Covert Or Unconscious Enemies Of Islam

 

 

COVERT OR UNCONSCIOUS ENEMIES OF ISLAM

 

Every religious group has its good and bad apples. I mean people who confess to a faith and seems to take it seriously, not people who, despite being the member of the religious group in question, is not really interested in the faith to say the least.  Among the former, i.e., the ‘serious’,  there are some who seem to prove their claims by trying to live up to the moral ideals of their faith and those who do anything but live up to them. These I call the bad apples.

 

In every religious group there are also those who seem to be sincere in their faith in the sense that they show no sign of doubting or challenging the core dogmas of the faith. These are usually called orthodox.  There are those however who show signs of being uneasy about the core dogmas and may occasionally voice protesting remarks and even offering alternative dogmas either modifying the orthodox version or entirely or largely replacing them with something of their own manufacture.  These are called heteredox or heretical. If these largely hide their heretical tendencies they are called hypocrites. They do not form the whole group of hypocrites in the religious community because there are other hypocrites who deny the religion entirely but do not want to proclaim it for some selfish reasons.

 

Although our beloved master Muhammad sws the Messenger of Allah was sent to put all records straight in Allah’s religion our Muslim community also could not escape the hypocritical formation of sub-groupings.  We learn both from the Qur’an and the Hadith that a not small minority among the Muslim population of the Prophet’s Medina were determined and dangerous hypocrites. Allah could not be more angry and His Prophet sws more forbearing about them.  They survived the Prophetic age and we still have them with us.

 

The original indigenous hypocrites among Muslims were added to by another kind of hypocrites who  originally were the false converts from other religions to Islam for various reasons. Over time they cultivated another indigenous group of hypocrites and heretics who hid themselves mainly among our good Sufis.  As you may know Sufis are those who are after a deeper understanding of Islam’s spiritual dimension and thereby attain higher piety with higher morality, more gracious social manners and nobler character traits. These people are the real elites and pride of Islam and Muslims. To be one of them takes born ability and persistent determination, i.e., hard work, sincere moral effort at its most intense.

 

Hiding among these pure and heroic brothers and sisters have been their own version of hypocrites just like hiding among the Muslims of the Prophetic Medina were their own group of hypocritical citizens.  You see, every prosperous and envied group attracts its own parasites.  False or hypocritical Sufis have been the parasites of the Sufi sub-community within the overall Islamic community.

 

What have these Sufi parasites have been up to?  In this article we shall insha Allah study this problem.  But before saying anything else we must note that our good and true Sufi masters suffered and tolerated these parasites just like our master the Messenger of Allah had done.  Occasional criticism and even condemnation were issued but as soon as the hypocrites drew in their heads the attack was stopped. Rarely Muslims persecuted their heretics as anywhere near Christians did theirs.  Our Sufi masters are still tolerating them.
The problems of hypocrisy and heresy often overlap. One can be a hypocrite without being a heretic. A person who does not believe in any religion but pretends that he is a believer for convenience’s sake is only a hypocrite.

 

Another who believes in things Islam does not admit and then declares his deviant beliefs openly is a heretic and not a hypocrite. Still another person who is a heretic but takes care to appear an Orthodox Muslim is both a heretic and hypocrite-  it is this last who is the most dangerous and the main parasites of Sufism. Lastly we must also mention the largest but the mildest group of deviants-  the ignorant masses.  Totally meaning well, many a good natured but ignorant Muslims face threats to there Islamic spirituality in the claims and teachings of the deliberately or deludedly misguided people who are made up of the categories we identified above.  We must hurry to add though that these categories are defined in analytical terms;  not every person in the mistaken camps is purely of the type we defined.  An individual can be a bit of more than one of these-  he may be a bit of a hypocrite, a bit of an ignorant, a bit deluded by his dreams or superstitious interpretation of his experiences etc.  In fact this mixing of wrongs and rights is more the rule than the exception.
If I explain what caused me to write this article we shall be more able to study the problem from the most practical viewpoint. Recently a young sister who has been recently bereaved of her beloved father wrote to me complaining that an old lady seen to be a senior Sufi with a great sheikh told her that his father was no more his father or the husband of her mother. These relationships were broken by the man’s death and the man was to be reincarnated as a total somebody else.  This struck the sister like a devastating blow.  How could this be? She did not know anything about such a belief like reincarnation. This should be totally outside Islam, should it not?  She badly wanted to relate to her father after death as her dear father etc.  What was even worse the old lady claimed that her sheikh also believed in reincarnation and had ‘identified’ a newborn baby as a man who had died some years ago. When challenged on such heretical beliefs their holders (as reported by the young bereaved sister) told her that Allah was a very harsh concept and softer concepts were necessary for better spirituality. She rightly remarks: But reincarnation, the severance of my dear father than me is an even harsher concept to contemplate! I concur and I do not blame her.

 

In fact I also personally heard some Sufi parasites talk on similar lines with other claims similarly defended.  Among them is the desirability to pray to prophets and saints and in fact call on living persons supposed to be holy in their absence.   They claim that prophets and saints do not die but only pretend to die and once buried begin to be around and fully involved in worldly affairs. Not only that but that they also hear prayers and deliver the requests made. But worst of all, they say that it is a mistake to pray to Allah. He may not deliver the requests or save the person from dangers he is facing. Only saints can do that for sure.  And they have an explanation can you believe it.  It is that Allah is too abstract and distant something for we weak humans with weak faiths to access and be accommodated by. We simply cannot visualise Him to feel the warmth and sympathy needed for our salvation.  But we can visualise and feel the warmth and nearness of saints who are lovely humans and as a result get our humble requests granted.  This is neither faith nor religion but Gnostic psychology.  You see, in spiritual research a time comes when the researcher comes to the conclusion that all faith items are lies directed to manipulate the imagination emotionally and designed to comfort the believers and enabling them to draw to their inner reserves of strength, i.e, the hypnotic and prophetic possibilities of their imagination which sometimes provides enough help to attain some desired objective.

