Praise be to Allah who, through His Eternal Word, does not cease to be praised:
The Universally Merciful, the Singularly Compassionate,
Who by His Mercy has stirred up in us gratitude for His goodness wherewith He has enriched us and inspired us to praise and glorify Him.
The limits of favour and the bounds of praise were extended when He promised to those grateful for His bounty still more blessings; and He spread wide the carpet of His Assembly to those who remember Him. He has brought into subjection all things according to His Wisdom and Equity, as He has willed, by His Power, so that by His Authority the mover remains still and the still moves. 'He is the First and the Last, The Outer and the Inner,' (57:3) the Controller of expansion [bast] and contraction [qabd],'the Knower of the Unseen [al-ghayb]; not even the weight of an atom, or less than that or greater than that, either in the heavens or on the earth escapes Him. ' {34:3}
We praise Him with the praise of those who know Him with true knowledge of Him. We give thanks to Him with the expressions of gratitude of those who acknowledge the perfection of His goodness and favour. We bear witness that there is no deity other than Allah alone, having no companion, with an affirmation to which no doubt is attached and before which no door closes from accepting. We testify that our liege-lord Muhammad is His Slave and Worshipper and Prophet and Messenger. May Allah bless him with a blessing that will bring us to him and gather us around him on the Day of Assembly and Reckoning. May Allah be pleased and grant peace to his family, his helpers, his descendants, the people of his household, his illustrious companions, the best of friends, as long as a star will shine, a new moon shall rise and a cloud shall float above the face of the earth.
As-salaamu alaykum.
Welcome to the web page of the Green Mountain Branch of the Shadhdhuli School for the Tranquillity of Being and the Illumination of Hearts, under the direction of Shaykh A. Nooruddeen Durkee, the Khalifah in North America of Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Muhammad al-Battawi, from whom he received idhn and ijaza in 1984CE/1405H to teach Islam from the Sufic (tasawwuf) perspective and to initiate, train and guide people specifically in the way of Shaykh Abu'l Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, may Allah sanctify his secret.
The Green Mountain School is actively dedicated to making known in English language and Arabic transliteration the ahzab, adhkar, awrad and du'aa' of Sidi Abu'l Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, may Allah sanctify his secret, which have informed, inspired and delivered to spiritual salvation many thousands of people from all over the world for more than 800 years.
Sidi Abu'l Hasan said, “Of all the Ways there are two: the way of traveling (suluk) and the way of attraction (jadhb). Our way is the Way of Jadhb. Our beginning is their end. Their beginning is our completion."
"Who is illumined in the beginning is illumined in the end.”
Shaykh Ibrahim Muhammad al-Battawi, the teacher of Shaykh Nooruddeen, received his ‘ijaza and khilafa from Shaykh Sidi Salama ar-Radi in the line that comes down from Sidna Yaqut al-Arsh, who, along with Sidna Ibn Ata 'Illah, was the khalifah of Sidna Mursi Abu'l Abbas, who was the khalifah of Shaykh Abu'l Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, may Allah sanctify their secret.
Sidi Salama ar-Radi gave Shaykh Ibrahim the specific duty to teach foreigners ('ajami) and named him Shaykhu-l-Afandiya. He fulfilled this duty in the course of his twenty-five year tenure at al-Azhar University, where his main focus was the teaching of Islamic philosophy, specifically the Ihya 'Ulumu-d-Din of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, may Allah be content with him. The students of Shaykh Ibrahim have come from, and then returned to teach in, areas all over the world, including Turkey, Central Asia, China, Indonesia, the Subcontinent, Africa and the West.
While attending the traditional course at al-Azhar, these students would come for personal teaching in weekly classes at the nearby zawiyah of the Shaykh. There, he instructed them in the Sufic understanding of the Qur'an, hadith, fiqh, usul-ud-din and the other Islamic sciences, and there they also met, ate, shared ideas and attended hadrah, dhikr, and made khalwa, especially itiqaf during the holy month of Ramadan. Upon completion of their studies, these students have returned to their countries to become teachers, professors, social workers and leaders, setting up masajid, orphanages, hospitals and other centers for the teaching and assistance of their various communities.
Shaykh Ibrahim in his mid-eighties (may Allah give him good health), is now retired, but continues teaching from the zawiyah on Azhar St. as well as from a new Masjid and Zawiyah he has constructed in the Heliopolis area of Misr Gadeed on the desert outskirts of Cairo. Shaykh Ibrahim has visited the United States four times and has spoken and taught at many centers and masajid, including the Dar al-Islam Foundation in Abiquiu, New Mexico where he served on the Board of Religious Education and development of Islamic Curriculum.
Insha'Allah he will make another visit to the US in the near future. Please check our latest news section coming soon.
Shaykh Nooruddeen came to this traditional Sufic Islam after embracing Islam in his early thirties in al-Quds. He is now in his mid sixties (may Allah give him health).
