Tasawwuf Shuyukh
[33] Tasawwuf: al-Haytami
[34] Tasawwuf: al-Sha`rani
[35] Tasawwuf: al-Qari
[33] ON TASAWWUF
Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 974)
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami was a
student of Zakariyya
al-Ansari. As mentioned before, he
represents the foremost
resource
for legal opinion (fatwa) in the entire late Shafi`i
school. He was once asked about the legal
status of those who
criticizes Sufis: Is there an excuse for
such critics? He replies
in his Fatawa hadithiyya:
It is incumbent upon every person endowed
with mind and
religion not to fall into the trap of
criticizing these folk
(Sufis), for it is a mortal poison, as has
been witnessed of
old and recently.(1)
Among many others on the same topic, he gave an important
fatwa entitled: "Whoever denies,
rejects, or disapproves of the
Sufis, Allah will not make his knowledge
beneficial." We
transcribe it below in full:
Our Shaykh, the gnostic (`arif) scholar Abu
al-Hasan al-Bakri
(d. 952) told me, on the authority of the
shaykh and scholar
Jamal al-Din al-Sabi verbatim -- and he is
one of the most
distinguished students of our Shaykh
Zakaria al-Sabiq (al-
Ansari), that al-Sabi used to reject and
criticize the way of
the honorable Ibn al-Farid. One time
al-Sabi saw in a dream
that it was the Day of Judgment, and he was
carrying a load
which made him exhausted, then he heard a
caller saying:
"Where is the group of Ibn
al-Farid?" He said:
I came forward in order to enter with them,
but I was
told: "You are not one of them, so go
back." When I
woke up I was in extreme fear, and felt
regret and
sorrow, so I repented to Allah from
rejecting the way
of Ibn al-Farid, and renewed my commitment
to Allah,
and returned to believing that he is one of
the awliya
-- saints and friends -- of Allah. The
following year
on the same night, I had the same dream. I
heard the
caller saying: "Where are the group of
Ibn al-Farid?
Let them enter Paradise." So I went
with them and I was
told: "Come in, for now you are one of
them."
Examine this matter carefully as it come from a man of
knowledge in Islam. It appears -- and Allah
knows best --
that it is because of the baraka or
blessing of his shaykh
Zakariyya al-Ansari that he has seen the
dream which made him
change his mind. Otherwise, how many of
their deniers they
have left to their blindness, until they
found themselves in
loss and destruction!
If you ask: "Some eminent scholars, like al-Bulqini and
others, the latest being al-Biqa`i and his
students, and
others under whom you yourself (i.e.
al-Haytami) have
studied, have disapproved of the Sufis, so
why did you prefer
this way over another?
I answer: I have preferred this way for a number of
reasons, among them:
*
What our shaykh has mentioned in Sharh al-rawd on the
authority of Sa`d al-Din al-Taftazani (d.
791),(2) the
truthfinder of Islam, the knight of his
field, the remover
of the proofs of darkness that the latter said,
responding Ibn al-Muqri's statement:
"Whoever doubts in
the disbelief (kufr) of Ibn al-`Arabi's
group, he himself
is a disbeliever": "The truth is
that Ibn al-`Arabi and
his group are the elite of the Umma, and
al-Yafi`i, Ibn
Ata' Allah, and others have clearly
declared they
considered Ibn `Arabi a wali, and that the
language which
Sufis use is true among the experts in its
usage, and that
the gnostic (`arif), when he becomes
completely absorbed
in the oceans of Unity, might make some
statements that
are liable to be misconstrued as incarnation
(hulul) and
ittihad (union), while in reality there is
neither
incarnation nor union."
*
It has been clearly stated by our Imams, such as al-Rafi`i
in his book al`Aziz, and al-Nawawi in
al-Rawda, al-Majmu`,
and others: "When a mufti is being
asked about a certain
phrase that can be construed as disbelief,
he should not
immediately say that the speaker should be
put to death
nor make permissible the shedding of his
blood. Rather let
him say: The speaker must be asked about
what he meant by
his statement, and he should hear his
explanation, then
act accordingly."
