We have a cock robin in our garden who has neither shame nor fear it seems. He sits on the kitchen window ledge pecking at the glass. Sometimes he even tries to fly into the room through the glass and we worry that he is going to break his beak! He is a beautiful bird with stick thin legs, fine feathers and an adventurous personality as befits a cock robin. We have never seen his partner assuming he has one – perhaps she is too discreet, sensible and probably has better things to do than try to fly into houses. The cock robin with his red breast plate, his insistence and presence gives us pleasure and we now leave a bowl of oats on the window ledge and he is there at various times of the day pecking delicately in the bowl. So maybe he knows what he is doing.

Now, I feel a little like that robin talking about Muslim spirituality and music. These are vast topics, they encompass several worlds, several sensibilities, several cultures ... and essentially they are realised not through words but in silence which may lead us to experiencing the ecstatic quality of music and spirituality. Like the robin, I am too little, too impertinent, too limited even to speak about this...subject. However, also like the robin, I may peck at flakes of insight and experience which unlike that cocky bird, I shall share with you in the short time we have!

I see in this Robin, in this cocky little creature, beauty and grace. He is that grace and beauty unconsciously, without fuss, without thought, without self-consciousness, without hubris. This is what music does for us if we are open to it – it allows us to enter a state of barakah or grace, it teaches us to become beautiful inside ourselves, it grants us passion, yearning, poise and occasionally, it takes us into a state of ecstatic connection with the Greater, what Muslims call Akbar. But music takes the Akbar out of the enclosure of phrase-mongering, the mechanistic Allahu-Akbar of distracted mundane expression into the open-ended oceanic awareness of the Greater within ourselves and in the universe about us. This is a central realisation of Islamic spirituality which great mystical poets like Rumi, Attar, Ibn Arabi speak of in their poetry.

MUSIC AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Music grants us an experience of beauty, it also gives us pleasure. There is a hadith or saying of the Prophet which states: “...nobody can escape the pleasure of the Qur’an”. Here is the fount of all music which Sufis or Islamic mystics praise and mention again and again. The Qur’an, the word of God, the fundamental text that forms a Muslim’s identity, is also a divine composition. It does not only contain allegories, moral injunctions and perennial wisdom – revelation in short – it is also a beautiful form made up of verses that produce wonderful sounds, grace and abundance, when recited melodically. And Qur’anic recital in the Islamic world is an art form held in the highest esteem by Muslims. The holy book is not only a source of revelation; it is also a source of pleasure and enjoyment: it is music for the ear and for the spirit. According to the great Islamic mystic al-Ghazzali, there are passages in the Qur’an that can induce a state of trance in the listener when they are recited and heard with an open heart. Such listeners are transported, they undergo a psychological – I dare say, spiritual – transformation. The sound of the Qur’an is the essence of music for Muslims, it affects and influences all sorts of serious – and indeed not-so-serious – music in the Islamic world by the intonation and strategic pause of the language, slow cumulative cadences of sound, the sound-values which instil in the listener a sort of preparatory meditative state of confirmation.

Listening to music as a spiritual practice is to listen with the heart of the ear which perceives and absorbs the subtlety of sound. Then we may enter that sound – the fast ecstatic rhythms, for example, of the tabla and rebab which is a stringed instrument, of Afghani music, or the long note reaching out to the Beloved that one hears in the Qawwali music from India or Pakistan, or in the subtle interchange of tone and words in the Persian ghazal – we may enter the sound or the sound may enter us with an extraordinary intensity and sense of purity. It’s the cleansing and stilling effect of even the most agitated music which dies down into a silence, and that makes instrumental music, song and chant so powerful a prelude to the silence of deep prayer. Repetition and absorption of sound creates a sacred space in the listener who, for that moment, forgets him or herself.