 

For example, a man in a desperate hurry to find something he badly needs may call upon the name of somebody he believes to be a saint with great occult powers- this ‘saint’ may not exist at all but be a fictitious person- what he is looking for may turn up like magic. This is true sometimes but the cause is an unconscious racking of the brain’s subconscious centres where the location of the sought object is already registered in the codes of unconscious memory-  like in the basement of a library where very old books not looked for any more are stored gathering dust.  Our minds take in almost infinite inputs from our surroundings which are mostly forgotten. The so-called forgotten information is not lost however. It is stored into the almost infinite memory bank of our subconscious mind like in a computers hard disk memory. An emotional manipulation of the imagination can cause an access to this memory bank as a result of which information badly needed pops up into the consciousness. Add to this the vast information processing ability of the mind and a giant new discovery of a fact is not beyond the mind’s possibilities.

 

Such mystics think that that is all to spiritual secrets.  Once this comforting if miserly and miserable conclusion is reached the researcher decides that it is time then to bank on the discovery and make a fame and if required a fortune out of it. So, if a seriously ill person asks for his help he will tell him in assuring tones that his illness will soon or within some time deadline will be cured because he the mystics will be using his curative powers or the powers of other saints etc. For the simple minded and foolish such helpers look more accessible thanks to their corporeality (bodiliness) and amenability to bribes; he may be required to pay something to the mystic. Thus grows an industry of peddling cures and remedies to life’s problems whose industrialist are the mystics who often syndicate themselves into a priestly hierarchy often working from a palace called a temple and filled with painted or sculpted images of gods and saints- just like the Hindu and Christian systems.  The so-called miracles observed then consist of several things.

 

One is the psychological benefits of hypnotism and its individual form auto-suggestion; many illnesses being psychosomatic may resolve under hypnosis or auto-suggestion.  Such psychosomatic illnesses are more common among the hysterics. A hysteric is a person who is too sensitive and vulnerable to suggestion. Just suggest that he will soon begin to see rats and mice around and he will! Suggest that he will go down with a temperature he will, suggest that he will recover from it at 3 pm and lo and behold he will. Another form of miracle is material fraud.  The mystic or fraudster works a simple trick of illusion (magic) which persuades the victim to believe that the mystic possesses miraculous powers. From then on the victim is ready to be manipulated and milked and be happy for it!

 

Thirdly the mystic may prophesy the future either in the form of a perfectly reasonable ability of foresight any intelligent person possesses or he has learned some facts from the slips of tongue of the victim or the spies the mystic employs to gather intelligence about his prospective victims. Or the victim can become so addicted to the confirmation of his belief in the mystic that an unconscious vicious circle may be created in his psychology which compels him to do some wrong acts which land him into trouble but these acts are such acts that the remedy to their harm is also subconsciously known by the mystic believer and when such ‘help’ arrives after the act the faith is confirmed. Lastly it is a sadly observed fact that hysterical people suffering from a catalogue of fears and worries and desperate for their relief note only successful prophecies and remedies while ignoring and forgetting a thousand failed ones. For example if he is frequenting a fortune teller he registers a successful prophecy but ignores ten failed ones and will not admit this to himself let alone to others. Overall it is such hysterical personalities who populate the ranks of indiscriminate, gullible believers and it is these that are the chief worshippers and happily paying customers of spiritual frauds and themselves hysterically self-deluded pseudo-masters.

 

What is the status of all such delusions and frauds in the face of Allah’s and His Messenger’s Islam?  Before we let the Highest Authority speak let us show where such clever guys are fatally mistaken.

 

 

THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF THE MIND

 

Continuing with the computer metaphor we can say that our minds similarly contain two memories-   the permanent, indelible memory put there by the manufacturer (God) which are the inbuilt programs. The user cannot interfere with these but employs them to get from the computer what he wants.   In the human computer the God-implanted programs are based entirely on the recognition Unity, Perfection and Obedience of God. This master feature Allah calls ‘al Fitra’, or the original human nature.  This cannot be changed by anybody. Read if you wish “(Islam is) the Nature of Allah on which He created mankind; Allah’s creation cannot be modified- this is the true religion” (30: 30)

 

Upon this master program are added secondary programs throughout a man’s life. His society in general and his family in particular impose on him their values and attitudes which may not be in line with the Nature Allah implanted in him. For example, rather than the pure and most elevating and blessing faith in Allah as the Only God and the Perfect he may be made to believe that God is a Trinity or that although there is a God Who is the ultimate creator and provider there also are lesser gods who can interfere with His Work and modify it in our favour if we serve these lesser gods besides serving the Creator God. Or that there are no gods at all but we are the gods in the sense that we can be the masters of our own destiny if we proceed scientifically (the modern anti-theology, secularist thesis)

 

The suppression of our God-Nature master program and its functional replacement by all sorts of software working from floppies and compact disks can then be a metaphor for religious and spiritual conditionings and manipulations of our religious and spiritual instincts. This interference with our original Islamic nature has been going on for ages and will go on till the end of the world.  Forgetting or remaining unaware of our born Islamic nature false prophets (which include false Sufis) work from their above-said theory of the emotional manipulation  of the human imagination to make their victims feel or do what they the manipulators want. With this superb crooked method they can invent and impose any new creed, law and spiritual system they want.

 

To complete the computer metaphor, these false prophets, be they called gurus, yogis, avatars, buddhas, lamas, saints, sheikhs or what have you are like the virus programs. They hijack the computer and send it into haywire directions. Their power base is the Satan who, as the chief adversary of God, directs all their actions in order to overrule Allah and claim the worship of Allah’s creatures.

 

What is required is adding only the Allah-approved software to the human computer and not software by enemy companies.  The master software in this respect is the Qur’an as it was the true Torah or the true Gospel in the past, which have been largely lost since many centuries. Let me tell you what difference it makes to have Islamic or un-Islamic software on our human computer. Both may create equally strong faith, so strong that each faith can drive its believers to sacrifice their lives for it.  For example a Christian believer can sacrifice his life as willingly as an Islamic one. A Marxist or Nationalist believer may sacrifice his life for his ideology as willingly as a religious believer. Which means the readiness to sacrifice one’s life for a belief is no proof that the belief in question is good and right.  Yet some people use this fact as conclusive proof that a given belief is true in an ontological sense as well as good in a moral sense.  Had this been so we would have to grant Nazism and Bolshevism the status of noble faiths and respect the atrocities the two led to.

