Abdal Hakim Murad – Imam Shamil Paradigms of Leadership
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses the history and culture of the Middle East, including the rise of Islam and the expansion of Russia, as well as the importance of mindfulness and avoiding false predictions in religion. The transcript also touches on the rise of Islam and the expansion of Russia, including the rise of Muslim nationalism and Russia's nationalist movement. The transcript also touches on the importance of leadership in shaping society and the need for people to be the ones who can control their destiny.
AI: Summary ©
Smilla Rahmanir Rahim Al hamdu lillahi rabbil aalameen or salat
wa salam ala acromial NBR even more serene, say dinner or Mowlana
Muhammad wa ala alihi wa Safi nine.
Last year some of you may have been with us on our journey
through the complex, always inspiring, always relevant
landscape of the Sierra.
And various points on that journey tracing that incomparably gripping
story, we find ourselves confronted with
inevitable questions.
The question the story is one of historical record.
But an almost inconceivably improbable achievement seems to
have been the outcome, the happy ending,
the Arabs, pagan people became monotheists a tribal people became
united. People with no interest in life after death became focused on
life after death, and under one leader.
So, to what do we attribute this? Well as believers we attributed
first and last to the Divine agency and the divine permission,
this is what it is to be realizing the meaning of being khalifa to
Allah.
But we also because the world has been set up in such a way as to
enable us to see what at least to our weak vision seem to be factors
causes, consequences, linearity, and the mysterious concatenation
of forces that constitutes this other old material world in which
we find ourselves the mystery of time itself factors and factors of
success.
And we noted at various points that the Holy Prophet alayhi salat
wa salam is inspirational, not just to those who are interested
in divine agency, permission, party sanctity, but also in terms
of what we generally refer to as charisma, skill, diplomacy,
statesmanship, generalship, the qualities that ancient Greeks
would regard as space, specifically the man lever to use.
And there have been several in recent years, who have taken this
story almost as a secular model
bracketing out the divine agency and saying, Well, this is a real
story that happened in space and time and what it what lessons are
there for us today to be gleaned from this story of brilliant
leadership?
John Adair has this book the leadership of Muhammad, which a
lot of Muslims are enthused by, and there are plenty of others.
But what I'm going to suggest in this little series of lectures
is that we need to be
a little uncomfortable about importing such contemporary
categories into our thought world.
Sometimes, we have to import terminology that is not quite
ours. So when we translate Eman, sometimes we say faith, yes, but
not quite.
When we translate Nabi we say, Prophet, yes, but not quite. The
semantic resonances of the words are subtly different in the two
linguistic universes, and we need to be aware constantly of
reinventing reconfiguring Islam into a form of thinking of
categories that seemed to sit naturally with a Western or an
Anglo Saxon linguistic frame. Clearly, we have the
responsibility to think carefully before such a transmutation, and
Nabi is not quite a prophet.
Similarly, this category of leadership seems to me to be, to
some degree, an alien imposition.
So I'm going to start with that thought.
Is it not the case that in our enlightenment world, where the
divine agency has been sidelined as a matter for sort of a private
hobbyists consideration rather than the governing explanation for
the human narrative, that we'd like to make man the measure of
all things, and therefore, man, as the author of his own destiny
becomes glorified, becomes autonomous, in a way that for
earlier generations
Human beings whether monotheistic or polytheistic, or pagan would
have seemed very strange and improper.
The glory of man
humanism. The idea that man through his own innate gifts and
capacities, can take the homes of destiny and force them onto a new
path. The idea of heroism
mentioned a number of times last year, the interesting book by the
philosopher Carlyle, heroes and hero worship.
In this book, he is a leading exponent of Hegel's philosophy of
history in high Victorian England, listed certain world historical
individuals who, as you saw it, were the incarnation of Geist of
spirits of this ontological cosmic principles that somehow always
move things onwards, you can see how compatible that was with the
Darwinian notions that were also breaking surface at the time that
of course, the Victorians did see themselves as obviously the climax
of a billion years of evolution. We began with amino acids, and we
end with the Church of England at the ranch. And this was generally
accepted as something self evident and not in need of interrogation
kind of very much part of that world. Social Darwinism, Marxists
were in due season, to take that perhaps to its logical conclusion.
In fact, we could say that many of the
key catastrophes of the 20th century were the result of the
politicizing of Darwin.
Communism took itself to be just helping natural selection along a
little bit.
And the Nazis took themselves to be helping natural selection along
a little bit, and they collided but ultimately they were singing
from the same Darwinian hymn sheet. Our reception of theories
of natural selection is of course, contested and an ongoing debate.
That's not really my point. The point is that in an essentially
secular view, which holds that human beings essentially are what
they are and achieve things in the world as the result of being
simply the latest generation in a mammalian and ultimately, sort of
protoplasmic meaningless, brutal, red in tooth and claw conflict
with other life forms, with nothing really meaning anything
except the perpetuation of one's genetic material. Clearly, this
idea of leadership becomes a central. So Carlisle,
understanding this very clearly, as the new Zeitgeist, a post
Christian idea, insists that there are certain world historical
individuals who represent this, her Galeon otology of progress
towards greater complexity and greater order.
And he identifies certain key individuals in human history. And
one of them as we saw is the Holy Prophet of Islam, who he sees as a
heroic figure. Somebody who genuinely brings about a paradigm
shift in the human condition and in perception simply through force
of character, and a lot of Western biographies of the Holy Prophet
and Maxine broadswords very Marxist biography, which is still
widely read, Penguin published it
tend to see this as the key feature of his career, leadership
skills,
human management skills, diplomacy, statesmanship, careful
planning, the calculation of chances. But these, if you
actually look at the Siraj
seem actually to have been not the considerations that weighed
heavily.
They were the considerations that mattered for Quraysh and his
adversaries, who were the real schemers, those who are plotting
and laying stratagems. But throughout the career of the Holy
Prophet of Islam, we find instead, the idea that one does one's duty
and the rest is up to God. But this idea of leadership seems more
like part of the old tribal glorification of certain
charismatic individuals than the prophetic model which is being
enunciated in Scripture.
So let's begin with that thought.
After all, the Muslim world and the British OMA is awash now with
leadership programs of various kinds.
How to create great leaders for Muslim community and CMC, I
suppose, is part of that industry in a certain way.
But
See? How exactly does that translate into our own indigenous
vocabulary and categories? Perhaps not very well.
So one of the things that I want to do in this course of lectures
is to look at certain figures who by secular Canons could be
regarded as leaders,
military, political, diplomatic, cultural, spiritual or scholarly.
The OMA has no shortage of great figures to be inspired by, and to
see to what extent their success and their esteem in the eyes of
the Ummah can be attributed to the kind of management speak,
calculating, flip chart culture that talks about how to be a great
CEO, or how to be a successful MP, or how to get a good job in the
Foreign Office and these sort of CV centered criteria for
leadership that seemed to be prevalent nowadays. Is there some
overlap, though? Are we talking about something radically
different? And if we are, then what really are we doing to the
logic of our community? If we insist on this leadership idea?
