When the Generous appears with the name Avenger
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‘When the Generous appears with the name Avenger’
(Reflections on the Turkish earthquake)
Abdal Hakim Murad
In surat al-Furqan, Allah tells us:
‘The Messenger said: My Lord, my people have taken this Qur’an as
something abandoned.’
Perhaps this could be the epitaph of the traditional Islamic world.
Many Muslims still adhere to aspects of the Qur’anic message; but
there seem to be whole sections of the revelation which we read,
formally, but fail to digest.
A little later in the same sura we come to one of these forgotten
Qur’anic themes. The text reads:
‘And We gave Musa the book, and appointed with him his brother Harun
as a supporter. Then We said: Go together unto the people who have
denied Our signs. Then We destroyed them, with a destruction that
was complete.’
‘And Nuh’s people, when they denied the Messengers; We drowned them,
and made of them a sign for mankind. We have prepared a painful
punishment for those who work injustice.’
‘And the tribes of Ad, and Thamud, and the dwellers of al-Rass, and
many generations in between.’
‘To each of them We coined parables; and each of them We destroyed
without a trace.’
We have read these verses many times. And we know that they were
addressed, the first time they were heard on earth, to the heathen
of Quraysh, as a warning. Earlier nations who had denied God’s signs
were swept away by His punishment. If they persisted in denying
sayyidina Muhammad (s) they were opening themselves up to the same
possibility.
Allah has names of Beauty: the Compassionate, the Merciful, the
Gentle, and many others. But He also has Names of Rigour: the
Overwhelming, the Just, the Avenger. The world in which we live
exists as the interaction and the manifestation of all of the divine
attributes. Hence it is a place of ease and of hardship, of joy and
of sorrow. It has to be this way: a world in which there was only
ease could not be a place in which we can discover ourselves to be
true human beings. It is only by experiencing hardship, and loss,
and bereavement, and disease, that we rise above our egos, and show
that we can live for others, and for principles, rather than only
for ourselves.
A feature of this world, this dunya, is therefore the existence of
catastrophe. Sometimes this catastrophe takes the form of a test: in
which case it may be a gift. At other times, however, it may take
the form of a punishment. The dunya is, as the athar states, ‘the
prison of the believer, and the paradise of the kafir.’ But
sometimes Allah’s anger at the repeated and scornful denial of His
signs can lead to a sudden snatching away of the delights of this
world.
One of the early Muslims said:
‘Know that when one of Allah’s servants sins against Him, He deals
with him leniently. Should he sin again, He conceals this for him.
But should he don its garments, then Allah conceives against him
such wrath as the very heavens and the earth could not compass,
neither the mountains, the trees, nor the animals; what man could
then withstand such wrath?’
One of the purposes of the Qur’an is to explain to us the risks
involved in rejecting the will of Allah. If we obey our Creator, and
respect His attributes, and emulate those attributes to the extent
and in the way that is appropriate for us, we become like Adam and
Hawwa, upon them be peace. We are restored to the fitra, to the
primordial norm of our species. And we gain our designed place as
Allah’s khalifas over the natural order.
However, if we turn our backs on the source of our being, if we face
the blackness of space rather than the sun, if we reject infinite
unity and prefer infinite multiplicity, we have become
anti-khalifas; or rather, we have become the khalifas of Iblis, not
of Allah. We acquire the attributes of Iblis: so that like him we
become deceivers, liars, cowards, lovers of dirt and impurity,
cynical advocates of empty pleasures.
To reject our God-given status as khulafa of our Maker, and to
accept a position as khulafa of Iblis, alayhi’l-la‘na, is hence to
deny our own humanity. We share in his primordial sin: like him, we
refuse to acknowledge Adam, that luminous saint before whom even the
angels must bow down. Instead, we prostrate ourselves before our own
whims, our own desires, our own all-too-fallible judgements.
A-ra’ayta man ittakhada ilahahu hawah, says the Qur’an: ‘have you
seen the one who takes his own passions to be his god?’
