Yesterday at salat-al-jumu’ah my favorite imam, as usual, said something to make me laugh and something to make me reflect. That’s why he’s my favorite. Every time I attend, I will find something to laugh about, and something to reflect upon—and maybe even more than once. I love loving God in the presence of this devout person.
As it turned out, he made me laugh about the sleep thing! Just as I was complaining in yesterday’s blog, he came around and made light of just what kinds of things happen regarding sleep in Ramadan. I could never be as funny as he, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Still the lesson was learned, we are not meant to sleep away the pangs of the difficult fast. In fact, that is part of this arduous act of devotion and to sleep it away is a contradiction.
He made me reflect on the topic I had already chosen for today: forgiveness. The synchronicity between my own spiritual states and what comes out of the mouth of the imam never ceases to amaze me and about all I can render in response is “That is why it is my favorite mosque”; or a plain “al-hamdu liLah”, thank God! I think every worshipper should be so lucky as to find just the right mosque. We all have different temperaments and no one mosque suits all types, but this one suits me, and I am grateful.
It suits me to have a mosque so close to my house that I can attend the tarawih regularly but I admit, I have never laughed there. Reminds me of something my second husband once said, “they worship a God with a LOT of rules and a little bit of mercy.” Last night they announced plans for the i’itikaf or spiritual retreat (the last ten days of Ramadan) and told the brothers (only) not to bring their microwave, not to bring their toaster oven and not to bring their cell phone. It was almost funny.
Following that announcement from the now infamous loud “speaker,” he said that fajr prayer would be at 5:40. I should have thought more clearly about this, but as it stands, I have three different prayer time schedules: my iphone has one from the Ipray app; and I printed one off line from Islamicity; then collected one from my favorite mosque, when I went there for the tarawih prayer the night proceeding the first day of fasting. None of them have the same time on it. I therefore create a buffer to offset any slight disagreement a few minutes in the morning and a few at sunset. The rest I leave in trust to Allah. But 5:40 is way, way later than any of these, and I thought to myself how could I be so far off?
I thought, hmm, well I better adjust my clock. I am getting up too early to coordinate between suhur, fajr and my personal Qur’an reading before a nap. Now in all my attempts at staying some what tech-literate, I am not quite tech savvy. I have this really neat alarm that plays a CD of my choice. I think I mentioned it, because I have this really awesome adhan by Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, from the sound track of a documentary on the Prophet Muhammad. It takes four minutes to complete and I linger in bed to hear the whole thing before beginning my diehard suhur routine.
I no longer have the paperwork that went with this lovely little device and each time I have to change it I am guessing at what to do. For one thing, it has two alarm options, and buttons light up to indicate which of the two. Buttons also light up to indicate a.m. and p.m. since it is not a 24 hour clock. The mistake I make most often is to set the alarm for p.m. instead of a.m., and then when I miss or oversleep I am surprised to hear the adhan at some time in the afternoon that day.
To make matters worse; after I changed the clock to 4:55 (I think, a.m.) I suddenly realized that he was NOT talking about the actual time for fajr prayer, but rather about the time they would be making the prayer AT THE mosque. The extra time is buffer. People are getting up for suhur, and then making their way to the mosque. Who knows how far those who attend the prayer in the mosque might have to travel to get there?
So, I changed the alarm time again. I still do not know what time I changed it to, because it did not go off in time for suhur. When I woke up it was already past time for the beginning of fajr, and therefore well past time for suhur. Some times when you sleep a little bit late you can do a suhur-in-5-minutes thing, but not this morning. I had one moment of panic, and then just decided that either Dr. Freud or Allah was at work about my complaining yesterday, and so today I do not fast. In my younger lither days I would have to persevere through out the day fasting without suhur, but not now, not at my age, so I am having my tea as I type.
No need to lie about it, no need to pretend. Missing this day is only an offense between me and Allah. The rules for remaking a day of missed fast, for what ever reason, will apply; and to these I humbly submit. But I cannot submit to them before I ask for forgiveness.
