Ramadan Travelogue

Abdal Hakim Murad

Travelogue No. 1 Metabolically and internally, Ramadan knocks the stuffing out of us. Like all the basic practices of our religion, it is an idea as simple as it is shattering. The body and spirit respond at their deepest level. The ego squeals with pain. To the extent that we are still babies, we cry and cry. There are some elemental human experiences where the body, detecting its limits, transforms the spirit. Making love, famously, is one example. But there are others. Once, walking in the Alps, I passed a lake as blue as cobalt, formed from the meltwater of a glacier which towered over it. No-one was in sight, so I stripped off and ran straight in. The shock of that freezing water around me was staggering, and I could feel my heart straining. Coming out, shivering uncontrollably, I felt like a king. All of life seemed to be shivering around me, and the world seemed to have become strangely sharp and bright. The experience of being born must be similar. From a comfort zone we experience the pain of delivery, and the outrage of new existence in an external world of bright lights and strange sounds. The baby screams, but its pain is its first experience of true life. Spiritually, it has begun its career. The fast blasts us, and exhausts us. We feel the laughable flab melting away, and start to remember the important fact that we are alive. Life is a symbiosis between our bodies and the world. We are alive when we feel that interaction and dependency at work. Travelogue No. 2 First one enters the world, then one understands it, then one transcends it. And herein lies the problem of modern man. Although he is a materialist, he hasn t yet entered the world his technology ensures that. Instead, he drifts through life in a comfortable centrally-heated dream. As Max Frisch wrote: Technology is the art of so arranging the world that we don t have to experience it. In such a culture of diminished consciousness, pain and loss are always experienced as negatives. The moderns can never find a divine name in a groan. For them, privation, of which fasting is a primordial example, contains nothing. Khosh dar dam is an ancient axiom of our spirituality. Attentiveness in every breath. That is why

the Afterlife is Quranically described as al-hayawan the abode of real life. Today We have removed your covering, so that your vision today is sharp (50:22). In dunya, however, we love to tune out, to drop out, to space out. For us naughty children, paying attention is such an effort. The fast enables a tunnel vision. Distractions and temptations on either side are blanked out, and we gain a focussed sense that we are moving to a destination. The body, with its blind craving, intuits that this is the time when the fast is to be broken. The spirit within is helped to remember that death and the land beyond are even more certain. When we fast from the trivia of dunya, death becomes our iftar. Travelogue No. 3 There's a silly piece in the Economist this week. Apparently fasting is bad for business. Brushing aside the interesting findings of Ahmad Etebari, who has shown that the stock market in Muslim lands usually booms during the fasting month, the anonymous journalist insists that 'a summer Ramadan is bad for the economy.' Of course, a subtle exploration of our need to renounce material desires is not to be expected of the Economist. But what a dismal list of complaints! Apparently more electricity is used: 'the lights stay on longer, as people have to eat after nightfall.' (The author seems not to know that Ramadan requires one to eat after nightfall in winter as well.) More locals will stay at home (is that bad for the economy?), increasing the demand for power. But the article admits that there are fewer tourists as well. Shouldn't the two factors cancel each other out? Is this curmudgeonly drivel all that people want to read? It seems unlikely. Perhaps the penny will drop, the ranks will break, and some brave soul will write about one, just one, positive aspect of fasting, or of Islam as a whole. Not everyone in the world believes in the message of maximal gluttony, driven by an Adam Smith economy that assumes greed and selfishness to be the most powerful of human impulses. Economists like to ride the tiger of human desire, and even try to direct it. But can they say anything at all to the faster, who instead of using his greed, seeks to break and humble it? Travelogue No. 4 Academics hate fasting. That s because they are motivated not by money (they get little) or even the hope of influencing society (they never do), but by the exquisite pleasure of feeling superior to others: to silly students, slow administrators, and academic rivals. What could carry a reader through a page of scholarly pedantry, other than the recurrent joy of spotting errors,

