Mohammad Elshinawy – Tazkiyah & Tasawwuf In The Quran & Sunnah
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of t matter, t matter, and t matter in Islam's spiritual process, as well as the transformation of scripture and the importance of faith and justice in the system. They also touch on the use of "by the way" and the need for cooperation and unity in addressing issues related to the S opinion. The speakers end with a statement of leaders to comply with regulations and compliance policies.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah walhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulillahi wa ala
alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Allahumma a'alimna wa anfa'una wa anfa
'na bima a'allamtana wa zidina a'ilma.
We begin in the name of Allah, all
praise and glory be to Allah and may
His finest peace and blessings be upon His
Messenger Muhammad and his family and his companions
and all those who adhere to his guidance.
We ask him to make us among the
best of those who adhere to his guidance.
Allahumma ameen.
We ask Allah to teach us that which
benefits us and to benefit us with that
which he teaches us and to increase us
in knowledge.
Allahumma ameen.
So we welcome everyone to tonight's topic on
tazkiyah and tasawwuf through the lens of the
Qur'an and sunnah.
Of course the importance of these topics, we
will begin with that inshallah and then these
two terms, when do they converge, when do
they diverge and how do we navigate that.
So first and foremost the prophetic du'a
when the Prophet ﷺ taught us to say,
Allahumma aati nafsi taqwaha wa zakiha anta khayru
man zakkaha anta waliyuha wa mawlaha Oh Allah,
grant my nafs, my soul, loosely translated it's
taqwa, it's piety, wa zakiha, allow it to
undergo, subject it to, tazkiya, zakiha, purify it,
loosely translated, anta khayru man zakkaha, you are
the best one to purify it, anta waliyuha
wa mawlaha, you are its guardian and you
are its master.
Only Allah can, subhanahu wa ta'ala and
he is the best of those who can,
subhanahu wa ta'ala and this reminds us
of the fact that we are absolutely dependent
on Allah to show us the way to
tazkiya, to show us the way to purify
ourselves, hence the title in the Quran and
in the sunnah and it should be expected
as well that only the creator of our
soul, the creator of our spirit can identify
for us the way to purify and to
develop and to make healthy, bring to health
that spirit of ours.
Buddhism isn't going to give it to us,
any form of paganism isn't going to give
it to us, materialism also is not going
to satisfy the soul, only his way and
the way of Allah is twofold, one is
that he shows us the way, right, so
you know the notion of you can take
a horse to water but you can't make
him drink, right, Allah shows us the way
to purify our souls, right and he also
inspires us to drink from it, those deserving
will be inspired, so there is an irshad,
there is directing and there is tawfiq, there
is his divine grace, subhanahu wa ta'ala
and so today we're going to talk a
little bit about the mechanics of tazkiya, the
science of tazkiya, the discipline of tazkiya and
tasawwuf, we'll talk about that, that's today's talk,
but deserving Allah's tawfiq, that is the product,
not random, the product of what, lifelong work
and we can say this the opposite way
as well, not purifying your soul can happen
either because you don't take your purification methods
from revelation, from Allah or because you took
them but you don't observe them, it's just
sort of a theoretical for you, it's intellectual
luxuries for you, you're not dedicated to the
path of Allah, the ibadah, and then this
ayah comes to check us all, when Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala said he has already
succeeded, this person that undergoes tazkiya purifies their
soul and they have already failed, it's over
for someone that does not undergo tazkiya of
the soul because as Allah azza wa jalla
said elsewhere in the Quran the day that
no wealth, no offspring will be of any
benefit except the one that comes to Allah
with a sound heart, tazkiya is the process
to arriving at a sound heart and it
is a discipline, it is a science that
our deen granted us or at least granted
us the principles for, the science on how
to tame the human being and bring him
to his most elevated state to fulfill his
potential because you know without training, without spiritual
training, the human being becomes no different without
the refinement of tazkiya and tasawwuf, he becomes
like the wild animals greedy, aggressive, hasty, whatever
it's going to be of course the training
will differ because we're not animals, you know
animal you can whack them and he'll submit,
it requires a different process that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala showed us that process is
called what?
the remedy to an unrefined spirit is called
what?
it's called ibadah and before i move any
further i do want to tie these two
concepts together when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
said وَمَا خَلَقْتُ الْجِنَّ وَالْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونَ i
didn't create the jinn or the human except
for ibadah, ibadah we often think of ritual
devotion the ritual acts, the outward acts we
do, but this definition is a definition that
we don't study enough and that's why there's
a discipline for it, that's why there's a
science for it which is at the heart
of ibadah is an inner state, a state
of absolute adoration of Allah a state of
being in awe of Allah, recognizing his awesomeness,
right?
awe, adoration and also you being submissive at
heart, feeling powerless in front of Allah and
humbled in front of him تَزْكِيَةَ تَصَوُّفَ are
the sciences that bring you to that inner
purity which is the root of ibadah, does
that make sense?
the same way that fiqh, the science of
islamic law is focused on what?
you being subservient to Allah in the exterior
ibadah right?
or as some other scholars have put it
islam submitting outwardly is where it must start,
but we can't stop there because the prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said ihsan, excellence in
your islam is when you worship Allah as
though you see him, it's not going to
be with your eyesight, it's going to be
with the refinement of what?
of your insight, that's where this science, this
discipline comes into play okay, this discipline, i
keep using the words تَزْكِيَةَ تَصَوُّفَ interchangeably why
am i doing that?
this needs a little bit of a rewind,
a historical rewind to understand the roots, the
origins historically of when that happened and why
that happened and how that happened so you
can imagine after the time of the prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and the early caliphs
of islam, islam had such inertia, it was
spreading in miraculous ways all over the globe,
like within a hundred years, you're talking about
islam being less than a hundred kilometers from
paris right, so there was an eruption of
prosperity for the muslim ummah okay, the ills
of prosperity caused a group of this ummah
within the first century even right, to start
falling prey to the ills of prosperity down
to even neglecting the obligations of islam okay,
and as time progressed there even occurred a
similar negligence when others that were outwardly religious
or should we even say more so religious,
they started over emphasizing the external acts, that's
called fiqh right, the exterior ibadah and neglecting
the interior ibadah, the sincerity, the certainty, the
trust in allah, the reliance, the seeking of
the dar al-akhirah, so a group of
this ummah, scholars really, became very well known,
this of course happened in a decentralized way,
but they became known for committing themselves to
resist these trends, the trends of materialism, the
trends also of like overemphasis on the exterior
ibadat, negligence of the acts of worship of
the heart, they insisted on focusing on these,
resisting these negative trends and calling others away
from them as well, so effectively they were
telling the ummah you have forgotten ihsan right,
you have forgotten tawakkul, you have forgotten yaqeen,
you have forgotten zuhd, you know ihsan is
excellence right, yaqeen is certainty, tawakkul, reliance on
allah, zuhd is what, to be disinterested in
this world, and that is something beloved to
allah, that you not be captivated, obsessed with
this material life or this worldly life, and
these people eventually became known, referred to as
a few things historically, they were referred to
as a zuhad, a zuhad, the ascetic, someone
who's ascetic, minimalist, aloof to this dunya, from
zuhad, and sometimes we find in our books
they were called the fuqara, fuqara means the
poor, but this is in reference to antumul
fuqara ilallah, that all of the creation is
impoverished in front of allah, we own nothing
in reality in front of allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, but they most famously were known
as as sufiyya, sufis, where did this term
come from, there are four views that historians
mention about why they were called sufis, the
first of them is that it comes from
the greek word sufiyya, right, because sufiyya, greek
word, sufiyya, like you know ayah sufiyya, the
church that became a masjid, right, why was
it called ayah sufiyya, ayah sufiyya means holy
wisdom, sufiyya is wisdom, think of like also
philosophy, philosophia, right, it's the pursuit of wisdom,
right, so these were a people that were
pursuing inner wisdom, pursuing the light of guidance
from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that was
one opinion, the other opinion is that it
came from as-suffah, as-suffah were the
people that accepted to give up and sacrifice
so much to go live with the prophet
sallallahu alayhi wasallam in medina, ahlus-suffah, they
were people that were transitioning into the muslim
state or the muslim city at the time,
and so it's a, they resemble ahlus-suffah,
those who relinquished worldly comfort for the sake
of deen, the third opinion is that it
came from safaa, it came from the word
safaa which means purity, as-safi means something
that's been filtered down to purity, and it
came from safaa, however the most famous opinion
is that it comes from the word suf,
suf means wool, because these were people that
were known to wear simple clothing, not expensive
extravagant clothing as everyone else in the age
of prosperity, so they were recognized by only
wearing sort of the roughest fabrics, the wool,
so they were known as the woolers, the
people that wore wool, why did this name
stick?
