We, the Muslims, find ourselves in a precarious situation across the globe. Our lands invaded, minds colonised, our societies disrupted, and our intellectual traditions ruptured. The life of the average Mussalman has been rendered nearly identical to his materialist counterpart. A potent slumber has overtaken his Aqal resulting from two centuries of reengineering that has made him uneasy, apologetic and even disdainful towards the 1300 year tradition bequeathed to him by a chain that goes directly back to the Prophet PBUH. The modern Muslim in his everyday ‘profane’ life submits himself completely (or almost completely) to his Western Masters, while professing to submit only to Allah. This juggling act of immanence vs transcendence has ripped his society, his very psyche and soul asunder. If the modern world, characterized purely by metrics and quantity, is to be the sole arbiter of success and prosperity, then how does one forge a connection with the All Knowing and the All Seeing? How is one to follow the example of His Chosen One upon him be eternal peace and blessings, the best of creation, when the modern Muslim mind has been transmuted into a playing field for the global tech cabal. What is needed then is a strong antidote that can dispel away the sea of paradoxes and contradictions that tug at our very fabric of being. A lack of the knowledge of the proper places of all things produces zulumat, which can only be cleared away with the light of Iman. A light that seldom rears itself in our highly regimented technalistic lives. Yet when one steps into the Haramain, it is almost as if that luminescence enters into one’s soul instantaneously. Circumambulating the House of God in complete awe of His Majesty and Power, the Bestower of Existence, the Ultimate Creator (Al-Khalaq). In that sublime moment, no Muslim gives any weight to what the inhabitants of a continent, that have brought humanity to the edge of catastrophe, might have to say. Whereas in every other place but the Haramain, their whims and conjectures reign supreme over the Muslim mind, here their effects are nullified. Expunged momentarily by the all encompassing sight of the Ka’abah. The running between Safa and Marwah, quenching one’s thirst with holy water from the miraculous Zam Zam spring, are rituals that seem so bizarre to the empiricist, whose gaze in its entirety, is locked on the sensible forms of matter. Whereas the Muslim who ventures for the pilgrimage, despite being embedded in the sinister web of materialism, gets a chance to experience the subtleties of the soul. It is during the course of the worship rituals that one witnesses the effects of the soul on the body, something that is an anathema to post Enlightenment Western thought. The sick, the elderly and the weak all of a sudden find within themselves a rapid effusion of spiritual energy, much to the dismay of the physician, and his staunch adherence to indices and concentrations. He would be further perplexed by the serenity and sakina of the Prophet’s PBUH Mosque, as well as the flocking of millions of muslims to pay their respects and regards at his blessed grave at all times. It is at the grave of the Chosen One where the intensity of devotion of his followers peaks. The narrow entrance to his and his successors chambers, crammed so tightly that one can only move a single step at a time. It is during that brief walk where once again one sees distinctions vanish. It would seem that the profane trifles that us Mussalmans bicker and compete over every other day, overabundance of material goods, the overt glitter of our possessions, degree of inflation of our egos, all are eviscerated by the presence of Mustafa PBUH. Duroods and salawats reverberate across the extent of the Roza, as each and every devotee attempts to obtain a glimpse of the sacred chamber where Khair ul Khalq resides. The otherwise unsure, anxious and apologetic Mussalman, daily jeered at by the Western sahibs for his religious devotion, finds himself revitalized, rejuvenated, restored, at peace and reassured due to merely being in proximity to God’s Beloved. The Sahib cannot even begin to fathom what his subject possesses. He is so strongly wound up by the chains of his never ending progress, deluded by the elusive utopia that always seems close but never manifests and isolated by his corporate techno lords. His constant content consumption, unable to seal the glaring chasm situated at the center of his being. Yet despite the damage inflicted by the Sahib on the Mussalman, his love and admiration for the Prophet PBUH remains. The Prophet whose legacy is neither dinar nor dirham but only Ilm.
Afkar-e-Qurtuba 