One of the most fundamental drives humans are motivated by is the drive to find a fellow human being to represent a standard for oneself, and to try to follow or emulate this human being who embodies values, characteristics, or achievements that one admires.
Many of us Muslims, who are searching for a way to live our religion to the best of our ability and, from within it, to build a society in which humans can live to their fullest potential, look to Abu Dharr el Ghaffari as one of our exemplars, a simple, man from a desert tribe.
Abu Dharr el Ghaffari was a member of a tribe that lived outside of Mecca. When he heard of the Prophet Muhammad, he sent his brother to Mecca and then, unsatisfied with his information, went himself. He spent two days with the Prophet’s cousin Ali before he was able to trust him enough to admit what he had come for. When he met the Prophet he immediately made the confession of faith. There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet. In spite of the Prophet’s own warning against it, he then immediately told the anti-Islam Meccan tribes of his conviction, and they attacked him. He was rescued by one of the Prophet’s relatives.
Abu Dharr then left Mecca to bear witness for Islam to his own tribe in the desert, and his family immediately joined him in his new faith. He stayed with his tribe until the Prophet had moved to Medina and been there for a while, then asked to join him and lived with him in Medina until the Prophet’s death.
After the Prophet’s death, Abu Dharr was grieved that he would no longer have his companionship and spent the next several years in the desert. He went to Damascus at the time of the third Caliph, Caliph Uthman, and was astounded and quite upset by the opulence of the new Muslim capital. He loudly denounced the Caliph himself and his companions, reminding them of the simplicity and comradliness with which the Prophet had lived among his companions in Medina. Because he refused to stop these strong criticisms, Uthman sent him to live in a small village. From that time until his death, Abu Dharr lived in the utmost simplicity, saying that he did not acquire possessions because he was saving for his abode in heaven.
Dr. Ali Shariati, in the introduction to his book And Once Again Abu Dharr, points out that Abu Dharr, who called for the sharing of wealth among people and spoke out against the riches of the palaces of Damascus, was not speaking from a strictly socialist point of view. His view was very strongly spiritual. He believed that Islam calls for this strict economic equality because it will help people to be the closest to God that they can possibly be.
Because we ground our political views firmly within the beauty and spirituality of our religious faith, we strongly identify with Abu Dharr’s view. Our view is that people’s ability to live in peace and treat each other kindly is the more difficult as we become more entrenched in competing to acquire goods, possessions, or power. Abu Dharr’s belief system is expressed by the Quran itself when we are reminded that our preoccupation with goods, lands, and progeny is temporal and that there is something greater, or when we are reminded to help the oppressed.
Anna Ghonim, Cairo, Egypt
