At the end of the summer last year, we spent our days between visits to a clinic in Jihangir, Istanbul. While its views over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn beyond were stunning, I was not too keen on those streets. In this secular quarter and haunt of expats, wine shops outnumbered grocery stores. In the rising heat there was often an unpleasant smell, for the area’s pet owners would not clean up after them. These streets had a continental European feeling to them and indeed conversations in French, German and English were often within earshot. Pehaps Jihangir’s most famous resident is the writer, Orhan Pamuk, whose apartment I always passed on my way to the mosque. My heart in Istanbul lies in a place inland called Gunesli – it is not beautiful, it does not have grand views and its residents are far from rich – but in its huge mosque in its centre into which pour local shop keepers for every prayer, there is a sense of iman. Jihangir is a place without spirit, a pale imitation of a Parisian street, losing itself in Efes Pilsner.
But on Fridays, a beacon lights on that hillside overlooking the Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea. The adhan calling me from Jihangir’s eroding minarets, I would wander down the road to join my jamat. Nobody ever looked at me and stared, for in this land of different hues, nothing indicated that I was an Englishman. Sitting on the carpet, the sun streaming through the open windows, the voices of foghorns down on the water below would greet us. Seeing young men entering in droves through the antique doors was a true delight, having recently returned from Artvin Province where the toothless, grey-haired ones dominated the mosques, though even they were small in number. These youthful faces were not locals, but came here for employment: my visits for Asr and Maghrib met with an elderly jamat numbering no more than five.
With every period of darkness, when my life seems so distant from the Prophetic ideal, I recall that beacon on the hillside. In the midst of despair there can still be light. And where did that beacon lead me? Warmed by dhikr after jummah, refreshed and renewed, we packed up and moved on to Gunesli, where salams are exchanged on its streets.
Here are some words from a great Muslim of the past that describe exactly what is happening with me. Last week I made a resolve and already I have slipped. And that argument with my nafs goes on, each day with another twist. That novel of mine is one of the chains. I know what I must do, but my attachment remains strong, even if for a while I think I am moving on.
“Still a prey to uncertainty, one day I decided to leave Baghdad and to give up everything; the next day I gave up my resolution. I advanced one step and immediately relapsed. In the morning I was sincerely resolved only to occupy myself with the future life; in the evening a crowd of carnal thoughts assailed and dispersed my resolutions. On the one side the world kept me bound to my post in the chains of covetousness, on the other side the voice of religion cried to me, “Up! Up! Thy life is nearing its end, and thou hast a long journey to make. All thy pretended knowledge is naught but falsehood and fantasy. If thou dost not think now of thy salvation, when wilt thou think of it? If thou dost not break thy chains today, when wilt thou break them?” Then my resolve was strengthened, I wished to give up all and fee; but the Tempter, returning to the attack, said, “You are suffering from a transitory feeling; don’t give way to it, for it will soon pass. If you obey it, if you give up this fine position, this honorable post exempt from trouble and rivalry, this seat of authority safe from attack, you will regret it later on without being able to recover it.”
These days I am repeatedly having a particular conversation with my nafs. It always goes something like this:
(more…)On Tuesday 9 July 1996, we flew from Dodoma at about 7.30 in the morning to Musoma, with a stop at Arusha to pick two other passengers up. Taking off from Arusha the surrounding landscape was filled with lush vegetation, including Banana Palms. Houses were round with cone-shaped thatched roofs, grouped in twos and threes amongst fields. Soon, a wider, scarcely populated and dry looking plain came within view. From our height, vast folds and ridges were clearly visible down below. We passed over what I presumed were volcanic craters and then past a huge volcanic mountain. The Serenghetti was invisible to us as we passed through heavy clouds above it, but closer to Musoma we could see Lake Victoria. Its vastness was even greater than I had imagined, as we swung around over a small section of it, ready to land at the airport.
Another of my uncles met us at the airport and drove us to his home. Later in the day, he took us to the diocese headquarters, where he worked, and met the Bishop of Mara, whose home we then visited for coffee in the evening. The Bishop’s home was very close to the shores of Lake Victoria and his family kept a cow and chickens out back. He seemed like a very good man, well suited to his role.
On Wednesday we went on Lake Victoria in a motor propelled fishing boat. Out there we saw such a diverse range of wildlife on the islands we encountered. Up on a tree-top we saw a pair of Fish Eagles with white heads and black bodies. Later we watched a Monitor Lizard sunning itself on a large rock by the water for a short time, before it disappeared off into some undergrowth. We saw hundreds of birds that looked like cormorants and we even watched a couple of shy monkies drinking at the lake side where the forest ended abruptly. Some of these islands were nothing more than huge boulders rising out of the lake, while others had a scattering of plant life, ranging from several varieties of grasses through to tall palms. Some islands still were almost entirely forested. In some places, fishermen had set up camp under rocks; in others, people were doing their washing by the lakeside.
On our return we went to visit the building site of my Uncle Les and Aunt Lyn’s new home, overlooking the lake. That evening we walked down the road to a hotel a few miles away for supper. We set off at six thirty, arrived at seven, but did not eat for over an hour and returned home just before ten. The culture shock experienced as we went inside felt unreal. In the heart of this modest neighbourhood was a marble floored hotel, with tinted glass windows, stainless steel chairs, Victorian style curtains and decorative wood carvings. After a delicious meal, they arranged transport to take us home. It had seemed like a strange development at first, but perhaps I had got too used to beans and rice, and baki soup. Perhaps I had just got used to concrete floors and fly-screen windows.
On Friday we spent the morning at a nursing home for babies, almost next door to the house that was being built for Lyn and Les. At any one time the home was looking after 30 children who had lost their mothers. Often the father would bring the child when his/her mother died in childbirth. The visit left me feeling sad one level, but at least the children seemed to be in good hands now. The buildings were very new and had good facilities, but there was concern that interest from those who were financially supporting the home would fade in time, as had happened in other places.
In the afternoon there was a celebration for my cousin’s first birthday and he was clearly happy to have even more attention than usual, with a few of his siblings’ young Tanzanian friends joining them for the party. Jelly and ice-cream seemed to be a strange concept for Tanzanian children, although they had no difficulty in gulping down glassed of Coca Cola, the international drink.
After a week in Musoma, we left at half past eleven on Saturday morning in the little MAF plane. The flight was quite turbulent due to the rising head of the midday air. Passing across the clear sky, we looked down on the Serenghetti with its scattered human settlements and over Lake Eyasi. After an uncomfortable landing back at Dodoma, we had lunch with a MAF employee before travelling on to Kongwa. It was good to return once more and I was glad to see ‘my bed’ again. Sunday, however, was my last full day there. I needed to have a good talk with my aunt and uncle who had accommodated me all those weeks, for they had noticed by anger and I had to assure them that I was not angry with them. I was not a happy fellow in general in those days for I seemed to slip easily into depression, but this anger was different somehow. I had all of this anger directed at the world, both from my experience here and as a result of listening to the news. The IRA had bombed a shopping centre in Manchester during my stay, a Tamil Tiger had blown herself up in Sri Lanka, news arrived of continuing sectarian abuse in Bosnia and these people reminded of the massacres in Rwanda only a few years before. I was angry too about being here now as a tourist. It was true that all of us had experienced much more of Tanzania than the average tourist would have since we were travelling far from the tourist trails. This was not four days on Safari in a National Park and three days at the beach, and so it was not fair that my anger seemed to fall on my family. But that anger remained because I just could not balance the conflicting sides of life.
