Tag: Islam

Islam Extols Arabic NOT Arabs

There is a perception that Islam is the glorification of Arabs and their culture and customs.

Well, it is not.

It is neither Arabism nor worship of Arabs.

Never once does the Noble Word exhort its reciters to follow the Arabs and their manner of living.

The Noble Quran makes a clear and decisive distinction between the dynamics of language and race. The former cuts through racial, ethnic, tribal, and national differences. However, the latter is fixed and cannot be appropriated.

I can possess native fluency in English, but that does not mean I can also physically become an Anglo-Saxon.

In extolling the Arabic language* and admonishing** the Bedouin conduct, Islam states a fascinating feature embedded within human beings, which is as follows:

Anyone can master any language.

Therefore, one sees a non-Arab of ANY race/ethnicity reciting the Quranic verses as beautifully and effortlessly as an Arab.

It can be said that Islam is the only system that balances the particularity and universality of human existence.

It prevents a particularity from eating its own self. Also, it stops a universality from enveloping and destroying a particularity.

 “Indeed in that is a lesson for those of vision.” [3:13]

*: see Quran 12:2, 13:37, 16:103, 41:3
**: see Quran 9:97, 9:98, 49:14

Dialogue Between God & Man

God:
I fashioned this world out of one and the same clay;
You made Iran; Ethiopia and Tartary.
From mere earth I made steel, pure and without alloy;
You fashioned sword and arrowhead and musketry.
You made the axe, with which you felled trees grown by me,
And fashioned cages for my singing birds, born free.

Man:
You made the night; I made the lamp that lights it up.
You fashioned clay; I made of it a drinking cup.
You made the wilderness, the mountain and the steppe;
I fashioned garden, orchard, avenue and scape.
I change dread poisons into panaceas, and
I am the one who fashions mirrors out of sand.

[ source: Muhammad Iqbal, Message from the East, پیام مشرق ]

Some Pearls of Wisdom by Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (Peace be Upon him)

“The tongue is a beast; if it is let loose, it devours.”

 “As intelligence increases, speech decreases.”

“Take wise points from wherever they may be, because if a wise saying is in the bosom of a hypocrite it flutters in his bosom till it comes out and settles with others of its own category in the bosom of the believer.”

“The worth of every man is in his attainments.”

“Whoever abandons saying, “I do not know” meets his destruction.”

“I love the opinion of an old man more than the determination of a young man.”

“The hearts get weary as bodies get weary; so look for beautiful wise sayings for them (to dispel their weariness).”

“The lowest form of knowledge is that which remains on the tongue and the most superior form is that which manifests itself through (the action of) the limbs and the organs of the body.”

“When you hear a tradition test it according to the criterion of intelligence not that of mere hearing, because relaters of knowledge are numerous but those who guard it are few.”

“He who acts solely according to his own opinion gets ruined, and he who consults other people shares in their understanding.”

Source: Nahj al-Balagha [The Path of Eloquence]

Islam’s Account of Man: A Short Sketch

أَفَحَسِبْتُمْ أَنَّمَا خَلَقْنَـٰكُمْ عَبَثًۭا وَأَنَّكُمْ إِلَيْنَا لَا تُرْجَعُونَ

Deemed ye then that We had created you for naught, and that ye would not be returned unto Us?

[Surah Al-Mu’minun: 115] Translation: Muhammad William Marmaduke Pickthall

The Noble Qur’an uses the terms In-saan [انسان] and bash’ar [بشر] to refer to a human being [man and woman].

They are often used interchangeably but they, nevertheless, have differences.

Bash’ar is a more empirical description. It is concerned with the outward appearance. It is the superficial and material account of a human being.

Now, as far as In-saan is concerned, it signifies a more profound and higher state.

The word shares its roots with the word Nisyaan [نسيان] which means forgetfulness and amnesia.

It is said that In-saan is a being who is in a state of forgetfulness with regards to its purpose.

So, when a Bash’ar is aware of his/her lack of knowledge and forgetfulness and strives to overcome it, he/she attains the rank of In-saan.

The Self is called Nafs (نفس).

It has three categories:

Nafs Ammarrah [نفس أمارة] : The part of self that entices Man to follow his lust and baser instincts.

Nafs Luvammah [نفس  اللوامة] : The part of self that admonishes Man to review, repent, and mend his ways.

Nafs Mutma’innah [نفس المطمئنة] : The highest level of self whose bearer finds satisfaction and bliss in absolute submission to the Ultimate Reality [الحق].

The primordial condition on which every human being is born is called Fitrah [فطرة]. It is a kind of operating system, a software which in its uncorrupted and undefiled form helps Man to establish a connection with Allah Almighty.

