Baatin
24-08-2010, 05:30 PM
ISLAM IN AFRICA
by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as Sufi
There is no question but that the future destiny of Africa is Islamic. It is important therefore that Islamic activists get their targets right and do not waste energy in useless argument and in divisive doctrine.
We have seen that the sufis are the sole authors of Jihad in African history, Theologically, also, there is no tenable case against the sufis for any men of intellect. If it could have been made, it certainly would have been hundreds of years ago by our able and devout 'ulama' with madrasah educations. It was not.
Al-Ghazali settled the matter once and for all. He was called the Proof of Islam. Imam Nawawi much honoured by the Wahhabis was a great sufi whose work The Garden of the Gnostics is a long study of wilayat and inner knowledges. Al-Qurtubi whose gigantic tafsir remains one of the monuments of the literature of commentary on the Qur'an was a sufi. So too was as-Suyuti, the great master of Hadith. Ibn Taymiyya was a sufi, only, regrettably he lacked the intellectual capacity to understand the profound insights of Ibn al-'Arabi and so attacked what he could not comprehend. Ibn 'Abdalwahhab himself was a sufi murid and in the words of a distinguished scholar working on the movement 'Ibn 'Abdalwahhab never formally renounced his own sufism.'
The inescapable truth is that the opposition, and it is not theological at all, it is political, to the sufis was guided and cued by western academics and orientalists, both catholic and jewish. We have demonstrated the political power of the sufis and the significance as the masters of Jihad and the grass-roots the only grass-roots movement in Islam. That is why we find that the Muslim Brotherhood which some scholars claim was scripted and guided by british intelligence has always been an elitist movement which never took the poor people along with it. Even at its height in egypt when it was, along with the imperialist british, opposing Nasser's policies, its main support was with the educated middle classes. The same is true in syria today where it opposes, along with britain, the leftist regime. This is not to say that there are not many sincere and pious men among them but it may be that they have been ideologically betrayed. Results will reveal the realities of this matter, if examined further.
We are left with the inescapable conclusion that an Islam based on masonic structures Islamic societies, Islamic centres with committees, chairmen (!), 'democratic' processes all these, far from having strengthened Islam, have left it more divided and more distrustful. Islam is not going to be revived by Islamic associations, not by a 'Union of Islamic Associations' any more than it can be controlled and exploited to political ends by Islamic conferences and Islamic secretariats. Islam is with the people. It always has been. "look for me among the poor," said our beloved Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, "for I was only sent among you on account of the poor."
A modernist critic said of our proposal for Ribats, which was a system that had created an Islamic empire that lasted over one hundred years and in turn merged into another similar Islamic society, that it was an elitist concept disconnected from the people. Yet critics like that lead bourgeois lives and are cut off experientially from the people. We, as sufis, move among the people of all lands and within our own large communities. We have hundreds of fuqara' and work closely on such matters as education, work structures and so on. We sit down on a quiet day to a table that feeds ten to twenty people.
It is by the already thrilling revival of the sufic path that Islam will revitalise in Africa. The most important factor is that there must on no account be rivalry or ill-feeling between the different Turuq. the french solution to defeating Muslims in morocco and the Sahara was to set up a conflict between the Darqawiyya and the Tijanniyya. They planted spies and did much damage, aided and abetted by the morocco jews, who infiltrated the ranks of the two groups. So today we most scrupulously avoid conflict between the great sufic orders. The two great Orders today are the Shadhiliyya-Darqawiyya in the west and the Naqshbandiyya in the east. Between our two Orders there is a deep and incorruptible love. When we celebrated the Moussem of our great master, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, may Allah be pleased with him, the Grand Shaykh of the Naqshbandiyya, Shaykh Aslam, came with a large group of his fuqara' to confirm our brotherhood and love in the path of serving Allah and calling the fuqara' to direct experience of the Lights and secrets of the Divine Lord. This should be the sunna of all the sufic Shaykhs in Africa today. Only the sufis can create and ambience of trust and brotherhood without which there will never be any Islamic revolution or resurgence.
Make no mistake we are living in an age where there has as yet emerged no clear Islamic politique. There is, as yet, no flag we can with conscience fight under. Our job should be to work within the existing framework of society if it is corrupt it will dialectically have no option but to break and change and within that frame create a body of Muslims who trust each other, keep the salat, pay the zakat and call on Allah morning and evening. People who do dhikr kathiran as ordered in the Qur'an much, much dhikr, standing, sitting, and reclining on their sides.