Yet, although my anger was undoubtedly unpleasant for those around me, I felt soon afterwards that these were important emotions to experience. It was a learning process for me. Phyll advised me that we have to find a way of living at a comfortable level, knowing that there will always be conflicts between the two worlds: we have to live in a way that ensures that we stay healthy, she said, and in a way that makes us believe that life is worth living. She told me that some mission partners came out and tried to live along side the people as far as possible, but then their children would become ill and they would never return. She believed that a balance could be found, wherein it was possible to live in a way that the individual felt comfortable with. Being able to contribute in a positive way towards the community was perhaps better than trying to live just like the community, she felt. For my part, I felt that I would not accept this cultural divide as part of life at that point, believing that I needed the anger to keep my concern alive.
When I finally rested my head on my pillow that night, I could hear people singing, clapping and whooping their voices in the village. It sounded like a happy night for some people and although I did not know the real reason I pretended that they were wishing me a happy last night in this place. I praise the my undefined Lord for giving them such beautiful voices.
On Monday morning we left Kongwa at just after ten, travelling east towards Morgoro. We stopped to eat our packed lunch at the memorial site of Primeminister Sokonie, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1984, on this same stretch of road. When his car crashed on that straight stretch of road he had been investigating corruption in the government, and so rumours were rife. As a member of the Masai tribe, Masai people have started settling in the area ever since his death. As we sat there munching on our sandwiches, a Masai man appeared and stood still watching us. Shortly afterwards, more young, very tall Masai men joined him, one of them holding a black plastic radio close to her ear. Dressed in traditional black robes, they asked the other man where we were from and he replied ‘Uingereza.’ It was an African Safari in reverse.
We continued on towards the Mikumi National Park through Morogoro. When we first entered the park we saw the charred forest on either side of the road where there had recently been a bush fire and there were still clouds of black smoke rising over a hill in the distance. As we drove onwards, we encountered wild animals close to the roadside: deer, elephants, warthogs, zebras, giraffes and a lone gnu. Taking a path away from the main road at half-past four, we watched hippos bathing in a water-hole, giraffes in the bush and some huge birds called Ground Hornbills. In the evening we stayed at the Mikumi Health Centre, its guest wing established to recover costs for the Health Project.
On Tuesday 16 July, we arose before dawn and went out in John’s Land Rover into the heart of the magnificent landscape. As the sun began to rise in the east from behind the hills, a low mists hugging the ground, we saw zebras, giraffes, elephants, tommies, gnus and buffalo in great numbers. It was a really special time. We remained out there for three hours and then returned again after breakfast to see baboons playing on the plain near a lone gnu and others in a group under a tree.
Driving in a more forested area, amongst long grasses, the most numerous animal population we encountered however was that of the Tetsi fly, as they swarmed on the car and annoyed us when they got inside. The forested valleys were impressive, although we did not see any animals as we passed through them. Still, for the remainder of the day we saw many strange birds including a breed of eagle, some type of pelican and a colourful little bird called a Lilac-breasted Roller.
Late in the afternoon we drove into Morogoro for an overnight stop, staying at the Masuka Village Hotel. I was glad of a shower that I did not have to prime with a hand pump or improvise with a plastic jug. I just turned on the tap and let the water flow over me: what a luxury. I went to sleep that night to a less than tuneful frog chorus. The following morning we left Morogoro early and started on our way to Darussalam. The coastal city was as busy as ever and just as hot.
Arriving at the White Sands Beach Hotel, located beside the ocean, I was feeling uneasy again. The immense luxury contrasted once more with my experience up until then. On the one hand I knew that I should have been encouraged that the hotel was Tanzanian owned and thus our stay fed into the economy, but on the other I had those images from the villages in my mind. I knew that tourism was a resource that could be exploited for the benefit of the country, but still I felt uncomfortable. My cynicism back then was probably misplaced, for Tanzania had a target to receive 50,000 tourists each year by 1998, earning the economy 500 million US dollars every year.
During our stay, the hotel was hosting practices for ‘Miss Tanzania 1996’ and a conference on eradicating poverty. The staff were all very friendly. I would say shikamoo and they would reply. I had to apologise that my Swahili was not very good of course when they tried to engage me in conversation. And so they would chat in English instead. Those were happy memories for me. When I greeted them in their language they seemed to treat me quite affectionately. The Indian Ocean was warm and the wind was far from cold.
My seven weeks in that beautiful land came to an end on 19 July 1996. The Zairean band Wenge Musica BCBG was staying at the hotel that day in preparation for their tour of Tanzania. These band members all looked very cool, very rich and had the characteristics of any Western R & B group, with their close shave hairstyles and designer sunglasses. The restaurant was filled with businessmen at lunchtime; I could not help noticing that almost without exception Tanzanian businessmen were well built, not at all like the slim men in Kongwa. On that last day, I was walking around as if the world was about to end. Tanzania had felt very homely, as I had grown used to life there. I knew I was going to miss the country, despite those angry moments. Shikamoo was a blessing for me: it served that role that salam alaikum fulfils today.
At the door I greeted the doorman and then said goodbye. We drove out to the airport and checked in for our flight. My time in that beautiful yet so struggling country was over.
My journey to Tanzania on 1 June 1996 was the first time I had travelled abroad alone and I was apprehensive about the journey. When my plane touched down in Darussalam on a very warm winter’s evening there was some sense of relief, although I suffered from nerves which made my passage through customs uncomfortable. Sweating in the unexpected heat, I was greeted affectionately in the airport lobby by my Uncle John and Aunt Phyll who were happy to see me at last. That night we slept in the Catholic Secretariat beneath mosquito nets, the song of insects outside cheering my arrival.
Darussalam was bustling on Sunday morning, a scene far removed from the sleepy Sabbath days of suburban England. Warm conversation greeted our arrival in town, a Tanzanian at the telephone kiosk asking if we were German until he realised that he could engage Phyll with Swahili chit-chat. After a phone call home, we were soon on the road again, heading out of the coastal town in John’s white Land Rover. All along the edge of the potholed tarmac road, salesmen could be seen selling every conceivable ware: bananas, bricks, Coca Cola, clothes. Into the countryside, their numbers lessened, the stalls replaced by fields, homes and forest. Out here the vegetation was lush and green, revealing banana palms, coconut palms and even rice on the low river fed fields.
We stopped for lunch in Morogoro, 2000 feet above sea level, at the New Green Restaurant. Though there was a short rain shower during our stopover, the vegetation was not as fresh here as it had been towards the coast. The journey onwards was long, for we were heading far into the interior where the land was dry, the earth dusty and the plants pale in colour, but the smooth road afforded us some comfort. To our left and right, graceful mountains rose out of the plain, each one veiled beneath a layer of trees. Forty kilometres from our destination, we finally cut off the good road and took to a dirt track across Kongwa Ranch, passing through Kongwa town and then the village between it and St Philip’s Theological College. After a full day travelling, we arrived at our destination at six in the evening.
The Iona community (in whose company I lost my faith years earlier) out in the Hebrides Sea thousands of miles from here was famous for its African choruses: I used to love those atmospheric gatherings in the Abbey. Yet those Celtic renderings of Swahili verse paled now, as the native voices rose into the heavens from the evening service in the white-walled chapel. Those songs were my welcome to this college in the heart of Tanzania. I loved John and Phyll’s flat at the head of the road: its views were spectacular, while its architectural style appealed to me. I slept well that first night on the campus.
