Abdal Hakim Murad – Shah Shahidullah Faridi Paradigms of Leadership
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam, ala Rasulillah was early,
he was so happy he won and voila.
So in this series of paradigms of leadership, we have been
more recently looking at some more recent figures, not because things
get better, historically, usually a rule of entropy seems to apply.
But because it tends to be easier for us to empathize with, learn
from people who to some extent, inhabit a world that's a bit like
our own. So we looked at Abdulhadi, ugly, in many ways, the
founder of modern European Islam. And then we looked at SHEIKH AHMED
Bullock, first imam of the mosque in Oxford. And
even though they are not remember Buhari or sharp at the NOC bound,
or Emmanuel finale, the recent pneus of their story somehow
brings them to life more vividly. And so I'm going to continue along
those lines today by speaking about a parallel life one, which
in some ways intersects with
that which reflects a different pattern. Not a pattern of light
coming to the west, but of something moving in the opposite
direction, rather less common process. So I'm going to be
speaking about John Gilbert Leonard, also known as
Shahidullah, for reading.
It's
not always easy to determine the details of his life, so to do the
boring historians thing and to grumble about the sources, even
though he dies in 1978, and one can still meet people who knew
him.
He never wrote or spoke much about himself. This is often a problem
dealing with people whose minds are not on themselves.
There's no autobiography. seldom does he make autobiographical
remarks in his multiples art is public pronouncements.
But there has been recently a very nice, well researched biography of
him by Sikandar and Samina Agim, published in Karachi. And
unfortunately, you can't get it here, even by the wiles of Amazon.
It's really hard to get hold off, but maybe inshallah it will reach
us one day, but you can buy it in bookshops in Pakistan, and I would
recommend it.
Also, over the years, as my
interest in him has become known, I've been communicated with by
some people who knew him or whose families knew him who shared with
me certain anecdotes and Reports which have helped to fill in my
picture of his life.
So let us proceed with the biography and indicate aspects of
his leadership. As we've said, it's not quite the Islamic world,
but the way in which he was regarded as a leader by what came
to be many, many 1000s of people and a legacy that continues to
this day.
So he is British, and his father
was born in Sydney, but spends most of his life in England is
William Leonard, born in 1888. Father served in World War One in
the military police, but leaves the army early because of deafness
goes into business and becomes a hugely successful businessman in
the paper manufacturing trade.
And also a property speculator becomes head of the European paper
Merchants Association, which I believe is still in existence in
1911. He marries the sheiks mother, Ruth Kathleen Leonard,
and the union is blessed with three sons and a daughter. The
last of them to die the daughter Kathleen died in 2001 in Paris
where she was living in conditions of some prosperity.
They had a very large house as you would expect in Willesden house
was bombed during the war. It seems no longer to be in existence
234 Willesden lane, so no possibility of a blue block there
and unfortunately, your green block perhaps might be
interesting.
And so the middle son, the second son
John Gilbert is born on the 11th of March 1915.
And is two years younger than his older brother William. But the two
are very, very close doesn't always happen with siblings, but
in their case, it's an important aspect of their spiritual growth
together. They're not twins, but in many ways, they are more than
just siblings. We are told that when they were young, they used to
go out for walks together that they had a propensity for nature.
They didn't like going in their father's car with his driver they
prefer to walk. All three boys were sent to Shrewsbury School. In
the 1920s Shrewsbury School one of those ancient English public
schools I think Michael Heseltine was there people like that and
establishment public school.
And he does the usual things in the school records indicate that
he was in the school cricket team in the classical six. So he was a
classicist to Grecian Latinus. To training the Officers Training
Corps.
divinity and Chapel were compulsory. So he knew his Bible,
very much a product of the heyday of the British system. But there's
also the roaring 20s, the age of postwar flapper, let it all hang
out hedonism. And there are early signs that the two of them
possibly through their communing with nature, but not through any
kind of family urging, because it seems that the parents were not
observant Catholics even there was a kind of default to Catholicism
in the and of course, Shrewsbury is an Anglican foundation, that
they start reading religious stuff together and theology.
So later on, he writes things like this. God's oneness and faith are
part of our nature. He's talking about the fitrah. Sometimes his
inspiration arises in our hearts, that kind of inner invitation, men
soul is inclined towards oneness.
Because Oxford, becomes an undergraduate, serious minded
young man and begins a correspondence with none other
than vagin or as early as 1934. And he is only 19 at the time. But
again, always happy to reply, again, or you may recall is the
French comparative religion is to is converted to Islam and
initiated into the shadowy 30 or by even a Gwalia, who we spoke
about electoral two ago. So there's a connection there and
again on continues to pop up in the story of significant 20th
century
European Muslims
indicated the line that links on modern day European Muslims like
shells on his release, his books are quite influential to most of
us. So back to Ghana, back to actually back to Shahabi Rahman,
Alicia Kabir, back to Abloh cardiologists at URI with his
famous letter to the French in which he proposes that the East
West conflict can be turned into some something more positive, with
both sides retaining their own spiritual integrity. And that sort
of dialogical authenticity has often characterized the works of
many European Muslim authors. So And incidentally, genau still so
influential. Prince Charles reads again, or Steve Bannon reads
Ghana, all kinds of people, not just people on the Looney Tunes,
right? But
still imprinted, influential Chicago idea here.
And the significance of general tends to be that unlike a lot of
syncretistic, comparative religionists, proto New Age
thinkers, again, always insistence that in order to make spiritual
growth, you have to make a significant spiritual commitment
to a single religion. This chop and change, new age thing, little
bit of yoga, a little bit of Feng Shui, perhaps a bit of hippie
Christianity mixed up together to suit the zeitgeist of the 1960s is
absolutely not. What tradition with a capital T is all about, and
generals works have achieved that more than I think they've achieved
anything else. Just last week, I was on a train to Leeds got
talking to a young Cameroonian guy called Ebenezer never met Ebenezer
before and he was a great fan of Guinness. So we're talking about
gain or what gain are made of modernism and Freemasonry and
interesting so a lot of
People still and because of the guy bought was bought up a
Christian but you can't read Ghana and be Islamophobic going off to
you is that if you're seriously interested in religion in the
modern age, the practices of Islam where you have to go because
they're more intact
and this is a common theme for European Islam I think if you look
at John Butz new autobiography, a Talibs Tale, which is interesting
account of how he also brought up a Catholic, went to Stonyhurst,
the Jesuit school and was actually thrown out of Stonyhurst
lost his interest in Catholic Christianity after Vatican to the
mid 1960s. When they changed the liturgy, the Latin Mass with all
of its bling and splendor and reverence was gone to be replaced
by various sort of slightly Protestant ties vernacular
liturgies. And he said after that he knew that Catholicism wasn't
spiritually serious. You can imagine what a fuss Muslims would
make if some council of ministers decided oh, in future you're going
to sit read your numbers in English. And the Imam is going to
be facing the congregation. Not with the congregation facing the
divine mystery and all kinds of other up to date. With it tree
innovations, hearts would be broken. But thankfully, we don't
have a Vatican or a papacy. Nobody has the right to fiddle with our
core practices in that way. Pope Francis is putting the boot in
spree spectacularly with the new
Motu Proprio that he issued a few months ago that's got the latin
mass society in tears. It's a big kerfuffle, if you look at Catholic
websites, they feel that they're losing something that they've
always had to be replaced by something
mediocre and modern.
But again, I was point was that you can't do that to Islam. Nobody
does it to Islam, because the liturgy is intact, and that why
it's the appropriate place for spiritually serious people in this
age, because its its forms are intact.
Anyway, so again, on interestingly, is an early
influence. And at that time, Ghana wasn't translated into English and
the books hadn't been written yet. This was the mid 1930s and general
Dyson 20 years later.
So, a serious minded young man in Oxford starts reading Orientalist
texts as well, of different traditions. But particularly this
is one of the golden ages of Islamic Studies, Sufi translation,
particularly Margaret Smith and Reynold Nicholson here in
Cambridge.