some scholars said and it's very interesting, that
it's because they accepted the name sufi, these,
they accepted that name to move people away
from calling them zuhad, these guys mashaallah don't
care about dunya, we're going to call them
what, muhsineen, they don't want the name muhsineen,
they are in denial of the fact that
they've reached the level of ihsan, muzakkeen, we're
sort of people that are experts of tazkiyah,
they don't want that one, this one is
objectively true, we wear wool, and it does
not involve self-praise, yes madam, does not
involve self-praise, so it's stuck, but don't
get caught up in the name, these are
people that were saying we cannot downplay the
sunnah, we cannot downplay the sunnah, but sincerity
as we outwardly enact the sunnah is even
more important, these were people that were saying
we cannot downplay the obligations of islam, but
the inner states are obligations as well, you
see what's happening there, they're trying to get
the ummah to focus on their negligence, and
let me mention to you some of the
most distinguished personalities in the early phases of
the sufi tradition, of them was ma'ruf
al-karhi, and i'll rank them for you
by the the year of death, ma'ruf
al-karhi died in the year 200 after
hijrah, so now we're talking about 200 years
in, and this timeline is very much helpful
for contextualizing this discipline, ma'ruf al-karhi
rahimahullah was someone that imam ahmed ibn hanbal,
one of the founders of the four schools,
admired very much, so much so that people
around him were like puzzled, like why do
you praise ma'ruf so much, right, because
ma'ruf was more known for sort of
being a sufi than being a faqih, a
scholar of hadith or law or something, right,
they said he's not a alim alim, he's
not like a scholar, and so imam ahmed
rahimahullah would say to them, and what else
do we seek out of all of this
knowledge, but what ma'ruf arrived at, in
another narration he said, the foundation of all
knowledge, he means the fear of god, is
what he was able to achieve, this is
why i admire him, because all this knowledge
we have is pointless if we don't get
to where he got to, for instance, in
215 died abu sulayman al-darani and abu
sulayman al-darani was a great scholar and
early practitioner of tazkiyah tasawwuf, known for it,
and he was very much keen and observant
of the quran and the sunnah, one of
the the famous statements that's often attributed to
him, he used to say that
sometimes a gem of wisdom, right, remember sufiya
wisdom, they're seeking it, sometimes one of these
gems of wisdom, these flashes of wisdom, lands
in my heart, and i do not accept
it for days, okay, he's saying i keep
it on hold, until two trustworthy witnesses tell
me i can let it in, who's he
referring to, the quran and the sunnah, right,
so he was very much known for this
sufi focus, if you will, tazkiyah focus, at
the same time he was utterly averse to
anything that was not approved of by the
quran and by the sunnah, in 295 is
the famous abu hussein al-nuri, i'll mention
to you just four so we can move
on, and he used to say to the
people about this path of seeking spiritual purity,
he would say he
says
whenever you see someone claiming a certain status
with allah, obviously he doesn't mean claiming like
with his mouth, if you're claiming it with
your mouth, it's already a huge red flag,
huge, right, but claiming it meaning sort of
acting in a way that he sort of
has a certain status with allah, he says
that exempts him from the sharia, says you
know i've reached a certain status, i don't
need to follow the outward stuff, the opposite
imbalance now, right, the opposite extreme, he says
do not come near him, and he would
say in another narration, suspect his religious commitment,
and the most famous of them who died
in 298, so you think of the third
century is winding down now, in 298 was
the famous al-junaid ibn muhammad, who was
known as a he was known as like
the the most elite chief of sort of
the sufi practitioners, he used to often say
the path to allah that
the path to allah the mighty and majestic
is obstructed for the creation of allah unless
they follow the footsteps of allah's messenger and
those adhering to his sunnah, like the rightly
guided caliphs and the scholars of islam that
are protective of the sunnah, so this is
the first 300 years, okay, the purest of
the sufi practitioners, obviously you can find them
in the purest generations, right, then things start
getting more complicated as we move away from
the period of revelation, right, move into future
centuries, towards the end of this third century,
one of the students of al-junaid ibn
muhammad, his name was al-hallaj, some of
you may hear the name of al-hallaj,
al-hallaj was sort of known, if you
look him up, he's known as a sufi
mystic, right, and he was accused of heresy
because he spoke words of pantheism, pantheism is
what?
god is everywhere, right, it's all the same,
right, al-junaid ibn muhammad, the sufi master,
the head of the class, it is reported
about him in tarikh al-baghdad that he
said to him, oh hallaj, you have ripped
such a gaping hole in islam, nobody can
hurt islam, he means in people's understanding of
islam, right, you have ripped a gaping hole
in islam with these philosophical sayings you're bringing
about, this deviance, that nothing can plug this
hole except your head, meaning you deserve to
pay for it with your life, for what
you did in terms of islam, and so
this, i use this only as a placeholder,
because this is what could be known as
what spawned or started the period where they
started an era, a different age, an era
of philosophical sufism, right, the philosophical sufis, and
some people try to reel them in, some
people try to sort of rehabilitate that excess,
that deviance that took place in philosophical sufism,
and the most famous of them is abu
ismail harawi rahimahullah, i'm fast forwarding now for
the sake of time, abu ismail harawi rahimahullah
died when?
in 481 hijrah, which means say about 200
years after okay, this was a great scholar,
a great scholar of islam, respectful of the
sharia, devoted to worship, courageous, fearless, right, he
risked his life on so many occasions, he
says about himself i
was subjected to the sword,
meaning execution, five times, every single time they're
not telling me recant your views, take them
back, they're just telling me shut your mouth,
stop disagreeing with people, just be silent about
those who have these other views, but he
was adamant about speaking truth, as he saw
it, as a great scholar of islam, however,
in this period, the notion of fana, and
to understand the history, you have to understand
fana, fana is translated in sufi discourse as
like annihilation, or vanishment, it is essentially a
doctrine which talks about being lost in god,
forgetting yourself, out of your observance of allah,
the ultimate, the most real, al haq, al
mubeen of course, what you mean by fana,
makes all the difference, there could be fana,
as ibn al qayyim sort of rehabilitates the
doctrine, that is ihsan, you only see allah,
worship allah as though you see him, if
you mean that nothing actually exists, that means
allah didn't create anything, it's only allah, it
means allah is in everything perhaps, right, you
can worship anything, you'd be worshiping allah, right,
this is the problem with that doctrine, but
that notion of you being lost in god,
had dominated all sufi discourse, by the time
al harawi was around, right, even in his
writings, like he tiptoed around the wrong beliefs,
because he was a scholar, but if you
read his writings, you know his book manazil
sa'ireen, has a hundred stations of spiritual
refinement, at the top of every station is
what?
fana, everything leads to what?
to fana, so it is almost as if
sufism, by the end of the 5th century,
had been predominantly, of course the haqq always
remained, and there was, but predominantly had been
reduced to an emotion, that was the problem,
everything was about what?
