Vicegerent Of God?

 

 

VICEGERENT OF GOD?

 

In the Qur’an there is a recurrent term and a theme related to it which is so unusual and so pregnant with meanings that it exercised the minds of Sufis persistently and put the commentators of the Qur’an to a task they can hardly be said to have enjoyed.  It begins with one of the earliest placed verses of the Qur’an, namely the second sura (chapter) ‘al Baqara’ verse 30, i.e. barely three minutes reading from the beginning of the Qur’an. In there we find the following

 

“(Remember) when thy Lord said to the angels I am about to put a ‘khlalifa’ in the earth” (please be patient until I explain what this word may mean).  They said ‘Are you going to put there somebody who will work corruption therein and spill blood while we are (already) glorifying and sanctifying Thee?’. He said ‘I know what you know not”(2:30). 

 

Allah then went on and made Adam and taught him ‘the names of everything’.  He then pointed to those things and asked the angels “If you are truthful then tell me their names”.  They couldn’t. He then asked Adam and he could tell them.  With this proof of Adam’s superiority Allah then turned to His angels and drove the message home “Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of the heavens and the earth and know what you hide and what you declare?”.  He then ordered all the angels to prostrate to Adam which they did except ‘Iblis’.  “He was (not one of the real angels however which angels can only obey Allah despite some occasional mutterings, but) one of the jinni (genii) and he took exception to his Lord’s command” (18: 50).  

 

In fact Iblis was so incensed with Adam’s creation as a superior being to him that being proud in his heart he was loath to admit Adam’s position and instead wowed to  prove Allah wrong by seducing Adam to act ungratefully and sin against the Lord.  He therefore asked Allah not to haste to punish him but let him loose to try Adam’s character.   And in His wisdom Allah granted this unholy wish of the Satan which name was now added to that of Iblis for the debuting  desperado.  He then managed to penetrate the Garden where Adam and Eve were residing and persuaded them to eat of the Forbidden Tree whereupon darkness and shame of sin removed their covers of innocence and they became aware of their evil-prone flesh (saw’atahuma) and made haste to cover themselves with some leaves from the garden (min waraq al janna).  Allah reprimanded them bitterly for it and threw them together with the Iblis Satan out and sent them down to the earth as mutual enemies for all time to the end of the world. Good days of ease and comfort were over for good and they now were to live as Allah said “In there you shall live and in there you shall die and from there you shall be taken out (resurrected)” (7: 25). “(However) if and when a guidance from Me comes to you then those who follow My guidance for them there shall be no fear, neither shall they grieve. But those who deny Our signs they are the denizens of hell; they shall remain therein” (2: 38-39). “Indeed the Satan is your enemy, do recognise him as your enemy” (35: 6).  And very many similar verses all pointing to the following

 

Man is created as the highest form of creature whose superiority consists of knowledge of things (names define things) and also his freewill.  Freewill because unlike the angels he will be able both to obey and  rebel against God and therefore runs the risk of working corruption and spilling blood on earth.  Even the Satan isn’t that intelligent and comprehensive.  Before Adam he was all obedience, after him he became all rebellion. In other words he lacks the balance of Adam. And lastly Allah commanded that all the angels prostrate themselves to Adam. Now, I know all too well that most muslim exegetes (scholarly commentators) shirk from the full implications of this prostration business. Some said that only a small number of angels who were then in the Presence of Allah was asked and did prostrate so that some greater angels were not so humiliated.  But that flies in the face of the fact that Allah explicitly says he commanded ‘the angels’, not some angles and ‘all angels in their totality’ prostrated themselves (sajada’l malaikatu KULLUHUM AJMA’EEN)  and not some angels. 

 

To suggest something else amounts to accusing Allah of ignorance about Arabic language and eloquence.  Why some commentators, both classical and modern are afraid of taking Allah’s word with its full implications?  The reason is a misplaced anxiety and a misguided zeal to ‘protect Allah’s Unity’ or to prevent ‘shirk’(polytheistic view) which in this case is a fear of casting Adam in some Divine light or image. They are forgetting that prostration does not necessarily mean that the prostrated-to is divine.  In antiquity kings and other lords were prostrated to without any prophets objecting.  In the Qur’an itself in the course of the story of Joseph (as) Allah twice mentions prostration to a man with implicit approval, namely,  the dream of Joseph (as) in which he sees eleven stars and the sun and the moon prostrating to him (12: 4) and when Jacob and all family enter Egypt with the blessings of Joseph and fulfil the dream by actually prostrating themselves before him (12: 100).

 

Please note: the prostrater is a prophet (Jacob) the ‘prostratee’ also is a prophet (Joseph) and the narrator is their APPROVING Lord Almighty. It was only in the Law of Muhammad (Sharia al Gharra al Ahmadia) that prostration to creatures were eventually banned and certainly not when Adam was presented to the angels. But still such a momentous favour to Adam needs and explanaion, a justification. If we, quite legitimately and thanks to the precedents, take prostration of highest creatures the angels to Adam as proof of Adam’s superiority, the superiority was such that it made him the KING of creatures. And since our Master Muhammad the Messenger of Allah sws is both the greatest creation of Allah and a son of Adam then this father Adam was the king of creatures and mankind he  fathered have been the king of all species of creatures from fish, bird and mammal to jinni and angels. And to the king prostration was due by the blessings and command of the Creator of all.  In fact nobody whether a scientist or a religious expert knows any kind of created being which is superior to man. Yes, the angels have great lights, great powers but because they lack freewill and by Allah’s testimony are ignorant of many things which man is taught by Allah they are not as comprehensive beings as men.