Smith, I think was also at Girton for a while, kind of tweedy lady
who could be seen cycling around on her way to church while writing
books about Robert either way, but one of the first people to bring
that to the light of a non specialist public. And Nicholson,
of course, just 100 yards from the Harvey Road, translated the
Masnavi into English, which has always been a kind of source of
spiritual radiation attracting all manner of people. One of the great
events of Oriental Studies really one of the few areas in which is
impacted a very wide public has been Nicholson's translation of
the machinery. But
the main influence seems to have been Nicholson's earlier
translation, which was off the cashflow module of eliquid weary,
which becomes an important text for Leonard stroke for Edie for
the rest of his life.
This is an element of men whose weary dies in 1072, a very early
Persian Sufi manual.
So, for Edie, eventually with his disciples in Karachi, teaches who
to query extensively
reading it in Persian usually and then expounding it in order. So
this is one of the things that he says later on, which varies mode
of exposition is evident, usually start with relevant quotations
from the Quran and the traditions of the Holy Prophet salAllahu
alayhi wasallam and then proceeds to his own analysis,
interspersed with numerous references to the dicta of the
saints.
He seems to have very definite views on every aspect of the
spiritual way, but shows no narrowmindedness and always gives
full mentioned to any differing opinions. He appears to be a
master of dogmatic theology and McCallum and frequently quotes its
judgments and argumentations throughout the book. So the
advantage of this type of text is that it absolutely routes the
higher discourse of the soul off in the outward armature of the
religion
and Hadith, Cullen, etc. You
showing the two as two halves of a single beautiful hole
to is in Oxford. And incidentally, casting your mind back to the
story of only eight years later, but Bullock converts in Oxford
during the war.
But there's no evidence that I've been able to determine that they
ever met each other.
By Alicia, again, you might remember from the previous
lecture, wrote the first book really that serious in an
introductory introductory kind of way to Sufism in 1933, which is
really quite early. This is the father of Idris Shah, and he comes
to live in Oxford, but later he comes to escape the Blitz. So
that's some way down the line.
So comparative religion is his thing with a particular interest
in these amazing Sufi classics. And while an undergraduate he
starts to write a dissertation, which seems to have been on
theosophy, quite a good choice, theosophy is writing high at the
time, lots of people are reading.
Madame Blavatsky, ISIS unveiled that strange kind of Vedanta type
spiritualist reincarnation is some Christian thing that
morphed in various ways divided into various ways, but it's still
a going concern. And it seems that because again, or had actually
written to refute the theosophist, that
Leonard was also writing a kind of refutation of Madame Blavatsky.
He came across the use of Ali's translation of the Quran.
He decided that since all of the great spiritual writers of the
world, the one thing they agree on is that ultimate reality is one
that and that you cannot attribute any internal differentiation to
it, that the Trinity was unacceptable as a spiritual
teaching. He calls it unacceptable.
Then he meets some Indian Muslims in London.
First Muslims he meets, it seems.
And then
he reflects later on, on the fact that he didn't seem to share the
general race and religious prejudice that was kind of the
default in England at the time. So this is what he writes later, a
rare autobiographical anecdote. We were three brothers one older and
one younger. It is often the case that the middle child falls out of
favor and does not remain the center of attention. However, it
was certainly the case with me that no matter how much I was
disregarded, when it came to Islam, my feelings were protected
from the influence of my Western prejudice. So he's interested in
these Indians, open minded listens, he's already had his
heart melted and his curiosity piqued by his reading of good
weary in particular.
He is not an emotive type of person, and he doesn't become an
ecstatic type of dervish ever he's always sober.
So he has these long, nocturnal discussions in Oxford in his robes
with his brother about religion, the meaning of life. Now, thanks
to translations, one can access the primary texts of the great
world religions to the Pali text society and these Orientalist
translations and
in that curious and earnest age, and this isn't just Brideshead
Revisited, but there are some serious young minds in Oxford as
well. They were discussing, well, what are we going to do? If we
can't accept the triune understanding of ultimate reality,
which is our birthright and what we studied at Shrewsbury? What are
we going to do?
We don't know the details of that process. But certainly we know
that in October of 1936, he and his brother both take the train
together to woking, the little mosque there and they take their
shahada together.
We didn't really know who it was with some stories say it was
Abdullah Yusuf Ali was living in London at the time it's translated
with the Quran. Others say that it was a mole and I've traveled Dean,
there's lots of different accounts maybe doesn't matter so much. But
they've taken their shahada immediately, of course, they face
the difficulties. In London in Oxford. There's no Halal anything.
Even the bread is always baked with lard, almost no mosques. It
was a very challenging experience for these two earnest young,
rather bookish converts. But they recognized having read their huge
victory, that their real difficulty was the lack of a
teacher, not just somebody to teach them the word
but a spiritual guide.
That's really what draws them into Islam.
So later on, he writes this or when he speaks of the
indispensability of a spiritual chef,
it is certainly imperative in the sense that without it many latent
qualities will never be developed. Or they will never bloom into that
perfection of which they are truly capable. They will be human beings
may be worthy ones in their own way, but they will have been
deprived with the countless virtues and blessings of
knowledge, which were their birthright, and which their God
given nature demanded. There'll be like stunted trees still
deserving, no doubt the name of the tree, but lacking the joy of
harmonious expansion, and displaying themselves in that
grant apparel, which is their gift from the court of divine beauty.
In the Sufi tradition, and falling wedge weary, he's absolutely
convinced that you can only really grow into what your Creator has
made you to be, if you have somebody who can help you to grow,
who can show you the way who can offer you a mirror in which to
contemplate your own imperfections and to intuit the way you are made
to be and can guide you interpret dreams, the traditional shake
worried relationship, which becomes
the guiding principle of most of the rest of his life.
Okay, so let's pause at this point and do one of my usual meandering
detours into another life.
Which is not a Muslim life. So it can't be included in this series.
But a if you'd like a more stunted life, that's not too harsh a word,
I think. And that's the life of somebody called JG Bennett, much
better known in esoteric spirituality circles. In the UK,
when I was an undergraduate, there was a JG Bennett reading group in
Cambridge, and they would sit on the floor and read his
his writings and it continues to be a big thing for many, sometimes
slightly silver headed
seekers of a certain generation. So Gigi Bennett is more or less a
contemporary authority. And they're interesting parallels. And
he also serves as a kind of,
perhaps even slightly tragic lesson in what happens when again
alls advice to root oneself in a particular exoteric form, in its
fullness, and in its rigor, and its discipline is not heeded.
The very frequent Western desire to be free of organized religion,
to look down upon the clergy and the formulas and the molars from a
position of evident, but self satisfied superiority. The
Enlightenment idea that we are happy when we are authentic, and
we are authentic when we comply to our own cells, rather than to the
forms that were originated in another place and time by other
selves. This is one of the besetting problems of the New Age
movement in particular, which says that to be spiritually free, you
have to be yourself. That's the exact inversion of all traditional
spiritual teaching, which is that the self in its present state is
really bad news, a trap, an illusion, gravitation or a black
hole for passions, to be resisted not not to be experienced as one's
normative self, you might say, the abolition of the traditional
understanding that there is knifes and raw, which is absolutely
universal, anima, numa nephesh, lower, all the traditions have
this, that there is a false self, which fails or TruSeq fits. It's
the most. It's the first teaching really, but the new age thing, and
a lot of Western spiritual dabbling has not been content with
that and a certain ability to look down one's nose at formal
religious practitioners has caused a lot of people to
not to experience not to grow into into this fullness that 3d
described so, Bennett
lots of books by him, including an interesting one in which he
depicts his discussions with various Sufi masters who he met.
This is one of the editions of his autobiography,
which is a spiritual journey, which doesn't really have
a culmination or a conclusion or an ending, although he is a
pneumatic type, that is to say he is intrinsically attracted towards
spiritual things. He's not a worldling he's really interested
in holy places, holy texts, holy people, and pins around you
like a ball on a pinball table from spiritual magnet to spiritual
magnets. So I want to, because I think the comparison is is useful.
And so many people even today continue to get trapped by their
determination to find freedom through their nurses autonomy,
that that native talents are
underused. So let me read a little bit from his actually rather
interesting, although perhaps rather long. autobiography. Now,
Bennett, during the First World War was kind of in charge of the
police in Istanbul. After the Ottomans had left the British in a
very traumatic time for Turkey, they'd lost the war. They'd also
lost the Balkan provinces in 1912. But as a toric, was not yet there.
