Tasawwuf - Sufism

Who is a Sufi (mutaṣawwif)?

The mutasawwif is he that seeks to become a Sufi, bi-idhni-Allah. They are the vast majority, Sufis are the most excelling ones.

The Sufi is he whose language, when he speaks, is the reality of his state.

Sufism is the renunciation of all selfish pleasures.

The Sufi is he that has nothing in his possession nor is himself possessed by anything.

The Sufi is he that sees nothing except God in the two worlds.

Regarding The Heretics

As for the would-be-Sufi (mutasawwif) claimants who are nescient of the Sharia or not even concerned by it: they are also heretics and completely undesirable no matter how big they grow their beard, turban, jubba, or voice!

Sh. G F Haddad in The Scholars of the Sufis

Al-Ghazali on Sufism

The Sufi path consists in cleansing the heart from whatever is other than Allah…

The Sufis are the seekers in Allah's Way, and their conduct is the best conduct, and their way is the best way, and their manners are the most sanctified. They have cleaned their hearts from other than Allah and they have made them as pathways for rivers to run, carrying knowledge of Allah.

Tasawwuf = fard 'ayn

Al-Ghazali declared tasawwuf to be a fard 'ayn or personal obligation upon every legally responsible Muslim man and woman, 'as none but Prophets are devoid of internal defects and diseases.'



 Tasawwuf Shuyukh

Al-Shafiʿi said:

​ I accompanied the Sufis and received from them but three words:

□ their statement that time is a sword: if you do not cut it, it cuts you;

□ their statement that if you do not keep your ego busy with truth it will keep you busy with falsehood;

□ their statement that deprivation is immunity.

Sufism (tasawwuf) is 3

1. a knowledge through which one knows the states of the human soul, praiseworthy or blameworthy,

2. how to purify it from the blameworthy and ennoble it by acquiring the praiseworthy [qualities], and

3. to journey and proceed to Allah - Most High, fleeing unto Him [by taking a spiritual path - tarīq ].
   

Religion Is an Orchard

Religion (al-dīn) is an orchard of which the fence is the Law (al-sharīʿa), the inner grove is the Path (al-tarīqa), and the fruit is the Reality (al-haqīqa).

Whoever has no Law has no Religion; whoever has no Path has no Law; and whoever has no Reality has no Path.
Shaykh al-ʿArusi

Advice by Shaykh Ibn Mashish

O Ali, God is God and men are men. Keep your tongue from the mention of them, and your heart from inclining before them, and be careful to guard the members (jawarih) and to fulfill the divine ordinances; thus the friendship (wilaya) of God is perfected in you. Have no remembrance of them except under obligation that duty to God imposes on you; thus your scrupulousness is perfected. Then say: …

 go deeper

The Sufis are a folk who have firmly grasped the Book and the Sunna, and have taken the Master of the Messengers—may the peace and prayers of Allah be upon him—as their Imam and example. They have taken the longing for the Divine, the inspirations of the Qur’anic spirit, and the exemplary Muhammadan model as means of gnosis, paths for spiritual wayfaring, and ways of arriving unto the Divine. They have presented to the world the strongest, most scrupulous, most guided, and firmest examples of spiritualism and faith.
The Scholars of The Sufis; Sh Abd al-Hadi Kharsa; p 35