Islam's Green

Global Fitna and Disunity!

Told like it is, by Fatima Barkatullah......please NOTA BENE (NB, meaning note well) provocative title choice is mine NOT sister Fatima's!

I decided to go to the Global Peace & Unity Event with just my eldest son to see what it was like and to feel that good feeling one gets when in an environment where our Brotherhood can be felt. I only went for the second day: Sunday. Ma Sha Allah many of the talks were inspiring: Yaasir Qadhi set out the solution for the problems the Ummah faces: returning to the Deen and doing what we can as individuals to make sure we are on the straight path....Salman al-'Awdah, George Galloway and others had powerful speeches reminding us of the situation many Muslims find themselves in. There was something for everyone really.

I think the scale of the Global Peace & Unity Event was different: apparently 50000 people attending between the two days (Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th of November). That is a lot of people. But if you're going to organise an event that big...you've got to meet the challenge, by thinking of everything. Many people accepted Islam at the event and others felt their Iman increase. The comedian was very funny and gave an important message at the same time. The food was good masha Allah.

I looked at the event as a mother. My son would have felt the Unity of the Muslims for quite a long time during the event. He would have seen that Muslims can excel in having quality businesses designing and selling Multimedia products, modern clothing, services, food and everything in between! That is something that would have boosted my confidence when I was a young girl - the only practicing Muslim in sight at my school. He would have also seen the amount of litter everywhere as well as the free-mixing. Unfortunately though, if he had been older, he would also have probably learnt that singers are more important than scholars. Imagine scholars being told they had to shorten their talks. Do you think anyone would ask a singer to shorten their songs? There was one point when Suhaib Webb was told to finish his talk in one minute. He in fact refused saying that he had been given twenty and he intended to speak for twenty minutes because he had a message he wanted to convey to the people. He even said to the audience many of whom seemed not to be paying attention to him: "If you can listen to singers then you should listen to your Imaams!"
Allahu Akbar.

I feel afraid. I am afraid that the Ummah is giving our children, dangerous mixed messages. We tell them not to follow their desires or imitate the disbelievers and then they see the following: Two singers who are known for their good work for Muslim children and education, singers who children often recognise, turn up on the stage with musical instrument in hand and start to sing and strum guitars in a Muslim event, for Muslims, organised by Muslims. One of them did apparently warn the audience and asked for tolerance. I had left the room as soon as I saw the first guitar. I truly believe that this is the fulfillment of the Prophet's prophecy:
“In my ummah there will be people who allow fornication/adultery (zina), silk, wine and musical instruments [ma’aazif].

(Reported by al-Bukhaari in al-Saheeh mu’allaqan, 51/10. Reported mawsoolan by al-Bayhaqi in al-Sunan al-Kubra, 3/272; al-Tabaraani in al-Mu’jam al-Kabeer, 3/319; and Ibn Hibbaan in al-Saheeh (8/265-266). Classed as saheeh by Ibn al-Salaah in ‘Uloom al-Hadeeth (32), Ibn al-Qayyim in Ighaathat al-Lahfaan (255) and Tahdheeb al-Sunan (5/270-272), al-Haafiz in al-Fath (10/51) and al-Albaani in al-Saheehah (1/140)).

But the event was meant to be for Global Peace & Unity. As soon as the instruments were brought out....they divided the Muslims. Why would you do that? Is it so important that your song, (which you claim is for da'wah and to give an Islamic message), be accompanied by a musical instrument that you know half the audience regard as haraam - forbidden by Allah, so they cannot expose themselves or their children to it? I mean was it that important to do that? I heard sister Yvonne Ridley saying on her show once how uncomfortable the new emerging pop nasheed culture was to her. I agree. It is a slippery slope.

I suppose the key is not to expose ones children to the nasheed culture. I have a Ahmad Bukhatir CD, a Junaid Jamshed CD, some Arabic songs which teach the pillars of Iman and rules of Tajweed, the five pillars of Islam, the six pillars of Iman tapes, which have innocent Muslim poems and rhymes on them. I also had Dawud Wharnsby Ali tapes which I only brought out occasionally but I am seriously considering getting rid of them, for this reason alone: whoever I bring into my children's lives will be a role model for my children...if they see him with a guitar, that will affect them, especially since one of my relations has a guitar (which I cover whenever I see it at their house) and if they notice that guitar and the guitar of nasheed artists (?) I mean musicians (that's what they are), then what message does that send them? Then on top of that if those musicians are 'bigged up' by the event organisers, (How many times were people at the GP&U event told that Yusuf Islam was in the building? So many times, with so many cheers and applause and takbeers. Much more than the scholars and students of knowledge were bigged up.) If the singers are bigged up and the audience hyped up, then that will be such a strong influence on my child, especially as he gets older. Human beings are affected by those who surround them.

