التصوُّف

التصوّف** موضوع شيُق للبعض والغوص فيه مثير للغضب عند آخرين. وهذا التناقض في فهم التصوُّف بينبع من إنه البعض بيشوفه طريق للسلام والطمأنينة من خلال التدين والعبادة، والبعض الآخر بيشوف فيه شكل من أشكال الإلحاد والهرطقة وهتك أستار الشريعة. 

أما أنا فموقفي أقرب من المحبين للتصوّف مع إني غير متدينة وغير ممارسة لأي من العبادات من صلاة أو صوم آو غيره. 

من فترة غير قصيرة بدأت أقرأ عن التصوٰف لانبهاري بفكرة ومبدأ "الزهد". شفت فيها تحرر عظيم وراحة نفسية عميقة. بعض الكتب اللي قرأتها كانت معقدة جداً والبعض الآخر كان سلس وبسيط وممتع للغاية. ومن كثر ما حبيت اللي قرأته حبيت إني أدونه بصورة ملخصة ومقتضبة. وبالمناسبة هذه أول مرة آكتب بالعربي في مدونتي. اخترت إني أكتب بالعامية وما كتبت بالفصحى حرصاً على سلامة وصحة محبين اللغة العربية.

على كلٍ، نرجع لموضوعنا التصوّف. انا لقيت أفضل طريقة لفهمه مبدئيا هي بالتركيز على غاية التصوف وهي برأيي الوصول إلى الله أو الحقيقة. وبما أنها وجهة غايتها الوصول إلى محطة معينة فهناك عدة طرق يمكن سلكها وبالتالي المقولة "الطرائق إلى الله على عدد أنفاس الخلائق"

الطريق بهذا المعنى يتم تحديدها نوعاً ما عن طريق الشيخ أو المريد اللي بيتبعه الصوفيّ. والقاعدة المتفق عليها إنه يتم تلقي الطرق الصوفية سابقاً عن سابق. وعند البحث عن الطريقة الأصل وجد إنها بتوقف عند كميل بن زياد اللي تلقى تعليمه على يد علي ابن ابي طالب والذي تلقى الطريق من النبي الذي هو بدوره تلقى الطريق من جبريل. ومن الطرق الصوفية المعروفة "القلندرية"، "الملامتية"، "القادرية"، "الدسوقية"، "الشاذلية"، "العزمية"، "البرهانية" وغيرهم.

 في جانب آخرما عليه إجماع وهوأصل كلمة "التصوف".بتستغربوا انه أصل الكلمة تم دراسته مطولاً من قبل العديد من العلماء ومؤرخين التصوّف. المهم نعرف إنه لا يوجد إجماع عأصل الكلمة. في ناس بيقول جاي من الصوف الذي كان رداء الأنبياء والزّهّاد كدلالة على التقشف. وفي ناس بيقولوا إنه مشتق  من كلمة الصفا (صفاء النفس)، ناس ثاني بيقول إنه مشتق من الكلمة اليونانية سوفيا وتعني الحكمة. مرات بينسبوا الكلمة لقبيلة أو جماعة مثل أهل الصُّفَّة أو قبيلة صوفة اليمنية. وطبعاً في كثير من الدارسين بيضيفوا اصول متعددة أخرى للتسمية.

بالنسبة الي موضوعي المفضل بالتصوف هو تعريف التصوف. زي ما أكيد بتتوقعوا في عدة تعريفات جميلة ومختلفة للتصوف. التعريف اللي حبيته أكثر شي هو تعريف الشيخ الشبلي (أبو بكر جعفر بن دلف بن جحدر الشبلي) اللي بيقول فيه "التصوف هو الجلوس مع الله بلا همٍّ" ومصطلح الجلوس في الصوفية روحاني وغير حسّي وبيشير إلى دوام الطاعة لله.

فكرة إسقاط الهم من القلب  في تعريف الشبلي فكرة رهيبة. وتفسر على عدة مستويات.

