I’ve read the “Contentions” series by Shaykh Abd al-Hakim and was deeply impressed. I can’t say I can understand even half of the message he was trying to get across with each of those contentions, but I know from the ones that I can interpret for myself that they are deeply meaningful.

I will begin this series and open it up to anyone else is interested in doing it with me (maybe we could alternate). At least maybe visitors could comment and fill in the gaps for me.

Contentions

1. Activism will only succeed when it remembers that history is in good hands.

My comments: Muslims activism is an interesting thing. Many of the activist movements, in my opinion (and possibly the shaykh’s), spend a great deal of time talking of Islam’s great and illustrious past. My interpretation of this contention is that the Shaykh is advising us to look forward in our Islamic activities, and rely on the fact that history is not ever going change. Our accomplishments will always be there, we need new accomplishments if we are to succeed.

Continuation of my Contentions Series

2. We must not overestimate the calamities of our age. A misplaced rigorism is less dangerous than an improper liberalism.

To understand this contention, I had to draw a relationship between calamities and liberalism. A calamity is a dire event, resulting in loss. And liberalism, by its nature is a movement with a free-thinking attitude.

The contention states that “misplaced rigorism” is less dangerous than “improper liberalism”. Rigorism means harshness or strictness in conduct, judgment, or practice. This seems straightforward: it is safer to be stricter about things that you don’t have a need to be strict over, than to introduce concepts of change where there is no need of change.

The Shaykh is advising us not to consider all the evils that have occured to the Muslim community and the world as bigger than they actually are. If we consider them of such importance, we begin to question the faith that we held when we brought about such calamities upon ourselves. It is also a reminder to myself and others that the world is just that, the world, it is transitory in nature. Muslims should respect the world, but also have a certain level of abhorrence for it. The best sufi’s are those that completely divorced themselves from the world, but yet they impacted the world greatly with their presence.

To consider the worlds problems so close to ones heart that it begins to adjust and modify your very identity and faith is a disease of this world. It is simply another way to show a love for this dunya, when we should be concentrating our love of Allah.

This contention reminds me that it is not the world we want to save, it is the soul. By paying atttention to the souls of the world with education, knowledge, and spirituality we will save the world as a secondary reaction.

I think this beautifully ties into the recent blog discussions on Progressive Islam. They have seen some womens rights abused and some other problems with this ummah, and they have overestimated the problem to the point that they react with complete liberalism (free-thinking) and abandon traditional thoughts completely. With Progressive Islam, we have seen this contention come to life.

Traditional Muslims need to consider the fact that the problems that “Progressives” are reacting to are not impossible to deal with within the framework of traditional Islam. It is a sign of lack of knowledge of the fundamentals and a love for this world if you begin to change your Islam because a certain problem in this world especially bothers you .

Furthermore, every problem is a test sent to this community, and we need to remember that our community has suffered through worse tests than anything that we have seen today.

Maybe this is becoming more my thoughts than interpreting the Shaykh’s. I would love to hear comments.

Continuation of my Contentions Series

3. This sin of the Muslim world: menefregismo

After a bit of searching I found that the word menefregismo is an Italian term (slang?) that refers to an “every man for himself / who cares about anyone else” approach to life.

I would agree with the Shaykh’s assertion. It is a major problem of this community. You can witness this in the very small things of everyday life for a Muslim; from the strange Muslim parking practices during Eid prayers to the rush towards the food upon opening our fast.

On the larger scale, we will grumble and moan over our the problems in Iraq or our dictator leaders or even our local politics in the musjid, but as long as we get our paycheck over here, who actually gets involved in changing the system?

Continuation of my Contentions Series

4. In senescence, religions have two possibilities: Alzheimers (the amnesiac option of the secular elites) and manic-depressive (the false Salafism).

Keywords:
I’ve linked to the definition of ’senescence’, since that might be a word which would confuse the lay-reader: it means ‘aging’.

“The false Salafism” is a term I see in some of the other contentions as well. I’ll spell out my interpretation: The Wahabi/Salafi’s described in my “Hidden Deviants” post. The qualifier of “false” indicates that the title that they use, “Salafiyya” (which literally means “Those who follow the venerable ancestors/predecessors”), is a false claim since our ancestors were not extremists such as the Salafiyya.

Paraphrase:
As religions get older, their followers begin to split into two groups, those who forget the fundamentals and lean towards secularism and those that assume an extreme cyclical relationship with the religion.

The Shaykh really helps us understand this one with his comments within parenthesis. We can take any of the great world religions and apply this contention to all of them. I believe that this description does not only apply to the followers, but really to the religion itself, and that is an important distinction. It was difficult to paraphrase that concept.

The first option for an aged religion is listed as “Alzheimers”. It seems to me that the Shaykh is commenting on the religious comprimises that certain intellectuals make when entering into the secularist-dominated areas of religious study within educational institutions and the like. The ’secular elite’, who still proclaim to be Christians or Muslims or Jews, will comfortably forget key elements in their theology when discussing their religion or their political views in their papers and speeches. Is it forgetfullness or are they intentional ommissions?

