Muslim Quixotics

 

 

MUSLIM QUIXOTICS

 

As said above, the first muslim quixotics (intelligent madmen) were the Kharijites. Then came the extremist Shia factions (not the mainstream).  These almost or actually deified Ali and his descendants and some even went as far as accusing the Prophet and even Allah for Ali’s sufferings.  Not able to stop even there, others invented another god in the person of the Satan whom they regarded another victim of Muhammad’s Allah’s injustice.  They renamed the Satan ‘Tawus’ . i.e. the Peacock’ and worshipped him as the true god destined to bring down Allah who had usurped the godhead from Tawus etc.  All these groups are imbued with a sense of self-absolution and award themselves a whiter than white self image, so white that whatever ‘sin’ they might commit, especially against the ‘others’ (i.e. ideological or spiritual ‘blacks’) , it wouldn’t harm them.  The ‘others’ for their part were blacker than black and worthy of damnation.

 

Hence all such groups has had a terrorist and conspiratorial and sometimes a suicidal streak running right through their fabric. All religions have had this problem of quixotic extremism (and all secular ideologies are quixotic by nature) thanks to the existence of this gene throughout the human race.  If anything, Christians have had this problem more than muslims and today, especially in the USA Christian quixotics are as alive and kicking as ever, preaching, threatening, prophesying and even killing or committing mass suicide. Jews have their own quixotics who are notorious for being the headache of all coalitions and the plague of all attempts at a solution to the Palestine problem. They also kill both Arab and Jew with  equal fervour and gusto once they pass a judgment on them.  Recently Hindus also joined the bandwagon of religious extremism and India bled for a number of years for that.  As already said Marxism did a lot of quixotic mischief until recently and today still holds out, however feebly in Kuba and North Korea. Nationalism, especially the Faschist kind, has also contributed to the tragedies of the recent one or two centuries. Today all Western societies suffer from a range of quixotic troublemakers from white-supremacists to extreme feminists, sexual revolutionaries and environment fanatics. As a result of their emotionally highly charged and laser-narrow worldviews and their them-against-us anxiety all quixotics are incurably plagued with paranoia. But as muslims we have our own plague- the Islamic quixotics.  We must therefore study them in some detail.

 

As all quixotics ours also suffer from a profoundly inadequate, caricaturised, stylised world view. Sure, most base their every claim on a the Qur’an and the Sunna. But that is done in an unhealthy, misleading way. What they don’t and perhaps can’t understand is that these two sacred sources contain thousands of statements from which, thanks to their neurotic minds, they can only pick and choose or over-emphasise only those which seem to justify their neurotic needs.  In their deeper minds, in their unconscious data-processing and emotion-handling mechanisms there developed neurological sieves to sift out any evidence that goes against their pre-set convictions and microscopes to magnify anything that supports the same convictions. If and when they are shown a verse or a hadith which may be interpreted against their views they either fail to register the objection, looking at you with blank eyes and starting to jump to another subject or they explain it away with such impatient irritation, far-fetched dismissers or plain denials that you lose all hope of making them understand.  The reality is that quixotics are not there to objectively and fairly and reasonably find the truth; instead, their very existence as self-congratulating and cocksure quixotics is at stake every time they engage in a debate. They either win or are seen to win it  by any means fair or foul or they may see blood and strike out.  

 

Again like all infantile religious impressions on the part of the members of fundamentalist sects and cults among other religious communities muslim quixotics’  impression of Islam is made of Islam’s literal understanding, like say, physical hell fire or a physical pool of ‘Kawthar’. Any spiritual interpretation of these concepts is intolerable for them. In fact literal understanding of religious language is the only form of understanding possible for a child. Children are acutely visual and tactile and inevitably and innocently materialistic. That is entirely age-appropriate because before anything else they have to learn about and develop skills about their bodies and their material environment. It is only once this vital need is satisfied that they can afford and get competence in the recognition and appreciation of the intangibles like the moral and spiritual  precepts and values.  As children they LOVE the literal understanding of their religion because that is the only comforting religion possible for them. However they are supposed to outgrow this once-perfect version and gradually graduate into the adult version. A normal adult feels unsatisfied with mere literal and loves the spiritual explanations and insights, if he or she remains religious to start with-  for unfortunately some shed religion like a reptile shedding old skin. But even some of these respond to the spiritual version making one conclude that their alienation from their faith was caused by the inadequacy of the childhood version and yet they weren’t provided with the adult version.

 

Be as it may,  those who lovingly and desperately stick to the childhood version of faith and cannot do more aren’t guilty of anything. So long they conscientiously practice both the commandments and take pains to behave ethically for God’s sake are saintly people and deserve every respect and love. Or even if they do not practice all, so long as keep their peace and live harmoniously with others who are we to judge them? Allah says “Indeed Allah does not pardon the (sin of) associating other gods with him (shirk) but FORGIVES anything else for whom He wills (4:48). 

 

The trouble erupts when the literal believer behaves too selfishly and arrogantly so as to angrily and categorically dismiss every body else’s differing understanding of Islam. As far as he is concerned one ought to take the verses of the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet sws on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING  either in their literal sense or he is guilty of blasphemy.  He doesn’t know or even if told, remains blind and deaf to the warning contained in the verse 7 of Sura 3 of the Book of Allah which explicitly states that some verses of the Qur’an are metaphorical (mutashabihat) which need ‘ta’weel’ (taking it deep into some primary or primordial realities which being difficult to grasp or incapable of verbal description can only be intimated through allegorical statements). Allah adds that only He knows their ta’weel and all we need to do is to have implicit faith in the existence of such realities. But metaphors they ARE and literal they AREN’T.

 

To see what exactly ta’weel means we may look at how Allah swt Himself explains it through some verses of surah al Yusuf (the Chapter on prophet Joseph) in the Qur’an.  As also known to the jews and Christians through their Bible the king sees in his dream seven lean cows eating seven fat cows etc.. Nobody among his learned advisers could interpret this disturbing dream for him.  But Joseph, to the great satisfaction of the king could, because in the very words of the Qur’an he was taught by Allah ‘taweel al ahadeeth” (interpretation of dreams).   He said that it meant that after seven years of bumper crops seven years of crop failures would come and they better save from the first period to cater for the second.  As you see COWS were not physical cows but METAPHORS for seven years in each case.  So when Allah says that some of the verses of the Qur’an are metaphors (mutashabihat) SUBJECT TO TA’WELL of which we men are not capable but only Allah is He means that yes, some verses are metaphors in need of ta’weel.

