The Qur'an and I. The Qur'an and Now.

Recently some friends and I started up another Qur’an study circle for women in South Africa. Some thoughts arising…

The Qur’an and I. We go way back. But not to childhood.

Growing up all I knew of the Qur’an was that I had a precious page of it folded up in a Persian enameled book-shaped locket, and that my grandmother used to sit aside quietly and read it a lot. It was only in my late teens when my father suddenly (or so it seemed to me) started to engage with it that I really became aware of it. With the family then transplanted from Knightsbridge to Texas, he was spending hours reading it, researching it and sharing his discoveries with a reverential audience of American and British converts to Islam. I did not know it then but this period of his activity as a teacher was to form the core foundation of his life’s work, and imbued in me a sense of the living Qur’an.

This living Qur’an was – is – so much more than a mere book.  For me it has taken on the role of a powerful link, a reference point to wholesome guidance, spiritual insight, requiting moments of anguish and despair, and also on occasion functioning as an oracle. Through it one hears the voice of Allah, mediated through time and history and the Prophet’s presence (S), but the voice of divinity nonetheless. And it pleases my musical soul to hear in its cadences and rhythms that follow their own internal coherence, at times formal, at other times abstract, the voice of truths beyond time, yet fully within the alif, ba’, ta’ (abc) of temporal language.

It was those handful of years when my father gave a profusion of talks on selected Suras of the Qur’an which drilled into me certain verses til they became the tent pegs of my little tent in the desert of my wanderings.

Hearing specific verses come up repeatedly, as my father explained the Qur’an by referring to other parts of the Qur’an, fused them into my neural pathways. These were the truth posts my pinball self pinged against in the gameplay of life. And when challenges presented themselves – as they still do – some verses just materialize to dissipate looming despair, encourage me, reassure me, or hold up a mirror of reckoning. If my feelings ever shroud those reverberations in my soul, grabbing the Qur’an and opening it at any random point sucks me into that knowingness again. That knowingness is the  certainty that Allah is above all in charge of everything, that everything seen and unseen remain in perfect balance, that His mercy overcomes all things, that there is a reason for everything, that the point of it all is not meaningless suffering but a movement towards light from darkness.

I never went to Islamic Sunday school. I never attended madrasa. I was never schooled in Islamic catechism in any other way other than through the living example of my father and family and the surrounding community of sincere western Muslims.  These living books were naturally supplemented by printed versions. As I learnt my Deen from my late teens through to my early twenties, I found I had to avoid looking towards the contemporary Middle East for models and paradigms of ideal Muslim living, for whatever I saw there confused me and left me perplexed and angry. What my limited vision and insight saw was so inconsonant with what I knew to be our beautiful Deen. And so I clung to the horizons right before me.

Thus my approach to the Qur’an was shaped by the principle that the Qur’an must speak to me in the here and now. In whatever circumstance I may find myself the Qur’an must be relevant.

Perhaps the most visceral experience of the presence of the Qur’an in my life was when as a young woman I found out I had breast cancer. During that trial it felt like huge enormous parts of me – of who I thought I was – were falling away, crumbling like an ancient temple in the face of a pounding flood. Once the water had swept past, all that remained were pillars pointing high up into the sky. And each of these pillars was made of a verse, the ones etched most deeply into my conscious awareness. These ayat pulsated with life and light and remained the beacons that enabled me, whatever was left of me, to weather the chemical storm and rearrangement of self-perception.

The Qur’an and Now

Over the years I have spent many hours in the company of Muslim women hungry for more knowledge of the Qur’an, studying and discussing its verses and themes. As the pendulum of history has slowly started to swing in the direction of enfranchising women,  women have started to engage with the Qur’an on our own terms.  We have been striving to develop a relationship with the Qur’an that goes far beyond patriarchal claims to knowledge or superiority and to the business of beingness. The mystery of what it means to be human, to be a servant of God – that is what engages us. I have gained so much delight from sharing the approach I have learnt with others: each session has felt like getting into a spaceship and  shooting for the stars.