 

What we need instead are objective criteria.  For example, which is better, to burn the widows alive in the same pyre with their dead husbands as in Hinduism or allow the widows to survive their husbands and remarry if they can and contribute to the society more? Altjough both a sincere Hindu and sincere Muslim are prepared to die for their values whose set of values are more humane and useful to the community they belong to?  Again, drinking has been one of the worst habits of mankind leaving in its trail enormous wrecks in the form of lost healths, worst crimes and accidents and economic waste to name but a few of its mischiefs.  Again a sincere Christian and a sincere Muslim are equally prepared to die for their faith but which is the objectively better faith, the one which allows drinking or the one which does not?

 

The very same standards of objectivity apply to original genuine Islam which flows from the Qur’an primarily and is augmented by that small part of the vast hadith literature which small part is completely in tune with the Qur’an?  When I say small part let it not be thought that we have only a couple hundred or so hadiths to go on. We have a few thousand which cover all subjects and help us to understand the Qur’an and inform us of the Prophet’s application of it to perfection- which should be enough. When we multiply the hadiths above this few thousand reliable hadiths we find that the added ones get increasingly disturbing for us. A good example is Ramuz al Ahadith, a late collection by a Turkish muhaddith. It contains about seven thousand hadiths arranged in alphabetical order of their first few words. As one reads through one finds quite a few hadiths on the very same subject following each other among which are differences of various seriousness. Some are simply unacceptable-  the heart feels upset and offended.

 

Yet, only very many Sufis use such disturbing, disappointing and therefore highly suspect hadiths to bolster up their creedal and spiritual claims by which they can ‘prove’ everything they want no matter how much their claims may fly in the face of Allah’s verses in the Qur’an or the hadiths far more reliably ascribed to the Prophet sws. Such attempts at breeding newer and newer beliefs about and practices in Islam on the basis of unreliable and disturbing hadiths as well as on the basis of ‘discoveries’ (kashfiyat) of individual Sufis can only be in the same category of innovations of the Greek votaries of Jesus, who thereby effaced the true teachings of Jesus as a true Jewish prophet observing the Jewish Law and replaced him with an imaginary Jesus far more analogous to the mystery gods of the pagan Gnostic traditions. This Gnostic virus has apparently jumped into Islam as well as Islam was absorbing many Christians into its ranks and for the same reason:  To formulate a softer, ‘tastier’ creed and supposedly more inspiring, aesthetic rituals.  As such it has been as healthy as preferring the sickly wine to the natural grapes from which it could be made. It must not be for nothing that some Sufis used all this wine metaphor to praise their schools of spirituality. Their creed was wine, their ecstasies were drunkenness and therefore un-Islamic claims excusable on account of the drunkenness and they called their monasteries as wine houses. And some if not a majority actually drank wine with gusto!

 

Islam does not deserve such desecrations and the lunacies it breeds and the bloody troubles (fitnas) it caused for centuries. The alcoholics need treatment to abandon the poison, not tolerance let alone praise and adoration as the best friends of God.  So, we must proceed.

 

1. THAT THESOURCE OF TRUE LEGAL AND OTHERWORLDLY KNOWLEDGE AND SPIRITUAL GNOSIS IS ALLAH’S BOOK AND THEREFORE MUSLIM WOULD-BE SAINTS (EXTRA PIOUS SERVANT) SHOULD BASE ALL THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND  GNOSIS AND ALL THEIR EFFORTS ON BELIEFS AND PRINCIPLES ALLAH AND HIS MESSENGER SWS INDICATED AND EXPOUNDED CAN BE  PROVEN THUS:

 

The Prophet sws is made by Allah to answer claims by the polytheists that such and such food items were lawful or unlawful “Say: I do not find in what is being revealed to me anything to be unlawful for an eater to eat except carcass or spilt blood…” (6: 145)
Or “Who made unlawful the ornaments of Allah which He issued along with good foods as provision for His servants?  Say: They are for the believers in this world and exclusively for them in the Hereafter” (7: 32)

 

These verses at one stroke demolishes the false ascetic practices by some false Sufis who, like yogis, ban not only eating meat but all foods ‘guilty’ of being tasty and nutritious and also ban decent dress and comfortable dwellings supposing that by depriving oneself from such generous lawful gifts of Allah they will please Allah. Yes, the Prophet sws did suffer some slight austerities like not sleeping on a too soft bed but most of his austerities were caused by lack of better things. When he had better things like a good dress he wore thjem and better food he did not refuse but ate and thanked Allah. His love of the meat and preference for the meaty uppers of the foreleg are well known. Allah is kind and generous and wants to be loved for it.  Which host likes a guest who spurns the good things the host so lavishly and generously offers him and instead insists on eating only the hulks of the nuts and skins of the fruits and the gristle of the meats and refuses a comfortable bed and insists on sleeping under the kitchen sink?

 

Which means Islamic spirituality cannot be practiced from the bad habits of pagan spiritual search.  Yet many so-called Sufis took this wrong path which makes a show of humility and hides great satanic pride even on to death.  Sufis who torture themselves are not following the Prophet sws but yogis and monks. We saw our sheikhs live thankfully accepting Allah’s lawful gifts. Thankful reasonable enjoyment of Allah’s gifts is Sunna and conducive to salvation.

 

As for otherworldly knowledge Allah clearly indicates that we were dead (souls not yet inhabiting a body and therefore not functional) then alive by being born from mothers and then dead again when our few decades of life came to an end and shall come alive for a second time when we are resurrected for Judgment. Hence Allah makes resurrected people to admit “They say: Our Lord, You made us dead twice and You made us alive twice” (40: 11)

 

Dead must mean the condition of a soul bereft of a functioning body.

