COMMENT: Back to square 1 ...

When I first started this blog, I named it madhab al-irfy. That name offended a fair few people, and led to accusations that I was seeking to start my own school of sacred thought and/or law.

The purpose of the blog was in fact to put on cyberpaper my infantile spiritual reflections. I didn't want to cloud my views on religion and religiosity on the other blog, Planet Irf (though I'm not sure I succeeded in this regard).

So what on earth is madhab al-irfy? What is my view on how orthodoxy is defined? And why should anyone give a shite?

My views on orthodoxy haven't really changed since the early 1990's. At the time, these weren't terribly fashionable views. Here are some of them in a nutshell, each followed by a random image:

1. No need to reinvent the wheel. If you want to follow the sacred law of Islam in your life, you have four (4) schools of law to choose from. All are equally valid. Just pick one and off you go.

2. You can't just pick and choose between schools of law. Though at times, you can pick an easier option when the option within your chosen school is just too tough. But picking and choosing for the sake of it takes away your sense of discipline.

3. Islam has an outer and inner tradition. Some call the inner tradition tasawwuf, others call it ihsan, others zuhd and others (my favourite!) irfan. Then there is that word 'sufism' that makes me ill.

4. The inner science is best (or rather, necessarily) learned from a qualified teacher. No Byron Bay sufism for me, thanks.

5. All sacred sciences of Islam are transmitted from teacher to student. Teachers were once students of teachers who were once students of teachers who were ... and on and on, all the way back to the people of the salaf, the first three generations.



6. There are two legitimate ways among Sunnis to express one's beliefs. These are known as Ashari and Maturidi. Hardly any difference between the two.

7. I like the Tabligh Jamaat, but I wish they'd phone ahead.

8. I like the Barelwi chaps but I wish they weren't so fractious.

9. I love both of them, but I wish they'd keep their disputes geographically limited to the Indian sub-Continent.

10. I unconditionally love my Shia brethren, even if I find some of their views on history uncomfortable.

11. Anyone who claims all salafis/wahhabis are terrorists is a moron who should return to the Planet G%7eHFRFft. Believe me, things aren't nice on that planet. (As in, yes, I once promoted the same rubbish.)

12. People who claim to be religious scholars but refuse to show their qualifications when asked are more likely than not complete fraudsters. Any qualified scholars who continue to support them are parties to the fraud. May God help them.

13. Scholars and imams who defend violence against women and/or children are evil.

Gee, what else? Would anyone like to add some more?

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COMMENT: There are frauds and then ...

A colleague who spent many years practising law in a set of Pacific Islands recently told me about a lawyer who arrived from the US to represent Fijian strongman George Speight in his treason trial. The lawyer tried to seek admission in Fiji. He claimed to be admitted in at least one American state, to have university qualifications in law, etc. After some investigations, it turned out the bloke was telling porky pies. Yep, this Navin Naidu chap was a complete fraud.

Which brings me to an upcoming interfaith event in Auckland organised by a group started in honour of a barrister whose qualifications are beyond question, indeed who was held in the highest regard by his profession and his nation.

The event involves 3 people. One is Douglas Pratt from the University of Waikato. You can read about Professor Pratt here. There is more here. This gentleman knows his stuff.

Another person to take part in this symposium is a chap known as Imam Afroz Ali.

This isn't the first time these two gentlemen have spoken on the same platform. In late June 2005, they held a symposium in Auckland. The promotional material described them as ...

Two eminent scholars on religion ...

Afroz Ali? A scholar of religion? But wait. There's more.

The other speaker, attending from Australia, is Mr. Afroz Ali of Sydney, also well versed in inter-religious matters, holding degrees in Islamic Studies and Shari'ah from Islamic University, Madina, Saudi Arabia ...

The man has not one but TWO degrees from the Islamic University of Madina. He holds ONE DEGREE in ISLAMIC STUDIES and ONE DEGREE in SHARIA.

Awesome. Now here's the thing. When Afroz Ali first started calling himself an "imam" and "religious scholar", a smart cookie I know from Melbourne used his contacts with the Islamic University of Madina admissions office. The result?

Yep. There is no record of an alumnus of that identity.

Indeed, I wonder whether Professor Pratt was aware of the fraudulent nature of Mr Ali's claims back in June 2005. Or whether he is aware now.

And I wonder if Afroz Ali has ever tried getting admitted to the Fiji Bar ...

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: No word ...

A large number of people have asked me about whether I have heard from this person in relation to certain inquiries. Some have left messages on this blog.

