Abdal Hakim Murad – Winter Reading List

Abdal Hakim Murad
Share Page

AI: Summary ©

The speakers discuss the beautiful Italian mountain landscape and small village of seven thousand people in Bosnia. They talk about the beautiful picture of the Dolomites and the Italian logo, and how the path is manageable and accredited. The path is a pleasant experience, but the dark months and springtime are pleasant experiences. The speakers also mention the beautiful Italian language and how people are happy.

AI: Summary ©

00:00:00 --> 00:00:05
			Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulillah,
		
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07
			wa ahlihi wa sahbihi wa man wa ala.
		
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11
			So it's that grey subterranean time of the
		
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13
			year again when we curl up with a
		
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16
			good book and wish for the springtime.
		
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19
			We've been doing this at CMC for some
		
00:00:19 --> 00:00:20
			years now and it seems to have a
		
00:00:20 --> 00:00:21
			certain traction.
		
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25
			It's also an opportunity for me, I suppose,
		
00:00:26 --> 00:00:27
			to think aloud about some of the things
		
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30
			that I've been reading and re-reading recently.
		
00:00:31 --> 00:00:32
			And there has been quite a lot of
		
00:00:32 --> 00:00:36
			interesting publication, the amounts of material and the
		
00:00:36 --> 00:00:38
			quality of material coming out about this film
		
00:00:38 --> 00:00:40
			in the English language now.
		
00:00:40 --> 00:00:44
			It's accelerating rapidly, which as English becomes, I
		
00:00:44 --> 00:00:48
			suppose, the principal language of the ummah, that
		
00:00:48 --> 00:00:49
			has to be a good thing.
		
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53
			So, I've got, as usual, five books that
		
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56
			I'd like to ponder.
		
00:00:57 --> 00:01:01
			The first of them is by somebody who's
		
00:01:01 --> 00:01:05
			quite a veteran, actually, of the Islamic authorial
		
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08
			and publishing scene in the UK now, Ruqayya
		
00:01:08 --> 00:01:09
			Waris Maqsood.
		
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12
			And this is one of her books about
		
00:01:12 --> 00:01:12
			Christianity.
		
00:01:12 --> 00:01:15
			She has one on the Pharisees and one
		
00:01:15 --> 00:01:16
			or two others.
		
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18
			And she's probably best known, I suppose, for
		
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21
			her book, The Muslim Marriage Guide, which is
		
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23
			a staple of that sort of side of
		
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25
			Muslim publishing, and actually quite good, I would
		
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27
			recommend The Muslim Marriage Guide.
		
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30
			But this one is The Mysteries of Jesus,
		
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36
			El Greco undercover, I think, A Muslim Study
		
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38
			of the Origins and Doctrines of the Christian
		
00:01:38 --> 00:01:39
			Church.
		
00:01:41 --> 00:01:45
			So, the title indicates that this is not
		
00:01:45 --> 00:01:49
			just a kind of Muslim biography of Sayyiduna
		
00:01:49 --> 00:01:53
			Isa, Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, but
		
00:01:53 --> 00:01:54
			is something a bit more ambitious.
		
00:01:55 --> 00:01:59
			She is surveying the origins and doctrines of
		
00:01:59 --> 00:02:00
			the Christian church.
		
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03
			So, as she goes through the gospel material
		
00:02:03 --> 00:02:06
			and the formation of the teachings of the
		
00:02:06 --> 00:02:11
			early church, she is reflecting on how things
		
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13
			came to be the way they finally fell
		
00:02:13 --> 00:02:19
			out, and also on what modern historians and
		
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22
			archaeologists make of the real Jesus, the quest
		
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25
			for the historical Jesus, might have to say
		
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28
			to augment or perhaps challenge the traditional Muslim
		
00:02:28 --> 00:02:32
			understanding of who the Messiah, Isa ibn Maryam,
		
00:02:33 --> 00:02:34
			peace be upon him, actually was.
		
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39
			And she's actually, unlike some Muslim authors, quite
		
00:02:39 --> 00:02:41
			well qualified to do this.
		
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45
			She was a trained Christian theologian, she knows
		
00:02:45 --> 00:02:49
			New Testament Greek, she understands the behind-the
		
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52
			-scenes aspect of the polemic, and before she
		
00:02:52 --> 00:02:53
			became Muslim she had, I think, six or
		
00:02:53 --> 00:02:57
			seven books about Christianity, written as a Christian
		
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59
			theologian and New Testament expert.
		
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01
			Does God Have a Body was one of
		
00:03:01 --> 00:03:05
			the popular ones, Jesus of Nazareth, The Way
		
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08
			of the Cross, still worth reading, an interesting
		
00:03:08 --> 00:03:12
			kind of text, and some other books published
		
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15
			in the mainstream and by SEM, Student Christian
		
00:03:15 --> 00:03:16
			Movement Press.
		
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18
			She was out there in the large world
		
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21
			of Christian publishing, and then Her Road to
		
00:03:21 --> 00:03:27
			Damascus took place, and she's become a very
		
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30
			widespread, widely read authoress of maybe 20 books,
		
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32
			not just an aspect of Islam, but she
		
00:03:32 --> 00:03:36
			has a guide, a tourist guide to Petra
		
00:03:36 --> 00:03:37
			and things like that.
		
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41
			She has a wide variety of interests and
		
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44
			she's still, alhamdulillah, doing well.
		
00:03:45 --> 00:03:51
			So this book may well be the best
		
00:03:51 --> 00:03:55
			place to look for a well-informed, a
		
00:03:55 --> 00:04:00
			serious, not conspiracy theory-laden or polemical account
		
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03
			of how we understand the origins of a
		
00:04:03 --> 00:04:07
			great world religion, and how the Islamic understanding
		
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10
			of what it was meant to be seems
		
00:04:10 --> 00:04:14
			to coalesce in many respects with the findings
		
00:04:14 --> 00:04:18
			of the latest academic scholarship, which she deploys
		
00:04:18 --> 00:04:19
			quite well.
		
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22
			So inevitably in a book like this there's
		
00:04:22 --> 00:04:26
			an element of autobiography, it's a theological insider's
		
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28
			account rather than just a dry-as-dust
		
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31
			account of the formation of the New Testament
		
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33
			canon, that kind of thing.
		
00:04:34 --> 00:04:35
			There's apparently a new book published about the
		
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37
			New Testament every ten minutes now, it's an
		
00:04:37 --> 00:04:41
			enormous world, nobody really knows what's going on
		
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44
			in it, but this is a serious Muslim
		
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46
			attempt to get into that space.
		
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48
			So just to give you a sense of
		
00:04:48 --> 00:04:54
			what she does, just so that we can
		
00:04:54 --> 00:04:59
			see the kind of fairly accessible prose that
		
00:04:59 --> 00:05:05
			she favours, for centuries Christians have characterized Muslims
		
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07
			as the enemy, the arch-rivals, the infidels,
		
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09
			the savage deniers of their God, and not
		
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12
			as deeply developed believers in the same God,
		
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14
			but also respect and accept the message of
		
00:05:14 --> 00:05:14
			Jesus.
		
00:05:16 --> 00:05:18
			Suddenly with the advent of fair-minded literature
		
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20
			about Islam in the West, and the increasing
		
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23
			number of translations of classical Muslim works, it
		
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25
			has become possible and permissible to study Islam
		
00:05:25 --> 00:05:25
			properly.
		
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28
			And it follows, as night follows day, that
		
00:05:28 --> 00:05:29
			as soon as devout lovers of God who
		
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32
			are baffled and bored with Trinitarianism make a
		
00:05:32 --> 00:05:34
			real study of Islam, many are led to
		
00:05:34 --> 00:05:36
			the same conclusions as myself.
		
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39
			It is the theology of the churches that
		
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41
			is wrong, not the love of Jesus or
		
00:05:41 --> 00:05:42
			the Christian way of life.
		
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45
			God has not gone away, and Jesus, the
		
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47
			moral guide, is still an inspirational presence.
		
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49
			It is just that for centuries church people
		
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52
			have never dared to admit that the Trinitarian
		
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54
			choice made by the fourth century church might
		
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57
			have been wrong, and that Jesus might not
		
00:05:57 --> 00:05:59
			have been the great blood sacrifice of propitiation,
		
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02
			but exactly what the Muslims have patiently said
		
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05
			he was, a sublime messenger of God, one
		
00:06:05 --> 00:06:07
			of a series of chosen prophets of whom
		
00:06:07 --> 00:06:09
			Muhammad was the seal and the last.
		