We must work to unite the people in love of Allah. There has been far too much talk of Islam and far too little of Allah, the Fire and the Garden. These 'reformist' movements as well as clinging to the deen of the northern society simply do not believe in the Unseen, in angels, in the Sirat, in the Fire, in the Garden, and least of all in the vision of Allah. They are earthed, utterly identical in behaviour and psychological condition, by the kafir elements with which they are so associated. It is difficult to see what the 'point' of being Muslim is if they are matrix by which we must assess Muslims in the world. That is to say the kafir who is challenged by the idea of Islam then looks to the Muslim to see the appreciable difference the vital difference in his life quality that should persuade him too to become Muslim. When he looks at these modernists who cannot wait to persuade the modern man that Islam is compatible with his life-values, his universities, his award system, his materialism, his sciences, he simply loses interest, for such a man has already found out that all these elements and institutions are false and do not provide him with inner sustenance. The whole Muslim has two elements to life one his outward behaviour which will be not only devout in 'ibada but will be courteous, welcoming, smiling, hospitable, wishing the best on men and praying with good heart for their growth and fulfilment. And two, his inward behaviour which will be enlightened by reflection and invocation, by being guided to understand the deep doctrine of tawhid, by watching the heart, by experiencing the lights from the Attributes and the manifestation of the Essence. He will not be, therefore, solid and opaque, grim and forbidding, he will not be long for the platform, the presidential party, the motorcade, but rather he will be a man who loves the poor, who prefers the company of the men of Allah to the men of a moment's transitory illusion of power. His power will be obliterated in the power of Allah and by this the people will love him and trust him and follow him. Nothing can stand in the way of the lovers of Allah and His Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him.
Fill the different sufic orders with new life and new men, fill the nights with dhikr and the pre-dawn with still unmoving, fixed muraqabah, take initiation in the Supreme Name of Allah. See Allah by Allah and be annihilated in Him. Such a man will have died the meaning-death before the sensory-death and so will be fearless like the great mujahideen before him for he will have gone beyond. Our great Master Shaykh ibn al-Habib, may Allah be pleased with him, said on his deathbed: "The people of dhikr do not die. And the people who do no dhikr, look at them, they are dead already!"
The road to the liberation of Africa and the raising up of Africa, and to being finished with this tragic hundred years just gone by, is clear. Liberation from exploitation and degradation and the horrible christian nexus of prostitution and alcoholism and the theft of resources. Liberation from the mythic fantasies of marxist materialism which nowhere liberates and everywhere enslaves, a doctrine created by jewish intellectuals (Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were all rabbinically educated) to destroy her enemies, and that includes Islam. A new Islamic century is beginning. It must begin with the revitalisation of the sufic way in Africa and broad support and brotherhood among the individual Turuq. It means a new spiritual energy. This will vitalise us. The 'politicisation' of Islam was a necessary phrase. It is now over. Our work Jihad was part of that struggle. We have now moved into a new and more inspiring stage of our duties. It is time to assist in the creation of a new man. Sufic products of powerful dhikr, intense spiritual practice, brave material generosity towards the masakin the bereft.
The sufis must work everywhere among the personnel of central government among the police among the army. They must work too among the refugees. If the sufis had over-run the palestinian refugee camps and not secularists and marxist their battle would already be over! Every abandonment by the state of the poor and the needy is a war-zone for the sufis. But their armaments are dhikr of Allah, brotherhood, assistance, trust and compassion.
As for overt targets as we have said there is as yet no banner to fight under. There is, however, one vital target for the Muslims everywhere. That is the brewery and the wine factory. All liquor is haram in Islam and its distribution must be most vigorously opposed by all. The alcohol, where it is made, the vessels containing it, the places selling it, all these are proscribed by shari'at. On this there can be no compromise for Muslims. Also it is a significant and suitably symbolic area of resistance to kafir humiliation that has been tolerated long enough. It is not 'fanatical' to oppose alcohol it is scientifically unacceptable, producing as it does brain shrinkage, sclerosis, insanity, the destruction of family life, and the work pattern on which modern society is based! The greatest single threat to soviet society is the apparently uncontrollable problem of alcoholism and heavy drinking both in the working and managerial classes as well as among children!
Allah has said in a well known ayat of the Qur'an that Allah will not change a people until they change what is in their hearts. This has always been and still is the business of the Islamic sufis. The modernists and the Wahhabis would like to see an Islamic sociology and deny the existence of an Islamic psychology. Yet it is the nafs that is our enemy as many hadith confirm. It is the heart of a man which must be assured if he is to gain the Garden.
http://bewley.virtualave.net/african2.html#ISLAM
by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as Sufi
There is no question but that the future destiny of Africa is Islamic. It is important therefore that Islamic activists get their targets right and do not waste energy in useless argument and in divisive doctrine.