So it's a truncated Turkey, a bruised turkey but you can still
go to all of the Sufi ceremonies and meet the theologians. Ayasofya
is still a mosque. So he's able to see this as a spiritual,
interested, non prejudiced person, he finds some interesting
encounters. So
this is part of his account of the Mevlevi ceremony in Istanbul.
This is the middle of the zikr or pointing of the soul towards God,
it symbolizes the paradisal state of the soul when it leaves the
body and enters the world of the Perfected man that insanity come
in.
Later, I learned how to perform the thicker myself and could
verify the state of beatitude quite devoid of excitement which
it engenders.
The thicker is repeated three times. For the third and last
time, the music changed into a strong and stately rhythm, much
less dramatic than before. This time, the shape himself took part.
For no reason that I could understand I began to weep. I
noticed that most of the others looking on was sobbing to nothing
new seem to have happened, but everything had changed.
All too soon, the thicker ended and the dervishes instantly
stopped about three times and slowly filed out. I watched each
face as they went by. And it seemed to me that never before had
I seemed such serenity.
And then when he gets to know the dervishes, he recounts he recalls
a kind of mystical experience that he'd had at least an out of body
experience when he was in fighting in the trenches in the First World
War, and was seriously wounded and had his out of body experience for
six days in which he was kind of floating around looking at looking
at his body as the surgeons were doing their work and out of body
experiences are very generally reported in a variety of cultures
after kind of huge traumatic shock to the metabolism. And that seems
to have been what awakened him to the traditionally very obvious
point, which is that we're not just bodies with a consciousness,
but we're souls as well as bodies.
And of course, the purpose of the prayer is to hold the two
together, you might say we're very embodied in our forms of worship.
I knew a Muslim girl who had kind of fallen away from the religion
and was living with her boyfriend and undergraduate. And she was in
a catastrophic motor accident and kind of died, but was brought
back. And she told me how she'd have these out of body
experiences. She'd be kind of during the surgical procedure
looking down on her own body, and kind of gently descending into it.
She was kind of really freaked out by this.
And she continued to have those experiences after she'd been sent
home. So he told her what to start the prayer again, you know how to
do it. And she said, yeah, that kind of pool. She stopped those
experiences afterwards. Because it's not it's not a good
experience to have that the two are not supposed to be separate
while you're still alive. Anyway.
When I became used to their way of dealing with questions, I asked
one wise old dervish about my experience of 21st of March 1918,
when I was wounded in France.
He listened very carefully and asked me one or two questions
which reminded me of features of the experience that I had
forgotten.
He said, the more Cabela is the Mevlevi ceremony has the effect of
bringing us into the same state where all fear of death
disappears. We know that if we die at that moment, we shouldn't
experience only bliss.
So he finds that these people already know about this type of
experience, and he can see from his own eyes and from his own
experience, that this is a true, sacred tradition.
The Muslim religion was beginning to interest me very much. As a
boy, I had been revolted by the quarrels of the Christian
churches. At my school we had two teachers of divinity, one very
high church, and the other very low Church of England. The high
churchmen was a mild but inept, old clergyman. But the low
churchmen was a ruthless fanatic. He spoke of the Roman Catholic
Church in terms that no schoolboy should be allowed to hear.
We had more of a succession of missionary lecturers who spoke to
us with such an accent of self righteousness.
About the heathen, and they're miserable state that I and many
others wanted to become heathens on the spot.
When I spoke to my parents, my mother who hated hypocrisy said,
most Englishmen are hypocrites, especially English priests.
As a boy, my father had been at Lansing college and experienced a
religious conversion. Afterwards it reacted against institutional
religion, and had done his best to present us as children from
acquiring any fixed beliefs against which we might afterwards
revolt.
So that kind of
reflects against
organized religions. And then he talks about
he's thinking about Islam, but he sees the tearaway prayer as an
ayah. Sophia and gives an amazing description of it and you see,
looking at it from a gallery, it's 10,000 people in the mosque. And
he says when everybody in the title with their heads hit the
ground, you could actually feel that large building shaking
slightly it was such such Majesty
What could I make of it? I went out into the open air, or Istanbul
was lit by oil lamps and candles festooned from minaret to minaret,
from roof to roof everywhere. An incomparably beautiful city was
dying. Okay, so he sees this is the end of the Ottoman world, and
this religious thing is part of that. Can you join it, but it's
dying? Soon there would be no assault on living at yielders the
palace. I could not know how great the changes were to be how soon
the face was to disappear with a women's veil. Soon them was in
would call to prayer wearing a bowler hat by the Edict of a
dictator and a hater of religion. Soon the dervishes were to
disappear from the streets. The tech is to be closed and they're
leading when exiled.
I was witnessing the death of an epoch but I did not know it. I
only knew that I was filled with a heartbreaking sadness. What was
where was I to go? I just written to the warden of my college in
Oxford to say that I would not take up my scholarship.
I'd been recommended for the Staff College and yet I knew that an
army career was impossible for me. I could not leave everything and
become a dervish. The dervishes belong to the dying world. They
were a reminder that once men had known how to live to the fall
inwardly as well as outwardly, but it was only too obvious that the
ancient fire died. So that's another theme that people think
well, this oriental culture
is coming to an end. Therefore I have to look for something else
perhaps in the west and Bennett then has this complex Korea, he
attaches himself to Gurdjieff in Paris and becomes Gurdjieff
representative in England. And there's accounts in the book of
frequent outrageousness of Gurdjieff, who had been with some
Sufi teachers in Central Asia but wasn't compliant in any way. He
wasn't a Muslim, he was have
sort of mixed Armenian Russian children ancestry, and they would
have these enormous sort of drunken, slightly promiscuous
banquets in his flat in Paris where other spiritual wisdom was
allegedly dispensed. So Bennett becomes his representative in
England for this antinomian non organized religion, sort of
spirituality gets quite hurt by it damaged
and then sells good. Jeff's property Coombs brings to Idris
Shah, who becomes another person who he thinks might be very
significant. And then he gets into suborned and kind of bounces
around with groups that allow people not to accept the second
Shahada.
So,
but you can see throughout his life this is much later. This is
the 1950s
is wandering around the old dervish lodges which never closed
of course.
Then he says,
I went at dusk to the great Sulaymaniyah mosque the youthful
masterpiece of CNN of Caesarea, one of the world's greatest
architects and mathematicians. My vision had grown more sensitive
with the years and I stood upon the outer wall enraptured, with a
subtle marvels of its domes and interlocking turrets cascading
down and down in a harmony that seemed to unite the earth and
heaven. How lifeless beside this prodigious building is our great
St. Paul's on legate Hill, or the massive, meaningless Church of St.
Peter's in Rome.
In the supreme work of art, sin and Myanmar fulfilled his promise
to Solomon the magnificent that he would outdo the Byzantines
architects of center Sofia,
I went inside and heard the voice of the boys in Chanting verses of
the Quran.
Once again, the purity of the acoustics brought tears to my
eyes. But now I was aware of a sound within the sound and realize
that the architect had built a spiritual temple within an earthly
temple.
Okay.
So the decades has been hanging around in love with Islam and in
love with the saints who he knows the saints but still something
within him a certain Western pride a certain determination not to
submit, has kept him outside the threshold.
Then last quote I want is when he goes to Syria and Mitch Abdullah
Davi Stanny, who's one of the great
renewals of the NOC Bandy tariqa in the 20th century, and again, he
has experience after experience with Danny Stanley that shows is a
real saint, who knows more than one would naturally do so. The
chef was waiting for me on the roof of his house. It was high up
above the city commanding a superb panorama. Abdullah destiny was of
middle height with a white beard but looked far younger than the 75
years attributed to him. I felt at ease from the start, and very soon
I experienced a great happiness that seemed to fill the place. I
knew that I was in the presence of a really good man.
After the usual salutations, and compliments with the excellence of
my Turkish, she astonished me by saying, Why did you not bring the
lady sister who is with you, I have a message for her as well as
you. It seemed unlikely that anyone could have told him about
Elizabeth, his wife, we'd walked straight to South house and my
guide had left me at the door without speaking to anyone. I
replied that as he was a Muslim, I did not think he would wish to
speak with a woman. He said very simply, why not? Such customs are
for the protection of the foolish, they do not concern me. Next time
you pass through Damascus, will you bring her to see me?
