Suffering Secularism, part 1

Political Impotence?
Most Muslims today address the dilemma of our political impotence from the standpoint of there being too little religion. However I believe the opposite to be true, that our problem lies in there being too much of a certain type of religion.

However I am no advocate of secularism. For I firmly wish to be reckoned on the tongues of truth to be amongst those Hufadh of the Hudood, whilst balancing that by following the Prophetic tradition of the ascendency of mercy, as mentioned both in the Qur'an and in the famous Hadith Qudsi.

Universalism v/s Specialism.
Rather it is the same perenial problem of universalism v/s specialism, that is even addressed by the then Quranic themes, that is the kernel of such political impotence.

Off course the opposite of universalism is usually specificism, but in religious terms such a specificism is compounded by a firm belief in your being special.

The classical example being the Judaic Nation.

And it is obviously this prescient worry that led the father of all prophets, Abraham (as), to supplicate to Allah t'ala (GOD, most high):
"O God, make me not a trial for the people."

A supplication that GOD heard and thus blessed him and honoured him both with Messengership and a Scripture whilst giving him no Nation (Umma). For in a Prophetic Hadith we learn that he will be raised with himself being his own Nation.

It is interesting then to juxtaposition that, very real worry, with the other pole of Quranic injunctions that define a distinctive Ummah; the Hijra, Qibla and then Jihad; characteristics that point to a highly charged political dimension.

The tension between two poles.
A tension that we all know in our brains in that we recognise that the Qur'an is an address to all men, whilst simultaneously being the cornerstone of our Society and the Prophet's Nation.

But whilst we might know it in our brains, we often fail to feel it in our bones and in the livers of our sides. For it will not become personal to us, until we remember what God ordained to be when HE blessed Muhammad (saw) with a great gift in the penultimate year of his life. The significance of that gift is always overlooked.

For whilst we are special, we must recognise that that speciality comes not from our own doing but from being blessed by bearing witness to the truth of GOD's last Messenger and all that he brought: the purity of belief that is the supplication, gratitude and obedience due to the ONE transcendental Creator.

It is a speciality that emanates from the Shahadah and permeates all that we do. Down to the greatest of our political endeavours to emulate the Quranic injunction to be a middling Nation, bearing witness to all other Nations. Neither a subjugating nor a subjugated Nation, but one which is the standard bearer for truth and justice, honesty and harmony; an epitome of the Shahadah; calling to all that is good.

The Last Messenger (saw).
And it is our link to the last Messenger and our love of him; his life and all that he did; and the manner in which GOD bestowed upon him that last personal gift, before granting him that which made him well pleased, that is telling.
A story and a reality of feeling that we should feel in our bones, and in the liver of our sides, every day of our lives.

That whilst Muhammad (saw) was the Messenger of GOD, he was also very much a man full of feeling.

And whilst he was blessed with many children prior to Messengership through Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (ra), the first of the believers, after her none but one fathered him any.

For Muhammad (saw) as a man showed us that manhood should encompass the loving care that a father shows to his children, even going so far as to declare that a man that does not show compassion to his children then GOD will not show compassion to him. And this in a tribal patriarchal society of warrior-men.

And then GOD blessed him with his last son, Ibrahim (as).
If GOD had so wished could HE not have blessed it upon him through one of the Mothers of the Believers?

But GOD choose Mariah, the Coptic Handmaiden, to be the vessel that bestowed upon him that beautiful gift.
Who when offered freedom through the testification, freely refused and then gained it through the birth of Ibrahim(a.s).

Perchance it was given to happen like that so that we might pause and reflect on our common heritage. That what makes us special is not who we are but what we do.

And whilst we have a special bond with Abraham, who had no Nation, we would have to admit that our cousin brothers, the Jews and the Christians, likewise claim a different special link with the father of the prophets, Abraham (as). Abraham (as) as declared by the Qur'an was neither a Christian, nor a Jew, but he was a Muslim before us.

And then it might be good to remember that they too, the Nations that preceded us, were muslim before us. That we have a common heritage and must live in a time where that commonality needs to be recognised.

Politics as Diplomacy.
Politics is diplomacy. No diplomacy can exist where there is a dearth of appreciation.

