THE TEN GROUPS
Once Hadhrat Zunnun was found weeping profusely. When asked about his weeping, he said: “Last night I dreamt that Allah Ta’ala said:
‘When I created mankind, they split into ten groups. I presented the world to them. Nine groups inclined to the dunya and one group turned away.
This one group split into ten groups. I presented Jannat to them. Nine groups inclined to Jannat, and one group turned away. This one group split into ten groups. I presented Jahannum to them. Nine groups fled from it. One group did not flee.
I said (to this one group): ‘You did not incline to the world. You do not desire Jannat nor fear Jahannum. What do you desire?’ They responded: ‘You know what we desire.’ ” (End of dream)
This tiny group is the select galaxy of Auliya. They desire nothing other than the Vision of Allah Azza Wa Jal. Their ibaadat is not for the acquisition of Jannat or thawaab nor is their abstention from transgression on account of fear for Jahannum. Their sole motive is the Vision of Allah Ta’ala.
It should not be understood from the lofty goal the Auliya have set their hearts on that ibaadat for obtainal of thawaab and Jannat, and abstention from sin for the fear of Jahannum are improper and defective motives. There is a different standard for the select Auliya. It is perfectly in order to desire Jannat and to fear Jahaanum, and to worship and obey for the acquisition of thawaab.

بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم

Petikan dari Buku ruhul Zikri Jilid ke-2 ini mengandungi sebahagian dari kata-kata sufi Syeikh Mahmud atau nama penuh beliau Syeikh Muhyiddin Abdul Qadir Mahmud al-Kedahi, pengasas Madrasah Nurul Iman yang dipetik daripada syarahan mahupun nasihat beliau kepada murid-muridnya. Kata-kata sufi yang diungkap oleh Syeikh Mahmud mempunyai mutiara kata makna yang mendalam, dimana ada sebahagian daripada kata-kata beliau tidak boleh difahami atau dibuat bandingan secara langsung mengikut fahaman orang awam.

Mutiara kata yang indah dan bermakna ini juga diharap -dengan rahmat dan kasih sayang Allah – dapat menangkis tuduhan-tuduhan liar selama ini terhadap ilmu Tasawuf. Semoga petikan dari buku ini menjadi santapan rohani yang dapat membersihkan jiwa dan mendorong hati untuk menjadi hamba Allah yang sehamba-hambaNya di dunia-Nya ini, Insya Allah.

1.            Jangan tinggal dengan nafsu. Jangan duduk dengan nafsu. Taslim (berserah) kepada Allah s.w.t.. Jangan redho dengan maksiat. Redholah dengan Qadho & Qadar Allah s.w.t.

2.            Tutuplah pintu pancaindera yang di bangsakan (ikut) nafsu. Tutuplah pintu hati yang di bangsakan mazmumah (sifat-sifat kebinatangan). Terbukalah pintu rahmat. Terbukalah anugerah Allah s.w.t. melalui taslim (penyerahan).

3.            Tolak hajat (kemahuan) sehingga Allah s.w.t. beri faham.

4.            Perkara yang kita kurang puas hati jangan kritik Allah s.w.t.

5.            Kedatangan sombong jadi nafsu. Perasaan sudah lama mengikuti (perjalanan) jadi nafsu.

6.            Buatlah istighfar, selawat, dan zikir. Lambat atau cepat (diri terbentuk) mengikut tekanan masing-masing.

7.            Terasa penat! Susah! Itu disebabkan nafsu tidak berupaya. Ibarat (seolah-olah) mendahului Allah s.w.t. apabila di datangi tekanan.Sebab itu kalau hendak berjalan (ikut perjalanan sufi), jangan ikut nafsu! Ikutlah Al-Quran & As- Sunnah.

8.            Ikhlas adalah rahsia. Selagi ada rungutan. Selagi terasa sudah lama dan sebagainya. Tanda belum dapat lagi (Tawakkul Mutlaq & Tauhid Mujarrad). Itu tandanya kurang ikhlas.

9.            Rahsia anak kunci kejayaan guru adalah ikhlas dengan Allah s.w.t.

10.        Cara pembersihan (jiwa) dengan cara bersedikit-sedikit (ikut kemampuan) iaitu dengan selawat, istighfar dan zikir. Membaca surah Alam Nasyroh jikalau datang perasaan jemu dan membaca surah Qulhuallah hu Ahad jikalau berasa celaru dan serabut.

11.        Orang buta kena gila penuh (yakin sepenuhnya) dengan orang celik. Barulah boleh berjalan. Jangan soal mati atau hidup.

12.        Wali Allah bukan maksum, jadi jangan tertipu kerana melihat syariatnya.

13.        Melihat kesalahan dan kelemahan guru adalah hijab bagi murid.

14.        Pelajaran ilmu tauhid (mengenai sifat dua puluh – usuluddin) hanya untuk mengawal akal. Bagi menumpukan kepada kalimah “La ila haillallah”.

15.        Macam mana Allah hendak beri rahmat kepada kamu? Kerana kamu “BIADAP DENGAN ALLAH!”

16.        Kerohanian, tidak dicari dengan akal tetapi dengan bertaqwa. Bila datang alamat kerohanian kena tolak dulu, sehingga ia datang bertubi-tubi, buatlah sembahyang istikhorah supaya pasti.

17.        Apa yang kita dakwa dari kerohanian kita, mesti ada bukti selepas itu. Tujuan (latihan) kerohanian ialah (untuk mendapat) sembahyang khusyuk. Sebagai anugerah dari Allah.

18.        Rahmat Allah datang dengan menendang atau meninggalkan nafsu.

19.        Bila timbul krisis (persilihan pendapat), perkara ini kena rujuk kepada Allah. Kalau ada rahmat melalui saya. Saya akan selesaikan dengan Rahmat Allah.

20.        Krisis mesti berlaku dikalangan Sahabat Radiallahu anhum kerana tidak sama darjah permikiran.

21.        Roh adalah urusan tuhan (maksud Alquran –Al-Isra’ ayat 85) ikut suka Tuhanlah hendak buat macam mana. Perkara inilah yang tidak difahami oleh ulamak zahiriah. Kenapa hendak campur urusan Tuhan?

22.        Kamu pun boleh dapat! (kekuatan iman dan taqwa yang tinggi)! Dengan syarat membuang kezaliman yang ada pada diri kamu sendiri.

23.        Taksub pada diri sendiri adalah hijab yang paling besar sekali.

24.        Kalau ada taksub atau mengambil kesempatan. Maka terhijablah kepada abid dan zuhud.

25.        Kadang-kadang manusia itu, kena dibiarkan dahulu sampai mereka terhantuk.

26.        Jatuh bangun dalam perjalanan (sufiyah-ahlullah) adalah perkara biasa.

27.        Berlaku pergeseran sesama jemaah adalah perkara biasa. Tetapi janganlah jadi bodoh.

28.        Rahsia perjalanan ialah tawaduk. Merendah diri dengan kebenaran.

29.        Orang yang kaya ilmu hendaklah tawaduk dengan kekayaan ilmunya atau keteguhannya.

30.        Sekarang ramai orang seperti kacang yang lupakan kulit. Hanya memandang jasad (zahiriah sahaja) tidak memandang Rahmat Allah, itulah punca menjadi tidak tawadduk (takabbur) – inilah permainan syaitan.

31.        Orang yang buta mata hati. Hal-hal dunia dia boleh buat bermacam-macam. Kereta yang beranika bentuk, pakaian yang berfesyen-fesyen dan bangunan yang pelbagai bentuk. Tetapi jalan ke akhirat mereka tidak boleh buat pula.

32.        Taslim (penyerahan). Menunggu lakonan-susunan Allah. Tidak kempen, tidak halau, tidak cepat, tidak lambat, tidak hendak sikit, tidak hendak banyak, tidak kira lama dan tidak kira baru. Tidak mahu jadi, tidak mahu tidak jadi, tidak kalau boleh dan tidak kalau tidak boleh!

33.        Nafsu sentiasa menarik kepada ammarah untuk duduk setakat lawwamah pun tidak di beri.

34.        Buatlah sesuatu bukan berasa kerana hendak untung dan bukan takut mengalami kerugian.

35.        Mutmainnah itu ialah nafsu yang duduk atas garisan syariat. Sentiasa memikirkan jalan, bagi mendorongkan manusia ke jalan Allah s.w.t.

36.        Apabila mendapat mutmainnah. Penyakit penat akan hilang.

37.        Kalau raja (pemerintah) lupa Allah dan rakyat lupa Allah maka kedua-duanya masuk neraka.

38.        Budak-budak gila dengan cara budaknya. Remaja gila dengan cara remajanya. Orang muda, gila dengan cara mudanya. Orang tua gila dengan cara tuanya, yang ini lagi teruk! Janggut dah putih tidak sedar-sedar lagi. Tidak ingat mati. Alamat hendak masuk neraka!

39.        Iblis pun berzikir. Dalilnya dalam surah Sod (ayat 82) iblis menyebut fabi izzatika (hingga akhir ayat) (Demi KebesaranMu aku akan menyesatkan mereka semua). Dia minta dengan kebesaran Tuhan.Tetapi iblis tidak istighfar dan selawat.

40.        Pada tiap-tiap lapisan langit ada penjaganya.

41.        Dalam merebut takwa, hendaklah kita pentingkan diri kita dahulu.

42.        Saya tidak boleh tarik sesiapa. Kalau boleh, saya tarik anak dan isteri saya dahulu. Saya hanya sekadar memberi galakan dan dorongan sahaja.

43.        Saya hendak bersahabat dengan orang yang ikhlas dan orang yang berani.

44.        Saya yang diberi amanah oleh Allah di muka bumi ini pun saya berasa masih banyak melakukan silap. Saya juga tidak tahu, di mana Allah hendak letakkan saya di akhirat nanti. Di syurga atau neraka.

45.        Tidak ada sebab kamu tidak mati, pasal malaikat maut pun akan mati.

46.        Ada orang mengadu kepada Hadrat Tok ayah. “Ayah! saya kadang-kadang berasa sayu, sedih, hancur hati dengan Allah semasa dalam halqah zikir. Kadang-kadang berasa  tawar, berat dan malas hendak zikir. Saya berasa risau”. Tok ayah menjawab. “Tidak mengapa, yang pentingnya kita istiqomah. Allah hendak tengok kita bersunguh-sungguh sahaja”.

47.        Di dalam perjalanan Ahlullah, orang yang masih terbelengu dengan hawa nafsu di kira budak-budak lagi, walaupun janggutnya sudah putih!

48.        Budak-budak hendak buat baik, takkan saya hendak halang. Tetapi fahamilah bahasa saya, budak-budak hendak buat baik!

49.        Kita jangan di perbudak-budakkan oleh budak-budak penjajah. Budak-budak penjajah lebih ganas daripada penjajah. Dia melayu tetapi perangai seperti orang England. Dia melayu tetapi perangai seperti orang Amerika. Dia melayu tapi perangai seperti orang Jepun.

50.        Kalau berzikir sahaja tetapi tidak selawat, tidak akan meningkat. Beristighfarlah paling kurang 100 kali sehari. Selawat pula kena lebihkan.

51.        Apa dia Amerika? Apa dia England? Apa dia Jepun? Bumi Allah yang derhaka dengan Allah! Ada Tuhan lain lagi? Seolah-olah Tuhan tidak tahu dan hendak membiarkan mereka memusnahkan orang mukmin. Takkan Allah hendak biarkan. Sesungguhnya Allah berserta dengan orang yang bertaqwa, dengan orang yang bersabar dan orang yang buat baik.

52.        Orang yang panas baran, payah hendak dapat dan masuk dalam perjalanan kesufian.

53.        Tanyalah para ulama’ solehin, kalau kamu tidak tahu perkara yang bersangkut-paut dengan hal agama. Jangan kamu hendak memandai-mandai! Tengok kitab! Kitab bertimbun-timbun.

54.        Saya sayang kamu tetapi kamu tidak sayang diri kamu sendiri.

55.        Kalau saya sahaja yang sayang kamu, tetapi Tuhan tidak sayang kamu. Tidak berguna juga.

56.        Kita kasih kepada orang yang Allah kasih. Kita benci kepada orang yang Allah benci.

57.        Tauhid Salaf adalah tauhid orang Zaukiah. Bukannya tauhid fahaman wahabbiah.

58.        Para Aulia’ yang bertugas di muka bumi ini ada seramai lapan ratus lima puluh enam orang (856). (Rujukan Kitab Tanwirul Qulub-Syaikh Muhammad Amin Al-Kurdi).

59.        Makan nasi jadi tahi, busuk. Makan zikir tidak busuk. Makanan jasad bila dimakan jadi busuk. Makanan roh bila dimakan jadi wangi. Kalau makan zikir jadi tahi, busuk. Ini menunjukkan ada penyelewengan.

60.        Apa dia iman? Iman ialah tumpuan yang penuh kepada Allah.

61.        Apa dia Iman? Iman ialah membuat perkara yang Allah perintah, dan meninggalkan segala tegahannya tanpa fikir bicara.

62.        Malulah dengan Allah. Kalau tidak boleh malu dengan Allah. Malulah dengan orang-orang yang Allah lantik (wali Allah).

63.        “Tawadhu”. Penyamun pun tawadhu, tapi tawadhu hendak menipu. Tawadhu yang dikehendaki ialah menerima benda yang haq (kebenaran).

64.        Memanglah agama Islam sudah lengkap tetapi “orang Islam” yang tidak ada dan tidak lengkap lagi.

65.        Orang (cinta) dunia buat (menganjurkan) “agama” tidak jadi agama tetap jadi “DUNIA”.

66.        Fana’ ialah kita membuat satu tumpuan yang penuh dengan Allah. Sehingga menghilangkan tumpuan selain Allah.

67.        Kenapa orang ketagih dengan benda maksiat, ketagih dengan candu? Sebab mereka tidak pernah rasa kemanisan dalam zikrullah.

68.        Sekurang-kurang darjah “guru mursyid” ialah orang yang sampai darjah “nafsu rodhiah”. Tetapi yang kita mahu ialah “guru murabbi”. Guru mursyid boleh membimbing anak muridnya setakat mutmainnah sahaja. Manakala guru murabbi, boleh membimbing lebih tinggi lagi. Guru murabbi ialah orang yang “Majzub”.

69.        Kenapa bila kita menyampaikan ilmu, Orang tidak boleh berubah? Sebab kita menyampai dalam syirik, ikut nafsu. Macam orang jual ubat. Dia kata ubat ini, kalau makan, kita sihat, boleh sembuhkan penyakit dan badan jadi gemuk. Tetapi si penjual ubat itu sendiri penuh dengan penyakit. Badannya sendiri kurus kering, ini menunjukkan dia tidak makan ubat yang dia jual. Macam mana orang hendak percaya.

70.        Kamu majlis orang soleh tidak boleh hadir. Majlis orang ‘tholeh’ (fasik) kamu boleh duduk-hadir. Ini alamat hendak masuk “NERAKA”.

71.        Mana ada kebaikan di dalam kekufuran.

72.        Orang bakhil musuh Allah, walaupun dia ahli ibadah. (Maksud hadis) Kamu jangan sempitkan istilah bakhil-kedekut hanya tertentu kepada harta sahaja.

• Bakhil masa- Tidak ada masa duduk halqah zikir dan membuat kebajikan. Pergi tempat lalai ada masa!
• Bakhil tangan- Tidak di gunakan untuk khidmat di jalan Allah. Untuk nafsu boleh pula!
• Bakhil mulut- Tidak digunakan untuk berzikir, berselawat, istighfar, membaca quran, membaca hadis dan bercakap perkara berfaedah. Untuk bercakap kosong dan perkara yang Allah tidak ridho boleh (mengumpat, memfitnah, melaga-lagakan orang dan lain-lain lagi) pula!
• Bakhil mata- Tidak digunakan untuk membaca Al-Quran, hadis, baca kitab dan memandang kebesaran Allah. Tengok benda maksiat boleh pula!
• Bakhil kaki- Untuk berjalan ke majlis orang soleh dan berkhidmat kerana Allah tidak boleh. Berjalan ke tempat-tempat yang Allah benci boleh pula!
• Bakhil pemikiran- Tidak digunakan untuk  memikirkan kebesaran Allah dan mencari jalan keridhoan Allah. Hanya digunakan memikir untuk memuaskan “HAWA NAFSU”.
• Bakhil perut – Tidak digunakan perutnya untuk berlapar.

73.          Orang-orang yang banyak berkhidmat (di jalan Ahlullah) lebih cepat dan mudah meningkat (di dalam proses membaiki diri) daripada orang yang banyak tumpu kepada ibadah sahaja.

74.        Untuk (ikut kemahuan) nafsu kamu, kamu sanggup berhutang. Hendak beli kereta boleh berhutang. Hendak beli atau buat atau tambah rumah (yang hebat) boleh berhutang. Untuk jalan Allah kamu tidak sanggup berhutang. Ini syaitan!

75.        Berganding bahu di dalam kebaikkan dan takwa, ialah kita berganding bahu di dalam bidang masing-masing. Macam guru dan murid. Guru menyampaikan ilmu dengan “IKHLAS”, murid pula menerima ilmu. Kebaikkannnya ialah ilmu. Seperti sebuah rumah. Ada bumbung, tiang, lantai, tingkap, pintu dan dinding. Mereka duduk ditempat masing-masing. Kalau bumbung tidak mahu duduk di tempatnya, tiang, lantai, tingkap, pintu dan dinding tidak mahu duduk di tempat masing-masing. Tidak jadilah rumah!

76.        Perasaan dan khayalan itulah kejinan. Bukannnya jin. Kalau di kata kepada kita “JIN”. Kena terima, jangan marah. Kalau marah, jin akan tumpang dekat kita.

77.        Janganlah ikut perasaan. Kawallah perasaan supaya ia tidak melampau.

78.        Allah jodohkan junjungan besar kita, Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. dengan Siti Khadijah (r.ah) Kerana ia seorang perempuan yang mempunyai kewibawaan. Rasulullah berumur 25 tahun, dia berumur 40 tahun. Allah jodohkan Rasulullah s.a.w. dengan seorang perempuan yang bersesuaian dengan kebangkitan seorang Rasul.

79.        Hiduplah sebagaimana Musa a.s, Asiah (isteri firaun) dan Masyitah yang hidup di dalam istana firaun.

80.        Orang yang mengaku Islam tetapi tidak buat amalan orang Islam. Dia buat perkara yang Allah larang minum arak, berzina, berjudi, dan macam-macam perkara mungkar yang ia buat. Teruknya manusia jenis ini. Kalau kita tanyakan kepada orang Hindu, “Ini orang awak ke?” Hindu pun tidak mahu mengaku dia Hindu! Tanya Majusi dan Budha, mereka pun tidak mengaku orang ini orang mereka. Tanya Yahudi dan Nasrani, mereka pun tidak mengaku orang ini orang mereka. Habis itu kamu hendak kata dia orang Islam!

81.        Air mata ada 7 peringkat. Air mata orang Ammarah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Lawwamah. Air mata Lawwamah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Mulhammah. Air mata Mulhammah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Mutmainnah. Air mata Mutmainnah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Rodhiah. Air mata Rodhiah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Mardhiah. Air mata Mardhiah mana hendak sama dengan air mata Kamilah.

82.        Semua yang datang jumpa saya ini ada keturunan (baik). Samada keturunan ahli sufi ataupun datuk nenek mereka pernah berbuat baik dengan Ahli Sufi-Ahlullah. Dia ada khidmat dengan orang-orang Allah. Tidak kiralah kebaikan yang mereka lakukan. Ataupun dia kasih dengan orang-orang Allah.

83.        Kamu sakit tetapi tidak mahu makan ubat tetapi kamu hendak sihat. Bagaimana kamu hendak sihat? Tuhan (Allah) yang menjadikan langit dan bumi sudah buat peraturannya (kalau sakit dan hendakkan sihat perlulah makan ubat). Kamu sombong! Sombong dengan Allah.

84.        Hendak makan buah tembikai, tetapi tidak tanam buah tembikai atau tidak beli buah tembikai bagaimana pula hendak makan buah tembikai. Tidak ikut susunan Allah. Kamu hendak berjaya tapi tidak ikut orang yang berjaya. Imam Syafie (r.a.) pernah berkata. Kamu harap-harap hendak berjaya tetapi kamu tidak ikut saluran-salurannya. Sesungguhnya kapal itu tidak akan belayar di atas darat.

85.        Kecil-kecil anak kita (boleh diasuh ikut kita). Bila sudah besar belum tentu jadi anak kita.

86.        Semasa saya di Bangkok (Thailand). Ada orang bertanya saya satu masalah. Allah s.w.t. buka kepadanya tentang hikmah bilangan rakaat sembahyang fardhu. Katanya sembahyang Zuhur dan Asar kalau di campur jadi lapan- syurga ada lapan. Maghrib dan Isyak kalau di campur jadi tujuh- nereka ada tujuh. Sembahyang subuh ada dua rakaat. Ini dia tidak dapat jawapannya. Puas dia memikir dan bertanya orang tetapi masih tidak mendapat jawapannya. Akhirnya dia bertanya kepada saya. Saya pun Syuhud Allah. Jawapannya, dua rakaat itu menunjukkan adanya malam dan siang. Dua perkara inilah (masa malam dan siang) menyebabkan manusia masuk syurga atau neraka.

87.        Saya tidak persoal tariqat. Yang saya persoalkan ialah jurulatih yang memimpin satu-satu tariqat itu. Adakah jurulatih itu sampai atau tidak (sampai haqiqat dan makrifat).

88.        Kita tidak boleh lawan iblis. Hendak lawan iblis sama seperti hendak melawan Allah. Pasal iblis pun minta izin daripada Allah untuk menyesatkan manusia. Untuk lawan Iblis mintalah bantuan daripada Allah.

89.        Tengok televisyen berjam-jam boleh. Tidak lenguh. Duduk halqah zikir ½ jam tidak boleh. Tidak larat!

90.        Nafsu Ammarah tidak boleh menyelesaikan nafsu Ammarah. Dia menjadi bertambah-tambah Ammarah lagi.

91.        Ketenangan tidak ada di dalam harta kekayaan, pangkat keturunan dan anak pinak. Ketenangan hanya ada di dalam “zikrullah”. (mengingati Allah)

92.        Sekarang ini zaman Karamah dan bukannya Ma’unah.

93.        Iblis hendak buat sesuatu dia minta izin dari Tuhan. Kamu hendak buat sesuatu, ada tanya Tuhan terlebih dahulu?

94.        Para sahabat r.a semuanya berjaya mendapat keredhaan Allah kerana mereka sentiasa memberi tumpuan yang penuh kepada Rasulullah s.a.w. Mereka memperbaiki diri mereka terlebih dahulu kemudian kepada orang-orang yang hampir dengan mereka seterusnya barulah kepada umat sejagat.

95.        Perkara (kerohanian) ini bukan boleh dapat dengan perasaan, dengan khayalan. Kena bersungguh-sungguh dan bertawakkul.

96.        Makanan dunia boleh dikongsi bersama. Makanan rohani tidak boleh di kongsi, perlu sungguh-sungguh (mujahadah lawan nafsu).

97.        Kamu janganlah hendak lawan orang-orang Allah (Wali Allah). Siapa kamu dan siapa mereka? Kamu tidakkan menang. Di dunia lagi Allah lipat kamu. Di akhirat Allah bubuh dalam neraka. Rugi! Rugi! Rugi!

98.        Para wali ialah orang yang paling aktif. Paling sibuk di dalam dunia ini. Sebab mereka faham dunia ini. “Maz ra’atul Akhirah”. Mereka faham surah “Wal ‘Asri”. Mereka tidak ada masa hendak buat kerja sia-sia.

99.        Saya hanya boleh beri nasihat dan dorongan kepada kamu. Selepas itu terpulanglah kepada kamu. Kamu hendak terima atau tidak. Kamu hendak jadi munafik ke? Mana saya  tahu.

100.    Di dalam perjalanan (Ahlullah-Tarikah Sufiyah) hak kita, hak orang (orang lain boleh tumpang), hak orang tetap hak orang.

101.    Sesiapa yang melanggar syariat Rasulullah s.a.w. dan merosakkan syariat Rasulullah s.a.w., boleh di hukum dan dipancung hatta dari kalangan para Aulia sekalipun.

102.    Kalau tidak ada syariat bagaimana hendak berjalan? (jalan Tarikat)

103.    Orang yang tidak mahu berguru di dalam jalan untuk mengenal Allah samalah seperti orang yang hendak petik buah rambutan di pokok yang banyak kerengga. Dia pula tidak mahu menggunakan galah, dan tangga. Hatinya hendak makam buah rambutan. Hendak dipanjatnya pokok rambutan itu tidak boleh, sebab banyak kerengga. Akhirnya lihat sahajalah buah rambutan tersebut!

104.    Syeikh (Guru Mursyid) ini umpama tangga atau pun pintu rumah. Hendak masuk rumah kenalah naik tangga dan melalui pintu. Apabila sudah masuk ke dalam rumah tidak perlulah bawa masuk tangga itu sekali. Biarlah di luar rumah sahaja.

105.    Perkara yang kita perlu  “tawassul” kita tidak “tawassul” dan perkara yang tidak perlu “tawassul” kita “tawassul”, ini sudah silap.

106.    Di dalam rumah, tempat makan boleh kamu sediakan tetapi kenapa tempat untuk halqah zikir tidak boleh kamu sediakan (tempat bermunajat dengan Allah).

107.    Untuk permulaan supaya kita mendapat kekuatan untuk meninggalkan perkara-perkara yang tidak bersesuaian. Maka hendaklah di seimbangkan masa makan dengan masa zikir. Seimbangkan masa mambaca akhbar dan majalah dengan masa membaca Al-Quran ataupun kitab-kitab yang bersesuaian dengan syariat dan thoriq. Seimbangkan masa ketika kita melakukan hobi yang sia-sia dengan masa kita membuat tumpuan kepada Allah. Insya Allah kita akan lihat hasilnya sedikit demi sedikit.

108.    Punca yang paling besar manusia tidak sampai Tuhan ialah “bimbang makhluk”. Kalau bimbang pasal “rezeki” lebih lagi teruk.

109.    Batu permata yang tersimpan di dalam bukit pun kalau tidak di korek dan tidak di gali, tetap tersimpanlah di dalam bukit sebagai batu permata selama-lamanya. Kalau manusia tidak korek dan prosesnya, maka manusia tidak akan dapat manfaat darinya. Begitu juga dengan kayu balak yang banyak terdapat di dalam hutan. Kayu jati atau kayu meranti pun, kalau tidak di tebang dan diproses, tidak boleh di buat kerusi, almari, perabot, rumah dan lain-lain dan akhirnya kayu balak tersebut reput dan mati dan tidak mendatangkan hasil. Begitulah jugalah para Aulia’, mereka Allah rahsiakan dari pengatahuan manusia. Kalau manusia tidak mecari mereka (Aulia’ Allah) maka mereka tidak  dapatlah manfaat darinya.

110.    Selagi dunia ini tidak kiamat, selagi itulah para aulia’ ada di muka bumi Allah ini.

111.    Orang yang nafsu Mutmainnah sudah tidak ada lagi penyakit-penyakit hati.

112.    Penyakit hasad ini adalah penyakit yang paling bahaya. Rasulullah menyatakan, hasad memakan kebajikan (menghilangkan pahala), sebagaimana api memakan kayu yang kering. Kamu semua ini tidak meningkat-ningkat sebab ada sifat hasad. Penatlah kamu meratib (berzikir)!, semuanya habis.

113.    Sesuatu perjuangan atau pekerjaan yang tidak ada aqidah, maka perjuangan atau pekerjaan tersebut tidak akan kekal lama. Aqidah merupakan asas atau akar tunjang bagi setiap pokok dan bangunan. Kalau asasnya tidak kuat, maka tumbanglah bangunan dan pokok itu. Maka perlulah di kuatkan aqidah sejak daripada buaian lagi.

114.    Mimpi-mimpi ini semua jangan pakai, kena tolak. Berpegang kepada Allah sahaja.

115.    Dapat berjumpa Rasulullah ini banyak jenis (kategori). Abu Bakar Assidiq r.a pun berjumpa Rasulullah s.a.w. Begitu juga Abu Jahal, Abu Lahab dan Abu Talib pun berjumpa Rasulullah s.a.w.

116.    Setengah ulama’ zahiriah tidak setuju dengan penggunaan tasbih. Mereka kata tasbih itu bid’ah, asal daripada Hindu dan Buddha. Kalau begitu, kereta yang kita pakai itu mana ada Tok Syeikh yang buatnya. Semua datang daripada Jepun, dan dari negeri orang putih. Jangan kita gunakan kereta itu buat maksiat sudahlah.

117.    Untuk mendapatkan kekuatan dan ketahanan (kerohanian) kena banyak menangis dengan Allah. Kalau tidak boleh buat-buatlah menangis.

118.    Adab dengan Allah seni-seseninya (halus sehalus-halusnya)

119.    Orang yang berjumpa Nabi Allah Khidir dan mengatakan Nabi Khidir a.s masih ada. Manaka orang yang tidak jumpa dengan Nabi Khidir dia akan berkata Nabi Khidir sudah tidak ada – sudah wafat.

120.    Hendak jumpa Khidir, Syirik! Dia makhluk Allah macam kamu juga. Tidak boleh bagi manfaat atau mudharat.

121.    Boleh jadi (lafaz) Allah Hu Akbar yang kita sebut terpesong dengan sesuap nasi, seteguk air, sekepal tanah, seorang perempuan, sebuku roti dan berbagai-bagai lagi. Allah sudah cerita dalam Al-Quran. Al-haa-kumut-takaasur (telah melalaikan kamu oleh banyak-banyak).

122.    Iblis yang asal kejadiannya daripada api pun boleh terpesong dan derhaka Tuhan! Apatah lagi kita manusia yang Allah ceritakan di jadikan daripada Air yang HINA!

123.    Pada suatu hari saya pergi jumpa guru saya, Tok Ayah Said (Qaddasallahusirrahu) di Lundang Paku, Kelantan. Saya sampai lewat dan ketika itu belum bersembahyang fardhu lagi. Saya lihat dia sedang duduk, maka saya pun pergi mendapatkan dia, bersalaman dan terus duduk berhampirannya. Tiba-tiba mukanya berubah merah menyala. Saya tahu yang dia marahkan saya, sebab saya belum sembahyang fardhu lagi dan terus berjumpa dengannya. Saya pun bergegas bangun dan terus bersembahyang. Selesai sahaja bersembahyang saya terus mendapatkannya dan barulah kelihatan beliau tersenyum. Lihat bagaimana dia mengajar saya beradab. Saya sangkakan apa yang telah saya buat di awal pertemuan tersebut, betul dan beradab tetapi sebenarnya salah. Dia bawa saya kepada beradab dengan Allah dahulu dan bukannya beradab kepada dia.

124.    Allah bersama orang yang Tawajjuh tetapi Allah tidak akan bersama dengan orang yang gelojoh.

125.    Rukun Islam ada lima perkara. Pertama, mengucap dua kalimah syahadah. Kedua, sembahyang lima waktu. Ke tiga berpuasa di bulan Ramadhan. Keempat, mengeluarkan zakat harta dan kelima mengerjakan ibadah haji. Pada hari ini mengapa sembahyang, puasa dan yang lain-lain tidak ke mana-mana, tidak ada roh? Kerana rukun Islam yang pertama lagi sudah tidak ada roh.

126.    Takrif iman ialah kita wajib ucapkan dengan lidah wajib tasdiq (terima) dengan hati dan wajib zahirkan dengan amalan jasad. Masalahnya sekarang, iman yang ada pada orang Islam, hanya ada pada lidah sahaja tidak sampai ke dalam hati. Sebab itulah ibadat mereka tidak ke mana-mana. Sembahyang mereka pun tidak boleh mencegah mereka daripada melakukan kemungkaran.

127.    Untuk melahirkan manusia yang berperwatakkan Aulia, kena lahir daripada ayah yang soleh dan ibu yang solehah. Kita ambil contoh Maulana Ilyas, Ghaust Abad 14 Hijrah (Pengasas Jemaah Tabligh).

128.    Gelombang dan ombak hanya berlaku di permukaan laut sahaja. Di dalam laut tidak ada gelombang, lagi dalam lagi tidak ada gelombong. Hendak masuk dalam laut, kena guna kapal selam. Kena keluar belanja mahal. Kalau setakat hendak terapung dipermukaan laut tidak perlulah semua itu. Guna batang pisang atau buluh, atau tong dram plastik, atau perahu pun boleh dan belanjanya pun tidaklah mahal. Tetapi kena lambungan gelombang sahajalah. Begitulah juga kalau nafsu Ammarah, Lawwamah, dan Mulhammah sentiasalah kena lambung dengan gelombang (kekufuran-kesyirikkan). Hanya orang Mutmainnah ke atas sahaja yang selamat daripada gelombang terutamanya orang Rodhiah, Mardhiah dan Kamil. Mereka ini lagi dalam mereka boleh menyelam.

129.    Untuk menyihatkan badan. Macam-macam kamu makan. Makan vitamin dan makan itu dan ini. Tetapi untuk menyihatkan “ROH”, kamu tidak pandai hendak usahakan.

130.    Bila ada iman, kamu akan bersatu dengan orang-orang Allah. Bila tidak ada iman kamu akan memusuhi orang-orang Allah.

131.    Apabila syirik, penyakit yang mula-mula akan terbit ialah khianat – tidak Amanah. Kedua, pembohong – tidak Sidiq (benar). Ketiga, jadi bodoh – tidak Fathonah. Oleh yang demikian, wajib bagi Rasul-Rasul dan Nabi-nabi bersifat Amanah, Sidiq dan Fathonah kerana mereka manusia yang tidak syirik.

132.    Mati hidup balik dan sampai hari kiamat pun Yahudi, Nasrani, Majusi dan Wasani (penyembah berhala) tidak akan redho dengan orang Islam; sehinggalah orang-orang Islam tinggalkan Allah dan Rasul-Nya.

133.    Tok Ayah Ismail Lundang Paku, Kelantan Qaddasallahu sirrahu (wali Allah yang berpangkat Qutub). Sebelum makan dia akan meratib (berzikir) terlebih dulu. Dia berzikir, “Dia (Allah) yang bagi makan, Dia (Allah) yang tidak bagi makan”. Sampai penuh perasaan dia dengan Allah barulah beliau makan. Sebaliknya kalau perasaannya tidak penuh dengan Tuhan dia tidak akan makan.

134.    Allah s.w.t. buat sesuatu ada kuotanya (kadarnya). Kuota itu terbahagi dua iaitu kuota Ar-Rahman (Maha Pemurah) dan kuota Ar-Rahim (Maha Pengasih). Orang kafir dan musyrikin, mereka ini termasuk di dalam kuota Ar-Rahman manakala orang Islam yang mukmin termasuk di dalam kuota Ar-Rahim. Orang yang mengaku Islam tetapi tidak ikut segala aturcara agama Islam, mereka ini tidak termasuk di dalam kuota Ar-Rahim kerana pura-pura Islam. Mereka ini tidak pula termasuk di dalam kuota Ar-Rahman kerana mereka mengaku Islam. Mereka inilah yang di makan oleh puak kafir musyrikin, dan mereka jugalah yang merosakkan agama Islam. Inilah golongan Munafiqin namanya.

135.    Bagaimana muridnya hendak dapat Mutmainnah kalau gurunya tidak Mutmainnah?.

136.    Cakapnya logik (cakap orang yang belum sampai mutmainnah) tetapi di dalamnya jijik (penuh dengan kekufuran dan kesyirikan)

137.    Contohilah orang-orang yang ikut saya yang telah maju walaupun mereka orang baru. Janganlah mencontohi orang-orang yang ikut saya yang tidak maju walaupun mereka orang yang telah lama.

