Abdal Hakim Murad – Seclusion & Love Session 1 Tafakkur
AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses the importance of transformation and healing in the spiritual world, including the holy Prophet's teachings and the need for a return to spirituality. The holy Prophet's teachings and the theory of holy secession explain the need for a rectification of nature and a dualistic spirituality. The need for a return to spirituality is a critical aspect of Islam, and healing is a need for a return to spirituality.
AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa
Salatu was Salam ala crommelin via email Mursaleen. See dinner or
molineaux Habib, dinner or ICT and Marina Mohammed, what I learned
early he was off by the age of 18.
Welcome to the first of these four little meditations, really not not
not formal lectures. They're very Ramadan oriented on the subject
which we've chosen, which is the juxtaposition of seclusion and
love.
That sounds like one of those alien pairings those of you who
can navigate his hair Allama Dean is Revival of the Religious
Sciences will be well aware that he likes to put certain virtues
together in order to show that there is a golden mean between two
and the Kitab. OSLA follows immediately the Kitab dabba SAPA
the book of the Curtis's of isolation is right next to the
book of the courtesies of company, intimacy, friendship, and there
are times when it is appropriate for us to be in company times when
it's appropriate for us to be alone. In many cases, just the
normal pattern of life dictates that sometimes with people,
sometimes we're on our own. But there is a particular religious
modality and a state of the heart, and a benefit and a drawback, a
visa and an ephah that accrue from both of those those normal human
conditions.
We're, of course, at the moment in this very strange kind of global
arty calf this locked down rather unpleasant term that they've
chosen, it's only slightly less bad than locking us up, I think.
And indeed, we do feel chained and restrained. And in some more
Trumpian corners of the United States, of course, they're trying
to break those chains in the name of republican liberty. But I think
many of us have detected that there are certain advantages,
blessings, even from this,
this downsizing of our worldly aspirations and this enhancement
of some of our anxieties particularly that natural and in a
sense, necessary human concern, the fear of death. So the shops
are closed, but the hospitals are absolutely packed open for
business, we would much rather things with the other way around,
but this is the way the divine power has, has decreed for this
particular point. And in every Hallo every human state, there is
an appropriate human spiritual response and a good and therefore
a sunnah way of being.
And I think we're already detecting that certain moods,
certain tides are flowing in society back towards something
more sacred,
that people are logging on more to online religious activities,
that people just having time to decompress and to think and to
meditate, that you that Islam knows as to Falkor, which is one
of the things that we're going to be looking at in the first of
these four little, little sessions.
And there is a certain movement of the spirit that is discernible.
As the Hadith says about fasting, Sophie that is shayateen. The
shaytaan chained up in the month of Ramadan, and the whole world is
going through a kind of ascetical fasting for many of its pleasures
and its customary joys at the moment and as a result, the heart
is liberated. Whether Shayateen are chained, the angels are
Unchained, the heart begins to move again. And human beings have
an opportunity through stillness and inactivity, to reflect on the
things that for humanity until the growth of our sort of consumer
addictions constituted the most important questions of human life.
Just yesterday evening here, we had to Zuma shadows, which was
nice in close succession, there does seem to be a
an increase in people's receptivity towards the things of
deen and a certain sense of detachment towards the dunya
distractions which have done such harm not just to the state of our
souls, but also to the state of the planet and just about every
other species that sadly has to share the planet with us.
So,
the Hadith in Bukhari and Muslim says, in the musoma, Juna
is one of the best known kind of caught by standards when Ramadan
begins.
Fasting is a Juna
which is a slightly unusual word, and generally it's translated as
protection.
So let's go with that a shield, that either Canada or hydrocodone
Simon Villa Yarmouth or lega. Chen. We're in shear timber who
had on our Katella, who fell Yeah, call in you saw him who is
fasting, let him not speak in an ugly way,
or behave in an ignorant and coarse way. And if somebody
insults him or picks a fight with him, let him just say, I'm
fasting.
So, protection indeed, but this, this jhana comes from the Arabic
word that also gives us words like Majnoon, which means crazy, or
jinn who are the unseen ones, it means something that causes a
detachment and a move into a different kind of plane. So when
we are fasting, we as it were moving into a different air, we
breathe differently. It's like that experience we have when we
dive underwater, we're still ourselves, but we inhabit a very
different ambient environment. And one that we feel is not so
naturally geared to the gratification of our of our
cravings and our nourishment, we are in a different space, when we
fast we breathe a different hour.
