Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/Date 2010

“As-salámu ‘alaikum wa rahmatul láhi wa barakátuh!”

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In a previous khutbah we looked at some examples of Metaphors and Parables in the Holy Qur’an. Today we will explore another powerful instrument of speech: the use of reason and rhetoric, which is deployed constantly throughout Allah’s Sacred Book. Here are some examples:

“Are the blind equal to those who can see? Or are the depths of darkness equal with Light? Or do they assign to Allah partners who have created [anything] as He has created, so that the creation seemed to them to be similar?” [Sura Al Ra’d 13:16]

“Qulil-Laahu Khaaliqu kulli-shay-in, wahuwal Waahidul-Qah-haar.”

“Say: Allah is the Creator of all things. He is The One, The Supreme and Irresistible.”

Again, further on towards the end of Sura Al Ra’d we read in verse 33:

“Is then He Who stands over every soul [and knows] all that it does, [like anyone else]? And yet they ascribe partners to Allah. Say: “But name them. Is it that you will inform Allah of something that He does not know on earth, or is it [just] a show of words?”” [Sura Ar-Ra’d  13:33]

And in Sura Az-Zumar 29:39: another example of reason and rhetoric:

“Allah sets forth an example: A man who serves many masters, all at odds with one another, and a man who serves just one master: are they the same?”

In Sura Yasin [ch36:v.77] another example:

“Awalam yaral insaanu an-na khalaq-nahu min nutfatin wa itha huwa haseemun mubeen…”

“Does Man not see that We created him from sperm? Yet, behold! He stands forth as an open adversary…”

In the next two verses [78-79] the Quran poses a rhetorical question that those without faith, puffed up with pride and arrogance, ask contemptuously:

“Wadaraba lanaa mathalan-wanasee khalqa, Qaala ma yuh-yil ithaama wahiya rameem.”

“And he makes comparisons for us, and he forg.ets his own [humble] origin and creation: He says: Who can give life to dry, decomposed bones?”

The answer comes in the Quran’s elegant, eloquent and irrefutable way:

“Qul yuh-yee hal-lathee an-sha-ahaa aw-wala marra, wahuwa bikulli khalaqin ‘aleem!”

“Say, He will give them life, Who created them for the first time! For He is well versed in every type of creation.”

These examples I have quoted show us that Allah’s Noble Book addresses its readers as sentient, articulate and rational human beings. We are not treated like cattle or sheep. Allah gave us the faculty of reason. He gave us the ability to weigh things up, to make considered judgements. Then, he presents us with a convincing argument and invites us to be the judge. He could have told us simply to believe so and so, without any supporting arguments. But no, Allah wants us to be utterly convinced, deep down, in our heart and soul, that what He revealed in the Quran is the Truth, and that the truth can stand up to any scrutiny.

Truth and falsehood are not the same. The one endures, the other perishes. When Prophet Muhammad sws re-entered Makka, he pronounced those timeless words:

“Wa qul jaa al haq, wa zahaqal baatil. Inna baatilan kaana zahooqaa[n]”

“And say: Truth has come, and falsehood has perished, because falsehood is by its nature, perishable.”

Brothers and sisters, that’s a good thought to consider. Why do we concern ourselves so much with the perishable pleasures of life? We should certainly enjoy what Allah has given us, but not too much. Our lives must not be centred around the pursuit of pleasures, leaving no time and space for our spiritual development. Life’s pleasures are a gift from Allah, and we must not deny His gifts. But always keep in mind that material things won’t last, our physical enjoyments won’t last, our life on earth won’t last. When we realize this, then we will become acutely aware of the preparations we must make for Aakhira, the life after our physical death. This is the Real Life that will last forever.

“Bal tu’ thiroonal hayaat ad-dunyaa, wal aakhiratu khairoo wa ab’qaa.”

“Behold, you enjoy the life of this world, but the life to come is more beautiful and longer lasting…” [Sura Al A’laa ch.87.v16-17]

Repeatedly, throughout the Sacred Text, there are invitations to use our reason and to consider, to compare and to weigh things up. The Holy Quran constantly appeals to our better judgement; it constantly invites us to reflect and to see the wisdom of Allah’s Divine Guidance.

Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.

Second Khutbah:

Sub’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My brothers and sisters,

There are many more examples of  the Holy Quran’s powerful use of Reason and Rhetoric. In today’s khutbah we have time only for a few examples.

In Sura Ar-Rahman, the All-Merciful, we find a constant refrain:

“Fa bi ay-yi aa-laa i-Rabbi huma tukath-thibaan?”

“Then which of the favours of your Lord will you two deny?”

The ‘two’ here refers to the human beings and the Jinn. As we know, there are beings that exist beyond the threshold of human perception, and there are both good and bad jinni. Shaytan is the leader of the rebellious jinni.

The All-Merciful therefore invites us to consider His overflowing generosity. He asks us repeatedly, which one of His favours would we deny? This rhetorical question is asked 31 times in the Sura’s 78 verses, and towards the end, we reach the punch-line, the rhetorical climax:

“Hal-jazaa-u ilal-ihsaani ilal-ihsaan?”

“Is there any reward for Good, other than Good?”

A simple, logical question with an equally simple, logical answer, delivered with such brevity, clarity and beauty.

The Holy Quran uses both rhetoric and reason in a powerful way. It addresses us, the readers, not as passive consumers of information, but as critical and sentient human beings. It engages both our intellect and our innate sense of balance, fairness, reason, logic and beauty, which are gifts from Allah. So, not only does Allah ennoble us with this great intellectual gift, but He also deploys numerous tools to tease, challenge and stimulate our minds and hearts. This allows us to engage His divine message in an active, dynamic way.

Clearly the Holy Quran is a masterpiece of both style and substance. While we admire the use of so many tools of language, like metaphor and parable, rhyme, reason and rhetoric, we must never lose sight of the substance. The Holy Quran can be admired for many things, but it is first and foremost a Book of Guidance for human beings, “hudal lin-naas,”, it’s a vital road map to navigate our way through life so that we can please Allah, and reach that safe home which is Al-Jannah, His Eternal Garden. That’s the main agenda. We should never lose sight of the main goal.

My dear sisters and brothers, we must read and reflect on this wonderful gift from Allah, which is His Word, His noble Book, Al Qur’an. We must not just read it like parrots, without engaging our minds, our intellect. We must read and reflect deeply, so that it’s divine wisdom can penetrate our hearts, and marinate in our marrowbones. Allah’s Word has the power to change our behaviour and improve our conditions.

The Quran invokes our God-given faculties of reason, of common sense, and our aesthetic sensitivities, our natural yearning for beauty and harmony. The Quran is instructive, but it’s not a dreary Do-it-yourself manual. The Quran is poetic but it’s not just a book of vacuous poetry. No human mind is capable of matching the Quran’s eloquence, and for 14 centuries its challenge, in Sura Al Baqara, [2:23] has not been beaten:

“And if your are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Surah like it, and call your witnesses of helpers besides Allah, if your [doubts] are true.”

The Holy Quran is its own miracle, standing by itself unchallenged in 14 centuries and will certainly keep its promise until the end of time. Allah’s Word is pre-eminently The Book of Divine Guidance, valid for all times and all places, inviting us to explore its depths and to find the gems of wisdom that will light up our own journey through the darkness of our own lives.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah!

Islam found me when I had no intention of being discovered.

I grew up in Southern California during the 1960s in a non-practicing Christian home. I don’t recall feeling particularly religiously inspired growing up, except maybe while singing “O’ Holy Night” with Johnny Mathis on my parents’ hi-fi. Some years we went to church on Easter Sunday, and some years we barbecued a steak instead.

Matters of faith were not discussed with any depth in my home; I remember my stepfather saying, “Kari, did you leave this milk out on the table? No? Well, Jesus knows if you’re lying … Jesus knows.” But, there was no further discussion about what Jesus would do about the spoiled milk. “Jesus knows” was just left hanging cryptically in the air.

My mother felt uncomfortable discussing anything, well, personal. Her way of instructing me on topics of any delicacy was to deliver the message via books and pamphlets. So, I learned about the facts of life through a pamphlet, and I learned about Christianity through the Golden Children’s Bible. I read that Bible in its entirety many times as a child, taking comfort from the stories of the Prophets. Abraham, Noah, Moses, Solomon and David, John and Jesus — I read all their stories, but what I lacked was the context and relevance of their lives to mine. Without a thread linking the words on the page to my life, they were only stories.

I memorized the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer because I heard kids at school reciting them. I longed for the religious surety of my classmates: “Have you been Baptized? No? Well, you’re going to Hell.” This frightened me; I worried my entire family was floundering around without being baptized, and we were sure to burn in Hell.

As a young adult I took the attitude of “as long as I’m a good person, and live an ethical life, God will love me.” That was fine, except as my world became more complicated I realized I was living a life full of loose ends and selfish decisions. I was floating through the years, reacting to whatever came in my direction, without a definitive plan. I thought I was aiming to fill the void I felt inside of myself, but I didn’t have a sense of what was actually missing. I got married, made a home, had a successful career, and started a family with the birth of my precious son, but none of it brought real contentment. By the age of 30, I found myself a divorced, single mother of a little boy.

Against all advice, and despite the worried looks and words of consternation from my WASP-ish family, I met and married my second husband, Ahmed, the foreign, dark-skinned Muslim guy I met at work.

Ahmed is a soft-spoken artist from Bombay. When we married, I made it very clear that I had no intention of embracing his faith, and he made it very clear that it was fine with him. His only caveat was that if we had children they would be raised as Muslims. This sweet man was the opposite of the media’s portrayal of the crazy or sinister Arab or Muslim, and so I had a different window on Islam through him, and I agreed to marry him. It didn’t feel like a threat to our future children, or me; he fasted quietly, he prayed quietly, he lived and let live.

Being married to a spiritually confident person like my husband began to have a negative effect on my “God will love me if I’m a good person” philosophy. I knew I was missing out on something much more profound than the “it’s all good” theory. I realized that I had no connection to God. I wanted what Ahmed had — a solid relationship with the Divine — but I was afraid of Islam. It seemed kind of tricky, and you had to actually work at being a Muslim; that didn’t sound easy, or let’s face it, fun. I just didn’t want to consider it.

A couple of years later we had a baby girl. Ahmed whispered the Adhan, (the Muslim call to prayer) in her ear only moments after she was born. She would be a Muslim.

Reminiscent of the promise made by the miller’s daughter to Rumpelstiltskin, the time had come for me to keep my promise to raise my daughter as a Muslim. As I looked into her sweet, tiny face, I told her I’d figure out this Islam thing for her and give her what I didn’t have as a child — open discussion about God and faith, and a framework with which to structure her life. I would make sure that she would have confidence in her relationship with God and an identity that would hold her true. I told her I would read the Quran, and learn about Islam to make sure it would be good for her.

I kept my promise. As I began to read the Quran, a miraculous book of verse and wisdom, I found my beloved and blessed Prophets Abraham, Moses, Joseph and Jesus. I found common-sense instructions about commerce and trade; I read beautiful verses that described the magnificence of the earth, its creatures, and my responsibility towards their care.

I studied the life of Prophet Muhammad, God’s blessings be with him; and because every aspect of his life on earth was chronicled by his followers and carefully preserved, I was able to consider his story as a historical document.

Muhammad laughed; he cried; he showed displeasure and frustration. He was gentle, but firm; and he was strong yet vulnerable. I was inspired and moved by the fact he took the counsel of his wife, Khadijah. I loved it that he needed her comfort and strength as he began to receive Divine revelations through the Angel Gabriel. The early female followers of Islam questioned the blessed Prophet in the mosque on matters of law and social justice, and he gave them equal time and an equal voice. In his last sermon, Muhammad admonished the future generations of Muslim men to respect and cherish their wives and daughters.

After about a year of reading and thinking, my brain made a connection to my heart, which sparked my soul into life. I felt God speaking to me through the Quran and the life of this pure-hearted Messenger. I had set out to vet a religion for my daughter, but while doing this promised research for her I found God, and Islam found me.

Kari Ansari is a writer, editor, marketing consultant, co-creator of the popular America’s Muslim Family Magazine and Muslim Family Bookshelf blog, and one of the founders of the Muslim Family Life Foundation.

Mrs. Ansari and her husband established America’s Muslim Family Magazine in 2003 to help fill the void of Muslim media in America. The magazine offered a positive and refreshing look at life for Muslims in America. Through its pages the magazine dealt with issues pertinent to Muslims living in the United States and encouraged active participation in government, the education system, and all aspects of American life.

In addition to her work in publishing, Mrs. Ansari uses her more than 20 years of experience in direct marketing and advertising as a marketing consultant specializing in the Muslim niche market. She has helped American companies approach the Muslim target market with cultural confidence, while at the same time she works with Muslim organizations to bridge the divide into the mainstream American marketplace.

Mrs. Ansari was born and educated in the United States and is a convert to Islam. She has been an active member of the Muslim community for more than a dozen years, working toward the positive inclusion of Muslims into the mainstream American society. She has four children ranging in age from 21 to 8. She and her husband, Ahmed, a native of India, currently live in Northern Virginia.

Source: Huffingtonpost.com. Read her other articles: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kari-ansari

Picture:https://www.americasmuslimfamily.com/americas-muslim-family/images/indexImages/summer2006/Cover600px.jpg

IslamiCity, 12 April 2009.

There are many stories that contemporary imams rarely tell their congregations. The story of Mukhayriq, a rabbi from Medina, is one such story. I have heard the stories about the battle of Uhud, one of prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) major battles with his Meccan enemies, from imams and Muslim preachers hundreds of times, but not once have I heard the story of Mukhayriq, who died fighting in that battle against the enemies of Islam.

So, I will tell the story of Rabbi Mukhayriq — the first Jewish martyr of Islam. It is quite apropos, as the season of spiritual holidays has begun.

Mukhayriq was a wealthy and learned leader of the tribe of Tha’labah. He fought with Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the battle of Uhud on March 19, 625 AD, and was martyred in it. That day was a Saturday. Rabbi Mukhayriq addressed his people and asked them to go with him to help Muhammad (SAW). His tribe’s men declined, saying that it was the day of Sabbath. Mukhayriq chastised them for not understanding the deeper meaning of Sabbath and announced that if he died in the battle, his entire wealth should go to Muhammad (SAW).

Mukhayriq died in battle against the Meccans. And when Muhammad (SAW), who was seriously injured in that battle, was informed about that death of Mukhayriq, Muhammad (SAW) said, “He was the best of Jews.”

Muhammad (SAW) inherited seven gardens and other forms of wealth from Mukhayriq. Muhammad (SAW) used this wealth to establish the first waqf — a charitable endowment — of Islam. It was from this endowment that the Prophet of Islam helped many poor people in Medina.

When Muhammad (SAW) migrated form Mecca to Medina in 622, he signed a treaty with the various tribes that lived in and around Medina. Many of these tribes had embraced Islam, some were pagan and others were Jewish. All of them signed the treaty with Muhammad (SAW) that is referred to by historians as the Constitution of Medina. The first Islamic state, a multi-tribal and multi-religious state, established by Muhammad (SAW) in Medina, was based on this social contract.

According to article 2 of the constitution, all the tribes who were signatories to the treaty constituted one nation (Ummah). Mukhayriq’s people, too, were signatories to this treaty and were obliged to fight with Muhammad (SAW) in accordance with article 37 of the constitution, which says: “The Jews must bear their expenses and the Muslims their expenses. Each must help the other against anyone who attacks the people of this document. They must seek mutual advice and consultation, and loyalty is a protection against treachery. A man is not liable for his ally’s misdeeds. The wronged must be helped.”

In a way, Rabbi Mukhayriq, who was also a well-respected scholar of Jews in Medina, was merely being a good citizen and was fulfilling a social contract. But his story is fantastic, especially for our times, when we are struggling to build bridges between various religious communities. Mukhayriq’s loyalty, his bravery, his sacrifice and his generosity are inspirational.

Perhaps it is about people like Mukhayriq that the Quran says: “And there are, certainly, among Jews and Christians, those who believe in God, in the revelation to you, and in the revelation to them, bowing in humility to God. They will not sell the Signs of God for a miserable gain! For them is a reward with their Lord” (3:199).

Mukhayriq was a true citizen of the state of Medina, and he gave his life in its defense. He was a Jew, and he was a true Islamic hero, and his story must never be forgotten.

If Muslim imams told his story, I am confident that it would contribute to manifestations of increased tolerance by Muslims toward others. There are many such wonderful examples of brotherhood, tolerance, sacrifice and good citizenship in Islamic traditions that undergird the backbone of Islamic ethics. I wish we told them more often.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is also the Director of the Islamic Studies Program. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations, Political Philosophy, and Islamic Political Thought, from Georgetown University.

Source: Delaware Online

http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IC0912-4008

But at the same time Islam claims a societal role for humans, and not simply a peripheral role but one in which society is viewed holistically, as greater than the sum of its parts – almost as a complex organism in its own right. And this role of society as a dynamic complex system intersects and overlaps with the role of the individual. So the Qur’an speaks of “ummatin” (the larger community) as having a collective fate, a collective life, a collective responsibility that interacts in a dynamic manner with each individual that is part of the society. And it doesn’t speak of the life of a community in an entirely allegorical or philosophical way but rather as having its own reality and therefore a responsibility and a destiny. “Every society will be called to its book.” (Qur’an 45:28) Just as individuals have a book that is a record of the reality of what they are and which is used to judge them and determine their fate, so too does every society have a book and a judgment awaiting them.

The Qur’an also implies a collective mode of thinking for each society -“We have adorned for each society their acts.” (Qur’an 6:108) So identification with a group and an admiration of the acts of that group is an instinct built into human beings. Every group has a particular taste, a particular aesthetic and a way of looking at things that makes their own achievements seem more pleasing than those of other groups. We value what we are familiar and comfortable with and we value that which originates from our own society (we have a group identity, a national identity that interacts and intersects with our individual identity) and we often devalue or deem as irrelevant or as something to be subsumed, that which is outside of our own societies.

So built into human nature are two modes of thinking that co-exist and overlap one another – individual thinking, and a complex, evolving, shifting ecosystem of group-thinking. This instinct to be part of a group is extremely powerful, whether the group is a nation, a culture, a sub-culture, a group of philosophers one identifies with, a political grouping, liberal, conservative, progressive, socialist, neo-con, political hawks, groups united on specific prejudices, groupings based on arts, music, business, corporations, commercial brands, technology, military forces, anarchists, internet discussion groups, groups of like-minded bloggers, groups that adhere single-mindedly to past traditions…groups that overturn tradition…and so on….

The impulse and need to form and participate in groups is a pattern built into the nature of humans, and while on one level our thinking is individual, on another it is, almost subconsciously, collective. Our individual consciousness evolves in the milieu of a complex, interconnected mental ecosystem where group ethics and a collective spirit and intention in action arises. Collective modes of thought emerge due to shared opinion, ideological direction, and will. So a society or group can take on the characteristics of a single complex individual and be viewed in that manner. And just as there is a limited lifespan for individuals there is also a term, a limit, a timeframe governed by a variety of conditions for the survival of any given mental ecosystem. When the life and vitality in the ideas around which a society or group congregates fades, weakens, or degenerates, that society, that manifestation of ideology and social structure reaches the end of its term, the end of its functional societal lifespan.

“And for every society there is a term, so when (the conditions of) their term is fulfilled they shall not remain behind, nor shall they go before.” (Qur’an 7:34)

So there arises a responsibility laid out not only by the Prophet but by revelation (the Qur’an) and by the reality and nature of societies and the laws which govern them. They have a life and death and an existence for a given span and will be called to an accounting (to their book). And so the Qur’an calls for people who will “rise up for Allah’s sake in twos and singly” (Qur’an 34:46) as the conscience of a society, as those who impart life to societies which blindly lay the foundations of their own demise and the conditions of their own degeneration. These will not approve group-think when it merits disapproval, nor allow a societal nafs-amarra to overrun their individual nafs-lawwama, but will act instead on carefully considered knowledge and inner conscience. Approval and disapproval takes on a metaphysical quality as the individual binds or distances himself from the reality which a society or group generates for themselves – and so we each are called upon to write our part, to manifest our corrective role in society’s unfolding “book”.

“Truly what unites the people and imparts to them a common shared (negative or positive) destiny consists in individual approval and disapproval.” (Imam Ali – Nahjul Balagha)

- Irshaad Hussain

Related articles:

History and Perception
Prisoners of thought
Paradox for a modern age

This is a Downing Street “clarification”. When the deputy prime minister says illegal, he means legal. When he says disastrous, he means brilliant. When he says black, he is fumbling for the word white.

On Wednesday Nick Clegg stood at the dispatch box and described the Iraq war as “the most disastrous decision of all” and the invasion of Iraq as “illegal”. Downing Street hurriedly explained that what he actually meant was that the invasion was a triumph of British arms and as lawful as driven snow.

Earlier in the week, the head of MI5 at the time of the war, Lady Manningham-Buller, had vindicated Clegg’s statement. So, too, had earlier evidence from Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general. To Downing Street, this was of no matter. Clegg was caught between the whirring flywheel of truth and the crashing gears of a mendacious diplomacy. He was torn to shreds.

The Liberal Democrat leader appears to have come unqualified to the task of high office. When pushed against the wall by the arch-warmonger, Jack Straw, he showed himself a serial truth-teller. While this handicap may not be insuperable at home, in foreign affairs it is a killer. Clegg was supposed to lie under political torture, and failed.

David Cameron, who is intelligent enough to agree with Clegg, was in a difficult position. He was visiting Barack Obama in Washington at the time. He knows, with the US president, that Afghanistan is the next most disastrous decision after Iraq. The two men can say that in private, but not in public. There they have to present Afghanistan as a great victory for Nato, a triumph of liberal interventionism. Britain and the US are marching to war shoulder to shoulder against Johnny Taliban and the mussulmen. Defeat is not an option.

Cameron and Obama have emerged from this first bilateral meeting as sensible men who must somehow navigate their respective ways from an inherited war to an honourable peace, amid a western foreign policy that has spent a decade drenched in sophistry.

Commentators are often asked to predict history’s verdict on a particular era, and are well advised to decline. But it is hard not to see western policy in the first decade of the 21st century as sunk in a morass of folly. It was subcontracted to a defence lobby desperate for a role, which it found in exploiting weak leaders by playing on the ideology of fear.

As a result, at the end of the decade western states found themselves spending more money to become less safe, with their global interests more at risk than at the start. The legacy of the victory over communism was squandered. In Britain, policy failed the Ernie Bevin test, that a citizen should be able to buy a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere he damn well pleases.

This has applied not just to the blood-thirsty horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has applied to the stance taken against other peoples opposed to these wars, such as Iran and Pakistan. It has led the US and Britain into contentious relations with the entire Muslim world, fuelling anti-western sentiment not only across Asia but, as Manningham-Buller pointed out, among Muslim populations within the west. The last decade has seen an entire foreign policy elite lose the art of friendship. Bred under the communist threat, the west’s leaders craved a mighty enemy and found it by exaggerating the threat from militant Islam and elevating terrorist gangs to the status of state enemies.

As a result, British policy has relied on one outdated premise after another. It relies on the collective security of Nato, long detached from its supposed purpose and entombed in the citadels of Kabul. It relies on Trident submarine missiles, on an “out of area” fleet and on aerial combat jets, all archaic cold war deterrents. It has an obsession with nuclear weapons that has bred an equal obsession in countries that lack them. Yet it can barely afford a helicopter.

The enmity of states has given rise to the deployment of other counter-productive crudities, such as sanctions on Iran, trade barriers against the developing world and the exchange of rhetorical abuse, beloved of George Bush and his amanuensis, Tony Blair. These two seemed at times to mimic Plato’s tyrants, “always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader”.

The past decade has been an age of pretence, of the US pretending to police the world, of Britain pretending to be its deputy, of Europe pretending to be America, of Russia pretending to an empire, and of China pretending wealth can substitute for democracy. Europe’s Lisbon treaty pretended it could fashion a new state from the crooked timber of Europe’s national identities and economies, bringing the common currency close to collapse.

