Marc Shaw, a history student at UCL, originally from Essex explains that as he is a vegetarian, he went for the cheapest non-leather shoes he could find… but adds: “That said I am being kind of a hypocrite as I’m wearing a leather jacket, but it’s second-hand so it’s not too bad. I bought it in Covent Garden from a vintage shop and I found some weird pills in the pocket. I don’t know if it was owned by a drug dealer or something before, but I got rid of those sharpish as it was pretty scary!” The 23-year-old is also wearing a vintage striped shirt teamed with black Topman skinny jeans and a pair of shades from Camden market. The student who now lives in the area, said: “I was slightly overwhelmed moving to London for my first year of study… you think it’s going to be this super cool place, and it is quite cool, but a tad overrated.

chrispiascik.com/news

Reasons why I haven't really been posting much:

1. I have a disliking for my camera, so I need to save up

2. It seems that most of the really nice pictures on Flickr (pretty much all Explored) aren't really raw images. (Call me a hypocrite because of the last picture, blah blah blah). But I'm serious! There's so much photoshopping that people can barely call themselves a "photographer".

3. It's not like anybody missed me.

A couple years ago Workcycles built a series of Fr8 bikes for Danish pharmaceuticals firm Novo Nordisk, arranged by then DK distributor Basikeli. Baiskikeli then sold similarly equipped Fr8's for several other firms but then the orders mysteriously stopped.

 

It turned out that Baisikeli had copied our bike to the millimeter, making just just enough cosmetic changes to evade legal problems and has them made very crudely and with lower spec components. Please do not confuse their unauthorized, very inferior... and actually more expensive bike with the original Fr8!

 

More about it here:

www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2011/03/31/inspirations-and-hypoc...

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.

 

All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

 

We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’

 

1984 George Orwell

This was a nice friendly kid who didn't have a mean bone in his body who made the horrid mistake of being caught by Pennsylvania state troopers with a few ounces of weed. Long story to short the cops tore his car down to a pile of scrap and he was charged with felony possession and did a couple of years in a state prison filled with hardened criminals were he was repeatedly beaten and raped. When he came out traumatized and stigmatized with a felony conviction and less than a year later he took his life in despair. For those of you who are too young or were born after the sixties or seventies it was still a time were people were given very serious hard time for what would be considered a minor drug offense today. I knew one guy spent weeks in the hellhole of Riker's Island until his friends scrapped the money for bail for possession of a dime bag of weed. Down in the southern states in those days forget about it. I remember there was one horror story that made the national news during the early seventies were some unlucky hippie got caught for one joint and it was in one of those hardcore redneck states was given a twenty year sentence. I knew way too many people from those days whose lives were badly disrupted or outright ruined from this country's insane and failed war on drugs. One of most hypocritical aspects of this is I knew several people who would later became cops that blew weed, tripped acid and snorted coke when they were teenagers or in their early twenties. In more recent years I served on grand jury and about 2/3 of the cases were for petty drug sales and got into some very heated arguments with fellow jurors over some of those cases.

Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

A couple years ago Workcycles built a series of Fr8 bikes for Danish pharmaceuticals firm Novo Nordisk, arranged by then DK distributor Basikeli. Baiskikeli then sold similarly equipped Fr8's for several other firms but then the orders mysteriously stopped.

 

It turned out that Baisikeli had copied our bike to the millimeter, making just just enough cosmetic changes to evade legal problems and has them made very crudely and with lower spec components. Please do not confuse their unauthorized, very inferior... and actually more expensive bike with the original Fr8!

 

More about it here:

www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2011/03/31/inspirations-and-hypoc...

Mary: '' Ryan dear, I wish you would remember to bring sunscreen as well as you do that radio, you are always outdoors''

 

Ryan: ''I guess you're right, I cant believe I have been doing the safety dance by the pool without it!!! Im such a hypocrite!''

 

Mary: ''Honestly Ryan, do you ever take anything seriously?''

 

Ryan: ''Not really haha! Dont worry so much, love ya sis, im on my way to see Roy's band jam, talk to you later!''

Where is sensible action, & my insanity whence?

See the difference, it is from where to whence.

From the church & hypocritical vestments, I take offence

Where is the abode of the Magi, & sweet wine whence?

For dervishes, piety and sensibility make no sense

Where is sermon and hymn, & the violin’s music whence.

Upon seeing our friend, our foes put up their defense

Where is a dead lantern, & the candle of the sun whence?

My eye-liner is the dust of your door and fence

Where shall I go, tell me, you command me whence?

Take your focus from your chin to the trap on the path hence,

Where to O heart, in such hurry you go whence?

May his memory of union be happy and intense

Where are your amorous gestures, & your reproach whence?

Make not restlessness & insomnia, Hafiz’s sentence

What is rest, which is patience, and sleep whence?

Now this, for me, is a serious award and I'll have to explain my feelings about love and Flickr and feelings. Right now, I need to think about it for a while, because it's a very complicated subject.

 

To me friendship mean something very special. It means I love you and I love and accept everything about you. That means I can do anything nice for you I want to. I can fave, comment and award until the cows come home and I can do it without being insincere or a hypocrital S-B.

 

Quite often with people I really love, I decide to give them a certain number of faves and awards and simply go in chronological order down their photostreams. This is truly sincere, because I love them and love everything they do and everything about them. I love them just the way they are.

 

Now, on the other hand if I want to ENJOY your work. I have to get all the manipulation away from my right brain and move from image to image, just soaking it in and letting it speak to me through that hemisphere.

 

When images are speaking to me I can't be bothered with with that left side brain-crap of measuring distances from the edge of the image to the center of interest, or checking the objects within the composition for multiplicity of size or any of the other b-llsh-t involved in art appreciation.

 

With Flickrfriends, we can't always see them close up, hear the tone of their voice or watch them walk, so we incept a series of feelings about them by their comments, their choice of subject matter, how they respond to that subject matter and then if they send us Emails and we ciberchat a bit we have a deep understanding of this friend.

 

We don't know everything about everyone on Flickr, but we also don't know everything about the people we work with, live with or go to church with. The greatest love out there is the love that when you have told them everything you've ever done, thought, every secret of your mind and heart, is the love that loves you just as your are.

 

Many of us have friends on Flickr and the internet we trust with things we don't even tell our families. That's the nature of bonding, and I'm quite happy with it. You need to watch your -ss, because you can get burned. I can tell you some hilarious stories about interactions on the internet that turned into gimme, gimme, gimmies ... from clandestine romantic adventures to outright cash money. I've had an offer to "take care of me" if I would dump Sherry. I figure Sherry would have dumped me a long time ago, if I were able to dump her.

 

Sometimes the bonding is so tight on the internet, we let it go much too far before we cut it off....BUT ....

 

There are so few of those experiences, they shouldn't be allowed to make us non-responsive to love. The Greeks had a word for it, and for the word "love" they had a dozen or so words. Agape is that word I think of most often when I think of my love for people and my love for life itself. If I say I love Dave, eyebrows will be raised and perhaps a timid question, "Are you, uh ......?" Now, that's none of your damned business unless I want to make it my business.

 

Rest assured, I LOVE Sherry and have for nearly 40 years. But with Agape I love sunnyvaledave, Tman, Deb, Toni, Dharmensingh, Valter, Olga, Ines, la Garota Carioca, Ginny, Flor, Bert, Randy and to be fair I'd have to list every name on my contact list. You'd get drousy and go to sleep and miss the whole point.

 

So, that's what my funny awards are all about. We have a special love for each other and this is one silly way to express it.

 

Get yourself some love in your heart. Love will keep you happy and smiling and will help you maintain physical health; just close your eyes and think about all the beautiful creatures and people on this earth and think about them loving each other and doing things for each other; think of hugs and kisses and even cop a feel or two for that matter and then when you open your eyes you should have a smile on your face.

 

Hate which is the opposite of love with eat through you like a cancer; it will kill you physically and spiritually with the slowest death a person can have. You need to watch out for it everywhere. All the hate ain't in bars and all the love ain't in houses of worship. So, like the hippies of old I say with a grin....

 

HEY, I LOVE YOU MAN! (and I'm talking to women here too....jajaja)

The highly selective high school at 1034 N. Wells St. opened in 2000. Ex.-Gov. Bruce Rauner (R-Hypocrite) clouted his kid into the union-staffed school when he lived in Winnetka, lied about it, then donated $250,000 after she was admitted.

lareviewofbooks.org/article/arendt-matters-revisiting-ori...

 

“What the unmaskers too often forget is that every one of us wears a mask that conceals a dark cabinet of hidden vices behind our public personas. A world populated by people unmasked, their secrets exposed, would be one where all immorality is shameless and all claims to respectability are hypocritical. But shame and hypocrisy are essential human drives. The rage against hypocrisy is a rage against civilized life. The danger in totalitarian movements is that the elite’s justified moral disgust at hypocrisy is translated into a carnival of destruction that is just so much fun.” ―Roger Berkowitz

Big East-German card by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 3203, 1968. Photo: Balinski.

 

East German actress Angelika Waller (1944) appeared in more than hundred films and TV productions since 1962. Her first leading role was in Das Kaninchen bin ich/The Rabbit Is Me (1965), a film which was banned in East Germany and which had its world premiere only in 1989.

 

Angelika Waller was born in 1944 in Bärwalde in der Neumark in former East-Germany (GDR). She went to school in Biesenthal in Brandenburg. As a kid, she already developed an interest in acting. From 1963 to 1966 she was trained as an actress at the youth studio of the Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), the former state television broadcaster in East Germany. To finance her studies, she worked as an ice cream seller and furniture painter. In 1965, Helene Weigel took her to the Berliner Ensemble, and since 1966 she has been a member of the theatre company. She made her stage debut in the comedy Frau Flinz by Helmut Baierl. She appeared in several Bertolt Brecht plays, including as Polly in Brecht's Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera). Her film debut is also her most famous role, which was only made public in 1989 (some sources say 1990). The film, Das Kaninchen bin ich/The Rabbit I Am (Kurt Maetzig, 1965) came in the GDR on the index . She played 19-year-old Maria Morzeck, who dreams of studying Slavistics, but her hopes are shattered when her brother, Dieter, is sent to prison after being convicted of sedition against the state. She cannot enter college, and becomes a waitress. Maria meets and falls in love with Paul Deister, an older, married man who turns out to be the judge who convicted her brother. Their affair ends when Deister is exposed as hypocritical and corrupt. After Dieter's release, he learns of his sister's relationship with the judge and assaults her. Eventually, Maria distances herself from both of them, and decides to pursue her forgotten dream. The film was based on Manfred Bieler's book Maria Morzeck or the Rabbit is Me. It was made in the aftermath of the VI Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party at January 1963, during which the establishment allowed a measure of liberalisation in the cultural life of East Germany. Although Bieler's novel was highly critical of the court system, he and Maetzig took care to include several "alibi scenes" in the film that were intended to put the state in a better light and also prevent the banning of the picture. The scenes were also meant to present the judicial reforms that took place between 1961 and 1963. The short era of liberalisation ended gradually when Leonid Brezhnev took power in the Soviet Union and introduced a conservative, more repressive course on cultural questions. Das Kaninchen bin ich, alongside eleven other films that were deemed politically damaging, was banned in 1965. In 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the picture had its world premiere and was released for public screening. It was presented at the Berlin and Locarno film festivals, and was elected as one of the 100 most important German films by a group of historians and critics in 1995.

 

Angelika Waller became a crowd favourite with her second film, the circus film Schwarze Panther/Black Panthers (Josef Mach, 1966). She played the young Martina, who, despite the opposition of her father, tames the panthers in the circus ring and, according to Filmportal.de, “she impresses, among other things, by her artistic talent.” In subsequent years, she is seen in numerous films in larger and smaller roles, repeated under the direction of Rolf Losansky. In the epic film series Osvobozhdenie/Liberation (Juri Oserow, Julius Kun, 1969-1970), Waller played Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun. The five-part film series is a dramatized account of the liberation of the Soviet Union's territory during World War II and the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany. The series was a Soviet-Polish-East German-Italian-Yugoslav co-production and according to official Soviet statistics, Liberation sold more than 400 million tickets worldwide. In the English-speaking world, a shorter, 118-minutes long version was distributed as The Great Battle. In the meanwhile the DEFA studio gave Waller only a few meaty parts, in which she could present her many acting facets, but the television offered her more possibilities. At the East-German television, she could convince in modern women's roles. She embodied emancipated women who decide for themselves in difficult situations. An extremely popular role was the title heroine - a postwoman - in the TV film Rotfuchs/Red fox (Manfred Mosblech, 1973). She also regularly played in the Krimi series Polizeiruf 110/Police Call 110 (1972-1987). Very popular was also the TV series Johann Sebastian Bach (1985) in which she played Bach's first wife. Since the 1970s, Angelika Weller worked as a teacher, and later as a professor at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst „Ernst Busch“ Berlin (Academy of Dramatic Arts Ernst Busch in Berlin). She also worked as a director and staged plays at the Berliner Arbeiter-Theater. Until 1992 she remained a member of the Berliner Ensemble. In 1990, she returned to the cinema in the post-war comedy Der Bruch/The Break-In (Frank Beyer, 1990) alongside Götz George, Rolf Hoppe and Otto Sander. Waller played a busty woman, cheated by her spouse, who clearly expresses her material wishes. Next, she appeared in two TV films, the comedy baby-sitter/Babysitter (Peter Welz, 1992) and again together with Götz George - in Tote sterben niemals aus/Dead people never die out (Jürgen Goslar, 1996). She starred in the role of Omi in the experimental film Happiness Is a Warm Gun (Thomas Imbach, 2001) on Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian. In addition, she also lent her voice as a voice actor to among others Geneviève Bujold in the TV film Anthony and Cleopatra (James Cellan Jones, 1976) and Linda Purl in the TV mini-series The last days of Pompeii (Peter R. Hunt, 1984). In 1978 she received the Art Prize of the GDR. Since 2010 Waller has been a regular guest lecturer at the Thomas Bernhard Institute for Acting and Directing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Most recently, she appeared in the cinemas as the grandmother in Rückenwind von vorn/Away You Go (Philipp Eichholtz, 2018). Angelika Waller lives in Berlin. Her daughter Susann Thiede (born 1963) also works as an actress.

 

Sources: Ines Walk (Filmzeit.de– German), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.

Continued from: www.flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/52652408863/in/datepos...

 

My Master’s Wrath and Mercy

 

رَبَّنَاۤ إِنَّكَ مَن تُدۡخِلِ ٱلنَّارَ فَقَدۡ أَخۡزَیۡتَهُۥۖ وَمَا لِلظَّـٰلِمِینَ مِنۡ أَنصَارࣲ

Our Lord! Indeed [You] whom You admit in the Fire then surely You (have) disgraced him, and not for the wrongdoers (are) any helpers.

Surah Aal e Imran, Verse 192

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Rabbana innaka man tudkhil in-naar: O my Lord! Indeed You are the one who admits into the Fire, so surely…

 

Akhzaytahu: you have disgraced him and made him (stuck) in the narrowness of imkaan, possibilities, imprisoned, punished, exiled (from Your Self), because they wronged themselves with their focus upon those other than You…

 

Wa ma lid-daalimeen: and there isn’t for the transgressors, the ones who have firmly placed themselves in the shadows of imkaan, possibilities…

 

Min ansaar: any helper who can help them and make them exit from those possibilities, except for the one who received permission from You to (be a helper) and make them exit from the possibilites from amongst the Prophets and the Auliya, Your Friends, after Your granting ability to them by the sending of the Messengers.

 

On the evening of that second day of hell, I went to the shrine near my house. I did not ask the blessed person of the shrine for anything. Not for relief, not for some understanding of how I had become so entrapped in a thought that only appeared to be nonsensical. I couldn’t even discuss it with anyone. Not that there was anyone to discuss it with! I sat there like a zombie for a while and then left. I knew in my silence, I had surrendered the matter in any case.

 

When I entered my bedroom, I saw a copy of Al Fath Ar Rabbani that I didn’t use for my regular reading. Qari Sahib had gifted it to me but it was much heavier and larger than my Urdu copy. This one had a side by side Arabic to Urdu translation on each page. I prayed the prayer of the istakhara and pried the book open to a random page.

 

Al Fath Ar Rabbani:

 

It started with a verse:

 

وَمَن یَتَّقِ ٱللَّهَ یَجۡعَل لَّهُۥ مَخۡرَجࣰا

 

And whoever fears Allah, He will make for him a way out,

 

وَیَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَیۡثُ لَا یَحۡتَسِبُۚ

 

And He will provide for him from where he doesn’t think (it is possible).

 

Surah At Talaq, Verse 2-3

 

I didn’t look up the exegesis of the verse then. Qari Sahib wasn’t there anyway and I really wanted to know what the rest of the page said.

 

“(The above verse) closed the door of depending on means. It closed the door of the wealthy and the kings and opened the door of tawakkul, reliance. The one who was mindful, the reward for him is that He, Subhanahu, will make relief for him and a way out from what is constricted for (other) people.”

 

The first two lines gave me pause. Doors had been spoken about earlier. Now Ghaus Pak (ra) was closing them. Two of the people I happened to be thinking of were in fact rich. They were wealthy. That had never played into our interaction in terms of a factor. There wasn’t a remarkable difference in our life styles. But the mention was specific for a reason. That was not lost on me.

 

I continued to read each word, carefully going back and forth from the Arabic to the Urdu.

 

“What should I do with you, say to you? You would have been heard if you called the living but he is not alive, the one you call.”

 

From the word “alive” I knew again that I had already been told, warned, alerted by all those verses about the dead and the graves, the deaf and the blind. Not once but repeatedly. Each time gently. After translating the verses I had always felt calm. Then just like that I would forget them as if they had never even appeared.

 

Then in the next line, Ghaus Pak (ra) expressed his fury at my own “prolonged” state of stubborn-ness and ignorance and he didn’t mince his words.

 

“Your heart is empty of islam, surrender and imaan, faith and iqaan, certainty. There is no Ma’rifat, Divine Recognition, for you. There is no ilm, knowledge, for you. For you are only hawas, indulging in foolish behaviour that is dangerous, therefore speaking to you is a waste.”

 

That’s when my heart first felt fear. Never ever before had Ghaus Pak (ra) said anything remotely harsh to me. Speaking to me was a waste of his time? I just stared at the words in disbelief.

 

“O hypocrites! You were contented with words about tawakkul, reliance upon Allah, with your tongues while your hearts are mushrik, worshippers of other gods in Creation. My heart is filled with anger towards you out of ardency (of love) for Allah Azzo Jal. If you are silent and you leave your rivalry (with Him), it is better, otherwise your houses will be burned.”

My heartbeat increased. I stopped reading.

 

“Your houses will be burned.” “My heart is filled with anger.” I felt scared to read the next line.

 

But then I saw that it was a prayer. For it was addressing Subhanahu and it started with the words, “Ya Haailo…”

It was a new Name of Allah for me. The word existed in Urdu as well. I knew what it mean. Haa’il, that which comes in between. I peered at the next words closely, fearfully. And it said:

 

يا حائل بين الماء المالح والعذب،

 

“Ya Haail-u! O One who protects, stops and obstructs and causes not to happen, by coming in between the water salty and fresh.”

 

The appearance of the words from the verse I had just translated was uncanny.

 

حل بيننا وبين التسخط عليك والمنازعة لك في أقدارك،

 

“Come between us and between discontentment towards You and quarreling with You about fate decreed.

 

حل بيننا وبين معاصيك ببرزخ من رحمتك

 

Come between us and between resistances to Your Authority with the barzakh, the protective partition, of Your Rahma, Mercy!

آمين

 

Ameen…”

 

Each time I moved to the Urdu the words had a pounding effect on me. To be sure of the meaning, I started looking up each Arabic word.

 

التسخط : displeasure, irritation, anger.

 

المنازعة : opposition, disagreement, conflict, dispute.

 

معاصي : resistance to authority.

 

I was left dumbfounded.

 

He continued:

 

“O listener! If you were Muttaqi, the one who is mindful and conscious of your Rabb, who raised you, Azzo Jal, Dakir, in remembrance of Him, as Muwwahidan, in union only with Him, Musheeran, pointing towards Him, before the trial, then when you are dropped into the fire of the distress that causes suffering, He will order,

 

یَـٰنَارُ كُونِی بَرۡدࣰا وَسَلَـٰمًا

 

O fire! Be coolness and safety.

 

After that it was a crazy day.

 

Ghaus Pak (ra) had exactly followed the Sunnah of the Quran. First had come the admonition, then the mercy. For an hour, I stared at the page and read it over and over. My heart sank every time I came to the words of his wrath. It was the first time in my life that my Master was angry with me.

 

I couldn’t get over it. Obedience was woven, no, kneaded into my nature. But all my efforts that had to do with changing the fabric of my nafs were superficial. Giving charity was easy. It was the expression of gratitude. As promised it brought me a serene state of peace. Why wouldn’t I do it only sincerely, in utter obedience? Why wouldn’t I increase it? I was the recipient of all its rewards which were truly indescribable in terms of rendering me a joy.

 

It was the changing of the nafs that was impossible.

 

I decided to immediately memorize the prayer. It was about to entail for me the most perfect expression of fear and sincere need for deliverance. That was something that I had never experienced before.

 

First I went back to re-read the verse of the seas salty and sweet.

 

That was the first moment I realized, I am both a Mo’min and I am a Kafir. All I could see in the state of being a Mo’min was the ill-will in my disposition. And all I could see in my state of Kufr was my carelessness and unawareness. There was no longer an “other.” In everything it was only me!

 

That was first forced the question; when am I which?

 

وَمَا یَسۡتَوِی ٱلۡبَحۡرَانِ هَـٰذَا عَذۡبࣱ فُرَاتࣱ سَاۤىِٕغࣱ شَرَابُهُۥ وَهَـٰذَا مِلۡحٌ أُجَاجࣱۖ

 

And not are alike the two seas.

This (is) fresh, sweet, pleasant its drink, and this salty (and) bitter…

Surah Fatir, Verse 12

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Then exemplified Subhanahu both of the groups, the Mo’min, the believer and the Kafir, the denier of truth, as two seas sweet and salty, so He said:

 

Wa ma yastawi al bahraane: And the two seas are not alike in advantage and benefit received from them both because…

 

Hada: the (state of the) Mo’min, the attester to the sea of Imaan, faith and Irfaan, Divine Recognition, the one upon whom is poured water from the Sea of the Essence of One-ness…

 

Adb-un: is like water fresh and delightful, giving pleasure to the mind, sweet in perfect sweetness…

 

Furat-un: sweet, it breaks the persistent feeling of ill will (to harm and avenge people) for those burning with thirst in the mirage of the world with the coolness of Yaqeen, certainty…

 

Saa’ighun sharaabuhu: easy is its drinking i.e. easy is its going down, for those set up on the nature of Tauheed, Allah Subhanahu’s One-ness.

 

Wa hada: And this (the other sea/group) i.e. the Kafir, the denier of truth or ungrateful, malevolent, unkind, is in the sea of ghaflat, unawareness and carelessness…

 

Milh-un: (is like water) salty, it does not reform a person who wants to reform themselves, whoever tastes from it, instead…

 

Ujaaj-un: (it is) burning, bitter, corrupting for the disposition. The one who tasted from it was destroyed, devastatingly, forever such that there is no rescue for him, instead…

 

Wa: the sea of bitterness, in it is still an advantage, but there is no benefit for the Kafir, the denier of truth, and the one who refuses to be guided at all.

