SURAH AL-‘IKHLAS
We are speaking on the Al-‘Ikhlas Surah upon which Allah Almighty conveys the manner how we ought to acquaint Him. In this frame we also spoke about the attributes of Allah Almighty, we spoke on the crucial attributes of being or dhatiya of God, (those of you who have studied in the ilmihal with an imam have mainly divided this under two groups: dhatiya and thubutiya) the dhatiya attributes or the attributes which speak on the being of God. There is one saying, one transmission of the Prophet (PBUH) which says: “Think, meditate in regards to the creatures of God, but do not meditate and do not think regarding God alone”. At times this transmission has been misinterpreted by shallow theologians and not by profound scholars (the profound scholars have not misinterpreted, rather the vacuous theologians who only absorb the scriptural dimension of the Qur’anic text, the literary scope of the Qur’anic text), so these vacuous scholars have misinterpreted the transmission and have concluded that “when we are about to think about the person (dhat) of God, there we should stop, we cannot use our mind to think”. This is not correct. Why do I say this? Since in Islam there is no subject which can be concluded as a taboo. Do you know what taboo means? Taboo means unable to touch, something which is abstract; it cannot be touched. Let me give you one concrete example with Christianity. If you ask any Christian priest how can it be that Jesus (PBUH) could be both son of God and God, he will tell you that it’s a secret, meaning that this person does not venture to analyze this matter. Whereas among Muslims there is no such event which can be recorded as taboo, one which we cannot come across; inasmuch God is also encompassed. However there is one element which has been greatly emphasized by the Prophet (PBUH) but not from the Qur’an: not to dwell in thought on the physiognomy of God, meaning that the moment you are thinking about the physiognomy of God then you motion in polytheism (shirk), then one must paint this imagine, take a picture of it, make a sculpture of it and this all leads to polytheism. Albeit the Qur’an has not eloped the terms with which it associates God to the elements of man, the Qur’an has not eloped this, for instance in the Qur’an it has been said: “Indeed, those who pledge allegiance to you, [O Muhammad] – they are actually pledging allegiance to Allah . The hand of Allah is over their hands. So he who breaks his word only breaks it to the detriment of himself. And he who fulfills that which he has promised Allah – He will give him a great reward.” (Surah Al-Fath, verse: 10). However here we can see that the word hand of God has been used, which in the interpretation does not refer to God having hands, it infers that the power of God is above you (this is the meaning it has and conveys), yet the Qur’an did not avoid using the word hand. Or when speaking about The Judgment Day it infers: “And do not invoke with Allah another deity. There is no deity except Him. Everything will be destroyed except His Face. His is the judgement, and to Him you will be returned.” (Surah Al-Qasas, verse: 88). In this verse of the Qur’an the word wajj has been used which in its literary form in Arabic means face. In the passports and identification cards people don’t show their feet, but instead they show the upper part which identifies the person. Even in the verse it highlights that everything beside the person, wajj – here it refers to the identity of God, the dhat of God, will be destroyed. To this reason we are not given any right to bring our imagination to pragmatism from the aspect on the physiognomy of God; in the mind, in the imagination each of us experiences God, however if we transmit this to the physical domain then this becomes polytheism / shirk and Islam has evidently forbidden this.
For instance painting as forbidden in Islam began since the early days, and even to date we come across people that when asked whether you can pain in Islam they answer by saying it is haram (forbidden), it is forbidden beginning by a transmission of the Prophet (PBUH): “May God accurse those who give a shape to things (musawwirin)”, it does not refer to painters here. Look now in science especially in the social sciences terms behold a great importance. He said: “May God accurse those who give shape to things” it directly refers to people who have made sculptures of idolatry upon which the polytheists of Mecca have shown deity to them; and here he is right. If one makes a sculpture in order for another to show deity to it, then this in Islam remains forbidden. Even if one makes a painting in order for others to go on prostration before it, then this also remains forbidden in Islam. Many times I have told my students that those who do not know how to transfer knowledge (you also remember this, especially you the younger ones), individuals who are unable to transfer that knowledge gained in the kitchen to the university, cannot become successful in life, inasmuch transfer of knowledge is the essence of success in life. What you know from the kitchen, you should be able to transfer that in the structure of the university as well, where you shall lecture to the students, and to this reason these matters ought to be compared.
