IECRC (USA & Canada)

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Volume 1, Issue 3 (Shawwal 1424)

“Today Sufism is a name without a reality.  It was once a reality without a name,” said Abul Hasan Fushanji some 300 years after the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).  These two sentences indicated two important points.  The first point being that Sufis, who had dedicated themselves to the worship of God, had once been an actuality during the time of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) and His Companions.  The word Sufi did not exist then, but its realities lived within those holy people.  The second sentence suggests a loss of this way of life with the acquisition of wealth as the Islamic empire expanded.  With the spreading of worldliness, “men tended to become more and more bound up with the ties of this life, [and] those who dedicated themselves to the worship of God were distinguished from the rest by the title of Sufis” (Lings, 45).

The word Sufi literally means ”woolen”.  The term was in reference to the clothes that came to be associated with those who had given up the material aspect of life in pursuit of a spiritual and deeper approach to God.  In going along with the concept of duality in this particular approach, the word Sufi also had the meaning of “purity”.  This sense of purity was the beginning and the end goal for the spiritual seeker.  Together these two meanings summed up much of what the Sufis strove for: a negation of this world and the achievement of purity in their faith.

If one asked a Sufi “What is Sufism,” he or she would expect a response that was abstract and to some extent unintelligible because of its mysticism.  But to a large extent, beyond these seeming abstractions, lies a simplicity.  There are a few core concepts that when explained make Sufism a very accessible approach to faith.  The first one of these core concepts deals with the heart itself, the most important organ that ties the believer to his or her Lord.  The ultimate goal of Sufism lies here: only through purity of the heart and character will the believer reach his or her Lord.  Therefore, the heart becomes the centerpiece.  And if looked at through the scope of imagery, one could liken the heart and its centrality to the sun around which the other planets revolve.  Just as the sun is crucial to our lives, for without it there would be no life on earth and no existence, so too, is the heart in such a vital position.  Without the heart, man is dead – both spiritually and physically.  One could then ask, “But everyone has a heart.  So what makes a Sufi’s heart different from an ordinary man’s?”  The answer to this question lies not in the physical realm but in the spiritual.  The “awakened” heart symbolizes consciousness of God.

Achieving consciousness of God, however is not as simple as it seems.  First off, the heart may be enshrouded in darkness / ignorance such that the person may exist in a state of unconsciousness.  It could also be that the person may know that his or her heart is enshrouded in darkness, and hence to release it from such chains, it needs a method of disentangling.

How does one release himself from such chains of ignorance?  Here is where the role of the sheikh / pir, the spiritual leader steps in. Just as it is impossible to imagine Islam without the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) because of His fundamental role in being the teacher of Islam, it is impossible in Sufism to imagine the approach to God without a sheikh.  It is only through him that the Sufis can reach their true potential.  It is the sheikh who unlocks certain secrets regarding the understanding of faith, but more importantly provides a link back to the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).  The silsilah, or the chain of shuyukh going to back to the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) himself, can be looked at as a series of links that connects the Sufi back to the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in a spiritual connection.  Creating this chain is of great importance for it in essence is creating a link back to the Receptacle into which God poured faith and knowledge.

The sheikh is important for another reason.  In the process of becoming closer to God, the novice may experience spiritual visions which he may interpret  incorrectly.  For example, as the Sufi learns to awaken his heart by  negating his self, the greatest danger that lies ahead of him in this process is the danger that the individual might interpret those visions as a sign of his own divinity.  Such grave mistakes are avoided by being in complete obedience to a Sufi master.  The Sufi master can be likened to a manual which tells the reader how and when and why to perform certain actions to reach the desired conclusion.  He is the warner that gives the alarm to the follower when he or she is exceeding their bounds.  The novice, then, is required to place his hands, symbolically speaking, into the guiding hands of the Sufi master.

This obedience is not a blind obedience.  In fact, one can call it a specialized and individualized type of obedience.  Because in a given population the spiritual ailments that people suffer from differ from individual to individual, so, too, do the treatments. Therefore, the tariqah, the order, which the novice wishes to enter is also particular to him.  If looked at in this light, the sheikh is actually seen as a type of doctor.

In all this, it is easy to get caught in the trap and believe that Sufis are antinomianists – meaning that they forsake the external law, the shari’ah, in favor of the inward law (Sufism).  Yet Sufis would argue the exact opposite.  The Sufi having mastered the external law, begins to focus on the nawafil – the voluntary acts.  The nawafil represents to the Sufi not only a love for God, for they are moving beyond what they are required to do, but they are also simultaneously becoming active followers.  A passive follower would just do the obligatory (fard) acts of faith and feel fulfilled, whereas the Sufi would strive to reach God through “extra credit” work. This concept of love through voluntary acts is summed up in the hadith qudsi, “Nothing is more pleasing to Me, as means for My slave to draw near unto Me, than worship which I have made binding upon him; and My slave ceases not to draw near unto Me with added devotions of his free will until I love him and when I love him I am the Hearing wherewith he hears, and the Sight wherewith he sees and the Hand whereby he grasps and the Foot whereon he walks.” This is in essence the doctrine of Sufism.

Prof. Dr. M. Jahangir Warsi

mj_warsi@hotmail.com

Dr. M. J. Warsi received his Ph.D. in Urdu language and linguistics from Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of several books and research papers in his subject. Before coming to California, he was a professor of Urdu language and linguistics at the University of Michigan.