A minor revolution to counter the biggy of 1397 SH is the present culinary movement amongst regime resenters to change things. Bonne chance!

Bishop Berkeley would probably have understood why, when asked for directions, people give such diverse answers to reach the same place: each has seen this or that or the other, each has been struck by this colour or that colour, by this landmark or by that, each has their own directional body-clock; in short each carries their own picture of reality around with them and assembles it when needed. Far better then to accompany the requester, in accordance with the English wont – as Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, may Allah have mercy on him, related from the daughter of King Muhammad IV – to the place they are heading for. Anne Brontë, near whose grave this encounter took place, would no doubt have agreed: she did not belong to a matrilegal society, despite her illumination of women, and she had impeccable manners.

Le Rumi de Muhammad W. v. G. était «abstrus und mystérieux» comme le maître allemand dit en son Divan occidental-oriental : mais on ne peut pas lui reprocher qu'il soit resté un mystère abstrus : il était parmi les grands qui ont fait le premières étapes sur le chemin de la sagesse théocratique au-delà de Constantinople - un grand service pour les générations futures d'Européens ; or, ce qui pour les uns est un mystère est pour les autres – qui ont accès à son sens – la clarté même, comme le savaient bien les initiés grecs aux μυστήρια; et tout ce qui est caché peut être découvert par ceux qui reconnaissent le voile. Muhammad W. v. G n'a eu accès qu'à un petit nombre de manuscrits musulmans, au Quran et à certains textes arabes ou persans traduits dans la terminologie chrétienne, et a eu peu de contacts avec des soldats d'un régiment Tatar près de Weimar: il n'a eu aucune rencontre physique avec quiconque pour qui les « mystères abstrus » étaient aussi clairs que la lumière du jour.

Allons donc vous et moi là où le ministre du duc Carl August ne pouvait pas aller, à travers ce monde complètement déraillé, en tant qu'hommes et femmes sobres et en bonne santé, dans une joie aux proportions et aux intentions vastes, au-delà du cirque médiatique du derviche tourneur, au jardin de la responsabilité sociale.

Marlowe led the way beside the burn towards the still snow-covered Bod an Deamhain. ‘There’ said Spade pointing to a half-concealed truncated head beneath some heather. ‘So it’s no conspiracy’, said Marlow as he inspected the hugely swollen head, still dripping red and vocalizing somewhat, and pointed to the sword beside it; it’s Abdalwahhab’s, I recognize it’. ‘No’, parried Spade, its a scimitar of Persian steel, but a replica, for use west of Constantinople, belonged to the Steingass’ estate – I’ve seen it in the Woking mosque museum’.

They continued upwards and as expected discovered the shrunken torso, its heart still beating faintly, extremely faintly. Quickly Marlowe pulled out his connector, shielding it from the steady rain. After several tries he eventually managed to contact an imam close in madhhab to Imam Malik – in a Zawiyya he had once visited near Shanghai, a case of mistaken identity. ‘Yes’, said Tuan SklavedesDankbaren, the imam, ‘Amal and iman were Siamese twins for the Imam of Madina, inseparable – except by a costly, linguistic operation, they cannot be understood apart; schizophrenia ensues t’otherwise, one being residing in his head, another in the real world: we have a character for uniting the two in Mandarin – 信 which means iman, expressed by a man standing by words which in turn refers to sincerity – without action, no sincerity; of course in simplified script all that is lost – and we’re subject to the same linguistic tyranny as you.’ Please record the following: إن الله لا يقبض العلم انتزاعًا ينتزعه من العباد، ولكن يقبض العلم بقبض العلماء حتى إذا لم يُبْقِ عالمًا اتَّخذ الناس رؤوسًا جهالاً، فسُئِلوا فأفتوا بغير علم؛ فضلوا وأضلوا and get your academic blood hounds to translate it for you.

