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Introduction
- Dr Saeed Shehabi:
I am not sure if we have a record attendance today because
people love spiritualism or the HSBC and banking. Our aim
tonight is to try and find a common cause between the two:
spirituality and banking, materialism and spiritualism.
First of all
I would like to thank the HSBC which is sponsoring tonight’s
session and after the first speech they are going to provide
us with a glance of what they do in their amanah services.
These are Islamic banking services adopted by the HSBC in
recent years.
I was not
expecting so many people. This shows that people are really
looking for spirituality at this time. I thought that
people are more materialistic. I also want to welcome Dr Ali
Alawi, a former Minister of Finance in Iraq, who spoke on
this platform two and a half years ago.
Sheikh
Fadhlalla Haeri:
I would like to thank Saeed Shehabi and all of you who have
come to make this gathering possible. I thank Allah for
putting our hearts in knowledge and light and to discover
the purpose that life has and the position of human beings
in this journey.
I have five
points which I would like to share with you:
·
The core essence of the din of Islam, the path of Islam;
·
The history of religions and how sometimes the original path
meets the peoples practice and sometimes it does not. In the
case of Islam the divergence of Muslims from the din. Simply
being a Muslim does not mean that the person is living fully
his din and has been awakened and enlightened by it;
·
The present situation essentially in the, developed Western
world and the urgency in the Western world towards human
potential and the discovery of excellence in perfection in
whatever a person does;
·
The overall global situation. I am sharing with you now why
I believe spirituality is prevailing again because of
secularism. We are heading towards an era of spiritualising
our secularised world.
So to begin
the din of Islam is based on the notion of the inner
feeling of all human beings of oneness – that there is one
creator. It is tawhid. It is based on the fact that we are
all caught in this world by these four corner stones which
are described as being the qualities of Allah and his
creation command.
They are the
first, the last the evident and the hidden. The heavens are
hidden the earth is evident. My inner most situation within
by own body is hidden but my senses and my ability to hear
is evident.
So whatever
you and I perceive, conceive and feel is within this
dichotomy of first, last, evident or unseen. This brings us
to the key issue in this life. All general experience is one
of two: duality – man, woman, up down, night day, good bad,
happy unhappy, living dead: and, and, and, what can this and
be unless it is one of two. Yet these two are connected
through the inception by the light of the one.
Our din has
got within it the perfect inner technology to unify and
bring into unison the two most important dualities: self and
soul, the ego, the so called I based on my biography
conditioned consciousness and that which is within the
heart: pure consciousness – real life. The Qur’an tells us
that when you question what is this ruh you can only say
it is from the command of my Lord.
So within
every human being there is an entity within the heart, the
soul. Others call it the higher essence or the secret or any
other such name implying that which you cannot define or
delineate. You can say something which he is doing now is
rude, or upsetting or okay and fine. The outer
qualification of a person or a persona or a personality can
be described, discussed and related to. But the ruh cannot.
The implication is that we, all of us, children of Adam have
within us the same intrinsic essence which reflects the
supreme essence, the eternal.
This whole
business occurred with Adam - in other words the four and a
half billion years since the creation of the earth
culminates some ten, twenty, fifty thousand years ago with
the rise of the consciousness discriminating between
specific things, worldly things and the divine – the
combination of the two. And this is what distinguishes human
beings from all other creations and animals.
And this
unison, the co-relation between the so-called being -
sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy, sometimes angry,
sometimes at peace sometimes expecting – it is so
transitory, referring this to the higher in me. Things that
are the foundation of morality. So human being are
distinguished from animals by having this thing called
morality or ethics or ethical responsibility because of this
high consciousness, pure consciousness, divine
consciousness within the heart and personal, conditioned
consciousness. The so-called me which is always changing. So
there is something in me which always changes for the
better, moving towards unison towards that which is like a
light in the heart representing the ever perfect creator.
So it is
again to bring about tawhid. The story begins when Allah
created Adam and said I did not create any of these entities
except to worship. Who are these entities? They are
minerals, plants all the animals to human beings. There is
a highly structured programme or domain.