Not sure. Sometimes it can go to extremes that seem quite absurd,
certainly without precedent in our culture, this idea of Muslim
Achievement Awards, for instance,
who is voted the best nasheed artist of 2018? Round of applause,
and it's like, the X Factor or something. When somebody comes on
you goes there, everybody cheers, and it's great entertainment, who
is the great scholar of 2018 round of applause. And here's a little
badge and the ambassador of some work comes along with it MPs
photograph next year, this is increasingly part of our celebrity
oriented culture in western Islam, which I think is rather strange,
in the context of a religion where scholars and others have genuinely
preferred not to be in the limelight. And where humility and
hate are almost a watchword of the religion.
The hadith says equally, Dean in Holyoke, will hollowcore islam al
Hyah.
Every religion has a particular specific ethos, and ethos of Islam
is shyness, humility, kind of this is part of the prophetic
greatness. And again, last year, I tried to point to what seems in
secular eyes to be something paradoxical about him and his
leadership sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
who could doubt the virility of the way in which he led his people
can peace and war.
Magnificent,
but at the same time, we see for instance, all of those many
Hadith, which have him crying, some Allahu alayhi wa salam.
That will be an interesting book, to put together all the occasions
where the Holy Prophet is moved to tears, by the death of a friend by
the death of his son by joy. He wept frequently as we don't he was
soft hearted, despite his leadership,
kinda Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said the higher and
meaner decree fifthly the rehab.
Again, there's a startling image but this is what is reported of
him in many Hadees the Holy Prophet salallahu Alaihe was, was
more shy, more modest than a virgin in her tent, sort of
bashful. How does that fit with a man who's buckling on his armor on
the eve of the Battle of Bader, and escapes with his closest
companion on the hijra, and those magnificent leadership moments
that that kind of bashfulness shyness
won't be found in the contemporary management speak leadership
manuals. We're dealing with something different here, that is
unfamiliar to those of us whose souls have been formed in the
modern world. And this has to give us pause if he is saying
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that the ethos of Islam is one of
humility, shyness. bashfulness sounds almost kind of
stereotypically feminine. Then where is leadership? Whereas
Muruga
virail Manly strength, which is also clearly an aspect of his
prophetic perfection. So, balancing those two I suggested
last time the prophet who weeps prophet who is shy
Who lowers his gaze with the prophet who is the great warrior
diplomat, Ambassador, rescuer of his people preacher heartily, and
so forth, is something that will force us to shift categories a
little bit.
And what is going on here? Well, what is going on, as I take it,
specifically Mohammed and specifically, Islamic,
which is
that
the way of Islam is to be in the world.
But not to seek magnificence in the world.
The Quranic stories, which gives you a variety of archetypes of the
conflict that is in the world, in in our souls between Iran and Musa
and new Murad, and Ibrahim. And all of those other face offs
between two principles,
are emblems told to awaken our innate awareness that the world is
a battle, and we are the battleground of the principle of
the spirit and the ego.
There is the magnificence of the pharaoh or it is Monster statues
that lasts for 5000 years because they're made out of such hard
granite and his pyramids and the magnificence of that, in the
Verona Allah, Allah Montes, a high physical height,
splendor, seeing him in his court must have been stunning, there is
leadership. There's charisma, I guess.
But opposing him and commended in the Scripture, there is a
different magnificence and a different leadership, which
doesn't really overlap with it at all. It has a charisma. There's
not the charisma of the powerful. And if you've lived in the world,
and move between worlds, and been with the true scholars, and also
been with politicians and ministers and generals, and even
heads of state, you'll know that they are not the same form of
money, Adam, they both have a charisma. But it's different. And
that is evidently important and how we're going to define it.
personal charisma it's something intangible. You can feel it even
when you close your eyes somehow in the presence of those people.
It's like defining beauty or envy or some other powerful elemental
human property that has a kind of radioactivity or magnetism within
it, how do you define those things? Who is going to define
beauty? Who is going to define any of these, the palette basic
palette of human emotion and charisma is clearly an important
part of it and predates civilization and goes back to the
earliest periods. Tribal kinship groups always recognized the
charisma of the shaman and the charisma of the chief and whoever
else happened to have charisma and warrior or Hunter. It's part of
what we are to detect and to intuit and to revere charisma
and kindness they burn others have talked a lot about this, even
though it's hard to define.
But it's clearly part of the human makeup,
to be in awe of charismatic individuals, but the charismatic
individual who is of the mosaic type.
The one who
has spent his or her life going against to fit around within
becomes a different type of radioactive human being to the
type who spent his whole life dismissing the higher possibility
and just following how're an ego and nafs different modality of
being human. Somehow the processing of the world is just
different. They see things differently. Everything is ego.
So this is clearly important to the Quran, it is giving us these
to use the buzzword paradigms of leadership.
But deconstructing our conventional worldly sense of what
it is to be followed in quite a radical and troubling way.
It's saying that the people who are truly to be respected and
those whose memories we bless, 1000s of years later, are not the
DevOps elite of the prehistoric world, but are those who
who were engaged in the more interesting struggle within
the most ancient human quest which is turning away from the immediate
desire for whatever sensory pleasures might be to hand.
Allow those yapping monkeys and dogs within to be silenced and
start to recenter themselves on the life of the spirit. Every
culture has had that
heyday now who knows Dane for answers, we've guided you. Both
paths as it were simple.
And both parts are accessible. And we all know it whether or not we
free it and frame it in specifically religious terms. But
everybody has the sense of rising above their lower immediate
appetites, whether or not they're religious, but religionists do it
for a reason.
So when we look at the ER N, and its frequent retellings of those
Titanic, Titanic showdowns between the ego, man and the spirit man,
we find something that applies 100% to today's world. And we find
an explanation of why it is that if you leave the presence of the
self-denying, faithful scholar, or the simple fruit seller on the
street corner, who's really got no ego, but really likes to read,
Grant, and then you visit, right you soldier on Korea, or gelatin
Malik full, and it's a different experience, even if they're also
praying and fasting and doing the same kind of Muslim things. It's a
different kind of leader whose presence you are in and the
presence of those whose habitat is the corridors of power is
overwhelmingly a disturbing one. disorienting, there's a kind of
dark energy there, which is palpable to most human beings.
generally don't find those places, very congenial. You breathe a sigh
of relief when you leave, not just because this guy could
have you
arrested in the embassy and chopped up into little pieces. But
because there is some kind of negative force there,
which can sometimes feel like a curse, the denial of the Divine
Presence, however absurd that human project might be. So
this is important in our Scripture. And it kind of subvert
our conventional language about leadership and makes us
interrogate very carefully the burgeoning Muslim culture of
developing leaders, and leadership programs and Muslim Achievement
Awards and the 500 greatest Muslims in a particular year and
all of this strange league tables. It's for God to judge who is a
great Muslim because Accra Macomb and Allah at Koco, the noblest of
you in His sight is the one who fears in most and who knows who
that is.
Who knows who is the best of us. Today, we have no means of
detecting that any more than we have a means of detecting who has
secret vices, secret virtues on others, keeping these things
hidden.
And that is part of His mercy. We are all veiled creatures. So
that's a way of beginning and what I want to do
to get to drill down into this a little bit more into this rather
disorienting doubt that I'm raising about the virtue of
leadership, self promotion, self vaulting, smiling in the
limelight, is to look at some Hadith
Hadith that should be quoted,
often in our community, you go to community events, and you see the
sort of Uncle Ji types, the community leaders, and
what they really want
is to be photographed with a local MP, more than anything else, other
heads of Islamic something and their trustees of this mosque of
that mosque. But you can see them kind of almost bursting with
pleasure and childish delight when the MP is there. The great white
man and I'm going to have a photograph of him and I can send
it to my uncle and the other rival trustee hasn't been photographed.
