Islam: A Religion of Life, Not Death – Sh Hamza Yusuf

Islam: A Religion of Life, Not Death – Hamza Yusuf

“Answer the call of God and God’s Messenger to what brings you to life.” 

– Qur’an

“If I asked for people to die for the sake of God, I would have them lining up at my house; but when I ask people to live for the sake of God, I can’t find anyone.”

– Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah

 

I am traveling to New Jersey next week to present for the Princeton Pro Life lecture series. The topic is being addressed from the perspective of the three Abrahamic faiths. I have been asked to present the Islamic view, so I have been thinking about how to address this topic to an American audience in the context of today’s climate. Unfortunately, so many people in the U.S. now associate Islam with death rather than with life. 

Nietzsche, the German philosopher, wrote in The Antichrist that Christianity “cheated us … out of the harvest of the culture of Islam. The wonderful world of the Moorish culture of Spain, really more closely related to us, more congenial to our senses and tastes than Rome and Greece, was trampled down … because it said Yes to life even with the rare and refined luxuries of Moorish life."

¹ Nietzsche’s point was that Islam was more balanced in its attitude (I recognize the reification) toward this world and celebrated it, unlike Christianity, which traditionally was far more focused on being other-worldly to the detriment of people’s experiences in the world.

Why is it that Nietzsche, a leading intellect of the nineteenth century, recognized Islam as a religion that celebrated life, yet so many people today have the opposite view? Perhaps one reason is that Nietzsche lived at a time when the Ottomans still existed and were seen in a relatively good light (emphasis on relatively) by many educated people. Moreover, the Muslim world was still unaffected in its everyday life by the incredible changes that were occurring in the West, and most Muslim countries in the nineteenth century were relatively stable and extremely safe places to visit. A cursory review of Western travel literature to the Muslim world at the time will verify this (see, for instance, Florence Nightingale’s travelogue to Egypt). Muslims had never shied away from the sensual and aesthetic components of life, which re-emerged in the West in spite of Christianity, as Islam was meant to offer a balanced life, and educated Europeans, who were raised with a sense of shame of the senses, were astounded by the celebration of the body and its experiences noted in such places as the hammams and gardens of the Muslim world.

Given this current hatred of Islam and all things Muslim that has arisen, I would argue that Muslims have a great challenge presently to redefine the faith from within here in the West and to stop allowing others who hate us to define it for us. We need to identify enemies out there and allies not to mention potential friends who may appear to be enemies today. Look closely at what they are saying and why. Many of their critiques are the same ones St. John of Damascus articulated in a small chapter on Islam back in the seventh century! We need to also recognize, as Ibn Taymiyyah pointed out in his Jawab al-Sahih, that some Muslims are ignorantly violent in their responses to the critiques of Christians, and this reinforces their very attack on Islam – that it spread by the sword and not by the strength of its Truth. One of the ways to do that is to create a strong and effective internet presence. There are currently several anti-Muslim websites run very professionally, and, in my estimation, they are very disturbing. For example, many of these websites decontextualize Qur’anic verses and invariably use hadith traditions that are sometimes deeply troubling or difficult to square with other aspects of Islam. Most people are unaware that the great hadith collections are only meant for scholars’ reference, and even those that are categorized as Sahih contain many traditions that are not considered authoritative by Ahl al-Sunnah. I do not want to go into a detailed explanation here, as this is not the proper forum, but suffice it to say that Imam Malik did not like excessive use of hadith for the very reason that these websites exploit: the hadith can be very confusing to those not versed in the tradition, as only highly skilled scholars are able to discern what is the relevance of each hadith and which hadith are used and which are not.

In my estimation, most Muslims have not recognized how problematic such websites are. Over time, they attract hundreds of thousands of viewers and have viral impact. They eventually reach millions, and we have a duty to defend our Prophet and clarify obfuscations about our faith as lovers of our Prophet, peace be upon him, and defenders of our faith. A serious effort from a select and talented group of Muslims needs to be spearheaded to address the issues raised on these websites, point by point. Over ten years ago, I met with several American leaders and scholars in Southern California and mentioned that I saw these websites that were spawning at that time as a serious problem that I suspected would grow worse over time, and I felt we must address this serious issue, as I feared that some of these sites would confuse not only people of other faiths but uneducated Muslims also. Unfortunately, at that time, everyone else in the room disagreed, and it was decided that we should not run that route as it was an apologetic position, and it was better to just ignore those websites as they would eventually fizzle away. However, that did not happen, and it is much worse today. The issue of Park 51 is a flashpoint, and though I hate to say this, if 9/11 had happened today – God-forbid – in this current climate, matters would be far worse for Muslims than they were in the halcyon days of this community ten years ago. It is time for Muslims to wake up and smell the qahwah.

