Pakistan – the land of opportunity… 6 February, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Land of the pure...and the not so pure.9 comments
Mauritania rejects migrant boat
From the Beeb this morning:
A vessel which broke down with several hundred illegal migrants on board is being refused permission by Mauritania to dock or allow passengers ashore. The ship is thought to be carrying mostly Pakistani migrants.
More here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6330183.stm
—–o—–x—–o—–x—–o—–x—–o—–x—–o—–x—–o—–x—–o—–x–
Mauritania?! On the Western coast of Africa? How did they get there?? Did their illegal vessel go through the apparently heavily guarded and regulated Suez, or was this small ship able to navigate all the way around the Cape of Good Hope?!
I guess they could have taken a flight to somewhere on mainland Africa and then taken the boat onwards… though hard for them to embark or disembark at a regulated port (ie any international airport) without proper papers. Anyway.
What desperation would drive people, our people, to take huge loans at prohibitive, in fact, murderous terms from loan-sharks, leave their families, their villages and everything they have ever known, to put their lives at the mercy of the high seas 3,000 miles from home just in the hope of setting foot on the promised land that is the European Union?!
And shame on me and on the Pakistani ‘elite’, for beating our chests like baboons at Pakistani “development”, “prosperity”, “khush-haali” and “taraqqi” – what nonsensical piffle. The desperate, the malnourished and the starving millions of Pakistan have not benefitted from the poodle’s “economic miracle“. But let’s be grateful to the Usurer and his Boss; at least we are the world experts in creating meaningless slogans and soulless property developments!
Another rainy day in the desert 5 February, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Everything doesn't need a category....1 comment so far
‘Wonderful’ weather…?!
Dubai has been enjoying some exceptionally wet weather of late, including yesterday. A pain for Brits like me (particularly those who once lived under the perma-grey skies of Central Lancashire, the ‘drizzle capital’ of …ermm… the North-West?), but wonderful for the rain-starved bedouins, I guess. Not that there are many of the latter in Dubai. And to be fair, there are far too many of the former. It almost feels like London, though there are probably more Caucasians here than in most parts of London, so this place is probably too ‘Western’ to be London.
I digress.
Yes, the weather. It has been raining a lot. This year’s rainfall in the UAE has been the heaviest in a decade, according to the Ministry of Environment and Water; which presumably means that instead of the unusual drizzling for half an hour on one December afternoon and 15 minutes on another January morning, it has actually rained properly on more than a dozen separate occasions (for instance, these in November, December and January), sometimes for a whole day or longer – remarkably unusual and decidedly unprecedented.
Not that any of this is a surprise.
As he (sallaallahu ‘alaihi wassalam) said:
The Last Hour will not come . . . till the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers.
extract from Sahih Muslim: Book 005, Number 2208
He (s) never told a lie, and He (s) was never told a lie…
Sijnul Mu’min… 31 January, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Everything doesn't need a category....add a comment
Patience…
The most honourable of all of Allah’s creation: Allah’s Messenger Muhammad (sallallaahu ‘alaihi wassalam) was asked: “Who is the most honorable amongst the people?” He replied: “The most God-fearing.” The people said: “We do not want to ask you about this.” He said: “The most honorable person is Yusuf, Allah’s prophet, the son of (Ya’qûb) Allah’s prophet, the son of (Ishâque) Allah’s prophet, the son of (Ibrahîm) the faithful friend of Allah“.
And what happened to the most honourable person? Sold as a slave and imprisoned for years over a crime he never committed. So wordly success is probably not the best measure of real honour and izzah then. :-)
And then there was Sayyidina Ya’qub (‘alaihi salam), his father, crying year after year after year, for over a decade, over the loss of his most beloved son Sayyidina Yusuf (‘alaihi salam). Crying so much that he lost his sight. Complaining to Allah alone of his pain, his suffering and his grief; the anguish and heartbreak that is like no other, and which only those who are in similar situations can begin to comprehend or empathise with…
The Prophet Ya’qub, the one going through this turmoil, was the most beloved person to Allah on the face of the Earth at that time.
