My parents brought me to the United States when I was 12 years old, with one purpose: to find a better education and life trajectory. In America, I have experienced a cultural and creative efflorescence, found my faith and grew into my current vision of ‘spirituality and creativity in contemporary culture’ that defines my work and non-profit organization Adhwaq.
I could not be more grateful for this journey. I appreciate its nuances and can almost smell the fragrance of every memory along the way. I am grateful for my high school English teacher Ryan Goble who set me on a path that I did not appreciate until only recently: how to ‘make connections where none seem possible or exist’ between seemingly disparate disciplines such as religion, history and music.
I also appreciate my religious journey, one that traversed and pushed the limits of darkness and light in my life. I appreciate, with a distance, the years of constriction in American mosques, but more so that spiritual rehabilitation that occurred at the hands of the most unlikely candidate, the TV drama Lost. This saga was an unfinished attempt at transcribing mysticism onto film, but I and many others were all the better at joining its heroes and villains for the journey.
Most importantly, Lost was the first instance that I realized something which my teacher Ryan Goble had taught me in high school: art is a medium that always transcends mere content and communicates in a context silently dormant between the lines, colors and sound. Lost saved my faith from my religious community, and set me on a journey that still unfolds today.
I’m most grateful for my spiritual guides, Habib Umar b. Hafidh and Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, who ushered me on a path of being embraced by another whom I have come to accept as the one who can take my hand to the final frontier: Muhyiddin Ibn al-ʿArabi. This artist of hearts and souls has healed me in more ways than I can describe or language can circumscribe. He took me by the hand to the intersection of faith and culture, religion and art, God and society, which T.S. Eliot famously described as ‘an occupation for the saint’.
My friends, Saad Omar, Sohaib Muhyiddin, Kamau Ayyubi, Shaykh Adeyinka Mendes, Joshua Beneventi, Prof. Bilal Ware and others have been, and continue to be, indispensable companions on the road. Saad continues to gift me the platform and confidence, since 2015, to teach my vision. Sohaib Muhyiddin has been a truly remarkable visionary director for my work at Adhwaq, Art of Healing and Green Medical Network Group.
Shaykh Adeyinka Mendes continues to cultivate the soil for haqiqa in the West and has humbly allowed me to join him. Joshua Beneventi is a gift from Ibn al-ʿArabi whose presence in my life materialized more blessings than I can count. And lastly, but not least, Bilal Ware has been a brother and mentor in my doctoral journey. From our conversations about spirituality over coffee Touba and Jamaican Jerk chicken to our recent growth into the arts and his efflorescence in social justice and politics, I am honored to have him in my life.
And I cannot forget my family, especially my parents who struggled and sacrificed to deliver me to this crucial juncture in my life, as well as my wife and daughter who are joining me with a loving embrace as we all take a journey of transition into the unknown. I would not be able to do what I have done without them, and am forever indebted to them.
All of this happened in America, not by coincidence. There is something attractive about the in-betweenness of the West specifically and our globalized world generally today. I write this now after having spent the first five days of my life in Istanbul and Konya, cities with deep and ancient spiritual imprints yet whirling with perplexity between east and west, past and present, transcendence and immanence.
And yet, as a child of war and diaspora, I have lived the longest years of my life in America. The 26 years that today mark the time I have grown in Michigan linger solemnly in my imagination. They reside as a narrative with the chapters I have just mentioned above and more still that I am undertaking currently. And with a new page and empty canvas, I have come to the conclusion that my growth and contributions in America have come to an end.
Last year, I was invited to Singapore and Malaysia by my dear friends at Simply Islam. I must admit, I was initially very hesitant to travel as an Islamic educator because I had left religious teaching in America. I grew tired of starting ‘at step 1’ all the time. Ibn al-ʿArabi wants me to think about art and the craft as a means to know God. Meanwhile, every talk I gave at an American mosque tried to chain me back to issues that hinder growth: ‘I thought music was haram?’, ‘Isn’t Ibn al-ʿArabi a heretic?’ or ‘The Prophet S never celebrated mawlid.’
As I took my flight to Singapore last year, I read about the life of the city-state’s patron saint, Habib Noh al-Habsyi. One bit in his life won my heart before I even arrived in Singapore: “He enjoyed Chinese opera and even bought first row tickets to every performance. When asked, he said: ‘I do not understand what they are saying, but I receive spiritual gnosis through it.” This, alongside seeing a banner at one of Singapore’s most celebrated mosques, masjid Ba ʿAlawi, that read: ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’ and experiencing Malaysia’s rich and harmonious marriage between Islam and indigenous Malay culture revived my hope in teaching Islam.
Nusantara appeared to me as the culmination of whatever I had envisioned for America during the past two decades of my work as an educator, but had been unable to accomplish. This in no way reflects on the faults of others but my own, and what I had come to accept as a silent conclusion of a spiritual contract between myself and that land: whatever I was meant to receive or give in America had been accomplished. I needed to move on.
This culmination did manifest in a few heartbreaks and many humbling embraces. There are quite a few American Muslim – and non-Muslim – artists who continue to invest in my work and vision of Ibn al-ʿArabi as the guide for artists. But it is also true that many of these invested individuals do not reside in the United States. They comprise a truly international community which I consider my family. And it is also true, unfortunately, that I have been saddened by some Western Muslim artists and influencers who cannot see beyond the immediate return of followers and viewers.
I migrate, for the third time in my life, from America to Nusantara with a parting message for these Western artists and influencers. Your talent, influence and presence is a gift that merits zakat. The alms due on this gift is to recognize that genuine human relationships, even those built over the virtual ether, are not only what truly lasts, but what also becomes the spring of our creativity. Until we recognize the importance of investing in our human relationships, we cannot unfold narratives that humanize us as a minority.
I leave America for Nusantara, settling in Kuala Lumpur and hoping to regularly visit Singapore and Indonesia, with neither contempt nor disillusionment about America. I cherish the memories and pray to create new ones at one point in time. However, at this juncture, I bid farewell to this land and its people, entrusting their wellbeing and coexistence to God.
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