138.    Kalau kamu boleh bersungguh-sungguh sebagaimana saya bersungguh-sungguh setidak-tidaknya 10 % (peratus). Pasti kamu akan berjaya.

139.    Berdoalah kepada Allah “Ya Allah dengan berkat mukjizat Rasulullah S.A.W, dengan berkat Kesultanan Syeikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani dan dengan berkat Ahli zaman ini, anugerahkanlah kepada hambaMu yang hina, daif, jahil lagi banyak dosa ini keimanan, keyakinan, ketakwaan, ketahanan dan kesolehan sebagaimana yang telah Engkau anugerahkan kepada Syeikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani”.

140.    Dua perbezaan di antara orang yang berdoa tetapi tidak ikut saluran dan orang yang tidak berdoa tetapi ikut saluran.

Cerita dua orang yang menanam buah tembikai (timun). Seorang, menggali lubang sedalam tiga kaki persegi dan letakkan segantang baja tahi ayam. Manakala seorang lagi menggali lubang sedalam satu kaki persegi dan letakkan hanya satu tempurung kelapa baja tahi ayam. Kemudian dia pun berdoa agar hasil buah tembikainya mencapai seberat 5 kilogram sebiji. Manakala yang seorang lagi tidak pun berdoa. Apabila pokok itu berbuah tentulah yang bubuh baja segantang dan gali lubang 3 kaki dalam itu buahnya mencapai berat 3 kilogram ke atas. Orang yang seorang lagi, takkanlah boleh mendapat berat buah 5 kilogram sebab cara dia tanam tidak betul walaupun dia berdoa. Orang yang berjaya itu, sebab ikut susunan walaupun dia tidak berdoa. Begitulah orang-orang Islam di hari ini, hendak iman, hendak menjadi orang soleh dan mati hendak masuk syurga tetapi tidak ikut salurannya. Hanya berdoa sahaja.

141.    Selagi mana tidak sampai (darjah) nafsu mutmainnah, selama itulah tidak faham Al-Quran dan Hadis.

142.    Mengapa manusia mudah terpengaruh dengan suasana kekufuran dan kesyirikkan? Sebab mereka masih duduk di dalam nafsu Ammarah. Nafsu yang penuh kekufuran.

143.    Orang yang tidak cinta agama, tidak cinta tanah air. Dia akan jual tanah air.

144.    Maksud niat ialah tumpuan hati kepada Allah. Untuk Allah kita tumpukan 65%. Manakala untuk Rasulullah 35%. Selain dari kedua-dua ini, hanyalah benda yang kita buat sampingan sahaja.

145.    Karomah yang berlaku ditangan para Aulia’, hanyalah untuk meyakinkan mereka, bahawasanya Dia (Allah) Tuhan, kita hamba.

146.    Karomah berlaku di kalangan Aulia’ dalam keadaan mereka tidak tahu dan tidak sedar berlakunya perkara tersebut. Apabila mereka mengetahui, mereka akan malu dengan Allah. Bersalahan pula dengan Ma’unah dimana apabila berlakunya sesuatu perkara yang dikehendaki maka akan wujud rasa hairan diri (perasan).

147.    Karomah yang ada pada para Aulia’ boleh berlaku pada bila-bila masa sahaja dan ianya berkekalan. Walaupun para Aulia’ tersebut sudah meninggal dunia. Manakala Ma’unah berlaku pada waktu yang tertentu dan ianya tidak kekal, bila mati sahaja orang soleh tersebut habislah Ma’unahnya.

148.    Perkara yang kita buat sebab tabiat, ianya tidak jadi ibadah. Kalau buat dengan kehambaan barulah ianya jadi ibadah. Seperti orang perempuan yang mengasuh anak atau membasuh pinggan-mankuk. Kalau dibuatnya dengan tabiat tidaklah mejadi ibadat. Kalau dibuat dengan kehambaan barulah ianya menjadi ibadah.

149.    Orang yang tidak senang dengan perjalanan Aulia’ ialah orang yang tidak senang dengan Rasulullah s.a.w. Tidak senang dengan Rasulullah s.a.w. bermakna tidak senang dengan Allah s.w.t.

150.    Agama ialah berperibadi dengan peribadi Rasulullah s.a.w. dan membuat amalan soleh.

151.    Maksud Hadis. Doa adalah senjata orang mukmin. Pada hari ini manusia hanya berdoa sahaja tetapi tidak mahu memproses dirinya menjadi mukmin. Sebab itulah doa mereka tidak di terima oleh Allah (tertolak).

152.    Wajib ke atas orang-orang yang hendak menjalani perjalanan (sufi) ini, melengkapkan dirinya dengan ilmu fardhu ain; untuk mengesahkan ibadahnya, bukan untuk mengesahkan ibadah orang lain. Lainlah kalau hendak menjadi mufti.

153.    Bila terasa adanya diri kita itulah DUNIA.

154.    Daripada kisah Uwais-Al-Qarni yang terdapat di dalam hadis Rasulullah s.a.w. Fahamlah bahawasanya Allah dan Rasul mementingkan kerohanian yakni ketaqwaan.

155.    Rasulullah s.a.w. menyuruh Amirul Mukminin Saiyidina Omar Al-Khatab r.a dan Saiyidina Ali Karamallah Wajhah berjumpa dengan Akbaru-Tabien-Uwais-Al-Qarni. Bukanlah bermakna pangkat Uwais lebih afdhal daripada Omar dan Ali. Cuma hendak membuktikan bahawasanya pingat yang ALLAH anugerah kepada Uwais tidak ada pada Omar dan Ali Radiallahu ‘anhuma.

156.    Kita hanya menolong orang-orang yang mahu menerima pertolongan.

157.    Nafsu Mutmainnah ialah nafsu yang tidak ada sifat-sifat yang keji dan sudah bersih daripada sifat-sifat yang ganas.

158.    Tanah Patani (Selatan Thailand) asalnya bumi Aulia’. Ramai orang soleh di zaman dahulu. Tetapi sekarang sudah teruk. Terpengaruh dengan suasana Siam (Buddha). Sebab apa? Sebab penyakit gila dunia (cinta dunia).

159.    Untuk membuat bangunan, semua orang kafir boleh buat. Ah Chong, Ramasamy dan orang kafir yang makan biawak pun boleh buat. Tetapi untuk membangunkan keimanan. Siapa hendak buat? Ini hanyalah kerja para Aulia’.

160.    Untungnya orang yang mengikuti perjalanan Aulia’, ialah akan mendapat iman.

161.    Tiada makhluk Allah yang paling biadab melainkan nafsu Ammarah. Apa yang Tuhan beri dia tidak mahu dan apa yang Tuhan tidak beri dia mahu. Apa yang Tuhan suruh dia tidak buat dan apa yang Tuhan larang dia buat!

162.    Kucing kalau sakit dia tidak menyusahkan tuannya. Manusia kalau sakit dia akan menyusahkan orang lain.

163.    Orang yang ikhlas di benci oleh orang nafsu ammarah.

164. Saiyidina Bilal r.a diseksa oleh kafir musyrikin. Supaya dia keluar daripada Islam. Dia hanya menyebut Ahad! Ahad! (Allah yang Esa) sehingga jasadnya tidak terasa kesakitan atas setiap siksaan yang dikenakan terhadapnya. Kerana dia membuat tumpuan terhadap Ahad! Ahad! Saiyidina Bilal ialah orang ‘Ajam (bukan arab) Maknanya zikir Ahad! Ahad! sesuai bagi orang ‘Ajam.

165. Saiyidina Bilal menyebut Ahad! Ahad! Sebelum surah Al-Ikhlas di turunkan lagi.

166. Mujahadah, ialah menundukkan nafsu untuk mengikuti garisan syariat dan thoriq serta meninggalkan keinginan nafsu dalam setiap aspek kehidupan.

167. Orang kafir mana ada yang sabar. Mana ada redho. Mana ada tawakkul. Sabar yang ada pada mereka tabiat sahaja.

168. Kalau orang kata kepada kamu, jahat. Kamu jangan marah. Kalau kamu marah, maknanya kamu memang jahat. Contohnya besi dan logam atau pun air boleh mengalirkan elektrik, kerana di dalamnya ada unsur yang boleh elektrik mengalir. Mengapa kayu, tembikar, dan tanah tidak boleh mengalirkan elektrik? Kerana di dalamnya tidak terdapat unsur-unsur yang boleh mengalirkan elektrik.

169. Buatlah zikir, istighfar dan selawat, sehingga menjadi darah dan daging. Di katakan menjadi darah dan daging, ialah setiap sel-sel kita tunduk kepada keagungan dan kebesaran Allah, sebagaimana pengakuan yang roh latifah robbaniah telah buat di alam zuriat.

170. Ketika dalam sembahyang, datang macam-macam gangguan di dalamnya (tidak ada tumpuan). Ingat macam-macam. Pada masa itu, jangan lawan dan jangan tolak, kena terima. Sebab ianya adalah qodho Allah. Kalau tolak bermakna lawan Tuhan. Sewaktu itu hendaklah kita hancur hati kepada Allah. Mengakulah bahawasanya kita ini tidak terpakai.

171. Orang yang tidak boleh menjaga waktu sembahyang yakni melewat-lewatkan sembahyang. Menunjukkan zikir belum masuk dalam badannya lagi. Orang yang sudah masuk zikir dalam badan akan membuat persiapan sebelum masuk waktu lagi. Walaupun dia tertidur, sebelum masuk waktu lagi, automatik dia akan terjaga.

172. Ketika Tuhan menjemput hamba-hambaNya menghadap Dia, kamu tidak boleh hadir (melewatkan waktu sembahyang). Tetapi bila kamu hendak jumpa bos kamu, buat perkara yang bersesuaian dengan nafsu, boleh pula tepat pada waktunya.

173. Pengajaran dari seorang Aulia’ Allah. Semasa mengaji di India. Saya belajar daripada Maulana Abdul Bari r.a. Sewaktu kuliah hadis, dia mengajar kitab Misykat. Di dalamnya, banyak hadis-hadis yang menerangkan Rasulullah s.a.w. membaca doa Qunut pada sembahyang Subuh daripada sembahyang witir. Ini menunjukkan bahawasanya mazhab kita Assyafie lebih kuat dalilnya daripada mazhab Hanafi. Saya pun memberitahu guru saya, “Daripada apa yang kami belajar tadi, menunjukkan bahawa dalil mazhab Syafie lebih kuat daripada mazhab empat yang lain”. Saya berasa kemaslah, pasal saya Syafie. Guru saya menjawab, “Wahai anakku! Imam-imam mujtahid ini adalah manusia juga dan sebagai manusia tentulah banyak kelemahan dan kekurangannya. Kalau kita ikut salah seorang daripada mereka, janganlah pula kita komen yang lain”. Masya-Allah! Saya kagum dengan jawapan yang di berinya. Tepat dan padat serta menyelesaikan masalah dan tidak pula menimbulkan masalah.

174. Orang yang pandai mengatakan itu tidak betul, ini tidak betul tetapi tidak boleh memberi jalan keluar dan membuat contoh; itu orang bodoh dan orang jahat! namanya.

175.    Bertaubatlah dengan bersungguh-sungguh. Sebagaimana ‘bapa’ kita iaitu Nabi Adam a.s bertaubat, barulah Allah s.w.t. menerima taubat kita.

176. Orang yang masak tidak membaca bismillah dan tidak berselawat, samalah seperti Apek (Cina Kafir).

177. Nafsu Ammarah ini, dia hendak beriman dengan syarat dia hendak Allah tunjukkan bukti dahulu. Macam kisah Nabi Musa a.s dengan Bani Israel. Selepas Allah selamatkan dari Firaun, Allah perintahkan mereka masuk ke Palestin tetapi mereka membantah. Mereka suruh Musa a.s masuk dahulu, kalau Nabi Musa sudah berjaya mengambil Palestin baru mereka hendak ikut. Padahal Allah sudah membuktikan kepada mereka cukup banyak. Tapi mereka membantah sebab nafsu ammarah. Dia (Nafsu Ammarah) tidak herani keluar masuk neraka.

178. Peralatan yang digunakan untuk memotong kaca, di depannya diletakkan batu berlian. Ia tidak menggunakan besi walaupun badan alat tersebut diperbuat dari besi. Macam itu juga kita. Hendak buat sesuatu, kena tumpu kepada Allah terlebih dulu. Letakkan Allah di hadapan dan nafsu di belakang kita. Inilah yang dikatakan iman. Hanya kekuatan iman sahaja yang boleh menyelesaikan segala kebuntuan (sebagaimana kekuatan berlian yang boleh memotong kaca).

179. Ada tiga “Ta” yang punca manusia berbunuh-bunuhan sesama sendiri dan akhirnya mereka masuk ke dalam Neraka:-

• Wanita
• Takhta                        
• Harta

180. Fanak-fi-Syeikh (ikut susunan guru) ialah kita patuh kepada susunan Syariat dan Thoriq.

181. Orang yang hendak (kenal) Allah. Tetapi tidak mahu berguru (dengan guru mursyid-murabbi). Semuanya hendak dibuat sendiri. Dia mengajar sendiri kemudiannya dia belajar sendiri kemudian dia buat kertas soalan sendiri, dan dia jawab kertas soalan itu. Selepas itu dia semak jawapan tadi betul ke salah dan dia berilah markah sendiri. Akhirnya dia pun perasan. Betul semua aku jawab!

182. Untuk mendapat ilmu hendaklah ada dua perkara:-

(i) Kebolehan.                             (ii) Keberkatan. Yang paling penting sekali ialah keberkatan. Untuk mendapat keberkatan hendaklah beradab dengan orang yang memberi kita ilmu (guru).

183. Kisah Yakinnya Abdul Mutalib. Semasa Abrahah hendak menyerang Kaabah. Dia merampas binatang ternakan penduduk Mekah. Kemudian dia memanggil Abdul Mutalib supaya berjumpa dengannya. Abrahah memberitahu dia mahu meruntuhkan Kaabah. Apa yang Abdul Mutalib hendak buat? Abdul Mutalib menjawab dia hanyalah tuan punya unta. Adapun Kaabah itu rumah Allah. Dia hanya  mahu binatang ternakan yang di curi oleh Abrahah dikembalikan semula. Adapun Kaabah kami serahkan kepada TuanNya (Allah) untuk menjaganya. Akhirnya Allah musnahkan  Abrahah dan tenteranya. Di hari ini kalau orang Islam ada keyakinan dan penyerahan kepada Allah seperti Abdul Mutalib. Sudah cukup bagi mereka mendapat bantuan dari Allah. Masa itu, Rasulullah baru hendak lahir dan Al-Quran pun belum diwahyukan lagi.

184. Maksud bersatu ialah berpegang teguh dengan apa-apa yang Allah bangkitkan Rasul.

185. Mengapa orang Islam di hari ini di timpa bala oleh Allah seperti ditindas oleh orang kafir musyrikin? Sebab, mereka takut selain dari Allah.

186. Semasa Tok Wali hidup tidak mahu mencari. Bila sudah mati baru tahu (bahawa) dia itu seorang Tok Wali. Hendak buat apa lagi? Dia sudah mati. Dia sudah masuk alam lain. Lepas itu pakat pergi lawat kubur sajalah.

187. Kalau benda dunia boleh di buat pertandingan. Lumba basikal, lumba lari, angkat berat dan berbagai-bagai lagi. Kalau kesolehan macam mana hendak dibuat pertandingan? Kenalah bergaul dengan orang-orang soleh. Lihatlah peribadi mereka. Kalau duduk seorang diri, (tidak campur orang soleh) kita jadi perasanlah. Entah-entah kita lebih berlemoih ( biadab ) daripada orang lain.

188. Syuhud

• Syuhudul-kasrah-fil-wahdah: Memandang yang banyak (makhluk) di dalam perintahan Allah yang Esa. Ini untuk orang salik.
• Syuhudul-wahdah-fil-kasrah: Memandang Allah yang Esa memerintah (mentadbir) pada sekalian makhlukNya. Ini untuk orang Mazjub.

189. Perjalanan saya ini adalah “perjalanan Uwaisiah”.

190. Yang di katakan Sanad Silsilah ialah kita berperibadi, beriman dan bertakwa sama seperti Ahli Silsilah (Para  Aulia’) yang lebih dahulu daripada kita. Bukannya hanya ada pada tulisan sahaja. (Silsilah ialah rantaian hubungan daripada satu orang guru kepada satu orang hingga kepada Tabi’-ul-Tabien, Tabien- Sahabat sampailah kepada Rasulullah S.A.W hingga kepada Jibril terus kepada Allah).

191. Selagi mana timbul persoalan kenapa? bagaimana? macamana? Apa fasal? di dalam diri kamu (terhadap susunan Allah). Selama itulah Allah s.w.t. tidak akan membuka rahsia kepada kamu. Fasal ini soalan yang timbul daripada kekufuran dan kesyirikkan kamu.

192. Amanah yang paling besar ialah “kehambaan”.

193. HARAM ikut orang sufi yang JAHIL! (Orang tarikat yang terikat)

194. Hendak jadi orang yang cerdik, jadilah HAMBA ALLAH!

195. Orang sakit yang duduk di Hospital, mereka tidak kacau orang sakit lain. Sebab doktor sudah ada. Masing-masing hanya memikirkan penyakit masing-masing. Mereka berharap penyakit mereka akan cepat sembuh. Begitulah juga kamu yang datang ikut saya, semuanya ada penyakit. Jadi janganlah ambil peduli dengan penyakit orang lain. Proseslah untuk menyembuhkan penyakit kita dulu.

196. Yang di katakan Syuhud Guru ialah seperti kereta kita beterinya lemah, kemudian kita “CAS” dengan menggunakan bateri kereta orang yang kuat. Kita sambungkan wayar bateri kita dengan bateri dia, kemudian ‘start’lah enjin.

197. Was-was mainan syaitan.Kalau kita ikut dia (was-was) maknanya kita ikut syaitanlah. Macam kita ambil wuduk, kita dah basuh anggota wuduk kita 3 kali. Kemudian datang bisikkan mengatakan belum rata lagi. Janganlah ikut. Kita dah basuh 3 kali, tidakkanlah tidak rata-rata lagi. Kita takbiratul ihram, dia kata tidak masuk (niat) lagi. Jangan ikut dia. Apabila kita buat sesuatu yang berbetulan dengan Syariat dan Thoriq, itu sudah mecukupi. Bila datang was-was, kita kata, “Ya Allah, hambamu ini bodoh, tidak reti (faham) dan banyak dosa”. Syaitan tidak bagi kita mengaku itu sahaja.

198. Kalau kamu dengar muzik yang haram (melalaikan), kaki kamu bergoyang ikut rentaknya, itu menunjukkan di kaki kamu ada IBLIS!

199. Daripada kamu berjumpa dengan Aulia’ yang sentiasa tenggelam di dalam kebesaran Allah, lebih baik kamu tengok tiang, sebab kamu tidak sangka buruk dengan tiang. Tetapi dengan Aulia’ jenis ini kamu akan sangka buruk. INI BAHAYA!

200. Semua Tarikat di dalam dunia ini sanad silsilahnya hanya sampai kepada dua orang sahabat iaitu Saiyidina Abu Bakar As-Siddiq dan Saiyidina Ali Karamallah Wajhah. Ini bukanlah bermakna para sahabat yang lain tidak membawa perjalanan Sufiyah. Ini adalah kerana kedua mereka ini merangkumi segenap aspek. Saiyidina Abu Bakar mendapat kesufian kerana dia yang awal-awal memeluk Islam dan dia terlalu kasih dan rapat terhadap Rasulullah s.a.w. Dia juga banyak , membuat pengorbanan di dalam perjuangan Rasulullah s.a.w. Saiyidina Ali Karamallah Wajhah mendapat kesufian sewaktu peperangan Uhud. Apabila beliau mendengar berita bahawa Rasulullah s.a.w. telah terbunuh di dalam pertempuran tersebut (berita palsu yang sengaja di buat oleh musyrikin untuk melemahkan orang mukmin). Dia pun terus memecut kudanya dengan sekuat-kuatnya untuk menyerbu kafir musyrikin. Dia hendak bunuh semua kafir musyrikin biar seorang pun tidak tinggal di bumi Allah. Allah s.w.t. menjadikan debu-debu yang berterbangan daripada kuda Saiyidina Ali malaikat-malaikat. Bila orang kafir melihat perkara tersebut mereka pun lari bertempiaran. Inilah perjalanan sufi. Asyidda’u A’lal Kuffar. Ruhama’ Bainahum (tidak tunduk kepada kekufuran dalam segenap aspek. Menunaikan dan memelihara hak-hak mukmin dan muslim).

201.    Buat zikir, istighfar dan selawat (semua perintah Allah) bukannya hendak ubah-menolak Qodho Allah. Tetapi adalah untuk mendapat Redho dengan Qodho Allah.

202.    Orang yang sombong, Allah tidak pilih mereka berkhidmat di jalan Allah. Hendak angkat seketul batu pun Allah tidak izin.

203.    Apa dia Iman? Iman ialah membuat perintah Allah dan menjauhkan laranganNya tanpa fikir bicara.

204.    Orang kaya jangan sombong dengan kekayaannya. Orang miskin jangan cemas dengan kemiskinannya.

205.    Berkawan dengan jutawan (orang kaya dunia) seperti kita naik kereta di belakang lori minyak. Di lori itu ada tertulis “BAHAYA! JANGAN HAMPIR, MUDAH TERBAKAR!”

206.    Selagi mana kamu tiada penyerahan kepada Allah, selagi itulah Iblis duduk dalam perut kamu!

207.    Orang yang mengatakan hendak masuk perjalanan tidak perlu ilmu. Itu cakap orang yang tidak sihat. Mengajilah banyak mana pun, tetapi janganlah kita berasa, ilmu itu kita punya dan kita ada ilmu. Ianya adalah semata-mata anugerah Rahmat Allah!

208.    Orang yang melihat orang lain mengamalkan sunnah seperti melihat bangkai. Sebenarnya, merekalah bangkai.

209. Di awal-awal Islam, Rasulullah s.a.w. mengajak manusia mentauhidkan Allah. Di sekeliling Rasulullah s.a.w. penuh dengan berhala, di dalam Masjidil Haram pun banyak berhala. Namun Rasulullah s.a.w. tetap pergi ke KAABAH buat ibadat. Rasulullah tidak pergi katuk bagi hancur berhala itu. Tetapi Rasulullah s.a.w. boleh duduk dalam suasana yang macam itu. Itulah yang di namakan KETAHANAN!.

210. Belajarlah ilmu fikah tetapi janganlah berbalah.

211. Bulan Muharram adalah bulan yang Allah s.w.t. berikan kemenangan kepada Rasul-RasulNya dan juga bulan yang dihancurkan kezaliman dan kekufuran.

212. Orang yang mengikuti Sunnah Rasulullah s.a.w. kenalah melaparkan perut dan bukannya membuncitkan perut.

213. Punca-punca yang merosakkan kesufian adalah disebabkan ilmu yang bercampur aduk dengan kejinan seperti puak bathiniah-zindiq dan tarikat yang tidak sampai kepada hakikat dan makrifat.

Dimulakan dan disudahi susunan ‘Ruhul Zikri’ Jilid kedua ini, hanya semata-mata dengan dan berharap Rahmat Allah S.W.T., di bawah berkat pancaran Nur Rasulullah S.A.W., dengan keberkatan kesultanan Syeikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani r.a. dan Ahli Zaman ini walau di mana pun mereka berada di bumi Allah S.W.T. ini. -Penyusun-

Sekiranya pembaca ada kemusykilan terhadap kandungan petikan buku ini silalah merujuk terus kepada Syeikh Mahmud sendiri. Beliau kebiasaannya berada di salah satu madrsah berikut:

• Madrasah Nurul Iman, Batu 5, Sik, Kedah
• Madrasah Nurul Iman, Jalan Kuari Sungai Long, Sungai Serai Hulu Langat, Selangor
• Madrasah Nurul Iman, Kg Kok Sira, Narathiwat, Thailand

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Sesungguhnya apa yang baik itu datangnya daripada Allah, sedangkan yang kurang atau khilaf itu adalah kerana kelemahan manusia itu sendiri. Maka, ambillah kebaikan ilmu yang terdapat dalam penyampaian ini. Mana yang baik itu jadikan teladan dan tauladan. Dan, jika terdapat sebarang kekurangan atau perbezaan pendapat, sila lah berdiskusi dengan pihak berkenaan atau ilmuan yang arif. Sesungguhnya ilmu itu luas melebihi pengetahuan manusia itu sendiri.

Sekian. Wallahu’alam.

<Aduhai teman, tidakkah kau sedar bahawa dunia ini hanyalah suatu persinggahan? Maka, perlulah kita bersegera kembali kepada hakiki. Menuai bekalan bagi menempuh perjalanan ke negeri abadi itu… Sesungguhnya teman, persinggahan ini cumalah satu… sekali sahaja… hanya satu tiket, satu perhentian… bangunlah, usah kita terus terleka dalam mimpi yang sementara ini…>

بارك الله فيكم وجزاكم الله خير الجزاء

“The supreme teaching is at large. The tiger is roaming the western deserts. He is at your throat now! Make your way to your hearts and abandon the crazed music of the city.”

- Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

“I stood with the pious and I didn’t find any progress with them. I stood with the warriors in the cause and I didn’t find a single step of progress with them. Then I said, ‘O Allah, what is the way to You?’ and Allah said, ‘Leave yourself and come.’ “

- Abu Yazid al-Bistami (Bayazid Bastami)

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim

We start right at the beginning, trying to make a definition of nafs in its totality. So the first thing to understand is that inner science in the Sufic science of the self, and we must grasp Ibn ‘Arabi’s statement that nobody knows the nafs except the sufis. No one understands the nafs except the sufis – no one is able to understand and there is no way they can understand – except the sufis.

Now, it is terribly important in our technical vocabulary that we have no fixed terms. For example, one shaykh says, “There are a hundred stages to Allah,” and designates what the hundred stages are, and another shaykh says, “There are a thousand stages to Allah,” and has written down what the thousand stages are. Shaykh al-Ansari has written what the thousand stages are. Another shaykh has said there are ten thousand stages to Allah and every one of them divides into a hundred recognisable stages, depending on his insights and recognitions. All this is not poetry because they specify what they’re talking about. Having said that, you must realise that each of these is true. They are by perception different ways of seeing, but they are all true, and you can take any of these ways and you will go through it step by step and recognises everything in it. Our terms are interchangeable.

The other thing is that we are quite happy to allow one term to plane into another term in talking about the self. We can be talking about the self and you can go out of the room and come back and we have not changed the subject and it has become qalb, the heart. So we are talking about the heart and you go out of the room and come back and we are talking about the ruh and we have not changed the subject of conversation. We changed the viewpoint. We’re talking about it in another way. You go out of the room another time and we’re talking about ‘aql, intellect. We have not changed the subject of conversation each time. We are looking at the same reality from a different aspect or from a different function.

Now we say nafs, then again someone might say embattled nafs, rebellious nafs, tranquil nafs – the three nafs of Imam al-Ghazali’s system. The nafs that is wild, the nafs that is rebellious, and then is quiescent. It is fighting, and then it accepts. It is in process. The first nafs is the wild horse on the hill; the second nafs is the one with a bit in the mouth and you jump on it and it throws you off. The third nafs is saddle, bridle and rider. These are the three stages of the nafs.

In another way, we take nafs, leaving out the top one, the highest one. We take two and say that is nafs. Then we go from nafs to qalb, from nafs to heart. We then make two separate things. We jump from one to the other depending on what we are dealing with. If we are dealing with nafs in the active, nafs in the passive, nafs in the historic, nafs in the developing, nafs in the situation whatever.

Another thing we say is the nafs and the ruh. The ruh is the spirit, pure light. The ruh and the nafs are fighting over qalb, the heart. The heart is the Beloved and they are two suitors, two lovers trying to have possession of the heart. The light of the Ruh wants the heart and the darkness of the nafs wants the heart. The heart is, in that sense, an arena that these two are trying to take over. You see, all of these depends on what you want to indicate. These are descriptive terms.

We now go on and say when we talk of nafs in its lower senses, in its embattled sense, in the wild sense. We say that nafs does not exist at all. It is not there. We are talking about a non-existent. An identifiable non-existent. It does not exist. It seems to exist, but I mean it not in a mad way and not in an esoteric way, not in a kind of Hindu way. I mean it in the sense that the physicist tells me that the wall is not there: it’s space, ripples in space from the binding of the nucleus of the atom. That the atom is the Albert Hall and there is one chair in it – this is the solid matter. And that is a ripple, an impulse, a charge of energy. So the whole thing is energy charge in vast space, emptiness. So when looked at from the viewpoint of the Khayal – now this is where you must hang on and fasten your safety belts. We are coming to some bitter turbulence.

The Khayal is turbulent. The Khayal is a faculty in us that solidifies objects. What the physicist tells us is not there in some other funny realm. It is there. That there is a solid wall. That there are solid objects is entirely due to a divinely designed apparent flaw that does not let us see that is the secret of existence. We will come to the Khayal later.

The objects are not solid, the faculty of the khayal solidifies them. This is a most important thing in understanding the nafs. So the nafs is a non-existent that we talk about while, let us say because there is a wall and there is a stage and this awful play goes on and we’re all in this play… I want a million dollars; I want four wives; I want to be President and I want to conquer that country over there, and I want to kill that one and get my own back on that one. This is the play. This is the Shakespeare. It is Aeschylus, Thomas Mann, George Lucas, horrible. Because this is apparently urgently real to people.

All people dealing with the nafs as of this minute in the dominant culture will only consider the nafs within the framework of the existing theatre. They are not prepared to look, and this is where we immediately jump back to the principle under which the IWF is created. They are not prepared to look at the biological principle underlying the self. They are not prepared to look at the physicist’s description of the same arena. The people dealing with the self as experts will not look at its biological character. Those who have been challenged to look at its biological character in a crude mechanistic way are not prepared to in a deep genetic way. They are not prepared to look at it in terms of physics. They are simply not prepared to square the two pictures.

The physicist is not prepared to look at the physical matter as he has grasped its constituent parts to be in terms of his own nafs within the sense of the arena. Do you follow? When I said that to Frithjof Capra, who is the level below the Nobel Prize, “But, Frithjof, my argument with you is that Heisenberg said there is a relationship between the observer and the observed. The observer is in the experiment. So I am not satisfied with your mathematical statement of matter because it does not include in it that when Zulaikha’s apple pie arrived on the table, a glazed look came over the eyes of this rational, brilliant scientist – a film passed over his face of sheer intoxicating enchantment. His two hands plunged forward, picked up the apple pie and wiped it off the face of the earth and everybody had a little piece and he had about four. And he didn’t even know. He said, “Emm -ahh-emm” and his eyes were glazed and shining, and he ate all the apple pie. “Emm, yum yum, good apple pie.” All the intellectual conversation finished – everything – atoms, nuclear black holes, everything.

I said, “Now I want that in your picture of the nature of man, Otherwise you have non’t got a complete picture.” It is the apple pie scoffer who smashing the atoms in the Cerne Laboratory at 60 million dollars a go. It is this one who doing this with the atoms. A nursery, and out of due season. In the nursery it is beautiful. In you it is horrific. I am frightened of you, Really frightened of you. I am frightened of the way you ate that pie. Do you understand?

So obviously apart from the inside, you have to allow the scientist – in the same way you have to allow each individual science to plane in to the meeting point which is man, on this side, and plane out to the divine Creator of the forms at that source. So if you are speaking from separation, you still have to connect with the scientists to the science to the sciences. If you’re speaking from gatheredness, you have to connect the manifestation to the manifester … the one who manifests. Do you understand it?

We jump back now to the nafs. First we’ll take the three terms -the wild nafs, the nafs in conflict , and the nafs serene. That is easy to understand because it has a certain ethical case. So we will get it out of the way first. That is simply that these three terms are from the subject’s own point of view. According to us, it is the human experience of the one who desires knowledge.

We are not talking about the savages unless they take this in question, which is why the sick person in that society is more interesting than the healthy person because he has put himself in question. The one who comes to a psychologist is a higher being than the one who is sitting governing a place, saying everything is fine. He is the madman. The real mad people don’t get locked up in an asylum. They get locked up in history. They get locked up in history because history is fantasy in process. Rumi said this. Rumi said the whole existence in culture is based on forgetfulness. Wherever you find remembrance, all that is gone. You simplify your architecture. You simply your social project, and inwardness dominates outwardness. Health dominates sickness, inwardly. Sickness dominates health outwardly but the science of healing dominates ignorance to deal with it.

So then there are three terms – one of them and then another. We will now look at these three terms. Let us say that there is the person in motion and the person asleep. The person who is static and the person is dynamic. So we will drop all these categories because we’ve already put our lolly on the person who says they are on the moon: who comes along to the Muslim psychologist rather than the heads of the corporation in terms of potential. We put our money on him because he is moving and this one is stuck.

The man who gave this doctrine got to this doctrine because he was the head of the corporation and he flipped. Imam al-Ghazali was the greatest ‘alim. He was like the dean of the faculty of theology at Yale University. And he got more and more in crisis. He said, “What does this mean? It all means nothing. What is this thing? I’m not anything. I don’t believe any of it. I’m not the dean of this. I don’t want to have dinner with the sultan and I don’t believe in any of it. What am I talking about? Why am I teaching these people when I know nothing?” And he got up to speak one day and he could not speak. He had 2000 students in front of him every day and he got up and said, “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,” and ran out the door, He went home, packed his bags, handed out the money to his servants, called his family, gave out the money for the running of his family affairs and went to the desert to find the Sufis.” To find the doctor of the heart.

And from him comes this theory, this description of the three nafs. What we find out about existence gives him regret at leaving it. What we find out about existence gives us desire to pass to the next stage of it. So this first thing is really simple: we will find it so simple that there is no difficulty with it.

This describes the person who has a path as opposed to the person who has no path in terms of knowledge. Although everyone has a path, we are talking about those who know it. And that first stage of knowing has to be not knowing, So there are some people, although they’re destined for knowing, they have to be given naturally a not-knowing.

So you have the kafir beginning – you have outward wildness. And the one who is in outward wildness has no constraint. “I can do what I like.” It is, to the Sufis, the maqam of the child. Not only does it do what it likes but it does not know that it is doing it. The child pees and shits. It does not know. It is time. It is not, “I am doing this thing” that we have to clean up. It is time. There is this stuff and then it goes. It does not know it’s doing it. It only finds out by this fuss that goes on every time it does it.

So it is that maqam in the adult about existence. Total ignorance is to do wrong and not know you are doing it. Not so anything, Why shouldn’t I do it? I’m totally gratified. Total gratification: Do what I want. Real wildness is a wonder thing. The wild horse is wonderful, Wild nafs is not wonderful because it is out of due season.

The kafir society encourages the wild adult and punishes the wild child. Punishes the child who defecates and pees instead of learning to stop it before even the biological structure of the body and the sphincter muscle is working to stop. So it is inhibited and punished when it should be wild and free. The training of the body should come with the biological growth of the body. Leave them uncovered, let them drop everything and hose it down afterwards. That is the traditional Muslim way. So then the deep underpinning of the self are based on that and not on guilt about this. This is the traditional Islam, Now, of course, we have modern Egyptians, Muslims who are very proud of the fact that they know how to use the lavatory. They are proud of it.

