Democracy and the Muslim Minority Predicament: The Contributions of Sayyed Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi
The late Sayyed Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi was one of the leading Indian ‘ulama of modern times, recognized in Muslim circles worldwide for his scholarship and his dedication to the cause of Islamic revival. He was born in 1913 at Takiya Kalan, also known as Daira-i Shah ‘Alimullah, a village near the town of Rai Bareilly, in the present-day Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In order to train as an ‘alim he was sent to the renowned Nadwat ul-‘Ulama madrasa in Lucknow for higher Islamic studies. Established in 1898, the Nadwa saw itself as a leading centre for the training of reformist ‘ulama. A major turning point in Nadwi’s life came in 1934, when he was appointed to teach Arabic and Qur’anic commentary at the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama. He carried on with teaching at the madrasa even after he was appointed its rector in 1961 after the death of his brother, a post that he occupied till his death in 1999.
It was at the Nadwa that Nadwi’s great skills as a writer and orator were able to develop and flourish. He is credited with having written almost 180 books, mostly in Arabic and some in Urdu. Nadwi’s writings were concerned to present Islam as a comprehensive world-view, as laying down guidelines and laws governing all aspects of personal as well as collective life. As such, therefore, he passionately echoed the argument of the Islamists that an Islamic state was essential for the laws of the shariah to be implemented in their entirety. However, he was, at the same time, a realist, aware that this was out of the realm of human possibility in the contemporary Indian context, characterized by a situation of Muslim minority-ness and the existence of a formally secular and democratic state. In contrast to Muslim liberals, and echoing the views of the Islamists, he insisted on the need for an Islamic order in order to implement the laws of God. However, he stood apart from most Islamists by arguing that the Islamic political order could come about in India only in some remotely distant future. Rather than directly struggling for it at the present, he believed that the Muslims of the country should accept the secular and democratic Indian state as it was and focus their energies in trying to build what he saw as a truly Islamic society, on the basis of which alone could an ideal Islamic political order come into being.
Muslims As A Minority: Between Faith and Democratic Citizenship
Muslim leaders in post-1947 India have had to deal with the question how they could adjust to living in a theoretically secular and democratic state. Opposed to the demand for Partition, principally because he felt that only in a united India would Muslims be able to carry on with their religious duty of missionary work, Nadwi insisted that Muslims could live along with others in a common homeland in peace and harmony, among the essentials of true democracy, and yet remain true to their religious commitments.[1]
Some years before 1947 Nadwi had joined the Jama’at-e Islami and was a close associate of its founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi. However, soon after he left it. It is likely that the Jama’at’s own understanding of the Islamic mission in the Indian context, based as it was on the primacy of the political struggle to establish an Islamic state, was also a crucial factor for Nadwi’s parting of ways with Maududi. It appears that while Nadwi shared much the same understanding of Islam as an all-comprehensive way of life, with the Islamic political order a necessary and indispensable pillar, he differed from the Jama’at on the crucial question of strategy, seeing the Jama’at’s approach as unrealistic in the Indian context, where, in a theoretically democratic and secular state, Muslims were a relatively small minority.
Nadwi’s opposition to the Jama’at comes out clearly in his book ‘Asr-i Hazir Mai Din Ki Tahfim-o-Tashrih (‘Understanding and Explaining Religion in the Contemporary Age’) which he penned in 1978, which won him, so he says in his introduction to its second edition published in 1980, fierce condemnation from leading members of the Jama’at. Here, Nadwi takes Maududi to task for having allegedly misinterpreted central Islamic beliefs in order to suit his own political agenda, presenting Islam, he says, as little more than a political programme. Thus, he accuses Maududi of equating the Islamic duty of ‘establishing religion’ (iqamat-i din) with the setting up of an Islamic state with God as Sovereign and Law Maker. At Maududi’s hands, he says, ‘God’ (ilah), ‘The Sustainer’ (rabb), ‘Religion’ (din) and ‘Worship’ (‘ibadat) have all been reduced to political concepts, suggesting that Islam is simply about political power and that the relationship between God and human beings is only that between an All-Powerful King and His subjects. However, Nadwi says, this relationship is also one of ‘love’ and ‘realisation of the Truth’, which is far more comprehensive than what Maududi envisages.[2]
Linked to Nadwi’s critique of Maududi for having allegedly reduced Islam to a mere political project was his concern that not only was such an approach a distortion of the actual import of the Qu’ran but also that it was impractical, if not dangerous, in the Indian context. Thus, he argued, Maududi’s insistence, in the context of Maududi’s critique of democracy, that to accept the commands of anyone other than God was tantamount to shirk, the crime of associating others with God, as this was allegedly akin to ‘worship’ (‘ibadat), was not in keeping with the teachings of Islam. God, Nadwi wrote, had, in His wisdom, had indeed provided adequate room for democratic choice and had left several areas of life free for people to decide how they could govern them, within the broad limits set by the shariah, and guided by a concern for social welfare. Further, Nadwi wrote that Maududi’s argument that God had sent prophets to the world charged with the mission of establishing an Islamic state was a misreading of the Islamic concept of prophethood. The principal work of the prophets, Nadwi argued, was to preach the worship of the one God and to exhort others to do good deeds. Not all prophets were rulers. In fact, only a few of them were granted that status. Nadwi faulted Maududi for ‘debasing’ the ‘lofty’ Islamic understanding of worship to mean simply ‘training’ people as willing subjects of the Islamic state.[3]
If the Islamic state is then simply a means for the ‘establishment of religion’ and not the ‘total religion (kul din)’ or the ‘primary objective (maqsad-i avvalin)’ of Islam, Nadwi suggested, it opens up the possibility of pursuing the same goals through other means in a contexts where setting up an Islamic state is not an immediate possibility, as is the case of theoretically democratic states which guarantee, at least in their Constitutions and laws, equal rights for minorities, as in contemporary India. Nadwi refers to this when he says that the objective of iqamat-i din needs to be pursued along with hikmat-i din (‘wisdom of the faith’), using constructive, as opposed to destructive, means. Eschewing ‘total opposition’ (kulli mukhalifat), Muslims striving for the ‘establishment of the faith’ should, he wrote, unhesitatingly adopt peaceful means such as ‘understanding and reform’ (tahfim-o-islah), ‘consultation’ (mashwara) and ‘wisdom’ (hikmat). Critiquing the use of uncalled for violence by some fiercely anti-democratic groups calling themselves ‘Islamic’, Nadwi stressed the need for ‘obedience’, ‘love’ and ‘faith’ and struggle against the ‘base self’ (nafs). Muslims should, he wrote, make use of all available legitimate spaces guaranteed by democratic states to pursue the cause of the ‘establishment of religion’, such as propagating their message through literature, public discussions, training volunteers, winning others over with the force of one’s own personality and establishing contacts with governments, exhorting them to abide by the shari’ah, seeking to convince them of the superiority of the solutions to worldly problems that Islam provides. It is clear that such spaces are available even in Muslim minority contexts, and Nadwi suggests that Muslims in India, too, should seek to take advantage of these to carry on with the mission of the ‘establishment of the faith’, even in the absence of realistic possibilities for the immediate setting up of an Islamic political order in the country. In sort, this was Nadwi’s advice to the Indian Muslims seeking to balance the demands of their faith with the fact of their living in a theoretically democratic state. In this way, he developed a theological argument for an Islamic approach to democracy.[4]
Although Nadwi agreed with Maududi in arguing for the necessity of an Islamic state, he insisted that ‘wisdom’ demanded that the strategies for attaining the goal be formulated in accordance with existing social conditions, particularly in the context of democratic states that, theoretically at least, provided equal rights to all communities. Thus, he noted, it was not necessary for a political party to directly launch a movement for the cause, especially if the odds were heavily weighed against it. A more realistic approach would be, he said, to ‘prepare people’s minds’ for Islamic government through a ‘silent revolution’ (khamosh inqilab), that is, through recourse to peaceful and democratic means without coming into conflict with the state. In a sense, then, Nadwi’s approach to democracy was pragmatic, and rather than actually endorsing it as an ideology he accepted it as a matter of fact that Muslims, too, must accept, yet one which they must gradually work to overcome, albeit through using democratic means.
Muslims in Post-1947 India: The Tasks Before the Community
Nadwi clearly saw this pragmatic approach as the only feasible way to carry on with the mission of ‘establishing the faith’ in the Indian context. Nadwi’s multifarious public activities and missionary efforts in post-1947 India were directed towards this one overarching goal. Nadwi seems to have felt that the Islamic imperative of struggling for the ‘establishment of the faith’ need not necessarily take the form of political activism alone. Nadwi was pragmatic enough to realise that efforts to establish an Islamic state in India without building up an Islamic society that would encompass a majority of the people of the country was utopian. Hence his insistent appeal to the Muslims to focus their energies on strengthening their commitment to their faith as well as engaging in missionary work among others. By slowly building up from below, Nadwi hoped that the field would be prepared for what he saw as the complete ‘establishment of the faith’. In this way, the democratic, secular state could indeed be accepted by the Indian Muslims, at least in the foreseeable future, for it provided them the spaces they could use for working towards ‘establishing’ Islam in its entirety in the long run, that is if God willed so.
An indication of this growing pragmatism was Nadwi’s wholehearted participation in the work of the Tablighi Jama’at, which he first came in touch with in 1943. In contrast to the Muslim League, the Tablighi Jama’at consciously eschewed political activity, refraining from communal controversy and conflict. The Tablighi Jama’at probably suggested itself to Nadwi as the most pragmatic strategy for Muslims in India, living as a marginalised and threatened minority, to adopt. The movement solved the dilemma of democracy by simply by-passing it, for it insisted that Islam should first be ‘established’ within oneself, and that till then the pursuit of an ‘Islamic state’ to take the place of the theoretically democratic state in India was simply utopian.
