The Mystery of the Two Natures

by Frithjof Schuon
Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Spring, 1974). World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

Editor's note: The following is from an updated translation of the essay, approved by the estate of Frithjof Schuon.

It is a strange fact in the history of Christianity that Pope Honorius I, though an impeccable pontiff, was expelled from the Church by the Sixth Ecumenical Council for the sole reason of having hesitated concerning the question of the two wills of Christ. A century and a half after this popes death, the Seventh Ecumenical Council considered it useful or necessary to ratify the excommunication of Honorius I and to include his name in the anathema of all known heresies. This ostracism is logically surprising when one is aware of the complexity of the issue at stake. For some, Christ has two wills since he is true man and true God; for others, these two wills are but one sinceas Honorius himself saidChrists human will cannot operate in contradiction to his divine will. One could say grosso modo that Christ possesses two wills in principle and one in fact; or again, one could use the image of two overlapping circles and express oneself thus: if it goes without saying that Christ possesses a priori two distinct wills, given his two incommensurable natures, there nonetheless is a region in his person where the two wills blend, as is seen precisely in the geometric symbolism of two intersecting circles. What can be said concerning the two wills applies above all and with all the more reason to the two natures: if it is true that Christ is at the same time both man and God, two things are then incontrovertible, namely, the duality and the unity of his nature. We are not saying that the monophysites, who admit only the unity of Christs nature, are right as against the Orthodox and Catholics, but neither do we say that they are intrinsically wrong from their point of view; and the same holds, as a result, for the monothelites, who simply apply the monophysite principle to a particular aspect of the nature of the God-Man. The justification of the monophysites appears, quite paradoxically, in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: it seems to us that it would be appropriate to apply to the Eucharistic elements what is affirmed dogmatically of Christ, namely, that he is true man and true God; if this is so, one could equally admit that the Eucharist is tru e bread and true Body or true wine and true Blood without compromising its divinity. To say that the bread is but an appearance is to apply to the Eucharist the doctrine judged hereticalof the monophysites, for whom Christ is, precisely, only apparently a man since he is really God; now just as the quality of true man in Catholic and Orthodox doctrine does not preclude Christ from being true God, so should the quality of true bread not preclude the host from being true Body in the minds of theol ogians, all the more so as both thingsthe created and the Uncreatedare incommensurable, which means that the physical reality of the elements does not exclude their divine content, any more than the real corporeality of Christ prevents the presence of the divine nature. It must be said again that monophysitism and therefore also transubstantiationism are not intrinsically wrongthe opposite would in fact be astonishing and for the following reason: to acknowledge that Christs humanity is a vehicle of the divine nature amounts to saying that if, in one respect, the human side is really human, it is so in a way that is nonetheless different from the humanity of ordinary men; the divine Presence transfigures or transubstantiates in a certain way, and a priori, the human nature; Christs body is

already here below what heavenly bodies are, with the sole difference that it is nevertheless affected by some of the accidents of earthly life. The same is true for the Eucharist: if in one respect it is real bread and real wine, in anotherwhich does not abolish the firstit is in fact substantially more than ordinary matter; metaphysically, this does not oblige one to pretend that this matter is only an appearance, but theologically, from the point of view of uni-dimensionalwe might say planimetricalternatives, the negation of real matter is probably the only means for a certain mentality of affirming effectively and enduringly the transcendence of the Eucharist. Nonetheless, this doctrine is bound to be a two-edged sword, the dangers of which can be neutralized only by esoteric truth, or theosophy in the ancient and true sense of the word. Theologians seem to think that bread and wine, as natural substances, are unworthy of the divine Presence, and this sentiment brings to mind a thesis of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, which is not irrelevant here. Hellenists[1] deemed the Incarnation to be unworthy of God owing to the frailty and impurity of earthly bodies; in his Great Catechesis, Saint Gregory answers that sin alone, not fleshly materiality, is unworthy of God. The Greeks might have responded that corporeal miseries, being traces of original sin and the fall, partake in the indignity of sin and unquestionably manifest it; and the Bishop of Nyssa could have retorted that a proof of the compatibility between the human body and a divine inherence is provided by the inherence of the Intellect, which is of a heavenly order and whose transcendence the Greeks are the first to acknowledge. The decisive argument is that these two orders, the created and the Uncreated, share no common measure and that nothing that is merely naturalwhatever its distant cause may becan oppose itself to the Presence of God. * * *

The uninformed reader who finds in the Koran that Jesus was one of those brought nigh ( muqarrabn) and one of the righteous (slihn)Srah of The Family of Imran: 45, 46has the following reaction: that Christ is one of those brought nigh is evident from every point of view, for if the greatest Prophets are not close to God, who then could be? And that Christ was one of the righteous is evident a fortiori and by several orders of magnitude, mathematically speaking. In reality, both seeming pleonasms are merely ellipses meant to illustrate a doctrinal position directed against the Christian thesis of the twofold nature of Christ; generally speaking, when the Koran appears to make statements that are all too obvious, and disappointing in their context, it is engaging in implicit polemics; in other words, it is aiming at a particular opinion, which it does not enunciate and which needs to be known in order for one to understand the passage. What Islam intends to affirm, in its way and according to its perspective, is that Jesus is true man and true God: instead of saying man, the Koran says righteous so as to define immediately the natur e of this man; and since its intention is to specify that no man is God, it suggests what in Christian terms is called the divine nature of Christ by using the expression brought nigh, which denotes the most elevated station Islam can attribute to a human being. Be that as it may, the twofold nature of Christ is sufficiently specified in the following verse: Jesus the Messiah, son of Mary, is the Messenger of God and His Word, which He [God] placed in Mary, and [Jesus is] of His Spirit [the Spirit of God] (Srah of Women: 171). In admitting the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, Islam accepts in its way the divine nature of Jesus:[2] in its way, that is, with the obvious reservation that it always intends to dissociate the divine from the human, and therefore that the Christic phenomenon is for it no more than a particular marvel of Omnipotence. * * *

We have said above that the ostracism by the two Councils of Honorius I in particular and of the monophysites-monothelites in general is logically surprising; now to say logically is to imply a reservation, for it is no surprise from an exoteric point of view that a too fragmentary or in some respects inopportune formulation should be considered a crime;[3] this shows that one is dealing with a domain that must be distinguished from that of pure, hence disinterested, knowledge, which admits the interplay of aspects and points of view without ever getting locked in artificial or inflammatory alternatives. It is important, however, not to confuse theological elaborations, which are fluid and productive of scissions, with dogmas themselves, which are fixed; such elaborations though also providential on their level take on the appearance of dogmatic systems in their turn, but far more contingently so than those within which they are situated as modalities; these are minor upyas, if one will, that is, saving mirages or spiritual means, designed to render more accessible that major upya which is religion. Now it is essential to keep in mind

the idea of lesser truth or relative error contained in this Buddhist notion; it means that there is, on the part of Heaven, tolerance through Mercy and not complete approbation. For man is a fo rm, and he needs forms; but since he alsoand even above allneeds the Essence, which religion or wisdom is supposed to communicate to him, he really needs a form of the Essence or a manifestation of the Void ( shnyamrti). If in one respect form is a prolongation of Essence, in another it contradicts it, which accounts on the one hand for the ambiguity of the exoteric upya, and on the other hand for two aspects of esoterism, one of which extends and intensifies the dogmatic upya, whereas the other is independent of it to the point of being able to contradict it. To the objection that esoterism also belongs to the formal order, one must respond that esoterism is aware of this and that it tends to transcend the accidentality of its own form, whereas exoterism is totally and heavily identified with its form. What results from this, in an altogether self-evident way, is that the dividing line between orthodoxy and apparent, and therefore merely extrinsic, heresy depends on psychological or moral contingencies of an ethnic or cultural provenance; while the fundamental upya, quite clearly, transmits total truth through its symbolism, the same cannot be said of that minor upya which is theology; its relativitywith respect to total truthis moreover proven, in the Christian sphere, by the notion of theological progress, which contains an admission at once candid and appalling.[4] It is true that every theology can lead incidentally to the profoundest insights, but it cannot, in its general and official doctrine, draw the conclusions such insights entail. It is a radical error to believe that the greatest spokesmen of theology, even if they are canonized saints, hold ipso facto all the keys to supreme wisdom;[5] they are instruments of Providence and are not called upon to go beyond certain limits; on the contrary, their role is to formulate what these limits are, according to a perspective willed directly or indirectly by Heaven. By indirectly we mean those cases wher e Heaven tolerates a limitation requiredor made desirableby a particular human predisposition, perhaps not welldefined a priori, but nonetheless proving to be predominant; this explains the majority of the differences or divergencesin most cases unilateral[6]between the Western and Eastern Churches. Some of these differentiations may seem a gratuitous luxury, but they are nonetheless unavoidable and finally opportune, collective mentalities being what they are. Even so, this opportuneness has nothing absolute about it and cannot prevent a kind of poison, concealed in this or that theological particularism, from manifesting itself in the course of history, belatedly and upon contact with false ideas whose possibility theologians were unable to foresee. In considering the most general factors of the issue, we shall say that Semitic dogmatisms, as well as Hindu darshanas like Ramanujan Vishnuism, pertain to the chivalrous and heroic spirit,[7] which necessarily tends toward voluntarism and individualism, and thus toward a moralizing anthropomorphism. It is in view of such a temperament, and because of it, that exclusivist[8] dogmas are crystallized and their corresponding theologies elaborated, which clearly implies that this temperament or this manner of seeing and feeling is acceptable to God as the raw material of the upya; nonetheless, since each religion is by definition a totalityas is proven by its imperative and unconditional character and since God could never impose absolute limits, the religious phenomenon by definition comprises the esoteric phenomenon, which is transmitted in principle and as a matter of preference, in different degrees, by vocations that favor contemplation, including sacred art. A certain underlying warrior or knightly mentality[9] accounts for many theological oscillations and their ensuing disputesthe nature of Christ and the structure of the Trinity having been the notable questions at issue in the Christian worldjust as it accounts for such forms of narrow-mindedness as the incomprehension and intolerance of ancient theologians toward the metaphysics and mysteries of Hellenism. It is moreover this same mentality that produced the divergence, in the very heart of the Greek tradition, between Aristotle and Plato, Plato having personified in essence the brahmna spirit inherent in the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition,[10] whereas the Stagirite formulated a metaphysics that was in certain respects centrifugal and perilously open to the world of phenomena, actions, experiences, and adventures.[11] After this parenthesis, which the general context of the case of Honorius I permits or even demands, let us return to our doctrinal subject. * * *

The problem of the two natures of Christ can be reduced, in the last analysis, to the relationship between the relative and the Absolute: if Christ is the Absolute entered into relativity, it follows, not only that the relative should return thereby to absoluteness, but also and above all that the relative should be prefigured in the Absolute; this is the meaning of the uncreated Word, which manifests itself in the human order, not only in the form of Christ or the Avatra, but also and a priori in the form of the immanent Intellect, and this brings us back to the complementarity between Revelation and Intellection. The Absolute manifested in the human world is at once Truth and Presence, or one or the other of these two elements, but without being able to exclude its complement. The element Presence takes precedence in Christianity, hence the sacraments and the emphasis on the volitive aspect of man; in other climates, and above all in universal gnosis, which retains its rights everywhere, it is the element Truth that determines the means of the path, in diverse ways and on diverse levels. In order to be as clear as possible, it is necessary to insist on the following principle: there is no possible relationship between the Absolute as such and relativity; for such a relationship to exist there must be something relative in the Absolute and something absolute in the relative. In other words: if one admits that the world is distinct from God, one must also admit that this distinction is prefigured in God Himself, which means that His unity of Essencewhich is never in questioncomprises degrees; not to admit this polarization in divinis is to leave the existence of the world without a cause, or it is to admit that there are two distinct realities and thus two Gods, namely, God and the world. For one of two things: either the world is explained starting from God, in which case there is in God prefiguration and creative act, and thus relativity; or else there is in God no relativity, in which case the world is unexplainable and is placed on a level with God. We once again emphasize that divine Relativity, the cause of the world, fulfills the role of the Absolute in relation to the world; in this sense, theologians are right to uphold in certain cases the absoluteness of all that is divine; absoluteness, for them, is thus synonymous with Divinity. At the risk of repeating ourselves, we could express this as follows: whoever admits the presence of the Absolute in the world, in the form of Christ for example, must admit equally the presence of the relative in Godin the form of the Word, precisely; whoever denies that there can be any relativity in God must consider the Creator, the Revealer, or the Redeemer as being situated beneath God, in the manner of the demiurge; for the Absolute as such neither creates, nor reveals, nor saves. In refusing to admit the relativity of thehypostases, there is an element of confusion between the absolute and the sublime: since the Divinity deserves or demands worship, there are some who want the Divinity to be absolutely absolute in every possible respect, if we may express ourselves, provisionally and incidentally, in such a manner. Now God is deserving of the worship of latria, not inasmuch as He comprises no relativityfor in this respect He is humanly inaccessiblebut inasmuch as He is absolute with respect to the relativity of the world, while comprising an aspect of relativity in view of this very contact. One might object that the thesis of reciprocity between the Absolute and the relative does not take into account the incommensurability, and hence the asymmetry, between the two terms; this is both true and false. If one wished to place emphasis on the incommensurable nature of God, one could not do so simply by denying relativity within the divine Principle; one could do so adequately only by separating the creative Principle from the intrinsic Absolute, which takes us back to the alternative between Paramtma and My, and then to the absorption of the second term by the first, precisely as a result of their incommensurability. This reduction of the real to the One without a second is exactly what those who deny relativity in divinis do not want, all the more as they hold fiercely to the unconditional and in some way massive reality of the world; in wanting an absolutely absolute God situated above an unconditionally real world, they seek to keep both feet on the ground without sacrificing anything of transcendence. In reality, however, the Universe is no more than an inward and, as it were, dreamlike dimension of God: it reflects the divine qualities in a mode that entails contrast, movement, and privation, thereby realizing the possibility for God to be other than God, a possibility contained in the divine Infinitude itself.

NOTES

[1] We are referring here to the partisans of Hellenism, that is to say, of the Hellenist tradition, which we cannot term pagan since we are envisaging it with respect to its spiritual values, though the word Hellenist more often designates, on the one hand, the Hellenized Jews of anti quity and, on the other, scholars versed in Greek language and literature. [2] According to a hadth, Jesus and Mary were the only human beings the devil did not touch at birth with his claw, and who therefore did not utter a cry. [3] Let it be said in passing that the anathematization of Honorius I proves, moreover, not that he was heretical, but that he was considered as such and that, as a result, the Church admits that a pope can lapse into heresyexcept, of course, when promulgating a dogmatic or moral definition ex cathedra; one might reject this by proposing that Honorius I did no more than sin against discipline; but in that case, the anathemas heaped upon him canonically would be inexplicable. Be that as it may, there is nothing in principle to prevent a pope from ruining the Church without in the least having to make an ex cathedra pronouncement; the greatest theologians admit the possibility of a pope lapsing into heresy, and the whole problem for them then becomes whether the heretical pope is deposed ipso facto or must be deposed canonically. However, the possibility at issue hereof which Honorius I is not at all an example can occur in so severe a degree only under utterly abnormal circumstances, which the twentieth century in fact affords; there would still be the question whether the pope who might be incriminated was a legitimate pope with regard to the conditions of his election. [4] One of two things: either there is theological progress, in which case theology is of little importance; or theology is important, in which case there can be no theological progress. [5] Thus the wisdom of the saints, which some seek to set in opposition to metaphysics, i s but an abuse of language; the wisdom of Ecclesiasticus is not, after all, of the same order as that of the Upanishads. It should be noted in this connection that if the Semitic Scriptures, even the most fundamental, do not have the tenor of the Vednta, this is because, unlike the Vednta, they are not directed exclusively to an intellectual elite, but have a function that obliges them to take account of possibilities found in the collective soul and to forestall the most diverse of reactions. To this it must be added that a sacred book, like the Gospel for example, which seems to speak to sinners, at least at the outset, really addresses any man insofar as he sins; this confers upon the notion of sin the widest significance possible that of a centrifugal motion, whether compressive or dispersingeven when there is properly speaking no objective transgression. Sacred language, even if directed at first to specific men, is finally directed to man as such. [6] For the spirit of innovation is to be found with the Latins, a fact resulting moreover from the paradoxical coincidence between prophetism and caesarism in the papacy. [7] The fact that Ramanuja was a brahman and not a kshatriya is no grounds for objection, since all castes inasmuch as they are particular predispositions are reflected or repeated in each single caste, so that a brahman of a kshatriya type is individually equivalent to a kshatriya of a brahman type. Furthermore, every human collectivity produces a human type with no affinity for speculative thought; it is all the more paradoxical and significant that this is the type or mentality which a Hindu would call a shdra outlook that determines all the so-called new theology and constitutes its sole originality and sole mystery. [8] Such an adjective is not a pleonasm, for a metaphysical axiom itself can also have a dogmatic character, practically speaking, but without therefore having to exclude formulations diverging from it. On the other hand, there are metaphysical axioms whose conditional character is recognized a priori, depending on the degree of relativity of the idea expressed: hence, archetypes contained in the creative Intellect are more real than their cosmic manifestation while being illusory with respect to the divine Essence; such and such Hindu Divinities are dogmatically inviolable, but they vanish before Paramtm or, rather, are reabsorbed therein, so that it may be possible to deny without heresy their existence, provided of course that by the same token one deny all beings that are even more relative. [9] One cannot lose sight of the fact that, in all climates, the same causes produce the same effects in highly diverse proportionsand that India is no exception; the quarrels of sectarian Vishnuism are a case in point.