So this jhana this protection, that is also something to do with
something hidden, has to do with this capital virtue of Osler, we
are taking a step back from the normal kind of monkey ish desire
within ourselves immediately to reach for the next source of sense
gratification, we simply can't. And one of the blessings that
people often remark on during Ramadan is that it actually gives
us the good news that we are capable of making a difference in
dealing with our addictions.
If you can knock off smoking during the day, that's a good
start.
If you can reduce your food intake during the day that suggests that
your obesity problem might not be so hopeless. As you might think
there's a lot of good news in fasting in that it shows us that
we do have this capacity to exercise will.
But this OSLA this act is a term that comes up quite often in the
Quran, which is the necessary human taking a step back from the
entanglement of desires and stuff and the cravings of the lower
self. So that the higher self might disentangle itself and
learn, once again, to fly is something that is not just a
matter of human experience, that we decompress when we're away from
these distractions and these anxiety inducing distractions,
which are really part and parcel of the modern world. The next
text, the next YouTube clip, the next thing, whenever we shows the
sign of being bored, even if only four years old, we reach for a
screen. And this is certainly not what the brain is designed for.
And the long term consequences for the human metabolism are hard to
guess, but unlikely to be good.
And the consequences for the spirit, quite apart from the
consequences for our mental health are likely to be even more
deleterious. Because the Spirit craves stillness, reflection to
and more difficult, that's when it finds itself. That's when it's at
peace.
So we find that
in the lives of the NBS alayhi wa salam, the prophets cited in the
Holy Quran, that just about everyone goes through some kind of
episode of stepping back of seclusion of Oslo
is think of Satan and Musa Alehissalaam, who is the kind of
archetypal social prophet is with his people and arguing with his
people. And again with owlient is, is in the MACOM of Kalam. He's
Kaleem Allah Allah spokesman, still has these times when he is
going solo
is in the desert.
Having committed the alleged crime in Egypt, he then in the
culmination of his career, as it were, his Mirage, he goes to see
not for the what the promise of his Lord where he receives the
law, the tablets of the law.
And then he goes back returns to his people and finds them with the
golden calf and things become harder.
Say that No, Maria, in the Quran, of course, experiences the
extraordinary visitation of Gibreel Alehissalaam when she is
in her state of Artesia Al Ain T beds in a distant place mccannon
Casa de
A place that is remote, which our Tafseer authors usually identify
with the desert to the east of Jerusalem, the wilderness.
Said and Abraham Ali salaam also goes solo, after his expulsion
from the house of his father.
And so on, there is an element of Oslo.
The beginning of the story of Makkah is a time of isolation and
solitude. Sometimes there's two or three of them there. Sydney
Ibrahim is sometimes there with a smile and Hotjar but it's very
full on and remote experience.
We tend to forget that the enormous crowds of the Hajj begin
with that solitude
and said, No Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam begins his
reseller, his message into the cave of Herat.
The amount of light where the same angel comes to him, and in this
terrifying way, orders him to recite Quran, which is the first
word of Allah's
uncreated speech to emerge into this strange paradoxical world of
space and time. So a lot of seclusion.
And in our civilization, the merit of seclusion has often been
debated. If the Prophet alayhi wasallam, or sometimes alone, and
seem to be very spiritually close to their Lord at that time, the
angel doesn't turn up when there's a crowd by and large, but when the
chosen one is alone,
that
we have also recognized that there has to be this balance. So the
prophets balance being with people, often arguing against
them, trying to help them
but also times of solitude and seclusion. And in the forms of
Islam, there are also types of stepping back, self prohibition.
Even the Hajj, which is this enormous example of software and
companionship is also a time when we are detached in certain ways,
from certain pleasures to the rules of Iran, which are actually
quite, quite strenuous rules in which forbid to us certain things,
which even when we're fasting in Ramadan, we are allowed to do it
is a secret state of of Taiji read of stripping away of dunya
attachments.
And Ramadan is another example of that. And the prayer itself. When
we pray, we're really not allowed to indulge any of our usual
pleasures, we can't even answer the phone. We're also in the state
of seclusion. But as they say, halwa fill Jalwa solitude in the
crowd. And this is a virtue that the spiritual of this community
have always commended in otherwise dead, automatic osmotically be
absorbed by the impulses of the people who are in the shopping
mall. Try and remember your Lord go in for what you want to buy, go
out again, but don't get caught up in that kind of mass,
comatose attitude that hypnosis that advertising men have imposed
on otherwise quite coherent human beings that were supposed to be
better than that.
So yeah, junuh a protection under stepping back.
