Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity. Tariq Ramadan

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СКАЧАТЬ entered in sympathy with a story, a past, a life, intermingled with sadness and solitude. One thousand and one memories and, at the same time, an incomparable view on the current events of the world. He was in affective contact with the most distant of countries. He knew almost everything that was going on in Tadjikistan, Kashmir, Chechnia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. He followed the regional current events of Washington, Los Angeles, Harlem, London, Munich, Paris, Geneva, right up to Karachi. A horizon burgeoning with information. He suffered so much and with such intensity in his room, from the state of the world, from the lies, massacres, imprisonings and tortures. His political intuition was fearsome; one understood why he was feared.

      He did not content himself with current events, he was interested in everything including the development of techniques, medicine, sciences and ecology. He knew the requirements of a deep Islamic reform. His curiosity was without limit, always awakened and particularly lucid. He had travelled across the world; and from then on the world lived in this room. There used to be crowds, scholars, presidents and kings; there remained, henceforth, nothing but observation, analysis and a deep sadness. In solitude, though, there was the Qur’ān; and in isolation, there were invocations. Invocations and tears. He gave his children symbolic names, names from the history of all persecutions and infinite determinations. With each one, he had the cord of complicity, the space of attention, the sensitivity of relation and love. With Aymen, his success and wounds; with Bilāl, his potential and heartbreak; with Yasser, his presence, his generous devotion and his waiting; with Arwa, his complicity and silences; with Hani, his commitment and determination. To each one, he reminded that he made us a gift of the best of mothers. She is, with the quality of her heart, his most beautiful present.

      After more than 40 years of exile, an entire life for God, faith and justice, he knew that his last hour was coming. In the most profound hours, he spoke and he spoke so much of love, fraternity and affection. A few months before returning to God, he said to me, with the strength of his sad, drowned look: “Our problem is one of spirituality. If a man comes to speak to me about the reforms to be undertaken in the Muslim world, about political strategies and of great geo-strategic plans, my first question to him would be whether he performed the dawn prayer (fajr) in its time.” He observed the agitation of each and everyone, including my own. He reminded me so much not to forget the essential, to be with God in order to know how to be with men. An entire life in struggle, the hair turned grey by time, and a reminder: “Power is not our objective; what have we to do with it? Our goal is love of the Creator, the fraternity and justice of Islam. This is our message to dictators.” Late at night, in that famous room, he spoke and entreated. The link with God is the way, and spirituality is the light of the road. One day, when having a look at his life, he said to me: “Our ethical behaviour and conscience of good and evil is an arm that is used against us by despots, lovers of titles, power and money. They do that which we cannot do; they lie as we cannot lie, they betray as we cannot betray and kill as we cannot kill. Our exactness before God is, in their eyes, our weakness. This apparent weakness is our real strength.”

      This strength was his energy up to his last days. He remained deeply faithful to the message. I owe him the understanding that to speak of God is, before anything else, to speak about love, the heart and fraternity. I owe him my learning that solitude with God is better than neglect with men. I owe him the feeling that deep sadness never exhausts one’s faith in God. His generosity, his kindness and knowledge were as many presents. I thank God for giving me the gift that is this father, at whose side I discovered that faith is love. Love of God and men in the face of all trials and adversities.

      Hasan al-Banna taught: “Be like a fruit tree. They attack you with stones, and you respond with fruits.” This he himself learnt very well; he made it his own in the most intimate sense of the word. Observer of the world, distant from the crowds, in the solitude of his place, after years of fighting without respite for God’s sake, against treachery and corruption, his words had the energy of the sources and of the rabbāniyya (of the essential link with the Creator). He never ceased to speak about God, the heart and about the intimacy of this Presence. He had learnt the essential, and he called for the essential without re-routing.

      He was laid to rest next to the one who taught him the way, Hasan al-Banna. May God have mercy on them both. A return from exile in death because despots fear the words of the living. The silence of the dead is nonetheless heavy of meaning, just like the supplications of those who are subjected to injustice. One must, nonetheless, say this word of truth even if it is bitter. Thus have we been commanded by the Prophet (pbuh): “We are to God and to Him we shall return.” God called to him a man, on the 4th August 1995, a Friday, just before dusk. A man, a son, a husband, a brother, a father-in-law, a grandfather, my father. The sole merit of those that remain will be to testify, day after day, their faithfulness to his memory and teaching. To love God, respond to His call, accompany men, live and learn how to die, live in order to learn how to die. This against all the odds.

      Said Ramadan spent 41 years in exile, almost an entire lifetime. What remains are his words, his outlook and his determination. This life is not the Life. May God receive him in His mercy, forgive him his sins and open for him the gates of Peace in the company of the Prophets, the pious and the just. I ask God to enable me to be for my children as my father was for me.

       Tariq Ramadan

       Foreword

       A man, a womanat the heart of modernity

      To observe and understand it, our world seems inaccessible. The days pass and confirm the folly of men. Carried, here, by technique and noise, they live on speed, computer science, music and cinema. Burdened, over there, by hunger and weariness, they survive on expectation, hope and in silence. Modern times have, for our memories, a concern for image, and also the infinite neglect of reality and meaning.

      In the East as in the West, our epoch gives rise to the greatest famine ever noticed on earth. Tortured bodies echo the suffering of minds. Bodies and hearts are thirsty for humanity. Poverty, straying, dictatorships and wars stifle and stammer the dignity of several billions of men and women every day. Solitude, individualism, moral misery, and lack of love eats into the being of all those whom comfort should have made content. Where is the way? Where are we going? How to be a woman, how to be a man today?

      So how, at the heart of this agony, do we respond to our hearts and protect the spirituality which makes us be? How, on the precipice of so much imbalances, do we bring forth the balance and harmony that will appease our hearts? How do we remain faithful to the pact of origin when modernity renders us so unfaithful to our humanity?

      Memory of the first morning:

      And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed, and made them testify touching themselves, ‘Am I not your Lord?’They said, ‘Yes, we testify…’ (Qur’ān, 7:172)

      This testimony lives in the depths of hearts; it speaks and calls to us. Our heart is our hope; spirituality is our way:

      It is not the eyes that are blind, but blind are the hearts within the breast. (Qur’ān, 22:46)

      This is looking, in one’s depth, for strength of sight, real sight. It is being with God in order to read the signs, live with His remembrance in order to fill oneself with humility, to give the night its light and pray loudly in infinite silence:

      Behold We shall cast upon thee a weighty word; surely the first part of the night is heavier in tread, more upright in speech, surely in the day thou hast long business. And remember the Name of thy Lord, and devote thyself unto Him very devoutly. Lord of the East and the West; there is no God but He… (Qur’ān, 73:5–9)

      To give life СКАЧАТЬ