the experience, the feeling, the vanishment, that's what
it was about, and this is why al
imam al zahabi, rahimahullah, the historian, he says,
people benefited from al harawi in droves, but
others remained ignorant, especially a group of the
sufis of philosophy, and monism, monism is everything
is god, in simplest terms, right, who follow
and adhere to his words in manazil sa
'ireen, and claim he is one of them,
they think he's agreeing with them, and he's
not, he says no, rather he was a
scripturalist, he cared about the scripture very much,
he was athari, devoted to affirming the divine
attributes, muthbit, extremely averse to speculative theology, he
didn't like sort of kalam and speculative theology,
and its adherents, and the people that followed
this, in his manazil, this is his book
on tazkiyah and tasawwuf, there are allusions, indirect
references, to erasure, erasing yourself, right, and annihilation,
self-annihilation, fana, right, the death of the
ego, to die to yourself, if you will,
right, and annihilation, but he only intended that
the absence of witnessing all else but god,
ihsan, that's what he meant by it, he
said he did not intend to deny the
existence of all else in the external world,
he's saying you're not recognizing anything else, because
allah is the reality, so everything else you
see through it, that's what he meant, you
don't see yourself anymore, you don't see the
people, you see allah is behind it all,
he said he didn't mean that nothing actually
existed in the external world, but then he
says, listen, if only he had not authored
this book, he says like this was so
misused for so many people, i wish he
never wrote the book, rahimahullah, this is a
great book by the way, it has great
value, but not just for anyone that doesn't
have a filter to go through it, that's
the idea, and we'll get to that in
a minute, he said for how sweet was
the tasawwuf of the companions, by the way,
zahabi rahimahullah is one of the greatest, top
five if you will, handful of names that
were students of ibn Taymiyah rahimahullah, right, he's
saying how sweet was the tasawwuf, the sufism
if you will, of the companions and the
successors, the tabi'een, they did not delve
into these vain ideas and these insinuations, rather
they worshipped god with humility and reliance and
fear, struggling against his enemies and hurrying to
his obedience, so in summary, how did the
shift happen to philosophical, mystical sufism, two things,
number one, fading emphasis on the scriptures, people
are moving more and more away from the
revelation, right, and number two, people without now
the safeguards of revelation, they're being more and
more exposed to outside ideas, other doctrines, right,
so there happens what's called syncretism, you think
islam says this, what you've already experienced from
the world around you, right, so this is
what happened, all right, so that was when
did al-harawi die, rahimahullah, who remembers, 481,
almost the year 500, attempts continued to happen
to restore the purest form of the sufi
discipline, the purest form of the science of
tazkiyah, one of the most famous of those
who sought to restore it was abu hamid
al-ghazzali, rahimahullah, in his book, ihya' alum
ad-din, al-ghazzali, rahimahullah, died when, in
505, so say about 25 years, 24 years
after al-harawi, rahimahullah, i want you just
to, without getting into it, al-ghazzali, rahimahullah,
writes a book called, what, reviving the religious
sciences, notice, it had sort of got, this
is a personality that is heralded in the
sufi tradition, right, and others of course, but
he's a great shafi'i scholar in fiqh,
but what i mean is, there's someone on
the inside saying, no, we need a revival,
we need to fix things, it's not just
about the emotion, it's not just about the
experience, right, the spiritual experience, there's more to
the religious sciences, so he writes a book,
four books, essentially, in this compendium of his,
section one is al-ibadat, section two is
al-adat, so this is how you worship
allah, five pillars of islam, that's section one,
section two is how you live life, this
is the etiquettes of getting married in islam,
this is interpersonal dealings, these are civil transactions,
or, and then he puts three and four
as what, al-muhlikat and al-munjiyat, the
spirituality, he pushed it, he's saying, guys, we
have to revive, how do we revive, by
not neglecting, as we have been neglecting, the
ibadat and the adat of this deen, that
by itself, just to know what the four
books are about, and the sequence in which
he placed them, and the period in which
he wrote this, is very telling to sort
of his understanding of what balance looks like,
this is not to say that anyone has
to agree with any book in its entirety
besides the quran, but just recognize that this
was a recognition of the beauty that the
sufi tradition has, but then the balancing act
that it required in this era, it's a
human effort, he himself admits that he is
not as established in the science of hadith
as he was, for example, in mantiq, and
logic, and reasoning, and fiqh, and usul fiqh,
and all the other sciences that he has
mastered, he admits this about himself, that's why
ibn qadamah himself, he wrote a book to
abridge it, to sort of filter it, for
laymen to read, to still benefit from, and
al-hafidh al-iraqi wrote a book on
this, to filter out all the weak hadith
that he did not believe could be attributed
to the prophet, but it's an attempt to
reel it back from where it had veered,
great sufi personality of course, an imam who
died in 561 after hijrah, so say about
50 years after al-ghazali, he writes his
book, and i have, there's a beautiful anecdote
in that also speaks to the pattern i
want you to pinpoint, he says, and i
perhaps i've mentioned before, he says the people
in their path to allah are like people
on the road through a market heading to
salah, the first person gets caught up in
the market and misses salah, right, so like
he missed his purpose in life, got distracted
by dunya, that's the analogy, the second person
got, you know, i'm sorry, yes, so this
is the first one got caught up, he's
saying the second person got slowed down, but
he still made it, he saw a few
items here, got delayed there, he missed out,
this is the second, but he still made
it, he caught the second rakah or something,
cuts and bruises, but he got to allah,
the third person has reached such a state,
listen, that he doesn't see the market, doesn't
see the items, doesn't see the glitter, he
doesn't even notice it, and he gets straight
to the prayer, then he says, but there
is a fourth level, he says the fourth
level is a man that walks through the
market, sees everything, and sees those distracted by
the market, but he himself is not distracted,
he doesn't live in an alternative reality, and
at the same time he's making earnest dua
for those distracted, ya allah forgive them, ya
allah guide them, ya allah bring, then he
says, and this is the truest station of
the prophets and the closest servants of god
to god, there's a reason why he said
that, right, because people were put under this
notion, there was a prevalent understanding out there
that this would have been everything, and it
certainly cannot be, then there's this, so Ibn
Al-Qayyim dies a full 200 years, in
751, 190, but effectively two centuries after Al
-Jilani rahimahullah, is Ibn Taymiyyah's most famous student,
Ibn Al-Qayyim, and Ibn Al-Qayyim rahimahullah,
writes Madariju Salikeen, the ranks of the divine
seekers, it's a book on Tazkiyah and Tasawwuf,
okay, it is based off of Al-Harawi's
Manazil Al-Sa'ireen, okay, Manazil is at
100 stations, Ibn Al-Qayyim writes Madarij, sort
of a build on Manazil, what did he
do in this, and I will cite for
you, so you don't have to believe me,
he embraced, undeniably, he embraced the Sufi tradition,
right, without considering it sacred, it's not sacred,
should I say, it is not all sacred,
that which conforms with the Ayat Al-Hadith
is sacred, that which does not conform with
the Ayat Al-Hadith is not sacred, that's
it, and before I quote to you Ibn
Al-Qayyim, I want you to just appreciate
and recognize why he did the very hard
work of rehabilitating a book like that, why,
why just throw it out, write another book,
yes, because if you understand why he felt
this, he believed it was fundamentally Islamic, what
is being said there, but there are sort
of bolts that were missing that need to
be placed there, and his balanced approach to
Sufism, our heritage of spiritual refinement and development,
his approach to it, his balanced fair approach
is indispensable, you know why, because this tradition,
the Sufi tradition is not going anywhere, it's
a part and parcel of the Islamic tradition,
and the materialistic modern world is in need
of it, even the Muslims among us, right,
we need this tradition, this heritage, it cannot
be disposed of, it would be equivalent to
saying, throw out the fiqh, make our own
madhhab, let's create a super madhhab, let's create
a brand new madhhab, you will not be
able to, in any case, listen to what
Ibn Al-Qayyim says here, he says, these
excesses, so Sufi practitioners when they went, when
they veered, right, they went to excess, he
says, whenever they went to excess, this caused
a fitna for two groups of people, I
want to stop quickly and say, until today,
this becomes a fitna, a means by which
Allah tries people, he says, one group was
veiled from the virtues of this class, their
delicate spirits, their genuine devotion, and they disqualify
it all due to these excesses, right, people
just throw out the baby with the bathwater,
they think of pejoratives, right, they use insults,
they're dismissive, right, of it all, denying its
utility altogether, and assuming the worst of its
entirety, he says, and this is baghi, this
is transgression and extremism, for if we shun
altogether anyone who errors or slips and disregard
their merit, the sciences and the crafts and
the wisdoms would all be ruined and their
traces would all be lost, so this is
one group that went to one extreme of
dismissing it all because of the shatahat, because
of the extreme manifestations or practices or beliefs
that arose in this tradition, he says, another
group, this is group two now, was veiled
by what they witnessed of virtue from such
people, they saw the purity of their hearts,
the strength of their resolve, their excellent devotion,
and that stopped them, that blinded them from
noticing the flaw and the inferiority of them,
no, of their excesses, and they pulled over
it the veil of their virtue, these are
good people, these are righteous people, we have
no right, there's no room for valid criticism,
so that was another fitnah, one and another,
he said they pulled over it the veil
of their virtues and decided that it should
all be accepted and defended, this group has
also fallen into extremism and transgression, then he
says, the third group are the people of
justice and equity, may Allah make us of
them, say ameen, those who gave each their
due right and allotted each their entitled station,
they did not diagnose the healthy person as
sick and defective, nor the sick and defective
as healthy, you know, at times when he
would sort of disagree with Al-Harawi, he
would say amazing things, I have one quote
here in my notes, he says that he
would say in the same book, Madarijus Salikeen,
Shaykh al-Islam, Al-Harawi, he's talking about
Al-Harawi by the way here, is beloved
to us, but the truth is more beloved
to us, and Shaykh al-Islam, his other
Shaykh now, Ibn Taymiyyah, used to say, his
practice, the practice of Al-Harawi was better
than his knowledge, right, his sincerity, his devotion,
his sacrifice, was better than sort of his
knowledge, other times he would say, and it
is difficult to disagree with Al-Harawi, due
to his mastery in so many sciences, but
at times even the little bird can tell
Suleyman A.S. something he does not know,
so I'm no less than a bird, and
he's no better than Suleyman A.S., so
respectful, right, loving and critical, respectful and open
-eyed as a scholar, right, here's Ibn Taymiyyah
himself, by the way, if this is a
little bit too academic for you, I apologize,
we're halfway done, but we are going to
have to read some of these anecdotes together
inshallah, he says, and these Shaykhs, he means
the Sufi Shaykhs, did not step beyond the
principles of Ahl as-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah,
Sunni Islam basically, in the major fundamentals, rather
to their credit is a share of encouraging
the principles of Ahl as-Sunnah, they brought
Islam to many lands, okay, this is an
undeniable historical fact, advocating for these principles and
being dedicated to propagating them and responding to
those who opposed them, and listen, and this
was a reason for Allah to elevate their
ranks and uplift their names, he says, and
most of what they say on the fundamental
level is good, though there will inevitably exist
in their statements and those of their peers
weaker opinions and faulty evidences, such as unconfirmed
hadith and invalid qiyas analogies, along with what
all people of insight, like some things are
so obvious, he's saying, and what along with
what all people of insight can recognize, and
that is expected as each person's statements can
be accepted and rejected, except the Messenger of
Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, I'll cite you just
one more anecdote from Nusaymiyah before we move
on, he says, however some of those who
undergo intense spiritual conditions, like fana, sukr, right,
spiritual intoxication, may at times experience an intoxication,
an oblivion, unawareness to other than Allah, while
under the sub-optimal state of fana, he's
saying sometimes you're trying to focus on Allah
so well you might hypnotize yourself, you might
sort of like lose your bearing a little
bit, he goes that has happened to some
people, he's not saying you should, he's saying
sub-optimal, it's not the ideal state, but
it is sub-optimal, by the way he
says elsewhere it is not the ideal state,
why?
