Islam's Green

The Journey to Allah

 

 

For those of us who are castrated by the lack of adequate Arabic, we'll have to keep relying on translators to bring us ilm in a language we can understand. We are fortunate to have a vast range of materials available to us in the English language, some of which is so badly translated that it might as well have stayed in Arabic, or is so verbose that one needs a dictionary at hand to make head or tail of it, but on the other hand we have the likes of Abu Rumaysah who's translations of some of the works of ibn Rajab al Hanbali strike a nice balance between academic propriety, the poetic and comprehensible. There is whole series published by Daar us Sunnah, but I am referring here to a most valuable treaties called "The Journey to Allah".

The book begins with four hadith that bear somewhat the same meaning, and the rest of the treatise could be looked at as an explanation of those invaluable words of guidance from the Prophet saws.

The hadith reminds us of what ibn Rajab calls "the great principle", and the first five chapters of the book deal with "the great principle" and how to understand and apply it. "The great principle" is that our deeds are not enough to save us from hell fire or attain paradise. What is of upmost importance is our humility and seeking forgiveness of Allah and our being grateful to Him. So this is the path that we should tread on our journey to Him, the exalted. The deeds that are most beloved to Allah are those done continuously, even if they are few, and we should be steadfast, balanced and through moderation we will reach our goal.

Bukhari records on the authority of Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet saws said "This religion is easy, none makes it hard upon himself except that it overwhelms him; therefore be firm, steadfast, and balanced; upon which have glad tidings! Seek help in this by journeying to Allah at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, and portion of the latter part of the night."

This is a hadith that needs to be expounded from every minbar and talked about in every gathering, because the destructive effects of the madness that is sold by some as deen these days is in danger of consuming us all!

The book was a personal timely reminder for myself at a time when my exertions in travelling a dawa had begun to take a server toll on me, and I was feeling very "burnt out". The danger at this stage is that one can easily abandon the good that one was upon, where as the solution lies in adopting a balance approach from the outset.

The final chapters talk about the excellence of drawing close to Allah and the types of reaching Him, in this life and the next, with a warning of those things that can destroy our deeds and leave us in poverty on the inevitable day we meet our Lord.

This is a book to be read and re-read, remembered and acted upon. A veritable treasure in a mere 70 pages!

Putin's Russia

Just in case you've forgotten about the brutal murder of our brother Alexander Litvinienco here is book that should help bring it all back into focus. Only its author, Anna Politizkavaya was also murdered, as by the way have a about twenty journalists all of them outspoken critics of Putin and the corruption of the ex-KGB and gangster run former Soviet Union. Anna stood out in particular for her expose of the bloody genocide in Chechnya. This mother of two was gunned down outside her apartment. There are plenty of contenders for her would be assasins. If you want to know who or why read this book!

Putins Russia is a grim portrayal of an increasingly desperate nation. A nation with all of the faults of its communist precursor, and then add some, and none of its virtues.  Putin's Russia has not been published in Russia. It's banned. 

Anna's style is very human. There is nothing remote or academic about this book, because it deals with real people and their mostly brutal lives. Each chapter is a little cameo of some part of the struggle for existence in the Russian Federation where laws, it seems, mean nothing. Judges are in the pay of organized crime whose bribes grease the wheels of the beaurocrats. It's a nation that oozes corruption and brutality.

In chapter One, "My County's Army, and It's Mothers" Anna details the terrible and brutal lives of the  Russian Federation's conscript Army, a law completely unto itself, who officers steal from, beat, humiliate, use as slave labour and even kill its soldiers with virtually no accountability. It's as if to say "If this is how the Russian Federation treats its own, how will it treat others!

In Chapter Two gives us a glimpse of exactly that as she open the can of worms of war crimes and terrible abuses suffered by the Chechen peoples at the hands of Russia's army, and where she details the sick and brutal rape and murder of a Chechen girl Elza Kungaeva by a Russian tank commander Colonel Budanov and the farcical trial that follows. 

Chapter Three and Five describes how much life had changed for some after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Chapter Four "How to Misappropriate Property with the Connivance of the Government" gives an insight into exactly how thoroughly corrupt Russian society has become. The scenes described in the chapter are so fantastic it might be taken out a movie! It is clear that what is going in Russia on bears little semblance to anything that could be called civil society. We are introduced to the turf wars of organized crime as two gangs battle it out for control of a factory, each supported by a different part of the state apparatus which is under the pay of each consecutive gang. She details the rise of Pashka Fedulev, from small time bootlegger to big time industrialist and "entrepreneur", and his side kick policeman Nikolai Ovchinnikov who rises along side him to the exulted position of Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Head of the Central Agency for Combating Organized Crime, a position to which he was appointed by Putin himself!

In Chapter six where Anna details the siege and horrific gassing of the hostages Dubrovka theatre in  Moscow. 200 of the 800 hostages are killed. Not by the Chechen hostage-takers, but in fact by the gas used by the Russian Special Forces. As gas picked by Putin himself!  Not to mention the on the spot execution of the hostage takers. 