 

The Kufr a Muslim most often imbues is that of ingratitude.

 

That is why the Quran says, it is a choice.

 

‏إِنَّا هَدَيْنَهُ ٱلسَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًۭا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا ‎

 

Indeed, We guided him to the way, whether he be grateful and whether he be ungrateful.

 

Surah Al Insaan, Verse 3

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Allah Subhanahu made the way clear completely and perfectly. Now the human being has the choice:

 

Imma shakiran: Either he becomes grateful, occupied with the thankfulness of blessings and regularity upon fulfilling the rights of Divine Kindness, giving the reins of his determination and his choice to the rightful guidance and commands so that he may become of the Arbaab il Anayate wa Sadaad, the people of blessings and correct-ness and Al Mutana’imeena, the ones granted favours in the Heaven of Raza, God’s Pleasure and Tasleem, surrender.

 

Wa imam kafoor-an: Or he can be ungrateful for blessings (bestowed), being in denial of The One bestowing the blessings, following in the footsteps of the people of ghafalat, forgetfulness and enemity (towards Allah), disputing and being corrupt until he will become of the people of Hell.

 

“The people forever burning in the fire of possibilities!”

 

The intensity of the incident first exploded upon me once I started reciting the prayer. Each time I uttered the words, I broke down so severely, it was like someone beloved to my heart had died. Each time I heard the words in my ear that I was displeased, in opposition, resistant to my Lord, to His Authority, to His Being, I would cover my ears with my hands and almost wail.

 

One word entered my life like it had never done before. I had been saying a tasbeeh of it for years but my heart hadn’t felt the plea in the words even once till now.

 

Astaghfirullah! – I seek the forgiveness of my Lord!

 

I would repeat it incessantly through my tears. But the prayer had three lines and each line had in it a word that was the proof of my state of rebellion. The experience was intense and whatever I’m writing here to express it, the truth is that it is inexpressible. It cannot be related.

 

Only when the last line came,

 

ببرزخ من رحمتك

 

…with the barzakh, the protective partition, of Your Rahma, Mercy!

 

did I feel a tranquility come over me so instantly, every other feeling preceding it absolute vanished. Obviously I became hooked to the prayer.

 

I started saying it every single time an imkaan returned, those useless, worthless, mirages of possibilities bearing my ill-will towards others who were all absent and insignificant. I would say the prayer from the beginning till the end. Each time I spanned the cycle in the same way. I cried and cried, my tears trying to drown my self.

 

Then I would despise myself for being in such abominable state. How could I have the audacity to be displeased, quarreling, resistant? I would be pausing through the entire utterance with Astaghfirullah in repetition until I would reach the part of the barzakh, the partition. Then again I would be calm like nothing had happened. Instantly!

 

وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَۖ

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورࣱ رَّحِیمُۢ

 

And seek forgiveness (of) Allah. Indeed, Allah (is) Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Surah Al Muzzammil, Verse 20

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa: And what happened to you in your past which came from the leaving of istighfar, the seeking of forgiveness…

 

Astaghfirullah: (so now it is time to) keep seeking the forgiveness of Allah, Al Mufaddil, The Bestower of Bounty, Al Mukarrim, The Granter of Forgiveness for what you did and become occupied with compliance to His Commands in the rest of your life as compensation for what has elapsed.

 

Innallaha: Indeed Allah, Al Muta’lliu, The Only One informed of your regrets and your intentions in it (that seeking of forgiveness and being in obedience of His Orders)…

 

Ghafoorun: is Forgiving, He forgives your sins from the past also…

 

Raheem-un: is All Merciful, He accepts your tauba, repentance, which is followed by your errors by His Favour and His Generosity (of which you are undeserving).

The prayer took over my life for the next few days. I didn’t speak about it to anyone. I continued my classes with Qari Sahib. In my next class, the first thing I did was look up the verse my page had opened to:

 

وَمَن یَتَّقِ ٱللَّهَ یَجۡعَل لَّهُۥ مَخۡرَجࣰا

 

And whoever is in taqwa, conscious of Allah, He will make for him a way out,

 

وَیَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَیۡثُ لَا یَحۡتَسِبُۚ

And He will provide for him from where not he thinks (it is possible).

Surah At Talaq, Verse 2-3

 

Tafseer Jilani

 

Wa: And overall…

 

Mayyattaqillah: the one who is mindful of Allah Subhanahu and safeguards his nafs, self, from His Qahr, Wrath, and Ghadab, Displeasure and keeps watch over himself from crossing the limits of His Boundaries which are drawn by Him, (the boundaries created) for the safeguarding of the rights of the people, especially the rights of spouses and practice mutual love for each other and (the one who) relies upon Him in all his states and entrusted his matters, all of them, to Him…

 

Yaj’al lahu: He, Allah Subhanahu, makes for him…

 

Makhrajan: a way out from the narrowness of possibilities which give result to different kinds of khudlan, humiliation and khusraan, losses.

 

Wa yarzaquhu: And He gives sustenance and carries towards him all of his needs that he is needful of in the subsistence of his family…

 

Min haysu la yahtasibu: i.e. from a place not expected and where he doesn’t have to wish for it to come from.

 

Narrowness of possibilities, humiliation, losses! There was a way made out, unexpected, unforeseen, “where he doesn’t have to wish it from.” With sustenance, not livelihood in currency as rizq is most often translated, but sustenance, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, not for one individual in question but the entire family.

 

For whom? The one who was in a state of consciousness of Subhanahu and who was mindful of the rights of others. The one who was watchful that His Displeasure and His Wrath did not reach him because of crossing boundaries set by Him.

Like the displeasure and wrath of my Master had reached me.

 

There was a time I used to pride myself on a relationship with my Lord that didn’t have fear in it. But two years ago, whilst writing a piece for the Urs Mubarik of Maulana Rum (ra), I had felt intense fear. I had been translating stories from the Masnavi and one of them had been about the Day of Judgement and how each person would have to fend for themselves. I had come across one of the verses alluding to that reality recently.

 

وَلَا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةࣱ وِزۡرَ أُخۡرَىٰۚ وَإِن تَدۡعُ مُثۡقَلَةٌ إِلَىٰ حِمۡلِهَا لَا یُحۡمَلۡ مِنۡهُ شَیۡءࣱ وَلَوۡ كَانَ ذَا قُرۡبَىٰۤۗ

إِنَّمَا تُنذِرُ ٱلَّذِینَ یَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّهُم بِٱلۡغَیۡبِ وَأَقَامُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَۚ وَمَن تَزَكَّىٰ فَإِنَّمَا یَتَزَكَّىٰ لِنَفۡسِهِۦۚ

وَإِلَى ٱللَّهِ ٱلۡمَصِیرُ

 

And no bearer will bear burdens (of) another.

And if a call heavily laden (soul) calls another to (carry) its load, nothing will be carried of it anything even if he be (from) near of kin.

You can only warn those who are conscious of their Lord - unseen and who establish the prayer.

And whoever purifies himself, then only he purifies for his own self.

And to Allah (is) the destination.

Surah Fatir, Verse 18

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa: And after that you recognized the Qudra, Authority, of Allah and you heard of the perfection of His Being in no need of anything, so for all of you is compulsory, the executing of His Commands and staying away from what He has forbidden because…

 

La taziru: no nafs, self, will, bear …

 

Waaziratu-n: as the bearer of burdens for being sinful, resisting authority…

 

Wizra: the burden (of) a wrong action of the nafs, self, that is indisciplined…

 

Ukhra wa in tad’u: of another and if any nafs, soul, asks…

 

Musqalatu-n: heavily laden by burdens and resisting authority…

 

Ila himliha: to share its burden i.e. someone else carry some of the burdens received by it to lessen them…

 

La yuhmal minhu shay-an: he will not carry any thing from another’s burden even if he consents to carry the burden because it is the demand of Allah’s Justice…

 

Wa lau kana: And if the person who was called to carry the burden…

 

Da qurba: is the family i.e. from the family of the asker, still all of the selves on that Day pledged (to carry) what they earned from their resistance. Each nafs will carry for its own self and no accountability will be for it except what it earned.

 

Then said Subhanahu addressing His Beloved (sending salutations and greetings upon him and his family the whole while) in the matters of His Servants:

 

Innama tundiru alladina yakhshauna Rabba-hum bil ghaib: only will you warn those who surrender to their Lord Unseen: meaning they are not beneficial, your warnings, which you recite O Akmal Ar Rusul, O Messenger who perfects Messenger-hood (salutations and greetings upon you and your family are sent by Him who made you the Nazeer) upon those wayward, with the exception of the group who are fearful of Allah and His Wrath and His Punishment, even though He is unseen for them, hearing Him, in submission to what has descended from Him, fearful of what can come from Him suddenly…

 

Wa: and along with that…

 

Aqaamus salata: they established prayer commanded, bringing closeness for them to His Essence, Al Mukhlisoona, sincere in it, Al Muttaharreena, purifying their selves from the inclination of everything except Allah Al Haqq, The Only Truth.

 

Wa man tazakka: And the one who purified himself and he cleansed his self from the leaning towards the capacity to invent a deceitful practice and whims…

 

Fa innama yatazakka li nafsihi: so indeed he only purified his nafs for his own self because the benefit of his purification returned to him, beneficial for him in his beginning and his end.

 

Wa: And after his purification from the demands of being human and the demands of animalistic desires which block from reaching of the origin of his nature…

 

Ilallahi: towards Allah, Al Munazza, The One Above all shortcomings, Al Mubarra’, The One Above all things lowly…

Al Maseer-u: (who is) The Destination i.e. Al Munqallab, the place returned to and the final abode i.e. everything returns towards Him and everyone’s purpose is Him, Subhanahu.

 

I was reminded of the exaltedness of the Chosen before Allah by the word Al Muttaharreena, the ones pure. How everyone had to purify themselves. Only one group was purified by Subhanahu Himself. That was the family of His Beloved (salutations and greetings upon him and his kin who were rendered void of any shortcoming at all).

 

The Name of Allah Subhanahu that Ghaus Pak (ra) used to begin the tafseer was an absolute favourite. I loved using it when calling out to Him in my prayers. It made no other words to follow the call even necessary. He was Al Musleh, The Reformer!

 

إِنَّمَا يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ لِيُذْهِبَ عَنكُمُ ٱلرِّجْسَ أَهْلَ ٱلْبَيْتِ وَيُطَهِّرَكُمْ تَطْهِيرًۭا

 

Indeed, Allah wishes to remove from you the impurity, (O) People (of) the House!

And to purify you (with thorough) purification.

Surah al Ahzab, Verse 33

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Innama yureedullahu: Indeed Allah Al Musleh, The Reformer of the states of His Worshipper, wishes for those who are chosen by Him, teaching them such advice and reminders which enter the heart and giving them warnings strange, unlike any other…

 

Liyudhiba ankum ar-rijsa: removing impurities from you, unattractive, loathsome by both the mind and by Jurisprudence (which can be in contradiction to one another), O…

 

Ahl e Bait: the people of the house of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), Al Majbooleen, who are raised upon honour and nobility..

 

Wa yutahhirakum: (and it is also His Will) to make you absolutely pure from the dirt of one’s nature and things that are hateful imperfections that exist from the beginning (from birth like the Shaitaan attached to each person), which are hurdles in the cleansing of personal nature (for e.g. menstruation or emissions)…

 

Tat-hirah: (to make you, O family of the Beloved, absolutely pure) in absolute purity. Such purity that nothing remains in you, any doubt of disfigurement and the disgrace of any shortcoming.

 

The verse of each person having to bear the consequences of their own actions had made me reflect on all the parallels I was drawing after Damascus of what I had thought was for that Day but seemed to exist and play out in our lives here. The nafs experiencing being Mutma’inna was the greatest of them all.

 

But no one could carry anyone’s burden in this world either.

Parents want to take on their child’s disease. Children want to give happiness to parents whose bitterness tells them that they will never come to possess it again. I have often wanted to give of the sight of one of my eyes to a cousin who lost it in both.

 

My nafs would ask me things like, “We won’t be able to drive again.”

 

I would consider it and say, “It’s ok. We don’t drive that much anyway.”

 

So on and so forth it goes. But it was not impossible. Each nafs had to pay the price for each decision in this world as well. Bear its consequence. Asking for forgiveness though, feeling repentant, held in it the promise of being forgiven. That existed for a relationship worldly or with Subhanahu. If it was sincere!

 

‏فَمَن تَابَ مِنۢ بَعْدِ ظُلْمِهِۦ وَأَصْلَحَ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَتُوبُ عَلَيْهِ ۗ

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌۭ رَّحِيمٌ

 

But whoever repented from after his wrongdoing and reforms, then indeed,

Allah will turn in forgiveness to him. Indeed, Allah (is) Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Surah Al Maidah, Verse 39

 

Tafseer e Jilani:

 

Faman ta’aba: So the one who repents and returns towards Allah mukhlis-an, sincere (in heart), khai’ifan, in fear (of reckoning)…

 

Min ba’ada dulmihi: after he transgressed boundaries set by Him …

 

Wa aslaha: and reformed themselves with repentance (by returning towards Allah with sincerity) for the corruption that they have brought upon their own nafs (self) by disobeying Allah’s Orders.

 

Fa innallaha: Indeed, Allah is Al Musleh, The Reformer of all states of His Servant.

 

Yatubu alaihi: And Allah also turns towards Him and accepts his tauba, repentance, after giving him the ability for that repentance.

 

Innallaha: Without doubt, Allah is the One who is Al Muyassir, the One who gives ease in all matter for His Servants…

 

Ghafur an: He is the Forgiver of all their sins.

 

The identity of the one repenting, Ta’ib, was defined specifically:

 

Faman ta’aba: So the one who repents and returns towards Allah sincere (in heart), in fear (of reckoning)…

Fear was requisite.

   

The Necessity of Fear

 

‏وَءَاخَرُونَ ٱعْتَرَفُوا۟ بِذُنُوبِهِمْ خَلَطُوا۟ عَمَلًۭا صَلِحًۭا وَءَاخَرَ سَيِّئًا عَسَى ٱللَّهُ أَن يَتُوبَ عَلَيْهِمْ ۚ

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌۭ رَّحِيمٌ ‎

 

And others who have acknowledged their sins.

They had mixed a deed righteous (with) other (that was) evil.

Perhaps Allah will turn (in mercy) to them.

Indeed, Allah (is) Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Surah At Tauba, Verse 102

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa: And the people of Medina…

 

Aakharoona: others, not from the ones who were Al

 

Munafiqoona, persistent upon hypocrisy, Al Muttarraneena, and who practice it, but instead…

 

A’tarifu bi dhunobihim: acknowledge their sins which happened from them from mukhalifa, being against (someone) and bughz, grudges, and ta’an, being accusatory and

istikhfaaf, showing disregard and gheebat, back-biting, when sitting alone with the hypocrites and the ones who practice hypocricy.

 

And while they have the appearance of imaan, faith, and ikhlas, sincerity, but they…

 

Khalatu amalan salihan: mixed good deeds from ikhlas, sincerity and raza, seeking the pleasure of Allah and tasleem, submission…

 

Wa: and deeds…

 

Aakhara sayyan: others which were bad and those deeds were done while in the community of the hypocrites in their discourse and being accusatory. For this reason they are downgraded from the rank of the Mukhliseen, Sincere, in all their circumstances.

 

Asallaho an yatooba alayhim: And Allah will most likely accept their repentance i.e. He gives them ability upon tauba, repentance and nidama, regret and accepts from them their repentance after they become sincere in it.

 

Innallaha: Indeed, Allah Al Musleh, The One who corrects the states of His Servants…

 

Ghafooran: is Forgiving of the one who repents and regrets from the core of the qalb, the Station of Recognition of Allah in the heart…

 

Rahim: is The One who accepts their repentance when they are excessive (trangressors).

 

In writing that piece for Maulana’s Urs Mubarik I had been crying too. That crying was out of fear for a time yet to come. It was the first time I had learnt the purpose of fear in a relationship with my Lord. It was deemed essential for a believer. In that relationship fear was an element that was necessary for it to reach completion.

 

Verses attesting to that had appeared again and again.

The way out with an all encompassing rizq from the Divine was promised for whom? The one who was in a state of consciousness of Subhanahu and who was mindful of the rights of others. The one who was watchful that His Displeasure and His Wrath did not reach him because of crossing boundaries set by Him.

 

The Message could only be received by those “who are fearful of Allah and His Wrath and His Punishment, even though He is unseen for them, hearing Him, in submission to what has descended from Him, fearful of what can come from Him suddenly…”

 

Suddenly I understood why all those hours and days and weeks, months and years I spent trying to tell the ones I loved what might save them from pain were a waste of time. Theirs as well as mine. At the end of the day they never really cared if I might become angry with them or not. It never mattered. When it did, they always listened. When it didn’t that’s when they took me for granted.

 

Like I, God forbid, had been taking my Creator and His Benevelonce for granted. Astaghfirullah!

 

After the tafseer I returned to the page to re-read the next part which I had couldn’t focus on before. The incident of the fire was about the Prophet Ibrahim (as). How it was ordered to change its intrinsic nature and become cool for him by Divine Command. It was an incident only about him and for him. Not anyone else and certainly not the ordinary.

 

“…before the trial then, when you are dropped into the fire of the distress that causes suffering, He will order,

 

یَـٰنَارُ كُونِی بَرۡدࣰا وَسَلَـٰمًا

 

O fire! Be coolness and safety.

 

I had done the tafseer from before so I looked it up.

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Ya Naaro: O Fire, created on the nature of burning and heat…

 

Kooni bardan: become cool and leave your burning and heat…

 

Wa: and don’t harm Our Friend by your coolness as well but instead become…

 

Salaman: safety i.e. a glad reception and peaceful for him and don’t harm him.

 

How did that come to happen? If

1.I was a Muttaqi, the one who is mindful and conscious of their Rabb, who raised them, Azzo Jal,

 

2.I was sincere in my Zikr because it came from the heart. Not the mind and not the tongue.

 

3.I was Muwwahidan, in union only with Him forgetting the others,

 

4.Musheeran, pointing towards Him, feeling that nearness because I was aware that I was always being seen by Him,

 

5.then BEFORE the trial, when I was dropped into the fire of the distress that causes suffering, He would order for me,

 

یَـٰنَارُ كُونِی بَرۡدࣰا وَسَلَـٰمًا

 

O fire! Be coolness and safety.

 

It was unbelievable!

 

Shaitaan has endless tactics. Ways to enter lives and ruin then. His favourite tactic though is causing ghaflat.

 

Forgetfulness of obeying Divine Commands, forgetfulness of crossing boundaries in the rights of others, forgetfulness of Allah’s remembrance.

 

Fa ansaahum dikr Allah: so he made them forget the remembrance of Allah, Al Munqad, The Only Deliverer from deviation from the straight path, Al Murshid, The Only Guide towards guidance.

 

Hence ghaflat was the deadliest weapon. It naturally created the absence of repentance. That show of remorse was his worst nightmare because he possesses intimate knowledge of the Essence of Subhanahu. He knew what repentance could deliver when expressed with sincerity.

 

The incident from the Masnavi I had translated for that piece was about the waking of Hazrat Amir Muawia (ratu) by Iblis to say his prayers:

 

“Hazrat Amir Muawia (ratu) was asleep one day when he was awakened by someone. When he looked around he saw no one. Then he noticed a man skulking behind the door. He asked, “Who are you?” The man replied, “The world knows me. I am unfortunate Iblis.”

 

Hazrat Amir Muawia (ratu) asked him sternly, “Why have you woken me?” He responded, “The time for prayer is about to pass, O Amir.”

 

Then he quoted the Prophet of God (salutations and greetings be upon the one most distinguished in the blessings of Allah and his beloved family),

 

عجلوا ألطاعات قبل الفوت

 

Complete your worship before it (its time) expires.

 

You should run to the mosque before you miss it.”

 

Hazrat Amir Muawia (ratu) retorted, “You can never want such a thing so as to guide someone. You came in like a thief and now you tell me you are a well-wisher? Why would I believe a thief and then one who claims he wants to benefit me?”

 

Here Iblis uttered the words revealing his envy:

 

‘Once I was ranked amongst the angels and walked the path of obedience willingly. I was the knower of Divine Secrets and a companion of the ones who lived near Allah’s Throne. As travelers roam wherever they might go, the love of the homeland never leaves them. Who has ever forgotten their first love?

 

I have also drunk the waters from the rivers of The Divine’s Blessings and I have also walked in the Gardens of His Pleasure. He placed His Affection upon me as well, looked upon me with Favour. When I was a child, who fed me and guided me? He did.

 

Once I too was a lover of His Entity and Essence. If then that mighty Ocean of His Generosity rejected me, so what? When the heart is separated from what it once loved, then it learns to value the days where there was union.’

 

تا دهد جان را فراقش گوشمال

جان بداند قدر ايام وصال

 

When the separation from Him softly offers reproach,

then one is nostalgic for days passed.

 

Whether it was “kufr,” refusal or whether it was “imaan,” believing, both were made by that Power and both belong to Him.”

 

Hazrat Amir Muawaia (ratu) remained unmoved. “What you say is true but you have no part in it anymore. You misguided countless before me. You are fire, yet you expect me to believe you will not burn me? Who has not been deceived by you? Because of your cunning, the nation of Nuh (as) is still burning in regret. You caused the destruction of the nation of A’ad, drowning them in punishment and grief. The people of Lut (as) were stoned because of you.

 

You have created countless trials for Mankind. Firaoun, the philosopher, scholarly, his powers to reflect were blinded by you. Abu Lahab became ignorant because of you. Abul Hikm was rendered Abu Jahal because of you. You are the ocean of deceit, people but a drop. Answer truthfully. Why would you wake me to pray?”

 

Iblis replied, “Oh man of despair! You do not accept the truth despite a 100 arguments. My fault is only that one bad deed has made me renowned for sinfulness. The truth is that if you had missed your prayer, nothing of the world would have remained of value before your eyes. Tears of pain and loss would have been shed. This crying, this softness of the heart, this intense pain and sadness, would have become the reward of a 100 prayers. I did not want you to let out the sigh that would gain you the deep appreciation of Allah.

 

Remember the man who arrived at the Mosque late and was told by the congregation leaving it that the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his family by their Lord who gazes upon them) had already said the last “salam.”

 

The young man sighed so deeply, the sound of it shook the listeners’ hearts.

 

One of them said, ‘Give me your sigh and take the blessing of my prayer.’

 

The man accepted his namaz and presented his sigh to me in turn. The sigh was filled with such humility and submission, the one who traded his prayer for it attained a higher rank and more.

 

A voice of the Unseen said to him in a dream, ‘In your trade, you have received the best of life, so rejoice!’

 

Your fear, O Amir, of The Divine and my envy are the reason I woke you. I woke you from the fear that your cries of repentance would burn me with jealousy. I am the envier of Mankind. I can never want anything good for them. In this envy I did what I did. I am the enemy of humans. How can I want that any benefit comes to them?”

 

Hazrat Amir Muawia (ratu) listened to his words then said to Iblis, “Now you have told the truth, O thief. In reality, you do not want that I humbly plead before my Lord with sincerity, that I weep tears of regret and repentance because the rank of that sighing and distress is more dear to Allah than anything else.”

