On the Symbolism of Marriage

I would just like to add that it is important to remember that the outer marriage of man and woman is but an outer facilitation and representation of a more important marriage - that of the self (nafs) and the spirit (ruh) from whose union the true spiritual heart (qalb) is born. The love and mercy that Allah assigns to the partnership of man and woman denotes how both discover their hearts through the inner integration of self and spirit.

Men and women are metaphors for higher realities. Problems arise when we believe that the form (of man + woman) is an end in itself because ultimate human fulfilment requires the appreciation of deeper and higher realities.

Because of this I would refer to marriage as a dynamic rather than an institiution.

The man as a symbol of the ruh must be possessed of certain attributes that reflect to the woman her spirit while the woman must be possessed of certain attributes that reflect to the man his nafs. This is necessary so that the man can understand his inner feminine principle and the women her inner masculine principle and through that understanding attain to completion.

Allah speaks about this dynamic through the metaphors of complimentary opposites: sun and moon, night and day, life and death, heaven and earth.

We talk about these opposites as twins but they are actually single realities which have been differentiated for us by Allah in order for us to understand his unity. Allah says:

31:28 And your creation and your resurrection is but as a single self
21:30 Have the people of disbelief not considered how the heavens and the earth were united as one then we cleaved them apart?

Suffice it to say that the very meaning of life is enravelled in the mystery of marriage.

On Islamic Art

I prefer not to get into legal hairsplitting when trying to define Islamic Art because like with most things there are differences of opinion in Islam.

There is traditional Islamic Art which ranges from calligraphy to carpet weaving to mosaic tiling to poetry to architecture to gardening to miniature painting to storytelling, etc. And then there is non-traditional or contemporary Islamic Art like qawwali, nasheeds, other musical forms, film, theatre, etc.

What they share is an ethos that revolves around the following principles:

(1) Celebration and glorification of the Divine Word (Qur'an) and the Divine Names (light, beauty, subtlety, etc) of Allah manifested in creation (macrocosm) and in the human self (microcosm) see 41:53.

(2) Promotion of the quest for self knowledge and knowledge of Allah which is the purpose of life.

(3) Promotion of prophetic virtue and character and the maintenance of its popular currency in society.

Islamic Arts is art for Allah's sake as opposed to art for arts sake.

All art is in fact the repositorial representation of the stories and dreams of a people just as creational wonders and beauty represent the metaphorical dream and story of Allah (who says in a Hadith Qudsi: I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I should be known so I created so that I would be known). The quality of our artistic output, its preservation and the value that we accord to it therefore bears witness to our collective state.

On the issue of representation, yes Islam generally discourages the representation of animate beings in visual art (though this is not a wholly unanimous position). This is always cited as a distinction of islamic art but seldom do we hear why. The most important reason for this is that cosmologically speaking this world is akin to the shadow of God from which we are exhorted to emerge through knowledge into the light of Divine Presence (Allah is the light of the heaven and the earth ...). This journey is not served by compounding the shadow with those of our own making. And then you also have the reason of preventing idolatry or claiming divinity on the part of the artist.

But what do you do in a world that is full of compound shadows that direct people further into the dark. In such a world I believe that shadows directing people towards the light are akin to light itself.

What We Really See

We in truth only see ourselves so if we create beauty or light often enough we will become beautiful and radiant.

On the Niqab Row 2

On whether or not we should unite in support of a woman's right to wear the niqab

Sister, I prefer to support Muslims in fulfilling the more important 'responsibility' of communicating the values and virtues of Islam through a cultural language and conduct that is (1)comprehensible and appreciable to society at large and (2) is appropriate to time and place and (3) follows the phaseology of the Islamic story as told and lived by the Prophet (s) himself by evolving incrementally with the assimilative capacities of its adherent audience.

These are the priorities of the Makkan situation that we are in and are more worthy of our unified support and practice. We are not in Madina. Why have the scholars not united around these foundational principles? Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part, we are speaking to the world in a cultural language that is best suited to much earlier eras. And in many cases, we cannot even speak in the linguistic language of the people, never mind the cultural language e.g. Sh. Hilali in Australia.

