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Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
“Religion’s Role in Politics” from the TPS blog
This is a thought-provoking piece published by The Pakistani Spectator (TPS) that brings together multiple views and voices on Pakistan.
I believe there are four questions to ask, when considering the virtues and costs of a connection between religion and government:
1. How useful is the connection to the country’s people (who should be the government’s interest)?
2. How useful is the connection to the religion?
3. How useful is the connection to the country’s leaders?
4. How useful is the connection to the religion’s leaders?
Do check out TPS for more analyses and comments.
Ramzan - A month of Piety
Contributed by Sadia Dehlvi
As children we aimed our eyes at the horizon trying to spot the small sliver and once the Ramzan moon was sighted we went around the house greeting all the elders with “Ramzan Mubarak’. The house would soon be filled with Pheniyan , khajla, dates and other Ramzan specific delicacies for sehri (pre dawn meal) and iftaar. The radio was locked in the cupboard and the television was veiled with a cloth only to be unveiled on Eid. Going to the movies was simply out of question, a childhood rule I still obey. When we were too young to fast, the elders said we could observe ek daad ka roza†(one jaw fast) so we eat carefully through the day from one side of the mouth. When one of the children reached the age of ten or eleven, the first fast was observed with festivities. There was a rozakushai ceremony and friends and family were invited for iftaar, a tradition is still observed in most Muslim families.We were a God fearing family and almost everyone in the family fasted in Ramzan. Those who did not fast pretended to and eat behind closed doors. The dining table in our house was pushed to one side of the room and we kept the traditional floor seating for the special month. Minutes before sunset which is iftar time, every member of the family would sit with their heads covered and hands folded in prayer. We were told that this was the time God would answer our prayers.
The Islamic months also called Lunar months are based on the sighting of the moon. The Islamic calendar known as the Hijri began when Mohammed (pbuh) did hijrat(migrated) to Medina from Mecca. Ramzan is the ninth Hijri month , the month when the miracle of the Quran was revealed by God through Gabriel.
Islam is built upon five pillars: that you worship none else but Allah and accepting Prophet Mohammad as the seal of prophethood, establishing regular prayers, giving of zakat( charity), performing the pilgrimage to Mecca and fasting in the month of Ramzan. Fasting is a Quranic order “O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint.â€(2:183).
It is known that Prophet Mohammad was the most generous of people, and in Ramzan he was even more generous. His companions described him as a wind that bears gifts. The Prophet said that the best charity in Ramzan is setting things right between people who are in conflict and those who harbour hatred for each other. Another tradition quotes the prophet saying that fasting is half of patience. He also said that patience was half of imaan. (faith). The Messenger of God swore that the breath of a fasting person was more pleasing to God than the fragrance of Musk.
Harbouring suspicion, rancour or negative opinions about others is specially noxious in Ramzan. The same goes for all forms of cheating, vanity and irrational anger. Islamic scholars have said that in order to get the most from Ramzan, one should not engage in excessive speech and be vigilant with the tongue. The sacred month is a time to examine shortcomings and build resolves to rectify them. Another objective of fasting is a way of experiencing hunger and developing compassion for the less fortunate.
 We grew up being taught that fasting was a believers shield which protects from the gameplan of Satan. It is a time when the gates of paradise are open, the devils locked up and the doors of hell closed. Ramzan is marked with iftaar dinners and some lighter moments. I am reminded about an anecdote about Ghalib, the poet. It was the month of Ramzan and Ghalib was sitting alone in a room sipping his wine. One of his students arrived and seeing him in a state of intoxication commented that he thought Satan was chained in Ramzan. Ghalib known for his wit remarked, “Indeed he is. It is this room he is locked inâ€.
Through the ages, Muslim scholars have written of the bounties of Ramzan and how good deeds are multiplied over and over again in the eyes of God. Love of the world is what is weaned in Ramzan by voulantary deprivations of food, drink and sexual intimacy. It is a month for the remembrance of God and gaining position and status with Him. Each year Ramzan comes and passes before our eyes until it again upon us. The first days of fasting seem long and stretched but after that the days dash by. Ramzan presents an exceptional  opportunity for purifying oneself and shedding the maladies of the heart, to increase ones faith through the power of abstinence and patience.
