Paper presented at the National Seminar
At
Hazara Society for Science and Religious Dialogue
September 6-9 , 2003
In learning and studying Islam, all self-respecting individuals are confronted with a problem which bothers them without exception. It is a matter of common observation that whenever we show and present the green passport on any of the airports of the world in the first world, anywhere in the developed world, a curious look comes on the face of the immigration officer. If that look were to have words it would be something like: here comes the fundamentalist, the backward person, the drug pusher, the person who is not in the world, who doesn’t understand the values of modern civilized living! This is an uneducated, uncivilized person. That is the kind of feedback we often get and what the look says. One feels deeply hurt and humiliated. How has come this to happen? It wasn’t always like this.
In order to explore this phenomenon we will study a five-fold model of Islam. This is the result of my work and of my teachers. I present here a sort of a tool which can be used as a peg, as an anchor to understanding our own situation in which we find ourselves, and perhaps the way out. For surely all things always should point to an action. “Reflection without action is paralysis.” Action without reflection is repetitive meaningless action. There is loss in both cases but when we do action with reflection then of course we are in command. Therefore, we need to reflect on this point, and of course from here must draw out conclusions. Each one of us can draw our own conclusions. It is a statement of a crisis; we are certainly in deep crisis.
A very great scholar of our times has put it in a nutshell:
“Muslims today do not know two things: they do not know how to live as a majority and they do not know how to live as a minority.”
Where we have our own governments and our own populations we are not being exemplary ourselves, and where we are a minority, such as the western world, we have some of the most bizarre ideas about Ghalba-e-Islam. We want to convert everybody when we don’t quite have time to organize ourselves as societies. We don’t know how to conduct our affairs; we don’t quite normally cohere ourselves. It is incredible. It seems that the face we offer to the world is that of a begging bowl asking for ultrasound machines, x-ray machines, satellite dishes, etc. This is a source of excruciating pain for all self-respecting, thinking, Muslims. This is the quandary of all Muslim countries throughout the world.
Is this what Islam has come down to in the year 2003, the begging bowl before the world? On the other hand, what do we have to offer to the world in spite of such lofty claims about the supremacy of Islam? Have we nothing to offer? Self-respecting people need to ask this question in all seriousness. What we are attempting to offer here in this short article is a narration of a crisis and therefore also perhaps an analysis.
[SLIDE ONE]
Let us draw five consecutive circles and in that try to build up a definition of what Islam is. Right at the center is Aqaid. Surely, all Islam begins with our readiness to accept some truths that, however much we may wish to discuss them or argue about them; once we have accepted them they are non-negotiable. Islam begins with Aqaid: they are Tauhid, Risalat, Malaika, Kutub, and Qiyamat. We can argue on their rationality and on their reasons but once having got them we realize that they make so much sense that they encompass a whole universe
At the start are the Aqaid. The root of the word Aqida is Ain, Qaf, Dal, the context. Tauhid, Risalat, Malaika, Kutub and Qiyamat are the basic five ingredients of belief; there is no argument about it. This is one circle. Around it there is another circle. Just saying that we believe in them will not do; we have to do something to prove that we believe. Arkan: these are also five – Kalma, Salaat, Saum, Zakat, Haj. The Aqeeda is in our hearts, and if we claim so, fair enough, but Allah knows the secrets of the hearts. So, therefore, Aqaid have to do with our inside. Arkan then have to deal with our actions, so therefore with the modes of outward worship. No religion can be without it’s own system of, let us say, the flowing of grace. All religions have to have their own vehicles of grace and these are our vehicles of grace, they are non-negotiable. We must look upon each of these as a psychic creation by Allah granted to us through His prophet as a mode of worship. We ourselves could not have invented them.
Arkan is not the whole definition of Islam. There are three more circles around it. We now take up Islah-e-Batin – inner purity. Briefly it is: if we are not constantly vetting our intentions, if we are not constantly checking out our intentions, i.e. why are we doing what we are doing and who for, we suddenly find that the Arkan become superfluous. Let us look at our Scripture: Allah seems to say over and over again, e.g. Sura Maoon:
“So woe be upon those who worship and forget the whole point of worship… who worship to be seen of men.”
