Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

International Purple Hijab Day, Saturday, February 13, 2010 is a day to reflect on the deaths which have resulted from domestic violence. A purple hijab is an apt reference for this phenomenon. The hijab—or head scarf, is a symbol of the modesty and piety associated with Muslim womanhood. Purple is a color associated with mourning. Hopefully, a purple hijab will bring to mind what is important for us to remember.

Remember Aasiya Zubair Hassan whose decapitated body was found by upstate New York police after they were told by her husband where to find it. Remember Sandeela Kanwal whose strangled body was found in her Jonesboro, Georgia, bed after someone in her household called the police early in the morning on July 6, 2008. These are just two of the 11 confirmed cases of murder in the US of Muslims by Muslim family members. Two of the 11 cases are of men, one murdered by his wife and the other a murder-suicide. Unfortunately there are other reports of murders in the US due to domestic abuse that can’t be substantiated at this time.

The Baitul Salaam Network, Inc., a national domestic violence awareness organization has put out a call for all in the Islamic community here in the US and abroad to reflect on the cases of death due to domestic violence in the Islamic community here in the US and around the world. “We have a very serious problem of domestic abuse, both nationally and internationally, that we as a community need to face head-on and work together to eradicate,” says Hadayai Majeed, co-founder and administrator of the organization.

So far the call has been answered by other organizations and individuals throughout the US. In Rhode Island the Healthy Families Initiative will host an all day workshop using materials developed by the Peaceful Families Project, a Muslim domestic violence think tank and advocacy organization headquartered in northern Virginia. In Atlanta, Georgia, Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence-Atlanta, an initiative of Baitul Salaam Network, Inc., facilitated by Professor Shyam Sriram of Georgia Perimeter College, has coordinated a prayer vigil. The host is the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam located in East Atlanta, on Saturday, February 13 beginning at 12 noon. In New York City HARIM, a Muslim women’s artist and writers collaborative, will host a literary event featuring South Asian poetry, at 37th Avenue and 74th in Street Jackson Heights. Other events are planned in the Midwest and Far West. On the same day, organizers have called for a moment of silence in the Islamic community, to begin at 12:12 pm, to remember all eleven reported murders of Muslims due to domestic violence and all others that have not been reported in the US and around the world.

Islam does not teach nor condone abuse of any living thing. It teaches Muslims not to harm others and Muslims are taught to believe there is a grave punishment for Muslims who do harm to others or abuse the land, sea or plant life. Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the example of how excellent a human being can be, was known to have never harmed anyone in his family. He only used violence when on the battlefield against a clearly identified enemy. He taught self-restraint and peace during his time here on earth. Muslim domestic violence advocates want to make it clear without any doubt that these heinous crimes that have been committed in some of the homes in the Islamic community are not supported by the Holy Quran or the valid Ahadith (life sayings and teachings of Prophet Muhammad) and are not the norm. These are learned behaviors that have nothing to do with religious teachings or practices.

AltMuslimah, an online Islamic newspaper, has launched a web site (located at UNIFEM Say-No UNiTE) devoted to domestic abuse activism. They also were instrumental in coordinating a multi-racial and multi-ethnic domestic violence advocacy forum, last February, called V2A, hosted by Masjid Dar Al Islam in Arlington,Virginia. The newspaper has compiled a calendar of events for the weekend of February 12-14, 2010, which includes Khutbahs (Friday sermons) focusing on the subject of domestic abuse that will be given at Muslim places of worship throughout the US.

Muslims are uniting against domestic abuse in the US and abroad and want to make it known that domestic abuse in any form will no longer be tolerated in the Islamic community and that survivors of abuse and their supporters are speaking up and out.

To get more information about events associated with International Purple Hijab Day contact Hadayai Majeed at haleem1@aol.com or call 770-255-8500.

Ya Haqq!

Note:  Posted as an act of  public service and awareness.