 

Please do not misunderstand-  I do not mean that all men are greater than angels at any given moment. Perhaps all are less than angels. What is greater is their POTENTIAL.  Angels remain where and what they are while men (at least some men), thanks to Allah’s favours Who gives them faith and helps them attain heavenly levels of moral and spiritual accomplishments-  such men (and of course women) ARE SERVED by the angels here and hereafter.  In the Garden (jannah) not only houris and ghilmans but also angels cater for Allah’s friends’ needs and pleasures and their host is a great angel named Ridwan who is the guardian of the Garden.  Yes, angels are under instructions from Allah to serve His human friends as proven by the verses “Those who say our Lord is Allah and then walk the Right Path; on them angles come down saying ‘do not fear and do not grieve-  instead rejoice with the Garden you have been promised. WE ARE YOUR GUARDIANS in THIS WORLD and the next.  Therein for you are what your souls yearn after, therein are for you what you call for- as a hospitality from your Lord” (41: 31). You see, man’s experience began with angels prostrating to him by Allah’s command and if he keeps faith and serves Allah well he will end up again angels serving him under command from Allah.  What do you want, every ‘alim’ knows that the Messenger of Allah is superior to all creatures and as his fellow  men and members of his ‘ummah’ (Islamic nation) we are also candidates to the same kingly status and destiny thanks to Allah’s great favour and generosity.
So, what Allah subhanahu wa taala meant by “I am about to put a khalifa on earth”?  

 

Again, many commentators and among them some moderns who are afraid of man’s (and therefore their own) potential and want to remain small and nasty instead of growing great and saintly by Allah’s favour and help-  they interpret the word ‘khalifa’ as beings who replace each other over time, i.e., generation taking place of generation because the verb ‘khalafa’ also means to ‘come after, to succeed’. What a timid and cowardly and wafer thin interpretation! But this quality of succeeding and replacing each other is shared by all living beings whether plants or animals.  Had Allah meant only the mortality and replaceability of man He wouldn’t mention it to His angels as if it was something special and the angels wouldn’t take offence as they did. Because all animals which again come and go in generations were already created without such fuss. Instead He challenged them to beat Adam’s accomplishment and thereby boasted (iftahara) with Adam against His angles and angels apologised and  prostrated to Adam.  Furthermore Allah said “Allah chose Adam and of Noah and family of Imran over all beings” (3: 33). 

 

We are all sons of Adam and if we behave ourselves we cannot fail to join our father in his chosenness as his sons Noah and Imran didn’t fail.  Allah’s gates of ‘rahmah’ (loving kindness) and ‘karam’ (gracious generosity) is wider than some of our poor exegetes can imagine.  I for my part cannot imagine myself estimating the magnitude of Allah’s rahmah and karam being less than unimaginably and unmeasurably great. Do some think that the ultimate reward from Allah for man is the Garden and finished? They are unknowingly insulting their Lord. The truth is that there is no limit to what He is keeping in store for us. Read if you wish “This is the Garden you have been promised-  … enter there in peace. This is the Day of Eternity. In there for them are everything they wish. And with US IS MORE” (ladaina mazeed) (50: 32..35). Nobody knows what is that ‘mazeed’, that MORE and it must be as great as Allah’s infinite wealth and generosity.   Anyone who does not dare to hope that mazeed and hopes for less has no gnosis (ma’rifah), no proper respect for and appreciation of Allah azza wa jalla. Man, wake up, He wants to give, He loves giving, He can afford giving any amount and kind! 

 

But we don’t have to wait for the next world to find out. Look what Allah said about us “He subjected to you all that are in the heavens and on earth as a favour from Him” (45: 13).  He Almighty said ALL (‘jami’an’), nothing less. And today we are seeing this power Allah delegated to us even more clearly-  scientists are manipulating the original genes Allah put in every species and its every individual and producing plants and animals to order. They split the atom, they are calculating to reach distant galaxies almost instantly thanks to the discovery of what are called the ‘wormholes’ in ‘Spacetime’ although it is still a theoretical possibility. All animals are doomed in front of man and only man’s good sense and compassion is helping prevent the extinction of some species. 

 

Only recently I have seen the TV news about an environmental action group producing tens of thousands of suits to be worn by penguins in areas potentially exposed to oil pollution. They noticed that penguins soaked by oil cleanse themselves with their beaks in the course of which they swallow some of the oil and  die as a result. Covered with the new textile suit they shall not be able to swallow any oil but shall be captured by the ever watchful group and cleansed with detergents. Look at the compassion in man when he is decent enough to realise and execute his responsibilities towards all other creatures in the universe AS THE VICEGERENT OF ALLAH (now please don’t make the mistake of looking down on non-muslims as essential inferiors. What faith is in each man and woman only Allah knows and we or they don’t know. Only Allah knows who will meet Him with true faith (iman) and who with unfaith (kufr).  Perhaps ‘character’ is the best indicator of the outcome for each person. A nasty muslim may lose and a kind non-muslim may win Allah’s favour in the end.

 

Every single one of us men and women are both potential saints and potential devils no matter our apparent or inherited faith. It is Allah Who guides or sends astray as He pleases. So RESPECT every man or woman and wish for them the best. To win people to Islam is only possible truly when we win their hearts before we win their minds. Go all out and try your best to make every man, woman and child, no matter of what faith, admire your civility, kindness and generosity).  Sons of Adam being unequalled by any other species  ARE named as the khalifas by Allah Himself, they are Allah’s vicegerents,  exclusively so.  This is not ‘shirk’.  All who understand spiritual matters know that Allah acts on his creatures, whether body or soul, through the agency of other creatures and NOT directly.   Divine or miraculous looking works of a man work only by the permission of Allah and such works do not make the man concerned a god. So any man can claim any work and any power and provided he stresses that it was a gift from Allah he cannot be accused of shirk. Had it been so Jesus could be accused of claiming Divinity as Christians surmised and claimed. Instead Allah swt clearly states in His Qur’an that Jesus performed acts supposedly only possible for Allah according to the ignorant and presented them to his audience as follows “I brought to you a Sign from your Lord: I form the shape of a bird and blow into it and it becomes a (living) bird with the permission of Allah. I heal the blind and the leper and revive the dead with the permission of Allah” (3: 49). 

