Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah Addresses Global Sufi Gathering

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:42:14 +0300

“I call upon the Muslims to revive the science of Tasawwuf”

On the day of Friday July 10th, 2009, during the second international conference in honor of Sidi Shiker (a well-known Moroccan Wali), Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah invited the Muslims to revive the science of Tasawwuf and to return it to its proper place, by which the sciences of the Din itself may be revived.

Bin Bayyah, who is one of the top scholars of Mauritania (West Africa), also stated in his speech entitled “The Foundations of Tasawwuf in the Book and the Sunnah”, that Tasawwuf (Sufism) is not a separate religion, but rather that it derives from the Qur’an and Sunnah, and that the scholars have developed its principles just as they have developed and derived the principles of Fiqh (Islamic Sacred Law) from those two sources as well.

The Shaykh also addressed in some detail the meaning of Tasawwuf, saying: “This word has become widespread and famous to the point that the meaning it points to has become obscured”, adding that Tasawwuf – like the other Islamic madhahib – was cognizant of the rifts that appeared in the Islamic Ummah, and confirmed that “Tasawwuf is a proof against the Sufi, the Sufi is not a proof against Tasawwuf”. In his definition of Tasawwuf, Bin Bayyah stressed that it is “Ihsan” (spiritual excellence), deriving this from the famous hadith Jibril, and adding that this means to seek perfection, and to have love for and longing towards meeting Allah Most High.

The Shaykh also mentioned that Tasawwuf is one (legitimate) science among the sciences of Islam, and stated that an Islamic science can either focus on the outward aspect, namely the actions of the limbs, which is termed “fiqh”, or it can focus on the inward aspect, namely the purification of the soul, softening of the heart, being inwardly detached from the dunya, and so on, and this is termed “tasawwuf”.

In terms of its Islamic origins, the Mauritanian scholar affirmed that its origins lie in the Qur’an and Sunnah, and quoting numerous verses and hadiths to support this, as well as some of the statements of the early founders of Tasawwuf, such as Imam Junayd who said: “This way of ours is confined within the principles of the Qur’an and Sunnah”.

The Shaykh also depended heavily on many occasions during his speech on the book “Qawa’id at-Tasawwuf” (Principles of Sufism) by Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq (d. 846 H), adding that this Moroccan scholar is indeed the “police” of the Sufis in the entire world.

At the end of his speech, Shaykh Bin Bayyah addressed some of the criticisms against Tasawwuf over history, such as the question of the Shuyukh specifying the dhikrs (and their numbers) for their followers, the use of dhikr beads, the question of Tawassul (using the righteous as a means to gain Allah’s blessings) and Tabarruk (deriving blessings from the relics of the righteous), and visiting the graves of the righteous Awliya, confirming in each point that they have a solid basis in Islam.

Translated from Arabic for ISRA News by: Ibrahim Hakim al-Shaghouri

Sacred Caravan - the best 10 day’s you’ll ever have.

Sat, 23 May 2009 03:54:45 +0300

So I was all upset about not being able to attend the Deen Intensive Rhila this year with it’s move to North America and then along came Sacred Caravan - alhamdulillah what a blessing this was!

This was truly the best 10 days I’ve ever had. We performed Umrah, had classes with Shaykh bin Bayyah, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Shaykh Abdullah Kadi and walked in the footsteps of the Prophet (s.w.s.) and his companions with various historical site visits in Mecca and Medina.

The group that Allah invited to the two Holy Cities came from all corners of the earth - the UK, USA, Australia, Germany amongst others and we really could not have had a more beautiful group masha’allah.

We visited the Kiswa factory, the Quran factory, Masjid al Nur, Masjid al Qiblatain, Masjid al bayah, the battleground of Uhud and the Archers Hill and many more.

I actually didn’t take a lot of photos but you can view more on Sacred Caravan’s facebook group or by following this link to one brothers Flickr uploads.

