On this day, 18th of Dhul-Hijjah, in between Makkah and Madinah, at a watering area known as Ghadir Khumm, after his final Hajj (pilgrimage), the last Prophet, Muhammad (Allah bless him and grant him peace) delivered a captivating speech to his followers, reminding them of Allah and preparing them for his departure.

When he reached the conclusion of his speech, he said, “It seems the time has approached when I shall be called away (by Allah) and I shall answer that call. I am leaving behind for you two weighty things (al-thaqalayn) and if you adhere to them both, you will never go astray after me. The first is the Book of Allah (the Qur’an), and the second is my progeny (itrati), my household (ahl al-bayti). The two shall not separate from each other until they reach me at the pool in Paradise.”

The Prophet then held up the hand of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib and said, “Do I not have more right over the believers than they have over themselves?”

They answered, “Yes, Oh Messenger of Allah!”

“Then for whomever I am his master (mawla), ‘Ali is his master (mawla). Oh Allah love those who love him and be hostile to those who hate him.”

There is much more to be said about this event and its meaning, but I will save it for tomorrow. I’m too tired right now.

So, peace be upon the Commander of the Faithful, the husband of the Illuminated One, the father of the leaders of the youths of Paradise, the champion of the army of Allah, the successor the greatest of human beings, and the grandfather of the one who will undertake the office (imamah) for the remainder of time, who will fill the earth with justice and equality, even after it has been filled with injustice and tyranny. Congratulations to all of the believers.

Asia Times Online, arguably one of the more “balanced” news media outlets, ran a disturbingly misguided article entitled, “When Even the Pope Has to Whisper.”

The premise of the article is that, despite the West’s admitted attempts at “reforming” the Muslim world in its own image,

” the available facts suggest that the opposite result will ensue: more freedom equals more fundamentalism. Not the secular Shi’ite parties but the pro-Iranian religious parties dominate the Iraqi polls. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood quadrupled its vote despite heavy-handed measures to intimidate its supporters; Hamas threatens to displace Fatah in the Palestinian elections this month; Hezbollah has become the strongest electoral as well as military force in Lebanon; and, most important of all, Mahmud Ahmadinejad crushed a more pragmatic opponent in last June’s Iranian presidential elections.”

What the article admits, and what most Muslim already know, is that the “Muslim world” must bow before secularization, that we must convert to this ideology or face the “consequences.” And they do not mean economic sanctions or failure to “succeed” in the world market. By consequences, they mean warfare, unprovoked violence, removal of the democratic rights they claim to offer, and eventual unnatural death. Like the untamed barbaric image that they project onto Islam, we Muslims must either convert to secularism or die.

They have managed to even incriminate the Pope in their plan, as the article emphasizes,

“And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said, well, there’s a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it’s an eternal word. It’s not Mohammed’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism’s completely different, that God has worked through his creatures.”

So, the Pope has admitted that the Bible has elements of man’s ideas and the Qur’an does not. That is a bad thing? I think 1.2 billion Muslims would disagree. In order to discredit even the Pope’s assertion, the author, therefore, resorts to cheap shots such as,

“It is universally known among scholars that alternative texts of the Koran have been discovered in various archaeological sites.”

If it is universally known, why is it not universally published ? The reality is that, even if some “texts” do exist that contain the Qur’an along with other writings, that does not invalidate the Qur’an we have today at all. If anything, it strengthens it. After all, our assertion is not, “nothing exists besides the Qur’an,” rather that “only one Qur’an is valid and universally accepted by ALL Muslims since the time of Prophet Muhammad.” Furthermore, anyone who has done serious research will discover that the Qur’an compiled during the Prophet’s lifetime, is the same one that exists today, in full.

The caliph ‘Uthman standardized a particular reading of the Qur’an and destroyed the others because it was the correct reading, not because he had a hidden agenda (as was the case with other religious books in other religions). Thousands of companions had memorized the Qur’an, written it down, and (in the case of Imam ‘AliI and others), compiled in its entirety before ‘Uthman. His insistence on standardization had nothing to do with “apocryphal” copies of the Qur’an or about a divided community with several different versions of the same book. Had his goal been to choose “one Qur’an over another”, there would have been an uproar. Nevertheless, when his opponents protested and eventually killed him, this one not one of their grievances.

But I digress. The true agenda of the Asia Times article is to assert that Islam will never conform to secularism because Islam is inflexible and intolerant. Their assertion is right, but their reasoning is completely wrong. I would disagree with the Pope on one point. The shari’ah (path of Islam) is flexible. Our system of fiqh (jurisprudence) allows us to adapt to cultures, time periods, and situations. This adaptability allowed Islam to spread effortlessly across the globe. Furthermore, as I’m sure the Pope would testify, Islam’s level of tolerance is unparalleled among religions and among secularists.

