the sunna as primordiality - abdal hakim murad

8/2/2019 The Sunna as Primordiality - Abdal Hakim Murad

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The Sunnaas PRIMORDIALITY

ByAbdal Hakim Murad, April 1999


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TWENTIETH-CENTURY WESTERN ART is not a subject for which weMuslims have much time. The alert among us are conscious that it

neatly represents the decline of the Western Christian worldview

and its replacement first with the titanic fantasies of the

Renaissance, those absurd nude figures urging us to consider the

human creature as sufficient unto himself; and then, when two

world wars convinced the Western elite that the human creature

left to his own devices was unlikely to create his own paradise on

earth, the grotesqueries of the modern period. Today, one of the

best-known of British artists is Damien Hurst, famous for exhibiting a

sheep floating in formaldehyde. Hardly less famous are Gilbert

and George, two middle-aged homosexuals in grey Marks and

Spencers suits, who paint vast canvases using their own body

fluids.The winner of the 1998 Turner Prize, the most prestigious gong

in the British art world, was painted with the excrement of an

elephant. Perhaps this is why we Muslims find modern Western artparticularly disagreeable and resistant to our contemplation: if art

is the crystallisation of a civilisation, then to amble along the

corridors of the Tate Gallery is to be confronted with a disturbing

realisation. Christianity, when it was taken seriously by the cultural

elite, produced significant works, which Muslims can recognise as

beautiful, despite the inherent dangers of its love of the graven

image. Christianity was sapped by the so-called enlightenment;

and now that the enlightenment itself has run its course, the

Western soul, as articulated by its most intelligent and most

respected artistic representatives, has shifted its concerns to the

human entrails. From the spirit, to the mind, to the body - and

now to its waste products: a depressing trajectory, and one from

which we avert our gaze. But it is immensely instructive,

nonetheless, to visit art galleries just to observe the consistency of

the decline. It serves as a reminder not only that we dislike themodern world, but also that we dont like disliking it. We would


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rather feel that there existed some authentic connection between

our worldview and that of the Western elite: but such a link

appears no longer to exist. It is not that we are extreme. It is not

we who destroyed the bridge. We are simply holding to the norms

generally recognised by our species for 99% of its history. It is the

West that is extreme, that has grown strange, that seems to have

gone mad.

And yet amidst this hideous visual cacophony, occasional insights

can be observed; and these can be of an almost revelatory

intensity. Almost all 20th century Western artists have been well

aware of their cultural situation, as wreckers of a religious view ofthe world, and as the depictors of its chaotic, formless, ugly

successor. A few, however, have recognised the persuasiveness

of the alternatives. And a very few, those who have escaped the

besetting racism and Islamophobia of European culture, have

acknowledged the beauty and depth of Islam.

One such artist was the Russian, Kasimir Malevich. Malevich lived

and worked around the time of the Russian Revolution, a time ofthe concatenation of the thousands of rival movements, religious,

mystical, atheistic, or aesthetic, which collided in the early 1920s,

only for the satanic force of Josef Stalin to emerge from the ruins.

It was, for a few brief and heady seasons, a time when the dead

weight of the countrys inherited hierarchies, both religious and

royal, seemed to have been removed to make way for a vision

that was not only more just, but also more spiritually sighted.

One manifestation of this was the demand by the young artists of

the Left that the authorities abolish all representational forms of

painting. Figurative art, they rightly pointed out, is inherently

oppressive. It privileges youth over age; wealth over poverty. In its

religious modes it attributes gender and race to the divine. Hence

the revolutionary slogan:


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A White Army officer

when you catch him

you beat him

and what about Raphael

its time to make

museum walls a target

let the mouths of big guns

shoot the old rags of the past!

The Bolsheviks themselves were horrified by this. For them,

representational art provided the foundation for all mass

propaganda. And in due time, Stalin and his successors

patronised and enforced the crude style of Socialist Realism,

images of muscular peasant men and women gazing up at the

new socialist dawn. The titanism and human-worship of the

Renaissance had been restored; only the desire for greater

freedom was removed.

