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Mumtaz Hussain created this work as a way to reflect on 9-11
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For
months the question echoed in the hearts and minds of Muslim leaders
and people throughout greater New York: What should we do on
September 11th? Finally a group of Muslim cultural
leaders, Imams (religious leaders) and others met in Long
Island, N.Y. last month to mull over the possibilities – a vigil,
cultural event? But in the end all agreed for a return to personal
reflection.
“We
wanted to do something in keeping with our faith,” said Daisy
Khan, executive director of the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA)
Society of New York. “We decided the best thing to do [to remember
the tragedies of Sept. 11th] was a more personal response
to deepen our connection with Allah.” And so the decision to
recommend a Nafil (nonobligatory) fast was made.
Last
week Khan sent out an email on behalf of the ASMA Society urging
Muslims and others to join in the fast, drawing on New York City’s
vast art and cultural society to help spread the news.
“Our
hearts need rest,” Khan said. “We all wish for tranquility.
Allah reminds us again and again that through His remembrance will
hearts be comforted. So we wanted to raise spiritual awareness and
heighten people’s connection to God. … The artist community is
wonderful. The artists are the conscious of the community.”
Mumtaz
Hussain, an artist and sculptor in Manhattan, said keeping a fast on
Sept. 11th is a good way of learning sabr (patience).
Keeping sabr is in “direct relation to the people who died and
those who lost their children or their husbands,” Hussain said.
“It will give all of us sabr. This is a way we express our
feelings. The western way is to keep quiet for a few minutes. Our
way is to fast.”
Hussain
urges all Muslims to join collectively to remember Sept. 11th
by publicly displaying their place in American society. Muslim
artists especially should join the fast, he says, because “the
writer, the poet, and the painter, their feeling is stronger than
the regular human being. The hatred is growing among the people, and
we’re trying to sooth them. We are part of it, and we are bleeding
also.”
The
main thing for Muslims is to clarify the deeply established
“soulfullness” and spirituality of Islam, says Daniel Abdal Hayy
Moore, a poet in Philadelphia who also plans to participate in the
fast. “The terrible event of September 11 caused a deep, deep
wound in the Muslim community. It hurt them as much as any other
American,” he says.
The
decision to fast is an individual choice, Moore adds. It may help to
spiritually cleanse the soul and remember the victims of the day
more personally than any other method, he says.
Khan
agrees, saying a personal response on Sept. 11th is most
appropriate. “The heart is the native home of belief, worship and
perfect virtue. We live in a pluralistic society, and it’s
important for us to invite members of other faiths, and to join them
to define ourselves,” she says.
As
more and more Muslims weigh in on the decision to fast, non-Muslims
are also joining in. Michael Green, an artist in Philadelphia, says
fasting, whether in Christian, Judaic, Islamic or any other form, is
good for the spirit – perhaps better than joining in any public,
overly patriotic displays of remembrance.
“[Sept.
11th] is going to be filled with a lot of sentiment,
profound feelings, and it calls upon all of us in a strange way to
figure out what is appropriate,” says Green. “We don’t want to
put ourselves in a position where we find ourselves supporting a
kind of unthinking, patriotic, ‘Us vs. Them’ position. A lot of
what will be done is not going to be appropriate. But fasting is
bedrock.
“In
any exercise like this, the goal is to loosen the grips of the ego,
the animal self. We worship a thousand idols. Michael Green ‘The
artist’ is probably more dangerous than any other idol I could
have. So a fast is an attempt to be less, not more.”
Both
Green and Hussain draw on the famous Afghani poet, Rumi, to explain
their decisions to fast. Green offers this Rumi line:
There’s
a hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, more
or less. … If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
Human
nature is such that people want to “align ourselves with people of
the same color skin, the same culture, religion,” Green says.
“Perhaps what this event can do, with the fast, is to make people
really profoundly reflect what the deepest meaning of being a Muslim
is, or just a human.”
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