Some Thoughts on Sufism
by
Sr Ruqaiyyah Waris
Maqsood
(Extracted from her book GCSE Islam, the Do-it-Yourself Guide, published by IPCI)
What is Sufism?
Sufis are Muslims who do not see ‘serving Allah’ in terms
of merely following the laws and rituals. The essence of Sufism is love of God, which completely fills the
heart, and is completely confident of God’s love in return.
‘Nothing is more beloved to Me than that My servant approaches Me with
constant acts of devotion. And when I love him I am the eye by which he sees
and the ear by which he hears. When he approaches me a span I approach him a
cubit, and when he comes to Me walking, I come to him at the run.’ Hadith Qudsi.
Sufism is a life of
spiritual practice, a ‘way of proceeding’ or purification, the following of a spiritual path or way (tariqah), in order to loosen enslavement
to the pleasures of the flesh and this world, and to purge the soul of evil
qualities.
Whereas fiqh deals with the minutiae of ritual and conduct tasawwuf is concerned with the spirit
behind them. For example, when saying prayers, the performing of correct wudu, facing Makkah accurately, the
times the prayers are said and the number of rakahs performed are all matters of fiqh, whereas the intention, concentration, devotion, purification
of soul, and effects of prayers on our morals and manners are matters of tasawwuf. Fiqh governs the carrying out
of commands in the minutest detail; tasawwuf
is the measure if the spirit of obedience and sincerity.
A saying is that ‘a
worshipper devoid of spirit is like a handsome man lacking in character, and a
worshipper full of spirit but defective in performance is like a noble man
deformed in appearance.’
Sufism is Islamic mysticism.
It developed as a reaction against dry Islamic legalism, but it has always
played a fundamental part in the religious experience of those Muslims (like
the Prophet himself) who devoted themselves to a lifetime of prayer and
closeness to God. It cannot be separated from Islam for it is the ‘awakening of
the heart’ by means of submission. It is called ‘the heart of Islam’ by those
who grasp its value, but it is regarded with suspicion by Muslims who base
their faith on obedience to the correct ritual performance of Islam and fear
bida (innovation).
What role does Sufism
play in the din or religion of Islam
as a whole? What is the command of Allah about it?
To Sufis, the role of Sufism is absolutely central. Sufism is seen as the very heart of Islam, without which the rituals are meaningless and mere motions. Islam is only complete when it consists of three fundamental aspects – amal, or action, the obedience to what Allah asks of us; iman, or belief in the Unseen, which the prophets as messengers have revealed to us; and ihsan, to worship Allah as if we can see Him, for we know He can see us.
Islam (or submission to the will of Allah) or Amal is conveyed to us by the Imams of shari’ah; iman is conveyed by the Imams of aqidah (or tenets of faith); and ihsan through the Imams of tasawwuf. Tasawwuf was therefore taught in the curriculum of madrassahs across the Muslim world, and many of the greatest shari’ah scholars have been Sufis.
Some of the Rituals and Practices of Sufism:
While all Sufis practice various rituals, each tariqah institutionalised its own organisation of them.
· Dhikr – chanting
repetitive litanies and invocations, sometimes brief and simple like a
repetition of a single name of God, sometimes more detailed and involved. It
was often practised until the devotee fell from exhaustion, or lapsed from
consciousness. It was intended to empty one’s consciousness of all the cares
and concerns of human life, to concentrate it on God, or the person of the
Prophet (pbuh). It led the Sufi to ecstatic mystical experience.
· Sama – listening to
the Qur’anic recitation or the chanting of Sufi prayers and special
invocations.
· Self-mortification
– to gain mystical experiences through
- fasting
- the exposure of
the body to cold, heat and coarse textiles
- the voluntary
infliction of pain.
· Ghina – recitation of
Sufi poetry and other literature with moving appeal. Sufis sang their themes in
exquisite poetry and moving saj or rhymed prose. The
greatest poets were Farid, Sa’di, Hafiz and Jalal ud-Din Rumi, whose Mathnawi
is like an encyclopedia of religious and ethical knowledge.
