Adli Yacubi

Tag: Everyday Saints

  • The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

    The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

    The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

    Introduction: Rabi al-Awwal and the Living Presence

    Rabi al-Awwal has arrived — the month in which many commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. But beyond the formal gatherings and public sermons, there are other ways his presence is felt.

    This blog reflects on three threads of remembrance: the Prophet ﷺ as a guide in our political struggles, a source of poetic longing, and a quiet presence in our daily lives — folded into our homes, habits, and inherited silences.

    I. The Constitution of Madinah and the Call of Islam: A Political Sunnah of Justice

    In the 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa gave birth to many political and religious formations. Among them was the Call of Islam, a progressive Muslim organization that took inspiration from the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ example as a political and ethical leader.

    At the heart of its formation was a sense that Islam was not simply a private affair, but a force for justice. The Prophet’s ﷺ Constitution of Madinah — a model for pluralism, shared civic belonging, and accountability — offered a living blueprint. In our reading circles and public addresses, we didn’t only study fiqh. We studied the Sunnah of justice, the Sunnah of solidarity, and the Sunnah of standing with the oppressed.

    This legacy reached a milestone in the 1992 National Muslim Conference, where Muslims from diverse traditions gathered to imagine a future democratic South Africa. The Prophet’s ﷺ example was not presented as abstraction but as compass — guiding how Muslims might live in plural, equal dignity with others.

    Today, the landscape is very different. There are Muslim judges, radio stations, political parties. But let us remember: these were not always guaranteed. Many of the freedoms now enjoyed were carried on the shoulders of those who took risk — and who understood the Prophet ﷺ not only as a man of prayer, but as a statesman of vision.

    II. Verse as Vessel: Poetic Devotion and Madīḥ

    In the lands of Africa, madīḥ — praise poetry — has always been more than art. It is invocation, love-letter, protest, and memory. In my own work, I’ve found that poetry often says what footnotes cannot.

    Take for example this poem, I Inherited Longing:

    I did not see you with my eyes
    But I knew you in my marrow.
    Your name moved through my mother’s breath
    and into the rhythm of my walk.

    When they asked: “Who is your teacher?”
    I said: “The one whose tears I drink
    when I whisper salawāt.”

    I did not inherit land.
    I inherited longing.

    This is not biography. It is embodiment.

    Across Cape Town and Johannesburg, poets still recite verses that draw the Prophet ﷺ close — not as distant figure, but as intimate companion. This is how many of us came to know him: not through doctrine alone, but through dhikr, dreams, rhythm, and rhyme.

    III. The Prophet Among the People — Salawāt and Everyday Sunnah

    If sīrah shapes our public imagination and verse stirs our hearts, then the most enduring presence of the Prophet ﷺ lies not in the pages of a book, but in the lived habits of South African Muslims. In Cape Town especially, his memory is invoked not only in grand commemorations but in the daily, quiet acts of care, courtesy, and devotion.

    From the kettle always on the boil to the salawāt murmured in pre-dawn hours, the Prophet’s ﷺ legacy breathes through a tradition of service and subtlety. One sees his trace in janāzah preparations, in unspoken generosity, and in how the kitchen is cleaned before Maghrib. These are not mere habits. They are sacred echoes — practices with deep Prophetic roots.

    Among the Cape’s most enduring spiritual inheritances is the Ratib al-Haddād, chanted for decades — if not centuries — in mosques and homes. This litany, associated with the Ba ʿAlawī tradition of Hadhramaut, Yemen, is recited rhythmically, often in gatherings after Maghrib or ‘Ishā’. Alongside it, a particular standing salawāt is recited with heartfelt rhythm, in the deep belief that the light and rūḥ of the Prophet ﷺ enters the space when we call upon him. This is not metaphor. It is presence.

    The Cape is also home to a rare spiritual text: an Afrikaans Ratib al-Haddād written in Arabic script. In it, Kaaps-Afrikaans phrases — such as Onse Here is Groot and Help ons met die dode — appear with Qur’anic reverence. The tasbīḥ, duʿā’, and barakah of our forebears were carried in a mother tongue now often dismissed. But they knew what they were doing: encoding devotion into daily speech, transmitting Prophetic rhythm in a creole born of struggle and longing.

