Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf - ADAMS Qurtuba Institute

Who Speaks For Islam - Sh Hamza Yusuf with Ray Suarez

911 Unity Walk 2011 - Sh Hamza Yusuf

God-consciousness After Ramadan - Sh Hamza Yusuf

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf offers reflections before the sermon and prayer on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, 2011.

Earl Lectures 2011 - Keynote Lecture - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Earl Lectures 2011 - Keynote Lecture - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

January 26, 2011

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf delivers his keynote lecture: "Lenders, Leopards, and Lions: The Violence of Avarice - Muslim Musings from Dante’s Six, Seventh, and Eighth Circles of Hell"
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is "the most influential Islamic scholar in the West" and the 38th most influential Muslim scholar worldwide, according to Georgetown University's study The 500 Most Influential Muslims (2009). Hamza Yusuf is a cofounder of Zaytuna College, located in Berkeley, California. He is an advisor to Stanford University's Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for Islamic Studies at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union.

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When the Social Contract is Breached on One Side, It's Breached on Both Sides - Sh Hamza Yusuf

When the Social Contract is Breached on One Side, It's Breached on Both Sides

Hamza Yusuf

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

– The Declaration of Independence

July 4, 1776

America, where are you? The people of Egypt are clamoring for the very right of dissolving the social contract with their current government due to its long string of abuses, a right enshrined in our nation's foundational document. It behooves America to lend a helping hand to Egypt's people at this crucial moment.

This is clearly a historic turn in the largest Arab nation, a widespread non-ideological movement, fueled by the long-repressed aspirations of the majority of Egyptians. Meanwhile, the ruthlessness of the powers that be in Egypt has been fully exposed in the sinister Machiavellian antics on display, being recorded this past week by the international media and by such American media celebrities as Anderson Cooper and Nicholas Kristof, who are sounding more revolutionary in their comments than some of the people they're interviewing. These courageous journalists have recognized the significance of the story and placed themselves on the front lines. While Hosni Mubarak is unleashing his thugs on innocent protesters and journalists, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, are apparently missing in action.

Something has irreversibly changed in the land of the Pharaohs. It has to do with the basic social contract, the relationship of a people to their leaders—a concept not alien to the Islamic tradition.

The oppression that the Egyptian youth have experienced for as long as they have been alive has stripped them of their basic human dignity. In many parts of the Arab world, including Egypt, it is not uncommon to see a grown man slapped and abused publicly by a police officer and have no recourse to justice. I have witnessed this several times during my time in the Arab world. Arab citizens are too often treated paternalistically at best and sadistically at worst. Not much has changed since the days of the preferred pre-modern method of public torture: the bastinado, which Florence Nightingale witnessed and recorded in her travelogue highlighting her stay in Egypt in the 1840s.

But for the youth of Egypt, enough is enough. They've come of age in a wired world that highlights the rebellious youth culture of the West. Many of them are more inspired by Bob Marley than by their local imam quoting Sahih al-Bukhari. "Them belly full but we hungry; a hungry mob is an angry mob."

The Egyptian people, many for the first time in their lives tasting the inebriating wine of political freedom, are challenging their government, courageously defying the fear factor so ruthlessly cultivated in the belly of the bestial state security apparatus. This mirrors what happened in the 1960s when African Americans lost their fear of a brutal system that had kept them in check for centuries and after much rebellion and rioting resulted in a freer and more enfranchised society.

America's Founding Fathers understood well that in order for a government to govern effectively and for its laws to be obeyed, the individual must have a respectful fear of the coercive power that government yields, but that, conversely, in order for a government not to abuse its laws and exploit its coercive power to further the selfish ends of its administrators or those who gain control over them, it must fear the aggregate of people for which it was established to serve. When a people, as in Egypt's case, collectively fear their government and are forced to bear its abuses, that government is a tyranny and not a servant of its people, despite the so-called elections in which Mubarak supposedly won about 90 percent of the people's votes.

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It is important to note that this is not an ideological movement. This is not about Right or Left, Communist or Capitalist, Liberal or Conservative, Islamist or secularist—even if all of these elements are invariably reflected in the various motivations of the diverse peoples populating Independence Square and other sites of protest. This is far more basic: it's about jobs, food prices, fair elections, reducing poverty, social justice, and above all, not living in fear of a government that should be serving the needs of its people instead of making them the servants of its wants.