The following day was a national holiday in honour of the five hundred people who died in the MV Bukoba ferry disaster on 20 May. So many young students had died that day when the boat sank on Lake Victoria as they travelled homewards following the public examinations. All around there was a sense of mourning. It was a sad day, but at the time I considered it a blessing in a way: it gave me pause to reflect on our own approach to death. This was before the death of the Princess of Wales and that very public outpouring of grief, real or imagined. It seemed to me that death was not a taboo as it often seemed to be within our own culture: a taboo which seemed to leave behind so much pain as the consequences of loss and sorrow were hidden away. I wondered whether the source of this was a greater appreciation of life and death. In the afternoon a service was held in memory of the mother of one of the college workers, who had just died after suffering from Tuberculosis. In England in our era, we do not know of TB, polio or pandemic flu and the survival rate of children is good: and so death is perceived differently I believed. As the departed soul was remembered in the chapel, beautiful African hymns were drifting through the air once more.
I was getting used to life in that at first unfamiliar landscape, although it was not a life I had ever experienced before. Following the red soil paths around the college, I came across giant Baobab trees and Philippine Leucaena for the first time in my life. Wandering further, there was the national grid transformer, but it was not yet connected, so the private diesel-generated electricity came on at half-past six in the evening and went off three hours later. It quickly struck me how much we take for granted in our resource-on-demand culture. By my third day in that foreign land I was already feeling humbled.
Despite my own shyness, everyone I met seemed to be extremely friendly and kind. A young man called Yohana brought me his school exercise book one evening in an effort to help me grasp his Swahili tongue. Everyone I met on a personal level was welcoming and yet that paranoid discomfort remained. Travelling up to the capital, I interpreted faces and eyes in my own way, worrying about those glances from strangers. Dodoma was hot and dusty, its climate distinct from coastal Darussalam, just like Ankara compared to Istanbul. John was visiting the bishops at the Cathedral and so I spent the day wandering around the town with Phyll. In that suffocating heat, a chilled bottle of ginger beer was most welcome, but it did not set my mind at ease. I was a self-conscious visitor to that magnificent country in 1996. I was anxious about the European Colonial past and about how I would be perceived in that now independent land. What was I to make of the glances of the people I passed by? These were amongst my thoughts throughout my stay as a white-faced guest in a proud African state.
Friday 7 June was the last day of the semester and it ended with a service of Communion in the chapel. Stuttering with broken Swahili I found myself standing before the happy congregation with words of introduction. ‘Habari,’ I asked, what news?
‘Nzuri,’ came the chorused reply – good.
I went on to tell them with rehearsed lines that my name was Timotheo, I was from England and the nephew of the Principal. My pronunciation was clearly hilarious for there was laughter all about me as I went on. Still, the chapel filled with applause when I ended. With the arrival of the holidays, the students were clearly overjoyed, for they left the chapel in enthusiastic song, their swaying close to dancing. Left behind, it was a kind of boost for me: my shy insecurity had given way to a moment’s confidence and I felt a sense of self-satisfaction. Two days later I would repeat my wee speech in front of another congregation in a half-complete church in the village.
The following day I studied Swahili without break and finally came across some advice in my textbook which I wished I had encountered earlier:
In Tanzanian culture there are conventions about who is the first to speak. It is usually the person of lower status who greets the other person. A stranger entering a village should greet the villagers who will then welcome him. These are conventions that should be noted, for the visitor will feel unwanted because nobody speaks and everyone looks unwelcoming, likewise the villagers may misinterpret it and feel offended because he is wandering around in their territory without even having the decency to make himself known to them. It is important in Swahili culture to greet people properly. A smile or a mumbled word is not sufficient and it is considered rude to ignore people.
I had a lot to learn. Indeed, when I was caught making biscuits in the kitchen in the middle of the week it provoked a number of questions. This was woman’s work I quickly learned and, while my eccentricities might be tolerated here, I was told that I would be chased out of town in Musoma, where a man who enters the kitchen is considered the lowest of the low. Still, my detractors enjoyed the ginger cookies anyway when they settled on the cooling rack.
It seemed like I would never get used to being a member of an ethnic minority. Saturday 15 June was no exception. Receiving visitors from England, John had agreed to take them up to Mpwapwa in the college Toyota, which although just over the hills behind us, could only be reached via miles of potholed dirt roads around the range of hills. The distance was shorter than that between Kongwa and Dodoma, but the journey took twice as long. Fatigued by that rough drive, I felt miserable again once we arrived. As a stranger pulled on Phyll’s bag, some men sitting nearby laughing at the sight, a crowd of men at one end of the central building called out as we walked past. A little while later, the man who had grabbed Phyll’s bag returned and began shouting at us. We wazungu (Europeans) seemed to be unwelcome there and I was happy to return to the suffocating enclosure of our car. The experience left me feeling depressed, demeaned, rejected and threatened, and possibly for the first time in my life I discovered what it is like to be on the receiving end of racism, if only for an hour or so. On our way into town, it had seemed so pleasant – people smiled and waved and so I waved back – but as we went further through Mpwapwa and up towards the new Cathedral that was being built, my mind was on our return. The Cathedral looked impressive, with spectacular views over the plain, but I did not appreciate it after our passage through the market. My mindless depression dominated the magnificent view.
Yet for every encounter with strangers and my perception of it, my meeting with individuals seemed to throw doubt on my previous conclusions. Tuesday 18 June was a day of conversation, which in those days came as quite a shock given my frequent reversion to silence. From next door came the Rwandan sisters, intent on bringing more Swahili through my lips. I suppose my lack of words was quite an aberration in this land. After lunch I ventured down the road to the student accommodation closer to the chapel, where I met three trainee priests: Amon, Suleman and Mote. Mote Mgombe had excellent English and thus acted as an interpreter between Suleman and myself: Suleman explained that they had been expecting me to visit and that not visiting would usually be interpreted as a sign of hostility. Taking his obvious upset to heart, I found myself visiting almost every day after that. Although we were talking together in a mixture of Swahili and English, it did not stop us delving into unfamiliar territory, with Amon leading us into realms I had always considered taboo.
Amon was pale and not in particularly high spirits since he had just been circumcised. Although circumcision was not the norm in his tribe – and his operation was motivated by the love of a woman – the other students were bemused by my culture’s attitude towards it. At the time I was equally bemused by theirs. They told me that the government had recently passed a law to prevent female circumcision, which various tribes had previously justified on the grounds of tradition, religion and superstition. Some people, they told me, even suggested that it was necessary to suppress desires that lead women into prostitution: given my own cultural background this concept did not sit well with me and I ended up asking questions about equality and gender dominance, which did not find an answer immediately.
When our neighbours arrived, Amon and Edita began speaking in a language that did not sound like Swahili and turned out to be one of the 126 tribal tongues of the country. Against this backdrop, Mote was very keen on explaining why the existence of a unifying national language was so important. Even within each of the 126 different tribes, the individual languages were subdivided into multiple dialects, making natural conversation between different groups awkward.