آول مستوى "إسقاط الهم من الغد" وهو مفهوم التوكل. والصوفيين بيقولوا "بالهمَّة والعمل" وبيحذروا من "المُنْية والأمل" خوفاً من سيطرة الأماني والآمال على العباد. والنقشبدي حكى شغلة كتير حلوة بهذا السياق " من طال أمله اشتغل بالجمع والتحصيل ، وغفل عن الموت وتركه نسياً منسياً حتى يصير كمن أيقن أنه يبقى إلى أقصى أوقات الآجال"

ثاني مستوى لإسقاط الهم هو اليقين بآن كل ماعليها زائل وفان. والتعلق بالزائل حمق. وهون في نقطة مهمة لازم تتوضح. التصوٰف لا يعني إنه الواحد لازم يكون فقير أو إنه الفقر يكون أحد غاياته. بالعكس التصوف بيقول الله يزيد ويبارك بس نتأكد من مُلْك الأشياء من دون ما نسمحلها تملكنا. الإمام عبد القادر الجيلاني قال "إجعلوا ذلك (المتاع) في أيديكم فليس في قلوبكم، فلا يضركم". بعرفش ليش هون تذكرت مثل بحبه كتير وهو "العز بهدلة".

ثالث مستوى لإسقاط الهم، واللي عنده رح آوقف لأني تعبت وبدي أروح أنام شوي قبل ما أطلع أمشي مع صديقي علي، هو إسقاط هَمِّ الآخرة بمعنى تجاوز الرغبة في الجنة والخشية من النار، إلى الرغبة في الإرتقاء إلى مقام المحبة " وهنا تكون كل أفعال العبد إرضاء لله وليست طمعاً في الجنة أو خوفاً من النار" ويمكن آكثر واحدة معروفة في إسقاط هم الآخرة هي رابعة العدوية المشهورة بقول "انها ما عبدته خوفاً من ناره ولا طمعاً في جنته، فتكون كآجير السوء إن عمل طلب الأجر، وانما عبدته حباً فيه وتقربتً إليه" 

وبالنهاية ونظراً لتحرر الصوفي من الدوافع المادية الدنيوية، فبلاقي إنه مباديء التصوف ممكن إنها تكون مدخل مهم لإعادة القيم والأخلاق للعديد من نواحي حياتنا.  

**معظم المعلومات من كتاب "التصوف" ليوسف زيدان.

Selective Enlightenment

Elisabeth Badinter is a famous person.  A celebrity of sort.  I only heard of her recently when I stumbled upon an interview with her in the Financial Times in which she was described as a philosopher, a feminist and a billionaire.  The combination of those three together was intriguing as well as contradictory.  I thought to myself, a person with such power must have vested interests that could compromise its philosophical and feminist ideals (Just a thought and I could be wrong of course).

Badinter is a former philosophy teacher, a best selling author, and an intellectual.  She is also the largest shareholder (10%) in Publicis, the multi-billion euro advertising agency.

The interviewer probed Badinter on an array of issues such as women’s rights, gender equality, religion, and prostitution. No talk of French prostitution and feminism is complete without evoking the name of the French baron of sleaze, Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK), who Badinter happens to be his wife’s friend.

The views of Badinter were refreshingly progressive and bold. She made the distinction between women’s rights and gender equality favoring the latter.  Simone de Beauvoir figured prominently in her thinking, and she seemed quite mesmerized by her.  On the topic of prostitution, Badinter sees it as a contract between two consenting adults, which the government has no business interfering in. In Badinter exact words she said, “If a woman wants to rent out her body, that’s nobody’s business”.  She is quite supportive and feels strongly about  gay marriages. 

All of this talk of freedoms took a sharp turn to the worst when it came to religion, especially Islam in France.  One could sense the tone of Badinter changing and she instantly turned into an all too familiar xenophobe that France has had an abundance of lately.  She vehemently opposed women wearing the veil at school and women in niqab in public places.  She equated wearing the veil with religious radicalism, and she proceeded to hail secularism as “Being part of France‘s DNA.” She went on to say “It [secularism] is the heritage [of France] of the [Age of] Enlightenment (17^th century).”

Badinter’s extremism and intolerance towards Moslems was perplexing and disappointing.  How could such a “progressive”  person who believes that prostitution is a right, deny the same right to choose to another.  This selective approach only highlights the hypocrisy that is taking over a large part of the world’s “intelligentsia”.  In fact it goes beyond hypocrisy to the more serious epidemic of the globally prevailing moral bankruptcy.  The same way seculars want religious institutions to accept their right not to believe, they too must grant these freedoms to religious people with all the edicts that come with it.  Interestingly I highly doubt that Badinter would dare to make such accusations, or take such strong stands by campaigning against any exhibition of Jewishness, which is quite prevalent all over France.

