On Being Invited to the Qur'an and Sunnah - Part One
During the
time which The Spiritual Health Learning Community has been online, the e-mail box has been fairly active. Among
the comments and questions which have arrived are a number from well-meaning people who
have invited me to the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Apparently,
to be Sufi, automatically raises questions about one's knowledge of, love for, and
commitment to the Revealed Word of God and the example of the final Rasul and Nabi
(messenger and prophet) of Islam, Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Sometimes
these transmissions are expressed in very respectful tones. On other occasions they are
given a non-respectful edge which can range in character all the way from mildly
disapproving to being very contemptuous in a self-righteous manner.
I am not
surprised by these kind of statements or perspectives since I have been exposed to them
for nearly twenty-seven years. Moreover, these points of view are neither new to me nor
are they new to the debate/discussion which has been going on for more than fourteen
hundred years (Hijra calendar) with respect to the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of
Islam.
Better
people than me on both sides of the discussion have commented extensively on these
matters, and I seriously doubt that I could offer something which is either different from
or better than already has come forth from very learned minds and hearts. So, what is
given here is merely a reminder of sorts.
Islam is not
just about being Muslim. To be a Muslim is a starting point and does not exhaust what
human beings are invited to either by the Qur'an or the Prophet.
The Qur'an
and the Prophet both invite us to not only be Muslim but to be Mu'min and Mohsin as well.
These are not referring to one and the same condition or spiritual state. Distinctions are
being made.
Of course,
all those individuals, who, by the grace of God, have attained the latter two spiritual
conditions are also Muslim, but not all Muslims can automatically be considered to be in
either of these two latter categories simply because a person calls oneself a Muslim.
There are
many, many ayats (verses) of the Qur'an which address these distinctions. For example,
these distinctions are touched upon, in part, when the Qur'an instructed the Prophet to
tell the Bedouins who had come to him professing their belief in Allah and the Prophet
that the Bedouins should not say that they believe but they should say they submitted to
Allah and the Prophet because belief or Iman (faith) had not, yet, entered into their
hearts.
The Prophet,
himself, had said that one could characterize faith or Iman in the following way. Faith
consists of a profession of the tongue, a verification of the heart, and a putting into
action by the limbs of whatever is being professed by the tongue.
Many people
go from the first (that is, professing of the tongue) to the third (that is, putting what
is professed into action) with not so much as a "how-do-you-do?" to the second
aspect of faith mentioned above - namely, verifying with the heart what is being professed
by the tongue and summarily being put into action. This is one of the reasons why so many
of our actions are given expression with a lack of hikmat or spiritual wisdom or insight,
since our hearts have never come to verify, and, therefore, develop some degree of
understanding concerning that which is being uttered by our lips and being put into
action.
There is a
long Hadith which is transmitted by 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) in which he talks
about a man unknown to the Companions of the Prophet and, yet, whose clothes showed no
sign of travel. The stranger came to the Prophet and sat knee to knee with him, as
intimate friends in those days would do, and began asking the Prophet, among other things,
to tell the meaning of Islam (pillars), Iman (faith) and 'Ihsan (spiritual excellence).
Each time
the Prophet gave an answer to these questions, the stranger told the Prophet: "Yes,
this is correct," and 'Umar (May Allah be pleased with him) indicated how all the
Companions were puzzled over, if not incredulous about, the manner in which this stranger
responded, as if he were waiting to verify whether the Prophet's answers were correct or
not.
After all
the questions had been asked (and there were more questions than just the above three),
and the stranger had departed, the Prophet was silent for a long time. Finally, the
Prophet asked 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) if the latter knew who the stranger
was.
The
Companion indicated that Allah and the Prophet knew, but the Companion did not know. The
Prophet said: "That was Archangel Gabriel, and he has come this day to teach you your
religion."
Again,
distinctions are being drawn. Not every individual who, by the grace of God, professes
submission to Islam also has attained to the level of faith, and not every person who has,
by the grace of God, attained to the level of faith, has, as well, attained to the level
of spiritual excellence.
People
recite the attestation of submission to the fact that there is no God but (or except, or
other than) Allah and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the Messenger of God. Then they
recite the similar Kalimah of faith as if they were saying the same thing again but in
slightly different words.
However, the
two are not the same. The second involves (or, at least, it should) a verification of the
heart which is not necessarily present in the initial attestation of submission, and, yet,
many people tend to gloss over the distinctions which are implicit in the two.
We all tend
to make the mistake of equating what we think about things as being the authoritative and
indisputable version of the way things are. People of insight tend to be a little more
cautious in their appraisal of the situation.