For as Muslims we cannot threaten, nor bribe, nor run rough-shod over any other people. But then what is left if the stick and the carrot are removed, but our words that might help men become better men, and women better women.

To bear witness to the truth of Muhammad (saw), and all that he brought, in his manner and with his tongue; appealing to the good in all men, and all women.


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The Mu`awwidhatayn, Kafiroon and Ikhlas (the four Qul's).

In the morning & In the evening.
These we recite when leaving the door to seek our livelihood, and when retiring to bed after having strived hard. To protect at the two corners of the day.

But the invisible forces that rule our destiny, are not indominatable, not unsurmountable. Nor are they many, solely one.

Kafirun & Ikhlas, the Choice and it's Purity.
For Karfirun, recalls our identity to us. Reminds us of our choice to believe. That is why, in our devotions (the five daily salaat), it is followed by Ikhlas, which is of itself the cornerstone of belief.

It is the word "La", of the declaration, made speech. And whilst it is directed outward by "Qul", it is it's return to our own ears that is the greater than any outward force or power. This understanding is compounded by the Sunnah, for Muhammad (saw) never did accuse another with the words "Kafir". Neither his vilifying uncle, Abu Lahab (cursed in the Qur'an) nor his worst enemies.

Whilst Kafiroon is the "La" of our declaration, Ikhlas is it's embodiment.

Falaq: the Day-Break.
Falaq is the sole one that contends with forces beyond our control, the envy of an envier and the magic of a evil-mongerer. We seek refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak, the dispeller of darkness, from those things.

And with it Allah t'ala declares the reality that He himself created evil, through His empowerment of us with free will. He reminds us that He is the One who is the ever doer of good. For does not the day always follow the night. And is not the dawn that he sustains ever breaking over some part of our World. And the glory of that sustenance ever overpowers the wrong that our hands may do. Thus He mentions it first, over and above any evil that we might conjure.

An-Nas, a protection from Pride, Arrogance & Envy.
And by an-Nas, the last of the three misfortunes that can befall a man is countered.

The first is through choosing disbelief and disobedience, the second is through the outside agency of another, and the last is the envy and arrogance that creeps into your head when you compare yourself with another.

The devil ever whispers into your ears poisened words that cause your breast to swell with the arrogance of....
"I am better than he, and more deserving of it!"

Just as Iblis said at the fateful time in regards to Adam (as), such arrogance can be root of our destruction.

And it is Allah t'ala (GOD, most high) who remedies these whispered suggestions to our pride by causing us to recall that He is the Lord GOD and the Master of all men.

And that in HIS eyes all are equal and all can call and ask of Him, and He is the that responds to the supplicant when he asks, no matter who that supplicant might be.

And that is the best of remedies for both pride and arrogance, the worst of man's enemies.

That your brother or sister, enemy or friend, has equal access to the Lord of all (illah). Is sustained by the Lord of all (rab). Is the slave of the Lord of all (malik).


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From Dawkins admirer to Muslim Believer, my story.

After having read many stories of the reverse movement in a separate thread, I thought it about time to tell my own.

My first plumb into the land of critical thinking came when at age 17 I read and loved "Godel, Escher and Bach". From there my love of popular Science flourished.

In 1988 I devoured "The Selfish Gene", and loving the book went so far as purchasing it's sequel "The Extended Phenotype". As theories they were beautiful and I admired them.

Because of being mathematically astute, I even purchased and read John Maynard Smiths numerous books detailing an ESS, the evolution of sex etc....

All of these books occupy pride of place on my bookshelf. And have recently been joined by a Folio edition of "The Origin of Species".

But not all of rationality, coupled with a soulless materialism, could satisfy me.

And then a friend of mine took me to the masjid, and there I found a Sakina (a silence, peace and contentedness) that I had not looked for, not there.

In my second year of a practical life sciences degree I wrote a paper on "Evolution".
I enjoyed writing it.

And it is in the writing of that I first critically questioned the idea of life springing full-fledged from a primordial soup of any sort.

Off course evolution is both a beautiful theory, and more importantly has been "proved" by observation in terms of microbial resistance and the like.