Publicis is a huge conglomerate.  To have its biggest shareholder campaign so vociferously against the simplest manifestation of Islam should undermine its ability to do business with Moslem stakeholders. Until Moslems learn how to flex their economic muscle, they should not be surprised to see business conducted with bigots who see them as an easy target, and who openly and belligerently attack their religious and cultural beliefs that they so cherish and consider “part of their DNA.”

And by the way just as I expected, Badinter’s view of the “DSK affair” was quite sympathetic (powerful vested interests at play).  She said the way DSK was treated  after his infamous New York Sofitel affair “has left a scar”.  I would say not one but many scars…the kind that usually comes with serial rapists.

A Mini Intifada in Ghor

Over the past few days a piece of news in Al-Ghad Newspaper caught my attention about a mini-intifada in one of the schools in the “shanty town” of Joufeh in the Jordan Valley.  The students of “Joufeh Secondary School for Boys” were rioting against the cutting off of electricity and water to their school.  Just imagine a school of 570 students was forced to shut down its restrooms because there was no water. Students answering nature calls had the choice of either going home or relieving themselves out in the open (Yes this is happening now in Jordan).  The electricity cutoff meant dark classrooms, in addition to other obvious inconveniences.  For two days in a row, the sight of young children calling for electricity and water in the streets around their school was nothing short of devastating, and a sure sign of the sorry state we find ourselves in today. 

The reason behind the cutoff in water was not clear.  However, the cutoff in electricity was because a good “Samaritan” and while practicing what seems a favorite passtime down there decided to shoot the electricty generator that feeds the school.  As expected, the electricity company refuses to foot the JD 18 thousand needed for fixing it (and I don't blame it).  Once again we find ourselves faced with the ramifications of the absence of the rule of law, and this time the victim presents itself in the form of an electricity generator, or maybe a school of 570 young students!

Funnily enough the school in question is a brand new school, less than 2-years old!!  From the pictures online, it seems modern and quite impressive.  It was built with foreign aid (surprise surprise!) and as part of some fancy program called Community Mobilization for Partnership (CMP)

in schools program run by an agency called IRD (International Relief and Development) and supported by USAID. The Arabic translation of CMP is quite intriguing and a bit fuzzy (     (المــدرســة المجتمعــية

 

or maybe it should be appropriately renamed

(المدرسة المشكلجية)

 

The latest reported news on the situation is that the school is still left to fend for itself to get basic services such as electricity and water.  The Ministry of Education is nowhere to be heard from nor seen. 

The story of this school fascinated me because it ironically sums up our state of affairs today on so many levels.  On the citizen respect level, in this school we find absolute disregard to the welfare of our students and their teaching faculties and environments.  On the national capital investment level, we are still building school edifices that we cannot sustain simply because we found some imbecile to fund them.  On the rule of law level, this story more than amplifies the state's inability to deter hooligans from wreaking havoc by violating public properties from electricity generators, to water wells, to government lands. On the public relations level, our love is still unabated for enrolling in fancy humanitarian programs without really putting in the necessary commitment or effort to make them work.  A case in point of these wonderful humanitarian programs is the core principles of IRD, which are: 

-          To reduce the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable groups and

-          To provide the tools and resources needed to increase their self-sufficiency.

Well for now, why don’t we reduce the urge of pooping by providing a decent lit bathrooms with clean running water in the school for our students. Once we succeed at that, we can then move on to provide other lofty tools needed to increase other self sufficiency requirements.

Finally, shame on us for consistently and systematically failing our children, especially the poor disadvantaged ones.

"Prime Ministers Galore"

Two frequently asked questions about Jordan keep on popping (or pooping) up on almost any occasion, ranging from the funeral of Nelson Mandela to the legalization of  marijuana in Uruguay.  The first is "why Jordan hasn’t been able to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth?" This question is immediately followed by "has this failure always been the case, or is it a recent phenomenon?"  The frequency of these questions intensifies with time, and so does the urge to find answers.  This very urge led me to read countless economic and political economic studies on why genuine growth over the past decades has remained elusive.

