Interview with Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

I did this interview with Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi as part of my research for a PhD thesis entitled: “Sufi epistemology encounters modernity in the Tariqa of the Sufi Master Abdalqadir as-Sufi.” The interview is published for the benefit of the fuqara and all those who wish to learn about Islam and Sufism.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir has shown that: (i) Sufism originated in Islam; (ii) the shari‘a and Sufism are inextricably connected; and (iii) politics constitutes an essential element of the shari‘a.

Furthermore Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir has indicated that the means for resolving the key problems facing contemporary society can be found in the Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas. Imam Malik’s teaching of the ‘amal ahl al-Madina (the practice of the first three generations of Muslims in Madina) eliminates the split between the inner and outer aspects of human personality; possesses the methodology for determining correct behaviour (usul al-fiqh); and affirms the relationship between political power and belief. For Imam Malik, practice or behaviour is evidence of knowledge, or to put it differently, the ‘amal ahl alMadina guarantees that theory and practice are inseparable. The deen of Islam in Imam Malik’s view was not something people thought but something they did and the truth of the deen was acquired through practical action, which in turn led to the knowledge of deeper levels of being (ma‘rifa).

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir points out that when there is a split between the inner and outer dimensions of the human personality, as is prevalent in modern society, human beings lose contact with reality (haqiqa). The mass psychosis of modern society does not reside in the people’s acceptance of the media’s fictionalised and propagandist versions of democracy and capitalism. That is a secondary issue. The primary cause of the psychosis lies at the core of the capitalist system, its motor force, the usurious money supply and oligarchy. Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir is of the view that the cause of the crisis of modern civilization is rejection of Divine guidance and he has dedicated his life to making that guidance available to humankind. Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir is a Shaykh of Tarbiyya (Instruction) and leader of the Qadiri-Shadhili-Darqawi Tariqa. He is also the founder of Dallas College and the Murabitun World Movement.

Riyad Asvat

20 September, 2013

 

The Interview

Riyad: Thank you very much, Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi, for your time. My questions are focused and basic but please feel free to take your time when answering them.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: I would like to make a comment, if I may. I would just like to say that from the day I became Muslim until now there has only been one point at which I changed my position and views, and that was when I was put in Khalwa by Shaykh al-Fayturi. When I came out of the Khalwa I was in a state of what you might call bewilderment, and I said, “What am I to do?” Shaykh al-Fayturi said, “After you have been to the House of Allah, there is nowhere to go except Madinah.” It was from that point on that I realised that the very foundations of Islam had been abandoned.

In the matter of Tasawwuf it is axiomatic and everyone agrees that there is no Sufism without the Shari’a of Islam. But the truth of the matter is that Islam has been abandoned. You cannot have Tasawwuf in its fullness unless you have Islamic fundamentals established. Now, the pillar of Zakat has fallen, since there is nowhere today that Zakat is taken by Zakat collectors. Zakat is not a given sadaqa, it has to be taken. It is the foundation of the state of the Muslims.

In the Qur’an we find that it says: Purify yourself with the Zakat. In as much as Tasawwuf is purification of the self, this means you cannot have it unless you have Zakat. So you cannot talk about ‘states’ and ‘stations’, you cannot talk about dhawq, you cannot even dare to talk about fana and baqa when you do not have the fundamentals of the Zakat. You cannot have Sufism in a bordello. That is really the point.

All the work to re-establish the fundamentals of the Fiqh has been going in opposition to the abandonment of the Deen of Islam, primarily by the Arab peoples themselves. The disbanding of that and the unveiling of the swindle of the idea that the Shi’a were a sect of Islam – when in fact they are an anti-Islam – that has been the background to my activity.

To sum up I would say that Tasawwuf is Futuwwa. It is not Ma’rifa. Ma’rifa is the secret of Tasawwuf, but Tasawwuf in itself is Futuwwa. It is the building and creating of excellence of character in the Jama’at. That is Tasawwuf. Hidden in that is the secret of Ma’rifa and only Allah knows where it goes among the Fuqara. That is the fundamental position I have: Tasawwuf is Futuwwa and its secret is Ma’rifa – not the opposite way around like you now get in the subcontinent and North Africa.

