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[ by Charles Cameron — the second holiest site in Islam disrespected by the editors of Azan? ]
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I’ve taken out the surrounding matter, but here’s the section on “decorated mosques” as a sign of the time of the Dajjal or Islamic antichrist, from Maulana Asim Umar‘s Third World War and Dajjal in the second issue of Azan:
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There’s no doubt that the photo that has been dropped in there is of the interior of the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina — compare, for instance here and specifically the larger image here — and the accompanying hadith are less than flattering of “decorated” mosques — suggesting they signal the time of the Dajjal:

Anas ibn Malik narrates that the Prophet of Allah said that the Hour would not arrive until the people show off to each other in (the construction and going to) of mosques. [Saheeh Ibn Khuzaima Vol. 2 Pg. 282, Saheeh Ibn Hibban Vol. 4 Pg. 493]

Abu Darda said that when you start decorating your mosques and beautifying your Mushaf (i.e. The Quran – adorning it with jewellery etc.), then upon you will be destruction. [Kashf-ul-Khifa’ Vol. 1 Pg. 95]

Abdullah ibn Abbas narrated that the Prophet said that when the sins of a nation increase, then their mosques become greatly decorated. And decorated mosques will only be constructed at the time of the emergence of the Dajjal. [Al Sunnan Al-Waridah Fil Fitn: Vol. 4 Pg. 819]

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What exactly do the Pakistani brothers intend to signal to their readers with this juxtaposition? As Mr Orange has reminded me, they are Deobandis, and consider devotions at the tombs of saints to be a form of shirk — but would they bring bulldozers to the Prophet’s mosque on that account, as their Wahhabi brothers in jihad did to a small shrine commemorating Abraham in Ayn al-Arous, Syria, recently?

I’d like to get a better sense of whether the juxtaposition is as unexpected in Pakistani context as it was to me, thousands of miles away, and would appreciate further clarification…

[ by Charles Cameron — on end-times rhetoric and having no need of sun or moon ]
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Detail from a Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liebana

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On the whole, the “signs of the end times” described in the installment of Maulana Asim Umar‘s Third World War and Dajjal, pp. 23-31, and now posted in the second issue of Azan on pp 83-89 are standard fare of the “wars and rumors of wars” type that could fit pretty much any time n history, including our own — “When the most despicable person of a nation would be its leader” would fit an astounding number of rulers across recorded history, depending on your point of view, including Nero and Diocletian, George III and Abe Lincoln, and a slew of Saddams, Mubaraks and Assads…

There was one section, however, that struck me as a powerful piece of visionary apocalyptic, and I wanted to bring it to the attention of those interested in such things.

The Maulana writes [I’ve omitted the Arabic honorifics since I lack Arabic, and corrected one typo in Enlish]:

“Hazrat Abu Hurayrah narrates that the Prophet of Allah said that the Day of Judgment would not occur before a fire erupts from Hijaz and lights up the necks of the camels of Basra.” [Bukhari, Muslim]

The incident mentioned in this Hadith has already occurred according to Hafiz Ibn Kathir (RA) and other historians. This fire appeared in 650 H on the Day of Jumu’ah in some valleys of Madinah Munawwarah and remained for about a month. The narrators have said that the fire suddenly erupted from the direction of Hijaz. The scene looked like a whole city of fire – containing a whole castle, tower or battlement etc. Its height was 4 “farsakh” (around 12 miles) and its width was 4 miles. The fire would melt any mountain it reached as if the mountain was made out of wax or glass. Its flames had the sound of thunder and the energy of river waves. Blue and red-colored rivers looked to be coming out of the fire. In such a (horrible) state, the fire reached Madinah Munawwarah. But the curious thing was that the wind that was emanating from the direction of the flames felt cool in Madinah. The scholars have written that the fire had encompassed all the jungles of Madinah such that in the Haram-e-Nabwi and in Madinah, all the houses were lit up as if from the sun. The people would do all their work in the night from the light (of the fire); in fact, the light of the sun and the moon would became faded because of the light of the fire.

Some people of Makkah (at the time of the fire) bore witness that they saw the fire while they were in Yamama and Basra.

A strange quality of the fire was that it used to burn the stones to coal but it would not have any effect on the trees. It is said that there was a large stone in a jungle – half of it was in the limits of Haram-e-Madina and half of it was outside the limits. The fire burnt to coal the half of the stone that was outside the limits of the Haram-e-Madina. However, it cooled when it reached to the other half and hence, this half remained safe.

