Sitting atop Mount Palmer in the heart of the city-state of Singapore, the maqām (shrine) – also known kerāmat (lit. miracle) in Malay – of Habib Noh al-Habsyi overlooks Singapore’s port on one side, one of the busiest trade routes in the world, and the country’s main financial building on the other. In-between, passersby can greet the saint as they drive on a highway that pays its respects to his inner sanctum on a perfect eye-level symmetry.
When I visited Habib Noh’s shrine for the first time, on my second day in Singapore, I was immediately struck by the modern sensibility of this patron-saint of his city-state. In many ways, his spiritual comfort residing amidst the hustle and bustle of Singapore’s financial district is exactly how I envision organic sainthood in our contemporary day and age, despite the fact that Habib Noh passed in 1866.
I have told everyone I met in Singapore that with Habib Noh’s gaze covering the entire financial ecosystem of the country, it will never – God willing – be afflicted with financial ruin or bankruptcy. As God mentions in the Qurʾan: “We have placed upon the earth firm anchors and gave you to drink sweet water.” (77:27) And so it is, that Singapore’s trade sails on sweet waters under the gaze and guidance of Habib Noh, as he himself a spiritual mountain and firm anchor, resides on top of a mount.
If the Malay term kerāmat (shrine and miracle) aptly describes the co-incidence of Habib Noh’s presence in space and time, so does its Arabic equivalent maqām embody this saint’s journey and spiritual vision for this land. The three meanings of maqām: shrine, spiritual station and musical modality conveys the different threads through which Habib Noh continues to make his presence known to his visitors and Singapore at large.
During my flight to Singapore, I took the time to read about Habib Noh, his life and career. What stood out to me immediately is his appreciation of Chinese opera, whence he would insist on sitting in the front row seat of every performance. He remarked about his love for this artform: “I do not understand what they are saying, but I receive spiritual insights from their performance.” As an Oud musician myself and someone who has all too often taught about the sanctity of the Named hiding behind unfamiliar names in art, I found myself at home in this Habib Noh’s vision.
Of course, Habib Noh’s legacy extends beyond this, including his habit of taking food from stalls and stores to give to the poor as well as his miraculous ability to escape prison time and again after being jailed by the British. But it is this rather peculiar love he had for Chinese opera that I think is so pertinent to what makes Singapore special today, not only economically but more importantly spiritually and religiously. It is not only Muslims who visit and honor Habib Noh, but also non-Muslims of different ethnicities, all of whom treat him as a national treasure and a patron saint of Singapore.
There are no coincidences in sainthood and lives of saints, both when they are performing miracles above the ground and after they continue their work in the unseen. It is divinely intentional that across the street from Habib Noh’s shrine rests the oldest Chinese temple in Singapore. And as you begin to explore the city-state, you find masjid Ba ʿAlawi, with Habib Noh’s own family name as its namesake and its imam one of his descendant-relatives, Habib Hasan al-Attas, who welcomes visitors with a banner that reads: “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.”
For Muslims living in the West, each of these silent scenes from Singapore appears as a mirror reflecting back deep trauma and cultural crises. As Western Muslims struggle to merely tolerate congratulating Christians on their religious holy days, or even honoring the shrines of Muslim saints for that matter, Habib Noh’s words ring as a remembrance of a much deeper process than tolerance: to know God in the mirror of the other.
As the entirety of Singapore, both its people and government, continue to honor Habib Noh’s legacy, even renovating his shrine complex under the apt slogan: ‘A spiritual oasis in the city’, his spirit will continue to embody and permeate every corner of this land. Just as he showed reverence to Chinese opera, acknowledging it as a means for maʿrifa (gnosis), so will all of Singapore be enveloped in this movement, its people witnessing higher truth and reality in the mirror of the other, especially those Singaporeans of other faiths and ethnicities.
You see, Singapore is not merely a modern and well-developed Asian country under the care of saints. Rather, it is the very embodiment of how saints perceive and receive the world around them. As the Andalusian Muslim saint Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-ʿArabi states, Muslim saints only ask God for mercy through His Name al-Raḥmān (The Most-Merciful), because they do not want mercy to simply descend, but for themselves to become ʿuyūn al-Raḥmān (eyes and springs of the Most-Merciful) and sources of happiness for those around them.
Singapore’s love and reverence for Habib Noh, and his own love for this land, has much to teach Western Muslims about the sacred need for relevance and revenance in one’s own cultural context, across past, present and future. After living in the United States for a near 30 years, I like many other Muslims here, are witnessing the undoing of an ‘American dream’ that never was.
We are not teenagers anymore, seeking fleeting glimmers, but neither a life of monasticism in-spite of the world. On the contrary, we are thirsty for a space of meaningfulness. We are craving a temporality and narrative where modernity can assist in experiencing the sacred, where the language of the senses (words, colors, fragrances) are vivid and actually sustain our bodies and spirits. This is what I tasted in Singapore, the first place I could call home, in a long time.
Comments