Imam al-Junayd used to say, “If I knew of a higher science than Tasawwuf I would have gone to it on my hands and knees.” It is a science but the point is that it does not change in any way. There is a realism in men of knowledge that they have to adapt to what is in front of them. There was a great Sufi who was working up in the mountains of the Tafilalet of Morocco and he had heard that the tribes had started worshipping animal spirits and all this stuff, so he went to try to clean it all up. Word got to the Fuqaha in Fes: “Oh, there’s this Sufi up in the mountains doing da’wa to the hill people” and this Fasi ‘alim said, “I’ll go and check it out.” They were very fine and sophisticated ‘ulama in Fes. So the ‘alim went up to the mountain and he went into the tiny little Mosque, and one of the peasants came stomping in with his boots covered in mud and filth and did two rak’ats, and the ‘alim looked in horror at these enormous boots in the Mosque. Then he met the Sufi and he said, “I was in the Mosque and this peasant came in, in his boots! I thought you were here to teach them Islam!” The Sufi said, “Look here, it has taken me two years to get them into the Mosque. YOU get the boots off!” That is Tasawwuf. It is knowing – it is knowledge of the self. Knowledge of the self is not Freudian psychology, it is not psychiatric, it is existential.

Riyad: What were the intellectual trends that influenced you prior to your conversion to Islam?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, you see, we don’t like the word ‘conversion’. Muslims do not like the word ‘conversion’ because it means you have been taken away from the natural. Christianity is an unnatural religion, imposing an ideology of magical transactions – bread and wine and so on. Judaism is a tribal religion so it is pure, but just for its own people. I cannot ‘convert’ to Judaism because I am not one of the tribe, but you convert to Christianity because you change reality and believe that bread is flesh and wine is blood, so you have to enter a zone of imagination.

Now, Islam is Deen al-Fitra. It is the transaction of nature. In that sense, becoming Muslim was like waking up and recognising how things are. It is recognition. We say that you enter Islam, like you enter a house. When the Muslims conquered a land they said that they ‘opened’ it to Islam.

As to your question, if I knew the answer to that then I would know everything! I mean, basically all the dreadful things I did, all the appalling things I did, took me to the point where I had to ask serious questions. So it was not by my virtue I became Muslim but by a wonderful series of wrong actions for which I am always grateful!

Riyad: How and when did you enter Islam?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: It is so long ago to remember. It’s nearly half a century ago! Well, I became Muslim, I said the Shahada, with the Imam Khatib of the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fes and my witnesses were Shaykh ‘Abdalkarim Da’udi, the Imam, and ‘Allal alFassi who was the head of the Istiqlal Party of Morocco. ‘Allal al-Fassi was a modernist and he was a militant opponent of the King. He said to me, “Have nothing to do with the Sufis.” I then later said to him, “What do you say about Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib?” and in fact Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib had taught ‘Allal alFasi Arabic at the Qarawiyyin and ‘Allal al-Fasi was famous for his great Arabic, his discourses were famous. When I said his name he said, “Oh well, he’s different!”

That was also when I saw that people see things outside as if ‘they are the ‘ulama’, ‘they are the Sufis’, ‘they are the modernists’ – they separate it all out. But the truth is that, apart from the Shi’a, we all pray together and we don’t look at ourselves that way, in the way outsiders do. I met some Somalis the other day and I said, “I make du’a for your Sufis and for your Wahhabis and for your pirates!”

Riyad: What were your reasons for entering Islam?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: All the reasons in the world. Reason itself! In my youth I met a lot of Christian divines who were very highly respected in the Christian community, one of whom was Charles Raven, a very highly respected Anglican theologian. Charles Raven was a very enchanting man, he was vice-chancellor of Cambridge University and professor there, and he told me that he did not formerly believe in anything. He started to study the science of ornithology and he said to me, “the science of ornithology convinced me of the existence of God because I was confronted with something of such intricacy and sophistication and synchronicity of events in the world of the birds that there was no other thing but to recognise it as a spiritual, divine phenomenon. I became a believer through my ornithology – and my Anglicanism was just the atmosphere in which I fulfilled my duties to God.” I suppose you could say that I am the same.