Faced as the Muslim community was with numerous problems that demanded a political solution, Nadwi was forced against his will to enter the field of politics. A sudden spurt in violent attacks against Muslims instigated by Hindu chauvinists, in which scores of Muslims lost their lives, as well as the continuing indifference of the government to Muslim problems, forced him to turn his attention to politics. But here too he exhorted Muslims to adopt the democratic path, seeking to sue available democratic spaces for having Muslim voices and demands heard. Accordingly, in 1964 Nadwi, along with other leading Muslim social, political and religious figures, set up the All-India Muslim Majlis-i Mushawarat (‘The Muslim Consultative Assembly’), an umbrella body of several Muslim organisations, to chalk out a coordinated political strategy for the Muslim community. Nadwi saw the Majlis as playing a central role in politically awakening, mobilising and uniting Muslim voters scattered all over the country in order to make them a powerful, consolidated political force operating within the existing democratic system. The Majlis was intended to dialogue with established political parties in order to convince them of the need to pay attention to the problems and concerns of the Muslims, as well as to promote inter-communal amity in the country, which it saw as indispensable for Muslims as well as others to prosper.[5] It sought to actively promote communal harmony while at the same time promoting Muslim rights and interests, the two being seen as inseparable from, rather than antagonistic to, each other. By thereby seeking to politically integrate the Muslims into the ‘mainstream’ of social and political life in India and to use existing democratic spaces and make democratic demands, the Majlis, as Nadwi saw it, was also intended to enable Muslims to prove to others their Qur’anic status of khair ummat (‘the best community’). It was only in a climate of peace, Nadwi wrote, that non-Muslims would be willing to seriously listen to the Islamic ‘invitation’.[6]
Nadwi saw secularism, understood both as state neutrality towards all religions as well as harmony between followers of different faiths, as indispensable for a plural society like India and for protecting Muslim interests. Even at the height of the Babri mosque controversy, in the early 1990s, when Hindu zealots, targetting a mosque in the town of Ayodhya which they alleged had been built on the ruins of a temple dedicated to the god-king Ram, unleashed a wave of attacks against Muslims, Nadwi counselled dialogue and restraint, rather than retaliation and conflict. Warning Muslims not to take to the path of violence in the face of militant Hindu attacks, he sought to present a solution to the dispute that might satisfy both sides. He met with several Hindu religious leaders to help evolve a mutually acceptable solution, believing that the matter should not be left to professional politicians who had a vested interest in instigating and prolonging communal conflict. When Hindu militants began a mass, India-wide campaign to destroy the mosque, fanning anti-Muslim passions and violence, Nadwi reacted by issuing a pubic statement calling for peace and tolerance, pleading that the matter be resolved through constitutional means. At a peace rally at Lucknow in 1990, he declared that in the face of mounting Hindu militancy, Muslims must respond by ‘turning to God, refraining from sin, inviting non-Muslims to Islam and adopting the path of steadfastness, tolerance and bravery’.
Islam, Democracy and Inter-Faith Dialogue
Nadwi called for inter-religious dialogue between Muslims and others, particularly Hindus, envisaging this as going beyond mere theological exchange to take the form of joint efforts for building a more harmonious and just society, using Islamic arguments for what is also a democratic demand. In his introduction to a general survey of Muslim contributions to Indian culture, he wrote that for people of different faiths to live together in peace and co-operation, it was necessary that they should understand each other’s religion, culture and traditions, regarding whatever they found good therein as ‘precious and worthy of encouragement and preservation’.[7] When two civilisations meet, he remarked, there is always a two-way process of interaction between them, both being influenced and moulded by each other. Such interaction must not be seen as necessarily negative, because ‘human existence is based on the noble principle of give and take’. In this, he wrote, ‘lies its strength and glory’.[8]
While not advocating a form of inter-faith dialogue that might lead Muslims to compromise in any way on their faith, being convinced that Islam was indeed the only perfect religion, Nadwi advocated what could be called a ‘dialogue of life’, appealing for people of different religions to work together for common purposes. This was yet another aspect of his pragmatic approach to the question of democratic politics. He saw the struggle against violence as the single most urgent need of the times, and here Muslims could work together with others to establish a more peaceful and just society. He often spoke out against extremism of all sorts, insisting that what was required was a band of missionaries who could ‘douse the flames of hatred and enmity’. He insisted that rather than being a ‘barrier’ in the path of Islamic missionary work, such a stance was actually a ‘facilitator’.[9]
The Payam-i Insaniyat (‘The Message of Humanity’) was Nadwi’s principal vehicle for the promotion of better relations between Muslims and people of other faiths. As its name suggests, it was intended to be a forum where people of different faiths could come together on the basis of their common humanity and belief in common values and principles of brotherhood, communal harmony, tolerance, mutual respect and love for the country. It aimed at promoting peaceful relations between Muslims and others and preventing moral decline. The Muslims had a special role to play in this regard for, as Nadwi saw it, it was they who had first ‘gifted the message of humanism, love, tolerance and concern for social welfare to the people of the country’. [10] Further, it was the religious duty of the Muslims to do so, for their status as the ‘best community’ in the Qur’an was bestowed upon them precisely because they ‘enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil’.[11] As such, as one of Nadwi’s admirers writes, it was also geared towards bringing Muslims to interact with others for addressing issues and problems of common concern, thus trying to reverse the trend towards ‘separatism’ that had made them ‘indifferent’ to these issues.[12] Nadwi insisted that Muslim community could no longer ‘live in its on imaginary world […] cut off from the mainstream of national life’. Rather, they needed to join hands with others in building the country,[13] for their lives were ‘inextricably linked to each other’s. The Payam-i Insaniyat, as he saw it, pointed to the most appropriate way in which Muslims could play a leading role in building a new India.
Insisting that Islam positively enjoined peace between people of different faiths, Nadwi argued that Muslims had a special role to play in the work of the Payam-i Insaniyat. Not only was this their religious duty, it was, he said, also indispensable if they were to live in security and peace and able to progress as a minority. He likened the movement to the half-i fuzul, a group headed by Muhammad in Mecca before he was appointed as a prophet, and consisting entirely of non-Muslims, mainly pagan Arabs. Just as the half-i fuzul aimed at helping the poor and the oppressed, irrespective of religion, and ‘enjoining the good and forbidding the evil’, so, too, Nadwi said, must Muslims in India today work along with people of other communities for spreading ‘true’ religion, peace, love and justice, and crusading against oppression, strife and violations of human rights, for Muslims, he insisted, have been appointed by God for that very purpose. These values and demands coincided with those espoused by democratic forces in the country, and thus pointed to the possibilities of these forces working together with Muslim groups for common aims.[14]
Nadwi envisaged the Payam-i Insaniyat as a means for Muslims to establish friendly relations with people of other religions, so that in this way they could impress them with the teachings of Islam and clear their misunderstandings about the religion. By bringing Muslims and others to work together for solving common problems, the Payam-i Insaniyat, Nadwi believed, would provide a means for Muslims to carry on with the Islamic duty of tabligh or missionary work. Thus, at a speech delivered at a Payam-i Insaniyat rally in the aftermath of the bloody riots at Bhiwandi in 1984, in which dozens of Muslims were killed, Nadwi remarked that although the Muslims had been living in the country for well over a thousand years they had failed in their duty of explaining the teachings of their faith and their moral virtues to the Hindus and impressing them with the same. Instead of befriending them, Muslims had alienated them, turning them into enemies. The time had now come, he said, that through efforts like that of the Payam-i Insaniyat, Muslims must show others what ‘jewels they hide in their hearts’, how deeply inspired they were by their religion to ‘show love and human concern’ for others, and how ‘useful’ they actually were for the country as a whole. Islam, he insisted, was actually a religion of peace (aman) and ‘security’ (salamati), and its true followers had ‘love, not hatred, for all humanity’, for all human beings, irrespective of religion, were God’s creatures and, hence, brothers to each other. Muslims, he said, should seek to convince others of this through their actions, and one way to do this was to work along with them for a more peaceful and just Indian society. This, he said, would be a great service that they could render to both India as well as Islam. Addressing the Muslims, Nadwi commented that God had chosen India to be their country, and this being their home they should exhibit ‘love’ for it. Islam, he said, positively encouraged them to have ‘love for their land’ (hubb al-watani) and the best way in which they could express their patriotism (watan dosti) was to work against oppression of all kinds, joining hands with others for this cause, while also carrying on with the mission of spreading the message of Islam that God had entrusted them with.
In advocating peace with others and working together within the democratic system for their goals, Muslims, Nadwi insisted, would not be betraying their religion. Rather, he pointed out, Islam is clear that human beings, irrespective of religion, race, caste and class, are ‘the most precious’ of God’s creation, and an ‘expression of Divine mercy’. This being the case, Muslims should strive for peace and must also raise their voices against all forms of oppression, something that advocates of genuine democracy would assert with equal passion. In this way, they would show others that they are ‘indispensable’ for the country, rather than a burden. But peace, he pointed out, could not be had if one community sought to impose its beliefs or culture on the others. Religious freedom was a must in a religiously plural society, and for this, Nadwi argued, true secularism (na mazhabiyat)—state neutrality vis-à-vis all religions—and democracy were indispensable, or else nothing could save India from the grave threat of a fascist take-over.[15] His words are proving to be truly prophetic, as recent events so tragically illustrate.
-taken from a paper by Yoginder Sikand
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Saturday, July 02, 2011
SEMUA BOLEH BERUBAH: PI DIGANTI TAU
Mathematicians Want to
Say Goodbye to Pi
By Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff WriterLiveScience.com | LiveScience.com – Thu, Jun 30, 2011
"I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe that pi is wrong."
That's the opening line of a watershed essay written in 2001 by mathematician Bob Palais of the University of Utah. In "Pi is Wrong!" Palais argued that, for thousands of years, humans have been focusing their attention and adulation on the wrong mathematical constant.
Two times pi, not pi itself, is the truly sacred number of the circle, Palais contended. We should be celebrating and symbolizing the value that is equal to approximately 6.28 — the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius — and not to the 3.14'ish ratio of its circumference to its diameter (a largely irrelevant property in geometry).
Last year, Palais' followers gave the new constant, 2pi, a name: tau. Since then, the tau movement has steadily grown, with its members hoping to replace pi as it appears in textbooks and calculators with tau, the true idol of math. Yesterday — 6/28 — they even celebrated Tau Day in math events worldwide.
But is pi really "wrong"? And if it is, why is tau better?
The mathematicians aren't saying that pi has been wrongly calculated. Its value is still approximately 3.14, as it always was. Rather they argue that 3.14 isn't the value that matters most when it comes to circles. Palais originally argued that pi should be changed to equal 6.28 while others prefer giving that number a new name altogether.
Kevin Houston, a mathematician at the University of Leeds in the U.K. who has made a YouTube video to explain all the advantages of tau over pi, said the most compelling argument for tau is that it is a much more natural number to use in the fields of math involving circles, like geometry, trigonometry and even advanced calculus.
"When measuring angles, mathematicians don't use degrees, they use radians," Houston enthusiastically told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. "There are 2pi radians in a circle. This means one quarter of a circle corresponds to half of pi. That is, one quarter corresponds to a half. That's crazy. Similarly, three quarters of a circle is three halves of pi. Three quarters corresponds to three halves!" [A Real Pie Chart: America's Favorite Pies]
"Let's now use tau," he continued. "One quarter of a circle is one quarter of tau. One quarter corresponds to one quarter! Isn't that sensible and easy to remember? Similarly, three quarters of a circle is three quarters of tau." Making tau equal to the full angular turn through a circle, he said, is "so easy and would prevent math, physics and engineering students from making silly errors."
A better teaching tool
Aside from preventing errors, as Palais put it in his article, "The opportunity to impress students with a beautiful and natural simplification has turned into an absurd exercise in memorization and dogma."
