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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
