The True Nature of Tasawwuf

By Shaykh Abdalqadir As-Sufi

on the 2nd night of his moussem in 2009

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, Audhubillahi mina shaytanir rajim. To this gathering of

Fuqara from all over the world, from the furthest extremities of the world to one of the furthest extremities of the world we say welcome. I want to take this moment, and the truth of this moment, to tell you something that is not known in this age. Partly because of the collapse of the Shariat of Islam. Since the time of Sultan AbdalHamid II of the Osmanlı Empire, there has not been a Shariah. There has not been Shariah on the face of the Earth. Least of all by those people who claim that what they want to do is establish Shariah. Because the missing dimension as we all know is Zakaat, and Zakaat is a taken not a given Sadaqah. Until that is restored, the Shariat has been wounded or

killed. The Deen has been stopped. Now, my concern here, is that you should

understand the true nature of Tasawwuf, which has been hidden. As it were at that

moment when there was a complete Shariah, there was also a complete pattern of Haqiqah. As a result of this, of course, our great Muslim community has been in anguish and concerned about what we’ve lost, so some have clung desperately to the Hadith and made themselves ‘ahl al Hadith’. Others have clung desperately to the regection of the inward in order to try to rescue the outward. While losing the very element of the outward and cannot live without the inward. And others have gone back to try to find the Inward among the dead and exalted the dead. Now with this has come a false idea about

the Shayukh of Tariqah. The Shayukh are a necessary element of Tariqah, but they are like

a hidden thread that goes through the cloth of Tasawwuf. In very recent times, there

were people who exalted the tremendous central experience of Marifah, as if that was

what Tasawuf was about. As a result of that, the ordinary Mumin began to think, ‘well I

am not one of these exalted people who will know these exalted states, so it’s not for me

or whats the use of it.’ But this was never the view of the people of Tasawwuf when the

Deen was in its whole completeness and glory. This is not the business of Tasawwuf. Let

us take this word and put it aside. What was this ‘thing’ that was at the heart of the

Muslim community and the Muslim nation. Now if you go back to the early books of the

fuqaha, you find whole books written on ‘Birr’. Now this is an untranslatable word.

What it essentially indicates is a right action stemming from a pure heart, and that that

right action, changes things. It is effective (action). You find that one of the coded words

for Tasawwuf among the Ulama of the great age was that, ‘so and so was a’ ‘Zahid’. Now

that was indicated because of his character – Zahid – that was a coded signal that he was aSufi. Now, let’s say it out what has not been said out for a hundred years. Tasawwuf –

forget the word – what this matter at the heart of the Muslim experience was indicated

by the word ‘Futuwwa’. This Futuwwa, the Fata, the people of this excellence. This is

what it’s all about. And this is something that comes with the whole body of the Jamaat.

One man cannot be it on his own. He cannot have this. It is a body of people that have it

and it is excellence of character and behavior. So you find, the date of the greatest

Marifah, the greatest direct knowledge of Allah, was the time when the fuqara had in

themselves this quality that was, it was not a man alone on an island, it was a body. It was

Jamaat. And so when a body of fuqara enter the mosque, one of the great mosques, it

electrified everybody. And they completed with each other, in their excellence. So that

Imam Junayd was sitting with his fuqara, the greatest of our imams, and a great man of

Futuwwa came in with his men and they were all superbly dressed like princes and Imam

Junayd said, ‘why are all your men so well dressed? All these handsome men, splendidly

dressed. What is this?’ and the Shaykh said to him, “Allah’s bounty, declare it.” İn Qur’an

it says: ….fa’ama bi ni’yamiti fi rabika tu hadeeth. And Imam Junayd said, ‘Get up

gentlemen and greet your masters.’ Because to them, it didn’t mean because they were

well dressed, it meant that they were princes of declaring the bounty of Allah. Everything

was coded meanings, every action was coded meanings. This is what this ‘thing’ was. This

is what you have. This is who you are. You are a Jamaat. Go into any mosque you will

not find what is here tonight. Because it’s been lost. People go to a Jumuah, they go in

and they go out. They don’t know who the man next to them is. People don’t know each

other. They are not bonded together, and it is this bonding together, this is what all the

politics of the kufar try to do with legislation, and ministry and organized charity, but this

is what ‘Life’ is for the people of Futuwwa. You are people who compete in excellence.