But in the white-hot heat of the moment, when the old wascrashing down with the Winter Palace and the Kazan Cathedral,

and the new, in the form of Soviet gigantism had not yet had its

triumph, a crack in European culture appeared that for a brief but

remarkable instant admitted the light of Islam.

Most of Russia, of course, is built on the ruins of Muslim civilisations.

More than any other European people, not excepting the Serbs,

the Russians have seen themselves as holy warriors against Islam.In the early 16th century, almost all of what is today Ukraine was

Muslim, ruled by the Kasimov emirs with their splendid capital to

the south of Moscow. The Crimea, one of the most densely

populated and prosperous regions on earth, was a Muslim state in

alliance with the Ottoman caliphate. The steppeland between

the Black and Caspian Seas had been Muslim for centuries,

growing rich on the silk and carpet trade between Iran and

Europe. To the east of Moscow, Muslim cities adorned the banks


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of the Volga river, culminating in their capital Kazan, a city

perhaps twenty times the size of Moscow itself. In 1555 Ivan the

Terrible, taking advantage of divisions between these European

Muslim empires, invaded and sacked Kazan. The great White

Mosque of Kul Sherif, with its eight minarets, was torn down, and its

rubble used to build St Basils Cathedral in Moscow. Although the

Kazan khans had always permitted the practice of Christianity, the

Russian conquerors prohibited Islam, and forcibly baptised the

remaining population. The Cossacks were let loose on the Muslim

countryside, young men from the frozen north who captured and

enslaved Muslim women, breeding from them a new type of

crusading zealot. So strong was the sense of confrontation withthe more civilised world of Islam that until the eighteenth century it

was common for drums in the Russian army to be made from the

skins of captured Muslims.

This legacy of hatred is the bedrock of Russian culture. Before Ivan

the Terrible, about half of the land-mass of Europe was Muslim.

And the Russian tsars saw themselves as the ethnic cleansers

under whose hammer blows the surviving Muslims would bow their

knees at the cross.

The Russian Revolution, and the years immediately preceding and

following it, challenged every assumption of the traditional Russian

mind; including the most fundamental assumption of all: the

unworthiness of Islam. Intellectuals and poets begin to respect

Muslim culture. Architects, bored and disgusted by the

flamboyant rococo splendour of St Petersburg, turned their eyes

to the architecture of Muslim Bukhara and Samarkand. Here, they

thought, was a harmony of man and nature, a celebration of

beauty that was not titanic, but contemplative. The blue tiles of

the Friday Mosque and the Shah-i Zindeh tombs of Samarqand

seemed not to raise up a fist of defiance to the skies, as did the art

of Europe; but to call down something of the peace of heaven

onto the earth. Russian architects such as Melnikov incorporatedUzbek themes into their houses. A spectacular example is


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Melnikovs design for the Soviet pavilion at the 1925 International

Exposition in Paris, which borrows from the design of Central Asian

Islamic tomb towers. Through works such as these, Western

architects such as Le Corbusier introduced Islamic themes into

their own design.

In the visual arts, this influence is also marked. There were other,

often quite demented movements in the air also, of course:

Acmeism, Cubism, Constructivism, and the rest. But among some

artists, those with an eye still on the spiritual, the attractions of the

Islamic sense of beauty proved too radiant to resist. As one

architect, Andrei Burov noted of his generation: There was astrong Mohammedan influence; and orthodox Mohammedanism

at that.

At this point, Kasimir Malevich steps in. Malevich was a

contemplative and a mystic, who found European

representational painting to be little more than a crude and

loathsome conjuring with flabby pink limbs against heroic

landscapes.

Malevichs greatest work is a painting called Black Square. This is

a square, painted completely in black, against a white border.

He called it his absolute symbol of modernity, a modernity which

he hoped would be pure and spiritual, as opposed to the

congealed decadence of 19th-century Western materialism.

He chose the image of a Black Square because it is the totalinversion of the Western tradition of recording the writhing diversity

of the manifest world. He wrote, later, that when painting it he felt

black nights within, and a timidity bordering on fear, but when

he neared completion he experienced a blissful sensation of

being drawn into a desert where nothing is real but feeling, and

feeling became the substance of my life.


