Minefield Of Opinions

 

16.  THE MINEFIELD OF OPINIONS

 

“I think…”, “I believe…” “It seems to me…” and the worst of all “I am sure…”.  These are some of the opening words of expressing our opinions which often are on everything we can imagine. Jumping to conclusions from hearsay reports is one of the most indulged public mental sports and judging people from smallest shreds of unexamined evidence or even from appearance is part of this social game. One of the downsides of democracy is allowing all and sundry to express opinions on everybody and everything without checking the sources let alone doing research. The main cause of forming quick opinions on everybody and everything is mainly emotional; the opinionated person has a psychological craving to exalt or humiliate the thing or person at the centre of his opinion. The most famous traditional subject of ready and handy opinion making is that between brides and their mothers-in-law. One or both is painfully obsessed by the personality and intentions of the other which, unfortunately, is almost always negative.  The opinions concerned are not only made by accident, that is to say the bride for example will not passively wait for her mother-in-law say or do something which can be interpreted negatively; she may also actually set traps for the old lady to fall in and expose more of her ‘negative’ sides. For example, she can ask her husband to put something to some place which she knows her mother-in-law will not like (unbeknown to the mother) and if and when the old lady begins her protests the bride will say to her husband “You see, it is always me who must be accused”.  The same game is played between a party in government and another in opposition: politics will not be politics if each will not set traps for the other to fall in and then begin to vituperate against trapped side.

 

From above it should have by now been obvious that hasty opinions made for emotional reasons are one of the inalienable aspects of immature egos, that is to say the selves who failed to make the necessary transition from the ‘demandsfull’  lower self which is a cooperating neighbour of the Devil to the loving merciful higher self which is a cooperating neighbour of God.

 

This is not to say that we should never be suspicious of anybody or anything. Suspicion is a healthy and wise attitude when based on reliable information and/or long and profound experience whereby the suspecting person feels almost in his bones that the person or thing disturbing his peace of mind looks every bit suspect. The opposite attitude is called naivety and is at the bottom of many tragic misjudgment we make. “I have been naïve” we regretfully say “I should have checked things in advance of my judgment and action”.  Obviously the desirable thing is a good balance between trust and suspicion. Unfortunately this is not often the case.

 

On these matters the Devil’s operations could not be more expert: because the Devil’s aim is causing trouble to and between people it constantly counsels us to adopt wrong suspicions or wrong trusts. Parents complain their children’s trusting strangers more than trusting them, nationalists warn their compatriots to believe them and not the enemy propaganda and religious preachers deplore the fact that their audience give more ear to ignorant advisers or sinners than the preachers etc. Often such complaints and deplorings are justified, at least in part. Overall we all are often unsure what and whom to believe and trust and have to learn the hard way, that is to say, after knocking our heads.

 

Is there a way of avoiding such misjudgments and therefore their any bad consequences? Many wise people can advise us on this matter but who is wiser than our Creator? Why not consult him on general principles before we consult our fellow men on specific situations?

Now Allah says “O believers if a dubious person comes to you with some news investigate the matter lest you unjustly hurt some people without realising (#)

 

How many are truly upright and responsibly acting people? If you are not sure the news-bringer is reliable then do not act on the information he brought until you investigate the matter further. Remember this last Iraq war? Britain and USA acted on information (if it was on information and not a hoax to begin with) and caused the destruction of tens of thousands of people and tens of billions dollars worth of assets and ended up shame-faced and also with innocent blood on their hands. That is not to say that the then Iraqi regime bore no responsibility. They did bear a very big responsibility. All the same, the Anglo-American response should be and could be more proportionate and far less destructive had they investigated both the accuracy of the information more thoroughly and tailored their response with finer accuracy and justice. What they may be leaving behind may prove to be worse than before.