 

Which means they are not what they appear to be but other realities which are ineffable (not putable in words). This susceptibility to ta’weel applies also to many hadiths which are about moral and spiritual matters and these should be amenable to our ta’weel because the Prophet and the sahaba did made ta’weels of them.  One is, for example the Prophet’s saying “Generosity is a branch of a tree overhanging from the Garden (paradise) into this world. Whoever grabs at it it takes him into the Garden”.  Now are we entitled to take this hadith as a metaphor or not?  Should we really believe that there is a physical tree branch of a physical tree in a physical paradise which branch overhangs into our present physical world and some people are physically holding to this branch which will lift them up like a crane and land them in paradise? If generous people are physically holding on to such a physical overhanging branch how is it that we neither see this the physical branch itself nor anybody’s physical grabbing of it but instead see their physical hands of generous people as free as ours and not up and grabbing at something? 

 

Obviously the tree in question is a metaphor and no less real for it.  What the literalists do not see is that they are exposing themselves as unmitigated materialists for whom for anything to be real it has to be made of physical matter.  Well, sorry but that cannot be true.  There should be and ARE realities, in fact greater and worthier realities beyond the matter and simply because some king-size infants cannot see and cannot tolerate to hear about them these non-material realities will not cease to exist and be effective.  In fact modern physics rejects matter as we perceive it being the real and ultimate essence of existence and substitutes it with unimaginable invisible principles accessible only by abstract mathematics yet verifiable by laboratory experiments.  And we don’t need modern physics to confirm for us the existence and effectiveness of non-material realities. What is more, non-physical realities may be beyond scientific verification but no less real for that. I am a scientist in the fullest sense of the term and I know what I am talking about.

 

A scientist who doesn’t know when to take off his scientist’s white coat and the pair of spectacles of scientificness cannot be a good scientist let alone a competent social man and wise thinker. He is like an intelligent autistic boy who may be a genius in a single field but a fool in everything else (an ‘idiotic savant’ as such are called).  We are aware and appreciative of things which we value more than the whole physical universe and even our life, things like love, faith, kindness, justice and ALLAH for the sakes of which we may be prepared to lay down our lives.  If the literalist is saying that to be real Allah also needs being material than it is the literalist who is guilty of the greatest blasphemy. Yet some literalists are doing just that unawares. They insist that Allah has a face, two hands and two feet etc., although unimaginably different than ours, simply because Allah tells about these in the Qur’an.  They forget that the Qur’an came down in ordinary Arabic idiom for ordinary Arab to understand (laallakum ta’qiloon) and ordinary arab understands all the ordinary metaphors of his language and can distinguish between the literal and metaphorical.  Which is exactly the same in all languages. 

 

For example go to a most uneducated but normal Englishman and tell him that you can help him in finding a job for him because YOU HAVE SOME MEANS IN YOUR HAND.  Do you think he will ask you to show him your hand, turn it around for him to see that said power?  If you ask someone to go and visit another person and he regretfully remarks that HE HAS NO FACE TO GO AND SEE HIM (he did something shameful towards him) can you point out that he has a physical face on his head?   If someone asks you to give some advice to another person who had not listened to you in the past and you say “I have no stomach to talk to him any more ” will than he point out that one doesn’t need his stomach but mouth to talk and also that since you are eating and drinking you do have a stomach and you are lying about it?  It is such stupidity to rule out metaphorical interpretation of some of Allah’s words simply because  it is Allah Who is talking. Allah is not like a mental defective such as an autistic boy who can only understand all statements literally or make statements only with a literal intent in mind. Talking to normal people in perfect idiom with full justification and proper eloquence Allah may have referred to his hands, face etc. which can and in fact should be understood metaphorically and that is ADAB, good manners. We shouldn’t fight over metaphors. Allahu a’lam.

 

Had the literalism been the only defect of the quixotics we could tolerate them as we did the simple good muslims with the same vision. But to their defect they add a fanaticism, a vindictiveness that is simply unholy and horrible and they may resort to such blood-curdling cruelty in the name of imposing their version of ‘tauhid’ or ‘sunna’ or the ‘sharia that makes the Satan blush and blanch. It was with this very same quixotic understanding and attitude that some activists had descended upon and terrorised Medina and eventually killed sayyidina Uthman ra.  It was the same streak of spiritual blindness and behavioural fanaticism on the part of some among sayyidina Ali’s ra party that limited his field of manoeuvre throughout his khilafa (rule). At the most critical moment at the battle of Siffin these self-righteous and haughty fanatics disobeyed him just when victory was nearly Ali’s and then DESERTED him and turned against him as well.

 

Not long after they also assassinated him. To this day this Kharijite streak lives on among muslims. It is characterised by a too literal and angry interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna, an arrogant and bossy demand on other muslims for them either submit to their beliefs or face the accusation of ‘kufr’ (blasphemy) and the punishment of death;  an obsession with secretive organisation and conspiracy to achieve total political power with a black list in hand… all shared by other kinds and categories of quixotics like the Marxists, racists or rabid nationalists.  Can you believe it,  such ‘quixotes’  are on record even challenging and criticising the Prophet himself, for example demanding that he fears Allah and distributes the spoils of war more justly (meaning to give them more).  A trio is on record visiting Aisha ra and questioning as to the Prophet’s amount of night vigil (tahajjud), fasting, salat and criticising his marrying instead  of staying celibate. Hearing these arrogant, self-righteous, self-congratulating and fault-finding remarks from within, the Prophet sws came out to admonish them to the effect that his sunna was based on moderation and realism and theirs were not acceptable to Allah being deviant from the perfect Sunna of the Messenger of Allah.  Thank to Allah that they did not strike out at the prophet as they did at Uthman and Ali.