Now, one of the big questions, I suppose, in the history of Islamic
education, you might say, but also of the Muslim mapping of what it
means to turn away from stuff, and the misery that usually entails
and the agitation of the soul towards the author, the creator of
the stuff, which is Dean itself, which is Tober has been the
question of
the role of fitrah and intellect, and the heart and what you might
call a kind of natural theology. To what extent can we do this? Is
it in our fitrah is this determination to turn towards the
light, something that is very strong in us, and dunya has
difficulty in suppressing, except for our age, when dunya is almost
all that is ever talked about and is in our lungs, we find it hard
to escape it. And one of the debates in our civilization and
many of the Allamah including the memo Casali and Abdulghani
nebulosity. His book on solitude, we might we might look at
is somebody called Ibn Tofail,
who dies in 1085. And his familiar under loss he spent his life elder
he dies in in Morocco, his firm, where the ash which is a town just
to the north of Grenada, so southern alanda
loss and has a career really identify generally as kind of
philosophical person. So it had been rushed, is his star pupil in
many ways, and it had been Tofail, who seems to have suggested to
have been rushed that he writes his momentously world changing
commentaries on Aristotle, which then go into Latin and trigger the
Scholastic revolution and his course revered by Thomas Aquinas
and medieval church and one of the strands that's led into the, the
subsequent trajectory of human thought, but even to fail, doesn't
write big philosophical books. But what he's mainly remembered for,
is one of the strangest books in Islamic civilization.
But again, one that has had an enormous sort of radiant power
beyond the frontiers of the Ummah, which is his little book called
high, Binya Curzon,
alive son of awake, that's already a kind of strange thing to call a
book, it sounds as odd in Arabic as it does in English. And what
Ibn Tofail is talking about in the form of this parable, this methyl,
and it's a kind of Sufi story, insofar as it seeks to talk about
something that's theologically really important by using a quite
simple story. Although it's in prose, not poetry, is the story of
the castaway. High than Jaco Zan, alive son of a week, is supposedly
a baby, abandoned as a castaway on a desert island off the coast of
India.
And the child becomes a kind of feral child, I suppose, we might
say and is adopted by a doe, a female deer, who
feeds him and is able to grow to childhood and then the female deer
dies. And during the course of Highborne Jaco zones,
completely unlimited childhood he looks around there's no dunya
distraction there's no Walmart's, there's no as there's no radio for
there's nothing except virgin nature, and himself, and the wide
heavens above. And even to fail is using this is a kind of thought
experiment to indicate what are we capable of in a state of complete
seclusion, if we've never seen another human being, but it's
simply surrounded by by fitrah by the glories of virgin nature.
And in this story, Hibernia Curzon, who is of a, a pneumatic
or a spiritually able capacity, is able to infer certain things from
the world, which indicate what we would call the existence of the
Creator.
So, looking at
the way in which everything in his island has a cause,
and realizing that there cannot be an infinite regress and endless
succession that essential a physical causes, but there must be
something that is set that cause causal chain into motion, he
concludes that it must be miscible as bad a cause of causes which
cannot itself be physical, but must be uncaused and therefore he
arrived at the idea of the Creator, without ever going to
Mother Assa or reading a book, he comes to this this conclusion.
Similarly, the existence of the spirit of some kind of animating
force, which he finds by looking inside himself, and by considering
what happens on the tragic day when he is kind of animal
stepmother, the DOE dies, and there she is, but she's not there,
that great existential shock that makes us realize the importance of
the animating spirit, and also looking at the order of the world,
the beauty of the world, the balance of the world, and
concluding that one needs to have a spiritual life and devote
oneself in adoration to the source of that life. So in his Osler, his
absolute
solitude, alive son of a week on his desert island, addresses
himself to the Lord of heaven. And he devises for himself, this is
particularly interesting, certain rituals, because this realization
that we have the surging up of a yearning for our origin and our
place of return, and our Creator which is what the heart starts to
feel when it's just no longer distracted by the the dross of
dunya needs to express itself formally. And this is a basic
human need. We really need ritual and we needed ritual
Since Stonehenge and before Stonehenge, it's part of the human
experience. So alive son of awake looks at the stars of the sky and
the heavenly bodies and sees their purity. It's impossible to imagine
the moon being contaminated. And therefore those higher things
being clean, suggests that in order to become higher, we human
beings also need to clean ourselves. So, without ever
reading a book of filth, he comes up with something that looks a bit
like the rituals of Mordor as an appropriate preparation for the
act of surrender and loving submission to the Creator.