Source - SandalaProductions

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¹The Portable Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. (New York, Penguin Books, 1982), 652.

Por Que No Burqa? – Sh Hamza Yusuf

Por Que No Burqa? – Hamza Yusuf 

Two months after 9/11, I was at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York for the World Economic Forum summit that was moved there from Davos and I was talking with Rabbi Meir Lau, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, when a vaguely familiar diminutive woman walked over and held her hand out to the Rabbi. He placed his hand over his heart and said, “Dr. Ruth, you know that as an Orthodox Rabbi, I do not shake hands with women, especially when they are as attractive as you are.” It was a most gracious, if not flirtatious, approach to deflecting a problem that vexes Orthodox Muslims, who unlike Orthodox Jews, represent a majority within their faith. 

In the recent pronouncement by the French government that citizenship would not be granted to men who required their French wives to wear the face veil, Prime Minister Francois Fillon was quoted as saying, “This case is about a radical religious person: he imposes the burqa, he imposes the separation of men and women in his own home, and he refuses to shake hands with women.” He went on to say that such a man “has no place in our country.” I, alongside many other American Muslims, can only say, thank God that I live in a truly secular nation that does not butt its secular head into the religious business of its citizens. The Jacobins must be rolling over in their graves. Por que no burqa. 

While I am personally opposed to the face veil, it is a legitimate, if minority opinion, in the Islamic legal tradition for a woman to wear one. Most women who wear it believe they are following God’s injunction and not their husband’s. French laicism seems as fundamentalist as the very religious fanatics it wants to keep out. On a trip to France a few years ago, I was shocked to see pornography openly displayed on the streets in large advertisements. How odd that to unveil a woman for all to gape at is civilized, but for her to cover up to ward off gazes is a crime. 

In America, we have whole communities of peaceful, law-abiding religious fundamentalists who drive buggies, wear 19th century bonnets on their heads, and eschew everything modern. But we admire them in some curious way and envy their simplicity and commitment to their way of life. Even Jewish Orthodoxy has so many similarities to many aspects of a normative reading of Islam that it is surprising the two groups don’t get along far better than they do. Jewish Orthodox women cover their hair or wear wigs; they do not shake hands with men, and vice-versa. They are largely segregated, but they are tolerated and left alone. 

Muslims, however, are a pariah, a target for everything odious about religion that secular people find disturbing. But we are nearly a quarter of the world’s population and getting along with us is a moral imperative. Most Muslims in America, as the recent Pew and Gallup polls have shown, are happy in this secular state and treated with dignity and respect, but that is not the case in large parts of Europe where too many Muslims bear the brunt of racism and xenophobia. It is not surprising then, that European Muslims, unlike their American counterparts, tend to slip into the backlash of extremism and resentment of a West that claims pluralism and inclusivity but too often has two sets of rules.

The Talmud, which Rabbi Meir Lau has no doubt studied for many years, says a woman’s hair is of her nakedness. While the French Prime Minister sees no problem with exposing in public places a woman’s glorious nakedness, he is oddly and quite rabidly disturbed by allowing others to cover it up. The sooner secular nations learn to allow people of faith to live their lives in peace, the sooner peace will flourish.

Source - SandalaProductions 

Prayer of the Oppressed – Sh Hamza Yusuf

Prayer of the Oppressed – Hamza Yusuf


Imam al-Dar'i wrote this prayer in a simple yet enchanting style, using the rajaz meter known to the Arabs as the poet's donkey because of its facile rhythm and the ease even tyros find in learning it. The desert cameleers, who led the caravans of old, traditionally sang in the rajaz meter and by it spurred on their beasts to move more swiftly toward their destination. Arab poets claim the rhythm of the rajaz imitates the rhythm of the camel's trot and is, they believe, derived from it. 

Rhetorically, the poem displays what the Arabs call, the easy impossible: deceptively simple thought and language which beguiles the listener into believing that such poetry is easy to write; yet upon any attempt at imitation, the aspirant is left thoroughly nonplussed. Poets know this magical aspect of the craft all too well. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is no invocation in the Arabic language written in such simple yet subtle verse as Imam al-Dar'i's poetic prayer.

When translating Imam al-Dar'i's invocation, I first put it into an iambic pentameter (five feet per line), but found great difficulty conveying the meanings precisely. So I decided to use hexameterthat is, six feet per line. Hexameter is seldom used in English, because the doubling of the trimeter becomes repetitious and can easily devolve into doggerel. However, I chose to use it so I could convey something of the nature of the original, which is in the Arabic meter closest to our hexameter. Arabic verse is quantitative; the rhythm is produced by the length of syllables, not by their accent, as in English.