Music conveys beauty through the ear – the ear or hearing being the primal sense; we sense the resonance of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb. I believe that hearing is the last sense to close down when we die. The Prophet Muhammad first heard the revelation in the womb of the cave in Mount Hira. Muslims hear the call to prayer – the azaan – which rises like a slender thread to the Almighty; we hear the Qur’an being recited, we hear music. In all of these situations we receive, and how we receive and what we receive are crucial. Cheap and crude expressions of sound which passes for music in the marketplace of the contemporary world and which we do not actu-ally listen to with intelligence, are invasive, delusory, deafening and deadening. We know that there is music of different qualities and levels of intensity. It can destroy as it can also uplift, it can create in the listener a sense of harmony, and of inward beauty. The early 11th century Islamic thinker, al-Biruni, considered poetry and music as part of the mathematical sci-ences; he emphasised their effect on the soul which is influenced by the mysterious Pythagorean experience of harmonious composition. The 11th century Islamic jurist, theologian and mystic, Al-Ghazzali, said that the music of the Qur’an can induce ecstasy (wajd) in the listener who may lose consciousness or weep uncontrol-lably on hearing verses being recited; thus the performance of religious music may be regarded as a form of worship. There are accounts from the early history of Islam in which we are told that unbeliev-ers converted to Islam because they were enchanted by the beauty of the sound of the Qur’an. To Ghazzali this beauty is a precious form of knowing which has close affinity to the soul ready to receive its rev-elations. The great Arab mystic, poet and thinker, al-Arabi, also ascribed talismanic, occult, healing powers to the sound of the Qur’an when it is recited; he proposed an alchemy of sound.

Music was not only considered as a science with a kinship to mathematics, it is an art which gives pleasure both sensual and spiritual, it is also regarded as therapy for the mind, spirit, indeed for the body. Thus music, which in the Islamic world is regarded as reflecting the harmonic structure of the universe, affects the mind. The 9th century Islamic philosopher, al-Kindi, propounded a doctrine which claimed to show the soothing qualities of music when combined with colours and perfumes which imitate the pleasures and delights of Paradise ranging from the purely carnal to the ecstatic. The 10th century thinker, Ma’sudi, regarded music as a noble legacy of the Greeks because it ignites and transforms the soul and it cannot be captured by the dead protocols of logic.

The group of esoteric scholars called Ikhwan al Safa or Brethren of Purity who lived in 9th century Basra, were clearly aware of the deep psychological effect that music can have on us. They championed the Pythagorean notion that the music we hear echoes the music of the cosmos produced by the motion of the celestial bodies, thus reflecting the innate harmony of existence. Music was to the soul what wine was to the body – both resulted in the creation of pleasure through the senses. There is an Orphic dimension to this thinking in that they knew – not through the methodical iterations of scientific experiments but by way of philosophy and insight – that music can affect and move animals too. It can create a deep sense of longing but it can also act as a therapy for melancholy, and a way of soothing children. It was prized by princes and emirs, and scenes depicting performing musicians occupy a prominent place in Islamic courtly art. Music, therefore, retained and still retains its power in the imagination of Muslims all over the world. During the Omayyad and Abbasid periods, members of princely courts were overpowered by a sense of ecstasy at musi-cal performances. Caliphs are reported as being reduced to tears or raised to ecstatic shouting before falling in a swoon on the floor. Not exactly dignified behaviour on the part of the ruler, but understood and respected nonetheless.