Enjoy : )

Help Imam Siraj Wahaj Day - this Friday

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:15:02 +0300

‘Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the voice of Da'wah in the West was diagnosed with prostate cancer on the week of March 2009. Since then, he has been receiving treatment and needs help to pay his medical bills.

He was there when we needed him; now he needs us!’

From Imam Suhaib Webb:

“Asalamu alaykum,

Last week the Muslim youth in America pulled off an amazing fundraiser for Imam Siraj Wahhaj. While 26 K. was donated we are still well short of our goal of $125,000.

The Idea:

Muslim organizations could call for “America’s Imam Day” designating a Friday where funds could be raised for the Imam across the country! It would be awesome if others such as our brothers in the U.K got on board as well. Let us all write, call and encourage our organizations like ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA,MAP, RIC, MYNA, AlMaghrib, Seekers Guidance and Zaytuna to make this call together.

I’m willing to fly to the states for one day, give the khutbah for the Imam and fly back for my exams in Egypt. I say this brothers and sisters because of my love for the Imam. By Allah I love him and hope and pray that we can moblize for the sake of Allah to help him.

The ball’s in your court….

SDW”

TO DONATE CLICK HERE

Another Mother of the Believers By Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:25:45 +0300

The land of Chinguett, more commonly known to the English-speaking world as Mauritania, is renowned for producing great scholars, saints, and erudite women of note. Scholars traveling to Mauritania have observed that “even their women memorize vast amounts of literature.” Mauritanian women have traditionally excelled in poetry, seerah, and genealogy, but some who mastered the traditional sciences were considered scholars in their own right.

Maryam Bint Bwayba, who memorized the entire Qur’an and the basic Maliki texts, was one such Mauritanian woman worthy of note. I had the honor of knowing Maryam, a selfless and caring woman, and the noble wife of Shaykh Murabit al-Hajj, having first met both of them twenty-five years ago in a small tent in the remote spiritual community of Tuwamirat in Mauritania.

My journey to that destination began four and a half years earlier, in 1980, at a bookstore in Abu Dhabi, where I met Shaykh Abdallah Ould Siddiq of the renowned Tajakanat clan. I knew immediately he was from West Africa, given the dir’ah, the distinct West African wide robe he was wearing, as well as the turban, a rare sight in the Gulf at that time. I had met scholars from West Africa when I was in Mali two years before and was interested in studying with them, so I asked the shaykh if he knew anyone who taught the classical Maliki texts in the traditional manner. He affirmed that he himself was a teacher of that very tradition, gave me his number, and said I was welcome anytime to come to his house for lessons. That began my Islamic education in earnest.

I started to study with Shaykh Abdallah Ould Siddiq in addition to my required classes at the Islamic Institute in Al-Ain. Unlike most Mauritanian teachers, he did not emphasize rote memorization or use of the wood slate known as the lawh. I studied directly from books. After a few years and much benefit from him and two other great Maliki jurists, Shaykh Shaybani and Shaykh Bayyah Ould Salik, my education took a major turn when I met a young electrician from the Massuma clan named Yahya Ould Khati. He was of the view that while these scholars were excellent, the truly illustrious man of his age was Murabit al-Hajj, who lived in a forgotten part of Mauritania, far away from civilization and the distractions of this world. He informed me that Shaykh Abdar Rahman, the son of Murabit al-Hajj, was now in the Emirates.

Shortly after, at the house of Shaykh Bayyah, an elder of the Massuma clan who had taken me under his wing and from whom I benefited greatly in my studies, I met Shaykh Abdar Rahman. Upon meeting him, I was struck by the otherworldliness of his presence, which is not unusual for Mauritanian scholars, but it was clearly pronounced in him. I remember thinking, “If this is the son, I must meet the father.” I also began studying with his close friend and companion, Shaykh Hamid, after I helped him get settled and, with the help of Shaykh Bashir Shaqfah, another of my teachers and at that time the head of the Office of Endowments at Al-Ain, secure a position of imam for him in the main mosque of Al-Ain, where I was serving as a muezzin.

