Pain and love

I guess a fundamental question I have never settled with it whether or not part of love is pain? Maslow has said that the opposite of love is not hate but rather apathy, non feeling. So it begs the question of what exactly is involved in love, what it can encompass, and what can never be a part of it. Human love that is, since divine love is perfect. Human love seems flawed, always, but does this necessitate pain. The colloquial saying -no pain no gain seems to suggest it does. If love is an experience for growth then pain must be a part of it. Pain from the lost of one's self. Despite the treasure of love, loving another involves sacrifice. Sacrifice of autonomy. The ability to come and go or even think as one pleases is altered. If one wants to travel but is in love do one's plans get changed? If one has a conviction but your love doesn't see eye to eye, does one's thoughts changed. If  one's tired of talking but love wants to engage, do you speak?
And what is hoped for as one goes through the pain of love, the lost of self, union? But why, why is the human is constant conflict? Wanting to be completely taken over by another and yet wanting to be by one's self. Maybe it is in relationship to the first split be with God, fully with God. No thought to the question of -who is your Lord? Just complete submission, knowing without thinking. Oneness without separation, but on the fateful split and man exile from the garden, that choice, that separation of what God wants and what man wants. Autonomy, freedom of choice and yet we find in this a burden and many of us go on the path longing for union again, complete submission again. Union.
And we resemble this in our human relationships. Wanting to be a part and completely submits to the will of our love and completely wanting to run away in autonomy -to do things our way. It seems love requires some kind of pain. True requires some kind of sacrifice.

Book Review: Empire of Illusion

Alhumduillah, this was one of the books from Shiekh Nuh's reading list. The upshot is that we should flee to Allah most high because this dunya and all it's comforts are fleeting. As well as the warning of Imam Al Haddad that love of this world is an evil trait in human nature though this may have been far from the author's intent. The author, Chris Hedges discusses, five illusions: literacy, love, wisdom, happiness, and America itself. Granted you'd probably have to already be leaning towards some of his ideas to be receptive to them he does make a good case for each.
First, very surprisingly, he takes us in to the world of WWE (wrestling). This illusion plays in to the idea of victimization in America. Long gone are the days of the evil Communist and the freedom loving American. Our villains and heroes are much more nuanced and everyone has a story. Partly the fault of psychology, Americans are well aware that every demon has a history. The rapist was raped and the murderer saw his father murdered, the adulterer never felt love from mom and the kidnapper had three miscarriages. Everyone has a story as to why their so bad, no one is truly responsible for their own actions.
The next chapter is, at times, unbearable. Chris Hedges takes us in to the dark world of pornography. Insanely this is a pastime for may American men and increasing women and youth. But pornography, as Chris Hedges makes clear, is not actually about sex as it is about power. Women are **** and men are all powerful. Pornography is essentially prostitution on film. Sadly, this is not just a non Muslim problem but many Muslim men also watch these films. What is the illusion here? Love. For many factors, including the abundance of pornography, the expectations men and women have of each other are increasingly unrealistic. The bizarre sexual images men fill their minds with can never be played out in real life, leaving them dissatisfied and increasingly addicted. Pornography, as popular as it is, is millions of Americans dark secret but if it were pulled in to light as Chris Hedges does in his book it would be clear that such an industry should seize to exist for its addictive qualities, it's part in ruining marriages and it's abuse of women.
Hedges takes us in to academia where he finds the illusion of wisdom. Funnily a week before I read this book I was talking to my sister and I mentioned to her that I felt I actually wasn't becoming more intelligent as I advanced in school. I was accumulating a slew of psychological terms but my general vocabulary hadn't improved much since high school, my spelling was terrible, and I don't know that I have gained a better grasp of the world in academia. Chris Hedges would seems to agree. Academia has become no better then it's for- profit counterparts. People go to college so they can get a good job not so that they can have a greater understanding of the world. Unfortunately I find it hard to agree that college should waste my time should teach about great thinkers of philosophy and poetry when it is so expensive! To pay 20, 000$ for a well- rounded education with no job prospects is admirable but far from appealing. Nevertheless I do think it is a sad state when government posters tell kids not to drop out of high school because graduates make more money. If the only reason we're in school is to make money it would be more profitable to go to a less expensive job institute then an expensive University. Hedges make the point that as we get more and more specialized in school and in our fields we can end up being a means to great evil then if we were actually taught to think. Think of a factory worker on a line who simply places a small part in to a machine day after day only to realize later on that the machines he helped to build were actually parts of an atomic bomb used to kill millions unjustly. Everyone will say "I was just doing my job", but if doing your job means maintaining and unjust system doesn't one have a responsibility to those who are hurt?
The illusion of happiness, this one I felt most uncertain about. Hedges makes the point that the influx of positive psychology in American corporations has caused us to embark on a Huxleyan- like society were "everyone's happy now". I noticed the strange titles like "team member" upon employees shirts in chain stores. Employers have found that they can actually manufacture happiness instead of actually doing anything to improve the job. Employees are taken to conferences were they are commanded encouraged to be happy. The are told to be team players, broken up in to smaller groups and encouraged to share intimate details of their lives. And alarming example of the effects of these groups on employees is when a team member gets hurt on the job, everyone in the group has to were a 'be safe' sticker on their uniform -embarrassing, no? Instead of having to improve working conditions employees are embarrassed in to silence. My issue with this chapter is the fact that I do believe happiness comes from the inside out and that no matter how horrible a circumstance is, positivity can help you cope, nevertheless that does not give those in authority permission to take advantage of us or fail to improve or circumstance, or worse tell us were being "negative" when we have honest concerns.
Lastly, the illusion of America. Being one who keeps my nose out of politics it was the more difficult chapter to get through and the most alarming. America as a freedom loving democracy is a joke. The right to pick an American idol is not democracy, nor is the right to chose a president from the candidates who raise the most corporate money. I'd like to think this changed a bit with Obama because he used the internet the get individual donors but their's no doubt he had corporate money behind him. Whats worse is that once he got in to office it's become apparent that things simply can't get done. Why are we still using oil? Why is Guantanamo bay still open? Why are we still at war? Simply because it is in the interest of the elites to keep it that way. It's become harder to buy food without chemical additives, find a job, or pay for school, find clothes made in America, or even have any idea of what's going on in the world. All these things have in common that they are controlled and manipulated by the corporate elite who have to answer to no one. Contrary to popular belief capitalism and democracy cannot go hand in hand. That too, is an illusion.
Excellent book, skip pass some of the passages on pornography there far to graphic. Also, thankfully, he does end the book on a good note, but I let you read for yourself.

