“God descended wisdom
That enlightens man
Then He stood between it
It was a face of man,
There it was Mohammed”
(Naim Frasher, Qerbelaja)
The desert is the place in which the eternity of the sand and stars occurs. It is a space of freedom where there is no calculation of time and space. A school of love; in which the language of instruction is the sky. There are no paths, no traces in the desert. No trace in the soft and emotional sand can be compared to the dazzling caress of dusk. The hill like sands inevitably motion from one shape to another, as if the desert renews itself in each moment. Even the song of the desert is in synchronization with its structure. In the rhythm of wind and life that motion together with the wind, in the escaping melody of eternity and in the everlasting of the presence, this song is born. Everyone who walks in this desert cannot forget this song. The desert, says one poet, is the language of God that makes sound from the fine pebbles of the desert sand.
To understand the desert is to understand the Prophet (PBUH). This is the place where the Prophet (PBUH) purified his soul. He has gained awakening for control of time and space. The concept of faith and oneness passes through the desert. Its main shrine rests amid the desert. The feet of the quite traveler towards the ultimate truth of the being must touch in the desert sand, his lips must burn from the heat whereas his tongue needs to dry out from thirst.
The first traveler in this primordial path is Adam (PBUH) and his wife Hawa. Lost and tired from separation with God they joined the desert sand in the sacred hill of Arafah. Abraham’s wife, Hajar, discovered water for her son amid the desert. Whereas in one cold and dark evening of winter, coming back from Midian going to Egypt with his wife, Moses (PBUH) lost his way amid the desert. The desert of
Moses was Sinai, and on top of it, the At-Tur hill is located. The flame of the Sacred Spirit burnt Moses (PBUH) in the branch of a tree and asked him to abandon all of his material and physical possessions and to experience the essence of the Sinai pilgrimage.
In the desert, a pair of angelic wings while singing in high voice “Subhanakalahumma wa bihamdika wa tebarakesmuke wa teala jedduke wa la ilahe gayruke” (You are Most High God, Praise be to You, Your name is Blessed, Your being Is most High, there is no other but You)” they had laid the ground to the first shrine on earth. Abd al-Muttalib was holding in his lap the ruler of the university who had just been born and by the same words as Imran and Hana, when they had given Maryam to serve at Beytu Makdis, in joyous tears had whispered “For you shrine, even if you are filled with idolatry, from four surrounding walls I hear “There is no other God except Allah”, I give this child wrapped in pears of light as your gift”.
I believe this words of Abd al-Muttalib on the caress wind of the desert were transferred to the inspiration of Wagner and his opera “ Die Gutterdammerung”. In a flame that captures the world “the gods” burn. A New era will arise.
The world is one dark desert that absorbs the light from the sun. And the sun absorbs it from the source of nur, from Mohammed (PBUH). The world is a plant that takes the water from Mohammed (PBUH), The world is a seed that takes its nutriment from Mohammed (PBUH). Without it the world is without light, without water and without nourishment. All of the values in it are scattered as idolatries in Wagner’s opera.
It was during a similar period when it was the heavenly will for this desert to experience the cultivation of the rose of mercy. The water of life: Mohammed (PBUH). It was this essence that brought together Adam and Hawa in the Arafah hill, it was that which discovered the water of life amid Safa and Marwa and washed the lips of Ismail in the lap of Hajar was that which then become light and guidance of Moses (PBUH) in the desert of Sinai, and it was that which was and is the pillar of faith, goodness, justice and of humanity until the end of this existential form. Mohammed (PBUH) this beacon and guidance at night, for the world in the night gives guidance and advice to people on how to manage and live their everyday life. He gives advices from the final stage of life to the viewpoint on values on all spheres of life. The prophetic tradition, at the beginning gave those specific individuals a philosophy of life, and with time and the socializing of the religious feeling among individuals this philosophy turned into a social culture with a special identity. The Prophet (PBUH) has created an unparalleled reform of
the human interaction and mindset. His society has presented a good example between the presentation of religion with culture and the social identity. His life and work is a paradigm that encompasses all meaningful elements and values of our physical and metaphysical life. This prophetic spirit has been transmitted to the way of life, the everyday experience and the Muslim feeling through centuries up to date. Exegesis and religious-cultural hermeneutics that various Muslim societies have developed in the historic process through their developing civilization in the world have been built on the social typology of the “golden age”.