I promise to do so if the opportunity came.
We sat for a long time in silence watching the ancient city. When he
began to speak, I found it hard to come out of the Deep River into
which I had fallen. He was saying I was expecting someone today. But
I did not know it would be you. A few nights ago, an angel came to
my room and told me that you would come to visit me that I was to
give you three messages. You have asked God for guidance about your
wife. She is in God's keeping. You've tried to help her but this
is wrong. You disturb the work that God is doing in her soul.
There is no cause for anxiety about her, but it is useless for
you to try to understand. Second message concerns your house,
you've asked God for guidance as to whether you should go your way
or follow others. You must trust yourself, you will be persecuted
by the Armenians. But you must not be afraid you have to attract many
people to you. You must not hesitate even if other people
are angry. It felt silent again, I was astonished at the two
messages. It was perfectly true that I had prayed for guidance on
just those two questions. If he was right than the way before he
was clear.
So
and then there is other things that he talks about. The point is
that throughout the book, he is relating
his experiences with some of the greatest saints of the 20th
century and seeing that Abdullah dynasty and he knows what he has
been praying for, this wasn't even an appointment, he just went on
the hope that you'd see him but the chef was waiting for him and
knew that he should have brought his wife and again and again, he
sees these kinds of Chifley phenomena. But still he doesn't
take the plunge. He's kind of dancing around on the brink
doesn't dive in. Although it said towards the end of his life. In
his last year of his life, he actually started to perform the
numbers in various ways and recognized Finally, some people
say to get union rather obvious point that the inner kernel has to
be protected by an outer shell, and that everybody needs
Sharia.
So,
this is important, I think because there are so many people out there
who are really reading Rumi attracted to spirituality, looking
for truth, sometimes people who have had experiences of their own.
But because of the nature of the age and the cult of individualism,
find it very hard to submit to an outer form, in other words to
accept the second Shahada.
So here is
Shahidullah for Edie later on, reflecting as somebody is asking
him a question, what about sticking to moral values without
numbers and religion will just be good and spiritual without doing
this deemed stuff? Reply. This is a misconception. Some people do
that in Europe, especially in certain historical times there
have been ethical movements, but this is illogical in a way. The
moral values which they know we say that he is good, he doesn't
commit evil doesn't steal, doesn't murder or he doesn't cheat people
doesn't lie. But how do we know that this is good?
The only knowledge we have that it is good not to steal not to commit
murder not to lie not
To cheat not to deceive is through religion. The basic morality is
known only through religion, man was unable to discover these
things on his own. And all societies refer their moral code
to certain teachers in the past. This is a reality,
you must realize that the moral view which we have in America and
Europe, these other places, I will diverge from Christianity.
Having derived the moral values from Christianity, they now say
that we don't believe in the ceremonial part of it, but only
take the moral part of it.
This is not the teaching of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi
wasallam, and you are taking one part and rejecting the other that
is unjustified. The fact is there are purposes in these things.
Worship is not just an unpleasant duty, which God has for no reason
or other told us to perform. That is not so the basis of all this
is, as I said, the knowledge or understanding of the ultimate
reality. What is the ultimate reality? Who is the Supreme Being?
What are his characteristics or attributes as far as we can
understand that? What was his purpose in creating us? What does
he wish us to do? What is our ultimate destination, and so
forth. In order to understand this, we have books that we read,
it's been prescribed by God according to our human nature. He
knows our nature much better than we do ourselves. We have to keep
reminding ourselves of God. And we must keep on expressing our sense
of obedience, and our sense of respect.
So this is again, something which is natural in man, and he has to
keep on reminding himself of his loyalty. God says, If you accept
me then bow down before me. Otherwise the human values wither
away. And at some point, people say that we accept moral values
and leave the rest. So it's necessary to remind yourself of
this. So he's very much aware of the Bennett's type of anti Nubian
spirituality, even practicing some forms of vicar was ethos and so
forth. But without being able to cross the ego to the extent that
one follows the outward, Muhammad and forms.
So the two brothers looking for a che England is not going to supply
them with one. But they have the bug, the issue, the yearning.
So the older brother William starts traveling, rather as
Bennett did, he goes to Turkey into Syria, looking for Mevlevi
after all, you reading roommate you want to find a Mevlevi shape,
but by this time, Ataturk has closed it. The main lodge that
Bennett wants attended in Istanbul is a police station, and so forth.
In Syria, the middle of his of that, but it's under French
occupation, there's a lot of persecution of the Sufis that.
So William actually went to Switzerland and metric of shoe on
well known comparative religionist, who died about 20
years ago and the first members of Sean's community.
Together, they went to Egypt, where it may be presumed that they
met going on again or when he took on Islam, decided he was going to
live in an Islamic context, attend Thickers he married daughter of
Arlene family of Cairo, and never I think left
left Egypt again, he had no particular interest in doing so
they are associating with these
intellectuals who are interested in some sort of perennial truth
underlying all religions. But they're not really seeking a
complex metaphysical philosophy, but neither of them are
metaphysicians. And if you read, Shaheed Allah's works, you can see
it's very much practical and inspirational. It's about taking
the disciple directly to God without dialectics.
Neither are they looking for something that will unite the
religion somehow. They're only looking for God. That's their
intention, they want to come to God.
Now, the father in England had been friends with a posh Indian
than the wife of Bahawalpur.
He owned property in North London quite close to the Leonard house.
Some members of his quality suite are also in London. This is a
Saudi Mohamed Han. That was in 1966. And if you look at old BBC
footage of the coronation in 1953, you can see him there looking very
splendid.
If you can imagine a traditional
Indian or Pakistani, bridegroom's outfit, you know, the thing is
pointy shoes, turbans. Therefore, if you multiply that by 10, you've
got the Nawab of Bahawalpur, kind of the queen is looking a bit
dowdy by comparison, this guy's
upstaging the bride
and the families is still going, although of course, Bahawalpur
absorbed into Pakistan. Palace is still no I think, Noor mahal
interesting kinds of place.
And the words grand Sal is still around Salahuddin.
He invites the interesting boys to India,
Egypt, their mind Furnitureland, Syria, Turkey, come to India. And
that's what they do. For some reason they don't travel together,
they travel separately.
But they don't know where to begin, then the web doesn't really
move in the kind of circles that they want to meet. He's in clubs
and so forth and playing Polo.
That's not what they want. So they begin a process of kind of
wandering around as seekers without having any contact or
addresses. Now, interestingly, 3d goes off to an ashram in Bangor,
all sorts of ashram, which is run by Rabindranath Tagore and his
experiences to go and his community is an interesting
milestone in his development. The place is called Shantiniketan,
which the Tagore family had founded, which is now morphed
still under the influence of the kind of presiding spirit of
Tagore, it's a university now near Calcutta. And this is where to go
at some of his well known works to go after all the very first non
western ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, friend of
Yeats, and Elliot liked him and sort of liked him and short
stories, poetry, and also an artist and a kind of
syncretistic Indic. philosopher, he actually wrote the national
anthem of India and also the national anthem of Bangladesh,
which is interesting. If anybody's written to national anthems, it's
kind of counterintuitive, but that was what he did. Now, what's
really interesting is that in that period, pre partition and pre BJP
and pre contemporary tensions,
the overlap space between the Hindu and the Muslim and all of
the other groups, particularly in Bengal, which has always been the
kind of intellectual center of India as well as for a long time
the political center because East England India Company made
Calcutta the company
then Google is where you get all of the good stuff, silk, opium,
whatever the company wants to traffic in.
So the East is where it's at. And the two goals are big landowners.
But very interesting representatives of a kind of
Indian that you don't encounter so much these days.
To go as father
knew a lot of Sufi poetry by heart. Persian was really the
language of the Indian elite, even the Hindu led at the time. And
hard to imagine that now but a lot of poetry, a lot of newspapers in
Persian, were being founded by Hindus
and was also the founder of something called the Brahmo Samaj,
which is a kind of Indian post Hindu Unitarian movement,
which was originating in the teachings of somebody called
Rammohan. Moy right in the 18th century,
who had been again of Hindu background, but he studied in the
madrasa in Patna new a lot of animal qalam, apparently, dressed
as a Muslim love the Sufi traditions of tolerance. The idea
of that elite at the time, the so called Mobile Brahmins, was that
in the Sufi context, you find a sort of tolerance that in the very
tight, rule bound universe of immobile, sort of traditional
Hindu religion, you can't find even somebody from a slightly
different caste or attributed to a different temple. So often fierce
rivalries where Sufism with its apparent with unification, very
ecstatic outlook seemed to be a wonderful alternative to that.
