The Tailor’s recent media engagement

A cut-up reading:

A prolonged transcript:

Postscript: Some notes in response to the kind feedback I have been receiving from folk on the net and in RL.

First, I’d like to address the concerns some people have had with my relationship to the rather infamous journalist in the first “cut-up” clip.

Regarding the context of the cut-up … I didn’t actually realise who the journalist was (being a recent migrant to the UK): but I’ve been filled in on his importance (particularly to the assistance he gave the Tories in previous decades). Basically, his full position (edited out here) was that I should be out of a job and not allowed into the the UK in the first place. Nothing personal, so to speak, he believes in zero immigration (irrespective of whether they are academics or not, Muslim or not), with the argument that, while most are law abiding individuals, there is a real possibility that at least one might be a terrorist. He was arguing for a blanket ban on all immigrants — particularly to universities. But, in addition, I guess he kind of implied that he would be “happy” if I left the country, just because he isn’t a big fan of Muslims.

It was filmed just after Christmas so I saw his role as more of a kind of pantomime dame more than anything else. But some friends were quite upset that the BBC let him say that on TV — and, given I was invited only to speak about miracles, some thought I was trapped into it — something that certainly did not happen (I was invited before the underwear bomber, and would happily return to the same programme, having quite enjoyed the whole “1 min sound bite” challenge of getting a point across).

In general, however, my criticism is still leveled internally to the Body of the Ummah, rather than that which is on the Other Side.

I will say the following about anger, however. The journalist’s anger derives not from the fire of judgement (and, we might say, individuality). But, rather, it derives from the waters of Love, and the Southern dangers located therein. The danger of Love, its flipside (rather than its dialectic opposite) is Fear. His anger (justifiable or not) is fear of Islam in his home, fear of the immigrant.

Now, it is absolutely essential that we relate to all angry people appropriately — with adab: adab in the literal (“ordinary”) sense of good manners. The reason is not some prosaic understanding of diplomacy or promoting good relations with non-Muslims. The reason is cosmic: adab in relation to people — intersubjective adab — mirrors the deeper Fires of extra-subjective Adab that a seeker must cultivate in order to enter the Eternal Aeon of Light and become one of the higher generation. If we lose our decorum and manners in relation to others — irrespective of how they behave to us — then we lose ourselves in the Loving waters of Creation and suffer a real danger of finding ourselves drowning, like Pharoah or our right wing friend here. We will cease to be individual, and be only Water (“full fathoms five thy father lies … those were pearls that were his eyes”).

The Sufistic irony is that this man’s anger — like all anger — is not one of Hateful attachment to some ego — but, rather, it is a fearful loss of selfhood (a breakage of the “perfect mould” gifted to us by the Hand of the Craftsman) into Love. Imam Ali could handle such a fana. The rest of us cannot and are consumed by the Leviathan below: observe how this form of anger speaks — think about ourselves, when we have been really angry — it is like a flow of anger, a torrent of anger, there is no longer an indiviual human being speaking behind it.

We must cultivate, therefore, the Fires of Adab in our judgement through the mirror of personal adab: in this way, the Seas of Love will part for us and we will consume the flesh of the Leviathan in the next world.

A second point, concerning a few more details regarding reading the Book of Creation. This whole blog (and what will come from it) is essentially my understanding of what constitutes a “correct reading” of this Book.

In a nutshell, I believe that all things in the world (including us) are like theorems, and our lives/interactions are like proofs that “inhabit” these theorems (in the sense of constructive logic). The status of religious texts is that they are circular in the coinductive sense: they always refer to the way in which they can be “inhabited” by our reading. They are like books that refer to the way in which we read them (and, actually, to nothing else). They have the same circular, coinductive status as this painting.

Of course, even acknowledging that (which I grant is a stretch for many) is not a proof of God’s existence: but the acknowledgement is what I see as how the final judgement works …

Apologies, my esotericism is runs rampant given a rein freed from the constraint of the soundbite (which is the benefit of television such as this). I could simply say, as I did there, that a Muslim should perceive all ayat as communication acts from God, and the world as a text to be read as such.

The possible impossible exception of interior escape

The fine line: sexuality derived from the co-garmenting that belies Creation's unfolding.

But what is the Feminine, exactly? Shekhina/Sakina? But what is that? A feminine tranquility sent down to us? But what is it, exactly? A transcendence? A means of transcending a masculine symbology? Or alternatively, the creative embodiment of that symbolic existence?

I have restated my formulation repeatedly here, though after different fashions, lovingly enumerated. And here I go again: the relationship between the Feminine, the Hijab and the Masculine now, mythopoetically first and then mathematically and then in co-garmenting of enumerations (the signs of my mathematics becoming mythopoeic distillation).

