Brooklyn Bedouin

Eid Mubarak to All!

When i was a boy living in upstate ny i remember going to an Eid celebration in Binghamton NY with my family. The Muslim community in that part of the world was small but we represented as well as we could. My father and some of the brothers stood around the perimeter and kept a careful watch over the gathering and i took part in the thikr vigorously. I recall that it rained that day. I remember thinking that there had never been and Eid that i could not recall it raining. It was the first Eid that i recall being very aware of from a spiritual perspective - that the rain was more than just a nuisance, that perhaps the rain was a message of something far greater. I was cluing into the power of water. Or, better said, the Power of Allah with rain as one of His signs.

The majority of the Eid’s ever since have had some form of rain, snow, something faling from the skies. I am writing about Eid because in this year when an Oakland imam gave a kutba about our nafs - you know the concept? our lower desires - and that Ramadan is about our soul, the part of us that does not need to eat, sleep, shit, have sex, taking a moment to look at our nafs - the part of us that is tied inextricably to here - this life, and that if let out of control our nafs can totally undermine our knowledge of our soul and our success in this and the next life...

the Greatest Jihad is controlling the Nafs - prayer is forcing them to submit,

Ramadan is a time to see, observe, to take stock of your relationship with your nafs... and to get them to submit. The nafs are your compulsions, your ego, and they never stop in trying to control what you are doing. He inner battle, the real soul struggle is with the nafs. Again, it is called the greatest Jihad, the greatest  holy war, because the soul and the nafs constantly go at it.

This year i have been pulling back and observing the places where i am compulsive, the  places where i am not as much in control and feel more guided by animal like instinct. Noting that space and then marking it down - determined to not let me nafs control my soul because my soul is the undying part - i want to serve the Divine.

Strangely, this is the first Ramadan that i will be unable to celebrate Eid in community.

I usually go with a reliable sighting of the new moon as reported via the folks at Zaytuna and Crescent watch, see below:

Crescentwatch has not received any reliably confirmed reports of the new crescent moon being sighted in North America this evening, Saturday Sep. 19.

On the basis of numerous negative reports from California, Texas, and Florida, we will complete the 30th day of Ramadan tomorrow and celebrate Eid al-Fitr on Monday September 21, 2009 in sha Allah along with millions of other Muslims worldwide.

A number of claims have been made to sightings of the moon in the United States on Saturday evening, in locations as diverse as Buffalo, New York; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Lodi, California. We have taken the time to evaluate these claims individually and found them to be unreliable. In each case, some of the testimony provided by the witness did not match with widely agreed upon, simple observational facts, known to any person who makes a habit of consistently sighting the moon.

* We are aware of confirmed moon sightings in Guyana & Surinam, South America, and that some organizations have decided to accept those sightings for their determination of the date of Eid. In line with the criteria Crescentwatch used begin the month of Ramadan and that we, and numerous other moon sighting organizations, have been using for many years, Crescentwatch currently accepts confirmed sightings only from the continental U.S. and Canada.

However, acceptance of reliable sightings outside of those boundaries is an entirely valid fiqh position, and would allow for people to celebrate Eid on Sunday. Zaytuna Institute, Crescentwatch, the Hilal Sighting Committee of North America, and numerous other organizations have decided to stick with the standard continental U.S. sighting region, until a broad consensus on such important changes can be reached.

For all those that are celebrating Eid Sunday or Monday, we wish you Eid Mubarak. May Allah accept your fast and all your efforts during Ramadan.
Last Updated: September 19, 2009  23:26 PST
Posted: September 19, 2009  20:10 PST

I happen to be in California right now. Basically, i am fasting today. but in NYC the communities i am a part of are celebrating Eid today. I am leaving tonight, God Willing, and the communities that are celebrating the Eid tomorrow are having their prayer service tomorrow morning.

Basically. for the first time in my life i will not be able to enjoy the Eid in company of other people. For a Ramadan that has been about taming my nafs i can think of no better way for it to end. This process has been between me and Allah - of course, i have shared some insights on my blog and with friends, but at the end of the day - talk is cheap - it is our actions that shine and speak for us. That is a great reminder, the most excellent lesson that i could ever be blessed with in this most auspicious time.

