From
Other Matters http://othermatters.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/poached-ottoman-recycling/

Looking at the domed ceiling of the Suleimaniya mosque I marvel at the ingenuity of Ottoman architecture: In the past the interior of the mosque was lit by huge braziers and wicker lamps. The damp, oily black smoke would rise to the ceiling, to be collected as it cooled into hidden ducts that were built within the dome itself. Slowly the liquid smoke would filter down and was collected in tiny pots, to be sifted, mixed with oil and gum, to be made into ink. That ink would then be used to write the Qur’ans that were read by the Ottomans themselves. An economy of resources at work: light to smoke, smoke to ink, ink to books, books that were read in the same light that would produce the ink. Truly, the hermetically sealed world of the Ottomans was a riddle that kept its answer to itself.

Farish Noor, Wonders of Islamic Civilization

Must read! Click here

read more

btw that is a horrible post-fajr ungroomed picture of me

http://www.marifah.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=111&Itemid=53

Sacred Law Has Both a Form and a Reality

Praise be to Allāh Most High and peace be upon His chosen servants.

Know that the Sacred Law has both a form and a reality. The form of the Sacred Law entails the fulfillment of the rulings encompassed by it after having belief in Allāh Most High and His Messenger and in all that has come from Allāh Most High (i.e. as revelation and all that it requires). Faith (imān) co-existing with the nafs al-`amāra and its admixed disputation (munāzaha), licentiousness (ibāha), transgression (tughyān) and denial (inkār) is simply a form of faith. Likewise ritual prayer (salāh) and ritual fasting (sawm) with their prerequisites and integrals are similarly simply forms of ritual prayer and ritual fasting. In this vein follow the other rulings encompassed by the Sacred Law.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-4311.html

The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.

Our current education system was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modeled after the new factories of the industrial revolution. Public schools, set up to supply the factories with a skilled labor force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years. We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or 25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still reflects factory thinking�get your education now and get it efficiently, in classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.

Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development.

..

Bartkowski thinks religion can be good for kids for three reasons. First, religious networks provide social support to parents, he said, and this can improve their parenting skills. Children who are brought into such networks and hear parental messages reinforced by other adults may also �take more to heart the messages that they get in the home,� he said.

Secondly, the types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family, Bartkowski told LiveScience. These �could be very, very important in shaping how parents relate to their kids, and then how children develop in response,� he said.

Finally, religious organizations imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance, he said.

University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who was not involved in the study, agrees. At least for the most religious parents, �getting their kids into heaven is more important than getting their kids into Harvard,� Wilcox said.

But as for why religious organizations might provide more of a boost to family life than secular organizations designed to do the same thing, that�s still somewhat of a mystery, said Annette Mahoney, a psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, also not involved in the research. Mahoney wondered: �Is there anything about religion and spirituality that sets it apart?�

Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Go to work, come home. Go to work, come home. Go to work — and vanish without a trace.

Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.

…

The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it.

==

From an article about Honey in Islam:

Amazing Facts…About The Work of the Honeybee

1. The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the younger bees are taught by the more experienced ones.

–

More than 1,400 years ago Allah and His messenger sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam (peace be upon him), told us that honey can heal a variety of medicinal problems.

Allah says in the Qur’an, “And the lord inspired the bee, saying: Take your habitations in the mountains and in the trees and in what they erect. Then, eat of all fruits and follow the ways of your Lord made easy (for you)’. There comes forth from their bellies a drink of varying colour wherein is healing for men. Verily in this is indeed a sign for people who think.” [Qur'an 16:68-69]

The Prophet, sallallahu aleyhe wa sallam (peace be upon him), has also told us of the healing found within honey for a variety of medical problems, including stomach ailments. One hadeeth, reported by Bukhari, states that a man came to the Prophet , sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam (peace be upon him), because his brother had a stomach disorder. The Prophet sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam said “Let him drink honey.” The man returned a second time and again the Prophet , sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam (peace be upon him), responded again, “Let him drink honey.” The man returned again, and said “I have done that.” The Prophet sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam then responded, “Allah has said the truth, but your brother’s stomach has told a lie. Let him drink honey.” He drank it and was cured.

Tirmizi, Ibn Majah and Baihaqi also reported that the Prophet, sallallahu alaiyhi wa sallam (peace be upon him), said, “Make use of the two remedies: honey and the Qur’an.”

“Reading Scripture”

This really is a great example of what I am speaking of in my last post. We are being told about an illiterate old woman’s experience with the Quran.

Then she would return to the prayer-mat, lifting the Qur�an above her head, saying as though: O Book! You are above my understanding. My head is nothing more than a place whereupon you rest.

