*Revnd Nadim Nassar (Founder, Awareness Foundation)
**Dr Mahera Ruby (Parenting Practitioner)
***Sheikh Mustafa Jaffar (scholar and lecturer)
****Sara Russell (photographer)
For the second year running the holy month of Ramadan comes amid the widespread pandemic that has wreaked havoc in the world. Muslims will observe fasting amid continuous health concerns but with high hopes of achieving vertical ascendance. Once again the month of fasting is likely to be marked in the absence of mass prayers and other forms of worship. While missing out on the social dimension of the month dedicated believers will enjoy quiet worship in the solitude of homes. The spirituality of Ramadan is indeed a unique experience.
Tuesday 20th April 2021
Sara Russell: Thank you very much for inviting me to share reflections that we can go away and contemplate more on. Bismallah Al Rahman Al Rahim. Everything we do starts with in the name of Allah so we remember him in everything we do. When we talk about the lockdown it seems to have become something that has dominated everyone’s lives. When we think about it the most frightening thing for most of us is what do I do when I am on my own, in my own company or when I am left without the daily routine of the structure that I am familiar with: the travelling, the commuting to work, the people we see. The familiarity suddenly with no choice of our own we are to remain home for what is called safety.
Is it so safe when we are left to reflect. I am sure everyone’s experience is very different. When we have God in our lives we turn to him in the sense that we seek refuge. He is the all knowing. There are many things we don’t see. Many things that we don’t recognise more so in this time. There is an acknowledgement of how much fear we have of the unknown. Yet it is comforting that we have this time when we can abstain from many things that distracted us from the most important things in our life.
The most important is the observance. And I have been running around maybe for some time every Ramadan I would be covering an event or an iftar with many renowned guests who would be speaking. And everybody would be listening and observing and looking forward to sharing iftar with these incredibly inspiring speakers. So I would be going to these events and I would be like the fly on the wall. That observance with lens was a time when you would be going to an event and you did not know exactly what you will take back from it.
With everything including this special time I believe that we are going through a big shift in many aspects of our life. We are having to rethink what we will be doing when the doors open to the outside world and going back out. Maybe there were many things which we over looked like our neighbours in need. There are lots of callings on that we may overlook due to the rat race. We may be running just trying to get from a to be and then we forget that just to stand still for a moment is very necessary.
So as much as we believe that things are out of our hands they are never ever accidental in the sense that God is the best planner. As much as we have planned so many things in our lives we have to surrender to the opening of the chapters. Every day we are presented with a challenge, with a specific task. I believe that in this holy month of Ramadan it is wonderful to have that slow pace where we could sit with our families and to really delve deeper into the spiritual sense and to look at the practice of abstinence.
What I recall that is so important is the power of speech and the power of silence. Now if we think about that speech can move mountains and bring about great change internally and collectively. Someone who speaks truth at the right time and in the right place and on the contrary if we speak at sometime it can cause the opposite. If we speak at a time where silence would be more beneficial. This is where we have to ask Allah to guide us. Allah will always be polishing that ability to be patient in every decision we make and to wait before we engage in response to anything.
I think we have become very much in ourselves followers of mass hysteria at times. The one thing I was reflecting on was the essence of time. Most of us did not even recognise because we had not had any memories that would have been different. People may have gone on a holiday or they may have gone on a pilgrimage or gone to visit family. Everything had come to a halt. What happened to that time, that whole year that we were in our homes. And now we are in our homes with certain restrictions. We wait and this is a waiting game that the world will open up.
We are here now and we are finding means of continuing our lives in just scheduling our day. Many are very uncomfortable with that because the sense of uncertainty rises to the surface. But what I see is that if we trust in God – if we trust in Allah above all – we have an opportunity to be more humble and observing. I think that that word I will be bringing up a lot is observance. I feel that all of us have not really been in that state of reflecting and questioning. We face demons. There is nothing more positive than to really recognise where we are with our faith. Faith is pivotal to our life and to our standard of living and to our mental well being and to strengthening community even though we may not be in congregation but as a community we are still supporting in prayer. We are communicating with our Lord in seclusion and perhaps this is necessary to really prepare us for the changes that are to come. How are we to respond to them?