After working on it considerably and feeling quite satisfied with the result, I sent it to the American poet Daniel Abdul-Hayy Moore, who had helped so wonderfully in our previous collaboration on the Poem of the Cloak (al-Burdah). Initially, he was troubled by the hexameter, and understandably so; but he decided to work with it and, in my opinion, turned a donkey into a mule, and for that I am deeply grateful. But the original is a thoroughbred, and for those who do not know Arabic, I highly recommend listening to the original as chanted so masterfully by the Fes Singers led by Sidi Mohammed Bennis.

Speaking of the recording, I feel compelled to relate an extraordinary incident, something I consider a miracle really. It is safe to say that this poem is noted for its miraculous nature, and Moroccans who are regular in their recitation of it will confirm that belief. On the night we finished the recording in Fes, it was quiet and still when we emerged from the studio into the cool night air and went for a late dinner. Then, at around three o'clock in the morning, Sidi Abdallateef Whiteman (who also did the cover design and layout for this book) and I set out with Mohammed Bennis and his fellow singers in a car to our hotel to pick up our bags and leave immediately for the taxi stand outside Bab Boujloud. One of the people of goodness in England had entrusted me with a monetary gift to deliver to Sidi Ismail Filali, a sincere servant of God who lives in Fes, spending his days carding wool and his nights calling on God. Because we had to catch an early flight from Tangiers later that day and had a drive of several hours ahead of us, I knew I would not have time to visit him and deliver the gift; so I asked Sidi Mohammed if he would do it. No sooner had I completed the question than we happened to pass by a large, windowless van with a man standing alongside it. It must have been 3:30 AM by now. Sidi Mohammed exclaimed, That looks just like Sidi Ismail! 

We swung the car around and went back to find that, sure enough, it was Sidi Ismail. We greeted each other, embracing warmly, and Sidi Ismail exclaimed, Glory to God! We just finished the Burdah and a recitation of the Qur'an in its entirety, and in the closing supplication, I asked God to see you tonight! By God, I swear it is true, and I did not know you were in Morocco. No sooner had I absorbed the import of what he told me than another surprise awaited me. Sidi Ismail opened the back door of the van revealing about twenty spiritual seekers with radiant faces. As if conducting an orchestra, Sidi Ismail raised his hands, and as he brought them down, the entire group broke into a spontaneous rendition of the prayer of Imam al-Dar'i, the very prayer we had just finished recording with the Fes Singers. This much is true: Sidi Ismail had no knowledge that I was in Morocco at that time, nor that we had just completed the recording of the prayer of Imam al-Dar'i. God is my Witness. 

Upon returning to the United States with the recording, I asked the very blessed Aishah Holland if she would pen the poem in its original Arabic for me. She has been a student of the American master of calligraphy and most learned and accomplished polymath, Mohammad Zakariyya, who recommended her highly. After she completed her work, my task was largely done, but there remained one missing piece: I had hoped to include the poem's chain of transmission back to Imam al-Dar'i, for the blessing of its lineage and the barakah of its narrators. I asked a close friend and scholar who had the chain, but a few years passed, and it was not forthcoming. I thought perhaps that I should not put the work out and that it was something not meant to be, as I felt insistent on acquiring the chain as a permission from its author, so to speak. 

On a blessed journey to Medina last year with my teacher and dearest friend, Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah, a master of both the inward and outward sciences, I happened to mention to him, while riding in a car in the middle of the Arabian desert, that I had translated the poem of Imam al-Dar'i. He smiled and said, He is in my chain from my father. I then boldly requested from him the chain of transmission. He looked at me and said, God willing. Time passed, and no chain came. I was beginning to believe that the poem would remain in my large collection of incomplete works. Then, on a more recent trip, as I was leaving for Medina again from Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah's house in Jeddah, he gave me the chain, and I felt it was time to release this poem. 
May God accept it as a work of devotion that benefits believers and gives them solace in their trials and tribulations.

Source - Sandalaproductions 

A Reflection on Divine Love – Sh Hamza Yusuf

A Reflection on Divine Love – Hamza Yusuf

Many Muslims believe that the idea, “God loves everyone,” is simply wrong and incongruous with Islamic teachings. Verses abound in the Qur’an decrying those God does not love: liars, hypocrites, oppressors, the arrogant, boastful braggarts, and those who love praise for that which they have not done, among others. Reading these verses, it is easy to begin to resent such people and to believe that God does not love everyone. However, if we look closely at these people, we see elements of ourselves in them.

What is true of any man is true of all men; the only difference is in the degree to which it is true. Prophets and sanctified saints are the only exceptions to this universal truth. Jesus, peace be upon him, states, as recorded in al-Muwatta’ of Imam Malik (d. 179/795):

Do not, like lords, look upon the faults of others. Rather, like servants, look after your own faults. In truth, humanity is comprised of only two types of people: the afflicted and the sound. So show mercy to the afflicted, and praise God for well-being.