We have seen that the sufis are the sole authors of Jihad in African history, Theologically, also, there is no tenable case against the sufis for any men of intellect. If it could have been made, it certainly would have been hundreds of years ago by our able and devout 'ulama' with madrasah educations. It was not.
Al-Ghazali settled the matter once and for all. He was called the Proof of Islam. Imam Nawawi much honoured by the Wahhabis was a great sufi whose work The Garden of the Gnostics is a long study of wilayat and inner knowledges. Al-Qurtubi whose gigantic tafsir remains one of the monuments of the literature of commentary on the Qur'an was a sufi. So too was as-Suyuti, the great master of Hadith. Ibn Taymiyya was a sufi, only, regrettably he lacked the intellectual capacity to understand the profound insights of Ibn al-'Arabi and so attacked what he could not comprehend. Ibn 'Abdalwahhab himself was a sufi murid and in the words of a distinguished scholar working on the movement 'Ibn 'Abdalwahhab never formally renounced his own sufism.'
The inescapable truth is that the opposition, and it is not theological at all, it is political, to the sufis was guided and cued by western academics and orientalists, both catholic and jewish. We have demonstrated the political power of the sufis and the significance as the masters of Jihad and the grass-roots the only grass-roots movement in Islam. That is why we find that the Muslim Brotherhood which some scholars claim was scripted and guided by british intelligence has always been an elitist movement which never took the poor people along with it. Even at its height in egypt when it was, along with the imperialist british, opposing Nasser's policies, its main support was with the educated middle classes. The same is true in syria today where it opposes, along with britain, the leftist regime. This is not to say that there are not many sincere and pious men among them but it may be that they have been ideologically betrayed. Results will reveal the realities of this matter, if examined further.
We are left with the inescapable conclusion that an Islam based on masonic structures Islamic societies, Islamic centres with committees, chairmen (!), 'democratic' processes all these, far from having strengthened Islam, have left it more divided and more distrustful. Islam is not going to be revived by Islamic associations, not by a 'Union of Islamic Associations' any more than it can be controlled and exploited to political ends by Islamic conferences and Islamic secretariats. Islam is with the people. It always has been. "look for me among the poor," said our beloved Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, "for I was only sent among you on account of the poor."
A modernist critic said of our proposal for Ribats, which was a system that had created an Islamic empire that lasted over one hundred years and in turn merged into another similar Islamic society, that it was an elitist concept disconnected from the people. Yet critics like that lead bourgeois lives and are cut off experientially from the people. We, as sufis, move among the people of all lands and within our own large communities. We have hundreds of fuqara' and work closely on such matters as education, work structures and so on. We sit down on a quiet day to a table that feeds ten to twenty people.
It is by the already thrilling revival of the sufic path that Islam will revitalise in Africa. The most important factor is that there must on no account be rivalry or ill-feeling between the different Turuq. the french solution to defeating Muslims in morocco and the Sahara was to set up a conflict between the Darqawiyya and the Tijanniyya. They planted spies and did much damage, aided and abetted by the morocco jews, who infiltrated the ranks of the two groups. So today we most scrupulously avoid conflict between the great sufic orders. The two great Orders today are the Shadhiliyya-Darqawiyya in the west and the Naqshbandiyya in the east. Between our two Orders there is a deep and incorruptible love. When we celebrated the Moussem of our great master, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, may Allah be pleased with him, the Grand Shaykh of the Naqshbandiyya, Shaykh Aslam, came with a large group of his fuqara' to confirm our brotherhood and love in the path of serving Allah and calling the fuqara' to direct experience of the Lights and secrets of the Divine Lord. This should be the sunna of all the sufic Shaykhs in Africa today. Only the sufis can create and ambience of trust and brotherhood without which there will never be any Islamic revolution or resurgence.
Make no mistake we are living in an age where there has as yet emerged no clear Islamic politique. There is, as yet, no flag we can with conscience fight under. Our job should be to work within the existing framework of society if it is corrupt it will dialectically have no option but to break and change and within that frame create a body of Muslims who trust each other, keep the salat, pay the zakat and call on Allah morning and evening. People who do dhikr kathiran as ordered in the Qur'an much, much dhikr, standing, sitting, and reclining on their sides.