The answer is no. And I don't expect an answer at anytime before December 2451.

Anyway, I'd better go and learn some religion from a real teacher.

NEWS: Muhammad gets totally tanked on a plane

And in breaking news, some bloke named Muhammad gets completely sloshed on a plane. He has to appear before a magistrate. How embarrassing. Here is what Fairfax has to say:

Khairulddin Mohammad Yahya swore loudly at the inflight supervisor and poked him in the chest before the captain left the cockpit to deal with him.

Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday heard that Yahya, 22, swore loudly at the supervisor while a passenger told his mother to shut him up because he was frightening people. Prosecutor Aman Dhillon told the court that Yahya repeatedly left his economy seat and sat next to his mother in business class after her requests for his upgrade were refused.

OK, so his name was Mohammad, not Muhammad. Whateva.

Mr Dhillon said hours after the Malyasian Airlines flight left Kuala Lumpur on July 22 last year, he was seen in the vacant seat next to his mother. He complied with a request to return to his seat but, soon after, reappeared whereupon the supervisor detected alcohol on him.

Mr Dhillon said that several hours before landing Yahya again sat in business where he called the supervisor a "motherf-----" and to "f--- all of you".

The captain, who noticed Yahya slurred his words and smelt of alcohol, asked his mother to tell him to return to his seat and stop harassing the crew.

Swearing. Drunken behaviour. But hang on. Isn't that what engineering grads normally get upto? And what did the magistrate rule?

Senior magistrate Dan Muling told Yahya, who pleaded guilty to disorderly behaviour on an aircraft, that he was out of control. "It's like you're a terrorist on a plane," Mr Muling said.

Yahya was convicted and fined $1500.

Not good enough. Send him off to Supermax.

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MEDIA: Jetlagged analysis of 60 Minutes ...

No, I'm not jetlagged right now. I'm just pain-killer-lagged thanks to having some recent surgery. And so I really couldn't be bothered right now to write something about a recent silly episode of Channel 9's Sexy ... woops ... 60 Minutes show on multiculturalism and other big words tabloid TV hacks find hard to spell, let alone understand.

With that in mind, here is something I wrote for Margo's Webdiary back in January 2006.

Jetlagged analysis on upcoming 60 minutes show

By Irfan Yusuf
Created 31/01/2006 - 16:09

Two weeks ago, while I was sitting in a mini-bus melting in the 300% humidity and then boiling in the heatwave-like conditions of Jakarta, I received a call from a mate in Sydney. The conversation went something like this:

HE: Listen, dude. 60 Minutes wanted to have me on some panel. I’ll be on my honeymoon. I presumed you’d be interested so I gave them your contact details.

ME (somewhat excitedly): You f#cking what?

HE: It’s ok. It’ll go for an hour and will be live. I would’ve done it except the missus would have killed me for cancelling the honeymoon.

ME: What’s this panel about? Industrial relations?

HE: No, some crap to do with Cronulla. You know how they are. They want a few token Muslims who actually speak English.

ME: Mate, you know I’m sick of being the village Muslim!

HE: Dude, I already told the bloke you’d do it. Anyway, they are going to call you, so have your phone on.

ME: Yeah, right. Have a good honeymoon.

The Perfect Face for Radio

Over the next few days, I made sure I sent and received enough text messages to use up the entire charge in my phone. I was not keen to appear on any commercial TV show on the Cronulla issue. Why?

Well, for a start, I am becoming a bit tired of being a commentator on anything remotely to do with that confusing and convoluted group known as the “Muslim Community”. Unless if it’s radio. Heck, if it’s Radio National, bring it on. Even being on the other end of the line with Alan Jones wasn’t terribly devastating.

But TV just isn’t my thing. It might be in 12 months time, once this diet begins to kick in. Until then, in relation to the world of television, my only comment is that I have the perfect face for radio.

(Unless I’m sitting across the table from Maxine McHugh. Lateline – bring it on!)

Not only that, I do have my doubts about 60 Minutes. OK, admittedly the show isn’t as infantile and unethical as Today Tonight, a show that makes Jerry Springer and his guests look like the Op-Ed pages of the New Zealand Herald. But the prospect of being on a one hour panel with a whole bunch of Muslim dimwits who couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag was not my way of overcoming jetlag.

Nonsensical Spokespeople

I’ve been on some forums with Muslim “leaders” before. I remember a forum on Channel 9’s Today Show which took place some 20 days after the London bombing. I was on there with Sheik Fehmi, one of the few imams who can speak English. There was also a lady from the Muslim Women’s National Network of Australia (MWNNA) who sadly didn’t get much of a chance to speak. The rest of the crowd were an embarrassment.