 

That all mean will and must die and no person of history is alive in a bodily sense or can monitor or interfere with the affairs of the world can be seen from the explicit assertations of Allah Who is the Highest Authority no matter who reports what from whom. Any reports which contradict Allah’s explicit and emphatic assertations can only be lies or errors. We must remember that Allah only guaranteed the infallibility of His Qur’an and Hadith can only be given cautious and conditional welcome as all great classical Hadith ulema themselves asserted and practiced.  For example that Jesus died and by dying ceased to know anything about what has been going on in this world since then is conclusively proven on none other than Allah’s Own Highest Authority

 

“O Jesus son of Mary! Was it you who told My servants ‘adopt me and my mother as two gods under Allah?’.  He replied “Absolved are You, how could I say something I had no right to?.., What I told them was what You had commanded me- ‘Worship Allah my Lord and your Lord’.  So long I was with them I was a watcher over them.  After You made me die You remained the Watcher over them… (5: 116- 117)

 

Can there  then be any doubt that no man can die and still know what is going on earth no matter who that man is-  prophet, saint or martyr. Allah is enough as a Witness and successor to keep a watch on His creation and deal with them. 

 

Yet some careless Sufis insist that not only prophets but their own mentors do not die as we understand it but remain as good as living physically which enables them to remain as part and parcel of this world’s affairs.  They simply avoid sensory detection. Clever, isn’t it?

 

The trouble with such wrong believers is that they have an infantile fear of physical extinction which they see death to be and again like too sensitive, neurotic infants want to be assured that their recently dead father is not really dead despite being buried but somehow physically alive and will soon come back even better than before. It is this infantile fantasy which lie below all ‘will come back beliefs’ be it the return of Krisna of the Hindus, the return of Jesus fantasy of Christians which spilled over into Islam but denied by Allah in His Qur’an-  denied, because in the verse we quoted above Jesus speaks to Allah on the Day of Judgment and DENIES any knowledge what happened after his death. Had he been sent back like Christians and most Muslims await him to he would say to Allah something like ‘but when you sent me back during the last days of the world I found them worshipping me and my mother as two gods under You, revering the cross and also eating pork and I therefore fought them and converted some into Islam etc.  Since the Day of Judgement is the new beginning had Jesus been alive or sent back to this world he could not fail to mention it because he should have to answer Allah’s question fully.

 

What is more, would you believe that some again misguided Sufis claim that our Prophet sws did not die but is still around and fully functional despite the fact that the greatest of all followers and the closest friend of the Prophet sws, namely Abu Bakr al Siddiq RA told the other sahaba mourning the very recent death of the Prophet sws that Muhammad sws was really dead; that whoever was worshipping Muhammad sws should know that he was dead but whoever was worshipping Allah should rejoice that Allah is Ever-Living and then recited to them the verse “Muhammad sws is but a messenger. If he dies or is killed will you then turn back on your heels…” ().  All companions then joined Abu Bakr Ra in admitting the mortality of Muhammad sws. Our some king size infants are still unable to register the fact.

 

What a disaster, what a failure of spiritual gnosis and aspiration it is not to be able to be satisfied by Allah’s Eternal Existence and still want to see the mummy and daddy around? Woe to Christians, woe to some ungrowing-up Muslims!

 

2. THAT WHAT WE NEED AS FAR AS MYTH AND LEGEND ARE CONCERNED ARE IN THE QUR’AN IN BRIEF AND TRUTHFUL FORMS AND SECONDLY IN HADITH WHERE THEY EXACTLY CONFORM WITH THE QUR’AN. THAT WE HAVE NO BUSINESS OF EXPLORING HINDU, BUDDHIST,CHRISTIAN, JEWISH OR MEDIUMISTIC MATERIAL CAN BE PROVEN BY THE FOLLOWING QUOTATIONS FROM THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY:

 

Concerning who the Companions of the Cave (Ashab al Kahf) Allah gives some very brief information and then warns us not to seek further information from other religious groups since they are very seriously fallible and unreliable and, more importantly, Muslims are not required or supposed to pursue obscure or occult matters Allah did not bother about on their behalf

 

“They (non-Muslims) said ‘They (the ‘cavists’) remained in it three hundred and nine years’. You say (to them) ‘How long they stayed only Allah knows. All the secrets of the heavens and the earth are His’.  How perfect a Seer and Hearer is He! They (the existents) have no Guardian other than Him and He admits no partners into His Rule and Judgment” (18: 25- 26)

 

We should not poke our noses into things we are not responsible for Allah said “Do not pursue matters about which you have no knowledge-  Indeed the ear, the eye and the heart all will be held responsible for it (such pursuits) (17: 36)

 

How can then a Muslim pursue matters like the anatomy and physiology of the seven heavens and the shape and substance of the Divine Throne and even a psychoanalysis of Allah and a specification of His Essence as some neo-Platonist-influenced fellows among us did so recklessly with so ridiculous and often also blasphmemous results?

 

Some such dashing heroes were so drunk with their verbose and unintelligible dissertations of their cosmic so-called discoveries that they pompously declared themselves as the greatest ever Gnostics never surpassed before nor to be ever surpassed afterwards. But when you read what they wrote you are shocked not only by the frequent contradictions of Allah’s verses in their statements but also by the bone breaking errors of logic as well as frequent self-contradictions of a pathetic order.  It was Greek philosophy and mysticism which had aborted the mission of Jesus, it was again the same couple which nearly derailed Sufi Islam. But alhamdulillah we have always had all-rounder masters, i.e, masters of Qur’anic knowledge, of Hadith, of fiqh, of philosophy, of science and of spirituality all rolled into one, like the great Imam Ghazali and Ahmad al Faruq known also as Imam Rabbani.
Lastly Allah commands His Messenger sws not to consult the People of the Bible on anything but stick to what Allah revealed to him in the Qur’an

 

“Some among them say ‘they (the cavists) were three and their dog was their fourth or “They were five and their dog was their sixth” by way of speculating about the unknown…. Do not enter into arguments with them and do not consult them on anything” (18- 22)
Here we are. Allah is neither specifying the details of old stories given to old nations nor allowing us to learn any myths and legends from them.  

