Imam Shamil

Paradigms of Leadership - Friday Khutbah by Abdal Hakim Murad

Opening

Khutbah al-Hajah (Opening Khutbah)

Main Khutbah

The Miraculous Achievement of the Prophet ﷺ

Last year some of you may have been with us on our journey through the complex, always inspiring, always relevant landscape of the Sirah. And at various points on that journey, tracing that incomparably gripping story, we find ourselves confronted with inevitable questions. The story is one of historical record, but an almost inconceivably improbable achievement seems to have been the outcome, the happy ending.

The Arabs, pagan people, became monotheists. Tribal people became united. People with no interest in life after death became focused on life after death, and under one leader.

So, to what do we attribute this? Well, as believers, we attribute it first and last to the divine agency and the divine permission. This is what it is to be realizing the meaning of being (خَلِيفَةُ اللهِ - Khalifatullah). But we also, because the world has been set up in such a way as to enable us to see what, at least to our weak vision, seem to be factors, causes, consequences, linearity in the mysterious concatenation of forces that constitutes this rather odd material world in which we find ourselves.

The Problem with Modern Leadership Theory

The mystery of time itself - factors, and factors of success. And we noted at various points that the Holy Prophet ﷺ is inspirational not just to those who are interested in divine agency, permission, piety, sanctity, but also in terms of what we generally refer to as charisma, skill, diplomacy, statesmanship, generalship, the qualities that ancient Greeks would regard as specifically the manly virtues. And there have been several in recent years who have taken this story almost as a secular model.

Bracketing out the divine agency and saying, well, this is a real story that happened in space and time, and what lessons are there for us today to be gleaned from this story of brilliant leadership? John Adair has this book, "The Leadership of Muhammad," which a lot of Muslims are enthused by, and there are plenty of others. But what I'm going to suggest in this little series of lectures is that we need to be a little uncomfortable about importing such contemporary categories into our thought world.

Sometimes we have to import terminology that is not quite ours. So when we translate (إيمان - iman) sometimes we say faith. Yes, but not quite. When we translate (نبي - nabi), we say prophet. Yes, but not quite. The semantic resonances of the words are subtly different in the two linguistic universes, and we need to beware constantly of reinventing, reconfiguring Islam into a form of thinking and categories that seem to sit naturally with the Western or Anglo-Saxon linguistic frame.

The Enlightenment View of Leadership

Similarly, this category of leadership seems to me to be, to some degree, an alien imposition. So I'm going to start with that thought. Is it not the case that in our Enlightenment world, where the divine agency has been sidelined as a matter for private hobbyists' consideration rather than the governing explanation for the human narrative, that we like to make man the measure of all things, and therefore man as the author of his own destiny becomes glorified, becomes autonomous in a way that for earlier generations of human beings, whether monotheistic or polytheistic or pagan, would have seemed very strange and improper.

The glory of man. Humanism. The idea that man, through his own innate gifts and capacities, can take the horns of destiny and force them onto a new path. The idea of heroism. I mentioned a number of times last year the interesting book by the philosopher Carlyle, "Heroes and Hero-Worship." In this book he, as a leading exponent of Hegel's philosophy of history in high Victorian England, listed certain world historical individuals who, as he saw it, were the incarnation of Geistes, of spirits, of this ontological cosmic principle that somehow always moved things onwards.

Social Darwinism and Its Consequences

You can see how compatible that was with the Darwinian notions that were also breaking surface at the time, but of course the Victorians did see themselves as obviously the climax of a billion years of evolution. We began with amino acids and we end with the Church of England and the Raj, and this was generally accepted as something self-evident and not in need of interrogation. Carlyle was very much part of that world.

Social Darwinism. Marxists were in due season to take that perhaps to its logical conclusion. In fact we could say that many of the key catastrophes of the 20th century were the result of the politicising of Darwin. Communism took itself to be just helping natural selection along a little bit, and the Nazis took themselves to be helping natural selection along a little bit, and they collided, but ultimately they were singing from the same Darwinian hymn sheet.