Violating the normality of our kind is a crime against the one who
designed that normality, and a denial of His wisdom and artistry.
And this violation can also render us vulnerable to the inherently
rigorous forces of nature.
It is of God’s mercy, and a proof of His providence, that any life
can exist at all. Were our planet to be a little further from the
sun, or a little closer, it would be uninhabitable. Were the sun’s
rays to be of a slightly different composition, they would be
lethal. Were our planet a little bit smaller, it could not retain
the atmosphere necessary to preserve life. If it were bigger, the
force of gravity would ensure that the atmosphere would include not
only oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but also heavier,
poisonous gases, like ammonia. The small size of the planet allows
these gases to escape.
The laws of physics themselves disclose what scientists can only
refer to as fine-tuning. One astrophysicist, Paul Davies, has
calculated that so finely balanced is the force of gravity against
electromagnetic energy that an adjustment of only one part in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 would ‘spell
catastrophe for stars like the sun.’ Reflecting on the relative
strengths of physical forces in the cosmos, Stephen Hawking, perhaps
the most famous physicist of our time, has pointed out ‘the
remarkable fact that the values of these numbers seem to have been
very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.’
In fact, the Qur’an tell us that ‘in the creation of the heavens and
the earth, and the succession of night and day, are signs for those
who possess an inner core.’ We gaped in astonishment recently at
just one of these signs: the total eclipse of the sun that was
visible in Cornwall. Few secular commentators remarked upon the
inherent strangeness of the eclipse phenomenon: on only one planet
in our solar system can one see the sun and the moon - or a moon -
as being of exactly equal size. And that planet is our own. Clearly,
as the hadith indicate, an eclipse is a tremendous sign of God,
which appeals to our intuition, to tell us that the universe itself
exists to provide us with signs - reminders - of the Creator’s
glory, which awaken our spirits from distraction.
The marvellous constancy of this creation, however, which makes
human life possible, exists on a condition. The house is
well-maintained by the landlord on condition that the tenant pays
the rent. And the only rent that our own, generous, Landlord asks
for is that we acknowledge and thank Him. And He only asks us for
this for our own benefit. He is al-Nafi‘ and al-Darr, the source of
benefit and of harm; we can neither benefit nor harm Him. He is
al-Ghani: the Independent.
It’s a good deal; and how could one expect anything else from the
Lord of the Worlds? All we have to do is to thank Him; and in our
own, Islamic covenant, we have a formal way of doing this five times
a day. When we fail to do this, our hearts are dirtied, we are in a
state of imbalance, and we open ourselves up to calamity.
A number of hadiths indicate ways in which specific forms of the
rejection of Allah’s providence can make us vulnerable to breakdowns
in the system of protection which Allah has built into the cosmos.
One of these, whose applicability has become painfully obvious in
the last two decades, is narrated by Imam Malik, and refers to the
consequences of the rejection of normal, Sunna practices of marriage
and reproduction:
‘Never does sexual immorality appear among a people, to the extent
that they make it public, without there appearing amongst them
plagues and agonies unknown to their forefathers.’
With perhaps a hundred thousand people in the United Kingdom
carrying the HIV virus, an infection with particularly hideous
consequences, the warning could not be more clear. It is not that
AIDS is a punishment for consuming drugs or for sex outside
marriage: that is too crude a view. Instead, the hadith indicates
that the Sunna is a protection for our kind, which preserves us from
breakdowns in the body’s defence systems. And any student of
medicine will be aware of the extraordinary complexity of the human
immune system: the titanic battles fought between pathogens and
antibodies throughout our lives, in every cell of our bodies. To the
extent that we deny the Sunna, we unbalance that system, and
catastrophe follows.
Individual human beings can open themselves up to tragedy in this
way. Sometimes, when misfortune strikes, it is not easy to see
whether it is a trial from Allah, or a chastisement, or simply the
consequence of violating the natural way which is the Sunna.
