Abdal Hakim Murad – Football, Glastonbury & the Hajj
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AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah.
Thinking at CMC about the Hajj about the aid,
praying for the Hodges now, of course, sadly reduced in number
thanks to COVID-19. But it's one of the combinations of our year.
And today happens to coincide with a rather more secular pilgrimage
event which has really gripped the country's soul, which is, of
course, the match between England and Italy.
A kind of secular pilgrimage if you like, so focused on Wembley,
but an interesting illustration of what brings us together and how we
see ourselves including plenty of Muslims, even some CMC graduates,
excitedly tweeting, footballs coming home. It's everybody.
And the symbol seem to be well, it's about England. But what does
that now mean? In our secular post traditional post narrative, post
everything age,
the fans who bring along enormous Spitfire shaped balloons.
The fans who sport the Cross of St. George without having the
least idea as to what it actually means it's it's become a festival
of exhibiting forgotten and unknown symbols, but still more
significant as an event, one that captures our imagination and
brings the Pilgrims much more thoroughly than saints and
George's Day, our National Day, largely honored in the breach, not
the observance, remembrance, Sunday, it's football really that
that is the great hedge events of our story. So as Muslims,
believers who want people to be going to a place that has
something in it, the football is empty.
Whereas the Kaaba is empty, but not empty. It is the place of the
Sakeena. And that's the real point, people are there for a
reason, which is about themselves, not their identity.
That in this age of the celebration of emptiness, we as
believers, looking at what's left of England and other western
countries will want to know what people used to be interested in.
If we're interested in a form of integration, that puts down roots
rather than the integration world by Whitehall, which basically
means Muslims, agreeing with the latest doctrines of sexuality and
whatever else it is, that is the current fashion but deep
integration,
we will find that there was something called a matter of
Britain.
An old sense of the country being about something and for something.
And this involves various forms of pilgrimage. CMC, regularly goes to
Walsingham, which is an area that has obviously conspicuous sporadic
resonances. It said that in the Middle Ages, most people in
England had been to waltzing at least once in their lives.
There was a pilgrimage to Canterbury many other places and
as in the Islamic world, places and times were seen as having
particular spiritual qualities or facades, which people would seek
out. One of the biggest pilgrimages Of course, which is
rather difficult for Muslims to integrate with is the great
pilgrimage of Western Europe, which is the pilgrimage to
Santiago de Compostela. The pilgrim route, the scallop shell,
which leads ultimately to the Cathedral of St. James and
Compostella. And the central image there is a son Jaime Matamoros.
St. James killed the Muslims. That's his name, the patron saint
of the record Kista, the definer of what it was to be a Western
European Matamoros slay them was killed the Muslims.
Difficult for us, it would be sad to integrate into that particular
ritual or to regard it with any kind of favor. But there it is,
and his on his horse, with his white face, cutting the heads off
these sad looking dark skinned Saracens Moors, Muslims are being
trampled underfoot that's where the pilgrim road takes you Well,
that was one galvanic force, a kind of alignment of spiritual
energies in traditional Europe one of sorry memory for ourselves.
But there are others and for people who still lived in an age
when the country was about
Something
would look partly atoms and particles at Glastonbury and I
want to talk about Glastonbury, which might seem to be a million
miles from the Hajj Makkah at the moment partly because I was there
yesterday and went up Glastonbury tour and saw what what is left of
that traditional sort of magnet of English spirituality and now
largely predictably, engulfed by a tide of consumerized New Age shops
for crystals and hospitals for homeopaths and all kinds of
alternative therapies goddess worship being the predominant
theme and Paul Christian Glastonbury, largely subsumed
under this enormous, rather indulgent wave of new age,
sentimentality, but still, they're drawn there for a reason. And
beneath all of the mock druids the mock priestesses there is the
reality of a place that has been significant in the matter of
Britain for many 1000s of years, and it's interesting to note that
it is a place that attracts Muslims. There's been a permanent
Dr. Bandy presents therefore well over 20 years. famous chef Nazmul
Haqqani when he went there in the 1990s said Glastonbury is the
spiritual heart of England. And he explained that his own teacher
teacher, Chef Abdullah W. stanie, had said that Britain would be
particularly susceptible to the message of Islam.
