الحمد لله، الحمد لله ، نحمده تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا، ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له، له الملك و له الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير، ونشهد أن سيدنا و مولانا محمداً عبده ورسوله، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدّى الأمانة ونصح الأمة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحق، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيا عباد الله اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون. يأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم. ومن يطع
الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما. اتقوا الله فيما أمر وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر.
قال الله تعالى في كتابه الكريم
In the year 1668, after having journeyed more than a year from Batavia (present day Jakarta, Indonesia), the ship Polsbroek arrived in Table Bay. The Cape, at that time, was under the control of the Dutch East India Company following its discovery by Jan van Riebeeck less than two decades earlier. Three men would disembark from the ship heavily restrained, for they were considered highly dangerous by the Dutch East India Company. One of them was sent to Robben Island and the remaining two were sent to the Company’s Fields in Constantia where they would begin their sentences. Who were they and what was their crime? The most important of the three prisoners was Shaykh Abdurrahman Matebe Shah. He was the last of the Malaccan Sultans, a faqih and a Qadiri Sufi Shaykh, who had fought a protracted Jihad against the armies of the Dutch East India Company. The other two men, there is a fair amount of certainty that one was Sayyid Mahmud (buried at Islam Hill in Constantia), were his most trusted companions and fuqaha in their own right. All three men would die in the land of their imprisonment, but not before they changed the future of this beautiful colony on the very southern tip of Africa which the Dutch had secured as a halfway-house for their maritime journeys around Africa to the east.
On account of their interaction with the local slave population, teaching Allah’s Oneness and bringing them into the Deen of Islam, Cape Town is today one of the cities most densely populated with Muslims outside the Muslim world. You could say that, if it were not for these men, Friday Jama’ats such as this one, as well as in all the other Mosques around the Cape, would not have existed. The destiny of Southern Africa will forever be entwined with the great station that Allah decreed for these men in this world and the next. Today they lie buried in the hills around us, their Baraka being a source of protection for us all.
Allah says in Surat al-Ibrahim(14:26)
“Do you not see how Allah makes a metaphor of a good word which is as a good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches are in heaven?”
Tafsir Jalalayn: ‘Kalimatan Tayyibatan’ means La ilaha illa Allah, there is no god but Allah. The tree whose roots are firm, refer to a palm tree.
In a well known hadith is is reported that the Messenger of Allah, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said: “Afdalu al-dhikri La ilaha illallah.” – The best remembrance of Allah is to say: “There is no god but Allah.”
In calling people to the worship of Allah and obedience to His Messenger, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, the Awliya and Shuhada buried here have planted a tree rooted deep in the earth with branches reaching high into the heavens, bearing the fruit of every Muslim baby born every single day in the houses of this city.
What emerges from any study of the Muslims of Cape Town is that they were firmly grounded in an ‘Ashari aqida, following the Shafi’i fiqh, based on their origins in the Malay islands or the East Coast of India, and that they were connected to Sufi Tariqahs: the Qadiriyyah of Shaykh Abdurrahman Matebe Shah, the Khalwatiyyah of Shaykh Yusuf, the Ba’Alawi of Shaykh al-Haddad or the Chistiyyah of Sayyid Abdullatif, the inheritor of Sufi Saheb. Ironically though, despite the importance of the Sufis in the historical progress of the Muslims of Cape Town, it is still necessary to defend the people of Tasawwuf from an ignorance that was cultivated in the Arabian heartland.