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12
			So this is an indication of really her
		
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15
			own sense of liberation from the difficult and
		
00:06:15 --> 00:06:21
			to many rather concerning aspects of classical Christian
		
00:06:21 --> 00:06:22
			teaching.
		
00:06:22 --> 00:06:24
			She finds this a kind of discovery of
		
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26
			Jesus rather than a turning away, and this
		
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28
			is the experience of very many people who
		
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31
			have come to Islam from a Christian direction.
		
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34
			The first step to this liberating knowledge is
		
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36
			the realization that the world extends far beyond
		
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39
			the confines of a chosen or an elite
		
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42
			church, and that God's love is widely bestowed.
		
00:06:42 --> 00:06:44
			It has no need to be limited, as
		
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47
			Islam believes there have been 124,000 perfect
		
00:06:47 --> 00:06:48
			prophets.
		
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52
			Just as today's principal versions of Christianity are
		
00:06:52 --> 00:06:54
			not the real truth, so too Christ was
		
00:06:54 --> 00:06:55
			not the only way to God.
		
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58
			God's plan was to send many, as befits
		
00:06:58 --> 00:07:00
			his generosity and love, and not just to
		
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02
			rely on the action in history of one
		
00:07:02 --> 00:07:03
			only begotten son.
		
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07
			And this is a characteristic of her approach,
		
00:07:07 --> 00:07:12
			that the discovery of the real historical Jesus,
		
00:07:12 --> 00:07:16
			the Jewish rabbi of first century Galilee, is
		
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18
			actually a rediscovery of the principle of the
		
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21
			love of God, the Mahabba, and the Rahma,
		
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25
			the all-encompassing loving compassion of God, who
		
00:07:25 --> 00:07:27
			would not blame human beings and send them
		
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29
			to * because of the original sin of
		
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32
			an ancestor, and who doesn't need a blood
		
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35
			sacrifice in order to forgive human beings, but
		
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37
			forgives them, as in the parable of the
		
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39
			prodigal son, which she says some interesting things
		
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42
			about, just forgives us just out of love.
		
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44
			In other words, it's not about justice and
		
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47
			a kind of cosmic law and a calculation,
		
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50
			it's about God's forgiveness and his love for
		
00:07:50 --> 00:07:51
			his creatures.
		
00:07:51 --> 00:07:54
			So she describes this as a liberation.
		
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58
			And she goes on in the same vein,
		
00:07:59 --> 00:08:00
			this is the last words of the book,
		
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04
			before she goes into a kind of put
		
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07
			-down of various Muslim forms of optimism about
		
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09
			the so-called gospel of Barnabas.
		
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13
			She doesn't believe in that story.
		
00:08:14 --> 00:08:16
			Essential to the concept of pure monotheism is
		
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18
			the insistence on the consistent stream of divine
		
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21
			revelation, the Qur'an being its most recent
		
00:08:21 --> 00:08:21
			manifestation.
		
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24
			Looking for the true meaning behind the words,
		
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26
			it is an easy matter for monotheist followers
		
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28
			of Jesus and his way to adjust their
		
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30
			minds so that the formula of witness that
		
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32
			brings entry to the kingdom of heaven is
		
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34
			no longer, in the name of God the
		
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36
			Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but
		
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38
			in the name of God the One, the
		
00:08:38 --> 00:08:39
			Compassionate and Merciful.
		
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42
			For that compassion and mercy promise a forgiveness
		
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45
			that is direct and total and overwhelming.
		
00:08:46 --> 00:08:47
			End of her book.
		
00:08:48 --> 00:08:51
			So it's interesting that she very much stresses,
		
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54
			as well as the kind of rigorous forensic
		
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57
			analysis of the synoptic Gospels and everything that
		
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00
			goes with that, the idea that Jesus would
		
00:09:00 --> 00:09:04
			not have believed in the church councils and
		
00:09:04 --> 00:09:05
			their conclusions.
		
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08
			But there's this very strong emphasis on the
		
00:09:08 --> 00:09:11
			move to Islam as being an ethicising of
		
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14
			the story, an opening up of real access
		
00:09:14 --> 00:09:18
			to and empathy with the fully human Jesus
		
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22
			of Nazareth, uncomplicated by infinity and divinity.
		
00:09:23 --> 00:09:26
			But also the overarching principle of love, mahabba,
		
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30
			which of course is overwhelmingly present in our
		
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32
			literature and in our poetry, and the Holy
		
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34
			Prophet is Habibullah, God's beloved.
		
00:09:34 --> 00:09:39
			It's the characteristic devotional method of approaching the
		
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42
			divine in the religion of Islam.
		
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44
			So it's interesting that it's that principle, that
		
00:09:44 --> 00:09:48
			emotive, effective one, that she's chosen to make
		
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50
			the kind of master signifier of this whole
		
00:09:50 --> 00:09:51
			story.
		
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53
			And it's really not polemical, it's not dismissive,
		
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57
			she doesn't call Christians idolaters, it's very respectful,
		
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01
			but as you would expect, a firm and
		
00:10:01 --> 00:10:05
			well-referenced account with thousands of pages of
		
00:10:05 --> 00:10:11
			footnotes, everything from the Babylonian Talmud to the
		
00:10:11 --> 00:10:15
			latest studies of the book of Jeremiah.
		
00:10:15 --> 00:10:17
			It's a commendable work.
		
00:10:18 --> 00:10:19
			So that's my first pick.
		
00:10:20 --> 00:10:21
			Number two, which kind of follows from it,
		
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24
			although these are not really in a particular
		
00:10:24 --> 00:10:29
			order, is by the well-known Jewish writer
		
00:10:29 --> 00:10:35
			and journalist Anthony Lerman, The Making and Unmaking
		
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37
			of a Zionist, a Personal and Political Journey.
		
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42
			So here's another serious book that's also kind
		
00:10:42 --> 00:10:46
			of autobiographical, this is actually more an autobiography,
		
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50
			by a British Jew who has a distinguished
		
00:10:50 --> 00:10:55
			career in journalism, particularly in Jewish journals, founded
		
00:10:55 --> 00:10:59
			a number of Jewish and Zionist organizations and
		
00:10:59 --> 00:11:03
			charities in this country and internationally, who documents
		
00:11:03 --> 00:11:08
			his, as it were, rather harrowing falling out
		
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10
			of love with the Zionist project, as he
		
00:11:10 --> 00:11:11
			understands it.
		
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15
			In 1970, he went from North London somewhere
		
00:11:15 --> 00:11:20
			to Zion with a build the land kind
		
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23
			of movement, that was the day of Zionist
		
00:11:23 --> 00:11:29
			socialism, reclaiming the land, and he documents how
		
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32
			the kind of indigenous population, the Palestinians, were
		
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35
			kind of blurred or not really spoken about
		
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38
			very much, but insofar as they were present,
		
00:11:38 --> 00:11:41
			they were regarded as a kind of simple
		
00:11:41 --> 00:11:45
			peasant people without a real national sensibility, whose
		
00:11:45 --> 00:11:49
			the responsibility for whose upliftment in civilization was
		
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52
			actually the responsibility of the Jewish settlers, who
		
00:11:52 --> 00:11:56
			therefore took themselves to be a kind of
		
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58
			benign presence in the land.
		
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01
			Of course, the tension of that taking the
		
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04
			land but uplifting its inhabitants is something that
		
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07
			grated in his soul, and he's quite detailed
		
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10
			in explaining how he, over a number of
		
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12
			years, it wasn't a sudden road to Damascus,
		
00:12:12 --> 00:12:18
			road from Damascus experience, but the ethical principles
		
00:12:18 --> 00:12:21
			of his Judaism, as he understands them, seemed
		
00:12:21 --> 00:12:25
			increasingly painfully and paradoxically to clash with the
		
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27
			reality of what was being done to the
		
00:12:27 --> 00:12:32
			land, and Israel's seemingly inexorable slide to ever
		
00:12:32 --> 00:12:36
			more vehement forms of right-wing nativism and
		
00:12:36 --> 00:12:41
			nationalism, until eventually he jumped ship and he
		
00:12:41 --> 00:12:45
			documents the quite fierce response to his post
		
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48
			-Zionism that he met with from some established
		
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51
			leaders and journalists in his community.
		
