Hamzah Wald Maqbul – The First Rule of Struggle 10 Ramadan 1444 Late Night Majlis
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So we continue,
in the discussion of the archetype of Mujahada,
or as Nicholson translates it, self mortification,
struggling against enough, so that a person can
achieve the state of,
witnessing,
the divine,
in his heart.
And so he continues. He says, now I
will state the arguments of the opposing party.
He told
the the the doctrine of,
of Riaba and of Mujahada being the driver
of a person's saluk. Now he's gonna
state the arguments of the opposing party.
They maintain that the
verse of the Quran cited by Sahel is,
Histeron Proteron.
The
verse
that those who struggle
for us,
we will guide them to our paths.
And so he translates this into a Greek
expression,
which
means I don't speak Greek, but it means
something like
putting the putting the last first.
That it's a type of.
He says that and the meaning of it
is that those who we guide to our
ways, they will strive to the utmost for
our sake.
But this is this is what their, interpretation
of this verse is. And that the prophet
said, none of you shall be saved by
his works. Oh, messenger of Allah, they cried,
not even you?
Not even I, said he, unless god encompasses
me with his mercy.
So this is the the the the counterargument.
Is a man's act, and his act cannot
possibly become the cause of his salvation, which
depends on the divine will.
And god has said whoever wishes,
whoever god wishes to lead aright, he will
open his
chest to receive Islam.
And whoever he wishes to lead astray, he
will make his chest straight and narrow.
By affirming his will, he denies the effect
of the religious ordinances which have been laid
upon mankind.
If Mujahideh were the cause of union,
then Iblis would not have been damned.
Or if neglect of Mujahadda were the cause
of damnation, Adam alayhi wasalam would never have
been blessed. The result hangs on predestined grace
on the inayat of Allah Ta'ala, not an
abundance of mujahada.
It is not the case that he who
exerts himself most is the most secure, but
he who has
obtained the grace of Allah ta'ala is most
near to him. A monk worshiping in his
cell may be far from Allah, and a
sinner in a tavern may be near to
him. The noblest thing in the world is
the faith of a child who is not
subject to the religious law at all, in
fact,
and in this respect belongs to the same
category as madmen.
If then Mujahideh is not the cause of
the noblest of all gifts, then no cause
is necessary for anything that is inferior.
This is a counterargument for the person who,
talks about Mujahadda.
Now he's gonna try to make between these
these these two,
points of view. He's trying to resolve he's
gonna try to resolve
between them. So he says, I, Ali bin
Uthman, Al Jullabi,
say that, the difference between the two parties
in this controversy lies in the in the
expression, the way they express themselves.
One says he who seeks shall find, and
the other says he who finds shall seek.
Seeking is their cause of finding, but it
is no less true that finding is also
the cause of seeking. The one party practices
mujahada for the purpose of obtaining contemplation, whereas
the other party practices contemplation
for the purpose of obtaining mujahada.
The fact is that mujahada stands in the
same relation to contemplation
as tawfir, as divine blessing, which is a
gift from Allah and
So just like a person's tafir and obedience,
they both have a relationship with one another.
You wanna do something and Allah wants you
to do some you wanna do something good
and Allah wants you to do something good,
so something good ends up happening.
As it is absurd to seek obedience without
the divine blessing without,
it is also absurd to seek the divine
blessing without obedience.
Both of them are absurd. To think that
Allah will wish good for you but you're
not gonna end up doing anything good, or
to think that you're gonna do something good
and that means Allah is gonna wish good
for you. Both of them have to be
there at the same time.
Just as it is absurd to seek the
divine blessing without obedience,
sorry. Just as it is absurd to,
seek obedience without divine divine blessing, it is
absurd to seek the divine blessing without obedience.
And there can be no without
contemplation, and there can be no contemplation without
The 2 of them are like kind of
like,
the 2 wings on which a person's saluk
flies.
Man is guided to mujahada by a flash
of divine beauty. In as much as that
flash is the cause of, the existence of
mujahada, divine guidance, hidayat, precedes
Mujahada.
Now with regards to the argument of Sahil
and his followers,
that
failure to affirm Mujahda involves the denial of
all religious ordinances which have come down in
the books,
to all the prophets that have been revealed.
This statement requires correction.
Religious obligation or taklif depends on divine guidance
on Hidayat and acts of mujahada only serve
to affirm the proofs of God, not to
affect real union with him.
God has said,
and though we had sent down the angels
unto them, and the dead had spoken unto
them, and we had gathered before them all
things together, they would not have believed unless
god had so willed.
For the belief in god is our will,
he writes in ex explanation,
not evidences or or.
Accordingly, the revelations of the prophet
and the ordinances of Deen
are means. They're asbaab to attaining union, but
they're not the cause, the illah, of obtaining
union.
