Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Tag: Allah

  • Konya – Rumi’s Abode

    As Vayu, the tropical cyclone, approaches the coastal towns of South India and particularly Karachi, I think I’ve found a brand new metaphor for my own religiosity in it.

    Recklessly unbridled from outside and hauntingly hollow from the core. Creating a stir all around and changing directions all the same; powerful yet empty in the eye.

    I hope it achieves enough in its power, recklessness and destruction that long after I’m gone, it’s carefully preserved, if not in the meteorological journals then at least in my memos, letters and emails to my victims.

    Call it a stroke of luck or a sweep of typhoon (if you allow me to drag my metaphor this long), I was able to arrange a reasonably long stopover at Konya, Turkey in my upcoming official visit to Italy next week – long enough to pay my respects to Maulana Jalal ud Din Rumi. If you don’t already know my interest in and association with Rumi, now is not the time to share it because this blog will otherwise turn into a treatise. My feelings about the whole affair are quite mixed. I think this is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my poem “Tempest“.

    Have you been to Konya?

  • Baal-e-Jibreel I

    Baal-e-Jibreel, put simply, is Iqbal’s monologue with God except that the persona they both take on is not the traditional, master’s and slave’s; but somewhat mystic, lover’s and beloved’s (though Iqbal is not to be confused with Sufi poets). The verses ooze with fierce, unintimidated love instead of respectful, humble worship. The first few odes that basically set the tone for the entire collection come out as quite aggressive. You feel the raging passion of a daring, cocky lover addressing his Beloved, telling Him that the obstacles in the way of love suit his adventure-thirsty nature just fine. If you wish to see how perfection borns out of the imperfect, you need to read the following couplets wherein a weak man can be seen to be begetting strong love. The stark contrast drawn between the guilty self of a man and yet the unapologetic love he is capable to experience is simply awe-inspiring. Understandably, the references to the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, and good and evil, are numerous throughout the thread.

    قصور وار ، غریب الدیار ہوں لیکن
    ترا خرابہ فرشتے نہ کر سکے آباد

    خطر پسند طبیعت کو ساز گار نہیں
    وہ گلستاں کہ جہاں گھات میں نہ ہو صیاد

    مقام شوق ترے قدسیوں کے بس کا نہیں
    انھی کا کام ہے یہ جن کے حوصلے ہیں زیاد

    As you read on, you know Iqbal is not an ordinary lover who is too wasted by passion to acknowledge reality. His extensive use of hyperbole and visual imagery, which is comparable to the ancient epics, does in no way make him depart from the subject which is exploration of self and God. Instead they empower him far beyond this by enabling him to take quick, pithy jabs at philosophical conundrums of his time. For instance, the wonderfully poetic way he addresses the contemporary problem of Zaat (Essence) Vs Siffaat (Attributes) is mind blowing. No wonder his daring takes (بت کدئہ صفات) have oft landed him in hot water with the religious establishment of his time.

    میری نوائے شوق سے شور حریم ذات میں
    غلغلہ ہائے الاماں بت کدئہ صفات میں

    When it comes to ‘yearning’, Iqbal has a lot to say. Man’s yearning, as he sees it, has led to the creation of churches and synagogues and the same yearning has destroyed the idols of Kaaba and Somnaat. In a way, Iqbal is not-so-tacitly coining a similitude between God and Man – each engaged in a passionate cycle of creation and destruction to find the other.

    گرچہ ہے میری جستجو دیر و حرم کی نقش بند
    میری فغاں سے رستخیز کعبہ و سومنات میں

    And here goes one of my most favorite couplets.

    متاع بے بہا ہے درد و سوز آرزو مندی
    مقام بندگی دے کر نہ لوں شان خداوندی

    The universal tragedy of the inhabitants of the gray world that they don’t belong anywhere, could not be better put.

    اپنے بھی خفا مجھ سے ہیں ، بیگانے بھی ناخوش
    میں زہر ہلاہل کو کبھی کہہ نہ سکا قند

    When yearning suffices the yearner, there’s hardly anything of substance that can be snatched of him, least of all, his happiness.

    ہر حال میں میرا دل بے قید ہے خرم
    کیا چھینے گا غنچے سے کوئی ذوق شکر خند!

    And a sweet end to the daring opening part of the book.

    چپ رہ نہ سکا حضرت یزداں میں بھی اقبال
    کرتا کوئی اس بندہ گستاخ کا منہ بند!

  • The Grey World – II

    I’ll pick up from where I left in my last blog.