We must work to unite the people in love of Allah. There has been far too much talk of Islam and far too little of Allah, the Fire and the Garden. These 'reformist' movements as well as clinging to the deen of the northern society simply do not believe in the Unseen, in angels, in the Sirat, in the Fire, in the Garden, and least of all in the vision of Allah. They are earthed, utterly identical in behaviour and psychological condition, by the kafir elements with which they are so associated. It is difficult to see what the 'point' of being Muslim is if they are matrix by which we must assess Muslims in the world. That is to say the kafir who is challenged by the idea of Islam then looks to the Muslim to see the appreciable difference the vital difference in his life quality that should persuade him too to become Muslim. When he looks at these modernists who cannot wait to persuade the modern man that Islam is compatible with his life-values, his universities, his award system, his materialism, his sciences, he simply loses interest, for such a man has already found out that all these elements and institutions are false and do not provide him with inner sustenance. The whole Muslim has two elements to life one his outward behaviour which will be not only devout in 'ibada but will be courteous, welcoming, smiling, hospitable, wishing the best on men and praying with good heart for their growth and fulfilment. And two, his inward behaviour which will be enlightened by reflection and invocation, by being guided to understand the deep doctrine of tawhid, by watching the heart, by experiencing the lights from the Attributes and the manifestation of the Essence. He will not be, therefore, solid and opaque, grim and forbidding, he will not be long for the platform, the presidential party, the motorcade, but rather he will be a man who loves the poor, who prefers the company of the men of Allah to the men of a moment's transitory illusion of power. His power will be obliterated in the power of Allah and by this the people will love him and trust him and follow him. Nothing can stand in the way of the lovers of Allah and His Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him.
Fill the different sufic orders with new life and new men, fill the nights with dhikr and the pre-dawn with still unmoving, fixed muraqabah, take initiation in the Supreme Name of Allah. See Allah by Allah and be annihilated in Him. Such a man will have died the meaning-death before the sensory-death and so will be fearless like the great mujahideen before him for he will have gone beyond. Our great Master Shaykh ibn al-Habib, may Allah be pleased with him, said on his deathbed: "The people of dhikr do not die. And the people who do no dhikr, look at them, they are dead already!"
The road to the liberation of Africa and the raising up of Africa, and to being finished with this tragic hundred years just gone by, is clear. Liberation from exploitation and degradation and the horrible christian nexus of prostitution and alcoholism and the theft of resources. Liberation from the mythic fantasies of marxist materialism which nowhere liberates and everywhere enslaves, a doctrine created by jewish intellectuals (Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were all rabbinically educated) to destroy her enemies, and that includes Islam. A new Islamic century is beginning. It must begin with the revitalisation of the sufic way in Africa and broad support and brotherhood among the individual Turuq. It means a new spiritual energy. This will vitalise us. The 'politicisation' of Islam was a necessary phrase. It is now over. Our work Jihad was part of that struggle. We have now moved into a new and more inspiring stage of our duties. It is time to assist in the creation of a new man. Sufic products of powerful dhikr, intense spiritual practice, brave material generosity towards the masakin the bereft.
The sufis must work everywhere among the personnel of central government among the police among the army. They must work too among the refugees. If the sufis had over-run the palestinian refugee camps and not secularists and marxist their battle would already be over! Every abandonment by the state of the poor and the needy is a war-zone for the sufis. But their armaments are dhikr of Allah, brotherhood, assistance, trust and compassion.
As for overt targets as we have said there is as yet no banner to fight under. There is, however, one vital target for the Muslims everywhere. That is the brewery and the wine factory. All liquor is haram in Islam and its distribution must be most vigorously opposed by all. The alcohol, where it is made, the vessels containing it, the places selling it, all these are proscribed by shari'at. On this there can be no compromise for Muslims. Also it is a significant and suitably symbolic area of resistance to kafir humiliation that has been tolerated long enough. It is not 'fanatical' to oppose alcohol it is scientifically unacceptable, producing as it does brain shrinkage, sclerosis, insanity, the destruction of family life, and the work pattern on which modern society is based! The greatest single threat to soviet society is the apparently uncontrollable problem of alcoholism and heavy drinking both in the working and managerial classes as well as among children!
Allah has said in a well known ayat of the Qur'an that Allah will not change a people until they change what is in their hearts. This has always been and still is the business of the Islamic sufis. The modernists and the Wahhabis would like to see an Islamic sociology and deny the existence of an Islamic psychology. Yet it is the nafs that is our enemy as many hadith confirm. It is the heart of a man which must be assured if he is to gain the Garden.
http://bewley.virtualave.net/african2.html#ISLAM