    Perhaps most evocatively, the Riwayat al-Birzanji — a melodic storytelling of the Prophet’s ﷺ birth and life — is performed during Moulood celebrations. My sisters would sing the first Riwayah in rich melody, sometimes referred to as laaghoe, or in Arabic terms, maqāmāt. These musical modes carried not only tune but transmission, passing down a soundscape of longing across generations.

    These gatherings — echoing devotional practices from South Asia, East and North Africa, and Southeast Asia — show that Cape Muslims are not an isolated outpost. We are part of a vast archipelago of Prophetic love, linked not only by history but by rhythm, breath, and remembrance.

    The First Riwayah composed by Sayyid Ja’far Ibn Hasan Al-Barzanji. In Arabic and English translation.

    IV. Kramats and Cape Saints: Circles of Protection

    If you trace a map around Cape Town, you will find sacred sites known as kramats — shrines of saintly Muslims, many of them exiled scholars or spiritual leaders, whose presence shaped the region’s barakah.

    Among the most revered is the kramat on Robben Island, believed to be the resting place of Tuang Mahmud Moturu, a 17th-century imam from Indonesia exiled by the Dutch. According to oral tradition, he carried with him the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet ﷺ. Even Nelson Mandela is said to have visited the kramat while imprisoned — a quiet act of respect for the spiritual presence that surrounded him.

    These kramats, stretching from Robben Island to Constantia, Faure to Bain’s Kloof, form what many refer to as a Circle of Islam, a protective perimeter believed by many Cape Muslims to spiritually guard the city. Even today, before departing for Hajj, many families visit these shrines to offer fātiḥah, seeking barakah and requesting the intercession of these tuangs — elder scholars and saints who represent a spiritual lineage of struggle, exile, remembrance, and return.

    It is no accident that these saints were also poets, teachers, and bearers of the sunnah. Their legacies weave the political with the spiritual, the literary with the lived. They stand as embodied representations of Prophetic devotion: not merely followers, but inheritors — those who carried the scent, the sound, and the story of the Beloved ﷺ into the soil of the Cape.

    These shrines are not merely gravesites. They are circles of remembrance. People visit with incense and duʿā’. Children are told stories. Salawāt is recited softly in the wind. In these spaces, the Prophet’s ﷺ spirit is invoked not as metaphor, but as living memory — guiding, protecting, witnessing.

    V. The Prophet at the Table

    When guests arrive in Cape Muslim homes, the first word is often “Ahlan wa sahlan.” It means “Welcome,” but more than that, it means: “Come as one whose path has been made smooth.” This is the spirit of the Prophet ﷺ at the table.

    Food is sacred here. When someone leaves for Hajj, families gather to recite salawāt and Qur’an. At weddings, a murmur of salawāt often follows the couple as they walk out — not choreographed, just habit. These are rhythms inherited, not invented.

    One of the most fragrant practices is the rampies sny — the cutting and perfuming of rose petals and leaves in preparation for the Moulood. Elders and children sit together, scenting the petals with rosewater, folding them into small cloths, whispering praises. It is not performance. It is love.

    The Prophet ﷺ is not only remembered here. He is welcomed — into the threshold, into the breath, into the heart of the home.

    Conclusion: The Prophet in Our Veins

    Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is with us — in scent, sound, and song. He is in our veins.
    Pic: Shafiq Morton

    We began with the idea that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is not a distant figure. Not only in the libraries, not only in the inherited manuscripts or well-attended Mawlid halls. He walks with us still — in our struggles for justice, in our poetry of longing, and in the subtle ways we greet, grieve, and gather.

    In South Africa — and especially in the Cape — this presence is not always announced from the pulpits or debated in institutions. It is poured into tea. It is stitched into janāzah cloth. It is recited in whispered salawāt and sung in melodies passed down from mother to daughter, uncle to nephew.

    The Prophet’s ﷺ legacy here has always been both principled and poetic — shaped by anti-apartheid resistance as much as by spiritual yearning. And in the rampies of Moulood, the maqāmāt of the Riwayah, and the rhythm of the Afrikaans Ratib, we find not just echoes of his name, but traces of his light.

