Which version of Islam? Slim or Fat?

Talking about Islam nowadays is cheap – cheapened by the general sectarian atmosphere that surrounds each and every group that aims to squander unabashed public acclaim. No group feels vindicated unless it comes fortified with visible ‘online’ credentials – no Sunni, Shi”i, Sufi, Ismaíli or Newbie Muslim worth his or her salt can afford to be seen outside his or her own generic laptop-driven, coffee-laden universe of frothy,worldly drivel, endless cheesecake- smothered gossip and haughty homespun diatribes about the ‘wonders of being Muslim’. These ‘wonders’ range from Malaysian golf-playing business executives discussing the importance of fasting during Ramadan while high on anti-depressants (Malaysian businessmen are among the world’s most stressed after the Chinese and the Swedes the least stressed) to Jean-hugging, Hijab-clad teenage Saudi TV hosts misreviewing the latest grotesquely infantile Hollywood movie Block Busters. The yesteryear sins of post-modern Western consumer society – hideous Gold-encrusted Gucci handbag et al- are today the darkened virtues of all ‘progressive” Muslims everywhere. While the developed Western nations are busy off-loading their own post-industrial waste through activities such as alternative medicine, sponsored runs, countryside hikes, herbal and organic farming, longer holidays and scholarly pursuits (enrolling for higher second and third degrees) – enjoying substantially healthier and happier family oriented lifestyles – Muslim societies, by contrast, are engaged in the sordid gorging of the rotten carcass of the modern urban lifestyle, self-glorified as the pig-proud but fallen priests of high consumerism. Most modern Muslim cities are now showing all the signs of having become the cradles of  the world’s dystopia congealed.

There are no traditional arts and crafts of the Muslim world; the streets are nicely laced-up with China’s industrial waste – tons and tons of plastic smelling office furniture, children’s toys, Chandeliers, buckets, steel knives and forks, plates and cups, prayer rugs – even inscriptions bearing the name “Allah” – all made in China – are being shipped, as we speak, to Islam’s holiest places. Just take a walk to Souk Uwais in Riyadh on a Wednesday. Traditional Islamic craftsmen, architects and calligraphers have long disappeared from the scene, taking up part-time jobs as hospital porters, Taxi drivers, pirate DVD sellers and handy-men, existing only as citified human cockroaches in damp and caliginous alleys that sprawl unceasingly into the urban nightmare. Western luxury goods like 24 carat Gold Rolex watches and Dunhill Cigarette Lighters are always available in the pretentious boutiques where poorly paid staff wait, hand on foot, on uninformed purchasing “elites” and their families, shovelling in without the slightest  knowledge of any questionable aesthetic impropriety or malice.

If, by chance, a modern Muslim city were to have anything so typically inglorious as as a Library or even a “University” you can bet your last Riyal on the likelihood that it will house only the finest stalwarts of urbane sophistication -salary-hugging officials who cut ribbons while putting money into undeclared off-shore Bank accounts. The middle management are, of course, ever ready to show their (in)sincerity to higher education- to the “ethos”of the Academy – by unfurling even newer purpose-built H-Blocks filled with yet more opaque, airless cells equipped with the latest Taiwanese software. There, in the antechamber of academe, in the bosom of Beijing’s noveau ameublement and audio-visual razzamatazz, lies the ghost of the absent teacher, beaten to the post by so and so’s cousin who knows the Dean. If the airless cells did not kill him, love for education certainly did not save him.

Food, glorious food! You are what you eat – Muslim cities have been reduced, en mass, to Kebab and Burger fastfood conglomerations – yes, there are a few good restaurants in these cities but the overwhelming emphasis on red meat has wrecked the very notion of Islamic cuisine – which has always been pro-vegetable and fruit, fish and fresh bread. The arrival of rice has been relatively late in the offering especially within the Arabian peninsular. Traditional Saudi Kabsa may be eaten with guests but never as daily consumption. Eating habits can change the course of civilizations.

What is it about the number of hospitals and the health of a nation?  Any country like Saudi Arabia can, if it chooses, employ a strong enough argument to show that the large number of modern high-tech hospitals in the Kingdom are a sure sign of the good health of the nation. But is this really a strong argument? If anything, the number of hospitals is, unfortunately, a sign of the exact opposite of this argument. Nothing is so genuinely disturbing than to witness the relatively large-scale routine hospitalization of many ordinary Saudis. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity and the chronic lack of exercise are the biggest killers of both young and old Saudis – No need to wait for an invading army from the East or the West, no need to wait for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – all that is required is a suicidal Drive-thru lifestyle, one that strictly forbids walking on pavements or mistakenly opening the car door to walk to the grocery store (young Saudi drivers only need to honk and the poor Indian grocery man will come out to his car) – even Drive-Thru ATM machines, just in case you are tempted to make a quick dash for some more money for the mobile coffin. This is not just another Saudi-bashing  blog ; similar shocking scenes are being replicated and copied across the Muslim World; in Iran, in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt. It is hoped that Saudi Arabia will emerge as the real moral bench mark for the entire region and the rest of the Islamic World.

