Eva was then drawn to learn Persian and to translate into French Iqbal’s works as well as those of the thirteenth-century mystic Jalaluddin Rumi, who became her spiritual guide.
(1/4)
Her love for Rumi and his work led her to translate into French the whole of his masterwork, the Mathnawi, a six-volume masterwork of over 26,000 couplets.
(2/4)
This affirming internal connection continued to sustain her throughout her life including her pilgrimage journey to Mecca and her time spent teaching at al-Azhar University in Cairo.
(3/4)
She joins her intention in writing with that of Rumi’s with his words:
“I did not write these lines for people to wear them or repeat them, but to put them under their feet and fly with them.”
(4/4)
📚
Camille Helminski
Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure
Sacred maternity is not understood in our culture, which instead medicalises it. Hence motherhood in general is sidelined, except for those who sell baby goods.
(1/5)
The resolution of every film comprises physical love, not marriage and procreation. Hence the growing barrenness of monocultural women,
(2/5)
and hence the ongoing celebration of maternity in Islam. ‘Truly, it is your detractor who is without issue’ (Quran 108:3). Even where maternity is tolerated, in place of domestic motherhood,
(3/5)
Therefore there is no real Sufism unless it is approached by two paths, obedience to the Law and the search for inner meanings (al-ma’na’l-batini).
(1/5)
This is explained in an old classical treatise, the Risalat of Al-Qushari [al-Qushayri]:
(2/5)
The shari‘a deals with the observance of the rites and devotional acts, whereas the Truth (Haqiqa) is involved with the inner vision of the Divine Glory. Any devotion not filled with the spirit of Truth is worthless,
(3/5)
[Qur’ān 51:47]
AND IT IS We who have built the universe with [Our creative] power; and, verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it.
(1/4)
v.47 : Lit., “the sky” or “the heaven,” which in the Qur’ān often has the connotation of “universe” or, in the plural (“the heavens”), of “cosmic systems.”
(2/4)
* See note 38 on the first part of 21:30. The phrase innā la-mūsi‘ūn clearly foreshadows the modern notion of the “expanding universe” – that is, the fact that the cosmos, though finite in extent, is continuously expanding in space.
(3/4)
Just as the heart has unveiling, the spirit has face-to-face vision. Unveiling is the lifting of the barriers between the heart and the Real, and face-to-face vision is mutual seeing.
(1/4)
As long as someone is with the heart, he has reports. When he reaches the spirit, he reaches face-to-face vision.
The knower of the Path and leader of the Folk of the Haqiqah,
(2/4)
Shaykh al-Islām Anṣārī, has let out the secret here in the tongue of unveiling and lifted from it the seal of jealousy. He said:
“On the first day of the beginningless covenant a tale unfolded between heart and spirit.
(3/4)
The living heart of Islam (the actualization of the revelation), added to the faithful observance of the ritual practice, the tariqa is designated by the word Tassawuf, or Sufism.
(1/4)
It is the esoteric dimension of the Islamic message, which, like the Shari‘a, the religious Law, has its origin in the Koran and the prophetic tradition.
(2/4)
That Sufism is fundamentally Islamic, whatever the more or less arbitrary affiliations attributed to it by the western orientalists may be—Vedanta, Christianity, Neo-Platonism—can in no way be doubted,
(3/4)
It was also through Sufism that Islam spread in Indonesia, brought to the region by Muslim traders from Persia and the Hijaz (the desert region now known as Saudi Arabia that includes Mecca and Medina).
(1/4)
From still extant tombstones and also Chinese documentation we witness the first waves of Islam arriving in northern Sumatra and Java as early as the late seventh century C.E.
(2/4)
Indonesians, who seem to have a natural tendency toward mysticism, readily welcomed the Sufi understanding of Islam. The Hindu and Buddhist rulers of that era seemed tolerant to the Sufi teachings of love and asceticism that had penetrated
(3/4)