April 04, 2005
Using Aqeedah to Tyrannize the Muslim Mind in UK – The Case of Halifax
Section: WRITINGS | 131 reads
Using Aqeedah to Tyrannize the
Muslim Mind in UK - The Case of Halifax
Dr. Pasha
Update on the Qur’an Camp at Halifax
Dr. Pasha’s Intensive Weekend Qur’an Camp
Saturday & Sunday, May 29th & 30th 2004
Calderdale Multicultural Activity Centre – C.M.A.C
Akeds Road, off Hopwood Lane, Halifax, HX1 2TR
Good Guys vs. Bad Guys in Halifax
The Intensive Weekend Qur’an Camp at Halifax, scheduled for 29th and 30th of May, will Inshallah proceed as planned. There is, however, an address change. The new address is:
Calderdale Multicultural Activity Centre – C.M.A.C
Akeds Road, off Hopwood Lane, Halifax, HX1 2TR
Below are some details as to why an address change became necessary.
“Do you, or don’t you consider Ashraf Ali Thanawi a Kafir?” That was the question the Imam at Halifax – May Allah bless him and open his eyes to the reality and complexity of living Islam in the West today – posed to me over the phone as a litmus test for allowing my Qur’an Camp to go ahead in his mosque as planned.
The way I see it, the whole issue comes down to this: “Are you or are you not one of us?” And that means one thing: whether or not I am a Bareilvi. The idea is if you are a Bareilvi, you are one of us, if you are not, you are not. Not only that, you may also be a Kafir. That means if you are a Bareilvi, you are a “good guy” – and our hearts and minds are open to you. What is more, so are also the doors of our mosque and our community. So, if you are a Bareilvi, you can come and teach and preach in our mosque. But if you are not a Bareilvi, we will not let you come into our mosque and teach or preach to our community – no matter how desperately our community may need such help.
What if it is the Qur’an – just the Qur’an – that I wanted to teach? What if it is just teaching the Muslims of Halifax how to read the Qur’an a little better and more correctly? What if all I wanted to do was to connect the People of Allah in the Halifax area with the Book of Allah in the House of Allah? No, not if you are not a Bareilvi and a Sunni like us.
What about all the social ills that plague the community – the drugs, the crime, the unemployment, the waywardness, the cultural alienation, the social disaffection and all the other unspeakable horrors that have burrowed so deep in the Muslim youth in Halifax and surrounding areas – should we not all work together to address them? No, not if you are not a Bareilvi – we don’t need you and we will not allow you to do it in our mosque and in our community. Your Aqeedah is all wrong. You have got the wrong Islam.
Litmus Test of Islam in 21st Century England
All right, how do you tell whose Aqeedah is right and whose Aqeedah is wrong? What is the litmus test? Simple! Answer one pivotal question and we will be able to tell whether your Aqeedah is right or not, and whether or not you are the right man to teach the Book of Allah in the House of Allah to the People of Allah in our community.
And here, again, is that question: “Do you or don’t you consider Ashraf Ali Thanawi a Kafir?” What difference does it make? Well, it makes all the difference. That is what sets the “good guys” apart from the “bad guys.” That is what tells us whether you are a true-believing Bareilvi or a Kafir Deobandi Trojan horse, out to brainwash the innocent and guileless members of our community.
That is how it is, and that is how it has been for a hundred years, in areas of India and Pakistan, and that is how we want it to be in Halifax and the rest of UK – in the 21st Century.
So, if you consider Thanawi a Kafir, you are one of us; you are a Bareilvi and a Sunni; and a good guy; and you are welcome to teach our community the Qur’an; or whatever else you want. But if you don’t, we cannot allow you to teach or preach in our mosque. We have an obligation to protect our younger generations, if not from a life of crime, deviance, alcohol, drugs and backwardness, at least from the evil Aqeedahs of all the non-Bareilvi Kafirs. We simply cannot allow non-Barelivi Kafirs to corrupt our innocent youth and naïve congregation.
It is as simple as that.
