The face was red with flushing
blood as he tried to stop his breath for as long as he could. The eyes
bulged out, though staring at nothing. Small rivulets of perspiration shone
on the forehead, and the voice coming through the foaming mouth was barely
audible. He could scarcely speak when he tried to complete his sentence,
and then did that through his gestures, nodding with satisfaction as if
the message had been transmitted by some telepathic process.
The man, a neighbour of mine, was
not faking it out. He was a highly educated professional and belonged to
a very respectable family. He truly believed in what he was trying to say.
Somehow -- perhaps because of my appearance -- he had a misconception that
I belonged to his ‘clan’. So he took very little time to begin sharing
his ideas with me: ‘The fragrance of flowers, the song of birds, the air,
everything... but then, you know it. Yes, yes, you know it. I am Allah,
you are Allah, everything is Allah....’
I realised afterwards that in a
very crude manner, the man was expressing (though technically incorrectly)
ideas he had gathered from some Sufi....
The Qur’anic concept
of Tawhid (monotheism) is that there is only one God -- Allah. All
those characteristics which can only be associated with God must not be
attributed to anyone else.
The Qur’an says:
Declare [O Prophet] that1
God is One2! He is the rock.3
He is neither anyone’s father nor anyone’s son. And none is equal to Him.[112:1-3]
Therefore, the whole world is His
creation: He is above all, and there is nothing like Him.
It is the correct belief in
God which enlightens the heart and solves the riddle this universe is.
Every creation points out to the fact that there must be a Creator and
therefore reflects God:
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.
[24:35]
In Sufism, however, Tawhid, is
expressed as ‘only Absolute Reality is absolutely real’. To the Sufi, this
concept of Tawhid is different from pantheism (regarded un-Islamic
by almost all the Muslim scholars), for the Sufistic Tawhid is not
‘everything is God’: it is ‘God is everything’, or, more ostensibly, ‘there
is nothing except God’. The result is that in Sufism, Tawhid expressed
as la ilaha illallah (there is no God but Allah) is the Tawhid
of the ordinary, whereas the Tawhid of the elect is la mawjuda
illallah (there is nothing but Allah). This means that whatever we
see does not have any significance, for it does not exist in reality. It
is only relatively real. What does exist in reality is God. Ibn ‘Arabi
writes in his book Fasusu’l-Hikam:
Although, apparently Creation is distinct
from the Creator, in reality the Creator is but Creation and Creation is
but the Creator. All these are from one reality. Nay, it is but He who
is the Only Reality, and it is He Who manifests Himself in all these realities.
This concept is called Wahdatu’l-Wajud
(Unity of Being): the idea is that a knife and a sword, for example,
are called by their respective names and are treated as distinct and separate
items. But when their ‘essence’ steel moves wara u’l-wara (‘beyond
the beyond’, that is beyond all forms and shapes), it is called steel.
Similarly, God is considered as the Ultimate Reality, which is transcendent
(beyond shape and form) but in essence immanent in Creation. In the words
of Sha Muhammad Isma‘il (‘Abaqat, ‘abaqah 20, al-isharah
u’l-awwal):
For all Creation, Ma bihitta
‘yun4 is only one Definite
being.
Another version of this concept
is Wahdatu’l-Shahud (Unity of Appearance), according to which, God is the
only Reality, and everything else is illusion. This version is again the
same concept expressed in a different way. According to Sha Muhammad
Isma‘il (‘Abaqat, ‘abaqah 20, al-isharahu’l-awwal):
...deep analysis will show
that there is no difference except that owing to the difference in their
stages and in their ways of reaching Lahut,5
they [the proponents of the two versions] have adopted varying styles to
express their opinions.
Such beliefs often result in
a strong tendency to regard a man’s physical self as a ‘form’ and to consider
this form as an obstruction in his going warau’l-wara (beyond the beyond)
and in reaching the Ultimate Reality. Theosophical (to be more precise,
existential) realisation of this Reality through self-denial and self-control
becomes the ultimate goal of life, whereas according to the Qur’an,
the purpose of man's life is worship and servitude to God (51-56) and the
purpose of religion is the purification of his soul to enable him to do
just that (62:2). In Sufism, therefore, purification of the soul becomes
the ultimate target of the Sufi’s life rather than becoming the outcome
of following the dictates of Islam. For this purification, rituals and
methods other than those recommended or demanded by Islam are often prescribed
with such authority6 and adhered
to with such pertinacity that they virtually amount to innovation in religion.
That which is a means to an end becomes the end in itself: man's humility,
which in Islam leads to servitude, becomes a source of his pride in Sufism;
servitude, which makes him a humble servant of his Master, makes him the
Master.
According to Sufism, perfect
awareness of the Absolute Reality results in the Sufi's being absolutely
unaware of Creation and of his own self; to be more precise, it results
in his being aware of the fact that in reality there is no existence of
Creation and even of his own self. This concept often leads to great imbalance;
in negating his ego, the Sufi ends up worshipping it; in negating Creation,
he negates life itself.
