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ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY
The Forgotten Revolution
By Abdal-Hakim Murad
THE POVERTY OF FANATICISM
'Blood is no argument', as Shakespeare observed. Sadly, Muslim ranks are
today swollen with those who disagree. The World Trade Centre, yesterday's
symbol of global finance, has today become a monument to the failure of
global Islam to control those who believe that the West can be bullied
into changing its wayward ways towards the East. There is no real excuse
to hand.
It is simply not enough to clamour, as many have done, about 'chickens
coming home to roost', and to protest that Washington's acquiescence in
Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing is the inevitable generator of such
hate. It is of course true - as Shabbir Akhtar has noted - that
powerlessness can corrupt as insistently as does power. But to comprehend
is not to sanction or even to empathize. To take innocent life to achieve
a goal is the hallmark of the most extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and
stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral constraints required by
religion.
There was a time, not long ago, when the 'ultras' were few, forming only a
tiny wart on the face of the worldwide attempt to revivify Islam. Sadly,
we can no longer enjoy the luxury of ignoring them. The extreme has
broadened, and the middle ground, giving way, is everywhere dislocated and
confused. And this enfeeblement of the middle ground, the wasat enjoined
by the Prophetic example, is in turn accelerated by the opprobrium which
the extremists bring not simply upon themselves, but upon committed
Muslims everywhere.
For here, as elsewhere, the preferences of the media work firmly against
us. David Koresh could broadcast his fringe Biblical message from Ranch
Apocalypse without the image of Christianity, or even its Adventist wing,
being in any way besmirched. But when a fringe Islamic group bombs Swedish
tourists in Cairo, the muck is instantly spread over 'militant Muslims'
everywhere.
If these things go on, the Islamic movement will cease to form an
authentic summons to cultural and spiritual renewal, and will exist as
little more than a splintered array of maniacal factions. The prospect of
such an appalling and humiliating end to the story of a religion which
once surpassed all others in its capacity for tolerating debate and
dissent is now a real possibility. The entire experience of Islamic work
over the past fifteen years has been one of increasing radicalization,
driven by the perceived failure of the traditional Islamic institutions
and the older Muslim movements to lead the Muslim peoples into the worthy
but so far chimerical promised land of the 'Islamic State.'
If this final catastrophe is to be averted, the mainstream will have to
regain the initiative. But for this to happen, it must begin by confessing
that the radical critique of moderation has its force. The Islamic
movement has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves
how it is that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a
cynical demagogue, could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt,
despite the vacuity of his beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood, with its
pullulating millions of members, should have failed, and failed
continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in
methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and
prolonged inadequacy.
It is in this context - startlingly, perhaps, but inescapably - that we
must present our case for the revival of the spiritual life within Islam.
If it is ever to prosper, the 'Islamic revival' must be made to see that
it is in crisis, and that its mental resources are proving insufficient to
meet contemporary needs. The response to this must be grounded in an act
of collective muhasaba, of self-examination, in terms that transcend the
ideologised neo-Islam of the revivalists, and return to a more classical
and indigenously Muslim dialectic.
Symptomatic of the disease is the fact that among all the explanations
offered for the crisis of the Islamic movement, the only authentically
Muslim interpretation, namely, that God should not be lending it His
support, is conspicuously absent. It is true that we frequently hear the
Quranic verse which states that "God does not change the condition of
a people until they change the condition of their own selves." [1]
But never, it seems, is this principle intelligently grasped. It is
assumed that the sacred text is here doing no more than to enjoin
individual moral reform as a precondition for collective societal success.
Nothing could be more hazardous, however, than to measure such moral
reform against the yardstick of the fiqh without giving concern to whether
the virtues gained have been acquired through conformity (a relatively
simple task), or proceed spontaneously from a genuine realignment of the
soul. The verse is speaking of a spiritual change, specifically, a
transformation of the nafs of the believers - not a moral one. And as the
Blessed Prophet never tired of reminding us, there is little value in
outward conformity to the rules unless this conformity is mirrored and
engendered by an authentically righteous disposition of the heart. 'No-one
shall enter the Garden by his works,' as he expressed it.