It's It's pitiful and is not respected by anyone. It's a kind
of groveling and it's because of our denial of this basic prophetic
principle. So if I could have those books
force you to carry them.
Yeah, so enough of me rubber
Hang on, let's look at some what the Holy Prophet says about this
principle of
leadership.
How can it be a problem in Islam when so many of these hero figures
in the Quran, clearly are leaders of their people.
And it is through their leadership, it seems that that
peoples are brought to salvation. Noah was a leader, Moses, a
leader, and so forth. So you know, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi
wasallam led his people what's not to like? Well,
this is Sufi herbal hurry with the famous
storied commentary of Ibn Hydra Alaska learning and is the Fed
Halle Berry. He's, I guess, a leader of the Mohammed the thin,
one of the great figures of late Mamluk Egypt, which was a period
of extraordinary fluorescence in Hadith studies, in particular, and
his life is well worth
charting interesting life, but he produces this
What What greater achievement could there be for a Muslim then
to produce the most respected commentary on the most respected
Hadith collection? So let's approach this with reverence. And
here is his way of addressing one of the later books in Sahih al
Bukhari Kitab al Arcam
book of rulings or judgments and it's the place where you tend to
get Hadith that are leadership related to be a judge to be an
inspector to be in authority of some kind, and
it begins
with the idea of not being a leader but uh, being leaders. So
Babel colada heater, Allah RT O Allah, our RT Audra Sula, we're
all Amory minquan. Allah says, Obey Allah, obey the messenger,
and those who have authority amongst you.
And the Amira, command Imara to be a commander, to have authority of
some kind. Allah is instructing us to obey Him, who is messenger and
those amongst us who have authority. The leadership Well,
it's not quite the same category, but this is as near as we're going
to get modern Arabic words for leader Zyme our ID and so forth
are post prophetic and perhaps that's indicative of how
the semantics of shoot shifted.
Okay, how does an Abdon Akbar Abdullah and Ulus on so hurry up
Bharani Abu selama Tapani Abdul Rahman and the host semi Abba
Herrera Radi Allahu Anhu your call in the Rasul allah sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam a call, man atta omniva called or law woman or Sony
for Hadassah Allah. Woman a TA Amiri for God at all, any woman
also Amiri forgot the Asani
the text of the hadith is, the Holy Prophet says, Whoever obeys
me has obeyed God. And Whoever disobeys me, has disobeyed God.
Whoever obeys my, the one who I have appointed to be in authority
has obeyed me, and who ever has disobeyed, the one to whom I have
given authority has disobeyed me.
This is expressed in stark terms, absolutely going to need some kind
of commentary, even Hydra supplies that but the basic principle is
yarn authority is a big deal in the religion and it comes through
the prophetic example during his lifetime. So Allahu alayhi wa
sallam through practical commands, this army goes here. That tax is
used for that purpose. Subsequently, it's through extreme
increasingly extended processes and chronological lines of
interpretation and he had but the principle is the same as obedience
to God. Therefore obedience to His Prophet therefore obedience to
people in authority.
Okay, and then another famous Hadith
and the Rasul Allah He sallallahu alayhi wa sallam a call Allah Kulu
kumara in Morocco local misfold on Andhra Yeti fell Imam will artisan
will lead the island this era in wa wa the school on Andhra Yeti.
While Roger Laura in Allah le Beatty he will homeschool on
camera at Walmart at aura tune Allah le Beatty's LG ha Well, what
are the
Why EMS pulutan home.
Every one of you is shepherd would have been understood as being a
shepherd specifically. And each one is answerable for his flock,
those whom he shepherds,
the greatest leader and a mammal, Amazon, who is an authority over
people, is a shepherd and is answerable for his, for the state
of his flock. A man is the shepherd of his household, and
shall be called to account is answerable for his household.
A woman is a shepherd over the people of her husband's house and
his children. And she is also answerable for that. I laugh I
couldn't do Cumbre in Wakanda, Columbus, OH, Lauren, Andhra yet
so you repeats it, every one of you as a shepherd, every one of
you is answerable for his flock. So this is more like a kind of
warning, and a statement of fact than a glorification of being a
leader, you'll be called to account. Just like a shepherd, who
is neglectful goes to sleep.
On Morocco, they smoke hashish. Sometimes the sheep disappears and
who knows, if you're not doing your job as a shepherd, you can be
taken to task for the sheep that disappears, or that falls down a
hole or whatever it is. A shepherd requires mindfulness, we'd say
nowadays, so you have to be mindful. So, the fact of authority
is there, there have to be rulers, they have to be fabulous, they
have to be structured in society, there has to be somebody who is in
charge of these structures. But this hadith is saying, watch out.
Not saying this is a glorious, glorious thing. As the Pharaonic
model. Pharaoh is not are interested in being called to
account for the status of the population of Egypt.
He's interested in his own magnificence.
But this hadith is telling us something quite different. So it
begins with this, which is already a healthy and a sobering thought.
It seems to me and then
I'm going to fast forward through
it this interesting chapter and with these commentaries as you can
imagine, a lot of it is highly technical stuff about arguments
over isn't ads and grammatical stuff, and we certainly aren't
going to look at that but let's look at the
next Hadith
Allah Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Allah hasta Illa fifth
attain Raj lon air teho Lahore Berlin for Sonata who Allah
halacha T Phil Hawk will ask Hello, hello Hickmott and via the
behalf while you are limo have
only two people should be invaded a man whom God has given wealth,
and he uses it almost to its depletion in right causes and
another whom God has given wisdom, in accordance of which with which
he judges and teachers
envious advice except it's permissible to envy, a billionaire
who's giving away all of his money, because his
liquor bottle lie to him. And yet Holy Prophet says such a person
he's praying and fasting and shut him up, but he's also doing these
other things, and then also this idea of wisdom. Somebody's wise,
you can envy that person. And that commentary goes on to explain that
this has a lot to do with wisdom in disposing of the affairs of
those who want is responsible this law aka this flock.
If you have wisdom
in dealing with people and in giving judgment over them, it's
permissible for people to envy you
so that they can put you up that somebody in a position of
authority can be legitimately
envied.
Let's move on a bit because there's
and then beb Milam yes ll E. Murata, Anna who Allahu Allah has
a chapter
on the fact that he who does not ask
For all authority will be given help in exercising that authority
by Allah.
So this is exactly the heart of what we were talking about with
this apparent prophetic paradox of the humility and magnificence of
his leadership. So Allahu alayhi wa sallam
on Abdul Rahman even some more attack all cordially Nabi usado,
Allahu alayhi wa sallam yeah after a rough man, lettuce le Imara for
indica in or Te Taha and Miss Ella tiene were killed to Eliza or kita
Eliza, we're in all data on writing Miss editing or inter alia
or either Hello after Alia meaning for our data writer has hired and
minha for Catherine Anya Monica was the lady who was hired.
So here is a Hadith that
immediately seems to challenge that leadership industry. I'm
remembering someone who's
convert who goes on to actually become a governor in Iran after
the conquest. So he's somebody who is an authority is a leader. Oh,
Abdur Rahman, the Holy Prophet says do not seek authority, do not
seek leadership.
Because if you are given it, having asked for it,
it will be given authority over you.