Back at Campsleuth they had it rendered into English: ‘Allah does not seize back knowledge by stripping away access to it from the slaves of Allah; rather He seizes it back by seizing back the ulama on their death – so if there remains no further alim in the world then people shall take up with ignorant leaders who when asked about something will give fatwas without knowledge, leading others astray as well as themselves’. ‘What do you think Tuan SklavedesDankbaren meant by giving us this,’ queried Spade; ‘Easypeasy, I’ve got it!’ replied Marlowe, ‘Knowledge is not information: it cannot be separated from a beating heart, in situ, amongst friends, connected to a company, a group who know each other and live together; knowledge cannot be computerized, information can, hence the separation of iman from amal, ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι: the deen must be mentalized out of existence.

‘It rather reminds me, said Spade, now we’re here of what Mr Brown said to Q. Victoria when translating the Gaelic: linguistic castration’. ‘Yes indeed, and if you need further confirmation of the track, here’s the clue: اللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابًا مُتَشَابِهًا مَثَانِيَ تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ – The skins of those who fear their Lord tremble at it – in Sura The Companies’. ‘But where’s the link?’ asked Marlowe. ‘Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib who asks for beneficial knowledge – the proof of which is that the hearts are humbled, the skin trembles and tears flow: in his nutshell: iman elicits knowledge, not information, which in turn has a physical effect on the body, i.e. movement and action. Presto. Case solved.’

‘And the severed head and torso?’, enquired Marlowe. ‘Part of knowledge shall die with him when he expires, it is true – because, and this is the last clue you’re getting for the mystery of the separation of iman and amal, up to very recently, historically speaking, a man or woman was not considered to have knowledge unless he or she had got it, face to face – or knees to knees as the case may be – from another man or woman who had it: remove the body with all its activity and all you are left with is information, wa basta: did not Malik relate that he had heard that Luqman al-Hakeem made his will and counselled his son, saying, ‘My son! Sit with the ulama, pressing your knees against theirs, for Allah gives life to the hearts by the light of wisdom as Allah gives life to the dead earth with the abundant rain of the sky.’’ And another thing, said Spade, ‘Face to face means anything could happen – within the realm of real knowledge, for the teacher might up and go, saying, “”Halluma, to the hills’ – something which is not latent with a mere manuscript, a printed book or Chatgpt; and the fella atransmitting may be ill, so you moved to find a cure, or in need, so you’re moved to slake it – all Heisenberg, or Jungian synchronicity: the subtle graciousness of the Geisha only manifests to the observer who is present.

The walk thirsted him to a bench: that one beneath the plane tree invited; but sitting thereon was an indeterminate whose face bore no benefit; the next, in the variegated shade of the park’s railings on which sat an elderly man whose furrowed face boded well, was the one; he greeted him and was surprised to hear a crisp ‘and good morning to you’ in response.

At the falling of a leaf from the plane tree came further confirmation of the perfection of every moment: he had breakfasted on delightful eggs in the company of the relaxed, the sun was invigorating, the passers-by multicoloured, and so now thoughts might be encouraged to rise from this bien-être: ghina is ridaa or contentment is riches is the haqq, no doubt for has He not declared, ‘Fa-ayna tadhhaboun?’ – ‘Where then are you going?’ – that the moment of contentment engenders movement to the forty neighbours on either side of one to ensure they too have breakfasted and tasted the sun and the falling leaf, and that movement is change, on which such vitality thrives.

O chameleon, now maligned of the Arabs, amongst the leaves of the orange tree: ‘red and green and blue are, as you so well know, the primal colours: the red of the Fire, the green of the Garden, the blue of the endless skies: you are not two-faced but as multifaceted as His creation, pointing to the very cure if they would understand – the dua of Sidi ‘Ali al-Jamal, ‘Allahumma, keep us in change’. And, die Hoffnung lauert, for your name is held in reverence by some, a very few – those who link it to battle, to the spear and to the plunder of the mihrab.

«… l’Etna nevoso, colonna del cielo / d’acuto gelo perenne nutrice / lo comprime. / Sgorgano da segrete caverne / fonti purissime d’orrido fuoco, / fiumi nel giorno riversano / corrente di livido fumo / e nella notte rotola / con bagliori di sangue / rocce portando alla discesa / profonda del mare, con fragore.»

