L-R: Hasan Le Gai Eaton who passed away today, Fuad Nahdi, the late Martin Lings (Shaykh Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din), Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Peter Sanders.
Charles le Gai Eaton, also known as Hasan Abdul Hakeem, died today. He was 89.
Born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1921 and raised as an agnostic by his parents. Gai Eaton was educated at Charterhouse and King’s College, Cambridge. He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist in Jamaica and Egypt, and joined the British Diplomatic service in 1949. He converted to Islam in 1951.
Gai Eaton’s books include Islam and the Destiny of Man, King of the Castle and Remembering God. Many British Muslims regard his books as influential.
I had the pleasure of keeping a correspondence with sidi Hasan when I was a younger man, and met him a number of times. He was a gentle, generous man with a very bright, wry sense of humour. I shall miss him.
21 Comments
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
رحمه الله رحمة الأبرار وجمعه مع حبيبه المصطفى صلى الله عليه وسلم
May Allah (swt) forgive is shortcomings, except his righteous deeds and grant him a place in Janaatul Firdous.
Faisal whay the reverence and kind words towards this great Muslim and then contempt, hatred and criminilsation towards other Ulema???
Surely because some are straightforward criminals who deserve the contempt and have earned the hatred.
Inna lillah wa inna ilahi rajeeon
BTW do you have a source for this tragic news ?
I havent seen it reported anywhere.
This is too shocking news. Corroborate this news! I won’t accept it!
The news is, sadly, true. Sidi Hassan passed away yesterday morning at 10 am. Allah bless him and have mercy upon him and fill his grave with light until the Last Day.
Ameen.
SubhanAllah – what an amazing soul.. May Allah bless him.
His books, every word he wrote was inspiring and had a huge influence on my life.. the surge of emotions I am feeling right now is intense subnanAllah.. Inna lillahi inna ilayhi raji’oon
Spitoon’s lauding of Hasan Gai Eaton (ra) is highly ironic since Gai Eaton was a trenchant critic of modernity and of attempts to twist and “reform” Islam to fit in with present trendy mores, which is the ethos of Spittoon.
Still its nice to see Spitoon giving some respect to the ulema by referring to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. The same Shaykh Hamza Yusuf who stated that someone who says homosexuality is halal in Islam is a kafir by ijma. Which of course Spitoon do.
Gai Eaton’s own words on modernity
“I had discovered Rene Guenon, a Frenchman who had lived the greater part of his life in Cairo as the Sheikh Abdul Wahed.
Guenon undermined and then; with uncompromising intellectual rigor, demolished all the assumptions taken for granted by modern man, that is to say Western or westernized man. Many others had been critical of the direction taken by European civilization since the so-called ‘Renaissance’, but none had dared to be as radical as he was or to re-assert with such force the principles and values which Western culture had consigned to the rubbish tip of history. His theme was the ‘primordial tradition’ or Sofia perennis, expressed-so he maintained-both in ancient mythologies and in the metaphysical doctrine at the root of the great religions. The language of this Tradition was the language of symbolism, and he had no equal in his interpretation of this symbolism. Moreover he turned the idea of human progress upside down, replacing it with the belief almost universal before the modern age, that humanity declines in spiritual excellence with the passage of time and that we are now in the Dark Age which precedes the End, an age in which all the possibilities rejected by earlier cultures have been spewed out into the world, quantity replaces quality and decadence approaches its final limit. No one who read him and understood him could ever be quite the same again.
Like others whose outlook had been transformed by reading Guenon, I was now a stranger in the world of the twentieth century. He had been led by the logic of his convictions to accept Islam, the final Revelation and, as it were, the summing-up of all that came before.”
“Occasionally I forgot my resolve not to become involved in fruitless argument. Some years ago I was a guest at a diplomatic dinner party in Trinidad. The young woman beside me was talking with a Christian Minister, an Englishman, seated opposite. I was only half attending to their conversation when I heard her say that she was not sure she believed in human progress. The Minister answered her so rudely and with such contempt that I could not resist the temptation to say: ‘She’s quite right – there’s no such thing as progress!’ He turned on me, his face contorted with fury, and said: ‘If I thought that I would commit suicide this very night!’ Since suicide is as great a sin for Christians as it is for Muslims, I understood for the first time the extent to which faith in progress, in a ‘better future’ and, by implication, in the possibility of a paradise on earth has replaced faith in God and in the hereafter. In the writings of the renegade priest Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity itself was reduced to a religion of progress. Deprive the modern Westerner of this faith and he is lost in a wilderness without signposts.”
http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/166/viewall/
http://www.mcb.org.uk/media/presstext.php?ann_id=389
“there’s no such thing as progress!”
Social reaction from cranky purveyors of half-baked neo-Platonic reaction, aka the so-called “Perennial Philosophy”… who would have thunk it?
His books changed my life…he was such a beautiful soul. Wish to meet him in jannah isA … love to all
He had a searing intellect with an insightful sense of humor. To hear him say ” There is no God, but God” in chatting, in his deep and halting tone was (is), to be given a glimpse of the (his) great search for unity.
I’m in tears. This person made me understand life. May he be granted Janat-e-firdos. Ameen.
May his soul rest in peace. His book “Remembering God: Reflections on Islam” is a book i re read very often because it really makes u reflect. He was one of the few writers in english on Islam that are very accessible to the general reader.
To Allah we belong and to him we return… May this remarkable soul now find the peace he so sincerely searched for.
For a long time I thought about writing to him to thank him for his book “Remembering God” which really opened my eyes… Now I really wish I had found the time.
I came across his book recently “Islam and the ‘Destiny of Man’ the book has changed my life my only regret was that I had not come across this book earlier.
Inna lillahi inna ilayhi raji’oon
may Allah grant him heaven
From: Nadia Sikder. 211/2 Ulan, Rd. Rampura Dhaka- 1219. Bangladesh.
Subject: Animal Brutality.
Contact:01191352473, 01720194213. (bugged)
Zavier Junior, 3months old pup was put to death by a crime committing syndicate known for their malice. It has been the 6th time they have allegedly poisoned my dogs in a row.
Police arrived to the crime site taking preparation for an on-line GD that we composed (GD Num:1019. dtd:22/5/2010.) Commencing for an autopsy in the Animal Hospital transferring to ICDDR,B (police’s own words). Within 4 days report would be affirmed….
It was aired on T.V (Channel i) at 10:30pm.- A family of 3, making several GDs to the P.S was utterly useless for the Matabars in these hi-tech days has kept them in isolation from the society as an outcast trying to banish them from their own home ever since its contained by the clench of land grabbers, has done it again, besides poisoning their puppy.
I am desperately awaiting for the doctors certificate but who am I to believe, whereas the viscera was never sent to ICDDR,B for analysis and the report was found to be distorted.
Red Alert: This syndicate is insulated by Lt. Col. Rashidul Alom posted to RAB1 Uttara as Dir. Resolving all their crimes.
I on behalf of Muttly, Amigo senior, Zavier Senior, and Zavier Junior, Sue he, and Amigo Junior(canines) with Tiny, Bravery and Georgie (felines). one that has a pure heart can seize the moment known as man’s best friend beseech your organizations assistance to come forward and prove there isanimal rights prevailing in such a territory were human rights are violated that truth and justice are just not to be dreamed of.
Their death has shaken me uncontrollably to an irrecoverable loss.
this write-up is in the capacity of a freelance human rights, animal rights, environmental activist.
PS: Georgie died today at 7:00pm having sustained boiling hot marr (rice water) followed apparently by rat- poisoning. in this state of mind of am incapable of writing any further but I hope you have the heart to share my pain of in-defensibility.