 

I personally have a story about myself to demonstrate the same lesson on a far smaller scale. Back in early 1970s I was a technologist at a petroleum refinery at the time working in the economics and scheduling section where the shares of each of the five investor companies from the products like gasoline (petrol), kerosene etc. was being allocated by some sophisticated calculations since the share of each did not depend on only the amounts of crude oil they contributed to the refinery processes but the composition of the crudes since each crude, say Kuwait or Kirkuk, contains different amounts of various hydrocarbons and other elements. At one point the section head was a man who was an enemy of Muslims because his non-Muslim country was at war with its neighbour which was a Muslim country. He was recently imported from abroad and put in charge of the department. His predecessor, a fine Dutch gentleman was very good to and appreciative of me since I was very successful in my work and as a Sufi was getting along very well with everybody in the company. Our common boss was another Dutch engineer, a rather rough tempered but technically brilliant man. After the arrival of the new department head the behaviour of this boss, which was euphoric until then (he amusedly and pleasantly called me ‘our Einstein’ because of my quickly solving some technical problems abruptly with good mathematics instead of tedious statistical and graphic methods- but I sure am no Einstein) and was looking at me as his future replacement (since he was to go home after teaching us all the skills we native engineers needed). What is more we were very good friends despite the gap of seniority between us. I began to be worried but could not ask questions since he was now a cold and distant man. Then came the annual performance evaluations of the personnel and my turn came to be interviewed. I was summoned to this man’s office where he levelled at me the accusations of incompetence he must have heard from my immediate boss the Muslim-hater. I asked about details of the few and with great confidence which is the right of all righteous persons rubbished each there and then. His initially darkened face begin to light up with a rosy pink, he began to smile sweetly as before and guess what he did?  He picked up the bad report about me in front of him and toring it to pieces dropped it in the dustbin. The next day the Muslim-hater got the sack and was on his way back to his country, accused of and dismissed on a charge of managerial gross misconduct. What happened? My boss took the good measure to investigate the news which came to him from the bad man and finding it to be false and malicious saved both himself and my humble self and the whole company from harm.

 

Compare this with the ages-long phenomenon of spreading of wrong and also often malicious news among the public on the part of some irresponsible gossipers or plain malicious public opinion manipulators. I have read a lot of history throughout my life and am still reading. I simply cannot have enough of it. What I see verifies what the philosopher said “There is nothing new under the sun” and also “History consists of repetitions”.  All the social and political ills which we complain about today were fully being represented among the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans to count but a few! Perpetually repeated because these ills are caused by our psychological defects our defect of character at the top of which defects is self-ish-ness!  When one is selfish he can only see himself and his personal desires and ambitions whatever direction he looks in. Allah says “Whichever direction you turn to, there is the Face of Allah” (2: 115). Because for selfish people God means themselves they see only themselves whichever direction they turn to. Here we may make a clever retort and say “The whole point of Sufism/Tasawwuf is rising from the pit of seeing in everything only yourself (your selfish interests) to the heaven of seeing Allah in everything (i.e. seeing that Allah is behind all and is watching how you are dealing with each and everything and behaving accordingly”.

 

Some of the familiar things the above-named ancient nations did were: Fighting over natural resources like water, mines, arable land. Fighting over positions of power. Fighting over women (or women over men). Spreading bad rumours about enemies and rivals (today called disinformation). Espionage and illegal assassinations. False charges and unjust punishments. Inventing religions and cults for material profit. Atheism. Pantheism. Mysticism. Magic. Uprisings to instal a communist, sometimes also anti-religious social order (primitive Marxism) with occasional if short-lived success. Imperialist adventures. Plastic surgery to beautify women and sometimes men. Make-up. Fashion shows. Feminism. Flying machines. Robots. Attempts to modify organisms and animals and men biologically. Environmental pollution and attempts to reverse it (6^th  century  BCE Rome had a vast underground sewage system taking the city’s effluents to the sea. The system still works!). Propaganda to demonise and demoralise the rival or the enemy while promoting the cause of the self. Drug abuse. Prostitution. Pornography. Homosexuality including homosexual partnerships. Nudism. Democracy with all its public opinion manipulations and dirty tricks etc. Accurate astronomical observations and vast astronomical tables (3000 BCE at the latest). Science fiction etc. So we are not as modern we think and our ancestors were not as backward as we are told. Another example of disinformation.