Because the sahaba that were raised at the
Prophet's hands, this never happened to them, right,
never, right, they were fully grounded in their
recognition of Allah and their engagement with the
realities that Allah created, the phenomenon Allah created
to test them with, right, because you know
if you lose sight of sort of reality
on the ground as we know it, you
also lose sight of how Allah is evaluating
you through these realities, so it will affect
knowledge and practice, so the sahaba never faltered
here, the generation after than the tabi'een,
there was some of this, and Ibn Taymiyyah
says because their hearts were so pure similar
to the sahaba, but their hearts were not
as strong as the hearts of the sahaba,
because a pure heart is tender but strong,
right, and the corrupt heart is hard and
weak, like fragile basically, right, so he's saying
the tabi'een had pure hearts, but they
had some fragility to them, you know the
youngest sahaba, if you read historically, they at
first, Ibn Taymiyyah says no, they don't do
it intentionally, as long as they're not doing
intentionally, it's not to be held against them,
but because they never heard it before, some
of the sahaba were very averse to this,
like when Aisha radiallahu anha heard that some
people in Al-Basra, like in Iraq, again
neighboring other civilizations sometimes, right, or not as
close to Medina as others, she heard that
he would recite the Qur'an and pass
out, so she used to say they're lying,
she would initially be in denial this was
true, like someone's making this up, she would
say, the Qur'an is more noble than
to cause the minds of grown men to
melt, your skin quivers and your eyes tear,
and we never heard about anyone passing out,
like someone making this up, and when Anas,
notice again young sahabi, when Anas radiallahu anha
heard of this in Al-Basra, he said
I'll tell you what we're gonna do, I'm
gonna stick you on top of that wall,
and I'm gonna recite the whole Qur'an
to you, let's see if you fall off,
initially he was resistant to it, right, so
it's not an optimal state, so Ibn Taymiyyah
saying sometimes it may happen, the sub-optimal
state of fana, it causes some sort of
blurring, hypnosis if you will, then he says,
spiritual intoxication is an ecstasy, void of discernment,
you lose your bearings, and hence a person
may utter in that condition, glory be to
me, subhani, instead of glory be to Allah,
a person may sort of blur the line
for himself and say glory be to me,
he says, there's nothing in this cloak, nothing
is in here but Allah, he said, or
the likes of the words narrated about Abu
Yazid Al-Bistami, great Sufi scholar, or others
from among the upright, notice he's saying your
fear of the upright, if you're an upright
scholar, it happened in passing, you didn't defend
it, he said statements uttered under the influence
of such intoxication should be folded away, we
should not be promoting this stuff, this would
be a disaster to promote, right, it would
be kufr to promote this, he says and
should not be transmitted and are not consequential,
they don't hurt the person though, I'm talking
about the person who said it, so long
as one's intoxication was not the result of
a haram form of ritual or behavior, so
long as he didn't try to make himself
that way, or he didn't drink alcohol or
something, then we're not going to hold against
him the fact that it was beyond his
capacity to keep his sense of reality for
a moment, he says but when the reason
was unlawful, haram, a person would not be
excused, and there is no difference in this
between physical and spiritual intoxication, where's he getting
this from by the way, when the man
got so happy after finding his camel before
he died, he said Allahumma oh Allah, you
are my slave and I am your master,
the hadith says that, then the prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam followed up and said what,
he slipped from his ecstasy, he was so
elated that he found his camel right before
he died, so he excused him sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam, so Ibn Taymiyyah is trying to
say here that we will also excuse those
who against their will they slipped in this,
and they were otherwise upright people, notice just
the justice right, Ibn Taymiyyah was amazing, very
few do you find that have not just
the knowledge but also the taqwa to do
this, you know they asked him once about
a bunch of people who left town basically
to commit zina, may Allah protect us, like
you want to go out away to party
where no one's going to know you, then
they drowned and all died, what is their
ruling, he said like they are rebellious to
Allah, that's their classification due to that whole
journey, because the intention of the journey was
to go find a quiet place to commit
you know an abomination of an act right,
that we are hopeful that because they drowned
Allah will pardon them, it will cancel out,
anyway, now I want to read for you
before we get into some high level, this
will be the last sort of extensive reading
of a slide, does anyone know Sirhindi, Rahimahullah,
who knows Sirhindi, great personality, Rahimahullah, I know
you're already reading so I'm going to read
and then I'll introduce him, he says this
is a great reformer of Islam that is
attributed to the Naqshbandi tariqa, one of the
schools of tasawwuf, he says, notice what he
says, not what you would expect if you're
from a different reference point, he says the
distinction of the Naqshbandis only happened by virtue
of their commitment to the lofty sunnah and
avoiding ugly bid'ah, repulsive innovations, he goes,
thus the seniors of this esteemed order, the
senior scholars of this order, he said avoided
dhikr out loud and encouraged dhikr in the
heart, I'm not saying agree or disagree, I'm
just telling, notice what he's saying, he's saying
the closer you get to the sunnah, the
more Allah will elevate you, he's saying they
also prohibited songs and dancing and inducing ecstasy,
trying to hypnotize yourself in these sort of
spiritual euphorias, he says, and other practices which
did not exist when, when's his reference point,
in his era sallallahu alayhi wasallam, or that
of the rightly guided khalifas, he said they
also chose seclusion in public over the 40
-day seclusion, like khalwa, what does it mean
to have khalwa with Allah, to do it
inside while you're still among people, so that
was their preferred form of khalwa, because in
our sunnah what, we only have i'tikaf, you
don't disappear, right, he says since it had
no precedent in the first generations and no
doubt this commitment yielded great results and this
avoidance bore many fruits, their words and glances
became cures for the sick hearts and spiritual
ailments, maladies, Allah put barakah in their words
basically, right, and their wise directives saved the
seekers from clinging to this world, their zuhd
was contagious, and their lofty ambitions, their azeema,
lifted the seekers along with them to finally
realizing their potentials, you know al-Sirhindi, he
died in 1624 common era, right, some call
him mujadid al-alf, like he revived the
ummah after a thousand years if you will,
but essentially Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had
utilized this man for a lot of things,
like political reform, you know when Islam was
being blurred, was being undermined, hijacked by Hindu
traditions, he reversed so much of that in
his lifetime, rahimahullah ta'ala, Allah gave him
access to do that, and also a lot
of religious reform as well, because he was
a Sufi, okay, I'm a Sufi from the
Naqshbandi tariqah, this is how he would identify
himself, that he was wholly invested in refining
his interior, so he was a Sufi, right,
but he was tirelessly at the same time
resisting what his madhhab, in tazkiyah if you
will, what it became, right, downplaying the sunnah,
over exaggerating, aggrandizing the saints, superstitions, right, and
he used to often speak about, there's one
good book, and there's another one called al
-mukhtarat, which I'm, oh this is from al
-mukhtarat, this is different, this is a case
study on his reform, speak about the great
crime that happened in Sufism, his words, of
separating between al-shari'ah and al-haqiqah,
so yeah there's the shari'ah, the entry
-level stuff, like fiqh, then there's the reality,
he said to separate them is a crime
against Allah and his messenger, and he used
to say, nothing brings anyone closer to Allah
than the fara'id and the nawafil, what
Allah made obligatory, ayat ahadith, the nawafil, meaning
the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ that he
encouraged, even if it's not mandatory, then he
says, and there's a reason why he said
this, he said, and there is no consideration
for any nawafil, any recommended acts, next to
the fara'id, he said, the sincerest, sincerest,
1000 years of nawafil, do not match the
obligations of Allah don't tell me you're doing
dhikr, or praying night prayers, or doing itikaf,
if this is not mandatory, it will never
compare, never bring you close to what Allah
and his messenger obligated, and he lived by
this, he concluded his life only coming out
in the later weaker moments of his life,
he would only come out of his house,
because he was forced to, once again, this
is not the khalwa that he is teaching,
but for the five prayers, he says, and
feeding the needy, and at 63 years old,
very interestingly, in 1624, this is the same
exact age as the Prophet ﷺ, the final
words of the Prophet ﷺ, Allahumma rafiq al
a'la, oh Allah give me the highest
company, never left his lips, those around him
used to say, so even those around him
are testifying to the fact that he worked
diligently to uphold the sunnah of the Prophet
ﷺ, okay, so now, some high-level principles,
what do we do now, in light of
all this, like it went very, and then
it kept coming, and then it goes, and
then it comes back, what do we do,
