Heroes

I did a post a while back with the same name, I wish I found this video back then.

Schism Revisited

When I started this series, I just didnt know how difficult its gonna be. Its a huge responsibility which means I have to cross check each and everything that I write in at least 4-5 books, all from different fiqhs to make sure that it is something acceptable to all. At times I have even tried to write about 2-3 different variations that I have read about the same incident. Secondly, I am talking about people we greatly love and revere. Obviously, watever I am writing might be offensive as well but it was not only about being offensive….it was emotionaly exhausting and I discontinued writing it just 10 days after I started writing the series. In the last 6 months or so I have done only 5 posts on the topic and have left the most controversial topics for later.
I have now decided to continue with the series and if you have read it till now, you know that the narration is now reaching a point from where onwards all I would be talking about would be misunderstandings, tragedies, wars, bloodshed and the actual advent of schism.
This will be a difficult ride for me and if I disappear all of a sudden, you can assume that I just had no option but to get away from it.
There shall be a post on the topic for every 2-3 days from now for a while. The first post is already here

Hazrat Omar (RA) II

Please read this if you havent.

The First Fitnah

Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddiq (RA)

Hazrat Omar (RA) Part I

Right after the death of the first Caliph Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddiq (RA), Hazrat Omar (RA) took over the formal direction of affairs from Hazrat Abu Bakar (RA). Although he had been chosen by the first Caliph, he was a man who was respected but not hugely loved by the people in Medina. He had a tough task ahead and in the coming years, he proved himself worthy of the post by being stern, energetic and austere.

One of his first actions was to demote Hazrat Khalid ibn Al-Walid (RA) from the supreme command. Although the two were cousins, it is believed that the demotion was due to certain mishaps during the Rida Wars. Hazrat Omar (RA) appointed Hazrat Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah (RA) as the new commander in chief. It is known that Hazrat Omar (RA) regretted his decision later in his life when Hazrat Khalid ibn Al-Walid (RA) was serving the Muslim Empire as a mere soldier with loyalty.

As by now the Muslim empire had expanded, it was divided into provinces and autonomous territories where the sovereign political authority was the Caliph himself. The provinces, administered by governors, were further divided into districts which were headed by junior governors who worked under the supervision of their governors. Various strict rules were to be followed by all the State officers. He was also the first to establish a a special department for the investigation of complaints against the officers of the State to maintain transparency. He also made sure to have his intelligence agents in each and every department.

Hazrat Omar (RA) was a genius, someone the West envies. There is no one quite like him in centuries of Western history. Even people like Abraham Lincoln can only come close to very few aspects of his personality and the reforms that he brought. He was someone who believed in military expansion and during his era, the Islamic Empire grew rapidly and at the time of his death, the Islamic empire extended from Libya to Indus River. And who can forget the stories of his heroic yet simple entrance in Jerusalem on a milk white camel where the white clothed Caliph received the keys to Jerusalem from the black-clad Patriarch…the stories which our grandparents just loved to tell us when we were young.

He was a man of integrity and he did not falter even when his own son (Abu Shahmah) was found drunk in public. Abu Shahmah was not spared, he recieved 80 lashes for breaking the law…a punishment which killed him. He despised pompous display of wealth and had no gatekeepers, audience halls or bodyguards. And thus, it only took a single man, Abu Lulu, the persian slave, to attack the Caliph. It is believed that Abu Lulu attacked the Caliph while he was leading the Fajr prayers, stabbing him 5-6 times. Abu Lulu was captured by the people around but he committed suicide. Hazrat Omar (RA), according to some narrations, died 3 days later and 5 days later according to some other narrations. Whatever the case may be, he embraced Shahadat on 1st Muharram, 24 Hijri.

On his deathbed, he also appointed a committee of six persons, which included both Hazrat Usman (RA) and Hazrat Ali (RA), to choose a Caliph amongst themselves. Also onn his deathbed, he requested Hazrat Aisha (RA) to allow him to be buried along his master, the Prophet (SAW)…a wish that Hazrat Aisha (RA) just could not let go in vain.

Important Note

The story of Majid Nawaz

Note: What follows is by Majid Nawaz himself and was published in Guardian.

