Touchstones

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:125, 127

Wa ‘idh ja’alnal-Bayta mathabatal-innasi

 wa amnanw-wat-takhidhu mim-maqami Ibrahima musalla. 

Wa ahidnaa ilaa Ibrahima wa Isma’ila

an-tahhira Baytiya littaa ‘ifina wal-akifina war-rukka ‘is-sujud. [125]

Wa ‘idh yarfa’u Ibrahimul-qawa ‘ida minal-Bayti

Wa Isma’ilu Rabbana taqabbal minnaa ‘innaka Antas-Sami ‘ul-Alim. [127]

And Lo!  We made the Temple a goal to which people might repair again and again, and a sanctuary:  take, then the place wherein Abraham once stood as your place of prayer.

And thus did We command Abraham and Ishmael:  ‘Purify My Temple for those who will walk around it, and those who will abide near it in meditation, and those who will bow down and prostrate themselves [in prayer].’ [125]

And when Abraham and Ishmael were raising the foundations of the Temple, [they prayed:]  ‘O our Sustainer!  Accept Thou this from us; for verily, Thou alone art all-hearing, all-knowing!’  [127]

We hear so much about the Kaaba: that Abraham and Ishmael were ordered to rebuild it on the site where Adam had built the first House of God; that the black stone is the only piece of it left from the original structure; that the black stone came from heaven (part of an ancient meteor, perhaps?)   Anticipating my recent visit to Makkah, I wondered how I would feel when I saw it.  My first view was from a distance, from a window of our hotel.  There it was, the small square structure, covered in black cloth, surrounded by people.  It was encircled by a three-tiered round elevated walkway with more people, surrounded by a huge construction site, surrounded by tall buildings.  I learned that Saudi King Abdullah, who had just died, had 27 billion dollars to the rebuilding of a much larger three-tiered elevated walkway around the Kaaba, to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of Hajj pilgrims.  There would be a special area for wheelchairs, and even a special area for motorized carts for those too frail even for wheelchairs.  I marveled at the resources the Saudis devote to meeting the needs of pilgrims, and could not help remembering that many believe the oil under their deserts was given to them for this purpose.  I began to feel an overwhelming reverence for their responsibility. 

What, I wondered, is the real meaning of the ritual of tawaf, walking seven times around the Kaaba in counter-clockwise direction?  What is the meaning of this small stone structure, unadorned except for the black cloth embroidered with Quranic verses, and a silver encasement around the black stone?  Why are we human beings so drawn to ultimate goals, to focus points for all our hopes and dreams?  God tells us in Quran that this is our nature. 

Surah Al-Baqara 2:144, 148

We have seen thee [O Prophet] often turn thy face towards heaven [for guidance]:  And now We shall indeed make thee turn in prayer in a direction which will fulfill thy desire.  Turn, then, thy face towards the Inviolable House of Worship; and wherever you all may be, turn your faces towards it [in prayer]…. [144]

… Be not, then, among the doubters: [147] for, every community faces a direction of its own, of which He is the focal point.  Vie, therefore, with one another in doing good works.  Wherever you may be, God will gather you all unto Himself:  for verily, God has the power to will anything. [148]

So, Quran confirms our human need for a focus of worship, a touchstone.  And Quran confirms that the focus of worship for the Prophet and his followers should be the Kaaba – the Inviolable House of Worship.  An empty cube.  But what was I doing here?  What did all this mean to me? 

