Letter to a New Muslim, part 2
Nov 22nd, 2008
So you are a new Muslim, and you may be such even if you have a lineage of Muslim ancestors that stretches back for generations, for each person who genuinely discovers Islam, confirms it and determines to live by it is always new.
You are beginning to find your feet in this strangely topsy-turvey world that is Islam today and that is especially upside-down in our already upside-down world here in the West.
You are assailed on one hand by the serious squad and their differences, a topic we dealt with at some length in the first part of this letter. On the other hand, there is the assault of the celebrities, nasheed singers and the whole burgeoning ‘Islamic’ entertainment industry. Reading the early history of the Muslims, it is very hard to find a match for this strange new culture of pop Islam, or the exotic panoply of superstar scholars and lecturers who fill our screens and the platforms of our conferences.
How did we get from ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, to this endless procession of celebrities, expert scholars and orators? As you are a new Muslim, we dare to think that you might question all this, that you really yearn for the authentic, that you would like somehow to live and die in Islam, not merely trying to prove to the world that you are exactly the same as them in every way, except that you are ‘Islamic’. No, you have decided that you are a Muslim, and not merely ‘Islamic’, if I dare express your thoughts for you.
You see the elderly go to the mosque, content with their own piety, and never really accepting you, although you may sometimes experience some sentimental reaction in the softer hearted ones. You see the women left behind in the houses, or striving to form women’s groups and study circles, striving heroically, along with their duties of motherhood and their struggle, often alone, to see that their children get something of the deen. You see the young divided into the docile, who stay ‘at home’ in the sense that they imbibe both the tradition and the prejudices of their elders, and those who kick over the traces and in the process abandon the deen in its entirety, often not really aware that they have done such a thing because it has never been presented to them as a reality in the first place. They drive the fast, ultra-smart cars and play hard-driving pop music very, very loud in them, while hanging out with each other and an array of pretty girls.
And then there are the very earnest young Muslim ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who have accepted wholesale a cultural mix, which leaves them a little marginalised, feeling exposed to the Islamophobia which haunts them. Their Islam often comes down to matters of dress, the ways in which the sexes mix, and attention to the contents of the food they buy. Their sources of knowledge are a translation of the Qur’an and a copy of Sahih al-Bukhari, and they are almost certainly also involved in learning Arabic and going to classes on ‘aqidah and shari‘ah etc., however, they are also quite likely to be found hanging out on the web rather than on the streets. These are very fine and serious people, but they themselves recognise that in some way they are stuck.
And you may have seen the alienated young men, who would have been likely, in another time, to have gone off to training camps in foreign lands, and who worry the security services precisely at the moment they shave off their beards and wear suits and ties. You have heard some of their hatred for the West and their passionate nihilism that really sees no way forward and so chooses death, a great misfortune not only for them but also for the others who happen to be around them at the moment of their murderous suicides.
All of these people are in earnest and are sincere, and so we do not wish to denigrate these qualities in any way, but you our reader, we suspect, are not satisfied with these choices, even though you may find that one of them matches your own description, but that is because this is the hand you have been dealt, if I may use such an image. You have accepted or re-affirmed Islam because of a deeper need, possibly a need which you may not even be able to articulate or define, let alone fulfil, but which, like a deep thirst, is there.
So this is the strange confused mixture that our contemporary world presents to us all as Islam in these lands in this time, and we only have accounts of the first community, the salaf, to confirm our deeper instincts that this is not really IT. Don’t mistake me; all these people really are Muslims, but neither they, nor we, really have Islam in our hands.
Then add into the mix the extraordinary events that we see in global finance and the re-alignment of the world geo-politically. Things that are much vaster than us are in motion, and we do not know if we will simply be squashed by forces and events that we have not understood, or if we might find ourselves being carried into deeds which will be our own undoing.
So what does someone do in such a situation? The answer has both an inward and an outward dimension. The inward dimension is the simple natural fact that one is always on the look-out. One knows deep within oneself that this deen is different. Many of us from a Christian or Jewish background knew then that the revelations to these pre-Islamic prophets were true, but we also came to know after deep search that whatever they brought no longer exists in an authentic fashion anywhere on the earth, although archaeological fragments and fossils do survive. But nothing with life and juice in it. The electricity has been turned off.
