A Sinner in Mecca

by Parvez Sharma

  Masjid al-Nabi: Literally, “the Prophet’s Mosque.” It is the second-holiest of the trinity of mosques that lie at the highest echelons of Islamic power. Located in Medina, the mosque went through a massive “redevelopment” project just like its counterpart in Mecca by the Saudi bin Laden family. The grave of the Prophet Muhammad and a few contested figures are contained within this mosque, where the exact location of the Prophet’s grave is denoted by a green-topped dome that the Saudi monarchy and their real masters in the Wahhabi ulema have tried to demolish several times to prevent its becoming a place of veneration, which it actually has become. The Saudi king appends the title of “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”) to his name.

  Mawlid (Mawlid al-Nabi): The birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, which occurs in the third month of the Islamic calendar. Most Muslims celebrate it. In Saudi Arabia, though, it is forbidden, as is the celebration of any child’s birthday. Celebrating birthdays is considered bida (an unnecessary religious innovation).

  Mina: Three miles from Mecca, this valley is a behemoth tent city spread over twelve square miles. It is used only during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. It has been the scene of many stampedes, as recently as 2015, and even a giant fire in 1997. The Saudi government claims the 100,000 tents of this unusual city are now fireproof. But the safety of up to 3 million pilgrims in areas like Mina and the Jamarat remains an intractable issue for the Saudi monarchy.

  Mufti: A person who can opine on sharia law and issue fatwas. In Islamic hierarchies, a mufti is often near the bottom of a tall ladder of scholarship.

  Mughal: This dynasty founded by Babur ruled most of India from the early sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Its fifth emperor gave the world one of its greatest monuments, the Taj Mahal. This originally Turkic-Mongol dynasty ruled over hundreds of thousands of miles and tried to create a united Indian state, a task only the British colonizers that followed them were able to finally execute. The Mughals were a Persianate society and brought that language and culture with them. This is why Urdu has so much in common with Persian. Akbar, one of the great Mughal Emperors, even tried to form a new religion called Din-i-Ilahi to unite the hundreds of ethnic languages, cultures, and religions of what some of them called Hindustan (the Land of the Hindus). The syncretism that existed between Hindus and Muslims for the most part under the Mughals lead to a great flourishing of architecture and the arts—an influence that can be clearly seen in contemporary India.

  Muhajir: The Islamic word for an “immigrant.” Even Prophet Muhammad and the earliest Muslims were muhajirun for a while when he had to escape Mecca and find shelter in Medina (then Yathrib). The word is connected by more than semantics to the name of Hajjar (mother of Ismael) and to Hijra. Most importantly, Muhammad, like Jesus, was a refugee.

  Mujahid: One who wages jihad, plural is mujahideen, and it is contentiously used to describe terrorists who are Muslim.

  Mukhabarat: The Arabic version of “intelligence agencies,” used in many Arab countries to enforce state terror. Some of the countries are Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Their tactics and victims have come under increasing scrutiny on the social web.

  Mullah: A scholar who is educated and respected for his piety. It has Quranic roots in the word mawla (lord, vicar, guardian, trustee). The majority of Muslims in the world use it simply as a prefix for their local cleric. Interestingly, it is said that some Sephardic Jews have used the term to refer to a religious leader.

  Mutawa, Mutaween: See Hai’a.

  Niqab: See Abaya and Burqa.

  Peer: Urdu word for a Sufi saint or wandering mystic, later revered with mausoleums (anathema for the Wahhabis).

  The Pentad: Good Muslims are supposed to act within five commandments. This is a pentad into which all acts fall, varying sometimes slightly due to culture, geography, and the various other diversities of Islam. In Arabic, the phrase used is al-ʾaḥkām al-khamsa. Most scholars agree they can be divided into:

  •farḍ or wājib - compulsory, obligatory

  •mustaḥabb or sunnah - recommended, also known as fadilah, mandub

  •mubāḥ - neither obligatory, recommended, disliked, nor sinful (neutral)

  •makrūh - disliked, abominable (abstaining is recommended)

  •ḥarām - sinful (abstaining is obligatory)

  All of these terms assume particular significance under the rules of Hajj.