We went to our hotel room, washed, and went down to the Haram, the area surrounding the Kaaba, through the hotel, through a huge, multi-tiered shopping mall, bigger than the Mall of America.  The Saudi’s, I thought, have certainly remained true to the spirit of commerce that sustained Makkah over the centuries.  We walked out into the plaza in front of the mosque, the Masjid Al-Haram, and entered a huge expanse of columned space, so large you cannot see one end of it from the other, walking always through crowds of pilgrims from all corners of the Muslim world.  We finally reached the long multi-storied enclosed passageway that led through the construction zone into the Haram itself.  And finally, there it was in front of me, larger than it seemed from above, but small nonetheless.  We found ourselves not at ground level, but one level up, the middle tier of the surrounding walkway.  The space surrounding the Kaaba at ground level was packed with people, all moving around the Kaaba.  Our walkway was packed as well, and so we joined the mass, moving with the crowd, seven times around the Kaaba.  Each time we passed the black stone we raised our right hands like everyone around us and recited words of praise and thanks to God.  I held on to my husband’s hand ferociously, not daring to lose him in the jostle of the crowd.  Groups of pilgrims from Indonesia and Malaysia, all wearing matching hijabs or backpacks or armbands held on to each other as well, forming snake-like lines at times, distinguishing patches of pink or orange or blue amid the white of the men’s wraps, and the white or black of the women’s jilbabs and burkahs.  Families moved together.  We learned later that it was school break week throughout the Middle East, which helped account for the crowds and the large number of children.  Parents carried babies in their arms and on their shoulders.  Children and youth of all ages walked beside their parents.  Old men and women held the arms of younger, stronger men and women.  Men and women pushed their fathers and mothers in wheelchairs.  Everyone was pushed together, jostled, moving forward.  My most overwhelming image was that of feet.  We were so pushed together that our movement was something beyond our individual control.  The safest place to look was down.  Most of the feet were bare.  Big feet, small feet, calloused feet, bandaged feet, some feet with socks, some with plastic sandals, some behind the wheels of the wheelchairs.  Some attached to hairy legs.  Some barely visible beneath reams of black cloth.

We arrived in time for Asr, the afternoon prayer.  When it was time to pray, everyone stopped and faced the Kaaba, men and women together.  After we finished our tawaf, we left the circling crowd and went to find the route between Safa and Marwa, to perform our Sa’i: seven times between two hills, retracing the steps of Hajar as she searched for water for her baby in the desert.  The top of Safa is still visible as a mound of rock, Marwa is completely hidden by marble floor and columns.  After we completed Sa’i, we went back to the Haram, this time at ground level, to pray in front of Makam Ibrahim, Abraham’s monument – a shrine consisting of Abraham’s footprints encased in a crystal dome, right beside the Kaaba.  The crowds had abated somewhat by this time, and we were able to kneel in front of the shrine to pray two rakats.  With this, our Umrah was complete.   We were even able to get close to the Kaaba after this, to actually touch it’s wall.

I had trouble sleeping that night.  I kept getting up to look down at the Kaaba, just visible from a corner of a window in our room.  The crowd surrounding the cube grew gradually thinner, but it never went away.  The movement never stopped.  At 3:00 am, it finally hit me.  Watching the people go round and round, unceasing.  The reason they had come.  The reason I had come.  To walk around an empty stone cube.  To recreate – to be part of – Creation.  I was able, over the next two days to do Tawaf again two times, once for each of my parents.  I tried to explain to them what it meant.  “It’s an empty stone building – it’s meaning lies in the expectations we each bring to it.  I did this for each of you with a prayer that knowing I did it will bring you some level of peace.”  It did. 

Our last full day in Makkah was Friday.  We wanted to pray Jumaa in front of the Kaaba, but the crowds were enormous.  We heard that the Haram had been closed hours before the prayer, the police were not letting any more in.  “Why don’t we just pray in our room?” I asked my husband.  All the prayers were broadcast into every room in the hotel.  He wanted to try, nonetheless.  So down we went, through the hotel, into the shopping mall where people were lined up in rows, facing the Kaaba.  “Why don’t we just pray here?”  “No, let’s just keep going.”  We entered the courtyard, stepping between the rows of seated pilgrims, looking for a place to sit.  “Here’s a place, let’s sit here.”  He didn’t stop, and I did not let go of him.  We entered the masjid, walked through more throngs.  “How about here?”  But no one stopped us, and we just kept going.  The Adhan had long been called.  I kept expecting to hear the Ikamah, kept expecting to stop.  He just kept moving.  Amazingly, we entered the first tier walkway and were able to move around it, directly in front of the black stone, before the prayer began.  The Kaaba was directly in front of us.  I was overcome then.  Tears flowed.