Look at these guidelines --
may Allah guide you! -- and
you will find that the deniers who assault
this great man
(Ibn `Arabi) and positively assert his
disbelief, ride
upon blind mounts, and stumble about like a
camel affected
with troubled vision. Verily Allah has
removed their sight
and their hearing from perceiving this,
until they fell
into whatever they fell into, which caused
them to be
despised, and made their knowledge of no
benefit.
*
Their great knowledge and utter renunciation of this world
and of anything other than Allah testify to
their
innocence from these terrible accusations,
therefore we
preferred to dismiss such accusations,
because their
statements are true realities in the way
they expressed
them. Their way cannot be denied without
knowing the
meaning of their statements and the
expressions they use,
and then turning to apply the expression to
the meaning
and see if they match or not. We thank
Allah that all of
their deniers are ignorant in that kind of
knowledge, as
not one of them has mastered the sciences
of unveilings
(mukashafat), or even smelled them from a
distance; nor
has anyone of them sincerely followed any
of the awliya,
so that he could master their terminology.
If you object saying: I disagree that their expressions
refer to a reality rather than being
metaphorical phrases,
therefore show me something clearer than
the explanations
that have been given?
I say: Rejecting that is stubborness. Let us assume
that you disagree with what I have
mentioned, but the correct
way of stating the objection is to say:
"This statement could
be interpreted in several ways," and
proceed to explain them;
not say: "If it meant this, then and if it meant that,
then "(3) and state from the start
"This is kufr"! That is
ignorance and going beyond the scope of
nasiha or good advice
that is being claimed by the critic.
Don't you see that if Ibn al-Muqri's real motivation
were good advice, he would not have
exaggerated by saying:
"Whoever has a doubt in the disbelief
of the group of Ibn al-
`Arabi, he himself is a disbeliever"?
So he extended his
judgment that Ibn al-`Arabi's followers
were disbelievers,
to everyone who had a doubt as to their
disbelief. Look at
this fanaticism that exceeds all bounds and
departs from the
consensus of the Imams, and goes so far as
to accuse anyone
who doubts their kufr. "Glorified are
You, this is awful
calumny!" (24:16) "When ye
welcomed it with your tongues, and
uttered with your mouths that whereof ye
had no knowledge, ye
counted it a trifle. In the sight of Allah,
it is very great"
(24:15).
Notice also what his statement suggests that it is an
obligation on the whole Nation to believe
that Ibn `Arabi and
his followers are disbelievers, otherwise
they will all be
declared disbelievers -- and no one thinks
likes this. As a
matter of fact, it might well lead into
something forbidden
which he himself has stated clearly in his
book al-Rawd when
he said: "Whoever accuses a Muslim of
being a disbeliever
based on a sin committed by him, and
without an attempt to
interpret it favorably, he himself commits
disbelief." Yet
here he is accusing an entire group of
Muslims of disbelief.
Moreover, no consideration should be paid
to his
interpretation, because he only gives the
kind of
interpretation that goes against those he
is criticizing, for
that is all that their words have impressed
upon him.
As for those who did not think of of the words of Ibn
`Arabi and the Sufis except as a pure light
in front of them,
and believed in their sainthood -- then how
can a Muslim
attack them by accusing them of disbelief?
No one would dare
to do so unless he is accepting the
possibility to be himself
called a disbeliever. This judgment
reflects a great deal of
fanaticism, and an assault on most of the
Muslims. We ask
Allah, through His Mercy, to forgive the
one who uttered it.
