“Be More & Achieve More!”

Dear Reader: Hi,

It’s been a while since I wrote here to you but as you know well by now, the world has seen some immense changes taking place this year and most surprisingly, or perhaps not really, these have been across the Middle East. The Middle East has traditionally been a historical place of significance due the constant line of God’s good Messengers appearing through-out the region over the centuries; it occupies the middle portion of the Earth, and of recent times contains within it the troublesome spot of Israel.

The Future Does Not Equal The Past, Does it?

Ever since man was created, the Angels questioned the Creator about the bloodshed and mischief that would be manifest due the actions of man. Almighty God, the Greatest, replied “I know that which you do not” (Final Testament, Chapter 2:30). God knew that He had created a being that was capable of bringing the forces of nature under his control – so long as he acted aright and with full reliance in his Maker. And so man was set on Earth to fulfil the noble mission of this stewardship: to ensure that the environment, nature, and all people co-exist peacefully with due rights and consideration given to all such elements.

But man was created in a complex fashion – his mind, heart, body and inner-self would be in constant flux and imbalance, with passions and desire often getting the better than reason and intellect; with negative attitudes such as arrogance, greed and envy getting the better of virtues like humility, charity and forgiveness. This battle of the inner and outer forces of man are the very basis of his ‘testing period’ here on Earth, as God, the Almighty states “He created life and death in order to test which of you is best in deed” (67:2).

The crowning glory of every man is to be successful on the The Great Day when he will be held responsible for all his thoughts, intentions, feelings, motives and actions. There will be no escaping from the Accountability of Almighty God in His Great Court – all of a person’s life will be laid bare – his own limbs, emotions and motives will give evidence to testify either for or against him. Successful will be the man who earns God’s grace That Day and successful will be the ones whose balance of good is weightier than his bad deeds.

‘Islamic’ Awakening of an individual can only occur when every person realises his and her own personal duty towards themselves, their neighbours and society, towards nature and the environment, and ultimately towards God. This realisation will lead to a heightened level of personal honour and a sense of nobility – that he has been created by God “Then He (God) fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him a spirit from us (the soul)” (32:9). This realisation combined with an attitude of accountability will help create an atmosphere of responsibility and due care.

Every child, mother and person knows what it means to act with love, care, kindness, patience and understanding. These virtues are recognised the world over as they are a part of God’s nature: as all good belongs to Him, emanates from Him, and returns to Him alone. We, who call ourselves as Muslims – who wish to lead an Islamic life – need to be more aware of when our passions and evil forces are attempting to make us act contrary to the higher virtues, values and characteristics. We need to understand that our benevolence, grace and compassion are much greater at winning the ‘game of life’ than when we exercise our lesser selves – acting with anger or irrationality will only debase our own credibility, it goes against our moral nature, and is not befitting for our purer soul.

In this way, Awakening occurs precisely due to Awareness: the keys to this awareness are many, but to mention some important ones here (a) every person has to increase their knowledge of life, the truth of this world, and the grand scheme of God; (b) they ought to ensure that they use the ‘aql (intellect), which has been bestowed upon humans to differentiate them from other living entities, working for the greater good through beneficial innovation, functioning within the framework of God’s Law; (c) to retain a healthy level of critical thinking, to have an attitude of curiosity, and to question openly the norms of our times, life, history and nature.

As well as this personal responsibility given to every man, there is an added responsibility upon the leaders of every nation to help ‘navigate mankind’s ship to a safe and prosperous destination’; as Muslims, we believe this is the fulfilment of the soul’s yearning – to be in proximity with its Creator. On Earth, we are guided to seek this divine proximity through prayer, devotion, positive contribution, self-sacrifice and charity. There is not a person on Earth who will not recognise a genuine act of kindness, care or charity. We must give more back than we take, if man is to reach the heights that have been destined for him.

In Surah Al-Ma‘ida (The Table Top, Chapter 5 of the Final Testament, The Holy Quran) we read:

15. O people of the Book! There has come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much that you used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary).

16. There has come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book - wherewith Allah (God) guides all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leads them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light - guiding them to a path that is straight.

17. In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary. Say: “Who then has the least power against Allah, if His will were to destroy Christ the son of Mary, his mother, and all every - one that is on the earth? For to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between. He creates what He pleases. For Allah has power over all things.”

18. (Both) the Jews and the Christians say: “We are sons of Allah, and his beloved.”
Say: “Why then does He punish you for your sins? Nay, you are but men - of the men he has created: He forgives whom He pleases, and He punishes whom He pleases: and to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between: and unto Him is the final goal (of all)”

19. O People of the Book! Now has come unto you, making (things) clear unto you, Our Messenger, after the break in (the series of) our apostles, lest you should say: “There came unto us no bringer of glad tidings and no warner (from evil)”: But now has come unto you a bringer of glad tidings and a warner (from evil). And Allah has power over all things.

When we wish to understand world events, we cannot really dissociate the spiritual dimension from the physical one, as this will only lead to a lesser understanding of causes and effects. As believers in God’s Message, His Book and His Messengers, we must trust in His Judgement and Wisdom at all times: that He is ultimately The One Who controls all affairs and to Him is our final return. Despite confusion, turmoil, politicking, double standards, negation of rights, injustices, propaganda, subjugation, oppression, denial of truths and fairness, we must remember that “Allah has power over all things.”

Much can be said about the world events and current ‘Islamic Awakening’ but the central point, as it always is, is about higher matters of fairness, justice and trust in God, His Commandments and His Order. Herein lies the ‘test’ referred to earlier, of not only every individual, but of also the nations and states that constitute such people and races. God’s mercy and bounties are distributed freely – imagine for a moment that there are now over seven billion people inhabiting the Earth, and still there is more than sufficient food, water, shelter and clothing to for all. Truly, “Allah has power over all things.”

When people are taken away from this central point of acting in accordance to God’s commands, they rely on their own senses and faculties alone – perceiving that their strengths and judgments are greater than any other. This only happens when a person, or a people, who are depending on God’s mercy anyway to live on this Earth of His, begin to consciously deny God as the rightful Owner, Creator, Provider and Master of the Universe. Steeped in self-indulgence, the luxuries and comforts surrounding them dull their spiritual senses and arrogance, false pride and jealousy take over. This arrogance leads to corruption and abuse of power, which in turn leads to acts of greed and monopolisation.

Greed, Envy, Corruption and Over-Consumption

This is precisely how the rulers and dictators in the Middle East region have been behaving over the past 40 to 50 years or so. They are no different to a dictator from any other region of the world, as the nature of a dictator is the same whichever country he maybe ruling: to rule with tyranny and disregard of basic freedoms of speech, consultations, debates and democratic processes. But sometimes, it can be argued that a people bring to power such dictators, or rulers, as they themselves deserve: its a two-way process. Let us continue with Surah Al-Maida and hear what Allah instructs us:

20. Remember Moses said to his people: “O my people! Call in remembrance the favour of Allah unto you, when He produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave you what He had not given to any other among the peoples.

21. “O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will you be overthrown, to your own ruin.”

22. They said: “O Moses! In this land are a people of exceeding strength: Never shall we enter it until they leave it: if (once) they leave, then shall we enter.”

23. (But) among (their) Allah-fearing men were two on whom Allah had bestowed His grace: They said: “Assault them at the (proper) Gate: when once you are in, victory will be yours; But on Allah put your trust if you have faith.”

24. They said: “O Moses! While they remain there, never shall we be able to enter, to the end of time. Go you, and thy Lord, and fight you two, while we sit here (and watch).”

25. He said: “O my Lord! I have power only over myself and my brother: so separate us from this rebellious people!”

26. Allah (God) said: “Therefore will the land be out of their reach for forty years: In distraction will they wander through the land: But sorrow you not over these rebellious people.

