The first time I met Shaykh Seraj was on Friday, January 9th, 2009, in the imam’s office adjoining the prayer hall of Azzawia, in Walmer Estate, Cape Town. I was somewhat in awe of him before I had met him. I was an academic doing research, and it was my first visit to Cape Town — but I had heard of Shaykh Seraj and his brother Shaykh Ahmad for many years before that, via their writings online. There was something that deeply appealed to me about both of them, before I had even met these two scions of the legacy of Azzawia, one of the great historical institutions of Islam in South Africa and the world, and spiritual heirs of the great ʿālim of the Ḥijāz, Sayyid Muhammad b. ʿAlawī al-Mālikī.
Perhaps it was the South African connection. My father had been involved in the anti-apartheid movement, and I think I knew that Azzawia had been on the right side of that struggle — a struggle that meant so much to my father. Perhaps it was the sort of broadminded traditionalism their writings had indicated: that traditionalism, with a small ‘t’, entrenched within the corpus of what one would call mainstream, normative Sunnism — the madhāhib of fiqh, the approaches to ʿaqīda of the Ashʿarīs, the Māturīdīs, and the authentic Ḥanbalīs, and of course, the Sufis. And yet, when one looked into Shaykh Seraj’s writings, including his master’s thesis at the University of South Africa, one found him entirely conversant with Western academia on Islam, discussing the ideas of Annemarie Schimmel, James Piscatori, and many others.
Perhaps it was the haunting tunes of Azzawia’s awrād and adhkār. The different odes to the Prophet being recited in the melodies of Azzawia in particular, and the tones of Cape Town in general, had something compellingly attractive about them. A stirring in one’s heart seemed unavoidable while listening to them, particularly for Westerners, as they sounded eerily similar to Western melodic modes. But those harmonies did not come from the West — they were brought to the Cape by Shaykh Muhammad Salih Hendricks, Shaykh Seraj’s grandfather, who had been inspired by his time in Zanzibar.
Perhaps it was simply the shaykh’s eloquence, which was legendary in English and Afrikaans, as well as the Arabic language which became a first language to him after years of study in Makka. When we read classical Arabic-Islamic texts together, it was clear he was super-proficient in the language, clarifying different terms, including how they could be translated in different ways, and pondering together what words would work best. He had a flair for exposition. In the early years of his time in Makka, he wrote to his brother-in-law of the Cape Town winter — its cold, wet nights with steaming coffee, which held great attraction as a base for conversations. When visiting London, he penned in a letter that to walk through its parks was to walk through the poetry of Wordsworth — the lush green trees, the undulating hills, the leaves of rich brown, red and gold, and the dim, pervasive mists. The skill he had with the written word.
I do not know, really, precisely what it was that attracted me the most to the shaykh. But I knew I had a profound curiosity about meeting Shaykh Seraj and Shaykh Ahmad — and when I walked into that office, I do remember feeling very much a sense of awe, as I met the ‘lamp in the shade of the mountain’. Serāj, the meaning of ‘lamp’ in Arabic, in the shade of Table Mountain, which overlooked Azzawia.
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Upon our first meeting, Shaykh Seraj indicated he knew of me from my work in the public sphere, and he made me feel like I was almost the most famous man alive. As time went on, I saw him exhibit that Prophetic virtue again and again. He had the innate ability to make people feel the loftiness of their worth. How often was I introduced to people he knew, and he would give me a background brief on them that meant they were basically all worthy of Nobel prizes. As a mutual friend said of him, he wore his heart on his sleeve, made everybody feel like one in a million, and was so open to and loving of the world.
At one point, I began to wonder if every member of Azzawia was almost superhuman in some way. Maybe they were — because of the training and the encouragement they received from the shaykhs of Azzawia. Shaykh Seraj always strove to motivate everyone; encouraged them to commit to excellence in whatever they did, as a way to show gratitude and thankfulness to the Divine. At the same time, he put that kind of effort in its right place. He said to me many times: “It is not incumbent for us to succeed. It is incumbent upon us to do our best.” We were not responsible for the final result — that was in the hands of the Divine. What He had placed in our hands was the ability to intend to do our best.
The shaykh was regarded as a walī, a friend of the Divine, around the world. In Cape Town, his impact was most felt, where his pastoral responsibilities encompassed a community of thousands. These were duties he took incredibly seriously, often to the severe detriment of his own personal health, despite students and friends trying hard to encourage him to hand over such responsibilities to others who might manage. But as noted: he took his duties seriously, and it is one of the many reasons he was so loved. He gave so much of himself to those who put their trust in him.
It should be noted: his family assisted him in this role tremendously. His wife, Rhoda, was, and is, a mountain that befits the natural wonder that is Table Mountain, in whose shadow Azzawia was built. His three children, Nuha, Alia and Rashid, are all individual testaments to the strength of their parents, as well as their own unique and special attributes.
Even in his Friday talks before the khuṭba, Shaykh Seraj was informal. As one long-time attendee said after his death, he was always seeking to engage and dialogue, rather than preach, judge and pontificate. That was his way. And it was the way of the tradition he inherited.
