Rule book #3

3. Trust no one. In Ktown, you are taught that you can only trust Allah, the shaykh, Um Sahl, and Um Khayr - until you learn that you can't trust the last three at all. No one among your friends is to be trusted.



This begins early when you arrive. Maybe even before you arrive. It begins with you being told, either by the shaykh & co directly or by murids, that murids are not trustworthy. It's something like, the murids come here because they are spiritually ill and immature, so you can't trust them. That is the excuse that they also give for all of the fitnah that used to come out of Ktown - oh it's the murids, they are't mature, they are spiritually ill.



But then at the same time, you're taught that the companionship of the "daraweesh" is the best company you can have, and that you should spend time with people who are serious about their suluk instead of non-Muslims or Muslims who are "caught up in the dunya." So, you're encouraged to stay away from Qasid students and other American Muslims who live in Jordan, you're encouraged to stay away from Jordanians, and you're encouraged to stay away from the other Americans who live and work in Jordan. Most of the people don't leave the neighborhood. They don't know Arabic, and they don't know anything about Jordan, so they're afraid to leave. So who do you have but the murids?



But why not trust them? They are Muslims, they are murids. Well the reason is that UK, US, and NK encourage you to tattle on other people. Most murids are immature and childish in many ways so if they see someone doing something that is against "As a Rule" or what they think isn't Islamic, they will go running to the z to tell on that person. So something that you might struggle with, is exposed before you want it to be. You know, even though he is your shaykh, I am sure that most people do not tell him everything. He really despises music and television, so I think the murids who are struggling to give that up don't tell him because he will kick them out of the tariqa. Or they fear he will.



But on a more real level, the reason you can't trust a murid in Ktown (or maybe in other towns) is that UK, US, and NK believe in sacred spying for the sake of the tariqa. US and NK believe that people will corrupt their tariqa. They keep a written profile of murids - I think it is all murids in the world, but especially of those who come to Jordan. Everyone must be in line with whatever NK and US are saying in this time, so if you wear clothing that doesn't conform or if you have TV in your house, things like this, they want to know about it. Since they never go out of their houses, they don't see the women in the street. They don't really know a lot of murids or know what is going on, so they rely on murids to be their eyes and ears into the world.



I remember with a few friends they would be amazed when Um Sahl would call them or Um Khayr would call them for a "talk" after the hadra or whatever. And they would say that they knew about something and they should get rid of it or stop doing it - whatever it was.



Just as an example, there was a woman who wasn't a murid who wasn't wearing niqab in the neighborhood. This was when there was no hard and fast rule about non-murids wearing it. In fact, none of the Qasid people who weren't murids wore it. So this woman wasn't a murid so she didn't wear it, but she came to the z. for all the hadras and stuff. So one day US told her, "I heard you aren't wearing niqab" in front of other people. How did she come to find this out, since she never leaves her house? Well, either murids ran and told on the non-murid or she had someone sacred spying on her.



Many of us, who have proven ourselves useful or single minded in the service of the shaykh somehow, have been called upon by the Um's to report on people. They will ask what you know about someone, and say, well, pay them a visit and tell me if you see anything strange. They have justified this saying, "We have the right to protect our neighborhood," because there is an attitude that they are Kharabsheh, they own Kharabsheh, even though most people in Kharabsheh want nothing to do with them. They believe it is their right to say who will live there, and where that person will live. So they want to make sure that people living there are following NK's rules, and if they aren't they will suggest they leave, or tell them to leave, or have the landlord kick them out.



So your friends, are they really your friends? US and UK admit that the "integrity" of their neighborhood - their ability to control the lives of the people who move there - is the motivation for their disobedience of the Quranic verses about spying.



But even if you can overlook that one, which a lot of us can and did for a long time, when UK forwards you an email from a murid, begging for her help, with the person's email address on it, or when NK passes around an email that one of his assistants has printed out with someone's darkest secrets in them, are these people worthy of trust? How about the people who receive them? When people get these emails or get passed a note from NK or they go to US's for tea and she fills their ears with stories about this or that murid who has displeased her, what do you think the murids' reaciton is?



They feel honored. They believe that this means they are now in the inner circle, that Besa and Hedaya now see them as equals of a sort, that they are progressed enough in their suluk to look down on the struggles of others. It makes people feel better about their problems to be able to look down on others' problems. Or perhaps they are afraid - if they raise questions about the propriety of this behavior, will they be next? Many people are afraid that some deep secret about them will be uncovered and they will be asked to leave the neighborhood.



No, but usually it is very pedestrian titillation. People love gossip and that's why you have a lot of gossip shows on TV and gossip magazines. This is no different, except that it has a veneer of piety on it. As if because they say they do it for the sake of the tariqa (not the sake of Allah or Islam, but for Nuh's tariqa) then that makes it okay. They said the murids are sick, and they're right in many cases, but they are sick too. Who else takes such perverse joy in passing around emails where a murid confesses that her marriage isn't consummated or that her husband is hitting her? Certainly not people who are worthy of any level of trust, much less with your heart, your soul, your akhira.



