The conference was dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the birth of Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad Kadyrov, the first President of Chechnya.
The conference was notable for excluding representatives of Wahhabi and Salafi movements, and for its definition of Sunni Muslims in the final communiqué of the conference that included Sufis, Ash’aris and Maturidis, but not Wahhabis or Salafis. It condemned Salafism and Wahhabism as “misguided” sects, along with extremist groups such as ISIS, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood and others.
The conference definition stated:
“Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah are the Ash’aris and Maturidis (adherents of the theological systems of Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi and Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari). In matters of belief, they are followers of any of the four schools of thought (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i or Hanbali) and are also the followers of the Sufism of Imam Junaid al-Baghdadi in doctrines, manners and [spiritual] purification.”
Category Archives: Islam
The Problem of Shirk
The Problem of Shirk (Idolatry))
Especially relevant in the light of the current chaos at university campuses
Each of the major religions has an idea of what is the greatest sin. For Christianity it is pride. For Buddhism ( I particularly like this one!) it is ignorance. And for Islam it is “shirk”!
Now what is shirk? The official translation is “making partners with Allah”. But somehow that translation doesn’t quite work. After all ,who goes into business with God?! Maybe a few priests and rabbis and Imams lol but that is another matter. So what ‘shirk” really means is setting up other priorities in one’s life-other than God. After all, doesn’t the Bible itself tell us : ”You must love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy soul”( Matthew 22:37-39) Well, most people don’t do that! -people from all the different faiths. So there is a problem!
And why is that?! Usually because they have other loves, other priorities-sometimes conscious ones and sometimes unconscious. So let us look at two categories of “shirk”.
Obvious Shirk
There are a few obvious forms of shirk-ones that are easy to detect and easy to denounce:
1-The first is love of money and material goods. This is the most commonly denounced one. I like to call it “economic paranoia”-where everything bad comes down to greed. As was said in the famous quote by president Bush, the elder: ”It’s the economy stupid”. So we get the all too common refrain ; ”Why did America go into Iraq-For the oil”. “Why have the doctors in Western countries been acting like fools during the Covid. It’s the money” Supposedly that answers everything. However ,I like to remind people, especially Christians, that greed is one of the 7 cardinal sins! There are six others to be alert to.
Then again, for some people, it IS all about the money. And that is indeed a big problem.Now this “greed shirk” has a number of extensions which sound kosher-like “financial planning” for individuals and “GDP enhancement” for governments. They sound virtuous But scratch the surface and that too often comes down to greed!
2_ Then there is Power and Social Status. You can ask yourselves why there are so many people running for electoral office. Do they not see what a terrible job that is? And they often use the excuise that it is for “public service” which may be true-but only for a minority as far as I can see. For example, in the Covid vaccine debacle, there has only been one politician in America, Senator Ron Johnson, standing up for the Truth. All the others, many who must be aware of what is going on, are silent.They don’t want to jeopardize their position!
3_ Nationalism. It is rampant everywhere-American nationalism(“we are the greatest country ever”!) Really?; Zionism( “only the Jewish people count”) ;.Arab nationalism(we see where that has led to in the Middle East) and locally French-Canadian nationalism( as long as you speak French, you’re good! As if lol). People with the least bit of insight and objectivity have seen through this one.
But then there are the more subtle forms of idolatry-one’s that whole swaths of people, if not the entire world, have embraced. They seem commendable, but once you scratch the surface, you see the corruption.
Hidden Forms of Shirk
1-The Cult of the Intellect– Of all the forms of idolatry ,this is probably the most potent and the most insidious one..This “cult’ is based on idealizing and idolizing the human mind. The Buddhists and Hindus have been onto this problem for a very long time and developed forms of meditation to get beyond it. But the three major Western religions have bought into it” whole hog”(pun intended!).Ever since the time of the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle but many others, spread their unholy messages and were translated into Latin and Greek and Arabic, the scholars of the Western traditions have been imbibing this contamination -often without realizing it. Even great Talmudic scholars and Islamic ones like Al Ghazzali, have drunk the kool-aid. Al Ghazzali, despite his critique of philosophers for not believing in Revelation, then goes onto say that Logic is a valid science. They have even integrated it ( as” mantiq”) into the Isalamic sciences! Where did they get that from?! Where can you find that in the Quran and sunnat? Do they not get the wisdom in the fact that our Prophet saws was unlettered. No! They are all people of the Western Enlightenment” which is actually “Endarkment”
So we can see this cult in our Universies, in our so-called “Objective Science” , in our government institutions. And many,many people have integrated it into their personal lives-often at great expense to themselves and the people around them!
2-Relationship: No, this is definitely NOT relationship with God, but usually refers to intimate partners. P.S. I am in the midst of attending a summit on Zoom called “Healing Relationships” led by Terry Real,who I greatly respect as a psychologist- but definitely not as a spiritual teacher.
The extreme example of this cult of relationship may well be the Hollywood Romance but there are many, many more subtle variants.
So we get politicians resigning to spend more time with their families. They are probably lying as they have learnt to do in Democratic politics but that aside. It is now considered acceptable to give up your vocation, your life mission if you wish, in favour of your family and relationships. Men have been cowed into submission (ever noticed lol) and women empowere4d into tyranny-all in the name of relationships!
3 – Family. Now this is particularly noticeable in Eastern cultures -like the Islamic ones I am currently in touch with.. How many times have I heard ”bir walidayn”(filial piety) and “Rahim Wassila”(maintaining ties to extended family))in Muslim discourse .Ironically the Quran says “ihsan walidayn” (being good to your parents ) rather than “bir walidayn” .Why? Because families can be ignorant and abusive. Because I have seen many Muslim parents marrying their daughters to nasty partners -often through the first shirk of materialism! ”He has a good career and money in the bank, so he must be a good partner” Really?! I have seen Muslims so absorbed with their family interactions that they forget to pray! Is that part of our religion?! I have seen people waste hours and hours socializing with their families with no noticeable benefit. Is that part of our religion. Certainly not! It is a hidden form of shirk!
Think about it, Sufi Ibrahim
Year in Review-2023
The Year in Review-2023
Problems of the Year
To paraphrase a famous quote from Winston Churchill lol:”Never in the history of human endeavour have so many been lied to by so many others for the benefit of so few”. Really! In all my years of existence (that’s now 77!) I have never seen so much lying! Whether we call it “spinning” or “cherry-picking” or” minimizing” or “denying” or “covering up”, the mendacity is literally through the roof. My principal Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim Haqqani- told us about it in the 1980’s! He put it in spiritual terms. ”We are now under the hegemony of the shaytan” he said. I couldn’t believe his Turkenglish included the word “hegemony” lol But he had it spot on! And I recently saw an interview with Roseanne Barr who is now a born-again Jew!, saying the same thing. ”This is the work of the devil” she said about her firing on her highly rated TV show in an interview with Joshua Phillips of Epoch TV.
So instead of “man of the year” or “woman of the year” or “athlete of the year” this article is going to be titled “Problem of the Year”. The problem, however, is probably a lot more than a year old! At least a century in my opinion and it is not likely to change much by next year. We shall see……
The Root Problem (the one that causes all the others!)
The root problem- the one that causes all the others is “Mind-productions”. I was first introduced to this term by Sheikh Nazim himself. But it is something that has been known for a long, long time. The Hindus and Buddhists have been talking about it since the beginning of their traditions. They understood that the mind was a trap- full of illusions. It is a central concept in their theology. Less so for the Western traditions -like Christianity (possibly the ultimate offender, given its elaborate theology and and its all too numerous theologians.( In fact European intellectuals, from the Greeks to the Germans and the French are certainly at the heart of the problem. But their malady is now universal!)The Jews with their Talmudic scholarship are next in line-not chronologically but in terms of intensity. And then we have the Muslims and their Islamic Sciences-often full of mind-productions. In the Western religions, it seems to only be the mystics like the Kabbalists in Judaism and the Sufis in Islam that recognize the problem
So where does this all come from? We could say with some justification that it is intrinsic to our nature and the evolutionarily advanced Cerebral Cortex that we are endowed with. This cortical activity can be very useful in certain situations but very damaging in others. Much like science itself-very useful at times, very harmful at others.
Cost vs. benefit?! I will let the reader figure out that one themselves. Most people, especially so-called “intelligent ones”, have been duped on this one.! A new cancer treatment is developed and everyone is excited. But they fail to realize that the vast majority of cancers are caused by science itself! -pesticides, heavy metals, VOCs in construction materials, additives in food, EMFs everywhere. Cost vs. benefit? In this case, highly negative. But most people’s “mind-productions” don’t go there! They think instead “science-wonderful”! Which brings us to the next form of “mind-productions”-the collective ones!
