For Sufis, God is more than what the legalist scholars of the early Islam described. In Islamic legal terms, God is the One who created the universe and obligated people to show their obedience to Him through following His orders and refraining from the prohibited. For the Sufis, however, God is the One men can approach through genuine love and respectful fear.² Thus, Sufis teach not only joyful obedience to God, but also remembrance of God at all times, and setting aside everything in this temporary world to reach purity, and achieve a state of direct experience of God, in which one can even annihilate himself in God’s Divine being.³

For Junayd (d. 910), one of the greatest Sufis of the ninth century, the essence of Sufism is an attribute of God in mankind which involves the annihilation of human qualities.⁴ To annihilate the self in God, one has to separate himself from this world. In the words of one of the earliest of the Sufis, Abu al-Hasan Nuri’s (d. 907), “[s]ufism is the renunciation of worldly pleasures and Sufis are the ones whose souls have been freed from the stains of humanity, and whose carnal desires have been annihilated to be purified, so that they could find rest with God.”⁵

As this quote suggests asceticism has been a common feature in the lives of Sufis. Like Nuri, Junayd describes Sufis as people who “… did not take Sufism from talk or words, but from hunger and renunciation of the world and cutting off the things to which we were accustomed and which we found agreeable.”⁶ For Dhun-Nun of Egypt (d. 859), another well-known Sufi from the ninth century, Sufis are the ones who do not get tired of being asked for anything; they are not saddened by the loss of anything. They have preferred God to everything, and God, in response, prefers them to everything.⁷ For this reason, early Sufis mainly focused on God and God’s oneness (tawhid), and their spiritual paths were composed of acts and rituals which aimed at interiorizing Islam in the hopes of understanding God in a deeper way.

The exact time when certain Muslim mystics called themselves Sufis for the first time is not known. Mysticism and living an ascetic life had been practiced since the time of the Prophet. Prophet Muhammad’s life (peace be upon him) was a model ascetic life for Sufis. Ali (d. 661), the Prophet’s cousin, son-in-law, and the fourth Caliph of Islam, is the main figure among the Prophet’s companions who transmitted his mysticism to the next generations. Thus, he appears in almost every Sufi chain (silsila) as the first link in the spiritual lineage from the Prophet to the present Shaykh. Names of other companions appear at the top of a few other chains.⁸ Sufis believe that the Prophet taught his mystical ways and esoteric knowledge (ilm al-ladun) to his companions, and they, in turn, transmitted these to the next generations and became the first link in a spiritual chain.

Unlike followers of the Sufi orders that appeared after the eleventh century, the first generations after the Prophet never considered mysticism as a separate way within Islam. They simply regarded the ascetic practices of the Prophet and the companions as a part of the Prophet’s Sunna (traditions). Nonetheless, by the eighth century, the term Sufism was already in use as a distinguished practice within Islam. Yet, it had not been systematized, nor had it produced any organized groups like the Sufi orders, which would come later. Thus, until the twelfth century, Sufis functioned as independent individual scholars who taught their own ways of mysticism to students who were in search of esoteric knowledge. Very few people had the means to become Sufi, as few people knew, or had connections to, the proper way to being accepted into a Sufi training circle. Still, knowing the procedures, and even having connections, would not be enough. One had to go through rigorous purification processes, the least of which was renunciation of the benefits of this world. Hence, if the prospective student was seeking a bright scholarly future, then following the Sufi path would not be appealing.

The formative period

The period between the eighth century and the twelfth is the formative period to which Sufi orders trace their origins. The Sufis became visible for the first time in the political arena in the eighth century, when they openly criticized the extravagancy of the Umayyad dynasty. Islam had expanded to three continents, and prosperity came as cash flowed from the newly captured territories. Palaces were built, and luxury became the norm of the ruling class.⁹

The Sufis’ reaction was quiet but highly political. They began protesting the government by stressing the virtues of asceticism (zühd) in their teachings.¹⁰ They encouraged their audiences to abhor anything temporary (fani – or of this world) in exchange for the eternal (baki – Godly). As one of the earliest Sufi manuals states, the Sufis considered purity a necessity for getting closer to God. Repentance was mentioned heavily as a tool for spiritual cleansing whereas abstinence and poverty were regarded as two virtues that would help one shed their worldly materials. Patience would help one endure the hardships of abstinence and poverty, and resist sinful temptations. Humility, fear of God’s punishment, piety, and sincerity were just some of the other qualities that the early Sufis considered as tools to train one’s soul in order to get closer to God, be intimate to Him, and possibly reach a state of intimacy with God.¹¹

Unlike the organized and institutionalized structure of the Sufi orders of later times, Sufis of the formative period functioned as individual scholars who were committed to passing their esoteric knowledge to the new generations. There were not established standards for such activities, nor was there a tradition of establishing a lodge – tekke – in which to conduct their activities. Abu Hashim (d. 767) from Kufa, who used the term Sufi for the first time, was also the one who established the first lodge of Sufism in Ramla, a city in Palestine on the road from Cairo (Fustat) to Damascus, the Capital of the Umayyads, where he lectured on Sufism to visiting students.¹² Unlike the twelfth century Sufi lodges that functioned as hospices where students of a particular Sufi order lived, studied, and were trained in the Sufi way, Hashim’s lodge was in the form of contemporary educational facilities, where wandering students heard lectures on Islamic sciences. Sufi masters of the formative period lectured either at their homes or at local mosques and educational complexes.¹³

Sufis of the formative period mostly lived in the vicinity of Baghdad, which had become a center for learning after the Abbasid takeover of the Caliphate in 750 CE. This area is the only location that superseded Khorasan (Transoxania) as a center for Sufi learning. The Abbasids generously funded learning activities and students seeking knowledge began visiting Baghdad, and they stayed if they could carve out a place for themselves.

As freelance scholars who championed ascetic lives along with teaching Islamic sciences, the Sufis of the formative period drew numerous students. However, they could not build a strong following resembling any of the post-eleventh century Sufi brotherhoods. This was most probably due to the fact that the later Sufi practice of strict allegiance to one master-shaykh had not been developed yet, and thus the students were not devotees of a certain Sufi tradition but were seekers who constantly travelled between several different masters in search for esoteric knowledge. Still, the great shaykhs’ of the period must have had charismatic influence as they left their tracks in the Sufi world in the form of distinguished traditions which we now think of as “schools” within early Sufism. Hujwiri, in Kashf al-Mahjub, mentions twelve distinguished Sufi schools – ten genuine and two reprobated. Two of these – the Junaydiyya of Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 910), and the Tayfuriyya of Abu Yazid Tayfur al-Bistami (d. 874) – represented two opposite poles in Sufi tradition. The Junaydiyya’s doctrine was based on sobriety (keeping consciousness despite the intoxicating spiritual influence of the love of God) and observing Islamic Law (Shari’a), whereas Tayfuriyya represented the school of rapture (ghalabah) and intoxication (sukr, jazbah), a spiritual state of unconsciousness with the love of God.¹⁴

The sober Sufis of the formative period were the closest to the legal scholars of early Islam in their understanding of the religion. Thus, these Sufis were mostly on good terms with the legalists who had gained political influence through their legal professions.

The first known sober Sufi was Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), whose key tools in reaching God were fear of God and sadness. Based on the Prophet’s saying that if people had known what the Prophet knew, they would laugh little but weep much, Hasan al-Basri and the followers of the school of sobriety would constantly weep for the miserable state of the world and their own shortcomings.¹⁵ Basri’s sober school was carried by much celebrated Sufis like Habib al-Ajami (d. 767), Davud al-Tai (d.800), Maruf al-Karhi (d. 815), and Sariyy al-Saqati (d. 867) to Junayd al-Baghdadi, in whose personality the school of sobriety found its most refined form. Junayd was born in Baghdad in 830. According to Farid al-Din Attar (d. 1221), one of the most famous biographers of the Sufis, Junayd’s way was that of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s traditions, as only these two would save one from destructive doubts about belief and bad innovations within the religion.¹⁶ Therefore, in Hujwiri’s words, Junayd was accepted by both the externalists (legalists) and the spiritualists (Sufis).¹⁷

Abu Yazid Tayfur al-Bistami’s Tayfuriyya school would be a perfect example of the schools of intoxication. Al-Bistami was born in the early ninth century in Bastam, a city in the north of what is today Iran, near the Caspian Sea, in the early ninth century. He was best known for his piousness, and for his rapturous longing for God and the intoxication of his love of God.¹⁸ Bistami’s school of intoxication suggests that once a man is intoxicated with love of God and enraptured upon his spiritual experiences with God, he does not notice anything else in creation since he is blinded with the love of God and loses his consciousness.¹⁹

The systematization of Sufism and the formation of the Sufi orders

The school of intoxication attracted much attention from the legalists, who accused the Sufis of polytheism. As their state of intoxication affected Sufis as a whole, Sufi intellectuals authored books and treatises in the defense of Sufism against extreme manifestations of intoxication. These works were crucial in the development of Sufi orders in later centuries, as these works ignited a long tradition of scholarship which helped formulate Sufism.²⁰

Manuals of Sufism and biographical works were the final two intellectual steps in the development of organized Sufi groups. Sufi scholars authored manuals on Sufism to prove that the true Sufism belonged to mainstream Islam (sirat al-mustaqim, or the straight path). Biographical works on great Sufis of the past followed the manuals. In these hagiographical dictionaries the authors narrated stories of the early Sufis, and provided later generations with their educational and training backgrounds. While manuals helped the Sufis theorize their ways of Sufism, biographies provided later Sufis with an indispensable tool to track their spiritual lineages to the Prophet for authenticity and legitimacy purposes.

