Islamic Degrowth

‘O holy Cordoba, love is your purpose!

Love wholly eternal, never waning, never fading’

Muhammad Iqbal, The Mosque of Cordoba

I was very young when my maternal grandfather died. I never got to know him as a person. But everything I’ve heard about him, from my parents and aunts and uncles, makes me yearn to know him, to have had a conversation with him. He was a school headmaster, and very passionate about education – teaching many children for free over his long career. I know he was a big lover of literature and enjoyed listening to Shakespeare productions on the radio. I know he had a sharp intellect and a ready wit. And I know he was very knowledgeable about the Qur’an.

My father remembered one conversation in particular with him about that day’s recitation, as they walked home from Jummah prayers. It was the mid-eighties, a few years before I was born. My parents were living in Lahore at that time and were hosting my grandfather for a few months. My grandfather was blind by then, with limited capacity to get around. So, my father, whenever he was home, would take my grandfather by the arm and lead him to the mosque for congregational prayers. That particular day, they went to Shadman Mosque, and the recitation included the last four verses of Surah Fajr. The conversation on the way back home was about the depth of meaning in those verses, about the concept of nafs and self-actualisation in Islam. My father told me that those few months spent with my grandfather in Lahore greatly inspired him, especially motivating him to seek a better, truer understanding of the Qur’an. While I’ve never been particularly devout in my life, my own, later conversation with my father about these last four verses of Surah Fajr has definitely inspired me. Despite it having taken me this long to come to some sort of understanding with my religion, it is these verses that I have held close these last few years, letting them guide me through increasingly tumultuous waters.

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