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) once offered prayer while carrying his granddaughter on his shoulder. “The Prophet (peach be unto him) led the people in prayer while she was on his shoulder. When he bowed he put her down and picked her up when he got up. He kept on doing so until he finished his prayer.” - Sunan of Abu-Dawoud

One commentator wrote:  “The purpose behind the action of the Prophet (peace be unto him) of carrying his granddaughter in the prayer was to set an example before the Arabs who considered having daughters and carrying them around as something bad or shameful. The Prophet…acted differently from them, and carried a girl on his neck in the prayer, and making something clear by example is much more effective than a mere precept.“  – Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 2,

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man should have to seek Him first to find her” - Maya Angelou

“The word shams (sun) is feminine, and qamar (moon) is masculine. The sun burns itself out to give light and life to everything around, and the moon is muneer, meaning it reflects the light. Within itself it has no light; it radiates the brilliance of the sun. So when we shine as men, the implication is that we are reflecting the glorious light of our women. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’aala be pleased with them.”  – Shaykh Abdallah Adhami

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Ali Eteraz is a thoughtful, intelligent, and at times, bitingly funny writer.  His very popular, now defunct blog, in which he wrote both comic and serious essays about Pakistani politics, Islamic sexuality, and extremist militancy, led to his eventually becoming a contributor to The Guardian UK and writing articles for such mainstream venues as Dissent, Foreign Policy, and The Huffington Post.

In Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan, Eteraz reveals his true gifts as a storyteller. It is a delight to read and utterly charming, lyrically written with exuberant good humor and insightful remembrances. It is also a brave book, driven by a keen and sardonic intelligence, and as he grows and gropes for personal and cosmic answers, one cannot but admire his daring. We root for him to succeed.

The book is broken into five parts, each signified by a different name he takes for himself, each identity a stage of his coming to terms with Pakistan, Islam, America, and his place in each.

The first part of the book, The Promised – Abir ul Islam, (literally, Perfume of Islam), evokes his parents’ hopes for him of a pious life; his father made a mannat, a Covenant with God, before he was born:“Ya Allah! If you should give me a son, I promise that we will become a great leader and servant of Islam.” His mother then went on Hajj with him as a baby and rubbed his chest on the wall of the Ka’ba in Mecca, so that Allah might bless him with reverence and resolve for his religion.  And this covenant did indeed guide his life for the next thirty years.

As a boy growing up in a Pakistan desert village, he joyfully embraces the sweetness of his youth and young manhood among his mother and father, Ammi and Pops, with all the love and strictness of a Muslim family in a Muslim country, surrounded by various grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  I especially loved his descriptions of life in rural Pakistan and of his wonderful mother Ammi, weaving lessons from the Koran with folk stories of Islam and the Jinn into daily living, which inhabited both reality and imagination in his young world. After a short and rather brutal madrassa education, that part of his life ends when his medical doctor father, Pops, gets a visa to work in America, and the family departs for every immigrant’s dream destination, Alabama.

In the second section, The American – Amir, the family moves repeatedly seeking opportunity, finally settling in the Bible Belt. In Alabama (Allahbama) he enters High School and decides to legally change his name to Amir to distance himself from his parents’ growing fundamentalism amid his teenage shyness and sexual angst.  It is the shortest section in the book, but beautifully captures the growing tension between him and his family and him and his loins.

In book three, The Fundamentalist – Abu Bakr Ramaq, he is off to college in Manhattan, his name changed once again after discovering he is descended from Abu Bakr Siddiq, the truthteller, a companion of the Prophet and the first Caliph of Islam (peace and blessings be upon them both). This revelation spurs his own fundamentalism, and he becomes Abu Bakr Ramaq (“spark of light”), representing the passion he now feels for Islam. One of the most intriguing parts of this section is his exploration of his faith, and confronting two of its greatest opponents – extremism and secularism. He dismisses Osama bin Laden as an opportunist and another in a long line of messianic pretenders. And his reading of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses juxtaposed with Islamic thinkers such as Zaid Shakir, who claims that secularism is un-Islamic, convinces him that the real battle is between Islam (and by extension all religions) and reason. The liberating freedom that reason gives is a curse that separates the here from the hereafter, the creation from the Creator.