And that when he came to Glastonbury, he understood why
that would be an Sharif Abdullah his watery Aloha from God's also
went there and prayed there.
She hasn't taken many others and it's a small by way of the British
Muslim experience, but one that indicates where I think increasing
generation increasingly significant generation of new
Muslims are interested because they want to know what is this
land What is it spiritual topography, how can they blend
with it? How can you escape from the kind of iron cages of those
Luton mosques and follow the Quranic injunction to seek God to
seek holiness to find the ways of Allah in His creation?
To see the signs of Allah and His creation, following that
commandment, so what does it mean to us and what on earth is its
connection to these 10 days that initiate the kind of build up to
the hedge that we're combination of, are you well,
Glastonbury is said to be sacred, because according to the legend,
and we have very solid in the realm of legend rather than
history, Joseph Aaron mithya, collected the blood of Christ from
the crucifixion in what became the Holy Grail and brought it to
England.
And specifically to Glastonbury, which at the time because the
marches around it were navigable was more or less on the coast. But
a place that is certainly pre Christian because there's
Neolithic remains stone circles, it's not that far from Stonehenge
and clearly a very important cultic center. There's the so
called Sweet road which may have had
religious significance which is said to be the oldest known road
in the world. That was a big place.
So the Christians kind of invent these memories. And then King
Arthur is said to be buried there. It's the Isle of Avalon, that kind
of early William of moles, Malmesbury, and then 19th century
sort of romanticizing of the chivalric origins of the English
story, not the story of empire and racism, but the story of the land
as a place of the holy
sucker ality.
And if you look at the map of the place and you go to the place
while you see the most obvious thing about the sacred geometry of
the place is not the ley lines that supposedly are around it and
I knew Michael Glickman, who was a leading serie ologists at Crewe.
Crop Circle expert is dead now but he was very interested in asking
me questions about the significance in Islamic sacred
geometry of these patterns which mysteriously appear in fields many
of them no doubt spurious but some of them genuinely intriguing and
difficult to interpret, and also the pattern of the ley lines. John
Michel, who was always a friend of Muslim community and those of a
certain age who remember the Salman Rushdie crisis may recall
that the only significant non Muslim voice that wrote at any
length in defense of the Muslim position was actually John Michel.
He was in touch with
a very interesting countercultural person who understood the Muslim
respect for Sacred people and sacred places.
is so Glastonbury is very significant for such speculators
and attempt to archaeologically find what is wholly beneath the
kind of legal LD football surface of modern, flat Britain.
But if you look at the city, it's a small town of Glastonbury. And
you can see how the Christians appropriated the older sacred
spaces and places and some of them seem to have been inhabited from
the time of the old stone age. The Paleolithic, very ancient, maybe
100,000 years, people have been worshiping, they're doing various
things, at a time when people were attentive to what we might call
the State of Iran. In other words, a sense of self denial, and
approaching certain spaces through making sacrifices, physical and
economic, in order to approach the terminus, the sacred place, and
you see all of the features of a traditional sacred place, there's
a sacred Well, of course, the chalice Well, there are straight
lines and circles, which are the basic geometric pattern that
people evolve through on the Hajj. And there are the plains of
course, which like artifact, and there is the circling up the tore
up on these strange rules, which are
sometimes led to the agricultural terraces, which seems a little
unlikely to me, but more likely to be the remains of some Bronze Age,
labyrinth of spiritual significance of like Borobudur in
Indonesia, which CMC visited only a couple of years ago. So really a
place that for those who still had a sense of the significance of the
British Isles, a great and important magnet so if you look at
them the significance of it Joseph of Aram Thea brings the Grail.
