My Dear Maryam & Sarah

 

[      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06TMMKjCfD0   ]

my dear maryam & sarah,

both you young punks 'floored' atok last week when you guys asked atok about 'the arash'.

frankly, atok dont know exactly, where 'the arash' is as, its immensity is beyond atok's imagination.

but what atok know is that atok must pay your  school  at sungai buluh a visit, and congratulate both your class teachers......

for giving both atok's cucus great education and aqidah grouding,  at these tender age of 5 and 7 respectively. the founders and patrons of the school , syabass to them all!!

during atok's time at 7, atok's teacher was just teaching atok, " this is a man, and this is a pen. a man and

 a pen ", from the the then famous book from longman of uk.

this earth to both of you , and to even atok,is huge.....super, super  huge.

just to fly from KL to London will take minimum 14 hours and that is only around 8,000 kilometres 

away!

but in the whole scheme of things,this planet earth is nothing.......it is very very tiny, just like a 

speck of dust, compared to the universe. 

the size of this universe is a figure with 25 zeros kilometres  behind that number, in dimension.

...and later in the year both your ugama teachwer will teach both of you a short ayat from surah al

 baqarah, ayat 255 to be precise, that is when you finish you muqaddam, insyaaallah.

in that ayat allah talks of HIS 'foot stool', known as 'the kursi'.

beyond the 'kursi' is the 'arash'

adults as old as atok, [and to you guys atok must be very very old, as you already consider both 

your parents already ancient ], had from time immemorial being arguing to no end about the

 nature of the 'kursi' and

 the 'arash', so if you two young guys cannot comprehend, it is nothing to worry about.

the 1st group of people  take the meaning of 'kursi' and 'arash', point blank, as what are

 mentioned in the quran.

the other group name called this group as the 'literalists'. another name given to them is '

 neosalafist '.

when the other group are  awee bit angrier and a wee bit impatient with thye 1st group because 

oftentimes the 1st group can behave like 'arseholes' and 'pain in the neck', the 2nd group called 

them 'wahabis'.

not a nice name to give,  a deragotory term, but that is the real world out there and even older

 people can got hot in between

 their collars!

the 2nd group, who like to call themselves, 'ahlil sunnah wal jamaah' think 'kursi' and 'arash',

 the understanding are much much beyond them, and that reflect the super immensity of allah's 

being and attributes.

a famous thinker and poet from amongst them known as rumi, 10 centuries ago, term it as 

'the place of the placeless, and a time of the timeless'.

more imaginative from amongst them put it in a more understanding way,[ as described in the utube ]

"imagine the universe as a ring, lost in the sahara desert...that sahara desert is the kursi.

now imagine the kursi as a ring. throw it in the sahara desert....that is the arash!! "

.....but they are quick to point out that this expression is only allegorical and figurative.

..........even at that  time and even with that expression,they feared to be termed

 'anthropomorphic' by later day people.

dont ask atok what 'anthropomorphic' means.

go ask your dad!

atok......

ps: " atok love you guys immensely!! "

...All Of Us Can Fly.......

friends, dato and tansri,

we are all fellow travelers on this planet earth.

this short sojourn in this duniya is just like a transient stop under a tree before our forward journey

our next stop is alam barzark.

a relatively very short stop compared to the next

it is just a 'small' station.

the final stop is beyond the atlantic, beyond the pacific.
it is back to our paradisal origin...the alam akhirat.

alam akhirah, just after the sirat, bifurcates into two....al jannah and al jaheem.
there is no return ticket
there is no side station

al jannah and al jaheem are for eternity.

[ oops! correction: there is a small sub station, on a plateau called al a'raf  where those with 'equal weightage on the 'al mizan' get assessed and reassessed for a couple of hundred thousand earth years , allahualam, before their on-toward final respective destination ]

here, we have a 'potpourri' of related lectures, old and current, by shaykh ninowy of duluth, usa, to invigorate us into the journey.

i count shaykh ninowy as one of my tok guru

we start in a rather inverted way, we start with the 'top end', three khutbah on the 'awliyas'.

their 'karamah etc and etc

then we go back to the nitty gritty of cleansing the 'heart', the tazkiah an naf tazkiah al qulub ,the real hard work......