So this wild nafs is out of due season. This adult doing what it wants, this person who says “I”. You know the little boy or girl who shows its belly. Everybody laughs – it is beautiful. When you see adults doing it in Golden Gate Park, when you see them expressing an abandon – it wearies people. Why? Because it’s out of due season, It’s not that maqam. That maqam is there and they did not have it there and they are doing it and it is too late. It is too late. It’s gone. When you had no teeth you drank liquids. When the teeth came .. are you going to eat pop always? Are you going to be this person or are you going to find out what the next is? The four year old, the three year old or the two year old sees a stair, climbs it once it knows there’s a stair -hump, hump, hump. How thrilling!

And they are not at that maqam. They see the staircase of knowledge and meanings and it’s awful because there’s no beauty. Their beauty is elsewhere. There is a beauty but it is not there. If we’re talking about knowledges, then we see people who are out of harmony with existence. The wild nafs first of all does not know it is wild. Then there is a wild nafs which does it knowing that is not it. Too wild. There is a wild nafs which does it knowing that it is not it. To them the party is no longer fun. The yields of the society are no longer gratifying. The goals are no longer satisfying. And this immediately expresses itself, of course, in that the pleasures are not pleasurable. And put alongside that the bitternesses are intolerable. Until you turn into a battle with them.

We move into this second realm which is the embattled nafs. They start to wrestle with themselves. They are discontented with themselves. This is the gift of Allah. This is the most wonderful thing. This is the ploughing of the field. It is a knife that cuts, but that knife turns over new soil. This trouble is wonderful. It is the most wonderful thing that can happen.

Out of this comes flight, turning over. Rejection, contrariness, doing the opposite in any sphere of action. Punk. It’s punk rock. It is a high mental plane in relation to the directors of Coca Cola. It is a high mental activity in relation to the Prime Minister of England the President of France: a high, high mental plane. Punk rock is Shakespeare, Aeschylus, genius in relation to them because they have tried to get at the meaning by the secret of the law of existence which is that everything is hidden in its opposite. Only there is no one to explain to them they have done it. So in the kafir society, so beauty-ugliness is to cut their face down like that. One half is one thing, one is the other. They have a razor blade down there, a safety pin in there and everyone says it’s horrible. It is ugly. It is beautiful. It’s outwardly ugly because they want a meaning that is beautiful. A spiritual search. Every age, that is why we go back to the park.

Every age expresses that in a different way because this search among people has to happen and no society can censure it unless they actually alter their hypothalamus which they are prepared to do to the already so-called sane person. You would not use the term sane. We say there is a complete person, structurally. You put them in any situation, then they could be the free one. Once, of course, you put in the chemicals, then they are in the shopping mall forever.

These are the people whose nafs is in trouble. This trouble is a gift of Allah. Now I am not yet talking about repair. I am talking about the sign of life, the sign that there is actually something happening. I’m not talking about what is the way this is healed. We will come to that later. If this person is not destroyed by the act of going to the opposite. Because it is dangerous. It can shatter the personality. It can destroy it beyond help by the action or by the station of shame, of disgrace to which they arrive. If they, in their search, by their intention for self over beauty of the ugliness, break through, then that person will begin precisely to try to discover the meaning of existence. The meaning of existence is discovered inside the self and this is achieved by your conquering you. The enemy is you! In the rebellion you think that the enemy is society, the classÉ

However, the language of the culture has described it, the king, the president, women, men, everybody. The creation, existence itself, The way is recognition that existence is perfect, flawless. The flaw is in the eye You cannot see. You are seeing trouble. From where is the trouble? Is it out there? No, because this is a mirror. What a horrible mirror! It has got a nose and it has got ears. It is you. Can’t smash the mirror. It is you. There is nothing wrong. Everything that is wrong is here. It is fascinating, is it not? It is enthralling that human beings could participate in this, not 100%, but 99.99999%. I mean everybody is participating in this lie. Society is built on it. History is built on it.

I am looking at this object and what’s wrong with it? The biologists say that the bird could not survive. There i’s something wrong with it, so it died. What is this? It’s complete, absolute lunacy. These law of forms have to be swept aside by natural selection in the calm march to higher forms. It ended with me. It is extraordinary. He is a bag of worms. He is a virus of typhoid and he got all this waster and stuff inside him, blood and phlegm.

What is this? It is in the eye that cannot see. It is like the television. I must give you this physical picture because we all forget just how mad the world has become. The children were on the television and they had this popular sportsman interviewing the children, this idiot. He had this little boy who collected beetles. He had a collection of these black things with these pincers and they were all crawling about and this awful lout was trying to emphasise with this child. He said, “Oh, but aren’t you frightened of the beetles. I mean, don’t you find them ugly?” He was using this sort of child talk, “Don’t you find them all very creepy, crawlyÉ ugh, don’t like beetles.” And the boy looked at him like he was demented. He said, “But they’re beautiful. Beetles are beautiful.” And he said, “They may be to you, but they give me the creeps.” And you saw him like the beetle. Isn’t it wonderful? Allah ta’ala says in Qur’an, “You will not find any flaw in creation.”

So back to where we were. The nafs sees creation by its station. You see creation by your station. Sitting with the Salihun and the awliya’ is the science of the Sufis because you want to see with their eye. You want to see with a clear eye. If I walk with him, he will show me this plant and that plant in the dhahir because he knows them, If I want to know meanings, I sit with the people of meanings and they show the meaning, And then I see with an inner eye. My eye is trained and then I will do what they do and practise what they practise and so it is my eye.

But you understand I have taken it from them. All meaning is hidden. I take it from you. If I Am in your company, I can take from you and I do not then, in the end, need words to be spoken. The murid wills peak the wisdom of the shaykh from things he has not been told by the shaykh. He will take it from it. In one glance volumes are transmitted, and this is not metaphor. This has been categorically demonstrated. You speak of the sciences of the shaykh because he has transmitted everything to you in one glance, in one instant. These knowledges do not take time to transmit. You put a camera in front and click, that is enough. You have got the picture. We are camera. We go click and we are finished, done. IBM is child’s play. Computers are cake mixers to this knowledge, child’s play in relation to it.

So now we come to repair our friend, the troubled nafs. We assuming that the creature wants out of this dilemma and wants to arrive, and now sees that the goal of the nafs is not total abandon, not total outward freedom, but complete inner freedom, serenity, tranquillity. And so not serenity in serenity, serenity in serenity and serenity in turbulence. Stillness in movement and movement in stillness. Outwardly still, inwardly moving. Outwardly moving and inwardly still. This is the goal of perfection; the ikhlas of liberation.

Now we come to what is the repair job. Now this is so enthralling I have to do a commercial for it. It is so intriguing. You see how stupid people can be and what a nuisance the Christian mess of theology has brought and the bother it has been to true teaching. They use words like sin and repentance. The words are so dishonoured by false transaction. Do you understand? Let us take the words sin and repentance. These terms have been poisoned by the Christian mess. Why? Because it is not based on tawhid, it’s based only on the arena. It is supposed to be a religion, but its only reality is the theatre arena of the middle self, of actions, the psychodrama. So then they say, imposing from this higher sphere that you can’t get into… “We have this information that it’s wrong for you to do that.” So you go, “Ooh, you see, I’ve done this terrible thing. I don’t know what to do.” They go, “Repent, repent.” So you go and calm it down, put a layer of cement over it, put a wreath on it, lots of flowers, have a fiesta, light some candles, then you go on and there you go again, la même chose.

So naturally we, all people of ‘aql, have kicked this out, but they have all ended up in the park showing their bellies. That sin and rebellion and they’re back to these idiots. Now here is the ironic (depending on how you look it) extraordinary, ravishing fact: that, in these two terms, in fact, should be understood in their reality not as ethics at all, but as basic biology of the function of the human self in the arena of it species is how the self develops and transforms.

We jump back to my discourse on the oneness of the action of Allah and how action adheres to self. Do you follow? We said in that discourse that action adheres to the self. It sticks to the self.

So let us now jump to bring in another term – the heart. Let us call the heart that inner arena in which all these impressions and experiences are impacted, are recorded, are held. They go in there and they come out from there. So the heart makes wrong action, so the nafs makes wrong action, and it is recorded, it is imprinted, it is rusted onto the heart. Now the ethical way, both of these Christian shaytans and the humanists – the christian shaytans are the same as the humanists because it’s a false transaction. It is a lie, nothing has happened You have just repressed it, as the analysts will say. In both of these instances you have held on to the previous acts, they are still in there. They say repress – it is there, it is written, it is stuck on you. The rust is there. Do you see what I am taking you to?

Therefore they say then you do it. You are still this one, you are still that one – only you are now on tour. You were in the capital and now you’re in the provinces. But it is the same play, the same dialogue, with a different touring cast. You are the great actor and they are all your extras. Strindberg drama. It happens here. They all go away and thus person ages and finds a new lot and does it all again. The basis of modern psychiatry is in that situation. Even my looking at the script, my looking at the parts does not remove it. I’m still carrying it. So it’s not a knowledge to know if the psychodrama reveals the oedipal pattern you’re still carrying, imprinting, and the event of the previous traumatic experience inside you.

Now, Sufiyya says turn to Allah. Allah is the Ever-Returning. We are not dealing with Allah, Allah is dealing with us. We are not dealing with the process called creation, the process is dealing with us. Whose? By Allah’s process.

So there comes into the heart of this seeker, recognising the wrong action that he is given an indication of how to be free of it, which is tawba. Tawba means to turns back, turn around, turn away. So you turn away, you turn away from the wrong action to the source of all action. If I do not see where the action comes from, I am weighed down because it all comes from me and I cannot deal with it. If I know that the action comes from Allah then the decree of Allah has been. “You are in wrong action.” If you are the fly, you are the filth.

At this point in comes only this one dimension in which everything matters, which is awareness. Which says, “If that is a fly, I do not want to be a fly. I would rather be a bee. I would like to carry pollen on my legs and make honey. I do not want to carry filth and make infection and sickness. It is not interesting.” Some people do and find it rather nice. “I like dirt, filth and bzzz.” But some people say, “I do not like it. I really rather like these flowers over there. I’d like to have these legs with pollen on them and make honey in the honeycomb.” If you are a bee you will be a bee. You will not be a fly. You are just a bee that gone over the filth and buzzed past it. It is already decided. You do not suddenly turn from a fly into a bee. You were a bee in the wrong place. And you say, “Bzzz, I don’t want that.”

The Sufis say that the bees scent the honey, scent the nectar and they arrive at it. They get there. The bees get to the flowers. You will only be who you are designed to be. The horse is not going to be a fish. Excuse me giving you this surprising information.

But it is the same with the self. It is under the decree. But it is constantly volatile, discovering who you are. If you say, “I am a reptile,” you see, and you slither along in the mud. He must look like a reptile and he is certainly behaving like one. He does not look like it but he is certainly behaving like it. Maybe he is. I guess he is. Look, he has got fangs, and, in fact, you were and we had not noticed. If the man says, “I am reptile and I am disgusting,” and a voice of creation which is him says, “No, you are a lover of Allah,” he says, “That sounds nice.”

It is what I told you about earlier, “There’s a wali on the mountain.” But you will not be unless you go. Whatever you want. You have possibilities and you will actualise them. Qur’an, the whole Book of Qur’an: “It is for those who spend of what We have given them.” Your potentialities, your capacities. If you use them this book is for you. Then you cannot stop. Wisdom on wisdom on wisdom. And power on power from Allah.

How is it that the modern child knows how to clean its teeth every day in order that it can go on putting food into its belly in a satisfactory manner? It is not taught every day to make tawba in preparation for being an adult when it is of use because it is no use to him as a child. But he knows how to clean his teeth as a child so he always does it. If you didn’t learn as a child, you have to be very strong to teach yourself to clean your teeth.

Why can you not clean your heart? If you make tawba the heart is clean. You do not change, you discover you. You do not change yourself. You cannot change yourself. You discover who you’ve always been from the beginning. If you take someone in the night and kidnap them and fling them into a dark place and it is all cold and they are huddling on the floor, they think, “I’m in a cellar. How terrible. I’ve been flung into a cellar. I’ve been kidnapped.” If that passes, “I must know my position. I must know why,” and they put on the light and they are in a palace. Do you understand?

Rumi says this knowledge is like a peasant and his wife living in rags, covered with lice, and all the creepy crawly things that we were talking about; living in degradation, eating bits of crusts and roots of radishes and drinking brackish water in a hovel with the spiders coming and earth falling on their heads while they sleep. And a man, a traveller, comes and says, “You do not need to live like this. Over these mountains is Baghdad. There are mosques with tiles and mosaics and every house has water running through it. There is work for everybody. There are beautiful clothes. There are silks. There is a whole life there, beautiful food, fresh vegetables and meat for everybody. Come with me. I am going.” and they say, “No, I do not believe. I’m staying here.”

We call this the kafir. The mumin says, “I believe you. I trust you. Why should you lie to me? You have nothing. You cannot. There’s nothing to take from us. There is no gain in it for you. It must be true. I trust you. I am mumin. I trust you.” The Messenger comes and gives you this news … I trust you.

The unseen reality is more terrible and more wonderful than the visible reality. The world is the hovel. The experiential zone of phenomenal existence is that hovel. The cosmos is that hovel. The Baghdad of that picture is ‘alam al-mithal, ‘alam al-Malakut, ‘alam al-Jabarut. The world of the Unseen and the world of the Lights from the Essence of Allah.

So any doctrine of the self has to take in everything in the hovel to everything in the Jabarut. Do you understand? Because we have only looked at the lower self. We are now at the bottom bit of this troubled self. And already we’re into unseen dimensions, Already we are into another element of the self. We have not got to the third thing at all. We are still dealing with the sick, troubled self.

Only I insist that the sick one is not the one who would go to the doctor. It is the one who is ruling in the world, highly placed in the world and honoured by the world. All your professors. All your leaders of industry. All your military. All your paraphernalia of society. All these turned upside down. In the realm of knowledge everything is turned upside down.

So we are still in the embattled nafs and I say the first step to this transformation is by your wanting it, but you later discover that it is not you wanting it. It is Allah wanting it. Because you are not the willer. Allah is the willer. But we have not got to attributes yet. We are trapped in action, I am in wrong action. I do not know about attributes yet. I do not seen know that I am doing it by the decree of Allah and even by the power of Allah. The hand that strikes is Allah striking. And the one who gets struck, it is Allah who had them struck by my wrong action, In truth, in reality, in Haqiqa. By Shari’a, I have to answer for everything I do.

Do you follow? So we’re still in the zone of action. Tawba, therefore, I say, is the first step to the transformation of the self. There is no other first step. There is no other means to transformation of the self except, first, to act of tawba. This is the basis therapy that you must teach people to transform them and you will find a very interesting thing. There will be one person who goes away and one person who draws near. The medicine of Tawba is for the mumin, not for the kafir. And you will not get them to take that medicine. They will not take it. You do not feed a fish with the food of a land creature. Its food is its wrong action.

We had a public meeting, You must allow another one of these crude vulgar examples. We had a public meeting in London two years ago in Hampstead and a man came to me and he had all these theological questions all about why in the world of suffering. How can there be an absolute if there is so much suffering in the world? What you do at school in the debating society. All these theological questions – Why this? Why that? I said, “I have one question, why are you here? Why did you come here?” He said, “Ah, because I want to know God.” “Please now, answer me, may I ask you one more question?” “Yes.” I said, “I do not believe that. What do you really want?” He said, “What I really want is to own a lot of real estate. I want to own Centre Point. I want to be a rich man. I want to let it out to people and make massive amounts of money. I want to have big ears and I want very beautiful women. And to buy them jewels and hang them on their necks and go to all the discotheques in London and have a good time.” This is wonderful,” I said. “Now,” I said, “I am so glad you came. Go out tomorrow. Get it.” And I said, “Get it. Get every single one of these things. And when you are sitting at the top of Centre Point in the penthouse with your car down below and your beautiful woman with her Cartier diamonds and you are sipping your champagne and they say, ‘How did you do it?’ say, ‘All this is from the Sufis.’ And you will have what you want and we will have want we want. Leave us alone and go. You are in the wrong place.” Now I guarantee you that he will get it.

So one patient you will send to his goal once you’ve given him the news – you have to give him the news. The good news is that if you take the way of Allah you will have a garden in the unseen. If you go against the way of Allah, you will be on fire in the unseen. I gave you that example because there are two people who will come to you with the same complaint. One person you can help and one person you cannot help, and if you try to give them that medicine you will kill them. One person will come and if you gave it to them you would make them mad, majnun. And if you gave it to the other person you would make them wali. So you have to know who to give this medicine to and who not to give it to. It is not the same for everybody. There must be some medicine that should do it but it would destroy the person. The same with the nafs. One person you can give it to. The same condition, but a different decree on them, a different seal on them, and you have travelled enough to know when to speak and when to say, “Go and get your dunya, Don’t worry us.” This is the question.

So we were examining the stage of tawba. This is the first stage. And I say it is the necessary first stage of transformation of the self. Let me give you the definition of tawba according to the elite and according to the elect of the elite. According to the elite, tawba is to say, “I have made wrong action,” and to not let yourself get away with it. Do you understand? But keep remembering it. “Now I have done it. I have got to watch.” So you hold down the self.

This is not our way, The Junaydi way is not to make tawba with remembering, but to make tawba with forgetfulness. In other words, you say sincerely to Allah, “I am tired of it. I am finished with it. Help me. Return, come back, give me mercy. I am tired of it, I am finished with it.” Having done that you get up. “Allahu Allahu, Hayy, Hayy,” and you have a good time, clear in the conviction that it will be removed from you and that you will not return to it. Because you know the operation works.

These are the two ways. The first way we do not accept – it is too difficult. Only great men can do it. We are rubbish, extras, mere walk-ons. So we do this other way. So naive, childish, and it works. It works and it takes the person to the source, the Forgiver, the Lover. And you are the beloved. Who is forgiven but the beloved, not the lover? The beloved is forgiven.

So the second element after tawba. Then, of course, life becomes interesting. Tawba is difficult, and after hardship comes ease, and there is the true fact of the matter: that for the Sufi is the transformation of the self is easy. And it’s sweet.

But the thing that everyone else has this terrible struggle. These awful Christians trying to do good works from a solid based nafs. This is disgusting, obscene. “I am doing good” – you spit it out, vomit it out. You see, like some of our brothers in Islam who say “I am greeting you because you are my brother.” You say, “Oh, don’t be. Be my enemy. You’re so good at it!” Do you understand? It is not that. It is from here. It;’s telling people it’s sunna to do this – we are brothers, we are all the same. Like when I was in the mosque in London and one of the Imams came to me and said, “I’d like you to come and meet someone to show you that in Islam we are all brothers. We are all the same, there’s no difference between the common person (looking at me) and the great rulers of society.” He said, “We are all one. All the same. And I’d to present to you the mufti of Sudan,” and the man punched him with his elbow and said “the grand mufti.” But it is so beautiful, it is so charming how strong they are. It is so wonderful. That is putting right action without tawba underneath it.

The next stage is to replace bad qualities with good qualities. That’s not difficult, is it? To replace bad qualities with good qualities. It’s not difficult if it’s preceded by tawba. The tawba is difficult. But if you’ve made tawba, it is fine. You were mean, now be generous. You ate too much, now eat little, You envied people, why should you? You are on a path to Allah. Who could be better than you? You’re going to your goal. How can you envy anybody anything? You are the highest. Move from it whatever it is.

You become angry now. You know what, you must replace anger with sweetness. “Anger is fire,” the Prophet said, and it is put out by water. If you are angry, do wudu’. He said, “Have you not seen the anger when veins stand out on the neck and temples? This is fire. Do wudu’ and you put out the fire.” And the meaning of the act of wudu’ is purification. And you do wudu’ and it is a tawba and the anger is gone.

What a wonderful thing. You see, anger is not to be removed from you. It must not leave. It must be under your control. If you did not have these volatile energies you would be dead. If you do not have the sexual drive, if you do not have the drive of anger, if you do not have all these energies, there would be no creation. But they must be in their place. You are arriving not at some kind of emptied shell – we are arriving at a balanced being. We are bringing everything to the middle. We bring appetite to the middle; belly appetite, sex appetite, possession appetite, reputation appetite. We bring everything to middle.

Now we look at the middle zone of the nafs. We will jump to three new terms, which is what is going on in this thing: Nafs, Hawa, Shaytan. Let us now look at what these three terms are in the arena of action. This is very interesting and will help a lot in your understanding of the process of behaviour. What is the experiencing self? It’s very simple. It’s you experiencing what’s there. So someone comes in. Wrong action. Nafs. Something appears, appetite, you take it. Hawa. What is front of you. It’s yours. You acquire what is there. You are acquisitive. You take what is yours. The belly, sex, head, reputation, study, being a scholar. You take, you acquire. You are possessed by appetites.

Now shaytan, shaytan with a tail and a samsonite briefcase. Shaytan has form. Shaytan has the form of many things. It changes form. Shaytan is a subtle energy of jinn in the unseen and he has a job to do. He is like the man who does the swamp cooler. When it breaks down, he turns up. When the nafs leaves a crack, he can come. He answers the call. We say, “Please come, the swamp cooler has broken down,” and the swamp cooler man comes and fixes it. Shaytan: whenever your nafs gets something wrong, there’s a crack in it, he’s got a complete service. He gets the message on his CB and he’s out the door. “Right, here I am.” Now shaytan is the volative activator at your already existent wrong action. Shaytan is when the creation comes back to inviting you. Suddenly your wrong action from you that was passive becomes active where the creation calls you to it. This is the meeting with shaytan. This is what is called shaytan. This is the identity of Iblis. That is why one day he is tall and thin, the next day he is small and fat, depending on what the situation is. In other words, if passively your intention is bad, then from intention to action, he is the action dimension of the wrong intention.

But you are judged. His job is that. Like the other man’s job is to clean the … He is under strict orders from Allah. You have wrong intention now, then give them up. You see. He says, “I will.” In Qur’an shaytan says, “I will not cease to try men until the last day.” That energy is persistent in man. When he has wrong intention, shaytan then comes in on his jet plane. “Come on, do this. There’s the trouble, make that one.” He pauses for breath. You jump in with the interrogation. Shaytan. The attack. The Shaytan. From the passive to the active. Nafs to shaytan through our old friend Hawa. Nafs, shaytan, hawa. Got that? So to cheer people up because they think, “How awful, what a mess. Allah, what a mess.”

We now look at it another way to cheer us – give us himma, yearning to get past it. We now take three more pictures: the dog, the pig and the sage. These are the three elements of nafs from another picture of what’s in there. Here are three creatures. Inside is a dog. This is nafs. What is nafs? Nafs and hawa.

How now, we are now going to look at it in another way. As a dog. One of the characteristics of the dog is this picture. In this picture it is the dog returns to its brother. You do it and you still do it. You go back to it. The dog plays a double game with the master, wagging tail, but it is not all friendly. Friendly, friendly, and then you go and cringe, tail shuddering, it’s awful. The dog chases round the side when it is terrified. There is all that cringing and slobbering. You are this you. You are this to you.

And what is the other characteristic of the dog? It is that the dog is treacherous to its own master. The dog will defend you as much as you defend yourself against the world. But at a certain point, you turn around and you savage yourself. Like the person we were talking about the other day. That has to happen. They will turn on themselves and savage themselves. They will do everything against their own interest – to the edge of suicide. And, of course, some people are torn to shreds.

The pig is appetite. What is this aspect of appetite? The aspect of appetite is if you allow it, if you feed it, it won’t stop feeding. The pig will not stop the feed. What is interesting is that the pig is abhorred in Islam and the dog is technically abhorred except as a hunter when you use its high qualities and ignore its low qualities. The dog in Islam is not allowed in the house because we will get all that and pick it up from it. It would rule us. But its higher qualities are something else. It hunts and guards.

The pig is haram because the character of the pig is appetite itself and if you feed it, it won’t stop feeding until it kills itself. It stuffs. Appetite feeds, “Grows by what it feeds on,” Shakespeare said. Appetite grows by what it feeds on. It keeps on and on and on. So it is a pig. And it gets fatter and fatter and fatter until it even will cannibalise. It will eat its own. Appetite will eventually eat its own, Devour everything, en famille. The child will devour the parent. The parents will devour the children and so on and so on. Devour by appetite.

These are two aspects of the nafs. Now, the Sufis say: if you kill these two the sage will die. We have not come to the sage yet. If you kill them the sage will die. They are these medieval chairs. When you sit on a chair and there are beasts under the chair that hold it up. In Spain they have wooden chairs that have an animal underneath and it’s sitting on it. This is their proper place, You do not kill them. If you kill them, you’re finished. The zahid may kill them and lose the day. The one who is an ascetic may destroy everything. We are not ascetic in this way. We say you subdue the pig, but you need the nourishment. You need the appetite. You need eating, but you subdue it. If you give the pig enough, it is all right.

The other aspect of the pig, its negative qualities is that it wallows in its own dirt. Its filth becomes its scent. It turns in on itself and wallows. Subdue the appetite, and it will carry you. Control the dog and it will guard you. You will get from it what its task it. It will guard you It will hunt for you. It will retrieve for you. It’s used for that in its place. If these two are subdued, they are, as it were, the chariot on which rides the sage. The sage is the raw insaniyya in its highest level. Then the true high aspect of the nafs emerges. These two are necessary in their place and onto this comes the sage, the man of wisdom, the creature of knowledge. He rides on a conquered appetite and a subdued anger and all the dog in us. Another picture of man.

So now we say that this, we come back to the first thing of the middle nafs. The embattled nafs is then busily involved in replacing wrong action with right action. This is, as it were, this middle part of the journey, once you get past its first stage from tawba, has two stages to go on to the third one. The first stage is to remove wrong action. The next stage is to acquire qualities.

The first of these qualities has to be – otherwise the journey cannot be made – sabr. Sabr means patience. But it means something more in Arabic. It’s a wonderful language. Sabr means something much more than this. Let us say it is an aspect of patience. Sabr is also strength in Arabic, fortitude, being able to deal with, staying power. That when you get knocked down, you do not go to pieces. Sabr means that you have staying power, that when the first hit comes, the first negative signal, the first trouble, you do not go to pieces. You just keep going. You have power. Sabr is the first thing to acquire.

Sabr, the Sufis say, is patience. It is a medicine. All of its taste is bitter and all of its results are sweet. It is wonderful. This is the position of the elite. Sabr, patience, is a medicine which is bitter, the results of which are sweet. This is why, seen from the view of the elite, the elect of the elite, patience has to be that in bitterness and sweetness are the same to them. So when al-Junayd was asked, “What is patience?” he said something tremendous. He said, “Patience is being patient with patience.” So its bitterness is sweet, and its sweetness is sweet. This is beautiful.

Do you see? They are the same to the man who has achieved, they are both the same. And this is the man of perfection who, remember, is a man of action. The one who has arrived is the one of action. Because action follows knowledge. Knowledge is the journey. Action is the proof. So this is the stage where this sabr becomes this – what a wonderful thing! It is the most interesting thing.

And the thing is we know everything about the nafs. So the first news of the Sufi is that there is nothing to be afraid about in the nafs. You see in the current way of looking at the nafs it actually quite frightening, because they bring these myths, like the Oedipal myth and these great Greek myths to dramatise this little arena which they are all so worried about. It is frightening. People see themselves pitted against these vast destructive figures. It is awful. They cringe before it.

Now the Sufi view is not this. The self. First of all, it’s very reassuring. There isn’t any aspect of the self that we do not know. You cannot bring a mystery self to the Sufi. You bring one you cannot do anything with, but never one that you do not know what it is. It is totally plotted, it is all as clear as daylight. It is very simple. It is all within the parameters that I have described. Even before I came among the Sufis I used to say to people, “Well, you can only do what a human being can do.” Because one of things of the nafs is to say, “You do not realise the un-nameable, unspeakable things that I have in my heart.” They make themselves into dreadful kings. They make themselves into these mythological figures. They say, “You do not realise. It may be all very well for you if you do not know the terrible things that there are, these serpents that all squishing around in me. A’udhu billah min ash-shaytan ar-rajim. Really you can only do what a human being can do, What is there else that you can do? The worst you can do is to destroy everything and everything, yourself included. It is quite human. There is nothing unexpected in it. So again the attitude if the Sufis to the nafs is not that it is a sickness, not as this dreadful thing. But that we are, it is a simply necessary ingredient of the recipe of what may turn out to be a very good dish, a very good cake, a very good morsel of nourishment for everybody. Of course, if you botched it, you can burn the cakes. But it’s basically the ingredients from which something tremendous can be made.

Moussem 1992, Granada

Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim

I want to say a little in continuation from the great Salat ‘ala an-Nabi of the Moroccan Shaykh that Sidi Hamid read. We talked yesterday about being the ‘abd of Allah, and we mentioned the hadith qudsi where Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says, “My slave approaches me by nawafil acts until he loves Me, and when he loves Me, I (Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala) become the hand with which he grasps and the foot with which he walks.” This awakening of the heart and this longing and this desire for Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala is called ‘ishq.

‘Ishq in Arabic is very interesting. It is like the creeper which creeps up the tree and covers the whole tree with its foliage and its flowers, until it is the tree. In doing so it kills the tree. It is like the tree is the nafs and the creeper is the love of Allah which slowly turns into this other effulgent flowering plant. This is ‘ishq. It is a longing. It is something which in itself devours, burns up the base substance which has the capacity to have this love for Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Now because Allah has majesty, has the jalali power, the love of Allah can make the man mad or can destroy him. Many, many stories of the sufis of the East are about people who become possessed with this love. The great example, of course, is the story or metaphor or mithal of Layla and Majnun. The way of the people of the innermost court of knowledge is to take a path to love of Allah which is founded on love of Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Every path to Allah is dangerous. The path of the love of Rasul is easy. It has two elements. One is praising him, the salat ‘ala an-Nabi. One is praising him to Allah. One is holding him up to Allah with gratitude to Allah.

That is all that is in our wird. It is in the works of Shaykh al-Jazuli. It is in the Salat al-Mashishiyya. Shaykh Ibn al-Mashish says, “Rasulu’llah, peace and blessings be upon him, is the great veil of all creation.” In other words, he is the last form of all the forms because the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “I am the first of the sons of Adam and I say it without boasting.” He is the form of the forms of man to Adam. He is directly, through the Prophets, the son of Adam. He is this perfect form, the completion of the vision of Sayyiduna Adam. Adam, peace be upon him, knew that he was the first and that his fulfilment was in the last, in Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him.

The love of Rasul has this element. It is based on Salat ‘ala an-Nabi on one side and on the other side it is taking on bits, particles of the qualities of Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him. In other words, you celebrate the qualities of Rasulullah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and you practise little bits because Shaykh al-Akbar, Muhyyidin Ibn al-’Arabi said:

“We cannot copy Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, we can only follow in the dust of where his feet went.”

It is a very beautiful thing, you see, and this was the adab of the Khulafa’ ar-Rashidun: Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, ‘Uthman and ‘Ali all said:

“We are the followers, we are the caliphs. we are the followers who come after Rasul.”

So that there was a line drawn and then they said:

“I am the representative, nothing more. I am the second caliph, the third, the fourth.”

The Khulafa’ ar-Rashidun were following in the dust of the footsteps of the Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. You see that the position in them in the minbar is a big sunna because the position in the minbar is again this recognition that the Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had the highest position. The coming down the steps of the minbar was the identification that they were the followers. This is why now in the mosques they take away the minbar. They are taking away the respect for Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, and making it a Christian pulpit. The Shi’ites do not use it because they do not recognise the Khulafa’ ar-Rashidun in the way that we recognise the Khulafa’ ar-Rashidun.

All this is the adab of these great men and the love that they had for Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him. The love of the Sahaba for Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was something that we will never grasp because they walked with him and talked with him and ate with him and fought with him and died for his path. This was something very exalted, and without it you cannot understand the history of Islam. So these Sahaba had a connection with Rasul that had an adab that was very, very, very fine. For example, there is an incident which demonstrates this. Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, was always remembering Allah. so his dhikr of Allah was with his tongue, with his members, meaning with all his body, and with his heart. The three dhikrs. One day in Madina, he had a ring on his finger and he found that he was playing with it and turning it around with forgetfulness. In other words, all of him was remembering Allah but these two fingers. Rasulullah was so shocked at this that he took the ring and threw it into the dust because it was the instrument of letting two of his fingers for an instant forget Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.

One of the Sahaba saw the ring of Rasul and because they loved him and they all wanted to have it, he put out his hand and another Sahabi stopped him and said, “Would you take something on which his glance has fallen with disapproval?” The man put his hand back. This is the adab and love of the Sahaba for Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

In the first of the visits to Madina of the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, a man welcomed him into his house and gave him his best room in his little house to spend the night. And he went up on the roof to sleep the night on the roof. Because the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was up in the night making his prayers, he heard this man move. He moved and he stopped, and he moved and he stopped all night long. In the morning the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said to him, “You had a very troubled night last night. I hope you got some sleep. What happened?”

He said, “O Rasulullah, you see, I went to a spot on the roof and I thought, maybe he is underneath, maybe I am standing above him. I can’t. So I moved somewhere else and I thought but may he is there. And I could not rest the whole night that I should have my foot over your head.”

This is the love of the Sahaba for Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him. So this was something very special, very high, because it connected the love, hubb, with the adab. Now, we cannot do that because this was the exalted destiny of these people to be alive at the time of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him. However, one of the gifts of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to the Muslims is that every Muslim has a connection with the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Every Muslim has a connection with Rasul.

You see, you cannot go on Hajj or ‘Umra, but that in Makka or Madina you will not one person, but many, many people who say: “Subhanallah. The Rasulullah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Subhanallah. I had a dream and the Rasulullah came and … etc.”

The Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “The one who has seen me in a dream has seen me because shaytan cannot take my shape.”

So here is this intimate connection with the Rasul in the ghayb. You see, the tawaf is not complete without an act of such special intimacy and adab and purity that you could not have imagined it. The Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, kissed the Black Stone, and for fourteen hundred years billions of Muslims have put their lips on that stone where he kissed it. This is the connection, a spiritual connection, a connection of adab between the Rasulullah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his ‘ibada, and the ‘ibada of all the Muslims. That is why ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiya’llahu ‘anhu, said: “I would not have kissed the stone if I had not seen the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, kiss the stone.”

So his kissing the stone was not for the stone, but for the sunna of the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, having done it. This is the adab and the love that these great men had between them and the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him. Of course, the highest point of this was that in his teaching he transmitted to them knowledges, but he not only transmitted knowledges, he transmitted secrets. The Qur’an was sent down on him and he gave it to his Sahaba. Also he taught them sciences. He taught on the science of firasa (physiognomy). He taught another the science of dreams. Then also he transmitted even in what we call ‘the way of the people of tasawwuf’. The Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said in a very famous hadith words to the effect:

“Teach people according to their knowledge, according to their understanding.”

He taught Shari’ah to the people. He taught behaviour, akhlaq. He taught mithal to understand tawhid. The Rasulullah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, also spoke in another way to the people close to him. It is not a story of the Sufis. It is in al-Bukhari. It is in the hadith. One day the Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was sitting with Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, who was the closest to him and he said, “Ya Abu Bakr, yawm al-yawm!” and the other Sahaba said, “What is this?” and Abu Bakr said, “ALLAH!” and was crying.

So all the Sahaba were jealous and the went to Abu Bakr and they asked, “What is this yawm al-yawm?” And Abu Bakr, radiya’llahu ‘anhu, said, “The Prophet salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was remembering that the yawm al-qiyama is close. It was close – yawm al-yawm”

So here was a language like the language of tasawwuf. Here was the way of speaking straight to the heart, straight to the heart of Abu Bakr. So Abu Bakr understood something in a way they could not understand. It was not for everybody. It was for Abu Bakr. So here again is the connection of love which is between the Sahaba and the Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Then you get the people who loved him who had not seen him, and you get the famous Uways al-Qarani who had not seen the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him, but when he heard that he had lost a tooth in the battle, he knocked his tooth out by his love of Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, just to get that close to him.