Having sat down not occupying the entire prayer-mat but a part of it, for to occupy the whole of the prayer-mat but a part of it, for to occupy the whole of the prayer-mat was to her an act of arrogance, she would open the book knowing only to keep the right side up, and to begin where she had left the previous day.

For a long time she would allow her eyes to rest on the two open pages before her. The letters in green ink from right to left, row beneath row, each shape mysteriously captivating, each dot below or above a letter an epitome of the entire scripture, each assembly of letters a group of dervishes raising their heads in zikr, each gap between two enigmatic shapes a leap from this world to the next, and each ending the advent of the Day of Resurrection.

She would thus see a thousand images in the procession of that script and would move from vision to vision.

From Hakkani blog

“Reuters reports that medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel. Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s. ‘Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.’ It isn’t known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns or not.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely stunning,” Lu said in an interview. “They made tilings that reflect mathematics that were so sophisticated that we didn’t figure it out until the last 20 or 30 years.”

Lyrics

I have dreamt of a place and time,where nobody gets annoyed,
But I must admit I�m not there yet but Something�s keeping me going

Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Open up o world and let me in,
then there�ll be a new life to begin

I have dreamt of an open world,
Borderless and wide
Where the people move from place to place
And nobody�s taking sides

Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Open up a world and let me in,
then there�ll be A new life to begin

I�ve been waiting for that moment
to arrive
All at once the palace of peace
will fill My eyes � how nice!

Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Maybe there�s a world that I�m still to find
Open up o world and let me in,
then there�ll be A new life to begin

I�ve been waiting for that moment
to arrive
All at once the wrongs of the world,
will be put right � how nice!

Let me point to the answer with an example drawn from my own experience.

I used to know, quite well, a leader of the radical ‘Islamic’ group, the Jama’at Islamiya, at the Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He grew a luxuriant beard, was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and spent his time preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a number of whom were actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style activism.

The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance, providence again brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed to recognise him. The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More astonishing still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned out to be an Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending to marry. I talked to him, and it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money. What was extraordinary was that his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression on him – he was once again the same distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion to ‘radical Islam’.

This phenomenon, which we might label ‘salafi burnout’, is a recognised feature of many modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one’s early twenties, loses steam some seven to ten years later. Prison and torture – the frequent lot of the Islamic radical – may serve to prolong commitment, but ultimately, a majority of these neo-Muslims relapse, seemingly no better or worse for their experience in the cult-like universe of the salafi mindset.

This ephemerality of extremist activism should be as suspicious as its content. Authentic Muslim faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile; as the Qur’an says, its root is meant to be ‘set firm’. One has to conclude that of the two trees depicted in the Quranic image, salafi extremism resembles the second rather than the first. After all, the Sahaba were not known for a transient commitment: their devotion and piety remained incomparably pure until they died.

What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism? One does not have to subscribe to determinist social theories to realise the importance of the almost universal condition of insecurity which Muslim societies are now experiencing. The Islamic world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. For instance, only thirty-five years ago the capital of Saudi Arabia was a cluster of mud huts, as it had been for thousands of years. Today’s Riyadh is a hi-tech megacity of glass towers, Coke machines, and gliding Cadillacs. This is an extreme case, but to some extent the dislocations of modernity are common to every Muslim society, excepting, perhaps, a handful of the most remote tribal peoples.

Such a transition period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing to remain constant, makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam. And because they are being propelled into it by this psychic sense of insecurity, rather than by the more normal processes of conversion and faith, they lack some of the natural religious virtues, which are acquired by contact with a continuous tradition, and can never be learnt from a book.

My new favorite band? Don’t know yet, ordered all CDs though here:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/debu3

Lyrics:

The soul and love became united,
Then into this realm they both came,
Together they’re always undivided,
Joined forever their source the same.

After the two were mingled and blended,
In a mixing that took place in such a way,
That all their boundaries were transcended,
Ever since then together they stay.

And so it was in this amazing manner,
That love and the soul were forever blended,
Joined by the One Who is the best Planner,
Both vanish in this mixture so splendid.

From the very strength of this blended state,
The soul with love has become united,
Which is the essence and which is the trait,
I don’t see how this could be decided.

Maybe it’s love that’s become the essence,
While it’s attribute may be the soul,
Not knowing which has become the quintessence,
I can?t say which one plays which role.

I can’t really say if it’s this way or that,
I just don’t know what it is in the end,
There’s no other way I can’t be exact,
This mixture is such a wonderful blend.

The result of this process was awesome indeed,
Both love and the soul forever connected,
The two of them speak and the words each one heeds,
Mingled and blended together protected.

