Tasawwuf Shuyukh
[21] Tasawwuf: al-Nawawi
[22] Tasawwuf: al-Maqdisi
[23] Tasawwuf: Ibn Taymiyya
[24] Tasawwuf: Ibn Taymiyya II
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[21] ON TASAWWUF
Imam Nawawi (d. 676)
One of the great Sufi scholars, strictest
latter-
time hadith masters, and most meticulous of
jurists, Shaykh al-Islam Imam Muhyiddin
Yahya ibn
Sharaf al-Nawawi is with al-Rafi`i the
principal
reference of the late Shafi`i school. His
books
remain authoritative in the methodology of
the
law, in Qur'an commentary, and in hadith.
His
commentary of Sahih Muslim is second only
to Ibn
Hajar's commentary of Sahih Bukhari. Allah
gave
his famous compilation of Forty Hadiths
more
circulation and fame than possibly any
other book
of hadith, large or small, and has allowed
Nawawi
to be of immense benefit to the Community
of
Islam.
Nawawi was considered a Sufi and a saint,
as is evident from the titles of some of
his
works and that of Sakhawi's biography
entitled
Tarjamat shaykh al-islam, qutb al-awliya'
al-
kiram, faqih al-anam, muhyi al-sunna wa
mumit al-
bid`a Abi Zakariyya Muhyi al-Din al-Nawawi
(The
biography of the Shaykh of Islam, the Pole
of
Noble Saints, the Jurist of Mankind, the
Reviver
of the Sunna and the Slayer of
Innovation... al-
Nawawi).
Nawawi writes in his short treatise
entitled al-Maqasid fi al tawhid wa
al-`ibada wa
usul al-tasawwuf (The purposes in oneness,
worship, and the foundations of self-
purification):
The specifications of the Way of the Sufis
are five:
1-
to keep the Presence of Allah in your
heart in public and in private;
2-
to follow the Sunna of the Prophet by
actions and speech;
3-
to keep away from people and from asking
them;
4-
to be happy with what Allah gave you,
even if it is less;
5-
to always refer your matters to
Allah.(1)
He died before he could complete his Bustan
al-`arifin fi al-zuhd wa al-tasawwuf (The
garden
of the gnostics in asceticism and self-
purification), which is a precious
collection of
sayings of the early and late masters of
tasawwuf
elaborating on some of the finer points of
self-
purification. Here is an excerpt:
Al-Shafi`i said, may Allah have mercy on
him: "Only the sincere one (mukhlis)
knows
hypocrisy (riya')." This means that it
is
impossible to know the reality of hypocrisy
and see its hidden shades except for one
who resolutely seeks (arada) sincerity.
That one strives for a long time searching
and meditating and examining at length
within himself until he knows or knows
something of what hypocrisy is. This does
not happen for everyone. Indeed, this
happens only with the special ones (al-
khawass). But for a given individual to
claim that he knows what hypocrisy is, this
is real ignorance on his part.
I shall mention in this book a
chapter, Allah willing, in which you will
see a type of wonder that will cool your
eyes. To illustrate the great extent of the
concealment of hypocrisy we only need
relate the following from the Teacher and
Imam Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri, may Allah
have mercy on him, from his Risala with our
isnad previously mentioned.
He said: "I heard Muhammad ibn al-
Husayn say: I heard Ahmad ibn `Ali ibn
Ja`far say: I heard al-Hasan ibn `Alawiyya
say: Abu Yazid [al-Bistami], may Allah be
well pleased with him, said: I was for
twelve years the blacksmith of my ego
(haddadu nafsi), then for five years I
became the mirror of my heart (mir'atu
qalbi), then for a year I looked at what
lay between the two of them and I saw
around me a visible belt [i.e. of kufr =
the vestimentary sign of a non-Muslim
subject of the Islamic state]. So I strove
to cut it for twelve years and then looked
again, and I saw around me a hidden belt.