Isolation

Accorded to existentialist theory and bridge theorist Erich Fromm, we all have to deal with the cold hard fact that we are alone, isolated. In a great big world of incredible forces we are essentially alone. It may come as a surprise but I wholeheartedly agree with this idea. In the greater reality their are indeed blessed angels and demonic jinn's who have accompanied us throughout life. And, of course, their is all mighty Allah. But that does not change the fact that we are alone. Alone in our experience of reality. God is with us in every moment of our lives he knows how we experience, what we experience, when we experience, who we are and why we are what we are. But our experience is not that of God's. We actually don't always knows why something is happening and we experience every reality in our own uniquely distorted way. In the rare moments when we feel like someone truly gets us we want to leap for joy -why? Because every moment of our experience is lived in isolation we are amazed when someone can seep in to that unknown unique territory and see the world through own eyes. But these moments are fleeting, rare and very often superficial. Nothing seems to point more to that isolated feeling then the one who constantly says "You know what I mean". The honest answer is, more often then not, "No".

"We human beings having a God complex"
-Our teacher Imam Amin Muhammad

As I stood in the elevator awaiting the 4th floor where my Aqueedah class takes place I prayed to God "Oh God give me something to take with me". All praise is due to God, who answers our prayers, Imam Amin said something that I hope will stick with me and help me to submit to the will of God for the rest of my life. Injustice, he explained, has to do with someone doing to someone else's property what they don't want you to do. God could never be called unjust because everything belongs to Him. Glory to God! Just the day before I was explaining to a non Muslim how God's tie to us is greater then our ties to each other. Somehow the true meaning of that statement was brought to me with Imam Amin's words. When people complain to or about God what are they (we) really saying? "Oh God how could you take my mother away?" God is the one who created your mother, and God is the one who created her sustenance, and God is the one who gave her the ability to carry you, and the ability to birth you, and the ability to care for you, and she was eternally in His favor as He did everything for her. And He is the one who put in your heart a love for her and He is the one who you and her are indebted to for every moment of breath and heartbeat, so who is it that has more right to decide what to do with her? And what to do with you? When He is the one who creates every moment and thing that exist, and He does this with Wisdom and He is the Most Merciful and Compassionate. So who has more right to decide what to do with His property?
Know this before it is completely apparent. Allah has the ultimate power over his creation, and He is unjust to none. And how can He be unjust when everything belongs to Him?

Becoming Imam Amin

When I ask to do the teacher spotlight on Imam Amin I was told that he “kept things pretty close to the chest” and may not be receptive to the idea, I prepared myself for rejection. Imam Amin responded to the idea with an unenthusiastic “Sure, why not?” as if our anxiety had been unwarranted. There is always wonder at the converts story. How someone leaves their faith and enters in to another is an impassioned journey, highly emotional and often misunderstood by those around them. What’s more then that is entering the faith and becoming one of its elites. Anyone who ever comes to Mecca Center knows Imam Amin. His classes and lectures are often filled with students seeking knowledge of their religion. Many people will find Imam Amin not only as a teacher of immense intelligence and wisdom but often a sincere advisor.

