Hamza Yusuf defends Dante

I agree with Abu Hasan.

And it was not offensive for Abu Hasan to mention NJ's father in the context of how he mentioned.

It is also not offensive of Abu Hasan to say:

 

no it isn't me!!
for a start i don't talk like a chav! and i don't know who the hell that guy is...

 

when the angels of hell are breaking your pathetic head with heavy maces, it is not dante's poetry that will save you.

what a piece of filth you are! you claim to love the Habib sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam but still you don't mind reading someone who blasphemed openly against him. you are worse than those street romeos who have more ghayrah than you.

to hell with such poetry and to hell with people who promote such poetry.

every time you read dante, replace the names of the Habib sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam with that of your own father and your mother on mount purgatory and enjoy dante. put your own son in the whatever-circle-of hell dante mentions and then come back here to defend such 'freedom'.

 

What about clubs?
And red areas?
And gay clubs?

 

Thank you for making yourself clear on where you stand.
You see in previous threads, like when we discussed science, we were unaware that you are a secularist liberal.
And we were also unaware of this at the onset of this 'discussion'.

You have acquiesced that Dante is a kafir, but my question still stands, what is you position on the individual who defends Dante on his insults and makes excuses for him?
Please provide the answer from Imam Qadi I'yad's 'Shifa', which you have read. This is unless you disagree with the verdict from the 'Shifa'.
This is not an inquisition. It is just to make things clear as to where you stand on these issues.

 

gorgeous george and nj

nj is this you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=LlkLjAQSNhs

 

KS, Dante -- in as far as he belongs to the European tradition and I have grown up in the European culture myself- is in that sense one of my own but that doesn't mean I agree with everything he wrote and i certainly don't agree with what he said about Huzoor Paak صلى الله عليه وسلم and I believe that he will go to hell.

that doesn't mean i shouldn't read his work or that it isn't a great work of poetry. why can you not see nuances and everything is either/or with people like you. the world aint black and white.

see being both paki and european we second-third-gen offspring of immigrants have a unique access to two -even three--civilisations: the European, the Islamic and the Indo-Pakistani. Why can we not take from all three and enjoy all three and disown none of them? That means we appreciate Imam Ghazali and we appreciate Ghalib and we appreciate Shakespeare. Honestly, I don't see why not.

 

AQ - to answer your question: no i am not a perrenialist. but shaykh hamza etc. aren't perrenialists either. why do i defend them? because they are muslims and you people are bad-mouthing them [whether with your own daleels or not].

i am a sunni in my aqeedah but i am also a liberal secularist. this means i accept all the items in our aqidah but i also believe that everyone has the right to live how they want and i believe in the separation of state and church. let me give you an example: i believe to drink grape wine is haram, and to deny that it is haram makes one a kafir, and i don't drink myself, but i think that muslim countries should have bars and taverns just like everywhere else so that those who want to can do so. that is what i mean by separating state from religion. i am also a social democrat in that i believe in a social welfare state [just like we had --sort of still have -- in the UK and as they have in sweden and norway and germany etc.] and also that democracy is a good system of governance. i am not against other forms of governance like monarchy etc. either but the problem with them is you cannot change a bad monarch so easily. bascially i believe religion is a personal thing as are morality. yet despite this in my personal life i strive to follow the shariah as much as i can and i love my prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم very much and saints like pir mihr ali shah very much too and i hope this answers your questions.

i agree with hamza yusuf when he says that if every Muslim country was like Sweden Muslims would think they are in the time of Saladin again!

 

So NJ, do you consider Dante as 'one our/your own'?

My previous question also remains to be answered.

 

i once mentioned to a shaykh similar things and said something like 'how can they not grasp this simple point? it's simple common sense.'

and his response was this: the disease is of the heart and not of the mind.

what is even a simple 2+2=4 to us or simple language comprehension is still a case of:

ذَٰلِكَ فَضْلُ اللَّهِ يُؤْتِيهِ مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَاللَّهُ ذُو الْفَضْلِ الْعَظِيمِ
​

as for those who don't comprehend what is plain and open and simple common sense, it's a case of:

فِي قُلُوبِهِم مَّرَضٌ​

that's all it boils down to. there's nothing more that can be said.

 

now, now. who do we have here? sorry, i didn't catch you the first time, though a thought crossed my mind.

