The origin of the word “Sufi” (tasawuff) - almost a synonym for “Islamic mysticism”- is the subject of a great deal of discussion.
Possible roots range from a bench on which the first Sufis sat to listen to the Prophet speak, to the wool of the clothes they wore, to their purity. In Arabic, all these words – suffe, suf, safi - might give us Sufi.
Sufi Islam has its critics within the Muslim world. Accused of syncretism, some blamed its alleged corruption for the decline of Muslim power during the period of European Colonial expansion, when almost every Muslim country became part of a European empire.
On the other hand, millions of Muslims identify to some extent with Sufi Islam, which has had a unifying tendency, bridging Sunni and Shi’a.
Some non-Sufi Muslims practice a style of devotion, reciting the 99 Names of God, for example, possibly accompanied by the use of prayer-beads (tasbih/misbaha), that evokes a profound awareness of God’s intimate presence and reality in their lives.
Usually 99 beads, sometimes 33 (three cycles).
Performance of voluntary prayer, too, may result in a type of spiritual experience that can be described as mystical, although not necessarily Sufi-related. Non-Muslims often characterize the Muslim view of God as distant and remote but the huge majority of Muslims, Sufi or non-Sufi, regard the developing of taqwah (God-consciousness) as one of the principal goals of their devotional lives.
Sufism traces its beginnings from Muhammad, who communicated certain teachings through a chain of Masters, each of whom chooses and initiates a successor. This compares with the idea of apostolic succession in Christianity, through which bishops trace their ordination back to Jesus’ apostles.
Sufi Islam stresses inner experience of the presence of God, so much so that Sufis sometimes neglected Islam’s external rituals, for which they were roundly condemned. They see different layers of meaning in the Qur’an and sunnah, in ritual acts, technical and theological terms (as do Ismailis).
The chain of succession is a silsilah.
This is often traced through Ali and also through Hasan of Basra (642 - 728 or 737).
Sufis usually follow a Master, joining his tariqah (path, or order).
This is the murid-murshid relationship, similar to the student-Guru relationship in Hinduism.
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Mehmet Nâzım Adil - Head of the Naqshbandi order (lineage traced to Rumi and to Muhammad through Abu Bakr.)
Some Tariqah have distinct dress.
Sufis are spiritual travelers, from worldliness and selfishness towards union with the divine.
They progress through stages (maqamat) that result, by God’s grace (karamat), in states (ahwal) marking their spiritual development.
Stages of Sufi Experience
Since about 859 A.D. in the earliest days of Sufism, the stages or stations (called maqamat) a Sufi is said to experience have been one of the central beliefs. These vary based on sect, but here is a typical sequence.
1. Repentance of sins and the worldly life
2. Abstinence of the desires of the world. (faqir)
3. Patience in waiting to experience God
4. Gratitude for their existence in God
5. Trust in God
6. Pleasure in experiencing the divine
7. Absorption of the self in the divine
8. Many teach annihilation of the self in the divine
STATES – (ahwal)
These states differ from the stations through which the Sufi passes in that the states are transitory experiences granted to him by God and over which he has no control, whereas the stations are permanent stages on the path which he has achieved through his own individual effort.
Wajad (ecstatsy)
Annihilation (istilam)
Happiness (bast)
Despondency (qabd)
Awakening (sahû
intoxication (sukr)
The goal is farna, a passing away of self-consciousness and into a permanent state of God-consciousness, the demise of nafs (the selfish soul).
Miracles are associated with the barrakah, or blessing, of the Sheikhs, some of which sound fantastic. The Sheikh or Pir does not claim to perform miracles: God’s grants miracles as a sign of favor and mercy.
Reynold A. Nicholson
lists some “miracles” expressing his own skepticism:
“It would be an almost endless task to enumerate and exemplify the different classes of miracles which are related in the lives of the Mohammedan saints--for instance, walking on water, flying in the air (with or without a passenger), rain-making, appearing in various places at the same time, healing by the breath, bringing the dead to life, knowledge and prediction of future events, thought-reading, telekinesis, paralysing or beheading an obnoxious person by a word or gesture, conversing with animals or plants, turning earth into gold or precious stones, producing food and drink, etc. To the Moslem, who has no sense of natural law, all these 'violations of custom,' as he calls them, seem equally credible. We, on the other hand, feel ourselves obliged to distinguish phenomena which we regard as irrational and impossible from those for which we can find some sort of 'natural' explanation. Modern theories of psychical influence, faith-healing, telepathy, veridical hallucination, hypnotic suggestion and the like, have thrown open to us a wide avenue of approach to this dark continent in the Eastern mind.”
The Mystics of Islam (1914) (page 140)
Dead saints (wali/awliya/friends of God/Waliyyat (f)) form a spiritual hierarchy that helps to sustain the world.
Below the Qutb stand various classes and grades of sanctity. Hujwiri enumerates them, in ascending series, as follows: three hundred Akhyar (Good), forty Abdal (Substitutes), seven Abrar (Pious), four Awtad (Supports), and three Nuqaba (Overseers).
The authority of the qutb, or ‘world pivot’, recognized among living Sheikhs as the preeminent Master of his day, sometimes rivaled that of non-Sufi scholars who served the caliphal state.
Practices include recitation, dance, song and prayer, all designed to lose the sense of self so that only awareness of God’s reality remains.
Flute: just as the flute’s reed was plucked from the rushes, so our souls were plucked from paradise. The evocative sound reminds us of our true abode.