I have been talking about The Cult of The Intellect for at least seven years (see the article on my blog about it in Nov.2016!). But this year ,I have come to realize that it is not purely a matter of individual minds! In fact there are numerous “collective mind-productions”! This phenomenon goes by various names. My favourite for now is “echo-chambers”. And we have loads of them now! We have ”the man-made climate change” echo-chamber. The “vaccines are safe and effective” echo-chamber now generally known as the “medical-scientific echo-chamber” and most recently with the Gaza-Israel war I have come across the “Muslim echo-chamber”. You know the one that says “free Palestine” ( we could discuss at length what they need to be free of?!) Or “From the River to the Sea”-a clearly genocidal echo-chamber!
One of the problems that comes up here is that people honestly believe their thoughts are their own. And generally that is NOT the case. Most of their individual thoughts are imprinted on their minds from the ethnic or national or professional communities of which they are a part. There are only a very few people who are actually doing the research and thinking for themselves! So that is a whole other dimension of the problem. One that makes it that much more difficult to solve!
And why are these mind-productions-individual and collective- so important!? Because they are almost always abstract, theoretical and biased. So they don’t correspond to Reality and lead in fact to false solutions. Take “climate change” theories for example. Clear-thinking or should I say clear-perceiving people can see that this is purely theoretical. At first, I too worried about the impending disaster. Then I started looking into it. One of the first things I discovered is that the climate has been changing all throughout Earth’s history! And even in the last two millenia there were two periods-The Medieval Warming Period and The Roman Warming period- where the climate was several degrees warmer than it is now. No catastrophe, no massive death tolls. In fact, it appears obvious to some scientists (the minority unfortunately for now!) that cooling is a much more dangerous process than warming!
Then I read some of the work of Henrik Svensmark and most recently watched a talk by the nobel Laureate in physics John Clauser. Svensmark thinks the problem comes from an increase in cosmic rays related to the strength of the energy of the sun (which always made sense to me as the most important factor!) How could it be otherwise?! And Clauser says it’s the clouds which are much more important for climate than the carbon layer. That too is most likely related to the sun. Why is this so important?! Because the governments are using this issue to scare all of us into submission and to spend trillions of dollars on “mitigation attempts” that are not working and never will. Why?! Because they have the diagnosis wrong! Who wants those electric cars anyway lol?! They are, in all likelihood more dangerous to our health than a well-maintained petroleum -based car. But that is a subject for another day!
The Three most Important Derivative Problems
- The dysfunctionality of the American Political System:
At this point in time, what happens in America affects the whole world. Americans may be proud of that fact but for the rest of us it is frightening! The American system is also based on a number of theoretical premises. Theories like “Due Process of the Law”, ”The Adversarial Process” and “Checks and balances”.And let us not forget Lincoln’s Gettysburg address where he talked of “ Government of the people for the people by the people”. That one is particularly rich- as we watch the wealth gap increase, the machinations of monied lobbyists and Superpacs on elections and the increasing cost of living. Perhaps it should be called “government for the wealthy by the wealthy”! That would be more accurate for now!! These ideas are built into the system as much as the American constitution is. And they are simply not working! Why should this concern us, anyway.
Let’s look at some recent problems.:
1-The Covid pandemic was generated by American “gain of function” research, financed by America and transferred to China after it was banned in the US.A. Then the entire pandemic was mismanaged because of Health Institutions like FDA and CDC that were basically sold-out to the Pharmaceutical companies and their vaccine production business. Anyone experience a disruption in their lives because of the pandemic lol?! Of course you did! Effective early interventions like with Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were then blocked so that vaccine manufacturers were free to profit from their vaccines. That alone probably cost millions of lives! And no-one has been held accountable. So much for “Due Process of the Law” and government for the people.?!
2-Then we have the “anthropogenic climate change” dubious theory- trying to push all of us into alternative energies and electric cars-items for which we have no evidence of their harm or harmlessness. And they refuse to seriously study it .Climate catastrophe or not, what about those electric cars?! Are they safe (EMFs everywhere) and are they really helping the environment?!
3-Then we have world-wide inflation as America rolls out the money distributing system via the Central Reserve. As well, we have two costly and devastating wars-in Ukraine and Gaza-both of which could have been prevented by a functional America-yes even with Trump as president?! And of course, the lurking danger of Iran and its weapons systems which the U.S. has refused to confront! So….all in all, we (the entire world ) is subject to American management or mismanagement-at least for now!
And what do they offer us as reassurance? “Due Process of the Law’! Really?! Have you noticed how the Justice system is being manipulated- left, right and center? Republican committees in the House of Representatives showing how Biden and his son Hunter plus other members of the family benefitted from quid pro quo deals with foreign adversaries. And what do the Democrats say?!”There is no evidence”! Whether you are Republican, Democrat or Independent-THAT IS PURE MENDACITY. They accuse Trump of complicity with the Russians(called Russiagate).The case is more or less dismissed .It was based on a fraudulent study (the Steele dossier) to begin with! No one apologizes . No one is held accountable. Is that what they call “Due Process of the Law’?!
Then 4- there is the famous ”adversarial approach”-in Law and government. (All of these are “mind-productions” btw) Have you watched that in progress?! The Democrats and Republicans argue for hours! No one’s opinion changes. The vote is almost tied. Even if they pass something in the House the Senate vetoes it. The adversarial process has become the “paralysis process”.If you want to watch that play out in a legal context,go back and watch the O.J. case.The defense lawyers were so clever they had the jury completely confused- a standard consequence of adversarial processes.
And 5-“ the Checks and balances in the constitution” that Americans are so proud of. Or is it cheques and bank balances lol? Recent example-President Biden wants to relieve young people of student debt. The conservatives disagree. They go to the Supreme Court which finds in their favour! So now the Biden Administration is looking for legal ways around the prohibition. And so it goes. “Analysis is paralysis”. And the entire world pays the price! God help us!
Then there is 5-Loss of Traditional Values with America leading the way forward. Or is that backward lol? Highest Divorce rate in History. LGBTQ-2S chaos and hysteria, pornography passing as sex education in primary schools, unwed people hooking-up”.Promiiscuity, S.T.D’s galore and now the autism, Cancer, autoimmune disorders and Alzheimerès disease.And America continues leading the way!
The “Woke” Establishment
And what IS this “Woke”. Woke is the liberal, free-thinking progressive movement becoming more and more unhinged and autocratic. The liberals have become totalitarian. You can no longer question the mainstream narrative like the benign nature of vaccines or climate change or Transgender rights without being labeled ultra-right or MAGA, or conspiracy theorist. The world has gone mad-or so it seems. Dr. Mattias Desmet calls it “Mass Formation Psychosis” .In previous times it may have been labelled simply “Mass Hysteria” .And few people have acknowledged that this is what is going on!
Just as the Dysfunctional American Health Institutions can be broken down into “Three-Letter Monsters”-FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS so too when it comes to Woke, we find a whole other series of Three-Letter Monsters (FLCCC likes to call them “The Alphabet Soup” agencies lol) .In the case of Woke, we find CRT(critical race theory”-which means it’s all about racism ultimately!); LGBTQ( everyone knows that one!) And because of it’s importance it has at least 5 letters in the shortest version. I can’t keep up with all the new letters being added lol: WEF(World Economic Forum, the Davos group) and the ultimate bureaucrat Klaus Schwab- talking about “The Great Reset” where we will all be happy and own nothing?! Our beloved Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is one of his students, I believe, as is the French President Macron); ESG(Environmental and Social Governance)-or how to make companies and the entire economy conform to Woke ideas and the Green Agenda; DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) especially in the universities. We see where that led in the recent University debacles concerning the governance of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT;WHO ( trying to gain control over all pandemic responses in the future to guarantee us that the response in the future will be as mis-managed as the Covid crisis-or worse since some of the countries that did best avoided most of the WHO protocols).And many others .Don’t let me forget the Four-Letter Word (no, it’s not what you think lol).Its the IPCC(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) -that is working on a false theory that has been exposed clearly in the last few years ,has been wrong on nearly every prediction it has made about future changes and continues to mobilize all of the Great Powers around it’s false theories!
As you can see, we are up against a huge, well-organized enemy.! A recent book authored by Seamus Bruner published by Sentinel Press is called “Controligarchs”.On the cover, you have Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, George Soros, Klaus Schwab and Mark Zuckerberg. H-m-m. Btw when I got to Amazon.ca to order it, there seems to be only one copy left! I had the same experience with RFKs book on Fauci which was a best seller at the time. Couldn’t get a copy at the largest bookseller in Canada! It took over a month. Suspicious,eh?! The signs are everywhere. There IS a conspiracy going on but the Conspiracy Theorists ,the same ones who said Covid was a lab leak and the vaccines are dangerous are being denied their moment of Truth! That may be changing.
So how did all of this happen? How did the American and European liberals become Controligarchs- Authoritarian autocrats. Most people didn’t see this happening!