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What on earth could this mean? The modern British writer Bruce

Chatwin, who knew Islam well, commented as follows:

This is not the language of a good Marxist, but of Meister

Eckhart - or, for that matter, of Mohammed. Malevichs

Black Square, his absolute symbol of modernity, is the

equivalent

in painting of the black-draped Kaba at Mecca, the shrine

in a valley of sterile soil where all men are equal before God.

Here we have the key to understanding Malevichs achievement.

In this painting, which for Muslims must be the most significant workof 20th century art, a cultured Russian finally breaks through the

carapace of solidified reality, and intuits the nature of truth.

Simplicity is beauty. And it is depth, instilling awe, and an

authentic rather than sentimental emotion.

Malevich, in a moment of cultural turmoil, and of intense, blazing

realisation, had stumbled upon the principle of pure beauty. Only

the Real is real; manifestation and its diversities are chimera. Theline between the two is razor-sharp: Qul ja al-Haqq wa-zahaqal-

batil, innal-batila kana zahuqa. Say: Reality has come, and

falsehood has vanished; falsehood was ever evanescent. This

was, after all, the aya recited by the Prophet (s) as he rode

around the Kaba, pointing with his stick to each of the 360 idols in

turn, upon which they fell over into the dust.

Malevich died, and Socialist Realism ruled triumphant. But for asecond in Europes history, the truth had been glimpsed.

At the centre of the Islamic religion lies the Kaba. Uniting the

aspects of the divine beauty and the divine majesty, it is a place

of resort and safety for human beings. It lies in a city protected

by the prayer of Ibrahim al-Khalil, alayhil-salam: My Lord, make

this land a sanctuary.


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The Kaba has many meanings. One of these pertains to the

Black Stone, which is the point at which the pilgrims come closest

to its mystery.

Ali ibn Abi Talib narrated that when God took the Covenant,

He recorded it in writing and fed it to the Black Stone, and

this is the meaning of the saying of those who touch the

Black Stone during the circumambulation of the Ancient

House: O God! This is believing in You, fulfilling our pledge to

You, and declaring the truth of Your record.

The Kaba therefore, while it is nothing of itself - a cube of stonesand mortar - represents and reminds its pilgrims of the primordial

moment of our kind. Allah speaks of a time before the creation of

the world:

when your Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam,

from their reins, their seed, and made them testify of

themselves, He said: Am I not your Lord? They said, Yea!

We testify! That was lest you should say on the Day of Arising:

Of this we were unaware. (7:171)

When we visit the House, we are therefore invited to remember

the Great Covenant: that forgotten moment when we committed

ourselves to our Maker, acknowleding Him as the source of our

being. The Black Stone itself is, according to a hadith which Imam

Tirmidhi declares to be sound, yaqutatun min yawaqit al-janna -a gemstone from Paradise itself.

The Kaba functions, in the imagination of those who visit it on Hajj,

or turn towards it in Salat, as the centre and point of origin of all

diverse things on earth. It is oriented towards the four cardinal

points of the compass. Its blackness recalls the blackness of the

night sky, of the heavens, and hence the pure presence of the

Creator. Allah tells us that there are signs for us in the heavensand the earth; and recent astronomy affirms that the spiral


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galaxies are revolving around black holes. A powerful symbol,

written into the magnificence of space, of the spiritual vortex

which beckons us to spiral into the unknown, where quantum

mechanics fail, where time and space are no more.

The yearning for the Kaba which sincere Muslims feel whenever

they think of it is therefore not, in fact, a yearning for the building.

In itself it is no less part of the created order than anything else in

creation. The yearning is, instead, a fragment, a breath of the

nostalgia for our point of origin, for that glorious time out of time

when we were in our Makers presence.

That yearning is the central emotion of Islam. It is of the heart: the

heart knows the Kabas splendour; the mind cannot understand

it: it is, after all, only a cube 12 metres high. Hence Jalal al-Din

Rumi says:

The intellect declares: The six directions are limits, and

there is no way out.

Love says: There is a way, and I have travelled it manytimes.

And later he says:

By the time the intellect has found a camel for the hajj,

love has circled the Kaba.