From Shaykh Hamid, I learned about the merits of memorization. Although I had studied several texts, and my Arabic was quite fluent by this time, Shaykh Hamid was adamant that without rote memorization, one was dependent upon books and did not really possess knowledge within oneself. Mauritanians, he told me, distinguish between daylight scholars and nighttime scholars. A daytime scholar needs light to read books to access knowledge, but a nighttime scholar can access that knowledge when the lights are out, through the strength of his memory and the retention of knowledge. Hence, he felt that I should start over.

I had studied Ibn Ashir, al-Risalah, and sections of Aqrab al-masalik privately; I had studied the early editions of al-Fiqh al-Maliki fi thawbihi al-jadid, which were used at the Institute; and I had studied hadith with Shaykh Ahmad Badawi, one of the great hadith scholars of Sudan. But I had put little to memory other than what I naturally retained. Shaykh Hamid procured a slate for me and began teaching me the basics again, but with rote memorization. It was humbling, but edifying, to see how this tradition has been carried on throughout the ages with these time-tested models.

I then became an imam in a small mosque near the large one, and was leading prayer for a community of mostly Afghan workers, who were sending their earnings back home to support families and the war effort against the Russians, who had invaded Afghanistan four years earlier.

It was then that I began to have dreams in which I saw a great man, whom I learned later was Murabit al-Hajj. One of those dreams included an elderly woman whom I had also never seen before.

**** ***** ****

I decided to leave my very comfortable and enjoyable life in the Emirates in 1984 and headed towards Mauritania via Algeria, where I planned on spending some months memorizing the Qur’an. I made this decision even though I was warned that there was a draught in Mauritania and living conditions were extremely harsh. Somehow, I felt compelled to go and nothing could deter me.

After spending some months with Sidi Bou Said at his madrassa in Tizi, Algeria, I traveled on to Tunisia, obtained a visa to Mauritania, and took a flight to Nouakchott, which lies on the Atlantic coast of the Sahara. I arrived in that capital city, with its extremely primitive conditions and vast slums that surrounded a small city center, with no addresses and no specific plan, other than to find Murabit al-Hajj.

I went to the marketplace and asked around if there was anyone from the Massuma clan, and was directed to a small shop where I met Abdi Salim, a very friendly man who was from the same branch of Massuma as my teacher, Shaykh Hamid. When I told Abdi Salim I wanted to find Murabit al-Hajj and study with him, his face lit up and he wholeheartedly endorsed the idea. He then took me to someone from Mukhtar al-Habib, the branch of the Massuma clan that Murabit al-Hajj was from, and they took me to the house of Mawlay al-Maqari al-Massumi, a small place made from tea boxes with open sewage in the back. Similar houses were all around, as far as the eye could see. Mawlay al-Maqari al-Massumi was one of the most hospitable and welcoming people I had ever met; I later learned he was loved by all who knew him. I stayed with him and his family for several days.

Providentially, Shaykh Abdar Rahman soon arrived from the Emirates to visit his mother and father and, not surprisingly, it was his wont to stay with Mawlay al-Maqari whenever in the capital. He would accompany me to his family’s school in Tuwamirat, but the journey required camels. A message was sent to the encampment of Murabit al-Hajj via the government radio announcements, which was how people in the capital communicated with the nomads in the desert. The message stated that Shaykh Abdar Rahman and Hamza Abdal Wahid (my given name when I converted and used at that time) would be arriving in the town of Kamur on such-and-such a date and were in need of camels there to take them to their village, Tuwamirat. We then set out on a rather unpleasant journey in a truck to Kamur, which was several hundred kilometers inland into the Sahara desert. The road at that time ended at Bou Talamit, and two-thirds of it was simply rough desert track worn down over time by loaded trucks and jeeps. It was the bumpiest, dirtiest, and most difficult road journey I had ever taken in my life.

After two grueling days, we arrived in a beautiful town known as Geru, which at the time had no technology, and the buildings there were all a lovely adobe. Hundreds of students studied at seven madrassas, called mahdhara in Geru. At night, with the exception of a few flashlights, candles, and kerosene lamps, all was dark so the Sahara night sky could be seen in all its stellar glory. The entire town was filled with the soothing sounds of the recitation of Qur’an and other texts.