 

 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

 

Theirs is a narrow mind with a tunnel vision concentrated on a single, emotionally charged and often deluded conviction not balanced by any actual or possible associated factors and considerations.  For example, an animal rigths activist HAS a legitimate concern to voice and demand action on but by keeping himself in the dark about other considerations like the necessity of medical research which may help both people and ANIMALS themselves and prevent more far more suffering than caused by animal experiments he may be doing more harm to the interests of animals than good. Obviously a quixotic is someone who is unable to become either a good scientist (facts discoverer) or philosopher (wisdoms seer) and given his blind anger and haste and unscrupulous daring he is a danger to himself and all others.  His feelings may be noble feelings but without realism and wisdom noblest feelings may lead to silliest and cruellest acts. Applying such an analysis to an Islamic quixote we may illustrate his plight with  an example, a relatively minor one.  Suppose the quixote is tormented by the prospect of eating something ‘haram’ (not allowed).  He ‘knows’ that Allah banned the drinking of wine.  From ‘wine’ he deduces ‘alcohol’ and accordingly makes all alcoholic drinks haram. 

 

Which is justified because both Allah and His Messenger sws explained to us that wine is bad because it distorts mind which leads to harm and one of Islam’s main aims is to prevent harm. But the Quixote does not stop there. He takes alcohol,  in fact the pure chemical form of it the ethyl alcohol and in his laser-thin tunnel vision tries to identify all substances that might have the slightest contact with it. Once during a Friday service we were handed a list of harams identified by such a group which list assured us tat all who did not know about it and consumed any of the items on it and did not repent would definitely end up in hell forever. To take one example,  the list quoted vanillin, that wonderful flavour used in chocolates, custards, cakes etc. which they explained was haram because in its extraction from vanilla beans alcohol was used as the solvent (which subsequently is evaporated leaving behind pure crystalline vanillin. According to the quixotes that temporary contact and the prospect of a single molecule of alcohol remaining in the product was enough to make it haram. Dare to disagree on however scientific, reasonable and fiqh grounds-  they saw blood. To one of them I said “do you really believe that taking somehow a single molecule of alcohol into yourself is haram?” He said “yes, and

 

I can quote a hadith saying that what is haram in large  amounts is also haram in small amounts’ ”.  Whereupon I felt Abu Hanifa’s genius visiting me and said “then you must go back to your muslim homeland and never remain a minute more in this country.  Because there are pubs on every street where alcohol vapour is constantly produced and spread into the streets.  It is impossible to live in England and not to inhale not one but many molecules of alcohol every day.  You will also be inhaling pork vapours and even eat some pork because the fruit you bought from a grocery might just be handled by somebody with remnants of pork on his hand or you may open a biscuit pack you bought from a shop and breaking it take one and eat. It is quite possible that it was handled by a porky hand and your hand could pick some pork molecules which it transferred to the biscuit you ate. He totally failed to register the objection and continued to go around in the mosque and hand out the precious new fiqh. He simply didn’t know and perhaps even didn’t want to know that both the Prophet and the sahaba MET Christians and talked to them without worrying about their wine drinking and pork handling and the sahaba ate the food prepared by the Christian monks who gave them a banquet when they had conquered Jerusalem.

 

And what do you want Allah swt ruled unambiguously “the food of those given the Book before you are HALAL for you” (5:5) which both the sahaba and ulama took at face value with the proviso that wine or pork was not served. Now to find fault with the sahaba and pious jurists of Islam (like Abu Hanifa, Shafii etc) is the sign of the Kharijite mentality which is contaminated with the blood of many saints including sayyidina Uthman and Ali and thousands after them. All reputable and wise ulama are unanimous that the nusoos (ayat and ahadith) are not interpreted to absurd extremes which an utterly literal and logical approach may lead to.  Had it been so muslims all should have to die because there is no cubic inch of the earth’s atmosphere which may not contain a molecule of alcohol or pork. Winds will carry them from England to Pakistan for example.  I remember one young Quixote who nearly died of septicaemia (blood poisoning) because he would not swallow antibiotics having been informed that harams like alcohol and gelatin was used in them.  Some gelatin may come from pigs but the pure gelatin produced is a chemically refined substance with no detectable ‘pork’ more than the atmosphere in a supermarket. What is more Abu Hanifa ruled that “ in things being halal is the rule and being haram is the exception.  Unless there is evidence to the contrary every article handed to us must be regarded halal (evidence like a reliable report, an admitting label, bad smell, a reasonable reason for being suspicious etc).  What is more we do not have to investigate because such an attitude of neurotic suspicion and exhaustive thoroughness is ‘usrah’ (unacceptable difficullty) while Allah wishes for us ‘yusra’ (ease).  So our good ancestors from the sahaba down lived with non-muslims and sometimes shared food on top of atmosphere with them without carrying out exhaustive research and investigations. 

 

Had muslim quixotics’ antics been confined to infinitesimal probabilities of haram perhaps it could be tolerable. But some are far more ambitious than that. They accuse the rest of us with all sorts of scandals razail), crimes (jinayat) and even blasphemy (shirk and kufr) simply because we follow the habits of the sahaba or at least our moderate madh-hab imams and ancestors who lived both under not so pious sultans and even non-muslims without rebelling and shared many things with non-muslims without neurotic scrupples just like the sahaba and the tabi’een did.  They angrily and ambitiously argue that we must unite wordwide under their quixotic banner with one of them as our ruler (khalifa) and then begin to wage war on others in the deluded hope that soon the whole world will be ‘saved’ by them. A feat which no prophet, including the Seal of the Prophets sws could do and Allah would not allow in any case simply because He made the world and divided it into camps for wise reasons in his unfathomable Wisdom and commanded us to co-exist with non-muslims unless our rights are infringed, peaceful negotiations fail to remove the injustice and and we have the power to give us a reasonable chance of winning a contest against the wrongdoers. In this respect one should not read the verses bearing on the matter of jehad selectively and in isolation but with all the circumstances surrounding them (‘sabab al nuzool’ , trends in the development and evolution of the Qur’anic and Prophetic rulings).  It is a rule of the Shariah that when circumstances change so do rules, when the same circumstances return the rulings made in their context return.  Muslims today are among the most backward and poorest nations incidentally suffering more from themselves and in the hands of each other than non muslims in general and the West in particular.

