Fuad: Perfume, Women & Prayer
by Humera
This saying of the Messenger of God ﷺ keeps coming to my mind:
“Two things of your world were made dear to me, perfume and women; and the coolness of my eyes is in prayer.”
Sadly, this hadith is often misinterpreted to justify dubious intentions on the part of some men but its deeper meaning has really hit home for me as I reflect on the phenomenon that was Fuad Nahdi.
When Fuad and I married, he introduced me to the Mombasan, Swahili, Hadrami and East African coastal culture that he came from. There were many new experiences that I embraced wholeheartedly but none so much as the locally made perfumed bukhur. As part of the wedding gift from my future mother-in-law, I was given a couple of round blocks of bukhur that had been homemade by women in Fuad’s family. This tradition had been passed down over generations through womenfolk who have been the keepers of the secrets of how to produce this intoxicating aroma. From the first moment I burned the coal and placed a small segment of the bukhur onto it, this tradition became integrated into our lives and that of my wider family.
It is also a well-known fact that women have traditionally been the healers in society with their in-depth knowledge of herbs and spices as well as their instinctive ability to empathise and nurture. In the last few years, we used to burn Frankincense quite a lot as it is particularly beneficial for uplifting spirits — I know for sure it helped keep Fuad’s thoughts positive as he grappled with his ill health.
Over the years, my fascination with burning bukhur and oud grew. Not many days would pass when we did not burn some of the many varieties we collected. Most importantly bukhur, as I came to find out, has many benefits such as improving mental clarity and creating a spiritual calm. This is why it is regularly used in spiritual practices and therefore not surprising that perfume was loved by the Prophet and why it continues to be central in most of our cultural traditions.
Alongside perfume, women always played a profound and powerful role in all areas of Fuad’s life. His mother was his ultimate love and we named our daughter Ilyeh after her. She was a strong, dynamic and creative woman who despite financial struggles gave her children the best upbringing that love could buy. In a family of five siblings, three are women: Fauzia, Surya and Latifa. Fuad had an intimate relationship with all three sisters as well as his maternal cousin sister Sultana who lived with them. He was their friend, mentor, father figure, guide, champion and of course, they were also totally devoted to him. Fuad took the role of getting his sisters married and most importantly, ensuring their husbands knew they had a man behind and in front of them who would defend their interests. This was particularly important to him as he would often tell me that in their conservative, male-dominated culture the rights of women were not always safeguarded and most men were invariably reluctant to upset this balance and their privileges.
Fuad supported his sisters in doing things not ordinarily done by women at that time. He enabled his two younger sisters, in particular, to engage in a range of opportunities such as vocational studies, to pursue careers, learn to drive and engage in the wider world. His sister Fauzia was closest to him in age. She was his best friend and confidant. He also had a very intimate and close bond with his niece Aziza, who stayed with us in our home for four years while she trained to become an osteopath. I think out of everyone in Fuad’s family, Aziza understood him best and was most like him.
Fuad’s conscientiousness in defending the rights of women prevailed throughout his whole life and in so many different ways. He was close to a wide range of women from his cultural background, his student life, professional life and those he met after we were married. With the advent of Whatsapp, he was able to talk to grandmothers, aunties, cousins and friends on a regular basis. He would reminisce nostalgically with grandmothers and with younger women he would support them in their endeavours and personal problems, often defending them against injustice. He was also a great father and grandfather figure to so many children and young women who lacked a positive Muslim male role model in their lives.
As I have shared previously, Fuad and I married as activists and lived as activists — we had our own separate commitments as well as things we worked on together. This was the situation until his final days. Over the course of our marriage, Fuad was one of the first Muslim men to pro-actively amplify the voices of Muslim women. The late 1980s was a time when the idea of women’s voices was seen strictly as ‘awra’, women were hardly represented anywhere and were definitely not in many decision-making roles. An-Nisa Society was set up in this context and it is quite difficult to explain to a younger generation of women today how incredibly difficult things were in those days.