Riyad: What made you incline towards Sufism?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: I didn’t ‘incline’ towards Sufism. I knew it was the core of the knowledge in Islam and I knew that you couldn’t get it without Islam. I knew you had to enter Islam for this thing. Western people thought you could have Sufism without Islam – gangsters, like Idris Shah and these dogs. You cannot do it. You have to enter Islam and Qur’an says: “Enter houses through their doors.” So one had to enter by the Shahada, and Shahada is witnessing. It means witnessing and Tasawwuf from one point of view is witnessing the Divine. Interesting question!

Riyad: How did you meet your first Shaykh?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: If you ask the question, “How did you find him?” that lets me answer

“I didn’t find him – but he found me!” I had heard that there was a great Shaykh in Meknes so I went to his Zawiyya but he wasn’t there. One of his leading Fuqara said, “I know where he is. He is out in the country, he has gone to the house of so-and-so… I’ll take you. We can drive and see him.” So we drove all the way for an hour or two into the country and arrived at this big, big farmhouse, and as we got out of the car the owner of the house ran forward and said, “Oh what a pity! You’ve just missed Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib… he’s just left!” We were so disappointed, but he said, “Oh never mind, come in!” – and you know Moroccan hospitality – “Come in and have some tea!” So he took us in, we sat down, and we were having tea when suddenly one of the servants rushed in saying, “He’s come back, he’s come back! The Shaykh has come back!” and Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib’s car drew up and he got out.

His chauffeur was saying, “I don’t know what this man is doing – we’re on our way to Meknes and he says, “Go back!” And I said, “What?” and he says, “I’ve forgotten something. Go back.” That was my meeting with him. He found me!

Riyad: Which aspects of his teaching made the biggest impact on you?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: No aspect. He made the biggest impact. He made the biggest impact. There was no aspect, it was him. It was pure, pure Islam under the Fiqh of Imam Malik. There was no aspect. The impact was the Shaykh. He was an extraordinary man. I mean, again it is a matter of ‘amal. Everything comes down to behaviour. When King Muhammad V was returned to power in Morocco – which is something the Shaykh had fought to bring about – all the Sufi shuyukh were told they had to go to Rabat and make Bayat to the king and put their hand to him, but Shaykh ibn al-Habib said, “I won’t go. I only know one King and I won’t go.” They said to him, “Well, if you don’t go, you’ll be in big trouble and you’ll probably end up in prison,” and he said, “I don’t care. That is not my business.” He refused to go, so then they said, “Well, if you don’t go, it won’t only bring trouble for you but for all your Fuqara.” So he went.

On the day of the meeting in Rabat there was a hall and all these great Sufi shaykhs from all over Morocco were there to bow their necks to the king. They were all sitting there and at the very last minute they heard this tapping of the walking stick of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, as he came right through the middle of them, and they said amongst themselves, “Ah! He’s come! We knew he’d come.” And he climbed up onto the platform. He turned around and greeted the people. Then he said, “I have come to greet you all and wish you benefit in your meeting, and I have come to apologise that I am unable to attend as I have something else I have to do. AsSalamu ‘alaykum.” – I mean! It is said that the good butcher doesn’t break the bone, he cuts around the socket of the bone!

Riyad: I see what you mean when you say, “It was him.”

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Yes, it was his way of dealing with things.

Riyad: Your Shaykh’s Diwan is regarded as one of the great classic texts on Tasawwuf. Could you please tell us about it?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, it is in very high Arabic. His Fuqara used to teach their children Arabic using his Diwan as the Arabic is so high. People who know Arabic and know nothing of Tasawwuf, they read it and collapse because of the Arabic! The content speaks for itself.