Imagine.
The most beloved person to Allah on this planet at that time, crying to Allah over the hurt, the anguish, the sheer mind-numbing feeling of emptiness he felt at the loss of Yusuf, but even after all that, not wavering in his eeman, not abandoning sabr, and complaining only to Allah, by saying “So (for me) patience is most fitting” (Qur’an 12:18)
Imagine. So Ya’qub was tested with more distress, further sorrow and yet greater sadness when he also lost his second son (Benjamin), but he still did not waver in his reponse:
“So patience is most fitting (for me). May be Allâh will bring them (back) all to me. Truly He! only He is All-Knowing, All-Wise. Alas, my grief for Yûsuf !” And he lost his sight because of the sorrow that he was suppressing (Qur’an 12:83 and 84)
He said: “I only complain of my grief and sorrow to Allâh, and I know from Allâh that which you know not. O my sons! Go you and enquire about Yûsuf (Joseph) and his brother, and never give up hope of Allâh’s Mercy. Certainly no one despairs of Allâh’s Mercy, except the people who disbelieve.” (Qur’an 12:86 and 87)
hmm… Is there a more befitting example of sabr through such turmoil? And if Allah can test his most beloved slave, his prophet, the father of the most honourable person in this way… then who are we not to be thankful to our Lord for his bounties and his mercies?
And as for Sayyidina Ya’qub, surely, one couldn’t do better than to emulate his example.
It is not for nothing that he (sallallaahu ‘alaihi wassalam) said,
The dunya is a prison for the believer and paradise for the disbeliever
Sahih Muslim, vol.4: Book 042, Number 7058
I think I am getting tired of the sijn…
Ever heard of JS Mill, Prime Minister? 29 January, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Land of Hope and Glory..., Quotes of the day/week/month.add a comment
How English . . . and how un-Blairite:
If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty‘
Nationalism? How silly. 9 January, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Iqbaliat, Islam and contemporary society, Land of the pure...and the not so pure.6 comments
It is instructive that whilst the concept of the ‘nation state’ as a political or social construct has all but disappeared from Europe, the ‘cradle’ of post medieval nationalism and nationhood, it remains a powerful force in much of the Muslim world, from Egypt to Turkey, and from Pakistan to Malaysia.
This of course, in addition to being inimical to everything Muslims should believe in, and ought to do, is also rather silly. Arbitrary lines in the sand, put there on the whims of our erstwhile colonial masters or representing long-extinct tribal/ethnic affiliations, should not, and cannot, demand fealty from any sane, thinking individual. The ‘rational being’, or even the ‘reasonably sentient being’, should find this absurd: it is perfectly natural, even laudable, to have allegiance to ideas and ideologies, to be loyal to people and to their history, and to love those close to, or similar to, one; but isn’t it absurdly illogical to extend this allegiance, this loyalty and even this love to something as meaningless as a line in the sand, an obscure poem (aka the national anthem) and some random geometric patterns (aka the ‘national flag‘)?
Of course, I am not really saying anything new above (there’s a surprise!) or adding to the sum-total of human understanding, but sometimes, it helps to re-state the bleedin’ obvious by regurgitating, reheating or repeating that which has already been said before, and in this, as in most other cases, the most relevant 20th century Urdu-speaking person to turn to is the ‘Allama himself.
There. If that exciting, enticing and alluring paragraph does not get all the 2.4 readers interested in this post, nothing will. :-)
Without further twitterings from me, here’s Dr Iqbal on ‘Wataniat‘ ie the nation-state as a political construct.