shaykh abdal qadir isa, [ circa 1920-1991 ], a syrian mujaddid  and doyen of ilm tasawuf from aleppo, ,  in his magnum opus, ' haqa' iq an at-tashawwuf ', realities of sufism, opined , that the journey starts with taubatan nasuha as the first station.

the next station is muhasabah, or introspection.

the third and the fourth stations, khauf [ fear ] and raja' [ hope ], come together.

the  careful traveler goes through life till death with both fear and hope.

then the subsequent stations, shidiq, ikhlas, sabr, wara', zuhud, ridha, tawakal, and shukr..........

the fruit of all these is closeness to allah, mahabbatullah

in a tradition from umar al khatab known as hadith al jibril, ' worship allah as if you are seeing HIM and if you can't , be assured that HE is seeing you! '.

all of us want to be people of ihsan.
all of us can fly.
we just need to re-orientate our paradigm.
we  just have to re-calibrate our hearts and minds in congruence with the qur'an and sunnah

   awliya allah 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3wdh439zIA

    awliya allah 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hRMttYSEfM

    awliya allah 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMT8V3X_iI

   on shukr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBKa9_tFQHA

   on piety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SEmGLqCEWU

    tazkiah , 4th nov.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPy8V07kPpo

    ibnu athaillah al iskandari's hikam, part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGPLC0MUNQw

[ starts after 26.05 ]

    ibnu athaillah al iskandari's hikam, part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIg7A0nxSl0

    on zikr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJ8neV3wYU

  on detachment & attachment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK8UeZBU32s
[ a lot of us live in a spiritual winter ]

   on death, dying and the living dead...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-zCziLbbTE

   on haj

https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/mail/inbox

   from rituals to spiritual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOK4B6W67AY

.....and now, dato and tansri, are we ready to re-testify?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ewZ6uk_98

Levels and Levels......

Friends, Dato and Tansri,

One Abubakar al Khattani and Abu Hasan ar-Ramli asked a tok guru and Shaykh, Abu Said al-Kharraz:

"Please tell us the stations in our journey to Allah? ".

al-Kharraz answered, " It has to start with repentance, repentance and repentance.....", and he went on,

" after this station, one moves on to khauf [ fear ]. From the station of khauf one move on to raja' [ hope ].

From the station of raja' , one move on to be a 'solihin' and 'solihah'.
Then, one gets elevated to being a mureed.

From being a mureed , one moves on to the next station, a state of  
ta'at, [ in complete obeyance ].

From complete obeyance one moves on to the station of mahabbah [ a state of unqualified love ]. 

From this station the next station is rindu [ 'lovesick' ].

The penultimate station on schedule is a steep hill to climb, leading to walliallah [ allah's friend ]

The last and final stop for the mere mortals is the station of the 
al-muqarrabin [ the one near to HIM ]

[ excerpt from haqq' iq at-tashawwuf, shaykh abdal qadir isa, [ circa 1920 - 1991 ]

Another sufi shaykh, al-Junaid al Bagdhdi, sultan al awliya of all shaykhs of his time, ten centuries earlier,  was asked a more direct and personal question by his fans:
" Shaykh, how do you achieve your current stature and state? "

" By staying under that staircase for over thirty years!..." , alluding to 'istiqamah ' and 'sabr' in doing the necessary 'legwork' a traveler had to undergo before they reach their status of a sufi saint. The 'legwork' is zikrullah, zikrullah and zikrullah and zikrullah, and good behaviour manners and adab...years and years of remembrance, total dedication  to the hala and the haram,and 'hablu minal llah' and 'hablu minan nas'.

At my personal level, being without a tok guru for decades, I have been oscillating, back and forth, back and forth, like a yo-yo, between the 3rd station, khauf, and the 4th station, raja' .

I get my occasionally 'endorhin high'  when on the rare occasion, when allowed to leapfrog to  a state of mahabbah, not stopping at the station of mureed and ta'at! 
This transient abberation in the order of things and adab is not long though. 
As fast as I get to that stage, I percolate down back to the station of  khauf [ fear ] and raja' [ hope ].


