Dear Emir of Qatar

World Champ Ali once fought an exhibition bout in Qatar. The event began with the declaration “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” A half century later the World Cup began with Quran recitation. Qatar is consistent.

While you invite the world to Islam, I thought I’d extend that invitation to you as well; we all need reminders.

I congratulate you in working with the International Labour Organization and pioneering much needed reforms in the Arab world. By dismantling the entrenched kafala system, an immigrant worker can now change jobs. This and other commendable legal reforms, such as having a minimum wage for migrant workers, may inspire Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait to follow your example. “Pay the worker his wages” as Muhammad ﷺ reminded “before his sweat has dried” which in 40°C implies paying instantaneously! However ‘Absconding’ from an employer remains a criminal offence that can well continue kafala by other means; laws in the books need not alter facts on the ground. For that we need a change of heart. So let us reflect on what makes your country unique: migrant workers make up 88% of your country’s inhabitants.

Immigrancy runs thematically through Islam. Its calendar begins on the date not of the revelation of the Quran, nor the birth of its Prophet, but on the day he migrated from the land of his birth. The lunar calendar itself is a migrant: the month of fasting shifting each year, migrating across seasons, returning to where it began thirty-three years later.

Muhammad ﷺ left Mecca and sought refuge in Medina. His companions became muhajirs, immigrants, and the natives of Medina ansars; gracious hosts. He returned to conquer Mecca and forgave its residents who had persecuted him and his family. After the transient homecoming, he chose to leave the land of his birth and conquest, to return to the land of the ansars, hosts that had conquered his heart, and continues to repose in Medina. His companions too rest in lands further afar.

Once in a lifetime, the most sedentary villager in a remote corner of the world, turns into a jet set traveler as he travels across the world to perform Hajj spending nights as a nomad in a desert tent. Reaching the Kaaba in the valley of Mecca, to walk around it seven rounds but never enter. Afterwards ascending and descending seven times between twin hills and travelling to the Valley of Knowledge (Arafat). He then repeats the hijra, migration, when he visits the tomb of Muhammad ﷺ. in Medina. When he returns home he finds it not quite the place he had left as he realizes that he has turned wayfarer. This world: a transit lounge; home: what comes after.

The law of the migrant’s religion, sharia, denotes the path that takes you to the source. During prayers the worshipper migrates within a personal space. Moments of repose while standing, bending, sitting in the midst of movements radially towards the Kaaba in a space named after that movement: masjid i.e. the place of sajdah, prostration. The mihrab niche of the mosque denotes that space itself migrates to an altar elsewhere.

Piety implies a movement towards God; those nearer to Him superior to those further away, irrespective of their status in the world. The Prophet judged that ansars, if they take care of the muhajirs immigrants as one of their own, then, and only then are ansars better than muhajirs.

All Qataris and immigrants, ansars and muhajirs, regardless of their religion, race or nationalities are, as the Quran asserts, ennobled children of Adam (Q.17:70). As Qatar invites the world to Islam, Islam invites Qatar, its Emir and its people to rise up and become ansars: gracious hosts to their immigrant muhajir workers.

In peace

H. Masud Taj

 

 

 

Architect-poet-calligrapher H. Masud Taj worked in a furniture factory in UAE and then later as an architect in Oman. Forty years ago he travelled overland from Oman to the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia that entailed driving across Qatar from Dubai; he ended up camping in the chilly desert outside Qatar as the border office was closed for the night. His analysis of Qatar’s neighbour Dubai as well as the quotations from the Quran and Hadith above and other calligraphic plates can be downloaded from Academia.

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