This fundamental emotion of the Islamic religion, which is in fact

part of the fitra - the primordial human nature, the state of grace

into which we were born - is love, mahabba, a painful desire to

return to the beloved. Walladhina amanu ashaddu hubban

liLlah. Those who have faith, as the Qur'an insists, have the

greatest love for God. (2:165) To know ones origin is to love it.

This nostalgic yearning to return, to circle back to the point of

origin, for which the Kaba is no more than the earthly symbol and

reminder, is the most common theme in the splendid and subtle


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poetic tradition of Islam. Here, for instance, is a poem by the 13th

century Turkish poet and lover of Allah, Yunus Emre:

We need to serve a King who never may be driven from His

throneTo rest within a place which we may ever feel to be our own.

A bird we need to be, to fly, to reach the very rim of things,

To drink that cordial whose joy we never may disown.

We need to be a diving bird, to plunge into the waters flow;

We need a gemstone to recover such as jewellers cannot

know.

To enter in a garden, there to dwell in contentments shade;

To pass the summer as a rose - a rose whose petals never fade.

Mankind must lover be, must ever search to find the true

Beloved;

Must burn within the flame of Love - nor burn in any other

flame.

Islam is hence the religion of theAlastu bi-rabbikum: Am I not yourLord?. We follow the Great Covenant, unlike adherents of

previous religions who follow lesser, local, ethnic covenants. The

Kaba represents our way of centring ourselves directly on the

divine presence, the origin of all manifestation.

We need to ponder the divine wisdom in this. Islam appeared in a

time and place where there was no civilisation. If a Quraishite

Arab had travelled five hundred miles north, south, east or west,he would have found a developed culture. But Arabia was a

pocket of primordial simplicity. And Allah subhanahu wa-taala

chose this vacuum for His final message, the one that would end

all previous covenants with Him, and gather the nations of the

earth to the restored Great Covenant itself.

One deep wisdom to be gained from this is the fact of Islams

simplicity. Our doctrine could not be more straightforward. The


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most pure, exalted, uncompromising monotheism: the clearest

idea of God there has ever been. A system of worship that

requires no paraphernalia: no crosses, confessionals, priests or

pews. Just the human creature, and its Lord. The Hajj and Umra

also take us back to an ancient time, as we wear the simplest of

garments, and perform primordial rites that reconnect us with the

symbolic centre, around the purest building there has ever been.

The fast of Ramadan is also timeless: bringing us into contact and

continuity with one of the oldest of all religious devotions. In fact,

some ulema say that fasting is the oldest religious commandment

of all: for in the Garden, the grandfather and grandmother of

humanity were under only one instruction: to refrain from eatingfrom a particular tree.

By stepping inside the protecting circle of Islam, the human

creature is thus reconnected to the ancient simplicity and dignity

of the human condition. Islam allows us to reclaim our status as

khalifas: Allahs deputies on earth.

But this is not limited to the pattern of worship alone. To worshipaccording to one vision of man, and to live according to another,

will inevitably provoke conflict in the soul. Some religions today

allow their followers to live a fully mainstream, 20th century lifestyle

outside the place of worship. But Islam knows that this is absurd.

The focussing on the divine presence during Salat relativises and

transforms our vision of everything else. When we turn away from

the Kaba again, we say, to right and left, al-Salaamu alaykum.

The reconnection with the exquisite and ancient sacred centre

brings a new attitude to the rest of our lives. The salat bars us

from corruption and ugly behaviour. That is, if it is done well, with

hudur- presence of mind and spirit - then the rest of our behaviour

will be refined. Poor manners, crude language, lack of

compassion for others, are all sure signs that we are offeringsalat

incorrectly.


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This means that Islam does not distinguish between our lives of

worship, and anything else in our lifestyle. And it means that the

starting point for putting our communities right, is the establishment

of the prayer, which redirects us to the point on which we are all

united. Not only through public observance in the mosque. It is

possible to go through the motions of the prayer, and pay no

attention; and this is almost worthless. The hadith says, The

worshipper in salat is credited only with that of which he was

conscious. And al-Hasan al-Basri said: Every prayer in which the

heart is not attentive is nearer to punishment than it is to reward.