So rule #3. Trust no one, except Allah.

The few and the humiliated

One thing that is being said on some of these blogs and also between Muslims is that the Ktown situation is "blown out of proportion" and that we don't need to do much because "it's only a few people." Also that people who go to Jordan are all rich and elite so who cares. I want to say something about this.



First it is true that at any given time, there are probably only about 200 to 400 foreigners in Kharabsheh with the shaykh. It used to be more and now it is less - a lot of people left him in 2008 and are leaving him now.



It is also true that about 95% of the problems that are being mentioned are specific to being in Kharabsheh. It is two different tariqas - the tariqa of those who live in America or England or wherever, and those who come to Jordan. Murids in Jordan have a different tariqa, with different rules and mentality. Murids who stay home in California have a tariqa that is radically different. However, the same four people are the leadership of both of these tariqas. Nuh is the shaykh in Jordan and he is the shaykh in California. And not all of the craziness is confined to Jordan. Some of the harsher or wierder stuff has been transmitted to all the murids, and is recorded on Mp3 or cd. Also, some of the rules are world-wide rules, not just Ktown rules.



So there is that.



Also, it may only be a grand total of 1500 or less people who have passed through Jordan - and many did so for a short time and never experienced the psychosis of the Shadhilis - but that is still 1500 or however many people who lived, up close, in the heart of a cult. Even if only 800 feel that they have been affected in a detrimental manner, that is 800 people who need help and understanding. And I think the number is much higher, because the crazy marriage and divorce stuff certainly was never limited to Jordan. The divorces have been a problem for NK from the years before anyone even lived in Ktown with him.



If the people who go there are rich or whatever, that shouldn't be a factor in whether or not you seek to protect other Muslims from the harm of the tariq. First of all, for those of you reading, it is not true that "only" rich people went to Jordan. Quite a few of us went on scholarships we received to study Arabic. A lot of people saved up their money from their jobs for a year or two before hand so that they could live six months or a year in Jordan and have suhba with the shaykh. There are some murids who work while they are in Jordan. There are some murids who came when a relative died and they inherited something that gave them the money to go. All in all the people who I knew in Ktown who were from rich backgrounds were definitely outnumbered by people who were regular middle class families, and even from working class backgrounds in some cases.



But I don't know where in Islam it says that you can never have empathy, understsanding for the well to do or where it says that a rich person who is harmed by a religious charlatan is not worthy of your assistance.



The reason Ktown matters is that the people who go to Ktown, who are recruited to be in the tariq, are in many cases, influential people. They run magazines, businesses, they come back to America or Canada in positions of leadership as teachers of the deen, imams, etc. Their Islamic academy and online Islamic knowledge database has reached tens of thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims alike - propogating Keller's very specific (and sometimes mistaken) understandings of Islamic law and belief and telling them that this is the one true understanding of Islam. So it isn't just for that well to do Pakistani kid that you have to feel some concern, it is for every naive Muslim or non-Muslim who logs into their website seeking knowledge of the deen. For every person who picks up "Reliance" or reads his articles looking for insight into Islam.



Nuh Keller is not a true shaykh. Nor is he a mufti or a scholar of Islamic law, even though he, his wife, and his students insinuate otherwise. Nuh, Besa, Hedaya, and others in the tariq have seriously harmed many people - financially, spiritually, emotionally. They have stood by while women were being assaulted in their own homes and blamed the women for the abuse. All of the people who were harmed or are being harmed by them are Muslims. The prophet (saws) said that a true Muslim is someone who other Muslims are safe from the harm of his tongue and hands. This is not true and will probably never be true of Nuh Keller, his wife, and their friend. Even if it was one person whose emails about personal sexual problems or faith struggles was forwarded by them to other people in the tariqa, that would be enough. This is not the hallmark of a shaykh or of scholars of the deen.



That is why this matters, even though yes, in comparison to the general Muslim population, we are small in number. Al Qaeda is also small in number compared to the general Muslims, yet you are quick to assess the harm and damage they have caused, and to repudiate their philosophies and actions. Keller may not be killing people, but he also has caused damage and spiritual death in his murids. That is why it matters.

a little thing

Once upon a time ---



One thing that used to bother me a lot, even when I was deep in the throes of my love sickness, was that NK, UK, and US used to refer to all non-Muslims as "the kufar", and the West as "Darul Harb" or the lands of the kufar, things like that. At every dars, NK would pray and he would three times pray for the victory of the Muslims over the kufar. When they would speak about non-Muslim women, it was always this idea that they were empty headed, empty souled, that they were sex machines, who have no dignity or anything like that. Funny I never heard them speak about non-Muslim men the same way.



I know this is something that a lot of Muslims don't care about. But it bothered me because NK and UK used to be non-Muslims and a lot of the murids did too. That means we all have non-Muslim parents. I mean, I used to wonder, if these are people of haqq, and it's supposed to be about your excellent character (a phrase we heard all the time, especially from UK), then how is this excellent? It was offputting to me.