  Qiyamah or Qiyamat: The Day of Judgment; different for different kinds of Muslims.

  Raj: Literally, “ruler” in Hindi. Generally refers to the period between 1858 and 1947, when the British Crown ruled India. The British were very proud of their rule in India, calling the country the “jewel in the crown.” The Raj ended when Gandhi and other “freedom fighters” established a unified post-British India. It was a time of history’s largest and bloodiest migration and created the Muslim nations of East and West Pakistan. The former in 1971 would become Bangladesh.

  Ramadan: The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, designated as the month of sawm (fasting), commemorating the first Quranic revelations to the Prophet in 622. The nature and number of restrictions during Ramadan depend on the kind of Islam being followed. Generally speaking, Muslims are commanded to fast from dawn to dusk. The predawn meal is called suhur; the post-dusk meal is called iftar and is often celebratory. Some of the prohibitions include drinking liquids, eating, and smoking, as well as refraining from any sexual relations. In some countries prohibitions also include gossiping, lying, insulting, fighting, or killing any living being. Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam.

  Rasoolullah: Rasool means “Messenger,” and Allah means “God.” In South Asia Rasoolullah is used for Muhammad, as the Messenger of Allah.

  Sahih Bukhari: Sunni Islam has four schools of thought: Hanbali, Hanafi, Sha’afi, and Maliki. They all developed under different circumstances. What many Sunnis agree on is the existence of an Islamic canon that comprises six Kutub al-Sittah (the Six Books). These very dense tomes are compilations of the Prophet’s sayings (hadith) and actions (sunnah). Sahih Bukhari is considered to be one of the larger tomes, with 7,275 hadith. But even larger is Sahih Muslim, with 9,200 hadith. Of all six books these two (Bukhari and Muslim) are considered the most influential.

  Salah/Namaaz: Salah (Arabic) and Namaaz (Urdu) refer to the daily mandated prayers for Muslims, who are to perform them facing the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. There are five daily prayers: Fajr (dawn), Zuhr (noon), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset), and Isha (night).

  Sharia: A body of religious and moral law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation. Given Islam’s diversity, with 1.7 billion vastly different adherents, sharia can be interpreted differently depending on history, geography, culture, the Muslim canon, and the Quran. The majority of the Muslim world does not live under any form of sharia. The implementation of religious law has been extremely contentious in Muslim communities around the world. Thus it is hard to pinpoint whose sharia is right in a sectarian faith with many schools of thought. Two major countries that are diametrically opposite and always in discord, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are the world’s two most prominent examples where sharia is the law of the land.

  Shaitan: Urdu and Arabic word for Satan.

  Sufi: The expansive term for the mystical, present in many different forms of Islam in ways as diverse as the religion of Islam itself. In Arabic, the word is tasawwuf (“to dress in wool”), in Urdu fakir, and in Persian darvish.

  Sufism: Mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world. It is often associated with ascetics who are worldly poor and spiritually divine. It usually conforms to diverse Islamic geographical, cultural, and spiritual practices. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is sai
d to have detested anything Sufi as shirk (idol worship). The Sufis through history have, however, been proselytizers of the faith. Disobeying the canon of Islam in their own unique ways, there are thousands of these mystics buried in Muslim lands from Morocco to Malaysia. They also remained repositories of all that is divine and ineffable.

  Primarily through poetry, Sufi mystics made Prophet Muhammad an emulatory figure, thus influencing Islamic piety. In Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Pashto, and Punjabi, their poetry has withstood the tides of times; though puritanical Wahhabi strains of Islam have destroyed their graves, they have not been able to contain their poetry and music. In the West, Rumi is erroneously presented as a singular Sufi figure and Sufism as religion. Both characterizations are wrong. Even in the seventh century, mystics wandered the sands of Arabia and even Mecca—perhaps it is them whose legacy the Sufis are.

  Sunnah: Every Muslim is taught to follow and emulate the sunnah—in a sense, everything known from Muhammad’s behavior and life. It takes all of Muhammad’s known hadith (traditions), his actions, his disapprovals, his approvals, whether silent or verbal, and turns them into a very specific, ritual-heavy part of Islamic theology. In a sense, it spells out (part of) the essence of Islam’s discipline, which is submission. The Quran itself is separate from this “path.”