PURITANNICAL RETRACTION

In short, music was regarded by the Arabs as having the most profound impact on the soul of all the arts. But there is also a certain puritanical retraction from the joy and pleasure in music to be found in the Islamic tradition which is espoused by many Muslims today. For these people who constantly seek a purity and perfection from an illusory “golden age” at the origins of the faith, music leads to decadence and invites promiscuity. Hence it is held in deep suspicion, if not outright hostility, by Islamists or Salafists, who regard it as a diabolical distraction leading to hedonism and unseemly sexual excess, with which they are curiously obsessed. Music, therefore, is off limits. A founder of one of the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Imam Shafi’i, condemned music as well as anything that is “played”. Abu Hanifa, another great Islamic jurist, also deplored music. Al-Ghazzali, however, whilst recognising this issue and whilst not promoting the use of music for licentious purposes, was of the opinion that since there was no prohibition of music in the Qur’an or in the Prophet’s traditions, music, therefore, was licit. The Sufis, or the Muslim mystical brotherhoods, support this position referring to the biblical tradition of David’s per-formances with the harp and to a hadith or tradition in which music was considered as an attribute of Paradise. Thus music is justified by recourse to other sacred or semi-sacred texts which satisfy the stringent pre-conditions of orthodox respectability and the fear of transgression, of crossing recognised and sanctified limits. Purity, correct behaviour and right-thinking are essential attributes of the Islamic identity according to many Islamic clerics. I suppose it could be deemed to be the trait of all passionate religious adherence.

However, music is an integral part of many sufi rituals as a process of cleansing and settling the mind for sama or the ecstatic annihilation of the soul in the Greater or Akbar of God when the heart is purified. In this case music satisfies the yearning for purity. The Islamic mystic, Dhu’l-Nun, wrote with hyperbole typical of some Sufis: “Listening to music is a divine influence which stirs the heart to seek Allah and those who listen to it spiritually to attain Allah and those who listen to it sensually to fall into heresy.” Another Sufi, al-Darraj said: “Listening to music....causes me to find the existence of the Truth behind the veil.” We can see that many Islamic thinkers were convinced of the power of music to open the soul and unveil the hidden qualities of the mind through the solvent influence of harmony.

MUSIC AS ORNAMENT

As those who learn to recite the Qur’an may be deemed to be intensive readers, for the Holy Book is, in a sense, the only book to be read, re-read and learnt, both practically and metaphorically, by heart; so too those who listen to the recitation or chanting of the Qur’an which borders on singing or a recitative, are intensive listeners. The theological science of the qiar’at is concerned with modes of reading, of vocalisation, and the refined gradings of pronunciation; it also involves the marshalling of techniques of melodious delivery of the verses of the Qur‘an which one may describe, with I hope an excusable indulgence, as the oral calligraphics of sound. An early theologian of the 14th century CE, Ibn Qayyim, says of the chanting of the Qur’an that it is a marvellous ornament. He refers to a Hadith of the Prophet in which the believer is commended to “adorn the Qur’an with your voices”. Another Hadith says: “...everything has its ornament, the Qur’an’s ornament is a beautiful voice.” Ornament was thought of as a part of music and in his Great Book of Music, the 9th-10th Islamic philosopher and scientist, Ibn Farabi, who wrote about the power of rhythmic improvisation and melodic ornamentation to achieve a higher level of consciousness, argued for the aesthetic function of musical ornamentation. He pointed out that it fed the imagination and provided pleasure, elegance, brilliance, virtuosity and opulence; one can think of it being to the ear as silk is to the skin. Ornament was not simply an add-on, a puff of sound, but essential to a composition’s integrity, as long as it arises from its core values and form. Thus Qur’anic recitation, with proper ornamentation, is closely connected to, and influenced by the art of music. So too, the call to prayer, the Azaan, is melodious although the practice varies from tradition to tradition, from country to country. Therefore, whilst in Wahabi-dominated Saudi Arabia, it is simple and austere, in Egypt it is more melodious, which is not without precedent since the Prophet selected the first Muezzin, Bilal, because he had a beautiful voice. Thus listeners are enchanted not only by the beauty of the sonority and intonation of the sounds themselves harvested by the ear but also by their own preconceptions of the significance of these fertile, rich sounds – they become both passive recipients, they become slaves or servants of the sacred sounds which are the uncreated words of Allah and considered by Muslims to be simultaneously revealed beauty (Jamal) and truth (Haqq), and they also become active participants in the creation of the sense of the sacred that the sounds produce. This is the quintessentially concentrated form of religious music. Listeners are drawn toward the presence of God by the assent of hearing, and beauty is conceived.