So I worked to cut it for five years,
looking to see how to cut. Then it was
unveiled for me (kushifa li) and I looked
at creation and saw that they were all
dead. So I recited the funeral prayer over
them."
I say: That hypocrisy should be as
inscrutable as this to the peerless master
in this path [i.e. tasawwuf] is enough to
show how greatly hidden it lies. His
phrase: "I saw them dead" is the
apex of
worth and beauty, and seldom do other than
the Prophet's words, Blessings and Peace be
upon him, gather up such wealth of
meanings. I shall touch upon its meaning
briefly. It means that after he had
struggled long and hard and his ego had
been disciplined and his heart illumined,
and when he had conquered his ego and
subdued it and achieved complete mastery
over it, and it had subjected himself to
him totally, at that time he looked at all
created beings and found that they were
dead and completely powerless:
they cannot harm nor can they benefit;
they cannot give nor can they
withhold;
they cannot give life nor can they
give death;
they cannot convey nor can they cut
off;
they cannot bring near nor can they
take away;
they cannot make happy nor can they
make sad;
they cannot bestow nor can they
deprive;
they possess for themselves neither
benefit nor harm,
nor death, nor life, nor resurrection.
This, then, characterizes human
beings as dead: they are considered dead in
all of the above respects, they are neither
feared nor entreated, what they have is not
coveted, they are not shown off to nor
fawned upon, one does not concern oneself
with them, they are not envied nor
disparaged, their defects are not mentioned
nor their faults pursued and exposed, one
is not jealous of them nor thinks much of
whatever Allah-given favors they have
received, and they are forgiven and excused
for their shortcomings, although the legal
punishments are applied to them according
to the Law. But the application of such
punishment does not preclude what we have
mentioned before, nor does it preclude our
endeavoring to cover up their faults
without disparaging them in the least.
This is how the dead are viewed. And
if someone mentions human beings in a
dishonorable manner we forbid him from
probing that subject in the same way that
we would if he were going to examine a
person who died. We do not do anything for
their sake nor do we leave Him for them.
And we no more stop ourselves from
fulfilling an act of obedience to Allah on
their account than we do on account of a
dead person, and we do not over-praise
them. And we neither love their own praise
for us nor hate their insults, and we do
not reciprocate them.
In sum, they are as it were non-
existent in all the respects we have
mentioned. They are under Allah's complete
care and jurisdiction. Whoever deals with
them in such a way, he has combined the
good of the next world with that of the
lower world. May Allah the Generous grant
us success towards achieving this These
few words are enough to touch upon an
explanation for Abu Yazid al-Bistami's
saying, may Allah be well pleased with
him.(2)
(1) Cf. Nuh Keller, Al-Maqasid: Imam
Nawawi's Manual of Islam
(Evanston: Sunna Books, 1994) p. 85-86.
(2) al-Nawawi, Bustan al-`arifin (Beirut:
dar al-kitab al-`arabi,
1405/1985) p. 53-54.
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M.
Hisham Kabbani's
_The Repudiation of "Salafi" Innovations_ (Kazi, 1996) p.
349-353.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[22] ON TASAWWUF
al-`Izz b. `Abd al-Salam b. Ahmad b. `Anim
al-Maqdisi (d. 678)
We mention this wa`iz (preacher) because he
is often confused with `Izz
al-Din ibn `Abd al-Salam al-Sulami, and a
small work of his on tasawwuf
is mistakenly attributed to the latter. In
this work, entitled variously
Hall al-rumuz wa mafatih al-kunuz and Zabad
khulasat al-tasawwuf, al-
Maqdisi divides the levels of suluk or
spiritual wayfaring along three
ways which correspond to the Prophet's
definition of Religion in the
hadith of Jibril:
Islam is the first of the levels of Religion, characterizing
the common believers;
Iman is the first of the stepping-stones of the heart and it
characterizes the elite of the
believers;
Ihsan is the first of the stepping-stones of the spirit, and it
characterizes the elite of those brought near.(1)
(1) al-`Izz ibn `Abd al-Salam [al-Maqdisi], Hall al-rumuz wa
mafatih al-kunuz (Cairo: matba`at nur
al-amal) p. 7.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[23] ON TASAWWUF
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728) Part 1/2
His admirers cite this jurist and hadith
master of the Hanbali school as
an enemy of Sufis, and he is the principal
authority in the campaign of
"Salafis" responsible for
creating the present climate of unwarranted
fanaticism and encouragement to ignorance
regarding tasawwuf. Yet Ibn
Taymiyya was himself a Sufi. However,
"Salafis" are careful never to
show the Sufi Ibn Taymiyya, who would
severely hamper their construction
of him as purely anti-Sufi.