Cultural Language: Allah gave apparent magic to Musa (a), healing to Isa (a), dream interpretation to Yusuf (a), poetry to Muhammad (s) because these were the cultural languages of the time. And Allah says: And we have sent no messenger except with the language of his people ... 14:5

Phaseology of the Islamic Story: The Qur'an did not descend in one fail swoop demanding people to conform with its dictates. It followed an evolutionary course that took into consideration context and adaptability. Even when the Prophet (s) himself became anxious that the revelation continue uninterrupted, Allah commands him not to be in haste. See 17:106 / 20:114 / 75:16-18.

These root Qur'anic principles that are borne out by the seerah of the Prophet (s) are higher in the hierarchy of principles that Islam espouses than the at best debatable subsidiary branch ruling of niqab - it is notable that the rulings on hijab were only introduced much later on in the Qur'anic story. Yet today the niqab and the beard and the short trousers are treated as if they were higher principles while the actual higher principles are neglected. So what we have is an inversion of the principles of Islam. It is no wonder therefore that we have been unsuccessful in accruing popular currency for our virtues and values.

I fundamentally disagree that the niqab is a worthy deed, especially not here in the West. Even strict scholars who support the thesis of the niqab, like Sh. Nuh Keller, counsel against it in the West due to the negative attention that it is likely to illicit. The scholars are anything but united on the issue of the niqab in terms of jurisprudence despite their reactionary and political show of unity in the face of provocation.

The antics of Bush and Blair around the Muslim world have only been made possible by the fact that we have inverted the paradigm of Islam so that subsidiary and contingent dogma reign supreme while those higher principles that would serve as the bedrock of a united ummah have been neglected or forgotten as a result of tribalism, feudalism, sectarianism, etc.

On the UK Niqab Row

I have not written on the niqab issue. I have been tempted but I have not found receptivity anywhere. Yesterday after my khutbah, I was accosted for even subtly suggesting that the way we are reacting to provocations suggests that we are defining ourselves by the other (what we are not) rather than by self knowledge and knowledge of Allah (what we are). This is very dangerous because did not Shaytan define himself by the other when he said: ‘I am better than him. You have created me from fire and you have created him from clay’.

As far as I am concerned and from my knowledge and research, the niqab is either of two things neither of which holds legitimacy especially in the environment in which we find ourselves. This is not to say that a woman cannot choose to do it for a personal or cultural reason but this should not be presented as a requirement of Islam.

1) A cultural tradition adopted from the Byzantines or the Persians which had more to do with social class and exclusivity than with modesty.
2) A mistaken attempt to extrapolate or extend Qur’anic prescriptions directed specifically at the Prophet’s wives (S) when the Qur’an quite clearly distinguishes them from other women. ‘O wives of the Prophet you are not like any other women …’ (33:32)

If you conflate the two together as I believe some current practitioners have done then what you have is a bid to create an exclusive religious class based on outer attire. You see we are so bereft of meaning and a profound appreciation of the inner realities of the Deen that the only way left for us to express our desire for a stronger faith is through more outer wrappings when Allah has said: ‘and the attire of God-consciousness, that is better’ (for purposes of modesty, protection, etc.). This is the result of only an exoteric/formal appreciation of the Deen. I won’t even go into the politicisation of the niqab even though it is an important aspect if we want to understand the psychology behind all of this. But suffice it to say we generally have nowadays either a Deen of formal ritual or one of politics or a hybrid blend of the two.

I find it incredible that Muslims have once again fallen into the reactionary trap of insisting on demonstrating their ‘rights’ rather than reflecting on what their responsibility is as Muslims living in this time and place. It’s almost as if we have become so ‘Western’ that notions of the individual rights that a secular society affords us supersede our responsibility of bringing Islam to the people in a language/conduct (actions speak louder than words) that they can understand. We have become just as secular and capitalist as the next man and pretend that we are more religious, so we have in reality an American dream with a Muslim veneer. It is nonsense. And now almost every Muslim feels that they must defends this behaviour out of some out of focus sense of solidarity. Muslims really need to focus on some key verses of the Qur’an that are pertinent to this situation and others like it which have unfortunately come to direct all of our actions, as if we are characters in a play.