It has been narrated through more than one source and
has become well-known to every one that
whoever opposes the
Sufis, Allah will not make His Knowledge
beneficial, and will
be inflicted with the worst and ugliest
(diseases/illnesses),
and we have witnessed that happening to
many deniers. For
example, al-Biqa`i (d. 885) may Allah
forgive him, used to be
one of the most distinguished scholars,
with numerous acts of
worship, an exceptional intelligence, and
an excellent memory
in all kinds of knowledge, especially in
the sciences of
exegesis and hadith, and he wrote numerous
books, but Allah
did not allow them to be of any kind of
benefit to anyone. He
also authored a book on Munasabat al-Qur'an
in about ten
volumes, about which no one knows except
the elite, and as
for the rest, they have never heard about
it. If this book
had been written by our Shaykh Zakariyya,
or by anyone who
believes (in awliya), it would have been
written with gold,
because, as a matter of fact, it has no
equal: for "Of the
bounties of thy Lord We bestow freely on
all, these as well
as those: the bounties of thy Lord are not
closed to anyone"
(17:20).
[Al-Biqa`i is the author, among others, of
a vicious attack
on tasawwuf and Sufis entitled Masra`
al-tasawwuf aw tanbih
al-ghabi ila takfir Ibn `Arabi wa-tahdir
al-`ibad min ahl al-
`inad (The destruction of tasawwuf, or: The
warning of the
ignoramus concerning the declaration of Ibn
`Arabi's
disbelief, and the cautioning of Allah's
servants against the
People of Stubbornness).]
Al-Biqa`i went to an extreme in his denial, and wrote
books about the subject, all of them
clearly and excessively
fanatical and deviating from the straight
path. But then he
paid for it fully and even more than that,
for he was caught
in the act on several occasions and was
judged a disbeliever
(kafir). It was ruled that his blood be
shed and he was about
to get killed, but he asked the help and
protection of some
influential people who got him out of it,
and he was made to
repent in Salihiyya, Egypt, and renew his
Islam. On the
latter occasion he was asked "What
exactly do you disapprove
of in Shaykh Muhiyyiddin (Ibn
`Arabi)?" He said: "I disagree
with him on certain passages, fifteen or
less, in his book
al-Futuhat."
Consider well this individual who contradicts his own
books, where he mentions that he opposes many parts of al-
Futuhat and other books and declares that
they constitute
disbelief: is there any reason to this
other than fanaticism?
He had some distinguished students who
listened to his words
and believed in them, among them some of my
shaykhs, but they
did not gain any kind of true knowledge
from it, because some
of them did not succeed in writing any
books, while some
wrote books on the art of fiqh equal to the
books of Sa`d al
Din al-Taftazani and others in their
eloquence, the beauty of
their style and the excellence of their
diction, but no one
paid any attention to them or even noticed
them, on the
contrary: people ignored them.
It happened to me with one of those, that while I was
studying under him, he started to have
difficulties
breathing, and I did not know at that time
that he opposed
the Sufis. In one of his sessions, the name
of Shaykh `Umar
Ibn al-Farid, may Allah sanctify his secret, was mentioned,
and he was asked: "What do you think
about him?" He said: "He
is a great poet"; then he was asked,
"and what else after
that?" He said "He is a
kafir." Then I had to leave, then I
came back later to read something to him
and I examined
carefully to see if he had repented, but I
found him
seriously ill and oppressed in his
breathing to the point
that he was almost dying. I said to him:
"If you believe in
Ibn al-Farid (i.e. in his Friendship with
Allah), I guarantee
that Allah will cure you of your
illness." He said: "I have
had this condition for years." I said:
"Even so." He said,
"All right, then I will," after
which he began to feel better
and better. One day, while I was walking
with him, trying to
correct his doctrine (`aqida), he said to
me: "As far as that
man is concerned, I do not judge him to be
a kafir, but as
far as his discourses are concerned, they
do include kufr." I
said: "One evil deed out of two,"
after which I quit studying
under him, and that illness stayed with
him, but relatively
better than before.
One of the students of al-Biqa`i, the scholar Shaykh
Nur al-Din Al-Mahalli, also used to say
"As far as the man is
concerned, I don't judge him to be a kafir,
but as far as his
discourses are concerned, they do include
kufr."