It is never the sinner that one should hate, but only the sin; for the essence of all humanity is a soul created in submission to its Creator. Whether that soul acknowledges this on a conscious level or not is a matter of grace, and this understanding enables us to look at others with compassion. All people, everywhere and throughout time, suffer great tribulation at various points in their lives. At this very moment, hearts are breaking and lives are being shattered, women abused, children violated, and people dying while their loved ones are crying. Also at this very moment, other hearts are rejoicing, babies are being born, mothers are nurturing, smiles are given freely, charity is being distributed, and lovers are uniting. The airport is one of the great metaphors of our time: sad, happy, and indifferent faces are all to be seen there, as people part with loved ones, greet their beloveds, or simply wait to pick up or let off people they barely know. Sad, happy, and indifferent are the states that sum up our collective body of souls. In the next life, however, there is only bliss or wretchedness, joy or sorrow—no indifference.

According to a beautiful hadith, the Prophet, God bless and grant him peace, said that on the Last Day, when the last two souls are brought forth before God, they are both condemned to hell. As the angels escort them to their final fiery abode, one of them wistfully looks back. Thereupon, God commands the angels to bring him back and asks the man why he turned back. The man replies, “I was expecting something else from you.” God responds, commanding the angels, “Take him to My Garden.”

It is our expectation of God that determines where we are. This points up the need for thinking well not only of God but also of God’s creation, despite the fact that we are all messy, imperfect works in progress, struggling along in this journey.

We either surrender to God or to the substitutes for God, which are invariably hollow. But true love, which is the love of God, is the single most powerful force in the world. It is a love that “alters not when it alteration finds.” It grows and never diminishes. If someone claims to have lost it, it can only be said that such a person did not have it to begin with. “It is the star to every wandering bark.” And in loving God, one must paradoxically love all of God’s creation, merely for the incontrovertible fact that everything is God’s creation. God does love everything in that He brought everything into existence from an act of divine love, and those who love God purely, and with the penetrating inner eye of reality, can only be a mercy while in the world. This does not mean that we love the evil that emanates from moral agents. In fact, it is an act of faith to loathe what is loathsome to God. So when God says He does not love oppressors, it is their oppression that we must loath. In denying the humanity that is inherent in the oppressor, we miss the point and disallow the possibility that the door of God’s mercy and love is open to everyone. If we truly believe that we love for everyone what we love for ourselves, then we should want everyone, no matter their state of being or their station in life, to enter that door of God’s mercy and love, through repentance and contrition. Allowing for this possibility enables us to be a mercy, as the Prophet, God bless and grant him peace, was.

What follows is a profound explication of this truth by emir ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri (d. 1300/1883), perhaps the last exemplar of Islam on all the levels of prophetic character—as a teacher, warrior, statesman, father, and fully awakened master of the path of the prophets:

“They love God, and God loves them” (Qur’an, 5:54). You should know that the love the real has for creation is of various kinds. One type is the divine love for them before they came into existence; and another is the divine love after they were created. These two types are further categorized into two other types: one is the divine love of the elect, and the other is the divine love of the elite of the elect. As for the first [the divine love before creation], it permeates all of existence, despite the varieties of types, kinds, and characters. It is understood in the famous dictum known well to the folk of spirit,¹ “I was a hidden treasure who loved to be known, so I created this creation to introduce Myself, and through it, they came to know Me.” This love is the love that brought the world into existence: “I created humankind and sprites only to adore Me” (51:56). In other words, “to know Me.” This is the very love we have mentioned; it is God’s inclination to manifest His divine names and attributes, and this is an inclination of the essential divine nature, which is not colored with a name or an attribute, because the names do not manifest at this level of consideration.² Then, this inclination of divine love for self- expression extended itself through all of the divine names and sought to manifest through the epiphanies of the divine traces as they had been previously hidden in the divine essence, consumed in the divine unity. But once God created them, they knew God as God desired to be known, given that the divine will is unassailable. Every type of creature knew God based upon the level of understanding and preparedness that God had bestowed upon it. As for the angels, each one is a type unto itself, and each has a station and rank, just as all the rest of creation has types and ranks. None can either relinquish or surpass its rank, and their acceptance is predicated upon the degree of knowledge of God that they have. For without a doubt, they increased in their knowledge when Adam, peace be upon him, taught them the names, as the Exalted has taught us in the Qur’an. As for inanimate objects, beasts, and animals other than humans, they have a natural disposition that entails a divine knowledge that neither increases nor decreases. Each of them also has a station, and it cannot exceed its boundaries of knowledge. As for the human being, he or she has a primordial knowledge that [although lost upon entering the world] can undergo a renovatio.³ Its renovation is based upon the condition of his or her outward state; I mean by this the state of the soul and intellect.⁴ For in reality, all of knowledge is concentrated in the individual’s reality; it simply manifests from one time to another, based upon the divine will, because the human reality is contained in each person. And each human being, in that he or she is a human being, is open to the possibility of the rank of “perfected human.” However, they will vary in the way their human perfection manifests itself in them.