Ibn Taymiyya's discourse on tasawwuf is riddled with
contradictions and ambiguities. One might say
that even though he
levelled all sorts of judgments on Sufis,
he was nevertheless unable to
deny the greatness of tasawwuf upon which
the Community had agreed long
before he came along. As a result he is
often observed slighting
tasawwuf, questioning his Sufi
contemporaries, and reducing the primacy
of the elite of Muslims to ordinariness, at
the same time as he boasts
of being a Qadiri Sufi in a direct line of
succession to Shaykh `Abd al-
Qadir al-Gilani, as we show in the lines
that follow.
It should be clear that the reason we quote the following evidence
is not because we consider Ibn Taymiyya in
any way representative of
tasawwuf. In our view he no more represents
tasawwuf than he represents
the `aqida of Ahl al-Sunna. However, we
quote his views only to
demonstrate that his misrepresentation by
Orientalists and "Salafis"
purely as an enemy of tasawwuf does not
stand to scrutiny. Regardless of
the desires of one group or another, the
facts provide clear evidence
that Ibn Taymiyya had no choice but to
accept tasawwuf and its
principles, and that he himself not only
claimed to be a Sufi, but also
to have been adorned with the cloak
(khirqa) of shaykhhood in the Qadiri
Sufi Order.
We have already mentioned Ibn Taymiyya's admiration for `Abd al-
Qadir Gilani, to whom he gives the title
"my Shaykh" (shaykhuna) and "my
Master" (sayyidi) exclusively in his
entire Fatawa. Ibn Taymiyya's sufi
inclinations and his reverence for `Abd
al-Qadir Gilani can also be seen
in his hundred-page commentary on Futuh
al-ghayb, covering only five of
the seventy-eight sermons of the book, but
showing that he considered
tasawwuf essential within the life of the
Islamic community.(1)
In his commentary Ibn Taymiyya stresses that the primacy of the
Shari`a forms the soundest tradition in
tasawwuf, and to argue this
point he lists over a dozen early masters,
as well as more contemporary
shaykhs like his fellow Hanbalis, al-Ansari
al-Harawi and `Abd al-Qadir,
and the latter's own shaykh, Hammad
al-Dabbas:
The upright among the followers of the Path
- like the majority of
the early shaykhs (shuyukh al-salaf) such
as Fudayl ibn `Iyad,
Ibrahim ibn Adham, Ma`ruf al-Karkhi,
al-Sari al-Saqati, al-Junayd
ibn Muhammad, and others of the early
teachers, as well as Shaykh
Abd al-Qadir, Shaykh Hammad, Shaykh Abu
al-Bayan and others of the
later masters -- do not permit the
followers of the Sufi path to
depart from the divinely legislated command
and prohibition, even
were that person to have flown in the air
or walked on water.(2)
Elsewhere also, such as in his al-Risala al-safadiyya, Ibn
Taymiyya defends the Sufis as those who
belong to the path of the Sunna
and represent it in their teachings and
writings:
The great shaykhs mentioned by Abu `Abd
al-Rahman al-Sulami in
Tabaqat al-sufiyya, and Abu al-Qasim
al-Qushayri in al-Risala,
were adherents of the school of Ahl
al-Sunna wa al-Jama`a and the
school of Ahl al-hadith, such as al-Fudayl
ibn `Iyad, al-Junayd
ibn Muhammad, Sahl ibn `Abd Allah
al-Tustari, `Amr ibn `Uthman al-
Makki, Abu `Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Khafif
al-Shirazi, and others,
and their speech is found in the Sunna, and
they composed books
about the Sunna.(3)
In his treatise on the difference between the lawful forms of
worship and the innovative forms, entitled
Risalat al-`ibadat al-
shar`iyya wal-farq baynaha wa bayn
al-bid`iyya, Ibn Taymiyya
unmistakably states that that the lawful is
the method and way of "those
who follow the Sufi path" or "the
way of self-denial" (zuhd) and those
who follow "what is called poverty and
tasawwuf", i.e. the fuqara' and
the Sufis:
The lawful is that by which one approaches
near to Allah. It is