The Prophet
has said that the Qur'an has an outer and an inner meaning. Furthermore, this inner
meaning has an inner meaning and so on to seven levels of significance.
There is
resonance between the above Hadith and another saying of the Prophet in which he indicated
that Allah has 300 traits and that if one could make even one of these attributes to be a
part of one's own character, one would attain paradise.
Surely, the
Prophet, better than anyone, recognized the infinite nature of Divinity, and the very
nature of infinity is that it cannot be exhausted. Similarly, the Qur'an cannot be limited
to, although it most certainly begins, in part, with - at least, from the human side of
things - a linguistic phenomenon.
Yet, the
Qur'an did not begin in language per se. The Qur'an manifested itself through a linguistic
locus of manifestation known as Arabic, but the origins of the Qur'an are, on a certain
level, in the Word of God which, despite its label as "Word", is not a
linguistic entity.
The Arabic
language was not a sacred language before the Qur'an. It was the Qur'an that made the
language sacred.
Arabic did
not invest the Qur'an with its richness. It is the Qur'an which invested this language
with its spiritual richness.
Arabic is
dependent on Revelation for its spiritual value. The Qur'an in its ultimate sense is not
dependent on Arabic in any way.
The language
is the palpable, exterior doorway through which one is drawn back to the non-linguistic
Source. Indeed, it is to this very verity that our attention is being directed when we are
told that all of the revealed Books are contained within the Qur'an, yet the entire
meaning of the Qur'an is contained in Surah Fatiha, and, further, that the complete
meaning of this Surah is contained in the opening line: "In the Name of Allah, the
Beneficent, the Merciful", and that, finally, the full meaning of this line is
contained in the dot below bey, the first Arabic letter of 'Bismillah' - in the Name of
Allah.
This dot is
the portal of this world through which we, if God wishes, gain access, according to our
God-given capacities, to whatever portions of the infinite Ocean on the other side which
God has made available to the spiritual potential of human beings. It is this Ocean which
is being pointed to in the Qur'an when we are informed that if all the oceans of the world
were ink and all the trees were used as pens, these would not be enough to write the
proper praises of the nature of Allah.
The Word of
God has been manifested in other linguistic loci of manifestation prior to the coming of
the Qur'an. The Qur'an is simply, and not so simply, the last locus of manifestation in
this series of Revelatory descents. All of these descents are different manifestations of
one and the same Word of God.
Every Muslim
believes the Qur'an is the uncreated Word of God. In its uncreated dimension it both
transcends, while simultaneously incorporates, the linguistic text - whether spoken or
written.
In any case,
describing the Qur'an as having seven levels of inner meaning, or talking about Allah in
terms of 300 traits, this is, in one sense, just a manner of speaking about a Truth which
cannot be reduced to either seven nor 300. The Reality transcends both, and the Prophet,
by the grace of Allah, knew this, but he was required to speak to people who did not
-people who had to be given something with which they could deal in a concrete and limited
manner.
What the
Prophet said in these foregoing respects was the truth and these numbers were not
arbitrarily chosen. Nonetheless, at the same time, the delimited quality of these
statements was made in a context of an abiding and overriding infinity in relation to both
Allah and the Qur'an.
However, let
us, for the sake of argument, limit the discussion to seven levels of inner meaning of the
Qur'an. When people invite me to examine the Qur'an, the very nature of this invitation is
ambiguous, since I do not know to which of the seven levels of meaning they are calling
me.
Moreover,
there can be no complete understanding - as far as human beings are capable of such
completeness - of any level of the Qur'an without taking into consideration the modulating
influences of the other levels of meaning which engage one another in a complex,
non-linear dynamic of depth, richness, nuance and subtlety which is beyond the
comprehension of the purely rational mind and requires, instead, those spiritual insights
that come by way of Divine support and inform the understanding of, for example, the
heart, rather than the mind.
There are,
indeed, dangers involved in trying to stay afloat amidst the cross-currents of the
aforementioned complex dynamic involving the kernels of unending Divine meaning, and there
have been those whose spiritual ship has been wrecked on the rocks of confusion and error
marking the boundary between spiritual truth and falsehood that is related to the above
dynamic. To navigate through these dangers, one needs a lot of expert help.
In fact, one
of the most important decisions an individual can make revolves about this question of who
really is qualified to assist one. If, by the grace of Allah, this decision is made
correctly, then, one has, God willing, a much better opportunity of surviving the ups and
downs of the mystical path. If, on the other hand, one has the misfortune to make the
wrong choice in this matter, one may, unless God intervenes, be headed for spiritual
disaster.
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