Therefore, if Salaat itself had been the point, Allah would have never said it, but Islah-e-Batin was the point it was supposed to achieve and missing that is missing Arkan itself and we have just the statements of the modes of worship. The Prophet (SA) said about fasting: many people who fast gain nothing except hunger and thirst. About Haj, he said: Many who go for Haj do so for business. So it turns out that the going for Haj isn’t the issue, the performance of the Rukn isn’t the issue, it is the inner purity to be achieved by it that is the issue. We are told about the terms of the Namaz. When we offer prayers we are supposed to be in a constant delicate awareness. That state does not come at will but it will not come without practice. So therefore Islah-e-Batin is a constant vetting of the need of attention.
Now let us take up the next circle: Muamlat – Dealing with people. The justice in dealings with people. This is Huqooq-ul-Ibaad. Allah has asked us to take care of this. This is your neighbour, your teacher, your parents, and your relatives. This is the person on the street, your companion, and your co-traveler. This is the person fallen on the street, the person with the rope around the neck, this is the person in pain, your servant. Now, we are talking about mankind: the Yateem and the Miskeen. How are we with humanity? If this is not in place then the rest is not of significance.
And then the last circle: Husn-e-Muashrat: the beauty of the environment. If you do your Qurbani and put the offals of the animal on your next-door neighbours’ gate; if your city stinks three days with the blood and the gore because you choose to please God in that way and offend man, offend any sensible person, then you have not understood the meaning of Qurbani. You are not asked to clean up the whole world, you are not asked to take care of the garbage of the whole earth, you are only asked this: you have come to this garden, just let it stay as it is; you are not asked to clean it, just do not trash it.
This planet earth is extremely precious. We talk about Ecology Crisis today. From day one we have been told not to waste water during Wudhoo because it is Makrooh. And in 1997 we read in the cover story of the Time magazine that the next wars will not be on oil but on water. We have only thirty-nine more years to go for all the fresh water table of the earth to be finished. Think about it: the Global 2000 Report submitted to President Carter by the Millennium Institute warns this. it is a question of Husn-e-Muashrat. We are told not to urinate under a fruit tree. What sense of environment! If we do not take care of these things we will leave an earth unworthy of worship on it.
The Prophet (SA) says that three things have been given to me which have not been given to other prophets: one is the whole earth that has been granted to me like a mosque. Any place where the sunlight hits the ground and it is clean, you can offer Namaz. Consider this as Husn e Muashrat. We know that it is not allowed to pollute a Mosque, but the Mosque is the whole world! Think of this: if you cannot take care of the earth you cannot take care of the Mosque. Sadly we have omitted this as our Islamic duties: as if he pollution of air, noise, water and other things were not sins!
So, we left out our town planning to other considerations, to commercialization and concrete jungles. We gave our Muamlat to profit and loss banking, to other ways of dealing with profit and money. Islah e Batin we handed over to our psychiatrists and psychologists. We reduced religion to the inner two circles. And when we did this the crisis came upon us, we came to the situation where we began being proud of things that were none of anyone’s business, and we started writing on our walls. Namaz parhiyay is kay pehlay keh aap ki namaz parhi jaaiy.
Then we started using the fear of death to make people pray. In all of our history, no imam, no wali, no saint, nobody has ever made that kind of an appeal to make people pray. It is only in our times when all these other things have gone, that is the only one left.
We have now come to a situation of reduction ad absurdum to such an extent that once I was in a class of grade ten students. One lad got up and said:
”Sir, I know the four Quls and Kausar. I go for my Friday Namaz, and Fast on Shab-e-Qadr. What more is there?”
He is right. When you reduce things, that is what happens. At the age of sixteen, Haj is out, Zakat is out. What is he measuring himself with then? As if cleaning up the place isn’t an Islamic duty, as if Muamlat and dealing with people, as if borrowing and returning things that you have borrowed, as if dealing with people with justice has got nothing to do with Islam. For him everything reduces to the lowest possible denominator. This is the kind of crisis we are in. Then we are often in despair to see that God does not answer our prayers. We have reduced Islam to that practice. This is an analysis of the crisis we are in.