It was our marriage that actually put Fuad into the heart of British Islam, a shift from his activism in the realm of international Muslim affairs. An-Nisa Society had already been going for four years before we married and in fact, it was through one of our seminars that we were introduced to Fuad. After Fuad and I were married, it was my sister Khalida, who as the founder and visionary of An-Nisa Society, would have endless conversations with him about the issues she was uncovering, particularly to do with anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic discrimination. It was her persuasion of Fuad that led to the setting up of the first British centric current affairs youth magazine Muslimwise.
Women were the backbone of Muslimwise, taking a public role, promoting it during a time of great hostility from the then Muslim establishment and doing much of the research and writing for it. It was Khalida, in particular, who first raised the issue of Muslim institutional discrimination in these pages and also went on to do the same in Q-News — something that she is seldom given acknowledgement for even today.
From the first issue of Muslimwise to Q-News, countless women had opportunities to write and to share their stories, including the young Uzma Jung, the articulate voice of her generation, who challenged the BBC’s negative portrayal of Muslims. Most importantly, Fuad always led the way in challenging Muslim institutionalized chauvinism by appointing a young generation of women to edit Q-News, such as Shagufta Yaqub and Fareena Alam and other young women voices such as Arzu Merali, Fozia Bora and Maryam Jilani. He faced enormous criticism all the way along but he had the guts and the shoulders to carry this load.
In Fuad’s later endeavour, Radical Middle Way (RMW) the focus was different. It was about damage limitation and about harnessing our reluctant scholars to be more grassroots, relevant and edgy. He gave platforms to diverse Islamic perspectives, younger generations, and in particular to women. The two women’s tours I was part of with Shaykha Halima Krausen and Dr Laura McDonald were inspiring and groundbreaking. Muslim women creatives were given platforms through RMW that they would not otherwise have had. Most importantly this engagement broke the monopoly of men only voices and enabled them to see that it’s not that bad sharing platforms with women!
There is much more to add to these days and insha’Allah, this part of Fuad’s life story will be told more fully in the future.
Apart from Fuad’s active support for women professionally, he also championed them in private. He supported numerous women through their personal problems, negotiated for them with their families, was the guardian (wali) for so many women without male representatives in their marriages and gave potential husbands the once over to let them know that there was someone watching over them should they misbehave towards their wives.
In more recent years, Fuad and I were involved in counselling many conflict-ridden marriages. He provided the necessary weight needed to get the men in the marriage to listen and to not dismiss the grievances of their wives. These sessions were often extremely difficult negotiating between conflicting perspectives and experiences. Hours and hours were spent with so many couples but the most important part of Fuad’s involvement was that the husband (and they were usually ‘religiously’ inclined men) couldn’t pull the wool over his eyes with talk of religion or even culture. He was mainly compassionate in these discussions but when necessary he would tell the husbands some home truths. They often struggled to listen to good advice or to challenge themselves but invariably Fuad balanced compassion with confrontation. Some did eventually listen. They benefited from new insights and renewed love in their marriages. More than anything, I will miss this aspect of Fuad’s personality and I can’t think of another man who could have had such an impact on these fragile and vulnerable men. The wives, who Fuad protected and supported, were like daughters to him and they equally reciprocated by seeing him as their mentor, guide and father figure.
Fuad had a unique ability to see women beyond the dominant, highly sexualised cultural and even theological understanding that prevailed in Muslim cultures throughout his life and is sadly still entrenched today. He valued women for their intellect and in particular, appreciated women’s ability to get things done. For as long as I was married to Fuad, it was women who championed him, supporting him in his vision and consolidating much of his work. It is not a coincidence that it was one of his surrogate daughters, Hasina (founder of Compassionate Funerals with her husband Alistair) who made all the arrangements for his funeral during this strange and unique pandemic — Alhamdulillah.
If there is one thing I want from Fuad’s legacy is for Muslim men to understand this side to Fuad and to learn and grow from his example.
Finally, I want to reflect on prayer. When I first met Fuad, An-Nisa Society was still very much rooted in identity politics. At this time, we did not know many spiritual teachers that we trusted and it was Fuad who introduced us to the late Shaykh Mohammed Mlamali Adam and the Sufi Ba’alawi traditions. Shaykh Mohammed centred us and gave space for us to unburden our souls and the frustrations within them. He opened up the Quran for us like no other and introduced us to the sublimity of dhikr, Alhamdulillah. It was also through Fuad that the Ba’alawi tradition became more popularised and so many young British Muslims became followers of this tradition or become embolden to pursue their ongoing spiritual journey with more confidence.