What can anyone say when faced with a situation like this? What can anyone do? How does anyone deal with something so preposterous and so egregious? My answer, however, was simple and direct. And here it is: “No!” I said. Then I explained: I do not consider Thanawi or the Ulema of Deoband in general, or the Ulema of Bareili, or the Ulema in any other place, Kafir. They were all good people, who did some good work in their own way, during the tenure Allah gave them on earth. Now they have all gone back to meet their master and he will decide what their fights and issues were all about.
Fallahu Yahkumu Bainahum Yawmal Qiyamati
Feema Kaanoo Feehi Yakhtalifoon (2:113).
Now our job – those of us who are left behind in this world, and who claim love, respect and allegiance to those Alims and Shaikhs and Pirs and Auliyaa’ from our past – is not to continue and perpetuate their ancient fights and disagreements, but to join hands over what was common among them: their love of Allah, Rasul, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, Islam and Muslims and their desire to serve the Muslims of their time and place in every way they could. We must take that joint heritage and work with it to make the condition of Muslims and the world better in our own time and in the places that are home to us today, whether it is Halifax, Bradford, UK or somewhere else. That means instead of creating divisions and weaknesses in Islam and Muslims using the names and work of our past leaders and Ulema and Shuyookh, we must use their blessed memory and legacy to unite and serve Muslims and make Islam stronger.
Here is what the Hadith says about people who use their past to ruin their present:
Innamaa Ahlakalladheena Min Qablikum Kathratu
Masaa-ilihim Wakhtilaafuhum Ala Anbiyaa-ihim.
Paraphrased, it means:
What destroyed those before you was their penchant
for excessive questioning and their disagreements and fights over their prophets.
Naturally, after Nabiy Karim, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, there are no prophets for us either to follow or to fight over. As a result, our fights and disagreements now must involve our Ulema and our good people. Because as the Hadith says: Al-Ulema Warathatul Anbiyaa’. Paraphrased it means, scholars are heirs to prophets. There is also a Hadith which says, Ulemaa-u Ummatee Ka-Anbiyaa-I Banee Israaeel, meaning scholars of my Ummat are like the prophets of Bani Israaeel.
So, today, we seem bent on doing what the Bani Israaeel did in earlier times with their prophets: We want to argue and quarrel and fight over our leaders, scholars and Ulema, just like they argued and quarrelled and fought over their prophets. But what was the result? What did their fights get them? Allah destroyed them on account of their fights and quarrels. What do you think Allah will do to us if we continue our own mutual fights and quarrels over our Ulema and Shuyookh? But before you answer that question, let me ask you another question and then leave you to figure out your answer: What exactly do you think has been happening to us for the past so many years, and what do you think is happening to us right now?
Avoiding Disputations
Long time ago, I decided not to fight the Muslims: not to get involved in their schisms and divisions; not to be a party to what some people will call their “religious” or “theological” disputations and hair splitting, steering clear of even the great moon-sighting debate; not to participate in their organizational politics and personal power play; and not to challenge anyone of them for anything – unless of course it was most blatantly and egregiously wrong or constituted a clear and present danger to public good.
As a result, when Muslims challenged me, I generally turned and ran – looking, you might say, for roots of trees to bite on while lying low (Hadith). But not this time. Not in the face of what I consider to be blatant tyranny over the minds and lives of generation upon generation of Muslims in the West – in the name of purity of Aqeedah.
The time seems to have come, and clearly issues have arisen, that make me want to speak out. And speak out is what I am about to do. But I must make it clear, right at the outset, that I bear no one any malice and I wish no one ill. And I have in my heart nothing but love and respect for the Muslims of Halifax, and the rest of UK – including their Imams, mosque committee members, teachers, Shaikhs, Ulema, leaders, community activists and all the others – regardless of their Aqeedah, or Maslak or Madh-Hab, or Jama’at, or organization or affiliation. They are all wonderful people working hard and with great dedication to do the best they can, under difficult conditions, to serve the Deen of Islam and the Muslim community. However, what I am doing right now is the one small thing that I value greatly in life: Calling it the way I see it; telling it the way it is. For, I don’t know any other way. And I hope and pray it will be with the best of motives and in the finest way I can.