Sufi orders started emerging by the twelfth century. One of the earliest orders, the Suhrawardiyya, emerged in Baghdad as Abu al-Najib Suhrawardi (d. 1168) started disseminating his way of Sufism in the area. Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166), the eponymous leader of the Qadiriyya tariqa, was Suhrawardi’s colleague in training under Muhammad Ibn Muslim al-Dabbas (d. 1131).²¹ Around the same time that Suhrawardi established his order, Jilani was conquering people’s hearts through emotionally moving sermons, a popular profession which brought him much fame and helped him disseminate the Qadiri way to a wide range of people.²² The Chistiyya and the Mawlaviyya were founded almost a century later, in Afghanistan and Anatolia respectively.

Another colleague of Jilani at al-Dabbas’ place was Abu Yaqub Yusuf al-Hamadani (d. 1140), a freelance Sufi scholar who was among the ones who brought Sufism from Baghdad to Transoxania.²³ His silsila (spiritual lineage) could be traced back to Junayd through various famous Sufi shaykhs.²⁴ Al-Hamadani is considered to be one of the most influential Sufis of the formative period as two of his disciples, Ahmed Yesevi (d. 1167) and Abd al-Khaliq Ghujduwani (d. 1179) were among the founding fathers of two distinguished and widespread Sufi tariqas of Transoxania, the Yeseviyye and the Naqshbandiyya.

When its origins are taken into consideration, it is clear that Sufism has been well rooted in mainstream Islam. Its origins go back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and his companions through the first generation Muslim scholars in the late seventh and early eighth centuries.

Notes

1. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 24
2. Fudayl b. Iyad says he worships God out of love. See Abd al-Rahman Jami, Nafahat al-Uns, trans. Lamii Çelebi (Istanbul: 1289 AH / 1872 CE), 91.
3. Ali bin Usman al-Hujwiri, The Kashf al-Mahjub, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (Lahore: Zia-ul-Quran Publications, 2001),101-105.
4. Hujwiri, The Kashf, 107.
5. Hujwiri quotes Abu al-Hasan Nuri (d.907), one of the greatest Sufis of the formative period. See Hujwiri, Kashf, 107-108.
6. Schimmel, The Mystical, 58.
7. Abu Nasr as-Sarraj, Kitab al-Luma fit-Tasawwuf, Ed. Reynold A. Nicholson (Leyden: E.J. Brill and London: Luzac &Co, 1914), 25. Schimmel quotes the same text but in the English version of her book the Arabic word of A-TH-R is translated as “choose”; however, “prefer” would be a better translation since “choose” distorts the meaning to some extent. See Schimmel, The Mystical, 15.
8. Schimmel, The Mystical, 28.
9. Schimmel, The Mystical, 29
10. Abu’l Qasim Qushayri, al-Risala al-Qushayriyya fi ilm al-Tasawwuf, trans. Alexander Kynsh (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing Limited, 2007), 17; Abdülkerim Kuşeyri, Kuşeyri Risalesi, trans. Süleyman Uludağ (Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1978), 49.
11. Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi, Kitab al-Taarruf li-madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf, Trans. A.J. Arberry (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1978), 82-102.
12. Jami, Nafahat, 86.
13. See Schimmel, The Mystical, for detailed information how early Sufis functioned.
14. Hujwiri, Kashf, 263-361.
15. Schimmel, The Mystical, 31.
16. Fared al-Din Attar, Tadhkira al-Awliya, trans. Mehmed Zahid Kotku, 60, accessed November 22, 2014 http://www.erimsever.com/Mevlana/Buyukler/TezkiretulEvliya_FAttar.pdf.
17. Hujwiri, Kashf, 208.
18. Jami, Nafahat, 66.
19. Hujwiri, Kashf, 273.
20. Schimmel, The Mystical, 55-7.
21. Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “SÜHREVERDI, Ebü’n-Necîb.”
22. Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “Abdülkadir-i Geylânî.”
23. Jami, Nafahat, 409, 588.
24. Jami, Nafahat, 409.

The Sufi way of poverty involves severing relationships with all that is other than the Eternally Besought-of-All, and depending only on Him to meet one’s needs. For this reason, the more detached one is from whatever is worldly and temporary and the more annihilated one is in depending on the Divine Attributes and Essence, the more one has attained poverty and can repeat the saying of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings: Poverty is my pride.^[1]

As stated in a blessed saying, when poverty becomes a dimension of faith and submission, one no longer depends on the help, will, and power of that which is not God. Even if such a person has enough wealth to fill the whole world, as the world is subject to decay and exhaustion, one does not depend upon it, but rather turns to God with all of one’s strength and feeling, conscious of his or her essential poverty and helplessness. How beautiful is the following couplet of Nabi, a seventeenth-century Ottoman poet:

Do not look on poverty with contempt, O Nabi!
Poverty is the mirror where independence of others is reflected.

Rumi made another fine observation about poverty:

Poverty is the essence and all else is form;
poverty is a remedy and all else the disease.
The whole world consists in vanity and conceit;
but poverty is the real core and meaning of existence.

Even if a person cannot discern his or her essential weakness and poverty with the light of belief, it is a reality that he or she is weak, poor, and needy. God Almighty declares: O humankind! You are all poor before God and in absolute need of Him, whereas He is the All-Wealthy and Self-Sufficient, the All-Praiseworthy (35:15). As absolutely everybody needs His act of choice, will, and decree to come into existence, His Self-Subsistent and All-Subsisting Existence is also needed at every moment to survive.

An individual’s poverty and neediness before the Almighty is not a means of humiliation; rather, one’s increased awareness of one’s poverty engenders higher degrees of dignity, for such awareness before the Absolutely Wealthy One is richness itself.

The believer becomes aware of his or her non-dependence on others, and acquires the consciousness of independence to the extent that one feels in his or her conscience that God is the sole source of power and wealth. His help is sought, and it is therefore to Him that one turns. Even if such a person is materially poor, he or she feels no need for anything or anyone else.

The believer is convinced that whatever or whoever exists, including himself or herself, essentially belongs to the Almighty, for all elements of creation are only shadows of the shadow of His absolutely independent Existence. This degree of conviction of God’s Unity is called annihilation in God, two steps ahead of which is subsistence with God. Concerning this, Hayali, another Ottoman poet of the seventeenth-century, says:

Hayali, cover your naked body with the shawl of poverty;
This is their pride, they know not of satin or silk.

Poverty is the goal of saints, the (natural) state of purified scholars, and the most manifest sign of love of God. The Almighty has placed poverty in the hearts of His friends so that those hearts may prosper through it. Poverty is a key of light to open the eye of the heart to the inexhaustible treasuries of God. One who has this key is the richest person in the world, for poverty is the door to richness. Those who pass through this door reach in their conscience the infinite treasuries of the Owner of all property and discover that poverty is identical with the real richness. For this reason we can say, as Junayd al-Baghdadi did:

Richness is no more than the final, perfect degree of poverty.^[2]

When one is perfectly conscious of one’s essential poverty before God and one’s absolute dependence on Him, one is absolutely rich, for such a person no longer feels any need. This is what must be meant by the famous saying: The real richness is the richness of the heart. When one has attained this degree of richness, it is as if he or she has found a credit card that is valid everywhere. One who has such mysterious capital can be considered neither poor nor powerless. This is what is described in the following lines:

His is power, by which we are powerful.
We are well-known by His Name or fame.
We go beyond peaks and continue our way;
we overcome all difficulties with ease.
We possess nothing worldly, but are absolutely rich,
and are dignified and respectable with His Dignity.
We follow the way of reflection, so
whatever exists is a source of the knowledge of God for us.^[3]

^[1] al-‘Ajluni, Kashfu’l-Khafa’, 2:87.

^[2] al-Qushayri, ar-Risala, 273.

^[3] M. Fethullah Gülen, Kırık Mızrap (Broken Plectrum), 38–39.

Walking into a regular salad bar for lunch, one anticipates nothing more than a short and simple exchange of civilities and of course a mixed salad. But there are instances where the wisdom one may receive from the man behind the counter has more variety than the salad.

Busy New Yorkers generally eat lunch at their desks. This is New York, after all, the city where “time is money” and lunch minutes are counted. This meal can be a quick coffee and a sandwich on the go or perhaps a bowl of warm soup. To cater to this eating tradition, there are countless “delis” all over the city where you can dash in and grab a bite to take out for your lunch. One popular trend is to order a freshly-made salad. Many delis are especially-equipped with a glassed-in counter housing a myriad of salad components laid out in bins – carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, beets; you name it, they are all there, for after all, this is New York, where there is something for everyone. You call out your desired ingredients, and a friendly server mixes them up for you, and then packs it up in a plastic bowl for you to take back to your desk.

I buy my “compose-your-own” tossed salad from a salad bar on 60th Street at Lexington Avenue. I always eagerly anticipate the selecting of my ingredients to make a salad just as I want it for that particular day. Let’s see, shall I have tofu or chickpeas today? Will I dare to eat some fresh onions? Shall I toss in a few almonds for flair? The events of my day may be running in total chaos, but I can certainly be in control of my salad.

