Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sermons
Sermon
208

SERMON 208

Amir al-mu'minin went to
enquire about the health of his companion al-Ala' ibn Ziyad
al-Harithi and when he noticed the vastness of his house he
said:

What will you do with
this vast house in this world, although you need this house more
in the next world. If you want to take it to the next world you
could entertain in it guests and be regardful of kinship and
discharge all (your) obligations according to their accrual. In
this way you will be able to take it to the next world.

Then al-Ala' said to
him: O' Amir al-mu'minin, I want to complain to you about my
brother Asim ibn Ziyad.

Amir al-mu'minin
enquired: What is the matter with him?

al-Ala' said: He has
put on a woollen coat and cut himself away from the world.

Amir al-mu'minin said:
Present him to me.

When he came Amir
al-mu'minin said: O' enemy of yourself. Certainly, the evil
(Satan) has misguided you. Do you feel no pity for your wife and
your children? Do you believe that if you use those things which
Allah has made lawful for you, He will dislike you? You are too
unimportant for Allah to do so.

He said: O' Amir
al-mu'minin, you also put on coarse dress and eat rough food.

Then he replied: Woe
be to you, I am not like you. Certainly, Allah, the Sublime, has
made it obligatory on true leaders that they should maintain
themselves at the level of low people so that the poor do not cry
over their poverty. (1)

(1)
From ancient days asceticism
and the abandonment of worldly attachments has been regarded as a
means of purification of the spirit and important for the
character. Consequently, those who wished to lead a life of
abstemiousness and meditation used to go out of the cities and
towns to stay in forests and caves in the mountains and stay there
concentrating on Allah according to their own conception. They
would eat only if a casual traveller or the inhabitant of nearby
dwellings gave them anything to eat, otherwise they remained
contented with the fruits of wild trees and the water of the
streams, and thus they passed their life. This way of worship
commenced in a way that was forced by the oppression and hardships
of rulers. Certain people left their houses and, in order to avoid
their grip, hid themselves in some wilderness or cave in a
mountain, engaging themselves in worship of and devotion to Allah.
Later on, this forced asceticism acquired a voluntary form and
people began to retire to caves and hollows of their own volition.
Thus it became an accepted way that whoever aimed at spiritual
development retired to some corner after severing himself from all
worldly ties. This method remained in vogue for centuries and even
now some traces of this way of worship are found among the
Buddhists and the Christians.

The moderate views of
Islam do not, however, accord with the monastic life, because for
attaining spiritual development it does not advocate the
abandonment of worldly enjoyments and successes, nor does it view
with approbation that a Muslim should leave his house and fellow
men and busy himself in formal worship, hiding in some corner. The
conception of worship in Islam is not confined to a few particular
rites, but it regards the earning of one's livelihood through
lawful means, mutual sympathy and good behaviour, and co-operation
and assistance also to be important constituents of worship. If an
individual ignores worldly rights and obligations and does not
fulfil his responsibility towards his wife and children, nor
occupies himself in efforts to earn a livelihood, but all the time
stays in meditation, he ruins his life and does not fulfil the
purpose of living. If this were Allah's aim, what would have the
need for creating and populating the world when there was already
a category of creatures who were all the time engaged in
worshipping and adoration.

Nature has made man to
stand on the cross-roads at which the midway is the centre of
guidance. If he deviates from this point of moderateness even a
bit, this way or that way, there is shear misguidance for him.
That midway is that he should neither bend towards this world to
such an extent as to ignore the next life, devoting himself
entirely to this one, nor should he abstain from this world so as
not to have any connection with anything of it, confining himself
to some corner leaving everything else. Since Allah has created
man in this world he should follow the code of life for living in
this world, and should partake of the comforts and pleasures
bestowed by Allah within moderate limits. The eating and using of
things made lawful by Allah is not against Allah's worship, but
rather Allah has created these things for the very purpose that
they should be taken advantage of. That is why those who were the
chosen of Allah lived in this world with others and ate and drank
like others. They did not feel the need to turn their faces away
from the people of the world, and to adopt the wilderness or the
caves of mountains as their abodes, or to live in distant spots.
On the other hand they remembered Allah, remained disentangled
from worldly affairs, and did not forget death despite the
pleasures and comforts of life.

The life of asceticism
sometimes produces such evils as ruin the next life also as well
as this one, and such an individual proves to be the true picture
of "the looser in this life as well as the next." When
natural impulses are not satisfied in the lawful and legal way the
mind turns into a centre of evil-ideas and becomes incapable of
performing worship with peace and concentration; and sometimes
passions so overcome the ascetic that breaking all moral fetters,
he devotes himself completely to their satisfaction and
consequently falls in an abyss of ruin for which it is impossible
to extract himself. That is why religious law accords a greater
position to the worship performed by a family man than that by a
non-family man, because the former can exercise mental peace and
concentration in the worship and rituals.