As Rumi says,

Or (suppose that) a mother cries to her suckling babe, “Come, I am mother: hark, my child!”—

Will the babe say?—“O mother, bring the proof (of it), so that I may take comfort in thy milk.”

When in the heart of any community there is savour (spiritual perception) from God, the face and voice of the prophet are (as) an evidentiary miracle.

When the prophet utters a cry from without, the soul of the community falls to worship within,

Because never in the world will the soul’s ear have heard from any one a cry of the same kind as his.

That stranger (the soul), by immediate perception of the strange (wondrous) voice, has heard from God’s tongue (the words), “Verily I am near.”

Ghazal by Hafez e Shirazi

غلامِ نرگسِ مستِ تو تاجدارانند

خرابِ بادهٔ لعلِ تو هوشیارانند

تو را صبا و مرا آبِ دیده شد غَمّاز

و گر نه عاشق و معشوق رازدارانند

ز زیرِ زلفِ دوتا چون گذر کُنی بِنْگر

که از یَمین و یَسارت چه سوگوارانند

گذار کن چو صبا بر بنفشه زار و ببین

که از تَطاوُلِ زلفت چه بی‌قرارانند

نصیبِ ماست بهشت ای خداشناس برو

که مُستَحَقِّ کرامت گناهکارانند

نه من بر آن گُلِ عارض غزل سُرایم و بس

که عَندَلیبِ تو از هر طرف هزارانند

تو دستگیر شو ای خضرِ  پی خجسته که من

پیاده می‌روم و هَمرَهان سوارانند

بیا به میکده و چهره ارغوانی کن

مرو به صومعه کآنجا سیاه کارانند

خلاصِ حافظ از آن زلفِ تابدار مباد

که بستگانِ کمندِ تو رستگارانند

Revelation (Waḥy) and Philosophy

Philosophy is the quicksilver that revelation was sent down from on high to preclude humanity from having to touch, for touch it enough and we will surely become “as mad as a hatter”.

“A coherent philosophical footing” is an oxymoron that is bested only by the term “philosophical faith”. Philosophy is for those who have failed to attain the certainty of faith. And so the solution is to recognize the need for a stability whose only basis can be revealed knowledge concerning the world beyond the ken of human perception.

Arash Najaf-Zadeh (The European New Right – A Shi’a Response: A Radical Critique of Alexander Dugin, E. Michael Jones, and Alain de Benoist, pgs. 60-1)

If it claims to be Universal, why was Qur’an revealed in Arabic?

I commented the following on an article [If You’re So Trad, Why Don’t You Move to Afghanistan] on Counter-Currents where I share my views under the name ‘Muhammad Aryan’.

The text in bold is parts that I quote from the article.

To which Mr. Vehmgericht replied,

I reply as follows:

So what if it is Arabic??

Linguistic expression rests in the metaphysical domain.

It is one aspect that distinguishes us human beings from other living creatures. It is something above the biological existence.

On the biological grade, we are all divided into different races and tribes.

However, on the metaphysical level, we are all the same.

For instance, how does a Dravidian who speaks Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada, etc., masters the languages of the Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic families?

How does a Korean or Indonesian learn English or French or German and vice versa?

So on and so forth.

A child does not born with a language already saved in his memory. He familiarizes himself with the sounds he hears around him and then tries to express them with his tongue.

What if a child born to German parents grows up in a Spanish household where he never listens to a word of German? Will he speak German? That is why to preserve a culture, it is necessary that children of a given ethnolinguistic community be taught about their ancestral heritage. Otherwise, that heritage will be lost.

There are many non-Whites who speak and write English better than most Englishmen, however, that does NOT mean that English heritage will be preserved even if there are no Whites Anglo-Saxons around.

Immigrants who migrate to Western lands like the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc., from South/West Asia faced this disconnect. Many a time, their children cannot speak the language of their ancestors or those who do speak, speak it in alien accents. Indeed, this is a strange breed of men which does not belong anywhere. It hangs in the air. It has no grounding.

Anyhow, coming back to the argument.

Men can learn any language. As we can see, it is quite evident.

There are Muslims of Han, Senegalese, Berber, Kurdish, Indonesian, Caucasian, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese, Turkic etc., stock who when recite the Arabic verses do not give a hint that they belong to an entirely different linguistic family.

Qur’an was revealed in Arabic because learning and mastering a language is embedded in our constitution. It is a universal aspect of human nature.

Hence, if Providence chose Arabic for the transmission of the Final Revelation to mankind, it was perfectly in line with our disposition.