And at the same time, I can now reveal to you the meaning of exterior and interior in Sufism. Because, as we have said, there is no exterior/interior dialectic within the Shariah nor within Prophetic vision: Prophecy is to live within Symbolic space alone, to live the signs in absolute metonymy of illuminated intimation, not in metaphoric suggestion of an Imaginary external meaning. So to say, for example, that the verses regarding hijab have an internal, esoteric meaning and an external, pragmatically physical meaning is to play into a dialectic that is essentially sinful, in the sense of its distance from Prophetic sunnah.

YAAOH (Yet another article on hijab)

That old chestnut again. But there is a cosmic reason why we obsess over it so.

A sister (clad in an amazing tabby catsuit) came to the Tailor’s shop to purchase a hijab.

The Tailor said:

My apologies for propagating further hijab-debate (which is continual, often terribly boring and I understand, coming as it does from a man, often irritating to the sisters).

I am confused by your request to purchase a hijab: for clearly you are in full hijab – I can only see your hands, left and right. The same for your mother and your sister. You have both style and flare and no further progress is necessary: you are already there. Unless you wish to realize the law into the physical plane, but there are of course a multiplicity of such authentic realizations. However that is a process of purr-chasing a pair of rose tinted spectacles to see how the law has played out in front if you, rather than buying new garments.

The sister said:

I understand and, to an extent, agree with the idea that speech/perception is the hijab and that the feminine is some form of human creativity that requires shelter of a righteous hijab. However, does this mean that there is no need left for the physical scalf? This would be pushing the metaphor a little too much, don’t you think so? As Sufism teaches us, shariah is both internal and external, after all.

The Tailor then replied:

Of course in Sufism, there is a particular sense of internal and external that I won’t dispute. And certainly, in non-Prophetic life, the internal/external dialectic is unavoidable.

But I would like to say that, in my view, there is no internal/external dialectic within Shariah. In this case, there is only a hijab of speech — it isn’t a metaphor in the Shariah, because metaphors are signs substituted for signs, and the Shariah (being Divine) is signs, standing alone (not substituted). The particular property of these legal signs is that they provide a resonance with the Real via their own self-reference (the rulings on hijab “refer” to the nature hijab-as-ruling). The Prophet as lawbringer is one who finds complete coincidence of what we see as internal and external, because his reality is Truth: there is no longer a (external) woman wearing a hijab, just there is no longer a (metaphoric, internal) Feminine Creative clothed a garment of Protective Righteous Language. There is now a (neither external nor internal) a woman wearing hijab (a paradoxical, exceptional hijab, that simultaneously hides and reveals through the actual shelter of hiding).

What does that mean for us, living our lives in external/internal dialectic? Speaking philosophically, it is nice to know that, following Hegel, there is an exceptional, middle term to that dialectic, and, following Lacan, it is the impossible female. And it is nice that we can wear that comfort through encountering her (according to some form of marriage).

Speaking practically, there is sin on us for not wearing an external hijab. The sin is not one of wearing, but of failing to live the signs according to the sunnah (the way of Prophecy).
Thus, there is also sin on us for wearing an internal hijab. To follow the sunnah requires us to escape the dialectic, locate the middle term of the impossible, exceptional feminine and be clothed then in the hijab of paradox.

Aisha’s marriage: a hyper-Salafi perspective

Aisha's age of betrothal and then marriage, understood as the descent of Divine Law and Light into our Feminine existence. Imbalance and prematurity lead to a tragedy we all share.

Narrated ‘Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years. (Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88)

The Tailor: The Judaic tradition sets 12 as the legal age for a marriage. Aisha was married at 6 and consummated at 9. There is an argument that the former law and the latter instance are not child abuse, because our notion of childhood is cultural and historically situated. People grew up faster and died earlier in those days. Closer to home, in medieval Europe, it was quite common for peasants at least to get hitched around 14. To survive. There was less information to aquire and more disease going around. Alhumdulilah, in the contemporary West at least, we have an extended childhood these days (in some cases, running into the 20s and 30s!). Alhumdulilah, because childhood is close to paradise. But this extended childhood is more or less the result of factors like the industrial revolution, advances in medicine, colonial oppression etc. I hope that one day an extended childhood will be the norm, globally.

Let’s assume this is the case. So these particularly young ages did not raise any eyebrows in those days. But if it is the case, what is the significance of detailing these ages in holy narratives?

By Time’s gift my vagaries returned me

I sigh
And sigh again
A forlorn and hopeless sight
Bereft and abandoned
The city of my being, ruined.
The temple of my worship broken down into bittersweet melancholy
by time’s desire for the return.

But she had never departed, though I perceive only fragments.

Memory
Of her fragrance
That backward glance, that hidden recognition
Lies above the ribbons of my remembrance
And as they unravel,
she simply lies in slumber.

Shariah and Science

A true brother on the path said: “To follow the Shariah is to be a good Muslim. To study the Science of Tasawwuf (Sufism) is to become a true human being. The Shariah is a precondition to engaging with that Science. It’s like learning to walk before we can run.”