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53
			I think he suffered quite a bit, but
		
00:12:53 --> 00:12:56
			it's a very honest kind of book and
		
00:12:56 --> 00:12:58
			he doesn't pull any punches.
		
00:12:59 --> 00:13:03
			One of the things, for those who aren't
		
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06
			aware, they look at the headlines, they may
		
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08
			not be aware that here is actually a
		
00:13:08 --> 00:13:13
			very rich, moral, monotheistic, somewhat agonistic tradition born
		
00:13:13 --> 00:13:15
			of centuries of misfortune.
		
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18
			There was a lot that's very profound and
		
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21
			tender and humane there, and some Muslims don't
		
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23
			quite get that these days.
		
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25
			It's actually a very good remedy for that,
		
00:13:25 --> 00:13:27
			because he is very good at quoting the
		
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30
			Jewish sources that remind us that this is
		
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33
			all supposed to be an ethical exercise, rather
		
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35
			than just a kind of land grab.
		
00:13:35 --> 00:13:39
			So, nice quote from Abraham Heschel here, Judaism
		
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41
			is not a religion of space and does
		
00:13:41 --> 00:13:42
			not worship the soil.
		
00:13:43 --> 00:13:44
			So too, the state of Israel is not
		
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47
			the climax of Jewish history, but a test
		
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49
			of the integrity of the Jewish people and
		
00:13:49 --> 00:13:50
			the competence of Judaism.
		
00:13:52 --> 00:13:56
			That's exactly the kind of moral clarion call
		
00:13:56 --> 00:14:01
			that eventually knocked over the walls of his
		
00:14:01 --> 00:14:05
			Zionist citadel and made him walk away, rather
		
00:14:05 --> 00:14:09
			sorrowfully, to become a firm, though never furious,
		
00:14:10 --> 00:14:14
			critic of the whole project of reclaiming the
		
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17
			land and necessarily marginalising and driving out the
		
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19
			people who were there before.
		
00:14:19 --> 00:14:21
			He doesn't engage very much with the Palestinian
		
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24
			communities, it's written very much from the point
		
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27
			of view of internal agonies and polemics within
		
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30
			the Jewish community, about the extent to which
		
00:14:30 --> 00:14:34
			it's necessary to create this place where, supposedly,
		
00:14:34 --> 00:14:37
			Jewish people will be safer than they are
		
00:14:37 --> 00:14:39
			anywhere else, rather than exposed in new ways,
		
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43
			in a kind of zero-sum game against
		
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46
			the interests and the rights of the pre
		
00:14:46 --> 00:14:48
			-existing nation and population.
		
00:14:49 --> 00:14:54
			So, I found it, and he's obviously arguing
		
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57
			with himself, that gives the book quite a
		
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00
			bit of energy, but I would recommend it
		
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02
			to Muslims who need to be more aware
		
00:15:02 --> 00:15:08
			of the internal arguments, polemics, agonising dichotomies happening
		
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10
			within Jewish communities in this country, when they
		
00:15:10 --> 00:15:15
			consider what's now happening, perhaps the most egregious
		
00:15:15 --> 00:15:19
			example of this impossible tension, the zero-sum
		
00:15:19 --> 00:15:20
			game, between, on the one hand, the desire
		
00:15:20 --> 00:15:24
			to create this highly fortified, nationally specific bunker,
		
00:15:25 --> 00:15:28
			against the rights of millions of people who
		
00:15:28 --> 00:15:31
			are, by the terms of the exercise, not
		
00:15:31 --> 00:15:35
			really what the exercise is for, who are
		
00:15:35 --> 00:15:36
			unchosen.
		
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41
			So, yeah, I think I'd recommend it, certainly
		
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43
			for Muslim readers who need to know more
		
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45
			about these internal Jewish arguments.
		
00:15:46 --> 00:15:50
			I found it quite, quite moving, and a
		
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53
			useful document regarding the collapse of what used
		
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55
			to be socialist Zionism, which was a major
		
00:15:55 --> 00:15:58
			thing, the kibbutz movement was basically an idealistic,
		
00:15:58 --> 00:16:02
			left-of-centre movement, and he sees that
		
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05
			for demographic and cultural reasons, the march to
		
00:16:05 --> 00:16:07
			the far right in Israel has become so
		
00:16:07 --> 00:16:11
			overwhelming that it's not really going to be
		
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14
			possible to have a socialist Zionism any longer,
		
00:16:14 --> 00:16:18
			if socialism is inclusive and egalitarian and respectful
		
00:16:18 --> 00:16:19
			of difference.
		
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21
			He sees that that is now something that
		
00:16:21 --> 00:16:24
			was once quite idealistic, that he bought into
		
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27
			in his youth, but is now a dead
		
00:16:27 --> 00:16:27
			letter.
		
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31
			So, like just about every other book about
		
00:16:31 --> 00:16:35
			Israel-Palestine at the moment, a rather sombre
		
00:16:35 --> 00:16:39
			read, he doesn't really offer any kind of
		
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41
			utopian future for us.
		
00:16:42 --> 00:16:47
			Okay, so my third pick, rather different, Mikhail
		
00:16:47 --> 00:16:50
			Abdullatif, The Tao of War.
		
00:16:53 --> 00:16:56
			I like this, partly because it's kind of
		
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58
			idiosyncratic and doesn't fit into any familiar category,
		
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02
			unless there's a whole genre of martial arts
		
00:17:02 --> 00:17:06
			spirituality that I've never become acquainted with, but
		
00:17:06 --> 00:17:10
			he is a Muslim practitioner of various East
		
00:17:10 --> 00:17:15
			Asian martial arts, who is very concerned with
		
00:17:15 --> 00:17:19
			the possibility that the endlessly growing martial arts
		
00:17:19 --> 00:17:25
			industry, the Wushu traditions, Kung Fu, Karate and
		
00:17:25 --> 00:17:27
			so forth, which have become what just about
		
00:17:27 --> 00:17:32
			every teenager does for a bit nowadays, can
		
00:17:32 --> 00:17:34
			actually be a useful way, even though they
		
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36
			seem to be very bodily and quite aggressive,
		
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39
			can actually be a way for Westerners to
		
00:17:39 --> 00:17:43
			return in an unexpected way to the sacred,
		
00:17:44 --> 00:17:46
			because all of these traditional martial arts came
		
00:17:46 --> 00:17:49
			from great sacred civilizations that knew the symbolism
		
00:17:49 --> 00:17:51
			and knew the meaning, and critically had an
		
00:17:51 --> 00:17:56
			important ethos of combat behind them.
		
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59
			These are ethical as well as simply militaristic
		
00:17:59 --> 00:18:02
			traditions, something that in the West has been
		
00:18:02 --> 00:18:06
			lacking, perhaps because the Gospels are pacifist, but
		
00:18:06 --> 00:18:08
			the Christian states had to have armies, so
		
00:18:08 --> 00:18:10
			it wasn't really clear how they could scripturally
		
00:18:10 --> 00:18:13
			resource their Knights Templars and so forth, it
		
00:18:13 --> 00:18:15
			all became a bit paradoxical.
		
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20
			But in the Far Eastern traditions, and also
		
00:18:20 --> 00:18:23
			in certain Islamic traditions, the Janissaries of course
		
00:18:23 --> 00:18:25
			were like a religious order, the Mamluks of
		
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28
			Egypt in their heyday were kind of on
		
00:18:28 --> 00:18:31
			a spiritual path, the path of Futuwa, chivalry,
		
00:18:32 --> 00:18:35
			but also involved highly subtle symbolisms of what
		
00:18:35 --> 00:18:38
			the armour meant, inscriptions on the sword, how
		
00:18:38 --> 00:18:41
			you put on the armour before going into
		
00:18:41 --> 00:18:43
			battle, certain prayers that you said, it was
		
00:18:43 --> 00:18:46
			part of the view of a sacred civilization.
		
00:18:46 --> 00:18:48
			So what he's saying is one way of
		
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51
			yanking the profane and unhappy West back to
		
00:18:51 --> 00:18:55
			the sacred is through these martial arts, unexpectedly,
		
00:18:55 --> 00:18:59
			I found that quite an intriguing idea.
		
