na'eem jeenah

‘Those people make the place stink!’

2008-03-24T13:16:00.000+02:00

I have lived in the South African Muslim community long enough to know of a range of vices that its members engage in. I even write and speak about them on a regular basis. However, I occasionally hear or witness something that shocks me and causes me to pull out my ‘Vices’ notebook to add yet another item to the long list there. I also pull out my ‘Ideas’ notebook to add yet another idea for a column I would like to write.
A recent such gem which resulted in shocked notes in both my pocketbooks – a difficult task for someone who is not ambidexterous – was a comment made by a certain maulana about immigrants to South Africa. He was not talking about immigrants in general; he was referring specifically to Muslim immigrants. His major complaint was about the negative effects of the influx of immigrants on mosques.
‘Our wudhu khannas (‘ablution facilities’ for those who do not understand this Urdu/Turkish/Farsi terminology),’ he opined, ‘now stink.’ Pointing to a particular mosque, he spoke about how the mosque infrastructure was ‘crumbling’. And he attributed both the stench and the crumbling infrastructure to the increased use of these facilities by immigrants. My guess is he was not referring to Indian, Pakistani, Bengali, Turkish, Iranian or European immigrants but those from our own continent.
The comments were mind-blowing. My brain was numbed into silence and I found myself unable to say anything in response (which most people who know me will find difficult to believe; my mouth usually leads the way – often with disastrous consequences). I could not even reach into my inside jacket pocket for the little booklets until much later when the full effect of the esteemed maulana’s statements hit me.
Let us, for a moment, ignore the fact that such xenophobic, racist remarks issued from the mouth of a person who is supposed to be part of the ‘leadership’ of the Muslim community. Clearly, this man had no concept of what it meant to be a Muslim. He certainly had no concept of what a masjid was. Anyone that did would not say such disgusting things with any degree of seriousness.
Did he think that the purpose of a masjid is to serve the interests of a small clique of people who rub each other’s back and who circulate money between themselves? Do these congregants of a masjid have to be of a particular nationality? Particular skin colour? Speak a particular language?
Are the immigrants and refugees (muhajiroon in Arabic) in our communities simply tolerated in our mosques? Is it a situation where we South Africans would really rather not have these foreigners there (what with the stink in the wudhu khanna and the crumbling infrastructure) but we put up with it because there really is nothing we can do about it?
Whatever happened to the notion of a mosque as a place of worship for all, a place of refuge, a place that was open to whoever wanted to make use of it? What happened to the idea of a mosque as a house of Allah that belonged to all Muslims? Or is one’s Muslimness compromised because one is an immigrant? The very fundamental understanding of a mosque is undermined and subverted by such comments.
The mosque should be available to anyone who might want to use it. And using it, for most people, simply means being able to pray in it, to perform their daily salah. I remember that, when I was growing up, my parents would allow into the house any stranger that came to the door with a sad story and said that all s/he wanted at that moment was a place for salah. They regarded this as a basic duty of a Muslim to another Muslim and, in fact, something of an honour to have a stranger pray in your house. Now, it seems, some of us get upset because unfamiliar people want to pray in our neighbourhood mosque. I use the word ‘unfamiliar people’ because in many cases the immigrants who pray in these mosques are not ‘strangers’; they live or work in the area where the mosque is located and, as such, ‘own’ the mosque.
I have heard many South African Muslims lament the fact that some immigrant communities prefer to set up their own mosques rather than using already-established ones. After hearing these disgusting remarks, can we blame any immigrant community if they wanted to have nothing to do with South African Muslims? With such attitudes in our community, I ask myself whether the stink in some of our mosques was not there from the time the intention to build it was made.
In a country beset with xenophobia, Muslims should be showing the way forward, teaching our compatriots the benefits of living with and accommodating ‘strangers’. If all our talk of a ‘global ummah’ is to mean anything, it must start with the way in which immigrant and South African Muslims interact with each other. This is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate what ‘global ummah’ means. But it is an opportunity we will rapidly lose if such attitudes become entrenched.
Perhaps our maulana should be given a good book on the sira (life story) of the Prophet Muhammad (s) – in English, Urdu or Gujerati, whichever he prefers. If he read it carefully, he might realise that the first community of Muslims would have ceased to exist if the Madinans were as xenophobic as he is. They would have just gotten rid of all those pesky, poor (and, after travelling on horseback or by foot from Makkah, I could add the word ‘stinky’) Quraish and former slaves from Makkah who came with nothing. In fact, unlike most of the immigrants in South Africa today, those refugees that journeyed with the Prophet (s) were given half of whatever was owned by the host population in Madinah. Surely there must be a lesson there somewhere.
And even before Muslims fled from Makkah to take up residence in Madinah, even before their refugee leader – Muhammad (s) – took up the leadership of the whole of Madinah – over Makkans and Madinans, Muslims from Makkah fled persecution to seek refuge in an African kingdom called Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. If the Abyssinian Negus had been concerned about the crumbling infrastructure in his kingdom, he would have handed them over to their fellow tribesmen and be done with the headache of those immigrants.
Instead, both the Negus and the Madinans welcomed the Muslim refugees. Islam started as a strange thing, developed among immigrants and refugees, and relied on immigrants to spread it to the four corners of the world. After knowing that, we should be dealing harshly with xenophobia in our community.

Shameless and dangerous Islamophobia

2008-02-18T13:04:00.000+02:00

What would you think if you were told that a South African academic spoke about Muslims in South Africa at a conference in Israel, organised by a right-wing Zionist organisation, and said: “I’m going to be talking about ‘Radical Islam in South Africa’, and … I was kinda thinking, well you know, I could have done the same presentation on something called Mainstream Islam in South Africa.”
According to this academic, “radical Islam in South Africa” is the same as “mainstream Islam in South Africa”? A very interesting perspective. Being an academic, of course, he must be able to back up his assertion with evidence. But his startling revelations do not end there. The paper, presented to a conference on “counter terrorism”, adds: “If you look at South African Muslims, some have fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, some have fought in Kashmir against the Indian army, they fought on the side of Iran during the Iran Iraq war in the 1980’s, some have experience in terms of Chechenya.” Again, of course, this great scholar must have got solid evidence to back up these serious claims. He must have interviewed quite a few of these “soldiers”, I am sure.
He also must have done substantial research for his assertion that, “There are groups with Islamist-socialist orientations penetrating gang structures and drug networks.” That I don’t have a clue what “groups with Islamist-socialist orientations” means is irrelevant; he must know what he was talking about, right?
Actually, no. He has no evidence to back up these spurious allegations. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. It is the kind of thing that would make one’s academic peers shake their heads in embarrassment and disgust. I challenge him to prove that he is not such a source of disgust, this academic who merrily spouts such nonsense and feels no need to explain.
But that’s not enough. Look at this gem quoted in the conference brochure. The academic, we are told “cautioned that radical Islam is becoming more and more mainstream within South Africa.” Why, we South African Muslims might even be to blame for problems with the successful holding of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. “The upcoming soccer World Cup in 2010 will pose a great counter terrorism challenge, he said, offering only the wry consolation that at their current levels of performance, there is little chance that either the Israeli or US teams will make it to the Cup games.” At least the guy has a sense of humour.
The brochure also quotes our academic as enlightening his audience with this incredible information: “More and more Moslems in South Africa travel for education and indoctrination to Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and return to important positions in their communities.” Where are these indoctrinated Muslims hiding out? We (the few Muslims who are not fundamentalist, terrorist radicals) should be informed so that we can keep away from them!
Based on his lecture, the brochure also tells us that, “While not a homogeneous entity, with Sunni-Shii tensions, Shiism is growing [in South Africa] due to the perceived victory over Israel in last summer’s Lebanon war.” Well, what do you know? The Sunnis and Shi’as are bashing each other’s brains out in South Africa, folks. Oh, and by the way, Mr (or is that Professor) Academic, it wasn’t a “perceived victory” over Israel; Israel was beaten! Your friends ran with their tails between their legs. And there is lots of evidence to prove that.
Most readers would likely read these foolish (but dangerous) statements and conclude that this must be the insane, propagandistic and fanciful ramblings of some non-Muslim, anti-Muslim Zionist. That suspicion would be at least partly wrong. The academic who peddles this twaddle goes by the name of Hussein Solomon and is based at the University of Pretoria. The centre he heads – the Centre for International Political Studies – even publishes a glossy, full-colour tabloid rag called Islamic Focus, which publishes authors whose names many Al-Qalam readers will recognise and, hopefully, be disgusted at.
And the conference which Professor Solomon illuminated with this rubbish was the Seventh International Conference of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism, held in Herzliya, Israel, last year. This Institute is a leading Zionist and anti-Muslim “research” institute which aims to entrench Israeli power over the Middle East. It puts out such interesting publications as its book on Suicide Terrorism. A fascinating article on the front page of its website is entitled “Which is the major Islamist threat? Global Jihad or the Iranian coalition”. One of its preposterous studies (it is, admittedly, better researched than Solomon’s paper) “examines the hypothesis that Palestinian women’s involvement in terrorism indicates women’s liberation”.
At the conference Solomon addressed, he was in the illustrious company of such people as the former Mossad head, Shabtai Shavit, American Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson (of “Jihad in America” fame) and former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. I’m sure Solomon was very comfortable with that group.
After all, he is also well-liked by a number of South African Zionists and has written many non-researched papers and done even more conference presentations around the world about the threat of Islam and Muslims not only to South Africa but to the whole of Africa.
One article, I recall, was entitled “Terrorism in Africa”. In truth, it was about what he called “Islamic extremism”. The most barbaric terrorist organisation in Africa, the Christian “Lord’s Resistance Army”, gets a mention only so that the authors can attack Sudan. In the article, Solomon and his co-“terrorism expert”, Anneli Botha, concocted a gory picture of all kinds of terrorist activities in Africa that they claimed Muslims were involved in. He attacks Muslim governments, Muslim organisations and even Muslim aid agencies. For example, “Although some of these [Muslim] NGO's [doing relief and welfare work] have legitimate objectives, those in control of it use it as a vanguard for destabilizing activities. These objectives include the destabilization of regimes or the determination to change the composition of regimes.” Any sane person can see the danger in such writings (and I’m not referring to his poor grasp of the rules of English grammar, which is the topic for another critique). For a brief commentary of this article, see http://naeemjeenah.blogspot.com/2007/01/terrorism-experts-insult-to-academia.html.
I have no doubt that Solomon will be unhappy with this column. In fact, he might even stoop (or is that “rise”) to using the Zionist tactic of asking to meet my boss so that I might be spoken to or silenced. This was what I became used to from Zionist organisations when I was a university lecturer. And Solomon himself last year asked to meet my boss to discuss a comment of mine in Al-Qalam which he didn’t like. I am tempted to say that people like Solomon should be ashamed. I’m not sure, however, whether they “do shame”. At least all those who write for his Islamic Focus (each one probably getting paid much more than Al-Qalam can afford to pay its editor) should feel ashamed for supporting a person with such Islamophobic views.

Good Muslims pray 5 times a day every day

2008-01-15T13:01:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month, The Star carried, as the lead story on its front page, an article headed ‘Good imam lured women’. The article concerned a man associated with ‘a mosque in Mayfair’, Johannesburg, who was recruiting women with promises of finding jobs for them. The women were invited to his office by his accomplices, where he fingerprinted them, took ID pictures of them, paid them R200 for their transport expenses and gave them each a cellphone by which he could get in touch with them. None of them were ever called but they would later discover that, unbeknownst to them, they had been married to some – most likely Pakistani – man, allegedly courtesy of the ‘imam’. (He was named in the article, but I don’t think it necessary for him to be named here.)
Although the man’s lawyer told the magistrate that the man was an imam at the mosque, I was later told by someone that he was, in fact, not the imam but the head of the mosque security. Either my informant did not know what he was talking about or the lawyer was lying. Or, perhaps, the truth lay somewhere in between.
I am pretty sure that many Muslims, upon seeing the headline, were upset and wanted to complain to the paper’s editor about an islamophobic headline. There are many reasons why Muslims might feel this way. One is that many Muslims feel that as soon as something negative is said about Islam or Muslims, we have all been shamed and should feel embarrassed about it. A kind of collective guilt. Some of us then become defensive and create a negative impression for Muslims where there might not have been one; others of us become aggressive against our fellow Muslims and verge on disowning Islam in order to say to the rest of society that we Muslims are really ok.
We should be past feeling ashamed for everything Muslims do. If some Muslim somewhere commits some kind of atrocity (and there is a lot of that going on, what with all those Muslim kings and dictators and Usama bin Laden’s boys all over the place), I don’t have to take responsibility for or feel ashamed about it. If some Muslim commits fraud (which cases we often come across in South Africa), then, again, there is no reason for me to feel embarrassed – unless I too am guilty or such acts.
Another reason some of us get upset by such articles is because we feel a need to defend ‘our own’. Because this person is from our community, many of us feel, we are bound to defend her/him. Such a sectionalist attitude has nothing to do with Islam. Islam requires that we defend those who have been wronged and that we defend the values of justice, fairness, and so forth. It does not require us blindly to defend Muslims whether they are right or wrong.
A third reason why some Muslims would be upset by such a headline is the attitude – sometimes subconscious – that our leaders (whether ‘ulamā or political leadership) can do no wrong and ‘my imam’ must be defended at all costs. The fact of the matter is that our leaders can and do do wrong. Often. Simply and uncritically defending them is, again, not really Islamic.
We should, in fact, be grateful that the media do uncover the bad elements of our society, so that we might know who they are and be able to decide what appropriate action to take against them. For we certainly should be taking action against them. Criminals that lurk in our community do us no favours. Indeed, criminals lurking in our communities, like rotten fruit in a basket, slowly make the rest of the community bad as well.
How else do we explain the attitude in certain sections of our community where crime is actually glorified. Many of us have heard of certain Muslim communities where, as the saying goes, the bigger the job you pull, the more respect you get. Or, as someone told me recently, the bigger the job, the better are your chances of getting a rich wife. How has it come to be that crime is viewed as an indicator of success and status?
How do we explain ‘ulamā showing up in court to give support to a convicted criminal simply because he is Muslim?
With such a record, I can very well understand the statement of the lawyer of the (alleged) imam in court. In response to the prosecution’s request for the ‘imam’s’ virtual house arrest, the lawyer appealed to the magistrate that he be allowed less stringent bail conditions. In particular, that he be allowed to go to the mosque because his client was ‘a good Muslim’. He qualified for this status because he prayed five times a day, every day. In response, the magistrate, very appropriately, asked ‘Is he a good Muslim?’ Perhaps the magistrate knew a little more about Islam than the lawyer (or, for that matter, the accused).
Of course, the principle of innocent until proven guilty must not be compromised. If we do not allow for due process so that a person may defend her or himself, we easily descend into the law of the jungle. However, that principle must be considered in conjunction with the level of responsibility that a person has and her or his relationship to society at large. A president of a country and an imam of a masjid have greater societal responsibility than a person with no public profile or responsibilities. As such, the manner with which criminal charges against such people with leadership roles are handled must, of necessity, be different.
A president (or presidential candidate) of a country that has been charged and faces a court case for fraud, for example, should not be allowed to continue in her or his role as president (or presidential candidate). Nor should an imam accused of forgery, fraud or any other serious offence simply continue discharging her or his duties as if life were normal. If such persons do not remove themselves from their positions of authority, they should be removed by right-thinking people within our society. Such removal does not imply that person’s guilt. It does, however, indicate an intolerance of the kinds of actions that the person has been accused of.
And, it indicates that we hold our leadership to a higher standard, that we expect our leadership to be exemplars for society and when a hint of the compromise of this exemplar status is received, action must swiftly be taken.
A few years ago, there were accusations made about a certain imam that he had sexually molested some children in his care. The story had made its rounds not only in the community where the imam was based but nationally. The right thing for the community to have done would have been to remove the imam from his position and for him to face charges in court and clear his name if he were not guilty. Instead, the community shielded him. He then left the town where he had been based and moved to another town, taking on another job as imam and madrassa teacher. Why should anyone of us trust our children to someone who has been accused in this manner. That he did not face his accusers in court does not make him innocent; it makes him a suspicious character. And, if he was guilty, it makes us all complicit in his crimes.