So far as, religious obligations are concerned, Abu
Bakr, who
was in the same position as Abu Jahl.
But Abu Jahl having justice and grace attained,
whereas Abu Jahl I'm sorry. Abu Bakr having
justice and grace attained, whereas Abu Jahl having
justice without grace failed. This is
a a a comment
directed to Abu Jahl, his actual or his
in
Jahiliya was what?
Abu Abu Hakam.
Why? Because he was, an upright. He was
thought to be an upright man, a just
man, a wise man, sagacious man, a generous
man, a man of many good qualities.
So these qualities were shared by Abu Bakr
and
and, and Abu Jahl.
But Abu Jahl didn't have the divine grace
that went with those qualities, so it made
him Abu Jahl, whereas the divine grace made
Abu Bakr Abu Bakr.
Therefore, the cause of attainment is attainment itself,
not the act of seeking attainment.
For if the seeker were the one with,
the object sought, the seeker would be 1.
And in that case, he would not be
the seeker because, he who has attained is
at rest, whereas the seeker can never be.
Again, in reference to their argument that the
qualities of a horse are altered by mujahada,
you must know that mujahada is only a
means of bringing out the quality that are
already latent in the horse but do not
appear,
until he's been trained. So
this this is a
important point building on the the question that
you had from before,
which is what all that's there, the qadr
of Allah has
been written before a person.
It's read by the angels the day your
soul is escorted into the womb of your
mother.
He's saying that the Mujahda is what? Is
that who you are is already inside? The
Mujahda is just chiseling away the
the the unnecessary
clay in order to bring out what the
actual image is from inside of it.
Will never turn a donkey into a horse
or a horse into a donkey, so it
doesn't alter your quality
because this involves a change of identity. Since
has not the power of transforming identity, it
cannot possibly be affirmed in the presence of
Allah.
And this is an important point because this
helps a person to both see the point
of the while also not attributing
their,
their
progress and their saluk to themselves.
Because the one who gives you your identity,
the one who just, you know, makes the
decision whether you're a horse or a donkey,
that's Allah to Allah. That all comes from
him.
So if you see yourself making progress through
your difficulty and your hardship, you know it's
there's some point to it but it's not
you that's doing it, it's
still the decision is Allah
This is an important point because in matters
of in matters of the the masha'if of
the Haqq and the masha'if of the Ahlus
Sunnah,
always their focus is on Allah Ta'ala.
It's not the locus of of control
for practical matters, even if we attribute it
for legal matters, for example, we attribute it
to human being, always it's attributed ultimately to
Allah This is why he says that this
is the sub of a person's progress, not
the of the person's progress.
It's an occasion. It's not it's not the
actual the actual,
causal reason.
Over that spiritual director, namely Sahil, they used
to pass a mujahada of which he was
independent
and which while he was in the reality
thereof, he was unable to express in words.
He was not like some who have made
their religious or their religion to talk about
mujahada without practicing it. How absurd that what
ought to consist wholly in action should become
nothing but words. In short, the Sufis are
unanimous in recognizing the existence of mujahada and
discipline,
but hold that it is wrong to pay
them regard. Those who deny mujahada do not
mean to deny its reality,
but only to deny that any regard should
be paid to it and that anyone should
be pleased with his own actions in the
place of holiness as in as much as
mujahada is the act of a man, while
mushahada
is the act or the state that, one
is kept in by God. And a man's
actions do not begin to have value until
God keeps him thus. The mujahada of those
who Allah loves is the work of god
in them without choice on their part. It
overwhelms them and melts them away.
But their mujahada of the ignorant is the
work of themselves in themselves by their own
choice. It perturbs and distresses them and distresses
due to evil.
Therefore, do not speak of your own actions
while you cannot avoid it, and never in
any circumstance follow your nafs, for it is
your phenomenal being that veils you from Allah
So that's what he's saying is that the
people who are denying Mujaha that they're not
they're denying it in words because you're not
supposed to talk about it. It's like fight
club. Rule first rule of fight club, you
don't talk about you're not supposed to talk
about it.
Just do it.
When you talk, you attribute things to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
If you attribute it to yourself, then it's
itself, it's the veil. He thinks why? Because
you're a phenomenal being. The being of yourself
is is the veil between you and Allah
If you were veiled by one act alone,
you might be unveiled by another. But since
your whole being is a veil, you will
not become worthy of substance subsistence,
of, until you are wholly annihilated.
It is related in a well known anecdote
that Hussein bin Mansur Al Hallaj came to
Kufa
and lodged in the house of Mohammed bin
Hussein Al Alawi.