the way of Allah. It is righteousness,
obedience, good deeds,
charity, and fairness. It is the way of
those on the Sufi path
(al-salikin), and the method of those
intending Allah and
worshipping Him; it is that which is
travelled by everyone who
desires Allah and follows the way of
self-denial (zuhd) and
religious practice, and what is called
poverty and tasawwuf and
the like.(4)
Regarding `Abd al-Qadir's teaching that the salik or Sufi wayfarer
should abstain from permitted desires, Ibn
Taymiyya begins by
determining that Abd al-Qadir's intention
is that one should give up
those permitted things which are not
commanded, for there may be a
danger in them. But to what extent? If
Islam is essentially learning and
carrying out the Divine command, then there
must be a way for the
striver on the path to determine the will
of Allah in each particular
situation. Ibn Taymiyya concedes that the
Qur'an and Sunna cannot
explicitly cover every possible specific
event in the life of every
believer. Yet if the goal of submission of
will and desire to Allah is
to be accomplished by those seeking Him,
there must be a way for the
striver to ascertain the Divine command in
its particularity.
Ibn Taymiyya's answer is to apply the legal concept of ijtihad to
the spiritual path, specifically to the
notion of ilham or inspiration.
In his efforts to achieve a union of his
will with Allah's, the true
Sufi reaches a state where he desires
nothing more than to discover the
greater good, the action which is most
pleasing and loveable to Allah.
When external legal arguments cannot direct
him in such matters, he can
rely on the standard Sufi notions of
private inspiration (ilham) and
intuitive perception (dhawq):
If the Sufi wayfarer has creatively
employed his efforts to the
external shar`i indications and sees no
clear probability
concerning his preferable action, he may
then feel inspired, along
with his goodness of intention and reverent
fear of Allah, to
choose one of two actions as superior to
the other. This kind of
inspiration (ilham) is an indication
concerning the truth. It may
be even a stronger indication than weak analogies,
weak hadiths,
weak literalist arguments (zawahir), and
weak istisHaab which are
employed by many who delve into the
principles, differences, and
systematizing of fiqh.(5)
Ibn Taymiyya bases this view on the principle that Allah has put a
natural disposition for the truth in
mankind, and when this natural
disposition has been grounded in the
reality of faith and enlightened by
Qur'anic teaching, and still the striver on
the path is unable to
determine the precise will of Allah in
specific instances, then his
heart will show him the preferable course
of action. Such an
inspiration, he holds, is one of the
strongest authorities possible in
the situation. Certainly the striver will
sometimes err, falsely guided
by his inspiration or intuitive perception
of the situation, just as the
mujtahid sometimes errs. But, he says, even
when the mujtahid or the
inspired striver is in error, he is
obedient.
Appealing to ilham and dhawq does not mean following one's own
whims or personal preferences.(6) In his
letter to Nasr al-Manbiji, he
qualifies this intuition as
"faith-informed" (al-dhawq al-imani). His
point is, as in the commentary to the
Futuh, that inspirational
experience is by nature ambiguous and needs
to be qualified and informed
by the criteria of the Qur'an and the
Sunna. Nor can it lead to a
certainty of the truth in his view, but
what it can do is give the
believer firm grounds for choosing the more
probably correct course of
action in a given instance and help him to
conform his will, in the
specific details of his life, to that of
his Creator and Commander.(7)
Other works of his as well abound in praise for Sufi teachings.
