Voices of Islam (117 page)

20
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L
ETTER TO
M
ANKIND

•

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

I have been to the center of the earth. Jules Verne didn’t get it right.

It’s not down in cavernous bowels of igneous rock swathed in

sulfurous fumes.

The serpents of the self and its idolized distractions are the only monsters to

come at you out of the rocks.

I have been to the Ka‘ba at Mecca

as pure as a heartbeat, as stunning in time and space as a precious diamond decreed by God to be

cut by the hand of man to mirror His Glory.

All is clarity there, and concentration.

The ears are filled with a joyous noise.

The eyes behold God’s plan in the masses of humanity that pass there that

reduce in every case to one: One heart before One God in one moment in time,

the most public place on earth for the most private encounter with our Lord.

I’ve sat among its people, I’ve

stood in the first rows of prayer facing the House, black cloth covering

258
Voices of the Spirit

stone,

I’ve bowed and prostrated as swallows wheel in a

sky so saturated with

light as to scintillate with a jagged indelible brightness.

This is still man’s major crossroad.

Around the Ka‘ba even the worst of men for a while

regain their innocence and are renewed.

If they are lost in awe and tears flow and they call on Allah with each heartbeat

they are in Paradise.

If they walk around the House of Allah chatting and distracted they are

still in God’s Garden, so powerful is the presence there.

The Ka‘ba is of a

blackness that is not black, of a dimension that has no

size, of a cubeness that has no

shape in space,

neither size, shape nor color define it, yet it is

such-and-such a dimension in roughly cube shape with a

golden door set in its side and a

golden rainspout over one edge at the top

made of square blocks of gray stone caulked with white and

covered over with fine black brocade to the ground embroidered at the top with the

golden calligraphy of God’s Word.

Inside it is empty.

(I was there one morning when they rolled a wooden stairway to the door and opened it and the

crowd came to a halt and

Letter to Mankind
259

gasped, and many of us burst into tears—I nearly

was able to enter, but

dignitaries and pilgrims with special green cards were the

only ones allowed—

but I saw men in the darkness inside face the inner wall and do the prayer,

prostrating to Allah from inside facing out in the holy space we pray towards

every day
outside
facing
in!
)

White and pearly gray marble slabs make a floor from the Ka‘ba to the edge of the mosque courtyard for the millions of

feet to pace, even the feet of

cats, lean felines of Mecca, one seen doing the seven prescribed circuits, a

perfect pilgrim of a cat,

before wandering off among the human multitudes.

Faces float forward from the faces we bear until I think all the

faces on earth are present there,

even unbelievers, even non-Muslims represented by the

intensity in the faces of those who go around God’s House—

no one on earth ignored by God, no one not brushed by

angels’ wings, no one in this creation of His

left in utter desolation, but is sustained and

conveyed into His Presence.

This is the heart of the world. The self of man.

The spirit of our consciousness in life and death.

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Voices of the Spirit

Distinctions blurred and distinctions sharpened at the same time.

Heavens rolled up, seas dried, earth-prints erased.

No one’s gone anywhere.

No one’s done anything. No one’s

taken a step or even the minutest breathtaking space of separation

away from the House of Allah at the

center of the earth of mankind in

space in Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia

January 6, 1996,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the United States of America,

3:25 A.M. one cold winter morning in my bed on earth

at the feast of our Lord.

NOTE

This poem first appeared in Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore,
Mecca/Medina Time- Warp.
Reprinted from a Zilzal Press chapbook, by permission from the author.

I
NDEX
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•

‘Abbas ibn ‘Abul Muttalib, 85 ‘Abbasid dynasty, 85, 117; ‘Ashura

symbolism and rebellion, 112 ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Saud (King of Saudi

Arabia), 84

‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Shaykh (Mufti of Saudi Arabia), 245

‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz (Mufti of Saudi Arabia), 245

‘Abd
(slave): achievement of, 44, 45;

religious mentality, 159–60;

worshiper as, 158 ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas, 250

Abdur-Rahman (Archangel), 32 Ablutions.
See Wudu
(ablutions) Abraham, 20, 92; Day of Arafat and, 3;

prayer, 2, 20

Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd, 253 Abu Bakr al-Jaza’iri, 220

Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, 42, 94, 114, 242;

tomb of, 82

Abu Bakr al-Tamastani al-Farsi, 172 Abu Basir, 230–231

Abu Hamza, 159–61

Abu Hanifa Nu‘man ibn Thabit, 215, 241, 249

Abu Hurayra, 18, 68–69, 90, 244–45

Abu Ja‘far ibn Jarir at-Tabari, 226 Abu Sufyan, 234

Acceptance, Merton and al-‘Alawi, 150

Adab
(decorum), 16

Adam, 21–22, 32

Al-‘Adawiyya, Rabi‘a, 175, 177

Adhan
(call to prayer): Abraham and,

1–4; newborn babies, 35; words of,

3–4

Adil al-Haqqani, Muhammad Nazim, 39

Afterlife, sunset prayers and, 20 Afternoon prayers.
See Asr
(afternoon

prayers)

Agape,
165 n.6

Age requirement for combative Jihad, 237–38

Ahmad (heavenly name of Prophet), prayer symbolism, 34

Ahmad, ‘A’isha bint, 170 Ahmad, Amir, 106

‘A’isha (wife of Prophet), 39, 43, 115,

238; tomb, 82

Akhfa
(innermost), 23–24

‘Alawi, 113

Al-Albani, Nasir, 223

Alchemical tradition, 141

Alcohol consumption, 93 ‘Ali, Abdullah Yusuf, 47 n.30
‘Alids,
113

‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, 44, 85, 93–94, 113–

14

‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abinin, 116 Allah,
dhikr
of, 66–69 Allah ibn Zayd, ‘Abd, 3–4

Al-sa’il
(personal self-defense), 220 Al-‘Alawi, Ahmad, 143–55

Amin Ahsan Islahi, 249–50 Amuli, Haydar, 42

Analogical gradations, 162–63 Anarchy.
See Fitna
(mayhem)

262
Index

Andalusia Inquisition of 1492, 218–19 Angels, prostration before Adam, 32 Annihilation: Gnostic and, 151; station

of, 45; Sufi dance, 59; symbolism in prayer cycle, 20–21; union and self-, 161

Ansari
clan, 94

Apostates, 253

Appearance, spiritual significance, 28– 30

Arabesque design, love as, 139–40 Arabs: Medina indigenous clans, 94;

Shiite, 120, 121

Arab society, revolution and women, 188

Arab tribes, 75–76

Art, fear, love and knowledge in, 139– 40

Ascension.
See Mi‘raj
(ascension) ‘Ashura, 111–22; Iran political

legitimacy, 119; rituals types of, 121–22; symbolism, 111–12

Asr
(afternoon prayers), 20, 21 Assignation of ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan,

115

‘Ata’ illah al-Iskandari, 67, 184

Atheists, 63

Attachments, purification from, 23 Attractiveness of evil, 137 Augustine, St., 132

Autumn, 20

Awadh, 120

Awe, servitude and, 169

Bab al-Rahma, 90, 92 Bad
vs
evil, 135

Al-Bahjuri, 249

Bahuti (Imam), 211

Bakka valley, Abraham and, 1 Banu Khuza’a tribe, 234

Al-Baqi’, 85

Baqi’ al-Gharqad,
84–85

Baqi’ Graveyard, 94

Al-Bara’a
(enmity for the sake of God), 232

Bara’ ibn Malik, 247

Al-Basri, Hasan, 145, 175

Bathing, purification and ritual, 16 Battle of Badr, 86–87, 89

Battle of the Camel, 115, 117

Battle of Karbala, 115–17, 119; ‘Ashura rituals and, 121–22

Battle of Siffin, 117 Battle of the Trench, 95 Battle of Yamama, 248 Baudelaire, Charles, 133

Beauty.
See Jamal
(beauty) Beirut, Lebanon, 189, 191

Belief: ‘Ashura and, 112; revelation and, 63–64

Believers, Circle of Unconditional Lovers, 23

Beloved.
See Mahbub
(beloved) Beloved–lover relationship, 158–59 Birth defects, evil and, 135

Body: purification of, 17; purity and covering, 24–25

Books as
dhikr,
60–61 Bosnian Sufis, 59–60