“…[S]eldom do you find one who is submissivly humble, who, when he hears the Qur’an, is affected by it. The people are [only] affected by the melodious voices of the reciters. They are affected by and react positively to the one whose recitation amazes them. This is not from Khushu’; rather, [true] Khushu’ is connected to the meaning, not the expression [lafz]…”
I came across this quote a couple of weeks ago and it seems true. Just last night I stumbled across a confirmation of what the Shaykh said. In al-Anwar al-Qudusiyya, Imam ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha’rani quoted Shaykh Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi:
“If the faqir find his heart [attentive] in listening to the recitation of the Qur’an due to the melodious voice of the reciter, and he does not find his heart [attentive] when hearing it [the Qur'an] from another reciter, then his listening is tainted [ma'lul]: that softness that he finds in his heart is [merely] from human nature.” [taken from chapter 183 of the Futuhat]
SubhanAllah, I have been thinking of this for the past few days. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, I was constantly reading the news and seeing image after image, and video clip after video clip of all the atrocities and terror that people were facing. This time around with the Gaza invasion, for some reason, I refuse to look at video images or view any pictures. There is something that has kept me from it this time, something inexplicible. I have been able to put my finger on it. This link here expresses what I have been feeling but unable to express [emphasis mine]:
So neuroscience has shown, for example, that when people look at images of someone from their group – a group that they identify with - and that means their ethnic group or their national group – a group that they consider to be ‘their people,’ that when people look at those images they experience that event. That perception is experienced as a trauma, as a psychological trauma. It leaves an impact in the brain. When we perceive things, neurological connections are formed, new connections in the brain are formed. So it’s not just a thought or a memory, as people would have thought in medieval times: that we have images floating around in our brains that can simply be flushed out. But it leaves a real, material, impact on our brain.
What’s important about that? What’s important is that in a world in which we are flooded with images – and traumatic images – we are being changed as human beings, by what we are seeing. And that the flood of negative images, the flood of traumatic images of people being blown up, of people being abused, of people being tortured, is traumatising us in a real way that has caused us as human beings to be unhealthy, and unstable, unless we have a way of dealing with this. Unless we have a way of taking this event and responding to it in a healthy way that forms a healthy brain and a healthy personality. Its why people who are highly compassionate in their close relationships feel compelled to in fact respond in often a very violent way and even transcend their own limits of ethics and morality, in order to protect those they perceive to be their group members, because of this experience of trauma. So we need to really understand what’s happening with human beings in our age, in this age when you are flooded with these negative images in order to respond appropriately.
Related to trauma, there is a great book that I started reading recently: Waking the Tiger
من خطبة سيدي اليعقوبي الادريسي الحسني رضي الله عنه و حفظه الله ، آثرتُ أن أقتطع هذه الخاتمة من خطبته انتصارا لأولئك المجاهدين
المرابطين على ثغور هذه الأمّة ، في وقت علا صوت الخذلان ….يقول :
” نعم أبناء المسلمين معاً أمة واحدة كما أخبر عليه الصلاة والسلام: (المسلمون كالجسد الواحد) ويزيدنا ذلك تعلقاً بأبنائنا وإخوتنا في غزة، ولكننا يجب كذلك أن نستذكر ما يشدنا إلى تلك الأرض التي أنشد فيها الإمام الشافعي بيتين من الشعر يحن إليها بعد أن امتد به العمر، فقال:
وإني لمشتاق إلى أرض غزة
وإن خانني بعد التفرق كتماني
سقى الله أرضاً لو ظفرت بتربها
كحلت به من شدة الشوق أجفاني
هذه أرض غزة التي تقصف اليوم.. هؤلاء أبناء غزة.. أبناء أولئك الذين اعتنقوا الإسلام لما جاء به الفاتحون.. هؤلاء الأبطال الذين يجسدون اليوم صوراً من صور البطولة والعزة.. لا يركعون لعدو ولا يستسلمون ولا يتخاذلون.. يقومون بذلك بالنيابة عن كل واحد منا.. بالنيابة عن أمة الإسلام.. أمام أعداء الله تبارك وتعالى من اليهود الصهاينة المجرمين، وأمام الخونة من العرب والمسلمين، نسأل الله تبارك وتعالى أن ينصر أولئك المجاهدين، وأن يفرج عن أهل غزة أجمعين، وأن يقمع الشرك والمشركين، وأن يهزم أعداء الله تبارك وتعالى من اليهود الملاعين، وأن يرد العرب والمسلمين إلى دينهم رداً جميلاً، إنه سميع قريب مجيب، أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله العظيم لي ولكم ولسائر المسلمين…”
The Messenger of Allah – sallaAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam – said: “From among the portents of the Hour is that the religious knowledge will be taken away (by the death of religious Scholars) and general ignorance (of religion) will appear; and the drinking of alcoholic drinks will be very common, and (open) illegal sexual intercourse will prevail, and men will decrease in number while women will increase so much so that, for fifty women there will only be one man to look after them.”[al-Bukhari]
I saw a link to this Canadian documentary on an email group I subscribe to. This is a must see for everyone. Scary stuff.
More than sixty years ago, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price decided to embark on a series of unique investigations that would engage his attention and energies for the next ten years. Possessed of an inquiring mind and a spiritual nature, Price was disturbed by what he found when he looked into the mouths of his patients. Rarely did an examination of an adult client reveal anything but rampant decay, often accompanied by serious problems elsewhere in the body such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, intestinal complaints and chronic fatigue. (They called it neurasthenia in Price’s day.) But it was the dentition of younger patients that gave him most cause for concern. He observed that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with what Price called “facial deformities”–overbites, narrowed faces, underdevelopment of the nose, lack of well-defined cheekbones and pinched nostrils. Such children invariably suffered from one or more complaints that sound all too familiar to mothers of the 1990s: frequent infections, allergies, anemia, asthma, poor vision, lack of coordination, fatigue and behavioral problems. Price did not believe that such “physical degeneration” was God’s plan for mankind. He was rather inclined to believe that the creator intended physical perfection for all human beings, and that children should grow up free of ailments.
I just thought I would offset some of the Muslim exuberance over Obama’s election. Although his origins lie in East Africa, he is no Najashi. Here is a good summary of my views on Obama:
Mark our words – the causes that the liberal left has been fighting for over the last eight years will simply be forgotten just like conservatives were put to sleep when Bush came to power. Obama is the pacifier that the establishment needs to quiet the simmering anger amongst Americans that has been threatening to boil over.
It will no longer be “fashionable” to fight the police state amongst the political left.
Mark our words – there will be no repeal of the Patriot Act, there will be no repeal of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, there will be no repeal of warrantless secret surveillance of American citizens.
The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines “fragile states” that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to U.S. national security.
The doctrine, which has generated intense debate in the U.S. military establishment and government, holds that in coming years, American troops are not likely to engage in major ground combat against hostile states as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead will frequently be called upon to operate in lawless areas to safeguard populations and rebuild countries.
Such “stability operations” will last longer and ultimately contribute more to the military’s success than “traditional combat operations,” according to the Army’s new Stability Operations Field Manual, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Bismillah
Sad, so sad.
The Messenger of Allah – sallaAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam – said: “From among the portents of the Hour is that the religious knowledge will be taken away (by the death of religious Scholars) and general ignorance (of religion) will appear; and the drinking of alcoholic drinks will be very common, and (open) illegal sexual intercourse will prevail, and men will decrease in number while women will increase so much so that, for fifty women there will only be one man to look after them.”[al-Bukhari]
The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines “fragile states” that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to U.S. national security.
Here is a transcription 