No doubt about it.
At the GP & U event Allah protected my son. Before the Nasheeds and songs even started, he fell asleep on my lap. Then when the guitar came out - I picked up all of my bags and my heavy son and walked out of the hall.

Remember the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “Whoever among you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hand (by taking action); if he cannot, then with his tongue (by speaking out); and if he cannot then with his heart (by hating it and feeling that it is wrong), but that is the weakest of faith.” (Narrated by Muslim, 49). About that Shaykh Ibn Baaz (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: Denouncing it in one’s heart is obligatory for everyone. That means hating the evil action and shunning those who do it, if one is unable to denounce it by taking action or speaking out.” From: al-Durar al-Saniyah fi al-Ajwabah al-Najdiyyah, 16/142.
We cannot be witness to such things nor can we pretend they are not that important. My son woke up, way after the nasheeds finished.

So many brothers and sisters who I know didn't listen to music just stayed in the room. That's how forbidden acts eventually get accepted by people: apathy. Not enjoining the good and forbidding the evil - not even protecting ourselves from witnessing the evil. I am not exaggerating when I say that I think this is the slippery slope that could lead our children into becoming wishy-washy Muslims. That is a disease of the heart.

One brother did speak out and did it in the nicest way: Br Jalal ibn Sa'eed. After the banjo strumming was over, he came and with a smile on his face said that the guitars were not his cup of tea and then clearly said for all to hear that Music is haraam. The crowd cheered. He called on them to do takbeer and there was loud cheering because so many people there agreed with him. He then said that he doesn't dislike the brothers who used musical instruments because he knows they thought they were doing good - or something like that. That took guts to do. Barak Allah feehi. He enjoined the good at the event when it was so easy to just act like everything was going fine.

The only reason I am speaking openly about this is because the singers so openly played their instruments to audiences of millions of Muslims if you include all those who could potentially watch the event on TV and later on DVD. So many children and young people will be influenced by their actions.

I will be writing to Islam Channel insha Allah and I hope things can improve in the future but I don't feel that optimistic because there is a current trend to just go along with anything that will impress non-Muslims and show them that we're not that different to them. It's sad to me, but I will not be attending such events in the future. I know what the crowd can do to your Iman because I've been there.

If anyone has any doubt about music, read these proofs:

http://www.islamqa.com/index.php?ref=5011&ln=eng

It is not just one scholars opinion. It is the opinion of the Sahabah, and the early generations, who are the ones who preserved Islam for us because they knew the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. The three infallibles prove it: The Qur'an, the Sunnah as well as the consensus of the early generations of Muslims.

Global Peace and Unity

Any event with such a billing was inevitably going to create a type of expectation that was going to be hard to meet.
Critics will point out that it was all razzmatazz and show, that it had no real substance, no real message. An opportunity to educate and enlighten was lost for entertainment and fun. Too many nasheeds of dubious lawfulness and even more dubious politicians getting airtime. Well perhaps the critics are right. Perhaps that's all true, but for me it was great to be with twenty two thousand of my brothers and sisters. It was joyous to wander among the stalls in the bazaar section and see so many Muslims with ideas to educate and enlighten, to give aid and help, and all held together by that thread and bond we call Islam. Our deen. Our way of life.
Highlights of my day (I only went Sunday) was meeting and chatting with Moazzam Beg, and getting a signed copy of Enemy Combatant. Helping man the save Chechnya campaign stall. Mingling with everybody and NOT being in the VIP lounge like I was last year, but still getting to meet most of the "celebs" back stage waiting for my four minute speech on the genocide in Chechnya.
We really have to "big it up" for everyone in IsalmChannel, and the hundreds of volunteers who helped make it all possible.
May Allah forgive them their mistakes, reward them for their good, and help them to improve as much for the next as they did from the last!
More Global peace and unity? Yes please!

 

Enemy Combatant

After Fatima Barkatullah's (one of this blogs regular commentators) recommendation I was looking forward to reading this. Strangely, some of the points she mentioned (about the scientific miracles in the Quran) being good for Dawa, seemed to me artificial and contrived. Perhaps I was being too picky, and having been forewarned, I was looking out for it. More interesting for me personally, and good Dawa in its own way, were his discussions with and comments about fellow prisoner Uthaman al Yemeni, unabashed and self confessed Al Qaeda operative, who knew bin Ladin personally.
I haven't talked to Moazzam, but inshallah, the account seems accurate and honest. Although the book is authored by Moazzam he mentions that he has got help from Victoria Brittan. The inside page mentions "with" the above. How much is  Moazzam and  how much is Victoria is never really stated.  All said this is a book that is well written but not a  masterpiece of  literature, but I do not mean by that to detract from the importance of this book. It is very readable, and was hard to put down. It's a story that tells itself, and one cannot help but feel for Moazzam and his family, and anger at the Americans, British and Pakistanis for the disgusting way that they are, until now, treating human beings, many, if not most of them entirely innocent of the crimes they are accused of.
Highlights of the book are the relationships and conversations that Moazzam strikes up with the guards, and how well he conveys the emotions and feelings that go along with three years of solitary confinement, and of course the complicity of the  British government in all of this. Then there is that fact that he is well educated, articulate British Asian Muslim, and the book contains his experiences of growing up in the racially charged streets of Birmingham. His education contrasts with with the ignorance of some of his FBI interrogators, and provides some of the most humorous moments of the book.
This book really deserves to be read, no one, Muslim or not, should be ignorant about such horrors and injustice. We need to fight it, and make sure that we ourselves take a lesson and never descend into such brutality.
By the time I finished the book the biggest question left was how Moazzam has managed to contain his anger and retain his humanity and compassion! I was only reading the account and I felt more angry and upset than him! This, perhaps, is one of the most important lessons from this book that reminds us of the true nature of the Muslim and how his character should be.