In the 20th century, it tended to be something like communism or
secularism or republicanism. But the 18th and 19th century for the
Hindu elite. It was Sufism that looked like the interesting
alternative or escape hatch from the iron cages of the caste
system.
So
Rammohan Moy Roy founds this movement, which is still very
active and is considered to be the first kind of Hindu reform
movement. He was interested in Unitarian Christianity who didn't
think the Trinity was interesting, but he liked the Unitarians
devoted his retirement really to the study of Rumi's Masnavi and
also the the Vedanta wrote a book Tophet and we're heading
interesting so somebody who is still a Bradman, writing a book in
Persian called Tophet and was heading the gift of the
monotheist. So against caste, against the God man syndrome and
the exploitations commonly attributed to it against
polytheism more or less against reincarnation, although not
necessarily to
So this mutates in various ways, splits in various ways and becomes
something called the ADDIE Dharma, which is now the ninth largest
religion in India. It's recognized as separate religion. Bangladesh
also recognizes it as a separate religion. It's not considered to
be Hindu any longer. So monotheism, no god men, no caste,
it obviously reflects this Sufi influence.
And his belief really was to cause further belief was that Hindu law
and institutions were corrupt, and only English law or Islamic law
could ever unite India.
Also, this kind of Vedantic Sufi half is thing. The syncretism was
motivated by a fondness for the bowel musicians this kind of
wandering, multifaith Minstrel, sometimes quite outrageous, which
you still encounter in parts of Bengal.
So
to go had a number of friends so this is when we're struggling to
understand why somebody who's converted to Islam through Sufism
and is full of the zeal of a convert wants to go to this Brahmo
Samaj sort of sub Hindu place where there aren't many Muslims.
It's interesting to note that one of the poets who are associated in
this Persian speaking world with Tagore Allah Mustafa wrote things
like this. There are great similarities and contents and
ideals of what poet Emperor Rabindranath has expressed in his
lyrics. Any Muslim can accept these concepts without hesitation.
No other person of Bengali language has ever uttered these
expressions of Muslim heart. We did not find any hostility towards
Islam in the vast literature produced by Tagore. On the
contrary, there is so much of Islamic content and ideals in his
writings that he can be called a Muslim without hesitation. It's
not too much to say that the concepts of idolatry, pluralism,
atheism, reincarnation, renunciation, etc, which are
considered as totally opposed to Islam are also non existent in his
writings.
To go particularly fond, not only of the messenger V, but of Hafez
and if you go to that university now you can see the bell which
called everybody to their morning prayers, morning meditation really
has carved into it a famous bait or nine by half his
mother or daughter, Monza leejohn on she on the ice, turn her down.
Giraffes Faryab Midata que para bandied Maha mailhot.
What security enjoy is there for me at the beloved waystation when
every moment the bell clangs fasten on the camel, that is
belts. Life is like a caravan. We're heading for the next world.
And the belts or the bells associated with a caravan our
vicar recollection prayer, meditation, anything that reminds
us that this is not our permanent abode. That's the kind of thought
so a very different world where the the kind of Brahmanical elites
that nowadays for moody, used to prefer reading Persian to reading
Sanskrit would often dress like Sufis, and it's very kind of
transitional universe and of course, taken a broad historical
picture. It was that transitional space that allowed large transfers
of, of Hindus into Islam over the centuries. It's these guys these
stepping stones that are enabling it. So at the age of 22. Here is
the young kind of well, it's not the hippie age, but he's a seeker
gone to India, on what later became the hippie trail. And he
spends three months at this Shantiniketan place. And later on
in life he was asked about his time with Tagore. This is what he
said.
He knew all about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was
not ignorant of him at all, because his father was a great
expert on Persian poetry was a linguist a cultured person. His
special study was Persian poetry Hafez and Rumi. So who is well
acquainted with the whole attitude of true Sufis, this Sufi influence
had come into goes work is a reflection of what he learned
after someof.
One might say he did express his respect for the Prophet sallallahu
alayhi wasallam. I think Tagore started readings from all the
sacred books every morning before Ghandi came into prominence, he
had a temple of worship, but not of any particular religion. And in
that every morning, they all used to assemble that. And a Hindu used
to read from the Bhagavad Gita, a Muslim used to read out of the
Quran, or the Christian used to read out of the Bible and so on.
This was done as a ceremony every morning.
But it seems that he thought that to go is a bit of an ego.
And also that he had this idea that he somehow himself had the
right to transcend the particulars of religion.
Imagine, which were all part of a perennial and universal truth and
didn't really need to be bound by any of those paths. So later on,
for Ed says this
is a great claim. And all the religions are parallel paths to
the same destination. It's a great claim, whether he can prove this
claim is another matter. Anyway, it is a wrong claim because nobody
rises above while he is living in the body. He is subject to the
limitations of the body he's living in the mental world is
subject to all limitations of the human body, how can you claim to
have risen above anyway, he may be forgiven, to go spoke of one God
and of the love of God and he stated that he respected the
prophet in the Quran, although he maintained that he respected the
others too. So these people and how they will be treated, we can't
place them in any category. There may be people of that are off
people who are sitting on the division divided, dividing wall
with * on the side and Paradise on that side. They are wishing to
enter the Janet, but they have not yet done so.
And later on about the idea of perennialism. He says this. Some
unconventional people claim that all religions are one that
teachings principles are all the same. It is true to some extent
that the basic principles of unity and righteousness are the same.
The basic mistake is that they are not aware that in each era, Allah
has colored his message with a different hue. The present age is
imbued with the beneficent of the noble Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam. The old books of piracy or Hindu religion may be correct, but
the outpouring of divine inspiration is not found there any
longer. They are like dry rivers.
So Lenin quits the ashram he sees it as idealistic, but driven by a
kind of well meaning aesthetic syncretism that proposes a truth
transcending the religions that actually seems rather miss misty
and vague.
So he is propelled still by this issue. Somewhere else in India,
he's going to find what he seeks. And
I want to read some Rumi today, going to indulge myself
where you see the apparent
universalism and Rumi and what it actually means.
Marhaba aisb wholesaled IMO a tabi Jun, LAN Latoya.
Welcome. Delightful, sweet beloved love.
Oh, the cure for all my illnesses.
A de via Nakba, to normal same on a tour of la toma, Jolene awesome
art. You are the medicine for my pride and for my strictness. You
are my Plato, you are my
Galen.
Just macaque as a flock you should call the rocks Ahmad or Chuck
should.
This body which is of clay, through love has reached the
heavens.
The mountains have begun to dance, even though they remain conscious.
And Charlotte asked khatoun, Belfer asked healthy Jews Marshall
bhave Joomla soft.
passionate love is a burning spark.
And when it
blazes, it burns everything, except that the beloved is unhurt.
Everything else is on fire.
darlin noggin John Tartikoff to show need a stereo East ah our
rush not padded.
Love if contained
and not expressed with the tongue is an ocean which has which is so
deep that it has no bottom
shadow her a Scotsman that go young Bertha von sadly armet
bagels rot on not among
the passion of love.
If I was able to speak of it constantly
100 days of judgment would come and I would still not have time to
complete what I want to say.
Asha V pi dust Azaria deal needs to be more each will be more
ideal.
Love to be a lover comes from the suffering and the wailing of the
heart. There is no earthly sickness that
and rival the pain of that is in the heart.
bility ash as hammer Dean hardwood asked our Shavon Ron was heavy
will lead to dust.
The religion of lovers is separate from all other religions. For
lovers madhhab and Miller are God Himself.
Sounds like the kind of thing to Gore and Bennett and so forth
would quite like they're following the religion of love separate from
the other religions.
But of course we know from Rumi that he prayed and preached in the
Great Mosque in Konya and was, somebody said mon Bundy or an
Edgar Johnny daarom been hog era he Mohammed a Mokhtar Ron and the
slave of the Quran. For as long as I draw breath, I'm dust beneath
the feet of the chosen one
followed a tradition.
