Radical Muslim Leader has Bohemian Past

The 20 February 2010 edition of the Telegraph, and their on-line version, telegraph.co.uk, both ran an article entitled: Radical Muslim leader has past in swinging London. According to the Telegraph, the author and playwright Ian Dallas, who in the 1960s was purported to have been part of the hip London scene, had since become a “Radical Muslim” going by the name of Abdalqadir as-Sufi, and was now “The leader of an extreme Muslim group”. As someone with firsthand knowledge, who has known Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi for forty years, I would like to take some of the most salient points raised in the Telegraph article as a springboard to offer the public a more balanced and informative introduction to a most fascinating and politically significant contemporary figure.

Ian Dallas is more accurately of the 1950s generation, as he was born in Ayr Scotland in 1930. He had already achieved both recognition and success as a playwright and author prior to the 1960s. He did once tell me that he had, as a young man, driven through the streets of Paris in a Rolls Royce, with Edith Piaf.

As the Telegraph mentions, Ian Dallas did, indeed, know Edith Piaf as well as Eric Clapton, to whom he did, in fact, give a copy of the beautiful love story, Layla and Majnun. However, this was nothing to do with Eric’s love affair with Pattie Boyd (the wife of Eric’s best friend, George Harrison) but rather, the terrible tragedy connected to the death of Eric’s son. The metaphorical tale tells of the all-consuming longing of a youth named Majnun (a word whose literal Arabic meaning is one possessed) for the love of his life, Layla (night in Arabic) who, in the coded language of the Sufis, stands for Allah as the Beloved.

As I only met Ian Dallas (or Shaykh Abdalqadir, as I have long been accustomed to refer to him) in 1970, I did not meet all of these people, although George Harrison would send over his driver with a large hamper of ‘goodies’ from Fortnum & Mason at the start of the New Year. I sat with Shaykh Abdalqadir when his friend from university, the celebrated psychiatrist R.D. Laing came by to meet him. Laing had just returned from India where he had gone with his wife to meet a guru. His wife had stayed on and moved in with the ‘spiritual master’. Needless to say, Ronald was very upset, and as I recall, not too impressed with Eastern Mysticism.

I was also present when Shaykh Abdalqadir had invited Fritjof Capra, the rising star in the world of nuclear physics, over for tea. The Shaykh’s wife, Zulaikha, had baked a plate of millefeuille. Capra had possibly just published The Tao of Physics. Over tea he explained his latest idea, which he called the ‘boot-strap theory’. Science was not my strong point, so all I can recall is that the image of the loops commonly used to pull on a certain kind of boot, were somehow being offered as a metaphor to convey his basic idea of how ‘matter came into existence’. Shaykh Abdalqadir listened very carefully, and here I remind you that he was, and still is, the most brilliant mind in Europe. He then said, “I think I’ve got it, except for the exact point at which the entire plate of French pastries disappeared and matter came into being.” Naturally, Capra was mortified, as he had not till that moment, realised he had eaten the entire plate of millefeuille. I too was most disappointed! Nevertheless, I do remember, as if it were only yesterday, the realisation from this episode that self-knowledge is over and above all other sciences. Dr. Capra is undoubtedly a brilliant physicist and this incident is in no sense intended to infer otherwise.

There are countless anecdotes, from Ian Dallas giving Bob Dylan his first copy of Rimbaud’s poems, to the wonderful story that appears in his Collected Works of how he had an acute attack of appendicitis while visiting friends on Martha’s Vineyard, and had to be rushed to hospital. He tells of a large warm-hearted nurse with a shining black face, who said one day, while he was sitting-up reading, “My grandfather caught Moby-Dick!” The nurse then told him that a very kind lady had come every day and sat in the room while he rested, and then left the books for him to read. The woman was Lillian Hellman, the American dramatist whose works include the hugely popular Little Foxes (1939), and was married to the famous writer, Dashiell Hammett, whose stories were at the centre of the Film Noir movement in Hollywood.

As is recounted in Ian Dallas - Collected Works, Hellman and Hammett were both ruthlessly persecuted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Witch Hunts. Mr Dallas quotes the entire speech made by Lillian to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I will never forget the impact it made on me after reading this speech to realise that this same great woman had sat everyday at the bedside of a young intellectual called Ian Dallas who, in the fullness of time, I would also meet and come to know and admire as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi.