Ten years ago, I was sent from Britain by a global Islamist group to recruit in Pakistan. Stepping off the plane in Lahore, I slowly breathed in the scene around me. With minarets and azans almost like background props and mood music, the Muslims I saw in every direction whetted my appetite for revolution. We were going to radicalise the country and foment a military coup against the democratically elected “client” ruler, Nawaz Sharif. I was 21 years old. I was part of a vanguard to set up a Pakistani branch of Hizb ut Tahrir (HT), so that their future caliphate could go nuclear. Nothing was going to get in my way. Nothing did.

Ten years on (during which I spent five years as a prisoner of conscience in Egypt), I recently returned. I had left HT and recanted Islamism. I was back, determined to reverse some of the Islamist fever I had helped instil. Whereas in 1999 Pakistanis thought my wife and I were Arabs due to her “Egyptian” headscarf, now rumours were rife about acid attacks on women walking the streets uncovered. I was older, wiser and smarter. This time, the revolution would be against Islamist hegemony.

I was on a four-week, nationwide university tour to speak against Islamism and to urge students towards pluralistic, democratic values. Contrary to western mythology, Islamist radicals are found among the educated, the elite and the socially mobile. Yes, a minority of Pakistani madrasas provide an ample supply of jihadists, but the ideologues are smart and modern.

Bin Laden, Zawahiri or, indeed, the many pseudo-intellectuals of HT are highly educated and socially mobile. Many madrasas are simply antiquated religious schools belonging to the conservative but apolitical Barelvis, Pakistan’s majority religious denomination. Jihadists despise this faction. Nine days ago, a jihadist blew himself up in a Pakistani mosque, murdering the leader of the Barelvis, Dr Sarfraz Naeemi. The poor are simply used as jihadist cannon fodder.

Thus it was that we began in Karachi and worked our way around the country. We ventured deep into the deserts of interior Sindh and then across into the turbulent outback of Quetta, Balochistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are said to be headquartered. From there, we crossed into the Punjab, ascended into Kashmir and then finally up to Islamabad. In our flak jackets, with a security detail in tow, we addressed thousands of students.

In Quetta, armed separatist students threatened to shoot anyone coming to the talk. Their gripe was with the Pakistani government from which they wanted independence. Like so many things in Pakistan, our role in this was eventually settled over a cup of “chai”.

My first real taste of the diversity that is Pakistan came here. I met popular revolutionaries who despised Islamists, yet wanted to secede, in some cases by violence, from Pakistan and “Punjabi hegemony”. They began their speeches in the name of Allah, but ended with: “Death to Pakistan.” They blamed the “Punjabi” government squarely for the ills of jihadism. Destroying Pakistan was not exactly on my agenda.

Pakistan and its problems are not monolithic and are not all related to Islamism. Corruption, ethnic and economic factors and a lack of leadership all play out differently in each province. I found the people of Sindh to be hugely sympathetic to our message. Conversely, the people of Mirpur, in “free” Kashmir, from where more than 90% of British Pakistanis come, and where sterling is a currency of choice, were hostile to the west. It was in Punjab where I found most of the denial culture. The west was to blame for everything, including sending me as an agent to set up HT in Pakistan and then as an agent trying to push back HT. You see, the trouble with conspiracy theories is that they were invented by the infidel west to stop Muslims thinking.

In Lahore, I was attacked by a British member of HT. He, like many others, had left the UK to recruit vulnerable Pakistani students. He was also a teacher at a private university. After this attack, we started receiving death threats. Our security advised us to cancel the rest of the tour. We chose to carry on.

It is true that Pakistan has exported its fair share of Jamaat-e-Islami Islamists and pro-Taliban jihadists to British shores. Many Pakistanis are in denial about the role their country has played in the growth of Islamism and jihadism. When we pushed them, however, most acknowledged the rise of the “religious right”. Denial is never a good thing when trying to solve a problem.

Here in the UK, after the release without charge of the 12 Pakistani student terrorism suspects, we could do with a dose of truth serum too. During the rise of British Islamism in the 1990s, HT was exported to Pakistan from Britain by the likes of me. In London, in 2000, I met Sandhurst-trained Pakistani officers who had been recruited from here and were being sent back to Pakistan to instigate a military coup.