 

What is the conclusion. The conclusion is that we should not jump to conclusions on hearing or reading any important piece of news without making our thorough investigations. This will often stop that plague of social and interpersonal life called wrong opinion about people or things. What is commercial advertisement if not to create a too good image of the stuff offered for sale.  The most enervating of them must be products alleged to help people slim extra fast, to cause bald heads to grow plentiful new hair, concoctions claimed to cure various serious illnesses. The prices are as astronomic as the sources are dubious. So and again, we must not be taken in by any medical or other advertisements before making thorough investigations. Here suspicion is better than trust; in fact trust can often be suicidal. The same dangers lurks behind many other advertisements like of fortunetelling, magical cures, spiritual claims (like being an all-saving, all-curing  guru, a sheikh, a flying undead saint etc.). Here again suspicion is more pious than trust. Read if you wish:

 

“Let those not hope, those who delight in what they do and love to be praised for things they never did or can never do, that they shall get away with it without punishment: Theirs is a painful punishment” (3: 188)

 

Unfortunately only too many people do not believe the claims of Allah and His friends while they are only too ready to believe Allah’s enemies, the selfish geniuses, the human devils. Under the cloak of modernism they follow such devils into all abuses and perversions which in actual fact are as old as humanity as we have seen above. Fabulous fortunes are spent on various obscene luxuries all of which contribute to social and personal degeneration and decay as well as to environmental deterioration which mainly consists of pollution and global warming while hundreds of millions of our human brothers and sisters undergo slowest and cruellest deaths from starvation, illnesses, civil wars, draughts and famines.

 

17.  SUPERIOR MERITS OF NAQSHIBANDI MASTERS

 

Allah made this humble servant hear our grandsheikh Abdullah Daghistani utter in great zeal and joy, his ethereal voice hopping with excitement “The seas Naqhsibandi masters are swimming in are not seas in which Hasan al Basris, Bishr al Hafis or Muhyiddin ibn al Arabis can swim”.  I have read many books about Tasawwuf and Sufis written by both Muslim and Western scholars and most of them mention the fact that our most distinguished Naqsibandi order is the one closest to the spirit and form of the beliefs and practices of Ahl al Sunna wa’l Jama’a, i.e, those most loyally and scrupulously following in the footsteps of the Messenger of Allah sws and his companions and the generations of followers of the companions. Ours is one of the few tariqats (orders) which pay no compliments to innovations like music and dancing or special dress outside the normal dress the Prophet sws, his companions and their followers wore, a dress distinguished for nothing outside humble utility and decency, modified only by the conditions and conventions of times and climes our masters and their pupils found themselves in. All the same, in true spirit of compassion and tolerance our masters accommodated others with different views and practices, including some harmless innovations intended to add flavour to life, that is to say, without joining them they kept those Sufis who adopted special uniforms and ceremonial practices unfounded in the Sunna happy by graciously tolerating them, which is called ‘mudarat’ in Arabic. After all the Prophet sws is reported to have said “Innee bu’ithtu limudaratin-naas”. i.e, “I am sent to keep people happy by graciously tolerating their harmless habits and practices”. We fully understand that some people cannot be moved emotionally and spiritually without some music and dancing or some special dress and sometimes also special effects as in the movies. That is alright with us, for people are often either immature or special and their Lord knows them best and only He can judge them. We pray all to succeed in attaining salvation. In fact each and every person is different as groups also can be. Allah is vast in His Rahmat and solely entitled to judging His servants.  But still there must be some truth in our grandsheikh’s saying we quoted above. We will insha Allah probe into this momentous saying and hopefully lay bare at least some its justifications- with Allah’s help and permission of course.

