(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

When my father-in-law passed away last year, someone advised that his tombstone should not be raised above the ground. When I asked why, I was told that this is how it should be done in Islam, and that any structure erected above the earth level is forbidden.

Abu Khattab, God bless his soul, was a man whom I especially loved and admired, and of course, no amount of elaborate masonry would have done justice to his cherished memory.

But I was still furious at the prevailing presumption that Islam had wanted it to be that way, and that’s why the suggestion was swiftly overruled.

These widespread fallacies made me think again about the true rationale for this edict about inconspicuous graves. Don’t kid yourself, for it has nothing to do with austerity or any other spiritual explanation. These teachings are in fact an integral part of the larger “uglification” conspiracy and an essential tool of the concerted campaign to erase our history.

It’s a simple equation. Since Muslims have fascinated the world with their breathtaking mausoleums from India to Marrakesh, so why not hit them where it hurts the most, by decreeing that beauty and art are forbidden in such fields? And where better to start? Armed with this poisonous ideology, the Wahabist bulldozers set off to work razing to the ground the most sacred burial places in Islam, the graves of Al Baqe’e, the resting place for the companions (Sahaba) of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, leaving unmarked bricks on barren land where domed enclaves once existed. The Sahaba’s old houses in Mecca did not escape the criminal destruction either and were also completely flattened.

Like the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan were dynamited by another Wahabist creation, today there is no archaeological trace of the old Mecca in order to chronicle the origins of the existence of Islam. It is gone forever and has all been replaced by ugly hotels and shopping malls. The madmen justified their actions by the ridiculous claim that it was feared Muslims would worship the shrines themselves, and hence it would constitute a return to idolatry which Islam had wiped out.

This assumption that Muslims are such a bunch of morons that they would today relapse into worshipping edifices built of stone after 1400 years of quitting the habit because they can’t tell the difference between a brick and a God perhaps should also make us demolish Al Ka’ba while we’re at it, lest we mistake it for a dark chocolate cube and eat it. These treacherous hands have even reached the tomb of the Prophet’s beloved wife, Khadijah, the first person to embrace Islam and the staunch incubator of the new faith. When you contrast the magnificent splendor that bejeweled the different mausoleums throughout our history, and when you see the current shameful shape of Khadija’s tomb, you will understand exactly why this was done and how they want Islam to look like in the eyes of the world: hideous and plain ugly.

These clerics with bulldozers claim that this is the correct Islamic way, and this begs my question: why do these 20^th century newcomers and their forged textbooks think that they know more about our religion and what it allows or forbids than the contemporaries of Islam’s revelation and their offspring, from the Rahsideen up to the Ottomans, whose testimonial monuments have, by God’s grace and His merciful providence, escaped the ruinous claws of the “uglifiers” and still stand tall for the whole world to marvel at? Read More »

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

I always wondered whether there was a deliberate Western conspiracy for the “uglification” of Islam, or whether it was the Muslims themselves who did not need outside help in this regard. I accidentally coined the term “uglification” a little more than a year ago on these pages, and by that, I was referring to the stubborn campaign to reduce Islam into a peculiar sect of sorcery and senseless mythology.

This campaign is underway to represent Islam as devoid of beauty and good taste, despite the overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, and the slanderous attempts to turn its prophet into a prolific babbler of jumbled fairytales, instead of the magnanimous humanitarian and genius – and even revolutionary women’s rights advocate – that evidence shows he truly had been. While I’m not usually prone to believing conspiracy theories, I did encounter personal evidence proving that the elaborate plot of “uglification” was a result of a mixture between the two: our own devastating ignorance and adherence to forged texts, but also the West’s active participation in promoting and perpetuating the outright lies.

One case in point which I shall never be able to forget took place exactly twenty years ago, during my first weeks at Charterhouse, the boarding school and bastion of the British establishment in which I landed at the tender age of 16. In that pillar of the English public school system, they used to invite certain speakers to address the students on various occasions, to educate the offspring of the British elite, so to speak, about other cultures and to promote tolerance and understanding.

At one such event, we were gathered to listen to a presentation about the different world religions and their contrasting beliefs and practices, given by a person introduced to us as an expert on this subject. After giving us a tour of the basic tenets of what everyone else believed, the lecturer then turned to Islam. I vividly recall the excitement I felt at that moment as a homesick student, proudly waiting for my schoolmates to find out what this misunderstood religion was all about.

Our guest speaker stood there with his aristocratic posture and impeccable upper class accent, and confined his description of Islam to the following short sentence: “Islam is a religion from the Arabian desert that set many teachings for its followers to abide by, for example, the requirement to eat food with their right hands, the rationale being that the left hand is designated for cleaning oneself after going to the toilet”. That was it. The time he allotted for Islam was over.

I swear by the God of all the religions which I learnt about that day that this was the only example that came out of his mouth. Coming from a supposedly learned authority, this incident confirmed to me that this guy came to the auditorium with a premeditatedly devious purpose, and could not have uttered what he said to this knowledge-thirsty audience out of sheer ignorance or lack of information. So, while Jesus died on the Cross for our sins and Buddhism preached peace and tranquility, Islam was apparently all about wiping your behind using the correct hand. So much for my pride amongst my peers that day. Read More »