Indeed, other tau advocates have said they've noticed a significant improvement in the ability of students to learn math, especially geometry and trigonometry where factors of 2pi show up the most, when the students learn with tau rather than pi.
Though 2pi appears much more often in calculations than does pi by itself (in fact, mathematicians often accidentally drop or ad that extra factor of 2 in their calculations), "there is no need for pi to be eradicated," Houston said. "You might say I'm not anti-pi, I'm pro-tau. Hence, anyone could use pi when they had a calculation involving half of tau."
Tau, the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, was chosen independently as the symbol for 2pi by Michael Hartl, physicist and mathematician and author of "The Tau Manifesto," and Peter Harremoës, a Danish information theorist. In an email, Houston explained their choice: "It looks a bit like pi and is the Greek 't,' so fits well with the idea of turn. (Since tau is used in angles you can talk about one quarter turn and so on.)"
Pi is too ingrained in our culture and our math to succumb to tau overnight, but the movement pushes ever onward. "Change will be incremental," Houston said.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Isra Mikraj Di Masir
The night of the holy journey
(This Wednesday marks Al-Israa and Miaraj, the Prophet Mohammed’s night journey to the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and ascendancy to heaven
, Monday 27 Jun 2011)
The boraq denotes lightening or shining (from the Arabic word Barq, lightening, or Baraqa, to shine).
This is in reference either to the light it emits or the speed at which it travels.
It is described as a winged beast and sometimes said to be the horse of Archangel Gabriel.
According to tradition, it is smaller than a mule but bigger than a donkey, with a human face, big eyes, and small ears. Its neck is said to be made of ambergris and its ears and shoulders of white pearl (or aquamarine). Its cheeks are described as resembling those of a horse.
The boraq has four legs. Its crest is said to be made of moist pearl weaved with gems and coral. Its shoulders are described as made of rubies and its eyes shine like the stars. It emits a ray of light as bright as the sun, and is very white. Its legs are said to be made of gold. Its chest, covered with gems, and shines like the stars of heaven. Its tail is studded with green emeralds, and its wings resemble those of an eagle’s. Its forelock is described as being bright as the moon and smells of incense. It breathes like a human and its udders are covered with gold.
Folk artists have painted the boraq in many styles. Images of the heavenly beast appeared in Egypt and other Arab countries first in lithograph and later in zincograph. Images produced on glass appeared in Tunisia and Syria.
According to al-Domeiri, the whiteness of the boraq is a reference to its high status.
The chronicler Ibn Hesham said the boraq was winged. Sources differ on whether Archangel Gabriel rode on the boraq with the prophet or not. There is also a discrepancy on whether the boraq was first ridden by Prophet Mohammad or used by other prophets, including Ibrahim (or Abraham), in the past.
In the oral tradition we see variations on the boraq theme. The horse of Seif Bin Ze Yazan, for instance, is called Barq al-Buruq (or supreme lightening). It can fly over mountains and valleys carrying the folk hero to battle the worshippers of fire.
The Israa and Miaraj is considered a major religious event during which some Muslims fast during the day and then engage in religious rituals and Koran reading. Usually, a banquet of meat (zafar, or flesh) is prepared for this special night.
In the Sharqia governorate, the event is celebrated on the night of 27 Rajab, following the Isha (evening) prayers.
Worshippers gather in a mosque and a sheikh recites verses from the Koran, especially those mentioning the Israa and Miaraj miracle.
The sheikh then recounts the story of the Israa and Miaraj to the audience (the Koran mentions the story in a brief manner, but it is elaborated upon in non-Koranic tradition).
Gifts are usually exchanged on this occasion. Parents send meat, fowl, fruit and vegetables to married children in a gesture of silat rahem, or kinship, says a resident of the Gita village in Sharqia.
The popular celebration of the Israa and Miaraj takes another form in Minya.
The celebrations there last for three days, 25-27 Rajab. The celebration begins daily after the maghreb (sunset) prayers at the mausoleum and mosque of al-Fuli.
First, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fuli recites from the Koran, then religious songs are performed by celebrity singers, including Sheikh Abdel Badie, Sheikha Samah and Sheikha Kawthar.
In Cairo, the evening’s celebrations are often combined with the Sayyeda Zeinab moulid (birthday) celebrations, and invariably draw in large crowdsTuesday, June 21, 2011
Rumah ambo Dalam versi Bebek
Sunday, June 19, 2011
my favourite house
it's a place where people have paddy fields at their front yard, forests at the back and graves at the side
it's a place where animals like cows, sheep, ducks and chickens roam around
it's a place where ghost stories are created, told and the people dont really care
this is the house where i spent about 1-2 months every year
and the house that will always be my favourite
i love it not just because of the people that lives in it...but also because the nature of the house it self
this house has the ability to calm down me down and get my 'creative' juices flowing
i usually spent every Raya here...but since both my grandparents passed away, we spent it at Selangor...the other grandparents' house...
it has 3 living rooms, 2 dining rooms, 10 rooms, 8 bathrooms, 1 reading room, 1 lovely garden, 1 huge lawn and backyard, and roofs that we can climb on and in...-wink-
and, oh...on the lawn, we have some part where we put the graves of my late grandma and grandpa and also two others...
this house, in 1 word, is AWESOME...2 words; DAMN AWESOME...3 words; DAMN F*****G AWESOME
hahahaha
the great house im talking about...situated infront of a mosque and surrounded by graves...also have kinda a forest at the back and the Kelantan River
the grave yards and mosque in front of the house
front gate, the seats where my cuzs and i hang out (talking about 'life') and the 'extended' house
trees at the lawn that we used to play everything that require running and hiding...and one of the places to parked cars
the way into the grave yard in the lawn and i can see that we need to trim the grasses in the graves...hoho
the back yard...and the gate will lead to another gate where there used to be a garden full of veggies
one of the dining 'rooms' and living rooms...which is also the place where we conducted most of the parties...hehe...
these are kinda storages without doors and also we used to play here when it was raining heavily and the water has no where to go...
kinda like a small garden in the house...there used to be a lot of plants, a fountain and some fishes and turtles...but we (as kids) kinda ruined a lot of those...hehe...and the other is the picture of the place for sunlight and rain to fall on the plants
the reading room where we used to play 'ghosts' and hide-n-seek and the stairs where i admit, i've fallen from quite a few times
the many 'corridors' of the house...there are a few more...the 1st lead to a the biggest room, the 2nd to the 'green field' and balcony and the 3rd to another balcony where we climb the roof for hide-n-seek
this storage-closet lead to inside the roof and that is the place where my foot slipped through...thank goodness the fan is not on...-phew-
just one of the places to chill...and yes...the roof top too...sitting on it and looking at the sky with my cuzs sure is nice...
just a door that leads to another set of stairs that leads outside...
quaint english-seaside-fountain...that is a lawn 'in' the house and the last pic is of a turtle pen
my aunt's passions...decorating, cooking (she is a marvelous baker) and painting
house in a house...kawaii-ne!!!...hehe...
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Gemulah Mak Saya; addendum
Mak tinggal di rumah keluarga kami bersama keluarga Kak Yah. Mak mengajar anak-anak Kak Yah, dari Muaz, Nusaibah dan Najwa membaca Quran. Mak agak 'bengkeng' ketika mengajar Quran. Ketika mak masih segar dahulu. Pak Cik Mansor lah yang jadi driver, membawa mak ke tempat orang mengajar sana sini.
Mak seumpama wanita sezaman dengannya suka memakai barang emas di tubuh, walaupun ketika sekadar berada di katilnya pada beberapa tahun akhir hayatnya. Mak juga tidak berpantang makan walaupun dia disuntik insulin hari-hari. Mak yang sangat terbatas gerakannya selepas mengalami sakit kencing manis itu banyak bergantung kepada anak-anak Kak Yah untuk membuka tutup suiz kipas, membuka tutup radio television, membawa air minum serta makanan dan sebagainya. Mak juga berleter kepada anak cucu sekiranya ada yang dia rasa tersangkut.
Ibah (Nusaibah) pulang ke rumah dari UITM Dungun pada 2 hujung minggu terakhir mak untuk berkhidmat kepada mak. Seorang cucu yang baik, masyaallah. Ketika mendapat khabar mak meninggal, Ibah yang sepatutnya mengikuti rombongan ke Johor telah menumpang Dok Mek untuk balik.
Saya teringat waktu saya kecil, mak suka membuat bedak sejuknya sendiri. Dia merendam beras di dalam molor (bekas kaca yang besar) dan diletakkan di kawasan terpencil yang redup untuk masa yang lama. Bau dari beras yang menghancur itu agak busuk, dan selepas beras itu hancur, maka patinya digotel kecil-kecil . Gotelan beras hancur itu diletakkan di atas badang buluh dan dijemur panas. Mak biasanya akan meletakkan kuntuman bunga melor bersama gotelan beras itu. Agaknya untuk memberi sedikit kewangian kepada bedak sejuk itu. Bedak itu tidak dipakai untuk tujuan berjangak (berhias), ianya memberi rasa sejuk selasa kepada pemakai dan mungkin melembutkan kulit. Muka perempuan yang mengenakan bedak sejuk ini akan kelihatan putih, umpama pakai 'mask' kecuali bahagian mata.
Agak saya, antara anak-anaknya , Abang Nung lah anak yang dia senangi, kerana patuh kepada mak, tidak bersoal balik apa yang mak katakan. Dok Mek lah yang dia banyak buat berjenguk -kira , dia anak sulung. Kak Yah dan anak-beranak lah yang dia banyak mengatur dan dia paling 'concern' , memandangkan Kak Yah tinggal bersama mak. Saya yang paling santai, saya bergurau dengan semua orang, mak, mak mertua dan semuanya.
Mak seumpama wanita sezaman dengannya suka memakai barang emas di tubuh, walaupun ketika sekadar berada di katilnya pada beberapa tahun akhir hayatnya. Mak juga tidak berpantang makan walaupun dia disuntik insulin hari-hari. Mak yang sangat terbatas gerakannya selepas mengalami sakit kencing manis itu banyak bergantung kepada anak-anak Kak Yah untuk membuka tutup suiz kipas, membuka tutup radio television, membawa air minum serta makanan dan sebagainya. Mak juga berleter kepada anak cucu sekiranya ada yang dia rasa tersangkut.
Ibah (Nusaibah) pulang ke rumah dari UITM Dungun pada 2 hujung minggu terakhir mak untuk berkhidmat kepada mak. Seorang cucu yang baik, masyaallah. Ketika mendapat khabar mak meninggal, Ibah yang sepatutnya mengikuti rombongan ke Johor telah menumpang Dok Mek untuk balik.