The lack of an ideology, for me, is the most refreshing aspect of this uprising. The stale rhetoric of "Islam is the solution" that has marked countless demonstrations for decades is absent. The pathetic socialist slogans of the Libyan revolution as well as the Syrian and Iraqi Arab nationalist slogans are all conspicuously absent. Islam is not a political ideology and hence does not offer a political solution per se; basic morality in politics is the solution. Most Muslims would be content living under Finnish or Swedish forms of governance, with a few adjustments to the sexual liberties in those countries, and feel as if it were the time of Saladin, given that they are committed to eradicating poverty and hunger, serving the aged, and even ensuring rights for dogs and cats. If you torture a dog in Stockholm, you go to jail. In the jails of Egypt, people can be tortured with impunity by dogs of the state.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man of al-Qaeda, was a pediatrician from one of the most respected families in Cairo. His maternal great-grandfather was a distinguished Egyptian lawyer, and his paternal great-grandfather was Shaykh al-Azhar, Muhammad al-Zawahiri. After Sadat’s assassination, under Mubarak’s orders, Ayman was arrested with a slew of other suspected "Islamists," beaten mercilessly, and burnt severely and repeatedly with cigarette butts by Egyptian torturers. According to a well-known American journalist who lives in Cairo and knew Ayman personally, he came out a very different man than he went in. We are all paying the price of this failed system that can drive normally decent people into the abnormal heinousness of nihilistic violence.

Islam is not an ideology, political or otherwise. It is a revelation from God that explains and reminds people of their duties toward their Creator in honoring and worshipping God with gratitude for the gift of life and all the concomitants of that gift, and of their duties toward their fellow creatures as unique and protected creations of God. Those duties are well described in all the Books sent by God and enshrined most succinctly in the Ten Commandments. Politics involves making sure the mail gets out, allotting appropriate monies for public works, and ensuring the security of a people from internal or external threats; all of these can be done without recourse to any specific religious tradition.

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, left no specific system of government; rather, he taught "constitutional" principles upon which governance should be based. Many of those principles, quite revolutionary at his time, have become common coin for most people today: the idea of equality among races and gender, the concept of economic justice, and the right of an individual to be protected in his person and property from unjust search or seizure. These are constitutional principles accepted by most governments today; whether they are practiced or not is another matter. There are, however, two clearly articulated aspects of governance that do have relevance in any state run by Muslims. The penal code of Islam was developed specifically for an Islamic polity, but only a few actual punishments are agreed upon, and the circumstances of its various applications are highly nuanced in Islamic legal texts, with an aim to avoid their implementation whenever possible. The gross and often perverse so-called "Islamic punishments" meted out today—invariably on the poorest and most helpless in societies—have nothing to do with the Prophet’s teaching, peace and blessings be upon him. Commercial law is, undeniably, another developed area in Islamic law that has implications in the running of a state.

           

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The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, warned that "Governance is great remorse on the Day of Judgment. Power is a luxurious wet-nurse and a terrifying weaner." Scholars interpreted this saying to mean that once a man tastes the perks of power, he finds it difficult to give up, but death comes to us all, and at that point, the crisis of having failed in one's duties to the people will turn into great remorse.

Since the American and French Revolutions, it is increasingly accepted that leaders must only lead when they have the support and the confidence of their people. If leaders breach the social contract of popular consent of the governed through abuses, they not only lose legitimacy but they must relinquish their mandate to govern. There can be no doubt—if there ever was—that Hosni Mubarak has lost his legitimacy with his people despite the apparent legality of his rule, whether it be cloaked in constitutional or Islamic principles.

These are indeed times that try men's souls, and the scholars of Egypt need to offer good counsel to their people. If the scholars are to have any relevance when the dust settles, they must take firm positions now. If they merely wait to see what happens, they lose the very thing that empowers them: the people's trust. Amr Khaled has courageously marched with the protesters in solidarity, despite his usual avoidance of politics, but in this situation, the cause is just and the stakes are high, and so he has taken a stand, and people will long remember that. Scholars need to guide and not be dictated to by the puppet masters of power who cut their strings as soon as their usefulness is over, leaving them in the paralysis of paltriness.

The need for resolute positions of solidarity with the Egyptian people in their pleas for political change is undeniable. I personally feel that the scholars, inside and outside of Egypt, have a responsibility to stand with the Egyptian people in their pleas for reform in Egypt. While scholars have a right to their own opinions on this and other matters, my personal opinion is that in order to stop further conflict and prevent more blood from being spilt, the scholars of Egypt should call for an immediate change in the government of Hosni Mubarak.