  Surah, Ayah, Quran: A Surah is a chapter from the Quran, which has a total of 114 chapters. These chapters are divided into verses called Ayah (plural, Ayat). Literally, an ayah means “sign” or “evidence,” which in a canonical context makes ayat divine revelations. Ayah can be Meccan (Makki) or Medinan (Madani), a geographical marker of where the Prophet was during revelation, since the Quran was not revealed sequentially. There is sectarian (Shia-Sunni) and scholarly dispute about the time of its compilation. Some scholars claim that what we know as the Quran today began compilation generations after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632. They claim this is partially because writing was not a common skill in seventh-century Arabia. There is, however, unanimity amongst all 1.7 billion Muslims on the planet that their illiterate Prophet Muhammad was the sole vessel of this ongoing revelation that took about twenty-three years. The holy book uses very sophisticated, classical, and poetic Arabic, and refers with great respect to its predecessors, the Old and New Testaments.

  Takfir: It is Islam’s version of excommunication. The dangerous practice of one Muslim’s labeling another Muslim a disbeliever (kafir). Falsely accusing someone of kufr (disbelief in Islam) is considered a major punishable act in most schools of Sunni Islam. There is widespread disagreement amongst Islamic scholars about the concept of takfir and its usage.

  Taliban: Taliban (singular, talib) in Pashto means “students.” It refers to the extreme and puritanical religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan and ruled the country from 1996–2000. In a sense they turned the clock back so successfully that most of the world did not how to react to their consistent brutalities, including the totalitarian misogyny that Afghan women suffered. They are notorious. Under the leadership of the deceased Mullah Mohammed Omar, they took Osama bin Laden in as he escaped from Sudan, and al-Qaeda was born, in a sense, on Afghan soil. Eager to destroy history, they famously obliterated two sixth-century statues known as the Buddhas of Bamiyan. There have been recent reports that Daesh has moved some of its “soldiers” to Afghanistan, which is waging war with the still-active though vastly reduced Taliban. Their version of Islam was, amongst others, much influenced by the Deobandi style from India.

  Tawaf: The ritual counterclockwise circling of the Kaaba during Hajj and Umrah. During Hajj there are different kinds of tawaf, but what is universal is that seven circumambulations must be made upon entering Mecca and the same when leaving. Pilgrims often do more. This circling begins from the corner of the cuboid Kaaba that contains the Al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad (see Kaaba). The tawaf is supposed to signal that the pilgrims are all united under Islam’s central precept of tawhid (see Tawhid). Many scholars say that the ritual is older than Islam, dating to when the Prophet Ibrahim laid the foundations for the Kaaba with his son Ismael. If those scholars are correct, then Muhammad, till he was forty, must have participated in the ritual, like his fellow Quraysh tribe, around a pre-Islamic Kaaba that at the time contained idols.

  Tawhid: This principle is the epicenter of this monotheism: There is only one God, and God (Allah, literally Al-Ilāh, “the God”) is One (Al-ʾAḥad) and Single (Al-Wāḥid). This is the very fulcrum around which the religion of Islam revolves. It is even commemorated in prayer, when during a part of the prayer ritual, the supplicant raises the index finger of the right hand acknowledging Tawhid. Centuries of Islamic theology and the building of its canon have rested on this wellspring. For a Muslim to break from this principle is an unpardonable sin.

  In Judaism a mirror principle called the shema exists, and the closest equivalent in Christianity is Unitarianism, which is not the norm in that religion. To explain this sometimes complex principle, the 180th verse of the Quran’s seventh chapter (amongst others) alludes to the ninety-nine names attributed to a singular God: The most beautiful names belong to Allah. So call on him by them; but shun such men as use profanity in his names: for what they do, they will soon be requited.

  Thobe or Thawb: A white robe worn by Saudi men and other Gulf Arabs. On the head they wear a piece of white cloth called the ghutrah (and sometimes the keffiyeh). The headgear is held in place by a circular cord called the agal. The robe itself is also called the dishdasha.