Saya teringat waktu saya kecil, mak suka membuat bedak sejuknya sendiri. Dia merendam beras di dalam molor (bekas kaca yang besar) dan diletakkan di kawasan terpencil yang redup untuk masa yang lama. Bau dari beras yang menghancur itu agak busuk, dan selepas beras itu hancur, maka patinya digotel kecil-kecil . Gotelan beras hancur itu diletakkan di atas badang buluh dan dijemur panas. Mak biasanya akan meletakkan kuntuman bunga melor bersama gotelan beras itu. Agaknya untuk memberi sedikit kewangian kepada bedak sejuk itu. Bedak itu tidak dipakai untuk tujuan berjangak (berhias), ianya memberi rasa sejuk selasa kepada pemakai dan mungkin melembutkan kulit. Muka perempuan yang mengenakan bedak sejuk ini akan kelihatan putih, umpama pakai 'mask' kecuali bahagian mata.
Agak saya, antara anak-anaknya , Abang Nung lah anak yang dia senangi, kerana patuh kepada mak, tidak bersoal balik apa yang mak katakan. Dok Mek lah yang dia banyak buat berjenguk -kira , dia anak sulung. Kak Yah dan anak-beranak lah yang dia banyak mengatur dan dia paling 'concern' , memandangkan Kak Yah tinggal bersama mak. Saya yang paling santai, saya bergurau dengan semua orang, mak, mak mertua dan semuanya.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Gemulah Mak Saya
Hari ini genaplah seminggu mak meninggal dunia. Mak telah menghayati hidupnya sebagai seorang Muslim Melayu dalam 'konteks tradisional'. Walaupun ketika mak telah lumpuh bahagian kakinya selepas serangan penyakit kecing manis, mak masih mengekalkan amalan sejak mudanya dengan melazimi surah Yasin, Tabarakallazi, Sejadah setiap hari. Mak terpaku di katilnya untuk hampir 3 tahun lebih, bagaimanapun pemikiran dan ingatannya tidak banyak terjejas sehinggalah ke akhir hayatnya.
Beberapa bulan yang lepas, saya menanya mak semada mak masih ingat Asma al-Husna, mak menjawab yang mak dah lama tak baca, tetapi Alhamdulillah ketika itu mak membaca semula dan nyata ingatannya masih kuat. Di bahagian kepala mak tidur, sentiasa ada Mushaf al-Quran dan ada 2 utas tasbih. Mak masih juga membaca al-Quran terutama antara maghrib dan isya', waklaupun ketika itu terpaku di katilnya.
Walaupun saya menyarankan agar mak menjama'kan sembahyangnya, kerana agak rumit untuk mengambil wudu untuk setiap waktu; apa lagi ketika berwudu mak memastikan yang mak melaksanakannya seumpama ketika mak masih segar sihat. Semua sunnat mahu dikerjakan, bahkan mak juga menyapu air atas tengkuk sebelum membasuh kaki (amalan ini disebut di mazhab Hanafi, tidak dalam mazhab Syafie ).
Beberapa tahun terkemudian ini mak kurang puasa sunnat, agaknya tubuhnya sudah lemah kesan dari penyakit kencing manisnya. Tetapi mak masih bertanya "habis dah puasa 6?", "berapa hari dah puasa ?" ketika hari-hari 10 awal Dzu al-Hijjah.
Mak adalah seorang yang buta-huruf kecuali huruf Quran, dan sememangnya mak hanya belajar membaca al-Quran, mak tidak pernah belajar membaca tulisan rumi atau jawi. Seingat saya mak sentiasa mempelajari al-Quran dari zaman seawal yang saya dapat ingat, dengan Mak Su Haji Batu 4 yang datang ke rumah selepas Asar, dengan Gemulah Haji Ali, dengan Gemulah Ustaz Ismail Mu'allimah Kubang Pasu, dengan Gemulah Mak Jah Haji, dengan Gemulah Kak Mah Cik Gu Johan, terkemudian dengan Gemulah Mak Ngah Haji Kota. Mak belajar mengaji al-Quran sehinggalah dia terpaku di katilnya kerana sakitnya.
Ketika dia terpaku pada katilnya, mak banyak mendengar radio, "orang mengajar dalam radio" dalam istilah mak dan melihat rancangan keagamaan dalam tv. Hanya saya tidak tahu sejauh mana yang mak dapat faham.
Mak juga banyak menghadiri tempat orang mengajar, terutama di balaisah A.Rahman Wakaf Che Yeh kemudian di Masjid at-Tarbiyyah, mak juga menghadiri tempat mengajar Haji Wan Jah, Ustazah Wan Faezah, Dr. Fatma dan lainnya. Mak suka keramaian di dalam majlis orang mengajar, mak juga suka keramaian berbekwoh. Pernah dalam tahun awal 70'an, jiran kami, Cik Gu Mat Amin menumpangkan mak dengan keretanya untuk pergi mendengar Haji Nik Leh di setiap pagi Jummat. Tetapi mak tidak langsung terpengaruh dengan aliran kaum muda, mungkin mak tidak fahampun perbezaan dan kejanggalan yang terdapat dalam pengajian Haji Nik Leh tersebut. Mak sekadar suka majlis pengajian!
Mak pernah bercerita yang dia hanya ke sekolah zaman budaknya untuk 2, 3 hari sahaja. Zaman kecilnya mak berkawan rapat dengan sepupunya Gemulah Fatimah isterinya Mat Isa. Ketika mula-mula serangan Jepun, mak banyak duduk bersembunyi di rumah Haji Saad, ayah saudaranya , iaitu bapanya Fatimah. Dia memberi komen "zaman tu, bodoh lagi , ada ke pergi nusuk (bersembunyi) di rumah orang kaya, (yang mungkin tumpuan orang merompak)". Dalam kad pengenalan ditulis mak dilahirkan pada tahun 1934, jadi agaknya memang tidak jauhlah dari benarnya, apabila dibandingkan dengan cerita mak itu.
Mak kuat bekerja untuk menyara hidup sekeluarga di zaman mudanya, dia menoreh getah di Kampong Jelutung dan di dalam Pagar Cik Mat di kampong kami, mak dan ayah juga membuat (menanam) padi di tanah dekat rumah CikGu Johan dan tanah Dalam Paya,. Mak juga mengoreng kopi untuk dijual, hanya kemudiannya berhenti kerana harga butir kopi melambung naik sedangkan mak tak tergamak hendak naikkan harga serbuk kopi. Mak juga suka sangat jadi 'ibu kutu' kepada rakan-rakannya yang bermain kutu. Kadang-kadang mak tidak ingat di mana disimpan duit kutipan kutu sehingga dia jadi gelisah.
Bapa mak, Haji Idris memang asal orang Kota, ayahnya Haji Abdul Rahman, seorang guru al-Quran berpindah dari Surau Kota ke kawasan sekarang ini berhampiran dengan round-about Kota. Oleh itu adik-beradik Tok Ayah Yeh , Pak Ngah Saad , Tok Da Geretak tinggal di kawasan yang sama. Ibu Mak, Meriam, asalnya dari Gaung, ayahnya Mak Da (gelaran yang kami panggil) ialah Paksu Mamat. Paksu Mamat adalah seorang bomoh patah, bomoh secara keturunan. Yang terakhir dalam keluarga Mak Da yang mewarisi baka bomoh ini ialah Gemulah Maksu Limah Gaung, dia sepatutnya jadi bidan tetapi dia seorang pengemban (mudah merasa jijik), sehingga dia sakit untuk berapa lama; kesudahannya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat datang dalam mimpi dan memberitahu Maksu Limah " dah mu tak leh jadi tok bidan, mu tolonglah orang dengan mengurut". Itulah yang menjadikan Maksu Limah sebagai tukang urut. Saya sempat berurut dengan Maksu Limah beberapa kali. Ganjilnya sebagai ayahnya, Paksu Mamat, Maksu Limah juga dengan sendirinya tertutup lior untuk memakan makanan yang disediakan oleh orang bukan Islam, Maksu Limah tak makan tepung nonde (ondeh-ondeh) yang dibeli kerana bimbang tepung beras itu hasil tangan orang Siam, dia tak makan biskut yang di dalam tin. Katanya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat sampaikan minum kopi yang dicampur manisan (gula melaka) kerana tidak boleh makan gula yang dibeli di kedai.
Keluarga kami agak rapat dengan waris di Gaung terutama dengan Gemulah Maksu Som dan Pakmuda Tolib.
Mak dan ayah sempat menunaikan ibadat haji pada tahun 1980, ketika itu saya juga menunaikan haji pertama saya. Kemudian 3 tahun yang lalu, mak menyerahkan wang sebanyak RM4'000 kepada saya supaya saya dapat menunaikan umrah untuknya, ketika itu beliau sudah tidak begitu sihat. Saya katakan kepadanya yang saya akan tunaikan haji bagi pihaknya, Alhamdulillah saya dengan rahmat Allah diberi kesempatan menunaikan haji pada tahun itu bersama Sdr Yusri , Sdr Shabrimim dan Dr Adli berserta isteri.
Mak sempat melihat Sarah, cucunya, anak kakak sulung saya berkahwin pada cuti raya Cina dalam bulan Februari yang lepas. Dia menunjukkan rasa seakan dia terpinggir di katilnya dari keriuhan persiapan majlis walimah kerana terpaku di katil sehinggalah dia dibawa ke rumah Dok Mek (panggilan kepada kakak sulung), untuk memerhati keriuhan itu dari kerusi rodanya. Ketika rombongan menghantar menantu ke Batu 30, mak mahu menyertai berarak itu. Dia muntah-muntah dalam kereta, dan sampai di rumah besan,mak tidak mahu turun dari kereta kerana kepenatan. Tetapi mak puas hati, nampak sangat yang dia kasih kepada menantu Dok Mek ini.
Selesai majlis menghantar menantu, bibik Indonesia yang menjaga mak mengadu yang dia tidak sihat dan seakan keluar darah bersama kahak. Doktor yang merawatnya menasihati kami agar dihantar bibik ini kepada agensi pekerja untuk mendapat bibik ganti. Sementara itu Sarah, pengantin baru, yang menunggu kursus induksi sebelum bertugas, menjaga mak . Pada 13hb. lepas. Dok Mek telah menelefon saya mengatakan Sarah menghubunginya yang mak bercakap dengan sebutan yang tidak dapat difahami. Ketika itu saya berada di Perpustakaan MAIK bertemu Ustaz Muhammad Mahmud. Saya menghubungi isteri yang berada di rumah, kami ke rumah mak.
