musaafir-e dasht

Answers to the questions that keep bugging our minds come from strange places. I have been a little worried about certain things lately, and today I stumbled upon these verses by Imam al-Shafa'i rahimahullah on this blog . The verses have left me speechless. They clarify many confusions and pave way for some clarity, at least, at this point in time. Alhamdulillah. “The intelligent and refined find no rest in dwelling in one place, So leave your homeland and travel far away! Travel and you will meet new people replacing those left behind, And tire yourself out, because it makes life worth living! I have seen that water stagnates when it stands still, Yet when it runs it is sweet and pure. And if the lion left not its land, it would not catch its prey And if the arrow left not the bow, it would not hit its aim And if the sun moved not across the horizon, People the world over would have tired of the sky.” - Imam Shafi

1. It was the spring of 1993 and the Balkan war was sending waves upon waves of refugees to the coastal villages where tourist traffic had died down. The Croatian Government had put up these refugees in tourist resorts whose owners were being compensated by international relief agencies. Bashka Voda was 25 miles from Krilo, a village where Abbas and I had our warehouse from where we took supplies to the Bosnian besieged town of Mostar. The war had opened the eyes of the refugees to their Islamic identity, sadly repressed through decades of Communism in Yugoslavia. They were eager to learn about Islam and relief workers like ourselves were struggling to do whatever we could. Bosnian refugees who lived around our warehouse often came to us for assistance. On one such visit a little girl approached me with a magazine picture showing a person making Salat1. “Can you teach me this?” she said in broken English pointing to the picture, “I love Allah, I love Islam but my father Communist, n...

Ramadan 14, 1433 AH Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again? - Emily Bronte I set out for the university at around 7.30 am this morning. One of the most pleasant morns in this Ramadan. Alhamdulillah. When I got on to the bus, I was reminded of the book on which I had spent around twenty minutes last night in order to convert and clean up its format to suit my kindle - The Embattled Innocence: Recollections of a Muslim Relief Worker by Suleman Ahmer. After paying my fare to the conductor, I pulled out my kindle from my handbag and started reading the preface and went on to read the first chapter, at the end of which, I was so moved to tears, that I had to shut my reading device off and give myself some time to think, and rethink. By this time, I saw the huge gates of the NED University passing by on my left hand side. I prepared myself to get off at the next stop - my university. In a dazed state of mind, I alighted the bus...

Just came across this excerpt from a book A Sense of Seige: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West   here , about the pseudo intellectuals, which sadly Pakistan is rife with: This is a real tragedy. These intellectuals are unable to question their positions and their assumed mission because they have no intellectual, academic or informative resource other than the West to rely on. Western sources are their only assets; and once their link to these sources is lost, they will be abandoned in the middle of a desert. Sadly, these intellectuals are unable to find the spiritual energy and intellectual courage necessary to save themselves and their countries, to preserve their roots, because that would mean denial of what has become their identity. In this case, “the decisive hour,” as defined by Marx -- a concept that evolved into “class suicide” -- takes place, when a part of the ruling class separates itself and joins the revolutionary class. These intellectuals ultimately expect th...

This is a strange morning. A beautiful one, indeed. While I write in solitude, my folks remain fast asleep. The parents will be travelling to another city today, and they do need proper rest before they set out for the journey. I look outside my window; my vision of the sky is impaired by the thick grey clouds that cover the Karachi sky today. Moonsoon, it seems, is on its way...  Happiness indeed is a gift of Allah (swt), the sweetness of which multiplies specially after one has experienced sorrow.  Sorrow, too is a gift of Allah, for it is sorrow that helps one realise how helpless man is, be it in the times of need or sufficiency. In both the situations man remains reliant upon Allah; there is none but Him who could remove our sorrow; there is none but Him who can lighten up our path.  It takes a moment for the life to get transformed. You do not even realise, and in a split second you find yourself standing at that bend on the road of your life tur...

Life, Literature and Nostalgia By Naeema Akram This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. -           Rumi Long ago, in my childhood, that is, I remember an elderly man telling me an inspiring tale about Saladin (Salahuddin Ayyubi), the famous Muslim hero. I was told that Saladin had memorised diwaans and diwaans of Arabic poetry. This piece of information got the precocious child in me thinking. I wondered how was that possible? Saladin – the great Muslim general who I had admired because of the stories I had read and heard about his bravery and kindness in my childhood – and poetry seemed like two worlds apart at that point in time. I was precocious, but some questions take their due time before we are blessed with their life-changing answers… I was a science student all my life. Racking my brains with Physics, Chemi...

An excellent elucidation of the matter by Shaykh al Islam, Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani (May Allah preserve him) posted at ashrafiya.com  - thought-provoking and clarifying many misconceptions regarding Sufism. I would warn the younger Muslim generation about the wrong interpretation of Sufism. It has been widely propagated in the Western world by non-Muslims. They coined the term Sufism. They praise Sufism. They preach sufism. They propagate Sufism. One may think that they do this in service to Islam. However, the reality is that the Sufism propagated by Western writers is quite contradictory to the Shariah. It is quite contradictory to the real essence of Tasawwuf and tariqat. A high ranking western offical visited the Darul Uloom, Karachi. After having a detailed tour observing the teaching activities he commented that he did not see anything about Sufism being taught. It was inquired that what did he mean by Sufism. He replied that Sufism is something relate...