The human
beings situation can move beyond that.. It can rebel. It can
be worse than animals. It can be satanic. So the beginning
of it all lies in the consciousness of realising that there
is an all encompassing reality.
My
interpretation of the that tree is the tree of duality:
good and bad. The jenah has only perfection in it. That is
ferdos, not the jenah of the salat. If it is an aspect of
this earth it must also be part of jennah.
All of us,
everyone of us wants to have a garden. Everyone wants to be
a gardener to groom our nafs and to curb our lower
tendencies. That is a more difficult issue. Allah reminds us
that only if your nafs have been subdued, your lower self
has been subdued, then it can enter jennah. You can have
access to jenah now but you we more used to creating havoc
and chaos because we do not have total disappearance for the
world of duality into the every present jenah within the
heart.
This is the
amazing revealed information: that there is one who created
you and you are there to make sense out of it. And this
courtesy and this information must now end up being a
transformation. So if I am not transformed by it I remain
just declaring aspects of being and if you like becoming
professional and the din becomes a way of earning a living
without having a real transformation.
And that is
what most religions suffer from, especially the Abrahamic
traditions which was formed 1850 years before the before
that advent of Christ with Abraham who grew up near the city
of Ur and migrated to what is now Turkey and towards what is
now Palestine or Israel and then down to Egypt and back
again to the sacred areas in Palestine near Jerusalem.
He is the
father of us all in that context. The Qur’an declares that
Ibrahim was in submission to this truth. The truth is that
we want comfort, we want ease, we want well being, heath,
and a good mind and a purified heart so that transformation
eventually occurs. Access to the ruh can only occur if the
heart pure. Otherwise it is murkier and there are ayas in
the Qur’an which describe seven or eight sickness of the
heart.
So we need
to ensure that the heart is pure: No anger, no
expectations. We also have our rituals, tawaf and the
sacrifice at the end of haf. This is the Prophet’s
sacrifice, or willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismael.
Some traditions say Ishak. It does not matter as long as
this great being who had given up everything for hak had
something in his heart about his son, he was over 100 years
old and he had to clear it out. His willingness to
sacrifice his son brought this manifestation of the ram and
he was inspired to sacrifice the ram instead.
This is
where we come on the path of accepting things as they are.
Reading things as they are in the right context. More than
anything else we want to clear our head, taking counsel,
referring to others, taking the best advice. Ultimately
you and yourself and between you and your creator to make
sure the heart is pure.
So this is
in fact our din of Islam.. It is declared that you have to
be concentrated. Prophet Muhammed, when he was in Mecca
never said he had brought a new religion. He declared
repeatedly that he was here to complete and that you must
put Allah in the centre of everything you do because he is
the cause of it all. He is the one who has given you life,
he is the one who has created the pattern of cause and
effect. The more you refer to the creator the more you
likely you are to be steady and centred within yourself.
Then you can sail through life and the journey with all its
ups and downs with a reasonable balance and equanimity.
As you know
the Ibrahamic prophets were numerous, maybe in the thousands
and they all had come to re-correct an imbalance or re-emphasise
an issue. They were using the language of the day which also
comprised a culture. In order to let everybody take that
responsibility to themselves, in order for everyone to
realise that if you make goodness for yourself, save
yourself from your lower self. This was the message
throughout the numerous currencies of prophecies. And the
Qur’an tells us they are all the same in the sense that
they are declaring the same thing, they are singing the same
song but in a manner that is more appropriate for the time
and they age from which they come.
So all these
are paths of salvation. There is also a saying that there
are as many paths to Allah as there are human beings,
implying that the outer biographies, the outer physiology,
your genetic inheritance is different from everyone else’s.
But our spiritual inheritance is the same. We want the same
certainty, security, faith that will lead us towards hope
and well being and inner contentment which is the door to
happiness. No one can be happy unless they maintain
contentment at heart.