The secularists’ assumption is that Muslims “deserve better.” Somehow, in some type of irreligious, yet cosmically unexplainable way, secularism is the “perfect way of life.” It is undoubtedly their religion, and they insist on forcing it upon anyone who stands in the way of “progress.” What is progress? Exploitation of land, natural resources, animals, and other human beings. Hyper-modernization has threatened the very existence of the earth, but anyone who is not eager to “just accept it” is seen as “backwards” and “intolerant.”

They assume that Islam is forced upon Muslims, especially Muslim women. They assume that, if we just try secularism for a few years, we will love it and never want to go back to the full implementation of Islam. They assume that their narrow understanding of democracy is the only valid system of government and that any system that differs from it is oppressive and wrong. Moreover, they assume that Muslims ever had an interest in forcing the West to conform to Islamic standards, while they are the ones who have invaded Muslim lands, colonized, waged wars, and sacrificed millions of lives, all under the banner of progress, much in the same way that early settlers in America believed themselves to be “civilizing” the indigenous people.

These are foolish assumptions that will unquestionably fail. They have ignored the very core of the Islamic understanding of God’s relationship with human beings. Islam is submission, not “submission when it is convenient or most pleasurable.” It is complete submission, in whatever form it takes. It can exist in a modern context, as the millions of practicing traditional Muslims living in the West have demonstrated. But all flexibility has limits, and not all “freedoms” are beneficial.

“In accordance with the real nature of things it is the human that must conform to the Divine and not the Divine to the human.” –Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Eid Mubarak to all of you! We’ve had a good one. We went to the festivities yesterday and prayed at the Zainabia this morning. Alhamdulillah, we live in a wonderful community. Yesterday was nice. I played Scrabble with some good friends of mine and listened to some live African drums and music.

Zahra is playing right now and refuses to take off her Eid dress.

It looks like I need to write some more so that this picture will fit correctly.

But I don’t know what to write.

So, that’s all.

Ginny has a very heartfelt, yet obviously confused post about whether to follow the local moon sighting for Eid or the Saudi Hajj declaration. Apparently her local masjid will be following Saudi, as will ISNA.

I admit that it is confusing. I can see why it would become an issue, especially if you are trying to participate with your local community. All of a sudden our differences are exposed, and we must rely on the knowledge that we have, which inevitably comes from our particular schools of thought. In this case, Ginny reverted to her understanding of the Maliki maddhab. Of course, some neo-salafi or modern politcal-islamist anti-maddhabi would criticize her for that. She should, after all, rely completely on the “Qur’an and Sunnah.” Nevertheless, the scholars of these schools claim to follow only those two sources, yet they have offered no consensus on this difficult subject.

For me, the perspective is different. Although I certainly do not wear this on my forehead, most people know that I follow the Ja’fari school. The Imami shi’a scholars have made it rather clear that one must follow his own local sighting and cannot rely even on a mujtahid, much less the simple declaration of a government thousands of miles away. Normally, I join the Sunnis on Eid, because they have a larger masjid and more community activities. Besides, unity is very important, and what better time to illustrate this than on Eid?

For Eid-al-fitr, they follow the local sighting. For Eid-al-adha, they follow Saudi determinations. But then sometimes they seem to follow neither and are very inconsistent.

It is no secret that most of the people who follow the overseas declarations are from overseas. Muslims indigenous to America are thus faced with a particular onus, doing what they think is right or doing what is convenient for the sake of apparent “unity.” The problem, as I’ve so often mentioned on OneUmmah.net, is that unity is not uniformity. Disagreements need not result in disputes. The Muslim Ummah did not survive a thousand years without differences of opinions.

My only concern is that the various Muslim organizations should remain consistent. And therein lies the problem with not following a particular school of thought. They seem to flip-flop according to whatever “ijtihad” they determine from year-to-year. This seems extremely haphazard, especially when they offer no significant explanation for their wish-washy positions. How can the “Fiqh Council” be taken seriously when it apparently does not accurately represent all (or perhaps any) of the schools of thought to which people in North America adhere? Therein lies the real problem. In not following a school of thought, they’ve simply created their own school of thought, one that can offer its own rulings and circumvent the 1400 years of scholarship and development of fiqh that most people of knowledge recognize as necessary.

So, anyway, Tuesday, we’ll be going to a brunch, roller skating, and hosting an Eid dinner, but it seems that we will not be going to Eid prayer. On Wednesday, assuming the Zainabia follows the rest of the Ja’fari world, we’ll attend the Eid prayer. Taubah doesn’t know any of this yet.