 

The first and most general superiority of the Naqshibandi way is already stated: it follows the exact Sunna of the Prophet sws and does not stand out from the crowd either in creed or form. We do not, for example, put our noses into philosophic, theosophic and magical attractions but keep to the simple creed and discourse of the Messenger of Allah sws and his companions RA. Neither Greek philosophy nor the Persian Magian habits and attitudes influenced us. Many Sufis got themselves into boiling water by dabbling in philosophical, theosophical, too mystic and too esoteric babble, got drowned in the turbidity and turbulence of their confused and undigested so-called discoveries and not only many of these were punished in this world for their reckless and arguably flawed speculations and claims but left behind them a legacy of fitna (trouble-making basis) to plague and destroy many after them. As such they betrayed the advice of the Messenger of Allah who admonished “Al fitnatu naimatun, laanallahu man ayqazaha”, i.e. “Fitna is asleep, may Allah curse (Allah curse) those who wake it up”. Please pass before your mind’s eye those famous or notorious Sufis who caused great public outcries, had themselves and their followers and sympathisers land in trouble and sometimes be punished severely as well, including a public execution. What is worse they left behind a legacy of insoluble spiritual nightmares offending this or that belief of Ahl al Sunna wa’l Jama’a and sometimes also practices one would be hard pressed to find place in the context of legacy our beloved and perfect leader the Messenger of Allah sws. Because of such odd and perplexing claims Muslims fought among themselves, charges of heresy or else ignorance were thrown at and back between the differing parties of them. If these were not awakening sleeping fitna and therefore the work of the Satan what is?

 

Against this sorry and confused background of mysticism and esotericism in Islamic history we put the simple, brilliant and canonical propriety of our Naqshibandi order whose depths of truth do not call as proof their sophisticated unintelligibility and supposedly delicious deviant innovated practices but their obvious and palpable effects on the believers, which effects are the same as good, traditional Islam’s, namely, improvement in the observation of the Holy Law and parallel improvements in personal morality and citizenly propriety.

Does this mean that Naqshibandi masters have no esoteric secrets? Given our masters’ reticence (silence and privacy) on esoteric matters one may be forgiven to think that Naqshibandi masters have little to say about profound spiritual matters. But that is not so. The reason why our masters are so humble about themselves and so silent about cosmic spiritual secrets is that, as our master sheikh Abdullah al Daghistani indicated, the secrets in question are necessarily ineffable, that is to say, not putable in words! In fact, if you are intelligent, you would see that for a spiritual secret to be a spiritual secret it must be ineffable: if some secret is capable of being expressed in words and understood as expressed, by the listener, it is not a spiritual secret at all but a piece of philosophy at best or a piece of sophistry (false and fraudulent wisdom) at worst. The sign that an esoteric claim is bogus is that it causes trouble even among good and intelligent people with the best intentions in the world. A true and therefore ineffable spiritual secret proves its truth only by translating direct into pious action and improved character. If it has to come out in some kind of verbal expression it can come out only in metaphoric language in which language in fact all the spiritual statements of the Book of Allah come. In verse 7 and 8 of Surat Ali Imran Allah Almighty, All-Gracious says:

 

“It is He Who sent down on thee (o Prophet sws) the Qur’an. In it are literally set judgmental verses (al muhkamat) while the rest are metaphors (mutashabihat). Those in whose hearts is a disease pursue what is metaphorical thereby seeking their ultimate meaning (ta’weel)  and thereby seeking trouble (fitna). None knows their ultimate meaning except Allah. Those profound in knowledge say ‘We just believe, all (both muhkamat and mutashabihat) are from Allah. Our Lord do not (therefore) bend our hearts after Thou hast guided us; instead give us loving mercy from Thee. Thou art the Greatest Giver”.

