Voices of Islam (79 page)

The Prophet was given the direct word of God in the Qur’an through the Messenger (there is always a Messenger behind every Messenger) Gabriel,
Jibril
in Arabic, who received the revelation from Allah and transmitted it through various experiences to Muhammad, peace be upon him. Every word of the Qur’an has a resonance that cannot be fathomed—even the most mundane-seeming practicalities—especially when discerned and explained by Gnostic teachers who have been bathed in the Qur’an in the deepest sense of the word. The Qur’an itself is a major
dhikr
of Allah, from which all other
adhkar
have been derived. Thus, the recitation of the Qur’an puts us in direct contact with God’s Light, and with the very heart and tongue of the Prophet, peace be upon him, from whom we received it, word for word and unchanged, to this day. Each time we open the Qur’an and recite its Arabic with pure intention we find ourselves in sacred territory.

Scholars, of course, from the Companions of the Prophet onward, have expounded on the meanings of the Qur’an and lead us to God through every phrase. The libraries of Islam are packed with diligently and lovingly hand- written copies of books, or their valuable and precious originals, which pour over every phrase of the Qur’an to find its most elemental and useful meaning to our lives. Books have been written on the grammar of the Qur’an as well, not from a pedantic point of view, but because it is a sacred grammar, and knowledge of it brings one into an awed remembrance or invocation of the grammar’s source, that being God Himself, Who has speech as one of His key attributes, as we clearly fi d manifest throughout the ages of mankind and within every culture on our terrestrial globe.

Books have even been written on the simple dot below the letter
ba’
that begins
Bismillah
in Arabic, which means, ‘‘In the name of Allah.’’ Treatises on a single dot! Such a treatise is also a
dhikr,
not simply a dry scholarly

Dhikr,
a Door That When Knocked, Opens
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analysis, but an excitement and regeneration of the heart through profound recollection, which leads to a vision of the universe and how it has proceeded from God’s command: ‘‘Be!’’

So the river of the Qur’an, with all of its illuminative examples and directives, is our major source of remembrance (
dhikr
). And the practices of prayer five times or more a day and in the deepness of night are forms of very intimate remembrance (
dhikr
), as are the Five Pillars of Islam, the testament of God’s Oneness (
al-Shahada
), the Prophet Muhammad’s Messengership, the formal prayer, the tax on our wealth, fasting Ramadan once a year, and traveling to Mecca to perform the Hajj once in our lifetimes. All of these are incomparable forms of remembrance (
dhikr
) of our Creator and Lord, without whom the entire fabric of the world and us within it would atomize into dust-mote fragments afloat in nothingness.

I made the Hajj pilgrimage in 1972, along with the first six members of our embryonic Sufi community in London. The Hajj is called ‘‘the arduous jour- ney.’’ But when you are in Mecca for the Hajj, a state of
dhikr
descends upon you, and it is all a swimming exercise in the great ocean of remembrance from then on. The word
sabaha
in Arabic not only means ‘‘to swim’’ but also ‘‘to praise and glorify.’’ The Muslim string of 99 beads for reciting each of God’s 99 Divine Names is known as
subha
or
tasbih,
from the same root word, meaning ‘‘to swim.’’ Surrounded by millions of Muslims from every part of the world, all there for the one focus—God, and His worship, and His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him—with every action and every inten- tion ostensibly for this end, you cannot help but drown in the sweet and salty seas of
dhikr.
But the most astonishing
dhikr,
the most miraculous vision of remembrance, is the Ka‘ba itself, the House of Allah, the cubed building draped in black embroidered cloth, which looms up from its surrounding marble courtyard fully material and made of stones and yet fully spiritual and seemingly insubstantial: holy. A rude building with a door in it, a black stone at one corner set in a silver collar that the pilgrims kiss as they circum- ambulate, and another square stone at the Yemeni Corner, which has been rubbed smooth by the pilgrims’ loving and perfumed hands as they pass.