· Musiqa and Raqs
– playing, listening or dancing to beautiful music, in order to bring about
- tarab, the special joy
and intense pleasure through hearing
- nashwah – emotional transport
to ‘higher realms’
- ghaybah – passage into
the world beyond and communication with transcendent reality.
· Banj al-asrar – or ‘anaesthetic
of secrets’, the assisting attainment of the mystical experience by drinking
wine or taking drugs.
Was Muhammad (pbuh) a Sufi?
1. The Prophet (pbuh) had many mystical experiences.
2. His heart was miraculously cleansed when he was a child.
3. He frequently practised withdrawal from life in order to meditate and pray, especially during the month of Ramadan (it was a ‘holy month’ long before it became the fasting month).
4. He based his entire life after his call to prophethood on the guidance of a ‘master’, in his case the angel Jibril, speaking as mouthpiece for Allah.
5. He experienced an ascent through the heavens (laylat al-miraj), and the nearer presence of God. (The ‘spiritual path’ (tariqah) of the Sufi is modelled on his heavenly ascent).
6. He practised self-mortification (mujahadat – from the word jihad) in the forms of long hours of prayer, especially at night, and most enjoyed in the hours before dawn (when he felt the presence of angels) and frequent fasts, simple food and clothing, and general simplicity of life.
7. He taught that the highest form of striving is the inward striving of the soul for purification – something he referred to as ‘the greater jihad’.
Some Famous Sufis
Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi (559/1165 -
638/1240)
Ibn Arabi was born in Andalus in 560/1165 and brought up in Cordoba, Seville and Granada. He travelled east, settled in Cairo in 596/1201, and moved to Makkah two years later. He also visited Baghdad, Jerusalem and Damascus, where he died and was buried in 636/1240.
He was the most speculative
of Islamic thinkers. His key theory was the pantheistic unity of all existence, wahdat
al-wujud, and his key emphasis was on love rather than justice.
· God is One,
Absolute, the Source of all being, whose essence is Being.
· The world is both
created and eternal, created so far as it exists in space-time, and eternal in
that it is in the knowledge of God.
· The world is God
and God is the world – they are indistinguishable from each other except in
abstract human knowledge.
· Man never becomes
God, nor God man, but it is possible through knowledge to achieve spiritual
unity with God.
· Every prophet is a word of God and Muhammad (pbuh) is the word of God, the focal point of all
other prophets.
· The purpose of
creation is al-insan al-kamil (the
perfect man), who is also the microcosm reflecting the glory of God the
Macrocosm.
· In so far as the
previous prophets were reflections of the perfect man, they were the awliya (sing. waliy or friend) of God. This quality was higher than prophecy.
· Ibn Arabi thought
himself the khatim (seal or last) of
the friends of God, as Muhammad had been the khatim of the prophets.
· God is One,
Absolute, the Source of all being, whose essence is Being.
· The world is both
created and eternal, created so far as it exists in space-time, and eternal in
that it is in the knowledge of God.
· The world is God
and God is the world – they are indistinguishable from each other except in
abstract human knowledge.
· A human cannot
become God, nor God a human, but it is possible through knowledge to achieve spiritual unity with God.
· Every prophet is a word of God and Muhammad (pbuh) is the word of God, the focal point of all
other prophets.
· The purpose of
creation is al-insan al-kamil (the
perfect human), who is also the microcosm reflecting the glory of God the
Macrocosm.
· In so far as the
previous prophets were reflections of the perfect human, they were the awliya (sing. waliy or friend) of God. This quality was higher than prophecy.
· Ibn Arabi thought
himself the khatim (seal or last) of
the friends of God, as Muhammad had been the khatim of the prophets.
Al-Ghazzali, d. 606/1111.
A ‘giant’ in both the terms
of Islamic law and Sufi mysticism, his outstanding contribution was to present
Sufism in terms an orthodox scholar could accept.