here and now, I want to give you
three ultra-important safeguards, that we should never
lose sight of, so that we always remain
within, within the pure sunni Islamic tazkiyah, spirituality,
regardless of the terms, it's about, again, the
substance, the concept, and when I say these,
I don't want you to think I'm criticizing
anything in particular, like it's not difficult, let
me be extra frank here, it is not
difficult to find honest Sufi scholars, right, not
superstitious laymen, not unlearned people, scholars from the
Sufi tradition, that will concur, that will agree
with me, that so much of tasawwuf today,
has not paid enough attention to these safeguards,
like if you read qawa'at al-tasawwuf
for Ahmed Zarouq al-Faasi, great Moroccan scholar,
who died 899, if you go on YouTube,
you know the Dr. Mohammed Saeed Ramadan al
-Bouti, right, Sheikh Omar Farooq Abdullah, Sheikh Hamza
Yusuf, all of them, I've heard them say,
most of tasawwuf today has not paid attention
to this, right, Sheikh Rashid Asrar, from the
UK, right, great scholar, he says the same
thing, he says there's so much, so much,
that if we are honest and we fear
Allah, we'll say, this is not approved of
by our two witnesses, they don't testify in
favor of this, the Qur'an and the
Sunnah do not testify in favor of what
has happened here with graves, what has happened
here with superstitions, and so on and so
forth, so let me just give you the
principles, and they're not my principles, just keep
that in mind, scholars across the board, you
will find them talking about this, even so
many of them, that I would identify themselves
as Sufis, right, okay, so the most important
thing is tawheed, we have nothing without tawheed,
if tawheed, the oneness of Allah, is compromised,
it's all over, have there been excesses in
this tradition that have infringed on tawheed, absolutely,
have there been people that say that Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is everywhere,
yes there has, by the way, you don't
have to sit there and vet who did
and didn't, you know, people like love to
debate about like whether Ibn Arabi, right, was
sort of, you know, excommunicated with good reason
or not, did he actually say with Allah,
did he say it or not, then if
he said it, did he recant it or
not, it's irrelevant, it doesn't matter, why, because
this is for our survival, yes there are
many scholars who have said this, it's not
sort of like some bullying that happened, the
people that said this about Ibn Arabi were
Ibn Hajar, and Al-Dhahabi, and Ibn Kathir,
and Al-Bulqini, and Al-Subki, and Abu
Hayyan, Al-Izzam, all of them have said
this, but what I mean is just take
the rule, okay, the rule, Al-Junaid Ibn
Muhammad, remember Sayyid Ta'ifah, he used to
say, to
single Allah out, Tawheed, or what our religion
is all about, rests on differentiating between the
eternal, the truly Hayy Qayyum, and between what,
temporary beings, right, so to believe that anyone
or anything is comparable to Allah, is actually
against Tazkiyah, because Tazkiyah is Ibadah, and Ibadah
is Islam, right, remember we said this in
the beginning, you will, the Mushrikeen were condemned
for not partaking in Tazkiyah, how, by being
Mushrikeen, right, by allowing rivalry in their hearts
with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la,
if anyone were to believe, right, that the
Prophet is inherently divine, right, he's actually sort
of from the light of Allah, not the
light Allah created, the light of Allah, right,
if you were to believe this universe is
controlled by certain stewards that share, partake in
the management of the universe, these things have
been said, right, there's Aqtab, and there's Awtad,
and there's Abdal, and every single one has
like a region, and has a jurisdiction, has
a dominion, these would be a huge problem,
right, and we will come back to the
Awliya', we will come back to the idea
of the Awliya', but the notion that someone
is, yes, there are Awliya', people are very
close to Allah Azza wa Jal, but there
is a huge ceiling where creation ends, and
the Creator is beyond, that always has to
be established, there is a report here from
Abu Yazid al-Bistami, Rahimahullah, once again, attributed
to the Sufi tradition, that he used to
say, لِلَّهِ خَلْقٌ كَثِيرٌ يَمْشُونَ عَلَى الْمَاءِ وَلَا
قِيمَةَ لَهُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ He said, there are
many people in God's creation that walk on
water, and they are worthless in the sight
of Allah.
He said, how do you know?
He said, لَوْ نَظَرْتُمْ إِلَىٰ مَنْ أُعْطِيَ مِنَ
الْكَرَامَاتِ حَتَّى يَطِيرُ فَلَا تَغْتَرُ بِهِ حَتَّى تَرَوْ
كَيْفَ هُوَ عِندَ الْأَمْرِ وَالنَّهِ وَحِفْظُ الْحُدُودِ If
you see someone flying in the sky, suspend
judgment until you examine what he is like
with Allah's commands, his prohibitions, and his boundaries.
You know why?
Because if someone appears to be performing a
miracle, but they're not observing the boundaries of
Allah, then Allah is not the one helping
him.
This guy has a contract with the jinn
then.
That becomes the clearest evidence that he is
a charlatan or sort of a sorcerer or
something because this is not a karamah.
You would be following the deen to have
this karamah if you had this karamah.
That's what he's trying to say.
Okay, so tawheed first and foremost.
Number two, the Prophet ﷺ being the gold
standard.
لَقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ
You have an excellent example and the messenger
of Allah ﷺ for anyone who seeks Allah
and the last day and remembers Allah frequently.
You know what that means is for anyone
to accept, not like a crowding of the
authority of the Prophet ﷺ.
If you accept that someone else has the
freedom to not follow the Prophet ﷺ, you
have left Islam.
This is reported about some of the imams
of the four schools.
They used to say that whomever believes that
someone can step out of the shariah of
Muhammad ﷺ.
The same way that Al-Khadir was allowed
to step out of the shariah of Musa
ﷺ, that person is murtad.
If you believe that they can, forget them,
your problem is you.
You believe they don't have to follow Muhammad
ﷺ, that's even on you.
And have there been people that have undermined
the authority of the sunnah and the authority
of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ?
Absolutely.
There are people when they separated between the
shariah, the sort of outward practice and the
haqiqah as it's put, they would say you
are so bogged down in your sort of
fiqh and your hadith and you're saying hadathani,
hadathani, hadathani.
You take your narration so seriously.
As for me, hadathani qalbi an rabbi.
This is sort of a phrasing that they've
coined.
I'm not, if you can't tell by now
that it is haram to generalize, I can't
help you.
But we want to say if someone says
this, absolutely unacceptable.
Says, my heart has narrated to me from
my lord.
I have the shortcut.
I have my own sort of reception.
Or as some of them have said, you
take your religion from Abdul Razaq.
This has been stated, right?
In some extreme groups.
Abdul Razaq, they're referring to the Shaykh of
Al-Bukhari.
So you guys take Al-Bukhari and then
you go work your way up to the
Companion, then you go to the Prophet.
You take your religion from Abdul Razaq.
Abdul Razaq al-San'ani, great Yemeni hadith
scholar.
We take our religion from Al-Razaq, the
provider himself, subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's creative, but it's also, what?
Blasphemous.
It's also destructive.
And this world and the next.
You know in Surah al-Tirmidhi, Ali ibn
Hatim radiallahu anhu said that the Prophet salallahu
alayhi wa sallam.
Please go ahead, Shaykh.
Yes.
I didn't translate it?
I'm sorry.
Jazakallahu khairan.
I appreciate you.
I owe you a cup of coffee.
Jazakallahu khair.
So hadathana means it has been narrated to
us.
It has been narrated to us.
It has been narrated to us.
Because the chain of transmission is sort of
multi-layered.
There's sort of generations here in the chain
of command.
They're saying we, our heart narrates to us
from God.
We're not dependent on these creatures.
We have direct sort of communication.
You might from Shaytan, right?
This is the problem.
When Ali heard Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
saying in the Quran, that these people, the
Jews and Christians, have accepted their ahbar, their
scholars, their monks as lords instead of or
alongside Allah.
Ali, who was formerly Christian, he said, Ya
Rasulallah, we didn't worship them.
Like we did.
So he's thinking external ritual, exterior, right?
We didn't make sujood to them or something.
We didn't worship them.
He said, did they not take what Allah
made halal and make it haram, and take
what Allah made haram and made it halal,
and you accepted for them to do that?
That is how you worship them.
You treat them like God.
They have an override.
They have a veto.
That is part as ibadah, right?
So undermining the Prophet ﷺ, it undermines not
just your following of the Prophet ﷺ, but
the one who sent him, the one who
authorized him subhanahu wa ta'ala.
You know there is a lesser version of
this that I do want to point out.
I'm not saying it is kufr or something,
but in general, when you're studying your deen,
you want to know what Allah said.
You want to know what the Prophet ﷺ
said.
If someone is teaching you more so about
the lifestyle of their teacher and their teacher,
more than the lifestyle of the Prophet ﷺ,
it should be a little bit of a
red flag for you.
Like, wait a minute, hold on.
Like, who's the gold standard?
Keep that in mind, right?
Not always wrong by the way, but keep
it in mind.
The third and last one, and the safeguards,
is the scholars.
You know there's a beautiful depiction here that
Allah ﷻ gives about Banu Israel to caution
us.
To caution us with settling for good intentions.
You know they say, like in English, there's
a saying that the path to the hellfire
is paved with what?