 

actually the interpretations are given by the elders of the ummah for a 1400 years, and pious torch bearers like Ala Hazrat and Yusuf Nabhani and Abdul Hakim Arwasi keep propagating it

what you term as sanctimonious arrogance of the pious is actually a desire to cling on to the manhaj of the Ahlus Sunnah and to uphold the pride and dignity of the message of The Prophet, sal Allahu 3alayhi wa sallam. subhan Allah, if this is the venom you carry at mere sinful aspirants with no amal who only wish to safeguard their 3aqidah, i wonder how much venom you would have unleashed had you ever met Ala Hazrat or Mihir Ali Shah in person!

in fact it is you who has been trying his level best to impose his saab and mem saab's 'enlightened' (as opposed to our 'pious') worldview onto others

who has insulted abdullah bin bayyah, habib ali jifri, abu bakr sirajuddin, yahya ninowy?

as for the others, at least those doing the insulting are giving GOOD REASONS and DALEELS for calling them deviants, while your only argument sums up to : "but they're popular and i like them", at other places you 'generally' term their cock and bull theories diametrically opposing the stance of classical positions as "different interpretations" (without specifically mentioning which theory of theirs is right and the daleel for it being so. when you are given daleels negating your position on some specific case such as this dante thing, you turn a blind eye or don't comprehend, or start jumping up and down. you claim to have read the shifa, yet you can't accept the gravity of the state of the person who defends dante for his disrespect to the Prophet)

as for hossein nasr, you do know that he is an out and out perennialist?

state your agenda openly nj - you accept perennialism and perennialist 'shuyukh' who propagate perennialist teachings, or you don't? daleels for either position? how hard can that be!

stop playing duck n dive, and stop taking these cheap jabs. if you love hamza yusuf and martin lings for their perennialism, then be a man, and state so openly, and counter-insult those Sunnis who insult them for what they perceive to be their heresies

BESIDES, aren't you a believer: that every human being has the right --or should have--to comment on what and who they want. Once you stop people having their own opinions...no matter how silly they might appear to you--that way lies the nightmare of totalitarianism... (post 28)

so then what exactly is your grouse against the members of the forum who comment on mark hanson and tahir and nazim and others like them?

as for what they have done for islam in the last 20 years, those on this perennialism bandwagon, all they have done is this - gain popularity of the masses starting to appear as "traditionalist Sunni", and when they got it, unleash their perennialist poison. this is the exact same thing tahir too did by the way.

the only thing that will settle that is daleels. bring your daleels for who/what is right and who/what is wrong.

popularity and masha Allah group hugs are not from adilla shar3iyyah

as you said elsewhere, let's be "fair". what do you know about taliban-run afghanistan from first hand experience? or do you just swallow what the papers tell you?

to this question by Talib

you say

imagine if i said that for my car cleaner:

yes, he's not university educated, but he has more knowledge of quantum physics than most phd's from the uk

on what grounds can you call him an islamic scholar or more knowledgeable than muslim scholars? what are your criteria for passing this judgment? popularity? or his poetry? how does good poetry from a linguistic pov make one a knowledgeable muslim? or do we call emerson too as 'more knowledgeable than most mullahs' now?

you are a disgusting person really. utterly disgusting. your claims of love of awliyaa and sunniyat are nothing but hot air. it's beyond obvious that the teachings of those very same awliyaa bother you. what you term as 'their own little world', we call the 'manhaj of the Ahlus Sunnah' and we pray to Allah to always keep us firmly locked in it and grant us death in this 'little world'

you start off with your arrogance and shooting from the behind. when responded, you come back with crocodile tears and some more arrogance! god forbid should someone show you your errors!

you are this forum's very own mark hanson who will scream names like ghazali left right and center, but the ideology of that very same ghazali bothers him and his filthy heart vents out its poison at anyone who tries to uphold that ideology

izzat aur mohabbat har kisi ko raas nahin aatey

you are the personification of al-ghazali's statement that 'more harm is done to deen by a foolish person of it than by a conscious enemy of it'

on what ground are you denigrating this 'perfect example of maulvis and maulvi-types' by saying 'living in their own little world'

yes we know that a LOT of people in the subcontinent use "miyan" for Allah Subhanahu - so what? does that make it right from an Islamic standpoint too? is popularity the criterion for validating something islamically? if so, what stops you from taking your deen from the likes of salman khan? or was your only bother that chisti attempted to correct what he saw as a wrong?

do you know WHY chisti said that you shouldn't use the word? did you bother to investigate? or is that how you work - you are an authority on any and everything and your word or popular culture is law? it's a genuine disgust even responding to you and your disgusting arrogance. you work with two tools - arrogance or crocodile tears!

