EID TALK
By:
Shaykh
Fadhlalla Haeri
I thank Allah for His
infinite mercies upon us. That mercies that are visible and the
mercies which are invisible. The ultimate mercy of having created us
in order to discover the reality behind all known and unknown
realities. Allah and his eternal light. I tank Allah
for enabling us to gather today to celebrate and rejoice for what is
called Eid. Eid in Arabic is from the word that leads to the meaning
of returning. ……
So that we return back and back to rejoice, and for us to celebrate
and glorify Allah, and give gratitude that we have been glorified as
human beings, so that we discover the world of the seen allowing the
world of the unseen to impinge upon us and leading us into the next
phase of life.
We have come from the
unknown and we are guided by the One and only all permeating, one
Reality Allah into another phase after we leave the body.
Indeed we are all Allah’s guests in this short lived existence and
journey on this world. We have come from the darkness of the womb
into the uncertainties of this world in order for us to discover
what is all about, what is the purpose of it, the meaning of it, how
can we conduct ourselves that is conducive for inner peace and inner
tranquility, until we leave that which does not belong to us which
is the body sown back into the Eternal creator beyond time and
beyond space. Allah’s mercy is such that He has already
programmed us in our primal fitra wanting that absolute
freedom. Relative freedom is not sufficient for human beings. We are
all caught in this time and space in order for us to yearn for the
phase in which there is none other than the eternal garden. Allah
describes the garden as a condition of the heart. Allah describe the garden as something we taste in this world that
we will regain in the next world in an absolute sense because there
is no more time and space.
The month of Ramadan is
a most difficult and the most easy and the most glorious month for
the Muslims. Indeed, the Din of Islam is simply echoing all
of that which were before it. The Din of Islam did not begin
with the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) it ended, it was completed. All the
prophets, all the messengers were prophets of Islam. They had to
submit to the fact that we are here in order to leave, they had to
submit to the fact that we are ignorant and that we are seeking
knowledge. They had to submit to the fact that we are uncertain and
that we are seeking certainty. They had to submit to the fact that
we are insecure, seeking security on a personal level as well as
that of a society. We all in submission to these realities. The
only difference is that some of us by that submission and that
auba we get more and more tuned to the presence of eternal light
and therefore we begin transformation rather than information. We
are all begin wanting to be informed but we all want to end up being
transformed in the knowledge that Allah is in charge, that the
glorious Lord and the Creator…… He has never neglected anything in
existence because Allah permeates everything in existence known and
unknown. Allah gives us constant opportunities for us to rediscover.
Allah tells us in the Qur`an that he has created us all from one
self and therefore equally in the eyes of God. We are all the same
in the eye of Allah except according to our degree of abandonment
according to our degree of detachment of less eagle, less of our
animal self. More and more of the higher self which according to
Allah is above the angels. We can be worse than
the animals and we can be above the angels, this is the freedom we
have.
We have equality in the
eye of Allah, we are all His children, we are all His creation and
we have the freedom of choosing whether to serve without
expectations or only serving for grandiose and other aspects which
are only going to last as long as circumstances last. We are all
human beings seeking and searching for that which is permanent. We
are all looking for the unity of human beings. Today and yesterday
exemplify the unity of Moslems. Nearly one and a half billion people
had been praying like we had been here in the open fields, asking
for Allah’s Rahma, asking for Allah’s manifestation of mercy
in their hearts so that it overflows into societies, into
communities so that there can be peace and tranquility so that
people can know how to worship. Allah says…….
I did not
create the known and unknown entities except to worship.
How can we worship a reality that we don’t know. How can you love
and adore a God that you don’t know. The God that you love is the
all Merciful, is the all Beneficent, is the all Powerful, is the
Everlasting, is the Light behind all lights and shadows, is the
Wadood, is he who loves all His creation, is a Rahman a
Rahim, is alatheen. He is the most Glorious, he is the
most Great, the most Powerful. By saying Allah u Akbar, we
say that Allah is greater than we can perceive. Allah is the creator
of our minds and our bodies and our societies and our journey. Allah
is greater than we can ever imagine by that which He has created.
Our minds can only take us up to a point based on rationality, logic
and reasoning, beyond that we have to abandon. Every prophet and
every messenger prescribed reflection, meditation, submission,
disappearance so that the One and only light appears where not only
visibly in the hearts of the believer so that you’ll be guided more
and more by the heart, more and more the unseen that inspires you.
Indeed the great people in our world, the great men of society, the
great president whom we are facing and all the other people were
inspired. Inspiration is not just rationality, it uses rationality
and goes beyond it. This is where transformation occurs, these are
the quantum leaps both in the sense of the individual as well as
societies and we are one society……….. We are one umar, we are
one people, we are all aspiring towards better love, higher quality
of communication, better relationships, and so on. We are one. The
shape of that securities change from time to time, the values do not
change. The values of Africa, of the ancient peoples in Africa are
the same. We have to apply these in a modern way. Respect of the
elders. Respect of the values, transmission from the elder to the
younger which is now being more and more distracted by the so called
materialistic onslaught by the obsession by the capitalistic
onslaughts. We have a duty to come up with alternatives, the
alternatives would be based on love and care and share, partnerships
relationships of a master to a disciple to a pupil, thus we will be
imitating the prophets. All the prophets had their own “harahim”,
they all had their “sahawa”, they had people around them who
wanted to immolate them. They wanted to immolate the prophetic
authority. The authority of the Prophet is from Allah, it is not
despotic, it is not self inflicted or invented, it is purely by
inspiration. The Prophet (SAW) is the ultimate instrument of the
unseen manifesting and the seen. He is the selfless, therefore he
reflects the Divine self, he reflects what is going to last. We are
celebrating today the universality of this path. It is not an
invention of 1400 odd years ago, exclusive for Arabs or for certain
ethnic groups. Allah send the Prophet (SAW) rahmatilla ala min
………and the universality of the Muslims is such that wherever he
lives he can live with integrity because he has the boundaries, he
knows what is allowed and what is not. Abuse, monopoly, lies and all
the other things that causes disruption to the individual and
thereby disruption to society. These are the boundaries of “sharia”
and applying them in a physical way in a community way, brings about
the rituals that we follow. The ritual of “salat” is not just
bending the knees and putting our heads on the ground, it is an act
of silence of inner silence and inner presence of the “qalb”
of the heart. Outer service, the limbs have to constantly move. You
and I have to struggle for the higher until such time that we have
no option than remembering the all glorifying Allah and remembering
what He tells us if we worship and adore Him then a society will
grow that is second to none.
Allah reminds us in the Qur`an …………and
if people of towns, villages and nations are cautious of Allah’s
ways and Allah’s natural way then there would be blessings from
heavens and earth from where we don’t know.