But if you're given it without asking for it, you will be helped
in it.
And then the Hadith goes on. And if you swear, it takes an oath to
something and then you see something else is better than it
then you can
pay an atonement for breaking your oath and then do the thing that is
is better, which is another issue but it's mentioned in this hadith.
So the commentary then,
trying to filter out some of the grammatical interest.
Men will Keela in NFC Hallock
whoever is entrusted to his own self will be destroyed.
Or men who feed to art will lead to kidney ILA NFC. This word is
used in the famous prayer where we say Do not make me rely upon
myself do not make my own self, my reliance.
Well, what color am Rahu Illa for learning sallahu li so in Arabic
you say when you make this use this verb, and you hand over to
something says something to someone, then you're giving it
over to him?
Well, Matt O'Neill, Hadith and untolerable Imana Teva Oh dear,
ha, toric it IANA to Who are they mean actually HERSA. So the
meaning of the hadith is that whoever seeks or authority and is
given it is not helped or is not to be helped in it because of his
zeal, because of his ambition. We probably say
we used to Pharaoh Minho, and the taller Bama Yatta I love or Bill
hook me macro.
So we gained from this the fact that to seek anything relating to
authority is disliked macro
for you to fulfill Imara avocado oil hisbah Wonderful Delic. And
included in authority here is things like being a judge, or
being a magistrate or policeman and things like that.
We're Enderman Hadassah, Allah, the Lika Yuan. And that whoever is
zealous for such positions, is not to be helped or will not be
helped.
So that seems to be the basic sense of the Hadith. And again,
it's really pulling the rug from underneath our sense of
leadership. And here is my CV, and I'm going to apply for this job
because I want to have some kind of authority over people. But if
you're given the authority without asking for it, without this house
without this ambitiousness, God will help you.
So where does that leave us? In our contemporary situation,
because after all, applying for a job nowadays, or competing for a
ministerial portfolio, in Whitehall, it's all about self
promotion, isn't it? You hire a PR firm to tell everybody about your
achievements, and you kind of structure stuff and do boast and
do talk on news night and do veil Your thoughts and you play to the
gallery and tell everybody how wonderful you are because you
really want that job. You want to be health minister, or you want to
be CEO of Glaxo or something and you're ambitious for that.
You have this house. Now Holy Prophet is telling us in this
Bukhari Hadith, that if you do that, and you have that strong
ambitiousness you're not going to be helped in it, but your yourself
will be your aid. In other words, there won't be divine assistance.
You're just relying on your own capacities.
It seems quite clear, but then of course, as has to be done, the
commentary points out that there seems to be a conflict with some
other text.
While you are read the whole facade here, arthralgia, who Abu
Dawood and Abu Hurayrah, Rafa Whoa, man Tala Barkada al
Muslimeen, had a Anello who saw Marvella ad Lu who Jota who Fela
Holden woman Hala Badgal ruku ad level fella who not there he says,
apparently this is contradicted by another Hadith narration about
Apple had the apple download from Apple or era
where the Holy Prophet says who ever seeks a judgeship over the
Muslims and gets the job. And then his justice prevails over his
injustice. He shall go to paradise.
But whoever is injustice, predominant that predominates over
his justice shall go to *.
There's another Hadith where it seems that if you really seek a
judgeship,
and you do it well, you go to heaven. So how do we balance these
two? Heidi's both about leadership? Well, Jim obey no
format. And the whole lay in Zen woman, co de la, you're an OB
Sebby Tala de la AXELA, Minho, laddle, either woolly, woolly.
And the way of reconciling the two is that the fact that he is not to
be helped because of his seeking the job doesn't mean that when he
does get the job, he's not capable of being just, oh, you're mellow,
tolerable, Whoa, now I'll cast Winnetka, Allah Tolia or it may be
that in the first case, the hadith is referring to
intending and in the second case, it's referring to actually when
you are in authority and you get the job
workout cut them I mean, had at Abbey Musa in land when Lehman had
us. And we've commented earlier on the Hadith he says some previous
volume, of course, people who use these books would know exactly
which page to turn to. And nowadays we have to spend hours
looking for it but there's another Hadith which is already commented
on, in which the Holy Prophet says I do not give authority to
somebody who wants it
Okay,
so
yep.
And then there's another Hadith in the comb Safaree sunnah Harlan
Imara was at a corner damnit and Yobo piano. For near Mel model
they are a bit settled Fatima
interesting Hadith, Holy Prophet here is offering a prediction you
shall certainly be keen to have authority
and it will be a source of regret on the Day of Judgment. So bless
it be the suckling and Richard be the wind.
The old expression and the commentary goes on to explain the
meaning of this, which is that the suckling is the fortunate one
who's enjoying this position when he's still attached in this world.
But in the next world when he is detached from those comforts, he
will find himself in a state of regret and misfortune.
Yep, and then he goes on to talk about the the vanity and
instability of positions of authority.
Colin will help.
I'll hear So Alan Willa, who was sebou filthy Turley. Nursey. I lay
her hat suffocated. Dima was to be a hatin AmWell willful road will
also manifest said we'll fill out with Ehrlich
one scholar says
you
ambition for power is the reason why people fight for it. So that
blood is shed, and properties are ransacked, and there is * and
widespread corruption in the earth.
So there's more here, but I think we get the general idea quite
strongly, which is that
ambitiousness
for leadership
is regarded prophetically as a very big problem.
And that God will not give you success if because of your
ambition for something.
You get it, which is one reason why we find the scholars
historically, and the Imam talks about the caliber, genuinely
refusing positions of authority, because of the fitna that it
brings. The believer wants to pray too fast to be right with God, to
bring up his family, all of this sort of Pharaonic glory of having
something splendid to boast about on your business card is not the
Islamic way.
That doesn't mean that there aren't to be leaders. But the
leaders ideally are there without having zealously shorter sought
out that position.
And that's the difference. So the NBS Ali Salam didn't want to be
prophets didn't ask to be prophets, they didn't fill out a
job application, it was
Allah subhanaw taala speaks to Musa
from the depths of the desert in the en Allahu La ilaha illa Atharv
bordoni What up in the solar daily decrease speaks to him, that fire
in the desert, I only I am God. There is no god other than me, so
worship Me and established the prayer for my recollection.
And then he's told to go to the fiddle around
with his brother and all of those commandments. But throughout the
discourse in a more Sally salon is kind of not very keen on all of
this.
The ego is not there.
The danger is manifest and who wants to go to the palace of fear
around after all, there's no hair of the only danger, the danger of
the ego and being caught up in that dark psychic turbulence is
far greater than any danger to life or limb, because the spirit
itself and its welfare is at stake.
So in our civilization, very often, we find that the truly
prophetic individuals are those who are in their positions without
really having wanted them at all.
And in again, and again, in the biographies of the scholars, you
find their reluctance to teach, for instance, the reluctance to
give is NADs unless their teachers and their students absolutely
insist,
their reluctance to write sometimes, unless their teachers
and their students absolutely insist they kind of
want to appear in the limelight. And the danger of being
top notch bigshot scholar is example in life of Imam Al Ghazali
Rahmatullahi Ali, who suffers this crisis precisely because as he
says in his autobiography, he seems to be enjoying this kind of
leadership position. And maybe he's enjoying being a suckling, in
this world and in the next world He is going to be weaned
is going to be out of luck. And that prompts that famous crisis.
