World of Tasawwuf
In the time of the Prophet, Tasawwuf was a reality without a name, today Tasawwuf is a name, but few know its Reality
Tasawwuf
Questions & Answers
"Question:
'IS TASAWWUF A BIDAT? WAS IT INVENTED BY JEWS?'
"Question:
HOW WOULD YOU RESPOND TO A CALL THAT SUFISM IS A BIDAH ?
ORIGINS OF TASAWWUF | WHAT IS TASAWWUF? | TASAWWUF TODAY | SUFI GLOSSARY
Invented by Jews ?
Question :
'Is tasawwuf a bidat? Was it invented by Jews?'
Answer :
"It is one of the orders of Islam to try to know Allahu ta'ala and, for this purpose, to look for and obey a rehber who knows and teaches the way of tasawwuf. Allahu ta'ala declared, 'look for a wasila to attain to Him!' The disciples' receiving faid and marifa from the rehber has been done and known by every Muslim since the time of Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam. It is not something introduced later by leaders of tasawwuf. Every rehber has held on to the rehber who has guided him. This chain of attachment goes back up to Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam. The chain of connection of the superiors of the Akhrariyya reaches him through Hadrat Abu Bakr radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh. And chains of other branches reach through Hadrat 'Ali radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh. Can this be called a bidat? Although such terms as murshid and murid were introduced later, names or words are of no particular importance. Even if these words did not exist, their meanings and the hearts' attachment would exist. [The Wahhabite book, too, says that not words but meanings should be taken into account.] The common fundamental job of all branches of tasawwuf is to teach how to do the dhikr, which is a command of our religion. The silent performance of a dhikr is more valuable than the vocal. 'The dhikr that the hafaza angels cannot hear is seventy times as valuable as that which the hafaza hear,' was declared in a hadith ash-Sharif. The dhikr commended in the hadith ash-Sharif is that performed by the qalb (heart) and the other latifas. It is written in valuable books that Rasulullah performed dhikr by the qalb before he was notified of the prophethood. Saying that tasawwuf is a bidat and that it was made up by Jews is like saying that it is a bidat to read the hadith book of 'al-Bukhari' or the fiqh book 'Al-hidaya'."
Muhammad Mathum al-Faruqi rahimah-Allahu ta'ala wrote in the 36th letter of the second volume of his Maktubat:
The leader of the tasawwuf way (school) named Khwajaghan is 'ABD 'AL-KHALIQ AL-GHUJDAWANI rahimah-Allahu ta'ala. The jadhba (attraction) of qayyumiyya peculiar to this way came to him from Hadrat Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh. And he taught the way of obtaining this jadhba. This way is called wuquf-i 'adadi and consists in the dihkr khafi, which again comes from Hadrat Abu Bakr. The second way, named 'jadhba ma'iyya', begun with Baha' ad-din al-Bukhari rahimah-Allahu ta'ala. 'Ala ad-din al-'Attar rahimah-Allahu ta'ala, the qutb of his time, established the conditions for the attainment of this jadhba. These conditions were called the Tariqa-i 'Ala'iyya. It has been reported that the shortest way [that makes one attain in the least time] is 'Ala'iyya." [It is also called the 'Ahrariyye' because Ubaid-Allah al-Ahrari rahimah-Allahu ta'ala, who passed away in Samarkand in 895 (1490 C.E.), disseminated the way of his master Ala ad-din al-Attar.]