After some time, Mote and I left Amon with the girls, wandering off to his room to continue our conversation there. He struck me as a very open minded and well read individual. Now that we had one another’s full attention, he wanted to take me up on the questions I had been asking earlier. He had no problem with the question I had asked, he told me, but the way I had asked it posed a problem. Tanzanian tribes were not unique, he said, in having defined traditional roles for men and women, but my worldview prevented me from accepting this. While Mote was able to approach the question from different angles, I found myself locked upon the only path I knew, adamant that these values transcended all boundaries of nation, race and class. So Mote talked about how women rose at five in the morning and worked through until ten at night, just to keep the home under control, but he neither praised this nor dismissed it outright. By contrast, I was convinced that with roles so rigidly defined that a man must stay away from home-making chores, an oppressive environment was in the making. Thus I ranted about women not being consulted in their futures, about how men make war and then sit and argue at the peace table. My views were not going to shift.
The following day, Edita sought my help with her English studies. Without a strong foundation in English grammar myself, I found it difficult to explain the rules of my native language. Swahili, by contrast, had structure at least, and Edita was the more successful teacher when she turned to advising me on my new tongue. In the afternoon I met with the students again along with one of Mote’s relatives. When this fellow had to depart, we walked with him part way towards his home, as was the tradition there. Then, returning to Mote’s room, we sat discussing music, since this seemed to be integrated into their whole existence.
In my presence they demonstrated how their fine choruses emerged, flowing from deep within their hearts. The result was moving song that made my spine tingle. Together they explained that the rhythmic words arose spontaneously as an element of their Christian worship. These were hymns for the sake of worship, they claimed, not for the sake of tradition. They said that their tribal rhythms and collage of voices sometimes moved people so much that they turned to Christianity through listening alone. Although he was out of practice, Mote had a real talent on the guitar, his fingers achieving such diversity of rhythm. When I returned on Thursday, I arrived armed with a compact tape recorder with which I captured eleven of their songs. Most of them were songs of Christian worship, with the exception of my favourite, Tanzania ni nchi nzuri (Tanzania is a very beautiful country) and a love song, Nampenda Coletta (I love you Coletta). The high of my new found friendship was welcome, but perhaps it would not last so long.
Friday 21 June was one of those days of emotion. At quarter past nine in the evening, a very sick child was brought to Phyll as the doctor on the campus. In her mother’s arms, she was sick, her worried father looking on, and Phyll gave her some kind of injection. It struck me as a strong reminder of how fragile life is and how precious all people are. The previous night the father of one of the night watchmen died of illness, and now there was this sight of a hopelessly weak child. All I could do was pray. I did not know what the illness was, or how serious it was, but the concern that I saw in Phyll’s face after the family left told me that this was a delicate situation. I felt sad realising that this family was lucky in being able to see a doctor and I wondered how many other families would go without health care at a time like this.
So that night I prayed, seeking the aid of our Creator. As an agnostic at that time without the strong faith of my family, it was something that did not come from me easily: but the sight of that poor little girl prompted me to take the only action that was within my grasp. I did not have strong faith because I believed in sincerity: my life was full of doubt, actions and thoughts that would please no one, and so I thought that my prayers would be worthless to a generous God. Writing my journal the following day, I wrote about how it was sometimes easier to pretend that I was lazy and to stay in bed, than to explain my real reasons for not going to church. I did not think that anybody really understood or tolerated that, but to do otherwise left me feeling like hypocrite and extremely uncomfortable as a result. But still, after the family left us that night, I turned and prayed to God.
With genuine concern and real sincerity, I prayed in the darkness until I was too tired, begging for an answer well into the night, asking that the little girl would be blessed and return to health. Were my prayers answered or was it just the dowa (medicine), I asked the following day? I did not know, but hearing news of her recovery, I decided not to reject my initial reaction: that someone up there had listened to me. I had friends who would have laughed at me because of that, but this was not about my friends. This was about the fact that I was brought up with faith and yet had been struggling to find it for myself for the previous four years. I did not know if I should read unnatural reasons into what I encountered, but sometimes I believed so strongly that there was something guiding me. I found myself in the heart of Tanzania with a group of Theological students who despite myself had offered me great friendship. I found myself listening to their beautiful choruses and gripped by discussions about how the church should act in our world.
In my diary I wrote that I could not help my beliefs and fears. I could not help it if I seemed to keep what I believe very private. Some people have very strong faiths, I wrote, but I supposed that I was not one of them. I found it very difficult, but religion kept on confronting me and good Christians kept on reaching out to me, whether here in East Africa or on that remote island off the west coast of Scotland. Writing then, I thought that I might be searching all my life, but said that I would not give up. The previous day I had seen a vomiting, dehydrated child. Today she was looking so much better and was eating at last. I wanted to praise the Lord for that.
On Saturday, Phyll was required to put stitches into a little boy’s head, after the college’s head driver apparently hit him for poking a pig with a stick. The boy was the son of the head driver’s next door neighbour, who was also a college driver. Seeing the blood running down his face, the boy’s mother cried that if her son had killed the pig she would have paid for it, ‘but how would he pay for our son?’ When the man appeared to show no remorse, the boy’s parents decided to involve the Police, but the following day we learnt that the head driver had suddenly fallen very ill.
With the start of a new week, we climbed up the hill behind the college again, following the same route as the spring trail to begin with but then veering off in another direction. We eventually came to a halt on some open ground around three hundred feet above the campus, taking in a spectacular view of the plains in the distance and the hills beyond. After staying there for a little while, we followed another path further up the hill that was used by the charcoal burners. Almost at the top of the hill there was a stone lined pit which acted as a charcoal oven, the ground all around it littered with small fragments of the blackened wood. In all these villages, charcoal was sold as fuel for cooking and that tasty smell used to hang in the air all the time,
So close to Rwanda and Burundi, news from those two tiny countries was always relevant within Tanzania. On Tuesday 25 June the BBC World Service reported that a Burundi delegation was meeting in Arusha to discuss what neighbouring countries could do to prevent genocide like the one that took place in Rwanda in 1994. Here in Tanzania I had met refugees from that sad land. Our neighbour was already a refugee from the previous upheavals in Rwanda in the 1960s, but in 1994 she lost her mother and sister to the killings and now looks after her sister’s daughter. I was immensely touched by the great strength of these people. While I found myself with tears when I thought of all the pain and suffering that had has risen from that slaughter, these folk explained that their Christian beliefs allowed them – people of two fighting tribes – to come together in work and fellowship, and to avoid conflict. Never in all my life had I encountered such strength after such heartless pain.
With my parents and my sister due to arrive in Tanzania imminently, we left Kongwa at ten in the morning on Monday 1 July. The landscape seemed much drier and dustier than it had been when we drove across it a month ago. The view travelling east was stunning, much more so than when travelling west from Darussalam, with fantastic views of the mountains ahead of us. Away from Kongwa and towards Morogoro the land looked very fertile, the ground dark brown unlike the red sandy dust of Kongwa. The closer we got to the coast, the greener the land became. On our way we encountered a group of baboons running across the road. We bought bananas and sodas for lunch while we travelled, and a young boy sold us hard-boiled eggs when we stopped briefly later on.
