Sufi Encounter

Re: # 26

romair, you have asked me this many times before and i have replied always; either you don`t remember or u choose to forget because you don`t like my answer. i am answering you again since you asked:



Below is an answer from Ala Hadrat Imam Muhammad Ahmad Rida Khan Barelwi, given in his Fatawa al-Haramayn (Waqf Ikhlas offset reprint p. 10):

Question Three: What is the Status of the Rafadah [Shia]?

Answer: The Rafidi, if he prefers Amir al-Mu`minin `Ali to the Two Shaykhs [Abu Bakr and `Umar] - Allah be well-pleased with all of them - is an innovator (mubtadi`) as stated in al-Khulasa, [al-Fatawa] al-Hindiyya and other books; but if he denies the validity of the Imamates of Abu Bakr and `Umar or the validity of the Imamate of one of the two, then the jurists (fuqaha`) declared him kafir while the theologians (mutakallimun) declared him an innovator - and the latter ruling is the more precautionary one. If he claims (1) to correct Allah Most High [i.e. in sending the Revelation to the Prophet rather than `Ali] or (2) that the existing Qur`an is defective or (3) that the Companions or anyone else altered it, or (4) that Amir al-Mu`minin [`Ali] or any other of the pure Imams is better than the Prophets in the sight of Allah - upon them all blessings and peace - as openly claimed by the Rafadah of our regions [India] and as stipulated in our time** by their Mujtahid - he is definitely a kafir and the ruling that applies to him is that of apostates, as stated in al-Hindiyya quoting the Zahiriyya and in al-Hadiqa al-Nadiyya and others of the Fiqh books. We have enlarged upon this question in our epistle _al-Maqala al-Mufassira `an Ahkam al-Bid`a al-Mukaffira_.

** [note: this was in c. 1900 CE]

``What is the status of Shias in Islam, as you understand it? ``

Shias will eventually end up in Heaven after a brief sojourn in a correctional facility where Omer, Abu Bakr , Usman and Ayesha will give them tutorials on the subtleties of HowTo always condemn/Tabrraing the right wrongdoers and not vice versa.

``God must be a chemist designing a drug. ``

but can a drug design you a God? ... do we need to call Batman to engineer an antidote.. ? i agree though.. the opiate is headspinning and could lethally fix the junkie for good.... inna lillahe ....

Post 21 reminded me a of a saying of Hazrat Ali:


[Allah possesses a drink which is reserved for his intimate friends:

When they drink they become intoxicated,

When they become intoxicated they become joyful,

When they become joyful they become sweet,

When they become sweet they begin to melt,

When they begin to melt they become free,

When they become free they seek,

When they seek they find,

When they find they arrive

When they arrive they join,

And when they join,

There is no difference between them and their Beloved]

On a side (and a completely irrelevent) note, when one compares the ideas on life after death with regards to Abrahamic religions (heaven hell), Hinduism, Buddhism (moksha and reincarnation), Evolution of life on earth from tRNA to super complex organisms, Adam and Eve`s descension from a `paradise` the location of which no scholar knows, the ideas of Iqbal`s `superman`, i.e man being a penultimate form only one step away from perfection, unity, Sufism, love and shedding one`s ego, the Prophet`s (pbuh) desire to understand the ultimate nature of things, his ascension until a single partition divided him from the Ultimate Reality (i.e. Allah), hadiths on doing what is right to please a Greater Being until He becomes your eyes, your ears, your hands etc etc, and the chemical nature of man and mind...

One concludes that God must be a chemist designing a drug.

Umer M

Naqshbandi #: ``All the great Muslim scholars have been sufis too...``

It is quite difficult to figure out where you stand........Let me ask you a question: What is the status of Shias in Islam, as you understand it?

Re: # 21

Naqshbandi Sahib, Subhanallah.

Having lived in Multan under the shadow of 3 of the Auliya-e-Ikram (Hazrat Shah Ruk-e-Aalim Alayhe-salam; Hazrat Bahauddin Zakariah Alayhe-salam; and Hazat Shah Shams Tabrez Alayhe-salam), I can only speak for myself (as I don’t know how others feel) that even the mention of their names give my body such a high and spirited feeling that it is indescribable. And I am not even officially a Muslim.

Jazak Allah.

Main Tay Ali da Malag

naqshbandi,

... you know that shaykh kabbani is persona non grata with most ``muslims``? ..... as soon as you mention his name, they start foaming at the mouth - he drives them nuts ! ...... unfortunately, urstruly has chosent to ignore this ``heretic`` and reserves his contempt for my other heros, mirza tahir ahmed and the agha khan ........... if these three could get together and come up with a new sect i would gladly sign up !

........... im my view, my mother was the only ``true muslim`` i ever met ..........here is a reproduction of an earlier post that explains why :

..........sacrificing a black goat always worked for us ........