This piece was published yesterday by the Hindustan Times
Islamic Spain: History’s refrain
At its peak, it lit the Dark Ages with science and philosophy, poetry, art, and architecture. It was the period remembered as a golden age for European Jews. Breakthroughs in medicine, the introduction of the number zero, the lost philosophy of Aristotle, even the prototype for the guitar all came to Europe through Islamic Spain.
However, his conclusion has the right heart though not the best of analyses:
At its best, the history of Islamic Spain is a model for interfaith cooperation that inspires those who seek an easier relationship among the three Abrahamic faiths. At its worst, it’s a warning of what can occur when political and religious leaders divide the world. It reminds us what really happens when civilizations clash.
Endowed with Love
Truly, those who are faithful
and do righteous deeds,
the Compassionate One will endow with Love.
- The Quran, (19:96)
Vidya Rao on Vrindavan
India’s eminent singer Vidya Rao has contributed this piece for Jahane Rumi. In this personal account she writes about her recent visit to Vrindavan, near Mathura, which is a major place of pilgrimage for Hindus. It is said that this area had the woods where Krishna frolicked with the gopis and tenderly wooed Radha.
Vrindavan is always a moment of pure magic. This time too.
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This time, after the morning darshan, Acharya Shrivatsa Goswami took those who stayed and had the time to smell the flowers, about 10 people— to the site of the old temple where Radha Raman ji had manifested–in a basket of shaligrams– in 1542. He was lovingly brought by Gopal Bhatt to a tiny temple where He lived for several years–in fact till 1861.In that year, He moved to the present larger temple built for him by Kundan Lal and Phundan Lal, courtiers and sons of Shah Bihari Lal, lately of the court of the deposed nawab of Avadh,Wajid Ali Shah, and now seeking shelter in Vrindavan in– as Shrivatsa ji put it– the court of the greatest king. What is interesting and moving about the tiny old temple is the small room (actually the largest space in that temple) that is the kitchen, which houses the eternal fire. This fire was lit in 1542 to cook the deity’s first meal after He moved here, and the same fire burns today too. It has never been extinguished. When Shrivatsa ji said this, when I looked at the glowing embers of that ancient fire, I thought of the arani sticks. Going in search of these eternal fire sticks, Yudhishthira met and answered the riddles posed to him by Dharma (his father, lord of justice and of death) in the guise of a yaksha. What is the riddle that I must answer as I stand here in search of this unextinguished fire? What is this fire? The fire of nurture? Of passion? Of creation? Of destruction? Of transformation ? Of the energy that keeps the universe spinning? All of these? None of these?
The kitchen is still in use in 2007 and it is here that, even today, Radha Raman ji’s meals (8 in all– for each seva) are lovingly cooked by the priests (Shrivatsa ji and his sons and nephews). Surely this cooking is the manifestation of vatsalya bhava– the emotional universe of the mother and her love for her child. The meals are cooked in huge gleaming kansa vessels that are coated with a thick layer of clay to slow down the process of cooking, to retain heat, to impart flavour– and perhaps to remind us that all is contained in the womb of muddy matter.These meals of course are the juthan, the prasad, that is shared with hundreds of pilgims every day. (Yummy, I might add.) Lightly cooked, steamed vegetables, dal fragrant with the most delicate spices, perfect fluffy phulkas and steaming hot pearls of rice. Dahi, of course and kheer too, fresh ghee and butter, straight from His mouth. Now we who eat the prasad are experiencing vatsalya bhava– which mother had not picked up her child’s half-eaten plate of food and made a meal of those leavings?