The meat from the cow is the same instance. Is this meat halal (allowed) to us? Yes, it is. If one Christian would cut it, if one Jew would cut it, if one Muslim could cut it is halal for us; we can eat it. But if one Buddhist cuts it then this would be haram for us. Why? It’s the same meat that which the Buddhist has cut. Why is it haram when the Buddhists would cut it? Since primarily the Buddhist would cut it with a purpose to sacrifice it for Buddha, whereas the Christian, the Jew and the Muslim would cut it for the needs of man; there is no ideology behind it in the latter. Since there is no ideology, the mean which is cut by the Christian and the Jew can be eaten by us, but that which is cut by the Buddhists we cannot eat, since behind that act there is an ideology. The same goes for painting and music. For instance music is greatly condemned by a number of people who do not have a very profound knowledge on religious sciences, in the experience of the religious sciences. Oftentimes people confront their metaphysical genes subject to the jurisdiction norms, and these norms ought to be analyzed from the domain of their necessity of having them present as well as the time and space of their establishment, if otherwise not specified in the Qur’an. Which shows that this is not the case. The spirit of man shows to him that it is not as he is made / driven to believe, but rather he is imposing barriers in an artificial way. Only weak people are disqualifying, have this in mind. Each one which shall tell you that another person is worthless, this one in question is instead worthless himself; these identities are weak people, they are not ready to confront society, it is as such from the religious frame as well. People who tell you that we need to encompass each individual, now these people are strong since they do not embody any fear.
I was once in one symposium with professor Ferid Muhic regarding the matter of globalization (he has one good paper on the influence of globalization in the human gene) and I concluded on one contradicting theory, that globalization does not cause harm to Muslims. Do you know what globalization means? Globalization simply means that all of us have to wear jeans, we all have to eat hot dogs, we all have to eat the same way, we all have to dress the same way, and to think the same way, this is what globalization represents. Where is the harm? The harm goes to the cultures which are within, they lose their identity with globalization; have in mind that only the weak cultures diminish their identities. Instead those which have a strong platform and ideology they could never lose. To this reason, globalization does not impose any fear on Islam, whereas for Muslims it does, however it is not dangerous whatsoever on Islam. I will give you an example from history which is highly significant.
You must have heard about Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan (there was one very good TV Show, in our earlier days the TV shows were rather didactic, very educational. It was a TV show regarding Marko Polo. You might recall, we have watched this before and now on Sitel 3 there is a similar TV Show. In fact in 1988 I have discussed on one newspaper “Flaka e vëllazërimit” with a couple of professors on the TV Show “Shogun”, Richard Chamberlain played the main role; it’s a very good TV Show).
You might have heard about Mongolians, they once had one very strong army but moreover when barbarians had arrived they had killed to a great extent. They had gone to Bagdad, and now Muslim historians say that on the rivers in Bagdad, Tigris and Euphrates Muslim blood was shed, because they have killed anyone they had come across. However those once strong Mongolians, do you know where they are today, do you know if they exist? Do you hear about them today? I tell you that 95% of the Mongolians which had been with Genghis Khan have become Muslims today. This reflects that one culture and civilization can resist and reign over physical power; to this reason globalization does not impose any problem on Islam, rather on Muslims, yet to Islam as a religion it does not cause any problem. Which means that among Muslims, we began speaking on the taboo matters, there is no matter which can remain undiscussed, and each subject can be undertaken for a discussion.
We have to encounter the fact that among Muslims there is one great weakness: before we used to have more pseudo-intellectuals, now we don’t have such identities anymore, we now have pseudo-religious people. 10-15 years ago we used to have pseudo-intellectuals which wanted to digest meat with the teeth of an infant; it is simply impossible to seek and discuss in such fashion on the most profound religious metaphysical matters. One person would sit and discuss on religion and when one would ask him: how many pages from the Qur’an have you read, the man would answer that he had never seen how even the Qur’an looks. One cannot simply speak, analyze one religion, one ideology, whatever the subject in question may be, provided that he has not read anything on that matter. Thence taboo matters in Islam do not exist, but this does not give the right to anyone to discuss profound and advanced matters; not just from the aspect of religion but moreover from the intellectual domain, one person who is not well read is not in possession of the right to undertake such an assay. For instance now a person who cannot grasp even simple matters, one who is not even guided on the most palpable issues of religion, is simply unable to discuss profound and insightful philosophical matters.