So this is what motivates shahidul Not to leave this nice but rather
wooly ashram
to continue so he goes next to the town of murals perhaps because
some of the Baja while poor, the web's courtiers are living there.
But it's also possible that you remember from last time Idris
father's Shah Silva Akbar Ali Shah has written the first Muslim
oriented book on Sufism in English has a house that Val Manziel so it
may be that there were connections there that he was
looking for.
In any case, he then goes to Delhi and goes to the Mazhar and his
Ahmed in Alia.
And here he says he found tremendous spiritual strengthening
and peace. He'd been in a state of commotion, looking and not finding
and here, he finds himself grounded and centered again.
He goes in the direction of Bahawalpur. So he's heading west
now to a place called Dara Navab. And this is a big kind of Chishti
stronghold in the subcontinent. And there he meets up with his
older brother, who has also been wandering around in the realm of
RP meet somebody who becomes a lifelong friend and
his successor, Captain Wahid Bosch, and they, the three of them
discussed Sufism late into the night and agreed that whoever
found the true mercy of the true guide first would tell the others
well, eight bucks, knows the terrain somewhat and he suggests
Maulana Ashraf Ali Tanvi, the great Deobandi scholar head of the
Dale band school and a great Sufi Chishti, slobbery lover of Rumi
looks promising. So they take the train to Sahara and pour, the
Hanvey meets them at the station. And they talked him at length in
order via an interpreter.
The older brother, federal Kappa, this time is called Farrokh is a
little bit it likes him, but it's a little bit taken aback by what
he takes to be his strictness and his formalism. So they're both in
a state of indecision, shall we shouldn't we?
And then Shahidullah has a dream in which you see somebody else
with a little girl.
And this, somebody else's your share is with me. You're part of
Dean as well as dunya. This is a very famous vision in the Tariqa.
So the leaves are important leave their band and continue to Roma,
but they didn't know what to do. They go to Lahore,
course with various famous Musonda, Dr. Gundry box, they live
there, they look for teacher, they can't find anybody there for
several months. So then they decided this is not working. It's
difficult in India.
We're not really part of either world. We certainly don't go to
the club and clap for a bearer. But neither really are we part of
the Indian thing with fish out of water. They decide to go back to
England. The mission is not accomplished. So they go to take
ship in Bombay buy their tickets. And then while they're waiting for
the ship to sail, they go to the Muslim Quarter and they go into a
mosque to pray us together. Obviously, everybody notices them
because they're both over six feet tall.
So people are kind of looking and then somebody comes over to them.
After the prayer
in engaging them in conversation, the Imam talks to them. And he
says, Oh, well, I have a teacher. You should meet him before you
leave India say Mohammed xLP shot of Hyderabad.
He's in Hyderabad at the time. So they basically tear up their
tickets and take a train instead of the boat and they go to
Hyderabad, long, difficult journey. And that's where they
meet him and of course for Ed recognizes that
must be exactly the man that is seen in his dream. And luckily xLP
sharp knows English, actually really well. He's been to Aligarh
is part of that part of modern Indian Muslim world
as it is already well known, he's quite close to Jinnah. He knows a
cabal pretty well as part of that Indian Muslim elite Shotcut ally.
Highly educated, very neat and dapper, very disciplined, divides
his day very precisely, an expert on music and poetry, initiated and
authorized to take disciples in the four major hubs. The four
great therapists of the subcontinent the NOC Bundys
Srishti, Saba is the CADRE and the sovereign awardees.
So finally, you know, just when they thought they were defeated,
and who knows how they would have continued in England, Providence
has brought them to what they had intended.
They wanted it beta, of course, this
the man is a saint, and they see the signs of that all the time,
and they feel so improved by just his loss. One of the important
principles of the Chishti Salisbury principle is just the
shape looking at the meridian Shahidullah was also able to help
people just just with a glance, so they're really benefiting, they're
staying in his house.
But they're not offered the bait. The chef is watching them, testing
them.
Who exactly are they?
And he thinks, Well, maybe they're like other seekers, or people who
come to the pier, because they want something. Maybe they want to
see miracles.
Or maybe they want the prestige of belonging to a famous terracotta
he's well aware of the fact that most people who think they want
God actually are in it for some ego thing. So he just kind of
maintains a watching brief. Are they looking for God? Or are they
just looking for a way of being
but on the third of October 1938, he grants the BR important moment,
because he realizes that Shaheed or not is only interested in God.
That's his intention, he wants to be close to his Lord.
So
let's read from one of Shahid Allah's later writings here so
that you hear from him directly rather than from
me Yeah, about the
the need for a teacher but the reason why some people find it
difficult.
I found chiefly that it's a sort of arrogance of temperament that
some people call themselves the devotees and slaves of the noble
prophet. But they're too arrogant to accept any living person as
anyone greater than themselves. They want to keep their neck stiff
all the time and don't want to bend it before anybody living.
This is arrogance and pride.
They say why should you venerate these people? And then they go to
extremes and say you worship them which of course we don't. Nobody
worships has any respect, which is due to a master nothing more than
that. One has to humble himself before living teacher. I don't
mean to say that he has to become completely humiliated and
disgraced and degraded. That is not the idea. He humbles himself
to the extent that he admits before him that I don't know and
you know, that I'm incompetent and you are competent. This much, that
is all just to accept that somebody knows more than you
somebody who can teach you except that he is a grade above you that
all
people will have this pride within them hide it in so many arguments
that really it's the pride that they don't want to accept anyone
who is greater than themselves.
But those words of course still still apply. We've all got our
noses in the air so he stays in Hyderabad with the chef for almost
a year.
A lot of discipline. This is a hard School of Sufism.
Early morning thicker. A lot of Ziad that, a lot of fasting
he spends all of Ramadan in the marshes house they read to just
have the Quran every night. The oddest commemorations really
important for the church to to this day, that discipline of
obliging oneself for me to remember God every 10 minutes.
And of course, that the difficulty of living in a country with people
who are impoverished is very often sick.
Often loses weight quite disastrously is almost a skeleton
at times that people are worried about him about the two of them.
No air conditioning temperature, maybe
50 Plus, in the summer, he's not going to go to similar to hang out
with chaps at the hill station. He's gone native.
And then of course, the Second World War starts and he goes to
join the army in Bahawalpur.
And they are both commissioned as lieutenants.
This helps him a little bit to recover from some of the recurrent
fevers which is had
and he uses the opportunity in the army to learn Arabic, Persian and
Oriental.
Later on when he married his wife helps him to master order as well.
So towards the end of his life, he wasn't speaking English very much.
Although he said he used to pray in English interestingly, mcdyess
in English, but his classes were all in order. He also learnt
Punjabi and pastoral, apparently
1945 The war is over his demobbed.
Then of course, partition and synergy, I've got a few
photographs of him, you might want to pass these around. I didn't
bother with the PowerPoint, but they're quite evocative, just a
few 3047 partition, he moves to Karachi, where he starts a
business is the tradition to sell off, of course, not to be a
dependent monk, but to work.
starts in paper, of course, that's the family business, blanket
factory. His father who is observing all of this with both of
his son's with kind of horror, father's really rich, since isn't
the money, but he refuses it, he sends it back again, from the
bank. Then his father sends him 50 taxes so he can start a taxi
business. Then he realizes that,
given local corruption, if he actually pays his Pakistan tax
bill, on the taxes, he's going to make a loss. The only way he can
run that business is if his corrupt and he refuses to do that.
So the taxes just get given away.
At this point, Pakistan exists he renounces his British citizenship
and becomes a Pakistani national.
So what's happening to the older brother? Well, the older brothers
is William Matthew Leonard known in the family as Pat.
He's also taken the bait art a little bit later than the younger
brother.
But there seems to be difficulty in having it right away, because
it seems that Saki Shah regards there as though as being a genuine
by our connection between him and shoe on still, and he won't accept
him as a disciple if there's still that connection. So Pat has to go
to Switzerland and formally sever his connection with Shawn and his
order.
And he comes straight back to India. In 1940, he finally takes a
while, Saki Shah, who is by this time very much in Muslim League
activism and as a delegate is in Lahore for a big all India Muslim
concrete Congress event. There is a girl from Meerut,
but like his brother,
is living in very considerable poverty and circumstances to which
his metabolism finds it difficult to adjust means that he's really
sick.