It was the venom with which they spoke of the West and of non-Muslims. US used to talk about how we would rise up in victory against them. She would make fun of the kufar, and would question the iman of Muslims who lived in the West, even though her own family does live there.



If you have read "Reliance of the Traveller", then you know that there is a chapter on jihad in there and that the book doesn't pull any punches on its treatment of non-Muslims. Now, it is true that this is an old book from "a different time," but it is intended to be a manual for us, today, to live Islam and understand the fiqh of the Shafiis, but also of Islam as a whole. And the book is very clear about fighting and killing non-Muslims, treating them differently when they are ahlul dhimma, and things like that. It's all very much contrary to the image of Islamic brotherhood and tolerance that Muslims talk about on television.



This hatred of the West was an issue because there were a lot of the sisters who didn't want to be in Jordan and wanted to go home. There were a few women who came expecting to stay in Jordan for a few months or even a year, and then once they got there it was like "Oh we're going to live here." They missed their families and life in Jordan isn't easy, even if you are from America and have more money than a Jordanian. So sometimes they would come seeking the counsel of these people, about how sad and miserable they were in Jordan and wanted to go home and it would be "Why do you want to leave the Muslims for the kufar?" I think this is one of multiple ways the women were induced to stay in Jordan rather than coming to an agreement with their husbands that they should leave.



There was a woman who was very ill, and had bad allergies that the Jordanian climate made worse, and even her husband wouldn't leave b/c UK and NK told him not to, and UK and US would say, "Why she wants to be with the kufar I don't know, they have doctors here in Jordan, Muslim doctors, that she can visit. And she should be patient with her sickness. Jordan is a land of baraka because the prophets were here, and she wants to leave that?" Things like that. It didn't matter that the doctors in Jordan are kind of shady or that they couldn't do anything - it was the land of Jordan itself that was making her ill. So when she did finally leave, a lot of the sisters took it as a sign of her (the sick woman) weak iman. "She just didn't try hard enough," is something that I heard many times.



A final part to this. I was with a group of murids, and this was in America. We were doing something for another murid, helping him out in his business, and we had to go out and buy supplies, meet vendors, things like that. Another one of the murids who lived in Jordan and would travel back and forth was with us and everytime we would go somewhere, he would remark on the kufar. He would even do things like take a deep breath and say "Sidi (to the men, not to me), can't you smell the kufr in the air? I can't tolerate it, I need to be back in the land of baraka."



He would also say how they had to be brought to Islam or risk the sword, things like that. I said to him, but didn't people come to Islam through the spread of the sufis and the traders and he goes "A very small portion. The truth is that most of the people who came to Islam did so because of military conquest. Islam was spread by the sword and we shouldn't be ashamed of it." He would even say these types of things when we were shopping for supplies and again later when he was shopping for treats and goodies to take back to Jordan because Jordan didn't have the little extras that he enjoyed in life. Only the West did.



But it did embarass me, and others, because we came to Islam through knowledge and peaceful means, and here he was saying that if people like us didn't come to it, then just kill us. Maybe he is being truthful. I'm not a historian so I really don't know, but it doesn't matter. It's just that this guy, who is a very close murid of the shaykh, exemplifies the mindset of NK and US on the matter of non-Muslims. Hatred of them, hatred of all the things they have, even while taking advantage of their technology and using their passports. None of them, not even NK and US, have given up the passports of their native Western countries, and because the laws of Jordan for hajj are very strict, NK makes hajj using his US passport, since the rules for Americans are more relaxed.



I thought it was plain hypocrisy. Decry the West even though they would seek out Westerners to join the tariq. Hate non-Muslims even though some of the murids came from convert backgrounds, especially some of their favorite ones, and the shaykh himself (or, maybe he has psychological issues about not being born a Muslim). To me, it was like on one level they will talk about love and peace and being an excellent person, but in reality, when you got up close, there was hypocrisy and hatred and a more militant attitude that you would expect from other groups of Muslims but not sufis.



Anyway, it might be something that doesn't bother a lot of people but it bothered me because it seemed two faced, and to me, it kind of hinted at a darker, uglier attitude and belief about Islam and the world that lay under the surface. I knew from a long time ago that people who were "higher up" in the tariqa received teachings and counsel that were supposed to be "secret" or that the rest of us weren't "ready" to know. When I got to see their hatred of others up close, I wondered what some of those teachings were, and honestly - it scared me a little. Again, it might just be me, and I definitely never heard aything that was really far out. But it was one of those things, that over time, peeled away the illusion and showed me the reality.

The bad wife

I think as the dust is settling, we need to return to story time. I want you to know, from the start, that the woman mentioned in this story no longer has any affiliation with the tariqa. When I told her about my blog and what I was doing, she gave me permission to tell this story to you, so that (her words), "Other women in my situation will know that they can do what I did and that they are not alone".



Many of the things I recall here come from my personal journal that I was keeping when I lived in Jordan. I have been writing these out for a while, editing them, and putting them in some sort of chronological order. But I have a life outside of the computer, so it takes me a while.