The Children of Israel were granted manifest bounties from God, not least the land, opportunity to thrive, power, provisions, free-trade, commerce, travel and security. But they abused their position and became weak-hearted after Moses led them away from the bondage of Pharaoh towards Mount Sinai. Clearly they had rebelled, which led to their own ruin. Rather than working for their own inheritance and future with faith and courage, they relied on Moses and his God to turn out the enemy first. In God’s law, we must work and strive for what we wish to enjoy.

This passage of events is not only referred to in the Final Testament (The Quran), but also in the Old Testament in the Book of Numbers, where we are informed how Moses sent a group of 12 men to examine the land North of Sinai. They came back with reports of “a land with milk and honey” – a rich country full of delights like pomegranates, figs, olives and grapes. Joshua (who took the leadership of the Israelites after the “forty years of wandering.”) and Caleb were the only ones amongst the twelve men who reported back positively.

However, the remaining ten men reported badly of strong men – the great stature of the Canaanites – in the new land, and this further inflamed the crowd, who were prepared to stone Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, and return back to Egypt. Their reply to Moses was full of irony, insolence, blasphemy and cowardice. In effect they said: “You talk of your God and all that – go with your God and fight there if you like – we shall sit here and watch.” The people of Israel had no faith, nor courage, and Moses remonstrated with them.

A New Approach Needed?

Is it a striking co-incidence that the people across the Middle East and Asia have suffered an almost similar fate as the Israelites over the past 40 years or so? Could it be said that the people across the region in general became weak-hearted, lost faith and courage and were left to wander in distraction for this period? Libya has been ruled by a dictator for forty two years, and Syria an equivalent time – so too in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and many other countries where authoritative regimes have been ruling autocratically.

But now the people are re-inventing themselves and saying a resilient “no!” to dictatorship, authoritative rule and brutal regimes. Using technology, combined with the spirit and dynamism of youth, strengthened with values of fairness, equality, truth and transparency, people are rising to make unprecedented changes sweeping the whole region. No-one had any idea that this would happen the way it has in such a short span of time. This is why it is important to refer back to Scripture/s to see the events through the spiritual lens and put such aspects into proper historical context and reading.

We like to believe that now there seems to be a ‘new approach’ towards self-expression that is helping to re-balance the power struggle in the Middle East and across the World. The vibrancy of the recent ‘Arab Spring’ is having effect in places further outside of the Middle East, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Europe (Spain, Greece, Turkey), South Russia and Latin America. It could be said that the current uprisings have their seeds in the recent events of the Intifada in Palestine and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, both inspired by spiritual leaders like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Imam Khomeini, respectively. Every part of the world has deep history and pages can be written about them – about Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Lebanon and on it goes. World events will never stop happening, as long as the World keeps spinning around till The Great Day.

So let us take a closer look at why these struggles occur; what drives them not only on the state level, but at an individual level, for we have come to realise that the individual constitutes the nation. We have also seen how a people can be deserving of a type of leader (such as dictator) due their own characteristics, and as in the case of Moses and his people, how a good leader can be the head of a stubborn, stiff-necked and uncooperative mass. History reveals many answers – Nature reveals many answers – and indeed Divine Revelation provides us many answers and insights for events which none of us were present.

Pride and Jealousy: Powerful Drivers and Tools of Evil

27. Recite to them the truth of the story of the two sons of Adam. Behold! They each presented a sacrifice (to God): It was accepted from one, but not from the other. Said the latter, “Be sure I will slay thee.” “Surely,” said the former, “(Allah) doth accept of the sacrifice of those who are righteous.

28. “If you do stretch your hand against me, to slay me, it is not for me to stretch my hand against you to slay thee: for I do fear Allah, the cherisher of the worlds.

29. “For me, I intend to let thee draw on thyself my sin as well as your own, for you will be among the companions of the fire, and that is the reward of those who do wrong.”

30. The (selfish) soul of the other led him to the murder of his brother: he murdered him, and became (himself) one of the lost ones.

31. Then Allah sent a raven, who scratched the ground, to show him how to hide the shame of his brother. “Woe is me!” said he; “Was I not even able to be as this raven, and to hide the shame of my brother?” then he became full of regrets-

32. On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our apostles with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.

33. The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;

34. Except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

35. O you who believe! Do your duty to Allah, seek the means of approach unto Him, and strive with might and main in his cause: that you may prosper.

36. As to those who reject Faith- if they had everything on earth, and twice repeated, to give as ransom for the penalty of the Day of Judgment, it would never be accepted of them, theirs would be a grievous penalty.

The two sons of Adam were Habil and Qabil (in English Bible Abel and Cain, respectively). Cain was the elder and Abel the younger – the righteous and innocent one. Presuming on the right of the elder, Cain was puffed up with arrogance and jealousy, which led him to commit the crime of murder. The cool, calm reply of Abel “Surely,” is full of meaning. He is innocent and God-fearing and the threat of death does not alter his state of belief and trust in God. He loves his Maker as he is effectively saying: “I am not going to retaliate though I have as much power as you have against me. I fear my Maker for I know He cherishes all His Creation. Let me warn you that you are doing wrong. I do not intend even to resist, but do you know what the consequences will be to you? You will be in spiritual torment.”

The innocent unselfish pleading of the younger brother had no effect, for the soul of the other was full of pride, selfishness and jealousy. He committed the murder, but in doing so, ruined his own self. The story of Cain is referred to in order to tell the story of Israel. Israel rebelled against God, slew and insulted righteous men who did them no harm, but on the contrary came in all humility.

When God withdrew His favour from Israel because of its sins and bestowed it on a brother nation, the jealousy of Israel plunged it deeper into sin. To kill, or seek to kill, an individual because he represents an ideal is to kill all who uphold the ideal. Whereas saving an individual life in the same circumstances is equivalent to saving the whole community. What could be stronger condemnation of individual assassination and revenge?

Honest Soul-Searching

So the current uprisings and revolutions are a culmination of years of inward reflections, yearning’s of the people’s soul to be closer to Him, free to call out His name with genuine pride and real honour and to live under His safe rule and good law. These revolutions are still taking shape – five months is nothing much in the grand scheme of things.

The Future of the any nation belongs to the people and in the world-over the people, want the same basic human rights: freedom of speech, opportunity, livelihood, education, travel, trade, business and security. The ‘war on terror’ was a convenient phrase to pursue the policy of ‘forward presence’ in sovereign lands according to the (non)-rules of ‘asymmetric warfare’. The so-called ‘axis of evil’ has been presented to the world as a way of dividing the planet along the ‘you are either with us or against us’ paradigm.

It is the current uprising and revolutions that is re-shaping the whole pattern and the re-shuffle of traditional power grids continues. Now a new language and a new idiom are required to secure the hearts and minds of the masses. People are not afraid of calling out for the truth. They are no longer afraid of pulling the reins of power in confidence towards the path of self-determination. The old regimes are losing ground, and I believe the East-West divide is narrowing all the time because the human needs, values, ideals and sufferings are the same as expressed the world over.

The ‘new approach’ is in fact a return to the honest self-expression as Abel demonstrated to his murderous brother Cain: “do what you want, the truth is on my side.” This same truth is what is causing pain to people across Europe and America – the great divide between those who ‘have’ and those who ‘have not’. The once great institutions of Education, Health, and Care Support are dwindling in face of huge economic crisis brought about due to the greed of the few in the banking world. This very economic crisis is causing the current political re-shuffle as people are claiming back their basic rights and privileges.

The whole world is undergoing a soul-searching exercise – the negative forces and impurities are being purged. The Earth is tired of carrying evil on its stomach, and the Great God above is allowing enough time for a rational re-assessment to take place country-by-country, people-by-people, and individual-by-individual.