He then sees that the creation itself, which is in really very
Quranic way, engaged in a state of cosmic witnessing to the glory,
and the beauty and the perfection of its source operates cyclically,
there are seasons, the sun and the moon rise, and they set
human life and other lives come and they go, everything is
cyclical. And therefore, he assumes that the human form of an
appropriate divine worship must also be cyclical. So he starts
walking around his little hut where he prays and finds the
circularity, this kind of tawaf, a very effective way of joining the
cosmic sympathy. So in his worship, he finds kind of cycles
that might, perhaps enable them to fails might have looked a bit like
the records, and so on. And so the point, the moral of the story is
that he gets Islam without ever reading a word, or having heard
the, the speech of a prophet or coming into contact with any of
the Creator's books, but he is a Fitri human being in a state of
what you might call creation, spirituality. And then the story
changes. Somebody else is washed up on this island, somebody called
abseil. And it's from another island. And first of all, he
breaks in upon a live son of a week when he in his Oslo he's
locked down as it were, is completely ecstatically blissfully
transformed by his worship of the Divine, and soul comes along,
another human being. And this is disruptive, something new,
something has disturbed this pattern, this odd biped, who he
realizes is another human being has appeared. And he's really
angry because it's been taken out of this state of blissful
contemplation of the, the higher verities.
And a kind of disagreement ensues. But eventually they find ways of
communicating. And Uppsala tells Hi, of his own island and how the
people have fallen away from a state of harmonious dealing with
their Creator and with creation, and are in a state of uproar,
anxiety, materialism, desire for status, and things.
And then Highlands another lesson,
which is really the lesson of compassion.
If you recognize Allah's beauty in everything in the world, which is
something that is enabled by the stillness, which seclusion gives
us and assume a gratitude for them, and you see the mercy of the
compassionate God and the principle of beauty in the world
super abundant everywhere, you yourself wish to become a
beautiful person, and therefore a compassionate person. You can't
just sit idly by while others are suffering, that's not part of
perfection. It's not one of the consequences, the fruits of
worship.
And so a live son of a week goes with abseil off to his island to
try and preach to these, these miscreants, these kinds of rather
than modern sounding people, and it doesn't go too well, because
they can't hear it.
They haven't had that inward state of limpid tranquility that enables
them to see that well, this makes a lot of sense that, of course,
we'd love to worship. And of course, there is a source, a one
source behind everything that they're busy with stuff, and
status. And it's a bit like the response that prophets tend to
receive. They're always strangers in their own country. So he
returns with upsell. And they spend the rest of their days
according to the story in a state of of worship and single hearted
dedication to the divine.
Now, this is a big story. And one of the things that I want to do in
these lectures is to track the trajectory of some of these Muslim
ideas, these memes as we might say, nowadays, in crossing
borders, and influencing Europe and the West, for the best. And in
this case, this book, will Arabic Book Hi, Ebony Ackles on you
gets translated into European languages. And it's done, first of
all, by Edward pokok, who is a professor of Arabic in Oxford in
the 17th century, that's done into Latin. And then somebody called
William ockley, who's our Sir Thomas Adams, Professor of Arabic
in Cambridge shortly afterwards,
is not into English.
And the book then really becomes a kind of 17th 18th Century Literary
sensation.
Everybody is reading alive, some awake, philosophy calls out or
deducted to see whatever it is in Latin, the self taught
philosopher, one who's got to the summum bonum has understood
everything by being taught on his own. And it becomes in the context
of the rise of Platonism in Europe and also a certain sense of
dissatisfaction with suddenly church Christianity, one of the go
to tech, so it's very influential in the formation of the Quaker
movement in in England, for instance, and with some of the
original nonconformist movements, and it goes on to influence Well,
one example that's frequently cited is Kent who seems to have
read it.
A number of other philosophers.
And also interestingly, it's almost certainly the the
inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Famously
the first novel in the English language, the first seems to have
read
the translation. And the story is very similar, although defo
doesn't really get the kind of spiritual dimension of it, but it
becomes a kind of
adventure story. Although it does have a esoteric dimension that
modern readers generally don't get, because they don't inhabit
inhabit that world with its with its assumptions and vocabulary. So
this becomes a best seller in the Western world, particularly in the
English speaking world.
And triggers are always one of the factors that triggers
one of what I call the Three Waves of love. That sounds a very sloppy
expression. Sounds like the title of Catherine Cook's novel perhaps
but I mean, love in the sense of sacramental sacred love. In other
words, recognizing the love ability of things because they are
bear witness to the beauty and the wisdom of their transcendent
creator. So real love, what they call a hockey in our vocabulary,
we tend to differentiate between real love and metaphorical love.