Enemy Combatant

Ayaat

Verily, in the alternation of the night and day, and in all that Allah hath created, in the heavens and the earth, are signs for those who fear Him.

Those who rest not their hope on their meeting with Us, but are pleased and satisfied with the life of the present, and those who heed not our signs

Their abode is the Fire because of the evil they have earned...

Surah Yunus 6-8

Those who have taqwa (the fear, awareness and mindfulness of God) see His signs and are mindful of the lessons and guidance implicit in them.
The signs are everywhere, "in all that Allah hath created."
On the 1st of Shawwal 1427, the evening of eid ul fitr, Ayaat was born.
What an amazing and confusing and frightening thing giving birth is.
It all starts from what is usually a moment of intense pleasure. How humble and base our origins are!
One sperm out of millions, a despised fluid, fertilizes an egg. An egg that then grows and changes through stages, first an alaq (a clot, a thing that clings, a leech like object), then to become a mudgah, something like a chewed piece of meat, then the bones begin the grow and on those bones flesh and then, only then we begin to take on the definitive form that is recognizable as human.
The mother carries this burden, that drains her of food, minerals and energy, yet still, somehow, there is a renewed vigour in the step of this mother, and a glow on her face! It kicks, gets hiccups, responds to loud noises, yet there is the worry and the prayer:

"Let this be a healthy child, let it be righteous child."

What will this world be like that this child will be born into? One even wonders if one wants to bring another life into life, because it seems so likely that a path of suffering and difficulty lies ahead. There is of course hope. Hope that this child can help make a better world, a world more mindful of Allah and merciful to His creation.
The baby is overdue, by a week! There is no cause for concern. The baby will come when Allah wills. Then the contractions start. Pain seared across the mothers face. She bites her tongue, screams of pain and I wonder:
"Why Allah? Why like this. Why does she have to go through this? This suffering this pain"
Shaitaan whispers: "Maybe there is no Allah, its like this because its raw, hard merciless nature. There no God, no Creator. Its like this because its blind, brutal, uncaring chance. Where is your God?"
Slowly, painfully the baby is born. A girl!
The umbilical cord, the life line that connected her to her mother, and through and from which that baby took all she needed, is now cut. This little, helpless creature is taken to the cot. The mother is shivering from shock. The child is born the pain goes on, the contractions have not stopped. There is more blood, more suffering, more pain to come, but I walk over to the cot and look and listen to the baby crying. For nine months she was in her mother, surrounded in fluid, taking food and oxygen from her mother, but now she is breathing, crying! I look in utter amazement. How? How could this possibly be? If you go into space to survive you need a special suit, pressurized, with oxygen and reflective material to ward of the harmful radiation unconstrained by an absent atmosphere. What ingenuity and thought and work and intelligence. Yet we are born into a world totally at odds and at variance from the one we came from before we we born, yet we survive, and thrive, and even after a time begin to imagine we are self sufficient and don't need the guidance of the One who created us and equipped us for survival in the first place!

I look at this small miracle and the whisperings of the doubter vanish.

"Yes! You are truly from Ayaat of Allah" I tell her.

After a while mother takes child, Looks at her with love, and through the pain and blood and tears she says:

"Oh my beatiful baby, what would mummy do without you?"

...and I shake my head in shere amazment. After all that suffering and pain so much love!

Certainly in this are ayaat for those who have taqwa.

What are these ayaat, what lessons do we lern, in our own lives, the world around us, the suffering of the ummah, the reality of the akhira! It tells us how Allah creates and brings about life and change and love, along with and even through suffering and hardship. They paradoxicly contradict yet are intertwined and interdependent. How?  Well, I won't do the thinking for you. If you have taqwa you will understand, even after some effort. If you have none my explanations won't help you!

And thus her name, Ayaat.

Ayaat bint Abdurraheem ibn Green. May Allah keep you straight on His path, Ameen!