Returning to the Telegraph article, it goes out of its way to reveal that Shaykh Abdalqadir’s teachings are said to include the claim that, “movies and football degrade the proletariat.” I am pleased to confirm, for the record, that Shaykh Abdalqadir is an aficionado of cinema and possesses a vast DVD film collection. He recently sent over to my house a copy of the French film ‘A Prophet’ directed by Jacque Audiard. He considers it one of the best films recently made. I can also confirm, as the Telegraph states, that he did, as Ian Dallas, act in Fellini’s 8 ½, but far more interesting is the fact that he re-wrote the ending of the film, the wondrous ‘dance of life’, which ends the film. The version we all know today is, of course, Fellini’s ending; he took it and made it his. The ending opens the way - after the total failure of a film director to fulfil the expectations imposed upon him - to give up and surrender, even his greatness. That is where the film ends, but it is also, in truth, where the real story begins.

As for football, it is true that he dislikes it, together with the increasingly unsavoury tendencies from which it has become inseparable. He is rather an avid rugby fan and is almost a fanatic when it comes to cricket, especially five-day test matches. He sees in the game of cricket a means by which young men can develop good character. He does attend, from time to time, at Newlands cricket ground in Cape Town, a match in order to enjoy the game in the company of his choosing.

The Telegraph also makes mention of one of his plays acted in by Albert Finney, and another starring the late Sir Alan Bates. All this is true, but what about comments in the paper that he is a, “radical Muslim leader” and also, “the leader of an extremist Muslim group”? Putting aside his “bohemian past”, as it was referred to, what about his radical change and his espousal of an extreme interpretation of Islam? The quantity of evidence to the contrary contained in Shaykh Abdalqadir’s writings, both published and non-published, is so vast that, like the Telegraph, I too shall have to be extremely selective in my choice of observations. However, contrary to the Telegraph, whose sparse and tenuous claims seem to be dictated by negative bias and cheap sensationalism, my own primary concern will be to avoid over-burdening the reader with the sheer weight of bona fide material available to me. Before I continue, I should also, for the sake of clarity, remind the reader that Shaykh Abdalqadir continues, on occasion, to write under his Scottish family name of Ian Dallas.

There is The Book Of Strangers, published in 1972, a novel that is about the search for knowledge and the awakening to Islam told in the form of a semi-autobiographical parable (Pantheon Books). There is Letter To An African Muslim (1981), which helped inspire a whole generation of South Africans to enter Islam at a time when apartheid still restricted the options available to most blacks. Shaykh Abdalqadir was the only white European who could freely walk the streets of Soweto, although the Apartheid regime banned both him and his book.

There is Root Islamic Education, first published in Norwich in 1982 and re-released in 1993, in London. This text is based firmly on the soundest and irrefutable classical Islamic texts that have come down to the Muslims throughout the centuries. There is the Technique of the Coup de Banque, published in Spain in 2000, which takes as its thematic corollaries Machiavelli’s Renaissance classic Il Principe (The Prince) and Curzio Malpararte’s 1931 masterwork Technique Du Coup D’État. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this article to give an adequate appraisal of the invaluable contributions these books have made in furthering the understanding of their respective subject matters. However, Technique of the Coup de Banque is one with which I have had a special connection.

Travelling from his base in the Scottish Highlands, Shaykh Abdalqadir made an extended visit to Cape Town in early 2001. I had already moved from Scotland to Cape Town a few months prior to this in anticipation of what we all hoped would lead to his permanent move to the city. Whilst there, he had the opportunity to overhear a conversation in a local bookstore between two young men, both of whom were University of Cape Town students. One was relating that he had heard that there was a Shaykh visiting from Europe who sounded very interesting, and that he hoped somehow to meet him. Hence, with the refined courtesy and habitual discretion which have long distinguished him, Shaykh Abdalqadir approached the student and prudently ventured, “I believe you wanted to meet me.” The next day the young man, extremely gregarious and outgoing by nature, came to have morning coffee at the house the Shaykh was renting.