When I say changes some things maybe you can see the change in many things like technology and the medical industry and many things that are parts of life that keep changing – like I forgot to unmute. And these sorts of we could call them technological glitches. We have to prepare ourselves to be very much energised to continue our struggle against the oppressions in the world which we see.
I have had many conversations and they are very much based on religion and it has to be so much more important that we focus as the structure we have as a blessing. All of us were created to pray. All of us in our innate nature came into this world to worship. So all of us have a faith and we have to connect with it. I might be using a parallel example in how we connect to technology but I am talking about connection beyond the physical. All these barriers in the world that can frustrate us.
You can speak your part and God can hear you. You can ask from him for guidance and in sha Allah that is something I feel that we are in need of more so than ever. I was reading the surah from the Quran called Taha and in one aya it is mentioned that whoever does good works and is a believer he shall have no fear of injustice or of the withholding of his due.
When we think about that trusting and having hope in God not just in times of despair but in times when we could have happy moments. I have been having a handful of very intimate small weddings that I have been photographing. And at such weddings people would have had 400 guests and then you are there and you can see this sacred moment of union. Nothing else seemed to be more important than two people coming together and then all the other plans came to be not so important. The couple would not be willing to wait until the disaster passes.
So what I am trying to reflect on to share here is the fact that perhaps a lot of things that would have been so important to us – the planning of certain events. In the end it seems that it was not so important. Certain extravagances of details that we perhaps would have prioritized in our lives now it becomes so comforting and soothing to embrace ourselves with the nature in the world. It is important for us to leave our homes and go to woodlands and the sea if we are blessed to have that near us and to engage with our families with our children, to confront certain issues that perhaps would have been ignored because there would have been so many distractions.
So we are coming home to where we need to see our own weaknesses and reflect on our own behaviours and attitudes and improve our mental health and our spiritual well being because all of those are connected – our mental, physical and spiritual selves.
Revnd Nadim Nassar: I have been thinking during the lockdown and during the fasting which just ended for Christians and also what triggered a lot of those ideas. I think they came just in time for our gathering here titled cleansing of the body and the soul. We all know that in the ancient Greek philosophy they separated between the body and the soul. They believed a human being is a body and a soul. The body is like a shell and the soul is in that body. The body and the soul form the human being. When a human being dies then the body disintegrates and the soul is eternal.
The Greek philosophy influenced a huge part of the world in the past including the Middle East. When Christ was born and grew up and had his ministry in the near east the Hellenistic culture, thoughts and philosophy were very much part of the thinking of the people at that time in that part of the world.
But Jesus was a revolutionary. He did not agree with the Greek philosophy and his idea of the human being as a unit, a holistic approach of the human being. He did not believe in the separation between the body and the soul. He always spoke in the way that he understood the human being as a whole. We are a body a soul, a spirit, a mind, a heart – all of that for our humanity.
A human being cannot be divided. And when he was there on the cross he felt his humanity. He felt the fragility of his humanity. But he did not only feel the pain in his body. The cruxification in the Christian theology is the suffering of the whole human being and also added to that is the suffering of God being human. So what is impossible for humanity is possible for God. So when God took the journey to be with us in Christ he redefined humanity, he redefined our understanding of humanity. So we see Jesus on the Cross screaming: My God, My God why have you forsaken me? He felt abandoned. He felt alone. His humanity kicked in, the fear to lose his life.
But at the same time he felt the presence of the father, the presence of God with him. Saint Mark says there was darkness in the time of the cross and God was present in that darkness. But Jesus felt the suffering in the depth of his existence and the resurrection for Christianity is the restoration of that humanity not only soul and spirit but also body. The Christian faith is based on the faith that Jesus Christ was risen body, spirt, mind and heart.