 

This is the case, more or less, for all the sons of Adam. WITH THE PERMISSION OF ALLAH each and every man has some power (tasarruf) over some part of the creation, be it salting meat and preventing its decomposition for months if not years or emptying an egg’s nucleus and filling it with the genes of another animal and implanting it into a female’s womb or even an incubator and producing an animal without sexual contact- like the sheep Dolly!  This is khilafa (vicegerency), it is only with the permission of Allah and no ‘shirk’ and it has been with us since the creation of mankind. What is civilisation if not modifying nature so as to make it more amenable to and safer for our exploitation?  Only man has the imagination and reasoning powers to envisage the whole universe and attempt at conquering and mastering it. And only Allah gave this power and potential to man, only He can take it away or interrupt it as He pleases and this power does not make man god as the power delegated to a court official by the king does not make him a second king. He remains a servant and subject to dismissal at any instant. So WE ARE ALLAH’s VICEGERENTS and what is more we cannot help being it and we better should try to make best of it as believing and obedient servants rather than making worst of it as unbelieving and rebellious servants.

 

But there is more to it.  Man’s vicegerency of Allah does not begin and end with his limited control over nature. Inside each of us there is a parallel inner universe even greater and worthier than the outer. Its substance is what Allah swt refers as HIS SPIRIT as He Almighty said in many places in His Qur’an, for example “When I shaped him (man) and BLEW IN HIM OF MY SPIRIT the angels threw themselves down in prostration to him (15: 29).

 

Now, did the angels prostrated to the dust which was man’s material ingredient or the Spirit blown in him by Allah? It is this Spirit which keeps us alive, which is, unlike our earthen bodies eternal and which makes us the TOP respondents and potentially the nearest companions of Allah in the order of things. Read if you wish “Indeed the God-fearing (muttaqeen) are in Gardens and rivers, as owners of seats of truthfulness in the Presence (Company) of a Powerful King (54: 55).  Even in this world “Allah took Abraham as His bosom friend” (Khalila) (4: 125) and  “Kallamallahu Musa takleema”, i.e. “Allah spoke to Moses with speech” (4: 164). If that is the case in this low world you can imagine what nearness and intimacy Allah in His endless Kindness and Grace may bestow on His dear servants. Yes, Allah HAS dear servants who are so much in love with and obedient to and pleased with him that He Almighty calls them His Friends (Awliya Allah) when He Almighty says “Be aware of the Friends of Allah- For them there is neither fear nor sorrow. They are those who have had faith and had been fearing Him.  For them is goodnews in this world and the next. There can be no changing Allah’s word. That (achievement) is the greatest possible success (for any man) (10: 62-63). 

 

Now Allah swt isn’t saying here anything about a worldly,material achievement. He is only mentioning faith and fear of Allah, both spiritual achievements. Which shows that the greatest achievement a man or woman can win is attaining true and profound faith and loving and fearing Allah at a level where they over-rule all other considerations in life. Only such a person may be called a waliyullah or friend of Allah and only Allah knows what extraordinary spiritual favours he or she is given in this world and what is in store for him or her in the next. On the basis of this revelation anyone with a mustard seed’s weight of true wisdom must see that the highest and most profitable aim in his or her life is achieving true profound faith and cultivating the love and fear of Allah and all the rest must be subservient to this incomparable, most vital aim.

 

Now as an experienced sufi I can only assert with all conviction that anybody who sincerely tries to do something about this aim will find to his pleasant, incredulous surprise that angels will help him in various ways and forms and while his waking hours will be like a walk on soft and fragrant green grass presenting him at every step with another piece of help and compliment from Allah his sleep will assume a heavenly character in which remembrance of Allah and blessing visits by His angels shall envelope him like rivers of milk and honey flowing from all directions to him and buoying him in their sweet embrace.   This moment he will hear the calls to prayer from the minarets of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and the Prophet’s fragrance will be wafted to his nostrils from that distance as if no it was no distance (which it isn’t for spirits) and the next moment he may find himself being presented with the exact sum of money to sort out a problem he met recently.  Read if you wish “Whoever, man or woman, does good works and is a believer We shall make him or her to live a life of comfort and ease and reward them for the best of what they used to do” (16: 97). 

 

Yes, it is possible to smell the fragrance of the beloved from any distance as Allah testified concerning His prophet Jacob’s smelling his son Joseph’s fragrance while he was miles away in Egypt ‘I find the fragrance of Joseph if you will not accuse me of being demented” (12: 94).  The only condition is that the beloved is loved for Allah’s sake. Such blessings are only preliminary tastings of the favours reserved by Allah for His  friends.  Extraordinary physical (kawni) powers and skills may also be granted in Allah’s wisdom and at Allah’s discretion. One particular example in the Qur’an provides the proof.  Allah swt tells us in Surat (chapter) al Naml (27: 38-40) how Solomon asked his attendants as to which of them could bring the throne of the queen of Saba to him all the way from Yemen which was hundreds of miles away. Eventually the task was accomplished by one who “was given a knowledge from the Book” who said “I can bring it to you before you clip an eyelid” and he did. Since this attendant wasn’t a prophet he had to be a ‘sahaba’ (companion) of Solomon peace be on him.

 

If you ask how this can happen I can only briefly and veiledly answer that. The spiritually advanced know and witness that time and space and matter AREN’T what they seem to be to ordinary men who are spiritual babies in deep sleep sucking at their dummies.  Knowing this and the mechanisms involved they can easily and with spiritual power can perform such feats which to them aren’t feats at all. They know that all existence is SPIRITUAL and the material is but a temporary illusion like the hallucinations of the sleepers which we call dreams. Because they are so simple and straightforward jobs true saints despise physical wonders and appreciate and insist that it is both more difficult and worthier to attain inner miracles which bring us near the Beloved Lord (makes us ‘muqarraboon’).  Incidentally almost all common people including some ignorant formality muslims are more interested in and thrilled by the physical wonders and for them the aptest aphorism is the Turkish adage “eshek hosaftan ne anlar” i.e, how much can an ass appreciate dessert” (It wants hay)- sorry for the rudish term. I only mean well and wanted to deliver some shock treatment).  I HUMBLY CONCLUDE BY SAYING THAT SPIRITUAL VICEGERENCY OF ALLAH IS RESERVED ONLY FOR TRUE AND PROFOUND BELIEVERS IN CONTRAST TO PHYISICAL VICEGERENCY WHICH IS FOR ALL.  