Bush and Blair treated the world as an enemy – “He who is not with us is against us”. From French surrender monkeys to Chinese traders, from Latin American drug growers to British computer hackers, from international lawyers to UN mediators, every alien was a suspect foe. Foreign policy lurched into paranoid mode. Guantánamo filled with victims and ludicrous sums were spent on security. The world responded in kind. Airports became nests of xenophobia.

This was nowhere better demonstrated than in Blair’s dreadful January appearance before the Chilcot inquiry, which now meekly claims to be unconcerned with the legality of the Iraq war (so what is it concerned with?). All evidence has testified that the war was a mistake and undermined Britain’s security. Blair’s contradictory display of pro-war self-delusion, arrogance and folly should be a textbook video for any school of 21st-century statesmanship.

Though Cameron’s public remarks on foreign policy so far have seemed reactionary, especially on the war, he learns fast, and is comfortable at summits and in bilateral encounters. His preamble to this week’s successful visit to Washington rejected the past emphasis on a special relationship and recognised that Britain was a “junior partner” but a partner “of choice”. It had its own view of the world. Subsequent confused signals over an Afghanistan withdrawal have hinted that Britain may at last realise some leverage over US war policy.

Everyone wants to leave Afghanistan, the only question being how and when. Britain has more than a stake in this. To leave only the US hopelessly fighting the Taliban would visit on Washington an even lonelier defeat than is implied by the current talk of a phased withdrawal. Obama is on a painful hook. It is for Britain to help him off it without the senseless slaughter of more soldiers.

The prize before these two leaders is now great, of bringing the mendacious bravado of the past decade into line with reality on the ground. It is to end two unnecessary wars and rebuild trust with a Muslim world that has no more interest in the pestilence of terror than does the west. It is to accept that the world is not a place of blocs but of individual states, each with divergent interests and fears. It is to realise colossal savings in defence spending and to shift the emphasis of foreign policy from state-sponsored paranoia to global trade and prosperity.

Clegg is right. So if Cameron cannot yet tell the truth, he can at least mean what Clegg says.

This article was written by Simon Jenkins and was first published in The Guardian, 22 July 2010. Read the original article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/22/clegg-truth-iraq

The initial and quite understandable response of many newcomers (to Islam) is to become an absolutist. Everything going on among pious Muslims is angelic; everything outside the circle of the faith is demonic. The appeal of this outlook lies in its simplicity. The newly rearranged landscape upon which the convert looks is seen in satisfying black and white terms of: them versus us; good against evil.

This mindset is sometimes called convertitis. It is a common illness, which can make those who have caught it rather difficult to deal with. Fortunately, it almost always wears off. The only exceptions are those weak souls who imagine that the buzz of excitement caused by their absolutist, Manichean division of the world was a necessary part of Islamic piety, or even that it has some spiritual significance. Such people are often condemned to wander from faction to faction, always joining something new, in an attempt to regain the initial excitement engendered by their conversion.

Most new Muslims, however, soon see through this. A majority of people come to Islam for real spiritual or intellectual reasons, and will continue with their quest once they are inside Islam. Becoming Muslim is, after all, only the first step to felicity. Those individuals who adopt Islam because they need an identity will be condemned to wander the sectarian and factional hall of mirrors, constantly looking for the perfect group that will give them their desperately needed sense of speciality and superiority.

But actions are by intentions. A hundred years ago the founder of the Anglo-Muslim movement, Imam Abdullah Quilliam, in Liverpool, was writing that those British people who convert for Allah and His Messenger would, by the grace of God, be rightly guided. Those who convert for any other reason are in serious spiritual trouble. Just as the salah (i.e. prayer) is invisibly invalidated if the niyyah (i.e. intention) at its outset is not correct, similarly, Islam will not work for us unless we have entered it in faith, out of a sincere quest for God’s good pleasure. If things are not going right for us, if we find no delight in our prayers, if Ramadan simply makes us hungry, if we cannot seem to find the right mosque or the right company to take us forward, then we would do well to start by examining our intentions. Did we become Muslims only, and purely, to bring our souls to God? Other reasons: solidarity with the oppressed, admiration for Muslims we know, desire to join a group, the love of a woman – none of these are adequate foundations for our lives as Muslims deserving of Allah’s grace and guidance. Imam al-Qushayri says that spiritual aspirants are only deprived of attainment when they neglect the foundations. So we need to look within, and if necessary, renew our faith, following the Prophetic Sunnah. Renew your iman, a celebrated Hadith enjoins.

So what are we? Statistically, perhaps, fifty thousand people. But once we have taken the plunge, and enjoyed the feel of Islam, and come to know through experience, rather than through reading books, that Islam is a way of sobriety, dignity, poise and rewarding spirituality, what exactly is our self-definition? When we meet family and friends who are not Muslim, how do we carry ourselves? Do we treat Islam as a great secret? A discreet eccentricity that we hope people will not be so crude as to mention? Or, on the contrary, something we wear on our sleeves, feeling that it is our duty constantly to steer the conversation back into sacred quarters, confronting people with Islam, that they might have no argument against us at the Resurrection?

More generally, what is our view of the wider world of unbelief, which, despite the breathless predictions of some of our co-religionists, continues to grow more powerful and more prosperous? How much of it can we affirm, and how much of it must we publicly or privately disown?

We can, of course, take the easy way out, and avoid engaging with these questions, by retreating from the mainstream of society, and consorting only with Muslims. But this is not so easy. We need to be employed, since this is pleasing to God; and we need to maintain good ties with our relations, since this is also enjoined in the Hadith. “Keep company with them both in the world in keeping with good custom”, (31:15) says the Qur’an to converts who have unbelieving parents. And the Hadith explains that non-Muslim parents have significant rights over their Muslim children.

But more significantly than this fact, to solve the problems thrown at us and at our identity by the real world outside the mosque gates, we need to engage regularly with non-Muslim society. But for this, there would be no effective d‘awah. People do not hear the word of Islam, generally, by being shouted at by some demagogue at Speakers Corner, or by reading some angry little pamphlet pushed into their hand by a wandering distributor of tracts. They convert through personal experience of Muslims. And this takes place, overwhelmingly, at the workplace. Other social contexts are closed to us: the pub, the beach, the office party. But work is a prime environment for being noticed, and judged, as Muslims.

There is nothing remotely new in this. Islam has always spread primarily through social interactions connected with work. The early Muslims who conquered half the world did not set up soapboxes in the town squares of Alexandria, Cordoba or Fez, in the hope that Christians would flock to them and hear their preaching. They did business with the Christians; and their nobility and integrity of conduct won the Christians over. That is the model followed by Muslims, particularly the Sufis, down the ages; and it is the one that we must retain today, by interacting honourably and respectfully with non-Muslims in our places of work, as much as we can.

If this is clear, then my initial question still begs a response. What is a British Muslim? What kind of creature is he/she? The public consensus has clear ideas about other British identities: British Anglican, British Jew, British Asian Muslim or Hindu: all these are recognised categories, and a certain community of expected response governs interactions between the majority and these groups. The Anglo-Muslim, however, is not a generally recognised type.

My own belief is that the future prosperity of the Anglo-Muslim movement will be determined largely by our ability to answer this question of identity. It is a question mainly for converts, but, which many of whose dimensions, will come to apply also to second-generation immigrant Muslims here, who have their own questions to ask themselves and this culture about what, exactly, they are.

To frame a response, I think it is useful to step back a little, and consider the larger picture of Islamic history of which we form a very small part. I mentioned earlier that Islam usually spread through the utilisation of commercial opportunities as opportunities for d‘awah. That picture is one of the most extraordinary success stories in religious history. Compare, for instance, the way in which the Muslim world was Islamised to the way in which the Americans were Christianised. Islamisation proceeded with remarkable gentleness at the hands of Sufis and merchants. Christianisation used mass extermination of the native Americans, the baptism of uncomprehending survivors, and the baleful scrutiny by the Inquisition of any signs of backsliding. A more extreme contrast would be impossible to find.

Perhaps no less extraordinary than this contrast is its interesting concomitant: Christianisation brought Europeanisation. Islamisation did not bring Arabisation. The churches built by the Puritans or the Conquistadors in the New World were deliberate replicas of churches in Europe. The mosques constructed in the areas gradually won for Islam are endlessly diverse, and reflect and indeed celebrate local particularities. Christianity is a universal religion that has historically sought to impose a universal metropolitan culture. Islam is a universal religion that has consistently nurtured a particularist provincial culture. A church in Mexico City resembles a church in Salamanca. A mosque in Nigeria, or Istanbul, or Djakarta, resembles only in key respects the patterns, now purified and uplifted by monotheism, of the indigenous regional patrimony.

No less remarkable is the ability of the Muslim liberators to accommodate those aspects of local, pre-Islamic tradition, which did not clash, absolutely with the truths of revelation. In entering new lands, Muslims were armed with the generous Qur’anic doctrine of Universal Apostleship; as the Qur’an says: “To every nation there has been sent a guide”, (35:24).

This conflicts sharply with the classical Christian view of salvation as hinging uniquely on one historical intervention of the divine in history: the salvific sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. Non-Christian religions were, in classical Christianity, seen as demonic and under the sign of original sin. But classical Islam has always been able and willing to see at least fragments of an authentic divine message in the faiths and cultures of non-Muslim peoples. If God has assured us that every nation has received divine guidance, then we can look with some favour on the Other.

Those who believe that Muslim communities can only flourish if they ghettoise themselves and refuse to interact with majority communities would do well to look at Chinese history. Many of the leading mandarins of Ming China were in fact Muslims. Wang Dai-Yu, for instance, who died in 1660, was a Muslim scholar who received the title of Master of the Four Religions because of his complete knowledge of China’s four religions: Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Many of the leading admirals in the navy of the Ming Empire were practising Muslims.

In China, mosques look very like traditional Chinese garden-temples, except that there is a prayer hall without idols, and the calligraphy is Qur’anic. In some of the most beautiful, you will find, as you enter, the following words in Chinese inscribed on a tablet:  “Sages have one mind and the same truth. In all parts of the world, sages arise who possess this uniformity of mind and truth. Muhammad, the Great Sage of the West, lived in Arabia long after Confucius, the Sage of China. Though separated by ages and countries, they had the same mind and Truth.”

In these examples from India and China, we see a practical confirmation of Islam’s proclamation of itself as the final, and hence universal, message from God. In a hadith we learn: Other prophets were sent only to their own peoples, while I am sent to all mankind.

It is not that the Qur’anic worldview affirms other religions as fully adequate paths to salvation. In fact, it clearly does not. But it allows the Muslim, as he encounters new worlds, to sift the wheat from the chaff in non-Muslim cultures, rejecting some things, to be sure, but maintaining others. In Islamic law, too, we find that shara‘ liman qablana, the revealed laws of those who came before us, can under certain conditions be accepted as valid legal precedent, if they are not demonstrably abrogated by an Islamic revealed source. And Islamic law also recognises the authority of ‘urf, local customary law, so that a law or custom is acceptable, and may be carried over into an Islamic culture or jurisdiction, if no Islamic revealed principle is thereby violated. Hence, we find the administration of Islamic law varying from country to country. If a wife complains of receiving insufficient dower from her husband, the qadi (judge) will make reference to what is considered normal in their culture and social group, and adjudge accordingly.

All of these historical observations have, I hope, served to make quite a simple point: Islam, as a universal religion, in fact as the only legitimately universal religion, also makes room for the particularities of the peoples who come into it. The traditional Muslim world is a rainbow, an extraordinary patchwork of different cultures, all united by a common adherence to the doctrinal and moral patterns set down in Revelation. Put differently, Revelation supplies parameters, hudud, rather than a complete blueprint for the details of cultural life. Local mindsets are Islamised, but remain distinct.

This point is obvious to anyone who has studied Islamic thought or Islamic history. I reiterate it today only because some Muslims nowadays reject it fiercely. Those who come to Islam because they wish to draw closer to God have no problem with a multiform Islam radiating from a single revealed paradigmatic core. But those who come to Islam seeking an identity will find the multiplicity of traditional Muslim cultures intolerable. People with confused identities are attracted to totalitarian solutions. And today, many young Muslims feel so threatened by the diversity of calls on their allegiance, and by the sheer complexity of modernity, that the only form of Islam they can regard as legitimate is a totalitarian, monolithic one. That there should be four schools of Islamic law is to them unbearable. That Muslim cultures should legitimately differ is a species of blasphemy.

These young people, who haunt our mosques and shout at any sign of disagreement, are either ignorant of Muslim history, or dismiss it as a gigantic mistake. For them, the grace and rahmah (mercy) of Allah has for some reason been withheld from all but a tiny fraction of the ummah (Muslim community). These people are the elect; and all disagreement with them is a blasphemy against God.

We cannot hope easily to cure such people. Simple proofs from our history or our scholarship will not suffice. What they need is a sense of security, and that, given the deteriorating conditions of both the Muslim world and of the ghettos in Western cities, may not come readily. For now, it is best to ignore their shouts and their melodramatic but always ill-fated activities. Our psychic problems are not theirs; and theirs can never be ours.

Islam is, and will continue to be, even amid the miserable globalisation of modern culture, a faith that celebrates diversity. Our thinking about our own position as British Muslims should focus on that fact, and quietly but firmly ignore the protests both of the totalitarian fringe, and of the importers of other regional cultures, such as that of Pakistan, which they regard as the only legitimate Islamic ideal.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad graduated from Cambridge University with a double-first in Arabic in 1983. He then lived in Cairo for three years, studying Islam under traditional teachers at Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world. . Since 1992 he has been a doctoral student at Oxford University, specializing in the religious life of the early Ottoman Empire. Shaikh Abdal Hakim is the translator of a number of works, including two volumes from Imam al-Ghazali’s Ihya Ulum al-Din He appears frequently on BBC Radio and writes occasionally for a number of publications, including The Independent; Q-News International, Britain’s premier Muslim Magazine; and Seasons, the semiacademic journal of Zaytuna Institute

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By Gary Younge

The Guardian, Sunday 4^th July 2010

Last Wednesday newly released documents revealed evidence that, in a less degraded political culture, would have produced a scandal. The Chilcot inquiry heard that the then attorney general, the government’s chief legal adviser, explicitly warned Tony Blair that an invasion without further United Nations approval would be illegal.

“In view of your meeting with President Bush, I thought you might wish to know where I stand on the question of whether a further decision of the UN security council is legally required in order to authorise the use of force against Iraq. My view remains that a further [UN] decision is required,” wrote Lord Goldsmith. As if further clarification were necessary, a handwritten note, assumed to be written by Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, warned: “Clear advice from attorney on need for further resolution.”

Unable to say he hadn’t been told, Blair instead behaved as though English had just become a foreign language. “I just don’t understand this,” he wrote in the margins. The very next day he flew to Washington and told George Bush he was “solidly with the president” regardless of what the UN did. Put bluntly, it is irrefutable proof that the British prime minister was willing to flout international law.

A few hours after the document’s release, across the Thames in a sweaty room in Lambeth, the Labour leadership contenders went through their paces. Each argued that under their guidance the next Labour government would listen so that it could learn, and inspire so that it could lead. Each paid homage to fairness, equality and empowerment while struggling to differentiate themselves. The lack of ventilation in the room and engagement from the stage induced a strange compulsive torpor. You couldn’t look away because there was nowhere else to look, but you couldn’t listen because they spoke in a parliamentary patois that mixed English with some obscure institutional inflection. It was as though Charlie Brown’s teacher were standing for leader of the opposition, her words turning to an unintelligible drone by the time they reached the back of the hall.

You would think there might have been a connection between these two events. The inquiry marked another crucial moment in an investigation that is revealing the true extent of duplicity and criminality within a Labour government that led up to an unpopular and calamitous war; the hustings are a bid by members of that self-same party to renew its credibility and purpose after a crushing defeat at the polls.

But in two fetid hours, Iraq never came up. Not a single candidate uttered its name from the podium and not a single question about it came from the floor. The whole evening was like a cross between Seinfeld andFawlty Towers – a show about nothing in which nobody mentioned the war.

That many of us who opposed the war and still oppose the occupation find this problematic is no surprise. It was the most defining personal political choice of the decade and, ethically speaking, not a remotely tough call. The fact that it was illegal adds judicial finality to a moment of moral clarity; but even within the law, it would have been wrong. The ramifications were not only predictable but predicted. Hundreds of thousands murdered, even more displaced, the unleashing of sectarian violence. Getting that wrong speaks to a major, murderous error of judgment.

True, it had come up in previous leadership debates, and will undoubtedly come up again. But the frontrunner, David Miliband, would like us all to move on and, if Wednesday is anything to go by, seems to be getting his way.

“You’ve punished us enough about Iraq,” he told Labour voters before the election. “The purpose of these elections is how we build a better tomorrow,” he told the Telegraph at the weekend. “Not how we debate a better yesterday.”

This is a curious piece of logic. The best indication of what people will do with power is to look at what they did when they had it. For what we do tomorrow is inevitably bound up with what we did yesterday. People who made grievous errors yesterday shouldn’t be trusted to make intelligent decisions tomorrow unless they are able to account for their mistakes today. In truth they haven’t been punished even nearly enough. They should be in jail.

The attempt to paint those who still raise these arguments as obsessives mired in paradigms past misses both the point and an opportunity. The point is that the occupation is still going on, and the other war to which it is inextricably bound, in Afghanistan, is still going wrong. “The essential characteristic of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common,” wrote the 19th-century French philosopher Ernest Renan. “And must have forgotten many things as well.” But in the past people had the decency to at least wait until things had finished happening before they started forgetting them.

The opportunity Iraq provides is to understand what went wrong in government as a means to restoring trust within the party and the country, which would be indispensable for any serious effort to commence an ideological, moral and political renewal. There are, without doubt, many other vital issues. But there are few that encapsulate the issues Labour needs to grapple with, whether you supported the war or not.

Among other things, Iraq raises the following questions: What does a Labour government do when it is presented with facts that contradict its convictions? How does it respond when most of the country demands that it change course? When have the candidates put their consciences before their careers? What internal democratic mechanisms exist within the Labour party to check the will of a determined leader? How does it deal with dissenters and dissent within its own ranks? How would a Labour government respond when it has clearly made a mistake?

It is not the only prism through which Labour’s period in office can or even should be examined; but it is the only one that brings together those fundamental questions in one issue.

In an ideologically crowded field, it also provides a rare distinction between the candidates. There’s only so long they can ignore this elephant in the room before it takes a dump on the carpet. Andy Burnham is proud to have supported it; Diane Abbott is proud she didn’t; David Miliband regrets supporting it and even having the issue raised; Ed Miliband and Ed Balls weren’t in parliament for the vote and, while neither spoke out against it, now say it was wrong. But the other reason why it is important is because it is unavoidable.

When giving examples of why Labour should listen more, a few candidates mentioned the 10p tax rate, an important subject to be sure but not the one that produced the largest demonstration in the history of the country or killed anybody. When asked about whether Labour had got the balance right between civil liberties and protecting the country from terrorism, David Miliband recalled sitting in Downing Street on 7 July 2005 and asking himself: “Could we have done anything to prevent this?” Well they could have not invaded Iraq, which every investigation has shown was the primary thing that made Britain a target.

It is precisely because the issue is so toxic that the poison must be drawn. For only then can Labour be dragged from its sick bed and stand for something more than just elections.

We often wish we could enter the hearts of our loved ones and see them from the inside, so we could truly know them. That wish hardly ever gets fulfilled and when it does, in rare moments, the glimpses are faint and fleeting. Moreover, what we see there does not always please us. But there is one exception, and in this case we are extremely fortunate. It is Muhammad (sallallhu alayhi wa sallam) who Muslims are supposed to love most of all human beings. We can enter the deepest recesses of his heart, and the view does not disappear. It stays still for us, and what we see there never fails to please us.

To enter Muhammad’s (saws) heart and see what is there we have to turn to his innumerable du’as, or supplications to Allah. There was hardly a moment in his life when Muhammad (saws) was not making some du’a: standing, sitting, lying down, in private and in public, for everything he did, big or small, in every situation he faced, in joy, in sorrow, in hardship and in ease. Du’as were the very breath of his life. It is with these du’as that every element of his life was consecrated; nothing profane remained. His life became a single unbroken act of worship. Let us look at some of his du’as in their English translation:

• O Allah, I am Your servant, the son of Your servant, the son of Your maid-servant, and entirely at your service. You hold me by my forelock. Your decree is what controls me, and Your commands to me are just. I beseech You by every one of Your names, those which You use to refer to Yourself, or have revealed in Your Book, or have taught to any one of Your creation, or have chosen to keep hidden with You in the Unseen, to make the Qur’an al-Karim the springtime of my heart, the light of my eyes, the departure of my grief, and the vanishing of my affliction and my sorrow.
• Allah! Unto You do I submit, in You do I believe, upon You do I depend, Unto You do I turn, For You do I contend; Unto You do I seek judgment. So forgive me for what I did and will do, for what I concealed and what I declared, and for that of which You are more knowledgeable than I.
• O Allah! You are my Lord, there is no deity but You. You created me and I am Your slave-servant. And I am trying my best to keep my oath of faith to You and to seek to live in the hope of Your promise. I seek refuge in You from my greatest evil deeds. I acknowledge your blessings upon me and I acknowledge my sins. So forgive me for none but You can forgive sins.
• All Praise is due to You, O Allah! You are the Sustainer of the heavens and of the earth and whatever is in them. Praise be to You; and Yours be the domain of the heavens and the earth and whatever is in them. Praise be to You; You are the Light of the heavens and the earth and whatever is in them. Praise be to You.
• Our Lord and Lord of everything! I give witness that You alone are the Lord, and that You have no partner. Our Lord and Lord of everything! I give witness that Muhammad is Your servant and Prophet. Our Lord and Lord of everything! I give witness that all men are brothers. Our Lord and Lord of everything! Make me and my family sincere to You in every hour of this life and the next. O Splendid and Majestic One, hear me and reply! Allah is the Greatest, the Greatest; Light of the Heavens and the Earth! Allah is the Greatest. Allah suffices me and there is no one better than Him to trust in.
• You are the Truth. Your promise is true, meeting with You is true, Your word is true, Paradise is true, Hell is true, Muhammad sallallhu alayhi wa sallam is true, the Hour of Judgment is true.
• Glory be to Allah and grace is His as great as the number of His creatures, the extent of His domain, and the ink needed to write down His countless signs of presence, omnipresence, and grace.
• O Allah! Grant me light in my heart, light in my sight, light in my hearing, light to my right, light to my left, light above me, light underneath me, light before me, light behind me, and grant me light.
• Our Lord, by Your knowledge of the Unseen, and by Your power over Your creation, grant me life so long as You know life to hold good for me, and grant me death when You know death to hold good for me! Our Lord, I ask You for the fear of You in public and in private, and I ask You for the ability to speak the word of truth in tranquility and in anger, and I ask You for frugality in wealth and in poverty, and I ask You for happiness which is never exhausted and I ask You for pleasure which is never ending, and I ask You for contentment with Your decisions, and I ask You for the finer life after death, and I ask You for the pleasure of looking upon Your face, and meeting You without ever having undergone great suffering, and without ever having been subjected to misleading temptation.
• O Allah! I ask You for vitality in this life and the one to come. Allah I ask for Your forgiveness and well-being in my practice of religion, my life, my family and my wealth. Allah! Cover over my faults and set my fears at ease. Allah! Protect me from before me, and from behind me, and on my right, and on my left, and from above, and I seek refuge in You from all attempts to undermine me.
• O Allah, have mercy on me! Do not leave me alone for even a moment, and put my affairs in order, there is no God but You.
• In the name of Allah I go out; I place my trust in Allah! O Allah, I seek refuge in You from bring made to stumble, from straying and from being made to stray, from doing wrong to others and from being wronged by others, and from misunderstanding and from being misunderstood.
• O Allah, nothing is easy except what You make easy; and You make the difficult easy if it be Your will.
• O Allah! I seek refuge in You from the evil of my hearing, the evil of my sight, the evil of my tongue, and the evil of my heart.
• O Allah! I seek refuge in You from knowledge which does not benefit, from a heart which is not humble, from an inner self which is never satisfied, and from a prayer which is not answered.
• Allah! Change our hearts. Change our hearts to be obedient to You.
• Allah! I seek refuge in You from need except of You, and from meekness except before You, and from fear except of You. I seek refuge in You from my ever telling an untruth, or perpetrating indecency, of becoming overweening because of my relationship withYou. I seek refuge in You from the malice of enemies, incurable disease, shattered hope, withdrawal of favour, and the sudden fall of vengeance.
• O Allah. Make me live and die for You, oft-remembering You, humble before You, sighing, repentant. My Lord, accept my repentance, cleanse me of my misdeeds, answer my prayer, substantiate my plea, guide my heart, straighten my tongue and banish all ill-will from my breast.