The man who physically attacked me was a British citizen who joined HT in the UK. British members of HT also played crucial roles in exporting their group to Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Mauritius, India, Egypt and Denmark, among others. I know because in each case I know the people who did it. Only when the people and governments of Britain and Pakistan take responsibility for the rot on their doorsteps can we start moving seriously towards solutions for the problem of extremism.

Our tour was partly to initiate such a thought process. By showing people that one does not have to be against Islam to be against Islamism, we hope to resolve the moral dilemma that many face.

Military means can only ever be a stop-gap. As the near Taliban takeover in the northern regions of Pakistan showed, if civil society cannot segregate the masses from Islamists, then American drone attacks will be the least of our worries.

All that glitters

…is definitely not gold.

People seem to be so happy and content in their lives as long as they are mere acquaintances. Once you get to know them, you find out it was just the fake facade. Deep inside, they have problems which are probably much bigger in magnitude than the ones which you consider to be fatal.

B is a bubbly woman, always cheerful and very energetic. Her dad died when she was 9. Her mom wasnt able to find a well paid job and they were forced to sell off their house, their car and other possessions. Her mom couldnt take it all and ended up getting a malignant cancer just 4 years later. B started working when she was only 17 and became the sole bread earner for her family. Just 2 years later her mom died too when B was merely in the first year of BSc. B is a strong woman. She continued with her education while working and is now doing her MPhill from Karachi University.

S was my student and that too a good one. She has a cancer in her uterus and she is only 21. Her dad died when she was 14 in a road accident that also left her mom with a hip fracture that hasnt healed perfectly as yet. Her elder brother married and left them because he couldnt support them. Her younger brother is only 17 now.

And you thought you were going through a lot?

But thats not the only point that I wanted to make with this post. There was something else too. Do you think people like S and B have done something wrong to be having so many different problems in life? Or its just a test from Allah (SWT)?

I am sure you have met, seen, been with people who think that if they are successful, they are doing everything correct…May Allah (SWT) help us all from falling into this trap of the Shaitan. Here’s a great video by Baba Ali.

Namesake

Before publishing this post, I contemplated for a while whether I should post it on this blog or not cuz it is somewhat different from the usual stuff that I post here. I finally decided to post it here because it is, although being a very personal issue, always a difficult choice to make for girls who are getting married or have recently been married.

So here it goes…

I am proud of the family I belong to and my second name is a sweet reminder of our origin.

I really like my fiance’s name. It always reminds of the good times of the Ottoman Empire.

And thats where the problem arises. That toughens the choice.

Shall I change my second name once I get married?

Or just append his name to mine? As in after my second name.

Minerva just did a post on this a few days back (you can read it here). While reading it, I was talking about this with an old acquaintance (on gtalk) who is also getting married later this year and it was quite interesting to note that we both pretty much agreed to what minerva was talking about in her post: wanting to change the name but unsure whether it would be a good idea or not cuz we have after all been shouting the loudest against this seemingly silly tradition.

This made me search a bit to know why it is so important? Or whether it is something we are all supposed to do. I will be summarizing my findings:

• All people must be called by their father’s name because the second name is used to define belongingness [Surah Al-Azhab]
• The Qur’an only talks about children and not the naming convention of wives
• The Umm-ul-Momineen were always known by their father’s name such as Hazrat Ayesha Binte Abu Bakar (RA) and Hazrat Hafsa Binte Omar (RA)
• Al-Kunya is an Arab tradition of calling the women with respect to their first child’s name (or the first son), it does not change the name in any manner
• Culturally, Pakistani women did not change their name after getting married some decades back
• It is actually a western tradition adopted by us. Now they are getting rid of this tradition because they think its quite chauvinistic. (Talk about women liberation!)

So, the question still persists? I guess, it kinda still does.

Do more

Continued from the previous post. Obviously wat follows is merely my opinion based on wat I have read, seen and gone through. It will be a bit random as I am only trying to put everything in one single post.

