The Essence of Islam’s Theology of Gender - Part II Shari'a

Abdul Hakim Murad

Part 11: Shari'a
..Women’s functions vary widely in the Muslim world and in Muslim history. In peasant communities, women work out of doors; in the desert, and among urban elites, womanhood is more frequently celebrated in the home. Recurrently, however, the public space is rigorously desexualised, and this is represented by the quasi-monastic garb of men and women, where frequently the colour white is the colour of the male, while black, significantly the sign of interiority, of the Ka‘ba and hence the celestial Layla, denotes femininity. In the private space of the home these signs are cast aside, and the home becomes as colourful as the public space is austere and polarised. Modernity, refusing to recognise gender as sacred sign, and delighting in random erotic signalling, renders the public space ‘domestic’ by colouring it, and makes war on all remnants of gender separation, crudely construed as judgemental.


For Muslims, a significant development in the new feminism is the renewed desire for apartness. Contemplating the crisis of egalitarian social contracts, where the burden of divorce invariably bears most heavily upon women, Daly and many others advocate an almost insurrectionist refusal of contact with the male, and the creation of ‘women’s spaces’ as citadels for the cultivation of a true sisterhood. This cannot be immediately useful to Muslims. Hermeneutics of suspicion directed against either sex are irreligious from the Qur’anic perspective. God, as a sign, ‘has created spouses for you, from your own kind, that you may find peace in them; and He has set between you love and mercy.’ (30:21) Nonetheless, the feminist demand for apartness should not be cast aside; it may even converge significantly with Islam’s provision of it.

Other aspects of Shari‘a discourse also call for elucidation. It cannot be our task here to review the detailed provisions of Islamic law, and to explain, in each individual instance, the Islamic case that gender equality, even where the concept is meaningful, can be undermined rather than established by enforced parity of role and rights. Such a project would require a separate volume of the type attempted recently by Haifa Jawad; and we must content ourselves with surveying a few representative issues.


Perhaps the most immediately conspicuous feature of Muslim communities is the dress code traditional for women


Perhaps the most immediately conspicuous feature of Muslim communities is the dress code traditional for women. It is often forgotten that the Shari‘a and the Muslim sense of human dignity require a dress code for men as well: in fully traditional Muslim societies, men always cover their hair in public, and wear long flowing garments exposing only the hands and feet. In Muslim law, however, their awra is more loosely defined: men have to cover themselves from the navel to the knees as a minimum. But women, on the basis of a hadith, must cover everything except the face, hands and feet. 


Again, the feminine dress code, known as hijab, forms a largely passive text available for a range of readings. For some Western feminist missionaries to Muslim lands, it is a symbol of patriarchy and of woman’s demure submission. For Muslim women, it proclaims their identity: many very secular women who demonstrated against the Shah in the 1970s wore it for this reason, as an almost aggressive flag of defiance. Franz Fanon reflected on a similar phenomenon among Algerian women protesting against French rule in the 1950s. For still other women, however, such as the Egyptian thinker Safinaz Kazim, the hijab is to be reconstrued as a quasi-feminist statement. A woman who exposes her charms in public is vulnerable to what might be described as ‘visual theft’, so that men unknown to her can enjoy her visually without her consent. By covering herself, she regains her ability to present herself as a physical being only to her family and sorority. This view of hijab, as a kind of moral raincoat particularly useful under the inclement climate of modernity, allows a vision of Islamic woman as liberated, not from tradition and meaning, but from ostentation and from subjection to random visual rape by men. The feminist objection to the patriarchal adornment or denuding of women, namely that it reduces them to the status of vulnerable, passive objects of the male regard, makes no headway against the hijab, responsibly understood.


A further controversy in the Shari‘a’s nurturing of gender roles centres around the institution of plural marriage. 


A further controversy in the Shari‘a’s nurturing of gender roles centres around the institution of plural marriage. This clearly is a primordial institution whose biological rationale is unanswerable: as Dawkins and others have observed, it is in the genetic interest of males to have a maximal number of females; while the reverse is never the case. Stephen Pinker notes somewhat obviously in his book How the Mind Works: ‘The reproductive success of males depends on how many females they mate with, but the reproductive success of females does not depend on how many males they mate with.’