Rapists, teddy bears and other injustices

2007-12-20T12:58:00.000+02:00

Two incidents in the past two weeks left many Muslims shaking our heads – partly in disbelief and partly in embarrassment or shame. The first was the case of the Saudi woman (still anonymous) who was sentenced to 200 lashes, and the second was the case of the British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced by a Sudanese court to serve 15 days in a Khartoum jail.

And while we shook our heads, islamophobes rubbed their hands in glee. This, after all, is exactly the kind of thing they need every once in a while in order to justify – even if it is only to their own twisted minds – all their prejudices and hatred against Islam and Muslims and it helps them to feel that they really are superior to us.

In the Saudi case, a 19-year-old married woman met a man, who she had known previously, in a car. While she and the male friend were in the car, the car was hijacked – something that might sound very familiar to South Africans, and the couple was driven to a remote location where they were both gang-raped by seven men, she 14 times. All the protagonists were arrested and four of the rapists were sentenced to between one and five years in prison. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that five years is a completely inadequate sentence for gang-rape.) The woman (and her companion) who was kidnapped, raped, violated and subjected to one of the worst injustices that any woman can be was not, as would be expected, sent for counselling and provided with physical and psychological support. No, Muslims don’t do that kind of thing, do we? Instead, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a strange man! What kind of idiocy is this? What kind of mockery is this of Islam and the shari’āh?

But the story did not end there. She subsequently appealed her sentence. The Appeal Court increased it to 200 lashes and six months’ imprisonment. (So, I suspect, for being raped she will spend her ‘Id al-adha in prison.) The Court added on the 110 lashes plus six months because, they said, she had tried to influence them through the media. Men (the judges were, of course, men), you see, are weak. That’s why women must be locked up in their homes so that we don’t get sexually excited by them. And that’s why they are so dangerous when they talk to the media – because our minds are weak and we might get influenced by them. Even if “we” are the judges in an appeal court. What an insult to the integrity and intelligence of men; what an injustice to the persons of women! Her lawyer was suspended and now faces disciplinary action. He too spoke to the media saying that the punishment meted out to his client contravened shari’āh – in which he is absolutely correct.

Almost two weeks later, certain Saudi officials said that the woman had confessed to having an extra-marital affair and that the additional punishment was because of that. For them, and for many other Muslims, such a “confession” – if indeed there was such a thing – is sufficient to justify the torture of rape victim. How can any Muslim (or any person) believing in justice and compassion (The Just and The Compassionate are two of the names of Allah) think that this can acceptable? Have we become insensitive barbarians who live by some form of law of the jungle? Further, if she did confess to adultery (let us assume that the reports of her “confession” actually meant adultery when they said “having an affair”, then the punishment is not what the Qur’ān prescribes for adultery. And if she did make such a confession, was her male companion also sentenced similarly?

In a different sort of way, the Sudanese case was just as ridiculous, if less unjust. A British school teacher, Gillian Gibbons, asked her Grade ** class to name a teddy bear. A little boy suggested it be given his name: “Muhammad”. Gibbons accepted the suggestion and the teddy bear, with more power over the lives of people than it realised it had, was duly named. So far, so good. Sounds like a fairly typical school day.

But the parents of one of the children then complained to the authorities that Gibbons had, in fact, maligned the name of the Prophet Muhammad (s). She was arrested, charged, hauled off to court and almost sentenced to receive 40 lashes. She apologised for any offence she might have caused and her sentence was reduced to 15 days in jail! As crazy as it all sounds, it did not end there. The next Friday, hundreds of Muslims held a demonstration after the jumu’ah prayer, calling for Gibbons’ head, demanding that she be sentenced to death. Fits in quite neatly with the image of the bloodthirsty Muslim, if you ask me.

Before Gibbons could serve out her full 15 days’ jail term, she was “pardoned” by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, adding an element of tragic humour to the whole sorry episode. How can we apply any sense of logic to this case? Are we Muslims really that stupid? Perhaps many of us are, if the calls to radio stations and comments on blogs are anything to go by. One caller said, with no shred of evidence, that Gibbons must have been indoctrinating the children. His proof? He had been a teacher so he knows what it’s like. As if one’s own misdemeanours are enough to accuse others of being similarly guilty. One blog commentator lamented that the teddy bear matter was “damaging to Islam’s image, but in the end common sense prevailed”. What common sense? Besides, justice is much more important than “Islam’s image”.
I have decided to start a campaign to evaluate the conduct of all Muhammads, Ahmads, Mustaphas and any others who have a name that was attached to the Prophet Muhammad (s). The campaign is currently recruiting volunteers. If any Muhammad, Ahmad, Mustapha falls short in his general conduct, his parents (or whichever relative named him) should be taken into the street and flogged publicly. The first parents to face this must be of the little Sudanese boy who suggested the name for the teddy bear.
We should also organise a vigilante force to find the parents of the Sudanese president and have them lashed. How dare they give that insolent boy the name (Hassan) of the grandson of the Prophet (s)?

The year of remembrance; the year of Keys

2007-11-25T12:50:00.001+02:00

Sixty years ago this month, on the 29 November 1947, a number of terrorist groups in what is often called the “Middle East” were rewarded for their murderous brutality: the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181. That resolution partitioned British Mandate Palestine into two states: a “Jewish state” on 55 percent of the land and an “Arab state” on 45 percent of the land. This despite the fact that, at the time, Jews made up only 30 percent of the population and owned only seven percent of the land.

Ironically, the only state established on that land has not been a state for the indigenous people but the state of Israel, a state for mostly immigrants with no lineage connection to the land. Today, that state covers about 80 percent of the land and has colonised the other 20 percent. It was a state established, on the 15th May 1948, on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism. It still is a state based on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism.

The months surrounding these two dates witnessed a number of brutal massacres, resulting in the murder and maiming of thousands of people. These months also resulted in about 750,000 members of the indigenous population being forced out of their homes and made into refugees. Today, they and their descendants number more than six million refugees.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful resolution adopted in New York, the resolution that condemned an entire people to decades of misery and to refugeehood. Sixty years later, it is time that the world corrected that injustice.

And next year will mark 60 years of what Palestinians refer to as their catastrophe, or Al-Nakba. It is time for the nakba to end!

As in South Africa, where Black people are requested ad nauseum to “forget the past”, “not live in the past” or “don’t blame the past”, Palestinians too are constantly told to forget this history, to move on as if the events of 60 years ago never happened, to wipe the slate clean and begin, not a new chapter but a new book. These demands are unjust and contemptible.

Does anyone in South Africa ask Afrikaners to forget the South African War (formerly called the Anglo-Boer)? Or to forget the concentration camps they were confined to by the English? Does anyone ask Jews to forget the Nazi genocide against them in the middle of the twentieth century when six million of their number were systematically killed? No!

Why, then, should Black people forget the crimes of Apartheid that we were subjected to? Why should Palestinians forget the crimes of Zionism that they were subjected to (and continue to be subjected to)?

It is true that history is written by the victors, not the victims. The powerful are usually the ones to shape how the story gets told. But memories are not the property of the powerful, to use, abuse, discard and forget at their whim. Oppressed people have long memories; memories are weapons and they are given up only voluntarily.

The next 13 months, for Palestinians, will be a demonstration of just how important memory is. It will be a commemoration of a humanitarian catastrophe and a celebration of six decades of resistance and of remembering.

Palestinian memories are not just in their heads and their hearts; there are also physical manifestations of these memories. Thousands of older Palestinians still have, neatly wrapped in cloth, their house keys with which they locked up their homes as they fled from the Zionist terrorists. Thousands of younger Palestinians, too, have these keys, handed down to them from their parents or grandparents, keys for houses that still stand, occupied by settlers who would prefer that those keys and those memories did not exist.

But they do. And 2008 will be remembered all over the world as the Year of the Keys, the year to open the door for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, the year of making known that the keys to peace and justice do exist for Palestinians, that peace and justice in the Middle East (or, as many Indian and Pakistani friends prefer to say, “West Asia”) is possible – when the refugees are allowed to return and allowed to open the doors of their homes long colonised.

Palestinian historian, Dr Salman Abu Sitta, compiled a list of 531 villages and towns ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 by Zionist terrorists; their populations converted into refugees communities. The majority of those that belonged to these depopulated localities, and their descendants, now live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Many villages were razed to the ground, destroyed, in an attempt to remove all trace that there were people who lived on this land, who belonged to the land and who owned the land.

One of those villages was Lubya. Lubya does not exist anymore; its people are refugees. Instead, money was collected from South African Jews to establish – on the ruins of Lubya – the “South Africa Forest”. And since this oppressive colonialist forest bears the name of our country, I will briefly describe what Lubya was and known for.

Lubya was (is) in Northern Palestine. It is known as the hometown of Abu Bakr al-Lubyani, a prominent Muslim scholar of the fifteenth century who taught Islamic religious sciences in Damascus. Most Palestinians cannot stop talking about the beauty of the Palestinian villages they had come from. Not so the people of Lubya which, it seems, was not known for its beauty. Instead, its reputation derived from the ingenuity and intellectualism of its people and their legendary folkloric narratives. And its cactus.

Lubya was attacked in July 1948 as part of the Israeli “Operation Dekel”. It was occupied on the 16 July and all 596 houses were razed to the ground. The village was successfully ethnically cleansed and its 2726 inhabitants forced to become refugees.

This year of remembrance, the Year of the Keys, is one that South Africans must commemorate, beginning on the 29th November, when protests will be held globally. The United Nations calls it the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In protests, rallies and exhibitions around the world, it will be the beginning of the commemoration of 60 years of Al-Nakba.

* For all those that are interested in the events of 1947-48 and the ethnic cleansing that took place, visit http://www.palestineremembered.com, which contains stories, maps, videos, statistics and oral history.

There is no virtue in forced suffering

2007-10-01T01:22:00.000+02:00

A friend that my wife had not spoken to in a good few months gave us the good news recently that she was pregnant. And, she added, she intended fasting for the whole month of Ramadan.

She had also fasted the whole month of Ramadan when she was expecting a previous baby – while in her seventh month of pregnancy. And, she had fasted the whole month while breastfeeding another.

Many people will read this and say “Masha Allah” because of this friend’s (actually, her husband’s, but let’s ignore that little detail for now) determination to fulfil the compulsory act of fasting in Ramadan – even under such difficult circumstances. Most Muslim scholars have said that a pregnant or breastfeeding woman does not have to observe the Ramadan fast, that she is exempt if she fears for the health of her baby or herself. The latter part of that sentence, the qualification, needs some reflection.

I’m not particularly impressed at hearing of pregnant or breastfeeding women fasting. In fact, when I heard what our friend was doing, I was a little concerned. While most mothers or mothers-to-be are quite sensible and will consult a medical practitioner or are quite happy to stop fasting if they feel there might be any danger (or if they hear the cries of a hungry infant), some feel there is something meritorious in fasting in such a situation, as if they develop a greater closeness to Allah because of it. This is a misplaced virtue.

Sometimes there is no serious consideration given to how the fasting might affect the foetus or the infant? What does it mean when we say “if she fears for the health or life of her baby”? Can an expectant mother automatically make such a decision – by herself – without first getting professional advice? If a child is exclusively breastfed, the impact on that child of her mother remaining hungry for the entire day can be substantial. There is a good chance that the milk of a fasting mother will dry up. Or that the milk might not be as nutritious as it might have been were she not fasting. Or that supplementing breast milk with substitutes will result in the baby later rejecting the breast.

The scholars did the right thing: they gave the mother the right of choice, they left it to her to decide. It is noteworthy that Islamic law, in matters of ritual worship such as salah or fasting, places such the power of decisions in the hands of the individuals rather than in the hands of an authority figure. The problem arises, however, when a such progressive scholarly opinion gets interpreted through the lenses of ignorant attitudes which dictate that there is virtue in suffering.

The Prophet (s) is reported to have said: “Allah has relieved the travellers of fasting and half of the prayer, and the pregnant and the breast-feeding women of the fast.” When Allah has “relieved” the believer of an obligation, when Allah has granted a favour to us regarding certain of our obligations, how can we regard ourselves as better believers if we refuse the favour of our Lord?

I sometimes get asked why, when I’m travelling, I shorten my salah. We are not travelling in the desert, the argument goes, we don’t ride camels, so our travelling is not as difficult as it was for the Prophet (s) and the sahabah and we, therefore, should not shorten our prayer. Again, who are we to reject the favour that Allah has granted us? What arrogance is it that suggests that we can be better if we do what we want rather than what Allah has allowed us to? It is not “better” to pray the full salah when travelling. And it is not “better” for a woman to fast when she is pregnant or breastfeeding.

Many of us have a mistaken notion that the best ‘ibadah (service of Allah) is the one that is made the most difficult. Does Allah really need us to suffer in serving him? Is forced deprivation a way of showing our commitment to Allah? Is that what He requires?

Bukhari reported from Anas that, during his hajj, the Prophet (s) saw a man leaning on both sides on his two sons, whereupon he asked: “What is the matter with this man?” The people said: “He has vowed to walk during hajj.” The Prophet (s) said: “Allah is in no need whatever of torturing this man.” Then he commanded the man to perform his hajj riding. The Prophet, incidentally, performed his hajj while riding his camel.

Truly, Allah does not need us to torture ourselves. Of course, He obliges us to serve Him, he asks for our sacrifice even. Our lives as Muslims should be characterised by struggle in order to create a better world. And, as many Muslims who languish in prisons like Guantanamo Bay and who have lost family members in the struggle for justice know, service to Allah sometimes results in great hardship and sacrifice. But to deliberately and unnecessarily harm ourselves in our ‘ibadah and then think that that harm will be pleasing to Him is not an Islamic notion. It is even worse to think that He will be pleased by us harming an innocent child (or foetus) and thinking that we are worshipping Him in the process. Allah is, after all, the Compassionate and Merciful.

It is not easy to give a blanket fatwa on a matter such as whether a mother can fast while pregnant. That is why the well-known Muslim scholars did not give such blanket fatawa. They preferred to leave the decision in the hands of the individual so that individual decisions can be made, on a case-by-case basis. Every mother is unique; every child is unique. And the decision about whether the mother should fast must be an individual one, made with some degree of assistance from a medical professional. But Allah has granted an exemption. Therefore, there should be no guilt associated with her not fasting if that is her decision, nor should there be any particular glory attached to the fact that she does, if that is her decision.