00:19:00 --> 00:19:03
			So this is how he starts, this book
		
00:19:03 --> 00:19:05
			is a training manual for the students of
		
00:19:05 --> 00:19:06
			applied philosophy.
		
00:19:07 --> 00:19:09
			It is an attempt to distill an historically
		
00:19:09 --> 00:19:12
			informed understanding of the martial arts into an
		
00:19:12 --> 00:19:15
			exploration of the philosophies which underpin them, and
		
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17
			then to utilize said understandings to inform us
		
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20
			of actionable advice and principles of being.
		
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24
			Navigating the world is a complex process, life
		
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26
			is thrown at you all at once, and
		
00:19:26 --> 00:19:27
			while there are many traditions available to act
		
00:19:27 --> 00:19:30
			as guides or collections of advice, few sets
		
00:19:30 --> 00:19:32
			of philosophies and practices prove as useful as
		
00:19:32 --> 00:19:34
			those found in the arts of war.
		
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37
			Combat is among the most real of human
		
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40
			endeavors, there is no room in it for
		
00:19:40 --> 00:19:43
			falsehood or posturing, the brute nature of survival
		
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45
			is brought to the surface and the most
		
00:19:45 --> 00:19:46
			serious realizations are made.
		
00:19:48 --> 00:19:53
			So this is the idea of the way
		
00:19:53 --> 00:19:56
			of the warrior being about attentiveness, self-awareness,
		
00:19:57 --> 00:20:01
			body-mind integration, an awareness of the uniqueness
		
00:20:01 --> 00:20:05
			and irreplaceability of the moment, a preternatural awareness
		
00:20:05 --> 00:20:07
			of time, which you'll get in some of
		
00:20:07 --> 00:20:10
			the great Kurosawa movies, the Seven Samurai is
		
00:20:10 --> 00:20:13
			basically a kind of spiritual parallel that the
		
00:20:13 --> 00:20:15
			villagers have to be defended by the ethos
		
00:20:15 --> 00:20:18
			of the Bushido, of the warrior's code, but
		
00:20:18 --> 00:20:21
			the great warriors are almost like monks, the
		
00:20:21 --> 00:20:23
			great scene in which one of the great
		
00:20:23 --> 00:20:25
			samurai goes out at night and kills some
		
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28
			of the bandits in order to take a
		
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31
			musket, and as soon as he gets back
		
00:20:31 --> 00:20:33
			after this really hair-raising exploit in the
		
00:20:33 --> 00:20:35
			middle of the night, he lies down and
		
00:20:35 --> 00:20:37
			falls asleep, and that's when we know that
		
00:20:37 --> 00:20:41
			he's fully in command of his impulses, his
		
00:20:41 --> 00:20:43
			emotions, he's in that state of detachment, which
		
00:20:43 --> 00:20:45
			is the necessary state of the true warrior.
		
00:20:47 --> 00:20:52
			So as he goes through this, he develops
		
00:20:52 --> 00:20:53
			a certain terminology.
		
00:20:54 --> 00:20:59
			The book is not just for Muslims, but
		
00:20:59 --> 00:21:01
			is I think an attempt to reach out
		
00:21:01 --> 00:21:04
			more generally to people who are thoughtfully practicing
		
00:21:04 --> 00:21:08
			martial arts in the East Asian traditions, in
		
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11
			order to remind them of certain principles that
		
00:21:11 --> 00:21:15
			sometimes seem specifically Confucian or Taoist, but actually
		
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18
			universal and have very obvious Islamic equivalents.
		
00:21:19 --> 00:21:22
			So instead of saying the religion of war,
		
00:21:23 --> 00:21:24
			he explains at the beginning his terminology.
		
00:21:25 --> 00:21:27
			He prefers the word Tao as being more
		
00:21:27 --> 00:21:30
			accessible to Westerners, and also is incorporating this
		
00:21:30 --> 00:21:31
			idea of a way.
		
00:21:31 --> 00:21:33
			Tao means a way, so it's a path
		
00:21:33 --> 00:21:39
			of spiritual transformation, it's Saluk, it's Futawa, and
		
00:21:39 --> 00:21:40
			he uses the language of the yin and
		
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43
			the yang quite frequently, where we would probably
		
00:21:43 --> 00:21:47
			say Jalal and Jamal, or perhaps Tashbih and
		
00:21:47 --> 00:21:47
			Tenzih.
		
00:21:47 --> 00:21:50
			He explains the Islamic equivalents to these, but
		
00:21:50 --> 00:21:54
			his particular choice of lexical field is in
		
00:21:54 --> 00:21:56
			the East Asian traditions, probably again because he's
		
00:21:56 --> 00:22:00
			trying to overcome certain reflexes that the Western
		
00:22:00 --> 00:22:04
			mind experiences when seeing Arabic terminology, but the
		
00:22:04 --> 00:22:06
			effect is I think a thoroughly Islamic way.
		
00:22:07 --> 00:22:09
			So sometimes he lapses into a kind of
		
00:22:09 --> 00:22:13
			verse or aphorisms in the kind of Dao
		
00:22:13 --> 00:22:14
			De Jing way.
		
00:22:15 --> 00:22:17
			So in some of the Binaries where he
		
00:22:17 --> 00:22:22
			talks about the yin and the yang, he
		
00:22:22 --> 00:22:24
			uses for instance distance and nearness.
		
00:22:26 --> 00:22:27
			So here's an example.
		
00:22:28 --> 00:22:29
			It's quite poetic.
		
00:22:29 --> 00:22:31
			Distance is the way of the yang.
		
00:22:31 --> 00:22:34
			The striker needs distance to generate power and
		
00:22:34 --> 00:22:35
			does not get too close.
		
00:22:36 --> 00:22:38
			The father is understood as far from the
		
00:22:38 --> 00:22:41
			children, as is Al-Aziz transcendent from mankind.
		
00:22:42 --> 00:22:44
			The soft punch requires some distance.
		
00:22:44 --> 00:22:47
			The hard punch needs more distance yet.
		
00:22:47 --> 00:22:49
			The kick requires more distance yet.
		
00:22:50 --> 00:22:51
			The distance measures the power.
		
00:22:52 --> 00:22:54
			The power measures the lethality of the warrior
		
00:22:54 --> 00:22:55
			of yang.
		
00:22:56 --> 00:22:58
			The potency of a man is his distance,
		
00:22:59 --> 00:23:00
			like the distance of the striker.
		
00:23:00 --> 00:23:03
			He must remain aloof and unaffected, able to
		
00:23:03 --> 00:23:05
			detach from mercy in the name of justice.
		
00:23:06 --> 00:23:10
			So that's Jalal, Tenzih, masculinity, yang.
		
00:23:11 --> 00:23:12
			Nearness is the way of the yin.
		
00:23:13 --> 00:23:15
			So the blow, he says, and this is
		
00:23:15 --> 00:23:19
			traditional Chinese Wushu wisdom, the blow is the
		
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22
			masculine, it's the yang, and you need to
		
00:23:22 --> 00:23:24
			be detached and far from the blow to
		
00:23:24 --> 00:23:26
			have the sufficient inertia.
		
00:23:27 --> 00:23:31
			Whereas grappling, which is kind of wrestling, judo
		
00:23:31 --> 00:23:36
			-type maneuvers, is feminine because it's enveloping and
		
00:23:36 --> 00:23:37
			nearness is required.
		
00:23:37 --> 00:23:40
			So nearness is the way of the yin.
		
00:23:40 --> 00:23:43
			The grappler needs nearness to apply leverage and
		
00:23:43 --> 00:23:44
			does not get too far.
		
00:23:45 --> 00:23:47
			The mother is understood as close to the
		
00:23:47 --> 00:23:50
			children, as a Rahman is close to mankind.
		
00:23:52 --> 00:23:53
			The first touch needs nearness.
		
00:23:54 --> 00:23:56
			The hold needs more nearness yet.
		
00:23:56 --> 00:23:59
			The squeeze of death needs more nearness yet.
		
00:24:00 --> 00:24:02
			The nearness measures the leverage.
		
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05
			The leverage measures the lethality of the warrior
		
00:24:05 --> 00:24:05
			of yin.
		
00:24:06 --> 00:24:08
			The potency of a woman is her nearness,
		
00:24:09 --> 00:24:10
			like the nearness of the grappler.
		