After growing a scanty beard, and following a series of truly hilarious misadventures with the opposite sex, he finally journeys back to his desert village in Pakistan with his mother and younger brother to find a pious Muslim wife and trace his noble lineage. But he finds out that he is not only unrelated to Abu Bakr, but is in fact descended from a Hindu convert that changed his name from Savekhi to the close sounding Siddique. He is then threatened by Taliban-style thugs just for being an American, and the family must be hastily escorted out of town and out of the country by his uncle’s military unit.

The fourth book, The Postmodern – Amir ul Islam, (literally, Prince of Islam), a combination of the his assumed and given name, suggests that he is reclaiming Islam only so that he can internalize it into something more manageable. He is crestfallen at his failure in Pakistan, blaming its backwardness and close mindedness on not being recognized for the pious Muslim he thinks himself to be. He willfully transfers to a Christian university in Atlanta and sets out to study Philosophy, especially Postmodernism, the bane of Islam and religion in general.  He is admirably honest in exposing his failure as the result of his own ego trying to impress others with his piety, a common young pretension, concluding that Islam and its most ardent followers in the mother country have failed him. Postmodernism is his revenge. And sex.

Yet he still carries the weight of the covenant made before he was born, so to accomplish this double and conflicting task, he strives for and becomes President of the MSA, the Muslim Students Association. He becomes BMOC, Big Muslim on Campus. Leading the Friday prayer, lecturing and give advice as an imam, taking up the Palestinian cause at the start of the second Intifada, he desperately tries to convince himself and everyone else of his Islamic credentials. In still seeking his own Islamic reflection in the mirrored approval of other Muslims, his religion becomes not a sacred obligation between himself and Allah, but a status conscious mirage between himself and every other Muslim on the planet.

Finally, he has had enough. After graduation, he moves to Washington DC, having obtained a fellowship for aspiring lawyers with the US Department of Justice.  A few months later, the planes hit the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11.

At last we come to The Reformer – Ali Eteraz, the fifth book, wherein he takes his final name, which means “Noble Protest”.  After 9/11, he ignored his work as a legal associate, and wrote, researched, and formed friendships on the internet in preparation of his obsessive drive to save Islam from it “idiots.” In the process, he loses his job, his apartment, his money and his family. He abandons his faith and moves to Las Vegas, Sin City, an almost perfect metaphor. After a few months of despondency, the reenergized reformer travels to Kuwait to convince Arabs to be part of the reformation of Islam. While staying with his friend Ziad, he plans an Islamic think tank of brave and accomplished Muslims to combat the loud militancy of the extremists; he schemes to reinvent Islam as a religion of equality, peace, and justice to fulfill his covenant. Ziad is a modern Muslim who couldn’t care less about such reformist ideas, and acts as his alter ego. Their brotherly back and forth finally breaks through the cycles of transformation and allows him to start over.

While visiting his mother back in California, Ali Eteraz comes full circle:  “My little Abir,“ she say. “You grew up all these years, just to become innocent again.”

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

From Arif and Ali Vakil’s Sufi Comics blog. Reposted with permission.

Indeed,  within us is the greatest universe, a fountain of surprises

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Alhamdulillah!  The Al Mihrab blog has named Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel, one of the Five Good Books for American Muslims (and everyone else). Check out all the books by clicking HERE.

* * *

It is told that on many a morning the venerable Khwaja Sheikh Bahaudin Naqsbandi (also called Baha al-Din, and in some parts of the world known as El-Shah) would stand on his doorstep, look out and think: “Everyone is a sheikh these days. Where has the dervish gone? Are there any left?”

(My late Master, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, often said something similar.)

* * *

The name of the Prophet’s (pbuh) mother was Aaminah bint Wahb, and his father’s name was Abdullah ibn Abdul-Mutalib

Translated:

Aaminah, the daughter of Wahb
Abdullah, the son of Abdul-Mutalib

So this means Wahb was the maternal grandfather of the Prophet (pbuh), and Abdul-Mutalib was the paternal grandfather of the Prophet (pbuh).