    The grey world, I’m beginning to realise, is more like a black hole – As vast as a universe in itself yet invisible to the external eye. Those who enter it, never come out. And somewhere along the way, they lose regard for what’s white/ one/ light/ virtue because it holds no proprietary right on the Golden Rule which is quite fair; only too far from what’s conventional and orthodox.

    It sometimes puts me in awe how brimming with meaning our world is, or can be if we really choose to notice. There are small truths floating all over in space, conforming or denying each other yet remaining truths in their own right. Think of all the religions as small, contradicting truths, for example, or libertarian vs authoritarian ideologies, republicans vs democrats, darwinism vs creationism, or science vs religion etc. So many of them to put us in awe. So much contradictory to put us in awe. Where do we find the golden rule that weaves them all together. More and more people are realizing that the uncharted spaces between non-conforming truths need to be explored. We can see efforts being made. I just discovered Broadly’s documentary ‘Inside the Weird World of an Islamic Feminist Cult’ which is basically a group of Islamic creationists led by Mr Oktar who claims to be the first Imam to introduce his followers to feminism. People are scared of him; some find him rather ‘weird’ (as the title of the documentary suggests); even I find his kittens unusual but I appreciate him for exploring the no-go area between traditional Islam and modern feminism, trying to modify each to bring them into harmony.

    Clearly Oktar has lost association with and regard for traditional Islam so much as for modern feminism, in hope of finding the middle ground. It can’t be said as of now if he has discovered the golden rule yet but one thing is for sure: he is never going to lapse back to either. So I guess he is a man trapped in a black hole. Kudos to him and everybody else exploring the grey world.

    Reference:

    ‘Inside the Weird World of an Islamic Feminist Cult’ documentary link: https://youtu.be/7bH21w2R0hc

  • Void

    When God created us, he left an aching void in us that could only be filled up by His love. Therefore, mankind embarked on a painstaking journey to find Him back and since nobody had actually seen God or knew what He looked like, the only tool they had to identify Him was the love-void inside of them: whatever filled that void up was to be the God!

    As long as His Beauty transcended the reach of their senses, they kept searching for it until they caught a reflection of it somewhere. Every time that happened, the caravan would halt there, closely inspect the thing that’s apparently exuding the Light of God, term it as mere illusion, discard it (or carry it as a relic) and move on. The ancient journey stretches to and continues up until our time.

    Our unconscious mind is a mysterious, intricate web of memories, lived and default. The Promise of Alast عہدِاَلَست is one such default memory that’s not actually lived by our bodies (although our souls were made witness to it in The World of Souls i.e. عالمِ اَرواح), is weak and hazy and lacks objective details like all other memories – but amazingly, it has a surprising capacity to override much stronger memories in order to storm our conscious mind to remind us that we have a Beloved to seek. The dormant yearning, thus catches fire. The torture it brings is familiar to us all.

    Our love-void is like a massive black hole consistently drawing us into anything that resembles God in the least. It could be anything from purity to strength to character to beauty because God alone is the origin of all likable attributes. Even if we encounter a single one of these traits, in the least of degrees, in somebody or something, we might feel immensely attracted to them because of our predisposition to fill up the void in ourselves, and start loving them. We can love them for as long as they stay true to our idea of God. Obviously, none but God fulfills this promise. So there come disappointments and the love eventually fades away with time as we start again to seek His Beauty until we find someone else. Only this time round, we make sure they last longer in the face of our godly ideal.

    People ask if the journey ends somewhere. No, it doesn’t. They’ll keep asking for more. At least, that’s the case with the perfect lover and the perfect Beloved: no one can love Allah more than Muhammad (S.A.W.) did, yet in His last days He used to say, “Forgive me, God, I couldn’t know Thee as I should have.” You see, he yearned for even more of His love.

    Don’t you hate your Nafs ever. It’s something that eventually gets you to your destination. What happens when you place an obstacle in a fast moving river. The water initially stops, gathers around the obstacle and its level begins to rise. The river gains greater strength near the obstacle until it either breaks it apart or sweeps it along. Same goes for Nafs. While attempting to resist our pursuit of Beauty by engaging us in distractions, it only manages to be an obstacle in the course of the free river of Love flowing inside of us. Every time that happens, our river stops for a while, we feel that we are missing something important though we might not know exactly what it is and we may even fall into depression. But ultimately we break away the obstacle and come out stronger and nearer to God in the journey of love. That’s how it goes. Had there been no obstacle, there would have been no progress either, see?