  Ulema: Literally, the “learned ones.” Semantically the word is connected to alim (“scholar”) and ilm (“knowledge”). This is the closest Islam comes to having a concept akin to clergy, a council of learned men. Unlike Catholicism, Islam does not have a pope. Also the Quran and Muhammad agree that there is a singular relationship between the supplicant and God; no intermediaries are needed. Thus this term is particularly contested. There is the usual patriarchal dissent about whether or not women can be an alimah.

  The ulema wield tremendous religious authority, which they say is earned from their scholarship. It is expected that an alim is at least a master of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and sharia (Islamic law). History has often given them huge power in different regions of Islam (since Islam is not a monolithic entity), depending on their ijma, or consensus.

  Ummah: The worldwide “community” of Muslims, which is a sacred concept handed down from the Prophet himself. This growing Ummah is 1.7 billion strong today.

  Umrah: The lesser pilgrimage, to Mecca only. Unlike the Hajj it can happen at any time of the year (other than the month of Hajj) and involves fewer rituals.

  Vilayat e faqih: This contested principle is at the center of the Iranian theocracy as it stands today. Literally, “guardianship of the jurist.” Technically, vilayat means “rule” and faqih is a learned jurist with impeccable credentials. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic, made this system a cornerstone of government, so Iran functions as a “republic” where absolute power rests with one man alone. Iran claims to possess a democracy where elections are held to a (religiously based) parliament and for the presidency. The final decision about most matters, however, comes down to one man: the faqih (supreme jurist), aka the supreme leader, aka rahbar (the supreme leader of the Islamic revolution). Many claim Iran’s young population (with a majority under thirty) has wide disagreement with the current rahbar, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his government.

  Wahhabi Islam: The ultra-puritanical form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. In 1744 a struggling cleric in the Nejd region of Saudi Arabia named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab made a pact with a local tribal leader, Muhammad bin Saud. Saud wanted religious backing for the monarchy he would build (Dar Al Saud) to rule what would become modern Saudi Arabia. In exchange for his political obedience, Wahhab wanted the protection and propagation of his Wahhabi movement, which would eventually lay the ideological and religious base of the country that would eventually (and brutally) form in 1932.

&nb
sp; Many scholars see Wahhabism as a legitimate reform movement. Its followers reject being named Wahhabi (because that would be akin to being named after a person) and prefer the term Salafi, after the “Salafs,” or early ancestors like those from Muhammad’s time. Ironically, in Saudi Arabia’s case they inhabit a country named after a person.

  Wahhabi Islam is austere and particularly cruel, and has spread worldwide due to a sustained Saudi monarchical effort over decades. It has unfortunately become the most influential form of Sunni Islam worldwide. Extremists like the barbaric Daesh draw a great deal of their ideology from Wahhabi Islam, often modeling themselves after the barbaric horse-riding and sword-wielding early Saud Ikhwans present during Wahhab’s time. The Wahhab-Saud pact has withstood centuries and remains the foundation of modern-day Saudi Arabia.

  During and after Wahhab’s time, for a brief while, the only destination outside of the Nejd region that the Wahhabis considered legitimate was India, where a Wahhab-style “reform” began almost simultaneously. In modern times the Indian subcontinent has been a particularly fruitful region for the dangerous spread of Wahhabi ideology.

  *It is important to remember that there is no universal system for transcription between English and Arabic. Arabic writers must transliterate when using computers and devices with a Latin alphabet keyboard. There are no English counterparts for several Arabic letters of the twenty-eight consonant characters that characterize the basic Arabic abjadiyah (script). Therefore, numbers are used. 7 is close to the Arabic equivalent that is ha’a (h). The numbers 3, 5, and 6 also refer to Arabic letters with no equivalent on an English keyboard. This style of transliteration is most used in text messages. A Saudi example for a basic greeting, “How are you today?” in text could be kaif al7al? wsh Btsawoon el youm? Finally, most people don’t realize there are many different kinds of colloquial Arabic. Lebanese and Egyptian Arabic are good examples.