Good intentions, right?
Ibn Mas'ud used to say, how many
people want to do the right thing, but
they just, they never get there, right?
And so here, Allah is saying, speaking about
the followers of Isa, Jesus ﷺ, he says,
the second sentence, as for the monasticism, they
became monks, which they invented.
So you know what?
I'm not going to deal with society.
I'm going to sort of focus on my
spirituality, right?
We didn't ask them to do this.
They only did it, but they did it
only to seek God's approval.
And so we gave those who believed among
them their reward.
For what?
For their sincerity.
And many of them became rebellious.
It was not sustainable.
So the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, as
taught to us by the scholars, and the
scholars should have a right to differ, but
scholarly difference is very different than layman, charlatan
difference.
Yes or no?
So the downplay of scholarship was huge.
Ibn Uyayna, I'll mention to you two narrations
because we have to move.
Ibn Uyayna, Sufyan Uyayna from the Tabi'in,
he used to say what?
He used to say, that
whomever goes astray from our worshippers resembles the
mistake of the Christians.
Those who believed, we gave them their reward.
See what happened?
Not all of them remained believers, right?
They were worshippers.
They were sort of dedicated to isolated worship
and but this isolationism could lead you down
the path of Christianity, right?
Because you're not invested in sacred knowledge.
He said, Sufyan Ibn Uyayna, and whomever becomes
corrupt of our scholars, it could happen to
even with knowledge now, right?
They have a resemblance of the Jews who
went astray because of the corruption in here.
This is almost like the discussion within this
ummah of tasawwuf and fiqh, tazkiyya and madhahib,
same thing.
You know, Ahmed Zarrouq, he says in the
book, without a chain, but this notion is
undisputed as a notion.
I was just hearing the great Mauritani scholar,
Sheikh Haddad, who mentioned something similar, and he's
also Maliki, that Imam Malik, say to the
people, man tasawwuf wa lam yatafakkah, whomever tries
to practice Sufism, like spiritual training, without fiqh,
without studying sacred knowledge, tazandak, they become a
heretic.
They sort of like, they're on the cusp
of leaving the faith if they don't leave.
He said, wa man tafakkah wa lam yatasawwuf,
tafasak, and whomever focuses on all the knowledge
and the classes and like the ilm and
the memorization and the fiqh, right, and does
not practice spiritual training, becomes a fasiq.
He becomes sort of like a rebellious sinner.
He becomes this arrogant person that's great at
arguing, and his heart becomes more and more
corrupt in the process, not more and more
pure.
So that's what Ibn Uyayna was referring to
here.
And As-Sirhindi, that I mentioned to you
earlier, the reformer, the Naqshbandi reformer and scholar,
he used to say, a beautiful quote from
him, is every single time the scholars, he
says this as a Sufi, every single time
the scholars and the Sufis differ.
He means the Sufis that aren't scholars, right?
The truth always winds up being with the
scholars.
He says, and it is no surprise because
the scholars are looking at the anbiya, they're
studying the prophets of Allah, and the Sufis
are looking at the awliya, of course lesser
awliya because the anbiya are awliya for sure.
He says, but the Sufis are looking at
the awliya, and that is like a candle
being compared to the sunlight.
One is deriving from prophethood, and one is
deriving from personal intuition, disclosures, could be right,
could be wrong, to the end of it,
okay?
So the importance of grounding ourselves in mainstream
Islamic scholarship, even if they're going to have
a spectrum of views.
Speaking of isolationism, oh no, I forgot that
I have one more quote.
So Muhammad Iqbal, you guys probably know who
that is, right?
Pakistani reformer.
He mentions this quote in the top, that
Muhammad of Arabia, salallahu alayhi wasalam, ascended the
highest heaven and returned.
And I swear by God, that if I
had reached that point, I should never have
returned.
Like I wouldn't want to come back to
the world.
So he's now commenting, he's not making the
statement, he's commenting on the statement, right?
He says, in the whole range of Sufi
literature, it will probably be difficult to find
words which in a single sentence disclose such
an acute perception, so accurately, the psychological differences
between the prophetic and the mystic types of
consciousness, mentalities, mindsets.
He says, the mystic does not wish to
return from the repose of the unitary experience.
He wants to be one with God.
Remember we said, he's talking about this when?
In the 1900s, right?
Now, in these recent centuries.
He says, and even when he does return,
because he has to return, you can't even
stay in that state, right?
He says, his return does not mean much
for mankind at large.
And the Prophet's return, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, was
creative.
It was dynamic.
He says, he returns to insert himself into
the sweep of time with a view to
control the force of history.
And thereby, thereby to create a fresh world
of ideals, of virtue and values.
He says, for the mystic, the repose, like
he's, where he runs away to, the oneness
with God experience, the unitary experience, he means
union with God, right?
Is something final.
It's an end.
For the Prophet, it is the awakening within
him of world-shaking psychological forces, calculated to
completely overhaul the world of concrete fact.
And the desire to see his religious experience
transformed into a living world force, is supreme
in the Prophet.
I'll mention to you something.
You guys know Nietzsche?
Dr. Hatem el-Hajj, he used to say
to us, I believe that if Nietzsche, you
know Nietzsche famously sort of had a fallout
with Christianity, late 1800s.
He said, God is dead.
Some, by the way, say he meant that
like there's no hope in this religion.
So Dr. Hatem believes, he says, I swear
to you, I believe, I don't know if
he swore, that if Nietzsche had come across
true Islam, he was so ready to become
Muslim.
He said, the problem is, if you read
Nietzsche's books, Friedrich Nietzsche, do you know how
he refers to Muslims?
He refers to Muslims, the Muslims he's come
across, as Turkish fatalists.
You know what a fatalist is?
A fatalist is someone that believes they have
no say in the world.
They have no agency whatsoever.
And so some people throw some religious language
on this as well, which is dangerous.
I'm just a feather in the wind.
These were some principles that were prominent as
the Muslim civilization was collapsing.
That's why Iqbal was allergic to them.
That's why he fought against them so hard.
That the earlier Muslims felt infused with Allah's
aid and responsible, right?
Not just powerless in front of Allah, but
empowered by Allah to carry out a mission
in this world, right?
An opportunity.
Okay, so let's talk about this a little
bit.
Whoever wants to leave can leave.
Some of the controversies.
What I'm about to share here, it would
be sort of useless.
I know today's a bit longer than usual
and I will be done in 15 minutes
max, inshallah.
But if you need to leave, absolutely.
Don't feel pressure.
And we will open the floor, of course,
for questions.
I just want to try to get through
the deck because many of the questions you
may want to ask are already going to
be addressed here.
But these are the positions I follow if
you're interested, right?
But these are the positions that, more importantly,
I believe are the product of a sound
consistent methodology.
That's all I personally care about.
I care to be consistent in front of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, hoping his approval,
you know, is what I earn.
That is what will matter most, even if
it may not always match with people's approval,
right?
Sufi controversies.
Maybe we start all the way at the
top.
Like, can you call yourself a Sufi?
Sufism, I've said it a thousand times tonight,
is not different than fiqh and aqeedah in
terms of the term, in terms of the
concept, right?
The term aqeedah is not found in the
Qur'an and Sunnah to mean creed, the
way we use it today.
It just settled as the title of the
discipline, right?
Fiqh was not used like that either, to
mean the rulings on practice that are derived,
not explicit, derived from detailed evidences.
It's not what it meant in the Qur
'an and Sunnah.
Likewise, Sufism, what does it mean?
What are you referring to is what we
care about.
The Prophet ﷺ permitted for us to use
names other than Muslim?
He did.
The Qur'an called people muhajireen and ansar.
I'm talking about permissibilities here.
I don't think it's beneficial, right?
Most of the time to use any other
names.
But when did Islam condemn them?
When they were used in tribal fashion.
So when the muhajireen and the ansar said,
who's with the muhajireen?
Who's with the ansar?
Who's with me?
Even though Allah praised them for being muhajireen
and being ansari, right?
Migrants and supporters.
The Prophet ﷺ said in that moment, not
because of the name, but in that moment
he said, أَوَ بِدَعْوَ الْجَهِلِيَّ وَنَبَيْنَ أَظْهُرِهُمْ Right?
Are you using the tribalistic calls?
Tribalistic prejudice, right?
This was what would make it problematic for
you to use a name other than Muslim.
If the word is not condemned in Islam,
then I'm going to ask you what you
mean by it.
That's what we should do.
So that's not really a controversy in my
book or in my head.
This is sort of red light green light
one two three.
So let me just finish the easy ones
first, right?
The notion of awliya.
What are awliya?
Awliya are translated as saints, but some people
don't like the term saint and I don't
either because it's kind of like a little
confusing with the Christian tradition.
A saint is someone who was righteous and
then died and then became sort of like
a, right?
They overlook you as like your godfather or
something.
It's very problematic in terms of just simplifying
what the word saying.
But the awliya are basically the most pious,
the friends of Allah, the saints if you
want to use the term.
It is established in the Qur'an.
Do we believe in awliya?
Absolutely.
So long as what?
We're not saying they're superhuman.