Islam is not entirely immune to this fate; almost everybody we have described have picked up fossils and archaeological bits of original Islam, but it is in the very nature of our deen, that the authentic and original form survives from age to age and is always to be found somewhere. That is because it is the last revelation and will endure to the Last Day, and it is because it is promised by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in a very famous hadith, which exists in numerous similar wordings right there in the sahih collections.
Thawban said: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “There will always be a party of my community openly and victoriously on the truth – those who fail to help them will not harm them – until the command of Allah comes while they are like that.” (Sahih Muslim)
So, this is the outward dimension; the confirmation by clear texts that there is something somewhere, that a clear, living and vibrant expression of the deen can still be found. About this we cannot, however, afford to be too idealistic or too naïve. That living form must line up in harmony with that of the first community, and while they were the best community of human beings ever to appear on the earth, we must not forget that they were exactly that, eminently human. Therefore, in looking for this ‘party’, we have all too often missed the mark by denying everything we see as being all too human, and end up in disappointment, confusion or desperation as we fruitlessly seek to find instead some ethereal gathering of superhuman paragons.
So, what are we looking for? Why are we looking? The only possible answer is that when we find them, we will go to them, we will move, we will join them, and, in a word, we will make hijrah. At last, we have put a word to it. I have avoided doing so for as long as I could, simply because the very vocabulary of Islam has become a collection of familiar archaeological artefacts, and thus dead. However, it means that we can access a whole volume of material in the Book and the Sunnah and the works of the scholars, if we need.
The truth is we need something for our lives, for our wives and our children, whether we are married or that still lies ahead of us. We seriously need community and like hearts and minds. We need people with whom we can share knowledge, and with whom we can relax, without feeling that relaxation itself is some betrayal of the very seriousness of the deen. We need people with whom we can work together seriously as adult men and women towards something real. We need people together with whom we can worship Allah in a genuine way, so that when we talk of the presence of angels at worship, we can really feel that they are a presence. We need people who can tell us the truth, without confronting us, because we know that in spite of ourselves we can become upset at that.
Above all, we need others to whom we can give. Although many articulate the need for others and for community thinking that we need others to give us something, our greatest need is for those with whom we can share and to whom we can give, because a great part of the deen is about generosity and sharing. We need the presence of knowledgeable people who teach and who know their deen and can answer some of our questions simply and in a way that makes sense in our situation, for we do not have the time or the need for a thousand proofs. We need a community devoted to learning this deen and teaching it to their young, not just to become scholars but to put it into practice in their lives.
We need some leadership that is neither autocratic nor too self-consciously ‘Islamic’. More than anything we need something ‘real’. We need a community for our da’wah, i.e. to invite the non-Muslims and the new Muslims into, because too many of us carry a deep shame of the sorry state of our community and yet quite sincerely feel the need to call others to Islam. We want a community of which we are not ashamed and to which we can invite with full confidence all those in search of the deen.
Having used this single Arabic word hijrah, let us see where it takes us. First of all, we note that when ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab was confronted with the need to have some form of dating, since before his time they simply called years, “The Year of the Elephant”, or the “Year of Badr”, etc., then he took counsel of the Companions, and at that time, between the 2nd and 3rd years of his caliphate, most of the great Companions were still alive. Some suggested to begin with the birth of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Some suggested his death. Some suggested the very first revelation of the Qur’an. And ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, may Allah be pleased with him, suggested that it should be dated from the hijrah from Makkah to Madinah, and this ‘Umar accepted, as did all of the other Companions, so that this became their consensus. This is fundamental for our letter to you: they recognised that Islam really began with the emigration from kufr to where there was a Muslim community, to Madinah. Of course, they were all Muslims before that point, but nevertheless they dated Islam from their emigration for the sake of Allah and His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.
Now, although that first emigration ceased with the Opening of Makkah to Islam, hijrah itself will never cease until the Last Day, for wherever there is a need, wherever it becomes increasingly difficult for the Muslims to practice their Islam, for whatever reason, it becomes obligatory to emigrate to somewhere where they can. And, of course, one might emigrate not because one found one’s deen intolerably difficult to practice, but from love of a better setting, a better company and people of knowledge who can teach, and a host of other reasons.