Absolute negation of the self
is impracticable, absolute negation of Creation impractical.
No Man born of a woman can
conceive nothingness for himself, unless he is deranged enough not to perceive
anything at all. Life is not insignificant. Nor is consciousness. And every
one of us knows this. Life still brings laughter, death still summons tears.
Intellect is still honoured, lack of consciousness is still regarded as
insanity. A man thinks and therefore is. When he thinks, he knows -- consciously
or otherwise -- that it is `he' who is thinking. Therefore, if he thinks
or believes that he does not exist -- that only God exists --, then he
will usually end up thinking or believing that it is ‘he’ who is actually
God. But God he cannot be. For the best of men -- the messengers of God
--, even in their greatness, always remained in want of their Lord's mercy
for the most minor of their needs:
Allahumma inni lima anzalta ilayya min khayrin
faqir
Lord! verily I am needy for anything you may bestow upon
me out of good. [A prayer of Moses (sws); see the Qur’an 28:24]
Allahumma inni ‘abduka, ibn ‘bdika, ibn amatika....
Lord! verily I am your slave, the son of your slave,
the son of your slave-woman …. (part of a prayer of the Prophet sws)
Therefore, even a messenger
of God remains a servant of his Master. To him God is the Master whom he
loves with all his heart and all his mind and all his soul. To the Sufi,
however, God is the beloved whose love leads him to realise the Ultimate
Reality -- and thus makes him the Master (though the Sufi will sometimes
deny this. However, as long as ‘he’ believes -- consciously or otherwise
-- that nothing expect God exists, he will usually be thinking of himself
as the Deity7).
The usual result of this shift
in the object is that in addition to the spiritual exercises and rituals
recommended or prescribed by Islam to enable man to serve God, the Sufi
virtually makes many other exercises and rituals obligatory, which often
leave him with very little energy and motivation to do God's bidding where
it is actually required. And since the Sufi has a philosophical foundation
for this shift from the balance required by Islam, he usually ends up being
a slave of his own desires.
Vis-a-vis the society as a
whole, the object of an individual’s life as envisaged by Sufism is impractical
ad absurdum, as realisation of the object by all would mean negation of
Creation by all and therefore negation of society, whereas realisation
of the object of a man’s life as envisaged by Islam would result in the
creation of a truly harmonious society. Worshipping and serving God entail
responsibility towards society. One’s affiliation with society is not negated
as such in Islam as a goal for achieving self-purification, just as none
of the blessings of God is negated for this purpose, howsoever trivial
it may appear to be.
Only when such negation becomes
necessary for preventing a greater injustice to the society or to one's
own self does Islam allow -- and in some cases demand -- that an individual
deny the privileges he has and negate his affiliation with his society.
In Sufism, however, there seems
to be a strong tendency to regard asceticism as highly desirable per se.
If nothing else, there is at least an abnormal emphasis on the negation
of worldly life:
Ibn ‘Ata Allah writes:
The source of every disobedience, indifference,
and passion is self-satisfaction. The source of every obedience, vigilance,
and virtue is dissatisfaction with one’s self. (Tr. Cryil Glasse, The Concise
Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, London: Stacey International, 1991,
p. 378).
Al Ghazali says in a al-Munqidh
mina‘l-Dalal:
Then I turned my attention to the Way of the
Sufis. I knew that it could not be traversed to the end without both doctrine
and practice, and that the gist of the doctrine lies in overcoming the
appetites of the flesh and getting rid of its evil dispositions and vile
qualities, so that the heart may be cleared of all but God....
When I considered the intention of my teaching, I perceived
that instead of doing it for God's sake alone I had no motive but the desire
for glory and reputation. I realised that I stood on the edge of a precipice
and would fall into Hellfire unless I set about to mend my ways... Conscious
of my helplessness and having surrendered my will entirely, I took refuge
with God as a man in sore trouble who has no resource left. God answered
my prayer and made it easy for me to turn my back on reputation and wealth
and wife and children and friends. (Tr. Cyril Glasse, The Concise Encyclopaedia
of Islam, second edition, London: Stacey International, 1991. p. 379)
Is this abnormal inclination towards
asceticism deliberate? Is it obligatory or merely desirable? -- these questions
may be debatable. However, one thing is certain. As far as the concept
of perfect awareness of the Absolute Reality is concerned, it inevitably
leads to the conceptual negation of Creation and therefore of society.
Perhaps because of the impracticability
and impracticality of their ideas, the Sufis have usually regarded it desirable
per se not to reveal their inner thoughts about Tawhid (and when they do
reveal them, the style they use makes their language unintelligible to
most people), whereas the Prophet (sws) was told to communicate his message
clearly as part of his mission (the Qur’an 5:67):
Know therefore that the ultimate of all disciples
of Mystic intuition is this Tawhid, and the secrets of this discipline
and cannot be written in any book because, according to a saying of ‘Arifin
[those who have achieved awareness], exposing the secrets of Divinity amounts
to infidelity. [al-Ghazali, Ihya ‘Ulumi’l-Din, Vol. 4. p. 641]
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