  To Allah we belong, and to Him is our return. O Allah! You suffice me in disaster. So reward me for it and replace it with something which is good.

  Allah, unto You I complain of my weakness, of my helplessness, and of my lowliness before men. O Most Merciful of the merciful, You are Lord of the weak. And You at my Lord. Into whose hands will You entrust me? Unto some far off stranger who will ill-treat me? Or unto a foe whom You have empowered against me? I care not, so You be not angry with me. But Your favouring help-that were for me the broader way and the wider scope! I take refuge in the Light of Your Countenance whereby all darkness are illuminated and things of this world and the next are rightly ordered, lest You make Your anger descend upon me, or lest Your wrath beset me. Yet it is Yours to reproach until You art well pleased. There is no power and no might except through You. (du’a in the most distressful moment in Ta’if )

In his du’a, we find an entirely humble and ever wakeful heart totally immersed in the remembrance of Allah in all His power and glory. The remembrance is in love and joy, without a moment of forgetfulness. We find a heart that knows that Allah is everything and he himself is nothing. His heart is emptied of everything so that Allah can occupy it. It is in complete faqr, or absolute poverty waiting to be enriched with Allah’s forgiveness, mercy, guidance and help. There is not the slightest trace of pride or self-sufficiency. In these du’a we see a heart in unconditional submission to Allah’s will. We find a heart entirely humble before Allah and ever thankful to Him under all circumstances. We find a heart pleased with Allah, eager to please Him, loathe to displease Him. We find a heart willing to be patient and persevering. This wise heart understands that all that truly matters is the Akhirah (the Hereafter), not the duniya (this world), and that the duniya must not be purchased by selling the Akhirah. In short, we see the perfect heart of a perfect slave of Allah, a human heart that has attained its highest and noblest state.

Du’a spontaneously welled up in Muhammad’s (saws) heart in an ever flowing stream. It is as if they were just there in his heart, waiting silently to make an appearance at the most fitting moment. The words are simple, yet wonderfully precise, unimaginably solemn in tone, and absolutely clear in meaning. And how moving they are! Words pour out in smooth succession, throbbing with an emotional fervour unmatched anywhere else in language. The whole being of the utterer is in the utterance. Language seems to have transcended its usual barriers to become a perfect vehicle for the heart yearning to reach its Master. This is no poet deliberately trying to create effect: nothing short of miracle can account for it, and the miracle is Allah’s overflowing grace on the heart of His beloved Messenger.
Oh, what a heart Muhammad (saws) had! His heart was no narrow region, its compass and depth are beyond our comprehension. Let us try to imagine what kind of person he was to have a heart like this! Is there any one else in human history who had a heart like this and whose heart is laid bare so fully for our view? But we can do more than just view it, we can also enter this blessed heart and rest in its cool shade and be blessed until we draw our final breath.

Having once seen Muhammad (saws) through his du’as, what more does one need to know him? It is this humble, obedient and devout heart that Muhammad (saws) carried everywhere, and everything he said or did bears its imprint. The heart was the seed, the heart was the blossoming and flourishing plant, the heart was the fragrant flower, the heart was the sweet and nourishing fruit . The heart was everything. To miss this is to miss our beloved Prophet (saws) altogether.

Yet today we find scholars and thinkers, even Muslims, around us who write and talk about Muhammad (saws) while totally oblivious of his unique heart. The result is a gross misrepresentation of him. In their presentation of Muhammad (saws) minus his heart, nothing remains of him. They, in fact, present someone else who is not Muhammad (saws) at all; they present a fictitious character, born out of their own folly and blindness. In failing to see the kind of heart he had, they mistake the true identity of the perfect Slave and Messenger of Allah. May Allah save them from themselves and us from their harm!
My brothers and sisters, consider how blessed we have been to have such a person as our Messenger of Allah. Let us prostrate ourselves in thankfulness to Allah. Also consider how fortunate we have been to still possess all these treasures from Muhammad (saws). Every weary and thirsty traveler journeying through life can drink from this inexhaustible, pure and nourishing fountain. What better gift can anyone leave for others? What better friend or benefactor can there be for us? We ought to pray for those noble ancestors whose patient and painstaking labour of love has preserved and handed down to us these priceless treasures. Let us know Muhammad (saws) as he should be known. Let us enter his blessed heart and make our dwelling there. Let us have the heart to love and follow him with all our being. For that we have to tune our heart to his.

We love and follow Muhammad’s (saws) way to our own benefit beyond measure in this world and the Next. In this world, it will free us from the clutches of the many demons within and outside us who are ever ready to tear us into pieces. It will bring our life a harmony and tranquility that we cannot otherwise find. And the benefit in the Next World is incalculable. Each of us, prosperous or poor, happy or unhappy, will one day wake up to find ourselves destitute and helpless on a Day very unlike any we have experienced here and in a World very unlike the one we know here. That will be the Day of Judgement in the World of Akhirah. At that moment of sore need we will have none except Muhammad (saws) to come to our rescue. He alone will have Allah’s permission to plead with Allah to be merciful to us. All of us will need him on that Day of days, and truly our need will be great. By loving and following him now while there is yet time, we can lay the foundation of our hope on that Heart-rending Day.

Let us all rejoice in the limitless blessing we have in Muhammad (saws). Let us all joyfully say Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wassallm.

*****

A. K. M. Mohiuddin is a retired university professor of English literature living in Bangladesh. He can be reached at this address: akmm45 [at] yahoo [dot] com

[ This article originally appeared on www.islamicity.com ]

Goals For Life

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/18 June 2010

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Football fever is all around us these days. And those who know the game will tell you that it’s all about scoring goals. Our khutbah today is also about scoring goals, but goals of a different kind.

Let’s think about the goals we all strive for throughout life — our lifetime goals. Each one of us is likely to have some burning ambition, some clear objective or ideal that drives us forward each day. It may be a work related deadline, a forthcoming exam or a karate grading session, or we may be working towards a particular career that we want to pursue after leaving university.

Consciously or subconsciously, we all have short-, medium-, and long-term goals that we hope to achieve before our life is over. The difference from soccer is that in real life no one knows when the final whistle will blow. No one knows just how, when, and where their life will end. When we line up for our congregational prayers the Imam often reminds to live each day as if it is our last day and to pray every prayer as if it is our last prayer. We must therefore be totally focused and sincere in what we do.

In order to achieve any goal, there is nearly always an economic dimension. We need money to get things done. No matter how noble or generous we want to be, we still need some degree of financial independence for ourselves in order to get what we want. This is simply in the nature of things. We may not want to be wealthy just for own sake, to show off and live a flashy lifestyle; rather, in order to be more effective in society, we must be able to stand on our own feet financially.

Therefore, we need to work to earn money to do what we would like to do. The danger is that the means can sometimes become the end in itself. How many young people have not set out in life with high ideals of making the world a better place for all, only to be distracted along the way? How many of us simply become consumers, buying the latest gadgets and fashionable clothes, enjoying the material pleasures of life and forgetting that their life really does have a higher and nobler purpose?

Many people work hard, get rich, and look back with a sense of pride in what they have achieved. It’s only human nature. The pride we feel drives us to more effort, producing more wealth and more pride, and so on. But worldly success is meaningless if we do not aspire to a higher and nobler objective. Thus, Allah reminds us in the Holy Quran:

“Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: Women and sons; heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence); and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this world’s life; but in nearness to Allah is the best of the goals (to return to).” (Sura Al `Imran 3:14)

We shouldn’t feel guilty about making a success in this world. Allah wants us to enjoy the fruits of our hard work. He wants us to work hard and to enjoy a nice car and a nice home in a nice neighbourhood. But this should be the by-product of worship, not the main agenda. We should not love material things so much as to distract us from worshiping Him. Some religions teach that in order to grow spiritually, you must deny yourself the pleasures of this world. You may have to spend time in a monastery or become an ascetic. Islam teaches life fulfilment, not life denial. Islam teaches that the body and the spirit should live in harmony, not in conflict. In our daily prayers, we supplicate Allah saying,

“Rabbana aatina fid-dunya hasanatan, wafil aakhirati hasanatan, waqina athaaban-naar.”

“Our Lord! Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter, and save us from the torment of the Fire.“

We have to get the balance right, between our work, family, home, community and our leisure time. Many of our parents came to Britain from other places in order to find work and a better life. We must make sure that our parents’ migration to Britain was not just for a better life for themselves and their children. We must make sure that our presence in this beautiful country will be a benefit to everyone who lives here.

Our country has many social problems related to financial debt, juvenile delinquency, failed marriages, and drug and alcohol abuse. We can and we should be working to put things right. Even if the reasons for our parents’ migration were mainly economic, we can extend that purpose to include good citizenship and being good and inspiring role models of what Islam can offer the modern world. That should be our intention. One hadith, narrated by `Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him), says the following:

“Actions are judged by their intention and everyone shall have only what he intended. Therefore, those who migrate for Allah and His Messenger, their migration was for Allah and His Messenger; and those whose migration was to achieve some worldly benefit or to take some woman in marriage, their migration will be judged for their intentions.”

My dear sisters and brothers, let us today dedicate ourselves to the service of Allah. Whether our parents came here to study, to work, to run a business, to seek political asylum, or to enjoy a better life in general, let us make sure that our daily concerns focus not only on improving ourselves, but also improving our neighbourhood, our country and our natural environment. This will bring us nearer to Allah. Let us, in our spiritual life, make the hijrah, the migration, from what pleases us to what pleases Allah. It means, in essence, that we must aim to rise above selfishness, vanity and self-indulgence. We must fulfil the noble purpose that Allah has decreed for us, which is to be His ambassadors on earth.

Let’s try to make our goals in life well-balanced and pleasing to Allah. Allah told His angels that He created us so that we can be His ambassadors on earth. Remember, we are all ambassadors of Islam. As young students, your immediate goal is to do well at university so that you can do well in life generally. All the time, remember that you are being observed by others, and your behaviour is how people will judge all Muslims. You represent Islam. It’s a big responsibility, but it’s also an opportunity to show how beautiful Islam is.

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The fourth Caliph, Sayyidna Ali once said, that the most eloquent way of showing gratitude to Allah is to serve His creation. God is not impressed by our lip service. He’s not impressed with how many prayers and how many acts of formal devotion we can offer. He’s much more interested in our good actions. He wants to see our love and gratitude made visible. We must bring benefit to our wider community if we really love Allah.

Allah is described in the Holy Qur’an as “Ar-Rahmaan,” the One Who is most merciful. Prophet Muhammad (sws) is described as “Rahmatul-lil-Aalameen,” the one who came as a Mercy to all the nations. We Muslims say we worship Allah and we follow the example of His last Prophet. Shouldn’t we therefore be merciful to others? Shouldn’t we be agents of mercy, angels of mercy? Let us look at ourselves honestly, and ask? What have I done today, that promotes Allah’s mercy to His creation? Have I today, removed something from the burdens of human misery? Have I today, added something to the sum total of human happiness? This is what it means to be a Muslim, to worship Allah and follow the example of His messenger.

There are many ways in which we can be more proactive. We should be at the forefront of community work, regenerating poor neighbourhoods and leading the campaigns against drug and alcohol abuse. We should be good examples of strong family life that promotes an active community service. Here at Royal Holloway our community has been helping the students and the university for over 20 years. Come forward and join us. We need you.

Allah loves all His creation, not only those who call themselves Muslims. Taking good care of all Allah’s creatures is a way of showing courtesy to Him. The World Cup will come and go, but let’s remember the biggest goal of all: Earning Allah’s good pleasure, by showing respect and generosity to all His creatures.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah

“As-salámu ‘alaikum wa rahmatul láhi wa barakátuh!”

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today’s khutbah is about Patriotism: love for one’s country. Is it wrong to love one’s country? Should we love our country more than we love Justice, or God? Should our love for country blind us to what’s right and what’s wrong? In our mass media there are frequent questions as to whether we Muslims can be trusted, whether we are loyal to this country or whether our loyalties lie elsewhere. Living under constant suspicion is not acceptable. We have a duty set out clearly what Islam has to say about Patriotism so that we can remove unfounded fears and phobias about our presence here in Britain, in Europe and the West generally.

But first we must question those who question our patriotism. There’s always a reason why people frame such questions. What is their agenda? Before we give a hasty answer, we must understand why the question is being asked.

The English poet, Ben Johnson wrote: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” By this he meant that when leaders no longer command any moral authority, when they can no longer justify their views by rational argument, by moral and ethical criteria, they resort to rousing calls for patriotism. It is sometimes a last desperate attempt to justify immoral and unethical actions by making a crude appeal to the emotions of the public. What does Islam say?

The Holy Quran urges Muslims to

‘enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong’ and it describes the Believers as

“…the best of people, those who enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and who have faith in Allah.” [sura 3:110]

“Ta’ muroona bil ma’roof, watan hawna ‘anil munkar, wa tu’minoona bil-Laah.”

This has nothing to do with your emotions, your nationality, your race, your political party, or whether you are rich or poor, Christian, Jewish or Muslim. It’s a simple matter of right and wrong. Which side are you on, the side of good or evil? Do you work for God or against God? In the USA there is a motto: “One Nation under God.” It’s very important to understand clearly what God stands for, and what the Nation stands for. The two are not always on the same side! During the American Civil War, one General turned to Abraham Lincoln and said: “Don’t worry, Mr President, God is on our side!” The President replied: “What really worries me is: Are we on God’s side?” A very important difference…

Muslims in the USA, Canada, Europe and elsewhere in the ‘West’ should not be forced to make a false choice. Loyalty to a country should never be a simple matter of ‘my country right or wrong’. That’s basically immoral, unethical and ultimately disloyal and un-patriotic. The most loyal thing a citizen can do is to speak out when things are going the wrong way. When politicians wage unjust wars it is our duty to speak out. We must be witnesses to fair dealing. We must be just, not only when it’s easy, but also when it’s unpopular and risky. We must always be fair and just, even to our enemies.

“O ye who believe! stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others towards you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to Piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that you do“.  Sura 5:8 al-Maa’ida.

Allah commands justice. It’s not an option. It’s an obligation. We must be critical, inwardly and outwardly. Jihad-al-nafs, the lifelong struggle against the lower Self, makes us constantly self-critical and self-purifying. We must also critically analyse what our political leaders are up to, and what they do in our name. This is our right and our responsibility as citizens. Beware of the politician who tells you that to make us feel safe over here, we have to make life unbearable for someone else over there. Patriotism is no excuse for foreign invasions, driven by Big Oil and the arms industry. Invading other countries does not make us safer. We must remind our governments to be even handed and consistent where human rights are concerned, at home and abroad. The lives of Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians are just as valuable as British or American lives. No one life has more value than any other. We are all God’s creatures.

Muslims are called upon to the highest of callings… to follow in the footsteps of the Prophets, to be witnesses to fair dealing, even if it be against our families and our own interests. We are called on to wear a noble garment: Ambassadors of Allah, Khaleefatul-Laah. trustees and caretakers of planet earth. This most honourable of titles carries a heavy responsibility. There is no place of narrow national, tribal or secular loyalties. Yes, we may be Arab or Pakistani by birth, British, European or American by nationality and Muslim by faith. There’s absolutely no problem, no contradiction in that. But our first loyalty is to Allah, creator of the heavens and the earth. This means upholding the truth and being faithful to our conscience. This should make us the most patriotic of all citizens, not simply blind followers of capricious politicians.

As Allah has said:

“Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah loveth those who are just” [Sura 60:8, al-Mum'tahina]

Sometimes, the most patriotic thing to do is to tell your leaders that they are wrong. Muhammad Ali, the boxer, did so when he refused to fight in Vietnam. He was called all sorts of nasty names. His patriotism was questioned, but later his stand was vindicated and he became an international hero. Nelson Mandela fought the unjust laws of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He paid for that by spending 27 years in prison. He was accused him of being a traitor, being un-patriotic and un-South African. But today most South Africans treat him like their saviour, and his struggle inspires people who love justice and fair dealing, all over the world.

Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.

Second Khutbah:

Sub’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

Muslims who live in the West should be brave, honest and truthful. We must ‘speak truth to power’ and not feel that our citizenship and our loyalty is compromised in doing so. A nation that encourages healthy debate and self-criticism, holding its rulers to account, is a healthy nation. It’s not just a human right to speak the truth to power. It’s an Islamic duty. It’s a sacred responsibility.

Prophet Muhammad sws once declared that:

“The best jihad is to speak a word of truth in the court of an unjust ruler”

Muslims are reminded to put wrong things right with their hands, and if they cannot do that, they must speak out against it, and if they are too weak to do so, then they must at the very least, hate the injustice in their hearts.

Allahu a’lam. And Allah knows best.

One thing we must be absolutely clear. Suicide bombing and other acts of indiscriminate violence have no precedent in the prophetic sunnah. This is not the way to address injustices; it is not the way of our noble and illustrious predecessors. While we deplore injustice and oppression, Islam also provides a moral and ethical compass for our actions. As citizens we have a duty to awaken the moral and ethical consciousness of our fellow citizens. We Muslims also have a duty to keep our neighbourhoods safe. Prophet Muhammad (sws) declared that

“A Muslim is he from whose tongue and hand other Muslims are safe, and a true Believer is one in whom all of mankind has a sanctuary for life and property.”

We should be a safe pair of hands, trustees, caretakers of other people and their possessions. We must never give our neighbours any reason for fear or suspicion. In many ways the western countries we live in offer us far more freedom, hospitality and personal security than we find in many Muslim majority countries. Let’s never forget that!

We are not allowed to undermine the security or integrity of the countries we live in. We must earn the trust of our neighbours. We are obliged to remind our fellow citizens, and our governments, to be consistent on human rights issues, and to be even handed with people living inside and outside our national borders. This is the only way we can earn respect and promote world peace in a lasting way for the future.

Dear Sisters and brothers,

Let us pray to Allah and ask for His divine Mercy and intervention. O Allah, help us to become worthy and valued citizens of every land where Muslims live. Help us to earn the respect and affection of our neighbours, through our adab, our good conduct and through our service to society which we render out of love and gratitude to You.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah!

This khutbah was delivered at Stoke Poges Lane Mosque, Slough, on 1st January 2010

This khutbah was delivered in Cardiff, Wales, on 30 April 2010. Al Manar

On 5 January 2009 the Israeli army rounded up around 65 Palestinians (including 11 women and 11 children under the age of 14) in Gaza, several of whom were waving white flags. After handcuffing the men and stripping them to their underwear, the soldiers marched their captives 2km north to al-Atatra and ordered them to climb into three pits, each three metres high and surrounded by barbed wire. The prisoners were forced to sit in stress positions, leaning forward with their heads down, and prohibited from talking to one another. On their first day they were denied food and water. On the second and third, each was given a sip of water and a single olive. On the fourth day the women and children were released and the men were transferred to military barracks.

It was just one of the stories to emerge from the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict conducted by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone. The report accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and “possibly” crimes against humanity. But in a conflict that saw 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians killed compared with about 1,400 Gazans, Goldstone was particularly scathing about Israel’s “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population” – which he said amounted to “collective punishment”.

The Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobbies concentrated their displeasure not on the substance of Goldstone’s report but the essence of his identity. Branded a “self-hating Jew”, he was effectively barred from his grandson’s bar mitzvah after the South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket it. The prominent US constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz has described Goldstone as a “despicable human being”, “an evil, evil man”, “a traitor to the Jewish people” and the UN’s “token court Jew”.

Then this month came “revelations” from an Israeli newspaper that, as a judge under the apartheid regime, Goldstone sentenced black people to death. This, according to Israel’s government, discredits not only Goldstone but everything he discovered about Gaza and, by association, international criticism of the occupation. “Such a person should not be allowed to lecture a democratic state defending itself against terrorists, who are not subject to the criteria of international moral norms,” argued the Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin.

“Although he was involved in clear racist activity, he had no problem writing such a report,” said the chairman of the Knesset’s state control committee, Yoel Hasson, who called Goldstone a hypocrite. Not to be outdone, Dershowitz (a strident advocate of torture) has now likened Goldstone to the Nazi geneticist Josef Mengele.

This crude one-downmanship in identity politics has no winners and many losers. Facts about racism in the past cannot excuse realities about racism in the present. Playing off the legacy of South Africa’s townships against the plight of the captives of al-Atatra seeks not to alleviate the suffering of either group but in effect to dismiss them. But for all the hyperbole and absurdity, there are important principles at stake about who can claim moral authority, on what basis, and to what end.

Let’s start with the most obvious. This is a cynical ploy by the Israeli government to divert attention from the findings of the UN report. Government officials have almost said as much. A foreign ministry official described the investigation by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth as “explosive PR material”. Hasson claims: “Had [the Israeli foreign ministry discovered this earlier], it would have greatly helped us in our activity against the report.” But the report is about Gaza, not Goldstone. Having lost control of the message, Israel is now trying to shoot the messenger.

That Israel would try to do so on the backs of black South Africans is a laughable indication of its desperation. For if Goldstone was complicit in apartheid’s crimes, then Israel was far more so. Israel was South Africa’s principal and most dependable arms dealer. As we learn elsewhere in the Guardian today, it even offered to sell the South African regime nuclear weapons.

“Throughout the 70s and 80s Israel had a deep, intimate and lucrative relationship with South Africa,” explains Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa. “Israel’s arms supplies helped to prolong the apartheid regime’s rule and to survive international sanctions.” No criticism of Goldstone’s complicity from representatives of the Israeli state can be taken seriously that does not acknowledge and condemn Israel’s even greater support of the self-same system.

But just because the Israeli government wants to change the subject doesn’t mean that we have to. Goldstone’s apartheid record matters. For the left to claim it doesn’t, simply because he came up with a conclusion about Gaza that they agree with, would also be cynical. Appointed senior counsel in 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising, Goldstone rose through the South African judiciary during one of apartheid’s most vicious periods. While in power he ordered the execution of two black South Africans and turned down the appeals of many others.

“A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times or by omission or by silence,” wrote the late Trinidadian intellectual CLR James in The Black Jacobins, “shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted.”

Goldstone’s claim that faced with a “moral dilemma” he thought “it was better to fight from inside than not at all”, is inadequate. Not only did he uphold apartheid laws, he enforced them. This is not a question of 20:20 hindsight: many in a similar position at that time chose a more principled stand. Both morally and professionally he had other options, and he is compromised by not having taken them.

But his record did not end with apartheid. While he may not have led the drive to a non-racial democracy, he followed it eagerly. When the system started to collapse, he fully embraced change. Nelson Mandela asked him to chair the commission into public violence primarily because he was trusted by both sides. As such, he was an archetypical transitional figure. After that he went on to produce respected reports into the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. So while his credibility as a human rights advocate might be diminished, it is by no means destroyed.

Finally, there is the insidious role that Israel has attempted to play as ideological gatekeeper for acceptable political behaviour among Jews. The attempt to tarnish any criticism of Israel, regardless of its merits, as unjust is untenable; to castigate them as un-Jewish is deplorable. “What saddens me today is that any Jew who speaks out with an independent voice, especially with the conduct of the state of Israel, is regarded as a self-hating Jew,” says retired South African constitutional court justice Albie Sachs, who is also Jewish. “Why should someone be made to choose between being a Jew and having a conscience?”

Gary Younge’s book Who Are We – and Should It Matter in the 21st Century? is published on 3 June

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

It has taken a cloud of volcanic ash to remind us how exposed we are, how vulnerable we are to the awesome forces of nature. Our sense of vulnerability is heightened when we travel. Travel has become a part of modern life. We’re always travelling. We travel from home to work, to study, to visit our relatives. We travel from town to town and from country to country, by road, by rail, sea and air. We almost take it for granted, that when we set out on a journey, we’ll get there safely. But there’s no guarantee. Accidents do happen. Bad weather, volcanic eruptions, human error and mechanical failure: things happen, and within seconds a routine journey can end in disaster.