Malaria and pneumonia. Malaria is not really curable, you can just
manage the symptoms.
And there's brother Shahidullah, never really accustomed himself to
the local food. He's digested and never quite gets used to it and is
often in a state of indigestion and as I said, becomes very thin.
So, Pat is finally taken to hospital in Lahore. 1945. really
ill seems to be on his deathbed and his younger brothers
constantly. It is his bedside, not not eating, not leaving the
hospital for days doing vicar.
And then
his condition worsens. Finally Shahidullah has persuaded you
can't stay indefinitely, just by your brother. So it goes out but
then a phone call, calls him back and his brother Farrokh has died.
And so he sits by the bed with his brother's body there and wondering
whether maybe he has made a mistake coming to India is such a
horrible disaster.
But then he has a vision. He sees the only app around his bed in the
presence of the Holy Prophet and this is a true Dream Vision stays
with him for the rest of his life and that's a kind of consolation
for him.
The two are kind of known in Lahore and a local civil servant
who has a kind of reserved
To grave spot in that bizarre complex, foot weary office in his
space, and so far oak is buried there, pretty close to hedge wiry,
and to this day if you
if you know how to find your way through the complex, which is very
subtle place, you can find the two of Faruk, Saab, the Englishman,
Pat Leonard, who is buried as a Muslim, Pierre and people come
from the era.
So that's a that's a blow. Because they'd been very close 3046 At the
age of 31, he gets married. His marshes daughter Rasheeda.
Remember the dream. So the marine Ozma Sharif, this had been on the
cards for some time. And it's clear that this was the little
girl that had originally seen with xLP shark in his initial dream in
Delhi.
And it had been on the cards for some time, but clearly a sign of
the chef's respect for him. And later, she used to say that once
were in the house, she was coming downstairs. He looked at her twice
before the amount looked at her twice. And so she went to her
father complaining, say, Well, who are these people who have in your
house and kind of looking at the daughters of the house. And after
they were married, he'd explained, he'd looked at her a second time
to make sure that she was the same woman that he'd seen in the dream
is always a very attentive husband. When they had a garden he
would always pick flowers from the garden and put out flowers for her
every day.
And in his will he provided for his wife he appointed designated
five Marines, who after his death would take care of her and she
actually is very competent takes over most of the functions of the
tourney after his death she doesn't 99 to
the next event is not in 51 when Saki Shah prepares to go to their
Hajj and the disciples accompany the masjid basura to Baghdad they
take the train for the zero. I've recorded Gilani them.
And then in Medina, specific practices very sober look, this is
a sober kind of study of out. So Keisha advises just one Z Ara to
the tomb every day, no more. Stand in silence. Don't ask for
anything. All of that today because our hours are canceled
except just for silhouette. And from us or until Asia, they will
sit in the sofa that was their practice.
Then, from ombre to natok Minar artifacts,
all kinds of dreams, openings, joyful prayers. Zaki Shah,
however, dies on Arafat on the day of Arafat. So, a climax but also
calamity.
So they return. And he immediately has to take on responsibilities
because his wife is the only surviving member of the Schiff's
family and of the sencilla.
That there's no designated successor. familiar situation.
We know that xLP Shah had frequently requested Shahidullah
to lead the vicar circles.
After his death, he was very reluctant to accept any kind of
leadership responsibility. Remember the kind of guiding theme
of these lectures that you know total Imara don't seek authority,
the prophetic command.
But then he has a dream of puppet and Sharif, where he says the
great Baba Fareed showing him how to take br From people which is a
specific way quite unlike a selfie chars method.
And that's one reason why he has the soubriquet fair ad because he
has a particular connection to
Mother Fareed, and he maintains this style of taking br Which is
Baba for each throughout his life.
A number of other Toyoko members have dreams and visions. And so
reluctantly, he agrees is going to take on this massive
responsibility.
Conditions for BI you have to guard the three ions. I am Arkell,
knowledge, the mind, love these are the three eyes with which you
perceive which have to be regulated. Now don't be shy didn't
have much of a permission or a vocation for large numbers of
disciples. But with Fareed it was very different and 1000s upon
1000s of people mainly in Pakistan, but also in India. In
rank poor in what's now Bangladesh there is still his disciples there
suddenly becomes a mass mass movement.
Quite often they'll come as is common to discuss worldly matters,
marriage issues, what should I do with my business, he was noted for
his patience with such people carried on a very extensive
correspondence, some of the people from the elites, but generally it
was the poor people that seem to have found his gatherings
effective. So, the center of gravity now, because of partition,
which has disrupted so much in Muslim India has shifted from
ultrasound to puck pattern. And the kind of small house was opened
for him there. Great simplicity was always his watchword. Most of
his life he lived just in a single room, sitting on the floor.
He's not been back to England for this time, but in 1956, his mother
Ruth is very sick. So he goes back to England to see her as his first
trip for 16 years. And he reported that on her deathbed, she did make
her shahada thankful shortly afterwards, and she offered him
some jewelry, but he refused it. He only took one small thing,
which is kind of Memento just to have something to remember her by.
returns to these responsibilities.
And
Sunday mornings were his great time for teaching,
much of which took the form of D'Arcy Hadith Hadith commentary.
He would also like to read the famous letters
the mucked about is Saudi, the 100 letters of Sharafuddin mannery
very early Sufi of North India has been translated by
Paul Jackson into English. He was a disciple of Nissan that didn't
hold out and
very popular form of teaching in the Chishti world. Another text he
liked was the RF RF of Abu Huff's. So rewarding may detect obviously
for the sort of idea. And one of the great four or five best known
introductory manuals to the fullness of Islam the outer form
the inward meaning.
After they're thicker, they will often read from the writings of
Zopi sharp, and then he will provide a commentary of his own
form of the vicar.
Again, this is one of the books which you can't really get in this
country, but which is a collection of
talks that were taped and then transcribed, so the form is fairly
informal.
In some nice things about liquor.
In surah tomb was in Mill Allah has himself commanded the Holy
Prophet to remember him with chorus Murghab pika, what a battle
electrotype de la remember the name of thy Lord and isolate
yourself to Him in total isolation.
This means to remember the name of your rub, Master Lord, he has
mentioned that word NAME particularly, is not just simply
said to remember a lot, but to remember the name. So, this is
significant, there is some hidden purpose in taking the name,
whether you take an aloud with your voice or you say it with the
inner voice, which we have, we can say something with an inner voice
with no outward expression. Still the name is there where words are
formulated, we can formulate words in the heart to there is a
definite purpose in the name. That is why to begin with people are
given this teaching of repeating the name of Allah. simply
repeating it as a word or a sound, of course is not the aim. The aim
is to fill one's soul with his feeling of his presence, to become
perfectly conscious of his presence. This is possible in this
way because when we call upon Allah He is present. It says in
the Quran, would only SDG bloco call upon me, and I will reply.
In the Hadith, the noble Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam has
made it clear to us. In fact, he has given it in the words of Allah
that Allah says that I am with that person who remembers me. And
I hope either Karani was of this kind that I'm with that person who
remembers me. That means to say that he then comes, you call him
so he comes, he is present.
It is not only our own effort, if it were our own effort, then we
can call and call and we would never gain anything by it. But
it's not like this. When we call then he comes and by this attempt,
we try to fill ourselves with his consciousness. This is really done
by him, not by us.
What is required is there are so many expressions. One speaks of
self sacrifice self Abnegation.
Abnegation of course means to deny oneself. Although usually self
Abnegation means to deny oneself the things which one likes. Here
I'm using the word in a different sense.
If that is to deny oneself altogether,
people talk about some other expression like self annihilation
and self obliteration. what one has to do is to try to remove
these thoughts of self that I want this and I want that I feel this
and so on. Try to feel a lot only.
Of course, at first you will feel yourself at Allah because a person
has a feeling of his own existence. This is something
natural to a person, he cannot rid himself with this feeling that I
am, this is his basic being. In fact, some philosophers have said
that this is the basis of all knowledge, it is true because
before all knowledge comes this feeling of this knowledge that I
am I exist,
there comes a stage as a member because Allah has pointed out, in
fact, all the Sufis have pointed out, that when a person gets so
totally absorbed in the object of his remembrance, and has really
filled himself with his consciousness, that he forgets
even this basic consciousness of I Am, even goes beyond this, he has
no awareness of his own existence. This is the perfection of this
process of trying to become absorbed, absorbed in the
consciousness of his presence, the awareness of His presence. So this
is what vicar means.