I am telling this story not to shock or titillate you, but because it was an essential turning point for me and for other individuals, and because in reality, they are not the only family in the tariqa who was in this situation and who received similar counseling. If I did not think that this story wasn't an essential component of my story or if I thought that it would not provide some spiritual comfort to others out there, it wouldn't be here. I'm sure there are many things I know about Ktown that will never, ever be published on a blog. This, sadly, is not one of them.



So, once upon a time ---



I had come back to Ktown from traveling, and I expected to feel refreshed and invigorated, but I did not. I thought my time away from the z and the tariqa would leave me wanting to come to the hadra, the dars, the company of the murids and especially of NK, US, and UK. Instead, I felt more restless, things seemed sharper to me. This was after my alarm clock had been set off. I thought being away would give me a balanced perspective wherein it would be clear that the murids needed reform, but that the structure, the tariqa, and its leaders were sound. Instead, I felt more and more like the veils were being stripped away and reality was presenting its face. This was, I want you to know, not something I wanted to happen.



Like many people I was heavily invested in being a murid, in this man being my spiritual leader and in UK and US being my models for womanhood. I had spent a great deal of time and money coming to Jordan to study Arabic as well as take the companionship of the shaykh and gain tarbiya from him. I was apart from my family for a long time in what I thought was a holy pursuit. So I didn't want all of this to be for naught, for the blackballings and all of that to be the true face. "It must be a misunderstanding," I would think to myself. There was still some doubt there about it. But having taken a break and returned to the real world meant that when I returned to Ktown, I saw its problems more clearly than I could have ever imagined.



I was visited by a sister. I won't say where she was from or how long she was in Ktown, just that she was there. I had known her for a while, from traveling and internet forums and suhbas and things like that, and we had many mutual friends. When we met in Ktown, we immediately clicked. So shortly after I returned to Ktown, and I mean within days, the sister came to see me. Her face was drawn, she had black circles under her eyes. Her hands were fluttery, as if she was nervous. When she removed her outer coverings, her hair was a mess - a sloppy bun where it was normally neatly done. I did what we do in Jordan, which is to say that I prepared tea for her, and set out a plate of dry Turkish cookies.



I sat across from her and we were silent for some moments until she finally burst out. "I think my husband is gay." Immediately, tears began to pour down her face. I handed her a box of Fine and she sobbed for a few moments, and then gathered herself.



"Why do you think that?"



She took a deep, yet shaky breath, and told me. A few months before they came to Jordan, she needed to use his computer to check on a package that she'd been expecting. She found dirty photos he'd downloaded into a folder. Dirty pictures of men. That led her to find out that he'd subscribed to a pornography service using their credit card. And then, in tears, and with great shame, she told me he'd never consummated their marriage.



I am telling you, dear reader, I was in shock. I had seen her husband, of course, with his trim beard and healthy smile. She had always spoken fondly of him, and like most murids, did not make a show of romantic love or anything like that. Most murids who are married are extremely reserved in the way that they speak about their spouses or interact with them in front of others. So this was no signal to me of what she was saying.



I began to ask her the usual questions one would ask in this situation. Yes she had dressed up in all sorts of clothes, makeup, jewelry and elaborate hairstyles. Yes, she had asked him "what he likes." Yes she had made proficient dua to Allah for His help in this matter. And yet none was forthcoming. By her account, her husband was cheerful and fond of her, but in this one important matter, he was a failure. Although they had, in her words, "engaged in some romantic things", the marriage was, after all this time (I won't say how long) still not consummated. Of course, I asked her the questions that would come naturally to any murid.



"Did you talk to Sh Nuh, Um Sahl, or Um Khayr?"



In fact she had, and that is where her story took an even stranger turn. She had approached the women, being too humiliated to go to a man with this. She told them about the dirty pictures, about his inability to do more than some chaste hugging. This was a marriage that had taken place after her husband was a murid. I do not think she was a murid at the time.



"So what did they say?" I asked her.



Well, she said that they told her that his inability to consummate the marriage was clearly due to some failure on her part. While they did acknowledge that the photos indicated that he still had "unnatural desires" that were an "inevitable consequence" of living in the West, this was a desire that could be easily overcome when a man was joined in marriage to a woman who filled all of the Islamic requirements, including, of course, faith, sincerity, and taqwa. If she was a true woman of taqwa, a true woman of the tariqa, her husband would have no problem falling into bed with her.



That he was still downloading gay dirty photos, and refusing to come to her bed was a sign of her failures, not his. She was subjected to a checklist of sorts. Did she wear inviting clothing and makeup every day? Did she nag him? Did she keep the house clean? Did she cook delicious food? Did she do all of her wirds? Did she do all of her salats? And on and on it went.



She left the z apartments that day, she told me, more dejected than ever. No one knew about the state of her marital bed. She was deeply ashamed, and she told me that it felt as though they had dug out some deep and secret shame within her, for as a Muslim, she did believe that if she was just alluring enough, pretty enough, submissive enough, agreeable enough, and pious enough, her husband would be led to turn from his sins and his dunya desires and to lay down beside her in the conjugal bed. Why, she wept, was Allah testing her with this? Why didn't He make her good enough to bring her husband to tawba, repentance?