I think
contentment is not possible to be maintained for any durable
time. Equally we have to struggle, each one of us as we do,
to maintain outer justice, goodness, compassion, generosity
etc
In the world
as it is you see chaos in the global sense. Earlier on this
chaos was on a smaller scale. Now we have globalisation. It
may have certain advantages, the internet, us discovering a
lot of aspects of news and technology. But it also has the
effect of realising how much injustice there is and that
people cannot do much about it because of the political
machinations and the global aspects of monopolies,
corporations and global finance. They have their own
machinations.
We have
often found ourselves at a cross roads. Is there anything we
can do? What should we do as human beings who believe that
this life is a preparation for the next life? How could we
be effective in doing our bit of consciousness? Of jihad.
And all of us are constantly confronted with an issue about
what we can do in order to at least air our perception of
this total abusiveness of this world situation, especially
if we believe, ourselves as Muslims, that real life comes
after departure from this physicality. And therefore we need
to prepare for it.
And when you
see the total lopsidedness of the world with cultures being
totally materialistic and abusive we need to counsel each
other and put things in perspective rather than lash out
emotionally or individually and therefore also end up in
the bad place.
So this
brings me to the issue that most of the religions,
regardless of the spiritual path, always start with unity
between the outer and inner and often end up with a
structure or traditions that are sanctified with inner
light or give life that comes with light.
That is why
often pseudo religious people are very grim. That is why
most young people don’t like it. And quite rightly. If you
discover the omnipresent, glorious creator who is always
guiding us about what to do and what not to do, why can’t
you liven up and share it? Why are you unhappy? Why is
everything miserable? It shows he who has not got that
higher divine inner light and outer struggle, seriousness
and responsibility is out of balance.
What happens
now is our world instead of being out centric it is
bicentric, if you look at Europe after an oppressive, if
you like specialised period of Christianity which was
created in order to reinforce the Roman Empire by
Constantine in the 1330’s. To consolidate this empire he
created a very refined aspect of the Abrahamic tradition.
Soon after that it became very oppressive. With the
inquisitions and divisions in the church there were about
500 years of conflict.
People were
fed up and we saw the beginning of the renaissance and the
reformation which led to the industrial revolution, the
scientific revolution, the technological revolution. Now we
have IT and a real change in every aspect of our lives. For
two hundred years fiefdoms were based on land ownership. Now
there are IT fiefdoms and it is mostly young people who seem
to be able to deal with this very well.
So now we
have come to a situation where our world, this global scene
has in a way shrunk distance, through communication,
satellite, through whatever you find that the distances of
the world are disappearing.
I as a
student of basic science know that time and space cannot be
separated and that whatever you experience within time and
space gives actually a bent, spherical aspect which brings
about the experience as the force of gravity. Space is the
end of that apparent thing called time which mean the demise
of absence and heralds the ever-presence.
That is why
I say spirituality will be the next theme. Materialism is
now taken to its hilt. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the
world is not in the queue for the green card or the British
passport. They are. The first thing we need to do is to keep
the body healthy, intact, in line. Then we go higher and
higher towards the hierarchy towards equanimity, towards
the realisation of the ever-present creator.
So there is
a hierarchy and people need to have some shelter, some food,
some clothing. When half the world does not have potable
water how can there be justice. Every year you find there is
more poverty in the world than the year before. And there is
also more concentrated wealth in the hands of fewer and
fewer than the year before.
That is why
the world is suffering from a totally unjust, global
situation and we are the inevitable recipients of this
imbalance. The demise of distance is the beginning which is
giving us the preview to the diving presence. That is why
this thing within us which constantly leads us to want to
know, who I am, where am I going, what is the meaning of
life, what comes later, who can save me, how can anybody
help me, what is the role of religions, how can I be
illumined by religion.
This is
coming more and more into the forefront. That is why we are
Muslims, if we truly believe our din, not just talk about
it. Instead of being in the head or in the books it should
be in our hearts, for us to be the first recipients of these
high ideals of nourishment. Then other things can happen.
In South
Africa one of the biggest obstacles to propagating the din
of Islam was that most of the people regarded it as being an
Indian din. The Indians in South Africa are the Muslims and
they regarded it as their special exclusive. That is why we
need to distinguish the Muslim situation from Islam. If
you look at the history of our 1400 years we find that after
the first years of unity and tawhid when people had
internalised the inner and outer light they were not
cowardice, they were not suicidal, they had no fear of
death. They had no fear of shadows in this life and they saw
the light of the divine within them. They were awakened.
