Islam is NOT a political ideology, a political theology, a political system, a political venture, or a political empire. It is concerned only with the way Muslims practice their particular communal politics just as it is concerned with the way every Muslim practices his own particular politics in her own personal life.
Islam is a religion, a way of pursuing one’s personal life, continuously asserting while simultaneously acquiring deeper insights into ethics, principles, standards, morals, values, and qualities to attain in life.
A Muslim is one who witnesses the Shahadah, the assertion that God is One and Mohammad is His Prophet. After that he need not do anything more to remain in the fold of Islam. Whatever else he does or does not do is between him and God.
Shariah and Tariqah mean the same in Arabic i.e. "the way". The word Shariah has now come to denote Islamic Law but because Islam is meant for the Muslim for all time THEREFORE there is no fixed law in Islam. And THEREFORE, the Shariah changes not only with time and place but also with culture, knowledge, circumstance, belief, and intellect. And, THEREFORE the Shariah of one Muslim is NOT the Shariah of another Muslim. Pluralism is a cardinal ethic of Islam so that all people are free to choose their own ways,their own Shariah under Islam. THEREFORE, as the Tariqah (the Belief) so the Shariah (the Law).
However, the word Tariqah has come to denote the beliefs and traditions of the non-orthodox sects, the so-called heretic sects, in Islam. Well then know that I am a heretic, a non-believer in the so-called "Shariah-Islam" of the Muslim ulama, the so-called Muslim scholars, born and bred over a thousand years of medieval ignorance. Islam is indeterminate and no Muslim should be so arrogant and intolerant as to uphold his own particular Islam as the only Islam that must be followed by all Muslims leave alone all people everywhere. Indeed, there are ethics to be upheld in Islam but these are broad, general issues and their specificity is determined by the Muslim community concerned in time, place, culture, knowledge, circumstance, belief, and intellect.
TS Eliot wrote that the point of any journey was to find out where you came from. As I bore my bulging canvas bag to the wharf at Circular Quay, not far from where my Irish great-great-grandparents had landed in leg irons, I hoped the point of my journey would become clearer once my ship had sailed. The Bretagne was my ship; it was white with blue stripes along the side and had a graceful bow, having been built in Saint-Nazaire as a modest version of the mighty Normandie. Alas, long veins of rust showed, and the crew looked morose. A Greek company now owned it, and the previous day had decanted 600 Greek brides.
The brides had been married “by proxy” in Greece to men in Australia they had never met. It worked this way. Young Greek (and Italian) men emigrated to Australia in the postwar years to work in the outback or at night in factories. When the authorities realised an entire gender was missing, they encouraged young women in Greece to write to their bereft male compatriots on the other side of the world. This often resulted in a wedding with the groom present only in a photograph pinned to the wedding cake. When a bride ship docked, anxious men and women would hold up photographs to identify the wife or husband they had never laid eyes on. Unfortunately, some hearts would change during the month-long voyage, producing a certain anarchy on arrival.
My Australian generation filled these ships on the return voyage to Europe, squeezing into six-berth cabins below the Plimsoll line in order to reach that mystical place called OT (“over there”). On the wharf that May day, aged 22, I told my mother I would be back in a year or two. “You won’t be back,” she said. With departure delayed 12 hours because Captain Nick was missing, we sang our umpteenth “Auld Lang Syne”, and the beer and tears ran dry; and finally we steamed out into the Pacific. I thought I could see my father’s silhouette on the headland; someone flashed their headlights.
I have read about fellow expatriates who insist that, from a tender age, they longed for cultural betterment elsewhere. Clive James comes to mind. As the bride ship slid into its first trough of green ocean, and salt spray cascaded over those of us still looking back, I was smitten with what I thought was seasickness but was really homesickness; rather like some tropical maladies, it recurs all your life and there is no cure.
Having made it to Singapore, Captain Nick missed, perhaps literally, the next port (Colombo) for reasons unexplained. As we crossed the Indian Ocean, with fresh water rationed for reasons unexplained, the horizon became a see-sawing line etched in my vision. The tiny, always empty dance floor remained at an angle and the Italian band were to be found at the rails, lime-green of pallor. Affordable alcohol ran dry for reasons unexplained, with the exception of sweet vermouth. Entertainment was provided by a fight between a Greek officer, known as Matinee Idol, and a New Zealander who had thrown him into the ship’s minuscule pool when we crossed the Equator.
Then, one morning, there were red cliffs and, beyond, the Suez Canal. At Aden, I paid £12 for a Hermes Baby typewriter, which accompanied me to places of upheaval for 30 years, minus only the letter “m”. When we landed at Genoa, I fell to the ground. Two years later, the bride ship blew up without loss of life, for reasons unexplained.
The journey taught me how immense the world is, and I remain in awe at the sheer magic of a flight that covers the same 13,000 miles in a day and a night. That said, when the pilot flying a cargo of rifles, ammunition, stockfish and me into the Biafran War at night bellowed, as we approached the ghostly outline of a dirt road littered with the wreckage of aircraft, “Turn the fucking lights on, so I know where to put this thing!”, I was also in awe at my own fragility and fear. Mind you, the art deco piano bar flying across the United States was no less surreal. You can take a shower on the new Airbus A380, after your massage. The magic has become routine, as if the epic scale of things no longer applies.
That is not quite true, and the trigger for these reflections is a poignant story of a journey that was on the front pages recently, but briefly, having now succumbed to Gordon Brown’s perennial crisis and the venality of his associates. Yet it lingers on. A backpack and a vaccination card were found, and a laptop, and there was a photograph on the web of a container holding the few bodies found floating where Flight AF447 went down on 1 June.
I have flown by Air France from Paris to Rio, the fatal route in reverse, and I remember the place where the trade winds collide and the ocean is sucked into the sky and becomes a vortex of a kind. My aircraft then – a Boeing 707 – rose and fell, rose and fell. The fake starlight window in the ceiling provided reassurance.
The news of Flight AF447 is now all but forgotten. I read a dignified statement by Jane and Robin Bjoroy, the parents of Alexander, aged 11, who had visited them during his half-term holiday and was on his way back to school in Bristol on AF447. They said their son’s death was tragic. It certainly was that, and perhaps a reminder of the epic scale of things.
Every writer worth his salt writes from his own point of view - why else would I take the trouble to read the take of others like me - and you?
To me John Pilger's pensive piece, for one, is beautifully crafted with humor, wonder, pain, thought.
It is telling me how the world has changed from the days of his youth - and keeps on changing - at an UN-understandable pace.
How human and frail our lives really are.
How amazing is life - and death - that he is still alive, having lived an out-of-the-ordinary adventurous cum dangerous life, but a little boy simply going back to his grade school in a transport no longer considered anything but ordinary, should never again awake from his sweet slumber in a vehicle that had provided him with his every wish to make his journey comfortable.
And the sad bravery of his parents in a heart-wrenching reality in a world where 'reality' often is all but gone mad.
Then again, the little boy did reach his destination! From whence he had begun his original journey to visit this land, our earth.
PS: who say dis lil piece is a piece o' cake - no have no tinkerin an' no thinkerin to it?
Posts
