call among many to this nation. Perhaps if some of those apathetic and ill-informed people in America addicted to the pipes of the pied piper leading them into the cave of shadows and ignorance would forgo seeing Jackass in 3D and other mindless films at the multiplex and actually pay attention to these developments, some good might come of it. Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Continental Congress, was asked by a woman what kind of a government they had settled on. He is reported to have replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." Openness and transparency, not to mention admitting wrongs and redressing them, are all necessary to restore the republic that has clearly been damaged and profoundly threatened.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Answering Michael... Questions about Islam and Extremism
An interesting question and answer about some relevant issues today...
> Greetings:
> I have been reading several articles you wrote on the Islam For Today
> website and I'm interested in learning a little more of your views on
> the issue of Islamic extremism. I have seen that several authors have
> described moderate Muslims as lost to complete Westernization; would
> this be a fair characterization or is there some middle ground? What
> sort of beliefs characterize a adherent to Islam who is neither
> hard-line nor virtually secular? I've also seen some discussion of the
> roots of such extremism and the bad fruit produced from it. What kind
> of beliefs and which sects are producing such things? Wahhabbism seems
> to get blamed a lot, I don't fully understand the difference or why it
> is blamed. Last, I'm wondering what sort of recourse there is to
> reclaim Islam from such an end. The consensus seems to be that
> educating both Muslims and non-Muslims is key to changing the Western
> perception that Islam is violent; does that seem to be the best option?
> Thanks very much for taking time to answer my questions. Please let
> me know if I need to clarify in any way.
> Michael
>
>
Michael...
Thank you for taking interest in my articles. I hope they were of some use
to you.
Yes, this is a very confusing issue actually, because of all the varying and
different opinions about it out there. The biggest problem with this issue
of "extremist", "moderate", "liberal," etc., starts with definitions.
Westerners (I am also one so I include myself in this category!) like to
apply typically western labels to Islam, which often don't fit. For example,
the term fundamentalist was originally a term used for far-right Christian
groups and connotes a certain type of "reject the world" brand of
Christianity. However, it has become synonymous with Muslim terrorists
(please don't ever use the label "Islamic terrorists" because this is an
oxymoron. Nothing in Islam can be associated with terrorism, however with
Muslims, unfortunately, it can be).
So we have this problem of definitions. Fundamentalist means one who follows
the fundamental teachings of the religion. MOst practicing Muslims - whether
extremist or liberal - believe they are following the fundamental teachings
of the religion. So, in essence, we are all fundamentalists! So there is the
this initial probelm with definitions.
Greetings:
> I have been reading several articles you wrote on the Islam For Today
> website and I'm interested in learning a little more of your views on
> the issue of Islamic extremism. I have seen that several authors have
> described moderate Muslims as lost to complete Westernization; would
> this be a fair characterization or is there some middle ground?
No, this is not a fair characterization. First off, what does that mean -
lost to complete Westernization? What aspects of westernization? The dress?
The culture - if you say culture, what aspects of the culture? We have to be
more specific when we make that claim, because Islam is not a culture, it is
a religion based on worship of God alone. The law in Islam, the shari'ah,
connotes in arabic - 'a wide road', meaning that the law itself is quite
flexible. But it is not a law that can be made up by oneself but must be
followed. See as Muslims we believe that it is not the divine that must
adapt to the human being, but the human being that must mold himself
according to the will of the divine -- this is how human beings perfect
themselves, by literally making themselves "godly", thus, the essence of
Islam -- the striving for self-perfection. The models of that
self-perfection are the prophets of God - Adam, Abraham, Noah, Jesus, Moses,
etc., culminating in the final prophecy of Muhammad.
What
> sort of beliefs characterize a adherent to Islam who is neither
> hard-line nor virtually secular? I've also seen some discussion of the
> roots of such extremism and the bad fruit produced from it. What kind
> of beliefs and which sects are producing such things? Wahhabbism seems
> to get blamed a lot, I don't fully understand the difference or why it
> is blamed.
There is no extremism in Islam. There is extremism among Muslims, but Islam
cannot have extremism because by defiintion it is a middle path. God says in
the Qur'an "Thus have we made of you an Ummah (community) justly balanced,
that you might be witnesses over the nations, and the Messenger a witness
over yourselves." Here, the Muslims are given their task of essentially
being the voice of reason between the extremes. Now, clearly, Muslims in the
current age are not living up to their historical role as a middle nation
and a witness, however, we must always make sure that we separate Islam and
Muslims. Islam is a perfect way of life, complete and fully sufficient as a
solution to all of humanity's problems. Muslims, however, we are human and
prone to error. Islam is a tool, if it is used and adhered to correctly, the
results will speak for themselves, however, we cannot equate these two -
because one is a religion and one is a people that may or may not apply that
religion correctly.