Like you know my parents are from Egypt.
I hear very interesting things about the quote
-unquote awliya of Egypt, right?
Like there is a man named the Sayyid
al-Badawi that I don't know anything about.
But what is circulated about him is incredible.
Like people go to his grave in greater
numbers than people go to hajj in Mecca
during his sort of like his birthday season
or like his that musim, that season.
And they circulate stories about how the fact
that he was so close to Allah that
he would get entranced staring into the sky
for three days at a time.
That's a problem because that's 15 prayers he
just missed, right or wrong?
There's this idea of like him looking at
you because he's so close to Allah that
if he looks at you, you incinerate.
This is like Marvel comics now, right?
So but you can't now say the only
thing is awliya.
Like the awliya are certainly the secrets of
Allah and his creation.
You don't know for sure who's a wali.
But we know the wali, if he's a
wali, he's not anywhere divine.
And we know the greatest awliya are who?
The prophets and in this ummah the sahaba
after the prophet So there's no real controversy
there.
The notion of a tariqah.
The tariqah is a counterpart of a madhhab.
It is the counterpart of the madhhab.
Nobody should be bullied for not following a
madhhab, right?
Or following a particular madhhab.
Likewise, you know, it could be a classy
discussion, an ethical discussion on because I'll give
you an example.
Are human beings inherently good or inherently evil?
Your spiritual training track will depend on that
theory of yours.
Those are turuq, right?
So like institutionalized Sufism where you give someone
a bay'ah, a pledge of allegiance, okay,
that could be controversial.
But the notion of like how I understand
the approach out loud dhikr or lower dhikr,
we'll get to that one.
These are not controversial.
Like even Ibn Taymiyyah was, it was attributed
that he was from the Qadiri tariqah.
Like he, one of his greatest students, Al
-Hafidh Abdul Hadi, the author of Al-Muharrar.
His great grandson, Yusuf Abdul Hadi, attributes his
sanad, his isnad in spiritual training to Ibn
Taymiyyah on the Qadiri way.
Like the Qadiri understanding of the approach of
tazkiyah, of tasawwuf.
This is undeniable.
Like Ibn Taymiyyah wrote a whole explanation on
the book of Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, right?
So just keep the idea on the most
fundamental level.
If you want to critique a particular tariqah,
a particular order, a particular understanding, like and
you're qualified as a scholar to do that,
feel free.
No problem.
Al-Ghazali did that, we said.
Ibn Taymiyyah is seen by people that only
know half of his legacy, his literature, as
like the enemy of Sufism because of how
much criticism he did.
If it's fair, if it's balanced, if you're
qualified, fine.
But it's no controversy, the notion of a
tariqah in principle.
And then awrad.
Awrad comes from wird.
Wird means something that you cycle through.
So in English they call them devotionals or
like daily devotionals or like your routine, your
regiment.
The Prophet ﷺ taught us certain patterns of
dhikr, patterns of ibadah, certain wird.
It's the way that you also measure, measure
how you do it.
Like Abu Hurairah had a wird of 12
,000 istighfar a day.
For instance, going back to, it's horrible that
I keep citing Ibn Taymiyyah, but just he
is positioned in a particular way that I
am trying to deconstruct in this talk, right?
Ibn Taymiyyah used to recite al-Fatiha 40
times.
He believed it would be wrong to tell
someone to recite al-Fatiha 40 times, but
it was his regiment.
He may have taken it from the fact
that the number 40 is a blessed number.
It shows up in the Qur'an a
lot.
Does he have a hadith for it?
No, he doesn't.
And he doesn't believe you can teach it
to others to recite it 40.
But yeah, he did.
This is not controversial.
And once again, if someone is not doing
the awrad taught by the Prophet ﷺ, they
should not be taught anything else because those
are superior.
That should also not be controversial.
The wird is not controversial and the Prophet's
wird being superior is not controversial.
There was a good imam in New Jersey
that was posting online the wird of Imam
Mimnawi, right?
Mimnawi had a certain regiment of how he
would make his dhikr.
And I said to him, Shaykh, with all
the respect, we don't need to debate on
whether there's sort of you can encourage someone
else's wird or not.
But considering most people don't do the wird
in the sunnah, should we be encouraging this?
And may Allah reward him.
He said publicly, he said, if you're not
doing what the Prophet did morning and evening
of adhkar, ignore what I just posted.
So we should agree on these things.
These things should be a given.
Okay, group dhikr.
So people are saying, so what's so funny?
Group dhikr.
People making dhikr in one voice.
To have a group where you're remembering Allah,
there's nothing there.
That's green.
But what if we're remembering Allah together in
the same voice?
That's a fiqhi controversy.
By the way, the four madhhabs don't just
disagree on this.
They disagree on even Qur'an.
Are we allowed, you know, in tajjal?
It's controversial.
That's halal or not?
Are you allowed to recite Qur'an in
unison or not?
So these things are matters of fiqh that
the scholars have disagreed on.
And every person should follow their scholar on
this.
And that's it.
We're not talking about impermissible wordings, we're not
talking about anything else.
We're talking about repeating in unison in one
breath, certain words of dhikr.
Or even Qur'an.
These are fiqhi controversies and should be there.
You know, some people, it's identity for them.
This means everything else you're guilty of as
well, right?
But they're not.
To be very honest, this is not the
case.
Tawassul.
What is tawassul?
Many people, by the way, do a horrible
job of mixing between tawassul and istighatha.
And this is like a train wreck of
a confusion.
Tawassul is like wasilah, a means.
It is you seeking your du'a to
be accepted.
I'm talking about the controversial one.
There's other forms of tawassul that are agreed
upon, allowed.
By saying certain words, O Allah, by the
right of your Prophet ﷺ, right?
O Allah, by the rank of your Prophet
ﷺ.
This is a wording.
Am I allowed to use this wording or
not?
The majority, by the way, permit this wording.
The Hanbalis even say it's recommended.
The Shafis and Malikis permit it.
The Hanafis say you don't do tawassul by
a created being.
You only do the agreed upon ways, which
are what?
O Allah, by your names.
O Allah, by this good deed that I
did, right?
Or these sorts of things, without getting into
a long discussion.
That should not be a source of consternation
for people.
Fiqh controversy permitted by the majority except for
the Hanafis.
The Mawlid.
Mawlid is the birthday of the Prophet ﷺ.
So people, people, get together on the date
that most historians say he was born ﷺ,
the 12th of Rabi'ul Awwal.
What do we do with that?
We're already saying nothing haram is happening.
Okay?
Let's assume no haram is happening.
If there's a haram belief associated, it's like
come on the 12th of Rabi'ul Awwal
because the Prophet ﷺ is alive and we're
going to leave an empty chair here because
he's going to attend our Mawlid.
No, this is not what we're talking about,
right?
This is ludicrous.
But let us imagine that there is none
of that happening.
Just getting together on the Mawlid and distinguishing
this date.
This is also a contradiction.
People that try to say the evidence here
and the evidence there, just like in fiqh,
people disagree on what are admissible evidences into
the conversation.
What is hujjah?
Like for instance, people say the bid'ah
is something that is x and y and
z.
They give you a definition of bid'ah.
That definition is not agreed upon.
The famous definition of Ash-Shatibi, there was
another definition.
So if you have a different definition for
bid'ah, you're going to have different conclusions
on what is and isn't bid'ah, right?
So we should all agree that the Mawlid
is not from the Sunnah.
The Prophet didn't do it, peace be upon
him.
It didn't happen for hundreds of years.
Does that make it a deal-breaker to
do it without involving haram?
A deal-breaker or not, that's a fiqh
controversy.
That's all.
Can we like distinguish this day to remind
people of the Prophet ﷺ, to praise him
and all of this, to revive the love
in the hearts?
On the day, by the way, the day.
If you go wider into Rabi'ul-Awwal,
it becomes less controversial.
Wider in the year, it becomes less controversial,
by the way.
Because are you allowed in Islam to distinguish
a day or is only Allah allowed to
give value to days?
The whole idea of our holidays haram and
halal, if they're religious, not religious.
Some will say even if they're not religious,
only Allah can pinpoint the day and say
give it value.
It's a fiqh discussion.
That's all.
Alright, so dreams.
Dreams undermining revelation has been a deviant excess
that has occurred in the Sufi tradition.
It doesn't mean all Sufis believe this.
But if you believe that your dreams supersede
Qur'an and Sunnah, this is a red
line.
There should be no controversy here, right?
This idea that Allah came to me and
told me I finally reached a certain level
and I don't need the shari'ah anymore
because I'm in the haqiqah now.
This has happened.
I have a friend.
This is not worth it because it makes
it sound like it's an isolated incident.
But this is sort of a wrong understanding
that needs to be spelled out.
Very wrong.
But I have a friend who said to
me, I used to always walk into the
masjid and see a brother sitting by the
pole making dhikr, right?
Notice why Surah Al-Hindi said, نَفْلَنْ فَرْضَ,
right?
So I always tell him, pray.
Iqamah is made.
He's like, oh you go ahead, you go
ahead.
So one time he tells me, come here,
come here, come here.