We were too greedy.  Al-hakamoot takathir….  We wanted to try again at Aisha, later that night… to try to reach the Kaaba.  I wanted to touch the black stone.  The crowds seemed to have abated, so we went down to find a place to pray at ground level, the same level as the Kaaba.  At that level, however, the crowds were thick as ever.  We circled round until we found a place to sit together, waiting for the prayer to begin.  That was when one of the Wahabi religious police stood in front of me and said Ya Hajja – move.  Move over to where the women are sitting, over there, gesticulating forcefully.   “This is my husband,” I said, “I will not leave him.”  He said, “She is my wife, she will get lost.”  “Ya Hajja,”  the WRP repeated, “Yallah, move.”  I refused to budge.  Then I looked at my husband and I knew he was fighting to control his temper.  He was readying his arsenal of Quranic verses, Sunnah and Hadith; weapons to defeat ossified medieval, pre-Islamic thinking.  We both knew that a fight with a WRP in front of the Kaaba would do nothing to enhance our spiritual journey.  “Let’s go,” we both agreed.  So we gave up our prayer spot and moved on.  We kept moving until the prayer began and everyone raised their hands to the Kaaba.  Then we stopped and prayed together.  No one could interrupt us then.  The WRP was left behind.  He tried his best, believing it was his duty to do so.  But he could not control the crowds.  He could not control those who follow a different vision of their faith.

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:150

Thus, from wherever thou mayest come forth, turn thy face [in prayer] towards the Inviolable House of Worship – for, behold, this [commandment] comes in truth from thy Sustainer; and God is not unaware of what you do. [149]  Hence, from wherever thou mayest come forth, turn thy face [in prayer] towards the Inviolable House of Worship; and wherever you all may be, turn your faces towards it, so that people should have no argument against you unless they are bent upon wrongdoing.  And hold them not in awe, but stand in awe of Me, and [obey Me,] so that I might bestow upon you the full measure of My blessings, and that you might follow the right path. [150]

Quran tells us that those who were alive at the time of the Prophet, pbuh, who believed in earlier revelations – the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians – were wrong to think that their previous allegiances precluded them from believing in the Prophet’s message about the Oneness of God, precluded them from believing in the prophecy of Muhammad, Salah Allahu Allahi Wa Salam.  The message here, in the 7^th century AD was that God / Allah, our Creator, did not leave the scene after Abraham and Moses and Jesus.  Prophet Muhammad, pbuh carried the same message.  And the message in that for us, if we will open our minds to it, is that God / Allah, our Creator does not leave us when a Prophet dies.  God is with us, in all of us, and in the world all around us – as long as we open our minds and hearts to Spirit. 

How could it be otherwise, I asked myself, when I considered the incongruity of the fact that I, a farm girl from Maryland, was praying there in front of the Kaaba in Makkah in Saudi Arabia?  And that every significant event and decision point in my life, every time I had prayed for guidance, had led to this moment?   God is not limited to the words recorded in books, even those we consider to be sacred.  Those words are a record of God’s influence on and guidance to a community.  They teach us about the nature of God and human beings.  But the lesson I saw at the Kaaba was that nothing can be static.  Each and every one of the individuals who made up the thousands in motion around the Kaaba was a point of movement and change.  And I was part of it.  All of the circumstances of each of our lives had led us to this place, at this time, a place of perpetual motion, of perpetual evolution.  Each of us would take the memory of that motion back with us to wherever we came from.  Tawaf, the circumambulation of the Kaaba.  The constant movement of humanity, following the pattern of the movement of the planets around the sun, following the evolution of the universe, of Creation. 

I never did touch the black stone.  The crowd around it was frenzied, out of control, life threatening.  But by then, I realized, it didn’t matter.