 

Unfortunately our many ulema specialised in collecting Jewish and Christian lore from apocryphal stories to creedal non-sense and transmitted them over generations to our day. For example, when we read about prophets’ stories collated from Jewish sources we find them clashing with the corresponding stories in the Qur’an, yet the compilers of such biographies of prophets never bother to check with Allah’s Book when they put their stories to pen and paper.

 

THAT SUCH FORAGERS INTO BANNED FOREIGN TERRITORY ARE INFECTED BY THE BLASPHEMOUS BELIEFS AND CLAIMS BECAUSE THOSE BELIEFS AND CLAIMS TASTED BETTER TO THEIR PERVERTED TONGUES  CAN BE PROVEN FROM THE FOLLOWING:

 

“They (newly rescued Jews from Egypt) said “O Moses, make gods for us like the gods they have” (We are dissatisfied with your invisible, stern, joyless God). He replied “Indeed you are an ignorant people” (7: 138)

 

This answers the blasphemous claim that Allah is too harsh a God to contemplate and beg from and softer gods or intermediaries are needed. It was for this perverted taste reasons that the Jews had adopted the golden calf as their god when Moses was away worshipping the True God Allah.  Christians improved on such blasphemy in the interest of their tastes again by converting Jesus, then Mary or alternatively Jesus and the Holy Spirit into Gods to supplement the too harsh and distant Allah. From where, from what hole they issue such claims one wonders.

 

It is not as they say. The truth is that nothing could be more attractive and compelling than Allah as reflected from the Qur’an.  He Almighty begins His Qur’an with the most endearing description of Himself as ‘al Rahman al Rahim’ which means ‘The Universally Graciously Caring and Mercifully Forgiving” and as for His distance He says “When my servants call on Me let them know that I am indeed near. I do come to the call of the caller”.  Which totally demolishes the unconscionable lie that Allah is too harsh, too distant and abstract to be called direct in cases of emergencies.  The death blow to this cruel claim can be seen from the verse about polytheists caught in a terrible storm while travelling on sea who Allah says would “call on Allah with purity of faith ‘If You deliver us from this we shall be thankful’ and forget their idols (10: 22).  Now compare what Allah says to what false Sufis say about mortal emergencies.  While Allah says that even hardened polytheists become monotheists when in serious trouble the false Sufis advise us to call on to beings other than Allah, more specifically and shamelessly on to themselves and not Allah because Allah is distant and unimaginable and unrelatable to. Where they got this blasphemous notion they are to explain.

 

 

A STUDY IN GODLINESS - IHLAS

 

'Ihlas' as a word means purity or making pure.  In Islamic religious parlance it is a term signifying the purity of intention of a muslim towards Allah.. Such a man is called  a 'muhlis'. He is like a man in mortal fear of drowning who is offered help by a life guard on the jetty or a man who loves somebody  so much that he can only think of pleasing the person he loves . Can such a man ignore or afford to ignore any of the instructions of the guard or ignore the desires of the beloved?  So is a muhlis servant of Allah in his feelings towards Allah.  A person without ihlas for a cause or towards another person cannot help to be lukewarm in his support and selfish when a temptation comes along.  He cannot be more  loyal and upright despite any degree of learning and upbringing he may have been boasting. That is why sometimes most friendly-looking acquaintances betray us or a comrade in arms  undermines the cause with his corruption and treachery.  From outright gangsters to eminent spiritual leaders men and women have mostly been unable to resist their selfish instinct when tempted hard enough.  One may behave quite saintly up to a point but a time may come when the worldly benefit and pleasure dangled before him proves too hard to resist. Put most simply people without ihlas are hypocritical, selfishly opportunistic and treacherous no matter how intelligent and well-educated.

 

One such does not care whether he is the most deservig person to take a benefit.  If he thinks he can tackle and swalllow ıt up he will. The benefit may be a material posession or a position. If possıble he wants it for himself. Why do you think Allah called the story of Joseph and his brothers 'ahsan al qasas' i.e, the best of stories?   Because if you read that in the Qur'an you find that let alone less well endowed people, even the sons and therefore pupils of a prophet like Jacob are at times are unable to transcend their selfishness and follow the Satan only too eagerly to destroy somebody whom Allah preferred  above them.(position benefit).   In fact this whole story summarizes  the history of man in symbol form. In man Allah and the Satan have been fighting a great battle which the Satan appears to be winning most of the time thanks to man's inability to see through his ego's injustice.   Of course Allah is the real Victor but He is allowing the Satan to win a lot of small battles as part of the Divine war strategy which is designed to bring the Satan to his utter ruin and humiliation.  And so shall people who ally themselves with the Satan will end up.  Deceived by their easy wins in small battles all over the course of the great war they are blissfully ignorant that they are being lead into the final pit of destruction very skillfully prepared by Allah.

 

A good example may be the ultimate ruin of a gangster after a series of brilliant frauds and ruthless cruelties or a high-liver's end in a hospital bed in excruciating terminal illness when he is made to vomit all his pleasures through his nostrils.. Then he knows which was vindicated  in the end? Breaking the laws of men and Allah or the warnings that abiding by the laws was the wiser and happier option? 

 

 

INTRODUCTION TO A STUDY IN GODLINESS

 

By Godliness I mean a person’s being conscious and fearful of and respectful and reverent towards God and loving God more than anybody and anything else. Surely such spiritual perfection is possible only for God’s elect at the top of which group are His true prophets and their summit is our master Muhammad the Messenger of Allah and the Last and Final of all prophets, may Allah’s blessings and peace be on all.