As for the first type of divine love, which is that of the elect, this is reserved for only certain ones among God’s servants. Examples of this are found in the Qur’an: “Surely God loves those who repent” (2:222). Also included among those God loves are those who purify themselves, the patient, the grateful, those who place their trust in God, those “who fight in ranks for the sake of God” (61:4), not to mention all the other beloveds

God mentions in the Qur’an who have embodied certain qualities and characteristics that necessitate this special love from the Real, Exalted

God. Nonetheless, it is a type of love that veils and [yet] allows for a transcendent understanding of God. Moreover, it is a love that is unobtainable for certain types of people, as mentioned in the verses, “God loves not oppressors,” (3:57), and “God loves not those who cover truth with lies” (3:32). Despite that, they are still enveloped in the first type of divine love [that is, divine love before they came into existence].

As for the second type of special divine love, it is for the elect of the elite; it is indicated in the sacred hadith,⁵ “My servant continues to draw near unto Me through voluntary acts of devotion until I love him. And when I love him, I become the hearing with which he hears, the sight with which he sees, the hand with which he strikes, and the foot with which he walks. Were he to ask something of Me, I would assuredly grant it; were he to seek refuge in Me, I would grant it.”⁶ In other words, the identity of the Real is revealed to him as the secret of his own outward and inward faculties. This type of divine love occurs with an epiphany upon the beloved, the fruit of which is manifest in this world due to the divine witnessing and vision that occurs in the imaginal⁷ realm; or it occurs with other things also, as an effusion of experiential knowledge through myriad gifts. As for the previous special type of love, it is still a veiled love, given that its possessor is still trapped in the illusion of otherness and duality. Hence, its fruits only manifest in the next world. For this reason, ‘Ata’ Allah (d.709/1309) says in his Aphorisms (al-Hikam), “The devoted servants and detached ones leave this world while their hearts are still filled with otherness.”⁸

This last love is attained only by those who possess the direct knowledge of God described in the sacred hadith above. Furthermore, it is only attained by one who has in his or her heart that universal love for all of creation that is understood in the verse, “My Mercy encompasses all things” (7:156). It is the mercy that the Messenger of God, God bless and grant him peace, spoke of when he said, “you will not truly believe until you show mercy to one another.”

To this, a companion responded, “But Messenger of God, all of us show mercy to others.”

The Prophet, God bless and grant him peace, explained, “I am not speaking of the mercy one of you shows to his friend but of universal mercy—mercy to all of humanity.”

Regarding the famous hadith, “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself,” Imam al-Nawawi (d. 676/1277) states in his commentary that this love includes all of humanity. He further elucidates that it is a love that goes against our very nature; it is angelic in nature, and it is only obtained by negating the ego.

This struggle with the ego—with our own vengeful soul—is one of the most difficult challenges we face. But in succeeding in this struggle, we are not only able to forgive: we are also able to strike, when the only appropriate response is a strike—but with the hand of God, not with the hand of our own ego because it is an undeniable reality of the world that miscreants exist, that there are human demons whose evil must be thwarted. This is the essence of jihad: to take up the sword in order to remove the sword from the hands of those who wish to do evil in the world. However, the mujahid must be purified from his own ego so he can act as an agent of the divine in the world. This was the reality of the Prophet, God bless and grant him peace, on the battlefield, about whom God said, “And when you threw, you did not throw, but rather God threw” (8:17). It is only such people who are worthy of being the caliphs of God upon the earth. They are the ones God will empower to rule. And for those who do not possess these qualities but still have the love of God, God’s greatest gift is to leave them powerless. God’s privation is itself a gift, for He withholds not from want but from wisdom. 

SOURCE

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1 The word used in Arabic is qawm, which literally means “folk”. However, in the technical vocabulary of tasawwuf (Sufism), it refers to the Sufis themselves. This is based upon the famous hadith in which the angels tell God of a group of people remembering Him, and they mention one who was not a participant but was only sitting in their company. To this God replies, “hum al-qawm la yashqa bihim jalisuhum,” meaning, “they are a folk (qawm) who even the one sitting with them is saved,” simply due to his being in their company. While the word “folk” is now considered archaic, it is still in use, and given that it means both “men” and “people” and originally meant “an army,” it seems most appropriate given that qawm in classical Arabic refers specifically to men-folk.

2 In classical Muslim theology an attribute (sifah) or a substantive name of God is neither the essence of God nor other than the essence. This means that any attribute or name cannot contain a summation of God that only God’s essence contains.