Well, there are a few elements at play here. One, of course, is hubris. Bill Gates was convinced he could solve the Health issues in Africa by vaccines Seems like that is not working out too well. It seems that is oral polio vaccines were causing more cases of polio than the actual disease itself! George Soros with all his investments in left-wing causes led to the election of Trump and the rise of right-wing movements denying his vision all over America. Mark Zuckerberg, Aspergers flashing all over his face , true to his disposition, out of touch with everything around him, wittingly or unwittingly, probably the latter, actually colluded with the government to get “disinformation” about Covid, most of which was real information, censored from Facebook. Jeff Bezos has left the CEO position at Amazon to transfer his energy to Blue Origin and space exploration. Any thinking person knows how useful that is for humanity lol And Klaus Schnab,with his dehaumanized, top-down Prussian approach to leadership may soon be voted “Most Disliked Man on the Planet”! Yes, even more so than Biden and Trump lol.
So what do all these men have in common? They are paternalistic. They think they know better than us what is good for us. They are in the common language “control freaks”. And they, like Bill Gates, are full of huibris! So when the pandemic started and you heard about Hydroxychloroquine and then Ivermectin, you couldn’t get it! Why? Because these people and their henchmen in the pharma industry and the Medical Institutions knew better than you. But they really didn’t! And isn’t that what democracy is all about – “Free Choice”?! Sorry, we have to rely on the experts . After all Bill Gates made billions with Microsoft! Shouldn’t he know better than you? Jeff Bezos also made billions with a way of delivering products on-line. Doesn’t that make him an expert in how you should live?! And then there is the ultimate Controligarch- not present in those pictures-Antony Fauci-responsible on several levels for the deaths of millions! But he gets to decide, not you!
And let’s not forget those hallowed halls of higher education-Harvard and Oxford and M.I.T.! Fees that can break the bank of any Middle-Class family! Indoctrinating the youth of America into “Wokeness” on a daily basis. So effective that our children will not listen to their parents’) wisdom because they have been indoctrinated by the high priests of “Woke”. Harvard recently was rated at the bottom of all Universities in Free Speech! Rating-0! Weren’t Universities set up to be hives of intellectual debate, new ideas and initiatives. No longer! Now they are training our youth into believing that they are either oppressors or oppressed. That is going to be a great help! And we see where that is going with the recent on-campus demonstrations. ”The Times They are a Changing” no doubt Mr. Dylan, but not in the way you or us would have liked!
- C) Islamism
Most people, especially Muslims, don’t understand what a serious problem this is. Outside of the spectacular actions of al-Qaida and Isis this movement rarely comes up on people’s radar! But, in reality, it is much vaster and more dangerous than those aforementioned marginal terrorist groups. We are beginning to hear about it more with the recent events in the Middle East. Hezbollah(a Shiite Islamist group ) and Hamas (a Sunni one) are in the news every day now. But the Western press calls them ”terrorists” and thus dismisses them as marginal. But they are not! Hamas is theologically connected with the Ikhwan Muslimeen which btw is also connected to Erdogan in Turkey who is an adherent and Qatar, which was hosting one of the leading Ikhwani scholars- Yusuf al Qardawi- and still has a strong affinity with that ideology. Then there are the Saudis with the Wahhabbi clergy in the background controlling much of the laws in the country. They too are, in another way, Islamists who have broken off from the traditional Islamic scholars who always recommended following one the four Classical schools of jurisprudence(called Madhhabs).Iran ,the sponsor of both Hamas and Hizbollah is also under an Islamist rulership with the reform doctrine of Vilayat e Fiqh(The guardianship of the Scholars-may God protect us all!) Pakistan and Afghanistan have been strongly influenced by the Taliban and before that by the Jamat al Islamiya of Maududdi.(Please refer to the article on our blog entitled” Islamism-The Scourge of the Modern Muslim Community” for more explanation).Not too long ago there were two other catastrophes-one in Algeria(200,000people killed) and Egypt where the duly elected Ikhwani party was running the country into the ground(as ideologically-driven parties always do! ) under the leadership of Mohammed Morsi- so much so that the army had to take over!
So people-Muslims and non-Muslims_-need to be acutely aware of this problem-or it will destroy us all. It is now an “ideological pandemic” in the Muslim world.
Now I want to make an important point of clarification here! I am not talking about Islamic scholarship. Nor am I talking about anything in traditional Islam outside of the heresies of the Mutazilis(the Rationnalists ) or the Khwarij( the hard-core extremists).Scholarship has had its important role throughout Islamic history and through the history of all religions. The scholars study the original texts-the Quran and hadith in our case. They attempt to understand them properly, systematize them and then come out with rulings that are both prescriptive AND attitudinally consistent with the original spirit of the religion and its fundamental sources.
Islamism, on the other hand, is something very different. I have to give Joshua Phillips , a young journalist at Epoch Times, credit for making this issue crystal-clear. Ever since Sheikh Nazim taught us that Islamism was not Islam, I had always been wary. But the final nail in the coffin was understanding what it fundamentally and philosophically was. Amazing, really, that some-one like Joshua, with a very meager knowledge of Islam and not very steeped in leftist ideology either, was able to come up with this insight! So much for “experts”?! Lol,. He realized that Syed Qutb, probably the most influential of all the Islamist thinkers, had actually studied Socialism and Communism while at University in the West. So Joshua’s contention is that Islamism is actually Marxist doctrine piggy-backed (pun intended lol) onto Islamic beliefs. When I first heard that, I got the usual shiver up my spine when I hear a Truth being enunciated! “Spot-on” I thought.
The similarity between the two (Islamism and Marxism) is actually striking on a deeper philosophical level if not so much on an outward one. They are both “materialist philosophies”. Now again most people have the wrong idea about materialism. They think it has everything to do with commercialism and making money and buying things. That is its surface level. On a deeper level, it means giving precedence to the outward! Chogyam Trungpa, the brilliant but corrupt Buddhist, wrote about this in the heydays of the New Age movement. His book ,one of the classics of New Age literature was called “Cutting through Spiritual Materialism”.
In Marxism we have the doctrine of “dialectical materialism”. In Islamism we have the doctrine of “spiritual materialism”. So, for Marx , the solution is to establish a Communist state called “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” We know where that has brought us to! For Islamists, the state they are adcocatng for is called “The Islamic Caliphate”. We have seen a few examples of that in recent history -all tragic.Note that this is not the same as the previous Caliphates in the Islamic world like the Ottoman Empire-all of which arose organically from the circumstances of the time. That Caliphate ended with the Ottoman Empire after WW1! Now what is being proposed is an ideologically-driven process. And we know well where ideology leads to! Islam is NOT an ideology.It is a religious practice, a way of Life inspired by a Revelation.Very different from human-generated agendas!
Both doctrines(Marxism and Islamism) believe that by changing the outer structure and having an authoritarian state, you can make people behave better. The true Islamic philosophy is the opposite! As Sheikh Nazim taught us, the people get the state they deserve. In the Quran it tells the Muslims that you shouldn’t impose the religion on others.. Also in our Holy Book Allah tells his Prophet saws to deliver the message-not to be a ruler or an enforcer. But who follows the holy texts when you can follow your own ideas or a collective illusion.
Said succinctly, Islamism is the opposite of Islam . Islam says: Be pious and good to others and self-controlled and Allah will reward you in this world and the next. Islamism says: “Let us rule you as we see fit and then you will be happy and virtuous” The evidence, for those who believe in evidence lol, goes totally contrary to that premise. Our choice of good or evil is between us and our Lord. Any intervenor trying to change that is more likely to do more harm than good. And that is exactly what has been happening!
Secondary Problems:
- D) Nationalism: Now, previously I would have put Nationalism at the top of the list. After all, it is so obvious! Israeli nationalism vs, Palestinian Nationalism; Russian Nationalism vs. Ukrainian Nationalism. The consequences are so obvious and in our face. And the Virgin Mary in her apparitions warned us of the danger of nationalism. Which gives it even more spiritual credence! But Remember: We are NOT Empiricists! We don’t believe that what is on the surface is the whole story. Muslims, in particular, need to be aware of this! Remember surat Al Baqara. Allah tells us the believers are those who believe in the invisible. The problem is not simply Zionism. That is a Thahiri(outward) position. The problem is much deeper than that! The only scholar I know of who suggested this recently was Sheikh Omar Ibn Hafidh who said “If the Muslims hadn’t fallen in love with dunniya (the world) Allah never would have taken any land from them” Kudos Sheikh Ibn Hafidh. I assuime Hamza Yusuf was saying something similar when he was denounced at RIS! The crowd was hoping he would recite the group mantras and he refused. Because he, too, looks beneath the surface.
So, although nationalism remains a problem across the world, Internationalism has become a bigger problem! The pandemic was caused and spread by internationalism. Our medical freedoms are being eroded by internationalism. The surge in cases of Cancer and Alzheimers and Autoimmune disorders is being produced by local “scientific” research and spread by international cooperation.