Fundamentalists usually lack the correct knowledge of Islam because of the
way they were taught. They are usually taught nothing but law, and almost
always come from one of the sects associated with Wahhabism. Wahhabism has
bred violence since its early days, but even going back almost to the
beginning of Islam there has been this extremist faction who the Prophet
vehemently condemned and warned about. His warning was so severe about these
people because he knew the damage they were capable of. The worst enemy is
always the one from within! Essentially, traditional Islam - true, moderate
Islam is that which has been passed down from the Prophet to his companions
to the generations of pious scholars, followed by the majority of the Muslim
community. This is known as the ahl sunnah wal jama'at (people of the way of
the Prophet and the majority of his followers, ( or something of the
like...) ). This group, the majority, is made up of what evolved in the
early years of Islam into 4 schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or what this
majority bases their practice of the religion on - all going back to the
correct teachings from the Qur'an and the Prophet's life, which is the
"living Qur'an" or the Qur'anic example. So this is the moderate majority of
Muslims which is still moderate, and still following these 4 schools of law.
However, Wahhabism, which is based on the heretical teachings of a man named
Muhammad Abdul-Wahhab, essentially came and declared war on this main group
of Muslims claiming that most of them were polytheists. He also said that
Muslims didn't have to follow the 4 schools and essentially could interpret
everything how they saw fit, which actually meant only following their
scholars. This is a source of extermism b/c it is a break from the moderate
way of the Prophet and his companions and followers. It is a break from
sound and authentic knowledge and prone to aberration. There are other
factors involved in extremism and it is a very complex issue, I am just
mentioning one of the major factors here...
Last, I'm wondering what sort of recourse there is to
> reclaim Islam from such an end. The consensus seems to be that
> educating both Muslims and non-Muslims is key to changing the Western
> perception that Islam is violent; does that seem to be the best option?
The way to reclaim Islam must come from Muslims, but the West can help. The
West has for so long supported Wahhabism, which ultimately comes back to
bite them. The Saudis for example, are the main exporters of
Wahhabism around the world without a doubt. This is their brand of Islam and
although not all Wahhabi's are violent, it is their teachings that provide
the fuel and justification for violence. Yes, education is also important,
but more importantly Muslims have to be re-educated about their own
teachings, following the traditional ahl sunnah wal jama'at body of
knowledge. Moreover, Muslims must stop focusing so much on legalist aspects
of our faith and focus more on the spiritual aspects and get back to doing
the work of self-perfection, namely, tasawwuf (Sufism). This is only my
opinion of course, but this is what I see as important steps.
> Greetings:
> I have been reading several articles you wrote on the Islam For Today
> website and I'm interested in learning a little more of your views on
> the issue of Islamic extremism. I have seen that several authors have
> described moderate Muslims as lost to complete Westernization; would
> this be a fair characterization or is there some middle ground? What
> sort of beliefs characterize a adherent to Islam who is neither
> hard-line nor virtually secular? I've also seen some discussion of the
> roots of such extremism and the bad fruit produced from it. What kind
> of beliefs and which sects are producing such things? Wahhabbism seems
> to get blamed a lot, I don't fully understand the difference or why it
> is blamed. Last, I'm wondering what sort of recourse there is to
> reclaim Islam from such an end. The consensus seems to be that
> educating both Muslims and non-Muslims is key to changing the Western
> perception that Islam is violent; does that seem to be the best option?
> Thanks very much for taking time to answer my questions. Please let
> me know if I need to clarify in any way.
> Michael
>
>
Michael...
Thank you for taking interest in my articles. I hope they were of some use
to you.
Yes, this is a very confusing issue actually, because of all the varying and
different opinions about it out there. The biggest problem with this issue
of "extremist", "moderate", "liberal," etc., starts with definitions.
Westerners (I am also one so I include myself in this category!) like to
apply typically western labels to Islam, which often don't fit. For example,
the term fundamentalist was originally a term used for far-right Christian
groups and connotes a certain type of "reject the world" brand of
Christianity. However, it has become synonymous with Muslim terrorists
(please don't ever use the label "Islamic terrorists" because this is an
oxymoron. Nothing in Islam can be associated with terrorism, however with
Muslims, unfortunately, it can be).
So we have this problem of definitions. Fundamentalist means one who follows
the fundamental teachings of the religion. MOst practicing Muslims - whether
extremist or liberal - believe they are following the fundamental teachings
of the religion. So, in essence, we are all fundamentalists! So there is the
this initial probelm with definitions.