We stayed with Shaykh Khatri, the brother of Murabit al-Hajj’s wife, Maryam, and a cousin of Murabit al-Hajj. While in Geru, I came to know a great saint and scholar, Sidi Minnu, who was already an old man at the time. He memorized all of the Hisn al-Hasin of Imam al-Jazari and recited it everyday. His other time was spent in praying for the entire Ummah. Once, we were sitting on the sand and he picked some up with his hand and said to me, “Never be far away from the earth, for this is our mother.” He then said something that struck me to the core: “I have never regretted anything in my entire life, nor have I ever wished for anything that I did not or could not have, but right now I wish that I was a young man so that I could accompany you on this great journey of yours to seek knowledge for the sake of God.”

After a few days, we set out for Kamur, which we had passed on our way to Geru, and then took camels and set out for Murabit al-Hajj; by nightfall we arrived in Galaga, a valley with a large lake that rises and lowers with the rainfall and the seasons. After breakfast the next morning, we set out for the upper region some miles from where Murabit al-Hajj’s clan was encamped.

*** *** ***

As we came into Tuwamirat, I was completely overwhelmed by its ethereal quality. It was the quintessential place that time forgot. The entire scene reminded me of something out of the Old Testament. Many of the people had never seen a white person before and the younger people had only heard about the French occupation, but never seen French people or other foreigners for that matter. I entered the tent of Murabit al-Hajj.

My eyes fell upon the most noble and majestic person I have ever seen in my life. He called me over, put his hand on my shoulder, welcomed me warmly, and then asked me, “Is it like the dream?” I burst into a flood of tears. I had indeed experienced a dream with him that was very similar to our actual meeting. He then went back to teaching. I was given a drink, and some of the students began to massage me, which I most appreciated, as my entire body ached from the difficult journey.

Murabit al-Hajj insisted that I stay with him in his tent and sleep next to him. I soon came to know his extraordinary wife, Maryam Bint Bwayba. Completely attentive to my needs, she took care to see that I was comfortable, and provided me with a running commentary on the place and its people. Maryam was one of the most selfless people I have ever met. She spent most mornings with her leather milk container called a jaffafah, which she used to make buttermilk for her family, for the poorer students, and for the seemingly endless stream of guests that visited. She surrounded herself with wooden bowls to dispense the morning and evening milk collected from the cows, and she knew which cows were producing more milk and which ones were not. She was ably assisted in her domestic chores by her faithful and selfless servant, Qabula, who had been with her since childhood and who smiled all the time.

During my time there, I came to know Maryam as this noble and joyful woman, especially her nurturing nature. At one point, I became severely ill from the endemic malarial fevers in Mauritania, and Maryam took motherly care of me. One day I remarked that I was used to eating vegetables and that their diet of milk and couscous, with some cooked dried meat, was hard on me. Maryam immediately began giving me dates everyday before the meal and also asked some of the Harateen to plant carrots for me. Soon, she began preparing small cooked carrots and serving them with my meals.

Maryam was always in a state of remembrance of God. Her full name was Maryam Bint Muhammad al-Amin Ould Muhammad Ahmad Bwayba. At an early age, she married Sidi Muhammad Bin Salik Ould Fahfu al-Amsami, known as Murabit al-Hajj Fahfu. She was an extraordinary woman of great merit and virtue and was noted for her more than sixty years of service to the students of the Islamic College of Tuwamirat. Maryam grew up during a time of great hardship in Mauritania and told me that people were so poor that many simply covered their nakedness with leaves. Her father, Muhammad al-Amin, who was known as Lamana, was a scholar as well as a skilled horseman and expert marksman. Maryam always displayed the greatest pride in her father and related to me his many exploits. I once praised her husband, and she laughed and responded, “You should have seen my father!”