In the last couple of Khutbas we looked at the formation of the Wahhabi sect. We saw how ibn Abdul Wahhab, with the support of the as-Sa’ud family, began to propagate a deviant version of Islam which was in direct contrast to what had been established by the ‘Ulama of the Ahl as-Sunna w’al-Jama’a through centuries of scholarship. We also saw that a considerable part of this vitriol was aimed at the Sufis and their practices. In order to proceed, it is first necessary to scrutinize some of his claims. Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s first assertion was that the Deen was in need of purification, and in order to do that he proposed a return to ‘Kitab wa Sunnah’, that is, the Book of Allah (Qur’an) and the Sunna (Practice of His Messenger). What he meant by Sunnah though was actually a return to the vast body of hadith assembled in the collections of hadith. Sunnah however, as understood by everyone else, was the ‘established practice’ of the Messenger, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and his companions, as recorded by Imam Malik, the Imam of the city, Madina al-Munawwara, where the vast share of the Sunnah was put into action. It was therefore impossible to revisit the Sunnah while prohibiting the following of the madhhabs (taqlid). For the same reason, his claim that he was following the Salaf –us-Salih, that is, the Messenger, his companions, their followers, and then their followers, was also incorrect. Therefore the usurpation of the term Salafi and its use by present-day Wahhabis must also be repudiated. Nevertheless, this version of the Deen, albeit deviant, proliferated amongst the tribes of Najd due to, as we saw, the establishment of Ikhwan colonies by Abdul ‘Aziz ibn Sa’ud and the continuation of the pact made between Muhammad ibn Sa’ud and ibn ‘Abdal Wahhab, sealed by the marriage of the son of the former to the daughter of the latter. To this very day the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia comes from the Al as-Shaykh family – descendants of ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab – and the intermarriage between the ibn-Sa’uds and Al as-Shaykhs remains a fixed institution two and a half centuries later.
Having looked at the development and spread of Wahhabism, it becomes easier to answer the question that was asked relevant to us here in Cape Town. Despite the importance of the Sufis in the historical progress of the Muslims of Cape Town, why is it still necessary to defend the people of Tasawwuf from an ignorance that was cultivated in the Arabian heartland?
In the early 1980’s, while I was growing up in Pretoria and barely in my teens, anyone who wanted to pursue a career in Islamic studies had one of two choices. Provided you could afford the tuition fees and accommodation, either you studied at the Dar al-Ulums in India, Deoband or Bareilly, or at their affiliated institutions in South Africa, Newcastle Dar al-‘Ulum in Northern Natal being one of the few options here. For those who lived in the Cape, Jami’a al-Azhar in Cairo was an admired destination. Only a few years later, the choices for places to study grew significantly as bursaries for study at Madina University became easily available, considering all those petro-dollars in circulation. Not to be left out, the Shi’as were doing the rounds as well, and we even heard of available bursaries to study in Qum, Iran.
When I travelled to Makka and Madina for the ‘Umra very soon after my graduation from High School in 1990, I had a personal confirmation that a fair number of those bursaries were snapped up. One evening, while leaving the Prophet’s Mosque amidst a myriad of unintelligible languages, I heard a group of young men speaking Afrikaans, not the Afrikaans I was used to in Pretoria, but a more casual, musical, in-a-hurry Afrikaans which I immediately recognised as the dialect spoken in Cape Town. Upon speaking to them I discovered that they were all students at Madina University and that some of them had been there for some years already. It was not surprising then to discover that one of the focal points of their course was ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s ‘Kitab at-Tawhid’. So these young men who had left the shores of Cape Town having recited the Ratib al-Haddad in their homes on Thursday nights, having visited the tombs of the Awliya especially during the months leading up to the Hajj, having celebrated the Maulud in celebration of the birth of the best of creation, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, returned a few years later denouncing centuries-old practices as bid’a and shrouding their mothers and sisters in the now ubiquitous black bag garment. A young ‘alim from Cape Town whom I met when I moved here more than ten years ago was so appalled by what was being taught at Madina University that he stopped going to his classes and instead found a Mauritanian ‘Alim and took private lessons from him studying traditional Maliki texts.
The inherent contradiction between the puritanical Deen that the Wahhabis preached and their actions in so far as their relations with their Kafir allies, first Britain and then America, was exposed when the Ikhwan colonies rebelled against the al-Sa’uds for what they rightly saw as a betrayal and selling out to the Kuffar. This culminated in the Ikhwan siege of Makka in 1979. Only about sixty out of a contingent of three-hundred Ikhwan fighters survived after a French elite corps, on the invitation of Fahd ibn Sa’ud, killed them within the precincts of the Ka’ba. It was then discovered that the leader of the uprising and his most loyal supporters were all graduates of Madina University. On hearing about what had happened, one of the Mauritanian ‘alims at the university wept at what he saw was the inevitable result of their education. It was this ill-advised education that led to the perpetration of untold atrocities against not only the Kuffar but also the Muslims, living and dead. One of their recent victims was the great 15th century Shadhili Shaykh, Ahmad Zarruq, rahimahu Allah, whose body was exhumed during the destruction of his tomb in Misurata, Libya.
أقول قولي هذا و أستغفر الله لي و لكم و لسائر المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو
الغفور الرَّحيم
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الحمد لله الحمد لله رب العالمين، وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله، صلى الله وسلم وبارك عليه وعلى آله وصحبه، والتابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله ما استطعتم واسمعوا وأطيعوا وأنفقوا خيرا لأنفسكم. يا عباد الله أوصيكم وإياي بتقوى الله وطاعته وأحذركم وإياي عن معصيته ومخالفته.
أيها المسلمون!
Allah says in Surat al-Baqara (2:112):
“Not so! All who submit themselves completely to Allah and are good-doers will find their reward with their Lord. They will feel no fear and know no sorrow.”
Sahih Bukhari:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
One day while the Prophet was sitting in the company of some of his companions, (The angel) Jibra’il came in the form of a man and asked, “What is Iman?” The Messenger replied, ‘Iman is to believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His prophets, the Last Day, the Destiny, the good and bad of it is from Allah Most High and the rising after death.” Then he further asked, “What is Islam?”
The Messenger replied, “To declare that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger, to pray, to pay the Zakat, to fast the month of Ramadan and to travel to the House of Allah .” Then he further asked, “What is Ihsan?” Allah’s Messenger replied, “To worship Allah as if you see Him, and while you do not see Him, He sees you.” Then he further asked, “When will the Hour come?” Allah’s Messenger replied, “The answerer has no better knowledge than the questioner. But I will inform you about its signs:
1. When a slave (lady) gives birth to her master, and
2. When the shepherds of black camels start boasting and competing with others in the construction of high buildings. And the Hour is one of five things which nobody knows except Allah.” When the Messenger was asked about who the man was, he said, “That was the angel Jibra’il who came to teach you your Deen.”
It would seem, if one believes what you hear and see in the media, that Tasawwuf (Sufism) is something extraneous to the Deen of Islam. This view is evidently held by the Wahhabi/Salafis as well since they insist that all traces of it must be wiped out, even to the extent of destroying the graves of the dead. This cannot be further from the truth as we can see from the hadith above.
Sahl al-Tustari said when speaking about the above hadith: “Islām is the foundation (iqrār), and that is outward. Imān is certainty (yaqin) and that pertains to the inward, and iḥsān is the perfection of worship (taʿabbud). He also said about Islam that it can be summarised in two statements and he quoted the ayat of Qur’an: And take whatever the Messenger gives you, and abstain from whatever he forbids you [59:7].Then he said: This can further be summarised by the Ayat of Qur’an: Whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah [4:80].
Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq said on this matter: “The foundation of Sufism is the station of Ihsan, which the Messenger defined as being “That you worship Allah as if you see Him, and while you do not see Him, He sees you.” That is because the various meanings of sincerely turning to Allah are based on this station and revolve around it.