Riyad: I don’t know if you’ve already answered this question but can you tell us something of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib’s personal characteristics?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, when you were with him he reminded you of Allah. That is who he was. When you were with him he reminded you of Allah. And later I was dining with ‘Allal al-Fasi, this great political leader, and he kept saying, “You know, you mustn’t have a shaykh” and at that point a messenger came running in, fell on his knees, kissed ‘Allal al-Fasi’s hand and gave him a document. I said to him, “But sir, you are a shaykh! But you are a shaykh of this world, of the dunya, and he is a shaykh of knowledge. You cannot say ‘you mustn’t have a shaykh’. The thing is that when I see you, you remind me of all the crises of the world. When I see him, he reminds me of Allah.” Again, it says in the Diwan, “The Shaykh reminds people of Allah” and Qur’an says: “When you forget, remember.”

Riyad: Tell us about the period between the passing of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib and your meeting with your second Shaykh.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: The interesting thing about my second Shaykh is that Shaykh Ibn al-Habib found me and Shaykh al-Fayturi found me. We were with a community of new Muslims in Bristol Gardens in London when an enormous black, diplomatic car drew up outside the door and out stepped someone from the Libyan Embassy. It was a young man who said “I have come from my Shaykh. We heard about you and he sent me to go and see you and to tell you: ‘Come and visit me’.” We had several connections after that and it was after that that I decided to go and visit him. But he sent someone to get me, and when he came I turned to Hajj ‘Abdalaziz, rahimahullah and said, “He’s come to get me!” From there I ended up in Benghazi – a very different Benghazi from the one we have now.

Riyad: This is an aspect that not much is written about that I could find. The question is: can you outline for us the procedures of the Khalwa?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Absolutely not!

[laughter] No! No.

Riyad: The next question is: can you tell us about Fana?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: No. You see… there are things you do not talk about. There are two lines of the Diwan where Shaykh ibn al-Habib says, “Ya taliban fana fillah, qul da’iman ‘Allah, Allah.’ Wa ghib fihi an siwahu, washhad bi qalbika Allah.”^[1] That is the answer. It is in the Diwan. There is an Adab about it you see. They say that if you talk about a beautiful woman in front of other men, you are insulting her. Is that not right? You are cheapening her. Next question!

Riyad: What advice did your Shaykh, Shaykh alFayturi, give you when you became a shaykh?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: He said, “Now no hand is over your hand.” That is all he said. And he made this wonderful remark I mentioned: “After you have been to the House of Allah, where do you go except to Madinah?” So you have to go to the fundamentals of the Deen. That’s all.

Riyad: How did you come to the conclusion that the ‘Amal Ahl al-Madinah was the best expression of Islam or Islamic practice?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, it is a source you see. There is one movement of people called the Salaf. In other words, they follow the original community of Islam, but the truth of the matter is that the Salaf were the people of Madinah. The people who call themselves Salaf are not Salafi because actually they follow Ibn Taymiyyah, who was a great mediaeval scholar, but the School of Madinah is the teaching of Imam Malik. It is just another way of saying that Imam Malik is not the ‘father’ of a Madhhab, of a School, he is the Imam of Dar al-Hijra. Imam Malik is the one who embodies all the teaching and science of Madinah. Madinah means ‘the city of the Deen’, the ‘place of the Deen’, the place of the religion itself. I don’t have to defend it – Ibn Taymiyyah, who was in fact a Hanbali, wrote a very important text called ‘The Superiority of the Amal of the Ahl al-Madinah over all the Schools’^[2] – so he is my defender!

Riyad: Would you say that the Murabitun Da’wa Movement grew out of your understanding of the ‘Amal Ahl al-Madinah?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: No, it grew out of energy really. It grew out of the Fuqara. It grew out of the people who had entered Islam and became part of it, and through the strong support of Muslims who were already there who liked what they saw. We were entering the stream of something that was already there. My strongest allies have always been Punjabis, so they were then and they are now. They are people with a strong Deen and a strong character. For instance Colonel Rahim, rahimahullah, who wrote ‘Jesus, Prophet of Islam’. Mirza Rashid, the barrister – Punjabi. I have always had these supports. I mean, the Deen is strong in the subcontinent. It is now basically vanished from the Arabs. It is gone.