 

 

EPISTLE ON UNITY (Risalat al Tawhid)

 

UNITY of God attains its unsurpassable zenith in Islam as does Allah’s perfection.  But the concept of Allah is hard enough to encompass let alone seeing into the possibilities of His Unity (al Tawhid).  The fundamental confession of Islam, worthy of its perfection, is the simplest and therefore the truest of all creeds:  LA ILAHA ILLALLAH-  there is no god but Allah.  The name Allah itself absolutely signifies utter unity;  it is a contraction of ‘al ilah’,  which means  the god.  ‘A god’ is out of question, godhead is one and the name therefore for the Divine essence can only be the God -  i.e., ALLAH!
WHO OR WHAT IS ALLAH.  Before we go any deeper into the Unity of Allah we better think about what Allah-  what as a concept itself signifies.

 

It is admitted by all reputable ulema and awliya (sufi saints) that essentially Allah is unknowable.  He is simply too great,  too unlike any of His creations and creatures including most developed men.  So we have no hope of encompassing Him as He is.  Ironically however, His perfection includes also His sufficient believability and ‘feelability’ (if the coinage can be forgiven) by us.  Yes, despite not perceiving Him like we do objects or not understanding Him like we do other  concepts,  we still can feel in our entire psyche that He must and does exist and that we can relate to Him as intimately and profitably as we can relate to no other-   and that is what I mean by ‘sufficient’.

 

But as I pointed out elsewhere as well,  there is another dimension to our relation to Allah.  This is at the level of our depth-psychology where all realities merge and fuse into one single Reality without however those lesser realities entirely disappearing.  This is a level of insight (basirah) and tasting (Zawq) sometimes attained by not only Sufis but even by the most unexpected person,  even a confessed atheist. That is because nobody is a real atheist in any final sense but all men deep down know Allah. What one needs is only a fortunate stumble to touch the trigger of the core grenade of truths in him and cause the inevitable  explosion in consciousness. Then he finds himself suddenly and momentarily engulfed in what is called ‘Cosmic Consciousness’.  It may be a mortal crisis which causes this explosion or the result of accumulated natural contemplations gone through by a sensitive and talented soul.  That is why all esoteric schools, including Sufism, employ contemplative methods to nurture this centre and stumble on the deep down trigger to cause this explosion of ultimate gnosis. Because this happened to this humble servant who is me I am not speculating but talking from personal experience.  Once this realization is gained it is never lost again and nothing remains the same any more.

 

So we have a fundamental psychic level of peripheral contact with the Divine.  There, a barrier is removed and without forgetting ourselves we are frozen in a timeless realization of the Real as much as we can bear. And that again is enough.

 

Once tasted this we come to understand that Allah’s greatest gift to us is our finding Him in our deepest heart in the form of the very best, noblest, most awe-inspiring, most gratefully compelling spiritual and moral perfection level we are potentially capable of.  Then and only then we become able to oversee our every thought and act from the view and vantage point of that bared Divine simile in ourselves. We develop a sense of unalienable shame and another inalienable sense of charitable responsibility with which we can criticize, check and rein in our lesser thoughts and deny ourselves acts which can diminish us.  In this case we call a man a godly man, a man with Allah in Him directing all his thoughts and acts into pious channels and repairing any occasional lapse by instant repentance followed by a compensatory act.  That is why Allah says “Innal hasanati yuzhibnal sayyiat” (11: 114), i.e, good acts rub out the bad.  No man, whatever his confessions and professions is entirely cut off from Allah;  the full simile attainable by honest and arduous spiritual quest may not be there but a varyingly lesser amount surely is.  That is why Allah says again “Belil insana ala nafsihi basiratun wa law alqa maazirah” (75: 15), i.e, no doubt man is an overseer of his self (knows always what he is up to) whatever pretences to not knowing he may make.  We see the same truth when Moses (peace be upon him) reminds that most accomplished of infidels the Pharaoh “You sure know full well (o Pharaoh) that it is the Lord of the heavens and earth Who sent down these (verses I am reciting to you)” (17: 102). 

 

So it is not a matter of anybody being blind to Allah but closing  his eyes not to see what he deep down and instinctively knows-   he closes his eyes because of unblessed loves he is harbouring and does not dare to expel.  What we must do then is daring to expel such unblessed loves, which are loves contrary to our and others’ best interests because they call for committing moral wrongs to attain their satisfaction.  You can easily name a hundred. 

 

To acquire that sufficient gnosis of Allah, that degree of love and appreciation and awe of Him we need to feed our soul with the contemplation of His nutritious revealed verses and the words he puts in the mouths of His friends and the pious acts He causes to pour out from their organs.  In other words we need His Qur’an and the example of His friends, especially those alive among us. Before our eyes His friends must parade and drop jewels for us to pick up and collect while inside us His verses must reverberate more and more until our psychic house becomes a full-time mosque in which His glories are perpetually sung.  Read if you whish “(His Light) is in houses which Allah permitted to rise. in them His Name is glorified, morning and evening.  They are men who  neither entertainment nor trade can divert from remembering Allah or praying the salat or paying the zakat.  They fear the Day when the eyes and hearts spin (with fear)” (24: 36- 37).  This must be a metaphor, namely that Allah’s friends are like mosques inside which the only occupation is glorifying and serving Allah without interruption no matter what they otherwise do externally, like earning a honest living or attending to family or run a country;  they never forget Allah nor neglect His commandments.