Along the route there were skeletons of tankers and trailers every so often, with all of their valuable parts stripped away and taken for rebuilding. We arrived in Darussalam in the middle of the afternoon. The streets were busy and here I encountered my first African traffic jam. It was good to feel the heat in Darussalam for Kongwa has been getting chilly. Tucking into chicken and chips – a welcome change to red beans and rice – we had our evening meal at the very modern Jungle Café. We were staying in the Catholic Secretariat again because the hotels were too expensive for us, two poorly paid missionaries and a student. I found myself doing nothing but listening, for the city sounded busy: jet aircraft flying low over the roof top, police sirens wailing in the distance, trucks rumbling past outside and voices in Swahili. Seeing these people rising early and up until well past dark, I wondered if Tanzania ever rested.
Travelling though the city streets, I loved a lot of its architecture, even if much of it seemed to be decaying, with Arabic and Asian influences seen all around. I thought that I would like Zanzibar because I loved the Indian-Arabic style of architecture. Most people in Darussalam lived in modest houses, however, some in concrete five storey flats. The old, impressive buildings were mostly government offices.
We collected my folk from the airport late into the evening on Tuesday after a busy day in the city. We had spent the morning shopping and attending to business, passing some time in the library at the British Council where I wondered whether I had stepped into another world. It was a smart building with a neat garden and was very nearly silent. The streets outside were crowded with salesmen, and there I bought a couple of bootleg cassettes featuring Lucky Dube’s latest album for 1600 shillings (about £2). Later on we spent the afternoon at the Bahari beach hotel. Phyll told me that they used to feel as I did, arriving in that luxurious setting after a month of simple living, but they had overcome the feelings of guilt, recognising that everybody deserves a break and a treat sometimes.
Construction of big houses along the road out of town towards the hotels was underway, in the new expensive suburbs of Darussalam. Upon the verges along the roads there are men making cement building materials, such as building blocks, decorative cement fencing and castings. This was a city alive in trade and enterprise. At every set of traffic lights people would run up to the car to attempt to make a transaction. I liked Darussalam a lot, for it seemed to be a cosmopolitan place. While there would always be the turning of heads as we walked on by, this city was an open place not at all like Mpwapwa. Where the crowds were smaller and people looked my way as I approached, I would utter those words Swahili folk use to show their respect. Shikamoo, shikamoo, all day, to these people in their beautiful country.
Our return to Kongwa came on Wednesday, with a journey that seemed much longer than before. Just as we had done on my first trip, we stopped in Morogoro for lunch and to do some shopping. My mother ventured into the market with her sister and my sister to buy some food for the coming week, and returned with expressions of joy written upon their faces. They loved the atmosphere, their reaction just more confirmation that my own pessimism was rooted in paranoia.
During the week that followed, I felt that things were changing. With the arrival of my folk, the Swahili lessons ceased, while Mote was now occupied preparing for a relative’s wedding. Something had changed. By Sunday 7 July, something was bothering me. It may just have been the news on the World Service, which made me rather depressed as I imagined the picture rather than writing the stories off as mere statistics. I saw the image of a Tamil Tiger rebel in my mind as I heard about her on the radio; she had blown herself up as a human bomb. And then I read in the Weekly Guardian newspaper about the murder of a Muslim woman in Bosnia. I thought about it and I wondered how anybody could be so evil. The world depressed me because I knew that I was helpless to stop the selfish, ignorant hate.
That day I wondered how people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu had the energy to continue their battles for justice and peace when bad news just struck me down. The massacres were not statistics: no, my mind was overflowing with hideous images of bodies and the faces of victims. I lamented that there was nothing that I could do and I wrote that my illness was seeing reality. Oh, the power of the media: perhaps my weeks without the newspaper were preferential.
Still, I introduced my parents and sister to the congregation in church that day, greeting the people first in their own tribal language and then continuing in Swahili for no more than two minutes. After lunch we walked through the village and along a dry river bed. Still insecure, I felt uncomfortable walking through the settlements uninvited, but continued onwards with my family nevertheless.
The next day we returned to the capital, Dodoma, in preparation for our flight to Musoma early on Tuesday morning. We went for a walk in the evening from the airport and MAF compound to the Post Office in Dodoma. Alas I still could not get used to the laugher accompanying the finger-pointing and cries of wazungu as we passed by, and I was left feeling angry. I began ranting about the wrongs of racism and the insincerity of those who could only see one kind of racism. Looking back on my journal entries I am amazed to read my thoughts from that time and how I joined dots that may not even have been there, to the point that I was launching into tirades again the gesturism of the anti-racism movement.
For some reason I suddenly had all this anger. I found myself unable to balance the struggle that I had encountered over the previous month with our new-found holiday intrigue. For a month or so I felt I had been living a life, but now we were marching around in our brand new boots, VCR in hand, snapping the sights with our automatic camera. I did not want to regurgitate my experiences on my return into a five minute sound bite about how this year I ‘did’ Africa and how splendid it was.
This was my first visit to a poor country in my life: prior to that I had travelled abroad in Europe and to New England in the United States of America. Nothing had prepared me for Tanzania and I found myself completely off balance. I knew that the purpose of holidays was to have fun, but I did not know if I had the right to have fun here when I saw people walking barefoot, carrying buckets of water on their heads. Did I have the right to have the time of my life, I asked myself, when life seemed to be a privilege for many people here? We were staying in one of the poorest nations in the world and we were viewing it on the liquid crystal display of our video camera.
I think I can still understand the discomfort I was feeling a decade ago, even as I deride the immaturity of the writing that journal of mine. I had had a very sheltered upbringing and I was suddenly in the midst of a whole new world.
The journey onwards… to be continued.
Ten years ago I spent forty-one days in Tanzania. Some memories…
Darussalam at sunset.
The road out of the college where I was staying in June 1996: Kongwa, Dodoma province.
Elephants on the plain at sunrise.
Kongwa at sun down.
There is a particularly coarse post out there in blogland by a convert to Islam about the alleged intrusion of those who ask, “Any passengers?” / “Are you expecting?” / “Don’t worry, I’ve known so many couples in your situation.” In my experience the people who ask these question are genuinely interested and / or possibly concerned, but well-meaning regardless. I certainly have never thought them to be nosy. For most people my response is a reaonable, “Insha Allah.” Occaisionally there are faint tears. But never would I harbour malice laiden grief against them. Really, the Muslim is one who should see blessing in these people’s words. A sadaqa for them or for you. These aren’t excuses to curse our friends and family. For us it is a reason to be patient, which is a sadaqa for ourselves. It is also a reason for us to be grateful to them for even asking, which is another sadaqa for ourselves. So alhamdulilah is the best response, not coarse words, not malice.
It may be that there is some naivety in my Islam, it may be that these are my Meccan years, it may be that I am just a literalist. Still, I take these words to heart:
Abu Musa said, “I said, ‘Messenger of Allah, whose Islam is best?’ He said, ‘The one from whose tongue and hands the Muslims are safe.’”
Many – more learned that I – mock this simple faith of mine. Conditions are placed upon those words: the tongue is loosened for those perceived to be heretics. Before the accusing finger is pointed towards the Salafis, let us be honest and recognise that this tendency exists in many a group. I have just read an article by a self-defined traditionalist whose words were remarkably similar to those of the commentator who did not think much of my call for unity. Each is convinced that they alone have grasped the true interpretation of Islam, and so all without may be classed as deviants, who then fall outside that realm where we are commanded fair speech and forbidden name-calling. Disappointment. That’s the word that comes to mind so frequently. People of knowledge from whose tongues we are not safe. Perhaps this is just the naivety of my Islam, perhaps I am a literalist.