That is why there are so many ayas which cannot be explained
unless we accept that there is another awakening. This life
of ours is geological, biological but there is another wave
that comes if you access the light in your heart after you
have groomed the nafs.
So after I
come to the unification movement throughout the world. You
come to the few percentage of the top people in the Western
world in the past 40 or 50 years. So much of this pursuit
of excellence has been experienced at every level of
development including science and physics (especially
quantum physics) and the inner functioning of physicality.
In the 50s it was mostly to do with the discovery of the
atom. But some amazing things have happened during the last
50 years. We have come to an age of the seen and the unseen
meeting. That is why I think mass spirituality will come
from sciences. It will not come from theological schools.
So the
cultural position we are in throughout the world is that we
all feel there is a desperate need, if you are satisfied
with basic requirements, the need is to discover the point
it is all about. It is about timelessness and spacelesnes.
It goes beyond the limitation of change. There is one
package in Islam our salat. If we perform our sira fully, it
is higher than any practice of meditation. It takes us to
another zone beyond space and time. Having that instant
travel and back. Distances are no distances, time is no
time, beyond the limitation of physicality.
It does not
deny our physicality. Allah tells us that if we are blind in
this world we will be more blind in the next. So you can’t
say never mind this world. But equally do not forget that
the real purpose of this world is to discover your eternal
side. So the object is to be least nafsi, least selfish, by
reducing my desire to own things to posses and grooming that
into modesty. It is not easy for everyone. There is a lot of
temptation and destraction. As we grow older we can say
less food.
The other
one is repulsion, anger. When anger becomes courage it
brings about so many virtues. And once knowledge comes into
this modified self is brings wisdom. Then you can talk
about justice. Doing the right thing, at the right time in
the right place without any concern about the consequences.
Just being just. Doing the right thing in the right way at
the right time. The perfect Prophetic profile. That is why
we love the Prophet. That is why we love the imams and the
enlightened beings. Because they were safe from themselves
and creation was safe from them and their relationship was
constantly referring to the ultimate inna ready to leave
this world.
If you are
ready to leave this world, you are qualified to deal with it
as appropriately as you can.
So now we
now come to the global scene. Allah declares to us that the
whole world, the whole people. Every human being has the
light in the heart and a different, every-changing
personality. If that personality does not get into unison,
with reference to its root which is its soul or spirit then
we are disjoined. Allah reminds us: “What is in your heart,
what is your priority?”
So I am here
this evening to share with you my utter optimism based on
what I tried to take you through in a very fast and speedy
panoramic way to declare to you that these days, these
decades are going to be those of spiritualising secularism.
The Western advance or decadence, which ever way you would
like to look at the balance sheet in the last 200 years has
been a world of meritocracy, what can you do and materialism
and it needs some sort of an order, some sort of an
expectation, some sort of a continuation.
So this
situation is secular. You can be a Catholic, you can be a
Christian you can be anybody, provided you can perform you
can get a job. Where in the Middle East or other parts of
the world is that possible? The first thing they ask is
which tribe are you from? And you fall into these sieves and
you don’t know where you end up. And that is why we see
greater injustice.
Part of that
is because we do not have a system of evaluating leaders.
So we end up having for the sake of this so-called idea
among the ummah not to have dispersion or divergence the
tendency to keep quiet and so we often end up having the
worst of rulers. And many a time you find in our history
that there was an alliance between these leaders and the
clergymen – whether Sunnis or Shias. They were often paid
by the rulers.
So we are
stuck to a great extent and here we have this wonderful
package of how you deal with yourself, with your brother,
with your sister, with the world at large, with the creator.
You are in this world but not of this world. That is why
Islam is the key. There will be a rise of this secular
spirituality in the West than in the Middle East which is
very much under government control and fear in order for
them to use the din to enhance their dunia. This is a human
tendency.