O People of iman stand firm for Allah (not against people or creation per se) bearing testimony to that which is equitable and let not the hatred of other people (e.g. Jack Straw, Phil Woolas, etc) prevent you from being just. Be just; that is closest to Allah-consciousness and be in awe of Allah, verily Allah is Aware of what you do. (5:9)

Goodness and evil are not equal. Repel (Evil) with that which is better then will he with whom you have enmity become as if he was an intimate friend. And no-one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint - none but persons of tremendous good fortune. (41:34-35)

What we are doing is allowing ourselves to be distracted and agitated by these episodes of provocation from the bigger picture and question, which is how do we as Muslims in the West learn, live and communicate Islam effectively. Can we really do this by emphasising distinction and exclusivities? Can we really do this by repetitively replying in the negative: no, no, no to every proposition?

The answer to these questions will only come to us when we give up pretences and fear of other than Allah and illumine our hearts with path finding knowledge and light.

Whether or not we are able to elevate our sphere of vision by ascending in both our salat and in our connectivity with creation in such a manner as to truly appreciate and meet the challenges facing us will determine our future in this land. Let us ponder on the story of Yusuf (a) who had something to offer (an incentive) his fellow prisoners before exhorting them to the worship of Allah. Where are our contributions and/or solutions to climate change, prison reform, mental illness, the European identity dilemma, the NHS, etc.? Until we understand the societies that we live in and adopt the prophetic approach appropriate for that environment, we will continue to go from pillar to post with every new episode of provocation like someone on a treadmill who thinks he is covering ground when he is actually going nowhere.

Allah knows best.

Reflection

When the seeker views himself in the mirror of poverty (faqr), his every flaw appears as a gem, his every blemish a flower, his donkey a conveyance to the treasure-trove.

The Loss of a Dream

What went wrong with Muslim civilisation and how is it to be restored? Most of the discourse amongst Muslim intelligentsia revolves around this question. From it have emerged ideologies and movements of various persuasions and intents, including some notable ones in my lifetime, as Muslims seek answers to perceived failure and impotence and long for more illustrious eras.

However, in recent times this discourse has come to increasingly exercise the minds of those outside the Muslim community as the cacophony of often unruly debate and conflict within the House of Islam spills resoundingly out onto the streets and airwaves in words and deeds that provoke alarm and trepidation. This external concern about and interest in Islam has now led to a global dialogue that has galvanised Muslim thinkers and ideologues to intensify their efforts to find answers and solutions to the Muslim dilemma.

While the development of this discourse is welcome and positive and has already begun to bear fruit in some respects, the parameters of its analyses and prescriptions are unduly constrained and indeed undermined by a number of critical issues.

The most important of these is the centuries old subordination of the primacy of the story and principles of Islam to contingent doctrinal and legalistic dogma. These dogmas were wielded by both scholastic and ruling elite in the interest of control and power preservation and idolised by those enthralled by the static utopia of history instead of the dynamic Islamic ideal of perpetual aspiration, endeavour and evolution. As a consequence of this subversion, the Muslim community was left with a mostly dogmatic and ritualistic Islam denuded of its transformative and evolutionary vitality and rendered insensitive to context of time and place. But most critically, they were deprived of a collective narrative and dream capable of inspiring and mobilising the holistic reform of Muslim societies and communities.

Islam is first and foremost the story of human awakening. It is the rise of consciousness and worshipful love of One all permeating Reality that is at once transcendent and immanent, beautiful and awesome, obvious and mysterious. From this realisation follows the patterning of human conduct, both individual and social, according to universal virtues that mirror the qualities of the Divine. So the dream of Islam is the dream of virtue inspired by knowledge and love. It is this perennial story of sacred and universal wisdom which is essential. Unless doctrine, ritual and law are contextualised by and serve this story as is their purpose they invariably deconstruct it and ultimately render it unintelligible. This is in my mind the most crucial issue facing Muslims today. Will the Islam of the story or the Islam of dogma prevail? All signs are that the latter remains predominant though not unchallenged.