Muhammad Mathum rahimah-Allahu ta'ala wrote in the 158th letter of the second volume:
Muhammad Mathum rahimah-Allahu ta'ala wrote in the 16th letter of the third volume:
"Statements such as, 'Everything is Him. The word Allah is the name of everything. It is like the name Zaid indicating human being; whereas, each of his organs has a different name. Then, where is Zaid? He is nowhere. And Allahu ta'ala is seen in every being. Therefore, it is permissible to call everything Allah. Beings are all appearances. Their annihilation is also a kind of appearance. In reality, there is nothing that becomes non-existent,' express not believing in the One Being but in many beings, and this is not compatible with what the superiors of tasawwuf have said. By such statements, Allahu ta'ala is claimed to be in the material world, meaning that He is not a distinct being and needs His creatures for His existence and for the existence of His attributes. He is likened to the existence of compounds which are in need of the existence of elements. And this is disbelief in Allahu ta'ala and is frank kufr (unbelief). It is necessary to believe that the existence of Allahu ta'ala is distinct from the existence of the material and spiritual worlds. In other words, the Wajib (the Indispensable Being, the Creator) and the mumkin (the dispensable, the creation) are two distinct beings. There is distinction in every case where there is dichotomy. If someone argues, saying, 'If the 'alam (everything other than Allahu ta'ala) existed in reality, then there would be no dichotomy. The existence of the 'alam is in appearance,' we answer that the Really Existent Being does not unite with the imaginary one. That is, one cannot say, 'Everything is Him.' If, by saying so, one means to say, 'Everything is non-existent; He is the only One who exists,' then it is correct. Yet, it would have been expressed not plainly but figuratively. It is similar to one's saying, 'I saw Zaid,' upon seeing Zaid's image in the mirror [or on the television screen]. Saying these not in the figurative sense but in the plain sense is like saying 'lion' to a donkey. [Similarly, it is incorrect to say that the sound from a radio or a loudspeaker is the voice of the speaker.] A lion is different from a donkey. It cannot be written in words that the two are the same one. The superiors of tasawwuf who taught Wahdat al-wujud did not say, 'The Real Being is in the creatures. He does not exist separately'; they said, 'The creatures are His manifestations, appearances.' Muhyiddin ibn al-'Arabi and his followers rahimahum-Allahu ta'ala said 'Hama-ust,' that is, 'everything is Him,' in this sense.
[Allahu ta'ala declares in the Surat adh-Dhariyat,
Source : http://www.hizmetbooks.org/
Sufism originates from Hinduism?
Critic:-
The origin of Sufism are in Hinduism. It is a revolt against the sterile legalistic nature of Islam.
Answer:-
The essentials of Sufism are certainly to be found in the Qur'an and Hadith but also in an oral tradition. This is perfectly clear from the writings of many Sufis who quote the Qur'an. It is also clear from my studies of the Qur'an and should be clear to those who have followed the articles I have posted here.
However, I know that there are persons hostile to Islam with sectarian minds who wish to deny this or anything good about Islam or wish that anything good is always connected with the particular sect, religion or ideology they happen to follow. It probably boost their own ego by association.
This tracing of Sufism to other non-Islamic sources is part of the more general tendency of trying to show that the Qur'an insists only of thing borrowed from others. To do this all differences have to be ignored or regarded as corruption and attention must be placed on similarities. But when it is pointed out that if Islam is similar to the whatever the critic himself accepts as true, then Islam must also be true, then the opposite procedure is adopted - the mind is concentrated on differences and similarities are ignored.
It is also a question of understanding the following:-
Religion is a single phenomenon, which has its origin in inspiration or higher conscious states (mystical or spiritual experiences). The founders of the religions do not belong to any sect, but separate religions do form because people follow different Prophets exclusively.
Islam is the name of the Universal Religion, which recognizes all prophets sent throughout the world. It includes and confirms their teachings, but not the corruption or misunderstanding which has arisen at the hands of misguided followers. It should not, therefore, be surprising that Islam should have mystical side and that this should resemble or include the mystical elements found in other religions.
This is a rather elementary feature of Islam, which one would have thought any one claiming to know Islam would know. But if they do not know this then their opinion about Islam is utterly valueless.
Originally, when the Prophet Salla Allahu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam first taught Islam it was a unity in which spiritual, philosophical (theological) and social (legalistic) elements coexisted in a harmonious way. It is only later that these elements began to separate out. The result is that when people look at Islam, some look only at the legalistic element, others look at the various schools of theology and others look at Sufism. Still another group look only at the actions and practices of people , particularly at the small group they brand terrorist and ignore everything else.
