The National – Sheykh Jihad Brown – 01 August 2009
Revisionist history in the Middle East likes to think of the Ottoman years as an episode of Turkish domination. The reality, however, was far from that.
The Ottomans were a diverse group. One of the most powerful positions in the empire, the Sultan’s chief of staff, was always an African. The top ministers and bureaucrats were more often selected from the ranks of the devshirme, Christian children raised in the palace and groomed for high-ranking functions, including military leadership. The language itself, Ottoman Turkish, was written in Arabic script.
There is a tendency in the Middle East to blame all failures in modernisation on the “Turkish Occupation”. The accusation appears moot, however, when we notice that the last Grand Vizier, Said Halim Pasha, was educated at Lausanne, Switzerland in the social sciences. He would be killed by Armenian assassins. If the Ottomans had really been the “sick man of Europe”, the British and their Anzacs would have faired better in the Dardanelles, but it was a rout.
More than anything, what may have contributed to Ottoman decline would be the impatience of the Young Turks to chase the fashion of modernisation. Add to that the intoxicating idea of nationalism, the latest import from Europe, as it spread throughout an ethnically diverse empire.
Istanbul today, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, remains diverse. Although rich in culture and still quite cosmopolitan, it abounds in contradictions: history and modernity; graceful beauty and kitsch; aristocracy and the nouveau riche; tradition and technology; authoritarianism and desire for democracy; conservative culture and moral abandon.
The gift of globalisation, however, has brought to this cosmopolitanism the creep of the uni-culture. The visitor looking to experience all that is unique to Turkey is challenged at every step by American fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, hotel chains and a plethora of other stylised conventions. If one allows oneself to be seduced by the siren song of the familiar, he or she might just forget where they are until they bump into the next monument. The advertisements are fundamentally the same, the banter of the radio jockeys is the same, the commuter traffic to their bedroom communities is the same; and it’s all just boring.
Today’s uni-culture is plastic, one-dimensional, and tastes of polyurethane. The alternative is the “authentic”, but that too is an enigma. “Authentic” is an adjective applied to another thing, like one might apply the “rustic” theme to their screensaver or interior design. We should be conscious that even when visiting a historic sight, we are seeing it through the filter of “presentation”. This is a stylised representation or interpretation of life as it was. It is still not the lived reality of the historical moment of the place and its occupants. They didn’t gaze at the walls and tour the objects as we do; they lived and “did” within that supporting context.
Reality, the third level of experience, is founded on continuity. It is a portal connecting us to the real. Uni-culture and “authentic representation” are temporal and never enduring.
In the narrow streets of the Fatih district and the hills of Uskudar live real Ottomans, who can show you, with the most gracious hospitality, a continuing history that no guidebook could “represent”. The Quran says: “And as for the froth, it will dissipate as if it had never been; but what benefits the people will remain in the Earth.”
Other Naqshbandi’s ventured to defend the vocal dhikr against critics. We recall that the seventeenth-century Medinese Sheykh Ibrahim al-Kurani entered into an argument about this issue with a prominent Ottoman visitor known for his opposition to music and vocal dhikr ceremonies (probably the Kadizadeli leader Mehmed Vani Effendi). Kurani also produced two treatise in defense of the vocal method, the Nash al-zahr fi’l -dhikr bi’l-jahr and the Ithaf al-munib al-awwah bi-fadl al-jahr bi-dhikr Allah. In the Ithaf, written in response to the Transoxanian foes of vocal recollection, he marshaled numerous Quranic verses and Prophet traditions to prove that this method was licit. Moreover, Kurani made the point that Shaafis – most of his own disciples- held the vocal dhikr superior. For followers of this legal school, vocal rather than silent dhikr was the “original” method and indeed a “key to the religion” of Islam.
In Damascus the prolific scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi took up the issue of music in his Idah al-dalalat fi sama al-alat – according to a recent study also in response to critics associated with the Kadizadeli movement. In the Idah, Nabulusi pointed out that all singing and musical accompaniment, whether by Sufis or other Muslims, was licit, if only by special dispensation. Music was prohibited only when it positively distracted listeners from the recollection of God or from the observance of religious duties. Finally a student of Kurani by the name of Ibn al-Mimi held that the silent method of recollection undeniably superior and the one that Naqshbandi’s specifically adopted; yet in view of the high emotions that apparently continued to surround controversies about the dhikr, and perhaps because of the insistence or audacity of the opposition, Ibn al-Mimi too found it necessary to challenge the opponents of vocal dhikr. In a treatise devoted to the Naqshbandi Way, he insisted that those who called for eliminating the vocal method were nothing but “ossified”, “ignorant”, “pigheaded”. [37]
[37] Ibn al-Mimi, Nazm al-sumut, 8b
ref: Le Gall, Dina (2005). A Culture of Sufism – Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World – 1450-1700. SUNY Press
Award winning blogger Sheila X of Higher-Criticism writes a review of Wahabi Islam by Delong-Bas
http://higher-criticism.com/2009/05/review-of-wahhabi-islam-natana-delong-bas.html
Appropriate honorifics have been added or adjusted to this excerpt:
Interestingly, DeLong-Bas herself provides ample evidence of Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s general deviation from mainstream Muslim thought. For example, she reports a religious edict issued by him, fatawa-wa-masa’il, in which [Abdul Wahab] discussed the actions of a close Companion of the Prophet, Abu Bakr (d. 634) (R). Abu Bakr (R) had been the first caliph of the Islamic community, and during his tenure (see The Political Careers of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs), had established the practice of the caliph serving as a paid guardian over the people. Ibn Abdul Wahhab expressed vehement disagreement with the decision saying that Abu Bakr (R) had mis-applied vague Quranic verses to justify the ruling. [Abdul Wahab] goes on to label Abu Bakr’s (R) decision as:
“…the most astonishing part of his ignorance 4“.
In the same edict, Ibn Abdul Wahhab described Abu Bakr’s (R) claim that such spending was for public good as:
…an awesome lie 5.
The last accusation is particularly ironic, since Abu Bakr (R)was so famous for his honesty that he was nicknamed The Truthful. Nevertheless, Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s harsh criticism of Abu Bakr (R) is a radical departure from the reverence that mainstream Muslims typically have of the Companions of the Prophet.
Whoever speaks well of the Companions of the Messenger of God, his chaste wives, and his purified progeny is absolved of hypocrisy. The pious scholars of the past and those after them who follow their path- the people of goodness and tradition, of understanding and profound scholarship- should be mentioned only in the best manner. Anyone who speaks ill of them has deviated from the path 6.
To listen is more important than to speak. The recitation of the Quran is sunna, an example worthy to be followed, but listening to the Quran is a Holy Order.
-Sheykh Maulana Nazim al-Hakkani
General Zikr – Rabi’Awwal 1430 – March 2009 from Yursil on Vimeo.
Shaykh Effendi is saying people are learning about Islam through the internet in Firawnic rooms. They discuss fatwas but they don’t know the basics of the religion. Muslims have left the way of the Prophets. Those that say that Allah is enough for them or the Quran is enough for them have cut the Shahadat. The nightmare of Shaitan is to see a man with a turban and beard, with Prophet’s (صلي الله عليه و سلم) sunnat. This nightmare is the same of most of todays Islamic leaders. We must follow those who are following the Prophet’s (صلي الله عليه و سلم) lifestyle.
the truth on 
m.a.kidwai,CME/IND.RLY.(retd.) on 
