A Muslim Convert Once More

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Shaykh Muhyi ad-Din Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn ‘Arabi ( q.s. ) wrote these lines in his book about the abdal , the changed ones:   “O, you who aspire to the degrees of the abdal , But who does not care to perform the required practices, Do not envy them, Do not be vain You will only be worthy of them, If you compete with them by ascetic states.   Let your heart be silent and live in retirement, Stay away from all, which keeps you at a distance From the Beloved Lord. Stay awake in the night, endure hunger, Thus you will attain your dignity. And you will be like them, At times staying at home, At times leaving for faraway lands.   The House of the Friendship with God, Has well-established corners. Our masters who stay in it are the abdal Between silence, solitude, hunger and vigil Can be seen the summit of the pure transcendent.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Little eating is, next to silence, solitude and vigils, of great importance on the Sufi path.  Little eating is connected to little sleeping, just like little meeting with people is connected to little talking.  Hunger can be self-chosen: it is the hunger of the travellers on the Sufi path.  It can also be given, and then it is, according to Shaykh Muhyi ad-Din Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn ‘Arabi ( q.s. ), the hunger of the verifiers, those with self-realisation.  In this case, they do not impose on themselves a regime of hunger, but their nutrition diminishes naturally.   Hunger has a hal , spiritual state, and a maqam , spiritual station.   According to Shaykh ibn al-‘Arabi ( q.s. ), in his Hilyat al-Abdal , hal belonging to hunger of the travellers on the Sufi path is characterised by humility, submission, modesty, softness, the spirit of poverty, the absence of vanity, calm behaviour, and absence of ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Khwaja Muhammad Nizham ad-Din Awliya’ ( q.s. ) told the following story from “Morals for the Heart”: “Once a dervish arrived at the hospice of Imam Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd ibn Muhammad al-Baghdadi, ( q.s. ) just as the new Moon was due to appear that signalled the beginning of the blessed month of Ramadhan.   That dervish requested the Shaykh to permit him to lead the tarawih prayer.   The Shaykh granted his request.   Every evening, thereafter, he recited the entire Qur’an. ‘Each night,’ said the Shaykh , ‘take one loaf of bread and one jug of water to the cell of that dervish’. As the Shaykh had commanded, they took a loaf of bread and a jug of water to his cell every night.   After he had recited the tarawih prayer for thirty evenings, the time of celebration arrived, and the day after ‘ Iyd the Shaykh bid that dervish farewell.   He left.   After his departure, they searched his cell, and found all t...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Shaykh Muhammad Hasan Shishty Kalimi ( q.s. ) made it clear that lust is subdued in Ramadhan: “Thanks to fasting, The children lust and sensual passion were in school. Now the feast has come, And the children are free from school!”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Mawlana Nur ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Rahman Muhammad Dashti Jami’ ( q.s. ) wrote:   “The search of the crescent of the feast, Is the work of the common people. The crescent of the feast, Is for the elite the circling movement of the goblet.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ In Ustadz Said Ukur Nursi’s ( q.s. ) “Treatise on Scrupulosity”, from “The Second Station of the Twenty-First Word,” as translated by Dr. Colin Turner, he said, “This is a scruple arising from searching for the best form of an action.  Supposing it to be fear of God, the more rigorous it becomes, the more severe the condition becomes for the person.  It even reaches the point that while searching for even better forms of action, he deviates into what is unlawful.  Sometimes searching for a sunnah makes him give up what is obligatory.  He says, ‘I wonder if my act was sound?’, and repeats it.  This state continues, and he falls into terrible despair.  Satan takes advantage of this state of his, and wounds him.  There are two cures for such a wound.   In the first cure, scruples like this are worthy of the Mu’taziliyyah , because they say, ‘Actions and things for which a person is responsible are either, of ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ In Ustadz Said Ukur Nursi’s ( q.s. ) “Treatise on Scrupulosity”, from “The Second Station of the Twenty-First Word,” as translated by Dr. Colin Turner, he said, “In matters of belief, what occurs to one in the form of doubts are scruples.  The unhappy man suffering from scruples sometimes confuses conceptions in his mind with imaginings.  That is, he imagines a doubt that has occurred to his imagination to be a doubt that has entered his mind, and supposes that his beliefs have been damaged.  Sometimes, he supposes a doubt he has imagined to have harmed his belief.  Sometimes, he supposes a doubt he has imagined to have been confirmed by his reason.  Sometimes, he supposes pondering over a matter related to unbelief to be unbelief.  That is, he supposes to be contrary to belief his exercising his ability to reflect in the form of understanding the causes of misguidance, and his ability to study and reason in impartial ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ One of the conditions of zakat is this principle of tamlik , the transfer of ownership, pertaining to zakat .  The majority of fuqaha’ agree that, even in the fixed eight aswnaf , the condition for a valid payment of zakat is that someone deserving should be given possession of the zakat as its owner.  The following is ijma’ , a consensus of our scholars of Sunni Islam.   If money was spent for the benefit of these very people without having given them possession of it, that zakat is considered to still be unpaid.  It is for this reason the four a’immah al-madzahib and the majority of the fuqaha’ agree that it is impermissible to spend zakat funds either on the construction of masajid , madaris , hospitals, orphanages, or any infrastructure related to them.  While there is no doubt that the benefit of such projects does reach the zakat recipients, the fact that the zakat has not passed on into their possession ...