He says, I sit with him.
He wants to explain to me why he
never comes to pray with the jama'ah.
And he says to him, when you go
to your friend's house, what do you do
when you get to your friend's door?
He said, I knock on the door and
if I have the key, I go inside.
He said, exactly.
I'm already inside.
I'm in the room, right?
Allah came to me in a dream and
said to me, you're good.
This is an epistemic crisis, by the way.
Like even for you to be a rational
human being that puts that much stock in
your dreams, makes you a punching bag for
your psychological disorders or satanic whispers.
Like you have a huge problem, right?
Allah gave you Quran, Sunnah, gave you friends
that can advise you, gave you SMEs, subject
matter experts, gave you istikhara prayer and all
these ways to make decision in life and
you sort of centralize dreams and intuition and
guts and sixth instinct and all this stuff.
This is a problem, right?
And that should be clear.
Also, idolization.
Like this whole idea that the sheikh, there's
like a halo, right?
For the teacher that he cannot be wrong.
He is not to be questioned.
This is a true red line.
Like the sahaba would ask the prophet, why'd
you do that?
Did things change?
Did the rule change?
They would ask him because the rule could
change.
And so you have every right to ask
respectfully, excuse me, isn't the rule X?
Because you're not going to be the one
that changes the rule, right?
No one's exempt, right or wrong.
There have been, you know, it has been
stated, you know, in this tradition, in excesses
of this tradition, that you are with your
sheikh like the deceased person is with his
washer, the one that washes you after you
die.
This is a problem.
We are all fallible creatures.
We are all prone to mistake.
We will make mistakes, right?
And so to idolize any human being after
the prophet, this is also why, by the
way, people freak out when they hear about
some sheikh with some scandal, like, whoa, hold
on guys.
They're human.
Yes, we expect more of those closer to
the, you know, the ayat and hadith.
But why are you freaking out this much?
Why are you surprised?
It is because you have this understanding that
they're larger than life.
They are to be idolized.
And that's only for our prophet ﷺ.
The last one is, and it's the most
controversial, is istighatha.
What is istighatha?
Istighatha is to plead for rescue, right?
Ghauth is rescue.
Ghaith, by the way, ghaith is rain that
rescues you.
So only after a long drought, the rain
gets called ghaith, because it's sort of like,
right?
And so istighatha is to call out for
someone as if you're to call out for
someone that's not absent, that's not present, who's
absent to help you in some way.
Okay?
If you believe this someone you called out
to in their absence has some divine qualities,
that's not controversial.
That's kufr.
You're not Muslim at that point.
If you believe someone has some control in
Allah's universe and shares in his rabubiyah, that's
not what we're talking about here, right?
We're talking about without shirk beliefs, without this
belief that someone is comparable to Allah or
has what is exclusively Allah's, right?
What if someone believes that one of the
creation of Allah is like an authorized medium?
I speak to them to speak to Allah
for me, or to get to speak to
them.
Not, oh Allah, because you love your prophet,
forgive me.
That's this one.
But you speak to them, right?
Like to say, oh Muhammad, right?
This is an eccentric view.
What's an eccentric view?
Meaning even though it may have been popularized
in certain periods in Islamic history, this was
something essentially unknown, right?
To the ongoing practice of the early Muslims
especially.
Does that make sense?
This is something unknown to the early Muslims
for the most part, right?
It doesn't mean that we're going to be
hostile or pass a judgment, right?
About the deviance of every last person or
scholar.
Because there have been scholars who said this.
You know it's very important, like al-Subqi,
rahimahullah, we're always saying rahimahullah, great scholar of
Islam, we're not worth his name.
He believed this was permissible.
He believed that it was a figure of
speech.
I don't agree with this, but I'm saying
he believed that.
So if someone is listening to al-Subqi,
where do I exactly stand to sort of
tell him, how do you not know that
sort of al-Subqi was mistaken here or
something?
It doesn't work.
You know even Ibn Taymiyyah, rahimahullah, that's why
it's important to move also beyond the debates.
Ibn Taymiyyah, rahimahullah, wrote a whole book called
al-Radd al-al-Bakri, refuting, disproving the
view of al-Bakri.
Al-Bakri was promoting istighatha, calling upon authorized
mediums in his belief, right?
To speak to Allah for us or to
get some benefit from Allah.
This same al-Bakri that Ibn Taymiyyah has
a scathing critique for in his book, Ibn
Taymiyyah protects him and hides him from the
government in his own house when the government
was after him, right?
And so in essence, I just want to
reiterate that you will find scholars, and the
earlier you go the more you will find,
across all four madhhabs, even by the way
from the Sufi tradition, that are categorically opposed
to istighatha, right?
And it is extremely controversial and honestly those
who subscribe to the Sufi tradition are those
that I would invite to really reconsider their
position if they believe it's permissible.
Why?
Because what is Sufism all about, remember?
It's about clearing out the middleman.
It's about getting straight to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, right?
And so where is the fana?
Where is the sort of vanishment of all
else?
Where else is sort of the ihsan?
Worshipping Allah as though you see him.
Where is removing the creation if we're going
to set up or believe that there is
a set up middleman?
So this is just an invitation in case
sort of you're inclined to this, keep that
in mind.
It should be natural for someone from that
tradition to recognize this is very dangerous, very
dangerous.
Like outwardly you're calling on someone, I'm not
saying you're not Muslim, that's not what I'm
saying.
But for the onlooker who's going to repeat
this after you, for the non-Muslim who
calls upon Jesus or Mary, can they easily
differentiate between what you're doing and what they're
doing when we say oh Muhammad, right?
So we have to be very protective of
what this is or what it could lead
to.
Because some people may actually believe that those
they call upon are comparable to Allah.
This is why Ibn Taymiyyah spoke about istighatha,
he said what?
It's shirk or could lead to shirk, right?
And this is why it must be categorically
prohibited.
So what do we do?
Because I'm done.
If you're a layman, you're not entitled to
an opinion, sorry.
If you're not learned, if you're not a
student, you're not sort of a scholar in
training, you don't have an opinion.
Keep that in mind always.
And if you're a scholar and you have
an istighadi opinion, not something that is agreed
upon by the scholars, you can't impose your
opinions on others if you're a scholar.
Because it's istighad based opinion, it's not a
fact, an undeniable fact, a matter of consensus.
These next two points may not be as
relevant tonight, but the leaders are entitled to
compliance with their policies within the spectrum of
scholarly views.
What does that mean?
That means the husband doesn't have to convince
his wife of why we're moving to another
town, right?
He should consult her, right?
But at the end of the day, we're
not going to sit there and have an
Islamic debate about whether it should be seven
or seven thirty in the masjid.
The imam is going to get to decide.
That's the idea, right?
So long as it's not scholarly views, the
sultan is going to pick whether Ramadan is
tomorrow or not, meaning if the moon sighting
was valid or not.
That's it.
The leader ends the khilaf within scholarly validity.
But always keep in mind also, because I
know one of the things that prompted me
to want to present on this issue tonight
at such length, is because the need for
cooperation could also open the door to questions
like, we don't get it, like are we
all in agreement on all issues or not,
right?
Just keep in mind that cooperation, collaborating, seeking
unity is based on benefits and harms.
It has nothing to do with valid and
invalid.
I'll give you an example that does not
apply to Sufism, Tazkiyah sort of discourse.
We can collaborate with people that we all
agree have wrong beliefs.
Yeah, and if we're going to collaborate with
non-Muslims for the greater good, that doesn't
mean we're in approval or validating their belief
system, right?
I'm not comparing, right, Muslims, even Muslim sects
to non-Muslims.
I'm just saying if that's the case, then
it should be a no-brainer that if
we see there is greater benefit in collaborating,
we're going to collaborate.
It's just based on is this advantageous for
us or not.
And we can even disagree on that, but
that is the system of thinking about this,
the way to think about it.
So Tazkiyah and Tasawwuf are interchangeable terms for
many people, believe it or not.
Tasawwuf became a discipline just like Aqidah and
Fiqh.
Disowning any of these disciplines is reckless and
excessive.
Excesses and deviations historically occurring in Tasawwuf, just
as it did in Aqidah and Fiqh, is
non-controversial.
This is a historical fact.
Only those trained in these disciplines should have
sincere objective discussions about any of these controversies.
Even those trained in these disciplines must not
busy this ummah or undermine its unity due
to these controversies.
Nothing should crowd our love for, our principled
collaboration with, and our protectiveness of those Allah
chose to be Muslim.
These controversies are not going anywhere, brothers and
sisters.
Our enemies do not differentiate between us.
And the non-Muslims, by the way, they
are averse, they are discouraged from their religions
because of the division within it.
So let them see the unity within us,
even if we're going to have conversations on
the layers of disagreement that may occur.
It should never compare, should never even appear
that it compares.
May Allah guide us, alright, have us be
of those that glorify the Quran and and
have loving, respectful, critical relationships with our scholars
whenever and wherever justified.
And may Allah forgive me for whatever was
wrong in this presentation, and make whatever was
right of benefit for us and for you.
Ameen.