The Islamic Alternative

But these, if you actually look at the Sirah, seem actually to have been not the considerations that weighed heavily. They were the considerations that mattered for Quraysh and his adversaries, who were the real schemers, those who were plotting and laying stratagems. But throughout the career of the Holy Prophet of Islam, we find instead the idea that one does one's duty and the rest is up to God.

But this idea of leadership seems more like part of the old tribal glorification of certain charismatic individuals than the prophetic model which is being enunciated in scripture.

The Problem of Muslim Leadership Awards

So let's begin with that thought. After all, the Muslim world and the British Ummah is awash now with leadership programs of various kinds. How to create great leaders for the Muslim community, and CMC, I suppose, is part of that industry, in a certain way.

Sometimes it can go to extremes that seem quite absurd, certainly without precedent in our culture. This idea of Muslim Achievement Awards, for instance. Who is voted the best Nasheed artist of 2018? Round of applause, and it's like the X Factor or something. Who is the Great Scholar of 2018? Round of applause, and here's a little badge, and the ambassador of somewhere comes along, and the MP is photographed next to you.

This is increasingly part of our celebrity-oriented culture in Western Islam, which I think is rather strange in the context of a religion where scholars and others have generally preferred not to be in the limelight, and where humility and (حَيَاء - haya) are almost a watchword of the religion. The Hadith says:

(Sunan Ibn Majah)

"Every religion has a particular, specific ethos, and the ethos of Islam is shyness, humility" - this is part of the prophetic greatness.

The Paradox of Prophetic Leadership

And again, last year I tried to point to what seems, in secular eyes, to be something paradoxical about him and his leadership. Who could doubt the virility of the way in which he led his people in peace and war? Magnificent. But at the same time, we see, for instance, all of those many hadiths which have him crying. That would be an interesting book, to put together all the occasions where the Holy Prophet is moved to tears by the death of a friend, by the death of his son, by joy. He wept frequently, as we don't.

He was soft-hearted, despite his leadership. There is another remarkable hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was more shy, more modest, than a virgin in her tent."

Sort of bashful. How does that fit with a man who's buckling on his armour on the eve of the Battle of Badr and escapes with his closest companion of the hijra and those magnificent leadership moments? That kind of bashfulness, shyness, won't be found in the contemporary management-speak leadership manuals.

The Islamic Understanding of Authority

We're dealing with something different here that is unfamiliar to those of us whose souls have been formed in the modern world. And this has to give us pause. If he is saying that the ethos of Islam is one of humility, shyness, bashfulness - it sounds almost stereotypically feminine - then where is leadership? Where is (مُرُوءَۃ - muruwa), virile manly strength? Which is also clearly an aspect of his prophetic perfection.

The Quranic Paradigms

The Quranic stories, which give you a variety of archetypes of the conflict that is in the world and in our souls between (فِرْعَوْن - Fir'aun) and (مُوسَیٰ - Musa) and (نِمْرُود - Nimrod) and (إبراهيم - Ibrahim) and all of those other face-offs between two principles, are emblems told to awaken our innate awareness that the world is a battle and we are the battleground of the principle of the spirit and the ego.

There is the magnificence of the pharaoh with his monster statues that last for 5,000 years because they are made out of such hard granite and his pyramids, and the magnificence of that. In the Fir'aun, he is up high, physical height, splendor. Seeing him in his court must have been stunning.

There is leadership. There is charisma, I guess. But opposing him and commended in the scripture, there is a different magnificence and a different leadership which doesn't really overlap with it at all.

Prophetic Hadiths on Authority and Leadership

Let's look at what the Holy Prophet says about this principle of leadership from Sahih al-Bukhari:

Chapter: Obedience to Authority

"Allah says: 'Obey Allah, obey the Messenger, and those who have authority amongst you.'"