A besetting problem we face, which symbolises all our otherspiritual problems, is that of the mechanical prayer: we proclaim

Allahu akbar, but immediately show that we dont know what

Allahu akbarmeans. We turn on a kind of autopilot, awakening

from a vague somnolence some minutes later with the salaam.

This is no good. Moving the body, and letting the tongue dance

cleverly around the palate, are of no help to us. The very word

salat signifies connection. There is little point in having a lamp ifwe dont switch on the electricity: and the electricity comes

through khushu - attentive humility, an awareness of the majesty

and nearness of our Lord, and all the divine beauty and rigour of

which the Holy Kaba is the emblem.

The act ofsalat brings us home: to the earth. The name of Adam,

alayhissalaam, is said to be derived from adim - earth, dust. And

Allah says that He created him of dust. By pressing the foreheadto the ground we recall our created and fleeting lives. From it did

We create you, to it do We return you, and from it shall We bring

you out one more time. Three encounters with the earth - and we

can escape none of them.

The slave is closest to his Lord while he prostrates. This is a hadith.

We are truly Allahs khulafa - His deputies and representatives on

this earth - when our foreheads, the symbol of Pharaonic pride


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and defiance, are pressed firmly down; when the heart is higher

than the head.

No umma on the planet has a more intimate relationship with

Allahs creation than do we Muslims. We know it as a universe of

signs, which revelation teaches us to read.

Truly in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the

succession of night and day are signs for people of inner

understanding. Those who make dhikr, who recall, Allah

standing, and sitting, and upon their sides, and think about

the way in which the heavens and the earth have been

made. (3:190, 191)

Salat is a form of dhikr. Allah commands sayyidina Musa

alayhisalam, And establish the Prayer for My dhikr, My

remembrance. (20:14) And remembrance of Allah is the

recollection of that original source and direction of humanity, at

the Great Covenant, and the Assembly of Am I Not your Lord - the

bezm-i alast. Hence our physical turning to the Kaba, which ispure beauty, represents and recalls our acknowledgement of our

primordial home, and our affirmation, again, of our loyalty to that

promise which we all have made.

Hence the beauty, and the dignity, and the timeless poise of the

Salat. By thesalat, we affirm the glory of our Lord, through tasbih

and bowing and prostrating. By the salat we affirm the pledge

which we have made to Him. And by thesalat we acknowledgethat we do this only because sayyidina Muhammad, sallallahu

alayhi wa-sallam, taught us how to pray. The prayer thus

becomes the culmination of the sunna. It is the pillar of religion -

whoever tears it down, has demolished the religion. Without it our

recollection of our primordial source and origin has no meaning,

and no sign.


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The prayer, of course, was gifted to humanity on the Night of the

Miraj. This was the culminating event of Rasulullahs prophetic

story: his greatest glory, as he rose into the very presence of his

Lord in order to behold His greatest signs.

In the divine presence, the Prophet (s.w.s.) was offered a choice.

He was brought wine, and he was brought milk. As he chooses

the milk, Gabriel, upon him be peace, says, Hudiyta lil-fitra - you

have been guided to the fitra - the primordial, pure, natural

disposition of man.

This extraordinary event deserves careful consideration. At the

summit of his prophetic career, and hence at the summit of

humanitys history of relating to Allah, a lesson is given about the

fitra; and we are shown that this is part of, and indeed the

essence of, the Sunna.

The choice between wine and milk is the choice between

corruption and purity. Milk is described in the Quran as khalisan -

pure. Wine, by the very process which produces it, is at oneremove from nature. It is a natural fluid, but in a state of

corruption. It is interesting that in the modern world, consumers

are very reluctant to eat food that has rotted, but are only too

happy to consume fluids that are rotted and corrupt. And the

process of fermentation is nothing other than a process of rotting.

Bottles of wine rarely advertise a sell-by date.

So: hudiyta lil-fitra. The prophetic figure of the Miraj is told by theangel that the fitra is one of his traits. And this, by extension,

becomes the nature of his sunna, in which we must all try to

partake.