So we find, rulership is generally something that the Allamah and the
pious do not aspire to. You leave it to the Mamelukes or whoever is
there, but you have to remain independent, and the scholar has
the right to criticize them on behalf of the liar. That's one of
the obligations of the scholar, and he may find that mosaic Lee he
risked life and limb in order to say that truth Adel jihadi Kalama
to Hopkin Soltani in jet air,
Jihad Jihad we here but the best Jihad Holy Prophet says is to
speak the truth in the presence of an unjust, tyrannical ruler.
So one of the things we're going to be looking at in these lectures
is the independence of the people of religion. The faith leaders of
Islam from political
authority Musar cannot be the one zero Alkaff surround cannot co opt
him and more so will not allow himself to be co opted. And this
is one of the the harshness is of the scholars vocation that the
people love the scholars and doubtful about the rulers.
And they are looking to the scholars for guidance to be in
that mosaic place. And nowadays across the OMA, we find the
nationalization of the automap, the CO opting of the people who
should be what I thought will envia, the heirs of the Prophet
and sometimes excruciating pressures are brought to bear on
them.
If you look at the WikiLeaks website, there's a big download of
royal Saudi emails.
Very depressing, not least the fact that they really don't know
the basis of Arabic grammars shocking, but
one of them is boasting to another prince, we can get out on a mat to
say whatever we want them to say.
That's the reality of much of the Ummah today.
And this is profoundly subversive and is not our idea of leadership.
You continue to speak the truth, even if you are strapped down on
the guillotine. And then you'll be loved until the Yamo piano. And
this is a hard thing for the scholars to bet so many of them
are now behind bars, but then sometimes, realistically, to
conserve what's left, maybe you have to go along with it. What are
we to make of the Muftis of the Russian Federation under
communism.
They tried to keep a tiny little spark alive and almost
extinguished candle of Islamic scholarship. The Madras is closed
the automat sent to Siberia. Everything smashed by a militant
state atheism and these kinds of figureheads, the so called Read
muffed is
a new one or two of them when I was a student. Beth's studying
with me at a bit of the US heart. And there were two of them from
Russia. And the rumor whilst they were both KGB men said to spy on
each other.
Actually, I found them to be decent. And understanding although
there's little that they could say was that if they don't do this
thing and become the Mufti of Tashkent and, and receive a salary
from an atheist state, there'll be nothing there at all. Other thing
will be dead. So sometimes they are in that excruciating,
difficult position. But still, historically, the role of Thor
Allamah is to be cherry of engaging with the Salatin.
The best of salt, Hans is he who visits the scholars, and the worst
of Scholars is he who visits the salt ions.
And this is really absolutely relevant to us today. Even in the
West.
Governments are really trying to get a handle on Muslim communities
and developing Muslim leadership skills and even paying money. Even
counter radicalization money to various charities and quangos and
odd shadowy agencies that have suddenly popped up and are
throwing money around to try and develop Muslim leadership skills.
We need to
stop with them with a long spoon, I think.
Not because we don't also want to destroy radicalism. We because
it's more of a threat to our religion, really than it is a
threat to their sovereignty.
That just for the integrity and the honor of the tradition of the
Alanna, which is not to be co opted by anyone.
So that's again, something that is we're going to be looking at in
these various episodes. I want to say something just
to conclude today
about one particular instance of this.
And this is one that is important for CMC because CMC is has a
memorandum with the Islamic University of Moscow.
And we have hosted the deputy Mufti of Moscow, the deputy Mufti
of Siberia and the Muslim Allah of the Russian Federation, which is
an important place because 40% of Muslims in Europe live in Russia,
the community, we went to Juma prayers, the CMC delegation at a
mosque in Moscow, where 100 was
60,000 People pray that aid just at that one mosque, and another
mosques in Moscow. And it's a big, big, vibrant, important community.
But their relationship with the government, and we talked to the
head of the Islamic University in Moscow and his predecessor, six
years earlier, had been shot dead in his office. And it's unstable
kind of place, and nobody's quite sure, who is who they are in a
much more difficult situation than we are here. But they are asking
these questions, and the Muslims of Russia are looking to the
scholars for leadership and not being co opted. But that's part of
a long story. And I want to go through some of that story, partly
because it's really interesting and dramatic.
Just, it's the kind of first of these little vignettes. So perhaps
these can be passed around. These are my handouts.
sure that you don't want to observe me struggling with
PowerPoints. It has comedic value.
It's not really good educational practice. So I'm doing it the old
Scott style with handouts. Now.
I'm going to lead up to an example champion of Muslim leadership of
the 19th century, who is Imam Shamil of the Caucasus, who many
of you will have heard about who is worth dwelling upon,
because of his being kind of on the cusp of modernity is not from
some Mameluke. Back when he's dealing with the reality of
European conquest, the European determination to institutionalize
religion, and to corrupt it, and dealing with a situation of
genocide.
So
he's from Dagestan,
the Caucasus, if you go to their main madrasa, it has a built in
devastation.
20 lecture rooms, each one is named after an hour limit of a
Stan who's been assassinated in the last 20 years. And that's how
touchy things are because of the so called Salafi jihadists who
don't like the traditional chef a scholars, it's
the kind of precarious place but it's very ancient Muslim place
development in the south, was called by the Arabs babble of Web.
And it is
an ancient city, a UNESCO heritage site Sahaba buried they're really
beautiful.
If you think about the early Muslim conquests, everybody spread
out like waves of a sort of storm in every direction, and they were
only stopped by the Atlantic in one direction and the Chinese in
another end to the north, really by the Byzantines and then by the
Caucasus,
coconut Caucasus is formidable.
The highest mountains in Europe.
Mount Elbrus is the highest mountain in Europe, not more
blocks, not Elbrus is 1000 meters higher than moblog.
Enormous phalanxes of sheer cliffs.
You can go to some of the Muslim villages in the Caucasus, which
are built kind of on the edge of this incredible abyss. And you
look down from somebody's roof, or from the wall next to the mosque.
And you can see below you, there are clouds, because it's so far
down. And apparently sometimes you can see thunderstorms from above.
It's a really extraordinary place. And so that because it's so
remote, so hard to get around in those mountains, that
it's very divided ethnically.
Ancient Arab historians called it Jebin a lot, because there's so
many different languages. So if you look at this little map,
ethnic plurality.
Most of you probably haven't heard of any of those languages, except
perhaps Russia and Georgia. And but this is just the surface of it
because there's other languages as well. So really inaccessible,
impossible to conquer. And the Sahaba didn't get beyond it. Some
of them went around to the east and on the Caspian. But then
According to the historian as they came to her, a great plains, a
desert, full of dangerous snakes. And then there's something called
a putrid sea, where you can't get any fresh water and they didn't go
further north. So this was the furthest limit of the Dar Al
Islam. And they're still substantial Christian communities
that Armenia and Georgia are Caucasian people that are still
Christian after all of this time, they're still pagans. Now. After
all of this time, a lot of the association's you might have heard
of Southeast Asia in the new
As pagans, to this day, really remote out of the way places, so,
Islam spread slowly in these mountains and it spreads from
the south.
The Douglaston is basically a chef that is and the Chechens as well.
Chania convert in 15th and 16th century Ingushetia, which is also
chef he was one of the Muslim republics that
converted only in the 19th century.