Shaykh Abdalqadir did, in fact, return to the Highlands but it had become clear that a move was imminent. Therefore, in preparation for this I was asked by our local Muslim Community leader, Orhan Wadvalla, to start an evening class based on Technique of the Coup de Bank. The UCT student he had met in the bookshop, and several of his friends, some Muslims and some not, were invited to come along to a weekly reading, which was held at my small cottage in Newlands. These sessions were dynamic and exciting and soon increased to twice a week. As I did not yet have any bookcases we were surrounded by stacks of books; reading, discussing and drinking espressos, while I rummaged around for Plato’s Republic or whatever other text the Shaykh may have indicated, that I knew to be somewhere in my ‘library’, and on we went!

A few months later Shaykh Abdalqadir moved to Cape Town and I had by then assembled a good group of young guys, the one non-Muslim had become Muslim, and some basic ground work had been done to prepare these dynamic men to sit with and benefit from the Shaykh’s generosity. They were all healthy young men, interested in what most young people their age are interested in, but they had also acquired an appetite for real knowledge, and whatever you really want out of life, you’ll get!

From that first group new ones have come. Most of those men are now married and have started families of their own. All of them, without exception, are more advanced on the path to knowledge than myself, but I was privileged to have, by the Generosity of Allah, the opportunity to play a part in this phase of their education. The one last thing I want to mention about this particular text is that everything that Shaykh Abdalqadir spoke of has come to pass. The financial crisis of 2008-2009, which continues to worsen into 2010 as I write, was laid bare in his brilliant exposition. With rare exceptions, only a few have listened, certainly not the so-called leaders of the Muslim World. Nevertheless, the number of those taking notice of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi continues to grow day by day.

There is the Ian Dallas book, Time of the Bedouin (2006) - on the politics of power, and also his latest publication Political Renewal (2009) which by juxtaposition in one volume of two exceptionally penetrating essays, produces a devastating historical survey of the relentless degeneration that has characterised the British political class and its social and constitutional apparatus over the last century and more: The End of the Political Class by Ian Dallas and Hilaire Belloc’s The House of Commons and Monarchy (1920).

There is the series of four books by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi, that were all composed from lectures given in a Cape Town mosque: The Book of Tawhid [Unity of Allah] 2004, The Book of Hubb [Love of the Divine] 2007, The Book of ‘Amal [Behaviour] 2008 and finally The Book of Safar [Travel] 2008. Imagine one of those Hollywood post-apocalyptic fantasies; the world has been all but totally destroyed, and you, say a young black man, happens to rescue a copy of the Qur’an from a heap of burning rubble, and then after many a close call, you produce an act of heroism that saves the life of a pretty blond headed girl on the point of despair, whose only worldly possessions happen to be these four slim texts. It turns out that this incredible encounter contains all that is needed as the basis for recovery of civilised human society; an interesting gene pool and ready access to Divine guidance and useful knowledge. They are simple yet utterly profound texts that, based upon the love and knowledge of our Prophet Muhammad, Allah grant him blessings and peace, can, with the Qur’an, be all you would need to start anew.

There are more books and countless anecdotes and taped discourses. When I am fortunate to be invited to his house for lunch, he often, while waiting eagerly for the meal to be announced, recites whole passages from Shakespeare, or the opening of Elliot’s The Waste Land or W. H. Auden or W. B. Yeats, replete with an Irish accent. He has a library of some several thousand books, some in English, French and Arabic, an extensive collection of classical music CDs, and I have already mentioned his film collection. He is mostly surrounded by men who are all the very brightest young people you could ever wish to meet. The Shaykh is the master. Most of all, he has guided a whole generation to knowledge of Allah and a deep understanding of the practice of Islam. To sit in his company is an honour and you learn things even without realising it.

