The Metaphor of the Umat as one body!
Narrator: An-Nu’man bin Bashir (RA).
- Sources: Found in Sahih al-Bukhari (6011) and Sahih Muslim (2586).
- Arabic Text: مَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فِي تَوَادِّهِمْ وَتَرَاحُمِهِمْ وَتَعَاطُفِهِمْ مَثَلُ الْجَسَدِ إِذَا اشْتَكَى مِنْهُ عُضْوٌ تَدَاعَى لَهُ سَائِرُ الْجَسَدِ بِالسَّهَرِ وَالْحُمَّى
- Translation: “The likeness of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is that of a single body; when one limb suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever”.
Since the recent events in Gaza this metaphor has come up over and over again. When I would criticize the policies and actions of the Palestinian leadership, as often did my Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim-I would be reproached on numerous occasions: ”Don’t you have any empathy for their pain?” Of course I do- like any normal human being would have. But that was not satisfactory. I would have to display my loyalty by blaming Israel and America and never putting into question what the so-called Muslims in Palestine were doing!
My own Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim- would regularly criticize their behaviour. I recently saw a video of him being asked about it shortly before his death- in a weakened state” What they are doing I am not understanding” he would say. ”This is not the way of our Prophet saws nor is it Islamic war. I don’t know what to call it” Then he hesitated.. ”It must be …..corruption” he said. And he spoke the Truth.
Mohammed, our Prophet saws went, once he got to Madina, from victory to victory. And yet the Arabs in the Middle East have gone from defeat to defeat. Something must be wrong! But they are not reading the signs as we are instructed to do, over and over again in the Quran. The Muslims are acting from pride and vengeance not from wisdom-the true inheritance of the sunnat. Our Prophet saws never took on the Persian or Byzantine Empire in his time. He knew they were too strong. The Quran itself says explicitly not to take on enemies that were more than twice their size (8:66). So the Palestinians and Iranians take on Israel and the U.S.A -How much stronger are the latter-100 times or 1000 times. These wars are pure folly!
Now to expand the analogy from the hadith about feeling the injured limb. What do you do then?! Let’s, for arguments sake, say that you had a broken leg from a car accident. Now you have to use your intelligence to deal with it . Does it serve any purpose to blame the car, or the brake manufacturer or the other driver?! Useless . Get to an E.R. quickly and get the fracture set and a cast put over the injury. Instead, the Muslims are content to blame others and go even further. ”To avenge your broken leg, go kick the other driver’s car. That way you will get your vengeance” That is what is being recommended .Reinjure your leg in the name of Justice! What foolishness?!
2- Simultaneous in timing with the hadith about empathy are the exhortations in the Quran and hadith to unity. I see all kinds of well-meaning Muslims saying: ’We have to be united to gain strength.” United with whom and with what? In this body of the umat I see a cancer of Wahhabbism (see my previous article about Ihsan) and an autoimmune disease(call it Systemic Lupus if you wish lol) -the Shiism of the Ayatollahs. Are you asking me to unite with my cancer and my autoimmune disease?! No way! I want to detoxify them quickly and extirpate them from my body. Asking me to love them because they claim they are Muslim is anathema to me. My loyalty is to Truth not to tribe.
Let me add in one final but crucial note. Muslims including our scholars have a lot of difficulty with contextualization. Because we believe the Quran is for all time and all places, we forget to take into account what was actually happening at the time of the Revelation(“asbab al nuzul” it is called in Arabic).So when the Quran appeals for Unity, the Muslim nation was weak ,vulnerable, under what we now call “an existential threat”. At this time however, Islam is very strong and robust-no matter how the Muslims feel about it. There is NO actual threat to our religion! The real threat is from within! We are 2 billion strong! So what is needed is not unity-but cleansing! What use is unifying with disease and corruption?!
May Allah make us people of awareness and practicality-not purveyors of tribalism and bigotry. That is NOT what our religion is about!
Salaams , Sufi Ibrahim