And then to the west of the Caucasus around the black sea of
people tend to be Hanafis because the influence comes up from the
kind of Turkic speaking world and that includes one of the last
nations of the Ummah, the Circassians.
Some of my favorite people choke us.
There's a map of C or Casio 150 years ago, there were maps of
Circassian people went there, and it had a population of about 3
million. And it was
if you consider the map of the Black Sea, it's going to the top
right hand corner,
Sochi
its main city. We heard of the Sochi Olympics, the main stadium
was built on the site of a mass grave, where the Russians buried
many of the former Muslim inhabitants.
Julian shinfield says that it was the biggest single genocide of the
19th century.
The catastrophe of the loss of CF Cassia which was a big trauma
across the Muslim world where 1.5 million was simply massacred men,
women and children and the survivors were dispelled. So
yes, here's a nice quote. In 1818 29, Russia gets your Cassia
from Turkey.
And then you have the Circassian genocide 1864 to 1867 90% of the
Circassian people die. So a Russian prince who is in charge of
this says to a group of visiting Americans the Circassians are just
like your American Indians, as untameable and uncivilized. And
owing to their natural energy of character, extermination only will
keep them quiet.
In 1861, towards the end, Tsar Alexander the second says now with
God's help the matter of complete conquest of the caucuses is near
to conclusion. A few years of persistent efforts are remaining
to utterly force out the hostile mountaineers from the fertile
countries they occupy and settle on the lands of Russian Christian
population forever.
This was
part of the story of Russian expansion, and Russian national
identity and this again is a headache for Muslims living in
Russia wasn't maybe 20% of the Russian Federal population
significant is that the Russian national story is constituted by
the expansion of the country against Somerset Prussians and
poles, Lithuanians to the west, but mainly Muslims to the south
and east. And this begins with Ivan the Terrible
1552 He
was kind of like Henry the Eighth only worse he had six wives just
read about what happened to them. And once
he had an argument with his pregnant daughter because she was
wearing something he didn't like, and so he beat her up and she
miscarried. And then the daughter's husband objected. And
so, Ivan the Terrible killed him and killed all his children and
kind of unhappy sort of person, but he is the one who really
begins this crusade towards the east and he captures the great
Muslim city of Kazakh 1552 and Muslim population is either killed
or forcibly baptized 300 years they're not allowed to pray the
Muslim way. And then Catherine the Great re legalizes Islam and
Muslims pop up again saying, we're going to go to church any longer
for you. And they start building mosques, and it's now
a mainly Muslim town, capital of Tatarstan,
which is interesting because Tatarstan is the most prosperous
of all of the republics of the Russian Federation, and is the
Muslim Republic.
Anyway, cousin is a great story, but it's not today's story. And
then Ivan the Terrible goes south and takes Astra Han, formerly
known as * telefone. Muslim city, which is where the Volga
River hits the Caspian Sea.
And then he goes east and the Muslim Harnett of severe today
Siberia, which is thinly populated but Muslim land also submits. And
that's really the end of the large Muslim preponderance in the
central and eastern Russian steps, but the process continues and
As the Russians continue to expand partly through the Cossacks with
these kinds of border mounted mercenaries, semi independent,
sometimes depressed, sometimes encouraged to the Russians tend to
put on the frontiers. Policy of Russian expansion is to establish
Garrison stations standards are governed by these wild,
very orthodox kind of crusading Cossacks. And an amnesty is
granted to criminals and exiles and other ne'er do wells if they
want to settle those lands, which removed from the previous Muslim
population. So that's how Russia from a fairly small thing starts
to become now still, after the cessation of the independent
states in 1991, the world's biggest country, largely because
of expansion against Muslim neighbors, so the Circassians
really get it in the neck which is who ever meet Circassians and
those Kassian websites because the 10% that escaped still exists
mainly in Turkey, but the Ottoman settled them
into the circus in villages in Kosovo for instance, the royal
guard of the Jordanian royal family is made up of CO casts
Ian's so the guy who taught my son Yusuf to shoot sick ASEAN
Europeans, European looking people and as chair cast your casting
people women are famously beautiful. So much of the blood of
the Ottoman royal houses actually see a Kassian so
penetrative Niall valid assault on in the 19th century was the wife
of Sultan Abdul Majeed and therefore the mother of Sultan
Abdullah Aziz and the Ottomans often imported So Cassie and women
because of their beauty, are famously beautiful. Even the
Italians Cosimo de Medici chi the great, sort of Mehdi chi, Baron of
renascence, Florence had an illegitimate child by a sick ASEAN
woman, parotid Nia, because the Ottoman women were really
powerful,
went on to found hospitals and she has a valid assault on moleskin
Aksaray. Istanbul is by her, she was powerful was reading Ottoman
history book recently and her son Abdulaziz had been traveling in
Europe and stopping at the Ottoman town of Rush Chuck, which is now
in Bulgaria. Intended to spend a month there, got a letter from his
mother saying, come back, and of course, the assault on me and
immediately went back that the wives the Sultan's were often not
powerful, but the mothers were incredibly powerful. Another one
Titi Moesgaard was gone codon affendi, who was the mother of
Sultan Abu Hamid, also co kacian.
So you could say that the blood of the Ottoman royal house was
actually European, Caucasian, Bosnian, some French Venetian.
They weren't Turkish, interesting that Europe called it Turkey, but
they weren't actually Turkish. But in any case, so Cassia now you
won't find on the map. Sochi in those places slightly Russian and
a few of the smaller peoples, that Kibera Diens and others kind of
consider themselves to be Circassians, but they have
vanished. So the fear of other Muslims in the Caucasus
who had always been fighting each other was the same is going to
happen to us, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Abkhazia, all of these
other Muslim peoples. And so the only way of resisting the Russians
was somehow to unite.
Not easy because they are Mountain People, like a lot of mountain
people in the Balkans, Lebanon elsewhere.
They have a culture of vendetta
con.
So if you steal a chicken from the next village, they come and sought
you out and it becomes a deal that can go on for generations.
And the prevailing law was called the audits, even though they
respected the Sharia, but the audit was customary law was in
many cases, something that cemented that sort of generally
divisions of the Caucasian people. So it was clearly a matter of
survival. For these people faced with the extreme brutality of the
Cossacks and invading forces, people really facing liquidation
genocide.
200,000 people died in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing but 1.5 million
instead of Cassia. That was a very serious operation. So they had to
unite. So we have
the great figure of Imam Shamil
Naqshbandi chieftain who is an EVA Aava are not another Stanny not a
church and he was from one of the smaller nationalities
Who became one of the best known Muslim leaders or heroes of the
19th century.
One of the interesting fun places to read about him and this is of
course, like so many other good books in the CMC library,
Leslie Blanche the Sabres of paradise.
As an interesting kind of woman, she died quite recently she was
over 100
kind of traditional, aristocratic, storytelling oriented loving woman
sort of who was Turkish clothes and had a villa in, in the south
of France made quite a lot of money out of her books, and she
was a sort of superior and mills and Boon type writers, European
women who went out and found love in the arms of sort of hunky
oriental men. The wild assures of love is her best known book, which
is people like Jane Digby and others who went out and married,
usually Arab, Muslim, then it's a kind of theme in European romantic
writing.