And it's basically the town of the Grail. Now, as we saw in lecture
on the Hajj last year, the most reasonable academic secular if
you'd like explanation of the Grail story is if you go back to
the main medieval happens to be German grill narrative
voltcom von Eschenbach
you'll find that he says he gets the Story of the Grail from a guy
who got it from an Arab in Moorish Spain who set up the grain in the
Grail is a stone that fell from heaven. The idea of it turning
black through the sins of humanity and clearly it's it's a hydra
password. As we said last year, and this is recognized by very
many historians, the most likely origin of the Grail legend, which
is certainly not biblical, is that it is a natural password, the
Blackstone and amongst all of those crystal sellers and crystal
ball galas and Glastonbury, this is what they don't appreciate the
stone,
which is the sign of Alas, to be robbed, become
so full of meaning. And if you look at Simon and mirrors new,
amazing book on the caliber, I think it's the first academic book
in English ever on the car, but he talks a lot about the enormously
rich significance of this.
So in Glastonbury, the medieval pilgrim goes there pays his dues
to the abbot of this huge monastery Benedictine house, which
has been created appropriating some of the old pagan energy
centers as the New Age people will say. But if you look at the map,
you can see if you put your back to the Church of St. Ben Ignis,
which is also on an ancient site, and you are somewhere round about
the spiritual heart of the Abbey, which is ruined thanks in radiate,
of course. And then you follow the road that everybody must have
taken for 1000s of years towards the top this strange looks like
trouble and nor and you spiral up it if you get to the, to the
summit,
that if you're going from this one sacred center, this tenderness to
the other
you're, as it were following a straight line. And if you look on
your Ordnance Survey map, and you get out your compass, you'll see
that straight line exactly, if you extend it beyond the tour, exactly
to within half a degree, ends up at the Kaaba in Mecca.
So it's an interesting reflection of the divine intention that all
of those hundreds of understandably, not knowing
pilgrims in the Middle Ages, all of those countless 1000s of them
who went there and then went down that road and were actually
looking for the Grail. And that road takes you past the chalice
well, which is like the zamzam of Glastonbury if you want to make
these analogies, but that's exactly the direction that you
would follow. If you really wanted to go to the grill Temple, which
is evidently the Haram in Mecca, the great sanctuary, where the
original Grail, actually is
and
And for centuries, Christians, including Arthur's knights of the
roundtable, trotted around looking for the Grail. The state, the
minor industry in New Age, writing, where is the Grail? What
is the Grail? It's the kind of
Dan Brown DaVinci Code, it's a huge world in our secular
environment, we still want to find it. And to know what it was, it's
an interesting moment of the recrudescence, or the perpetuation
of a sacred symbol in an otherwise very flat age. But the reality is
that those pilgrims going from the abbey towards the top, we're
actually exactly facing the Qibla.
So that's the divine sign, if you like that within the sacred
geometries of the United Kingdom, and this great orientation.
There is this line that helps the people unknowingly to face the
great sanctuary, which is not just significant for Muslims, because
it's pre Muslim, it's Abrahamic, it's Muthiah butterly nests, where
am now a place of resort for mankind and a place of safety.
Even though only the initiated as it were, can go there now.
Otherwise, you'd have 10 million tourists in Florida, with our
cameras, it's obvious why they're not allowed in. But you have to be
initiated to the shahada to approach the final 10, the last
the great center of the sacred on Earth.
So that was an interesting thought that I had as I labored my way up,
Glastonbury taught. And it's interesting to see how many people
are still seeking something still feeling something wants to go on
that journey, want the Grail, you get to the top, and there are
middle aged guys walking their dogs, so forth, and people chasing
their children. But there's also quite a few people meditating,
facing some direction, which they hope is significant. But of
course, they don't have the direction.
It's kind of there but but not there.
