 “Muslims are many in number but few in reality, and the groups that claim to be Muslim are many, approaching 73 sects and numbering more than 1 billion.” [1] |
Though Safaa and Marwah are not mentioned by name in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the event connected to the hills; namely, Hagar’s desperate search for water to feed her son Ishmael, is evocatively depicted.
When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, “Do not let me see the boy die.” And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept. God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. [Genesis 21:15-19]
Muslim tradition says that Hagar had in fact run between Safaa and Marwah until
the angel Gabriel had struck the ground with his wing (or heel) and caused water
to gush forth. Hagar’s desperate dash is vividly recalled each year on the
Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj, where the faithful move as one nation, seven times
between the two hills.
In the course of the Hajj, it has also become a custom to visit al-Medina (literally, the City), whose centerpiece is Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the
Prophet’s Mosque). Beneath its resplendent Green Dome lies the actual home and tomb of Muhammad.
The mosque is a living paradox within the kingdom, because the state-sponsored
strain of Islam- Salafism-
traces its ideological lineage back to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s own career of
ravaging the tombs of Muslim saints. By the time he died in 1792, the domes erected over those tombs
had become the
favorite targets of his zealous cohorts.
According to Sir Richard Burton, who disguised himself as an Afghan Muslim to perform the Hajj in 1853, the al-Saud tribe went on a pillaging spree across the Arabian Peninsula in 1810, and upon entering al-Medina, became enthralled “by the appearance of the golden or gilt globes and crescents surmounting the green dome“.
In their crass attempt to demolish the Green Dome, however:
Two of their number…were killed by falling from the slippery roof, and the rest, struck by superstitious fears, abandoned the work of destruction. [the text of Sir Richard Burton's remarkable journey can be found here]
Saudi suspicions over the Mosque are far from dead. It is disconcerting to note that fatwas (religious edicts) such as this, pertaining to the grave of Prophet Muhammad, even exists.
With regards to some ignorant people who stipulate the permissibility of graves being allowed in Masaajid (mosques) due to the presence of the Prophet’s grave and his two noble companions’ graves being part of his Masjid, then this can not be presented as an argument or proof, because the Messenger of Allaah and his two noble companions were buried in his house and not inside the Masjid. But when Al Waleed ibn ‘Abul-Maalik ibn Marwaan decided to expand the Prophet’s Masjid, he included the house of the Prophet as part of the Masjid, due to his intended extension. Al Waleed ibn ‘Abdul-Maalik ibn Marwaan committed an error when he did this, and what was obligatory upon him was not to include the house of the Prophet as part of the Masjid…
Taken to its logical conclusion, the fatwa agitates for the so-called error
to be rectified. Either the Green Dome of the Prophet’s Mosque is to be torn down, finishing what had been attempted by the early Saudi marauders, or the Prophet Muhammad’s grave is exhumed and his cadaver transplanted elsewhere.
Lest you think that these notions are too farfetched to have any grounding in
reality; they do resonate amongst Saudi Arabia’s top scholars. Shaykh Muhammad Nasir-al-din al-Albani, for example, has called for
both the demolition of the Green Dome and for
shuffling the Prophet’s grave outside the mosque in at least five of his books. [2]
According to Gibril Haddad (Albani
& His Friends), Shaykh Abdul Aziz Bin Baaz- another leading scholar of the kingdom-
minded
over a regime of “blatant tampering with the scholarly heritage of Islam” to prop up the otherwise indefensible position that visiting the Prophet’s grave is a grotesque rite.
“In the book of al-Adhkar by Imam al-Nawawi as published by Dar al-Huda in al-Riyadh in 1409/1989 and edited by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Arna’ut of Damascus, page 295, the chapter-title, ‘Section on Visiting the Grave of the Messenger’ was substituted with the title, ‘Section on Visiting the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah’…”
In fact, Imam al-Nawawi- one of the most highly-regarded scholars of Sunni Islam- was not alone in upholding the rite and calling it what it is. There is overwhelming accord amongst past and present ulema (religious scholars) that visiting the Prophet’s grave brings tremendous benefit to the believer.
This clash between the traditional elements (represented by the majority of ulema) on the one side, and ‘reformist’ elements that work and rework the line that what they are doing is simply
‘purging’ the religion of idolatry frankly befuddles most non-Muslims. It is fashionable instead to adopt the simple, black-and-white view of morality, in which the only boundary that exists and should exist lies between moderates and extremists.