 

THE DEPARTMENT STORE OF TAWHID - You know, there are  department stores in all sizable towns.  In them you may find almost every line of trade represented.  There are separate departments for food, furniture, stationery, electrical goods, clothing and even travel and astrology.  Realizing the Unity of Allah also has many aspects and venues.  Let us briefly sample a few:

 

“LA ILAHA ILLALLAH” also means that Allah is Perfect which perfection is too great to allow any other being to rival Him and therefore pose as a god.  Which means we can never ever justify any accusation against Allah. Such doubt in Allah’s being the best for everything is nothing but a demonstration of our own poverty of understanding.  Everything Allah causes to happen is justified in an ultimate sense although it may clash with our desires. There is no other god to appeal to and had there been, that god would take refuge in Allah from our ignorance and insolence. So Allah says: “Had there been gods as they say then these god would seek access to the Owner of the Throne” (17: 42) So learn to appreciate Allah as He deserves.

 

“LA ILAHA ILLALLAH” also means that we must thank that there is no other god. Oh my dear, what would we do if there was another to rival Him?  That other one, being equally powerful could easily snatch us or steal away half of us and we would be lost between the two of them.  How perfect to have only one God Who is Perfect.  We don’t have to worry about anybody else, human or divine, once we obtain the friendship of the Single Perfect God.

 

“LA ILAHA ILLALLAH” also means that all those who believe in Allah, of necessity (as an unbroken extension of it) can only love each other.  Please look around you-  how many muslims do you find, even in sufi premises who really get along well for long? Imagine how better off we could be had we loved each other really and truly.  Then decide what is the level of our unification (tawhid) of Allah.  Mind you, Allah tells us that He and His friends are one single party of mutually loving and helping friends.  He says:  “Those who believe in Allah… Allah has written in their hearts faith and supported them with A Spirit from Himself… they are the party of Allah and it is the party of Allah who are saved” (58: 22).

 

Yet, perhaps we can never be perfect in our tawhid;  after all the Prophet sws said “Shirk in my nation (Ummah) (Polytheism) is as hidden as the sound of the steps of an ant”.  But this doesn’t change the fact that the truer our belief in the Unity of Allah the greater our capacity for loving others believing in Him and getting along with them well. To point to this the Prophet sws said “The best among you are the one who gets along well with others and others get along well with him.  The one with whom mutual getting along is not possible,   there is no good in him”.  That unavailable good is proper faith in Allah’s Unity! 
“LA ILAHA ILLALLAH ” also means we have only one master to serve,  and also thanks that it is so.  It means in everything you do, keep your Only Master’s pleasure as your ultimate goal and never sacrifice that goal to anything.  Thanks that it is so, i.e, we have only one master to serve, it is hard enough to serve one so great, what would we do if we had more?

 

If and when we target in what we do only Allah’s pleasure no harm whatsoever can possibly come to our best interests.  Any harm, if it comes at all, comes only to our wrong interests and against thanks that our wrong interests are exposed and deposed and our best interests find the opportunity to be served at last!  What is more as soon as the perhaps traumatic experience of having one’s one (wrong) interest  harmed Allah applies the balm of at least one good interest served- and He let’s us know and like that .   Just serve that Single Master and all His agents, even the Devil,  must and will  serve you with His command. 

 

“LA ILAHA ILLALLAH” also means that by fearing just Him you need not to fear anybody or anything else-  you are relieved of and released from all lesser but all the same terrible enough terrors and terrible people.  Respecting Him is such enough respect that not only you become able to respect things and persons Allah loves but all His creation will be made to respect you, one way or another, but respect they will. 

 

Really there is no end to the interpretaion of “La ilaha illallah” for all secrets are in it entirely as all keys of salvation are.  So let us help ourselves to Allah’s Own eloquence on the matter which sums up all the secrets we ourselves cannot exhaust:
“Ala inna awliya Allahi la khawfun alaihim wa la hum yahzanun.  Allazina amanu wa kanu yattaqun.  Lahumul bushra fil hayatid dunya wa fil akhirah.  La tabdila likelimatillah.  Zalika huwal fawdul azim” (10: 62- 64). And that happily means:

 

“Beware that for the friends of Allah there can be neither fear nor shall they grieve.  They are those who believed and have been avoiding offending Allah.  For them are good news in the life of this world and the next.  Allah’s words are unchangeable.  This (theirs) is the ultimate success” .  Amen.

 

 

WRONG AND RIGHT GNOSIS IN SUFISM

 

WHAT IS GNOSIS.   One of the fundamental concepts and terms in Sufi lore and literature is what is called ma’rifa.   It derives from the Arabic verb a’rafa  which means ‘to know’ but with a profounder sense than the other verb ‘alima, from which the nouns ‘ilm (knowledge) and ‘alim (knower, man of learning) derives.
A man with ma’rifa is called an arif .

 

The English equivalent of ma’rifa is gnosis and of arif,  gnostic, both Greek words.
The spiritual tradition of seeking gnosis is called  Gnosticism and predates both Islam and Christianity.  As the two religions became more or less established people with Gnostic minds laid claim to their respective profound interpretations.

 

CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM - In the case of Christianity, the earlier religions’ Gnostics who adopted Christianity moved in to interpret it in the light of their pre-Christian mind habits as well as existing myths and legends.  Similarly minded among born Christians joined in.  One of the ancient myths was the Trinitarian theology and an occasional detail about a parent and a child god, the latter dying and resurrecting for the salvation of mankind. In that sense Christianity was entirely taken over by the Gnostics when eventually St Athanasius the full deifier of Christ won against Arius the half or reluctant deifier (both ‘church fathers’ of early 4th century).  Another Gnostic myth was the mystery sacrament of Eucharist where the believers ‘ate the flesh and drank the blood of their (son) god’ so that they partook of his holiness. In that also the old Gnostics won. But in many other senses they had to fight a protracted bitter battle with mainstream churchmen who found many claims of Gnostics too much to swallow.  Accordingly they persecuted them and eventually won against them once the church became twinned with Roman imperial power. 
The main complaint against the Gnostics was that they kept churning up myth after myth and claim miracle after miracle independent of and sometimes contrary to the Bible’s statements or what the mainstream churchmen made of them. 