Sometimes it is a combination of these things. But it is not only
individuals to whom calamities may come. Whole human collectivities
are also at risk.
Much of the recent history of the Umma can be understood as the
simple consequence of ghafla - of heedlessness of Allah ta‘ala. The
Ottoman empire, for instance, is a good example. By Allah’s decree
and permission, this state continued for an astonishing six hundred
years or more, from 1280 until 1924. In fact, the Ottoman sultans
were the longest-reigning of any significant dynasty in world
history. No family, in China, India, Europe or anywhere else, ruled
for so long. And the achievement is the more remarkable when we look
at the size and the diversity of the empire. Many races, religions
and languages were present; there was no obvious unifying criterion
for all the sultan’s subjects; and yet the empire endured.
It is not difficult to see why Allah should have given the Ottoman
state such success. The sultans always respected the ulema and the
shuyukh: Sultan Mehmed, who liberated Constantinople from the
Byzantine oppression, was the disciple of Ak Shamsuddin, himself of
the lineage of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, radiya’Llahu anhu. With such
men to pray for them, the early sultans could hardly be defeated in
battle. Another factor in Ottoman success was the insistence of the
Ottoman ulema on tolerating differences of opinions among Muslims.
All classical writers on Muslim political theory have taken to heart
Imam al-Ghazali’s insistence that the Muslims are never served by
attempts to impose one narrow definition of the faith on everyone
else. That kind of totalitarian approach results only in hatred and
civil war, bringing misery and weakness to the Muslim community.
The Ottoman demise resulted not from the adoption of a narrow
definition of Islam that set Muslim against Muslim, but from a
thoughtless Westernisation among the ruling classes. Adopting the
materialism of Western Europe, the Ottoman nobility and middle
classes began to abandon the Sunna. The turban began to disappear,
followed by the remainder of Muslim dress. Houses began to be
designed to bring the sexes together, rather than to separate them.
The mosques in rich sections of town emptied, except on Fridays. And
the high men of the state, with some exceptions, were increasingly
reluctant to ask the great ulema for their prayers.
The Ottoman empire ended, effectively, with the First World War.
Sultan Abd al-Hamid had been overthrown by a Westernising clique
which then decided to bring the empire into the war which ended in
its dismemberment. If the Ottomans had remained loyal to the Sunna,
and hence avoided injustice, bribery, and weakness on the field of
battle, the Ottoman state would in all probability be in existence
today, and its model of an Islam which tolerates diversity would
still prevail, instead of the nervous, intolerant little groups
which fill the Islamic scene today.
The principle which underlies all this is not controversial among
Muslims. If we forget Allah, He will forget us: ‘forget us’ in the
sense of not protecting us from misfortune. The world, where it is
not held in order by the hand of Allah, is pure chaos; and in such
chaos human beings cannot survive for an instant. They are suddenly
overwhelmed by plagues, like the plagues of Egypt, or by poisonous
winds, or floods.
On 16 September 1999, Dr Klaus Topfer, head of the UN Environment
Programme, announced that ‘indications are that it is too late to
prevent global warming.’ The steady increase in hurricanes, in
particular, is a sign that the international protocols on greenhouse
gas emission are not adequate, even where they are obeyed. Topfer’s
gloomy predictions are now generally shared: the world environment
is ruined, and will deteriorate further even in the unlikely event
that Californians stop driving cars, or China closes its power
stations.
The current crisis in the world’s environment is, of course, only to
be understood religiously. Global warming, depletion of the
rainforests, the failure of the monsoon, hormone pollution, male
sterility, acid rain, BSE, desertification, and a myriad of other
planet-threatening calamities can be easily explained, from our
perspective as Muslims, as the consequences of not paying the rent.