The people of Basrah bore witness that they saw the necks of camels light up from the light of the fire…

[The Beginning and the End: Ibn Kathir (RA)]

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You know my interest in semblances and parallelisms. Compare:

in fact, the light of the sun and the moon would became faded because of the light of the fire

in that narrative with:

the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it

in Revelation 21:23.

I am not arguing that there is an echo between the two accounts, nor that they describe the same phenomenon — simply that the rhetoric of each has a similar poetic intensity. This just happens to be one of those occasions when there are more things in heaven than are dreamed of in your natural sciences.

[ by Charles Cameron — for the record, there’s a Boston “special edition” of Azan, though I’ve only seen the ad! ]
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The second issue of Azan magazine is out, and not all that exciting — but just as I did last time, I’ve scanned it for bits that interest me, and come up with a couple — but first I’d like to note is the teaser on p. 49 (below) for a “special issue” on the Boston bombings, dated 15/5 on the cover and claiming to have been published “soon after the attacks”:

I haven’t seen it, but there’s corroboration. SITE appears to have found a copy and announced it in this tweet on May 25th:

So somewhere between Azan #1 and Azan #2, there would seem to have been an out of series issue. Since it concentrates on Boston, however, and not Khorasan, there’s probably not much in it along my line of interest, so knowing it’s out there only piques my curiosity just a tad.

[ by Charles Cameron — the four goats go with the woman, the cow called Bessie belongs with Hiyakawa’s Ladder of Abstraction ]
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My friend the anthropologist Peter van der Werff recently wrote this paragraph about a woman he met in India:

The very poor woman explained me she and her four goats needed the shadow of a tree to escape from the blistering afternoon sun in their semi-arid part of India. There was a tree at the edge of the village, but the owner did not allow her to come near that tree. Therefore, she and her goats suffered from the heat, at the cost of her health and the productivity of the goats.

I was reminded of SI Hayakawa‘s Ladder of Abstraction.

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Caution: you really do need, as it says, to “read” this image from the bottom up…

See Bessie, the Cow, in SI and AR Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, pp. 83-85, 5th ed..

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Why did I think of Hayakawa’s ladder?

Here are two other things m’friend Peter had to say about the woman and her goats, the merciless sun, and that tree with its abundance of merciful shade:

As long as economists don’t include oppression and exploitation in their models, they cannot understand poverty.

and:

Such cruel relationships occur in many of the 750,000 villages of India. Without including those oppressive and exploitative realities, real poverty is not captured. We may invite economists to fit this reality in the computer.

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We humans can do it. But how do we configure models that can hold those levels of granularity and abstraction — of individual human concern and global decision-making necessity — close enough together to give our grand plans humane flexibility?

I suspect writers such as Lawrence Wright know more about this than the number crunchers — and that the well-selected anecdote must become as significant as the well-chosen statistic …

[ by Charles Cameron — considering a rare attribute in two religious leaders ]
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Christopher Anzalone tells a story about the Grand Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr (above, left), Moqtada‘s father, in his highly recommended podcast on Jihad & Martyrdom in Contemporary Muslim Militants with Karl Morand.

I’m very slow at transcription, but this story hit me with its insight into an aspect of religion that — as the story itself illustrates — is not always recognized, and i was able to find the same story told elsewhere, though not with the flair Chris brings to the telling. Here it is, as recounted by Patrick Cockburn in his book, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq:

One former disciple of Mohammed Sadiq tells an anecdote illustrating his master’s pragmatism. “One day, I was sitting with Mohammed Sadiq in his office, when a man came in to ask the price of tomatoes,” he says. “The question infuriated me: I thought he had come to mock us. But al-Sadr, wiser and smarter than I am, gave him a detailed answer, giving him the price of different kinds of tomatoes. He had understood what the question was about. I caught up with the man as he left the office and asked him why he had asked the question. He replied: ‘In selecting a marji’ [a religious figure to emulate and whose rulings he would accept], I choose the one who knows my suffering, who is close to the poor and the disinherited.'”

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Pope Francis has a similar direct and simple approach, and from the very start of his pontificate it has been winning him admirers, both religious and secular. He refuses the limo, preferring to take the bus. He pays his own bill as he checks out at the hotel front desk (above, right). He telephones the guy in Buenos Aires whose newsstand supplied his daily newspaper, to thank him and cancel his subscription…

Person to person.