(For all the grandfathers out there, peace and blessings be upon us all.)

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“I shall pass this way but once, any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, because I shall not pass this way again.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Happy New Year 2010 to all my Brothers and Sister of every faith and race and creed around the world!  May God bless you all this year with health, happiness, wisdom, and love, so that we may better serve God by serving His creation.  I can think of no better resolution for the New Year than to try and live up to these true words:

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Surrendering to love is the hardest damn work I have ever done in my life. Put me working in prisons to teach murderers how to give good massages or give me tortured women who haven’t slept without nightmares in ten years, but don’t ask me to be open and receive tender loving care of someone who is going to know all my dirty laundry and stick around anyway!

Why is it so hard? Well, I guess I’ve just been on the road so long I don’t know the difference between my feet and my boots and here comes someone to offer a foot rub and I gotta’ feel how tired my feet are and how long I‘ve been wanting some good touch and lay down all those other times of disappointment and confusion and let this in without overwhelming myself or anyone else with grief and longing. I didn’t learn how to do this at home or school. Did you? It takes a combination of mercy and love we give ourselves.

- John Calvi, from True Love, The Friends (Quaker) Journal, 1992

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

In the joyous and loving spirit of Christmas, and to celebrate the birth of Jesus, or as he is know in Islam, Isa ibn Mariyam (pbuh), a poem by one of His sainted devotees.

You Are Christ’s Hands

Humanity now.

- Saint Teresa of Avila

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

If God is slow to grant your request and you do not receive what you ask for promptly, do not be grieved, for you are not wiser than God.

It this happens to you, it is because either your way of life does not accord with your request, or because the pathways of your heart are at odds with the intention of your prayer.

Or it may be because your inner state is too childish by comparison with the magnitude of the thing you have asked for.

It is not appropriate that great things should fall easily into our hands, otherwise God’s gift will be held in dishonor, because of the ease with which we obtain it.

For anything that is readily obtained is also easily lost, whereas everything which is found with toil is preserved with care.

- from Daily Readings with St. Isaac of Syria (also called St. Isaac of Nineveh), edited by A.M. Allchin.

Ya Haqq!

Note: Alhamdulillah! that such men have through the ages sent forth their spiritual wisdom, for they too are a particle of the mercy of Allah.

St. Isaac also said:

‘Like a handful of dust thrown into the sea are the sins of all mankind compared with the mercy and providence of God’.”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

This is related by Anas ibn Malik [May Allah bless him]:

“One day, in the house of Abu Ayyub, we were sitting together in the company of our Master, the blessed Messenger of Allah ( pbuh). Suddenly, we heard a very ugly voice calling from outside. “O Messenger of Allah, have I your permission to enter?” Our Master (pbuh) asked us: “Do you recognize that voice? When we replied: “Allah and His Messenger know best,” our Master (pbuh) said: “That is the voice of Satan.”

“Umar got up and said: “O Messenger of Allah, by your leave, let me go and smash the deceiver’s skull. Let me deliver the people from his mischief.” But our Master (pbuh) told him: “It is not within your power to do so, Umar, for he has been given respite till the Resurrection. Nobody can touch him.”

“We all fell silent, waiting to see what might happen. Our Master (pbuh) said: “There is always an underlying reason for things. Otherwise he would not have come here.” He then gave permission for the devil to enter his presence. In he came, his face very ugly, blind in one eye and with a few hairs on his chin. He explained that he had come at Allah’s command saying: “Had I not come, the Exalted Lord would have tormented me as long as I was on earth. You are to question me, and I am to answer your queries.”

“Our Master (pbuh) then asked Satan: “Who are your enemies?” To this he replied: “My enemies are fifteen groups of people. First of all, my chief foes are you and all the Prophets.”

“What you say is true,” said the blessed Messenger (pbuh): “Neither I nor any of the Prophets have any love for you. You are both my greatest enemy and that of all the Prophets.” Satan then proceeded to enumerate his other foes:

“My second enemies are scholars who put their learning into practice. They not only study and teach, but also act on what they learn.”