Robert Luongo, Lecturer in Shakespeare & Rhetoric at Dallas College in Cape Town

An Improper Bostonian

It has been pointed out to me by several people that A Boston Brahmin in New Mexico, an article I wrote for my blog in May, left them wanting to hear more, what happened next.  The story does indeed continue, although this is not the moment for me to tell it. Suffice it to say that I continued on to California and that while travelling west I met a young fellow about my age heading east. He gave me the address of a person who he described as his teacher, the playwright and poet, Daniel Moore, who is today better known as Daniel Abdalhayy Moore.  I did reach California and went to the address in Berkeley. Daniel, who some years earlier had formed a radical ‘street theatre’ called the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, invited me to stay as his guest... It must have been early June 1970 and still a few months prior to my 21^st birthday.

In the meantime, while sitting in a café in Tangiers, the highly accomplished playwright (he had already several BBC productions to his credit) and author, Ian Dallas, had read in the Rolling Stone about this unusual theatre troupe whose plays were a bizarre mixture of Anti-Viet Nam protest and Tibetan Buddhism. He made the firm intention that should his new screenplay be accepted by one of the Hollywood studios, he would visit these people.

Within a month of my arrival in Berkeley a telegram arrived from Mr Dallas, who was then in Los Angeles, saying that he would very much like to pay Daniel and his theatre group a visit. Using the phone number that had been included with the message, Daniel keenly welcomed him to come. You could say that I was only there by chance, as I had no connection to the other people living in the house.

I do recall Daniel being asked if his theatre was still performing, to which he answered that it wasn’t. He told Mr Dallas that he was presently reading the works of Rumi. I was sitting by the phone while this conversation was taking place, so I saw Daniel put his hand over the phone and say: “He says that he knows everything about Rumi.”

I had begun to feel that I had stayed with these strange people, actors and musicians, long enough, so was about to leave. I had just seen Fellini’s Satyricon at the cinema and was ready to distance myself from the macabre company of the Eastern mystics who inhabited this large Victorian house. Nevertheless, I decided to hold on another week to meet this stranger.

It was a memorable first encounter and the source of many an amusing anecdote, as I was the driver on the day Daniel and I went to the San Francisco Bus Terminal to collect his guest. Our vehicle was the infamous ‘animal car’ (a mobile art project by an Berkeley art student) that was a 1955 Chevy covered in animal fur and without any seats, but instead contained large cushions covered in Indian fabric for the passengers to sit upon. As the driver, I sat on a raised mushroom so that I could at least see the road ahead of me. Even so, there was no way I was going to spot what was coming around the next corner.

Firstly, considering that I was the one person who wasn’t actually meant to be there, I soon embraced Islam by this stranger’s hand. Secondly, I remain indebted to him for everything I have learnt, one way or another, over the intervening forty years as a student of a man I consider the greatest intellect of this age. Of course, some of you will know that our stranger, the celebrated writer, Ian Dallas, is better known today as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi.

Well, there‘s the story I started off by saying I wasn’t going to tell. I must conclude that the Islam we were taught was that of the sound teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.  I did not join a Sufi group. My culture is that of Western Civilization and my love of literature and classical music is part of my cultural heritage. My religion is Islam.

Robert Luongo

 

Pablo's Portrait by Luqman Nieto

Luqman Nieto is a second year student at Dallas College in Cape Town. He was born in Seville Spain and acquired his early education at the Medrassa Mawlana Muhammad Wasany in Majorca. When he completed his studies in Majorca he had achieved the qualification of Hafiz, having recorded the entire Qur’an to memory by heart. Interspersed with his studies he and all the boys attending the medrassa practiced archery, horseback riding and swimming and sailing in the summer months. At the age of nineteen Luqman moved to Cape Town, quickly improved his English and in 2009 entered Dallas College. I am very proud to present this short story by an outstanding student.

 

The following short story is a dramatization based upon an anecdote that Ernst Jünger, the celebrated German soldier and poet, who served as an officer in both World Wars, told to Julien Hervier and was recorded in Hervier’s book The Details of Time, Conversations with Ernst Jünger.  Jünger was the only high ranking German officer known to have been complicit in the failed attempt on Hitler’s life who was not executed by the Führer. He remains the most highly decorated soldier in all of German history. Jünger refused to be subjugated to the de-nazification process imposed by the Americans after the war, as he insisted that while he fought to defend his country, he never joined nor was he part of the Nazi Party. Jünger died at the age of 103 and is the author of numerous books, essays and articles that were published during his lifetime. His highly acclaimed Storm of Steel is considered: ‘One of the most striking accounts of the First World War’ (Richard Holms, Evening Standard). 