Ghazzali took issue with:
· The mutakallimun,
those who relied on revelation rather than reason, esoteric knowledge based on
‘revelations’ to their teachers, and conceded to their enemies that they had
done so – thus rendering themselves unconvincing. Their teaching, although
based on the holy writings, did not stop the raging controversies, and may well
have fuelled them.
· The Batinis
for their over-belief and trust in pirs
or saints, appealing to the simple-minded by taking advantage of their lack of
education and teaching doctrines on the authority of those pirs or occult leaders they believed to be infallible (unable to be
wrong).
· The notion that
mystical experiences brought a person into unity with the divine Being. That
was rejected as blasphemy. He insisted that knowledge of God was never
knowledge of His Self, but only of His revealed will. So, Sufis such as al-Hallaj
(309/922) who claimed that through mystical experience he and God had become
One were indeed committing blasphemy. (Al-Hallaj was crucified for blasphemy).
· any Sufis who withdrew from society into ‘monasteries’
· any form of asceticism or mortification
· any claim that a Muslim was not required to observe all the rituals and other laws of shari’ah.
· atheists, for their denial of God and the assertion that the world existed by itself.
· naturalists, who accepted that God existed but denied that He had any relevance, and there would be no judgement, therefore people could indulge in the pleasures of this world that Islam forbade.
· Philosophers, whose doctrines he subjected to critical analysis. He acknowledged their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, logic, nature, politics and ethics, but not their denial of bodily resurrection on Judgement Day, or their assertion that the universe was eternal and uncreated.
· The argument that matter would pass away, but the soul would not, and therefore must be a separate entity; that the soul alone is immortal because it is of the essence of the logos which is spirit. Al-Ghazzali argued that both soul and body would meet whatever was due on Judgement Day; anything less would compromise divine Justice, let alone contradict the divine word, which taught that recreation of the body a second time and its reunion with the soul was no more difficult or surprising for God than their creation in the first place.
He reaffirmed the view that tasawwuf was both knowledge and action, and rebuked those who sought fast-track methods of reaching the mystical experience. He disapproved of any claim that a Muslim was not obliged to observe all the rituals and other laws of shari’ah. He realised that Islam would never accept Sufism except on the conditions that it kept within the bounds of Islamic law and traditional belief to secure an accepted place within Islam. The only form of Sufism he would accept was one which conformed both to the shari’ah and the spirit of Islam.
Jalal ud-Din Rumi (1207-1273), the Mevlana
Rumi, the Mevlana, was the greatest mystical poet of Persia. He was born at Balkh in Khorasan in a highly respected family which had produced many notable scholars. His great-grandfather claimed descent from Abu Bakr. His father Baha ud-Din Walad was an eminent theologian and great preacher. When Jalal ud-Din was 12 they left Balkh and moved westwards, possibly on divine instruction, but also to flee the Mongol hordes sweeping through Khorasan. They went to Damascus and finally to Turkey.
Jalal ud-Din married, and his eldest son Sultan Walid was born in 1226. The family settled in Qonya, the capital of the Western Seljuk Empire. Baha ud-Din became the spiritual adviser of the ruler, until he died in 1230. His pupil Burhan ud-Din – a Sufi shaykh - arrived in Qonya and continued to teach Jalal ud-Din, who was now 25. During the next decade he studied under this pir and passed through all the stages of the Sufi mystical way. When Burhan ud-Din died in 1240, Jalal ud-Din assumed the rank of shaykh and began to establish his fraternity of disciples. The followers were known as Maulawi or Mevlevi, (Mevlevi being the Turkish pronunciation of Maulawi), and Rumi was known among them as ‘Maulana’ or ‘our Master’.
According to his son Sultan, in his narrative of his father’s life – the Ibtida-namah (‘Book of Beginning’), the remainder of his life fell into three periods, each marked by a mystical intimacy of the closest kind with a ‘perfect man’, one of the saints in whom divine attributes were mirrores, so that the lover, seeing himself in the light of God, realizes that he and his Beloved are not two but One. These experiences lay at the centre of Rumi’s thought and inspired all his poetry.