Warning: this column does not have a halaal stamp!

2007-09-05T01:17:00.000+02:00

In January this year, political commentator Mohau Pheko wrote a rather ignorant article, published in the Sunday Times, about the “halaal” symbol used on various foodstuffs in South Africa. Arguing that South Africa was a secular state that should neither support nor oppose any religious beliefs or practices, she went on to claim that, in South Africa, “Christianity is the de facto official religion of the country”. Her main thrust, however, was that the use of the halaal symbol was a religious imposition on millions of non-Muslim South Africans. As I said, pretty ignorant (and, dare I say, shameful for a political commentator).

At the time, I wrote an 800-word response to Pheko which was not published. While I stand by my argument against her, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the Muslim community in South Africa is heavily accountable for making a mockery of the notions of halaal and haraam.

Halaal now, in South Africa, is understood by many people as meaning a type of food (often, even, as a “Muslim” word for curry – which implies, of course, that pap is haraam even without the vleis). In fact, as all Muslims know, the term means something that is acceptable or permissible. And, generally, Muslims know what things are permissible. Indeed, the first principle of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) is that all things are permissible unless something can be proved to be impermissible (haraam) through textual proof (from the Qur’ān or sunnah).

This, unfortunately, is not the attitude that the South African Muslim community has internalised. Hence we have numerous halaal-certifying agencies (and numerous turf battles between them): because ordinary Muslims are not willing (and have not been allowed) to exercise our own judgement in respect of such issues.

I’m not saying that these agencies should not exist; having travelled in countries tiny Muslim populations, I can appreciate the assistance of such certification. However, the level of control and regulation by these agencies is becoming obscene.

A friend of mine opened a water bottling plant a few years ago and he tried marketing his product mainly to hotels and conference centres. When I met him soon after he started his business, he proudly gave me a few bottles of water – on the house, of course. Beautiful bottles, but I was amazed that they carried a halaal stamp. “This is silly,” I told him. “You are a Muslim, you are bottling this and you know that water is by nature halaal. Why do you have to have this stamp?” It turns out that when he tried marketing his products, he ran into a brick wall. The purchasers at these businesses refused to buy his water unless it was certified “halaal”. They insisted their Muslim clients would otherwise not drink the water!

So, we now have bottled water bearing halaal stamps; we even have toothpicks proudly declaring themselves to be halaal. Because (in complete violation of the first principle of fiqh) in South Africa, of course, the water is haraam unless it can prove itself to halaal. And so too with the toothpick and all the other (obviously permissible) items we see on the supermarket shelves.

On a radio talk show on a Muslim station a few years ago, I called in to ask the representative of a halaal-certifying agency why they certified water. He responded that some of these bottling companies had parties on Friday nights and even if one drop of alcohol fell into the water, it would become haraam. I assumed from this response that these companies have their parties – with alcohol – in the area where their water bottling takes place. Very bad practice. I also assumed from the response that these halaal agencies send their inspectors every Friday night to attend these parties to monitor whether alcohol falls into the water vats. What a taxing job! The next step, I suppose, is for all our taps to have halaal stamps as well. Who know what kind of shenanigans go on at the parties at Johannesburg Water, astaghfirullah!

We are making a pious mockery of what can be very rational notions of halaal and haraam. The principle of the permissibility of all things is quite liberating in how it informs people that the world is available to you to use ethically – except for a small number of things which are prohibited and which are clear.

The Prophet Muhammad (s) is reported to have said: “Allah has prescribed certain obligations for you, so do not neglect them; He has defined certain limits, so do not transgress them; He has prohibited certain things, so do not do them; and He has kept silent concerning other things out of mercy for you and not because of forgetfulness, so do not ask questions concerning them.”

I suspect that bottled water and toothpicks falls in the category of those things about which we should “not ask questions concerning them”. Let us embrace the mercy of Allah, rather than accusing Him of forgetfulness.

The notion of halaal is also one referring to that which is wholesome and good for human consumption. I find it quite comforting to know that the best form of halaal food is that which is good for my body, in which animals have not been mistreated before they became meat on my table. I’m sure many people, Muslim and non-Muslim, would find such a notion beautiful. However, when we mock the concept by wielding halaal stamps like weapons to prevent people from eating – as we do, that beauty fades.

It is this same attitude which has reduced our understanding of the shari’ah to an understanding simply about halaal and haraam (or, more correctly, about haraam) and about punishments: stoning, lashing, amputating hands, etc. Who gives much consideration these days to the objectives of the shari’ah, principles articulated by scholars for centuries such as the protection of life or the protection of the intellect or, as some scholars argue, the protection of the environment. If we place these objectives uppermost in our minds, the way we understand shari’ah and how it should be “applied” would change radically.

Finally, let me remind ourselves about Allah’s warning. We are told in Surah 9, Verse 31: “They (Christians and Jews) have taken their rabbis and priests as lords besides Allah, and the Messiah, son of Mary, although they were commanded to worship no one except the One Allah. There is no deity but He, glory be to Him above what they associate with Him!”

‘Adi bin Hatim, who had been a Christian before accepting Islam, once heard the Prophet (s) reciting this verse and he said: “O Messenger of Allah, they do not worship them.” The Prophet (s) replied, “Yes, but they prohibit to the people what is halaal and permit them what is haraam, and the people obey them. This is indeed their worship of them.”

Let those voices be heard!

2007-07-26T01:16:00.000+02:00

I was recently invited to speak at a meeting called in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The meeting, in Johannesburg, was called by a coalition of women’s organisations and was for women only.

I felt quite pleased and honoured, for a number of reasons. One reason is that there have been numerous attempts over the years to form such coalitions of South African Muslim women that would serve the interests of and speak in the name of these women.

The Muslim Youth Movement (MYM) Gender Desk (as one speaker at another meeting held by a rival coalition noted) had, for many years, held the formation of a national Muslim women’s coalition as one of its objectives and I, as a leader in the MYM, had vigorously supported the idea. So, knowing that there are some attempts being made in this direction were very pleasing (this was before I realised there were rival coalitions – but that’s the subject of another discussion). It was also exciting that women were getting together to talk not just about “women’s issues” but about the “affairs of the ummah”. And, of course, I was honoured to be invited to address this gathering of women. (I must add that I was thrilled when I saw what a large gathering it was: hundreds of women from various parts of Gauteng, from organisations doing all kinds of great work.)

Then, a couple of days before the event, I noticed an announcement of the meeting with a list of speakers. (I usually check when I’m invited who the other speakers might be; this time I didn’t.) And, shock, horror, I realised that all five speakers that were to address this exclusively female congregation were men! I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t make any sense.

Were there no (Muslim) women that could speak about Palestine? There must be, for I have met and heard many of them. I have even heard some of them speak in a mosque. I am sure they were not a figment of my imagination, my fantasy that women actually can speak about politics and other such things. Some of them, as I recall, have really loud voices and shout as if no one was listening to them. Well, maybe no one was, judging from the speakers’ list for this event.

To say that I was disappointed would be a bit of an understatement. Not that I have anything against men, of course. I’m all for men taking a stand and talking politics and other important issues that the world has to face. Too few do. But, this was an event organised by women, for (only) women, and yet there would be no women’s voice to be heard.

Perhaps I’m overreacting; perhaps these women were just tired of listening to each other and needed some fresh voices. Well, my ego would likely prefer that interpretation; it’s nice to think of one’s self as having a “fresh voice”. But my head – which tries to outwit my ego and usually succeeds – said that couldn’t be it.

So, there we were, five male speakers, in this hall packed to capacity with women. Two of the speakers spoke from behind a curtain. I thought it might be because they didn’t want to share a platform with me. (On this occasion, my ego clearly won the tussle and wiped the floor with my head.) The other three of us ignored the curtain. (Incidentally, when the two purdah-ed speakers concluded their talks, they emerged from behind the curtain and walked through the female audience towards the exits at the back of the hall.) A good thing too, since one speaker had a slide presentation which would have lost its power and its point behind the curtain and another had a set of brilliant posters to show the audience.

But, the make-up of the panel was not the only insult to the women. One of the speakers – and I’m not saying whether he was a veiled speaker or not – began his presentation with a patently anti-woman and Islamophobic “joke”. You must have heard the one about the Afghan (although the speaker said Iraqi) man who, before the war, used to walk so many paces in front of his wife but now walks even more paces behind her. When asked about the change, he said, “landmines”. As I said, profoundly sexist and profoundly Islamophobic. But, the audience laughed. As they did for others of his sexist jokes.

Why would women want to listen to a man who insults them and then expects them to laugh at the insults? Why do they then laugh? I suppose one could ask, in another context, why a black person would listen to a white person making racist jokes, expecting him to laugh and why he would then laugh. Power, perhaps? The belief that this man (or white person) is more knowledgeable and, hence, his jokes must be worthy of a laugh? Of course, with an all-male panel, one should expect that women start to believe that men are the more knowledgeable.

Following this event, I reflected a little on the need for groups like the MYM Gender Desk, forcefully promoting the notion that women have a right to speak and be heard. A brochure from that organisation, for example, says, under the heading “Let the women be heard!”: “Women have not had much of a say in the interpretation of Islam, and their voices have been suppressed in mosques and other institutions. There therefore exists a ‘voicelessness’ of women in Islam. We work towards ensuring that the woman’s voice is heard.”

Interesting concept, that: the idea that the woman’s voice must be heard. We might remember that, barely 10 years ago, a Muslim radio station went to court to try and ensure that it could merrily have its programming without a single woman’s voice being heard on air. When the powers-that-be at the station realised that this might result in their losing their licence, they quickly found a fatwa that said it was halal for a woman’s voice to be heard.

But allowing Muslim women’s voices to be heard is more than an exercise of having female tongues moving; it means that women should be able to express themselves and be listened to by all of us on issues that affect the community, on our political, economic and social lives. Many, many Muslim women, in their daily lives, are very influential in the work that they do, shaping the lives of people and influencing the structures of societies. It’s such a pity, then, that they don’t get the same reception in the Muslim community. We do ourselves – as a community – a great disservice by silencing them.

Lessons of freedom from a Muslim past

2007-07-12T01:13:00.000+02:00

Anyone visiting some of the Southern areas of Spain cannot help but feel uplifted and humbled. I had the opportunity recently to be uplifted and humbled when I was in Spain for a conference. The fine splendour of Al-Hamra, the majesty of the excavation of Madinah al-Zahra, the overwhelming beauty of the arches of the Great Mosque of Cordoba are all awe-inspiring - despite the ugliness that has been caused to some of these by Spanish rulers over the centuries. For me, one of the less spectacular sights that touched me in a very special way was a life-size statue in one end of Cordoba’s old city.

In what used to be the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, in a small square about 5 metres by 5 metres, is a statue – little more than life size. The statue is of a man whose Hebrew name was Moshe ben Maimon; Arabs referred to him as Abu ‘Imran Musa ibn Maimun; he is known around the world by the name the Greeks gave to him: Moses Maimonides.

Maimonides was a product of the period of Muslim rule in Spain: a Jewish rabbi, scholar, philosopher and political advisor who thrived under Muslim rule and who served and was served by the Muslim culture that he found himself in. A prolific writer, he wrote mostly in Arabic. This includes his famous theological-philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed and some of his exegeses of the Torah and Talmud, mostly written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew. His writings and his innovative thought - on issues as diverse as theology and medicine - were produced during the period that Jews refer to as the Golden Age of Jewish Culture - during Muslim rule in Spain. He is regarded as the most influential figure in Medieval Jewish philosophy. He remains the most widely debated and controversial Jewish thinker among modern scholars.

While Maimonides’ writings on philosophy influenced a number of Muslim philosophers, he acknowledged a great debt that he himself owed to Muslim philosophers who were also children of the same period and who spent at least some of their time in the same city – Cordoba – that he is famously linked with: especially Ibn Rushd, Ibn Farabi and Ibn Sina. After Cordoba, Maimonides lived some part of his life in Morocco and then in Egypt, where he became a physician and adviser to Salahuddin Ayyubi. He became known as the greatest physician of his time.

It was a glorious period in history; a period which saw often sharp debate between many luminaries who have shaped how we today view the world, some of whom I have mentioned above. It was a period and a context of intellectual growth, based on an intellectual freedom that was fostered and protected by the Andalusian society and its Muslim rulers, a freedom that was regarded as paramount in the development of civilisations.

Maimonides’ statue is particularly poignant because he, a Jew, is a symbol of a kind of religious and intellectual tolerance that allowed such civilisational growth and fostered such development in human thought and such scholarly endeavour. He is a symbol of an Andalusian society that freed the mind and acknowledged and rewarded those who exercised these minds in the service of knowledge and of people.

How sad, then, that Maimonides and his family were forced to flee their homes in fear of the new rulers, the fundamentalist Almohades (or Al-Muwahhidun), who were intent on converting everyone to Islam. How tragic, that that period of religious and intellectual freedom (and thus growth) which is an example for all civilisations, was followed soon after by a period that we can look back on as one of the worst examples of religious intolerance and persecution – the Christian conquest and the Spanish Inquisition, which resulted in a genocide against Jews, Muslims and Unitarian Christians.

The rule of the Church that followed Muslim rule in Spain saw some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we know of. That period witnessed the unrelenting persecution of religious minorities (including Christian minorities), the brutal suppression of independent intellectual exercise and the fiery attacks against women who dared to think or speak for themselves. It was also a period when - as often with such contexts - words and labels took on different and particularly horrific meanings and implications. Terms like “witches”, “heretics”, and “Moors” were all employed skilfully as part of the agenda to suppress any independent thinking and action.

No Jewish Maimonides could arise in such an environment, no Muslim Ibn Rushd.

Andalusia, during its heyday, presents an important lesson for the world today - especially for Muslims. The critical importance of free thought for the development of Islamic scholarship, the Muslim ummah and humanity more generally, cannot be taken for granted. The fear that often inflicts Muslim thought and debate today - on minor jurisprudential as well as on major philosophical matters - is an unhealthy feature that suppresses our growth and development as individuals and as communities. The fear of being called a feminist or a kafir by fellow Muslims is more characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition than it is of Muslim Andalusia.

For those of us that live in Muslim minority contexts, even the period after the fall of Andalusia - when Muslims there became a minority - presents important lessons. The fatawa that fuqaha of the period gave for the persecuted Muslim minority are fascinating to read as one witnesses their grappling with changing circumstances, with their attempts to relate the shari’ah to an entirely new and previously unheard-of context.

It is this heritage of Andalusia - along with the heritage reflected in Al-Hamra and the Grand Mosque in Cordoba - that has resulted, over the past few decades, in a number of Spanish people questioning their own identities. Their need to reclaim the Muslim heritage of Spain as Spanish heritage has resulted in many of them converting to Islam and seeing in Islam a continuation of the Andalusian tradition. Many other Spaniards who see the same need to reconnect with that tradition, but without becoming Muslims themselves, also play a role today in the reclamation of Spain’s Muslim past and in restoring respect to the period of Muslim rule in Spain

Justified strike, unjustified violence

2007-06-13T00:58:00.000+02:00

It is the largest strike in democratic South Africa. And a very necessary strike too.

All of us that complain bitterly about the poor service we receive from civil servants such as nurses, police and teachers, and complain about the level of corruption in some of these sectors should pause for a moment to consider how much we as a society actually value these public servants – as reflected in how much we pay them to serve us.