 

ﮐﮧ ﺑﺮﺍﺑﺮ می ﮐﻨﺪ ﺷﺎﮦ ﻣﺠﯿﺪ

ﺍﺷﮏ ﺭﺍ ﺩﺭ ﻭﺯﻥ ﺑﺎ ﺧﻮﻥ ﺷﮩﯿﺪ

 

In equal regard holds The Almighty,

the tears of the sinner, the repentant, and the blood of the martyr.

 

Subhan Allah! The story was exquisitely narrated by Maulana (ra). Was it any wonder that the Masnavi was given the honour of being called the Quran in Farsi.

 

Shaitaan knows what Subhanahu’s Exalted Name Al Ghafoor encompasses. That His Mercy prevails over everything else. So he’s worried that the expression of regret, if it is sincere, might yield a person instant forgiveness. Of not one sin but all of them in one go!

 

Bishar Haafi (ra) was the most extraordinary example of that:

 

Hazrat Bishr Haafi (ra) spent most of his life drinking alcohol and roaming the streets in a state of intoxication. He belonged to a very wealthy family and lived alone. Twice, sometimes thrice a day, he changed his clothes, each garment finer than the next.

 

One day upon reaching his house he came upon a piece of paper lying on the road. It had the words Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim written on it. When he saw his Lord’s Name thrown on the ground like that he started weeping. Then he picked up the paper, kissed it, put some itar (perfume) on it and placed it on a high spot.

 

That night he heard the voice of Allah Al-Afuww, The Supreme Pardoner, asking him, was he not tired yet of being so distant from Him. And just like that, overnight, he became a wali (saint). He left his all of his wealth and roamed the streets barefoot. That is how he got his title, Haafi, the one who walks barefoot.

 

He was one of the few people for whom Imam Hanbal (ra) rose from his seat to greet when he entered and one of the only he walked with out to the street when he left.

When asked why he treated a faqeer, one who had given up the world and its possessions for poverty and worship, with such honour, Imam Hanbal (ra) replied, ““Jiss Rab ko mein maanta hun, Bishr Haafi uss Rab to jaante hain – the Lord that I merely believe in, Bishr Haafi knows that Lord.”

 

Subhan Allah!

 

Shaitaan takes pride in the destruction of Man, declaring it often in the Quran. He thinks he’s fulfilling his promise, keeping his word. One of those is his announcing that he will take a share of everything a Servant of God is bestowed.

Before I read the verse, I thought that was in the context of worldly possessions. Taking control of their possessions to fulfill his general mission to destroy Mankind. The usual ways of doing it via the mechanics inherent in capitalism, endless dictatorships and such. I had written about those extensively because it played out all the time. How it guaranteed his success.

 

But Ghaus Pak (ra) explained it differently.

 

لَّعَنَهُ ٱللَّهُۘ وَقَالَ لَأَتَّخِذَنَّ مِنۡ عِبَادِكَ نَصِیبࣰا مَّفۡرُوضࣰا

 

Allah cursed him and he said, "I will surely take from Your Slaves a portion appointed."

Surah An Nisa, Verse 118

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

And how can we worship him and call him and indeed…

 

La’anaullahu: cursed Him Allah Subhanahu and expelled him from the Honour of His Presence and made him leave from (the list) of His Sincere Worshippers for the sake of deceiving the worshippers for the purpose of shirrk, associating others with Allah, and tughyan, oppression…

 

Wa: and after that he became hopeless of Allah’s Clemency and in despair of His Mercy…

 

Qala la’attakhidanna min ibadika: he said, “I will surely take from Your Servants, the ones because of whom you expelled me and because of whom you made me distant (from You)…

 

Naseeban: a portion, a share complete from what You made for him…

 

Mafroudan: appointed for them from Your Tauheed, Your One-ness, and honouring You by deluding them and deceiving them so that they commit shirrk (hoping and expecting from others except You) and associate others with You and say about You what is inappropriate for Your Majesty till they will fall by this from the binding of Your Safekeeping and Your Guardianship and become deserving of Your Displeasure and Your Anger.

 

The Displeasure and Anger would be coming one way or the other. It could be felt willingly or one would be made to feel it. Either way, it was unavoidable!

 

In each tafseer I was noticing what caused Allah Subhanahu’s Anger and Displeasure. Shaitaan had robbed me of my share for my entire life. I would have remained in that robbed state performing rote rituals even if some of them were above what was obligatory. I would have remained a Mushrik till my dying day had my Master not intervened in the manner that he did.

Ghaus Pak (ra) was the perfect manifestation of the undeniable truth that ends Surah Fatiha. Only following in the footsteps of the ones bestowed inaam, Divine Favours, was the path of least resistance. Least humiliation. Least agony.

 

For as I shockingly learnt from the Quran, even the infidels of Mecca who were proud of being Mushrikeen, it was their inherited tradition, believed in Subhanahu. After Him they worshipped those self-created idols of clay that they adorned the Ka’aba with.

 

Even they, when asked, who made these heavens and the earth, replied, “Allah.”

 

وَلَىِٕن سَأَلۡتَهُم مَّنۡ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ لَیَقُولُنَّ ٱللَّهُۚ

 

And if you ask them who created the heavens and the earth? Surely, they will say, "Allah." Say, "Then do you see what you invoke from besides Allah?

Surah Az-Zumar, Verse 38

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Then pointed Subhanahu towards elaborating on His Tauheed, Divine One-ness, indicating to the Mushrikeen, the ones who associate others with Him, registering their state of beguile and allurement and being foolish, so He said, addressing His Beloved (upon whom and whose family He sends greetings and salutations continuously):

 

Wa la’in sa’altahum: And if you ask them, O Akmal Ar Rusul, Messenger who perfects the Messengerhood (Allah sends greetings and salutations upon you and your family since always), the disbelievers of the Quresh…

 

Man khalaqas samawaati wal ard: who created the Heavens and the Earth i.e. the highest in creation and the lowest in creation and what is between them from their mixing and who has brought them into existence and who has constructed in them and who has made to appear what is in them from the natural wonders and peculiarities…

 

Layaqoolunna: so they say, for sure…

 

Allah: Al Muttafarrid, The Only One who creates and invents, Al Muttwaahid, The One All Alone in His being worshipped and His being The Sustainer, because they have no power to turn away from this answer with their backs.

 

Ghaus Pak (ra) too was displeased and angry with me. But only out of his love for His Lord. That was the way of His Friends. They only loved because of Him. They only had enemity because of Him. I was deserving of that wrath upon me. In hindsight I was fortunate that it came.

 

In a single page he had expressed his irritation, reprimanded me, then taught me a prayer that brought me before my Lord in utmost repentance and showed me how even suffering ordained could morph into the opposite, become a blessing.

Thus I began to see how the barzakh, that partition of the Divine’s Mercy, began to take form in my life.

 

In Lahore it was part of my daily routine to visit an elderly friend who had been unwell for years. There were good days and bad but as a result of ever increasing illnesses that brought with them acute pain, more and more they would be in the worst mood possible.

 

But they too had a Spiritual Master. So every so often, he would step in and lift them out of the bitterness they were drowning in. Like a breather to remind them of who they were and not who they had become. Then they would be let go again and sink. That was how it was playing out for now.

 

The Spiritual Master is the Arif. Since Ghaus Pak (ra) says that they can see destiny ordained, they decide when to step in, for how long and when to retreat to let the disciple’s journey play out. But they are always there, keeping their eye on those who are in their charge, looking into their hearts to see how rusted they have become.

 

Each day I entered the house not knowing what mood awaited me. Mostly I was greeted with intense sarcasm, mistrust which manifested in a poisonous tongue resulting in complete humiliation. Sometimes I was alone in the room, other times people were present who ignored the incidence. I always wondered why they were silent. I was about to find out.

 

I had been reciting the prayer gifted to me by Ghaus Pak (ra). Then I was uttering it as my own repentance but like all prayers, there were branches of other Divine Mercies emanating from it. A day or two later, I entered the room expecting a thrashing. We happened to be sitting right next to each other. It was early in the day. She was being served breakfast.

 

All I had said thus far was “How did you sleep?”

 

In response came a fire of reproaches. How I could not be relied upon. I was insincere. Selfish. And so on. On every other occasion, no exceptions, I would attempt to exercise patience as I had learnt it. Silent in the tongue, begrudging in the heart, angry in the mind. Even that didn’t always work. Sometimes I would lose it and say something curt, leaving earlier than I would otherwise. Only to be extremely disappointed in my failure of restraint, beating myself up about it before I even reached my car to head home.

 

On that day, as we sat so close to each other that our thighs almost touched, I listened to the sharpness of the words that normally sliced through my heart with a calm I had never experienced before. It was so eerie that I just sat there making sure what I was feeling was in fact real. I felt like they were speaking to someone else in the room. But there was no one else.

 

I focused on my heart. Did it feel a grudge, sorry for itself for being attacked without provocation? It didn’t. I honed in on my mind. Was it angry or rolling its eyes thinking, “Here we go again.” It wasn’t. There was a partition between us. The barzakh I had pleaded for with my weeping had appeared.

It was so unexpectedly crazy it felt like magic!

 

The truth, as it turned out, was that everyone followed Iblis. The believers, the non-believers. The grateful, the ungrateful. He turns each Mo’min into a Kafir. At some point or the other, everyone was taken in by his seduction. No one’s nafs was spared.

 

Except for one group!

 

وَلَقَدۡ صَدَّقَ عَلَیۡهِمۡ إِبۡلِیسُ ظَنَّهُۥ فَٱتَّبَعُوهُ إِلَّا فَرِیقࣰا مِّنَ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِینَ

 

And certainly, Iblis found his assumption about them to be true, so they (all) followed him except a group of the believers.

Surah As Saba, Verse 20

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Then said Subhanahu taking an oath…

 

Wa: upon Himself…

 

Laqad saddaqa: indeed he, Iblis, authenticated…

 

Alayhim: upon those, Al Haalikeen, the ones who destroy themselves in the maze of khusraan, losses and kufraan, denial and ingratitude…

 

Iblis: the enemy for them, persistent, permanent in enemity with them from the beginning of their creation…

 

Dannahu: his belief, which was what he thought to be true for them when he said to their father, the Prophet Adam (as),

 

لَأَحۡتَنِكَنَّ ذُرِّیَّتَهُۥۤ إِلَّا قَلِیلࣰ

 

I will surely destroy his offspring except a few – Al Isra, 62

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

La ahtanikanna durriyaatahu: Iblis said: I will make them wayward and trap them with vulgarity and by alluring them to do something wrong so that I can erase their names from the book of believers. So how can they become of the Arifeen, the ones who recognize Allah and the Al Mukaashifeen, for whom everything unveils, Al Mushahideen, the witnessing ones because what they are made from and their foundation, it demands different kinds of corruption and various kinds of sin and waywardness.

 

And for me there are many opportunities (through these demands) to create paranoia for them and allure them till they become misguided from the straight path of guidance and the way of correctness…

 

Illa qaleela: except a few amongst them for indeed they are Sabitoon, steadfast on what they are set up on. I have no power to persuade them towards wrongdoing because they are Muwwayadeen, assisted by You and they are Muwwafiqeen, granted ability by Your Power.

 

And he said:

 

وَلَا تَجِدُ أَكْثَرَهُمْ شَكِرِينَ ‎

 

And you will not find most of them to be grateful - Surah Al Araaf, Verse 17

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

La tajidu: You will not find, Ya Muizzu, O You who is The Bestower of Honour to everybody else in in humiliation and The One directing the astray to the Right Path…

 

Aksarahim Shakireen: most of them to be grateful when they will return towards You, they will be not be the grateful ones, spending from what You bestowed them of blessings on what You commanded them not to do.

 

And he said:

 

وَلَأُضِلَّنَّهُمۡ وَلَأُمَنِّیَنَّهُمۡ

 

And I will surely deceive them and surely arouse desires in them – An Nisa, Verse 119

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa laudillanahum: And I will surely deceive them by different deceptions and whisperings of doubt and paranoia from the Way of Your Tauheed, One-ness…

 

Wa layumanniannahum: and I will arouse desires in them by their concerns with their livelihood in this place of deception (the world) with hirs, greed and tool al amal, never ending hopes and all types of desires of their nafs, their egos, which arise from lust and (seeking of) pleasure and much else apart from this. And after that he misguided them from the path of

 

Shukr, Gratitude and Imaan, faith…

 

Fattaba’uhu: they followed him, ungrateful and denying of the blessings and Al Munim, the Bestower of those Blessings, all of them…

 

Illa fareeqan min al Mo’mineen: except a group from the

Mo’mineen, the believers, Al Mu’qineena, possessing certainy in the Tauheed, the One-ness of Allah, Al Musaddeqeena, attesting to His Prophets, Al Muttadakkireena, taking warning that he is their enemy forever, so they turned back from him and from his persuasion by deception, thus they remained Saalimeen, secure, from his persuasion to deceive.

 

No wonder a connection to that group was deemed essential to receive guidance. They were in a count, set apart from everyone else in Creation. They were the ones who were “an’amta alayhim.”

 

The inordinate focus on the prayer from Ghaus Pak (ra) brought my attention to the verses expounding on the etiquettes of the prayer in the Quran. I looked them up:

 

ٱدۡعُوا۟ رَبَّكُمۡ تَضَرُّعࣰا وَخُفۡیَةًۚ

إِنَّهُۥ لَا یُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُعۡتَدِینَ

 

Call upon your Lord humbly and privately.

Indeed, He (does) not love the transgressors.

Surah Al Araaf, Verse 55

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Udu’u: Call upon Him, those who have been set up on the true nature of Tauheed, One-ness…

 

Rabbukum: your Rabb, Al Mutafarraq, The One who is Unique in your raising and in making you appear…

 

Tadarru’an: (call upon Him) humbly as the ones who beseech Him…

 

Wa khufiatan: and quietly, as the ones hiding and the ones scared, and the ones submissive from the depths of the heart, not unstable in the edges of the tongue like the transgressors.

 

Innahu la yuhibbil Mu’tadeena: Indeed, He does not like the ones who cross the boundaries of what is right, the Al Mujawizeena, the ones who exceed limits, the Al Mujahireena, the ones who ask for things loudly, Al Maalliheena, the ones who ask for wrong things in their prayer because His Knowledge of their states is enough regarding their asking.

 

It was new word for me. Mu’tadeena! I knew already Subhanahu did not like the Kafireen, the deniers of truth. He did not like the Zalimeen, the unjust, the ones who crossed limits. He did not like the Faisqeen, those defiant in their disobedience. The Mu’tadeen were also transgressors. Overtly they seemed the same as the Kafireen.

 

Except in the tafseer, everything about them seemed to be related to those of us who were on the inside of the circle of Islam. For we the ones who were praying to Subhanahu. Except we were asking for things loudly. We were asking for things wrongly. We did not deny Subhanahu. We deluded ourselves that we were aspiring to be of the Mo’mineen, the believers. We didn’t even know we had become aligned with the disbelievers. Like them we were not scared of Him.

 

The most exalted of prayers in the Quran are the ones Allah Subhanahu Himself taught His Beloved (salutations and greetings upon him and his blessed family and the utterance that came forth from them that lead the way to our salvation). It was as if He said to him, “Ask from me this and ask it like this.”

 

One of those prayers then appeared that seemed to be exactly for such a situation. For if one was being rendered a transgressor whilst in prayer, then clearly refuge was in need from Shaitaan who was prevailing in exactly that moment. A moment that one thought was intensely private and only between them and their Lord.

 

وَقُل رَّبِّ أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنۡ هَمَزَتِ ٱلشَّیَـٰطِینِ

 

And say, "My Lord! I seek refuge in You from the suggestions (of) the evil ones,

 

وَأَعُوذُ بِكَ رَبِّ أَن یَحۡضُرُونِ

 

And I seek refuge in You, My Lord! Lest they be present with me."

Surah Al Mu’minoon, Verse 97-98

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa qul Rabbi: So say, “O Lord who raises me by Your Kunf, Safekeeping and Jawaar, Watchfulness…

 

Audo bika min hamazaati Shayateen: I seek refuge in You from the promptings of the evil ones and their waswase, whisperings and the different kinds of seductions and

misleading.

 

Wa: And especially…

 

Aoudo: I seek protection and come into refuge…

 

Bika: with You, O…

 

Rabbi Ayyahdiroon: my Lord, lest they come near me and let my focus be upon You and when my heart is soft in its inclination towards You and I invoke You, especially during my prayer and during my recitation and during the time I present my needs to You.

 

It revealed to me why the recitation of the namaz, why the recitation of the Quran, all worship was made to begin with seeking of refuge from Shaitaan and his followers.

 

فَإِذَا قَرَأۡتَ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانَ فَٱسۡتَعِذۡ بِٱللَّهِ مِنَ ٱلشَّیۡطَـٰنِ ٱلرَّجِیمِ

 

So when you recite the Quran, seek refuge in Allah from the Shaitaan, the accursed.

Surah An Nahl, Verse 98

 

Fasta’id: then seek refuge and invoke, first of all…

 

Billahi: Allah, Al Mutajalli, The One who unveils, by the attribute of speech, which makes others helpless before it, Al Hafeed, The Protector of His Sincere Servants from everything in useless sins and disobedience…

 

Min: (which occur) due to doubts and paranoia…

 

Ash Shaitaan ar rajeem: from Shaitaan the accursed one, Al Matrood, the one expelled and the one made distant from the court of the Presence of Allah Azzo Jal with the stoning of the effects of the Attributes of Allah’s Wrath and (seek refuge) from his delusions and rationalizations which are the armies of desire and forgetfulness and false imaginings and thrilling hallucinations which persuade different kinds of hopes and lust.

 

Basically possibilities!

 

Yet another revelation that came to me through the prayer Ya Haailo had to with the virtue of patience.

 

قُلۡ یَـٰعِبَادِ ٱلَّذِینَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ رَبَّكُمۡۚ لِلَّذِینَ أَحۡسَنُوا۟ فِی هَـٰذِهِ ٱلدُّنۡیَا حَسَنَةࣱۗ

إِنَّمَا یُوَفَّى ٱلصَّـٰبِرُونَ أَجۡرَهُم بِغَیۡرِ حِسَابࣲ

 

Say, "O My slaves those who believe!

Be mindful of your Lord. For those who do good in this world is good,

Only will be paid back in full the patient ones their reward without account."

Surah Az Zumar, Verse 10

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Qul: Say, Ya Akmal Ar Rusul (Allah sends blessings and salutations upon you since the beginning of everything), O Messenger who completes the Messenger-hood, give this message on Our Behalf, calling out to the selected sincere amongst my Servants…

 

Ya ibadi: O My Worshippers, by attaching them with His Essence making them special and honouring them…

 

Alladina aamano: those who attained to faith from amongst you in the One-ness of My Essence and My Appearance according to My Affairs and My Ever changing-ness in accordance with My Names and Attributes, the requirement of your faith is taqwa, mindfulness from the demands of your desires…

 

Ittaqu Rabbukum: be conscious of your Lord and stay away from what is forbidden by Him and what He has ordered prevented for you and characterize yourself with His Commands and know that He…

 

Lilladina ahsanu: for the ones with spiritual excellence and beautiful regard with Allah…

 

Fi hadihi duniya: in this world, which is the place of gaining lessons and choosing…

 

Hasana: there is goodness, multifold and more than a thousand times more than that in the Hereafter which is the Dar al Qarar, the abode which is forever so take heed, O people of vision, both inner and outer.

…

Innama yuwaffa as sabiroon: Only the steadfast are given in full as the Al Mutahammiloona, the ones who carry their burdens with the different kinds of difficulties and toiling with patience in the practice of Imaan, faith…

 

Ajrahum: their reward and in abundance upon them will be goodness and different kinds of recompenses and honours…

 

Bighairi hisaab: without count, for all of it and exceeding it, with no possibility of measure and enumeration and without any number, merely by His Bounty for them and His Honour upon them.

 

My way of practicing it was about to change.

 

Continued on: www.flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/52649820039/in/datepos...

 

Somehow I missed the most recent turn of events in this case. My strong feeling have not changed so I decided to revisit it.

 

It now seems that Mr. Fairey has admitted that he a) did not use the picture he originally claimed, b) he knowingly lied about which picture he used and c) destroyed evidence to hide which picture he used. In response, his representation by the Stanford Fair Use Project has been withdrawn. Sadly, the FUP still supports his claim. Apparently they are ok with representing a thief, but not a liar and a thief. cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6353

 

And lets not pretend what happened was anything else. Its theft. Noting more, nothing less. Below is a slightly modified version of what I posted on my flickr page about this case. One of the arguments made in support of Fairey by some at Stanford was that he was fighting the Evil Big Business. Apparently success condones being the victum of theft. Only in the mean time, the artist has asserted that he, not AP, owns the picture. I have no idea if that has changed now that Fairey has admitted to lying about which picture he stole.

 

And on the note of the "Big Business Bad" - whether AP or Mr. Garcia owns the picture really does not matter. Here is the string of events leading to the original picture being taken - A person spent time and possibly money (photography school) developing a skill (photography). His skill was sufficient to allow him to generate income from that skill. That in turn allowed him to purchase professional tools of his trade (camera, camera bag, etc.) and pay for other up front expenses (travel costs) that further raised his professional stature to the point that a large (maybe the largest) purchaser of photographic media contracted with him to produce works. But if his works can be "used fairly" without compensation, then he will not be able to continue in this profession. He will have to take up some other means of supporting himself. And the picture will not be taken.

 

And that was not a picture you could take with a Point and Shoot. The original picture was taken low angle with the table made "invisible" meaning Mr. Garcia put the lens at about 2-21/2 feet off the ground. It was framed with the American flag as the backdrop giving the feeling of then Senator Obama being "Presidential." To get that Mr. Garcia had to be in the exact right spot, something that does not happen by luck in a room full of professional photographers. He caught a moment when President Obama was looking up at the speaker creating the "looking for inspiration" look. Despite what some posters here have said in various discussions, Mr. Clooney was not the subject of the picture and he was not the speaker at that moment either, a fact now clear by Fairey's admission that he lied about which picture he stole. The lighting conditions, as shown by the shadow of the flag behind President Obama, were challenging at best. The picture was probably taken without a flash (there is no bright spot on the water glass in front of President Obama), yet he still got good facial lighting - not an easy task (ask any wedding photographer). Doing that with a dark skinned subject against a dark blue background while wearing a black suit and white shirt? Well I would still be playing with the settings when they press conference was over. Mr. Garcia had the skill to "see" the picture before the event even took place or else he would not have been in the right position. You can google the event and see lots of pictures that were not as good. He then got his lighting right in a very challenging situation - something that required a "fast" (read EXPENSIVE) lens and probably a high ISO camera body (even more expensive) and a LOT of skill. Expensive equipment is a tool, the skill is in the person. Then he took the exact right picture at the exact right time while crouched uncomfortably for a LONG time. 99% of the people in the world would have stood to high, to far back, in the wrong place and used a flash that would have blown out half of President Obama's face and made the other half the dark side of the moon with his eyes red. Mr. Fairey didn't "reference" one of those pictures, he went with the one that took a PROFESSIONAL to get.