This is the theme we have reached. The world is in motion in strange ways we do not fully understand even when we read very clever analyses. It is in motion in ways that we know are potentially very dangerous. The Muslims are generally out of sync. The last revelation to mankind is being trivialised and made peripheral in a host of ways. Nowhere is it being recognised as the truth we know it to be, and the shocking thing is that this is not because of evil kuffar, but because of our own failure as a community to live it, transmit it and articulate it. The time is short and very dangerous. We have already set out and taken this decision to live by this deen, and so we are not content to do it half-heartedly. We are daring enough to want it all. For that we are going to have to move to the next stage and find our brothers and sisters. We need to find our Madinah, and we have had enough hints to know that it is probably not going to be in one of those romantic settings for which we still incorrigibly yearn, deep in the deserts of tents and camels, but may be located in quite some other kind of desert and is possibly closer to hand.
Abdassamad Clarke
Letter to a New Muslim, part 1 can be found here.
[...] Read it at the Muslims of Norwich website [...]
Asalamu alaikum
This is a great article well thought out. You have hit the nail on the head with much of your words. I have only been Muslim for about 5 years now ,this article relates to my experiences and unfortunate realisations of the Muslim community today. At first i had high expectations for the Muslims but i became very much disapointed ,just as i became at first extremely frustrated with those i had grow up with when they wanted nothing to do with what i was saying to them about Islam i.e freinds and family ,i did’nt like then Muslim community and i became very much against the community i came from. But that made me turn completelty to Allaah and to build a relelationship with the Divine which at that time was a would say ‘special’ ,the dark realities of the Muslim community is depressing ,its dull and ugly ,muslims never smile ,they don’t speak english in public which is dissastruos for dawah ,the domestic violence ,going to the kufr for benifits etc ,and having to deal with outright kufr from those around me home ,work and friends. Jazakallaah khair Brother sayid Adassamad Clarke ,May Allaah swy reward you and fill your life with Baraka.
wa alaikum as-salam,
Thank you for your words and your du’a. Many a writer is only waiting for his brothers’ and sisters’ du’as.
The truth is that when one finds one’s people and one’s ‘home’, so to speak, one can look with more kindness on the failings of our community, but before that it can be intolerable to know the beauty, truth and majesty that is Islam and then to witness our own falling short of that. May Allah guide our community to the revival of Islam in all its richness and make our community a haven for all those who are seeking the truth and some sanity in this age. Amin.
Ma’a salamah,
Abdassamad
Wa alaykum assalam Shaun,
You are absolutely right in your appraisal of Hajj Abdassamad’s article. He is a good writer and a clear thinker. That much is evident in the fluent construction of the letter and the well balanced wisdom of his words. What too is abundantly clear is that he speaks from experience. One sees this not only in the letter itself, but also in his reply to your generous comments, “…when one finds one’s people and one’s ‘home’…one can look with more kindness on the failings of our community…” This is an indication of his own reality, one which I am in a position to confirm since I am one of those with whom he shares it here in Norwich. Therefore, my point is that although we can all agree that the letter is both insightful and well written, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is also a call to action, a call to movement and a call to the rediscovery of the secret of Madinah.
Hajj Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison
Asalam Alaykum,
A touching letter indeed. And you are certainly in my duahs, as are all the people there in Norwich. Since my return here i have spent every day “doing things” which Allah inspired me to do whilst in Norwich so that i may free the knots, and one by one i feel them coming loose, so that i may pave the path for that very special ‘arabic word’ you delayed so late in the peice. I darent say it as it is so important for me now. Nothing else matters….
Please keep me in your duahs, and that Allah does not turn away from my intention i made.
Asad
May Allah reward you well, sidi. Ameen
“On the other hand, there is the assault of the celebrities, nasheed singers and the whole burgeoning ‘Islamic’ entertainment industry. Reading the early history of the Muslims, it is very hard to find a match for this strange new culture of pop Islam, or the exotic panoply of superstar scholars and lecturers who fill our screens and the platforms of our conferences.”
I lurve nasheeds ehmm. You know it’s better than listening to alternative rock music to which I have been addicted to and still struggling to overcome:p Good diagnosis – we have the core, without which we have just the shell.
with duas,
M
Dear M,
It would be deplorable for me to look down on other people’s failings, since I certainly have enough of my own to get on with.