Maryam was in a state of complete submission to her Lord and always encouraged people to study. Her world was that of a small tribal province, but her spirit was truly universal. When she married Murabit al-Hajj, he was already recognized for his scholarship, mastery of Arabic, and complete disengagement from worldly matters. After he had married Maryam, her father said to him, “You might want to think about the means to a good livelihood now that you are married,” to which Murabit al-Hajj replied, “The means of this world are as multitudinous as the night stars to me, but I would not like to sully my soul with their pursuit.”

In their early years, Maryam studied several texts with her husband. She memorized the entire Qur’an in addition to the basic Maliki texts. Furthermore, she studied with him the entire al-Wadih al-Mubeen of Sidi Abdal-Qadir Ould Muhammad Salim with its hundreds of lines on matters of creed. She also read his extensive commentary, Bughyat al-Raghibeen ‘ala al-Wadih al-Mubeen, which she kept at her side for many years. She knew the text and its meaning by heart and was extremely adept in matters of creed. Maryam also memorized and practiced Imam al-Nawawi’s book of prayers and supplications known as al-Adhkar.

Those who have had the blessing of spending time in Tuwamirat would always see her sitting under her tent or the lumbar surrounded by her pots and milk bowls and her prayer beads. When new students arrived, she always asked about them, their parents, brothers, and sisters, and where they came from. She would laugh and say she had “luqba,” a Mauritanian colloquialism for “curiosity,” but in reality she delighted in the students and desired to make them feel at home. Incredible as it sounds, she never forgot anyone who had studied at the school and when they visited years later, she would call out their names and ask about their family members, name by name! When I first arrived, she had asked the names of all of my family members, which, given that they were Christian names, would have been harder for her to remember than Mauritanian names. But when I returned many years later, she asked about each of the members of my family, whose names I had mentioned to her only once. “Kayfa Elizabeth? Kayfa David? Kayfa John? Kayfa Troy? Kayfa Mariah?” I was completely stunned. I remarked to her that in another time she would have been a great muhaddith scholar, with her uncanny ability to recall names.

*** *** ***

I first saw Maryam in one of the dreams I had in 1983 in the Emirates, a year before I actually met her. One day, I was sitting in the tent studying with Murabit al-Hajj, when I saw her in the background and realized she was the person in my dreams.

The last time I saw Maryam, her world had changed considerably in her lifetime, but there was something unchanging about her. Despite the fashionable colored milhafahs that the women of the clan began to wear, she clung to the old-fashioned ways of her ancestors, and wore the traditional blue-dyed nilah that left a ghostly shade of indigo on the skin of the women, as well as the men who wore turbans made of the same material. And regardless of the outward difficulties of her life, she remained one of the most happy and joyful people I have ever known.

Maryam had always hoped to make the pilgrimage but felt obliged to first take care of her responsibilities, to her family and the school that she felt were binding upon her. She was never in the limelight, but the blue image of her milhafa could be seen in the background of meetings when dignitaries and visitors would come and pay their respects to Murabit al-Hajj, always in service to all. Once, when a group of Western students visited, one of the women asked Murabit al-Hajj for his prayers and he replied that they should also ask Maryam for her supplication as her prayers were ones that, insha’ Allah, God listened to and would answer. Although she was not famous like her husband, nor noted for any distinguished achievements, she was a luminary in her own right. Her son once told me, “She was one of the hidden ones, far more learned and accomplished than the people who knew her or lived with her realized.” I couldn’t agree more. When I told her brother, Khatry, she was like a mother to me, he replied, “She was a mother to all the believers.” No words could be more befitting.

Maryam Bint Bwayba, the beloved wife of the great scholar and teacher Murabit al-Hajj Ould Fahfu, and beloved selfless servant of the students of sacred knowledge at the mahdhara of Murabit al-Hajj, died after a brief but intense illness at approximately six in the evening on Sunday, the 15th of Rabi al-Thani, 1430 ah. In her honor, we are establishing the Maryam Bin Bwayba Scholarship Fund for Women, with all proceeds to be used for scholarships for qualified women in financial need attending Zaytuna’s educational programs. Donations should be sent to Zaytuna Institute, 2070 Allston Way, Suite 300, Berkeley, California, 94704, and the Memo line of checks should be marked as “Maryam Bint Bwayba Scholarship Fund.” For those who wish to send donations to the family of Murabit al-Hajj, please call Zaytuna at 510.549.3454.