For example, in his book al-ihtijaj bi
al-qadar, he defends the Sufis'
emphasis on love of Allah and their
voluntarist rather than intellectual
approach to religion as being in agreement
with the teachings of the
Qur'an , the sound hadith, and the imja`
al-salaf:
As for the Sufis, they affirm the love (of
Allah), and this is
more evident among them than all other
issues. The basis of their
Way is simply will and love. The
affirmation of the love of Allah
is well-known in the speech of their early
and recent masters,
just as it is affirmed in the Book and the
Sunna and in the
agreement of the Salaf.(8)
Ibn Taymiyya is also notorious for his condemnation of Ibn `Arabi.
However, what he condemned was not Ibn
`Arabi but a tiny book of his
entitled Fusus al-hikam, which forms a
single slim volume. As for Ibn
`Arabi's magnum opus, al-Futuhat al-makkiyya
(The Meccan divine
disclosures), Ibn Taymiyya was no less an
admirer of this great work
than everyone else in Islam who saw it, as
he declares in his letter to
Abu al-Fath Nasr al-Munayji (d. 709)
published in his the volume
entitled Tawhid al-rububiyya of his Fatawa:
I was one of those who, previously, used to
hold the best opinion
of Ibn `Arabi and extol his praise, because
of the benefits I saw
in his books, such as what he said in many
of his books, for
example: al-Futuhat, al-Kanh, al-Muhkam
al-marbut, al-Durra al-
fakhira, Matali` al-nujum, and other such
works.(9)
Ibn Taymiyya goes on to say he changed his opinions, not because
of anything in these books, but only after
he read the Fusus.
Continued in Part 2/2
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[24] ON TASAWWUF
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728) Part 2/2
We now turn to the evidence of Ibn Taymiyya's affiliation with the
Qadiri Sufi Way and to his own
acknowledgement, as related by his
student Ibn `Abd al-Hadi (d. 909), that he
had received the Qadiri
khirqa or cloak of authority from `Abd
al-Qadir al-Gilani through a
chain of three shaykhs. These are no other
than the three Ibn Qudamas
who are among the established authorities
in fiqh in the Hanbali school.
This information was brought to light by
George Makdisi in a series of
articles published in the 1970s.(10)
In a manuscript of the Yusuf ibn `Abd al Hadi al-Hanbali entitled
Bad' al 'ilqa bi labs al khirqa (The
beginning of the shield in the
wearing of the Sufi cloak), Ibn Taymiyya is
listed within a Sufi
spiritual genealogy with other well known
Hanbali scholars. The links in
this genealogy are, in descending order:
1. `Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani (d. 561)
2.a. Abu `Umar ibn Qudama (d. 607)
2.b. Muwaffaq al Din ibn Qudama (d. 620)
3. Ibn Abi `Umar ibn Qudama (d. 682)
4. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728)
5. Ibn Qayyim al Jawziyya (d. 751)
6. Ibn Rajab (d. 795)
(Both Abu `Umar ibn Qudama and his brother
Muwaffaq al-Din received the
khirqa directly from Abd al-Qadir himself.)
Ibn Taymiyya is then quoted by Ibn `Abd al Hadi as affirming his
Sufi affiliation both in the Qadiri order
and in other Sufi orders:
I have worn the Sufi cloak of a number of
shaykhs belonging to
various tariqas (labistu khirqata at
tasawwuf min turuqi jama'atin
min al shuyukhi), among them the Shaykh
`Abd al-Qadir al Jili,
whose tariqa is the greatest of the well
known ones.