 

After prophets come the next best believers whom Allah calls ‘al siddiqoon’, i.e., the most purely and sincerely believing and acting servants of His. At their summit is our master and the closest friend and worthiest companion of the Messenger of Allah, namely Abu Bakr RA whom both Allah and His Messenger called ‘al Siddiq’ and this ummah (Islamic nation) has been calling ‘al Siddiq al Akbar’, i.e., the Greatest Siddiq. Some commentators are agreed that the two persons referred to in the following verse are, respectively, Rasulullah sws and Abu Bakr RA:

 

“The one who came with the Sincere Truth and (the one) who confirmed that most beautiful (Truth)” (39: 33)

 

Allah calls His sincere and acting believers His friends (awliya), I mean acting on what Allah commanded them both by way of obligation/farz and prohibition/haram, fulfilling obligations and shunning the prohibited. Before He calls them His friends He calls them believers (al mu’minoon). He also calls them ‘al siddiqoon’/ the sincerely and entirely truthful then ‘al shuhada’/the witnesses (of the Truth) and  ‘al salihoon’/the good and praises them as the best companions  to have around. Read if you wish:

 

“Whoever obeys Allah and the Messenger then such are among those Allah favoured, namely the prophets (al anbiya), the sincerely truthful (al siddiqoon), the witnesses (al shuhada) and the good (al salihoon). What an excellent company are they! (4: 69)
Commentators agree that each of these categories include all the merits of those mentioned after them. So, prophets are also siddiqoon, shuhada and salihoon while siddiqoon are not prophets but they are both shuhada and salihoon etc.

 

Apart from prophets however, the fact is that the difference between the following three ranks are not categorically sharp but they overlap and almost mean the same thing and that same thing is being friends (awliya) of Allah.

 

Mind you, although the more popular meaning of shuhada (singular ‘shahid’) are ‘martyrs’, i.e., those who are killed while fighting for Allah or just killed by enemies of Allah for whatever reason in actual fact this is not the general meaning but a part of it. In the general sense a ‘witness’/shahid is a believer whose certainty attained such level of perfection that he believes in Allah as if he is seeing Allah.

 

The qualifications of Allah’s true believers do not end there though. Allah also calls them with relish ‘al muhsinoon’, i.e., those who behave kindly, correctly and gracefully. In one sense a ‘muhsin’ (singular of ‘muhsinoon) is the witness described above. In a very reliable hadith we read: Al Ihsan (being muhsin) is worshipping your Lord as if you are seeing Him; if you are not (actually) seeing Him (you at least know that) He is seeing you.
For greatest profit we can see all these qualifications of Allah’s friends, apart from prophethood, as our chief life aims.

 

Interestingly the word ‘muhsin’ can be seen to envelop all the rest. In proof we may read:
“Act ye graciously (ahsinoo), Allah loves the gracious (al muhsinoon) (2: 195)

 

What is acting graciously? Allah explains:

 

“Those respecters (of Allah) who spend for Allah both while in tight and ample circumstances (irrespective of their financial situation), swallow their resentments and forgive people- Allah loves the gracious (who are also) those who when they (somehow) commit a shameful act or wrong themselves remember Allah and immediately ask for pardon for their sins- and none else but Allah can pardon sins- and do not insist on what they were so doing despite knowing better. Their reward is forgiveness from their Lord, followed by Gardens from under which rivers flow to remain therein forever. How excellent is the reward of the doers (rather than just sayers) (3: 134- 136)

 

So, nobody is sinless, except prophets whose mistakes sometimes do occur but never amount to sins against Allah but are just momentary lapses designed to serve a lesson to them in the process of Allah perfecting them more and more. After all, making a mistake and then asking for Allah’s pardon and getting Allah’s pardon for it leaves one with more profit than not making any mistakes and therefore not needing to ask for Allah’s pardon. Allah wants to keep us humble lest we become satanised by pride or lose spiritual light by complacency- He will not allow even His prophets to believe that they are pure and good enough. And that is the truth and the reality: there is no limit to the lights and perfections Allah can grant on any of His servants who believe in and obey Him!  And nothing works better than learning from mistakes in attaining more lights (understanding of spiritual secrets) and more perfection (closeness to Allah). 
That Allah may forgive all sins committed under whatever circumstances if we ask hard enough and work for compensatory good hard enough while asking for the pardon can be seen from the story of Wahshi, a late companion (sahaba) of the Prophet sws.

 

Hind the wife of Abu Sufyan, the last leader of yet unconverted, pagan Quraish, employed an Ethiopian slave whom was called Wahshi for a dirty job. This fellow was an expert in throwing a lance. Because Hind bore a grudge against Hamza RA the heroic uncle of the Prophet sws on account of Hamza killing her cousins at the Battle of Badr, she appointed Wahshi to assassinate Hamza RA while he was fighting at the next battle, namely Uhud, which was again between the Muslims and the pagans. She promised Wahshi all the jewelry she was wearing. Accordingly Wahshi surreptitiously kept watch on Hamza RA and found the opportunity he was looking for. From behind a rock he threw his lance which went all the way through Hamza’s RA abdomen and killed him. Hamza’s slaughter was one of the causes for Muslims losing the battle on top of aggrieving the Prophet sws most.
On the eventual conquest of Mecca the pagan capital by Muslims the Prophet sws forgave almost all his enemies except a few whose offences had to be punished in order not to leave a too soft impression, their offences being particularly foul. Among the listed criminals were both Hind and Wahshi. Hind dared to enter the Prophet’s presence and admitting her crimes and asking for pardon obtained the Prophet’s pardon. Wahshi though, thinking himself beyond both Prophetic pardon and salvation ran away and hid himself. The Prophet sent and re-sent envoys to him to give himself up but he refused explaining that he could hope no mercy. In the end Allah sent down certainly the most merciful verse to be found in any holy scripture ever, which read:

 

“Say: O My servants who went to excess in wronging themselves! Do not give up on Allah’s Mercy; Allah indeed pardons all sins because He is the Very-Pardoning and Forgiving One (39: 53)

 

When Wahshi was given this news he presented himself to the Prophet sws who forgave him but also told him never to show up again because he would be renewing the Prophet’s sws pain of losing his uncle. Please observe how human the Prophet sws was!
Wahshi accordingly avoided being seen by the Prophet sws and rather than taking it negatively he construed it positively and vowed to compensate for the damage he had done to Islam and pain he had caused to Allah’s Messenger sws. It took him just a few years to fulfil his vow; At the battle between the army of first caliph Abu Bakr al Siddiq RA and the false prophet Musailima it was Wahshi who turned the tables against Musailima’s army who were fighting very heroically indeed; Wahshi repeated his performance at Uhud. He sought Musailima by hiding and hopping from cover to cover over the battlefield until he came close enough to throw a lance: it killed Musailima as it had Hamza RA and at long last Wahshi’s conscience was assuaged. Had not those few false prophets challenging our Prophet sws and Islam itself been eliminated we would have no Islam and Muslims today to speak of and no Islamic civilisation which for a thousand years surpassed all civilisations and made possible today’s universal civilisation.