The recent air crash that killed the Polish president and his entire entourage is just one example. Some people think that safe travel is only a matter of technology. Those who have no faith background depend entirely on technology and luck, but Muslims know that there’s no such thing as ‘luck.’ There is only Allah’s Decree, Destiny or Foreordainment, His Qadaa’ and Qadr. That is why we always say, insha-Allah, “if it pleases Allah.” We recognise that everything is under His control, and nothing happens in the heavens or the earth without His permission. We mortal human beings rely utterly on Allah’s mercy. No one but Allah can guarantee a safe journey. Only Allah can ensure that our trip to the supermarket and our flight to distant lands will bring us safely to our destination. Sura An-‘Am reminds us [ch 6:v63]

“Say: “who is it that delivers you from the dark recesses of land and sea, when you call upon Him in humility and silent terror: `if He only delivers us from these (dangers), (we vow) we shall truly show our gratitude’?” (63) Say: “It is Allah that delivers you from these and all (other) distresses: and yet ye worship false gods!”

Believers know that. They know that even the shortest routine journey can be fraught with hidden dangers.

While other people hope for a safe arrival, the true believer knows that only Allah can guarantee our safety. That is why our beloved Prophet Muhammad sws recommended specific prayers for the traveller. There are many prayers for travelling, and this is one of my personal favourites:

“Rabbee anzilnee manzilan mubarakan wa anta khairul-munzileen.”

“O My Lord! Cause me to land at a blessed landing place, and you are the Best of those to deliver safe landings”. [sura al-mu’minoon 23:29]

This was the prayer of Noah, Nabi Nooh, as the floodwaters rose up around the Ark which Allah ordered him to build. The Ark as we know enabled its passengers to survive the terrible flood. Eventually, when the flood subsided it came to rest at a safe landfall.

Modern transport is much faster and in some ways safer than the methods used by our ancestors. They had no satnav systems, no airbags, no ambulances or air-sea rescue teams in case of an emergency. They had to be in good health, physically, mentally and spiritually, to endure the rigors of travel. Distances we cover in a few hours today, took them several months of hardship and patience.

Times change, but our helplessness and vulnerability does not change. We still rely utterly on Allah’s mercy, not on luck. We human beings are by nature forgetful, insaan, and our Noble Quran helps us to remember how much we depend on our generous Lord and Educator. That’s why it teaches us this lovely prayer:

“Rabbee anzilnee manzilan mubarakan wa anta khairul-munzileen.”

“O My Lord! Cause me to land at a blessed landing place, and you are the Best of those to deliver safe landings”. [sura al-mu’minoon 23:29]

“Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.”

Second Khutbah:

“Soob’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem”

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My dear sisters and brothers,

We’re constantly on the move, on a journey, not just from one place to another in the physical world, but also from one state to another, in the spiritual world.

When we were born, our soul, our Ruuh has travelled from the realm of eternity into the world of time and space. It accompanies our body on this journey through life, and when we die, our Soul will separate from the body and travel again, back to eternity, back to Allah, back to the timeless and space-less dimension whence it began. Soob’haanal-Laah!

Our whole life is a journey, a most important journey. From our birth to our death, to our re-awakening in that eternal realm that awaits us all beyond the barzagh, the curtain of our physical death, this is the greatest of all journeys. This is the only chance we have, while body and soul are still connected as one personality. This is the only chance we have to live a successful life as our Lord, Creator and Sustainer has decreed. We must purify the soul, we must remove all the moral pollution, the greed, envy, anger, jealousy, arrogance and lust that drags the soul downward toward destruction. This is clear in Sura Al Shams ch91:v7-10

“Wa nafsiw-wama sow-waa haa. Fa-al hamahaa fujoorahaa wataq’waahaa. Qad’aflaha man zak-kaahaa. Waqad’ khaaba man das-saahaa…”

“By the Soul, and the proportion and order given to it; [7] and its enlightenment as to its wrong and its right; [8] Truly the successful ones purify it, [9] and the failures corrupt it…”

My dear Sisters and Brothers, the whole purpose of our journey through life is to be among the successful ones who have purified their soul and who return to Allah with a “qalb saleeem,” a “sound heart.”

“Al Jannah firdaws.” An elevated place in Allah’s Garden: that is our destination; that’s where we all want to be. Every wise person would want to arrive at this safest of all landing places. Al Jannah firdaws, that will be our reward for all the hardship, sacrifice, service to others out of love and gratitude to Allah. That’s the real prize. But if we lose, heaven forbid it, if we miss the opportunity, we might just find ourselves in the company of that nasty fellow downstairs, the one with the horns and the spiky tail, who whispers seductive and misleading ideas into our hearts, and who in the end will have led us to hellfire. Wa A-oothubil-Laah!

We should think, say and do all the right things, day by day, hour by hour, that will bring us to that blessed landing place, to Allah’s Ridwaan, His good pleasure.

As we journey through life, we should imagine that we are actually on a fast flowing river, racing to meet our destiny. Every moment, we’re being drawn, irresistibly, towards Allah.

“Inna lil-Laahi wa inna ilayhir raaji-oon.”

“From Allah have we come, and to Him, surely, we will return.” [Sura Al Baqara ch2:v156]

Dear Sisters and brothers, it’s not enough that we should desire for ourselves only to have a safe landing place. We should have that same desire for our families, for our wider communities and indeed for every human being. Prophet Muhammad (sws) said that a Believer is not a Believer until he desires for his brother whatever he desires for himself. Even if we don’t think of it that way, we’re all in the same ‘boat’ together. Planet earth is like a leaky boat, and we will ultimately either sink together or float together.

Imagine you’re standing on a riverbank where the torrent is rushing past. You hear a shout and you see someone struggling in the floodwater, reaching out to you for help. There’s a rope lying at your feet. You only have seconds to throw the rope and save him. He’s calling desperately for help. What do you do? Do you first ask him: Are you a Muslim? Are you a Christian or Jewish? Does it matter whether he’s a Sufi or a Salafi, or a Deobandi, Barehelwi or Wahhabi? Heavens, no, he’s just another human being like you, desperately needing help! You don’t have to think about it. Seeing any human being in distress should evoke a primeval, instinctive response. Throw the rope! Save a life!  The Holy Quran assures us that to save one human life is like saving all mankind!

In a way, we’re all like that man in the floodwater, struggling to keep ourselves safe, out of debt, out of danger, out of the clutches of Shaitaan and hellfire. Allah reaches out to us, as He declares in His Noble Book:

“Wa’tasimu bi hablil-laahi jamee-aa…..”

“And hold fast, all together, to the rope which Allah (stretches out for you) and do not be divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah’s favour on you; for you were enemies and He joined your hearts in love so that by His grace you became brothers; and you were on the brink of the pit of fire and He saved you from it. This is how Allah makes his signs clear to you: that you may be guided.”

[sura Al Imran 3:103]

The key is to hold fast, all together, despite our differences, despite our race or language or social status. Allah wants us to look deeper than the superficial things that divide us He wants us to recognise our common humanity, to recognise that we are all part of His wonderful Plan. When we do this, when we all hold fast to Allah’s rope, we will deserve a safe landing place in His garden.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Thursday 8^th April 2010

The west’s proudest export to the Islamic world this past decade has been democracy. That is, not real democracy, which is too complicated, but elections. They have been exported at the point of a gun and a missile to Iraq and Afghanistan, to “nation-build” these states and hence “defeat terror”. When apologists are challenged to show some good resulting from the shambles, they invariably reply: “It has given Iraqis and Afghans freedom to vote.”

As British electors don democratic finery and troop to the polls next month, elections in both war-torn countries are looking sick. Last month’s poll in Iraq, blessed (or cursed) with a Westminster-style constitution, has failed to yield a coherent government. It appeared to show the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, just beaten by his predecessor, Ayad Allawi. If so, it would be a remarkable case of a developing world democracy actually ejecting a sitting leader. In that respect, Iraq would be ahead of Britain, where the opposition must lead by at least 10 percentage points to be certain of power.

For the time being, Baghdad’s government has been in abeyance. The Sunni militias, reportedly backed by al‑Qaida, have returned to the streets, and the death rate is again soaring. Kurdistan is all but a separate country, and the odds are on the Sunnis being forced back into a semi-autonomous region. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions been driven from their homes – including almost all Iraq’s ancient population of Christians. The import of democracy has so far just inflamed local tension and fuelled fundamentalism. Like precious porcelain, elections were exported without instructions on their care. In the absence of adequate security, they are little more than tribal plebiscites.

At least in Iraq western troops are leaving the country to its fate. The west’s guilt at the mayhem left behind will start to diminish with time. People will blame George Bush and Tony Blair, leaving them, as they wish, to render their account not to the Iraqis but only to God.

In Afghanistan, a similar saga has been running for nine years, and is growing ever more tragic. Last year saw the deaths of more Afghans (2,412) and more western troops (520) than since the 2001 invasion. Nato is locked in a struggle to hold Helmand province for the government of the president, Hamid Karzai, against insurgents who can wait as long as they like to defeat the hated invaders.

Nato is only now seeking control, nine years on, of the country’s second city of Kandahar, in which the Taliban is dominant and the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the power broker. Karzai is said to have told local elders that there will be no assault on Kandahar “without their permission”. If Nato cannot negotiate a deal over the city, rather than reduce it to rubble, its mission is surely doomed.

The fact that Hamid Karzai was elected, by whatever dubious means, seems to infuriate western leaders. Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and their respective foreign ministers rage and telephone and pay visits and expostulate. The repetitive criticism hurled at Karzai for being corrupt and in the pocket of drug lords has become near comical, not least because of his eccentric response. Last week he threatened privately to swear allegiance to the Taliban himself (which might solve many problems).

The west is constantly telling Karzai to “clean up his act” or, as the New York Times harrumphs, “stop doing whatever he and his aides choose”. This is not because there is any likelihood of his obeying, but to help make the domestic case for the war look less shaky. As the joke in Kabul goes, as long as the west pretends to uphold his regime, Karzai must “pretend to be Swedish”. He is America’s exhibit A for world democracy. The idea that he might regard himself as the elected representative of the Afghan people, warts and all, with a future to consider and his neck on the line, is beyond consideration.

Democracy in both America and Britain is coming under scrutiny these days. Quite apart from the antics of MPs and congressmen, it is said to be sliding towards oligarchy, with increasing overtones of autocracy. Money and its power over technology are making elections unfair. The military-industrial complex is as powerful as ever, having adopted “the menace of global terrorism” as its casus belli. Lobbying and corruption are polluting the government process. In a nutshell, democracy is not in good shape.

How strange to choose this moment to export it, least of all to countries that have never experienced it in their history. The west not only exports the stuff, it does so with massive, thuggish violence, the antithesis of how self-government should mature in any polity. The tortured justification in Iraq and Afghanistan is that elections will somehow sanctify a “war against terrorism” waged on someone else’s soil. The resulting death and destruction have been appalling. Never can an end, however noble, have so failed to justify the means of achieving it.

The high-minded attacks on corruption in Muslim states from London and Washington is futile. In most countries corruption is the lubricant of power. Nor is the west that clean. Britain showered corruption on the Saudis to obtain arms contracts. The activities of American firms in “rebuilding” Iraq were wholly corrupt. In 2001 the British in Kabul – in the person of Clare Short no less – were put in charge of suppressing Afghan opium, fuel of most of that country’s corruption. Britain allowed it to continue, when the Taliban had been in the process of stamping it out.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats are dishonest to say that the Afghan war is justified “provided” Karzai ends corruption, stops rigging elections, and trains his army and police. None of this will happen, and is merely cover to avoid saying what these politicians know to be true – that British soldiers are dying for a dud hypothetical.

As Britons go the polls, they should challenge their candidates to justify what is being done in their name. A system of government that they have spent two centuries evolving and still not perfected is being rammed down the throats of poor and insecure people, who are then hectored for not handling it properly. Why should they? The invasions of their countries was not their choice. They did not ask to be a model for Britain’s moral exhibitionism. They did not plead for their villages to be target practice for western special forces.

Karzai is told he will lose Nato protection if he continues to associate with drug dealers and warlords – many of whom appear to be his relatives. He knows – as we know – that this is bluff. There can be no counter-insurgency without a client regime. Obama and Brown need him as much as he needs them.

Amid this bluff the only certainty for Karzai is that, one day, Nato will get fed up and leave him to his fate, as it is now leaving Maliki in Baghdad. If he wants to live, he must make his peace with Afghans, not Americans, and that means on Afghan terms. Free and fair elections and a stop to corruption will have no part to play in that survival game. Democracy has been greatly oversold.

Oh Muslims! I urge myself first and all of you to be ever God-concious. Allah has decreed by His divine majesty that Islam will prevail and supercede every religion, ideology and man-made ism. Thus it is that Islam will be the dominant religion in the world.

This divine promise was made at the time when the believers were a mere handful, faced with persecution and execution, and the future of Islam looked bleak. Today, 14 centuries later, the Muslim population world-wide stands at approximately 1.3 billion believers.

This rapid growth of Islam is causing great concern to the enemies of truth. Today, our khutbah focuses on a very interesting report on the “World’s changing demographics.” (Please keep in mind that this is a non-muslim report)

“The world is changing…. Europe as we know it today will cease to exist…. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today. This is primarily due to two factors;           1).The growing Islamic fertility rate. (2). Muslim immigration.

• At present in France there are more churches than mosques. In the year 2027, one in five Frenchmen will be Muslim. In 39 years, France will be an Islamic republic.
• In the last 30 years in Great Britain, the Muslim population grew from 89,000 to 2.5 million. There are over 1,000 mosques, of which many were former churches.
• In 15 years from now, more than half the population in Netherlands will be Islamic.
• Russia has over 23 million Muslims. Soon 40% of the Russian army will be Muslim.
• The German Government has secretly stated with great concern:                “Germany will become a Muslim state in the year 2050.”
• There are 52 million Muslims throughout Europe. In five to ten years, Islam will be the dominant religion in the world.
• In 1970, in the U.S.A, the Muslim population stood at 100,000. In the year 2008, the Muslim Population now stands at 9 million (scary?)
• The Catholic Church has recently reported that Islam has just surpassed their membership numbers.

The world is changing….its time to awake and evangelize the Muslim world…this is a call to action…” ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU )

Oh Muslims. Can you now understand why there is so much Islamophobia today ? The enemies of Islam have become constipated and great effort is made to stem the growing tide Islam. Notorious Televangelists are championing the Israeli Zionist cause. Millions of dollars are spent to set in motion their propaganda machines to demonize the image of Islam and Muslims. Two leading Christian Missionaries, Harry Morin and Phil Parshall, conducted seminars to help Christians understand the difficulties and possibilities of evangelism in Muslim communities. They ask, what does God see when He looks at Muslim people?

“Terrorism, fanatical fundamentalism, suicide bombings, black-veiled women, holy wars, Arab sheiks- these are a few of the common words and images that come to the mind of most Westerners. But did you ever wonder what God see when He looks at Muslims?

God sees hungry hearts that are bound by the fear of evil spirits and haunted by the uncertainty of eternity. God sees a growing swell of young people in third-world poverty, frustrated by unemployment, and hatefully resentful of the luxuries of the extravagant West…. Acclaimed Historians insisted there was no need to be concerned about Islam. They said it was a barbaric and rigid religion that was born in the desert and that would die in the desert. They assured the Christian world that in time, Islam would simply fade away in the glory and splendor of Western civilization. But the night of ignorance has passed and we have woken up to the reality that Islam is now the fastest growing religion in many parts of the world and embraces a global community of 1.2 billion people. We have recently been shaken out of our disillusionment to realize that Islam is here to stay, and that it is a dynamic force that must be reckoned with.” ( http://www.cmmequip.org )

Oh Muslims…awake from your slumber and throw off the yoke of complacency. Grab hold of the rope of Allah and be saved from the tidal waves of greed and love for this temporary world. The entire world today is groping in the darkness of immorality, promiscuity and godlessness. The world needs Islam.

Annually, on the 16 June, we commemorate National Youth Day. Let it be made crystal clear to our youth that their place is not in the discos and dens of vice. Don’t destroy your precious lives with drugs, gangsterism and Satanist activities.

Our beloved Prophet (pbuh) said: “One of the categories of  people who will stand in the shade of Allah’s divine protection on judgment day, will be the youth who committed their lives in the obedience of Allah.

Oh young men and daughters! Take control of your lives and steer your destiny in the path of Allah. Now is the time to nurture your sense of responsibility as the fathers and mothers of tomorrow. We need you to become dynamic future leaders and to preach and live Islam with peace, justice and love for all. Let us collectively make ourselves part of the unfolding of the divine plan that Islam will be the dominant religion of the world. Let the world know that Islam needs no terrorism, suicide bombings or conquests. Islam means Peace, and peace is what the world is desperately in need of.

Allah says in His Glorious Qur’an. “Verily, the religion with Allah is Islam.”

Praise be to Allah and salutations on all the revered prophets of Allah. Jumu’ah Mubarak.

Audhu billahi min ash shaytanir rajeem! Bismillah ir Rahmanir Raheem!

Al hamdu lillahi rabbil ‘alameen. Was salaatu was salaamu ‘alaa ashrafil anbiyaee wal mursaleen. Sayidinaa wa nabi’na wa moulanaa Muhammadin wa’ala aalihee wa sahbihee wa sallim.

‘Amma b’ad:

وَلْتَكُن مِّنْكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ وَأُوْلَـئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “Wal Wal takunN minkum ummatunN yad’auna ilal khayri wa ya-muruna bil ma’rufi wa yanhona ‘an il munkar Wa ulaaika hum mul muflihoon”

“Let there arise out of you a group of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to achieve success”

(Surah 3 Ali ‘Imran Verse 104).

Dear sisters, brothers, respected elders and learned colleagues, assalamu’alaykum!

This ayah is the essence of Islam. Being able to give criticism, being able to take criticism and being able to act on that criticism is what Islam is all about. So it’s not just about talking, it’s about doing. Islam is dynamic; it’s no use just making fancy speeches and not acting upon what we say! And this is what I’m going to talk about today, insha Allah.

If someone loves you, they will be critical sometimes! And if they see a fault in themselves, they’ll try to correct themselves as well. Just think, if someone tells you to your face that your breath smells, do they hate you or do they love you? The alternative is someone keeping quiet in front of you and telling fifty other people and they are laughing behind your back!

When I was young, I came to this country as a child, about nine years old. I was very close to my father but had he had to part with me because he desired for me good education and a better life than the life he had.

So I was brought up by my older brothers in this country. And believe me, it’s completely different to being brought up by your parents, because you feel you have a right over your parents whereas your brothers, well it’s not easy at the best of times. However, they did their best and may Allah (s) reward them and their wives for looking after me.

At that age, as you know, it’s easy to get into bad habits with your peers at school and I was no exception. I started smoking with a friend of mine to see what it was like. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately), I got caught and my brothers were very strict and told me off really sternly. However, both of them themselves were smokers! Although I was too young to say anything to them and stopped smoking because I was really scared, they realised that if they didn’t give up themselves, it would send out the wrong message.

Therefore, the next day, they threw away their last packet of Benson and Hedges. Never to smoke again!

This act of theirs has left an indelible mark on me and I have remembered it ever since.

This is what Islam in action is all about. When the Companions used to leave each other, they would recite:

“Wal asr, innal insaana la fikhusr, il alladheena ‘amanu wa amilu salihaati  wa tawaso bil haqqi wa tawaso bi sabr .”

This is the famous surah, Al Asr. Allah (s) swears by time that insaan (humankind) is in a state of loss (we are all losers because we are wasting time). Apart from those who believe and do good deeds and admonish others with the truth and bear with patience that which comes their way. You see, the Companions (r) were totally focussed on the hereafter, their only mission was to spread the deen and so they admonished each other to do this wherever they went.

Last year, I was driving up to Keele for the Jumu’ah prayer with my brother and he said to me: “Why do you give khutbahs every week when it doesn’t really make a difference!”

I thought this was quite a silly observation at the time, but later I realised that every week we give reminders and we talk about punishments and rewards and if I’m totally honest, I would be upset if no one was following my advice! I get upset at myself sometimes talking the talk and not being able to walk the walk…

So today, I don’t want to be judgemental, but I DO want you to monitor yourselves. You must ask yourselves this question:

“Is Islam a personal matter like the other religions or is it more than that?”

Don’t belittle yourselves, and don’t belittle your deen. It’s not just another religion –  IT’S A WAY OF LIFE!

You are VERY IMPORTANT MUSLIMS, especially in this university environment where you are the future intellectuals. You are the future surgeons, saving lives with the idhn (permission) of Allah (s). And more importantly, you are the ambassadors of the Prophet (s).

You see, before Muhammad (s) came, people were lucky enough to have Prophets sent to them to remind them. Every time things went too far, a Prophet would come. But after Muhammad (s), this came to an end. Now, we have to fend for ourselves.

But let us look at this positively! Allah (s) trusts this ummah to deliver His message. Subhan Allah, this is a great honour.

What is more, all the world’s eyes are on us Muslims. Islam is under scrutiny. Why? Because the Shaytan and the friends of Shaytan are afraid of Islam.

Remember! The sunnah of Allah does not change, the sunnah of the Prophets does not change and the sunnah of the Devil does not change.

Why is there no media anger against other faiths? Because there’s always ONE TRUTH.

So we are Muslims entrusted with the truth! This is for us a great honour, but also a great responsibility.

Before people buy into your arguments, they look at you. Your behaviour, your character, your habits, what you do with your spare time, how you dress, what kind of friends you hang around with, your taste in clothes, what you listen to…

So before a non Muslim friend says to you “Hey Abdul, my man! How comes you flirting wiv dat girl man! I fought you said all females are your sistaz”, you have to wake up and scrutinise yourself!

You see, people buy people before they buy the product. Believe me, I’ve been in business since 1980 when I left school!

So if you work for Vodafone, how you interact with the customer will decide the customer’s perception of Vodafone! If you are polite and caring, they will forget that Vodafone is a huge company greedy for your money!

But there’s nothing wrong with the product you’re selling! ISLAM is a great product, it’s The TRUTH!

What is wrong is that WE’RE very bad salespeople!

Now if you think about the image of Islam, it’s at an all time low. People associate everything negative with Islam! What is more, ALL attention is on Islam and Muslims.

Again, let’s look at this positively, let’s use the interest to our advantage. Let’s show the world the characteristics of a Muslim.

A few weeks ago, someone left a baby at one of the local mosques. The baby died. Even now there are flowers and teddy bears where the baby was found.  The media descended on the mosque. Mosque, baby, illegitimate relationship, Muslims!

Just think, one act of fornication and all this! But think about how this started. The two perpetrators didn’t meet all of a sudden and the baby was born. They must have met somewhere or been introduced by someone. What I’m saying is that it must started from something very small. The eyes meet, when they shouldn’t, then it leads to another thing, then another; each time, the person thinks it’s only a bit of harmless fun. Until it’s too late.

This is why Allah (s) says in the Holy Quran “La takraba az zina!” “Don’t even come near fornication!”

Cigarettes, drugs, alcohol have to be bought to be consumed, whereas your passions, your lower self is with you all the time. It needs CONTROL. This is why in Islam, there is no free mixing between the sexes.

Many non-Muslims even know about this! So when they see disparity between us and our deen, they mock us, we are easy prey for the tabloids!

There was a time when non-Muslims would deposit money with Muslims with long beards, the longer the beard, the more trustworthy the Muslim! But not today!

But youngsters! I have good news. All this can change! Because you are the ones most capable of change. This is in the middle of the Quran, you have the likes of inspirational surahs such as Surah Maryam, Surah Yusuf, Surah Kahf.

A young girl barely 13 or 14 years of age is given the responsibility of giving birth to a great Prophet and taking on all of her peoples’ taunts and mockery. You girls and boys are the ones Allah addresses when He wants change. The older you get the more resistant you are to change. It’s no use teaching me something, you’ve heard the saying ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’!