What may not be clear to such people is that the various dispensations of Religion as brought by the different Prophets are brought in the language or conceptual system of the people to whom the Prophet comes. That is, it is formulated and presented differently according to the times, place and people. Therefore, people who form attachments to words and are literal minded in the narrow sense, tend to be quite unable to see the basic similarities. To illustrate this there is a story about Grapes. A Persian, an Arab, a Turk and an African were quarreling because, they had a limited amount of money and, though they wished to buy the same thing, they had different names for it.
There are a range of different shapes of chairs. But if the word "chair" which should have a general meaning, is identified with a particular instance of it, and different people identify it with different shapes, then the controversies which might ensue will surely be regarded as stupid by the more discerning.
Truth remains truth, and is, and ought to be, repeatedly mentioned and confirmed. It can be seen quite independently by those who have the capacity for perception. It is not necessary that the knowledge of the existence of the sun and moon, for instance, should be transferred from person to person or traced to someone else. But falsehood being based on fantasy can be of infinite variety and leads to many contradictions.
Differentation
"Question:
If the ma'arif of tasawwuf had come from Rasulullah Salla Allah 'alayhi wa Sallam, there should not have been any differentiation. Contrarily, there are various branches of tasawwuf.
Why are the ahwal and ma'arif in each of them different?"
"Answer:
" This difference is due to the difference in men's abilities and the conditions they are in. For example, though there may be a specific remedy for a disease, the prognosis and medical treatment varies with the patient. It is like the difference between photographs of a person taken by different photographers. Every perfection has been taken from Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam. There have been small differences due to power and manner of reception. Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam taught the ma'arif, secret sciences, to his companions in different degrees. As a matter of fact, he declared in a hadith ash-Sharif,
"All paths of tasawwuf originated from Hadrat Imam Jafar as-Sadiq radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh, who was joined to Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam with two lineages, one of which was his paternal way, which reached Rasulullah through Hadrat 'Ali radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh. The second line was his maternal grandfather's pedigree, which was related to Rasulullah through Hadrat Abu Bakr radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh. Because he descended maternally from Abu Bakr as-Siddiq and also received faid from Rasulullah through him, Hadrat Imam Jafar as-Sadiq said, 'Abu Bakr as-Siddiq gave me two lives.' These two ways of faid and marifa that Imam Jafar as-Sadiq had did not commingle or intersect. Faid has been flowing through Hadrat Imam to the great Akhrariyya guides from Hadrat Abu Bakr, and to the other silsilas (chains) from Hadrat 'Ali."
[On page 122 of the book, it is written:
"Rasulullah had told Huzaifat ibn al-Yaman the names of munafiqs on their way back from the Tabuk Battle. Huzaifa did not tell these names to anyone lest disunity should arise. As it is obvious, there was no secret knowledge of Huzaifa, as the sufi heretics claim. For, Islam is unhidden and has no secret knowledge."
In this passage, he alleges that the knowledge of tasawwuf was INVENTED BY JEWS. However, on page 30, it has been said:
"Most of the Sahabis did not know the knowledge Rasulullah had intimated to Muaz ibn Jabal. Rasulullah had told Muaz not to tell it to anybody. Then, it is permitted to conceal knowledge for good and advantageous reasons."
It is obvious that the Wahhabite book lacks coherence. Every part of this book of five hundred pages is full of such similar incongruous, foolish lines. Quoting hundreds of ayats and hadiths, the writer throws dust into eyes and, because he does not know anything about the sciences of tafsir and hadith, goes astray by making up meanings with a swift pen and tries to mislead readers.]
Muhammad Mathum rahmat-Allahi ta'ala 'alaih wrote in his sixty-first letter of the second volume:
"The most valuable and most beneficial thing in this world is to attain the marifa of Allahu ta'ala, that is, to know Him. Allahu ta'ala can be known in two ways. In the first one, one can know Him as the scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat rahimahum-Allahu ta'ala communicated. The second one is the understanding of the great men of tasawwuf. The former knowledge can be gained as a result of study and meditation. The second one is attained through kashf and shuhud of the heart. The first one pertains to knowledge ('ilm), which originates from wisdom ('aql) and intelligence, while the second one pertains to a spiritual state (hal) which originates from the origin, the reality. In the first one, there exists an alim as a mediator. In the second, mediation of the 'arif comes to an end, because becoming an 'arif of something means being lost in that thing. This is expressed well in the verse,
Descending and ascending does not make you closer,
To get closer to Haqq means to cease existing!
