American Jihad by Steven Barboza

Author:Steven Barboza
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307778024
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-16T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Ecstasy

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable

of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp:

The Lamp enclosed in Glass; the glass as it were a brilliant star:

Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the East nor of the West,

whose Oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it:

Light upon Light! Allah doth set forth Parables for men:

and Allah doth know all things.

Qur’an 24:35

The great mystical tradition in Islam is called Sufism, or tasawwuf (purity of faith and of heart). A Sufi is one who follows a path that he hopes will bring him nearer to Allah. The path, tariqah, consists of many stages, some of which are repentance and avoiding the sins of the past, spiritual poverty (feeling far from perfection and seeking it in Allah), continual remembrance of Allah (zikr), and abstinence even from what Allah has made lawful in order to avoid distractions.

A Sufi must trust entirely in Allah and wait in hope for divine revelation. Only then will all objects in the world vanish or fuse into the oneness of Allah. The Sufi will then experience self-annihilation, taking on divine attributes and joining Allah in love.

This union with Allah, ma’rifah, or gnosis, transforms the soul of the Sufi, even upon his return to the everyday world.

The path is dangerous, and only masters and their trained disciples are experienced enough to walk it alone, or under guidance from a dead master or the Prophet himself, without becoming so enraptured by Allah’s graces that they forsake the world and lose their way back. Novices must be guided along the route, after becoming initiated as disciples in one of the many spiritual schools, or orders, that trace themselves back to the Prophet, or at least to Ali, his cousin and the third caliph after Muhammad’s death.

Sufism depends on, and exists within, the bounds of exoterism, ultimately surpassing it.

It is believed that Sufis take their name from either soof, wool, because the first Sufis are said to have worn ragged woolen cloth and vowed poverty, or from suff, a row, because these men will be honored to stand in the first row before Allah on Judgment Day.

Some historians count the first Sufis (besides the Prophet) as being forty-five men from Mecca who renounced the life of the world to devote themselves almost entirely to meditation in the Prophet’s mosque.

Historically, many influential Islamic philosophers and poets were Sufis—among them al-Hallaj, ibn ’Arabi, al-Jilani, al-Ghazali, al-Junaid, and Jalaluddin Rumi, whose order is popularly known as the Whirling Dervishes. 1Modern-day Sufis in America often maintain their own mosques and follow the guidance of a master who lives (or lived) thousands of miles away in the Old World—Africa, the Middle East, Turkey. Some orders teach disciples to travel the path while adhering strictly to the exoteric laws, the shari’ah, as practiced by one of the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence: Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanafi. Other American Sufis place decidedly more emphasis on the esoteric nature of the mystical teachings.

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