So this is very important when we look at the holistic approach of humanity. So when we talk about cleansing about how to clean our body and our soul let us go further and say how do we clean our heart as a symbol of humanity. Jesus Christ says that the evil thought is born in the heart of human beings not outside. Do not look at evil outside. If we want to look at why we have evil in the world let us go to the heart. The cleansing is not whether I clean my hands or take a shower or give money to the poor and abstain from food – all this is just the surface of what God expects us to do in the process of cleansing.
When we want to clean water and we know that when we open the tap we do not have clean water we put a filter and when it comes out of the filter it comes out clean. So when we are talking about the cleansing of humanity or the human being where do we put the filter? We put the filter where the dirt is. We attach the filter to the tap because we know dirty water comes through the filter and it comes out clean. So the filter that we need is not how much I give to the poor, how much I abstain from food because we all have this idea.
Christians, Muslims, Jews most of the religions have fasting. And unfortunately we put emphasis on what we abstain from eating or doing. Actually the cleansing goes beyond what I do to who I am. God created us whether Muslims or Christians in his own image. And the image of God is love in the food we eat, in the money we give. Those are only reflections only a display to what? It is a display to what is there in the heart. So the filter should be attached to the heart because also the image of God is there and the image of God is the filter. So whether we are Christians, Muslims or Jews, regardless of our religion the question that we need to ask ourselves is what kind of filter do I have? And through that filter comes what I say, the cleansing of the tongue. What I do which means the cleansing of the hand, the thoughts – the cleansing of the mind.
So the filter is my relationship with God. It is not the shallow ideas that we stop eating meat or anything that comes from animals and go to a vegetarian diet and think that they are fasting. For Muslims if they do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset they are fasting. Let me tell you something from my knowledge and experience with Islam and with and Christianity. This is not what fasting is about. Fasting is about reflecting on what kind of filter I have in my heart.
Let me give you an example. If I want to spread hate or love I use social media. And sometimes we think facebook or twitter or social media is horrible. Social media is a tool. It is us who use it and out of the heart flows everything. So look at the human being as a whole and ask the question if we really want to cleanse ourselves is to rethink what kind of filter I have, where my filter is and what is coming out of that filter.
Dr Mahera Ruby: Just listening to the two speakers before me it is a tough task giving a presentation. I wanted to come from the perspective of what it means for me to be a Muslim when last Ramadan it was full lockdown and this Ramadan we are not quite sure what kind of a lockdown it is. There is uncertainty.
What does cleansing of the body and soul really mean? It has been an opportunity to recalibrate a sense of faith, family and fortitude .We have had to endure quite a lot of uncertainty but also events. So much has changed. Before we were so busy. Now there is a new form of businesses. We are at the end of a skype call or a zoom call and there isn’t that travel time but still there is something about the recalibrating of time and space and situating where we are.
So when I was thinking about this presentation I was thinking about how it was interesting. Last Ramadan was full of lockdown. I was just saying to a friend how different I am feeling this Ramadan when last Ramadan I felt really connected and at one with who I was and a sense of what I wanted, a sense of who others were around me. There was heightened awareness of the situation we are in.
As lockdown is easing and we are expecting a sense of normality this Ramadan there is a pull of wanting life to be as it was, of wanting a life that is more connected. But what does this connection really mean. I was thinking about the relationships that we have and a sense of conscious awareness that I had last Ramadan. Why is it so different this Ramadan? Will I go back to the sense of norm? Do I really want to go back to that sense of norm as it was or do I create a new sense of norm.
Workwise there has been a huge shift. I was an academic, at university, travelling between two universities in a given week two or three times a week to the university and back. As soon as COVID hit I was pushed into something I wanted to do for a very long time which was supporting families in crisis. COVID strangely allowed me to do that and to be conscious and present for the community in a different way then I was before.
This conscious awareness of me and us comes from our relationships with others: our family our peers, how we connect to nature and how we connect to the community. But all of that is brought together really in the way we connect to our creator and how we connect to God who created us.