Their salary demands certainly are not unreasonable and their tough negotiating attitude is definitely justified. The fact that this strike brings together four union federations and a number of independent unions of public sector workers in a joint action is itself a reflection of the level of anger and frustration among these workers who regularly hear about how the South African economy is growing but don’t see the real benefits of this growth for themselves.

But such frustration and anger is not sufficient justification for some of what has been characterising this strike.

In particular, it is a grave problem that health workers have taken the kind of attitude they have. Many of them insist on striking even though, in terms of the Labour Relations Act, they are regarded as essential service workers and hence not allowed to go on strike. Such a stipulation is, of course, entirely justifiable and moral.

Hospitals have to function. Sick people have to receive treatment. The measure of the morality of a society is how that society treats its most vulnerable members. This includes those that are sick, the aged and the children. When we treat these vulnerable groups simply as pawns to serve our own interests – no matter how justified those interests might be – we lose a fundamental moral argument about the justice of our cause. When we are unconcerned that the fight for our own interests will endanger not only the well-being but even the lives of people within these vulnerable groups, then we, as a society, border on the criminal.

Let us also be clear about the state of vulnerability that we are referring to. I have a medical aid hospital plan. If my family members need to be hospitalised, we will go to a private clinic. Most of the public sector workers on strike belong to medical aid schemes that provide them with very good benefits – mostly better than what I have. The people who need to access health services at public hospitals and who are currently being turned away from Chris Hani Baragwanath in Soweto and from King Edward in Durban and from Tygerberg in Cape Town by striking nurses come from the poorest sections of our South African community.

They are not just vulnerable because they are ill; they were already vulnerable because of their poverty. They are, most of them, part of the working class. And, most of them pay a considerable amount of money to transport themselves to hospitals – only to then be turned away without treatment.

And so, we might ask, what is the commitment of striking workers to the broader interests of the working class – not just to workers. What is their commitment to working class mothers and gogos who have to access health services? What is their commitment to babies born (or about to be born) into the working class? What is their commitment to the parents of any child who might die because of the strike?

While we all should not only sympathise with but actively support the just struggles of public servants for better wages and better working conditions, we should also expect better service from our public servants. And that better service, in the case of health workers, should be available even during a strike like the current one.

The ongoing, constant struggle of workers for better working and living conditions is an extremely important one and critical for the development of a democratic society. Workers form the backbone of a society and their proper and just compensation for the work they do and their building of our society must be provided for.

But workers in the public sector, particularly those in sectors such as health, have a special role and responsibility of service. This does not mean that they should be expected to serve completely selflessly and without expecting just rewards. But it does mean that that special responsibility must be paramount and must be privileged.

It is not privileged when nurses in public hospitals turn patients away and when nurses who are working are dragged out by their striking colleagues and prevented from saving lives.

Perhaps these incidents should not surprise us, however. We live in a society where human life and well-being has been considerably cheapened. When a person can be killed for a cellphone, should we be surprised that people are refused treatment by others who want increased salaries? Or that principals get sjamboked in their schools because they insist on keeping these schools open for learners who want to attend?

Additionally, South African society is increasingly becoming materialistic and individualistic. Again, is it any wonder that some workers would adopt as violent an attitude as in the examples above, when they regularly see evidence of people that they worked and grew up with suddenly join the ranks of millionaires and billionaires, when those who used to be leaders of their trade unions have become – overnight – directors of corporations and driving flashy cars and living in the most upmarket suburbs? Why, workers would wonder, should they not share in this new-found wealth of our nation.

Indeed, the concern only for the self – and its concomitant lack of any concern for other people – is at the heart of much of the violent crime in South Africa. And I am not sure that we can expect that to change for as long as our society bases its understanding of progress on a capitalist notion of wealth and individual advancement without acknowledging the need to address the very critical basic needs of the vast majority of our people.

Workers, and the working class more generally, have an important role to play in this, in stressing working class solidarity – as we have seen with sympathy strikes in the past weeks – and in stressing human solidarity. The lack of solidarity gives rise to a lack of care and to unconcern about the well-being of people that we are responsible for and, even, an unconcern about whether they live or die.

Children and mad people not allowed. Oh, and women too!

2007-05-17T04:28:00.000+02:00

Like most other people with email addresses, I am swamped daily by junk mail that chews up my bandwidth and wastes my time as I hit the worn “delete” button. With all my spam filters, I still receive a few hundred spam mails a day in all my email boxes combined.

It is, therefore, quite amazing that my eye spotted a gem of an email in among the junk recently. I opened the attachment – curious at the subject line – and saw a bold headline. “Children and the Musjid,” it said. Since it was only four paragraphs long, I read it. Actually, I think I read it because I have a latent masochistic streak (and maybe because I sensed the possibility of material for my column).

Quoting a hadith, the author (a well-known “Hadhrat Maulana” from India) says that children and insane people should be kept away from the mosques “to safeguard the purity and sanctity of the Musjid”. He goes on: “Children as well as insane people are careless in regard to matters of tahaarat (purity). The possibility of them defiling the Musjid is strong.” The author adds a few sentences on the problem of mosque carpets being defiled by children and gives instructions on how such carpets must be cleaned (“remove the particular portion and wash it”).

Children also, according to the author, “create a disturbance distracting the attention of the musallis. The Shariah, therefore, does not permit bringing children to the Musjid.”

Of course, this is not new. We have heard it all before. But it irritates me each time I hear it.

The “defilement” argument, of course, seems to be most relevant and convincing of the need to keep children (and mad people) out of the masjid. But it is not consistent with the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (s). Anas b. Malik narrated that a desert Arab stood in a corner of the [Prophet’s (s)] mosque and urinated there. The people shouted, but the Messenger of Allah (s) said: “Leave him alone.” When he had finished, the Messenger of Allah (s) ordered that a bucket (of water) should be brought and poured over it.

This was an adult man that deliberately urinated in the mosque. The Prophet’s response was one of compassion and understanding, not of hysteria, punishment and proscription for the “defiling” of the mosque. Yet Hadhrat Maulana wants children to be banned from mosques because there is “the possibility of them defiling the Musjid”.

But it is necessary to look at the broader picture too. The Prophet’s (s) attitude to children more generally and, in particular, his response to children in the mosque is crucial to examine. We know that, while he was praying salah, he picked up his grand daughter Umaymah. There are also reports of his grandson, Hasan, sitting on the minbar while the Prophet (s) was delivering a khutbah. And a report of an incident when he was leading the salah and, while in prostration, one of his grand children jumped on his back. The Prophet (s) stayed in prostration until the child got off. When people asked about the lengthened prostration, the Prophet (s) explained the reason. He did not then forbid the children from entering the mosque, complaining about their being a “distraction” to the worshippers or speak about “the possibility of their defiling” the mosque. His attitude towards children, in general, was one of compassion and love and he extended this to the mosque.

Yes, of course, little children will make a noise in the mosque – else they can’t be little children. I’m sure Hasan and Husain and Umaymah made a noise in the Prophet’s (s) mosque – else they couldn’t have been little children. Yet their grandfather’s response was an inviting, rather than a repelling one.

And that is a reflection not only of the compassion and love for children that the Prophet (s) had, but also of his wisdom. How could he, on the one hand, instruct people to pray their salah in the mosque and advise them to instruct their children to pray salah from age seven and, on the other hand, prohibit children from coming to the mosque. Where will they then pray? At home without their parents?

More importantly, how do we expect children to grow up feeling an attraction to the mosque and the activities in it if, when they are young, they are made to feel unwanted and like outsiders in that space? Such an attitude will either result in little Muslim schizophrenics or in those children extending their mosque exile into their adulthood. If we want adults to fill our mosques, we have to invite them in when they are kids.

The attitude of “kids and mad people out” is also reflective of a broader problem. Those who usually are most vocal about keeping children out of the mosque are also those who are most vocal about keeping women out of the mosque. What such people really want, it seems, is for mosques to be (in most places in South Africa, to remain) exclusive men’s clubs.

Perhaps we should also open little cigar rooms at the back of the mosque (or, perhaps, little argila / hooka rooms) so that the men can have quiet, undistracted, undefiled periods of prayer followed by good ol’ male bonding with smoky rituals.

I must add that I do think the notion of the sounds of children playing (and even crying) being regarded as “distractions” is not a savoury and, dare I say, “sunnatic” one. Children sounds should be consoling and comforting to our hearts, music to our ears and should, in fact, help to focus us on Allah’s presence through hearing the sounds of his miracles.

But I can understand that some among us would feel distracted by such sounds because we might think that these are the sounds that only women should hear, because only women should be caring for children. Again, it’s an attitude contrary to that of the Prophet (s).

I wonder how such people would have enjoyed their prayers in the Prophet’s (s) mosque – where children jumped onto the imam’s back while he was in sajda, where Bedouins urinated on the floor and where, according to a report in Bukhari, dogs (which had urinated) would even walk through the mosque. (Hamza bin ‘Abdullah narrated: “My father said. ‘During the lifetime of Allah’s Apostle, the dogs used to urinate, and pass through the mosques. Nevertheless they never used to sprinkle water on it.’”)

Such defilement! Such distraction! Almost makes one feel that it’s better to pray in the darkest corner of one’s house!

Accountable for our silence

2007-04-18T09:14:00.000+02:00

I suppose we should be pleased and relieved that such a wide range of forces across the world is taking up, so seriously, the issue of the massacre of Muslims in one part of the world. One would certainly be hard-pressed to find the international Zionist movement to be so passionately against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or the Christian right calling for a UN force to prevent the massacre of Iraqis.

But Zionists and the Christian right have not only jumped onto the Darfur bandwagon, they have even eclipsed the left in their passionate support of the people of Darfur (and their calls for military intervention). Suddenly, one sees huge campaigns organised by such groups about Darfur. Even the South African Union of Jewish Students is now focussing its attention on the massacre of Muslims in Darfur.

What is it that has resulted in this outpouring of support for an oppressed Muslim community? Where are Muslims in all of this? And what is really happening in Darfur?

Apart from these usually anti-Muslim groups, leftist organisations, activists and intellectuals have been speaking about the Darfur crisis for the past few years. They have taken up the issue variously from the perspective of a human rights catastrophe, (which it is), as a genocide (which it isn’t), with an eye on imperialist objectives in the region (which are substantial), as a racist war by Arabs against Africans or a combination of the above.

The Muslim response, however, has been quite muted – internationally, with few exceptions (including a protest outside the Sudanese embassy in Pretoria organised by the Muslim Youth Movement and supported by the Palestine Solidarity Committee). Most Muslims in South Africa are generally ignorant about what is happening, don’t buy into the usual media spin about the issue but don’t bother to find out for themselves what the truth is and have a knee-jerk reaction to the news that Muslims might be committing any kind of atrocities. Thus, because the issue is framed as a Muslim government massacring other people, South African Muslims either prefer to remain silent on the matter or to defend the Sudanese government.

Since when are we able to believe and defend a Muslim military dictatorship? Undemocratic, dictatorial governments exist across the Muslim world. They all, without exception, deserve our scorn, derision and active opposition. And there really is no reason to believe them when they defend themselves against charges of human rights abuses. The Sudanese government, for all its pretence of being some kind of an ‘Islamic’ government, is no exception.

As regards the Darfur crisis, Muslims should be in the forefront of the campaign in support of the unarmed and brutalised masses in that region. Darfur, once a great Muslim empire, today is being raped and its people are battered and tormented as pawns in a political battle. And its assailants are all Muslims. The Muslim enthusiasm for Darfur should be no less than the Muslim enthusiasm for Palestine or Iraq. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

And the pretended uncertainty that some Muslims have about Darfur, based on the fact that Zionist and Christian right groups are campaigning on the Darfur issue is, at best, a smokescreen for ignorance and apathy and, at worst, an excuse for being silent in the face of Muslim human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

Yes, these groups have their own agendas for supporting the Darfur cause. The Zionists, for example, have long insisted that the Palestinian solidarity movement around the world should also target the various Arab regimes for their human rights violations (as if the argument that “my neighbour is as bad as or worse than I” makes my oppression ok). Having failed to distract the movement in that way, Zionists have now chosen to take up their own campaign against a Muslim regime so as to divert attention away from the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

There is also a strong American imperialist agenda behind the sudden concern for African victims of gross human rights violations: oil! Sudan, it has been established, has the largest oil reserves in the world. But, that oil has been promised to the Chinese by the Sudanese government. Darfur is a convenient entry point for a soft occupation and establishment of foreign military bases in Sudan.

So the historically-known supporters of oppression and dictatorship do have their own agendas. But, that should not cause Muslims to ignore the very real suffering of the people of Darfur. As an aside at this point, I should point out that the reason I refuse to call the crisis ‘genocide’ is because ‘genocide’ implies an intention and an effort to wipe out an entire group of people based on their religion, ethnicity or other such characteristic. Such an intention and effort does not exist in Sudan. The Fur people (from whom Darfur gets its name) are not being attacked because they are Fur. Indeed, I have met Fur people who live undisturbed and, sometimes, happily and comfortably in Khartoum.

There are complex reasons for the Darfur crisis (and the allegation of Arab vs. African is not one of them). Primarily, as with many other wars and battles, the crisis is caused by a battle of elites: Fur elites and Northern Sudanese elites – who have ruled together for many years, sometimes tenuously – have fallen out among themselves because they could not agree on the sharing of power. The former then decided to win their demands through insurgent action. The government retaliated with the kind of barbarism and brutality that makes one ashamed to be human. Conveniently for Khartoum, there was another factor that assisted it in prosecuting its war: increased desertification in the North West had intensified the competition for land between the agriculturalists in Darfur and the pastoralists further north. The government mobilised this competition, armed certain groups within the pastoralist community and led them into a brutal war.

The victims – the people of Darfur – are those who are not part of the elites in battle and who, in fact, benefit little from any of these elites. And so their lives have been made miserable, tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of people have been massacred in the most terrible ways, livelihoods and homes have been utterly destroyed, war crimes have been committed, villages have been bombed from the air by government forces, rape has become commonplace. The once powerful empire of Darfur is virtually a waste land. And innocent, struggling people are – as usual – the victims.

The perpetrators – Muslims, all of them – intransigently refuse to account for their actions. The Sudanese government has just agreed to allow UN forces into Darfur. We wait to see whether that is an agreement that will be honoured on the ground. And we wait to see how the imperialist forces might use the UN involvement for their own ends. And so, while the Zionists and the imperialists and the UN argue and debate about how best to resolve the Darfur crisis and argue about whether it is a genocide, the people of Darfur continue to die and to suffer and to become refugees and to become miserable. And all of us who remain silent – whatever excuses we use for our silence – will one day be accountable for not speaking out.

And to Him is our return

2007-03-26T08:22:00.000+02:00

“The Hamas government must be recognized, not only because recognition of Hamas would be good for Israel… but because this is the right move by any criterion of justice and international law.” Such a statement is probably not unusual to many Al-Qalam readers. But it is unusual for many Jews and particularly when it comes from an Israeli Jew.

It was these kinds of statements that made Tanya Reinhardt an enemy to many Zionists; it was the same kind of statement that endeared her to Palestinians and Palestinian supporters globally. And it is these kinds of statements that are being remembered now in obituaries and speeches around the world. Professor Tanya Reinhardt died on Saturday, 17 March 2007, aged 63.