The former is related to the 'ilm al-khusuli (knowledge attained by studying), and the latter to the 'ilm al-khuduree (knowledge attained through revelation). In the former the nafs has not given up disobedience, while in the latter the nafs has perished and is always with al-Haqq. In the former, iman and 'ibadat are in a superficial form, because the nafs has not become a believer yet. A hadith qudsi declares, 'Be at enmity with your nafs! It bears enmity against Me.' Iman of the heart mentioned above is called the 'iman al-majazi' (metaphoric belief), which may go away. In the latter, because there is no quality of being human left and because the nafs itself has become a believer, iman is protected from being lost, so it is called the 'iman al-haqiqi' (real belief). In this stage 'ibadat are real. The metaphor may be lost, but the reality will not cease existing. This real belief is referred to in the hadith ash-Sharif, 'Oh my Rabb! From You, I want iman the end of which is not disbelief,' and in the 136th ayat of the Surat an-Nisa, 'Oh believers! Believe in Allah and His Rasul.' Imam AHMAD BIN HANBAL rahimah-Allahu ta'ala, in order to attain this marifa, although he was at a high degree in knowledge and ijtihad, ran to be in the service of Hadrat BISHR AL-HAFI rahimah-Allahu ta'ala. When he was asked why he kept close to Bishr al-Hafi, he answered, 'He knows Allah better than I do.' [The Wahhabite book, on page 109, writes, "Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal's pedigree links on to that of Rasulullah's at Nizar ibn Mu'adh. He was the most superior scholar of his time in fiqh and hadith. He was at a very high level in wara and in following the Sunna. He was born in Baghdad in 164 and died there in 241 A.H." It is written in FARID AL-DIN ATTAR'S rahimah-Allahu ta'ala Persian 'Tadhkirat al-awliya' that Ahmad ibn Hanbal attended the lectures of many mashayikhs, for example, DHUL-NUN AL-MISRI and Bishr al-Hafi's (150-277). A crippled woman sent her son to Imam Ahmad and asked him to pray for her. The Imam performed an ablution (wudu) and salat and prayed. The son found his mother welcoming him at the gate when he returned home. She recovered her health through the blessing of Imam Ahmad's prayer.]
"IMAM ABU HANIFAH Al-Imam al-azam rahimah-Allahu ta'ala gave up the work of ijtihad in his last years. He attended Hadrat Jafar as-Sadiq's rahimah-Allahu ta'ala sohbat for two years. When he was asked why he had done so, he answered, 'Numan [Hadrat al-Imam al-Azam's name was Numan.] would have perished if it weren't for those two years.' Although both the imams [Abu Hanifa and Ahmad ibn Hanbal] were at ultimately high grades in knowledge and 'ibadat, they went to the superiors of tasawwuf and attained marifa and its fruit, iman al-haqiqi. Was there another 'ibada more valuable than ijtihad? Was there a deed superior to teaching and disseminating Islam? Leaving these aside, they clung to, embraced the service of the superiors of tasawwuf, and thus attained marifa.
"The value of a'mal (deeds) and 'ibadat is measured with the degree of iman. The brilliance of 'ibadat depends on the amount of ikhlas. The more perfect iman becomes, the more ikhlas is attained, and deeds become all the more glorious and acceptable. The perfection of iman and completion of ikhlas depends on marifa. Since marifa and real belief depend on the attainment of fana' and death-before-death, the perfection of iman is as much as one's fana'. It must be for this reason that it was declared in a hadith ash-Sharif that Hadrat Abu Bakr as-Siddiq's radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh iman was superior to all other Muslims' iman: ' 'Abu Bakr's iman, if weighed against the iman of all my umma, would weigh more,' for he was the most advanced of all the Umma in fana'. The hadith ash-Sharif, 'The one who wants to see a walking corpse must look at Abu Quhafa's son,' confirms this. All the Sahabat al-kiram radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anhum ajmain had attained to the degree of fana'. The preference of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq's fana' in this hadith shows that his degree of fana' was very high."