[10] It goes without saying that the classical periodwith its grave intellectual and artistic deviation and its recurrence at the time of the Renaissance are patent examples of warrior or knightly, and hence kshatriya, Luciferianism; however, we do not have in mind here deviations as such since, on the contrary, we are speaking of normal manifestations, which are acceptable to Heaven; otherwise there could be no question of voluntarist and emotional upyas. [11] But let us not make Aristotelianism responsible for the modern world, which is due to a convergence of various factors, such as the abuses and subsequent reactionsprovoked by the unrealistic idealism of Catholicism, and also by the diverging and irreconcilable demands of the Latin and Germanic mentalities, all of which lead, precisely, to scientism and the profane mentality.

The Only Heritage We Have

by Gai Eaton
Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring 1974) World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com THE arrogance of the West in relation to other cultures may be decently cloaked in our time, for this is an age of polite falsities, but it is still obsessive. The fact that non-Europeans are expected to adopt Western patterns of Government and Western post-Christian morality (as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations) is sufficient evidence of this. Condemnation of any departure from Western norms of behavior by Africans, Arabs, or Asians is now expressed more in terms of sorrow than of anger, but it is expressed nonetheless and betrays a complacency that has scarcely been dented by two World Wars or by the dim realization that our history is a quite unparalleled story of destruction and exploitation. This complacency blocks the way to any appreciation of what has been and, to some extent, still isthe human norm elsewhere in the world, outside the environment we have created in the aftermath of Christianity. And yet, without such understanding, it is quite impossible for the modern world to see itself objectively or in context. Mircea Eliade has suggested that for the past half-century Western scholars have approached the study of mythology from a completely different viewpoint to that of their nineteenth century predecessors. Unlike the Victorians, for whom the word myth was equivalent to fiction, modern scholarsso he saysaccept the myth in the terms in which it has been understood in the archaic societies, that is to say as a true story telling us something about the nature of the universe and about mans place in it. This may be true of certain scholars, but it is very far from being true of the general public or, for that matter, of the television pundits who play such a dominant role in molding public opinion. In this field, as in so many others, the intellectual assumptions of ordinary people are still based upon the scientific thinking of the last century; and if reputable scholars have at last abandoned the notion that the great archaic myths are no more than an inept, pre-scientific attempt to explain the observed phenomena of nature, their views have certainly not reached the writers of school text-books or penetrated the minds of most educated people in the Western world. A superficial study of the life-patterns, myths, and rituals of primitive peoples played a significant part in undermining the religious faith of Christians in the second half of the nineteenth century. First, it was taken for granted that these other races were lower on the evolutionary scale than Europeans (What, after all, had they invented? Where were their railway trains?). Secondly it was assumed by people who had completely lost the capacity for analogical and symbolical thinking that the myths by which these races lived were meant to be taken quite literally and represented no more than the first gropings of the rational animal towards a scientific explanation of the universe. On this basis, since it was impossible to miss the parallels

between primitive religion and the most advanced of religions, Christianity, the question had to be asked whether the latter also should not be classified as a pre-scientific effort to account for observed facts. If these arguments were sound, then either one of two conclusions might be drawn from them. It could be assumed that religion is a phenomenon which evolves in step with human evolution, provided it is constantly purged of its primitive and unscientific elements and kept up -to-date; or else that religion as such, including Christianity, is no more than a vestige of the pre-scientific age and should be discarded together with all the other superstitions that we have inherited from the times of ignorance. Protestant sects constantly on the defensive are only too ready to adopt the first of these conclusions in the mistaken notion that it offers their religion some hope of survival, and we have recently seen the hierarchy of the Catholic Church stumbling into this very pitfall. They imagine that Christianity might be allowed to survive on a modest scale if it can be proved to be useful to society, that is, to make men better citizens, mo re decent neighbors, more conscientious tax-payers; and they are ready to abandon everything that smacks of other worldliness, of metaphysics or of ritualism. The more ground they give, the harder they are pressed by their enemies. And yet there is only one question that needs to be asked, and the answer to this question cannot depend upon any contingency, let alone upon social or moral considerations. If religion is true, then it would remain no less true even if one could prove that it makes men worse rather than better citizens, more cruel rather than kinder. If it is false, then it would be no less false if shown to be capable of transforming this world into a earthly paradise. Behind and above all human and moral considerations this question stands alone in stark simplicity and the way in which it is answered is totally decisive. * * *

There are occasions when poison and antidote are to be found in the same place. Faced with the confusion of perspectives which has been the inevitabl e result of the breakdown of those human and geographical barriers which formerly divided different cultures and different religious domains into so many separate worlds, there is no going back to the simplicity of a single, self -sufficient viewpoint. It becomes essential to go forward to the recognition that perspectives never really clash, their orientation being always towards the same, unique centre. The knowledge of other doctrines, other ways to the centre, which has done so much to shake the faith of those who had believed their own truth to be the only one (as, in a sense, it was, since they needed no other to attain salvation) must now be used to revitalize all those relative truths which serve as bridges between our present existence and a realm beyond such relativities. One bridge is enough for any man. But first he must be convinced of its soundness. Under present circumstances this seems to depend upon having some general knowledge of the nature of bridges. This knowledge can scarcely be effective unless it takes account of what is in fact the specifically human heritage (and primal material out of which all bridges have been built), the primordial tradition or perennial philosophy. This is the bedrock of all human awareness of what we are a nd where we are, and it might be said that all the doctrines which have served to keep us human through the ages and to enable us to make use of our heritage have been no more than divinely willed adaptations of this basic wisdom to the increasingly desperate needs of a fallenand still fallinghumanity. The great acts of renewal, the Revelations from which are descended the world religions as we now know them, took place not as milestones on the evolutionary way but as medicines for a worsening sickness. They happened when (and wherever) the archaic wisdom was in so grave a condition of decay that a direct intervention from outside the normal context of human existence was required if men were to be saved from losing all sense of their real nature and destiny. In the case of Hinduism, the acts of renewal did not break the continuity of the tradition, but gave it a new impetus. Christianity was able to maintain a close link with the Judaic tradition (hence the inclusion of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible). And Islam, although it came into being in what was virtually a spiritual vacuum, has always been perfectly explicit as to its role: the Prophet Muhammad was not an innovator, but a reminder of forgotten truths and the restorer of an ancient wisdom, pointing a way of return to the normal and universal religion of mankind and crowning, by his mission, the work of countless prophets and messengers who had maintained the link between God and man since the beginning of time.

Such interventions and renewals would have been unnecessary if it had been possible then (or now) for men to tap the full resources of the primordial traditions by remounting the stream of time and as the People of the Book might saybursting back into the Garden of Eden. But the direction of time is only too clearly indicated in everything around us, in the running down of clocks, in the ageing and decay of things and organisms and in the dissolution of patterns into their component fragments. This direction may be temporarily reversed (since creation is not a closed system) through the inbreak of That which is outside time, through Revelation or through the rituals of renewal practiced by many archaic peoples, but the possibility of returning once and for all to the place from which mankind set out does not exist within our frame of reference. The lightning stroke seizes upon the wandering fragments and organizes them into a pattern through which some quantum of meaning finds expression or some message is flashed upon the screen of existence. The pattern, however, must eventually be subjected to the normal processes of time and suffer the common fate of all things under the sun. This is why we are denied access to the fullness of our heritage and surmise its existence from the bits and pieces, the echoes and the memories which are seen to lie all around us if only we are prepared to recognize them for what they are. These fragments, still to be found in the myths and rituals of the few primitive peoples who have not yet been totally submerged in the stream of modernism, are immensely precious. They may have been warped by the passage of time, and those who still live by them may in many cases have forgotten their true meaning, but the fact remains that they exist, they are accessible to us and, like a charred but still just legible document, they provide confirmation of our viceregal identity. The religions with which the Westerner is most closely acquainted those of Semitic origin and, perhaps, Buddhismare historical in character, first in the quite simple sense that they do have a history strictly comparable to that of human institutions and temporal events, and secondly because the story of their achievements and of the vicissitudes they have suffered takes a significant place in their teaching. Time as we experience it in our daily lives is the background against which they are observed and understood. The archaic doctrines, on the other hand, have no history. Their relationship to ordinary time has been that of rocks towards the sea which gradually erodes them. In this lies their strength, insofar as they recall conditions before the dawn of recorded history, and their weakness, in that they cannot serve as models in terms of which the men of our time might organize their lives. They might in a certain sense be said to rest upon the fiction that nothing has changed, nothing has happened, since time began. They have survived precisely because events in time have been treated as meaningless unless they could be related back to the pre-temporal patterns of creation, reintegrated into these patterns and thus transcended so far as their historical actuality is concerned. Inwardly, at least, they have made time stand still. A particular characteristic quality of all traditional societies, says Mircea Eliade, is their opposition to the ordinary concept of time and their determination constantly to return, through ritual action, to the mythical moment of their origin, the Great Time. Neither the objects of the exterior world n or human acts as such have any separate being or significance they are real only as imitations of the universal, primordial gestures made by God or the gods at the moment of creation. Nothing is worth noticing or mentioning unless it has been bathed in the waters of its source. It follows that, for the ancients as for primitive peoples up to the present time, myth and history could not and cannot be separated, historical events being valid, in their view, only to the extent that they illustrated mythical themes. The modern historian, concerned to discover what really happened, has the unenviable task of trying to separate the two, but for the ancients it was the myth the pre-temporal eventthat was truly real and happenings came about only because th e reverberations of this event determined the patterns of time orif we translate this into religious termsthat it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. On the one hand we have a view in terms of which the world could not under any circumstances be thought of as separated from its timeless source, on the other a view which takes this separation completely for granted. In the personal life as in the wider context of world events archaic man has considered the actions of daily life to be real only if they fill out the contours of a pre-existent and harmonious mould. There are certain ways of hunting (or, in agricultural communities, of plowing, sowing and reaping), certain ways of eating and making love and constructing artifacts which are in accordance with the heavenly precedents handed down in the myths and rituals of his peopleWe must do what the gods did Thenand all other ways are disorderly and ultimately unproductive. His thirst for the Real and his awareness that, if he commits himself

to trivialities, he must himself become trivial and lose the quality of dignity, the quality of viceregality, dominates all his faculties. In the circumstances of our time, so far from our origins, it might be said that he is defeated before he even starts, that the stream of time now runs too fast and too fiercely to be resisted and that the echoes which still reach him from That Time are too dim to be effectively obeyed. This may be so. But he lives on as a reminder and as a sign for those who are prepared to understand. The fact that archaic man is a survivor from a period when the conditions of human life were quite different to what they now are makes it difficult for him to accept as natural misfortunes such as sickness, infertility or accidental death which do not seem to us at all mysterious in their origin. For him they indicate a disruption of the harmony and order which still appear to him as normal since he retains, however dimly, some recollection of a time before these ills had become the common lot of our kind, and he therefore ascribes them to some disruptive act of witchcraft, or human failure. This is not really so remote from the religious point of view which finds their cause in human sinfulness. For the primitive as, in a certain sense, for the Christian, we live commonly under a curse, but the former because he has chosen to ignore the changes which time has brought aboutis still surprised by this fact and tries to pin the fault on someone in his immediate neighborhood. Still at home in the world, still trusting the environment (which we see as something to be subdued and conquered), he assumes its innocence and blames himself or others like himself for the ills to which his flesh is heir. He does not see the rhythms of nature as phenomena of time: the alternations of day and night and the changes of the lunar cycle and of the seasons are events which happened once and for all in That Time, and his own life is integrated into their pattern because he and they are aspects of a single, timeless order. And because time does not appear to him as a continuous, un-interrupted process, the changes which take place in the course of his life are in the nature of mutations. We know of only one rite of passage, the dreaded phenomenon of physical death, whereas the life of archaic man is scattered with deaths and rebirthsrites of naming, puberty, marriage and so oneach representing a harsh severance from the past and a total break with the habits and attachments of his former existence, so that he might be expected to re-emerge from the ritual moment into the light of common day with a new name and a new identity. In such a context physical death cannot have the quality of uniqueness that it has for us, but is simply the greatest and most cataclysmic of the rites of passage. He does not need to think or talk in terms of a life after death since he is accustomed to regard every ending as the necessary prelude to a new beginning. He himself, in this most intimate selfhood, is projected into the primordial moment when everything began and every death, every break in continuity, coincides with the primal sacrifice out of which time and multiplicity were born into their fiery and self-consuming existence. Rooted in a coherent world and free from the oppressive sense of meaninglessness which time and multiplicity induce when they are seen as self-subsisting, this man could scarcely be expected to ask the questions that we ask or to search high and low for a significance which (in his experience) saturates both the common objects of sense and the ordinary events which compose a human life-span. It is a fundamental assumption of all traditional doctrines, whether archaic or religioushowever their outward forms may differthat men have been provided not only with the mental, emotional and sensory equipment necessary for them to be able to cope with their worldly environment but also with answers to all the real questions that can be asked. The question that remains unanswered is the one that has been posed in the wrong terms. These answers, however, are not of a kind to satisfy the questioning mind when it breaks loose from the personality as a whole and demands that everything should be translated into its own specific terms; nor can they be passed from hand to hand like coins. These answers are, by their nature, bonds of connection between the individual and all that is; but because they relate not to the partial but to the whole man it follows that the whole man must be apt to receive them if they are to mean anything to him. Division and turbulence, obscurity or falsity at any level of his being, will set barriers in the way of total understanding; for totality can only be comprehended by totality: It is not the eyes which grow blind. It is the hearts within the breasts that grow blind.[1] Two quite different kinds of difficulty provide barriers to human understanding. The first (with which we are well acquainted in our age) is the technical difficulty of matters which require special training and instruction combined with an active practical intelligence if they are to be grasped, and in this case the barrier is there for all to seeno one supposes that he can master a book on nuclear physics merely because he is able to read. The second kind of difficulty is more subtle and perhaps more deceptive since it relates to the

understanding of statements, symbols and stories which, on the surface, appear transparently simple and wide-open even to the most naive and least instructed intelligence. Like the tests which the traditional hero undergoes, but with a less obvious challenge, they try each man's capacity to plumb the depths of the truth that is offered to his under-standing, but they also allow those of small capacity to think they have grasped all that there is to be grasped. In this sense they are, almost by definition, merciful, in that they give to each as much as he is able to receive. But there is always the danger that those who see only the concrete image, the outer husk, andthinking themselves intelligentassume that there is nothing more to be seen will dismiss such truths as being too trivial to merit their further attention. Of this attitude, which is the common one of our time both towards the symbolic formulations of primitive peoples and towards the religious scriptures, one might say as the Jamaicans do of a stupid man who supposes himself intelligent: Him is so ignorant that him don't even know him don't know. The symbolic and analogical modes of thought which were natural to our remote ancestors and are still natural to certain archaic peoples are regarded as primitive in the evolut ionary sense of the term, that is, as lacking in something that has since been acquired in the way of understanding. People speak of pre -logical modes of thought, implying that those who employed such modes were incapable of the full exercise of reason and therefore a little less than human. There is, however, a totally different view than can be taken of such matters and of our modern incapacity to think in the concrete and synthetic terms of symbol and analogy. According to this view, the transformation of symbols into rational concepts and into the ABC of explicit doctrines is to be regarded, not as an evolutionary advance, but as a concession to Man's diminishing aptitude for grasping any truth in its totality, its variety of aspects and it suprarational richness and density of meaning. It is the fool rather than the intelligent man who needs to have everything explained to him. As Schuon has pointed out on a number of occasions, the explicit doctrine is already inherent in the symbolic formulation. Its deployment in terms of discourse and argument adds nothing to it and can never exhaust its meaning. Indeed, when the majority of people have begun to take symbols literally so that it becomes necessary to state in conceptual form what was previously implicit, there is an unavoidable impoverishment of meaning in the process of fitting it to the rigid limitations of human language. In our time learned men find it necessary to write whole books to explain the significance of one symbol in all the variety of its implications. And if all the trees in the earth were pens and the sea, with seven more seas to help it, were ink, the words of God could not be exhausted.[2] Symbols are, in the first place, things. Our understanding of them depends upon our capacity for seeing the elements of our environment as they really are (or in terms of what they really mean) rather than as they appear in terms of human appetite. And the essential truth, says Schuon, is that everything, each thing, each energy by the fact that it exists... represents a possible entry towards the Real. [3] The process whereby the environment gradually congeals or loses its quality of transparency, until things are no more than objects which can either be put to practical use or else be kicked aside because they get in our way, is the same as the process whereby symbols are drained of meaning and reduced to the level either of poetic allegory or of primitive science. For modern man, only the objects of sense appear unquestio nably real, while everything else is either subjective or abstract. For archaic man, reality resides not in the object as such but in what it signifies: stripped of this significance it is a shadowy thing on the verge of non-existence. We are free, being what we are, to regard such a view as false, but we only make fools of ourselves if we dismiss it without even bothering to ask what it is all about and without considering if only for a moment the possibility that we might be wrong. For this is the only heritage we have. Our human past has nothing else to offer us. And before we resign ourselves to abject poverty (comforted, no doubt, by the forlorn hope that science will eventually make us rich) we might do well to recall Pascals question as to whet her the heir to a fortune would ever think of dismissing his title-deeds as forgeries without troubling to examine them. Folly, however, is more often the symptom of a vice than of a lack of intelligence, and it is not uncommon for arrogance to induce a willful blindness. If history is bunk and our human past a tale of ignorance and superstition, then we might claim to be giants; but if we are the heirs of men who were nobler than us and knew more than we do, then we are pygmies and must bow our heads in shame. * * *