The understandable awe and reverence felt for the Qur’an among Muslims as the Book of God has often acted as a barrier to engaging with it and gaining meaning from it. Among non-Arab speakers, access to Qur’an can seem impenetrable, for Arabic is a complex language. For native Arabic speakers, it should not be assumed that Qur’anic Arabic is automatically intelligible, for modern parlance has dragged certain words away from their original contexts and lent them different shades of meaning. So for them the challenge is not to read with blind assumptions. It has become clear to me that Arabic had been invented for the Qur’an – the Qur’an itself intimates as much. The intricate root and branch system of Arabic reveals forests of meaning that bring colour and light and bedazzlement to the body of this revelation.  These forests confound linear literary models, plunging us into a wonder-world  of inter-connectedness, allowing us to taste Tawhid, the underlying unity behind variegated life experience.

Never has the Qur’an been more accessible, and never has mankind been in more dire need of it. Yet at the same time an opposite truth also presents: greater accessibility means more opportunities for misinterpretation. The challenge in how to negotiate the relationship between reason and revelation has never been as tough as it is for Muslims today.  For this task we need women’s voices to integrate with men’s, and discourses that take us out of halls of self-righteous judgment into fields of ethics and morals,  out of polarizing ‘Othering’ and into oneness, away from shadowplay into the zenith sunlight of the love of God.

Ramadan Closing In

Ramadan is closing in. This year this month has sped by. For the first time in years I've been away from home base, though in homes away from home - how blessed am I? The pekoras and samosas have followed me, however, as I've tried to ensure my son gets his daily quotas of desi iftar fare. The open plan layout of the house we are in reeks of fried food for hours afterwards, uncorrected even by wafts of cloying incense. After years of resistance to the semiotic symbolism of food, I have yielded to the perceived reality that food frames culture (or culture frames food?) and that culinary culture is one hugely influential anchorage of religion. If savoury spicy treats help keep my boy connected to his Deen, then so be it!

Shorter days and clement weather of a southern hemisphere's winter have reduced Ramadan wipeouts. I felt for my UK friends - heatwaves and long 18 hour days. May the reward be commensurate with the difficulty! No Ramadan rage threatened here. The dry, high atmosphere introduced me to a new form of 'Ramadan brain': the suction cup effect where your grey matter feels like its dessicating and sticking to your skull interior.

That most delicious gift of Ramadan, the fleecy blanket of inner silence, has also been gratefully received. At times the white noise percolates and penetrates the precariously porous and amorphous presence of consciousness - and peppers my vocabulary with purple passages (so who cares?) - but the sheer weight of the fast makes it easy to relocate the mute button on the inner monologue function. Can it really be so simple a matter of blood sugar? That its dilution beings inner peace? There's a hadith that alludes to this (sic., 'Shaytan flows through the sons of Adam as blood flows through his veins")... Or is it the special grace that comes from the sacralized intention of the fast ('Fasting is for Me and I am its reward'  - hadith qudsi)? After all, of all the obligatory ritual obligations due from a Muslim, fasting is the most invisible. Allah alone knows whether you are fulfilling its tenets or not.

The remembrance of God heightens, as with each breath conscious awareness of one's inner state increases. In Ramadan it becomes easier to give up and give in as one notices the degree of dependency one has on means - food, water, indulging desires, loose talk. Its quite humbling to see what a hold habits have on us. One evening, during some frisky dinner time banter, I got my hands slapped for wittering on in what really amounted to gossip, the type of gossip where irrelevant news about someone amounts to frivolous talk, even though no malice had been intended. What had been the purpose of my verbal drivel? Was I conscious of every word? No. Blood sugar had begun to rise once again and those satanic impulses started slithering around in me too. Shudder!

Ramadan is commonly thought of by Muslims as the month par excellence to devote to the Qur'an. Our Noble Book gets a thorough dusting as tradition encourages us to read a juz' a day. For me, quality over quantity is my preference - I can bask for hours in commentary and etymology, entering into an imaginarium of endless and deepening delight. The beauty and majesty of the Word of God once again thrills me with its multi-dimensionality, speaking in time, beyond time, allegorically, emphatically. All signs point to the one underlying truth: la ilaha illa'llah - there is no god but Allah. And it is the fast that enables us see this Oneness better than at any other time of the year. Day after day the ego-self's hold is weakened as a new strength starts to beam through. The soul's light starts to illuminate our beingness, and states of grace descend, moments of deep tranquillity stretching in all directions through one's innermost.