In the last Chapter Anna tires to answer a question:
"Why do I so dislike Putin?"
"....this precisely why. I dislike him for a matter-of-factness worse that felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies, for the gas he used in the Nord-Ost siege, for the massacre of the innocents (she is referring to Chechnya) which went on throughout his first term as President.
This is how I see it. Others have different views. The killing of children has not put people off trying to have Putin's period in office extended to ten years. This is being done creating new pro-Putin youth movements...
In Russia we have had leaders like with this outlook before. It lead to tragedy, to bloodshed on a huge scale, to civil wars. I want no more of that. That is why I so dislike this typical Soviet Chekist as he struts down the red carpet in the Kremlin on his way to throne of Russia."

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

Buddha by Karen Armstrong

I have decided to start a new category called "Essential Reading."
This will contain reviews of books that I have recently read, good or bad, and perhaps more importantly books that I think are essential reading, either because of their impact on me personally, or because of their effect on society, thought and perceptions.
I'd also be very happy to receive any recommendations.
My first book review is by an author who's writings I really like, and highly recommend her books, including this one. I hope to review some of her other books in the future.

Buddha by Karen Armstrong

Having read, studied and practiced some form of Buddhism in the past during my years of searching, it was with growing fascination that I revisited the life and teachings of that extraordinary man through the mostly sympathetic and insightful guidance of Karen Armstrong in her book entitled Buddhism.

My reaction as the life and journey of Siddhartha unfolded in those pages was a mixture of familiarity, excitement, admiration and ultimately confusion.

The familiarity was partly because the story and the teachings and experience of Buddha’s eightfold enlightened path was one that I had trodden, and ultimately abandoned, unfulfilled, but not untouched. There was, and perhaps still is, a core to the Dharma that instinctively appealed something within. This, however, was not the familiarity that caused my excitement. Now I was looking back on the life and teachings of Buddha, but through the mindset of a Muslim, utterly convinced that Islam is the true and ultimately only path to true happiness and salvation in this life and the next. The familiarity here was between the teachings that Buddha expounded and truths of Islam, the searching and seeking of the blessed Prophet to find truth and that of Siddhartha. How both rejected the religions and philosophies of their time. Both made such efforts to teach and preach the ideas in which they believed, and how many accepted them just by looking at the manner of each. One cannot help but admire the dedication and tenacity and self discipline that Buddha enforced upon himself and his single-mindedness in pursuing his desired goal to “understand.” My confusion was because ultimately their conclusions are so different. Buddha never talks, or guides to God. His path is ultimately “humanist”, because according to him the human being alone is the source of his or her own salvation. One must seek, he teaches ones own path.  It was in fact this very conclusion that ultimately lead me to reject Buddhism, and having read again about the life a teachings of Buddha again I came ultimately to the same conclusion.

One who fails to find Allah, fails to find anything. The one who finds Allah finds all.

Muslims often ask, and it is a question I thought over again and again, could Buddha have been a Prophet? The answer to this seems that if, what has been preserved of his teaching is true, then there is no possible way he could have been.

We could speculate that his message was lost and corrupted, like that of Jesus, or Abraham. Certainly Karen in her book tries to equate Buddha’s experience of Nirvana with that of some monotheist’s experience of God, but I found this ultimately unconvincing.

At the heart of Buddha’s teachings is the belief that life is suffering, and that this suffering is caused by the self. Thus by annihilating (nirvana means “annihilation”) ones “self” you escape misery and unhappiness. This means that there is in fact no room for individualism and personalities in Buddhism. Once one has become “enlightened” the individualism and personalities associated with self disappear. Of course a Buddhist considers this a virtue, not a criticism, but from the point of view of our history we have towering personalities that dominate our relgion, from the Prophet (saws) hiself, to his close companions, such as Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Khalid bin Waleed and others, Hasan al Basri, Abdul Qadir al Jalani, Salahudeen, ibn Taymiyya, AlGazzali…..scholars, thinkers, soldiers, mystics! At the same time Islam never looses sight of the needs of society. This is, in fact, what has always struck me about Islam, its balance. It never falls into extremes. It is middle way, that accounts for all the multifaceted aspects of human life and activity and guides the best way through. Indeed, this is one of clear evidences for its divine origin.

All this makes it more difficult to reconcile Buddha’s teachings with Islam. Perhaps this could be explained by assuming that Buddha’s teaching were time and place specific, as indeed were all the divine messages previous to Islam. The Prophet Mohammed was in fact the only universal messenger. So perhaps these teachings were what was needed then, and was suitable for that place. This is of course possible, but all of this reminds me of a timely warning. Muslims must be very careful what they borrow from other religious traditions, if indeed we can or should do that all. Even if those traditions were divinely inspired, they were for a certain time and place. It would like trying to squeeze an adult into children’s clothes. Surely an act of absurdity and ignorance! How about then if these traditions are only the product of the human mind?