00:24:11 --> 00:24:14
			She must stay engaged and empathetic, able to
		
00:24:14 --> 00:24:16
			understand others in the name of compassion.
		
00:24:17 --> 00:24:19
			So immediately we see the book is actually,
		
00:24:19 --> 00:24:24
			it has a significant interest in the principle,
		
00:24:24 --> 00:24:26
			fundamental human binary of the masculine and the
		
00:24:26 --> 00:24:28
			feminine, which in the Chinese tradition kind of
		
00:24:28 --> 00:24:30
			determines the warp and woof of the universe.
		
00:24:31 --> 00:24:33
			Which also, if you look at Sachiko Murata's
		
00:24:33 --> 00:24:36
			book, The Tao of Islam, is closely paralleled
		
00:24:36 --> 00:24:43
			by Jalal, Jamal, masculine, feminine equivalences in the
		
00:24:43 --> 00:24:44
			sacred symbolism of Islam.
		
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47
			So I'd like to read more of that
		
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50
			because it's a very good way of explaining
		
00:24:50 --> 00:24:53
			the idea of the genders as complementary and
		
00:24:53 --> 00:24:57
			equal in difference, distance, closeness, the blow, the
		
00:24:57 --> 00:24:57
			embrace.
		
00:24:59 --> 00:25:03
			Okay, so towards the end, he moves into
		
00:25:03 --> 00:25:06
			what we would say the inward ethic of
		
00:25:06 --> 00:25:07
			war.
		
00:25:07 --> 00:25:10
			So the angry man, the vengeful man, is
		
00:25:10 --> 00:25:12
			the one who's going to fail spiritually as
		
00:25:12 --> 00:25:13
			well as on the field of battle.
		
00:25:14 --> 00:25:15
			That's like some of the modern Muslims, so
		
00:25:15 --> 00:25:17
			-called jihadis, who are just full of anger
		
00:25:17 --> 00:25:19
			and revenge and resentment and they want to
		
00:25:19 --> 00:25:21
			humiliate the enemy.
		
00:25:21 --> 00:25:23
			That's the opposite of this Tao of war.
		
00:25:26 --> 00:25:27
			So listen to this.
		
00:25:27 --> 00:25:29
			The sage Abu Madian says, when you see
		
00:25:29 --> 00:25:32
			a deficiency in another, know you can perceive
		
00:25:32 --> 00:25:34
			it only because it's already in you.
		
00:25:34 --> 00:25:37
			I wish we'd remember that.
		
00:25:37 --> 00:25:39
			So do not look down on others but
		
00:25:39 --> 00:25:42
			have humility and be grateful the ground of
		
00:25:42 --> 00:25:45
			all being manifests it in others and not
		
00:25:45 --> 00:25:46
			in yourself.
		
00:25:47 --> 00:25:50
			The martial artist protects the inward state by
		
00:25:50 --> 00:25:51
			avoiding fools.
		
00:25:52 --> 00:25:54
			When apes enter the library, they seldom learn
		
00:25:54 --> 00:25:56
			to read and often make the library a
		
00:25:56 --> 00:25:56
			zoo.
		
00:25:59 --> 00:26:00
			Why argue with a fool who has practiced
		
00:26:00 --> 00:26:01
			in being foolish?
		
00:26:02 --> 00:26:04
			Are you too practiced in dealing with fools?
		
00:26:04 --> 00:26:06
			If so, you wasted your time.
		
00:26:07 --> 00:26:09
			If not, do not waste your time further.
		
00:26:10 --> 00:26:11
			So there are these very nice kind of
		
00:26:11 --> 00:26:15
			moralizing but not pedantic aphorisms.
		
00:26:19 --> 00:26:21
			It's not so easy if you're in the
		
00:26:21 --> 00:26:25
			West to access the Islamic traditions of Chinese
		
00:26:25 --> 00:26:28
			martial arts, but many of the great practitioners
		
00:26:28 --> 00:26:31
			of Wushu were always Muslim masters.
		
00:26:32 --> 00:26:36
			Yang Ping, for instance, who died 50 years
		
00:26:36 --> 00:26:39
			ago now, was one of the great Wushu
		
00:26:39 --> 00:26:42
			practitioners and he had thousands of students and
		
00:26:42 --> 00:26:44
			he was famous for when he was exercising,
		
00:26:44 --> 00:26:47
			which he did by moving certain rocks, he
		
00:26:47 --> 00:26:48
			would always recite the Quran.
		
00:26:50 --> 00:26:54
			It's integrated into the Islamic modality of Chinese
		
00:26:54 --> 00:26:57
			spirituality and there are specifically Islamic forms of
		
00:26:57 --> 00:27:00
			Chinese martial arts which you won't get at
		
00:27:00 --> 00:27:02
			your local community center on a Saturday evening,
		
00:27:03 --> 00:27:03
			I'm afraid.
		
00:27:03 --> 00:27:06
			They've not really been imported into the West
		
00:27:06 --> 00:27:08
			and of course the Cultural Revolution in China
		
00:27:08 --> 00:27:09
			has put paid to a lot of those
		
00:27:09 --> 00:27:14
			the places where those things were taught.
		
00:27:14 --> 00:27:17
			But if you can, find a spiritual master
		
00:27:17 --> 00:27:22
			who is also a practitioner of Wushu martial
		
00:27:22 --> 00:27:24
			arts, so that as well as doing the
		
00:27:24 --> 00:27:27
			exercises and learning the throws and the grapplings,
		
00:27:27 --> 00:27:30
			you're actually grappling with yourself at the same
		
00:27:30 --> 00:27:32
			time, which is part of the integrated spirituality,
		
00:27:33 --> 00:27:35
			the way of war and the way of
		
00:27:35 --> 00:27:38
			Futuwa, which is axiomatic in the prophetic way.
		
00:27:39 --> 00:27:42
			So I enjoyed that, but we must move
		
00:27:42 --> 00:27:42
			on.
		
00:27:43 --> 00:27:45
			Pick number four for this year.
		
00:27:46 --> 00:27:49
			This is Ron Reeves and Yahya Burt's nice
		
00:27:49 --> 00:27:52
			edition of the collected poems of Abdullah Quilliam.
		
00:27:54 --> 00:27:56
			Versatile man, we think of him as the
		
00:27:56 --> 00:27:58
			mosque builder, the one who established the first
		
00:27:58 --> 00:28:00
			proper Muslim mosque in the UK and Liverpool,
		
00:28:01 --> 00:28:05
			whenever it was, 1889, Brown Terrace, and the
		
00:28:05 --> 00:28:06
			one who is really a kind of activist,
		
00:28:07 --> 00:28:09
			a publisher of the first Muslim newspapers in
		
00:28:09 --> 00:28:14
			England, the Islamic world and the present, and
		
00:28:14 --> 00:28:16
			very active in Dawa in his community, which
		
00:28:16 --> 00:28:20
			numbered several hundred by the time it abruptly
		
00:28:20 --> 00:28:22
			really had to shut up in 1908.
		
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27
			Also his closeness to the Ottoman ruler, Sultan
		
00:28:27 --> 00:28:31
			Abdul Hamid, he was really a polymath.
		
00:28:32 --> 00:28:35
			If you go through the pages of his
		
00:28:35 --> 00:28:38
			newspaper, you'll find that in true Victorian style,
		
00:28:38 --> 00:28:39
			there's poetry all over the place.
		
00:28:40 --> 00:28:43
			Not much poetry in modern newspapers, which is
		
00:28:43 --> 00:28:43
			interesting.
		
00:28:44 --> 00:28:47
			They still have poetry in newspapers in the
		
00:28:47 --> 00:28:50
			Arab world, I've noticed almost every day, but
		
00:28:50 --> 00:28:53
			not really in the Times or the Telegraph.
		
00:28:53 --> 00:28:56
			It's just not mainstream culture any longer.
		
00:28:56 --> 00:28:58
			But he's Victorian as well as Islamic.
		
00:28:58 --> 00:29:00
			And one of the things that I found
		
00:29:00 --> 00:29:03
			interesting about Quilliam's poetry, and this does really
		
00:29:03 --> 00:29:06
			seem to be a very good attempt really
		
00:29:06 --> 00:29:08
			to put all of his poetry together, even
		
00:29:08 --> 00:29:10
			though it was scattered to the winds, particularly
		
00:29:10 --> 00:29:15
			after his disappearance in 1908, and his reinvention
		
00:29:15 --> 00:29:19
			as the mysterious Dr. Marcel-Henri Léon, in
		
00:29:19 --> 00:29:22
			kind of disguise, returned to England, became an
		
00:29:22 --> 00:29:28
			expert on influenza, and very idiosyncratic personality in
		
00:29:28 --> 00:29:31
			many ways, although it's certainly the same soul
		
00:29:31 --> 00:29:32
			at work.
		