I was
talking to a friend of mine in Iraq who is really baffled
and he said you may have helped to take Saddam out of his
palace but are you able to take Saddam out of the hearts of
the people? Until you realise that everyone has the light of
the great magnificent ruler in his heart you become ashamed
and become accountable. And you say Allahu akbar: Allah is
greater than I can imagine, Allah is greater than I can
phathom and then you are humble.
So if
Christians, Jews Muslims truly live their path and are
enlightened by their path then we have contributed first to
ourselves and then to the global rise based on this secular
performance. It has to move to the other end, it can’t go
anywhere else. In the West there is more thirst for
spirituality than in the East. In the East we are more
confused. We think we have it and we lose both this world
and the next. And in the West people who have got it all
are still unhappy.
Be aware.
You put yourself in the grave every night and then you wake
up and say Illuamdu Allah, what an amazing day even if the
traffic jams are increasing. And then you see the positive
side.
So again I
thank you for coming, thank you for your time, thank you for
allowing me to share with you my total optimism for which
there is very strong evidence and I hope we can share some
aspects so all of us can benefit and move higher while we
are dealing with Iraq.
Discussion
Q:
I saw a documentary on Channel Five which stated that the
heart responds to events before the brain. Does the heart
give the order to the brain? The Qur’an talks about a pure
heart when making decisions. It doesn’t say you have a pure
brain! What is your advice for moving from thinking about
everything in materialistic terms to moving towards the
light.
A;
This is a very crucial question. It sums up everything. The
cosmology we have from our tradition in the Qur’an and from
the Prophetic way and from the great ones is that we as
human beings are a composition of this twoness: one is my
personal consciousness and the other is supreme or pure or
God consciousness. God consciousness is my ruh and the ruh
is what lives in this thing called the heart. It is the
pumping heart. It is somewhere there. So the source of my
life, the umbilical cord to life is from that. And through
that the baby begins to develop the mind, the brain and the
memory and the conditioned consciousness of the baby and
the personality later on. So the issue is that I as a human
being with an identity card with the ability to speak, to
sit, to move to think to have memory good or bad be
concerned about the future, all of this has come about
because of that ruh which is my heart. So if you like the
heart is the essence, the source of that energy.
As
for thinking there are two aspects: one is mental thinking
and the others refers to the rational self. It is like
spiritual intelligence. The more I refer to the absolute the
more the relative becomes easy. Your work, my work, his
work, the bus has gone, who is there – this is all relative
. It is all changing. If I refer to an absolute than I am
likely to get the relative in its context. The child as he
or she grows, the mother is very much concerned that the
child is aware of who is around. She doesn’t mind the child
messing up eating when it is alone but not when people are
present. To be aware, take reference.
So the heart comes before thinking before anything
manifest. It is to do with the rational self. Where is
Allah? I can refer to my heart if it is a heart if it has
been purified. I am programmed to want survival and I am
also programmed to want to be strong. And then I am
programmed to love all the divine attributes. Who doesn’t
want wealth, power to be a healer. Everyone is a bit of
healer advising if someone comes and says I have a stomach
upset. Children love to play doctors. It is higher up, it
belongs to Allah, not to the nafs. So this shadow of I
wants to sit on the throne. This is the issue.
Q:
You talked about time and space which are attributes of
this life. But when we go to the other life which we believe
is eternal, no confines, no restrictions are we talking
about the absence of time and space completely.
A:
In our tradition there is time and space after death. Until
youm al kiyama. Then there is no time and space, absolute.
Because the Qur’an tells us that a day with Allah is like
10,000 years. In death I can’t act anymore. But my ruh
continues. That is why I said we have the model, but we are
not internalising the model.
The main question you asked is how can I have that higher
reference while I am fully absorbed. I think this is
personal. Especially a man of your calibre and education. We
need to find our own pharmacopia. You can’t be given a
specific medicine. I used to find that a bit of a break from
the confinement like salat or anything that enables you to
switch off totally and allow the vastness of the outer world
to re-energise you totally. So you have to find whatever is
appropriate for you. I suggest every hour you take five
minutes to do a special dikr or anything that gives you a
diversion from the mind and its gymnastics into the
stillness of the inner ruh. You need a little help and
guidance until you get it and once you get it you can do it.