The picture is a little clearer now. Rasulullah (s.w.s.) is born in

Makka, a city of ancient desert simplicity. He migrates to Madina,

a city of ancient agricultural, peasant simplicity. The rites of his

religion, culminating in thesalat, breathe something of that purity


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and ancient humanity. They are not of our time: they make the

habits of our time seem puny and undignified.

The modern world is in a panic about its departure from nature.

The seas, air and rivers are rendered impure by industries which

are the expression of human greed and the hatred of simplicity.

Alzheimers disease, asthma, AIDS and male infertility are spiralling

hints of the collapse of the species. The Rio conference urged a

reduction in emissions, and hence of certain forms of production,

but failed to explain how the forgotten virtue of zuhd might be

made attractive again to people whose religion has lost its

appeal, and who hence worship their pleasures and themselves.Ordinary people indicate their unease by buying organic

produce, using aloe-vera shampoo, and shunning the synthetic

wherever they can. And yet this is a return to form, not to content.

It is idle to recommend a natural lifestyle if one adopts it only as

a style rather than as a significant affirmation of a cosmos that has

a source and a destiny, and has been created to support

humanity in its life of worship and affirmation of the Real. As

Muslims, we affirm a natural lifestyle: and this is no mere pose. The

retrieval of the Great Covenant demands that we live in

accordance with the created norm of our kind. Shah WaliAllah

observes that God has appointed a sharia for every species. And

every species, when not oppressed by modern man, remains

faithful to that sharia. But humanity is capable of forgetting, and

of violating the message of his genes, his hormones, his gender,

and his innate yearning for his source. This dysfunctionality is theessence of kufr, the process by which we hide our true natures

from ourselves.

The road to the reclamation of our natural norm is open only in the

form of the Sunna. Only the Muslims worship as did the founder of

their religion. Prophetic Madina was a primordial city; and by

following the pattern of life exampled by its luminous inhabitants

we can genuinely retrieve our essence. The sunna is hence alifeboat which allows us to move safely through the toxic sea of


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modernity, while sustaining ourselves from provisions which were

laid down in an age before such pollution occurred.

Let us remind ourselves of the lifestyle of the Prophet (s). We live in

a time of lifestyle choices; but for us, in fact, there is only one

appealing lifestyle choice. Modernity holds up to us a range of

ideal types to imitate: we can be like Peter Tatchell, or Monica

Lewinsky, or Alan Clarke, or Michael Jackson. There is a long

menu of alternatives. But when set beside the radiant humanity of

Rasulullah (s.w.s.), there is no contest at all. For the Prophet is

humanity itself, in its Adamic perfection. In him, and in his style of

life, the highest possibilities of our condition are realised andrevealed. And this is beauty itself: the wordjamil, beautiful, which

is one of his names, refers also to virtue. Ihsan, the Prophetic state

of harmony with God, means the engendering of husn, or beauty.

Here is a condensed recollection, a kind of verbal icon, of that

Prophetic beauty. It is paraphrased from a passage by Imam al-

Ghazali, in Book 19 of his Revival of the Religious Sciences, Ihya

Ulum al-Din.

The Messenger of God (s) was the mildest of men, but also the

bravest and most just of men. He was the most restrained of

people; never touching the hand of a woman over whom he did

not have rights, or who was not his mahram. He was the most

generous of men, so that never did a gold or silver coin spend the

night in his house. If something remained at the end of the day,

because he had not found someone to give it to, and nightdescended, he would go out, and not return home until he had

given it to someone in need. From what Allah gave him [...] he

would take only the simplest and easiest foods: dates and barley,

giving anything else away in the path of Allah. Never did he

refuse a gift for which he was asked. He used to mend his own

sandals, and patch his own clothes, and serve his family, and help

them to cut meat. He was the shyest of men, so that his gazewould never remain long in the face of anyone else. He would


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accept the invitation of a freeman or a slave, and accept a gift,

even if it were no more than a gulp of milk, or the thigh of a rabbit,

and offer something in return. He never consumed anything given

in sadaqa. He was not too proud to reply to a slave-girl, or a

pauper in rags. He would become angered for his Lord, never for

himself; he would cause truth and justice to prevail even if this led

to discomfort to himself or to his companions.