To this reason the tradition of the Prophet (PBUH) prescribes that what we learn we ought to practice in life; when we shall engender to practice then even to seek to learn more, hence as long as we do not practice it each of our learnings become like the Jewish teachings. The Prophet (PBUH) says that the Jews, from the domain of ideology confer and dwell in thought regarding matters and from the physical, worldly view they may be very successful and this is simply indubitable. Howbeit from the ideological / spiritual domain they are destroyed, says the Prophet (PBUH), as he infers: “kilu kal ve kethretis-sual”- the Jews have been destroyed due to the trivial and unnecessary discussions (in Arabic the trivial talking is known as kilu kal) and athrat sual –from many questionings”. Individuals who do little work, question a lot, have in mind that these individuals will always find something (behane) to complain about. In Islam there is no taboo, yet it does not mean that we must undertake to discuss profound and advanced matters without even establishing some firm platform. On the other hand there are some identities who wish to live religion only by flattering words and deity on God. For instance they might have great fondness and affection about Mevlana, we have people here who like to be involved in art, and who moreover wish to make mistakes so they do not show deity on Allah Almighty and according to them, Mevlana has significant tolerance, since the author would say: whatever you are come. Yes, however Hazrat Mevlana does not only have tolerance, and personally I don’t use the word tolerance, I use the term understanding instead since to tolerate one means to step over your own principles; we do not step over our principles. We can have and show understanding on somebody who might not behave like us, one who might not agree with us, but to tolerate for one to step over us, simply no. Yes Hazrat Mevlana has understanding for all people, he calls everyone, yet Hazrat Mevlana would pray 100 rekat namaz, did you know this? Meaning that the turning dance of Mevlana should not be the only thing we would love. And now here we have music, good rhythm, he was a good composer, he was very welcoming, tolerant, oh yes this person is good for us and let us now drink alcohol. He had not drank alcohol or did he engage in sin. Did you know that in the makam of the spiritual tasawwuf after several periods you begin not to differentiate between the physical matters, since one night, this was said by an actor (I said this to the boys here last night), in the platform of the normal religious behavior my wealth is my wealth, your wealth is your wealth; in an upper platform of spirituality your wealth is your wealth, my wealth is your wealth; in the platform of the haqiqa or reality, neither my wealth is my wealth nor your wealth is your wealth; in the platform of the profound seek of marifah there is neither you or me, only God exists, to this reason such elements as the formal do not exist. Hazrat Mevlana yes is one person from the high rank, but do you know how his stand with God was? The Mawlawi Derwish, for instance, have their spiritual education for 1001 days without seeing anyone, they remain in ibadah only and with a daily piece of bread in one room of , inasmuch this is not a person whom we will take as a reference in order to engage in profuse entertainment, and then for us to claim yes we are with Hazrat Mevlana, or with Yunus Emre or with Naim.
Taking for example Naim Frasheri, they have made this poet a communist. Naim does not have a single poetry where he does not refer to God, do you know why? For instance he has one poetry “O Eros”, Naim wrote this in Greek. He could write in Greek, Persian, Turkish and even Albanian. Moreover he has one work which has been translated into Albanian; the original version was written in Persian: “Tehajjulat”-“Dreaming”. ”O Eros” is a poetry speaking on a love which does not have a counter physical, materialistic value; it does not have / refer to an object.
The poetry “O Eros” by Naim Frasheri is the same as the renewed poem of Layla and Majnun by Fuzuli which speaks on the love for God without any counter physical or materialistic value, instead it only has its own spiritual value. To this reason I say to you that the more we engross and analyze certain issues, the more vivid and fond of them we become, yet we have to remain under one principle, especially those of you which are into this with me, we do not belittle anyone, we do not engage to analyze anyone’s’ faith, we deal only with our own fashion of believing, with our manner of religious practice, we analyze at the outmost ourselves, and what is of most importance, when we hear a word on a certain matter we do not speak from our stomach. Remember this word this is one word by Professor Ismail Bardh, but I have taken permission from him since he says that his words I can use as mine, when one word comes from the stomach, a scent is released just as whatever we have in our stomach, the word which comes from our hear, the word arising from our hearts has a pleasant scent, it contains love; the word coming from the stomach has one decayed scent. To this reason never come to a conclusion in a hasty manner.
We began with the matter on taboo, Islam does not have a taboo issue thus we spoke on the attribute of Allah Almighty which portray what character God has upon us, what is the character of Allah Almighty among us. We spoke about wujjud – God exists, kidem – God is eternal, without a beginning, beka – God is eternal without end, we spoke on wahdaniyat and said that one of the crucial elements on the belief of God is to believe in the oneness of God and if in the universe there were to be two gods or three gods then the universe would have to have been destroyed. For instance take a look at the Greek mythology, those of you who have read a little on the Greek mythology know that gods, let us skip books now just recall the movie with Brat Pit “Troya”, (have you seen this movie? Whoever has not seen it, let him watch it is one good movie) in the movie one can observe how the gods fight against one another and if gods begin to fight in this manner, then god loses the character of being god.