These were the marks of these great, great men. So this theme is very vast. This theme has no end, you see, because for every Muslim there is a story of their connection with the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him. Especially among the people of the Path, the fuqara’, there are many of those stories. Again, every hajji and everyone who has done ‘Umra has some experience of this.

We were on the Hajj the year that Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahu’llah, died on the Hajj. It was a year with far too many people, probably more people than there has ever been since. It was a very chaotic year and one night in Madina after the Hajj, someone came to me while I was fast asleep and said, “Go quickly to the house of the Rasul. Go the house of the Rasul! Go and cling to the walls of the house of the Rasul. Allah has accepted nobody’s Hajj this year except those who go and cling to the wall of the house of the Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him.”

You know that the Saudis lock up at night. So I woke up everybody who was sleeping and I thought I must take Hajj ‘Abdul-’Aziz. I went to look for him and he was not in his bed. I said, “What’s the matter?” and he said, “I’ll tell you. Come quickly. I’ll tell you.”

The two of us started to walk through the streets of Madina in the middle of the night at four in the morning. He said, “I had this dream and I was told to get up and go to Rasul, peace and blessings be upon him.”

So the two of us went in the night. As we approached, in the middle of the night, the wall of the Rasulullah, there came from here, from there, from there, one, one, two, two people rushing with this ont heir face, and we all arrived against the wall to make our rak’ats and we all knew we had come with the same message.

This is how Allah has made the connection between the muminun and the Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him. This is absolutely dynamic. The Prophet, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said:

“I will intercede for my people on Yawm al-Qiyama.”

Intercession in Arabic is shafa’a.

“I will make shafa’a for my people on Yawm al-Qiyama.”

Now, you cannot make shafa’a if you do not know what it is. It is an intimate connection. I say, “I have done this thing.” He says, “I will intercede for you to the King.” So it is a direct connection. Allah forgives, but he had this role of the intercessor for all the wrong actions of his people. Now you have a people who deny this, but it cannot be denied because it is promised by the Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

Then you see at the very heart of the matter is a strange thing, and this where we make this great divide between the Muslims and the christians, because despite this highest, highest, highest position we have for Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, and despite the secret of Nuru Muhammad, there is this pure tawhid of knowledge about which Sayyiduna ‘Ali was asked, “Did you reach Allah by Muhammad?” He said, “No, if I had gone to Allah by Muhammad, I would have stayed with Muhammad. I reached Allah by Allah.”

This is the secret of the people of dhikr because it is the secret of Ism al-A’dham. Everyone calls to Allah by His Name, but it is the heart of the matter. When he, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was leaving the earth, his last words were:

“To the highest Companion, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala.”

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Yesterday we got to a very significant point of approaching understanding of this great central claim of the people of tasawwuf from the Qur’an al-Karim. We found it in the event of Sayyiduna Musa, ‘alayhi salam, in his quest for this ultimate knowledge of Divine reality. In unfolding this we came on uncertain things that we have to clarify in order that there should not be confusion. We also came on certain things which we might say are contrary claims which are true. But we remember that the sufis say that this knowledge cannot be proved by logic. In other words, it is a precarious path which scorns logic in the sense that it leaps over it because we are not anymore concerned with demonstration or proof, we are concerned with confirmation of experience. If someone has something that is beyond their experience, up to that point all that remains is confirmation of the experience.

We find that the people of knowledge of Allah, by the separate paths that they have come to it, all confirm the goal. The Ahl al-Haqiqat in one place will say something and other people of haqiqat without connection with these people confirm the same thing. Those who have examined the matter even more deeply in terms of the human record find confirmation of exactly the same story in the communities before Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Allah has never left a people without a prophet and therefore he has never left them without access to the unitary reality.

Firstly we have to understand the more important thing which is that this realisation, this unveiling of its nature obliterates the one who looks on it. It is like the one who stares at the sun and becomes blind. So also the people of haqiqat claim in the end their knowledge, yet they also claim with it, in this extraordinary position Allah has put them, a total ignorance. They put themselves beneath everybody while they are making the most grandiose claim possible in their ecstasy-folded up in the great claim is the most menial claim. We say it is a talisman sewn up, bounded and sealed in a mundane cloth. But we also saw that at this point of illumination, the opposite attributes clashed together into a point of unification, so that jamal and jalal met at the point of this annihilation. We end saying that the attributes are darknesses because, for example, you can see the act of strength but you cannot see strength itself, you cannot the see the qudra. You can see the effect of will but you cannot see the will.

Attributes are the darkness and therefore the Essence itself is a luminosity, it is an illumination and therefore it is in itself form. So the sourceness of the attributes, which coming into mulk manifest form, is darkness. The core of the darkness is the luminosity of the Essence-the lights, the tajalli, the self-manifestation from the Essence, but the self-manifestation from the Essence is division. Therefore in an inner chamber of the palace, there is a hidden room with a key. We say that there is an inscription in a talisman that is sealed. There is light upon light and there is outline, there is vision, there is identification but the key to all of it is that when this mountain-self disintegrates and dust remains, that is the confirmation of the recognition of what happens in the process of the annihilation, and in the return from the annihilation. Annihilation has, if you like, three phases: it has the ecstasy and the swooning and the passing away. It has the obliteration and it has the return. This is as far as we can go. We cannot take the matter further than this.

We must make the journey back, as it were, from this condition to what we are able to recognise of the cosmology of this situation that is the existence of the world because at this point we have broken the barrier between the self and the cosmos. We have recognised that self-cosmos is one reality. We are now dealing with the whole creation, you as all the creation. The mountain and Sayyiduna Musa have one knowledge between them-he knows what the mountain knows! The dust and the clay know what the dust and the clay know. The secret therefore of the smallest atom is the secret of all existence. What man discovers, the atom already knew! In Qur’an Allah says that every creature invokes Allah, every creature praises Allah, only you do not know.

This situation we must look at more finely. We have said that Allah is One in His acts, His attributes and His Essence. In reference to the unity of the act of Allah we confirm it by the line of the Diwan of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahullah, “The multiplicity of actions do not multiply the Actor.” In other words, there appear to be many actions but in reality, “Allah is the Creator of you and your actions”-Qur’an. This in itself rips away the veil of qudra and the fantasy of the creatures control over the human situation. In every situation he is utterly dependent and in it we see most clearly that the ruler, the monarch, the leader, the tyrant is most at the mercy of the human situation. The man of destiny, the Mao Tse Tung, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan is most at the mercy because Allah raises him up and Allah brings him down as He wants and when He wants. He does not have knowledge-his very frenzy of activity is the evidence of his ignorance. He is trying to set up a kingdom that is other than the kingdom of Allah in knowledge.

We will say of the attributes that the one who goes from act to attribute has already made a tremendous leap because they have gone from outward appearances to what allows the outward appearance to happen. It is a very crucial zone because it is in this zone that the intelligent seeker realises that all the elements by which man makes something happen are not his. We have said of the act, have we not, that all actions are really one action. This in itself removes from man the fantasy of power, kingdom and achievement. It is what places the governments of existence under shari’at and not under the politics of any kingdom. That is the meaning of Madina al-Munawarra and not what people have said it is today.

When we realise the unity of the attributes we already come to this impossible situation where we realise that all the elements and energies of creation are under the command of Allah. Allah says in the Qur’an, “He makes people laugh and He makes people cry.” These are two names of Allah. “He brings to life and He makes die.” In the Qur’an this ayat is followed by that ayat. This is an actual confirmation of the saneness of weeping and the saneness of laughing. We cannot end up with the same view of existence when we understand this. They are different in experience but they are the same in reality. So a real knowledge would be one in which these two experiences would be understood to be the same.

The sufis say that the common people get the sting but they do not get the honey. The elite get the honey and they do not get the sting. But the elect of the elite get the sting and get the honey and they do not care. In other words they experience the sensory in its fullness but the meanings so dominate their experience that it has made them the same for them. Like Sayyiduna Ayyub, ‘alayhi salam, the pain becomes a du’a. At that point worship and suffering are not different and at that point there is no suffering properly speaking. The opposites have met. One of the great awliya said, “I reached Allah by the opposite names.” Meaning that by placing them together and placing them together he finally broke through to understanding what existence was like.

The oneness of the Essence is a secret which contains a secret. Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, has warned against contemplation of the Essence because you are not going to decode it. You are going to unlock a lock. You will go into a room, you will go out of a room. You will pass from one phase to another phase. You will join and you will separate. You will extinguish the outline and you will replace the outline but in that chamber, in that secret garden there is only you. There is nothing that is not you, because that is the unitary reality. You, the experiencing slave, will vanish and it will manifest. So you will pass in and out of that secret garden through the gate. You will smell these fragrances and you will smell those fragrances and that is the most that we can say.

This annihilation contains a period of swooning between these realms. What are these realms? Now we come to precisely what designates all of existence. We have designated these by three terms: mulk, malakut and jabarut. There are two systems by which this is explained by the Ahl al-Haqiqat: the first places as it were jabarut at the pinnacle. So they talk about ahadiyya, al-wahdat and wahidiyya. In other words, ahadiyya is pure, uncontaminated unity without form, without distinction, without condition, without definition. Where was Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, before the creation of the universe? Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, replied, “He was in the great ama, the great mist,” beyond what may be stated. He was inaccessible for there was no-one and no thing to have access. This is ahadiyya.

Then you have wahidiyya as the third of the three. Wahidiyya is the potential of all the elements of the attributes, all the names of Allah, Asma was-Sifa-names and attributes, as this capacity from which all existence will unfold. Their effulgence cascades from the Unseen into the phenomenal universe. Wahdat is between these two. Wahdat is the one form from which all the forms come. It is that primary form from which the forms come. Properly speaking it is not a realm but a barzakh, an interspace between ahadiya and wahidiya. Remember that these are not three realms in reality but in description between because Allah’s Essence cannot be divided. Allah’s unity cannot be separated. It is our way of coming at this subtle, fine matter. But we must be able to recognise these three elements in order to realise the tremendous nature of the Divine Creator. So its essential reality we define as indefinable – the Name that cannot be named, the great name of the Name. The ultimate name, the supreme name.

We come to the barzakh of the wahdat which is Nuri Muhammad, the light of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, taken from the hadith which confirms this primal reality of the meaning of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. We are not talking about the dhat of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, but about his haqiqat, about his ma’nawiya, his meaning, his reality, because his essence is like your essence and my essence in the sense that our essences have no reality in themselves, they are only reflections. The only existent is Allah.

What about the reality, the meaning of him, the light of him? Let us for the moment say that the Nuri Muhammad is this interspace between completely indefinable, inaccessible, inexplicable sublimity and the vast fountain-head of all the energies of all the attributes. He is the first of the lights manifesting from the Essence of Allah because he is the ultimate form. Sayyiduna Adam is the pinnacle of creation and the adamic perfection is completed in the lastness of the adamic which is Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Therefore that is the ultimate form of what maybe form than which there is no higher. Therefore it is by him that the whole thing has meaning.

As Sayyiduna ‘Ali, karamullahu wajhahu, said, “The evidence of tents in the desert, of camels being barbecued, of silken tents, of carpets laid out, of goblets, of trays, of houris, of youths, of armies-all this is evidence that the king has arrived, all this is in order that the king should take his place. So all of existence is in order that Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, should manifest. There is a hadith qudsi that says, “If it were not for you I would not have created the universe, oh Muhammad!” Sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. He is therefore in this picture, this barzakh between the ineffable and the plenitude of all the attributes. There is the mist and the peacock emerges, and then the peacock opens its tail and the tail of the peacock shows all its variegated colours, and all its splendour is unfolded which is the unfolding of the names and the attributes. These are the three stages of ilahiya, of godness, of the divinity. Again, we are not referring to the Prophet of Madina or his essence, but of the nur of Muhammad, the haqiqat al-Muhammadi.

Now let us look at the three creational realms. We have mulk and malakut and, as I say, some people put jabarut at the pinnacle, and then there is the descent to malakut and the descent to mulk. Shaykh al-Akbar, radiyallahu ‘anhu, says–because these are only in description, Allah is One, not dividable-“It is better understood that if between the mulk, the visible realm and the malakut, the invisible realm, you put the jabarut and make jabarut the interspace, you will understand everything.

Before we topple over what can be held in the intellect let us pull back from that and return again to Qur’an. We find in Surat ar-Rahman that there are two seas, one bitter and one sweet, and there is an interspace between them. One does not run into the other. There is a barzakh between them, is that not correct? So they do not mingle but they meet in this interspace and interspace is that which does not take up space. The line between one and another is the barzakh. Just as we say that insanu kamal, the perfect man, is the complete interspace between two seas. He is the barzakh between the knowledge of shari’at of the phenomenal world and the haqiqat, the hidden world, the subtle world, the spiritual reality. He is between the two, and he does not deny the one and he does not deny the other. He obeys the obligations of the one and he confirms the secret of the other. He is outwardly a man of shari’at and inwardly and man of haqiqat.

If we look at these realms, not from the man’s point of view of knowledge but in the creational sense of cosmos, we find a visible world and an invisible world and there is a barzakh between them. Let us go further. In ordinary imagination, if you look out of the window you see a tree. You see tree as solid and around it is nothing, air. It is by that space that you recognise the object. Then of course along comes a scientist and says, “That is solid, and that is a gas.” So in a sense the whole thing is a lie. So it is a mode of perception: I see the tree in its separateness. So you have another dual, you have samawati wal-ard, the heavens and the earth in the physical sense but then we take it further than that-the sky is ard. You go from the simple condition of the bedouin woman whom they wanted to accuse of shirk and was asked by the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, “Where is Allah?” because he had confirmed that Allah has no where-ness because he cannot be associated with anything and therefore cannot be associated with a place, and yet he asked her this question to see if she was mushrik and she pointed to the sky. But in her intellect that meant no place because the tree is the object, the river is the object, the person is the object but up there is nothing. So that was the purest non-mushrik situation. She was not an idolater. That is the non-idolatry of the common people in which samawat is the space between the object, and that already purifies one from the gross shirk.

Then we are told that the space is also in fact a gas, it is also form, and because we want a pure tawhid, remember that shirk goes through three stages: it goes through worshipping a form, an object, to worshipping an element to worshipping a person. In other words, the mushrik tries to obey tawhid from a crude to a subtle to a mysterious. Worshipping an object-when the jews went off the path they worshipped gold. The worship of the jews is the pure evidence of the shirk because in worshipping the car they in fact bow down to the gold. They were looking beyond the form to its substance. The worship of the element is the very high shirk like the zoroastrians-fire, earth, air or wind, and some believe that running water is inhabited by divine capacity. The tibetans, when they deviated from what they were taught, ended up worshipping the wind power which blew the prayer wheel. They turned the wheels to show that the wind would blow them and they put up flags because they lived under the power of the wind on top of the Himalayas. The zoroastrians worshipped fire and the event of the end of zoroastrianism is the coming of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

The worship of the present society is not an atheist society but a deeply religious society and it is a zoroastrian society. The guardians of zoroastrian power are the people who are at present the occupiers of the Haramayn because they worship oil which is fire. They take their living by it, their power from it and their importance from it. This is shirk. They depend on it therefore it is their god, therefore the occupiers of the Haramayn today are mushrik because this is open worship, it is not nafs.

This is not leaving our point, it is very germane** to what we are examining-the subtlest shirk is the worship of a person, that someone is a deity, because obviously if you say that someone is a deity you do not mean their body so you have to explain away their body in some crazy doctrine, because if you had just meant the body you could have made it of clay or of wood but you have left that domain, it is primitive. The people who are most wise about these idols of stone and so on are the muslims because they know that it leads to these other ones. When the christian missionaries went to Africa they let them continue with their idols, they never removed the idols, saying, “It is just a step from that idol to this idol of a living person with a history. So you have a black Jesus, a chinese Jesus, a south american indian Jesus, a’udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim, because they say that he is a divinity. In other words they have exalted him up and so they have to take his body with him and say that godhood is embodied. They lie who say he is one of two-Qur’an.

Our doctrine can have no taint of these elements. Our tawhid can have no taint of either of these three elements, these conditions of shirk. We have to arrive at something which is devoid of that and this is why in description the Ahl al-Haqiqat have made these three dimensions in speaking of the Divine reality in order to make quite clear that you cannot identify the Prophet Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, with the Divinity. We have to deal with the secret and that secret is the secret of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, but that secret is therefore the secret of existence, the secret of the universe, only we are speaking in gradations to get the matter finer and finer so that there is not any taint or shred or shadow of connection so that we have pure tanzih and confirm Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, as one who walked in the market place and so on and so on-the qualities of bani Adam.

Let us return then to these three realms of mulk, malakut and jabarut. We say that jabarut is between mulk and malakut. We have then gone one step further, if you recall, which is that mulk on first examination is the outline of the solid form. In other words we have identified ‘out’ (or ard?)** with malakut and samawat with malakut but this is the primitive tawhid of the bedouin woman. We then realise that the whole cosmic reality including the air-because otherwise we will again end up worshipping the air, worshipping the subtle elements-is also form. Air is made of oxygen and nitrogen, so already it is form, just as running water is oxygen and hydrogen. The ocean is apparently limitless but in fact it has form, a distinct viscose silhouette, yet so does the air and so does the volatile fire that is somewhere and is not anywhere. And obviously with the earth as we have seen.

Therefore we avoid this by refining our understanding of it to its furthest limits and the scientist confirms to us that the air is form so we were on the right track before the scientist demonstrated it. We were on the right track from our Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, confirmed by the great awliya and salihun like Muhyiddin Ibn al-’Arabi. He was writing a tawhid for an age that was lying seven hundred years ahead of him because he we preparing people for the discovery that scientists were going to make about matter because the next thing would be that they would make people worship the power of matter. He prepared us for this because the vision of the ‘arif is beyond the knowledge of the constituencies, the nature, the identity of the underlying substance of stuff.

So we now reach this next stage of samawati wal-ard. By ard we mean all that is cosmic and by samawat we mean all that is ghayb, hidden, because properly speaking if we go to the sublime Qur’an, samawati is from asma’. So the heavens is a place of names, a place of meanings, and the earth is a place of sensory. “We have taught Adam all the names,” we have taught him the heavenly realities, we have given him a heavenly dimension in his ‘aql, that Allah asked him to identify and name. Language is between the two kingdoms of mulk and malakut, between the hidden and the visible. So asma’ is the realm of the samawat. So the samawat is the malakut in this higher knowldge. We have a creature who is between the visible world and the invisible world and that is why, right at the beginning of Qur’an, Allah says, “This book is for people who believe in the Unseen.” If you do not believe in the Unseen you are not going to break through to tawhid.

This elevates us up to a state of knowledge. You believe in the Unseen until you see it and then you do not have to believe in it. If you tell me, “There is someone I would like you to meet,” I believe in that person, I believe that they exist. The Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, confirmed the Ghayb and he is a trustworthy person and so you believe him. Once I have met so-and-so I do not have to believe in him, I have the evidence. Madness is when you do not believe yourself-you do not accept what you tell yourself, you cannot bear it, so you say you are someone else and split in two. This is a knowledge. You go from ‘Ilm al-Yaqin to ‘Ayn al-Yaqin. Allah says in Qur’an, “Do not say, ‘I am mumin,’ say, ‘I am muslim.’” Submit! Take the message! Believe in the Ghayb! When you have ‘Ayn al-Yaqin, do not brag, do not boast, because it is based on a subtle moral and spiritual quality. Do not say, “I am mumin, I have iman,” what is iman? Iman is trust. What is trust in? It is in the Books, the Messengers, the Angels-all the elements of the Unseen-the Balance, the Qudra of the destiny, the Last Day, the Garden and the Fire. In other words, malakut.

This brings us to the finest element of all of this which is that between mulk and malakut there is a division, a barzakh has been set up. The nature of a barzakh is that it has one face facing one way and one face facing the other way and yet it is really one and it is not really an existent. It is a non-existent simply by these two coming together but there has to be a barzakh. This barzakh between mulk and malakut is jabarut. Jabarut is from jabr. Allah is Al-Jabaru. This is the tremendous might of Allah. Jabr is what cannot be penetrated, it is like a wall that cannot be breached, it is that kind of power-impenetrable, unbreakable. So then, Qur’an comes into all its fullness because if you read Qur’an with awareness of the description of cosmology of existence, it just pours the information onto you, it floods you. You cannot open the Qur’an but that you will find it. If you open it ten times you will find it seven out of ten as it is so common to the basic news that the Book contains, and it is the secret of the realm of the jabarut, the realm of the lights. We have defined that it is the jabarut that sets up the outlines.

Let us take it again in the simple bedouin sense: between the man and the sky there is a silhouette, an outline, but he is that outline. One is dense and one is subtle. I see his outline by the air and I see the air by his outline. Between the visible and the invisible-between this man and outline, and the Unseen, there is a similar division. Between cosmos, man and sky, and heaven, and the ruh there is a similar outline. That is the mithal of that.

Now let us make it easier. In daytime the earth outlines between man and sky which we are now holding to as both being cosmos are visible. When night comes, sky and man have been gathered. So in another condition which is night, there is no difference. I cannot see the difference, I cannot even see them but they are there and they have been unified by the night. Let us take another example: a landscape with a house, trees, cattle, fences and roads-the snow falls and it all is unified. It is covered over and the outlines are gone, but it is all earth, so the snow had only made true what was true anyway. That is one condition in which all the separate things are gathered, and the night is a condition which makes all the separate things which are still there gathered, undifferentiated.

In malakut there is the same thing only it happens the other way around. In malakut it begins as a darkness, begins as snow, everything is unified, then the form emerges, the outline emerges. Let us take it further. On the earth we see darknesses by light. We see solid forms by the light of the sun, or an artificial sun. So by light you see darknesses. This is our condition on the earth. If you were to go into the depths of the ocean-and we shall take this as our mithal-at first it would be complete darkness. If you were a scuba diver you would at first distinguish absolutely nothing, but as you grow accustomed to this condition there are certain fish in the depths of the ocean that from within themselves have luminosity. Allah has given them an outline of light so that in their darkness they are lights. So you would begin to discern the lights of these creatures of the deep by their darkness. So in malakut, by being annihilated in the darkness of the attributes there begin to emerge the lights of the Essence, which are the subtle forms. From the lights, all the lights come to one light. Nuri Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

Make no misunderstanding and imagining that we are saying anything that would permit people to say that we are worshipping Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, him, and that we are making any claim for him. We are not making any claim for anyone except Allah. But we want a tawhid that will have the Rabb and marbu-the Lord and the lorded over, and not a tawhid that leaves us with an unexplained universe and an unexplained master of the universe, the human being. Otherwise we have set up the total existence as a god, or we will deviate and become pantheists which all the muslims try to say that the sufis are. ‘God is the cosmos.’ But by this delineation we are not saying so, how could it be so when we are saying that everything perishes except the face of Allah. Nor are we monist, we are not saying that there is only One and nothing exists and there is only Allah and that is the end of it, because we say that the final position of knowledge has to be two. It has to be the Lord with nothing associated with Him, and the dependent, utterly reliant, utterly helpless slave-cosmic slave in slave cosmos obeying His rules. We must remember that this is our final position that we must aim for.

To clarify this last confusion-because if we made a mistake about Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, we would then end up making the mistake about ourselves and our own identity-we go back to the statement that the essences of the things have no reality. Let us take the human creature. We have seen that the human creature has the core attributes: speech, hearing, sight, knowledge, will, power and life. These are the mother attributes, umm as-sifat, the source attributes. But we have also confirmed that these belong to Allah. They belong to Allah in perfection and in endless time, in the beyond time, and they belong to the creature in the in-time imperfectly and therefore with living. And also because they do not belong to him independence by dependence while they belong to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, with independence-He is not dependent on any thing or source for these energies.

Therefore this creature with these acts is this creature with His attributes. But attributes are impossible without His Essence. We are a cell-source from which these attributes come. They have to unify up to one source otherwise there would not be identity. Essence means ‘coming from’, attributed to this one or that one, so we attribute to an essence. This essence is not a reality, it does not exist. We have confirmed that there is only one Essence, Allah is One in His Essence, not multiple in His Essence. But Allah has created existence bil-Haqq, with the Truth. To explain this, to clarify this, the people of clear vision have created a technical vocabulary so that we can understand this and arrive at a position where we make sense of the universe and do not attribute specific and identifiable power and reality and divinity to the creature, and return all sublime elements to the Divine Creator-after all, everything in the universe indicates these spectacular attributes. We have to be very clear not to end up in shirk which is what unfortunately the modern muslims have allowed themselves to do, essentially because their political social shari’at behaviour is deeply involved in the shirk of worshipping petrol.

So a term has been created for the sources of the created beings and that is Ayan ath-thabita-the source-form, the source-outline. Ayan ath-thabita are the essences of the individual creatures, but it exists in description but not in reality. It exists from one point of view and not from another point of view. As Shaykh al-Akbar puts it, “If you say it exists, it exists, if you say it does not exist, it does not exist.” Then to make this clear, the people of unveiling take a very spectacular proof of demonstration-I say proof because it is a proof that there are signs in the self and on the horizon if you only knew-so they take from the horizon something that will explain the self. They let the one explain the other because these are two signs of one Lord. We will come back to this expression ‘the signs of the Lord’ inshallah.

They say that the source of the creature, the essence of the creature is like a mirror. If you think about the mirror, there is nothing in it, it is a barzakh, it is glass with silver and black on it. What happens is that if this mirror is placed before something it reflects it. In front of the light it reflects the light. In that sense it is a receptacle of the light but it is not the light. There is no fusion, no incarnation, no joining. It is not that and that is not this. Yet if you look there, you will say that there is light there, and this is that light. Equally you might say that in the eclipse if I look at the sun I will be blinded but if I look through the smoked glass I will not be blinded. So we say that I cannot look on the shamsul-haqiqat, I cannot look on the Essence but I can look on the Nuri Muhammad because its meaning is to filter this to allow it to be reflected. Or if you like, the Reality is a sun and Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is a moon. From the Divine the light issues, and this planet takes its reflected light from it. We are on the earth and we look up and we can see the moon. We can look at the moon but we cannot look at the sun. If we look at the moon we are seeing the light of the sun by the moon, but we are not saying that the moon is the sun. In fact, the moon is a bit of the earth.

So we will say something further: each mirror will show what it shows according to its shape and its density. One mirror will be very wide and clear and will show a wide, clear reflection. Another will show a long image, another will show a short image, another will show a curved image, another will show convex, another will show concave-in other words, according to the shape of the mirror there will be a different encapturing of this light, but reflected. That is the most that can be said about the essences of the individual creatures. But all the mirrors are taking from one light.

To change the metaphor: the sufis say ‘Many flowers from one water.’ The source is one, the manifestations are many. This is the way in which we encompass speaking about the final, uttermost limit of what may be said. This understanding the nature of this barzakh that makes this mirror this and that mirror that-because it is by barzakh that each mirror has its form-this is the limit to which the intellect can go, in knowing that between mulk and malakut the lights make the differences, outline the differences, outline the outlines. This is called the place of the sidrat al-muntahar. Sidrat al-muntahar is a desert plant of spikes which, when you see it against the horizon, breaks up the sky so that the sky is all outlines. Sidrat al-muntahar is all outlines, it is like a line drawing on a blank page. That is its silhouette. So arriving at sidrat al-muntahar is arriving at that place where the outlines emerge in the clarity and finality beyond which there is only obliteration. Sidrat al-muntahar also has a fruit and if you take it it creates ecstasy and yearning for the homeland. In other words it creates a drunkenness, it creates an intoxication and it creates a yearning for the homeland, and the homeland of the bani Adam is Alastu bi-Rabbikum-“Am I not your Lord?” The homeland of the bani Adam is the Dhar** which is referred to in the Qur’an, when you reach the ultimate abode, when you reach the last home, which is the vision of your Lord.

Then we go to the description in Qur’an of the highest gnostic experience which was Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam-his vision, his passing from his adamic, non-existent essence of reflected light to this barzakh reality of his own ma’nawiya, of his own meaning, of his own nur. He, therefore, had the gnosis that is the highest gnosis and Allah says a very significant thing in Qur’an: “He did not waver.” In other words, his ecstasy did not stop him having access to the knowledges that came from it. You see, a man can have a drunkeness that obliterates him so that he does not remember anything. We say that a drunkenness that has forgetfulness in it is not the same as a drunkenness that has remembering in it. So Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, did not waver. Allah says, “You certainly saw him on the furthest horizon.” So whom did he see? Whom did he see!

Surat an-Najm: “‘Indaha Jannatu ma’wa”-Near it is the Garden of Refuge. Allah says that the lote-tree, the sidrat al-muntahar was misted over, but his eye did not waver nor did he look away.” Then Allah says, “Laqad raa min ayati Rabbihil-kubra.” ‘He saw some of the Greatest Signs of his Lord.’ So we would say that this vision of the Essence-this is not Allah, because you can never, never say that this is Allah because we are agnostics and this is the secret of gnosis-indicates Him. So he saw the greatest sign of his Lord, and what is the greatest sign of his Lord? Himself. But not Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who is buried in Madina, or his identity, but his secret, his meaning.

So then we go from there to the core of the matter which is of course the famous Ayat an-Nur, the Sign of light. The greatest sign of the Lord. Allah says, “Allahu nuru samawati wal-ard.” Now we have explicated that in detail and we now take it in its highest meaning.

“The metaphor of His Light is that of a niche
in which there is a lamp, the lamp inside a glass,
the glass like a brilliant star, najm…”

I say najm to remind you of the surat we have just been looking at. Now here we have already that the secret is an enfolded secret. There is a niche, in it is a lamp and in the lamp there is a glass, and the glass itself is like a star. So this knowledge is a knowledge enfolded and enfolded. Allah’s light is like a niche, and if you like you could say that the niche is like the universe in which there is a lamp, which you could say is man, and then there is a glass which is like a star, which is his secret.

“…lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west,”

in other words it is a ruhani light. We have said that the niche we could say is the world, the lamp we have said is the person, the glass is the ruh and the light is the secret of the secret because that light is not lit from a olive tree from the east or the west, that light is a secret. If you consider the olive, the secret of the olive is that out of impossible material this extraordinary thing happens. From the driest, driest, driest tree on the driest, driest, driest land comes a fruit which is basically of no use unless you transform it from what it was into something else. Then to get its secret you have to crush it until there is nothing left of it and when you have obliterated it, then you get the oil. So this very secret is based on the obliteration of its sources in the physical and the intellectual world. Our meeting with him is based on our abandoning on what we have come from. Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, says in a famous hadith, “The search for the haqq is an exile.” So to reach this gnosis this crushing has to happen, this rejection of everything we possess has to happen to get to this oil, to this essence that is the light from which the light comes.

“…its oil all but giving off light even if no fire touches it.”

It is light in itself before the fire has even touched it. The human being’s secret is light before it is even ignited. Man is the khalif of Allah, if he only knew! “Truly man is in loss,” Qur’an says. Why is he is loss? Because he does not know his own secret. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radiyallahu ‘anhu, says in his Diwan, “Truly if a man knew the secret of his own heart he would never speak again, he would shed a tear with every breath he took.” It is already luminous before it is even lit and the gnosis lights it.

“Light upon Light.”

In other words, once this point is reached of illumination then it is Nurun ’ala Nur. Then all the effulgence of the lights of Allah manifest and, again, everything is turned around the other way-from the blinding illumination of the sun is the clear outline of the Nuri Muhammad. From the Nuri Muhammad all the attributes which were darknesses show their face, show their power, show their qualities-unveil them to the seeker. He sees the power of Allah in the witnessing of what he sees and in the amr of Allah in the creation of the universe, whether it is the chromosomes or the crystals or the stars.

“Allah guides to His Light whomever He wills…”

He guides them to this knowledge. He does not guide everybody so whomever denies it is denying Qur’an. If what they say is true, Allah is not guiding anybody because that is the claim of the people who deny the Ahl as-Sufiya. And here it says that Allah guides whom He wants to this ruhani knowledge that speaks of Nurun ‘ala Nur. If they are denying that man can be guided to this knowledge they are denying Qur’an.

“…and Allah makes metaphors for mankind…”

in other words Allah gives access to this knowledge. The mithal is to take you to the knowledge. What I am saying indicates for you the whole of the way. There only remains for you after this the khalwa. There only remains for you after this the tasting, the experience.

“…and Allah has knowledge of all things.”

That is the situation of the human being. That is why he is called khalif. And it is this tremendous power that has kept Islam alive for over fourteen hundred years despite the ignorance and darkness of people who claim to be ‘ulama in this day and age and despite the ignorance and darkness of the people who rule over the muslims when they are in clear, open shirk in the worship of powers that do not return authority to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi ad-Darqawi

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

The Arabic word ihsan, which begins the title of this talk, comes from the verb ahsana which means to act well, to do something expertly, to master something”, but although these meanings are indeed included in it, the word as it is used here comes from a well-known saying of the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in which he was asked to define the deen or life-practice he was sent to convey to mankind. He divided it into three parts: firstly Islam which he defined in terms of the five pillars, the actions every Muslim must perform; secondly Iman or faith which he defined in terms of the things every Muslim must believe; and thirdly Ihsan which he defined by saying, “It is to worship Allah as if you could see Him, for though you may not see Him, He crtainly sees you.” In other words Ihsan involves the bringing together of the other two aspects of the deen by a human being who is in a state of intense awareness of the presence of his Lord. Many great Sufis have said that this is sufism. Our master, Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, says as part of his definition of sufism, and therefore Ihsan, at the beginning of his book The Hundred Steps:

Sufism is the science of the journey to the King It is taking the ancient way, the primordial path of direct experience of the Real.

The sufi is universal. He has reduced and then eliminated the marks of selfhood to allow a clear view of the cosmic reality. He has rolled up the cosmos in its turn and obliterated it. He has gone beyond. The sufi has said “Allah” – until he has understood.

Something of the meaning of these words will unfold, Allah willing, during the course of this talk.

Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, the first shaykh of Shaykh Abdalqadir, says with reference to Ihsan in the long supplication which forms part of his wird, one of the central practices of the path we follow:

We ask for an Ihsan which will drive us into the presence of the unseen worlds and which will purify us from every kind of forgetfulness and defect.

This brings the matter right back to home to us sitting here in this zawiyya which is a place dedicated to making Ihsan a reality in the lives of those who use it. What is being talked about is not some theoretical construct but rather what is possible for us as human beings; what direction we are going to take in our own lives. The shaykh speaks here about the presence of unseen worlds and he also speaks about forgetfulness and defects, and this brings us immediately face to face with two very different paths we might follow in our lives. The word for human being in Arabic is insan. One meaning of this word is the pupil of the eye; another possibility is that it comes from the word which means to forget. So the word itself contains the two directions which a human being can take. One possibility is that we become completely engrossed in this world, forgetting that it is merely part of a much longer journey which started before we were born and will continue beyond our death. The other possibility open to us is that, like the pupil of the eye, we become a lens, except that whereas the pupil stands as the interface between the outer world of forms and the inner world of sense perception, the human being as a whole stands potentially as the conscious interface between this material world and the unseen world of spiritual realities.

So how does it come about that we hold this exalted position in the scheme of things? There are three sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, which together make up a complete description of the true nature of existence and of our place as human beings in it and which take us to the very root of our humanness and put us beyond all the evolutionary or historical definitions with which we have been so profoundly indoctrinated.

The first is: “Allah was and there was nothing with Him – and He is as He was.”

