Let your mind roam and see where it takes you
I am writing this for two girls particularly, one from Karachi and the other from London, who wrote to me after my last article. I will answer them.
But first, I am writing this week’s column today as my usual Sunday is a holiday because of Eidul Baqr i.e., the festival that commemorates the sacrifice of the Prophet Ibrahim (AS) (Abraham) of his son Prophet Ismail (AS) (Ishmael), when Muslims perform the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, Mina, Arafat, Muzdalifah, and back to Mina to stone Satan who thrice tried to stop Ibrahim and failed, then back to Mecca to perform the seven goodbye circumambulations called ‘Tawaf al Wida’ of the Ka’aba and leave the city. Hajj actually means being present on the plains of Arafat on the day between dawn and noon and is a sort of a dress rehearsal of the Day of Judgment while the unstitched cloth men wear symbolises the coffin.
The word ‘Tawaf’ means to circumambulate. Warlords who circumambulate their territory to inspect it and collect revenue are called ‘Tawaif ul Malook’ – those who circumambulate their territory over which they have sovereignty. Thus a chieftain is called ‘Malik’; the Saudi king is called ‘Malik Salman’. A streetwalker is called ‘Tawaif’ for she has a beat that she circumambulates. Thus ‘Tawaif’ has come to mean prostitute. Why is a policeman circumambulating his beat not called ‘Tawaif al Shurta’ (police)? Wouldn’t that be less discriminatory?
More interestingly, as Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son Ismail the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) appeared and told him to stop as he had proven his love for God and to sacrifice a sheep instead, which is why all pilgrims or ‘Hajjis’ sacrifice animals on Eidul Baqr, a name in which the word ‘Baqr’ also refers to a cow or calf. The second chapter or ‘surah’ of the Quran is called ‘Baqarah’ which refers to the Golden Calf the Israelites made to present to the Pharaoh when Moses was up on the mountain getting the 40 Commandments from God, 30 of which he broke in anger (to the relief of some) when he saw what the Israelites were up to. However, a more interesting and logical theory I have heard is that instead of asking Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismail, Angel Jibril asked him to cut off his son’s foreskin and circumcise him, because at least one drop of blood must flow, and that is where the Judaic tradition of circumcision that Muslims also follow. God knows best. If the story is true, best that a sheep replaced circumcision, else Muslims would have been circumcising millions of young boys on Hajj whose parents would have charged an arm and a leg and prayed for more boys. It would have replaced selling animals for sacrifice as a more lucrative business. Be all that as it may, a Happy Eid Mubarak to all human beings.
Anyway, the Karachi girl wrote: “I personally hate the idea of welfare now as I realise it makes people bone lazy and pathetic beggars. You cannot be Islamic and democratic at the same time as it’s a contradiction to say the least. People should decide and get it over with.
“I wonder if people understand that Maverick is the monkey on our back? What do you think?”
Remove Islam from Pakistan and you lose the justification for Pakistan. Remove religion and mullahs from politics and statecraft and you partially save Pakistan
The London girl wrote: “Just people’s welfare will do. ‘Islamic’ just seems to translate into mistreatment of women and minorities. People (men) don’t have the vision to translate a state system along political lines. The least Islamic state in the world is Saudi Arabia. The most Islamic is Ireland. This is based on the treatment of the old and the rights of and justice towards citizens.”
My dear Karachi girl, Maverick asks questions that others have in their minds but daren’t ask and I answer them. Sometimes he taunts us. Other times he makes statements that I would rather come from his mouth than mine. He is “not the monkey on our back” or one that we spank. He is you and I and our conscience.