Meanwhile, the profoundly judgemental and works- oriented tenor of modern
revivalist Islam (we must shun the problematic buzz-word
'fundamentalism'), fixated on visible manifestations of morality, has
failed to address the underlying question of what revelation is for. For
it is theological nonsense to suggest that God's final concern is with our
ability to conform to a complex set of rules. His concern is rather that
we should be restored, through our labours and His grace, to that state of
purity and equilibrium with which we were born. The rules are a vital
means to that end, and are facilitated by it. But they do not take its
place.
To make this point, the Holy Quran deploys a striking metaphor. In Sura
Ibrahim, verses 24 to 26, we read:
Have you not seen how God coineth a likeness: a goodly word like a goodly
tree, the root whereof is set firm, its branch in the heaven? It bringeth
forth its fruit at every time, by the leave of its Lord. Thus doth God
coin likenesses for men, that perhaps they may reflect. And the likeness
of an evil word is that of an evil tree that hath been torn up by the root
from upon the earth, possessed of no stability.
According to the scholars of tafsir, the reference here is to the 'words'
(kalima) of faith and unfaith. The former is illustrated as a natural
growth, whose florescence of moral and intellectual achievement is
nourished by firm roots, which in turn denote the basis of faith: the
quality of the proofs one has received, and the certainty and sound
awareness of God which alone signify that one is firmly grounded in the
reality of existence. The fruits thus yielded - the palpable benefits of
the religious life - are permanent ('at every time'), and are not man's
own accomplishment, for they only come 'by the leave of its Lord'. Thus is
the sound life of faith. The contrast is then drawn with the only
alternative: kufr, which is not grounded in reality but in illusion, and
is hence 'possessed of no stability'.[2]
This passage, reminiscent of some of the binary categorisations of human
types presented early on in Surat al-Baqara, precisely encapsulates the
relationship between faith and works, the hierarchy which exists between
them, and the sustainable balance between nourishment and fructition,
between taking and giving, which true faith must maintain.
It is against this criterion that we must judge the quality of
contemporary 'activist' styles of faith. Is the young 'ultra', with his
intense rage which can sometimes render him liable to nervous disorders,
and his fixation on a relatively narrow range of issues and concerns,
really firmly rooted, and fruitful, in the sense described by this Quranic
image?
Let me point to the answer with an example drawn from my own experience.
I used to know , quite well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the
Jama'at Islamiya, at the Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi.
He grew a luxuriant beard, was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his
miswak, and spent his time preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a
number of whom were actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his
khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a
citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style activism.
The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance,
providence again brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time,
chancing to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed to recognise him.
The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More astonishing
still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned out to
be an Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending
to marry. I talked to him, and it became clear that he was no longer even
a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in
life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money. What was
extraordinary was that his experiences in Islamic activism had made no
impression on him - he was once again the same distracted, ordinary
Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion to 'radical Islam'.
This phenomenon, which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised
feature of many modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained
usually in one's early twenties, loses steam some seven to ten years
later. Prison and torture - the frequent lot of the Islamic radical - may
serve to prolong commitment, but ultimately, a majority of these
neo-Muslims relapse, seemingly no better or worse for their experience in
the cult-like universe of the salafi mindset.
This ephemerality of extremist activism should be as suspicious as its
content. Authentic Muslim faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile;
as the Qur'an says, its root is meant to be 'set firm'. One has to
conclude that of the two trees depicted in the Quranic image, salafi
extremism resembles the second rather than the first. After all, the
Sahaba were not known for a transient commitment: their devotion and piety
remained incomparably pure until they died.