There is no virtue in the accumulation of factual knowledge for its own sake, and to suggest that human intelligence is soon confused and, indeed, clogged when it is fed with too many irrelevancies is not to belittle this intelligence. But once men have wandered outside the normal limitations of the knowledge that is useful to them in terms of their spiritual and physical needs, then it becomes necessary, not to bring them back to the limited perspective (which is impossible, since history cannot be reversed), but to balance the scraps of knowledge they have picked up as a dog picks up stray bones with an awareness of truths which set these scraps in their proper context. What possible relevance can the habits of some ancient people or of an Australian aboriginal tribe have to the lives of people in modern Europe or America? None, until the latter have strayed outside their own world and begun to concern themselves with such things. But once this concern exists it may lead us to a region of false ideas which devastate our homeland like deadly bacteria brought back from outer space unless they can be rectified in terms of a perspective wider than any that is provided by a purely local viewpoint. If we insist upon knowing about things which are, from the practical point of view, none of our business, then we have to grow a few inches to accommodate this strange knowledge. Otherwise our capacity for comprehending the world, our world, as a whole that makes sense may burst at the seams. The ordinary Christian of earlier times did not need to know that God has spoken in many languages and through a great variety of masks, and the disturbing fact that the vessels in which this Speech is preserved are necessarily relative in character was irrelevant to his salvation. He was securely lodged in a religious context that fulfilled his real needs, answered his questions and provided him with his bridge to eternity. All that concerned him was to perfect and intensify his own way to God, making use of the entirely adequate doctrinal and ritual supports available to him: the knowledge that there existed alternative ways, equally effective for those to whose habits and patterns of thought they were adjusted, could not have helped him in this task. And if, through ignorance, he assumed that his own faith was the only truth and that such others as he might hear of through travelers' tales were necessarily false, this did no harm. It was when the geographical barriers came down and the Europeans first Christian and, later, ex-Christianfanned out over the globe that the situation changed radically. No blame can be attached to a person for attacking a foreign Tradition in the name of his own belief if it is done through ignorance purely and simply, says Schuon; when however this is not the case, the person will be guilty of a blasphemy, since by outraging the Divine Truth in an alien form he is merely profiting by an opportunity to offend God without having to trouble his own conscience. This is the real explanation of the gross and impure zeal displayed by those who, in the name of religious conviction, devote their lives to making sacred things appear odious...[4] A study of certain aspects of Christian missionary endeavor suggests that there was indeed a gross and impure zeal at work, but this zeal has been intensified in the service of the pseudo-religion of progress. So long as a particular religion is contained and insulated in its own world (the frontiers of which have been determined by geographical or racial factors) the arguments and dogmas upon which the faith of the majority of believers is based can remain, in the precise sense of the term, parochial. Their narrowness and their vulnerability to criticism founded upon a more sophisticated knowledge or a more rigorous logic than is provided by the parish worthies, does not matter if they are effective, that is to say, if they open windows onto the truly universal. They can, of course, only do this if they are within the limits of certain terms of referenceadequate representations of the truth, but such representations do not need to be very subtle or very comprehensive so long as they serve to awaken the truth that is already present at the centre of man's being or, from another point of view, to open his heart to the action of Grace. But religious dogmas are particularly vulnerable to those who, instead of using them as stepping-stones to a forgotten but still recover-able knowledge, sit down to examine and analyze their structure. Dogmatic doctrine cannot be more than an aide-memoire. It collapses when treated as though it were a scientific statement, for what it represents cannot be simply stated in the way that the laws which govern the movements of the planets or the formation of crystals can be stated. The latter belong to our own level of existence and may be expressed in the language of our kind, whereas the truths towards which dogmas (like symbols) point the way are not reducible to any of the dimensions of relativity. They will not come down to us, except in the form of intimations bait for the spirit not yet entirely submerged in the glassy depths. It is we who are required to go to that central place where they reside in their essential fullness, and the certainty that we are able to do this is among the basic certainties upon which the religions, as well as the

primordial doctrine, have built their castles. When this is lost sight ofand the innermost room of the castle is locked upreligion loses its raison d'etre and falls into decay. And of course we lose sight of this certainty. It gets buried under the debris of the centuries. But the innermost room is still there and the lock will still turn though the key may be rusty; for the reservoir of Grace which is the luminous centre of every Revelation is timeless, immune from the process of decay which erodes its temporal outworks. God does not retreat: it is we who go away. Our absence (carried downstream from our spiritual home) has been, according to traditional teaching, the occasion for the great religious Revelations which, if they could not outwardly and objectively restore the primordial harmonyfor Paradise lost is not regained at the same level of existence at least made possible an inward and spiritual restoration which might be reflected in the environment so far as the circumstances of the time permitted; and indeed the tales common to Christianity, Islam and Buddhism of the transformation of matter or of concord between men and beasts in the presence of the saints suggests that the environment has been restored to something of its primordial perfection at such moments. But the very fact that these moments have to be described as miraculous reminds us that time goes on. It is as ferry-boats equipped to carry men across the stream of time (rather than as dams blocking the stream) that the world's religions have provided the means of salvation. What men are to be saved from is fragmentation, dismemberment, and dispersal in multiplicity, and what they stand to lose in such a process of fragmentation, is their real identity as human beings. The unity which a particular religion imposes upon its people is necessarily somewhat rigid, at least in its outward forms, but this is the nature of ferries, and it is only as rigid structures that they can serve their purpose. The fact that one religion forbids what another permits, or that sexual and alimentary regulations are not the same for all, in no way undermines the validity of these rules in their own context, as parts of a single, seaworthy structure which has been built in the light of a particular religious perspective. The perspective determines the blueprint and the method of construction, while the given environment provides the materials. Those in our time who assert their right to approach God in their own way and condemn all organized religion seem unaware that, even if they themselves are capable of making this approach (as, in the nature of things, some few may be), they are also asserting the right of other men to drown and perhaps condemning them to drowning. The question that has to be posed is not whether the possibility exists of a man breaking through to Reality on his own, without the assistance of traditional supports and a religious framework, but whether this in fact happens save in the most exceptional cases. The answer to the first question would necessarily be in the affirmative, since it deals only with possibilities and with God all things are possible. But the second can only receive a negative answer. And this is what matters. Churches and temples are necessary, not because God is what He is, but because we are what we are. Though present everywhere, He is most easily found wherever a particular religious crystallization has, like a burning glass, focused the rays of His Grace. Such words as structure and crystallization suggest something rather more concrete than an idea or an aspiration. As we have seen, the life of archaic peoples is so thoroughly determined by their myths, symbols and rituals that what happens outside this sacred framework can hardly be said to exist. For them there can be no opposition between sacred and profane, since they are unacquainted with the profane. Given the conditions of a later time and the increasing remoteness of our world from its divine source, the world's religions have had to face this opposition, although the extent to which they have acknowledged its existence varies greatly. The orthodox Hindu has much in common with archaic man and is scarcely aware of a profane sphere set over against his ritual practice. The Moslem who still lives in a tight-knit Islamic community knows something of the same cohesion of life in the world with religious life. The case of Christianity is quite different. The Hindus never questioned the subordination of the temporal power to the spiritual, and Islam brought its own corner of the world under the rule of the spiritual descendents of the Prophet. But Christianity came into being in a hostile environment which was therefore by implication profane. Unlike Hindus or Moslems, Christians were immediately in contact with things that were not sacred and had to compromise with the profane sphere (or suffer martyrdom). Since the religion did not contain within itself such rules of conduct and of political organization as are set out in the Hindu scriptures and in the Qoran, it had to assimilate much of its worldly structure from the Hebraic environment into which it was born and from the Roman environment into which it grew to maturity. Even at the height of its power, when Christendom was mighty

and unified, a distinction was admitted between the spiritual and the temporal (therefore profane) spheres which would have seemed intolerable to Moslems at the time when the Islamic civilization was at its zenith. It was always more natural to Christians than to others to suppose that there were aspects of human life which lay outside the immediate orbit of religion. These things could be kept in order or neutralizedso long as men acted as good Christians in relation to them, but they did not in themselves belong to the sphere of the sacred. Through this loophole, unimportant so long as the majority of Westerners thought primarily in terms of being good Christians, has crept the entirely profane world of our age which goes its own way while permitting the survival of religion as a personal matterso long as it does not interfere in more important domains. Personal faith is one thing, religion another. The two are intimately bound up with one another, but the distinction must be made. A man may pursue a spiritual path in isolation from his social and economic environment, but the very idea of religion implies the in-corporation of the public realm in a spiritually determined pattern so that not just a man but all men are assisted towards their goal by everything they do and everything they touch in the normal course of their daily lives. The ferry-boat is a world in itself, an ark supplied with all the necessities of life. But things break away. First one aspect of living claims autonomy, then another, building themselves their own little shipsbut ships for sailing downstream, in accordance with the direction of time, not for crossing over. Politics, science, industry, art and literature go their way, each proudly independent of everything except the current itself and their own increasing momentum. Until finally one more little ship is added to the flotilla calling itself, perhaps, Religion Adapted to the Needs of Our Time and carrying certain regulations governing the personal life and a cargo of ideals. Somehow it never quite manages to keep up with the rest: possibly some memory tugs at it, against the pull of the stream, or the strangeness of its cargo sets it apart. To question the usefulness of any attempt to adapt religion to what are supposed to be the needs of our time is not to decry the intrinsic value of personal piety or, indeed, to underestimate the nobility of those who live a Christian life in the contemporary context: what is questionable is the propriety of diluting truth for the sake of meeting error halfway and of applying evolutionary theory to the marks of eternity that are embedded in the matrix of the temporal world. To put the point bluntly, if God wished to speak to the modern world it may be supposed that He would find a way of doing so. There is a limit to how far men can go in interpreting the divine Word in terms of a language from which all the appropriate words have been excluded. If people have gone away from the central place that is their real home, then charity requires that they should be shown the way back. To imagine one can take the centre out to themwhile they stay where they areis folly. The effort to make religionand in this case it is Christianity with which we are specifically concerned acceptable to as many people as possible has a way of defeating its own object. This has happened to a striking degree in the Protestant countries, where Christianity has too often been reduced to a matter of morality and idealism. But there are two quite separate factors that come together to undermine faith and to block the spread of religion. In the first place there is the refusal to admit that the very structure of contemporary life (in particular the work by which the vast majority of people have to earn their living) excludes religion, being profane in root and branch, and that Christianity can only be integrated into this structure if it denies its own truth. The success of certain extremist sects which have flatly refused to compromise with the modern world suggests that compromise is not in fact essential to the survival of Christianity. Secondly, Protestant Christians have to a great extent cast aside their meta-physical and intellectual heritage for the sake of appealing to ordinary people, and the Catholic Church now seems ready to follow their example. These ordinary people may not be greatly concerned with intellectual considerations, but those from whom they take their cuethose who, in the long run, have the most effective influence upon their ideas are concerned. An ironic situation has arisen: Christianity has been simplified and de-intellectualized to make it more palatable to the majority, and instead of gratefully accepting this watered-down religion, the majority have looked to the more educated, more questioning and intellectually demanding minority for guidance. The latter, after one glance at the pap that is on offer, have turned their thumbs down.

This is, in itself, an over-simplification. There are members of the effective elite who have chosen to look into the matter for themselves and have rediscovered the metaphysical roots of the Christian religion and others who have been content to go down on their knees in simple faith, and among relatively 'uneducated people there are those who demand intellectual satisfaction. But it cannot be denied, particularly in this age of mass media, that a Church which cannot or will not appeal to the leaders of opinion must sooner or later lose the masses and that the ignorance of Christian doctrine (and Christian symbolism) displayed by those who dismiss religion as a fairy story is so abysmal that one can only assume they were never told any more of Christianity than a simple-minded missionary might see fit to tell supposedly simple savages. Religion, when its metaphysical and mystical core is forgotten, is eminently attackable from the point of view of those who accept the scientific view in its entirety, but what is in fact attacked (whether in private conversation or through the mass media) is the religion of tiny tots, Sunday School Christianity. And the attack is met with Sunday School argument. When two mena priest, perhaps, and a scientistsit down before the television camera to discuss religion, the priest might be supposed to have three courses open to him. Scornful of the scientist's intellectual provincialism, he could bring down on the latter's head the full weight of ancient doctrine, with all its metaphysical depth, its complexity of definitions, its swift transition between levels of symbolism; or he might rise to his feet and call upon God to strike down his adversary in an immediate manifestation of the divine Wrath (for who is to say that miracles no longer happen if no one demands them any longer?). Finally, he might ask the man to go away and find out something about Christianity instead of asking foolish questions. But anger is now thought unseemly in a Christian, and doctrine is too complicated for little minds. Nor must there be any hint that terror lies in wait for a world which goes astray or that the consequences of living in error can be a great deal more serious than the consequences of living in sin. In the event, this discussion is a cozy affair. The scientist demolishes religion as it is understood by a good child. The man of God, while completely accepting the theory of knowledge upon which the scientist has built his argument, defends religion in the language of a good child. Both, it seems, learnt the same lessons at school. Both, perhaps, recited the verse which begins, Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild... But one cast it aside, while the other was touched by it, neither of them aware of how inappropriate such a verse (or others of its kind) might be in the context of a religion drenched in the blood of the martyrs and of the heretics and flowing from a Revelation which, like every catastrophic inbreak of Reality, brought down among men, not peace, but the sword. Though God has said to the Islamic world, My Mercy precedes my Wrath, Moslems have never imagined that Wrath was abolished by its subordination to the ultimately all-embracing Mercy. But contemporary Christianitypartly in reaction against the Hell-raising fulminations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centurieshas drifted into a situation in which God is defined entirely in terms of the nicest human qualities and anthropomorphic symbolism is taken so literally that the Absolute is humanized to the point of absurdity. From this has sprung the natural reaction of those who are unable to forgive God for not being a Christian as they were taught to understand the term, the anger of men betrayed by those whom they most trusted, the sad blasphemies of those whoseeing a sick world around them can only ascribe its creation to a monstrously sick deity, while the real villains of the peace, the gentle teachers of the good child's religion, go gently on their way. Thibon has written concerning the simple tale of the creation of God by man and there is nothing surprising in this since God in Himself isas the theologians teachuncreated whereas images, ideas and concepts are of the order of created things. Of necessity the tiger knows a tigerish deity, and among men only those few who have sloughed off their own image and achieved within themselves a kind of total nudity can know God otherwise than through their own image. But what is seen through this warped glass is nonetheless there, and the humanized image serves as a bridge to a region beyond the limitations imposed upon all created images provided it is recognized as a bridge. The great danger is that it will be mistaken for a stopping-place rather than as a point of departure, and this is the danger to which Christianity, at least in modern times, seems to have been particularly exposed. Europeans have always been in a rather special sense of the termsimple-minded (the ancient Romans were) and peculiarly inclined to take the symbol for the thing symbolized, always trying to reduce all that is to manageable proportions and to confine it within the bounds of common sense. They have succeeded at last in reducing God to the dimens ions of an Old Man in the Sky and, having achieved this, are horrified to discover what a useless (and immoral) Old Man this is.

Just as individual men risk spiritual suffocation in a world less and less capable of recognizing any values beyond those of the social realm, so religion is in danger of separation from its timeless source if it chases after the little ships that are being carried so far downstream: there is a process at work here that can culminate only in an existence which is no more than a simian parody of human life. And this existence, in its brief time, would be close to the condition which Christians define as hell: a separation from Reality as near to completion as may be possible (a fraction of a degree above absolute zero) and, since pain is the symptom of separation, an agony of cosmic proportions.

NOTES

[1] Qoran. 22:46. [2] Qorn. 31:27. [3] Images de l'Esprit: Frithjof Schuon. p. 100. [4] The Transcendent Unity of Religions: Frithjof Schuon (Faber and Faber) p. 28.

Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad singing Imam Al-Haddads poem (Allah have mercy upon him), Qad Kafani Ilmu Rabbi: my Lords knowledge has sufficed me from asking or choosing For my dua and my agonizing supplication is a witness to my poverty. For this secret I make supplication in times of ease and times of difficulty I am a slave whose pride is in his poverty and obligation O my Lord and my King You know my state And what has settled in my heart of agonies and preoccupations Save me with a gentleness from You, O Lord of Lords Oh save me, Most Generous before I run out of patience My Lords knowledge has sufficed me from asking or choosing O One who is swift in sending aid I ask for aid that will arrive to me swiftly

It will defeat all difficulty and it will bring all that I hope for O Near One Who answers and All-Knowing and All-Hearing I have attained realization through my incapacity, my submission and my brokenness My Lords knowledge has sufficed me from asking or choosing I am still standing by the door, so please my Lord have mercy on my standing And in the valley of generosity, I am in itikaf (solitary retreat) So, Allah, make my retreat here permanent And Im abiding by good opinion (of You) For it is my friend and ally And it is the one that sits by me and keeps me company All day and night My Lords knowledge has sufficed me from asking or choosing There is a need in my soul, O Allah so please fulfill it, O Best of Fulfillers And comfort my secret and my heart from its burning and its shrapnel In pleasure and in happiness and as long as You are pleased with me For joy and expansion is my state and my motto and my cover My Lords knowledge has sufficed me from asking or choosing

Notes on Fiqhus-Sunnah of as-Sayyid Sabiq

Author: Imaam al-Albani
Source: Tamaam ul-Minnah Fit-Ta'liq alaa Fiqh us-Sunnah (trans. Dawud Burbank) Article ID : WKH030001 [

Note: References to page nos are to the English translation of Muhammad Saeed Dabas and Jamalud Deen M. Zarabozo

Volume One (43) P. vi "This book deals with the fiqh questions and provides supporting evidence to them from the clear [text of the] Book (of Allaah), and the authentic Sunnah of the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam." This is a claim true for the most part, however the book does contain many weak (Daeef) ahaadeeth some of which he remained silent about, and the others he thought to be saheeh or hasan following others in that and being mistaken therein. And it contains more than a few questions for which he does not mention a proof rather for some of them, the proof is against them. And this will be more fully explained in its correct places inshaa-Allaah. (43) P. viii line 10, "In Saheeh al-Bukhaaree it is recorded from Abu Saeed al-Muqbiri that the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, said, "This religion is easy ..."" The narrator of the hadeeth is Saeed ibn Abee Saeed al-Muqbiree from Aboo Hurairah. The wording of al-Bukhaaree Book of Imaan is "The religion is easy ..." the wording, "This religion is easy ..." is reported by an-Nasaaee and Ibn Hibbaan. P. 44 p. viii line 13, "In Saheeh Muslim a hadeeth says, "The most beloved religion..." The hadeeth is in fact reported by al-Bukhaaree in his Saheeh without isnaad and in his Aadaabul-Mufrad with connected isnaad, and is reported by Ahmad in al-Musnad and others from Ibn Abbaas from the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam. It is not reported by Muslim. The hadeeth is Hasan Lighairihi. [Tamaamul-Minnah p. 44, as-Saheehah, no. 881] (45) p. ix 5 lines from the end, "There is a hadeeth where the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, prohibited the discussion of events that have not yet occurred." This hadeeth is reported by Aboo Daawood, Ahmad and others and is weak (Daeef) due to one of its narrators, Abdullaah ibn Sad. P. x line 1, "The Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, also stated, "Allaah has made certain things obligatory ..."" Declared Daeef by Shaikh al-Albaanee due to its chain being disconnected between Makhool and Aboo Thalabah the companion. Ghayatul-Maraam (no. 4), al-Mishkaat (no. 197) and al-Imaan (p. 43) of Shaikh al-Albaanee. JaamiulUloom wal-Hikam of Ibn Rajab, no. 30. (46) p. 2 no. (iii), "Alee narrated ... This hadeeth is related by Ahmad." It is reported by Abdullaah ibn Ahmad. Thehadeeth is hasan, [Irwaaul-Ghaleel, no. 13]. (46) p. 4 25th line, "There is also a hadeeth from Abdullaah ibn Umar ... however this hadeeth is mudtarab ..." Rather it is Saheeh only some weak narrations of it are mudtarab. (Irwaaul-Ghaleel, no. 23 and 172] (47) p. 5 3rd paragraph, "The hadeeth of Jaabir ..." The hadeeth is weak, as an-Nawawee says in alMajmoo, (1/173). (48) p. 5 3rd paragraph, "It has also been related from Ibn Umar ..." Also weak. Its isnaad contains Ayyoob ibn Khaalil al-Harraanee who is Daeef and on top of that he causes idtiraab in its isnaad. (48) p. 5 3rd paragraph, "Yahya Ibn Saeed ..." It is reported from Umar by Yahyaa ibn Abdir-Rahmaan ibn Haatib (who was not born until after the death of Umar) not by Yahyaa ibn Saeed. It is therefore weak (munqati).

(49) p. 7 "The bones, horns, ... skin ... of dead animals ... all of these are considered pure " Rather the skin of dead animals is established to be impure due to the many ahaadeeth from the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, such as his, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, saying, "When the skin is tanned then it is purified" [Reported by Muslim and others]. The fact that the skin has to be tanned to make it pure is clearly shown by the following hadeeth reported by Ibn Abbaas (p7-8). (50) p. 8 "Blood ..." "Al-Hasan said ... mentioned by al-Bukhaaree" Rather al-Bukhaaree quotes it in muallaq form. It is, however, connected with saheeh isnaad by Ibn Abee Shaibah. 50) p. 9 "Aboo Hurairah did not see anything wrong in a drop or two of blood ..." Reported by Ibn Abee Shaibah in his Musannaf and its isnaad is weak due to Shareek ibn Abdillaah al-Qaadee who is daeef due to his weak memory. (The position that blood is taahir and does not break wudoo is the position of al-Bukhaaree and Ibn Hazm). (52) That normal blood, blood of animals and blood of menstruation are all the same. This is incorrect due to two reasons: That there is no proof for this from the Book or Sunnah and the principle is that things are pure unless declared impure in a text. That it contradicts what is established in the Sunnah. a. As for the blood of humans then that is shown to be pure by the hadeeth of the Ansaaree who prayed at night and was struck by arrows and continued praying even though his blood flowed. [Reported in muallaqform by al-Bukhaaree and connected by Ahmad and others Saheeh Abee Daawood, 193] As for the blood of animals then that is also pure as shown by the authentic narration that Ibn Masood some camels and ??? became smeared with their blood and excrement then the Iqaamah was given and he prayed without making wudoo. Reported by Abdur-Razzaaq in his musannaf (1/125), Ibn Abee Shaibah (1/392) and atTabaraanee in al-Mujamul-Kabeer 9/283) with Saheeh isnaad from him.

b.

c.

(52) His making distinction between a small and a large amount of blood. This has no proof from the sunnah rather it is negated by the hadeeth of the Ansaaree. The Athar from Aboo Hurairah is Daeef as has preceded. (This distinction is rebutted by Ibn Hazm in al-Muhallaa and by Ibnul-Arabee and al-Qurtubee in their tafseers). (53) "Vomiting of a person ... there is agreement amongst the scholars ..." He does not mention any proof. Scholars are not agreed in that that the vomit of a muslim is pure is the saying of Ibn Hazm (al-muhallaa, 1/183), ash-Shawkaanee in ad-Dururul-Bahiyyah and Saddeeq Hasan Khaan in his Sharh (1/18-20). " but a small amount of vomit ... and .... are overlooked." He doesnt bring any proof. (54) p. 12 "Alcohol... some scholars say that it is pure." In order that their saying should not be regarded as unimportant their names should be mentioned, amongst them are,

i.

ii.

iii.

Rabeeah ibn Abee Abdir-Rahmaan, known as Rabeeatur-Raee, al-Haafiz says of him in atTahdheeb,"He met some of the Sahaabah and greater taabieen, and he gave Fatwaas in alMadeenah, where the people used to turn to him, and his circle was attended by forty men wearing imaamah and Maalik learnt from him. al-Laith ibn Sad al-Misree, al-Faqeeh, the famous imaam, the great scholars acknowledged his excellence amongst them Imaam Maalik in the letter which he wrote to him. And ash-Shaafiee said of him, "He was a greater scholar than Maalik, but his companions did not carry his renown. Ismaaeel ibn Yahyaa al-Muzaanee, companion of Imaam ash-Shaafiee. He was a mujtahid imaam.

And this is the position of many other scholars of later times from Baghdaad and other towns they hold that alcohol is pure and only drinking it is what is forbidden (see Tafseerul-Qurtubee, 6/88). (55) p 16 3rd paragraph, "If a person finishes the Prayer ..." Its proof is the hadeeth of Aboo Saeed al-Khudree, "That while Allaahs Messenger, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, was praying with his Companions he suddenly took off his shoes and placed them on his left so when the people saw that they threw off their shoes, so when the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, finished his prayer he said,"Why did you throw off your shoes?" They said, "We saw you throw off your shoes so we threw our shoes off." So Allaah s Messenger, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, said, "Indeed Jibreel Alaihis-Salaam, came to me and informed me that my shoes contained impurity. And he said, "When one of you comes to the mosque then let him look, and if he finds any impurity or filth on his shoes, then let him wipe it and pray in them." Reported by Ahmad, Aboo Daawood and others with a saheeh isnaad, Al-Irwaa, 284. (56) p. 17 2nd paragraph "This is related by the group" the group meaning, al-Bukhaaree, Muslim, Aboo Daawood, at-Tirmidhee, an-Nasaaee and Ibn Maajah. This wording including In the name of Allaah is not reported by any of the group, but rather by Saeed ibn Mansoor in his Sunan and by Ibn Abee Shaibah in his Musannaf (1/1) and Ibn Abee Haatim in alIlal (1/64) and its isnaadcontains (Aboo Mishar Najeeh) who is weak. There are other narrations ordering this, from Anas but these are Shaadhdh. The practice of saying Bismillaah when entering the toilet may, however be supported by the hadeeth of Alee, radiyallaahu anhu, from the Prophet,sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, who said, "The screen that is between the eyes of the Jinn and the private parts of the sons of Aadam, when one of them enters the toilet, is that he says Bismillaah." Reported by at-Tirmidhee and Ibn Maajah, and declared weak by atTirmidhee, but it has two supporting isnaads from Anas, reported by at-Tabraanee, so the hadeeth is at the very least hasan. And see Irwaaul-Ghaleel, no. 50. (58) p. 17 3rd paragraph, "Aboo Saeed reported... not forbidden." The hadeeth is weak for two reasons: i. ii. Ikrimah ibn Ammaar related it from Yahyaa ibn Abee Katheer, and Ikrimahs narrations from him are mudtarab[see at-Taqreeb]. Its isnaad contains Hilaal ibn Iyaad who is unknown.

The ruling which the author bases upon this hadeeth is therefore not established.

(59) p. 18 1st question, "... The prohibition implies that it is only disliked ..." "Some reconciliate [sic.] these hadeeth by saying that in the desert it is forbidden to face or turn ones back on the kabah while it is permitted in buildings ..." What is correct is that it is forbidden in the desert or within buildings. The Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, relieving himself on the roof of Hafsahs house cannot be used either to lessen the forbiddance reported in Aboo Hurairahs hadeeth, or to make the forbiddance particular to buildings, that is because it was an action he was doing in private, hidden from the people and so cannot be said to have been a proof of its allowance or particularisation of the forbiddance. i.e., it was clearly something private not meant to be seen and followed, something particular to him,sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, (and see as-SailulJarraar of ash-Shawkaanee (2/69)). As for the saying of Ibn Umar [translator mistakenly puts Umar] "Certainly not ... this has been prohibited only in open areas ..." The he does not state that this understanding is from the Prophet, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, but may have been his own personal understanding due to his, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, action on the roof of Hafsahs house. (61) p. 18 "Qataadah related from ... This hadeeth is related by Ahmad ..." The hadeeth is weak. Qataadah reports it using ananah [saying, from] and he is a mudallis. Further in the view of Imaam Ahmad and alHaakim Qataadah never met Ibn Sarjas whom he narrates from here, and that would make the hadeeth munqatia in their view. (63) p. 19 "Abdullaah ibn Mughaffal narrated... reported by the five." The hadeeth is weak since the reporter from the Companions is al-Hasan al-Basree who despite his fame and position was a mudallis, and he narrates here usingananah. However Aboo Daawood and other report with a saheeh isnaad that Allaahs Messenger, sallallaahu alaihi wa sallaam, forbade that one of us should comb our hair every day or that he should urinate in his bathing place. (63) p. 19 "Urinating in running water" ... "Jaabir said... and its narrators are trustworthy." It is weak since it contains in its isnaad, (i) Someone unknown, (iii) someone accused of lying, and (iii) ananah of the mudallis Abuz-Zubair and further it is contradicted by the authentic narration of al-Laith reported by Muslim with the wording, " standing water." The wording " running water " is therefore Munkar. It is narrated by at-Tabraanee in al-Awsat which should have been mentioned. (64) p. 19 " said Aaishah, "If someone related to you ... sitting."" Its isnaad from Aaishah is weak due to Shareek ibn Abdillaah al-Qaadee. However there is a support for it which raises it to authenticity, narrated by Sufyaan ath-Thawree. (Reported by Aboo Awaanah in his Saheeh (1/198), al-Haakim (1/181), al-Baihaqee (1/101) and Ahmad).

THE SEALS OF THE PROPHET (PBUH)

The Seal of Prophethood

The word khatem (seal of prophethood) signifies that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was the final prophet, as well as indicating that there was a mark (seal) on his back that symbolized this fact. Islamic sources discuss different aspects of the seal of prophethood, focusing particularly on its nature, its form, whether it was an innate quality, whether there was any inscription found on the mark, and finally whether the seal disappeared when Prophet Muhammad died. As is well known, Prophet Muhammad not only had some unique qualities, but he also had other characteristics that he shared with ordinary people. The unique characteristics of the Prophet are discussed in Islamic sources under titles such as dalail (features) orhasais (characteristics), which are separate sciences from shamail and sirah (life of the Prophet) (see the article on shamail and sirah). The information collected about these characteristics are presented and evaluated in a genre of books that is commonly known as either dalail al-Nabawiyya (The Features [or Proof] of the Prophet) or hasais al-Nabawiyya (The Unique Characteristics of the Prophet). On the other hand, the fact that Prophet Muhammad was himself the seal, or the last link in the chain of prophets, was mentioned by the Prophet himself. One of the many hadiths on this issue is significant in terms of explaining the institution of prophethood and the place of the last Prophet among other prophets. The Prophet is quoted as having said: My position in relation to the other Prophets is like this: A man builds a house, completes it and decorates it beautifully, but leaves out one brick. When the people who come to see it enter this glorious house, they marvel at its beauty and say: The house is splendid but for the lack of this one brick (then, how much more splendid the house will be). Now, I am like this brick; I am the last of the Prophets. (al-Bukhari, kitab al-manaqib, bab khatim an-nabiyyin; Muslim, kitab al-fada'il, bab khatam an-nabiyyin; see also Tirmidhi, kitab al-manaqib, bab fadl an-nabi and kitab al-adab, bab alamthal; Musnad Abu Dawud Tayalisi, marwiat Jabir bin Abdullah; and Musnad Ahmad, marwiat Ubayyi bin Ka'b, Abu Sa'id Khudri and Abu Hurairah.) Both of the main sources of Islam, the Quran and the hadiths, clearly state that the last of the Prophets that were sent to humanity from time to time, beginning with Adam, was Prophet Muhammad. It is for this reason that he is also called the Prophet of the Last Days. No prophet will follow him. Therefore, Allah Almighty makes it clear that Prophet Muhammad is the seal of all prophets and that there no other prophet will come after him; He created a manifestation of this fact in the form of a mark, or seal, on the blessed body of the Prophet, and on no other. The original expression used by the Companions of the Prophet and later generations of Islamic scholars for the mark on the Prophets body is Khatem al-Nubuwwa. This phrase can be translated in different ways, including (the most commonly) the seal of prophethood, the symbol of prophethood, the cachet of prophethood, the sign of prophecy, and the mark of prophecy/prophethood.

Regarding the seal, the sources give, in brief, the following information: there was a mark on the back of Prophet Muhammad, between his shoulder blades, which was raised; this mark resembled a seal on a letter or document. Islamic sources also discuss another aspect of this seal; was the seal of the last prophet there when the Prophet was born, or did it appear later in his life time? According to many sources, this seal was not a birthmark; however, these sources disagree about when it first appeared. The most common argument is that this seal was stamped on his back when his chest was opened and cleansed by an angel. On the other hand, there is also the argument that as the seal was not an innate mark it disappeared when Prophet Muhammad died. All these views suggest that the seal of prophethood was not a congenital birthmark that was part of his physical makeup, but rather a divine sign of Muhammads being the last Prophet.

The Seal Ring of Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh)

In the Hejaz region of the Arabian Peninsula it was not custumary for political leaders to use a seal until the time of the migration of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina. In the sixth year after the Hijrah (627 AD), Prophet Muhammad decided to send letters to the heads of neighboring countries in order to gain recognition for the newly-established Islamic state. These letters, which also served to invite these leaders to Islam, needed to be stamped with a seal. Some of the Companions of the Prophet explained that those leaders would not accept his letters if they had no seal on them, as this was custumary in other countries, and therefore they would not be seen as official letters without the seal of a head of a state. The seal would serve to make them official. The Prophet then ordered a seal to be made, and sent his letters to other statesmen with this seal. The original word for seal in Arabic is khatem. The Prophets seal was made in the form of a ring; for this reason the word khatem is generally used to mean a ring as well. For the same reason, the phrase Khatem al-Nabi is understood and translated as the seal ring of Prophet Muhammad. One of the great companions, Abdullah ibn Umar is reported to have once said: Prophet Muhammad had a silver ring. He used it to seal the letters he sent to different places, but he did not wear it. According to evidence in historical sources, the seals of Prophet Muhammad were rings with stones, made of silver. On the rings were inscribed the three words Muhammad Rasul Allah (Muhammad, Prophet of Allah) arranged in such a way that each of the words constituted a line: the first line, going from the bottom to the top, read Muhammad; the second line consisted of the word Rasul (Messenger); and the third line read Allah. The majority of reports state that these seals were made of silver. When Prophet Muhammad had his rings made and - from time to time - wore them, some of his Companions wanted to have similar rings. The Prophet, however, intervened, saying that no one should have

a ring that had the same inscription as his. By discouraging the use of the official seal of state, Prophet Muhammad maintained the unique aspect of the institution of the state, separating public (or official) matters and private matters. On the other hand, despite the fact that all personal belongings of Prophet Muhammad, including his shoes, cloaks, water cups and swords, were transmitted to his Companions as gifts and kept by them, his seals (rings) were an exception. The sources clearly state that his seal was transferred to the first Caliph, Abu Bakr after his death, and then to Umar, and then to Uthman. (The seal was then lost in a well called the Aris Well in the sixth year of Uthmans reign, which lasted a total of 12 years.) The fact that the seal was transferred to the three caliphs respectively indicates that it was not a piece of personal property, but a symbol that belonged to the head of the state. As is well-known, these three companions were the first three Caliphs (Heads of State) after the death of the Prophet. All three of them used the Prophets seal to stamp official documents and letters of state during their rule. In addition, according to a report by Hussein, his father, Ali, also had the same phrase inscribed on his own seal.