Islam’s naturalism, its insistence on the fitra and our authentic belongingness to the natural order, has ensured the conservation of this creational norm within the moral context of the Shari‘a. Polygamy, in the Islamic case, appears as a recognisably Semitic institution, traceable back to an Old Testament tribal society frequently at war and unequipped with a social security system that might protect and assimilate widows into society. However it is more universal: classical Hinduism permits a man four wives, and there are many Christian voices, not only Mormons, who are today calling for the restoration of polygamy as part of an authentically Biblical lifestyle. (See, for example, http://www.familyman.u-net.com/polygamy.html)

Islam’s theology of gender thus contends with a maze, a web of connections which demand familiarity with a diverse legal code, regional heterogeneity, and with the metaphysical no less than with the physical. This complexity should warn us against offering facile generalisations about Islam’s attitude to women. Journalists, feminists and cultivated people generally in the West have harboured deeply negative verdicts here. Often these verdicts are arrived at through the observation of actual Muslim societies; and it would be both futile and immoral to suggest that the modern Islamic world is always to be admired for its treatment of women. Women in countries such as Saudi Arabia, where they are not even permitted to drive cars, are objectively the victims of an oppression which is not the product of a divinely-willed sheltering of a sex, but of ego, of the nafs of the male. 

Muslim women have for long periods of Islam’s history left their homes to become scholars. 

Biology should be destiny, but a destiny that allows for multiple possibilities. Women’s discourse valorizes the home; but Muslim women have for long periods of Islam’s history left their homes to become scholars. A hundred years ago the orientalist Ignaz Goldziher showed that perhaps fifteen percent of medieval hadith scholars were women, teaching in the mosques and universally admired for their integrity. Colleges such as the Saqlatuniya Madrasa in Cairo were funded and staffed entirely by women. The most recent study of Muslim female academicians, by Ruth Roded, charts an extraordinary dilemma for the researcher:

‘If U.S. and European historians feel a need to reconstruct women’s history because women are invisible in the traditional sources, Islamic scholars are faced with a plethora of source material that has only begun to be studied. [ . . . ] In reading the biographies of thousands of Muslim women scholars, one is amazed at the evidence that contradicts the view of Muslim women as marginal, secluded, and restricted.’

Stereotypes come under almost intolerable strain when Roded documents the fact that the proportion of female lecturers in many classical Islamic colleges was higher than in modern Western universities. A’isha, Mother of Believers, who taught hadith in the ur-mosque of Islam, is as always the indispensable paradigm: lively, intelligent, devout, and humbling to all subsequent memory.

Conclusion: Muslim Societies Today

But until past ideals are reclaimed, a polarisation in Muslim societies is likely. The Westernised classes will reject traditional idioms simply because those styles are not Western and fail to satisfy the élite’s self-image. The pseudosalafi literalists will continue to reject Sufism’s high regard for women, and its demand for the destruction of the ego. The same constituency will defy legitimate calls for a due ijtihad-based transformation of aspects of Islamic law, not because of any profound moral understanding of that law, but because of a hamfisted exegesis of usul and because those calls are associated with Western influence and demands. 


Whether the conscientious middle ground, inspired by the genius of tradition, can seize the initiative, and allow an ego-free and generous Muslim definition of the Sunna to shape the agenda in our rapidly polarising societies, remains to be seen. No doubt, the Sufi insight that there is no justice or compassion on earth without an emptying of the self will be the final yardstick among the wise. But it is clear that the Islamic tradition offers the possibility of a truly radical solution, offering not only to itself but to the West the transcendence of a debate which continues to perplex many responsible minds, contemplating an emergent society where the absence of roles presides over an increasingly damaging absence of rules. 