In 1244, Shamsu’d Din of Tabriz, a wandering dervish, arrived at Qonya. Jalal ud-Din found in him the perfect image of the Divine Beloved he had long been seeking. He took him into his house, and they were inseparable for a year or two, his son Sultan likening this to the journey of Moses in company with Khadir (Surah 18:64-80). He said they had become ‘two bodies with one soul’. In that union of loving souls all distinctions vanish, nothing remains but the essential unity of Love in which the lover and beloved merged their separate identities. His disciples, however, bitterly resented being cut off from him and his preoccupation with Shamsu’d Din alone, and actually threatened him with violence and abuse. He fled to Damascus, but Jalal ud-Din was so upset that his son Sultan Walad fetched him back and the disciples were forgiven. However, it all repeated a second time, and the third time he vanished without leaving a trace behind.
In his grief and desolation, and passionate and uncontrollable emotion which overwhelmed him, Rumi wrote his immense collection (c2,500) of mystical odes, ‘the Diwan of Shams-i-Tabriz’, using Shams’ name as if he and himself were the same person. He also instituted the characteristic religious dance with its plaintive reed-flute accompaniment.
The second episode of his spiritual life (c1252-1261) was a fainter repetition of the first. He devoted himself to Salah ud-Din Faridun Zarkub, who became his deputy and had the task of instructing the disciples. They again showed their resentment in no uncertain manner, and virtually excommunicated them!
The third episode began when Salah ud-Din died in c.1261, and Rumi found source of inspiration in another disciple, Husam ud-Din Hasan b. Muhammad b. Hasan b. Akhi Turk, whose name was mystically associated with his greatest work, the celebrated Mathnawi (epic poem – of some 25,000 rhyming couplets, in six books). Rumi likened himself to a flute on his lips pouring forth ‘the wailful music that he made’. In the last ten years of Rumi’s life, Husam acted as his khalifah, and succeeded him as head of the Order on his death in 1273. Sultan Walad took his place in 1284.
He had been guide and friend to the Seljuk governor of Rum, the minister Mu’in ud-Din, and also to Sultan Ala ud-Din himself. He was so influential he was able to defy those who attacked his doctrines. He referred to critics as ‘boobies’ and ‘dogs baying at the moon’.
Female Sufis.
Although most famous, Rabi’a al-Adawiyya - (born 95/714 or 99/717-8 - died
185/801) was not the first, but a
culminating representative of female Sufism. She was not a highly-strung and
emotional recluse, but a rational, disciplined teacher who demonstrated her
mastery of important mystical states, such as truthfulness (sidq), self-criticism (muhasaba), spiritual intoxication (sukr), love for God (mahabba), and gnosis (ma’rifa).
Rabi’a has often been called
the founder of Sufi love-mysticism, but this was actually not a particularly
important aspect of her teaching. She had a reputation as a specialist in
jurisprudence. Her pupil Maryam of Basra
was noted for her lectures on love,
going into ecstasies on hearing someone speak of love, and finally dying in a
swoon during a discourse on love.
By the beginning of the C10,
Sufi women could be found throughout the Muslim world from Egypt to Khurasan,
but most had become disciples of Sufi men as opposed to having women teachers.
Sufi women mixed freely with men, travelled long distances in order to study,
and occupied positions of authority and respect. But they no longer seem to
have been spiritual masters themselves.
Some accepted the ‘spiritual marriage’, also part of
Christian practice, in which a couple lived together but the sexual
relationship was set aside. It was also permitted for unrelated men and women
to live together as ‘brother and sister’ in a spiritual union, caring for each
other with no sexual intimacy. The woman was usually expected to act as the
servant of Allah by serving and attending to her male companion. Rabi’a bint Isma’il had this
relationship with her husband Ahmad b. Abi al-Hawari. She encouraged him to
take other wives if he needed sexual satisfaction. In the view of some, this
made such a woman superior to the husband, who still had the need for sex.