(Pindaro, Pitica I 470 a.C.)

«... snowy Etna, column of the sky / nurturer of acute perennial frost / pressing down upon it /purest sources of horrid fire springing from secret caves, / rivers pouring out by day / currents of livid smoke / and in the night rolling / with flashes of blood / causing rocks to descend / in the deep of the sea, with a roar. "

(Pindar, Pitica I 470 BC)

But primarily a Sign of the All-Powerful, and secondly a provider of hot thermal springs for the poor to make ghusl in.

‘All the signs point to a global matriarchal society in the making’, he said. ‘And bully for it’, she reposted, ‘When fatherhood – in male form – disappears or becomes dysfunctional, the proles shall be more able to break away quickly from the way of their forefathers to submission’. ‘So the trans phenomenon is a transitional phase?’. ‘Why surely, the weaker, the sicker the deen becomes the greater the split between the outward and the inward – you end up with real life and this thing hanging on by the skin of its teeth known as religion. The time is ripe for the deen again: the hermaphros shall have nothing to fear, they perform the salat between the men and the women.’ ‘Well that’s a relief’, he said ‘unbuttoning his frock’.

What distinguishes the Imam of Madina from the other Imams who have gained current ascendency among the vast bulk of the umma is his reliance on, his trust in the people of Madina al-Munawwara: Shafii, his student, in the end rejected the legal value of this intimate connection of his to his companions, fellow fuqaha and precursors in favour of an intellectual, head-based, systematic assessment of the deen which veered towards logic rather than trust, and we might say rather than love; people are after all subject to forgetfulness, misunderstanding and shortcomings – with respect to the capacity for fiqh and transmission of the deen – is the argument; he was born in Palestine, came to Makka and became part of Madina society only relatively late. Abu Hanifa was based in Kufa and was obliged to take much of his knowledge from single chains of transmission, i.e from isolated companions and tabi’un who arrived with the knowledge, that is their own particular portion of knowledge, they had acquired while residing in Madina at a particular time and in particular circumstances. But as Rabi’ reports, ‘A thousand from a thousand is preferable to me then one from one, as the sunna shall be stripped away from your hands by one from one’, and the sunna he is referring to is the sunna of the Messenger, on whom be peace and blessings, which then became the accepted pattern of social life for the people of Madina, i.e. the ‘amal; moreover ‘Ubaydallah ibn Abd al-Karim ar-Raazi said, ‘The Messenger of Allah, may the peace and blessings of Allah was taken [back to His Lord] while twenty thousand eyes wept for him’, i.e. referring to the ten thousand Companions who had remained in Madina up to the time of his death and who were living in accordance with the very last form and pattern of behaviour adopted by its inhabitants from the exemplar of the Messenger living among them. What was of overriding importance to Imam Malik was what the people were doing at that particular moment and the way this practice was transmitted by succeeding generations to him – with all of the changes and modifications occasioned by the fuqaha of Madina which naturally occurred on account of changing circumstances and new situations. These then were the people who knew which pattern of life corresponded the closest to that of the Messenger, on whom be peace and blessing – precisely because succeeding generations developed within that social framework. How different from the form transmitted by a student of his who later rejected this social transmission of the deen in favour of a system which strove to erase all the anomalies which must naturally occur in the recording of a prophetic teaching transmitted by men and women! how different from the form transmitted by the great alim of Kufa who did not have access to the last, complete, social ‘picture’ of Madina and so had to rely a great deal on fresh ijtihad, i.e. not the ijtihad of the tabi’un and tabi’u tabi’un!

In short, action, ‘amal, was of overriding importance for Imam Malik; indeed he defined iman in terms of action: iman which did not lead to action was of a very insubstantial form – he was not a Maturidi; iman he knew was subject to increase and decrease; this then is the underlying reason for his trust of the people of Madina: they were acting in accordance with the Messenger, they possessed the overall balanced, social way of living because they saw themselves as part of a complete society: they understood the danger of taking an isolated hadith, however authentic, out of context, i.e. by ignoring to whom it was said, why it was said and whether of not is was of general, social import.