 

From all above we can see that Godliness which we may translate as ‘taqwa’ (loving and reverent fear of Allah) is the only means to attaining higher and higher levels of faith until we become worthy of the qualifications of being a “mu’min” (believer), a “salih” (good) person, a “shahid” (a witness to the Divine Truth permeating the whole creation) and a “siddiq” (a truly sincere and committed agent of good under Allah) as our master Abu Bakr the Greatest Siddiq was. Amen.

 

 

AS MANY WORLDS AS MEN

 

Did you ever wonder why almost everybody may pick up an argument with everybody else he meets?
As a Sufi I did study this problem and I think I basically understand why. As you may know Sufis are students of human mind always beginning with themselves and in fact never finishing studying themselves. Each of as is an ocean reaching all the way to the shores of Divinity. Each of us is another personalised universe.

 

Two insights arise from this most profitable of studies:

 

1. Each of us contain all the rest of of us in a fudamental sense and given enough time and care each can decipher the others. Which means we must also try to objectively and conscientiously study others- equipped with our self-insights-  so that we find out how to deal with most charitably and help them without creating injustice or causing hurt to them. My humble proof for this unity of man's nature is the verse:

 

"Indeed WE have created you from a single soul"(4:1).

 

2. The more we understand ourselves the more we discover the wheels, belts and levers, buttons and safety valves running and controlling our thoughts, moods and behaviors and therefore notice signs of danger and interfere more intelligently to stop any wrong being committed by ourselves. By the natural extension of this developed ability we can also monitor and help others.

 

It is with these two insights that a true spiritual master keeps himself on tract towards Allah and can pilot others on theirs if they will allow him.

 

In fact the universe as a whole, whatever it is, as well as in every particular can only be known by Allah. For our part our knowledge is confined to what our fallible sense organs and even more fallible minds can make of it. Our picture of the universe is totally subjective and extremely limited even when we are a top scientist with all the top equipment at his disposal.  The secret of our unavoidable ignorance is that all our perceptions are products of the interaction of our nervous system with the stimuli impinging on it supposedly from the ouside. Perhaps there is no inside and outside, no past and no future and no far and no near, no color or taste.... except as a product of our sensory interaction with things whatever they may be. Which means there might be nothing to know outside ourselves and this ourselves may contain the whole that exists in whatever form they register with us.

 

This in fact is the basis of that hallowed Sufi theory of Wahdat al Wujud (Unity of Being) which is a philosophical and mystical view of the Tawhid (Unity of Allah). In fact Allah could not be more helpful in reminding this unity of everyything in Him:

 

"He is the First and the Last and the Outer and the Inner and He knows of everything (57: 3).

 

Yet, despite their fundamental similarities no two men are identical, even when they are identical twins. For a man is not his body, his inner machinery alone; he is also his personal experiences and even twins do not experience the same things in life.
Where this brings us? Why, it brings us to the realization that we must not judge anybody including ourselves in a final sense. People who may look worse to us may have many good things in themselves which one day may surprise us while we ourselves may one day shock ourselves with the extent of outrage we may commit. We can never know ourselves anywhere fully but only Allah knows and we must always take refuge in Him lest our secret bad juices leak out and shock both others and us. In this sense Rasulullah sws prayed: "Lord, do not abandon me to my ego even for the duration of a blink of an eye". He also prayed: "Lord, give my soul its piety and purify it; Thou art its Protector and Guardian".
With this realisation of our tiny partiality and unavoidable massive ignorance of even ourselves, we realise that what we take to be the world is barely other than our inner geography projected outwards and that each and every man has theirs world their way. That is why we are unable to agree on many things and points;  we must be humble enough to see our own unhelpable ignorance and not argue too much let alone fight with each other. Said Rasulullah sws "Hot arguments extinguish faith".  

 

Can you now perhaps understand what Sufi endeavor is?  It is a journey (sayr) of discovery through the seven earths and seven heavens of our self (nowhere else!) with a view of loosening our any heavy attachments to the 'earths' making up our hungry and greedy ego and at at the same time rising to and through the seven heavens of spiritual elavation towards our destiny with our Creator. At the end we may be fortunate enough to be allowed to enter His Throne Room and put our head to its happiest and most grateful sajda ever and forever and then- allowed to look up!
Read if you wish:

 

"That Day are faces resplendent, looking at their Lord" (75: 22)   Amen.

 

 

DIVERSE PONTIFICATIONS - PATIENCE BEFORE PONTIFICATION, PLEASE!

 

Patience is perhaps the supreme intelligence in pursuing Sufism. In this age of accelerated conversions to Islam, especially through Sufism, we must avoid fractionalising Islam by each convert or self-discovered Muslim hastily adding to the tissue of Islam his or her own spritual fancies instead of leaving them to one side and learning everything anew from Islam.  In other words, discovering or rediscovering Islam should not send us preaching it from our own cultural accumulations irrespective of their worth vis-a-vis original Islam.   Yet, old or new, we today's active Muslims, like the early Greek and Roman Christians, cannot wait to give an opinion on every little or big thing or to report from past generations what pleases our spiritual pre-conceptions or prejudices. Lastly, we do not hesitate to import into Islam concepts and even practices from many pagan religions, which took our fancy for some reason. Below are some of my humble criticisms of some such hasty and 'tasty' pontifications and importations.

 

Let us consider a statement which goes something like this: If you want something, do not seek it but give yourself to Allah's service and He will get it for you". So, you need not to work to earn your living, you need not pursue your legitimate aims but just meditating and worshipping where you are sitting your needs will be delivered to your door.  Did we check this sweet pontification with Allah and His Messenger sws? I don't think so. Let us look what Allah says. But before we quote let us remember an article about tahajjud prayers where verses about it were quoted. Basically, Allah, in Surat al Muzammil v.20,  says that His Prophet sws and those few sincere early souls who followed him were in the habit of standing quite long hours at night and praying to Allah with plenty of recitations from the Qur'an. No doubt, these earliest sahaba are the top saints of all times whatever we subsequent generations, Sufi or not, can claim or hope to be. Now, Allah observes their all-out obsession with His service and then does what? HE INTERFERES!     