A linguist (who studied under that other very famous Jewish linguist known for his pro-Palestinian positions, Noam Chomsky), Tanya was a strong, outspoken and unwavering critic of Israeli policies and a strong defender of Palestinian rights. Apart from her against-the-grain comments on the Hamas electoral victory, she also opposed the Oslo Accords at a time when there was much euphoria about it globally – including from many Palestinian quarters; she argued that it would perpetuate and strengthen the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and she was proved correct. She also insisted that the real reason for Israel’s recent war against Lebanon was to make the Litani River Israel’s northern border.

But, arguably, her most important contributions to international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle was her contribution to the debate on the boycott of Israeli academics and academic institutions. Favouring a boycott, she nevertheless differentiated between institutions and individual academics, offering a nuanced perspective on the boycott question that has been quoted, analysed and critiqued by the Palestine solidarity movement around the world. These positions resulted in her academic position at Tel Aviv University becoming increasingly uncomfortable and, in December last year, she moved to New York to teach at New York University.

Tanya Reinhardt is among those who, being part of a privileged oppressor class by accident of birth, are able to transcend that accident and fearlessly articulate themselves in favour of justice and in opposition to their privilege. Like a number of other Israeli Jews and a number of White South Africans under Apartheid, she chose the difficult path of speaking truth to power, despite the uncomfortable and, often, frightening personal consequences.

When I heard of Tanya’s death, I immediately sent out an email to the Palestine Solidarity Committee mailing list with the subject: "Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un – To Allah we belong and to Him is our return." Later, I remembered what I had been taught when I was a little boy and realised that some Muslims might take objection to my subject line. Many Muslims are taught – as I was – that when you hear news of a Muslim death, you should respond with these words from the Qur’an. However, when you hear of the death of a non-Muslim, you should respond “Fi naari jahannam” – Into the fire of hell.

Fortunately for me, I was quickly dispossessed of such unIslamic notions when I joined, at age 14, a halqa of the Muslim Youth Movement. It was there that I learnt to study the Qur’an and it was there that I learnt of Qur’anic verses such as 2:62: “Verily, those who have attained to faith [in this scripture], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.” And verses such as 5:69 and 22:17. How could I, after this, say “fi naari jahannam” when Allah’s attitude and guidance was so different?

I was also exposed to various ahadith related to this issue, such as the one where the Prophet is reported to have stood up when the funeral of a Jew passed by. When he was told the deceased was a Jew, he responded: “Is it not a living being?” Muhammad (s) also performed the funeral prayer for Abdullah ibn Ubai, the leader of the hypocrites in Madinah, and gave his shirt for Abdullah to be buried in.

The attitude that many of us Muslims have of us being a chosen people who exclusively will realise the favours of Allah must be debunked. We cannot afford to offend the spirit of the Qur’an with such selfish wishes which the words of Allah and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad militate against.

The Prophet showed extreme concern for all who were to die or had died. Remember his loving attempts to counsel his uncle Abu Talib when the latter was on his death bed? Yet Abu Talib refused to embrace Islam even at the very end. Muhammad’s (s) attitude was always one of mercy, not one of hatred or anger – even towards those who had sworn to be his enemies.

That mercy is beautifully captured in a hadith narrated by Usama bin Zaid: “The daughter of the Prophet (s) sent (a messenger) to the Prophet requesting him to come as her child was dying, but the Prophet returned the messenger and told him to convey his greeting to her and say: ‘Whatever Allah takes is for Him and whatever He gives, is for Him, and everything with Him has a limited fixed term and so she should be patient and hope for Allah's reward.’ She again sent for him, swearing that he should come. The Prophet got up, and so did Sa’d bin ‘Ubada, Muadh bin Jabal, Ubai bin Ka’b, Zaid bin Thabit and some other men. The child was brought to Allah’s Apostle while his breath was disturbed in his chest. On that the eyes of the Prophet (s) started shedding tears. Sa’d said, ‘O Allah's Apostle! What is this?’ He replied, ‘It is mercy which Allah has lodged in the hearts of His slaves, and Allah is merciful only to those of His slaves who are merciful (to others).’”

And so, to Tanya Reinhardt, I say: “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un”. After all, we all – Muslim or not – belong to Allah and we will all return to Him.

Throwing stones in the war of terror

2007-02-15T03:51:00.000+02:00

As I followed the recent story of the Dockrat cousins whose names were put on the US’ list of terror suspects – and which almost made it onto the UN list – I remembered a seemingly-unrelated experience.

In the 1980s, whenever we had protests against the state (none of which had any legal protection), the police usually broke them up. When we organised these on university grounds, we sometimes had a degree of protection. The cops would then look for an excuse for attacking us. Often, they would claim that they waded in with their batons, rubber bullets and tear-gas because of “stone-throwing”.

It seems to me that the US has identified the Dockrat cousins as stone-throwers. And, like with the police in the 1980s, the US does not have to produce any evidence before it jumps in, boots and all.

I have repeatedly said over the past few years that the South African Muslim community has largely been cocooned from the attacks against Muslims in most parts of the world today; we have not really understood what Bush’s war of terror really means for ordinary Muslims. The Dockrat saga has suddenly and painfully brought that war into our front yards. We cannot, anymore, bury our heads in the sand about what it means or think just of our responsibility as being in solidarity with Muslims elsewhere; it is now here!

Perhaps it was to punish South Africa for its Burma vote in the UN Security Council, but for whatever reason, the US decided it was time to drag South Africa into its war. It thus submitted the names of the Dockrats to the UN’s 1267 Committee, set up specifically to “oversees the implementation… of the sanctions imposed by the Security Council on individuals and entities belonging or related to the Taliban, Usama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaida organization” and to maintain “a list of individuals and entities for this purpose”. The Committee has to make all decisions by consensus and since South Africa, as a Security Council member, is a member of the committee, it is able to veto any names submitted. Which is what it did in this case, asking for evidence before it would support any names’ inclusion on the list. It was a correct and principled position. In general, South Africa’s foreign policy sucks. But on this one, we got it right.

The submission of the names was made in the context of a global climate of fear, where many Muslims around the world have been intimidated into silence, acquiescence or, even, collaboration. It is a climate where being Muslim, looking Muslim or sounding Muslim can easily carry uncomfortable (at best) consequences.

Most South African Muslims felt immune from this global climate. Not any more! Especially not after the US has announced it has more South African names to add to its list. And I doubt this is an idle threat. Of course, South Africans have not been completely immune from these experiences. Even our Department of Foreign Affairs is now complaining about South Africans being harassed, interrogated and deported from foreign airports.

As a community, South African Muslims must take principled stands on these issues. And the first principled position is that we will not remain silent in the face of injustices against anyone – Muslim or not. The Dockrats, therefore, deserve the support of the general South African community for as long as they are victims of such arbitrary actions by the US and anyone else. If there is no evidence (that is sustainable in court) produced that they are guilty of anything illegal, they must be regarded as innocent and our community must do whatever is necessary to attempt to protect them from the cronies of that Son of a Bush in the White House.

However, the difficulty about taking a principled stand is that it can become discomforting. It is in recognition of this that Allah says in the Qur’an: “Stand out firmly for justice… even as against yourselves, your parents or your kin…” (4:135). Allah advises us to do the right thing but also advises us that it will not be easy. And so too is it in this case.

I was recently discussing this issue with a friend, just before I delivered a khutbah on the topic. He asked me what I thought of the Dockrat listing but, before I could respond, added, “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” I still insist that there must be proof of even the smoke. Besides, as anyone trying to start a braai knows, there does not have to be a fire where there is smoke.

But his comment brought back to my mind the stone-throwing excuse that the cops used in the 1980s. A problem at some of those protests was that there actually were people who threw stones at the police. Stone-throwing as a form of resistance has its place; a demonstration is not necessarily that place. Those that threw stones from within a demonstration and thus prompted the police attack often fell into one of three categories: agent provocateurs, ill-disciplined individuals or zealots.

All three of these categories exist in the Muslim community today and we cannot afford to concede ground to any of them. Certainly, there are agent provocateurs and spies even in our mosques. We should not be paranoid, but we should also not be naïve. And there definitely are ill-disciplined and over-zealous individuals in our community who will attract the worst attacks of the imperialists’ terrorist war on us, either ignorant or unconcerned of the consequences for the community as a whole.

We would often seek out the ill-disciplined and over-zealous in our protests and give them a good talking-to – or worse. Because in our demonstrations were also children, the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women, the slow-runners, the unfit… Unless they had agreed to be part of a stone-throwing mob and unless they had been informed of the consequences thereof, it was unfair and unjust to force those consequences on them.

We do have people in our community who are sympathetic to Al-Qaida and the Taliban; we do have people in our community who hold the same ideologies as those groups (who do not believe in human rights, who believe that men are superior to and in charge of women, who believe in an Islam that is intolerant of people of other faiths and even of other Muslims who do not agree with them, who believe that only they have the truth from Allah).

The question is: how do we deal with this phenomenon? Can we, as a community, allow such people to expose us to a war not of our choosing? Can we allow them to expose the weak among us to attacks without their being informed of this? Can we allow them to run rampant in our community, insisting that “the kuffar” must be killed (which, of course, includes our neighbours), that women must be locked up in their houses, that Muslims must overthrow all governments of the world and establish a khilafah (I wonder who will be the caliph)?

As much as I supported the first part of the government position on this issue (that they required credible and sustainable evidence) I think that their second part was equally correct: that if such evidence is provided and can be upheld in a court of law, then the government will have to act in terms of its legal obligations.

The Muslim community too, needs to consider how it acts in terms of its moral obligations. The “stand out for justice” verse, after all, implies certain moral responsibilities irrespective of who the other person is: Muslim or non-Muslim. Anyone that promotes injustice – whether an individual or a government – must be isolated by the Muslim community and dealt with in a fitting manner.

A Month of Revenge

2007-01-15T00:42:00.000+02:00

Al-Qalam, January 2007

It has been a month of revenge. First there was the assassination (oops, I meant “execution”) of Saddam Hussain on the day of ‘Id and then there was the US attack on Somalia. Both, acts of revenge.

The need for revenge is never a good motivation for any kind of action. And no one should expect that any action based on revenge will deliver justice. Far from it. It is, in fact, a miscarriage of justice.

In the case of Saddam Hussain, this miscarriage of justice began long before the trapdoor disappeared from under his feet and the rope tightened to snap his neck; it began when he was captured and paraded on TV screens around the world, treated like an animal, having his teeth checked like a cow at an auction. And it continued with a sham trial, the most public and most broadcast kangaroo trial ever. What else does one call a court where two judges get fired because they were “too lenient” with the defendant’s outbursts? Or where two defence lawyers are inexplicably murdered? Or where the judge who sentences the accused to death has personal grievances against that accused?

And can anyone doubt that revenge had a lot to do with the execution when the court, the government and the military occupiers who control that government decide that the execution will take place on the day of ‘Id-al-Adha? Or when the executioners scream out slogans and taunt the prisoner as he stands on the trapdoor that will end his life? Or when these same people refuse to allow the prisoner’s body to be returned to his family, leaving it lying in a truck for hours?

This is not to say, of course, that Saddam was some kind of hero; he wasn’t. He was a thug, a sadist and an oppressive dictator. Granted, he was not more of a thug than George Bush, but a thug nevertheless. One who – at some point in time – took instructions from the thugs of the ilk of Bush.

But the judicial process that Saddam was subjected to did little to even pretend that it intended to deliver justice or truth. Truth, indeed, would have much better been served had Saddam been allowed to live and if he was, slowly and painfully, made to reveal the story of his dictatorial rule. Many of those who rejoice now in the vengeful execution will wonder later whether it had been a good idea, when they realise that despite Saddam having died, they were no closer to knowing what had happened to their families and friends that had faced the wrath of the Butcher of Baghdad.

But while some Iraqis – with the help of their American cohorts – exacted revenge on one man (and two of his cronies two weeks later), the Americans (always wanting to do things on a grander scale than anyone else) exacted their revenge on an entire nation, killing – by most accounts – more than 100 people in the process and assisting to make another 100,000 into refugees.

The American attack on Somalia (and their pushing the Ethiopians to attack days earlier) is partly about revenge. Some 13 years ago, in 1993, the US army was sent packing from Somalia with its proverbial tail between its legs. It was a humiliation for the great superpower which was forced to retreat by an African nation with no government, no army, no state structures and no fancy Black Hawk helicopters. Only 18 American soldiers (not civilians) were killed, but the US army has not lived it down. After all, everyone knows that one American life is worth many other lives. And certainly worth a good few hundred African lives. So after that incident and the death of those 18 soldiers, the US has watched Somalia from afar, licking its wounds and waiting for the right time to get back and stamp its superiority on that troublesome nation.

And then, when the time was right, it created the opportunity to do so. Did the US suddenly discover than three Al-Qaida leaders were living in Somalia? Surely if the claim is true, then the US has better intelligence than that. The Union of Islamic Courts has been “in control” of most of Somalia for more than six months. Why did the US not try to capture these “Al-Qaida” members earlier? More fundamentally, of course, is that the US believes it quite appropriate that in pursuit of three suspects of some crime, it might use an AC-130 helicopter gunship and indiscriminately shoot up entire neighbourhoods. Oh wait, they are Africans and Muslims, so who cares. And it doesn’t really matter whether the “Al-Qaida terrorists” are captured or killed, or not. It doesn’t even matter whether they exist. I can imagine George Bush, who believes that God communicates with him, repeating to himself over the past few weeks “I shall have my vengeance!”

When I was much younger, I learnt a story in my Muslim Youth Movement halqa which I have not forgotten. It is the kind of story that is useful to recollect every so often, in order for each of us to check ourselves. It is a story about the abhorrence of vengeance. Once Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet (s), was fighting on the battlefield with one of the most powerful champions of the enemy. He finally managed to strike the warrior’s sword from his hand and the man was lying on the ground. As Ali raised his sword to take the man’s life, he spat in Ali’s face. Ali stopped and sheathed his sword. His enemy said, “I don’t understand. You were about to kill me, and after I spit at you, you spare my life?”

Ali replied: “I was going to take your life in battling for Allah’s sake, but when you spat at me, it angered me. Had I killed you then, I would have been a murderer, for I would have struck in anger. I will fight for Allah, but I will not murder for my ego.”

‘This enemy of my enemy stuff doesn’t work’

2006-12-18T00:36:00.000+02:00

Al-Qalam, December 2007
Just over half a century ago, we witnessed one of the most despicable events – lasting more than half a decade – in contemporary history being perpetrated from within the heart of Europe and dragging much of the world into a war. That “event” was Nazi rule in Germany, the Second World War (or the Second European Tribal War, as Malcolm X preferred to call it) caused by that rule and, most especially, the deliberate, planned and systematic genocide of a number of groups of people: Jews, Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, etc.