Read full paper:  
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/gender.htm

'Islam, Irigaray, and the retrieval of gender' 

©Abdal Hakim Murad (April 1999)

Brief biography of Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad (Timothy J. Winter): 

http://baytunur.blogspot.com/2010/02/perceived-failure-of-traditional.html

The Essence of Islam’s Theology of Gender - Part 1: Metaphysics

Abdul Hakim Murad

Part 1: Metaphysics
...The two leading modern scholars of this tradition in Islamic thought are Izutsu and Murata, who have both noted the parallels between Sufism’s dynamic cosmology and the Taoist world view: each sees existence as a dynamic interplay of opposites, which ultimately resolve to the One.

Each sees existence as a dynamic interplay of opposites, which ultimately resolve to the One.

The Sufi metaphysicians were drawing on a longstanding distinction between the Divine Names that were called Names of Majesty (jalal), and the Names of Beauty (jamal). The Names of Majesty included Allah as Powerful (al-Qawi), Overwhelming (al-Jabbar), Judge (al-Hakam); and these were seen as pre-eminently masculine. Names of Beauty included the All-Compassionate (al-Rahman), the Mild (al-Halim), the Loving-kind (al-Wadud), and so on: seen as archetypally feminine. The crux is that neither set could be seen as pre-eminent, for all were equally Names of God. In fact, by far the most conspicuous of the Divine Names in the Qur'an is al-Rahman, the All-Compassionate. And the explictly feminine resonances of this name were remarked upon by the Prophet (s.w.s.) himself, who taught that rahma, loving compassion, is an attribute derived from the word rahim, meaning a womb. (Bukhari, Adab, 13) The cosmic matrix from which differentiated being is fashioned is thus, as in all primordial systems, explicitly feminine; although Allah ‘an sich’ remains outside qualification by gender or by any other property.

Further confirmation for this is supplied in a famous hadith, preserved for us by al-Bukhari, which describes how during the Muslim conquest of Mecca a woman was running about in the hot sun, searching for her child. She found him, and clutched him to her breast, saying, ‘My son, my son!’ The Prophet’s Companions saw this, and wept. The Prophet was delighted to see their rahma, and said, ‘Do you wonder at this woman’s rahma for her child? By Him in Whose hand is my soul, on the Day of Judgement, God shall show more rahma towards His believing servant than this woman has shown to her son.’ (Bukhari, Adab, 18)

And again: ‘On the day that He created the heavens and the earth, God created a hundred rahmas, each of which is as great as the space which lies between heaven and earth. And He sent one rahma down to earth, by which a mother has rahma for her child.’ (Muslim, Tawba, 21)
Drawing on this explicit identification of rahma with the ‘maternal’ aspect of the phenomenal divine, the developed tradition of Sufism habitually identifies God’s entire creative aspect as ‘feminine’, and as merciful. Creation itself is the nafas al-Rahman, the Breath of the All-Compassionate. Here the Ash‘arite occasionalism which insists on preserving the divine omnipotence by denying secondary causation is shifted into a mystical, matronal register, where the world of emanation is gendered by the sheer fact of its engendering. ‘We have created everything in pairs,’ says the Qur’an.

This ‘female’ aspect of God allowed most of the great mystical poets to refer to God asLayla - the celestial beloved - the Arabic name Layla actually means ‘night’. Layla is the veiled, darkly-unknown God who brings forth life, and whose beauty once revealed dazzles the lover. In one branch of this tradition, the poets use frankly erotic language to convey the rapture of the spiritual wayfarer as he lifts the veil - a metaphor for distraction and sin - to be annihilated in his Beloved. 

The kalam hence abolishes gender; spirituality deploys it exuberantly as metaphor, thereby displaying an aspect of the distinction between ‘iman’ and ‘ihsan’. The third component of the ternary laid down by the Hadith of Gabriel, ‘islam’, comprising the outward forms of religion, also recognises and affirms gender as a fundamental quality of existence, and this finds expression in many provisions of Islamic law and the norms of Muslim life.