No doubt this is part of the reason I made that resolve – mentioned in my last post – this weekend. I plan – if Allah wills – to learn Arabic now, so that one day I may kneel at the feet of the people of isnad and ijaza: clearly I cannot take this deen from anonymous essays and public web logs. Only then will I know whether I am truly naive or an idealist instead. But for the time being, until I get there, you will just have to bare with me as I hang on to the words of our blessed Prophet, peace be upon him, as I read them in English translations available to me (fear not: the Muwatta, Riyad as-Salihin and Al-Adab al-Mufrad lie within my grasp). So this simple faith remains, with my literal readings of “speak good or remain silent”, “your mother, your mother, your mother”, “the one from whose tongue”, “this brotherhood of yours”…
A stranger wrote some words for me yesterday that struck a chord:
For myself, my journey began on these reflections.. though blessed with a family and community of Muslims, something was lacking.. the frequent quarrels, petty back talking, etc i witnessed between Muslims and even at the masajid made it obvious that something was missing… and soon i was on a search for something greater… and that was the “Prophetic Character”, as i realised that truly that was the foundation of Islam.
Yes indeed. This is what I seek too: the Prophetic Character. This stranger went on:
So my search began to find the scholars who called to Allah with the display of the Prophetic character, following the footsteps of the noble prophet (peace be upon him) building solid communities based on firm and pure hearts.. who went on to call the masses to the deen with the precious light that emitted from the very inner fibres of their beings…
For me the journey will be long for language is not my strong point: only Allah knows whether I will grasp that foreign tongue and unfamiliar alphabet. But it is a journey I realise I must undertake, for though my knowledge now is little, already I well know the gems of the Prophetic Character in those few words I have learned from their renderings into the English language. This is a journey I must undertake myself. It is my heart and my soul that seeks redemption after all. So I realise that I must go myself to seek knowledge. I have done the bare minimum for the past five years, but my soul tells me that this is not enough. I do not wish to become a scholar or a sheikh. I merely wish to redeem my soul, to put the confusion behind me, to live as our blessed Prophet taught us to. Nothing more than that.
I only want to live a good life and perhaps, if Allah wills, embody however faintly the light of Islam.
On Friday evening I came across an article which really resonated with me. I wanted to contact the author, but I decided to sleep on it first, to mull over my thoughts. This was an article in which the author wrote about what traditional Islam meant to him. Part of that description included this sentiment: “It is the Islam of the quaint villages…”
It resonated with me because for weeks now I have been thinking of a faraway place I passed through last summer. It also touched me because there is a part of me which does not sit well with the modern age. Throughout my teenage years I was something of an eccentric. While my friends were interested in mountain bikes, football, Nintendo and Baywatch, I was a dreamer. I yearned after a romantic past, of a wood-framed house surrounded by the cottage garden, of self-sufficiency, spring-fed waters, of the homestead farm. I would sketch out my rough architectural diagrams of my self-build Tudor house. My favourite book as a child was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy: I imagined I was Almanzo and I dreamed of living my life as he had all those years ago. Later – this probably led to my eventual arrival as a student of development studies – my attention turned to sub-Saharan Africa. An article about life in Burkina Faso inspired me in a way you could not imagine.
With the wisdom of age, of course I now realise that all those dreams were indeed for a romantic past. The reality of life is that it is hard: inoculated from birth against mumps and rubella, and against tetanus, living in an age protected from TB, and able to access an education from the age of five to twenty-one, we forget the realities of existence in different times and different places. Still, that was my dream and an element of it remains with me even today. Something has been bothering my heart of late and that article I read on Friday gave me an inkling of what it was: a kind of discomfort with the age we are living in.
Last summer I spent a couple of weeks up in the highlands of eastern Turkey with my mother-in-law, up above the clouds. My wife’s family originate in Hopa on the Black Sea, close to the border with Georgia in Artvin province. Every year, to escape the summer heat, my mother-in-law packs up her possessions like the nomads of old and ascends the mountains for the refuge of that usually cooler air. Life up there is quite primitive: the houses are simple stone-walled structures without cement, covered with the tarpaulin these travellers bring with them. The evening meal is prepared on wood burning stoves, which in turn warms the shelter as the cold evening draws in.
So last August my wife and I began the journey in the early morning one Friday, looking forward to our reunion with her mother after such a long time. There is a vast dam building project underway in the valley between our village just inland from Hopa and Artvin, so we had to leave at first light so we could travel while the road along the bottom of the valley was still open. We travelled inland rising steadily higher and higher into the mountains. At around 11am we stopped in Ardanuc to get some vegetables and have a rest, but not for too long. Soon we were winding up a dirt track through this beautiful landscape which reminded me of my holidays in Switzerland as a child. It was a steep landscape of meadows, streams and log chalets. Alas, we forgot our camera so there are no photographs I could share with you, but take my word for it: this was a landscape which almost made me cry tears of joy. We were heading for a Yayla about two hours short of Ardahan, but I could have stopped just there, so magnificent was that scenery.
But we continued onwards, until we came to a camping ground on the side of a valley where we stopped for lunch. There was a shack on the edge in which a group of men were preparing to barbeque cubes of lamb meat. I sat down on a bench with the lady-folk close to an ice-cold spring, for we had just discovered that the men were chilling bottles of Turkish spirits beneath the bubbling surface. After lunch, leaving my male travelling companions to their Reki and the ladies to their conversation, I caught a lift with an old Muslim man back to the mosque for Jummah prayer. I speak very little Turkish, but that ride was an immense blessing: we exchanged salams and I watched as those I had left behind appeared as dots across the valley.
It was this trip to the mosque that has been in my thoughts for these past many weeks, which made that article strike such a chord with me on Friday. I should think that mosque has never seen an English Muslim enter its doors before in all its ancient history. We parked our car just off the road, because the mosque could only be reached on foot. Together, communicating with one another only by hand gestures and that brotherly fondness in our hearts, we walked up the hill through that village that seemed to be caught in a time warp. There was a water-trough fed by a stream out in front of the mosque – what a beautiful sight. But what touched my heart was the sight in the small garden in front of that place of prayer. All of the men were gathered in a circle, awaiting the call of the adhan, expressing such affection for one another, conversing with kind words. We exchanged salams, but I did not join them, entering the mosque instead with my old companion. That building seemed centuries old inside. It was dark, and yet it seemed light. The walls were stone, not decorated like those fine mosques of Istanbul. There were some pieces of calligraphy, and old worn out rugs on the floor. There was a spirit in that mosque which warmed my soul. That place has been in my thoughts.
The tale of the remainder of my journey up into the mountains is for another time. This post is about that place in my heart. It is not a geographical place, but an emotional place. That place that the author described: “It is the Islam of the quaint villages…” Yes, this is the yearning of my heart. That place of true brotherhood outside the mosque, that place of a simplicity that does not care for our modern-day obsessions with labels and debates. That place where Allah is remembered, where life stops for the prayer, where brothers respect one another and welcome the stranger passing through. That place of beauty.
Allah knows best my heart. This weekend I have made a resolve. Allah knows best my heart. I cannot articulate yet what this is: not to you the reader. But its origin lies in that experience that has been on my mind all these weeks. Inshallah, with time I will explain. In time I will explain.