A return to the historical era of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is beckoning. The re-alignment will be complete with the old order crumbling and the new, purer, just order replacing it. The Islamic Awakening is still nascent, as much remains to be done, and the impurities still need to be filtered post-colonisation era and dictatorial rule. Again, it will be deemed by some, and the question presents itself once again, could the colonisation process itself be considered an act of God? That US is currently the world’s dominant superpower, despite its huge deficit of $14trillion, so are not its actions a result of following Divine inspiration? This can be argued, but surely a sea-change is in process, with the former attitudes of complete hegemony arguably not plausible anymore as actions and motives are scrutinised ever-more with today’s communications methods including social media.

The role of the next batch of purer leaders will be to write a new narrative – one of peace, security, love and charity. They will demonstrate Higher Order by living by Principles of Justice and Divine Commandments. The Holy scripture/s will not be diluted or relegated to abstract theological polemics, but be the guiding light for the people and nations who wish to prosper, because they understand that the spiritual and physical dimensions are closely intertwined.

The on-going story of life is always the same as re-accounted here through the case of Moses and his people, as well as between Cain and Abel; the tussle between good and evil, light and dark, truth and falsehood, greed and generosity. It is the law of nature and history that the pendulum always swings to normalise the world affairs, though the history of conflict will continue due to our testing probationary period here on planet Earth.

Peaceful, democratic dissent and demonstrations are paving the way for change. Nations are healing and reconciling their differences. The contradictions between the elite and the masses are being re-addressed. Injustices and overstepping of boundaries may still occur here and there, but the new dialogue has the pendulum swinging well in the favour of Justice. Cultural forces are shaping a new vision for the people that have unleashed their creative power. Democracy will now be on suitable terms, not just on grounds of self-interest. People know who they really are, and deep down they sense that there is an alternative, better way to prosperity and global peace.

For Continued and Rising Success & Contentment,

Asad Khan

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Dear Reader,

Much has been said with respect to Islam by those who are ardently opposed to it, without any real analysis or deep thought may I add. Yet there are others who are able to see its principles and teachings and weigh them against the (r)evolutionary course of human nature, as well as the continuous challenges of the context that we live in and the environment that surrounds us all. From this worldview, it becomes crystal clear that Islam as a “Way of Life” is suited to the inherent nature and yearning of man: to adopt higher principles of living and relating, to gain nearness to purity and piety in both thought and conduct, and to honour timeless values of justice, peace, fairness and neighbourliness. With the fullnes of time, these aspects will become further clear in the West, where champions of this call and its better practice will emerge more-so. Prince Charles is one such sensible champion, but there are many others..

Here is the trasncipt of this delivery by Prince Charles,

A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled Islam and the Environment, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
9th June 2010

Vice Chancellor,
Your Royal Highnesses,
Director,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a very great pleasure for me to be here today to help you celebrate the Oxford Centre’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Whereas bits of your Patron are dropping off after the past quarter of a century, I find quite a few bits of the Centre still being added! However, I cannot tell you how encouraged I am that in addition to the Prince of Wales Fellowship, the number of fellowships you now offer continues to grow and also that this Summer you will welcome the fifth group of young people on your Young Muslim Leadership programme which is run in association with my charities. This is a vital contribution to the process of boosting the self-esteem of young Muslims – about whom I care deeply.

It has been a great concern of mine to affirm and encourage those groups and faith communities that are in the minority in this country. Indeed, over the last twenty-five years, I have tried to find as many ways as possible to help integrate them into British society and to build good relationships between our faith communities. I happen to believe this is best achieved by emphasizing unity through diversity. Only in this way can we ensure fairness and build mutual respect in our country. And if we get it right here then perhaps we might be able to offer an example in the wider world.

I am slightly alarmed that it is now seventeen years since I came here to the Sheldonian to deliver a lecture for the Centre that tried to do just this. I called it “Islam and the West” and, from what I can tell, it clearly struck a chord, and not just here in the U.K. I am still reminded of what I said, particularly when I travel in the Islamic world – in fact, because it was printed, believe it or not, it is the only speech I have ever made which continues to produce a small return!

I wanted to give that lecture to address the dangers of the ignorance and misunderstanding that I felt were growing between the Islamic world and the West in the aftermath of the Cold War. Since then, the situation has both improved and worsened, depending on where you look. Certainly the sorts of advances made by the Oxford Centre have helped to build confidence and understanding, but we all know only too well how some of the things I warned of in that lecture have since come to pass, both here and elsewhere in the world. So it is tremendously important that we continue to work to heal the differences and overcome the misconceptions that still exist. I remain confident that this is possible because there are many values we all share that have the powerful capacity to bind us, rather than what happens when those values are forgotten – or purposefully ignored.

Healing division is also my theme today, but this time it is not the divisions between cultures I want to explore. It is the division that poses a much more fundamental threat to the health and well-being of us all. It is the widening division we are seeing in so many ways between humanity and Nature.

Many of Nature’s vital, life-support systems are now struggling to cope under the strain of global industrialization. How they will manage if millions more people are to achieve Western levels of consumption is highly disturbing to contemplate. The problems are only going to get much worse. And they are very real. Whatever you might have read in the newspapers, particularly about climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen conference last year, we face many related and very serious problems that are a matter of accurate, scientific record.

The actual facts are that over the last half century, for instance, we have destroyed at least thirty per cent of the world’s tropical rainforests and if we continue to chop them down at the present rate, by 2050 we will end up with a very disturbing situation. In fact, in the three years since I started my Rainforest Project to try and help find an innovative solution to tropical deforestation, over 30 million hectares have been lost, and with them this planet has lost about 80,000 species. When you consider that a given area of equatorial trees evaporates eight times as much rainwater as an equivalent patch of ocean, you quickly start to see how their disappearance will affect the productivity of the Earth. They produce billions of tonnes of water every day and without that rainfall the world’s food security will become very unstable.

But there are other facts too. In the last fifty years our industrialized approach to farming has degraded a third of the Earth’s top soil. That is a fact. We have also fished the oceans so extensively that if we continue at the same rate for much longer we are likely to see the collapse of global fisheries in forty years from now. Another fact. Then there are the colossal amounts of waste that pollute the Earth – the many dead zones where nothing can live in many major river estuaries and various parts of the oceans, or those immense rafts of plastic that now float about in the Pacific. Would you believe that one of them, off the coast of California, is made up of 100 million tonnes of plastic and it has doubled in size in just the last decade. It is now at least six times the size of the United Kingdom. And we call ourselves civilized!

These are all very real problems and they are facts – all of them, the obvious results of the comprehensive industrialization of life. But what is less obvious is the attitude and general outlook which perpetuate this dangerously destructive approach. It is an approach that acts contrary to the teachings of each and every one of the world’s sacred traditions, including Islam.

What surprises me, I have to say, is that, quite apart from whether or not we value the sacred traditions as much as we should, the blunt economic facts make the predominant approach increasingly irrational. I imagine that few of you are familiar with the interim report of the United Nations study called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Study which came out in 2008. It painted a salutary picture of what we lose in straightforward financial terms by our destruction of natural systems and the absence of their services to the world. In the first place they calculated that we destroy around 50 billion dollars worth of a system that produces these services every year. By mapping the loss of those services over a forty year period, their estimate is that, in financial terms, the global economy incurs an annual loss of between 2 and 4.5 trillion dollars – every single year.

To put that figure into some sort of perspective, the recent crash in the world’s banking system caused a one-off loss of just 2 trillion dollars. I wonder why the bigger annual loss does not attract the same kind of Media frenzy as the banking crisis did?

