Ramadan in darkness
Reflections in Ramadan 1443 AH
The new crescent moon’s sighting has once again ushered the most beloved guest into our homes. The holy month of Ramadan is upon us, and many of us are eager to seek from the limitless blessings and bounties that The Most Merciful has placed within this month for all who submit to His will and fast as He has prescribed — in body and in soul. As with every year, this Ramadan has begun for me with a sombre note as I realise that my daily religious practices of the past year diminished from the pinnacle of the previous Ramadan — a pinnacle many of us make the intention to maintain after the holy month ends. Beyond this sadness, I find myself also burdened with a kind of darkness— not darkness in its literal sense, that is, the total or partial absence of physical light that illuminates space. The darkness I speak of here is also a metaphorical one that represents an absence of anything that illuminates or uplifts both our tangible and intangible worlds.
A physical darkness: Insecurity
In Surah Yūnus, Allāh explains that He has created night-time for us “so that you can rest in it” and made the daylight “so that you can see”. For those of us living in Nigeria or countries facing a similar deterioration of law and public order, we know that the cover of darkness that night brings has ceased being a respite from days of work and bustle. Instead, the night now brings a heightened state of anxiety and fear because of the criminality that is increasingly perpetuated during its course—the insecurity encroaching into towns and cities that were once looked to as paragons of peace and stability has left all of us contemplating our security in the land. When will it reach us? To further worsen this anxiety, there seems to be widespread uncertainty about the motivations and methods of these criminals/terrorists, even at the highest levels of government. So how do we begin to protect ourselves against a problem that we have such a limited understanding of? We can make changes to our lifestyles but we cannot entirely isolate ourselves in our homes because we need to work, earn, worship, and socialise — all of which often require some degree of mobility. Even if we can personally avoid the danger zones, we often have family and friends exposed by virtue of their livelihoods or the responsibilities they have to fulfil. Beyond insecurity challenges, plummeting economic indicators, and heightened ethnic and political tensions are further piling onto our worries. The once comforting silence of the night is now an unwelcome quietness that forces us to contemplate these worries and challenges.
A mental darkness: Ignorance
The importance of knowledge and the status of the people who seek it in Islam is evident throughout our theological texts, the foremost being the Holy Qur’an, but also in our reverence for scholars in the Ummah. The elevated statuses of such people are enshrined in different parts of the Holy Qur’an, such as in Surah Al-Mujadila, “Allāh will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees”, and in Surah Fatir, “It is only those who have knowledge among His slaves that fear Allāh. These and many other Qur’anic verses and oral traditions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) should orient us to design lives and societies that encourage the pursuit of knowledge. In this current age of the internet and social media, this task is seemingly easier since we have access to incredibly vast amounts of information from written and oral sources on innumerable topics of the material and spiritual worlds. One would expect that the availability of knowledge would naturally encourage its exploration and acquisition, and in that process, many of us would become aware of the extent of our ignorance — an ignorance that should engender humility in asserting our own intellects on a particular issue. Yet the opposite seems to be prevalent — many of us engage in a quick google on a topic or read a single book, which seem to satisfy our desire for a single answer or solution. We pay no heed to the biases inherent in knowledge/information depending on who reports it, the nuance that is acquired in the long process of creating it, or the rigour needed to assess its validity. Equipped with what we think is a quick answer to often profoundly complex questions, many of us adopt the aura and arrogance expected of a scholar.
“Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” Only those endowed with understanding take heed.” — Surah Az-Zumar, verse 39
Nowhere is the dangerous consequences of this faux intellect more apparent than in popular islamic discourse. In seeking how to navigate a rapidly changing world, Muslims who are often young and straddling civilisational fault lines look to reconcile their identities — often their religious identity as Muslims alongside other cultural, social or political identities — by revisiting foundational Islamic theological texts in an attempt to reinterpret them using a modern lens. Undoubtedly technological advancements and ideological shifts of recent centuries have made it increasingly complex to understand what Islamic laws and principles mean in new contexts, especially in societies that are heterogenous in religion and culture. The emergence of the modern nation state that is interconnected with a secular international order further complicates that task.