At my salad bar, the server behind the counter who assembles all my selected ingredients and tosses them together is a young, rotund black fellow with a smile and accent as broad as the Hudson River. I always enjoy my few minutes with him each day, for his smile seasons the pleasure of the tasty lunch to follow.

Today while I was waiting in line, Tony was busy mixing up a salad for the girl in front of me, and I heard him say a few words to her in Arabic. I discovered through their conversation that she was an Egyptian.

Listening to him speak with her, I assumed that he was one of the many African-Americans who have embraced Islam. When it was my turn, I said to Tony, “Oh! I am so impressed! Do you know Arabic? Have you become a Muslim?”

He looked at me, smiled and replied: “No, I am not a Muslim. But I am currently trying to learn Arabic. You know that story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible? It tells us that a whole lot of trouble was caused because people just can’t seem to understand each other. So I thought if I could learn the language of this faith and of these peoples who are certainly in need of having us better understand them, then that would be a positive step to better communication. I look at all the religions in our world, and I thought too, if I could learn to recite a few prayers in Arabic, I would be able feel my own faith in a deeper way.”

His words astonished me. I anticipated a simple, polite exchange of civilities, and instead I received a gift of unexpected, profound perception. As I watched Tony mix my salad, my thoughts tossed up in all directions like the lettuce leaves. I was led to think of many things while I waited for him to finish.

I thought of Queen Cleopatra reciting her line in Shakespeare’s play, “…My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…”

I thought of those green salad leaves and my commitment to vegetarianism as a hope for a more respectful communication with our planet.

I thought of the events of that story of the Tower of Babel from the Chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament of the Bible. I recalled that it related how the people of the earth became so skilled in construction that they decided to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. I remember how God came to look at their tower and decided it would only lead the people away from His Infinite Wisdom. Just what had displeased the Lord so in this Tower of Babel construction project, I wondered? Was it because the people were so presumptuous that they could make a building so tall it would pierce the top of heaven? I thought about the construction site of a new skyscraper now rising on Manhattan’s skyline that I had passed on my way to the deli. I wondered about the boastful modern Babel builders of today who vie to make a name for themselves by trying to build the tallest building in the world, yet still do not manage to reach heaven in their earthly ways. I asked myself too, if these buildings of our new world were leading us closer or farther away from God, just as they had in the Old Testament.

I thought about the Twin Towers that used to grace lower Manhattan, and their tragic story.

I also remembered how in the story of Babel all the men on the earth at that time still spoke one language. I recalled in the text how, in reaction to their prideful building of that Tower, God thwarted their plans. He confused their language, causing them to speak different languages so they would not be able to understand each other, and how He also scattered the people of the city all over the face of the earth. I thought about how this story pertained to my life as a cross-cultural communicator and language instructor. I wondered if it was an illusion to think that all the languages of the world could ever come together in one humanity of communication, or rather are we condemned to remain mute among each other?

I thought of all the towers of incomprehension we build in our lives, not just with words, but with thoughts and deeds. I thought of how the outer words of speech and writing create not only beautiful literature, but also in many instances doubts, confusion and arguments.

I then thought of the Sufis and their Language of the Heart, and wondered if that could be the only true language all the peoples of the world could potentially share. I thought of how the Sufis speak and act with a Divine Gift of the language of the heart, where every outer word is a linguistic reflection of their inner peaceful quest for beauty and praiseworthy actions.

I thought about the true Sufi masters, who are not reclusive residents of monasteries, but who live in our midst and go about their business on their quest for finding the oracle of the heart. They are on the Sufi path, which may lead right through your neighborhood. This Sufi may be a shoemaker, a shop clerk, a lawyer, a photographer….or a salad fixer in a Manhattan deli.

But in the end, all these thoughts in my mind circled back to the simple wisdom of Tony’s words. His efforts honored the hope of the verse in the Qur’an which states: “We created you nations and tribes that ye may know one another” (49:13).

Yes, we need to try to give a chance to understanding those around us, whose languages and customs we do not know, so that we can know one another. Tony showed me that there are many individuals making just this effort. As he tossed my salad, I thought of the salad of our world, sometimes raw, sometimes cooked; sometimes flavored with ingredients both savory and spicy, a bowl of mixed greens of both incomprehension and the concord of many paths and peoples.

When he had finished tossing, Tony, with his ever-present bright smile, handed me my container of prepared salad with a flourish. I looked at all the diverse ingredients which had come together to make a salad like none other before it, all now mixed together in delicious harmony. As I took it from his hands, I knew I would be sustained this day not only by the green leaves of nature’s bounteous garden, but also by the green leaves of his salad of hopeful humanity, this salad which Dr. Martin Luther King called our “inescapable mutuality of existence.”

Katharine Branning is the Vice-President, Library, French Institute Alliance Française in Manhattan and author of a series of essays on Turkey, Yes, I Would Love another Glass of Tea. She is also the curator of the exhibit “Song of Stones” dedicated to Seljuk art held in New York and Washington DC.

The best place to begin this discussion is with the Qur’an. There are numerous verses that mention love, but whenever the word love is used “the quality is always ascribed to God and human beings, and nothing else; and God’s love is always directed at human beings.” Not only does this mean that the relationship between God and human beings is unique, but love defines that unique relationship. In the verses that mention love for God, the Qur’an makes two important points. Firstly, God wants people to love him, and secondly, their love for God follows upon His love for them. The verse of the Qur’an most cited for this is “…whom He loves, and who love Him” (5:54). The inferences that Sufi mystics have drawn from this verse is that love cannot be learned, it is the result of divine grace, and the initiative comes from God. This feeling of God’s desire “to love and to be loved” inspired Rumi to suggest:

Not a single lover would seek union if the beloved were not seeking it.

The message of the Qur’an compelled Muslims to understand their relationship with God as one requiring reciprocated love. Sufi poets then searched for a vocabulary to describe their love for God, including words not found in the Qur’an or Hadiths.

In the early period of Sufism “the majority of teachings on love are contained in poems and brief statements that focus upon the human love for God, wherein there is always a duality between the human lover and the Divine Beloved.” This developed into a trend within Sufi thought in which “all aspects of creation and spiritual aspiration are presented in an imaginal language fired by love.” An important development in this trend was the use of the word for passionate love, ishq, rather than the more accepted vocabulary of the Qur’an. The Qur’anic terms for love are hubb and mahabba that describe the measured affection of God. Ishq came into the lexicon of Sufi poetry to describe “the essential desire for God and the love of God as an essential attribute, which fills the heart of the mystic.” Using the word ishq in a religious context means that:

Love is no longer merely an expression of gratitude for the blessings of God; it is no longer content with rigorous asceticism and meticulous ritual observance. It becomes an absolute necessity, entailing neither enjoyment nor alleviation, but intensifying as the reciprocity of the lover and the loved comes into effect.

By redefining their love for God as ishq, the early Sufi poets extended their vocabulary, and by doing this they could more accurately describe their inner response to the revelation of the Qur’an. The recognition of two types of love is expressed by Rabia in the following quatrain:

Two loves I give thee, love that yearns.
And love because thy due is love.
My yearning, my remembrance turns
To Thee, nor lets it from thee rove.

Here, Rabia identifies the spontaneous love for God she feels within herself – and the dutiful love she is obliged to give to God in the performance of her religious responsibilities. As Chittick wrote, “Love pertains to the experiential dimension of Sufism, not the theoretical; it must be experienced to be understood.” Sufism connects experiential knowledge to the belief that “nothing is dearer to God than that man loves him.” A mystic and poet who lived in Anatolia in the same period as Rumi, Yunus Emre, described the intensifying experience of love for God:

Your love has wrested me away from me
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
Day and night I burn, gripped by agony,
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
For Yunus Emre, “love is the most powerful of everything.”

When love for God is described in terms of passion then the language of romantic love is readily accessible to be adapted as the metaphoric language of the spiritual journey. In Sufi poetry there is a convention of the spiritual supplicant being called the lover of God, while God is referred to as the Beloved. Throughout Sufi poetry we read verses that elaborate ideas about the relationship of the lover and the Beloved. A good example of this is seen in this verse by Rumi:

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

Here God has two titles, the Beloved and the Beautiful One, but this poem could easily be read as secular love poetry. In this verse Rumi includes the beliefs that the impetus to love comes from God, as it is a sacred decree, and doing so is as unstoppable as the rush of water.

Another poem of Rumi that can be read as secular love poetry uses less recognizable references to God:

In one sweet moment
She burst from my heart.
There we sat on the floor,
drinking ruby wine.
Trapped by her beauty,
I saw and I touched –
My whole face became eyes,
All my eyes became hands.

Through the use of the conventional poetic symbols of his era, for example, drinking wine as a symbol for spiritual intoxication, the poet again express both secular and spiritual meanings simultaneously. As one of the translators of the above piece comments in his introduction to the selection of Rumi’s poems:

Nothing with Rumi can be taken literally: One must always be aware of the meaning behind the meaning, and the veils behind veils.

The translator Jonathon Star, says that Rumi, like other Sufi poets, at “the deepest level” of his poetry “tells only one story: the soul’s search for the Beloved.”