This should demonstrate the flaw in the sum that does not need an Oxbridge mathematician to understand – that Nature’s finite resources, divided by our ever-more rapacious desire for continuous economic growth, does not work out. We are clearly living beyond our means, already consuming the Earth’s capital resources faster than she can replenish them.

Over the years, I have pointed out again and again that our environmental problems cannot be solved simply by applying yet more and more of our brilliant green technology – important though it is. It is no good just fixing the pump and not the well.

When I say this, everybody nods sagely, but I get the impression that many are often unwilling to embrace what I am really referring to, perhaps because the missing element sits outside the parameters of the prevailing secular view. It is this “missing element” that I would like to examine today.

In short, when we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.

So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen.

In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so.

I must say, I find this rather baffling. If this is so, why is it that their sense of the sacred has so little bearing on the way science is employed to exploit the natural world in so many damaging ways?

I suppose it must be to do with who pays the fiddler. Over the last two centuries, science has become ever more firmly yoked to the ambitions of commerce. Because there are such big economic benefits from such a union, society has been persuaded that there is nothing wrong here. And so, a great deal of empirical research is now driven by the imperative that its findings must be employed to maximum, financial effect, whatever the impact this may have on the Earth’s long-term capacity to endure.

This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in Nature but quantity and motion. This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works and how we fit within the scheme of things. As a result, Nature has been completely objectified – “She” has become an “it” – and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.

Understanding the world from a mechanical point of view and then employing that knowledge has, of course, always been part of the development of human civilization, but as our technology has become ever more sophisticated and our industrialized methods so much more powerful, so the level of destruction is now potentially all the more widespread and un-containable, especially if you add into this mix the emphasis we have on consumerism.

It was that great scientist, Goethe, who saw life as the masculine principle striving endlessly to reach the “eternal feminine” – what the Greeks called “Sophia,” or wisdom. It is a striving, he said, fired by the force of love. I am not sure that this is quite the way things happen today. Our striving in the industrialized world is certainly not fired by a love of wisdom. It is far more focussed on the desire for the greatest possible financial profit.

This ignores the spiritual teachings of traditions like Islam, which recognize that it is not our animal needs that are absolute; it is our spiritual essence, an essence made for the infinite. But with consumerism now such a key element in our economic model, our natural, spiritual desire for the infinite is constantly being reflected towards the finite. Our spiritual perspective has been flattened and made earthbound and we are persuaded to channel all of our natural, never-ending desire for what Islamic poets called “the Beloved” towards nothing but more and more material commodities. Unfortunately we forget that our spiritual desire can never be completely satisfied. It is rightly a never-ending desire. But when that desire is focussed only on the earthly, it becomes potentially disastrous. The hunger for yet more and more things creates an alarming vacuum and, as we are now realizing, this does great harm to the Earth and creates a never ending unhappiness for many, many people.

I hope you can just begin to see my point. The utter dominance of the mechanistic approach of science over everything else, including religion, has “de-souled” the dominant world view, and that includes our perception of Nature. As soul is elbowed out of the picture, our deeper link with the natural world is severed. Our sense of the spiritual relationship between humanity, the Earth and her great diversity of life has become dim. The entire emphasis is all on the mechanical process of increasing growth in the economy, of making every process more “efficient” and achieving as much convenience as possible. None of which could be said to be an ambition of God. And so, unfashionable though it is to suggest it, I am keen to stress here the need to heal this divide within ourselves. How else can we heal the divide between East and West unless we reconcile the East and West within ourselves? Everything in Nature is a paradox and seems to carry within itself the paradox of opposites. Curiously, this maintains the essential balance. Only human beings seem to introduce imbalance. The task is surely to reconnect ourselves with the wisdom found in Nature which is stressed by each of the sacred traditions in their own way.

My understanding of Islam is that it warns that to deny the reality of our inner being leads to an inner darkness which can quickly extend outwards into the world of Nature. If we ignore the calling of the soul, then we destroy Nature. To understand this we have to remember that we are Nature, not inanimate objects like stones; we reflect the universal patterns of Nature. And in this way, we are not a part that can somehow disengage itself and take a purely objective view.

From what I know of the Qu’ran, again and again it describes the natural world as the handiwork of a unitary benevolent power. It very explicitly describes Nature as possessing an “intelligibility” and that there is no separation between Man and Nature, precisely because there is no separation between the natural world and God. It offers a completely integrated view of the Universe where religion and science, mind and matter are all part of one living, conscious whole. We are, therefore, finite beings contained by an infinitude, and each of us is a microcosm of the whole. This suggests to me that Nature is a knowing partner, never a mindless slave to humanity, and we are Her tenants; God’s guests for all too short a time.

If I may quote the Qu’ran, “Have you considered: if your water were to disappear into the Earth, who then could bring you gushing water?” This is the Divine hospitality that offers us our provisions and our dwelling places, our clothing, tools and transport. The Earth is robust and prolific, but also delicate, subtle, complex and diverse and so our mark must always be gentle – or the water will disappear, as it is doing in places like the Punjab in India. Industrialized farming methods there rely upon the use of high-yielding seeds and chemical fertilizers, both of which need a lot more energy and a lot more water as well. As a consequence the water table has dropped dramatically – I have been there, I have seen it – so far, by three feet a year. Punjabi farmers are now having to dig expensive bore holes over 200 feet deep to get at what remains of the water and, as a result, their debts become ever deeper and the salt rises to the surface contaminating the soil.

This is not a sustainable way of growing food and maintaining the well-being of communities. It does not respect Divine hospitality. The costs it incurs will have to be borne by those who will inherit what is fast becoming the ruined and frayed fabric of life. So for their sake, we have to acknowledge that the immediate, short-term financial benefits of our predominant, mechanistic approach are too expensive to continue to dominate our way of life.

This happens when traditional principles and practices are abandoned – and with them, all sense of reverence for the Earth which is an inseparable element in an integrated and spiritually grounded tradition like Islam – just as it was once firmly embedded in the philosophical heritage of Western thought. The Stoics of Ancient Greece, for instance, held that “right knowledge,” as they called it, is gained by living in agreement with Nature, where there is a correspondence or a sympathy between the truth of things, thought and action. They saw it as our duty to achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the Cosmos.

This incidentally is also the teaching of Judaism. The Book of Genesis says that God placed Mankind in the garden “to tend it and take care of it,” to serve and conserve it for the sake of future generations. “Adamah” in Hebrew means “the one hewn from the Earth,” so Adam is a child of the Earth. In my own tradition of Christianity, the immanence of God is made explicit by the incarnation of Christ. But let us also not forget that throughout the Christian New Testament, Christ often refers to Himself as “the Son of Man” which, in Hebrew, is “Ben Adam.” He, too, is a “son of the Earth,” surely making the same explicit connection between human nature and the whole of Nature.

Even the apocryphal Gnostic texts are imbued with the same principle. The fragments of one of the oldest, ascribed to Mary Magdalene, instructs us that “Attachment to matter gives rise to passion against Nature. Thus, trouble arises in the whole body; this is why I tell you; be in harmony.” In all cases the message is clear. Our specific purpose is to “earth” Heaven. So, to separate ourselves within an inner darkness, leads to what the Irish poet, WB Yeats, warned of at the start of the Twentieth Century. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he wrote, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.”

The traditional way of life within Islam is very clear about the “centre” that holds the relationship together. From what I know of its core teachings and commentaries, the important principle we must keep in mind is that there are limits to the abundance of Nature. These are not arbitrary limits, they are the limits imposed by God and, as such, if my understanding of the Qu’ran is correct, Muslims are commanded not to transgress them.

