Post by Ashiq e Rasool on Nov 2, 2004 14:00:04 GMT
The wahabi who converted to Buddhism
By kerim fenari
Jalal loved Islamic art, and the great lyrical productions of sufi poetry. He had come to religion through travelling in tribal Muslim areas, where he breathed that precious and liberating air which one can only describe as the Islamic spirit. Not the boy scout bonhomerie of the liberal Ikhwan, or the nervous guilt of the Tableegh, but the authentic, unpolluted Islam, as shaped and lived for countless generations by joyfully untroubled lovers of Allah.
Jalal’s fate however was to don a gas mask supplied by the wahabi sect, which cut him off from the liberating oxygen of normative Islam and slowly asphyxiated him with fumes of human making. At the university, his open mindness made him heedless of choosing company that would open his heart to the love of his lord. Or so he thought! This was his undoing.
I never learned the name of the man who converted him to Wahabism, but one can deduce his character, and the expression on his face, and the body language without difficulty.
As months passed jalal the Arabic student fell under the spell of the shouting sermoniser he insisted on hearing, a shadow crept over his features. Formerly a frequent visitor to Medina, he went less often, troubled by wahabi fatwa,s against paying too much attention to God’s messengers. His confidence in the sacred in the saints and in beauty began to waver, a process that clearly agonised him. At times, when he spoke he would return to his old self, and talk about the saints and sacred geography of muslim cities. But then a cloud would come over his face, he would shudder guiltily as his programming once again took over, and he parroted the shallow slogans of wahabbism. I thought once of the film ‘Invasion of the body snatcher’. Jalal was being possessed.
Watching the shadows gather around jalal, convinced me that something infernal was at work. Wahabbism seemed to be not simply a package of ideas it was an existential condition. It breathed intensity, a dark radioactivity which could on prolonged exposure, make me physically weak and sick. After only attending 1 session with a wahabi, whose blindness had veiled him from my own orientation, I had to DETOXFY myself by taking a long walk, breathing deeply, and repeating thousands of prayers upon the Noble Prophet (Salla Allahu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam) Salla Allahu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam
Back in Makka, Jalal’s condition was getting worse. He began to stand very close in front of me, Fingering my lapels as he spoke, trying to influence his ideas and beliefs on me. In otherwords convert me to wahbbism. I recognised a symptom of a very advanced case of wahabbism. When I spoke to him of beauty, or art or literature, or holiness, his face now blazed with an amused and self-righteous contempt. All that was Bi’da.. Jala’s room at the university which he shared with 3 others was stripped of anything “ethically” Muslim- small rugs from Kashmir, rosewater sprinklers even his ebony prayer beads had to go. His life was stripped down, sterilised, irradiated with ultraviolet light from the harshest end of the spectrum. His reading habits withered, as he realised that the great sacred poets of Islam: Rumi Sanai Shabistri and the rest were all Sufis, and all the soil of wahabbism had been sterile for literature, as it had been for all the other arts of Islam.
I watched this transformation with pain. I had hoped, as had others, that he would someday combine his cultural knowledge with his Islamic knowledge to become a major muslim leader back in America, speaking two languages with fluency. However his destiny lay through the wahabi desert. And in the end he died of thirst….
He suffered a kind of spiritual heart-attack. His attempt to change his spiritual make-up finally collapsed, as I should have anticipated. A crisis which must have tortured him almost beyond endurance brought about his sudden departure from the university, and from the country. He renounced Islam, and met and married a Chinese girl. He now practices a form of Nishiren Buddhism which no doubts helps to satisfy, as wahabbism never could his craving for contemplation and beauty.
Jala’s case was extreme, but I fear it is not unique. The spread of wahabism, is rapid, and is contaminating many thousands of souls that might otherwise, with proper exposure to traditional Ulamah and an attachment to a spiritual guide (PIR) , have found the tranquillity and serenity of authentic Islam. While I know everything is by Allah’s decree, I blame myself for jala’s apostasy. I should have taken him to saints, and the true gatherings of divine love thet discreetly flourish in Saudi Arabia, which could have inoculated him against the VIRUS which led to his death.
But he represents, an extreme form, the whole story of the ummah’s contemporary crisis. Our lack of recognition of of insistence upon, beauty in our souls, and the distance from the maker that ensures from the decline of tradition and from the diabolically-contrived spread of heresay and disharmony.
Thankfully, the ummah is still filled with Saints Sufi’s and greatcraftsmen. Having travelled the world, I know that amid no other community may one find such glories and spirituality and human excellence. All the more reasons to defend tradition against this new plague.