When you have been in this 'business' for some years now like i do,  the spirit is ever willing, but the flesh occasionally rebel! Waking up at 4 am in the wee hours of the morning  can be done for a period of two weeks, at the most three, but is a difficult proposition if it is to be done daily , seven days a week, 54 weeks in a year, come vacation  or working. 
This is in the realm of 'hubluminallah'. Beyond this come 'RINDU'. 
One cannot fake it.
Mere mortals like you and me, we fall back to where we are.

At my age now, I wish I can turn back the clock by 20 years. Then a decent Tok Guru would have entertained me and lead me by the hand over those slippery 'slope'.

Now, at 64, I am already afflicted by phd  [ 'permanent head damage' ], and no tok guru or shaykh, in their right mind, would want to waste his precious time and emotion  to 'teach an old monkey like me  new tricks'. So here I am permanently bivouked at station, hope.

...and to make things straight for the record, it is not just the lack of a 'mursyid tok guru'.
the potential student is also mainly at fault, not wanting to remove his cloth of egoism!
it is much a problematic student than the lack of tok guru.
i am to be blamed!

I guess there are many many millions like me.

In our thirties we have more than a passing interest in things 'tassawuf' but over the years we are too choosy about which  tok guru we go to. 

Central , from our perspective, rightly or wrongly, I think is , our reluctance to 'lose' our personal 'soveriengty'' to just any charlatan tok guru.

And currently there are just quite a number in the 'business'.
Bad and wrong 'tok gurus' can oftentimes be worse than no 'tok gurus' at all!
At the end, while waiting for the 'murshid' tok guru, we 'missed' the boat........
A problem of being too careful.

But insyaallah , even the station of hope is good enough.

Allah hummakh tim lana bi husnil khatimah , wa la takh tim alaina bi suul khatimah!
[ oh allah, grant a good ending to our lives and don't let end our lives with bad ending....]

Dr Nik

A similar article in the blog :

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2015/11/three-stations.html

Paris Massacre, Anger and Resentment....

Friends, Dato and Tansri,

I was surfing the net the other day quietly by myself in one corner in the doctor's common room at my hospital  while waiting for an angioplasty case to be ready in the operation thearte when Dr Liew NC , a consultant vascular surgeon, a born again christian, approached me and asked,

"Nik, why for god's sake are all these young Muslims killing themselves and innocent people in Europe?'
I took a deep breath and pondered:

Doc Liew,

I can be academic and a wee bit untruthful and give you a whole load of rubbish as what Prof Bernard Lewis, doyen of western orientalism, gave some , 20 years back  to  Bush Senior,[ and later 15, to Bush Junior ] citing history right from the Spanish inquisition up to theOttomans emasculation in Europe and the subsequent domination of the Muslim hinterland by the former 'crusaders'I think that is a whole load of rubbish but rubbish enough to provide  Bush senior and later Bush Junior and his British poodle, Mr Anthony Blair,  the intellectual and moral munitions to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
[  http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/90sep/rage.htm  ]

These young muslims , they are not schooled and their memories are quite short. So i will give the short but more honest answer to you.

What they are doing is certainly not Islam. 
Islam is submission to the One and Only, and in Islam if you kill a human being, be it Muslim or non Muslim, without rhyme or reason, it is a crime against the whole of humanity.
You will be dumped in to HELL for eternity.
No decent Muslim, learned or unlearned, ever wish this to happen!

But put yourselves in the position of a typical Muslim youth in Paris or Brussel let us say, or even a youth in Baghdad,Libya , or now even in  Yemen. Even in Chechnya for that matter.
if you grow up in Baghdad, during Saddam's time, time was hard but you did not have to live in your own shit. Your father can go to work in the market place and he could bring  some money home for bread and butter.
In  post-Bush's Baghdad, you have no electricity, no proper sewarage system, no proper running water and you live practically where you shit. Your dad and uncles and cousins got their heads head blown off in the market place. The Shia- Sunni querrel got worse.

Between  the 2 Iraq wars several hundred thousands children died from hunger from sanctions. 
After the wars another 1 million died, countless lost their homes. You saw and continue to see your cousins, your brothers and sisters and your children got blown off. 
There is no future.
And above all you see America and Europe got off scotts free!
Tony Blair , General Powell and Bush Junior ,you see , are still free and 'unrepentant' despite all facts pointing to them as criminals against humanity. 