 

Their spiritual claims boiled down to this:  With or without the Scripture, they could gain access to Divine/spiritual realities and truths by their ascetic methods and achieve miraculous feats.  Put more radically, they were their own god and own prophet and the Scripture could and should be interpreted in their own lights rather than their claims judged in the light of the Scripture.

 

But Gnostic insights into spiritual truths are even more possible as well as valid   under the guidance of the True Scripture which the Qur’an is and once the Torah and the Gospel were.  We shall see that when we come to Sufism.

 

 

GNOSTICISM IN ISLAM

 

Before we look at how Gnosticism fared under Islam we must note one crucial difference
between the scriptural traditions of Islam and Christianity. 

 

In the latter the spiritual split came very early and the Gnostic side won.  The original and therefore orthodox church (jama’at) of Jesus was the Jerusalem Church whose leader was James brother of Jesus.  It consisted of orthodox jews following the renovated form of Judaism,  as  renovated by Jesus.  Soon however an ex-persecutor and prosecutor of these new jews arrived at their door protesting his repentance and asking for admission.  The hosts were not very convinced and after some anxious hesitation and reluctant giving of the benefit of the doubt they let him in with heavy hearts.  That was it!  The man then followed a path of irrepressible duplicity shifting between orthodox and heretical positions depending on whether the true disciples were looking or not. Stormy relations ensued and this newcomer, the future St Paul had to break away and take an entirely different path.  He could then afford it, because under the disciples aura he had made enough disciples of his own from among the gentiles.  Gentiles because jews would not swallow his shockingly heterodox views.  He travelled far and wide among the gentiles eventually making it to Rome,  all the way establishing churches (jamaats) in various towns recognizing him as the agent of the gnostic-defined (mythical) Christ.  He kept in contact with them by post and the letters he sent to his churches (e.g., Galatians, Ephesians) and persons (e.g, Timothy) form the major portion of the second part of the New Testament, known as the Acts of the Apostles. 

 

All the same,  Biblical scholars question the authenticity of most of Paul’s letters.
Some views of Gnostics led Paul to theorize about Jesus’s nature and role and lay the foundations of the future Trinitarianism  in Christianity, athough he was more properly an implied half-deifier of Jesus.  He made Jesus superhuman enough for others to blow him into godhead. His departure from the jewish version of prophethood (which is almost identical with Islam’s) was that he called Jesus ‘Son of God’ in slightly more than a metaphoric sense and fully endorsed the Gnostic view that he had died to atone for the sins of mankind.  From this rather humble level of shift towards Gnosticism it was then a matter of time before a more substantial shift could happen.  This shift culminated in the full and equal deification of Jesus as the Son of God. Initially and by Evangelical standards he was not equal but subservient to God the Father- the position of Arius.  But  St Athanasius demanded that the two are equalized.  At the notorious Council of Nicaea in 325 under more than the aegis of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great Athanasius won. Then he lost at another synod and at still another he won showing the dubious and arbitrary nature of interpretations applied to the Christian scriptures. As the Athanasian view gradually if unsteadily won and the legion of Gospels presented in defence of the views of each sect underwent a process of elimination until the four we have today remained as the ‘orthodox’ and ‘synoptic’ ones. Which means scripture followed and was modified by the winning semi- if not fully Gnostic sect of St Athanasius and those following his school.   The Roman church was Athanasian from the beginning and so it remained.   When the Byzantine church split away it was too late to redefine the creed.   The differences between the two churches were mainly political.  

 

In Islam the status of the Scripture is the very opposite. The Qur’an was established in its original form from the word go and all subsequent sectarian rivalries had to contend with its unassailable authority.

 

As a result the Gnostic breed failed to hijack Islam as they had Christianity.  It was simply impossible to say things about Allah and the prophet or anybody else even slightly different from the Qur’ans’s statements on the same and get away with it!  The only way for Gnostics then was penetrating Sufism and worm their way through it.

 

TRUE ISLAMIC GNOSIS EXISTS - The above however does not mean that Islam has no a genuine Gnostic potential and tradition of its own. That is true Sufism as represented by the most prevalent and popular tariqats to which even the most accomplished Sunni ulema are sometimes proud to belong. In fact many great sheikhs of our tariqats are also great ulema of theology and fiqh.  From Imam Ghazali RA onwards any unnecessary contradictions between true Sufism and Islamic scholarship have been removed.  What remained however was a second level of contradictive rivalry between the too literal-minded and therefore unenlightened scholars and the too gnostic-minded and therefore varyingly blasphemous-looking Sufis.  Good quality Sufis and good quality scholars managed to co-exist amicably and often merged.  This is the position among mainstream Muslims today.

 

What is this true Islamic gnosis?  This is the same question as what is true gnosis?
All great sheikhs, e.g., Naqshibandi master Imam Rabbani (16th century India)  are unanimous that gnosis is subject to Divine Revelation (the Qur’an in the case of Islam) and the actual teachings and example of the receiver of the Revelation (the Prophet sws and his Sunna).  Any idea or practice which flies in the face of the two can only be delusion and error no matter what emotions or lights it appears to display.  We shall see why in a moment.

 

But before that we must understand another dispute between the too Gnostic-minded (i.e., those believing in the supremacy of personal ‘discoveries’, called kashfiyat, real or alleged.  Sometimes alleged because telling lies and telling them only too skilfully, is not alien to religious and spiritual claims;  the supremacy of kashfiyat is to both the letter of the Qur’an and sometimes also the Hadith)… the too Gnostic-minded and the too literal-minded who for their part believe that everything the Qur’an and Hadith says must be taken literally however badly clashing with observed reality and commonsense. 