We are taking more from the world than ever before, greedily digging
up its most inaccessible resources, sucking up oil from under the
North Sea and the Alaskan tundra, mining uranium from deserts in
Namibia, squeezing iron ore from inaccessible corners of Mauretania:
the sheer quantity of Allah’s bounty should astonish us. And yet the
more we gobble it up, the less we thank the source of these
resources. When an oil well is finally depleted, humanity does not
burp, and say, ‘Al-hamdu li’llah.’
We are not paying the rent, and so the Landlord, subhanahu
wa-ta‘ala, sees no reason to maintain the property. Why should He?
Out of His astonishing mercy, he keeps oxygen in the air, and fresh
water in the rivers, so that the earth supports six billion people,
and comparatively few starve. But as we guzzle more, and reflect
less, this generosity cannot go on forever. The signs of decay in
the world’s environment are already giving concern to the
materialistic superpowers: not because they deeply care about being
good gardeners in God’s creation, but because the only thing they
really care about - the economy - may in the longer term be at risk.
>From what I have said, it should be clear that Allah’s rahma does
not exclude the possibility of calamities on earth. As the Qur’an
says, kataba ala nafsihi ’r-Rahma: He has prescribed rahma upon
Himself. However, although the Rahman is in a sense first among the
divine qualities, there are others; and one of these is al-Adl, the
Just, while another is al-Muntaqim, the Avenger.
Recently in Turkey we witnessed a calamity which we have to regard
as a manifestation of this divine name. Perhaps forty thousand died.
Others may still die, as the secular Turkish state struggles
pathetically to provide shelter and medical care for two hundred
thousand homeless who are now at risk from cholera and typhoid,
thanks to the strange, unseasonable rain and miserable weather which
have followed the quake.
It is a terrible thing. Imam Musa Memis, one of the heroes of the
relief work, is an imam from the afflicted region. He estimates that
he and his team of imams have buried over twenty thousand people.
And still the trucks come rumbling in, filled with mangled remains
chiselled from the ruins by the rescue teams.
If you drive now from the southern suburbs of Istanbul, towards
Adapazari and Izmit, seventy miles away, you will not see a single
modern house or block of flats left standing. The hand of God has
swept all away.
Secular explanations are of course easily at hand. Northwest Turkey
has always been an earthquake zone. However, secularists, who in
Turkey are many and virulent, have to acknowledge one thing. In
Ottoman times, earthquakes claimed comparatively few lives. This was
for a very simple reason. The Ottomans belonged to the land: they
knew it, including its occasional tendency to thrash about, and they
built for it.
Those who have visited Sarajevo, or Mostar, or the other cities of
Bosnia tortured by months of bombardment, may have noticed a
remarkable thing. Modern buildings made of prestressed concrete need
only a tap with a mortar shell to bring them down like a pack of
cards. But the Ottoman buildings are astoundingly resilient. A
large-calibre artillery shell can go through a dome, or clean
through one of those pencil-thin minarets, and the structure remains
absolutely sound. So the Serbs poured more than 150,000 shells on
Sarajevo, and almost all of the mosques of the old city are still
serviceable. But walk out of the old town and into the modern
quarter, and there is absolute devastation, stretching like a
concrete sea in all directions. No-one lives there now, except the
rats.
The Turks knew how to build: for a reason. They came from a country
prone to earthquakes. Their buildings are incredibly strong. During
the 1961 earthquake which flattened the Macedonian capital of
Skopje, killing 20,000 people, observers watched with astonishment
as the minarets, seemingly the flimsiest buildings in the world,
danced and undulated like snakes, and then settled down again,
pointing to the heavens, while the rest of the city, built under
Tito, collapsed with a roar.
In 1878, when the Russian army occupied the cities of Bulgaria, they
experienced enormous difficulties in demolishing the mosques. In
Sofia, the capital, they had to wait until there was a midnight
thunderstorm, and then they detonated giant charges of dynamite in
the mosques to bring them down. The local people mistook the sound
for thunder, and did not come out to defend their mosques until, for
the first time in five centuries, they failed to hear the adhan for
fajr.