A simple example: The management of the Covid pandemic-through lockdowns and vaccines was a disaster. Thought out by American and European Health Agencies and spread throughout the world. This, despite the fact that it should be clear that physicians and in the case of Uttar Pradesh a few, very few health authorities, had much better results by early treatment with repurposed drugs. But who needs Reality when you can rely on International Consensus?! Answer: We all do!
At this point the International authorities are more involved in covering up the Truth than in using it for our betterment!! A sad state of affairs indeed.
- E) The Triad of Evil
America has done many things wrong! And so have the Europeans! But let it be clear. They may have problems with Truth and corruption of Truth but they are in no ways as evil as the Triad -Russia, China and Iran Anyone who says otherwise, like our dear Sheikh Imran Hussein who ,in his Eschatology, proposes Russia as our saviour or our Sunni Muslim leaders chumming up with Iran are leading us astray.. All of these duplicitous calculations can only serve the cause of evil in the long run. This is true as well, maybe even more so, with our Western Powers cozying up to China to make more money or to Iran hoping to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. All of this will end up backfiring just like Chamberlain’s cozying up to Hitler before WW2! Befriending evil is in the long run a very bad strategy. But politicians of all stripes think they can outwit the spiritual laws of nature. They have never been so wrong!
Btw I hope it is clear by now what one of the central attitudinal problems in the modern world is “Clever Calculation and Manipulation”. You can’t game the system that God has put in place! We need leaders of sincerity and goodwill and vision-not leaders of self-interest, ideological stubbornness and statistical manipulation. Those leaders are the very ones that have brought us to the state we are in now. If you need more evidence for this hypothesis watch American politics for a day or two and try to see what I am saying. It should be obvious!
Positive Signs:
At this point you should probably be asking: ”Is there any hope” ?! And the answer is: “not a lot, but there are some hopeful signs”:
1-The insanity at the most “esteemed” Institutions of Higher Learning”! They are being outed! I have been decrying those institutions for a long time, ever since hearing Steven Gaskin describing the bad influence of higher education .But nevertheless these “Temples of the Cult of the Intellect” as I call them, have been riding high for a long time! Employers were rushing to hire their graduates, parents were willing to mortgage their homes to finance their childrens’ education, and the fees just seemed to be going up and up! But with the recent campus demonstrations in support of Hamas and genocidal wishes towards Jews, they are finally seeing their credibility challenged! It’s about time. Personally, I think they should be transformed into trade schools! -in Medicine, Law and Dentistry for example. As to the softer sciences like Social Sciences, Political Science and Literature ,a better venue for this kind of education should be explored .Because, for now, the Universities have become hotbeds of propaganda and brain-washing as opposed to bastions of free thought and creativity
2-Due to the excesses and mismanagement of the Covid epidemic, many groups have developed to promote Freedom in Medicine and objective scientific enquiry (if that is at all possible!) I myself follow CHD (Childrens Health Defense) under the leadership of RFKjr., Epoch Times which called the lab leak while it was still being referred to as a “conspiracy theory” and FLCCC under the capable leadership of Pierre Kory and Paul Marik. But each of these organizations has been denounced and cancelled by the mainstream media.Many have been deplatformed from various social media sites. All the main health organizations like CDC and FDA and NIH (remember the three-letter monsters!) denounce them! And yet, they are the ones speaking the most Truth! What a state!
When I hear Republican representative4s saying RFKjr., who they should be siding with, is a conspiracy theorist, I know we are in deep s—t! Everything he says is backed up by references and documents and studies! What are they talking about?! They, too, with a few exceptions like Senator Ron Johnson and Senator Rand Paul, are still living in their biased, ideological bubbles. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik are clearly amongst the most competent ,brilliant and open-minded physicians . Both lost their jobs as intensivists in their hospitals for speaking about their clinical experiences.
And then to clinch it all, I went to Wikipedia to look into other Health Freedom organizations and this is what I came up with!
“The health freedom movement is a libertarian coalition that opposes regulation of health practices[1] and advocates for increased access to “non-traditional” health care.[2]
The right-wing John Birch Society( often seen as the intellectual equivalent of the KKK!) has been a prominent advocate for health freedom since at least the 1970s, and the specific term “health freedom movement” has been used in the United States since the 1990s.”
Wow! Are you kidding?! What a cover-up?! What mischief?! This is what we are up against if we begin to fight for Truth! We have a long way to go.
3-The Middle East: As to the Middle East I am hopeful that “we have touched bottom” as they like to call it. In A.A. The Abrahamic accords were a good start. Removing Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which appears inevitable, will also be helpful. But we still have the evil Axis partner Iran to deal with. And only their own people can solve that. The Western powers should do everything they can to promote the uprising of the people but do it in an honest, not a CIA covert way We shall see! In the years to come if God so wills, we will update these issues and try to see if we are making progress or regress. Happy New Year! Sufi Ibrahim
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Middle East Oct.2023
Middle East Statement
This should hopefully be the last of three statements on the Middle East (the others are on the Sufi Ibrahim Kreps Youtube channel) and the most concrete one. I would advise people against taking sides in this conflict! There is more than enough blame to go around-including the faults of America, of the U.N., of England and Turkey historically -let alone what the two parties involved have been up to!
Taking a strong position on one side or the other thus becomes a manifestation of ignorance! Now I understand that Muslims feel the need to be loyal to the Palestinians. And loyalty IS an Islamic virtue. But the true loyalty is to the Truth not to the tribe!
Feeling the pain is one thing. It is human. But assigning blame and acting from that analysis requires wisdom and discernment and unfortunately that is in short supply nowadays.
Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim
Husn Al Dhann and Radical Positivity!
Husn Al Dhann (having a good opinion) is a much vaunted Islamic virtue. It is based mostly on the Quranic ayat 49:12 where we are encouraged to “avoid suspicion” and to not back bite. However, most of the scholars go well beyond the text and encourage us to have a good opinion both of our Lord and our fellow man. Noble aspiration, no doubt! In this article, we will go into the idea of Husn Al Dhann regarding our Lord. As I mentioned in my previous article on this subject having universally and systematically a good opinion of man seems to fly in the face of much life experience and even of the Quran and hadith themselves. So let’s stick to our Creator for now.If we return again to the Quran 2:30 we find the angels, who are created to be obedient, objecting to Allah’s creation of man. “Wilt thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?’ They are truly clairvoyant! Ever noticed the veracity of their prediction lol?! They see what is going to happen on Earth, as we also can now see it, and protest! So what does Allah respond? “I know what you know not”. And as opposed to most people they do not argue back lol. They submit! Wouldn’t it be nice if men wee like that-submitting immediately to the Truth?! But don’t hold your breath. For the Quran itself tells us that ‘insan’ is disputatious. He keeps arguing his opinion no matter what Truth is put forward-most of the time anyway.
Most of us, unfortunately, are still in the state of the angels before Allah’s clarification. So there is a serious level of hypocrisy going on-even in the hearts of the believers?! They say they have a good opinion of Allah and His creation but as soon as things go wrong, they assume that Allah has made a mistake! Estagfirullah. The examples of this are legion: “This child should not have died so early”; “This car accident should never have happened”; “This war is a mistake”. The examples in our minds and hearts are multiple. We want to be the correctors of Allah. WE know better! Allah should conform to our beliefs rather than to HIS Wisdom. The believers, at least, don’t formulate it that way since it sounds wrong but once you get into the nitty-gritty you will see that is what they are thinking!.
So what is the opposite point of view? It is that Allah is in charge. Everything is happening from His Will and with His permission. No exceptions! Then we must submit. But instead our nafs rebels “This( (the war in Ukraine, the killing of American children in their schools, the establishment of the state of Israel, the American invasion of Iraq-take your choice. It’s all a big mistake! It shouldn’t be” it screams mostly inside our heads.
Btw one of the groups that understands this point well are the Advaita Vedantists. We do not agree with most of their theology but on this point they are spot on. Here is a quote from one of their great teachers, the American Robert Adams -who was a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, a remarkable Hindu saint “Nothing is wrong. Everything is right just the way it is.(“I know what you know not” says Allah) Do not try to figure it out Leave it alone(tawakuul in our language) And also.” Be aware of yourself, always(muraqaba).The world goes through its own karma(the Divine plan) It has absolutely nothing to do with you. You belong to God( ina lillahi) Everything you see is God (wahadat al wujud).What a ‘hal’ this man possessed. We need to learn from this!
So let me begin to lay out an alternative approach beginning with a few anecdotes. The first involves a defrocked psychoanalyst who gave up on his practice, finding that the results were few and far between. Instead he developed a very successful program for schizophrenics called “Case Management” In that program instead of using expensive, over-trained mental health professionals, people with a simple university bachelor’s degree were hired to be available(read humans as opposed to the professionals lol) on a full-time basis, a bit like parents)and to respond as needed instead of during office hours with long-delayed appointments-the usual M.O. of health care systems. They were assigned to have 6-8 people to watch over and help in a practical way over a period of time. The results were so remarkable that this program became the standard of care in most mental health systems-at least those that were front-line and competent!