Theologically, as we have seen, Islam tends to assert the equality of the male and female principles, while in its practical social structures it establishes a distinction. To understand this paradox is to understand the essence of the Islamic philosophy of gender, which constructs roles from below, not from above.

The discussion so far has moved downwards through districts of metaphysics to touch on issues of shari‘a. Theologically, as we have seen, Islam tends to assert the equality of the male and female principles, while in its practical social structures it establishes a distinction. To understand this paradox is to understand the essence of the Islamic philosophy of gender, which constructs roles from below, not from above.

Read full paper: 
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/gender.htm

'Islam, Irigaray, and the retrieval of gender' 

©Abdal Hakim Murad (April 1999)

Brief biography of Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad (Timothy J. Winter): 

http://baytunur.blogspot.com/2010/02/perceived-failure-of-traditional.html

Interview with Sayyid Naquib Al-Attas

Applying the Prophetic Sunna to the Modern World - Interview with Sayyid Naquib Al-Attas

Interview with Al-Attas: Applying Sunnah to The Modern World - Lastprophet.info

-Can we adapt to the modern world without destroying our tradition? How can we protect the authentic Islamic traditions today? How can the sunnah be applied today?

Is the sunnah (practices of the Prophet) not applied today? In other words, it is not possible to say that the sunnah is not applied today. It is applied. But I think we have to go back to learn about these people; we must go back to study the past, return to their books, and so on. Otherwise, how can people understand such things?

It is necessary that there be proper teachers, as the schools now do not give much information. Having proper teachers means having qualified people who know about the sunnah and who are close to the early traditions; even in the modern world we can dress like a modern man, but our mind must not be like this.

The important thing is to teach people, that is all. That is the only way to return to the tradition. Otherwise today, modern Muslims, particularly western-educated Muslims do not know, and they demand proof. They think that they are being rational, although they are not really being rational at all. Therefore, we have to counter all this by teaching all these things again.

We must teach them what is real, because they do not know. They do not know anything about Islam. I mean, here they are following the West. They think that Islam started in the 13th century and it is just a simple religion of merchants, and therefore rather out of date, rather ancient. But we should teach them the real history, bring it out and teach it. And by example we must also know that we have to be well acquainted with the West as well as Islam.

Look at how we get education now. We learn their thoughts, their philosophies, and we make critical analysis, we accept that some of what they say is the truth. Yes, and most of our scholars are uttering the truth; even if it was first said by an infidel, it is still the truth.

In Turkey you are doing the same thing. I think this is important. I think there is no other way. We have to teach slowly; this is what people did before. They came to the Hindus and Buddhists. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, even the rulers, became Muslim. Then after this, we cannot keep track of their numbers. But remember that because of what these people did, there are more than 200 million of people Muslim here. This is due to their work.

-Is an Islamization of knowledge possible?

Of course. But what do we mean by this? The Quran Islamized knowledge and the Arabs Islamized their knowledge through the language. In other words, the importance of language in Islamization is very important. That is why I think, although I am not sure, Ali Caksu’s paper raises such an important question; I read only the abstract but he asks if there is such a thing as the Islamic language it seems that he thinks that although there is no Islamic language, there is a Muslim language. Well, I do not agree with this.

What we mean by an Islamic language is the Muslim languages. But within the Muslim languages there are certain basic vocabulary items, key terms, that belong to the Quran and this is what is important. So, in this way Muslim languages become the Islamic language, even though they are different languages. The Turkish language is different from Persian, from Arabic, and from Malay languages. But within this there are certain words which are important links uniting them. This is what I call the Islamic language, this basic vocabulary. These words come from the revelation but they can be given different meanings, which is the cause of the confusion that exists today. And then they do not correlate with one another anymore. Thus, conflict arises.

-What kind of education policy should be followed?

The policy I think is to be acquainted with the West and Islam in addition to our own national, what is called ethical and cultural tradition. We must be familiar with the West, because without this knowledge it the unknown can only become a problem. That is why the modern day ulama cannot do anything; they do not understand the West. They may be acquainted with the law in Islam, but this is also not very profound.