Imam Muhammad Mathum rahimah-Allahu ta'ala declares in the 106th letter of the second volume:
"Repeat the beautiful word 'La ilaha illa'llah' many, many times! Perform this dhikr with your heart! This blessed word is very beneficial in clearing the heart. Everything but Allahu ta'ala is annihilated when half of this beautiful word is uttered, and the existence of the true mabud (who is worshiped) is announced when the remaining half is said. And sair and suluk, that is, advance on the way of tasawwuf, are for attaining these two. It was declared in a hadith ash-Sharif, 'The most valuable word is La ilaha illa'llah.' Do not be in the company of many people! Worship much! Cling tightly to Rasulullah's Sunnat! Avoid bidat' and men of bidat' very much! Both the good and the wicked can do good deeds, but solely the Siddiqs abstain from bad things.
"You question whether it is malign for the wayfarer on the way of tasawwuf to wear very expensive clothes obtained in a halal way. The things in the hands or on the body of the one whose heart has attained to the degree of fana' and has no interest in anything except Allahu ta'ala do not prevent his heart from the dhikr. His heart has no relation with his exterior organs. Even his sleep is not an obstacle to his heart's work. It is not so with the one who has not been able to attain to the degree of fana', and his exterior, visible organs, do have a connection with his heart. However, it cannot be said that his wearing new, expensive clothes is an obstacle to his heart's work. Great guides of Islam, the imams of Ahl al-Bait, al-Imam al-azam Abu Hanifa and 'ABD AL-QADIR AL-GEILANI rahimahum-Allahu ta'ala wore very expensive clothes. The books Khazanat ar-riwaya, Matalib al-Muminin and Dhahira report that Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam wore a jubba (long gown with full sleeves) which was worth a thousand dirhams of silver. He was seen performing salat wearing a jubba worth four thousand dirhams. Al-Imam al-azam Abu Hanifa rahimah-Allahu ta'ala advised his disciples to wear new and valuable clothes. Hadrat Abu Said al-khudri was asked what his opinion about changes and new practices in eating, drinking and dressing was. He said that all were means to show Allahu ta'ala's favor when they were done with halal money and not for ostentation or with hypocrisy.
"Love for anything other than Allahu ta'ala is of two kinds. The first kind is the love for a creature through the heart and body and the desire to obtain it. Such is the love of the ignorant. It is for the purpose of redeeming the heart from this love that one endeavors on the way of tasawwuf. Thus, solely the love for Allahu ta'ala remains in the heart and one gets redeemed from occult polytheism. It is thus seen that tasawwuf is necessary for a person to get rid of occult polytheism. It is a means to attain the iman ordered in the ayat, 'O believers! Do believe!' The divine order in the 120th ayat of the Surat al-Anam, 'Give up the sins which are performed overtly with the organs or with the heart!' shows that it is necessary to unfasten the heart from its interest in everything but Allahu ta'ala. What kind of goodness could be expected of a heart in love with something other than Him? In Allahu ta'ala's sight, there is no value or importance in a soul that yearns for someone other than Him.
"The second kind of love is that in which solely the organs' love or wish is involved. The heart and soul, having already been devoted to Allahu ta'ala, know none but Him. This sort of love is called the 'mail tabii' (instinct). This love is only of the body. It does not smear the heart or soul. It arises from the properties and needs of substances and energy in the body. Love of this kind for creatures might exist in those who have attained fana' and baqa' and in the awliya' rahimahum-Allahu ta'ala of high status. In fact, it exists in all of them. Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam liked cool and sweet sherbets. The hadith ash-Sharif, 'I was allowed to like three things of your world,' is widely known. The books of Shama'il write that Rasulullah sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam liked clothes called 'al-burd al-yamani ' that were made of cotton and linen.
"When the nafs is honored with fana' and attains itminan (tranquillity), it becomes similar to the five latifas, namely the qalb (heart), ruh (soul), sirr (mystery), khafi (the secret) and akhfa (the most secret). And at this state of the nafs, jihad is made only against the evil desires of the substances and thermal and kinetic energy of the body. A hadith ash-Sharif declares, 'What is perceived through the sense organs affects [those who have] clean hearts and also cleansed nafses.' The effect on other people can be inferred accordingly.