The basis of love is said to be fire,
While the soul is derived from the wind,
The wind itself it ignites this fire,
And the fire then consumes the wind again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/arts/20yusuf.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=login

[snippet]

During his onstage interview with KCRW�s music director, Nic Harcourt � to be broadcast and webcast at 2:15 p.m. Thursday at www.kcrw.org � Mr. Islam revealed that his return to pop might have happened sooner. In 2004, he was turned away when he tried to enter the United States because his name was on the no-fly list created to fight terrorism. With that London-to-Washington trip, Mr. Islam said on Tuesday, he was headed for Nashville, where he had booked recording sessions and musicians. The deportation led to official protests from the foreign office of Great Britain, where Mr. Islam is a citizen and has spoken repeatedly against terrorism. He was allowed into the United States this time without incident. Visiting the United States now, he said onstage, was, �One small step for a man, one giant step for common sense.� One of his new songs, �Maybe There�s a World,� envisions, �an open world, borderless and wide/Where the people move from place to place and nobody�s taking sides.�

Mr. Stevens didn�t touch a guitar for more than 20 years, he said onstage, �to stay out of trouble more than anything.� But when he picked one up a little over two years ago, he said, �My fingers just felt at home.� The 2004 tsunami inspired him to write a song, �Indian Ocean,� for a charity album; it�s a long, detailed narrative about an English family on an island holiday that takes in an orphan after the tsunami. He performed it on Tuesday night, along with another recent topical song, �Little Ones,� set to an old Celtic melody, with lyrics that mourn children killed in war and promise they�ll go to heaven.

After nearly three decades, Mr. Islam has stepped back into a sound that Cat Stevens�s old fans will find familiar. His voice is still gentle and kindly, and his stage presence is unassuming, almost humble. He still builds songs around syncopated guitar and piano vamps, like the near-calypso of �Midday (Avoid City After Dark),� and uses eccentric structures that give his songs a subtle lift.

[snippet]

Vote using your email address and then check your email for instructions. This blog is listed as “Mind, Body, Soul” If you think I deserve to win something vote for me If not, well, I hope I can earn some better scores next year

I have some interesting topics to finish and post.. just bear with me I’m building a new computer tonight for myself.

Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

By Dinesh D�Souza

RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. – In recent months, a spate of atheist books have
argued that religion represents, as �End of Faith� author Sam Harris puts
it, �the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.�

Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. �The Crusades
slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the
torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did
bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries.�

In his bestseller �The God Delusion,� Richard Dawkins contends that most of
the world�s recent conflicts – in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in
Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka – show the vitality
of religion�s murderous impulse.

The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed
to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The
best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials.
How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually,
fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail
against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years
ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be
about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in
jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower
at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls
produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of
creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph
Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no
Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants
murdered more than 100 million people.

Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as �religious wars� were
not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to
territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called
religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were
Catholics? Hardly.

The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its
core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination
and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may
advance theological claims – �God gave us this land� and so forth – but the
conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious
motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in
Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

Yet today�s atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr.
Harris�s analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. �While the motivations of
the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious,� he informs us, �they are
Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of
life and death.� In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as
combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious
motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be
some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.

Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and
atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that
Stalinism and Maoism were in reality �little more than a political
religion.� As for Nazism, �while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed
itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from
medieval Christianity.� Indeed, �The holocaust marked the culmination of
� two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews.�

One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins�s work. Don�t be fooled by this
rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism
was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity
did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology,
advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a �culmination� of
2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent
sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes
committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the
greater crimes committed in their name.

Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some
of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the
name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to
self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that
condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of
Jesus provide no support for – indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to – the
historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.

Atheist hubris

The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic
ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest
techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create
a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people – the Jews, the
landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped – have to be eliminated in order
to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their
apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm
the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky�s dictum, �If God is not, everything is
permitted.�

Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is
that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not
managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism
in the past few decades.

It�s time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief
has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not
religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

* Dinesh D�Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new
book, �The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for
9/11,� will be published in January.

SOURCE: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html

Provided by Tahir Hakkani – Sheykh Abdul Kerim of the Naksibendi Hakkani tarikat speaks about controlling egoistic desires and working on ourselves first before judging others. He explains that we must also associate ourselves with the righteous in order to prepare for the arrival of Mehdi aleyhis selam.

–

Sheykh speaks about how all the religions are dividing into those who are holding truth and will stand with Jesus (Alayhewassalam) and those who are against it.

Found via SufiNews

The Three Pillars of Sufism: Humility, Charity, Truth

Discourse: OSHO – Times of India – India
Saturday, August 5, 2006

The Qur’an says three basic qualities have to be in the heart of the seeker. The first is khushu or humility. The second is karamat or charity, and what this means is sharing, to experience the joy of giving. And the third is sijd or truthfulness, which means authenticity. That is, recognising that which you are. These are the three pillars of Sufism.