Therefore the education system must be balanced with knowledge of Islam. Going back to the past, we cannot just stop at the former politicians. At least, the mind of people have begun to open, they have become new people. They are pleased that we opened things that they have not seen before.

As far as Islam and its interpretation are concerned, sometimes people might bring up certain questions that may cause problems. It might be better if we did not bother with these questions, or even the hadiths. To the modern mind it is not very beneficial to introduce our hadith, as from the point of view of the modern mind they are irrational or unacceptable. But, this is what they are doing now. We should put a stop to this.

What about hadiths that deal with science and with ethics? The hadiths of the Prophet are like the Quran. The hadith have been classified. But nobody does this today. Maybe one day someone will classify the hadith. There are hadiths of the Prophet concerned with science and which deal with metaphysics and profound philosophy. There is a hadith which says “O Allah, show me the things that really exist.” The Prophet is asking about metaphysical and philosophical ideas here. This kind of hadith cannot be classified. Thus, there are spiritual hadiths, legal hadiths, and historical hadiths. We must study them in this way.

-What kind of educational policies can the Islamic world develop in this new century? How can we attain a certain quality of education?

The only way is if the people who are teaching are really good scholars and the qualities they have are passed on to their students. So, in other words, they must be equipped with a knowledge of languages, apart from, of course, Arabic - the language of the Quran. That is, they must understand the Quran and the hadiths that were written in the past as well as their own language and European languages, depending on their fields. So, in other words, those who are studying medieval philosophy must know something about the medieval scholars who wrote in Latin, and the Greeks. Then they will be able to apply many of the things that they learn and analyze them. This is a quality education; anything else is no different from a factory.

-How should we introduce Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to our age?

That is a very important question. How should we introduce the Prophet to our time? Many talk about him when the subject is concerned with ethics. And yet those hadiths that are concerned with ethics are not mentioned. Even the Prophet himself is not mentioned. Even here, they talk about Allah, but not about Muhammad.

We must ensure that the knowledge of hadiths does not turn people against the Prophet. For example, if you are talking to women only, and you say that the Prophet said: “Women are crooked”, you should stress that this has to do with their rib bones. But if such a hadith were to spread among the people they would only blame the Prophet. Or they would say the hadith is false. That is why I think we should stop talking about such hadith. If somebody brings it up, we should not answer. Only by ignoring them can we stop such a problem. But bringing out hadiths that deal more with what we know to be our problems today is more important.

The emblem of my institute is the name of Prophet Muhammad.

The Islamic university uses the Quran. But the Quran cannot be used as an emblem. It is the word of God, and thus to fulfill the importance would be very difficult. In fact, it is a form of arrogance to think that one can do this. Thus, Prophet Muhammad should be the symbol of Islamic education and thought, because he is like us, a human being. There are some people who do not understand this and say that such universities are Islamic, and the Quran becomes nothing more than a simple sort of word.

The Quran itself talks about many things, about history, about science, about knowledge, about man, yet these people are not concerned with such things. They are only concerned with what politics to follow, even now they are mainly dealing with problems that are political; of course, one must encounter such problems. But how can we confront such problems if we do not know our own tradition and if we are not acquainted with the West or able to discuss such things in a dialogue.

I also realized that nobody has defined what they mean by the West. When I talk about the West I understand not so much the people and the place but rather the world view. This world view has evolved from the Greco, Roman, Judea, and Christian traditions and they have been fused together; in addition the pagan traditions of the European peoples has been added - the Celts, the Visigoths, Teutonic, and Germanic people. So, gradually this has produced a certain world view. This world view is constantly involved in a dynamic dialectic of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. Then this synthesis has begun to turn again to thesis, and continues like this.

To sum up, this is what I mean by problematic. That is, we are saying that they have reached a synthesis and that there are no more theses to create an antithesis. Then they talk about secularization. The eternity of the world is a matter that is discussed; Einstein talked about whether God is still relevant today because he was an Aristotelian. He thought that God was only relevant at the beginning and that after that, the world was just left to evolve, so Einstein asked what God’s role today is. And his conclusion was that God had no more role. But our God is always active. It is not possible for Him not to have a role.