 

Ours is a no win situation unless we sort out our internal and inter-muslim mess and until then peace and cautious cooperation with others are necessary for us. And peace is always the aim of Islam under any circumstances except the most desperate and muslims offer it to the whole world in principle and work towards it sincerely.  In any case quixotism is wrong under any circumstances and as proven by the assassination of the likes of sayyidina Ali ra quixotics are never satisfied with anything or anybody no matter how holy and righteous and close and dear to the Prophet sws himself. They are only satisfied with themselves. For quixotics the actual agenda is imposing upon others and NOT bringing about good except theirs.  They remind me the thugs in a folk story who had a grudge against a gardener.  They climbed over the fence and began to pick up and eat the fruits. When the poor gardener dutifully arrived to stop them they beat them up to pulp. The owner of the garden finds his servant in that pitiful condition and knowing the circumstances ruefully comments “ their intention wasn’t eating fruit but beating you up”.  Isn’t that what exactly happens to the opponents of their quixotic cause? Isn’t the real aim of football hooligans beating up others and wrecking up places rather than watching football?  Quixotics are people who are so unable to understand the world around them and are so hurt by it that in order to punish that world they need and have to invent a cause they can identify with and  believe in. What better pretext than one a religion may provide on whatever shaky or dubious grounds?  Talking on behalf of a god is the most empowering ploy for anyone to criticise and accuse and  beat others to his heart’s content.

 

 

ON SHIRK AND TAWHID

 

INTRODUCTION

 

One of the hottest arguments between literalist and sufi muslims is the subject of what does and does not amount to shirk. Islam no doubt is the most absolutely Unitarian faith and its term for the unity of God is ‘tawhid’.   ‘Shirk’ means claiming that there are other gods, however junior, in addition to Allah which Islam defines as the only god.
Alhamdulillah Islam is so unambiguous and unieqivocal about the absolute unity of Allah as God that no philosopher, mystic or sect can challenge this dogma in any way and remain considered a muslim.  Therefore no well-established muslim sect or sufi order can be accused of shirk.  

 

But the fact remains that some statements on the part of some Sufis about prophets and saints shock and anger the literalists so much that they cannot wait to open their mouths and rain showers of protests and criticism on the Sufis concerned.  Let us see some common and typical examples of sufi hyperboles on the Prophet sws and apparently superb followers of him who are called ‘awliya Allah’ by Sufis.  Incidentally a hyperbole means a deliberate literary exaggeration which is not meant literally but for emotional effect.    Like calling your father the kindest man imaginable. If challenged, the son, if he is sane, will admit that he did not mean it literally, for much kinder men should definitely exist, but he only intended to show his love and appreciation for and his attachment to his father.  This is hyperbole, it is called ‘mubalagha’ in Arabic and is recognized as a legitimate tool of eloquence.   In fact all poetry is based as much as on hyperbole as on metaphors.  Example:

 

“My beloved drips honey
From her rose bud of a mouth
Her scent sends east and west faint
In fact spring comes from her breath”.

 

Here we see metaphors like her lips being rose buds and drip honey and hyperboles like east and west fainting from the bliss her scent causes and even the spring season is caused by her breath filling the air.  What this poetical statement means is not that a woman is or can really be so beautiful and powerful but it is that the poet wants to say “I love her like mad, I am badly obsessed with her”.

 

It is the same with mystics’ statements intended to show their great  appreciation of prophets and  saints and are not to be taken literally. 

 

One of the sufi mystic claims in this category may be the claim that the Prophet sws sees and knows everything and is present everywhere at every instant (hazir and nazir).  What it means actually is that the sufi is so constantly and overwhelmingly obsessed by the image of the Prophet sws that his inner world (which is vaster than the outer in fact) is full of him always and everywhere.  A literal interpretation of this poetic statement is inadmissible because it is totally and unambiguously runs against Allah’s statements and Rasululullah’s own explicit statements on such ontological matters.  What is more such literalist claims are also meaningless.   What is the use of duplicating Allah’s omniscience (knowing everything) and omnipresence (being everywhere)? Allah needs neither a partner, nor a helper, nor an adviser, nor a lover!  He is the only Knower, Will and Actor Who exercises all these powers behind a number of veils in the form of the various ranks of creation-  first the near angels called ‘mala al a’la’ (high confidants), then the countless numbers of lesser angels. Then come men and jinni, then animals and plants and  then objects of nature like the sun and moon and the forces of nature like the wind and earthquake. All these servants do Allah’s bidding and nothing else, whether they know it or not, whether they mean it or not.  Read if you wish  in Allah’s Book in Surat Ali Imran v.83:  “Are they seeking another religion than Allah’s to Whom are submitted everybody in heavens and earth willingly or unwillingly and unto Whom they shall return?”

 

In this scheme and among men prophets and saints enjoy highest status;  they are privy to great secrets and may be endowed with great powers on loan from Allah;  or they rather constitute another level of virtual actorship concealing the Real Actor:  They are acting as  veils for Allah’s Will and Action.  But these virtual role playings are never total.  They can only be partial, temporary and changeable and of nil magnitude when compared with Allah’s totality. Therefore literally assigning to any created being a total knowledge and control over events is inadmissible and may only be a hyperbole not worth risking as it is bound to cause fitna which is worse than murder among muslims.  Said the Almighty in Surat Baqara v.191 “Fitna is worse than murder”. 