[This resort to "one evil out of
two" is characteristic of
many of today's "Salafis," who do
not hesitate to brand Sufis
with disbelief, both on the whole and
individually, then when
they are admonished for their reprehensible
act, they answer:
"I do not judge them to be kafir, but
their words do include
kufr"! As Haytami said, criticizing
the Sufis is a mortal
poison and a pitfall from which one does
irremediable damage
to one's belief, and we ask Allah's
protection.]
If you ask: Has not Allah made the knowledge of some of
the deniers of Sufis beneficial?
I say: There are two groups of deniers: in the case of
those we mentioned, their intention was not
to show pure good
counsel to Muslims, but pure fanaticism,
which is why they
believed whatever they believed. They were
overcome by a kind
of envy and the desire to be different from
others in their
time, in order to be distinguished from
them by means of
these unusual things and to gain the
reputation that they
disapprove of any reprehensible matter
without fearing
anyone, and the like of such corrupted
intentions which
contains not the slightest portion of
sincerity.(4)
(1) Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Fatawa hadithiyya (Cairo: al-
Halabi, 1970) p. 331.
(2) Sa`d al-Din Mas`ud ibn `Umar al-Taftazani, one of the
great mujtahid polymaths of the Shafi`i
school, he authored books
in
tafsir, kalam, usul, fiqh, `ilm al-mantiq (logic), grammar,
rhetoric, and philology.
(3) An allusion to Ibn Taymiyya, who predicated his judgment
of Ibn `Arabi on the constant obnoxious
assumption that he
understood his terminology and meanings.
(4) al-Haytami, Fatawa hadithiyya p. 52-54.
[34] ON TASAWWUF
`Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha`rani (d. 973)
A Hanafi scholar of comparative fiqh and
author of numerous works
on Law and tasawwuf, among which al-Tabaqat
al-kubra in which he
writes, as cited in the Reliance of the
Traveller:
The path of the Sufis is built on the Koran
and sunna, and is
based upon living according to the morals
of the prophets and
purified ones. It may not be blamed unless
it violates an
explicit statement from the Koran, sunna,
or scholarly
consensus, exclusively. If it does not
contravene one of
these, the very most that one may say of it
is that it is an
understanding a Muslim man has been given,
so let whoever
wishes act upon it, and whoever does not refrain,
this being
as true of works as of understanding. So no
pretext remains
for condemning it except one's own low
opinion of others, or
interpreting what they do as ostentation,
which is unlawful.
Whoever carefully examines the branches of knowledge of
the Folk of Allah Most High will find that
none of them are
beyond the pale of the Sacred Law. How
should they lie beyond
the pale of the Sacred Law when it is the
law that connects
the Sufis to Allah at every moment? Rather, the reason for
the doubts of someone unfamiliar with the
way of the Sufis
that it is of the very essence of theSacred
Law is the fact
that such a person has not thoroughly
mastered the knowledge
of the law. This is why Junayd (Allah Most
High have mercy on
him) said, "This knowledge of ours is
built of the Koran and
sunna," in reply to those of his time
or any other who
imagine that it is beyond the pale of the
Koran and sunna.
The Folk unanimously concur that none is fit to teach
in the path of Allah Mighty and Majestic
save someone with
comprehensive mastery of the Sacred Law, who knows its
explicit and implicit rulings, which of
them are of general
applicability and which are particular,
which supersede
others and which are superseded. He must
also have a thorough
grounding in Arabic, be familiar with its
figurative modes
and similes, and so forth. So every true
Sufi is a scholar is
Sacred Law, though the reverse is not
necessarily true.
To summarize, no one denies the states of the Sufis
except someone ignorant of the way they
are. Qushayri says,
"No era of the Islamic period has had
a true sheikh of this
group, save that the Imams of the scholars
of that time
deferred to him, showed humility towards
him, and visited him
for the benefit of his spiritual grace
(baraka). If the Folk
had no superiority or election, the matter
would have been
the other way around.(1)
(1) al-Tabaqat al-kubra al-musamma bi Lawaqih al-anwar fi
tabaqat
al-akhyar (1374/1954) (Reprint, Beirut: dar al-fikr, n.d.)