Sitting in Imam Amin’s last day of hadith class I could sense the students hesitation to leave. When the time for class ended Imam Amin gave his departing words, heroically he ended the last class with the quintessential hadith of Gabriel. “Hadith Gabriel is the summary of our religion, it is to hadith what The Opening is to the Quran, it is the mother of hadith”, he relates. Imam Amin smiles as he continues to explain the hadith “I actually didn’t plan this ending”.

I wondered if he would say the same thing about his life? As a man born into non-religious family, he was now standing before a class of both converts and born- Muslims explaining to them the basics of their religion. Imam Amin was born in in the 1970’s in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the age of 10 he joined an organization called ‘AnsarAllah’ until entering orthodox Islam at the age of 17. He says of the group in retrospect, “They had some positive things as far as social movement and other cultural stuff but as far the tenets of Islamic faith… they were misguided in many of their beliefs…” At the time many is his community had taken to Islam, so there was no backlash from peers about his conversion, but his parents weren’t as accepting, he recalls, “They weren’t supportive, they really weren’t… it took them probably eight yeas before they began to accept”. As a youth he remembers seeing his parents frustrations as a sign that he was on the right path, he says of his young self “Actual I think I was a little bit too enthused if I could go back today I would correct a lot of things”

            At the age of seventeen he started studying the basics of Islam with a local Indian Imam, they spent about 6 months together. Being an avid reader this traditional method of “Qira’a” translated in English to “reading on the teacher” greatly appealed to him, at the age of 19 he left his home to attend Al Azhaar in Egypt. He attended school there until being advised to study privately. “I would have classes in the morning I studied Arabic then I would go in the afternoon… I would get lessons in the Mosque… it was much better then going to school…I started travelling from Lebanon to Syria…it was better… I would be going for specific things… to see a specific teacher for a specific time.” Worldly pursuits through religious knowledge were far from his ambitions. He returned home to America working in construction and studying by night. “Our teachers never taught us to take religion as an occupation”, for 10 years he learned with Walid al Risa’I and Shaykh Al- Ashi, in the summers he would visit various countries.

He was soon called to be Imam of Masjid Muhammad, the community had been an offshoot of another pseudo Islamic movement, Imam Amin soon removed all traces of anything that wasn’t Sunni Islam. He faced tension from the community and some members left. It would not be the first or last time the Imam faced criticism for his adherence to the tradition. On one of his Sheikhs visit to America some of his students complained about Imam Amin, “he’s rough on everybody”, his Sheikh approached him about the complaints. He sat him down and showed him some videos, which he’d previously, criticized, “yes, you should criticize them about this” his Sheikh responded.

Perhaps Imam Amin is both famous and infamous for his adherence to traditional Islam, perhaps it is the source of both love and disdain. Nevertheless it is his love for traditional Islam that drove him to Mecca for six years without recompense. Back and forth from Atlantic City to New York, mile after mile for nothing except the love of Islam, for no other reason then the pleasure of Allah. It was at the age of 27 that he knew the call to traditional Islam was his purpose in life “I really realized… after 10 years from my pursuit of study I think that at that point I realized that my job is to call people to Allah… from that point on that’s what I dedicated my life to… about fifteen year ago I said this is what I want to do… full time this is my life… from that point on I’ve been really engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and the spreading of it”

After Imam Amin became the Imam of Masjid Muhammad it became not only a place for Friday gathering, it also become a place of Islamic learning. It was this Masjid that would be the source of his tears as he stared upon its broken roof and bare floors; it was torn apart by the waters of Hurricane Sandy. “I was hurt… I realized everything is according to the divine decree of Allah for a wisdom He knows”. It seems difficult to gage Imam Amin’s sadness over his complete contentment with divine decree, “(it) feels like Allah has given you another opportunity to build a place of worship, a Masjid and a place of learning that people would benefit… (it) gives you the opportunity to be at the forefront of building His religion”.

I’ve never been to a class or lecture of Imam Amin where he didn’t stress the importance of orthodox Islam, whether Islamic beliefs, Islamic law, Prophetic Biography, Hadith, Explanation of the Quran or Spiritual purification he’d always spend a portion of class time on the significance of following “Ahl Sunna wal Jamaa’a”. Translated in English as the following of the prophetic way and the majority of Muslims both past and present, this seemed to be the main point of each class he teaches, no matter the topic, this was his message. “If one becomes engrossed in studying and one has a love for Islamic knowledge and one has a love for the people of knowledge then what your going to do is emulate them until one day Insha Allah you will become like them or similar to them in your action and behavior which is a natural progression…”

Imam teaches classes on Sundays at the Mecca Center from11am- 5pm. To donate to Masjid Muhammad please visit: http://www.mmacinc.org/donate