He used to bind a stone around his waist out of hunger. He would

eat what was brought, and would not refuse any permissible food.

If there was dates without bread, he would eat, if there was roast

meat, he would eat; if there was rough barley bread, he wouldeat it; if there was honey or something sweet, he would eat it; if

there was only yogurt without even bread, he would be quite

satisfied with that.

He was not sated, even with barley-bread, for three consecutive

days, until the day he met his Lord, not because of poverty, or

avarice, but because he always preferred others over himself.

He would attend weddings, and visit the sick, and attend

funerals, and would often walk among his enemies without a

guard. He was the most humble of men, and the most serene,

without arrogance. He was the most eloquent of men, without

ever speaking for too long. He was the most cheerful of men. He

was afraid of nothing in the dunya. He would wear a rough

Yemeni cloak, or a woollen tunic; whatever was lawful and was to

hand, that he would wear. He would ride whatever was to hand:sometimes a horse, sometimes a camel, sometimes a mule,

sometimes a donkey. And at times he would walk barefoot,

without an upper garment or a turban or a cap. He would visit

the sick even if they were in the furthest part of Madina. He loved

perfumes, and disliked foul smells.

He maintained affectionate and loyal ties with his relatives, but

without preferring them to anyone who was superior to them. He


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never snubbed anyone. He accepted the excuse of anyone who

made an excuse. He would joke, but would never say anything

that was not true. He would laugh, but not uproarously. He would

watch permissible games and sports, and would not criticise them.

He ran races with his wives. Voices would be raised around him,

and he would be patient. He kept a sheep, from which he would

draw milk for his family. He would walk among the fields of his

companions. He never despised any pauper for his poverty or

illness; neither did he hold any king in awe simply because he was

a king. He would call rich and poor to Allah, without distinction.

In him, Allah combined all noble traits of character; although heneither read nor wrote, having grown up in a land of ignorance

and deserts in poverty, as a shepherd, and as an orphan with

neither father nor mother. But Allah Himself taught him all the

excellent qualities of character, and praiseworthy ways, and the

stories of the early and the later prophets, and the way to

salvation and triumph in the Akhira, and to joy and detachment in

the dunya, and how to hold fast to duty, and to avoid the

unnecessary. May Allah give us success in obeying him, and in

following his sunna. Amin ya rabb al-alamin.

This moving portrait by Imam al-Ghazali depicts our role model,

and simultaneously our ideal of humanity lived in the form of

absolute beauty. His was a life lived in fullness. There was no

aspect of human perfection that he did not know and manifest.

And his perfection also indicates the nature of specifically

masculine perfection. He was a great warrior; a sound hadith

narrated by Imam al-Darimi tells us, on the authority of Ali, that

On the day of Badr I was present, and we sought refuge in

the Prophet (s.w.s.), who was the closest of us all to the

enemy. On that day he was the most powerful of all the

combatants who fought.


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One of the Companions described him riding his horse, wearing a

red turban and holding his sword, and said later that never in his

life had he seen a sight more beautiful.

In 23 years he became undisputed ruler of Arabia. Through his

genius and charisma, and the attractive force of his personality,

he united the Arabian tribes for the first time in their history. He

took his people from the depths of idolatry into the purest form of

monotheism. He gave them a law for the first time. He laid down,

in his mosque in Madina, a system of worship, self-restraint and

spiritual fruitfulness that provided the inspiration and the

precedent for countless generations of later worshippers andsaints. In affirming the Kaba, he affirmed beauty; so that all else

that he did was beautiful.

And in all this, he attributed his success only to Allah. He was, as

Imam al-Ghazali records, the most humble of men. He was

forbearing, polite, courteous, and mild. He paid no attention to

peoples outward form, but assessed and responded to their

spirits. He forgave constantly. He was indulgent with the simpleBedouin of Central Arabia, the roughest people on earth. When

one of them. who wanted money, pulled his cloak so violently

that it left a mark, he merely smiled, and ordered that the man be

given what he wanted.