THE EATING AND DRINKING STYLES OF THE HOLY PROPHET

I eat like an ordinary people, and I sit like an ordinary man

It must be stated that the sources do not mention how the Prophet (pbuh) sat at a table; rather they point out how he did not sit. It has been stated that he would generally sit kneeling. The sources from the first period usually cite a single line that is a hadith: As for Me, I never settle in well to eat The Prophet, who would ensure that he was in a purified state when eating the food provided by Allah, always thanked Allah for His blessings. The Prophet and the people who followed him were always worried about what their meal would lead to; they were grateful to Allah and requested that He cause their meal to lead to good things. The Prophet always tried to prevent practices that caused waste and to make use of all of Allahs blessings, even a single grain of rice.

Bread
According to the available documents Prophet Muhammad always ate bread made from barley flour. He would not eat bread made from refined flour, from which the bran had been removed. At that time in the Hejaz wheat was imported and very expensive. The Prophet would not eat food made from wheat flour which was not affordable for the majority of people. He disapproved of luxury and maintained the status of role model in the matter of food, as with everything else. He preferred barley bread not only because it was economic, but also as it was filling and nutritional. During meals, the Prophet would sit at a low table made of leather or canvas. He would not use a table or a tray with legs. He would not bring appetizers like salads, pickles or spices to the table. The Prophet would never overeat.

The texts from the first period speak of the Prophet eating two meals a day. Breakfast was called ghada, and dinner was called asha. Prophet Muhammad would eat two meals a day at the most. One of these meals always consisted of light foods. These light foods included dates. The Prophet advised that dinner should be eaten and ordered: Do not neglect dinner but dine, even with a handful of dates; neglecting dinner ages people and harms the body. Prophet Muhammad emphasized the important effect of hunger on humans in the following words: O Allah! I take shelter in you against hunger; hunger is a very bad condition which weakens people However, he also underlined the hazards of imbalanced and excessive eating: No person can fill a dish that is worse than his stomach. Basically humans need only a few bites to withstand hunger. If they need to eat more, they must fill one third of their stomachs with food, one third with drink and they should leave the remaining part empty for breath! Aisha says: The family members of the Prophet never ate two meals in quick succession and never ate their fill of barley bread Ibn Abbas says: Sometimes the Holy Prophet would go to sleep without having eaten anything for several nights consecutively; he and his family would not be able to find anything to eat for dinner and they would eat barley bread. For the Prophet the most important feature of a meal was whether it was halal (permitted), clean and nutritional. Prophet Muhammad did not prefer one food over another and he did not find fault with any food. Abu Hurairah said: The Holy Prophet would never prefer one food over another. He would eat what was offered if he was hungry, and would not eat if he was not. The Prophet did not indulge in any food and he had no craving for any food. If someone eats whatever they crave, this is wasteful. Prophet Muhammad would thank the host in particular for the meals served and he would say that he had been satisfied by the food served to him. Some examples of the food that the Prophet ate are as follows: leg of mutton, mutton chops, kebab, chicken, bustard, meat soup, zucchini, olive oil, curd cheese, melon, halva, honey, dates, Swiss chard and fish. This list, to which other foods can be added, also gives us an idea about the cuisine of the Age of Happiness. Simplicity dominated the food, and simplicity is an indication of maturity.

Washing Hands before the Meal

The Prophet wanted people not to be content with ordinary cleanliness, but to demonstrate their cleanliness in every field. He also wanted people to be as clean as possible for meals. In the same way that a Muslim takes ablution before prayer, they should wash their hands before eating. The practice of washing ones hands before the meal was not performed in other religions at the time; it was first introduced by Prophet Muhammad. If something happens to one who has gone to bed without washing their hands after dinner, may he seek fault in himself, not in someone else!. Salman-i Farisi said that Prophet Muhammad ordered: The blessings of food lie in washing hands before and after eating.

Prayers said by Prophet Muhammad before and after Meals

The Prophet would always utter a basmala (blessing) before performing every action, including eating. If the basmala is forgotten at the beginning, it is uttered as soon as one remembers. Prophet Muhammad would always pray after the meals. His shortest prayer was the one that consisted of the phrase Alhamdulillah (Thanks be to Allah). He stated that the most virtuous form of worship was to utter La ilaha illallah(There is no God but Allah) and that the finest prayer was Alhamdulillah. There is no one single method for such prayers. Everybody can say prayers from their hearts, using long or short phrases. In the period of Prophet Muhammad meals were eaten on a low table and out of a large common plate. For this reason the Prophet desired that everybody should eat from in front of them. Eating together and getting up from the table together are manners that he advises. Prophet Muhammad said: After the table has been set, may no one leave the table before it is cleared. Even if they are full, so as not to embarrass the people around the table, may no one take their hands off the table. May they not exhibit an attitude indicating that they are full. When a person leaves the table early, he embarrasses his friend; this also leads his friend to take his hands off the table. He might not yet be full! In accordance with this, a person who is invited to the table and offered food should not refuse the offer if they are hungry and should not use unbelievable phrases such as, I am fullI have just eaten. The Prophet stated that: Food that is enough for one person is sufficient for two. Food that is enough for two people is sufficient for four people and the food for four people is sufficient to feed eight people. Thus, we can understand the importance of sharing what we have, whether it is a little or a lot, with other people. Umar bin Abi Salama gives the following account: I went to the house of the Holy Prophet. He was sitting at the table. When he saw me, He said: My child, come to the table, utter basmala, start eating with your right hand and take the food from in front of you. Abu Said al-Hudri tells us: When the Holy Prophet would finish his meal and get ready to leave the table he would utter the following prayer: al-Hamdu lillalillazi atamena va sakana va jaalana minalmslimin which means May Allah, Who feeds us and makes us a society of Muslims, be praised. Abu Umama tells us: When the table was about to be cleared, Prophet Muhammad would say the following prayer: al-Hamdu lillahi hamdan kasiran tayyeban mubarakan fihi khayra muvaddain vala mustaghnan anhu Rabbana which means Allah, I Praise You with eternal gratitude, ceaseless and void of pretense; not with the kind turned down by You.

Fruit Eaten by the Prophet

We learn that Prophet Muhammad loved eating melon, watermelon and cucumbers. Grapes, quince, and thekabas fruit of the miswak tree were among the other fruit preferred by the Prophet.

The Prophet showed great care in selecting food that would not have a negative effect on his health. He ate fruit during and after the meals, not merely as a fruit, rather but to stabilize the temperature of his body. Abu Hurairah tells us: When the companions of the Holy Prophet obtained the first fruit, they would immediately bring it to the Holy Prophet. He would take that first fruit into his sacred hands and say the following prayer: O Allah! Grant fertility to our fruit, our city and our measures called sa and mudd. O Allah! Holy Abraham is your worshipper, friend and prophet. I too am your worshipper and prophet. He prayed to you for Mecca. I pray to You to the extent of His prayer, and even twice the measure of that prayer for Medina! He would then call the youngest child and give them that first fruit.

The Prophet's Drinks

The drinks that were enjoyed in the Age of Happiness were things like honey sherbet (asal), date or grape juice and milk. During wedding feasts, guests would be treated to date sherbet. Milk had a special place among the drinks of Prophet Muhammad. He would sometimes add cold water to the milk before drinking it. Particularly in hot weather, the Prophet would cool off the milk when it was available by adding some cold water. Aisha reported; Fresh water would be brought from the spring Buyut al-Suqya, which was at a distance of two days. The Prophet would also show great care that his drinking water was fresh, and that it had rested and been kept for a night. In related sources, there are accounts about water which has rested in a jug. The Prophet would drink water slowly, resting between sips. He would take a breath twice three breaths. He said that Drinking water in stages eases digestion, quenches the thirst and is healthier. stressing the importance of drinking in this manner for our health. Ibn Abbas states the following: Our Holy Prophet banned us from putting the ends of the water skins or jugs to our mouth and finishing them in one gulp. After the warning of our Prophet, a man drank from the jug in one gulp and what should emerge from the jug but a snake!

The Sacred Cup

There were about eleven people who volunteered to serve the Prophet. The most prominent of these were the companions Anas bin Malik and Abdullah bin Masud. Abdullah bin Masud would carry the Prophets shoes, miswaks and cushions and keep them ready for use. When the Prophet stood, Abdullah bin Masud would bring the Prophets shoes and put them on his feet. When the Prophet sat, he would take off his shoes and hold them in his hands.

Anas bin Malik was the water-bearer for the Prophet. He would carry the Prophets water cup carefully, clean it and prepare the Prophets drinks. Prophet Muhammad would use one cup for all drinks, including water. This cup was made of a wood called nudar. This cup once cracked along the side and was mended with a silver ring, and was used again. The width of this cup was greater than its height. It had an iron ring by which it could be hung on the wall. Once Anas tried to replace this iron ring with a silver or golden ring, but his step-father Abu Talha (34/654) said: Dont ever do that! Dont change anything that was made by the Holy Prophet! After that, Anas did not replace this part and preserved the cup as it was. Some of the personal belongings of the Prophet were preserved by his Companions and passed on from one generation to the next. The Companions of Prophet Muhammad had profound respect for the objects that the Prophet used, and the places where he slept, prayed and rested. The objects were preserved by them out of respect, affection, homage and for blessings. Monuments were built in the places where the Prophet had slept, prayed or rested.

Honoring Imam Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci - interfaith moments

Kongsi

Semalam pada pukul 2.25 ptg I am pleased to share a few interfaith moments about Imam Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci, a scholar of Islam, a lawyer and an Imam. He has now established an institution with his name to impart education to the youth born and raised here in the D/FW Metroplex. Tonight, April 10, 2010, he is being honored for the international recognition he has brought to the Dallas Forth worth Metroplex. He is listed among the 500 influential Muslims around the world. When we initiated the Unity Day program in 2005, a 9/11 memorial event to bring Americans of all hues together to rededicate our pledge for the safety and prosperity of our nation, I ran into a conflict, one of my volunteers wanted additional time be given to Muslims in the interfaith prayer sequence of 10 religions, a suggestion was even made, that since it is a Muslim initiative, they should have the floor first. However, as a Muslim deeply committed to the pluralistic values of Islam, I strongly believed in the egalitarian values embedded in every aspect of Islam including the rituals, and I was having difficulty with the idea of being treated special. I wanted every one of the ten religions be given equal time, and to avoid conflict of priority, we put them in an alphabetical order. A few of the volunteers were making it difficult for me for not listening to them. So, I go to Imam Yusuf before the situation gets out of handle. He listened to me intently and offered this brilliant choice: Brother Mike, Religiously you are right, that is the right thing to do, we have to believe and practice equality, but if you want their support, you decide what you want to do, but do the right thing." That was exactly what I wanted to hear and I asked him if I could put those words, " Islamically it was right to treat all faiths on par" that in the email and send it to the group, he said go for it, and with that conflicts faded and solutions emerged. I cherish that moment with Dr. Kavakci. In another personal incident about 15 years ago, when I was marrying my late wife Najma, I wanted my friends Mr. Maini and Mr. Sharma, who are Hindu by faith, to be the required witnesses of the wedding ceremony as I considered them my elder and brother, but the tradition was for the Father, Uncles or brothers to be the witness, generally Muslim, in my case they were the ones for me. So, Imam Yusuf, Najma and I went for a walk in Dr. Asif Syeds ranch and being an out of box thinker he was, he suggested that we increase the number of witnesses to five and include two of my friends with the other three. I

adored him for that and have been admiring him since then. Last year at the SMU, the students hosted a talk on Human rights in Islam, and one of the greatest moments of my life came upon me when I found out, I was the co-speaker with Dr. Kavakci, what an honor! A humble man by nature, he wanted me to sit right next to him during the Q& A session, and goaded me to answer the questions first, I found an unusual safety in it, after my response to the students, he would start saying perfect and then quote Quraan to support my response. He made my day. Imam Yusuf calls himself a Khaksaar, a humble soul and a person who serves the humanity. I recall my Grand father also used the same title with his signature in his correspondence with Allama Mashriqi. Imam Yusuf has been on my Radio show several times, one of them was a daily show called the Wisdom of Religion, all the beautiful religions and the other was a Saturday program called Festivals of the world, where we shared the essence of every festival you can imagine in that given week. He and I have shared many delightful moments on the radio. He is an amazing orator. I have always enjoyed walking into his office and hear him say that, I am one of the Muslims he can speak without guards. He also gives me immense value in saying that I could bring the communities (intra and inter) together. I am proud of that. A few months ago, I wrote an article about intra faith and dedicated that to him. Today, I have reserved a table with great enthusiasm and labeled it Islam intra -faith table and have invited two Muslims each from Ahmadiyya, Bohra, Ismaili, Shia, Sunni and Warith Deen Muhammad traditions to start a conversation. I am delighted to see this great scholar, Imam Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci has been recognized as one of the 500 influential leaders in the world. Here is an article written in February honoring him: http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2010/04/there-isonly-one-islam.html A few dinner pictures and other pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeghouse/sets/72157623704109391/show/ Jazak Allah Khair Mike Ghouse, Mike Ghouse is a frequent guest at the media offering pluralistic solutions to issues of the day. He is a thinker, writer, speaker, optimist and an activist of Pluralism, Interfaith, Co-existence, Peace, Islam, India and Civil Societies. His work is reflected at 3 websites & 22 Blogs listed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/ www.WorldMuslimCongress.com Good for Muslims and good for the World To be a Muslim is to be a conflict mitigater and goodwill nurturer

Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy

Al imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy

The Knights of Knowledge and the Pioneers of Success
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, may Allah raise the rank of Prophet Muhammad and his kind Al and Companions and protect his nation from that which he fears for them. May Allah grant us the sincere intentions. Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy is the Imam of Ahl us-Sunnah--the man

who refuted and defeated the leaders of the groups of misguidance and extinguished the fires of their bad innovations. He defended the Religion of Allah by the methodology of the Prophet. He was an extremely wellknown and famous scholar--so skillful in producing airtight proofs in defense of the Creed of Ahl us-Sunnah. Known as Abul-Hasan, Imam al-Ash^ariyy is ^Aliyy the son of Isma^il, the son of Abu Bishr Ishaq, the son of Salim, the son of Isma^il, the son of ^Abdullah, the son of Musa, the son of Bilal, the son of Abu Burdah, the son of Abu Musa ^Abdullah, the son of Qays, the son of Haddar, al-Ash^ariyy, al-Yamaniyy. "Al-Ash^ariyy" is in reference to his tribe, (the Asha^irah,) and "alYamaniyy" is in reference to his home country, Yaman. The Prophet praised the tribe of the Asha^irah in more than one hadith. He said about them: "If they were in a certain location and some fell short in their supply of food, they would get together, join what food every individual had, then distribute the sum equally among all of them." AlHakim related the Prophet, in praising them, said:

which means: << They follow my methodology, and I am pleased with their action. >> In Surat al-Maidah, Ayah 54, Allah said:

{ }
which refers to a group of people guided by Allah, who love Allah, and Allah loves them... It was narrated, at the time this verse was revealed, the Prophet pointed at Abu Musa al-Ash^ariyy and said: "Those are His people"--an explicit reference to the tribe of the Asha^irah--to whom Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy belongs. Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy was born in the year 260 after the Emigration (Hijrah) according to some, and according to others, in the year 270. Nonetheless, he was born prior to the year 300 and lived most of his life before that, so he belongs to the people of the Salaf. He was raised in a family of Ahl us-Sunnah, although later on he became a student of al-Jubbaiyy, one of the leaders of the faction of the Mu^tazilah, and associated with him for a period of time. Although Al-Jubbaiyy was well-known and famous among the Mu^tazilah, Imam al-Ash^ariyy did not accept everything he heard from him. Al-Jubbaiyy used to believe in and repeat a blasphemous belief famous among the Mu^tazilah. He said, "It is obligatory on Allah to do that which is most benefiting for the slaves." Ibn

^Asakir narrated in his book, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari, that once, Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy questioned al-Jubbaiyy about this belief: He inquired, "What do you say about three people: a believer, a boy [i.e., a person who did not reach the age of puberty], and a blasphemer?" Al-Jubbaiyy answered him: "The believer is among the people who will have high ranks in the Hereafter. The blasphemer is among the people who will be losers in the Hereafter. As for the boy, he will be among the people who will be saved, however, his status will not reach the status of that believer." Al-Ash^ariyy then asked al-Jubbaiyy: "Would the rank of the boy attain the rank of the believer?" Al-Jubbaiyy answered, "No. The pious believer attained that status because of his worship and obedience, and the boy does not have the obedience and worship of that believer." Al-Ash^ariyy asked al-Jubbaiyy, "What if the boy says, This is not a shortcoming on my part. O Allah, if You had willed for me to live long enough in this life, I would have done as much obedience and worship as the pious believer." Al-Jubbaiyys answer to that was, "Allah would tell that boy, I knew that if you had lived longer, you would have sinned, and you would have been tortured; so I made you die before the age of puberty." Al-Ash^ariyy said to al-Jubbaiyy: "What if the blasphemous person then said, O Allah, You knew about me. Why did you not do that which is most benefiting to me, and make me die before the age of puberty, as You did the boy?" Al-Jubbaiyy was silenced; he did not know how or what to respond. He could not defend his belief as is the case with all those who build their conclusions on false premises. Al-Jubbaiyy came to his conclusion about the status of those three people in the Hereafter based on his false conviction that it is obligatory on Allah to do that which is most benefiting to the slave, and this is why he reached the stage where he could not defend his statement. Rather, the correct premise, the one which is airtight and easily defended is to say as Ahl usSunnah say: ""Allah is not obligated to do anything. When Allah rewards the believers, this is out of His generosity, and when Allah punishes the sinners, this is justice from Him."