But the real point of this story is what the psychoanalyst responded when asked by a member of the audience whether his psychoanalytic experience had been of any use whatsoever. And he responded: “What I learnt from my psychoanalytic therapy was to be brutally honest with myself” Can we, as believers, say the same thing? Do we have the same capacity for self-observation as this psychiatrist. If we do, then we will acknowledge that we are regularly opposing the actions of Allah .i.e. Reality!
Before we address some possible remedies to this situation let me tell you another story-the story of Sheikh Hashimi. Before he passed on the great sheikh and Sufi Ahmad Al Alawi named muqaddams(representatives) to be assigned to most of the surrounding Arab countries. Representatives were sent to Morocco and Tunisia a nd Syria amongst others. And the representative he sent to Syria was an Algerian man named Muhammad al Hashimi. For those who are cognizant of the world of Sufi silsilas(chains of transmission) Sheikh Hashimi was the sheikh of Abdur Rahman Shaghouri who was the sheikh of Sheikh Nuh.
Sheikh Hashimi was well beloved of the Syrians. When he died after 40 years of teaching them and serving them, they were missing him and so they went to his “khadim*(servant) and asked him what he remembered of Sheikh Hashimi’s teachings. He responded: “I only learnt one thing from the sheikh but it sufficed me for my entire Life”! “Only one thing .During fourty years of service?!” They were astounded but asked the inevitable follow-up question: “Alright, So what was that one thing?” “Fi kooli shay khareen”(In every thing there is goodness).A fitting explanation if not a complete one, to the ayat where Allah tells us that He knows what we do not. That there is goodness in everything-A Divine Plan and Divine Wisdom!
Before we get to the solution to this dilemma, let me tell you one more story-from my pre-Islamic days. I got into my real spiritual search somewhere in the early seventies while I was still a Marxist -albeit an unconvinced one(discernment even then lol).I read a lot and visited where I could. One of my earliest visits(1973 I believe) was to Ojai ,California to see Krishnamurti, I was hoping to connect with a fellow psychiatrist named Shainberg I believe but Allah had other, more relevant plans in mind.
Instead, I met with an “ordinary Joe” American. I asked him what he was doin g there (seemed so out of place) and then he told me his story .He was a Korean war veteran.(It is 1973 so the Korean war had finished 20 years earlier.)It was the worst possible situation. In the trenches- filled with mud and dead bodies and blood and gore. You can just imagine or maybe you can’t! And then he was hit by an artillery shell of the Communists. At that moment the sky opened up and he saw another scene of battle but that one was Luminous and Glorious and Ecstatic! In that dimension everything made sense and more. Then he lost consciousness.
When he awoke, he was in intense pain from the wound he had incurred. He required constant pulmonary drainage and opiates and round the clock nursing! But he survived. It was now 20 years later and he was still looking to retrieve his “hal”(spiritual state) that he had experienced in Korea. That is why he came to see Krishnamurti. Amazing, eh?
So now, after all that preamble ,we get to the heart of the matter. How do we stop disputing with our Lord and begin accepting His Will- not in theory but in actual practice. I have a few recommendations and perhaps together we can discover more. Inshallah. So this is the program I propose for arriving at Husn Al Dhann which is also “rida” (acceptance) and “tawakuul” (trust in Allah.
1- First let us remember the famous statement of Ali Jemal r.a. of Fes “Everything to you is from you” i.e. it is a specific response to your situation, your actions, your educational needs, your merits and defects. Nothing is random! Everything is purposeful! That is what Allah is saying when he states that He knows what the angels do not!
When the horrible tsunami hit East Asia in 2004 I saw an Islamic scholar on public television saying: “this is just a geological event(tectonic plates moving) not a theological one”! I couldn’t believe my ears! Does he not understand in any way the workings of our Lord?! Clearly not.
As is my habit, I then started researching what was going on in those areas.The worst hit places turned out to be Aceh province in Indonesia and the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Aha! In both places there were civil wars going on. Clearly not pleasing to Allah who encourages us in the Quran itself to accept all peoples and nations. Then the Earthquake hit Pakistan in Muzaffarabad and Belokot in 2005.What do you know?! Al Qaida was organizing in those areas. According to the Indian army sources, they still are! Could that be the reason for these disasters? Only Allah knows but it would be reasonable to arrive at those conclusions. Just remember, nothing is random.
The same is true on a personal level. But most people don’t want to go there. The “bala”(misfortune) is either a consequence of some bad behaviour or a stimulus to growth through the purification effect of suffering. Admittedly not always obvious which of the two it is!
When Muhammad Ali may Allah be pleased with his efforts and sincerity was asked if he thought his Parkinsonism was a consequence of his boxing career he answered humbly: “No. I made a grave mistake in saying ‘I am the Greatest’ when the only great One is my Lord. This is the consequence!” Humble man. Mashallah. So whenever something “negative” occurs to you, look deeply into yourself. Is there anything you did wrong? If so, ask forgiveness and begin correcting it. If not, praise the Lord for elevating you still higher.
2-Ask yourself “What is good in this apparent evil?” What is the silver lining in the cloud?” How can I see this as the glass half-full rather than half-empty?” Hamza Yusuf tells the story of a Moroccan man who had a stroke and was paralyzed on one side of his body. When people would meet him, he would point to the side that was still working and say something like: “Look how merciful is Allah. He left me with this entire side that works” Or the story of the great wali of the Tablighi people, Maulana Zakariah, who was dying of terminal stage 4 cancer and saying on his deathbed: “Ya Karim’, Ya Karim” These are very high levels of faith but we can take learnings from these examples.
3-Think about how it could have been worse. A few years ago, I had a knee injury. When I finally got to a competent orthopedist, he diagnosed me with an “insufficiency fracture”- something I had never heard of in medical school. He told me I had to take all pressure of the knee(i.e. I needed to sit for salat) and it would cure itself over several months .Which is exactly what happened! I thought to myself: “Thank God it wasn’t progressive osteoarthritis as the G.P. had thought because then I would be looking at a knee-replacement(very painful!) down the road. Don’t feel too bad! I am not always that good about my Husn Al Dhann lol.
My father when he was still alive would taunt people with the statement:” We have the best weather in the world here in Montreal”. People would think he was crazy! “What?! – the terrible cold and snowstorms in the winter and the hot ,muggy days of the summer! How could you say that?” He would answer” We don’t have hurricanes, we don’t have volcanoes. Tornadoes are very rare and we have almost no earthquakes. What’s a blizzard in the winter. You hunker down for a day. Then you take out your shovel the next day and you’re good to go”.
As you watch the weather trends nowadays, you can’t help thinking that he had a point. The massive heat waves in southern USA, the hurricanes in Florida and the West Coast, the drought in the mid-West and the wildfires in California and the West Coast! We are doing pretty well in Montreal lol.( For the nit-pickers and naysayers and contradiction detectors -the people I love to hate lol-yes there was an ice-storm in 1998 that did considerable damage-not many deaths however. The exception that proves the rule.
So my father was practicing Husn Al Dhann about the weather. He would have been shocked to learn that he was performing an act of piety lol. Like the time I caught him resonating with the Hare Krishna crowd at Philip’s Square! “But Dad I thought you don’t believe in religion” I said. “I Know. But I like this music. It gets to me” Too bad he didn’t go further in his spiritual quest!
4- Seeing the compassion in the pain. You have a chronic pain condition. But it comes and goes. Your skin is burning and itching. But then it disappears enough for you to get a decent sleep. Your money is running out. And suddenly a source of ‘risq’ occurs. None of this was predictable. None of it even makes sense! If you have no cartiledge at the knee joint or between the vertebrae why does the pain come and go?! Shouldn’t it be there all the time. No doctor can explain that. It is from the Mercy of Allah. And He is micromanaging our experience on a moment by moment basis. See if you can observe it!
5-What is this difficult experience designed to teach you. There is almost always a heuristic component to every hardship. I remember a social worker who told me about ending up in the hospital with acute appendicitis. Only then did she realize she was in an abusive relationship and needed to get out. Or the Kashmiri businessman from Sri Nagar who found out that his partner was emptying the cash register every night which led to the bankrupcy of their enterprise. He came running to the Naqshbandi Mujaddid sheikh in Gutlibagh(Mir Alam) and said that was the best decision of his life.
So “hold your horses” before saying “this shouldn’t be”, exercise self -restraint and above all remeber:”fi kulli shay khairin(in everything is goodness) and praise the Lord. Alhumdulillah Rabbil Alamin. May Allah help us all in this challenging task of having a good opinion of His actions-always!