Sesampai kami, mak sudah mampu bertutur semula, tetapi mak nampak letih. Saya meminta mak mengangkat tangan kanannya, dia hanya mampu mengangkatnya di bawah paras bahu. Sarah memberitahu yang nasi di makan mak pada pagi itu banyak yang tumpah. Saya diarah oleh Dok Mek supaya hantar mak ke hospital, saya dan isteri beritahu mak, mak menolak dan minta dinanti-nantikan dahulu. Saya memberitahunya kita ke Hospital Perdana, sekadar untuk 'checking', bukan untuk masuk wad. Mak walaupun liat bersetuju. Kak Yah balik dari HUSM dan isteri saya menghubungi ambulan Hospital Perdana. Selepas zuhur mak dihantar ke Hospital, doktor yang merawat mak mengatakan dia mengesyaki masalah jantung, tubuh mak yang sembab dan lelah mak ketika bernafas itu juga disebabkan masaalah jantung. Untuk bertemu dengan doktor bahagian jantung itu, mak dinasihatkan tidur dihospital untuk satu malam. Mak agak keberatan tetapi akhir bersetuju selepas dipujuk.
Esoknya doktor yang merawat mak menunjukkan 'ujian echo' yang injab mak tidak dapat berfungsi dengan baik, terdapat darah yang back-flow. Masyaallah semua itu jelas kelihatan pada 'image scan' yang ditunjukkan , doktor juga menunjukkan kesan-kesan pada jantung yang mengisyaratkan yang mak pernah kena serangan jantung sebelum ini. Sesuatu yang kami semua tidak sedari. Doktor menasihati mak agar tidur semalam lagi di hospital, suatu yang berat untuk dipersetujui oleh mak. Abang Nung balik menziarah mak , dia memberitahu mak yang dia akan balik semula pada 2hb 4, mak menjawab dengan sebutan yang tidak jelas 'lama sangat lagi tu'
Mak ke hospital semula pada 20hb, doktor yang merawatnya mengatakan keadaan mak semakin merosot berbanding seminggu sebelumnya. Dia mengatakan mungkin mak mengalami stroke yang kedua. Badan mak juga agak kering,
Dari hospital, ambulan menghantar mak ke MRSM Tumpat, ke rumah Dok Mek. Mak agak 'selesa' kerana terdapat Nah, orang tempatan yang menjaga mak dari 8 pagi hingga 5 petang. Hari selasa, mak nampak semakin letih, Kak Yah masukkan air ke badan mak, tetapi nampaknya tidak banyak menolong.
Hari rabu itu saya dan isteri pada 10 pagi keluar dari rumah Dok Mek kerana isteri saya menemani Maryam untuk mendapatkan keputusan SPMnya. Saya pula mahu membeli broad-band kerana yang lama hilang. Kami kembali waktu zuhur. Badan mak mulai semakin sejuk di sebelah kirinya, sejuk dan seakan berpeluh. Saya menelefon Dok Mek dan Abang Nung memaklumkan perkara itu, kemudian dada sebelah kanan pula menjadi sejuk. Kak Yah sampai kira-kira jam 2 lebih. Kak Yah menghubungi adik-beradik mak. Dok Mek berada di Kuantan kerana mesyuarat, sementara anaknya, Balqis mengambil keputusan SPM di MRSM Jasin.
Rakan-rakan Dok Mek, terutama Cikgu Nik Zainun dan Cikgu Nik Rahimah berulang alik bersama guru-guru perempuan lain datang menjenguk mak dan membaca Yasin . Mak semakin letih, saya meminta Kak Yah masukkan susu melalui tiub kepada mak, dengan harapan semoga mak akan memperolihi sedikit tenaga. Adik beradik mak, Ayah Sim dan Makngah Yam, Da dan Makcik Esah datang. Mak semakin lemah, keluar air mata yang mengalir dari sisi mata mak yang rapat terpejam.
Saya membacakan kalimah 'la illa ha illallah' berkali-kali di telinga mak, Da membaca Surah ar-Ra'du . Agaknya di pertengahan Surah ar-Ra'du yang saya baca, pada jam 6.14 petang mak berbunyi perlahan seakan tergolong lidah. Agaknya bunyi dari mak itu berulang tiga kali (dalam sekitar seminit), dan makpun berhenti bernafas, Kak Yah dalam sebak mengatakan nadi mak sudah tidak berdenyut.
Saya hubungi Dok Mek dan Abang Nung yang masih dalam perjalanan balik. Dok Mek dalam sebak yang kuat mengarahkan jangan diapa-apa mak sehingga dia sampai balik. Segala yang patut diatur, kami yang ada aturkan. Mak mendahului kami dengan tenang.
Malam itu pelajar-pelajar MRSM perempuan dan lelaki bergilir-gilir membaca Surah Yasin , kaki tangan MRSM pula sentiasa menawarkan sebarang pertolongan yang mereka boleh bantu. Keluarga kami merakam terima-kasih yang tidak terhingga kepada kaki-tangan dan pelajar MRSM Tumpat di atas segala perhatian dan bantuan yang begitu bererti yang telah mereka sumbangkan. Semoga Allah membalas dengan sebaik-baik balasan di dunia dan Akhirat.
Esoknya, mak disembahyang di Surau MRSM jam 11 pagi, kakitangan MRSM serta pelajar menghadiri sembahyang mak, kami juga menjemput Ustaz Muslim dari Pondok Neting serta pelajarnya untuk untuk menyembahyangkan mak. Semada hayat dunianya, mak suka anak-anak, makpun waktu perpisahan dari permukaan dunia ini telah disembahyangkan oleh begitu ramai anak-anak.
Jenazah mak dibawa balik ke Kota, itulah yang selalu mak sebutkan yang dia mahu dikebumikan di Kubur Surau Kota. Rakan-rakan dari pondok dan kenalan lain ramai yang datang menyembahyangkan mak selepas sembahyang zuhur. Sembahyangnya diimamkan oleh Baba Abdul Aziz Pungguk.
Ketika jasad mak diletakkan di dalam lahad, puting-beliong (dragon-flies) begitu banyak mengerumuni kawasan sekitar itu. Saya, Pak Cik Mansor (abang ipar) dan Marwan (anak Dok Mek) turun ke dalam lubang untuk menempatkan mak dalam lahadnya. Saya memulakan bacaan tahlil dan kemudian saya bacakan talqin ringkas untuk mak........
Sehingga hari ini, saya tidak begitu merasa kehilangan mak, tetapi saya merasakan mak sekadar berpindah terlebih dahulu daripada kami, mak sekadar pergi lebih awal menanti ketibaan kami.
Semoga Allah menilik mak dengan tilikan Rahmat, semoga kami terus mendapat kebajikan dari amalan mak, semoga kami tidak terfitnah selepas pemergian mak.
Al-fatihah untuk mak......
Beberapa bulan yang lepas, saya menanya mak semada mak masih ingat Asma al-Husna, mak menjawab yang mak dah lama tak baca, tetapi Alhamdulillah ketika itu mak membaca semula dan nyata ingatannya masih kuat. Di bahagian kepala mak tidur, sentiasa ada Mushaf al-Quran dan ada 2 utas tasbih. Mak masih juga membaca al-Quran terutama antara maghrib dan isya', waklaupun ketika itu terpaku di katilnya.
Walaupun saya menyarankan agar mak menjama'kan sembahyangnya, kerana agak rumit untuk mengambil wudu untuk setiap waktu; apa lagi ketika berwudu mak memastikan yang mak melaksanakannya seumpama ketika mak masih segar sihat. Semua sunnat mahu dikerjakan, bahkan mak juga menyapu air atas tengkuk sebelum membasuh kaki (amalan ini disebut di mazhab Hanafi, tidak dalam mazhab Syafie ).
Beberapa tahun terkemudian ini mak kurang puasa sunnat, agaknya tubuhnya sudah lemah kesan dari penyakit kencing manisnya. Tetapi mak masih bertanya "habis dah puasa 6?", "berapa hari dah puasa ?" ketika hari-hari 10 awal Dzu al-Hijjah.
Mak adalah seorang yang buta-huruf kecuali huruf Quran, dan sememangnya mak hanya belajar membaca al-Quran, mak tidak pernah belajar membaca tulisan rumi atau jawi. Seingat saya mak sentiasa mempelajari al-Quran dari zaman seawal yang saya dapat ingat, dengan Mak Su Haji Batu 4 yang datang ke rumah selepas Asar, dengan Gemulah Haji Ali, dengan Gemulah Ustaz Ismail Mu'allimah Kubang Pasu, dengan Gemulah Mak Jah Haji, dengan Gemulah Kak Mah Cik Gu Johan, terkemudian dengan Gemulah Mak Ngah Haji Kota. Mak belajar mengaji al-Quran sehinggalah dia terpaku di katilnya kerana sakitnya.
Ketika dia terpaku pada katilnya, mak banyak mendengar radio, "orang mengajar dalam radio" dalam istilah mak dan melihat rancangan keagamaan dalam tv. Hanya saya tidak tahu sejauh mana yang mak dapat faham.
Mak juga banyak menghadiri tempat orang mengajar, terutama di balaisah A.Rahman Wakaf Che Yeh kemudian di Masjid at-Tarbiyyah, mak juga menghadiri tempat mengajar Haji Wan Jah, Ustazah Wan Faezah, Dr. Fatma dan lainnya. Mak suka keramaian di dalam majlis orang mengajar, mak juga suka keramaian berbekwoh. Pernah dalam tahun awal 70'an, jiran kami, Cik Gu Mat Amin menumpangkan mak dengan keretanya untuk pergi mendengar Haji Nik Leh di setiap pagi Jummat. Tetapi mak tidak langsung terpengaruh dengan aliran kaum muda, mungkin mak tidak fahampun perbezaan dan kejanggalan yang terdapat dalam pengajian Haji Nik Leh tersebut. Mak sekadar suka majlis pengajian!
Mak pernah bercerita yang dia hanya ke sekolah zaman budaknya untuk 2, 3 hari sahaja. Zaman kecilnya mak berkawan rapat dengan sepupunya Gemulah Fatimah isterinya Mat Isa. Ketika mula-mula serangan Jepun, mak banyak duduk bersembunyi di rumah Haji Saad, ayah saudaranya , iaitu bapanya Fatimah. Dia memberi komen "zaman tu, bodoh lagi , ada ke pergi nusuk (bersembunyi) di rumah orang kaya, (yang mungkin tumpuan orang merompak)". Dalam kad pengenalan ditulis mak dilahirkan pada tahun 1934, jadi agaknya memang tidak jauhlah dari benarnya, apabila dibandingkan dengan cerita mak itu.
Mak kuat bekerja untuk menyara hidup sekeluarga di zaman mudanya, dia menoreh getah di Kampong Jelutung dan di dalam Pagar Cik Mat di kampong kami, mak dan ayah juga membuat (menanam) padi di tanah dekat rumah CikGu Johan dan tanah Dalam Paya,. Mak juga mengoreng kopi untuk dijual, hanya kemudiannya berhenti kerana harga butir kopi melambung naik sedangkan mak tak tergamak hendak naikkan harga serbuk kopi. Mak juga suka sangat jadi 'ibu kutu' kepada rakan-rakannya yang bermain kutu. Kadang-kadang mak tidak ingat di mana disimpan duit kutipan kutu sehingga dia jadi gelisah.
