Voices of Islam (81 page)

‘Amr said, ‘‘I heard the Messenger of Allah say, ‘I know some words which, if a person says them truly from his heart and dies after that, he will be unlawful to the Fire: ‘‘There is no god but Allah.’’’’’ (
Sunan al-Tirmidhi
) Umm Hani said, ‘‘The Messenger of Allah passed by me one day and

I said, ‘Messenger of Allah, I am old and weak, so command me something I can do sitting.’ He said, ‘Say ‘‘Glory be to Allah’’ a hundred times: it is equal to a hundred slaves of the descendants of Isma‘il you set free. Say ‘‘Praise be to Allah’’ a hundred times: it is equal to a hundred horses saddled and bridled and ridden in the Way of Allah. Say ‘‘Allah is most great’’ a hundred times: it is equal to a hundred camels garlanded and facing the direction of Mecca (
al-qibla
). Say, ‘‘There is no god but Allah’’ a hundred times. (I think he said) this fills up what is between heaven and earth. On that day no one will have a better action presented than that which will be presented for you, unless he brings the like of what you bring.’’’ (
Musnad
of Ibn Hanbal)

NOTES

1. Arabic-English Dictionary, The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic,
   ed. J.M. Cowan (New York: Spoken Language Services, Inc., 1976), 310.
   

2. Quoted in ‘Abd al-Qadir Sufi
   The Way of Muhammad
   (London and San Francisco: The Diwan Press, 1975), 105.
   

3. Martin Lings,
   A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-‘Alawi
   

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 54–55.

6
‌

T
HERE
W
AS
N
O
O
NE
L
IKE
H
IM

•

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

To say there was no one like him is to say

there was no one like him!

God knows best about this but we say

‘‘There was no one like him.’’

The best way to get even a tiny glimpse of who he was is to recall some person with extraordinary qualities who passed by in a moment

or stayed for a season, whose

sweet nobility awed you, or whose spontaneous depth of knowledge,

taken out from some deepsea nets whose strings you couldn’t see

nor whose source fathom, light after light,

load of richness,

dredged from the deeps...

Or someone you loved whose every gesture was meaning, whose

still center was a

camp of tents, in each tent a prince whose otherworldly

beauty swept you away.

72
Voices of the Spirit

A snowbound romance between two summers whose heat melted it away

leaving only a positive memory and no sculptor’s regret

not to have ‘‘caught it in stone,’’ or to have kept it forever frozen.

Someone whose strength seemed to be summoned from an ancient animal kingdom

against a violence of nature that flooded from nowhere,

or someone whose sudden sweetness surprised you and made you want it to last your whole lifetime

past the closing door down the hallway, but who went on to a similar succession

of such personal sweetnesses.

Or the Buddha, sitting crosswise to everything.

Or the linkage of radiances connecting its dots through the globe

in discrete places, in out-of-the-way locations—

a generosity that saved someone from drowning or a word that turned a life all the way around—

this, these, one after the other,

commonly continuous, all of them and more,

forming a whole man in this world where everyone is a partial enigma jigsaw,

forming a clear focus in a dangerous fog,

a light standing up

in a subway of shadows.

In a world gone galvinized tin, a sensitive liquid.

He was like no one.

There Was No One Like Him
73

The peaks of all possible humanness folded into one.

He had time for everything and everyone.

Nothing that exists kept him from anything else in existence.

He himself was an empty mirror, but the frame was the cosmos

aflame in the dot

that sits below the letter
ba
in
Bismillah

—in the Name of Allah—

and bathes everything in light. This is no fiction.

His Companions like lenses

on the same occasion

caught sight of him the same

and recorded identical conversation as multiple observers,

so that a movie of him exists, walking alone among them,

a world not gone in a burst once gone,

but alive forever on the transmitted heart screen of emptiness.

Gentle humility shook the earth’s foundations

since true knowledge funneled in discs of exploding light through it.

Tattered poverty sent proud kings flying

since it endures after golden thrones have turned impossibly to dust.

Face down in the dust the tyrant is wild-eyed.

He fears for his neck

as God’s rose-thorn digs in.

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Voices of the Spirit

But the Prophet’s face down in the dust pushed its light through the stars, spread out in an array

that will never go away.

There was no one like him.

NOTE

This poem was first published in
Maulood.
It is reprinted here from a Zilzal Press chapbook by permission of the author.

7
‌

A S
PIRITUAL
T
OUR OF THE
P
ROPHET
’
S
C
ITY
(M
EDINA
)

•

Daoud Stephen Casewit

It is Ramadan. I have just spent four days at the center of Islam’s ritual universe. The glow of Mecca dims into the desert darkness as our car glides northwards. My next destination: the oasis sanctuary of Medina. I have accomplished the reverential visit, or
ziyara,
to the Prophet’s City before, but never in such a distinguished company. Mustafa, my guide, is a leading expert on the sacred history and geography of his native Medina. Having met me in Mecca with a car and driver, he is to be my companion for the next three days.

‘‘My brother,’’ he says, ‘‘I am sure you know why this freeway is called Emigration Road.’’

Like any good teacher, Mustafa is testing me. For a Western convert, I am considered well read in the vast Arabic literature on the hallowed township.
1
However, keen to benefit from his erudition, my reply is brief. ‘‘Because the Prophet was forced to take flight from Mecca to Medina.’’

‘‘Indeed,’’ he affirms, ‘‘for thirteen years God’s Messenger strove to sow the seeds of Islam in the hostile, pagan soil of Mecca. As his small group of followers grew, the persecution they faced intensified. Meanwhile, in Yathrib, as Medina was then called, the nascent faith had been embraced by an influential number of its citizens, who offered protection and refuge to the Muslims of Mecca. In the early fall of 622
CE
the Prophet undertook the
hijra
(‘emigration’ or ‘fl to Medina, joining the
e´migre´s
who had preceded him.
2
In the shelter of this oasis, the vulnerable seedling of God’s Final Revelation was able to take firm root, growing into a strong, unified commu- nity of believers composed of indigenous allies (
ansar
) and emigrants.’’

‘‘Wasn’t the emigration to Medina a religious obligation at one time?’’ I ask.

‘‘Yes. In the early years, Medina was like an island of monotheistic faith and moral rectitude in a sea of polytheistic ignorance and depravity. The sacrificial

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Voices of the Spirit

act of severing ties to kin and homeland for God and His Prophet was the ultimate touchstone of sincere belief. Thus, Medina is known as The Abode of Emigration (
Dar al-Hijra
) and The Abode of Faith (
Dar al-Iman
). However, following the conquest of Mecca in 630
CE
and the submission of Arabia’s tribes, the
hijra
to Medina lost its imperative nature. Indeed, given the city’s inability to support endless waves of new inhabitants, emigration was actually discouraged. Henceforth, increased emphasis was placed on its profound connotations of personal effort in the Way of God and living in conformity with the practice of the Prophet Muhammad.’’
3