Last Ramadan I realised and it was a humble realisation. I used to think that a lot of things were under my control. There was this idea that we have this concept in Islam of tawakil of being able to hand over and to rely on God’s plan knowing that God is in ultimate control of whatever happens. I may plan something but his plan is greater. We have that buffer that I planned but in the end will do as he sees fit.
And it really made me realise that there was a part of life that is under my control and when I feel out of control I will hand over to him. And it was a real struggle. But that last Ramadan was an eye opening realisation for me that the consciousness that I needed to gain was actually that I was not in control at all. What I was in control of was an awareness of what my context is. An awareness of who people are and who those around me are, my expectations of them and their expectations of me and being able to do some kind of planning to meet those needs.
So that really brought me to another layer of thinking is that sense of self. What does that sense of self look like and where is it based in ourselves. And again as I was looking through the Quran and doing some personal study – and I am no scholar but just listening to scholars – it is all in the heart. In the Quran there are a lot of indications that when we think about the physical feelings that we have desires that we have, the emotional pulls that we have, the intellectual drive that we have the thought processes the reflection and the spiritual self all exist in the heart like the four chambers of our heart.
And as we know according to human nature we have four main parts to ourselves: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. I was trying to connect those with this sense of self purification. How can we transcend our character and our behaviour from the mundane to the sublime.
I was thinking about how we engage in our actions. Something that was said earlier in fasting when we are fasting there are the outward actions of fasting but it does not do anything for our inner cleansing and our heart. What impact does it have? The abstinence from food and the pleasures of life. All of those things. Does it really have an impact?
When you think about fasting and the cleansing, the process of it. The fasting takes into consideration all four aspects of our human nature, when we think about the nafs, the physical desires that we have. When we are fasting it does not mean that we do not have those physical desires for good food. We break our fast with a wonderful display of food on our tables but we try to restrain ourselves and part of that restraint has to be connected to the emotional aspect that has to be connected to our fasting.
If we do not treat ourselves as a whole being it can feel quite empty and incomplete. I have some verses from the Quran and the real struggle is with the physical and emotional self. The feelings that we feel in the heart and the desires that it creates for us to do or want in life. And the two things that really pull us back from that is our intellect which in Arabic is known as the akul and our state of fitr which is the sense of wanting to be good wanting to be connected.
So this sense of fitr is really unique to the Muslim faith where we know that we have been born in a state of purity, in a state of connection to the creator. So that fitr to be good and to be connected to the truth which ultimately is who we are, where we come from and where we are going which is from Allah and back to him with an intermittent period on earth to practise how we use our free will.
So this fitr is what pulls us back. The most interesting thing is the akul the intellect which is in the heart. We sometimes refer to it as a gut instinct, intuition, all of those things. And actually it is refined by the strength of our connection to God. This akul is sometimes translated as the reins on our horse. When we are in trouble depending on our expertise and how well we ride a horse we will be able to use those reins and pull back and regain the stability to keep us safe.
So with akul, imagine the reins. The strength of those reins is my relationship with God. So how strong and connected I am will be my ability to reign in my intellect to reason for my purpose here on earth. What am here for and what I am wanting to contribute. So part of the reason for the cleansing is to be able to do justice to these four aspects of ourselves and being able to see ourselves as a whole being.
Sometimes I say to parents when you are really struggling with your children know that they have a sense of self which is yearning to be good which is our fitr. So whenever we are in trouble when we are struggling, my intellect isn’t working, my heart is thumping because there is a desire that I want something so badly draw into my fitr my sense of who I am and who I need to be connected to and it will become easier to reign myself in and to be able to cleanse and to be able to realign where I need to be.
And again that will really indicate my sense of fortitude. Being able to continue and keep going on this journey on this life with many hurdles where many challenges will be thrown at us but if we look after heart we will find peace. I love the idea of the filter. And the filter is our five senses. And if we think about those five senses they are the filter that we need in order to keep our heart supple and connected to Allah.