His embrace of Islam came after many years of traditional religious education as a youth followed, in his early manhood, by a decade of intense study of the world's major religions, along with the principles of geography, history, art and world culture. As a result he brings to his teaching a very broad and inclusive view. Being originally from the West, he has an understanding of the needs and problems of western people, particularly Americans. His language is often laced with references to places, items of pop culture, and situations familiar to that audience, and he has a particular heart-felt understanding for their need to understand Islam from within as well as without. At the same time, his long years in the East, especially in the ancient sites of the origins of spirituality including extended stays of many years in Makkah and Egypt as well as intense visits to Madinah and al-Quds, have given him an awareness of The Long View and a tolerance for the universal Source of religious and spiritual consciousness, as well as a clear understand of Islam and how exactly it is in Truth the past, the final, and present operating system (OS) of those who heed The Command; the very seal and fulfillment of the myriad revelations sent by Allah in the history of humankind.
An historian and geographer by inclination, he has traced the origins of language, the movement of ideas, and the development of religions across continents and cultures, and this knowledge informs his teaching with a depth and breadth the students find challenging, informing and invigorating.
The Green Mountain School is the third school Shaykh Nooruddeen has founded.
The first was established in 1969CE/1389H on Flag Mountain in New Mexico. This school was the site of the first purpose-built masjid ever erected in New Mexico.
The second school he founded was Dar al-Islam, established by him in Abiquiu, New Mexico in 1980/1400. In addition to its use for the Islamic education of children, it has been used for teaching by such well-known teachers as Shaykh Seyed Ali Ashraf, Shaykh Umar Abdullah, Shaykh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani and Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller and Imam Hamza Yusuf, and well as his own Shaykh, Sidi Ibrahim al-Battawi among others.
After founding and then serving as the president of Dar al-Islam Foundation for eight years, Shaykh Nooruddeen moved to Alexandria, Egypt where he lived for five years. There he taught under the direction of his own Shaykh and translated, transliterated, edited and produced the Orisons and Origins of the Shadhdhuliyyah, which include all of the well-known and widely accepted Awrad, Ahzab, Adhkar, and Du'aa' of Shaykh Abu'l Hasan, Allah sanctify his secret, as well as the snatches and tatters of the oral teaching which were recorded by various students of Shaykh Abu'l Hasan and his teachers. The wide dispersal of these texts has been and continues to be among the basic objectives of the Green Mountain School.
A new edition of the Orisons of the Shadhdhuliyyah is presently proceeding to press in Malaysia and it will, Insha’Allah, be back in print by Ramadan 1406/2005.
Shaykh Nooruddeen started the Green Mountain School, named after the mountain ridge on which he presently lives, in 1995 when he returned from Egypt. The major concentration of the school was and continues to be the teaching of the Qur’an.
In the course of transliterating the Orisons, he had received a number of requests for the transliteration of such surahs as Ya Seen and al-Wa'qiyah. This in turn led to his concentration for over twelve years on the transliteration of the Arabic of the Holy Qur'an and, consequentially, the translation of the text into literate 21st Century American English.
The transliteration aspect of the Transliterated Tajwidi Qur'an is more important to him than the translation, although the translation has proved very useful and easy to understand. But the transliteration has the ability to help the non-Arabic reader to enunciate a semblance of the original text, and thus to fulfill the primary Order of Allah which is to “Read” ('Iqra ) or “Recite”. This Tajwidi Qur’an is now being read and used in teaching all over the English-speaking world.
Shaykh Nooruddeen, along with two close associates, has now developed a course which enables, and has enabled, young people and adults to move quickly from using transliterated texts to actual recitation of the Qur’an. This course of Reading, Writing and Reciting Qur'anic Arabic uses the system of orthography created by Dr. Zafr Iqbal, in which the rules of tajwid are graphically represented in the text as an aid to the student reader.
This text is the same as the one used in the Transliterated Tajwidi Qur'an and also the final lessons in the teaching book “Qur'an Made Easy”, by Shabbir Behlim, which, along with the rules in “Easy Tajwid” by Dr. Syed Muqri al-Husayni forms the basis of the teaching.
In the past year alone more than forty people, using this system, have learned to read directly and without hesitation from the Arabic text of the Qur'an.
The Green Mountain School also serves to make more widely known some of the thinking of Shaykh Nooruddeen on many contemporary issues. These can be found in various written, audio and visual forms on this website.
A large part of Shaykh Nooruddeen's work has been in the realm of education, and for many years specifically in the realm of teaching reading, writing, and reciting of Qur'anic Arabic, which grew out of his work in the translation and transliteration of the sacred texts of the Shadhdhuliyyah and finally the Qur'an. He, along with other teachers affiliated with the school, are deeply involved in work with children and adults, in the local masjid and nationally, particularly in the south-eastern United States.