Real love is the love of the one who owes everything to its source.
And metaphorical Love is the love that we experience when we love
something or someone because in that person, there are
unmistakable signs of the beauty and the the greatness of the
Creator. So there's a kind of mirroring.
So
we have this in our
Islamic culture, which is in a sense, Quranic
Hibernia crozon, comes from the Islamic world, it couldn't really
have been created very easily in western suddenly Latin
Christendom.
And where it appears in the West, the story of alive son of awake
with its idea of a seclusion, that leads to a kind of compassion, and
also a direct knowledge of God. Sometimes it's sort of deistic
circles, people who are trying to sidetrack organized religion, but
it's a sacred story. It's certainly not part of the
secularization of the West, far from it. It's emphasizing a
creation, spirituality, everything in the world, breathes the
fragrance of its divine source.
And what I mean then by these three waves of love, is that
Islamic civilization has influenced and shaped the West in
very many ways. And one of the things that we like to reflect on
at the Cambridge Muslim college is not the kind of them and us view
of Islam and the West as an endless kind of zero sum game, but
as a dialogue, in which Islamic civilization has quite frequently
played a catalytic and transformative role. But very
often, when we think about this non medieval Islamic influence on
the west, we tend to think of, oh, inventions have ruined the Rashid
sends a nice water clock to Charlemagne, and we have 1000s of
inventions, and therefore, the West really should respect us more
and be less Islamophobic because we've had so many inventions and
we've contributed to the wonderful mater of science and technology,
which has now given us well, a failing world but but nevermind,
that kind of apologetic Muslim inferior
already complex that anxiously wants to prove that Islam really
was on the same track towards science, technology and all of
this other wonders. That's not really what Revelation is gifting
us with.
But certainly somebody like Ibn rushed, massively changes the
history of philosophy in the West, and moves the West away from Plato
towards Aristotle, in the form of Aquinas and subsequent thinkers.
And the Renaissance, of course, is deeply shaped by people like
Marsilio, oficina, Pico della Mirandola, and others, who are not
just reading Islamic, philosophical sources, that are
also very influenced by the example of the Ottomans, the
society that actually allows different religions to coexist. So
John Locke was very interested in what he calls the turban nations,
and one of the foundations of the English tradition of toleration of
different religious movements, is said to be John Locke's letter
concerning toleration, which is almost certainly influenced by his
understanding that, in the Ottoman example, you have a very
successful, powerful Levant and civilization that does allow
different religions to exist and to coexist. And therefore, why
can't we do that in England, and at the time of the Civil War, that
was quite revolutionary, and for many people, quite inspiring
thought. So there's been a lot of things in political theory in
metaphysics and ethics, where Islamic civilization has
influenced the West. But in terms of the principle of what we would
call muhabba. of love. This is less frequently reflected upon.
And that's one of the things that I want to, if not really prove
academically, at least indicate
Mariah Vasile and redeem, now that I fossils, the Sufis of Persia,
say, we've come in order to arrive not in order to differentiate
logically. So this is
just an indication of ishara not in a bar if you prefer Arabic, but
the the the Three Waves of love are as follows.
Not only has Islamic civilization influenced the intellectual,
ethical, political evolution of the West, but also Islamic
civilization has rectified certain, perhaps fatal
shortcomings in the spirituality of the West.
Now spirituality is a much more vague thing to theorize and to
prove and to trace origins for then something like philosophy.
You can see where Elena's alley and farabi and Ibn rushed change
Aquinas and you can write your PhD thesis on that and it's quite
miserable. But something like a spiritual transformation,
something like the quintessential spiritual virtue of muhabba or
love that thing which Hibernia comes on discovers, without access
to written revelation. That's going to be harder to map. But in
any case, what I'm proposing is that there have been three great
episode three waves in which the principle of muhabba in our
civilization, which is absolutely essential, and part of Eman
itself, the Quran says, Will Latina Amma know a shed to hug
vallila Those who have a man have more love for Allah and this
wonderful Quranic evocation of the complexity and beauty and
perfection and order of the created world.
How customer weighty were ordered, all of that, which necessarily
inspires love. There can be no recognition of beauty that doesn't
also engender love. Love is the recognition of perfection, or the
detection of perfection in something.
This love based Quranic insistence on the divine imminence and
presence in the world. With his simultaneous transcendence is
something that was harder in western theologies and
philosophies.