So in Ramadan all those five senses are trained. We are training to see good things, to hear good things, to taste good things, feel good things. So if we focus on those five senses as our filtering process hopefully our hearts will be in the right place to connect to God and the creator.
And I just want to touch on the verse by the remembrance of Allah let us find rest. And that really is being able to be content with our lot or whatever we have been given on earth. We know that it has been given to us from our creator and he knows us best and ultimately that is a sense of purifying and really rising above what our desires are and wanting things for a higher purpose. And I just wanted to conclude with that.
Sheikh Mustafa: Thank you first and foremost to Dr Saeed Shehabi for inviting me. It is an honour to be among such distinguished panellists to talk about my own understanding of what the lockdown has done for me. The lockdown has set me thinking about what changes it has brought about for me. And when I look at the subject tonight which talks vertical ascension and cleansing of one’s body and soul we are looking at this opportunity that God has given us. This opportunity is solitude, to reflect and to stop being part of the rat race, the hustle and bustle, the busy life suddenly finding ourselves all alone, not knowing what to do because suddenly we find ourselves confined within the four walls of our own home, finding creative ways to doing what we used to do.
So zoom came up to keep us busy with each other, to keep the social contact with each other. Yet I find myself to give you a candid analogy like somebody in prison and suddenly from within the prison the person is then punished to go into solitary confinement. Now that person is within four walls not knowing what to do and that prisoner will find ways of how to keep busy. A solitary confined prisoner will find a way of remembering the days, of counting the meals.
In any case what we have to find ourselves for this particular vertical ascension to God is that we are in a position to develop and expand on that opportunity God has given us to expand and develop ourselves on our individual connection to God. We have the opportunity to spend more time on acts of worship which can be divided into two. There are the collective acts of worship when we pray salat al jumah together. Of course there are benefits of collective worship because this brings about the social meaning in us. That brings about the importance or remembering each other, asking about each other, working with each other. That is an act of collective worship.
Then you have salat, you have hajj. Even in acts of charity you bring out those different acts of charity with each other understanding the plight of Muslims all over the world. These are all acts of collective worship. The sincerity is for God alone to determine. When you are doing it solely for the pleasure of God but when you do it collectively there is a danger of being tainted by insincerity, the desire for publicity or for power. To show off for so many reasons.
When you are solitary confined within your own home that prayer that you recited with hundreds of people you have to recite it alone. Now it is me and my God and I can open up to God. Before I was praying with so many people but now there is nobody to watch me and whatever I do now is exclusively for God.
So let me give you another analogy – perhaps it will help explain what I mean when I say it is so important that we capitalize on and exploit this opportunity that we have been given. We have been given this opportunity to be alone with God. Now let us use this halwa to enhance our connection with God.
Let me use another very candid analogy. When we get married we go away on a honey moon. Most of us will perceive this as time taken as private time with each other. The couple just the two of them alone away from everybody else. They have time together to build on the bond between themselves. Not only physical, it is also emotional. They will start talking to each other and exploring each others minds, attitudes and ideas so that end of the honey moon period they now know each other, they now know how to work with each other, how to work around each other and how to progress their lives together and being one force now. That is what honeymoons are for.
When we are in solitary confinement we can add to it the blessings that the month of Ramadan has brought. The month of Ramadan is a month where Allah has brought down his mercy without asking any questions whether you are fasting or not. You are emerged in that mercy which Allah has promised you. Every breath that you take is tasfir is glorifying God and it has its own rewards.
When you sleep it is an act of worship. You can imagine the amount of mercy that Allah has rolled out for his creatures during this month. It is this month coupled with the fact that we have so much time on our hands not knowing what to do. Perhaps we explore that opportunity to strengthen the bond that we have with Allah. Now let us explore the virtues of munajat for example. Munajat is what prophet Musa did with Allah alone, in seclusion and talking like he was one to one with Allah. That is what is required of us. This is what we can exploit and raise ourselves to the position of sublimity or to a lofty state where Allah created us to go. We have been created to use all his means in acts of worship to raise ourselves to get to the proximity close to God.