Riyad: What would you regard as the priorities of the Movement?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Staying together, helping each other, and not fighting. Those are priorities! It is an elite, and so they have an obligation not to fight each other. That is the only way it can spill out and strengthen other people.

Riyad: You have repeatedly said that the present society, based as it is on modernity, must eventually or inevitably crumble.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, could I change that? It does look as if it is crumbling! Its not prophecy, its news! You see it every day.

Riyad: How do you think Islam can rescue mankind from the annihilation being brought about?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “Every age, from my time until the end of time, will be worse than the one before it.” And he said that at the end you will not find anyone who will say La ilaha illallah. It is running down, we don’t believe in happy endings. Happy endings are for the next world, but the world runs down – entropy. But Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam said that if the Last Day comes upon you while you are planting a tree, go on planting the tree. That’s Tasawwuf. That’s how you deal with reality. It is the Shi’a who have an apocalyptic happy ending with angels descending and everyone’s happy and the Mahdi turns up and they have a party – its nonsense. We are not utopians or futurists. We are dealing with now, not the future. The only encouraging thing is when you read the documents of high, high people of other epochs, they say, “This is the worst age that has ever been and never has there been something as bad as this!” I mean, Tacitus said his age was “the most appalling age. We have just lived through the most hellish age, nothing can be as bad as this!” They were saying it in the Renaissance. And they are still saying it, so we have to get on with it. [laughs and pauses] One must be a long-term optimist and a short-term pessimist.

Riyad: What role can the Murabitun Movement play in the revival of Islam?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Themselves. You see, the most you can do is produce men and women of quality. You need the yeast, and when you have the yeast you have to put it in the bread. It has been the same in every age and every place. The people of knowledge raise up everything around them, by calling things by their proper names, not by ideology.

Riyad: How do you understand what has come to be called ‘the global financial crisis’?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Usury. It’s just usury. It’s taking excess in return. The usury is against nature. We don’t need Islam to tell us that because the Christians had it already. It is ‘contra naturam’ – against nature. There is a limited amount of stuff in the world so you cannot keep increasing and increasing it every time you exchange something. It is not possible. This is what is happening now and it is against nature. Calling it capitalism, calling it, as Marx, who was paid by the Rothschilds, did – ‘surplus value’ – these are polite words. This is like ‘rendition’. When you do something nasty you use a polite word for it, but it is usury. There is no global crisis. You just can’t keep asking for more and more and more every time you make an exchange. And they know it because even to deal with the crisis they have had to reduce the interest to half a percent as if it were just an unfortunate crisis and the minute the crisis is over they will start taking it all back again.

It is usury. But continuing in the practice of usury is madness, it is psychosis. The thing itself is a mathematic swindle, but to practice it is a psychosis. It is not clever. It is a form of madness because you are believing something you know is untrue which is what madness is. It is not that you don’t know. You do know and you still behave that way. So what they call ‘capitalism’ is usury and what they call ‘usury’ is a kind of madness. It has a psychology, it is a psychosis – a greedy psychosis! Mad people usually get thinner and thinner don’t they? Emaciated. But the usurers get fatter and fatter! It’s a very special psychosis.

Riyad: What role do trade and commerce play in an Islamic society?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Islam IS trade and commerce. There are two business contracts: one with God, and one with men. The first one is La ilaha illallah, and that is ‘ibada, worship of God – and that is the primary contract. The secondary contract is trade, exchange, and the exchange has to have rules, including all the rules that prevent usury. Imam Malik said, “No usury even to a blade of grass.” That is the second Shahada: Muhammad Rasulullah – and that is trade. That is the answer. Islam is nothing but transactions. Transactions with Allah – ‘ibada, transactions between men and exchange of stuff is Fiqh. Islam is not complicated, you see. Part of the psychosis of modern people is that they have made everything complicated. All the transactions of today and people now see it, simple people now see it. People on the streets of Athens and New York and Tel Aviv and Paris and London who are rioting have seen it. They are not stupid, but the madness goes on… for a little!