And something which the West whenever it could open a channel
hoovered up very thirstily from the Islamic world.
So we've number one.
I hope well, Audrey.
If you've listened to my little paradigms of leadership lecture
about Sakina bint Al Hussein emember passangers daughter,
you'll find that I reflect quite a lot on the nature of the
literature that accompanied primal Islam.
And it's a literature of love. The great era of love poetry in
Islamic civilization,
often quite frank and explicit even
is that of the early believers and the admin bait and those who are
closest to the Allen bait and this principle of muhabba of
affirmation of creation that comes really from the prophetic
embracing of the world.
To despite his times of seclusion, he was a man who transformed the
world by living in the world and recognizing Allah's signs in the
world. And the beauty of women and the beauty of love and this is a
major theme of earliest law, some of the orientalist always a bit
perplexed by this and thought of this as a reaction against this
severe world denying asceticism of earliest on but no, it isn't.
These were very devout people who are sharing that literature. So we
have the Leland, Norm legend, Jamil Butina, while the other
later on these great love stories that become very easily turned
into allegories of the human love for the last divine Beloved. And
this tradition of love poetry in Islamic civilization shared by the
Allamah, as much as by everybody else, which is part of Islam's
creation, spirituality in love of Allah's signs in the world.
goes viral,
and crosses over,
crosses the frontier Southern 10th 11th 12th century
efflorescence of this idea of courtly love,
Chase love, by and large,
the freezing of the qualities, or the beauty of the Beloved, becomes
a kind of craze in Europe at that time, and replaces the rather
ascetical and difficult poetry that precedes it. And there are
speculations that the word troubadour might actually come
etymologically from the Arabic word Taarab, which means kind of
joy, which is a word for singing the context in which this kind of
amatory
verse which is popular in Muslim Spain, found its way into Europe.
And the idea of Strophic verse, rhymed poetry coming into Europe
from the Muslim world because the Romans didn't have rhymed poetry,
that influence along with so many other influences, that we got an
England staying ticketed for one to find kind of one's own
religion, by experiencing with an open heart distance seclusion from
from dunya.
That reality,
and this becomes a major theme in Europe and one of the key factors
in the enlightenment and particularly the counter
enlightenment and the age of Romanticism. So Jeff fine Bowden,
in his book on Islam and, and romanticism, Rumi and others on
the transformation of European literature and European
sensibilities in the 18th and the 19th century. And of course, Greta
is the key example of this with his famous Muhammad ska sang is a
song about the blessed prophet as somebody who has
affirmed that of nature, and a builder of civilization. But his
viscosity for divan and the whole transformation of of German but
also English Literature at that time, comes clearly from that
second wave of the penetration of
literature from from the east. This time, it's not that Leila
motional and legend Jamil Butina, and so forth. The Arabic poetry
tends to come through the Persians, the translation of Greek
Persian poets, Saturday, Rumi Hafez into Latin, German, English,
French, triggers this huge transformation. So this is
something that because many Europe the case that the great paradigms
of Romantic literature in Europe, the rediscovery of love comes from
the Islamic world. So that's wave number two, where's the third?
Well, the third is happening, also kind of without the armor,
particularly intending it, but just to the power of the principle
in what you might call the Rumi phenomenon, particularly in the
United States, but also across across Europe, that Rooney even
though Trump has brought in the Muslim ban, and room is Afghan
compatriots aren't allowed into America now, but it's harder to
get these memes out. And particularly this this right here.
This way of love is irresistible. And Franklin Lewis in his book
Rumi past and present, Eastern West, has this hundreds and
hundreds of pages explaining how profound has been the
transformation of Western sensibilities by this supreme
history supreme poet of divine love. And Nietzsche, Mystic, but
also one who is absolutely overwhelmed by the love of God.
And that story,
of course, is ongoing. One might remark as a rather sad
footnote to that the fact that the ALMA is not taking advantage of
this. The ALMA is more interested in Oh, Muslims invented water
clocks, or Oh, Muslims brought sugar to Western Europe and look
we contributed to your progress, rather than to see what might be
authentically in
digitally spiritual. Generally our discourse in the West is based on
can we have no carbon school, please? And can we have halal meat
in the prisons? And can you stop being Islamophobic and shut those
people up and it's a grievance culture, because we're insecure.
And because we no longer are inhabiting that space, the Quranic
space of difficult thinking about the beauty of the heavens and the
earth, this wonderful, upbeat, celebratory, Quranic insistence,
that everything is staggering. And everything is praising God's name.
