Naksibendi’s are often criticized for strong beliefs of Imam Mahdi’s (AS) imminent coming. This is an adjusted version my comments on the topic of the latter in a conversation.

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My beliefs (if I can call them my own) are simply in line with basic Islam. A reminder for us would be that nearly all Sunni Shaykhs have referenced this day and age as the time immediately before Imam Mahdi (AS), a time of trials. In the same manner, it was sunnah to explain and describe things in this way. So much so that even the Sahabi who lived over 1400 years ago would expect Qiyamat, Imam Mahdi (AS), and the Dajjal as very imminent things.

Yet, is this yielding to a philosophy of life based on prophecy of events and people to come, defeatist in the present?

I assert that holding this religious position is not defeatist but a necessary factor in refocusing our efforts inward, which yields better outwards results (as a natural consequence) in the most clean and organic manner.

The way of Islam is that even if you know that Qiyamat is tomorrow, you are still expected to plant your tree, coming from a Hadith of the Holy Prophet (S).

However, by interpreting this tradition as belief that valuable knowledge of future spiritual realities is to be *ignored* in favor of any and all practical work would be a sad mistake. This is because the fundamental factor here is change of attitude, of perception. Modification of attitudes allows me to now focus on planting my tree, in my garden, but with the knowledge that it may or may not give fruit and give benefit for others tomorrow. We plant with hope.

The lesson to take here is not to act in ignorance of spiritual knowledge, but rather, to build your life in a way of Islam, and allow it to grow. Since then, the community changes, because you are a part of that community. The ‘government’ itself changes, because the people have changed, and Allah changed the conditions for such a people.

The way of Ahl ul sunnah leaves ‘big picture’, hard-turn, forceful changes of societies for the Awliya to manage and direct, and lets us focus on establishing ourselves as Muslim servants within an Islamic community in the best manner possible. One that allows us to keep our faith and live simply.

This approach directly contrasts with the example of secularists and their ‘activist reform’ that directly target political institutions and various ’causes of the day’ and sucks dry the spiritual progress of the activist individual in bitter arguments. Delusion upon layer of delusion piles on the individual as they believe they are changing society for the better, when they end up compromising principle after principle personally.

Sadly, I don’t think any of us are prepared to put aside our nafs and be able to dictate to each other how entire governments need to be run, especially when we can’t figure out how to run our own households.

Believing in Imam Mahdi (AS) and his imminent arrival is hardly a reason to stop working on improving our personal situation. If anything, it is more of a reason to focus on improving our personal relationship to our faith, which yields the best results for those around us in a very practical manner.

The trials of Imam Mahdi’s (AS) time will be huge, in fact, numerous Muslims won’t even be properly able to identify him due to their own personal weaknesses of faith. Shouldn’t that concern us? Working on building that faith for the above reason, if not our own ‘personal’ Day-of-Judgement (death), gives us renewed energy to get us thinking about our own faith, its strength, its weaknesses.

Finally, while a faith in the future ‘Utopian ideal’ focuses us on personal development it is also a reason to let us abandon imposing our various socio-political-economic viewpoints on other people. It allows us to concern ourselves -with- ourselves and in that way be helpful to others.

Worry about governments is compost heap for our time and energy. Governments have very little imposing factors on real Islamic communities, especially rural ones living lives of simple Islam. This is really regardless of where in the world we decide to settle.

As the Prophet (S) said in Sahih Bukhari:

“Allah’s Apostle said, “There will come a time when the best property of a Muslim will be sheep which he will take to the tops of mountains and the places of rainfall so as to flee with his religion from the afflictions. ”

When will we decide that things will be bad enough to take a little bit of that holy advice?

Sufi Mawlid in Urdu by Sabri Brothers. Pakistan Sufism

English Translation written in the video.

Yavuz Sultan Selim had sent a military expedition to Egypt as part of his campaign to unite all Muslim lands under one flag. Along the way, he allowed his army to rest in very large fruit garden. But before continuing on the journey, the sultan had all of his soldiers’ bags checked to see if there were any fruit inside. Seeing that no soldier took a fruit, Sultan Selim raised his hand up toward the sky and said, ” O Allah, endless praise to You. Thank You for giving me an army that does not consume haram. Had there been a single soldier that ate a fruit without permission from its owner I was going to turn back from the expedition.” And he continued to praise and thank Allah…

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Osmanlı orsusunun, İslam’ı tek bir bayrak altında toplamak gayesi ile Mısır seferine giderken Gebze yakınlarındaki bağlık-bahçelik bir arazide mola verdiğinde Yavuz Sultan Selim’in bütün askerlerin heybelerini arattığını ve hiçbirinde meyve cinsinden birşey çıkmaması üzerine ellerini semaya açarak; ‘Allah’ım, sonsuz şükürler olsun ki bana haram yemeyen bir ordu lütfettin. Eğer askerimin içinde bir tek kişi sahibinden izinsiz bir meyve yeseydi ve ben bunu haber alsaydım Mısır seferinden vazgeçerdim! diyerek Rabbine sonsuz hamd’ü senalarda bulunduğunu…

Here is a video of a short but powerful speech given by Sheikh Maulana at the “Avrupa Milli Gorus Teskilati” convention fourteen years ago. In the video you can see the former prime minister of Turkey and then head of the Islamic oriented Refah Party, Necmettin Erbakan; the mayor of Istanbul and now the current prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Refah Party parliamentarian who later was living in exile from Turkey for many years, Sevki Yilmaz.

The video has english subtitles:

“Haramayn” is the word used in Ottoman Manuscripts to refer to Mecca and Medina; it means “the two harams-sanctuaries.” Mecca is a sanctuary because of the Ka’ba, and Medina was declared a sanctuary after the Prophet’s emigration to this city. The Ottomans referred to Jerusalem, which was the first direction for prayer (qibla), as “the third of the Haramayn.”