In 1996 when I went to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – a college of the University of London – I watched as a fellow student when through what he thought was a radical transition in his views. Given the nature of the college, many white students came in with quite similar views: they were generally anti-racist, empathetic for the under-dog, left-wing/liberal and greatly interested in the affairs of particular African or Asian nations. Although this kind of leaning does exist to quite a degree within wider British society, including sections of the media, I would say that a Eurocentric and white ethno-centric viewpoint still predominates ‘on the street’. Thus the views found amongst white students at SOAS could have been considered quite radical.
Young people, however, often have a tendency to rebel against the dominant environment in which they find themselves, as I witnessed in the case of this particular student. He was studying Geography and Development Studies like myself and had spent the previous year doing field research in Zimbabwe. When I first me him, he had hugely Afro-centric views and was very keen on deliberately making friends with ‘ethnic’ students. As time went by, I noticed that these views were starting to shift quite significantly. It started with him playing devils-advocate with his ‘ethnic’ friends, moved on to a passionate defence British colonial engagement in Africa and later derision of the alleged anti-white ethos in the college. He had become a true radical – except that these views were not radical at all. They were just radical within his context.
I often recall this fellow when I am in gatherings made up mainly of white converts to Islam. Many of us were able to make a reasonably easy journey towards Islam precisely because we had a more internationalist perspective on life. Like those students at SOAS, we too had a generally anti-racist mindset, empathy for the under-dog and left-wing/liberal views. But like that radical student at SOAS, there seems to be an increasing trend for gatherings of white Muslims to descend to the level of racist exchanges, particularly about Pakistani Muslims. There is contempt for their culture, derision of their ways and a level of general stereotyping about this group of people.
There is probably a good reason why I have experienced more of this since moving out of London a year ago. London is a hugely diverse city and the character of its mosques reflects this. In every part of the city we find mosques that are not the preserve of one particular ethnic group, but are cosmopolitan instead. They also tend to have good or decent provision for women. In many places outside the capital, however, this is not the case. Mosques are often split along community lines and Islamic identity is conflated with ethnic identity. In my own town, although there exists a fairly large number of European, Arab and African Muslim families, the Pakistani community clearly dominates. The result is a sense of exclusion at the mosque for anyone who does not speak Urdu, although change is slowly underway. No doubt it is this sense of exclusion which fuels the somewhat racist talk of some white Muslims – and particularly women who have been refused entry to the mosque – in these areas.
I have another theory about this attitude though. A prominent characteristic of dawah over the past decade has been the separation of Islam from ‘culture’. This has led to a sense of superiority developing amongst converts (not just white converts) and amongst young people born into Muslim families: that we follow true Islam, not the cultural interpretations of those before us. This sense of superiority is a real disease, which has seen old Bengali men who have prayed in the mosque five times a day without fail for fifty years castigated by young men as foolish ignorant folk. Given that many of these unsettling convert discussions revolve around the question of their (Pakistani) culture – as if we don’t come to Islam with our own – I would say that this Islam versus culture argument has a lot to do with it.
It is fair to acknowledge that the experience of many converts, particularly those residing outside cosmopolitan settings, has been the racism of existing Muslim communities. I once felt that this was more likely to affect black converts, but more and more I see that white converts perceive discrimination. I think it is more likely that white Muslims will be positively received in mosques with larger Arab attendance, but this cannot be said of Pakistani community mosques. The children of some English Muslim friends of ours have been put off Islam because when they were at school their Pakistani schoolmates told them that they could not be proper Muslims because they were white. My general response to this kind of racism – be it the refusal to return the salams of the convert or simply the reluctance to make friends – is to hypothesise that this community probably experienced white racism in its early years and has therefore become quite insular in its outlook. The views of an English Muslim in my town suggests that there may be something in this: he became Muslim back in the 1960s and reports that race relations were extremely poor at that time. Meanwhile, a Pakistani friend of ours suggests that some Pakistani racism is linked to Mirpuri self-image. Whatever the cause, the result is the same: the sense of exclusion felt by those outside that group.
This is all very unfortunate. Our community is at risk of splitting down quite rigid lines, whether that is ethnicity or ‘convert’ versus ‘immigrant’. When people talk about radicalisation in relation to the Muslim community, they are usually talking about a polarisation towards militancy. The radicalisation that I am witnessing more and more is the acceptance of racism, and it is a disease which needs tackling with equal urgency. If we are now all resigned to the fact that we will experience racism at some point from within the Muslim community, we need to act as individuals to counteract this. For my part that means continuing to attend the mosque and not giving in to prejudice. It means saying that the experience of my convert friends is far from the totality of my experience.
Beyond this though, it is recognising why we are Muslims. We need to get away from our obsession about ourselves and recall where our focus should lie. We should be God-centred, not self-centred. When I talk of the obsession with the self, I am not talking about that very real need of ours to correct ourselves: rather I am talking about the debates about identity, about who and what we are.
We are Muslims and our aim is to achieve the pleasure of Allah. Allah has made us into nations and tribes that we may get to know one another: enough said. After this we remember that this brotherhood of ours is one brotherhood. Yes, I know that the atmosphere in my local mosque is not what I was used to in the cosmopolitan big city. I know that I am not easily accepted as I was in the mosques of the capital. But I recall that, revolving around Tawhid, my prayer, worship, life and death are for God, Lord of the Worlds, who has no partner. In this we find our resting place, our home. When we recognise this, it becomes less important whether we are accepted by others: what matters is whether Allah accepts us and whether He accepts our deeds.
One of the beauties of brotherhood as we experience it within the fold of Islam is sincerity amongst friends. In my days before Islam, friends were people who told me exactly what I wanted to hear. My true friends today are those who speak the truth and grant me wise counsel even when this is not what I want to hear.
I have a dear friend to whom I am still indebted because of his wise counsel. I was studying in Scotland and passing through a difficult period of my life. This friend of mine travelled 420 miles north from London to tell me that Allah had done His part in guiding me to Islam: now it was my turn to repay Him. I had been dwelling in self-pity and, witnessing this, my friend travelled all this way to give me his sound advice. He did not go the extra mile to help me: he went the extra four-hundred and twenty miles.
Giving and receiving good counsel is key part of brotherhood, as An-Nawawi illustrated in his Riyad as-Salihin (The Meadows of the Righteous):
22. Chapter: On Good Counsel
Allah says, “The believers are brothers,” (49:10), and the Almighty said, reporting about Nuh, “I am giving you good counsel,” (7:62) and about Hud, “I am a faithful counsellor to you.” (7:68)
181. Abu Ruqayya Tamim ibn Aws ad-Dari reported the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “The deen is good counsel.” We said, “For whom?” He said, “For Allah, His Book, His Messenger, the Imams of the Muslims and their common people.”
182. Jarir ibn ‘Abdullah said, “I gave allegiance to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, on the basis of performing the prayer, paying the zakat and giving good counsel to every Muslim.”
183. Anas reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “None of you can truly be said to believe until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself.”
I pray that my friends will continue to grant me their wise counsel. It is one of the greatest blessings of Islam, that a friend can come round for dinner and speak the truth to his brother.
According to contemporary scientists, it is thought that the universe came into being around 13.7 billion years ago. The basic characteristics of the very early universe have been described in the big bang theory, but scientists are still only able to make educated guesses about the details. High energy physics has been used to describe the evolution of the universe in the period that followed, explaining how the first protons, electrons and neutrons formed. They talk of the formation of the first nuclei, then the formation of atoms and of neutral hydrogen. A third period describes the formation of structure: matter coming together to form stars, quasars, galaxies, galaxy clusters and super clusters. I find this structural period fascinating.