The scale of that holocaust against all these groups and the systematic nature of it is what makes it one of the greatest tragedies of our time. It is a tragedy that must be remembered, commemorated and learnt from. The message of “Never again” that has become a favourite refrain of Jews – especially survivors of the genocide and their families – must become a driving force in international politics. Never again to genocide, never again to holocaust, never again to ethnic cleansing, never again to the driving of people out of their homes and the creation of refugee populations, never again to the attempt to wipe out entire groups of people on the basis of their ethnicity, “race” (a fallacious concept in itself but one which is used to categorise people nevertheless), class, sexual orientation, religion…

Of course, the “Never again” call and commitment has not seized all people around the world. Hence we saw, just over ten years ago, the genocide in Rwanda; hence we see the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (by those whose people were victims of the Nazi holocaust). History is also witness, of course, to holocausts and genocides before the mid-20^th Century: the European holocaust against native Americans (or First Nations as many prefer to call themselves) and Australian aboriginals being just two recent examples. Many of these (recorded as well as, I am sure, unrecorded) were worse in scale than that perpetrated by Nazi Germany. For example, 80 million First Nations people were murdered in an attempt to completely wipe them off the face of the earth.

However, we should not be thinking in terms of one holocaust being more important than another or allowing one to detract from another. Genocides anywhere in the world, perpetrated against whomever in the world, require our attention and our condemnation. Thus, whether there were genocides before or after 1945 does not detract from the enormous tragedy of the Nazi holocaust. Nor should there be any detraction from this event by the fact of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (even if the holocaust in Germany was used as an excuse for this ethnic cleansing). The slow genocide against the Palestinian people is the quintessential moral tragedy of the day, but it cannot cause us to ignore other moral tragedies. Nor should there be any detraction by the fact that the Nazi holocaust has become an “industry” that is abused for various agendas – including to justify the oppression of the Palestinian people (see Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering).

The fact is that a holocaust took place in Europe in the middle of the 20^th Century. The fact is that there was an intention and attempt by the Nazis to destroy the entire Jewish nation. These facts are sufficient for us all, today and forever, to stand on the side of those opposing holocaust, genocide and all forms of injustice. Jews should be the foremost in these struggles – as they have been in many other struggles.

That I take the Qur’an extremely seriously forces me to want to have nothing to do with those who – for whatever reason or agenda – seek to deny these facts. And it really doesn’t matter to me whether it was 5,999,999 or 6,000,001 Jews and / or others that were killed by Hitler and his murderous followers. It was a genocide against the Jewish people and that is enough for me to be repulsed by it.

That is why I find the recent conference that took place in Iran to be so jarring to my sensibilities. It is not just silly, untactical, not good for the cause of the Palestinian people and insensitive – as others have said. All these are true. But, more important is its attempt – even if only from part of the contingent of 67 speakers, to deny a historical fact and a moral truth. And, being so, it is a psychological rejection of the “Never again” that should be inspiring us. This conference should not have happened, bringing together the people that were brought together. I don’t deny that there might have been some good people (I have great respect for the rabbis of Neturei Karta, for example, who do not deny the Nazi holocaust and support the Palestinian struggle against Zionist racism), but that is beside the point.

What moral, spiritual, legal or political purpose can be served by bringing together people who insist that the number of Jews murdered was not 6 million and people who are arch-racists? I understand the organisers’ insistence that the conference is about allowing freedom of speech, particularly to those deniers of the Nazi holocaust who are not allowed that freedom in Europe or North America. (Remember David Irving who has been sentenced to three years imprisonment in Austria for claiming that the holocaust against Jews did not happen?) Such liars and racists have the right to free speech, but does a Muslim nation need to create the space for them to propagate those lies and hatred?

A friend wrote to me a few days ago about an interview on CNN by Wolf Blitzer (former lobbyist for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)) with David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan who was one of the 67 speakers at the Iran conference. She said:

[Duke] is not just a “former” klansman, he’s still an avowed racist and Americans, especially African Americans, know this. You don’t just wake and decide one morning that you’re not a racist anymore, that takes years of hard work even for soft racists like your average Joe who has beers with his black neighbor and once dated a Latina in high school… Those agreeing with [Duke] are the same people who call us islamofascists. This enemy of my enemy stuff doesn’t work. This conference was counterproductive, reactionary and damaging.

My friend is an African-American Muslim who knows very well what emotions the name of David Duke evokes among African-Americans. For those that don’t know him, a visit to his website will show that the views of the KKK are deeply entrenched in his mind.

Struggles for justice are important; they are what make us human. A deep-seated passion against injustice is crucial in order for us to continue to maintain that humanity. But these struggles themselves must be based on truth, on justice and on always maintaining the moral high ground.

“Stand out firmly for justice,” the Qur’an says, “even as against yourselves…”

Let the angels sing. That’s our culture

2006-11-21T15:46:00.000+02:00

Al-Qalam, November 2006

I’m wondering whether allegations of sexual harassment in South Africa will soon become ‘normal’, like stories of murder, rape and armed robbery. Will we all become desensitised to it to the extent that we yawn when we see yet another story of accusations of sexual harassment against some or other politician.

But I wonder more about how much and why we are patient enough to have our intelligence also assaulted by claims that such incidences are because ‘it’s part of our culture’. The most recent of the culture defences came from ANC chief whip in the National Assembly, Mbulelo Goniwe. His accuser claims that when she rejected his attempt to get her into his bed, he said: “I thought you were a real Xhosa girl.” Do you remember our former deputy president who thought he just had to have sex with the woman who called him “Uncle” because, he claimed, according to Zulu culture a man should never leave a woman sexually unfulfilled?

I was reading one of the scores of articles written about the Goniwe case, entitled “Not in my Xhosa culture” and published in the Mail & Guardian when I realised how close to home this issue of the opportunistic use of culture really was.

After all, isn’t Islam (or, if you will, “Islamic culture”) often used as a justification for the hateful (and, in fact, unIslamic) manner in which many Muslim women are treated – including the ways they are sexually treated in the bedroom? Indeed, many Muslim men use much more powerful religio-cultural arguments to get what they want from women than the vague resort to “Zulu culture” or “Xhosa culture” which is more easily disputed. And this misogyny is fast becoming part of the popular culture of Muslims in South Africa and around the world.

Have you heard of all those pamphlets with “naseehat” (advices) to brides which tell them how to be good slaves to their husbands – including in the bedroom? They all resort to “Islamic culture” or “Islam” to convince the poor woman of her subservient status. Possibly the most famous bedroom-related one is the alleged hadith that, “If a husband calls his wife to his bed and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” When a Muslim man wants his jollies (or anything else from his wife), the best way to get them is to make a religious argument. And hundreds of thousands of Muslim women believe that this is now their unchallengeable duty. No headaches, no upset tummies, no exhaustion because of looking after the babies, nothing can be a good enough excuse for the angels. No questions may be asked, no complaints proffered, no explanations offered.
The methodology of the use of Islam for male sexual fulfilment spans a spectrum – from opportunistically quoting Qur’anic verses and ahadith to adopting certain customs and integrating them into Islamic practice. I heard numerous examples of both types recently when I participated in a conference on Islamic Feminism in Spain. Scholars from various parts of the world – many from the Muslim world – told of their experiences as Muslim women and how Islam is abused in order to subjugate women. Thus it is that while, on the one hand, the angel hadith is used to force wives into sex whenever their husbands want it or the verse from Surah Al-Nisa is quoted to argue that hubbies have an Islamic right to batter their wives (with some good ulama even providing guidelines on how to do it without leaving scars), other sex-related anti-women practices can find no real religious justification. This, of course, does not stop certain Muslims from saying there is religious justification.

An example of this is the case of female circumcision (or what some activists would prefer to call “female genital mutilation” or FGM). Now we all know that this abominable practice (which is also done by Christians in some parts of Africa) has nothing to do with Islam, right? Wrong! It seems that someone forgot to send that memo to the (then) Shaikh of Al-Azhar, Jad Al-Haqq ‘Ali Jad Al-Haqq who, in 1994, ruled that it was an Islamic duty! Indeed, FGM suddenly became equated with Islam itself. Note the statement later by Egyptian Shaikh Youssef Badri: “[Female] circumcision is Islamic… There’s nothing which says circumcision is a crime, but the Egyptians came along and said that Islam is a crime.”

There are numerous other “rules” – usually with no basis in Islam but talked of as if they have such a basis – that seek to regulate women’s behaviour or to separate men and women and to isolate women because, we are told, men are sexually weak and women are temptresses that can lure us weak creatures into sin. Apart from the fact that I, as a man, feel quite insulted by this assertion that I am inherently a weak creature, it is interesting that people can spin an argument in whatever way they want in order to achieve the same objective. A few centuries ago, Muslim women were told they had to isolate themselves from the society because – get this – women’s libido was uncontrollable and, I suppose, a woman would jump the first man she saw in the street, destroying her marriage and the community as a result. Neither perspective has any basis in Islam, but such things easily become part of “our culture” and begin to be regarded as religious.

The Muslim community, I suppose, will probably implode if Muslim women suddenly began asking for their right to experience pleasure during sex. The Prophet (s) is reported to have said: “Let none of you come upon his wife like an animal, let there be an emissary between them.” When asked what the emissary was, he replied, “The kiss and sweet words.” In another hadith, the Prophet (s) points out that one of the deficiencies of a man is that “he should approach his wife and have sexual contact with her before exchanging words and caresses, consequently, he sleeps with her and fulfils his needs (i.e. orgasm) before she fulfils hers.” In a statement that would raise even feminist eyebrows, Al-Ghazali elaborated on the importance of a woman achieving orgasm by asserting, “Congruence in attaining a climax is more gratifying to her because the man is not preoccupied with his own pleasure, but rather with hers.”

And, Dear Imam Al-Ghazali, if he is more preoccupied with his own pleasure rather than hers? Will the angels curse him until the morning? I very much doubt it. After all, my “cultural” understanding is that the angels spend most of their time singing the praises of their Creator; I doubt they will want to waste energy on curses.

Muslims don’t have the monopoly on blood and violence

2006-10-10T16:44:00.000+02:00

October 2006, Al-Qalam

It has now become an established norm – within journalism and within society more generally - that when some violence is committed by a Muslim somewhere in the world, other Muslims are asked to condemn it as if they bore some responsibility for it. This has been a growing trend since the incidents of the 11 September 2001.

Recently, then, when Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14^th century Byzantine emperor as referring to “what Muhammad brought” as “only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached, not only were Muslims in this country asked to respond to what he had said, we were also called on to condemn the few incidents of (contemptible) violence that followed Benedict’s statement.

Apart from the fact that I really don’t care to defend what is done by others that I do not agree with – even if we share the same religion, another problem I have with this knee-jerk reaction is that this call to condemn such acts of violence is a requirement only of Muslims and not of members of other faiths or ideologies when their co-religionists are similarly guilty.

Benedict XVI, in his attempt to reclaim reason and rationality (and Europe) for Christianity, sought to do it partly by demonising Islam, the religion of the foreign, by painting it (even if in passing) as the irrational Other to Christianity’s rationality, as the one which was spread by the sword, as opposed to Christianity’s peacefulness. The greater injustice that the Pope committed against the truth was not what he said about Islam, but what he said (and did not say) about Christianity. It was a deliberate act of forgetfulness of the irrationality and violence of Christianity that has been wrought on the world for centuries. A reminder of some of that violence is, perhaps, necessary for those who demand, ad nauseum¸ condemnations and apologies from Muslims.

The father of Manuel II Paleologus , the Roman emperor that Benedict quoted, was a well-known Crusader king, part of the centuries-long Christian Crusades that were characterised by blood and murder – of Muslims, Jews and even other Christians. Manuel II Paleologus’ rule was followed by another bloody episode in Christian history where the main – though not sole – victims were Christians: the Inquisition. Both of these are part of the European Christian history of violence that Benedict not only does not apologise for, but completely ignores. Both of these rank as among the most bloody and shameful periods in the last few centuries.

A few hundred years later, Europeans were part of a very important – and extremely violent and brutal – Christian project: colonisation. European colonialism destroyed entire peoples, perpetrated the worst and most large- scale theft of property ever and subjugated nations in a manner never before seen in history. At least half of the world continues to suffer from the destruction caused by that period of Christian expansionism. But this is not worthy of Benedict’s attention nor is he willing (as honesty would demand) to claim it (and then apologise for it) as part of Christian experience.

He ignores too the violence visited on Europe by his compatriots just over half a century ago, when the Nazis perpetrated a holocaust that sought to eliminate various ‘undesirables’ – including the genocide that resulted in the murders of six million Jews. And Benedict certainly forgot to note and condemn his own role as a member of the Hitler Youth!

If the Pope were to look to the world today to find instances of violence to condemn in his attempt to set the Church apart from it, he can do no better than to refer to the Crusade of Christian armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by a twentieth century emperor: George Bush. But instances of Muslim violence are so much easier to refer to if one wants to convince Europe of Christianity’s rationality – especially in this day when Islam and Muslims are easily the most convenient whipping boys of the world!

What of that deliberately ignored group in Africa, which has been waging a brutal war for the past 20 years (making it Africa’s longest-running conflicts): the Lord’s Resistance Army which has terrorised civilian populations in Northern Uganda in its efforts to create a Christian state. The LRA is probably the most brutal guerrilla group operating anywhere in the world today. Its signature is the amputation of victims’ limbs or lips. Thousands of Ugandan villagers suffer today as a result of the mutilations and murders visited on the people by these soldiers of Christianity. And about 25,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA (another of its signatures) to be forced to be slaves or child soldiers.

There is much more Christian violence to talk about than can be referred to in one article. But the point is that Christianity does not have less violence and blood in its history than any other religion. Perhaps it has even more than any other religion to apologise for and condemn. Yet no Christian is repeatedly asked – especially when talking of issues of justice – to begin by condemning the Crusades, colonialism, the Nazi holocaust, the LRA and other such painful episodes. (Just as no Hindu is asked to begin by condemning Hindutva murders in India and no Jew is asked to begin by condemning Israeli massacres in Palestine.)

It is not sufficient, as one Christian caller on a talk show recently responded to such incidents, by saying that the perpetrators of all of these and the perpetrators of Apartheid in South Africa ‘are not Christians’. Just as it is not an adequate excuse for Muslims to simply refer to Bin Laden and his cronies as ‘not Muslim’. Muslims have to accept that terrorists exist within our midst and that such terrorists sometimes use their religion to justify their terrorism. So too do Christians have to accept that terrorists have and do exist within their midst and that such terrorism (whether by a state like the US or by extra-state groups like the LRA) is often justified by resort to their religion. It is such acceptance that will help overcome all forms of terrorism. But such acceptance does not imply that one group (Muslims) need to constantly apologise for the violence of their co-religionists before anything they have to say will be regarded as being valuable.

And five years later…

2006-09-14T23:59:00.000+02:00

September 2006, Al-Qalam

It was a tragic day, five years ago. And it heralded the beginning of a new period in the history of our world. The date I’m referring to, of course, is the 14^th October 2001, when the US attack on Afghanistan began. Five years later, the world’s superpower has managed only to secure the better part of the Afghani capital, Kabul, leaving the rest of the country to the mercies of warlords, tribal leaders and the Taliban – who were supposed to have been crushed within weeks.

Five years later, it is clear that Afghanistan was the beginning of a global war against Muslims and against all those who stand in the way of the expansion of the American empire. Whatever the pretext that was used to justify the war to the world, there was no justification for the bombing of an entire country into the Stone Age, for the murder of civilians that accompanied that bombing and for the illegal detentions and torture that formed part of that war.