you are blind to see that in a general societal sense, it's not us who isolated ourselves but rather your saab and mem saab. it is because your saab and mem saab are the TRULY NARROW MINDED ONES who see their culture as the norm and the benchmarks to which society must conform to and anything else is frowned upon and considered substandard. babu's like you canvass for the narrow minded worldview held by your saab and mem saab who are too arrogant to accept that other people can be different to them and have different cultures, norms, traditions etc.

i again urge you to read the tafseer of the verse i quoted earlier.

good you mentioned that. i urge you to read the islamic ruling on that from the likes of Ala Hazrat and other Sunnis. or is Ala Hazrat too a "mulla" for you?

this is a straw man. no one was 'badmouting everything' about any country. the context was just dante. since you ran out of replies, you brought in this line.

how long have you lived in saudi? again it all comes down to your own identity

if you identify yourself as a muslim and see them as muslims, i assure you that is not the case with the majority.

it all depends on what you identify yourself with and based on what identification criteria you see them. you see yourself as poor and them as spoilt rich, you will get one reaction. you see yourself as an intelligent pakistani and them as dumb arabs, you will get a different reaction. etc.

but hey, your judge and jury are saab and mem saab's tabloid rags and your own hallucinations, be it on the saudis or the taliban or the mullas of the subcontinent.

i'd hazard a guess that you get along well with your white englishmen buddies because you identify yourself as 'english' primarily around them

it's all about the identity.

 

no.

but i know NJ for a long time and we have corresponded a lot; and he has discussed his father. from which i gather that he was a good man and i have no problem believing that he was a good man and i have said that he was a good man.

anybody who speaks or understands english will see that i have referred to the departed soul only with respect; and actually criticising NJ for not living up to his ideals [as i assumed would be his]. still, if NJ perceives this as insulting his father's memory, i apologise for the unfortunate outcome, which was never the intention.

let us put it this way: shouldn't have mentioned his late father at all? all right, accepted. i am sorry, i apologise. let us move on.

you people are strange people with strange comprehension. what is unacceptable?

 

Abu Hasan did you know Naqshbandi's father in person? It seems that you know him pretty well to say that his father wouldn't have appreciated naqshbandijamaati's current state of freethinking.

I think this is getting carried away to far. This is totally unacceptable.

 

for those whom iqbal is an authority:

kaun hai taarik e aayin e Rasul e mukhtar?
maslahat waqt ki hai kis ke `amal ka mi'yaar?
kis ankhoN meiN samaya hai shi'yaar e aghyaar?
ho gayi kis ki nigah Tarz e salaf sey beyzaar?

qalb meiN soz nahiN, ruH meiN iHsaas nahiN
kuch bhi paygham e Muhammad ka tumheN paas nahiN (sallAllahu `alayhi wa sallam)

 

the classic: "have you stopped beating your wife?"

 

i don't know how you graduated with such a poor grasp of logic. only someone who:

- has a sound knowledge of islam
- has knowledge of iqbal's positions
- has interviewed at least a 1000 'mulla'
​

can do the comparison and say 'most' mullas. (by the way, in urdu, we don't write mulla with haa in the end. it is ملا not ملاه or مله) or iqbal should have written a dedicated work on an islamic science.

regardless, just because YOU in your ignorance think that iqbal was a great scholar - or many of those MA-in-urdu think so - it is not necessarily the truth. and even if he was a knowledgeable man (which he was btw) he is not an authority for muslims, except for those ignoramuses who satisfy themselves with poetry instead of learning from the qur'an and hadith.

sheeple.

 

so much for your comprehension. my point was that your late father - may Allah ta'ala grant him lofty jannah - was a good man who wouldn't have appreciated your current state of freethinking.

i said it in another thread; either you didn't read it, or you choose to ignore it. the framework upon which scholars down the ages have agreed upon is what defines ahlu's sunnah. in that framework, there are primary issues and secondary issues. anyone deviating from the primary issues is considered as deviating from the jama'ah. in secondary issues, we acknowledge that there are differences, but still these differences are examined and agreed upon by scholars in the past 1000 years.

unlike you who talks about classical positions without having read them, you will be surprised to know that many of us actually read those positions. you will be further surprised to know that there is little left for interpretation - and wherever there is scope for interpretation, our criticism is restrained. isn't it ironical that you ridicule a person for rejecting dante without having read the book, but you still make tall and long claims without knowing shara`yi positions - all based on conjecture and scraps you have seen here and there?

anyone who departs from the framework will be called out. we do not think that we will change the world - but certainly we will say what we feel is right. why don't you have the same enthusiasm you have for dante? after all, our motivation is only to keep people faithful to ahlu's sunnah.

secondly, any proof or is it just one of your sweeping generalisations?