Further on he says:
The greatest Sufi Way (ajall al-turuq) is
that of my master
(sayyidi) `Abd al-Qadir al Jili, may Allah
have mercy on him.(11)
Further corroboration comes from Ibn Taymiyya in one of his own
works, as quoted in his al Mas'ala at
tabriziyya:
labistu al khirqata al-mubarakata li al
Shaykh `Abd al-Qadir wa
bayni wa baynahu ithan
I wore the blessed Sufi cloak of `Abd
al-Qadir, there being
between him and me two shaykhs.(12)
Ibn Taymiyya thus affirms that he was an assiduous reader of Ibn
`Arabi's al-Futuhat al-makkiyya; that he
considers `Abd al-Qadir al-
Gilani his shaykh -- he even wrote a
commentary on the latter's Futuh
al-ghayb; and that he belongs to the
Qadiriyya order and other Sufi
orders. What does he say about tasawwuf and
Sufis in general?
In his essay entitled al-Sufiyya wa al-fuqara' and published in
the eleventh volume (al Tawassuf) of his
Majmu`a fatawa Ibn
Taymiyya al Kubra, he states:
The word sufi was not well-known in the
first three centuries but
its usage became well-known after that.
More than a few Imams and
shaykhs spoke about it, such as Ahmad ibn
Hanbal, Abu Sulayman
al Darani, and others. It has been related
that Sufyan al-Thawri
used it. Some have also mentioned that
concerning Hasan
al Basri.(13)
Ibn Taymiyya then goes on to deduce that tasawwuf originated in
Basra among the generations after the
tabi`in, because he finds that
many of the early Sufis originated from
there while he does not find
evidence of it elsewhere. In this way he
mistakenly reduces tasawwuf to
a specific place and time, cutting it off
from its links with the time
of the Prophet and the Companions. This is
one the aberrant conclusions
which gives rise, among today's
"Salafis," to questions such as: "Where
in the Qur'an and the Sunna is tasawwuf
mentioned?" As Ibn `Ajiba
replied to such questioners:
The founder of the science of tasawwuf is
the Prophet himself to
whom Allah taught it by means of revelation
and inspiration.(14)
By Allah's favor, we have put this issue to
rest in our lengthy
exposition on the proofs of tasawwuf in the
pages above.
Ibn Taymiyya continues:
Tasawwuf has realities (haqa'iq) and states
of experience (ahwal)
which the Sufis mention in their science...
Some say that the Sufi
is he who purifies himself from anything
which distracts him from
the remembrance of Allah and who becomes
full of reflection about
the hereafter, to the point that gold and
stones will be the same
to him. Others say that tasawwuf is
safeguarding of the precious
meanings and leaving behind pretensions to
fame and vanity, and
the like. Thus the meaning of sufi alludes
to the meaning of
siddiq or one who has reached complete
Truthfulness, because the
best of human beings after prophets are the
siddiqin, as Allah
mentioned in the verse:
Whoever obeys Allah and the Apostle, they
are in the company
of those on whom is the grace of Allah: of
the prophets, the
truthful saints, the martyrs and the
righteous; ah, what a
beautiful fellowship! (4:69)
They consider, therefore, that after the Prophets there is
no one more virtuous than the Sufi, and the
Sufi is, in fact,
among other kinds of truthful saints, only
one kind, who
specialized in asceticism and worship
(al-sufi huwa fi al haqiqa
naw`un
min al-siddiqin fahuwa al-siddiq alladhi ikhtassa bi
al
zuhdi wa al '`ibada). The Sufi
is "the righteous man of the
path," just as others are called
"the righteous ones of the
`ulama" and "the righteous ones
of the emirs"...
[Here Ibn Taymiyya denies the Sufis' claim
that they represent
Truthfulness after the Prophets, and he
makes their status only
one among many of a larger pool of truthful
servants. This stems
from his earlier premise that tasawwuf
originated later and
farther than the Sunna of the Prophet. We have
already mentioned
that this premise was incorrect. All of the
Sufis consider that
the conveyors of their knowledge and
discipline were none other
than the Companions and the Successors, who
took it from none
other than the Prophet himself. In this
respect the Sufis and the
great Companions and Successors are not
differentiated in essence,
although they are differentiated in name,
by which precedence is
given to the Companions and the Successors
according to the hadith
of the Prophet.
