Part 2 : Moroccan Adventures

So, insha’Allah, the task as a writer or poet is to always put oneself in the midst of what may come, wherever Allah’s manifestation may be happening. Of course, it is happening everywhere, whether we are aware of it nor not, but we want to be in a state of dhikr to recognize it as often and as deeply as possible. This requires a certain training, which, for me, came partly from the time I spent with the muqaddem and shaykh, as well as my earlier Zen Buddhist meditation, and something I became more aware of as I traveled in other parts of the world, and saw what Allah has done with other civilizations, present and past, as Allah ta’ala counsels in the Qur’an.

In the late 1970s, six of us western Sufi Muslims, fuqara of Shaykh ibn al-Habib, traveled throughout northern and south-eastern Algeria in the late 70s, when it was still easier to travel there, and met many awliyya, some wellknown and some more hidden. Every moment you sit with a wali is worth many years of ‘ibada, as it is said, because these men and women of Allah, who have reached a high station with Allah, show us more than words can tell what the grace of Allah and the Prophet, peace be upon him, really is, and how they manifest among us in our present life.

We also spent time living and traveling in Morocco, and attended many mawlids and moussems. In the tomb of Ali al-Jamal in Fez we discovered the book that was translated and published by The Diwan Press as The Meaning of Man. We were told his fuqara, even today, are still coming down to his tomb, which is situated in a low place in Fez, to read from and study his book. We photographed each hand-written page and later transcribed it and translated it into
English, a first-time event of great importance. We also journeyed to Shaykh Ibn Mashish’s mountaintop tomb in Larache, raheemullah, and did dhikr and prayer among the wild cork trees, prostrating in sajdah on the flat cork-floored crest above the canyons as if flying among clouds.

In a way of nourishing the heart and soul, all of these experiences have invested my poetry in a way that I really can’t even explain, and it may not be obviously evident. To this date, I have not written an account about the trip to Shaykh ibn al-Mashish’s tomb, because I’m not a scholar-historian nor memoirist, but a writer of poems. If you remain an open field, from the creative, poetic point of view, Allah works through you however He wills.

Back in the beginning when I was first a Muslim, the poets that I knew and loved, in San Francisco and California at that time, were mostly Buddhist, and they wrote poetry out of their Buddhism, both philosophically and through their love and interest in nature and our natural “enlightened” consciousness. Their poetry is often meditative, recognizing the essence of stillness, and above all, recognizing the goal of the end of mankind’s suffering, which is spiritual wisdom.

At the time, when I thought about my poetic intentions, I said to myself, “This is what I want to do, insha’Allah, for Islam, for Sufism, I want to be a voice that isn’t specifically only speaking to Muslims,” because this time in our history is the era of the Prophet Muhammad, salallahu alayhi wa salam, where Islam is the deen of Allah. We “Muslims” in particular have to remember that the Prophet came for every human being, and it will be so until the end of time — we must speak to everyone. At the inception of my being Muslim and Sufi, I wanted to create a body of work that reminds people, and myself, about Allah, praying and hoping that every poem I write is a dhikr for me, and insha’Allah, also a dhikr for other people. Because as Allah says in Qur’an, “When you forget, remember!” which is an ayat of tremendous mercy. When we go through a moment of unconsciousness, or torpor, ghafla (forgetfulness), then we turn and remember, we remember Allah and His beloved Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salam, we remember who we are and the path of life we are on, and the heart ticks back into a wider consciousness.

Abdal Hayy Daniel Moore's Journey

GRATITUDE TO MOROCCO

I would also like to express an enormous gratitude to the people of Morocco, who have always shown us the deepest generosity. At first, filled with longing and excitement to be a part of a tariqat in Morocco, I went to Meknes to the zawiyya of our shaykh thinking it would be a kind of perfect Utopia, and it was perfect, but not in the way we think. It was perfect the way the world is perfect. And at the same time, the intention, the niyyat, of everyone, even the imperfect ones, like us, like me, was to be in a circle of dhikr, and to find the Presence, the Hadrat of Allah. There is something deeply imbedded in the heart of the Moroccan people that is very beautiful and essential, full of iman, having available to it the various steps toward real knowledge of God, and as a citizen of the world with spiritual thirst, for that I am deeply grateful. When our little community of European Muslims passed through the market streets, in our djalabas and turbans, purchased in Tangiers before we went south into the Moroccan heartland, people would stop and weep to see obviously Muslim westerners respectful of Moroccan culture, instead of as with the earlier influx of Europeans who came as hippies in the 60s, and who seemed only to indulge in some of the less Islamic aspects of Moroccan culture.

Although I was born in Oakland, in the North American state of California, I consider Meknes, Morocco, my real birthplace, where I met Shaykh ibn al-Habib, raheemullah, wali of Allah, Qutub shaykh of the time, and where I also lived for a time that had the taste of eternity in it, in his zawiyya with his disciples. It was there I saw the old men (and some of the women as well, most especially his wives) of his spiritual community who had been with him for decades, who were now like trees, forests of trees — I was living in a forest of ‘ilm and ma’rifa. Among all the variety of people we encountered there we found these giant trees, like towering redwoods. That was the world of our shaykh’s domains. So when my wife and I visited Meknes a few years ago, in early 2000, I suddenly felt at home again.