 

Robert Luongo, Dallas College lecturer of Shakespeare & Rhetoric

 

 

I

t was a clear and fresh morning of winter. The sun had finally come to pay us a visit after a long absence. The streets of Paris smelled like a shirt that had just been washed and hung in the sun. Nadia was walking with her light and gentle pace, almost trotting like a young colt that has been locked up for too long and finally re-discovers the pleasures of running in freedom. I could hardly keep up without looking too ridiculous behind her.

 

I met Nadia a morning like this one in Saint Germain des Prés. While I was having a shot of espresso in the Café Fleurs, she was drawing in an artist’s sketchbook, a small detail of a beautiful corner. With precise and short movements, acquired by her impeccable Russian classical technique, Nadia was capturing the essence of that corner in that precise moment. But I did not know her name yet. All I knew was that while she was observing the corner and capturing the moment I was observing her and becoming her captive.

 

After the first espresso I asked for a second one, and after the second for a third. I did not want to disturb the girl who was drawing but I could not leave without saying anything to her. By the time of the fourth espresso it had become a matter of proving to myself that I could do it. Not that I had bad luck with women, actually I would say that it was rather good, they found me awkwardly handsome and rather charming - even though I never thought I was any of those things - but there was something in that girl, which was terribly challenging. Later on I would come to know her name was Nadia. She looked like a Russian princess, with long brown hair, big green eyes and marble-like sculpted features. She was not particularly pretty, as her mouth was a little big and so were her eyes, and her nose a little small, but everything put together had a special enchantment.

 

She was wrapped in a distant air, perhaps a bit cold, like the fresh breeze that was blowing through the terrace of the Café de Fleurs that sunny morning of winter. But what attracted me more than anything were her hands; the long thin fingers with a darkish colour at their tips, which revealed to me that what she was doing was not merely a casual moment of inspiration but a profession. The bones which revealed themselves through the skin and the light blue veins were all in perfect balance. Her hands were like the violins in a complex piece of classical music, the accents of the melody that was her face, and all accompanied by a perfect atonal harmony that was her body.  If Prokofiev were to see her he would have composed the most beautiful yet dissonant piano concerto.

 

Suddenly she closed her notebook, organized her pencils in a small leather case and stood up. She took a long breath and I contained mine. She turned, looked around and her glance favoured me before she walked straight to the table where I was.

 

Before I could even realise what was happening, she was sitting in front of me and had ordered a coffee. All of that distant look had completely disappeared and gave place to a warm friendly smile. I was shocked. The kind of shock that happens when something you imagine doing suddenly dislodges from the realm of imaginations to the realm of reality, and you have to face it.

 

Nadia arrived a couple of years ago in Paris. She came from a bourgeois family of Moscow where she had learnt the art of painting miniatures. Her mother was part of the old aristocracy and her father a successful business man. By 1920, following the Russian Revolution, her mother foresaw the worsening of things in Russia, and so decided to send her daughter to Paris where Nadia could continue developing her talent as a painter under the careful supervision of a very good friend of her mother.

 

Nadia talked and I listened. She seemed like someone who had been alone for a long time and suddenly found someone with whom she could talk. From time to time she would stop and ask me a few things - which I answered as quickly and as short as possible - before carrying on as if what I had said did not really matter. I was delighted.

 

When I started to know her better after that first encounter, I learnt that she was like that; she would remain in silence immersed in her thoughts and would hardly speak for what seemed an eternity, and then she would emerge out of that world of hers and talk as if there was not enough time to say everything she wanted to say. Every period of silence resulted in some master piece of painting and after every period of talking I would have the most beautiful and profound lines to put in the mouth of the heroine of my latest piece of writing.

 

Once I asked her why she choose my table and why she sat with me that day at the café. She answered: “When I finished my painting that day and I stood up I felt like someone who had been travelling alone for a long time and when he gets back to the place from where he left he needs someone who will listen to all his stories of the journey. I looked around and the only face I saw that I could trust was yours. So I went to your table and I talked to you”.