The contemporary world has lost its orient and religion. Along with culture and identity, they have obtained the shape of the sand hills of the dark desert that can easily alter their shape by a slight wind blow. The Clash of Civilizations by Huntington, The last Day of Fukuyaman provided us a freedom not but by choice, but by violence. This type of freedom is becoming the main attraction of existence of happiness by the mass media. If we take a look at the situation in which Muslims are found nowadays, we can note that there is a dangerous game being played between ourselves and others as well; some are betraying us by claiming prudency of religion, as if we are we the best out there, and others are telling us not to be preoccupied with the world developments around us. We have different dimensions here all leading to fractions some of them speak of the conversion of crypto and other dangerous elements. While we also have fractions that proclaim themselves Islamic and in essence they reject Islam at the same time. The cultural viewpoint to which we identify ourselves as contemporary people, has been assaying all religions and other cultures expect for itself. Not only this but it considers others as a dangerous element for the individual aspect. Today, culture and religion no longer consider the positivist theories and atheism as their main danger, but the populist culture of the everyday of people. The populist culture is the biggest danger for the development and the continuum of that development among the religious ones in relation to the positive criteria.
This danger needs to be assayed by being neutral, if we wish to avoid the religious, ethical and intellectual human chaos. We need to have it clear that this problem will not be solved by relying on modernity or anti modernity. The main issue is that we have been negligent and have failed to give a pragmatic diagnosis to matters. We also come across a vivid lacking of dealing with issues in their current state, and facing them accordingly in the time we live in. Today’s problems can be solved if we only look at recent events and if we take for basis the revealing prophetic typology. The typology of the prophetic society is presented in accordance and harmony with religion and the world. Its culture is not only aware of the ideological and practical differences in respect to itself, but even the differences outside itself it considers them as human realities and seeks to find a
common ground for social harmony with them. The human dimension and its representation for the integrity of human kind is similar to the universal message of the Prophet (PBUH). Its main strive has been to insert the peaceful everyday life, foundation of religion on basis of confidence, the ideal of man accepting himself and the surrounding and the ideal representation of ethical values.
Nowadays in all of the above mentioned principles as Muslims we are facing problems. The concept of mercy in all humankind in Islam has been somehow tolerant and has allowed a lot raising questions and even pessimism to penetrate its principles. Surely we cannot speak about the ideal religiousness which has exceeded the frames of logic and mature knowledge. Precisely to this starting with the historic and recent reality of the prophetic typology we ought to re-analyze the complex matters and issues of the current time we are living in. The prophetic tradition except for its religion dimension is also a piece and part of our culture. It encompasses the codes without which our cultural and ethnical memory cannot be read. I believe it is time for us to escape the Balkan syndrome that turned into paradoxical metaphor for the uncivilized and primitive mindsets in people. To grow free from the “balkanization of societies” semantic that today mainly refers to belittling words and marks the fragmentations of an entire collection in smaller and smaller groups that end up in segregation, battles, harsh hatred, in cunning moral prudency and different ancient rituals.
Protecting our personal and multi-dimensional identity today is not capable through rising defensive physical, mental, ideological and nationalistic walls and neither by inserting individual guardians and protectors of all kind to keep us at bay from the assault of the different, so called other religious, cultural or civilized species, even if this assault might be interpreted as un-cultural.
Only in the strength of the metaphysical and ontological nature that in practice is built with the persona of the Prophet (PBUH), the fortress in the desert of personal intimacy can be established as an essential structure of each individual soul, preferably one enlightened human, from which the feeling of primordial religiousness arises, and the silence of the personality planted in each segment of human being. And only this fortress, because in itself it is part of the universal and the unconditional freedom and limitless compassion towards the universal, between the East and West, resists the universal or plantar assault of the culture and globalized world and worldly civilization.