Additionally, Shaykh Nooruddeen lectures widely, nationally and internationally. On a local level he has for ten years delivered the weekly khutbah (sermon) at a number of different community masajid where he serves a varied constituency, including prisoners, students, immigrants and refugees, Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans.
In 2005 and he gave the Eid Khutbah to the United Muslim Communities of Richmond, Virginia where he spoke to over 6000 people on the theme of “One Deen, One Ummah.”
His talks and sermons are based on the understanding of Islam as the vehicle for the advancement of the prophetic ideals of peace, justice, mercy, love and freedom, which the Prophet, peace & blessings be upon him, made clear in the fulfillment of his mission as a Mercy to all the worlds:
“And We have not sent you save as a mercy to all the worlds.” (Q21:107)
Shaykh Nooruddeen is deeply convinced that this message of Universal Mercy (ar-rahmah) is the message that all kinds of people are thirsting for, and that it is a positive way forward for Muslims, especially those living in minority circumstances. Rather than believing in ideas of progress or reformation or the re-invention of Islam, he believes that what is necessary is that we pay attention to the actual message of Mercy and Justice that Allah revealed and that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, demonstrated, and seek to become messengers of mercy to the various worlds in which we live.
He believes that when we, as the humble followers of the followers, embody that message of Mercy and Justice in the world in accordance with the teaching of Allah connecting belief (al-'iman) and good actions ('al-amal salih) we will be successful as was the Prophet, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him and his family, for deep down all people everywhere yearn for peace.
Only those who are at peace can make
peace.
Only those who have love can give love.
If you want mercy be merciful.
Mercy is spread by those who are mercy full.
Those who give mercy get mercy. or as the Prophet, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him, said,
"No one is a believer in Allah until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."
The School also serves as a local conduit for the dispersing of zakat and sadaqah to those mentioned by Allah It sponsors a weekly ma'idatu-l-rahmah (table of mercy), which gathers together orphans and widows from the refugee community, local university students and professors, and others among the poor, lately imprisoned and broken hearted to eat together, pray together, make dhikr together and read Qur'an together.
The Green Mountain School, in concert with An-Noor Foundation, has for more than seven years run a prison chaplaincy for both men and women in maximum security state prisons. This has been augmented and widened by a correspondence program which now has spread to provide copies of Qur'an and monthly letters to over one hundred and seventy individual Muslim prisoners in more than twenty-six prisons all over the country who are keen to know more about classical, traditional Islam, given the onslaught of Wahhabi/Salafi extremism. To combat these extremist tendencies, the school provides authentic information about traditional Islam using books and visual materials from among such teachers and guides as Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Shaykh Hisham al-Kabbani, Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal, Shaykh Ibrahim al-Battawi, and others teaching along the same lines.
These lectures, books, pamphlets and materials, drawn from a wide variety of the traditional sources, give the inmates, who are often heavily influenced by extremist viewpoints, a more complete idea of the possibilities within the world of Islam than they would find otherwise, since most of them have embraced Islam within the context of being imprisoned and are often unaware of the larger ummah, especially its historical and scholarly inheritance, other than as an abstraction.
The Green Mountain School supports cooperation among the turuq and in this area has worked closely over the last eight years with the Islamic Study and Research Association (ISRA) in spreading the love of Allah and His Prophet, blessings of peace be upon him and his family, in reviving the public celebration and gathering for the Mawlid an-Nabi and the Isra and Miraj held annually in Columbia, SC and Washington, DC. He maintains friendly and brotherly relations with the two teaching shaykhs who are active in the same geographical area: Shaykh Ahmad Abdu-r-Rashid and Shaykh Harun ar-Rasheed al-Faye. Shaykh Nooruddeen has also devoted much time and effort over the past four years to the teaching of the basic principles of Islam, Iman, Ihsan, and Iqan as well as Reading, Writing and Reciting Qur'anic Arabic to the students of the Shadhdhuli shaykh from the sacred precinct of al-Quds ash-Sharif and his long-time friend, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal, whose message and call for peace, justice, mercy, love and freedom he wholeheartedly shares. Recently, along with Shaykh Ahmad Abdu-r-Rashid, he invited Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Yahya al-Husayni an- Ninowy from www.alhaqq.net Atlanta to give a series of lessons on the new publication by Noon Hierographers of at-Tanwir fi ‘Isqaati-t-Tadbiir by Shaykh Ibn ‘Ata’Illah as-Sakandari, http://www.greenmountainschool.org/tasawwuf.htm#1 and is looking forward to collaborating with Shaykh Ninowy on future programs at the Center.
‘Insha'Allah you will find on this website useful materials in the realms of the written word as well as that of the spoken, chanted and visible word.
You may communicate with the School by writing here.
“When the help of Allah comes and the Opening, and you see people entering the religion of Allah in multitudes, then hymn the praises of your Lord and seek His forgiveness. Truly He is ever accepting of repentance.” (Q 110:01-03)