The second is Allah’s words on the tongue of His Messenger: “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known. So I created the creation in order to be known.”

And the third is Allah’s words conveyed by the Prophet: “The whole universe cannot contain Me but the heart of My believing servant contains Me.”

“Allah was and there was nothing with HimÉ” The current climate of opinion has turned the existence of God into a matter of philosophical speculation with the result that for most people, including many who consider themselves believers, the existence of God has been turned into a speculative hypothesis. How far we have come from the Truth! The existence of Allah is the most absolute certainty. Not, it is true, the distant, capricious, potentate God of misinterpreted scripture but Reality itself, that Oneness on Whom everything is totally and continually dependant for its being, but Who is Himself beyond need of anything – Oneness, not in the arithmetical sense of being the first of two or three but rather that absolute singularity the physicists talk of which does not permit the independent existence of anything else along side it. Everything else comes into existence and goes out of it again, begins and ends, is born and dies. Allah is before and after. There is no beginning to His firstness, no end to His lastness. Nothing is like Him or can be compared with Him nor is it possible to have any conception of what He is like.

“And He is as He was.” If this is the case how come we are sitting here now living on this planet which is part of the solar system in one of countless galaxies in a universe which seems to go on for ever? The answer to this question is that the absolute, majestic and overwhelming transcendence of the first tradition is conditioned by the second: “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known. So I created the creation in order to be known.” It was the desire for self-knowledge expressed in the depths of the Essence of the Divine Being that caused the process of creation and led to the unfolding of the many layers of existence and all the forms contained in them including ourselves and the universe we inhabit. And there is another tradition about the actual moment of creation which says that when Allah decreed that the creation should come into existence out of non-existence He grasped a handful of His light and said to it, “Be Muhammad!” And then from that light He created everything else in existence.

Now we have to be careful when we hear this that we do not dismiss it by considering it to be merely a figure of speech or a poetic metaphor. It is literally what happened. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib says in his Diwan at the beginning of the qasida entitled The Qualities of Muhammad:

Muhammad is the fountain-head of lights and darkness and
the source of their emergence from the presence of before-time.

So his light was the first of lights when He determined
the manifestation of His Names in the first world.

From him all things were clothed in their origination in being,
and their support comes from him without any interruption.

And this, of course, as it applies to the whole of existence also applies to our own universe and everything in it including our own emergence as human beings on the earth. I must repeat: be careful you do not take this as metaphor; it is a literal description of how things have come into existence. Taking the present state of the expanding universe and working backwards from it, cosmologists, both astronomers and quantum physicists, have come up with a more or less consistent picture of the first moments of the universe. They say that the universe developed from a singularity, an infinitely small, infinitely dense point emerging out of nothingness. It was a fireball, they say, and by that they mean, of course, not fire as we know it today, but rather a ball of pure energy. Its rate of expansion was incredibly fast as we understand time now but because in those early moments space and time were inextricably bound up together we can have no real idea of what the conditions were like within it. The important point for us in the present context is that the whole event in these very early stages can only be described as being made up of undifferentiated light.

So what has, through the aeons of expansion, turned into innumerable galaxies made up of stars and planets, a few of which are visible to us when we look up into the breathtaking beauty of the sky at night, was all present in a latent form in this literally fistful sized ball of light. Because of the inconceivable degree of chance necessary to bring about the conditions which made our emergence as sentient human beings on this planet a possibility, the scientists have developed a theory they call the anthropic principle. They say that if we make the simple assumption that human beings exist, all the principle qualities of the universe, all the natural laws, even all the physical constants, can be derived from this assumption. In other words what they are saying is that the whole universe exists only in order to give human beings somewhere to live, so that they, in turn, will be able to describe the universe. How little they understand!

In the 13th Century Shaykh Muhyi’d-din ibn al-’Arabi, whose family came from Murcia and who lived down the road in Seville, enunciated clearly what was in any case common knowledge among the Muslims: “In the universe it was man who was intended.” This was, of course, because they knew that the first impulse of creation took the form of the Muhammadan Light: in other words they understood that the whole purpose of existence was the coming into being of the perfect human form which became physically manifest in the succession of incorruptible Messengers and Prophets of Allah, may the peace of Allah be upon all of them, who reached their apogee and fulfilment with the advent of the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. That was the mirror in which the “Hidden Treasure” became known by revealing Himself to Himself in all His Majesty and Beauty.

Now we are approaching the subject matter of this talk: the gnostic knowledge of mankind; what Shaykh Abdalqadir referred to as the journey to the King. Knowledge of our universe forms part of it, but only a very small part. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib says in his Great Ode about the person making this journey:

He would see the planets and the secrets of their constellations
and the meaning of their tremendously rapid movement.

But this is entirely insignificant when compared with scale of the journey as a whole. He also says:

The veil of the tablet of forms would be lifted from his secret
and so the hidden sciences would emerge uncovered.

- Had the trees been the pens to write it and their ink
all of the surrounding seas, they would have dried up –

And he would visit the domain which is peopled by
the limitless array of innumerable angels,

And further:

He would freely roam around the Throne and the Footstool
which make the heavenly bodies appear like a small ring.

With reference to this last statement the great early gnostic Abu Yazid al-Bistami said when describing his own path to knowledge that as he rose through the seven heavens, the size of each of them in comparison with the succeeding one was like that of a ring thrown into a desert. Then he reached the Throne of Allah, which is the greatest of all created forms and he said of it that it disappeared into a corner of his heart. Are you now beginning to grasp what an extraordinary thing a human being is; what our possibilities really are? And the most extraordinary thing is that all this is just the preliminary stage. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib now goes on to say:

And, in his quest to purify the secret of his secret from every delay,
he finally stops at the door to the pure Presence.

This station of the People in the journey of their spirits
is the station of concealment and bewilderment.

After it comes knowledge – which may not be disseminated
except by the one who in vision has received a clear authority.

So the gnostic knowledge we are talking about only begins after this vast inner outer journey has been brought to its completion. Finally the Shaykh says, echoing the final hadith about the heart of the believer:

So there are signs in the self for any who ponders it
because all existence is contained in it.

In purification the self expands to contain the Real.
Now do not wonder and ask ‘How?’ or ‘Where?’ or ‘What?’

Now take the words of Shaykh Abdalqadir we quoted at the beginning:

He has reduced and then eliminated the marks of selfhood to allow a clear view of the cosmic reality. He has rolled up the cosmos in its turn and obliterated it. He has gone beyond.

Now perhaps these words can be seen in their true perspective. And he is one of those who not only have clear authority to impart what they know but are obliged to convey their knowledge in order to guide to other human beings to the path of Allah.

He says in The Hundred Steps about this ultimate human possibility, about gnosis itself:

Ma’rifa – gnosis

Gnosis is the knowledge on which all other knowledge rests. All knowledges are suppositional yet verifiable in the realm of contingency. This knowledge is real yet not demonstrable. Other knowledges do not, however, illuminate their knower, nor remove his anguish, nor give him judgement in every case, nor invest his presence with light and radiance. The man of knowledge remains in needs and creational dependence. The man of gnosis does not remain in any need except dependency on his Lord who gives him what he requires from creation. Other knowledges, being constructs without foundation, are baseless. Gnosis, the central knowledge, for it is knowledge of the self, is a proof to the one who knows it and this is its glory and its supremacy over all others. By it its possessor knows the Universe, how it is set up and its underlying laws in their action, their qualities and their essences. His knowledge of the Universe is his own self knowledge, while his knowledge of his own self is direct perception of his own original reality, his adamic identity. Everything he has comes from Allah. He never sees anything but he sees Allah in it, before it, after it. There is only Allah in his eyes as in his heart.

Whoever has gained this has gained the red sulphur. By it he can transform the hearts of those who come to him, for his presence alone is a guidance and a reminder. He guides to Allah by Allah.

And as Shaykh Abdalqadir makes clear in his book, this ultimate knowledge is in fact the beginning of another phase of endless unveilings in which, as he says, the secrets of love flow without end. And, looking at it from a slightly different angle, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib says about it in the qasida we have been looking at:

A man would not hesitate to spend all he had
– if he only recognised the secret of his own heart.

If a man could but grasp the bliss of his secret
he would shed a tear with every breath he breathed.

This has hopefully been enough to give us at least an idea of what Ihsan, the true birthright of the realised human being, entails. But, of course, for those in whose beings a chord has been struck, for those who feel a stirring in their hearts towards this highest human possibility, an idea is not enough; they will only be satisfied by the experience itself. But such ultimate fulfilment does not come cheap. The price is very high. Shaykh Abdalqadir alludes to it when he says, talking of the man who achieves the goal: “He has reduced and then eliminated the marks of selfhoodÉ” This is referring to path of the purification of the self which forms the necessary preliminary stages of the journey to the King. But for this too there is a necessary precondition and that is the basic act of submission which every human being must make and this brings us back to the hadith of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, about Islam, Iman and Ihsan with which we started.

Shaykh Abdalqadir says at the very beginning of The Hundred Steps:

‘There is no road to the realities except on the tongue of the shari’a,’ said Shaykh al-Akbar. The shari’a of Islam is the confirmation that there is no divinity but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. It is to pray five times daily the ritual prostrations. It is to fast the month of Ramadan. It is to pay the zakat tax of wealth. It is to take, if possible, the Hajj to the pure House of Allah and the plain of ‘Arafat. It is based on these and confirms that the one following the shari’a has elected to live within the broad moral parameters set down in the Qur’anic commands and according to the guidance within the sunna, the life pattern of Muhammad, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him.

So adopting the divinely ordained framework of Islam, becoming a Muslim, is the necessary first step for someone who wants to set out on this path of self-knowledge; it is the gateway which must be gone through to make the journey we have been talking about possible. But as the shaykh makes clear this does not involve saddling oneself with some arbitrarily imposed set of laws but is in itself just a further recognition of what it is to be a human being. He says that by becoming a Muslim and accepting Allah’s limits as conveyed to us by His final Messenger Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, we are simply recognising:

Éthat the human creature is limited, is in a body, and thus like all bodies in the physical world is subject to given laws. É(so the legal framework of Islam) is the self-chosen pattern of life one has adopted in order to deepen knowledge until one reaches one’s own source, one’s spring of life, to drink the water of illumination. It implies the recognition of biological laws that function at every level of existence.

The choice facing each human being is, therefore, very straightforward: either to go in through this door and follow the path of Allah and His Messengers which leads, in any case, to the pleasure of Allah and also opens the way to the glorious possibility of that gnostic knowledge we have been talking about here this afternoon, which is both the ultimate purpose and the complete fulfilment of human existence; or to fail to go through it and go one’s own way, following one’s own whims and desires, and by doing that to deny oneself the possibility of any permanent satisfaction or peace of mind and condemn oneself to an eternity of burning regret for having missed the chance. We have to go one way or the other. There is no third way. The choice is ours; the choice is yours.

By Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi

(From, “The Way of Muhammad”, Diwan Press, 1975, ASIN: B0000D74TC)

His name means the Praise Worthy.

Muhammad was forebearing, honest, just and chaste. His hand never touched the hand of a woman over whom he did not have rights. He was the most generous of men. Neither a dinar nor a dirham was left him in the evening. If anything remained and there was no one to give it to, night having fallen suddenly, he would not retire to his apartment until he was able to give this excess to whoever needed it. He was never asked for anything but that he gave it to the one who asked. He would prefer the seeker to himself and his family, and so often his store of grain for the year was used up before the end of the year. He patched his sandals and clothing, did household chores, and ate with his woman folk. He was shy and would not stare into people’s faces. He answered the invitation of the slaves and the free born, and he accepted presents even if they consisted of merely a draught of milk, while because of hunger he would at times tie two stones around his stomach.

He ate what was at hand, did not refrain from any permitted food. He did not eat reclining. He attended feasts, visited the sick, attended funerals, and walked among his enemies without a guard. He was the humblest of men, the most silent without being insolent, and the most eloquent without being lengthy. He was always joyful and never awed by the affairs of this world.

He rode a horse, a male camel, a mule, a donkey; he walked barefoot and bareheaded at different times. He loved perfumes and disliked foul smells. He sat and ate with the poor. He tyrannized nobody and accepted the excuse of the one who begged his pardon.

He joked but he only spoke the truth. He laughed but did not burst out laughing. He did not eat better food or wear better clothes than his servants.

The conduct of this perfect ruler was untaught. He could neither read nor write, he grew up with shepherds in an ignorant desert land, and was an orphan without father or mother. He refused to curse his enemy saying, “I was sent to forgive not to curse.” When asked to wish evil to anyone he blessed them instead.

If there was a bed, he slept on it. If not, he reclined on the earth. He was always the first to extend a greeting. In a handshake he was never the first one to release his hand. He preferred his guests over himself and would offer the cushion on which he reclined until it was accepted.

He called his companions by their surnames so as to show honour to them, and the children as to soften their hearts. One did not argue in his presence. He only spoke the truth. He was the most smiling and laughing of men in the presence of his companions, admiring what they said and mingling with them.

He never found fault with his food. If he was pleased with it, he ate it and if he disliked it, he left it. If he disliked it, he did not make it hateful to someone else. He ate what was in front of him on the plate, within his reach, eating with three fingers. He wiped the dish clean with his fingers saying, “The last morsel is very blessed.”

One of his companion said about him, “Of all men, he was the most generous, the most open hearted, the most truthful, the most fulfilling of promise, then gentlest of temper, and the noblest towards his family. Whoever saw him unexpectedly was awed by him, and whoever was his intimate loved him.”

He was sent to complete the noble qualities of character.

O Lord, bless the Chosen one with your perfect prayer of blessing. Your prayer is that which grants success in his business as befits his lofty worth. Then bless his noble family and glorious Companions and those who have followed them.

–
Read more here: http://bewley.virtualave.net/Way.html
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By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Sura 73

Al-Muzzammil – The Enwrapped

In the name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful

1 O you enwrapped in your clothing,

stay up at night, except a little,

2 half of it, or a little less,

3 or a little more,

and recite the Qur’an distinctly.

4 We will impose a weighty Word upon you.

5 Certainly rising at night has a stronger effect

and is more conducive to concentration.

6 In the daytime much of your time

is taken up by business matters.

7 Remember the Name of your Lord,

and devote yourself to Him completely.

8 Lord of the East and West.

There is no god but Him,

So take Him as your Guardian.

9 Be steadfast in the face of what they say

and cut yourself off from them -

but courteously.

10 Leave the deniers, who live a life of ease, to Me,

and put up with them a little longer.

The tafsir of this in Ibn Juzayy says about the beginning of this revelation that this is Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, directly addressing the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim. It refers to the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, being wrapped up in his cloak after the revelation of the Surah al-’Alaq, which was the first revelation, Iqra’. Allah commands him to stand in the night prayer. It also talks about reciting distinctly, tartil, the correct pronunciation of the Qur’an. Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, orders the Rasul in his recitation to recite the Qur’an distinctly. This is the order which we all obey in the recitation of Qur’an. What we take from this is that although Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is uniquely addressing the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, in this you have your true model of tasawwuf. Here is the true model of the Sufism of Islam in its correct condition. It cannot be argued because it is based on this profound Sunnah and these directions of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim.

It says:

7 Remember the Name of your Lord,

and devote yourself to Him completely.

8 Lord of the East and West.

There is no god but Him,

So take Him as your Guardian.

So right there you have the direction, that is, what is addressed to the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, and is taken by the muslims as a Sunnah of Rasul. It is taken by them and an order on them. In other words, everyone’s recitation of Qur’an comes from this ayat which says to recite the Qur’an in tartil, so that every letter is clear. But at the same time there is this image of the Rasul as muzzammil, as wrapped up. To the people of tasawwuf this represents the image, the silhouette, of the man who has turned from the world and everything to do with the world, and completely enclosed himself in this remembering of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

We go from these blessed ayats of Qur’an to the words of the Diwan of our blessed Shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radiya’llahu anhu, who is buried in Meknes, and who taught in Fez, Meknes and in the deserts and the cities of Algeria and Morocco at the opposite end of Africa from where we are now.

In The Lesser Qasida, he says:

In the tavern of the Presence we drank a wine

of the lights that totally dispelled the darkness.

Already the Shaykh is using a special language, and this language has been the language of the Sufis. It is the language of Burda and after all, connection with Burda and Muzzammil is obvious for all of us because the Burda is the cloak of Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim. Here where he says, “In the tavern of the Presence”, they use this language to explain to those who know this matter and who have taken on this matter which is tasawwuf. It is not a sentiment, it is not a club, it is not tariqa or Shaykh or wird or wazifa, it is something much deeper than that. It is the commitment of the faqir to have knowledge of his Lord. Knowledge of his Lord means Hadrat al-Rabbani, the presence of Lordship.

He calls this condition of calling upon Allah like the drinker is in the place of drinking and is drinking a wine that will intoxicate him. This is the language of the sufis, because this intoxication is the intoxication of love. This is the intoxication of longing, yearning, ‘ishq.

Through it we grasped…

Now he comes to tell you what he is given and what the one who wraps himself in his mantle like Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, is given in his portion, not in the portion of Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, because he is the first of the sons of Adam.

… that the act in every atom

is through its Creator who is worshipped everywhere.

He says that we are given a tawhid that is not intellectual, it is an understanding which brings everything into creation, is in every atom. He only has to say to a thing Kun fa-yakun and that act is one act which brings all things into creation, sustains all things in creation and takes them out of creation by their disintegration. This is the Power of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and it is through this light we grasp that the Act is in every atom through its Creator being worshipped everywhere.

We realised, we were given the reality of the fact, that Allah is

manifest in everything through His most Beautiful Names

and the secrets of power.

Because Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has said in Qur’an 2:114:

Both East and the West both belong to Allah,

so wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah.

Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.

The secrets of power are in Kun fa-yakun.

However, the states of existence are numerous,

and because of this great veils have fallen over wisdom,

And the Merciful has sent the flower of His creation

as a bringer of good news and a warner, a guide with inner sight.

If you wish to obtain the gift of happiness

then make him (the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim) the guide of your every thought and move.

Tell the impulses of the self: “Do not come with me.

Do not cut off my path to the Lord of creation.”

So he says, if you want this tranquillity, this serenity, you say, “Do not come with me.” Who do you say it to? You say it to your self, “You, do not come with me. Leave me be, stop nagging and pulling at me and making me anxious and making me concerned, leave me be.” Do not cut off my path to the Lord of creation. In other words, the one who cuts you off from the path to the Lord of creation is yourself. The faqir said to Rabi’a al-’Adawiya, the great woman saint of Basra, when she asked what was wrong with him, “I am waiting for a door to open.” She struck him. She said, “Who said it was shut?” So you cut yourself off from this great Presence of Lordship.

And then he gives you the advice, and he gives you the whole tariqa in these three words. He says:

Whoever has got dhikr, fikr and himma

will in every moment rise above otherness,

The otherness means thinking that there is other-than-Allah. Because there is no other-than-Allah in the truth. He will remember Hadrat al-Rabbani, the presence of Lordship. That the Lord is manifest in every atom. In The Greater Qasida of the Diwan the Shaykh says,

Take care – you cannot despise even the lowest atom.

Things have no existence except through their Lord.

O Living! O Eternal! Your own most eloquent proof!

These three things are: dhikr, fikr and himma. The dhikr is the invocation of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, by the tongue. The greatest dhikr is the Ism al-Mufrad. The single Name of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The greatest way of reciting the Ism al-Mufrad is the Ism al-’Adhim, which is the Name extended and expanded, Allaaaaaaaah, in the way that has come to us from Shaykh Shadhili, and from Moulay al-’Arabi al-Darqawi, and from Shaykh Mustafa al-’Alawi, radiya’llahu anhu, and from Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radiya’llahu anhu, of Meknes. The Ism al-Mufrad is saying it in the short way like the beat of the heart, Allah, Allah, Allah. That is said with the tasbih. This is the remembering and not letting yourself forget the Presence of Lordship. The Ism al-’Adhim is for deepening this experience by the recitation of the Name, Allaaaaaaah. This is the dhikr.

Fikr is reflection. Reflection is that in every matter you return it to Allah so that you do not see the world as having contradictions. So that when the contrary comes you see it is also from Allah. The Sufis say, Alhamdu lillahi ‘ala kulli hal. Praise belongs to Allah in every state. I give the example of a very great Sufi, Sidi Hamoud of Blida in Algeria. He was an old gentleman and I was present when they brought him the news that his two sons had been killed in a car crash. After they brought him the news there was a moment, and then he said, “Alhamdulillah!” People were shocked because they thought he was being pleased with it but what he meant was that in this situation too, I praise Allah. And it was something that everyone present was shattered by. It showed that he never for a moment forgot, and he put the matter to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

There was another example of that wisdom with one of our people. They had a new baby and while the woman was turned away there was this inexplicable suffocation and when she turned around the child was gone. The woman went into shock. There was with her a very learned ‘alima who took her and rushed her through to the washroom to do wudu. She was in shock, she had lost her new baby, but she made her do wudu, and said, “Come. Two raka’at.” There was no phoning police or doctors, the poor child was dead. She made her do the two raka’at with majesty. Afterwards, the mother said to me, “If it had not been for Hajja Khayriyya I could not have dealt with it at all. It was that that made me able to deal with it and understand it.” It was in the worst situation remembering Allah, Alhamdu lillahi ‘ala kulli hal. This is tasawwuf. Tasawwuf is not a club, it is not an allegiance to someone in a distant place. It is knowledge of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Dhikr, fikr, and the third thing, which he says which will make you forget otherness, that there is something other-than-Allah and that event is under Allah’s command, is himma. Himma means yearning. Himma means longing. That is the difference between the Sufi and the faqir. The faqir follows in the way of the Sufi but the Sufi longs for the presence of Lordship. He longs for the Beloved. There is in him awakened something that begins to come alive inside him. His heart comes alive. In the language of the Sufis, they would go to the Shaykh and they would say, “Construct me a heart.” Make it so it is functioning for what it was created which is to long for Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Imam Junayd, radiya’llahu anhu, said that Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, gathered before the creation of the world all of the spirits, all the arwah, and said, Qur’an 7:172:

Alastu bi-Rabbikum?

They said, “We testify that indeed You are!”

The Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim said, “Men are asleep and when they die they wake up.” The Sufis are those people among the fuqara’ who begin to wake up and who begin to remember from inside themselves, the cells remember an ancient covenant, an ancient contract, that they made before the creation of the world. Their ruh, when it was asked, Alastu bi-Rabbikum? said, “We testify that indeed You are.” That is the beginning of the end of something in the Sufi and something new begins which is always in motion. It is always in movement.

You will notice that the shuyukh all travel. They go here and then they go there. They are restless because this matter is never finished with them. They call people to Allah, and they guide people to Allah and they speak well of Allah in an age where people either do not speak about Him at all, and do not know about Him, or are frivolous about Him. So this himma becomes the more and more powerful dimension of the life of the Sufi. The evidence of himma is the same evidence that you find between the people who just like to take a drink and the people who become chronic drinkers in the world. Once they get a taste for the wine, they go to where the people who like wine are. They go to the tavern, they want to be with the other people drinking because this thing is so special that if you do not do it they have nothing to say to you. This is why the metaphor of the tavern and the wine is used because the people who love Allah want to be with the people who love Allah. If there is ever an evidence of the meaning of Hajj it is that because at the end of the day everyone on Hajj becomes a lover of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, everyone is Sufi on Hajj. Labbayk labbayk, Allahumma labbayk, it is himma, you are shouting in the street with a million people who are shouting Labbayk! What is that but that you have wakened up? You are in place with over a million people, and the Ka’aba. The first time you see it it is a little box, the next time you see it is a mountain. One time you see it, is solid, and the next time it is like a curtain in the wind. You do not know what is going on. You cannot get near the black stone and suddenly you are up against it and you are kissing it, you do not know how it happened, and you are gone again. So everyone is a lover of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Hajj unveils for you this state but this is the living state of the people who love Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

And he will attain gnosis beyond what he desires

and fast realise the secrets of existence.

What are the secrets of existence? To all people, everywhere, existence is a secret. They cannot make sense of it and they would say, “Well if I knew that I would know the numbers for the lottery. If I knew that I would know how to be rich.” They see the secret of existence as if it was to make life easy for them but the secrets of existence are the knowledges of the Power of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and the understanding that Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is in charge of everything. Therefore what happened is what Allah intends to happen. The secrets of existence reveal to you that He is the Doer, He is the Actor in every situation. This means that when you act you act by Him not by you.

Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says in Hadith Qudsi, “My slave approaches me by nawafil acts.” What are nawafil acts? Acts that are nafila, are acts that are unnecessary. They are extra. This is fard and then comes Sunnah and these extra things like the Duha prayer which is almost a secret prayer. It is not for other people, it is for you to do privately at that special time before the middle of the day. It is also like the night prayer is for Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The Sufis say the daytime is the time for the slave to serve his Master, that is five prayers a day. The night time is for the lover to be with the Beloved, and that is the prayer of the night because something else happens at night. Imam Junayd, the great Imam of the Sufis, was asked, “What did you get from all these years?” He said, “I think I got two raka’at under the stairs.” Hadrat al-Rabbani, the presence of Lordship.

He will see that separation is the pure Shari’a,

which, properly speaking, is the source of Haqiqa.

There is the whole thing. The Shari’a is based on separation, this is there, this is there, I am here, you are there – separate – in a world of separateness. Therefore if I steal, I get punished. If I kill, I get killed because separation makes distinctions and the world is based on distinctions. If you do that, that is the punishment. If you do that, that is the reward. If the inheritance is such, the Qadi says, “No, it does not go to you, it goes to the two sisters.” And so on and so on, this is separation. This is the world of business, this is the world of affairs, this is the world of the news on television. But the news on television itself, these events have to be seen from a position of Shari’a because also it must be understood that the Shari’a is the source of the Haqiqa, the reality of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. What does this mean?

Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib says in his qasida “Gifts of the Ism al-’Adhim”:

Love with the love of Allah and hate with His hate.

This is the Shari’a, so be aware of it, my friend!

Someone said to me, “You are anti-semitic.” I said, “No, I am not anti-semitic. Allah hates the jews, I love what Allah loves, I hate what He hates.” I am not going to gas them or kill them but you cannot make me love them because Allah hates them. Allah’s curse in on the jews. So you cannot make me love them because I am a muslim. You can do what you like with them but they can never be loved by the people who love Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

The Haqiqa is that in every situation you want what Allah wants. Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, said, “Allah wants something and you want something. What you want is not what Allah wants, but you must know that what Allah wants will certainly happen.” At the point that you say that, that is ma’rifa. Then you want. One of the great Sufis called it the giving up of the management of affairs. He did not mean that you went like a hindu and sat down and said reality is all fake, illusion, so I will just sit here and beg. No, because separation is the pure Shari’a.

What is the pure Shari’a? The Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim said to a man, “Please do not beg, wait a moment.” He asked someone to lend him so much money. The Prophet, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, borrowed the money and said, “Somebody sell me a brush.” They sold him a brush. He said, “There you are, these people need their courtyard swept and they will pay you. With some of the money you can pay me back for the brush, I will pay back the man, and you are employed.” That is Shari’a. But look, it is because Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, expects people to act. In acting know that what comes, comes from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

When Sayyida Maryam, who was beloved of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, was under the palm tree, He gave her one command. He said, “Shake the palm tree and the dates will come down.” And there was water flowing underneath it that she could drink. We knew a very blessed majdhub who was intoxicated with love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, Moulay Hasan, rahimahu’llah. Every day he would sit in his house and he crocheted two skull caps. When he finished them he would go out and sit in the mosque and sell the two caps. Then he would go back to his house and say, “I have been shaking the palm tree.” He got a few dirhams because people knew who he was and of course they gave him the money. He would feed up to forty people at his table every day. On these two caps he would feed these people and pour out gallons of tea and all from “shaking the palm tree.” This is an understanding of being in harmony with the Shari’a and yet understanding the Haqiqa.

This is why the Qur’an commands mankind to reflect

and brings a tawhid which eliminates any doubt.

A tawhid which eliminates doubt is a knowledge of the unity of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, in His command over everything, every atom, every leaf that falls. Everything is in the knowledge of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, from the beginning of time, from the creation of time itself, through the world to the end of time and the rolling up of the carpet of existence. This is the tawhid that has no doubt in it. The sceptic is the one who doubts, not existence, but himself. So when someone is sceptical to you, you must reject what they give to you because the thing they point to is not the thing they are sceptical about, they are not sure of themselves. They have the opposite of knowledge, they are ignorant. According to the Sufis the world is in front of you like a mirror. Abdalqadir al-Jilani said, “The world is before you like a mirror and I am not making a metaphor.” Before you like mirror, so when you look at the world it is giving you back, you. The sceptic says, “I am not sure about that.” He is not sure because he is not sure of the mercy of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The sceptical person can only lead to darkness. The muslim is never sceptical because this doubt exists only with a knowledge that is incomplete and the knowledge of tawhid that is complete is one which arrives at the point of knowing that the one at the centre is non-existent. That the only existent is Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

When Abu Yazid al-Bustami, radiya’llahu anhu, was in the khalwa in the cave and he heard a voice say, “Who is within?” He said, “Abu Yazid.” The voice said, “Then I cannot enter for where I am there cannot be two.” And then he passed out. Now that one has a tawhid because the self on which we base the separation and the obligation to obey the Shari’a of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, in itself has an intrinsic reality. It is a reality by the power of Allah, the secrets of the power of Allah, which has set the world and given us a Shari’a which is, what the ‘ulama used to call, “The ship of the Sunnah.” The ship of the Sunnah means that with following the Sunnah you can sail in the ship through all the rocks of contradictions of existence and events and not be smashed on the rocks.

That is why everything that has happened in Afghanistan is a demonstration that the people were not being taught Islam because they were led into a disaster, and there is no disaster for muslims, there is only victory. If you obey Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, you have victory. The Battle of Badr is the evidence of the majesty of Allah over the power of the kuffar. Of course after that it was not allowed to fight if you were outnumbered more than two to one. So you do not enter into disaster and suicide and ignorant things like that because it is done without fear of Allah. The result is chaos but it does not reflect on Islam, it does not reflect on muslims because the reality of Islam is not there. The Islam is with the people who obey Allah, who love Allah, and who create a life that is a better sort of life than the kuffar can possibly create. The event of being shahid is not the purpose of a Jihad. The purpose of Jihad is victory. The gift of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, on the ones fighting is that those fighting fi sabilillah and are killed are raised up shahid, but it is based on the victory. ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiya’llahu anhu, said, “When did you defeat the enemy?” They replied. “In the afternoon.” He asked, “When did you engage them?” They said, “At Dhuhr.” He said, “You mean that the enemy stood up to the muslims from Dhuhr to ‘Asr? You have made a bida’ on the religion!” This is Deen of Islam. If you obey Allah, you have success. If you board the ship of the Sunnah you are safe, you cannot go wrong.

The Merciful is only to be seen in manifestations like

the Throne, the Footstool, the Tablet, or the Lote-Tree.

The intellect cannot grasp the nature of the Attributes of the Lord

through unveiling, let alone realise what nature itself is.

So attack the attributes of the self and efface them, …

How do you efface the attributes of the self? Ism al-Mufrad – Allah, Allah, Allah…This is tasawwuf – Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah…

…and you will be helped by the lights of the eternal Attributes.

But what are the Attributes? The Mother Attributes are seeing, hearing, speech, life – hayyu – and power. These are the attributes of the self. This is when the Sufi becomes muzzammil, he wraps the cloak around himself reciting Allah, Allah, Allah, Allaaaaaaaah – And slowly but surely his sight will go, his hearing will go, his hayyu will go, he will stop breathing. All the attributes, the power will go and all that will remain will be the Name.

When I was in the khalwa with my second Shaykh, Shaykh al-Fayturi, rahimahu’llah, of Benghazi, Libya, he would come and ask what had happened. I told him, “I stopped doing the dhikr, I could not go on, but then I heard the dhikr.” And he said, “What a wonderful thing. There were you looking for the Name of Allah and there was the Name of Allah looking for you.”

Thus you will see lovers who have become intoxicated by the lights,

and the drunkest lover is the one who is given special licence.

There is no restriction on what those utterly overwhelmed

by Allah may reveal, or on the people of Idhn.

The people who have an Idhn, a permission can teach this matter and it can spread because they will not say things that are incorrect, that are a bad adab to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The ones who are intoxicated, we excuse them from saying what they say. We have to ignore what they say because it sounds as if they are against the Shari’a which is something shocking. One of the students of Imam Junayd, radiya’llahu anhu, in Baghdad used to enter states of intoxication where he would declare that he was the Divine. The ‘ulama wanted to arrest him because of this but the Shaykh would see the moment coming and he would have the man, Shibli , locked up in the insane asylum to that they could not touch him. He would say, “Quick get him off to the insane asylum,” and off they would take him. He would say all these things, which I will not repeat, by claiming godhood. But they would say, “He is mad,” so he was alright. But eventually he became so intoxicated when he was saying these things, that the ‘ulama, who really were jealous of Imam Junayd and wanted to get at him, had Shibli arrested and had him tried and he was condemned to death. They brought the death sentence to Imam Junayd to sign. Imam Junayd was in his zawiyya, in his muraqqa’, his patched robe, and he took off the robe of the Sufi and he lifted the robe of the Qadi, and he put it on and he wrote, “In the eyes of the Shari’a he is guilty, in the eyes of the Haqiqa, Allahu a’lam.” This was the fine point of this matter in those days when such things were a matter of life and death. Now nobody cares anymore about anything. So tasawwuf has to fight against people who want to sentimentalise it and make it cheap and popular and emotional. In those days it was a matter of life and death.

He says of these people who are utterly overwhelmed by Allah:

Here are ones who have obliterated their selves

and plumbed every depth in the oceans of love,

So submit to them for what you see of their ardent love,

and the raqs and the singing in their dhikr of the Beloved.

He said submit to the Hadra, Hayy Llah, Hayy Llah, Hayy Lllah, these are people who are intoxicated with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, who are in love with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, submit to them. Submit to their singing, La ilaha illa’llah, La ilaha illaíllah, La ilaha illa’llah. Submit to their dance, to Hadra.

If you had but tasted something of the meaning of our words,

you would already be experiencing every hal.

And, my brother, you would have borne your troubles patiently,

and you would have torn the robes of shame and self-importance,

You would have said to the leader of the Sufis, “Make us love His name!

There is no shame in that song, nor in that love!”

Unfortunately, whoever becomes subject to his own self

is cut off from the secrets of this path.

All of modern education, all of the message and philosophy of the cinema and television is telling people that they must become masters of their destiny, they must take charge. They must be like these people in the Olympics who race and win and they make this futile punch in the air. They get a golf ball into a hole and they punch the air as if it was a triumph. They are not in command of anything. They are in complete darkness and ignorance. He said, “Whoever becomes subject to his own self is cut off from the secrets of this path.”

Everything in the last hundred years in the world has been driven by the philosophy of the power of the will. All the great philosophy of the last century has been to take the will and to take command of it and will things to be. It has caused on the face of the earth the death of millions and millions of people, from Russia, Germany, South Africa, from the middle of Africa, people have been wiped out because they have tried to take command by the will. The will belongs to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. That is why Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, educating the Rasul, salla’llahu alayhi wa sallim, in being the Rasul of Allah, said, Do not say I will do a thing except you say “Insha’llah.” Now people say things like, “It will be dry tomorrow,” and then they say, “Insha’llah.” It is nothing to do with the mashi’a of Allah. The masha’llah is what will separate you from your action in case you think it is your mastery. I will do it insha’llah. That is where the masha’llah comes in. Not people saying insha’llah, insha’llah. It does not mean anything. That is not under the mashi’a of Allah, it is under the Qudra of Allah. Something is by the idhn of Allah, but I will do it insha’llah. We will meet tomorrow, insha’llah. In other words, before your activating anything, the will, that will in fact determine it, has determined it and will continue to determine it, which is the will of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, over the individual destinies of the human being.