Ibnu ^Asakir also narrated that Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy saw the Prophet in a dream ordering him to support the school of Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jama^ah. In his dream, Abul-Hasan asked the Prophet, "How should I

do that? How should I back the school of Ahl us-Sunnah when I have spent so many years associating with the school of the Mu^tazilah?" The Prophet told him: "If I did not know that Allah would support you with a special support enabling you success in this matter, I would teach you myself and detail for you every single aspect of how to do it." Later, Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy said, "I would be present in a session debating opponents, those who oppose Ahl us-Sunnah, and a case I had not heard the answer to would arise. All of a sudden, the perfect answer would be clear in my mind, and I would use it to discredit those people. I knew this was Allahs special support the Prophet informed me about." After he saw that dream, Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy publicly declared he was clear of the school of the Mu^tazilah, and that he was following Ahl us-Sunnah. It was mentioned he climbed to the top of the mimbar in the mosque one Friday and declared he was clear of the school of the Mu^tazilah and committed himself to refute them and expose their falsehood. From then on, he worked diligently to spread the school of Ahl us-Sunnah by producing the crystal clear textual and intellectual proofs in support of their methodology. He authored new books refuting books he had authored previously when he was still following the Mu^tazilah. For each book he authored while he was with the Mu^tazilah, he authored a refutation from the school of Ahl us-Sunnah. The Faqih, Abu Bakr as-Sayrafiyy, said: "The Mu^tazilah had raised their heads up high until al-Ash^ariyy stood up against them and trapped them in the most tiny corner." The Hafidh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadiyy in Tarikh Baghdad said: "Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy is one who defended the creed and one who authored books and works refuting the atheists and others among the Mu^tazilah, Jahmiyyah, Khawarij, and all other innovators of misguidance." Shamsud-Din Ibn Khillikan in his book, Al-A^yan, said: "Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy is the forefather in explaining the essentials of the belief, the one who supported the school of Ahl us-Sunnah; the Ash^ariyysare named in reference to him, and his fame is beyond lengthy description." Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy was astonishing in his ability to produce the proofs to discredit the innovators of misguidance. Abu Sahl asSu^lukiyy, who was among the great scholars and God-fearing people said: "We attended a debate between Imam al-Ash^ariyy and some of the heads of the Mu^tazilah at the house of a prominent man in al-Basrah. Imam al-Ash^ariyy debated them all and defeated every one of them! He dealt with them one by one until he silenced each one of them. After that, they agreed on another session of debate. When Imam al-Ash^ariyy showed up at the specified time, he found none of the Mu^tazilah dared to show their faces. Imam al-Ash^ariyy told the house-boy to write on the door, "They escaped." Imam Abu ^Abdullah Ibn Khafif, who was one of the great waliyys said:

"When I was a young man, I went to al-Basrah to meet Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy because I heard about him. When I first entered al-Basrah, I saw a handsome shaykh. I asked him, "Where is the residence of AbulHasan al-Ash^ariyy?" He said, "What do you want from him?" I said: "I would like to meet him." This shaykh told me, "Come back tomorrow morning to this same location, and I shall help you with that." I came the next morning, and went with that shaykh to a session in the house of a prominent person. Present in that session were several scholars and knowledgeable people. When the people saw that shaykh come in, they treated him respectfully and seated him in the best and most prominent location in that session. Then, one of the people there was asked a question pertaining to the creed. When that person started responding, this shaykh interfered and began to debate the one who was asked the question--until he silenced him. I was astonished by the extent of that shaykhs knowledge, so I asked some of those who were near to me who this shaykh was. They told me this was Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy. When the session was over and the people left, I followed him. He looked at me and asked, "Young man, how did you find Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy?" I said, "Just as I have heard about him, and I am your servant." Then I asked Imam al-Ash^ariyy, "Why did you not start talking yourself?" Imam al-Ash^ariyy said, "I do not initiate talking with those innovators of misguidance." Imam al-Ash^ariyy did not initiate talking with innovators because he did not want to open a door for them to speak unlawful words. He would not, however, allow them to get away with speaking unlawful words should they initiate them. Rather, he would debate them and refute them in accordance with what Allah obligated us to do in forbidding the unlawful (munkar) and ordering the obligatory (ma^ruf). This showed a great level of understanding and comprehension. Some scholars said, "Al-Ash^ariyy had a strong insight." At first, Imam al-Ash^ariyy did not reveal his identity to Ibn Khafif because, knowing the effect of the first impression on the relationship between a shaykh and his student, he wanted Ibn Khafifs first impression of him to be very remarkable--which he established in the session of debate. This incident shows the truthfulness of scholars saying that Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy was a great Sufi and a master in the matters and secrets pertaining to the heart, in as much as he was a master in the fields of the religious knowledge. The Ustadh Abu-Ishaq al-Isfarayiniyy, who in his own right, was a great imam, said: "Next to Imam AbulHasan al-Bahiliyy, I am like a drop in the

ocean. I heard Imam al-Bahiliyy say that compared to al-Ash^ariyy he was like a drop in the ocean." Before Abul-Hasan al-Bahiliyy became a student of al-Ash^ariyy, he used to be one of the imams of the Shi^ah sect. Imam al-Ash^ariyy debated him, and as a result, he left that which had had been following and became a student of Imam al-Ash^ariyy. After that, he became one of the great scholars of Ahl us-Sunnah. The Judge: Abu Bakr Ibn al-Baqillaniyy said about himself, "I will be in the best of the levels of my knowledge if I can understand the words of alAsh^ariyy."." Abu Bakr Ibn al-Baqillaniyy reached a stage among the scholars of the school of Imam al-Ash^ariyy, such that if one said, "the Judge said," without specifying further, the people would understand "the Judge" is Abu Bakr Ibn al-Baqillaniyy. He had a very sharp intelligence-clearly witnessed once when the caliph sent a message with him to the King of the Romans. That Roman king had been told that al-Baqillaniyy would not bow to a kafir, so he would not bow to that king. Thinking he was smart, that king devised a way to make al-Baqillaniyy bow for him when he entered the room. He made the doorway entrance so low, such that if one wanted to enter, he would have to bow down. When alBaqillaniyy arrived, he was so keen and quick that he immediately realized what was intended. He turned around and entered backwards! At another time, al-Baqillaniyy entered the session of that king when the king had the monks and their head priest with them. Al-Baqilaniyy addressed their head priest mockingly by saying, "How is the wife doing, and the children?" To that, the king said, "The caliph who sent you to us said you were among the knowledgeable ones--among the great scholars of your nation. How is it you ignore the fact the priests do not get married, they do not have children, and we clear them from that?" Al-Baqillaniyy told him, "You clear the priests and monks from these things, and you do not clear Allah from that? It is as if you hold them in a greater status than Allah!" The king, the monks, and their head priest were dumbfounded! If this great, intelligent man, Imam al-Baqillaniyy, used to say, "I would be in the best of the levels of my knowledge if I comprehend the words of Imam al-Ash^ariyy," what would be the status of al-Ash^ariyy? The endeavors of Imam al-Ash^ariyy in performing worship are astonishing. Some of his companions mentioned that for almost twenty (20) years he prayed Fajr Prayer with the ablution (wudu) he performed for the ^Isha Prayer, i.e., he did not sleep. Imam al-Ash^ariyy used to sustain himself from the proceeds of a village which his grandfather, Bilal, the son of Burdah, left for his descendants with the intention they finance their needs from that village. Imam al-Ash^ariyys share from that waqf was 17 dirhams for the entire year, amounting to less than one and onehalf dirham each month. Though this was so little, it was sufficient for him for the entire month. That this sustained him for the month is an indication of the extent of his detachment from this world. In addition to his vast knowledge of tawhid, Imam al-Ash^ariyy was very

skillful in the areas of the fiqh and the hadith. He followed the school of Imam ash-Shafi^iyy and studied in that area with Imam Abu Ishaq alMarwaziyy, as it was mentioned by both: Imam Abu Bakr Ibn Furak and Imam Abu Ishaq al-Isfarayiniyy. Imam Abu Mansur al-Baghdadiyy said: "I heard ^Abdullah, the son of Mahmud the son of Tahir, the Sufiyy say the following: I saw Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy in the mosque of al-Basrah after he had just silenced the Mu^tazilah in front of the people. One of those present said to him, "We have acknowledged that you have knowledge as vast as the ocean in the area of the creed (tawhid) I want to ask you a question pertaining to the fiqh." Imam al-Ash^ariyy told him, "Ask whatever you want." This man chose to ask, "What do you say about the one who prays without reciting the Fatihah?" Immediately, Imam al-Ash^ariyy answered: "Zakariyya, the son of Yahya as-Suddiyy, told us ^Abdul Jabbar told us, Sufyan told us, az-Zuhriyy told me, from the route of Mahmud, the son of ar-Rabi^, from the route of ^Ubadah the son of Samit, from the Prophet, who said:

{ }

which means: << The prayers are not valid for the one who does not recite the Fatihah. >> Imam al-Ash^ariyy continued. He said, "Zakariyyah narrated to us, Bindar narrated to us, Yahya, the son of Sa^id narrated to us, from the route of Ja^far, the son of Maymun and Abu ^Uthman, from the route of Abu Hurayrah, who said: The Prophet ordered me to call out in al-Madinah the prayers are invalid for the one who does not recite the Fatihah." The person who asked the question was silenced with astonishment at the vastness of Imam al-Ash^ariyys knowledge in fiqh as well. Imam al-Ash^ariyy narrated the hadith from the route of many shaykhs, among them: Zakariyyah as-Sajiyy, Abu Khalifah al-Jumahiyy, Sahl, the son of Nuh, and others. Abu Bakr Ibn Furak counted more than one hundred (100) authored books for Imam al-Ash^ariyy, may Allah raise his rank. Al-Juwayniyy, the Imam of the Haramayn, at his time, said the authored works of Imam alAsh^ariyy were in excess of two hundred (200), among which was the interpretation of the Quran. It was mentioned this interpretation of the Quran was composed of 200 volumes. Among Imam al-Ash^ariyys authored works are:

1. Risalatu Istihsan al-Khawd fi ^Ilm al-Kalam (The Praise worthiness of Practicing the Knowledge of Kalam); 2. Kitab ar-Radd ^alal-Mujassimah (A Refutation of Those who Attribute Bodily Attributes to Allah); 3. An-Naqdu ^ala al-Jubbaiyy (A Refutation of al-Jubbaiyy--the man who was his teacher from the Mu^tazilah); 4. Kitabus-Sifat (The Attributes of Allah). In this book he refuted one of his own authored works written at the time he was still following the madhhab of the Mu^tazilah); 5. Jawazu Ruyatillahi Ta^ala bil Absar (The Validity of Seeing Allah Ta^ala); 6. Adab al-Jadal (The Manners of Debating); 7. Al-Ibanah (The Clarification) This is among his most famous books. However, today you cannot find authentic printed copies of it. One of the unauthentic copies is published today by the Mushabbiha and spread among the people It contains a great deal of the Wahhabiyys misguidance, including an expression by which they claimed that all the Muslims, upon making supplication to Allah, say: "O Lord, the One Who inhabits the skies." This is ugly misguidance. Every person knows such a statement is far from the truth. No one heard the Muslims say such a statement--nor was such an expression found in any of the books Imam Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy actually authored. No such thing was found in the publications or the books authored by the students of Imam AbulHasan al-Ash^ariyy, nor the students of his students, nor the students of the students of his students, nor any of the people who follow his school (madhhab). This expression cannot be found among the scholars or the laymen. This, in itself, is sufficient to prove this expression a falsehood! Let us all be warned about this. Due to the strength of the Ash^ariyys in the religion and their vast knowledge to refute and expose those who deviate from the true path, many factions of misguidance, like the Mu^tazilah,tried to defame and discredit the Ash^ariyys. However, the great scholars of Ahl us-Sunnah managed to bury their misguidance. Nowadays, the Wahhabiyys who oppose the millions of Muslims of Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jama^ah and declare them as blasphemers for clearing Allah from bodily attributes, directions, places, manners of being, and all non-befitting attributes, have launched slanderous statements and defamation at the Ash^ariyys because the majority of Ahl us-Sunnah are Ash^ariyys. The Mushabbiha accuse the Ash^ariyys of blasphemy, yet, when they teach they cannot surpass quoting the great Ash^ariyys such as alBayhaqiyy. They cannot escape saying, "al-Bayhaqiyy said," "anNawawiyy said," or "al-Bukhariyy said," because the scholars of Ahl usSunnah, whether Maturidiyys or Ash^ariyys, are the ones who enjoy a continuous chain of narration all the way back to the Prophet--whereas the

Wahhabiys cannot claim the same. Their chain of narration, from their ill school of thought, stops at their forefather, Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived seven hundred years ago. As in the past, God willing, the scholars of Ahl us-Sunnahwill bury their misguidance. The Judge of Judges, Abu ^Abdullah ad-Damghaniyy al-Hanafiyy replied to the following question he received in Baghdad: "What do the honorable shaykhs say about a group of people who joined to damn the Ash^ariyys and declare them as blasphemers?" He replied by saying: "Such people have innovated an innovation of misguidance and committed a forbidden matter. The people in charge should denounce such people and discipline them satisfactorily so that others do not imitate them." Shaykh Abu Ishaq ash-Shiraziyy commented on this reply by saying: "The Ash^ariyys are the elite of Ahl us-Sunnah and the supporters of the laws of the Religion. They stood up to refute the innovators of misguidance among the Qadariyyah and others. The one who slanders them, in fact, slanders Ahl us-Sunnah. The one in charge of Muslims has to discipline such people in a way to stop others from imitating them." The great scholar, Diyauddin Abu al-Abbas Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn ^Umar Ibn Yusuf Ibn ^Umar al-Qurtubiyy compiled a treatise which he called: Zajrut-Muftari ^ala Abil-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy, which means: Restraining the One Who Fabricates about Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy. In it, he refuted some innovators of misguidance who slandered Imam alAsh^ariyy. When Shaykh Taqiuddin ibn Daqiq al-^Id read it, he eulogized it. Ustadh Abul-Qasim al-Qushayriyy said: "The people of hadith are all in agreement that Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy was an Imam of Hadith and his school is the same as the people of hadith. He presented the essentials of the Religion according to the methodology of Ahl us-Sunnah and he refuted the factions of misguidance. He was a drawn sword against the Mu^tazilah, the innovators, and the apostates. The one who slanders him or defames him, in fact, speaks ill of the entire Ahl us-Sunnah." Imam al-Ash^ariyys reputation was widespread. He became very famous, and his students spread throughout the different countries. His followers increased in numbers, including those who took from him directly and those who took from him through others, until the people of Ahl us-Sunnah became either Ash^ariyys or Maturidiyys. Know: Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy was not the first among the scholars of Ahl us-Sunnah to stand up and defend the creed, but rather he followed the path of the scholars before him among the scholars of Ahl us-Sunnah. Backing and supporting the school of Ahl us-Sunnah was known long before Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy, however, he contributed to adding clarity and clarification to the people about the creed of Ahl us-Sunnah. Those who came after Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy followed his path. Since they identified themselves with him, they are called "Ash^ariyys." A special school was not innovated for them,

rather, their school is the school of Ahl us-Sunnah. The way they support and back the creed of Ahl us-Sunnah is the methodology of Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy. Imam Al-Bayhaqiyy said: "Our Shaykh, Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy, did not make innovations in our Religion. Rather, he took the sayings of the Companions and their followers and those who came after them among the imams of the Essentials of Belief and he supported their sayings by clarifying them further. " Ibnus-Subkiyy said in his book, At-Tabaqat: "Know that Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy did not innovate a personal opinion and did not start a new school. Rather, he confirmed the schools of the Salaf and strove to carry out what the Companions of the Prophet had followed." When one attributes himself to al-Ash^ariyy it is because Imam al-Ash^ariyy adhered to the methodology of the Salaf and he produced the proofs in its support. Hence nowadays the one who follows in the steps of al-Ash^ariyy in adhering to the methodology of the Salaf and propagating the proofs in its support is referred to as an "Ash^ariyy." Ibnus-Subkiyy, in the same book, reported the following saying of alMaayariqiyy al-Malikiyy: "Abul-Hasan was not the first to speak the methodology of Ahl us-Sunnah. Rather, he followed the steps of others in doing so. He supported a well-known school and contributed to its credibility. Hence, he did not innovate a saying or a school of his own. Do you not see that the school of the people of al-Madinah was attributed to Imam Malik? Hence, the one who follows the school of the people of alMadinah is called a Malikiyy. Imam Malik had only followed the course of those who came before him and closely adhered to their method. However, because Imam Malik shed light on the school and explained it clearly, it was attributed to him. Likewise is the case of Abul-Hasan alAsh^ariyy; he only explained and promoted the school of the Salaf and authored works in supporting it." This is why those who genuinely follow the true school of Ahl us-Sunnah are called Ash^ariyys. As for the one who wishes to review the books pertaining to the life and the writings of Imam Abul Hasan al-Ash^ariyy, let him refer to what the Shaykh of ash-Sham and its historian: Abul-Qasim Ibn ^Asakir wrote in his book, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari. In this book there are details about the life of Imam Abul Hasan al-Ash^ariyy, the books which he authored, the people who followed his madhhab,and his students. He who looks thoroughly into this matter would realize the Ash^ariyys are the cavaliers in bringing about achievements for the Muslims. He who looks thoroughly into the issues, the matters, and the cases would realize the Ash^ariyys were the leaders and the pioneers in the areas of religious knowledge and the areas of jihad. The scholars of hundreds of millions of Muslims were Ash^ariyys.