Then Ibn Taymiyya arbitrarily separates Sufis and scholars
into two seemingly discrete groups, whereas
we have seen that all
the Sufis were great scholars, and that
many of the greatest
scholars were Sufis. Al-Junayd anticipated
such high-handed
distinctions in his famous statement:
"This knowledge of ours is
built of the Qur'an and the Sunna."
Also addressing this important
mistake in his Tabaqat al-kubra, Sha`rani
quotes al-Junayd and
goes on to state:
Every true Sufi is a scholar is Sacred Law,
though the
reverse is not necessarily true.(15)]
Some people criticized the Sufis and said
that they were
innovators and out of the Sunna... but the
truth is that they are
exercising ijtihad in view of obeying Allah
just as others who are
obedient to Allah have also done. So from
them you will find the
Foremost in Nearness (al-sabiq al-muqarrab)
by virtue of his
striving, while some of them are from the
People of the Right
Hand... and among those claiming
affiliation with them, are those
who are unjust to themselves, rebelling
against their Lord. These
are the sects of innovators and
free-thinkers (zindiq) who claim
affiliation to the Sufis but in the opinion
of the genuine Sufis,
they do not belong, for example, al-Hallaj.
[Here Ibn Taymiyya's inappropriate citing
of al-Hallaj is far more
symptomatic of his own misunderstanding of
tasawwuf that it is
illustrative of the point he is trying to
make. In reality, as
`Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi said of
al-Hallaj, "his case (among the
Sufis) is not clear, though Ibn `Ata'
Allah, Ibn Khafif, and Abu
al-Qasim al-Nasir Abadi approved of
him."(16) Furthermore, we have
already mentioned that major scholars in
Ibn Taymiyya's own school
rejected the charges leveled against
al-Hallaj, and even
considered him a saint, such as Ibn `Aqil
and Ibn Qudama. Can it
be that Ibn Taymiyya was unaware of all
these positions which
invalidate his point, or is he merely
affecting ignorance?]
Tasawwuf has branched out and diversified
and the Sufis have
become known as three types:
1- Sufiyyat al haqa'iq: the Sufis of
Realities, and these are the
ones we mentioned above;
2- Sufiyyat al arzaq: the funded Sufis who
live on the religious
endowments of Sufi guest-houses and
schools; it is not
necessary for them to be among the people
of true realities, as
this is a very rare thing...
3- Sufiyyat al rasm: the Sufis by
appearance only, who are
interested in bearing the name and the
dress etc.(17)
About fana' -- a term used by Sufis literally signifying
extinction or self-extinction -- and the
shatahat or sweeping statements
of Sufis, Ibn Taymiyya says:
This state of love is characterize many of
the People of Love of
Allah and the People of Seeking (Ahl al
irada). A person vanishes
to himself in the object of his love --
Allah through the
intensity of his love. He will recall
Allah, not recalling
himself, remember Allah and forget himself,
take Allah to witness
and not take himself to witness, exist in
Allah, not to himself.
When he reaches that stage, he no longer
feels his own existence.
That is why he may say in this state: ana
al haqq (I am the
Truth), or subhani (Glory to Me!), and ma
fi al-jubba illa Allah
(There is nothing in this cloak except
Allah), because he is drunk
in the love of Allah and this is a pleasure
and happiness that he
cannot control...
