The Need for a Shaykh to Arrive

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahhab ibn Ahmad ash-Sha’rani (q.s.) wrote, “If it were true that the spiritual path of the folk,” meaning the Sufis, “can be reached with understanding alone and without recourse to a shaykh who takes the aspirant, then the likes of the Proof of Islam, Imam al-Ghazali and Shaykh ‘Izz ad-Din ibn ‘Abd as-Salam would have been in no need of taking their manners from a shaykh. 

This is despite the fact that before they entered the spiritual path of the folk, both of them used to say, ‘Anyone who claims a path to knowledge different from what we have, he has invented a lie against Allah (s.w.t.).’  Afterwards, when the both of them entered the spiritual path of the folk, they said, ‘We wasted our lives in idleness and being covered with veils.’  They both affirmed and praised the path.”


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