This was a cautionary note, not so much against song and music, as against celebrityhood which reduces people to ‘masses’ who gaze upon performers, whether musicians or sports persons. It is that transformation of one person into a ‘star’ and consequently everyone else into ‘the masses’ that is disturbing.
What a difference even in the world of classical music when we wait to get a new CD of some celebrity musicians, whereas in the 19th century they waited for the sheet music in order to sit down and play it together.
With Nasheed, what has happened is that we watch and listen to a performance, whereas the people of dhikr sing together, worship Allah together. And there is place there for the gifted singer but in that case what he does is bring the lyrics of the song to our hearts as only one part of this body of people who are remembering Allah together.
But thank you for your kind letter and your du’a, and may Allah give you and us the tasting of some of these matters of the authentic deen.
As-salamu alaikum,
Abdassamad
as salaamu alaikum uncle,
may i be so bold as to state what is, in my humble opinion, written between the lines? come to norwich! this is something i am considering seriously as I believe there is a community there that desires to implement the 5 pillars with as little compromise as possible.
regarding the issue of the new islamic nasheed celebrities i ask you to have a read through this piece i have just completed:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=31358684481&topic=9128
i think that this is a movement that we need to look carefully at and needs scholarly guidance.
wa alaikum as-salam, Sidi Ayman,
We didn’t state Norwich as a destination of hijrah explicitly in the article because, by the very nature of the Internet, some of our readers are in Indonesia, Australia and Russia, and, pleased as we are with what Allah has given us here, we nevertheless do have to admit that there are other places that people could go to secure their deen. If you would like to join us here, then we would be honoured to have your company and Ahlan wa Sahlan.
Thank you for the link to your piece, which I have read with interest. As I mentioned elsewhere to you, one doesn’t want to come down hard on nasheed artists et al out of some puritanical motivation.
Indeed, if our artists could aspire to the highest possible expression of their art consonant with our deen, and with content that really reflected the urgency of our situation on this earth, particularly in the context of the controlled demolition we are experiencing of the world’s hitherto existing economic (dis)order, then I for one would be very pleased.
If our artists merely have a ‘me-too’ approach and try to prove that we are really very nice people, and that our muhajabah girls can scream and giggle every bit as much as girls do for rock stars, then obviously I need say no more.
Clearly scholarly guidance is important, but if people would also consider themselves part of a community, in the way we outlined, then such public representations of the deen would need counsel from and permission from the leader of the community. As it is, it is every man for himself, and many people are largely expanding their CVs, wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah.
I remember in Denmark watching a lengthy one-to-one interview with a prominent Islamic personality, which I experienced as a rather tedious boxing match in which the two sides sparred rather unconvincingly for almost half an hour. It occurred to me that if the man had gone as representative of a community, authorised by an amir, he would have gone in the spirit of the fighter in single combat before the battle, whose job it is to take out his opponent right away or die in the process, not merely have a sparring match.
As-salamu alaikum,
Abdassamad
Hajj Abdas Samad,
What did you mean by “particularly in the context of the controlled demolition we are experiencing of the world’s hitherto existing economic”? It is the controlled demolition part which puzzles me.
Regards,
Asad
Sidi Habib,
I have had the image of the twin towers in my mind for some days, or those controlled demolitions, and how there is a moment when there has been a tremendous explosion, but the building is still standing and then gradually it descends to the ground. It seems to me that the world economy has just received such an explosion, but as yet it seems to be standing.
And Allah knows best.
Abdassamad
I made hijrah to Norwich two years ago. Why? For two reasons: knowledge and good company.
If you want the knowledge, you have to go to it. Remember that Allah only created us so that we would acquire knowledge of Him, so don’t wait…..emigrate.
Bismillah
Asalamualaikum
Sidi Abdasamand
You have mashallah describe it very well. Someof us saying all these things are often mocked by others muslim for pointing out these issues. It may be because the celebraty culture of ‘Practicing’ muslim feel somehow belittled. As a scholar says most of us are in deen in shape or form but not in reality.
May Allah grant me the tawfiq not to see deen in such a shallow way and May Allah accept your work.
Masalam
Shahed
Salam alaik,
This message is directed to Abdallah Seymour, can I emigrate like him,can he guide me,in this tyrannical world of extreme visa restrictions,talkless of high financial cost?I’m nostalgic of the old Islamic world,when you could emigrate at will.May Allah let that time come back now,amin!!!