What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious
activism? One does not have to subscribe to determinist social theories to
realise the importance of the almost universal condition of insecurity
which Muslim societies are now experiencing. The Islamic world is passing
through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and
scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the
Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. For instance,
only thirty-five years ago the capital of Saudi Arabia was a cluster of
mud huts, as it had been for thousands of years. Today's Riyadh is a
hi-tech megacity of glass towers, Coke machines, and gliding Cadillacs.
This is an extreme case, but to some extent the dislocations of modernity
are common to every Muslim society, excepting, perhaps, a handful of the
most remote tribal peoples.
Such a transition period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing
to remain constant, makes human beings very insecure. They look around for
something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that
something is usually Islam. And because they are being propelled into it
by this psychic sense of insecurity, rather than by the more normal
processes of conversion and faith, they lack some of the natural religious
virtues, which are acquired by contact with a continuous tradition, and
can never be learnt from a book.
One easily visualises how this works. A young Arab, part of an oversized
family, competing for scarce jobs, unable to marry because he is poor,
perhaps a migrant to a rapidly expanding city, feels like a man lost in a
desert without signposts. One morning he picks up a copy of Sayyid Qutb
from a newsstand, and is 'born-again' on the spot. This is what he needed:
instant certainty, a framework in which to interpret the landscape before
him, to resolve the problems and tensions of his life, and, even more
deliciously, a way of feeling superior and in control. He joins a group,
and, anxious to retain his newfound certainty, accepts the usual
proposition that all the other groups are mistaken.
This, of course, is not how Muslim religious conversion is supposed to
work. It is meant to be a process of intellectual maturation, triggered by
the presence of a very holy person or place. Tawba, in its traditional
form, yields an outlook of joy, contentment, and a deep affection for
others. The modern type of tawba, however, born of insecurity, often makes
Muslims narrow, intolerant, and exclusivist. Even more noticeably, it
produces people whose faith is, despite its apparent intensity, liable to
vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of real nourishment, the
activist's soul can only grow hungry and emaciated, until at last it dies.
THE ACTIVISM WITHIN
How should we respond to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what
Islam is for. As we noted earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of
rules which, when meticulously followed, becomes a passport to paradise.
Instead, it is a package of social, intellectual and spiritual technology
whose purpose is to cleanse the human heart. In the Qur'an, the Lord says
that on the Day of Judgement, nothing will be of any use to us, except a
sound heart (qalbun salim).[3] And in a famous hadith, the Prophet, upon
whom be blessings and peace, says that "Verily in the body there is a
piece of flesh. If it is sound, the body is all sound. If it is corrupt,
the body is all corrupt. Verily, it is the heart."
Mindful of this commandment, under which all the other commandments of
Islam are subsumed, and which alone gives them meaning, the Islamic
scholars have worked out a science, an ilm, of analysing the 'states' of
the heart, and the methods of bringing it into this condition of
soundness. In the fullness of time, this science acquired the name
tasawwuf, in English 'Sufism' - a traditional label for what we might
nowadays more intelligibly call 'Islamic psychology.'
At this point, many hackles are raised and well-rehearsed objections
voiced.
It is vital to understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has
been, a doctrinal system, or a school of thought - a madhhab. It is,
instead, a set of insights and practices which operate within the various
Islamic madhhabs; in other words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And
like most of the other Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in its
later developed form, in the age of the Prophet (upon him be blessings and
peace) or his Companions. This does not make it less legitimate. There are
many Islamic sciences which only took shape many years after the Prophetic
age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or the innumerable technical disciplines
of hadith.
Now this, of course, leads us into the often misunderstood area of sunna
and bid'a, two notions which are wielded as blunt instruments by many
contemporary activists, but which are often grossly misunderstood. The
classic Orientalist thesis is of course that Islam, as an 'arid Semitic
religion', failed to incorporate mechanisms for its own development, and
that it petrified upon the death of its founder. This, however, is a
nonsense rooted in the ethnic determinism of the nineteenth century
historians who had shaped the views of the early Orientalist synthesizers
(Muir, Le Bon, Renan, Caetani). Islam, as the religion designed for the
end of time, has in fact proved itself eminently adaptable to the rapidly
changing conditions which characterise this final and most 'entropic'
stage of history.
What is a bid'a, according to the classical definitions of Islamic law? We
all know the famous hadith:
Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation,
every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in Hell.[4]
Does this mean that everything introduced into Islam that was not known to
the first generation of Muslims is to be rejected? The classical ulema do
not accept such a literalistic interpretation.
Let us take a definition from Imam al-Shafi'i, an authority universally
accepted in Sunni Islam. Imam al-Shafi'i writes:
There are two kinds of introduced matters (muhdathat). One is that which
contradicts a text of the Qur'an, or the Sunna, or a report from the early
Muslims (athar), or the consensus (ijma') of the Muslims: this is an
'innovation of misguidance' (bid'at dalala). The second kind is that which
is in itself good and entails no contradiction of any of these
authorities: this is a 'non-reprehensible innovation' (bid'a ghayr
madhmuma).[5]
This basic distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of bid'a
is recognised by the overwhelming majority of classical ulema. Among some,
for instance al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam (one of the half-dozen or so great
mujtahids of Islamic history), innovations fall under the five axiological
headings of the Shari'a: the obligatory (wajib), the recommended (mandub),
the permissible (mubah), the offensive (makruh), and the forbidden (haram).[6]
Under the category of 'obligatory innovation', Ibn Abd al-Salam gives the
following examples: recording the Qur'an and the laws of Islam in writing
at a time when it was feared that they would be lost, studying Arabic
grammar in order to resolve controversies over the Qur'an, and developing
philosophical theology (kalam) to refute the claims of the Mu'tazilites.
Category two is 'recommended innovation'. Under this heading the ulema
list such activities as building madrasas, writing books on beneficial
Islamic subjects, and in-depth studies of Arabic linguistics.
Category three is 'permissible', or 'neutral innovation', including
worldly activities such as sifting flour, and constructing houses in
various styles not known in Medina.
Category four is the 'reprehensible innovation'. This includes such
misdemeanours as overdecorating mosques or the Qur'an.
Category five is the 'forbidden innovation'. This includes unlawful taxes,
giving judgeships to those unqualified to hold them, and sectarian beliefs
and practices that explicitly contravene the known principles of the
Qur'an and the Sunna.
The above classification of bid'a types is normal in classical Shari'a
literature, being accepted by the four schools of orthodox fiqh. There
have been only two significant exceptions to this understanding in the
history of Islamic thought: the Zahiri school as articulated by Ibn Hazm,
and one wing of the Hanbali madhhab, represented by Ibn Taymiya, who goes
against the classical ijma' on this issue, and claims that all forms of
innovation, good or bad, are un-Islamic.
Why is it, then, that so many Muslims now believe that innovation in any
form is unacceptable in Islam? One factor has already been touched on: the
mental complexes thrown up by insecurity, which incline people to find
comfort in derstand how Muslim civilisation was able so quickly to produce
novel academic disciplines to deal with new problems as these arose.
Islamic psychology is characteristic of the new ulum which, although
present in latent and implicit form in the Quran, were first systematized
in Islamic culture during the early Abbasid period. Given the importance
that the Quran attaches to obtaining a 'sound heart', we are not surprised
to find that the influence of Islamic psychology has been massive and
all-pervasive. In the formative first four centuries of Islam, the time
when the great works of tafsir, hadith, grammar, and so forth were laid
down, the ulema also applied their minds to this problem of al-qalb al-salim.
This was first visible when, following the example of the Tabi'in, many of
the early ascetics, such as Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Sufyan al-Thawri, and
Abdallah ibn al-Mubarak, had focussed their concerns explicitly on the art
of purifying the heart. The methods they recommended were frequent fasting
and night prayer, periodic retreats, and a preoccupation with murabata:
service as volunteer fighters in the border castles of Asia Minor.
This type of pietist orientation was not in the least systematic during
this period. It was a loose category embracing all Muslims who sought
salvation through the Prophetic virtues of renunciation, sincerity, and
deep devotion to the revelation. These men and women were variously
referred to as al-bakka'un: 'the weepers', because of their fear of the
Day of Judgement, or as zuhhad, ascetics, or ubbad, 'unceasing
worshippers'.
By the third century, however, we start to find writings which can be
understood as belonging to a distinct devotional school. The increasing
luxury and materialism of Abbasid urban society spurred many Muslims to
campaign for a restoration of the simplicity of the Prophetic age. Purity
of heart, compassion for others, and a constant recollection of God were
the defining features of this trend. We find references to the method of
muhasaba: self-examination to detect impurities of intention. Also
stressed was riyada: self-discipline.
By this time, too, the main outlines of Quranic psychology had been worked
out. The human creature, it was realised, was made up of four constituent
parts: the body (jism), the mind (aql), the spirit (ruh), and the self (nafs).
The first two need little comment. Less familiar (at least to people of a
modern education) are the third and fourth categories.
The spirit is the ruh, that underlying essence of the human individual
which survives death. It is hard to comprehend rationally, being in part
of Divine inspiration, as the Quran says: "And they ask you about the
spirit; say, the spirit is of the command of my Lord. And you have been
given of knowledge only a little."[7]
According to the early Islamic more demanding is the policy known as
mujahada: the daily combat against the lower self, the nafs. As the Quran
says: 'As for him that fears the standing before his Lord, and forbids his
nafs its desires, for him, Heaven shall be his place of resort.'[8] Hence
the Sufi commandment: 'Slaughter your ego with the knives of mujahada.'[9]
Once the nafs is controlled, then the heart is clear, and the virtues
proceed from it easily and naturally.
Because its objective is nothing less than salvation, this vital Islamic
science has been consistently expounded by the great scholars of classical
Islam. While today there are many Muslims, influenced by either Wahhabi or
Orientalist agendas, who believe that Sufism has always led a somewhat
marginal existence in Islam, the reality is that the overwhelming majority
of the classical scholars were actively involved in Sufism.
The early Shafi'i scholars of Khurasan: al-Hakim al-Nisaburi, Ibn Furak,
al-Qushayri and al-Bayhaqi, were all Sufis who formed links in the richest
academic tradition of Abbasid Islam, which culminated in the achievement
of Imam Hujjat al-Islam al-Ghazali. Ghazali himself, author of some three
hundred books, including the definitive rebuttals of Arab philosophy and
the Ismailis, three large textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh, the best-known tract
of usul al-fiqh, two works on logic, and several theological treatises,
also left us with the classic statement of orthodox Sufism: the Ihya Ulum
al-Din, a book of which Imam Nawawi remarked: "Were the books of
Islam all to be l ost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to
replace them all."[10]
Imam Nawawi himself wrote two books which record his debt to Sufism, one
called the Bustan al-Arifin ('Garden of the Gnostics', and another called
the Kitab al-Maqasid (recently published in English translation, Sunna
Books, Evanston Il. trans. Nuh Keller).
Among the Malikis, too, Sufism was popular. Al-Sawi, al-Dardir, al-Laqqani
and Abd al-Wahhab al-Baghdadi were all exponents of Sufism. The Maliki
jurist of Cairo, Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani defines Sufism as follows:
'The path of the Sufis is built on the Quran and the Sunna, and is based
on living according to the morals of the prophets and the purified ones.
It may not be blamed, unless it violates an explicit statement from the
Quran, sunna, or ijma. If it does not contravene any of these sources,
then no pretext remains for condemning it, except one's own low opinion of
others, or interpreting what they do as ostentation, which is unlawful.
No-one denies the states of the Sufis except someone ignorant of the way
they are.'[11]
For Hanbali Sufism one has to look no further than the revered figures of
Abdallah Ansari, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Ibn al-Jawzi, and Ibn Rajab.
In fact, virtually all the great luminaries of medieval Islam: al-Suyuti,
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Ayni, Ibn Khaldun, al-Subki, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami;
tafsir writers like Baydawi, al-Sawi, Abu'l-Su'ud, al-Baghawi, and Ibn
Kathir[12] ; 'aqeedah writers such as Taftazani, al-Nasafi, al-Razi: all
wrote in support of Sufism. Many, indeed, composed independent works of
Sufi inspiration. The ulema of the great dynasties of Islamic history,
including the Ottomans and the Moghuls, were deeply infused with the Sufi
outlook, regarding it as one of the most central and indispensable of
Islamic sciences.
Further confirmation of the Islamic legitimacy of Sufism is supplied by
the enthusiasm of its exponents for carrying Islam beyond the boundaries
of the Islamic world. The Islamization process in India, Black Africa, and
South-East Asia was carried out largely at the hands of wandering Sufi
teachers. Likewise, the Islamic obligation of jihad has been borne with
especial zeal by the Sufi orders. All the great nineteenth century
jihadists: Uthman dan Fodio (Hausaland), al-Sanousi (Libya), Abd al-Qadir
al-Jaza'iri (Algeria), Imam Shamil (Daghestan) and the leaders of the
Padre Rebellion (Sumatra) were active practitioners of Sufism, writing
extensively on it while on their campaigns. Nothing is further from
reality, in fact, than the claim that Sufism represents a quietist and
non-militant form of Islam.
With all this, we confront a paradox. Why is it, if Sufism has been so
respected a part of Muslim intellectual and political life throughout our
history, that there are, nowadays, angry voices raised against it? There
are two fundamental reasons here.
Firstly, there is again the pervasive influence of Orientalist
scholarship, which, at least before 1922 when Massignon wrote his Essai
sur les origines de la lexique technique, was of the opinion that
something so fertile and profound as Sufism could never have grown from
the essentially 'barren and legalistic' soil of Islam. Orientalist works
translated into Muslim languages were influential upon key Muslim
modernists - such as Muhammad Abduh in his later writings - who began to
question the centrality, or even the legitimacy, of Sufi discourse in
Islam.
Secondly, there is the emergence of the Wahhabi da'wa. When Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab, some two hundred years ago, teamed up with the Saudi tribe
and attacked the neighbouring clans, he was doing so under the sign of an
essentially neo-Kharijite version of Islam. Although he invoked Ibn
Taymiya, he had reservations even about him. For Ibn Taymiya himself,
although critical of the excesses of certain Sufi groups, had been
committed to a branch of mainstream Sufism. This is clear, for instance,
in Ibn Taymiya's work Sharh Futuh al-Ghayb, a commentary on some technical
points in the Openings of the Unseen, a key work by the sixth-century
saint of Baghdad, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. Throughout the work Ibn Taymiya
shows himself to be a loyal disciple of al-Jilani, whom he always refers
to as shaykhuna ('our teacher'). This Qadiri affiliation is confirmed in
the later literature of the Qadiri tariqa, which records Ibn Taymiya as a
key link in the silsila, the chain of transmission of Qadiri
teachings.[13]
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, however, went far beyond this. Raised in the wastelands
of Najd in Central Arabia, he had little access to mainstream Muslim
scholarship. In fact, when his da'wa appeared and became notorious, the
scholars and muftis of the day applied to it the famous Hadith of Najd:
Ibn Umar reported the Prophet (upon whom be blessings and peace) as
saying: "Oh God, bless us in our Syria; O God, bless us in our
Yemen." Those present said: "And in our Najd, O Messenger of
God!" but he said, "O God, bless us in our Syria; O God, bless
us in our Yemen." Those present said, "And in our Najd, O
Messenger of God!". Ibn Umar said that he thought that he said on the
third occasion: "Earthquakes and dissensions (fitna) are there, and
there shall arise the horn of the devil."[14]
And it is significant that almost uniquely among the lands of Islam, Najd
has never produced scholars of any repute.
The Najd-based da'wa of the Wahhabis, however, began to be heard more
loudly following the explosion of Saudi oil wealth. Many, even most,
Islamic publishing houses in Cairo and Beirut are now subsidised by
Wahhabi organisations, which prevent them from publishing traditional
works on Sufism, and remove passages in other works considered
unacceptable to Wahhabist doctrine.
The neo-Kharijite nature of Wahhabism makes it intolerant of all other
forms of Islamic expression. However, because it has no coherent fiqh of
its own - it rejects the orthodox madhhabs - and has only the most basic
and primitively anthropomorphic 'aqeedah, it has a fluid, amoebalike
tendency to produce divisions and subdivisions among those who profess it.
No longer are the Islamic groups essentially united by a consistent
madhhab and the Ash'ari [or Maturidi] 'aqeedah. Instead, they are all
trying to derive the shari'a and the 'aqeedah from the Quran and the Sunna
by themselves. The result is the appalling state of division and conflict
which disfigures the modern salafi condition.
At this critical moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic
hope for survival, and that is to restore the 'middle way', defined by
that sophisticated classical consensus which was worked out over painful
centuries of debate and scholarship. That consensus alone has the
demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But it can only be
retrieved when we improve the state of our hearts, and fill them with the
Islamic virtues of affection, respect, tolerance and reconciliation. This
inner reform, which is the traditional competence of Sufism, is a
precondition for the restoration of unity in the Islamic movement. The
alternative is likely to be continued, and agonising, failure.
NOTES
1. Sura 13:11.
2. For a further analysis of this passage, see Habib Ahmad Mashhur
al-Haddad, Key to the Garden (London 1990 CE), 78-81.
3. Sura 26:89. The archetype is Abrahamic: see Sura 37:84.
4. This hadith is in fact an instance of takhsis al-amm: a frequent
procedure of usul al-fiqh by which an apparently unqualified statement is
qualified to avoid the contradiction of another necessary principle. See
Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, tr. Nuh Keller (Abu
Dhabi, 1991 CE), 907-8 for some further examples.
5. Ibn Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari (Damascus, 1347), 97.
6. Cited in Muhammad al-Jurdani, al-Jawahir al-lu'lu'iyya fi sharh al-Arba'in
al-Nawawiya (Damascus, 1328), 220-1.
7. 17:85.
8. 79:40.
9. al-Qushayri, al-Risala (Cairo, n.d.), I, 393.
10. al-Zabidi, Ithaf al-sada al-muttaqin (Cairo, 1311), I, 27.
11. Sha'rani, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (Cairo, 1374), I, 4.
12. It is true that Ibn Kathir in his Bidaya is critical of some later
Sufis. Nonetheless, in his mawlid, which he asked his pupils to recite on
the occasion of the Blessed Prophet's birthday each year, he makes his
personal debt to a conservative and sober Sufism quite clear.
13. See G. Makdisi's article 'Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order'
in the American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1973.
14. Narrated by Bukhari. The translation is from J. Robson, Mishkat al-Masabih
(Lahore, 1970), II, 1380.
Abdal-Hakim Murad is presently a research student at Oxford University. He
studied Arabic at University of Cambridge and at al-Azhar University in
Cairo and has translated a number of Islamic works including Bayhaqi's
"Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith" (Quillan Press,1992), al-Ghazali's
"Rememberance of Death and the Afterlife" (Islamic Texts
Society, Cambridge) and has recently completed the translation of Al-Ghazali's
"Breaking of the Two Desires" (Islamic Texts Society,
Cambridge). He is also know as T.J.Winter.
Source: http://www.dawoodi-bohras.com
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