Humility does not mean the ordinary so-called humbleness. The humble person is not egoless. He carries a new kind of ego, of being humble. He thinks he is humble, �Nobody is as humble as I am�. He goes on comparing. The ego has not changed, the ego has only taken a new posture, more subtle. First the ego was very gross.

That’s when you go on bragging about your money. One day you renounce all your money and then you start bragging that you have renounced all. This is subtle, but the bragging continues. The claim was for somebody, now it is for nobody.

The claim is still there. Now it has taken a subtle form. Humility, khushu, means a man who has understood all the ways of the ego. And by understanding all the ways of the ego, the ego has disappeared.

This is one of the most essential qualities for those who want to move towards godliness � because if you are too much you will not be moving. You have to be liquid, you have to melt; you cannot remain frozen in your ego.

The second is charity, karamat. Charity does not mean that you give and you feel very good that you have given, that you give and you oblige the person to whom you have given. Then it is not karamat; then it is not charity.

Charity is when you give and you feel obliged that the other has taken it; when you give with no idea that you are obliging anybody in any way; when you give because you have too much. It is not that the other needs.

Charity is when you give out of your abundance. The flower has blossomed and the words spread the fragrance to the winds � what else can the flower do? The lamp has been lit and it shares its light, it spreads its light. The cloud is full of water and it showers � what else can it do?

The third is truthfulness. It does not mean saying the truth, it means being the truth. Saying is only half-way; being is the true thing.

You can say truth a few times when it doesn’t harm you � that’s what people go on doing. When truth is not going to harm them they become truthful. And if sometimes truth is going to harm others they persist in being very truthful.

But when the truth is not going to help you then you drop it, then it is no more meaningful. That’s why people say “Honesty is the best policy”. Policy? The very word is dishonest.

Truth cannot be a policy and honesty cannot be a policy. They can only be your very heart � not policies. Policies can be used and dropped. Policies are political. When honesty pays, you are honest � that’s what it means.

When it does not pay, you become dishonest. You have no relationship with honesty. You use it. Sijd means to be truthful, to be true. It is not only a question of policy.

Whatsoever happens, whatsoever the result, not thinking of the result but just to be true, to risk all for truth � that’s what sijd is. It is to risk everything for truth � because if truth is saved, all is saved, and if truth is lost, all is lost.

From HAhmed, MujahadeenRyder

A News report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emEK7t2m35Q&NR

The actual video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emEK7t2m35Q&NR

From al-Andalus to Khurasan
Documents from the Medieval Muslim World
Edited by Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Lennart Sundelin, Sof�a Torallas Tovar and Amalia Zome�o

Description from Publisher:

As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the survival of documents and archives as with their accessibility.
A rich documentary legacy survives, but because of its inaccessibility and unfamiliarity to all but the most specialised scholars in the field, it has remained sadly underutilised. This volume contributes to the redressing of that problem. It collects papers given at the conference “Documents and the History of the Early Islamic Mediterranean World,” including editions of unpublished documents and historical studies, which make use of documentary evidence from al-Andalus, Sicily, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Khurasan.

Till God Inherits the Earth
Islamic Pious Endowments in al-Andalus (9-15th Centuries)
Alejandro Garc�a Sanju�n

Description from Publisher:

Till God Inherits the Earth deals with the origins and evolution of the Islamic institution of pious endowments in al-Andalus, analysing its juridical basis and its social-economic role.
Evidence is primarly drawn from Andalusi Maliki jurisprudence and from narrative and biographical traditional sources as well.
Separate chapters examine private and public donations and special importance is given to the analysis of the public goals of the institution, namely, charitative, religious (mosques, rabitas), educational and for the jihad. The book is completed with several appendices including complementary information, translations of Arabic texts and figures.
This study provides us with a complete knowledge of several and important issues such as the relevance of Islamic jurisprudence as an historical source, the structure of economic property, the idea of charity, the Islamic concept of general or common interest and the social and juridical role of men of religion.

What is funny about certain forms of idealists is that they don’t even know they are idealists. Atheists such as these believe in an idealic vision where the weak are simply eliminated by the virtue of human goodness.

It’s not happening:

Two hundred years after the abolition of the slave trade by the UK Parliament in 1807, there are more slaves in the world than ever before; some estimate as many as 27 million.* It is easier and cheaper to buy and sell humans today than it was at the height of the transatlantic slave trade; in the 1800s, slaves were precious commodities, now they can be traded for just a few British pounds. Slavery may be forgotten, but it is not yet gone.