“My third enemies are the righteous, who recite the Holy Quran and model their character on what they read.”

“My fourth enemies are those who give the Call to Prayer for Allah’s sake.”

“My fifth enemies are the poor who are satisfied with their lot.”

“My sixth enemies are the compassionate.”

“My seventh enemies are the generous.”

“My eighth enemies are those who perform the early morning prayer on time.”

“My ninth enemies are those who advise the people and call them to Allah, those who reform the people.”

“My tenth enemies are those who abstain from unlawful food and avoid fornication and adultery.”

“My eleventh enemies are those who are always in a state of ritual purity, ready for worship.”

“My twelfth enemies are the modest.”

“My thirteenth enemies are those who place all their trust in Allah.”

“My fourteenth enemies are those who give pleasure to the poor and needy.”

“My fifteenth enemies are those called pious and devout, who are always busy in the service of their Exalted Lord.”

Our Master (pbuh) asked: “Have you any friends among my Community” What are the characteristics of your friends?” To this Satan replied: “O Messenger, ten classes of people are my friends:

First, tyrannical rulers and princes who oppress the people. Second, the arrogant. Third, scholars who are the lackeys of tyrants, who cannot tell them the truth, but hide it and confirm their falsehoods. Fourth, dishonest tradesmen who cannot be trusted in business. Fifth, those who take strong drink. Sixth, confidence tricksters and black marketeers. Seventh, backbiters and slanderous gossips. Eighth, usurers, those who take interest. Ninth, liars and blasphemers. Tenth, informers, intriguers who stir up enmity and cause friends to quarrel and fall out with one another.”

Here we have listed all the friends and foes of Satan. Those who worship are his foes, while those who do not worship are his friends. Is it possible to conceive of a spiritual teacher, a saint, who not only fails to worship Allah personally, but even prevents others from doing so? Anyone who keeps people from their five daily prayers, who make them break their fast, is indeed an intimate friend-not of Allah, but of Satan. He is an enemy of the Exalted Lord. We shall see the true condition of such people on the coming Day of Resurrection. They will have a hard time explaining themselves to their deluded and misguided disciples who will say to them, as they are cast into the fire:

“We were only following you, so can you give us some relief from Allah’s punishment?” (14:21)

They will reply: “Had Allah guided us, we would have guided you.” (14:21)

“It makes no difference now, whether we panic or patiently endure.” (14:21)

“For us there is no refuge.” (14:21)

The false teachers will try to blame it all on Satan. But when they start to shower their curses on him, Satan will emerge from the fire upon a throne, addressing them with these words:

Satan will say: “Allah made you a promise true. I also made you promises, but I have left you in the lurch. I had no power over you. I only called you and you answered me. Therefore do not blame me but blame yourselves. I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I did not believe in the divine partnership you once ascribed to me.” For the evildoers there is indeed a painful punishment. (14:22)

- excerpt adapted from Irshad: Wisdom of a Sufi Master, by Sheikh Muzaffar Ozak al-Jerrahi.

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Thanksgiving is almost here in the US, and with Eid al-Adha the next day it will soon be a time of giving thanks, of gratitude to the Creator. Before every meal, Sufis say “Bismillah!” This is their way of saying Grace, of being grateful. Yet every human being who follows a spiritual path has their own way of being gracious, whose origin is Grace; the giving of thanks to God.

Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself.

One who cherishes gratitude does not cling to the gift!

Thanksgiving is the true meat of God’s bounty;

The bounty is its shell,

For thanksgiving carries you to the hearth of the Beloved.

Abundance alone brings heedlessness,

Thanksgiving gives birth to alertness.

The bounty of thanksgiving will satisfy and elevate you,

And you will bestow a hundred bounties in return.

Eat your fill of God’s delicacies,

And you will be freed from hunger and begging.

- Rumi

“With mealtime prayer we offer thanksgiving to the Source of all sustenance. Prayer is a means by which the reins of hunger and the senses are taken by the spirit and intellect. The offering of a mealtime blessing elevates eating from a mechanical activity to conscious participation in the chain of being. It is an acknowledgment of the fact that in eating any organism, we are sharing in the sacrifice it has made to sustain us.”

