Voices of Islam (13 page)

Pillars of Religion and Faith
41

Let not those who covetously withheld of the gifts

That God has given them with His grace, think that it is good for them. Nay, it will be the worse for them.

Soon shall the things that the covetous withheld be tied to their necks,

Like a twisted collar on the Day of Judgment! To God belongs the inheritance Of the Heavens and the Earth. And God is well acquainted with all that you do.

(Qur’an 3:180)

Just as the Qur’an reminds us that all events are known to God before they occur, it also affirms that humans have the ability to make a choice between good and evil. If this were not so, what would be the purpose of Judgment Day? What God knows ahead of time is that each person will be offered temp- tations in her life and that each will be forced to make a decision as to which path she will follow—the straight or the crooked. Before we are born, God knows what our challenges will be and how we will cope with them. In this sense, the Prophet Muhammad’s comment that a person’s final destination, whether it be heaven or hell, is already predetermined before birth is correct. The statement makes sense because God alone is all knowing. In His mercy, God has measured out His guidance along with the human capacity to discern good from evil, providing believers with a combination of predestina- tion and free will. For this reason, ‘‘Satan has no authority over those who have faith and put their trust in the Lord’’ (Qur’an 16:99).

NOTES

1. Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick,
   The Vision of Islam
   (New York: Paragon House, 1994), xxv.
   

2. Ibid., 167.

1. See http://www.islamicity.com/m
   osque/pillars.shtml (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   

   2.524).
   

2. Alim CD-ROM (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   2.504).
   

3. See http://www.muslimaccess.com/sunnah/sahaba
   h/HAKIM_IBN_ HAZM.htm (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   2.551).
   

4. In the Qur’anic verse to which this statement refers (9:104), Muslims are told that even God accepts gifts of charity in the form of repentance and righteous works from believers. However, it is not correct to insinuate that the believer is superior to God because of this. This is what Hujwiri means by an ‘‘utterly false’’ notion.
   

5. ‘Ali B. ‘Uthman al-Jullabi al-Hujwiri,
   The Kashf al-Mahjub: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism,
   trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (1911; repr., London: Luzac & Co., 1976), 316.
   

6. Alim CD-ROM (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   3.128)
   

7. It is thought that the Prophet Muhammad decided not to perform his
   Tarawih
   prayers in the mosque because of the crowd that gathered to follow his example. He was afraid that Muslims would assume that these prayers were obligatory, so he prayed
   

   42
   Voices of Tradition
   

   at home. See http://www.geocities.com/abusamad/tarawi
   h.html. See also, Alim CD-ROM (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   9.393).
   

8. See http://www.i
   slamonline.net/english/index.shtml (
   Sahih al-Bukhari,
   

   3.227).
   

9. There is a debate about exactly when in Ramadan this event took place, so it is not a spiritual necessity to pinpoint the exact date of
   Laylat al-Qadr.
   According to the Prophet’s wife Aisha, it was on an odd-numbered evening that fell within the final ten nights of the month.
   

10. Hujwiri,
    Kashf al-Mahjub,
    329
    

11. One of the most racially and culturally diverse groups at the Hajj is the North Americans. In 2005, there were 12,750 pilgrims (who call themselves
    Hajjis
    ) from the United States. See, for example, http://
    www.saudiembassy.net/2005News/ News/HajDetail.asp?cIndex=5017.
    

12. One of the most tragic years at the
    Jamarat
    (Stoning area) was 2004, when 244 people were trampled to death, including one child. After that the government of Saudi Arabia made major changes to the traffic pattern and tried to eliminate the danger of a stampede. However, in 2006 more pilgrims were trampled at the Stoning Area. In 1990, a stampede at Safa and Marwa, the site of the Running, killed 1426 people, prompting the organization to make changes in that part of the Hajj as well.
    

13. On the number of animals slaughtered at Mecca and Mina during the Hajj in 2005, see http://www.saudiembassy.net/2005News/News/HajDetail.asp
    ? cIndex=5000.
    

3
‌

R
AMADAN
H
OUSE
G
UEST

•

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Fasting is Mine.

—Hadith Qudsi

Ramadan has come to live with us.

It is God’s private apartments moved into our house

and taking over.

Where the doors were

are now entranceways into His Garden.

Where windows were are

continuous waterfalls. Abundance in the

dryness. Hidden in the dust:

clusters of roses.
Sprung from our footsteps:
ascents.
Climbs past the

usual dimensions:
the usual

ticking clock in the antechamber.
The ancient mahogany piano has become

rock crystal, playing only God’s music on

silent keys. There is a

haunting rise and fall of distant melody come

close to the inner ear, come closer even than our

own physicality, a

sound more essential than the marrow of our bones or the

44
Voices of Tradition

enormous sailing surface of the corpuscles of our blood, that is

His interconnecting rooms leading always past the closed door of His Presence, the

open hallways of approach, the retreating audience halls where

attendants move with

melodious precision, and speak in an undertone of avalanche, words of

rainforests keeping earth’s atmosphere filled with breathable air, deeps of the

nearest ocean where various killer whales congregate in

affable groups.

The earth is an outdoor amphitheater of affable groups, and time a

shudder of water across fans of spray at the source of the cascade of all

creaturely manifestation.

When the rooms are filled with the yearly fast the most geographical distances are drawn near,

Watusi warriors in tiger pelts arrive in silent droves, desert men in blazing white burnooses slide

down off their donkeys and come in, Siamese ladies in

straight batik skirts stand in angular poses to the

click of passing birds, and a

white wind sweeps across everything that inhales or intakes, exhales or

digests. The very air becomes a

stomach turned inside-out in which the sun and all her

planets turn in

wide swinging arcs in the tonal soup of darkness.

Ramadan House Guest
45

God says, ‘‘Fasting is Mine.’’

Because He alone knows its dimensions. It

contains each ant and microbe in the

drama of being a creature.

Ramadan has moved into the earth

like a different sky

settling down on the same dunes.

For a month the feast takes place in a heavenly dimension. Trays are

brought in from

other atmospheres.

Our house is His. Its guests belong to Him. The

repast is His, the withholding and giving is

He alone.

5 Ramadan

NOTE

This poem fi appeared in Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore,
The Ramadan Sonnets
(San Francisco and Bethesda, Maryland: Jusoor/City Lights Books, 1996). Reprinted from Jusoor/City Lights Books and republished in the Ecstatic Exchange Series. This poem is reproduced here by permission of the author.

4
‌

T
HE
Q
UR
’
AN
,
THE
W
ORD OF
G
OD

•

Mustansir Mir

Like the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, the Qur’an, the scripture of Islam, is considered sacred by those who believe in it as the Word of God. According to Muslim belief, God revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad (570–632
CE
), the Arabian Prophet of Islam, in small and large portions over a period of about 22 years. About the size of the New Testament, the Qur’an has been preserved in Arabic, the language in which it was originally revealed. And while the Qur’an calls the variety of languages spoken by humankind as ‘‘one of the signs’’ of God (Qur’an 30:22), there is no doubt that Arabic, being the vehicle of the Word of God, has always enjoyed special importance in both the Islamic religion and the Islamic civilization.
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