"You ask whether it is permissible to eat what the following people might offer or to go to their houses: bidat-committer, bribe-taker, cheater (fraud), sinner. It is better not to eat and not to go. In fact, it is necessary for those who are on the way of tasawwuf to avoid them. It is permissible in case of necessity. It is haram to eat something which is known to be haram. It is halal to eat anything known to be halal. If it is not known whether it is halal or haram, it will be better not to eat it.
Sufism a bid'at ?
HOW WOULD YOU RESPOND TO THE CLAIM THAT SUFISM IS BID'A?
© Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995
Answer :
I would respond by looking to see how traditional ulama or Islamic scholars have viewed it. For the longest period of Islamic history--from Umayyad times to Abbasid, to Mameluke, to the end of the six-hundred-year Ottoman period--Sufism has been taught and understood as an Islamic discipline, like Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), hadith, Qur'an recital (tajwid), tenets of faith (ilm al-tawhid) or any other, each of which preserved some particular aspect of the din or religion of Islam. While the details and terminology of these shari'a disciplines were unknown to the first generation of Muslims, when they did come into being, they were not considered bid'a or "reprehensible innovation" by the ulema of shari'a because for them, bid'a did not pertain to means, but rather to ends, or more specifically, those ends that nothing in Islam attested to the validity of.
To illustrate this point, we may note that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) never in his life prayed in a mosque built of reinforced concrete, with a carpeted floor, glass windows, and so on, yet these are not considered bid'a, because we Muslims have been commanded to come together in mosques to perform the prayer, and large new buildings for this are merely a means to carry out the command.
In the realm of knowledge, books of detailed interpretation of the Qur'an, verse by verse and sura by sura, were not known to the first generation of Islam, nor was the term tafsir current among them, yet because of its benefit in preserving a vital aspect of the revelation, the understanding of the Qur'an, when the tafsir literature came into being, it was acknowledged to serve an end endorsed by the shari'a and was not condemned as bid'a. The same is true of most of the Islamic sciences, such as ilm al-jarh wa tadil or "the science of weighing positive and negative factors for evaluating the reliability of hadith narrators", or ilm al-tawhid, "the science of tenets of Islamic faith", and other disciplines essential to the shari'a. In this connection, Imam Shafi'i (d. 204/820) has said, "Anything which has a support (mustanad) from the shari'a is not bid'a, even if the early Muslims did not do it" (Ahmad al-Ghimari, Tashnif al-adhan, Cairo: Maktaba al-Khanji, n.d., 133).
Similarly ilm al-tasawwuf, "the science of Sufism" came into being to preserve and transmit a particular aspect of the shari'a, that of ikhlas or sincerity. It was recognized that the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was not only words and actions, but also states of being: that a Muslim must not only say certain things and do certain things, but must also be something. The shari'a commands one, for example, in many Qur'anic verses and prophetic hadiths, to fear Allah, to have sincerity toward Him, to be so certain in ones knowledge of Allah that one worships Him as if one sees Him, to love the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) more than any other human being, to show love and respect to all fellow Muslims, to show mercy, and to have many other states of the heart. It likewise forbids us such inward states as envy, malice, pride, arrogance, love of this world, anger for the sake of ones ego, and so on. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi relates, for example, with a chain of transmission judged rigorously authenticated (sahih) by Ibn Main, the hadith "Anger spoils faith (iman) as [the bitterness of] aloes sap spoils honey" (Nawadir al-usul. Istanbul 1294/1877. Reprint. Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d., 6).
If we reflect upon these states, obligatory to attain or to eliminate, we notice that they proceed from dispositions, dispositions not only lacking in the unregenerate human heart, but acquired only with some effort, resulting in a human change so profound that the Qur'an in many verses terms it purification, as when Allah says in surat al-Ala, for example,
Bringing about this change is the aim of the Islamic science of Sufism, and it cannot be termed bid'a, because the shari'a commands us to accomplish the change.