The destruction of the tomb of Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq was itself a proof of the ignorance of the perpetrators. If they were to carry out a cursory study of the life of the great man, they would realise the folly of their actions, for Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq, was known amongst the sufis for his strict observance of the Sharia, constantly cautioning the Sufis of any action that may be contrary to the Deen. It was this painstaking adherence to the Sharia that he passed on to those who inherited his knowledge amongst the Shadhili and Darqawi Shuyukh. The Shaykh of our Shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahu Allah, was one such man and it was said about him and his fuqara that they would traverse the length and breadth of the Maghrib (Morocco and Algeria), seeing to it that the limits of the Shari’a were adhered to.
Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq was uniquely known by both the fuqaha and sufis as ‘muhtasib al-ulama w’al awliya’- literally, ‘he who keeps a check on’.
The composition of ninety four different works is attributed to Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq. They are classified as: One work on alchemy, two on medicine, two on ‘aqida, two tafsirs of Qur’an, three on the science of numbers and letters, four biographies and travel narratives (including his autobiography), five collections of correspondence, six books on hadith, ten books of commentary on dhikrs, ten books on fiqh, and thirty-nine books on tasawwuf.
When Sayyidi Ahmad al-Hadrami, the Shaykh of Ahmad Zarruq, sent him away after having passed this knowledge onto him, he said the following words, “Submit to Salma, go wherever She goes. Follow the winds of your destiny and turn wherever She turns.” These words were counsel that he should always remain in submission to the Beloved, that is, Allah, throughout the unfolding of his destiny. When Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq finally settled in Misurata, he wrote back to his Shaykh:
“You must know Sayyidi that I am in Misrata because of what came into my heart that I must obey. We are unable to do anything but turn wherever the wind of our destiny turns,
And accept whatever emanates from it with the help of Allah.
Since each destiny has been recorded in a book we do not care where we are,
As long as we are numbered among the beloved ones.”
إنَّ اللهَ ومَلائِكَتَهُ يُصلُّونَ على النَّبِي يَا أَيُها الذينَ آمنوا صَلُّوا عَلَيْهِ وسَلِّمُوا تَسْليماً. اللهمَّ صَلِّ وسَلِّم وبارِك عَلَيْهِ وعلى آلِهِ وصَحْبِهِ أجمعين.
وارض اللهم عن الخلفاء الراشدين المرشدين الحنفاء ساداتنا وأئمتنا أبي بكر وعمر وعثمان وعلي ، وعن سائر الصحابة أجمعين، خصوصا الأنصار منهم والمهاجرين، وعن التابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
اللهم اهد أولات أمور المسلمين لما يرضيك ولاتباع سنة نبيك صلى الله عليه وسلم وثبت أقدامهم على الصراط المستقيم وأصلحهم يا رب العالمين.
اللهم بارك على شيخنا، و على أميرنا، وعلى جميع أمراء وزعماء المسلمين.
اللهم بارك على المسلمين في هذه المدينة ووفقهم لما تحبه وترضاه يا أكرم الأكرمين. .
اللهمّ أَعِزَّ الْلإسلامَ والمُسِلمينَ (3) واَخْذُلِ الكُفْرَ والكافِرينَ، وانْصُرِ المُجاهِدينَ في سَبِيلِ
اللهِ. واجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وكَلِمَةَ الكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلى.
ربنا ءاتنا في الدنيا حسنة وفي الأخرة حسنة وقنا عذاب النار.
ربنا ءاتنا من لدنك رحمة و هيئ لنا من أمرنا رشدا.
ربنا هب لنا من أزواجنا وذريتنا قرة أعين واجعلنا للمتقين إماما.
ربنا اغفر لنا ذنوبنا وإِسرافنا في أمرِنا وثبت أقدامنا وانصرنا على القوم الكافرِينَ.
إن الله يأمر بالعدل والإحسان وإيتاء ذي القربى وينهى عَنِ الفحشاءِ والمُنكَرِ والبغي، يعظكم لعلكم تذكرون، ولَذِكْرُ اللهِ أكبر والله يَعْلَمُ ما تَصْنَعُون. وقُومُوا إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يرحمكم الله
