29 Ramadan 1431

From Ramadan

Today is the last day of the month of Ramadan.

Imam Sajjad (‘a) has an amazing du’a for saying good-bye to the month.

I said to my son: “Look at this, talking to a month! Isn’t that weird! What sense does it make to talk with a month, as if the month could hear us in prayer! What is a month, after all? It is just a period of time between sightings of new moons.” My son, Ali, said: “No. It’s not weird. We can be friends with Ramadan. Why not? We can be friends with anything.” Ali is right. We can be friends with the blessed month. It has been a teacher. It has been a protector. It has been a guide. It has been a warner. Of course, the month is none of these things on its own, and certainly not as a mere period of time. But the month is much more than a measure of time, and what it means for us and our friendship with it is due to what God has ordained for us through His sanctification of this month.

Lots of people think that we can only have a meaningful relationship with God if God is a person with thoughts and emotions. Exalted is He far above what they attribute. But we can have a meaningful personal relationship even with a month. There is no need to get silly about it.

Here are some bits of Imam Sajad’s farewell to the month of Ramadan.

Peace be upon thee,

O greatest month of God!

O festival of His friends!

24 Peace be upon thee,

O most noble of accompanying times!

O best of months in days and hours!

25 Peace be upon thee,

month in which

expectations come near

and good works are scattered about!

26 Peace be upon thee,

comrade

who is great in worth when found

and who torments through absence when lost,

anticipated friend

whose parting gives pain!

27 Peace be upon thee,

familiar

who brought comfort in coming,

thus making happy,

who left loneliness in going,

thus giving anguish!

28 Peace be upon thee,

neighbour in whom

hearts became tender

and sins became few!

29 Peace be upon thee,

helper

who aided against Satan,

companion

who made easy the paths of good-doing!

30 Peace be upon thee -

How many became freedmen of God within thee!

How happy those who observed the respect due to thee!

31 Peace be upon thee -

How many the sins thou erased!

How many the kinds of faults thou covered over!

32 Peace be upon thee -

How drawn out wert thou for the sinners!

How awesome wert thou in the hearts of the faithful!

33 Peace be upon thee,

month with which no days compete!

34 Peace be upon thee,

month which is peace in all affairs!

35 Peace be upon thee,

thou whose companionship is not disliked,

thou whose friendly mixing is not blamed!

36 Peace be upon thee,

just as thou hast entered upon us with blessings

and cleansed us of the defilement of offenses!

37 Peace be upon thee -

Thou art not bid farewell in annoyance

nor is thy fasting left in weariness!

38 Peace be upon thee,

object of seeking before thy time,

object of sorrow before thy passing!

39 Peace be upon thee -

How much evil was turned away from us through thee!

How much good flowed upon us because of thee!

40 Peace be upon thee

and upon the Night of Decree

which is better than a thousand months!¹⁹⁰

41 Peace be upon thee -

How much we craved thee yesterday!

How intensely we shall yearn for thee tomorrow!

42 Peace be upon thee

and upon thy bounty

which has now been made unlawful to us

and upon thy blessings gone by

which have now been stripped away from us!

This is followed by praise to God, the patron of the knowledge by which He has preferred us, and its prescribed practices to which He has guided us. We have undertaken, through Thy giving success, its fasting and its standing in prayer, but with shortcomings, and we have performed little of much.

Then there is more praise of God, and repentance for shortcomings and sins, blessings on Muhammad and his household, and prayer for moral reform:

49 O God,

with the passing of this month

make us pass forth from our offenses,

with its departure

make us depart from our evil deeds,

and appoint us thereby among its most felicitous people,

the most plentiful of them in portion,

and the fullest of them in share!

Then there is prayer for a good Eid.

Thou art the most generous of those who are beseeched,
the most sufficient of those in whom confidence is had,
the most bestowing of those from whom bounty is asked,
and Thou art powerful over everything!¹⁹⁵

http://www.al-islam.org/sahifa/dua45.html

28 Ramadan 1431

From Ramadan

Hoping is needed for coping.

Much of what we observe reveals a progression,
From what was concealed to its opening expression.

In this world, or in a dream’s reality,
I told a friend, or a friend told me,
“If there is a lock, then there must be a key.”

When at dusk the owl of Minerva flew,
It called out its dhikr of “Hu, hu, hu!”
Now tell me what you are going to do
When you find your way blocked from any breakthrough?

If something is finite, a philosopher said,
then if only you would just use your head,
you would know where beyond it the road always has led,
just as there must have been a loaf, if there’s a piece of bread,
and if there is a scrap, from a greater it was shred.

A sophomore will complain that this logic fails;
it provides no cure to the mind that ails.
His refutation takes sharp aim and then assails
the demonstration of a hammer from a box of nails.
Science without teleology prevails,
no matter how complex one observes details.

To this, I will protest, if I may,
that the point was never to force my way
until a flag of surrender was put on display,
but only to suggest we might reasonably say
that the hole in the lock is just as plain as day,
and for what lacks in one’s heart, it might at least pay
to seek where it leads as we bow down and pray.

27 Ramadan 1431

Some of my students brought me a book of hymns from the Granth Sahib, when they returned from India.
Here are a couple samples.