The last ten nights - according to an Islamic tradition offering us freedom from the fires of hell - coincide with the Night of Determination, or Destiny, or Power, the Laylat ul-Qadr. We are protected from knowing exactly which night it might have been that the Qur'an in its entirety was revealed to our beloved prophet Muhammad (S), merely that it is one of the odd numbered. Because of various traditions, the Shi'as prefer one of the earlier odd nights, the Sunnis preferring one of the latter ones. Those who would hedge bets try to observe them all. Regardless, the importance of this night is indicated in the chapter in the Qur'an by the same name, in which it is declared that it is 'better than a a thousand months'. One night...better than a thousand months?! However unfathomable, who isn't going to want to try to witness this event? The moment in time it alludes to is a deep and unending mystery.

The traditions of night vigil practised by Muslims in different ways helps push us out of our comfort zone. Even if it is but a portion of the night, the baraka of Ramadan ensures a benefit is gained. In Karachi those fortunate to belong to distinct communities have ready made opportunities to gather and pray together, whether to read 10 raka'at, or 100, whether to recite 99 Names of God or the 1000 of the incrementally intoxicating beautiful litany of Jawshan al-Kabir.

Already stripped and polished by the fast, staying up in prayer and contemplation loosens the subtle rust on the heart's mirror. Our sense of time is ruptured, and small portals into timelessness start to shiver into the landscape of consciousness. Through fasting of the senses, we can taste the feast of what lies beyond the limitations of these senses, an infinite, expanding universe that encapsulates time and space, precedes it and follows it and rolls it all up in its Presence.

Happy New Year or Temporal Neophilia

A new year dawns. A new year of man's reckoning, as significant a milestone as we collectively wish it to be. Is it worth celebrating the new year? The local authorities where I live are clearly ambivalent about this, oscillating between acceptance (the port authorities hosted a massive fireworks display) and rejection (shutting down restaurants and blocking off roads).

Maybe the magic is the potential impregnated into the word 'new' and is nothing to do with the year at all? Maybe what attracts us is not the passage of time so much as the novelty we associate with its coming.
'New' signifies hope, fresh starts, better times, the chance to transform into a better version of ourselves.
Yet we can do that or choose to do that every day of the year because every day is new. For that matter, every moment is new, every second! Every moment is full of potential for revolution, for change, for becoming what we may be. The Qur'an tells us that every day He is in a state of Glory or upon a new affair - with the word for 'day' (yawm) meaning more than simply 24 hours but a unit of time.

As Muslims we are somewhat robbed of the idea of giddy and slightly crazed new year festivity which secular cultures bring to their ushering in of the solar Gregorian new year. The events of Karbala will forever cast an ignominious shadow over the beginning of the lunar Islamic calendar. This heinous and shameful episode in our history looms as a reminder that one can never forget the depths of treachery, disloyalty and lust for power to which human beings are susceptible. Instead our new year starts us off  introspectively, with deep reflection on what it means to be a Muslim, and with a sense of humility and awe at the sacrifice of Imam Hussain (as) and his extended family. And deep distaste for what so-called  Muslims do to Muslims.What can there be to celebrate when the beloved family of the Holy Prophet (S) was massacred and chopped down so eagerly? Even now every day we see Karbala revisited in what goes on between those who profess to follow the religion of peaceful submission.

Actually we can celebrate, just not wantonly. We can celebrate the tough choice the Imam made to stick to his beliefs - that rulership had to reflect noble, humble, selfless and god-conscious conduct, to stand up to forces that abused the power of the growing wave of Islam for self-interest and worldly gain. We can celebrate the fact that during this first month of the year, Muharram, in which the battle of Karbala took place, a line was forever drawn in the proverbial sands of time about the true intended nature of Islamic leadership. Needless to say, that model of Islamic leadership has yet to arise on any scale worth noting, though there have been plenty of pious, honourable and visionary Muslims who have led their communities and cities well. We can celebrate the triumph of truth over falsehood.

Having grown up in western oriented or Christian societies in which new year is celebrated, I cannot help but also be affected by a tremor of expectation at what the new year might bring. Even as I know it to be foolish and over-commercialized, the vestiges of my social conditioning still twitch my imagination on the occasion. Of course, the New Year hoohaa is the tail end of the Christmas drama, which in itself was invented as a convenient way of marrying pagan rites with Christian observance and then later Coca Cola got in on the picture.