 

Mr. Fairey STOLE the picture, just like he has many others. While the matter of which picture he stole may seem minor, in this case it makes a HUGE difference. One of the key tests for fair use is how much of the original work is used. Mr. Fairey "claimed" he used a picture with both the future President and George Clooney. This gave him standing to claim he used only a "portion" of the original work. In fact, he used the entirety of a picture that was of just President Obama. He knew which picture he used and the impact it would have on any fair use claim and so he lied about it and covered up that lie by destroying evidence of the lie. AP sued him in February of this year. The FUP took up his case and filed a counter suit in April. it took until October for Mr. Fairey to come clean. I cant imagine that from February to April not one of his lawyers failed to ask which picture he used so he either lied to them or they too knew of the deception. Without the claim of having used only a portion of the original work, the use fails every test for fair use. It is a shame the Stanford FUP lacks the integrity to say so instead of simply withdrawing without comment. They were loud and proud defenders of his "rights" but lack the backbone to admit a mistake. Shame! Personally, I hope he and his lawyers (including the FUP lawyers) are charged for filing a false claim, perjury and filing a false official document. In the case of the lawyers, I hope they are disciplined - preferably disbarred - and in the case of Mr. Fairey I hope his business is seized and he is put in jail. He wanted to be an example so make him one.

 

The ONLY reason this is even up for debate is the low regard many in and out of the "art" community hold for photographers. If Mr. Fairey were an artist without the "rip off" appendage, he would have taken his OWN picture. If he respected Mr. Garcia as an artist he would have ASKED to use the picture. He lacks the skill to take the picture himself and the integrity to ask for permission to use it.

  

Shepard is a fraud

 

Never has the saying "Where you stand depends on where you sit"* had more meaning to me. I have always been a supporter of 1st Amendment rights and taken a board view of fair use. Now my views are beginning to change - change radically.

 

I doubt there are many people in this country who did not see some version of the "Hope" poster over the last year. And many heard about the controversy over the "artist" using the image without permission. When I heard about it, my first thought was that it was one more example of corporate media overstepping. The fact that it was AP made me even more biased as I have followed the whole "newspapers vs Google" debate and I am firmly on the side of Google. So it was a bit shocking when I stubbled on to "the rest of the story"**

 

At the end of March I asked "Is it Art?" I asked this because of an unpleasant interaction with a "real" artist. Since then I have read more and more that has angered me with the seeming "pecking order" in the art world. Photographers, it seems, are either the bottom of the pile on not considered at all. Shepard Fairey makes his view clear early in his "defense" piece on Huffington Post

 

"No disrespect was intended to photographer Mannie Garcia, but I did not think (and do not think) I needed permission to make an art piece using a reference photo."

 

This was the first time I had ever heard the term "reference photo." I had to Google it. Guess what the first hit was? A company selling "References Photos for artists." Personally, the argument stops there since there is a market for reference photos he clearly "stole" when he used it. Had Mr. Garcia wanted to market the picture as a "reference photo," compensation would have been made. But putting that aside, lets dig deeper into Shepards statement. Clearly he does not think the original photograph was art - He "made" it art. He didn't say "no disrespect to my fellow artist" - no it was "photographer." You can almost feel the contempt flowing through his fingers to the keyboard and out to the web. He goes on:

 

"My Obama poster does not compete with the intent of, or the market for the reference photo. In fact, the argument has been made that the reference photo would have faded into obscurity if it were not for my poster which became so culturally pervasive. The Garcia photo is now more famous and valuable than it ever would have been prior to the creation of my poster.

 

First off, it wasn't a "reference photo" it was a photo produced by Mr. Garcia while on assignment for the AP and was therefore owned by AP. I seem to remember AP has a business model built around paying people to produce photos which they then resell. The second part shows just how big Shepards ego is. Mr. Garcia should THANK him for "referencing" his otherwise obscure picture. Hmmmmm....I dont remember anywhere that says if no one knows about the thing I am stealing then it is ok. Or if it makes the thing I am stealing more valuable then its ok. I have a book on photography from 1944. Its out of print and pretty obscure. If I "reference" and add the words "digital" and "Photoshop" while removing "film" and "darkroom" do I get to sell it as mine? In Shepard Fairey's world I do.

 

Shepard drones on about political speech, fair use and how he didn't profit (not true). All of those might be arguments except for one fact. He is a serial kleptomaniac. (read the second one if you read nothing else!). To his credit, he is in good company.

 

So why my sudden change of heart? Well one, I think I am getting good enough as a photographer that I can give serious thought to doing it as a full time thing once I retire. Since that is 5 years away, I can build both the skills and business foundation before I have to worry about it paying any bills. If either one doesn't get there, I can still love an appreciate my photography and no matter how obscure, its still MINE. Second, I started a blog about photography (for very personal reasons I am choosing not to associate it with this flickr stream) and I am putting a fair bit of creative energy into it. Im discovering that other people have done the same, only to have some scum-bag copy and paste their work into a book. Finally, I am a bit miffed at this whole "art vs reference" thing. At this point the last thing I want to be associated with it the "art" community. "Creative" is more my style but even in the "creative" community there are some who say "you just point a camera." While I dont think I ever believed that, I have learned that the difference between a nice picture and a stunning picture is often hours of work backed up by days/weeks/months/years of study and practice. And I dont think I have taken any "stunning" pictures. I want to and am willing to work toward that. Once I can, the last thing I want is some punk rip off artist with no morals "referencing" my pictures to put on a t-shirt and call it his own. And, I might add, if it is so easy go, point your camera at something. Oh wait, no camera. What, you don't have a magic camera tree and a lens bush? Oh, you do but its a crappy one. Well waive the upgrade wand and make it a 20MP FF like I did. Lighting sucks? Chant the soft light incantation.

 

The utter emptiness of the "reference" argument (which is apparently well know in the "art" community) is that at the end of the day they "reference" a particular photograph because it is "better" than the thousands available of the same subject. There was no shortage of photographs of then Senator Obama. His official Senate picture was/is even in the public domain. I am pretty darn sure his campaign would have happily provided a "free as in beer" picture to "reference." But compared to the Garcia photo, those all sucked. But you said all photographers did was point a camera and document........

 

Good intent does not make up for bad acts. Many "Progressives" are on the wrong side of this because they see it as an attack on the President. Its not. Its about right and wrong.

 

Shepard is a fraud

 

P.S. - I would have preferred to use a picture of the "artist" rather than The President (who has nothing to do with this). But I couldn't find one that was not copyrighted and I wasn't going to steal from another photographer. So I used this, directly from the Obey Giant website. Fair Use, right Shepard?

  

*As far as I can tell, this quote is attributed to Nelson Mendela but some caveman probably said it right after his cave painting got copied too. Theft - so simple a Caveman can do it (Thanks Geico!).

** RIP Paul Harvey

Matthew 15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,

2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?

4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;

6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.

7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,

8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

 

"The Talmud states that Jesus got what He deserved, and the highest legal authority in Judaism, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, not only confirmed the Talmud's judgment, he urged the murder of Jesus' followers, if such killings could be made to look like an accident. So what's to absolve? The Talmud and Maimonides are "witnesses against themselves." A papal proclamation to the contrary has the same credibility as an absolution issued by the Masonic Lodge or the U.N. "

"Judaism's Babylonian Talmud long ago subverted the Constitution, Congress and the Supreme Court, but few Tea Party "patriots" seem to have noticed. "

"The Talmudic Noachide Law is already Federal Law (Public Law 102-14), but "Christian Republicans" are oblivious. It would take a real mensch to proclaim the truth about it, and I do not expect any to emerge from the zombie ranks of Michael Savage, Michael Medved, Daniel Lapin, Limbaugh or Beck. "

"Consequently, while the six pointed star of the Synagogue of Satan is embedded on the front of the Thomas S. Foley Federal Courthouse building in Spokane, Washington (in the form of the misnamed "Great Seal of the United States"), alleged "Christian evangelists" are feverishly hunting down the Shariah law, which would threaten America's subservience to the House of Rothschild's house of usury."

"Like many of you, in this work I can always use a laugh. I have to thank the Judeo-Churchian Shariah-hunters of Tennessee, such as Grand Golem Bill Ketron and Grand Golem Judd Matheny, and Tennessee "Eagle Forum" (www.tneagleforum.org) for providing a hearty one this day."

Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

 

Judaism's Fractured Version of Adam and Eve in the Garden

"Examples of nullification of the Biblical text and the substitution of rabbinic glosses for the Word of God are vast. For purposes of illustration, let us start at the beginning. According to the rabbis, the plain meaning printed in the Genesis text, when taken literally, is wrong. The rabbis teach that the description in Genesis of Adam's transgression- as having eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil- is erroneous, and that the Genesis text in actuality "conceals his true sin." This rabbinic tradition is presented gingerly and fleetingly in the commentary on Genesis 2: 16-17 in the Jewish Study Bible: "Knowledge of good and bad may be a merism, a figure of speech, in which polar opposites denotes a totality..." This is The Jewish Study Bible's veiled allusion to the Kabbalistic rabbinic teaching about the Genesis account of Adam and Eve; that is: this "figure of speech" good and evil, i.e. "good and bad" is a code for the Shekhinah[the dwelling or settling presence of God (cf. divine presence), especially in the Temple in Jerusalem] and the Tiferet[the sixth sefira in the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, which is the spirituality of Rabbinic Judaism. It has the common association of "Spirituality", "Balance", "Integration", "Beauty", "Miracles", "Compassion", and "Masculinity"]. According to Judaism, without having the esoteric knowledge of the rabbis, the Book of Genesis cannot be understood. The plain meaning can only mislead. The exegetical principle of the necessity of rabbinic mediation for comprehension of Scripture, and its certain misinterpretation without such mediation, is applied throughout Judaism's encounter with the Bible. This is priestcraft.

""In the Zohar[foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.[1] It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and "true self" to "The Light of God," and the relationship between the "universal energy" and man. Its scriptural exegesis can be considered an esoteric form of the Rabbinic literature known as Midrash, which elaborates on the Torah], the exact nature of Adam's sin is a tightly guarded secret; the Biblical account of the Garden story is seen as hiding the true meaning. Adam conversed with Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai; "Adam sat by me and spoke to me and asked that his sin not be revealed to the whole world, apart from what the Torah says of it, and that it should remain concealed with the Tree of the Garden of Eden. But I told him that the companions had already revealed it. And he said, 'Whatever the companions have revealed among themselves is good and proper, but not the rest of mankind.' What is the reason for this? The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed it to me, by the Holy Spirit, and to the companions, so that they might discuss it among themselves, but not to the younger companions or to those who arwe still to come into the world." (Zohar Hadash, Bereshit 18d-19a, Midrash ha-Ne'elam).

"The tightly guarded secret behind what true Christians believe to be the literal truth of Genesis, but what is in fact, according to the rabbis a mere Biblical "figure of speech" (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), centers on the spirit-force personified in Judaism as the goddess known as Shekinah. It is the doctrine of Orthodox Judaism that "Adam's secret sin" consisted of having divided the unity of the goddess Shekinah as she inhabited Eden with her supernatural male consort, the Tiferet. The unity of the Shekhinah and the Tiferet that was formerly above duality (above good and evil) in the "Ten Sefirot," became, through Adam, a duality of polar opposites, and the "knowledge" obtained by Adam in the Garden was sorcery.

"The Babylonian Talmud claims that the forbidden tree in the Garden from which Adam ate was the fig: "Rabbi Nehemia holds that the tree of which Adam ate was the fig tree" (BT Berakoth 40a). The Kabbalah teaches that the leaves of this fig tree conveyed powers of sorcery and magic (Zohar 1:56b Bereshit). Cosequently, in the rabbinic mind, the aprons worn by Adam and Eve, being made from the leaves of the fig tree, were garments that gave the wearers magical powers. These aprons made from fig leaves had the power to give the bearer the ability to enjoy "the fruits of the world-to-come" in the here and now. (BT Bava Metzia 114b). It is with this rabbinic understanding that Freemasons and Mormons wear these aprons in their own rituals.

"The Zohar states that by black magic Adam cut in half the divine unity of the god and goddess. Adam was formerly a giant, but after his sin his physical proportions were shrunk by God and "his erect stature diminished by one hundred cubits." (Zohar 1:53h). In the fertile rabbinic imagination, most of the Book of Genesis, when taken literally, is misleading. In Zohar 1:36a Bereshit, an account is given of the temptation of Eve in Genesis 3: 4-6: "Eat from it and you will really be like Elohim, knowing good and evil." After quoting this text, the Zohar reports that "Rabbi Yehudah said, This is not what the serpent said. For if he had said, 'With this tree the Blessed Holy One created the world,' it would have been a correct statement. What the serpent said was actually this: 'The Blessed Holy One ate from this tree and then created the world... Eat from it and you will be creating worlds.""

from Michael Hoffman's "Judaism Discovered" (pp 196-199)

 

There's more- far too many to list here.

 

WAKE UP CHRISTIANS!!! DON'T LET THE LIARS DECEIVE YOU...

Detail from MARTYRS OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN, the Masculine Gestalt.

 

Below is a transcription of the words in the above image:

 

Our homeland is Diaspora. Scattered in the seed of strangers, we enter the cribs of our enemies to live uninvited lives. Our history is older than history rooted in the first stirrings of desire. We are the martyrs of the Cities of the Plain torched and murdered by our fathers' Father, we cling now to ropes of shadow wary of the son. We are the unexpected: the babe in the bulrushes, the wind in the willows, the cowbird’s egg. We are that which defines recognition…the question that serves no answer. Embraced or exiled, our name is anarchy. We are the sons and daughters of slaves. Born into servitude, we fit no uniform. Patterns of behavior cannot suit us. We hang naked on hooks of shame, shrouded in the smoke of premonition. How came we to die? What circumstances force this unrelenting purgatory? Ask Lot. Ask Abraham. Ask god himself. If he answers your prayers, does he not proclaim his victories? Holocaust! Our cities were assaulted by fire. Men, women and children raped and sodomized by fire. The unborn boiled in the womb. Infants roasted in their cribs. What monster claims this victory…this genocide? Holocaust! Our feet were pierced with flame. Great spouts and gouts of it ashed the plain with bone and hair. The tongues went in unto every entry of our flesh. We were crucified by pain. Holocaust! What hypocrite claims this victory? Abraham who fucked his sister? Lot who fucked his daughters? God gazed full upon the cities of the plain; for these he winked and nodded…. Our fathers were born from the ashes of the plain. Man created in God’s image created by men created from the guilty seeds of incest rooted in the ashes of the plain. We who are the martyrs of the plain proclaim your birth! What guilt shapes this deflection….Disciples of incest and adultery, from what lofty height do you view the plain? How come you to judge? We are all the sons and daughters of whores. Your god is your greatest sin. You have created him in your image to punish and forgive the sins that men have created. Is this not madness? A super-father who chides and protects you while diminishing his enemies even unto eternal damnation. Is this not childishness? And if you have created him in your image to create you in his is he not also a child? You have created a world for boys…a place of perpetual naivety unsuitable for innocence. A world of fear based on enforcement of privilege by a brotherhood in the name of the Father. Three brothers claiming the birthright of the Father; two born out of incest and one from adultery. Three little bully-boys who control their reality through force and threat…a triad of divine hypocrisy. Murdered by our fathers in the name of the Father, we, the martyrs of the plain, accuse you. From what seed stems your root? Your declination bears the taint of incest…might you be mad? Might you be blind? Paranoid? What defects define your heritage? Centuries of inbreeding from brother and sister to father and son and son to father…might you be mad? Might you be deaf…unable to hear the cries of the earth…blind to the suffering you inflict in the name of the father, in the name of your father’s father…in your name? Might you be deaf and blind to the songs and colors of the earth? Father in unto son in unto father in unto son…has this incest brought us all in unto Death…and Death in unto all…even unto the songs and colors of the earth? We who have endured the holocaust and exist within the purgatory of your fear no longer fear you…or your father…or your father’s father. Having breathed the sulphur of your victory century after century has turned your lungs to stone…our hearts to stone. We no longer fear you…no longer hear you. Your voice. That which has shouted your omnipotence century after century laden with threats and superstition falls like lead among the ashes…no longer hear you. You who have silenced the voices of the earth in the name of the father. In your name. Your voice lies like lead among the ashes. What an infernal history have you created! Magician!…what a fragile illusion have you enforced. Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Three brothers controlling the earth in the name of the father…in your name. You have brought us to your end. Now even you can see your face. The face of god. The erasure of all faces. The silencing of all voices in the ashes of the earth. Dare you take the final step? Are you not tempted by what your father has promised his faithful sons? Abraham’s bosom. Heaven. Paradise? Dare you take the final step? You who have rejoiced in the destruction of the plain and the persecution of its martyrs, why do you hesitate before the rapture? Would you ignore your father’s voice? Cowards! He calls you to his bosom. Does the fear of pain delay you? Hypocrites! The flames that defeat and stigmatize your enemies will raise you to paradise. Why do you hesitate? He who has given you power over the earth has promised you eternal life. Why do you hesitate? Is there not punishment for doubt? Do you not fear his wrath? Why do you not embrace his promise? He has promised you whores and houris, riches and wonders. All that you have killed for here he will give you there. Why do you hesitate? Is there not punishment for doubt? Do you lust after your daughters? You will be given daughters and like Lot you will bear no shame. Do you lust after your sister? Your sister will be given to you and like Abraham you will bear no shame. Are you not your father’s sons? In the name of the father, are not his rights your rights? As you have invented him so has he invented you. Your needs are known and will be fulfilled. Why do you hesitate? Perhaps; you know yourselves too well. Perhaps you know that Lot seduced his daughters and that god perjured his testimony. Perhaps you recognize in his word the false actions and atonement that you have writ there and continue writing in complicity. Perhaps you know yourselves too well. Perhaps you know that the shallowness of his reward reflects the shallowness of your desire. Having done commerce among yourselves, does not a reward commensurate cause suspicion? Perhaps promising you there what he admonishes here causes some doubt? Perhaps the father you have created to create you in his image would deceive you as you deceive others in his name. Perhaps he is false as you are false…as you are false in his name. Perhaps you know yourselves too well…know too well the yoke of promises and threats, the control of everlasting pain. The father in the image of the father…controlling yoke of everlasting pain. Perhaps it is the image that delays you. His image/your image. Perhaps; you would not give up his power. His power/your power. Perhaps you know that to exercise his power is to lose your power. His image/your image. Perhaps you know….Does nothing shame you? Does being a man not shame you? Does redundancy not shame you? Does cowardice not shame you? And hypocrisy? Does murder in the name of the father not shame you? We, the martyrs of the plain, shame you, for by killing us you kill your children, your fathers, Ishmael and Isaac. We are the unexpected. The babe in the whore’s womb! The twilight birth. The cuckoo’s egg. We are the unexpected. The sudden light that reveals the contour of your hypocrisy. The holocaust awaits you. You have been given the means. Your father expects you. Would you be prodigal? Come! Do unto yourselves as you have done unto others. As you have ruled the earth so will you serve in Paradise. Your world flounders. Your seed fails you. Your father’s father whom you have created to exalt your premise exhales you. Wrapped in dogma you ignore the inevitabilities of creation. That which is created creates. As beginnings create endings endings illuminate beginnings. That which lies between is compressed into layered repetition. If you do not destroy this world in the name of the father with the gift of the father then you destroy the father who is yourself. Come, we the martyrs of the plain await your suicide…await your patricide…await your end…Await the end of the father who is Isaac who is Abraham who is Ishmael, who is god our murderer. We, the martyrs of the plain await your end. You who claim the birthright of the father, we await your end. You who murder in the name of the father, we await your end. You who have murdered us in the name of the father, we, the martyrs of the plain, await your end....

  

"MARTYRS OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN examines the First Holocaust. Based on the blue triangle that descends the back panel of PROCRUSTES IN SITU, the third section of the Trilogy concerns itself with the destruction of the cities Admah, Gomorrah, Sodom, and Zeboiim which the Old Testament attributes to the wrath of God. It examines the procrustean constrictions of patriarchy and the liberating challenge of feminine entelechy through the songs of Procrustes and the opposing chants of Chance, Being, and Desire. Masculine gestalt versus feminine insurrection." Robert Cremean

 

Collection:

Fresno Art Museum

Fresno, California

Privatize the gains socialize the losses.

spotted on a stall at the st. lawrence antique market, front st, toronto. No, I did not buy it!

 

After returning to the US from North Vienam in 1972, Jane Fonda told the world press that the american prisoners of war were being well-treated and not tortured. When the POW's returned in 1973 and spoke of the inhumane treatment and torture they had suffered when they refused to meet with groups such as Fonda's, Fonda referred to the returning POWs as "hypocrites and liars". Considered a traitor and an anarchist by many, she earned the derogatory moniker "Hanoi Jane".

Primavera Sound, Barcelona, 2016.

 

Как уже справедливо заметили остальные участники — все мы как-будто побывали на разных фестивалях — это прекрасно, и вот что увидел я на своей 7-ой Примавере в Барсе — на этот раз удалось зацепить примерно 45 групп (из over200), правда у всех получился разный хронометраж (из-за неизбежных и многочисленных пересечений).

 

Top 30 of Primavera Sound 2016.

 

01. Lush

02. Ty Segall & The Muggers @ Apolo

03. PJ Harvey

04. Beach House

05. Julia Holter

06. Thee Oh Sees

07. Cavern of Anti-Matter

08. Tame Impala

09. Merkabah

10. Helena Hauff @ B&W

 

11. Air

12. Deradoorian

13. Holly Herndon

14. PTV3 @ Apolo

15. Moderat

16. Venom

17. Suede

18. Tortoise

19. Dinosaur Jr.

20. Mudhoney

 

21. Autolux

22. Battles

23. A.R. Kane

24. Richard Hawley

25. Chairlift

26. Brian Wilson

27. Holögrama

28. U.S. Girls

29. Lena Willikens @ B&W

30. Shellac

 

***

 

Overall:

 

/full - весь концерт

/end - только финал

/half - примерно полконцерта

/two-thirds - примерно две трети

/start - только начало

 

30.05

 

Psychic TV/ PTV3 /full

 

31.05

 

Carla /full

SG Lewis /full

Deradoorian /full

Merkabah /end

 

01.06

 

Goat /half

Suede /full

 

02.06

 

Daughter /end

Air /half

A.R. Kane /end

Explosions in the Sky /half

Tame Impala /full

LCD Soundsystem /start

Holögrama /start

Beach Slang /start

Thee Oh Sees /two-thirds

Battles /two-thirds

Helena Hauff /two-thirds

 

03.06

 

Lush /full

Savages /end

Beirut /start

Cavern of Anti-Matter /full

[overrated band] /two songs

Dinosaur Jr. /half

Tortoise /half

Shellac /half

The Last Shadow Puppets /start

Animal Collective /start

Holly Herndon /half

Merkabah /half

 

04.06

 

U.S. Girls /full

Autolux /full

Brian Wilson /half

Richard Hawley /half

Deerhunter /full

PJ Harvey /half

Sun Glitters /start

Venom /half

Chairlift /half

Lena Willikens /half

Julia Holter /full | Sigur Rós /miss

Moderat /full

 

05.06

 

Mudhoney /full

Black Lips /half

Univers /full

Ty Segall & The Muggers /full

 

***

 

Lush — к счастью оказались в полном порядке, и очень сильно заряжены на отдачу (особенно Miki), правда чтобы на них попасть в Барсе пришлось пройти целый квест, с двумя разными очередями (и не всем желающим это удалось), но они ещё много где выступят в этом году, так что можете смело отправляться смотреть их на других фестах (надеюсь и у меня Примаверой всё не ограничится), и вот что они играют:

 

Lush @ Primavera Sound, Barcelona, 2016.06.03

 

01. De-Luxe

02. Lit Up

03. Kiss Chase

04. Hypocrite

05. Thoughtforms

06. Light From a Dead Star

07. Desire Lines

08. Breeze

09. Etheriel

10. Scarlet

11. Out of Control

12. For Love

13. Ladykillers

14. Downer

15. Sweetness and Light

 

Ty Segall — стоит смотреть в клубах, как мне кажется, на открытых сценах в Porto 2014, да и в Барсе, он конечно тоже угорает, но в клубе-то есть где распоясаться зрителям, и в Apolo в этом плане было всё идеально: котеки выбегали на сцену, и немного покривлявшись радостно прыгали в толпу (этот Ty и сам полетал пару раз), охрана вела себя прилично, и никто не пострадал, но, клуб зачем-то продавал пиво в стеклянных бутылках (это чисто испанский epic fail), и в конце стало понятно, насколько всё прошло на грани — весь пол был усыпан осколками от бутылок(!).

