Sunday, July 11, 2010

Islam, According to Al-Jibran's Heart

Abdul-Razzaq Al-Jubran starts his book entitled "Prophet's Republic: An Existential Return" and a secondary title "Muddling Soil" by dedicating it to the deceived by the current copy of Islam, and to Ali Sharee'ati, to Soren Kierkegaard, to his brother, and a female who taught him rebellion.

"I divorced Muslims, hence I found Islam"

“The path of reform in Islam is Kierkegaardian.” P. 86

“Faith is not a must for beauty” p. 87




A book that had been published in 2007 by a Lebanese publication house named "Insan (=Human)", reached Iraq and, as usual, illegally photocopied and sold around Baghdad. According to our local book seller it is one of the most sold books during the previous years.


Who are the prophets according to Al Jubran?

“Prophets are not those who shook hand with Gabriel, but those who slapped darkness” p.113

Al Jubran proceeds to remind us of the non-belonged, of the strangers in history. All the prophets were strangers to their society rules. They felt estranged. Also did Ghandi, Jbran Khalil Jubran, Imam Ali, Abo Thar Al Ghafari, and others.

About the most widely spread version of Islamic history he writes:

Most historians, were the court’s historians…(according to Al-Jibran, those court historians wrote a mutated version of history so that they gain the court's approval and support), while the true page of history, or let us say that true history of Islam is the history of the opposition and not any other… history of revolutions, history of the suppressed, and the crazy… the unwritten oral history” p.101

Prophets are always buried by books and not by soil” p. 112

Al-Jubran proceeds to contrast the behavior of jurisprudents in history against the prophets' behavior and found great differences.

"God pours prophets and people drink jurisprudents"


Social-class and Islam

The prophet came to stand for Bilal, and not to stand for God” p.159
Bilal was a black slave owned by a very wealthy man in Mecca who turned to be one of the most furious enemy of the prophet Mohammed because the prophet tried to free Bilal and to makes him equal to the wealthy man. Al Jubran thinks that feelings of strong rejection to the prophet by as such wealthy men of Mecca were not because of the new religion per se, but because of social-class problems.


Forced Faked Faith

Al Jubran reminds us of one of the prophet's quotations in which Mohammed the Prophets disapprove the behavior of those people who want to drag other people to heaven in chains. Al Jibran reminds us that the Prophet's problem were not with those who just didn't believe in him, but mainly with the injustice. Al Jubran concludes:

"God is concerned mainly with injustice and not with unbelief."


Communists

Al Jubran is an Iraqi. He might have some respect to Iraqi Communists. He declares in a short quote that: "Communists are closer to God". Since communists usually don't steal in Iraq, then you will find them poor here, and hence they haven't the capability to leave the country to a safer and secure one. And since many Iraqi communists are known for their love for alcohol, Al Jubran quoted:

"If the communists are drinking wine in the bar, then the Islamists (=political Islam) are drinking money in the mosques, and God's problem is not the drunk, but the poor!"


Old Temple New Temple

"The first thing the prophet had destroyed was a temple" p.126

"the problem of the people here is that they cannot find a door to the prophets but the jurisprudents and this what makes them enter to this cave they call a mosque in spite of its darkness"

Al Jubran thinks that Islam was simple at first, simple and lovable. Islamic jurisprudents had turned it into a complex and hated one, according to Al Jibran who put the Danimark cartoon drawings of the prophet as an example of how much hated we are, and how it is important to "rescue the prophet from Islam, since rescuing Islam is difficult" as Al Jubra Says. He adds:

"The jurisprudents had inserted their noses in what the Quran had chose to be silent about, and they talked more than the prophets did"

"The jurisprudents of Islam had elongated the path to God" p 120

"The religion of the prophet is the religion of heart, simply"

Al-Jubran reminds us of the prophet's advice to consult our hearts when we are confused about the right way and to be humanistic:

"It was not the prophet's aim to cultivate barbs, veils, and mosques so that they point to God, but his aim was to cultivate the hearts so that they point to mankind… because the problem of existence is not God, it is mankind".

"Religiousness in prophet's consciousness, is how you become humanistic in the street, not a priestly in the temple"


Pyramids of Love

In the Islamic belief, human were made by God from mud. Al-Jubran tells us about how some Sufis believe that it was a step in our making that we were made from mud, and our responsibility is to turn our mud into something else, like when Mohammad Iqbal, the Sufi who liked Jalal Al Deen Al Rumi's wisdom, said once: "Al Rumi, turned my mud into crystal (taking in mind that the word crystal in Arabic also means "core")". Al Jubran tells us then about the slaves who die while building the pyramids from mud. And advices us to build pyramids from the mud we are made from, the humanistic mud. i.e. to build pyramids of love inside of us, inside our hearts.

4 comments:

Santa Rosa New School Aikido said...

Thank you for this beautiful post, Sami.

saminkie said...

And thanks for your visit, Laura.

Historyscoper said...

Poetry is beautiful, but real history trumps it with hard facts. To really understand Islam you have to study its history going back to its rise and spread in the 7th cent. Go to school online free anytime with the Historyscoper and master all 1400 years at http://go.to/islamhistory

Quran said...

Al Jabran has done great efforts to share this beautiful book with us. The history of Islam and prophets is best described in Our book the Quran.