The most hostile enemy of man is his self,

which hinders him from gaining the Haqiqa.

The most powerful enemy of man is his self. Which means that the only ones who could lead the muslims in action which Allah wants are ones who have already defeated their nafs and are in obedience to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Then they would not hold futile ideas such as that there is something called America, and that we can make war on it. There is no such thing as the United States of America. It does not exist. The people running it, you see, they could not run a bus. The world is not set up like that any more. So this futile idea that there is a real world in which you operate, has produced this disaster for people and has degraded the name of Islam throughout the world. The ones who have conquered fi sabilillah, and the ones who have done it fi sabilillah, like the Khalifs of Istanbul and the Moghul Emperors of the Sub-continent, they are the ones. On the night before a battle with the hindus a Moghul Emperor’s leading General left and went over to the Hindus. The Emperor withdrew into his tent and one of his Generals came after him and saw him making two raka’at. He said, “Your majesty, please do not despair, we are with you.” He said, “No, I am thanking Allah because if he had deserted us on the battlefield we would have lost. But Allah has made him leave now, and now we know who our men are. Now we will have victory.” He was fighting fi sabilillah so therefore it was not a setback. If he was a General just thinking about the logistics it was a disaster, but he was going fi sabilillah and he saw it as a gift from Allah to ensure his troops were safe and they would have the victory. This is the opposite of what we have been witnessing recently.

So become greater than the common people if you desire reunion with Him,

and do not be satisfied with a mere reputation of nobility.

O, the triumph of a people who have answered

the great call of the Beloved, and so obtained the Garden!

By that I mean both ‘Irfan in the presence of nearness

and gnosis, ma’rifa, of the garden of rivers, houris, and delights.

Let the one whose heart has become devoid and empty

of ‘Irfan in every thought weep over himself.

In other words, if the heart is not full of this knowledge all you can do is weep over yourself.

The joy of life without trouble, by my Lord,

is only found in the realisation of reunion.

Perhaps a glance will cure the sick man of his sickness,

for the perception of the essence of Haqiqa is mighty.

It is enough that the people who love Allah look on Him for that might be the thing that cures you. I give you proof of this with the man sitting next to me. He was with a few other men in the desert of Morocco and they got lost. In the desert overnight you can be dead from thirst. From nowhere they saw a motorcycle coming towards them. The young man on the motorcycle took them one by one back to his father’s house. He told them that his father had told him to go out to these people because they were lost. They said to his father, “This is an amazing coincidence.” And he said, “No, no, this is not a coincidence.” He said, “You are from Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib aren’t you?” They said , “Yes.” Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib was in the north of Morocco and they were in the southern-most desert of Morocco. He said, “Well now I am too. Five years ago I was in Zagora, which is the big market town, and there were masses of people for the day of the market. On the other side of the square I saw a very big car and sitting in the back was this old gentleman. Suddenly he opened the door of the car, he walked all the way across the square and came to me. He took my hand and said, ‘Assalamu alaikum, ya wali Allah.’ I became hot, I burst into a sweat, and the man turned and got back into the car and then the car vanished. I was agitated and I rushed around asking, ‘Who was that man? Who was that man in the car?’ They said to me, ‘That was a Darqawi Shaykh from Meknes, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib.’ I thought there must be a reason. Now, after all these years I looked out and saw you were going to die in the desert and realised you were fuqara of the Shaykh and my job was to save you.”

My best time is when I am characterised by humility,

incapacity, poverty, and negation of the will.

For these are the foundations of our perfect path.

So follow it and avoid reputation and self-importance.

Flee to the opposite of the Attributes of the Lord,

then by Allah’s favour, you will be the richest of creation.

His Attributes are encompassing knowledge, and power over everything,

and our attributes are ignorance and less power than a particle of dust.

If you desire to reach the goal of all the ‘Arifin,

then, O my companion, set out for it with himma.

Being a slave of Allah is sincere when it goes

along with giving the Lord what He wants at every moment.

By slavehood I mean tajrid, being stripped, from every power

and strength and any means, and even getting things for yourself.

Because in this way the heart is purified of blindness

and is filled with lights in every thought.

The song is over. Praise is due at the beginning and the end

for the gift of help from the Best of the Community.

May the blessings of Allah be upon him and his family,

and his Companions, the people in Allah’s care.

Its writer is known, I mean Muhammad ibn al-Habib,

who seeks perfect slavehood.

So convey a fragrance to it, O Master of Generosity,

from You that will spread the effulgence of Haqiqa over all creation.

Fatiha

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

The pleasure of life is only in the company of the fuqara. They are the sultans, the masters, the princes.

There is no higher company. As they are the least of men and make no claims, they are the elite and the two worlds are their property. With them is the Maqam al-Mahmud, for the Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, has said, ‘Look for me among the poor, for I was only sent among you because of them,’ and ‘Poverty is all my glory,’ and “Allah loves the poor.”

Therefore keep their company and have adab in their assemblies. Leave your portion behind you whenever they send you forward.

Keep their company – in this is half the science of knowledge. Our knowledge is not informational, it is transmitted. The company of the fuqara is like a developing fluid in which the murid is soaked, until by its properties, the self emerges and is recognised. As we see later in the poem, the imprinting of the image is due to being exposed to the light of the Shaykh.

Spiritual courtesy has three levels:

1) adab to Allah

2) adab to the Shaykh

3) adab to creation

Adab to Allah has three parts:

a) Performance of the obligatory

b) Nawafil (extra) acts of ‘ubudiyya – night prayers, recitation of Qur’an, wirds, wazifas, diwan, Asma’ al-Husna.

c) Muraqaba. The invocation of the Supreme Name with deep contemplation and stillness until the falling away of the attributes and the secret is revealed. The secret of muraqaba is mushahada (That is, the secret of watching is witnessing.)

Adab to the Shaykh has three parts:

a) Action. That is service without judgement.

b) State. Taste the states of the Shaykh in three conditions:

i) dhikr – follow him in concentration on his Lord.

ii) fikr – follow his exposition of the glories of his Lord.

iii) himma – follow him in his yearning for his Lord.

c) Station. Recall that his maqam is the ayat of YaSin:

‘And there came a man, running, from the furthest part of the city saying, “Follow the Messengers.”‘

Love of the Shaykh vanishes in love of the Messenger.
Love of the Messenger vanishes in love of Allah.

Adab to the fuqara has three parts:

a) This is contained in the last phrase of this line: ‘Leave your portion behind you whenever they send you forward.’

b) See their faults as your mirror in which you discover what is wrong with you.

c) When you look at the fuqara, see the Shaykh.

Seize the moment and always be present with them. Know that rida is bestowed on those who are present.

Do not think that learning comes only from the discourse. It comes in the ‘keeping company’. Keeping company is an intellectual activity. Discourse is an ecstatic activity. Sama’a is a serene activity. All three are the conditions of ‘being present’, This is the transformative process that we call alchemy.

Cling to silence unless you are questioned. Then say, ‘I have no knowledge’ and be concealed by ignorance.

Silence must not be to draw attention, but to ward off attention. Do not be afraid among the fuqara. No one should notice your silence. Your reticence is your victory, and by it your ignorance will rapidly be transformed into knowledge.

Do not look at fault unless you see a clear fault appear in you, but it is concealed.

The fuqara are flawless. When you see them as flawless you have become flawless. When you are flawless, you have reached your Shaykh.

‘You will not find any flaw in the creation of the Merciful.’

Until you can understand this to be true of the lovers of Allah, how will you grasp it among the people of suffering and the people of wrong action?

Lower your head and ask for forgiveness without cause. Stand apologising in just treatment.

No blame. This is the rule of the zawiyya and the maqam of the awliya. It is the station of the ‘the stranger will cast out the weaker’ and the defeat of hypocrisy (nifaq).

If a fault appears from you, then apologise and lift the face of your apology for what has flowed in you from you.

Do not cling to wrong action. Do not nurse any bad feeling. Let everything go. The fuqara must have hearts like children of whom the Messenger of Allah, blessings and the peace of Allah be upon him, said, ‘Allah loves them for three things.

One, they cry easily, Two, they hold no rancour. Three, if you take away a gold toy and give them a clay one it is the same for them.

Say, ‘Your insignificant slave is more entitled to your pardon. Act kindly in forgiveness and adhere to gentleness, O fuqara!’

The progress of the seeker lies in this verse. Here is the quick ascent and the victory over the nafs.

They are not entitled to condescension, and it is their practice. Fear neither overtaking nor harm from them.

Until you taste this ease in the company of the fuqara, you can never taste ease in your own company. Until you taste ease in your own company, you cannot reach the stage of entering the ahwal (states) of the Shaykh. Once you trust the fuqara you can trust yourself. When you trust yourself, you meet the shaykh at last, not as a guide or a teacher, or a leader, but as a light calling to a light.

Always be generous in singing the praises of the brothers in the senses and the meaning. Lower the eye if someone slips.

Praising the fuqara has expansion in it, and release, and freedom from fear, and the end of loneliness. It has compassion for the sick in it, patience with the old, and generosity with the young.

In it faqirat learn to honour their husbands and fuqara to be sweet to their wives. Lower the eye if someone slips. This is a high prophetic sunnah – covering the faults of the brothers. It is the effect of the dhikr of astaghfirullah. It is the cause of the dhikr – tabaraka’llah. From it comes the Shaykh’s love of the murid. The Shaykh rejoices in two things – when his murid is spoken against and when his murid refrains from speaking against.

Watch the Shaykh carefully in his states, perhaps a trace of his approval will be seen on you.

The Shaykh has three states in public.

i) Meeting. Like a host with his guests or a father with his children. Here all is hidden under the light of welcome, attention, news, and the exchange of courtesies. This is the most difficult ground for the new murid. Levity is for the nursery and where there is play there is no work.

ii) Guidance. When the Shaykh speaks to one person, take it as meant for you. The Shaykh conceals his serious admonition and hides his target both in reproach and in love. When the Shaykh speaks to you consider it is cross-roads – do not turn back on your path. If he is pleased with you, resolve to strengthen your purpose. If he is displeased, delight in his noticing it. When he speaks of Allah – take it in – all his words will become realities for you.

iii) Absence. When the Shaykh withdraws from the company inwardly during samaÔa or in a meeting, go with him. It was for this that you set out. It was for this that you et out. This draws you into the audience chamber of the heart.

‘Perhaps a trace of his approval will be seen on you.’

This is a light from Allah and without intermediary. The Shaykh does not ‘do’ anything. He recognises those Allah loves. This recognition has wisdom in it for him and for you. Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi of Fes, may Allah be merciful to him, said, ‘One glance from the Shaykh wipes out a thousand wrong actions.’ This is very difficult for the people of thought-forms to understand and easy for the people of states. This concerns the inner zone of the lubb, or core of the human self’s awareness. Its mithal is the sun’s rays. If you sit in the sun you become sunburned. If you sit with the Shaykh you become purified, later intoxicated, and finally annihilated. As the one who is first warmed, then burned, and at the end finally blinded by the rays of the sun. In this zone is the innermost reality and the secrets of ‘keeping company’.

Advance with seriousness and leap to serve him. Perhaps he will be pleased, and beware lest you become irritated.

Your service to the shaykh is a tremendous thing. Greater than it is his service to you. Wrong feelings against the Shaykh endanger the murid by confusion and the illusion that the nafs is other, and there is no other… Abu’l-’Abbas al-Mursi, Allah’s mercy be upon him, said, “The one who says, ‘why?’ to his Shaykh will never be happy.’ Never forget the contract with the Shaykh is to move you from ‘ilmi nafsika to ‘ilmi rabbika, from knowledge of yourself to knowledge of your Lord.

The pleasure of the Creator is in his pleasure and his obedience. He will be pleased with you. Beware of the one who leaves it.

There is no shirk here. It is the secret of the people of the path. Without a Shaykh a man cannot defeat his nafs. The more he fights himself the more powerful the elf becomes. Attention confirms the nafs. The activator of the nafs will be either outside or inside the nafs. If it is activated from inside, this is the work of Shaytan, the whisperer, who instigates wrong action. That is why, following the word of Moulay ‘Abdalqadir al-Jilani, the murid must make himself like the dead body in the hands of the washer in relations with the Shaykh. Abu Yazid, Allah’s mercy on these great awliya, said, ‘He who does not have a Shaykh as a master will have Shaytan as a master.’ This is why keeping company is a necessary condition of the path. How can the doctor heal the patient unless the patient is brought before him? At the heart of the matter, however, there is no rule over the murid. The murid must want what the Shaykh wants, in that is his cure. The murid is the one who has handed over his irada – his will – to the Shaykh in order to come quickly out of the fantasies of the khayal, (the faculty investing solid objects with their reality) and the kufr, the covering that is the self.

‘Fear Allah and He will give you discrimination.’

That means not by you but by Him. Then separation does not veil you from gatheredness and gatheredness does not veil you from separation.

Know that the path of the People is study, and the state of the one who claims it today is as you see.

The homeland of the People is ma’nawiyya. In this realm the bird of the secret flies freely into the open space of open space. The intellect must be trained to move in the realm of ishara, indication, that is the subtle zone of meanings arrived at by hints and coded signs, inaccessible by the lower faculty of reason. The faculty of ishara only emerges by the practice of dhikr, not by the practice of fikr. It in return is dependent on himma – constant yearning that increases and becomes more intense. There is no end to this except in the Beloved.

When will I see them, where will I see them? When will my ear hear some news of them?

Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi of Fes, may Allah be merciful to him, said, ‘If you have seen the fuqara, then you have seen Allah.’ Once some ignorant scholars denounced the fuqara for performing the hadra. They asked what happened when the fuqara danced. The reply was, ‘We see Allah.’ The scholars exclaimed that this was just as they had thought. It was shirk. ‘Why?’ asked the fuqara, ‘Do you see other-than-Allah?’

Who is mine and where will my like compete with them in wells about which I do not recognise impurity?

Once love of Allah becomes established in the heart, the faqir becomes a means of contemplation, and a place of meeting, and a cause of delight in the heart.

I love them and I treat them gently and I offer them my heart’s blood – especially a party of them.

Among the elite are the elect. Some are drunk, wandering, helpless, in love with the Majesty. Some are sober, still, powerful, in contemplation of the Beauty. Some are sober/drunk, still/moving – majesty does not veil them from beauty and beauty does not veil them from majesty. They are the people of perfection.

A people with noble qualities – Wherever they sit, a fragrance remains in the place after them.

This is baraka. Baraka is from the hadrat ar-Rabbani, the presence of Lordship. Whoever denies baraka, denies that Allah is the Living who does not die. To the muslim, baraka is at the Black Stone, in the Rawdah, on the Laylat al-Qadr. To the mumin, baraka is in the mosque, at the tombs of the awliya – without shirk or bidÔa for there is no need to do anything to experience it – and in the presence of the salihun. To the muhsin, baraka is in every tree and every stone and every flower and every face and every star. Tabaraka’llah.

Tasawwuf is guided by their character in the Paths. Excellent harmony is theirs, that delights my eye.

Sufism is not a coded doctrine. It is the acts and states of the men of Allah, the rijala’llah. It is dhawq. Taste for the people of state. Witnessing for the people of witnessings. Annihilation for the people of annihilation.

They are the people of my love and my lovers who are among those who trail the coat-tails of might in magnificence.

Love of the lovers is a tremendous thing. If you are present when they meet and express their love, Allah has given you a great overflowing (fadl). Their meeting takes place but is not witnessed. Their parting is witnessed but does not place. Their sole concern is the contemplation of the Beloved. This is the maqam of Ihsan.

May I be united with them in Allah, And my wrong action forgiven and pardoned in Him.

What a du’a and what a goal! This is the maqam of Ibrahim.

Then blessings be upon the Chosen, Sayyiduna Muhammad, the best of those who fulfilled and who vowed.

What a prayer and what a reward! This is the maqam of Islam. We thank Allah for the gift of Islam and it is enough for us.
Ameen.

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

The du’a of the Muslim is, “O Allah, keep me in change.” Keep me always changing because everything is changing and every day Allah is on a new creation.

You must be renewing and renewing yourself. You have to always be in change. You must remember that the company of the fuqara is the highest company. You must keep each other company. You must travel toother places where there are fuqara. You must sit with the fuqara in every place. You must be an example to them and take example from them when you meet people of quality. Seek the people of knowledge, seek the people of love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and the people of love of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. To take the adab of the great ones you have to sit with them, you have to sit with the people of knowledge. It is by your company that you are purified.

Tasawwuf is keeping company, then tasawwuf is listening, then tasawwuf is acting upon what you hear. There is only one enemy and that is your self. The nafs has nothing good in it. The worst of all things to the Sufis is the recognition of their own good qualities over and against that of other people – it is what sets them back and smashes them on the rocks of destiny. You must not look at your good qualities. You must consider them something that in themselves have been spoiled even by your being conscious of them. You do not look at your self.

You do not find fault with others, you find fault with your self.

You must look at your self and say, “What is wrong with it?” Harith al-Muhasibi went over his day, then went over his hours and then went over his minutes, then went over his breath until he had verified that it was pleasing to Allah, that it was acceptable to Allah. Two great `ulama met in Baghdad and they argued and fought with each other. At the end one of them said, “Let us meet tomorrow and discuss this matter further and the other one said, “No, let us meet tomorrow and make peace and forget all about it.”

This is the way of the Sufis – to begin again.

You must not be limited in your forgiveness of the faults of others but you must not have any measurement of any attention to yourself. Any consciousness of your self you must turn from. You must turn away from the nafs and the method of turning away from the nafs is not a psychological method, it is dhikrullah. (Surat ar-Ra’d, 28 ) “Only in the dhikr of Allah can the heart find peace.” You must do dhikr of Allah. You must remember Allah standing, sitting and reclining on your side. You must call upon Allah. You cannot afford to be out of the company of the people who love Allah for any amount of time in this age that we live in. You must be with the people who love Allah, you need them. You need the people of Allah because they will remindyou of Allah. You need the people of knowledge because you have to be strong in your Deen and you have to be correct in your Deen in an age where every mosque has a different way of going into sajda, let alone the higher things of the Deen. You must speak well of people and have a good opinion of people. You must become people of futuwwa, you must become these people who are spoken of because of the high aspiration, the high himma you have which is on a universal scale that when you go to the Ka’ba, with all the troubles that are there, you must look for the people of Allah there and sit with them. Beware of the people of dunya. Beware of the people of dunya until you are safe, and when you are safe it does not matter where you go. If you are not safe then you must be careful. You must have taqwa and you must have wara’. You must take care, take care, watch, until you are on Sirat al-Mustaqim because when things go wrong you have to remember that all you have got is then to turn to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Remember, even tawba is nothing to do with you – it is because Allah has decreed for you tawba because He wants you, so even that is not yours, it is not your good achievement.

Your asking forgiveness is not your good achievement, it is simply Allah claiming you and you recognising that He has claimed you. You belong to Allah. You have come from Allah and you are going to Allah. This is what you have to tell yourself. You must not be hypnotised by dunya.

Remember that Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, indicated that the small coin of the poor person is as dangerous as the gold of the rich, so you must be generous. To be generous is to follow the way of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. You must be generous, you must have a good opinion of other people, you must not say bad things about other people and if you do say them you must go back and clean it out and you must ask their forgiveness. If someone is totally against you and totally in the wrong then you have to forgive them and you have to forget it and you have to go back and put things right. This is how the Deen has always been. This is how these great men have lived in the past.

Just finally to remind you – look what has become of futuwwa – the elders of the organisation of people calling themselves al- Fatah are tying dynamite to youngsters’ bellies and shoving them out to blow themselves up, when the people who fought with Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, pushed the young people aside in order that they could go and fight fisabilillah, fight in the service of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. So the whole Deen has to start all over again.

You are the people who must start it and in this continent is where it will begin. It is from your people and from your children, but you must have an adab to them, you must treat them with courtesy. You must treat your children with courtesy, you must treat the young with courtesy just as you must treat the old with courtesy. You must become the people of adab and if you become the people of adab you will be safe. If you become people of adab you will be Sufis. At-Tariqa kulluha-adab. The Tariqa is nothing but adab, that is all it is – adab.

You must also have some respect for yourself. That respect for yourself is only manifest by the fact that all the people around you are at ease and in harmony with you and pleased that you are there. This is how you must be. You must be a blessing on the earth. You must be a baraka for everybody. You must be ones that when you enter a room it all lights up because of your love of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, your love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and because your tongue is supple with the name of Allah and not the matters of dunya. Dunya will not fail to happen. All its strategems and spoils will not fail to crash about your ears, they have always done it and they will continue to do it. When the People of the Cave came out, there they were again faced with the world and all its problems and all its difficulties, but Allah loves the people of tawhid and loves the people who love Him and this is the company, the company of the Sufis.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, that we prefer to go to the company of people who only want to go to Allah in preference to anyone who may do anything to help us and give us advantage in this world.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to make us ready for the tests that come so that we can respond to Him and remember to praise Him in every situation. Alhamdulillahi `ala kulli hal.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to bless this mosque and its imams and its guardians and that it continues to be a witness for Islam as it has been in the troubled times of the past.
Ameen.

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim

We have looked at the letter and we have looked at the word, now we will look at a phrase. This phrase is a Qur’anic phrase about which Ibn aI-’Arabi has written much. Everything he says is a confirmation, explanation and commentary on what is in the Qur’an al-Karim. The ayat of Qur’an is: “Everything is perishing except the face of Allah.”

There are different degrees of knowledge. There is the knowledge of the simple people, there is the knowledge of the chosen people and there is the knowledge of the elite of the chosen people. The highest knowledge confirms the lowest knowledge. This statement, “Everything perishes except the face of Allah” “continues: “And He is the Going On, oh Lord of Majesty and generous gifts.” All this spiritual knowledge of which we are about to speak should not, correctly, be examined at this stage. This is a medicine for you to give you the desire to arrive at the stage where you can use this knowledge and live in it. Modem man is so cut off from this knowledge – the materialists’ view of life does not supply intellectual answers and is in itself unscientific. It is against the evidence of experience.

Then modem man says, “I want spiritual knowledge.” In other words, ‘I am not interested in this outwardness, I want inward knowledge but I am not interested in all of these religions. These are all forms, and I want the essence. I want Allah and I will dispense with the Prophet, with Jesus, Buddha, this one and that one’, and because they have not got a path of teaching, these people end up in terrible disaster. Modem man is in the marshes! What a mess! If he goes to know spiritual knowledges without a guide he has to base it on himself, yet the only path since the beginning has been the dismantling of the self, the taking to pieces of the experiencing locus. You are the locus of these darknesses and turbulence, and what is desired is to dispel these clouds in order that the sun should shine.

These people do not arrive at a spiritual condition, they arrive at a kind of very high sickness like a fever because they have mistaken fine feelings and fine sensory sensations for the meanings. They never leave the realm of the sensory and so they do not enter the realm of the meanings. In America very often people would say to me, “I know what you are talking about. I am a mountain climber and I climb up the-great mountains in the Rockies and I look at the horizon and I am annihilated. I feel that I am nothing before this greatness of the Divine.” What he is saying however is that he has identified himself with the horizon, he has expanded his personality until he is a complete issue of The National Geographic! People say, “Ah, when I listen to Mozart”, and some very exalted people say that when they listen to Bach, “I feel this oneness that the mystics talk about”, but if you experience anything then there are two, so where then is unity? Where is the oneness of Allah?

From the beginning man has spoken about this difficult matter in terms of being blown out like a flame, being pulverised like a mountain, or being blown away like a cloud, and all have agreed that this recognition is based on your non-existence. Now we really begin because I have now connected what we were saying to what we started with. People want to take this knowledge and in taking it they have invented something and based their spiritual knowledge on their presence and not the presence of Allah.

We have taken this phrase, “Everything perishes except the face of Allah.” Everything perishes, everything is in annihilation – fana, except the face of Allah. It continues, “The Lord who is Dhul-jalali wal-ikram.” So to understand this deeply I have said that you must have a certain experience and that modem man wants to get somewhere without taking the journey. However, because he is trapped in materialism, if you told him to take the path of the great men of knowledge of the past, because they are rebels they would refuse, you have to show them something at the end, you just talk to them about the goal. They do not understand it but it is exciting, ravishing and intoxicating and so people say, “Yes, this is what I want.” If they are sincere, they set out on the path and as they go on the path they realise that they do not have this doctrine as experience so they have to go back to the beginning of the matter. What were the beginnings of the matter? They are what is visible with the outer eye: prayer, fasting, Zakat and the Hajj.

What they dismissed before as religion in the way of divine knowledge they realise is the vehicle to take them to discovery. We will very breath that is in you, this spirit that knows itself. Ibn al-’ Arabi calls this the mirror. You are the mirror and you are facing the world. While the world is facing you it is a mirror and it puts to you what is in front of you. What is before you is inside you without contradiction and without struggle for every moment of your existence. Your reality is before you. There are not two worlds, there is one world and that world is visible and invisible and light. What is before you in the visible world comes from the yearning of the living heart so nobody must be surprised at anything in the destiny since the pen, properly speaking, is in their own hands.

Man is creation. Moulay aI-’Arabi ad-Darqawi, the shaykh of our shuyukh, says, “If the cosmos was to disappear, do you think it is possible that you would not disappear also? When you disappear, does not the whole world disappear with you?” When you die it all goes with you. Your world is gone, and a world with you in it has gone. There is no longer a you/world – that dual vitality has disappeared. Let us look for a minute at this cosmos, still imagining for a moment that it is the thing we stand on, that we are like moon colonisers and have landed on this alien planet. Let us pretend that it is all outside us before we confront this difficult fact that we are just a tuft of the carpet that has been pulled out from the great design of the carpet.

We look up and we see the stars streaming through the sky and they are like a cosmic dust, and we look down and we see the dust of the atoms. What is above us and what is below us is basically the same. We do not know anything at this stage unless there is unveiling, but the opposites are such that if you go from the one thing to its opposite you will at the extreme of that opposite arrive back to what you left. Thus the materialists in their relentless search to prove the solidity of the stones beneath their feet have come back and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are very sorry. I am afraid it is nothing but space.” Nothing but space – the materialists have even said it! Properly speaking, the materialists are nearer to tawhid than the muslim ‘ulama. What the scientists have discovered with their instruments which cost a fortune and have left them stupid before their knowledge, was already known by Ibn aI-’Arabi and the Andalucian sufis without having spent a penny. They had better television because they could see in it whatever they required, and written in the great book of Ibn aI-’Arabi is everything that you find in high energy physics, atomic physics.

As you already know from school, if you go into a square inch of your flesh you will find a living population the size of the city of Madras. When you go in deeper that city begins to open out and as you go in further it expands out even more until you enter the sub-atomic world where you are basically an empty space. When you go into you there is nothing there, but I do not want to frighten you so we will forget about you – let us look at the stones. The principle is of binding: there is active energy around a nucleus so there is a kind of basic dust which by its polar energy holds itself together so that around that the protons and the neutrons can revolve. What you have is an agitation in a kind of ball. If that is looked into it all begins to disappear in more subtle forms. According to the structure of these atoms, this binding becomes closer and more powerful and more solid until this agitating mass takes on the character, when stood back from, of solidity.

Thus the stones under your feet seem solid but then planet has a structure, like that obnoxious story of the Little Prince standing on the planet. In fact you are standing on this thing and it also is bound by a series of inner energy processes, all of which are movement, all of which are whirling and involve tremendous speed. This tremendous speed becomes the stillness of the stone of the rock before you. Equally the planet, made up of all these, becomes like a great stone when in fact, when stood back from as you would look at a planet in the sky, it is spinning and is in an orbit and that orbit in turn is galactically whirling in an enormous motion. The speed is what solidifies in our experience but not, I am prepared to say, in reality. Something that seems to be there in place is not in place in any way that you can say that place exists, so cosmically we are in a very unusual situation.

Now we look at the creature on the rock. What is happening beneath his feet is happening in his own body. There is not only the streaming energy of the electrical currents of his body, which if interrupted he will become ill and which if cut off he will die, not only are there rivers running through his body, not only is there a whole inner geography in motion, not only is his body a processing system taking in energy and putting out energy, putting out waste and taking in raw energy but that we are powered by oxygen. If you look with your eyes at the air you see space, but remember that the oxygen on which you depend is itself a solidity, it is a gas. Nothing is what it seems to be!

Now we are going to take a step. Everything so far is basically your school education about physics and cosmology. Look at the strange reality we find ourselves in which is that you are in this cosmic sea! It is streaming; you are streaming, and you perceive that it is below you and that you are on it. This basic myth is the foundation of history, events, suffering and ignorance. The reality is not like this but how it is, is very strange. All of existence is here and at the same instant it is not here. It is not that everything is going in and out like a light blinking – if you blink a light very fast there is a point where it seems constant and the point at which it becomes constant is the point when it is changing at the speed of light. When you look at the star it seems to be there because its light is happening so quickly that you are getting a picture of a constant zone. Others with a different signal seem to be blinking, twinkling.

The truth of the matter is that the things that are here, are not here. They are not here, and then not here. They are ‘are not’ at the same time. At the point that they are ‘are not’ is itself the frontier which makes time. The somethingness of the’ is’ moment is time, and the frontier of the not-there is before-timeness, after-timeness, endless- timeness. This barrier is the secret of the divine power of the Creator and beyond this we cannot go with words. This is the truth of every living thing. What is the truth of the smallest grain of sand is the truth of the greatest star and is the truth of the whole cosmos. The truth of one thing is the truth of everything. Someone said to one of the great shaykhs of the Darqawi tariqa, “Tell me the greatest great Name of Allah!” And he said, “Show me the least thing in the whole universe, and I will show you the greatest great Name of Allah.

Al-Hayyu al-Qayyum – these are two names of Allah. The Hayyu is the Living and if you listen to it, “Hayy, Hayy, Hayy”, it is what you do in the hadra, it is the breath, it is life itself. What is life itself but the instant? You have no life except at this instant. The man or woman who came into this room has already moved atom by atom millions of miles in the revelation of the sub-structure of their body. Look at the feeble base on which we are held up! Ibn aI-’Arabi says, “Existence is a khayal” – an imagination, but that imagination is bil-Haqq, by the truth, by the real, it is it! And it is not it, that you can worship it, because it is not there that you should worship it, and it is there that you must worship its Creator. You are part of it so you do not exist that you should be a mushrik, yet you are there as a slave that you should recognise your source. It is your source, but you are its proof on itself to itself of its lordship.

He is the Lord of the world. Are you not one of his worlds? By you the world is seen. If you are not there, there is no world, there is no-one to see. He has made you and sees by you and you see by Him because your faculties are His. The ear is yours, the eye is yours – the property of the slave, but the seeing is His and the hearing is His. Why? Because the ear is sensory, the eye is sensory, but the seeing is meaning and the hearing is meaning, so there is this line between the visible and the invisible and this is the divine reality which sets up the forn and destroys the forn. Knowledge of it is the only knowledge. You are by it, it is not by you. You are dependent on these energies coming together in this whirling conflagration that is your brief life. He is independent, exalted above any connection with anyone or anything.

Everything is in annihilation except the face of Allah. What is the face of Allah? Here I must stop. I cannot say. If I were to say, you would not understand. That does not mean that there is another way that we can say it that, “That is it, but it is a secret”, because when you have the secret, if you give it, it is not a secret. What is this secret? It is your secret, meaning that this matter of the face of Allah must concern you more passionately, more deeply and more profoundly than any other matter in existence, because it is your source. It is that which remains when you perish. You are it. You belong to it. You are from it. Everything that you have, everything that you know, everything that you experience is by the lights of this face. It is like you have this enormous television set and all of it is based on its energy which makes it possible. The image is based on the source and the source is its energy, but for you to know that there is that energy it has to flood through all the parts of the machine and in every part of that machine that energy will set up processes which will create a picture which is how you are with Allah. He is the Hayyu, the Living. What is Al- Qayyum? Al-Qayyum is the opposite name. Al-Hayyu is the instant, and the Qayyum is the endless desert of eternity and the same truth. The instant and the endless time are not two things, they are one thing without thingness. This is the situation of the human being.

People of this knowledge cannot continue in the charade of pretending that they are here forever and that their private project is greater than the only meaningful act of the human being which is to glorify Allah. This glorification has a binding condition because this knowledge, as we said at the beginning, is based on your having a body and having a limited intellect. The binding condition is that you are permitted to glorify Allah on condition that you feed the hungry, that you look after the orphan, that you protect the widow and you give out of what you possess until generosity becomes your mark. Generosity is not by niyyat, generosity is in the hand. There is no time for the niyyat of generosity until you have niyyat to take the next breath that you take and such men do exist, who breathe knowing that the breath is from Allah. They account for every breath they take because it is nothing else than the breath of the Merciful.

We have touched on the first layer of the many layers of meaning in this great ayat, but you must remember another ayat of Qur’an which says: “If all the trees were the pens, and the seven oceans were the ink, and then one ocean more, they would be used up before they would be finished speaking of the glories of Allah.” This is the human situation, this is the cosmic situation, nothing exists except Allah, nothing happens except the glorification of the angels, and sometimes men consciously by their choice join with a conscious praise, the praise that they are, by their existing in the first place.

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

We want to look at the matter of tawhid so that you have a strong understanding of it, because this is the foundation of our Deen and it is the foundation of the tariqa of the people who desire knowledge of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Its declaration is found in Surat Ali Imran:

“Allah bears witness that there is no god but Him as do the angels and the people of knowledge upholding justice.” You see the significance of this — that this affirmation of the oneness of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is the thing confirmed by the angels and the people of knowledge upholding justice. So the people of knowledge, the evidence of their being people of knowledge is that they uphold justice. You can relate this to the age we live in when people who are called ‘ulama do not uphold justice, they do not speak. I once said that the evidence that a man is teaching the Deen properly at the Ka’ba is that he would not be able to proceed before he was arrested. Unless he is upholding justice, unless he is declaring what the correct behaviour of the human beings is who have accepted this Deen, then he is not one of the people who understand or know tawhid or are indeed teaching tawhid. “There is no god but Him, the Almighty, the All-Wise.” What the ‘ulama and the muhaqqiqun have indicated and taught about this is correct. Any other hal or maqam that flows from anything but this affirmation has flaws in it.

Part 1

Tawhid has three aspects. The first aspect of tawhid is that of the common people. It is founded on testimonies, the Shahada — Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadun- Rasulullah. The second aspect of tawhid is that of the elite, the khass, and it is founded on realities. It is founded on haqa’iq. In other words, the people of the elite are those people of knowledge who have had openings lillahi, from Allah — ‘Ilm al-Laduni, a knowledge that is directly from Allah, and this gives them a higher understanding of tawhid. These people are called the khass, the elite. The Sufis divide the people into three groups — the common people, the elite, and the elect of the elite. The third aspect of tawhid is that of the khass al-khass, the elect of the elite, and their knowledge is founded on Pre-existence. It is founded on that which was before existence came into being, on the pure, absolute reality of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. When Rasulullah was asked about what was before the creation of the universe he said, “Allah was, and there was nothing with Him,” and when Imam Junayd was asked about this he simply added, “Is, as He was.”