TurbanTip to Seekers Digest:

OpenDemocracy – Slavery in the 21st Century
March 2007 marks the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade. openDemocracy presents the first of a series of five photo-essays documenting contemporary forms of slavery around the world.

Great article at SunniSister by Umm Zaid on Talking out of Turn.� If you want a hint of where part 2 of criticising Traditionalism goes, you should read this.

The problem is that we often forget we don�t know. We are so used to this culture of assumptions and innuendos, of half-truths passed along as incontrovertible facts, that we forget our taqwa, however temporarily, and begin speculating on things that we have no knowledge about and that are best left to Allah and those immediately concerned

I remember being on�the ICNA YM list where a link was sent out to Chenyan Mujahids who were performing the zikr of the type described below.��

They�mocked them, their zikr, and�made accusations of bidaat and shirk�(as most of them are trained to do).� These were men, who as described below, continued their rememberance of Allah while Russian bombers flew overhead.� They knew where their protection came from.

I have since heard from my Sheykh, who had and has relationships with the Chechens, that nearly all of those men in that video died as a mujahids in the battle.�

Here is the article (emphasis mine):

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/world/europe/24grozny.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Religion Returns to Chechnya
The New York Times
GROZNY, Russia � Three circles of barefoot men, one ring inside another, sway to the cadence of chant.

Grozny is the capital of Chechnya, where secessionism has been rife.
The men stamp in time as they sway, and grunt from the abdomen and throat, filling the room with a primal sound. One voice rises over the rest, singing variants of the names of God.

The men stop, face right and walk counterclockwise, slowly at first, then fast. As they gain speed they begin to hop on their outside feet and draw closer. The three circles merge into a spinning ball.

The ball stops. It opens back up. The stamping resumes, softly at first, then louder. Many of the men are entranced. The air around them hums. The wooden floor shakes. The men turn left and accelerate the other way.

This is a zikr, the mystical Sufi dance of the Caucasus and a ritual near the center of Chechen Islam.

Here inside Chechnya, where Russia has spent six years trying to contain the second Chechen war since the Soviet Union collapsed, traditional forms of religious expression are returning to public life. It is a revival laden with meaning, and with implications that are unclear.

The Kremlin has worried for generations about Islam’s influence in the Caucasus, long attacking local Sufi traditions and, in the 1990′s, attacking the role of small numbers of foreign Wahhabis, proponents of an austere Arabian interpretation of Islam whom Moscow often accuses of encouraging terrorist attacks.

But Chechnya’s Sufi brotherhoods have never been vanquished � not by repression, bans or exile by the czars or Stalin, and not by the Kremlin of late.

Now they are reclaiming a place in public life. What makes the resurgence so unusual is that Sufi practices have become an element of policy for pro-Russian Chechens. Zikr ceremonies are embraced by the kadyrovsky, the Kremlin-backed Chechen force that is assuming much of the administration of this shattered land.

Post-Soviet Russia tried to make zikr celebrations a symbol of Chechen aggression, portraying zikr as the dance and trance of the rebels, the ritual of the untamed. Now zikr is performed by the men the Kremlin is counting on to keep Chechnya in check.

The occasion for ceremony on this day was the blessing of the foundation of a mosque that will be named for Akhmad Kadyrov, the Russian-backed Chechen president who was assassinated in 2004.

The mosque, whose foundation rests on the grounds of the former headquarters of the Communist Party’s regional committee, is meant to replace older associations. Not only is it an implicit rebuke of Communism, it is situated beside the ruins of another, much smaller mosque that was being constructed by the separatists in the 1990′s.

Its scale and grandeur are intended as public statement. At a cost of $20 million, it will be a sprawling complex, with room for a religious school and a residence for the mufti, said Amradin Adilgeriyev, an adviser to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin premier and son of the slain president.

The mosque will hold 10,000 worshipers, making it the largest in the republic. Its minarets will rise 179 feet in the air. It will speak not just of faith, but of power.

And so on this day the men dance. And dance. Tassels on their skullcaps bounce and swing. Sweat darkens their shirts. They are perhaps 90 in men in all, mostly young. They look strong. But zikr is demanding. As some of them tire, they step aside. Others take their place.

Their stamping can be heard two blocks away.

The entrance to the construction site is controlled by gunmen who make sure that none of the separatists enters with a bomb. Other young men boil brick-sized chunks of beef in caldrons of garlic broth, stirring the meat with a wooden slab.

Zikr has several forms. This form traces its origins to Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, a shepherd who traveled the Middle East in the 19th century, then returned to Chechnya and found converts to Sufism. Initially his followers pledged peace, but in time many joined the resistance to Russia, and their leader was exiled. They fought on, becoming a reservoir of Chechen traditionalism and rebellious spirit.