Such instruction is hard to square if all you do is found your understanding of the world on empirical terms alone. Four hundred years of relying on trying and testing the facts scientifically has established the view that spirituality and religious faith are outdated expressions of superstitious belief. After all, empiricism has proved how the world fits together and it is nothing to do with a “Supreme Being.” There is no empirical evidence for the existence of God so, therefore, Q.E.D, God does not exist. It is a very reasonable, rational argument, and I presume it can be applied to “thought” too. After all, no brain scanner has ever managed to photograph a thought, nor a piece of love, and it never will. So, Q.E.D., that must mean “thought” and “love” do not exist either!

Clearly there is a point beyond which empiricism cannot make complete sense of the world. It works by establishing facts through testing them by the scientific process. It is one kind of language and a very fine one, but it is a language not able to fathom experiences like faith or the meaning of things – it is not able to articulate matters of the soul. This is why it consistently elbows soul out of the picture.

But we do have other kinds of “language,” as Islam well knows, and they are much better at dealing with the realm of the soul and matters of meaning. Each is a different aspect of our language, in fact. Each deals with different aspects of the truth and if you put empiricism, philosophy and the spiritual perception of life together, just as the Islamic tradition at its best and richest has always done, then they tend to complement each other rather well.

Take the difference this made in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, as an example, during the so-called “Golden Age of Islam.” It was a period which gave rise to a spectacular flowering of scientific advancement, but all of it was underpinned by an age-old philosophical understanding of reality and grounded in a profound spirituality, which included a deep reverence for the Natural world. Theirs was an integrated vision of the world, reflecting the timeless truth that all life is rooted in the unity of the Creator. This is the testimony of faith, is it not, embodied in the contemplative implication of the formless essence of the Qur’an’s haqîqa? It is the notion of Tawhîd, the oneness of all things within the embrace of the Divine unity.

Islamic writers express it so well. Ibn Khaldûn, for instance, who taught that “all creatures are subject to a regular and orderly system. Causes are linked to effects where each is connected with the other.” Or the great Shabistâri in Fourteenth Century Persia, who talked of the world being “a mirror from head to foot, in every atom a hundred blazing suns where a world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.” Words that resonate, don’t you think, with William Blake’s famous lines, “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower.”

Other Western poets have captured this truth too. William Wordsworth, perhaps one of the greatest of all our Nature poets, describes “a sense sublime of something far more inter-fused… a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of thought and rolls through all things.” I quote the poets because they help us identify this “sense sublime” and inspire reverence for the created world.

Reverence is not science-based knowledge. It is an experience always mediated by love, sometimes induced by it; and love comes from relationship. If you take away reverence and reduce our spiritual relationship with life, then you open yourself up to the idea that we can be little more than a chance group of isolated, self-obsessed individuals, disconnected from life’s innate presence and un-anchored by any sense of duty to the rest of the world. We are free to act without responsibility. Thus we turn a blind eye to those islands of plastic in the sea, or to the treatment meted out to animals in factory farms. And it is why the so-called “precautionary principle” is so often thrown out of the window.

This is the principle that would make us think twice if, say, we were to climb into a vehicle that happens to have a ninety per cent chance of crashing. Instead, because the danger is not proven beyond doubt, we think it is safe to embark upon the journey. This is how we proceed in many significant fields – in matters like genetic modification or climate change. We go on denying that there may be side-effects, even if our intuition warns us to be cautious, or even if there is some related evidence. Recently, for instance, the news emerged that, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of honey bee colonies in the United States failed to survive the Winter. More than three million colonies in the U.S. and billions of honeybees worldwide have died. Scientists say they are no nearer to knowing what is causing this catastrophic collapse, but there is plenty of evidence that modern pesticides have played their part. Given that bees, like nearly every other bug, are insects, I would have thought it was rather obvious. And yet we carry on with a narrow-minded, mechanistic approach to industrialized farming with all its focus on high yields at whatever price. So we lace the fields with pesticides that kill insects. It is quite bizarre how we continue to entrust our food security to the very substances that are destroying the harmonic cycle which produces our food. It really is a form of collective hubris and I often wonder if those who practise such well-exercised scepticism in these matters will ever see that “the Emperor is wearing no clothes?”

This, then, is why the wisdom and learning offered by a sacred tradition like Islam matters – and, if I may say so, why those who hold and strive to preserve their sacred traditions in different parts of the world have every reason to become more confident of their ground. The Islamic world is the custodian of one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity. It is both Islam’s noble heritage and a priceless gift to the rest of the world. And yet, so often, that wisdom is now obscured by the dominant drive towards Western materialism – the feeling that to be truly “modern” you have to ape the West.

To counter that tendency I have done what I can with my School of Traditional Arts to nurture and support traditional and sacred craft skills – not least those of Islam – because they keep alive a perspective that we sorely need, even though short-term fashion deems them to be irrelevant. The geometry and patterning that are taught at the School are the basis of the many crafts that have been all but abandoned in many parts of the world, including the Islamic world. It is a tragedy of monumental proportions that they are being forgotten because they reflect the spiritual mathematics found everywhere in Nature. As Islam teaches very specifically, it is a patterning that reflects the very ground of our being. It is the Divine imagination, so to speak; the ineffable presence that is the sacred breath of life. As the Seventeenth Century mystic, Ibn Âshir, puts it, by the practice of these arts you “see the One who manifests in the form, not the form by itself.”

For many in the modern world this is hard to understand because the view of God has become so distorted. “God” is seen as being, somehow, outside “His” creation, rather than part of its unfolding – what the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Being the principle that underlines the Cosmos, the Cosmos is the result of God knowing it and of it knowing the uncreated God. Notice the emphasis there on “un”-created. It is of profound importance. The basis of all existence is in this relationship.

I suspect the reason why this is such an unfashionable view is that the deep-seated experience of participation in the living, creative presence of God is offered to us in all traditions not by empiricism, but by revelation. This is a rare and precious gift and only given to those whose supreme humanity and capacity for great humility achieves a mastery over the ego. It comes at the moment when “the knower and the known” become one – the moment when the mind of Man comes into union with the mind of God.

This, of course, is not deemed possible from an empirical point of view, but revelation is a very different kind of knowing from scientific, evidence-based knowledge, and I cannot stress the point strongly enough; by dismissing such a process and discarding what it offers to humankind, we throw away a very important lifeline for the future.

I must say, once you do blend the different languages – the empirical and the spiritual together as I am suggesting, and as I have been trying to say for so long – then you do begin to wonder why the sceptics think the desire to work in harmony with Nature is so unscientific. Why is it deemed so worthwhile to abandon our true relationship with the “beingness” of all things; to limit ourselves to the science of manipulation, rather than immerse ourselves in the wider science of understanding? They seem such spurious arguments, because, as Islam clearly understands, it is actually impossible to divorce human beings from Nature’s patterns and processes. The Qur’an is considered to be the “last Revelation” but it clearly acknowledges which book is the first. That book is the great book of creation, of Nature herself, which has been taken too much for granted in our modern world and needs to be restored to its original position.

So, with all this in mind, I would like to set you a challenge, if I may; a challenge that I hope will be conveyed beyond this audience today. It is the challenge to mobilize Islamic scholars, poets and artists, as well as those craftsmen, engineers and scientists who work with and within the Islamic tradition, to identify the general ideas, the teachings and the practical techniques within the tradition which encourage us to work with the grain of Nature rather than against it. I would urge you to consider whether we can learn anything from the Islamic culture’s profound understanding of the natural world to help us all in the fearsome challenges we face. Are there, for instance, any that could help preserve our precious marine eco-systems and fisheries? Are there any traditional methods of avoiding damage to all of Nature’s systems that revive the principle of sustainability within Islam?

To give you an idea of what I mean, let me offer a few examples drawn from the work done by my School of Traditional Arts, where project workers have shown that re-introducing traditional craft skills brings a coherence to peoples’ daily lives, perhaps because they fuse the spiritual with the practical.