So the first aspect of tawhid of the common people is by Shahada, that there is no divinity except Allah and He is One without association. La sharikalah — nothing is associated with Him. The first aspect of tawhid is their knowledge and acceptance of Surat al-Ikhlas: “Qul: Huwallahu Ahad. Allahu Samad. Lam yalid wa lam yulad, wa lam yakun lahu kufuwan Ahad.” This is the primary and manifest unification. This is something that all the Muslims can confirm and once you have become a person of this, by it, shirk al-‘adham is forbidden. You cannot associate anything with Allah in any direct manner whatsoever. Nothing is associated with Him, and this is established once you have made this Shahada. By it the qibla is defined and ‘ibada is fard. In other words, once you have said this then you have accepted that there is one qibla and there is not any other qibla or many qiblas, and that no other qibla is accepted. Do not forget that when Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was given the qibla of the House of Allah in Makkah it was the going-beyond the religion of the jews and the christians. There is no way that anyone of Shahada can say, “Oh yes, these are all valid religions,” because the giving of the qibla was Allah’s evidence to the common people that the way Allah had accepted was different — otherwise the qibla would have remained the same as that of the jews and the Christians who look to Jerusalem. So this is from the Shahada. By it, blood is spared and possessions protected. In other words, by it the whole edifice of the shari’at falls into place. When you say, “Blood is spared,” it means the rules concerning legal judgments enter into action, meaning therefore that there is a mechanism within the shari’at to spare blood by pardon and by consent of the relatives and so on. Possessions are protected — all the rules of ownership come under this Shahada. All the rules of ownership that have been laid down in the Qur’an and by the Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and then continued by the ijma’ of the community, are now established. By it, Dar al-Islam is distinguished from Dar al-Harb. This is an extension of the divine distinction that places the qibla to be the House of Allah in Makkah over and against Jerusalem. Equally this distinguishes the zone of the Muslims as being Dar al-Islam and it is distinguished from Dar al-Harb, the land where you can make jihad.

The modernists have tried to cover this over but it is inescapable because it is a logical and necessary extension of recognising the supremacy of the qibla of the House of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, in Makkah. And by it, the jama’at is approved for the people. Once you have this Shahada then it is approved that the people of this Shahada gather in jama’at for Salat, that their lived community is jama’at and that the binding factor of that community is the worship of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Even if the common people do not confirm this correctly, in other words if they have not grasped all of it, nevertheless by ascertaining it they will be freed from uncertainty, perplexity and doubt through the sincerity of their Shahada. In other words, an intellectual grasp is not the important matter, but in doing it the sincerity of the one who says it is what matters. If they have got it right, their hearts will be right so that they do not have to have the same understanding as the learned people. The example of this was shown by the Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Some of the Sahaba became very agitated because they thought a bedouin woman was mushrik and they said to Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, “We do not think she is straight in her tawhid.” He said, “Bring her to me.” She came and he said to her, “Where is Allah?” Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was asking, “Where?” when he knew in his knowledge that Allah has no where-ness, rather he wanted to see what she would say. “Where is Allah?” She did not point to a tree or a stone, she pointed to the sky. Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, immediately understood that in her understanding, in her grasp this meant ‘no-where’. To her the sky was like nowhere. It did not have place, so he said, “It is alright. Leave her be, she is correct. She is Muslim.” He accepted that answer from her because she did not indicate a form and he left it at that. So what we are saying is that the sincerity of the Shahada will make up for failure in the intellect to grasp it completely. We are speaking of the unification of the common people. This unification of the common people is authenticated through the confirmation in the heart. This unification of the common people is also by repetition of Shahada. By confirmation of the Risala of Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and the works of Allah. In other words, as they live inside the community of Islam the people begin to confirm it by their recognising through the life of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and through things they are taught about him and by the behaviour of the community around them — what they approve and disapprove of — and they begin to strengthen this tawhid. And of course the works of Allah: when they see Allah’s creation and see what Allah does, the power of Allah over events, all these strengthen this Shahada. It is necessary after hearing it. It is discovered by viewing the truth, and it grows by confirmation. This is the first aspect of tawhid.

Part 2

The second aspect of tawhid is that of the elect, of the khass. It is different in the sense that it is confirmed by realities, by haqa’iq. This means that the one who is on the path of dhikr begins to have openings, begins to have gleams, flashes, illuminations that come into the heart and that help free the slave from being enmeshed in events and being enmeshed in the idea of some kind of absolute reality in existence rather than that the absolute reality stands over and against and beyond existence. It is by the iskat, the casting away of the asbab — it is by the casting away of the apparent causes. This is something you must now concentrate on. It is by casting away the apparent causes — in other words, you do not look at the creation just as the creation works. The creation works, on the face of it, by cause and effect, obviously. If the apple drops, it drops by gravity. If I move, I move because I have ordered the limb to move, and so on. We live in a world of cause and effect. We think, “If you do this, that happens,” and of course at a very low level this is absolutely true, as we experience life. If you boil water you get steam. But this is not how things are because in the realm of events Allah is the Creator of you and your actions. The best example is if you take the dog. You say, “The dog has been created by Allah,” but what is ‘dog’? Dog is not just a body. We know how a dog behaves, we know what it ‘is’. We know that it will be your friend and yet it will turn on you. We know that it can be trained to hunt. We know that it is dirty and that it leaves behind it its droppings with indifference, that it licks itself, it is unclean and it is also loyal. We know all this mixture of things about ‘dog.’ You cannot separate the dog from its dogginess. The dog and its actions are one, they are the same. The animal that you see is what it is by its complete pattern of existence. There are the high, wild and noble animals which live in families, they hunt together, they share, and then they compete for mates — there is a whole pattern that is not separable from the animal. What man has done because of his intelligence, his intellect, is that he has separated himself from the animals and thinks, “Ah, that is them, but not me. I am free because while the animals mate in a season, I can mate in any season,” and he begins to think he is independent and separate from his own actions. But the man is also the whole pattern of his actions. The understanding of this begins to affect the understanding of the destiny. This is why the du’a of the elect is, “Allah, give me an Iman that is lasting.” What does this mean? It means that when the vicissitudes of life come, when the difficulties of life come, let my Iman be able to deal with it and may I not lose that Iman, because I want to have an Iman that is still there at the end of the story because I have been destined by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to be one of those people who is with the ones who will gain the Garden.

This changes your view of action. You do not look at the cause and effect. You realise that in the whole process of existence, in the words of Imam al-Ghazali, there are actually no secondary causes. That really the thing is happening in another kind of way that at first we cannot grasp. A wonderful metaphor for this was given to me by the Raja of Mahmudabad, rahimahullah: “What does the ant know of the pattern of a Persian carpet?” It is as if the ant is crawling through a forest of trees of the carpet and does not know what the pattern is, but if we look at it we see that the ant is in fact moving through a completely structured and determined set of patterns of enormous complexity. That is the reality of the existence of that instance. But this is also true of us. The matter is as ‘Umar ibn al- Khattab said, “The book is written and it is shut.” It is done, it is over. Once you grasp this, then you behave differently. Fear of Allah is recognising His power in every instant. The difference between the kafir and the mumin is that the kafir thinks he is the operator. He thinks he is free to act, but we know that we are determined, and yet we still have to act. Already our kidneys will make us afraid at a certain moment. One of Shakespeare’s characters says, “I have no kidney for this fight.” So his cowardice is from his kidneys because his kidneys become frightened, and you have been given these kidneys and not other ones. Another man is brave because his kidneys are strong. The Muslims in the Osmanli army used to bind a cloth, the cummerbund, around their kidneys so that their kidneys would not let them down in the battle. So they used tight, tight binding around their middle so that they would be brave.

They were tuning in to the understanding that already it was not a matter of, “These men are coming and I am here and I am frightened,” it is a matter of, “Already my whole body has been determined to be able to act in a certain way. Allah has already designed me to lose my temper at a certain moment, so I do not want to be at the mercy of my temper. I want to do what is pleasing to Allah.” Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, guided people saying, “Anger is fire. Water puts out fire. If you feel anger coming on, do wudu.” In other words, stay among the people of knowledge and do not become one who is ignorant as the one who is ignorant is the one whose senses have dominated not just his intelligence, but also his heart because the heart becomes clouded over. This is why the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “There is an organ in the body that if you can guarantee it to me I can guarantee you the Janna,” and he put his hand on his heart. The heart is the vital organ of the Muslim and the intellect can become clouded over if the heart is not clear.

So the master of the whole affair is the heart, and the people of heart are not looking to secondary causes, they are looking to the Causer, who is the Actor. Allah is the Actor in every situation. This will change how you behave in every situation. Once you realise that this is His staging of events, events are His, then you will be among the knowers, you will act differently from the ones who do not know, who think they are the actors. So this goes to a very important matter. This tawhid is to go beyond intellectual debate. It is to go beyond dependence on the declaration of the Shahada. In this stage you do not depend on dalil, on argument or proof, you do not depend on sabab, on the causes, in order to have tawwakul. You do not depend on any wasila, on any means of rescue. You have put the whole matter in the hands of Allah. In the Diwan of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahullah, he says, “Make all your troubles one and hand them over to Allah,” subhanahu wa ta’ala.

You will view the precedence of Allah in His wisdom and knowledge. In other words, in every situation prior to event, Allah’s wisdom is there and Allah’s knowledge is there and you will tune to this. You will see how things are set in their place. You will see how things are relative to their moment. You will see how things are hidden under their pattern. Every thing and every person has a pattern and they are hidden under it. As I was just saying, the organs of the body also determine the actions. You see how these things are and how they are hidden under their patterns.

For example, the Shah of Iran in his heyday held a great pagan, pre-Islamic celebration in Iran and he gave all his guests golden lavatories, and he exalted them in the most vulgar way. When one saw that one said, “Now he is absolutely finished,” but they said, “Why? It is not possible! He has the CIA, he has the American support, he has the worst secret service in the world, Savak, he cannot be defeated.” “But he has gone too high, so he will be defeated when someone goes into sajda, because that is the opposite, and the thing will turn over.” So things are hidden in their form. That is what inspires the people of this spiritual quality to have wara’, to be careful. You want to be careful because you want that the form you are on is not one which is going to crash. That is why it is said that the true Sufi is like a black insect on a black stone in a room in the middle of the night — you do not even see him, because his carefulness, his wara’, his scrupulousness is his protection against the inexorability of the world’s actions. Thus you will realise causes, and at last you will step on the path of iskat. You will step onto the path of being able to cast away the viewing of new events. This is an extraordinary statement: “The casting away of new events.” The people who see new events think that the world is in command of itself, that things are being determined by other people’s actions whereas the reality is that the new event has no newness and there is no reality of events — Allah is the Actor. Allah is making it happen. So what looks like a victory is a defeat, and what looks like a defeat is a victory. When the Mongol armies came pouring down from Asia into the Subcontinent towards Europe, on the face of it, it was the greatest catastrophe possible. When Rumi’s father, who was a very great ‘alim, got to Baghdad he went to warn the people, but they did not listen. He told them this thing was happening. When the great Khan came and slaughtered these people, he mounted the mimbar and made his famous statement, “I am the scourge of Allah.” He did not say that he was the scourge against Allah, but, “I am the scourge of Allah.” He had the tawhid which they had lost! — because it was a punishment from Allah.

Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “The child is the hidden secret of the father,” and the grandchild of the Mongol leader became the first of the Muslim rulers who then dominated the whole world. All the Moghul inheritance came from his sons. So what had looked like a disaster had in fact, hidden in it, this tremendous event. Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi puts it another way, he says, “There is nothing in this world that is not a blessing for one person and a curse for somebody else.” He said, “The sultan dies and some of his family are executed and the others are mourning and they lose their positions, their palaces, and at the same time the new sultan comes and he gives amnesty and hundreds of prisoners are released from prison.” So the one event, for some it brings them low and for others it raises them up. This is the tawhid of the khass and it comes with fana’ and it is clarified by jam’. Jam’ is a very important word for the Sufis, and it means gatheredness. It is when the slave does not experience himself as separate and distinct, but where all existence is somehow gathered together in his experience, so his reality does not end with his limbs or his intellect. This knowledge will be one which attracts those who aspire to tawhid. In other words, the people of the elite are like the red sulphur. They draw to them those people who wish to have this same quality of knowledge. This understanding of tawhid is something that transmits, and the model of this is Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who poured out this knowledge onto the people around him, and it pours from the people of knowledge onto the ones who desire this knowledge. It is an alchemical process that transforms the hearts.

Part 3

The third aspect of tawhid is that of the elect of the elite, the khass al-khass. This is the tawhid that Allah has specified for Himself and has decreed as being that of His qadr. This is the aspect of tawhid which is that of His power over events. He has projected a gleam of it upon the asrar, the secrets of a number of His sincere friends. Allah has just given a glimpse of this tawhid that Allah has specified for Himself to some of His awliya, and He has made them mute so they cannot describe it, and He has made them powerless so they will not divulge it. The allusion made to this in the language of those who hint at it by reference to this strange matter about events being His doing — the casting away of new events — becomes the confirmation of Pre-existence. Allah was and there was nothing with Him, and it was Imam Junayd, the elect of the elite who then said, “Is, as He was.”This expression becomes a fault. The saying of it becomes a mistake. It becomes a blemish on it. Tawhid does not become complete until this in turn is cast away. This last is the qutb of allusions in the language of the masters of the Sufic tariqa — this abandoning of what has been given by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, casting everything out, knowing it cannot be said. They have robed it in ornaments of description, the Sufis have outlined it in chapters. The open explanations only increase its hiddenness, so getting it clear hides it more. Attributes, sifa, descriptions, only increase its reticence, expanding it only increases its difficulty. Those who are engaged in contemplation and the people of states are moving towards this aspect of the tawhid of the khass al-khass. Those who are awed by it, by Allah’s majesty, are intending to move to it. They are in the niyyat of moving to it.

Those who speak of ‘Ayn al-Jam’, the source of this gatheredness where the self becomes universal, are referring to it. Concerning it, allusion, ishara, collapses. Tongues cannot speak and expression cannot indicate, because tawhid is beyond what any created one could indicate about it, what time could encompass, and what any cause could cover. About it Abdullah al-Ansari, one of the great Hanbali Sufis wrote: “Ma wahada al-Wahida min wahid, idhkullu man wahadahu jahi. Tawhidu man yantiqu anmatihi ariyatun abtalahal wahid. Tawhidahu iyahu tawhidahu wa nattu man yanatuhu lahi.” “No-one can declare the unity of the Unique. Whoever declares His unity is a denier. The declaration of unity by anyone speaking from his description is shameful and nullified by the Unique. The declaration of His unity is for Him to declare, and the description of anyone describing Him is a heresy.” This is the poem of a lover of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, who will just not allow anything to be said about the matter. This is like a completion of his understanding which leaves him back among the common people saying with them in the jama’at, “Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadur-Rasulullah,” sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

Allahumma! Allah give us an Iman that is lasting. O Allah, give us knowledge throughout our life that draws us near to You. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to keep us among the company of the Salihun. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, for a taste of the company of the Salihun. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to keep us in the circles of knowledge, to keep us in the company of the people of knowledge. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to make us lovers of Him. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to give us a destiny which draws us always nearer to Him. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to give us a great expectation of His mercy and His light.

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

You must concentrate very hard. We are going to discuss and examine a subject that is one of the key terms of the Qur’an and therefore one of the key, crucial terms for the Sufis. On it everything revolves and you will see to what an extent this is true. This is the word ‘Hubb’ — love. Hubb is mentioned in the Qur’an and the Sunna as both the privilege of Allah and of the creatures. This is something which is given and which belongs to Allah, and it is also the privilege of created beings. Allah explicitly relates different categories of the loved ones, the mahbubun, and also the condition of those He does not love, and even those who are related to those He does not love. This is very important in the Qur’an. Allah is very specific about it and even categorises the conditions of it, the nature of it and defines it throughout the whole Qur’an. Allah orders His Messenger, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, to transmit to us this prescription.

A’udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim. We go to Surat Al ‘Imran, 3:31: “Say: if you love Allah, then follow me and Allah will love you and forgive you for your wrong actions. Allah is Ever-forgiving, Most Merciful.” “Then follow me,” — that is Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. So this is the divine contract with the muminun. Then we come to Surat al-Ma’ida, 5:54, where Allah begins to tell us what the nature of this contract is.

“You who have iman! If any of you renounce your Deen, Allah will bring forward a people whom He loves and who love Him — humble to the muminun, fierce to the kafirun, who do jihad in the way of Allah and do not fear the blame of any censurer.” So Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says: “Allah will bring forward a people whom He loves and who love Him,” — in other words, people who have held to the contract He has made, and he defines how such people would be — humble to the muminun and fierce to the kafirun. Of course what you find now, especially among the Arab peoples, is that they are humble to the kafirun and fierce to the muminun, but the people whom Allah loves are humble to the muminun and fierce to the kafirun, they do jihad in the way of Allah and do not fear the blame of any censurer. They do it just for Allah and in the way of Allah, in obedience to how war is to be fought as has been defined by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Allah speaks openly of those He loves and we will look at five in a very interesting series of definitions in which we find out who these people are. Look at Surat al-Baqara, 2:222: “Allah loves those who turn back from wrong-doing and He loves those who purify themselves.” It also means that the love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, can take someone in the middle of their life, it can take someone at the very last breath of their life if they turn back from wrong-doing. And He loves those who purify themselves, who are clean, and then do the Salat, who worship Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Purification has two dimensions in Islam: one is the purification of water. Then, as Imam Junayd said, “Purify yourselves with the water of the Unseen” — that is, an inward purification which accompanies the purification of the limbs. That is why, from the moment you start wudu, there must be no conversation. Ignore what you see in the mosques, especially among the Arabs, so many of whom have lost the Deen. Wudu is an ‘ibada which takes an equal importance alongside the Salat because there is no Salat without the wudu. Wudu is part of the Salat. When you start the wudu you do not speak to anyone until you have completed the wudu which is part of your ‘ibada which then takes you to the Salat. The next ayat is in Surat Al ‘Imran, 3:159. “Allah loves those who trust in Him.” Tawakkilin — the people of tawakkul, the people who have trust in Him. The people who have trust in Allah, Allah loves them. This is to be among the beloved of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. It is not that you trust in Allah as if it were something thrown out into the void — in the act of your trusting Allah, you are encompassed in the love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. This is the contract with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Now we look at Surat Al ‘Imran, 3:146. It is very interesting because a lot of these definitions come in these surats, Al ‘Imran and Al-Baqara, these foundational, explanatory surats, you might say, of the Deen. This is considered necessary to the understanding of the Deen of Islam. “Allah loves the steadfast.” Now we go back to Surat al-Baqara, 2:195. “Do good, Allah loves the good-doers.” This is the command to enter into the company of the ones whom Allah loves. “Do good, and Allah loves the ones who do good.” The Muhsin is the standard, it is the definition of the one who is on the Sirat al-Mustaqim. You have got to do good — you enter a situation and you bring the good with you. We will see in a moment the importance of this and also what it means, so that your tawhid is not complete until you have grasped what this contract of love is with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Now Surat as-Saff, 61:4. This is a very important ayat for the age we live in. Allah tells us something again unexpected. “Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranks like well-built walls.” Fight means fight — it does not mean some interior thing about the nafs. Qatala is to cut, to fight, it is the sword, battle. Allah loves those who fight in His way and the sabil of Allah is according to what has been clearly defined by Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Fighting in the way of Allah is not the same as fighting to defend your home, which you are entitled to do, and it is not the same as fighting just because you are attacked. Fighting fisabilillah, in the way of Allah, is fighting because you have raised high the banner of Islam. This is what fighting in the way of Allah means, and it means that you fight in ranks like well-built walls. In other words, it is not individuals taking on the enemy, it is that the way of Allah is with leadership and the leader leads from the front. He leads the way the Rasul led, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, the way the great rulers of the Moghuls and the Osmanli led their men into battle. What we are witnessing today cannot be connected to this ayat. There must be leadership. His head must be above the shoulders of everyone and he must have raised high the banner of Islam which means he is coming with the confirmation of unity, the completion of the messengership of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam — he is coming with Salat, he is coming with Sawm, he is coming with Zakat and he is guaranteeing the Hajj — that is the way of Allah and nothing else will do. These are the people Allah loves. It is important that you understand this. When Allah refuses to love those who are disapproved of because of certain characteristics, He makes it clear that they must disappear only and necessarily by the appearance of their opposite. Thus there is not a dualism of good and evil in the universe, but a dynamic reality governed by love. This is very important because, again, in the deviations of the modern world, you hear many people using the terms of the Haqq and the Batil as if there were some kind of duel between the haqq and the batil. This is from the language of the modernists and is an outrage against Islam. Allah makes very clear, as you can see in the ayats that follow, how His rule of love is put into action and that there is not a dualism of good and evil because Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says: “When the truth comes, the lie has to vanish.” So there can be no way that it can confront it. We are going to come upon what exactly the process is that nevertheless creates a conflict among men that will divide the people who are loved by Allah and the people whom Allah does not love.

Now we are looking at those whom Allah does not love. We will look at six ayats that explain this and the first is Surat al-Ma’ida, 5:64. “They rush about the earth corrupting it and Allah does not love the corrupters.” This is a very important term because now we have the definition of those people whom Allah does not love — the people of fasad, the mufsidin — the people who actively corrupt, and not only that but they are busy with corruption. You are getting used to opening the Qur’an and moving around in it. This is how you learn. It is not this book which is shut and brought out for deaths. You live by it. Now we look at Surat al- An’am, 6:141. “He does not love the profligate.” Then strengthening this, we get a clear definition in Surat ar-Rum, 30:45. “He certainly does not love the kafirun.” Tough luck on them! There is no way that we can join with them and say that we have unity with them. Whatever they say about this group or that group and whatever names they give them, the muminun know that these people are not loved. Whatever wrong among our own community there may be now, the truth is Allah does not love these other people so they are finished. Allah certainly does not love the kafirun. They want us to go to the other extreme and take out all these ayats of Qur’an so that we all have tolérance of each other. But this is not possible — Allah does not love them! We did not do it — there is no use us trying to love them, because Allah does not love them. “Innahu la yuhibbul-kafirin,” — that is the truth.

Surat an-Nisa’, 4:148. Another personal aspect of the intimacy of Allah’s dislike is that it affects individuals, not just bodies of people. “Allah does not love evil words being voiced out loud except in the case of someone who has been wronged.” In other words, the one who does this is outside the love of Allah, they cannot enter into this fortress of divine protection. If someone has been wronged then you have to tell something dreadful in order to protect them. That is why the presence of an active shari’at is necessary, because you should not denounce anybody unless the protection is complete — they can be protected by the ‘amr of the ruler. But there is not any shari’at. In this appalling situation in Nigeria where these imams who think that they run things — and our Islam is not about imams, we are not shi’a and our imams do not run things — they find a woman and say that she has committed adultery but none of it fits anything of how these matters are arrived at. They pass sentences of execution, and because the ‘amr is not there all the Muslims are disgraced and then they say how bad we are.

The reason that happens is because the judge makes a judgment without an amir. When the qadi gives the judgment the amir says, “Carry out the qadi’s orders,” and then it is complete. When it is complete a totally different social order is established, but if you have a qadi saying, “This person is an adulterer. Execute them. Stone them,” and there is no amir to complete the process, then the whole edifice of Islamic law collapses. Allah says in Qur’an: “Enter Islam kafah” — completely. You have to take the whole thing. You cannot not have the ‘amr, and this is the responsibility we have to recover in our lifetimes, inshallah. “Allah does not love evil words being voiced out loud except in the case of someone who has been wronged.” We have to create a framework where that can happen. If you voice against someone who has been wronged and there is no judgment and there is no punishment then you have slandered them. You have to come before the qadis with your proofs and a judgment has to be given. Then you can speak out about these things. But the one who says, “He drinks,” or this or that — he is just a slanderer because the process has not been completed. But for the one who has been wronged, that voicing of what is wrong has to be accomplished. This is the rahma, this is the mercy of the shari’at.

Now we look at Surat al-Baqara, 2:190. This is again very relevant to the time we live in, as are many things that you will find as you open the Qur’an. “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight you but do not go beyond the limits. Allah does not love those who go beyond the limits.” Part of everything we are seeing now in this time is people fighting beyond the limits. They do no know that there are rules. Allah has set down rules about fighting. Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, has set down detailed rules about fighting and we cannot go beyond these limits. When you hear this Indonesian saying, “Oh, I’m sorry that in blowing up these people in Bali I killed eighty one Muslims — it was collateral damage,” this is nothing to do with Islam. Killing eighty one Muslims is collateral damage? This is the language of the kuffar. I cannot find ‘collateral damage’ in Qur’an. “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight you but do not go beyond the limits. Allah does not love those who go beyond the limits.” In other words, if you fight with a total nihilistic obliteration of people then Allah has put you outside this protected fortress of the ones He loves. The sixth ayat is in Surat Al ‘Imran, 3:32. This, in a way, completes the whole set of ayats we have been looking at. “Say: obey Allah and the Messenger.” This is one of the most important ayats in the Qur’an. “Say: obey Allah and the Messenger:” these two are put together. There is no way you obey Allah if you do not obey the Messenger. “Say: obey Allah and the Messenger. Then if they do turn away, Allah does not love the kafirun.” There is no doubt about this, that Allah has placed His love with the muminun and He does not love the kafirun. The sign of the people who are in His protection of love is that they obey Allah and the Messenger.

What we find from this is very interesting. We find the presence of the Salih is the end of fasad and its way. This is why good is not fighting evil. It is the arrival of the Salih which brings about the defeat and the vanishing of the people of fasad, of the mufsidin. The mufsidin are cast out by the presence and the reality of the Salih. There is no way in which any war against the kuffar is to be seen in terms of the logistics of either dead bodies or destruction. It is the presence of the salihun, it is the reality of the salihun that brings the victory to the Muslims. Sayyiduna ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, radiyallahu ‘anhu, finished the enemy and Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said about him, “O ‘Umar, I could go with you into any valley because shaytan would never follow you.” So the arrival of ‘Umar ibn al- Khattab was the defeat of the shayatin. The creation and the advancement and the leadership of the salihun is what destroys the people of fasad.

We find out from Allah’s explaining about love, that a process is taking place all the time in the world but it is not something the outcome of which is uncertain, it is not good fighting evil in some dualism, there is no dualism, this is tawhid. Allah is in charge. Allah cares for us, and Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, cares for us as we know from Surat at-Tawba: “A Messenger has come to you from among yourselves. Your suffering is distressing to him; he is deeply concerned for you; he is gentle and merciful to the muminun.” Allah has shown us how this love spills out into all the process of living. Look at Surat al-Hujurat, 49:7. “Allah has given you love of iman and made it pleasing to your hearts.” This is how the dynamic of Allah’s love manifests among the creatures. Iman is belief in Allah, His Books, His Messengers, His Angels, the Last Day, the Balance and the Decree. So Allah has given us love of these unseen truths and realities — Allah has given us love of iman and made it pleasing to our hearts. Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, indicated that taking pleasure in wudu is a sign of iman — his pleasure in the act of wudu was the indication of this inner quality.

Now we go to Surat ar-Rum, 30:21. This, again, is about Allah’s outpouring in all the processes of life. “He created spouses for you of your own kind so that you might find tranquillity in them, and He has placed affection and compassion between you.” So this gift of Allah to the couple is part of this transaction of this kingdom of love which is Allah’s domain of the muminun. Mawada and Rahma are two dimensions of love — the Sufis say that mawada is the beginning of love which then becomes richer and becomes love. Rahma is mercy and if mercy is in the heart then that heart is predisposed to love, because it is the motor of love. Now we go to Surat al-Mumtahana, 60:1, “O you who have iman, do not take My enemy as friends showing love for them, when they have rejected the truth that has come to you.” So if you express love to those whom Allah has forbidden from this circle of love, everything is lost. Do not do this when they have rejected the truth that has come to the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. That is against the contract of love with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, that He has made with the muminun. “O you who have iman, do not take My enemy as friends, as awliya,” because to us the term ‘awliya’ is used for the ones who love Allah and whom Allah loves. Wilayat is something pure and exalted and to degrade it by saying that the kuffar have wilayat is a betrayal of the contract with Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

So it follows from these blessed ayats that Allah has created us for Him alone and not for ourselves. This is what we find out from these ayats — that we were not created for ourselves. For this reason, retribution is tied to the acts that we do for ourselves and not for Him. For the acts that we do for ourselves, there is a price to pay. Our ‘ibada is for Him and not for us, even though the worship is not the act itself. The outward behaviour of the created beings belongs to Him, for He remains the Agent. He is the Agent of action. The perfection of acts is returned to Him because everything comes from Him. So when the act of ‘ibada is perfect, it is actually His. It is not for us and it is not ours. This is Allah’s Hadrat ar-Rabbani, and this is what is happening in all the acts of worship.

Look at Surat ash-Shams, 91:7: “And the self and what proportions it, and inspires it with depravity or taqwa.” This takes us into the secret of tawhid, into the secret of the Qadr, of the seal of the destiny. Allah puts some people on a path of depravity and some people on a path of taqwa. The difference between the people of depravity and the people of taqwa is a matter of knowledge. The difference between the two parties is not that one is doing wrong acts that are not pleasing to Allah and the other is doing good actions that are pleasing to Allah, the difference is that the ones who have taqwa know that the whole process comes from Allah. The whole thing is in Allah’s hands. This changes the people of taqwa. The difference is not their displeasing acts and their good acts but that the people of taqwa know that the whole process is decreed and determined by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. This is the point. This is how love flows to those people and it is that love which is knowledge. “Fear Allah and He will give you knowledge.” Then that knowledge is the receptivity of the love flowing from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, on His slave. It is further confirmed in Surat As-Saffat, 37:96: “Allah created both you and what you do.” The person and the actions cannot be separated. You cannot separate dogginess from the dog. You cannot understand a dog as just a creature with four legs and a tail. Dog is also the one which is faithful, the one which will turn on you, the one which can be used to hunt, the one which is dirty, the one which eats disgusting things — all these things make dog. But so with the human creature. Allah created both you and what you do. These things are not separate. So the first stage of the Sufic path is where grasping comes not intellectually but in the heart — the recognition that Allah is the Creator of us and our actions, that Allah is the Actor in every situation. Allah is the Doer.

All that has been happening at present in the tragic, lost Arab communities is because they have not been taught tawhid. They have not been taught the truth about Allah and so they are going around in circles against things Allah has ordered for them because they do not realise that Allah has created both you and what you do. Now we look at this in Surat al-An’am, 6:102. It is so openly stated in Qur’an. “That is Allah, your Lord. There is no god but Him, the Creator of everything. So worship Him. He is responsible for everything.” When Abu Bakr as-Siddiq had been ill and someone asked him, “Who made you better?” He said, “The same One who made me ill.” “That is Allah, your Lord, your Rabb.” Rabb is Allah’s governance of all the specific details of the created existence. The ayat specifically mentions, “That is Allah, your Rabb.” So the rububiyat, the connected relatedness of all the specific details and contradictory things of the whole existence — He is the Master of it. “He is responsible for everything.” So the Creator is not like the person who makes a glass and then he has created the glass, no. He is the Creator of everything and that means of events. We live in a world of events. Throughout the Qur’an He tells about the events and how it is Allah who has made and is making them happen. We ourselves are an event of divine creation and Allah is making us happen. That is why the prayer of the muminun is, “O Allah, give us an iman that is lasting. Give us an iman that will take us to the grave so that we die with shahada.”

All kinds of things happen at the last minute with people because it is written. Only the other day, one of our people in Switzerland wanted to marry a man who was not Muslim and she said to him, “I cannot marry you because you are not Muslim. You have to become Muslim.” He became Muslim and on the Monday they were married, and on the Saturday he was dead. Allah had written Islam for him and so the wedding was followed by a funeral in the outward, but in the inward he had gone out from this world and from the Fire, to the Garden. This is the seal of the destiny of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The Messenger of Allah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “Allah the Mighty and Majestic said, ‘Those who approach me come with acts I love the most, the fara’id, then my servant draws nearer by extra, nawafil acts until I love him. When I love him I become his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand by which he grasps and his foot with which he walks.’”

In other words, the difference between those who are loved by Allah and those who are not loved by Allah is this knowledge by which we then understand the whole process by which we live our existence. It is by this tajalli, this i’tihad, that tawhid can be sustained. It is by this understanding of what Allah has promised to those who love Him — this is the secret of tawhid. We go to the last reference in the Qur’an in Surat al-Anfal, 8:17. Here, Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is directly addressing Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. At the Battle of Badr, Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, took a handful of dust and threw it at the kuffar and they lost their place, they became unseated from their horses by this event of the Rasul’s doing this. It tipped the balance. Allah explains to Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam: “You did not throw when you threw, it was Allah who threw.” Here you see a clear description of this relationship between the creature and the Creator without any incarnation, without any penetration, without any association. The Lord is the Lord and the slave is the slave. Allah explains to the Rasul, “When you threw,” so Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, did throw but He says, “You did not throw when you threw. It was Allah who threw.” This is the secret of existence unveiled by the presence of the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, bringing wisdom to all the Muslims by it because his action is then explained by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, in His revelation. It is a tremendous moment, it is like the lifting of a veil to let all the muminun understand. “You did not throw when you threw. It was Allah who threw.”

Thus the maqam of love is an elevated honour and love itself is the ‘asl, the principle of existence itself, of wujud. Shaykh al- Akbar said, “From love we have come, by love we are made, towards love we go, to love we give ourselves.”

Part 2

Decades ago, when I had just become Muslim, I met a very cultured and educated lady for whom I had great respect, and I told her I had become Muslim. She said, “Oh, that is very beautiful, Islam is a very beautiful religion. There is only one thing, which is that I have read the Qur’an and I found that there is a lot of violence in it.” This disturbed me because I did not know how to answer her. Many years later I was reading Imam al-Ghazali and he says, “When the kafir opens the Qur’an, he finds nothing in it but fighting and battles and blood and the Fire and all the terrible punishments that are due. When the mumin opens the Qur’an he finds gardens under which rivers flow and that Allah loves them. This is the secret of the Qur’an — that it has for its people what it has.” To that we would add that the kafir nevertheless finds in it a warning. Qur’an says in it, “Ya ayuhalladhina amanu,” and, “Ya ayuhalladhina kafiru.” So the kuffar have a warning and the muminun have guidance and we are the people of guidance, and we thank Allah for the gift of Islam, it is enough for us.

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Now we are going to look at a Sufic term which is, in a sense, alongside tawhid in that tawhid is that which places us into understanding of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. This term is what tawhid does or means or transforms in the human being, in the Muslim who takes on this knowledge of tawhid. It is a technical term which we trace of course back to the Qur’an, which is Futuwwa. Futuwwa is a kind of nobility. People translate it as chivalry but it is not to do with horses. It is to do with the highest capacity or quality possible in knowledge for the servant of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. We will take three ayats. There are others but these are the three most significant for us, which define this futuwwa. Futuwwa comes from ‘fata’ which is like ‘youth’. The plural is fatyan and fatya in the feminine. As we are looking at it in Qur’an it appears as fata. We look first at Surat al-Kahf which is the eighteenth surat and at the thirteenth ayat. It is referring to the young men who were put into the cave and Allah says, “They were young men who had iman in their Lord and We increased them in guidance.” (Surat al-Kahf, 13)

We will come back to Surat al-Kahf but we want to go to Surat al-Anbiya’ which is surat twenty one, ayat sixty. “They said, ‘We heard a young man mentioning them, they call him Ibrahim’.” (Surat al-Anbiya’, 60) This refers to the well-known moment when Sayyiduna Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, not only destroys the idols but by divine inspiration of intellect he does this devastating act, and it is this action which completely finishes them because he does not say, “I smashed it,” which is what they are saying, he says, if you remember, “No, the biggest idol did it.” They say, “But this is ridiculous! How could an idol possibly smash the other idols?” At that point he reveals the whole thing with Allah – that they have no power. This is the indication of the effect of the fata changing the whole situation of false worship. We will come back to Surat al-Anbiya’ but now we will go back to Surat al-Kahf, ayat fifty nine: “Remember when Musa said to his servant, ‘I will not give up until I reach the meeting-place of the two seas’.” (Surat al-Kahf, 60)

Musa said this to his fata, to his young attendant. Here we have three examples of the use of this word and in each of them a young man is taken into a situation of knowledge and learning by Allah. The people of the Cave, remember, are men with iman in their Lord and, “We increased them in guidance,” because they wanted a pure tawhid, they would not accept the idolatry so they submitted to this event of being preserved by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, until they were in the company worthy of them. The second one is the Prophet Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, and it is the application of his knowledge of tawhid that conquers the mushrikun. The third one is a very important and significant ayat which tells about Sayyiduna Musa unfolding his hikma from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and saying then to the young man that he will not give up until he has reached the meeting-place of the two seas. Because he is Nabiy he is also teaching the young man that you follow the way of the prophet so you will not give up until you reach the meeting-place of the two seas. To the Sufis, the meeting-place of the two seas is where, in the words of Ibn Ata’illah, the shari’at and the haqiqat meet, because for the person of that knowledge, the shari’at does not separate him from the haqiqat and the haqiqat does not separate him from the shari’at. He gives everything its due.