Bapa mak, Haji Idris memang asal orang Kota, ayahnya Haji Abdul Rahman, seorang guru al-Quran berpindah dari Surau Kota ke kawasan sekarang ini berhampiran dengan round-about Kota. Oleh itu adik-beradik Tok Ayah Yeh , Pak Ngah Saad , Tok Da Geretak tinggal di kawasan yang sama. Ibu Mak, Meriam, asalnya dari Gaung, ayahnya Mak Da (gelaran yang kami panggil) ialah Paksu Mamat. Paksu Mamat adalah seorang bomoh patah, bomoh secara keturunan. Yang terakhir dalam keluarga Mak Da yang mewarisi baka bomoh ini ialah Gemulah Maksu Limah Gaung, dia sepatutnya jadi bidan tetapi dia seorang pengemban (mudah merasa jijik), sehingga dia sakit untuk berapa lama; kesudahannya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat datang dalam mimpi dan memberitahu Maksu Limah " dah mu tak leh jadi tok bidan, mu tolonglah orang dengan mengurut". Itulah yang menjadikan Maksu Limah sebagai tukang urut. Saya sempat berurut dengan Maksu Limah beberapa kali. Ganjilnya sebagai ayahnya, Paksu Mamat, Maksu Limah juga dengan sendirinya tertutup lior untuk memakan makanan yang disediakan oleh orang bukan Islam, Maksu Limah tak makan tepung nonde (ondeh-ondeh) yang dibeli kerana bimbang tepung beras itu hasil tangan orang Siam, dia tak makan biskut yang di dalam tin. Katanya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat sampaikan minum kopi yang dicampur manisan (gula melaka) kerana tidak boleh makan gula yang dibeli di kedai.
Keluarga kami agak rapat dengan waris di Gaung terutama dengan Gemulah Maksu Som dan Pakmuda Tolib.
Mak dan ayah sempat menunaikan ibadat haji pada tahun 1980, ketika itu saya juga menunaikan haji pertama saya. Kemudian 3 tahun yang lalu, mak menyerahkan wang sebanyak RM4'000 kepada saya supaya saya dapat menunaikan umrah untuknya, ketika itu beliau sudah tidak begitu sihat. Saya katakan kepadanya yang saya akan tunaikan haji bagi pihaknya, Alhamdulillah saya dengan rahmat Allah diberi kesempatan menunaikan haji pada tahun itu bersama Sdr Yusri , Sdr Shabrimim dan Dr Adli berserta isteri.
Mak sempat melihat Sarah, cucunya, anak kakak sulung saya berkahwin pada cuti raya Cina dalam bulan Februari yang lepas. Dia menunjukkan rasa seakan dia terpinggir di katilnya dari keriuhan persiapan majlis walimah kerana terpaku di katil sehinggalah dia dibawa ke rumah Dok Mek (panggilan kepada kakak sulung), untuk memerhati keriuhan itu dari kerusi rodanya. Ketika rombongan menghantar menantu ke Batu 30, mak mahu menyertai berarak itu. Dia muntah-muntah dalam kereta, dan sampai di rumah besan,mak tidak mahu turun dari kereta kerana kepenatan. Tetapi mak puas hati, nampak sangat yang dia kasih kepada menantu Dok Mek ini.
Selesai majlis menghantar menantu, bibik Indonesia yang menjaga mak mengadu yang dia tidak sihat dan seakan keluar darah bersama kahak. Doktor yang merawatnya menasihati kami agar dihantar bibik ini kepada agensi pekerja untuk mendapat bibik ganti. Sementara itu Sarah, pengantin baru, yang menunggu kursus induksi sebelum bertugas, menjaga mak . Pada 13hb. lepas. Dok Mek telah menelefon saya mengatakan Sarah menghubunginya yang mak bercakap dengan sebutan yang tidak dapat difahami. Ketika itu saya berada di Perpustakaan MAIK bertemu Ustaz Muhammad Mahmud. Saya menghubungi isteri yang berada di rumah, kami ke rumah mak.
Sesampai kami, mak sudah mampu bertutur semula, tetapi mak nampak letih. Saya meminta mak mengangkat tangan kanannya, dia hanya mampu mengangkatnya di bawah paras bahu. Sarah memberitahu yang nasi di makan mak pada pagi itu banyak yang tumpah. Saya diarah oleh Dok Mek supaya hantar mak ke hospital, saya dan isteri beritahu mak, mak menolak dan minta dinanti-nantikan dahulu. Saya memberitahunya kita ke Hospital Perdana, sekadar untuk 'checking', bukan untuk masuk wad. Mak walaupun liat bersetuju. Kak Yah balik dari HUSM dan isteri saya menghubungi ambulan Hospital Perdana. Selepas zuhur mak dihantar ke Hospital, doktor yang merawat mak mengatakan dia mengesyaki masalah jantung, tubuh mak yang sembab dan lelah mak ketika bernafas itu juga disebabkan masaalah jantung. Untuk bertemu dengan doktor bahagian jantung itu, mak dinasihatkan tidur dihospital untuk satu malam. Mak agak keberatan tetapi akhir bersetuju selepas dipujuk.
Esoknya doktor yang merawat mak menunjukkan 'ujian echo' yang injab mak tidak dapat berfungsi dengan baik, terdapat darah yang back-flow. Masyaallah semua itu jelas kelihatan pada 'image scan' yang ditunjukkan , doktor juga menunjukkan kesan-kesan pada jantung yang mengisyaratkan yang mak pernah kena serangan jantung sebelum ini. Sesuatu yang kami semua tidak sedari. Doktor menasihati mak agar tidur semalam lagi di hospital, suatu yang berat untuk dipersetujui oleh mak. Abang Nung balik menziarah mak , dia memberitahu mak yang dia akan balik semula pada 2hb 4, mak menjawab dengan sebutan yang tidak jelas 'lama sangat lagi tu'
Mak ke hospital semula pada 20hb, doktor yang merawatnya mengatakan keadaan mak semakin merosot berbanding seminggu sebelumnya. Dia mengatakan mungkin mak mengalami stroke yang kedua. Badan mak juga agak kering,
Dari hospital, ambulan menghantar mak ke MRSM Tumpat, ke rumah Dok Mek. Mak agak 'selesa' kerana terdapat Nah, orang tempatan yang menjaga mak dari 8 pagi hingga 5 petang. Hari selasa, mak nampak semakin letih, Kak Yah masukkan air ke badan mak, tetapi nampaknya tidak banyak menolong.
Hari rabu itu saya dan isteri pada 10 pagi keluar dari rumah Dok Mek kerana isteri saya menemani Maryam untuk mendapatkan keputusan SPMnya. Saya pula mahu membeli broad-band kerana yang lama hilang. Kami kembali waktu zuhur. Badan mak mulai semakin sejuk di sebelah kirinya, sejuk dan seakan berpeluh. Saya menelefon Dok Mek dan Abang Nung memaklumkan perkara itu, kemudian dada sebelah kanan pula menjadi sejuk. Kak Yah sampai kira-kira jam 2 lebih. Kak Yah menghubungi adik-beradik mak. Dok Mek berada di Kuantan kerana mesyuarat, sementara anaknya, Balqis mengambil keputusan SPM di MRSM Jasin.
Rakan-rakan Dok Mek, terutama Cikgu Nik Zainun dan Cikgu Nik Rahimah berulang alik bersama guru-guru perempuan lain datang menjenguk mak dan membaca Yasin . Mak semakin letih, saya meminta Kak Yah masukkan susu melalui tiub kepada mak, dengan harapan semoga mak akan memperolihi sedikit tenaga. Adik beradik mak, Ayah Sim dan Makngah Yam, Da dan Makcik Esah datang. Mak semakin lemah, keluar air mata yang mengalir dari sisi mata mak yang rapat terpejam.
Saya membacakan kalimah 'la illa ha illallah' berkali-kali di telinga mak, Da membaca Surah ar-Ra'du . Agaknya di pertengahan Surah ar-Ra'du yang saya baca, pada jam 6.14 petang mak berbunyi perlahan seakan tergolong lidah. Agaknya bunyi dari mak itu berulang tiga kali (dalam sekitar seminit), dan makpun berhenti bernafas, Kak Yah dalam sebak mengatakan nadi mak sudah tidak berdenyut.
Saya hubungi Dok Mek dan Abang Nung yang masih dalam perjalanan balik. Dok Mek dalam sebak yang kuat mengarahkan jangan diapa-apa mak sehingga dia sampai balik. Segala yang patut diatur, kami yang ada aturkan. Mak mendahului kami dengan tenang.
Malam itu pelajar-pelajar MRSM perempuan dan lelaki bergilir-gilir membaca Surah Yasin , kaki tangan MRSM pula sentiasa menawarkan sebarang pertolongan yang mereka boleh bantu. Keluarga kami merakam terima-kasih yang tidak terhingga kepada kaki-tangan dan pelajar MRSM Tumpat di atas segala perhatian dan bantuan yang begitu bererti yang telah mereka sumbangkan. Semoga Allah membalas dengan sebaik-baik balasan di dunia dan Akhirat.
Esoknya, mak disembahyang di Surau MRSM jam 11 pagi, kakitangan MRSM serta pelajar menghadiri sembahyang mak, kami juga menjemput Ustaz Muslim dari Pondok Neting serta pelajarnya untuk untuk menyembahyangkan mak. Semada hayat dunianya, mak suka anak-anak, makpun waktu perpisahan dari permukaan dunia ini telah disembahyangkan oleh begitu ramai anak-anak.
Jenazah mak dibawa balik ke Kota, itulah yang selalu mak sebutkan yang dia mahu dikebumikan di Kubur Surau Kota. Rakan-rakan dari pondok dan kenalan lain ramai yang datang menyembahyangkan mak selepas sembahyang zuhur. Sembahyangnya diimamkan oleh Baba Abdul Aziz Pungguk.
Ketika jasad mak diletakkan di dalam lahad, puting-beliong (dragon-flies) begitu banyak mengerumuni kawasan sekitar itu. Saya, Pak Cik Mansor (abang ipar) dan Marwan (anak Dok Mek) turun ke dalam lubang untuk menempatkan mak dalam lahadnya. Saya memulakan bacaan tahlil dan kemudian saya bacakan talqin ringkas untuk mak........
Sehingga hari ini, saya tidak begitu merasa kehilangan mak, tetapi saya merasakan mak sekadar berpindah terlebih dahulu daripada kami, mak sekadar pergi lebih awal menanti ketibaan kami.
Semoga Allah menilik mak dengan tilikan Rahmat, semoga kami terus mendapat kebajikan dari amalan mak, semoga kami tidak terfitnah selepas pemergian mak.
Al-fatihah untuk mak......