So as an academic tool Iwould like to present to the teachers of Islamiat the following methodology. I will build a chart of connections: between each of the Aqaid and its implications to Islah e Batin, Muamlat, and Husn e Muashrat. Put more specifically: How does believing in Tauhid relate to Islah e Batin, to Muamlat and to Husne Muashrat? For if the five Aqaid do not overflow into the outer three circles they remain nearly void.
We are applying the inner most circle of Aqaid to the outer three circles of Islah e Batin, Muamlat, and Husne Muashrat. Because if these do not have any impact there then everything merely remains within, and that is the whole point. They do not remain within, these are the things of the heart. The Aqaid impact on the heart, the Arkan: impact on the limbs, Islah e Batin: impacts on the Nafs, the self, Muamlat impact on society, Husne Muashrat: impacts on earth; the planet. That is the sweep of Islam. That is how it is Deen e Fitrat, Mukamamal Zabta-e- Hayaat. That is how it encompasses everything. It is only when we feel like this that it does work otherwise it is an empty slogan. This is the problem.
This is why conversations on Islam go awry because we find that we cannot even argue with them, we are not even on the same plane. If a person that reduces Islam to the inner two planes and you start saying: “To do Zulm is a very bad thing; give the worker his wages before his sweat is dry,” what you are doing is arguing the Mamalat but he may say: “Yes, sure, but these people are all the same, not worthy of such actions.” Now this person has reduced Islam to Arkan so he never misses a prayer but he has misunderstood Muamlat and Husn-e-Muashrat. Therefore, this then is a tool of thought.
THE APLICATIONS
Tauhid and Islah e batin: When I believe in Allah the One, it’s impact on Islah e Batin is that I become one. I in myself am not one I am many. I have many roles, I have many faces, and I have many masks. I have many masters whom I serve; the masters of my impulses and the masters of my self. The master of things which I miscall: my greed as my needs – but when I turn my attention towards The One, I also become one, then I am no longer decimated, refracted, and shredded by the world. Then when I have achieved that inner integration and inner oneness I am able to turn to the whole of mankind and say, “What will you take from me, that which I’ve given to Him cannot be taken by you, and what I have been given cannot be taken by you, so what can you do then?” Islah e Batin is then achieved by that the inner oneness when I believe in one.
Allah uses this metaphor also
“Have you not seen the situation of a slave who has two masters, he manages to please neither. “
This is the psychology of this oneness and connected to this. Tauhid incidentally is translated as unity of God, which is not true. Unity makes it an abstract noun – Tauhid is a verb. Tauhid is an active thing, it is what you do, Tauhid is to make one. It is not to believe in The One, which is one of the technical points – Tauhid is a verb so in that sense it is an active word. It achieves Islah e Batin, inner integrity.
Tauhid and Muamlat: When I believe in Allah, I cannot be unjust to a fellow human being because he is also Allah’s creation like myself. If I expect justice from my Allah, how can I be unjust to anyone? This is the direct connection to Muamlat.
Now, Husn e Muashrat. If I believe in the unity of creation, Muamlat is the brotherhood of mankind; Husn e Muashrat is the unity of creation, the oneness of nature. Even in the eighth grades today we know that the water cycle is connected. Now we even know that if we put too much DDT on the fruits, we will get ulcers. If we put too many pollutants in the system, we must not think that they just will evaporate, they will return to harm us. All nature is one and nature revenges itself with relentless justice.