After the death of the Prophet (SAW), the time of the Caliphate of Hazrat Omar (RA) is usually deemed to be the time wen the maqasid of sharia were being achieved although a lot of people had (and still have) reservations. Obviously, the best time has to be that of the Khulfa-e-rashideen but the other three Khulfa had to deal with many civil wars during their eras and most of the time we forget talking about their reforms and ‘good governance’. Since then, there has been no muslim ruler (Hazrat Omar (RA) hated to be called a ruler, he preferred the modest Ameer-ul-momineen) who has been able to achieve even a fraction of that.

Today, as we see the world, it is a shame that it is in fact the Scandinavian countries that come close to achieving the maqasid of sharia. Obviously they have laws that permit vulagrity, illegitimate live-in couples and so on so forth but they value life and the government protects their right to be allowed to practice the religion they belong to, to get free education, to get opportunities of employment and to get their wealth and property protected (arsonists dont go around burning other people’s property there).

Challenging the writ of the State

Soon after the death of the Prophet (SAW), the Ridda Wars broke out because Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddiq’s (RA) Caliphate was not accepted and the writ of the State was challenged. The issue got so heated up that there was no option but to go on war.

Although there were lot more misunderstandings in the coming years, the writ of the state was once again challenged in a brutal way during Jang-e-Siffin by a group of people who were known to be very pious Muslims but in fact ended up calling Hazrat Ali (RA) kafir. This whole issue led to Jang-e-Neherwan and later shahadat of Hazrat Ali (RA).

Today, the writ of the state is being challenged in the worst manner. I dont like the government and it is their mistakes that its all come so far.

It is important to understand that everyone sporting a beard is not someone who has the authority to implement a sharia. The Prophet (SAW) has very clearly talked about such people: “There would be a group of people among you who would recite the Book but it will not go beyond their throats, they would pass through teachings of the Deen as an arrow passes through the prey. They would kill the followers of Islam and spare the idol-worshippers.” [Sahih Muslim]

Zaid Hamid on Operation Rah-e-Haq

PS: I am not saying that all Talebans are terrorists…but the one that are in power now, surely are.

Maqasid al-Sharia

Ibn-e-Maryam hua kare koi
Mere dukh ki dawa kare koi

I know I am bad with the shairi thing and most probably I have gotten the shair above wrong, apologies for that, but thats not the point of the post. The point of the post is to talk about the self-proclaimed sualiheen aka holy beings aka messiahs aka Talibans.

But before talking about Taliban and whether we like em, support em or not, i think its important to understand what the buzz word, Sharia, is all about.

Now this will obviously be a summary and/or an introduction to the topic and will not include a lot of minute details.

Sharia

The word Sharia itself has been used only once in the Qur’an [45:18] and can literally be translated to mean ‘way’ or ‘path.’ It is the legal framework (based on fiqh) for the private and public lives of Muslims providing laws for politics, economics, family, hygiene and several social issues. (Do read The Comparison with the Common Law here)

The objectives of Sharia

The law was basically developed for the falah of the people, both in this world and in the hereafter and thus include all aspects of life.

1. Protection of Religion: To protect the freedom of practicing religion, specifically the 5 basic pillars of Islam. To provide basic health facilities so as to enable all to undertake activities of physical ibadat (includes marriage at appropriate age) and help people in earning halal rizq.
2. Protection of Life: To promote meditation through salaat (mental relaxation) and physical health through medical facilities and exercise. Family health to be protected through laws on quarantines during epidemics and the isolation of persons with contagious disease. This category also includes laws of revenge, qisas andhomicide.
3. Protection of Progeny: To provide medical facilities to the females to ensure a healthier society. This category also includes the laws related to marriage (the contract itself), divorce, custody of children, adoption, inheritance and also illegitimate relationships (zina) and the children that might be born as a result of such relationships.
4. Protection of The Mind: To provide services that would provide mental peace and laws that keep people away from alcohol, drugs and other addictive habits. This may include a lot of laws that govern the economical condition of the society (poor economic condition can lead to mental imbalance) and false accusations.
5. Protection of Wealth: To facilitate people in ensuring proper usage of their zakaat. This category also includes laws about financial independence of women and regulations about property, trade, preservation of property rights and the punishments for stealing.

Do we know of a country that protects religion, life, progeny, mind and wealth?