 

In proof of this point of nobody whatsoever having total knowledge and power over anything let alone the whole world and its events He Almighty says in Surat  al An’am v.50 where the Prophet is commanded to say thus.  “Say: ‘ I am not saying to you that Allah’s treasures are with me. And I DO NOT KNOW ghaib. Also I am not saying that I am an angel.  I am only following what is inspired to me…”.     Again and equally explicitly He Almighty said in Surat al A’raf v. 187- 188  “ They ask you about the Hour, when is its advent.  Say: Its knowledge is exclusive to Allah.  Nobody can disclose its time but He. It hangs heavy on the heavens and earth (i.e., it is built in in them and its time is ticking like a time bomb, so-to-speak).  It shall not come to you but quite suddenly. THEY ARE ASKING YOU AS IF YOU ARE INTIMATE TO IT (i.e., YOU AREN’T).   Say: ‘Its knowledge is with Allah but most people do not realize that’.   Say (also to them) ‘I can cause myself neither good nor harm except what Allah wills. HAD I KNOWN THE GHAIB I WOULD INCREASE THE GOOD TO ME AND NO HARM WOULD TOUCH ME.  I AM ONLY A WARNER AND BRINGER OF GOODNEWS TO A PEOPLE WHO CARES TO BELIEVE”.  Could Allah azza wa jalla be more explicit and unambiguous about the inner condition of His prophets and lesser friends (awlia)?

 

Unfortunately some sufi statements intended to glorify the Prophet sws and sometimes a saints or saints state exactly the opposite, imaginarily giving their heroes what Allah EMPATICALLY DENIES HAVING GIVEN THEM and in addition makes His Prophet sws deny the same as well. Claims such as everything is given to the hand of a prophet or saint for him to share out or power to oversee all creation and interfere or being everywhere controlling everything every instant…   are both incredible and meaningless.   Since everything is running as only Allah wills another being’s involvement in it has no meaning except absurdity.  Where this false impression comes from we shall deal with later.                              

Yet considering the pious and  charitable and good-natured impression some Sufis give their saying such literal absurdities  makes one conclude that such Sufis are only being poetic and employing hyperboles designed to hit hard the hearts of seekers and impart them an overwhelming appreciation of the Prophet sws and awlia.  This of course does not mean that every sufi talking this way is aware that his statements are poetic and not literal.  In fact many just imitate and quote their teachers who might know better.  Admittedly however the  effects of such hyperboles can be electrifying and radically transforming in sensitive and impressionable souls.  The pupil sufi may go into convulsions of admiration and adoration of the prophet or wali in question and make extra efforts to live in Allah’s way with a seriousness and determination at a he otherwise could muster.   Sufis rightly point out that dry scriptural, literal and doctrinal statements fail to move the customer of religion and their formulations work faster and far better.  Yet such hyperbolic evocations create also a serious risk and dilemma.  We shall see how in a moment. But a historical reminder first.

 

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF DERAILMENT OF SPIRITUALITY

 

This abandoning of Allah’s and His prophets’ own explicit statements and replacing them by supposedly Gnostic (alleged personal spiritual discoveries) insights has been the plague of all religions and more recently before Islam, its greatest victim was the True Religion of God as brought by Jesus Christ which was a renovation of the Mosaic and was not called Christianity by him or any of his disciples. It was St Paul who first opposed the real life disciples (ashab) of the Christ which disciples’  beliefs about God and Jesus were simply on Mosaic lines.   In late Jewish tradition the term son of God was the equivalent of friend of God (waliyyullah) among us muslims and Father as applied to God simply meant our ‘Rabb’ in Islam, i.e Lord.  The word ‘rabb’ among jews, who spoke a language related to  Arabic meant a ‘teacher’.  Yet the Hellenistic world of the times into  which Jesus was born  was quite at home with a literal understanding of terms like ‘God the Father’ and ‘Son of God’.  On top of that there were many old as well as current religions, sects and cults, many of them Gnostic, i.e. based not so much on revelation to a central prophet but alleged personal spiritual discoveries of any and everybody who had the interest in and flair for a spiritual life was quite free to DIY an new cult.  These sects and cults produced quite similar faiths which however would not hesitate to murder each other on very minor points.  This illness of competitive spiritual freewheeling and murderous factionalism was exactly contracted by the Hellenistic admirers and advocates of Jesus who just dismissed and ignored the protests of the real life disciples of Jesus and independent of them spread like mushrooms all over the Roman lands as self-invented innovators. 

 

Their power came from their mysticism which could not flourish so luxuriantly and unhindered among the scripturally-based Judaic community.  Not that jews did not have their profound spirituality and mysticism.  They definitely had but the Law and the Scripture acted as brakes and controls to steer that spirituality and that mysticism  and prevent its straying into freewheeling territory where anybody could claim anything according to himself.  Beset by all the illnesses of the Hellenistic spirituality it took the core body of Christianity the Roman Church more than three centuries to suppress the excessive freewheeling and infighting and impose its version of events and values as orthodoxy and fight decisively from the advantage point of being adopted as the imperial religion under the Roman emperors as from Constantine the Great who incidentally had transferred the seat of government to a new capital in the East,  namely Byzanthium which later became renamed as Constantionopolis.

 

The Roman Church itself traced its ancestry as to right to rule to St Peter the chief disciple of Jesus and doctrinally to St Paul the real founder of what came to be known Christianity.   St Paul simply hijacked the name ‘Christ Jesus’ and this dying, resurrecting and atoning and saving Christ Jesus as the central myth he laid the foundations of another Hellenistic mystery religion loosely thrown back to a Judaic origin in the Jewish scriptural prediction for tastier new slant and advantage over the rival Hellenistic mystery cults with a similar die-resurrect-save thesis. Frowned upon and even expelled by the small body of jewish Jesus followers Paul diversified into gentile audiences and travelling far and wide built for himself an archipelago of clientele from Asia Minor to Rome itself.  His disciples  built on the foundations he left, increasingly abandoned the already diluted and emasculated Judaic part  in his system and replaced with more Greek ethos in theology and more Roman precedents in practice and organization.    For these Greco_Roman christinas God became more and more literally the Father and Jesus the Divine Son.  God’s Law in the Torah which Jesus personally affirmed and applied Paul had already declared as ‘garbage’ (*) and was to have no place in Christianity.   For Christians after Paul the distinction between God and Christ became narrower and narrower until the two merged and in practice Jesus became the more important and the more decisive.  Much later the Holy Spirit was added to the two to make a Holy Trinity but the dominance of the Son continued even more than before.   For all practical intents and purposes the Christ became the God,  the Creator, the Sustainer, the Helper and punisher, the judge, the saver and condemner and God ‘the Father’ receded into a shadowy non-role.  Something of the same happened to Rasulullah sws in the hands of some Sufis and to his grandsons the ‘imams’ in the hands of the Shia.   The cause reason is the same as in Christianity.  