O saints, such is the creation of God,
Some regard life as transient; others deem it permanent.
How mysterious is the human world!
Man is gripped by lust, anger, attachment.
He has forgotten the Divine Presence.
He believes the mortal body to be lasting,
though it is illusory like a dream during the night.
All that you see will vanish
Like the shadow of moving clouds.
Nanak, the devotee, says,
Know the world as insubstantial
and find refuge in the presence of God.
---------------------------------------

One practices deceit and loots the riches of others,
And spends them on his wife and sons.
O my foolish mind, do not engage in fraud,
for ultimately, it is your soul which has to account for your actions.
The body wears off every minute, and in the end old age fails you.
Then no one will offer you even a palmful of water.
Kabir says, "Listen, O man, no one belongs to you,
So why not recite the Lord's Name early in the morning?"
----------------------------------------------------------

In these days we should remember those who are suffering from the flooding in Pakistan and India. It was reported today:

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has said the worst flood of country’s history has caused large-scale devastation which is beyond imagination.

The idea that the world is temporary is held in common between Muslims, Sikhs, and many others.
We should not refuse to read the hymns of those of other faiths, nor should we fail to help them when they are in need.
There are many reactions to the recognition that the world is fleeting.
Some say, "Enjoy it while you can!"
It seems more reasonable to be virtuous while you can.
If we are just here for a short time,
would it not be better to let some virtue shine,
and, in so doing, to find refuge in the presence of God?

26 Ramadan 1431

One of the goals of fasting is to push aside the veils of appetite and anger that block the eye of the heart, so that the heart may see the beauty of the divine kingdom. The human spirit comes from the kingdom of God, but its return is blocked by the devils within and without. It is said that the Prophet said: "If the devils did not swarm arount the hearts of the children of Adam, they would look at the dominion of the heavens." The instruments used by the devils are anger and appetite.

Anger and appetite are peacock and snake.
They misguide us through the devil and through the self.
Could there have been a Fall without them?

Hunger is a symbol for the starving of anger and appetite.
The devil of the person with faith is emaciated.
When the devil has no weapon left, he cannot whisper.
This is why Jesus told the apostles to fast, so that perhaps their hearts could see God.

Too much hunger, however is harmful. Moderation is the counsel of wisdom.
Fasting has three degrees:
1. The ordinary fasting according to Islamic law.
2. Keeping from any disobedience to God.
3. The examination of ones thoughts and prevention of thinking of anything but God.
The third is the fasting of the people of faqr, spiritual poverty. Their capital for wayfaring is nothingness.
God's being inclines only to non-being.
Take as your provision on this way non-being.
{God has bought from the faithful their selves and their possessions in order that they should have the Garden.} (9:111)

A man of perfection
walked the path of annihilation
and departed from existence
like dust.

When someone is destroyed in God, God must provide him a substitute.

The above remarks are a reconsideration of the words of another "revert" to Islam: Sayf al-Din Tughril, who lived centuries ago.
You can find his words in translation in William Chittick's Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth Century Sufi Texts,
Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.

25 Ramadan 1431

From Ramadan

If, by the end of the blessed month of Ramadan, there is no change in your works and deeds, and your ways and manners are no different from what they were before the month of fasting, it is evident that the fast which you were expected to perform was not realized; and that which you have done is no more than a vulgar physical fast. In this noble month, in which you have been invited to the divine banquet, if you do not gain insight (ma'rifah) about God the Almighty nor insight into yourself, it means that you have not properly participated in the feast of Allah and failed to observe the etiquette of the feast. You must not forget that if you are not able to reform and refine yourselves in this blessed month, which is the 'month of Allah,' in which the gates of divine mercy are opened to the servants of God and the satans and devils-according to some reports-are locked in chains, [25] and if you fail to manage and control your nafs e ammarah (the 'commanding self'), [26] to subdue your selfish lusts and to cut off your relations and interests with this world and material things, then after the end of the month of fasting it will be difficult for you to be able to accomplish this.
Imam Khomeini, Jihad al-Akbar (The Greatest Struggle)

24 Ramadan 1431

From Ramadan

O God, guide me in it (in this month) to do good.

And decree for me in it what I need and what I hope.

O Who has no need for explanations or for supplications,

O Knower of what is in the breasts of all the nations,

send blessings on Muhammad and on his folk, the pure ones.

Ramadan is coming to a close. There is less than a week left, and yet there is so much left to do. We begin with the self, the examination of conscience, review of habits and faults, and speculate on how to stand back and take charge of our lives. Next, we need to notice that we are not fasting alone. We seek to stand together against injustice even while we fast.

In traditional Islamic and Medieval Christian practical philosophies, the areas to which practical wisdom are applied were divided (following Aristotle) into three: the self, the family, and the community.

Today I have been thinking about the family. We fast together as families. Even those who are too old or too young or too sick to observe the formal rules of the fast are yet in some manner observant. There is the reading of the Qur’an, the gathering of iftār, prayers. We need to also be observant of the roles we play in our families, and to reform them, to break bad habits in our family relationships, and to develop good ones. As families, to we need to break the bad habits that we as families have and to improve ourselves as families.