Zaytuna Institute © 1996-2008

Praise of Shaykh ‘Abd Allah ibn Bayyah (b. 1935) By Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī (b. 1926) (May Allah preserve them both)

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 22:37:33 +0300

Indeed it is from God’s blessings upon a person that they be acquainted with great people—those who have their scholarly importance, their religious importance, and their intellectual (fikrī), spiritual (sulūkī), and reformist (islāhī) importance. This is a blessing that deserves gratitude, and I believe that among the favours of God (Most High) upon me, and from His beneficence towards me, is that I know one of the unique scholars the like of whom time is rarely generous [in bringing forward].

Indeed he is none other than the supremely erudite (al-‘allāma) Shaykh ‘Abd Allah (SWT) ibn Bayyah, whose renown in knowledge and eminence has reached the horizons, and whom [people] far and near have come to know. I have known him for many years in the context of conferences and councils in which he participated with his knowledge, ideas, and efforts.

The reality is that the more I have come closer to him and got to know him better, the more I have loved him and [the more] he has risen in my estimation. Rarely does a person combine both love and esteem for an individual: there are people whom one esteems and respects but does not love, and there are those whom one loves and has a strong emotional [attachment] to, but one does not esteem them and respect them.

As for those for whom one combines [both] love and esteem, they are few [in number], and among these few is the Shaykh ‘Abd Allah (SWT) ibn Bayyah, who God has given numerous excellent qualities. He combines [religious] conservatism and liberalism: he is a conservative individual, but he is not closed; and he is an individual who facilitates, but he is not lax. He is a Mālikī: he has memorized the fiqh of the Mālikīs, their texts (mutūn), their commentaries (shurūh), their supercommentaries (hawāshī), and their various poetic codifications of disciplines (manzūmāt), but he is also supremely erudite in fiqh in general, and comparative fiqh. He is Salafī in creed, but he is also a Sūfī, with spiritual inclinations, without monasticism, just as our Shaykh Abū al-Hasan al-Nadwī said that he adopts Sūfism on the basis that it is spirituality, and purification for the soul, and connection with God, Blessed and Exalted is He. Shaykh ‘Abd Allah (SWT) ibn Bayyah is [thus] between Salafism and Sūfism.

He also combines what people in our age call purity of origin (asāla), and being contemporary (mu‘āsara), for he is a man of authenticity, connected to the [Islamic intellectual] heritage, cognizant of it, well aware of its various treasures in fiqh, exegesis, hadīth, history, literature, and other [disciplines], but he is [at the same time] not distracted from the [present] time, for he lives the time, its problems, its various currents, unlike many of our scholars who live alone in the past, and do not know anything about the present, while Shaykh Ibn Bayyah knows the past, lives with the present, and peers into the future.

Perhaps it is his knowledge of the French language, on the one hand, and his assuming [positions] of great responsibility in his country—more than once he was a minister, and more than once he bore great responsibilities—perhaps all of this has made him open up to the age and look to it with an eye, and look to the [intellectual] heritage with the other eye. For this reason he has concerned himself with the aspects of Islam pertaining to reform and renewal, and the necessity of changing the umma to that which is more blessed and better, by means of changing its thoughts, changing its learning, changing its aspirations, or what the Qur’an has expressed as “souls”: “Indeed God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own souls” [13:11].

The reality is that the excellent qualities of Shaykh ‘Abd Allah (SWT) ibn Bayyah are [so] many [that] this place does not have the room for [their enunciation], and the [aforementioned comments] are simply passing thoughts by means of which I express the eminence of the Shaykh, and express my love for him; and [they are also] a prayer that God brings us together with him, for I believe he is one of the righteous (sālihūn), one of the doers of good, God willing, and I say, as Imam al-Shāfi‘ī has said:

I love the righteous, and I am not one of them;

Perhaps through them I will attain intercession.