Since I founded it, the School has helped restore these skills in places as far afield as Jordan and Nigeria. It also helps to build bridges within communities in this country which have suffered the worst fractures. In Burnley in Lancashire, for instance, project workers have been teaching children from many backgrounds an integrated view of the world using the patterns of Islamic sacred geometry. This has not just inspired the imagination of the children taking part, but their teachers too. They tell me they have discovered a much more integrated approach to education, where maths and art are not alien to one another, but are seen as two sides of the same coin and directly rooted in Nature’s patterns and processes.

In Afghanistan, I have only recently managed to see the work being done under the umbrella of what we have called “the Turquoise Mountain Foundation” – an initiative I launched some four years ago – which is running similar education programmes and craft training courses. It is also helping with the urban regeneration of the old historic quarter of the city by guiding people to start businesses using the craft skills they have learned.

For example, in the building of schools, people are being shown how to use mud-bricks which are a quarter of the price of the concrete blocks used by other agencies. They are also resistant to earthquakes, whereas concrete is not. And they cope much better with extremes of temperature – mud-brick buildings are cooler in the Summer and warmer in the Winter. What is more, they use local labour and local, natural materials. So these schools are a good example of how traditional wisdom blends with modern needs. After all, you can still use computers and other modern technology in a mud-brick building! And more comfortably, too, given it is more suited to local conditions.

When I finally did manage to reach Kabul earlier this year – after several years of trying – what I saw was truly remarkable. It proved to me that teaching and employing traditional crafts is an effective way of re-introducing the kinds of techniques that are benign to the natural environment. They are also capable of restoring a cultural balance in peoples’ minds. By encouraging a wider celebration of the traditional, ancient culture of Afghanistan, these skills help in a very practical way to counteract the oppressive effects of extremism in all its forms, both religious and secular. This is how traditional wisdom works. It is not a theory or a science written down. Its wisdom is discovered through practice and in action.

These are schemes that are close to my heart, but the Oxford Centre keeps me informed of many others. Working in Muslim countries, the World Wildlife Fund has found that trying to convey the importance of conservation is much easier if it is transmitted by religious leaders whose reference is Qur’anic teaching. In Zanzibar, they had little success trying to reduce spear-fishing and the use of dragnets, which were destroying the coral reefs. But when the guidance came from the Qur’an, there was a notable change in behaviour. Or in Indonesia and in Malaysia, where former poachers are being deterred in the same way from destroying the last remaining tigers.

And it is not just such interventions that are important. It is mystifying, for instance, that the modern world completely ignores the time-honoured feats of engineering in the ancient world. The Qanats of Iran, for example, that still provide water for thousands of people in what would otherwise be desert conditions. These underground canals – unbelievably 170,000 miles of them – keep the water from the mountains moving down the tunnels using gravity alone. And the water in every village is then kept fresh by the way the storage towers keep the air flowing freely, moved by the wind.

In Spain, the irrigation systems constructed 1200 years ago also still work perfectly, as does the way in which the water is managed by the local population – a way of operating devised before the Muslim rule in Spain disintegrated. The same sorts of Islamic management schemes operate in other parts of the world too, like the “hima” zones in Saudi Arabia which set aside land for use as pasture. These are all examples of how prophetic teaching, in this case framed by the guidance of the Qu’ran, maintains a long term view of things and keeps the danger of a self-interested form of short-term economics at bay.

I am sure that if an organization like the Oxford Centre could help to establish a global forum on “Islam and the Environment” many more very practical, traditional approaches like these could become more widely applied. They may range from science and technology to agriculture, healthcare, architecture and education. Think what could be achieved if mothers and fathers, the teachers in madrassas and Imams, all sought to demonstrate to children how to translate Islamic teachings into practical action – how to blend traditional knowledge and awareness of Nature’s needs with the best of what we know now.

This is certainly something I feel we have to do in the one final issue I have to mention as I close. Perhaps a few facts and figures might demonstrate why.

When I was born in 1948, a city like Lagos in Nigeria had a population of just three hundred thousand. Today, just over sixty years later, it is home to twenty million. Thirty-five thousand people live in every square mile of the city, and its population increases by another six hundred thousand every year.

I choose Lagos as an example. I could have chosen Mumbai, Cairo or Mexico City; wherever you look, the world’s population is increasing fast. It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8 billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within fifty years. In the Arab world, sixty per cent of the population is now under the age of thirty. That will mean, in some way or other, 100 million new jobs will have to be created in that region alone over the next ten to fifteen years.

I am well aware that the very long term prediction is that population may go down. 150 years from now the trends suggest there may be as few as four billion people, maybe even just two billion, but there is no getting away from the fact that in the short term, in the next fifty years, we face monumental problems as the figures rocket. No mega-city can ever hope to catch up with the present expansion in their numbers to provide adequate healthcare, education, transport, food and shelter for so many. Nor can the Earth herself sustain us all, when the demands and pressures on her bounty worldwide are becoming so intense.

I know it is a complicated issue. The experts suggest that, in theory, the Earth could support 9 billion people, but not if a vast proportion is consuming the world’s resources at present Western levels. So the changes have to be essentially two-fold. It would certainly help if the acceleration slowed down, but it would also help if the world reduced its desire to consume.

I have been following carefully the findings of my British Asian Trust in India which has been helping to run a women’s education project in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra called Satara. They have noticed that a real difference can be made when women are able to become more involved in the running of the community. This is also the experience in Bangladesh. I have long been fascinated by Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It operates micro-credit schemes that offer loans to the poorest communities through a bank which is now ninety per cent owned by the rural poor. Interestingly, where the loans are managed by the women of the community, the birth rate has gone down. The impact of these sorts of schemes, of education and the provision of family planning services, has been widespread. Whereas in the 1980s, the average family in Bangladesh had six children, now the average figure is three. But with mega-cities growing as they are, I fear there is little chance these sorts of schemes can help the plight of many millions of people unless we all face up to the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural.

It raises some very difficult moral questions, I know, but do we not each one of us carry the same responsibility towards the Earth? It is surely time to ask if we can come to a view that balances the traditional attitude to the sacred nature of life on the one hand with, on the other, those teachings within each of the sacred traditions that urge humankind to keep within the limits of Nature’s benevolence and bounty.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have endured all this with patience and fortitude. You have also given a very good impression of listening to my own personal thoughts on the perspective opened up by Islamic teaching. I have wanted to convey them to you because it always moves me to be reminded that, from the perspective of traditional Islamic teaching, the destruction of the Earth is represented as the destruction of a prayerful being.

Whichever faith tradition we come from, the fact at the heart of the matter is the same. Our inheritance from our Creator is at stake. It will be no good at the end of the day as we sit amidst the wreckage, trying to console ourselves that it was all done for the best possible reasons of development and the betterment of Mankind. The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason – and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with Creation.

The Modernist ideology that has dominated the Western outlook for a century implies that “tradition” is backward looking. What I have tried to explain today is that this is far from true. Tradition is the accumulation of the knowledge and wisdom that we should be offering to the next generation. It is, therefore, visionary – it looks forward.

Turning to the traditional teachings, like those found in Islam that define our relationship with the natural world, does not mean locking us into some sort of cultural and technological immobility. As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do.

All of the mounting evidence is telling us that we are, indeed, on the wrong road, so you might think it would be wise to draw on the timeless guidance that comes from our intuitive sense of the origin of all things to which we are rooted. Nature’s rhythms, her cycles and her processes, are our guides to this uncreated, originating voice. They are our greatest teachers because they are expressions of Divine Unity. Which is why there is a profound truth in that seemingly simple, old saying of the nomads – that “the best of all Mosques is Nature herself.”

So as I have maintained, any person would be much better off by developing an Eye of Veneration, so that the essence of all organic things is sensed for what it acutally is: transitory and purposeful; inter-dependent and sublime.