Addendum: The “elephant in the room” here is doubt! “Shakk”-the fifth klesa if you wish. The doubt comes from us believing in what is in our minds rather than in what Allah is doing. It is the cause of much of our errors and most of our anxiety! The only way to deal with it is to become acutely aware of it and to defuse it with tawakuul as soon as it comes up.
As Muslims we know the story of our Prophet saws with Abu Bakr Siddiq in the cave as they are fleeing to Madina. Abu Bakr r.a. is worrying(i.e. doubting), for one of the few times, about the safety of our Prophet saws who responds;” Are you not aware that Allah is with us on this journey” the Noble One explains. If Abu Bakr.one of the great ones, the Siddiq has doubts ,what about us.
The opposite of doubt is certitude -“Yaqin” but that is a very high state in Reality. As mentionned in the article most believers have that certainty in theory. But in Reality ,especially when being tested, that is another matter.So let us continue working on it.! Inshallah. Sufi Ibrahim
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Three Approaches to Ramadan Fasting
Asalamu aleykum, brothers and sisters. I have noticed over the years that fasters break down into three basic categories, the last one being the least popular but the most recommended. What else is new? The most common being the worst! So what are the three?
1-The Deniers affectionately known as the “mu mishkila “(What me worry?) people . I met those people first in Damascus. The political situation was horrid. The tension was palpable in the air. But when you brought it up, without attempting to blame anyone, you got “the mu mishkila ” response. “We have some of the finest Islamic scholars in the world”(True). “We have some great Sufi tariqats-“True! What could possibly go wrong.?! Well, we all know where that led to- catastrophe! 100’s of thousands killed, millions displaced! Now, I am not saying the denial led to the catastrophe .But it certainly didn’t help. And once you are in denial, thus ignoring the cause, there is no way out! But catastrophe.
And now we have Zelensky of the Ukraine doing the same thing. The Americans warned him! “They are planning an invasion” they told him (There were already 150,000 troops at his doorstep) “What invasion. Don’t say that!” He reproached the Americans for their realism. And look where that led?!Deniers pay a very heavy price for their temporary delusional relief.
Now how does this play out with the fasting process? In many Muslim societies but especially amongst the Arab societies you get the following narrative: “Fasting, it’s so easy for me. I do everything I usually do except I don’t eat” Easy-peasy. Really?! Well, first it’s their wives that out them: “Ahmad is in such a foul mood all the time he is fasting.” And its their bosses “My employees make so many more mistakes during this month”. What?! I thought it was so easy for them.
The first person that alerted me to this problem was a French-Canadian lady whose husband worked for the Canadian embassy in Morocco. They regularly noticed that their Moroccan Muslim employees became more irritable and more impatient while fasting. Gradually they learnt to be more careful in addressing them. You can be sure that confronted with this phenomenon the employees would be in complete denial: “Me, I am no different than usual. Better, actually because I don’t have to take breaks for eating”. Ya, right. The outsiders could see through their self-deception.
Btw in the hadith Ramadan is referred to as “the month of patience”. Think about it. We don’t have to be patient with things that are easy and pleasant.” Be patient with your well-behaved child” or” be patient with your delicious ice cream” Makes no sense, right? You have to be patient with difficult things. And Ramadan is difficult, make no bones about it! Mubarak for sure ,full of rewards in the hereafter, an order from Allah, for sure. But difficult, nevertheless- as are many of the edicts from our Lord.
I grew up hating denial.( The other side of that coin was that I had a strong inclination for Truth-regardless of the social influences around me.Still do, btw! My mother, may God forgive her and reward her for all her hard work raising us four rebels lol was a somatizer. She would get angry with one of us and get stomachaches after. When I would try to indicate to her that the stomachaches were her emotional reaction to our bad behaviour, we would get denial. “No its not that. I just ate too much lasagna at dinner.” Lol. My mom was not an overeater!
To indicate why this is important, I can tell you that at a younger age I too had stomacaches. Once again my mother would try to put it on the food! When I finally got into group therapy at the ripe age of 23 ,i understood the connection with my emotions during the stomachaches and I have never had any since! Except when I do eat bad food lol and get gastroenteritis. But NOT from emotions! So it makes a big difference when you stop denying! Then you can adapt and modify your behaviour and often enough solve the underlying problem!
Then I studied psychoanalysis and learnt that “denial is the most primitive defense mechanism of all!” And when I started researching the Arabic dictionnary I realized that denial and lying came from the same Arabic trilateral root- k-dh-b. And Allah uses them almost interchangeably in the Quran. So this is important stuff!
There are so many manifestations of this denial mechanism but we can only mention a few here. Here is one that bothered me a lot during the pre-Covid period when I went to Jumaa prayer on a regular basis. Somewhere around the 25th day or so the Iman would get up on the pulpit and say something like:”25 days of Ramadan and it has gone by in the wink of an eye”. Really?! I don’t know what world this Imam is living in but it ain’t mine lol. Each day had its own particular struggle. At one point during almost every day it seemed like the fast would never end. Ever had one of those fasting days? That’s why our Prophet saws called it the month of patience. Maybe I missed the hadith where it says “Ramadan goes by in the wink of an eye” but I doubt it. Instead the Imam should be saying something like; “Congratulations on all your efforts. You are all doing a great job.” Like a good teacher trying to encourage their students or a good coach trying to spur his team on to victory.. That would be compassionate, that would be empathic. I think they need to add on a course in pedagogy and psychology in the Madrassas. But instead we constantly get the message that we are not doing enough! That is what drove the Catholics away from their Churches. Let’s not make the same mistake!
2– The Complainers (or in the vernacular the kvetches lol) These people go around the entire month complaining about their symptoms- much to the chagrin of the Muslims around them. They tell us about their tiredness ,their headaches, their lack of cognitive abilities and brain fog. The deniers hate them. “Stop that brother or sister, you are going to lose all your “ajr”(reward).”You will be rewarded for your sufferings on the other side” True- but that most often doesn’t take away the symptoms. It just makes the first person feel like you have no empathy or compassion. Instead of empathy you get guilt. The famous ADHD researcher Ed Hallowell called that the school of “shame, blame and humiliation”-apparently standard in most traditional societies!
Now the physical symptoms are an important part of the experience and need to be properly managed. For example one thing I learnt early on was that many headaches were actually ,in fact, caffeine withdrawal headaches. One of my convert friends got it so bad one year that he went to the emergency room thinking that he had meningitis! Until we figured it out. I watched my sheikh of the time, Sheikh Nazim breaking fast every day with a cup of tea and taking a cup of tea as the last thing in suhoor(pre-Fajr meal).Only later did I realize that he was managing his caffeine withdrawal that way. Now that is my regular practice-one cup of coffee at iftar and one at suhoor. And most often I will get away without the headache-especially if the fast is only 15 hours or less.
Here, I would like to tell another type of story(a bad management story) to illustrate another aspect of the managing symptoms story .One year when I went to London for Ramadan- as I did regularly for many years-to be with my sheikh, I met a young Irish convert from a very difficult background. He had had a father who was an episodic alcoholic with a very bad character. His father would get angry and throw him up against the wall when that happened. Due to multiple traumas like that -many of which gave him concussions, he developed grand-mal epilepsy! So at the beginning of Ramadan he came to consult with me as to how he should manage the fast. I suggested he should go slowly ,perhaps every second day at the beginning, He would hear nothing of it!
It seemed to be working well early on but during the last ten days ,his defenses broke down and he had a grand-mal seizure in the middle of the mosque during Tarawih prayer.There was a group of fanatics there- followers of someone we knew as Greensheikh. They were convinced that this was not a medical condition but rather a jinn possession and wanted to do an exorcism. Most of the attendees however, including myself, saw it for what it was-a neurological event that needed medical attention! A fight broke out between the two groups, a member of the Greensheikh group pulled out a knife and the police had to be called in(Very well-trained British cops I must say) In the end we accompanied the murid to the hospital but one of the “reasonable” group had to deal with a knife-wound to the hand that took weeks to heal after getting infected.. Such is the price of denial.
In fact, many of us know people that are unable to fast-because of diabetes or heart conditions or migraines and many other illnesses. So it must be acknowledged that fasting is a physiological stress. You have to in relatively good health to do it. So beware of deniers! They can be dangerous to your health and even to your life!
3-The Embracers; This is the approach I am recommending. Embrace ALL the Reality-the glory and upliftment and transcendent aspects of Ramadan(the states of Grace) AND the difficult parts. The openings may be brief and subtle. They may be evanescent and hard to capture at times. But they ARE there. What one of my shuyukh called “nafahat” (spiritual breezes).But don’t miss them. Enjoy them -like butterflies in the summer. If they linger, then you are truly blessed. The sufferings will be rewarded as well. So don’t let your physical symptoms distract you from the “barakat” of the month. It’s all good! Embrace it all! The physical symptoms can be managed -with compassion and wisdom-and the transcendent aspects can be savoured-especially if you can open your eyes and your heart to what is occuring on the inner planes. May Allah make this the best and holiest Ramadan ever. And if we don’t see the results on this side of the curtain we will certainly see them on the other side ! Ramadan Mubarak and Ramadan Karim.