PLO tea would be another example of that kind of author. But this
book is actually more serious because she actually met people
from Imam Shannon's family, including his great granddaughter
in Istanbul, she met some of the Georgian royals and she put
together this account and the family still live in Medina
because he knows Shannon died and was buried in Medina, he used to
have a nice little bear or
tomb there. So it's kind of dies at the end of the 19th century,
almost living memory, even though he's from somebody somewhere that
seems to be so strange and so distant. So her book is actually
quite gripping, and quite worth the read. So
after the conquest of SEER Cassia, which has really traumatized the
whole Muslim world, the Khalifa wants to send forces but he
doesn't necessarily want even though he's won the Crimean War,
another struggle against the Russians. The Russians have a
million men under arms in southern Russia following the Crimean War.
So they're pushing further into the Caucasus. So that becomes this
legendary scene of battles Lermontov, Tolkien, F. And
Tolstoy, Tolstoy famous novel * Murad is set in the
Caucasian was comes as important for the Russian imagination as the
Wild West is for Americans except a little bit more literate and
perhaps a little bit more, more disciplined.
So, the first coherent response comes from a very shadowy, still
not properly researched. Individual, you might think, well,
the records here but actually the libraries of Dagestan, in
particular are absolutely packed. These were highly literate
scholarly communities
who conversed with each other and wrote their books in Arabic,
even though they were not ethnically Arabs. And there's a
lot of histories side offend ich wrote a book on the history of the
Tariqas. In the Caucasus, who was assassinated five years ago, he
was one of the chefs of the terrier class, that really old
man, really good books in Russia, about the spiritual history of the
region.
These are literate people and the sources do exist. But the
beginning of the jihad comes at the hands of very strange
individual, known as Chef Mandsaur or eleisha, mon Sol, and there's
lots of stories about him. One of them is that he was actually an
Italian Jesuit priest, who had been sent to convert the
Caucasians to Catholicism, but ends up converting to Islam, and
takes up arms against the Russians with an authorization from the
Ottoman Khalifa. And he's known to have fallen at a battle base
called Tata tube in the Caucasus in 1791.
He
demonstrated the potential military power of the Caucasians,
the peoples to the north, the Black Sea once was an entirely
Muslim lake. And there were no significant Christian settlements
on the Black Sea. Crimea was a semi independent Muslim foreign
aid under the gear iFamily. And current was a great, powerful
Muslim country that traded with the rest of the world and we
should all visit Crimea it's amazingly beautiful and to see the
Great Mosque and bhakti Sri and Hans palace. It's like kind of the
east of Europe, Granada as it were very evocative.
So the the Catherine the Great at the end of the 18th century starts
to push down towards the black
See, and she takes Crimea and the mosques are pulled down and
population either dispelled or reduced to serve status basically
like being agricultural slave and the good is removed and then the
nilgai step which is Muslim nomadic territory around what is
now a DESA and down towards zero Cassia is progressively ethnically
cleansed and settled by cos x in this traditional fashion. And
these people didn't put up much of a resistance the no guys kind of
nomadic pastoralists can't do much against a million Russian bandits
and they submit the sort of, you know, guys around.
But the Caucasians, these mountaineers are a different
matter. These are people who are incredibly physically tough, who
live on almost nothing bit of dried meat and porridge that
sustains you forever. It said that, in the 19th century, a
Chechen woman would never marry a man unless he had killed at least
one Russian
and jumped over a river at least 15 feet wide, and also jumped over
a rope held at shoulder height between two of his friends. And if
he hadn't done these things, because she wasn't going to give
him the time of day. These are real warriors. And because they
lived in these mountains, always walking up and down tremendously
physically strong,
physically strong, tough and turned out to be something of a
match for the enormous Russian legions. These are some of the
world's great warriors, they fought like lions, and the leaders
of this resistance were with the Naqshbandi shakes. Knocked band is
often associated with pro Sharia militancy in Islamic history. And
certainly in the Caucasus, the Caucasians have basically nowadays
either notch bandage or arteries.
And both of them have a tradition of militancy.
1827
A kind of capitalism established by somebody called kasi Mala, who
is an ox Mundi worried in the town of Henry, which is on top of this
impossibly steep needle like mountain, and it's difficult even
to get a mule up there. But this becomes for three decades, the
capital of the independent Muslim states of the Caucasus.
His preaching in Naqshbandi lines is about self
improvement, and also about replacing the addict and these
laws of vendetta with Sharia. Sharia doesn't recognize this kind
of tit for tat killing, but instead, insist that you deal with
an injustice by going to the guardi who imposes a penalty, and
a line is drawn under dispute. So much of the battle in caucuses is
about replacing old ideas of vendetta and honor with shitty
values. And to this date in the region. They call this the time of
Shetty in the caucuses. There is
the problem of alcohol consumption. In the center of the
villages are these big earthenware jars full of alcohol. And this has
to be dealt with. And I'm Shana when he comes in on issues of
ruling that anybody who claims to be Muslim who has ever consumed
alcohol has to be flogged.
And then somebody points out, well, you have also in your own
youth, are known to have tasted wine and he says yes, and I will
be the first to enact this law. So he has his brother, who's also
drunk to flog him publicly, even though he's the ruler, the leader
in front of everybody. And then he flogs his brother.
That's the kind of toughness of these people and that imposition
of the rules on oneself. So that one is also part of the populace
that is subject to one's leadership is one reason why he
manages to inspire people so much.
The fact that he is living with their life and lives an extremely
simple style of life. So
you have
because the mullah starting to try and take territory back from
the Russians, and then the Russians,
the siege, remembering,
and Rosie Mola is there and is getting married, Shamil is there
with their knives so the kind of Khalifa
30 o'clock, and they decide that they're not going to leave, but
they're going to make a stand and the Russians procedure. And
according to the Russians, when they finally take the time they
find a quasi mandala. They're
still seated on his prayer carpet and he's still in the preposition
but he's actually dead, having been killed with his hand on his
beard. But Shan mill is still fighting with 60 of the knives,
great sharpshooters, Trojans
shooting from a bastion and then famous incident. Inspiration
already in has gotten into the English press.
When there's only two men alive out of the entire garrison. This
is what a Russian officer says describing the incident. It was
dark by the light of the burning thatch we saw a man standing in
the doorway of the house which stood on raised ground rather
above us. This man who is very tall and powerfully built stood
quiet still, as if giving us time to take aim. Then suddenly, with a
spring of a wild beast, he leaped clean over the heads of the very
line of soldiers about to fire on him and landing behind them.
wielding his sword in his left hand, he cut down three of them,
but was benefited by the fourth the steel plunging deep into his
chest. His face still extraordinary in its immobility,
he sees the banate pulled it out of his own flesh, cut down the man
and with another superhuman leap, cleared the wall and vanished into
the darkness. We were left absolutely dumbfounded. This is a
famous moment in Russian imperial history really the idea of the
Russian troops with their banet surrounding Imam Shamil. And he
cuts down three of them, jumps over their heads and disappears,
and lives to fight another 30 years in this extraordinary
campaign. And of course, events like that secure him the loyalty
of so many others, he escaped from memory, his badly wounded, he goes
up even higher in the mountain to the side of a glazier to a little
stone hut,
where a shepherd since word to his wife, Fatima, who comes to Him
with food nurses in through a fever, and this time, he's already
got 18 bayonet and sword wounds on his body. And he's then when he
recovers, appointed by the Muslims of all of the caucuses to be that
an imam on Amazon, the leader of the struggle. So
we find and we don't really have time to trace all of the details
of this, even though the Russians lose half a million men, and their
attempts to subdue Imam Shamil and his campaign, a master of
guerrilla warfare.
