If we SYs have the confidence to believe that what we have inherited or chosen

[Guest guest]

" New Muslims like myself are grateful to Allah for the ni'ma of

Islam - but we cannot say that we are grateful to the Umma. Islam is

in its theology and its historical practice a missionary faith - one

of the great missionary faiths, along with Christianity and Buddhism.

And yet while Christianity and Buddhism are today brilliantly

organised for conversion, Islam has no such operation, at least to my

knowledge. Ballighu anni wa-law aya ('Convey my message, even though

a single verse') is a Prophetic commandment that binds us all. It is

a fard ayn, and a fard kifaya - and we are disobeying it on both

counts.

 

Ten years ago a book appeared in France called D'Une foi l'autre, les

conversions a l'Islam en Occident. The authors, both career

journalists, carried out extensive interviews with new Muslims in

Europe and America. Their conclusions are clear. Almost all educated

converts to Islam come in through the door of Islamic spirituality.

In the middle ages, the Sufi tariqas were the only effective engine

of Islamisation in Muslim minority areas like Central Asia, India,

black Africa and Java; and that pattern is maintained today.

Why should this be the case? Well, any new Muslim can tell you the

answer. Westerners are in the first instance seeking not a moral

path, or a political ideology, or a sense of special identity - these

being the three commodities on offer among the established Islamic

movements. They lack one thing, and they know it - the spiritual

life. Thus, handing the average educated Westerner a book by Sayyid

Qutb, for instance, or Mawdudi, is likely to have no effect, and may

even provoke a revulsion. But hand him or her a collection of Islamic

spiritual poetry, and the reaction will be immediately more positive.

It is an extraordinary fact that the best-selling religious poet in

modern America is our very own Jalal al-Din Rumi. Despite the

immeasurably different time and place of his origin, he outsells

every Christian religious poet.

 

Those who puzzle over the da'wa issue in the West generally refuse to

take this on board. All too often they follow limited, ideological

versions of Islam that are relevant only to their own cultural

situation, and have no relevance to the problems of educated modern

Westerners. We need to overcome this. We need to capitalise on the

modern Western love of Islamic spirituality - and also of Islamic art

and crafts. By doing so, we can reap a rich harvest, in sha' Allah.

If the West is like a fortress, then we can approach it from its

strongest place, by provoking it politically and militarily, as the

absurd Saddam Hussein did; in which case we will bring yet more

humiliation and destruction upon our people. Or we can find those

areas of its defences which have become tumbledown and weak. Those

are, essentially, areas of spirituality and aesthetics. Millions of

young Westerners are dissatisfied both with the materialism of their

world, and with the doctrines of Christianity, and are seeking refuge

in New Age groups and cults. Those people should be natural recruits

for Islam - and yet we ignore them.

 

Similarly, and for the same constituency, we need to emphasise

Islam's vibrant theological response to the problem of conservation.

The Qur'an is the richest of all the world's scriptures in its

emphasis on the beauty of nature as a theophany - a mazhar - of the

Divine names.

 

As a Western Muslim, who understands what moves and influences

Westerners, I feel that by stressing these two issues, Islam is well-

placed not merely to flourish, but to dominate the religious scene of

the next century. Only Allah truly knows the future. But it seems to

me that we are at a crossroads, of which the millennium is a useful,

if accidental symbol. It will either be the watershed which marks the

final collapse of Islam as an intellectually and spiritually rich

tradition at ease with itself, as increasingly it presides over an

overpopulated and undernourished zone of chaos. Or it will take

stock, abandon the dead end of meaningless extremism, and begin to

play its natural world role as a moral and spiritual exemplar.

As we look around ourselves today at the chaos and disintegration of

the Umma, we may ask whether such a possibility is credible. But we

are living through times when the future is genuinely negotiable in

an almost unprecedented way. Ideologies which formerly obstructed or

persecuted Islam, like extreme Christianity, nationalism and

Communism, are withering. Ernest Gellner, the Cambridge

anthropologist has described Islam as 'the last religion' - the last

in the sense of truly believing its scriptural narratives to be

normative.

 

If we have the confidence to believe that what we have inherited or

chosen is indeed absolute truth, then optimism would seem quite

reasonable. And I am optimistic. If Islam and the Muslims can keep

their nerve, and not follow the secularising course mapped out for

them by their rivals, or travel the blind alley of extremism, then

they will indeed dominate the world, as once they did. And, we may I

think quite reasonably hope, they will once again affirm without the

ambiguity of worldly failure, the timeless and challenging words, wa

kalimatuLlahi hiya al-ulya - 'and the word of God is supreme'. "

 

Abdal Hakim Murad

Belfast, March 1997.

 

 

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Dear all,

 

If we SYs have the confidence to believe that what we have inherited

or chosen is indeed absolute truth, then optimism would seem quite

reasonable. And i am optimistic. If SYs can keep their balance, and

not blindly follow the rudimentary subtle system mapped out for them,

or travel the dark alley of unfounded fears and unwarranted rituals,

then they will indeed dominate the world in spirituality. And, we may

quite reasonably hope, they will once again affirm without the

ambiguity of worldly failure, the timeless and challenging words, wa

kalimatuLlahi hiya al-ulya - 'and the word of God is supreme'.

 

And to bring to remembrance, the word of God is Truth which must be

upheld at all times under all circumstances. Lest we forget, Sahaja

Yoga is the Last Judgment and Resurrection and that word of God is

supreme. All other innovations like stress management are based on

falsehood and deception. We will have to answer for our lies,

deception and stubborn refusal to speak the Truth despite the most

optimum and safe of circumstances.

 

Shri Mataji has done Her job and spoken the Truth for more than three

decades. .................. that is why we know it is the Last

Judgment and Resurrection. The rank and file have absconded their

duty and fled to the safety of their collective caves to shoebeat

all the negativity that keeps them in fear (of being honest??!!!)

............ that is why only 1% of humanity will know the Truth about

the Last Judgment and Resurrection somewhere around AD 8023!

 

 

warmest regards,

 

 

jagbir