Having said that, I believe we should maintain a good opinion of the scholars who either take a position or choose to remain silent—a valid option during fitnah. We must recognize that personal ijtihad in difficult times is to be respected. The Mufti of Egypt is an honorable and pious man; he understands the complexity of the situation, the dangers of instability, and the tragedies that can quickly arise when conflagrations take a life of their own. Moreover, his position is certainly consonant with a traditional approach that was taken by many of the great scholars of the past. While some may not agree with his opinion, Muslims should respect religious authority, acknowledge a scholar's right to it, and not assume we know anyone's intentions. God alone is the Judge of men's hearts.

           

A few caveats are necessary in this current crisis. The idea that Mubarak is the sole problem is in itself a problem. Mubarak represents a certain ruling elite in Egypt that controls immense wealth and holds the country in its vice-grip of graft and corruption. If he goes today, it is likely that the ruling elite will make some cosmetic reforms, such as reduce the price of food, and promise free and fair elections, but when the foreign media leaves, it'll be business as usual. Moreover, the United States has its largest embassy in Egypt, and with tens of billions of dollars in investments over the years, mostly in military aid, Washington will invariably not want such a strategically significant place as Egypt to fall into the hands of a real reformer, despite the administration's rhetoric of "spreading democracy."

It's also worth noting that Egypt suffers from major systemic problems that make any immediate transition to a Western style democracy not only improbable but more likely a destabilizing factor that results in life becoming even more unbearable than it is now. America's experiment in Iraqi democracy is worth reflecting upon. 

The real problem in Egypt is not the lack of freedom of expression; the Egyptians are some of the most outspoken people in the world. In fact, the world's problems are solved daily in the cafes of Cairo with creative solutions coming from the waiters as well as the waited upon. What is lacking in Egypt is a reasonable living standard that enables average wage earners not to succumb to the necessity of graft, a government that serves the people, a sound judicial system relatively free from corruption, and, most importantly, basic human dignity—the right to be respected in your own land.

Other Arab countries exist with far less freedom of expression than Egypt—which happens to have the freest press in the Muslim world—but nonetheless have stable societies because the per capita income is high and people live reasonably well. American voter apathy—between 40-50 percent of eligible voters don't vote—proves that democracy is not a priority when all is going well, but when all is not well, tea parties arise, or perhaps in Egypt's case, qahwa parties, meant to awaken the failing government.

Fitnah is worse than killing, according to the Qur'an, and in this case, the fitnah is persecution. The Egyptians have been persecuted for too long, and while traditional scholars since the days of the early fitnahs have sided with stability in order to prevent bloodshed that often resulted in worse situations than the ones being opposed, in an age where peaceful protest is the only rational means of a people to redress the wrongs of their government, the scholars should not only support but acknowledge this change in the world. The situation in the Middle East is intolerable, and as John F. Kennedy rightly remarked, "If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable."

Deferred Dreams, Self-Destruction, and Suicide Bombings - Sh Hamza Yusuf

 

There was a story in the New York Times a few days ago about how the "revolution" in Tunisia was sparked in December by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old, befuddled roadside green grocer. Like so many young Arabs, he was born poor and only dreamed of providing for his siblings and his mother. He had been to college, where he studied law, but had found no employment possibilities. So, given the basic dignity often found in people in places like Tunisia, he chose to humble himself and find a halal means to generate some income. But he kept running into problems with the police and government inspectors until the fateful day in December when they confiscated his cart and his produce, saying he didn’t have a proper permit, and leaving him with an unpaid loan with which he’d bought the goods. At the station, upon attempting to reclaim his cart, he was slapped and humiliated publicly. His already deferred dreams had clearly dried up. Bouazizi left an apologetic note for his mother and set himself on fire in front of the local government building.

 

Four weeks later, the protests sparked by his death brought down the government of President Zine el Abdidine Ben Ali, who’d ruled Tunis with an iron hand for 23 years.

 

I have had the good fortune of visiting Tunisia many times. During my last visit, which was in the early nineties, I was harassed by the Mukhabarat (secret police), and the family that I was staying with was also questioned. That left a bad taste for me, and I decided not to return to the country and have not been back since.

 

Mukhabarat notwithstanding, my experience of the Tunisians is that they are wonderful people. They are known among Arabs for being kind and gentle. They are slow to lose their temper and quick to lend a hand to a stranger. I remember seeing young men selling beautiful bundles of jasmine flowers that had such a powerful scent that you could smell a seller coming your way long before he reached you.