3 Renovatio is a Latin theological term that seems to convey perfectly the Arabic tajaddad, “renewal”. In classical Christian theology, the corrupted imago dei is restored to its original integrity. This conveys well the meaning intended here, and God knows best.

4 “Intellect” here refers to the medieval understanding of intellect, which differed from reason. Intellect was the function of one’s intelligence that distinguished between the real and the apparent—hence the Latin, inte lectus, to distinguish between or to judge between [the real and the false].

5 A sacred hadith (hadith qudsi) neither holds the rank of a hadith, which is a statement from the Prophet s, nor of the Qur’an. It holds a third rank, which is a divine statement; i.e., it is considered revelation, but unlike the Qur’an, it is uttered in the words of the Prophet Muhammad s; we could say it is the Prophet s paraphrasing his Lord.

6 This hadith is recorded by Imam al-Bukhari and is considered absolutely true.

7 The emir uses the expression ‘ala takhyil, which is related to imagination but is not to be confused with the modern usage of this word; hence, imaginal.

8 Emir ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri, al-Mawaqif, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah, 2004), 196-197, mawqif #105.

When You’re a Statistic - Sh Hamza Yusuf

When You’re a Statistic

It’s been said that a liberal is just a conservative that hasn’t been mugged yet. Sometimes it takes something traumatic to wake us up to the realities of our situation, and to force us to rethink our beliefs and behaviors.

 

Americans are essentially civil and decent people and not prone to violent reactions, but now millions of Americans are being exposed to a profoundly radical and extremely distorted view of Islam, which is that 1) Islam is an evil religion; 2) it was born in the crucible of violence, and engenders violence in its followers; and 3) a significant number of American Muslims are actively working to undermine the government of this country, and to establish shariah law.

 

These ideas may sound outlandish and farfetched, but some of the major websites promoting such views get hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. The trouble with such misinformation is that when someone wants to learn about Islam and Googles, for instance, shariah law and women, they’re likely to see an image of a girl with her nose cut off. Worse yet, most of the top ten articles returned from such a search are not expository articles explaining what shariah actually is ­­– they are articles propagating the idea that the shariah is evil.

 

Hence, even if people sincerely search for information about Islam, they are likely to get misinformation and anti-Islam propaganda. Moreover, even educated people are having a harder time sorting the wheat from the chaff, distinguishing what is accurate from what is propaganda against Islam. There are also a lot of very negative emails circulating on the Internet either misquoting Qur’an and hadith or quoting out of context.

 

In fact, if you walk into a bookstore today and simply browse under the subject of Islam, about half the books are anti-Muslim or written by apostates from Islam who actually hate Islam. If a person scans the shelves for a book on the Qur’an, the best looking book that catches their eye could very well be The Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, and so one starts to read it, and it distorts Islam using the sources of Islam, such as Qur’anic verses or hadith. The verses quoted are explained without historical context, and are used to distort the holistic message of the Qur’an.

 

It is easy to make Islam look like the most evil religion on the planet using quotations from primary sources. It is also easy to do the same with Christianity, Judaism, or any other world-religion, but most people, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins notwithstanding, know that Judaism and Christianity are not evil. However, they do not know that about Islam because we have allowed other people to define Islam. Look in the bookstore sections about other religions, and you’ll see a vastly different set of books. For instance, you will find nothing negative about Judaism in the section on Judaism, and if you did, rest assured that major Jewish activist organizations would soon have a slew of volunteers writing to the publishers and the bookstores and have the book pulled from the shelves in record time. The Christian section is so vast as to overshadow the few titles that present Christianity in less than a positive light. Even the section on Wicca and Paganism comprises of titles mostly like, How I Found Inner Peace by Worshipping the Moon and How Satan Can Cure Your Migraines.

 

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When Alice is in Wonderland and questions Humpty Dumpty about his usage of words, he says, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

 

Alice responds, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 

Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is which is to be master – that’s all.” That is, which definition is going to be definitive?

 

When we say “Islam,” is it the beautiful religion of peace and spiritual elevation that sustains millions and millions of people during their journeys through life and inspires countless good deeds, or is it the violent, misogynistic, anachronistic medieval madness that is now infecting America?

 

When we say “jihad,” does it mean an honorable struggle for social justice and the internal struggle with our own selves against the ego, envy, pride, miserliness, and stupidity, and the universal right to defend one’s land or one’s home from aggressors, or does it mean brutally and barbarically chopping off heads, cutting off noses, lopping off ears, flogging women, or blowing up innocent people for simply not being part of the faith? 

 

Who is going to define the words? Is it going to be every Tom, Dick, and Humpty Dumpty? Are we going to leave it for those who have passed through the looking glass and are living in Wonderland where black is white, up is down, and right is wrong, and where, like the queen reminds Alice, “Sentence first – verdict afterward” is how things work? Who is going to decide?