The Tailor thought:

But surely the Shariah, God’s most direct communication, is above any science, including the Science of the Body. And surely it is a communication sent to human beings, not to wild things. The Law is written for human beings alone. Therefore Science precedes the Law.

Prophetic becoming is a crowning line of flight from Mecca to Medina. From Love to Law.

To engage with this crowning of Love by Law: how can we engage with this crowning? By means of the Law itself! The Law encloses the Science, because its sole purpose is to define, self-reflexively, this crowning. The Real nature of the Shariah goes far beyond mundane (and ultimately Imaginary) socio-politics, in fact there is little to link them apart from a family resemblance. The Shariah is for the Cosmos itself: its nature is more akin to subatomic physics. It is precisely the Logic of Life. A logic and meta-logic is built into each article of law: their jurisdiction is the very act of attempting to read the Divine Communication, including the communication of Shariah. An act of reading that is, in essence, this crowning of the human being.

But we must become human first, before we read too deeply. Perhaps those who are not interested in reading, should simply be content to be humans, elevated above all creation anyway (who could ask for anything more?) in the knowledge that Life comes from Love and Love is the meaning of Life.

All lawyers, however, should be human. This is the first principle of the Verandah Vanguard. A wild man cannot study law, he will eat skin and not fruit. A wild man cannot judge, least possibly serious miscarriages of justice occur.

Glue (live) by the Friends of Design

From live concert by Kazakh-London Suficore group the Friends of Design. Vocals: Matronita Minor (aka Sally Deen). Guitar: the Geographer. Lyrics and beats by the Tailor.

Prophetic Medicine in the Light of Modern Science

Christmas Day and three men were simultaneously up to no good. At varying degrees.

In Melbourne, an enthusiastic brother proclaimed to his fellow students at an Islamic retreat in the Dandenongs: “Recent Biomedical advances provide more scientific evidence for the Divine Truth of Islam. In a recent edition of the Reader’s Digest, there is an article that describes experiments conducted by American scientists, showing that the medical hadiths of Islam reveals conclusively a knowledge of preventive medicine and immunology far beyond anything known at the time of the revelation. For example, the well known hadith of the fly … “

Meanwhile, inscribed but unaware, somewhere below the ayat of blue skies, above the ayat of the Atlantic seas, a man recited the Opening (but never Really Opened in his life) as he attempted to blow up a plane with plastic explosives hidden in his underpants. Fortunately the attempt was a failure, his fellow passengers overpowering him.

And then there was Herman U. Ticz, who certainly had Opened, but was now deen-drunk, differentiated and dominated, smoking a strong cuban and feeling the full effects of his large brandy at the Club Along the Edge of Time, an establishment located on the fourth floor above the Tailor’s West End boutique.

Re-volution (a party political broadcast on behalf of the Verandah Vanguard )

What follows is a party political broadcast on behalf of the Verandah Vanguard, circa the year 4009AD.

The principles of the Verandah Vanguard have always been rooted in the intrinsic Divinity of Elevated evolution for all things, in Godly growth, in Managed mutation, in Righteous revolution, running through all areas of society like bifircating lines of electric fire, through all sign-to-sign interpretations we might have of Society and the Law, from the communities that comprise the human psyche, to family units and love affairs and philosophies and sciences, to the entire normative understanding of a political State itself.

Everything is in fluent flux, everything is permitted, life is a laboratory and we are chemists in experimentation: but with the Goal that, ultimately, each experiment across all levels leads us closer to a Perfection that permeates through all levels. Through continual flux derives Perfection, true social evolution. Previous revolutions failed because they did not take into account that constant mental re-volution is required for there to be Progress to the Goal: not a single, linguistically interpreted political moment, but a continual dialectic within the Ummatic assembly of the lesser Mind. Let the child be suckled until it has legs to walk!

The Magic Mirror Game

The game's tagline: "Will you be the first princess to look into the eyes of your true love?"

The Professor blogged: just played two rounds of this with my daughter. At the beginning she was tempted to cheat as the rules are rather baroque. You play one of four princesses, throw the dice, then proceed clockwise or anticlockwise as you choose. The board consists of a series of circular series of spaces, upon which a pink heart shaped card is placed face down. When you land on a space, you turn over the associated card and show it to everyone: if it is an image of your designated princess, you get to look into the magic mirror. If they mirror shows the wicked witch/Paranoid-Imaginary Mother, then you can’t keep the card — if the mirror reflects an image of the princess’s associated Prince, then you retain the card. The winner is she who collects four images of their designated princess.

It’s a load of fun, and as my daughter understands now, most fun when one plays by the rules and employs intersubjective logical inference to develop strategies to return to spaces other players have shown to hold desirable cards.

Thoroughly recommended as a Christmas present for those special princesses in your life. It is available at Toys R Us or Amazon here.

The game’s tagline: “Will you be the first princess to look into the eyes of your true love?”