Eid Mubarak and Eid Kareem to All. Allah is All-Seeing and All-Knowing, and the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. To Him i come from and to Him i will return. Blessings to Prophet Muhammad and all the rightly Prophets and Uluma.  May he accept our fasting, the best of our intentions, and may Allah grant us the best of our affairs in this life, and save us from the Abasement of this life and may Allah save us from the Punishment of the Fire in the Hereafter. I say this for myself, my mother, my father, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, my teachers, my imam’s, for someone special and her family and her teachers, and for the Muslim umma as a whole - particularly the strivers in NYC and California. Blessings to Prophet Muhammad and all the rightly Prophets and Uluma. Allah is the Most High, Allah, the Sublime, Ya Allah Ya Allah - there is nothing worthy of worship but Allah. Amin.

ps- look for rain today :)

bb-

Breathe peace, not nicotine!

Tarawih prayers let out on Steinway Street, and the chattering crowd moves slowly down the block through the low hanging smoke. There are almost 25 Hookah cafes in an approximately one-block stretch. With lolling fat men with mustaches and nubile nymphettes showing bare shoulders as they sip from Shisha pipes, the scene is from a bad 1950’s sword and sandal epic, perhaps a tale spun off from the Bible and populated with eye-rolling Philistines and other Hollywood “Middle Eastern” types. It is an orgy of Arab self-indulgence—and a carnival of cancer.

 

The fast of Ramadan is meant to help free us from bad habits. But as the month ends, how many of us have used this time to get free of the smoking habit?  Since starting a program called Nafis Salaam to study and stop smoking among Muslims, I have begun to notice smokers everywhere, and especially among the young. I see them clustered in doorways, I notice their itchy fingers and hungry mouths, I smell them smoking next door and downstairs, I notice their air of defensiveness, evasion and sometimes desperation.

 

Every day in the USA, 4,000 young people start smoking. And every year, some 400,000 Americans die from smoking related illnesses. Around the world, some Muslim ethnicities have the highest rates of smoking—over 50 percent among Turks, Bosnians, Muslims from the former Soviet republics, Bangladeshis. Arab communities’ smoking rates are also increasing, as tobacco companies target them in marketing. Studies demonstrate how sedentary and unhealthy many Arab nations are becoming, with increasing rates of cancer and heart disease.

 

Consumption of unbalanced foods and well as cigarettes is affecting your friends and neighbors. While perhaps slightly healthier than cousins back home, the South Asians in New York have been found to have a 28% rate of diabetes. And Nafis Salaam’s polls of over 150 diverse New York Muslims show that over 50 percent are regularly exposed to second hand smoke. We should be alarmed by this health crisis.

 

On top of this, we are now seeing the rapid spread of Shisha as an economic engine, chic—or kitschy--celebration of identity, and a habit that is more dangerous to your health than cigarettes. Steinway Street rakes in the cash from nargila pipes, while everywhere Yemeni and Egyptian delis sell packet after packet despite the prohibitive prices.

 

This is self-imposed genocide. This is mass delusion. We do this to ourselves. Interesting that NYC Mayor Bloomberg should ignore these Shisha cafes, making an exception to his tough anti-smoking laws. This exception easily kills more Arabs than Israelis killed in Gaza. Why, when even in Baghdad and in Istanbul new regulations against smoking are finally being implemented?

  

Unless they are smokers, imams are generally very clearly against smoking. Some will deliver passable Khotbas on the subject. And yet, how very few will organize AA style support groups for quitters in their congregations. I have floated the idea—but the real push for this must come from within the congregation. So many Muslims are passive consumers of religion and have low expectations. African American communities seem a step ahead on understanding the need for social services, but are woefully under-funded. Someone has to start this service! How will our mosques grow into the healing gardens they were meant to be?

 

Many leaders have promised to help our Nafis Salaam program, but are slow to water our own gardens. Imams should step up to the plate on smoking prevention and cessation, no messy gender issues for them since it mainly affects male Muslims. We hope to soon have videos of imams' khotbas posted along with quitters’ stories. We would also be willing to post your personal stories.

 

As we go through the NYC Muslim community, I meet men and women who tell me stories—of loved ones unable to quit, who die suddenly, of their own attempts and frustration, and also stories of victory. ‘I feel so healthy and clean” they say. “I can taste food again!”