In looking for reasons, there seemed to be an emphasis on the weakness of the institutional framework for policy making and strategy planning in Jordan.  There also seems to be a consensus on the symptom, or maybe the root cause, of such weakness, which are the continuous dizzying changes in governments in Jordan. The constant “government hopping” has been a huge enigma for me.  Why would anyone “in his right mind” (the ultimate absolute decision maker namely the king) persistently disrupt an already vulnerable socio-economic  status quo? Why?  Moreover, I noticed that we have tended to blame the past decade (in an indirect allusion to King Abdulla’s reign) for such instability.  Having all of this in mind, I decided to take a quick look at government formations in Jordan since it was a British Protectorate (Emirate of Transjordan 1921) until today.  Here is what I found:

-          The first prime minister Transjordan knew was Rashid Talee’ (April-August 1921)

-          Since 1921 Jordan has had 73 changes of prime ministers. An average 
of one prime minister per 1.3 years.

-          Since 1946 Jordan has had 61 changes of prime ministers. An average of one prime minister per 1.1 years

-          Three prime ministers had their (or one of their) premierships for less than a month.  5 days (Hazza Majali in 1955), 8 days (Hussein Khalidi in 1957), and 9 days (Muhammad Daoud in 1970).

-          61 out of the 73 were prime ministers for less than two years.

-          41 out of the 73 were prime ministers for less than a year

-          10 out of the 73 were prime ministers for less than three months.

-          The longest sitting prime minister was Tawfiq Abu Al-Huda 1938-1944

-          The longest 3 sitting prime ministers were before 1946

-          Zeid Refai was twice a prime minister (I had completely forgotten about this) the first time 1973-1976 and the second time 1985-1989. Both periods were tumultuous ones.

-          From 1999 until today Jordan has had 10 prime ministers.  An average of 1 prime minister per 1.4 years. A better ratio than the previous decades!!!!

-          Since 1948 Israel has had 12 prime ministers over 33 terms.

In conclusion,  attributing  our inability to achieve sustainable growth to the instability of our policy making framework seems to hold some truth to it.  As we say in Arabic, if the reason is known, then the puzzlement is gone; or part of it at least.

USA: A Melting Pot or a Changing One?

These days reading the news coming out of the USA, it is quite evident that we no longer read names typically associated with Anglo-Saxon America.  The following is a sample of some of the names in leading news stories over the past few weeks:

Yanira Maldonado:  Arizona woman held on marijuana charges
Arvind Mahankali:  Winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Tamerlan Tsarnaev & Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:  Alleged Boston Marathon bombers
Barack Obama: The first US Jewish President
Tamer Mosallam, Nozad Al Hamawendi, Cecilia Zamora, Alyahyan, teenagers involved in a recent highly publicized tragic car crash in Newport Beach in California.

A passing thought for whatever it is worth.

 

Tolerance...

“I am not guilty of the common error of judging another by myself. I easily believe in another’s humor which is contrary to my own; and though I find myself engaged to one certain form, I do not oblige others to it, as many do; but believe and apprehend a thousand ways of living; and, contrary to most men, more easily admit of difference than uniformity amongst us. I as frankly as any one would have me, discharge a man from my humors and principles, and consider him according to his own particular model. Though I am not continent myself, I nevertheless sincerely approve the continence of the Feuillans and Capuchins, and highly commend their way of living. I insinuate myself by imagination into their places, and love and honor them the more for being other than I am. I very much desire that we may be judged every man by himself, and would not be drawn into the consequence of common examples”. (Michel Montaigne)

العصافير "توتوت" والقافله تسير

ارتفع سقف حرية التعبير..
بس فعليًا ما صار في تغيير..
المشاكل هي هي وقابله للتجيير..
والجماعه فوق بيتكركرو "ههه قال بدهم تحرير"..
والجماعه تحت بيتخبطو باللي بصير وما بصير..
طعه وقايمه قلبت كل صغير كبير...
والكبير سقف أحمر لأنه من غيره بئس المصير..
صدقنا حالنا وفكرنا فيسبوك مأذنه للتكبير..
وفكرنا تويتر لحاله رح يعمل تأثير..
وتناسينا إنه الكلام الحاف ما بحل أزمة تعتير..
إفتراضي كان أو جاي من حتة تقرير..
الوضع مهزله والحراك قابل للمصادره بس مش للتصدير..
وسلامتكو وتعيشو على خطابات إجلال وتقدير..
فحواهاالعصافير توتوت والقافله تسير