The crypto-Nazis would be the guardians of their indigenous culture. But it is the True Immigrant Muslim who will be the hafiz of that culture, through Islamic literacy.
The crypto-Nazis and general racist bigots say: Islam is a virus that, if unchecked, will overcome our native laws, government and culture, supplanting them with an alien and barbaric shariah. Minarets in Switzerland, hijabs in France, shariah marriage laws in England: the end game will be the repetition of the original story of Islam’s unfolding. Give a dog an inch and then he will take Medina and then Mecca and then whatever else remains, by insidious subtle moves at first, then by the sword and oppression.
The ignorant ummah says: give us our rights. Islam is compatible with modernity — more so, its principles pre-empt modern ideas of progressive economics, science, environmentalism and feminism. Islam is the best of modernity, tempered with and guided by God’s Law. So we demand all the external aspects of our practice, our clothing, our architecture, our sunnah.
The Tailor says:
But do they understand the Real meaning of clothing, architecture and the sunnah? Do they understand what a hijab is? Can they read the architecture of a Masjid? Do they live the sunnah? For the hijab is righteous language. The masjid is all of creation, its minarets are the awtad, the stabilizers, of Reality itself. And the sunnah is literacy.
You would have minarets, awtad, for your Reality. But remember that Pharoah had mastery of the awtad (89: 10), so take care in what you demand, if your demand is made in ignorance or in arrogance.
It is better to turn the other cheek in this particular dispute. For we are not ready. We are not ready. We are not ready.
We have no armor, no Medina, feeble grasp of the Deen, and an inability to read the Qur’an itself, let alone the other books. Who are we to demand any rights in such a state, when we do not understand what “rights” and a “state” are?
Where can the armor be found? Where is our Medina? It lies beneath your feet, in the Western forests behind you, in the streets of modernity that you walk. It lies in the culture that the racists would defend from you in their ignorance. The indigenous culture of the land that your journey (or your parents’ or grandparents’ journeys) has brought you to stand upon — this land will be your armor. The canon of the Northern lands will be your Medina.
Let’s talk about Britain rather than the rest of Europe. Islam is a coherent, single (not multiplicitous) Belief. But Islam is not water, it is milk. It is a way of reading the ayats of life, the signs of your context. Islam is reading. And so we read the Land we travel upon. If I were back in Australia, I would say the key to being a truly Australian Muslim begins with the signs perceived and annotated by the various Aboriginal tribes: the Rainbow Serpent creation myth and the shin, the Dreamtime symbolic, the walkabout hajj, the speech of praise and thanks I heard uttered by spirits in bushland creeks, emerging to give water and running underground, the Aboriginal methods of fire control, where the bush is systematically burnt back to prevent unchecked Fire. But I am not there now, nor in Switzerland or America, so let’s talk about Britain and you can fill in the dots for yourself, wherever you are, Muslim or not.
I say to you: no one can call themselves a truly British Muslim without becoming a hafiz, a guardian, of the blood of Truth — the culture — that runs through this land. He who meets, Uwaisi-like, Blake and Donne in the pubs and churches of the city. He who reads the poets from Wordsworth to the metaphysicians, for poetry is special and particular here. Who knows Dowland, who understands the hyper-geographies and Kabbalic psychologies of the Bard.
Our antagonists claim guardianship of this culture and gain nothing, for they are ignorant and cannot read. But they lack religion and literacy is key to religion, so we cannot fault them on that. But an illiterate Muslim is worse than a thousand ignorant racists. The migrant Muslims do not read the text in front of them and so risk everything. They made a partial hijrah only, the baby was a premature and requires immediate suckling from the Wife of Law, from the Mother of Belief.
An ancient indigenous Islam runs through the veins of our Island. A true British Islam would not destroy this culture, but would elevate it through providing an exemplary light by which to read these texts. It would elevate all ancient ayats of Albion. Islam would then be brought to the Island by the sword — but it would be Arthur’s sword and no people or animals will be harmed in the making of the film.
Postscript
I speak here in the mode of Milk. But if you want to hear it from the Asselic realm, read this poet, hear this music, and make it your own song:
It was a time when silly bees could speak,
And in that time I was a silly bee,
Who fed on time until my heart ‘gan break,
Yet never found the time would favour me.
Of all the swarm I only did not thrive,
Yet brought I wax and honey to the hive.
Then thus I buzzed when time no sap would give:
Why should this blessed time to me be dry,
Sith by this time the lazy drone doth live,
The wasp, the worm, the gnat, the butterfly?
Mated with grief I kneeled on my knees,
And thus complained unto the king of bees:
My liege, gods grant thy time may never end,
And yet vouchsafe to hear my plaint of time,
Which fruitless flies have found to have a friend,
And I cast down when atomies do climb.