00:29:34 --> 00:29:35
			But the way in which he puts together
		
00:29:35 --> 00:29:40
			the sometimes a little bit moralizing and insistent
		
00:29:40 --> 00:29:44
			rhyming of the kind of Browning or Tennyson
		
00:29:44 --> 00:29:48
			generation, and subsequently, it's definitely not the kind
		
00:29:48 --> 00:29:51
			of Swinburne cynicism.
		
00:29:52 --> 00:29:55
			It's very kind of almost empire building, and
		
00:29:55 --> 00:29:56
			it's sort of stiff upper lip.
		
00:29:57 --> 00:29:59
			So it's quite Victorian in its kind of
		
00:29:59 --> 00:30:06
			rather moralizing lessons about hard work, and pulling
		
00:30:06 --> 00:30:09
			your socks up, and not being downcast by
		
00:30:09 --> 00:30:11
			the tribulations of life.
		
00:30:11 --> 00:30:15
			And that doesn't really coincide particularly well with
		
00:30:15 --> 00:30:18
			modern rather more chill sensibilities, I suppose.
		
00:30:19 --> 00:30:23
			Sometimes it falls rather in a rather difficult
		
00:30:23 --> 00:30:25
			way on contemporary ears.
		
00:30:27 --> 00:30:30
			But a number of things come out.
		
00:30:30 --> 00:30:32
			One is that this founder of British Islam,
		
00:30:32 --> 00:30:37
			Sheikh al-Islam Abdullah Quilliam Bay, the representative
		
00:30:37 --> 00:30:40
			of the Khalifa in Britain, in a rather
		
00:30:40 --> 00:30:45
			diminutive British Ummah in the 1890s and beginning
		
00:30:45 --> 00:30:49
			of the 20th century, was really quite sort
		
00:30:49 --> 00:30:52
			of patriotic, and very involved with the conservation
		
00:30:52 --> 00:30:55
			of the antiquities, and the heritage, and the
		
00:30:55 --> 00:30:58
			landscape, and the flora and fauna of the
		
00:30:58 --> 00:30:58
			British Isles.
		
00:30:58 --> 00:31:02
			It's a very kind of nature loving poetry
		
00:31:02 --> 00:31:07
			in the Victorian sense, but he's clearly sees
		
00:31:07 --> 00:31:09
			it as fitting in with his Islamic loyalty.
		
00:31:10 --> 00:31:12
			The song for Deir Morna, that's the Isle
		
00:31:12 --> 00:31:14
			of Man, a jubilant song, huzzah for the
		
00:31:14 --> 00:31:15
			little Manx nation.
		
00:31:16 --> 00:31:17
			So cheer loud and long, full hearted and
		
00:31:17 --> 00:31:20
			strong, ye Manx men of every station.
		
00:31:20 --> 00:31:22
			For land of the Glen, of Cushag and
		
00:31:22 --> 00:31:24
			Wren, of mountain of Vale, and of Heather.
		
00:31:24 --> 00:31:26
			Health to the women, good luck to the
		
00:31:26 --> 00:31:27
			men, of the Island of Morna forever.
		
00:31:28 --> 00:31:30
			So this is a kind of pushback against
		
00:31:30 --> 00:31:35
			the kind of right-wing, pharaogist narrative that
		
00:31:35 --> 00:31:39
			Muslimness and Britishness can't really go together.
		
00:31:40 --> 00:31:43
			He's absolutely kind of patriotic, and even patriotic
		
00:31:43 --> 00:31:45
			for the Isle of Man, which is one
		
00:31:45 --> 00:31:47
			of the more kind of diminutive and out
		
00:31:47 --> 00:31:50
			of the way oddball corners of the British
		
00:31:50 --> 00:31:51
			Isles.
		
00:31:51 --> 00:31:53
			He's very located in his local loyalties and
		
00:31:53 --> 00:31:56
			patriotism, but he's also the head of the
		
00:31:56 --> 00:31:57
			Muslim religion in England.
		
00:31:57 --> 00:31:59
			It's interesting that the story of the British
		
00:31:59 --> 00:32:02
			Ummah should have got underway in that way.
		
00:32:04 --> 00:32:07
			Another thing I liked is that one of
		
00:32:07 --> 00:32:11
			the many enigmas has been the publication, apparently
		
00:32:11 --> 00:32:14
			through his auspices, quite late in his life,
		
00:32:14 --> 00:32:20
			of the poetry of a certain Sheikh Abdullah
		
00:32:20 --> 00:32:26
			Harun, or Sheikh Harun Abdullah, who he presents,
		
00:32:26 --> 00:32:28
			and this is really the only volume of
		
00:32:28 --> 00:32:31
			poetry that Quilliam brought about, whose publication Quilliam
		
00:32:31 --> 00:32:35
			brought about in his lifetime, presents itself as
		
00:32:35 --> 00:32:38
			the poetry of a Turkish Sufi Sheikh, of
		
00:32:38 --> 00:32:45
			the Mevlevi tradition, lamenting a woman called Habiba,
		
00:32:46 --> 00:32:48
			who seems to be a kind of euphemism
		
00:32:48 --> 00:32:50
			for the lost divine beloved in places.
		
00:32:51 --> 00:32:53
			But it's pretty clear in the introduction to
		
00:32:53 --> 00:32:56
			this volume, I think it's persuasive, that actually
		
00:32:56 --> 00:32:58
			there never was a Sheikh Harun Abdullah, and
		
00:32:58 --> 00:33:00
			that it was Quilliam all along, just using
		
00:33:00 --> 00:33:02
			a mahlas, or a kind of pen name,
		
00:33:03 --> 00:33:06
			but writing this time in a much more
		
00:33:06 --> 00:33:07
			recognisably Ottoman vein.
		
00:33:07 --> 00:33:09
			He'd spent more time in the Ottoman Empire,
		
00:33:09 --> 00:33:11
			his Turkish had become better.
		
00:33:11 --> 00:33:14
			So here we find not the kind of
		
00:33:14 --> 00:33:20
			Omar Khayyam playing with Victorian romantic sensibilities and
		
00:33:20 --> 00:33:24
			distorting the Sufi message of love in the
		
00:33:24 --> 00:33:27
			process, turning everything into a kind of hedonistic
		
00:33:27 --> 00:33:29
			pre-Raphaelite day by the river.
		
00:33:30 --> 00:33:34
			Instead this feels a little bit like what
		
00:33:34 --> 00:33:37
			an actual Mevlevi Sheikh might have used the
		
00:33:37 --> 00:33:38
			English language for.
		
00:33:40 --> 00:33:41
			So here's just an example.
		
00:33:45 --> 00:33:50
			This poem begins with the Qur'anic passage
		
00:33:50 --> 00:33:55
			in Surah Yusuf, God invites you to the
		
00:33:55 --> 00:33:56
			dwelling of peace.
		
00:33:57 --> 00:33:59
			Grant thou, O Allah, this my prayer upon
		
00:33:59 --> 00:34:02
			the earth, that everywhere mankind may with each
		
00:34:02 --> 00:34:04
			other bear and lead a peaceful life.
		
00:34:04 --> 00:34:06
			That they may truly Islam know, more like
		
00:34:06 --> 00:34:09
			thy prophet daily grow, and live together here
		
00:34:09 --> 00:34:11
			below in love and not in strife.
		
00:34:11 --> 00:34:15
			That's kind of moralising and a bit like
		
00:34:15 --> 00:34:15
			a hymn.
		
00:34:16 --> 00:34:19
			Then elsewhere, even though Quilliam wasn't really a
		
00:34:19 --> 00:34:23
			profound thinker or a metaphysician, you get stuff
		
00:34:23 --> 00:34:24
			like this.
		
00:34:25 --> 00:34:28
			Come, man, and contemplate upon thyself and one
		
00:34:28 --> 00:34:31
			who was and ever is, whose day will
		
00:34:31 --> 00:34:32
			ne'er be done.
		