For Rumi, passionate love, ishq, has two expressions. The first is love in the material world, “like the love between male and female”, and the second is the “real love,” which is the “love felt toward God.” These couplets of Rumi’s explain how the poet signified both aspects of ishq:

Love is the attribute of God, who has no need of anyone. To be in love with other than Him is metaphorical love.
And
Love, be it real or metaphorical,
Ultimately takes humans to God.

These two couplets express two fundamental beliefs of Sufism. In the first couplet we read that love is an attribute of God – as stated in the Qur’an. In the second we see that love “takes humans to God.”

While the Qur’an shows that love is an attribute of God, for many adherents of the Sufi tradition love is God’s most important attribute because for the spiritual journey of the wayfarer, love provides the path that takes them to reunion with God. In Rumi’s “spiritual masterpiece,” the Masnavi, the poet seeks to show that “God is known primarily through love.” The significance given to love in this part of the Islamic tradition has allowed some to suggest simply that “God is Love.” However, it is important to note that love is not the only attribute of God:

…He is Mercy, Knowledge, Life, Power and Will. He possesses all these qualities; His Being is the same as their Being; but we may not say that God is Mercy and nothing else, or that He is Knowledge and nothing else… He possesses all His Attributes absolutely, yet in His Essence He is beyond them all.

More than a generation before Rumi the mystic Farid al-Din Attar (d.1220) wrote a variation of the shahada (testimony of faith) as la ilaha illa ishq – No God but Love. In his Divan Rumi shows that he did not believe God could be defined as such. In fact, this excerpt from the Divan could be commenting on the above phrase of Attar:

Others call Thee Love, but I call Thee the Sultan of Love – oh Thou who are beyond the concept of this or that, do not go without me!

Rumi’s poetry not only shows that God cannot be defined but He can only be described with symbol, metaphor or analogy, which eventually also proves to be inadequate:

All of these are symbols – I mean that the other
world keeps coming into this world.
Like cream hidden in the soul of milk, No place
keeps coming into this place.
Like intellect concealed in blood and skin, the
Traceless keeps entering into traces.
And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love
comes dragging its skirts, a cup of wine in its hand.
And from beyond Love, that Indescribable One
who can only be called “That” keeps coming.

In this piece of sublime verse Rumi uses analogy to communicate a sense of God. We also see an explanation of the variance of love and intellect, but most importantly, embedded in the poetry, Rumi presents the difference between love as an attribute of God, and “the Indescribable One who can only be called ‘That'” which is God.

As we saw in one of the couplets quoted above, Rumi believed that love, “real or metaphorical, ultimately takes humans to God.” The journey to reunion with God was made by “constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God’s attributes.” For the Sufi mystic, “the qualities of the Beloved enter in the place of the qualities of the lover.” This is a heightened sense of jihad, when jihad is thought of as “the personal struggle against one’s own shortcomings that is required of all Muslims so that they can perfect their submission.”

For the Sufi mystic, however, the demand of reunion with God was to “qualify yourself with the qualities of God,” which was achieved by constant mental struggle to exchange the base qualities of the mystic for the praiseworthy qualities by which God has described himself in the Qur’anic revelation. The Mevlevi Sufi, Sefik Can, suggests this is achieved when “The goal of the Sufi mystic is to understand and love The One who has created humankind.” The connection of love to reunion with God is explained when Sefik Can says “In the Sufi tradition, love is described as annihilation in the Beloved.” Again, the poetry of Rumi makes a vivid representation of this teaching:

Love came and it made me empty.
Love came and it filled me with the Beloved.
It became the blood in my body
It became my arms and my legs.
It became everything!
Now all I have is a name,
The rest belongs to the Beloved.

The verse describes the progressive, experiential knowledge of love. First came abandonment of the ego. Then, came submission whereby one no longer acts according to the ego, but in submission to the Beloved who now becomes “… his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks…” as in the well-known hadith qudsi. The Sufi understanding of the annihilation of the self in the Beloved can be regarded as an expression of the ultimate understanding of tawhid – asserting God’s unity. Annemarie Schimmel suggests that “to declare that God is One is the goal of religious life for the Muslim in general and the Sufi in particular.” An elaboration of this idea leads to the assertion that only God has real existence and hence only God has the right to say “I,” for “God is the only true subject.”

It is the tawhid that underpins the expression of love in Sufi poetry because “the true lover sees everything as pertaining to his beloved.” This is a teaching that Rumi sought to convey in the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, for he intended

… to coax out of his readers the misapprehension that the world is made up of a multitude of separate selves apart from God and into the knowledge that all reality subsists only in relation to God.

It is a state of mind whereby “the poets recognized God everywhere,” as Annemarie Schimmel said, citing the verse of the Qur’an that inspired this awareness: “Withersoever ye turn, there is the face of God” (Surah 2/109). Two couplets quoted by Schimmel use the above-mentioned symbolism of wine to begin their explanation of tawhid:

The glass is all and the wine is naught,
Or the glass is naught and the wine is all –
but the vocabulary of religion concludes the realization:
That all that is, is He indeed:
Soul and loved one and heart and creed.

Because “love is desire and need,” it is stated that God, at the level of His attributes, created the world because He desired (or “loved”) to be known. Furthermore, God’s love for the Prophet is evident in this saying, “But for thee I would not have made the celestial spheres.” Ultimately, God’s desire to be revealed through the prophets and the saints “was the motivating force in His creation of the universe,” and all the world’s forms, movements and activities result from that original love. On this Rumi wrote:

The creatures are set in motion by Love, Love by Eternity-without-beginning; the wind dances because of the spheres, the trees because of the wind.

When we use the metaphor of the spiritual journey, we know from Sufi poetry that love is the vehicle par excellence for the traveller.

Bibliography

• Can, Sefik. 2005. The Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective. Translated by Cuneyt Eroglu and Zeki Saritoprak, New Jersey: The Light Inc.
• Chittick, William C. 1983. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Lumbard, J.E.B. 2007. “From Hubb to Ishq: The Development of Love in Early Sufism.” Journal of Islamic Studies, 18:3, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Murata, S. and Chittick, W.C. 1994. The Vision of Islam, London: I.B. TAURIS.
• Rumi. 1992. A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, translated by Jonathon Star and Shahram Shiva, New York: Bantam Books.
• Rumi. 2006. Spiritual Verses: The First Book of the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, translated by Alan Williams, London: Penguin,.
• Schimmel, A. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
• Schimmel, A. 1982. As Through a Veil, Mystical Poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
• von Donzel, E., Lewis, B., and Pellat, C. (eds). 1978. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. 4, Leidin, Netherlands: E.J. Brill.
• Yunus Emre, trans. Turgut Durduran. http://www.stwing.upenn.edu. Accessed 17/5/08.

Current trends in language studies

Of the various functions of language one is its meaning making, knowledge producing activity. Various theories of language and discourses produce different kinds of knowledge, meaning, reality and truth-claims. Over the last four decades much academic discussion dealing with language has started out with its value-laden entwinement with ideology. Language’s ambiguous nature, culture-specific character, indeterminacy of meaning and the ways in which it shapes and controls our perceptions of the world, have been studied in the social and political context. Consequently, there has been proliferation of such diverse disciplines as psycholinguistics, socio-linguistics, and post-colonial studies. Research in language use has tended to focus on its power to shape our perceptions of the world within hierarchical structures of power which are both formulated and upheld by language. Language has been studied as social capital, an instrument for establishing cultural hegemony, a form of manipulation and conquest, a discourse of power embedded in ideology in the context of education, interpersonal and mass communication, business, propaganda, advertisements, natural sciences and translation studies.

The truth-claim of the designative tradition in the philosophy of language, based as it is on nominalism and naturalism, limits meaning to word-object relation only, and reduces reality to mere physical phenomena that can be quantitatively measured and explained. This exclusive, separatist, Cartesian focus on mirroring objective reality ends in scientific materialism and determinism, which leaves no room for the noblest reaches of spiritual life. On the other hand, if the twin emphasis on how discourse is both constituted by and constitutes the socio-cultural world and the notion that discourse is invested in and contributes to the (re)production of power relations in society, ends in cultural materialism, likewise the poststructuralist marginalizing of external reality, exaggerated one-sided emphasis on hermetically closed system of textuality, regression and deference of meaning results in nihilism.

Breaking free from linguistic reductionism

If it is to have a future, the philosophy of language has to break free from cultural narcissism, solipsism, and linguistic reductionism. It has to make a connection between the fullness of life and language. The idea of reality needs to be extended to make room for the complexity of full human experience-the Transcendental and the temporal and spatial, the Eternal and the historical, the spiritual and the physical, the sacred and the secular. Regrettably research in language studies has not been carried over into the domain of mystical discourse. The absence of an adequate study of the need, nature, function, effect and context of language in leaping up to Transcendence, neglect of the study of the relationship between language and faith in mystical discourse in various theories of meaning and reality is symptomatic of a deep problem in our current views of our cognition of reality. The difficulty is not a matter of mere oversight. The problem is far more distressing, for it concerns our entire orientation towards these issues, which is based on a set of presuppositions that deny God, spirituality, mysticism, and sacredness a central role in the constitution of reality. The paradigms of positivism and empiricism are still regarded as organizing forms which exclude transcendence and subjective mystical experience as integral parts of the fullness of life.