At the practical level, the nature of this science of purifying the heart (like virtually all other traditional Islamic disciplines) requires that the knowledge be taken from those who possess it. This is why historically we find that groups of students gathered around particular sheikhs to learn the discipline of Sufism from. While such tariqas or groups, past and present, have emphasized different ways to realize the attachment of the heart to Allah commanded by the Islamic revelation, some features are found in all of them, such as learning knowledge from a teacher by precept and example, and then methodically increasing ones iman or faith by applying this knowledge through performing obligatory and supererogatory works of worship, among the greatest of latter being dhikr or the remembrance of Allah. There is much in the Qur'an and sunna that attests to the validity of this approach, such as the hadith related by al-Bukhari that:
Allah Most High says: "....My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks me, I will surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him (Sahih al-Bukhari. 9 vols. Cairo 1313/1895. Reprint (9 vols. in 3). Beirut: Dar al-Jil, n.d., 5.131: 6502)--which is a way of expressing that such a person has realized the consummate awareness of tawhid or "unity of Allah" demanded by the shari'a, which entails total sincerity to Allah in all one's actions. Because of this hadith, and others, traditional ulama have long acknowledged that ilm or "Sacred Knowledge" is not sufficient in itself, but also entails amal or "applying what one knows"--as well as the resultant hal or "praiseworthy spiritual state" mentioned in the hadith.
It was perceived in all Islamic times that when a scholar joins between these aspects, his words mirror his humility and sincerity, and for that reason enter the hearts of listeners. This is why we find that so many of the Islamic scholars to whom Allah gave tawfiq or success in their work were Sufis. Indeed, to throw away every traditional work of the Islamic sciences authored by those educated by Sufis would be to discard 75 percent or more of the books of Islam. These men included such scholars as the Hanafi Imam Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin, Shaykh al-Islam Zakaria al-Ansari, Imam Ibn Daqiq al-Eid, Imam al-Izz Ibn Abd al-Salam, ABD'AL GHANI AN-NABLUSI, MUJADDID ALIF THANI SIRHINDI, Shaykh Ibrahim al-Bajuri, ABU HAMID AL-GHAZALI, SHAH WALI 'ALLAH DEHLWI, IMAM AL-NAWAWI, the hadith master (hafiz, someone with 100,000 hadiths by memory) Abd al-Adhim al-Mundhiri, the hadith master Murtada al-Zabidi, the hadith master Abd al-Rauf al-Manawi, the hadith master JALAL AL-DIN AL-SUYUTI, the hadith master Taqi al-Din al-Subki, SAYYAD AHMAD AR-RIFA'I, IBN HAJAR AL-HAYTAMI, Zayn al-Din al-Mallibari, Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, and many many others.
Imam al-Nawawi's attitude towards Sufism is plain from his work Bustan al-arifin [The grove of the knowers of Allah] on the subject, as well as his references to al-Qushayris famous Sufi manual al-Risala al-Qushayriyya throughout his own Kitab al-adhkar [Book of the remembrances of Allah], and the fact that fifteen out of seventeen quotations about sincerity (ikhlas) and being true (sidq) in an introductory section of his largest legal work (al-Majmu: sharh al-Muhadhdhab. 20 vols. Cairo n.d. Reprint. Medina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, n.d., 1.1718) are from Sufis who appear by name in al-Sulamis Tabaqat al-Sufiyya [The successive generations of Sufis]. Even Ibn Taymiyya (whose views on Sufism remain strangely unfamiliar even to those for whom he is their "Sheikh of Islam") devoted volumes ten and eleven of his Majmu al-fatawa to Sufism, while his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya wrote his three-volume Madarij al-salikin as a detailed commentary on Abdullah al-Ansaris Manazil al-sairin, a guide to the maqamat or "spiritual stations" of the Sufi path. These and many other Muslim scholars knew first hand the value of Sufism as an ancillary shari'a discipline needed to purify the heart, and this was the reason that the Umma as a whole did not judge Sufism to be a bid'a down through the ages of Islamic civilization, but rather recognized it as the science of ikhlas or sincerity, so urgently needed by every Muslim on ...
And Allah alone gives success.
© Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995