Yusuf (p) was a youngster but he controlled his lower passions. The woman offered herself to Him but He refused. He preferred to go to prison than to participate in obscenity. He was young, in His prime.

Ibraheem (a) was a young man, taking on all His family, His father and His tribe.

The people in the Cave were young men, the word used is feti. The word for chivalry is futuwwa, being honourable, kind, helping, caring. So youth is connected to being chivalrous, not the opposite as is the case with many youngsters today.

But, let me remind you, it isn’t cool to walk around like a gangster.

Luqman the Wise (may Allah be pleased with Him) gives advice to his son: “Don’t walk about the earth as if you own it, don’t raise your voice like the eyoning of a donkey, an ass!”

I want you to take this advise and IMPLEMENT it. Don’t hang around shouting and chatting, don’t disturb other students, especially in the library.

When I was studying here at Keele as a mature student, trying to finish off essays in the library IT section was impossible sometimes because of some sections of students chitting and chatting and using foul language! And you know, most of the time, the noise was made by Pakistani students! Because I could understand Urdu I could understand Punjabi, Mirpuri, Pathohari, I knew what they were saying, and I’m almost deaf in one ear!!

In this country, a lot goes on that is bad. For example, promiscuity and drinking, pornography to name a few of the evils. However, one thing this country does have is the RIGHT TO CHOOSE.

In contrast, in some parts of the Muslim world, especially in villages, where people are illiterate and have little or no knowledge of Islam, there is a lot of jahilliyya (ignorance). And also because there is bigotry from the males, sex is treated as taboo and a lot of wrong goes on.

However, in this environment, we are educated. And what is more we have a choice: We can engage in these evil practices OR we can turn away.

Each one of you who is young has strong passions at this stage of your lives. This is a blessing from Allah (s). However, this blessing has to be controlled. The Prophet (s) prescribed MARRIAGE. If you love a sister, marry her, Allah will do the rest. If you can’t, stay away from sisters and fast. Fasting will help you to control your carnal desires.

You can research into details regarding these issues. I don’t have time to delve into these so please forgive me for being short and blunt.

Simply put, you cannot afford to think of the next life as being a great distance away. Bring it into this life, think of it as close to you as your shadow. Sometimes, the childish and scary ways are more effective. For example, when we were little kids, if we didn’t behave, we were warned to close our ears and listen to the sound of the hellfire. When we did this, we were reminded that this is what Allah (s) has in store for us if we didn’t do as we were told.

So, we must use all means to think of the hereafter. The Prophet (s) Himself was not just a Bashir (giver of glad tidings), He was a Nazir (Warner) as well.

We must also remember that our bodily parts will testify against us if we have misused them in this life. This is in Surah Yaseen. How can this be? Because in the next life, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to speak lies, people will not be able to say anything BUT THE TRUTH.

Furthermore, we will be resurrected in the state that we leave this world. So think about what your last act should be in this world, reading the Qur’an, listening to a nasheed or listening to a vulgar song.

Yes, of course it’s not easy, there is peer pressure etc. But then again, the better the person you want to become, the harder you will have to work. But THE GREATER THE REWARD! There is a hadith of the Prophet (s) that talks of the seven categories of Muslims who will be given the shade on the Day of Judgement when there will be no shade for anyone. And one of these will be a young man who said no to the seduction of a rich woman for the sake of Allah (s).

Again, I emphasise that it is not easy. After all, how long can you stay away from your peers? But, stay away we must, again using simple techniques. We have to be strong and NOT BE NAIVE. Would you jump into a well if someone asked you, would you kill someone at someone’s order? No you wouldn’t! So why follow other people’s silly advice when you should know better? You are undergraduates, post graduates, thinkers, not primary school kids!

We cannot and MUST not compromise on the deen. We cannot dilute this great way of life.

Why do we have to be so proactive? Because, no new religion is to come after Islam and no new Prophet is to come after Muhammad (s)

So it is our duty, whether we like it or not to speak out when we see something un-Islamic going on. This goes for everyone, young and old. If you old, you have no reason to be passive and think “Oh well, nothing will change, so why should I do anything?” WRONG! We are not the ones to bring about the change- it is Allah (s)! Our duty is only to tell off, (wa ma ‘alayna ilal balaagh). Allah will take care of the rest! Think about the hadith of the Prophet (s) who said that when the Angel of Death was told to destroy a community, He came back and said that there was a pious man who was always worshipping! What should he do? Allah (s) replied: Destroy this community and start with him first! Meaning that this man was passive, he did not enjoin the good and forbid the wrong. He was of the opinion that religion is a personal affair.

So you must realise dear elders that we must tell someone when the other brother, son or daughter is wrong because this criticism is LOVE. You must not be embarrased. These are your daughters and sons, your duty doesn’t end with your blood relations, it continues to those related to you through the deen!

The Prophet (s) said: “Be with your brother when he does good and when he does bad.” One of the companions was puzzled, he asked “Ya Rasul Allah (s)! I can understand being with my brother when he is doing good but what do you mean be with him when he is doing bad?” The Prophet (s) explained that you must tell him off when he is wrong!

FINALLY TO FINISH OFF:

To the Youngsters:

Treat this mosque like the cave that the youngsters ran away to and found the solace and Mercy of Allah (s)! Come to the mosque, come to the committee members, ask them for any help. Talk to anyone you feel comfortable to talk to. Don’t worry about your mistakes, we all make mistakes, it is part of human nature to make mistakes, but a bigger mistake would be to not learn from our mistakes.

To the Mosque Committee Members:

Appoint the right people, take on responsibilities, work with each other. Don’t be harsh with your sisters and brothers, listen to them, overlook their minor faults, help them in a positive way. Let’s also try to get learned scholars here to get the message across and answer questions! Don’t chase the youngsters away from the mosque, they should be attracted and made to feel safe here. They should feel safe from your hands and your tongue. Remember! The Prophet (s) was gentle with the believers hareesun ‘alaykum, he was Rauf, He had compassion for the Muslims.

So, I admonish you and I admonish myself! Criticise, take criticism and act on that criticism! That is the way of Islam.

May Allah give you, me and all Muslims the quwwa (power), the tawfeeq (ability) and the himma (strength) to be able to do this and be the best ambassadors of Islam.  Ameen.

ARABIC KHUTBAHS, then salah.

(Prof Humayun Ansari OBE, is currently Professor of the History of Islam and Cultural Diversity, and Director, Centre for Minority Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London)

When I came to Royal Holloway thirty years ago to begin my doctoral research, I could not possibly have predicted that the then well-established and widely-accepted concepts of the ‘Muslim world’ and the ‘West’ would become such highly contested notions. The ‘Muslim world’ was generally taken for granted, albeit as something that was geographically bounded, inferior and essentially different from the West. Arguably, British historical writing – or at least the majority of it, particularly during Britain’s imperial phase – reflected the power relations with Muslim societies. Now, three decades later, it is ‘Islamophobia’ (reflecting the existing climate of widespread fear and hostility towards Islam and Muslims) and ‘a clash of civilisations’ (in which the current war against terror – and by extension Islam – has come to occupy such prominence lately) that both interrogate the dynamics between knowledge and power in today’s rapidly globalising context.

Norman Daniel, the widely-respected historian of Islam and Muslims, who published his Western Images of Islam as long ago as 1960, highlighted the political and religious considerations behind distorted western views of Islam, examining Christian-Muslim interaction from medieval times to the modern world. According to him, hostile attitudes and hatreds had become deeply embedded, surfacing from time to time given the right context or conditions. We may or may not go along with all that Daniel proposed, but Edward Said – while agreeing with Daniel – gave his thesis a timely post-modern twist in what became his controversial study, Orientalism, published in 1978 not long before I reinvented myself as a PhD student. And since its publication, Said’s many protagonists have argued that a new more sophisticated kind of ‘Orientalism’ has emerged and continues to shape attitudes in the so-called West.

But, despite the impact of Said’s ideas, much of the debate generated by his work has been conducted by non-historians; few of the latter have engaged with Said’s argument. Indeed, many of them have dismissed him as being not only confused but also plainly ahistorical. It is this lack of engagement that has prompted me in my lecture this evening to explore how – over time – British historical imaginations have processed or handled Islam and the so-called Muslim world.

* * * * *

As I have just mentioned, since Orientalism’s publication in 1978 there has been a great deal of debate about Said’s thesis and propositions. His study has provoked much controversy but it has also generated an immense amount of positive intellectual development across many humanities and social sciences disciplines. Said, as is well-known, sought to explore the relationship between power and knowledge; between imperialism and scholarship. He saw ‘Orientalism’ as a Western discourse that essentialises the Muslim world in pejorative ways, one that was intimately entwined with imposition of imperial power, offering ideological justifications for it While a wide range of academics have developed or refined Said’s framework, others have challenged and, indeed, denounced it, as Robert Irwin puts it, as a perverted muddle of ‘malignant charlatanry’. In terms of the production of historical knowledge about the peoples, politics and cultures of the so-called Orient, disagreements have been to do with approaches, sources, and interpretive paradigms. An increasing number of scholars have come to accept that knowledge is socially-constructed and that complex developments contribute towards shaping our understandings of the world. Hence, social and political interests play a significant role in the adoption of one way of construing reality rather than another. Others claim that they tell it like it is; they allow facts to speak for themselves, and have no interest in the social utility of the historical knowledge that they produce. Intellectual curiosity, ‘lust for knowing’, is apparently their only drive. Bernard Lewis, thus, defended Orientalism as ‘pure scholarship’, a discipline that strove towards objectivity. On the other hand, A.J. Arberry (who was a government censor during the Second World War) in his compilation, Oriental Essays (1960), while denying that he himself had any political agendas, accepted that politics nonetheless intruded academic scholarship. Indeed, it could be argued that politics is always present, but not necessarily where people claim to locate it since politics has less to do with interactions than actions and results, which are always unpredictable. It is, thus, difficult to put intentions on trial.

Absolute claims such as these demand closer inspection, and so what I want to explore this evening is how far there were scholars who were genuinely ‘purely’ interested in Islam and Muslim societies and so studied them for their own sake. I want to do this by looking at the places that Islam and Muslims have occupied in British historical imaginations from the outset of the early modern period to the present.

One of the key reasons for examining the past is to uncover the shape of human experience: can we discern any patterns in it, and how can we make sense of it through time? For many centuries, in the context of Britain, ‘the march of history’ was understood in sacred terms. For Christian writers historical knowledge bore witness to the grand theme of Creation and the Last Judgement. But as Islam spread through the Mediterranean, posing a theological and political threat as it conquered the bastions of Eastern Christendom, the mysterious rise of this ‘falsehood’ against the truth of Christianity compelled an explanation. How to stem its rising tide and protect Christians and Christendom (and convert Muslims) from this scourge?

The response of medieval and early modern Christian scholars was to create ‘a body of literature concerning the faith, its Prophet, and his book, polemic in purpose and scurrilous in tone, designed to protect and discourage rather than to inform’. Attacks on Islam were in part a way of propping up ideological conformity among various Christian denominations, in Britain as elsewhere. With military power unable to withstand Islamic expansion, refutation through argument and missionary work was considered the best option for overcoming the challenge, for which knowledge of the Muslim adversaries, their beliefs and practices, was considered crucial. In much of this scholarship, a repertoire of Christian legends rather than hard historical evidence about Islam and Muslims, nourished by imaginative fantasies, served the purpose. While the explanations provided were never fully satisfying, writers such as William Bedwell – the so-called father of Islamic studies in England – succeeded in creating a portrait of an exotic, and deluded, ‘other’ – and hence a negative perception became deeply embedded in the ‘British’ social imaginary, something that possesses considerable emotional resonance even to this day.

That said, when we look at the early modern period, we find that, in the British Isles at large, there was little awareness of, let alone curiosity about, Muslims – even less so in serious literature. Most of those who had sufficient resources and interest to sponsor Arabic studies were either churchmen (as was the case with most forms of learning, not just this field) or closely aligned with their causes who aimed primarily at producing materials to achieve their own salvation as well as that of wayward Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims. Thomas Adams, a wealthy draper and sometime Lord Mayor of London, created the Chair of Arabic at Cambridge in 1632 in the hope that he might, through his patronage, contribute to converting Muslims. Four years later, William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the University of Oxford, established its Professorship in Arabic, primarily as part of the struggle against Catholicism.

It is important to note, however, that in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, those in Europe who studied Islam tended to do so not out of interest in that faith per se, but primarily to pursue intra-confessional polemic. During the Reformation, Islam was frequently used by one group of Christians to criticise another. Protestants were likened to Muslims for deviating from and perverting the true faith. Such developments, of course, need to be located in the context of Ottoman expansion in competition with other European states. It is noticeable though that, while there was considerable conflict between the states, it did not take the form of ‘Islamdom’ versus ‘Christendom’.

The 1600s are credited with having marked the beginning of ‘modern’ British historical writing. The confident authority of the Christian world view began to crumble as secularised interpretations of history, centred on human rather than divine activity, gained ground. Reason combined with empirical evidence was coming to be accepted as the final authority for deciding what was historically credible. Scholars now increasingly possessed the resources and linguistic potential to investigate more rigorously than before the nature of Muslim beliefs, history, traditions and practices. Hence, writings on Islam became contradictory, reflecting the fragmented views held by Europeans on the subject, influenced by political thinkers such as Descartes and Spinoza. The old stereotypes were repeated by most writers, but now alongside newer observations that found favourable things in Islam. For example, there was The General Historie of the Turkes (1603) by Richard Knolles. A fear-inducing chronicle, it was filled with accounts of Ottoman atrocities, cruelties and torture. Knolles, like earlier English writers, called the Ottoman Empire the “great terror of the world”, Islam the work of Satan and Muhammad a false prophet. But – here is the difference – Knolle also acknowledged Turkish determination, courage, and frugality and the massive 1,200 page account contained much positive information about Muslims, until then considered mortal enemies. Likewise, Edward Pococke’s 1649 Specimen Historae Arabum while casting Islam as the religion of the false prophet, managed by deploying Arabic sources and historians to avoid many of the distortions of medieval polemic and presented what was, for its time, a more balanced view of Muslim society. A little later Paul Rycaut, in his The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, drew a picture of Ottoman despotism, unequivocally corrupt and backward, straight out of the old stock of ignorance and fear. But it also recounted accurate, knowledgeable and insightful details of Turkish life and history, of Ottoman political, military, and religious organisation, of the diversity of Islamic beliefs and traditions. In it there was also acknowledgement of mutuality of commercial interests and benefits and admiration of many aspects of Islamic culture. But importantly, having been written by British men, these histories lacked the breadth of understanding of Muslim societies that eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century women observers, such as Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Sophie Lane-Poole, would contribute thanks to what they wrote about spheres of life to which they, as females, had exclusive access.

By the end of the seventeenth century, while the intellectual climate had changed significantly in favour of ‘freethinking’, both orthodox Christians and so-called ‘deviants’ continued to critique each other. Humphery Prideaux’s 1697 Life of Mahomet aimed to uncover ‘[t]he true nature of imposture fully displa’d in the life of Mahomet, with a discourse annex’d for the vindication of Christianity from this charge’, while Henry Stubbe’s anti-Trinitarian tract, Account of the rise and progress of Mahometenism (written in 1671 but not actually published until 1911), trenchantly challenged ‘the fabulous inventions of the Christians’ in the light of reason, contrasting this with his positive assessment of the life of Muhammad and Islam’s rationality. What is particularly interesting is that both these authors used Pococke’s work and sources extensively but interpreted them in radically different ways to arrive at opposite poles in their conclusions – one hostile (thanks, it should be added, largely in response to the challenge of Deism rather than Islam), the other sympathetic, to Islam and Muslims. What we see emerging out of these controversies by the eighteenth century are rather more balanced understandings of Islam, for instance Simon Ockley’s The History of the Saracens in 1718. Nevertheless, given the religious context in which they were operating, their authors could hardly be expected to write wholly positively of a religion that had proved ‘the first ruin of the eastern church’. Ultimately, even Ockley condemned Muhammad as the ‘great imposter’.

The late eighteenth century was also a period of transition in British imperial history, and, not surprisingly, this too had an impact on how Islam and Muslims were viewed by contemporaries. The East India Company from the mid-eighteenth century had been steadily establishing dominance in India, often taking power from Muslim rulers in the process, but it was still navigating its way towards finding the right strategies in order to establish firm control. Many who ran the early Company in India admired and appreciated indigenous cultures, saw merit in their history and assimilated. William Robertson was one Enlightenment historian who expressed an early willingness to value Indian culture and society as the development of an equivalent and equally valid civilisation to that of Europe. However, whereas Europe was seen to have ‘progressed’, India during the Mughal period was perceived to have ‘stagnated’ in relative terms. Hence, Robertson believed that India should be facilitated but not coerced in its socio-economic and cultural development by a form of imperial rule and commerce that demonstrated respect for India’s cultural heritage. This ‘development approach’ to history associated particularly with the Scottish Enlightenment from the 1750s to the 1790s, concluded that the human record was one of material and moral improvement, of cultural development from ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’ to ‘civilisation’, and that their own society stood at the pinnacle of achievement. Since Muslim societies were judged as, at best, semi-barbaric, colonialism – Empire in other words – was justified.

As British imperial expansion progressed, there was a further shift in attitudes to Islam. There was perhaps less prejudice alongside a greater sense of curiosity; so while history continued to be written as a moral tale, critical enquiry gave birth to new historical values. Yet stereotyping persisted. Edward Gibbon while exploring how Christianity ended European classical civilisation in his 1788 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, imbued Islam with several positive attributes, but his final moral judgement on Muhammad was that the Prophet ended up an ambitious impostor. And whatever its virtues, Gibbon did not want Europe to be over-run by Islam nor the Quran ‘taught in the schools of Oxford, her pulpits [demonstrating] to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.’ While Gibbon along with another of Britain’s most eminent Enlightenment scholars, William Jones were both admirers of Muslim civilisations, they both firmly believed in the superiority of the European, because, for them, Europe had forged ahead in gathering useful knowledge, in its command of ‘Reason’ and its application of the scientific method – in all these fields, they believed, other peoples lagged far behind. Those who judge Jones’s scholarly work as entirely motivated by aesthetic and academic interest really need to look at his life and career more closely, as this reveals him to be not only complex, inconsistent and contradictory but also someone who possessed undoubted utilitarian propensities. Far from being a disinterested Orientalist, in Mukherjee’s assessment, Jones was a late eighteenth-century ‘liberal imperialist’, who had no doubt in his mind about ‘the excellence of our constitution, and the character of a perfect king of England’ – after all, he served for many years as a judge in British-controlled Calcutta.

Thus, the ways in which British historians of this period analysed, imagined and depicted the so-called ‘Orient’ were often intertwined in complex ways with growing British power, often over Muslim peoples. In time, these realities began to shape historical accounts. The Romanticist influence on historical writing was also felt. The ‘Orient’ attracted interest as it became less threatening while remaining exotic. One key (though not uncontested) element of nineteenth-century thought on the ‘Orient’ was a particular concentration on the difference between East and West. Islam constituted a distinct type in terms of civilisation, cultural essence and core values – these, many Orientalists of the time believed, shaped a different Muslim consciousness, mind-set and behaviour.

Scottish Enlightenment thinking continued to be the leading intellectual influence. John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone, both highly instrumental in the extension of British power in India and West Asia, would have seen themselves as no more than subscribing to the forces that drove societies from one stage to another. Both belonged to a broad band of historians comprising conservatives as well as many liberals and radicals, among whom imperial expansion, born out of human enlightenment and effort, and underpinned by utilitarian ideas, became a dominant vision. They were supported by a growing evangelical public sentiment, which viewed Empire as the work of Providence. Notwithstanding their kinship with different schools of thought, all British historians during this period assumed the intellectual and moral superiority of contemporary Great Britain over the Muslim world.

Let us take probably the single most influential work in the early nineteenth century – James Mill’s 1817 The History of British India. For Mill, knowledge was nothing if it was not a source of power – a tool of change. Understanding the past was good ‘only for the improvement of the future’. Since Indo-Muslim society, a product of despotism, superstition and poverty, given to insecurity and lacking in progress, measured ‘lower’ in his scale of civilisation, British rule was justified. Similarly, Macaulay, a great admirer of Mill’s History, also believed in the benevolent impact of British rule in India and elsewhere. Macaulay’s dismissal of, and contempt for, the natives epitomised Saidian ‘Orientalism’.

But, while it might be argued that this kind of ‘Orientalist’ history writing had become hegemonic by the nineteenth century, Said’s argument leaves little room for the kind of contestation and contrasting approaches to Islam that were evidently emerging in this period. Take, for instance, the works of Edward Lane, a scholar who was to have an enormous influence on Middle Eastern studies. From Lane’s life, it is immediately clear that, in the context of the early nineteenth-century excitement about Egypt, while he remained committed to his own cultural heritage, he became genuinely interested in Egyptian society – its traditions, customs and people – to the point where he adopted an Egyptian lifestyle, dress and language.

While many scholars have levelled charges of ‘Orientalism’ against Lane – his awareness of his difference from an essentially alien culture, the coded sense of superiority in his major works, his views regarding the unchanging character of Middle Eastern societies – his biographer, Leila Ahmad, has shown that Lane possessed a relatively accurate and sympathetic understanding of Islam. It is true that he comes across, occasionally, as condescending, patronising, even admonishing, in his best-known An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (first published in 1836), but, when read in the context of his personal interaction, it could be argued that for the most part he strove for and largely succeeded in presenting an account of Egyptian society and its people that was respectful, and one that someone belonging to that culture could broadly accept as authentic and accurate. More usefully, it created a space for British scholars within which emotively-charged and hostile traditions could be more effectively challenged.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, new perceptions of Muhammad, accompanied by new attitudes to his religion were also emerging. This period was particularly crucial in British historical understanding of Islam, for it was a time when the enduring images of Muhammad as a heretic were juxtaposed with new images of Muhammad a noble figure. In contrast to Said’s methodological emphasis on the unity of the Orientalist discourse, what we witness is a considerable plurality of approaches to Islam. Thus, discourse about Islam, at times contradictory, became richer, more diverse and more complex than Said’s arguments suggested.

The reasons for this shift were many. Burgeoning knowledge about Islam and increased information made earlier stereotypes less tenable. The demise of Christian apocalypticism and the rise of secular historical method created the Muhammad of history, relegating to the shadows the Muhammad of Christian legend. The Victorian proclivity for great men coupled with their fascination for an exotic East engendered a sympathetic environment for a partial rehabilitation of Muhammad and Islam. And the rise of British power over Muslim lands made for a context in which the Prophet and his religion could be treated more benevolently, even while it continued to encourage and support criticism of its modern expressions.

This juxtaposition is clearly visible in Carlyle’s famous lecture on Muhammad, ‘Hero as Prophet’. In 1840, after centuries during which Muhammad had been called an imposter, a seducer or worse, he made the ‘first strong affirmation in the whole of European literature, medieval or modern of a belief in the sincerity of Muhammad’. And yet, he too, it might be argued, was prone uncritically to deploy ‘Orientalist’ tropes and attitudes in his rhetoric. Islam for Carlyle remained ‘a confused form of Christianity’, fit for semi-barbaric Arabs.

So the main assumptions of historical writing at this time remained paternalism and utilitarianism. Both contributed to the British assumption of superiority over the East and to the justification of colonial rule. Hence, William Muir, scholar and colonial administrator around the time of the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857-58, in his historical works, consistently denigrated Muhammad and the Qur’an, misrepresented Muslims and undervalued Islam, often through a conscious manipulation of, at times, questionable sources, in order to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity and British culture in justification of colonial dominance. In his Life of Mahomet he concluded, ‘the sword of Mahomet, and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of Civilization, Liberty and the Truth which the world has yet known’. In line with Whig interpretations of history, Victorians believed that they were positioned at the pinnacle of human development. Historians did not dispense knowledge of the past for its own sake, or simply to inculcate practical lessons – that is, to sustain British rule. Above all they strove to preach a moral sermon, to hold up the virtues that they believed had won empire in the East and which alone could preserve it.

