‘Whole societies have passed away before your time, so travel about the earth and see the final fate of the deniers’ The Family of ‘Imran: 137.

De loin en loin, quelques personnages à turban passaient en longeant les murs, et aucune tête de femme ne se montrait derrière les grillages discrets des haramlikes… L’or etait un moyen de m’attacher ce va-nu-pieds, mais j’en avais peu… Puisse Allah accorder longue vie au Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, qui fait revivre les grandes fêtes religieuses, les grandes solennités de l’islam ; Stamboul illuminé chaque soir, le Bosphore éclairé aux feux de Bengale, les dernières lueurs de l’Orient qui s’en va, une féerie à grand spectacle que sans doute on ne reverra plus… ‘Vive le Sultan!… vive la constitution… vive la guerre…’ enivrés de se croire libres… et, seuls, quelques vieux Turcs qui se souvenaient du passé haussaient les épaules…

La Scène:

In short, the turbans, women in Freiheit, gold and Sultaniyya [albeit mit constitution auf der Lauer], veiled degeneracy plus a mélange of kabaa’ir cum finesse of Loti, buried a stone’s throw from Abu Ayub and Ahmet Necib Fazil Kisakürek radiAllah ‘anhuma. Less than a century and a half ago. Progress in five generations: to the Rémy Martin on pavement display and glittering, volatile exchange boards, manifestly free assorted Dirndl and official loud-speaker religion sans deen, sans teeth…

King Con Korona test required in Istanbul by German authorities but not recognised on arrival in Berlin; further KCK test [far from the slick, high tech. one of Havalimani IST – test result in hours] in a military camp at Tegel, not recognised on the Baltic coast, and anyway so low-tech [no internet, test results in 3 days] as to be of no benefit. Fast-changing laws keep the officials in ignorance and some, mostly women, on their toes. A further test in five days. Kaaos at the Local Health Authorities: each official in each country in each state knew his little bit of info. – the whole puzzlepic. too boring to imagine; and in the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education for each has its own KCK parameters which may conflict, and KCK quarentine times for risk area Bavaria are shorter than risk area Turkey for example, despite having a lower case rate; even the Bild-Zeitung is not exagerrating this time, and starwar drive-ins with hazmat-suited robotic medics make for schöne Fotos. Pharma-Phirdaus cum mafia cum mathematical profits, the latest magic which can only really be warded of by spitting over the left shoulder, as before the staging of Macbeth. Vive the unpious Shaykhs striving with taqwa, and may the grandest of them be read.

Du musée Hagia Sofia au Mescid Aya Sofia, va-t-il s’assoir sur le trône du palais Topkapi?

Unhinged from all celestial directives the modus vivendi of current folk is reduced to drawing its vitality from the semi-official state organ, as Pravda might say, of Germany’s Mirror which is nothing else but what the Quran indicates as the outpouring of the nafs, i.e. the seething coagulation of the desires and whims of the lower self, the lowest common denominater, which changes, nay, has the right to change, from moment to moment, day to day: it sets the tone, asks the questions and promulgates the new draft laws. You will pay the penalty for not wearing a watch: if you are not careful, its timetable will change impetuously; pay the penalty for not being au fait with the latest media pronouncements; for missing the continual updating of the law-book. This weekly Ode to the State must be balanced with its own Requiem, reflected in song in the degeneration of its readers for:

It does not urge to sprightliness in the salat, dignity in comportment or Blitzschnelligkeit in action after a moment’s pause for reflection.

‘If We Had sent down this Qur’an onto a mountain, you would have seen it humbled, crushed to pieces out of fear of Allah. We make such examples for people so that hopefully they will reflect.’ The Gathering: 21

It is narrated that the father of Imam Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, married a woman and when he entered her marriage room he discovered she was black. He remained in thought and did not approach her. She then said to him, “Did you make istikhaara of Allah?” to which he replied, “Yes”. She then said, “Do you have any doubts as to your Lord?” – then he had sexual intercourse with her and she became pregnant with Imam Malik.

The Imam of Dar al-Hijra’s mother was black, Quran is a mainstream, the Mirror is an ooze.

And was it not MH who said that if thinking does not lead to pravda then it is not thinking?

She of Chiaravalle introduced “cosmic education” to describe an approach for children that emphasized the interdependence of all the elements of the natural world; she encouraged children’s spontaneous activity with plants and animals in their natural environments – preferably in the open air; e dio non era assente.

But meanwhile in the 30 – plus one, mark you! – degrees of the Baltic version, structures and policy prevented the migration from the upper, too-sunlit rooms to the cooling shade of the chestnut trees in the yard below; schulfrei was the cry.

The neo extremism of surburbia taking out mini grassshoots from between the flagstones of the public pavement with a flamethrower eradicator from the baumarkt before the chintzed privacy of his windows may yet lead to trouble.

The baraka of the negligible is the increase of the mumin and far from insignificant.

The penal code is truly democrat within its books for all fall within its purview whether your pass-partout is of the land or of elsewhere.

One can only supplicate that he may make a change of tender as a seal to the change from a museum to the mosque of Inviolable Wisdom; however the smoke screen of outrage may prevent this more social, more beneficial move.

Through the wondrous eyes of the child he saw the sea’s horizon as the crest of a gigantic waterfall.