In Turkey itself, today, the newest structures have proved the most
flimsy. The ancient buildings are generally safe and sound. The
Orhan Ghazi mosque in Izmid, dating from the early fourteenth
century, is apparently largely unscathed. The traditional wooden
houses are virtually all safe, and those who lived in them are still
alive. I was once myself in an earthquake in Turkey, just thirty
miles from Izmit. But I was in an old Ottoman house: the house
groaned and squeaked for a minute, but it was quite unharmed.
There is, then, a secular culprit. Or rather, a class of them. They
are those Turkish city planners who, following the destruction of
the Ottoman caliphate, insisted on changing the face of Turkey. Just
as it was a criminal offence in Ataturk’s Turkey to wear a turban,
so also the state insisted on the abandonment of traditional Turkish
building methods. They had to be replaced by European, specifically
German norms. Hence those rows of dismal, grey buildings in modern
Turkish cities which have nothing to do with Turkey. Their spiritual
and engineering roots are in Germany: and Germany is not in an
earthquake zone.
The Ottomans, a proud Islamic people who believed in their own
traditions, insisted on architecture which could survive an
earthquake which might not come for a hundred years. The modern
secular Turk, however, thinks only for the moment. Not only does he
not give a thought to the eternity which is beyond death: he fails
to think about the world his descendents might inhabit, or the
safety of his own children. He thinks of image: of the pathetic
delight of making his cities look more European, and he thinks of
profit. No longer do most Turks live in extended houses, with
gardens, in the delightful surroundings which so impressed
nineteenth-century visitors to Turkey. They are cramped together in
grey, gardenless flats. And they are no longer even safe.
So we can say that there is human responsibility here. The rulers of
the region in a sense brought this down on their own people’s heads.
Their greed for profit, and their silly desire to ape the West,
massively worsened the impact of this tragedy.
Yet as Muslims we would insist that there is something deeper at
work. Nothing occurs in the world, not even a leaf dropping from a
tree, that Allah is not fully aware of, and that He has not decreed.
And His decrees have meaning.
What was it that that man of the Salaf said?
‘Know that when one of Allah’s servants sins against Him, He deals
with him leniently. Should he sin again, He conceals this for him.
But should he don its garments, then Allah conceives against him
such wrath as the very heavens and the earth could not compass,
neither the mountains, the trees, nor the animals; what man could
then withstand such wrath?’
The earthquake was a test, no doubt. But it was also a fearsome
expression of the Divine name al-Muntaqim, the Avenger. The same
name under which the divine action confronted Fir‘awn, and the
peoples of Ad, Thamud, Madyan and ar-Rass.
The people of that corner of Turkey had, as the athar puts it,
donned the garments of sin. Izmit, forty years ago a beautiful,
sleepy town of believers, had become a grimy, greedy industrial city
where the beer consumption was higher than almost anywhere in
Europe. The lottery, the piyango, is a curse upon Turkish society,
encouraging the idea that one can get rich without work. But in that
corner of the country it was more popular than anywhere else.
Pornography was rife. I was once on a bus outside Yalova, the now
totally destroyed coastal city, and the bus driver seemed to spend
the entire journey watching the video player, which had been located
specifically to enable to driver to watch. And what was being shown
was hard-core pornography! To a busfull of normal travellers,
including women and children. I saw one man look rather amused by
it, but no-one seemed shocked.
The coastline was filled with casinos, bars, and discos, where one
could spend one’s entire life, and several fortunes, in total
self-indulgence. Formerly one could swim, in predictably mixed
beaches, but few now dare since the sea of Marmara has become one of
the most lethally polluted bodies of water in the world. The mosques
are empty, except for Jum‘a prayers. Most of the population, in
short, is in a frenzy for the dunya. The sense of serenity and
hospitality, and sheer simple happiness, which was once normal among
Muslim Turks, has almost vanished. Greed, selfishness, and misery
are the norm.