Gratitude is an eagle, blessings a fine plump partridge
only gratitude wins the reward of blessing.
Give thanks to Him alone who buys
your words in the bazaar of Paradise.

- Nasir-i Khusraw

Excerpt from Serving the Guest – A Sufi Cookbook

Ya Haqq!

O Beloved, everywhere I look, You are!
Every sound I hear is You!
Every touch, taste, scent, all You!

Every child’s face is You,
Every stranger, every friend
Of every nation, end to end.

Every sound echoes Your voice!
The wind stirs the trees and
The leaves sway to La Illaha ill Allah!

The sea waves Your name to the shore
The earth grows Your name in its bounty
The sky colors Your name in aching blue.

In all the worlds, everywhere
Without end, there is only You
The Merciful and Everlasting Friend.

- Irving Karchmar, July 2007

Ya Haqq!

Note: This poem was originally part of a longer post which you can read here.

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

In honor of Eid al-Adha, The Ebook of Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel will be gifted to all that want one, through November 27th, in either English or Spanish. Just email me at:

Irvingk1945 at gmail dot com, and write gift ebook or Spanish gift ebook in the subject line.  Inshallah, it will be of some benefit

Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice: One of the two main Islamic festivals (the other is ‘Id al-Fitr), this festival falls on the 10th day of the lunar month of Zul-Hijja and is the concluding act of pilgrimage to Mecca. In commemoration of Abraham’s faith, in his willingness to sacrifice even his son Isaac as God commanded, sheep, goats and camels are offered to God, and the meat is distributed to the poor and needy. ‘Id al-Adha is observed whether or not one is on pilgrimage.

Eid al-Adha in 2009 is on Friday, the 27th of November.

Note that in the Muslim calendar, a holiday begins on the sunset of the previous day, so observing Muslims will celebrate Eid al-Adha on the sunset of Thursday, the 26th of November.

Although Eid al-Adha is always on the same day of the Islamic calendar, the date on the Gregorian calendar varies from year to year, since the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar and the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar. This difference means Eid al-Adha moves in the Gregorian calendar approximately 11 days every year. The date of Eid al-Adha may also vary from country to country depending on whether the moon has been sighted or not.

Eid Mubarak!

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

How do you love quietly?

A dear sister wrote me recently and asked that question. Since she has a spiritual inclination, I answered her this way:

To love quietly is to do the work that is meant for you in this life, and to serve all whom you come in contact with, even in small ways. That is quiet love – for others and for God, who is in all His creation. To love a particular person quietly, is to pray for him, to help him when you can, and to listen.

Her question also reminded me of this post about the old woman washing the steps of a Buddhist temple, which you can read here.

Please add your own thoughts and answers in the comments, and here is a quote for inspiration

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. – ( 1st Corinthians 13:4-8)

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Master of the Jinn is celebrating its Five Year Anniversary this month And in commemoration of that, for anyone that buys a copy of the book, in either the paperback edition or as an ebook (from Mobipocket, or the Amazon Kindle book reader),  I will send them a jpg of the original beautiful cover art of Master of the Jinn. It makes lovely wallpaper or a great screensaver for your computer Just go to this link, all the info is there:

http://masterofthejinn.com/order.html

Then email me and I will email you back the cover art.

Irvingk1945@gmail.com

Just put Cover Art in the subject line.

Ya Haqq!

PS:  Here is the latest review of Master of the Jinn on the Clouddragon blog.

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

October 10^th is the one year anniversary of the death of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, for over 50 years the Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order, and for 17 years, my Master (may God bless his soul and raise him to the highest rank of His beloveds).

To commemorate the occasion, his own poem is a fitting tribute to his life and station:

My heart holds Your home,

my head desiring You;

Night and day have all passed,

while I am pledged to You.

I have suffered at the hand

of the people of the time;

In the world I’ve only seen

fidelity from You.