Despite the fact that since the 1970s the study of mysticism has completely transformed, it has yet to draw the attention of linguists, literary critics and philosophers of language. Far from being regarded as sentimentalism and deviation from religion or abnormal behavior it has come to be recognized as an account of sublime spiritual experience. The labors of religions psychologists, like the work of William James (1982) disentangled it from psycho-physical accidents and no responsible student now identifies mysticism with confusion of thought. The philosophical and theological landscape with its increasing emphasis on Transcendence, respect for the idea of the sacred, growing recognition of the distinctness, independence and need of the spiritual order and a revival of the creaturely sense, strongly contrast with the temper of the nineteenth-century thought. The metaphysical claims of mystics are now recognized as truth-claims. The warm welcome given to Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1926) has been followed by renewed interest in the sacred. Yet in spite of the adjustments required by such a shift in philosophical outlook, language theorists have yet to enrich their insights by gleaning from the field of mysticism. Wittgenstein’s catalogue of “language games” includes prayer but it does not move beyond formal prayer to private prayer, munajat, “a prayer of intimate conversation between God and man during which words of love and affection are exchanged and consolation is found for the afflicted heart.” The linguist’s inquiry does not address issues of the meaningfulness, force and effect of language constructs in the mystical discourse and context. This constitutes a very large gap in scholarship on language.

The profundity of thought, sublimity of emotion and esthetic beauty of the works of Muslim mystics has gained international attention and respect by virtue of their translation into different languages and the commentaries on them-Massignon’s French volume on Mansur al-Hallaj (1922), Chittick (2000), Nicholson (1964, 1970, 1989), Arberry (1956, 1979) and Schimmel’s works (1975, 2003) in English on Muslim mystics in general and in particular on Al-Hujwiri and Maulana Rumi, Margaret Smith on Muhasibi (1935), and Rabia (1994), Schimmel’s German volume on the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) (1981). Maulana Rumi has emerged as the most widely read poet in the United States because of the accessibility of translations of his work into English.

Rationale

Why Sufi poetry? The devastation caused by the two world wars, for the first time shook the Western world into realizing a two-fold need .The first was of “a deeper understanding and appreciation of other peoples and their civilizations, especially their moral and spiritual achievements.” The second need arose from the strong call for “a new vision of the Universe, a clearer insight into the fundamentals of ethics and religion.” What should be the criteria for living a decent life? Can the nations be brought together? Is there a God of love or simply a blind, mechanical, impersonal force behind the chance collocation of atoms? What is the nature of the relationship between man and God? Can man reach out to Him or does He remain inaccessible? This quest led men and women to dig out what the mystics, the greatest minds of East and West, who by common consent are accepted as the people of God, have thought and said about the truth of God.

This was, according to Arberry, one of the main objectives behind a series of translations of Sufi (Islamic mystical) literature and commentaries on them, showing the background against which this kind of literature arose and developed. The translator of Sufi literature emerged in the role of the guide who shows the way to treasures. Arberry (1956) wrote, “Mankind is hungry, but the feast is there, though it is locked up and hidden away.” The aim of translations was to put that feast within reach, so that, like “the Heroes of Homer, we may stretch out our hands to the good cheer laid before us.”

Unfortunately this aim has not yet been realized. Since 9/11 nations have drifted even further away from each other. Misunderstanding, misrepresenting and misrepresented, seething with the consuming passion of mistrust and hatred, the world today is once again standing on the brink of disaster. We behave in this wasteland like hollow men who eschew eye contact with each other, who can connect nothing with nothing, and talk only about the clash of civilizations. We need to open our eyes to the beauty of the emotion of love shared by all the religions and traditions of mysticism. No doubt, the great religions differ in fundamentals, but the essence is the same, and that is compassion and it is that which brings the great religions together on a strong spiritual footing.

The transformative spirit and power of Sufi poetry was later voiced once more by a Western scholar, Karen Armstrong, who viewed her access to the Holy Qur’an and Sufi literature through translations as a “very liberating experience.” She discovered expansion, pluralism and compassion in Islam. Since then it has been her jihad, as she puts it, to enlighten her people in the West about the true spirit of Islam and dispel misunderstandings, prejudices, and negative stereotyping of Muslims.

Another motive which should precipitate translation of Sufi poetry is the need to fill the gap in scholarship on language. Language has a complex character. It can perform diverse and contradictory functions. Like the two-faced Roman God Janus, language has an ambivalent character; it can equally disclose and hide, construct and destroy, inspire and demoralize, liberate and imprison, clarify and distort, heal and hurt. Sufi literature brings forth the paradox of the inadequacy of words to express and convey the mystical experience and insight, and on the other hand the meaning, power and need of words. Sufis always say that their experience is ineffable, yet they couch their feelings and experiences in words and express them with great conviction, force and eloquence .If the spiritual experience and the vision are unutterable and beyond expression and words are inherently incapable of expressing something which is beyond the comprehension of intellect (because words are the tools of intellect to conceptualize) then these questions are immediately raised:

1. What is the nature of language in Sufi poetry?
2. What does a Sufi describe?
3. How do the words function?
4. What is the purpose of this functioning?

First, Sufi poetry is highly metaphorical in nature. The illogical logic in Sufi poetry addresses the “ontological” status of metaphor in relation to how things actually are: the unreality of the phenomenal world and the way it should be “seen as something else.”

Second, Sufi literature reveals and describes the most profound spiritual truths disclosing the esoteric aspect of Islam, as the very titles of many Sufi treatises demonstrate. Kashf-Al-Mahjub, the oldest Persian treatise of tasawwuf (Sufism), written by Ali Bin Uthman Al-Hujwiri, means the “Unveiling of the Veiled,” and in his own words it is “an explanation of mystical sayings, and an uplifting of the veil of mortality.” Long before Derrida used the word “translator” for a writer, Sufi writers saw themselves in the role of translators, who transfer, reconstitute and interpret divine truths from the transcendental domain to the context of this physical world.

This makes us move on to the function that language performs in Sufi literature. Sufi poetry displays the close relation between language, belief, understanding and truth. Sufi poetry by its very nature engages us in a dialogue with the Transcendental. Not only does it initiate the move to relate, it then becomes the means of consolidating and strengthening the bond, and expanding understanding of the nature of relationship.

Here language becomes a way of showing the way to harmony and peace that passes understanding. Words do not strain, slip and crack here. They are meaningful, not illusory nor simulacra. They create meaning: meaning is not endless regression here. Language in Sufi poetry is not “a prison house” outside which no reality lives. Functioning as a therapy, Sufi poetry sprouts hope and shows possibilities of breaking through impasse, becoming a source of strength and inspiration. It reanimates and “brings dead hearts to life.”

Sufi poetry has constitutive value; it constitutes who we are, how we should think and live. It sets the parameters of our life by pressing upon us the ideal of love and compassion. Making us see beyond the mere referential value of word-object relationship, it offers a dynamic and creative view of language.

Thus, Sufi poetry develops an optimistic relationship between humankind and language. Just as mystical experience is liberating, likewise language is seen as a liberating force, expanding and promoting human well being, rather than being constrictive as Derrida, the philosopher of language, claims it to be.

Integrating the sacred with the secular

Research in the translation of Sufi literature becomes a way of reintegrating “the sacred with the secular” in today’s disenchanted world. The way language in Sufi literature creates and extends meaning and reality is nowadays ignored because of the Post-structuralist emphasis on culture, ideology and indeterminacy of meaning in language. But the significance of language as a “meaning-making” activity, a way of knowing and understanding Transcendence, a means of creating a bridge across diverse religions and cultures validates such comparative studies. Truth may be at stake. A researcher and a scholar like the translators, critics, historians, journalists and professors of literature can break or make a writer on his/her own terms. Research acquires the power of Plato’s pharmakon, both “poison” and “remedy.” The power invested in the researcher to change texts and so change the world should be increasingly recognized.

The researcher may intervene in the interpretation of text for different reasons and use research to serve various functions. If an interpretation is yoked to a political or national agenda it may manipulate language to construct meaning not intended by the original text. In this way research ceases to be a means of knowing the truth. It becomes manipulation, subsuming the original meaning into its own hegemonizing voice. In generating erroneous perceptions of a work and the doctrine it is embedded in biased or erroneous interpretation assists in promoting negative stereotypes. Inauthentic and distorted versions of Sufi literature were instrumental in re-presenting Islamic mysticism as a form of Bacchanalian ecstasy. Research can thus do more harm than good by repressing, distorting or containing the original meaning.

In its positive aspect, by being faithful to the original meaning of the text, research can promote good will through intercultural dialogue, expand understanding about other religions and literatures, and promote peaceful coexistence. The aim should be to deepen understanding and expand awareness about the complexity of the web of language use in making Sufi poetry.

Aalia Sohail Khan is an associate professor of English in the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.

References

• Arberry A.J. Muslim Saints and Mystics. Trans. Tadhkirat-al-Auliya by Farid al-Din Attar. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
• Medina, Jose. Language: Key Concept in Philosophy. London: MPG Books Limited. 2000.
• Schimmel, Annemarie. As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism: A study in the nature and development of Man’s spiritual consciousness. New York: Meridian Books, 1960.