Riyad: You have been very active with the minting of gold and silver coins. What is the significance of these coins?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well the reason I left Christianity was because the christians said that when you took this bread it was flesh – hic est corpus – and the wine was the blood of Jesus, Allah forgive us. The priests had an inquisition in Spain such that if you didn’t believe this they tortured you and burned you. But the peasants have an expression – they say, “This man is sound: he calls bread, bread and wine, wine.” Which meant that he didn’t tell the lie of the priests that the bread and wine were the flesh and blood of Jesus. He called bread, bread and wine, wine – not bread as a sacrament and wine as a sacrament.

It is the same with the people who are trading stuff that isn’t there. What the christians did with the bread and the wine, through the priests who ruled Europe for three, four hundred years, now the bankers are doing it with the money. They are calling paper, gold. They are calling plastic, ‘gold cards’. It is mad. It is plastic, it is rubbish! The whole thing is a swindle from top to bottom. But gold is gold. De Gaulle said, “Everybody knows that gold has value.” He was a man of humility and the moment he said it they had him thrown out. He was a great president of France who said that they must stop using the dollar and use gold and within a year they had him thrown out and in exile in Ireland. Taking his place was a member of the Rothschild family, Mr. Pompidou. So … I am not alone! De Gaulle is my witness! Gold is gold. It is the practice of the People of Madinah. It is Sunna. It is the practice of the Muslims and always has been.

Parvez’s ^[3] brother Tariq, who is from the Punjab, is making coins and he is using the seal that was used by the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan for the Dinar in the Mogul Empire. ‘Business as usual’. We’ve just opened shop, that’s all! It is getting interesting.

Riyad: What are the reasons for establishing Dallas College?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, it’s just education, because people are taught just to go out and make money for these other people and they themselves will get a little reward whilst these other people will get vast millions and billions of reward. I wanted some people who would know who they were and where they were and what they were doing. So there are different things to study. Our curriculum is not the same one as at the University of Cape Town or Cambridge or Oxford because they have stopped teaching. There is no teaching of what happens in the world. I mean, an interesting aspect of this is that I am at the minute writing a book on the great Roman political writers, and I found out that all the important commentaries have been written by women. My explanation is that men think, “This is completely useless and nobody is going to pay any attention to this, so these women can play with it like they used to play with embroidery and knitting.” And now we have got these spectacular books written by these brilliant women scholars because the men don’t see any future in it. They don’t relate it to what they call ‘the real world outside’ but in fact it’s the only thing that does relate to the real world outside. It’s not an accident that the commentaries are written by women because that is a proof that the women are more free than the men in our society. They are more real. Does that make sense? It is very interesting. The books are wonderful… not one or two but I have got five books by women scholars from California to Durham and Cambridge and other funny universities, but the writing is spectacular – about the ancient Romans.

And the men? They don’t know what the hell is going on. They’ve got these politicians and just look at them. I mean, the President of the Republic of France was on television last night to tell the people, “I am going to rescue this terrible financial crisis. I am going to increase your value added tax – so every time you purchase something it’s going to go up to 20%.” So every time you buy something, 20% of that money, you give to the bankers! You see? At the same time, that money will not be used for your hospitals and your education and your universities, it will go into the banks. He’s gone mad! I don’t have to explain anything – but they have a lot of explaining to do.

Riyad: What role do you envisage for the traditional Islamic universities such as Qarawiyyin, Az-Zaytuna and al-Azhar?