1:4. In Reliance of the Traveller p.
863-864.
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M.
Hisham Kabbani's
_The Repudiation of "Salafi"
Innovations_ (Kazi, 1996) p. 395-396.
[35] ON TASAWWUF
Mulla `Ali al-Qari (d. 1014)
One of the great Hanafi masters of hadith
and Imams of fiqh,
Qur'anic commentary, language, history and
tasawwuf, he authored
several great commentaries such as
al-Mirqat on Mishkat al-masabih
in several volumes, a two-volume commentary
on Qadi `Iyad's al-
Shifa', and a two-volume commentary on
Ghazali's abridgment of the
Ihya entitled `Ayn al-`ilm wa zayn al-hilm
(The spring of
knowledge and the adornment of
understanding). His book of
prophetic invocations, al-Hizb al-a`zam
(The supreme daily dhikr)
forms the basis of Imam al-Jazuli's celebrated
manual of dhikr,
Dala'il al-khayrat, which along with the
Qur'an is recited daily
by many pious Muslims around the world.
He writes in the foreword to his commentary on Ghazali:
I wrote this commentary on the abridgment
of Ihya' `ulum al-
din by the Proof of Islam and the
Confirmation of Creatures
hoping to receive some of the outpouring of
blessings from
the words of the most pure knowers of
Allah, and to benefit
from the gifts that exude from the pages of
the Shaykhs and
the Saints, so that I may be mentioned in
their number and be
raised in their throng, even if I fell
short in their
following and their service, for I rely on
my love for them
and content myself with my longing for
them.(1)
On the obligation to seek purification of
the heart he writes:
The greatest of the great (al-akabir) have
striven to pray
only two rak`at without conversing with
their ego about dunya
in the midst of their prayer, and they were
unable to do
this. Therefore there is not any such
ambition for us of ever
achieving this. Would that one saves only
half of his prayer,
or only a third, from the whisperings and
the passing
thoughts turning over in the mind. He is
like him who mixes
good and bad, like a glass full of vinegar
into which water
is poured: inevitably vinegar is spilled in
proportion to the
water poured and the two amounts never
coexist. We ask for
Allah's help!(2)
The last chapter of Qari's commentary on Ghazali, perhaps the
most valuable of the entire work, is
devoted to Ghazali's and
Qari's explanations of the verse "If
you love Allah, follow me,
and Allah will love you!" (3:31) and
is reminiscent of al-Harawi's
Kitab sad maydan on the same topic. In it
Qari cites al-Hasan al-
Basri as saying: "Whoever (truly)
knows his Lord loves Him, and
whoever (truly) knows the world does
without it." Qari begins the
chapter with a warning that the various
spiritual states of love
for Allah described by Sufis in their
terminology all proceed from
the same Qur'anic source and that it is not
permitted to deny them
unless one denies the source itself:
Love and the discipline of the path
(al-mahabba wa al-suluk)
mean the path of love and longing, and
whoever does not scoop
his drink from the ocean of gnosticism does
not know the
reality of love, even if the genus,
examples, and terminology
are different. Love has no other meaning
than the exhortation
to obedience, and whoever denies love
denies familiarity
(uns) and passion (shawq) and taste (dhawq)
and effacement
(mahu) and clarity (sahu) and extinction
(fana') and
subsistence (baqa') and contraction (qabd)
and expansion
(bast) and all the rest of the necessary
characteristics of
love and longing, and the rest of the
stations of the People
of Gnosis.(3)
(1) al-Qari, Sharh `Ayn al-`ilm wa zayn al-hilm 1:1.
(2) Ibid. 1:78.
(3) Ibid. 2:354-355.
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M.
Hisham Kabbani's
_The Repudiation of "Salafi"
Innovations_ (Kazi, 1996) p. 397-398.
Blessings and Peace on the Prophet, his
Family, and his Companions
GFH Abu Hammad
[1996-11-16]
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