Individuals who put on
the cloak of Sufism and make a loud show of their spiritual
greatness are cut off from the path of Islam and are ignorant of
its wide teachings. They have been misled by Satan and, relying on
their self-formed conceptions, tread wrongful paths. Eventually
their misguidance becomes so serious that they begin to regard
their leaders as having attained such a level that their word is
as the word of Allah and their act is as the act of Allah.
Sometimes they regard themselves beyond all the bounds and
limitations of religious law and consider every evil act to be
lawful for them. This deviation from faith and irreligiousness is
named Sufism (complete devotion to Allah). Its unlawful principles
are called "at-tariqah" (ways of achieving communion
with Allah) and the followers of this cult are known as Sufis.
First of all Abu Hashim al-Kufi and Shami adopted this nickname.
He was of Umayyad descent and a fatalist (believing that man is
bound to act as pre-ordained by Allah). The reason for giving him
this name was that, in order to make a show of his asceticism and
fear for Allah, he put on a woollen cloak. Later on this nickname
became common and various grounds were put forth as the basis of
this name. For example, one ground is that 'Sufi' has three
letters, "sad", "waw" and "fa'".
"sad" stands for "sabr" (endurance),
"sidq" (truthfulness) and "safa" (purity of
heart); "waw" stands for "wudd" (love),
"wird" (repeating Allah's name) and "wafa'"
(faithfulness to Allah), and "fa'" stands for
"fard" (unity), "faqr" (destitution) and
"fana'" (death or absorption in Allah's Self). The
second view is that it has been derived from
"as-Suffah", which was a platform near the Prophet's
mosque which had a covering of date-palm leaves. Those who stayed
there were called Ashabu'Suffah (people of the platform). The
third view is that the name of the progenitor of an Arab tribe was
Sufah, and this tribe performed the duties of serving the pilgrims
and the Kabah, and it is with reference to their connection with
this tribe that these people were called Sufis. This group is
divided among various sects but the basic sects are seven only.
1) al-Wahdatiyyah
(unitarian):
This sect believes
in the oneness of all existence. Its belief is that everything
of this world is Allah, so much so that they assign to even
polluted things the same godly position. They liken Allah with
the river and the waves rising in it, and argue that the waves
which sometimes rise and sometimes fall have no separate
existence other than the river, but their existence is exactly
the existence of the river. Therefore, nothing can be
separated from its own existence.
2) al-Ittihadiyyah
(the unitists):
They believe that
they have united with Allah and Allah has united with them.
They liken Allah with fire and themselves with iron that lies
in the fire and acquires its form and property.
3) al-Hululiyyah
(the formists):
Their belief is
that Allah takes the form of those who claim to know Him and
the perfect ones, and their bodies are places of His stay. In
this way, they are seemingly men but really Allah.

4) al-Wasiliyyah
(the combiners):
This sect considers
itself to have combined with Allah. Their belief is that the
laws of the shariah are a means of development of human
personality and character, and that when the human self
combines with Allah it no more needs perfection or
development. Consequently, for the "wasilin",
worship and ritual become useless, because they hold that when
truth and reality is achieved shariah remains of no avail.
Therefore, they can do anything and they cannot be questioned.

5) az-Zarraqiyyah
(the revellers):
This sect regards
vocal and instrumental music as worship, and earns the
pleasures of this world through a show of asceticism and
begging from door to door. They are ever engaged in relating
concocted stories of miraculous performances of their leaders
to over-awe the common people.

6) al-Ushshaqiyyah
(the lovers):
The theory of this
sect is that apparency is the means to reality, meaning that
carnal love is the means to achieve love of Allah. That is, in
order to reach the stage of Allah's love it is necessary to
have love with some human beauty. But the love which they
regard as love for Allah is just the product of mental
disorder through which the lover inclines to one individual
with all his attention and his final aim is to have access to
the beloved. This love can lead to the way of evil and vice,
but it has no connection with the love of Allah.

A Persian couplet
says:
The truth of the
fact is that carnal love is like a jinn and a jinn cannot
give you guidance.
7) at-Talqiniyyah
(the encounterers):
According to this
sect, the reading of religious sciences and books of
scholarship is thoroughly unlawful. Rather, the position that
is achieved by an hour of spiritual effort of the Sufis cannot
be achieved by seventy years of reading books.

According to Shiah
Ulama' all these sects are on the wrong path and out of the fold
of Islam. In this connection, numerous sayings of the Imams are
related. In this sermon also Amir al-mu'minin has regarded the
severance of Asim ibn Ziyad from this world as the mischief of
Satan, and he forcefully dissuaded him from adopting that course.
(For further study, see Sharh Nahj al-balaghah, al-Hajj Mirza
Habibu'llah al-Khu'i, vol. 13, pp. 132-417; vol. 14, pp. 2-22).