The Hadith of Absolute Obedience

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"Whoever obeys me has obeyed Allah, and whoever disobeys me has disobeyed Allah. Whoever obeys my commander has obeyed me, and whoever disobeys my commander has disobeyed me."

The Hadith of Shepherding

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"Every one of you is a shepherd, and each one is answerable for his flock. The greatest leader who is an authority over people is a shepherd and is answerable for his flock. A man is the shepherd of his household and shall be called to account for his household. A woman is a shepherd over the people of her husband's house and his children, and she is also answerable for that."

So this is more like a kind of warning and a statement of fact than a glorification of being a leader. You'll be called to account.

The Warning Against Seeking Authority

Chapter: He Who Does Not Ask for Authority Will Be Helped

The Hadith of Abdur Rahman ibn Samura

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"O Abdur Rahman, do not seek authority, do not seek leadership, because if you are given it having asked for it, you will be left to it [on your own]. But if you are given it without asking for it, you will be helped in it."

The commentary explains : مَن وُكِلَ إِلَى نَفْسِهِ هَلَكَ - "Whoever is entrusted to his own self will be destroyed."

HEADING

SUBHEADING

The meaning of the hadith is that whoever seeks authority and is given it is not helped because of his ambition. From this we gain that to seek anything relating to authority is (مَكْرُوه - makruh) (disliked).

وَأَنَّ مَن حَرَصَ عَلَى ذَلِكَ لَا يُعَانُ - "And that whoever is zealous for such positions is not to be helped or will not be helped."

The Hadith Warning of Future Regret

(Reference: Sahih al-Bukhari)

"You shall certainly be ambitious for authority, and it will be a source of regret on the Day of Judgment. So blessed be the suckling, and wretched be the weaning."

The Holy Prophet ﷺ here is offering a prediction: you shall certainly be ambitious for authority, and it will be a source of regret on the Day of Judgment. The commentary explains that the suckling is the fortunate one who's enjoying this position when he's still attached in this world, but in the next world when he's detached from those comforts he will find himself in a state of regret and misfortune.

The Reality of Modern Self-Promotion

But where does that leave us in our contemporary situation? Because after all, applying for a job nowadays or competing for a ministerial portfolio in Whitehall - it's all about self-promotion, isn't it? You hire a PR firm to tell everybody about your achievements, you kind of structure stuff and you boast and you talk on news programs and you veil your faults and you play to the gallery and tell everybody how wonderful you are because you really want that job.

Now the Holy Prophet is telling us in this Bukhari hadith that if you do that and you have that strong ambitiousness, you're not going to be helped in it - you yourself will be your aid. In other words, there won't be divine assistance; you're just relying on your own capacities.

The Independence of Scholars from Political Authority

One of the things we're going to be looking at in these lectures is the independence of the people of religion - the faith leaders of Islam - from political authority. مُوسَى cannot be the وزير الأوقاف )Minister of Religious Affairs فِرْعَن cannot co-opt him, and مُوسَى will not allow himself to be co-opted.

And this is one of the harshnesses of the scholar's vocation: that the people love the scholars and are doubtful about the rulers, and they're looking to the scholars for guidance. To be in that Mosaic place... and nowadays, across the Ummah, we find the nationalization of the ulama, the co-opting of the people who should be the heirs of the prophets.

The Example of Imam Shamil

I want to conclude today with one particular instance of this: Imam Shamil of the Caucasus. He's worth dwelling upon because of his being kind of on the cusp of modernity. He's not from some Mamluk past - he's dealing with the reality of European conquest, the European determination to institutionalize religion and to co-opt it, and dealing with a situation of genocide.

The Caucasus Context

So he's from Dagestan, the Caucasus. If you go to their main madrasa in Khasavyurt in Dagestan, 20 lecture rooms - each one is named after an alim of Dagestan who's been assassinated in the last 20 years. And that's how touchy things are.

But it's a very ancient Muslim place. Derbent in the south was called by the Arabs (باب الْأَبْوَاب - Babal Abwab), and it is an ancient city, a UNESCO heritage site. Sahaba buried there, really beautiful.