 

He tells them that some of them may be not in good enough health, some others may have their daily (mundane) chores to attend to as socially responsible people, especially to their gainful employments and lastly to the jehad obligation which is very tiring. After these observations Allah APPLIES BRAKES to their zeal and asks them to do as much night devotions as they can reasonably bear in view of their day time obligations and health needs-  which they should not leave to others or abandon entirely! HE IS NOT, repeat, NOT, saying that if they give themselves entirely to prayers day and night (busy themselves with Allah only) He will keep them in good health and He will send them all their needs to their door and He will defeat their enemies in their absence without them moving a finger.  This was how the Messenger of Allah sws and his ashab understood and practiced Allah's Word. They kept working and carrying out their social obligations in full.

 

The idea that it is possible to get one's needs by means of spiritual concentration (call it meditation, incantation, yoga or tawakkul...) is the definition of MAGIC and it does not work except when Allah allows the Satan to pull a rabbit out a hat for the magician, and that in order to extend the magician's  rope into more dangerous territory (called 'Istidraj', or gradually destructive deception).  That almost all religions before Islam degenerated into idolatry and magic is certain.  Whole classes of 'ordained' priests as well as swarms of self-styled ascetics emerged and led parasitical lives while pretending to rely entirely on God. Among later Muslims such misguided attempts did not lack but Islam's invincible vigor often and to a large extent saw them off. In one early case our master Umar RA saw several men staying in the mosque outside prayer hours and when he questioned them why they idled there all the day they replied that they were busying them with the zikr of Allah. The second chief pupil of the Messenger of Allah sws retorted "You are just being parasites on others. You know full well that neihter dinars nor drachmas will rain from the sky". Then he whipped them out. In fact Allah says with all the Authority of being Allah: "Inna lil insani illa ma sa'a inna sa'yahu sawfa yura", i.e., For man there is nothing other than what he works for; his (fruits of) work shall certainly be seen" (53: 39- 40).

 

The Prophet sws and his ashab both worked for a living and took to the field against their enemies. Some nights the Prophet sws could not get up to pray tahajjud before dawn and in lieu he prayed 12 rik'ats in the course the next morning, as our mother Aisha truthfully reported. Incidentally, there is no need to eulogise tahajjud by biochemical speculations and 'prove' that it is health-enhancing etc. It may be so sometimes but if the right dose is not observed it can also harm the health. Ulema rule that if one is too sleepy he should not pray but take a nap and and pray only after being refreshed. If the food is ready one should first satiate his hunger and only then pray etc. Trying to make difficult what Allah made easy is neither (taqwa) piety nor zeal (adheema) but another irresponsible pontification.  Allah said "Allah desires EASE for you, He does not desire HARDSHIP for you" (2: 185). Which I think means "O my servants be EASY on yourselves and only follow the established Sunna of My Messenger sws which is ease itself".

 

Another popular pontification is inserting Hindu material into Islam via Sufism. Not only 'chakras' are served but at times even 'reincarnation' is offered. The theory of chakras is what 'the four humors' of old medicine to new medicine. When research into neurology was almost non-existent yogis who specialised in spiritual masturbation if the term will be kindly forgiven formed one fanciful idea after another among which were chakras, reincarnation, karma and all the stone gods of Hinduism and also a dense mass of magic some of which boiled down to pathological delusions densely populated by sensory illusions.

 

Alhamdulillah that Allah tabarake wa ta'ala sent His incomparable last and final messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sellem and wiping away all the cobwebs spun by the multitude of deranged religions made the Divine Sunlight  shine on humanity at long last. With one stroke He sent to the dustbin of history all undead (vampiric) superstitions of earlier religions without exception. That we are not allowed to import anything from earlier religions is proven by many hadiths. In one case we have a man who carries some Biblical scrolls and quotes from them to the sahaba radiyallahu anhum. The Prophet sws scolds the man and adds "Had Moses come today he would have to leave aside what he was given and follow me". A similar episode was repeated during our mastee Umar's RA time and again the culprit was stopped peddling old scriptures. In view of this we may not be allowed to import dogmas or concepts, let alone practices from older religions and it is particularly a disservice to Sufism to seek its explanation or justification in yogic, tantric or Christian gnostic terms, terminologies and concepts. In the Book of Allah we have EVERYTHING we need to meditate over profound matters of spirit as we have all the legal roots of all legislation to the end of the time; in other words both Tariqa and Sharia have enough foundation in Allah's Book and the Prophet's sws Sunna and spilling over into the unholy ground of other religions is an unconscious admission of the imperfection of Islam which is a deluded idea.

 

Lastly, all above do not mean that non-Muslims may not have many brilliant and valid ideas and inspirations. They may. After all we all are Allah's equal servants under His Gracious Gaze and equally benefiting from His bounties. All valid ideas and inspirations are halal to us provided that their supposed validity is checked against Allah's Book and His Prophet's sws Sunna. I humbly hope that is clear.

 

Let me give you one example of a lovely insight from a wise man outside Islam "Each good act is its own reward". What does this mean if not "Good acts should be made for Allah's Sake alone"?  We cannot thank Allah enough for allowing and helping us to do the good act, can we? A non-Muslim can say this and many other gems simply because Allah created all of us with the nature of Islam and our any derangements in later life are only partial displacemnts from Islam. Any Islam which persists in a servant enables him to live more decent a life in the same proportion whatever wrongs his actual religions may contain. That is why Allah asked us to tolerate Ahl al Kitab and let them be if that is what they want and not force them to embrace Islam. Allah must know something to check us like this; I hope that He has some pleasant surprises for all well-meaning but did-not-know-better members of the old religions. But as for ourselves and as briefly documented above we for our part as Muslims should embrace our own Qur'an and Sunna and be sure that they are ENOUGH for us in a real and full sense. Amen.

 

 

Web design by Surge Solutions