00:34:32 --> 00:34:35
			Steadfast for truth seek thou, and seek till
		
00:34:35 --> 00:34:37
			it appear, and know ye that the truth
		
00:34:37 --> 00:34:38
			no rival hath nor peer.
		
00:34:39 --> 00:34:42
			Seek thou within, seek thou without, seek thou
		
00:34:42 --> 00:34:44
			all way, till in thy very soul doth
		
00:34:44 --> 00:34:46
			come its burning ray.
		
00:34:47 --> 00:34:48
			How foolish be the man who on a
		
00:34:48 --> 00:34:51
			darksome night doth seek to find the sun
		
00:34:51 --> 00:34:53
			by aid of candlelight, but greater fool be
		
00:34:53 --> 00:34:56
			he who in the light of day seeks
		
00:34:56 --> 00:34:58
			for the midday sun by aid of torch's
		
00:34:58 --> 00:35:01
			ray, etc.
		
00:35:01 --> 00:35:05
			So what he's trying to do in his
		
00:35:05 --> 00:35:09
			characteristically fearless way is to use the English
		
00:35:09 --> 00:35:12
			language as a native vehicle for the conveying
		
00:35:12 --> 00:35:15
			of a kind of deeper, not just moralising,
		
00:35:15 --> 00:35:18
			but Islamic metaphysical sense of the world as
		
00:35:18 --> 00:35:21
			the veil of reality and light casting shadows,
		
00:35:21 --> 00:35:24
			characteristically late Navlavi sense.
		
00:35:26 --> 00:35:27
			And probably this is the first time when
		
00:35:27 --> 00:35:30
			the English language was the subject of a
		
00:35:30 --> 00:35:35
			serious attempt to convey deeper Islamic meanings, and
		
00:35:35 --> 00:35:41
			even though it's not great poetry, it shows
		
00:35:41 --> 00:35:43
			the capacity, I think, of the English language
		
00:35:43 --> 00:35:46
			to carry Islamic meanings.
		
00:35:46 --> 00:35:50
			It's more successful than recent Islamic poetry has
		
00:35:50 --> 00:35:50
			been.
		
00:35:51 --> 00:35:54
			Anyway, time is short, so my final pick
		
00:35:54 --> 00:35:58
			for this year is a hiking manual, not
		
00:35:58 --> 00:36:04
			literature at all, Via Dinarica by Tim Clancy,
		
00:36:05 --> 00:36:08
			and it's a BRAT trekking guide.
		
00:36:09 --> 00:36:12
			Hiking the White Trail in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
		
00:36:12 --> 00:36:15
			This is the first kind of detailed trekking
		
00:36:15 --> 00:36:18
			guide that has maps and pictures and information
		
00:36:18 --> 00:36:20
			on where to stay and where to get
		
00:36:20 --> 00:36:25
			a meal, that I've seen that actually deals
		
00:36:25 --> 00:36:26
			with Muslim Europe.
		
00:36:28 --> 00:36:30
			And hiking is one of the things I
		
00:36:30 --> 00:36:32
			enjoy, and I've actually done bits of this
		
00:36:32 --> 00:36:38
			long-distance footpath in Bosnia.
		
00:36:38 --> 00:36:40
			Usually it would take two weeks, I guess,
		
00:36:41 --> 00:36:43
			to do the whole thing end-to-end.
		
00:36:44 --> 00:36:48
			327 kilometres across Bosnia from left to right.
		
00:36:50 --> 00:36:53
			There are hiking trails in other Muslim parts
		
00:36:53 --> 00:36:56
			of Europe, in Albania, apparently there's some in
		
00:36:56 --> 00:36:58
			Circassia, the Caucasus.
		
00:36:59 --> 00:37:02
			There's plenty in southern Spain, but of course
		
00:37:02 --> 00:37:08
			there you're seeing villages with ladies curing ham
		
00:37:08 --> 00:37:10
			and churches that happen to face the Qibla,
		
00:37:10 --> 00:37:12
			and it's all a bit kind of post
		
00:37:12 --> 00:37:14
			-ethnic cleansing and rather depressive.
		
00:37:15 --> 00:37:17
			But Bosnia of course still has a living,
		
00:37:17 --> 00:37:21
			surviving Muslim community, despite everything that they've been
		
00:37:21 --> 00:37:21
			through.
		
00:37:22 --> 00:37:24
			So it's a kind of hike that enables
		
00:37:24 --> 00:37:28
			you to cross the boundary between firstly the
		
00:37:28 --> 00:37:33
			Catholic world, the Croat world, into the Islamic
		
00:37:33 --> 00:37:36
			world, central Bosnia, and then towards the end,
		
00:37:37 --> 00:37:42
			in Republika Srpska, along the Serbian border, to
		
00:37:42 --> 00:37:45
			experience the Orthodox world.
		
00:37:46 --> 00:37:48
			Bosnia is this unique meeting place of the
		
00:37:48 --> 00:37:51
			three great religious traditions of Europe.
		
00:37:53 --> 00:37:56
			So you start off in the Central Park,
		
00:37:57 --> 00:38:01
			Vidinje, in the Croat, far west of the
		
00:38:01 --> 00:38:05
			country, where the landscape's very Mediterranean.
		
00:38:06 --> 00:38:09
			Throughout the route it's basically limestone hills.
		
00:38:09 --> 00:38:10
			This is the Dinaric Alps.
		
00:38:11 --> 00:38:12
			If you've been to the Dolomites, you'll more
		
00:38:12 --> 00:38:13
			or less have a sense of what to
		
00:38:13 --> 00:38:14
			expect.
		
00:38:14 --> 00:38:15
			Although it's not as high as the Dolomites,
		
00:38:15 --> 00:38:16
			it goes up to about two and a
		
00:38:16 --> 00:38:17
			half thousand metres.
		
00:38:18 --> 00:38:19
			The path doesn't go right up to the
		
00:38:19 --> 00:38:20
			high summits.
		
00:38:20 --> 00:38:23
			It's kind of not really very difficult, I
		
00:38:23 --> 00:38:23
			would say.
		
00:38:23 --> 00:38:27
			It's not kind of hanging, suspended over a
		
00:38:27 --> 00:38:27
			precipice.
		
00:38:29 --> 00:38:30
			It's manageable.
		
00:38:31 --> 00:38:34
			But two and a half thousand metres is
		
00:38:34 --> 00:38:35
			quite respectable.
		
00:38:35 --> 00:38:39
			And as you move from the karst limestone
		
00:38:39 --> 00:38:47
			pavements of western Herzegovina, and then towards central
		
00:38:47 --> 00:38:49
			Bosnia, the landscape changes.
		
00:38:49 --> 00:38:50
			You know that you're in central Europe.
		
00:38:50 --> 00:38:52
			This is an Alpine landscape.
		
00:38:52 --> 00:38:55
			And of course, partly because the population of
		
00:38:55 --> 00:38:56
			Bosnia has gone down by about a million
		
00:38:56 --> 00:38:57
			since the war.
		
00:38:58 --> 00:38:59
			A lot of the young people have left.
		
00:38:59 --> 00:39:01
			People died in the war, of course.
		
00:39:02 --> 00:39:04
			But still, the villages are populated.
		
00:39:05 --> 00:39:07
			Unlike a lot of places in Spain, Italy,
		
00:39:08 --> 00:39:09
			Russia now, where there's just nobody in the
		
00:39:09 --> 00:39:10
			countryside any longer.
		
00:39:10 --> 00:39:12
			Everybody's gone or died.
		
00:39:12 --> 00:39:15
			Bosnia, the countryside is still populated.
		
00:39:15 --> 00:39:18
			Partly because they can't afford automation.
		
00:39:19 --> 00:39:20
			Partly because it's just a very out-of
		
00:39:20 --> 00:39:21
			-the-way place.
		
00:39:22 --> 00:39:25
			And it's perhaps the last place in Europe
		
00:39:25 --> 00:39:27
			where you can still find villages that are
		
00:39:27 --> 00:39:28
			really unspoilt.
		
00:39:29 --> 00:39:33
			Whether it's the traditional hospitality, where they have
		
00:39:33 --> 00:39:35
			the tradition of in the summertime in the
		
00:39:35 --> 00:39:38
			village that's too poor to afford to build
		
00:39:38 --> 00:39:42
			a mosque, they have a square area of
		
00:39:42 --> 00:39:44
			lawn that they keep very short.
		