Ibrahim Al Hawass, who was also one of
the great,
also came to Kufa, and having heard of
Halaj went to go see him. Al Halaj
said to him, oh, Ibrahim, during this 40
years of your connection with Tasawaf, what have
you gained from it? Ibrahim Hawass
answered, I have made the doctrine of trust,
in a lot
uniquely my own. Al Hallaj said you have
wasted your life in cultivating your spiritual nature.
What has become of annihilation and unification?
What has become of annihilation and unification, I
e, trust in God is a term denoting
your conduct toward God and your spiritual excellence
in regards to relying on him. If a
man spends his whole life in remedying his
spiritual nature, he will need another life for
remedying his material nature, and his life will
be lost before he is found
a trace or vestige of God. And the
story is told of sheikh
Abu, Ali,
Syahav
Maru.
Siahar Persian for black. Abu Ali Siahar Maru,
that he said,
I saw my lore, Nafs,
in a form resembling my own, and someone
had seized it by the hair and gave
it to me in my own hands.
People, you know, like when they make a
lot of and they cut the nuffs off
really hard
and its grip on the person's starts to
slip. Then the starts seeing things from other
places,
but
the mind doesn't know how to interpret that
because the doesn't see. It's not an eye.
We even say the word sees things metaphorically.
So then the brain has to try to
neurons and things like that have to try
to transform transform and, like, translate all these
things into metaphor.
So he said he said, I saw my
nuffs,
that someone had seized it by its hair
and gave it to me in my own
hands.
I bound it to a tree and was
about to destroy it when it cried out,
don't trouble yourself.
I am, God's army.
I am God's army. I am God's soldier.
You cannot reduce me to nothing. You can't.
You'll never be able to destroy me.
And it is related
concerning Muhammad bin Iliyan of Nas'ah, an eminent
companion of Junaid, that
he said in my novitiate,
when I was a novice,
when I had become aware of the corruptions
of the nafs and acquainted with its places
of ambush, I always felt a violent hate
violent hatred of it in my heart.
One day, something like a
young fox came forth from my throat.
Again, this is one of those visions that
a person sees. Say, a young fox came
forth from my throat, and god caused me
to know that it was my nafs. I
cast it under my feet, and at every
kick I gave it, it grew bigger.
I said, other things are destroyed by pain
and blows. Why do you do why do
you increase?
It replied because I was created perverse. That
which is pain to other things is pleasure
to me and that that which is their
pleasure is my pain.
But the whatever is good for your is
gonna harm harm it. It's gonna make it
feel pain and whatever makes it happy is
gonna harm the
Sheikha Abu Abbas Shaqani,
who was the imam of his time, said,
one day I came into my house and
found a yellow dog lying there asleep.
Thinking that it had come in from the
street, I was about to turn it out,
but it crept in under, under me and
vanished.
Sheikh, Abu Qasem Gourgani,
who today is the may Allah prolong his
life. So that's his Sheikh. That's his. He's
always known. Yeah. But he was big he
was big he actually was a big Sheikh.
He's not just some reason, like, popping up.
He really was a great Sheikh.
He said that he said
that,
who to this day is the may God
prolong his life relates.
Speaking of his own novitiate,
that he saw his lower soul, his nafs
in the form of a snake. Adarresh said,
I saw my lower soul in the shape
of a mouse. Who are you? I asked.
It answered, I am the destruction of the
heedless, for I urge them to evil and
the salvation of those who love God. For
if I were not with them in my
corruption,
they would have been puffed up with pride
in their purity.
So it's like the opposite of your hype
guy. You know, people have a hype guy
to, you know, like, you know, constantly pumping
them up and whatever. As he said that,
like, in the in the,
the adulations
that the triumphant generals would come
into Rome with, that they would ride in
a
chariot with the with the the the Laurel
wreath on their head and the whole room
would come to,
like, cheer them and whatever. Right? So that
they would have a a slave ride on
the chariot with them and just every couple
of minutes, like, whisper in their ear, all
of it is vanity, all of it is
vanity.
The person has the nuffs. It kinda helps
you from
thinking you're cool,
because that's how it is.
All of these stories,
prove that the lower soul is a real
substance
and not a mere attribute and that it
has attributes which are clearly,
which we clearly can perceive. The messenger of
Allah said
the worst enemy is your nafs, which is
between your own two sides. When you have
obtained knowledge of it, you recognize that it
can be mastered by discipline,
but that its essence and substance do not
perish. If it is rightly known, under control,
the seeker need not care,
though it continues to exist in him.
Hence, the purpose of Mujahada of the nafs
is to destroy its attributes, not to annihilate
its reality.
Now I will discuss the true nature of
passion and the renunciation of lust.
We'll leave that for,
for the next.
Allah
give us.
Allah give us control over this thing and
not ever give it control over us. That
we have
The fortune of it serving us and that
we be saved from the disgrace of,
serving it, and that the moment that he
takes from this world, that this thing is
under our control and not the other way
around.