Maybe we still resonate with the echoes of our pastoral and agri-rural past when we were all consciously locked into the cycles and seasons of sowing, sprouting, harvesting and storing. Modern day amenities like abundant food supplies, plumbing and central heating have inured us to the sheer life/death scenarios of survival, but deeply ingrained in us is the knowing that life is cyclical and somehow we are compelled to mark the beginnings and endings in significant ways so that we can share in a collective history of our community. After all, it is this shared sense of history that shapes us in our individuality as much as our DNA and upbringing.

But the love of the new - neophilia - is irresistible. Apparently our love of novelty is probably hardwired into our brains, according to a recent study; maybe because it  lights up the Ventral Striatum -  the pleasure processor. Or maybe it is because  dopamine is involved in deciding on new ventures. From what I've read, it seems the threat of the new is outweighed by the benefit of trying it out. Even as we seek to perpetuate the familiar for continuity and productivity, we crave the new to satisfy our interest and creativity and the love for being surprised. Its as if we need our apparatus of perception or the affective domain or our EQ to be refreshed and recalibrated.

Maybe the love of the new is the light of the soul pulsating beams into our consciousness, harkening us to a deeply buried secret inherent to the human condition, namely that life itself is a shimmering, glimmering, dazzling miracle. In Surat ul-Mulk in the Qur'an Allah tells us to  'return [your] vision twice again. [Your] vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued. Other translations render 'fatigued' as 'exhausted', and 'humbled' as 'dull, discomfited' or 'confused'. The implication being that you will feel overwhelmed with witnessing the perfection of creation.

And surely that is why we want the new year to be happy and good for ourselves and for others. Our soul is telling us, 'Look! Do you see any imperfection in it?' And that is the vision with which we are impelled to reconnect. There is always hope, so do not allow the murkiness of your vision to veil you from that potential of experiencing serendipity and a higher order of harmony within your beating breast.

So I pray that in this new year we turn away from man's mad machinations (the angels had a right to complain!) and look instead to be inspired by creation and nature, by its perfect order and symmetry, its astonishing cause and effect, its organically sublime 'pretzality' (my coinage!), its offerings and takings, its awesomeness and exquisiteness, its majesty and beauty.

In this way, I greet you all with a heartfelt prayer for a 'Happy New Year'!

Ramadan Redux V - Retreat

photocredit Ban Farell Ebrahim

I’ve just emerged, fresh and dewy from a 3 day i’tikaf with three of my companions on the path, Rezwaneh, Rubeena and Rosina. This retreat came as an unexpected windfall. Some of our group had sent a request to our Shaykh to ask whether he might consider placing some of them in khalwah on his next visit. His response was to request us to do i’tikaf first. Arrangements fell quickly into place and soon the four of us were lodged in our dedicated zawiyah. May Meher Apa’s niyyat in offering her home as a place to which we can attract angels and in which to hasten illumination be rewarded by the permanent presence of angels in her life and full illumination of her being!

Not being able to fulfill the technical requirement of an i’tikaf in a mosque, our apartment was nonetheless an ideal eyrie, breezily floating above Karachi, embraced by trembling trees, cawing crows, hooping koels and a purring of rickshaws and beeping cars. Here in this temporarily designated sacred space we were able to fulfill, if not the letter of the sunnatic law, at least the spirit and as close to the form as possible. The Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family, used to spend the last ten days of Ramadan in retreat at the mosque. It was such an integral part of his Sunnah, that one year when he did not manage to do it, he spent 20 days of the following Ramadan in i’tikaf instead. And if the ten days are not possible, then three are considered to be the minimum. Disconnecting ourselves from each of own ‘Domestos’ or work arenas presented challenges that vanished in the face of firm intention. Alhamdulillah!

Each of us followed our own rhythm – reading Qur’an, beseeching Allah, diving into meaningful books, invoking Allah by His Beautiful Names, sending peace and blessings upon the Beloved Prophet and his family, observing the night vigil, in particular the layali al-qadr (we had 2). We made some prayers together, each other's focused presence fuelling our own purpose. Such sweet secluded solace! Safe and freed from any worldly concerns. 