So, finally, the question of the hour is: which version of Islam do Muslims deplore? Forget Sunni, Shia, Salafi or Sufi- these are grossly over politicized terms that have now become meaningless in the context of which we speak – there are today only two versions from which to choose; the Slim or the Fat?

Can’t buy me love

Money, or ‘faloos’ as it is called in modern colloquial Arabic, can and cannot do certain things. The Beatles famously sang ‘can’t buy me love’ , a modern day version of an old classic truism; one that reveals not only the surprising sagacity of a new generation of emancipated youth but that of many a wise observer throughout the long channels of human history.

Faloos, notoriously, cannot buy love, love of people, love of nation, love of heritage, love of education, nor love of God – that one single commodity most needed from the town planners in Riyadh and from those claiming to be guardians of the City’s prosperity. Despite the wealth of its many citizens, Riyadh still cannot boast  a legitimate public transport system, unless we are forced to cite the abysmal 2 Riyal Bus Service used exclusively by poor Indian migrant workers, even for all the love of money. It does not matter which way round we wish to examine it, but Riyadh remains  poorly placed for the likes of the 21st century and the needs of its soaring adolescent population. The traffic congestion is hideous in extremis and disorientating, inviting major hemorrhage – inducing blockages in all the main arteries at each and every rush hour and at most other times. The poor design of the roads, with virtually no pavements for pedestrians, nor conveniently placed U-Turns, makes Riyadh the most spectacularly un-modern of modern cities. Riyadh boasts great riches and proof of opulent lifestyles is much in evidence but it still ranks as the poorest city in terms of its major road design flaws. It is a driver’s apocalypse -  an urban graveland where experienced owners of nice cars need not apply. Nice cars are for nice cities. Bad cars are for bad cities – so maybe the phantom-like oddity of the 2-Riyal Bus expressed a subliminal message after all? The presence of nice cars in bad cities is a crime for their owners and especially the car manufacturers and so Riyadh has finally emerged as the inglorious antithesis of everything the modern motorist most viscerally holds dear; the almost total absence of clean largely uncluttered roads, adequately planned country or desert lanes, ample U-Turning opportunities, hard shoulders, scenic views and ecologically friendly engines. And do not just take my word for it – go hire a car and check it out for yourselves; you can always watch the entire series of Top Gear as a consolation prize on your return.

But pity faloos, poor faloos for having anticipated such sublime niceties for the residents of Riyadh – for nothing is so characteristic of the abandonment of love for the love of faloos than the near total absence of Islamic art and architecture from a major Muslim city of the 21st Century. If the past is what helps to situate us in the present then Riyadh is neither in the present nor in the past, nor yet in the future. According to a report published in Saudi Aramco World, [Volume 31, No.4] “despite the opportunities that construction of this magnitude offers – throughout the kingdom as well as in Riyadh – no specifically Arab-Islamic style of architecture has emerged. Instead, Riyadh and most other centers of growth have imported not only the building technology of the West but also its architectural themes“. Einstein famously remarked that nothing is so unintelligible than the unintelligibility of the world and so nothing is surprising in the observation of the almost total absence of ‘specifically Arab-Islamic’ architecture – why? Because faloos cannot buy love and without love no education let alone traditional architecture is possible – Nothing surprising about that. Nothing whatsoever.

The icing on the cake and proof – if needed – that Riyadh is poor all but in name is the Sauron-like beast, the bottle-opener-in-the-sky, the unflattering anti-tribute to all bottle-opening aficionados and fans of J.R.R.Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings everywhere – Mamlaka Tower or the eponymously named ‘Kingdom Tower’. Here, in full daylight and in the deathly darkness of the night, stands this creature, this Eye of Sauron, blocking out both the rays of the Sun and the Moon as well as the aspirations of all traditional Islamic architects everywhere. In many famous Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad himself warned against the construction of high-rise buildings – why? Not because he was untrained in modern architectural methods nor for that matter because he did not countenance the opportunities available to future generations but because without aesthetic continuity – where the material ambiance breaks with the spiritual values of Islam – an unpleasant, ungodly vacuum is created, a void made up of entirely new elements, foreign both to the soil and heritage of Arabia. Nothing demonstrates the unceasing and disproportionate love of money more poignantly than the near complete replacement of traditional Islamic architecture with unappealing modern substitutes of the worst possible kinds. Even in Rome, in London, in Naples, in Venice, in Prague, in Moscow, in Paris, in Athens -  in all the major European cities – continuity is both respected and practised for this very reason. What would happen if the citizens of Rome woke up one morning to find that all of their ancient monuments, buildings, and archaeological sites had been bulldozed, while they slept, to make room for kitschy 5 star hotels and nail salons? No doubt, one can only imagine the uproar. No society worthy of its name, no culture that respects its own heritage could, would or wish to achieve the unimaginable – namely, the elimination of itself from the cultural and aesthetic map of the world. No amount of money, even it be in the billions, is worth this kind of cultural auto-destruction. Every human knows this, every human sings it- only faloos does not.