A GREATER DIMENSION

Now a few words about my personal response to music. I am an example, along with millions of others, of a convergence of tradi-tions, partly in their so-called pure forms (which are never as pure as we think) and partly in their modern hybridised forms. Therefore, I find pleasure, joy, poignancy, the pos-sibility of transformation and even of transcendence in many types of music, both from the East and the West. I find pleasure from the delicately erotic songs of Natasha Atlas who sings in Arabic, from the ecstatic exhalations of Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, from Schubert’s chamber music and the piano sonatas of Beethoven, the operas of Mozart, from Bach. I find an inward delicacy in the crystalline notes of a Scarlatti sonata which fall on the ear like drops of melt-water. And it’s not only so-called classical music or traditional music that moves me – there is the marvel-lous intricacy of John Coltrane’s saxophone, the quasi-mystical, dreamy impressions of Miles Davis, the meditative sequences of Abdullah Ebrahim’s jazz piano, the single ecstatic lines of Santana’s guitar which draw the ear towards the sky. I could go on and on, and I am sure all of you have your own addictions. Music is attachment and a way to experience deeply something that is nameless, it can be the expression of deep longing, of the deep exaltation of uninhibited joy or an austere recognition of a greater dimension than our own petty consciousness. All of it is music.

The pure original forms were also new in their time and they were the results of evolving traditions. We may admire and be moved by our traditional forms and musical content – but we are also distanced from their language being situated in the contemporary world. Inevitably, we listen differently from the original listeners, we have different memories, identities and contexts from which we feel, think, act and live. By actually living today, we are subjected – if that is the right word – to great impersonal convergences because of the result of globalisation which clearly is an economic phenomenon but it is also cultural. We hear new sounds, different sounds declaring different musical languages; musicians hear them too and are influenced by them so that their music is infused with difference and the possibilities of difference. Convergence is inevitable – we cannot set up barriers which are leak-proof – the influence of different musical cultures is becoming a flood, and not only from but between the Abrahamic faiths.

As it is, music in the Islamic world was always made up of many strands. Clearly, we have the tradition of Arabic music – which has its own variations as we travel from the Mahgreb to the Middle East; there is Persian music which influenced the Muslim music of India which has its own taste and style. Then there is the rich tradition of music from Black Muslim Africa, and the music of the Far East. As I have said, music in the Islamic world is influenced by the sounds and the contents of the Qur’an which could be regarded as a symphonic work in its own right, but the influences are absorbed, mediated and transformed to reflect local cultures and traditions. Thus, the songs of Turkmenistan will have some affinity with the songs of Egypt but they will also have their own stamp of sound and form. Their sounds may be reflections of the holy text, they may use similar images, they may mirror the spirituality of the faith, but their style, their tone, their feel will have a distinct fingerprint which is native to the cultures from which they spring. There is so much more to say about music in the Islamic world. But we can talk too much about music when we should be actu-ally listening actively to its intelligence and beauty. It is at the heart of silence which, in turn is at the heart of prayer that orientates us, as we attempt to reach out to the Greater or the Akbar of Allah.

One last point, as I recall Dr. Zaki Badawi to whom this essay is dedicated. The night before he died, his wife Mariam, told me that he was forced to play scrabble with his grand daughters who insisted that he join them. After that he read a Ph.D. thesis that he was supervising. Finally, before going to bed, he listened to Um Kulthum whose great meandering rivers of poetry verging on song seared with longing he loved. What better recommendation to us here to value and find solace in the transformative power of music which one could describe, at the risk of being over-florid, as poetry unleashed from the page and eye, leaping through the ear into the heart. Islamic music has complex intellectual and technical underpinnings, but its purpose is to give the listener pleasure, to create a sense of harmony and to move the listener to visit a deeper sense of self.