    Last and the most important question: How can you gain His love in this world? There’s a mystic saying about it: there are as many paths to God as there are human souls on earth. However, there are some baby steps that we can take. Read about the people who actually gained His love. Drop your guard for your inner sense of Beauty in order to let it guide you freely. But above and beyond everything else, read Allah. He, of all the beings, knows how do we get to Him and He has made no secret of the Path. The opening chapter of Quran, Surah Fatiha, consists solely of the supplication that addresses this fundamental need of ours: اھدنا الصراط المستقیم i.e. Guide us to the right Path and it seems like, as Dr. Israr says, the whole of Quran that follows, is a divine response to this supplication.

    So it’s definitely well worth a read. But what happens when you first open it? I’ll hopefully write on this later and I’m quite positive you’ll be able to relate!

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    P.S. This was originally written in response to a host of questions posed by an old fellow who grew up mainly in a liberal atmosphere but felt a growing void and a yearning for the divine inside of her. I just wanted to connect the two using Iqbal, Dr. Israr and Dr. Rafiuddin. Another thing that i had in my mind while writing this, was a casual discussion with a fellow blogger. Please feel free to comment, add, discuss or correct!

  • Mother God

    Though God is an ethereal spirit with no sexual connotations to its gender, the debate over His “actual” gender has passionately raged in the recent decades particularly in the wake of the rise of radical feminism in reaction to the timeless patriarchy that had reigned supreme. The reason i am writing this is that this debate is not distant, irrelevant or academic, it rather dictates how we perceive God in our day to day lives, defines our faith and how we act under its influence.

    The most prevailing understanding of the gender of God is that God is predominantly a powerful masculine figure. This understanding possibly originated and strengthened over centuries in attempts to explain the attributes of God being Strong (Qawi), Subduer (Qahhar), Avenger (Muntaqim) and Compeller (Jabbar). Though there are other equally important attributes like Jamal (Beauty) that are the prototype of femininity but since these scholarly attempts were made in patriarchal societies so it is not very surprising for male-chauvinistic interpretations to have made their way into the sacred religious texts passed on to later generations. This partially explains why today, we refer to, and more importantly understand, God as a watchful man-guard over the universe though theological descriptions leave sufficient room for alternative explanations.

    The question remains: Is God REALLY a watchful man-guard or is He more of a compassionate mother – the love of whom envelops the universe?

    Islam has a distinctive edge over other religions of the world in that its Holy Book i.e. Quran has survived literally intact for centuries under conflicting and sometimes, even battling Muslim governments after the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.). Karen Armstrong brings to our notice a commonly recited but strikingly overlooked piece from Quran i.e. the very Bism-illah-irrahman-irrahim.

    …Nor was God distinctively male. Each recitation began with the invocation: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim). Allah was a masculine noun, but the divine names al-Rahman and al-Rahim are not only grammatically feminine but related etymologically to the word for womb(!)

    It must be a shocking revelation for anybody who recites Quran on a regular basis. In the very tasmiah, God uses one masculine and two feminine names for Him(?)self, which although does not prove that God is predominantly feminine, in the very least points to the fact that God doesn’t want this side of Him(?) to be taken any lightly.

    I was scrolling down a forum when i found this gem posted by MariaS.

    Some people may say when huwa means “he” and “it” and hiya means “she” and “it” then why is God using huwa if hiya and huwa both mean “it” as Allah says : Qul huwAllahu ahad [Say he is One and Alone]? Answer: In A’rabic grammar, there are certain rules and criteria for feminine gender: 1) If it is feminine in nature like ummun [mother], ukhtun [sister]. 2) If the word ends with an A’rabic word ‘ta‘ like mirwaahatun [fan]. 3) If the word ends ‘badha Alif‘- an A’rabic letter. 4) Pairs of the body like yadun [hands], a’inun [eyes]. As the above criteria are not getting satisfied, by default Allah uses huwa-it.

    I am not concluding this piece because i understand that people have different opinions. I do not intend to “establish” anything here neither do i feel the need of doing it nor do i find myself qualified for that. It’s just that i am going through a spiritual crisis where invoking God is, as i see it, the only way out and invoking a mother God feels much easier and more natural. Besides, I feel it’s really important for us to see God in the universe. The watchful man-guard is hard to see, the compassionate mother is hard not to.

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    P.S. In case this article interests you, there are some links that i would like you to check out.

    Islam and the Divine Feminine

    God’s Feminine Side Is Plain to See (slightly offensive but makes the point anyway)

    Shekhina: The Feminine Aspect of God

    Also, in case you are into literature, Paulo Coelho, in his book “By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept”, makes an overwhelmingly beautiful case for the feminine God.