Life and Death

Warning - this post discusses difficult issues. Please stop reading if you feel too uncomfortable.

I'm going to make a bold claim: people rarely discuss death. It's something that every last person on this planet is destined to experience yet I think in modern society the concept of death and the transient nature of life has been pushed far, far down the list of topics people are comfortable discussing. Maybe it has always been so but while I have no idea if mortality has ever been a dinner-table conversation, it's certainly true that in times gone by death was a much more regular event and much more a part of people's everyday lives.

As an example, churches were once the centre of the community - the place where everybody visited on a regular basis. If you ever visit an old church you'll find a graveyard adjacent to it in a prime location - often having to walk past it to enter the church. Nowadays graveyards have been relocated to out of town sites - out of sight and out of mind. Medicine and agricultural advancements have also contributed to leave death at the fringes of our existence and it has become so easy to forget that life is not forever despite a complete subconscious awareness that it is. 

Today I went to a talk titled "Coping with Death, Dealing with Grief" held by The City Circle. A little bit of a sombre title but the essence of the topic was the Islamic perspective on dealing with grief. The speaker (Shaykh Yunus Dudhwala) was very credible and well qualified to discuss the issue as the Head of Chaplaincy and Bereavement Services at Barts Health NHS Trust. 

To react to death and to grieve is perfectly natural and human and no one should be ashamed of such. Grief and bereavement show the depth of the bond between the departed and those left behind and comes from a compassionate and merciful place and this should not be forgotten. Different people do react differently to the death of someone close to them - their cultural and religious background affects their reaction as does their own belief of what death is. If they believe in life after death then that leads to a different view to someone who believe death is final. 

Islamic theology and practice is heavily rooted in the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and one of the early points made was that the Prophet (pbuh) experienced the loss of relatives of every relationship: father, mother, grandparents, wife, uncles, sons, daughters and friends. The example is there for every situation and always he counselled and practiced patience and forbearance. The speaker shared a number of traditions describing the Prophet's instructions and comments to people suffering through grief. He encouraged compassion that allows for the release of grief. Crying and sadness are perfectly natural reactions and should not be discouraged - to feel is to be human and we are but human. Do not be too quick to judge the level of others' grief - some are stoic, others are more emotional. To each their own way of dealing with it and the best thing you can do is to support them and be there for them. That said though, some level of self-control is required in Islam - grief is personal and does not need to be announced to the world. Wailing, smashing things, screaming - all of these are not allowed. 

At the heart of it is the concept of patience and the famous verse "Allah is with those who are patient". Demonstrating patience and exercising self control at the time when feelings are most raw and you are at your most vulnerable is the pinnacle of spiritual achievement. Incredibly hard to do  when anger, frustration, sadness and wishfulness are all assaulting your mind. 

This is where the second major point comes into play. Islam teaches that there is life after death and whenever a Muslim hears of a death he/she is encouraged to say "To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return". A short phrase that has a superbly powerful and profound meaning. It's a reminder that our lives and the lives of our friends and the lives of our family and the lives of every single person who walks the earth are only ever on temporary loan and that the loan will eventually have to be paid back. It teaches the awareness that the time is appointed for everyone and cannot be avoided. There are no premature deaths in Islam. People may die young but not early as it was ever written thus.

So with this awareness what does it mean for us? To me, the blessing in all this is that the length of the loan is unknown to us. That death can come at any time can be either a cause for lethargy or a spur for activity. It's the difference between "If I don't know if I'll get to finish an endeavour why should should I bother to start it?" and "If I don't know I'll get to finish an endeavour I had better make sure I do as much as I can!". The latter is a much more positive view and should be the default stance for everybody. Think on death and your own mortality but let it drive you to achieve, build, maintain your relationships, be productive and generally do what is worthwhile in life.

P.S. Here's an interesting folktale on the impermanent nature of life.

Thought of The Day YMLP 2015

Assalamualaikum all

This is the tenth day of the programme and the first day of our self-run thoughts of the day.

I spent some time last night thinking about what would make an interesting topic for this and after writing and deleting a number of attempts decided to talk about human nature and to keep it fresh by exploring what happened just yesterday while its fresh in our minds.

I’m going to focus on our guided tour of the Islamic Gallery at the british museum with the curator. In case you’ve forgotten we’d had a pretty early start and by the time of the tour we’d already visited the Houses of Parliament. 

So, the first thing to strike me was the approach that the curator took. No phones, no food, no fun. Listen to me and do nothing else. At the time I remember thinking (to quote Ali) “WTF? This is a bit stifling.” And from the quiet chats I had with a number of you I know I was not alone in thinking this. Been a long day and the last thing we wanted was to be treated like little children. At this stage I also knew nothing about her beyond she was a curator. So to my eyes we had this random middle aged lady aggressively talking at us about objects of limited personal interest – to me at least – and my mind was totally switched off and in fact I was discreetly on my phone hiding behind Afnan. You might remember Raiyan tried similar but didn’t have my experience in hiding phone usage and got caught. And on top of that to be honest I don’t even remember what the first items were that we saw. All I remember thinking is This is ridiculous - I am super bored and how can I disrupt this class?

Now that was my perspective. I want to take a moment to empathise and look at it through her eyes. And obviously this is all conjecture but I think its reasonable conjecture.

We have a busy woman taking time out of her more enjoyable tasks to do one of the more usually thankless duties of her job. She knows the objects on display very well and has taken that tour countless times before and could do it with her eyes closed. Most likely with bored school kids and other captive audiences like us who pay her zero attention while she imparts what she considers to be wisdom and knowledge. And its quite likely that for her to not feel like she’s wasting her valuable time and effort she wants to have the appearance that her audience is actually listening – which leads to her insistence on no phones and food and allows her to say her spiel without interruption.

So what do we do? The audience is bored and the speaker is bored. There’s no connection between the two and no one is enjoying the situation.

It was at this point she opened up to questions and if you remember I asked her about her background as I wanted to hear about something else that the artefacts and personal histories fascinate me and it seemed a good way to be subtly disruptive. The question turned out to surprise her and throw her completely off the track she was on – really not something I was expecting at the time if im honest. But she answered at length and after the other questions that Ali and Dr Mustafa asked we now had a better understanding of who she was and the hard work she was doing to preserve muslim heritage and history – which is actually our heritage and history and something we should be grateful to her and her kind of people for.

And all that made me much more appreciative and attentive. I finally recognised that we had an expert in our midst who was doing work which was benefit to all of us. To my mind the mood in the gallery visibly changed and the curator herself relaxed by several levels which made her much more pleasant to listen to.

And from that point I remember a lot more of what we saw. Around the lamps if you remember she was asking questions of us – one particular was “Where did the memluke kings reign?”. I just threw out Syria as a random guess and followed it with Iran. While I’d heard of the Memluke kings I didn’t have the foggiest idea where they were from. But she heard Syria and that random chance led her to think that we were a knowledgeable audience and not a bunch of numpties and again she relaxed and felt more comfortable. By the end of the tour she had no issue with phones and people wandering to look at other displays and likely didn’t even notice as she was so engaged with explaining the artefacts to the core group who stayed around and demonstrated interest.

So that’s the story – what are the lessons? Quite possible that you may draw different lessons but to me the first is that if you are going to lead a group the most effective way is to recognise who they are and make sure they know who you are. You can’t lead without credibility and credibility has to be earned. To begin with the curator did not do this and we were all completely switched off and looking for ways to escape! Build a connection and make it personal. Put yourself in their position and recognise their issues so you can get to know who you’re collaborating with and once you do you can simply just watch how the world changes around you!

Second lesson is that people in general are quite simple no matter how senior or important they might be. They love to talk about themselves and be asked for their ‘expert’ opinion. Show an interest in issues that they are interested in and they will come to you a metaphorically long way. For example at dinner I’ve sat next to the Director twice now and for the first dinner we mostly made small talk about the weather and how ‘nice’ the food was. But the second time I and the people around me managed to discover his secret interest – Recent and contemporary Indian history. Actually not so secret as he is a historian and it should’ve been fairly obvious. And once we got onto the topic of madrasas in india we saw a whole other side to him and one that I really enjoyed seeing and talking to. And with that thought I’m going to close.

Yusuf's Guide To Living - Episode 2 - An Encounter with Greatness

It was Shakespeare’s Malvolio who said, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them". A question that people on the street often ask of me is "what's the best way to interact with other people?" Mostly I respond to this question with a smile and say "be yourself". However, I often feel bad about saying this because it has been statistically proven (in the great Humanity Survey of early 2011) that people generally make poor quality human beings.

"What do you think other people are like?" - 76,600 respondents.

It came as a surprise to me then that on my daily commute, observing people with much accuracy and judging them on how they responded to my staring, I saw a man who was not only born with greatness but also had greatness written all over him.

One genteel action set him apart from the wild mob of harried commuters.
He was standing alone, close to the doors and away from the seats. I was too afraid to approach him at first but after steeling myself I stood up and joined him in his glorious standing.

“Good day to you, sir” I begin.

“Hello”.

“So where are you headed?”

“Liverpool St.”

“Excellent,” I say, “That gives us lots of time, at least 20 minutes. I would like to learn from you. What's your name?”

“What?” He pretends to look confused.

“What do I call you?”

“Oh. Alpha Golden.”

“Ah…yes, of course,” I mutter, “that makes sense.”

“Mr Golden, please teach me.” I announce.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

“I want to be great like you. How does this usually happen?”

“How does what happen?” 

“My dear fellow. Your modesty speaks volumes. Clearly you were born great. I would like greatness thrust upon me, Alpha, and I think you can help me. You are here, standing amidst all these empty seats because of your conviction and practice in that most ancient and glorious art of chivalry! Many thought that chivalry was dead and that men world over no longer strove for generosity of spirit. That men would happily sit down and let a woman stand, uncaringly ignoring all others save their own selves. I see from your stance that even though there are lots of empty seats, you stand alone in protest of the changing social landscape. You know that few women expect such behaviour and so you pre-emptively stand, rather than make them wait even a moment while you get up from 

your seat. Sir, I applaud you. Please teach me all that you know.”

A thought occurs to me.

“Oh. Wait. Am I allowed to call you Alpha? It won't impact our student teacher relationship will it? Should I call you Sir? Shaykh? Master? My liege?” I ask.

“Errr.”

This catches me by surprise.

“Why did you ‘errr’?”

“Erm. What...”

I cut him off. 

"Fraud! FRAUD!" I shout. "You cannot be great! A great man knows how to use silences instead of saying " errr" or "erm"! You are a fraud. What do you have to say for yourself?"

He stares at me initially with disbelief that I have discovered his dark secret, but rapidly his cheeks colour and what I recognise to be shame fills his expression.

“I...I...I think this is my stop,” he says as the train slows.

“But this isn't Liverpool St, that’s another 15 minutes away” I say.

Sounding desperate, he says “No, this is where I need to get off the train” but hesitates for a few seconds before jumping out as the doors are about to close.

I follow him with my eyes and as the train leaves the platform I observe that, unable to move because of his shame, he stays where the doors were.

An unknown man achieving greatness