And there's more
from this is from actually one of his, his classes.
He wrote a number of books, some of them based on his many
discourses, tarbiyah, TL or sharp, which is basically a compilation
which he put together of his teacher xLP chars, teachings, he
has what is probably an English is best known book in aspects of
faith, which does sometimes appear in some bookshops in the UK.
And also these multiples that are printed as spirituality and
religion. A very basic introduction to Islam book called
everyday practice in Islam, how to pray, how to fast, why to pray,
why to fast and so on.
But also help the trustee community
by writing to the British Library and obtaining manuscripts
of trustee texts, which he then translated into, although
we've seen that his finding his existence in
the subcontinent,
very taxing physically.
At the age of 59, he has his first heart attack is hospitalized for
two months.
He used to describe illnesses, there's a cat of the body, it's
kind of something that you give and it's the sort of purification
insisted on continuing with his practices and seeing his
disciples.
And just as an example of the, his insistence of following the
prophetic example of living with the poor,
when he first moved to Karachi, he moved to a room above a baker's
shop. And Karachi is pretty hot. But above a baker's shop is like
being in the oven. But he stayed there for a very long time is an
extraordinarily difficult circumstance. So you can imagine
it takes a toll on his health.
Notice MDA ill again, taken to hospital again.
While he's there, he's apparently more concerned with his wife's
health than than his own goes into intensive care.
And then one of the last things that he says is, who are all those
men dressed in white are the Tablighi is
then he realized that the time has come for him to depart. This is
it.
People also realize that the last Hellcat the last circle of
teaching he'd ever given, he actually ended it with the word
holder half is I'd never done that before. So people thought well,
this is some kind of Valediction. So on the 17th of Ramadan, he
dies. Next day is buried in the Sufi Hassan cemetery in Karachi.
And he appoints Suraj Ali Khalifa dies in 2009. Janessa is obviously
a big thing in Karachi, attended by a lot of people. And according
to one of the people who wrote to me there was a 13 year old boy in
Karachi, who saw a dream in which the Holy Prophet was leading a
janazah prayer. When he woke up he learned that his neighbor Shaheed
a lifer, Edie had died. And he went to the Junos and he saw it
was in exactly the same form. So there's the outward sort of
contours of his life.
things to bear in mind that his was a way of subtle not of soccer,
that is to say of sobriety. He was a very calm person. He was not
inclined to intoxicated ecstatic dancing expressions of religion.
Even though he lived in very considerable poverty, to the
exasperation of his parents, he said, do not reject the world but
abstain from it.
Very gentle in his techniques. If people had problems with drink
addiction, and so forth, neglecting prayers, He would wind
them very gently away from those things rather than being stern
with them and risking driving them away. And usually His instruction
to people his advice would take the form of indirect hints, rather
than commands.
Here's another thing from an email
from somebody who heard things from his father who was his
disciple
which again indicates this kind of moderate and
sober type of religion
and the dangers of alternatives. One other story which my father
related to men, which I find particularly significant, in light
of the lecture shahidul offer really gave about the importance
of a shaping protecting a marine from the overwhelming effects are
the practices of disorder. My father, who was a small boy at the
time, had an older cousin in his early 20s, who would often visit
shahidul light and sit quietly in the corner and observe as others
interacted with the shape.
Finally, after many visits, Shahidullah asked him what he
seeks. My father's cousin told him, I want to experience
closeness to Allah, please, would you remove the veil that separates
me from him?
Shahidullah replied in the negative, wanting him that he was
too immature spiritually to bear the burden of that closeness.
My father's cousin persisted through several subsequent visits,
and finally shahidul, like relented.
It's unclear exactly how it happened. But the short of it is
that Shahidullah removed the veil. For the subsequent several days,
my father's cousin went into a major zorb state, repeating again
and again, only that the majesty of what he was seeing was too
great for him to bear. I'm paraphrasing here. After several
days of this, my father's cousin's mother sick with worry, visited
Shahidullah and asked him to undo whatever it was that he had done.
Shahidullah summit my father's cousin went on, did the unveiling,
returning the young man to his former state.
My father was a small boy at the time. So the memories are a bit
broad in their strokes. But it's another story I thought worth
sharing.
So yeah, it's a kind of very classical, medieval image of
sainthood. There's no kind of modernism or fundamentalism or
anything about this, it plunged absolutely into the heart of the
normative tradition.
And the poverty in particular, impress people or not when his
father died, he wouldn't touch the inheritance, which he made over to
his sister instead, who calculated that the dividend from the
investments was around 2 million pounds a year. So it's really
turning down the 14. He always wore simple dress and there's
going to weddings. And if you look at pictures of him, you can see
that he doesn't wear the kind of big turban thing
that is common amongst chefs in some cultures. Usually he dressed
very simply.
He accepted music is an atrocity tradition, and he listened to it.
He enjoyed reading the novels of PJ Woodhouse apparently Jeeves and
Wooster.
Another thing that he taught was that one should not emigrate to
the west for the Sandia to said,
they should stay in Pakistan and benefit it they will be happier.
So he himself had emulated the Hijra at the migration of the Holy
Prophet to and for Islam.
He says, if you put your child in a pool of water, he will
definitely get wet.
So watch out for sending your children to schools in the West.
And he says those who studied in the West should return as soon as
possible in order to benefit their people.
Meticulous in his following of the Sunnah. And even people point out
that his his beta came at the age of 40. And his death came at the
age of 63. So there's prophetic parallels. They're
very, very clearly humble like the Holy Prophet, he would ask advice
from children.
Very strong spiritual attachment to the Holy Prophets on a wet
amongst his most beloved devotions, vicar, particularly
Mondays and Thursdays
emphasize the importance of constant making a small efforts,
Mujahidin had he said that even delaying a small desire for 10
minutes is very helpful.
So I won't eat that bar of chocolate now but in 10 minutes
time even that he says is good for you.
or changing one's resolution. If you have a habit that you always
walk in a particular way, change it walk in a different way that
helps you to wake up and be more alert. He says, People these days
a week can carry little. So you have to give them these basic
disciplines.
Again, the poverty, sometimes he wouldn't teach them a book because
he couldn't afford to buy it.
love of nature when he moved out of this room above the bakery,
which apparently was just six feet long.
Some of the disciples said actually, he couldn't stretch out
on it. That's one of their recollections. So then he moved
into a kind of bungalow, he had a garden he had a love of nature.
Famous for the answer ability if his prayers sometimes people
observed that they would go to the chef with the intention of asking
a question but to his philosophy he would answer the question
before they asked it which again is very standard if you've
associated with Alia
so I'm going to end just with one of his disciples eulogistic ores
that they have there have not been at this place in Karachi is still
a big event. This people are still they're still publishing.
But this is a eulogy by one of his disciples.
Rosa shump Daraa Ashley Mola, John in Zakharova, soft sofa who Tora
Bora is eternity Emani more this should be aura had no borders
Auntie aura had no board, or bizarre hair Malda insaan Hulk had
done that.
Which they translate like this day and night he burnt his frail self
in the love of his Lord. He burned his own self in order to improve
our faith. His love had no limit, limit his composure, no bounds,
visibly a human but constantly immersed in God.
It's very kind of unlike say that armored Bullock story or the other
convert stories which we've looked at here we have the case of
somebody who makes a permanent hitter at eastwards and immerses
himself 100% in the local culture, even loses his British passport
because he just wants to be with with these people in his adopted
country, Pakistan, it's an interesting kind of counter
migration, perhaps sociologists would call it
so yeah, I'm still working on this. I still get random emails
from people some of whom have died not long ago, that inshallah one
day there'll be a more substantive biography, although probably
that's the last thing he would have wanted. So my alley, what are
the
hundreds and we don't usually do questions after this. And this has
gone on for too long as usual. Thank you for your attention in
Sharla. There's baraka and Hodor be decree him tangible Rama by
mentioning the pure ones mercy two cents. Thank you all very much. So
Monica,
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers