Diary 1963 - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Diaries 1963The Seven Faces of the Prophet1088 Fulton St.San Francisco 17, Calif.March 17, 1963Shamsuddin Ahmed,48 J. Model TownLahore, West PakistanMy dear Friend and Brother:As-salaam aleikhum. You may understand now why I do not call myself a Muslim but aninshallahist. While originally a Muslim meant one who surrendered to God, it later came to meanmostly those who accepted Sharia and finally those who followed openly or blindly an Ijma, thesource of which in not only unclear, but often has nothing whatsoever to do with revelation.The difficulty of translating Holy Qur’an will be offered here, not with any idea that it will beaccepted, but to point out a totally different direction toward understanding simultaneously a massof accumulated knowledge and one’s self. The arrival here in San Francisco of one Farooq Mawlawi,a direct descendent of Maulana Roum, has stimulated the first effort toward an explanation of thatportion of Holy Scriptures which it has been given to me to explain.The translation of Er-Rahman and Er-Rahim into other languages has resulted in the use ofterms quite unrelated to each other whereas it is obvious that the root Rahm is common to these twowords and they must have some related function. Offhand I call them “the Compassionator” and“the Compassionating” without holding too fast to these words. To explain further:I call Mohammed the example of Er-Rahman and Isa the example of Er-Rahim and it comesout in their prayers that Mohammed begins with praise toward God and the concern is with Allah;while Isa is concerned with mankind and says: “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us ourdebts.”Or, in the practical life I am called upon to bring man to a greater spiritual realization followingMohammed; and also trying to increase the world’s food supplies, following Isa. There is no contradictionbut this takes Er-Rahman and Er-Rahim out of the realm of the abstract into the concreteand practical. Therefore any problems or questions which have no relation to Fateha or “The Lord’sPrayer” are outside my duties in life and from this point of view, your eager friend Afridi has triedto place before a dervish something without showing the relation of it to Allah or revelation.One of the besetting sins of Muslims is their idols and these idols are chiefly: Islam, Qur’an andHadith. For the term Islam has no relation to surrender or peacefulness and means in practice theextension of one’s will; Qur’an is used without regard to its content and Hadith even more so. Theresult is that religion is far from religion and not a single reform whomsoever, whatsoever has goneback to Fateha which is supposed to be repeated many times each day that blind followers of Shariacannot off hand even tell one how many times they say Fateha and this is called “devotion.”