To the Gulf, a naseeha: less sugar, less words, more action, for the language of theology might well be misunderstood – for how many might fathom, ‘He is at pains to defend the justice of Allah by qualifying the absolute judgement of Allah [championed by the extremist position] by first declaring that the imposition of duties on the slaves of Allah is never heavier than they can bear and secondly that the capability for anything does not precede or accompany actions as such – for the capacity of any person is not an essential part of his being: he may or may not have it at any given moment, just as he may or not possess knowledge. Thus a person may only be held to account as long as the duty incumbent on him does not surpass his strength to bear it; moreover given that any given human capacity is not an essential part of the slave’s being, but rather subject to alteration and flux, Allah in his justice would not judge him in an absolute manner’;

and how many might overlook even la ilaaha illallah of the language of ‘aqida through over-familiarity;

so only the language of love might ensnare them, the pansies and pensées des Fleurs du Mal.

‘Beware of envy’ said the Father of the Cat, ‘for it devours good actions just as fire devours wood or grass’.

There is a tendency to still be polite when talking to robots and any habit of omitting the please and thank-you’s is also prejudicial to human speech.

‘And where are the free now?’ said Little Eva; did we ride in vain?

‘Washed up on the shore beneath the gourd, safe and sound, with the flotsam and jetsam of turbulent years behind them’.

‘In acknowledgment of the established tradition of Quraysh, their tradition of the winter and summer caravans: so let them worship the Lord of this House who has preserved them from hunger and secured them from fear’ and in recognition of the leaf they moved to Havana to call the volk to the Creator of that which had once joined those extirpated tribes in peace.

He had wanted plastic art, then that of music, then was hauled to words:

O landscape of the night! you set a form of order to the darkness by the watches of isha, the sunna, tahajjud, fajr and subh;

so he took his tent with him wherever he went and joined the Bedouin.

His doing-without only brought increase; he remembered the paucity and anxiousness of the times of covetousness. “The good is in a little which lasts, continues and goes on” – and shall be found where greedy eyes have deemed it too small.

The beach was chock-a-block and very hot so she removed her veil to better camouflage her swim.

His opposite Names of non-opposition and the words of ad-dadd, الاضاد changing from half full to half empty perhaps, like the marhaban of welcome and its opposite of unwelcomeness.

‘My disconfort from torridness is the confort of the mangos while my shiver at the cold is the delight of the snow’ he added.

Questi mostri, col sorgere del sole, si erano rintanati in zone non cosciente; Donnafugata era vicina ormai con il suo palazzo, con le sue acque zampillanti, con i ricordi dei suoi antenati santi, con l’impressione che essa dava di perennità del’infanza.

William Butler Yeats spoke of Wagner’s words over music – and remember they chose Tolkien over Wagner, Abu Hamam sped in surf over waves over water, and yet a third admired the majestic and the magnificent lions of elegies 4 and 6 in Sils Maria, all rendering intelligible the oft khaotic spontaneity of pulsating events in their story telling, not far from those historians revealing the ever recurring sameness of things through time.

And so he thanked the author, poet, story teller and historian for entertaining and imposing an order which allowed a letting go to enable the swimming of the relaxed and smiling folk around the island of pain and passion.

Yeats ha parlato delle parole di Wagner sulla musica - e ricorda che hanno scelto Tolkien invece di Wagner, Abu Hamam sfrecciava nel surf sulle onde sopra l'acqua, eppure un terzo ha ammirato i maestosi e magnifici leoni delle elegie 4 e 6 a Sils Maria, rendendo comprensibile la spontaneità spesso khaotica di eventi pulsanti nel loro racconto, non lontano da quegli storici che rivelano l'identità sempre ricorrente delle cose nel tempo. 

E così ha ringraziato l'autore, il poeta, il narratore e lo storico per intrattenere e imporre un ordine che ha permesso di lasciarsi andare per consentire il nuoto della gente rilassata e sorridente intorno all'isola di dolore e passione. 

He always awoke at eight, a numbersman, compared the calories and the energy expended, unaware summer had come; but today the numbercounter was out of action and he woke unawares at dawn to discover the flawed peach was written for another and his vigour beyond compare;

the apple core on the path for a faqir;

perhaps ‘the ruin with all its trellises fallen in’ for himself.

When all is well and attachment to the dunya grows stronger fear of death increases.

He read of all the ‘international civil wars’ and thought of cold fire, and how may an Arabic word ends in its opposite meaning: the coining of words important for both sides, for those of submission and those of covering up.

And learnt that bewilderment drives one to the Lord, weakness to His power and the Ungereimheiten of his fellow men and women to the fantasies of his own nafs.

He sat for three hours in the Sh.’s morning room wandering in what it meant,

just the blackbird on green for company and the occasional siamese,

only afterwards he recognised Him as the Actor.

‘His mercy precedes His anger’, so no regret, as Edith said.

‘Those are suspicious’ he said, ‘those eating en famille à dix ou douze between parked cars, at this motorway rest place. They are foreign’. The cuckoo sings but lays its eggs in another’s nest. They have left the middle strip and found themselves in Europa, but will she embrace them? Will they her?

‘Where is the one charged with unearthly matters, the designated priest?’, ‘disappeared, it seems’. ‘But no, there he swims in the workers’ pool.’ ‘But we have no workers only slaves.’ ‘The workers are to come, those constrained in technique, when the Supreme I.Q. shall imitate man and women – and for many will be indistinguishable, until the day the SIQ realises that fitra is of the earth, contained in the Messenger on whom be peace and blessings, no numbers there, and so bust his main fuse on the primal server in a shower of beautiful sparks.’

Said the priest, ‘The person who shall be punished the most severely on the Day of Standing before the Lord is the alim whose knowledge does not benefit himself.’