For Continued ‘Correct’ Success and ‘True’ Contentment,

Asad R Khan

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Hi,

From R W Emerson:

..This inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes, is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but somewhat resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that which we call Character, — a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart; which is company for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need society, but can entertain themselves very well alone. The purest literary talent appears at one time great, at another time small, but character is of a stellar and undiminishable greatness. What others effect by talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes by some magnetism. “Half his strength he put not forth.” His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing of bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs….

..Man, ordinarily a pendant to events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the world he lives in, in these examples appears to share the life of things, and to be an expression of the same laws which control the tides and the sun, numbers and quantities.

..But to use a more modest illustration, and nearer home, I observe, that in our political elections, where this element, if it appears at all, can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand its incomparable rate. The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted. They cannot come at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker, if he be not one, who, before he was appointed by the people to represent them, was appointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact, — invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself, — so that the most confident and the most violent persons learn that here is resistance on which both impudence and terror are wasted, namely, faith in a fact. The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion. The constituency at home hearkens to their words, watches the color of their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses its own. Our public assemblies are pretty good tests of manly force. Our frank countrymen of the west and south have a taste for character, and like to know whether the New Englander is a substantial man, or whether the hand can pass through him.

The same motive force appears in trade. There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate, is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it. See him, and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune. In the new objects we recognize the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent, as her factor and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity combines with his insight into the fabric of society, to put him above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith, that contracts are of no private interpretation. The habit of his mind is a reference to standards of natural equity and public advantage; and he inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. This immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the Southern Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar port, centres in his brain only; and nobody in the universe can make his place good. In his parlor, I see very well that he has been at hard work this morning, with that knitted brow, and that settled humor, which all his desire to be courteous cannot shake off. I see plainly how many firm acts have been done; how many valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride of art, and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remote combination, the consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of the world. He too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must be born to trade, or he cannot learn it.

..This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we feel one man’s presence, and do not feel another’s, is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being: justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be withstood, than any other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral order seen through the medium of an individual nature. An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates. He encloses the world, as the patriot does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theatre for action. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

..The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circumstances. Impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions, events, and persons. They cannot see the action, until it is done. Yet its moral element pre-existed in the actor, and its quality as right or wrong, it was easy to predict. Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative. Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may be ranked as having its natural place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents of the system. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely, but to be loved. The class of character like to hear of their faults: the other class do not like to hear of faults; they worship events; secure to them a fact, a connexion, a certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask no more. The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him. A given order of events has no power to secure to him the satisfaction which the imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness escapes from any set of circumstances, whilst prosperity belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory which is its natural fruit, into any order of events. No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

..The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man should give us a sense of mass. Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes. But if I go to see an ingenious man, I shall think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimble pieces of benevolence and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his place, and let me apprehend, if it were only his resistance; know that I have encountered a new and positive quality; — great refreshment for both of us. It is much, that he does not accept the conventional opinions and practices. That nonconformity will remain a goad and remembrancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in the first place. There is nothing real or useful that is not a seat of war. Our houses ring with laughter and personal and critical gossip, but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot let pass in silence, but must either worship or hate, — and to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of opinion, and the obscure and eccentric, — he helps; he puts America and Europe in the wrong, and destroys the skepticism which says, `man is a doll, let us eat and drink, ’tis the best we can do,’ by illuminating the untried and unknown. Acquiescence in the establishment, and appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads which are not clear, and which must see a house built, before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise man not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few. Fountains, fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because he is commanded, the assured, the primary,— they are good; for these announce the instant presence of supreme power.

..These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They must also make us feel, that they have a controlling happy future, opening before them, which sheds a splendor on the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported: he cannot therefore wait to unravel any man’s blunders: he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain, and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you, if you have loitered about the old things, and have not kept your relation to him, by adding to your wealth. New actions are the only apologies and explanations of old ones, which the noble can bear to offer or to receive. If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.

Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it, or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation.

As I have said, nature keeps these sovereignty’s in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons and disciplines would divide some share of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goes her own gait, and puts the wisest in the wrong. She makes very light of gospels and prophets, as one who has a great many more to produce, and no excess of time to spare on any one. There is a class of men, individuals of which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue, that they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem to be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized. They are usually received with ill-will, because they are new, and because they set a bound to the exaggeration that has been made of the personality of the last divine person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his own high unprecedented way. Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building. It may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we should not require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on our own, of its action.

..He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot go abroad without encountering inexplicable influences. One man fastens an eye on him, and the graves of the memory render up their dead; the secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to betray, must be yielded; — another, and he cannot speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their cartilages; the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence to him; and there are persons, he cannot choose but remember, who gave a transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled another life in his bosom.

What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they spring from this deep root? The sufficient reply to the skeptic, who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful intercourse with persons, which makes the faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid enjoyment.

This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact. But the mind requires a victory to the senses, a force of character which will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; which will rule animal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.

If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least, let us do them homage. In society, high advantages are set down to the possessor, as disadvantages. It requires the more wariness in our private estimates. I do not forgive in my friends the failure to know a fine character, and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When, at last, that which we have always longed for, is arrived, and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical, and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any religion but this, to know, that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? if none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes. Nature is indulged by the presence of this guest. There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses, — only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

Ref: www.rwe.org

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Welcome,

I’m going to relate to you a story of a group of people who wished the best for themselves and relied on their own capacities alone.

A long time ago there was a group of people who were preparing to go to sleep and dream about how they wanted to gather their harvest early in the morning. They had eagerly looked forwards to reaping the fruits of hard labour and resolved to gather the bounty at the break of dawn. When they awoke, they called upon each other to hurry towards the garden and to move quietly whilst doing so. When they arrived, they found the garden, to their great dismay and anguish, in utter ruins. But why? What had happened?

Well, let’s hear it from the One Who Knows all in His own Majestic words, Chapter 68, The Pen:

17. Verily We have tried them as We tried the People of the Garden, when they resolved to gather the fruits of the (garden) in the morning.
18. But made no reservation, (”If it be God’s Will”).
19. Then there came on the (garden) a visitation from thy Lord, (which swept away) all around, while they were asleep.
20. So the (garden) became, by the morning, like a dark and desolate spot, (whose fruit had been gathered).
21. As the morning broke, they called out, one to another,-
22. “Go ye to your tilth (betimes) in the morning, if ye would gather the fruits.”
23. So they departed, conversing in secret low tones, (saying)-
24. “Let not a single indigent person break in upon you into the (garden) this day.”
25. And they opened the morning, strong in an (unjust) resolve.
26. But when they saw the (garden), they said: “We have surely lost our way:
27. “Indeed we are shut out (of the fruits of our labour)!”
28. Said one of them, more just (than the rest): “Did I not say to you, ‘Why not glorify (God)?’”
29. They said: “Glory to our Lord! Verily we have been doing wrong!”
30. Then they turned, one against another, in reproach.
31. They said: “Alas for us! We have indeed transgressed!
32. “It may be that our Lord will give us in exchange a better (garden) than this: for we do turn to Him (in repentance)!”
33. Such is the Punishment (in this life); but greater is the Punishment in the Hereafter,- if only they knew!
34. Verily, for the Righteous, are Gardens of Delight, in the Presence of their Lord.
35. Shall We then treat the People of Faith like the People of Sin?

So, these foolish and greedy people wanted to steal the fruits of not just their labour, but other people’s too, who had an equal share in reaping the rewards. And also, they had no inclination towards relying on the Sustainer, the Source of all Goodness, for their provisions but in their ignorance thought they had control over all aspects of livelihood.