There is a similar situation in the Jewish tradition; not all prophets were righteous among the Jews; for instance those of Yakowi have killed Isav and have taken the rights to become prophets (have you seen the movie with Abraham (PBUH) and his sons?) or the misunderstandings between Ismail who is son of Hajera from Abraham (PBUH), one slave and Isha who is son of Sara, the wife of Abraham (PBUH) shown in the movie according to the Jews. There is misunderstanding on who will become a prophet. This is clearly illogical, one is a prophet of God, and did not choose that himself, nobody asked him if he wanted to become a prophet, but it is a choice made by God alone. Inasmuch those who analyze religion say that only Islam contains all the characteristics of being a true religion. Oftentimes when Islam is condemned the attacks are made to the arising comments in one particular period in time, which at times are valid. Resultantly in various periods there were comments made with a prolonged presence; certain comments and judgments cannot be expected to survive for long, we call them fatwa, the presence of fatwa cannot survive for a very long time. Fatwa, in regards to a religious matter has as a particular life span. In Arab it is known as al mahdud biz-zamaan wal makan – limited by time and place.
I will give you an example with our region. In the year 1878 after the Congress of Berlin, when Bosna and Hercegovina was annexed by Austro-Hungary, it was then taken from the Ottoman Empire and it was given to Austro-Hungary. At that time Osman ef. Karabeg, was a mufti (Islamic scholar who interprets the Islamic law) of Mostar, along with the scholar of Mostar came up with one fatwa, which said: “everything which shall come to us from the West, we shall not accept it”; this is one conservative politics which in certain occasions can be allowed since in that time Austro-Hungary had penetrated in Bosna mainly with amorality and had greatly influenced on the idea of drinking alcohol, thusly the current liberal way of thinking and behaving as well as drinking alcohol among the Bosnians arises from that time. It is not that they were immoral but rather more liberal. This fatwa resisted as truth for 10 years, until 1900. The problem aroused when we expanded its life span, and hence this fatwa was taken for true until the 1980s; these imams until 1980’s have said that everything coming from the West is not good and automatically there was confrontation with the social reality. Inasmuch the same occurrence can take place with other fatwas.
The element of the oneness of God (wahdaniyat) is important. I did say it last week as well, but let me recall you anew that we now no longer have classical polytheism, we have a hidden polytheism / hidden shirk. For instance we do not literary take one idolatry and show deity to it, there is now only a slight movement of such worship in the world today, but instead we have come to idolize other ways.
Faqir has one essay on the idolization of interest. For instance one of our idols is interest; in one side you put God and on the other side the interest; the population in the contemporary world up to 90% shall avow to interest; that of interest is justified whereas the part on God is not reasoned. Inasmuch they bring interest before God, this is a kind of polytheism (now I don’t want to transmit this in the other domains of life). There might be a possibility to earn halal in life, and yet you choose to earn haram even though you know that God knows this, that He knows what you are doing, that He is following your deeds; these are all elements of inner shirk or even idolization of certain objects which do not behold or represent any significant importance.
Look now, unfortunately I understand we need to solace, but we cannot allow to come to the stage for this condition of relaxing to become our idol. Another matter is the example with sports, we have idolized sport to the extent that it has even turned into a daily jargon in our conversations. Among the Turks they say “En bűyűk Galatasaray” – “Galatasay are the greatest”. Among our tradition en bűyűk – the greatest, is used to refer to God, Allah Akbar. This is not shirk, one who says this does not motion out of his iman, but you can still see how this has been idolized and taken from words, since language is the most vivid portray of what one is thinking. Then we come across various singers, I am not against music you know I myself listen to music, but it does not need to be greatly idolized to the extent to drive us crazy. We should show that love to Allah Almighty, to show love to the Prophet (PBUH), and the rest of the issues should only be there to serve us for relaxing. Regarding music, last night I heard one professor say a very good thing: “Music, to the one remembering God appends his deity, whereas to the one who commits to wrong doing, to the fasik it augments the decaying”, inasmuch to the good person it appends the goodness, to the wicked one it decays him further.
The most crucial element within the wahdaniyat is that beside God in the universe we ought not to avow to another existence, in reality not to accept our own existence. When we think that we have become somebody (hey, I am this important figure now) have in mind that that shall only bring decay; genuine and ultimate existence only God has. Even when you speak on matters, like somebody might be wealthy, somebody might be more intelligent or somebody might believe that everything which he has become arises from himself only, it all instead comes from God alone. Henceforth when we shall see a success in us, we should take our hands up and say: “Ya Rabb, gratification be upon you, since if it was not for You, I would have not been here”, inasmuch this supplements our wealth, knowledge and all other things.
Decisively next week we shall speak on the two last attributes and with this we shall finish this Ramadan. The Saturday evening is the Laylat al-Qadr, and inshaAllah that night in the mosque of Saat in Tetovo we shall sing ilahi, conduct dhirk there in the mosque, have a brief lecture and have a good night, inshaAllah you also come. Thank you.