IDEA 55
Stranger
From ‘Abdil-Lah, who said that the Messenger of AL-LAH (ﷺ) said: “Verily Islam began as something strange and will go back to being strange, so glad tidings to the strangers!” It was asked: “Who are the strangers?” He said, “Exiles from their tribes.” (Sunanub-ni Majah, Book 36, Hadith 63)
Fellow Muslim, when you meet me,
Should you spend your peace to greet me
Or turn away, as from the danger
Of an unbelieving stranger?
Do I hear you call me brother?
How, then, shall our newborn mother
Overbear my parents’ blood
With the faith to dam its flood?
God endowed creative Nature,
Mute in Muslim nomenclature,
With the choice of form and face
I should have by right of race;
Health and strength and mind and mood,
Filtered through my fetal food,
Grew confirmed in twenty years,
Parallel to friends and peers.
Can religion dig so deep,
Unearthing twenty years of sleep,
Fraught with dreams that forged a brain
Fit to fight with doubt and pain?
Self-reliance was the creed
Common to our Northern breed;
Constant thought and dauntless will
Made the man that I am still.
How foreign is this talk of thought
To one, like you, who hasn’t got
A single question left to ask
Since Muhammad solved your task!
Banish doubt, but don’t forget
God has more to teach us yet.
With the thought, “I am complete,”
Feeble minds regain their feet ─
Find their footing, lose their soul,
Made to gain the greatest goal ─
Not of nature’s dull demand,
But soaring where the angels stand.
Truth can never be a book
When the reader’s vacant look
Renders every sentence dim,
Robbed of what it says to him.
Truth is but a scholar’s creed
When “the facts” forbid the deed,
Done in danger, done to dare
Dotard custom’s hardened stare.
All alone I faced that gaze,
Burnt and blinded by its rays,
Darkened by the light it gave
Unto an agnostic grave.
Finally an angel showed,
Happily by God bestowed,
Where my nightmare doubts would break;
There I found you all ─ awake.
Yes, we have our perfect creed,
Written so the lips may read
What Muslim eyes must see to wear
That familiar glassy stare.
Even now I cannot find
Friendship with a kindred mind,
Where the quest of wisdom would
Constitute our “brotherhood”.
“Mind?” you say, “and have you not
Something more profound than thought?”
More profound, so rarely cast
For love I keep it to the last.
Buried in this flesh, but beating,
Softly was my heart completing
Rhythms of a life’s emotion,
Like a wave beneath the ocean.
Now hardened by the “common sense”
Rife in times of decadence,
Hardly can my heart inflame
On the altar of God’s Name.
Long before I saw the face
Of faith that saved me from disgrace,
Godlessness had gained a hold
Upon my soul and turned it cold.
Even now my spirit slumbers
In the grossness that encumbers
Hopes of Heaven’s ecstasy
With an earthly apathy.
Spirit bids the Muslim mind
Spiral upwards, there to find
Strength of will is weak until
It works its way within God’s Will.
Beauty revels in the East,
Dancing past her sacred Beast;
Beasts of burdens, self-confessed,
Bray for Beauty in the West.
Western creature though I am,
Long ago I cut the stem
Through which the precocious flower
Of my spirit sucked its power
From a dry and shallow soil,
Land of boasting, fruitless toil,
And on rootless sentiment
Drifted to the Orient.
There, a speck of human dust
Whirled away by wander-lust,
I imagined, in my pride,
God would send my spirit’s guide.
All that virtue claimed could be
I expected stored for me
In a man of vibrant vision,
Kindly calm, and bold decision.
Yet I failed to meet the mentor
Suited to my high intent, or
Did some saint, with wisdom’s eye,
See me, sigh, and pass me by?
Finally I found that I
Must upon myself rely ─
Echoing the sad conclusion
Source of half the world’s confusion.
Gone the hours of morning thunder,
Night’s despair and starry wonder,
When a broken blossom lying
In the street could start me crying.
Maddened by a boundless zeal
Bound to less than the ideal,
I, behind a face of stone,
Studied laws that made me groan,
Till at last the outer shell
Of Islam fit rather well,
Then became my second skin
As the hardness sank within ─
Not the hardness of Islam,
But carelessness of who I am.
With the outer life defined,
Inner labours look resigned.
Islam, for us, can often mean
Custom pressed through Comfort’s screen,
Fading in a narrow frame,
Bent by worldly wealth and fame.
God’s eternal truth remains;
Only here on earth it wanes.
Should I wonder if my portion
Suffers some of that distortion?
Codes of holy modesty,
Ringed by right severity,
Have, by modern “facts”, been fated
To be feared or felt outdated.
Iron men cannot receive
Diamond rules and still believe.
Only souls of silk can see
Spaces in solidity.
Souls of such extreme refinement
Hide their heavenly alignment
From the over-grown attentions
Of men brought up upon pretensions.
Muslims now are so oppressed
By the banners of the West
Blowing into brain and bone,
Few have thoughts to call their own.
Call them God’s, but is He here,
Where the heart is taught to fear
Any pain of long endurance
Without accident insurance?
Every meeting with a real
Muslim mocks at my ideal,
Making it more manifest
I’m becoming like the rest.
So, as a Muslim, you must greet me;
Thank you for the way you treat me.
I am strange, and there’s a danger
I may turn to getting stranger.
Download the PDF version for free at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’ān – Mont Redmond complete version, or purchase a hard copy at Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an: Redmond, Mont: 9781738842506: Books – Amazo