In 1991, when Chechnya declared independence from Russia, the Kunta-Haji brotherhoods, long underground, fought again. Sebastian Smith, who covered the Chechen wars and wrote “Allah’s Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus,” noted that they became a source of rebel resolve.

At one zikr ceremony he observed, the men were dancing, he wrote, until a Russian bomber screamed low overhead, buzzing the village. Mr. Smith watched their reaction. “No one even looks up,” he wrote. “The whooping grows louder.”

The Sufis resisted the influx of Wahhabis who came to fight Russia beside them, but whose version of Islam aligned more closely with that of the Afghan Taliban.

Mr. Kadyrov said in an interview that he hoped to help restore Chechen Sufi traditions as part of an effort to preserve Chechen culture. He has reopened the roads to Ertan, a village in the mountains, where Kunta-Haji Kishiyev’s mother is buried. Her grave is a shrine and a place for pilgrimages, which for years were not made. This spring the roads to Ertan are crowded with walkers, who visit the grave to circle it and pray.

Still, efforts to incorporate Sufi brotherhoods into a government closely identified with the Kremlin contain contradictions. Some see manipulation on Mr. Kadyrov’s part, noting that Chechen self-identity has never been suppressed, even by some of the most repressive forces the world has ever known.

Whether Mr. Kadyrov can control the forces he taps into is unknown. The zikrists dance on this day with state approval. But for whom?

“Kadyrov wants to show that he is a supporter of Chechen traditional Islam,” said Aslan Doukaev, a native of Chechnya who is director of the North Caucasus service of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. “But Sufis always wanted Chechen independence, and that signal is being sent here too.”

�

Sister Umm Zaid has a nice piece about tariqa, shaikh’s, bayat, and the potential pride of the murid.�

Please take a look here:

Another teacher and I discussed this once, and he said, �Remember, the distance from a murid to maridh is very short.� In other words, to be a murid is not all that different from being maridh, a sick person in need of treatment, a patient. And who takes pride in illness?

So students should probably not look upon their bay�ah with pride, for pride is a sickness of the heart. Nor should they brag about it, for riya�, or showing off, is a sickness of the heart. Sheykh Abd al Khaliq al Shabrawi says, in reference to riya�, �As for the seeker of the path to the Real, he must strive to lower his rank in the hearts of others.�

UZ provides a�good link in there to our�Master,�Shaikh Abd al Qadir Jilani (rad):

Your asceticism [zuhd] is part of your facade. Your religion [din] is part of your facade. Inwardly, you are a mess. It is like whitewash on the water closet, i.e. the toilet, or a lock on the garbage can. Since this is how you are, Satan has set up camp in your heart and made it a place for him to live in.

*update: please take note�that my use of specific ayats is to ‘cater’ to the argument parameters set forth by those I am discussing with.� I am arguing for the permissibility of things established in Islamic Law.� As far as the applicability, this is a secondary concern and not one that is part of the discourse.

It is truly amazing the direction this conversation has taken.�

Haroon has responded at Avari/Nameh�to the conversation with eteraz.�

I’m not a writer per se, and�I don’t plan on selling any books in my lifetime.� With this post I respond now to another accomplished writer whose command of that very same language far outstrips mine.� On the other hand, I like to think my comments are grounded in rationality, and I adore bullet style points and responses.� It appeals to my computer-science trained brain.

So that is how I will approach this.

�Thabet led me to a fierce� if somewhat hollow assault on Eteraz by Yursil, of Mind, Body, Soul; be sure to read the comments section for one especially brutal note. However, Eteraz is not one to take any of this bending over — he slams back, both here and then here, making it clear that he wasn’t taken too seriously by Yursil, to Yursil’s disadvantage. (Then Eteraz receives his response; I am upset that Yursil has to qualify what Muslims can tolerate, vis-a-vis the Divine, as the specific respect exclusive, by implication if not deduction, of the traditionalist.)

I would recommend that Haroon first catch up as to what occurred here.� My post responded to a direct assault on traditional Islam.�

�I-S-L-A-M.

The beliefs, laws, rules, guidelines of Islam.� My faith.��Excuse me for being passionate about it.

Haroon’s�boxing-style commentary of the discussion is quite entertaining, but fairly inaccurate. Several questions have been left unanswered by eteraz, and his last comments on my previous post speak volumes as to where the conversation ended.

�While he might have his reasons to accuse Eteraz of practicing in, or agreeing to, an imperfect or erroneous Islam (by and large according to his traditionalist model), the debate is not, and has never been, about who is the good Muslim and who is going to heaven and when and after how long in what level of hellfire.