...............i really don`t care what the learned wahabis and the taliban scholars say about “real” islam, all I know is that sacrificing a black bakra at the mazar of haji bahadur ali abdullah shah in kohat always worked for our family.............my mother (god bless her soul) was a deeply religious person even though she seldom prayed or did any of the things that “real” muslims do nowadays .........but she always celebrated all kinds of festivals by distributing plates of firni, zarda and halwa to the neighbors : shab-i-barat, shab-i-mairaj, eid-i-mild-un-nabi and chahar shamba – when we lived in the punjab most of our neighbors didn’t quite know what chahar shamba was but they always returned the plate of firni filled with zarda........... actually chahar shamba was taken quite seriously around our house and we never traveled for the first, I think, twelve or thirteen days of safar............... to this day i have some premonitions about traveling during safar - luckily, i never really know when it comes around anymore .............

...........so whenever we had some big event coming up we would pile into our volkswagen and khala’s morris and set out for kohat.........it was before they built the kohat tunnel and it took many many hours to wind through the the kotla pass, stopping at a scenic spot to have a picnic lunch and then again for some kid to throw up by the side of the road ........but it was fun, unless you were the kid throwing up ................... it was important to get to the mazar to make sure that a cousin got through issb or khaloo jan passed his kidney stones or another cousin got through his matric exams or ama-bibi recovered from pneumonia ..............sometimes ama-bibi would come all the way from quetta to sacrifice black bakra in kohat since she didn’t have a lot of faith in the local baluchi pirs and faqirs ...................she knew her pirs – afterall, she was a syed zadi and the daughter of the gadhi nasheens of some holy man in jalalabad in afghanistan and we all loved her because she always came laden with toys and crates of fruit from the orchards of hanna ...............

....................so when one day she decided that she wanted to go to the mazar of hazrat pir baba in pacha, which is almost all the way to china, we happily piled into the cars and took off towards mardan, through the ambela pass, up to dager and down to the pir baba’s mazar ............. they say it was a beautiful drive but all I remember is that that the kids threw up over each other and all the adults got real cranky after the second flat tire and the morris overheated and the locals just sat perched on the rocks like crows looking at the strange city people fussing and yelling at each other .............

.................needless to say, we never went back to pir baba and stuck with our abdullah shah of kohat..............after all he had never failed us – many a cousin made it through issb, khaloo jan passed his kidney stones successfully, another cousin passed his civil service exam and became an assistant commissioner, ama-bibi got her wish and mamoo jan had a son after three daughters ...............so I really don’t care what the thekaydars of religion say – i am a believer

mardoodi? LOL.. that was brilliant... :)

Re: # 5

hamidm you listen to Shaykh Kabbani? Amazing! (I love him!!)

urstruly bhai has spent too much time with tablighis and jamaat e islamis and mardoodi, sorry, mawdudi`s books/ilk...

May Allah give him proper understanding. Urstruly Bhai, please read a classic tafsir of that verse. All the great Muslim scholars have been sufis too...

Beautiful Ali! Thank you. Jazak Allahu khayran! This is probably the best article I`ve ever read on Chowk. It is full of light from the wisdom of the Saints, the Awliya Allah, the Elect of the Elect (below the Prophets)! Thank you so much...although a word of caution: I`ve tried in the past to raise such topics on here before. Often it is derided as being religious nonsense. The saying of Our Master Sayyidina `Isa ibn Maryam `alayhisalam comes to mind, ``Do not cast pearls before swine.``

However, thank you and thank you again! Which is this book of which you make mention.

The saying which you attribute to Hazrat Rabia Basri about not worshipping a Lord she does not see is also related of Mawla e Kainaat Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib alayhisalam.

Our Beloved Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa Aalihi wa sallam, the Master and raison d`etre of Creation, the Sayyid of the Prophets and Messengers, a Light from the Light of Allah, The Beloved of Allah, Habib Allah, who was certainly in the highest of all possible spiritual stations, said, ``He who has seen me has seen al-Haqq! [Allah]!`` (aw qamaa qaala alayhi salatu wa salaam) . This is Fana Fillah!

Mawla ya salli wa sallam dai`man abadan abada
`ala Habibika khayr`ul khalqi kullihimi!

-al Busiri

Hazrat Abu Bakr as-Siddiq Radhi Allahu anhu was so annihilated in the love of the Prophet (which is the only route to the love of God--fana fil Rasul) that he could recognise that the Beloved Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam was approaching just by hearing the footsteps of the Beloved`s camel without even seeing it!! Allahu Akbar!

A lover has written about the 3 stages of the Path and the heirarchy of beings:

Khalq se awliya, awliya se Rusul
Hai RasooloN se `aala hamara Nabi!

From the creation to the saints, the saints to the Prophets
Above all Prophets is our Messenger!

Re: # 19

That’s why they use chilman at most religious places. Chilman, a perforated screen, covers grave from four sides. You can`t see blinding light therefore see Him or pretend to see Him through the chilman.

I like the word chilman, hides a lot of things, doesn’t it!

nazaaraa mujhe kisne chilman se maaraa........

Gimmickry without substance - very sufi.

Format this display of sufi noor in the manner the rest of us use -

``
‘A mystic once said: ‘My mind does not recall being close to God. The experience is as it is - and I simply know that being close to God is good.’ The mystical state is an immediate, direct encounter. By following the mystical way I came to understand the true nature of God’s revelations to Muhammad.’