Nursi says that people are “connected with almost all beings” and because of this “a boundless capacity to love [these things] has been included in [our] nature[s].” However, even though individuals have the freedom to love transient things, these finite objects cannot fulfill them in the same way as the Enduring One (al-Baqi) can. What most people do not realize is that they “constantly suffer the pain of separation” because their infinite capacity for love, which has been given to them by God, is not fulfilled by things of this world. Like Rumi’s reed-flute, people yearn for a return to their reed-bed. By “misusing [their love] and spending it on transitory beings, [people have] done wrong and suffer the punishment for [this] fault through the pain of separation.” Individuals do not need to live in the state of suffering, however, and Nursi’s Third Flash offers them a way to transcend it.

The first part of the Sufi phrase calls people to sever that desire give one’s love to the finite things of this world. True, “the shadows of the shadows of the manifestation of His Most Beautiful Names” are beautiful and able to be loved in this world, but they themselves are not God and are not fit for the love that only God deserves. When people love only things of this world, they suffer; when they focus their love on the Enduring One (al-Baqi) they are brought closer to God and are fulfilled in ways not of this world. When they sever their ties to finite love, they open themselves to a Higher Love, an Infinite Love. The purpose of the first part of the Sufi phrase is to comfort people with knowledge of an Ever Enduring Love, and remind them that the love of this world pales in comparison to God’s everlasting love.

The second part of the Sufi phrase not only heals people’s spiritual wounds, but also acts to satisfy “the intense wish for immortality in [their] natures[s].” Nursi says that people long for immortality, because God is immortal and “the matter most important to [people], [their] most pressing duty is to form a relation with the Enduring One,” who is immortal. By placing their love in the finite, in loving only things of this world, people are limiting their capacities for Eternal Love and as a result they suffer. The only fulfilling love is love for the al-Baqi, the Enduring One, the Immortal and Undying Love of God. Once human beings separate themselves from the love of this world, as the first part of the Sufi phrase directs, people can then be healed by the knowledge that God is the Enduring One, and God’s love will never fade away.

Nursi insists that it is not only possible, but preferable, to live a life of infinite love in the present moment. To explain this point, he uses the illustration of the hands of a clock:

Just as the hands of a clock counting the seconds, and those counting the minutes, hours, and days superficially resemble each other, but differ in respect to speed, so too the spheres of the body, soul, heart, and spirit in man differ from each other.

Nursi says that the spiritual nature of humans is not bound by time. Yes, the physical existence of people’s pasts are extinct, and their futures not yet existent, but the present moment in which they live, in the minutes and hours that they live for the Love of God, they are immortal-“Yes, one second on the way of love, knowledge, and pleasure of the Truly Enduring One is a year.” Although it may often seem that “time flies when we are having fun,” in reality a “moment’s union for God’s sake within the bounds of the Enduring One of Glory’s pleasure is a window of union, not only for a [moment], but [permanently].” Speaking of the human perception of time and place, Nursi seems to anticipate Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity-“The broad Earth with enemies is like a drinking-glass, while the eye of a needle with friends is like a broad arena.” Understanding this imagery, a moment in God’s love can be an eternity of pleasure and fulfillment, and a moment without God’s love can seem like an eternity of suffering. It is because of this that Nursi, and the multitudes of Muslims before him and since, have prayed the five prescribed daily prayers to God. Through prayer Muslims are linked to God and are reminded of God’s Enduring Love; and through remembrance of the Enduring Love of God the transitory becomes eternal (baqi).

Sufi tradition also gives two other images for this enduring love: that of the fabric of life, and that of the “conveyor belt.” For the first image, life is seen as fabric. If during one’s life a person does nothing of merit, nothing of love for God, then the fabric remains plain, unbeautiful, and transient. If one does bad things and denies God’s love, the fabric becomes dirty and tattered and the fabric suffers. However, if one does what is beautiful and one remembers the Enduring One, flowers are embroidered on the fabric and these flowers last through all eternity, sustained by God’s Infinite Love. Likewise, the image of the conveyor belt symbolizes the transience of this world-for every deed done in this life, something goes on to the next. If one does nothing beautiful, nothing for God, then nothing is placed on the conveyor belt and nothing goes into the next life. If one does bad things or good things in this life, then these things go on into the next life, not to be seen again until death. One day, the conveyor belt stops and at that moment there is nothing left that one can do.

Similar to the Catholic Jesuit notion of Ad Meiorem Dei Gloriam (that is, living for the Greater Glory of God), Nursi’s reflections on the work of humans for God alludes to how spiritually profitable a life devoted to God can be:

Serve for the sake of God, meet with others for the sake of God, work for the sake of God; make all of your actions ‘in God, for God, and to God,’ then, all the moments of your life will become like years.

When working for the sake of God, when loving people for the sake of God, when living life for God;, a moment is like a year. Just as in our dreams a day can seem like a year, a life dedicated to and in love with God can feel like an eternity-in fact, a moment with God is an eternity, a glimpse of the Enduring Love of God.

This Sufi phrase of al-Baqi, which is formed under the name of God, ‘al-Baqi,’ calls people to cut ties with the finite love that this world offers. It also comforts human beings by reminding them that only God’s infinite love can bring us healing, fulfillment, and an everlasting union. In his Third Flash, Nursi eloquently affirms that within the Love of God there is the promise of an Enduring Love, a love that cannot be found in the worldly shadows alone.

Michael David Graskemper is a graduate student at John Carroll University, Department of Religious Studies

Reference

Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said, The Flashes Collection, Sozler Nesriyat, Istanbul: 1995, pp 29, 30.

Even though garden cultivation of roses began some 5,000 years ago, possibly in China, the fossil record indicates that roses have existed for millions of years. Wherever roses are found, they become a symbol of something: love, beauty, royalty, death, war, and politics. Sometimes, they even represent famous names in history.

During the Roman Empire, roses were grown extensively in the Middle East. Those roses, the most fragrant in the world, were used to make perfume. Their strong scent also caused people to regard them as having a deep mystical significance. However, roses grown in China do not have such a scent. Perhaps this is one reason why roses are not nearly so beloved in China.

Roses seem to make their first literary appearance in the eighth century bce. In The Iliad, an epic poem of ancient Greece, Hectares body was anointed with rose oil. Roses are often mentioned in ancient Greek myths in a wide variety of different forms. For example, a white raised symbolized Aphrodites purity and innocence. Furthermore, her desire and passion for Adonis, her wounded love, was represented by a few drops of her blood changing a white rose into a red rose. In another myth, Zeus scattered roses across the land as a wedding gift to Eros and Psyche.

The Romans also embellished their myths with roses. They used roses at funerals as a sign of resurrection, for example, and Flora was the goddess of spring and flowers. Despite being credited with creating the rose, other Greek deities helped Flora give it its life, sweet scent, and beautiful shape.

Presumably, a correlation exists between ancient Greek and Roman mythology and Christianity with respect to roses. Harpcrates, who was bribed into secrecy with a white rose by Eros, became the god of silence. This was carried over into Christianity, for a rose was often carved onto a meeting rooms plastered ceilings to warn that the discussions were sub rosa (under the rose, or secret).

The rose and religion

Christians used the red rose as a symbol of Jesus passion, martyrdom, and resurrection, as well as for Marys motherhood and purity. Mary is mostly linked with the white rose. The roses design also implies the liturgy. For instance, Mary is surrounded with brilliant roses in this beautiful poem by Wordsworth (1807):

In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,
And, Mary! Oft beside our blazing fire,
When yeas of wedded life were as a day
Whose current answers to the hearts desire.(1)

Also, Mary is often reported as being accompanied by showers of fragrant rose petals. Many stained-glass window scenes of the Blessed Mother and other saints show them holding roses. Underlying all of this is the idea that fragrance is good.

In the seventh century, Prophet Muhammad is symbolized with a rose. It seems that every opening bloom points to another wonderful person in the garden of humanity. The roses reputation increased a thousandfold with the coming of the Prophet. His great personality illuminated the roses color, and his perfect morality is the source of its fragrant sense.

Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230), one of the greatest Sufi mystic poets of all time, wrote in his The Rose Garden:

In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.(2)

Another Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), notes that just as the rose consists of many petals held together, so a Sufis soul shows many different qualities. These qualities emit fragrance in the form of a spiritual personality. As the rose has a beautiful structure, the Sufi has a fine structure, manner, dealing with others, speech, action, and so on. Just as the roses beautiful perfume penetrates the entire room, the Sufi penetrates society and helps to heal its problems.

Furthermore, the Quran honors the red rose by mentioning only it out of all flowers: When the sky is torn apart, so it was (like) a red rose like ointment. Then which of your Lords favors will you deny? (55:37-38). The beauty of a single rose is just one small creation among all of Gods bestowed bounties. The rose has a distinct shape, and whoever created it and tore the sky apart, just like we might tear apart a red rose, created it so that we could understand that the rose was created for significant reasons.

In the Islamic tradition, wearing perfume is a food for the soul and the spirit. One hadith relates that one of the Prophets favorite things was good fragrance. That is why Muslims often wear pure essence of rosewater, especially before prayers. Rosewater is also the preferred soak for the miswak (a traditional toothbrush taken from the branches of a fibrous tree).

Possessing one of the most heavenly scents, a roses essence has several aromatherapeutic benefits as well. Valerie Worwood, in her The Complete Book of Aromatherapy, writes that a roses essence is a powerful and uplifting anti-depressant, aids in digestion, and soothes frayed nerves. These benefits can be enjoyed just by sprinkling some rose water or essence on your body, adding a few drops to your bathwater, or burning the scent in an incense burner in your home.