1. There is One God,
the Eternal, the Only Being; none exists save He.
2. There is One
Master, the Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly leads His followers
into the Light.
3. There is One Holy
Book, the sacred manuscript of Nature, the only scripture which can enlighten
the world.
4. There is One True
Religion, the unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal,
which fulfils the life’s purpose of every soul.
5. There is One Law,
the law of reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience,
together with a sense of awakened justice.
6. There is One
Brotherhood, the human brotherhood which unites the children of earth
indiscriminately in the Fatherhood of God.
7. There is One Moral,
the love which springs forth from self-denial and blooms in deeds of
beneficence.
8. There is One
Object of praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshippers through
all aspects from the seen to the unseen.
9. There is One
Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the
essence of all wisdom.
10. There is One
Path, the annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the mortal to
immortality, in which resides all perfection.
The God of the Sufi is the God of every creed, and the God of all. Names make no difference to Him – Allah, God, Gott, Dieu, Khuda, Brahma or Bhagwan – all these names and more are names of this God. God is beyond the limitation of name. In God, the Sufi sees the perfection of all that is in the reach of human perception, and yet knows Him to be above human reach. He looks to him as the lover to the beloved, and knows that all things in life come from Him.
The ‘tongue’ of God is busy speaking through all things, but in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of a human. He has done this throughout human history, every great teacher of the past having been this Guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, the human disguises consisted of coats worn by the same Guiding Spirit, who appeared to be different in each – Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and many more, known or unknown to history. It was always one and the same Person. Those who saw the Person and knew him recognised him whatever the form or disguise; those who saw only the coat went astray. There is only one Teacher, however different he may be at different periods of history, and he comes in every time and place to awaken humans from the slumber of this life of illusion, and to guide them towards divine perfection.
It is often for no other reason than clinging to the personality of their particular teacher, claiming that he is superior to other teachers, and degrading a teacher held in the same esteem by others, that people have separated themselves from one another, and caused most of the wars and factions which history records among the children of God. They consider only certain books or scrolls to be sacred scripture, carefully preserved as holy, to be handed down to posterity as divine revelation. They have fought and disputed over the authenticity of these books, and have refused to accept any other book of similar character, and have thus formed diverse sects. Sufis have in all ages respected all such books, and traced in them the same truth which they read in the incorruptible manuscript of nature, the perfect and living model that teaches the inner law of life. All scriptures before nature’s manuscript are as little pools of water before the Ocean.
Religion is the duty of every individual. Every soul is born for a purpose, and the light of that purpose is kindled in his or her soul. This is why Sufis in their tolerance allow all people to have their own path, and do not compare the principles of others with their own, but allow freedom of thought to everyone, since they themselves are freethinkers. Sin and virtue, right and wrong, good and bad are not the same in the case of each individual; they are according to their grade of evolution and state of life. Therefore Sufis concern themselves little with the name of the religion or the place of worship. All places are sacred enough for worship, and all religions convey the religion of the soul. It is only those who do not understand who can mock at the faith of another, condemning to hell or destruction those who do not consider their faith to be the only true faith.
Knowledge of self blooms into knowledge of God. Self-knowledge answers such questions as: Why am I here? Where have I come from? Did I exist before I became conscious of my present existence? If I existed, as what did I exist? As an individual such as I now am, or as a multitude, or as an insect, bird, animal, spirit, jinn, or angel? What happens at death? What purpose do I have to accomplish here? What is my duty in life? But a person asks ‘Why am I here?’ according to the limits of his or her intelligence.
- To eat, drink and be merry? Even animals do this – what more have you accomplished by being human?
- To gain power and position? Both soon pass, all things we possess are taken from others, and others in their turn await with outstretched hands to seize them.
- To gain honour? Someone has to be humbled to give you the honour you seek.
- To gain love? The beauty in ourselves which makes another love us will soon fade away, and may pale in comparison with another.