I can’t give you an absolute specific remedy but they are
available.
Q:
How much erfan is the way to deep knowledge?
A:
How can I worship an entity unless I know the aspects of it,
unless I love it? Unless I adore it. Again I go into this
duality of my nafs and the thing I have grown up with, my
biography and my ruh. I love all the divine attributes. At
all times we are attracted to this panorama of these amazing
qualities of Allah. Some of them I cannot get near. I can’t
participate in these higher qualities and that is how I get
drawn into internalising my din. All of it is based on
erfan, all of it is life. The young people do not have the
inner meaning of worship. What is the inner meaning of wodu.
To disconnect from the outer world Bismallah is the most
difficult thing – it is the most difficult passport to get.
You think an American is difficult. So you it is all about
erfan. Allah is ever forgiving, ever present. So we have to
be honest.
Q:
So many people call for jihad. And the Qur’an says that
in a certain environment it is alright to respond in a
physical way? When and how should we respond to what is
around us?
A:
Again a very crucial and timely question. We are not living
in an ideal environment to be able to really follow the
original Prophetic injunction of jihad. There are other
conditions in terms of basic theology which need to be
present if we are to follow the overall package. The world
‘jihad’ is from the root word of ‘jed’, energy. How can you
and I exist without expanding energy? And if that energy is
always directed towards the higher or the attainment of the
balance with the higher then at least you don’t have to
feel that guilty.
Here is an aspect of jihad. We have struggled to get here
despite all the odds and the difficulties. Time constraint
in our to have some idea about the map of existence. We can
use it to succeed either outwardly or inwardly. I am not
avoiding the issue of how much can we be in the
battlefield. If I was in south Lebanon and maybe a bit
younger or more energetic than I am today I would have
certainly gone to the front. But I am that there. And I
think I would of caused so much consumption of food and
water and whatever and I would be so exhausted that I would
be pretty useless. So you have to be responsible to yourself
about what you are doing because the Prophet’s teaching is
vast on this issue. Do it with your limbs, do it with your
tongue in any way you can if see injustice. You cannot just
sit back and ignore it because it will affect you.
Blood pressure is nothing more than someone who has
expectations and cannot raise their thoughts. You have to
respond. That is one of the reasons I do not watch
television. I will either break it or break myself. So you
have to question your ability and the context of the time.
Iraq was the same. Many of my friend told me to go back to
Iraq and my feeling was that I can’t be consuming what
little there is left of water and electricity: my input
would be inappropriate. They need more people on the ground
to rebuild the basic structure. I am offering an experience
of the art of disappearance. But the appearance is not
taking place so how can disappearance take place. So you
have to be honest with yourself . Guilt is the distance
between what you did at the moment and what you could have
done had your referred to the higher entity.
Q:
We see what is happening when spirituality is taken out
of religion. It seems that the spiritual people are
abandoning their outlook. We need the constraints of time
and space.
A:
You are right. We must be in the middle. You cannot deny the
outer responsibility. But equally you will not be qualified
for the outer unless you have the constant reference to the
inner. If you deny one you will be denied the other. So
it is the constancy of being in the middle. Ready to stay,
ready to go. Then we are not following a pre-conceived
prejudice. We are suffering from prejudice. We need justice
not prejudice.
Q:
We Muslims are in trouble throughout the world and we
have caused more bloodshed among ourselves than from
outside. Can you tell us how to overcome this?
A:
Again it is a very crucial issue. And again if we must go to
the origin. Were there Sunnis and Shias in Mecca during the
time of the Prophet. There were no Sunnis or Shias in the
first twenty or thirty years. So these things are natural.
As time progresses divisions are natural, dispersions are
natural and the yearning for unity that you have described
is also natural. If you don’t go back to the source of
spirituality we will find that these differences are a cause
for fighting.
I
am from South Africa and there is one of my best friends
from South Africa, Haroun, sitting there. Do we have any
problem of Sunnis and Shias. He is a Hanafi, I am a Jafferi.