But the only real thing that had been proved is the progressive part of the inductive process.

Proof by induction requires two equally important parts. The initial input has to be shown to be true, and then a logical progression must also be shown true.

Normally, to prove the initial input is rudimentary because it is supposed to be the simplest expression of the series.

But the funny thing is is that whilst evolutionary progression gets all the news, it is the basic building block of life that gets none.

Scientist recognise that the cell is the basic building block of all life.
And yet the cell is marvellously complex.

And furthermore it had never been shown that mere mechanical or chemical or physical forces can "make" it.

Indeed the cell is necessary for evolutionary progression.
It provides the distinctness, the phenotypedeness, by which evolution can progress.

And contrarily Dawkins, et al, dismisses it's intricacies by supposing the advent of a replicator molecule. Completely missing the point that even the advent of a replicator molecule, does not deliver the first cell.

And off course SCIENCE has given up trying to create a cell, from primordial ingredients that must have been on Earth.

The closest any scientist has ever got is a few nucleotides, the first but not complete building blocks of a first so called replicator molecule.

However, the distinctness of a cell is primary provided by its unique structure giving phospholipid membrane. Which they have not even tried to address.

The molecular structure of a phospholipid is unusually ambiphillic, possessing of two separate polarities within one molecule. And closest natural occurrence to such molecules happens to be from soap, which all have an organic (living) origin.

And it was this realisation that did it for me, and that fact that Evolution far from creating clarity, thrives on misrepresentation. But then that is the subject of another blog.

Off course my religion claims not to explain the origin of life in detail, but it does provide for the foundation of scientific and rational thought on this and many other questions.
"And no change will you find in the Sunnat Allah".

Whilst materialistic rationalism claims for itself all and sundry, down to even the ethics that dominate the Western World.

Whilst we, Muslims, see Rationality as a tool to use, they see rationality as an end and be all. Therein lies our difference.


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The Conservation of Consciousness, random thoughts. :)

Let's see now.
I'm going to try think this through carefully.

Mathematically speaking if x belongs to the group X then the properties that define that group are necessarily reflected in every member of that group.

So when we define a platonic bird to include all those with feathers, it naturally means that any member of that group must have feathers.

However what is quite logical is that a thing does not have to have the properties of which is made.
So for example water the liquid doesn't have the properties of the bipolar molecule, for it itself is not bipolar like a magnet!

But this is against the grain of what is known, because knowledge elucidation should progress in the direction from that which we know to that which we don't know.

So water we know through its cooling and quenching properties. And yet when we change it's state it can burn and scald, and then also freeze.

And then we might agree that the properties of water, and really of any material, are fully dependent on the energy applied or contained within that material. In effect the material becomes immaterial :).

And once again we should remind ourselves to move from the known to the unknown, and not counter wise.

Whilst we might having so far noted the difference between matter and energy surmise that the following holds:

Matter, that which gives body or width to objects or causes it to fill out space.
Energy, that which imparts movement to matter.

Then we are left to ponder "to which group does consciousness belong? If that is to any?".

Certainly we might note that consciousness, like energy, imparts or even slows movement. It causes us to change or react to our environment.

And certainly we feel that our consciousness fills out our body, so that we feel the pain of loss when a limb is hurt.

And so we might surmise that consciousness is but a combination of those two qualities, Matter and Energy, in a particular context.

But we would be wrong.
For consciousness can cause movement opposed to the natural flow of energy.

For our laws of Physics state that energy flows from well ordered states to more disordered states, or that objects move towards decreasing potentials within any system. And so the marble rolls down the hill.

But it is we who can pick it up and carry it back up the hill. And likewise we can apply disorder to any and many ordered systems.

And so obviously we conclude that consciousness can control both matter, it's form and shape, and energy release and flow.

So much is obvious.
Except that we must by these observations conclude that consciousness is a third, neither just matter nor just energy, but another.

And then it might be that we surmise that it belongs in essence to the group of that which is...

And we might note that for two of the group the laws of conservation hold,

That matter can neither be created nor destroyed and just changed.

And likewise for energy.

Then we might induce that property for consciousness, that it might also neither be created nor destroyed, but solely changed.

Quid pro quo.



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Location:London