The view does nothing to address the internal dynamics of the Muslim community, which is characterized by an oftentimes grim struggle for the rights to define orthodoxy. As the voluminous report churned out by the
National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States makes clear, the "civil war" within Muslim
ranks will have a dramatic impact on the rest of the world.
Partisan Decisions
The question must be asked: “Are Mecca and Medina the sole preserve of a particular country named after a particular tribe?”
There is, of course, a key difference between the broad representation of past Islamic empires and modernity’s conception of the nation-state.
Undoubtedly, Saudi Arabia falls into the latter category.
But a nation-state is defined as a form of state in which those who exercise power claim legitimacy for their rule partly or solely on the grounds that their power is exercised for the promotion of the distinctive interests, values and cultural heritage of a particular nation whose members ideally would constitute all, or most of, its subject population and all of whom would dwell within the borders.
The operative phrase is “subject population“. Unless Saudi Arabia regards itself as overlords of the Ummah, it is extremely hard to condone its
negatory policies, apparently taken on behalf of her Muslim subjects worldwide, without so much as the vestige of
a consensus being reached.
There is perhaps a realization that historical sites are dearly important to people,
and that any argument against the role of history and tradition is simply a tool
in a deliberate campaign of de-culturalization. Joel Spring states that “one’s knowledge, images, and emotions regarding the past have an impact on future actions. Individuals often make decisions based on what they believe to be the historical purposes and goals of an institution.”
If Spring is right, then the immediate fallout of the sustained demolitions of historical artifacts identified most strongly with the Prophet Muhammad, his family and companions would surely be the lessening of
adoration for the Prophet himself.
This intense love- often trumped as an example of ‘idolatry’ by ideologues-
cannot be underestimated amongst non-Arab Muslims who make up the enormous bulk (and hence,
consensus) of the Ummah. After all, a religion based mainly on the upholding
of legal norms enshrined in an Arabic text could hardly be expected to penetrate
the cultures of non-Arab illiterates far removed from the cosmopolitan world of
the great Islamic cities of the medieval age. Early non-Arab converts were
attracted to the personality of the Prophet Muhammad himself, as emulated by the Sufi missionaries who adhered to the Sunnah (Prophetic behavior).
It is thus no coincidence that the Hanbali Madhhab
(School of Thought) which laid particular emphasis on literalistic and
non-allegorical interpretation of the scriptures, came to form the
near-exclusive backbone of puritanical movements like the Saudi brand of
Salafism. Malise Ruthven (Islam in the World) highlights that the same thing had
happened in the past; the Hanbali framework inevitably "became a rallying point for
Arabs who found their linguistic and cultural hegemony diminishing in a
multi-national Islamic society dominated numerically by Turks, Persians, Berbers
and other non-Arab peoples".
The Fatal Loss
At any rate, the chronic annihilation of Islam’s physical legacy would have
floundered if not for the devastating effect that secularization has had on the
religious psyche. Karen Armstrong (A History of Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths) argues that
being raised in a scientifically-oriented society has robbed us of the ability to think naturally in terms of symbols.
Sacred places lose their symbolism simply because “we have developed a more logical and discursive mode of thought. Instead of looking at physical phenomenon imaginatively, we strip an object of all its emotive associations and concentrate on the thing itself.”
The sight bereft of holism leads people to an extremely narrow view of things,
and the attitude is best enshrined in a Koranic story that relates the vulgar
challenge that some Jews had flung on Moses."…We shall
not believe thee unto we see God face to face!" (Quran 2:55). This is
sadly the state of the narrow mind, a state that the Koran firmly eschews in
favor of a more circuitous process of introspection:
"The likeness of the life of the present is as the rain which We send down from the skies: by its mingling arises the produce of the earth- which provides food for men and animals: (It grows) till the earth is clad with its golden ornaments and is decked out (in beauty): the people to whom it belongs think they have all powers of disposal over it: There reaches it Our command by night or by day, and We make it like a harvest clean-mown, as if it had not flourished only the day before! thus do We explain the Signs in detail for those who reflect." [Quran 10:25]Places that attain to sacredness are neither new nor is it a radical departure from the natural evolution of religions. Karen Armstrong notes that “this is not something that happens automatically. Once a place has been experienced as sacred in some way and has proved capable of giving people access to the divine“, a great deal of creative energy is spent on helping others cultivate this same sense of transcendence.
“Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man, dead for over thirteen hundred years, been loved so personally, and by so many, as he who lies buried beneath the great green dome…”
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
so true, Qiyamat is very close