The Ottomans were emotionally connected with these two holy cities and this connection was reflected in their national traditions and international policies. Starting from the time of Sultan Celebi Mehmed, every year a caravan of royal gifts (Surre Alayi) was sent to the holy lands as a sign of respect. Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror demanded that the Mamluks renovate the conduits that carried water to the Hijaz, or that they leave the renovation to the Ottomans. The Mamluks’ refusal to do this brought the two countries to the brink of war.

Following the conquest of Egypt by Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim) in 1517, the governor of Mecca sent an envoy to deliver the keys of the city to the Sultan and expressed his allegiance on July 12, 1517; it is from this date that the Ottoman rule over the holy lands, a rule lasting for four centuries, started. Selim I sent the envoy back with a caravan of two hundred thousand gold coins and a great quantity of foodstuffs.

Selim I attended the Friday prayer in the Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) of Aleppo after defeating the Mamluks in Marj Dabiq. The imam proclaimed the sultan to be “Ruler of the Haramayn” while delivering the Friday sermon given in the presence of Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawaqqil. Selim I correct the imam saying that he was the “Servant of the Haramayn”. This gives an idea about the respect the Ottomans felt towards the region in comparison to the Mamluks, who had adopted the title “Protector of the Haramayn”.

Selim I is quoted as having said, “We are a nation who has sacrificed our lives for the unity of Muslims” For centuries, the Ottomans were a unique power that protected the Islamic world from outside attacks; a fact that has strengthened the allegiance of Muslims to Istanbul until the time when the Great Ottoman State (Devlet-i Aliye) collapsed. Halil Inalcik reports the following events in his “The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600: In 1517, while Selim I was in Cairo, the Protuguese fleet entered the Red Sea to attack Mecca. The governor of Mecca was about to leave the city when the people of Hijaz asked for help and protection from the Ottoman admiral Selim Reis. The port of Jeddah was successfully defended against the Portuguese.

The Ottomans already had a fleet in the Mediterranean; Selim I ordered that another fleet be built in the Suez to ensure Ottoman rule over the Red Sea and the protection of the Haramayn, which was further strengthened after Aden and Yemen were annexed.

In the sixteenth century, the Muslim rulers of Sumatra and India demanded support from the Ottomans against the Portuguese , and in their letters they addressed the sultan as the “protector of Islam”. Turkish khanates to the north of the Black Sea complained to the Ottomans about the Russian obstruction of their pilgrimage route to Mecca through the Crimea. The Ottomans launched a campaign to the Volga basin to establish security for the pilgrims.

Excerpted from the “Yildiz Albums of Sultan Abdul Hamid II Mecca-Medina”

Friday, June 20, 2008

Mathematicians Kemal Karaosmanoğlu and Süleyman Metin Yılmaz have developed a database software program of Ottoman classical music. Called Mus2okur, the software contains musical notes of thousands of Ottoman classical works

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

An incredible collection of the musical notes of Ottoman classical works has been gathered together in a revolutionary new software program created by two Turkish mathematicians.

Mathematicians Kemal Karaosmanoğlu and Süleyman Metin Yılmaz spent years looking at musical manuscripts of a myriad of Ottoman classical songs and instrumental works found in the dusty archives of TRT, Turkey’s first and only state television and radio station. As a result of this meticulous study, they applied the musical notes of more than 1,500 classical works to database software they created, calling the result Mus2okur. The software program not only contains the musical notes of centuries-old Ottoman works, but also their lyrics and information about the composers. In addition, each song in Mus2okur is provided with a makam, melodic mode, and usul, underlying rhythmic cycle that complements the melodic rhythm and helps shape the overall structure of a composition in Ottoman classical music.

Mus2okur also contains an index of a total of 24,000 different Ottoman classical works with their descriptive characteristics. All the works can be applied to 128 different musical instruments on a music computer and can be played with a fretless guitar.

Mus2okur is a masterpiece, said Karl Signell, world-renowned U.S. ethnomusicologist and scholar of Turkish classical music.

Mus2okur is one of the most successful studies I have ever witnessed and is a unique source for addicts and researchers of Ottoman classical music, said Periklis Tsoukalas, a Greek musician who specializes in Eastern music.

In the early years of the Turkish Republic, Ottoman classical music was neglected to a great extent because it evoked a past tradition and way of life not in line with modernization and Westernization efforts of the young nation state. We have adopted the notation system of the West and simply ignored our own classical music, said Karaosmanoğlu. As we turned our face to the West, we neglected our own music. Karaosmanoğlu noted that in most Western music, the octave is divided into 12 semitones, while Ottoman classical music features a much more complex range of tones.

Mus2okur also contains information on a specific music notation system created by Hampartsoum Limondjian, more commonly known as Baba Hamparzsum, a prominent Ottoman Armenian composer of Turkish classical music. Called the Hampartsoum notation system, the system Limondjian developed became the main musical notation system for Turkish classical music. Limondjian served as royal musician during the reign of Ottoman Sultan Selim III, who was also a musician. Hampartsoum notation uses symbols derived from an older notation called khaz used by the Armenian Church in the eighth and the ninth centuries.

The music notation system created by Limondjian is the basic notation system in the history of Turkish classical music. Thousands of old songs are still alive today thanks to Limondjian’s notation system, said Karaosmanoğlu. This is the reason why we have also incorporated his notation system to our software program, he said.

Mus2okur’s rich database makes it a great reference on Ottoman classical music for Western musicians and scholars who are interested in the unique style of music.

[http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=107702]

From hakkani.wordpress.com