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Prepared for recital by Abdal Hakim Murad Introduction The earliest Muslim historians recorded the events of the Ascension in some detail. During the most difficult period of his ministry in Mecca, the Holy Prophet was miraculously taken on a night … Continue reading
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by Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre The West is looking for its own identity, and the temptation is the shortcut of defining itself in opposition to Islam. These pages attempt a recomposition. Islam and the West are no longer geographical or ideological identities, … Continue reading
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By Tim Winter The first chapters of Piper at the Gates consider modernity’s crisis of knowledge as expressed in opera, drama and the novel. Nietzsche’s pessimism about human culture in a post-religious and hyper-rational age is then explored through the … Continue reading
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Letters on the Spiritual Path is the culmination of many years’ effort to present a complete rendering into English, or any other western language of all 272 letters of spiritual guidance written by the renowned Sufi teacher of eighteenth century … Continue reading
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Reflections on the new Cambridge Mosque. Ask most people, Muslims included, what a mosque is, and you will get a multitude of answers; but most of all you will get the typical response – oh it’s a dome and a … Continue reading
I’ve been asked to put up on this blog the design I made for the new Cambridge Mosque back in 2008 — and here’s an elevation of it to be going on with. The brief was for a space for 1000 worshippers, 80 cars and in an Anglo-Ottoman style — and to be costed. I had three weeks to do it. I’m not sure which bit was Anglo but I believe there was a Paxton style iron and glass atrium somewhere. It was many years ago.
The project was to raise funds to enable the purchase of land in central Cambridge where the mosque was eventually built. I will add more drawings of the project soon.
I’ve also prepared a long critique of the new Marks Bardfield Cambridge mosque as it was finally constructed. That will also be posted in the near future.
New from Quilliam Press
Schoolteacher Paul Pringle has faced many challenges in his life: struggles with alcohol and anxiety, with what it means to be a man, and with the very meaning of life itself.lf
In his search for self-discovery he trains as an ultra runner. The world’s toughest marathons seem to beckon him. He will face hundreds of miles of deadly struggle against the mighty Sahara Desert, the forests of Finland and the subzero wastes of the Canadian Arctic. Journalists and scientists monitor his progress as he pushes his body to the very limits, as he competes in extreme sporting events which have already claimed lives.
But the outward struggle supports a growing sense of self-knowledge and of bonding with the natural world from which modernity had alienated him. This is an autobiography of personal transformation, of the discovery of a true masculinity amid the confusions of modern Britain, and of a painful but grace-filled journey to the changeless Madina of truth.
Published on Jan 1, 2023
Sidi Muhammad Ibn al-Habīb, may Allah be pleased with him, appeared at a significant time in Moroccan history at the end of a great epoch of western Sufism and was in some ways the isthmus between the old Muslim world of the East and the new age of Islam taking root in the West at the end of the twentieth century.
Morocco is significantly, the most western Muslim nation, parts of it being in fact further west than mainland UK. Ibn al-Habīb was teaching formal knowledge of the Islamic disciplines in the Qarawīyyīn mosque in Fes as long ago as the year 1900 but by the time he died in 1971 at the age of 101, he was a renowned spiritual master as well, with many disciples in Morocco and Algeria and a small number from Great Britain, France and America. He is buried in his zawiya in Meknes, Morocco, and left this famous Diwan, a collection of sacred verse, as a guide for the sincere seeker of gnostic truths.
These poems are normally sung in Arabic and this revised translation is intended to facilitate this for non-Arabic readers by including transliterated text and translation as well as the original Arabic, with numbered poems and a table of contents for easy navigation. Included is also the original introduction and litany by the Shaykh as well as a new biography hitherto unseen in English.
This revised version restores the text closer to the 1962 Meknes edition with the addition now of the recommended supplications after the five prayers and the Salat al Mashish. The Arabic text has been thoroughly checked and is now in a more readable typeface (Lotus).
It is now published by Quilliam Press and available in flapped paperback with sewn sections for extra strength. (Not print on demand) A cloth bound version is also available.
Available from most bookshops in UK and Central Books.
https://www.centralbooks.com/diwan-of-sidi-muhammad-ibn-al-habib.html
A technical hitch is stopping it appearing on Amazon. It is being investigated.
Paperback RRP £19.95
ISBN: 978-1-872038-27-8
Cloth RRP £29.95
ISBN: 978-1-872038-28-5
Publication date Nov 1 2022
from Quilliam Press
A revealing memoir of a sixty year journey from early post-war Britain through to the new millennium and the huge social, political, technological and religious upheavals that went with it. The author details his slow awakening to the extraordinary worlds he was to move through: from the Quakers of his upbringing to the hard-nosed architects that he studied with in 1960s London and his immersion in the chaos of the burgeoning music business.
His musical journey then took him, almost unwittingly, into a Moroccan Sufi order, and eventually on the pilgrimage to Mekka and Medina. Ian Abdal Latīf tries to examine his motives at each step of the way, recording his meetings with real holy men and not-so-holy men, and the upheavals that these encounters brought about. In this illuminating and entertaining autobiography he charts a course through these tumultuous waters, eventually finding some peace and gratitude for the lessons learnt.
288pp with a 20pp colour section. Many previously unpublished pictures.
“A captivating journey through some little-known but surprisingly influential moments of musical and British Islamic history.”
Abdal Hakīm Murad
Dean, Cambridge Muslim College
“Honesty and scrupulous self-examination are the best virtues of any autobiography, and Ian Whiteman’s is all of that and more. He takes us on a voyage from his rural and musical youth, through the music scene of the psychedelic 60s, and into the spiritual world of Sufism, with all the insights and character sketches of the best storytellers. Recommended!”
Richard Thompson
Singer–Songwriter
“Of all the voyages of self-discovery that began in the London of the 1960s, few were as life-changing and eventful as that of Ian Whiteman. From the stage of the Marquee to the Haram at Mecca, he has a lot to tell us in this unique memoir.”
Richard Williams
Music and Sports writer
Price £19.95
282 pages + 20 pages many never seen before colour photos,
To buy:
email me at: editorial.qasida@gmail.com
£25.00 will get you a signed copy sent to anywhere in the world. Postage free
Can also be obtained from Mecca Books and Zaytuna Books in the USA; from Wardah Books in Singapore.
Editorial Qasida is a non-Amazon publisher.
Song lyric by Ian Whiteman
When the dawn breaks
And the sky shakes
And the stories now unfold
When the earth gives up its secrets
and the truth can now be told
You will stand there right before Him
And your words will seem so small
Lord, forgive me, I’m just a poor man
Who had tried to hear Your call
Why’s your heart in such confusion
When this water is so pure
It’s this doubt that is illusion
And this drink is just the cure
Thirty years I have been calling
Don’t you hear my cry at all
Lord forgive me. I’m just a poor man
Who had tried to hear Your call
When I stood here empty handed
You sufficed my every need
I did not dare to ask for anything more
Just in case You thought it greed
What is heaven? What is bliss
Can I ask for more than this?
Lord forgive me. I’m just a poor man
Who had tried to hear Your call
Ian Whiteman 