 

So, some still believe that the earth is flat because Allah says “mehhedna” (We laid out) about the earth.  They are unable to see the colloguality of the Qur’an (lisanun arabiyyun mubeen-  in plain Arabic as Allah insists putting it) and its not being in the terminology of the scientist which terminology neither did exist in the seventh century nor even most of modern people are skilled in.  When He Almighty says “We laid out” He simply means “as you my weak servants see and use the earth like a bed for your resting and farming needs” for ‘mehd’ means a bed.  Why to read unnecessarily more into the mercifully ‘plain Arabic Qur’an’ for plain stupid people like us and for our benefit and both sides equally stupid create a storm in a teacup of water?  The trouble with the too literal-minded person is that his necessarily infantile childhood impressions of the depictions of things in the Qur’an have made such a sweet and addictive effect on him that he simply cannot outgrow it and graduate into adult thinking and understanding. 

 

About such a case our sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi gives a funny metaphor.  Child son asks father “Why men are so interested in and mad about women?”.  Answer: “Because women have a halwa with them which men like very much”.   The Sheikh explains that because the child isn’t yet sexually aware he cannot be persuaded by a sexually frank answer. Instead a metaphor must be employed to exploit the child’s already existing idea of something pleasant.  Now let us continue with a hypothetical scenario.  Suppose this boy grows up as naïve as ever and marries and approaches the bride.  Because the poor thing is too literal-minded, not instructed on the matter but  retained the loved infantile explanation which was a piece of halwa (made from semolina, sugar, butter etc.) when he bares the bride and doesn’t find a packet of halwa hidden under but something totally different he is both bitterly disappointed and will seek a divorce. 

 

Most interestingly and tellingly, the Qur’an itself explicitly warns us that most of its verses are metaphors (mutashabihat) and subject to interpretation (ta’weel) which ta’weel however is possible only for Allah- at least in a full sense (see Qur’an 3:7).  So if we are taken to the paradise and find that it contains not so much physical tents (hiyam), rooms (ghurfa) and date palms (nahl) but infinitely superior wonders and delights shall we object and accuse Allah of cheating us?  Why this desperate insistence on literalism if not for the reason of a stunted mind refusing to grow?  In fact the paradise is as yet unimaginably wonderful and we should thank Allah for that.

 

Lastly the metaphor used by sheikh Rumi may be seen as a bit obscene by some people but they couldn’t be more wrong.  Awlia, the true saints of Allah,  have pure minds and hearts and neither like nor intend lewdness in their discourses. Only not pure enough minds read lewdness into their words.  Don’t you see, Allah’s own promise of houris (heavenly maidens with big black eyes fixed on their partners)-  many non-Muslims, particularly Christians interpret this metaphor with unclean minds.

 

What his sexual metaphor given by Rumi really intends couldn’t be more justified.  Spiritual growth is the real mission of human beings and sexual growth is a parallel process which can be taken as a metaphor for the spiritual.  Just like a boy who, for lack of adequate hormons fails to develop into puberty can have no inkling about the feelings and functions of adult biology so cannot a religious believer with not enough spiritual hormones (so-to-speak) make the crucial brake into spiritual maturity (RUSHD) to go beyond the metaphors of the Scripture and recognize (‘arafa) the true meanings clothed in them.  
But the only stupid party is not the literalist.  The too Gnostic is equally stupid.

 

You will remember that the basic contention of Gnosticism was the belief that each and every person, if he undergoes the necessary mental development and training, can access the Divine in his own right and a prophet and a scripture are necessary only for the naïve and the uninitiated, although we are paraphrasing.   The error of such a belief can be seen by considering an equivalent area of human potential-  making scientific discoveries.  The Gnostic claim looks like a claim about scientific achievement in the following lines.  “By adeqauate teaching and training everybody can become a scientist and make discoveries as great as any other scientist”.  

 

Well, the actual record is there to see:  Tens of thousands graduate as physicists or mathematicians from universities every year but only few make noteworthy breakthroughs and each century has so far produced only a handful top discoverers like Newton (gravitation and differential calculus etc),  Gauss  (probability theory, magnetism etc) Einstein (relativity, photoelectric effect etc.) or Schrodinger (wave mechanics).   Similarly, every year universities graduate tens of thousands of musicians.  How many become Mozarts or Beethovens?  Every day millions of youths join football clubs.  How many make it to Pele or Maradonna class?  So prophets of Allah are BORN and not made although a natural, humanly unassisted incubation period must precede the arrival of the prophetic revelation. This could not have a more convincing example than the case of our prophet and undoubtedly the greatest and most successful of all prophets, namely Muhammad sallalahu alayhi wa sellem.  Nearing his 40th year he was instinctively attracted to solitude periodically  until the Ramadan of 610 -  IT THEN SUDDENLY BROKE UNTO HIM!    No ‘gnostic’ can match that whatever effort, patience and ingenuity he can put into his deliberate and therefore artificial spiritual work.  Yogis and scripture-ignoring sufi aspirants equally waste their times and prostitute their potential.

 

The reason is simple. Human mind has a wish fulfilling capacity which works both in a material and spiritual direction.  If a person likes something very much, is obsessed and possessed by it he stands a much higher chance in getting what he wants than another person who couldn’t care less. So, misers get their snowblling savings,  Casanovas their fair victims and politically ambitious their elected turf. As for the spiritual goals the results are even surer and greater. If a believer wants to verify his faith and voluntarily undergoes ascetic practices his mind’s dreaming faculty eventually steps in and deliver the convincing goods.  So, the Hindu, the Christian and the Muslim each  ‘verifies’ his own creed or a personal variation of it.  For example, the Muslim believes God, namely Allah to be One without partner in godhead and his any ascetic practices deliver visions to that effect. The Christian for his part, equally happily ‘witnesses’ the Trinity as the ‘glorious, glowing supreme truth. The Hindu may see one of his gods in overwhelming convincing splendor. So what is the difference?