Raising Children-An Islamic Perspective
This is one of the best videos I have seen on synthesizing Western and Islamic wisdom into a Manual for Child-Rearing. Have a l,ook!
A Quick Note on Patience!
(Did your contradiction detector light up lol? That’s the way we have all been trained by our so-called education system. Should be called miseducation system but that’s a whole other story. Yes, quick and patient .Get used to it! Life is full of contradictions. (Apologies to the most honorable Aristotle- the Guru in chief of logic!)
So(another faux pas that I love. Not supposed to start a sentence with “so” according to the politically correct grammarians!) But(another dubious start lol) it is such a great word…”so” and “so” As say the Americans “sue me if you don’t like it”! So, this is another in a series of articles about Islamic concepts being misused, overused and abused. We will be talking shortly about “Bir Walidayn”-another problematic concept-at least in modern usage. Stay tuned!
A French lady living for a long time in Egypt came to the conclusion that the basic Egyptian mind-set was “bokra inshallah”(Tomorrow, if God wills).That is NOT patience. Patience is neither procrastination ,nor slacknes of will nor cowardice. Although those are often unwittingly being invoked by the term “patience”. That is NOT the sunnat of our Prophet saws.
As I like to say, something which could be misunderstood as heretical since we believe our Prophet saws was inspired in his actions, if Muhammad saws had been patient with the Qurayshi kuffar for another year in Mecca we may never have had a religion ! That of course is not possible as the spread of Islam was from Divine destiny. The point however is still well-taken. Patience, although a good default position, is not always the right option. Sometimes it is action that is needed. And the difference between the two is a matter of judgment and discernment -two entities that are not subject to fixed formulations!
So what is Right Patience(borrowing here from the lexicon of the Buddhists).As mentioned previously Right Patience is neither laziness nor procrastination nor cowardice nor fatalism nor passivity. Right Patience implies hard work-doing our “due diligence”. It requires intelligence and effort and a reasonable measure of planning(not the obsessional over-thought planning we see in modern Western institutions!).After all of that is done, then we rely on Allah (tawwakul) for the result- knowing full well that only He can cause the result to be.(see the Aphorisms of Ibn Ataillah for further elaboration on this point).Understanding and seeing this can be considered an absolutely essential part of our suluk(path) whatever that may be. And we have a most excellent example of that in the life of our Prophet saws.
In the hadith we have a very instructive teaching on this principle:
Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, the hadith outlines the story of a Bedouin man who was leaving his camel without tying it. The Prophet (PBUH) asked him “Why don’t you tie down your camel?” The Bedouin answered, “I put my trust in Allah.” The Prophet then replied, “Tie your camel first, and then put your trust in Allah.”
Our Prophet saws did not only speak about this, he acted like that! His entire life he “tied his camel”. That is, he did the necessary work, planned when needed(for the Muslim battles for example) prayed and then left the result to Allah. And that is the way we need to be. No more “bokra inshallah” lol. Rather firm commitment to Right Action and Right Words and then trusting deeply and absolutely in God. May Allah help us all to understand and to see! Salaams, Ibrahim
The Real Problem of the Taliban-Religious Materialism
The Taliban have recaptured Afghanistan!So we see these noble,dignified soldiers dressed in sunnat clothing and if we look no further,we could be impressed.Personally,I find their dress,at least for the males,much more appealing than that of Western politicians who are essentially wearing the garb of the lower echelons of the royal courts-the jacks of the monarchy!.As to the women,the imposed dress code is both awful and unnatural-the product of a misplaced principle of modesty.We will look into the issue of “principles” a little later in the article as they seem to go hand in hand with “Materialism”.
Now,when I say materialism I am not referring to its sense of greediness and avarice as it is commonly used.I am referring to a philosophical,attitudinal position where the concrete is the predominant and determinant reality.So the Marxists say they are “dialectical materialists”. The scientific types say they are empirically-based .But Empiricism is just another form of materialism.And many of our religions are carrying another and even deeper form of materialism-the dress,the rituals the rules of the religion in its outer form.I call that”Religious Materialism”.
Now this is not what religion is supposed to be.This is not what the Prophets and founders and mystics of the religion were teaching.In fact,this common distinction between spirituality and religion is moot,in fact.True religion IS spiritual,by definition.But it appears that the human mind has a need to concretize and codify everything.And therein the problem begins.Now codification may well be necessary to some extant but it musn’t become predominant.Otherwise we are into religious bureaucracuy -an inevitable consequence of Religious Materialism.At that point,we have “thrown out the baby with the bathwater” so to speak.
So, paradoxically the Taliban have fallen into the same trap as the Marxists.The Marxists believed that if you changed the outward,economic situation of the people their inward state would change.And the Taliban believe that if you set up the structure of an Islamic state,people will become good and virtuous.So they are deeply misled.Au contraire what they become is rigid (uncompassionate) or hypocritical! Neither is a good outcome.Neither is what the founders of religion including our Prophet wished for!
So,when I look at the Taliban,I don’t see any of the “nur”(light) of Islam in their faces.I am sure this was not the case with the original Muslims around the Prophet saws.The unbelievers began seeing this transformatioin two generations after the Prophet saws where the nur of the Sahhabbas was beginning to diminish in the Muslim community.At this point in time you have to search it out unfortunately.I remember being in Mecca and looking and looking for it.I finally found it in a group of Bangladeshi people who belonged to the Naqshbandi order.And yes,it is the Sufis who are carrying this nur most clearly.It is not there-neither in the Taliban nor the Salafis nor the Shia generally.
Now,this is a universal phenomenon-not unique to Islam.We can find it in all religions.The original light and baraka and Love becomes a set of rules and regulations and customs and rituals.And the life is lost.No matter how noble the principles,how accurate the scriptrural exegeses,how clever the scholars,the very essence of the religion,the sap of the tree so to speak, is lost.And then we too are lost.
One of the paradoxes of this Materialism is that it is almost inevitably tied to a series of principles -i.e. things that are not material in themselves but of course end up being materialized in ways that are often contrary to the origins of the principles themselves! So the Marxists are bound to the notion of “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” which then becomes the dictatorship of the top echelons of the Communist party.The Scientific Materialists become the advocates of the “randomized,placebo-controlled, multi-centered , peer-reviewed articles in published prestigious journals”(That IS a mouthful lol) and then miss the Reality on the ground as they did so ignobly with early treatment of Covid epidemic.That one cost millions of lives on its own!The Christian Materialists massacre those from a different faith as in the Spanish inquisition and the Crusades and burn the witches at the stake in the name of “The Love of Jesus” Wa la howla wala quwatta.And the Muslim Materialists continually talk about “Quran and sunnat” while missing the wisdom ,compassion and humanity of both.These contradictions tend to supplant the original intentions and tend to have a very long life,unfortunately.
Once the essence is lost,the entire structure is compromised.Peoples hearts are dry and all sorts of excesses and cruelties become possible.Thence the critique of the secularists against religions.And unfortunately they have a point.
So now we can see it, in its full manifestation, in the Taliban.Outer,materialistic religion.what a trap?! The devil must be rubbing his hands in glee.And yet,these people think what they are doing is right and pure.Little do they know what trap they have fallen into.I will let God decide their fate but for sure I will not be part of it and I will call them out as I have done many times in the past to the other Islamic Materialists-the Wahhabbis.I clearly remember leaving one of their dinner invitations saying to them bluntly:”I do not see any light in your faces.How can I possibly believe your words” And I said the same to a group of Shia who were also trying to convince me of their ideas.Until I see the light and feel the Love,their empty words are meaningless.
So,is there a way out?! Of course there is!. Allah would not leave us with a problem for which there is no solution.But the way out requires something that few people seem willing to do-self-observation(muraqabat). Let me give you an example!
About twelve years ago, in Jordan, I met an ex-Wahhabbi who had come to spend time with my sheikh of the time-Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller.”How did you get here?” I asked” Wahhabbis never come to see the Sufis.” He told me that he was earnestly following the Wahhabbi way(now they cal themsaelves Salafis after the early generation of Muslims but they are very far from the state of those noble ones!). He continued to tell me his story;’My heart was dry .I could feel nothing.And then I appealed to my Lord for help.He swt sent me a dream in which the Prophet saws was driving a Chevrolet?! ” I knew then that Sheikh Nuh was a true representative of our Prophet and my Wahhabbi teachers were a mere shadow of that reality-at best.That is the kind of lucidity required to break out of the Materialist conundrum that troubles all the religions.May Allah help us to remain inwardly rich and alive and not to fall into the trap of outwardliness. Salaams,Ibrahim
Ramadan as Process(An update to The Phenomenology of Ramadan)
Ramadan as Process:
I an writing this article because it seems to me that there is a major aspect of the Ramadan experience that our scholars are unwilling to talk about -except in the most fleeting terms-its difficulty lol.They much prefer their idealizations and their principles to the lived reality!On the other hand ,in sharp contrast,I was pleased to hear Sheikh Zaid Shakir recently mentioning “the rigours of Ramadan” The local Imam,when the mosque was operating at full capacity,loved,instead, to talk about how quickly it is was passing.”19 days” he would say:”and it passed like a brief moment”.Really?! Yup,a brief moment -of 19 eternities.