By the later decades of the nineteenth century, biology, anthropology and other sciences had combined with Maine’s demonstration of the historicity of ideas and Darwin’s law of natural selection to produce a relative ranking of world civilisations along racial lines. According to these criteria, Muslim societies did not fare well. Britain had developed the highest ideal of social happiness and devised the scientific instrument of law to enforce it. Writing at the zenith of the Imperialist phase in England, William Hunter stressed the importance of national character of the British race – ‘adventurous, masterful, patient in defeat and persistent in executing its designs’ – as the key to its imperial success. J.R. Seeley’s Expansion of England, published in 1883, stated that the study of history could offer lessons for those serving the Empire. Lord Acton, Seeley’s successor at Cambridge at the beginning of the twentieth century, likewise considered the making of moral judgements to be the mark of true historical writing. For him, the British Empire possessed an essentially noble purpose – it was a benevolent and progressive force in human history. While Seeley believed in the necessity and moral justification of the continuance of British rule, a question that troubled him was how the British could reconcile the despotism of the Indian Empire with the democracy enjoyed by the colonies of white settlers (and indeed, the British themselves): how Britain could ‘be in the East at once the greatest Mussulman Power in the world … and at the same time in the West be the foremost champion of free thought and spiritual religions?’. Well, for such historians, Indian society being un-progressive and perhaps decadent, the important thing was to do Indians good in spite of themselves; to lead India (and the rest of the Empire) with a paternal authoritarian hand. The histories of the period up to 1914 broadly reflected these assumptions.

It is true that this was not invariably the attitude in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – drawing inspiration from Cobbett, Bright and Cobden, scholars such as J.A. Hobson challenged the justifications for imperial rule. Nevertheless, it undoubtedly remained the hegemonic view. The majority of British historians agreed with Seeley’s analysis. Re-evaluative trends in British Islamic scholarship were still at an embryonic stage, and thinly veiled disparagement of Islam and Muhammad such as that of David Margoliouth, Professor of Arabic at Oxford, continued to inform influential historical analysis.

However, while Islamic history offered scope to Orientalist scholars to draw favourable comparisons regarding the virtues and truth of Christianity, there had also emerged considerable questioning of the Christian faith and this led to the re-evaluation of both academic and popular attitudes towards other belief-systems. T.W. Arnold, who spent much time in scholarly pursuits in northern India, was part of a small group of historians who presented interpretations of Christian and Muslim cultural history and interaction that challenged the arguments of the orthodox Orientalist paradigm. Both in conception and construction, his 1896 The Preaching of Islam represented a radical departure in British Islamic scholarship. In contrast to reductionist constructions of Islam as monolithic, having only one authentic expression, Arnold affirmed the validity of all the varying and sometimes contradictory currents within it, and concluded in his The Islamic Faith that, since religion was defined by individual understanding and practice of faith, ‘no single formula—beyond the brief simple words of the creed—can sum up [Islam’s] many diversities’. E.G. Browne too exuded enthusiasm for and empathy with Arab, Persian and Turkish cultures and peoples. A scholar of enormous erudition, he travelled in Persia and his A Year Among the Persians, published in 1893, represented a sympathetic portrayal of Persian society. His monumental Literary History of Persia, which came out in 1902, further valorised its refinements. An adherent of the liberal view of progress in historical development, he became passionately interested in the politics of contemporary Persia, supported the Constitutional Movement and resistance to European imperialist encroachments. Browne’s positive analysis in his The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909, published in 1910, not only countered the imperialist notions of Persian capriciousness and corruption as essential contributors of lack of progress; of their incapacity for democratic self-government, but also, by means of a ‘nationalist [counter] Orientalism’, announced the revival of an eastern people whose national character had empowered past historical achievements and might well do so again.

The climate of opinion in early twentieth-century Britain was, thus, simultaneously sympathetic towards and highly suspicious of Muslims. Muslim political activism imposed new demands on British authority, and pan-Islamism became a cause of increasing political concern as conflict with the Ottoman Empire intensified. Muslim aspirations seemed in sharp conflict with British imperial ambitions and political strategic security. These priorities were reflected in literature of the period. Cromer’s Modern Egypt (1908), for instance, effectively ignored Egypt’s achievements, highlighted its deficiencies through selective use of empirical materials, and offered an unbalanced rationalisation of British imperial rule. What was needed, he suggested, was a system that would ‘enable the mass of the population to be governed according to the code of Christian morality’.

The aftermath of the First World War witnessed the revival of the idea of British colonial mission and imperial obligation. The Empire’s history as the unfolding of the story of liberty re-emerged as the dominant mode of interpretation. With the break up of the Ottoman Empire, Britain became much more strategically dominant in the Middle East, responsible for lands that were perceived to be inhabited by people not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world. Representing a main trend in British historical writing, historians such as Reginald Coupland still believed in the moral qualities of the British to shape a better world and saw the history and purpose of the Empire as the gradual unfolding of liberty. While not an officer of the Empire he spent much time in its service and he made influential historically rigorous contributions to the debates on the direction of the Empire and imperial policy making.

The post-Second World War years witnessed rapid change and much instability as the pace of decolonisation quickened and the Cold War began. In this context, Asia and Africa increasingly became the battlegrounds. Western governments felt the urgent need for reliable knowledge about critical areas to inform policy-making. But, in the late 1950s and 1960s, scholars such as Richard Southern and the afore-mentioned Norman Daniel showed that it was not so much new positive knowledge that was being produced by disinterested scholars, but rather the diffusion in more refined and complex forms of greatly distorted existing elaborations, creating inaccurate images of Islam and Muhammad, based on dubious sources and distorted readings of texts and scriptures, leading to crude and derogatory assertions.

Take Hamilton Gibb and Bernard Lewis, two towering figures in the field in this period. Their interest in Islam and Muslim peoples’ current affairs undoubtedly emanated from their desire to influence policy-makers. Gibb, for instance, was concerned that Western governments were acting largely out of ignorance and it was his belief that understanding of Muslim peoples’ beliefs and cultures by careful study of their specific past was essential for effective policy-making. However, the categories he used to organise the knowledge and to interpret Islam and the history of the Muslim peoples are illustrative of what many critics would eventually argue were the grave shortcomings of the Orientalist tradition. For instance, in Modern Trends in Islam (1945), Gibb started from the assumption that there was an unchanging and distinctive Arab or Muslim ‘mind’ whose nature he could infer from his knowledge of the traditional texts of Islam and which could be implicitly or explicitly contrasted with an equally singular and essentialised ‘Western mind’. On this basis Gibb was able to offer sweeping generalisations about the innate deficiencies of Muslims’ thought-processes, imagination and ethics that had caused them to stagnate and fail to modernise. According to Irwin, ‘As a Christian moralist, [Gibb] was inclined to blame Islam’s decline on carnality, greed and mysticism’. Gibb explained Ottoman decline by locating it in its specifically Islamic despotic character. Yet, as Roger Owen has pointed out, Gibb’s analysis was largely flawed as his data in fact suggested that in the groups and activities of the Ottoman Empire there was little that could be considered as specifically Islamic – indeed, developments under the Ottomans had close parallels in non-Muslim Europe and Asia. More recently Caroline Finkel has challenged even more convincingly such ‘myths’ of Ottoman decay.

Bernard Lewis was the other ‘big gun’ in the field of British scholarship on Islam, and like Gibb, he believed that the Orientalists’ deep understanding of Islamic civilisation rendered them uniquely capable of shedding light on policy matters. In 1953, Lewis, in a lecture on “Communism and Islam” at Chatham House, ignoring local contexts and histories, elaborated his conception of Islam, similar to that of Gibb, as a civilisation with a distinct, unique and basically unchanging essence. For Lewis, Islam’s core features included an essentially autocratic and totalitarian political tradition that made Communism appealing to Muslims. Lewis accepted that, while Muslims were obliged to resist impious government, their subservience to authority took precedence. This contrasted sharply with ‘the spirit of resistance to tyranny and misrule … inherent in the core values of Western civilisation’. This line of argument ignored what Muslims had actually done over the centuries when confronted with impious or tyrannical rule. But such overarching, monolithic, delineations of the ‘Islamic civilisation’, underpinned by apparently timeless and uniform ‘Islamic concepts’, became very attractive towards the end of the twentieth century, with Lewis, for instance, pointing to ‘a clash of civilisations’, in his words, ‘the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both’. In such writing, one can indeed see many of the key features of Said’s ‘Orientalism’.

Gibb and Lewis’s ideas, like ‘Orientalism’ in the Saidian sense more generally, dovetailed modernisation theory, the dominant paradigm from the 1950s to the 1970s. A common set of assumptions about the character and trajectory of historical change, it denoted the process of transition from traditional to modern society as universal, linear and initiated by the West. Why Muslim societies had not modernised according to the Western model, it was argued, had little to do with social, political and economic forces – their legacies of colonialism, continuing foreign domination or economic under development – rather, they had become disoriented because of their essentially static nature, psychological deficiencies and cultural pathologies. Unlike the early modern Europe’s insatiable thirst for discovering the ‘secrets’ of Muslim advances, Muslims seemed uninterested in learning about the sources of Europe’s growing strength. Their societies were, therefore, unable to develop the institutions and internal dynamics that might lead to fundamental social transformation from within. Lewis, in his From Babel to Dragomans and The Muslim Discovery of Europe, linked the failure of Muslim societies to modernise with their lack of the spirit of enquiry, their misplaced sense of superiority, and their insularity and hostility towards the West. According to Lewis ‘Few Muslims travelled voluntarily to the land of the infidels …The question of travel for study did not arise, since clearly there was nothing to be learned from the benighted infidels of the outer wilderness’. And so, Lewis argued, change had to come from outside. New historical findings, however, challenge such analyses, and show that Muslims were, actually, intensely curious about and fascinated by European societies and peoples in the early modern period. Nabil Matar’s work, among others, has demonstrated that Arabic-speaking Muslims were deeply inquisitive about scientific, literary and political developments in ‘bilad al-nasara’ (the lands of the Christians) and, like their European counterparts, wrote ‘detailed and empirically based’ accounts of Europe in the seventeenth century.

Already beginning to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s, this challenging of the framework of interpretation, which had hitherto both shaped historical analyses and conclusions and their perceived complicity with Western power in the Muslim world, brings me to reflect on the current state of play! I would argue that there is still an influential strand in historical writing, buttressed by those who hold reins of power, which links in with ‘Orientalist’ paradigms and rationalises Western superiority, tutelage and domination. It insists that the modern West remains at the pinnacle of a new hierarchy of human evolution; and that Muslim lands need to follow suit through the enfeeblement of Islam.

Niall Ferguson, for one, offering refurbished Whiggish wisdom, has furnished an historical basis for the current Anglophone liberal imperial project. His writings argue that the British Empire was a powerful force of order, justice and development for much of its existence and built much of the modern world; its paternalistic authoritarian practice of government, through a properly trained and knowledgeable administrative corps competent to dispense fairness and justice, ushered in ‘civilisation’/modernisation setting the natives on the path to progress. Alternatives to empire would have involved despotism, endemic disorder and economic decay, and resulted in dangerous instability.

In Ferguson’s writing, it would seem, we have come full circle – he offers canards once championed by old imperialists such as Mill and Macaulay. While he agrees with Marx’s deterministic approach to the evolution of human history, he, unlike Marx, is much more positively disposed to British rule and argues that the Empire was forced to make painful decisions in pursuit of ‘liberal’ objectives. Systematically ignoring sources that analyse or present the perspectives of the colonised, there emerges, in Gopal’s words, a ‘poisonous fairytale’ of ‘a benign developmental mission’ – a pattern that tends to reinforce the prejudices of those whom he seeks to influence. Highly provocative, Ferguson’s histories of the British Empire construct the ‘lessons’ that we are to learn from the ‘rise and demise of the British world order’. What are they? As part of the building of a similar empire, the war on Iraq was the right thing to do. For him, ruthlessness in its prosecution was justified: he says, ‘what happened at Abu Ghraib prison was no worse than the initiatory “hazing” routine in many army camps and even student fraternities’.

* * * * *

So what conclusions can we draw from all of these developments? It is very clear that dichotomous notions of the ‘clash of civilisations’, ‘the end of history’ and ‘liberal international interventionism’, while still popular and influential in policy-making circles, are now being challenged from both the contemporary and historical perspectives. On the theoretical level, the category of ‘civilisation’, while tangible in geopolitical, cultural and material terms, seems diffuse. In terms of cultures, values or systems of belief, they can be shown to be ever changing and adaptable to new conditions. Hence, unlike conflicts between states, it is difficult to know in what ways civilisations could be construed to ‘clash’. Moreover, it is being increasingly argued that ‘Islamic civilisation’, with distinctly recognisable features, like its Roman and Greek counterparts, has disappeared. Equally, with the globalisation of modernity, ‘Western civilisation’ also appears to have lost its specifically European character. This line of argument makes the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis seem untenable.

Historically too, many scholars today reject the portrayal of the relations and interaction between the so-called Muslim world and the West (both contentious terms because of their homogenising, reductionist and essentialist undertones) as a simple story of perpetual opposition and conflict. They seek to demonstrate historically that civilisations have never been hermetically-sealed separate entities – the shared story of Asia, Africa and Europe, for one, is replete with uninterrupted mutual exchange.

More specifically, Christian and Islamic ‘civilisations’ are being shown to have interacted fruitfully and to have borrowed from one other with mutually formative effects. The idea of ‘multiple modernities’ challenges the classical theory of modernisation as a uniquely and specifically European project. ‘Oriental globalisation’ literature, with its longer time frame, contests this thesis, demonstrating historically that many of the characteristics that are associated with the eighteenth-century British industrial revolution had emerged earlier in China, and that Middle East was ahead of Europe in this period. Thanks to Jardine and Brotton, we are now much more aware of the highly symbiotic relationship between Muslim and other European cultures and the profound influence of developments in Muslim societies on the emergence of European Renaissance and Enlightenment thinking – especially the role of the Ottoman Empire in generating mechanisms that lay behind ‘modernisation’. There was, in reality, no monolithic and unitary Europe confronting the Ottoman enemy. Nor was ‘Islam’ unremittingly ranged against the ‘West’. Yes, there were conflicts but there was also trade and the exchange and mingling of ideas, technologies and institutions.

This brings us to the question of how this challenging of the ‘Western-centric’ paradigm has emerged? Surely much of the answer lies in the changed context and the changing relations and balance of power in today’s world and the impact of this on the character of the historical knowledge being produced. Shifts in history writing reflect shifts in world politics, as the West itself is gradually de-centred by multi-centric global processes. Analysis of history writing about the Muslim world in Britain, as I have suggested this evening, reveals that it has always been produced in complex, diverse and non-monolithic ways. Nor, as Said contended more generally in his Orientalism, has it been entirely systematically constructed; there has not been one totalising vision of the West’s Islamic ‘Other’. British historians could write about the Muslim world ‘as often consumed by admiration and reverence as by denigration and depreciation’. But as British power expanded, some came to think of Islam and the Muslim world as ontologically different from, and inferior to, the ‘West’; and many such scholars placed their knowledge at the disposal of the Empire. Others, albeit more commonly at the margins, opposed imperialism or wrote more sympathetically about Islamic cultures and societies, though not necessarily deploying a different interpretive frame from mainstream Orientalists. Yet, individual historians are always products of their pasts as well as their presents. They cannot escape, to quote Bernard Lewis (rather ironically since he seems to exclude himself from this comment), ‘the prejudices of their culture and age…Even when writing of the past historians are captive of their own times – in their materials and their methods, their concepts and their concerns.’

Having acknowledged the limitations of British historical writing about the Muslim world, what alternatives are there? Said’s critique has undoubtedly helped us to become more acutely and self-critically conscious of the existence of multiple perspectives and the need to consider them in any historical analysis. The empowered, and much more articulate and confidently vocal, Muslim subaltern has contributed to the shifts in historical thinking and approaches. Moving away from global generalities, due attention is now being given to local and regional social and political dynamics, hierarchies of power and historical contexts. Likewise, factoring in the history of women living in Muslim societies into the wider story is being pursued with much more vigour, undermining stereotypes about their past lives (and present realities too).

But, all the same, it appears impossible to escape completely the essentialism that continues to inhere even in current historical epistemologies – a cultural essentialism that, for Said, was the hallmark of ‘Orientalism’. For someone in my position, there remains the nagging question as to whether or not I might have become, or at least be regarded as, a native informant? Have I become one of ‘us’, a product of British academia, part of the crop of new ‘Orientalists’ who, many argue, has emerged since the publication of Said’s Orientalism – someone who (whether they mean to do so or not) ends up applying a Eurocentric gaze that results in the sustaining of old hegemonies and dominances; one who uncovers the supposed mysteries of the ‘Muslim world’ for the benefit and in the interest of the ‘West’ – what Spivak calls the ‘European discursive production’ that continues to influence and shape our knowledge, culture and histories. Or is it possible, I wonder, to be a free-floating, cross-pollinated, historian. In other words, do we remain complicit in the ‘Western’ project or is it possible to develop instead a transnationally oscillating subjectivity. Taking such questions into account, perhaps all one can do is recognise the existence of discoursive tension within oneself, realise that all one is doing is fashioning one of many stories from one’s own relatively narrow perspective and seek to minimise the limits of the essentialism that inheres therein. I leave you with this thought!

Arshad Gamiet/Royal Holloway University of London/2010

“As-salámu ‘alaikum wa rahmatul láhi wa barakátuh!”

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

“O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.”

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The more we read the Holy Qur’an the more we can wonder at its construction, its use of language. It has a unique ability to fire up the human imagination and to deliver ideas into our hearts and minds in a powerful way. Over the last 14 hundred years scholars, experts in Arabic language and literature have marvelled at the way the Holy Qur’an sets the standard for communication, by informing, instructing and inspiring its readers. The Quran has become the ideal standard by which the power of written and the spoken word can be measured. This amazing book is of course not the product of a human mind or human imagination. This is the very Word of Allah: the Revealed Word of the Most High, transmitted through the archangel Gabriel, Jibreel, alahis salaam, and made audible and intelligible to us by the noblest of all creation, the seal of all the Prophets, khaataman nabiy-yeen, Prophet Muhammad (sws).

Often when Allah wants to explain an important idea, He uses a powerful figure of speech, a story or a metaphor that lingers in the memory and helps us to take hold of the message and fix it firmly into our hearts. There are many examples in the Holy Qur’an but we have time only to consider a few.

One example is the importance of remembering that every good thing that comes to us comes from Allah, and every bad thing comes to us comes from our own lower nafs, when we pervert or do harm to our own soul, through our own bad thoughts and actions. If Allah were to simply make a statement in a bland way we may not remember the message. But he uses powerful imagery. He tells us a story, for example, a parable of the two men arguing in Sura Kahf. One is filled with pride and arrogance over his beautiful garden and he tries to humiliate his poorer neighbour. So to teach him a lesson, Allah destroys it overnight. The poor man then reminds him that he forgot to say,

“Ma sha Allah, la kuw-wata il-La bil-Lah!” (18:39)

“This is the Will of Allah, there is no power and no strength except from Allah.”

Muslims have been so impressed by the power of this parable, this simple story. To make sure we don’t become like the unfortunate man who was puffed up with pride, we’ve placed reminders about this story all around us. I’ve seen the Arabic words “Ma-Sha-Allah” beautifully inscribed on the marbelled walls of palatial homes and humbler dwellings, carefully and lovingly painted by hand on busses, trucks and scooter taxis from Karachi to Cairo and from Chittagong to Kuala Lumpur. No believing Muslim wants to invite a nasty fate by forgetting his utter reliance on Allah’s generosity and mercy.

Another parable or metaphor that the Holy Qur’an uses, is the the way Allah separates truth from falsehood, by separating what is good for us from what is evil. There is a beautiful verse in Sura Ra’d (ch 13.v 17) which describes the way rain falls and the floodwaters carry a scum that rises to the surface, just like metal ore heated in a furnace produces a scum that rises to the top.

“He sends water down from the sky, and the channels flow, each according to its measure; but the torrent bears away the foam that mounts up to the surface. Even so, from that [ore] they heat in the furnace to make ornaments or utensils there is a scum likewise. This is how Allah uses parables to explain Truth and Falsehood; for the scum disappears like froth cast out; while that which is for the good of mankind remains on earth. This is how Allah explains with parables.”

This powerful metaphor reminds us that all the hardship and suffering that we endure is simply Allah’s way of burning off the impurities in our character so that our hearts can be refined and purified. The famous poet Jalaluddin Rumi wrote, ‘Suffering is a Gift: in it is a hidden Mercy.’ Allah mercifully cleans out our hearts for us so that we can be ready for al-Jannah, because, as the Holy Qur’an reminds us, no one will enter Allah’s Garden except those with a sound heart [qalbun saleem] [sura 26:v89]

Brothers and sisters, let us cultivate a daily habit of reading the Quran, reading and pondering over its meaning, even if it’s just a few verses. We must read it every day, and we must consider our day incomplete unless we’ve spent at least a few minutes with Allah’s Noble Book, reading it with understanding, reading it with love, devotion, consideration, tafakkur, contemplation and reflection. This is the way we can light up our lives through the darkness of human ignorance around us.

Innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.

Second Khutbah:

Sub’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

My brothers and sisters,

One more example, perhaps the best example, of the beautiful use of language, of metaphor in the Holy Qur’an is in Sura Nur, verse 36. This is the famous verse of Light:

“Allahun nurus-sama waati wal ard…”

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the East nor of the West, whose Oil is almost luminous, although fire barely touched it: Light upon Light! Allah does guide whom He pleases to His Light. Allah does set forth Parables for men: and Allah knows all things.”

36 Such a light shines in houses which Allah has permitted to be raised to honour; for the celebration in them of His name: in such houses, is He glorified in the mornings and in the evenings (again and again)

37 By people who are not distracted by trade nor business, from  Remembering Allah nor from regular Prayer nor from the doing regular acts of Charity: their (only) fear is for the Day when hearts and eyes will be transformed (in a world completely new)

That Allah may reward them according to the best of their deeds and add even more for them out of His Grace: for Allah does provide for those whom He chooses, without measure.”

Brothers and sisters, these beautiful words have inspired people and moved them to tears, over the centuries. Truth and beauty are aspects of the same divine Reality. The truth and beauty of the Holy Qur’an will continue to inspire its readers until the end of time. But Allah’s Book is more than an inspired and inspiring literary classic. The Holy Qur’an is more than just the greatest work of literature in any language. It’s much more than a collection of amazing stories, metaphors and parables. It’s pre-eminently THE book of divine Wisdom, the  Criterion between right and wrong, the radiant guiding light for us to navigate our way through the treacherous waters of life. Let’s honour this Greatest of all Books by reading it, living by its advice, heeding its warnings and sharing it’s eternal truth and beauty with others.

When we die, the Holy Qur’an will either be a witness for us, pleading our case to save us from the fire, or we will stand condemned by it, for our negligence, for our disregard. Which one will it be? That’s for us to decide: it’s our choice, it’s our call.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah:

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah!

(First published on Irshad Hussain’s blog, www.islamfrominside.com, on December 29, 2008) Article republished on khutbahbank by kind permission of Irshad Hussain

“Then when they came in to Yusuf, he took his parents to lodge with him and said: Enter safe into Egypt, if Allah please.” (Qur’an 12:99)

“And he raised his parents upon the throne and they (the brothers) fell down in prostration before him, and he said: O my father! (yaa abati) this is the significance (tawil) of my vision of old; my Lord has indeed made it to be true; and He was indeed kind to me when He brought me forth from the prison and brought you from the desert after the Shaitan (Satan) had sown dissensions between me and my brothers, surely my Lord is benignant to whom He pleases; surely He is the Knowing, the Wise.” (Qur’an 12:100)

“My Lord! Thou hast given me of the kingdom and taught me of the interpretation of sayings: Originator/Splitter of the heavens and the earth! Thou art my guardian in this world and the hereafter; make me die (ta-waffa) a Muslim and join me with the good.” (Qur’an 12:101)

Although in a narrative sense the sura of Joseph (Yusuf) is one of the most accessible and straightforward chapters of the Qur’an, describing in chronological order the story of Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers, his rise to prominence in Egypt, and his reunion with his family, it is simultaneously a narrative whose surface conceals immense depths of meaning. The apparent meaning is a veil over multiple layers of hidden significance. This is indicated by the verses themselves as they connote a deep level of purport in the narrative:

“Certainly in Yusuf and his brothers there are deep signs for the inquirers.” (Qur’an 12:7)

And the repeated references in the sura to the science of tawil is a pointer to the fact that what occurs in this sura requires a multi-layered interpretation for its significance to be understood.