Wassalam.
By Kerim Fenari.
By kerim fenari
Jalal loved Islamic art, and the great lyrical productions of sufi poetry. He had come to religion through travelling in tribal Muslim areas, where he breathed that precious and liberating air which one can only describe as the Islamic spirit. Not the boy scout bonhomerie of the liberal Ikhwan, or the nervous guilt of the Tableegh, but the authentic, unpolluted Islam, as shaped and lived for countless generations by joyfully untroubled lovers of Allah.
Jalal’s fate however was to don a gas mask supplied by the wahabi sect, which cut him off from the liberating oxygen of normative Islam and slowly asphyxiated him with fumes of human making. At the university, his open mindness made him heedless of choosing company that would open his heart to the love of his lord. Or so he thought! This was his undoing.
I never learned the name of the man who converted him to Wahabism, but one can deduce his character, and the expression on his face, and the body language without difficulty.
As months passed jalal the Arabic student fell under the spell of the shouting sermoniser he insisted on hearing, a shadow crept over his features. Formerly a frequent visitor to Medina, he went less often, troubled by wahabi fatwa,s against paying too much attention to God’s messengers. His confidence in the sacred in the saints and in beauty began to waver, a process that clearly agonised him. At times, when he spoke he would return to his old self, and talk about the saints and sacred geography of muslim cities. But then a cloud would come over his face, he would shudder guiltily as his programming once again took over, and he parroted the shallow slogans of wahabbism. I thought once of the film ‘Invasion of the body snatcher’. Jalal was being possessed.
Watching the shadows gather around jalal, convinced me that something infernal was at work. Wahabbism seemed to be not simply a package of ideas it was an existential condition. It breathed intensity, a dark radioactivity which could on prolonged exposure, make me physically weak and sick. After only attending 1 session with a wahabi, whose blindness had veiled him from my own orientation, I had to DETOXFY myself by taking a long walk, breathing deeply, and repeating thousands of prayers upon the Noble Prophet (Salla Allahu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam) Salla Allahu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam
Back in Makka, Jalal’s condition was getting worse. He began to stand very close in front of me, Fingering my lapels as he spoke, trying to influence his ideas and beliefs on me. In otherwords convert me to wahbbism. I recognised a symptom of a very advanced case of wahabbism. When I spoke to him of beauty, or art or literature, or holiness, his face now blazed with an amused and self-righteous contempt. All that was Bi’da.. Jala’s room at the university which he shared with 3 others was stripped of anything “ethically” Muslim- small rugs from Kashmir, rosewater sprinklers even his ebony prayer beads had to go. His life was stripped down, sterilised, irradiated with ultraviolet light from the harshest end of the spectrum. His reading habits withered, as he realised that the great sacred poets of Islam: Rumi Sanai Shabistri and the rest were all Sufis, and all the soil of wahabbism had been sterile for literature, as it had been for all the other arts of Islam.
I watched this transformation with pain. I had hoped, as had others, that he would someday combine his cultural knowledge with his Islamic knowledge to become a major muslim leader back in America, speaking two languages with fluency. However his destiny lay through the wahabi desert. And in the end he died of thirst….
He suffered a kind of spiritual heart-attack. His attempt to change his spiritual make-up finally collapsed, as I should have anticipated. A crisis which must have tortured him almost beyond endurance brought about his sudden departure from the university, and from the country. He renounced Islam, and met and married a Chinese girl. He now practices a form of Nishiren Buddhism which no doubts helps to satisfy, as wahabbism never could his craving for contemplation and beauty.
Jala’s case was extreme, but I fear it is not unique. The spread of wahabism, is rapid, and is contaminating many thousands of souls that might otherwise, with proper exposure to traditional Ulamah and an attachment to a spiritual guide (PIR) , have found the tranquillity and serenity of authentic Islam. While I know everything is by Allah’s decree, I blame myself for jala’s apostasy. I should have taken him to saints, and the true gatherings of divine love thet discreetly flourish in Saudi Arabia, which could have inoculated him against the VIRUS which led to his death.
But he represents, an extreme form, the whole story of the ummah’s contemporary crisis. Our lack of recognition of of insistence upon, beauty in our souls, and the distance from the maker that ensures from the decline of tradition and from the diabolically-contrived spread of heresay and disharmony.
Thankfully, the ummah is still filled with Saints Sufi’s and greatcraftsmen. Having travelled the world, I know that amid no other community may one find such glories and spirituality and human excellence. All the more reasons to defend tradition against this new plague.
Wassalam.
By Kerim Fenari.
