The Royal Wedding: Ancient Origins

Friday sermon (jum'ah khutba) - Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad - Cambridge - 29th April 2011 - 25 mins 54 secs

On the eve of the wedding of the to-be Duke and Duchess of Cambridge the Sheikh gave his own take on the fanfare surrounding the Royal Wedding.

The public interest in the ceremonies may have been aroused for a number of reasons, not all of them edifying, but perhaps one factor behind it was a collective response of the fitra, the natural state lying more or less dormant in every individual.

It may have been that being attracted by the pageantry was in fact a respect for the ordinances of that most ancient bond of marriage. The Sheikh mentioned how Adam, peace be upon him, was taught the Names of things by Allah, and that he was not taught them in isolation but rather with a partner, Hawa (Eve). Returning back to his original postulation, Sheikh Abdal Hakim commented that the dual singularity of marriage is in the natural order of things, the modern obsession with the individual identity being an aberration a step removed from the primordial path.

The image above is of the spring blossom - to be found at the time of the wedding - in Selwyn College, Cambridge. Taken by the CKETC team.

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The Mercy of Diversity

As-salaam 'alaykum. Please accept my sincere apologies for the hiatus in posting. InshaAllah a new administrator will be taking over the site shortly, who has more time to manage it and update more regularly. There are some great recordings to come, including Sheikh Abdal Hakim's khutba on the royal wedding (!) among other things.

For those of you who have contributed to the transcription project, I also wanted to thank you sincerely for your response and let you know that we are working on getting the transcripts up online inshaAllah.

So, apologies again for the unscheduled break in posts. Please forgive me for that, and rest assured that regular posts will resume shortly with the injection of some new blood!

In the meantime, here is a very interesting recent talk by Sheikh Abdal Hakim on the significance of diversity in modern Britain, which he delivered during Habib Umar b. Hafiz's tour of the UK. You can also see talks by Habib Umar himself here.