 

Beach House — выдали лайв с космическим звуком/светом, ещё и под звёздным небом, это был полный улёт (и наконец-то я посмотрел их шоу целиком)!

 

Julia Holter — видел её на Flow 2013, в маленьком зале цирка(?), отстояв там немыслимую очередь (концерт был обалденный), потом на Primavera Sound 2014, в Аудитории (она пела специально в мой ДР — это был идеальный концерт ever), и вот наконец ей дали большую сцену (Ray Ban), в итоге я там завис настолько, что полностью пропустил Sigur Rós (и это при том, что я из фан-клуба SR)!

 

От Radiohead мне хватило двух с половиной треков — они пересекались с не менее великими коллективами: Пещера Антивещества и Шеллак, например. Легендарный чекин во время Радиохэда, в полутора километрах от них, на лайве Shellac, несомненно войдёт в историю Primavera Sound! Кстати, на Шеллаке было неприлично много народа, как это понимать?

 

В очередной раз напишу, что Thee Oh Sees / Ty Segall в разы(!!!) лучше смотрятся на концертах, чем на записях — не пропускайте их по возможности!

 

Дважды за эти годы честно пытался въехать в Animal Collective, но с обоих концертов очень быстро сваливал — для меня слишком атонально и муторно.

 

Отдельно стоит упомянуть мистическое шоу Polly — она играет новый альбом, и не одна, а с целой группой музыкантов, и это всё звучит и выглядит нереально круто! (думаю теперь — не скататься ли в Москву через неделю, там это стоит всего 1k, смешная цена для её нынешнего уровня), в Барсе не удалось посмотреть целиком, т.к. не хотелось совсем пропустить Venom / Chairlift.

 

Концерты Deerhunter и Battles также стараюсь не пропускать, потому что они клёвые! Как обычно был неплох Beirut. Tortoise — отцы! The Last Shadow Puppets на записях гораздо лучше чем живьем (вообще ушёл с них). Нравится музыка Sun Glitters (под настроение), но на этот раз получилось послушать его (это один человек — Victor Ferreira, из Люксембурга) лишь по пути.

 

Нормально отношусь к LCD Soundsystem, и мы с друзьями даже как-то ходили в Новую Голландию, где посмотрели фильм про Мёрфи — Shut Up and Play the Hits (2013), но в этот барселонский вечер я предпочёл забойных Thee Oh Sees — и вы должны увидеть хоть раз этот калифорнийский гараж! Правда ребята потом рассказывали, что лайв LCD Soundsystem считают чуть-ли не лучшим — OK!

 

Merkabah — avant-garde/psychedelic от никому неизвестных польских нойзеров, играют помимо гитар ещё на каких-то hand made штучках (я так и не понял на чём) — мне так понравились, посмотрел их аж два раза (правда оба не полностью) — отличные ребята!

 

Cavern of Anti-Matter (параллельно с Radiohead) — та самая kraut группа, и там, между прочим, играет один из участников Stereolаb — мне только одного этого было бы достаточно.

 

Tame Impala — их последние студийные записи я сильно котирую, но оказалось что в концертном сетлисте помимо явных хитов(и они были wow!), есть и непонятные провалы/зависания, к тому же в Барсе у них произошёл фэйл — что-то отключилось и возникла пауза, потом они начали с того же места — получилось как-то неоднозначно, мне скорее понравилось, но я ожидал гораздо большего, если честно (и из-за них был пропущен John Carpenter, увы).

 

Helena Hauff — девица-открытие, techno/minimal wave/electro из Гамбурга, свою роль сыграла и крутейшая сцена B&W (от Bowers & Wilkins). Сложно представить, сколько стоил этот специальный тент, нафаршированный hi-end'ом, и я сочувствую тем кто так и не добрался через мост в Beach Club, ведь там было так интересно (своя атмосфера)). Сцена B&W по-моему организовала лучший звук феста (хотя при тех вложениях, какие делает в аппарат Примавера — там везде прекрасный саунд).

 

Venom — совершенно внезапно выдали море драйва, думал будет совсем ужас, но нет (и под конец я услышал ту самую песню - Black Metal живьем (!), а чего добился ты?)) смешно получилось — в 200 метрах от них звучал солнечный synth от Chairlift, которых я тоже люблю (так что ходил туда-сюда).

 

Deradoorian — интересный art pop, от участницы Dirty Projectors, но её прошлогодний дебютный альбом я благополучно прозевал, теперь придётся заценить.

 

Air — космические синтезаторы, куда же без них, на подобных концертах улетаешь в другое измерение, автоматический дабл лайк!

 

Suede — Brett так старался, что порвал рубашку (хотя пишут, он вышел в заранее порванной рубахе, как так?!)) — был весь мокрый, без устали прыгал и скакал по сцене (видимо попался хороший колумбийский ла-ла-ла), но не могу не отметить их вклад в движ Примаверы.

 

Holly Herndon — интересная американка, с IDM/glitch/techno, надо бы послушать её альбомы (их аж три) — простоял на этом концерте практически разинув рот, типа — эй, алё, что тут вообще происходит? (была дичь-дичь, но она запомнилась).

 

A.R. Kane — успел лишь к последним трекам, и они оказались более чем! Очень жаль, что их поставили в неудачный таймслот (вместе с Air).

 

Dinosaur Jr. (играли параллельно с Radiohead) — дождался всё-таки кавер на The Cure, и пошёл с чистой совестью (на Шеллак)).

 

PTV3 — самый ламповый концерт феста, шаманство происходило в клубе Apolo, Genesis P-Orridge — несомненно godlikegenius!

 

Brian Wilson — разумеется уважаю, и кино про него наверняка все вы тоже посмотрели (Love & Mercy, 2014), но именно в тот момент мне хотелось чего-то позабойнее.

 

Autolux — классные, нравятся с того самого разогрева PJ Harvey в СПб, летом 2008, особенно когда на вокале их ударница — Carla (хотя в СПб меня больше всего поразило что их вокалист идеально говорит по-русски, но об этом я уже писал).

 

Richard Hawley — нельзя просто так взять и пропустить концерт гитариста Pulp!

 

Holögrama — любопытный испанский kraut дуэт, кроме того, удалось заценить ещё две неплохих испанских/каталонских группы: Carla — dream pop/folk, и Univers — noise pop/post-rock из Барсы.

 

U.S. Girls — две модных-премодных synth девицы, и с ними ещё был чувак в ковбойской шляпе (в нескольких треках он смешно позировал с гитарой), так вот, юная спортивная киса на вокале искренне возмущалась — почему вы не прыгаете и не радуетесь нам, неужели мы настолько плохи? и в итоге показала грудь, чтобы хоть как-то оживить аудиторию (да, это беспроигрышный вариант, получила заслуженные аплодисменты)) — видимо она впервые на Примавере, и не в курсе, что тут вам не спортивный ЗОЖ-фестиваль, и все нормальные люди с утра (около 16:00) ещё еле стоят на ногах, пошатываясь после вчерашнего. В принципе USG вовсе неплохие и некоторый хайп вполне обоснован, к тому же они старались и просто стали жертвами неправильного времени — ночью это всё прокатило бы на ура, но она под конец совсем обиделась и ушла не попрощавшись, хнык — ну не плачь.

 

Moderat — ночью, на главной сцене и с идеальным мощным звуком — very good! Правда иногда они по-моему перегибали, нельзя играть так сложно в 3 ночи — всё должно быть просто и убойно (см. Justice или Kap Bambino с Die Antwoord, например). С другой стороны — возможно надо было всего лишь ещё чем-нибудь закинуться.

 

Mudhoney — подозрительно хорошо сохранились (это удивило даже больше, чем то что они играли), и пусть grunge остался в прошлом — посмотреть на них набилась целая площадь, они выступали перед Театром современного искусства(кажется) — был очень рад посмотреть на одну из ключевых групп жанра, и именно там продавали Martini (это была их сцена) в этих супермодных и красивых стаканчиках (всего за 3.5).

 

Возможно вы не поверите, но на самом фесте я вообще не пил алкоголь — только свежевыжатый лимонный сок, по 0.5 за 5.5 (и он, кстати, на самом деле штырит!), и пару раз ел органические бургеры. Одна из причин — неадекватный для нас ценник (5—7—9—12 евро за стаканчик локального пива(точнее пойла)/коктейля), вторая — алкоголь уже был внутри (хаха), т.к. мы практически нон-стопом дегустировали вина перед фестом (красные) и по утрам (белые). Странно, что на подобные фесты не дают вписываться нормальным ламповым пивоварням — из бельгийских монастырей, например.

 

Кто-то ехал сюда ради Radiohead, кто-то из-за LCDS, моими целями были в основном Lush, Tame Impala, Beach House, PJ Harvey и Julia Holter с Venom (дада) — остался доволен настолько, что немного опоздал на свой собственный самолёт (все друзья разлетались в разные дни, на разных самолётах и в разные страны, например я должен был в итоге оказаться в Финляндии, но не в этот раз)) — зато слетал через Москву (кстати, DME/S7 — норм), так что Примавера удалась!

 

Line Up:

lineup.primaverasound.es/2016_artists

 

Timetable:

clashfinder.com/s/ps16/

 

Photos:

www.flickr.com/photos/deepskyobject/albums/72157668363430955

 

Videos:

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4QcWvf2qqEKp_hmEfQfkliAGl...

 

#primavera #ps16 #primaverasound #барселона #barcelona #primavera2016

leaves falling again:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QfFGO2SCPk

 

The Tell Tale Heart

By Edgar Allan Poe

 

True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

 

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

 

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

 

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

 

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room.

 

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

 

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.

 

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha! When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises. I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

 

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

 

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/02/25/new-global-warming-dat...

Continued from Part I of The Upside of Humiliation: www.flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/52272860962/in/datepos...

 

From a lecture on his person: “The grief of the event, his witnessing of it, never left him for a single second his entire life. Not for an instant. So let’s look at grief for a moment. What is it? It is an emotional and psychological experience that we undergo after some loss. It applies to all kinds of losses. But then there is a term bereavement. Which is a specific type of grief. It is what you undergo when you lose a loved one.

 

We will still use the word grief for the purpose of this lecture. Grief is an individualized process. You cannot generalize it. Everybody’s reaction and endurance of it is unique. There can be no time limit set for how long it should be felt. The stages defined by psychology in the West are denial, anger, bargaining (with God), depression, and finally acceptance.

 

There are two kinds of grief, acute and prolonged. Acute is a shock, the pain is sharp but transient. The Sufis call it a meaning making tone. When you start making sense of things. Prolonged grief is an emotional crisis, almost like a paralysis.

It’s a numbness, a social withdrawal, total pain. It causes dysfunctionality. Grief has four components; separation distress, traumatic distress, guilt and remorse and social withdrawal.

 

But Hazrat Zain ul Abideen’s (as), the unmatched social reformer of his time, a political reformer, his reaction and way of dealing with pain, for him the answer lay in three verses in the Quran. For what someone might face as a test once in a while over a lifetime, he underwent it all in nine days.

 

‏وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُم بِشَىْءٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْخَوْفِ وَٱلْجُوعِ وَنَقْصٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْأَمْوَلِ وَٱلْأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَتِ ۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّبِرِينَ ‎

 

And surely We will test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good news to the patient ones.

Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 155

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa lunabluwannakum: And We test them, Allah takes an oath on Himself, We will test you and we will place you in a trial, testing your steadfastness and your reach in Allah’s Tauheed, His One-ness…

 

Bi shayin: just a little, which will tell of most of it (your steadfastness) and the duality (of your reach in Tauheed)…

 

Min al khauf: from something of fear that comes from things that you hate that are external for e.g. fire, drowning, an enemy etc…

 

Wal joou’: and from something that comes from the things that you despise that are internal like greed and (excessive) hopes and miserliness and such…

 

Wa naqsim minal amwaal: and a little bit of loss of possessions which make your hearts incline towards them naturally…

 

Wal anfus: and a little bit of loss of something that belongs to your self which make you feel strength and pride because of them, from your children and your siblings and your relatives and your clan…

 

Was samaraat: and something of fruits, which are dependent on possessions and children, which grant honour and your showing off of your domination upon the enemy.

 

Wa bashirr: And give them glad tidings, O Akmal Ar Rasool, The Messenger who perfects The Messengers (peace be upon him and his family)…

 

As Saabireen: the patient ones among the ones who are certain in Tauheed and they…

 

‏ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌۭ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَجِعُونَ ‎

 

Those who, when strikes them a misfortune, they say, "Indeed, we belong to Allah and indeed we towards Him will return."

Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 156

 

Alladina ida asabathum museebatun qalu: are the ones who when affliction touches them, they say with collective union in their tongue…

 

Inna: Indeed, We are a shadow…

 

Lillah: of Allah Al Wahid, The One One, Al Ahad, The One and Only, Al Mutajjali, The One who reveals and unveils with His Perfect Names and His Exalted Attributes in this world…

 

Wa inna: and indeed we are, after our returning in the Afterworld…

 

Ilayhi: towards Him and not towards anyone other than Him from the shadows (of association)…

 

Raji’oon: the ones returning, the ones who make the returning of the shadow towards The One who created the shadows.

 

Subhan Allah!

 

‏أُو۟لَٓئِكَ عَلَيْهِمْ صَلَوَتٌۭ مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَرَحْمَةٌۭ ۖ وَأُو۟لَٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُهْتَدُونَ ‎

 

Those are the ones, on them are blessings from their Lord and Mercy.

And those are the guided ones.

Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 157

 

Ulaika: They are the ones, happy, steadfast in the place of Tauheed, who are cleansed from the imprisonment of time and space, being and not being.

 

Alaihim: Upon them, not upon other than them from the people of ranks, is…

 

Salawaat: His Inclination and His Focus, which rise from the Ocean of His Essence, flowing from the streams of Attributes and Names towards the Cosmos of Appearance to grow Divine Recognition and Truth which make one reach towards the Giver of the Eternal Blessings and towards an enjoyment that lasts forever, pouring upon them forever…

 

Mir Rabbihim: from their Lord who brought them to the Place of Honour…

 

Wa rahmatun: and Mercy which covers them, and no one other than them, in abundance.

 

Wa ulaika: And they are the Al Wasiloon, the one who reach..

Hum ul muhtadoon: as the guided ones towards the True Origin and the True Abode.

 

I was left speechless.

 

There was an incident in the lecture about Imam Zain ul Abideen’s (as) blessed person which created a reflection. As if I could see the verses through his being. At one point the Imam (as) was imprisoned by his arch enemy Marwan. Zuhri, the Supreme Justice of the court of the time went to see him. Seeing his condition, shackled in chains, hardly any food and water, he fell on his feet and crying, expressed how something like this could happen to one of the sons of the one who brought the faith to this world.

 

Imam Zain ul Abideen (as) only said this: “It is enough for make me feel proud that in Karbala my father was beheaded and left without a burial, without even clothes, his body trampled by horses. It is enough to make me feel proud that my aunt and my sisters were made to sit bareback on camels for a thousand miles without a veil, when no one even set eyes on their shadow before and I was dragged behind them in markets through cities.”

 

It was the word he used in Arabic, fakhar, that I knew. It exists in Urdu but I still had to look it up to make sure I was translating it right: something that makes you proud!

 

And I thought about what Allah Subhanahu had said to Hazrat Bayazid Bastami (ra) when the means to gain what he had been told: his ilm, knowledge, his taqwa, restraint, piety and mindfulness, and his sakhawat, generosity had not granted him his heart’s only desire, Nearness, closeness, qurb!

 

“Bayazid, Come to me by way of that which I am not,” Allah Subhanahu had said.

 

“But what is it that you are possibly not?” The saint had asked, baffled.

 

He received the answer, “Humility and humiliation.”

 

Everything the Imam (as) was describing sounded like nothing but the purest and deepest humiliation a human being could possibly experience. Yet he was proud of it. I wondered, just like the martyr sees Allah in his final moment of life in this world, hence his title shaheed, the witness, was the Imam (as) and his blessed family seeing Allah Al Baseer, The Seeing One, throughout the time of their pain? Like their father, Imam Ali (as) who never prayed a sala’t where he didn’t see his Lord?

 

Perhaps that was why even in those 10 days of Karbala, never did any person of the household of Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family) miss a single raka’t of the 1,000 they prayed every single night. When I, if I haven’t eaten properly the night before, find myself tired and making excuses to shorten my dawn prayers, which are hardly of length to begin with.

 

Imam Zain ul Abideen (as) said to Zuhri, “You believe me to be helpless?”

 

He looked down and Zuhri narrates, ‘I looked at the Imam’s (as) hands and the shackles were broken and he said to me, Put them back on again.’

 

Zuhri said I placed the chains around his wrist and asked,

 

“What was that Ya Imam (as)?”

 

He replied, “This is surrender to the Pleasure of your Lord God. We only do that which is His Pleasure and nothing else.”

 

Was it any wonder they were the ones Chosen Ones whose capacity was deeper than oceans?

 

يَخْتَصُّ بِرَحْمَتِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُ ۗ

 

He chooses for His Mercy whom He wills.

Surah Aal e Imran, Verse 74

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Yakhtassu bi rahmatihi: He chooses for His Mercy, a Mercy Expansive, All Encompassing, a Mercy which is a collection of Excellence and Perfection…

 

Mayya sha’u: whom He wills from His Chosen Worshippers, honoring them with His Bounty from Himself, according to their capacity, whose (that Mercy’s) depth cannot be known and its boundary cannot be estimated.

 

I realized then that my humiliation, it could never make me feel fakhar. It was a courtesy of my nafs. I chose it every time. Almost always, it misguided me by making me believe I was softer and kinder than others, hiding from me all the while that it was just proud. It thought in secret for me to only discover later, I was imagining I was better than the other. Like Iblis!

 

I ticked all the boxes of transgressors; wicked, disobedient, hypocritical, angry, ruled by my tabyat, impatient. The only thing I had going for me was that I always felt deep regret. I instantly apologized. I yearned to be forgiven so repentance poured forth from me.

 

The lecture on Muharram continued: “Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family) said that in the first instance of the difficulty, patience must be exercised. Not hours or days later. Not thinking one needed time to “process.” In the first instant. Meaning what? That the family of the Prophet (peace be upon him and them) understand that every relationship is through and from Allah alone. It is never yours to lose. Nothing is yours. It all belongs to only Him.”

 

When I had first started feeling confused about the coldness of the behaviour of someone who seemed to be walking on air days ago around me, it was Qari Sahib who happened to say something in a class that made my heart calm.

 

“Before you rely on someone,” he was quoting Ghaus Pak (ra), “Kissi pe bharosa karne se pehle uss se dosti karo. (Before you rely on someone, make sure they are your friend!) And how do you know anyone for sure? Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family) says through three things; either live next to them as their neighbor so you know how their days and nights are timed, travel with them so their character is revealed or engage in business with them to see their morals.”

 

The verse from my last video appeared before my eyes: it was always easy to rely on God. He had already said He was my Friend. And His Beloved (peace be upon him and his family).

And Imam Ali (as) for whom specifically, the verse descended.

 

‏إِنَّمَا وَلِيُّكُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ يُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَيُؤْتُونَ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَهُمْ رَكِعُونَ ‎

 

Your only Friend is Allah and His Messenger, and those who believe,

and those who establish prayer and give zakat and they are those who bow down in prayer.

Surah Al Maida’, Verse 55

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Inna walliyyukum Allah: Indeed, Allah is your Friend, The One who is in charge of your matters as related to all kinds of ordinary love…

 

Wa Rasooluhu: and so is His Messenger (peace be upon him and his family), who is His Vice-regent second to Him, also in charge…

 

Walladina aamino: and those who brought faith in Allah with a special love (extraordinary) because of their following the Prophet (peace be upon him) and they…

 

Alladina yuqeemoona: are the one who are forever…

As salat: in prayer that brings one close to Allah’s Essence…

 

And yu’toona az zakata: and they give charity which cleanses their batin, inner being, from focus on anything other than Allah…

 

Wa: in the state of…

 

Hum rak’ioon: bowing in their prayer.

 

Huzoor Ghaus Pak (ra) says the verse is revealed for Maula Ali (may Allah gives honour to his countenance), when a beggar asked him (for alms) while he was in ruku’, bowing in prayer, and he loosened his ring so that it dropped (for him to take).

No wonder all my friendships fizzled into thin air one by one. How else was I going to learn that Innama, only three were my friends!

 

At first when I started to apply the rule of Wahjurhum hajran jameela, my nafs only brought me further humiliation in every encounter. The rule had been given. The key word was “avoid” and then it appeared again, “with gracious avoidance.” My nafs decide to ignore exactly that word. It would say to me on random days, “Well if we’re having a lunch and inviting four people, can’t we invite a fifth?”

 

It would sound reasonable enough so I would. Then would come the slap of humiliation from the other end. On another day it would say, “If we’re going to the same place an hour away, might as well driver together.” I would agree and a harder slap would come. “We’re in the area,” it would suggest, “let’s stop by and say hi.” And the humiliation would further intensify.

 

Until I understood why only because of the kindness of my guide who guides all guides!

 

In those days, one night I would read Al Fath Ar Rabbani and in it Ghaus Pak (ra) would say: Knowledge without the application of deed will only take you back to creation again and again.

 

Basically towards humiliation instead of towards dignity.

I realized what I was doing or rather was made to realize it because I was constantly reiterating the verse of avoidance in the lectures with the kids. I would circle back to it all the time. But I was tweaking the rule. Hence, the rest of its application was rendering it void. It wasn’t even that it was without result. It was having the exact opposite effect. Instead of bringing me into safety, my nafs was forcing me into harm.

 

So I reminded myself:

 

Wahjurjum: leave them and turn your attention away from them…

 

Hajran jameela: with beautiful avoidance, smiling, cheerfully,

without inclining towards their false delerium (confusion and reduced awareness)

and without consideration for them or looking after them

and without speaking to them

and with tawakkul, reliance upon Allah and entrust the matter of avenging them to Him. For indeed, He is Enough for you regarding their supply of misdeeds and ridicule.