I’ve been drunk with Your wine

Since pre-eternity;

I’m surrendered to Your will

till post-eternity.

I’ve no hope for heaven

or for the Resurrection;

I have never wanted

anyone but You.

Once I realized that in reality

the Path cannot be traveled

Except on Your feet,

I lost both my head and feet.

With every breath I take

I am conscious of You;

I gave up heart and soul

for contentment from You.

If, like Nurbakhsh, you have pledged

yourself wholeheartedly to God;

The creation then will be ready

to pledge itself to you.

- from the Divan of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

For the occasional Poetry Monday, here are two old favorites.

Atlas

i am used to the heft of it
sitting against my rib,
used to the ridges of forest,
used to the way my thumb
slips into the sea as i pull
it tight; something is sweet
in the thick odor of flesh
burning and sweating and bearing young.
i have learned to carry it
the way a poor man learns
to carry everything.

- Lucille Clifton

I have always known
that at last I would
take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.

- Narihira (9th century Japan), translated by Kenneth Rexroth

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Here is a remarkable poem written by the first Ming Emperor of China, Zhu Yuanzhang (born 1328), celebrating the life and mission of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).

Since Creation of Universe
Heaven has already appointed,
Faith Preaching Giant Saint,
From West He’s Born,
To receive Holy Scripture,
With thirty part Book,
To guide all creations,
King of all Kings,
Leader of Holy Ones,
With Support from Divine,
To Protect His Nation,
With five daily prayers,
Silently hope for peace,
With heart toward Allah,
Empower the poor ones,
Save them from calamity,
See through the Unseen,
Pulling souls and spirits,
Away from all wrongdoings,
Mercy to the World,
Walking ancient Crowned Path,
Evil vanquished to One,
Religion Pure and True,
Muhammad,
The Noble High One.

- forwarded from Brother Jeremy P. Cheng, via the PH Pro Indonesian Yahoo group.

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Here is a link to the first time I ever heard the word Jinn. It is a wonderful scene in the 1940 movie Thief of Bagdad, starring Sabu as the thief, and Rex Ingram as the Jinni (which is usually anglicized as “genie.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I742bNHifm8&feature=related

Forward to about the 2:58 mark, as Sabu opens the bottle he finds on the beach, and listen as the Jinni materializes as smoke and says, “Two thousand years ago, King Solomon, master of the all the Jinn, imprisoned me in that bottle.”

Then buy Master of the Jinn to read my own interpretation of the many Jinn legends

Ya Haqq!

PS:  There is actually a legend that in Biblical times, the King of Arabia begged King Solomon to help in controlling a wicked and powerful Jinni, an Ifrit,  that was wreaking havoc within his kingdom. King Solomon came and by the power of his seal ring, given to him by God to control the Jinn, imprisoned the wicked Jinni in a bottle, or oil lamp in some versions.

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Alhamdulillah, Ramadan is nearly gone, and Eid ul-Fitr is nearly upon us. As an early Eid gift, I am giving a FREE Master of the Jinn Ebook in pdf format to all who want one. Just email me at:

Irvingk1945 at gmail dot com

And put GIFT EBOOK in the subject line.

Inshallah, the book will engage the mind and lighten the fast, and be of spiritual benefit.

If you would like to read an excerpt of the first two chapters before you make up your mind, click HERE.

Ya Haqq!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Master of the Jinn has been translated and published in Indonesia (Sang Raja Jin), Turkey (Cinlerin Efendisi), Russia (Povelitel dzhinnov), Germany (Meister der Jinn), and Croatia (Gospodar demona).  If you are observing Ramadan in any of those countries, a copy would make a wonderful Eid gift, and will get to you in time if you order now

To order the various editions, click the links below:

English - Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel

Indonesian - Sang Raja Jin

German - Meister der Jinn

Croatian - Gospodar demona

Russian - Povelitel dzhinnov

Turkish - Cinlerin Efendisi

If you would like a signed copy  (English edition only), email me at:

Irvingk1945 at gmail dot com

Ramadan Kareem

Ya Haqq!