Kamaa arslana fikum Rasulam-minkum yatlu alaykum Ayatina wa yuzak-kikum wa yu’allimukumul-Kitaba wal-hikmata way u ‘allimukum-ma lam takunu ta’lamun.  [151]  Fadh-kurunii adhkurkum wash-kuru li wa la takfurun. [152]

Even as We have sent unto you an apostle from among yourselves to convey unto you Our messages, and to cause you to grow in purity, and to impart unto you revelation and wisdom, and to teach you that which you knew not: [151]  so remember Me, and I shall remember you; and be grateful unto Me, and deny Me not. [152]

Radicalization: Who Is a Muslim?

Surah Al-Hajj (22: 3-4):

Wa minan-nasi many-yujdilu fil-lahi shahid.  Wa minan-nasi many-yujadilu fil-lahi bighayri ilminw-wa yattabi’u kulla Shaytanim-marid.

And yet, among men there is many a one who argues about God without having any knowledge [of Him], and follows every rebellious satanic force about which it has been decreed that whoever entrusts himself to it, him will it lead astray and guide towards the suffering of the blazing flame! 

The latest round of attacks by Muslim extremists in Europe gave rise to new levels of introspection in the broader Muslim community.  Mainstream Muslims and mosque leaders decried the killing of the cartoonists at France’s Charlie Hebdo and the Jews at the Kosher grocery, calling the perpetrators extremists who are acting in the name of Islam, but who are not true Muslims.  The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC), denounced the murders.  “It is despicable that they shouted God is Great in Arabic as they took lives,” said Dr. Mohammed Kaiseruddin, chairman and co-founder of the CIOGC.  Statements of condemnation against the attacks have also been issued by well-established national Muslim organizations including ISNA, CAIR, USCMO, as well as numerous Muslim groups across the United States.  On CNN’s “State of the Union” on January 18, Yahya Hendi, Muslim Chaplain at Georgetown University in Washington, DC said “Islam cannot support terrorism in any way, shape or form.  The terrorists are kidnapping my name, using my name, my beautiful religion.”  The host of the show responded, “They do use religious justification.  They are steeped in the texts, they quote the texts.”  Imam Hendi answered, “They are misquoting the text.  They are not using the text.  They translate it in their own way.  They misinterpret it to justify their own violence.”

Azeem Ibrahim, a lecturer in international security at the University of Chicago, wrote an article published in the Chicago Tribune titled, “The Battle Within Islam.”  He asks, “How did Islam come to this point?”  He describes how when non-Muslims write about radicalization, they stop at the point of looking inside religious doctrine for the answers, “and for good reason.  They stand at the threshold of the internal theological debate of a great world religion.  To advance further means going into a territory about which even commentators don’t feel they can bluff their way through.  It means engaging with 12 centuries worth of theological debate and risking offending millions with a slip of the pen.” 

I would argue that most Muslims stop at the point of examining doctrine as well, and for the same reasons.  In fact, most Muslims do not even allow themselves to think about examining doctrine.  And that, Ibrahim argues and I agree, has opened the door for the propagation of Wahabi conservatism by the only player wealthy and audacious enough to build mosques and madrasas, train religious leaders, print and distribute free pamphlets and books worldwide for the past 40 plus years – Saudi Arabia.  As Ibrahim explains, “Wahabism emphasizes anti-Semitism, misogyny, interacting with non-Muslims only in cases of necessity and ex-communicating any Muslims who do not subscribe to its deeply conservative and culturally isolationist ideology.  It lays the intellectual foundations for jihadism, a rogue offshoot of Wahabism which encourages the terrorism we see on our own TV screens.” 

Saudi Arabia has condemned the Paris attacks, and other terrorist attacks, and outlawed any affiliation with ISIL within its borders.  The Saudis have even started constructing a 600 mile fence along their entire border with Iraq in an effort to keep out ISIL militants.  On the other hand, we have had an example of Saudi Wahabism in action again these past two weeks.  A liberal Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, kick-started a public discussion about Islam and modernity on his blog.  A Saudi court sentenced Badawi to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” The first 50 lashes were delivered in a public flogging on Friday, Jan. 9^th.  Badawi was scheduled to receive 50 more every Friday until he reaches 1,000, but the floggings were suspended, presumably due to public outcry and demonstrations in the West.