In the mosques around that fault line there was nobody on his knees
praying for protection. But in the larger society there was also
much that was rotten, and that openly defied Allah subhanahu
wa-ta‘ala.
Last year the military sacked a duly-elected Islamic government. The
Western media, of course, supposedly so loud in its defence of
democracy, hardly raised a squeak of protest. More recently, the
excellent schools and humanitarian organisations of the scholar
Fethullah Gülen have been subject to intolerable official pressure.
Laws against the wearing of hijab in universities and government
offices are being strictly enforced. Throughout the country, Islam,
however moderate and gentle, is being subjected to what we can only
describe as persecution. The country is turned viciously against
itself: it is committing cultural suicide.
Even secular Turks acknowledge that the Islamic groups are the only
remaining repository of honesty left in the country. Municipalities
controlled by the Muslims, such as Konya, Urfa and Istanbul itself,
have been cleansed of bribery, sleaze, and laziness. In Turkey, the
Islamic political experiment, which seeks, after all, no more than
the revival of the country’s indigenous values, has been morally
vindicated in every area in which it has been allowed to operate.
But the response of the secular elite has been predictably crude:
arrests, suppression of newspapers, the banning of political
parties.
We may speculate that the long-term consequence will be the
emergence of extremism. Turkish Islam at present is not extreme. In
Turkey, it is secularity that is extreme. Just take the example of
the Kurds. Under the Islamic order, the Kurds were peacefully
tolerated as fellow-Muslims. Under the Turkish nationalist order,
the Kurds find their position unbearable.
So to advocate Islamisation in Turkey is to oppose extremism. It is
also to oppose levels of corruption that now stink unbearably.
In any case, it is to my mind no coincidence that the earthquake
struck when and where it did. It wiped out Turkey’s secular
heartland. And it took place following monstrous, demonic moves for
the further persecution of religion and the denial of basic Muslim
rights.
Let me repeat what I have been saying. It is too crude a view to
regard a tragedy such as this earthquake as a straightforward divine
punishment. The Islamic view is more subtle. We believe that the
overwhelming forces of nature are only kept in check by Allah.
Without His providence, our pathetic bodies would survive not for
one instant amid the titanic powers of the universe.
But when we forget His providence, we become vulnerable. We are, as
the people of Izmit discovered, on shaky ground.
Abu Hurayra radiya’Llahu anhu said: The Prophet, salla’Llahu alayhi
wa-sallam said: ‘The Hour shall not come until knowledge is taken
away, and earthquakes become common, and time is always too short,
and trials appear, and killing is widespread, and until wealth
becomes so abundant that it is superfluous.’ (Bukhari)
We are all vulnerable. Particularly in these times. This is an age
of forgetfulness and sadness, and we need remembrance and joy.
Wa-man a‘rada an dhikri fa-inna lahu ma‘ishatan danka , the Qur’an
says: ‘whoever turns aside from remembering Me, he shall have a
miserable life’. The modern world claims to progress: but people
have longer faces than ever before. Antidepressant drugs have never
been more widely prescribed. 17 percent of British women attempt
suicide by the age of 25. We work longer hours than ever before; and
our home lives and our marriages have never been under such
pressure.
Modernity serves only the idol of money: it does not serve human
beings. We have turned away from the unitive Source, towards the
rubble at the edges of existence: and we are sad. We are hungry. We
know that we need what all human beings have always needed: the
remembrance of Allah. And yet the modern world tells us that that is
nowhere on the list of priorities.
We have forgotten, so we have been forgotten. The modern world is
fast asleep, troubled by dreams of material pleasures that somehow
are not really pleasurable.
When we forget who we are, so radically, the protection begins to be
withdrawn, and we are at the mercy of the material world, which we
now trust and love more than we trust and love God. And the people
of Turkey have learnt how much the material world, the earth, can
help us, when we forget to acknowledge its divine source. And when
we forget to give thanks for it.