00:39:44 --> 00:39:45
			And people just pray their Jumu'ah on
		
00:39:45 --> 00:39:46
			that lawn.
		
00:39:46 --> 00:39:48
			There's a fence around it to stop animals
		
00:39:48 --> 00:39:49
			straying into it.
		
00:39:49 --> 00:39:50
			And that's their mosque.
		
00:39:52 --> 00:39:54
			And I've been to some of these villages
		
00:39:54 --> 00:39:57
			and they genuinely give you a sense of
		
00:39:57 --> 00:40:00
			the integrity and the warmth and the kinship
		
00:40:00 --> 00:40:03
			of traditional village communities.
		
00:40:05 --> 00:40:08
			And it goes through some important places like
		
00:40:08 --> 00:40:10
			Umuljani, which is perhaps the most beautiful valley
		
00:40:10 --> 00:40:11
			in Bosnia.
		
00:40:11 --> 00:40:13
			There's a dragon there.
		
00:40:13 --> 00:40:14
			I've seen the dragon.
		
00:40:15 --> 00:40:16
			It's been turned to stone, but it still
		
00:40:16 --> 00:40:17
			looks like a dragon.
		
00:40:17 --> 00:40:19
			And people will tell you the story of
		
00:40:19 --> 00:40:20
			how the Imam turned it into stone.
		
00:40:21 --> 00:40:24
			And Umuljani also has Bosnia's oldest mosque.
		
00:40:24 --> 00:40:25
			They say it's the oldest mosque.
		
00:40:26 --> 00:40:29
			It doesn't have a pencil type of Ottoman
		
00:40:29 --> 00:40:30
			minaret.
		
00:40:30 --> 00:40:32
			It has something that's a bit more like
		
00:40:32 --> 00:40:37
			a kind of, how would you describe it?
		
00:40:37 --> 00:40:39
			More like a steeple, but with a rounded
		
00:40:39 --> 00:40:39
			top.
		
00:40:39 --> 00:40:42
			Very, very ancient, very ancient flagstone.
		
00:40:42 --> 00:40:44
			Been messed around with a little bit, but
		
00:40:44 --> 00:40:45
			you still get a sense that this is
		
00:40:45 --> 00:40:47
			really out of the way.
		
00:40:47 --> 00:40:50
			And of course, wildlife.
		
00:40:51 --> 00:40:53
			The wolf is still there.
		
00:40:53 --> 00:40:57
			The bear, the lynx, a lot more lynx
		
00:40:57 --> 00:40:59
			than there are left in Spain because it's
		
00:40:59 --> 00:41:00
			just out of the way.
		
00:41:01 --> 00:41:03
			Eagles, one of the last places in Europe
		
00:41:03 --> 00:41:04
			where you'll see a lot of eagles.
		
00:41:06 --> 00:41:08
			And you can stray off the path in
		
00:41:08 --> 00:41:10
			different directions to see various Muslim sites like
		
00:41:10 --> 00:41:11
			Ayvatovica.
		
00:41:11 --> 00:41:13
			If you go at the season for Ayvatovica,
		
00:41:13 --> 00:41:15
			which is one of Bosnia's big religious festivals,
		
00:41:15 --> 00:41:17
			the mufti goes, people on the horses and
		
00:41:17 --> 00:41:19
			banging drums, wonderful thing.
		
00:41:20 --> 00:41:23
			That's not so far from this footpath.
		
00:41:24 --> 00:41:26
			Bosnia is not an enormous country anyway.
		
00:41:27 --> 00:41:30
			And then you come out after moving through
		
00:41:30 --> 00:41:33
			the high mountains to the south of Sarajevo
		
00:41:33 --> 00:41:36
			into Republika Srpska and it stops more or
		
00:41:36 --> 00:41:38
			less at the Serbian border and the river
		
00:41:38 --> 00:41:39
			Drina.
		
00:41:40 --> 00:41:44
			So yeah, which is another national park, Sutileska
		
00:41:44 --> 00:41:46
			National Park, which is in the Republic of
		
00:41:46 --> 00:41:46
			Srpska.
		
00:41:46 --> 00:41:49
			So for those who are of a strenuous
		
00:41:49 --> 00:41:52
			disposition and wish to contemplate God's signs in
		
00:41:52 --> 00:41:54
			nature, Bosnia is really very beautiful.
		
00:41:56 --> 00:41:58
			You have to take certain precautions.
		
00:41:59 --> 00:42:02
			There's still five million landmines lying around, but
		
00:42:02 --> 00:42:06
			they're in certain known areas and there aren't
		
00:42:06 --> 00:42:09
			any mine fields near this path.
		
00:42:09 --> 00:42:11
			They've been quite careful.
		
00:42:11 --> 00:42:15
			It's a properly accredited long-distance footpath, so
		
00:42:15 --> 00:42:20
			it's properly signposted, there's flashes everywhere, there's a
		
00:42:20 --> 00:42:22
			GPS system so you can't really get lost
		
00:42:22 --> 00:42:23
			even in the high mountains.
		
00:42:24 --> 00:42:25
			Obviously, if you're up above 2,000 metres
		
00:42:25 --> 00:42:27
			or so, the possibility is that the weather
		
00:42:27 --> 00:42:29
			will change rapidly, so you have to know
		
00:42:29 --> 00:42:33
			what you're doing with proper boots and equipment
		
00:42:33 --> 00:42:35
			and thermal blankets and so forth to deal
		
00:42:35 --> 00:42:37
			with sudden changes in temperature.
		
00:42:37 --> 00:42:41
			It does get really high, but one of
		
00:42:41 --> 00:42:42
			the most beautiful places in Europe is going
		
00:42:42 --> 00:42:45
			to the little Kafana, the Bosnian cafe, up
		
00:42:45 --> 00:42:49
			above Umuljani, this huge beautiful green valley with
		
00:42:49 --> 00:42:50
			the pine trees all around it.
		
00:42:50 --> 00:42:54
			In the Kafana, they serve sweet tea, of
		
00:42:54 --> 00:42:57
			course, and the famous Bosnian kajmak, which is
		
00:42:57 --> 00:42:59
			a kind of rich cream which you eat
		
00:42:59 --> 00:43:01
			with bread.
		
00:43:01 --> 00:43:04
			It's not something that a dietician necessarily would
		
00:43:04 --> 00:43:07
			recommend every day, but it's a wonderful experience
		
00:43:07 --> 00:43:09
			of the food of the land.
		
00:43:10 --> 00:43:14
			This is, I would say, a very good
		
00:43:14 --> 00:43:18
			example of the hiking trail guide, because it's
		
00:43:18 --> 00:43:21
			got very good large-scale maps.
		
00:43:21 --> 00:43:23
			It talks about where you can swim, where
		
00:43:23 --> 00:43:25
			you shouldn't swim, what to look out for,
		
00:43:25 --> 00:43:28
			what to see, lots of information on flora
		
00:43:28 --> 00:43:33
			and fauna, tree types, rare endangered species, tour
		
00:43:33 --> 00:43:35
			operators, how to deal with...
		
00:43:35 --> 00:43:39
			well, it's worthwhile, even if you don't go
		
00:43:39 --> 00:43:42
			on the trail, just reading the book is
		
00:43:42 --> 00:43:42
			a breath of fresh air.
		
00:43:44 --> 00:43:46
			So alhamdulillah, that brings us to the end
		
00:43:46 --> 00:43:50
			of my meandering through the rather disparate reading
		
00:43:50 --> 00:43:51
			that I've been doing of late.
		
00:43:53 --> 00:43:54
			I hope there's been some benefit in it,
		
00:43:55 --> 00:43:56
			and insha'Allah, we ask Allah subhanahu wa
		
00:43:56 --> 00:43:58
			ta'ala to guide us through these dark
		
00:43:58 --> 00:44:00
			months and not make them dark months of
		
00:44:00 --> 00:44:02
			the soul, and insha'Allah bring us to
		
00:44:02 --> 00:44:05
			the springtime of hearts in his good time,
		
00:44:05 --> 00:44:07
			with his wisdom and compassion, insha'Allah.
		
00:44:08 --> 00:44:10
			Barakallahu feekum, wa al'afu minkum, wa salamu
		
00:44:10 --> 00:44:12
			alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh.