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 What Little Difference A Year Makes >> Humera Khan A Year of Political Drift >> Yahya Birt Our
Upside Down World >> Ibrahim Hewitt London: The Strength of a Soft City
>> Caspar
Melville Is Poverty History Yet? >> Kumi Naidoo Nanu Miah - The King of Parr >> Shamim Miah Does
Terror Grow A
Sweet Interrogation >> Fareena
Alam The
Unravelling of Ayaan Hirsi Ali >> Mohamed N. Husain The Purse and the Accidental Activist >> Lilit Marcus The Peace Warrior The World Halal
Industry Comes to London US Congress Gets Ready for its first Muslim |
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Diary Page 11 But no journey provokes as much excitement as Timbuktu. At the margins of the Sahara, it now has an international airport with exotic pink neon lights proclaiming Aerodrome du Toumbouctou. The night we landed, the two-storey adobe building looked beautiful - like a Hollywood prop for a film about French legionnaires. Clearly, Timbuktu remains the destination for the convinced and the determined. I was in this fabled city to attend a mawlid - a celebration of the birthday of the Blessed Prophet, peace be upon him. The event is as old as the town itself and on the twelfth of Rabi al Awwal, more than 75,000 people - twice the town’s population - descended on it to join the festivities. It turned out to be one helluva party - people recited the burda like they can only do in Africa. There were tribesman from the nearby deserts and guests from as far afield as Russia, Bangladesh and Syria. Most of the foreign guests - including myself - were invited by Tripoli-based World Islamic Call Society (WICS). The thousand of voices singing in the cool Saharan night was magical. “Man, there is so much love here,” a beaming Louis Farrakhan, one of the guests, was heard telling his entourage. “The world needs to see this miracle.” To host its international conference in Timbuktu was brilliant of WICS. Of course, they was no five-star luxury but our short stay in harsh conditions was unforgetable. This is the city of 333 saints, thousands of manuscripts and the best mud architecture in the world. Among the local Tuareg is a famous proverb which says: “It is better to see oneself than to be informed by a third person.”Timbuktu-ans still believe that: “Salt comes from the north, Gold comes from the south,/Money comes from the country of white people,/But the words of God, knowledge,/Stories and nice folk tales,/Can only be found in Tombouctou.” ***** In Vienna, I am overwhelmed by mixed feelings. Only a couple of miles from where I am, at the Vienna State Opera House (Wiener Staatsoper), Turkish Ottoman forces were routed in 1683. What if the Muslim forces under Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha had conquered Vienna? What kind of Europe would we have today? I muse over all this as I nurse a delectable cup of coffee and pastry - both part of the Muslim legacy that survived the battle in Vienna. Legend has it that after the Battle of Vienna, the Austrians discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Turkish encampment. With this, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the first coffeehouse in Vienna and the third in Europe. Kulczycki is memorialised with a statue of him in Turkish outfit on a street named after him. Vienna is a beautiful city and it is full of surprises. Islam is the second largest religion after Catholicism in Austria and was accepted as an official religion in 1912. Half of the country’s 450,000 Muslims (roughly four percent of the total population) live in Vienna. Of the country’s 76 mosques, 53 are in the capital city. ***** Oh, by the way, I was in town to attend a conference on Xenophobia, Racism and the Media. It was, again, an opportunity to meet interesting media people. The conference was professionally executed but the recommendations, to be honest, were hardly earth-shattering. South Africa’s Muslims are a weird product of political activism, social consciousness, sectarian madness and extreme ostentatiousness. This is a country which has produced more than its share of Muslim martyrs in the anti-apartheid struggle. But it has also seen some of its members seduced by the anti-Islamic ideology of race superiority. Today, the struggle for the heart and soul of South African Islam is fierce: it is one between relevancy and dogmatism, engagement or disengagement, clarity or obscurantism. When it comes to Islam, there are so many similarities between what is going on in Britain and South Africa. But, alas, we do not have the likes of Cassiem Khan and Na’eem Jeenah - two outstanding young(ish) mujahids whose contributions in the field of humanitarian work and the debate over freedom of expression are exemplary. It was a privilege to share platforms with the the charming Mufti AK Hoosen (Channel Islam), the combative Maulana Ebrahim Bham (Jamiatul Ulama, Transvaal) and the superbly elegant and noble Ferial Haffeejee (Editor, Mail and Guardian). The climate of tolerance, compassion and dissident with which our media workshop was conducted was splendid. And one never forgets the generousity of the South Africans - especially that of my dear friend Idris Khamisa. ***** As I perform my tawwaf in Makkah, it suddenly dawns on me that this is the mother of all conference venues. This is my umpteenth visit to the holy but every time I perform the hajj or umrah, it is a fresh experience. I always come away with everything I would want to see in a conference: inspiration, clarity and the determination to renew my commitments to serving humanity. ***** It is with this mentality that I land in Istanbul to attend yet another conference - this one is on Muslims of Europe (www.muslimsofeurope.com). The venue is splendid, some of the people invited are amazing but... Affan Chowdhry is away. |