After three years, I realized that this door to Sufism was not going to open any further unless I embraced Islam.
(1/) I understood that the natural evolution of Sufism came through Islam and realized that there were no Sufis who were not Muslims.
(2/)

This is how the Qur’ān should be viewed by Muslims today: a living dynamic agent in society, especially in view of the widening gap between Islam and the reality of their daily life.
(1/)

We seem to view the Qur’ān as an abstract thing that has no historical living reality. We no longer perceive of it as the force that once shaped Islamic life and society, or the source of the daily orders that Muslims used to receive and act upon.
(2/)

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The ‘Sheikh al-Akbar’, Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi (d. 638 AH) says (in Chapter 178— ‘The Station of Love’—of his magnum opus, The Meccan Openings):
(1/) ‘Know—may God give you success—that love is a divine station, for He ascribed it to Himself, and called Himself ‘the Loving’ (Al-Wadud).... This station has four names:
(2/)

Since the perfume spreads from flowers, whenever one of the sincerely devoted kept them company, his heart was enlightened and his breast expanded. Their followers multiplied, their hearts were illumined by the lights of Holiness,
(1/5) and they were far removed from self-centeredness. This led to the development of a sincere, worshipful, and mindful [Sufi] community.
(2/5)

Literalism may satisfy children, but the mature mind and the heart have rights which Islam, as a religion grounded in the radiant heart of the Prophet himself, has proved admirably able to satisfy.
(1/6) The inner reality, which is Prophecy, came to an end with his death, but the Prophet's wilaya, his spiritual rank, remains an inspiration to which Muslim attention is constantly called.
(2/6)

We must also mention that every one of the one hundred and fourteen chapters of the Holy Qur’an begins with the sacred formula ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’ (‘BismiIllah Al-Rahman Al-Rahim’)
(1/) except the ninth (Surat Al-Tawbah)—albeit that Islamic scholars point out that the ‘missing’ basmallah of Surat Al-Tawbah reappears in Surat Al-Naml wherein God says:
...And lo! it is: In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. (Al-Naml, 27:30)
(2/)

God speaks of the great reality of love many times in the Holy Qur’an. He mentions those whom He loves, such as,
(1/) for example, those who rely on Him:
And when you are resolved, rely on God; for God loves those who rely [upon Him]. (Aal ‘Imran, 3:159)
(2/)

Our previous definition of love is confirmed by the etymological root of the word ‘hubb’ (‘love’), which comes from the word ‘habb’ (‘seed’) thus implying a seed falls into the ground, grows, then brings forth a new and beautiful plant.
(1/) God makes this clear in the Holy Qur’an with His words:
(2/)

The Prophet was asked once what was the best cure for forgetfulness—or for what the Qur’an calls “rust on the heart”—and he said it was to think frequently of death and to remember God constantly.
(1/) You see, if we forget how soon we shall have to die, and if we overlook the fact that everything around us is perishing before our eyes, then we are living in a fantasy world. It is only when we wake up to the truth that the perishable,
(2/)

The fourth Pillar, the Fast during the month of Ramadan, takes this a step further and requires that we practice detach­ment from our natural desires and appetites.
(1/) The basic rules are simple. During that one month of the year, the Muslim must abstain from food and drink from the first dim light of dawn until sunset, provided this does not endanger his health.
2/)

I remember many years ago I was invigilating an examination in Cairo University and, because the annual exams take place at the hottest time of the year, they were held in a huge marquee by the Nile.
(1/) Several hundred students were sitting at their desks, their whole future depending on what they wrote upon those terrible blank sheets of paper before them. A strange tension built up, almost palpable; one student after another put his or her pen down, staring into space.
(2/)

What I have said might suggest a rare—even rarified— minority interest of little concern to the mass of believers, so it is important to emphasise that Sufism has penetrated the whole body of Islam.
(1/) A Sufi brotherhood is called a tariqah (its plural is turuq), meaning “path” or “way”. Whereas in Christianity mysticism has been largely confined to the monasteries, the turuq have played an important role in Islamic history.
(2/)

Those who follow this way believe that Sufism—not the name, but the thing itself—derives directly from the Prophet Muhammad. The name came later, to describe something implicit in the religion from the very start.
(1/) And that’s an important point, because many Western oriental­ists have tried to attribute the development of Sufism to foreign influences, “borrowings”—Neoplatonism, Hindu Vedanta and so on. It’s an understandable misconception.
(2/)

At the same time, it can be maintained that spiritual development is also critically dependent on what the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) called the jihad al-akbar, the struggle with the lower self,
(1/) or, in terms of my previous note to Qur’an 50:21-22, the struggle with the nafs al-ammarah, the compulsive or commanding self. In taking on board the empirical findings of cognitive psychology in the identification of the prevalence of fast,
(2/)

Western psychology has developed over the decades allowing the human condition to be analysed, especially with regard to the effect of childhood experiences on later life.
(1/) However, this knowledge of the human psyche is still largely the product of its historical cultural environment, that is a secular humanist vision that prefers to see the mind more as machine that can be ‘understood’
(2/)

[Qur'ān 95:4] Verily We created man in the best of forms.
(1/) Man is Adam. In other words: “I created Adam in the most beautiful form and chose him out from among all the creatures.
(2/)

[Qur'ān 1:6] Guide us upon the straight path.

Guide us to the straight path, in other words, fix us upon [the path of] guidance and empower us to remain upright along the path of oneness, that is, the path of those favoured [by You]
(1/) with the special favour pertaining to [Your] Mercifulness (raḥīmiyya), which is gnosis, love and guidance, such as the prophets, the martyrs, the truthful and the friends (awliyāÌ) who have witnessed Him as the First and the Last,
(2/)

[Qur'ān 24:35] God is the light of the heavens and the earth...
(1/) That is, the One who has adorned the heavens and earth with lights. The likeness of his light means the likeness of the light of Muḥammad.
(2/)

A dervish was asked, “What is the evidence for God's being?”
(1/3) He replied, “Morning takes away the need for a lamp.” When the sun rises, a lamp is not required. The whole cosmos is the evidence, it needs someone to look. The whole cosmos is fragrant herbs, it needs someone to smell.
(2/3)

• The Nature of Islamic Art & Sufism •