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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

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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 Shaykh, 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.”

 

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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. Sheikh 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.

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*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.

http://www.hahmed.com/blog/2006/04/29/mawlid-celebration-the-zaytuna-institute/

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

Featuring :
Shaykh 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.

The Independent: Shame of the House of Saud: Shadows over Mecca
Previously unseen photographs reveal how religious zealots obsessed with idolatory have colluded with developers to destroy Islam’s diverse heritage. By Daniel Howden

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.