Islam was the basis of Pakistan for the Muslims of India who claimed to be a separate nation distinct from the Hindus, so the idea was to make them a homeland where they would be independent of Hindu domination. Remove Islam from Pakistan and you lose the justification for Pakistan. Remove religion and mullahs from politics and statecraft and you partially save Pakistan. Remove the products of this anti-democratic decrepit political system meaning the politicians from Pakistan and you save Pakistan entirely. Pakistan was not made as a laboratory for obscurant clerics in which to experiment their theocratic obscurantism or for us to experiment in aping Britain, our former coloniser. If ape we must, why not hand it over to Maverick the Monkey and his tribe? Decolonise your minds. Pakistan was made as a homeland for Indian Muslims to implement the secular injunctions of God in the Quran to make it a model state for others to emulate. That means the implementation of Haqooq ul Ibad or the Rights of God’s Creations at State level.
Now if you take out welfare from Islam, which is Haqooq ul Ibad especially for human beings who are the jewel of His creation, and you also take out choice of leadership by the people, you have no Islam of God but religions, sects and movements made by men who have arrogated to themselves the right to interpret and adulterate or even add to God’s word. By turning faith into religions clerics have made for themselves jobs and businesses. Remember, Haqooq Allah or our duties towards God are between Him and us only, for in our secular life on earth and on the day of Judgment we are answerable to Him and Him alone, not any intermediary, pope, rabbi, archbishop, mullah or pundit. Yes, in secular life we are also answerable to state laws adjudged by men, but those laws should be based on divine laws as most secular laws are too, as long as Ijtehad or re-interpretation without innovation or breaking any of God’s principles and fundamentals has been done to keep them contemporary. Remember Thomas Jefferson’s Quran that I told you about and how much he borrowed from it in writing the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution. Know that the UN Declaration of Human Rights is largely based on the Quran as too the Geneva Conventions about the rules of war and the treatment of prisoners of war. God is merciful, beneficent and forgiving of our lapses in the performance of our duties towards Him. But in our duties towards His creations He is not. He will not only judge us for our deeds but more importantly on our intentions behind those deeds for He knows what is in men’s and women’s hearts and minds. If our intentions are good but we unwittingly end up doing something bad we can be forgiven. But if our intentions are selfish and bad in doing something ostensibly good, like any form of charity to camouflage our misdeeds as a PR exercise, God knows that and we may end up cancelling out some of the good we have done. Our intentions will be taken into account, not only our deeds. That is why God tells man that when he dispenses justice he must remember that he is, in a secular sense, playing God and should be most conscious of it. Thus God tells us never to hate anyone so much that we cannot do him or her justice and follow due process as He does by making our skins and senses witness as to what we did. You cannot dispense justice if you are prejudiced, biased or harbour preconceived notions that judges sadly and sinfully forget much too often.
Welfare is another pillar of Islam. It is the duty of a state that calls itself ‘Islamic’ to focus on welfare. What else, for a piece of land cannot have faith or religion, can it? I get goose bumps when I read that the Almighty says that if you do good to my creations I become indebted to you. Man can argue that if my sins are more, punish me, but if your mercy and your debt towards me are greater, then send me to paradise, but that is a play with logic and taunting Him by twisting his own words – and man is a champion twister.
Welfare is the fulcrum of our social contract, which is Mr Jinnah’s speech to the first Constituent Assembly on August 14, 1947. Jinnah ordered that the citizens of Pakistan should be free to practice their faith without discrimination or hindrance for that is the personal concern of the individual and no business of the state. I suggest you girls read it, the real one and not the censored one.
The concept of welfare in Britain is not just the dole that some say makes people “bone lazy”. Remember too the National Health Service, free and cheap education, free public transport for the elderly and so much more. Remember Hazrat Umar (RA) our second caliph who said that if a dog dies of hunger in his realm it is his responsibility. The ruler or caliph represents the state’s responsibilities.
After all, why does man make states, like Ozymandias or Lenin did? So that the human condition has a better chance of improvement in that new political, economic, social and judicial dispensation, where people will get educated and emancipated in the correct contemporary sense. When the state stops providing this it loses its raison d’être or justification to exist and crumbles, as the Soviet Union did before our eyes for all its amazing military power. Today, most states, including Pakistan, have stopped implementing the purpose for which men made them and are in danger of going the Soviet and east European way. Iraq and Syria have already lost large swathes of their land. The European Union is in danger of crumbling, for it is losing its justification by not improving the human condition but in fact degrading it. It is the duty of the State to provide free or affordable food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, transportation, justice and so much more. If it cannot, then why should it exist? Its citizens would lose their stake in the existing state and think that perhaps under another dispensation they would do better.