But Afghanistan was not the only target of the Washington warlords; it was just the beginning – and the world will never be the same again. Not long after, Iraq was invaded and occupied too – this time on the basis of absolute lies. And most other countries of the world were browbeaten into accepting US president George Bush’s war of terror as their own. Many, like South Africa, enacted odious and draconian legislation in order better to deal with the – in many cases non-existent – ‘terrorist threat’.

The ‘War on Terror’ has now also become a franchise. Whether it is Israel wanting to justify its atrocities against the Palestinians and Lebanese or India wanting to make excuses for its clampdown on Muslim activists, all their domestic agendas can be easily tailored to fit into their explanation of the ‘War on Terror’. This gives them carte blanche to use whatever methods they think might be necessary and it allows them to become a US ally. The war against the Palestinian people very quickly became part of the ‘war on terror’. So did the war on Hizbullah, and the war against the Kashmiri people, and the war against the Chechen people, and the war against the Iranian people, and the war against activist Muslims living in the West…

In Gaza, Israel’s war of terror has reduced large numbers of Palestinians to scrounging in bins for food, to mothers suffering that their breasts are not able to produce milk because of their malnutrition and then having to give their babies formula milk. But, not having money, they mix much less of the formula than is required. The result: a generation of malnourished babies. It is a sobering and disturbing thought in the month of Ramadan!

But Bush and Blair’s military war of terror is just one dimension of the overall strategy. And becoming obsessed with that dimension – as critical as it is – is to forget other more insidious dimensions, something we cannot afford to do. One of those more insidious dimensions is the recent repeated rhetorical attack against ‘Islamic fascists’ or ‘Islamo-fascists’ (both Bush and Blair have used these terms recently) and the attempt to cultivate ‘moderate Muslims’. Sadly, a number of Muslims in the West have fallen into the trap, falling – in the process – over themselves to be seen as the ‘moderate’ Muslim voices.

This is not to deny that there do exist ‘fascists’ within our community (just as there do exist ‘terrorists’ within our community). But we certainly have no need of people of the likes of Bush telling us what Islam is and who is a good or a bad Muslim.

The past five years has guaranteed that we can never go back and undo what has happened. It is also a wake-up call for Muslims, a jolting reminder that we need to take responsibility for our community and the actions of its members, that if we are willing to tolerate unIslamic behaviour from within it, then we will be faced with consequences when others are affected by that behaviour, that if we are willing to simply overlook the actions of those Muslims who want to project Islam as a hate-filled, violent, misogynistic religion, then our passivity in the face of this distortion of Islam will result in our being constantly under attack and under the microscope by those looking for the vaguest excuse to get at Muslims.

As the world becomes an increasingly difficult place within which to be a Muslim, as Muslims languish in Guantanamo Bay and numerous other secret and not-so-secret prisons scattered across the globe, this Ramadan must force us to reach new realisations about who we are and how we are to live in this world. It should force us, too, to make renewed commitments about how we relate with the people we live with – in this country and beyond.

One of those realisations needs to be the understanding that, as we do not live alone, so too can we not fight our battles alone. While many of the governments of the world might be pursuing an imperialist agenda that is drafted in Washington, the peoples of the world do not necessarily accept such agendas. It is these people – Muslim and, especially, non-Muslim – that are our allies. Those Muslims that think that they can (or would like to) continue living in little ethnic cocoons will find – if they haven’t already – that such spaces are more dangerous than being comfort zones. And those that have not yet discovered this truth will one day find out – with a rude shock. And, then, it might just be too late.

It was the oranges

2006-09-13T13:23:00.000+02:00

Al-Qalam, September 2006

The old man walked into the Beirut office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), parcel in hand, and asked for Leila Khaled. The PFLP guards refused. It was 1971 and, following her hijackings of two aeroplanes in the past two years, Leila was a prime target for Israeli assassination. The man explained that he had just returned from hajj and an anonymous Iranian man had asked him to deliver the parcel to Leila. After the regulatory bomb check, the suspicious guards opened the parcel to find an Iranian carpet.

Moving between three countries, trying to avoid Israeli attacks, repeatedly becoming a refugee, Leila always ensured that the rug travelled with her – even though she never used it and even though it sometimes meant leaving behind other valuables. Two years ago, during a television interview in Iran, she called for the rug donor to identify himself so she could thank him. Instead, a woman approached her, explaining that she was the man’s daughter. He had died two years previously. On his death bed, he had asked for Leila Khaled’s picture to be placed on his grave. And on his grave stone his family had had the following words inscribed: “He died without meeting Leila Khaled.”

Such was the love of people around the world for this Palestinian revolutionary. She has been eulogised in scores of languages, even referred to as the “female Che Guevara”. Counted among those who admire her are a number of South Africans who, over the past 37 years, have named their daughters “Leila” or, even, Leila Khaled.

But almost four decades after the courageous acts that Leila became famous for, many wonder what had happened to her. Had she mellowed? Did she become a “housewife” and a mother and disappear from public life? Does she have regrets about the hijackings that made her an international celebrity? Is she still an activist?

Leila Khaled’s recent visit to South Africa, as a guest of the Encounters Film Festival, answered many of these questions.

No, she has not mellowed; yes, she remains as revolutionary as she was in 1969; yes, she is a mother and wife but that has not changed her commitment to her homeland and the struggle for its liberation; yes, she remains an activist and a committed member of the PFLP and of its politburo, and a member of the Palestinian National Council – the Palestinian parliament in exile. No, she has no regrets about the hijackings; she patiently explains that at a time when the world had forgotten that there even existed a Palestinian people, some dramatic action was necessary to draw attention to the plight of her people. “And we didn’t kill a single person,” she adds.

Of course, everyone wants to know why she did it; what drove her, a 24- year-old woman, to embark on that daring adventure? What inspired her, as a 15-year-old teenager, to join the Arab Resistance Movement and, later, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?

It was the oranges.

She cried at a public meeting in Johannesburg a few two weeks ago when the chairperson related how, as a child refugee in Lebanon, Leila was instructed by her mother not to eat the oranges because “our oranges are in Haifa” where Leila was born and from where her family was forced by the Israelis to flee in 1948. Her mother promised that they would one day return to Haifa and eat their oranges.

The yearning to realise that promise is also the reason that, to this day, Leila’s family does not celebrate Eid; they simply observe it as a quiet family affair: she, her husband and her two sons. Because, as Leila’s mother had told her children, a real Eid can only be celebrated “at home”, in Haifa.

And, in conversation with Leila, it is clear that these are the reasons for her tirelessness, her boundless energy, her fiery enthusiasm which easily could be missed because of her soft speech. It is the need to go back home. So there is really nothing extraordinary about this youngest of four children; she is just like any other Palestinian refugee.

Her quiet demeanour and determined efforts took South Africa by storm in the two weeks that she was here. She had numerous speaking engagements, even more media interviews, met with Nelson Mandela, Minister Essop Pahad, Minister Ronnie Kasrils, Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, various other politicians, Cosatu president Willie Madisha and other trade unionists, various social movements and faith groups. And her message was the same wherever she went: it is foolish for South Africa to think that it can be a mediator between Palestinians and Israelis; South Africans must side with their historical allies, the Palestinian people; the South African government and civil society must take the lead in imposing sanctions and boycotts on the Israeli state; the South African government should listen to more Palestinian voices than just Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah and should grant recognition to the democratic choice of the Palestinian people who elected a Hamas government in recent elections.

Her other message was of hope and love – for South African comrades in the liberation struggle and for allies of the Palestinian people in South Africa. Leila’s commitment to friends is as deep as her commitment to Palestine. That commitment is reflected in the reason she continues to refuse to use the Iranian carpet. She had promised herself that when Palestine is liberated, she would place the carpet in the Mosque of Al-Aqsa and bring her Iranian admirer’s family to Jerusalem to pray on it.

This is a time for fluttering hearts

2006-08-16T11:14:00.000+02:00

August 2006, Al-Qalam

It is times like these that are most dangerous for human beings. It is when the powerful flex their muscles and commit the greatest forms of oppression and destruction against the weak and their property, with the rest of the world watching either helplessly or approvingly, that it is tempting to lose faith in all things human and in all things divine.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard, on numerous occasions, friends saying that they feel that they just want to take a break from the news for a few days – for the sake of their sanity. I too have said it to myself and to others. (Let us for a moment forget the fact that the Lebanese and Palestinians, who, in these weeks, have been bombed on a daily basis, do not have the luxury to “take a break from it all”.)

The need to “take a break”, the disillusionment and hopelessness that many of us wallow in at such times are understandable, but are also reflective of a deeper crisis that we face (I know that I certainly do). It is a crisis whose cause is the forgetting of Allah and whose manifestation is the false belief that we control our own destinies, that we human beings have the power to make things better (or worse). It is this crisis that causes us to feel helpless, frustrated, powerless, overwhelmed and wanting to “take a break from it all”.

Those who are conscious of the reality – the only reality – about who has the Real Power, will have no desire nor any need to take a break because they will not feel helpless or overwhelmed. It is a difficult consciousness to achieve, for it is like handing over one’s self to another, to The Only Other. Allah reminds us of the Only Reality on numerous occasions in the Qur’ān. Significantly, we are also reminded of it at the beginning of Surah Anfal (Spoils of War), the surah that deals with, in the main, wars and fighting.

“Believers are those who,” we are told in the second verse of this surah, “when Allah is mentioned, feel a tremor in their hearts, and when they hear His signs rehearsed, find their faith strengthened, and put their trust in their Lord.” It seems like a “soft” message at the beginning of a “hard” surah dealing with war. But it is, of course, completely appropriate.

For many of us, our relationship to Allah is about praying five times daily and lifting our hands in du’a. It is not enough! Being beggars to God’s beneficence cannot be sufficient. What is required, according to this verse, is, firstly, that the love for Allah is such that the mere mention of His name makes one’s heart flutter, makes one feel faint and almost swoon with love, adoration and an overwhelming physical, psychological, mental and spiritual acknowledgement that He is in charge of the world, that He is the only independent and that we are utterly dependent on Him.

Secondly, according to the verse, that when the signs of Allah (whether the verses of the Qur’an or His signs in Nature) are heard or observed, it strengthens our faith. And what is the nature of this faith? It is the faith not simply in the existence of the Divine. Rather, it is a faith that our lives and our futures are in His Hand, to dispose of as He wills, that we are from Him and to Him is our return, that it is only in Him that we can find succour and solace, that without Him we would not exist and without Him there is no help, no progress, no comfort, no liberty, no justice, no balance, no love.

Thirdly, that we put our trust in Allah. Easier said than done. Because putting one’s trust completely in another is not a matter of words; it is a matter of dependence, of enslavement even. And, in this case, it is a matter of acknowledging the nothingness of our selves and the absoluteness of Allah, an acknowledgement too that He is the only Disposer of our affairs. To put one’s trust in Allah is admitting that we have the responsibility over our efforts (our jihad) but that we have no control over its outcomes; that belongs only to Him.

It is such weakness of heart in the presence of Allah, such strengthening of faith and such utter trust that is rewarded by a certain kind of personal victory. Those who fought at Badr received that reward, as is described in that same surah: “Remember He covered you with a sort of drowsiness, to give you calm as from Himself, and He caused rain to descend on you from heaven, to clean you therewith, to remove from you the stain of Satan, to strengthen your hearts, and to plant your feet firmly therewith.”

The reward is a strength of heart, a firmness of feet, a purity of soul and a calmness of self that is, in the final analysis, invincible. For how can one not be invincible when one believes one is fighting not alone but with Allah’s hand carrying the flag, Allah’s finger squeezing the trigger, Allah’s feet carrying one towards the oppressive and unjust forces?

And when He is so integrally involved, how can we become disillusioned, feel helpless and feel frustrated? And if the outcomes are always His, can we ever be defeated?

Certainly, Hizbullah has shown that a healthy dose of the cause of justice, a dependence on Allah and the need to overcome oppression must always lead to victory. A small militant force, without a state or an army, held off the fourth most powerful army in the world for almost five weeks and, at the end of that period, was still standing. That, in anyone’s books, is a defeat for Israel. But that is not surprising. Of course it would be. For there is no match between, on the one side, arrogance, injustice, oppression and a fear of death and, on the other side, righteousness of one’s cause, defence of one’s people, trust in Allah and willingness to die for justice; the former – no matter what its military capability – will always lose.

It’s not an end

2006-06-18T21:41:00.000+02:00

June 2006, Al-Qalam

In my last column, I focussed on the miracles – physical, emotional and psychological – of birth. I, therefore, thought it appropriate to focus, in this column, on the event that the very occasion of birth begins preparing us all for: death. Indeed, for the Muslim baby, it is as if the moment of birth is a call to the end of life as the adhaan is recited into the baby’s ears. After all, there is no adhaan before the funeral prayer; the adhaan at birth seems to suffice.

Allah reminds us in the Qur’an of the inevitability of death, the fact that no human will be able to escape it. “Every soul will taste death,” Allah says in 3:185. And, again in 4:85: “Death will overtake you no matter where you may be, even in high towers.” However, it is not only inevitable; one’s demise is also completely out of one’s control. “No soul will die,” we are told, “except with Allah’s permission at a predestined time” (3:145). It is Allah’s determination when death occurs and under what circumstances. Often, our attempts to impute meaning about the goodness or otherwise of a person to the manner of his death are often more our attempts to understand and our hopes for the person than the reality. The only reality is that Allah is in charge of and has control over our deaths.

Part of that reality, too, is that death is a return to our Creator. “Every soul is certain to taste death: We test you all through the bad and the good and to Us you will all return,” Allah reminds us in 21:35. Again, in 29:57: “Every soul will taste death, then it is to us that you will be returned.” The return to Allah, of course, is regardless of the character of a person or the life she led in this world; all souls will return to Allah. Death is not an end, simply a transition into a new life, a life in the presence of the Creator.

And because it is a new beginning rather than an end, those who are sincere in their faith are not afraid of it and embrace it without concern. We are reminded of this in Allah’s instruction to the Prophet (s) to issue a challenge to the Jews of Madinah: “Say (O Prophet): ‘You who follow the Jewish faith, if you truly claim that out of all people you alone are friends of Allah, then you should be hoping for death’” (62:6).

For most people, their deaths signal the completion of their tasks in this world. Once they are done, they move on. To think that remaining behind, holding on and refusing to let go, refusing to surrender, is a virtue, is incorrect. Islam places an enormous amount of emphasis on life. To save the life of one person is as if one has saved the entire humanity, and to take the life of one person is as if one has killed all of humanity, we are told in the Qur’ān. Yet there is no great value in simply continuing to be alive. We live in a society where too much emphasis is placed on simply being alive – irrespective of the quality of that life.

If non-Muslim commentators were able to understand such a perspective on death, they would more easily understand the phenomenon of martyrdom bombers and would have no need to fantasise about virgins in heaven or try to create mythical biographies of personal suffering of the bombers.

I recall that when my wife was ill with cancer and we had made the decision to end all her therapy, it was with the knowledge that she would die not long thereafter. But it was also with the understanding that it was more important for her to have a productive, constructive and fulfilling rest of her life than for it to be stretched out to the maximum in terms of time but with her sick and in bed. Terminating her treatment meant shortening her life (theoretically, because only Allah decides on the length of one’s life), but it also meant ensuring that the short life that she had left would be well-lived. And so she spent the next few months going for hajj, co-authoring a book, fulfilling numerous speaking and writing engagements (sometimes travelling across the country to do so). When she was done, when her task was fulfilled, her soul returned to Allah.