 

It took me two weeks to apply the rule correctly. For 14 days I burned in the hell of my own creation. But each time I brought the blame upon myself because of another verse that lives with me every single day of my life to the point that I memorized it to utter in the prostrations of my namaz:

 

وَلَوْ أَنَّهُمْ إِذ ظَّلَمُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَهُمْ جَآءُوكَ فَٱسْتَغْفَرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ

وَٱسْتَغْفَرَ لَهُمُ ٱلرَّسُولُ لَوَجَدُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابًۭا رَّحِيمًۭا

 

And if they, when they wronged themselves, come to you and asked forgiveness of Allah,

and the Messenger (peace be upon him) asked forgiveness for them,

surely, they would have found Allah Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Surah An-Nisa’, Verse 64

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa lau annahum: And if they, without doubt, due to the intensity of their ghaflat, forgetfulness and hypocrisy…

 

Id zalamu anfusahum: that which befalls you of affliction, (which is) harmful, not submitting to you (O Beloved)…

 

Jaa’uka: they must come to you as the ones who repent, the one who are apologetic because of that which happened from them…

 

Fastaghfarullah: then they ask for forgiveness from Allah (being) sincere and regretful…

 

Wastaghfara lahum Ar Rasoolu: and The Messenger (peace be upon him) also asks for forgiveness for them through intercession and praying before Allah, asking for the acceptance (of the person by Him) after they have come as the ones who are apologetic…

 

Lawajadullaha: surely, they will find Allah (to be) and they will testify to Him being the One who grants Bounty and Mercy…

 

Tawwaban: (and find Allah to be) The One who accepts their repentance…

 

Raheeman: The One who is Merciful to them and grants them ability to do this (go the The Messenger (peace be upon him).

I was ghafil, forgetful, (of the rule). I was a hypocrite. I had lied to my nafs so I trained it to lie to me. Except now when it spoke I believed it and those lies only harmed me. I believed them just like once it believed me.

 

Sigh!

 

I had quoted the above verse on forgiveness countless times. But this time different words were hitting me like arrows as I read it in repetition:

 

My affliction came upon me from my own self because I didn’t submit, not to Allah Subhanahu, but His Beloved (peace be upon him and his family).

 

When I appeared before him then, tired, sad, needing release from what I had done which had imprisoned me, I needed to be

1.apologetic

2.regretful

3.repentant

4.sincere

5.then again feeling regret

6.then again being apologetic

 

A common friend had asked me when I finally started refusing invites, “Will you not ever meet again?”

 

“No,” I said, “We might. But I’m not thinking about it.”

 

I knew I would never take any steps to initiate contact. My friend became silent. She asked if I needed an apology for a shift to happen, hinting that it seemed unlikely. I smiled.

 

“I’ve had this experience many times before,” I said, “I hold no grudge. You will only find me smiling and cheerful,” I laughed, feeling again that pang of gratitude that I did not have to act cold. My heart still liked them. I did not need to distress it with a false sense of dignity.

 

Pir Naseeruddin Naseer (ra) says the person who does something wrong and does not apologize or express regret, their heart is sealed. Since it is the exercise of a choice, the person, perhaps unconsciously, becomes defiant. Disobedient. The Quran defines such a person as a fajir and Maula e Kayinaat (as) said to his son just before his passing;

 

و ایاک و مصادقۃ الفاجر فانہ یبیعک بالتاقۃ

 

And avoid the Fajir, the one who is defiant about his disobedience and insistent upon it,

for, without doubt, he will sell you for nothing.

 

The elusive “sell me for nothing” line was now crystal clear. Anyone entirely governed by their tabyat, acquired nature, was in a constant state of fear or sadness. Whereas the Friends of God never felt either because they controlled their tabyat while we were controlled by ours.

 

أَلَآ إِنَّ أَوْلِيَآءَ ٱللَّهِ لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ

 

Verily, the Friends of Allah, there will be no fear upon them and not they will grieve.

Surah Yunus, Verse 62

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Ala Inna auliya Allah e: Al Munkhalaeena, the ones who are detached from the demands of being human in total, Al Munsalekheena, the one who are far from the requirements of desires of their selves in totality...

 

La khauf-un alayhim wa la hum yahzanoon: there is no fear upon them nor do they feel grief because fear and sadness, they only come from the effects of the tabyat, (the secondary nature that is acquired from outside), and the pursuit of that which fulfills it.

 

Not to mention the layer of forgetfulness, likely the top layer of the tabyat. My being existent or non-existent for them, it was the same.

 

And suddenly I was free! Not from one relationship or two but all that held no sincerity towards me. Smiling and cheerful!

 

And of all things I was the one in a place, courtesy of the hadith of my Nabi, who is Rauf and Rahim (peace be upon him and his family), where I might be rendered love from my Lord for executing a command perfectly.

 

إنَّ اللهَ تعالى يُحِبُّ إذا عمِلَ أحدُكمْ عملًا أنْ يُتقِنَهُ

 

Indeed, Allah The Exalted One loves when one of you does a deed exactly as it should be done.

 

The hadith brought home the point of the verse that when every single person was in the same boat of khusr – loss. The only possibility of separation from that state, any distinction, was a deed, salih, good.

 

‏وَٱلْعَصْرِ

إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ

‏ ‎ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ

‏

(Allah takes an oath) upon time,

that the human being is surely in a state of loss,

except those who believe and do righteous deeds…

Surah Al-Asr, Verses 1-3

 

Tafseer e Jilani:

 

Wal Asr: Then Allah Suban Ta’ala takes an oath upon time and the ages, the meaning of which is about the Eternal Essence of Allah, from the beginning till the end, Timeless and Everlasting.

 

Innal Insaana: Indeed, the human being, created such to have a natural propensity towards the nature of ma’rifa, the Recognition of God and imaan, faith according to his share of the Lahoot, the Realm of the Divine, where there is no time and space…

 

Lafe khusr: is in a state of loss, immense and humiliating failure, as a result of their busyness in that which is useless due to the requirements (and needs) of his physical being, as related to his share of the world of Nasoot, the life in this world.

 

Illa: Except the Muqinoon, those who possess inner certainty…

 

Alladina Aamino: about the One-ness of Allah Subhan Ta’ala and are conscious, through their steadfastness, in their behaviour continuously in His Kingdom and about His Authority.

 

Wa: And with this faith and certainty…

 

Amilos Sualihaat: they do good deeds which points towards their ikhas, sincerity and their yaqeen, absolute conviction, and niyyat, intention.

 

“When someone makes a particular action beautiful, Allah falls in love with that person,” a friend who is a scholar told me. “But the problem lies in us humans defining beauty itself. As long as my fitrat, the core being of a human being as created by Allah remains saleem, pure, then I will have a proper consciousness of beauty. I will call a beautiful thing beautiful and an ugly thing ugly.

 

But if my nature gets corrupted, then things become the opposite. If my tabyat, which is acquired by my habits and environment, overpowers the fitrat, ugly things become beautiful for me and beautiful things become ugly. What is beautiful loses its worth. That is the problem with the corruption of the soul. That is why one of the meanings of Islam is keeping the fitrat safe. That is why in the Hereafter Allah says what will save you is your qalb, your heart within the heart which recognizes Him, if it is saleem.”

 

I looked up the verse he quoted:

 

‏إِذْ جَآءَ رَبَّهُۥ بِقَلْبٍۢ سَلِيمٍ ‎

 

Remember when he came to his Lord with a pure heart.

Surah As Saffat, Verse 84

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Remember, O Messenger who completes the Messengers (peace be upon you and your family), the time when…

Id ja’a Rabbuhu biqalbin saleem: when he, the Prophet Ibrahim (as), came to his Lord with a heart perfect, intact from all of the inclinations false and opinions untrue.

In another lecture I came upon the most interesting definition of freedom from within my faith, of being free as a human being.

 

“What is freedom?” the scholar asked his audience. “The first question one has to ask is freedom for what and freedom from what. If you cannot answer these questions, you don’t understand what freedom is.

 

Freedom is defined as removing the obstacles from my path of prosperity and evolving. But removing others from my path of freedom is easy. The problem arises when I am the block in my own path of freedom. That is the challenge. What if I am the hurdle in my spiritual or socio-economic or moral progress.

 

The Quran addresses both social freedom and individual freedom through the context of sending Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family).”

 

The he quoted the verse:

 

لَقَدْ مَنَّ ٱللَّهُ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعَثَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًۭا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ

يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَتِهِۦ

وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ

وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ ٱلْكِتَبَ

وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ

وَإِن كَانُوا۟ مِن قَبْلُ لَفِى ضَلَلٍۢ مُّبِينٍ ‎

 

Indeed, Allah has bestowed a favour upon the believers, when he raised in their midst an apostle from among themselves,

to convey His Messages unto them,

and to cause them to grow in purity,

and to impart unto them the Divine Writ as well as wisdom,

where as before that they were, indeed, most obviously, lost in error.

Surah Aal e Imran, Verse 164

 

I had translated its tafseer so I went back to it.

 

Laqad Mannallahu: By the Name of Allah, He bestowed a great Favour…

 

Ala al Mo’mineen: upon the ones who are sincere…

 

Id ba’atha fi-him: when he raised him, the Prophet (peace be upon him)), from amongst them for their guidance…

 

Rasool an: as a Messenger to be their Murshid, guide, who was brought up…

 

Min Anfusihim: in them to guide them with different types of guidance.

 

Yatlu alihim: First of all, he recites to them (the Quran) and makes them listen…

 

Ayati hi: to Allah’s Verses, which indicate towards the One-ness of His Essence.

 

Wa Yuzzakihim: Secondly, he purifies them from the evils whisperings of Satan and those desires that lead one astray from the Path of Allah’s One-ness.

 

Wa Yuallimuhim: And thirdly, he teaches them…

 

Al Kitab: the Book, which explains and clarifies to them the means to cleanse the overt, the zahir, as well as everything which is related to the apparent world.

 

Wa: Then fourthly he teaches them…

 

Al hikmat; the wisdom that purifies their inner being, the batin, from the inclination towards anything other than Allah, (both people and things), and which connects them to Sidrat al Muntaha, the Lote Tree, near which is Jannat ul Mawa, Heaven.

 

Wa in Kanu Min Qablu: And they were before the unveiling of these four stations…

 

Lafi Dalalin Mubeen: in clear waywardness and severe humiliation.

 

At the end then Ghaus Pak (ra) prays: “Ya Allah! By Your Bounty, save us from the sleep of those who are heedless.

I re-read each word carefully. Through the perfect being of Ajmal Ar Rusul alone, the most beautiful Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) because he is the noor who brings, reveals, unveils and clarifies it, the Book cleanses the overt. Through the wisdom he alone teaches, the inner is purified.

 

But before both he does the tazkiya, the purification of thought.

 

As Qari Sahib says, “For purity to enter, the vessel must be pure!”

 

I counted the number of times the verb hada’, to guide, appeared in the verse. Only through his guidance, seeking it, staying in it, came the safety from the whisperings of Satan and one’s own desires, unending and dictated by the nafs.

In another verse, I saw an additional meaning of what malice in the breast is: selfishness, duality.

 

I was noticing how Mankind was entirely blanketed in self-centeredness courtesy of the addiction to technology. For the first consequence of any addiction, be it sick love, eating, watching tv or holding a phone 24/7, is selfishness. The second cause of wickedness of the heart, was duality. Which Ghaus Pak (ra) defined as hopes and expectations associated with others.

 

وَنَزَعْنَا مَا فِى صُدُورِهِم مِّنْ غِلٍّ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهِمُ ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ ۖ

وَقَالُوا۟ ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ٱلَّذِى هَدَىٰنَا لِهَـٰذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لِنَهْتَدِىَ لَوْلَآ أَنْ هَدَىٰنَا ٱللَّهُ ۖ

 

And We will remove whatever is in their breasts of malice.

Flows from underneath them the rivers.

And they will say, "All the praise (is) for Allah, the One Who guided us to this, and we were not to receive guidance if not (had) guided us Allah. Certainly, came Messengers of our Lord with the truth."

Surah Al-Araaf, Verse 43

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa: After they have entered the Heaven of Tauheed, One-ness…

 

Naza’na ma fi sudoorihim min ghill-in: after We erased from their breasts, duality and selfishness

 

Tajri min tahtihal anhaar: (the Heaven) under which flow rivers of Ma’rifat, Knowledge of God and Haqaiq, Realities of the Essence of God, sprouting from the Ocean of the His One-ness.

 

Wa: After their unveiling due the dissolving of their identity and they triumph in the Everlasting Existence of Allah…

 

Qaalu: they said, with the capability of their tongues as inspired by Allah, that they may become steadfast on gratitude…

 

Alhamdo: praise and admiration that rises from tasleem o raza, surrender and acceptance…

 

Lillah alladi hada-na li hada: for The One who made us reach the status of contentedness and the Place of the Honour of meeting Him…

 

Wa ma kunna li nahtadiya: Which we would not have reached if we had stayed in the company of our desires and the darkness of our selves…

 

Lau la an hada-na: were it not for his Lutf, Kindness and Endless Generosity and Vast Mercy.

 

I memorized the second verse instantly to utter in my prostrations.

 

The lecture continued: “The Rasool (peace be upon him and his family) has been sent to cleanse your overt and inner beings. So in fact he has been sent to free you from your own self that shackles you.”

 

I went back to my notes from my lecture for the kids and looked up the list of what emanates from my self to remember exactly the definition of those “shackles:”

 

وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ وَنَعْلَمُ مَا تُوَسْوِسُ بِهِۦ نَفْسُهُۥ ۖ

 

And certainly We created man and We know what his self whispers to him.

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wa: And We…

 

Na’alamu: We know him from that point…

 

Ma tuwaswisu: (as to) what whispers and makes up a rambling story…

 

Bihi nafsohu: from his own self and sways his heart (from that point) until now from

1.those kinds of delusions and false imaginings

2.and those things that descend upon him as animalistic desires

3.and those thoughts that are imprisoned by the chains of rituals

4.and shackles of inherent habits that are inherited

5.as a result of useless ponderings which are mixed with unthinking paranoia.

 

I began to look up the verses the scholar had quoted to emphasize that there was only one original source of tazkiya, purification. There was only one human being that Allah Subhanahu had chosen, appointed, named in all His Other Books and announced that he in turn, determined and then commanded, solely, what was intrinsically beneficial and what caused harm for the self.

 

The lecture continued: “Ma’roof is that which my fitrat knows and recognizes as good and munkir is that which my iftrat knows is sinful and wrong. So the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) does not command anything that the fitrat dislikes and only commands that which it already knows as good.

 

For the Quran repeatedly uses the words “transgression of boundaries” in the context of the injustice we do to our own selves. Not the injustice we perpetrate on others. Not the injustice others impose on us. The focus is always brought to one’s own nafs al Ammara. Similarly he only forbids that which the fitrat already knows is harmful for it. Nothing else! There is no conflict in his instruction and order for the soul.”

 

Then he quoted the verse which I translated with Qari Sahib:

 

ٱلَّذِينَ يَتَّبِعُونَ ٱلرَّسُولَ ٱلنَّبِىَّ ٱلْأُمِّىَّ

ٱلَّذِى يَجِدُونَهُۥ مَكْتُوبًا عِندَهُمْ فِى ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةِ وَٱلْإِنجِيلِ يَأْمُرُهُم بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ

وَيَنْهَىٰهُمْ عَنِ ٱلْمُنكَرِ وَيُحِلُّ لَهُمُ ٱلطَّيِّبَـٰتِ

وَيُحَرِّمُ عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلْخَبَـٰٓئِثَ وَيَضَعُ عَنْهُمْ إِصْرَهُمْ وَٱلْأَغْلَـٰلَ ٱلَّتِى كَانَتْ عَلَيْهِمْ ۚ

فَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ بِهِۦ وَعَزَّرُوهُ وَنَصَرُوهُ وَٱتَّبَعُوا۟ ٱلنُّورَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ مَعَهُۥٓ ۙ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ

 

Those who follow the Messenger, the Ummiyy Prophet (peace be upon him) whom they find written with them in the Torah and the Injīl ,

and who bids them what is fair and forbids what is unfair,

and makes lawful for them good things,

and makes unlawful for them impure things,

and relieves them of their burden, and of the shackles that were upon them.

So, those who believe in him and support him, and help him and follow the light sent down with him, - those are the ones who are successful.

Surah Al Ara-af, Verse 157

 

Tafseer e Jilani

 

Wahum: And they are…

 

Alladina yatti’buna As Rasool: the ones who follow the Messenger (peace be upon him), the one who was sent with the Essence of One-ness (Al Mursil bi Tauheed)…

 

An Nabiyya: the Prophet, Al Mutammim li mukarim il akhlaq, the one who was sent to complete the nobleness of manners (upon Allah’s Akhlaq, His Attributes)…

 

Al Ummiya: the one who is Al Muttahaqiq, the one who was made inevitable, Al Makhsoos, the one who was made uniquely special with Ilm il Luduni, the Divine Knowledge, which was taught to him from his Lord without acquisition (from other means), without effort, without any formal training from any teacher, and he is…

 

Alladi yajidoonahu: who they find in all of the books of the faiths…

 

Maktooban: written about in those books, about his being sent and his religion and his name and his appearance and all of his attributes…

 

Ayndahum fi Torat wal Ineel: in the Torat and in the Injeel, Bible, that when he will announce his Prophet-hood…

 

Ya’monohum bil ma’roof and yanhahum ayn al munkir ya

yahillu lahum tayyebaat: who bids them what is fair and forbids what is unfair, and makes lawful for them the good things, which they forbid upon their own selves…

 

Wa yuharrimu alaihum al khabais: and makes unlawful for them impure things, which they made lawful for themselves…

Wa aidan: And also…

 

Yada’u anhum israhum: relieves them of their loads i.e. the burdens which they carry by leaving the world and detaching from it, which was more than their strength to bear, just like they cut their bodily parts by which they sinned and just like they cut the cloth they wore if it became soiled and other than this…

 

Wa; he also made them free…

 

Al aghlaal: of their shackles i.e. the painful difficulties…

 

Allati kanat alaihim falladina aamino bihi: which came upon them. So those who believed in him, (the Messenger peace be upon him), when he was sent and gave his invitation (towards the One-ness of Allah)…

 

Wa azzaruhu: and they honoured him in the way that he was deserving of honour and glorification…

 

Wa nasaruhu: and they helped him, supporting him in his religion…

 

Wstaba’u an Noor: and they followed The Light, which is the Quran…

 

Alladi unzila ma’hu: which is sent with him from Allah to help him and to testify…

 

Ulaika: these are the ones who are the fortunate and radiant and accepted by Allah. They are the Al Muwwafiqoon, the ones given the ability to follow him.

 

Humul muflihoon: It is they who are the successful ones i.e. Al Muqassaroon, the ones who are confined by Him in success and triumph with victory.

 

Subhan Allah!

 

It was exactly what the scholar said. There was no conflict in what he ordered and what was intrinsically a source of ease. The hurdle was indeed one’s own self every single time that pulled on in the opposite direction of what was naturally good for it. In the form of hesitation, reluctance, delay, refusal, denial!

 

The lecture continued: “Imam Ali (as) says it most beautifully in the exact opposite manner of the mantra of the West which is ‘We are all born free.’ Because Islam gives one the right of social and individual freedom like nothing else for it is a freedom given by God Himself.

 

لا تكُن عبدا لغيرك، وقد خلقك الله حُرًا

 

Don’t be a slave to any other because indeed, Allah Subhanahu, has created you free.

 

Those who themselves are as individuals enslaved by their nafs, they are the ones who try to enslave others as well. Only the likes those who are free, like Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family), free others. Like Hazrat Bilal (ratu), Hazrat Anas (ratu), you, me. If I am free from my nafs I want everybody to be free. And if I am enslaved by it, I want everybody to be enslaved by it as well. And then become enslaved to me.”

 

I realized that once I decided I would adhere to a rule, my nafs surrendered itself never because of my own “determination.” I had written once before, because I learnt it from Maulana Rum (ra), that the nafs holds the aql prisoner. Reflection, consideration, they’re all impossibilities because the nafs does not bow to that which it imprisons. On top of it the ghaflat, perpetual state of forgetfulness, allows for a permanence of the dire state.

 

Masnavi Shareef: “Your nafs has made itself your lord and master. The one who slaughters it is your aql, the power to reflect. But it becomes hostage to the ego and prays for blessings from the Divine without struggling for them. But the price of receiving that blessing without trial is the killing of the ego, for it is the root of all wrongdoing. And that is impossible without a guide.”

 

رزق جانی کے بری با سعی و جست

جز با عدل شیخ کو داؤد تست

 

How can you ever gain blessings from your own struggles and endeavours?

Without the assistance of the Spiritual Master who intervenes for you like Hazrat Dawood (as)?

 

نفس چوں با شیخ بیندگام تو

از بن دندان شود او رام تو

 

When your nafs, your ego, sees you in the footsteps of your guide, it will have no choice but to become obedient to you.

 

عقل گایے غالب آید در شکار

بر سگ نفست کہ باشد شیخ یار

 

The aql, your powers to reflect, will only conquer the enemy, your ego, in this battle

when you are accompanied by your Sheikh.

 

My nafs allowed me to follow the rule of the verse of avoidance only because of the attention of someone upon me. A Master, A Master of Masters. A Master of the Universe!

 

As I wrote the piece and translated from the Arabic word by word the exegesis of the verses, I started honing in on Allah’s Names and Attributes to deepen my understanding of them. So that when my heart uttered them in my namaz, my qalb felt something. That Station of Ma’rifat, Recognition of The Divine, if not saw, then at least heard something. If not from the Realm of the Unseen, then from my own tongue.

 

And I remembered that the Prophet who perfected the Message (peace be upon him and his family) saying:

 

لا یستقیم ایمان احدکم حتی یستقیم قلبہ

و لا یستقیم قلبہ حتی یستقیم لسانہ

و لا یستقیم لسانہ حتی تستقیم اعمالہ

 

“None of you can persevere in your imaan, faith, till his qalb, the Seat of Recognition of Allah, becomes steadfast.

And his qalb cannot be unfaltering until his tongue becomes correct.

And his tongue cannot be correct until his deeds become unwavering.”

 

Ghaus Pak (ra) says; “Anything that I have been bestowed in my life as a blessing only came to me by way of the Ahl e Bait – the blessed household of Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family).”

 

This comes from someone who is in fact one of the most extraordinary members of that household himself. The one who is the unquestioned conduit of spirituality for the Universe till the end of its existence. After Damascus I knew with certainty that the same held true for me. Everything I was ever bestowed in my entire life only came to me by way of the Ahl e Bait (as).

 

My heart was flooded by that love in the city called Paradise by Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him and his family) himself. The first time, the second, every single time. Upon each return I felt like I entered a womb, the only word to describe my feelings. I was loved and cared in a way I had never experienced in my life. Hence if that life were to hit reset, if I was also allowed one thing that wasn’t a part of the first one, I would request that I be born in Damascus and live there forever.

 

Iqbal said, and I have quoted him umpteenth times in my pieces, that heaven and hell are here in this world. Ghaus Pak (ra) says the same. His definition of hell is unforgettable: deprivation, humiliation, doubt, desires, endless hopes. All due to the nafs causing paranoia and delusions.