She plunged into a depression. She stopped doing her hair. She stopped wearing makeup. She began wearing stretchy pants and t-shirts in the home. She slept on the farshas in the living room instead of in the bed with him. (Farshas are mattresses with fancy covers that are on the floor and are the way traditional Jordanians furnished their sitting rooms). She began to see a future without children, without "her needs" being met, and felt hopeless.



And then it got worse, she told me. About a week before she came to see me, she'd been to another murid's home, for a tea party or some such gathering, she was approached by two older, more senior murids, who were known as the ablahs. These were women that most of us avoided by all means. They were harsh, mean women who had no time or patience for spoiled Westerners who hadn't lived in Egypt with the Um's or been murids of Hajji Baba. With stern faces, the murids warned her about "blabbing her intimate secrets around" and told her "there must be a problem with you as a woman." As my friend talked to them, it became clear that one or both of the Um's had told them that the marriage wasn't consummated and that it was due to the shortcomings of my friend as a wife. "AlhamduliLlah, they didn't tell them about the photos, about my husband's real problem," she told me. No, they just apparently told her most private business to women who were their buddies from the olden days, and then bad mouthed her on top of it.



She thought that perhaps, out of their desire to help her, the Um's had told the ablahs, who they must have known would scold her, out of a desire to see her "corrected" and help in her tarbiya. Sometimes as a murid, you are told stories of shaykhs subjecting their students to bizarre, painful and humiliating things as a means of wearing down their egos. So she thought, maybe this was a case like that.



I thought about this for a moment and then asked, "You mean that you think the Um's mistakenly thought that the ablahs would somehow prove a means of your tarbiya because you think that they sincerely believe that what is going on in your home is your fault?"



She thought about this, and her face turned bright red. It was like a light bulb switched on inside of her and was burning hot. "No. I don't think that they think this is my fault, not sincerely. I think they are just blaming me because it is embarrassing for the shaykh to have a murid who is gay. And because they don't want to deal with a man's sexual dysfunction." As she thought on it more and more, the expression on her face changed. She started to get angry. "Do you think it's possible they knew about him before we got married?"



"Allahu'alim," I told her. I didn't want to think on that. I was still thinking about my friend, married to a man who didn't and would never desire her. I pointed out that "even if the shaykh didn't know before you got married, he (the husband) did. He married you knowing he feels desire for men. Maybe he thought that having you there would switch him. He laid the burden of his sexuality on you, without telling you ahead of time what you were in for. So does it matter if the shaykh knew or didn't know?"



She stayed late talking to me that day, and returned the next. She turned over every possibility of the past and future in her mind. We looked at the consequences of every course of action she could take. She was already dealing with the ramifications of one - the ablahs knew about her sexless marriage, and no doubt before long most of the neighborhood's women would as well. And they did. In fact, I even heard about her from another person who didn't know that I already knew the real story. What I was told was that it was another case of a woman who wasn't ready to "stop being selfish" and give herself up on the wedding bed and that "if she didn't watch it" she would be divorced and her prize catch of a husband would move on to someone else. This was a constant theme of Um Khayr in the marriage class -- that most of the married murid women were sexually frigid and unavailable and that they were not pleasing their husbands and thus not pleasing Allah. And that we'd all better watch our steps or our husbands would move on to women who were happy to please, on top of Allah being displeased with us (ie, hell!)



My friend - she had it out with her husband. He admitted that he had a "problem," that he hoped marriage would "cure" him. Why he had not told her upon marrying her - well that was the advice of all the shaykhs whose counsel he had sought. It was a minor flaw that would be easily corrected upon marrige and she needn't ever know about it. That he might have exposed her to sexually transmitted diseases, let alone all of the psychological and spiritual distress she suffered never entered the minds of any of these men.



When it came down to it, they both left Jordan and the tariqa. They later divorced. I hear that he has left Islam and is semi-open about his sexuality. As for my friend, she is radically different as a Muslim now, as are, I am learning, many people who leave Ktown. They (we?) approach Islam very differently, perhaps in a way you would not recognize or understand, but it is a necessary thing after you live with Nuh Keller and his women. There are some murids who leave Islam altogether. I think we have yet to see the long term effect of the cult on people's spirituality, but I wonder how many will be driven away from Islam because of them.



Here was a woman who sought the advice of two women famed for their ability to understand marriage, particularly Um Khayr, and was instead blamed for the very real failures of the husband. Instead of compassion and real support, she was told that she was inadequate as a woman, as a sexual being, and as a Muslim. And then, in direct disobedience to the Quran and Sunnah, the Um's told her story to others.



If you think this story is made up, you clearly have not been to Ktown. What is even worse, I think, than this story being real - with real people who really had to live with this pain - is that they were not the first and probably will not be the last couple who are in the same problem. I know of at least one other murid couple where the husband had issues with same sex attraction, and a handful of other murid couples where the husband had a porno problem in general. I also know of several men and women whose "confidential" emails to NK, UK, and US about sexuality problems in marriage were shared with murids in the neighborhood. I even saw one that was forwarded to a friend of mine - "Please read this and understand the sickness of the West" was the message from UK. The murid's pain was used to slam our home countries. The murid's email and name weren't even blanked out. And those are just the ones that I know about.



I have spoken to other women who quit the tariqa and their marriages because of sexuality issues that the shaykh refuses to address. I haven't spoken to the men because really, after all that, this is not something I want to talk about with them.



In Kellerworld, men are perfect, and normal, with the sexual appetites that exactly match the prophet (pbuh) or that match the ascetics that he so worships - they are beyond needing sex. The women are virginal and pure, except when they aren't -- when they are needed by men for their needs or for baby making or when they are whores who drive men wild. This is why men are allowed to behave as they please, while women are subjected to ever more psychotic restrictions about dress, movement, behavior and speech -- all the while being told that everything about us is sexually alluring to the brother murids.



No man in Kellerworld is gay. No man in Kellerworld is addicted to pornography or into some strange bedroom behavior. No one ever stops to think to himself, "Hold on a second. I do not find that I get sexually out of control when I see a woman in hijab with blue embroidery on it. I find that I am able to keep my pants on when I see a hijabi woman with her face uncovered." Instead, the ones who come to Jordan begin to grow their split personalities - one for Jordan and one for everywhere else, where a woman who would be Mashallah, pious in America becomes a disobedient fitna in Jordan. It becomes a place where a woman in a blue raincoat is a sex symbol.



If everything else about the tariqa was authentic and in line with the sunnah, the monstrous nature of this issue alone would be enough to keep a sensible person away.



So please ponder this sister's story, and the other things I mentioned to you. Please think about what you know of Jordan's rules - everyone knows some of what the women are expected to do and everyone gossips about it, so you must know. My friend has let her story be told because she hopes it will help someone who is in her situation or help someone who needs to to see the truth. The least you can do is reflect upon it.

After the exposures

So I have been following the exposure of the tariqa on the blog I mentioned, as well as the other blog. Emails are flying back and forth between people, also ims and phone calls.



I am giddy in a way. I told you a little tiny bit about what I learned in Jordan - men who were blackballed for their questioning the tariqa. Or really for questioning Um Sahl or NK. Or Um Sahl just didn't like them. Whatever it is.



I told you about the life for women there. About women that everyone knew was being abused and no one did anything. Did I tell you how UK, US, and NK used to share their emails and letters with people? They would tell you what transpired between them and the seeker when the person came for help? And of course that stuff would make its way around the neighborhood, which is likely what was intended.



I'm told they're very angry in Jordan, wanting to know who that blogger is and the people commenting. Just like they were about the other guy's blog a few months ago. Does it matter? It is all of us, none of us. Truth will find a way, Noah.



So what comes now? I mean, is it just to say "Look at this freak show?" and that's it?



I can see where some people - Salafi and the ikhwani types - will use this to say, "See, sufism is totally wrong and misguided," and basically for their propaganda purposes. To get people to attend their programs or give them money.



We need people who really care, without regard to the manhaj. I think at this point, it can only be those who were there or who are tariqa in some way (any tariqa). Look before you go laughing at those crazy sufis and telling us how the Maghrib Institute is superior, you should realize that these Muslims in Kharabsheh are real people with parents, siblings, spouses, and children and they are being severely damaged, emotionally, financially, spiritually. There are families whose hearts are broken because their son or daughter ran off to Kharabsheh and breaks off contact because the father doesn't approve of the shaykh.



There has to be something for those people, as well as people who are leaving or escaping from Kharabsheh, to come together and share their experiences and also (this is going to sound so corny) the path to healing. There isn't anything much written about Islamic cults out there. Muslims deny that cults can exist or they will prescribe their version of Islam as the cure, without regard to the damage that you have already suffered. Non-Muslims don't understand us.



I think a private message board, email group, or some sort of blog or website where it's controlled by trusted people to avoid spying and spamming and flaming is the best thing right now. The conversation forums at the two blogs got very quickly out of control, which shows that we (the people who left and our families) can't really be safe or secure posting our stories there. People will flame us, tell us we're going to hell, try to intimidate us (which is happening to some of the former murids) or use us for their own ends.



I know some of you are out there reading. I leave it up to you to be the ones to create this safe haven. I know most of us need it. My cousin, who had been in Damascus studying with that fraud, said "Only people who were there can understand what we have been through," and I think the same is true for those of us who were in Ktown.



Make sure you make it easy to find - put keywords on the site, give it an easy title, link it where you can in Islamic forums before they inevitably remove your link claming it is "fitnah" (as if NK isn't the big fitnah, but they will link to him!) Make sure that members' identities, ip address, even the posts are protected from search engines and curious drive bys. That the spies can't find them and use it against them. I can't wait to see it.

