“You can see a bird in flight and watch to observe it, or feel that you are flying with it. That is contemplation, becoming the other.” Hafiz. Despite (or because of) its apparent calmness, contemplation is the state that most radically dissolves and liberates the self. Through contemplation, the other gradually seeps into us like gentle rain ... without realising it, we suddenly start to see ... the world is not outside us and nothing is lifeless ... images appear and disappear over the silence of that which has no name or form ... like the blinking of something that isn’t our eyes... perhaps then the inner teacher will appear intimately... you will recognise him because all that has withered blooms again ... then we will know that the sky can also be stone and feet can walk on clouds and ... But make sure you do not name him ... for he will vanish.

The Song of the Hoopoe “Traveler who travels with no other baggage than imagination.”

"Those who are on the road of the heart show their wounds...". Farid Ud-Din Attar. S.XI. Persia. Cd rom_interactive. Zayd Ibn Dawra 2000 Marrakesh. Collaborations: Zoubida el Bouzidi. IDEP.

Entrevista with Houria Bouteldja.

There is an anarchist essence inherent in Islam, which deserves our attention. Koranic cosmology states that a human being in the state of nature is a ‘slave (or serf) of Al-lâh, just as a sunflower is a slave of the sun, because they are organically linked. The concept of submission to a Single Reality (al- islam) does not translate into submission to human institutions, rather the reverse: it leads to a rejection of all external coercion as contrary to the nature of things. Muslims reject the limits that the market and the institutionalisation of life impose on their freedom, as an inner space in which intimacy with Creation becomes possible. The freedom that Muslims recognise is not political freedom under protection of the State, but an inner state/space that enables us to reject the world of representations, reject the fiction of power that some sheathe themselves in. This is based on idea that human beings are noble in essence, that their state of nature (fitrah) is superior to their state of culture. Ibn Jaldún says: “The political and educational order is contrary to the power of the soul because it embodies an instance of external control”.This point explains why Islam has been described as ‘mystical anarchy’. Abdennur Prado is a writer, president of the Catalan Islamic Council and co-director of the International Congress of Islamic Feminism.