 

Recently I have been reading some Ibn al Arabi passages that remind us that how we treat our bodies is a service to God. I have to admit I hardly ever think this way. I wonder: if we were all more in touch with this intimate truth, would we be more tender towards His creation, and to each other?

 

Addiction is such a prison and smoking is a internal rendition. It is not enough to hate this evil in our hearts! It is more appropriate to ask, “How can I help?”  You may risk a sour look, but why not tell Muslim merchants not to sell this haraam. Even if you think it is just Makruh, help your friends and family to get free. Help them lovingly.

 

And if you are a smoker reading this please know that this struggle to quit is a form of the Greatest Jihad. Let us all celebrate quitters, and seek the inner freedom through struggle, insha’Allah. There are streams of waters beneath our feet along smoky Steinway Street— you can almost hear these silent waters--healing is so near. Breathe peace, not nicotine, not 15 known carcinogens.

 

Our community can often seem like a broken thing. With the self-congratulatory public iftars, the insecurities and blame, all the habits of our beleaguered cultures, it is as if we sit on a hill of ants. But we can begin to listen to our human souls, in order to address the disconnect between cultural versions of Islam and the spirit of the deen.

If you think you might be able to help us develop this movement of awareness against the smoking habit, a movement of liberation and empowerment, a hope for new life, please be in touch. Please contact or call 718 512 5176. Peace to you.

this is a re-post from Adem Carroll of the Muslim Consultative Network

US Muslims: backlash fear builds each 9/11 - By Rachel Zoll (AP)

US Muslims: backlash fear builds each 9/11

By RACHEL ZOLL (AP) – 19 hours ago

NEW YORK — There is the dread of leaving the house that morning. People might stare, or worse, yell insults.

Prayers are more intense, visits with family longer. Mosques become a refuge.

Eight years after 9/11, many U.S. Muslims still struggle through the anniversary of the attacks. Yes, the sting has lessened. For the younger generation of Muslims, the tragedy can even seem like a distant memory. "Time marches on," said Souha Azmeh Al-Samkari, a 22-year-old student at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Yet, many American Muslims say Sept. 11 will never be routine, no matter how many anniversaries have passed.

"I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every year," said Nancy Rokayak, 45, of Charlotte, N.C., who covers her hair in public. "I feel on 9/11 others look at me and blame me for the events that took place."

Rokayak, a U.S.-born convert, has four children with her husband, who is from Egypt, and works as an ultrasound technologist. She makes sure she is wearing a red, white and blue flag pin every Sept. 11 and feels safer staying close to home.

Sarah Sayeed, 41, who lives in the Bronx, said that for a long time, she hesitated before going out on the anniversary. The morning the World Trade Center crumbled, she rushed to her son's Islamic day school so they could both return home. The other women there warned that she should take off her headscarf, or hijab, for her own safety. She now attends an interfaith prayer event each Sept. 11, keeping her hair covered as always.

"There's still a sense of `Should I go anywhere? Should I say anything?' There's kind of that anxiety," said Sayeed, who was born in India and came to the U.S. at age 8. "I force myself to go out."

The anniversary brings a mix of emotions: sorrow over the huge loss of life, anguish over the wars that followed, but also resentment over how the hijackings so completely transformed the place of Muslims in the U.S. and beyond.

A poll released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 38 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. That is down from 45 percent two years earlier.

It is now common in U.S. mosques for Muslims to preface public remarks by saying they know the government is eavesdropping but Muslims have nothing to hide.

"It put a lot of Muslim Americans in the position of, `We don't blend in as much as we thought we did,'" said Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, 32, a native New Yorker whose college friend was killed in the World Trade Center.

Some of the Muslims interviewed for this story said they have been subjected to insults, though not on the Sept. 11 anniversary. Sayeed remembers a man walking by and calling her "Taliban." Closer to the attacks, an anonymous caller told Rokayak to get out of the country.

Abdul-Matin, 32, said he avoids TV news on the anniversary "if it's too much of this drumbeating or warmongering, if the focus is on `what they did to us.'" He prefers spending the day with his relatives, especially his mother, who was with him in Brooklyn the morning of the attacks.

"It's a family day," Abdul-Matin said.

This year, the anniversary falls on a Friday, the Islamic day of congregational prayer, and during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, when mosques are usually packed. Muslims expect their prayer leaders, or imams, will at least mention the significance of the date in their sermons.