Just as the local community feeds those in i’tikaf in the mosques, members of our group sent generous feasts for iftar and dinner. Our embarrassment at their largesse was assuaged by the knowledge that others would partake their share, namely Meher’s trusty and loyal staff.

For me there was a distinct rhythm to this seclusion. For those of us who were fortunate enough to settle in the night before the first fajr, I feel we tasted something very complete, very satisfying. The initial sense of privilege and elation of being freed to do as much and whichever ‘ibadah as one wished carried into sustained periods of delight, yearning and profound tranquility. I spent much time praying for all my family and friends, begging Allah to send them the best of what would draw them closer and protect them by His mercy. Discharging that longing for them all, I was able to turn to the matter of disappearing from myself. Peak periods of invocation were in the midst of the night: distinct shifts in attention, from scanning the horizon to being enveloped… beyond words.

Time became a gift – not something to beat or race against. Whether reading or resting, supplicating or sleeping, time felt expanding not just linearly, but almost in all directions, as if being dismantled.

We turned away from creation and focused on our inner contemplation and intimate conversation with Allah. At times it was hard to know just with whom one was ‘conversing’. We turned in longing. Turning, turning, buoyed by bliss.

I was again awed by the word of God and felt honoured to have the Qur’an and to be able to read it. Each surah speaking in multidimensional tones, rich, complicated sounds from a DNA’d past, other-worldly rhyme and metre sending morse code to the heart. Can we truly be of that creation which was chosen to receive the full encodation of reality which the Qur’an  represents? Subhanallah – law anzalna hadha’l-qur’ana 'ala jabalin…[Q. 59:21]

Time 'stops' and yet I am aware of time. The muezzin calls and its time to offer formal prayers. The day peaks in heat, light changes, dusk falls and night draws a shroud. I am aswim in an ocean of sublime subhan.  I can feel every cell, every pore oozing with longing and sheer delight at the miracle of being.

And though our rooms are far larger than a Sufi’s cell, their simplicity invokes the noble austerity of the khalwah chamber. Here it is easy for senses to detach from the world and implode and ignite the innermost.

And when you do discover the glittering hyperspace of shimmering lights, or just catch glimpses of it, you realize it has always been there, waiting, twinkling, beckoning.

Glossary:

I’tikaf: retreat into a mosque, usually for the last 10 days of Ramadan.

Khalwah: solitary seclusion for the purpose of contemplating Allah alone.

Zawiyah: literally corner; equivalent to tekye (Turkish) or khanqah (Persian & Urdu), meaning Sufi lodge where teachings are given & circles of invocation held.

Niyyat: intention, firm resolve.
Sunnatic: of the Sunnah (see below). My coinage as far as I know.

Sunnah: custom, pattern; the Prophet’s (S) way.

Layali al-qadr: pl. of laylat ul-qadr, the Night of Determination. One of the last ten odd nights of Ramadan in which the Qur’an was revealed and on which events of the next year are determined.

Fajr: dawn prayer.
'Ibadah: Devotional worship.

Surah: chapter of the Qur’an.

Subhanallah: Glory be to Allah!

Subhan: Glory. Root word means to swim.

Ramadan Redux

Fasting and feasting - the ancient and natural rhythm of life. Constriction and expansion. Scarcity and plenty. Withholding from and abandoning unto. Outer attention and inner awareness. Sight and insight. For me Ramadan is about all these things.

Ramadan in Pakistan is also about togetherness, caring for others and Ramadan road rage (theirs, not mine - it usually occurs in the last half hour before sunset as people rush to reach home in time). My daughter says for her its about introspection and appreciation and I would heartily agree. Its that inward looking quality that comes with the territory that makes it so compelling. Time to attend to the inner self, the interior world, empty it out of thriving idols, polish the mirrors, reduce the hissing vipers of negative thought, opinion and judgement.


I'm not sure why but the lead up to Ramadan often seems imbued with a mounting frenzy. An internal pressure builds up to complete tasks and tie up loose ends in order to free myself for the month. Having been abroad this year during that period, the whirl of coffees and meals out with friends has felt slightly beyond my control. For all my enjoyment of the feasting with dear friends, I am longing for the fasting and withdrawal. And living in a Muslim country, the communal consensus on the change of life's daily rhythm  heightens the sense of the sacred and  makes the transition sweeter. What a luxury not to have to explain to anyone why one isn't eating! And how liberating to feel perfectly justified to spend time alone, read and reflect!