Sufi poets, such as Rumi (d. 1273) and Din Attar (d. 1221) are widely admired.
Tariqahs include the Naqshbandi, the Mevlevi (the “whirling dervishes”) and the Chishti.
Saint’s Shrines, where teaching takes place, function as pilgrim centers.
Dervishes at Rumi’s tomb, Konya, Turkey.
Self-less service of others diminishes self-centeredness, so humanitarianism has a long history among Sufi orders.
Alongside schools, they run hospitals, hospices and clinics (for animals as well as for people).
Sufi orders flourish today throughout the Muslim world.
Some non-Muslims identify with Sufi Islam, which Hazrat Inayat Khan (1883-1927) founder of the Sufi Order International encouraged.
Stressing the essential unity of all faith, which is God’s gift to humanity and never a human work, this builds on traditional, universal aspects of Sufi teaching.
Sufis were accused of heresy for teaching the UNITY of BEING, and for identifying themselves as “God”.
Famously, Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922) was executed for exclaiming “I am Truth” (ana al haq).
Al-Ghazali did much to reconcile the legalistic, exoteric Islam with Sufism.
Al-Ghazali (d 1111) began his life as a highly respected legal scholar and theologian who was critical of Islamic falsafah (from the Greek), which he saw as neo-platonic and essentially atheist, despite references to God. His most famous work was the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers).
After a type of mental break down while teaching in Baghdad, he started to travel.
He later wrote that he was “deeply involved in affairs, and that the best of his activities,” his teaching, “was concerned with branches of knowledge which were unimportant and worthless.”
Examining his motive for teaching, he found that it was not from a “sincere desire to serve God” but that he “wanted an influential position and widespread recognition,” which he in fact did enjoy. He had no doubt, reflecting on this, that he “stood on an eroding sandbank …worldly desires were trying to keep” him “chained” where he was.
Ghazali described himself as standing “on the edge of an abyss, and that without an immediate conversion,” he felt that he “should be doomed to eternal fire.” Ghazali would resolve to take to the road, to leave his post, but then “the mood would pass.”
Satan would say, “…this is a passing mood …. Do not yield to it.” Ghazali was free from any financial or other worries and thought that if he did leave he would probably soon regret it and return. Six months went by in this manner, as he was “tossed about between the attractions of worldly desires and the impulses towards eternal life.”
Then, “the matter ceased to be one of choice and became one of compulsion,” and “God caused [his] tongue to dry up so that [he] was prevented from lecturing…[this] impediment [produced grief in his] soul” (Watt 1952: 136ff;
Encountering Sufis, he became convinced that their way was the true way.
I learnt with certainty that it is above all the mystics who walk on the road to God; their life is the best life, their method the soundest method' (Watt 1952: 63).
Responding to criticism that Sufis neglect externals, he encouraged them to also observe the five pillars, which helped reconcile Sufi Islam with mainstream Sunni Islam.
Al-Hallaj had misspoken; what he experienced was intimacy with God but there is a difference between saying that the wine and the wine-glass are identical, and saying that we perceive them as identical.
A Woman Sufi Saint
The earliest Muslims are said to have feared God’s wrath.
However, a Sufi woman, Rabi’a (d. 801) introduced the notion of love (hubb) into Islamic mysticism, the love between the “beloved” (God) and the “lover”.
In their devotion, these two become one. Rabi’ia, who never married, is highly regarded among Sufi Muslims.
When asked why she remained celibate, she replied that she was so wrapped up in the love of God that she no longer had any awareness of existing as a “being” separate from God. No duality exists when the mystic is immersed in the love of God. Since she had no “being”, how could she marry?
Later, Sufis developed the concept of the ‘unity of being’, interpreting the Shahadah to mean that there is no Reality but the Reality, that if only God ‘is’, then everything is divine. Other women have also become known as Sufi saints.
POETRY
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.
From each a mystic silence Love demands.
What do all seek so earnestly? 'Tis Love.
What do they whisper to each other? Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts.
In Love no longer 'thou' and 'I' exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul,
Behold the Friend; Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.
Farid ud Din Attar - translation Margaret Smith -The Jawhar Al-Dhat
Oh! Supreme Lover!
Let me leave aside my worries.
The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.
By Allah!
I long to escape the prison of my ego
and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.
These sad and lonely people tire me.
I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.
I'm sick of mortal kings.
I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheikhs and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.
You are the Essence of the Essence,
The intoxication of Love.
I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.
Rumi - 'The Love Poems of Rumi' - Deepak Chopra & Fereydoun Kia
The Song of the Reed
Listen to the song of the reed,
How it wails with the pain of separation:
"Ever since I was taken from my reed bed
My woeful song has caused men and women to weep.
I seek out those whose hearts are torn by separation
For only they understand the pain of this longing.
Whoever is taken away from his homeland
Yearns for the day he will return.
In every gathering, among those who are happy or sad,
I cry with the same lament.
Everyone hears according to his own understanding,
None has searched for the secrets within me.
My secret is found in my lament
But an eye or ear without light cannot know it . . ."
The sound of the reed comes from fire, not wind
What use is one's life without this fire?
It is the fire of love that brings music to the reed.
It is the ferment of love that gives taste to the wine.
The song of the reed soothes the pain of lost love.
Its melody sweeps the veils from the heart.
Can there be a poison so bitter or a sugar so sweet
As the song of the reed?
To hear the song of the reed
everything you have ever known must be left behind.
-- Version by Jonathan Star
"Rumi - In the Arms of the Beloved"
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York 1997