 

Fi naari jahannuma (Surah Tauba, Verse 109): in the fires of Hell i.e. a deep valley, very wide, full of the fire of deprivation and humiliation.

 

And doubt!

 

لَهُم مِّن جَهَنَّمَ مِهَادٌ وَمِن فَوْقِهِمْ غَوَاشٍ ۚ

وَكَذَٰلِكَ نَجْزِى ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ

 

For them Hell (is) their resting place and their covering as well. And thus We recompense the wrongdoers.

Surah Al-Araaf, Ayaat 41

 

Lahum min jahannama: Hell is the torture of imkaan, possibility which is doubt.

 

Mihaad: They will burn in these fires of their false desires…

 

Wa min fauqihim ghiwash: covered with the fires of their power and wealth and claims of being great and possessing abundance.

 

Wa ka daalika najzi ad-dualimeen: The zalimeen are the ones who transgress the boundaries of Allah due to their nafs which are drowning in the addiction of their senses, their paranoia and their delusion.

 

In a lecture on a day, Qari Sahib quoted the iconic line in the Quran about the faith that all Muslims know; La ikrahu fi-deen.

“There is no compulsion in embracing Islam and none in practicing it. Pray, don’t pray. Give zaka’t, don’t give it. Forgive or hold a grudge. Lie or tell a truth. It is all up to you. Be clear on the influence of your own nafs upon your own self.”

 

We studied the tafseer of the verse by Ghaus Pak (ra). I wanted to understand what it meant. And of course I was rewarded for the effort. For when translations called Taghut, “false deities and gods,” Ghaus Pak (ra) called the nafs al Ammara, bringing the matter from the “other” back upon one’s own self.

 

‏لَآ إِكْرَاهَ فِى ٱلدِّينِ ۖ قَد تَّبَيَّنَ ٱلرُّشْدُ مِنَ ٱلْغَىِّ ۚ

فَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِٱلطَّغُوتِ وَيُؤْمِنۢ بِٱللَّهِ فَقَدِ ٱسْتَمْسَكَ بِٱلْعُرْوَةِ ٱلْوُثْقَىٰ لَا ٱنفِصَامَ لَهَا ۗ

وَٱللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ ‎

 

There is no compulsion in the religion. Surely has become distinct the right (path) from the wrong. Then whoever rejects false deities and believes in Allah, then surely he grasped the handhold - firm, which will not break for him.

And Allah (is) All-Hearing, All-Knowing.

Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 256

 

Tafseer Jilani

 

La ikraha: There is no force and there is no threat and there is no compulsion...

 

Fi deen: in compliance in the religion of Islam and being obedient of it, after the appearance of the ultimate truth because…

 

Qad tabayyana: indeed, it becomes clear and indeed, it is made distinct…

 

Ar rushd: the right path and guidance…

 

Min al gayye: from allurement and misguidedness.

 

Fa man yakfur bit taaghute: So anyone who denies the truth by believing in false idols, which is the nafs al Ammara which misguides from the Path of Truth…

 

Ya yu’min billah: and brings faith in Allah Al Hadi, The True Guide, towards the Straight Path…

 

Faqad-is-tamsaka: surely he attached himself to, and in fact, grasped and clung…

 

Bil urwatil wusqa: to the strong rope which is the Rope of Allah Subhanahu, hanging from the Permanence of His Essence to the Everlasting-ness of His Names and Attributes…

 

Lan fisama: It (the rope) will not break and it will not disconnect…

 

Laha: from itself ever.

 

Wallahu: And Allah Al Hadi, The Guide, is for all…

 

Samee’un: The All Hearing with His Essence the words of everyone…

 

Aleem-un: All Knowing of everything and the interests of all which have been placed inside them.

 

“So reflect,” says Ghaus Pak (ra), “O you are perishing, where do you place yourself in this?”

 

The marker of distortion and disruption in faith was the nafs. And the savior: connection of Allah Subhanahu’s Names and Attributes woven inside the rope that brought attachment to Him.

 

While I wrote the piece, my reflections were all concentrations upon the namaz. I began to write down each line in it to understand the sequence of the meaning.

 

The beginning is a seeking of refuge in Allah Subhanahu:

Audobillah e min as Shaitan ar rajeem – I seek refuge from Satan the accursed.

 

Then comes Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim – the first invocation of Allah’s Names.

 

It was followed by the Surah Al Fateha, the preface of the Quran. In it the first three lines of the Surah were praise of Allah Subhanahu. The first line also being the expression of gratitude:

 

Alhamdolillah e Rabbil Aalmeen – All praise is for Allah, the Lord of all the Universe.

 

The second and third verses both invoked His Names, the same ones:

 

Ar Rahman Ar Rahim – The Entirely Merciful, The Especially Merciful.

 

Then Maalik e Youm iddin – The King of the Day of Judgement.

After came the submission; We only worship you and We only ask You for help.

 

And finally the prayer, which was for guidance!

 

But in that ask was a secret. The Sirat e Mustaqeem for which guidance was sought, that Straight Path, the verse reveals, was the one walked upon by those someones who were blessed by Him – siraat alladaina an’amta alayhim.

 

From the verb, I learnt a new Name of Allah: Naeem.

I heard a scholar say once: “Allah Subhanahu did not come to Earth and walk that path Himself. He sent others to show it and those who followed them and those after who followed them until in a meadow of grass, footsteps became outlined. A path leads to the Path.”

 

The greatest conflict within the faith today exists because people refuse to follow anyone else. But they don’t know, their aql imprisoned by their nafs will never surrender to anything except precisely when they follow another.

 

As my attention upon the words in the namaz intensified, I began to wonder that was actually being said by me in the part called the Tashahhud.

 

Part III Continued on: www.flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/52274085984/in/datepos...

Screw You - Memo to Boss. Motivational Poster

 

I should have sent this so many times in my career to the unscrupulous, hypocritical and bullying bosses of both sexes who plague the work place.

At the Jesus in the City parade I decided to take a shortcut: instead of going with the parade around the many downtown city blocks, I decided to take a shortcut and meet the floats on the way back. As I walked through the shortcut I got a bit tired and thirsty so I bought a cool drink. It was a sunny and hot afternoon so soon I was thirsty again and the sweat on my forehead started to bother me. As I reached the end of this shortcut street and met up with the floats of the parade I saw this man who was playing the role of our Lord, Jesus Christ: he was barefoot and wearing minimum clothes under the hot sun. Being tired and annoyed by the heat I immediately thought, “Is he crazy? I would never do that!” Then almost immediately I thought, “Thank God Jesus Christ died for me so I don’t have to do it!”

 

Such raw human thoughts caught me by surprise because for years I have been expressing my commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ (through prayers and Christian songs) telling Him that I love Him, and that I am willing to do anything for Him—even if it means persecution and death! Yet, here I was thankful that my Lord—whom I claim to love and willing to die for Him--died in my place because I was bothered with sweat! As I started to think about my hypocrite heart (I say “hypocrite heart” and not “hypocrite mind” because my mind knows what it wants to do, but it is my heart that makes claims and commitments it is unwilling to keep) I remembered how a while back I had a foot infection, and so I went to the doctor and after the treatment I asked him, “Doctor, will this leave a scar?” I was concerned if a scar—no bigger than a quarter inch in diameter--will be “visible” on the bottom of my foot (how often do people see the bottom of our feet anyway?!), and I claimed that I was willing to take the pain and the scars of the scourging Roman wimps on my back for the sake of Christ! Then I remembered how I spent thousands of dollars and years of my times on my braces—as if I am not going to die and rot, as if my teeth are eternal!

 

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There is a 10 minutes walk from the bus stop to my evening job and I enjoy that walk so much because the area is so quiet and peaceful that I always walk the distance rather than take the shuttle van. And I try to walk slowly to extend this 10 minutes walk to over 15 minutes. In those 15-20 minutes I pray my most sincere prayers and often times those prayers are audible if you are close to me. Last week as I was walking and praying I decided to think more about my hypocritical life, and soon I found myself telling God the truth about me. The truth is that for the last 12 years of my “Christian” life I was never a true worshipper of the Lord:

 

For the first 4 years I did not know much about Christianity and my life was characterized by lust. At the same time I had a crush on a lady who was my idol.

 

Then God freed me from lust just like that, overnight, and few months later He freed me from my obsessive crush on that lady and soon after that I started taking the Christian life seriously because I was afraid I would fall back into the slavery of lust (not because I loved Him but because I loved myself and loved the new freedom from sin I had). And so soon I became a “Christian” legalist full of bitterness, and lacked joy and peace. I knew what it meant to be saved by grace, but I had no idea what it meant to live by grace. In those years, as I worked in a warehouse, I wanted to please God more than anything and yearned to know His will and obey Him. I cared about His blessings more than I cared about loving Him for who He is. In those four years I fell in love with a close friend and soon she became an idol too—along with the dream of being happily married to her. So in those four years I had more than one idol that kept my soul “fresh” and energized: I had my self-righteousness, I had my false humility (which was more of a low self-esteem), I had the love of a woman who I was fascinated with. This went on for about 4 years.

 

Then within few months I got accepted into university, I lost the woman I loved, God freed me from my legalism, and I bought a camera! So for the next four years I had higher education as my idol (it so much replaced my low self-esteem as an idol), and rejection and pain occupied my mind more than everything else combined. Soon I started attending the university gym and physical health and appearance became another idol. And photography became kind of an idol too! This was the spiritual story of my life for the next four years.

 

Now that I graduated and working two jobs: I have idols in the form of worries about making and saving money, buying a car and getting my own place, getting married, etc.

 

Then if my life story goes like most people in North America: in few years I will have the worries of a wedding, being “happily” married, having “healthy” children. Then I will worry about their upbringing and then I will worry about the friends they hang out with, and their education. Then I will worry about them getting married, and then I will have my grandchildren as my idols. Then I will look forward to retirement and just relaxing—and that would be my idol--and few years later I will die. I will have just another grave and another tombstone, and I will be just another rotten corpse.

 

My life is truly characterised by worshipping idols, and hypocrisy is the best cover up for it. I do not remember a week where I worshipped the Lord only--He always had competitions. Actually, He was competing with my idols. I never for a whole day loved Him for He is, that is: to love Him because He is worthy of my love. And most of those idols in my life are not extraordinary things that forced themselves on me, no, it is just that my human heart has this endless capacity to make an idol of anything—to idolize and attach itself to anything and anyone except the One who deserves my worship and intimacy. That is what made Job so extraordinary because when all important things to him (his family, his wealth, his health, his fame and power, the respect of his wife and friends, God’s blessings, and his reputation as being righteous), things that could have been idols to him, were taken away from him, he said:

 

“ Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

and naked I will depart.

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;

may the name of the LORD be praised.” (Job 1:21)

 

Job was not a man who only trusted and feared the Lord, oh no: Job loved the Lord!

 

The popular 21 century American preacher A. W. Tozar said, “Christians don't tell lies – they just go to church and sing them.” Well, I do not tell lies—I just live them. No one described me better than the Lord Jesus Christ when He said in Matthew 23:3, “So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” The perfect inscription on my tombstone should read: A true idolater. A hypocritical Christian.

 

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There is something else I thought about the other day while walking to work. For years I prayed and cried for something I wanted God to do. But God in His infinite love and wisdom did not give me what I had asked for! If He did allow it to happen then I would have been absolutely miserable for the rest of my life! And you know what? Five years later while I was talking to Him about it I realized He did it because He loved me, and I thanked Him! Five years later I thanked Him! You know, if a stranger holds a public door for me for 2 seconds then I would thank him whole heartedly and without hesitation, yet I waited five years to thank my Saviour and Heavenly Father for freeing me from an absolutely miserable life! This is a perfect example of the idolatry of self-centeredness: my pain, my dreams, my hopes, my desires, my self-worth, and so on.

 

I also thought about something I pray for my future wife to have, and that is: for her to have a quiet spirit. I do not mean she speaks little or does not tell jokes, but not to have a restless spirit—to be resting in the Lord. The reason I pray for this is that many women I come across have restless spirits, and this restless spirit leads them to set goals and pursue them impatiently. For example, I know women who married men simply because they reached a certain age and that they had set a goal they should be married by a certain age; in other words a man entered a marriage based on love but his wife married him for no reason other than he was the most available man at that time! And the cycle continues: after they get married they become restless until they have their first child, then they become restless until they buy a house. In other words their whole lives are characterized by jumping from one idol to another. Then I realized what a hypocrite I am by asking my wife to have a quiet spirit, when I have not attained it myself—nor have put any meaningful effort into obtaining it!

 

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With all my idolatry God, in His mercy and love, did not treat me as I deserve. Often times I come across people who say that they can’t believe in God because He is a cruel and unjust Judge. But from my personal experience He seems to be the opposite: He is a very loving and just Father. I do not know where I would be today if God is not loving, but I do know that I will end up in hell. In the first few years of my Christian life I thought God mainly responds to us according to our obedience, but as I am growing older in my Christian walk and look back at my life I realize that is not true: God mainly responds to us, His children, like any parent would do and that is according to His love—and what an infinite source of sacrificial and enduring love He is!

 

I just described to you above what a deep well of idolatry my heart is, even though on the outside I might seem like a “good Christian”. And if God has overlooked all my other sins and just considered my idolatry alone and treated me according to that, then I would be in a whole load of terrible today. Yet, God treated me according to His love: He watched over me, and protected me—even when in my ignorance I asked in prayer for those things that will harm me. It is like when the apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:13:

 

“Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”

 

Why was God good to me? I do not know any reason except that He is good. It is like our Lord said in Matthew 5:45, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” God does not say, “Oh, this man sinned! Let’s starve him to death!” No, He sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous; He is patient because He desires that all may come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ as Saviour and be saved.

 

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

 

Sometimes I like to think about the reason God has been good to me as in Genesis’ account of the creation. For example it says in Genesis 1:3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” He created light because He wanted to. Why is He good to me? Not because I deserve it, but because He wants to—because God is love. That is why another way to summarize my life is this: Fadi’s unfaithfulness. God’s faithfulness.

 

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There are just two more things I want to say about idolatry. The first is that the opposite of idolatry is intimacy. And intimacy is not reading the Bible, worship, singing praise songs, attending church, fellowship with believers, preaching, serving, or even trust and obedience; those things can increase intimacy and can be the product of intimacy but they do not necessarily mean intimacy. The best action that can describe intimacy is the word “rest”; that is: to rest in the Lord. The reason I say action is that resting is difficult when we have “so much” to do. We are driven to do this and that and resting in our world is often times equivalent to losing. Even prayer is not intimacy if you do not do it with a restful heart. Let me tell you how I imagine intimacy:

 

Suppose that I am married to a woman whom I am in love with and she is in love with me. Suppose she is a housewife and I am employed outside the home. I come home from a very tiring day and I terribly miss my wife; she too had a tiring day and misses me too. I enter the house and I sit on the sofa. What do you think I want my wife to do for me? Bring me a cup of cold water? Prepare me food? Give my shoulders a message? No, I will desire none of those things. The thing I would want the most is for her to come and sit beside me, resting her head on my shoulder, and wrapping my arm around her. I want to rest in her presence. That is what intimacy about.

 

Now if God stripped away everything dear to us, then out of need and loneliness we would start to spend more time with Him—we would become more intimate with Him. But this type of intimacy does not show true love. True intimacy is driven by love and not need of things; true intimacy is driven by the need to be with the one you love.

 

The second thing I want to say is this: often times our lack of intimacy with God is because we simply do not care anymore. Sin, of course, leads to lack of intimacy with God because God is holy and He abhours sin. But often times we simply do not care for being intimate with Him anymore. Strangely I found that I can love God but not like Him. It is very strange to say that I can love but not like a person but it is true. Sometimes because of disappointments with God (mainly because of unbiblical expectations we had of Him) we grow bitter toward Him. And even though we love Him by obeying Him, we become less fond of Him as a person (not as a human, but as an entity with a personality)—He starts becoming to us more of a good King than a loving Father. To protect ourselves from further hurt we stop caring for God or against God—we become lukewarm. And that means we stop expecting good from God and that is a very damaging thing to our intimacy. Let me tell you a story:

 

For the last year or so I did not ask anything from God in prayer: I just stopped expecting goods things from Him (for many reasons which I will not get into now). Then about 4 months ago I was listening to John Piper and he said something like, “Requesting things in prayer is not just something God wants us to do! Oh no, He commands us to ask!” I thought to myself, “Oh wow! It’s been so long since I asked anything from Him!” So I went to pray and it was a very difficult thing to do because I was breaking an emotional and spiritual protest against God. I simply asked Him to help me find a job because I had just graduated from university and I needed to find a job. That same week I got an evening job which I like, and next week I got an interview to a very good morning job that has to do with my university education and a couple weeks later I got that job too!

 

---

 

For the year 2012 I really want to start to get to know God...intimately! Not just know about God, but know God. I remember Paul Washer saying something like, “I am tired of knowing someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew God! I want to know Him personally!” Is there idolatry in your life? Some hypocrisy too, may be? Do you know God, not just personally but intimately? Do you even care to know Him intimately? And the answer is not a “yes” or a “no”; the answer is the answer to the question: What is your priority? If we are willing to become more honest then we can even ask: Does getting to know God intimately even make it on the list of the top five priorities in our life?

 

(Toronto, ON; summer 2011.)

     

leave me alone, human. i am busy.

  

pictures only from me, for now. comments and responses when i am able.

I made this piece for the Hypocrite Reader for an article on Vladimir Propp and his book Morphology of the Folk Tale. Propp was a formalist scholar who analyzed Russian folk tales (he said that his work would apply to all folk tales, but he used Russian folk tales for his work). His work involved classifying the different elements he believed were common to all folktales, including 8 character types. My illustration is of these character types:

 

1. The villain — struggles against the hero.

2. The dispatcher—character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

 

3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.

4. The princess or prize — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.

5. Her father — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for

 

during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father cannot be clearly distinguished.

6. The donor—prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.

7. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

8. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

 

Propp differentiated between general folk tales and "animal stories." Tolkien did likewise in his "On Fairy Stories," and I'm inclined to agree, but I don't believe the categories are totally mutually exclusive. One of the wonderful things about fairy stories, in my opinion, is the totally inexplicable talking animals who turn up and never return to the plot! Fairy tale logic and magical thinking (in all senses of the phrase) at its best, really. Plus, the essay isn't about this distinction, so I took the opportunity to draw some animals in Russian hats.

 

Blogged here and here.

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Now I ain't tryna be the greatest

I used to hate hip-hop... yup, because the women degraded

But Too $hort made me laugh, like a hypocrite I played it

A hypocrite I stated, though I only recited half

Omittin the word "bitch," cursin I wouldn't say it

Me and dog couldn't relate, til a bitch I dated

Forgive my favorite word for hers and hers alike

But I learnt it from a song I heard and sorta liked

Yeah, for the icin, glamorized drug dealin was appealin

But the block club kept it from in front of our buildin

Gangsta rap-based filmings became the buildin blocks

For children with leakin ceilings catchin drippins with pots

Coupled with compositions from Pac, Nas's "It Was Written"

In the mix with my realities and feelings

Living conditions, religion, ignorant wisdom and artistic vision

I began to jot, tap the world and listen, it drop

 

My mom can't feed me, my boyfriend beats me

I have sex for money, the hood don't love me

The cops wanna kill me, this nonsense built me

And I got noooo place to gooo

They bomb my village, they call us killers

Took me off they welfare, can't afford they health care

My teacher won't teach me, my master beats me

And it huuurts meee soooul

 

I had a ghetto boy bop, a Jay-Z boycott

'Cause he said that he never prayed to God, he prayed to Gotti

I'm thinkin godly, God guard me from the ungodly

But by my 30th watchin of "Streets is Watchin"

I was back to givin props again and that was botherin

By this uncomfortable as a untouchable touchin you

The theme songs that niggas hustle to seem wrong but these songs was comin true

And it was all becoming cool

I found a condom on the ground that Johns would cum into and thought

What constitutes a prostitute is the pursuit of profit then they drop it

The homie in a suit pat her on the butt, then rock it

It seems I was seein the same scene adopted

Prevalent in different things with the witnesses indifferent to stop it

They said don't knock it, mind ya business

His business isn't mine and that nigga pimpin got it

 

They took my daughter, we ain't got no water

I can't get hired, they cross on fire

We all got suspended, I just got sentenced

So I got noooo place to gooo

They threw down my gang sign, I ain't got no hang time

They talk about my sneakers, poisoned our leader

My father ain't seen me, turn off my TV

'Cause it huuurts meee soooul

 

So through the Grim Reaper sickle sharpening

Macintosh marketing

Oil field augering

Brazilian adolescent disarmament

Israeli occupation

Islamic martyrdom, precise

Yeah, laser guided targeting

Oil for food, water, and terrorist organization harborin

Sand camouflage army men

CCF sponsorin, world conquerin, telephone monitorin

Louis Vuitton modelin, pornographic actress honorin

String theory ponderin, bullimic vomitin

Catholic priest fondlin, pre-emptive bombin and Osama and no bombin them

They breakin in my car again, deforestation and overloggin and

Hennessy and Hypnotic swallowin, hydroponic coughin and

All the world's ills, sittin on chrome 24-inch wheels, like that

 

They say I'm infected, this is why I injected

I had it aborted, we got deported

My laptop got spyware, they say that I can't lie here

But I got noooo place to gooo

I can't stop eatin, my best friend's leavin

My pastor touched me, I love this country

I lost my earpiece, I hope y'all hear me

'Cause it huuurts meee soooul

 

Hurt me Soul - Lupe Fiasco

Frase Típica (d'un votant del PP) (COLOR: VERD)

_______________________________________

 

Frase Típica (de un votante del PP)

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

  

1- Tots els polítics són iguals. (COLOR: BLAU)

____________

 

¿I per què votes al PP? (COLOR: ROIG)

_______________________________________

 

Todos los políticos son iguales.

____________

 

¿Y por qué votas al PP?

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

2- No podem canviar res.

____________

 

¿Com va a canviar, votant de nou al PP?

_______________________________________

 

No podemos cambiar nada.

____________

 

¿Cómo va a cambiar, votando de nuevo al PP?

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

3- La corrupció és normal....

____________

 

Home, votant sempre al PP.... ¡¿Tu ets còmplice o què?!

_______________________________________

 

La corrupción es normal....

____________

 

Hombre, votando siempre al PP.... ¡¿Tú eres cómplice o qué?!

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

4- ¿Per què protestar, si tot seguirà igual?

____________

 

¿I per què votar al PP, si tot seguirà igual?

_______________________________________

 

¿Por qué protestar, si todo seguirá igual?

____________

 

¿Y por qué votar al PP, si todo seguirá igual?

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

5- El bipartidisme aporta estabilitat.

____________

 

¿Estabilitat per seguir robant o governant...?

_______________________________________

 

El bipartidismo aporta estabilidad.

____________

 

¿Estabilidad para seguir robando o gobernando...?

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

6- El bipartidisme aporta confiança.

____________

 

Però, ¿no eren tots iguals? ¡¿En qui anem a confiar...?!

 

_______________________________________

 

El bipartidismo aporta confianza.

____________

 

Pero, ¿no eran todos iguales? ¡¿En quién vamos a confiar...?!

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

7- Jo sóc ciutadà del Món.