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well, the Qarawiyyin in Fes has a great tradition in teaching the Arabic language. The Azhar: Sa’id Ramadan who was a friend of mine, who was married to Hasan al-Banna’s daughter, founder of the Ikhwan al-Muslimun, he had a superb intellect. He was tortured dreadfully by Nasser’s people. He used to say to me, “Don’t worry, I can get you a fatwa for anything from the Azhar. They’ll make anything halal. Anything you need, they’ll give it to you!” So, you know, that was the standing they had because they had so betrayed themselves to first Nasser then Sadat, then Mubarak, and now, you know, the Ikhwan al-Muslimun themselves have become the dictators of choice. The Azhar used to be a very great institution and Shaykh ‘Illish was the great defender of the Fiqh of Imam Malik and he cast out all these modernists in his time. He drove them out with his sword. He chased them down the corridors of the Azhar with his sword!

The Qarawiyyin has a great tradition and there are places in the Sahara, in Algeria and in the Tafilalet of Morocco where they are teaching pure, pure, pure Deen, that’s for sure. I can’t answer for the Himalayas. So it’s all there.

But the Arab world is bereft, you see.

Riyad: That was the last of my twenty-five questions!

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Twenty-five questions! Do I get a prize?

Riyad: The twenty-sixth question should be ‘How do you ask the right questions?’ I need to learn that.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well let’s go back to Dallas College, you see. If you want to understand Australia, you have to read D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Kangaroo’ and if you want to understand World War II then you have to read Malaparte’s ‘The Skin’ – ‘La Pelle’. There are these works that illuminate things for you. It is the same with Ernst Junger. If you want to understand the crisis of modern thinking you have to read Ernst Junger because he has seen into it with great depth. It is these sorts of books that one is putting to people. You can’t make sense of Australia if you talk demographics and trade or even anthropology – that does not make sense of anything, but if you read ‘Kangaroo’, with imagination, not as a reportage, then you understand the relationship of the people of Australia to the land.

Riyad: D.H. Lawrence irritates a lot of Australians because they don’t like what he has written. They say that he stayed for just a short time.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Well I mean you only need to be with a person for one minute to know who they are, so how long do you have to stay in a country? A thousand years? In a minute you know exactly. But Lawrence was a great, great man and he saw. It doesn’t take long to see, and he understood something, you see, and it was about the relationship between the land and the people. It’s the dislocation there that is the crisis of Australia, not the Indonesians. And it will not be the Chinese. They will still have the same thing to deal with.

Lawrence irritates a lot of English people too, for the same reasons! He lived there for ages and they still don’t like him. He was a great writer and his book ‘The Fantasia of the Unconscious’ was a very important book.

The Australians should maybe ask why he left. Maybe that is the question.

Riyad: They don’t deal with the real issues. Now they are allowing the Americans to open a military base in Darwin and the reason for that is that they say the Asians are going to invade.

Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi: Yes but you know, if you want to protect yourself, you don’t get a crippled alcoholic to defend you. You get a Samurai! They can’t defend themselves. The military base will not help Australia any more than all the military bases in the United States have stopped Mexico invading the country systematically for the last fifty years. When I first went to America there was great excitement in Texas about new restaurants called Texmex where they served half Texan food and half Mexican food. Now you have these restaurants on the frontiers of Canada. They say “Oh, we have trouble with these Mexican gangs in Los Angeles and Arizona” but they are not gangs at all. They are the advanced army of the Mexican people! They are an occupying, invading force. The idiots don’t realise that they are armies. They are tattooed, they have vows of loyalty and leadership – nothing as in America. They have completely taken over the country step by step. It is quite interesting. Again, if you want to understand Mexico then you have to read D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Plumed Serpent’. And if you want to understand England you have to read ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. All the crisis of the class conflict is there. It is brilliant.

I mean, I don’t like Lawrence, but you don’t dislike your doctor when he gives you the medicine. If you know he’ll diagnose correctly then you’ll put up with him. It’s not an intellectual thing of ‘I don’t like the doctor’s face’, it’s ‘I don’t like his medicine’. I mean, I’d run if Lawrence came into the room because he must have been a monster, but my God, he saw what was happening.

Although, he wasn’t altogether dreadful.

Let’s make Fatiha.

Riyad Asvat