- To gain virtue? A great number of sufferers from moral hallucination are met with amongst the self-righteous.
Some see God sooner, hear Him more quickly, have been nearer to Him than others – they may be called the elect of God. Rejection of the stranger and believing only in what you have already acknowledged has kept humanity in darkness for ages. All Teachers taught for whatever community of people they were born, and prophesied the coming of the next Teacher, until the fulfilment of the Message. The messages differ only with the era of evolution, or to suit a particular country, climate, period, or requirement.
All messengers have been the embodiment of the one Master-ideal. When Jesus said ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’ it did not mean that the visible person of Jesus was that, but the Master-spirit within him – the same spirit that spoke through Krishna, Muhammad etc. The Spirit spoke through all the blessed tongues, and yet itself remain formless, nameless, birthless and deathless. The blind world clings to the names and forms – it is this ignorance which divides and separates man from man by their delusions. In reality there is One Religion, that of the Only God.
Is a Sufi a Muslim?
This depends on how you define the word ‘Muslim’. Is a Sufi a follower of Islam? Peace and its attainment certainly is the goal. But if the following of Islam is understood to mean the obligatory adherence to a certain rite, conforming to certain restrictions, then many Sufis would resist being placed in that category, feeling they were beyond limitations of that kind.
Do they accept the Qur’an? Yes indeed. But as well as accepting it, many Sufis also recognise other scriptures that Muslims disregard, and they may not follow any particular special book. To a Sufi, revelation is the inherent property of every soul – there is an unceasing flow of the divine stream, which has neither beginning nor end. Divine wisdom is for all, and not limited to a certain people. There is a place in Sufism for all the teachings of other faiths. Wisdom is not restricted to any geographical spot, and cannot be described as a school of thought if by that is meant the instruction of one particular doctrine. It is a school of thought only in the sense that through it one learns wisdom.
Any Muslim who believed the essence of Islam to be the most perfect following of the Qur’an, sunnah and shari’ah would find difficulty in accepting as Muslim a version of the faith which abandoned or neglected those principles.
Music in Sufism
Music plays a great part in many Sufi movements, and is particularly
emphasized in the Chishti path to
spiritual attainment. Music is Ghiza-i-ruh,
the food of the soul. They listen to qawwali, special songs sung at their
sema, the contemplative musical
assembly.
The Shaykh sits in the midst, and the other Sufis sit round him and invoke one after the other the sacred names of God, and repeat surahs of the Qur’an turn by turn. This is to tune the heart of each one present to its proper pitch, hearts that are already prepared by dhikr or contemplation.
It is believed to set the heart in rhythm, make even the circulation of the blood regular, and the pulsation and the whole mechanism of the body become rhythmic. When the mind is also set in rhythm by its awakened response to tone, the Sufi’s whole being becomes musical. Music makes all things in the world living to them, and makes them alive to all things, and they begin to realise how life is dead to many in the world, and how many are dead to life.
There are different grades of progress, and the verses sung by qawwalis are different. Some are in praise of the beauty of the ideal – they stress the divine immanence; others are pictured as the lover in love, the agony of separation, the feelings in the presence of the Beloved.
The qawwalis sing distinctly, so that every word is clear to the hearers, and the music may not hide the poetry. The tabla (drum) players emphasize the accents and keep the rhythm even, so that the being of the Sufi joins with the rhythm and harmony of the music. The condition of the Sufi becomes different – emotion has full play, there is a feeling of joy that cannot be put into words, language being inadequate to express it. This state is termed Hal or Wajad, the sacred ecstasy, and is regarded with respect by all present in the assembly.
Sometimes, if deeply touched, feeling finds vent in tears, or even motion or dance, which Sufis call Raqs.
Criticisms of Sufism and its practices:
Many Muslims do not share enthusiasm for Sufism, and some actively oppose it. There have been extremely worrying rumours made in recent times about the character and behaviour of some of the Shaykhs, who should be the pinnacles of good Muslim behaviour. Orthodox Muslims are often suspicious, critical, and even highly antagonistic of Sufism, for a mix of these reasons:
· Tawhid challenged - the doctrine
of Tawhid is challenged by the Sufi
desire to ‘become one with God’.
