Islamic Haiku and commentary

muhammd-in-clouds

“Muhammad” in clouds…
Peace be upon him, and us…
we all drift away!

The world is a porous place, that in the world of physics might be particles and might be waves. Allah in the Qur’an says to see His signs on the horizon and in the self. But in reality, both are porous, both are particles or waves, the hardest teak and the most obdurate self: wisps before Allah. It seems the Way of Muhammad, peace be upon him, is to become fine, subtle, more transparent before the will of God, and to see and listen to his signs in order to bring about this refinement, this sweet disintegration of the self-defined self within the greater integration of being a True Human Being, a true “Muhammadan” soul. This isn’t just Sufism, this is Islam.

Recently, at a huge outdoor nighttime gathering in honor of the Prophet, when a shaykh of Islam was explaining his beloved name, letter by letter, people looked up at the moon and the clouds around it and saw his name written in Arabic letters there in the sky (see graphic accompanying poem: Peace be Upon Him). The look in the video on the face of the shaykh tells it all: astonishment. Some might quibble that this “sky writing” is superstitious, unworthy of our interest, and they may do so with the best and worthiest of intentions.

But for the lover (and remember, the Prophet said to practice remembrance of God “until they call you mad,”) all things in this porous universe point to Allah and His Prophet, peace be upon him, and even ants looking for crumbs might be worshipping Him, and rain falling from the clouds of His Rahma directly to feed the earth, and ultimately ourselves..

For both the clouds and ourselves… drift away…

Categories: Poems, The Prophet Muhammad (salallahu alayhi wa sallam)