Asim Rehman, president of the Muslim Bar Association of New York, was at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan when the planes hit. He said he passes the day "as a proud New Yorker" in "prayer and reflection" for the victims, their families and others.

Not all mosques will commemorate the day. A significant number of U.S. Muslims contend that no one of their faith could have perpetrated the hijackings. They resist suggestions that they should be monitoring their own communities for extremism.

Kamran Memon, an Illinois lawyer, has taken a different approach, founding Muslims for A Safe America, which challenges fellow Muslims to learn more about national security. The debates and talks he leads at mosques throughout the Chicago area start from the position that Muslims were behind the attacks.

On the anniversary, Memon keeps his work schedule light and prefers to stay home. He reflects on what happened, but his thoughts are more focused on what could be ahead. Some Muslims are convinced that if the U.S. is hit with another terrorist attack, the government will put them in internment camps, he said.

"There's this fear about what down the road this will mean for my daughter's future. What kind of life will she have here?" he said. "People may be less angry or less hostile toward Muslims in general, but if there's another attack, what then?"

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

How Hearts Change...

“What conversation are you having inside yourself?”

I walk around the crowded streets of Manhattan, listening to the calls of the sneaker sellers, the street meat vendors, passing rows and rows of plants and flowers that crowd the side streets below the garment district. I walk to the mosque in the middle of the day to pray my midday prayers.

One day as I was leaving I came upon a young Bengali brother who I knew from going to Baruch College. We chatted and talked and he walked me near to my block – going about 5 blocks out of his way to accommodate me. The next day we met again, and I paid him the same courtesy and we walked 5 blocks out of my direction. He told me a story:

He said it was a Hadith, which I cannot narrate the chain of authenticity so please forgive me. I will relate what he told me because it is relevant in terms of our responsibility to one another, our understanding of what it means to lives as brothers and sisters on this planet earth, and for its connection to the concept of justice in Islam.

The false choice we make in the United States is between a sense of a collective responsibility and our so-called rugged individualism. Obama mentioned it in his speech on health care last night. And it comes to mind when I think of the story the young brother related.

He said that in the time of the Prophet  - peace and blessings be upon him – there was a very rich man praying, and a very poor man lined up next to him and began praying. The rich man brushed off his shoulder signaling that he did not want to pray next to this poor man. Upon the end of the salat the Prophet was told of this and subsequently commanded the rich man to give the poor man half of his wealth. The poor man refused the wealth because he did not want to become such as the rich man. Allah knows best, forgive me if I have related it wrong.

“What conversation are you having inside yourself?”

So I began walking back to my office, over one block, down another, into the dregs of the garment district where they fix sewing machines and hagglers wrestle over the price of thread and needles, then over another block and down a stretch. En route I came upon a fruit vendor selling an assortment that included dates. I rarely see a fruit vendor selling dates (especially during Ramadan) so I bought 4 for a dollar and he put them (wastefully) into a plastic bag. Clutching the plastic bag I proceeded along my merry way until I turned on a street I rarely turn and then to my left saw a young man sitting against a building with a sign on cardboard written in English saying that he was homeless, hungry, and would accept any assistance. He was different than the other people in The City with these types of signs. Why? Because he was NOT white. Usually I see young wayward white youth hawking in NYC in this manner.

This man was Indian. Not what I expected to see. I passed him then turned back and of course gave him the bag with the dates. The smile on his face was enough to make me tear. Not because what I did was so special, but because we shared a very human moment. I was ecstatic for that smile – I may have made his day but he seriously made mine.

“What conversation are you having inside yourself?”

THE conversation --- about hearts and how they change:

The Ocean of Brooklyn

My breath is Brooklyn bound-

  In leather sandals and mets caps

Backpacks with dodger blue in

  South American mestizo Spanish

In purple tops with stray straps dangling

  In gold chains and fat rimmed spectacles

In blinking eyes, squinting to catch a glimpse

   A moment of solace dressed in all black

    With a ny sports club pack

With graffiti of rust on metal doors

 O’ the arrogant ones!

O’ selfish kin

    Thou art the reflection of me!

 

The loud mouthed and toothless,

  The Dominican and Lubavitch

     Post messiah and wandering

Red-flushed wine faces

  Black stained; what’s read all over fingers

   They have sandals and blackened feet

And they trace the desire lines on their fingers

   With remembrances and thikr

In fancy shoes and collars popped

   In saggy jeans to tight to drop

Breathing, wheezing Brooklyn

   They scratch the surface

    To play the daily numbers

Adjusting… golden rings.