So that was an interesting example of the way in which the yearning
for the stone for the house for these ancient practices of the
sacred Well, the straight line of the sigh, the circle of the tawaf,
are universal. And it's interesting to note that you can
go up the tour, either clockwise or anti clockwise. And this again,
has very ancient significance. It's even said that the reason why
people in England and India and Japan have always been driving on
the left, not the right, is because they were solar
civilizations recognizing a solar calendar and a solar divinity. And
that's the way the sun moves. If your northern hemisphere south of
the equator, of course, it's quite different. So those civilizations,
when they go to their sacred places will go clockwise around
them.
It's forgotten now, but until living memory, it was a tradition
in England, if you riding a horse or hiking or walking, you would
and you came to a church or a cemetery, you would always go
around it on the left, leaving the sacred place on your right piece
of superstition or folklore, if you like. That way is called deal
sealer, which is a very interesting, probably German word.
That's the way you go. And
that tends to be practices of circumambulation in western
Christendom, where they abolished lunar things and lunar calendars
and move towards the idea of Sol Invictus and solar calendar. But
in the Semitic tradition, and also in very many ancient pagan
traditions, the way around a sacred place is what's called
widdershins, which is anti clockwise.
And actually, they even do that in some Eastern Christian churches.
I've noticed if you go to a traditional Greek wedding, which
I'd recommend it very beautiful thing. They walk around the altar
and Scream Screen seven times, but the way Muslims go around the
caliber, anti clockwise, they still have that ancient pre sola
idea.
And certainly in Judaism, if you've been to Jewish betrothal
ceremony, the real thing which
traditional weddings are always very beautiful in world religions.
The tradition is for the bride to go around the groom seven times
she makes a toe off around him.
And she goes widdershins, anti clockwise, the rabbi's all agree
on that. So, a heart is towards the source towards the sanctuary
towards the place of authority of Khilafah
And
that, of course, is also what we do on the Hajj. The Hajj is a very
ancient thing that Amira talks about in his book where he speaks
a lot about the cosmology of the Kaaba and the stars and the
solstice is towards which the Kaaba is, is oriented note to
this, that as we go around the Kaaba, the heart is on the side of
the Kaaba, and we walk around it anti clockwise, seven times
because as the religion of fitrah Islam is is lunar, in its
calendar, and the Quran is quite severe on those who tried to
introduce extra little bits of months in order to make it comply
with with with the sun, symbol of the religion is, of course, the
crescent moon. And there's a lot of connections between human bio
rhythms and the lunar cycles, which go back to very, very
ancient times, certainly unrecoverable and probably
impossible really to prove academically but in any case. So
if you see that you're heading towards the Kepler in Glastonbury
surrounded by all of this new age paraphernalia, you come to the
taught and preferred way is going widdershins a lot of these pagan
goddesses will be walking probably barefoot, with their piercings and
tie dyed robes alongside with you, which is one reason why a lot of
Muslims find the place indigestible, quite understandably
because it has been overlaid with this mock paganism.
Who knows what the druids really were or what they did, but we
still want to get away from all of this and then get back to Druidry.
Well, good luck, there's no Silsila there's no shujaa there's
no ijazah it's, it's an extinct species, you can't resurrect it
any more than you can resurrect a passenger pigeon, it's gone. But
the sign that so many people want it is an indication that the idea
of the matter of Britain the idea of pilgrimage, the idea of these
ancient forms, the sacred Well, the straight line, the crossing
the seven fold.
All of these things represent something that is profoundly
antique and ancient and primordial and healing in human beings.
Because a pilgrimage a real pilgrimage is a journey, not just
some external
feature, but is about inner transformation as well.
Which is the meaning of the Tobia, its orientation towards the bake.
It is say love bake your Raheem Sterling we say love bake
Allahumma love bake.