 

What do the above Divine admonitions mean? Why, they must mean this: Know that Allah’s Book is no joke, no easy meal for self-seeking, self-important spiritual adventurers who want to take Allah’s secrets by stealth first and storm second. Neither invented ascetic practices nor philosophical erudition, nor Satan-like divine ambitions can crack open Allah’s most jealously treasured secrets; burgling the Divine may be a tempting idea but attempting it ends only in disaster and disgrace, beginning with megalomaniac euphoria and ending in scandalous and often also blasphemous claims and therefore in Hell. He only releases and reveals His any or some secrets to His humblest and most respectful and obedient servants who cannot even imagine seeing themselves asking for them. The Beloved of Allah never asked for or expected to be Allah’s messenger and receive His Revelations. Read if you wish:

 

“Thus We have revealed to thee (o Muhammad sws) a Spirit from Our Affair (of Divine Jurisdiction). You used not to know what either Scripture or faith was” (42:52)

 

The Prophet sws was more surprised than his Meccan audience with Allah’s Revelations to him and it took him a long time to believe his senses and some reassurance from Allah that he had not gone mad. In other words He only confides in those servants of His who are humblest and most innocent of pretentious ambitions which confiding results in those servants’ ineffable improvement in spiritual awareness and perception and also their magnificent improvement in piety, charity and overall character. True spiritual secrets are like arcane medicines; the patient does not know what they are and how they work; instead he or she simply becomes cured and healed and increases in spiritual health and wellbeing as nobody else can.

 

Compare this non-suspecting, non-expecting humility and innocence of Allah’s and our Beloved Muhammad sws and the crass and burning (therefore Hell-bound) ambition of some mystics who go out to hunt down Allah, burgle His quarters and steal His secrets and then eventually dominate Him so that they can call out “I am God!, blessed am I” etc.  No true Naqsibandi ever did this because they are swimming in such seas with such satisfactions that those swimming in muddy puddles while imagining that they are diving and cruising in Divine oceans cannot distract them. Why the muddy paddles they swim in appear to them to be Divine oceans is that they are poisoned by the spiritual opiums, marijuanas and ecstacies they themselves formulated or bought from ‘spiritual’ drug dealers. In the end they pay for their impious luxuries with their derailment of mind and decomposition of character. What they do ascetical Hindus and Buddhists, Cabbalists and Theosophists also can; theirs  is not the true stuff of enlightenment and salvation but often commercial stuff on par with snake-oil and the ‘Holy Grail’. Salvation can never be a mass industry, it has always been and will remain an utterly private affair open only to the most humble, innocent and conscientious souls. In other words lambs will get what wolves cannot.

 

In the light of all above we may now be able to understand why true Naqshibandi masters are so simple and unpretentious souls completely at home with everybody, every bit living the lives of ordinary men, always accessible, never taxing anybody in any sense and never amounting to spiritual tycoons thriving on massive donations and running almost regal organisations and their luxurious installations. Our grandsheikh run his incredibly humble life from a small house every bit reflecting material poverty and attended mostly by humblest imaginable people made of lambs’ stuff and not wolves. He selflessly trained other materially poor people with spiritual talent among whom our present master sheikh Nazim al Haqqani is as his khalifa (may Allah bless both to the measure of His Divine Generosity).

 

This is the Naqshibandi way, the way of  pure and genuine Islam combining literal and full obedience to Allah’s Law and seeking Allah’ Face more than anything else in life. What awaits a person if he (or she of course) follows the true Naqshibandi way (I am saying ‘true’, because there have always been imitation Naqshibandis  in the market)? What awaits him is spiritual awakening and expansion in a most private way. He remains the same person outwardly except his ever-increasing shine as a good man while inside his soul he is introduced to spiritual persons (not to be confused by biological persons) who account for a lot of control in the world. They may also be called ‘angelic’ persons. Among them are Khidr alaihissalam- and many more. Surely all control is utterly Allah’s but He often exercises His control through angelic and other instruments He created and keeps at His disposal. Among these instruments or rather servants are rijal al ghaib (men of the Unseen) of whom Khidr AS is one. All saints (true and advanced believers) have and leave behind an angelic presence as in fact do all greatly bad people have and leave behind a demonic presence, which means nobody with some overall good or overall bad qualities lacks good or bad presence and also good or bad legacy among the generation he lives and also among those which come after him. That is why we have some Muhammad-like (sws) characters on the one hand and Abu Jahl-like characters on the other. This humble writer can testify that rijal al ghaib do exist and effectively functioning as also Allah’s angels and human devils and demonic (jinni) devils are. Depending on whom you meet and interact with in whatever way, you may benefit from Allah’s friends among the rijal al ghaib or be harmed by Allah’s enemies hiding in demonic realms in the form of potent residues. These may look like fantastic claims but their reality is quite ordinary and their affairs business-like. After all what and who are Allah’s angels if not spiritual/soul-kind agents of Allah’s implementation of His Will (Amr-Allah) in the universe. As much as by angels we are also influenced by rijal al ghaib, both angelic and demonic.