 

This unrelenting and hateful messaging is taking an effect over time. We can see this in the changes in public views of Islam. In polls taken immediately after 9-11, most people did not have a negative view of Islam. That has changed dramatically now. The majority of people in the United States do have negative views of Islam now. This is because the people who want to propagate that narrative have been working hard. They have been funding organizations, funding the publication of books, getting anti-Muslim messages on TV shows, and in general, they have been the only voices heard by most Americans. Muslims have been sleeping through this, or else simply watching in horror as the propaganda takes hold.

 

Here is what happens. Most people out there who do not like Islam or have a negative view of it are not going to do much, as most people mosey along through life and do not think about much other than their own concerns and preoccupations. However, talk-show hosts, editorial writers – what Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point calls “mavens, connectors, and influencers” – are reading the negative books on Islam that are best sellers, such as Islamic Infiltration; Muslim Mafia; Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerable Religion; Infidel’s Guide to the Qur’an; Why I am Not a Muslim; Infidel; Islamic Invasion – and a lot of these books are being sent to congresspersons and senators. The majority of people in this country do not read books or even newspapers, but many watch Fox News. They listen to talk-show hosts. They listen to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly. And these pundits have access to millions of Americans and for many of them, this is the only view of Islam they’re getting.

 

Now, you have some media figures, such as Keith Olbermann, who do attempt to present another view, but he and those like him are more often than not preaching to the choir. You also have court jesters who can speak the truth without losing their heads, such as Jon Stewart, and millions tune in to such programs, but such audiences are considered either pinheads or potheads according to the other camp. These shows do not reach the large segment of Americans who are conservatives (or even moderates) and who need to hear a different and more accurate portrayal of Islam. I don’t want to be Manichean about this, as many of the right-wing voices also address other issues that are necessary to address and are often ignored by the left. They are not hearing any counter voices because we have not made strategic alliances in the conservative community.

 

According to a recent study, over 50 percent of Evangelicals believe that people outside of Christianity can go to heaven, but only 34 percent of that same group believes that Muslims can go to heaven. There are millions of people out there who think that all Muslims are hell bound.

 

Among that segment of society, there are people whom the Qur’an terms sufahah. These are the fools, the idiotic people – the jahilun: people of ignorance, impetuousness, and zealotry. Every community has such people in it. The Muslims have them; the Jews have them; the Christians have them; the secular humanists have them. Every community has sociopaths or irrational people who may even slit the throat of a Bengali taxi driver because he said, “Yes, I am a Muslim.” Those people are going to be empowered increasingly. And people are more susceptible to new villains during times of economic hardship. As the unemployment rate rises and crimes increase, and people are looking for new targets for their aggression, why not a Muslim? Already, we’ve had “Burn the Qur’an Day” – will it be “Mug a Muslim Day” next?

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Our choices are clear. We can sit here and watch all that is happening and think that things are fine. We can think to ourselves, “My neighbors are fine; everybody is nice to me at work.” But if that is what you think, you are living in a bubble. And your bubble is about to burst. I have been watching a trend that is getting worse and worse. And if something is not done, if there is nothing done to countervail, no other mitigating force, things are headed in a dangerous direction. Newton’s law of physics applies here as well: Bodies at rest will remain at rest, and bodies in motion will remain in motion, unless acted upon by an external force.

 

We have a body of messaging in motion, and it is hateful, it is effective, it is well-financed, and it is having its impact on opinions that were at rest before 9-11. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Civil strife is asleep, and may God curse the one who wakens it.” This hadith indicates that calamities are waiting to happen, and people’s passions are easily aroused. This is a recurring phenomenon over the ages and all around the world. Just ask a Bosnian refugee in America how his Serbian neighbors turned on him and his family after being friends for all their lives. This happened through a powerful and violent campaign of propaganda waged by Serbian nationalists allied with certain extreme elements in the Orthodox Church. The result was tragic, but people thought then as we do now: that could never happen here.

 

Unless there is another force out there to counter this, Muslims are going to wake up in a very different America, an America that has drifted far from its own admirable and noble ideals, and they are going to wonder what happened.

 

What happened was that you were asleep. Just like people slept before. People forget that the 1920’s in Germany was one of the most liberal periods. But there was hyperinflation, high unemployment, a lot of social problems, and before they knew it, they democratically elected fascists into power. The fascists did not seize power; they were democratically elected. Right now, we have several angry and hateful candidates in close races in the House and the Senate and even governorships. You can say, “Oh, well, they are only a handful of people.” But this is how it starts. And in hard times, people turn to demagogues. And they are waiting in the wings.