· Erotic and
distasteful language – Physical terms such as embracing, hugging and
talking to God, or erotic language is distasteful to most Muslims.
· Khamr – Some Sufis
used alcohol or drugs to induce mystic states.
· Music and dance - Many Muslims
insist these are forbidden.
· Fana – replacing belief that life in this world is
God’s arena for human spiritual development with the notion it is not
important, just a brief journey to the beyond.
· Unity threatened - The unity of
the Ummah is threatened, as Sufis
withdraw into sects, in which they are tempted to think themselves better
Muslims than others.
· Kashf – Rational
scientific knowledge is abandoned in favour of mystical experiences, and
critical analysis ignored for the authoritarian pronouncements of a shaykh – which would inevitably be
limited by the knowledge and experience and talents of that shaykh, and could even be the ravings of
an unsound mind.
· Ta’ah – the unwise,
even dangerous, total obedience to a Shaykh.
· Karamat – teaching that
miracles are possible in the state of union or communion with God, and are
indeed favours granted by God to the most pious.
· Ologies - mathematics
becoming mixed up with numerology, astronomy with astrology, chemistry with
alchemy, etc.
· Magic – teaching that dhikr or repeated prayers are
‘shortcuts’ to results; encouraging people to hope for manipulation of supernatural
forces, thus opening the door to gullibility, magic, talismanship and
charlatanism.
· Ta’abbud - Deliberately
giving up the fulfilment of normal obligations, for the sake of ritualistic
worship such as chanting of phrases, and lengthy contemplation.
· Tawakkul – trust in Allah
degenerating into trust that God will make your desired things happen;
replacing the study of God’s inexorable laws with superstition.
· Qismat – a passive
acquiescence to whatever happens, easily causing neglect and breakdown,
replacing taklif - the moral
responsibility to do God’s will on earth.
· Pantheistic
metaphysics – that all created things from the level of inanimate objects to the
highest of conscious beings were all part of ‘the one’.
· Teaching that all
religious paths are of equal value, all inspired by the same
divine source.
· Egotism – seeking to be saved oneself rather than caring for others.
· Takfir - The tendency to dismiss those not in one’s group as kuffar (unbelievers).
· Tomb-shrines - Praying at the tombs of ‘saints’ for miraculous intervention in healing, pregnancy, or worldly success, or touching the tomb in order to acquire the saint’s special sacred power or barakah.
· Urs festivals - The anniversary of the death of a shaykh becoming the occasion for great gatherings of people and major festivals.
· Odd Doctrines - developing or adopting a number of doctrines foreign to Islam.
· Charlatans - At worst, Sufism offers an opportunity for immature and ignorant pretenders of spiritual excellence and hypocritical dervishes to take full advantage of the gullibilities of eager but unwary disciples. Some so-called shaykhs have even taken sexual advantage of their disciples, or lured them in for monetary gain.
The Importance of
Sufism in the UK.
Sufism has played an important role in the UK, and its membership numbers are on the increase.
Members consist of
· members of the various Sufi Orders around the world who have come to live in the UK
· new converts from the UK Muslim and non-Muslim communities
Many western people find the attitudes towards religion and life in general of some of the Muslims from other cultures very difficult to cope with, and not always to their taste. Sufism has a wide appeal, especially to those of more spiritual interests and character.
In the UK the Sufi Orders welcome women and value them highly, whereas many mosques of certain cultures do not draw in women to their programmes of worship and activities, so inevitably many of the female converts will be drawn to the Sufi aspect of Islam, and the mosques where they can be made to feel at home and have their contributions valued.
The main orders attracting UK converts seem to be the Naqshbandiyyah (under the Turkish Sheikh Nazim), and the Murabitun (under the Scottish Sheikh Abdul Kadir).