and knowing that one could have done a better job? But how can one be proud, if one is hungry? Superbia, pride, is the greatest of the seven deadly sins. This is because it cannot coexist with the fear of God. The worst sinners in the Qur an are the arrogant: Pharoah, Nimrod, the selfsatisfied snobs of Ad and Thamud. With pride in our hearts, we cannot know God. I shall divert from My signs those who were proud in the earth without right , says the Qur an. (7:146) Even if they see every sign, they do not believe. So humility enables a truer perception. And hunger really helps. Thus does Ramadan sharpen our knowledge of ourselves and of the world. Travelogue No. 5 Our main forms of ibada are structured to help us achieve transformation. The rituals of the hajj, with their preliminaries, trials and culmination, are an obvious example. The Hajj is, at its most basic, the ihram, the tawaf, and Arafat three stages of conversion leading to the devastating pleas for forgiveness on the slopes of the Mount of Mercy. The Prayer, too, is structured similarly: essentially it is the standing, the bowing, and the prostration: the latter representing the ultimate form of repentance and closeness. Ramadan seems to have a similar threefold structure. We pass through ten days of mercy; ten days of forgiveness, and then 'enfranchisement from hellfire'. Of course, ritually nothing changes; and inwardly, different Muslims are likely to stand at different points on their journey. Still, the believer s experience is to be that of a progressive spiralling-in to the centre, where the divine Presence is to be found. One could say: Acceptance, Absolution, and Liberation. In every spirituality, these are the three basic waystations. And we recall, critically, that they are all gifts, they are never of our own making. Travelogue No. 6 We have been saying that Ramadan is a way of waking up. Ego veils us from reality: our own reality and that of other people. How can we truly engage with someone else if our minds are busy trying to convey a good impression, or telling us to find fault with the person we are talking to? The nafs, deep within us, is also outside ourselves, obscuring our sight. When the nafs is ruling us, we are wearing very dark spectacles. Sometimes we may not see the other person s humanity at all. A shame, this, because other people are interesting; in fact, one of the few things that one

never tires of is the miracle of human consciousness. The world is only superficially made of objects. Really, what matters about it is the galaxy of autonomous souls, like points of light dotted around the darkness of oblivion. We will only be given that vision if we are alert to the true and miraculous humanity of others. Waking up to Allah means leaving ego behind. So it means gaining the ability to see other people. Modernity is so often about massaging the ego that we lose the capacity really to empathise. The Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda were ultimate examples of where this can go. Television is, regrettably, a widespread Ramadan habit. It gives us an out-of-body experience: we are transported into the world of Neighbours or Sky Sport, where the ego presides; and hence we forget our hunger and thirst. But anaesthesis is not in any way a proper response to the fast. Television is always a kind of narcosis, run by men who wish to hypnotise us into buying and thinking things. Todd Alcott s famous poem captures its nature perfectly, showing TV, as slave of the ego, making us its slaves. Here s the poem. Travelogue No. 7 Shaykh Osman Nuri Topbas says: 'Prophet Adam, alayhi's-salam, unknowingly committed an error that resulted in his exile to earth from paradise. The ultimate reason for this event is to offer the descendents of Adam during their life on earth, the opportunity to regain their lost honour of having had 'the best stature' (95:4). This supreme distinction is bestowed only upon those human beings who pass the tests conferred upon them by their Creator during this earthly life and in so doing earn their right to return to their primordial paradisiacal home. ' Here the Shaykh is telling us that there is a wisdom in the creation of the ego. In Allah's generosity, He has made the return to Him 'the great triumph' (al-fawz al-azim). The people of Paradise are fully human, that is to say, they have succeeded in the basic human quest for spirit over ego. Hence they are rightly with their Lord. They have reclaimed Him, and He has reclaimed them. This is the second Adamic maqam: the maqam of suluk, wayfaring, which is also the maqam of tawba. At first, Adam is with his Lord by His pure gift. When he is lost, and is found again, he is with Him by another gift, which is the gift of mujahada, spiritual effort. Both are from Him, but the second, by a deep mystery, is also from ourselves. The scholars say that the one who reaches Him through effort, suluk, is in a higher state, because he has followed the sunna of Adam, in 'learning the Names'.