Read more:
http://seekersguidance.org/blog/2009/12/applying-the-prophetic-sunna-to-the-modern-world-interview-with-sayyid-naquib-al-a

PROF. DR SYED MUHAMMAD  NAQUIB AL-ATTAS

A Contemporary Malaysian Philosopher/Theologian, Syed Muhammad Naquib bin Ali bin Abdullah bin Muhsin al-Attas was born in 1931 in Bogor, Java. His adolescent experiences were spent in Java during the height of the Indonesian struggle for Independence in 1945. 

Al-Attas in his person resembles the universal character of scholars of the past in the mastery of many branches of learning: religion, metaphysics, theology, philosophy, education, philology, letters, art and architecture, and military sciences. He is also an able calligrapher.

He has contributed importantly to the history and origin of the modern Malay language. 

His commentaries on the ideas of Fansuri and al-Raniri are the first definitive ones on early Malay Sufis based on 16th and 17th century manuscripts. In fact, al-Attas's writings in Malay on Islamic subjects are unique in their poetic prose, and serve as literary models for the Islamic-oriented scholars and writers of Malaysia. This marks the first time that modern Malay is used intellectually and philosophically, thereby creating a new style of language. 

In addition, and even more importantly, his discourses on Islam and its relationship to cultural and historical identity has attracted vast audiences. He was a Principal Consultant to the World of Islam Festival held in London in 1976, and was speaker and delegate at the International Islamic Conference held concurrently at the same place. He was also a speaker and an active participant at the First World Conference on Islamic Education held at Mecca in 1977, where he chaired the Committee on Aims and Definitions of Islamic Education. From 1976-77, he was a Visiting Professor at Temple University Philadelphia, USA.

He authored Rangkaian Ruba’iyyat a literary work that was among the first ever published in 1959 and the classic work, Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised Among the Malays, in 1963. His two-volume doctoral thesis on The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, which is the most important and comprehensive work to date on one of the greatest and perhaps the most controversial Sufi scholars in the Malay world earned him the PhD in the UK in 1965. 

Read full biography:
http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/biography/viewentry.php?id=1826

Mulla Nasrudin: Turkish Bath

admin | February 14, 2010

Nasrudin went to a Turkish bath. As he was poorly dressed the attendants treated him in a casual manner, gave him only a scrap of soap and an old towel. When he left, Nasrudin gave the two men a gold coin each. He had not complained, and they could not understand it. Could it be, they wondered, that if he had been better treated he would have given an even larger tip?

The following week Nasrudin appeared again. This time, of course, he was looked after like a king. After being massaged, perfumed and treated with the utmost deference, he left the bath, handing each attendant the smallest possible copper coin.

“This,” said Nasrudin, “is for last time. The gold coins were for this week.”

Courtesy:  http://www.alhaddad.org/blog/?p=1815

'Religion Cannot Survive Confined to One Compartment of Life and Education'

GAI EATON (b.1921) HASSAN ABDUL HAKEEM
Author of  Islam & the Destiny of Man, Remembering God and King of the Castle.

"I was sent to school or rather to a series of schools in England and in Switzerland before arriving, aged 14, at Charterhouse. Surely, with services in the school chapel and classes in `Scripture', Christianity should have made some impact upon me? It made no impact at all, either upon me or upon my school friends. This does not seem to me surprising. Religion cannot survive, whole and effective when it is confined to one single compartment of life and education. Religion is either all or it is nothing; either it dwarfs all profane studies or it is dwarfed by them.

Religion is either all or it is nothing; either it dwarfs all profane studies or it is dwarfed by them.

Religion, it was assumed had nothing to do with the more important studies which formed the backbone of our education. God did not interfere in historical events, He did not determine the phenomena we studied in science classes, He played no part in current events, and the world, governed entirely by chance, and by material forces, was to be understood without reference to anything that might -or might not -exist beyond its horizons. God was surplus to requirements....