This matter has in it both truth and falsehood. Yet when
someone enters through his fervor a state
of ecstatic love (`ishq)
for Allah, he will take leave of his mind,
and when he enters that
state of absentmindedness, he will find
himself as if he is
accepting the concept of ittihad (union
with Allah). I do not
consider this a sin, because that person is
excused and no one may
punish him as he is not aware of what he is
doing. The pen does
not condemn the crazed person except when
he is restored to sanity
(and commits the same act). However, when
he is in that state and
commits wrong, he will come under Allah's
address:
O Our Lord, do not take us to task if we
forget or make
mistakes (2:286), There is no blame on you
if you
unintentionally make a mistake.(18)
The story is mentioned of two men whose mutual love was so
strong that one day, as one of them fell in
the sea, the other one
threw himself in behind him. Then the first
one asked: "What made
you fall here like me?" His friend
replied: "I vanished in you and
no longer saw myself. I thought you were I
and I was you"...
Therefore, as long as one is not drunk
through something that is
prohibited, his action is accepted from
him, but if he is drunk
through something prohibited (i.e. the
intention was bad) then he
is not excused.(19)
The above pages show the great extent of Ibn Taymiyya's
familiarity with the broad lines of
tasawwuf. Such knowledge was but
part of the complete education of anyone
who had a claim to learning in
his day and before his time. It did not
constitute something extraneous
or foreign to the great corpus of the
Islamic sciences. And yet,
similarly to his case in `aqida which we
have unravelled in the previous
pages, Ibn Taymiyya's misunderstanding of
tasawwuf massively outweighed
his understanding of it. This point was
brought to light with quasi-
surgical precision by the great Sufi Shaykh
Ibn `Ata' Allah in the
debate he held with Ibn Taymiyya in the
mosque of al-Azhar in Cairo.
(1) The commentary is found in volume 10:455-548 of the first
Riyadh edition
of the Majmu` fatawa Ibn Taymiyya.
(2) Majmu` fatawa Ibn Taymiyya 10:516.
(3) Ibn Taymiyya, al-Safadiyya (Riyad: matabi` hanifa, 1396/1976)
1:267.
(4) Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu`at al-rasa'il wa al-masa'il (Beirut:
lajnat al-turath al-`arabi) 5:83.
(5) Majmu` fatawa Ibn Taymiyya 10:473-474.
(6) Ibid. 10:479.
(7) Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu`a al-rasa'il wal-masa'il 1:162.
(8) Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ihtijaj bi al-qadar (Cairo: al-matba`a al-
salafiyya, 1394/1974) p. 38.
(9) Ibn Taymiyya, Tawhid al-rububiyya in Majmu`a al-Fatawa al-
kubra (Riyad, 1381) 2:464-465.
(10) George Makdisi, "L'isnad initiatique soufi de Muwaffaq ad-Din
ibn Qudama," in Cahiers de l'Herne:
Louis Massignon (Paris: Editions de
l'Herne, 1970) p. 88-96; "Ibn Taimiya:
A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order," in
American Journal of Arabic Studies I
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974) p. 118-
129; "The Hanbali School and
Sufism," in Boletin de la Asociacion
Espanola
de Orientalistas 15 (Madrid, 1979) p. 115-126.
(11) Ibn `Abd al Hadi, Bad' al 'ilqa
bi labs al khirqa, ms. al-
Hadi, Princeton Library Arabic Collection,
fols. 154a, 169b, 171b 172a;
and Damascus University, copy of original
Arabic manuscript, 985H.; also
mentioned in at Talyani, manuscript Chester
Beatty 3296 (8) in Dublin,
fol. 67a.
(12) Manuscript Damascus, Zahiriyya #1186 H.
(13) Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu`a al-fatawa al-kubra 11:5.
(14) Ibn `Ajiba, Iqaz al-himam p. 6.
(15) al-Sha`rani, al-Tabaqat al-kubra 1:4.
(16) `Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi, Usul al-din p. 315-16.
(17) Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu`a al-fatawa
al-kubra 11:16-20.
(18) Op. cit. 2:396 397.
(19) Op. cit. 10:339.
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M.
Hisham Kabbani's
_The Repudiation of "Salafi"
Innovations_ (Kazi, 1996) p. 354-366.
Blessings and Peace on the Prophet, his
Family, and his Companions
GFH Abu Hammad
[1996-11-16]
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