The one who fasts, learns both the bitterness of distance from his Lord's gifts - the senses rightly enjoyed among the fruits of Paradise - and the hardship of seeking them again, by fighting the ego. He divests himself of his earthy, heavy impulses, and 'learns the Names'. In Ramadan, he puts on the robe of mercy, justice, truthfulness, and freedom from self, which is like the divine Samadiyya. Then his Lord 'turns towards him', and he enjoys the gifts again, this time at the degree of acceptance. If there were no struggle, he could not be accepted. Even the nafs, the ego, is a gift from Heaven. Without an enemy, the warrior cannot rightly wear his robe of glory, and enjoy the sweets of victory. 'We have ennobled the descendants of Adam. Travelogue No. 8 In the northern hemisphere, where probably 90 percent of Muslims live, the days are getting longer. It s all quite manageable, of course. When I first fasted, thirty years ago, iftar in Cambridge was at an ambitious 9:30PM, but I don t recall the fast being particularly onerous. In our hyperborean latitudes days are long, but not hot, so it balances out. Sometimes I think of making my fortune by hiring a cruise ship, and taking wealthy Middle Easterners to some sub-antarctic latitude south of Australia, where the Ramadan days would be delightfully short. The ship could be packed with the usual cruise-ship timekillers: arcade games, a quoits deck, perhaps a halal casino. The ship could be called the SS Cynic. We have not imposed any hardship upon you in religion, the Book reminds us. Sometimes, in a room full of fasting people, I think of opening my eyes underwater in a pool. One misses the experience of breathing, but can swim around for about a minute without undue discomfort. Then one has to come up for air. An eighteen-hour fast is like a brief dip under the surface. Iftar is welcome, but it is not a desperate gasping for oxygen after a near-lethal deprivation. For that, we would have to fast for several days. Our indulgent age might demur, but the fast is a gentle, moderate practice. Travelogue No. 9 A spiritually fertile time in Ramadan is after the Fajr prayer.

I like this poem by Sultan Murad III of Turkey (r. 1574-1595). He wrote it one morning after finishing Fajr. It s become a famous song and apparently he wrote the tune too. UYAN EY GZLERIM GAFLETTEN UYAN Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. Azrail s intention is your soul to take. Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. Dawn hears the birds when early they stir and wake, Hear from their tongues all the sweet praises they make, Mountains and trees and the stones their worship make, Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. See how they open God s heaven s gates so wide, Raining his mercy as the faithful abide; Robing with high honour those who sleep denied. Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. This world is not your home, soon it melts away. Even were all seven climes under your sway Throne and dominion and glory pass away Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. Here is Murad your slave, all his sins erase! Forgive my errors and all my burden raise, Raise me in the shade of Ahmad s flag of praise. Wake from your heedlessness O my eyes awake Long you have slumbered so now my eyes awake. Travelogue No. 10 Mawlana Rumi, may Allah sanctify his secret, gives us the secret of the discernment of spirits :

The home of the nightingales is in lush herbiage, in pastures and in rose gardens. The home of the dung-beetles is, however, amidst rubbish and rotten garbage. In the hadith: The most beloved of places to God are the mosques; and the most hated of places to him are the markets. (No doubt Wall Street is included.) Because our age is market-driven, and places of worship are either uninhabited or despised, the nightingales are strangers. But holiness does not change; nor does our deep yearning for it. In a sense, the whole world is fasting now, and is hungry, lacking spiritual food, and the fragrance of the rose-garden. Religion is constantly under attack by the lovers of the marketplace, who hate worship and its people. As Rumi adds: O dung-beetle! You run away from the rose garden, but this hatred of yours only serves to point to the perfection of the rose garden. Those who are fasting from religion are envious of those who are still capable of breaking their fast. The Holy Prophet s symbol is a rose. Blessing him is a kind of rosary . We recall the perfection of a holy person whose home was a mosque. I m in Turkey now. Here s a Turkish reminder of our need for the blessed rose. Travelogue No. 11 Ramadan is quite a spectacle on Turkish TV. It s not only the religious channels which are kept busy. National TV takes off secular blinkers and recognises that even in the big cities, eight decades after enforced secularity, most Turks are still fasting. On Channel 1, we viewers get an interesting mix on the iftar programme. It used to be dominated by astonishingly boring philosophers in cheap suits, who talked about Islam and Technology, or Islam and Kemalism. In the new atmosphere we re breathing, we get piety instead, and also a new sense of Turkey s responsibilities to the wider region. The mufti of Gmlcine in Greece is a regular visitor. And last year there was Firas Qazzaz, the recentlyappointed second muezzin of the Haram in Jerusalem. Here he is on the Loving Ramadan show, singing away in the Topkapi palace. Travelogue No. 12

