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Muslim scholar says insects carved name of Islamic prophet
Deborah Horan
Something about the sound of the tree bark hitting the ground caught Assad Busool's attention, compelling the Islamic scholar to pluck the wood fragment from the pavement in front of his Skokie home.
What he found written on it has caused a minor stir among some members of his Muslim community, who view the engraving as a divine reminder of the existence of God.
The word "Muhammad" -- or rather the Arabic for the Islamic prophet's name -- had been carved into the bark by insects.
"I was astonished," said Busool, 69. "I said, 'What is the meaning of this?' I have a holy tree in my yard."
Like Catholics who claim to have seen images of the Virgin Mary, some Muslims in Busool's community are interpreting the markings on the 14-inch-long bark chip as a sign from heaven, even though, like visages of Mary, it is mixed with other markings that open it to other interpretations.
"It's crystal clear, it says Muhammad," said Andala Mbengue, a cabdriver from Senegal who saw the wood after Friday prayers at the American Islamic College in Chicago. "Allah is always putting himself out there. Sometimes people ignore it, but he's always showing us signs."
Sani Umar, a professor of religion at Northwestern University, said some sects within Islam would treat such findings with great skepticism. Other Muslim societies might be more accepting of the phenomena, he said. The most conservative sects would dismiss the sightings.
Not everyone greeted news of the bark chip with Busool's level of enthusiasm.
Dr. Muhammad Sahloul, a physician and president of the Mosque Foundation, said mainstream Muslims "don't tend to overestimate the significance of these things."
And a colleague of Busool's at the Islamic college said he didn't see the word Muhammad the first time he looked at the bark.
"I guess it depends on how you look at it," said Ghulam Haider Aasi, chair of the Islamic Studies Department.
While the Virgin Mary has allegedly appeared in towns such as Lourdes, France, and more recently as an image on the Fullerton Street underpass of the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago, apparitions in Islam are typically in Arabic script, not human form, which is forbidden by Islam, scholars said.
What such sightings mean depends on a person's religion, experts said.
Catholics, for example, might interpret a manifestation of Mary as a rebuke of the modern world or an expression of sorrow at the state of the church, said Robert Orsi, a religion professor at Northwestern. But scholars of Islam said some Muslims would view such apparitions as mystical reminders that God is everywhere in nature, in the setting sun, in the clouds, in a blade of grass.
"Nature is a scripture that has to be read," said Ali Asani, a professor of Indo-Muslim languages and cultures at Harvard University. "So you find these phenomena in different Muslim societies, of people finding the name of God written on things."
In Kenya, Muslim farmers noticed splotches on a newborn calf spelled "Allah," the Arabic word for God, Asani said. In Australia, Muslims found a tree inscribed with the same word. In Senegal, a Frenchman caught a fish with markings that said "Muhammad" and another fish was found in Liverpool, England, marked with "Allah."
"The idea behind this is that God manifests himself in nature, and thus these phenomena are taken as objective proofs of his existence -- and, by extension, the veracity of the religion of Islam," said Ruediger Seesemann, a professor of religious studies at Northwestern. |