____________

 

Sí, però 'Gibraltar EsPPaññool', ¿¿no???

_______________________________________

 

Yo soy ciudadano del Mundo.

____________

 

Sí, pero 'Gibraltar EsPPaññool', ¿¿no???

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

8- Jo sóc apolític.

____________

 

Digna sentència, per un votant del PP.

_______________________________________

 

Yo soy apolítico.

____________

 

Digna sentencia, para un votante del PP.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

9- A mi no m'interessa la política.

____________

 

A mon iaio tampoc. Era feixista.

De fet, odiava la política i la democràcia.

 

_______________________________________

 

A mí no me interesa la política.

____________

 

A mi abuelo tampoco. Era fascista.

De hecho, odiaba la política y la democracia.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Sueca, País Valencià, Marènia. 28-8-2014. Joanjo Aguar Matoses (COLOR: GROC. OMBRA: NEGRA)

(Últims retocs: 30-8-2014. 14.40)

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

POTS PUBLICAR O REENVIAR AQUEST TEXT. ENDAVANT!!!!

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

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SI VOLS VEURE AQUESTES FRASES EN IMATGES, VISITA FLICKR - JOANJO AGUAR MATOSES

 

ÀLBUM: Frase Típica (d'un votant del PP)

  

www.flickr.com/photos/joanjo_aguar_matoses/sets/721576469...

  

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

MÉS COSES....

 

__________________________________

 

Clica M'AGRADA a aquestes pàgines de Facebook, si n'estàs d'acord, clar.

  

www.facebook.com/Acabem.Discriminacio.Valencia

 

www.facebook.com/Associacio.Victimes.del.PP.AsViPP

 

www.facebook.com/Marenia.Cat

 

__________________________________

 

Més pàgines personals.

  

FOTOS I ALTRES IMATGES

 

www.flickr.com/photos/joanjo_aguar_matoses/

  

RELATS I ALTRES ESCRITS

 

relatsencatala.cat/veure-tots-relats/Joanjo%20Aguar%20Mat...

 

__________________________________

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

  

ETIQUETES PER A FLICKR (IMATGES) I PER A RELATSENCATALA.CAT (ESCRITS)

 

__________________________________

 

Etiquetes bones (71):

 

2014, frase, típica, tipica, "frase típica", "frase tipica", "típica frase", "tipica frase", typical, phrase, "typical phrase", "typical sentence", catchphrase, "typical words", votant, votante, vote, "votant del PP", "votante del PP", hipòcrita, hipócrita, hypocrite, hiPPòcrita, hiPPócrita, hyPPocrite, franquisme, franquismo, sociològic, sociológico, "franquisme sociològic", "franquismo sociológico", bipartidisme, bipartidismo, Gibraltar, español, "Gibraltar Español", feixista, fascista, apolític, apolítico, corrupció, corrupción, corruption, protestes, protestas, PP, Partit, Partido, Popular, "Partit Popular", "Partido Popular", "People Party", "People's Party", política, polític, politics, Espanya, España, Spain, "Spain is Pain", degeneració, degeneración, degeneration, democràtica, democrática, democrat, democratic, "degeneració democràtica", "degeneración democrática", "regeneració democràtica", "regeneración democrática",

 

__________________________________

 

Etiquetes descartades (61):

 

regeneració, regeneración, regeneration,

topic, típic, típico, sentence, statement, words, votar, votación, Marènia, Marenia,

Sueca, Valencia, València, "País Valencià", "Pais Valencia",

banc, bank, banco, banca, protesta, manifestació, manifestación, pacífic, pacífico,

peaceful, peace, pacifismo, pacifista, eslógan, eslògan, slogan, lluita, lucha, fight,

combat, combatiu, combativo, pancarta, cartell, cartel,

dictadura, dictatorship, war, guerra, warrior, guerrer, guerrero,

hipoteca, mortgage, desnonament, desahucio, eviction, ousting, ejection,

Aguar, Matoses, Joanjo, "Joanjo Aguar Matoses", "Joanjo Aguar",

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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the drugs didn't work.

pain of lost, unspeakable, everyone's in the rules.

 

fatigue, fragile.

metion about what haven't past,

sudden in a while, can't stop falling, and life just failed.

 

sentence with greasy words,

too much sentimental, hypocritical overdo.

And so it came

We felt invincible,

But things got worse,

inconceivable.

 

Then we took sides

Became despicable,

We traded lies

Unbelievable.

 

Theories abounded

Many farcical,

Cherry-picked the rules,

Hypocritical.

 

Gave out advice

Often delusional,

And embraced hate

Became so emotional.

 

Questioned our freedoms

Made it political,

Casting blame,

So diabolical.

 

More people died

It was Inevitable,

The powers that be

Now even more questionable.

 

And as each quarter plays it’s Joker

From the churches to the Hospital wards,

Our children realise the world we’ve created,

Is just a badly stacked house of cards.

 

Labour Party questions for Boris Johnson:

 

On his sexism:

Do you still think that the way to deal with advice from a female colleague is to “just pat her on the bottom and send her on her way”?

Do you still think that children of single mothers are ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate?

Do you still think unmarried women who have children should be pushed into “destitution on a Victorian scale”?

Do you still think a man should “take control of his woman”?

Why have you never voted in favour of protecting women’s reproductive rights?

Isn’t your criticism of single mothers and what you appallingly describe as “illegitimate” children hypocritical?

 

On his racism:

Why won’t you apologise for describing black people as “piccanninies” with “watermelon smiles”?

Do you feel any shame for the 375% rise in Islamophobic hate crime linked to the article you wrote that called Muslim women “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”?

Why as editor of the Spectator did you approve an article which argued that black people have lower IQs and an article in which the author boasted of being “an antisemite”?

Why won’t you order an independent inquiry specifically into Islamophobia in the Conservative party?

Will you apologise for saying young people had “an almost Nigerian interest in money”?

Do you regret saying that Barack Obama had an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire”?

 

On his other offensive comments:

Do you still call gay people “tank-topped bumboys”?

Do you still think equal marriage is similar to “marrying a dog”?

Will you apologise for calling working class men “drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”?

Do you still consider the investigation of historical child abuse by the police to be “spaffing money up the wall”?

Do you regret saying that the Libyan city of Sirte had a bright future as soon as they "clear the dead bodies away"?

In 2011, when you were being briefed about the cost of inquests into the 7/7 bombings, did you say “f*** the families”?

 

On his Ministers:

Where is Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Do you agree with Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comments that victims of the Grenfell Tower fire lacked “common sense”?

Why haven’t you sacked Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Why have you appointed an Education Secretary who was sacked for leaking from a National Security Council meeting?

Why have you allowed Alun Cairns to stand as a Conservative Party candidate when he was forced to resign for lying about his knowledge of an allegation that a Conservative candidate had sabotaged a rape trial?

Was Michael Gove right when he said you can't build a team and can't provide leadership or unity?

 

On the NHS:

Why did you pull back from legislating to protect the NHS from a US trade deal?

Why did you say in the ITV leaders’ debate that allegations of the NHS being on the table in secret talks with the USA were “an absolute invention” and “completely untrue” when official government documents show it is being discussed?

If the NHS isn’t being privatised why are private firms given £9.2 billion of the NHS budget?

Why did you lie in your party’s manifesto about how many extra nurses you are promising to recruit?

Why does the Conservative manifesto offer no extra money for social care when the system is in crisis?

Will you apologise to the grandmother who waited three hours on the floor for an ambulance last week?

 

On Jennifer Arcuri:

Jennifer Arcuri described you as “a really good friend”. Why did you not declare an interest when she was granted public money?

Did your office intervene to give Jennifer Arcuri a place on trade missions to Tel Aviv and New York after she was initially told she did not meet the criteria?

Did you write Jennifer Arcuri a letter of recommendation to become CEO of Tech City?

Do you think it is fair that Jennifer Arcuri is being held to account for allegations of corrupt behaviour by yourself?

 

On his record:

Have you only lied to the Queen once?

When was the last time you spoke to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband and what are you personally doing to help secure her release?

Do you still support fox hunting?

Do you still plan on lying in front of a bulldozer to prevent Heathrow expansion or will you spend another £20,000 of taxpayers’ money to run away from a vote on it?

Why do you think you have been sacked from so many jobs?

Do you regret wasting £300,000 of taxpayers' money on illegal water cannons?

 

On climate and the environment:

Do you still think global warming is a “primitive fear without foundation”?

Why did you claim you were going to ban fracking when you are actually pausing it temporarily and still considering applications?

On his campaign:

Are you scared of Andrew Neil?

Why did you not show up to Channel 4’s climate crisis debate last night?

If the BBC empty chair you for bottling an Andrew Neil interview will you review its remit as well?

Why did it take so long for you to visit communities in Yorkshire and the Midlands who were affected by flooding, and what does count as a national emergency?

Will you suspend the Conservative candidate in Shropshire who yesterday said that his Sikh opponent was "talking through his turban" and strip him of his honour?

Why won’t you publish the report into Russian interference in British democracy?

Do you support a free and fair press apart from Channel 4 and the Daily Mirror?

 

On one face politicians decorate several face (ek cheray pey kai cheray sajalaytay hen log)

 

PEACE IN WORLD IS VITAL WARNS SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Ecology tells us; assume earth in the shape of a man and suppose the map of US

is on the shoulder and of Iraq is on the chest and Germany's map on the face and

the map of England is on the head and Pakistan's map is on one hand and India's

map is on the other hand, and so on and if the bombs are launched from shoulder

on the chest and shoulder feels they are safe from the loss or face feels its

survival depends on bombing the head or one hand feel safety in attacking the

other hand are only our foolish politics, no nuclear plant is safe from earth

quacks or from falling stones from space or from other natural disasters.

Ecology says; Earth breaths through trees which are its Lungs, if we cut trees

we cut our Lungs. At all cost we must promote ecological sciences as The Holy

Quran instruct us: .Allah brought you forth from the earth and hath made you

husband it.. (Quran, Hud: 61, trans. Pickthall).

But husbandry is judicious management of resources for which honest politicians scientists are required for instance how prophet Solomon or prophet Yusuf (Joseph) managed the resources, in chapter 12 of Quran it is clearly explained how through

interpretation of dreams, Hazrat Yusuf managed resources honestly to make people

survive even during series of famine.

All revealed books and good ideologies teaches tolerance for the sake of peace

but still we are spending on creating Jewish bomb, Christian bomb, Muslim bomb,

Hindu bomb, Communist bomb, Buddhist bomb, Socialist bomb, Democratic bomb,

Capitalist bomb, Marxist bomb, Secular bomb, etc. which can bring distortable

differences in our planet. According to biologists and physicists . tiny

differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differential conditions,

in weather; this is known as the .butterfly effect. . the notion that a

butterfly flapping its wings today in Japan might affect hurricanes next month

in America. .Science is measurement. and to measure up to .butterfly effect.

scientists says we need unimaginably powerful computers that will consume more

energy that contains in galaxies. The Quran says everything is in Allah's measurement (65: 12, LV: 7), Long before modern science, butterfly effect is

explained in the Quran through the movement of falling leaf (VI: 59), now call

it butterfly effect or Leaf effect explaining the same phenomena that waves

created by even tiny actions has its effects in different time and space, now

imagine bombing in any part of the world can bring disaster in other parts of

the world in form of earthquakes, diseases, floods and other environmental

destruction. We know that .Science is measurement. but for measurement we need

energy which we spend more in battles, in cold war, in negative politics, in

nuclear war technology instead of creating .ozone creating bomb., .gravity

creating bomb., .oxygen creating bomb., .moderate temperature creating bomb.,

.rain creating bomb. and other such peaceful bombs which we can bombard on moon,

planets, asteroids to make them suitable for living. Science can do such wonders

by measuring nature sincerely as the Quran says:

Allah has subjected to you all that is in the heavens and all that is in the

earth: it is all as a favour and kindness from Him. Verily, in it are signs for

a people who think deeply. (Quran, 45: 13).

But instead of studying such signs deeply we are spending on war technology or

on security of global feudal that in league with regional feudal for gaining

power somehow disturb the balance in nature and balance in world market, in long

run which is dangerous for all, therefore its time to give political authority

also to sincere ecologists to avoid terrorism and state terrorism. Terrorism in

the garb of religion or terrorism in the garb of secularism or terrorism in the

garb of any ideology should be condemned at all level with sincerity.

According to some German scholars (S. Nadvi) and Christian historiographer Prof.

Kamal Salibi: many prophets, including Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon and upto

prophet Hazrat Isaa were only sent to Bani-Israel who were the tribes of Western

Saudi Arabian provinces; Hijaz and Asir. Therefore non-Arabian-cast can not be

Christian or Jew from Arab descendant.s point of view, in this regard below are

issues from verses of the Quran which perhaps are not addressed to the

Christians or Jews of Europe, Russia, Africa, America, Japan, China, Mongolia,

India, Australia but following Quranic verses are addressed to those Arab

descendants who created sects after the demise of their prophets, then later the

Books of these sects were translated, redacted into Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek,

Latin, English, etc. (see Kamal Salibi's books: Bible came from Arabia, Secrets

of the Bible people, and Conspiracy in Jerusalem). (Allah knows better).

According to the Quran: Before the last prophet Muhammad (33; 40), messengers

were sent regionally for their nations (10; 47). And messengers We have

mentioned to you before and messengers We have not mentioned to you.. (4; 164).

The last prophet is sent to all mankind (34; 28) as a mercy for the ’Alamin (21;

107). 'Alamin' means worlds, mankind, jinn, all creatures, and all creations.

From the first prophet Adam upto the last prophet Muhammad, Allah revealed

Islamic teaching to all the prophets (2; 37, 4; 163-164, 7; 157). Islam means

submission to the Creator (which brings peace). ..And this (submission to Allah

that is Islam) was enjoined by Ibrahim (Abraham) upon his sons and by Ya’qub

(Jacob) (saying), "O my sons! Allah has chosen for you the religion, then die

not except in the Faith of Islam (2; 132). Including the Taurat (Torah) and the

Injeel (Gospel) the Source of all the revealed books is One as the Quran

confirming what came before it (3; 3). Quran informs that previous revealed

books are mixed with changes by human hands (3; 71, 2; 75, 79). From

historiographical research also it is evident that no revealed book before Quran

is available in its original form in which The Creator is directly speaking like

we see in the Quran. Since Quran is the last revealed book, therefore it was

favor from The Creator to guard the Quran (from changes by human hands).

..and surely, We will guard it (from changes by human editing). (Quran, 15; 9).

..Verily this (Quran) is no less than a Message to (all) the Worlds: to whoever

among you wills to go straight.. (Quran, 81; 27-28)

Islam means peace; Islam teaches and prefers peace;

In chapter 2, verse 11-12, Quran says: And when it is said to them (hypocrites):

"Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "We are only peace-makers." Verily!

They are the ones who make mischief, but they perceive not.

In sura 8, ayat 61, Quran says: ..But if the enemy incline towards peace, do

thou (also) incline towards peace..

  

'Allah Himself is As-Salam (Peace)'

 

Narrated Shaqlq bin Salama: 'Abdullah said, "Whenever we prayed behind the Prophet we used to recite (in sitting) 'Peace be on Gabriel, Michael, peace be on so and so. Once Allah's Apostle looked back at us and said, 'Allah Himself is As-Salam (Peace), and if anyone of you prays then he should say, At-Tahiyatu lil-lahi wassalawatu wat-taiyibatu. AsSalamu 'alalika aiyuha-n-Nabiyu wa rahmatu-l-lahi wa barakatuhu. As-Salam alaina wa ala ibadil-lah is-salihin. (All the compliments, prayers and good things are due to Allah: peace be on you, O Prophet and Allah's mercy and blessings be on you. Peace be on us an on the true pious slaves of Allah). (If you say that, it will be for all the slaves in the heaven and the earth). Ash-hadu an la-ilaha illa-l-lahu wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan 'abduhu wa Rasuluhu. (I testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and I also testify that Muhammad is His slave and His Apostle)."

(Hadees from Bukhari)

  

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I am a patient of Parkinson disease since 13 years and loves to devote my time in writting about

 

ART, SCIENCE AND RELIGION

 

Because if percieved with right view the above causes are good for making world; peaceful, pollution free, welfare global village

 

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this is also connected with facebook in Mansur Salim's Timeline year 1992.

Since 1972 to present S, Mansur is producing and exhibiting ART AND SCIENCE WORKS some of which can be seen in facebook and at: www.artchowk.com

And at: www.flickr.com/photos/art-science-works/

Articles on ART, SCIENCE AND RELIGION are compiled by Mansur Salim for the: The Institute of Quran and science, Pakistan (IQSP).

IQSP started in January 1992 and its first volume was published in September,1992. For acquiring photocopies of previous five volumes or for sending articles or donation to IQSP please contact Mansur Salim at:

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Ph.+92-21-36027026

 

Along the Waterfront of Duluth, Minnesota

Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is one of the best museums of its type I have ever seen. My favorite feature is a timeline of moral breakthroughs and legal decisions prohibiting abuse or genocide that espoused the rights of man juxtaposed against the atrocities that occurred shortly after the legislation, moral breakthroughs or treaties were established. The exhibit makes it clear how extremely outrageous and how hypocritical mankind has been in our treatment of our fellow man. The timeline of history and philosophy is impressive in its own right if only for its breadth.

Eric and I were invited to a small get together with a friend who lives out on the man-made islands of Amwaj. Amwaj was built on reclaimed land in 2004 and is really a city within a city. It has villas, apartments, a beautiful outdoor mall with restaurants and a lagoon, a hospital and a school and several hotels.

 

Our friends villa was down from one of these hotels, the Dragon Hotel, which is pictured. The hotel is a hot party spot for Saudi people coming over for a break from their restrictive lives. The islands of Bahrain are much more relaxed in the rules, so hypocritical Saudis come over to drink, take off their hijabs and party it up. Apparently all at the Dragon Hotel, spikes and all.

Somebody in Wisconsin doesn't like President Barack Obama all that much.

 

An unnamed company has paid for a billboard along Highway 41 in Oshkosh that reads, "Impeach Obama."

 

The tagline says: "America's small businesses are failing; help us spread the message."

 

It was paid for by an unnamed company represented by Tom Wroblewski who told the AP the sentiment is that Washington politics are bad for small businesses.

 

www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Wisconsin-Billboard-Ca...

www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-barrett/promises-dashed-poste...

 

This day four years ago I had a large poster of presidential hopeful Barack Obama tacked to my office wall. He’s wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and the candidates’ perfunctory power tie; this one is burgundy with silver pinstripes. His gleaming white smile looks airbrushed and his right hand is raised in salute to a tide of supporters. So powerful, so commanding, it seemed that with a simple wave he could quiet Washington’s roiling and partisan Red Sea.

 

“Yes We Can,” the poster reads.

 

Eleven weeks after the election he presided over an adoring audience of some 1.5 million people crowded onto Washington’s Mall for inauguration day. Freezing temperatures and icy gusts didn’t stand a chance in the face of his radiance. To a nation and a world desperate for change it was like Obama could have fed those masses with two fish and five loaves.

 

To me, a print journalist wooed by his magnetism the morning after his 2004 convention speech (see “Democrats’ brightest shine at national convention“) the United States had elected a world leader. Finally. Given his multinational upbringing, Obama would surely tamp down mindless rhetoric about “American exceptionalism” and advocate instead for a united world. The White House and Washington would no longer be owned by K Street, Wall Street and Israel.

 

So I too drank of the Obama Kool-Aid. Tasted like miracle wine. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about his middle name (Hussein), birthplace (Honolulu or Jakarta made no difference to me) or, even, his religious pledge. Give me an earnest and honest Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or Atheist over a misled, hypocritical Christian any day. Just, dear Lord, give me a wise and righteous leader.

 

Five months later, when President Barack Hussein Obama flew to Cairo and addressed the world’s 1.5 million Muslims, he quoted from the Talmud, the Quran and the New Testament. Amen Brother. Woot-woot!

 

By now I was thanking the heavens for Obama’s mama. Literally. I bowed my head and gave thanks for Stanley Ann Dunham. When Barack had been a schoolboy in Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic nation, Stanley Ann had sent him to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school. At one he studied the catechism; at the other he learned about the muezzin’s call. On Easter or Christmas she might drag him to church, but she also took him to Buddhist temples, Chinese New Year celebrations, Shinto shrines, and to ancient Hawaiian burial sites. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama recalled how his mother, a stubborn secularist, believed that a good education required a working knowledge of all the world’s great teachings and religions.

 

So his inclusive speech in Cairo shouldn’t have surprised me. But after eight years of a professed born-again Christian residing over American politics, it did. I’d forgotten that U.S. presidents could be great.

 

“I come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama said to a rapt audience at Cairo University on June 4, 2009. “There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Quran tells us, ‘Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.’”

 

From where her ashes had been spread along Oahu’s glorious Lanai Lookout, the late Stanley Ann (deceased for 17 years tomorrow) was living large in her son’s enlightenment. I was sure of it.

 

The election, inauguration, Cairo. Those were heady days. I was Obama intoxicated.

 

“Yes We Can.”

 

Of course we could. Why the hell had we waited so long?

 

Then, two years ago, I took Obama’s poster down. Rolled it up and put it away. No singular event inspired the action. No fit of anger or irrational spontaneity preceded it. However, I had thought it odd that a Nobel Peace Prize winner was championing the unmanned drones that routinely killed innocents alongside the (alleged) guilty. No judge or jury for either. Also, I’d noticed how the National Debt Clock near Times Square continued ticking off inconceivable amounts of gross debt. And in the wake of his inauguration, Congress had remained as partisan as ever, even more so.

 

Apparently Obama’s raised hand had quieted nothing. Perhaps no mere mortal could shed the weight of two wars, an economic collapse and Capitol Hill’s frat-house loyalties. Obama was human after all. Go figure. Maybe he was just another silk-tongued politician who had convinced us that he could work miracles. I suspect he’d even convinced himself.

 

So the poster came down. I was tired of looking at it and being reminded of the broken promise. Not the embellished campaign pledges that all candidates make; rather, the singular hope that had been fully inspired by our new multinational president. Obama inflated us and then let the air scream out. Nothing much changed under his watch. Looking at the poster every day only reminded me of that sorry fact. Of how the miracle wine had turned sour. Of how the hope that had risen in our throats as soon as McCain conceded began to taste like bile. Of how the post-election, post-Palin celebrations that flowed from Washington to London to Amman, Gaza, Baghdad and Tehran eventually went flat.

 

In Cairo, Obama had injected a decided sense of promise into global politics, Western, Far Eastern and Middle Eastern alike– Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, all of us.

 

“It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward. It is easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share,” he’d said, finishing his speech to a standing ovation. “There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion– that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples; a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew.”

 

Then he’d corrected the behavior of our world’s three most warring faiths. Used their own words. Seared the lesson on them as if he were branding his mark on the world.

 

“The Holy Quran tells us, ‘O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.’ The Talmud tells us: ‘The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.’ The Holy Bible tells us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’”

 

Recalling that, I dug out the poster from the closet this week. It’s ripped and wrinkled and doesn’t hold much promise. On Tuesday I’ll vote again for Obama. (What are my choices, really?) But this time there will be no Kool-Aid, no dreaming, no inflated sense of change.

 

The only hope I hold is that the second time is the charm– not the charmer.

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