Following are some of the prominent Ash^ariyys:

Abu Ishaq al-Isfarayiniyy; famous for the title al-ustadh, "the very skillful one"; The hafidh: Abu Nu^aym al-Asbahaniyy, the author of the book, Hilyat alAwliya; The famous Malikiyy judge: ^Abdul-Wahhab; Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Juwayniyy , who was the one whose hand lit up after he died, because he had written so many authentic religious judgments (fatwas); ^Abdul-Malik Abul-Ma^ali al-Juwayniyy , who is the son of Abu Muhammad al-Juwayniyy and the famous imam of the Haramayn, the Haram of Makkah and the Haram of al-Madinah; Abu Mansur at-Tamimiyy, the author of Al-Farqu Baynal-Firaq and Usul ud-Din; The hafidh: al-Isma^iliyy, who authored the book: Al-Mustakhraj ^AlaSahih al-Bukhariyy; The famous hafidh: al-Bayhaqiyy; The hafidh: ad-Daraqutniyy ; who was among the giants of the hafidhs of hadith; The hafidh:, al-Khatib al-Baghdadiyy, who authored the famous book, The History of Baghdad; The ustadh: Abul-Qasim al-Qushayriyy, the author of Ar-Risalah alQushayriyyah, a famous book in Sufism; His son, known as Abun-Nasr; The shaykh: Abu Ishaq ash-Shiraziyy , who was a famous Shafi^iyy scholar who authored At-Tanbih, Al-Muhadhdhab, and Al-Luma^; The famous Shafi^iyy faqih: Nasr al-Maqdisiyy; Imam al-Ghazaliyy; Al-Farawiy y; Abul-Wafa' Ibn ^Aqil al-Hanbaliyy; The Hanafiyy judge: ad-Damghaniyy, who was the judge of all judges in his era;

Imam Abul-Walid al-Bajiyy, a famous Malikiyy scholar; The Imam, the Master: Ahmad ar-Rifa^iyy; The hafidh: Abul-Qasim Ibn ^Asakir; Ibnus-Sam^aniyy, who acquired the knowledge through about 1000 shaykhs and authored the book: Al-Ansab; The hafidh: as-Silafiyy; Al-Qadi ^Iyad al-Malikiyy the author of Ash-Shifa; Imam an-Nawawiyy; Imam Fakhrud-Din ar-Raziyy, the author of the famous book of interpretation; Al-Qurtubiyy, who is also famous for his book of interpretation; The Shafi^iyy shaykh: ^Izzud-Din Ibnu ^Abdis-Salam, who was known for being strict in bidding that which Allah made lawful and forbidding that which Allah made unlawful; The Malikiyy scholar, linguist, and faqih: Abu ^Amr Ibnul-Hajib; Al-Qadi Ibnu Daqiq al-^Id, who, according to some sayings, reached the level of ijtihad; Imam ^Alaud-Din al-Bajiyy, a famous Malikiyy scholar; The judge of the judges: Taqiyyuddin as-Subkiyy; The hafidh of Jerusalem: al-^Alaiyy; The hafidh: Zaynud-Din al-^Iraqiyy, and his son, the hafidh, AbuZur^ah; The Seal of the hafidhs: Ibn Hajar al-^Asqalaniyy; The seal of the linguists, Imam Murtada az-Zabidiyy, who was a follower of the school (madhhab) of Imam AbuHanifah; The judge of the judges, the famous later Shafi^iyy scholar,: Zakariyya alAnsariyy; The Sufi shaykh: Bahaud-Din ar-Rawwas; The Mufti of the city of Makkah: Ahmad Ibn Zayni Dahlan , who authored a famous book: The History of Islamic States; The famous Indian scholar: Waliyyullah ad-Dahlawiyy;

The Mufti of Egypt, the shaykh: Muhammad ^Ulaysh al-Malikiyy; The shaykh of the Azhar Mosque in Egypt, who lived about 100 years ago: Shaykh ^Abdullah ash-Sharqawiyy; The famous shaykh from Tripoli: Abul Mahasin al-Qawuqjiyy, who died less than 100 years ago in Egypt. Much of the narration which has reached us today was narrated through him; Imam Husayn al-Jisr at-Tarabulsiyy of Tripoli, who is known for his books: Ar-Risalah al-Hamidiyyah and Al-Husun al-Hamidiyyah, both authored to defend the Religion of Islam against the atheists at the time of the Ottoman Sultan, ^AbdulHamid II; Our shaykh: ^Abdullah al-Harariyy, who is the shaykh of the Shafi^iyy madhhab and the Rifa^iyy tariqah today. These aforementioned are among the most famous scholars of this nation--and they are the followers of Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariyy. Others, not mentioned, like at-Tahawiyy and other scholars of the Hanafiyy school were followers of Imam al-Maturidiyy, who, like Imam Abul-Hasan al-Ash^ariy, supported the methodology of Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jama^ah. Among the followers of Imam al-Ash^ariyy were many government officials and sultans. Among them:

The famous government minister: Nidham al-Mulk, who was among the first to establish Islamic schools in the countries of the Muslims, the one who built the great school known as al-Madrasah an-Nidhamiyyahin Baghdad, Iraq; The just sultan and hero: Salahud-Din al-Ayyubiyy, who defeated the Crusaders in the battle of Hittin, and drove them out of Jerusalem. Salahud-Din al-Ayyubiyy ordered the matters of the creed, according to the methodology of Imam al-Ash^ariyy to be recited on the top of the minarets every morning after the call (adhan) for the Subh prayer. Ibnu Hibah al-Makkiyy, a famous Ash^ariyy scholar, authored a book pertaining to the creed--in poetry--which he presented as a gift to Salahud-Din alAyyubiyy. Salahud-Din al-Ayyubiyy ordered this book taught to the children in the schools. Despite the fact Salahud-Din al-Ayyubiyy was so occupied with fighting the battles he was renowned to have fought, he took the time each day to teach his small children from a book of the ^Aqidah. He used to ask his children to recite before him what they had memorized from this book--even though he would be in the front lines, preparing for the battle-- --to ensure they held the proper creed. The king: al-Kamil al-Ayyubiyy, who defeated the Crusaders in Dimyat and took the King of France and other kings as prisoners of war;

The Sultan: al-Ashraf Khalil, the son of al-MansurSayf ad-Din Qalawun, the one who completely uprooted the Crusaders from the countries of ashSham; All the sultans of the Mamluks were known to be followers of Imam Abul Hasan al-Ash^ariyy; The Sultan: Muhammad al-Fatih al-^Uthmaniyy, who conquered Constantinople, and about whom Imam Ahmad related the Prophet said: << Constantinople shall be opened, and praised is the army and its leader who shall open it. >> ; All the ^Uthmaniyy sultans who ruled were followers of Imam alAsh^ariyy.

So, let it be known, the people of Ahl us-Sunnah are either followers of Imam al-Ash^ariyy or Imam al-Maturidiyy. For the Shafi^iyys, the Malikiyys, the Hanafiyys, and the noble among the Hanbaliyys, when talking or writing about the matters of the Religion or the Essentials of the Belief, they used and are still using the expressions of Imam al-Ash^ariyy. It was by following the methodology of Imam al-Ash^ariyy that these aforementioned defended the Religion of Islam. Imam Abu Nasr alQushayriyy said: "I clear myself from the person who opposes me in two matters: The love that I have for Abu Bakr, and following the creed of Imam al-Ash^ariyy." Those are the scholars of the Religion, and all of them are Ash^ariyys. The scholars who were not Ash^ariyy were Maturidiyys and between the Ash^ariyys and the Maturidiyys, there are no differences in what pertains to the Essentials of the Belief. Although many Ash^ariyy scholars were mentioned, we did not intend to mention every single Ash^ariyy. After all, who is able to count the stars in the sky, and who can count the sand particles of the desert? The Ash^ariyys are the Knights of Knowledge and the Pioneers of Success. What has been mentioned gives one an indication of what was intended--in as much as the title of a book reflects the essence of its content. Imam al Ash^ariyy died in the year 324. The people of Ahl us-Sunnah wept for his death. May Allah raise his rank and endow upon us the ability to follow his example. Allah knows best.

BY ABD AR-RAHMAN I. DOI REVISED AND EXPANDED BY

ABDASSAMAD CLARKE (726 pages, Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., London, 2008)

This book has long been the standard reference on the subject in English. The authors first establish the principles on which the Shari'ah rests: the Book of Allah, the Sunnah, the consensus of knowledgeable Muslims, and the intellectual tools of ijtihad such as analogical reasoning. They begin each topic of Shari'ah with the relevant ayat of the Quran, often giving the commentary on those yt from the most reliable works of commentary. Then the book proceeds to the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, each hadith being meticulously sourced from the major collections and retranslated according to well known explanatory works on the hadith literature. The authors often give the judgements of the four schools and the majorulama from a wide range of classical texts. The work has received a very extensive overhaul and update with considerable new material available in English for the first time.

Professor Abdur Rahman I. Doi (1933 - 1999)

The late Professor Doi was born in Himmatnagar, Gujarat in India and educated at the University of Bombay, and later at Cambridge University, England. He taught for many years in various institutions in Nigeria. He held posts in Malaysia and the position of honorary professor at Universitas Islamica, Italy, and was visiting professor to University of Bayreuth, Germany and University of Bordeaux, France. Towards the end of his life he lived and taught in South Africa. Of all his authorship, he is most justly famous for this work.

Abdassamad Clarke
Abdassamad Clarke is from Ulster and was formally educated in Edinburgh. He accepted Islam in 1973 and later studied Arabic, tajwd and other Islamic sciences in Cairo. He has a number of translations of classical Arabic works. He is currently an imam and teacher at the Ihsan Mosque, Norwich, UK.

Den gavmilde Qur'an: en fremlgning af de tre frste suraer

Oversttelse af Jakob Werdelin, Abdassamad Clarke og Sud stergaard

Havens Forlag

Bestilles hos NBC

Forord Med disse tre suraer indleder vi vor fremlgning af Den Gavmilde Quran til Danmarks befolkning i sikker overbevisning om, at den vil blive mdt af de mest positive og bne sind. Sandheden er, at dette arbejde skulle have vret udfrt for lngst. Lige siden Sren Kierkegaard i sine sidste r kaldte p en tilbagevenden til Jesus virkelige lre, er behovet for at bringe dansk levevis tilbage til et ndeligt grundlag kun vokset. Ls mere

Translations from Arabic to English

The Compendium

of Knowledge and Wisdom

Jami' al-'Ulum wa'l-Hikam

BY IBN RAJAB AL-HANBAL The Compendium of Knowledge and Wisdom "Jami'al-'ulum wa'l-hikam [108] fi sharh khamsina hadithan min jawami' al-kalim is a comprehensive collection of sciences and wisdom in commentary on fifty hadith from the concise comprehensive speech [of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace]," by Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali. Translation generously commissioned by The International Centre for Islamic Studies.

NEWS. It is published by Turath Publishing Ltd., of London.

The author adds another eight hadith to the famous Forty Hadith of Imam an-Nawawi and gives a much more elaborate commentary: on their chains of transmission, on the rulings that they entail and on the spiritual dimensions of the hadith, their explanations with respect to ayat of Qur'an and other hadith, and what the great salihun and awliya of Islam have said about them.

The Kitab al-Athar

of Imam Abu Hanifah

BY IMAM MUHAMMAD IBN

AL-HASAN ASH-SHAYBANI

This compilation of traditions from the first generations of Islam the Companions, the Followers and the Followers of the Followers and hadith of the Messenger of Allah (saw), is understood by the ulama to have been the work of Imam Abu Hanifah. It was compiled by his student, Imam Muhammad. As is his pattern with the Muwatta, Imam Muhammad comments on each tradition and places it within the context of the fiqh rulings of his teacher, Imam Abu Hanifah. This will be an invaluable book for those interested in the early sources of Hanafi fiqh rulings, as it will also for those studying the history of the hadith and traditions.

Read here the chapter on sales according to Abu Hanifah and see how far off the mark the 'Islamic financiers' are.

The History of the Khalifahs Who took the Right Way See our translation of the chapters on the Khulafa ar-

Rashidun translated from Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti's "Tarikh alKhulafa" and published as "The Khalifahs who took the Right Way" (London,Ta-Ha Publications 1995)

Third Edition due out in October 2008 with extensive revisions, particularly the restoration of as-Suyuti's citation of his sources.

Read this substantial excerpt [116 k] from the story of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him.

The Complete Forty Hadith "The Complete Forty Hadith" is translated from Imam an-Nawawi's al-Arba'un anNawawiyyah wa sharhuha

This is the complete translation of this seminal work by Imam an-Nawawi. It includes the forty-two hadith many of which the people of knowledge have described as 'the half of the din' or 'the pivot of Islam', etc. The book includes the previously untranslated commentary which the Imam felt necessary for the true understanding of these ahadith.

Note: the third edition is on its way later in the year, with a better table of contents, and the hadith will be given names for greater ease of use and to make it simpler to find the hadith quickly.
160 pages, A5 paperback. ISBN 189794074 2.

Published by Ta-Ha Publishing Ltd.,London.

The Two Invocations Among our translations also is Al-Ism al-Mufrad - The Unique Name on the permissibility of

using the Unique Name "Allah" in dhikr, by Shaykh al-Alawi, published by Diwan Press as the first part of The Two Invocationsin 1980, and recently republished by Madinah Media.

Kitab al-Jami': on the sunnah, wisdom, courtesy, battles and history The translation of Kitab al-Jami' by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani was published by Ta-Ha Publishing Ltd in Dhu'l-Hijjah of 1419/April 1999 as "A Madinan View". However, this title was a mistake of my own, since it implies that the Madinan perspective on fiqh is one among many, whereas the position of the people of Madinah from Malik down to the present is that the 'amal (practice) of the people of Madinah is an incontrovertible proof of the Sunnah, as is affirmed by Ibn Taymiyyah. What Malik recorded in his Muwatta, as he so often expresses it, is "that on which there is no disagreement in our city".

Published in August 2004

"The Muwatta of Muhammad" by Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ash-Shaybani

(Translated jointly with Muhammad Abdarrahman)

"The Muwatta of Muhammad"[72k] being the transmission of

Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ash-Shaybani of the Muwatta of Imam Malik. This narration of the Muwatta of Imam Malik differs from most other transmissions in a number of respects:

1.

that itis not from a Maliki but from one of the two main imams of the Hanafi madhhab;

2.

although Imam Muhammad does not include Imam Malik's accounts of the 'amal of Madinah, and Malik's own judgements and explanations of different points of fiqh from the Madinan point of view, in their place he substitutes his own judgements and the judgements of Abu Hanifah, may Allah show him mercy, but nevertheless sometimes opting for the position of Malik where it is based, in his view, on a stronger hadith. In this respect, although the book is not the final word on Hanafi fiqh it is a fascinating glimpse of the crystallisation of the Hanafi madhhab in a very early stage.

3.

most interestingly, it contains an amount of hadith from Malik himself that the Muwatta narrated by Yahya ibn Yahya does not contain, most notably the hadith "Actions are only by intentions". Shah Wali Allah Dahlawi (1114-1176AH) said in the introduction to his book al-Musaffa Sharh al-Muwatta in Persian. After mentioning his bewilderment because of the disagreements of the madhhabs of the fuqaha, and the many different parties among the people of knowledge and their contending with each other, each one trying to draw the other to his side - he said, may Allah have mercy on him:

I was given the inspiration that pointed me to the book, theMuwatta, the composition of the courageous and liberally generous Imam, the Proof of Islam, Malik ibn Anas, and that thought grew stronger bit by bit. I became certain that there is no book of fiqh to be found stronger than the Muwatta of Imam Malik, since books are distinguished in merit from each other either because of the merit of the author, or because of their insistence on authenticity of transmission, or from the point of view of the fame of their hadith, or from the point of view of their wide acceptanc eamong Muslims generally, or from the point of view of excellence of structure and comprehensiveness of important goals or such like. All of these matters exist in theMuwatta completely with respect to all other books on the face of the earth today. He also said in the same introduction to the Musaffa:

My breast expanded and I became certain that the Muwatta is the most sahih book to be found on the earth after the Book of Allah.

Al-HafidhIbn Hajar said:

"The unqualified truth is that all of the Muwattais sound without any exception." The section given here is from the book of sales. The Muwatta of Muhammad was finally published in August 2004. The publishers areTurath Publishing

Rijal: narrators of the Muwatta of Imam Muhammad ibn alHasan ash-Shaybani by Shaykh 'Abd al-Hayyal-Luknawi This book is the Shaykh's distillation of the strengths and weaknesses of all of the narrators of the Muwatta, both the Madinan narrators of Imam Malik and the Kufan and other narrators of Imam Muhammad. It is published as a part of theMuwatta of Imam Muhammad, and it is already published by Ta-Ha independently as a separate volume.