The glorious achievements of Islamic civilisation’s golden age were inspired by the story of Islam and its worldview that is predicated upon the underlying unity and integration of the cosmos and the branches of knowledge. The oneness of the microcosm and the macrocosm and the mutually reflective and integrative correspondences between the two are the far reaching implications of the monotheistic experience imbued by Islam. From this holistic cognizance of the world as a reflection of the Divine Unicosm emerged a cosmology of archetypal symbolism mapped by the Qur’an which proved the master key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe on both celestial and terrestrial planes. That the chief luminaries of this civilisation were all polymaths attests to the fundamental centrality of synthesis, which after all is the foundation of Islam.

In order to impart the totality and symmetry of the ontological accord espoused by Islam and its far-reaching implications, Islamic civilisation cultivated as a matter of course the faculty of originative imagination insightfully cited by Milton as one of the instruments of Muslim power which England should emulate. This imagination in all of its ascending gradations of lucidity was necessary in order to conceive of the metaphysical matrix from which the physical world derives its existence and of which it is a realm of signs and metaphors. Moreover, without it one could not hope to fully comprehend the complementary interdependence of opposites as exemplified by the fact that Allah fuses opposites in His Being as consequently does man in his reflectively paradoxical nature.

Everything engendered in existence is imagination – but in fact it is Reality. Whoever understands this truth has grasped the mysteries of the Way.
Ibn Arabi

The vitalisation of originative imagination represented the leap to knowledge inspired faith and on to spiritual excellence and benevolence. It held that the human being possessed as a property of his transcendent spirit a timeless vertical memory through whose access it was possible to ascend the hierarchical strata of existence and in so doing behold the metaphysical dynamics of the dream of God. In fact the Muslim prayer ritual is essentially and ultimately nothing other than an exercise of this human faculty. This spiritual intellection and conceptual dynamism manifested itself most magnificently in the ingenious creativity of Muslims in both the sciences and the arts. And its legacy, though not always acknowledged, made possible the Renaissance and subsequently what we now call western civilisation.

However, with the subversion of the order of primacy in Islam whereby the story of awakening to the oneness of The Real was supplanted by legal and doctrinal dogma, originative imagination was displaced from the centre of collective Muslim concern to become the dedication of a peripheral custodian minority. This transfiguration of the paradigm of Muslim society would transfer the centre of the gravity of consciousness from the heart, the seat of originative imagination, to the mind and mark the beginning of the rationalisation of Islam and more importantly and consequently the disintegration of its unitive cosmological organism.

Although this process was gradual, and to some extent counterbalanced and even reversed at various junctures and in certain places by the interventions of reforming visionaries, it nevertheless set the scene for the decline of the Muslim world as a whole. Moreover, it compromised the integrity of the Muslim programme rendering it susceptible to corruption since dogma can always be manipulated to serve a story other than its own. Stories antithetical to the spirit of Islam, such as those of nationalism, sectarianism, racism and misogyny were superimposed upon the dogma of Islam to expedite the interests and expediencies of power.

But perhaps the most disastrous way in which this process disenfranchised the Muslim world is to be found in its reaction to the industrialisation and technological development of the West and the onset of modernity. Due to the devaluation of originative imagination and the resulting dream-blindness that this mutating process exacted on the Muslim world, it was woefully ill-equipped to accurately interpret what it was seeing in the West. It was no longer advantaged by a unifying worldview through which it could profoundly understand itself and therefore could not understand what it necessarily perceived as the other. This led to a mistaken analysis of the West that has not yet been corrected and has debilitated the Muslim world to this very day.

This erroneous analysis was essentially that the West’s industrial and technological advance was primarily rooted in scientific rationalism. That the dream of the West had been nurtured in no insignificant way by that of Islam, and therefore, that the humanities were at the root of its ascendancy appears to have been too far a leap for the beleaguered imagination of the Muslim world. The realisation that, in the words of Blake, “What is now proven was once only imagined”, had become lore long forgotten by Muslim observers. Unlike the Queen of Sheba in the court of Solomon, Muslims did not recognise their throne in its new guise. Their unitary perspective on the world had become binary. Admittedly, there remained those with a vision of the supra-rational but they had long since been dispossessed.