Greetings:
> I have been reading several articles you wrote on the Islam For Today
> website and I'm interested in learning a little more of your views on
> the issue of Islamic extremism. I have seen that several authors have
> described moderate Muslims as lost to complete Westernization; would
> this be a fair characterization or is there some middle ground?
No, this is not a fair characterization. First off, what does that mean -
lost to complete Westernization? What aspects of westernization? The dress?
The culture - if you say culture, what aspects of the culture? We have to be
more specific when we make that claim, because Islam is not a culture, it is
a religion based on worship of God alone. The law in Islam, the shari'ah,
connotes in arabic - 'a wide road', meaning that the law itself is quite
flexible. But it is not a law that can be made up by oneself but must be
followed. See as Muslims we believe that it is not the divine that must
adapt to the human being, but the human being that must mold himself
according to the will of the divine -- this is how human beings perfect
themselves, by literally making themselves "godly", thus, the essence of
Islam -- the striving for self-perfection. The models of that
self-perfection are the prophets of God - Adam, Abraham, Noah, Jesus, Moses,
etc., culminating in the final prophecy of Muhammad.
What
> sort of beliefs characterize a adherent to Islam who is neither
> hard-line nor virtually secular? I've also seen some discussion of the
> roots of such extremism and the bad fruit produced from it. What kind
> of beliefs and which sects are producing such things? Wahhabbism seems
> to get blamed a lot, I don't fully understand the difference or why it
> is blamed.
There is no extremism in Islam. There is extremism among Muslims, but Islam
cannot have extremism because by defiintion it is a middle path. God says in
the Qur'an "Thus have we made of you an Ummah (community) justly balanced,
that you might be witnesses over the nations, and the Messenger a witness
over yourselves." Here, the Muslims are given their task of essentially
being the voice of reason between the extremes. Now, clearly, Muslims in the
current age are not living up to their historical role as a middle nation
and a witness, however, we must always make sure that we separate Islam and
Muslims. Islam is a perfect way of life, complete and fully sufficient as a
solution to all of humanity's problems. Muslims, however, we are human and
prone to error. Islam is a tool, if it is used and adhered to correctly, the
results will speak for themselves, however, we cannot equate these two -
because one is a religion and one is a people that may or may not apply that
religion correctly.
Fundamentalists usually lack the correct knowledge of Islam because of the
way they were taught. They are usually taught nothing but law, and almost
always come from one of the sects associated with Wahhabism. Wahhabism has
bred violence since its early days, but even going back almost to the
beginning of Islam there has been this extremist faction who the Prophet
vehemently condemned and warned about. His warning was so severe about these
people because he knew the damage they were capable of. The worst enemy is
always the one from within! Essentially, traditional Islam - true, moderate
Islam is that which has been passed down from the Prophet to his companions
to the generations of pious scholars, followed by the majority of the Muslim
community. This is known as the ahl sunnah wal jama'at (people of the way of
the Prophet and the majority of his followers, ( or something of the
like...) ). This group, the majority, is made up of what evolved in the
early years of Islam into 4 schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or what this
majority bases their practice of the religion on - all going back to the
correct teachings from the Qur'an and the Prophet's life, which is the
"living Qur'an" or the Qur'anic example. So this is the moderate majority of
Muslims which is still moderate, and still following these 4 schools of law.
However, Wahhabism, which is based on the heretical teachings of a man named
Muhammad Abdul-Wahhab, essentially came and declared war on this main group
of Muslims claiming that most of them were polytheists. He also said that
Muslims didn't have to follow the 4 schools and essentially could interpret
everything how they saw fit, which actually meant only following their
scholars. This is a source of extermism b/c it is a break from the moderate
way of the Prophet and his companions and followers. It is a break from
sound and authentic knowledge and prone to aberration. There are other
factors involved in extremism and it is a very complex issue, I am just
mentioning one of the major factors here...
Last, I'm wondering what sort of recourse there is to
> reclaim Islam from such an end. The consensus seems to be that
> educating both Muslims and non-Muslims is key to changing the Western
> perception that Islam is violent; does that seem to be the best option?
The way to reclaim Islam must come from Muslims, but the West can help. The
West has for so long supported Wahhabism, which ultimately comes back to
bite them. The Saudis for example, are the main exporters of
Wahhabism around the world without a doubt. This is their brand of Islam and
although not all Wahhabi's are violent, it is their teachings that provide
the fuel and justification for violence. Yes, education is also important,
but more importantly Muslims have to be re-educated about their own
teachings, following the traditional ahl sunnah wal jama'at body of
knowledge. Moreover, Muslims must stop focusing so much on legalist aspects
of our faith and focus more on the spiritual aspects and get back to doing
the work of self-perfection, namely, tasawwuf (Sufism). This is only my
opinion of course, but this is what I see as important steps.
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