The Word of Islam (Avebury Studies in Green Research) by John Alden Williams

Author:John Alden Williams [Williams, John Alden]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

Antinomians

A wave of persecution of the Ṣūfīs of Baghdad followed the execution of al-Ḥallāj, and many Ṣūfīs moved to Khurāsān and Transoxania, where the Samānī princes were more tolerant. There they performed a great service to Islamic Civilization as missionaries, converting the Turkish peoples of Central Asia to Islam. Antinomianism, a strong hostility to the scholars of the Law and their concerns, often characterized the Khurāsānī Ṣūfīs. They accused the ‘ulamā’ of “the murder of God’s lovers,” separated faith from works, and were hospitable to theosophical ideas found among gnostic sects. The subjective “state” seemed to be given priority over the observable and verifiable act.

Abū Sa’īd b. Abī ‘l-Khayr

Abū Sa’īd b. Abī ‘l-Khayr (d. 1049/A.H. 440), was a great Khurāsānī Ṣūfī. After a period of extraordinary austerities, followed by self-abasement in service to the poor, he became known as a spiritual guide and settled in an urban khānqāh or Ṣūfī convent. At the end of his life, he lived “more like a sultan than a Ṣūfī,” as his biographer remarked, accepting with complacency the veneration of his followers and the masses, organizing extravagant entertainments for his Ṣūfīs at which they were encouraged to feast, dance, and worship God with grateful hearts, and feeding the poor. He never failed to find generous donors for these activities, in part because of his gift of thought-reading and other “miracles.”

He is credited with many rubā’īyāt or quatrains, some of them impertinent enough to be attributed to ‘Umar Khayyām. While many of them are probably spurious, they form part of his image. He referred to the Ka‘ba as “a house of stones” and the Law as bondage and was accused of infidelity by the fundamentalist Ibn Ḥazm of Córdoba, but he held that “the shortest way to God lies in giving comfort to the heart of a Muslim.”33

The Qalandars mentioned here were notorious people who dropped out of Muslim society and mocked all its rules, claiming—not always convincingly—to be doing so from spiritual insight.

Quatrains

Your sinful servant I—Your mercy, where now?

In my heart darkness lies—Your comfort, where now?

Obedience can buy Your paradise—why then,

A merchant are You—Your goodness, where now?

Till every madrasa and minaret beneath the sun

Lies desolate, the Qalandar’s work will not be done.

Not one true Muslim will appear,

Till truest faith and infidelity are one.34

I said to Him, “For whom does Your beauty thus unfold?”

He answered me: “For Myself, as I am I was of old.

For Lover am I and Love and I alone the Beloved,

Mirror and Beauty am I: Me in Myself behold.”

Your Path, wherein we walk, in every step is fair.

Meeting with You, whatever way we go, is fair.

Whatever eye doth look upon Your face, finds beauty there.

Your praise, whatever tongue doth give it You, is fair.35

If people wish to draw near to God, they must seek Him in the hearts of others. They should speak well of all people, whether present or absent, and if they themselves seek to be a light to guide others, then like the sun, they must show the same face to all.

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