There is something so incredible happening here. The recieving of food from ‘the mouths of babes’(!), so food as Truth? The world made ’streemay’, feminised, by these burly (and burly they are) priests as they take on the womanly tasks of cooking for, and feeding the child-God, and for the child-God manifest as the world and every person in it. The priests also clean the kitchen, wash the cooking vessels, again feminine tasks, tasks that bring to my mind a beautiful poem in the tamilpillai poetic tradition, where the all-too-human baby girl-child, rocking to and fro on her mother’s lap, is addressed as Meenakshi, Queen and Mother of the universe, lovely bride of the beautiful bridegroom (Kalyana Sundaram is Shiva’s name in Madurai) who is here just a little girl playing house- house with the universe.
The poem says (and I translate badly) Little girl, playing house-house — you take Mount Meru and make it the pillar of your toy house, spread over it the canopy of the sky. You pin to that canopy the twinkling lamps of sun and moon and stars. You wash the soiled vesels of the worlds in the crashing flood-waters of the pralay-deluge, and you neatly stack them, lovingly, in your home. Then that madman, your husband, comes dancing into your courtyard and overturns your work, messes it all up. You don’t say a word– only smile and pick up the pieces and begin all over again.Â
 Are the priests, washing the vessels of the worlds, sweeping the kitchen of creation, mirroring Meenakshi? Who is human here– who is divine? Who is man/woman/child?
Shrivatsa ji spoke of the daily seva for this child-lover god. He is a rasik, Shrivatsa ji said, a lover of all things beautiful, so we dress him in beautiful clothes and jewellery and we sing for him, we please him. Those who are his lovers sing for him.
I remember what musicians say– ‘Raga, rasoi, pagri, kabhi kabhi bante hain” (Perfect music, that special taste to one’s cooking, the perfectly tied turban– these happen but sometimes). Raga, rasoi, pagri– these echo the nitya seva of raga, bhog, shringar (music, food and ornamentation/clothes/also love, devotion, bhakti) that is offered every day, eight times a day to the Beloved.
And I understand too why the word for kitchen (and by extension, for cooking) in Hindi is rasoi– this is the place of rasa, taste, yes, but also enjoyment, immersion in the essence of all aesthetic delight.
What a strange and powerful experience that was to be there before that 500-year old fire, with those muscular, feminised men, to know the temple as the kitchen of the universe (and so to also know the kitchen as the temple of the self) from where (as my dear friend Ramu Gandhi had put it in when speaking of Sita ki rasoi– “Sita’s Kitchen”) every creature in the universe receives nourishment– “sab ko khurak milta hai”.
And that this ‘khurak’ is only apparently bread– the same bread of which Jesus had said “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. In Radha Raman’s old temple-kitchen I realise again, powerfully, that Life, Truth IS bread, khurak, that nourishes us so deeply– physically and spiritually; and that bread, my humble sookhi roti IS– none other– every word that proceeds from that baby mouth, every kiss of that Dark Beloved’s lips.
Mealtimes will never be the same again!
A place unsown…
Another profund Rumination -Â
The Absolute Being works in nonexistence -
what but nonexistence is the workshop of the Maker
of existence?
Does anyone write upon a written page? Does
anyone plant a sapling in a place already planted?
No, he searches for a paper free of writing, he
sows a seed in a place unsown.
Be, oh brother, a place unsown, a white paper
untouched by the pen!
Translation by William C. Chittick
Found here
Bulleh Shah - poems and musings
I am free, my mind is free,
I can be imprisoned nowhere.
Today Bulleh Shah’s Urs (death anniversary) celebrations have commenced in Qasoor, Pakistan. Bulleh Shah was an iconoclastic Sufi poet from the Punjab who rejected convention, orthodox religion and conventions. His message of peace and individuality continues. In all respects he was ahead of his times. This time delegates from India will also attend the ceremonies and his timeless verse shall be sung.
Centuries before we knew existentialist thought, this was uttered by a small town Sufi poet:
I know not who I am
I am neither a believer going to the mosque
Nor given to non-believing ways
Neither clean, nor unclean
Neither Moses not Pharaoh
I know not who I am
I am neither among sinners nor among saints
Neither happy, nor unhappy
I belong neither to water not to earth
I am neither fire, not air
I know not who I am
(Translation by K S Duggal)
Another poem berates the classes and hierarchies that divide people:
Let us go O Bullah
let us go then you and I
to the kingdom of the blind;
where none debates our caste or creed
none respect us thus.
This transient world
is neither thine nor mine;
all is finite
why then this quarrel
this contest
for all is ephemeral there in.
Mullah and the torch bearer
are both alike,
professing to light the path for others
themselves dwell in darkness.
(from ‘Kalaam Bulleh Shah’ printed by Pakistan International Printers, Lahore )
On the futility of ritual and uttering that Reality is about unity of all existence - Ik Nukte vich Gal Mukdi Eh (Its all in One contained):
Understand the one and forget the rest.
Shake off your ways of an apostate pest
Leading to the grave to hell and to torture.
Rid your mind of dreams of disaster.
This is how is the argument maintained.
It’s all in One contained.
What use is it bowing one’s head?
To what avail has prostrating led?
Reading kalam you make them laugh.
Absorbing not a word while the Quran you quaff.
The truth must be here and there sustained.
It’s all in One contained.
Some retire to the jungles in vain.
Others restrict their meals to a grain.
Misled they waste away unfed .
And come back home
Emaciated in the ascetic postures feigned.
It’s all in One contained.
Seek you master, say your prayers and surrender to God
It will lead you to mystic abandon
And help you to get attuned to the Lord.
It’s the truth that Bulleh has gained.
It’s all in One contained.
(Translation by K S Duggal)
What an inspiring corpus of verse Bulleh Shah has left for us.
Wish I was in Qasoor, too.
Please do watch Abida Parveen singing here and here.
Jahane Rumi Links: On the rejection of meaningless formal learning here and on freedom of the mind here; and on love sickness here.
Sufi Zikr - inspiration for a painting
This is a painting that I revisited and converted its earlier abstract form into a calligraphic experiment. Now the challenge was that in addition to the lack of training in oil painting…
The rescued letter of Mahatama Gandhi
 A rare letter by Gandhi weeks before his assassination was saved from an auction by the Indian Government. The contents of the letter are most interesting. The great old man of India calling for tolerance towards Muslims..! A forgotten leaf of history by many especially the bigots in India. Read entry here >>
Standing Alone in Mecca
“In a charming personal narrative, Nomani navigates through a crisis of faith brought upon by the murder of close friend Daniel Pearl by Islamic militants…”
On Rumi, Iqbal and ‘Dynamic Sufism’
Pakistan celeberates Allama Iqbal’s death anniversary on April 21 with the usual lip-service. The key messages of Iqbal seem to have been lost in the maze of officialdom.
Pakistani Civil Society Confronts Extremism
Thousands marched in the blistering heat on the streets of Lahore; and similar demonstrations were held in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar.
The Source of Joy - Rumi
Poem by Rumi click here >>Â
Version by Coleman Barks
“Say I am You”
Maypop, 1994
Easter in Lahore
The local Christian community praying at an Easter service in Lahore, Pakistan.
On infinite love - from Kashul Mahjub
Kashful Mahjub is one of the early treatises on Sufism and has shown light to many Sufis world-wide. Full entry here >>
The Cow - a parable
Amardeep has posted the following Sufi parable related by Idries Shah with a request to respond to his humorous interpretation. Full entry here >>
On Gandhara Art
The Buddhist art of Gandhara influenced Indian art and sensibilities and also that of the entire Buddhist world. Full entry here >>
I can’t be without you (Rumi)
From Rumi: Hidden Music, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Women Sufis of Delhi
One of my favourite verses of the Quran is Surah Al Azhab which makes it clear that spiritual blessings are intended for both righteous men and women who are equal in the eyes of God.
Surveys show that Pakistanis (and Muslims) reject “terrorism”
The Daily Times Pakistan has published a story on surveys carried out by various organizations. The results are quite revealing not least for Pakistan.
Pakistani liberals would need to change their view that it is a society heading towards extremism and the Jihad-flaunting Islamists would be upset that they are not supported by an overwhelming majority. Most importantly, the global media barons would also be left bewildered as their spin-doctors and experts have been, to a great degree, proven wrong!