    He is with us — in scent, sound, and song. He is in our veins.

    PostScript

    Here is a beautiful salawāt from Salat an-Nuraniyya of Ahmad al-Badawi; also called Salawat Badawi Kubra…

    O Allah! Exalt, greet and bless our master and liege lord Muḥammad, the Tree of Original Light, the Sparkle of the Handful of Divine Mercy, the Best of All Humankind, the Noblest of Physical Frames, the Vessel of the Lord’s Secrets and Storehouse of the Sciences of the Elect, the Possessor of the Original Divine Grasp, Resplendent Grace, and Uppermost Rank, under whose flag line up all the prophets, so that they are from him and point to him. 

    🌿

  • Before Three Sisters: A Road Interrupted, A Heart Opened

    Before Three Sisters: A Road Interrupted, A Heart Opened

    Before Three Sisters: A Road Interrupted, A Heart Opened

    We left Johannesburg in the early light, bound for Worcester — a journey that would return me not only to a familiar valley, but to a story still unfolding. I climbed into Deem’s bakkie at 6:20am. The air was still soft with sleep, but the weight we carried was real — a dinghy boat hitched behind us, and cement bags packed into the back to balance the load. Deem was heading to the Cape for another transport run, as he often did — ferrying cars, boats, bakkies, golf carts, whatever needed moving.

    He kept it steady, slow — 80 to 90 km/h. The road hummed low. We started talking.

    Mostly about our children.

    His sons, his daughter. Now grown. Their paths, their beliefs, the choices they were making in a complicated world.

    “I worry, bru,” he said. “About their Islam… their qibla.”

    I nodded. And gently shared my own truth:

    “We’ve already planted the seeds, Deem. Madrasa, school, life. The goodness is wired in. They’ll find their way to the Divine — maybe not how we imagined, but still. They’ll find it.”

    We sat in that silence — the kind that listens.

    Faried and the Detour

    Just before Three Sisters, Deem got a message. A friend of his, Faried, had broken down with his family. We rerouted.

    And just like that, our quiet bakkie became a car of five — Faried, his wife, and their daughter now in the back seat. I stayed quiet. This wasn’t my space to speak.

    But something had shifted. The stillness that had carried us through the early part of the journey made way for the unexpected warmth of company, for laughter, for memory. What had begun as a private ride between two companions was now a shared passage — a reminder that some roads widen not with tar, but with presence.

    The wife was chatty, warm, full of stories. She and Deem started talking about Deem’s drivers. One in particular: Archie.

    “Archie’s solid,” she said. “Kaaps, maar sharp. Always shows up.”

    A few kilometres down the line, just past Beaufort West, almost in Worcester, Deem turned to me and asked:

    “You know what Archie’s real name is?”

    I smiled.

    “My eldest brother — Allah yarhamu — was Fuad. But everyone called him Archie. So… is he also Fuad?”

    Deem laughed.

    “Nai bru… his real name is Abdul Qahhar.”

    We both burst out.

    “Qahharjie becomes Archie! Allah!”

    The Bend in the Road

    The road narrowed into the Hexrivier Valley. Dark by then. But not empty. The headlights caught a curve.

    “You see that corner?” Deem said.

    And then he told me:

    His father — Omar, also known as Amie, known to my kids as Dada — once took that very bend too fast. Racing from farm to farm, moving fish, goods, deals. He missed the turn. His bakkie flew into the river. He survived. And fished out his own worker, too.

    “I was a laaitie then,” Deem said. “But every time I pass this spot, I remember. Dada was tough. A real survivor.”

    I stayed quiet. Because what do you say when the road opens memory like that?

    To Worcester, With Love

    And then, as the road opened wider and the mountains made way for valleys known in name and marriage, I found myself returning not just to a place — but to the people and stories who made that place feel like mine.

    Worcester wasn’t just a destination. It was memory incarnate.

    When I married Sadia, I stepped into her family’s legacy — the Fakiers and the Majieds. Worcester was theirs. Her childhood. Her community. Later, her battleground — she became a unionist, fighting for dignity across these valleys.