The other option is the ‘false Salafism’, which, although is defined in terms that Muslims understand, does not mean that it is exclusive to Islam. “Manic-depressive” is essentially a bi-polar condition, where one goes through phases of extreme excitement and then extreme depression. Salafis exhibit this behavior perfectly, which the Shaykh has described as “Salafi Burnout” in another one of his works. I imagine that radical/extreme elements of other religions go through similar phases as well: cycles of harsh and forced practice with cycles of faithlessness and carelessness.

One important point is that Shaykh has left out traditional interpretation of religion from the equation, and defined two negatives. Since he precedes the whole statement with “In senescence..”, is he hinting that traditionalists are in fact not aging the religion, but keeping it youthful and intact?

Continuation of my Contentions Series

5. Aid for ?moderate? Middle Eastern regimes is meals on wheels, because it does not expect to rejuvenate.

I make the assumption that the Shaykh is talking about financial aid to Muslim countries. Meals on wheels is directly referencing the ‘official’ Meals on Wheels program whose mission statement I’ve added below:

“The Meals On Wheels Association of America represents those who provide congregate and home-delivered meal services to people in need. Our mission is to provide visionary leadership and professional training, and to develop partnerships that will ensure the provision of quality nutrition services”

In the same way that Meals on Wheels is dedicated to sustaining the eldery and those incapable of gathering their own food, foreign aid to Muslim countries are not meant to revitalize the nation nor encourage the nation to find its own sources of revenue. Meals on wheels does not have any intention of rejuvinating the people it serves, merely to ensure they avoid starvation.

Another analagous interpretation is the ‘relief’ aid that some Christian groups try to sell from 2 am infomercials. However, the reason I don’t believe this is what the Shaykh is referring to is because I strongly believe that the goal in that case is actually not to sustain nor rejuvinate, but to convert.

Continuation of my Contentions Series

6. Postmodernism is Jahiliyya. Each tribe has its own story.

Keywords:

Postmodernism – I’ve linked the word to a few google definitions. I like the following definition:

A belief that individuals are merely constructs of social forces, that there is no transcendent truth that can be known; a rejection of any one world view or explanation of reality as well as a rejection of the reality of objective truth.

Jahilyya – Pre-islamic period of ignorance which prevailed over Arabia.

My interpretation:

To equate anything to Jahilliya is often taken as an outright insult; “Jahil” being the term for the ignorant. My first, and incorrect, interpretation of the Contention involved some equation of modernity to ignorance. But then again, of all things to compare to the period of Jahilliya, post-modernism seemed quite specific to me.

By reading the above definition of post-modernism, we can come to the conclusion that, although it is referred often to architecture and art, postmodernism is actually an outlook on life, a philosophy. It is a means by which the West resolves its need to incorporate multiple cultures and perspectives into its own without firmly adhering to a particular one.

But to truly understand why the Shaykh chose to use post-modernism, I had to understand what came before it, modernism.

Modernism – the optimistic view that human reason and science are sufficient to understand the world and solve its problems.

Modernism seems to a be a specific outlook on life, a scientific based one. It became plain to me now as to why the Shaykh singled out postmodernism in his comparison to the Jahilliya.

Let us look at the state of people during the Jahiliyya: Arabia was split into tribes, each having its own religion, its own idol, coming together now and then to trade for mutual benefit.

The philosophy of post-modernism is the very idea that different tribes (or cultures) should be able to co-exist without a single universal way to interpret the world. In this way, “each tribe has it’s own story”. I take this contention to mean that post-modernism is literally a synonym for Jahilyya since it describes the way that the Arabs lived in the time of Jahilliya.

Another analogy to summarize this concept is that the post-modern West is the Makkah and Kabaa’ of the modern day Jahiliyya, where every culture/tribe write its own story with its own religions/beliefs/idols.

Post-modernism is essentially a multiple-faceted way to look at the world, versus modernism which is a single, well-defined way. If post-modernism is Jahilliya, then modernism is simply another false religion.

Continuation of my Contentions Series

7. The modern West shows that without a Shari?a there can only be scattered hunafa?.

Keywords:

Sharia: Islamic Religious Law

Hunafa: During the Jahilliya (time of ignorance), the Hunafa’ were those that turned away from idol worship, but did not form one cohesive community. Comes from the word hanif which translates to “upright”.

My interpretation:
In today’s society we have good people scattered across the West, without any religious law binding them together. Muslims are especially crippled in regards to knowing much of their faith without the religious law in place.

Sharia binds us together to form a Muslim community, without it we are a scattered group like the Hunafa, those who uphold the truth, but remain largely silent and unable to alter our own environments for the better.

Today’s atrocities that are being witnessed in Iraq should help us realize our lowly state of affairs.

Maybe someone can offer an alternative explanation here, I feel I may be missing something.