In the first part Haroon speaks of determining a perfect or erroneous Islam, and in the next we are speaking of good or bad Muslims.� This is a disingenuous transition for Haroon, as the topic, since Eteraz decided to attack traditional Islam in the post-that-started-it-all-for-me, has been just that:

Is my ‘Islam’ barbaric, backwards and deserving such denigration?

What is the correct ‘Islam’, the ‘progressive’ understanding or the ‘traditional’ one?

The topic was not whether I am a better Muslim, personally, than Eteraz.�

The difference (that Haroon chooses to ignore) is that Eteraz presents his personal ideals as the true Islam or at least truer than what he considers ‘traditional Islam’.� In his mind,�eteraz’s�’Islam’ far outweighs us traditional barbarians in�social justice and moral legitimacy.�

Of course, his gauge for this judgement�is Western humanistic�morality.

Frankly, this seems more of a support-your-blog-buddy type post than I would have expected from Haroon.�

Not being aware of the initial attack on traditionalism, and then trying to redefine the debate to one that Haroon is more comfortable with (traditionalists scholars take on history) is quite alarming.�

Where did Eteraz bring up these points?� Why didn’t he?� Because it wasn’t relevant, I wasn’t discussing a utopian society of some time past.�

I understand Haroon’s criticism of ‘traditionalism’ in terms of historical idealism, heck I may agree with him.�� But what does that have to do�with Aqidah, Fiqh,�Adab and our basic fundamental understanding of the Quran?

�[In his responses, Eteraz is brilliant: He points out that traditional Islam had its strengths, but also its weaknesses, and globalization and modernization are sufficient to force us to change our paradigms.]

Ego-stroking.� We know from previous praise where Haroon stands on Eteraz.� He may wish to reconsider this opinion.�

Honestly Haroon, I appreciate your command of history and the English language, but history as irrelevant to this conversation.�

This, to me,�is about belief, sacredness, and deviation.� Not what occurred a 100 years ago or 200 years ago, or even�500 years ago.� This is about what occurred 1400 years ago when the Prophet Muhummad (S) received a Divine Message from God.��

This is the age old�debate between Muslims who have encountered other civilizations, other ideas they deem superior to their own Tawheed-based philosophy.� Is the Quran is a complete metaphor, designed for the uneducated masses… �which a new, ‘enlightened intellectual elite’ can rise above or see through?�

�Islam is from God; the Qur’an is from God; the Sunnah is from God through His Prophet, peace be upon him, and the course of the Prophet’s mission was of course divinely intended. But how do we draw the lines between where context begins and immanence ends? What is reason and what is revelation? What makes the Qur’an God’s word? By which I mean — what type of speech is God’s speech, if God’s speech is being delivered in a language developed by humans over centuries? (I don’t mean to be impious, and I don’t want to be taken impiously. I want to point out the fuzziness of our boundaries.)

Haroon gets a bit more on topic here.�

Haroon may have fuzzy boundaries, but he probably would not be surprised by the fact that I am not fuzzy on these subjects at all.� The Quran is God’s speech.� It is delivered in a language that He declared:

Surely We have revealed it– an Arabic Quran– that you may understand.” Surah Yusuf

Can we say that this�verse is�’fuzzy’?� Not to me. It means the Almighty gave us the Quran in Arabic at that time and place for a purpose.

A few of the issues at hand.

“Marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one.” (4:3)

When condemning polygamy, does Haroon join Eteraz?� Can we blame this on a ‘fuzzy’ understanding of Arabic, or is there more to it?� This�verse directly deals with polygamy.�

Etereaz complains that it is permitted here and here.. Why is there even a doubt as to whether it is permitted in his mind?�

“And who guard their�private-parts – Save from their wives or the (slaves) that their right hands possess.”� (23:5-6)

The same, except the topic is slavery.� Here we are shown we can expose ourselves to wives and the slaves our right hand posses.� Is there doubt to this?� Etereaz condemns that it is permitted here and here..�� I could understand doubts by a lack of knowledge, but there is no doubt here. This is condemnation.

Allah enjoins you about [the share of inheritance of] your children: A male’s share shall equal that of two females — in case there are only daughters, more than two shall have two-thirds of what has been left behind…. (4:11)

Woman’s inheritance,�a condemnation in his original post here.

…�party liable is mentally deficient, or weak, or unable Himself to dictate, Let his guardian dictate faithfully, and get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses… (2:282).

Eteraz complains about the witness of a woman being (according to the traditional understanding, in certain cases) less than a man. The Quran is pretty clear on this above.� Do we think time and such have made the Quran less valuable or less clear?�

Eteraz already essentially�tosses out hadith for determining anything of substance, so these are direct QURANIC ayats.� What is the response?�� Nothing.� Sidetracking issues.

