| The Trouble with Rage | | Print | |
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Page 1 of 3 By Suhaib Webb As we sat together in the back of Al-Azhar, the heat of the sun was apparent more than its light. The air was thick; a fusion of Cairo’s pollution, dust and its famous humidity. Like birds on a scarecrow, we sat motionless under the shadow of an ancient Ottoman pillar as the Sheikh’s face and words proved more than sufficient to illuminate our dark circle: “Sheikh Ahmed Derder was the Sheikh of the Malikis (a school of legal thought in Islam) in his day. He used to teach in the back of the mosque. One day the Sheikh was taking his lunch and he noticed a cat sliding through the wall of students. Suddenly one of the students hit the cat and pushed it aside. The Sheikh stood and scolded the student reminding him that this poor creature should be treated with dignity. At that moment the Sheikh began to crumble his food and serve the cat. From that day onward the cat would come to the Sheikh at lunchtime and purr his way into the Sheikh’s heart. And every time the Sheikh would serve the cat as a servant serves his master. A short time later another cat came, until, after a few weeks, whenever the sheikh would enter the masjid, there were no less than a hundred cats following him, and he would do his best to serve them whatever he had.” As we listened to this story our hearts flew as birds over high mountains. Then, suddenly, the Sheikh paused, looked at us and said, “Here is one of our greatest legal scholars, a saint and teacher. Look at how he treated a cat! And today, people are killing innocent human beings in the name of Islam!” Sadness overcame the Sheikh and he paused and suddenly, although in front of us, it was though he had traveled 1000 miles away from our small circle. |