your excellency,
my son, johan, asked me the other day, '' which way am i to go dad, follow ustaz azhar and ustaz shamsuri and most mufti's way of the ugama or be coccooned by the straight jacket of dr maza, dr rozaimi, ustaz fathul bari, and ustad rasul dahri way...? "
i told him:
"johan, you are asking papa to open up papa's yet to be written book called," islam 101 for idiots! ". the book is still up there in the cloud
it may not even see the light of the day!
joe, you can choose either way or even both ways;... or beg to differ on special issues , if you have the knowledge of a budding qardhawi....but islam in the 1st 100 years post nabi was the islam of sahabat, tabi'in and tabi-tabi'in......ie , the nabi way of islam.
what nabi did, said, purported to have said all were recorded by oral tradition by his sahabat.
his likes and dislikes.
the number of facial hairs on his face , everything all in the open
nabi is an open secrets.
not the secrets that we now are exposed to of what ntr or ringgit malaysia did.
no! no!
nabi is maksum.
even his mannerisms at home were recorded and orally by his dear wives and 'mothers of the faithful, affectionately, mostly sayyeditina aisya'.
oral tradition amongst the arabs during nabi's time was excellent.
there were hundred thousands of these oral tradition passed from one generation to another, most 'sanad' impeccable, some dubious and some outright maudhu'.
this is understandable as the political life of the muslims get muddled from beyond caliph muawiya's time onwards.
muawiya on his death bed intimated to his errant son yazid to deal with nabi's grandsons sayyidina hussien and hassan gently but he did not and the slaughter at karbali followed.
that was the beginning of 'political ' islam.
in fact political islam began well during sayyedina othman's time as the empire gets bigger.
some hadith became politicised....and i am not mentioning the dichotomy of shiism and sunism inot the picture yet, just the differences within the sunni only.
thankfully though, there were separation of power between 'ulama' and the sultans or caliph of that time, alhamdullillah...this is allah's grace to us present day muslims.
if you follow the lives of the 4 imam, during the post tabi'in period, theirs were not simple 'makan gaji' type of scholars we have today.
most of them were incarcerated by the respective caliph of the day.
they lead hard, zuhud life.
all the four great imam ie hanafi, maliki, hambali and shafei.
even then , if you are not a great scholar, and does not know say 10,000 hadiths by heart and their relative sanads, you are obliged to follow one of them for your own 'safety' net. if the 4 great imam were wrong with their interpretation of the qur'an and hadth, at least you are assured of great company.
imam ghazali and his associates come in 3 centuries after nabi, when the muslims were in control of half of the known world.
by his writings and teaching he was a reformer of his time
a century later came ibnu taimyiah, another great reformer, and his prolific student, ibnu qayyim al jauzi
imam bukhari and muslim and abu dawud et etc were 200 plus after nabi.
if you live in the 15th century c.e, for example,there is no big querrel.
you either belong to one of the 4 mazhab in term of jurisprudence and follow the al ghazaliah school or the al taimymiah school, in term of spirit and leaning.
not only that, you would usually belong to one of the many tarekat group for guidance and camaraderie.
al ghazalian school tend to be more circumspective and highly spiritual in their outlook and oftentimes lost in zikr and remembrance, and the taimiyah school tend to be upright like 'school prefects' .....
both are ok.
to throw the spanner in to the engine,then in the 17th century, came ibnu abdul wahab, a reformer from the at taimyaih school. he was a fire brand fundamentalist.
ibnu abdul wahab is the principal 'tok guru' of the present day wahabi movement.
present day 'wahabis', just because they have finish reading a couple of dozen books on ugama , and 'by heart' a few hundred hadiths, they think they have the monopoly of knowledge and methodology to knowledge!
compounded to this, some 100 years ago with the help of lawrence of arabia, the young 'prince' faisal, son of abdul aziz was involved in a major uprising of the arabs against the ottomans.
pan arabism follows.
later the bludgeoning petrodollar enriched the arab states surrounding the nejd desert.
makkatul mukharamah and madinatul munawarah compete head to head with the centuries old al azhar school.
ibnu abdul wahab's fundamentalist views grow from strength to strenght.
now back to your choice, joe....
do you want to be a school prefect or do you want to be in love?
this is not mutually exclusive though joe....
you can suspend the decision, just carry on your ilm gathering at the masjid from tok gurus and tok gurus, read read and read a lot of tafseer and books on ugama, and decide later.
but papa is not going to give you an unbiased advice.
no! no!
i want you to go thru life s a lover...not a school prefect..stuck at age 60 plus still at the ablution phase of the ugama........that is what being a wahabi is!
they missed the kernel and the honey.
papa is unashamedly biased here since at this age of 3 score and six, papa just see too many examples amongst papa's friends and colleagues.
even then at the end of the day it is still your choice.
with the 'wahabi's papa is reminded about pol pot's cambodia.
way back in 1975, well before you were born pol pot and his gang of revolutionary government declared that '' as of 1975...... this is year zero for cambodia! ", relegating centuries of cambodian culture and political growth to the dustbin of history.
before you decide to be a 'pol pot', suspend your choice and thread carefully.
enjoy the ugama.
there are many levels in the enjoyment of our ugama.
if you choose to be a 'pol pot' your enjoyment , in papa's estimation, would be a wee be stifled.
be a mukmin at all cost and may you and papa be blessed with husnul khatimah
no hurry....
enjoy the journey! "
that , your excellency is my unpublished ' islam 101
for idiots '
i do not think it will see the light of the day though!
nik howk
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MRXs5fqlXQ ]
the salafi fallacy......
t. j winter aka abdal hakim murad of cambridge.
on the subject of tawbah, a discourse of imam al ghazali from his ihya...
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUYzGarFac ]
33:12 circle of zikr......a garden of paradise...qalb as salim
35:10 major and minor sin
37:10 sort yourself out , look inward.
40:20 istiqamah
42:10 iblis type of islam
43:20 by zikrullah hearts are made calm.....
Come, Come whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
rumi
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