And yet I needed to know the meaning of my own existence. Only those who, at some time in their lives, have been possessed by such a need can guess at its intensity, comparable to that of physical hunger or sexual desire. I did not see how I could put one foot in front of the other unless I understood where I was going and why. I could do nothing unless I understood what part my action played in the scheme of things. All I knew I knew was that I knew nothing - nothing, that is to say, of the slightest importance - and I was paralysed by my ignorance as though immobilised in a dense fog.

Where should I seek knowledge?

By the time I was 15 I had discovered that there was something called `philosophy' and that the word meant 'love of wisdom'. Wisdom was what I sought, so the satisfaction of my need must lie hidden in these heavy books written by wise men. With a feeling of intense excitement, like an explorer already in sight of the undiscovered land, I ploughed through Descartes, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Bertrand Russell, or else read works which explained their teachings.

`No intelligent person nowadays believes in the God of religion!' 

From Charterhouse I went on to Cambridge, A few of us lingered on, drinking coffee, after the evening meal in the Hall of King's College. The conversation turned to religion. At the head of the table sat an undergraduate who was universally admired for his brilliance, his wit and his sophistication. Hoping to impress him and taking advantage of a brief silence, I said: `No intelligent person nowadays believes in the God of religion!' He looked at me rather sadly before answering: `On the contrary, nowadays intelligent people are the only ones who do believe in God', I would willingly have sunk out of sight under the table."

Read full article:
http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/june02_index.php?l=21

Jhok Ranjhan | Shah Hussain

Jhok Ranjhan | Shah Hussain

November 4, 2009 by qausain

-

Lyric & Translation:

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Main bhi jhok ranjhan di janan,
Naal meray koi challey.
Travelers, I too have to go
to the place of my beloved,
Is there anyone who will go with me?

Pairan pawondi, mintan kardi,
Janan tan peya ikalay.
I have begged many to accompany me, And
now I set out alone.

Nain bhi doongi, Tilla purana,
Sheenhan taan patan mallay.
The river is deep and the shaky bridge creaks,
As people step on it,
And the ferry is a known haunt of tigers.

Ratain dard, Deenhan darman si,
Ghao mitran de allhay.
During long nights I have been tortured
by my raw wounds.

Ranjhan yaar, Tabeeb seenda,
Main tan dard awallay.
I have heard in his lonely hut
knows the sure remedy.

Kahay Hussain Faqeer nimanan,
Sayeen seenhorey ghallay.
Humble begger Hussain says:
O God, send me a message
(invitation to come to you)

-

http://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/poets/shah-hussain/

Tarim and Shibam, Hadhramaut, Yemen

Masjed Aljame'a, also know as Haroon Al-Rashid mosque, the biggest and the oldest mosque in the town, historian said that the mosque established in the early days of Islam when the Hadhrami people entered Islam, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) sent Ziyad Ibn Labid Al-Ansari to Hadhramaut as a ruler and to teach the Hadhramis Islam's principals. Ziad was spending his time between Shibam & Tarim the major two towns in Hadhramaut that time, the mosque also renewd by Ziades who were ruling big part of Yemen on behalf of Baghdad Abbasid Khalifah Haroon Al-Rashid time in the 2nd century of Hijrah.
The photo took after Eid Al-Fitr prayers 1427H-2006 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75075663@N00/332546390/
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/332546390_627e49409c.jpg

Matla'a Shibam" Shabwani play dancers in front of Shibam Hadhramaut, the dancers are taking their way through town's main gate to reach to town's main square. 


http://www.flickr.com/photos/75075663@N00/332546392/in/photostream/



The Rehabilitation of the City of Shibam is part of a project that focuses on the preservation of this unique place as a living community, with architectural restoration integrated into the creation of new economic and social structures. The Award recipients are the Yemeni government and its cultural agencies, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the community of Shibam.


http://www.eartharchitecture.org/index.php?/categories/66-Yemen