Rediscovering Minimalism in our Muslim Identity
It was around July 2018 when my housing problems in Dubai started, I was kicked out of my house. The house was being literally torn apart while my stuff was still inside, and we, the renters of the house, were tossed on to the street. The homeowner, the main cause of this problem, was nowhere to be found. We lost our deposit, our rooms, and any place to sleep. Given barely a few hours to pack.
It took me around 3 trips by my car to take everything to my temporary hotel room, which was later shutdown, I then booked another hotel apartment for a month before it closedown, it left me lost in Dubai for months before deciding to leave (this is all happening during the Dubai slow financial crisis in 2018). I needed another 3 trips from Dubai to Muscat packing all my belongings to my parent’s apartment in Oman in my small car. I was frustrated, mentally and physically for all the things I owned. That’s when I finally realised how temporary everything is, and when I decided that everything I should ever own should fit into the car I drive. And this was how my path towards discovering minimalism started.
Even though I was never a casual shopper — opting to save and overthink purchases. I spent my saving on experiences and being in nature far from the materialistic shops of the city. Nevertheless I still loved souvenirs, buying those random small pieces and products to own and display, had boxes of useless products and books that looked nice hoping to use “one day”.
Like everything in my life, I knew everything has its timing. The event happened during the holy month of Ramadan, the month where one should focus on disciplining himself in his habits and religion. My path towards Minimalism reminded me of the process of fasting (from the aspect of stopping food from sunrise to sunset); the less we eat, the more we appreciate the food we have on our table. We stop an essential act (of eating) temporarily to realise the importance of what we already have, we gain more appreciation of food than eating good food ever does.
What is Minimalism?
First we need to define what Minimalism really is. Outside of the misunderstood Instagram-aesthetic narrative.
Like fasting; the importance is not physical change in our body, it’s psychological change. It is not about owning less things, nor purging our closet, nor wearing only monotonic colours, nor limiting yourself to “100 things”. It’s about challenging your deepest beliefs; clearing the noise in our head to address our deepest problems. To discipline ones self by detaching from the unnecessary.
Reducing the objects we own is one of the means in discipline, yet the people quickly jumping onto the Minimalist bandwagon are usually rich and safe enough to afford owning less things overlooking the discipline aspect of minimalism, as they can easily buy up items as they break; while the less fortunate people are forced to hoard to make sure when the essential things are broken they can fix them, so they own more as a necessity. Possessions are sometimes a lifeline more than a burden, we can’t simply say they can’t afford to be Minimalists.
Minimalism in the Bedouin Culture
The truth is, the deeper understanding of Minimalism (or essentialism) is not a new movement of the 21st century. It is found in most pre-colonialized cultures. Found in many nomadic cultures around the world. Yet the Arabian Peninsula and its surroundings thrived on the idea for a long time, with the Bedouins.
Living on the vast emptiness of the desert under the harshness of dry weather, the nature of the Bedouins was they are never settled in one area, instead the follow the growth and the weather to wherever there is water and grass for their stock. Thus they travel with as few possessions as they could carry on the back of their camels. Anything extra that isn't useful for survival was a burden that had no place in their life.
Their temporary houses were made of dry wood and fabric from goats. The more permanent ones were made from mud and palm fronds. Yet all those houses can be disassembled and disappear without a trace as they move, returning the debt to nature, leaving as clean as they arrived: without a trace.
This is where the misconception of the Gulf Arabs (Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula) lack of history comes from — they never left physical traces. The way the Mediterranean and other cultures left through history. Art and history for the bedouins can’t be found in the traditional sense of Museums.
The Gulf Arab history is found in poetry told around campfires in the middle of a chilly night. In songs of love between the palm trees. In the strength of the language and the perfection of its speaker, in values of honour and serving the guest. History is found in the minds of the greatly respected elders who held the galleries in different locations inside their minds. Those elders know and inherit a direct lineage of history. They couldn’t afford to enslave themselves onto carrying unneeded burden. They were free. Illustrating Al Kindi’s and Epictetus’s philosophy: to take only the minimum bare needs in life. Desiring nothing of desirability value other than some currency, weapons and survival materials. For spendings a great deal of time to please the body and collecting the unnecessary is a sign of an ungifted men.
“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”
― Epictetus, The Discourses
When Lawrence of Arabia was travelling with the bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula, he repeatedly wrote how shocked he was of how they needed nothing. Even when they travelled North and were offered different and fresh green food and olives from Palestine and Syria.
… they made it their pride to find the desert sufficient for their every need (Lawrence: Warrior and Scholar. Leigh, B.)
The culture transcended to music too; compared to the Western polyphony of technical perfection (that plays more than one note at a time in complex and strict timings), the music from the Arabian peninsula and its Persian and Turkish neighbours were always monophonic; only one simple note at a time, called Maqam (مَقام), the note is full of emotions and intensity that is free from the burden of restriction to run in different scale or variation each time as the setting demands. The same music played under the moon light, is different from the Sultan’s guest room. While the Western musician needs to perfect the physical sheet music to access the soul of Western music— the classical Arabic musician can only access the music throughout its soul and what it stimulates inside of him with as less notes as possible.
Minimalism in Islam
Anything little and sufficient is better than a lot but distractive.
.ما قل وكفى خير مما كثر وألهى
— Mohammed ﷺ
Minimalism and Essentialism were encouraged since the emergence of Islam, with an act know in Arabic as Zuhd (زُهُد) which literally means ‘detachment’. To be detached of both physical and mental stuff. To not let anything or anyone take on your happiness or life, to be content and happy with what you have. Sadly our consumeristic world does not pursue this, instead we pursue a lifestyle that impresses others and our instagram view, new gadgets and travels. We pursue happiness if we took pictures in certain places or things, yet we ignore the fact that even the word ‘happy’ in english originates from the Latin beatus — to be blessed. Happiness is about being grateful of what we already have.
It does not mean we should live like hermits. Buy nothing new. Wear only shades of black and white. Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you. (Ali ibn abi Talib (RA)). It is to be mindful of what we own, to keep it in its position: in our hands, not our hearts.
In her book, Reclaim Your Heart, Yasmin Mogahed gives a beautiful analogy of the Ocean —of a vessel on the ocean floating. The ocean is the our dunya (earthly concerns and possessions), our means to reach our destination (from money, cars, shoes, designer items). Your life is the vessel, while your heart is inside this vessel. If the vessel allows all the ocean’s water get into the boat, it sinks. But the vessel accepts the dunya for what it is, accepts that it cannot keep what burdens the heart, to keep the ocean in its place under the vessel to stay afloat and guides it to the destination. We need to remember to keep dunya in its place.
Islam minimizes everything to the oneness of God. Everything around us is just means to live our life to serve him, not a burden to be carried.
Purify your life
The goal of minimalism, is not to reach minimalist nirvana, but to use minimalism as the means to our distractions. Applying it in our life, lifestyle, faith, thinking and design. Begin with the end in mind, consider your end goal and values and stick to them. Reflect if we are slipping into the natural burden of satisfying unneeded recognition or promotions or products or a certain lifestyle. Be mindful of who we are really doing it for. Start shedding out anything that does not add value to our life.
Remember to ask yourself;
Is this good for my heart? Or is it an unnecessary burden?