And I dislike the one whose wares are sins

Even though I am equal to them in wares

I ask God, Glory be to Him and be He Exalted, to shower blessings upon the life of Shaykh ‘Abd Allah (SWT) ibn Bayyah, benefit the umma through him, benefit the religion, the religious, Islam, and the Muslims through him, and bless all his family and progeny, and that He raises us [in the Hereafter] together, with those [around] the Messenger of God, may God bless him and give him peace, with “Prophets, the veracious (siddīqīn), the martyrs, and the righteous (sālihīn), and how blessed they are as companions! [4:69]”

Translated from http://www.binbayyah.net/ by Usaama al-Azami for suhaibwebb.com

www.suhaibwebb.com

A retreat to the mountains of Granada with Al Ghazali’s Ihya taught by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and Shaykh Yahya Rhodus

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:56:09 +0300

Al-Ghazali Weekend 2009 with Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad Winters and Sidi Yahya Rhodus

The focus this year will be Imam Al-Ghazalis books 35-38 of the Ihya which are:

The Book of Divine Unity and Reliance on Him

The Book of Love, Yearning, Intimacy and Good-Pleasure

The Book of Intention, Sincerity and Honesty

The Book of Vigilance and Watching the Self

Some filming will be done during the 27th and 28th June to create a series of lectures on the Ihya. The proceeds from these DVDs will go towards a mosque construction programme in Cambridge. The course itself will begin on Saturday 27th and finish Monday the 30th. Filming will take place during the weekend only.

Course dates Friday 26th June to Tuesday 30th June

Arrival date Friday 26th June

Course starts Saturday 27th June

Course finishes Monday 29th June

Departure date Tuesday 30th June

Course Costs (per person per course)

260 euros for a double ensuite

240 euros for a shared apartment, 3 bedrooms, 1 spacious bathroom and living area

200 euros for bedroom with bathroom immediately outside (to be shared by one other room only)

160 euros for dormitory style accommodation

The above prices are for accommodation, all meals and all tuition. The prices do not include airplane tickets or transport costs.

Please email mail@al-madrasa.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it to reserve your place. Ensuite bedrooms are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment.

For more information visit: www.al-madrasa.com

To see photos of the retreat centre click here

Technical issues solved!

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:04:12 +0300

I had a few technical issues today but alhamdulillah it’s all sorted now so ‘Hmmm Satay...’ and the rest of the blog can now be viewed again.

Click here to go straight to the latest post ‘Hmmm Satay...’

Hmmm Satay...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:36:38 +0300

Whilst I’m a fan of the Satay House in London and that other little Malaysian place on Edgware Road that I can’t remember the name of, there really is nothing like the real thing! First you need to start your journey off in Malaysia Airlines Business class where you’re served Satay as good as a restaurant and then you need to eat your way around Malaysia sampling the delights of not just satay but ‘pull tea’, ‘chicken rice’ and many other delights that Malaysia has to offer.

Okay, so I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t usually travel business class but when your luggage is 22kg over the maximum, it actually works out cheaper to upgrade than to pay the excess luggage fee! But, after my wonderful experience with Malaysia

Curing Extremism by Imam Zaid Shakir, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf & Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:13:07 +0300

‘3 Voices one message: In this three part lecture series Imam Zaid Shakir, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf diagnose and offer curative solutions to one of the most pressing problems we face as a globalized human society.... religious extremism.

Is Islam intrinsically extreme? Who's to blame? What is the role that the individual, the community and the society at large can play in combating and preventing religious extremism?

Find the answers to these essential questions and more in this critical series.’

This is a short 4 minute introduction, the full version can be downloaded at www.tinyurl.com/curingextremism

Umrah with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:46:13 +0300

Lectures / classes and visits to sacred sites in Mecca and Medina with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: May 2009

For more details go to Sacred Caravan