Steve Biko and the Night Better Than a Thousand Months
Forty years ago Steve Biko died on a night that Muslims consider better than a thousand months. Some today like yesterday may begin to wonder, do Black Lives Matter to God? The Night of Power is a pivotal moment in which angels repeatedly descend from heaven seeking to bestow blessings of Divine intervention for those standing on earth imploring God’s help. God describes this night as qualitatively better than a thousand months, which is greater than a lifetime. This night can be described as pivotal for two reasons: The first is that this intervention changes the course of history as when God first sent the Angel Gabriel with the Holy Qur’an on his last mission to mankind. The second is that in this way the hosts of angels coming to earth are a spiritual intervention for believers, creating in them an internal peace in an oppressive period of time. In the chapter called The Night of Power, both these pivotal purposes are explained:
We sent it down on the Night of Power. What will explain to you what that Night of Power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months; on that night the angels and the Spirit descend again and again with their Lord’s permission on every task. Peace it is until the rising of the dawn. (Qur’an 97: 1–5)
This Night of Power is one special historic and religious pivotal moment when God brings attention to His last revelation to mankind. Throughout the Islamic tradition, there are several such Divine interventions in time when religious foundations are erected. An example is when Abraham builds the house of the one God, following which Muslims are commanded to journey to this house of God at least once in a lifetime. There are moments of religious preservation in the year of the elephant when God protects His house. In this year the birth of the Messenger of God occurs. There are moments of religious migration away from oppression in Mecca to religious liberty in Medina, in the first month of Rabi al Awwal of the Muslim calendar. These moments singularly changed history and religious times but some times a convergence took place that was pivotal.
Often pivotal moments converge on similar dates: An historic American moment of this type occurred on January 1, 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln. This occurred in the holy month of Rajab, similarly in that month in 10th year of Prophet Muhammad’s mission (620 CE) al-Isra wa ‘l-Mi’raj occurred. In one night the Prophet (saw) went from Makkah to Jerusalem, then to the heavens and beyond. This is immediately after the most difficult days in the Prophet Muhammad’s life and just before he immigrated from Mecca to Medina and the beginning of a new era of Islamic history and a time of religious peace. On the other hand, epic moments of religion and history can converge — causing a time of extreme difficulty in discerning the transcendent divine intervention due to the immanent evil of the moment.
The Night of Power 1977
One of those difficult moments of pivotal convergence was the night Steve Biko was violently martyred. It happened on the 27th night of Ramadan in the year of 1397, the Night of Power, which fell on September 12, 1977. How can such a disruption of peace and injustice take place on the Night of Power when the angels are descending granting peace until the rising of the dawn? Biko’s brutal murder created a theodicy question that would lead some to form a negative opinion about God and the value of Black lives to God. Muslim theology teaches that God has the prerogative to take what belongs to Him, and one of those angels that descended was the angel of death who was commanded to take the soul of Steve Biko. Despite the evil of a thousand blows that night that White supremacy thought it was killing a Black man in attempt to silence the voice that yelled the loudest that Black Lives Matter, to believers in God’s eternal power, this night was still better than a thousand months. It was a pivotal moment in the anti-apartheid movement which ended the life of the struggle in South Africa.
Steve Biko was beaten to death while in Police custody, a familiar dark and brutal reality yesterday and today. Until this late summer night in 1977, Biko was an outspoken leader of the South African Liberation Movement against apartheid in the decades after Mandela’s imprisonment. Steve Biko spoke about the ambiguous nature of life and death and what a good life meant to him: “You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care anyway.” Although Steve Biko is physically gone, he is alive and victorious because he lived caring for his fellow South Africans, repelling evil with good. We Muslims believe by the power of God that all martyrs live beyond their mortal life and we are commanded not to refer to those slain while fighting for peace and justice as dead. Our Holy Book says:
‘Do not say that those who are killed in God’s cause are dead; they are alive, though you do not realize it.’ Qur’an 2:154
The Night of Power in Arabic is called “lailatul qadr,” Qadr is referred to most commonly as power or decree. Qadr has a much richer meaning theologically than the isolated words of power or decree. It is one of God’s attributes, signifying “ the One who is surely Able and All-Powerful.” The Qur’an uses the root qaf dal ra 132 times in 11 different forms and contexts. The meanings become relevant to our theological understanding as Muslims because they convey the contextual meanings of the second reason for the Night of Power: to restrict, to control, to determine and to plot, appraisal and to exact due measure, the decreed time and an appointed period. The answer to God’s rhetorical question becomes timely for those who wrestle with the theodicy of Black suffering and for those who ask how something like the evil of White Supremacy could win and how the death of Steve Biko could have taken place on such a holy night. A night God describes as, “better than a thousand months.” We can understand, that on that night it was decreed for Steve Biko to be martyred. We can understand, that the All-Powerful began to restrict and control White Power on that night in the angelic realm. We can understand that the powerful system of apartheid that was thought to be indefatigable was now determined to fail despite being supported by Western powers and the United States of America, because surely God is Able. We can understand that it was decreed that White supremacy’s plot was being undone with exact due measure by the Best of Plotters. We can understand that Steve Biko’s life on earth reached its decreed time and his blood paid the price for a new period in South Africa.
Graciously, Muslims have the privileged opportunity to perennially experience both the historic and religiously pivotal moment every Ramadan. You can too if you only would believe. At the rising of the dawn after Steve Biko was murdered, very few would have believed you in 1977 if you told them Steve Biko’s death was actually the death blow to White supremacy in South Africa. In just a decade Nelson Mandela would be freed from prison and elected President of South Africa. Who would have believed you if you had said that last night angels descended as they do annually as decreed to fulfill God’s command to restore justice, so do not fear nor should you grieve. If you had counseled them that God is surely Able to exact justice and All Powerful over all things. Perhaps, today we can look back and look ahead to know just how important these pivotal moments are and see just how a moment can be qualitatively better than a thousand months. At that moment in 1397 on the Night of Power almost 40 years ago, a pivotal change occurred in the heavens and on earth. Today we communally seek similar blessings in the Night of Power and Divine intervention. We communally stand and implore God believing that He is surely Able, All Powerful to affirmatively answer at this pivotal moment in time the rhetorical question: do Black lives matter to God?