And we just need to join in the most beautiful religious vision
that there's ever been incredibly upbeat, and absolutely focused on
this principle of, well, Latina Ana Lucia, to harbor Leila, those
who have a man have more love for Allah. But we're not in that
space. Unfortunately, when we go into the interfaith gathering, we
say, well, here's a translation of some text on Arpita. But this wave
of love, we're not surfing on that wave of love, unfortunately, but
it's happening anyway. That is a meme that they can't get out,
because what is more delicious, and what the human beings most
crave. So that's my theory of the Three Waves of love. But let's
rewind a little bit. Before we before we sign off, because people
are going to depending on where they are want to think about
that if tar
you'll have noticed that there is a connection between this Islamic
idea of seclusion of OSLA or Kalwa, if you like out the curve,
but also the contemplation of nature.
And you might think, Well, if the the mystic is in his cell, how's
it going to get out and take a hike and experience the beauties
of nature? Well, actually, our stories where we talk about
solitude, and transformation and joyful upliftment are not stories
of the monk in his cell, or in his cave, which is more of a kind of
Christian or Buddhist monastic tradition, but are actually about
being alone in nature. And that's the case with those Quranic
stories. So in Abraham's setting, the mosser said, that out, seeing
the glory of nature, if you've been to that cave on the Mountain
of Light, you'll see that it has the greatest view in the world.
You see the world and the rising in the setting of the sun and moon
and the celestial bodies. It's staggering. The beauty of it is an
overwhelming sign
that our seclusion tends to be a seclusion, which is open to the
beauty of nature.
Think about Imam Al Ghazali, for instance, Rahmatullahi are they
his seclusion, this drastic crisis that he had in his 10 years
disappearing, and turning, turning down so many opportunities for
dunya and academic preferment and just almost barefoot going off
into the desert.
He is traveling. The Islamic tradition of holy seclusion is
more to do with Sierra than Tara hub. In other words, it's a holy
traveling the idea of the dervishes not just sitting in a
cave, but he's out there, wandering around, celebrating the
beauty of the world, doing compassionate things, working
miracles is one of the great troops of our civilization, the
wandering, solitary, the hermit, who is kind of a friar, if you
like if you're out and about engaging with society. And that I
think, is what differentiates us from the Buddhist and the early
Christian idea of solitude and renunciation of the world. Because
in those contexts, it's also about renunciation of nature.
It's about a dualism, that we have to modify the flesh and turn
ourselves into almost skeletons. If you look at some of those
Buddhist images of the fasting Buddha, it's quite, it's like
something out of a concentration camp. And we have to do that so
that the body and the flesh and our enjoyment is no more and then
the Spirit will be liberated. Now, in early Christianity, there were
a lot of debates as to exactly what you do with the world. But it
was noted that Jesus and his disciples were kind of solitary is
not engaged in large networks of family life. St. Paul, similarly,
and if you read Peter Brown and his books on body and society,
you'll read hundreds of pages of actually profoundly depressing
stories of mortification, and people who tortured themselves.
The vows of monasticism poverty, chastity, obedience, and the
endless flatulent stories of certain forms of
Christianity that were normal at that time. And one of the reasons
for the need for a rectification of the spirituality of the world
that that made the rise of Islam inevitable was the fact that that
had become too dismal. So one of the arguments in contemporary
Christianity is we need to get back to a nature spirituality. And
we need to start celebrating, rather than flagellating. So here
is the work of a former Catholic priest, really a best seller.
I wouldn't recommend all of it, but it is at least indicative of
where this argument is leading. This is Matthew Fox, Christian
spirituality. So he's talking about the crisis of spirituality
in the West and the way in which this flatulent monastic type of
Christianity is not really functioning as a very attractive
alternative particularly to young people. So this is what he says is
in his introduction,
what religion must let go off in the West is an exclusively fall
redemption model of spirituality, a model that has dominated
theology Bible studies, seminary and novitiate training,
hagiography, psychology for centuries. It is a dualistic
model. It begins its theology with sin and original sin, and
generally ends with redemption. for redemption. Spirituality does
not teach believers about the new creation or creativity, about
justice making and social transformation, or about Eros play
pleasure and the God of delight. It fails to teach love of the
earth or care for the cosmos. And it is so frightened of passion
that it fails to listen to the impassioned pleas of the
unknowing, the little ones of human history.