There was the representative from the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), which is apparently the peak body of Muslims. This chappy was boasting about how his organisation had issued a letter condemning the London attacks.

From memory, the letter was dated 27 July 2005. The bombing happened on 7 July 2005. It took the organisation 20 days to issue a condemnation of terrorism. But when Michelle Leslie took off her scarf and put on a singlet top and hipsters (presumably so that she could fit in with all the Aussie Muslim chicks in Auburn and Broadmeadows), it took AFIC around 20 seconds to condemn her.

Then there’s that poor fellow who works in a convenience store. Wassim Doureihi is wasting away his life working for the big chief of the fringe group Hizbut Tehrir (HT) who owns a host of convenience stores in and around Sydney. This young Aussie Muslim is talented and full of energy. Why he wastes his time grinding the axes and selling over-priced soft drinks for a fringe group baffles me.

Ethnic Islam & Aussie Mossies

Actually, it doesn’t. Why? Because I could so easily have been him. You see, folks, AFIC and all the other middle aged migrant male-dominated Muslim organisations have created a system of mosques in which Islam is little more than a cultural relic of life in Muslim countries half a century ago.

Today in Pakistan and Bangladesh guys and girls may be hitting the nightclubs, but women are still not allowed in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi mosques of Sydney. The Lebanese Moslems Association may have had some kind of generational change, it Islam is still a strictly Lebanese phenomenon at the Imam Ali Mosque in Lakemba. The congregation there may be multi-racial, but most of them are barred from joining the LMA due to constitutional apartheid that only allows persons eligible for a Lebanese passport to be on the committee.

Most Imams cannot speak English. They are imported from overseas and poorly paid. Their job description is simple – do whatever it takes to make sure Islam remains a cultural relic for first generation migrants, thereby guaranteeing its almost complete irrelevance to young Australian-born Muslims who make up the majority of Australia’s Muslim community.

So what has this to do with Aussie Muslim kids following wacky fringe groups? The mainstream Imams may not speak English. Their employers may be lost on a cultural time warp. But mainstream Islamic theology which these imams can teach when they extricate themselves from their employers’ cultural time warp is not something anyone should be worried about. In fact, it is the best antidote to religious extremism.

But the migrant self-appointed elders and leaders are keeping this mainstream Islam from young Muslims who are brought up in Australia and cannot recognise fringe groups for what they are. Further, so many of the English-language materials we grew up with and which were given to us by lazy and stingy leaders were hand-outs from some radical Saudi and Pakistani publishers committed to an isolationist theology.

Getting Over Radicalism

Hence, so many of us forced to learn Islam from books have been exposed to writers on the more radical end of the Muslim literary spectrum. This in itself is no big deal. I’m sure more senior readers here will recall dabbling in those little red books of Chairman Mao.

And I do recall some months back spending an hour or so with a theatre full of well-heeled ex-lefties as they cheered on that mad Argentinian dentist as he swam across the Amazon after riding a motor cycle across South America before hanging out with Ayatollah Castro for a while.

Was I in Newtown or Glebe at the time? Nope. Roseville. In the heart of Sydney’s North Shore.

I may have read my fair share of Dr Ali Shariati and other ideologues of the Iranian Revolution. I might have attended a few lectures given by Afghan mujahideen leaders. Though admittedly that was the time when they were directed by the Grand Ayatollahs Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr.

I’ve read my quota of radical stuff. But it didn’t take me long to get over it.

(Actually, in Shariati’s case, I haven’t quite gotten over it. If anything, the current lot of conservative Iranian mullahs are well and truly over this super-funky Sorbonne-educated Iranian sociologist. His work is deemed too liberal and is banned in Iran.)

But not all young people get over their flirtation with radicalism. For many Aussie Mossies, their first impressions of Islamic faith are lasting. Mainstream imams and mosques often cannot provide them with spiritual and ideological antidote.

I strongly doubt people like young Wassim will do anything risking national security. Their rhetoric is radical, but their actions are harmless. Although it only takes just a handful of serious wackos to … I don’t even want to think about it.

Individual Responsibility

Yes, I realise that each individual has to take responsibility for their own actions. We can’t go on always saying society is to blame. Unless, of course, if we are on the funnier end of the human spectrum and do talk shows for ABC TV.