All of this came about through his detachment. The veil of self

and distraction was gone: he saw by the Truth. He knew his own

prophetic status, but was not made proud by this. He said: I amthe first around whom the earth shall split open at the Resurrection

- and I do not boast. He knew his worth, but because he knew his

Lord, he was not proud.

His sunna entailed living in the world, not running away from it.

After the overwhelming experience of revelation on Mount Hira,

facing the Kaba, he went down again into Meccan society. He

had his solitary times with his Lord, in the long watches of the night,


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forms of tahajjud so long and exacting that he forbade his

companions to imitate him. He fasted in rigourous ways that he

would not allow to others. He was detached, and yet in his world,

and, in the end, commanding his world. He was truly the khalifa:

the one who has no ego, and hence speaks, and acts, and rules,

by and for Allah alone.

Living the sunna therefore means emulating his inner as well as his

outer perfection. The sunna has to come easily and naturally to

us, as the normal lifestyle of our species. Not one of you has

iman, he insisted, until his desire, his personal preference, his

hawa, is in accordance with what I have brought.

Today, among our Muslim communities, there are many who have

not learnt this lesson. There are some misguided fools who

imagine that one can achieve spiritual excellence without

adhering to the Sunna. This notion, that there can be ihsan

without islam, is a falsehood, repudiated by all the Muslims and

the Sufis, since the beginning of Islam. For instance, Imam Jalal al-

Din Rumi says:

I am the servant of the Quran, for as long as I have a soul.

I am the dust on the road of Muhammad, the Chosen One.

If someone interprets my words in any other way,

That person I deplore, and I deplore his words.

Conversely, we can make no claim to be following the outward

sunna, unless we have some share in emulating his innerperfection also. There are many Muslims whose body language

and manners betray their ignorance of this insight. To pray, fast,

eat halal, and observe the other aspects of the outward sunna,

will produce only a lopsided, partial type of Muslim, unless we

have been working on our inward lives. We need to watch the

nafs, the ego, like a cat watching a mousehole. We need to grind

it down, so that we become like light.


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The Sahaba converted millions of men and women, most of them

devout Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Zoroastrians, even without

speaking to them. The Quran was not translated, and few of

them learnt the local languages. But the sheer radiance of their

presence, and the natural beauty of the sunna, with its

graciousness, dignity and poise, won over the hearts of those who

saw them.

Today it is possible to meet Muslims who follow the outward

aspects of the Sunna, and yet do not cause hearts to incline

towards them; but to be repelled. Had you been rough and hard

of heart, they would have scattered from around you. (3:159) Weseem to have edited that verse out of the Holy Quran. If some of

our activists, with their flak jackets, their Doc Marten boots, and

their aggressive demeanour, could be taken back to the seventh

century, it is unlikely that the Christians, Buddhists and others would

have found them very impressive. They, and the Sahaba

themselves, would have regarded them as religious failures, driven

by anger and a sense of marginalisation into a religious form

marked by aggressiveness, not the hilm, the gracious clemency

which was the hallmark of the Prophet (s.w.s.), and without which

he could never have won so many hearts.

The conclusion, then, is very simple. Islam is very simple. It is the

religion which reunites us to nature and to God. It celebrates

rather than represses human nature. It discloses the splendour of

our Adamic potential.

Those of us who have lived far from nature, and far from beauty,

and far from the saints, often have anger, and darkness, and

confusion in our hearts. But this is not the Sunna. The sunna is

about detachment, about the confidence that however

seemingly black the situation of the world, however great the

oppression, no leaf falls without the will of Allah. Ultimately, all is

well. The cosmos, and history, are in good hands.


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That was the confidence of Rasulullah (s.w.s.). It has to be our

confidence as well. There is too much depression among us,

which leads either to demoralisation and immorality, or to panic,

and meaningless, ugly forms of extremism, which have nothing to

do with the serenity and beauty to which the Kaba summons us.

But Islam commands wisdom, and balance. It is the middle way.

And for us, whatever our situation, it is always available, and can

always be put into practice. We are the fortunate umma in

todays world. Fortunate, because unlike Westerners, we are still

centred on beauty. In other words, we still know what we are,

and what we are called to be.

the sunna as primordiality - abdal hakim murad

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