My favorite story of connecting this is from China. This was in Chairman Mao’s time. The people came to him and said that sparrows were destroying the tomato crop because they were poking in them and destroying the fruit so the command went forth: “Kill sparrows.” Millions of Chinese people went after sparrows; in no time not a single sparrow was left on the face of China. Three months later they discovered that the sparrows did not only eat the tomatoes, they were also eating a couple of worms, which were eating tomatoes. Because the natural predator of those worms was removed from the cycle, the worms then multiplied into trillions. Then they just did not stop at tomatoes, they destroyed every standing crop. When the news reached Chairman Mao he put forth another command: “He who kills the sparrows will be killed. Let us import sparrows.” So 747 planes were emptied out by their seats, filled with sparrows from other parts of the world, and released in the atmosphere of China. It took them three years to get back to where they were. Do not mess with nature. This is the creation of The One who is in Wehdat. Every part is connected to another. Do not mess with it because you do it to your own peril. Nature revenges itself with ruthless justice. Now we see how the impact works? Belief in Tauhid works.
Belief in Risalat with Islah e Batin is his role model. When I believe that the prophets were ambassadors of God and when I believe that they did what God ordered them to do and when I believe that they also told me to do certain things, it is a way of telling myself that I do not have any excuse whatsoever to deny them. They did it so it can be done. They did it in the sweltering heat, we in the air-conditioner cannot do it! He is not asking us to go to Badr nor to go to Taif – only to do simple things, so we must do them.
For Muamlat, every Rasool has created an Ummat – with unity of mankind as the ultimate ideal – for identity, and not to show off in front of other people, for that will be vanity and pride. Just as every person is Allah’s creation, like that in the point of view of the Ummat, each Rasool, each prophet has created a community of mankind. And so therefore we are asked to transcend in a unity above our own family. To go beyond our family to a greater unity. Straight away we cannot go to humanity; there has to be a middle station first. First there is my family and then my kin, my own people, the city in which I live. All prophets taught us Muamlat, they taught us to deal with our fellow believers in a particular way. That is how an Ummat takes shape. The goal of creation of a Millat teaches us Muamlat. As in the sentence: “He who does Milawat is not among us”, “not among us” has Muamlat with it.
The connection of Risalat with Husne Muashrat, in Quran:
I swear by the fig, and the olive, and Mount Senai, and this city of peace that man was created in the best of moulds.
There are many interpretations of these first four verses. Here is one. It is agreed upon by every Mufassir who has reflected on this. The mountain of Fig even today in Damascus is known to be the sacred spot where the great prophets of Bani Israel, e.g. Yakoob, Suleman, Dawood A.S and others are buried in the vicinity. Mount Olive even today in Jerusalem is remembered because of its proximity with the life of Jesus. Mount Sinai reminds us of Moses. This city of peace is the city of Makkah and reminds us of Prophet (p.b.u.h). So one way of reading the oaths of Sura Teen is:
I swear by the sanctity of the environment where my beloveds have lived, I swear by the best of men, that man was created in the best of moulds.
I swear by the substance of which those whom I loved were created that I made all of you as them. This verse gives us the sacred geography, the sacred space of Risalat.
The relation of Malaika with Islah e Batin. We are told that there are angels who are witnessing what we are doing – the good on the right, the bad deeds on the left. We are told not to do evil things because we are being seen. This awareness of being witnessed itself saves us from a hundred psychological diseases. I am quoting a German Psychiatrist, who cures psychiatric problems of non-Muslims, and he reflects in one of his books that I meet people who have no faith at all and they are suffering from illusions of alienation. People who feel themselves alienated, who feel in the state of cathexis. People who cannot connect with anything on this planet: they do not care about anything that happens, before or after, to them or anyone else.
Like the world a French writer Camus had created in his novel “The Outsider” – That is the Absurd universe. Man is a meaningless freak creature on an absurd universe, who is here only by chance on an insignificant planet revolving around a third rate sun. If any person on this planet has been given even a typical Muslim childhood, we are perennially and permanently saved from this feeling of alienation by believing in Malaika. Please understand: loneliness is true but aloneness is impossible. For a Muslim is never alone. You can be lonely but you cannot be alone. There is The One who created the universe and the angels who run it. Therefore, angels have connection with Islah e Batin – they are witnesses. We are being watched and this sense of being watched alone saves us.