Of course, life doesn't stop during this month, though work days are shortened and afternoon siestas become necessary. Food markets seem as busy as ever, with our local snack bars selling samosas, pekoras, dehi bare, aloo papray chaat and suchlike, seeing a huge increase in business. Mosques suddenly fill up like never before as people rush to assuage their guilt over their prayer deficits, or earn more divine favour by increased prayers.Completing the reading of the Noble Qur'an during this month is also often achieved through the medium of the optional but customary Tarawih* prayers, wherein some Imams recite a juz' every evening during the Tarawih, while other more ambitious ones may recite 3 a day over a period of ten days.

In my own household, kitchen 'Domestos' continues apace, albeit in modified form.  Not everyone is able to fast, so lunches still have to manifest. And then there's the 'iftaari'. Growing up in my own more Middle Eastern influenced family, fast-breaking was observed simply with dates and water, maybe a broth and then prayers. Dinner would only then follow, and invariably it would be healthful soups, stews, rices, salads and maybe a rice pudding or some other soft dessert. It was impressed on us the need to eat right in order to enable the blessings of Ramadan to flourish, rather than allow poor diet to interfere with this sacred time.


Iftar or fast break in Pakistan is a much grander affair - celebratory almost. When I first moved here I had declared my home a pekora free zone - I simply couldn't get my mind around the idea of fried foods for 'breakfast'. Gradually as my children grew up and acclimatized to local fare the demand grew for these unconscionable delicacies - and I happily admit one cannot deny the tastiness of fresh home-made pekoras and samosas. My son would disappear to break fast with the staff, as he found their iftar more appetizing than the wholesome chickpea salads, yoghurt dishes and fruit salads I preferred to offer. So in spite of my avowal, over the years the frequency of said fried items appearing on our iftar spread started to increase. If you can't beat them, join them! Like a salmon tired of swimming upstream to spawn, I found nothing around me corroborated with my own ideas about what was culinarily appropriate. My resistance eroded in direct proportion to the desire to please.


The Prophet (S)  famously declared that for most of his followers, fasting represented nothing more than hungry bellies, and praying meant tired knees. Even then he had identified the pitfall of mindlessness in acts of prescribed worship. If we only engage with our rites of worship with attention to form, they can easily become empty. But with mindfulness of the inner meanings, they become gateways to inner vistas of stillness and sublime silence. The withdrawal and withholding of Ramadan allows multiple layers of awareness to descend on us: from seeing how weak and dependent we are on our habits, to heightening our compassion and awareness of the needs of others, to refreshing our knowledge of the Qur'an al-Karim,  to savouring the sweetness of extended periods of invocation, and generally to bask in a feeling of lightness that evokes qualities of true Light. Reducing the sway of the appetites of the self increases the divine light that already reflects in us.

Fasting is the fast track to inner witnessing par excellence. Gradually the interior white noise starts to shrink to a whisper. Caverns of inner silence expand. The sense of beingness mushrooms, filling all the inner matrices. Ramadan is truly a sacred time for renewal. And of all our prescribed worships, this one is the most invisible: only Allah can know if we have truly fasted, on the level of alimentation, speech, intention and action. And thus it is that He declares that He will be its reward. Such an intimate promise, so sublime. To fast for the love of Allah alone, in obedience to His call to remember Him and only Him - that intention can only be met with direct Divine Grace.


Glossary:
Iftaari, iftar: literally fast breaking.
Juz': A portion of the Qur'an, specifically, one thirtieth part.
Pekoras: Gram flour fritters seasoned with vegetables and spices.
Qur'an al-Karim: The Noble Qur'an.
Tarawih: Special Ramadan prayers recited after the last evening prayer.

*Originally optional, Tarawih was instituted as a congregational prayer by the second caliph Umar, with the number of rak'at differing according to which school of law is followed (20 for the Hanafis, for example). The Prophet had always recommended night prayers be done, especially during the month of Ramadan (a total of 11 rak'at).