So ,all around me I would see and hear of events.Like my very first Tarawih prayer where the Imam fell to the floor writhing in pain.It turned out that the Ramadan dehydration phenomenon had crystallized a stone in his urinary tract requiring an emergency medical procedure.Or the woman who would mention to her friends that her husband, who said he was fine with fasting, was regularly losing his temper for nothing.Or the patients I had to recommend to stop their fast because their depression,which they were already struggling with, had gotten worse! All of this goes on backstage,while in the foreground the ulema are only telling us of the blessings and the benefits- which is also true.
Don’t get me wrong here! I think Ramadan is a wonderful practice- clearly ordained by our Lord for our benefit.But that benefit is spiritual- not physical.And it involves hardship and perseverance and submission to our Lord.If it were otherwise it would not be called “the month of patience”. It is not a beach-party of Divine Presence.For that, no patience would required.
So why do I bring this up?! Because I don’t believe in “denial'”. According to the psychoanalysts,denial is the most primitive form of defense mechanism.And in the Arabic language the root word for denial (k-th-b) is the same as that for lying! So we really don’t want to go there.This attempt at denial ends up being counterproductive! If the ulema were hoping to encourage us by telling us only about the positive aspects and not acknowledging the experience,they have the opposite effect.People who are having difficulty and pain then feel like they are defective,slackers and losers.Is that what we want?! To have a collective assault on our self-worth?That is certainly NOT the intention of our Lord or his Prophet saws
Now,once again,the point here is not to minimize the importance of Ramadan.Allah has ordered it for our benefit.The point is to learn how to manage it in a way that we get the maximum benefit and the least harm.We all know of people who cannot do it-due to diabetes,or migraines or circulatory illness or even in my experience people who are depressed and psychotic.But there are many more subtle and more common issues.Last year, I myself missed a large part of the fast because of the viral illness called Shingles.It was apparent that the fasting had triggered it and it would only get worse if I continued fasting .I had to make up the days during the year.I was content with my decision.And this year all is well,so far! Alhumdulillah.
Others are not so discerning.I remember being with an Irish convert in England who suffered from serious epilepsy.I advised him to do only a partial fast. He wouldn’t listen and had a grand-mal seizure in the Peckham mosque during tarawih prayers in the last ten days.That seizure elicited a huge fitna between the believers in neurology(including myself lol) and those who considered it was “jinn”.A huge conflagration occurred and the police(who were excellently trained unlike in America!) had to be called in to quell the riot!. That is not what we need as Muslims!
Admittedly most Ramadan issues are not quite so dramatic.They are more about managing our energy deficits,dealing with the headaches,the periods of constipation and loss of drive.All of those are reasonably frequent and need to be managed.For most people,Ramadan is a roller-coaster! Periods of loss of energy,loss of motivation followed by moments of barakat and peace and blessings.Some experience tranquility and calm.Others lose their will to to do anything! “it’s all grist for the mill” the psychoanalysts like to say.For us “it’s all service to our Lord”. But, we are not supposed to be increasing the pain through blindness and ignorance.And the blindness we are referring to here mostly involves blindness to our inner experience.
“So what does this mean concretely?”you may ask.And we ARE living in the era of concreteness! It is called Philosophical Materialism or Empirism-and it affects the Muslim psyche just as it affects the social psyche generally.Some examples.When I was still practising psychiatry,I would reduce the number of patients I saw /day and abstain from new evaluations and complex reports since that is what took the most cognitive effort.When I met some Iranian students of agriculture at the local university,they told me they started studying at iftar and studied through the night.”Clever ones” I thought! A member of the Tunisian Olypmpic team told me they did their athletic training at midnight during Ramadan-after the Tarawih prayer.Another brilliant move.But all of that requires awareness and breaking of habits-somehing that is all too rare in many circles!
One of the keys here is NOT to feel guilty about our experience.And not to be a”.Ramadan fasting macho”.The Imams seem to be specialized in making us feel bad! ‘You fasted all day but you had some bad thoughts about a friend.Fasting cancelled”. “You recited some Quran.Did you not know that Imam AbuHanifa and Imam Shafii did two complete Qurans /day.So you’re a slacker”! ” You left after 8 rakats.Don’t you know that 20 is better” And on and on .I call this “The Catholicization of Islam” as the Catholics were adept at making their parishioners feel bad about themselves and regularly sending them to the hell-fires! One of the reasons so many left the Church.
Sheikh Nazim used to tell us that the formula for life was 40 to1- pain to pleasure.My apologies to any hedonists in the audience lol.Ramadan may well be even more acute.But the reward is with Allah.I shudder to think what the outcome would be if it were in the hands of human beings.Actually if you look around at our planet you can see what that would be?! Gradual and systematic destruction! Tawakuultu Ilayhi Wa Huwa Rabb ul Arsh Al Atheem. (We trust in Him and He is the Lord of the Magificent Throne-i.e. the Ultimate Manager!)
So,Ramadan Kareem and Saleem.It’s going to be tough! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! But in the end it’s more than worth it.And it’s well worth managing it skilfuly as well!
The Phenomenology of Ramadan
“Phenomenology” is a relatively new area of inquiry- often associated with such personalities as the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger(1889-1976).We will not even attempt to go into the the intricacies of their philosophical systems as this would fly in the face of my most profound conviction about the need for simplicity. I would prefer to sort out a chaotic garage or warehouse space(obviously of my own making lol) than to even attempt such an endeavour.
Nevertheless,I think these schools of thought do represent an important development in our own way of conceiving the world and more specifically the need for us to observe and reflect on our inner experience.This need does not seem to be very present in traditional cultures including Islam where correct behaviour and correct beliefs seemed to suffice.So for most Muslims ,the fact that Allah ordained fasting in the Quran(2:183) and the Prophet saws told us of its benefits and the scholars have determined that the first ten days are for “Rahmat”(mercy) and the second ten are about” forgiveness from God” and the last ten give “freedom from the hellfires” is sufficient.
Being in the modern world, however, some of us, at least, feel the need to go deeper-into the inner experience and this is where phenomenology comes in.We need to look at the inner,experiential reality .
As I reflected on this( it may well have been an inspiration) I realized that an interesting parallel to Ramadan is the experience of pregnancy.The trigger for this thinking may well have been a difficult beginning to this year’s Ramadan and my recollections of the accounts of Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, and her difficult pregnancies being bed-ridden for months at the beginning of each of her pregnancies with overwhelming nausea.The details of her experience are not what is important here however,no more than the details of the philosophical systems of Husserl and Heidegger.What is interesting is that the three trimesters of pregnancy provide an interesting parallel to the three ten-day sections of Ramadan and I believe this can be helpful to us in understanding the process.
So, in Ramadan,the first ten days especially the early ones can be difficult for people.Just as women often experience nausea(morning-sickness) during the first trimester fasters will have a variety of symptoms as they take on the fast-headaches,dizziness,weakness,lack of concentration ,etc. Depending on the state of health of the practitioner this may last only a day or two or may continue for a longer period of time,for some intermittently throughout the month.
The second trimester of pregnancy usually is characterized by a subsidence of the ‘crisis mode’ ,less symptoms,a calmness and a waiting.I would call this phase”paddling” and “incubation”. The baby is slowing growing and developing.The same is true in Ramadan.The worst is over.Now is the time of persistence and patience.
We all know where the third trimester of pregnancy leads! If we have had any contact with a woman going through it,we know they are literally “carrying a heavy load” ,exhausted,breathless at night and anticipating and fretting about the”apocalypse ‘to come.And then it is over.At this point the model breaks down somewhat as Ramadan is not as clearly defines in its finality.So for the last ten days to be more accurate I would add in the model of the Shakespearian play which builds up to its climax(Lailat al Qadr) and its dénouement(the few days left after Lailat al Qadr. And the the Eid celebrations-in both cases.However for the woman, as opposed to the faster,the work has just begun!That is why Allah and his Prophet insist so strongly on the rights of the Mother!
I hope that helps you understand better the inner process of the month of fasting and makes it a more fulfilling and satisfying experience.I feel like it is helping me to think of it this way.And I can’t wait to see the baby at the end! Salaams,ibrahim