HAJJ IN 1972
I was with a group of us living in the zawiyya during the last Ramadan of Shaykh ibn al-Habib’s life, and I went on Hajj in 1972, with Shaykh Dr. Abdal-Qadir, Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley, Abdal-Aziz Redpath and the great photographer, Peter Abdal-Adheem Sanders. It was a truly momentous Hajj for us. We were meant to meet the shaykh in Jeddah. We had asked permission in Meknes at that Ramadan to go on Hajj and he had said, “Meet me in Jeddah.” But we arrived in Jeddah and he wasn’t there. So we went on to Mecca, and still didn’t see him. Then the sheriff of his zawiyya, Sidi Moulay Sheriff, came running up to us, greeted us very happily, asked how we were, how our travels were, and if we were satisfied with our accommodations (which we were not, our mutawwif had not really taken care of us). He then went and found us a good place to stay, took us to a place to eat, for we were all very hungry, and after all that, which must have taken over an hour or so, took Abdalhaqq Bewley off to speak to him privately.
When Abdalhaqq came back he had tears streaming down his cheeks. Shaykh ibn al-Habib, raheemullah, wouldn’t meet us in Mecca, for he had died on his way from Meknes by automobile, in Blida, Algeria. So our Hajj was one of deep grief as well as the deep experience of the Hajj itself, and was therefore a doubly difficult journey, and continued to be so when we returned to England to tell the community there the very sad news. But I’ve always felt, and this has been a constant in my own spiritual life as a living example of true ‘adab, that the way in which this faqir greeted us, carrying such a terrific burden of news, was so extraordinary, in that he didn’t run up to us saying, “The shaykh is dead! The shaykh is dead!” But in fact, he made sure we were comfortable, and fed, and then spoke the right words to Abdalhaqq privately.

We found in all our journeys to Morocco and our visits with the people, that with the natural beauty of the country itself, with its lavender valleys and rolling green hills, and its variegated and rich culture, among the people there’s an innocence and a deep wisdom, there’s a depth, a beauty in the people, and certainly in the profound tradition of Sufism and Islam that is so much a part of Morocco, in all of its manifestations. And the tradition is still very much alive that makes available, through the living scholars and shuyukh and awliyya, the Path to Allah, The Ultimate Reality, through correctly and sincerely receiving the proper initiation and ‘idhn, from a real shaykh of m’arifa, of whom there are many great and magnificent living exemplars today.

May Islam and Sufism continue to grow and thrive among all humankind everywhere, with Morocco again at its peak of a golden age of Sufism and true Islamic teachings, and constant nourishment for all those who go with a hunger for true spiritual experience and deep-rooted foundational learning.

Amen.

Debt and the Prostitution of America

(We just read Tun Dr.Mahathir comment on USD 4.0 Trillion Derivatives Trade Per Day. How the world did not care much. How our intellect and action gone kaput ? Why lower interest rates in US will rob the poor in other countries ? The crash day will come and be prepared,like the Flood in Nabi Nuh's time).


Submitted by Cris Sheridan on 30 Sep 2010 (Financial Sense)
"The borrower is a slave to the lender." Proverbs 22:7

Our entire nation is largely indebted to a single private corporation! Yes, that's right, the Federal Reserve—a privately held bank that is closing in on being the 2nd largest holder of US debt. At the rate its going, the Fed may actually be the largest holder in the space of a few months. This is not a good sign.

"The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil." —Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1802. ME 10:323

Many people are aware that America is the largest debtor nation in the world. What they don't understand is that this means the US must depend upon borrowing other people's money in exchange for a service. Sounds like prostitution doesn't it? You see, although the selling and servicing of debt is a common practice among many nations, the nature of this type of contract was rewritten on a global scale when America went from being the world’s greatest lender to the world's largest borrower. The consequences of such led, by necessity, to a bill of divorce under the presidency of Richard Nixon where foreign powers were cheated from their previously agreed to dowry. This severing of gold from the issuance of debt and currency now allows America to merely exchange debt for more and more debt. Unfortunately, what was once a contract of fair exchange is now a continual debasement. The world's most desired bride has now become a harlot.

There is a huge reason why foreign nations continue to slum it up at the Treasury auction every year and pay America for her services—they are drunk with our money! They cannot sober up because she has inflated and multiplied her favors all over the world. Madam America is fighting hard to keep her clientele happy, but her assets are becoming visibly stretched. The American taxpayer cannot afford to pay the bill. Therefore, she has no choice but to inflate or die!

Many are bewildered by the huge increase in gold's value over the past decade. To them, it is an anomaly; something that can't be explained in terms of modern finance. They are deceived; unable to see outside their unyielding faith in paper money because it is issued in God's name—"In God We Trust"—or because they believe that nations, and not just companies, are too big to fail. History proves otherwise...and God does not look favorably upon blasphemy.

I do not believe this system will end soon. Though America has been elevated to a precarious position atop an unwieldy beast, her services are still loved more than she is hated. Eventually, however, one will outstrip the other...turning what has been, so far, from a consensual agreement into a forced act. Until then, America will continue to become a slave to both the Federal Reserve and foreign nations—prostituting her wealth by selling her body to the highest bidder. The question is, will there be a final day of reckoning?