The book launch with a talk on the theme of the book was held at the Froud Centre in London, Sunday 6/6/04.

13 September, 2008 4:59

Becoming muslim
In 1922 I left my native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as a Special Correspondent to some of the leading Continental newspapers, and spent from that year onward nearly the whole of my time in the Islamic East. My interest in the nations with which I came into contact was in the beginning that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social order and an outlook on life fundamentally different from the European; and from the very first there grew in me a sympathy for the more tranquil- I should rather

say: more mechanized mode of living in Europe. This sympathy gradually led me to an investigation of the reasons for such a difference, and I became interested in the religious teachings of the Muslims. At the time in question, that interest was not strong enough to draw me into the fold of Islam, but it opened to me a new vista of a progressive human society, of real brotherly feeling. The reality, however, of present day Muslim life appeared to be very far from the ideal possibilities given in the religious teachings of Islam. Whatever, in Islam, had been progress and movement, had turned, among the Muslims, into indolence and stagnation; whatever there had been of generosity and readiness for self-sacrifice, had become, among the present-day Muslims, perverted into narrow-mindedness and love of an easy life. Prompted by this discovery and puzzled by the obvious in congruency between Once and Now, I tried to approach the problem before me from a more intimate point of view: that is, I tried to imagine myself as being within the circle of Islam. It was a purely intellectual experiment; and it revealed to me, within a very short time, the right solution. I realized that the one and only reason for the social and cultural decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that they had gradually ceased to follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam was still there; but it was a body without soul. The very element which once had stood for the strength of the Muslim world was now responsible for its weakness: Islamic society had been built, from the very outset, on religious foundations alone, and the weakening of the foundations has necessarily weakened the cultural structure -and possibly might cause its ultimate disappearance. The more I understood how concrete and how immensely practical the teachings of Islam are, the more eager became my questioning as to why the Muslims had abandoned their full application to real life. I discussed this problem with many thinking Muslims in almost all the countries between the Libyan Desert and the Pamirs, between the Bosphorus and the Arabian Sea. It almost became an obsession which ultimately overshadowed all my other intellectual interests in the world of Islam. The questioning steadily grew in emphasis -until I, a non-Muslim, talked to Muslims as if I were to defend Islam from their negligence and indolence. The progress was imperceptible to me, until one day -it was in autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan -a young provincial Governor said to me: "But you are a Muslim, only you don't know it yourself." I was struck by these words and remained silent. But when I came back to Europe once again, in 1926, I saw that the only logical consequence of my attitude was to embrace Islam. So much about the circumstances of my becoming a Muslim. Since then I was asked, time and again: "Why did you embrace Islam ? What was it that attracted you particularly ?" -and I must confess: I don't know of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular teaching that attracted me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent structure of moral teaching and practical life program. I could not say, even now, which aspect of it appeals to me more than any other. Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other: nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is "in its proper place," has created the strongest impression on me. There might have been, along with it, other impressions also which today it is difficult for me to analyze. After all, it was a matter of love; and love is composed of many things; of our desires and our loneliness, of our high aims and our shortcomings, of our strength and our weakness. So it was in my case. Islam came over me like a robber who enters a house by night; but, unlike a robber, it entered to remain for good. Ever since then I endeavored to learn as much as I could about Islam. I studied the

Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); I studied the language of Islam and its history, and a good deal of what has been written about it and against it. I spent over five years in the Hijaz and Najd, mostly in al-Madinah, so that I might experience something of the original surroundings in which this religion was preached by the Arabian Prophet. As the Hijaz is the meeting centre of Muslims from many countries, I was able to compare most of the different religious and social views prevalent in the Islamic world in our days. Those studies and comparisons created in me the firm conviction that Islam, as a spiritual and social phenomenon, is still in spite of all the drawbacks caused by the deficiencies of the Muslims, by far the greatest driving force mankind has ever experienced; and all my interest became, since then, center around the problem of its regeneration. About the author: Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurtur Zeitung, and after his conversion to Islam traveled and worked throughout the Muslim world, from North Africa to as far East as Afghanistan. After years of devoted study he became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. After the establishment of Pakistan, he was appointed the Director of the Department of Islamic Reconstruction, West Punjab and later on became Pakistan's Alternate Representative at the United Nations. Muhammad Asad's two important books are: Islam at the Crossroads and Road to Mecca. He also produced a monthly journal Arafat. At present he is working upon an English translation of the Holy Qur'an. [Asad completed his translation and has passed away.

TOKOH PEMIKIRAN al Imam al Ghazali Rahimahullah Latar Belakang Muhammad b Muhammad b Ahmad Lahir: 450H, Taus, Parsi Gelaran: al Ghazali sempena kampung kelahirannya / pekerjaan bapanya iaitu pemintal bulu kambing (al Ghazzal) Ahli tasauf dan pemikir Meninggal dunia: 505H di Taus Sifat Peribadi Gemari semua bidang ilmu sehingga digelar gedung ilmu Fasih bercakap, berpidato dan berhujah Bertaqwa, wara, kuat beribadat, berhemah tinggi Praktis, melakukan pembersihan jiwa Ahli fiqh berfikiran terbuka dan bebas daripada taqlid Pengkritis dan pemikir bebas yang unggul Tegas, berani, tabah hadapi ujian Pendidikan Dididik bapanya sejak kecil dengan ilmu dan akhlak

Menguasai bahasa Arab, memudahkannya menguasai ilmu lebih tinggi Mahir behujah dalam usuluddin dalam aliran al Asyairah Digelar Hujjatu al Islam Dilantik naib kenselor Universiti an Nizzamiah Mulakan kehidupan sufi tahun 489H

Pandangan al Imam al Ghazali Rahimahullah Pembentukan jiwa Kecenderungan kepada hikmah dan kecintaan kepada ibadah merupakan unsur rabbani yang semulajadi Peranan pendidikan Sama seperti doktor yang tidak boleh membuat preskripsi yang sama kepada semua pesakitnya. Pendidikan sepatutnya mengkaji keupayaan pelajar Panduan rumahtangga Lelaki pemimpin dan pengawal tanggungjawab terhadap perempuan. Allah melebihkan lelaki ke atas perempuan kerana mereka membelanjakan sebahagian harta mereka Sumbangan al Imam al Ghazali dalam Bidang Ilmu dan Pemikiran Tasauf Menjadi sufi ke akhir hayatnya Orang hendak mengikut sufi hendaklah beramal sepenuhnya dengan syariat kerana syariat anak tangga pertama bagi ilmu tasauf Menghasilkan beberapa kitab tasauf Falsafah Menulis kitab Maqasid al Falasifah menerangkan doktrin ahli falsafah sehingga dianggap karya aliran Aristotle di Tanah Arab Menulis kitab Tahafutu al Falasifah mengkritik kelemahan falsafah barat Selepasnya, tidak muncul ahli falsafah yang terkenal selama 100 tahun Fiqh Islam Mujtahid dan ahli hukum terkenal Penguasaannya menyebabkan dirinya dilantik profesor ilmu Kuliahnya menarik perhatian ramai orang. Nasihatnya sering diminta. Al Imam Ibnu Taimiyah Rahimahullah Latar Belakang Taqiuddin abu al Abbas Ahmad b Abdul Halim al Harrani Lahir: 661H, Harran, Iraq Namanya bersempena moyangnya ke-9 Banyak berjasa dalam gerakan pembaharuan Islam Meninggal dunia: Penjara Damsyiq, 728H Sifat Peribadi Bertaqwa dan berakhlak

Ulung, berhemah tinggi, tidak mudah berputus asa Cerdas dan kuat ingatan Berfikir terbuka dan kritis Berani dan tegas hadapi cabaran

Pendidikan Telah hafaz al Quran sejak remaja Cintai ilmu dan suka bergaul dengan ulama Pernah diuji oleh seorang Yahudi dengan soalan yang akhirnya berjaya dijawab lalu Yahudi tersebut tertarik dengannya lalu memeluk Islam Mula memberi fatwa ketika 19 tahun Menyelesaikan masalah yang tidak dapat diselesaikan ulama Menulis hampir 300 jilid buku Pernah menggantikannya ayahnya mengajar tafsir Pandangan al Imam Ibnu Taimiyah Bentuk kesatuan Dua bentuk: Keagamaan (keyakinan kepada Allah, Rasul dan rukun iman yang lain) dan Bahasa (Bahasa Arab) Organisasi Menekankan konsep Ummah. Membentuk organisasi negara merupakan fungsi ummah Fungsi ummah mesti ditegakkan atas kesatuan kebajikan, taqwa dan persaudaraan Sumbangan al Imam Ibnu Taimiyah Rahimahullah Akademik Bersihkan amalan daripada bidah, khrafat dan mungkar Menentang penyelewengan akidah Ajak kembali menghayati Islam Dipenjara kerana menegakkan kebenaran Tidak berputus asa dan terus mengkritik penyelewengan akidah Mendedahkan keburukan penyelewengan tersebut dan mengajak mereka kembali kepada al Quran dan as Sunnah Menentang pemikiran barat yang cuba meracuni pemikiran Karya Majmuah ar Risalah al Kubra Majmuatu Rasail Majmuatu Khamsi ar Rasail Majmuu Fatawa Minhaju as Sunnati an Nabawiyyati Ilmu al Hadis Abu Ala al Maududi Rahimahullah Latar Belakang

Lahir: 1903M, Urghabad, India Ajli gerakan dakwah Asia Hasilkan buku ilmiah, tulisannya merupakan formula himpunan ke arah pembaharuan dan pembinaan semula tamadun berasaskan al Quran dan as Sunnah Meninggal dunia: 1983M

Sifat Peribadi Pemikir Islam zaman mutakhir Ilmu yang luas dalam pelbagai bidang Bersederhana, bertaqwa dan beristiqamah Berhemah tinggi, bercita-cita mengembalikan masyarakat kepada al Quran dan as Sunnah Gigih menegakkan kebenaran dan keadilan Pendidikan Di rumah daripada bapanya sendiri kerana kecewa dengan dasar pemerintah Inggeris Menguasai Bahasa Inggeris dengan baik Membaca bahan ilmiah dalam Bahasa Inggeris dan menterjemahkannya ke dalam Bahasa Urdu Beberapa Pandangan al Maududi Keperluan hidup dengan sempurna Manusia berusaha hidup dengan sempurna dengan menggunakan anggota badan dan pancaindera Tahap kemahiran manusia Kemahiran manusia berbeza. Sekiranya digerakkan secara bersepadu, dapat berfungsi dengan lebih berkesan untuk melahirkan tamadun tinggi Taqlid Jika manusia menolak Rasulullah, akan sesat terutamanya yang berpandukan akal semata-mata kerana akal mempunyai kemampuan terbatas dan mustahil mencapai hakikat sebenar Sumbangan al Maududi Kewartawanan Bekerja sebagai wartawan ketika 16 tahun sebelum menjadi pengarang. Dilantik ketua pengarang akhbar harian Muslim Banyak menulis artikel ilmiah mengajak kepada al Quran dan as Sunnah Ditugaskan memimpin majalah bulanan Turjuman Al Quran Hasil karya Menterjemah buku falsafah dan tafsir daripada bahasa aran dan inggeris ke dalam Bahasa Urdu Buku pertama: Jihad fil Islam Menghasilkan ar Risalah ad Diniah yang menjadi bacaan umum dalam dan luar negara

Hasilkan Kitab Siratu an Nabi yang mendapat penghargaan Rabitah al Alam al Islami Gerakan Islam Salurkan pandangan dan pemikiran melalui penulisan dan ceramah Menubuhkan Jamaatu al Islami di Lahore Pernah dipenjarakan selama 2 tahun Dipenjara sekali lagi kerana bukunya The Qadiani Problem

As Syeikh Muhammad Idris al Marbawi Rahimahullah Latar Belakang As Syeikh Muhammad Idris b Abdul Rauf Lahir:Mekah, 1313H Dikenali sebagai ulama Melayu pertama di Mesir Daya ingatan kuat (hafaz 16 juz al Quran dan beberapa kitab lain ketika 10 tahun) Meninggal dunia: 1989M Sifat Peribadi Ulama besar nusantara Ahli bahasa,mahir dalam bidang hadis Menjaga maruah, bertaqwa dan kuat beribadat Hemah tinggi, gigih menuntut ilmu Pendidikan Sekolah Melayu Kampung Lubuk Merbau Pondok Wan Ahmad Pondok Tuan Husin al Masudi Pondok Sheikh Ahmad Pathani Pondok Tok Kenali Al Azhar Mesir Kejayaan Idris Marbawi dalam Bidang Pendidikan Hasilkan kamus Arab Melayu pertama Qamus al Marbawi dan Qamus al Jaib Tetap gigih menuntut ilmu sehingga memperoleh ijazah al Aliah di al Azhar Pelajar Melayu pertama mendapat ijazah tersebut Sumbangan Al Marbawi dalam Bidang Bahasa Hasilkan kitab hadis, fiqh, tafsir dan kamus kerana menguasai Bahasa Arab dan Bahasa Melayu Hasilkan Bahrul Mazi, kitab hadis pertama dalam Bahasa Melayu tulisan jawi Tulis kitab dalam Bahasa Melayu agar menjadi bahan bacaan orang Melayu Menulis Bulugh al Maram, kupasan hadis dalam Sahih Bukhari Dianugerahi Ijazah Kehormat Doktor Persuratan oleh Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Dianugerahi Tokoh Maal Hijrah Malaysia

Who Hijacked Islam?

"Let not your hatred of others cause you to act unjustly against them." The Koran Never in Islam's history have the actions of so few of its followers caused the religion and its community of believers to be such an abomination in the eyes of others. Millions of Muslims who fled to North America and Europe to escape poverty and persecution at home have become the objects of hatred and are now profiled as potential terrorists. The nascent democratic movements in Muslim countries will regress for a few decades as ruling autocrats use their participation in the global war against terrorism to terrorize their critics and dissenters. This is what Mohamed Atta and his fellow terrorists and sponsors have done to Islam and its community worldwide by their murder of innocents at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks must be condemned, and the condemnation must be without reservation. The foremost religious authorities are outraged and have issued statements denouncing the monstrous murders. All efforts to punish the perpetrators must be supported. One is therefore perturbed by the confusion among Muslims who responded to the attack with a misplaced diatribe against the U.S. In Malaysia, the governmentcontrolled media have been deployed to stir up anti-American sentiments, while members of the political Elite use a different language for international diplomacy. Certainly there are legitimate grievances against the U.S. and good reason for despondency over the fate of the Palestinians, who now face an even more arrogant Israel. But this is not the time for sermonizing or moralizing over U.S. foreign policy. Had we Malaysians been the victims of such a tragedy, we would find such hectoring tasteless and repulsive. One wonders how, in the 21st century, the Muslim world could have produced an Osama bin Laden. In the centuries when Islam forged civilizations, men of wealth created pious foundations supporting universities and hospitals, and princes competed with one another to patronize scientists, philosophers and men of letters. The greatest of scientists and philosophers of the medieval age, ibn Sina, was a product of that system. But bin Laden uses his personal fortune to sponsor terror and murder, not learning or creativity, and to wreak destruction rather than promote creation. Bin Laden and his protgs are the children of desperation; they come from countries where political struggle through peaceful means is futile. In many Muslim

countries, political dissent is simply illegal. Yet, year by year, the size of the educated class and the number of young professionals continue to increase. These people need space to express their political and social concerns. But state control is total, leaving no room for civil society to grow. The need for Muslim societies to address their internal social and political development has become more urgent than ever. Economic development alone is clearly insufficient: it creates its own tensions in the social and political spheres, which must be addressed. A proper orientation must be developed for Muslim engagement with the world at large. Participation in the global processes must not be the monopoly of the government. It is the sense of alienation and the perception that the world is against them that nurture bitterness among those who resort to terrorism. Confusion and anger against the global order and its only superpower have been brought about by the failure of the Muslim world to address two crucial issues: Afghanistan's descent into chaos and anarchy as a result of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent rise of the Taliban, and the suffering inflicted on the Muslim masses in Iraq by its dictator as well as by sanctions imposed on that long-suffering nation. For ethical reasons, Muslims will support the global initiative against terrorism. But there is a growing perception that autocrats of all types will seize the opportunity to prop up their regimes and deal a severe blow to democratic movements. Russian President Vladimir Putin will use it to defend atrocities in Chechnya, Israel to defend its intransigence and Malaysia its detentions without trial. Necessity will prompt the U.S. to seek the collaboration of the governments of Muslim countries. This is understandable. But they do not hold all the answers to terrorism. The growth of democracy, political participation and civil society is the final answer. By softening its endorsement of the struggle for democracy and the protection of human rights, the U.S. will inadvertently strengthen dictatorial regimes, thus replicating past associations with Marcos, Suharto and the Shah of Iran. For more than 100 years, the Muslim world has had to grapple with the problem of modernity. Of greatest urgency is the effort to inculcate an intellectual and political orientation that promotes democracy and openness. Intellectuals and politicians must have the courage to condemn fanaticism in all its forms. But they must, in the same breath, equally condemn the tyrants and oppressive regimes that dash every hope of peaceful change.

According to Anwar Ibrahim's lawyer, this essay will be part of a lawsuit that Anwar, the jailed former Deputy Prime Minister, plans to file this week against the Malaysian government for alleged defamation resulting from a state-owned TV broadcast that he says characterized him as an Islamic extremist and a threat to national security.