We are concerned about the highest. And I enjoy the slight
differences. So we have to rise to the higher and then we
find the lower disappears. But if as human being we are
created to constantly think if the icentricity, my past and
the way of things as I was used to I will also see these
differences as threatening. We have not gone to the
highest.
Q:
Can
you elaborate on the notion of oneness?
A:
From time immemorial many parts of the world, many parts of
human civilisation people began to have the notion of
oneness and that is where supreme consciousness began to
impinge of human consciousness. So you will find it even
among people who you did not consider historically as
civilised. There were a lot of nomadic people in the Far
East, the Middle East on the subcontinent and in Africa who
were aware and they depicted it in cave drawings and in
other traditions. So this notion of the one from which
everything has emanated goes back to the time of Adam.
As
for wahda al wajud I don’t think it was very well
understood. It is the unity of the source of everything in
existence rather than everything is the same. The source is
one. The from the supreme essence you have infinite
varieties. The ant has soul, it is different from that of a
tiger and my soul. My soul contains in a pattern , in a
programmed subliminal software, all the other souls. That
is why I can understand the whale and how it behaves.
Everything that is sentient has a soul and all of it has
the presence of the universal supreme soul or Godhead, or
any other name you would like to give it.
The difference between Hinduism or Buddhism and the Islamic
tradition is the grooming of the self. The main aspects of
our practices are clear whether it is salat or zakat, or
khums, you have to do it in order to crush the ego and for
you to be free from the presumption and assumption that you
are this great guy or this great woman.
Q:
The Qur’an says that we should not be making excuses for
not going into battle and so on. A small army with faith
can defeat a Golaith. You should not ask can you do it or
can you not do it because if you have the faith you will do
it. Regarding the Sunni Shia conflict the Qur’an says we
have to be obedient to Allah and Allah says to not divide
amongst yourselves. So if we just follow that simple thing
it is as simple as that. And also regarding jihad the
Prophet once said take care of your parents.
A:
He gave guidance for a particular situation. You have to
judge it for yourself and not use your parents as an excuse
to escape. The nafs wants to serve itself so it will always
find an excuse.
As
for the presence of angels sometimes you feel another power,
you feel you are not alone. There is some angelogy going on.
In the last three or four years no less than 300 or 400
books have been published on the presence of angels. How do
you use the angels. The key issue is that you must be
neutral and keep calm and these energies come. You have to
be in a certain frame of mind. The energy has to be
prevailing or it doesn’t.
Q:
You are a man of peace who has built bridges between various
religions and cultures. If you were in Iraq what would you
suggest ?
A:
I would send you a postcard and since I do not intend to be
there you will only receive a post card from South Africa.
In truth the moment itself, the presence itself, the
environment itself will enable everyone to lose our head and
our heart together. So I can’t, sitting in the comfort of
this place, say what would I do there. I really don’t know.
If I well and I am up to it I may be right in the front. Or
I may be helping others or I may be teaching or I may be
carrying water for a woman across the road who is older than
I. I really don’t know but I have to be accountable to
myself because I have to live with myself. I do not want to
feel guilty and bad and awful and upset with myself. I first
have to save myself from myself in order to have presence.
So I really don’t know what I would do. Context, context,
context. So if we take the teaching of Islam out of its
context than again we are using religious teachings in order
to enhance the nafs. So context is essential. You have to be
honest. I can’t tell I have to be in unity.
*Fadhlalla
Haeri is a philosopher/writer who combines knowledge and
experience of the spiritual teachings of the East with a
keen understanding of the West. He was raised in a family of
several generations of Islamic spiritual leaders in the Holy
City of Karbala. Educated in Europe and America, Shaykh
Fadhlalla was active in the oil industry and international
business, which he abandoned in pursuit of spiritual
knowledge. His belief in the universality of the true
Islamic heritage enables him to understand and relate to the
spiritual quest wherever it may arise, irrespective of
culture or ethnicity. One of his main aims is to make
accessible to younger generations the Prophetic way of life,
through understanding the foundation of the Divinely
revealed message and its omnipresent Creator.
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