Associating roses with religion is as old as religion itself. How nice it would be if the veneration that all Jews, Christians, and Muslims have for the rose could make all of us understand that we are bound together with each other and many others in this very way! Moreover, these three monotheistic religions trace their origins to the Middle East, the ancestral home of modern roses.

The rose in other cultures

Many other cultures feature things related to the rose. For example, different sects within Hinduism worship deities through such household and temple offerings as rose attar (perfume). Ancient Persian legends speak of a nightingale that so dearly loved the white rose that it grasped it tightly. The thorns, which pierced its breast and caused its blood to fall on the rose, turned it red. Hence, one type of rose is known as the red damask. Interestingly, Rose is one of the most popular names for girls in many languages. The Turkish word gul, for instance, means rose and smile and has many popular derivations in Turkey.

Around the twelfth or thirteenth century, knights returning from the Crusades brought the rose home to Europe. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the rose was used as a symbol for the factions fighting to control England. The white rose symbolized York, and the red rose symbolized Lancaster. As a result, the conflict became known by historians as the War of the Roses. The red rose is still the emblem of England, since Lancaster won the war. Roses were in such high demand during the seventeenth century that royalty considered roses or rose water as legal tender. Both were often used as barter and for payment. Napoleons wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses in western Paris during the 1800s.

A new interpretation

In the twentieth century, a splendid new interpretation of the rose and nightingale story was presented by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. His famous The Words contains an addendum to the discussion on the nightingale. The nightingales small wage is the delight it experiences from gazing on smiling, beautiful roses, and the pleasure it receives from conversing with them and pouring out its woes. In other words, its sorrowful song is not a complaint arising from animal grief; rather, it is the birds thanks for the gifts of the Most Merciful.

Moreover, according to Said Nursi, every sort of being–even stars–has a nightingale. But the most excellent and noble nightingale, whose voice was the most ringing, whose recitation was the most complete, whose thanks were the most universal, who brought all beings of the heavens and Earth in the universes garden to rapture through his poetry was Prophet Muhammad, the nightingale of the luminous Quran. Here, the rose is associated with divine knowledge and wisdom.

Conclusion

Today, people prefer to buy roses for special occasions as precious gifts. As Shakespeare said, there is a meaning kept in the rose that we have to understand, just as the rose keeps its scent within itself. On Valentines Day roses express our love, on Mothers Day they tell our mothers that we remember their mercy toward us, and on Teachers Day they show a students respect for his or her teachers.

Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this symbolic ancestry. The popularity of roses seems to rise and fall according to gardening trends of the time. Gardeners realize that roses fit the lifestyle of every century. With the rise of emphasis on spirituality in the twenty-first century, roses are once again enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

Roses have a special hold upon us and, even though it is hard to capture in words, there is something about roses that evokes a response beyond the virtue of great beauty. This article has presented some historical traces of roses in several civilizations. Perhaps you will associate them with a favorite meaning or figure. So, would you like to finish the following sonnet of Shakespeare in your own way?

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I …?(3)
(the original says in her cheeks)

Footnotes

1. www.poetry.com
2. Omar Ali-Shah, tr. The Rose Garden (Gulistan) of Saadi (Reno, NV: Tractus, 1997).
3. From My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun, Sonnet 130, www.poets.org.

Gulen’s book promises to show that Path by describing it and through the example of a teacher who personifies the human struggle for perfection. It is no ordinary path that the book under review describes. It is the Sufi path that leads an aspirant to the goal of perfecting oneself by conquering the lower self and orienting it toward the Self: God. Sufism teaches a moral process that must be undertaken by all who seek to be purified and admitted into the state of perfected personhood. Gulen takes the aspirant through this journey of self-discipline to attain the self- hood, in which God reflects His own attributes. This is the journey that is willingly undertaken to become a mirror that reflects Divine qualities as they are lived in human society-compassion and love, forgiveness and magnanimity.

In the chapter on the origins of Sufism, Gulen does not simply delineate the historical development of the spiritual movement in Islam. He also engages the reader, in a style that befits his own position as a practicing master, by anchoring Sufism appropriately in the Qur’an and Sunna and showing the indispensable connection between the Sufism and the Shari’ah. The goals of the Sufi path and the Shari’ah are identical in the sense that Islam, as a religion, inculcates virtues that lead to obedience of the Merciful Creator, with a deeper spiritual and intellectual awareness and commitment. There is a realistic assessment of human religiosity in the section in which Gulen states that Sufis divide people into three groups: perfected ones, aspirants, and lay believers who “cling heavily to the earth.”

The Sufi path, that begins with “turning toward God,” lists all the states and stages in the psychological and spiritual development of the God-loving and human-caring personality of a novice. Whether it is a virtue or a state, Gulen describes it in detail to make it accessible for the one who wishes to understand these stations directly derived from the teachings of the Qur’an and the Sunna. The relevance of each state is underscored by the poems of some Sufi masters, especially those of Rumi, that have captured the essential meaning of these states in human spiritual and moral development.

The arrangement of these stations is not hierarchical, in that they do not require the aspirant to go through the path in the order adopted by Gulen. Rather, the author seeks to provide each station and stage as a point of entry on the path, which resembles a river that can be entered from any point and journeyed to reach the Final Source: God. In a way, Gulen follows Mawlana Rumi in inviting the aspirant at any stage of his or her spiritual development to join the travelers on the path of God’s Love through love for God’s creation and creatures-the life of harmony and peace. The book is a welcome, original addition to the growing literature on the Islamic Sufi tradition.

Abdulaziz Sachedina
Department of Religious Studies
University of Virginia

WHAT IS SUFISM?

Sufism has been defined in many ways. Some see it as God’s annihilating the individual’s ego, will, and self-centredness and then reviving him spiritually with the lights of His Essence so that he may live according to His will. Others view it as a continuous striving to cleanse one’s self of all that is bad or evil in order to acquire virtue.

Junayd al-Baghdadi, a famous Sufi master, defines Sufism as a method of recollecting “self-annihilation in God” and “permanence or subsistence with God.” Shibli summarizes it as always being together with God or in His presence, so that no worldly or other-worldly aim is even entertained. Abu Muhammad Jarir describes it as resisting the temptations of the carnal self and bad qualities and acquiring laudable moral qualities.

There are some who describe Sufism as seeing behind the “outer” or surface appearance of things and events and interpreting whatever happens in the world in relation to God. This means that a person regards every act of God as a window to “see” Him, lives his life as a continuous effort to view or “see” Him with a profound, spiritual “seeing” indescribable in physical terms, and with a profound awareness of being continually overseen by Him.

All of these definitions can be summarized as follows: Sufism is the path followed by an individual who is seeking to free himself or herself from human vices and weaknesses in order to acquire angelic qualities and conduct pleasing to God. Such a goal can be realized by living in accordance with the requirements of God’s knowledge and love, and in the resulting spiritual delights that ensue.

Sufism is based on observing even the most “trivial” rule of Shari’a in order to penetrate their inner meaning. An initiate or traveler on the path (salik) never separates the outer observance of the Shari’a from its inner dimension, and therefore observes all of the requirements of both the outer and the inner dimensions of Islam. Through such observance, he or she travels toward the goal in utmost humility and submission.

Sufism, being a demanding path leading to knowledge of God, has no room for negligence or frivolity. It requires that the initiate should strive continuously, like a honeybee flying from the hive to flowers and from flowers to the hive, to acquire this knowledge. He should purify his heart from all other attachments, and resist all carnal inclinations, desires, and appetites. He should lead his life in a spiritual manner, always be ready to receive divine blessing and inspiration, and in strict observance of the example left behind by Prophet Muhammad. Convinced that attachment and adherence to God is the greatest merit and honor, he should renounce his own desires for the demands of God, the Truth.

After these [preliminary] definitions, we should discuss the aim, benefits, and principles of Sufism.

Sufism requires the strict observance of all religious obligations, an austere lifestyle, and the renunciation of carnal desires. Through this method of spiritual self-discipline, the individual’s heart is purified and his senses and faculties are employed in the way of God, which means that he can now begin to live on a spiritual level. Sufism also enables man, through the constant worship of God, to deepen his awareness of himself as a devotee of God. It enables him to renounce this transient world and the desires and emotions that it engenders, and awakens him to the reality of the other world that is turned toward God’s Divine Beautiful Names.

Sufism allows the individual to make this transition, for it develops the angelic dimension of one’s existence and enables the acquisition of a strong, heart-felt, and personally experienced conviction of the articles of faith that he had accepted only superficially.

The principles of Sufism may be listed as follows:

1. Reaching true belief in God’s Divine Oneness and living in accordance with its demands.

2. Heeding the Divine Speech (the Qur’an), and discerning and then obeying the commands of the Divine Power and Will as they relate to the universe (the laws of creation and life).

3. Overflowing with Divine Love and getting along with all other beings in the realization (originating from Divine Love) that the universe is a cradle of brotherhood.

4. Giving preference or precedence to the well-being and happiness of others.

5. Acting in accord with the demands of the Divine Will-not with the demands of our own will-and living in a manner that reflects our self-annihilation in God and subsistence with Him.

6. Being open to love, spiritual yearning, delight, and ecstasy.

7. Being able to discern what is in hearts or minds through facial expressions and the inner, Divine mysteries and meanings of surface events.

8. Visiting spiritual places and associating with people who encourage the avoidance of sin and striving in the way of God.