In verse 100 (as well as in verses 4 and 5 of the sura), Yusuf addresses his father as “yaa abati” which is a personal form of address, whereas the brothers address their father using a more formal means of address. This is an indicator of the special spiritual bond between Jacob and Joseph. A bond that remains intact even through their years of separation – a symbol of this bond is Joesph’s cloak or shirt. Joseph’s cloak (or his shirt) was given to Joseph by Jacob as a gift. According to the story in Genesis, the giving of this cloak marked the beginning of the envy felt by Joseph’s brothers. The passing of a cloak in Islam (especially in Sufism or Shi’ite Islam) indicates a transfer of spiritual authority from one person to another or connotes an acknowledgement of a person’s spiritual stature. Joseph receives the cloak and this is symbolic of the connection between the heart of Jacob and that of Joseph and it is also an indicator of Joseph’s connection to the Divine. Joseph’s spiritual stature grows and increases over time, and the cloak/shirt later becomes a means of healing to his aged father (restoring the vision he lost through weeping over his separation from Joseph). This is symbolic of the great increase in Joseph’s own spiritual authority and ability as well as the deep mystical bond between him and his father.

So Joseph’s cloak/shirt is a symbol of the bond of deep love and shared spiritual knowledge between Joseph and Jacob. This is a bond that passes through higher worlds even as it connects two hearts. From Joseph’s heart, to God, to Jacob’s heart – a spiritual connection between two people passes through God. When traditional love, that is normal earthly love, witnesses such a deep, powerful bond of knowledge and spiritual attraction it may cause the arising of jealousy within earthly hearts. It is similar to the jealousy Rumi’s adherents felt when Rumi was in the company of Shams-al-din with whom he had an intensely close spiritual linkage. Or like the jealousy that some people in the Prophet’s time felt when they witnessed the bond between the Prophet and Ali or between the Prophet and some of his dearest companions. For those who have a ritualistic or predominantly exoteric connection to their religion but without the dominance of spirit within themselves – seeing such a powerful attraction and extreme intensity of spirit can, perhaps, lead to a spiritual jealousy and envy – it can bring out negative qualities of the nafs. In Yusuf’s brothers this manifests in their lowering Yusuf into a pit – which itself is symbolic of their desire to lower him in status. They “agreed that they should lower him down into the bottom of the pit….” (Qur’an 12:15)

Note: The lowering into the well is countered by an actual raising of spiritual status. In the darkness of the well Joseph is illuminated by  the light of inspiration: “….We revealed to him: You will most certainly inform them of this their affair while they do not perceive.” (Qur’an 12:15). God illuminates his soul with knowledge of what is to come and so bestows calm upon him in a desperate situation. When the outcome is determined, all anxiety disappears – the only unknown is how the conclusion will be arrived at, not the ending itself.

When Yusuf is lowered into the well, for Jacob also it is a lowering of status as his spirit has a connection with Joseph – his continued attachment and weeping over Joseph irks the brothers causing a continual annoyance and disrespect to flow from them – and the father lives in state of loss. So in verse 99 and 100 Joseph restores Jacob to his proper spiritual hierarchy by raising him to the throne – a sign of the restoration of his status after so long a period of time: “….he took his parents to lodge with him and said: Enter safely into Egypt….And he raised his parents upon the throne….” (Qur’an 12:100)

Also in verse 12:100 we arrive at the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream which is initially described in 12:4. After he has the dream, we are told that a part of Joseph’s prohethood is the ability to reveal the tawil (the hidden interpretation) of dreams and of events. And Joseph demonstrates this ability by interpreting the dreams/visions of the prisoners (when he is in jail) and of the king (when he is released). He does this by showing what events the dreams signify. In other words he maps the dreams onto real events in the world. But his own dream remains unexplained till verse 100. And at that point we learn that while interpretation of the dreams of others demonstrates his mastery of tawil, Joseph’s dream encompasses a sort of double tawil.

Joseph dreams (in verse 4) that he saw the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars prostrating to him. “When Yusuf said to his father: O my father! surely I saw eleven stars and the sun and the moon – I saw them making obeisance to me.” (Qur’an 12:4) The meaning of this is that he will come to a position of authority and will be reunited with his family who will recognize his authority. The further meaning of this is that he will become the spiritual centre of the constellation of his family and they will orbit around him and be guided (suggested by their prostration) through his spiritual authority. A further aspect is that the dream displays the eventual elevated spiritual position of all his family since they are all symbolized by heavenly lights or heavenly bodies.

If we reverse the chronology of these events (the dream and the final reunion with his family) then we see that the dream (from Qur’an 12:4) was displaying the true spiritual reality underlying all the events in this world leading up to Joseph’s reunion with his family and their prostration before him. So Joseph’s family prostrating before him indicates that his spiritual stature was such that he became the central gravitational fulcrum about which their souls orbited – he becomes the means by which his brothers are uplifted from their errors so that they become lights in their own right under the pull and influence and guidance of Joseph. Joseph becomes the guide who, though his identity is not known to the brothers, corrects the faults in their souls.

Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon, and stars is more indicative of reality and the true state of affairs than the material reality around him. The dream is a revelatory witnessing of spiritual realities. The actual events in this world are a shadow of this reality. So Joseph witnesses the true inner reality of events in his dream. Eventually that inner reality unfolds in the form of actual events in this world and Joseph says, “This is the interpretation of my dream.” (Qur’an 12:100)

But the dream was the truer reality as it was not simply a dream that maps onto this world but a witnessing of the spiritual bedrock underlying events – it was revelation. The dream is an explanation of the true meaning of the actual events that transpire later in time. The dream provides a deep explanation of the events even as the events show the true prophetic nature of the dream. It is a paradoxical double tawil that rises above the other dream interpretations made by Joseph. The meaning of the events preceded the events. So when spiritual realities are perceived in Joseph’s revelatory dream, that dream is more real than the events it foreshadows in the sense that it gives a truer picture of the nature underlying the events in this world.

His dream is when he is truly awake because he is witnessing higher spiritual realities in it, realities that are concealed in this waking world. And the Qur’an says that when we awake after death in a higher spiritual reality, our sight (our understanding) will be piercing, awake. Joseph is already truly awake in that higher reality through his dream. He is armed with that experience when he acts in this world. Everything he does arises from a continuous process of tawil. His dreams apprise him of the spiritual reality underlying events in this world. And so Joseph, armed with the gift of tawil, acts with perfect balance and equanimity, guiding individuals (his family) and entire societies (Egypt) to that which is most felicitous.

As well, the dream of Joseph is an indication of the divine lights illuminating Joseph’s soul. When such lights open within an individual this is a sign that events of this world will be in submission to higher decrees. Joseph glimpses the divine decree in his dream. When Joseph is placed in a pit and later in prison, this is only a path to the fulfillment displayed in the dream. Joseph will be elevated. Those who wish him harm will be subdued by him – and through their submission to the nobility of Joseph (and thus to God), they find their salvation and they find mercy. The outcome of Joseph’s road was guided by Allah as stated in Qur’an 12:21: “And Allah was pre-dominant in his career, but most of mankind know not. (Qur’an 12:21)

When verse 100 speaks of Joseph’s family prostrating before him it uses a term that occurs in several places in the Qur’an to describe the action and inner state of someone who witnessed a manifestation of God and fell down prostrate in reaction to this divine theophany (as when Moses’ swooned when experiencing the Divine presence) or in reaction to  experiencing the true power of the Qur’an’s verses. For example Qur’an  19:58 says, “….When the revelations of the Beneficent were recited to them they fell down prostrating, adoring, weeping.” (Qur’an 19:58) Joseph’s brothers experienced an inner transformation brought about by Joseph’s guidance, so their prostration also encompassed an inner recognition of Joseph’s spiritual authority and their newly awakened spirits prostrated out of gratitude and realization.

In Qur’an 12:88 the brothers asked Joseph for charity, for sadaqa. They used a verbal form of the root s-d-q. They used it in its ordinary meaning of being charitable. They were unaware of the immense extent of Joseph’s charity towards them – he gives them not simply material charity but also a spiritual charity which is to be their salvation. He gives to them exactly what they ask for but in a manner far more deep and profound than they could have imagined. He gives them the gift of their own souls set right, of inner truthfulness (sidq). Their request is worth reiterating so we can become aware, in hindsight, of its double meaning. They ask: “O Mighty one, we and our family have been beset by hardship, and we have brought unworthy goods! So fill up the measure for us, and be charitable with us: surely God rewards those who are charitable!” (Qur’an 12:88) They asked for material goods, and received both material and spiritual goods. The hardship is the hardship of the fractures within their own souls caused by their placing Joseph into the well. The unworthy goods they brought were their own selves. They wish Joseph to fill up their measure and the measure he fills up is to raise their souls/selves to the proper measure – to place in their souls what was lacking. They wish Joseph to be charitable and he bestows upon them the ultimate charity by guiding them to a state of spiritual restoration and by bestowing upon them forgiveness and mercy.

“He (Joseph) said: (There shall be) no reproof against you this day; Allah will forgive you, and He is the most Merciful of the merciful.” (Qur’an 12:92)

In Qur’an 12:91 the brothers say: “By Allah! Allah has certainly chosen you over us, and we were certainly sinners.” (Qur’an 12:91) Joseph has, through careful and studied guidance brought them to a realization about their own selves. They experience a recognition of their former corrupted inner state and the corrections Joseph has brought about within them. This is a sign that Joseph has worked within his brothers an alchemical change that transforms them from a fallen state to a state of spiritual restoration. He lifts them out of the blind alley of the nafs al-amarra (the soul that commands to evil) to the state of nafs al-lawamma (the blaming soul – the active conscience) and activates within them the workings of spirit. The activity of this process is evident when they are told in verse 87, “….despair not of the spirit of Allah….” (Qur’an 12:87)

Joseph and his father had to reverse within the brothers the effects of their past wrongdoing and their past recalcitrance towards correction – to reverse the process by which they came under the influence of evil, of Shaitan (Satan). As Jacob mentions concerning the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers (early in the sura), “Lo, Shaitan (Satan) is for man an open foe.” (Qur’an 12:5) The brothers undergo a fall, akin to the fall of Adam, in that they are tempted and they succumb and act against Joseph. Joseph’s task is to lead them back from this fall, to liberate them from the grip of Shaitan, and restore their own souls to them. They have to be lifted out of the spiritual darkness into which they cast themselves by their actions against Joseph and returned to light. The inevitability of a successful conclusion is prefigured in Joseph’s dream in which his brother’s appear as heavenly lights. But for them to reach a stage of spiritual restoration it is not sufficient for Joseph simply to speak to them or lecture them. They have to learn through lived experience and they have to be guided through the appropriate experiences – Joseph acts as their guide – a spiritual guide of whom they are completely unaware. He shapes the difficulties and hardships they must go through, he maneuvers the twists and turns and stratagems that eventually bring them to a position of reunion, recognition, repentance, and salvation. The apparent plot convolutions in the sura can initially appear to be a tangle of different threads, but these resolve eventually into a concentrated spiritual tapestry. The threads of Joseph’s brothers are those of souls being purified of sins and faults. The thread of Joseph is a binding thread that connects all the disparate portions of the tapestry into a unified whole. Joseph’s position is one of deep spiritual authority.

In one sense , Joseph’s position of authority and power, and the actions he takes to correct and straighten the crooked souls of his brothers, and the gracious mercy he shows to all those who wronged him can also be seen as an earthly example and symbol of a higher guidance and judgement. God’s intention is not simply to discharge His wrath and vengeance upon humans, nor to doom them for slips of the soul, but rather the Prophets and revelation and the endless signs that are manifest out in the world and within our own selves are all a form of guidance and correction to steer us to felicity. The aim is to guide us, sometimes with rewards and sometimes with a stick, just as Joseph armed with knowledge that his brothers’ lacked, forced them into situations which were uncomfortable and trying for them but which ultimately had the aim of straightening the crookedness in their souls. And when the brothers were helpless in front of Joseph and subject to his command – he showed them only mercy. Just as Joseph had a hidden knowledge of his brothers’ situation and guided them to a spiritual realization which would allow them to turn in a new direction, so God has hidden knowledge of all our situations.

Verse 101 (“My Lord! Thou hast given me of the kingdom and taught me of the interpretation of sayings….”) uses similar wording to verse 6, except now Joseph recognizes through personal experience and knowledge the promise that was made in verse 6. And this expands further, if any such expansion was possible, Joseph’s profound gratefulness to God for the protecting bond that has guided him and his family to felicity and union through mysterious and astounding routes. It is here that we realize that Joseph’s position is a truly elevated one as he has a position of proximity to Allah denoted by the term wali. “Thou art my wali (proximate loving guardian) in this world and the hereafter….” (Qur’an 12:101) God is his wali in the two domains of this world and the hereafter, the material universe and the spiritual worlds.

This verse also uses the term Fatir, translated as Creator or Originator but which literally means “splitter” and possibly also referring to fitra (the primordial nature with which things are created). In this case it likely refers to the dual nature of creation which consists of both matter and spirit, form and substance, earth and heaven. “Creator/Splitter of the heavens and earth” says the verse. And God’s guidance of Joseph unites both these dimensions as Joseph’s every action in this world is one that originates in and descends from a higher realm and takes root in this world. While the two worlds, dunya (this world) and akhira (the hereafter), are in one sense separate it is also the case that the higher worlds encompass and envelop the lower ones. So when a command issues from the higher worlds, it operates irresistibly in the lower world, the world of the dunya – “He regulates the affair from the heaven to the earth….” (Qur’an 32:5) In sura Yusuf, verse 6 says: “…thy Lord will prefer thee and will teach thee the interpretation of events, and will perfect His grace upon the family of Jacob….” (Qur’an 12:6) This is like a command which issues from heaven and then, from that point on, invisibly but irresistibly regulates all matters concerning Joseph and Jacob and their family until they are brought to a state of felicity in verse 100. Everything that happens in between in this sura is guided by the promise of verse 6. And the patience of Jacob and Joseph is a sign of their proximity and surrender to God and His infallible promise. The word ta-waffa (also used in verse 101) refers to the moment of death when each soul is received by the angel or by God, and Joseph, recognizing in full the intense transcendence of the station he has reached in verse 100, asks God to preserve this elevated state of awareness and surrender within him, till he arrives at the moment of his death: “….make me die (ta-waffa) a Muslim and join me with the good.” (Qur’an 12:101)

-Irshaad Hussain

Tuesday 23rd February 201o

Let us agree on this: we live in pluralistic societies and pluralism is an unavoidable fact. We are equal citizens, but with different cultural and religious backgrounds. So, how can we, instead of being obsessed with potential “conflicts of identity” within communities, change that viewpoint to define and promote a common ethical framework, nurtured by the richness of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds? After all, a pluralistic society needs a strong and effective ethics of citizenship in order to face up to both its internal challenges (diversity, equal rights, racism, corruption, etc) and international challenges (economic crisis, global warming, migrations, etc).

Here’s one principle for reaching that goal: an ethics of citizenship should itself reflect the diversity of the citizenship. For while we agree that no one has the right to impose their beliefs on another, we also understand that our common life should be defined in such a way that it includes the contributions of all the religious and philosophical traditions within it. Further, the way to bring about such inclusion is through critical debate.

When it comes to the new Muslim presence in western countries, that critical debate is hard to achieve. Islam is perceived as a “problem”, never as a gift in our quest for a rich and stimulating diversity. And that’s a mistake. Islam has much to offer – not least when considering how individuals in politics and business have recently been behaving, within the limits of the law, but with a clear lack of ethics.

Islamic literature is full of injunctions about the centrality of an education based on ethics and proper ends. Individual responsibility, when it comes to communicating, learning and teaching is central to the Islamic message. Muslims are expected to be “witnesses to their message before people”, which means speaking in a decent way, preventing cheating and corruption, and respecting the environment. Integrity in politics and the rejection of usurious speculation in economics are principles that are pushing Muslim citizens and scholars to explore new avenues that bring public life and interpersonal ethics together.

More broadly, the Muslim presence should be perceived as positive, too. It is not undermining the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian ethical and cultural roots of Europe. Neither is it introducing dogmatism into the debate, as if spiritual and religious traditions automatically draw on authoritarian sources. They can operate within both the limits of the law and in the open public sphere. On the contrary, the Muslim presence can play a critical role in thinking about our future and shaping a new common narrative. It can help recall and revive some of the fundamental principles upon which the cultures of Europe are based.

To put it another way, Muslims remind their fellow citizens that one cannot simply get rid of older ethical traditions and replace them with a supposedly neutral rule of law or by impartial values formed in a free market. To agree on the rule of law, equality and democratic transparency is surely not enough. Contemporary crises within societies, and at the international level, remind us we need more ethics in our public life, not merely more efficiency.

Whether we can agree on the content of a common ethic is another question entirely. But this is where critical and indepth debates should take place, and it’s in this way that the issue of our plural future together should be determined. That future cannot be shaped by superficial discussions of national identity, values or Britishness. Similarly, we must stop treating diversity as a hindrance, for it should be exactly the opposite. Rather, an ethics based on our common citizenship must be forged from a serious and profound engagement with the meaning of our common humanity.

• Read the Citizens Ethics pamphlet in full here

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(Wednesday February 28, 2007)

Journeys of Wisdom

In the story of Joseph, there is inspiration for us all, especially those of us who have had first-hand experience of migration from our homelands to these shores. This should help us to understand better the greater journey, which is the journey of life itself.

In our monotonous lifestyles, it is easy to forget that journeys offer great lessons to us; whether in the guise of the daily drive to work or an unnerving mass movement of people across continents. Hence, it is possible to see a Divine purpose in the act of movement, because it is evident that human beings are not the only ones on the move.

For example, behind the outward serenity, there is a motion of protons and neutrons in an atom and the spinning of the earth. All move in an anti-clockwise direction. The pilgrims at Mecca follow this precise movement around the Ka’bah. By following His command, all are worshipping their Lord, signifying their submission which is Islam. Similarly, our migration to distant lands cannot possibly be for the sake of bread alone, but to fulfil a higher purpose.

In Joseph’s journey, God sets a precedent. Hence the interactions of a migrant with the indigenous population are worthy examples to emulate. Therefore, from a mere slave to becoming a minister in the government of a prosperous Egypt, Joseph does not let the power corrupt him, nor does he lose sight of the fact that all his actions must be a form of worship of His Lord.

He is firstly enticed by his master’s wife through her sexual advances, but he rejects them, preferring imprisonment to lewdness. Yes, of course, he is upset by trials and tribulations, but his attitude is not a nihilistic, despairing one. Instead, he shows perseverance in patience and prayer during hardship and is thankful to his Lord at times of ease. Furthermore, he never boasts about his unique skills of dream interpretation and far sighted wisdom. Instead, he attributes these qualities to God, as being His gifts. Above all, rather than seeking revenge he chooses to forgive his brothers.

Notwithstanding the high stature of Joseph, how much of the above have we been able to achieve during our time, not just in the city of Stoke-On-Trent, but these isles as a whole? Have we resisted the temptations, dealt honestly with people, used our God-given talents to help, albeit in a small way? Do we even feel we even belong to this soil, or do we prefer to partake in the politics of our lands many miles away? Do we eat the same curries that we feed our customers in our famous Baltis?

In brief, are we dynamically worshipping our Lord through our actions or restricting our worship to prayers alone? Only if the answer to these questions is yes can we hope to be emulating Joseph and only then can we feel that we have made the best use of our journeys.

February 1, 2008

‘Don’t teach children patriotism’

Nicola Woolcock

Patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is “morally ambiguous”, a leading educational body recommends.

History and citizenship lessons should stick to the bare facts rather than encouraging loyalty to Britain when covering subjects such as the Second World War or the British Empire, the Institute of Education researchers said. Teachers should not instill pride in what they consider great moments of British history, as more shameful episodes could be downplayed or excluded.

The slave trade, imperialism and 20th century wars should be taught as controversial issues while students are deciding how they feel about their country, the report says.

Three quarters of teachers felt obliged to tell students about the danger of patriotism. The survey suggested neither pupils nor teachers wanted patriotism endorsed by schools.

Historians said last night, however, that it was impossible to teach the subject without patriotism or a recognition that British values were rooted in the past.

The report criticises the current drive to use citizenship lessons as a way of promoting pride in being British and developing a sense of belonging. It said: “To love what is corrupt is itself corrupting, not least because it inclines us to ignore, forget, forgive or excuse the corruption. And there’s the rub for patriotism.

“Countries are morally ambiguous entities: they are what they are by virtue of their histories.”

The authors added: “It is hard to think of a national history free from the blights of warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation, or a national identity forged without recourse to exclusionary and xenophobic stereotypes.”

Alan Johnson, the former Education Secretary, announced last year that pupils aged 11 to 16 would have compulsory lessons in British history. Ethnicity, religion, race and national identity will be taught, through studying immigration, the Commonwealth, the Empire and devolution, extending the popular vote and women’s rights.

Gordon Brown said at the time: “There is a golden thread that intertwines the unshakeable British commitment to liberty with another very British idea: that of duty and social responsibility.”

But Dr Hand, the co-author of the report, said: “Gordon Brown and David Cameron have both called for a history curriculum that fosters attachment and loyalty to Britain, but the case for promoting patriotism in schools is weak.

“Are countries really appropriate objects of love? Loving things can be bad for us, for example when the things we love are morally corrupt. Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it’s an open question whether citizens should love their countries.”

The institute – part of the University of London – asked nearly 300 pupils aged 13 to 14, and 47 teachers, in 20 London schools, how patriotism should be handled. About 94 per cent of teachers and 77 per cent of teenagers said that schools should give a balanced presentation of opposing views. Fewer than 10 per cent felt patriotism should be actively promoted.

However, 19 per cent of teachers and 16 per cent of teenagers thought schools should support patriotic views when expressed by pupils.The historian Tristram Hunt said of the institute’s report: “I think it’s a very immature approach to the topic. The point is not whether history was right or wrong from a 21st Century liberal-left perspective. It’s about teaching students to understand the mindset and context of our forebears.

“The real problem isn’t that our children are being indoctrinated with patriotism, but that they don’t know enough British history.”

Ambiguous times

1750-1830 The Industrial Revolution: exploitation of the poor versus great wealth creation and growth

1807 Abolition of the slave trade. Britons were both practitioners of the trade and responsible for abolition

1947 Indian independence and Partition. How well did Britain manage its withdrawal from the sub-continent?

2003 Iraq war: was it liberation or occupation?

It’s more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim

The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. ­Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the excuse for launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to observe the ceasefire.

While the war failed in its primary aim of regime change in Gaza, it left ­behind a trail of death, devastation, destruction and indescribable human suffering. Israel lost 13 people, three in so-called friendly fire. The Palestinian death toll was 1,387, including 773 civilians (115 women and 300 children), and more than 5,300 people were injured. The entire population of 1.5 million was left traumatised. Across the Gaza Strip, 3,530 homes were completely destroyed, 2,850 severely damaged and 11,000 suffered structural damage.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, tending to the needs of four million Palestinian refugees, stated that Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age”; its inhabitants reduced to building homes from mud after the fierce 22-day offensive.

War crimes were committed and possibly even crimes against humanity, documented in horrific detail in Judge Richard Goldstone’s report for the UN human rights council. The report condemned both Israel and Hamas, but reserved its strongest criticism for Israel, accusing it of deliberately targeting and terrorising civilians in Gaza. The British government did not take part in the vote on the report, sending a signal to the hawks in Israel that they can continue to disregard the laws of war. Gordon Brown’s 2007 appointment as a patron of the Jewish National Fund UK presumably played a part in the adoption of this pusillanimous position.