Just think of how many states have come and gone on the land you two girls are living on in Karachi and London. Karachi has gone from a sleepy, civilised fishing village and an airline refuelling stop to one of the largest, dirtiest, most uncivilised mega-cities in the world because of no concern for man’s welfare. Times were when London was only “the city” or the business district. All other places like Hampstead, Hendon, Chelsea, Putney, Wimbledon, Kingston, Richmond and others were villages. Now they have all come together to form today’s London. Europe was divided into many mostly warring states and principalities: today the best thing the EU has done is to prevent internecine and world wars for the last 70 years. The only war and tension in Europe is between Russia and the Ukraine for Russia has re-annexed Crimea from Ukraine, but neither is in the EU.
Why, little girls, it’s all about trades routes – roads, railways, shipping and pipelines. Why do you think China is frenetically building trade belts or corridors east and south? For trade, that’s why. Why do you think that the Europeans underhandedly, with the USA hand in glove, fostered a ‘people’s revolt’ in Maidan Square and overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russia elected president: to secure gas pipelines routes to Europe on which it is so dependent, forgetting that most of its gas comes from Russia and only passes through Ukraine.
The concept of welfare in Britain is not just the dole that some say makes people “bone lazy”. Remember too the National Health Service, free and cheap education, free public transport for the elderly and so much more
As to democracy, doesn’t God tell us to choose from amongst ourselves and choose from amongst the best? Doesn’t the word ‘choose’ imply ‘choice’, which is democratic? He also tells us certain conditions under which we may dissociate from or overthrow bad rulers. If you argue that it was a small gathering of elders and tribal leaders who choose the caliph in times of yore, what do you think is any form of indirect elections – an electoral college as in the US or the lower house in a parliamentary system? Sure Islam has democracy but its majority followers are uneducated in their faith and fall for asinine propaganda of scholars and political thinkers who have their own hegemonic agendas. Learn, girls, learn and try and understand, especially that Ijtehad is one of the pillars of Islam.
As to women, minorities and the elderly, denying them their god-given rights is particular to all Muslim majority states of today to varying degrees. You may not know that God doesn’t even require Muslims to make a state as long as the state they live in gives them their rights. All discrimination is manmade, not God made. How can God deny women equal rights when it would mean denying the womb that bears males? How can women’s rights be denied when it was a woman, to wit Khadija (RA), who made our beloved Prophet (PBUH) rich? How can they be denied driving cars when God and His messenger didn’t disallow them driving camels and horses and leading armies into battle? Just because religions and movements like Wahabism deny women their God-given rights doesn’t mean that Islam denies it too. Certainly under man’s patriarchal societies women have got a raw deal. But what rights did so many Muslim and non-Muslim women rulers give to women and religious minorities? Precious little, if any, I’m afraid.
Doesn’t God say, “There is no compulsion in religion”? Didn’t the Prophet (PBUH) let Jews pray in his mosque? Doesn’t God enjoin people to look after their old parents and the elderly? In a real Islamic welfare state there would be real democracy in which the human condition improves and women, minorities and the elderly are treated as equal citizens in word and deed. Don’t confuse principle with practice and the perfidy of humankind.
Good Lord: where did I start and where have you girls taken me? That happens when you let your mind roam. I suggest that you keep asking questions of yourselves, of others and of me and let your minds roam. Think for yourselves and take advice if you feel you need it and see where your musings take you. Beware of alien-influenced half-educated prejudiced morons who only mislead. Don’t let the roller coaster of life hijack your right of thinking, meditation and discovery. You will then ‘see’ things stranger and more beautiful than imagination; a ‘dawning’ that fills you with wonderment. The best sources of knowledge and understanding come from meditation and musings. Eid Mubarak.