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Multiculturalism Failed: 1Malaysia strives
German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off the offensive, British PM David Cameron threw it into the scrum and now President Nicolas Sarkozy has converted it, the match view is unanimous, multiculturalism in the EU is failed, politically bankrupt and dead.
The French President has lined up to bury multiculturalism.
So what have the leaders of the EU’s three most populous states (212 million people) just buried, burned and banished?
The 1970s concept of “multiculturalism” has, these days, essentially become popular shorthand for indigenous concerns about immigration, religious intolerance — basically the Muslim exception — and the undermining of Enlightenment freedoms, liberties, equalities, rights and values as espoused by figures such as Rousseau, Locke and Mills.
Even its earliest advocates admit that as a concept multiculturalism is ill- defined. “Multiculturalism is best understood neither as a political doctrine with a programmatic content nor a philosophical school with a distinct theory of man’s place in the world but as a perspective on or a way of viewing human life. Since the multicultural movement sprang up unplanned in many different political contexts … it lacks a clear focus and identity.” writes Bhikhu Chotalal Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, UK in a paper that is now 11 years old (see below).
The crux of the matter as far as he is sees it is that: “Multicultural societies in their current form are new to our age and throw up theoretical and political problems that have no parallel in history. The political theories, institutions, vocabulary, virtues and skill that we have developed in the course of consolidating and conducting the affairs of a culturally homogeneous state during the past three centuries are of limited help, and sometimes even a positive handicap, in dealing with multicultural societies…This is a formidable theoretical and political task and no multicultural society has so far succeeded in tackling it…”
So and in the words of its advocates, it is a still-evolving, poorly-defined and experimental “perspective” that major European leaders have now dramatically ditched as a disaster.
What then, some might well ask, is all the fuss about?
Among the euro-Left attacks on multiculturalism are seen as intolerant political extremism of the worst kind. Diametrically opposite of course is the view of the euro-Right for whom multiculturalism is a looming threat to the very survival of old Europe.
For the record this is what President Sarkozy said February 10 during a marathon nationwide television exchange on TV1: “My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure … Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want a society where communities coexist side by side. Our Muslim compatriots must be able to practise their religion, as any citizen can, but we in France do not want people to pray in an ostentatious way in the street. If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France. The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women and freedom for little girls to go to school.”
Difficult to find a clearer clarion call for the assimilation and integration of immigrant communities and a directive that it is the mother culture that the incomers must absorb — “melt into a single community” he said — not the other way round.
Rather than an outcry in the immediate aftermath of President Sarkozy’s disclosure that he shared the views of the leaders of Germany and Britain on multiculturalism, there was an eerie silence in the news cycle.
Despite the recent significant rise of support for a reinvigorated Front National under its new leader Marine Le Pen — who now proudly asserts her party’s main policies are driving French political debate — the Left did not seem to have readied its defences of a pan-European concept that it hijacked in the late 70s to force through transformational change in conservative western societies with strong folk memories of their different tribal origins.
This may of course have been because until recently multiculturalisme has not been a concept with a stratified place in France, a bastion of the nation state where there are no formal records of a citizen’s ethnicity, culture or religion, and such data is specifically omitted in the decennial census. While the French may not acknowledge multiculturalisme as a state construct, the presidential antennae are acutely attuned and Sarkozy knows exactly why his EU counterparts have held the Requiem Mass for multiculturalism.
He is also uncomfortably aware how strongly the French feel about issues covered by this piece of politically correct shorthand. (A TNS-Sofres poll found mid-January that 32% of voters in the UMP party, led by President Nicolas Sarkozy until his election, would support a UMP-FN government in 2012).
The political Right has now made its point absolutely clear, the 2012 presidential elections are set to be fraught with ethnic/religious tension and it will all be the Left’s fault.
So it was curious that it took more than 24 hours for the Left to pick themselves up off the floor after the presidential punches had landed and cobble together their defence of programmes increasingly under challenge across an economically disintegrating Europe.
French sociologist, Michel Wieviorka defends Multiculturalism
Finally they managed it and the silence was somewhat timidly broken by sociologist, Michel Wieviorka (of EHESS-l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in this contribution to the left-wing Rue89.com website: “Will the left unquestioningly swallow the convergent attacks from the right and extreme-right against what they call ‘multiculturalism’” he asked?
Mr Wieviorka then proceeded to remind his audience what the media and its readers meant by the use of the word ‘multiculturalism’: “not a set of clearly identified cultural differences, which are strictly speaking the subject of multiculturalism, but a nebulous group of concerns related to immigration, terrorism, crime, delinquency, insecurity and especially Islam, that is to say a religion.”
Continuing his analysis of the Sarkozy Statement, he added: “(it is) legitimate and desirable for a head of state to attack terrorism and violence, and take measures to end domination by groups and their leaders on individuals within minority groups, beginning with women. But to attribute these evils to multiculturalism, is to find too convenient a scapegoat (…) Criticism of multiculturalism by the extreme-right and right always includes a noteworthy aspect: it goes hand in hand with a call for the proper integration of all immigrants. This call is always presented as a need that is basic to nationhood, and the society as a whole; it is never advanced from the perspective of the immigrant (…) In France in particular, with its attachment to the republican ideal, and its national version of universal values, the prevailing philosophy and this includes that on the left, has often resulted in a rejection of everything that might lead to a recognition of minorities, and an encouragement therefore of the horrors of communitarianism. (…) Well-tempered multiculturalism, subject to regular re-assessment, implemented with caution, and without premature generalisations, is not necessarily the abomination that the extreme right and right would have us believe, it might even offer solutions for a left eager to articulate absolute respect for universal values, and differences…” he concluded.
This cerebral and academic defence of the ‘perspective’ seems more designed as food for an enjoyable Left Bank debate by Parisian intellectuals than as effective ammunition against the shrapnel in the political messages the three leaders have clearly been getting from focus groups and grass roots in their respective countries.
The significance of the French presidential position on multiculturalism — it took four months to gestate post-Merkel remember — should not be overlooked.
France with the largest Muslim population in western Europe– five to six million (8-9.6%) of the total according to a BBC European factsheet “favours Muslim integration. But the growth of the community has challenged the French ideal of a strict separation between religion and public life”.
These factors are now of growing political import following the resurgence of the Front National party as FrenchNewsOnline has previously reported here and here
Story: Ken Pottinger
editorial@french-news-online.com
A long and interesting essay “What is Multiculturalism” can be read in this paper by Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, UK
A later essay from 2000 entitled “Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and
Entering The Future Egypt
Open page
- Zimbabwe’s blood diamonds (2011/03)
- The Arab lobby (2011/03)
- Is Egypt the future IndoTurkeZi (2011/03)
Open page
Is Egypt the future IndoTurkeZil?
So many ways to strut your democratic stuff in a new world
18 March, by Pepe Escobar
Three mummies were recently found in an underground temple in Luxor, Egypt. Translated hieroglyphs identified them as the Clash of Civilizations, the End of History, and Islamophobia. They ruled in Western domains into the second decade of the twenty-first century before dying and being embalmed.
That much is settled. Without them, the Middle East is already a new world that must be understood in a new way. For one thing, Egypt, that previously moribund land of “stability” and bosom buddy of whoever was in power in Washington, has been hurled into the Middle East’s New Great Game. The question is: What will be its fate — and that of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets in a staggering show of aggressive nonviolence in January and February?
It is, of course, impossible to say, especially since shadow play is the norm and the realities of rule are hard to discern. In a country where “politics” has for decades meant the army, it’s notable that the key actor supposedly coordinating the “transition to democracy” remains an appointee of Pharaoh Hosni Mubarak, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi from the Supreme Army Council. At least, popular pressure has forced Tantawi’s military junta to appoint a new transitional Prime Minister, the Tahrir-Square-friendly former transport minister Essam Sharaf.
Keep in mind that the hated emergency laws from the Mubarak era, part of what provoked the Egyptian uprising to begin with, are still in place and that the country’s intellectuals, its political parties, labor unions, and the media all fear a silent counterrevolution. At the same time, they almost uniformly insist that the Tahrir Square revolution will neither be hijacked nor rebranded by opportunists. As the ideological divide between liberalism, secularism, and Islamism disintegrated when the country’s psychological Wall of Fear came down, lawyers, doctors, textile workers — a range of the country’s civil society — remain clear on one thing: they will never settle for a theocracy or a military dictatorship. They want full democracy.
No wonder what that implies makes Western diplomatic circles tremble. An Egyptian army even remotely accountable to an elected civilian government will not, for instance, collaborate in the Israeli siege of Gaza’s Palestinians, or in CIA renditions of terror suspects to the country’s prisons, or blindly in that monstrous farce, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”
Meanwhile, there are more pedestrian matters to deal with: How, for example, will the army-directed transition towards September elections make the economic numbers add up? In 2009, Egypt’s import bill was $56 billion, while the country’s exports only added up to $29 billion. Tourism, foreign aid, and borrowing helped fill the gap. The uprising sent tourism into a tailspin and who knows what kinds of aid and loans anyone will fork over in the months to come.
Meanwhile, the country will have to import no less than 10 million tons of wheat in 2011 at about $3.3 billion (if grain prices don’t continue to rise) to keep people at least half-fed. This is but a small part of Mubarak’s tawdry legacy, which includes 40 million Egyptians, almost half the population, living on less than $2 a day, and it’s not going to disappear overnight, if at all.
Hit by a rolling, largely peaceful revolution all across MENA (the newly popular acronym for the Middle East and Northern Africa), Washington and an aging Fortress Europe, filled with fear, wallow in a mire of perplexity. Even after the dust from those rebellious Northern African winds settles, it’s hardly a given that they will grasp just how all the cultural stereotypes used to explain the Middle East for decades also managed to vanish.
My favorite line of the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 is still Tunisian scholar Sarhan Dhouib’s: “These revolts are an answer to [George W.] Bush’s intent to democratize the Arab world with violence.” If “shock and awe” is now also an artifact of an ancient world, what’s next?
Models for rent or sale
On February 3rd, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation published a poll conducted in seven Arab countries and Iran. No less than 66% of respondents considered Turkey, not Iran, the ideal model for the Middle East. A media scrum from Le Monde to the Financial Times now evidently concurs. After all, Turkey is a functional democracy in a Muslim-majority country where the separation of mosque and state prevails.
That stellar Islamic scholar at Oxford, Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, also recently labeled the “Turkish way” as “a source of inspiration.” In late February, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu agreed, with a surfeit of modesty that barely covered the ambitions of the new Turkey, insisting that his country does not want to be a model for the region, “but we can be a source of inspiration.”
The Egyptian Marxist economist Samir Amin — widely respected across the developing world — suspects that, whatever the hopes of the Turks and others, including so many Egyptians, Washington has quite different ideas about Egypt’s destiny. It wants, he believes, not a Turkish model but a Pakistani one for that country: that is, the mix of an “Islamic power” with a military dictatorship. It won’t fly, Amin is convinced, because “the Egyptian people are now highly politicized.”