Imam Malik said himself that he arrived at his ‘well trodden way’ because he took it from those he personally knew, who in turn had taken it personally from those they knew, and in turn from the latter who had taken it from the Messenger, on whom be peace and blessings.

This is in no way to denigrate the other two Imams mentioned above; but it is a clear statement to the effect that this is the way, par excellence, indeed the only way, for those who understand the existentialist truth of our Imam: he knew people of knowledge and he trusted them because they acted upon what they knew; and morever a whole society of them.

Imam Malik’s iman was therefore not solely intellectual but rather suffused with the actions and judgements of all those around him – a balance of intimate social awareness together with the capacity to understand the validity of the judgements of the tabiun and tabi at-tabiun which may have differed from the decisions of the Messenger – because given in particular circumstances or even abrogated. His concern was the overall good of society; how different from vast numbers of individual ulama and shaykhs, disconnected from any society or community of their own, who ascribe fanatically to the present obsession with confining the deen to hadiths and who in doing so bring imbalance and fitna to the umma. It may now be clear to the reader why the essentially hadith-based madhhab of Imam Ahmad was able to be misused to cause so much fitna, especially in Africa – which had hitherto been the Hochburg of love for Imam Malik, may Allah be please with him; perhaps too the Imam’s trust in the people around him might be an opening for the many mini shaykhs and ulama – who abound in virtal reality – to a non-informational understanding of the deen, enabling them to ditch the ideal Islam in their brains for a hands on, existential interaction with their fellow men and women, and an acceptance of a Rais, an Amir, a Sultan or a King – however faulty in their eyes, i.e. an acceptance of one of the pillars of the deen which they conveniently choose to ignore because it necessarily implies a societal rather then an intellectual commitment.

The Imam was urged on two occasions by the governor of Makka and the Khalif to allow his teaching to become the official deen; he declined, knowing that it was up to people themselves to recognise the truth of what he was teaching: those who are not following the Imam must ask themselves where ‘this business of ours’ as Imam Malik terms it, originated: he is the Imam Dar al-Hijra, the Imam of the place to which the Messenger went to to establish a social reality after he had become certain that it was not possible in Makka: if these people genuinely desire a blue print for a just and balanced society, then it is to the Illuminated City and its Imam rather than Makka or Kufa to which they must address their study and practice.

It is relatively unusual to read such crass invective from the university Augean stables of objectivity; but so be it: hate blinds. May the All-Seeing, the All-Merciful guide D. F-M.

Clear however is the unwanted – on the part of the author – positive effect for the Muslim reader: Fernández-Morera merely serves to remind the umma of all the life-giving aspects of the deen which have become forgotten or watered down during the last decades by means of the multiple efforts on both sides of the fence to align the deen with the demands of folklore christianity and monetary democracy. Thus the author is accurate in highlighting the recent sugary academic cosiness with Muslim Andalusia but gravely wanting in his understanding of such matters as slavery, jihad, dhimmi status, women and physical punishments within the shariat: his refusal to consider any wisdom underlying the legal parameters and rulings sent down by the Lord of the Worlds or demonstrated by His Messenger, peace be upon him, renders his assessment of Iberian life a collection of shallow, anecdotal, journalistic outpourings devoid of any deeper coherent social context. Given that he judges according to christian norms and legal terms then we must remind him of the necessity of just perspective: to take but just one example: Any ‘killings’ on the Peninsula were exacted by appointed judges and in accordance with divine law, unlike the 7 millions killed in the Balkans by his co-faithists, the six exterminated by the neo-Aryan-redemptionist, wotanist christians, the untold hundreds of thousands by European christian colonialists in Africa and Asia or the 20 million plus eliminated by the linguistic inheritors of the jews and christians, i.e. the purgists, the communists. That Fernández-Morera ‘discovers’ a number of aberrant rulers or judges, the exception to the rule, only serves to support the legitimacy and reality of the judicial system of that time and place. Extra-judicial, inquisitorial torture and killings on a massive scale on the part of non-Muslim parties are historically proven by the latter themselves; such practices were certainly not the norm in Muslim societies.