This principle – of straight talk – is all the more dear to me, for its being the quintessential Islamic ideal, as per the Hadith of our beloved Rasul, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam:
Afdalul Jihadi, Kalimatu Haqqin
Inda Sultaanin Jaa-ir.
Paraphrase:
The finest form of public struggle is to speak
the truth in the presence of tyranny.
Some of these things I have said earlier in my speeches and discussions. Now it is time for me to put some of them down in writing.
When Bradford Burned
When beautiful Bradford was about to burn, not too many people seemed to care about it till it happened. I was in Manchester at that time. I gave a fairly impassioned speech on the occasion. And I begged people to take me to Bradford, even as it smouldered. But I could not make it to Bradford at that time because it was not considered safe for me to go there.
A Muslim community not safe for a Muslim to visit? And in West Yorkshire? And in the United Kingdom? And in the year 2004? Nearly a thousand years to the Magna Carta? And many more hundreds of years from the day when Allah’s noble Rasul Moosa, Alaihis Salam, thundered before Pharaoh:
Arsil Ma’iya Bani Israa-eel (7:105).
Paraphrase:
Let my people go! (7:105; 20:47; 26:17).
And fourteen hundred years after Allah’s beloved Rasul, Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, declared:
They may put the sun in my right hand and
the moon in my left hand, but that will not
stop me from doing what I am doing.
But my heart was in Bradford. It was with the people of Bradford.
It was with the poor, dispossessed, misguided, ill-trained, uneducated Western Muslim youth of Bradford – part of what I have been calling since the late 1980s or early 1990s The Western Wing of the Muslim Ummah – whom not too many people over the past decades had succeeded in instructing in a better way of life, rooted in Islam and its glorious social and practical teachings.
I did however go to Bradford, months later, where I was privileged to participate in the weekly Dhikr at the Hanafia mosque and also give a number of speeches at the mosque. May Allah bless and reward their Imams and their mosque committee members and leaders who were most kind and gracious to honour me and to invite and allow me to do that at that time. May Allah honour them as they honored me and may Allah open his doors to them as they opened the doors of their mosque and community to me!
After all, what did or do I want from these or any other people? Other than to share with them a little bit of the understanding of Allah’s Deen and his book that Allah has so mercifully bestowed upon me. And to share with them also the vision Allah has given me of the glorious role of Islam and Muslims in the West – a vision that includes mainstreaming Islam and of making it a part and parcel of everyday life in Western societies on both shores of the Atlantic? It was that vision and that passion to be with the Muslims of the area and help them in whatever way I could that later on took me to Oldham and made the Oldham City Council rally around my work, even as many local Muslims preferred to watch from the sidelines.
Oldham Riots and the First Islamic Community Clean Up
When Oldham was ravaged by riots, not too many people seemed to bother till after it had all happened and the embers had died down. I was not in a position to visit Oldham then. But I did eventually go to Oldham and saw the condition in which Muslims lived.
No one should live like that. Not non-Muslims and certainly not Muslims. Not anywhere and certainly not in the heart of Yorkshire in the UK in the year 2004. To others it may be a question of quality of life and standard of living. To me it was a question of simple Islam. Others may criticize, condemn and pass resolutions or hold conventions and give speeches. To me it was a matter that called for immediate action.
As a result, I committed myself to return to Oldham and organize a community clean up. That produced Dr. Pasha’s First Islamic Community Clean Up with the help of the area Muslims and with full support and participation on the part of the Oldham City Council – wonderful people, all of them, Allah bless them all, in his own way, however he chooses to do it. For, he is Rahman and Rahim – the most merciful and the most gracious, the most beneficent and the most compassionate. And his mercy and grace envelop everything – Rahmatee Wa-Si’at Kullah Shaiy (7:156).
It was quite a sight – a sight I will never forget. And a sight probably not too many of those who participated in it are likely to forget – Muslims and non-Muslims alike walking the streets of the Muslim areas of Oldham, trash bags in hand, cleaning the streets and the pavements, and picking up rubbish with their own hands, with the white-and-green city truck in tow.
You can read elsewhere (www.IslamicSolutions.Com) the reaction and comments of the Oldham City Council representative to that event.
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