 

When I finished my fifth espresso and she her first one we left the Café de Fleurs and I walked her home. Her pace that day was the same light and gentle trot that moved her through the streets of Paris that warm winter morning.

 

We were going to see a well known painter who was spending some time in Paris. Nadia knew him from, as she said, a random casual meeting arranged by destiny. She was painting a view of a popular café in the city, where the ordinary people usually sit, with a vivid detailed surrealism, and he passed by. He stood behind her for a long time while she did not notice it, for when she painted she was habitually unaware of what was going on around her except for that which she was painting. He admired her work, especially her amazing technique and her eye for detail. When he knew that she was from Russia he invited her to help him with a work he was doing for Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. His name was Picasso.

 

When we arrived at Picasso’s house in the street of the Grands-Augustines she knocked at the door. Olga, Picasso’s wife, opened for us and Nadia, after introducing me, began a lively conversation with Olga in Russian. Olga was a ballet dancer that Picasso met while working for Diaghilev and she and Picasso got married in 1918.

 

A little child of about six years old came running and passed by my side without noticing me. When he saw Nadia he ran to her and she received him with open arms speaking to him in Russian with a mellow voice. He laughed and begun to talk mixing words from French, Russian and Spanish with such ease that I would have assumed it to be only one language.

 

Pablo, the son of Picasso and Olga, pulled Nadia without leaving her hand to the studio where his father was working. Nadia looked at me and told me with her eyes to follow them. From what I could understand, Pablo was saying his father had just finished a portrait of him and Pablo wanted Nadia to see it.

 

The four of us went into Picasso’s studio. The studio was a large square room with two big windows facing the street at one end of the room. The windows had no curtains and the light of the sun entered through them illuminating the whole room. Picasso was facing the wall opposite the windows with the easel in front of him and all his paints, brushes and pencils on the side. There were paintings leaning against the four walls of the room, some were finished and others were unfinished, revealing the intentions of the painter and how they developed and changed through the process of painting.

 

Picasso was a man in his forties of normal height and constitution with small piercing eyes. Under his apron, which had so many spots of paint that the original colour was un-recognizable, he was wearing an elegant shirt and a tie. He greeted Nadia kindly and Nadia introduced me to him. Picasso looked at me with the eyes of someone who is used to seeing the true essence of the world around him and who is then able to capture that essence in paint. And then he smiled at me and his eyes seemed to change colour, from a dark brown to a light sand one, like the earth when it is dry and has a light brown colour and then it rains and the brown becomes dark, but in reverse.

 

Nadia and Picasso talked about the portrait of his son while the living subject of it was running around trying to capture everyone’s attention. He probably felt that he was more important than his fake copy. Nadia and Picasso commented on the details of the painting talking about the strokes of the painter and the chromatic scale of colours he had used. For anyone who, like me, did not paint, it was almost as if they were speaking another language, Chinese for example. Soon my attention was captured by the rest of the paintings leaning against the walls, and then by Pablo himself, who was happy to finally have seized someone’s attention and was doing his best not to lose it.

 

Olga had gone out of the studio and her voice came to us calling Pablo. Pablo left the studio and Nadia, who suddenly felt a rush to ask Olga for the meaning of some Russian word in French, followed the child. Without really wanting to, because his presence overwhelmed me a little, I found my self alone with Picasso.

 

Picasso came closer to me. I was looking at the portrait trying to find something to say that would not reveal my almost complete ignorance of the subject when he looked at me and smiled. Sensing my predicament he said: “Don’t worry, I actually don’t like it”.

 

Picasso went to the painting and lifted it off the easel. With the painting in his hands he turned to me and said: “This painting would have a certain effect, but that effect would be exactly the same one, in the metaphysical meaning of it, if I would wrap it in paper and abandon it in a corner. It would be exactly the same as if ten thousand people would have admired it”.

 

Picasso put the painting on the easel again and went to join his wife, son and Nadia in the kitchen where Olga had prepared some coffee.

 

I stayed there, looking at the portrait of little Pablo, thinking about the casual tone of the words that Picasso had just uttered, rendering them even more shocking to me, until Nadia’s voice dragged me out of my state and rushed me to the kitchen before the coffee could get cold.