 

As Islam spread and conquered old cultures and spiritual traditions the well-developed and long-ingrained of these new entrants began to mix with and influence the muslim views and habits with both salutary and deleterious results.  The mythicalization and   artificialization which had happened to the images and memories of ancient spiritual masters like Buddha,  Zoroaster and Jesus arrived at the door of the Rasululah as well.  Certainly few succeeded to hijack and recast him to a certain extent in a new invented and unhealthily inflated image but it no doubt happened.  But thanks to Rasulullah’s sws memory being too recent, too authentically and exhaustively preserved along with the Qur’an the success of Islamic St Pauls has been very limited and on the very fringes. In fact finding the Rasululah sws too strong a target to attack, melt and  recast in their Gnostic images the innovators found easier targets in his grandchildren whom they called ‘imams’ and sometimes went as far as almost or fully deifying them (e.g., infallible like popes and even more so). Rasulullah’s own victimization in this respect has only been slight and he contiunues in his original authentic and genuine image of being ‘ ‘Abduhu wa rasuluhu’  (Allah’s created servant and messenger) as solidly as his first day.   Alhamdu lillah all great and reputable sufi sheikhs and tariqats are free from and Pauline ambiguities and treacheries. 

 

Yet, some disturbing going-overboards always plagued some Sufis both  as regards the Prophet’s (sws) nature and Allah’s relation to man.  These fortunately hardly went anywhere near the Gnostic Christian’s parallel claims in audacity and Islamic faith remains as authentic and as secure as ever.  Still these pre-Islamic influences  must be responsible for the unhealthy inflation applied to the image of the Prophet sws who is made to look so completely powerful that he became almost the tastier and more obsessive object of contemplation and adoration than Allah with Whose omnipresence and omniscience he is made almost identical.  But unlike other faiths we have the full and infallible remedy at hand.

 

Allah and the Rasul sws taught us, for example,  that Allah sees us at all times and His two angels called Kiraman Katibin monitor each of us and records our deeds for Allah’s judgment.  In some sufi versions these are just ignored and the Prophet does a simpler job. He both hears and sees and interferes and employs no Kiramen Katibin for that.  Rather than searching for Allah in his heart and contemplating exclusively Him Almighty murids in some sufi tariqats are made to look for the Prophet sws (and also hosts of awlia) and believing that he sees and judges him to behave accordingly.  Some even routinely pray direct to the Prophet sws and designated saints just like Christians are habituated to do towards Jesus and their saints.  This of course was never practiced by the sahaba even by a far shot and they definitely pitied Christians for such misguided practices.   And they had Rasulullah’s sws warnings against them.  He sws is reported to have said “May Allah curse jews and Christians who built up and adopted the graves of their saints (sulaha) as prayer grounds (masajid).   

One report depicts him admonishing his companions in his last address to them in his masjid hours before he died saying “I have made halal what the Qur’an made halal and made haram what the Qur’an made haram. Nations before you adopted  the graves of their prophets and  saints as prayer grounds. I am forbidding you doing the same”. Of course this does not mean that graves of prophets and great followers of his are to be lost.  As every muslim they are entitled to decent and maintained, identifiable graves and visiting those graves are always great acts of piety as they refresh their purifying and saving memories. What is apparently deplored by the Prophet sws are canonization and institutionalisation of such practices which often degenerate into a veritable worship of the saint as if the saint is like Allah for all practical intents and purposes if not in theory and can hear prayers directed to him personally and grant wishes personally. Why some Sufis vehemently defend such practices we shall also insha Allah explain soon.

 

 

THE GNOSTIC REWORKING OF IMAGES

 

By all reputable standards*  is definitely not Islam’s original teaching but a persistent continuation of a Gnostic tradition pre-dating the Qur’an and the actual teachings of the Prophet sws.  As in the case of Paul and  other hardened and addicted Gnostics who had hijacked Christ and converted him into an ever-living and ever-watching and ever-interfering spiritual sovereign no matter how hard and desperately the real Christ’s real sahabas complained and protested  some Sufis repeated this same sleight of hand and hijacking Allah’s next and last messenger Muhammad sws and reworked his image into almost another Pauline Christ who stands for God all but in name.  He is omnipresent, omniscient, sends revelations and help, judges and decides issues, punishes and rewards, appoints and dismisses from office.  Not a single shred of evidence exists in either the Qur’an and reputable hadith for such claims and all evidence quoted are outside the major and trusted Hadith collections.  The few quotations taken from collections like the Bukhari’s are misapplied and could be interpreted far better. For example take this Bukhari Hadith:
“Allah says ‘Nothing endears a servant to Me than his doing what I made obligatoryt (farz) to him.  When he also does voluntary acts of devotion I love him even more until I become his eye with which he sees and his hearing with which he hears and his hand with which he grabs and his foot with which he walks. When he calls on me I come to his call and when he asks for my protection I protect him”.  

 

Extremists take this to mean that the servant becomes omniscient (hears, sees and knows everything God does) and hand can do anything and his steps can take him anywhere. But this need not be taken so hyperbolically.  A simpler interpretation in fact bears all the hallmarks of truth and practicality.  Allah becomes the servants vision in the sense that his vision looks for and takes in only what Allah approves and refuses to dirty itself with what Allah disapproves. He gives eart only to the word of truth and piety and shuts out lies and words of impiety.   His hands only work for halal and the meritious and his  feet takes and keeps him in Allah’s path etc.  Look at this simple, humble and eminently practicable interpretation which puts a believer straightaway on the simple yet the most honorable path of moment by moment piety and charity and look at the insanely inflated, totally non-practicable and doctrinally highly suspect as well as extremely pretentious and megalomaniac interpretation to his praises short of declaring him Divine.  So no sane and true sufi ever commits shirk as regards the Prophet’s status (sws).  But hyperbole some do resort to and the intention is to enhance the appreciation of the Prophet sws.  But there  a fine point here.  It is that whatever hyperbole the sufi lover of the Prophet sws employs to show his appreciation of him falls in fact far short of the Prophet’s real rank and status with Allah which rank and status is unknown to anybody but known only to Allah. 