Bad Blood and Modern Science

The traditional Arab science of ‘Hijama’, cupping or ‘blood-letting’ , has been around in the Gulf for many hundreds of years. It has earlier precedents, notably among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and traditionally was an important procedure in Chinese and Indian medical practices. In the Arab world, the philosopher Ibn Sina among others, endorsed its use in certain circumstances with the right precautions. The Arab physicians seemed, in general, to be in agreement with the famous Roman physician Claude Galen [AD 129 – 200] of Pergamum, whose enthusiasm for the practice was well known. More importantly for the Muslim physicians, this procedure – loosely translated as ‘blood-sucking’ in Arabic – was also strongly recommended by the Prophet himself ,who saw in it a highly effective and useful remedy against many ailments of the body and the mind. The procedure basically involves the use of cups or horns to extract blood from certain points on the body following small incisions. The idea is that the viscosity of the blood is thence reduced and with it the ‘bad blood’ and toxins that may have accumulated in the body causing different ailments and disease. The extraction of blood is therefore viewed as an early form of detoxification.

Despite these honourable and, in the case of Prophet Muhammad, auspicious recommendations Hijama is, in countries like Saudi Arabia, beginning to be questioned on the presumption that modern science has made the need for such recommendations obselete.

I recently went along to a branch of the famous Dr.Suleiman Al Habib chain of hospitals in Riyadh to enquire about the possibility of having the procedure carried out by qualified practioners only to find rather bemused-looking staff explaining that the procedure was no longer on the menu. I later found out that the Saudi Health Services Council recently advised practioners to abandon the practice altogether because “evidence given to prove its effectiveness was non-scientific”. I was shocked but not altogether surprised to find Buciallism [ Maurice Bucaille - one time exponent of the much discredited "modern- science -proves- the -Quran" thesis] rearing its ugly head in Arab circles again.  The faces of  some of the hospital staff – who really ought to know better – summed it all up for me; a mixture of unbeknowest smugness carved out of an unhealthy ignorance of the world of alternative medicine. There is nothing ‘Bedou’ [unsophisticated] about cupping but something very ‘bedou’ about the complete uncritical endorsement of ”modern science” . There are just as many fads, fashions in science as there in the fashion boutiques of Milan, New York or Riyadh – as the famous case of Hollywood actress Gweneth Paltrow amply shows. Rather than assuming that the whole of modern medicine is some kind of universal remedy for all of our ills, Paltrow was recently spotted bearing the visible marks of having been cupped after undergoing treatment using TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine].  If modern wealthy celebrities are opting for alternative medicine, on the knowledge that modern medicine is the not the universal cure of all evils, why then are some Saudis refusing to acknowledge the Sunnah of the Prophet as an effective alternative? When will mimetic reflexes and inferiority complexes finally evaporate from the Nejd or will it end only when every other aspect of the Sunnah is eliminated on the ground that modern science has not yet verified its effectiveness?

Noesis and The Muhammadan Mould

The term “Muhammadan” has been incorrectly criticized as an inaccurate substitute for the term “Muslim”.  No doubt, Muslims do not refer to themselves as “Muhammadans”; however, the term has been retained here for reasons of dialectic in order to highlight a select code of practices, social attitudes and ethical and moral decision making that stem from the example set by the Prophet Muhammad during his lifetime.

The mould of Muhammad therefore indicates a  template upon which all subsequent ethical and moral thinking takes place.

Why Prophet Muhammad and why now? Modern Muslims, those who presumably believe in the “progress of our time” might incline towards the view that the teachings of Muhammad are today outdated by modern events or circumstances. Whatever the case, the author of this blog cannot accept the opinion that ancient truths and beliefs are, have or will be refuted by modern superstitutions of whatever kind or variety. Most reputable University departments still permit the teaching of ancient thought, not as an anachronism, but as an enduring testimony to a wisdom that is of perennial value for mankind in general. The teachings of Prophet Muhammad, being as they are of direct noetic quality,  are deeply saturated in wisdom as well as practical intelligence of a instinctively superior perennial kind.

The Greek term ‘Noesis’ can be translated, with some inevitable loss in the English, to indicate or mean “higher intellectual intuition”, a term that underscores a quality or mode of awareness that realizes an implicit relationship, within human consciousness itself, of the Divine and the human domains in Nature. This mode of awareness or ‘higher intuition’ is a marked feature of the Muhammadan Mould and for this reason cannot be sublimated by the incongruities of modern facts and circumstances. It is for this reasn that the Muhammadan Mould indicates both the ‘Whole Man’ (al-Insan-el- Kamil) and ‘Áncient Man’ (al-Insan -el- Qadim), the ever-renewing present and the quasi-absolute past,  the expanding horizon of the macrocosm and the concentrated depths of the microcosm.

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In the Name of Allah, the Beneficient, the Merciful