Some of the most beautiful images I know are those showing deep space as generated by the Hubble Space Telescope. Those images always warm my soul, reminding me of the grandeur of our Creator, putting everything into perspective. One of the most exciting developments of recent times was the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, which was derived from data accumulated between September 2003 and January 2004. Although this has been described as covering a small region of space, it is estimated to contain ten thousand galaxies. As the deepest image of the universe ever taken using the visible spectrum, it takes us back in time more than 13 billion years, showing us how the universe looked in the early Stelliferous age.
While the images of deep space in themselves are always heartwarming, their significance is also profoundly felt when one considers the words of the Qur’an about Allah’s creation. Sura 41, ayat 11, fails to provide us with a wooly, open description that the post-enlightenment age has taught us to expect from scripture. Far from it: the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image could be used to illustrate this verse. The non-Muslim, Arthur J. Arberry, translated it as follows in 1964:
Then He lifted Himself to heaven when it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, “Come willingly, or unwillingly!” They said, “We come willingly.” *
This need not comes as a surprise for the Muslim who believes that the Qur’an is the Word of God. Of course the Creator can describe His creation in truthful terms. From His Throne, He is witness to all things. For the disbeliever who considers the Qur’an to be the fourteen hundred year old work of man, however, it could be nothing but a miracle: it would even have been so had it originated in 1964, twenty-nine years before Hubble was operational. Allah is magnificent.
One of my favorite websites is http://hubblesite.org. For me it is a reminder of what we really mean when we say ‘Allahu Akbar’ – God is Great. In these days of conflict, it is wonderful to remind ourselves of these things. If we set our short lives beside the fourteen billion years of Allah’s creation, it helps put everything into perspective. It reminds us of our place. It reminds us of why we are here and our part in this great scheme of things. It is right that we reflect upon these things, because it is what Allah asked of those us who were not brought up as Muslims. This is how that same Arabist translated sura 21, ayat 30:
Have not the unbelievers then beheld that the heavens and the earth were a mass all sewn up, then We unstitched them and of water fashioned every living thing? Will they not believe?
For my part, I have beheld and thus I am one who witnesses that none has the right to be worshipped except Allah alone without partner and that Muhammad is his Messenger. Allah is magnificent. Visit that site and reflect. It is well worth it. Notice how it strengthens your du’a.
* A. J. Arberry (1964), The Koran Interpreted, Oxford University Press, p.491
A good soul reminded me of these things this very evening. As God wills, the advice we receive is always timely. So what excuse now do we have? I have quoted the Qur’an and hadith (narrations) directly from that advice:
“And those who abuse believing men and woman, when they have not merited it, bear the weight of slander and clear wrongdoing.” (Qur’an, al Ahzab, 58)
“Be God-conscious and put things right between you. Obey God and His Messenger if you are believers.” (Qur’an, al Anfal, 1)
“Let not some men among you laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the latter are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, after he has believed: And those who do not desist are doing wrong.” (Qur’an, al Hujrat, 11)
“The believers are brothers, so make peace between your brothers.” (Qur’an, al Hujraat, 10)
“And when they (the righteous) hear vain talk they turn away therefrom and say: ‘To us our deeds and to you yours; peace be upon you. We seek not the ignorant.” (Qur’an, al Qasas, 55)
Abu Musa said, “I said, ‘Messenger of God, whose Islam is best?’ He said, ‘The one from whose tongue and hands the Muslims are safe.’” (Hadith)
The Messenger of God (may Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “From the excellence of a man’s Islam is leaving that which does not concern him.” (Hadith)
Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “It is enough of a lie for a man to talk about everything he hears.” (Hadith)
“Whoever believes in God and the Last Day, let him speak good or remain silent.” (Hadith)
Anas reported that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “Do not hate one another nor envy one another nor act in a hostile way towards one another nor cut one another off. Be servants of God, brothers. It is not lawful for a Muslim to cut himself off from his brother for more than three days.” (Hadith)
The Messenger of God, peace be upon him said, “The gates of the Garden are opened on Mondays and Thursdays and every servant who does not associate anything with God is forgiven except the man between whom and his brother there is rancour. It is said, ‘Wait until these two make up! Wait until these two make up!’” (Hadith)
Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “No servant veils another servant in this world without God veiling him on the Day of Rising.” (Hadith)
If there is anyone amongst those of you who read this blog whom I have offended, whether in an article or responding to comments, I apologise. Please forgive me. If I have spoken out of turn, then remind me and I will apologise. Please, even if I have irritated you, find some compassion in your heart and make amends with me. If I die tonight or tomorrow it will be too late. If I have any debt with any of you or you with me, whether from words I wrote, a comment not replied, an appointment I missed or otherwise, let us settle it before it is too late. Let us remind ourselves of what binds us.
I turn my face to Him who created the heavens and earth, a pure monotheist, in submission, and am not of those who associate others with Him. My prayer, worship, life and death are for God, Lord of the Worlds, who has no partner. Thus I have been commanded and I am of those who submit.
And my final request is this: make du’a for me. Pray that I do not die other than as one who has earned His pleasure and that I return to Him only with a pure heart.
Thank you for reading my blog. Over and out.
These are the days when we need to express love for one another. The nations are gathering around to devour our ummah just as people share a plate of food. First came the European states with their pens and rulers in the days of Empire, dividing up the Muslim world into bite-sized portions. These days it’s war on weapons of mass destruction, war for democracy, war on dictatorship and war on terrorism. In the name of human rights, human rights are abused. In the name of freedom, innocent men and women are incarcerated. In the name of civilisation, vacuum bombs, cluster bombs and cruise missiles are rained down on far-off lands. These are the days when we need to express love for one another. But we don’t.
For a month or so I was a member of a large group for Muslim writers, but I have left now primarily because I was irritated by the contempt with which some members approached others. There was the hard character who chastised those with whom he disagreed as feminists, sufis and worthless inter-faithers. There was the self-characterised liberal who wrote off the rest of us. There was the ‘traditionalist’ who condemned the ‘salafi’ and the ‘salafi’ who denounced the ‘sufis’. I am just a simple Muslim, neither ‘Salafi’ or ‘Sufi’, but I try to deal with people whatever their persuasion in as gentle and polite manner as possible. Unfortunately, whenever I do so I am then condemned as one or the other. Yes, I am a worthless inter-faither, not worthy of a salam.
These are the days when we need to express love for one another, but we don’t. Instead we are salafis, sufis, traditionalists, modernists, converts, Pakistanis, Arabs, Englishis; all trampling down our own unique path, critical of all who fall without. Meanwhile, just as our noble Prophet warned us that they would, the nations continue to summon each other upon us as we call guests to eat from a plate of food – may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. We cannot respond, because we are suspicious of one another. Having categorised ourselves, we categorise others and find ourselves easily able to write off the suffering of those outside. It is all wrong. This brotherhood of yours is one brotherhood.
These are the days when we need to express love for one another. These are the days.
I found this article interesting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5012300.stm
Much is being made these days about British Identity – or the erosion of it. Predicatably the finger is being pointed at “Multi-culturalism”, but I don’t believe this is correct. Much more pervasive is the influence of advertising, marketing, publishing and broadcasting. The times, they are a changing.
Also interesting:
http://islameetsworld.blogspot.com/2006/02/punch-drunk-on-british-islamic.html