Muhammad travelled through the seven higher worlds of Heaven during his ‘Night-
Journey’ and the closer to Allah came, the greater the Light he saw until it practically
blinded him. So in Islam God is often described as Light. There are many great Sufi mystics
who reveal the nature of God in Islam.
``

That`s not very profound. Not even worth a second look.

i recently came across, trey parker`s ``vision`` of God ... It was something... It had the physical appearance of a rodent in blue with snaggly teeth and spiritually It followed the way of the Buddha or atleast thats what trey parker made It say on the show....

wallah ho alam bis savaab.

ok. she did make an interesting comparison between nina simone and abida parveen or was it her friend that did?.. on that account i`d take my #16 back for the moment.

(though she sux in general)

kamila shamsie sux ass!

Someone who has articulated what I was attempting to say, in a more eloquent fashion. Kamila Shamsie is one of the English language`s fastest rising young novel writers in the world.

``Musical notes``

by Kamila Shamsie
Prospect: Issue III

Karachi, 3am, winter 1999. I am sitting in a garden where the temperature is several degrees higher than in the adjoining driveway. It could be because of all the people
packed into the garden, but it seems more plausible that the heat is generated by the
woman on stage. With her hands raised above her head, she is belting out songs in a
voice that can veer from heartbreak to ecstasy as though they are adjacent emotions.

Someone sitting next to me asks, ``Do you think the neighbours mind?``

Another responds: ``Mind? Are you crazy? This is Abida Parveen!``

It might begin to convey her status and that of the Sufi music she sings to explain that you could find entire neighbourhoods, possibly towns, in Pakistan where the residents would be delighted to be kept up until dawn by the sound of Parveen. There are a host of political, cultural and religious comments to be made about her popularity and importance, but all discussion of Abida Parveen must start with her sound.

``Pakistan`s Nina Simone!`` an English friend of mine said when I took him to hear her at the South Bank a few years ago, and it is true the two singers share something in the resonance and strength of their voices. And as Simone moved between the blues,
gospel and jazz, so Abida Parveen`s repertoire includes the ghazal, the kafi and the
qawwali (the last involving an improvisational quality that some listeners compare to
scat). She is a remarkable qawwal ”the rendition of Must Qalandar`` with which she ends many of her concerts is among the most rousing pieces of music anyone is ever likely to hear, and is one of the many reasons she is often talked of as the heir to the great Pakistani qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. but it is with the kafi that she is most closely associated.

Love songs with mystical undertones, kafis make use of refrains that form the fixed points around which the singer can string together verses from many different sources. Though most kafis are written by men (Abida Parveen feels a special affinity to those of the Sufi saint Shah Abdul Latif), the poets often take on a female persona as they write of their passion for God, which allows Parveen to bring a particular intimacy to their words.

The writer and critic Aamer Hussein explains Parveen`s widespread popularity by pointing out that, ``she combines classical and folk in the best possible way, and brings together a modern sensibility with classical training. She is able to cut across barriers” she appeals equally to people who like dancing, to those who listen for the pleasures of sound and to those who understand the demands of kafi and qawwali.``

The near devotion with which Parveen is regarded in Pakistan owes a great deal to the
genre to which she harnesses her remarkable voice. She moves from one style to another,
but all within the Sufi tradition of music, with God as the beloved and the singer/poet as the supplicant/lover. To understand how radical this paradigm is, it is necessary only to consider the role of third party intervention in the relationship of lovers. ”it is almost always unwanted, meddlesome and irrelevant. In other words, the Sufic tradition does not allow for any outside force to impose its will, its interpretation, on that relationship between the individual and God. So no clerics, no learned scholars,`` no governments are in any position to dictate the terms under which one can express or enact one`s relationship to God.

Bulle Shah, one of Pakistan`s most famous Sufi saints, has a couplet:

Masjid dha de, mandir dha de, dha de jo kucch dainda
Par kisi da dil na dhain, Rab dilan vich rehnda.

Destroy the mosque, destroy the temple, destroy everything in sight
But never destroy a human heart ”for there God resides.``

Abida Parveen echoed this sentiment in a recent interview, saying,``Religion was made by man, love was made by God.`` That she has been able to freely express such ideas in Pakistan over the last three decades, ”starting in the years of General Zia`s military rule, which were characterised by the political ascent of Islamic orthodoxy says a great deal about how deep-rooted the Sufi tradition is, particularly in the provinces of Sindh and the Punjab (it is no coincidence that these are the two of Pakistan`s four provinces in which Islamic fundamentalists have historically been weakest).

Those who think secularism is the antidote to fundamentalism should make their way to one of the annual festivals of the Sufi saints: over half a million devotees come to listen to Sufic singers express devotion in a manner that makes a mockery of the claim that ecstatic music is antithetical to Islam. In Pakistan, very few people express a real interest in secularism for most, religion is part of the fabric of life, and secularism denotes absence. But Sufism, with its ideas of love and tolerance, is a very real presence. And no politician or religious leader, no matter how orthodox, has ever dared challenge it.