The Prophet of Allah (ṣ) is reported to have said:

“The more one is faithful, the more one shows kindness to his spouse.”

Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 103, 228.

and

“Whoever is more well-behaved is more complete in his faith. The best among you is one who does good to his family.”

Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 103, 226.

and

“He is not one of us who possesses money but keeps his family away from his wealth.”

Mustadrak, vol. 2, 643.

Imam Sadiq (‘a) is reported to have said:

“Whoever is our friend shows greater kindness to his spouse.”

Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 103, 227.

So, I pray, too, that I may improve myself as a son, husband, brother, and father, and grandfather (!), and that God and my family members may forgive me for my odius shortcomings in relation to them.

O God, I beseech You in it for that which pleases You,

And I seek refuge in You from whatever offends You,

And I beseech You in it for success in being obedient to You,

And never to sin against You, O Abundant Giver to those who ask!

23 Ramadan 1431

Learning Nonviolence

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Rachelle Friesen

As I prepared to move to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a friend of mine said, “If Palestinians could only learn the art of nonviolence then they could gain their freedom.” Upon arrival I was encouraged at what I found. The spirit of nonviolence was active across the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Whenever a violent action hits Israel or Palestine, the media is quick to report it; however what is not reported is the nonviolent action that happens here on a weekly basis. Every weekend there is a host of demonstrations throughout the territories, often protesting the construction of the separation wall and settlements, the recent mistreatment at a checkpoint, or the abuse of prisoners in Israeli detention.

Every Saturday, folks in Hebron protest to open a settler-only road in the middle of the city to everyone and to allow Palestinian shops to open again in what once was a busy market.

Every Friday, villages such as Bil’in, Ni’lin, Wadi Rahal, Al Ma’sara, and Al-Walaja gather after the midday prayers to protest the construction of the wall and settlements on their village property. Often these nonviolent protesters, who are Palestinian with international and Israeli supporters, are met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and arrests.

It is not an easy decision to attend these protests, especially as a Palestinian. Consequences for attending can include being gassed, hit with rubber bullets, or roughly detained. Even worse, one’s family can also be targeted with threats and intimidation tactics. Yet despite the potential ramifications, Palestinians still gather.

For example, this week in Al-Walaja (a village just outside Bethlehem), approximately 60 Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals gathered to protest the construction of both the wall and a settlement built on Palestinian confiscated land, braving the 40-degree heat, even while many were fasting for the holy month of Ramadan. Men, women, and children marched, banging drums, chanting slogans, and waving flags. Children from Al-Walaja had created a large papier-mâché Palestinian who could be seen climbing the Wall.

Although soldiers were watching on a nearby hill and two Jeeps came driving up close to the protesters, they eventually turned around and kept their distance. The previous week local activists reported that the soldiers gave the protesters five minutes to disperse, and then five seconds later they started firing tear-gas.

Al-Walaja, sitting between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, is a village of Palestinians who in 1948 became refugees, many fleeing to camps throughout the West Bank and Jordan. In times of calm, many returned, preferring their rural village to life in the crowded camps. Yet continually the village has become victim to Israeli military action and settler activity.

The neighboring settlement and the wall now threaten their village. Upon the planned completion of the wall, Al-Walaja will become completely encircled by the barrier with only one access gate that will be controlled by the Israeli military.

Witnessing the creativity and determination of Palestinians protesting, I have come to believe that it is not the Palestinians that need to learn the art of nonviolence, but it is us from the West that need to learn to listen to the voices that our media and governments have silenced, to act in the face of injustice, and to sacrifice ourselves for peace even when the consequences are difficult to handle.

from http://mccpalestine.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/learning-nonviolence/

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I invite Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine.~ —Ruhollah Khomeini^[9]

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22 Ramadan 1431

Learning a language, building muscle, reading a long novel, regular aerobic exercise, acquiring a skill, all of these things take a long time and they require systematic effort. You have to have a program. Spirituality is like that, too. Ramadan is a program. Religion is education; and learning is a sacred activity. All education is a drawing out of what lies within. Information is only the occasion of self-development. On certain days, you have to commit yourself to staying up at night. Tonight is the night of the 23rd of Ramadan, the night after the 22nd day. Perhaps it is the night of decree, or measure, or worth, or all of them. Perhaps it is a night of empowerment. A night to understand that power does not come with the ability to force one’s way, to make others conform to one’s will, but that real power comes from what the Mennonites call Gelassenheit, and what Muslims cal Islam, the autonomous decision to let God’s will be done.

21 Ramadan 1431

It has occurred to me that our prayer

has the form of the waves of the ocean.

The water stands still for a while

and then it gathers and spills.

We stand still to recite the Qur’an,

And spill over into a bow.

Then there is the most complete spilling over into sajdah.

The ocean’s fingers run up on the sand

as it splashes its head down again and again.

Again the water pulls back and sits,

and again the water fingers slide up the sand.

There are swells that do not break into sajdah,

that raise what is on the water up.

So, is this the prayer of the ocean?

Do I pray as well?

O God, let my prayer be an ocean,

an ocean to drown in You!