It is difficult to really explain Fuad’s sense of spirituality because it was certainly not conventional. He never lived in a spiritual bubble and for him, faith was not about seclusion or some lofty, highbrow lecture that went way beyond the heads of those listening. His sense of spirituality lived through his endeavours and his belief that the deepest faith required the engagement with all that was difficult and uncomfortable in the world. It involved standing up for justice as the Quran enjoins on us as well as the Prophetic example of defending the marginalised and the discriminated. Fuad always spoke truth to power.
For Fuad, prayer was about being embedded in its essence and acting on its virtues. Don’t get me wrong — this didn’t make him a saint but it did make him a real human being. And when we read that above all the worldly things that the Prophet appreciated that prayer was ‘the coolness of his eyes’, I believe that Fuad tried to love the prayer as the Prophet did — as something that was natural and that informed the way he lived.
Fuad’s love of the Prophet was unquestionable and his legacy to this love is his establishing the importance of mawlid (the marking of the birth of the Prophet with stories, poems and celebrations) — a practice that was condemned by the Saudis and therefore difficult to do publically from the 1970s. But Fuad believed completely in the importance of mawlid and he organised the first major one in England in 1995, entitled Uniting for the Prophet. It brought together different Sufi and even non-Sufi traditions under one roof. This was repeated at another iconic event in 2005 with the mawlid at Wembley Conference Centre. As a result of breaking this glass ceiling, the mawlid is no longer held secretly — rather, it is practised widely across the country. As a footnote, the stress of organising the 1995 mawlid was the start of Fuad’s health issues resulting in a minor heart attack but this didn’t stop him from doing what he had to do!
So in conclusion, I recognise that I haven’t said much about Fuad and my relationship or even that of Fuad with our children — maybe that is for another day and still a little difficult for me to share right now. As I mark the 40th day of his passing, I did not want to delay sharing these thoughts. They have occupied my mind, particularly as I ponder the question: what do I really wish to be Fuad’s legacy?
Undoubtedly, the public aspects of Fuad’s life will be recorded but for me what is most important is not the speech making or the events organising. What is actually most important for me is Fuad’s private legacy, the things he did instinctively and deliberately to challenge the status quo and to bring about change, the listening he did to people’s troubles, the shoulders he gave to people to lean on, the intimidation of his presence when the need arose and most importantly, his infectious humour (often at my expense!) and his forgiving nature.
I circle back now to the hadith I mentioned at the beginning of this outpouring, about the love the Prophet had for perfume, women and prayer. As you can see, Fuad’s life and legacy helped me understand the essence of this hadith at a very personal level.
While what I have written is mainly focused on women, one of my greatest desires is for Fuad’s example to be emulated, even just a little, by our menfolk. Since Fuad’s passing I have spoken to so many of the men who loved Fuad sincerely, who cried unashamedly and I know miss him dearly. Dear brothers, my wish for you is to channel this love into your own personal transformation and to be the torchbearers for a different kind of society. I am here to help you continue to see Fuad as a role model and to keep learning from his character and his actions. We need more men like Fuad who are not harbouring deep-seated masculine insecurities and who are not falling back on a status quo that takes advantage of women. Women felt safe with Fuad — this should be the norm and not the exception!
Thank you for indulging my thoughts. We cannot unwrite or undo the past but we can move forward constructively, taking all that is good with us. If you have a moment, your duas for Fuad would be greatly appreciated, as have been all your thoughts, messages, prayers and love during these last 40 days.
Nadir TN with the help of Abdul-Rehman Malik launched a legacy fund that has been set up in his Fuad’s name as a sadaqa jariya (an on-going charity). While honouring and consolidating his achievements through the soon to be set up Convergence Trust, the objective of this fund is to invest in the future. The projects highlighted will insha’Allah take forward Fuad’s passion for supporting and giving space for our younger generations to grow and thrive. For further information and to support this initiative please see the link below: