Chivalry

The definition of chivalry (تَعْرَيفُ الفُتُوَة) by Habib Ali Al-Jifri:

هِيَ قُوَّةٌ مُتَبَصِّرَةٌ كَامِنَةٌ

It is a Strength, possessing Insight, which is Internalized,

تَنْفَعِلُ لِنُصْرَةِ الحَقِّ

which Reacts in order to give Victory to Truth.

الْإِخْلَاصُ مَقَْصِدُهَا و الأخْلَاقُ مُرْشِدَهَا

Sincerity it its Goal, Good Character is its Guide

 و الرَّحْمَةُ بَاطِنُهَا و التَّغْيِيرُ ظَاهِرُهَا

Mercy is its Inward, and Bringing about Change is its Outward.

فَكُلّ مَا لَا تَجْتَمِعُ فيه هذه المُوَاصَفَاتِ فَلَيْسَ بِالْفُتُوَة

And everything which doesn't combine all of these attributes is not considered Chivalry.

هي قوَّةٌ تَكُونُ في الجَسَدِ و تَكُونُ في النَّفْسِ

So it is a Power that exists in the Body and in the Self

 و تَكُونُ في الْعَقْلِ و تَكُونُ في الرُّوحِ 

and in the Mind and in the Spirit.

Hijab - a recognition of holiness

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad has a very interesting answer to the question "What is 'Hijab' and how should it affect us on an inner and outer level?"

Here it is:

Hijab is an ancient and, actually profound institution.  Sometimes we assume that it's just about the surface and doesn't affect what is within.  But of course what we do to our outward does have an impact on what we're like within, just as our inward state will be frequently discernible in terms of our body language, our behaviour, the kind of adab we have with others.  So it is necessarily a profound institution.

What it is in its essence is a kind of cautious celebration.  Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'aala has created the world as an expression of His Beauty and His Goodness and He has placed the greatest and most miraculous concentration of beauty in His creation in the beauty of women.

And every culture has always known that.  The artists and the poets have always celebrated that as the most extraordinary manifestation of beauty, of jamal, in Allah's creation.

Of course that is to be celebrated, but it's also the case that, in the Semitic tradition in particular, that not everybody has the right to gaze upon particularly intense concentrations of holiness.

So, in the ancient temple of sayyidina Sulaiman, in Jerusalem, The Holy of Holies was always covered by a veil.  Similarly in the Catholic church, the sacrament will often be in a little tabarnacle, that is covered by a veil.  And similarly, in the context of Islam, you could also say that the ka'abah is also veiled.  The kiswah, the shroud of the kaabah, is in a sense the hijab of the most spectacular symbol of the Divine Absoluteness and Eternity that exists in this world.

So the hijab really is not a sign that something is unworthy or impure or dangerous.  Rather it's an expression of the presence of holiness. 

And that generally is the way in which Muslims have responded to the miracle of beauty. 

So it's a way, as it were, of emphasizing the otherness, the apartness. 

So, for instance, the word for women in Arabic is hareem but the word for the sanctuary in Mecca is the haram.  It's a particular concept of an enclosure in which the sacred is manifested and displayed.

That's something hard for us to understand in our civilization because beauty is the thing that is the least understood and is most commercialized.  So the face of the woman, even though nobody knows that this is the manifestation of the Divine Creative Power is a signpost, not an end to itself, is used and commercialized on the front cover of every magazine and every TV show.  Because people still have that dim sense that here is something transcendent.  In the beauty of women there is a sign of transcendence.  Even the most dead-hearted atheist still is inspired by that.

Of course what they don't have is a way of setting that off and of sanctifying it and demonstrating that it has to be in its due context.  We wouldn't feel right if the kaabah was unveiled.  Certain sacred things are set around with barriers and liminal zones.

And so it is with the miracle of female beauty.  That in the context of Islam our way of expressing reverence for it is to set it apart, to treat it with dignity to surround it... with actually quite severe regulations about deportment, modesty, self-effacement that are not there to deny her, but to acknowledge the sometimes unruly power that the disclosure of beauty in the public space can bring out.

Ya Nafsu (O My Soul)

Should you not gain your wants, my soul, then be not grieved;
But hasten to that banquet which your Lord’s bequeathed.

And when a thing for which you ask is slow to come,
Then know that often through delay are gifts received.

Find solace in privation and respect its due,
For only by contentment is the heart relieved.

And know that when the trials of life have rendered you
Despairing of all hope, and of all joy bereaved, 

Then shake yourself and rouse yourself from heedlessness,
And make pure hope a meadow that you never leave.

Your Maker’s gifts take subtle and uncounted forms.
How fine the fabric of the world His hands have weaved.

The journey done, they came to the water of life,
And all the caravan drank deep, their thirst relieved.

Far be it from the host to leave them thirsty there,
His spring pours forth all generosity received.

My Lord, my trust in all Your purposes is strong,
That trust is now my shield; I’m safe, and undeceived.

All those who hope for grace from You will feel Your rain;
Too generous are You to leave my branch unleaved.

May blessings rest upon the loved one, Muhammad,
Who’s been my means to high degrees since I believed.

He is my fortress and my handhold, so my soul,
Hold fast, and travel to a joy still unconceived.

By Shaykh Ali bin Husayn al-Habshi, 

translated by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad 

Finding God... at Work

Transcribed from a short talk by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad:

Often, Muslims working in a contemporary, fast-moving, turbo-capitalistic-world workplace, feel guilty and uncertain and think that perhaps they're selling out.

In fact, ours is not a worldly religion, but a religion that teaches us to be at ease in the world. 

And our founder, the Holy Prophet, salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, was in the world. 

He was not a monk or a nun.  He was part of his society.  He fully participated in the political and economical and social and marital life of his culture. 

He was an economic actor.

So when we look at issues like this, we find that we're able to go right back to the fountain head of the religion to see what he, himself, had to say about issues that are very contemporary, but in fact are part of the timeless language of human ethics. 

This is about issues that are eternal -- issues of charity, issues of empathy, issues of justice.  This is not a new innovation.

What I want to do, is consider a hadith -- a well know saying of the Holy Prophet, salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam.  It's narrated by Jabir bin Abdullah and it's in the collection of Al Bukhari, so it's rigorously authenticated.  And he says, sallaAllahu 'alaihi wa sallam,

Rahima Allahu imra'an
sahla al-bay'ee
sahla ash-shiraa'ee
sahla al-qadaa'ee
sahla al-iqtidaa'ee

It's one of those pithy, syncopated, rhyming statements that we often find in the hadith. 

What it means is,

May God have mercy upon a person
who is easy in his buying,
and in his selling,
and in his taking of money in a loan,
and in his reclaiming of money that is owed to him.

Not a very elegant English translation, I'm afraid.  Even if you don't know Arabic, you'll know how zippy is the original.

And it's a prayer from the Prophet, that God should have mercy on these people.

This may come as some kind of culture-shock, because we tend to assume nowadays--Muslims, like everybody else -- that religion, spirituality, personal transformation, the "Hotline to God", are things that happen in a beautiful sacred place, a little quiet backwater, perhaps a retreat centre, perhaps a place we go to on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, and the real world is out there, where we accumulate all kinds of bad vibes, which we then purge at a place of worship.

Sometimes we treat a place of worship as a kind of spa, where we go to decontaminate.

That's a very unhealthy way of looking at what we do 5 or 6 days a week.

The Muslim vision is that of a totality. 

Everything is to be incorporated into the Fundamental Human Project, which has to be, for Islam, as for all other religions, turning away from the self, towards the other -- the Other with the big 'O' and also the other with the little 'o'. 

Turning away from our lower selfishness toward something that, in some strange but convincing way persuades us that it is what we really are, underneath.

The fundamental turning, which the Qur'an calls Tawbah, which we translate as repentance, means turning, turning away, and turning away from sin to righteousness, which is another way of expressing turning away from the rubbish within, to what is beautiful that God has placed within the soul.

So, when the Holy Prophet salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, is speaking about economic matters, and matters of business ethics, this doesn't surprise us because everywhere belongs to God.  And everywhere is a place where God is to be celebrated -- even the computer terminal in the estate agent or wherever it is that you work.  Muslims are invited to find a way of sanctifying every moment of those experiences.

Imam Al Ghazali, one of the great ethical thinkers of Islam used to say that humanity basically exists in three categories:

Rajulun shaghalathu dunyaahu 'an ukhraahu, fa huwa min al halikeen

Category number one is the person whose worldly concerns distract him from his otherworldy concerns, and he is of the lost.

Wa rajulun shaghalthu ukhraahu 'an dunyaahu, fa huwa inshaAllah min al faa-izeen

And a man who is distracted by his otherworldly concerns from his worldly concerns and he is, God willing, one of the successful

wa rajulun a'aanat-hu ukhraahu 'ala dunyaahu wa dunyaahu 'alaa ukhraahu fa huwa min al muqarrabeen

And a man whose worldly concerns help him in his otherworldly concerns and he is of those brought near to God.

So we move close to God, not by skirting the realities of the world but rather going through them.  And that takes some doing.  Particularly in the modern world, where it is fair to say that the average contemporary workplace is not primarily geared up for fostering the spiritual life of its employees.

But in any case, whether we're Muslims or not, if we have any interest in what we call spirituality, it's something we're going to want to think carefully about.

---end of transcript---

So it's not about choosing this world or the next, it's about using this world for the next.

The ant on the carpet

Imagine an ant walking across a carpet.  As he walks, he crosses over fissures and crevices and climbs up and over bumps and mounds of seemingly random colors.  He can't understand what purpose this veritable obstacle course could serve.

Of course, the ant has a very limited perspective.  And if he could see the bigger picture, he would see clearly that the terrain he's walking across is actually a part of the beautiful pattern on a Persian carpet.

As we live our lives, we also have a very limited perspective.  We face obstacles and disappointments and plans change and things often don't go the way we wish they would.

Looking back, though, we can often see that whatever happened was exactly what we needed.

We just didn't know it at the time.

And ultimately, we know that although we might not see it, God always has a beautiful plan for us and things happen exactly as He intends it in His infinite Wisdom and Mercy.

From a Rumi poem related by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad in a lecture about relying on God.