I met another victim of the strict Wahabist-style interpretation of Islam a few weeks ago.  Leaving a House of Representatives meeting of CIOGC in Chicago, I was approached by the father of Hamza Khan, the 19 year old who was arrested before Christmas trying to take his younger siblings with him on a flight to Istanbul, allegedly to cross the border into Syria and join up with ISIL.  The father was trying to raise money for his son’s defense.  I was caught between my sympathy for a father in such obvious emotional pain, and my anger that a young man’s mind had been so vulnerable to the extremist rhetoric on the internet.  Hamza Khan was trained as a “Hafiz” – someone who memorizes the whole Quran.  How could he go through that training, and even lead his mosque congregation in evening prayer during the whole month of Ramadan this past summer, and not have absorbed the Quran’s messages of peace and mercy?  Somehow he got sucked into the cultish rhetoric about Islamic values being possible only in an idealized Islamic state, and that any country, group or individual perceived as trying to stop its creation is fair game for attack. 

We don’t know Hamza Khan’s whole story, but we do know this.  The Muslim community is very good at venerating the Quran.  But the project of examining doctrine for its relevance and applicability in our lives has been woefully lacking.   Every Muslim has, by definition, a relationship with the Quran.  Most Muslims follow others’ interpretations – the classical scholars and the clerics who study them - either through ignorance, or conviction that those others know better than they, or because of reverence for history and religious leaders, or because they are intimidated by the prospect of trying to understand an ancient text in what is for most Muslims a foreign language.  Even native Arabic speakers are not fluent in Quranic Arabic.   And this is a text that Muslims believe contains messages from the ultimate Judge who will decide whether they spend eternity in heaven or hell.  It is not surprising that most Muslims abdicate from the interpretive project and just try to be good people, recite Quran as best they can, revere its sacredness, and hope for the best.  But there come times like this, when blindly following the interpretations of the medieval past is no longer an option for those of us who believe that we must use our critical minds to understand our faith.

Pause

The tribal mentality of the Wahabists and the barbarism of the extremists have invoked counter movements among Muslims who live in countries where freedom of religion and expression is guaranteed.  These movements take many forms.  One of them, a different form of self-proclaimed Islamic radicalism, is described in an article on the website vice.com by Gavin Haynes.  He writes about a don at Oxford in England, Dr. Taj Hargey, who took part of his salary and started his own mosque in South Africa late last year.  The five founding principles of Dr. Hargey’s mosque are: Qu'ran-centric, gender equality, non-sectarian, inter-cultural, and independent.  The place of worship, he says—unlike most mosques around the world—is both gay-friendly and woman-friendly.  His "Open Mosque" in Cape Town has been firebombed three times since it commenced operations in September.  Hargey is a self-proclaimed hardcore “fundamentalist,” in that he rejects the Hadith and unsurprisingly, Sharia law (which uses Hadith as a primary source).  Hargey posits that “Islam is about the Qur'an, and it is from the Qur'an that he will preach, ignoring all the other footnotes beloved of [most contemporary] clerics.  All of that stuff, he says, has no pertinence to the Qur'an: It's a book that rejects violence, doesn't mention the burqa, embraces a role for women, and doesn't explicitly ban images of Muhammad or encourage Muslims to murder satirical cartoonists.” 

Hargey is not the only Muslim who has found refuge from harsh applications of Islam by adopting a Quran only approach.  Look up “Quranism” on Wikipedia, and you get a whole list of organizations and individuals reflecting different manifestations of the Quran only approach, as well as a very succinct guide to the differences between Sunni/Shia Islam and Quranism on a list of articles of faith.  I am greatly encouraged by all attempts to challenge unhealthy, repressive doctrine.   I share the goals of the Quranists, but not their method.  My study of the Quran has shown me that there are many references in it to specific circumstances and events in the lives of the Prophet and his companions.  It is impossible to understand Quran without reference to the context of the revelations.  And the only source we have for understanding the history and culture in which Quran was revealed - however flawed and subject to personal and historical bias - is Seerah (stories of the life of the Prophet) and Hadith (collections of narrations from the Prophet’s companions about what he was supposed to have done and said).  These texts need to be studied with a critical mind, but the story of revelation is not complete without them.