There�is an outstanding�question of what�Eteraz considers such verses to�mean.� If he ignores them, then we might as well�be speaking to the atheist Eteraz that once was.� When we don’t have a common ground on even a sacred text we have a problem with terminology, “Muslim” is being misused.

Let’s put aside my original responses on FGM not existing within traditional Islam, Islam providing a means out of slavery (and the West’s debt-slavery replacement program), and finally that the West also puts different norms for female and male dress.�

When he criticizes these things, he is in my opinion, directly criticizing God’s word. � Does Haroon see this differently?� Are we sure this is the man we want to be defending?

�Joking or not, should Islam be morphed into something that allows us to casually say:

“There are times when I don�t believe in God (it�s an organic relationship).”

Should the Almighty be�treated with such reckless abandon that�His words are�actually mocked and that�His name is even on the same line as a ‘pimp’?� Should�the rewards of Paradise be mocked and rejected, while�we�stay silent?��Is this the man/Islam that Haroon endorses?

Conclusions to these and other questions, for a believing Muslim should be clear.�

I recommend Haroon re-read the�dialogue with some more context.�

And while I love reading his excellent�prose (Allah has�Blessed�Haroon, and he should be grateful) I�hope he manages to stay on topic.

Here is the post again, Haroon.� Brilliant.

�

Celebration of Maulid at Zaytuna, recordings available at hahmed.com.

Featuring :
Sheykh Hamza Yusuf
Imam Zaid Shakir

�

The country’s first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues.

For instance, Muslims wash before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness.

Likewise, the faithful face Mecca. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity.

And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.

Instead, the homogenisation of Islam’s holiest sites was allowed to accelerate into a demolition campaign that now threatens the birthplace of the Prophet itself. The site survived the early reign of Ibn Saud 50 years ago when the architect for the planned library persuaded the absolute ruler to allow him to preserve the remains under the new structure. Saudi authorities now plan to “update” the site with a car park that would mean concreting over the remains.

And yes, as I said to the media, as I said to this person, to this lady reporter, “Why are you running after me? There are so many people in the world. There are so many Muslims organizations.” She said, “I am making a story about Sufism. I am researching about Sufism.” I said, “I am just a simple man, I have a couple of people around. There are so many other ones, big ones.” She said, “I think you are interesting.” I said, “No. I think you are already trying somewhere, someway, somehow to put that I am a bad guy. You can try your best but you are not going to be able to do that. You are just going to lie about it.”

Realm of Truth has an excellent post on Muslim Unity

Some people get a lot of heat for “promoting fitnah” when they respond to claims that Salafis make. Wait a minute, accusing ‘Ulema of promoting bid’a, shirk, or kufr isn’t causing fitnah, but responding to these claims is ‘rendering Muslim unity null and void.’ How do people expect the various groups in the Ummah to unite when one group and one group alone is accusing the vast majority of the Ummah of being deviant in its aqeedah, fiqh, and tasawwuf? Come on, lets be brutally honest, there is only one group today that is promoting takfeer, accusing the ‘Ulema of deficiencies, and going around harassing people. Why can’t people simply admit this point? Why are those people who respond to such claims accused of ‘riling up fitnah’ when in reality, they are trying to demote it? How do you expect the Ummah to unite when people like this exist? Please give an honest answer.

(P.S. I love the Voltron)

�

link

To the Editor:

I am one of the subjects of your article “Leaving Stony Brook to Follow a Sheik” (April 9). You did not adequately tell my side of the story.

Not mentioned was the important fact that because of my religious beliefs I was thrown out of the house by my parents and my life was made miserable. My right to freedom of religion and worship was violated.

I am an American. I am not living in Afghanistan. Far from leaving my family, I continually went back to see them to make amends at the behest of the shaykh, but to no avail.

My life has improved holistically since I became a member of this Sufi order. It taught me tolerance, patience and humility. Your article did not mention any of this.

Erdem Kahyaoglu
Sidney Center, N.Y.

�

To the Editor:

“Leaving Stony Brook to Follow a Sheik” suggests that three young men dropped out of school to follow a cult leader. But two of them graduated from Stony Brook University, and they all moved on with their lives as responsible adults.

Muslims today are vulnerable targets for projections of Americans’ unidentified anxieties. These young men are under intense pressure to return to the consensus reality of parents, teachers, media and so on, and may legitimately feel that rather than having joined a mind-control cult, they are trying to leave one.

Husnu Ali Price
Sidney Center, N.Y.
The writer is a member of the Osmanli Naks-i’bendi Hakkani order.