The Mu’adzin of Sefrou

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The following is adapted from Signs on the Horizons by Shaykh Harun Michael Sugich. 

“I would never have noticed Haj Muhammad al-Khidhra’a (q.s.) had not one of my companions pointed him out to me in a large gathering of Sufis in Meknes in 1975.  He did not have an imposing appearance.  He was an elderly man in his 70s or 80s, white bearded, with a high forehead, and wearing the dark green turban of the Darqawa, lost in the crowd, head bowed, reciting qaswa’id, Sufi odes.  We somehow expect men of spiritual attainment to have an obvious beatific presence.  This is sometimes the case, but more often than not the saints are wrapped in anonymity. 

He had been the mu’adzin, the one who delivers the call to prayer, of Sefrou, a small village outside Fes.  He was, I was told, a very great saint.  For many years, he had lived in a state of extreme khawf, dread, of God.  This is an exalted, and terrible spiritual condition, on the Way in which the Sufi is overwhelmed with fear, and paralysed, by a direct experience of God’s Jalal, Majesty.  According to Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (q.s.), in Futuh al-Ghayb, ‘al-Jalal produces a disquieting fear and creates disturbing apprehension and overpowers the heart in such an awful manner, and its symptoms become visible on the physical body.’ 

According to fuqara’ who knew him, at the time, Haj Muhammad (q.s.) lived for years in a state of paralysis and terror, rarely speaking and weeping copiously.  He constantly trembled with fear, and was repeatedly struck by what the Sufis call ‘barq’, ‘lightning’, which is a spiritual event, where a powerful electric-like wave shoots from the base of the spine through the neck like a lightning bolt.  When this happens, the faqir should cry out the Name of God, ‘Allah!’, and then lower the eyes, and say a blessing on the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.).  The experience can be shattering and hits certain people on the path from time to time.  In Haj Muhammad’s (q.s.) case, lightning struck him over and over again for years.  The impact is hard to imagine.  By the time I met him, he had passed through this station transformed, and was now basking in the Jamal, Beauty; and Rahmah, Mercy, of God.  His whole manner was effusive, light and overflowing.  He was childlike, innocent, and unreservedly sweet.  Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (q.s.) described this condition in Futuh al-Ghayb, as the Divine ‘Reflection on the heart of man producing light, joy, elegance and sweet words and loving conversation, and glad tidings with regard to great gifts and high position and closeness to Himself …’”