[One of the arguments that the Quranists use to support their position is that the Prophet Muhammad himself, pbuh, as well as Abu Bakr and Umar, his closest companions, are said to have warned against recording and collecting Hadith, and even burned them.  But how do we supposedly know this?  Hadith.  And how could Abu Bakr and Umar have burned them if they were not recorded and collected until 100 years (Seerah) to 150 years (Hadith) after the Prophet’s death – a fact some Quranists cite as an argument against them?] 

I appreciate that there can be value in studying the linguistic construction of the Quran.  I leave that to those with a mastery of Quranic Arabic.  It’s vocabulary and phraseology - in Arabic and in translation - is not addressed to a liberally educated 21st century woman, to say the least.  I have to remind myself every time I pick up a Quran that it's messages come to me indirectly, through the filter of language and culture.  Rejecting Seerah and Hadith out of hand would deprive me of an invaluable interpretive tool.  At their best, the most reliable Hadith are useful in helping me understand why the ayat were revealed when they were - to whom they were addressed, and for what purpose.  I do this knowing all the while that the Hadith themselves are a product of the time and culture of those who recorded them.  They are not only subject to the possibility of human error – memory is the most fickle of filters – but they are also subject to cultural irrelevance.  I therefore read Seerah and Hadith with an analytical, interpretive mind. 

I understand the first injunction of Prophet Muhammad’s revelation – “Read, in the name of your Creator,” as an affirmation that reading and studying are required to discern what is true from what is false.

I cannot say who is a Muslim and who is not a Muslim.  If someone who identifies as Muslim commits atrocities in the name of Islam, I can condemn their acts and the way they interpret their faith, and I do – categorically.  And I can make myself feel better by believing that they will get their due in kind in the hereafter for their hatred and barbarous acts.  But I cannot presume to know their ultimate destiny; that is God’s call.  At the same time, no human being has the power to decide that I am not Muslim, even though they may profoundly disagree with the way I understand the faith. 

What is sure is that all of us human beings are subject to the lure of false promises of justice, or riches, or fame and glory, or a martyr’s paradise – all that falls under the rubric of what Quran calls “Shaitan” – Satan. 

From Surah An-Nisaa (4):

But all who take Satan rather than God for their master do indeed, most clearly, lose all:  he holds out promises to them, and fills them with vain desires:  yet whatever Satan promises them is but meant to delude the mind.  Such as these have hell for their goal:  and they shall find no way to escape therefrom.  [119-121]

These are challenging times for Muslims.  As we grapple with the consequences of extremism, we Muslims who have the luxury of freedom of religion and speech will explore every approach we can to reinforce the balance and rationality of our faith.   We must use the reasoning capabilities God gave us, along with what we know in our hearts, to discern the false from the true.  We can learn from each other, and overwhelm the voices of the violent extremists.  But as we devote our hearts and minds, time and resources to this endeavor, we must be ever mindful of the pitfalls.  As much as we formulate answers for ourselves, we must never lose our humility.  We must support each other.  We must rise above the tribalism, retribution, and sanctimonious arrogance that God’s revelation came to dispel – and that unfortunately have hijacked the very religion that came to liberate us from that past.  We must, above all, practice “Islam,” doing everything we can to promote God’s peace in ourselves and with each other.

From Surah Al-Baqara, God’s message to the Children of Israel rings true to us today:

Wa la talbisul-haqqa bilbatili wa taktumul-haqqa wa antum ta’lamun.  Wa aqimus-Salata wa ‘atuz-Zaqata war-ka’u ma’ar-raki’in. 

Ata murunan-nasa bilbirri wa tansawna anfusakum wa antum tatlunal-Kitab.  Afala ta’qilun.  [42-44]

Do not overlay the truth with falsehood, and do not knowingly suppress the truth; and be constant in prayer, and spend in charity, and bow down in prayer with all who thus bow down.

Do you bid other people to be pious, the while you forget your own selves – and yet you recite the divine writ?  Will you not, then, use your reason?  [42-44]