One year on, the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas on earth, continues to teeter on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, in force since June 2007, restricts the flow not only of arms but also food, fuel and medical supplies to well below the minimum necessary for normal, everyday life. Reconstruction work has hardly begun because of the Israeli ban on bringing in cement and other building materials to Gaza. Thousands of families still live in the ruins of their former homes. Hospitals, health facilities, schools, government buildings and mosques cannot be rebuilt. Nor can the basic infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City’s sewage disposal plant. Today, 80% of Gaza’s population remain dependent on food aid, 43% are unemployed, and 70% live on less than $1 a day.

Meanwhile, the so-called peace process cannot be revived because ­Israel refuses to freeze settlement expansion on the West Bank. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently agreed to a temporary freeze of 10 months, but this does not apply to the 3,000 pre-approved housing units to be built on the West Bank or to any part of Greater Jerusalem. It’s like two men negotiating the division of a pizza while one continues to gobble it up.

Politically, the disjunction between words and deeds persists. Appeals to the Israeli government to lift or relax the blockade of Gaza were not backed up by effective pressure or the threat of sanctions. In fact, the only effective pressure was applied by the US on the Egyptian government – to seal its border with Gaza. Egypt has its own reason for complying: Hamas is ideologically allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic opposition to the Egyptian regime. The tunnels under the border separating Egypt from the Gaza Strip bring food and material relief to the people under siege. Yet, under US supervision and with the help of US army engineers, Egypt is building an 18-metre-deep underground steel wall to disrupt the tunnels and tighten the blockade.

The wall of shame, as Egyptians call it, will complete the transformation of Gaza into an open-air prison. It is the cruellest example of the concerted Israeli-Egyptian-US policy to isolate and prevent Hamas from leading the Palestinian struggle for self-determi nation. Hamas is habitually dismissed by its enemies as a purely terrorist organisation. Yet no one can deny that it won a fair and free election in the West Bank as well as Gaza in January 2006. Moreover, once Hamas gained power through the ballot box, its leaders adopted a more pragmatic stand ­towards Israel than that enshrined in its charter, repeatedly expressing its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. But there was no one to talk to on the Israeli side.

Israel adamantly refused to recognise the Hamas-led government. The US and the European Union followed, resorting to economic sanctions in a vain attempt to turn the people against their elected leaders. This cannot possibly bring security or stability because it is based on the denial of the most elementary human rights of the people of Gaza and the collective political rights of the Palestinian people. Through its special relationship with the US and its staunch support for Israel, the British government is implicated in this shameful policy.

At present the British public is preoccupied with Tony Blair and the war in Iraq. What is often overlooked is that this was only one aspect of a disastrous British policy towards the Middle East, inaugurated by Blair, and which shows no sign of changing under his successor.

One of Blair’s arguments used to justify the Iraq war was that it would help bring justice to the long-suffering Palestinians. In his House of Commons speech on 18 March 2003, he promised that action against Iraq would form part of a broader engagement with the problems of the Middle East. He even declared that resolving the Israeli- Palestinian dispute was as important to Middle East peace as removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Yet by focusing international attention on Iraq, the war further ­marginalised the Palestinian question. To be fair, Blair persuaded the Quartet (a group consisting of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia) to issue the Roadmap in 2003, which called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But President George Bush was not genuinely committed and only adopted it under pressure from his allies. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard-line prime minister at the time, wrecked the plan by continuing to expand Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Could Blair really not have realised that for Bush the special relationship that counted was the one with Israel? Every time Bush had to choose between Blair and Sharon, he chose Sharon.

Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 was not a contribution to the Roadmap but an attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Greater Israel and part of a plan to entrench the occupation there. Yet in return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon extracted from the US a written agreement to Israel’s retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Bush’s support amounted to an abrupt reversal of US policy since 1967, which regarded the settlements as illegal and as an obstacle to peace. Blair publicly endorsed the pact, probably to preserve a united Anglo-American front at any price. It was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

In July 2006, at the height of the savage Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Blair opposed a security council resolution for an immediate and ­unconditional ceasefire: he wanted to give Israel an opportunity to destroy Hezbollah, the radical Shi’ite religious-political movement. One year later, in June 2007, he resigned from office. That day he was appointed the Quartet’s special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His main sponsor was Bush and his blatant partisanship on behalf of Israel was probably considered a qualification. His appointment coincided with the collapse of the Palestinian national unity government, the reassertion of Fatah rule in the West Bank and the violent seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza.

Blair’s main tasks were to mobilise international assistance for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, to promote good governance and the rule of law in the Palestinian territories, and to further Palestinian economic development. His broader mission, was “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”.

On taking up his appointment, Blair said that: “The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community – that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the ­Middle East is a two-state solution.” His appointment was received with great satisfaction by the Israelis and with utter dismay by the Arabs.

In his two and a half years as special envoy, Blair has achieved remarkably little. True, Blair helped persuade the Israelis to reduce the number of West Bank checkpoints from 630 to 590; he helped to create employment oppor tunities; and he may have contributed to a slight improvement in living standards in Palestine. But the Americans remained fixated on security rather than on economic development, and their policy remains skewed in favour of Israel. Barack Obama made a promising start as president by insisting on a complete settlement freeze on the West Bank, but was compelled to back down, dashing many of our high hopes.

One reason for Blair’s disappointing results is that he wears too many hats and cannot, as he promised, be “someone who is on the ground spending 24/7 on the issue”. Another reason is his “West Bank first” attitude – continuing the western policy of bolstering Fatah and propping up the ailing Palestinian Authority against Hamas. His lack of commitment to Gaza is all too evident. During the Gaza war, he did not call for a ceasefire. He has one standard for Israel and one for its victims. His attitude to Gaza is to wait for change rather than risk incurring the displeasure of his American and Israeli friends. As envoy, Blair has been inside Gaza only twice; once to visit a UN school just beyond the border and once to Gaza City. His project for sanitation in northern Gaza was never completed because he could not persuade the Israelis to allow in the last small load of pipes needed. A growing group of western politicians has publicly acknowledged the necessity of talking to Hamas if meaningful progress is to be achieved; Blair is not one of their number.

Blair has totally failed to fulfil the official role of the envoy “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”, largely for reasons beyond his control. The most important of these is Israel’s determination to perpetuate the isolation and the de-development of Gaza and deny the Palestinian people a small piece of land – 22% of Mandate-era ­Palestine, to be precise – on which to live in freedom and dignity. It is a policy that Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli sociologist, named ­”politicide” – the denial to the Palestinian people of any independent political existence in Palestine.

Partly, however, Blair’s failure is due to his own personal limitations; his ­inability to grasp that the fundamental issue in this tragic conflict is not Israeli security but Palestinian national rights, and that concerted and sustained international pressure is required to compel Israel to recognise these rights. The core issue cannot be avoided: there can be no settlement of the conflict without an end to the Israeli occupation. There is international consensus for a two-state solution, but Israel rejects it and Blair has been unable or unwilling to use the Quartet to enforce it.

Blair’s failure to stand up for Palestinian independence is precisely what endears him to the Israeli establishment. In February of last year, while the Palestinians in Gaza were still mourning their dead, Blair received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv University as the “laureate for the present time dimension in the field of leadership”. The citation praised him for his “exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership”. The prize is worth $1m. I may be cynical, but I cannot help viewing this prize as absurd, given Blair’s silent complicity in Israel’s continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.

Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso, 2009). His fee for this article has been donated to Medical Aid for Palestine.

This article appeared in the Guardian on 3rd February 2010

“A-úthu billáhi minash shaytánir rajeem. Bismilláhir rahmánir raheem

Al hamdu lillahi nahmaduhu wanasta’eenahu, wanastagh-firuhu, wanatoobu ilayhi, wana’oothu Billaahi min shuroori an-fusinaa, wamin sayyi aati a’maalinaa. May- Yahdillahu fa huwal muhtad, wa may- yudlill falan tajidaa lahu waliyan murshida. Wa ash-hadu an Laa ilaaha ill-Alláh, wahdahoo laa shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhoo warasooluh”

All Praise is due to Alláh, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Alláh, he is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Alláh, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad, sws, is His servant, and His messenger.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem! Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, haqqa tuqaatihee wala tamu tun-na, il-la wa antum Muslimoon.”

O You who believe, – Fear Allah, as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims.

Ya Ay-yuhal-latheena ‘aamanut taqul-laaha, wa qooloo qawlan sadeedaa. Yuslih-lakum a’maalakum wa yaghfir lakum thunoobakum, wamay yu-til-laaha warasoolah, faqad faaza fawzan atheemaa.”

O You who believe, – Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

In the opening verse of Sura An-Nisaa’, Allah says:

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;― Be conscious of Allah, through Whom ye demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah ever watches over you.`

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Muslims in Britain are often asked, “Do you consider yourself British or Muslim?” In other parts of Europe, the question is, are you European or Muslim? And, across the Atlantic, “Are you American or Muslim, Canadian or Muslim?” And so on. The question presupposes that one’s identity and one’s loyalty can only fit into one category. It also betrays the questioner’s anxiety as to where we Muslims belong. Before we hasten to answer this question, we need to examine its assumptions critically. It’s and either/or question, and it assumes that being Muslim and being British or French or German or American/Canadian/Australian are mutually exclusive identities. It’s like asking, are you a husband, or a father, or a son? Obviously, one can be all these, without any conflict or contradictions. The question itself is absurd. So, don’t answer this question as if you accept its wrong assumptions. The simple truth is that one can be a good Muslim and be a loyal British citizen, or European or American citizen without any problems.

The problem arises when we define our meanings narrowly and exclusively.

What exactly does it mean to be British, or whatever?

If one defines ‘British’ as being white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant [W.A.S.P. for short] then clearly we brown skinned colonial cousins won’t ever fit that description. It’s racially and religiously exclusive. Who is ‘British’ has to be redefined. It must include all those who may have been born elsewhere but who have made Britain their home and who are entitled to a British passport. Being British is someone who strives to promote the wellbeing of everyone who lives in this country, and who is sensitive to the needs of people beyond our shores, someone who believes that ‘fair play’ applies not only to cricket but to life generally This is a more inclusive and acceptable definition of British-ness. We Muslims can certainly accept this definition and strive to fulfil it, because we find in it a resonance with our own Islamic ethos.

To be a Muslim is to be a follower of a universal faith, to believe in One God and to believe in all His prophets. ‘Muslim’ is not a national identity. It’s a belief identity. A Muslim can be Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Egyptian by birth, British by nationality and at the same time be an obedient son, a loving father, a devoted husband as well as a helpful neighbour and a loyal and upright citizen. One can be all this at the same time, with absolutely no contradictions. The contradictions only exist in someone else’s mind.

“O mankind, I have created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know and respect one another and not despise one another…”[Sura Hujuraat ch 49 verse13]

To know and to respect other people of different cultures, languages and ethnicity is a moral and spiritual imperative, decreed by Allah. Knowing and respecting the diversity of Allah’s creation is something we must share with others. We must teach them and reassure them that diversity should not become a source of fear and loathing, but a source of wonder and admiration. It is one of the Ayaat, one of the Signs of Allah.

We must understand that in these fast-changing times, people feel uncertain and insecure about their own national identity. Some are no longer sure if they are British, English, Scottish, Welsh or European. What comes first? Does it really matter? Aren’t we first human beings, homo sapiens? Bani Adam? KhaleefatullAh?..trustees and custodians of planet Earth? We Muslims must understand this, and we must reassure our friends and neighbours in the wider community that they have nothing to fear from our presence in their midst. We have to do this by earning their respect and trust. By doing so, we will simply be following the “uswatul hasanah,” the grand exemplar, the perfect role-model of Prophet Muhammad (sws).

Let’s not forget that even before he was called upon by Allah to fulfil the most honoured role as “khaataman-nabiy-yeen,” the Last of the Prophets, he had, in the first 40 years of his life earned the title of “Al-ameen,” The Trustworthy.

Let us then work hard to earn that same reputation amongst our friends and neighbours in the wider community. We must always be truthful and trustworthy. Let us follow our beloved Prophet Muhammad (sws)’s example. There’s no quick fix here. It’s a long and serious process, a lifestyle and lifetime commitment. It will take lots of hard work over many years. But this is what it means to be a true Muslim. We who worship the Lord of Mercy and who follow the Mercy to all the Nations,

(Wa ma arsal naaka illa Rahmatal lil ‘aalameen)

We will have to show others the beauty of Islam, bit by bit, day by day, through our practical living example, through big and small acts of kindness, generosity and mercy. We will have to join others in improving our neighbourhoods, reducing crime, drug abuse and social exclusion. Every Muslim must be involved in at least one activity that promotes social cohesion, human welfare and good citizenship. It’s a long road ahead, but this is what Allah has decreed for us, and at the end of this road, inshAllah, awaits the Ridwaan, the Good Pleasure of our Lord.

innalláha wa malaaikata yusallúna alan nabi. Yá ay yuhal latheena ámanu sallú alayhi wasalli mú tas leema. Allahumma salli alá Muhammad, wa ala áli Muhammad, kama salayta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali Ibrahim. Allahumma barik ala Muhammad, kama barakta ala Ibrahim, wa ala ali ibrahim. Fil ála meen, innaka hameedun majeed.

Second Khutbah:

Sub’ hanallahi wal hamdu lillah, wala hawla wala quwwata illah billah yu althi yual theem

Glory to Allah!  Praise to Allah! There is no power and no strength except from Allah!

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We’ve all heard about Islamic Relief. It’s one of the biggest Muslim charities, helping anyone in need, all over the world. How many of us actually know how this big international charity began?

During Ramadan I attended an Iftar dinner hosted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I heard Dr Hani Al Banna, the founder and CEO, tell us how it started 25 years ago. It was in Cairo, Egypt, where his young nephew came to him and said, “Uncle, here’s my pocket money. I don’t really need anything for myself. Please use it to help the poor people.” He handed over one  Egyptian Pound [about 20p]. Dr Al Banna was deeply moved by this young boy’s generosity, giving his whole week’s pocket money to the poor. So he started Islamic Relief with that sum,  just 20p. Today it’s an international relief agency that raises millions to provide help and support to the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth.

Let us take this as an example. Even the smallest good deed, driven by love and gratitude to Allah, can be magnified a million times over. Allah’s mercy and blessings are limitless. Sura Al Baqara reminds us of a grain of corn that sprouts seven ears, each carrying a hundred grains. Allah multiplies His rewards many times over. We should never take Allah’s loving mercy for granted.

Let us reflect on Allah’s living and loving generosity towards us. Let us show Him our gratitude, by serving His most vulnerable servants.

Brothers and sisters, to conclude our khutbah

InnaAllaha, Yamuru bil adel, wal ihsaan, wa eetaa-i zil qurba; wa yanha anil fuhshaa-i, wal munkari walbaghi; ya-idzukhum lallakum tathak-karoon. (Sura 16:90),

“Surely Allah commands justice, good deeds and generosity to others and to relatives; and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you, so that you may be reminded.”

Fadth kuroonee adth kurkum, wash kuroolee walaa tak furoon [2:152].

“and remember Me: I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not reject faith.”

wala thikrul-Laahi akbar, Wal-Laahu ya’lamu maa tasna’oon.” [29:45].

“and without doubt, Remembrance of Allah is the Greatest Thing in life, and Allah knows the deeds that you do.”

Ameen.                   Aqeemus salaah!

Allah says in the Glorious Qur’an;

“Your Lord has decreed that you shall worship none except Him; and show kindness to your parents. If one of them or both reach old age, never say to them ‘uf’, nor scold them. Rather speak to them graciously and lower for them your wing of mercy, and say, ‘My Lord, have mercy on them as they raised me mercifully when I was small.” ( 17:23 )

Oh Muslims, in this above verse Allah states categorically that He has prescribed affection, kindness and obedience towards parents. The Almighty absolutely forbids ill-treatment, abuse and neglect of parents. Paradise and divine approval are for those who are kind to their parents, as the Holy Prophet (pbuh) so beautifully states;

“Paradise lies at the feet of the Mothers”

Oh servants of Allah. We have just started the new academic year 2009. The learner, the educator, the professional, the layman, the business person, nay, everybody is in search of success and prosperity. The question is; What is true success ?

Firoun was a mighty ruler and very wealthy, yet he died horribly and unsuccessful.

Abu Jahl, who was an uncle of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), was an intellectual in his era, but his obstinacy and boastfull arrogance blinded him to the Truth, and he also died in disgrace and unsuccessful. How many of us move in mighty executive circles today, holding positions of esteem, but neglect and abandon our beloved parents?  How many parents are crying of loneliness in old-age homes and cramped out buildings? Why are children’s memories so short? Have we forgotten so soon how our mothers painfully bore and brought us into this world? Remember, when our beloved Prophet was asked who is the most deserving of our affectionate company, he replied thrice, Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother and then your Father. Therefore understand! that one’s worship of Allah is incomplete if one deserts, abandons or abuses one’s parents.

Our Noble Prophet (pbuh) was asked: Why do you give the mother three degrees of preference over the father? He replied: “Your mother carried you for nine months in her blessed womb, then painfully gave birth to you. After that she gave up her sleep for you, suckled you, carried you in her arms for three years and cleaned up your mess. She did your laundry. She cooked and served your food for eighteen years. When you were forty, fifty, sixty, she still followed your progress with great interest. The man enquired; Oh Prophet, suppose I carry my mother on my back for years, clean up after her, cook for her and feed her. Suppose I attend to those same services as long as she may live? The Prophet replied; There will be this one difference between you. Your mother looked out for you to live, while you are waiting for her to die.”

Listen attentively and I will relate to you a beautiful qissah (story).

“One day Nabi Musa (as) was conversing with Allah on Mount Sinai, and Allah said: Oh Musa, go to certain place where you shall meet a certain person, who is a butcher by trade, He will be your close companion in Jannah. When Nabi Musa arrived in this town, he hid his true identity and requested hospitality from this butcher, saying he is a traveler. The butcher took him home that evening and made him sit, saying, make yourself at home, but kindly excuse me for a while as I have something very important to do first. Nabi Musa then noticed that his host tended to a very old and frail woman laying in a basket. He cleaned the old lady, brushed her hair, then lovingly fed her and made her comfortable. The old lady murmured something, to which the butcher said ‘Amen’. After a while Nabi Musa asked his host about the old lady, and he replied. She is my mother. Every morning before I leave, I see to her needs for the day and make her comfortable. When I return home, I clean her up and feed her before I see to my own needs. Then Nabi Musa asked, What did she murmur to you. The butcher smiled and said. My mother daily makes duah that Allah must make me the companion of Nabi Musa in Jannah. I only say Ameen to please her, because I am only an ordinary person in comparison to Nabi Musa who is the great prophet of Allah. Hear the good news, brother butcher, the blessed Nabi Musa said. Your mother’s duah has been accepted. I am Nabi Musa and you are to be my close companion in Jannah.”

Oh Muslims, Listen dearly and reflect on the following qissah (story) as well.

One day, the great wali, Imam Hasan Al-Basri (ra) was making Tawaf around the Ka’bah, and saw a young man carrying a basket on his back. The young man explained. We are poor folk. For years my mother had this deep yearning to visit the Ka’bah, but we could never afford it. She had grown old, but always spoke so lovingly of the Ka’bah, with eyes  filled with tears. I could not bear to see my mother in such a state, so I placed her in this basket and brought her all the way from our house in Syria. Oh Imam, did I repay my Mother’s due by what I have done for her? The pious Imam replied: Even if you carry your mother on your back and perform tawaaf seventy times around the Ka’bah, you will never compensate her for one kick you gave her when you were in her blessed womb.”

Oh servants of Allah! Do I need to say more? Islam teaches us that our two beloved parents are our doorway to Paradise. Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi urges;

“Be obedient and loving to your parents and earn Allah’s good pleasure. Your mother and father are your honoured guests. You will lose them one day, and be left all alone in this world. You will never find a friend and helper like your mother. For of all those who seem to be your friends, the most loyal is your mother. She is your true friend, all the rest are friends of your money, rank, beauty etc. Should you become bankrupt, ugly, old or sick, or be put into prison, your one real friend will be your MOTHER.” I pray from this sacred Mimbar to Almighty Allah to bless all our beloved parents lives with khair and barakah, and those who are deceased, to grant them Jannatul-Firdous, Ameen.

Jumuah Mubarak!!!

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Praise be to Almighty Allah, Sovereign of the universe and choicest blessings on our illustrious Master, Nabi Muhammad (pbuh), the absolute final of all divine emissaries.

Allah says in the Glorious Qur’an;

“I have not created Jinn and Mankind except for my worship.”

It is also stated in a Hadith Qudsi, that the Lord Almighty declares;

“I was a hidden treasure, and I wanted to become known. So I created the creation, for my glorification.”

Oh Muslims, taking cognizance of these divine statements, we ask. Is mankind on course in terms of this noble objective? Looking at global events, one finds Muslims in disarray, facing persecution which started with the commencement of the Prophetic mission, and perpetuated against Muslims in Bosnia, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.  Our own beloved country of South Africa seems to be going down a dark tunnel, with allegations of fraud, corruption and bribery, even on government level.

It seems as if our education system and institutions have failed us. Hooliganism and gangsterism are rife on schools. Alcohol and drugs are the order of the day and a great number of Muslim youth are trapped in the demonic cult of Satanism. Hence, we can see the local, national and international scene of the Muslim world gives a gloomy picture of despair. However, it is not my intention to stand here on this sacred platform of truth to make you morbid. No; there is indeed hope. Great hope for the future. Great hope for us to rid the world from the misery of godlessness, into the light of Godliness.

Let us start with thanking our beloved Creator for having afforded us the wonderful opportunity to have stood on the mighty plains of Arafah with approximately 3 million fellow pilgrims. Remember, beloved Hujaaj, that you have been crowned as ambassadors to convey the message of Arafah, but most importantly, to live your Hajj. The completion of this great Hajj ushers in the new Islamic year of Muharram 1430. New Year for a Muslim does not involve vulgarity obscenity and vanity. We are not clowns and coons to dance in public, like slaves to the tunes of their slave masters. Nay, New Year signifies a new and fresh beginning. It is an opportunity for us to recommit ourselves to the purpose of our creation, and fulfilling our Amanat  (trust) as Allah has decreed for us.

“You (Muslims) are the best community, selected for the guidance of mankind. You order with the good and prevent from evil, and you have faith in Allah.” (Al-Qur’an).

It is this bounden duty of Da’wah, which we have neglected for so long, which resulted in the mess we find ourselves in.

Oh Muslims, don’t you see that everything revolves around Da’wah ? Look at the organized Da’wah campaigns of Satan’s dens of vice and sin through their gambling casinos, prostitution houses, shebeens and drug outlets. Now the world is groping in spiritual darkness. Where is that great Muslim Ummah who brought glory and civilization and led the world out of the dark ages?

Islam is the perfect Deen based on unity. We are an ummah united in our worship of One Allah, one Qur’an, one Kaa’bah as our qiblah under the one flag of our illustrious Master, Nabi Muhammad (pbuh). The rampant malady which grips this Ummah today is because ;

a)      Mutual love has departed from our hearts, while hatred and animosity dominate the scene.

b)      Harmony is ousted, while disharmony has entrenched itself.

c)      Self righteous attitudes among  us, that my perspective of an issue is the ultimate perspective, and my view must rule supreme.

We need to realize that it is this kind of immaturity and mediocre level of intellectual intollerence which curbs our progress and prolonging our intellectual and political impotency.

We therefore need to evaluate ourselves in the light of the Islamic value system which finds distinct expression for its promotion in its demand for human welfare and inner/ inter-religious harmony.

It is our religious duty to elect a strong and competent leadership, under whose guidance we need to convey the uncorrupted message of Tauheed.

Let us make a strong resolution, as we enter this new year,  that we will live and propagate the message of Arafah. Positive change starts with our individual selves and within our homes and immediate environments. In conclusion, I remind myself and you of the last advise of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), from the plains of Arafah.

“ I leave behind two mighty things. Whosoever adheres to them, will never go astray. It is the Book of Allah (Al-Qur’an) and my Sunnah.

May Allah bless us all and grant us success and prosperity for the new year ahead, Ameen.

Muharram Mubarak