These are the three things which are the foundation of the fata, the young man of knowledge, of spiritual nobility. So the Qur’anic references are to the men of the Cave who would not worship an idol but preferred the cave to denying tawhid, the Prophet Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, who used his intellect to destroy the shirk of the idol-worshippers in his demonstration of tawhid, and the servant of Sayyiduna Musa, ‘alayhi salam, who helped him towards his goal because it was part of how Allah chose to unfold to Sayyiduna Musa certain high, divine knowledges which he needed for his task of being a messenger to the people of his time. This means that futuwwa, nobility, is a door to guidance. We go back to Surat al-Kahf, to the tenth ayat: “The young men took refuge in the cave and said, ‘Our Lord, give us mercy directly from You and open the way for us to right guidance in our situation’.” (Surat al-Kahf, 10) “Min ladunka” is ‘directly from You’ and it means divine illumination. It means tajaliyyat of the Dhat in the language of the Sufis – divine openings from the Essence of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. “Min amrina rashadan” – We come to the key word we connect with futuwwa which is Rushd. Rashada is right guidance. Now we go to Surat al-Anbiya’ and we will come back to Surat al-Kahf. You see also the perfection of the Qur’an that these things click together, these extraordinary things all tie in together perfectly and that the words of the Qur’an are divinely appointed to have these specific meanings. We come now to Sayyiduna Ibrahim in ayat fifty one: “We gave Ibrahim his right guidance early on and We had complete knowledge of him.” (Surat al-Anbiya 51)

It is very significant that Allah tells us that this right guidance was given ahead of the event, that this high place of Sayyiduna Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, preceded it. He gave him right guidance early on, before the encounter with the mushriks, so that when the moment came he had divine inspiration and illumination to know what to do. It is not his intellect in the sense of his brain but his intellect in the sense of the illumination of his consciousness to know what to do to fight the mushrikun. Then Allah says a very interesting thing: “We had complete knowledge of him.” We would not have been surprised if Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, said that at that point Ibrahim had complete knowledge of Allah, but Allah says, “We had complete knowledge of him.” This goes to the ayat where Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says: (Surat al-Maida, 54) “We love them and they love Us.” So, “We had complete knowledge of him and he had complete knowledge of Us,” which is why Ibrahim had a very special name, he was called Khalil. Shaykh Ibn al-’Arabi explains that ‘khalil’ is from a term in Arabic which means ‘saturated’. If you put a woollen cloth in water it becomes completely saturated so that while the wool is the wool and the water is the water, the wool is completely water and the water is completely wool without any incarnation or joining. The slave is the slave and the Lord is the Lord, but this saturation of knowledge is in the love that Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, had for Sayyiduna Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, and the love that Sayyiduna Ibrahim had for Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. “We had complete knowledge of him.” In this inversion it is very important to realise the high station among the prophets of Sayyiduna Ibrahim. You will find that the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, makes numerous very special references to Ibrahim and identifies himself with Ibrahim in many, many ways. The use of the word ‘huda’ that you could say belongs to Ibrahim is the word which Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, says that he brought to his people.

Now we come to the third thing which again is in Surat al- Kahf. “Musa said to him, ‘May I follow You on condition that You teach me some of the right guidance you have been taught?’” (Surat al-Kahf, 66) This is so tremendous that we could divert onto that whole story of Sayyiduna Musa because it is so full of meanings for the Sufis. In it, Allah chose for His prophet this means of completion of his high and enormously difficult task. He was given, as it were, an instructor of a nature that is very similar to the encounter at the beginning of the hadith collection of Imam Muslim, radiyallahu ‘anhu, which tells us of the angel coming to Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and putting his knees against his knees and questioning him about Islam, iman and ihsan – this apparent teaching exploding from the Unseen into the seen world in this very special encounter. It is the same with Sayyiduna Musa and this famous meeting, with all of the three events, which on the face of it look totally wrong, yet which then reveal what their meaning was.

“Musa said to him, ‘May I follow You on condition that You teach me some of the right guidance you have been taught.’” ‘Teach me some of the rushda you have been taught. You give me this, this is what I want from you. This is what this meeting is for, to get rushda.’ In that sense, there are the young men of the cave, there is the Prophet Ibrahim as a young man and there is the servant of Sayyiduna Musa, and each of these contain teaching about the nature of tawhid so that we connect futuwwa with rushd. So futuwwa is the door to right guidance. The first technical reference to fityan is from Hasan al-Basri who was one of the first of the shuyukh of our tariqa, so everything he said is of enormous importance to us, and because of his nearness to the Sahaba and Tabi’in. He said that in the early days the fityan, the people of this futuwwa, were not recognised by their words but by their actions, and it is that which may be called useful knowledge. When we recite the Wird we twice ask Allah for useful knowledge, ‘Ilm an-Nafi’an, and he is saying that it is the action of the noble youths which is the useful knowledge which is desired – it is knowledge which is action. Now we go to Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, from Qur’an, and we find a very interesting thing. A man had prepared food to receive the Messenger, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and some of the Sahaba. When the food came, one of the them refused to eat saying that he was fasting. Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “Your brother has invited us and has gone to a lot of trouble – eat! Fast another day if you want.” This is the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who instituted the obligatory fast and praised all nawafil acts of fasting and boasted that his fasting was over everybody’s, but in the face of this adab towards people who prepare food, was offended and challenged the man, “Eat! Fast another day if you want.” This is futuwwa. This is placing the adab of the guest to the host as the highest among the acts of ‘ibada. This is from al- Bayhaqi and ad-Daraqutni from Jabir.

Another one connected to food was that a sheep was offered to the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and he started to cut it up and distribute the meat. Sayyideta ‘Aisha, may Allah bless her, said, “There is only the neck left for us!” He looked at her and said, “It is all left for us except the neck.” This is futuwwa. Futuwwa is that there is no trouble or test to turn one from serving Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Imam Junayd said, “One happy day I went to visit Salih as-Saqarti and he said to me, ‘O Abul-Qasim! Last night my ruh heard a voice and it said, “O Salih! I first created men and they all turned to Me and came to Me. Then I showed them the dunya and nine tenths of them left Me, the rest stayed with Me. I then told them of the Janna and nine tenths of them wanted it and one tenth stayed with Me. On them I set difficulties and tests until they weakened and called for help until nine tenths of them became distant from Me. To those who remained I said, ‘You did not desire the dunya, you do not desire the Janna, and you did not run away from My trials.’ And they replied, ‘You know, O Allah, what we desire.’ I said, ‘I will pile on you troubles that not even the greatest mountains could support,’ and they replied, ‘We accept, O Allah, as long as it comes from You’.”’”

Futuwwa is a universal compassion that bonds its people together and cuts off those of unlike qualities, and this is from the ayat, “Men and women who are Muslim, men and women who are mumin.” (Surat al-Ahzab, 35) This is because the people of futuwwa, men and women, have to be the same, they cannot be different. Imam al-Junayd told of one of his teachers, a man of futuwwa, Abu Musa al-Kumasi. One day Junayd recounted that Abu Musa and his wife were at home and their whole house collapsed on top of them. Their friends dug and they found the shaykh who said, “Leave me! Look for my wife!” They dug and finally they found her. She said, “Pay no attention to me! Leave me and find Shaykh Abu Musa.” This concern must be mutual concern for the other. The summit of futuwwa is therefore the highest effect of this right guidance. It is the highest knowledge because futuwwa is that the lover must obey the wishes of the Beloved. Once again, in the exalted country of Imam al-Junayd who was the Imam of the Sufis, Abu Hafs was there, who was a very great Sufi and is very highly praised in the Kashf al-Mahjub of Hujwiri. Junayd gave his definition of futuwwa and then he saw Abu Hafs and he said, “Abu Hafs, what do you say?” Abu Hafs said, “Futuwwa is that you give justice and never expect it.” Junayd said, “That is the best answer.”

One day Abu Husayn an-Nuri visited the circle of Imam al- Junayd – there were these meetings of very great Sufis where between themselves they almost competed for the most fine and pure declarations of knowledge and love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala – and Abu Husayn said, “I am told that you can discourse on any subject. Tell me the subject of your choice and then I for my part will add further evidence.” Imam al-Junayd said, “What do you want me to speak about?” An-Nuri said, “On love.” Junayd said, “I will tell you a story. My friends and I were in an orchard. One of our party had gone to get supplies and had not returned, so we went onto the farm’s terrace to look out for them and then we noticed a blind man accompanied by a young man of great beauty. Suddenly we heard the blind man say, ‘You have ordered me to do such-andsuch and I carried out your orders. You forbade me to do suchand- such and I set these things aside. I have never disobeyed you in anything, what more do you want of me?’ The young man answered, ‘That you die.’ The blind man said, ‘Very well. Then I will die.’ He stretched out on the ground and covered his face.” Junayd goes on, “I said to my companions, ‘The blind one certainly seems lifeless, but he cannot be dead. He must be seeming to be dead.’ So we went down, we examined him, and confirmed that in fact he was dead.” An-Nuri rose and left without adding a word.

Part 2

The fuqara must ask always to be in change. The du’a of the Sufis is, “O Allah, keep me in change.” Keep me always changing because everything is changing and every day Allah is on a new creation. You must be renewing and renewing yourself. You have to always be in change. You must remember that the company of the fuqara is the highest company. You must keep each other company. You must travel to other places where there are fuqara. You must sit with the fuqara in every place. You must be an example to them and take example from them when you meet people of quality. Seek the people of knowledge, seek the people of love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and the people of love of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. To take the adab of the great ones you have to sit with them, you have to sit with the people of knowledge. It is by your company that you are purified. Tasawwuf is keeping company, then tasawwuf is listening, then tasawwuf is acting upon what you hear. There is only one enemy and that is your self. The nafs has nothing good in it. The worst of all things to the Sufis is the recognition of their own good qualities over and against that of other people – it is what sets them back and smashes them on the rocks of destiny. You must not look at your good qualities. You must consider them something that in themselves have been spoiled even by your being conscious of them. You do not look at your self.

You do not find fault with others, you find fault with your self. You must look at your self and say, “What is wrong with it?” Harith al-Muhasibi went over his day, then went over his hours and then went over his minutes, then went over his breath until he had verified that it was pleasing to Allah, that it was acceptable to Allah. Two great ‘ulama met in Baghdad and they argued and fought with each other. At the end one of them said, “Let us meet tomorrow and discuss this matter further and the other one said, “No, let us meet tomorrow and make peace and forget all about it.” This is the way of the Sufis – to begin again. You must not be limited in your forgiveness of the faults of others but you must not have any measurement of any attention to yourself. Any consciousness of your self you must turn from. You must turn away from the nafs and the method of turning away from the nafs is not a psychological method, it is dhikrullah. (Surat ar-Ra’d, 28) “Only in the dhikr of Allah can the heart find peace.” You must do dhikr of Allah. You must remember Allah standing, sitting and reclining on your side. You must call upon Allah. You cannot afford to be out of the company of the people who love Allah for any amount of time in this age that we live in. You must be with the people who love Allah, you need them. You need the people of Allah because they will remind you of Allah. You need the people of knowledge because you have to be strong in your Deen and you have to be correct in your Deen in an age where every mosque has a different way of going into sajda, let alone the higher things of the Deen. You must speak well of people and have a good opinion of people. You must become people of futuwwa, you must become these people who are spoken of because of the high aspiration, the high himma you have which is on a universal scale that when you go to the Ka’ba, with all the troubles that are there, you must look for the people of Allah there and sit with them. Beware of the people of dunya. Beware of the people of dunya until you are safe, and when you are safe it does not matter where you go. If you are not safe then you must be careful. You must have taqwa and you must have wara’. You must take care, take care, watch, until you are on Sirat al-Mustaqim because when things go wrong you have to remember that all you have got is then to turn to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Remember, even tawba is nothing to do with you – it is because Allah has decreed for you tawba because He wants you, so even that is not yours, it is not your good achievement. Your asking forgiveness is not your good achievement, it is simply Allah claiming you and you recognising that He has claimed you. You belong to Allah. You have come from Allah and you are going to Allah. This is what you have to tell yourself. You must not be hypnotised by dunya. Remember that Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, indicated that the small coin of the poor person is as dangerous as the gold of the rich, so you must be generous. To be generous is to follow the way of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. You must be generous, you must have a good opinion of other people, you must not say bad things about other people and if you do say them you must go back and clean it out and you must ask their forgiveness. If someone is totally against you and totally in the wrong then you have to forgive them and you have to forget it and you have to go back and put things right. This is how the Deen has always been. This is how these great men have lived in the past.

Just finally to remind you – look what has become of futuwwa – the elders of the organisation of people calling themselves al- Fatah are tying dynamite to youngsters’ bellies and shoving them out to blow themselves up, when the people who fought with Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, pushed the young people aside in order that they could go and fight fisabilillah, fight in the service of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. So the whole Deen has to start all over again. You are the people who must start it and in this continent is where it will begin. It is from your people and from your children, but you must have an adab to them, you must treat them with courtesy. You must treat your children with courtesy, you must treat the young with courtesy just as you must treat the old with courtesy. You must become the people of adab and if you become the people of adab you will be safe. If you become people of adab you will be Sufis. At-Tariqa kulluha-adab. The Tariqa is nothing but adab, that is all it is – adab. You must also have some respect for yourself. That respect for yourself is only manifest by the fact that all the people around you are at ease and in harmony with you and pleased that you are there. This is how you must be. You must be a blessing on the earth. You must be a baraka for everybody. You must be ones that when you enter a room it all lights up because of your love of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, your love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and because your tongue is supple with the name of Allah and not the matters of dunya. Dunya will not fail to happen. All its strategems and spoils will not fail to crash about your ears, they have always done it and they will continue to do it. When the People of the Cave came out, there they were again faced with the world and all its problems and all its difficulties, but Allah loves the people of tawhid and loves the people who love Him and this is the company, the company of the Sufis.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to give us all our lives the company of the Sufis. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to take out our tasawwuf to whatever part of the world we go. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, that we prefer to go to the company of people who only want to go to Allah in preference to anyone who may do anything to help us and give us advantage in this world. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to make us ready for the tests that come so that we can respond to him and remember to praise him in every situation. Alhamdulillahi ‘ala kulli hal. We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to bless this mosque and its imams and its guardians and that it continues to be a witness for Islam as it has been in the troubled times of the past. Amin.

Moussem 1995, Weimar

By Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala says in the Qur’an: “Antum al-fuqara, Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid.”

So when Allah ta’ala says this he refers to all the human creatures: they are fuqara, Allah is the infinitely Rich and the One-Deserving-Praise. So why are we to say that we are fuqara more than anyone else would say they are fuqara? The only difference is that the people who claim this name claim it as an honor, that to be poor is to be poor in the knowledge of the richness of Allah ta’ala – not in terms of the richness of the world but of the richness of Allah ta’ala. The people who say ‘We are fuqara,’ say it in the light of Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid. This has two things: Allah by His Name al-Ghaniyu, Allah by His Name al-Hamid. His Name al-Ghaniyu means that the richness belongs to Him, therefore all that is connected to the outward needs of the human being goes back to the Ghaniyu. We are fuqara and He has the wealth.

What is the wealth or what is part of the wealth that Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has? Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has names to teach us what we can know of Him. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al- Habib, radi Allahu ‘anhu, says in the Diwan: “Praise Allah with what He has described Himself “- with what He has praised Himself.

Now, among the things of the wealth of Allah are His giving life – so the life is from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, the health is from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, the provision is from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. All the needs by which the existent exists come from the Ghaniyu. The Ghaniyu is like the Samad, it is a wealth that has no limit.”Qul Huwa Allahu Ahad, Allahu Samad.”

Now this means that what comes to us in the life does not come by the means. For the one-who-knows, for the people of knowledge who have understood the message of the Qur’an and of the behavior, of the life, of Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, that on which we are dependent comes from Him. Shaykh ibn al- Habib, radi Allahu ‘anhu, says in his Diwan, “Allah is the One who does not have need of anything and everything else has need of Him.”Now this means that what is required has to come not from dunya,it does not come through dunya, it comes by the rizq of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and it is important to understand that, as in the famous phrase, the shocking phrase of Imam al- Ghazzali, there are no secondary causes. This is not to deny the shari’ah, this is not to deny the obligations of behavior under the shari’ah, it is to recognize who is the Provider.

Now the whole of the modern world is based on imagining that we provide by organizing society best, and the more they organize it, the bigger the disasters become, until the ocean is poisoned, the air is poisoned, the earth is poisoned and the people are dying of diseases that have not appeared until this minute. This is based on the ’successful’ application of man’s illusionary wealth – that they can be the wealthy. Someone said to me today that they were working with the ‘big boys’, the people dealing with billions. But I thought, “Antum al-fuqara, Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid.” So who are the ‘big boys’, who are the rich ones? The rich ones are the awliya of Allah because they are rich in Allah. They have moved, their poverty has become bathed in the wealth that comes from the wealth of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. They have understood where it comes from. This is the famous saying of Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya, radi Allahu ‘anha, “Do not seek the garden, seek the Gardener.” He is the One who gives these glorious things.

Now “Antum al-fuqara” is a very interesting term because this term is the term used for the people of tariqa. Now the faqir, as I said previously, used to be marked by his staff- it was like the staff of Sayyedina Musa – and the big tasbih and the short djellaba, which was cut short, again all connected to sunna because Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, was against the trailing garment that suggested pride and arrogance, and also was unclean. So they would wear very short djellabas and an enormous tasbih and the staff and even sometimes it was muraqa (patched). Now this was the badge of their poverty.

Now the interesting thing is that today, you see, because people think that they are the providers, they start off not understanding how existence works. Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, said: ” If they only understood, if men only understood, they would be like the birds that go out in the morning hungry and come back at night full .”
This is the statement of the one who gave us the shari’ah. It is not a contradiction of the shari’ah – it is understanding how creation works. What Allah set up, functions. He has made it according to laws. He has made it bil-Haqq and He has made it with wisdom, with Hikmah.

Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has created the world with wisdom. It actually works to laws in the same way that every living thing we see moves and emerges through laws. And one of the signs of losing this knowledge is mentioned right at the beginning of surat al-Baqara, where Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, speaks of the kuffar and of ignorance and He says: ” They will alter creation.”

Now how do you alter creation? You alter creation not by destroying things and burning things because that is part of the process of creation – things emerging and being destroyed. Altering creation means that you take life and you change the form of life, which is what they are now doing with the DNA and the microbiology of the humans. So this is the idea that we can arrange existence. Allah says in the Qur’an: “Look, and look again and your glance will come back to you – you will not have found any flaw in the creation.” This is also why Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, has likened famine to Kufr. Because you would only starve in a massive way if you had lost contact with this knowledge: “Antum al-fuqara, Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid .” And so the rizq comes from the Ghaniyu.

Now also, ” Antum al-fuqara, Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid .” Al-Hamid is the One deserving-of-Praise, The One to be Praised, al hamdu’lillahi Rabbi’l Alamin.” Praise belongs to Allah because He the is Lord of All-the-Worlds, of the Universe, of the cosmos, and also all the unseen worlds. Now this praise is that thing which defines the faqir. His knowledge, his understanding of the world, is based on knowing the name of the Ghaniyu, and the understanding of the hidden things, of the ghayb, of all that is in the zone of Iman, all that which is the invisible, the non-visible, connects to His name the Hamid, because these things can only be understood by hamd. If you do not have the hamd you will not have the opening of the heart to realize the nature of existence, and therefore the nature of yourself. You will imagine, in deviation of the knowledge that is in Qur’an, you will imagine that your existence is something that you have to fight the world for, in order to struggle and make it all come right, so that you can take on and steal this attribute of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, as if you could, of provision. And as you struggle for this then by the wisdom of Allah, He lets you do it until by His wisdom He tries to teach you by His changing the pattern. You see, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said: “I am in My slaves opinion of Me, so have a good opinion of Me.” (Hadith Qudsi)
Now if someone desperately, in this age, goes after the dunya and they fight to get it, they are saying that Allah is not going to give it to them. Do you follow? Therefore, what happens is that it is as if Allah is saying, ‘If that is how you see it, I will not disappoint you. I will give back to you this strange mode of recognizing Me by thinking I would not do it.’

Our relationship with Allah never stops for a second. If He is not manifest by His names of Beauty, He will manifest by His names of Majesty. If He does not come to us with solace, ease, and with the good things, it is because He is coming to us with His names of terrible Majesty. Look at the people of Bosnia, who had lost their deen. All that they had of Islam were their names, some dress habits, and births, marriages, and deaths. But they have had to enter the door of Islam by the funeral prayer. The thing has suddenly become real by this terrible majesty that Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has given to them, and by the funeral prayer, by the Salat al-Janazah, the people of Bosnia are coming back into Islam.

All the disasters of the Arabs have been because they have left the deen of Islam, especially those who declare that they are the renovators of Islam but in fact they have precipitated themselves with a passion towards the deen of the kuffar – and in doing that they lose knowledge and become ignorant. So, this knowledge that Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid, these are the two guiding names for the understanding that you are faqir, it is itself sirat al-mustaqeem. It is sirat al-mustaqeem because you have understood “Laa hawla wa laa quwatta illa billahi al-Aliyyu al- Adheem.”

Now this has no concordance with, or along-sideness with, rationalism, critical analysis, or with exploring the world as if it was yours to take to pieces and put together again.Sovereignty, the hakimiyyah, belongs to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Therefore, the foundation of your life has to be based on something which has an interior certainty about this fact, the Yaqin, of which there are stages: ‘Ilm al-Yaqin, ‘Ayn al-Yaqin and Haqq al-Yaqin.

Now the ‘Ilm al-Yaqin is precisely: “Antum al-fuqara, Huwa al-Ghaniyu al-Hamid.” So the people of zawiyyah, the people of tariqa, the people of dhikr, whatever you want to call them, it does not matter, the people who have put at the center of their lives more-than-what-is-asked, that is itself, all of the deen of Islam, salat, zakat, sawm and hajj,they are people who increase and want increase of knowledge. “Allah increase me in knowledge.”

Knowledge is not information. If knowledge was information we could buy the CD-ROM from the Apple Corporation, stick it in the computer and out it would come. I saw someone from the Peninsula who said to me, “Everything is all right we are going to put all the hadiths into a computer.” I said, “Then will you swallow the computer program? How will you assimilate this? This is not knowledge. You already have all the collections of the hadith.” Everyone has access to all the hadith, we already know what the hadith are. That is not the point. Assimilation is the point. That is not tanwir. That is ignorance.

Shaykh Shadhili al-Naifa, of Tunis, said to me, “I have a hundred hadith,”and he is the biggest ‘alim in Tunis, in fact he is one of the ‘ulema of our school of Madinah. He said “I have 100 hadith, that’s all. I don’t go outside that.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I sat with my shaykh of hadith and he said to me, ‘I had it from shaykh so-and so, who had it from shaykh so and-so, who had if from shaykh so-and-so, who had it from… , and so on and so on and so on, who had it from Bukhari, who had it from this one, who had it from Abu Hurayra, who had it from Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim.’ ” In other words he had face-to-face knowledge in an unbroken chain back to Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim.

Information is not knowledge. Information is not wisdom. You do not live by facts, you live by the moment. And the sitting before the teacher, who passes to you the knowledge, is like taking a photograph. By the light, the image of what is in front of you is implanted in your heart. That is education.

That is why the so-called fundamentalists will achieve absolutely nothing. But it is not because they are bad people, it is because they have taken their fiqh from people who altered the fiqh in order to allow the foundation of banks in Egypt.

So this knowledge and this transmission has always been in the hands of the people who remember Allah, who do dhikr of Allah, because the dhikr of Allah affects the heart, it purifies the heart. The ones who want that, then they say, ‘I am faqir’, and at this point, you have to then say, ‘Am I sincere? This is a test, all right how important is it?’ You see, the Murabitun had three rules. The first was da’wat al-haqq, the second one was radd al-mudhaalim and the third was qat-al-mujariyi, the third one was to remove unjust taxes.

Now this da’wat al-haqq (invitation to the truth) is the commitment of the fuqara, this is their job, this is their duty. I mean you must understand the state people are in, not in some spiritual or intellectual way that the people talk about. It is khusr. People recite this famous surah, again and again and again and simply do not realize that the loss is theirs because they are not following the deen of Islam, because they have not given Allah His due. Allah says in the Qur’an, “They have not measured Allah with His true measure .” This is a tremendous statement.

How do you measure Allah by His true measure? By your disappearance, you will be more and more measuring Him by His true measure. And then if you are to disappear completely then it is possible, by your non-existence. If you diminish you will know more the measure of Allah, you will be nearer the measure of Allah and if you disappear completely you will have measured Him by His true measure because you will not exist. If you do not exist then you have measured Him because there is nothing else to measure. So the increasing of knowledge is the diminishing of the nafs. The real knowledge is your non-existence before His existence.You see, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radi Allahu ‘anhu, told me there were two tariqa as-suffiya. One was the tariqa of Harith al-Muhasibi, which was an outward tajrid, tajrid adh-dhahir, of zuhd, of extra prayer, of much dhikr, of much purification, and of much journeying fi sabil lillah. You understand? This way, the way of Harith al-Muhasibi, he said was for very exalted people. So for very high people, this was possible. But the other way was the way of Shaykh Shahdhili, Shaykh ‘Abdalqadir al-Jilani, and Imam Junayd. And this was a tariqa which was not like al-Muhasibi’s. It was that the tajrid was interior, tajrid al-batin, a tajrid which was to remove all that was inside. When the person retires in the dhikr of Ism al Adham and recites the name of Allah, A-L-L-A-H, then they strip off the attributes, the sifaat. They strip off all the sifaat of their consciousness until they diminish and diminish and diminish and diminish.At one point in the khalwa, Shaykh al-Fayturi, raheem Allah, came in and said, “How are you doing? ” and I said, “Well, the dhikr stopped and then I couldn’t say it and then I began to hear the dhikr.” And he said, “Look at this, what is this? There were you looking for the dhikr and here the dhikr came looking for you.”

So this is the diminishing of the self before the Majesty of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and the Highness of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. So if you put this dimension in a person, someone who says, ‘My life is impossible, I cannot pay the money, I haven’t got the something, I need this for my wife, my children are without all these things.’ Shaykh Muhammad ibn al Habib, radi Allahu ‘anhu, says in the Diwan, ” Make all your troubles One,” and put all these troubles to Allah.

Shaykh al-Fayturi, raheem Allah, used to say, “Fuqara, you really do need Allah. Don’t you understand?” He used to sit there and say: “You really do need Allah. What are you doing? What is the matter with you all? Why are you all in such a state? You really do need Allah, and Allah is near, qarib. He is not far, He is near, nearer than the nearness of yourself, of your life-self; of your jugular. You need Allah. You’re faqir but you need al-Ghaniyu, al-Hamid but He’s near. What is the turbulence, why this uncertainty?” Then by the dhikr you reach a point where you have ‘Ayn al-yaqin. ‘Ayn al-yaqin is that you see in the inwardness, and you see in the hiddenness, what is the Certain. And this sureness and this firmness is confirmed inwardly and outwardly, but there is a point at which this confirmation and totality is Haqq al-yaqin. But the Haqq al-yaqin goes to other times in Qur’an when Allah ta’ala speaks of the yaqin and says: ” What is the yaqin? ” Now the yaqin is that you will certainly die, it is mawt. So the people of sufiyya understand that you should ‘ die before you die’. Die in the meaning before you die in the hiss”. Mawt qabla ta’moot”. Die before you die.

Now this is a knowledge which comes by the going towards it. If you go towards it, it comes towards you. If you desire knowledge, knowledge comes to you. “Fear Allah and He will give you knowledge.” What is complete fear is your non-existence. If you appear with majesty before the mouse, the mouse dies of fright. Is that not true? This is the slave before his Lord. Now, this contract of going to Allah, this path for the faqir, is a path of yearning. It is when the slave is pleased to be a slave. At that point, slavehood as we know it changes its character, and the slave, the ‘abd, becomes the beloved, mahbub. So the ‘abd becomes mahbub, so everything that was bitter becomes sweet. Salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim said the sign of the mumin is that wuduis sweet for him. So the act of slavery that you must wash before salat becomes this sweet, sweet thing. This is the sign of the mumin.

Now this is tarbiyya, this is development, this is the creating of the free. The only free person is the one who has accepted slavery. That is why the modern Arabs have complaints about everything because they are not content with Allah. Being content with Allah gives you this pleasure.

Allah says in the Qur’an, speaking of the awliya of Allah, ” They are pleased with Him and He is pleased with them . Radi Allahu ‘anhum wa radu ‘anhu.” So wilayat is His, because in their being content with Allah, it reflects back that Allah is content with them.”I am in my slaves opinion of Me, so have a good opinion of Me.” (Hadith Qudsi) If you have a good opinion then Allah does also. If you are content then Allah is content with you and then you have wilayat and wilayat is closeness. Wilayat is qurba, it is closeness. The friend is the one who is near. Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says in Qur’an, speaking about Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, “He brought him to within two bows lengths”… of the Throne.

Now the two bows lengths, the mufassareen say, in the old days of the Arabs if someone approached a king with a petition they would stretch a bow and another bow and he was allowed then, as a special privilege, to come to the king. That was as near as he could get, beyond that and he was killed. And so salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, in coming to that, it was the highest privilege of the creature in coming near to the King. So that is, in the Arabic language, the most possible nearness to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, by this mithal of the two bows length.

So you see, Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, he opened up a way and in a way, it is macabre that this path that Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, opened up for human beings should have become that thing which the modernists (the so-called fundamentalists) present to the world and call Islam, because it is so distant from it. It’s distant by adab, it’s distant by ‘amal, it’s distant by niyyat and it’s non-existent by dhawq, by experience, by taste.

So the people of the path are those people who gather adab and ‘amal. They gather these things and make them theirs, until they become in themselves those lights which bring the people into Islam.

If only what the modern people presented was Islam, not that they ever do present it to anybody.

Never have I heard one word of da’wa to the Europeans by the leadership of all the Islamic organizations with their fortunes pumped into them from the Middle East. Never has there been a call to the path of Islam. When Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, was attacked, the people who rose up in rage about it were the people who loved the Rasul. But nobody stepped forward. It was a golden opportunity to say, ‘You must know why we want this book destroyed because it is about salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, who said, “I am the first of the sons of Adam and I say it without boast.” ‘ It was the moment to say, ‘Don’t you know who he is? Rasulallah’. Now you start to tell them all of the Shifa and they would say,’My God we did not know, no-one told us this, now you tell me.’ And no-one has told them. They even said that the Muslims don’t like this book because it is blasphemy. But blasphemy is only a thing you can do to God. It is something to us and it’s more serious because you cannot harm Allah.

By the shari’ah, and by the fiqh, and by the orders of Qur’an, we have to defend Rasulallah and his honor, because we love him, because of his nobility as the first of creation. But they don’t recognize the maqam of salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim. They are like Abu Lahab, who when they talk of him, talk of the son of Abdallah and not the Rasul of Allah.

He is that one whom Allah has elevated by putting his name alongside His, as it says in the Shifa of Qadi ‘Ayad, ‘Allah has elevated him and has put his name alongside His Name.’ Ashadu an laa ilaha ill Allah wa ashadu anna Muhammadun Rasulallah. That in itself is the reason why there is this elevation of his being the first of the sons of Adam, and this is without boasting he said, but it is also without shirk.

So what I want to leave you with is that in taking on the work and the pleasure of being faqir and faqirat is that you have taken on the path of knowledge. That knowledge is based on Tawheed – Allah is One and nothing can be associated with Him- and it is based on your acquiring as best you can, in your way, the adab of those people who loved Rasul, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallim, and therefore copy him. This removes from us the obligation of the rest of the human race to be anxious about our needs.

Allah is the Provider, Allah is the One-who-looks after-and-Guards, al-Hafidhu, He is the Latifu and He is the Hakim.

Mawlana Sayyid Abu ‘l-Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi (may Allah shower His mercy upon him) wrote: 

‘‘It was a greatly blessed day and fortunate hour of my life when I attended in the service of Mawlana Ahmad ‘Ali Lahori, the amir of Anjuman Khuddam al-Din [situated at] Shiranwala Gate, Lahore. My life has two major turns from where it chose a new path (a better and blessed path, I believe). The first was when I became acquainted with Mawlana Ahmad ‘Ali [Lahori]. The second occurred when Allah took me to Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas (may Allah shower His mercy upon him). 

If I had not met Mawlana Ahmad ‘Ali, my life – whether good or bad – would have been very different to my current one. It probably would not have a taste for, nor inclination towards anything save literature, history and writing. 

Gnosticism, finding the path and traversing it are great things. Being in Mawlana’s company created, in the least, a yearning to seek Allah, the sweetness of [uttering] Allah’s name, a love for the people of Allah, recognition of my own deficiency and the need for my rectification and perfection. And for us laypeople this is the greatest fortune and bounty.’’ 

Chalis Barey Musalman (Karachi: Idarat al-Qur’an, November 2001 ed.) Vol. 1, p. 630, compiled by Sayyid Hafiz Muhammad Akbar Shah Bukhari.

Love has nothing to do with

the five senses and the six directions:

its goal is only to experience

the attraction exerted by the Beloved.

Afterwards, perhaps, permission

will come from God:

the secrets that ought to be told with be told

with an eloquence nearer to the understanding

that these subtle confusing allusions.

The secret is partner with none

but the knower of the secret:

in the skeptic’s ear

the secret is no secret at all.

Mathnawi III, 1417-1424

Love is the Water of Life

Everything other than love for the most beautiful God

though it be sugar- eating.

What is agony of the spirit?

To advance toward death without seizing

hold of the Water of Life.

Masnawi I 3686-87

“I made four mistakes in my preliminary steps in this way; I thought that I remember Him, know Him, love Him, and I seek Him. But when I reached Him I saw that His remembering of me preceded my remembrance of Him, His knowledge about me preceded my knowledge of Him, His love towards me preceded my love for Him, and He sought me in order that I would begin to seek Him.”

- Shaykh Abu Yazid al-Bistami

Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (rahimahullah) said about the Sufis:

“I don’t know people better than them.”

Someone said to him: “They listen to music and they reach states of ecstasy.”

He said: “Do you prevent them from enjoying an hour with Allah?”

(From Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Saffarini al-Hanbali (died 1188) who related in his Ghidha’ al-albab li-sharh manzumat al-adab from Ibrahim ibn ‘Abdillah al-Qalanasi) (Cairo: Matba’at al-Najah, 1324/1906) 1:120