The same fear of passion prevents it from helping lovers to
celebrate their experiences as spiritual and mystical. Well, you
can see where he's coming from. He's in California, and he's
coming out of the 60s and the 70s, the hippie generation, the turn to
green spiritualities, but he's also coming from a Catholic
monastic background, and he's saying, we need to get rid of
those doctrines of the wrong kind of seclusion. The doctrines that
say that nature is just fallen, and that humanity without grace is
a massive Donata and back to something more cheerful. So
essentially, the distinction that I'm trying to make here is that
these three waves of love were welcomed by Europe, because so
many people are fatigued, by an insistence that you could only
turn to your Creator, if you turned away from the wonder of the
beauty of the world. And you had to if you're a serious, go into
some kind of monastic training, and perhaps quite drastic
strategies of self denial, celibacy and poverty and the rest.
This is not the word of Islam. Holy Prophet says, Lara banita
Fill Islam. There is no monasticism in Islam.
He comes from the Mountain of Light and enters his society.
Sometimes is an RTF sometimes his with his Lord that He is also with
his people.
Remember her dad says work the hood rebel Kathy feta this theory
and her work the ILO drove a lot Eva be Sadie fee her
car cut through the thick veils by going around them cuts through the
subtle veils by going through them. What he means by the thick
veils is kind of the deadly sins, you don't deal with them by
participating in them until you come out the other side. I gratify
this pleasure and then I'll be alright, no, you avoid them. But
the thin veils which is kind of the distractions of this world,
you engage with them, and you don't run away from them, which is
why our normalcy in our civilization is software, and not
OSLA. It is sociality and not solitude, even though sometimes
solitude can have that extraordinary spiritual effect.
Let me just read
a hadith
which is particularly moving and perhaps we can
call and enter this shortly.
Call it even on there, even Omar said,
tell us about the most remarkable thing you have seen from
Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
I shall wept and said every aspect of him was remarkable.
Once he approached me on my allotted night until his skin
touched my skin. Then he said, Let me pray to my Lord. He went to the
waterskin performed his walk from it and stood up to pray.
But then he wept so much that he worked his beard. Then he went
into frustration so that he worked the floor. Then he lay down on his
side until Bill owl came to call
Welcome to the Morning prep.
And Bilal asked Yara Salalah a messenger of God what has made you
weep when ALLAH has forgiven you your past errors and the future
ones? He replied, Why haka yeah Bilal Woe unto you OB lol What
could stop me weeping when Allah the Exalted as sent down to me
this night in Nephi hunky summer where it will work the laffy Layli
one the heart, the eye yet in the oil Bab there are in the creation
of the heavens and the earth and the variations of night and day
signs to those with receptive hearts.
Then he said, Woe to him who reads it and fails to contemplate on it.
So the Holy Prophet in this this night is just overwhelmed by this
divine revelation, that in the creation of the heavens in the
earth and succession, succession of night and day, and the majesty
of creation are the things that fill us with a sense of, of
meaning, and of longing of nostalgia, the beauty of sajer
time, the beauty of the sunset, the wonders of creation, signs for
people of understanding. These are not scientists to be run away from
locking the door of the monastery or the cell behind you know, we
are in creation, we are part of creation, we are to join the
cosmic symphony of cosmic praise. And that is just to sum up what I
believe to be the distinction between Islamic and some earlier,
religious visions of seclusion, as is a seclusion that is in nature.
And that affirms nature, and our forms of worship and our Habad
affirm nature because we know when the sun rises and sets out about
us absolutely integrated in nature. Justice was the bad of
alive, son of awake. So it's a seclusion in nature, so that we
can feast on allow signs and help the spirit to be nourished. But
that of course requires stillness and calmness. So let's end with a
hope that inshallah human beings by taking a step back from the
consumer rat race for these few weeks well Insha Allah, allow
their spiritual circuits to be reactivated because that can never
be suffocated in human beings entirely, and will start to think
again and will start to celebrate again, the beauty of the mystery
of the created world. And we'll discover on the basis of that, to
this seclusion, through this halwa the beauty of love muhabba of the
creator of one another of the beauties and the miracles of the
inner universe of the natural world. And insha Allah to give
complete thanks for the wonder that is Allah's creation, that is
our daughter in sha Allah and may Allah calls us to understand the
blessings and the benefits which this double Ramadan as it were
this locked down this halwa Ramadan is holding out to us now
may we in sha Allah, pick those fruits and be nourished by them in
sha Allah. May Allah bless you and accept your fasting and bring
reconciliation and healing to human beings and to the planet in
this difficult time. BarakAllahu FICO will reform income was salam
o aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.