Yesterday my favorite imam read a story from the hadith literature. The Prophet, (saw) said the best thing is dhikr, remembrance to Allah, and after the dhikr of the names of Allah, the best dhikr is astaghfir-Allah I seek forgiveness from Allah. This is the best dhikr, the story goes, because it is a mediator between a sin or a wrong doing and Allah. He then elaborated the best way to make this dhikr: one hundred repetitions; and the best times to make it: after fajr prayer before sunrise, and after ‘asr or the afternoon prayer. I’m not a diehard about all these details, except to say that the 100 repetitions are pretty standard.
The specific times are a plus, I guess. I am just not capable of being that literal. But then again I guess that’s okay too, because even he reminded us that we should say it, at least once, all the time, or on any occasion that “we might forget Allah.” Forgetfulness is either the greater kind, when we commit sins, or the normal kind, when we are thoughtless or un-mindful. We are then called back to the truth of Allah’s continual presence by uttering to ourselves, “astaghfir-Allah”; so short, so sweet, so simple and yet so, so super powerful.
It is this mediation between our humble states as human creatures, who have to consciously remember Allah, dhikr-Allah, and therefore repeat “astaghfir-Allah” that was on my mind yesterday when I instead complained about my broken sleep. The (perhaps) most prolific scholar of Islamic law, ethics, philosophy and Sufism, Imam al-Ghazzali (12th c.) was once asked how often Allah would forgive? He answered, “As often as we ask.” That’s a lot like what my favorite imam said, we should say it all the time, and any time, as a mediator between our every day ordinary states of forgetfulness and the presence before the divine throne: astaghfir-Allah.
That’s all it takes.
Well at least, that’s all it takes when the sin or offence is against ourselves. Mind you there can be no offense against Allah, for that is the nature of the divine in Islam: untouched by our shortcomings, or our ranting, intentional or unintentional. You don’t curse God out of the heavens, so to speak. A sin is always and only against our own souls, or against our selves. Failure to arise in time for the suhur and subsequently missing a day of obligatory fasting is a sin against my own self. For this I must not only seek forgiveness for my soul astaghfir-Allah, but also I must expiate: make it up or do some other compensation should there be a greater condition preventing me from following through with the fasting or Ramadan.
A sin against another person however cannot be expiated by uttering astaghfir-Allah alone. A sin against another person is an offense that must be forgiven by the person offended, before it can be forgiven by Allah. I found this logic so powerful in the discourse of reconciliation in the public space. A few years ago I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a huge conference on multiculturalism and reconciliation. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, author of the book, A Human Being Died that Night, was another of the speakers.
She is a clinical psychologist by training, and was asked to serve on the truth and reconciliation committee after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Eventually, she was asked to act as personal psychologist for a man known as “the butcher of apartheid.” In her book, she examined how the phenomenon of forgiveness worked. Now I have to confess, before I heard her speak and then subsequently read the book, I had a long discussion with a Jewish participant. We were not comfortable with our perception that the Christian paradigm of forgiveness did not seem to require any expiation. We were doubtful that forgiveness and reconciliation could occur just on the part of some benevolence from the one(s) offended. We were not sure that you could just “overcome them with our capacity to forgive.”
So I listened to her, discussed it further with her, and then read her book, and this is the deal: the evidence shows that the perpetrator of a crime against another human being must seek forgiveness from the family and others if not the victim directly. What happened in South Africa was that the family would have the choice to forgive. By forgiving, they raise the perpetrator back up to a level of humanity lost by the act perpetuated. If the family or victim continued to hold a grudge, what actually happens, in a manner of speaking, is they are then brought down to the level of the one who did the offense.
This is the logistics of the Islamic paradigm of forgiveness when one offends another: Stop the offense, seek forgiveness from the one offended, and only after it is granted, then, do the astaghfir-Allah.
Yes, to err is human but apparently forgiveness is mutually shared: between the human and the divine. I think this is why so many offenses in human history have not been resolved: no one took responsibility for the offense, made it right, and address those offended. Sometimes, we think we can just redo the mistake and it should go away. But a hole is left open because something very human in the act of forgiveness is left out. Today we commemorate the famous march on Washington, let us hope the offense of racism finds such recompense in America.
In Malaysia and Indonesia, at the end of Ramadan there is a custom to seek forgiveness zahir and batin for offenses done knowing and unknowingly. We do not know all the time how our actions affect another person. So to keep the level of humanity in forgiveness straight let me say, in writing this blog, if I have offended anyone knowingly or unknowingly, please forgive me and astaghfir-Allah.