The
dhikr
of the vision of the Ka‘ba alone is a monumental proclamation of God’s praises. Here people circle seven times, then come to stand and face the harsh wall of their reality and bathe in the Compassionate Grace of Allah that permeates the very air of the Meccan mosque. This anchor in the heart never leaves anyone who has visited Mecca, even if they stray afterward. It is the center of the world for us, and the center of our prayer to which we turn each day. Its depth seems to go straight through the earth’s core and straight up to the Throne of God. No one is unmoved at the Ka‘ba, it seems, and when I returned to Mecca 24 years later, at the very sight of the outer mosque from the street through the buildings as our bus got closer, I burst into tears. And again at the first sight of the Ka‘ba itself through the arches of the mosque entrance, there in its courtyard, serene, waiting for the

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believers to pay respect to Allah there, openly and with submission, raw heart-burst, naked before it in our being, pierced through and through by its majesty and Light, tears involuntarily come to greet its pure and seemingly undimensional monumentality.

It is said that everyone who goes on the Hajj becomes a Sufi And if that means that one is overwhelmed with love for Allah, then it is true. We met people at the beginning of the Hajj who were transformed entirely at the end. Their faces stern and puritanical seeming at the beginning were softer and filled with happiness at the end of the Hajj. This is the result of
dhikr,
true
dhikr,
where the heart is made softer and pliant and open to God’s whispers from His unseen domains. The Qur’an recitation in the prayer and the act of going down into prostration, the true position of remembrance for all of God’s creatures, all of these things are the crowning glory of
dhikr
of God.

A spiritual master, a shaykh of Allah, is also a Ka‘ba, a center around which believers pivot in their worship, not of him or her as a person, but of Allah’s light made manifest and beamed to the disciples through the shaykh.

Our shaykh in Mekne`s, Morocco (May Allah protect his secret), Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, was over a hundred years old when I met him. He barely moved. His voice was indescribably sweet, but honed by the raspi- ness of age. His face was like the moon. His words were simple, and he wept easily with an inner rationale. But sitting even for a moment in his presence was in itself an automatic
dhikr
of Allah. I did not see an old man. The old man, the young man, the mortal man, was so refi , so essentialized, that he was almost gone. It seemed that he looked at us from the Next World, from Allah’s direct Presence. You felt you were in the presence of a heart being constantly fi with direct inspirations from the Absolute. You do not see many people like him in this life. It is the only way that we have for understanding the Prophet of Allah, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, and likewise a true understanding of all the prophets before him, who by their Messengership and their prophethood, looked at humankind from Allah’s Presence, not our own earthly reality alone, with their hearts filled to the extent of the divinely lit universe. Each one of them was a
dhikr
of God. The details came later, the revelations in words, the parables, the teachings, and the commandments. God had captured them heart and soul, and sent them back to capture us with remembrance of Him as well.

Our connection to the Prophet through remembering God is that part of our own consciousness which is the human birthright, the consciousness that knows God foremost and hindmost, from first to last. Each of our souls has a portion of prophethood—in dreams, in inspirations, and in our sense of justice or duty—though (praise be to God) we have not been burdened with the Prophet’s task in its incalculable measure. It is our chance for illumina- tion. It is our cardiac highway to the center. It is simply our direct way to the living Presence of Allah.

Dhikr,
a Door That When Knocked, Opens
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The staunch materialists remember God through negation. The scientists who insist that no God made the universe remember him by denying Him. If the materialist says that man created God out of his own insecurities, it is simply a projection of his own consciousness, perhaps a remembrance not of a Divine Reality but of the mythically proportioned Mother and Father when as a baby he saw only their care and compassion; he too is by default in a kind of negative state of divine remembrance. But is this inspiration only mechanical? Was the need for such an invention simply psychological, the panicky reaction to a separation neurosis? The reasoning for such a conclusion is sliver thin. For where the human need to invent things ends and Divine inspiration begins is a fuzzy boundary indeed. It is where worlds overlap, where dimensions of ‘‘our’’ consciousness and ‘‘Divine’’ conscious- ness shade into each other, and where the intricacy of disentangling one from the other is one of confusion, and ultimately of belief. Either you believe one explanation or you believe the other. And belief is very diffi to analyze, unless the fierceness of your position puts you so firmly in one camp or the other that you will not be budged by any persuasions. This is where the history of revelation takes place, on this playing (or more often battle) field, between the ‘‘refuseniks’’ and the believers. And why one person is of one or the other ‘‘camp’’ is itself a mystery. Nature and nurture are both confounded by this dilemma. Why someone with all the material gifts that life can provide is a refusenik and totally enshrouded in disbelief, while someone with absolutely nothing is a believer seeing the riches of God’s illumination in every breath, is a mystery that no amount of psychological analysis can possibly explain. For every conclusion will only appeal to those of one persuasion or another.

Ultimately, the litmus test is in which of the two, the refusenik or the believer, is the more content. Which of the two is still fi d with light and praise no matter what devastations have taken place in his or her life? Which of the two ultimately is happier in his or her universe? Which universe is an endless bounty of riches: the universe of the one who remembers God or the universe of the one who does not? The person who sees God’s actions in everything that befalls him or her, or the person who does not? The person who throws all faith over when a tribulation comes to her, or the person who is increased in faith, even when home and family and livelihood are swept out to sea, as in the recent Tsunami in the Indian Ocean that wrecked the shore- line communities yet left many praying more than before and, although in trauma, affirming God’s Mercy? One might say that such people were mad. But whom else but God can they turn to? If their fishing boat has been trans- ported to the roof of their house, whose power put it there? In the midst of a terrible fl this winter when I felt like dying, I had a little insight into this state. In the midst of terrible suffering (far beyond what I was experiencing) one calls out to God. Even atheists have been known to do this. The Qur’an and the Bible both say that when people are at sea and a storm comes up

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that threatens their boat, they cry out to God to save them, but when they reach shore and safety they forget all about Him, and go on living their oblivious ways.

But God in the Qur’an says, ‘‘When you forget, remember.’’ Perhaps it is that simple. It is only a matter of remembering God, but those who remem- ber Him best are those who are purified by their remembrance, who seek Him by their actions and thoughts, who turn away from forgetfulness, and who polish the clapper of their remembrance in the bell of their hearts to make a purer sound.

Because God remembers everyone of His creation, no one is left out. Not a soul on this earth is absent from His consciousness of us. Otherwise, we would not have been born into whatever circumstances we fi ourselves. Each of us who takes a breath remembers Allah.
Al-Hayy,
the Living One, breath, the sound of breathing, that thing we do last before we die, that thing that starts us once we are out of the womb, breath, upon which our words sail like boats into profanity or divinity. And how much better to speak well-shot words whose target is God than to spend our lives in the styes of pigs. Perhaps it is this simple. How much more harmonious somehow to have the Name of God on our tongues and in the moisture of our mouths than profanities and rages. And how soothingly the naming in this way cools our rages, although some use the Name of God to kill and destroy, betraying His Reality in deepest insincerity while telling themselves that they are His righteous servants.

The difference between a true person of
dhikr
and a fake one is evident, sooner or later. No wanton destruction in His Name enters history as a boon. But somehow a person of true
dhikr
of Allah who may even sit still in the shade of an arch or in the deepest recesses of
khalwa
(retreat) outlasts every historic tragedy that may befall mankind at the hands of natural disasters (God’s Majesty) or at the hands of humankind itself. In Kastamonu, Turkey, in the mosque
tekke
and tomb of Shaykh Saban-i- Veli, there are little wooden closet rooms in which his disciples retreated to practice a protracted regimen of
dhikr
of Allah. The little dark rooms are empty. The practitioners are in the graveyard outside. A bit of inquiry would probably reveal more about them, their names, or some of their spiritual legacy. But even so, in the stillness of the mosque, facing these little rooms of
dhikr,
one is struck by the sheer power of their simplicity and their function. Not battlefields, which now are empty glades, hillsides, valleys, with no trace of bloodshed, only the memories of war historians, but these little dark prisons for the willing liberation of souls and hearts. A peace falls over the entire place, as if in the hush one might experience the men and women who might be behind the little doors entering the world of reality by means of their
dhikr.
And in any case, while we are alive, before we enter the already purchased grave (by the sheer destiny of our deaths), how better to pass our days than to practice the remembrance of