 

Tunisia is a stunningly beautiful country with a great history and a bright and talented people, but corruption, cruelty, and the ineptitude of leaders unable to gauge the frustration of their people has led to the current crisis. Like so many Muslim countries, its government has been run largely by a family operation with a tribal mentality that was milking a population dry.

 

When the government was brought down this month, President Ben Ali fled with his wife, Leila, to Jeddah of all places; terrible floods in the port city inauspiciously welcomed him. It seems that Jeddah is the choice retirement haven of ex-African Muslim tyrants, including the former dictator Idi Amin of Uganda. Sometimes, birds of prey flock together in unlikely places. No doubt, Ben Ali has millions, if not billions, of dollars in his Swiss accounts, but even Europe, despite its dire need of cash, didn’t want him. Options diminish quickly for these men once they’re out of political power, but where odiousness closes doors in some places, great wealth obviously opens them in others.

 

The irony is that such tyrants usually rise to power because the people want to get rid of tyranny from a previous source. Years ago, I was in the house of the great Tunisian scholar, Shaykh Shadhili Nayfar, who was from a proud Andalusian family that had fled to Tunis with the collapse of Muslim Spain. Shaykh Shadhili had been the dean at al-Zaytuna University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. He studied rare manuscripts and had a great library in his home that researchers could use. Since he was a former Member of Parliament in Tunisia, I asked him about the country’s history. He told me that during the anti-colonial movement to rid the country of the French, the scholars of al-Zaytuna University were very powerful indeed, but the single most unifying force was around the politician, Habib Bourguiba, and the scholars of al-Zaytuna debated long and hard whether or not to back Bourguiba, as he was an avowed secularist and had no commitment to the religion.

 

Shaykh Shadhili said that the scholars opted to support Bourguiba because they thought he would help the Tunisians oust the French, and they could deal with him thereafter. However, little did these scholars realize that Bourguiba would be worse than the French and would, in fact, turn against them before they could do anything about him. This seems to be the great lesson of revolutions and coups: With rare exceptions, they bring in new governments that are as bad or worse than the ones they ousted. The man who just fled from Tunisia to Jeddah had taken the government from a decrepit and delirious Bourguiba promising the Tunisians that the age of tyranny was over. Hah.

 

An intriguing aspect of the current Tunisian situation is the absence of ideology. This is a genuine uprising of people who are sick and tired of the corruption and cruelty of a state apparatus. Monarchs of old practiced the tradition of benevolence. They were not always benevolent but were raised with the understanding that they were there to serve the people. These pathetic Arab rulers who overthrew those monarchs practice the worst types of cronyism and nepotism, placing their sons on their "thrones," and they thrive in an environment that is driven by family and tribal allegiance. The cracks have been showing for a while. And now, in Tunisia, it has all come tumbling down.

 

The lessons of history are worth heeding. Tunis, once called Carthage, had a mythical queen, Dido. According to legend, she killed herself on a funeral pyre due to her despair at being scorned by Aeneas, who abandoned her to Rome. The historical Hannibal led a Tunisian army to Rome to rid Tunis of Roman persecution, but he failed, and Rome’s vengeance led to the salting of the soil in Tunis and the destruction of Carthage that lies in ruins today near the capital. The Muslim world now has its share of misguided, petty Hannibals who think that by attacking Rome, they will restore the glory of "Carthage." Yet, their attacks only provide the necessary excuses for the Empire to salt the soil of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

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While the Tunisian Dido didn’t accomplish anything through her suicide by fire, our poor green grocer, Mohamed Bouazizi, has ignited the Arab world in flames, achieving in death what he could not in life – sense of purpose and meaning – indubitably more than all the suicide bombers around the globe combined. His was an act of a desperate man who chose not to kill others but instead to light himself on fire in protest. This was the sacrificial tactic that Buddhist monks used during the Vietnam War, and their actions had a massive impact on the psyches of Westerners. When a situation becomes so desperate that people choose to leave the world rather than to stay in it and struggle, the message to the surviving ones is clear: it is time for a change. Well that change is happening in Egypt and other places in the Muslim world. Let’s hope for the best and pray for these poor, suffering people who deserve far better than their leaders have given them.

 

Suicide is rare in the Muslim world, but it’s increasing. God makes life generally bearable for people, so they will choose even highly difficult situations over the option of checking out. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, which begins with "To be or not to be," reminds us that in taking our own lives, we may be fleeing to troubles far greater than the ones prompting us to flee.