Shocked!

Today I opened my email and had an email from a friend who was in the tariqa pointing me to a blog on the internet. (This is 4 your sake: judging by the content, she is referring to the Salafi Burnout blog, where several posts detailing the problems with Kharabsheh and sh. Nuh and sh. Yaqoubi and other sufi types were written about. That blog was taken down.) Once again, it seems that ex-murids are speaking out against Keller. It is a blog about problems in Salafism and Islamic movements and now the guy actually wrote about the Ktown stuff. He says that he is getting a lot of emails from people all over about it and that's why he chose to write on it. I have to say that I am finding the discussion forum below the post quite shocking, and this is why I do not have comments on my blog. I just want to tell my story, my friends' stories. You know the Keller side of it - and he doesn't have comments on HIS website or blog either.



But this is something, I think, that is not going to be stopped. I do not think there is reform possible in Kharabsheh. Nuh Keller has said, "Nuh does not care if you all picked up and left tomorrow, he doesn't need you to be here, doing what he is doing." That is the only way this will end -- if you do as he talks about - pick up and go. If he was genuine, he wouldn't care if his meal tickets picked up and left. There is no reforming NK, UK, and US.



I am not sure yet if I want to link to this other blog. I am not sure I want people who are that toxic coming here. There is a lot of anger out there, but what bothers me, naturally, is that most of the ugliness seems to reside in the hearts of those who are saying that they are murids or defending the shaykh in some way. The people who are former murids are clearly angry, but I don't see this ugliness from them for the most part. But as a friend of mine once said, as murids we reflect the state of our shaykh. So some shaykhs have many children and their murids do as well and the tariqa is very oriented towards kids and family. Some shaykhs, like NK, don't have any, and then you find a lot of murids who don't have children or the murids as a whole aren't very family oriented.



I'm laughing because I think the comments from the murids on that blog really reflect their shaykh, and their shaykh's two henchwomen.



Anyway, I am shocked. I was not expecting to read all that stuff! I think it's a little out of control, actually. but the story is being heard!

Rule realties #2

So what is it like to live with the realities of "nose in the dirt," rule #2 in Kharabsheh (and also a tariqa-wide rule)?



Many of the rules, if not most of them, governed not only how women can dress, but also behave - in the z, in the house, in friends' homes, in the street. Again, I remind you that the rules for murids in Jordan are very different than the rules - or lack of them - for the murids everywhere else in the world. So if you are a murid from Chicago, and you read this and say "That's not what it's like," just remember - you're in Chicago.



So nose in the dirt.



Well, first of all, for a period of time, up until about summer of 2007, Um Khayr would give a dars on Tuesday mornings about marriage. These classes were for all women, married or unmarried, and there were, at one point, a few women who weren't murids but were Americans married to local men who would attend. She used non-Islamic books, exclusively. The two "bibles" of the women's group were Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin and The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle. If you didn't have a copy of these books, there were women who were very eager and happy to lend it to you. NK also allowed us to make copies of these books, saying that because they were unavailable in the bookstores in Jordan, then copyright - as conceived of in Shariah - didn't prevent us from reproducing them ourselves. UK also liked Dr. Laura books, as well as Michele Weiner Davis's books Divorce Busting, Change Your Life and Everyone in It, and the Sex Starved Marriage. Now, you were not supposed to read all of the chapters. For example, she didn't want unmarried women to read the sex starved marriage one and all of us were supposed to skip the chapter in FW about sex and religion, things like that. But overall, she thought these were good books that sort of fell in line with what she was teaching us.



Why? I think because they are mainly secular (FW is a Mormon book), and modern and would appeal to us in their tone of voice and writing in a way that a 800 year old book by a man from the Middle East wouldn't. However, even with the familiar names and modern haircuts, the message was basically the same - keep your nose in the dirt. Is your husband about to make a disastrous financial decision? You need to shut up and not "nag" him and question his manliness. Things like that. Week after week, UK taught us how our asking for things - even necessities, how our displeasure at things he may have done that is wrong, how our failure to dress up in sexy clothes and make up all of these things - but most of all, asking to go home to our home countries - were "nagging" and ugly and we would drive him away. "Remember," she would say "polygamy is not illegal in Jordan, and believe me, they do talk about all the problems they have at home and some of them tell each other 'Why not just take another wife and send her home?'"



Now, Laura Doyle says that you should never tolerate abuse, but that is not what we exactly learned. UK would say that if you or your husband, in your marriage, were inspiring one another to do wrong by Allah, to not be the best Muslim you could be, then you should divorce, but never, not once, did she tell us it was okay to leave when a man hit you.



This is because our dear shaykh had taught us that wife beating is part of the Shariah. I don't know if he knows what that means to some men. He lives an out of touch life. He doesn't visit people in their homes, except rarely. He does not go outside and mingle with the people. He only goes from his home to the masjid and back again. He does not look at people when he is walking up the hill, and does not talk even to most of his male murids. So how does he really know what he is giving permission to?



