THE JUDGE
Many lack awareness that judgment of others is a means to self-preservation, and in pointing fingers, unwittingly use the magician’s greatest trick: misdirection. This malaise injures the spirit of both the individual and the community.
Focusing on the faults of others stunts self-improvement and veils personal deficiencies, especially when done serially.
When we remove the sliver from another’s eye, we often forget to remove the two-by-four from our own. This deliberate forgetfulness protects us from scrutiny, even though our defects may engulf our vision. This behaviour may temporarily serve us, but the thin facade comes at a cost: the furtherance of cognitive dissonance.
Allah is al-Hakam—the Judge. This translation is inadequate, but the fuller meaning implies someone wise, impartial, truthful, knowledgeable and just. All these attributes are needed to pass a sound verdict, which our biased critique commonly lacks: “Judgement is for God alone: He tells the truth, and He is the best of judges” [6:57].
THE LUMINARIES
A gnawing conscience is a sign of a healthy spiritual heart, and the Prophet’s (s) scruple was too strong not to rage against the hedonism engulfing his beloved City. His inner lament led him to seek solutions in solitude and beseech God’s guidance. This annual spiritual retreat was a taking out of or stepping away from in an attempt to see, and though dark, it was here that a light mightier than a thousand suns lit his heart.
Where do you go to get lit(erature)?
Heritage Day (24 September) is a South African national holiday commemorating the nation’s cultural diversity. Sadly, colonial marketeers co-opted Heritage Day by commercially turning it into Braai Day, pivoting our attention from nation-building and recognising each other’s inherent value to frivolity.
For Muslims, our heritage, Islamic Thaqafah, is one of literacy. The literate community became the thrust of the new revelation, with the command to read forming the foundation of the emerging Islamic culture. The God-given directive to first become literate was ingenious. It locked in future behaviour necessary for the survival of the Islamic project and, through its adherents, facilitated and ensured the transmission of Divine knowledge and the emergence and maintenance of an authentic Revelation. It would be safe to say that without a literate Islamic culture, we would not enjoy the status of Muslims, and by extension, that of whatever prefix we use to identify ourselves as Muslims living at the Cape. And if, without a literate culture, we somehow did, our Islam and the Quran would have looked very different today because their preservation would not have been pristine, similar to that of the People of the Book.
Read; it’s such a humble word, but its power is atomic and dynamic, hence its preeminent position in the Quran. It’s the word that every Muslim should give homage to and to which we all owe our faith.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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