In Surat al-Mulk we are told, patiently:
‘Are you confident that He who is in heaven will not cause the earth
to cave in beneath you and to be swallowed up by it as it shakes?
Or are you confident that He who is in heaven will not loose against
you a whirlwind? You will before long known how was My warning.’
So the conclusion is inescapable. We who are not paying the rent for
our planet are now paying heavy fines instead.
But the Landlord is merciful.
His mercy is expressed, despite our waywardness, in so many ways.
There is the hadith, for instance, that states that whoever dies
tahta al-radm, under fallen masonry, is a shaheed, a martyr. So
those who have died so horribly in Turkey can be considered shuhada.
Many ulema there have confirmed this judgement.
Another expression of His mercy is that in the next life, those who
acknowledged Him shall know no more earthquakes. A hadith in Abu
Daud says: ‘This my Umma is an Umma which receives mercy: for it has
no punishment in the akhira. Its punishment is in this dunya:
strife, earthquakes, and killing.’
The Landlord is merciful. Through the signs which He sets up in
creation: eclipses, earthquakes, tornadoes, blue skies: He reminds
us patiently of His glory. And of our origin and return.
Allah subhanahu wa ta‘ala is qabil al-tawb: the acceptor of
penitence. Innahu kana bi’l-awwabina ghafura: He is ever Forgiving
of those who turn to Him. Faced with the evidence of His
overpowering might, and of His power to remove His protection from
the violence of nature, our hearts tremble. And in this there lies
our hope. Allah himself says, in a Hadith Qudsi:
‘Son of Adam! So long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall
forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. Son of
Adam! were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you
then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. Son of Adam!
Were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and
were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring
you forgiveness like unto it.’ [Tirmidhi]
The divine name al-Hafiz, the Protector, is the one we seek refuge
in against the name al-Muntaqim, the Avenger. This is the meaning of
the Prophetic du‘a - A‘udhu bika mink: ‘I seek Your protection from
You.’
A man once came to Ibn Mas‘ud, radiya’Llahu anh, and asked him: I
have repeatedly committed a major sin - can there be any repentance
for me? Ibn Mas‘ud turned away, and the man saw that his eyes had
filled with tears. He said: ‘Paradise has eight gates, and each one
of them is sometimes open and sometimes shut. With the exception of
the Gate of Repentance, which is held open eternally by an angel who
never leaves that place. So do not despair!’
One of the early Muslims used to say that ‘Repentance is like
becoming a Muslim again.’
We need to find shelter in the Divine protection. And the road back
to that place is called tawba. For the surviving people of Turkey,
and for the world. We need to repent of our frenzied enthusiasm for
the mechanical pleasures of today’s world. Watching the disgusting
exhibitions of human egos on television while our neighbours are
lonely is not the way of Muslims. A hadith tells us that the Muslim
is not he who sleeps well-fed while his neighbour is hungry.
Life today, in places like secular Turkey no less than here, has
become a kind of amble from one pleasure to the next. One collects
pleasurable experiences, and then muses over them in retirement. And
life is nothing else. This state of ghafla, of forgetfulness, is the
source of every sin. And the first step in overcoming it has to be
muhasaba.
Muhasaba is a term in the Sunna: ‘Call yourselves to account before
you yourselves are called to account.’ And the ulema say that the
first step in tawba is muhasaba. We need, as individuals and as
societies, to stop gobbling for a moment, and to think about how we
have recently spent our time. At the end of each day, to take a
minute looking back, to see what we would rather forget. And when we
see those things, the desire for tawba begins.
We ask Allah subhanahu ta‘ala to grant us the gift of tawba, for us
here, and for all Muslims.
May He forgive us our weaknesses and our secret faults, and our
laziness in serving Him.
May He grant us love and brotherhood for one another, and give us
the blessing of common action against what threatens us all.
May He empty our hearts of suspicion and pride, and of the love of
dispute, and unite us in the service of Islam and the Muslims.
Abdal-Hakim Murad (August 1999)
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