The big Ramadan experience in Istanbul is the dawn prayer at the Eyup mosque, on the European side of the Golden Horn. Get here early very early with your own prayer carpet, because unless you spend much of the night here you can give up any thought of getting inside. Before the prayer we get a variety of ilahis in different maqams, and Qur anic recitation. There are some very serious people here, deep in worship. Outside, by the great plane tree planted by the Conqueror, people are snacking before the adhan. Others are queuing for the visit to Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, the Holy Prophet s standard-bearer. All around the mosque the pre-dawn darkness is defied by street vendors. The restaurants are busy, with everyone s eye on the clock. There is a queue for wudu. Something about the prayer is especially magical here. There is that atmosphere of expectancy which appears when a mosque is very busy. The recitation is excellently done, and afterwards, people are slow to leave. Someone I know takes a swim here every morning, after fajr. I m not sure I would follow him, given the ambiguous state of the waterway. But the whole experience is one of deep cleansing. How can we create such a paradisal place in the West? Travelogue No. 13 Istanbul has always had the complete range of Tarawih experiences on offer. Perhaps my favourite is provided by a tiny mosque in the thieves district of Kumkapi, where a brilliant young hafiz completes the Khatm with a small congregation of tough gypsies and Kurds. At the

opposite end of the spectrum there are the virtuoso voices of the Bayezit Mosque, led this year by the miracle-reciter Suat Gztok. The thing at Bayezit is total elaborateness: the maqam may shift even in mid-verse, and the coloratura trills are staggering; but not a hint of ostentation is allowed to show in the voice. The result is surely one of the world s most austere and beautiful sounds. This year there is something new in town. The great singer and Qur an reciter Mehmet Kemiksiz has been commissioned by the committee running the Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010 programme, to recreate the old Tarawih traditions of the Ottoman imperial court. So now we can experience the Enderun Tarawih , the Palace Tarawih , which Mehmet, and his associate Ahmet Sahin, have brought to life from old archives. Every night in rotation this Ramadan, one of the 29 imperial mosques of the city (that is, mosques built by a sultan, where he might attend prayers), is hosting Mehmet and his six-man chorus. Between each set of rak as, they sing ilahis, temcits, or other sacred songs. They always begin in the maqam known as Isfahan, and then move on through Saba, to Ushshaq or Huseini, to Evc, ending with the vigorous and joyful Acemasiran. The maqam of the Qur an recitation of Tarawih follows each new mode. The effect is remarkably powerful. These little songs and chants are not just an interlude, to distract us while people enter and leave the mosque. The progression of maqams shapes the entire emotional atmosphere, so that at the end the witr prayer seems unbelievably exultant. And there s more. The Enderun Tarawih is based on short rak as (you can do a khatm later, in tahajjud), but the imam is not free to choose the verses. There are ten Arrangements (tartib), so that the verses each night are about a single subject. Tonight, in the skdar Yeni Mosque, we ll hear twenty sets of verses from the seventh tartib, whose subject is Allah is Forgiving and Merciful . You can download the entire set of ilahis from Mehmet s excellent website (look on the right hand side). You can also download the smart brochure, which lists all the verses recited in each tartib. Travelogue No. 14

Allah s Messenger was the most generous of people; and he was at his most generous in Ramadan, says the hadith. Why in Ramadan? Because it s the time when we realise the providence of our Lord, and are conscious of His blessings. Knowing their value, we realise why it is important for others to have the same. Building his own mosque with his own blessed hands, the Holy Prophet said: Allahumma, la aysha illa aysh al-Akhira O Allah, there is no life other than the Hereafter. Those words echo on in his mosque to this day. The whole building recalls the next world, and in its holiest place, the Rawda, the Garden of Paradise seems very close. Our mosque in Cambridge tries also to be built on intention. A mosque built on taqwa from the first day is more worthy for you to stand in. In it are people who love to purify themselves . If Islam is to advance further, it must do so from the mosques. A mosque is the irreplaceable beating and lifegiving heart of any Muslim community. And what we are hoping and praying for is a mosque that invigorates everyone who enters it or passes it by with pride and love of the path of the Akhira.