 

The difference is not in the quality of the hallucinations ordered and obtained but in the practical implications.  For example if the Christian hallucination is taken as binding in practice then witch hunts and heretic burnings must be endorsed and perpetuated.  So Medieval Christian saints were almost always the accomplices of the Inquisition and sometimes presided over the barbarities done to alleged witches and heretics.  The Yogi can only endorse the barbaric burning alive of all the wives of a dead Brahmin on the same pyre as their husband. The Muslim is spared this kind of indignity only by the good nature of the Islamic Law which endorses no such barbarities in the name of religion. True, it has its rather severe punishments like hand chopping for theft and stoning to death for adultery but these it presents not as holy duties but as simple legal deterrents and retributions with the added reluctance to implement such punishments and instead preferably find a way to let the culprits of the hook if possible.  The Prophet sws is on record hating such legal punishments and insinuating cover-ups for avoiding them altogether.

 

What is more the stoning is not in the Qur’an which absence cannot be for nothing. It is almost transparent that the practice was allowed by the Prophet only reluctantly in view of the extreme sexual jealousy among his followers which jealousy threatened to undermine their faith. A hadith about Sa’d b. Ubade RA being unable to stomach Allah’s stringent condition before anybody was convicted of a sexual offence proves this only too explicitly.  This sahaba said that Although he believed that the verse about finding four witnesses to testify against any accused was from Allah he was too jealous to obey such a Divine command but would kill instantly.  The Prophet had to back off in the face of such defiance and in fact steer off the issue diplomatically.  More than once in the process of legislating Allah and His messenger sws found that the community was not ready and changed course.  Which means when the community is ready more lenient attitudes will be acceptable to them. The prrof is that the Prophet never avenged any personal hurt done to him but allowed others to avenge theirs. From the Prophet’s own reluctance for implementing corporeal and capital punishments it appears that they were more intended as deterrents. In line with this opinion such punishments were rarely meted out by almost all Islamic governments from the Abbasids to the Ottomans.  On the whole awliya simply covered up and forgave.  This contrasts only too sharply by the uncompromising insistence of Christian saints insistence on burnings and Hindus routine sending widows to the same pyre as their dead husbands. 

 

And in Islam as in all else there is another likelihood of error in Gnostic ‘discoveries’.  It is when the belief to be verified is not an orthodox one.  It may be an extreme Shia claim or a philosophy learned from other pre-Islamic traditions including the Neo-Platonic philosophy.  Because the last said features in the claims to discoveries by some Sufis a summary of it will perhaps be useful.

 

Neo-Platonism was founded by Alexandrian Greek philosopher Plotinus (205- 70) who settled in Rome and gathered around him a number of mystic philosophers.  Basically he adopted Plato’s theory of everything emanating from a single immaterial, indescribable One.  From it emanates successfully mind, soul and nature. It is nature which ‘dreams’ the chaotic material world into existence which has otherwise no reality.  Be as it may this material world, including the human body is evil, in fact the whole basis of all evil. The defective thinking of the soul creates in us the illusion of time and space.  The only way to realize or attain the One is possible by rejecting the material nature and cultivating the mind (intellect). Even so, the realization is momentary and consists of a mystical union with the One.

 

This theory continues to explain the cosmos, with all its stars and ‘heavens’ in terms of spiritual stages of the way back to the One; accordingly the moon, the sun, the planets like Mars and Uranus are given spiritual significance and concentric spherical ‘heavens’ are defined by their apparent paths around the earth-  i.e,  taking the now discredited Ptolemaic astronomy as the true picture of the cosmos.  Of course given the mystical intentions and the profuse employment of metaphor this is forgivable.  But a Muslim,   unlike a Greek philosopher or a Christian mystic has a rival cosmology and creation story in the Qur’an which he should rather prefer to the model conjured up by Plato or Plotinus.  The Qur’anic cosmology sharply differs from the Platonic by cutting all causal or sequential connection between the One and the cosmos which is not an emanation (issue) from the One but a creation by the One.  Both versions agree on the total indescribabiltity of the One but the Qur’an identifies it with Allah and defines Allah with Conscious relation to the cosmos in which relation moral values are all-important. 

 

As such Allah is a far more helpful concept in improving human experience and conduct than the ultimately amoral and hypothetical One.  Muslim believers relationship with Allah is not coolly if perhaps admiringly intellectual as the Platonic mysticism prefers;  it is intensely emotional,  variable and stormy at times but always captivating and compelling.  In fact it is a love relationship of the noblest and utmost kind tempered by nearly equal fear of an awe rather than terror kind.  In fact all profound love including the human including the sexual form contain a strong element of fear which is not horror but a mortal anxiety about not offending the too valuable beloved and thereby deserve a break-up.  Platonism lacks this most valuable quality and accordingly the few neo-Platonic influenced Sufis in our history make out as disturbingly boastful and know-all impression on their audiences with frequent daring interpretations which, instead of justifying the statements of the Qur’an in plausible ways from their ‘discoveries’  feel free to interpret the Qur’an in ways which look patently implausible and at times possibly blasphemous.  No less than a figure than the Naqshibandi grandmaster Sheikh Ahmad al Faruq (aka Imam Rabbani) criticised the ‘discoveries’ and other claims of Neo-Platonists amomg Sufis and often castigated them as well. 

 

THE PECULIAR UNHELPFULNESS OF TOO GNOSTIC CLAIMS.  Sufis with too much trust in their Gnostic abilities have a penchant for marginal if not totally unfounded interpretations of Qur’anic verses and working with weak and sometimes even invented hadiths which fly in the face of verses and more well-established hadiths.  For example*