The process of true democratization that began back in the distant 1950s in Turkey proved to be a long road. Nonetheless, despite periodic military coups and the continuing political power of the Turkish army, elections were, and remain, free. The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, now at the Turkish helm, was founded in August 2001 by former members of the Refah Party, a much more conservative Islamic group with an ideology similar to that of today’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
As the AKP mellowed out, however, the pro-business, pro-European Union wing of the country’s Islamists mixed with various center-right politicians and, in 2002, the AKP finally took power in Ankara. Only then could they begin to slowly undermine the stranglehold of the traditional Istanbul-based secular Turkish elite and the military that had held power since the 1920s.
Yet the AKP did not dream of dismantling the secular system first installed by Turkey’s founding father Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in 1924. The Turkish civil code he instituted was inspired by Switzerland with citizenship based on secular law. While the country is predominantly Muslim, of course, its people simply would not welcome a system, as in Khomeinist Iran, that is guided by religion.
The AKP should be viewed as the equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe after the 1950s — dynamic, business-oriented conservatives with religious roots. In Egypt, the moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood has many similarities to the AKP and looks to it for inspiration. In the new Egypt, it will finally be a legitimate political party and most experts believe that it could garner 25% to 30% of the vote in the first election of the new era.
All roads lead to Tahrir
Turkish critics — usually from the Western-oriented technical and managerial caste — regularly accuse the democracy-meets-Islam Turkish model of being little more than a successful marketing ploy, or worse, a Middle Eastern version of Russia. After all, the army still wields disproportionate behind-the-scenes power as guarantor of the state’s secular framework. And the country’s Kurdish minority is not really integrated into the system (although in September 2010 Turkish voters approved constitutional changes that give greater rights to Christians and Kurds).
With its glorious Ottoman past, notes Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Turkey was never colonized by a world power, and thus “‘veneration of Europe’ or ‘imitation of the West’ never had the humiliating connotations” described by Frantz Fanon or Edward Said for much of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.
There are stark differences between Turkey’s road to a military-free democracy in 2002 and the littered path ahead for Egypt’s young demonstrators and nascent political parties. In Turkey the key actors were pro-business Islamists, conservatives, neo-liberals, and right-wing nationalists. In Egypt they are pro-labor Islamists, leftists, liberals, and left-wing nationalists.
The Tahrir Square revolution was essentially unleashed by two youth groups: the April 6 Youth Movement (which was geared towards solidarity with workers on strike), and We Are All Khaled Said (which mobilized against police brutality). Later, they would be joined by Muslim Brotherhood activists and — crucially — organized labor, the masses of workers (and the unemployed) who had suffered from years of the International Monetary Fund’s “structural adjustment” poison. (As late as April 2010, an IMF delegation visited Cairo and praised Mubarak’s “progress.”)
The revolution in Tahrir Square made the necessary connections in a deeply comprehensible way. It managed to go to the heart of the matter, linking miserable wages, mass unemployment, and increasing poverty to the ways in which Mubarak’s cronies (and also the military establishment) enriched themselves. Sooner or later, in any showdown to come, the way the military controls so much of the economy will be an unavoidable topic — the way, for instance, army-owned companies continue to make a killing in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel, and oil industries, or the way the military has come to own significant tracts of land in the Nile Delta and on the Red Sea, “gifts” for guaranteeing regime stability.
It’s not surprising that key sectors in the West are pushing for a “safe” Turkish model for Egypt. Yet, given the country’s immiseration, it’s unlikely that young protesters and their working class supporters will be appeased even by the possibility of a Turkish-style, neoliberal, Islamo-democratic system. What this leftist/liberal/Islamist coalition is fighting for is a labor-friendly, independent, truly sovereign democracy. It doesn’t take a PhD. from the London School of Economics, like the one bought by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, to see how cataclysmic this newly independent outlook could be for the current status quo.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Don’t misunderstand: Whether the Tahrir Square activists want to reproduce the Turkish system in Egypt or not, Turkey itself is immensely popular there, as it increasingly is in the wider Arab world. That offers Ankara’s politicians the perfect scenario for consolidating the country’s regional leadership role, distinctly on the rise since, in 2003, its leaders established their independence by rebuffing George W. Bush’s desire to use Turkish territory in his invasion of Iraq.
That popularity was only heightened after eight of the nine victims shot by Israeli commandos in the Gaza freedom flotilla fiasco turned out to be Turks. When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vociferously condemned Israel for its “bloody massacre,” he instantly became the “King of Gaza.” When Mubarak finally responded to the Tahrir Square demonstrations by announcing that he would not run again for president in 2011, President Obama didn’t say much, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Egypt not to “rush towards elections.” As for Erdogan, he virtually ordered Mubarak to step down, live on al-Jazeera for the whole Muslim world to see.
While Washington fiddled with embracing the wrong side of history, however reluctantly and chaotically, in the company of those staunch Mubarak defenders Israel and Saudi Arabia, Erdogan — with a canny assessment of regional politics — preferred to back Egyptians attempting to chart their own destiny. And it paid off.
The point is not that America is now “losing” Turkey, nor that, as some critics have charged, Erdogan is dreaming of becoming a neo-Ottoman Caliph (whatever that might mean). What must be understood here is a new Turkish concept: strategic depth. For that we need to turn to a book, Stratejik Derinlik: Turkiye’nin Uluslararasi Konumu (Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position), published in Istanbul in 2001 by Ahmet Davutoglu, then a professor of international relations at the University of Marmara, now Turkey’s Foreign Minister.
In that book, Davutoglu looked into a future that seems ever closer to now and placed Turkey at the center of three concentric circles: 1) the Balkans, the Black Sea basin, and the Caucasus; 2) the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean; 3) the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Central Asia. When it came to future areas of influence, even in 2001 he believed that Turkey could potentially claim no less than eight: the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, Turkic Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Today, he is a key player, and in many of those same areas of potential influence, people are indeed looking to Turkey. It’s a remarkable moment for Davutoglu, who remains convinced that Ankara will be a force to reckon with in the Middle East. As he puts it, simply enough, “This is our home.”
Take the idea of Turkey’s “strategic depth” and combine it with the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 and you understand why Erdogan has launched a bid not just to make the Turkish model the Egyptian one or even the Middle Eastern one, but to upstage Egypt as the future mediator between the region and the West. That Erdogan and Davutoglu were heading in this direction has been clear enough from the way, in the past few years, they have tried to insert themselves as mediators between Syria and Israel and have launched a complex political, diplomatic, and economic opening towards Iran.
And speaking of historical ironies, just as Iran’s fundamentalist leaders were watching an Egyptian regime deeply hostile to them go down, protests by the Iranian Green Movement suddenly began to rock Tehran again — during a visit by none other than Turkish President Abdullah Gul. The protests were handled with what amounted to a velvet glove (by Tehran’s standards) because the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat found itself in a potentially losing competition with its Turkish ally to become the number one inspirational source for Arab mass movements.
Java: democracy with your coffee?
If Egyptians want lessons in the establishment of democracy, Turkey is hardly the only place to turn to for inspiration. They could, for example, look to Latin America. For the first time in over 500 years, South America is fully democratic. As in Egypt, so in many Latin American countries in the Cold War era, dictatorships were the order of the day and militaries ruled. In Brazil, for instance, the “slow, gradual, and secure” political opening that left a military dictatorship behind took practically a decade.
That implies a lot of patience. The same applies to another model: Indonesia. There, in 1998, Suharto, an aging U.S.-backed dictator 32 years in power, finally resigned only a few days after returning from a visit to, of all places, Cairo. Indonesia then looked a lot like Egypt in February 2011: a Western-friendly, predominantly Muslim nation, impoverished and fed up with a mega-corrupt military dictator who crushed leftist intellectuals as well as political Islam.
Thirteen years later, Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy and the freest in Southeast Asia, with a secular government, a booming economy, and the military out of politics.
I still have vivid memories of riding a bike one day in May 1998 across the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, while it was literally on fire, rage exploding in endless columns of smoke. Washington did not intervene then, nor did China, nor the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Indonesians did it for themselves. The transition followed an existing, if previously largely ignored, constitution. (In Egypt, the constitution now must be amended via a referendum.)
True, Indonesians had to live for a while with Suharto’s handpicked vice president, the affable B.J. Habibie (so unlike Mubarak’s handpicked successor the sinister Omar “Sheikh al-Torture” Suleiman). It took a year to organize new elections, amend electoral laws, and get rid of appointed seats in Parliament. It took six years for the first direct presidential election. And yes, corruption is still a huge problem, and wealth and the right connections go a long way (as is true, some would say, in the U.S.). But today, the rule of law prevails.
An “Islamic state” never had a chance. Today, only 25% of Indonesians vote for Islamic parties, while the well-organized Prosperous Justice Party, an ideological descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, but now officially open to non-Muslims, holds only four out of 37 seats in the cabinet of President Yudhoyono, and expects to win no more than 10% of the vote in the 2014 elections.
While Indonesia remains close to the U.S. and is heavily courted by Washington as a counterweight to China, Brazil under the presidency of immensely popular Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva charted a far more independent path for itself and, by example, much of Latin America. This process took almost a decade and future historians may see it as at least as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In Eastern Europe, 1989 could be seen, in part, as a chain of rebellions by people yearning to get access to the global market. The Great Arab Revolt, on the other hand, has been an uprising in significant part against the dictatorship of that same market. Protestors from Tunisia to Bahrain are striking out in favor of social inclusion and new, better social and economic contracts. No wonder this staggering, ongoing upheaval is regarded across Latin America with tremendous empathy and with the feeling that "We did it, and now they’re doing it."
The future is, of course, unknown, but perhaps a decade or two from now, we’ll be able to say that the Egyptians and other Arab peoples struck out not on the Turkish model, nor even the Brazilian or Indonesian ones, but onto a set of new paths. Perhaps the future from Cairo to Tunis, Benghazi to Manama, Algiers to (Allah willing) a post-House of Saud Saudi Arabia will involve inventing a new political culture and the new economic contracts that would go with it, ones that will be indigenous and, hopefully, democratic in new and surprising ways.
Which brings us back to Turkey. It’s perfectly feasible that Islam will be one of the building blocks of something entirely new, something no one today has a clue about, something that will resemble what was, in Europe, the separation between politics and religion. In the spirit of May 1968, perhaps we can even picture an Arab Banksy plastering a stencil across all Arab capitals: Imagination in Power!
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S T Vaughan
7 Mar, 2011
It would appear the whole of Europe agrees multiculturalism is dead in Europe, so that solves the problem, and the problem now just goes away and everyone carries on doing their own thing – Germany ignores its immigrants, France shoves them on a ferry to England and England gives them a house and benefits, and all agree multiculturalism just doesn’t work!
S T Vaughan
Birmingham
B14 4EA