    Back when I was still courting her, I’d drive my light blue VW Beetle 1400 — my first car, bought from Deem — all the way from Cape Town to Worcester and back. About 120 kilometres each way. For love.

    So that night, when we came through the final bend, the boat still hitched behind us, the road folding into familiar curves… I realised:

    This wasn’t just a road trip. This was return.

    To family. To love. To the people who carried us before we even knew their names.

    Closing Blessing

    As Shaykh Jamiel Abrahams said, in response to this journey:

    “Many a person with shaggy and dusty hair, dusty and driven away from doors… if he was to call on Allah ﷻ, Allah would surely answer.”

    Some roads answer us back. Even in silence. Even before Three Sisters.

    And maybe, if you’ve followed this far, it means you too have travelled one of those roads — or carried its dust in your shoes.

  • Hy Lyk Soos ’n Wolf: The Sorbaan and the Teacher Who Raised Me

    Hy Lyk Soos ’n Wolf: The Sorbaan and the Teacher Who Raised Me

    Allah is Sublime.

    The other day, I told my brother-in-law, Al-Ameen, how we need to promote the sorbaan again—that sacred cloth of knowledge and dignity that once crowned the heads of our teachers and storytellers. Without missing a beat, he said, “Do you want one? I’ll give you mine.”

    I was taken aback. “Really? Don’t you wear it?”

    He smiled. “It’s too garish for my style.”

    Then he added, almost casually, “It’s from my dad. From Boeta Junain.”

    And suddenly, I was no longer standing in conversation. I was nine years old again, my hand tucked in my mother’s, walking down Olifants Street in Primrose Park. We were on our way to meet my new khalifa.

    My mother, Hi’ Rugaya, had decided it was time for me to learn Qur’an properly. We walked all the way down the road, right to the edge where Primrose Park brushes up against Manenberg. That place where the road thins out, where the houses change tone.

    We met him at the doorway. Tall. Stern. A presence.

    On the way back, she asked me gently, “So what do you think?”

    I paused, looked up at her, and said with wide eyes, “Met sy grou oë en grys baard, hy lyk soos ’n wolf.” (With his gray eyes and silvery beard, he looks like a wolf.)

    She laughed. But we went back the next day. And the next. And the next.

    Boeta Junain became my khalifa — more than just a madrasa teacher. He taught me the Qur’an. He taught me tauhid, tahara, and how to perfect my salah. But most of all, he taught me the stories. Hundreds of them. Stories of the awliya, of lovers of God, of hidden saints, of miracles wrapped in humility.

    He loved me like a son. I stayed in his madrasa well into high school. When I was seventeen, I left to study at As-Salaam Institute in Braemar, KwaZulu-Natal. There I met another teacher who helped refine my Qur’anic pronunciation. A year later, after completing matric, I came back.

    And I returned to Boeta Junain.

    He asked me to recite. Listened deeply. Then called his older students, saying, “Come. Let Adli help you improve your recitation.”

    That day I knew what tarbiyah meant: to be raised, then trusted, then made to raise others.

    Some of those students, like members of the Browns family, went on to become among South Africa’s well-known huffaadh.

    And now, all these years later, his sorbaan has surfaced again—offered from father to son, and from brother to brother. A gift wrapped not only in cloth, but in memory.

    Today, three of his children, Salama, Cassiem and Juleiga are now continuing this legacy teaching young children in Qur’an and Islam.

    The sorbaan is not fashion. It is not costume. It is voice made visible.

    It is the texture of trust. The curve of tradition.

    It says: I have received. I have remembered. I will return.

    When I look at it now, even in another’s hands, I see something eternal: gold thread, cotton wrap, and the quiet humility of a teacher who looked like a wolf, but raised a whole den of cubs.

    Acknowledgement
    Tramakasi to Sh. Jamiel Abrahams, Sadia Fakier, Zaid Nordien, and Al-Ameen Marley — for helping carry this cloth of memory into the light.

    Postscript
    If Al-Ameen does send me the photo of the original sorbaan, I will share it. But even now, the memory is vivid enough to wear.