So it's about something. So in these days, when we as it were
circled towards the sucker ality of the hedge, even those of us who
this year, find our hearts attached to the house and Emmanuel
has Elia and others talk quite a lot about this very remarkable
emotion and ishtiaq Or Ill bait. He says, that's the beginning of
the Hajj, longing for the house, that when you think about the
caliber, and the proximity of the Kaaba, and what the Kaaba
represents, and the divine forgiveness and erasure of what
you've done, that is there, and the closeness to the Sakeena. Of
course, that's what we want, we have a natural yearning for it.
It's beloved,
isn't the car but often, compared to a beloved in all of our poetry?
It's the Veiled Laila it's, again, a very, a reminder of the feminine
significance of this. So these are the LAL in Russia, the 10 nights
and a YAML Asha, and we have a series of a hadith that remind us
that the Hajj is for all of us, because these 10 days are
significant for all of us. And the Hadith tend to be for some reason,
a boy said to me, the, in his Saheeh, usually called a saga,
there's a Hadith from Ibn abbess, in which the Holy Prophet
salallahu alayhi wa sallam Mermin a yurman Minella Amelie Salah fee
in a heartbeat, you know, not mean her the hill is a Yeoman ashram.
There is no day of in which there can be righteous action. There are
no days which are more beloved to Allah, then these 10 days
and this has been accepted into the foot condition. This is a
special time, a time of not so much calculating the increase of
actions, but rather the Divine Love of the intensified things
that we do the hedges there the spirit recalls the Kaaba, the
pebble and becomes more real and therefore the quality of our works
is increased.
And thought the devout down the Muslim centuries there has been an
awareness that as you see the full moon the moon again,
growing up
Present swelling.
Hajj is on its way and of course the Hajj Moon is one of the
beautiful things you can get away from this. arc lights and sodium
lights that they put up everywhere but one of the most beautiful
features of the hundreds always the moon.
What can the Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Yes somo to Sun
tiss ideal hija
Holy Prophet alayhi salat wa salam says And Timothy again used to
fast 1010 Nine days of the hedger unit fast on the day of Eid. But
the faster the day of Arafa is particularly important. And then
later the Hadith goes on to talk about where your ma showed up the
day of Ashura, which got about about months later.
With a lesser a Yemeni militia, and three days in each month.
So again, we have the idea not just of good works in these 10
days, as the crescendo builds up. And we become aware of the sucker
ality that is in times as well as places even if we can't get to the
place. There's an intense intensification of our experience
of the time. And that fasting is one of the things that are
prophetically counseled. At this time, in order to sharpen our
sense of attentiveness, our haram style tend to read or stripping
away of our dunya attachments. So according to a hadith, the
combination of this as the fast of Arafat, which is 100 that's still
very widely observed in the old method for the non hajis at a time
when according to the Hadith gayness in Tirmidhi, a successful
inwardly balanced and directed and mindful if you like, fast of the
Day of Arafah is an atonement for the sins of the previous year, and
the next year, you get two years.
It doesn't mean that you can watch Netflix all day and then the sun
goes down and you binge and all of the stuff you've been doing is
magically washed away. No.
It's not as stupid as that. It is about
the divine regard for those who are not just on the plane of
Arafah sweating and crying and raising their hands in dark when
the Lord is proud before the angels on Zorro, Eli birdie
at Tony, show us and Oberon Tartine look at my slaves. He says
as he sees the people of Arafat, they've come to me with messy hair
suffering from heat.
tatty
dusty.
I bear witness to you that I have forgiven them. And the for far too
long. So that's the great miracle of the hajis that Arafat somehow
despite everything within us, and around us there is that Eurasia.
Net, escuela Bharat, this is where the tears fall. There's the mount
of mercy. It's not called a mountain of anger. It's the
mountain of mercy, the hunches about the approach to the one
who's out on the rough I mean, and that's the, the reality of the
Divine is characterized by that Ketubah and enough see a Rama he
has prescribed mercy upon himself. So we can't be there on that day.