Now let us move away from Iraq to the rest of the Muslim hinterland: Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Yemen , Syria and for that matter even Egypt. Wherever the white Caucasian race have an interest, they have their dirty hands in . 
One can be guaranteed of absolute chaos and mayhem.
If it is not a case of war, even the democratically elected President Morsi was 'demolished' via Western complicity etc etc and etc.

What are these young people  supposed  to do? Shake their hands and say thank you?
And lately , thanks to Saudi , Israel, America and also Europe's complicity, we have the people of Syria being  weaponized to the teeth with the noble intention of bringing down Assad.

There are now currently 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe.
On the extreme right you have the sufis or 'people of the ihsan', whose intention are to 'walk this earth as peacefully as possible , not even wanting to harm a red  ant or even a rat'. i like them very much.

in the middle you have the  great big  silent majority, a motley of nominal Muslims and non nominal Muslims: Sunni  and Shia ; to the extreme left you have 30 million or so Wahabis and Salafis, none of them are as mad and jihadist oriented as what Bernard Lewis and John Exposito et al wanted the world to perceived of them.

You throw in 1 to 2 million Muslims dying of collateral damage from 1000's and  1000's sorties of cruise missiles and aerial bombing , over decades,  not counting hundreds of thousands of drones raining down on Muslim hinterland in the last decade.
If all these can just radicalize just 0.1 % from the extreme left of the spectrum, you have at least 15 million radicals just waiting to die for their religion.

The overriding sentiment amongst ulama  worth his salt, Shia or Sunni, liberal or conservative, is that none of them will  100 % negate jihad as a last bid defensive mechanism open to ordinary Muslims. If he does, he is no ulama.
A great majority will say the present content on which suicide bombing are carried on is definitely 'non Islamic'. Point taken, fullstop.

2 million have died at their hands, is a definitive testimony of that.
Bush, Blair and General Powell are still free running around selling their ware when they should actually be behind bars at The Hague as WAR CRIMINALS!

There is no papacy in Islam to whom one can look up to for guidance.
Guidance is between the individuals and God Himself . 
The scholars only can pontificate and advise.
Islam is a personal and 'democratic' religion, from this perspective
It is all between you and God!'

To these young people, at the end of the day, they ask their 'hearts'
All is fair in war and peace.
'You kill my mothers, uncles and children and cousins, does not matter where, I kill yours'

and to complicate the scenario further, the definition of 'cousin' or 'brother' in islam is wide. 
he could be in palestine, chechnya or kabul!

Now, if one allow Mc Cain or Putin  or that mad chap, Donald Trump, [  who is currently getting madder and madder as the weeks and days goes on, ] their ways, they would  go on to flatten the Levant [ greater Syria and Iraq ]  with nuke and dirty bombs in order  to flush out ISIS. 

They have the logistics and the ordinance to do just that. The PR job and rationale can be organized later very easily.

CNN, Aljazira and BBC can help in making this plan ' palatable ' for the rest of the watching world. 
world public opinion is malleable and a forever moving goal posts!

Congratulations!
And  I would be the first to congratulate them for being moronic.
  
In the process,if by conservative estimate, they could just manage to radicalized 10 % of the Muslim body, the world at large have to deal with 150 millions future jihadists, all well spread out across the globe.
Even the sufis may  be radicalized. 
No one can guarantee there will be no snow ball effect.

again i say congratulations to them. 
go ahead.

The ball is actually in Obama's , Hollande's, Putin's and Cameron's feet.
even hillary.
If they think they can manage to win against 150 million potential jihadis, 

congatulations!!
Go ahead!
They are most welcomed!

Doc Liew,

Like Iraq before, no one, and I stress again, NO ONE, is interested in the root cause.
The killing field on both side will increase because all players have lost their sanity.
This is a recipe for World War 3, if current world leaders are not careful!

america, russia  may have MAD.
but in this 21st century MAD is almost totally inconsequential.
if YOU radicalise 1.6 billion muslims, that is the mother of all MADNESS!

This is not an ideal world and this is the reality all of us, peace loving people of the world, have to face.

THINK

dr nik

' hasbunallah wani' mal Wakeel '...suffice for Allah, HE is al Wakeel