 

A Sufis desperate and wordy hyperboles are wild and often misguided guesses at his rank and status with Allah on top of angering any literalists who like to the the Prophet sws as a man substantially comparable to themselves, but still comparable.  This again is misguided.   That neither the Prophet’s nor awlia’s rank and status with Allah can be guessed even by a far margin is proven by the verse in Surat al Sajda where the Almighty says
“Wal la ta’lamu nafsun ma ukhfiya lahum min qurrata a’yunin jaza’an bima kanu ya’malun” (),  i.e., “Nobody can know what is prepared in secret for them (true believers) for what they have been doing”.  To deserve such unimaginable, unfathomable reward which only Allah has the capacity to know and no human mind or angelic perception can even begin to approach the true believer (a prophet or a best follower of him- a saintly muslim) than that believers rank and status with Allah must also be unimaginably high.  Where has anybody seen rewarding a person with the mind and character or a corporal with the rank and office of a field marshall?  To receive and enjoy a lofty blessing from Allah one needs be endowed with the capacity to appreciate and enjoy the blessing.  It is no use to unvite two week old suckling baby to a royal banquet where sumptuous delicacies from the four corners of the world are on offer and nothing less.

 

But this of course does not mean that any and every parabole a zealous or dubious sufi spurts from his mouth or squirts from his pen is excusable. For example,  if a hyperbole gives the impression that it is not the Prophet or the wali who is receiving from and adoring Allah but the other way round than we have a problem.  Sometimes the hyperbole is so slanted that trying to magnify the Prophet it sacrifices something of Allah’s greatness.   The impression given is that Allah’s enjoyment of His Divinity was dependent upon creating something or somebody at all, however great that something or somebody would be.   He Almighty says in Surat al Anbiya v. 17  “Had we wished to obtain enjoyment (we needed not obtain it from creation but) could have it from with what is with Ourselves (min ladunna).  If any further doubt remains then read from Surat Ibrahim v.8 “Said Moses: If you and everybody else on earth without exception blasphemed Allah still remains  needless of anything and anybody as well as worthy of all praises”.   In Surat Yunus v. 68,  He Almighy refutes the Christian claim that Allah took Jesus as His son (the most beloved relation to anybody-  can you imagine the Perfect Father Allah delighting in a perfect son (astaghfirullah).  He says about this deluded claim “They said: ‘Allah took for Himself a son’.  Absolved is He!  He does not need anything or anybody whatsoever…”.   For Him nobody, repeat nobody is indispensable and everybody is expendable.  Read if you wish from Surat  al Maida v.17  “Should Allah will to destroy the Christ and his mother Mary and all else on earth who could stop Him? To Him belongs everything in heavens and on earth and in between.  He creates what He will and has Power over and for doing everything”  We must remember that Christians claimed that the

 

Christ was too dear to Allah, He was inseparable from Him, absolutely necessary for mankind’s salvation; without him He could not save mankind.  He was the beloved and only Son etc.  Allah subhanahu wa jalla sha’nuhu dimisses all such claims.  

 

The fact is that the greatest man is only the one with greatest rahmat and karam and ihsan shown him by Allah.  The gifts are entirely one-sided and the recipient cannot pay back anything.  Jesus or Muhammad sws,  all are servants brought near to Allah purely out of Allah’s mercy, grace and gifts.

 

But this does not mean that such elevated servants are our equals. They are our eternal superiors, our noble and gracious brothers to whom we owe more than the whole world-   our salvation. Loving, honouring, praising and obeying them is inseparable from loving, honouring, praising and obeying Allah;  although Allah remains God and they remain created servants Allah so willed as to make them His favorites, raised their station and rank and brought them near Him;  He calls them ‘al muqarrabun’, those brought near. 

 

                        
WHY DUBIOUS SUFI PRACTICES SEEM TO WORK

 

Sufism is basically of two kinds.  One is real Sufism which is the pious business of reducing ourselves to Allah’s true servanthood.  In return we expect only Allah’s pleasure and if true we would not mind in the least and perhaps even positively shun being seen as a saint by the public. Only pure souls can recognize such true Sufis and saints while the ignorant look for show and lustre and swallows whole the more show and lustre they see in a claimnant to sainthood. Some are so stupid that the more royally and opulently and tyrannically the claimant displays himself and the more extravagant claims he makes the greater he is seen.  Of such fakes the world is full of and are especially the rule among the Christians and the Hindus.  Islam, for his part is so well-defined and immune a religion is that however false and worldly ambitious false saints cannot make too much show or claim too atrocious marvels.  But such still do exist and perhaps make the majority.

 

This latter group is also of two kinds-  plain liars who cannot proev their claims and simply depend on the credulity of their worshippers and really skilful mavericks who employ magic to enhance their standing.  The magic employed is also of two kinds, namely, physical and psychological.

 

The definition of magic is this:  It is the employment of natural laws to create an illusion which is too difficult to explain away by ordinary people. Only a cool-headed scientist or fellow magician can expose the pretender. Physical magic nowadays is very plentiful and makes advance upon advance in line with the development of science and technology. For example one very well-known magician uses giant holographic effects to show himself being cut into to by a giant saw.  The game is given away by the extreme fuzziness of the saw which fuzziness is a trademark of all hologramic images.  Many false gurus and sheikhs necessarily resort to simpler and smaller devices to show themselves as miracle mongers.

As for psychological magic this also is of two kinds.  One is the staple psychological technology of subduing the flesh to will, denying it many desires and comforts and thereby bring about a partial dissolution of the neurological barrier separating the two halves of the brain. This is in fact the trademark of yogis and other monks (including early Christian Gnostics) and from them it passed to some misguided Sufis who employed them as part of their enlightenment project irrespective of the fact that the Prophet’s Sunna dismisses them and that Sunna should be enough for any degree of enlightement.  We can call these traditional and experimentally developed practices as ‘monasticism’,  it is mentioned in the Qur’an as ‘rahbaniyyata’,  in the case of Christians but not entirely endorsed.  In the interpretaion of this reference by Allah swt the Prophet sws ruled “La rahbaniyyata fil Islam”,  i.e., In Islam monastic practices are not acceptable. Muslim believer does not aim at enlightenment as such but aims only at winning Allah’s pleasure.  Enlightenment comes to him in the wake of it.  The means to Allah’s pleasure is the Prophet’s Sunna as it actually was-  nothing less, nothing more.  When a sufi goes beyond the or Sunna and adopts practices from yogis like withholding the breath the body or depriving it of sleep or legitimate sex what he produces is not miracles but psychological magical effects which any ascetic whatever his faith or blasphemy is.