---

straw man again. the bile was because of your love for dante and european culture. i didn't know that i was an expert on birmingham; so mentioning it once in my post (even if it is in a hypothetical context) makes me an expert?

you are entitled to your opinion about the second part. but yes, i was born in india even though, i prefer to consider myself as a citizen of this world. one of iqbal's lines i like is: islam tera des hai tuu mustafawi hai. my identity is only muslim.

just an indian. [not english; not white; not european; not american. just an indian.]

we are happy in the well. it is you who is upset that we don't want to go outside that well and still scorn us for not allowing people to make their own choices. you want to go out of the well, but still want to be considered as one amongst those in the well.

rukhsat e qafile ka shor, ghash sey hameN uthaye kyuN
sotey haiN un ke saaye meiN, koyi hameN jagaye kyuN

it appears that you don't think about what you are talking. here is from your previous post.

Actually if you were born or grew up in Europe you are European therefore he is ours too. Art has no boundaries. He is as much ours as Shakespeare. [to a comment by KS that dante is not ours.]

You'd have to read his work to find out. He was inspired in the same way as other great poets have been...the power of language is not to be underestimated.
​

just another inconsequential nobody. of course, an indian nobody.

yes, i view arabs with starstruck eyes and i am not ashamed to say that i admire arabs or arabo-islamic culture. i claim it for my own. i do not have an inferiority complex vis-a-vis arabo-islamic culture; in fact, i consider this as superior culture.

talking back to the arab man: if it is a man like ibn abidin shami or imam sanusi; imam al-haddad or qaDi `iyaD, you are right. not only that i do not have courage to talk back to them, i do not wish to do that. if you are talking about men born as arabs like qaddafi or saddam or any assorted king or prince, well they are as RasulAllah sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam said:

their skins are that of arabs, but their hearts are that of non-arabs [a`ajim]

what a silly objection.

narrated by ibn abbas raDiyallahu `anhuma that RasulAllah sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam said: 'love the arabs for three reasons: because i am an arab, the qur'an is in arabic and the language of the people of paradise is arabic.' [bayhaqi in shu'ab al-iman vide mishkat al-masabih]

ali al-qari in mirqatu'l mafatih

{love arabs for three} that is, for three attributes or reasons.

{i am an arab} and everything that is related to the Beloved is also beloved.

{and the qur'an is in arabic} that is: it has been revealed in the language of arabs; and only one who knows its eloquence and comprehends its meaning can recognise the eloquence and succinctness [of the quran]; and they [the arabs] have borne the shariah and transmitted it to us; and have clarified and explained the sayings and actions of RasulAllah sallAllahu `alayhi wa sallam; and conveyed his miracles to us. and the arabs provide the sources of islam, and they won the lands for islam and islam spread on earth because of them; and they are the progeny of isma'yil `alayhi's salam; and the questions in the grave will be in their language [the language of arabs]. therefore, it is said: one who becomes a muslim, is an arab.

{and the language of the dwellers of paradise is arabic} and thus it can be extrapolated that the the language of those in hell will be other than arabic.

{bayhaqi in shu'ab al-iman} also reported by Tabarani in mu'jam al-kabir, Hakim in al-mustadrak and `uqayli in al-Du`afa.
​

----

you can exaggerate as much as you can. btw, we follow the standard position of sunnis on thought crimes: as long as they are not articulated aloud (in case of blasphemies) and as long as they are not acted upon (like thinking about adultery or theft or murder), a person is not guilty.

there may be capable people on this forum, but as far as the admins and moderators are concerned, we don't think we are capable of running a forum, much less a state. we believe that islam demands an adherent to be within bounds; if a person wants to breach those limits, it is up to him. whosoever wants to believe, let him believe; and whosoever wants to disbelieve, let him disbelieve. but let not the disbeliever or the renegade insist that we include things in islam which are described by the shariah as out of bounds.

i don't remember talking about ninowy or habib ali; but anybody who speaks against ahlu's sunnah will be called out. not just because we feel like it, but that is how it should be. talking back to the arab man you know...(when they renege from the shariah).

another statement parading your ignorance of quran and sunnah: "deeds are qualified by the ends."

wa billahi't tawfiq.

 

I thought you said you had read the ash Shifa of Qadi Iyad when ks was failing his high school exams/driving a taxi?

 

NJ does you Pir; Sayyid Munawwar Shah Jamati not live in Sparkhill?

Does Alipur Sharif not have masajid at Shakespeare Street and Woodlands Road in Sparkhill?