The Challenge of Unity

The fear of other Muslims in the Caucasus - who'd always been fighting each other - was that the same was going to happen to them as happened to Circassia: Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Abkhazia. All of these are the Muslim peoples, and so the only way of resisting the Russians was somehow to unite. Not easy, because they are mountain people, and like a lot of mountain people in the Balkans, Lebanon, elsewhere, they have a culture of vendetta.

The prevailing law was called the (عَادَات - adat) - even though they respected the Sharia, the law that was kind of customary law was in many cases something that cemented the jahili divisions of the Caucasian people. So it was clearly a matter of survival for these people faced with the extreme brutality of the Cossacks and the invading forces - people really facing liquidation, genocide.

Imam Shamil's Reluctant Leadership

We have the great figure of Imam Shamil - Naqshbandi chieftain who was an Avar. He became one of the best-known Muslim leaders or heroes of the 19th century.

Imam Shamil is appointed by his teacher Ghazi Mullah. It's clear that he doesn't want to do any of this. It's evident that his real concern is (ذِكْر - dhikr) and with implementation of the divine law. But given this force majeure of the possibility of Serbian-style ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus, he has no choice but to take on the mantle of being a leader.

But at every point he maintains his independence and his austere and ascetical lifestyle. His food is the food of everyone else. He lives in a very simple stone hut throughout the quite excruciating Caucasian winters at altitude. He shares their suffering. He is at the front line of combat.

The Mosaic Spirit

And in this we detect something of the prophetic Muhammadan spirit: true leadership which does not lead from behind but from the front, and which does things not because one desires some kind of glory in the style of Napoleon and so many others - "la gloire" - but rather because one is obliged by Allah's law and by the urgent entreaties of one's people to take up this mantle.

But at all times, despite being angry at what the Russians had done - and it was a righteous anger - at no point does his anger lead him into needless massacre and mayhem. He treats hostages and prisoners honorably. Despite the fact that the Russians cheat him at every opportunity, he always upholds his undertakings.

The True Nature of Islamic Leadership

And thus is his memory in Medina with his family and in the Caucasus. Much of the Ummah still revered as somebody who was Mosaic and not Pharaonic - somebody who did not wish for leadership but had it thrust upon him, and as a result - as is promised in the Hadith of the Holy Prophet - was given help in his leadership.

Nobody today particularly reveres those generals and those tsars, but who doesn't revere the memory of Imam Shamil? And even this romantic fiction writer Leslie Blanche really admires the man, though she had nothing to do with Islam. This is how dawah exists. This is how leadership should be.

But it doesn't have much to do with the kind of self-seeking, self-promoting flip-chart culture of the leadership programs in today's Ummah. It's to do with spiritual charisma and self-denial: to the extent that you deny the ego, you can exercise just authority and Allah will help you. To the extent that your ego is in it and your rise to fame and fortune is an ego trip, you're going to be a disaster to the world.

Conclusion

And we see this today in Washington, Moscow, so many places: egos result in the destruction of the رَعِيَّة (ra'iya) and the humiliation of many.

So that's the end of this rather brief introduction and outline to the life of Imam Shamil. But worth reading more about because it's a very dramatic, heroic, buccaneering kind of story in an age when things were looking bleak - as they are today - but still the Ummah continues and Islam is still there and thriving in the Caucasus.

Muslim population in Russia continues to grow: they don't drink so much, they don't have as many abortions, they have big families, and the Ummah الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ continues to grow there.

So who would have thought in Imam Shamil's time that there would be 160,000 people praying their Eid prayer at the Olympic Stadium Mosque in Moscow? You can see it from the space station apparently - it's

extraordinary, a huge jama'ah.

So واللهُ خَيْرٌ الْمَاكِرِينَ - "Allah is the best of planners."

Closing Dua

رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ

وَآخِرُ دَعْوَانَا أَنِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ

وَاللهُ أَعْلَمُ

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