9. Being content with permitted pleasures, and not to taking even a single step toward that which is not permitted.

10. Continuously struggling against worldly ambitions and illusions that lead us to believe in the eternal nature of this world.

11. Never forgetting that salvation is possible only through certainty or conviction of the truth of religious beliefs and conduct, sincerity or purity of intention, and the sole desire to please God.

Two other elements may be added: acquiring knowledge and understanding of the religious and gnostic sciences, and following the guidance of a perfected, spiritual master. Both of these are of considerable significance the Naqshbandiyah Sufi order.

It may be useful to discuss Sufism according to the following basic concepts, which often form the core of books written on good morals, manners, and asceticism, and which are regarded as the sites of the “Muhammadan Truth” in one’s heart. They can also be considered lights by which to know and follow the spiritual path leading to God.

The first and foremost of these concepts is wakefulness (yaqaza), which is alluded to in several Prophetic sayings (hadiths): “My eyes sleep but my heart does not,” and “Men are asleep. They wake up when they die.”

THE ORIGIN OF SUFISM

As the history of Islamic religious sciences tells us, religious commandments were not written down during the early days of Islam; rather, the practice and oral circulation of commandments related to belief, worship, and daily life allowed the people to memorize them. Thus it was not difficult to compile them in books later on, for what had been memorized and practiced was simply written down. In addition, since religious commandments were the vital issues in a Muslim’s individual and collective life, scholars gave priority to them and compiled books on them. Legal scholars collected and codified books on Islamic law and its rules and principles pertaining to all fields of life. Traditionists established the Prophetic traditions (hadiths) and way of life (sunnah), and preserved them in books. Theologians dealt with the issues concerning Muslim belief. Interpreters of the Qur’an dedicated themselves to studying its meaning, including issues that would later be called “Qur’anic sciences,” such as naskh (abrogation of a law), inzal (God’s sending down the entire Qur’an at one time), tanzil (God’s sending down the Qur’an in parts on different occasions), qira’at (Qur’anic recitation), ta’wil (exegesis), and others. Thanks to these universally appreciated efforts, the truths and principles of Islam were established in such a way that their authenticity cannot be doubted.

While some scholars were engaged in these “outer” activities, Sufi masters were mostly concentrating on the pure spiritual dimension of the Muhammadan Truth. They sought to reveal the essence of man’s being, the real nature of existence, and the inner dynamics of man and the cosmos by calling attention to the reality of things lying beneath and beyond their outer dimension. Adding to the Qur’anic commentaries, the narrations of the Traditionists, and the deductions of the legal scholars, the Sufi masters developed their ways through asceticism, spirituality and self-purification-in short, their practice and experience of religion. Thus the Islamic spiritual life based on asceticism, regular worship, abstention from all major and minor sins, sincerity and purity of intention, love and yearning, and the individual’s admission of his essential impotence and destitution became the subject-matter of Sufism, a new science possessing its own method, principles, rules, and terms. Even if various differences gradually emerged among the orders that were established later on, it can be said that the basic core of this science has always been the essence of the Muhammadan Truth.

The two aspects of the same truth-the commandments of the Shari’a and Sufism- have sometimes been presented as mutually exclusive. This is quite unfortunate, as Sufism is nothing more than the spirit of Shari’a, which is made up of austerity, self-control and criticism, and the continuous struggle to resist the temptations of Satan and the carnal, evil-commanding self so as to be able to fulfill religious obligations. While adherence to the former has been regarded as exotericism (self-restriction to the outer dimension of religion), following the latter has been seen as pure esotericism. Although this discrimination partly arises from assertions that the commandments of the Shari’a are represented by legal scholars or muftis, and the other by the Sufis, it should be viewed as the result of the natural, human tendency of assigning priority to that way which is most suitable for the individual practitioner. 

Many legal scholars, Traditionists, and interpreters of the Qur’an produced important books based on the Qur’an and the Sunna. The Sufis, following the methods dating back to the time of the Prophet and his Companions, also compiled books on austerity, the spiritual struggle against carnal desires and temptations, states and stations of the spirit. They also recorded their own spiritual experiences, love, ardor, and rapture. The goal of this literature was to attract the attention of those whom they regarded as restricting their practice and reflection to the “outer” dimension of religion, and directing it to the “inner” dimension of the religious life.

Both Sufis and scholars sought to reach God by observing the Divine obligations and prohibitions. Nevertheless, some extremist attitudes-occasionally observed on both sides-caused disagreements. Actually there was no substantial disagreement, and it should not have been viewed as a disagreement, for it only involved dealing with different aspects and elements of religion under different titles. The tendency of specialists in jurisprudence to concern themselves with the rules of worship and daily life and how to regulate and discipline man’s individual and social life, and that of Sufis to provide a way for man to live at a high level of spirituality through self-purification and spiritual training cannot be considered a disagreement. In fact, Sufism and jurisprudence are like the two schools of a university that is seeking to teach its students the two dimensions of the Shari’a and to enable its students to practice it in their daily life. One school cannot survive without the other, for while one teaches how to pray, how to be ritually pure, how to fast, how to give charity, and how to regulate all aspects of daily life, the other concentrates on what these and other actions really mean, how to make worship an inseparable part of man’s existence, and how to elevate man to the rank of a universal, perfect being-a true human being. That is why neither discipline can be neglected.

Although some self-proclaimed Sufis have labelled religious scholars as “scholars of ceremonies” and “exoterists,” real, perfected Sufis have always depended on the basic principles of the Shari’a and have based their thoughts on the Qur’an and the Sunna. They have derived their methods from these basic sources of Islam. Al-Wasaya wa al-Ri’aya (The Advices and Observation of Rules) by al-Muhasibi, al-Ta’arruf li-Madhhabi Ahi al-Sufism (A Description of the Way of the People of Sufism) by Kalabazi, al-Luma’ (The Gleams) by al-Tusi, Qut al-Qulub (The Food of Hearts) by Abu Talib al-Makki, and al-Risala (The Treatise) by al-Qushayri are among the precious sources where Sufism is dealt with according to the Qur’an and the Sunna. Some of these sources concentrate on self-control and self- purification, while others elaborate upon various topics concerned with Sufism.

After these great compilers came Hujjat al-Islam Imam al-Ghazzali author of Ihya’ al-Ulum al-Din (Reviving the Religious Sciences), his most celebrated work. He reviewed all of Sufism’s terms, principles, and rules, and, establishing those agreed upon by all Sufi masters and criticizing others, united the outer (Shari’a and jurisprudence) and inner (Sufi) dimensions of Islam. The Sufi masters coming after him presented Sufism as one of the religious sciences or a dimension thereof, promoting unity or agreement among themselves and the so-called “scholars of ceremonies.” In addition, they made several Sufi subjects, such as the states of the spirit, certainty or conviction, sincerity and morality, part of the curriculum of madrassas (institutes for the study of religious sciences).

Although Sufism mostly concentrates on the inner world of man and deals with the meaning and effect of religious commandments on man’s spirit and heart and is therefore abstract, it does not contradict any of the Islamic ways based on the Qur’an and Sunna. In fact, as is the case with other religious sciences, its source is the Qur’an and the Sunna, as well as the conclusions drawn from the Qur’an and the Sunna via ijtihad (deduction) by the purified scholars of the early period of Islam. It dwells on knowledge, knowledge of God, certainty, sincerity, perfect goodness, and other similar, fundamental virtues.

Defining Sufism as the “science of esoteric truths or mysteries,” or the “science of man’s spiritual states and stations,” or the “science of initiation” does not mean that it is completely different from other religious sciences. Such definitions have resulted from the Shari’a-rooted experiences of various individuals, all of whom have had different temperaments and dispositions, over the centuries. It is a distortion to present the viewpoints of Sufis and the thoughts and conclusions of Shari’a scholars as essentially different from each other. Although it is undeniable that some Sufis have been fanatic adherents of their own ways, and that some religious scholars (i.e., legal scholars, Traditionists, and interpreters of the Qur’an) have restricted themselves to the outward dimension of religion, those who follow and represent the middle, straight path have always formed the majority. Therefore it is wrong to conclude that there is a serious disagreement, which most likely began with some unbecoming thoughts and words uttered by some legal scholars and Sufis against each other, between the two groups. When compared with those on the side of tolerance and consensus, those who have started or participated in such conflicts are very few indeed. This is natural, for both groups have always depended on the Qur’an and Sunna, the two main sources of Islam.

In addition, the priorities of Sufism have never been different from those of jurisprudence. Both disciplines stress the importance of belief and of engaging in good deeds and good conduct. The only difference is that Sufis emphasize self-purification, deepening the meaning of good deeds and multiplying them, and attaining higher standards of good morals so that one’s conscience can awaken to the knowledge of God and thus embark upon a path that leads to the required sincerity in living Islam and obtaining God’s pleasure. By means of these virtues, man can acquire another nature, another heart, a spiritual intellect within the heart, a deeper knowledge of God, and another “tongue” with which to mention God, he can observe all Shari’a commandments based on a deeper awareness of, and with a disposition for, devotion to God.

An individual practitioner of Sufism can use it to deepen his or her spirituality. Through the struggle with one’s self, solitude or retreat, invocation, self-control and self-criticism, the veils covering the inner dimension of existence are torn apart, enabling the individual to acquire a strong conviction of the truth of all the major and minor principles of faith.