And here we have been given the opportunity on a silver platter. It is lockdown. You can’t go out. When you are along forget the wajabat, forget the obligatory acts of worship that you have to do, the five time prayers, the bowing down, the recitation of the Quran. They are all compulsory acts that we have to do. Forget about that. What can we do beyond that?
We find in the life of Prophet Jacob that relationship with God. Whenever his sons came to him reminding him that Joseph is no longer with them. He replied: I grieve, I am sorry for what is happening but all my complaints will be to Allah. So while people came to him expressing their grief, their sorrow to what was happening to prophet Jacob he did not say thank you for giving me an ear. He very clearly said my grief and my sorrow is going to be poured out to God. I am going to talk to him and to him alone will I pour my grief. He has the power to change things for me. He is the only power that can change the situation I am. I shall open up and pour my grief only to him. And when the brothers repented afterwards when they came to Jacob and said seek forgiveness of Allah for us for what we have done. Immediately Prophet Jacob did not raise his hand and say forgive them for what they have done for that would be a public display of an act of worship. He tells his sons I will seek forgiveness from Allah for you when I am alone with Allah.
That act of seeking intercession, of seeking forgiveness will be done when I am alone not in front of you. I am not doing it for you I am doing it for God. It is this particular opportunity that we have to exploit and we have to develop. So let us cleanse ourselves using all the acts of worship that are recommended or proscribed. We do these acts but we try and do them in the time of solitary solitude and what better time than the lockdown we are in.
I pray to Allah and hope you will join me in prayer that Allah makes these times of solitary confinement worthy of us in developing our relationship with him and maybe develop it to the level of ashurah where we are the loving ones and he is the loved one, in sha Allah.
*Revd Nadim Nassar is the Executive Director and Founder of the Awareness Foundation he had established in 2003 with Bishop Michael Marshall. He was born and raised in Lattakia, Syria and he is the only Syrian priest in the Church of England. In 2018, Nassar’s first book, “The Culture of God”, was published by Hodder & Stoughton. He is a member of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland’s Inter Faith Theological Advisory Group, the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on International Religious Freedom, and he advises the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Nadim Nassar lectures, speaks and teaches in the Middle East, Europe and the US; he leads diocesan conferences in the US, UK and Hong Kong. He gives frequent public lectures at various platforms.
**Sheikh Mustafa Jaffer pursued Islamic studies in Tehran, Iran, for several years and became a religious scholar. Then he studied for his Masters degree in Arabic-English Translation and Interpretation from Edinburgh University in Scotland. He has also led Hajj groups for the past 20 years and has delivered lectures to Muslim communities in many countries outside UK.
***Dr Mahera Ruby is a Personal Growth and Family Coach. She set up Blooming Parenting in 2012 with a vision to reshape and strengthen families and communities. Through facilitating bespoke parenting and youth courses, Mahera supports families and educators to nurture families to blossom into the gifts that they are. Over the last fifteen years, Mahera has been an academic holding research and teaching roles at various London Universities including UCL IOE. She completed her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. Mahera has authored many publications. She has co-authored her first book ‘Interconnecting Worlds: Teacher partnerships for bilingual learning’. and her latest book ‘Family Jigsaws: Grandmothers as the missing piece shaping bilingual children’s learner identities’ has been published by the IoE Press. Mahera is a community organiser. Previous roles have included being the chair of Muslimaat UK and is currently a Trustee at Markfield Institute of Higher Education and East London Mosque. Mahera is involved in many interfaith projects and activities. She recently joined as a Trustee at Citizens UK.
****Sara Russell is a documentary/street photographer, whose works are inspired by peaceful activism. She visited countries such as Palestine in 2014 and Iraq in 2016. There she found inspiration in the daily lives of the people and her encounters with them on her journey through the streets. Her shared stills reflect the human narrative of love and hope, the struggles to survive the dark reality of oppression.