As Muslims however, we know that the knowledge we need to navigate these challenges is already available in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, the words and actions of our Prophet Muhammad (SAW). And we can look to the people of knowledge amongst us, the scholars, for guidance. It is telling of the age of fitnah (trial or affliction) that we are in that we find many of our scholars in disagreement with each other. To even know which scholar to follow, a level of knowledge is needed which we must seek as individuals. I reflect on my experience of Islamiyya, the semi-formal Islamic education that many of us in northern Nigeria will have received growing up. There was such a great emphasis on tajwīd (the rules for correct pronunciation of the Qur’an) and its memorisation, but minimal focus on Aqīdah (Islamic creed) and Usūl (the foundations of knowledge, usually of jurisprudence). The consequence for me personally has been, often, when I encounter conflicting Islamic verdicts on a particular issue, even from local scholars that follow the same madhab, I am left ignorant of which to abide by. This is the mental darkness of which I speak — a lack of knowledge and uncertainty of how best to acquire it. I find that though lectures and seminars on YouTube and short Islamic courses help provide clarity on many issues of religious practice, their unsystematic nature means that it is difficult to translate what is learned to thinking about broader concepts such as politics, economics, and social change. The institutions that offer this formalised, systematic Islamic education are lacking in Nigeria, especially for women, and even when they are present, the limited time that one has due to work and other responsibilities makes it almost impossible to commit to them. How do we balance the work that is necessary to sustain a livelihood with the pursuit of knowledge, both of which are demanding in their own rights?
A spiritual darkness: Immorality
Perhaps its the widespread lack of knowledge across Muslim populations that has led us to inherit ideologies, whether political, economic or social, that are often in great tension with Islamic ideals. The assimilation process has been so quick, yet subtle, that it isn’t obvious to many of us that a stark change has occurred. Only when pronouncements that are in such clear contradiction to Islamic law are made with great confidence do we realise just how far we have strayed. By virtue of personal and professional experiences that have forcefully immersed me in cultural contexts different to the one I was born into, I have undoubtedly also absorbed some Western/liberal ideas, as they are often referred to. Being tainted in this regard makes it difficult to understand whether my inclination for a certain Islamic ruling or fatwa on an issue is based on the strength of the supporting evidence given, or norms that I have acquired from societies founded on liberalist ideals that are sometimes in conflict with Islamic ones. Self-reflection and accountability can, and have helped to reveal the flaws in my intentions and thinking, but I still recognise the mind’s capacity to self-deceive and my likelihood to give myself teh benefit of the doubt. So what is the way forward?
It always seems unhelpful to speak of problems without solutions. But for these personal challenges that I — and, I suspect, many other Muslims — are facing, I have no answers. If not, I wouldn’t have written this post. So I return to Allah’s holy book, which He has described as a criterion that sets apart right from wrong and “a healing and a mercy to those who believe”. I have always been familiar with the story of Prophet Yūnus (AS) and the du’a that he made that led to Allāh (SWT) granting him escape from the belly of the whale. But for the first time, I noticed that in the translation of the verse, Prophet Yūnus calls out not from within the darkness but from within the darknesses.He suffered from the darkness of the night, the darkness of the ocean, and the darkness of the belly of the whale. Yet through his admission of wrongdoing and beseeching of Allāh for help, he was granted relief.
وَذَا ٱلنُّونِ إِذ ذَّهَبَ مُغَـٰضِبًۭا فَظَنَّ أَن لَّن نَّقْدِرَ عَلَيْهِ فَنَادَىٰ فِى ٱلظُّلُمَـٰتِ أَن لَّآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّآ أَنتَ سُبْحَـٰنَكَ إِنِّى كُنتُ مِنَ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ
And [mention] the man of the fish [i.e., Jonah], when he went off in anger and thought that We would not decree [anything] upon him. And he called out within the darknesses, “There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers.” — [21:87]
So perhaps we don’t need to have a solution; we just need to be aware that we are in the dark and in need of guidance. And what is there to do in darkness if not seek a light? And what light is more worthy of being sought than An-Nūr? Allāh’s attribute as a source of light and illumination is enshrined in the famous Verse of Light where He says “Allāh is The Light of the heavens and the Earth”. The renowned scholar Ibn al-Qayyim made a beautiful commentary of this verse in his book Al-Waabil Al-Sayyib. He likened the niche to the chest of the believer, and the glass, which of the most crisp and clear kind, with the heart of a believer. He says a believing heart “sees the truth by virtue of its clarity and, similar to the olive oil which is [represents] the substance of the believing heart, it is from the “tree” of Revelation, that which Allāh (‘Azza wa Jalla) revealed in His books. The stronger a believer adheres to the revelation, the stronger the roots in his heart are!” It seems all we need to do is believe, wholly and truly, in Allāh — the Unity of His Lordship, the Unity of His Worship, and the Unity of His Names and Attributes— and guidance comes. “And you do not will except that Allāh wills — Lord of the worlds.”
“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His light is like a niche within which is a lamp, the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearly [white] star lit from [the oil of] a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire. Light upon light. Allah guides to His light whom He wills. And Allah presents examples for the people, and Allah is Knowing of all things.” — [24:35]