 

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How Do We Respond? – Sh Hamza Yusuf

How Do We Respond? – Hamza Yusuf

First of all, I want to apologize for the delay in writing the second part of what I started with my last post (“When You’re a Statistic”). On top of an overwhelming schedule and a family crisis, I have not been well. I’m very grateful to those who expressed concern as to why we hadn’t posted. I shall do my best at being consistent with the blog; I have requested that we set up an alert mechanism so people are notified when there is new content.

As promised, here are some ways I feel we should respond to the crisis that I described in my previous blog.

1. Understand the problem. The first thing that we must do is recognize the scope and the depth of the problem. Spend a little time on the Internet, and search for issues related to Islam, the way people who have little or no knowledge about Islam might do if they were curious about our religion. Try Google searches for terms like “jihad” or “women in Islam,” and see the top websites and links that appear. Compare some of the websites run by Muslims with the ones run by people attacking the Muslims, and note the difference. Spend some time browsing at bookstores in your community to see the sections on Islam, and see what others are being exposed to about our religion. Notice the number of negative books. Then look at the Christian or Jewish section, and see how it compares with the Islam section. In other words, try and experience what a person curious about Islam and Muslims is likely to find if he or she browsed the Internet or bookstore shelves.

2. Pray for our community. Do a daily litany (wird) with the intention of our protection. We are encouraged in the Sunnah to be consistent in our remembrance of God. There are many fine litanies that have been prepared by scholars based upon the prophetic invocations. Personally, I prefer Imam al-Hadad’s or Sidi Ahmad Zarruq’s as over-the-counter litanies. The spiritual benefits of consistent litany recitation are many, and they are well-tested and true. There is also another reason, in my estimation, for consistently reading such litanies, and that is to help create what is termed in medicine as “herd immunity.” When enough people have built up resistance to a disease through inoculation, others are protected by the critical mass that has been achieved. I believe this is what historically protected the Muslim community from attacks. There were enough people calling upon God for protection for the entire community so that even those who weren’t asking for help received it anyway. We need to pray for our community’s well-being everywhere and ask God to ward off harm. This is one of the prayers in Imam al-Hadad’s litany: “Suffice us by protecting us from the evil of oppressors, and remove any harm from the Muslims.”

3. Strengthen and grow Muslim organizations. Support the existing organizations, and create new ones that are needed. For instance, we need a Muslim legal defense fund. Take a look at the Anti-Defamation League. Go to its website and read about its mission and its activities. The ADL was established to combat anti-Jewish sentiment in this country. Given the anti-Muslim sentiments prevalent now, Muslims need an Anti-Defamation League of their own. And we need endowments to adequately support such groups. The Jewish community donated millions of dollars to strengthen such organizations to ensure that what happened in Germany is not repeated in America. And indeed they succeeded – despite the many anti-Jewish people that still exist in this country, it is no longer the anti-Semitic country that it once was.

The Muslims need to strengthen our existing organizations, such as CAIR and ING. Despite its unfortunate problems of the past, and the fact that it could improve itself in many ways, CAIR is a solid organization that has been built with a lot of hard work by sincere and dedicated people, and it can withstand the attacks if it has the backing of a larger number of Muslims. The seeds of a really strong American Muslim institution have been planted at CAIR, but it must be watered with money and constructive criticism.

The Muslim organizations, including Zaytuna College, have a fiduciary responsibility toward their stakeholders, i.e. the Muslims we claim to represent and serve, as well as those who are funding us. Islamic Networks Group (ING), for instance, is one of the most important organizations in the United States; it does not proselytize, but educates and presents a clear picture of normative Islam. ING understands that we have zealots, that we have fringe Islam, but it focuses instead on educating people of other faiths about what the majority of Muslims believe and practice. This is what people need to know, just as they know that David Koresh and what occurred at Waco, Texas in the early 1990s does not represent the Seventh Day Adventists, and his actions do not represent all Christians or even all Seventh Day Adventists. The same is true for Jewish extremists, like Meir Kahane, or the American-born medical doctor Baruch Goldstein, who went into a mosque in 1994 and opened fire, killing 29 Muslims during their prayer. Americans know that he is not the same as their kids’ pediatrician, who happens to be a competent and peaceful Jewish doctor named Dr. Goldberg. Yet, when they see Dr. Abdallah, they wonder if he is secretly supporting some violent organization. He looks a little shady. And what’s with that Osama-like beard? And why does he have a picture of himself on Hajj hanging on the wall in his office?

So the more organizations Muslims establish, the easier it will be for people to see that normative Islam has nothing to do with what the militant extremists do. We have a large number of Muslim doctors in America, and yet we are not serving the underclass very well through free medical clinics, such as the Umma Free Clinic in Los Angeles. I think our Muslim doctors should donate a day every two weeks to treat the needy who have no medical insurance. In other words, Muslims need to enhance the existing Muslim organizations and also create new ones, especially social service organizations.

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