The disproportionate attribution of Western advance to scientific rationalism accelerated and compounded the transfiguration of the Muslim paradigm and further removed it from the source of its power. It generated a mechanistic utilitarian approach to life and reinforced the supremacy of dogma, which in conjunction with the colonial imposition of nation-statehood, all but vanquished the Muslim dream. As a result, even today, and despite some recently emerging positive impulses, the Muslim world largely remains dreamless.

Whatever dreaming there is occurs as a result of external sensory stimulation, or within the narrow confines of nationalistic aspiration and fervour, or by the contrivance of dogmatic sloganeering. In all these cases, because the dream of Islam remains vital, even if only in the subconscious due to its innate accordance with primordial human aspiration, these other anathemic dreams serve only to provoke an internal software conflict. This conflict produces interminable crises of identity and confidence and deprives the Muslim world of the conceptual resources of the heart necessary to revitalise its dream.

Restoring the correct paradigmatic order of priorities to Islam by reinstating the primacy of the evolutionary human story of awakening above subsidiary dogma will in time revitalise the Muslim capacity to dream. But in order for us to achieve this, we must learn to imaginatively tell ourselves this story in the language of our time so that it is intelligible and assimilable. This demands a concerted reengagement with the humanities and a revival of the arts and culture of Islam as a means of equipping ourselves with the literacy to read and interpret the signs, symbols and metaphors of the dream of God that is creation. Only then will our rationalism be nurtured at the wellspring of the supra-rational allowing us to scale the heights of cultural and scientific achievement and excellence in the manner of our inspirational predecessors.

On account of its underlying unitary principles, the characteristics of Muslim civilisation are its humanity, inclusivity, intellection, spirituality and the pursuit of virtue as manifested most notably, in the European context, in the 800 year story of Muslim Andalusia. These characteristics have much to offer a post-modern secular world that is turning its back on the concept of a human dream of holistic fulfilment and instead cocoons itself in defensive posturing and nightmares only assuaged by fleeting material pleasures.

Muslim civilisation can be restored but it will require us to dream. And while its future form and countenance will not be the same, its story and principles ensure that it has all the potential to prove no less inspiring and enriching to humanity than its past manifestation.

© Luqman Ali
02 June 2005

This essay was published in the July/August '05 issue of The Liberal Magazine in the U.K.

On Muslims in Europe

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

He it is who in the heaven is Ilah and in the earth is Ilah and He is The Wise, The All-Knowing. Q 43:74

The issue of the spirituality of Muslims in Europe is of utmost importance at a time when Muslims find themselves under intense and relentless examination and scrutiny by all sections of European society as a result of the current climate of fear and anxiety that is the intended outcome of the global war on terror. The presence of an estimated 12-15 million Muslims in Europe is a cause of great concern for the architects of the European project and various strategies and agendas are being brought to bear on the situation in order to manage perceived present and future danger and threats. While many of these strategies and agendas are unmistakably hostile and predicated on deep pessimism and historical antipathy towards Islam, it is important to recognise that there also exists on the part of many Europeans a deep respect for Islam and a more positive and optimistic outlook on the future.

The existence of two parallel yet discordant discourses and attitudes towards Muslims in Europe demands that Muslims be possessed of a high degree of discernment and the ability to seamlessly integrate a dual strategy that is an appropriate response to a heterogeneous environment. As it transpires, such a strategy seems to be largely beyond Muslims for the simple reason that true Islamic spirituality centred on the profound cognisance of the mutual dependency and integration of contraries in heaven as on earth has become lore long forgotten. This collective amnesia, effectively the result of the intense love of one over another arising from seeing two of which one is more immediate, has lead Muslim into the same, but perhaps more nebulous, secularism that they themselves claim to oppose.

The separation of church and state in the Western context like the separation of men and women, scholars and laymen, literalism and interpretation, dogma and story, religion and politics, shariah and haqiqah in the Muslim context are nothing other than testaments to a failure to internally reconcile through knowledge and practice matters material and spiritual, physical and metaphysical, body and spirit in the both active and receptive process of unification that is tawhid. This failure is the inevitable outcome of resigning to the nightmare of the lower shadow out of perceived material expedience rather than cleaving to the dream of higher light, virtue and gatheredness.