Best regards,
Lateef Akanbi Adeyemi
Thank Allah for Al-Murabitun,and other pure Muslim groups.About Islamic solution, the only one to purify world trade,there are challenges to surmont,eg,I read Vadillo’s article on the consequences of modern riba(banking and interest,paper money,stock markets,etc).I decided to act,get e-dinar account,and save any little money I had.After getting US $100 to open a dom account in Nigeria,they told me,the Nigeria bank,I’ll pay them $26 for every transaction.I couldn’t afford it.
May I suggest we have a joint e-dinar account for poor Muslims in each country.I’m the only Muslim in a catholic school,where I work, with about $135/month.Financially,how I survive is a miracle.Living is very costly here.So,we need action on this e-dinar solution now!!!May Allah(SWT)give us the will now.I’m 49 with a BA,my children are young,the eldest living is 12.
I’m saying all this due to how Hajj Abdassamad compared the future situation to the gradual collapse of the twin-tower in New York.____________Lateef Akanbi Adeyemi
Yes, that is the present difficulty with e-dinar. However, this difficulty is also an opportunity.
As you rightly suggest, there needs to be a local entity (called Wakala) which handles relations with the main e-dinar entity, and which buys dinars and e-dinars from them and sells them locally etc., thus cutting out the ridiculous bank changes, or at least gathering them together, so that rather than paying $26 to transact with $100, one pays that for $10,000 or more. There is work for a businessman here, and profit, and also the knowledge that he will be advancing the deen. The Indonesians are further advanced than anyone else: http://wakalanusantara.com/
Abdassamad
As salamou alaikum Lateef
In some respects your very fortunate as I hear that in Nigeria there are many aspects of Amirate which have survived, and of course a high percentage of the population is Muslim. We don’t have such large numbers here, so as the minority we have a different set of issues. I’m sure in Nigeria there are men of knowledge and sound Deen?
Salam alaik, Ya Hajj Abdassamad.May Allah reward you,your family and all Muslms abundantly in this world and the Hereafter,amin.
Abdullateef
Salam alaik,
I have not read the full “Letter to a New Muslim” yet,but excerpts that I ‘ve read show that it’s a masterpiece that should be summerised and published by a wealthy Muslim and be used for dawah,and be given to potential new Muslims, Muslims with very little knowledge of the deen and Muslims with weak faith, free of charge,but no Qur’anic quotation, to avoid sacrilege.
Abdullateef
wa alaikum as-salam,
Sidi Lateef,
Your du’a is like water for a thirsty man, may Allah give you the like and more in abundance.
Abdassamad
Wa alaikum salam,Ya Abdallah Seymour,
Thank you for your reply.It’s only in tne North of Nigeria that Muslims are in the majority.In the South,it’s a mixture,a very sad indeed,a lot of apostacy,and/or attending mosque, church,and native doctors, for spiritual solutions to problems by some “Muslims”,no pure Islam there(Southern Nigeria).
Apart from Murabitun which practises pure form of Islam in the North,some Sufis I know in Nigeria don’t practise Shariah well enough,apart from Salah.I have the strong feeling that that small community in Norwich is better than useless large number here,asthagfirullahi.In Norwich,insha Allah,I plan to attend the Homoepathic College,before returning to Nigeria._________Sidi Lateef
Salam alaik Dear Hajj Abdassamad,
Thank you for your kind reply and du’a.May Allah satisfy all your needs,amin.
Sidi Lateef
Dear Abdallah Seymour,
I forgot to tell you about the activities of the Wahhabis,who claim that Sufism is bid’ha,and only they practise pure Islam.
Sidi Lateef
Allah has guided me to Murabitun after reading “Dajjal” of Thompson,Alhamdulillahi.
Salam alaik,Dear Abdallah Seymour,please,the word “useless” refers to those people mixing other things to Deen in the Southern Nigeria,eg,when I told some Christians that alcohol is forbidden,they replied that they knew some “Muslims”drinking it.
fantastic!
making a physical hijrah is impossible but there is the intention and hijrah of the heart………
Physical hijrah is possible and, in certain circumstances obligatory, and will be until the Last Day. However, because this age is so ambivalent the form it will take will be appropriate to the age. Every mumin has made hijrah of the heart in that they have abandoned wrongdoing, kufr and hypocrisy.