We’ve all seen them. We know they exist. We might even know where they live. Mercedes, BMW’s, $500,000 houses, platinum watches, wads of cash, and tons of plastic have invaded our masajid. This, in of itself, of course, might not be a bad thing. Wealth is not forbidden in Islam. Prophet Sulayman (peace be upon him) was a wealthy king. Many companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) acquired great wealth in the early caliphate, especially when the Muslims took control of Syria. What characterized most of the above people was the way in which they spent their money. It was distributed to the poor, to the masjid, to the community fund (bayt-ul-mal), and for the struggle (jihad) against injustice and evil.

It is reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “He who goes to sleep with a full stomach, while his neighbor is hungry, is not one of us.” Our situation today is much different from those bygone empires. The amount of poverty and extreme starvation in the world has gone far beyond what we could ever imagine. It is easy for us to turn to those few wealthy Muslims with scorn because they appear to be lavishing in their wealth. But the truth is that their wealth is minuscule. The truth is that some of them do give charity (sometimes in large quantities), but it is not our business to know that anyway.

As Muslims in the West, faced with the task of spreading Islam, it is laughable that we have not begun our da’wah programs (if you want to call them that) with an intense economic empowerment effort. I am not talking about a relief organization. We have plenty of those. I am referring to a serious effort to go beyond simple relief and to actually layout paths of success for people.

Over the past 10 years of my short Muslim life, I have seen numerous impoverished African Americans enter into the fold of Islam. “Islam has the answers,” they were told, “Not just the spiritual answers but the social answers, the political answers, and even the economic answers.” We were fed lines detailing how an Islamic economic system could revolutionize this capitalist society and bring equality and prosperity to the millions of underclass people. This is true. Our Islamic system, if it is properly understood and implemented, does offer this.

In “Essays on Iqtisad” (a commentary, of sorts, on the great work of As-Sayyid Muhammad Baqir As-Sadr’s, Iqtisaduna) Dr. Kadhim As-Sadr, Associated Professor of Economics at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, explains,

From the point of view of wealthy people of Quraysh, usury was the best way for gaining profit from their savings. Because a usurer without any toil and painstaking work of travel and transportation of commodity, which is a part of trade, could easily gain substantial profit. Since savings were limited among ordinary inhabitants of Hijaz, who generally were nomads, and because trade had created substantial demand for capital, large profits were to be made from usury. In addition to these, the usurers did not have to share in the risks which accompanied trading activities. The long distances in the unsafe deserts created numerous dangers for the merchant caravans, yet the capital, as well as the accumulated interest, of the usurers were immune from every risk, because if the borrower was unable to repay his usury loan, he became a slave of the holder…

…The Prophet (SA) condemned usury from the beginning of his mission, and always forbade Muslims from commission of this action. While teaching economic ethics and condemning usury, gradually he (SA) limited the scope of usury. After a while he (SA) prohibited compound usury; then, in the last years of Hijra, simple usury or even commodity transactions which were deemed usurious were prohibited, and commission of usury was declared to be among the greatest sins…

…The prohibition of usury, to a large extent, limited the scope of the savings’ usage. Except through partnership and creation of value-added, there was no other way for the owners of savings to make a profit. In effect, the prohibition of riba led owners of savings to become dependent on investors in order to obtain an income from their savings. This, and other changes, which were brought about merely as a result of alterations of economic rights and legal privileges in the economy of the early Islam period, along with other incentives provided for the producers and investors, created new legal privileges and prestige for them which in itself increased the participation in partnerships. These changes on the whole increased demand for investment in the early Islamic period and thus created coordination and balance between the circulation of money and production of commodities.” (pg. 212-213).

The western capitalistic system, in contrast, relies entirely on usury and offers “credit” as the solution to supposedly “equalizing” the playing field between rich and poor. In reality, this system only causes the poor to fall further into debt and the rich to increase profit on their stale savings, without lifting a finger (unless it is to call collection agencies, but they probably pay someone else to do that).

So, those of us who frown upon (or cheer) the apparent wealth of our minor Muslim elite, our talented tenth, fail to realize that they are only fat cats in a world of bigger fish. We must begin forming business alliances on a large scale so that we can offer more than just a “theoretical” solution to the new “Muslim underclass.” As people of all races and classes begin to embrace Islam, we cannot settle for imparting the “how Islam should be” speech.

Just as certain groups of people in western countries are known for their extreme wealth, exclusivity, and economic suppression of the masses, so should Muslims become known for our own wealth, unlimited scope, and economic empowerment of the masses. It is time for the world to turn to us, not simply for our economic, social, and political theories, but for our practical and ethical implementations of the verbiage we so frequently slide into da’wah pamphlets and interfaith round-table discussions.