  Everyone clinging onto something.

To possess, grasping demanding

  Losing breath, chests aching,

    Expanding, contracting…

 

Until the doors of the train open.

   Like a valve, an outlet to the sea,

My body floats out of this brackish train

   Into the salty streets

Of this land of kings, next to queens,

   The borough, the city, the planet,

     The Ocean of Brooklyn.

Finley Quaye - Even After All

LAST LINE: Even after all/

you just survive soldier/

and your soul is beautiful/

and your soul is good

Signs for those who Reflect

Literally everyday of Ramadan has its own miracles. Today was not different. Even still, I am stunned by them and anticipate them. It is like knowing that The Creator is going to do something special for you (besides properly apportion you for the environment, order the stars and planets into fixed orbits, make an invisible energy field called gravity keeping everything in its place on earth, make plants and animals our friends, protectors, and sustenance, and rain water on us so that our bodies stay moist – oh and perfectly position my heart in relationship to all my other organs so that I can live – plus making my soul and literally everything else: time, love, feelings, etc…) Still, everyday I feel like Allah gives me a special opportunity to reflect in a way that is like a mini revelation. In Ramadan I suppose I am keenly tuned in.

It is the month that the Angel Gabriel would relate the signs of Allah in the form of Arabic verse, and ordered divinely to our Nabi (saws), so that now we have a collection called The Quran. SO being open-hearted an able to discern the previously indiscernible is quite likely.

Regarding my heart… a dear friend sent me this:

There’s this pace in all of us that wants to love, a soft childlike place – the place that can connect easily to spirit, to God, to joy. This place is the most exposed and hurting during times of heartbreak. Much of the time, we aren’t as connected to this part of us. But in heartbreak we can connect easily, we are constantly mindful of this soft part. We have a unique opportunity to open up to this part – to fall in it – to let groundlessness be grounding. We can see with new eyes when we are seeing from this soft place – we can see ourselves differently and move in different ways. If we allow it, we can learn, grow, and love, pray, eat, sleep, and work more intensely & with more presence and awareness than ever before. We have new insight, we can become more awake. If we don’t fight it. This is ultimately a chance to surrender.

So with these new eyes, with this open heart, with a situation where I needed to really take a look at myself and find out what I can do to get myself right within I have been spending more time around the elders in my Muslim community. As a result I came across a recurring friendship with Brother Abdul Qadir, of Masjid At-Taqwa, the special assistant to Imam Siraj. He and I have been talking, building, me listening and learning from my elder. This is a miracle in itself – time with an elder black anchor in my community. Especially since both of my grandfathers passed long before I could come to know them.

Well, it turns out that this brother also has a role in my life that I did not even know. It has to do with him and my mother. Here’s how she tells it:

“I was a freshman in college, he would sell Muhammad speaks, on Franklin Ave, I  started buying the paper and would go to this progressive afro centric shop to get black stuff …  that sorta stuff was still relatively new in 1970. We would talk about the Nation and eventually invited me to the mosque on 116^th street first, its’s where I first took shahada, prior to taking that I was in college taking a religious course, I took theology and liberation, that and other courses, one of instructors was a Muslim from Egypt, gave me a Quran he got in 1952, the year I was born – I was planning to convert, serious thinking, I had gone to the mosque on 72^nd and riverside [now the 96^th street mosque] and went a few times, and never felt quite at home and that is why I joined the nation of Islam. He would come by the house and sell the paper, and soon I became active with the paper, then I became one of the secretaries, over the years we would always recognize one anther. [as the community grew more insular and less accepting of difference] He was one of the people that was never harsh, never judged me”

Brother Qadir did not take me under his wing because he knew who my mother was. But when he did find out he shocked me and mentioned the street where my mother grew up. After that we became buddies. Last night after iftar at Taqwa (Imam Siraj returned yesterday too and I handed him a date that he broke his fast with!) we rushed to his house and ate some strip steak, green beans, and brown rice his wife left for us. A wonderful circle of faith and fellowship in black and Muslim Brooklyn – that is a Ramadan Miracle, and its one for the ages.

bb