The fact that many Muslims, unbeknown to even themselves, have necessarily embraced a form of secularism particular to them but no less insidious means that much of the spirituality that exists amongst Muslims is of an invariably abstract, speculative, unrealised and therefore unapplied nature. Superstition, folkloric custom and ritual, inherited tradition and so called otherworldliness all masquerade as spirituality so much so that some Muslims find themselves blaming the impostor for their woes. This is a perilous situation as even the compass of spiritual intuition and understanding has been thrown awry by the irresistible magnetism of the dunya to the extent that the impulse-notes of the fitrah can no longer be felt or heard over the deafening interference of information overload.

Nothing of Muslim life has been spared the virus of secularism despite claims to the contrary. Even the precious tree of knowledge has been uprooted and its branches dismembered such that the unified vision of Islam is virtually unintelligible. But more disturbing than all of that and at the root of all of this outer fragmentation and conflict lies a retrograde perspective of Godhood that means that Muslims in Europe as elsewhere are beholden to the worship and service of either the Transcendent, Majestic and Remote or the Immanent, Beautiful and Close but rarely or never both equitably and simultaneously in exemplification of Qur’anic guidance and prophetic example.

The existential implications of what may appear to be an abstract conceptual equation are in fact most tangible as such a one-eyed conception of Allah denies the possibility of balance, justice, reconciliation and peace by which a Muslim is qualified as a member of the Middle Nation that witnesses, gives good news and warns in emulation of him who is a mercy to all the worlds (S). Of these tangible implications, I would mention as currently relevant examples the excessive anger, violence, arrogance, despair, reactivity, frustration, depression and power-obsession that characterises many Muslims.

An exposition of this lower human disposition towards imbalance, prejudice, and inequity, whether in relation to Creator or creation, is masterfully presented to us as a prayer of deliverance in the oft-recited first chapter of the Qur’an which we all know yet do not know so well.

Guide us along the straight path. The path of those upon whom You have bestowed your favour, not that of those who have incurred Your anger nor those who have gone astray. Q 1:6-7

The predominance of a faith of fear as opposed to one of love amongst most Muslims resulting from the conception of a Majestic and Awesome deity suggests that the path is anything but straight because it is guided by only one of two indispensable and in fact indivisible constellations of divine provenance and guidance. It would therefore be fair to say that our measure and estimation of ourselves and therefore of Allah are deficient and unsound. No self-knowledge equates to no knowledge of Allah. Can there be any true Islam without this knowledge? Can there be any spirituality without Islam?

What we are faced with is a reversion to delimited Judaic or Christian conceptions of divinity and a betrayal of the complete and final message of Qur’anic tawhid the realisation of which brings about Muhammadi spirituality. This spirituality is the only viable and sustainable one for our time because it alone is of sufficient latitudinal capacity and vision to integrate East and West, fatalism and self-determination, tradition and modernity, patriarchy and matriarchy and thereby bring reconciliation and peace to an ever shrinking yet increasingly polarised world.

At a time when the world is becoming ever smaller as a result of the globalisation of power mechanics, economic interdependence and cultural values, the only holistic and applicable formula for a fulfilling life is living tawhid. If Islam is a way of life, tawhid is the formula or key to its transformative programme.

The good news is that the challenges and adversities besetting Muslims in Europe are having the desired effect of driving many Muslims to seek a deeper and more profound understanding of their faith that can only lead the sincere and persevering to the authentication of their Islam through the realisation of tawhid. Such authentication, if achieved by enough people, will lead to the existence of a critical mass of exemplars through whose presence and service true Muhammadi spirituality will nourish souls parched by the desert of secular materialism.

Europe is currently seeking an inclusive and unifying narrative to tell itself and thereby facilitate the realisation of a dream that is nothing other than a perversion of the dream of living tawhid. Were Muslims to transform their overwhelming marauder mentality into one of Islamic agency and exemplify tawhidi spirituality in word, deed and state, there is every possibility that this would represent an irresistible and appealing solution to the European problem and the human dilemma.

As always and in concert with the bumper sticker slogan ‘Islam is the Solution’, I confirm that it is indeed the solution but only if we accept that we are the problem because our binary view of things prevents us from yielding to the One.