Whether the divine recording angels press Delete, really
delete, not kind of recoverable if you pay some IT expert a lot of
money to get them back from their scramble state, but really delete
this if they had never been there. That's a pretty extraordinary
thing. When you think about how useless we usually are. That's the
Divine Mercy.
But if we can't be there, and most of us can't be there, then to
market with the fast and with good actions. And it's also recommended
for people to give sadaqa
and because CMC is my humble opinion, a place where Islam is
not celebrated as just an aspect of ancestral inheritance, that one
is anxious about preserving. But it's something that points people
towards God. We're very theists centric,
and where the Hajj and everything else in Islam is not just a
checklist of obligations, but it's a journey to the heart and to the
to the Rabbil Alameen where we try to have a full sunnah, the inward
as well as the outward
that CMC in my view represents a good destination
In a muddy and ambiguous age, for people sadaqa and their higher,
good deeds are multiplied and ADA attentiveness because the
effectiveness of a good deed is not so much measured by its
outcome in the ACARA, which is subject to the divine knowledge
and mercy, but the unclouded thing of our hearts
because our problem our only problem really, is that we
forgotten that we've forgotten that allow us to be robbed become
the significance of the stone and we're like those meditators on
Glastonbury tour who didn't want to do there's no era shared. They
don't have a Kapler, but they know that they want something. And
that's not a good place for us to be 100 Allah Islam in its
immutable and ancient and gorgeous practices reconnect us to
something that is immutable and absolutely serious.
That we can go to a place like Glastonbury and know what it
indicates. So we, even though people tend to see our community
as the community that really doesn't belong. A bunch of weird
people from the island
actually turn up to the people who to be the people who most belong.
Because we can retrieve this matter of Britain, not in some
flag waving, jingoistic inflatable Spitfire away, but seeing the
security and the goodness that can be identified here which points
onwards by the Divine decree to great sanctuary, the place of the
real Sakina so we ask Allah subhanaw taala to grant us an
attentive month of the Hajj, to uplift us in this time, to help us
perhaps to view films to read books to consider the enormous
wonderful majesty of this greatest of all journeys and insha Allah
for those who have not made the Hajj, the Hajj have the honor to
make a strong intention that we will do it sooner rather than
later. Because the Hydras are majesty and memorable amazingness
and to put money aside for another trip to Agha deer or Dubai
is to this understand what really enriches us in life the Hajj
should be number one of our aspirations and Insha Allah, even
if all we have in these 10 days is a ridable determination and love
for Allah's house that that will make the Time Well Spent
inshallah. So may Allah subhanaw taala give us a
good 10 days. And inshallah if you subscribe to our YouTube channel,
you'll see that CMC is setting aside time and energy in these 10
days for various lectures, insights into the Hajj, the
meaning, the richness, the incomparable ocean of rich,
nourishing meaning that
we should be feasting upon in this starvation, Age of Spiritual void,
and drought. And in sha Allah, with CMC, we will be making a good
pilgrimage within even if we can't this year have the ISM to make the
pilgrimage to Hajj without insha Allah So may Allah subhanaw taala
accept our actions except our intentions. Grant us ishtiaq
longing for his house insha Allah have an emotion from which so much
is good comes in sha Allah make us detached from the false
pilgrimages of the dunya and focus always in a mindful and modest and
loving way on the truth table. And in sha Allah make us people who
truly and sincerely say love Baker Allahumma love bake, love Baker
Sharika look at a bake in 101. Now not like our milk, luxury color,
meaning of that is all the meaning you will ever need. Returning to
the place of origin, in love and obedience and Obaldia Sleaford
towards the merciful Sakeena the still peaceable presence of herbal
Alameen nothing more beautiful. So may Allah subhanaw taala accept
our intentions and give us a good 10 days and nights in sha Allah
And forgive us and overlook our shortcomings. Not Alone with equal
salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.