Muamlat and angels, again we are being watched but there is a deeper meaning. Sura Saf has a description about angels being in ranks and angels being perfectly obedient to their own stature. Muamlat and belief in angels combine in our understanding of the dignity of human stature. All angels who put in a particular rank are pleased to be in that rank and choose not to be elsewhere. Their obedience is perfect. As a human being my belief in Malaika deepens my ranking and my understanding of the hierarchy of human beings. They are in ranks and that gives us the metaphor for understanding how the Malaika connects with Muamlat.
The connection of Malaika and Husn e Muashrat is also easy. We are told that angels are like places of good scents. They are able to cross those paths more easily. So we are not supposed to have an environment that stinks because if it does we make it difficult for the angels to pass. These are the Adaab.
Now we turn to belief in Kutub (Books) , The book tells us to do certain things, so it comprises the role model, like a method manual. The book teaches us some enormous things about human behaviour. For now just as a hint, Sura Baqara verse 177 lists at least seven categories of people to whom we are to give out of our wealth for the love of God and then give Zakat. In other verses there is everything about inheritance: who should get how much. Thus these are the Laws that create the norms of Justice in society.
Husne Muashrat and Kitab. The keyword used for a sentence in the book is Ayat and the word used for a sign of nature is also Ayat. This double hint suddenly opens the two meanings of the Book itself. We are told to read the Kitab e Mubeen, which is the manifest book, which is the book of nature, the universe itself, and we are told to read the Quran e Majeed, the book. So then, we suddenly see that the Quran is a microcosm of the book of nature. Reading the verses of the book is like reading the signs of nature. Therefore, do not abuse them with impunity. Therefore, do not cut down the trees, without reason. They are also praising Allah. Kitab and Imaan have direct contact with Ayaat.
The word Kitab is used in Quran in three senses, one is used for itself. This is the book, next is the book of nature Kitab e Mubeen, the third is the Kitab un Nafs, the book of self, oneself. These three combine to a total. Therefore we have to understand nature itself as praising Allah and, being a sign of Allah, a manifestation of the will of God and His beauty.
Qiyamat and Islah e Batin: Surely, following the role model and following the law has to have consequences. Therefore let us not think death to be the last stage; there is a stage after that. That is the exact translation of Qiyamat: the day after. To believe that there is a day after death is to believe that there are consequences for actions regardless of whether I am able to see them or not in my own life. That means to believe in a dimension other than this life, this earth, therefore consequences of our actions.
Such is the degree of justice in Muamlat and Haqooq ul Ibaad! One of the things that made me think for a while is the hadeeth of the Prophet (SA) the day of judgement “if a ram with horns has hit a ram without horns while in the world, God will allow that ram to have horns and hit it back”. On reflection, I realized that he was talking about how justice would penetrate down ven to the animal level. In the encompassing justice we go right down to what we believe is the animal kingdom where those creatures are living by instinct and they are programmed to do it. If that is where justice will go then what about us human beings?
In Husne Muashrat and Qiyamat we must always be aware of the cosmic closure when the cosmos will be overlapped, when the scheme of things will come to an end, when the sun will rise from the west and the earth will be rolled up like a paper is rolled up. So then, we will see that whatever nature was, it has served its purpose, the cosmos has come to an end: this justice is divine.
We see how the ray of light coming from the Aqaid affects everything else. We see how each one needs to individually maintain certain things to do. We need to retain these three columns as part of our beliefs.
One last comment on Tauhid, Risalat, Malaika, Kutub and Qiyamat. This is the beginning. Belief in God means that since I could not have brought forth myself, there is no alternative for belief in the One who created everything. I could not have created myself, therefore, there is One that created me. And when there is my beginning, there is my end. And this is about my life and everything else. The role model of how to live it, the laws by which to live it and the witness to watch it! the inward integration is so powerful that once it hits us, it makes us think and we exclaim in wonderment: The beginning, the end, how to live it, path to live it, the law to live it by and witness to watch it… all form part of one divine whole.
So Aqaid have a deep connection with life here and hereafter.
This is a vision by which a method of thinking may be applied to the teaching of Islamiat at the appropriate level.
Thank you.