 

Such spiritual entities, like Allah Himself Who is beyond all categories and in charge of all, are represented in all of us and if we are not careful we can miss the benefits of good souls represented in us and instead be harmed by bad souls standing side by side with the good souls and competing with them in claiming us.

 

How do we go about attracting right spiritual company and avoiding the wrong? This is where Islam and consequently its best expression the Naqshibandi Way comes in.

 

But I must caution you before we proceed further: by Naqshibandi I mean the true and the genuine and must remind you that even among the most true and genuine looking Naqshibandi groups and their sheikhs and assistant sheikhs yet unsaved and even devilish people may lurk and pretend quite successfully. After all what is man if not the only or almost only animal who can pretend by theatrical acting who he is not and may also cannot become. A true Sufi will not lie to you and will not be caught cheating and offending Allah’s Law. Unfortunately among Sufis also are big liars, pretenders, cheats and swindlers for it is the unalienable ‘sunna’ of the Satan that he plagues mosques, Sufi groups and centres most while he need not busy himself too much with places like drinkhouses, brothels and even churches where he is obeyed to varying degrees as a matter of fact. There are those who are there for money or for a woman or something or other of this world and there are also some posing as sheikhs or future sheikhs but inside are rotten or at least dangerously impure and unsteady. You must look for some telltale signs of such persons. Some of the signs are interest in money, casting a self-important image, intolerance of others, too much criticism of others, bombastic talking, bad temper and quarrelsomeness and most dangerously hypocrisy which can be detected by finding out facts on matters the hypocrite builds his claims and fame on. Some boast of having travelled the world in spiritual quest like climbing the Himalayas or foraging in the Amazon jungles in search of great masters from whom they learned the top spiritual secrets they claim they are in possession of, others take the slyer and cleverer route to self-importance by stealing or ‘buying’ the works of scholarly others and peddling them as theirs thereby gaining renown as great scholars and lastly playing all sorts of theatrical acting and false miracle-mongering with a view to creating in the minds of as many people as they can an image of great spiritual masterliness for themselves. Some cry convulsively during preaching to make others also cry and therefore admire him more, some direct innuendos to some of their audience  supposedly revealing something he could not know by ordinary means about the person at the receiving end of the innuendo, like a personal secret the pretending hypocrite learnt by accident or espionage etc.

 

There is also an overall indicator of hypocrisy on the part of an apparent master: It is his or her accumulation of power, wealth and fame and also his becoming a constant invitee of the assemblies of the high and the mighty where he visibly and almost obscenely enjoys himself unconcerned with the fact that all worldly elites anywhere in the world are great sinners whose company Allah’s friends detest and would rather shun. Read if you wish:

 

“Thus We appointed the mighty ones of each township from among their criminals in order that they conspire therein” (6: 123)

 

And the hadith “al mar’u ala deeni khalilih”, i.e. man is on the path of one whose company he enjoys”.  If you enjoy a gamblers company you are a gambler character, if you enjoy a womaniser’s company you also are a womaniser or a future womaniser.

 

Great ones of each society arrived where they are with and on sin and can remain there as long as they can sin more than their rivals. Exceptions only prove the rule.

 

In conclusion keep the company of the deliberately poor (fuqara) who are otherwise brilliant souls and exemplary loving, caring charitable characters and you can be sure that whatever their academic credentials and their humility among fellow believers he has got the real stuff, hopefully the Naqhsibandi secret, that which comes from the Messenger of Allah sws through his very best pupil Abu Bakr al Siddiq RA. Amen.