But the right way is to remember that all our plan’s success depend on how much they accord with God’s Will and Plan. His universal Will is supreme over all affairs. The foolish men who had secretly plotted to rob the poor of their just rights were frustrated when their plan was foiled by the Greater Force. They were put into a position where they were unable to continue with their fraudulent mission, as a storm destroyed the fruits and trees and altered the place beyond recognition.

This is the spiritual reason behind a physical phenomena which often we do not see nor realise. We will think it an unfortunate matter of ‘nature’ that has nothing to do with anyone, or thing, in particular. But here, we are told that the deceptive, cruel and selfish motives of a certain bunch of people triggered the spiritual intervention that created the physical upheaval. The dreams of the selfish were destroyed because they thought they could cheat the poor of their share. Class struggle? Yes, the rich owners of the orchid did not realise the rights of the poor that they were trampling on so their greed was punished.

Their first thought was of personal loss, the loss their labour and the loss of their capital. They had plotted to keep out others from the fruits: now, as it happened, the loss was their own. When such greed is punished often people are ready to throw blame on others. With varying degrees of guilt, one had pointed out in moments of reflection that he had warned them of wrongdoing and defying the Will of God and the right of man.

The selfishness created an arrogance in them that they were the proud owners of the garden and this led them to forget God. However, once they realised their mistake some sincerely repented and hoped for a better exchange to what the previously had. This is the beauty of God’s Mercy: there’s always room for it if we sincerely draw nearness to Him and repent. If not, we are warned that the punishment of the Hereafter is much worse than what we witness here.

You may wonder “why do the wicked flourish?” God’s mercy is one of the reasons but there are others we can refer to:

1. the limited choice left to man’s will;
2. his moral responsibility;
3. the need of tuning his will to God’s will;
4. the long-suffering quality of God, which allows the widest possible chance of-
5. His Mercy &
6. in the final part, the nature of spiritual punishment, which is not an arbitrary act, but a long gradual process in which there is room for repentance at every stage.

All these aspects are represented in this remarkable Parable of the People of the Garden, which also illustrates the greed, selfishness and heedlessness of man, as well as his tendency to throw blame on others if he can think of a scapegoat.

All these foibles are shown, but the Mercy of God is boundless, and even after the worst sins and punishments, there may be hope of a better orchid than the one lost, if only:

• the repentance is true &
• there is a complete surrender to the Will of God.

And if there is no surrender of the will, then the punishment in the Hereafter is something incomparably greater than the little calamities in the Parable.

So now, think of the times and situations where such phenomena may have taken place in your own life, or in the lives of those you know or have heard of. Can you think of what the real reason might be, unknown to you at the time, of a particular case of misfortune befalling on anyone? It is not the nature of good people to wish bad for any other but we do need to learn the lessons of past mistakes and move ahead with a greater recognition of the universal order around us and the just rights of the people. You may now also begin to see the current global economic crises in a different way: the leaders of wall street and other major banking corporations have had to rely on government bail-outs which ultimately the people will have to pay for.

But the good will wait for their turn and are patient with testing times, for they understand that all affairs rest with Him above and know if they wish to have their dreams materialised, they must trust in God and surrender their will to His.

For Success & Contentment,

Asad Khan

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Yesterday I wrote a note on the need to be patient when asking and anticipating anything in one’s life and we looked at how the nature of man’s involves 2 elements as parts of his impatient base character (70:20-21):

1. fretful when evil touches him
2. niggardly when good reaches him

How many times have we seen people call upon ‘God’ for bringing about goodness in their lives, especially when they feel all the usual support structures and creature comforts around them are insufficient in helping them? I say ‘God’ in quotes because it is in these moments of deep despair that ones calls upon the real, All-seeing, All-Hearing God even thought they do not realise this. This is because normally they rely on demi-gods: things manufactured out of one’s fanciful imagination that hold no authority or power to bring good or deliver from harm. And so when the All-Merciful God delivers good to the person and with time fortunes change, the same person becomes stubborn and arrogant, rejecting the favours of his Lord, and selfishly hoards wealth / knowledge / talents / resources / charity for himself.

Now, hear what else we are told about our nature by our Fashioner in the Chapter “Children of Israel”:-

17:11 “The prayer that man should make for good, He makes for evil; for man is given to hasty (deeds).

Man in his ignorance or haste mistakes evil for good, and desires what he should not have. The wise and instructed soul has patience and does not put its own desires above the wisdom of God. He receives with contentment the favours of God and prays to be rightly guided in his desires and petitions.

If any do wish for the transitory things (of this life), We readily grant them - such things as We will, to such person as We will: in the end have We provided Hell for them: they will burn therein, disgraced and rejected.

Those who do wish for the (things of) the Hereafter, and strive therefor with all due striving, and have Faith,- they are the ones whose striving is acceptable (to God)

Of the bounties of thy Lord We bestow freely on all- These as well as those: The bounties of thy Lord are not closed (to anyone).

See how We have bestowed more on some than on others; but verily the Hereafter is more in rank and gradation and more in excellence.

Take not with God another object of worship; or thou (O man!) wilt sit in disgrace and destitution.

Remember how I said in my previous blog post not to be overly concerned with what some people have and what others don’t? Here again we are reminded in the plainest of terms similar wisdoms:

• If any wishes for the material aspects he will be granted them - as determined by his Creator
• Asking, receiving and not thanking (in its fullest meaning) is next to treason: the wicked are warned with the severest of punishments
• The Provider gives and restricts as He pleases, yet His Provision is open to all without prejudice
• Think about The Maker, The Provider, The Sustainer and thank Him- Alone - through devotion, prayer and faith with selfless service and charity
• Bear in mind the Day of Meeting your Lord when all will be laid-out in front: those who are true to Him win his Grace; those who rebel and reject His favours are humiliated
• And each person will then be to their own and there will be sufficient evidence from within (the soul) to account for or against him
• The end-game, the Hereafter, is the real deal and this is what ought to be truly sought after.

Every man’s fate We have fastened on his own neck: On the Day of Judgement We shall bring out for him a scroll, which he will see spread open.

(It will be said to him:) “Read thine (own) record: Sufficient is thy soul this day to make out an account against thee.”

Who receives guidance, receives it for his own benefit: who goes astray doth so to his own loss: No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another: nor would We visit with Our Wrath until We had sent an apostle (to give warning).

So if one is going to ask for such and such, would it not be better not ensure that it is for worthy reasons and moreover, show gratitude for what one has in any case whilst remaining patient and steadfast at all times?

We have now seen how God’s help is widely available as He is the All-loving and The Cherishing. Let’s confirm this love, mercy and care for us with verses from the fourth chapter (The Women):

Allah does wish to make clear to you and to show you the ordinances of those before you; and (He does wish to) turn to you (In Mercy): And Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.

Allah does wish to Turn to you, but the wish of those who follow their lusts is that ye should turn away (from Him),- far, far away.

Allah does wish to lighten your (difficulties): For man was created Weak (in flesh).

Our Creator and Provider knows our inherent strengths and weaknesses and is ever-ready to assist and return an honest call. He wishes to help us, show us the way and strengthen our bond with him. But then the choice is left to us whether or not we like to play-out according to His wisdom and support or our own selfish and limited desires.

4:32 And in no wise covet those things in which God has bestowed His gifts More freely on some of you than on others: To men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn: But ask God of His bounty. For God has full knowledge of all things.

This dear reader is the authentic text that is beyond doubt and corruption gifted to mankind for his guidance and welfare. Too many people forge their own understandings and have little knowledge of the Truth. Fanciful conjecture is not the means or style of Ark2Ark Training and Coaching. Rather, we aim to deliver the compelling messages of Truth and Certainty based on proofs and visible, undeniable Signs of God and His Mercy.

For Success & Contentment

Asad Khan

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