 

An odd aspect of the reaction to Bouazizi’s suicidal act is that some Muslims will surely condemn it, since suicide is clearly prohibited in Islam, but these same Muslims will justify the actions of suicide bombers, now euphemistically called "martyrdom operations" ('amiliyyat istishhadiyyah) on Arabic newscasts. The justifiers point out that suicide bombing is an act of defense, and their only real weapon at that.

 

But the similarities and differences of a suicide and suicide bombing are worth contemplating. In Bouazizi’s mind, suicide was his only weapon of defense against an unjust Tunisian government that would neither listen to him nor even let him earn a livelihood selling vegetables without having to bribe some low-level official to get the piece of paper that would enable him to do so. A suicide bomber, as the social science studies show, is also in a similar state of despair, and straps bombs to himself so he can kill himself and other people about whom he knows nothing. The assumption the suicide bomber makes seems to be, "My life and my people’s lives are miserable, and no one is doing anything about it, so it might fix things if I sacrifice my life and take a bunch of other people’s lives too." Hence, some people just being on an Israeli street corner become a target, irrespective of whether they support or oppose Israeli aggression against Palestinians. What makes such suicide bombing more honorable than Bouazizi’s suicide?

 

Suicide is suicide, it seems to me, but it becomes truly heinous when one decides to take others with him using indiscriminate methods of mass destruction. I cannot sit in judgment of the Palestinians who have resorted to such measures nor the Chechnyian women who lost husbands and children and in acts of savage revenge killed themselves and others. I am not in their shoes, and I cannot fathom the depth of their despair. However, I do not condone the act of suicide bombing or any form of suicide, as I consider both to be of the same ilk, and in fact the former is worse in my estimation due to the extended harm to others. And I do judge the notion that suicide bombers are somehow not really committing suicide (because they are taking the lives of others) yet our Tunisian green grocer deserves to go to hell because he is committing suicide. He is not seen as a martyr, but the suicide bombers are viewed as noble martyrs because along with their own lives they took some possibly innocent bystanders; hence, in this view, suicide bombers deserve a martyr’s honor and paradise. I must admit, I just don’t get it; I think those who promote this notion need to study Mizan al-amal and the other great texts of ethical theory in our tradition.

 

Like copycat suicide bombers who now proliferate all over the Muslim world, we are seeing copycat self-immolators in places like Egypt, Algeria, and even Mauritania. Dr. T. J. Winter said, "Suicide bombing is an extreme way of shooting oneself in the foot." The Muslim world deserves better strategies for dealing with very real social issues as well as better leadership, clearly.

 

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Though suicide is haram, the simple protest of this Tunisian street vendor did more to change the status quo and put real fear in the hearts of the tyrants than all of the suicide bombers. We must devise better and more civilized ways of dealing with our differences, as we live in an age of nuclear power, machine guns, aerial bombings, and global news cycles that expose us to the pain and suffering of peoples in far off places.

 

Many people in the West have no idea how much the Arab on the street suffers from humiliation under unjust rulers and their petty minions. I have a friend who is a beautiful young Arab man from the desert. Unlike some of his compatriots who come to the West and have promiscuous relationships, he chose to honorably marry an American Muslim woman while he was studying here. Now, upon returning to his homeland, he is struggling to get a visa for her, as his country does not like its citizens to marry outside their land without first notifying the government. He now simply waits for the whim of some petty bureaucrat to issue his wife a visa so that she can join her husband and meet his family.

 

Like our green grocer, people can only take so much.

 

The great American novelist, writer, and poet, Langston Hughes, wrote:

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore…
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over…
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

 

Our green grocer went to university with dreams; but his dreams did not materialize, and so he turned to selling vegetables to earn an honorable livelihood. Yet he was not allowed even to fulfill that pitiful deferred dream. They should have just let the man sell his vegetables, but they didn’t, and the fire was lit. Already those flames have spread to Egypt, and we watch with fear and trepidation, hoping and praying for our brothers and sisters in Egypt, the heart of the Arab world, which now is engulfed in the bonfire of revolution.

 

Post Script:

Sorry for the delay in posting a blog. If you knew why, you would sympathize. I really appreciate the prayers and well wishes so many of you expressed. Thank you and God bless you. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Jeddah also who are suffering from devastating rainfalls that have left many homeless.

What Happened to Poetry - Sh Hamza Yusuf

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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