And it said that the Russians only succeed eventually just by cutting
down all of the forests to Chechnya and Dagestan are covered
by a huge beautiful deciduous oak woods, where the Marines would
hide themselves. And so the Russians decided just to rather
like the Americans with Agent Orange in Vietnam, you just
plaster the landscape with defoliant and there's nowhere for
the Vietcong to hide. The Russians do the same kind of thing. So it
said eventually, Chechnya and Dagestan were conquered by the
acts rather than the musket.
But
still, he is exploits become
legendary.
The Russians attack another church and village a shelter
2000 of Shamas mureeds take an oath to defend it to the death,
hand to hand fight through the streets and the rushes Russians
capture the town massacre everybody, men, women and
children. Incidentally, very often women in the church in another
standing tradition are fighting and even the children are one of
the famous sieges
of a whole I think it is that the women and children are hiding in a
cave and the Russians are taking the main village and then women
and children burst out of the cave and even the children with knives
are kind of jabbing up at the Russian soldiers and really
formidable formidable opponents.
So
shamble continues to the great humiliation of the Tsar, sort of
three months right away in St. Petersburg, to
to prevail, and he developed also a scholarly tradition, we have
writings from him, he has his own other card, which is called the
ZedBoard of Shamoun, which is a kind of development of the
Naqshbandi Hotmail Hydreigon tradition.
Yeah dramatic dramatic stories
of the final capture but what I
another account from a Russian officer
and the attack on a whole goal which is Shambles new capital.
And
the Russians have just betrayed Imam Shamil because the besieging
the Turner's if you give us your son, Jamal, a dean, as a hostage,
will leave you in peace and will raise the siege Shanell saying
that the town is about to be annihilated, reluctantly agrees in
generality and goes off, and as soon as the Russians have their
hands on him, they start the bombardment again, and it's clear
that it's just been a ruse and channel. His hatred of the
Russians is partly due to the kind of treasonous behavior has been
duped. So the Russians advanced again.
And
this is the account of the Russian officer.
We had to lower soldiers by means of ropes, our troops are almost
overcome by the stench of the numberless corpses. In the chasm
between the two villages that guard had to be changed every few
hours. More than 1000 bodies were counted large numbers were swept
downstream or lay bloated on the rocks. 900 prisoners were taken
alive mostly women, children and old men. But in spite of their
wounds and exhaustion, even these did not surrender easily. Some
gathered up their last force and * the benefits from their
guards. The weeping and wailing of the few children left alive and
the sufferings of the wounded and dying, completed the tragic scene.
Share mill has escaped with his family, and he has his two wives
Fatima and Joe Hara. With him gel Hara falls prey to a Russian
bullet sniper. She's pregnant, falls into the river, never seen
again. But still, they managed to escape and then
famous episode he wants to get his son back.
And in order to do this, he captured in a very daring raid in
Georgia, to Christian princesses. And this is great shame to the
court in St. Petersburg. And he says, I'll return your princesses
if you return my son.
And this turns out to be successful and the princesses are
returned and his sons humanity and comes back in a very famous and
touching scene.
But what is particularly interesting is that with the
princesses, there is a French
tutor, a governess and a Tulsi. She's just a kind of teacher from
Paris who's got a job teaching the royal princesses in Georgia and
she has captured with them and shares their captivity up in the
mountain village, I will the the mountain fastness and when she is
returned, along with the princesses as part of the hostage
exchange, she writes a book when she goes back to France which
explains how honorably she has been treated. Even though these
people are so shockingly poor. Her honor, as she put it in the honor
of the princesses remained intact. The Imam was stern that treated
them with respect and part of the the mythos the legend of Imam
Shamil is the honorable way in which he always treated prisoners
and respected the sanctity of non competence despite the fact that
the Russians massacred the entire population of nearby Sierra
Cassia. He did not retaliate in kind and treated prisoners
honorably.
finally captured
1859 In the last remaining owl or mountain settlements, a place
called gold nib, which is still almost the kind of place of
pilgrimage in the Caucasus for the KNOX bandas. He only has 300
Faithful Marines left and the Russians have a vast army. And the
Russians say unless you lay down your arms, we're going to hunt
down every member of your family and kill them. As Shambo realizes
the game is up. And so famously, he gives himself up and goes off
to St. Petersburg in captivity and the CMC group last year, visiting
the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. were shown his dagger
and his banner, which they still have in the museum though, quite
an evocative thing seeing those
things from a time that was not that long ago.
So that was the end of the independent notch Bundy state. And
what we glean from this is Imam Shamil is appointed by his teacher
of Ozzy Mala. It's clear that he doesn't want to do any of this.
It's evident that is real concern is dhikr and with implementation
of the Divine Law, but given this false measure of the possibility
of Serbians now ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus, he has no choice
but to take on the mantle of being a leader. But every point he
maintains his independence and his austere and ascetical lifestyle,
his food is the food of everyone else. He lives in a very simple
stone hut throughout the quiet, excruciating Caucasian winters at
altitude, he shares their suffering, he is at the frontline
of combat. And in this we detect something of the prophetic
Muhammad and spirit through leadership, which does not lead
from behind, but from the front, and which does things not because
one desires, some kind of glory, in the style of Napoleon, so many
others, like laugh, but rather because one is obliged by God's
law, and by the urgent in treaties of one's people to take up this
this mantle, but at all times, despite being angry at what the
Russians had done, and it was a righteous anger. At no point does
his anger lead him into needless massacre and mayhem? He treats
hostages and prisoners honorably. He, despite the fact that the
Russians cheat him, every opportunity always upholds his
undertakings. And thus, it is never in Medina, with his family
and in the Caucasus, Russia, and much of the almost still revered
as somebody who was mosaic or not very onic. Somebody who did not
wish for leadership, but had it thrust upon him. And as a result,
as is promised in the Hadith of the Holy Prophet was given help in
his leadership, that VDJ particularly revered those
generals and those stars, but who doesn't revere the memory of Imam
Shamil. And even this romantic fiction writer, Leslie Blanche,
really admires the man, though she had nothing to do with Islam. This
is how Dawa exists. This is how leadership should be. But it
doesn't have much to do with the kind of self seeking self
promoting flip chart, culture of the leadership programs in today's
almost it's to do with spiritual charisma, and self denial.
To the extent that you deny the ego, you can exercise just
authority that God will help you to the extent that your ego is in
it, and you'll rise to fame and fortune is an ego trip, you're
going to be a disaster to the world. And we see this today in
Washington, Moscow, so many places, egos result in the
destruction of the year, the humiliation of Benny Adam. So
that's the end of this rather brief introduction and outline to
the life of Imam Shamil but worth reading more about because it's a
very dramatic, heroic buccaneering kind of story. And an age when
things were looking bleak as they are today that still continues and
Islam is still there and thriving in the Caucasus Muslim population
in Russia continues to grow.
They didn't drink so much. They didn't have as many abortions as
big families have the owner of hamdulillah continues to grow
there. So who would have thought him Imam chandeliers time that
there will be 160,000 people praying the Eid prayer at an
Olympic Stadium mosque in Moscow you can see it from from the space
station appropriate. Extraordinary, a huge dinar So,
while Allahu hadal mercury in God is the best of plotters,
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers