Haqiqatul Tasawwuf :Realities of Sufism

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Haqiqatul Tasawwuf

(Realities of Sufism)

A Concise Treatise of Ilm ul Tasawwuf
With An Explanation of
Necessary Technical Terms

Courtesy: The African Qadriyya at www.abunashaykh.com

Tawbah, Tawwakal, Ridhaa, Dhikr,

Khawf, Muhaasabah, Shukr, Faqr,

Sidq, Rajaa, Tasawwuf, Qurb,

Sabr, Ikhlaas, Taqwa, Mahabbah,

Zuhd, Waraa, Tawaadu, Yaqeen,

 

Tawbah (Turning to Allah for Forgiveness)

Tawbah is leaving what the Shari‘ah finds blameworthy for what it finds praiseworthy. It is the beginning of the path of the sālikīn (spiritual travelers), the key to the happiness of the murīdīn (spiritual aspirants), and the condition that makes the passage to Allah the Exalted sound. In many ayats, Allah the Exalted orders the believers to perform tawbah, making it a means for success in both this world and the next. Allah says:

وَتُوبُوا إِلَى اللهِ جَمِيعاً أَََيُّهَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ لَعَلَّكُم تُفْلِحُونْ
And turn to Allah all of you, O believers! so that you may be successful. (24:31)
اَسْتَغْـفِرُوا رَبَّكُمْ ثُمَّ تُوبُوا إِلَيْهْ
And ask forgiveness of your Lord, then turn to Him. (11:90)
يَآ أَيُّهَا الَّذِيْنَ ءَامَنـُوا تُوبُوا إِلَى اللهِ تَوْبَةً نَصُوحاً
O you who believe! Turn to Allah a sincere turning. (66:

 

The Messenger, the Faultless (Allah bless him and grant him peace), often renewed his tawbah, repeatedly asking Allah for forgiveness in order to teach the Ummah and establish the Sunnah. Al-Aghar ibn Yasar al-Muzni (may Allah be pleased with him) related that the Prophet of Allah said, “O mankind, make tawbah to Allah and ask him for forgiveness, for surely I make tawbah a hundred times each day.” Imam Nawawi (may Allah show him mercy) said:
Tawbah is required for every wrongdoing. If the tawbah is for a disobedience commited only between the servant of Allah and Allah the Exalted, the following three conditions must be met: the servant stops doing the disobedience, regrets having done it, and resolves to never do it again. If the disobedience is connected with another person then it has four conditions: the three conditions mentioned above, plus, the obligation of giving the wronged person his right. If this right is money or anything similar, it must be given back. If the wronged person was verbally or physically abused, then Allah’s servant seeking tawbah should submit himself to the right of the wronged person, or ask him for forgiveness. If the abuse is ghaybah (backbiting), then he should ask the wronged person to pardon him. He must turn away from all wrong actions.
Among the conditions of tawbah is leaving the company of those who encourage committing wrongs and discourage obedience to Allah, and joining the companionship of the good and truthful so that their companionship deters one from returning to one’s old life of disobedience.

The Sufi does not look at the smallness of his sin; rather, he looks at the greatness of his Lord, following the example of the companions of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah be pleased with all of them). Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “You might do something that seems, in your opinion, to be smaller than a strand of hair; but in the time of the Messenger of Allah, we considered it to be very big.” Abu ‘Abd Allah said, “He meant by this ‘something’ anything that leads to destruction.”

The Sufi not only does tawbah from his outward disobedience, which, in his eyes, is the tawbah of the common people, but in addition, he performs tawbah from everything that distracts his heart from being occupied with Allah the Exalted. When Dhu al-Nun al-Misri (may Allah be pleased with him) was asked about tawbah he said, “Tawbah of the common is from wrong actions while tawbah of the elite is from heedlessness.”

‘Abd Allah al-Tamimi (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “A difference exists between those who make tawbah: one may be making tawbah from his wrong actions, while another may be making tawbah from his heedlessness, while still another may be making tawbah from seeing himself doing good and being obedient.”
Know that whenever the Sufi corrects his knowledge of Allah the Exalted and increases his works, his tawbah becomes more precise. So, no blemishes can be hidden from the one whose heart has been purified from the filth of sin and has had the lights of īmān shone upon it. He won’t feel at ease when he tries to commit slips. Immediately, he will make tawbah from the shame he feels from the knowledge that Allah is seeing him. The Sufi has to increase in his asking for forgiveness night and day, thus making him feel both his actual servanthood to Allah and his shortcomings in giving His Lord His rightful due. From this he acknowledges servitude (‘ubūdīya) and confirms Lordship (rubūbīya).

Allah the Exalted says:
فَـقُلتُ اَسْتَغْفِرُوا رَبُّكُمْ إِنَّهُ كَانَ غَفَّاراً ، يُرْسِلِ السَّمَاءَ عَلَيْكُمْ مِدْرَاراً، وَيُمْدِدْكُمْ بِأَمْوَالٍ وَبَنِينَ وَيَجْعَلْ لَّـكُـمْ جَنَّاتٍ وَيَجْعَلْ لَّكُمْ أَنْهَاراً
Then I said, Ask forgiveness of your Lord, surely He is the most Forgiving: He will send down upon you the cloud, pouring down abundance of rain: And help you with wealth and sons, and make for you gardens, and make for you rivers. (71:10–12)
إِنَّ الْمُتَّقِينَ فِى جَنَّاتٍ وَعُيُونٍ ، ءَاخِذِينَ مَآ ءَاتَاهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا قَبْلَ ذَالِكَ مُحْسِنِـيْن ، كَانُوا قَلِيلاً مِّنَ الَّيْلِ مَا يَهْجَعُونَ ، وَبِالأَسْحَارِ هُمْ يَسْتَغْفِرُونْ
Surely those who guard (against evil) shall be in gardens and fountains. Taking what their Lord gives them; surely they were before that, the doers of good. They used to sleep but little in the night. And in the morning they asked forgiveness. (51:15–1

When the Sufi reads these verses and others like them, he sheds tears of regret for his shortcomings in his life and for his remissness in his relationship to Allah. He turns to his faults and shortcomings, correcting them before it is too late. Then he turns to his soul (nafs) and purifies it. He follows this with increased acts of obedience and goodness, as the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) has said, “Performing acts of goodness (ĥasanah) immediately after wrong actions (sayyi’ah) erases wrong actions.”

Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq (may Allah have mercy upon him) said in his book of rules:
The claim of the claimer is known by its result. If the claim manifests itself then it is correct; otherwise, the one who alleges his claim is a liar. Tawbah not followed by godfearingness (taqwā) is considered unaccepted. Taqwā not free of doing wrong actions (istiqama) is admixed and imperfect. Istiqāma without scrupulousness (wara‘) is incomplete. Wara‘ that is not a result of zuhd is limited. Zuhd that is not built upon trust in Allah (tawakkul) is dry and dead. Tawakkul whose fruits do not manifest by completely cutting off everything that does not lead to Allah and referring to Him, is a picture without truth in it (it is a form without reality). So, sound tawbah manifests through the servant turning away from the forbidden (ĥarām); perfection in taqwā manifests through the servant finding no observer except Allah; istiqāmah exists through the servant taking precautions to perform his religious exercises (wird) without innovation (bid‘); and wara‘ exists when the servant, at the point of experiencing strong desires for something that may be unacceptable, leaves it.

Khawf (Fear of Allah)
Imam al-Ghazali, the Proof of Islam (may Allah have mercy upon him), said, “Know that the reality of khawf is the heart’s suffering and its burning in expectation of something distasteful befalling it. This fear is due to one’s sins or knowledge of Allah’s qualities. No doubt, knowledge of Allah’s qualities will cause fear. How perfect! because he who knows Allah, by necessity, fears him.”

Allah says:
إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ العُلَمَاءْ
Those of His servants who are possessed of knowledge fear Allah. (35:2
Allah calls upon his servants to fear Him only. He says:
وَإِيَّايَ فَارْهَبُونْ
So of Me alone should you be afraid. (16:51)
He praises the believers and describes them as having fear, saying:
يخَافُونَ رَبَّهُمْ مِنْ فَوقِهِمْ
They fear their Lord above them. (16:50)
Allah has made fear a condition for completeness of īmān, saying:
وَخَافُوْنِ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ مُؤْمِنِـينْ
Fear Me if you are believers. (3:175)
He has promised the one who fears to stand before Allah two gardens: the garden of knowledges in this world, and the garden of adornments in the next world. He says:
وَلمِـَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ جَنَّتَان
And for him who fears to stand in the presence of his Lord is two gardens. (55:46)
Allah made the Jannah an abode for the one who fears to stand before his Lord. Allah also says:
وَأمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبـِّهِ وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الهَوَى ، فَإِنَّ الجَنَّةَ هِيَ المَأوَى
And as for him who fears to stand in the presence of his Lord and forbids the soul from low desires, then surely the garden—that is the abode. (79:40-41)

Shaykh Ahmad al-Zarruq (may Allah have mercy on him) said in his book of rules, “Among the motives for action is the presence of fear. It is magnifying Allah’s greatness accompanied by dread. Fear is the heart’s disturbance at the possibility of being the object of the Lord’s vengeance.”

Khawf is found in the one who is aware of the dangerous consequences of his actions. Therefore, he stops himself at the required (the wājib), neither turning his attention to deviation and sin, nor putting himself into situations that might cause him to fall into evil and corruption. Through fear, the Sufi ascends to adornment with nearness. The fear that manifested in the world of the body is transferred to the world of the spirit (rūh). The ‘ārif will have intimate feelings, achieved only by the people of purity.

To describe the station of khawf, Sayyid ‘Abd al-Wahāb al-Sha‘rāni (may Allah be pleased with him) tells of how Sayyida Rābiyah al-‘Adawīya was given to so much weeping and sadness that whenever she heard the mention of the Hellfire she would faint, remaining unconscious for sometime. The place where she made sujūd was like a small ditch from the tears she shed; it was as if the Hellfire had only been created for her sake. The secret of this fear lies in the belief that every trial other than the Hellfire is easy to bear, and any misadventure other than remoteness from Allah is insignificant.
The Sufi understands that the lover will not drink the cup of love until fear has ripened his heart. He who does not have taqwā such as this will not know why he cries; and he who has not seen the beauty of Yūsuf will not know what caused Ya‘qub’s suffering.

The one at the station of khawf does not weep and wipe his eyes; rather, he leaves that for which he fears being punished.
Abu Sulayman al-Darāni (may Allah have mercy upon him) said, “Fear does not leave a heart but that it is ruined.”
Those who possess khawf are not of one rank. Ibn Ajiba (may Allah have mercy upon him) categorized them into three. He said, “Fear of the common is of punishment and of missing a reward; fear of the elect is of blame and of missing the opportunity of drawing closer; fear of the elect of the elect is of being veiled for displaying discourtesy.”