The king replied but thus: Peace, peevish bee,
Thou’rt bound to serve the time, the time not thee.
(Words by Robert, Earl of Essex, song by John Dowland)
Masha Allah. Great analysis.
Why though do Donne and Blake and Wordsworth and Shakespeare need to be claimed for Islam? Why can’t they just be who they were?
I’ve been a friend of Islam for as long as I can remember – certainly since I was eight years old, which means 41 years this year. I was entranced by the simplicity and gracefulness of the prayer, the quiet dignity of traditional muslims, the exquisite beauty of Islamic art, the language of the Qur’an. And I still love these things. But for the first time also I find myself feeling distanced from Islam. Perhaps because, particularly over the last decade, it has become a thing, a noun from which comes a verb, to Islamize, rather than a verb, to submit, from which comes a noun that describes an attitude, submission.
British Islam is the world of the nylon hijab, the kitsch and clumsy pastiche of Islamic architecture in concrete and steel, the soundbite Qur’an, the constant agitation for change in the direction of ancient conservatisms.
“The son of Adam does Me wrong: he curses Time and I am Time.” [Muslim Vol. 15, p. 31]
Allah is the twenty-first century, ispost modernity, is the zeitgeist, is muticulturalism and ambiguity and existential angst and the next big thing. But all I can see from the Ummah, frozen forever in Ibn Taymiyyah’s abhorrence of Bid’a. is the cursing of Time.
Salaams James,
“Allah is the twenty-first century, ispost modernity, is the zeitgeist, is muticulturalism and ambiguity and existential angst and the next big thing. But all I can see from the Ummah, frozen forever in Ibn Taymiyyah’s abhorrence of Bid’a. is the cursing of Time.”
Which is precisely why we should be playing that Dowland song in the mosques: if they understood its point, then they’d be freed of that freeze:
“Thou’rt bound to serve the time, the time not thee.”
I don’t mean to say that Islam should claim these authors. For me, Islam is still this verb of submission — but I agree it has become a noun for many.
To submit is to read the ayats, and, if one is serious about being a British Muslim — in its real sense — then, in submission, one must read the ayats that run through this Britain. To locate and gather the Divine sparks hidden within its indigenous heritage and — not to claim them as “ours” — but to guard and uphold them for the country and for the world.
Mu
awesome.
Your approval, on this issue, means the most to me and proves hope for the future of the ummah, oh child of the revolution
if hifz points to a guardianship that comes from knowing.
is khifafa (small k) that guardianship that comes from doing?
beautifully stated. food for thought.
The king replied but thus: Peace, peevish bee,
Thou’rt bound to serve the time, the time not thee.
It’s a very beautiful and powerful poem, Musa, which I didn’t know before. So many thanks for introducing us.
What does it mean, though, ‘to serve the time’? This is the issue I wanted to highlight. Can one serve the time, when one would have rather lived in a time more than a millennium previously, and one is constantly comparing this moment unfavourably to that moment, and one is trying to live the values and practices of then, now (which is basically how it is for all of the ‘Abrahamic’ religions, each in their own way)?
On the other hand, if submission is submission to the moment, isn’t what happened all that time ago simply intended to draw our attention to this fact?
‘When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow’s thoughts’
I am in complete agreement with you here, regarding the treatment of time by these peevish bees, the dogmatic and impatient sons of Adam. I suppose another way of putting it is that their curse takes the form of a false historicity, an imagined historical authenticity: rather like some aspects of the Early Music movement or the Society for Creative Anachronism, only without (or with, depending on what your thing is) the fun.
To serve Time would mean to understand that Time is not the dressing-up games of a clocked, measured, physicalist historicity. To serve Time is to let go of these things and to let one’s being authentically unfold, over the four rivers that run from the Tree of Life.
And the honey gatherers, following these contours and paths of unfolding, will repair everything, in Time:
And your Lord taught the bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in habitations; Then to eat of all the produce, and find with skill the spacious paths of its Lord: there issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for men: truly in this is a sign for those who give thought.
(Qur’an 16:68-69)
an excellent read dear one.
peace to you!
Thank you for reading and your key encouragement in general with this blog (I think about a year or so since I started it). Peace and happiness back to you and your Land, our gifted jeweler! (I will email you soon inshallah.)
“For we are not ready. We are not ready. We are not ready.”
Indeed!
Great post. Its been a while since a blogger has got me ineterested in reading blogs again. Thanks Tailor!
Salaam Asiya,
Thank you so much for reading — your encouraging comments provide much motivation for me
Love and Light,
The Tailor