Timeless wisdom is only appreciated by humans that ascend the limitations of their time.

(6) The Modern: Independence

Despite the continued emphasis on “human autonomy”, modern humans are debilitated by their own handiworks. Navigation apps have switched off our sense of direction, autocorrection have removed our sense of spelling and grammar, emojis have reduced our complex feelings to a bundle of ‘inanimate symbols’.

This episode of a “successive removal of our human capabilities” was preceded by another where we lost our ability to use the pens, thanks to physical and then virtually keyboard. Our fingers’ ability to recognise the shape of letters, has been taken away in favour of buttons (that would alert us to a hit) and then a flat un-recognizable virtual surface.

The ballpoint was an episode in that too. In Arabic, it is called “dry pen” and, while it refers to its mechanism, the word is very expressive of its nature, it is dry and drying. It cuts us from ‘ink’ and ‘flow’ that have always been linked with tradition and writing. The fountain pen, on the other side, refers to the mood of writing and flowing where ideas are inspired from the fountain of knowledge and flow from a mind to another.

Equally, the Arabic word for “ink” is مِداد very connected to مَدَد or divine support and continuity. This carries a lot inside it; just for you (dear reader) to reflect on.

Modern man’s claim of ‘autonomy’ is just a lie that we have believed in for we have become “subjects” to our own making rather than servants of God. Only when we return to that original position, we can say we are free.

قال ابن نباته المصري ممثلا مسألة الدور:
مسألة الدور جرت * بيني وبين من أحب
لولا مشيبي ما جفا * لولا جفاه لم أشب

Ibn Nabatah of Egypt expressed the logical issue of circularity (a rational impossibility) in verse (with some romantic hint) saying;

The circularity issue occured,
Between me and the one I love
Were it not for my grey hair he wouldn’t have turned away
And were not for his turning away, my hair wouldn’t have turned grey

To all our brothers and sisters across the world!

Eid Mubarak. May Allah, Who has granted tawfīq to complete the month, bless us by accepting it and even more by making it a real change in our life and relationship with Him and His creation. May it be an opening at all levels and a closure to the doors of forgetfulness and discomfort. May you and your loved ones have a blessed day and days ahead. Ameen

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This course will help you better comprehend the concept of covenant in the Qur'an as well as understand what exactly the covenant we as Muslims have with our Creator and what we need to do to make sure we are fulfilling our role.

This is a great opportunity to empower your Ramadan as well as deepen your appreciation of the Quran. To sign up or find out more please click the link below.

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حقا رقى فوق السما * وله الفخار قد انتمى
وتشرفت تلك الجهات بمشهدٍ إذ قُدّما
قِدما أقروا أنهم تبعوا النبي الخاتما
بالقدس قد أم الجميع وعهده قد أُبرما
وأطاعهُ هذا البراق و حلَّ في ذاك الحمى
جبريل قدمه و موسى * شوقهُ قد أُضرما
لما رآه قد ارتقي * للسدرة العليا وما
أعطاه مولاه الكريم وما حباه وأنعما
وبذاك حق لنا الهنا فالحمد للذ تمما
وكتبتها وأنا ابن سعد للنبي معظما
وبجاهه متوسلا، ومصليا ومسلّما

كل عام وأنتم بخير
وكتب/ أحمد سعد الأزهري

The Underlying Feature of the Modern (3)

While speed strips us of our sense of time, its impactful presence in our relationship with space is evident. With speed, concepts like travel by day or night have been completely transformed. Our sense of distance has irreversibly changed too. We measure distance by the speed of trains, cars and planes…and even spaceships. The slow mode of a horse ride moved from being ‘an essential’ to becoming ‘a luxury’ or for the best part of the population of the urbanised world, ‘a redundancy’.

We had to create new roads called ‘motorways’ for the motorcars and motorcycles which avoid little villages, now sided to countryside and shunned from ‘spaces’ that have become the dominion for ‘speed’, the new idol of modernity. On motorways or highways - as some like to call them - service based stops (full of commercialised services and commodified rests) have replaced the old modes of travelling through villages and cities, resting there and making new friends and exploring new ways of life and thinking. Think about travel in the pre-motor world where travelers made sure to take calculated rests from one village to another and sometimes making a life and settling for some time in the resting place, now becoming a destination. Ibn Battūta can be a good example of that. Speed’s impact on our sense of distance made the long seem short and deprived us from observing details of societies and communities that exist in between our origination and our destination. In that, we miss new friendships, experiences and many other opportunities.

If our sense of geography has become deformed, our sense of typography is even more deformed and I will discuss this in my next post.

This is Nadhm of Ashmawiyyah by Shaykh `Uthman b. Sanad al-Wā’ili al-Basri (may Allah bless his soul) in the Maliki Madhhab.

https://youtu.be/UUpTH0SYnIc?si=w3eIiGDGlwzzobpA

YouTube

الدرة الثمينة في مذهب عالم المدينة { نظم متن العشماوية} في المذهب المالكي | الراسخون

الدرة الثمينة في مذهب عالم المدينة { نظم متن العشماوية} نظم الشيخ عثمان بن سند الوائلي الفيلكاوي بصوت خالد بن يوسف الجهيم