In a sense, all Muslim individuals are responsible for the near-complete cultural irrelevance of their imams. In the same sense that all Catholics and Anglicans are to blame if a small group in their churches try to cover up for paedophile priests.

If Muslim dimwits keep speaking for Aussie Muslims, it’s because educated articulate Muslims able to understand the Aussie mainstream don’t speak out. And their silence is allowing the dimwits to confuse the hell out of mainstream Australia.

Getting Back to 60 Minutes

You might recall my leaving the mobile phone uncharged for a few days in Indonesia so that I could avoid receiving a call. The following week, I felt a bit guilty and sent an e-mail to the producers. I vaguely recall someone ringing me the next morning, but it was at around 4am.

The 60 Minutes dude finally managed to track me down when I had just touched down in Sydney. He sent me the blurb via e-mail. Here it is...

Cronulla Forum


On February 8, the 60 Minutes program is holding a forum to discuss the Cronulla riots. The forum, chaired by 60 Minutes, will be filmed and televised nationally in late February.


While calm has been restored to Sydney’s beachfront, the underlying problems that caused this unprecedented eruption of violence remain.


This was not just a suburban territorial dispute, nor simply a law and order issue – it struck at the very heart of multiculturalism in Australia, highlighting serious social problems caused by mistrust, alienation, frustration and anger.


Why did it happen and how can this potentially explosive situation be resolved?


60 Minutes is keen to involve young Muslims and non-Muslims to hear their views on what is undoubtedly the most important social issue in Australia today.

Er, I never knew Muslims were an issue in Cronulla. I understand persons of Middle Eastern appearance may be problematic to some Cronulla locals. Perhaps we might even narrow that down further to persons of Lebanese extraction and of Middle Eastern appearance.

The forum will be held in the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Apparently Ray Martin will be hosting it. It will go for around an hour, and will then be edited down to 20 minutes.

So we might have 200 people in the hall from all different sides of the argument – Cronulla locals, white supremacists, non-English speaking imams, Leb kids with bad attitudes and even worse haircuts, non-Leb surfie kids with bad attitudes and smelling of too much beer and cheap Byron Bay gunja, etc. We each have to try and contribute something within a space of 60 minutes. This gives us all a space of 18 seconds to say something. Then the show will be edited down, enabling each person to get 6 seconds on the channel. That’s 6 seconds to express one’s self on multiculturalism and alienation and Lebbos and all that stuff.

And what will be the focus of the edited version?

From the wording of the blurb, it seems the 60 Minutes crew regard the entire Cronulla thing to become a debate about Aussie Mossies. And with 6 seconds each, even the most articulate Aussie Mossie (or indeed Aussie anything) will have little chance to say anything useful.

And what is the point of running things this way? In what way will viewers be more enlightened about the issues underlying the riots?

Once I get over my jetlag, I will address more on this issue. Until then, I’m off for another nap. Selamat Lemmegetsomesleep.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

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VIDEO: The mother of Salman

The late Salman Hamdani was an American hero. He was a 'first responder' on September 11 2001, placing himself in harm's way to save other human beings. For 6 months, he was regarded as a suspect. Then when his remains were found at Ground Zero, Salman Hamdani was finally exonerated.

For those 6 months, his parents lived a double jeopardy of distress - their son was missing and they had neighbours looking at them suspiciously as rumours spread that their son may have been a terrorist.

Now with a terror-loving congressman holding hearings into Muslim radicalism, Salman Hamdani's story was being cited by Congressman Keith Ellison in his emotional testimony. And the American Right are having a field day of bigotry, alleging Ellison made the whole thing up. Matthew Shaffer, a Fellow at the National Review Institute, does some googling and alleges that there really weren't any serious rumours about Hamdani at all.

Shaffer should tell this to Talat Hamdani, Salman's mum. Here's what she has to say:

Despite his noble instincts, the tabloid media initially suggested that because of his Pakistani-American heritage, he might have been involved with the attacks.

My grief was compounded by the suspicions that clouded Salman's name and the suggestion that his faith -- my faith -- not the acts of 19 murderers, was somehow responsible.

Her entire piece, written in response to the IRA-supporting Peter King witch hunt, should be read in full.

All of which just goes to show how irrational is racial and religious profiling.



Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf

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VIDEO: Protecting victims of violence against women in Dubai

This is a report from 2007 about an American woman living in Dubai who has set up an organisation providing shelter to victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking and other forms of abuse. Yes, it happens in all societies including nominally Muslim ones. And even the wealthiest of them are not immune.



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VIDEO: Congressman Keith Ellison testifies ...

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