Iss daur main may aur hai, jaam aur hai, jum aur
Saaqi ne bina ki rawish-e-lutf-o-sitam aur
Muslim nai bhi ta’ameer kia, apna harum aur
Tahzeeb ke azar ne trishwai sanam aur
In taza khudaon main baRa sab se watan hai
Jo pairhan iss ka hai, woh mazhab ka kafan hai
Yeh but keh tarasheeda-e-tahzeeb-i-navi hai
Gharat gar-e-khashan-e-deen-i-nabawi hai
Baazu tira tawheed ki quwwat se qawi hai
Islam tira dais he, tu Mustafawi hai!
Nazzara-e-deerana zamanay ko dikha dai
Ai Mustafawi, khaak main iss but to mila dai
Ho qaid-maqaami to nateeja hai tabahi
Rah bahar main azad-e-watan, soorat-e-maahi
Hai tark-e-watan sunnat-e-Mahboob-e-Ilaahi
Dai tu bhi nabuwwat ki sadaqat peh gawahi
Guftaar-e-siyasat main watan aur hi kuch hai
Irshaad-e-nabuwwat main watan aur hi kuch hai
Aqwaam-e-jahan main hai raqabat, to issi sai
Taskheer hai maqsood-e-tijarat, to issi sai
Khaali hai sadaqat sai siyasat, to issi sai
Kamzor ka ghar hota hai gharat, to issi sai
Aqwam main makhlooq-e-khuda bat-ti hai iss sai
Qaumeat islam ki jaR kat-ti hai iss sai
Some things never change…. 8 January, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Land of Hope and Glory..., Quotes of the day/week/month.4 comments
Aah… England.
And a double aah…Orwell.
So we get Orwell on England….
“When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?”
“There is no doubt about the Englishman’s inbred conviction that those who live to the south of him are his inferiors; even our foreign policy is governed by it to some extent. . . “
And for extra credit, here’s something about a place that really has not changed. London in the words of a newly arrived immigrant from Eastern Europe:
On binge-drinking:
“On Saturday nights, a half-million workers, male and female, together with their children, flood the city like a sea, flocking especially in certain sections and celebrate the Sabbath all night until five in the morning … They stuff themselves and drink like animals … They all race against time to drink themselves insensate. The wives do not lag behind their husbands but get drunk with them; the children run and crawl among them…”
On London’s cosmopolitan nature:
“You look at these hundreds of thousands, these millions of people humbly streaming here from all over the face of the earth…It is like a biblical picture, something out of Babylon, a prophecy from the Apocalypse coming to pass before your eyes.”
On religion and veiled women:
“One night, in the crowd of lost women and profligates, I was stopped by a woman making her way hurriedly through the crowd. She was dressed all in black, and her hat hid her face almost completely.”
The woman pressed a piece of paper into his hand which said, in French, “I am the resurrection and the life“.
“I learned later that it was Catholic propaganda, as usual poking its nose everywhere … There is an abundance of these propagandists, men and women. It is subtle, calculating propaganda.”
But no, the above was not written last week by a Polish plumber or a Bulgarian engineer or even a Latvian nurse. It was written by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky in 1862, almost 150 years ago.
Plus ça change
News? What news? 7 January, 2007
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Everything doesn't need a category....1 comment so far
Apparently, some bearded dude met an untimely end recently.
I wouldn’t know, I was at Mina. Or in the Haram. Or maybe even at ‘Arafah. walhamdolillah.
Feel like going back already :-) Does any place on earth compare with the sand, the rocks and the shrubby trees of that plain, on that day, in that hour? When our Lord the Most High descends and expresses Pride and Joy to those near Him, at the gathering of His slaves.
Imagine.
Allah, the Creator and the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth, the Most Merciful Lord, boasting at the behaviour of us irrelevant, miniscule and inconsequential sinners.
The day when more slaves of Allah are freed from the naar than any other. And the day when Iblees is more humiliated than any other day (bar one, of course).
I really should go back. Insha Allah . . .
Away… 22 December, 2006
Posted by Abu Abdur Rahman in Everything doesn't need a category....add a comment
This blog is taking a two week break while the blogger performs Hajj in Saudi Arabia.
See you all once we return inshaAllah…Though not sure how anyone would notice that we are away :)