The willingness to embrace death, though, should not be interpreted as an obsession with dying. Indeed, while one should be so confident in one’s relationship with one’s Creator that one would be prepared to die in the next moment, one should live one’s life in this world as if one would live forever. One should be prepared to confront Allah at any time, knowing that one has fulfilled the requirements for such a confrontation. At the same time, one plans for one’s activities in this world for the long term, laying the ground for all the good things one would like to do – as if one will be able to do them all without being interrupted by death. There is a very interesting hadith from the Prophet Muhammad (s) in the latter regard. “If the last hour strikes and you are carrying a sapling to the grove for planting,” he said, “plant it!”

In the eyes of babes

2006-05-13T01:31:00.000+02:00

May 2006, Al-Qalam

I was repeatedly reminded, in the past months, of Professor Amina Wadud’s words, from her jumu’ah khutbah on “Engaged Surrender” at Cape Town’s Claremont Main Rd Mosque 12 years ago: “A woman carries her child under her heart for nine months. What she eats the child eats. As she cares for her health, she cares for the child’s health. As she breathes fresh air, she breathes in for the nourishment of the child. As she takes care of her spiritual and emotional state of mind, she cares for the child’s well being… She carries that child for nine months and this is an act of surrender. She is following the will of Allah.

“This is a marvellous example of engaged surrender. The mother cannot take a day’s rest. She cannot lay the child down beside her on the bed and say, ‘Just for today, I think I will not be pregnant.’ More importantly, after the nine months are over, she may not hold onto to that child. She must surrender the child and give in to Allah’s will. For just as Allah commanded her to hold onto that child for nine long months, so must she engage in the act of surrender when it is time to bring the child forth.

“If she continues to [hold onto it], it will mean death for her and for the child. So, she will engage in surrender.”

Over the past few months, as I watched my wife going through the motions – often difficult – of pregnancy, I couldn’t help but remember Amina’s lessons about birth.

The birth of a baby in almost all societies is a joyous occasion. It heralds life and the continuation of life and of society. Human beings see, in babies, the reproduction of ourselves and proof that we will persist. Of course, today, like in the day of the Prophet (s), there are still some societies where sadness greets the birth of a baby girl. Thank Allah, that is not the case in most Muslim communities.

But beyond the hope of survival, what does the birth of a baby mean to us? Most importantly, it is a sign of the Majesty and Glory of Allah.

In Surah Mu’min, Allah says: “It is He who has created you from dust then from a sperm drop then from a leech-like clot; then does He get you out as a child, then lets you (grow and) reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old though of you there are some who die before, and lets you reach a term appointed, in order that you may learn wisdom. It is He who gives life and death. And when He decides upon an affair, he says to it ‘Be’ and it is.”

And in Surah Mu’minun: “Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood, then of that clot We made a lump, then We made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh, then We developed out of it another creature, so blessed is Allah, the best to create.”

The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: “Every one of you is collected in the womb of his mother for the first 40 days, and then he becomes a clot for another 40 days, and then a piece of flesh for another 40 days… Then the soul is breathed into his body.”

The miracle of the human birth can’t but force us into a state of awe, of sensing the presence of Allah in His creation, of realising His Majesty, His Knowledge, His Mercy, His Power. It is difficult to look at a baby that has just emerged from the womb and not to realise the existence and presence of the Creator of us all.

The birth of a baby is also a sign of the Resurrection. In Surah Al-Hajj, for example, Allah says: “Oh humankind. If you are in doubt concerning the Resurrection, then lo! We have created you from dust, then from a drop of seed, then from a clot, then from a little lump of flesh shapely and shapeless, that We may make (it) clean for you. And We cause what We will to remain in the wombs for an appointed time, and afterward We bring you forth as infants, then (give you growth) that you attain your full strength. And among you there is he who dies (young), and among you is he who is brought back to the most abject time of life, so that, after knowledge, he knows nothing. And you (Muhammad), do see the earth barren, but when We send down water onto it, it thrills and swells and puts forth every lovely kind (of growth).”

Apart from these wondrous thoughts that the birth of a baby might cause us to have, my most important contemplation is that, looking at the miracle that is a newborn baby – her innocence, her beauty, her helplessness, her demanding voice – one cannot help but recognise, acknowledge and praise Allah and see His attributes in her.

Over the past few weeks, I often look adoringly at my baby and wonder – fearfully – about the world she has entered. But I take solace in the fact that her very presence is supposed to teach the world about gentleness, love, compassion and mercy. How can a parent feed, clothe, listen to the cries and change the nappies of a little baby and not be filled with compassion?

A Bedouin man once asked the Prophet (s), “Do you kiss your children? We do not kiss ours.” To which the Prophet (s) replied: “What can I do if Allah has removed compassion from your hearts.” Not only does the presence of children teach us compassion; it also is an indicator of the state of our hearts.

Engaged surrender in this context also means realising that once that baby is older, one will have to let go and allow him to lead his own life. As a parent I will not be able to lead her life. Hence Sayyidina Ali’s insightful advice: “Bring your children up differently from the way you were brought up, for they live in an era different from yours.”

Unfortunately, this does not mean we don’t try to impose our aspirations on our children, firstly through their names. And, so, our bundle of joy is called “Imarah Unathi” – a yearning for good “leadership” and an acknowledgement that “Allah is with us”.

Between freedom and unfreedom

2006-04-28T11:14:00.000+02:00

April 2006, Al-Qalam

Another 27^th April has just passed. Another Freedom Day, another set of Freedom Day celebrations. Twelve years after our first democratic elections, the “Vivas” and “Amandlas” continue to be chanted on this day.

I remember a few days after this day in 1994, on the 10^th May, when I stood – all goose pimply – with my family at the Union Buildings as Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first president of a democratic South Africa. It was a great day for all South Africans, a symbol of the fruits of a long, tiresome, tortuous struggle against Apartheid-capitalism and colonialism.

Twelve years later, there aren’t many people who have goose pimples on the 27^th April. Most of those who shared in the struggle and who suffered the deprivations that resulted from being Black today sit with amazement on their faces as they realise that they do not share in the post-1994 benefits.

I know that after this column is read, some readers will be quietly commenting that in a context where the vast majority of Muslims do not participate in any political activity whatsoever, it would be more appropriate for me to call on Muslims on participate politically, rather than harping on the few things that have gone wrong in the system. And that I must acknowledge all the good things in South Africa after 1994. Allow me to quickly dispense with that criticism.

Yes, it is true that the vast majority of South African Muslims have not celebrated even one Freedom Day and didn’t bother disturbing their well-lotioned skins with goose bumps on the 10^th May 1994. It is true that most South African Muslims don’t care about politics (or other people) and, like those large birds with long necks, prefer to bury their heads in the sand until they are sufficiently alarmed about their personal interests and security. Such attitudes need to be confronted, in our mosques, in our newspapers, on our radio stations. Apathy is no virtue and our commitment to Islam obliges us to be involved. So I am not attempting to provide excuses for the uninvolved. It is also true that a lot has changed in South Africa after the death of Apartheid. But it isn’t just “a few things” that are wrong with the system; it has serious problems. The scale of the problems we face do not allow us to hide them for fear of fuelling apathy; the time to speak out has long arrived.

While government-sponsored events around the country trumpeted and celebrated our freedoms on the 27^th, some people chose, instead, to mark the day differently. Thousands of shack dwellers and residents of poor areas in Durban joined for what they called “unFreedom Day”, remembering the suffering caused by Apartheid and which continues today – for some people, in worse ways.

Poor people around the country are losing patience with this “freedom”. Between 1995 and 2002, the unemployment levels in South Africa almost doubled. Today, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of wealth distribution.

Millions of South Africans live in squalor and disease in squatter camps (I prefer this term to the euphemistic “informal settlements” which makes it sound as if squatter camps are ok, just different). If you can imagine sharing a toilet and a tap with 1,000 other human beings, then you can imagine living in a squatter camp.

The basic rights that South Africans fought for seem, for the majority of our people, not much closer to being achieved than they were ten years ago. Of course, this group does not include the distinguished business leaders who have benefited from the elite empowerment of BEE, nor does it include the rich whites that continue to own and control the wealth of this country. Nor, for that matter, does it include the majority of those that grace our newspapers and television screens as the political elite. Most of these latter groups seem to have lost touch (for those that were, at some point, in touch) with the masses of poor people, increasingly vulnerable to Aids, crime and death by starvation.

It is these millions of poverty-stricken people who either snubbed their unwashed noses (because they just don’t have the water to wash) at Freedom Day or who participated in alternative, unFreedom Day events. After all, what is freedom for you when you do not have access to water or electricity, when you live in a shack in a stinking camp with sewage flowing in the streets, when you live in fear of fires and rats at night and of violent death during the day, when there is more certainty in the prospect of long-term unemployment than in “a better life for all”.

It is these millions that decided to vote with their feet in the last two elections: this year and in 2004, by keeping away from the voting booths. It is these millions that ensured that only 38 percent of South Africans of voting age voted for the ANC in 2004. There is a message there somewhere, for those who wish to think.

Nabi Muhammad (s) is reported to have said that: “Poverty leads to unbelief.” Understanding this hadith implies a careful examination of the role that Muslims have to play in this country – between now and next year’s Freedom Day.

Of course, many Muslims will continue on our merry way with our heads buried way down there, unaffected and unaffecting. Many others of us pretend to be politicians and try courting those we think are the power brokers in our society: invite Thabo for tea, samoosas for Naledi, supper with Essop and everything will be fine. I’m surprised no maulana or shaikh has pitched up at the Johannesburg High Court in turban and long dress (as some did when Schabir Shaik was in court) to support Zuma and help him sing “Awalethu Mshini wam”. Then there are those who masturbate our communal egos by getting newspaper posters of government ministers and counting for us how many “Muslims” are in cabinet and in parliament. As if that should assuage or massage our consciences.

There will be no freedom in South Africa as long as people continue to be forced to live as sub-humans – while others kill themselves of overeating. There will be no freedom as long as we allow the voices of the poor to be silenced through constant indignities, through manipulating the law, through making this a country that serves only capitalism (seems the struggle against Apartheid-capitalism is not really over).

Poverty leads to unbelief. And to crime. And anger. And uprisings.

There will be no Freedom Day until we are all free!

We cannot tolerate such misogyny! No more!

2006-03-28T01:27:00.000+02:00

March 2006, Al-Qalam

The (latest) Jacob Zuma saga should be a cause for concern for all of us South Africans. As we get assaulted – on a daily basis – by tantalising news headlines relating to his rape trial, we should be wondering what the story and the headlines mean for our society.

“She didn’t say ‘no’”, “She didn’t resist”, were just two of the many headlines on newspaper placards lining the streets. And, somehow, the implication was that we can’t really trust this woman who has accused one of the most powerful politicians in our country with one of the most heinous crimes we know of: rape.

Certainly, the crime of rape is not a light matter. Nor is it a light matter to be the person who is accused of it. But it is extremely troubling when the rape victim (or complainant, to be legally correct) is repeatedly portrayed in as negative a light as possible. In the Zuma case, that negative and intimidatory portrayal is happening in the courtroom, outside it and in the media.

Of course, this is not the first case where the complainant is treated in such a manner. (And I doubt it will be the last.) With the accused being the country’s former deputy president, it is, however, probably the most high- profile rape case to have taken place in South Africa.

Inside the courtroom, the complainant has been harangued, accused, mocked, sniggered at and humiliated. Her previous sexual history has been laid out for public display. The fact that she had been raped several times as a child was made light of and tossed around by the defence as if to suggest that childhood rape implies the victim was sexually promiscuous, as if being raped as a child was actually her fault.

The media, ready for the sensationalism that was sure to flow from the rape trial with huge political undertones, humiliated her again – this time in the name of news, the “She didn’t say ‘no’” type of headlines broadcasting to all of South Africa that it might have been her fault after all.

Before readers jump onto that bandwagon and ask, “well, why didn’t she say no?”, we should all remember a few facts about the reality of rape in South Africa. Firstly, the moment of a man preparing to penetrate a woman without her permission is not like an intellectual discussion around a table, where the participants can freely express their views and say “yes” or “no”. A person must be completely devoid of understanding, compassion or imagination to not be able to realise that such a woman must be in extreme fear / confusion / trauma / indecision. It is easy to imagine the woman “freezing”, not being able to say or do anything – as Zuma’s alleged victim claims she was.

Secondly, hardly any woman in South Africa will willingly and easily falsely accuse someone of rape – let alone a senior politician with such massive support in the townships, squatter camps and rural areas of this country. Not when she realises that, in fact, only one in nine female rape victims in South Africa actually report their rape. Not when she knows that of those one-in-nine reports, not all go to court. And not when she understands that of those that do go to court, only seven percent end in convictions – after the victim is lambasted in court.

But the most disgusting performances of injustice and misogyny have taken place outside court, with the perpetrators – Zuma’s supporters – being both women and men. The complainant has been called a “bitch”; those supporting her – mainly members of POWA (People Opposing Women Abuse) – have been called “those bitches”; a woman that some Zuma supporters thought was the complainant was stoned and, more recently, the complainant’s name was displayed on a placard and her picture burnt – to the chants of “burn the bitch”. (Revealing a rape complainant’s identity is illegal under the Criminal Procedures Act and this latest disgusting display should have been followed by a few arrests.)

Even more concerning than these exhibitions of women-hatred is the fact that the protestors’ hero, the man who seeks to be South Africa’s next president, has never, not once, publicly reprimanded, chastised or even corrected his supporters. Instead, he emerges from the courtroom grinning broadly, waving to his adoring devotees who seem ready to make sajda in front of him, responds to the nickname “Zulu Boy” and even leads them in the singing of “Awalethu Mshini wami” (bring my machine gun). The song, as Ebrahim Bofelo has pointed out, is particularly odious in this context because of the phallic connotations of it being sung outside a rape trial.

Although the Qur’an does not mention rape, when I read about Zuma’s trial or watch the sickening scenes on television, my mind strays to the verses of the Qur’an regarding the dignity of women and the need for women’s honour to be protected from too-eager tongues. Indeed, even the famous verses in the Qur’an relating to adultery were revealed not in order to punish anyone for adultery but to punish those who falsely cast aspersions on a woman. In the light of these verses and the sunnah of the Prophet, no Muslim can but feel revolted at the goings-on surrounding Zuma.

But the feeling of revolt is not sufficient. The fact is that the kind of sentiment expressed outside the Zuma courtroom is one that is not too difficult to find within the Muslim community too. Many among us view women who make rape accusations with scepticism, sometimes suggesting that “she asked for it”. How many times have we not heard of women who are beaten up by their husbands and who are then told to go back to the abuser and “have sabr” (patience)? Have we not heard of incidents (not in South Africa, though) of “honour killings” of Muslim women?

Whether in the context of the Zuma trial or within the Muslim community, Muslims need to increasingly commit ourselves to justice for women. Our commitment should include the determination that such things will not happen in our houses and our families. And it should include the determination that we will not shelter those who are perpetrators. Instead, we will expose them, shame them and refuse to have anything to do with them. We will do it in our homes, in our organisations and from our minbars. It is only then that we can live peacefully with our consciences – if we have consciences.