 

How these magical effects occur?  As we said, the dissolution of the barrier between the two halves of the brain makes available all its congnitive powers accessible to the practitioner.  For example all his forgotten memories become available to compute answers to complicated problems and surviving precarious situations.  Because animals also have their two bran halves less isolated and the right intuitive part far stronger then the left intelligence part they are far better than men in reading the body language and other danger signals than us.  They also communicate much better by body language and voice quality than we can because they basically lack goodenough language.  Similarly yogis, monk and Sufis emulating them become good mind-readers and mind-influencers which in no way is indicative of enlightenment.  Such skills and feats are only indicators of empowerment and if anything enhance the lower self (ego) instead of suppressing it and opening the heart to Allah.  So we find even in some very reputable sufi literature pompous references to mind-reading, mind-control,  fortune-telling and more dubiously stories about psychic competitions between two sheikhs one trying to subdue the other by his psychic muscle while the other is resisting and counter attacking-  just like two cocky wrestlers or boxers.  They also question each other as to  their spiritual skills and stations and dismiss each other as the lesser saint.  “What maqam are you on?” asks one, “Such and such maqam” says the other.  “Hah” says scornfully the first “You are still a beginner” etc.

The self-glorifying delusions may get so much out of hand that some Sufis may break into hymns of boastings and looking down on prophets and even appropriating Allah’s privileges.  When more sober they and their supporters explain such atrocities as excused due to spiritual intoxication and some even regard such intoxication as the summit of sanctity. They forget that Islam which is none other than the Prophet’s Sunna is the religion of sobriety and bans and condemns intoxication (clouding of the mind). 

 

The Messenger of Allah sws said “Kullu musakkirin haram”, i.e., all intoxicants are unlawful.  Since he sws said ALL it means ALL.  In fact many great Sufis are of our opinion,  unequivocally criticized and condemned all forms of and declarations under the influence of intoxicants some of which did appear to amount to shirk.  For example some Sufis only too frequently and casually refer to their attaining to the witnessing the  Essence of Allah (mushahadat dhat Allah).  Apparently it is too easy for them although they have nothing to show for it.  They forget that knowing and understanding something in full is the proof that the knower and understander IS SUPERIOR to the known and understood which in their case means they are claiming without naming it that they are superior to Allah.  Why not, the boys are able to penetrate the very Essence of Allah which means they encompass Him.  This flies in the face of all nasses of Islam.  It also breaks the Prophet’s commandment which is “Contemplate the creation of Allah but not His Essence lest you are ruined”.  They also  report “seeing” Allah in dream and holding conversations with Him.  Nothing of the sort is even faintly implied by any nasses of Islam (ayat and hadith) nor such feats are reported from the Prophet sws himself let alone from his companions.  But such feats are only too conspicuous in all pagan religions from ancient Egypt and Greece to India and Polynesia.  In Greece patients with difficult illnesses found their way to the temple at Aesclapius the god of medicine, fasted and worshipped there for a number of days under the supervision of its priestesses and oracles and in the end “saw in their dream, talked with him and learned  or were given the cure by him. 

 

Such miraculous events are reported from all ages from all corners of the earth and if even a few per cent true seem to give credit to idolatry and polytheim (as shirk).  Taking such ostensibly ‘tried and tested’ methods some Sufis did not hesitate to dive headlong into pagan and semi-pagan pre-Islamic practices from saint-worship to tomb veneration to employment of incantations, talismans, charms and amulets.  Even worse open and unabashed praying to saints direct like “O hazrat so and so,  only you have the power to do this,  do it for me” with apparent success. But even if successful these practices are shirk and their results ‘istidraj’, i.e., false miracles allowed by Allah to let the culprit drown himself in more blasphemy and get his bitter lesson in due course.  What do we want. Even the Devil is worshipped as a god and even as ‘the only true god’ and he also is consistently reported as granting the wishes of his votaries- which again can only be istidraj.  And I will tell you in fact how it works but why its employment leads to utter disgrace and destruction.

 

 

THE SECRET OF AGES

 

Men are not all of same intelligence and ability.  On the one end we have people of so weak intelligence and low ability that they have to be looked after by others all their life or perish.  At schools we find pupils who can never master even simple arithmetics or make a somersault. At the other end we find pupils who are so intelligent that they successfully challenge their teachers and embarrass them.  Famous Einstein was so afraid of his pupil the Indian physicist Bose that he often looked Bose’s way to see whether Bose agreed with what he said or not.  On the physical side we find youngsters as skilful as apes and monkeys or as fast as hounds.

 

Now among such super intelligence, super ability rarities are a class of people we may call spiritual or psychic geniuses.  They seem to be born with incredible amounts of ability to understand how their and others’ minds work and can develop methods of exploiting this knowledge which is doubtlessly the most arcane and privileged of knowledges.
These psychic/psychological/spiritual giants, call them what you want, come to realize that each and every one of us are our own world and the so-called objective world which seems to exist ouside and independent of us in fact is not as outside and independent as it looks.  It is not also as internal to and dependent on us as some psychics assume, among them some sufi geniuses. It is somewhere in between.  Try to manipulate it too much in your intersest and you are in for a disheartening shock.  Therefore a miracle-worker may make an enemy fall on his face but spoilt by this success if he thinks that he can also make the sun raise prematurely or the dead come alive he will surely scandalize himself.  The reason is that the Real Skill and Power is with Allah only (la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah) and a man can go near Allah or get a licence from Him to work miracles but neither is total even by a far margin.  Had Allah given total power to men their works could easily clash and the world ruined. Read if you wish “ Had there been gods other than and under Him the heavens and the earth would fall into ruin” ()

 

 

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