AlmostFifty

IYC’s New Anthem Just Dropped 🎬🎵 Tum Apna Mahal Bacha Lo…

It seems inevitable that the revival of Islam in the latter days will take place within Western cultural forms. This will surely involve a transformation of the very highest of Western cultural forms,* as illuminated by the “Prophetic breeze" foreseen 200 years ago by al-Rawwas. Yes, in a (hitherto insufficiently well-known) visionary experience, the great Rifa'i saint Imam al-Rawwas saw that at the very height of the West's dominance and enmity towards Islam, an effusion from the Prophetic Presence ﷺ would bring large numbers of Westerners into Islam, who in virtue of that effusion, would be blessed with an extraordinarily profound understanding of the dīn. More recently, the great Moroccan saint Shaykh Muhammad Ibn al-Habib also foresaw that the revival of Islam would take place at the hands of individuals from the West. Much of the Muslim presence in the West has failed. I will seek to avoid inciting defensiveness by mentioning names, but many of the initial forms in which the establishment of Islam was sought in the Western world were some or all of 1 formalistic and legalistic 2 narrow-mindedly ethnocentric 3 subordinate to economic concerns, with "Islamic" observance largely no more than a cocoon employed (despite the almost complete absence of an authentic Islamic worldview) to justify fear of a half-understood host culture, and thereby validate insularity, as well as to establish rigid family control structures. 4 intellectually fideistic in a manner that ironically played into the hands of default scientism and positivism 5 devoid of continuity with the historically normative twofold structure of . self-mastery and . purification leading to inward tasting and illumination. Thus personally incapable of presenting a profound vision of Islam to our Western hosts, we became the skulking, sullen intruder whose presence makes no sense. Hence identitarianism, self-ghettoisation, and burning resentment. To the contrary, to be sufficiently acknowledged by the ascendent cultural hegemon to be able to begin to transform it, Islam has to make deep, uniquely intelligible sense as vessel of sanctification, as both the redeemer and liberator of human nature, and as the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional consummator and fulfiller of the human journey through this world, embracing all human types. Meanwhile, the West of advanced modernity has reached unprecedented heights in developing the apparatuses of techne capable of serving as multifarious vehicles for this supreme vision of human nature. But it lacks the cohesive, holistic, integral metaphysical worldview able to provide deep-rooted meaning and content to match that highly enriched matter; it lacks content, that is, beyond hedonism and an ultimately futile and bleak, nihilistic (but still highly arresting) depiction of the drama of human life. And yet let's face it, we are utterly mimetically subordinate to these cultural forms; we cannot see outside them; and we cannot fully see inside them either. Hence our dismal creative weakness and lack of compelling narrative. What we need most urgently of all as an Umma, is the return to the prioritisation of that Prophetic Presence ﷺ in all things. What could effect this transformation but the Presence of the Perfect Man ﷺ? The uniter of all the human types, the full scope of the human experience, mystic, warrior, lawgiver, trader, husband, father, friend? The harmoniser of majesty and beauty in all of those human types, such that the Four Caliphs, the most complete of human beings, were but facets of his perfection ﷺ ? The many of you who think this impossible, thank you, we don't need you. And if this has proved impossible hitherto, it is thanks to the likes of you. For those who believe in the transformative power of the revelation to the Last Prophet ﷺ know that all is possible in the One God who sent him. TBC ... In an upcoming post I will set forward some possible solutions to replace the inadequacies I have outlined here. In the meantime, I'd be interested in your thoughts on all this, including 1-5 above. * i.e., the transformation of Western e.g., literary, artistic, music, institutional, philosophical, and even religious forms.