Yet US and UK know, because when some men are hitting them, they go to these wise women for counsel and help. I know, a lot of sisters want sh. Nuh to put their man straight. They think if he tells the husband, the husband will obey but does he tell them at all? Mostly, from the women I know who went to them for help, they told them, "Well, you need to work harder at pleasing him," and "You should bear this with sabr and your reward is in Jannah."



There were some women there who, as the months would go by, seemed to shrink and disappear. Some women you would only see on Eid, when SNK encouraged the men to let their wives gather with the other women to celebrate. Some women never talked or had anything to say, they would sit in the corner just watching. They looked so sad.



Shortly before the time that C lost his job, there was a mawlid. Maybe about 50 of us were there. All of a sudden, one woman who was very popular but whose physical and mental deterioration were noticeable, began speaking about her husband having sex with her against her will, when she was sick and also when it was haram (ie, her period). The whole room went silent and people turned their faces from her. "My mother has had to pull him off me a few times," she said. "He just can't stay away." She wasn't bragging. She just said it apropos of nothing. "Everyone thinks I am so lucky but I guess I'm not."



No one knew what to say, so after a moment, they began to talk about anything and everything else. Later, some of the sisters lectured her about speaking about "her husband's affair" and that she had to protect his reputation. She went to UK and US, and later SNK a number of times, and said that they told her to bear this with patience nad that a lot of wives wished their husbands found them "so desirable." Later, she told a few people he was also sodomizing her, and that UK told her to just "be patient and make duah."



There was two or three other women whose husbands were into pornography. US had told a small group of us on one occasion that she knew there were men "watching videos and these things" online, but never were men lectured about this the way that we were constantly lectured on clothing and laughing / talking too loud. I remember one woman was emailing murids asking "What am I supposed to do?" and no one would give her advice, but just "make duah that he is cured of this" and that sort of thing.



After I had left the tariqa, I was put in touch with a former murid whose husband was addicted to homosexual pornography. She had been to UK and US numerous times, as well as writing letters to NK, begging for help. They ignored her. When she divorced her husband, they said taht it was her fault that her husabnd had been "misled," even though it is probable that her husband had this issue long before the wifeyboo came along. However, as with most of us, the solution that they offer to men who have gay urges is to get married. The now ex-wife thinks that is what happened in her case.



There were men who would stand right up close to the women's doors or right up at the corner of streets, so that women had to brush past them or stop and ask them to move. Although they were told not to do this by one of the shaykh's students, they did it all the time, and this has gone on for years. Instead, the women are lecutred about talking and laughing too loud - not because of noise but because it apparently is alluring to men.



I wondered then, when will the men of Kharabsheh be told to take some responsibilities for their nufus? (I know now the answer is "When pigs fly.")



After that sister, the one who confessed in the mawlid, left her husband, people began to make duah against her, even though at that time, she was still trying to reconcile with him and get him to go to counseling so they could stay married. I attended a small tea party gathering and out of nowhere, one of the women raised her hands and said "Ya Rabb, please let Brother X find a righteous wife, a good murid," and other women said "Ameen."



It was women, who knew that she was suffering, who were her worst enemies. I remember UK told some of us that because she didn't have patience and sabr and iman, Allah could punish her, "even though she thinks she's doing something that is beneficial to her."



The bottom line, always, is that anything your husband does or asks for must be borne by you, even if it is against the religion or against your dignity. And for you to seek help or seek justice is a crime against men and against Allah. Many women have left their murid husbands and subsequently left the tariqa. I do not remember any of the women who were divorced in my time in the tariqa who were not labeled as rebellious or "mentally and spiritually unbalanced" later. In some cases, like the woman I told you about, we were told to stop talking to them. Very few stay in the tariqa because when you leave your husband and US and UK unleash their displeasure against you, you learn that the reason they say "Nose in the dirt" is because that is what you are - dirt. And who would want to seek spiritual enlightenment with people who tell you you're dirt and that you're crazy and a bad Muslim for trying to leave an abusive or just bad marriage?



I do want to say that I think there are many happy or normal marriages, even in Jordan. In Kharabsheh, I think the happy ones are outweighed by the messed up ones. Many of the women are in Jordan sort of against their will, they are very unhappy by their living situations, and things like that. Almost none of the men work, many of them either rely on savings or they rely on their parents and their wife's parents for money. I think this, as well as being foreigners who don't speak the language in most cases, creates unique pressures and has led to what is going on in Jordan now, where more than 25 couples - the last time I got an update - have been divorced in the past year.



They say that they are bringing forth a new age of Islam, a renwal of the golden age, and bringing people back to love and the sunnah. However, what they are doing is teaching women to be silent, even in the face of horrific abuses, and that our value is as sexual objects, brood mares, and cleaning girls. We must absolutely look at the track record of a group of leaders who have had 25 divorces or more just among their Kharabsheh group in the past year, as well as the many nasty divorces that have happened with the tariqa for many years now. Our bad marriages aren't a secret to anyone - except maybe Nuh Keller, who is, it would seem, blissfully unaware of anything.