Who compete in generosity. Who compete in speaking well of each other. All this, this is

what the Sahaba were. The Sahaba were not these awful ghost like figures worrying about

their Wudu like the appalling Tablighi Jamaat. They have got the worst manners in the

world. You want to go sleep in the Mosque which is Makruh. If that is how they treat the

House of Allah how will they treat the house of they’re neighbors. And now, everything,

‘At-Tariqah kulluha Adab’. This is what it is. It isn’t anything else. It is this, but it is this

which elevates you. This is the ‘Red Sulphur’ of which the Sufis spoke. It is not a spiritual

state. All this language of Tasawwuf as if it was just simply the experience of inner states

and stations. No! That’s not what it’s about. These are the instruments by which this

‘whole’ person manifests. The business of ‘This’. That’s why it’s Futuwwa not

Tasawwuf. There’s no Tasawwuf, This isn’t Tasawwuf. Look here, no Tariqahs! Forget

Tariqahs! Forget Shaykhs. All this is waste of time. This is not what it’s about. After

Mawlay Abdalqadr Jilani, Rahimullah, had spent years as a Zahid on the mountainwanting states of inner enlightment with Allah, subhana wa ta’Ala, and people came from

all over Iraq to get Baraka from him and also to be fed because people came with food and

money to give to the people to please Mawlay Abdalqadir, then one night he was sitting

and reflecting on Allah and then an angel came and said I have a message from the

Throne. Allah says, what are you doing standing on one leg on a mountain, go down and

teach the people of Baghdad. And he went down and he stopped at the gates of the city,

he was enormously renowned as this Zahid. And he went to a mosque outside the centre

of the city and he sat down and he called a youth who had not reached puberty so it was

not a political act. He said, go to the great mosque, and he pulled a rose from the

courtyard of the mosque, he said, take this and go to the central mosque and you will see

a circle of Ulama, give them this from me and say this is from Mawlay Abdalqadir, can I

come in and teach the people. So the boy went into the mosque and presented the rose,

and then these highly tuned experts of fiqh, as they got this message and looked at each

other and they said we can’t have Mawlay Abdalqadir, they will all go to him and we will

have no one. And they started to his say no, and one of the elders of them said come here

and he took a glass and said take this glass of water. It was filled to the brim. He said take

that to him and say to him the glass is full, we don’t need any more Mawlay Abdalqadir,

thank you very much. So the boy went back and took this to Mawlay Abdalqadir and he

looked at it and took another rose and popped it into the glass and said here take this to

them. And when they saw this they saw Marifah, they understood. Now because of this,

the people who follow Mawlay Abdalqadir, he was a great alim of fiqh, it was his

permission to come in, so from that point the people who came to attend his classes used

to put a rose in their turban because of this story of how he entered with adab. That’s all

Tasawwuf, that’s all the business of the Qadriyyah. They had the rose because they sat

and learned from him. You see, there are two sorts of Shayukh. There’s the Shaykh of

instruction, Suluk, snd there’s the Shaykh of Baraka and we say Baraka and awakening.

The Shaykh of Baraka and awakening is like the wali who is like a powerhouse. He gives

out lights you see. He awakens the faqir overnight, or a minute or a few days. But the real

matter is Suluk. The real matter is the teaching. The thing that is alive, meaning that the

teaching can go to the jamaat and it lifts everyone up. So the Shaykh of instruction is the

conduit of this affair. And yet the affair is becoming a complete person. You’ve reached

the summit of what you are capable of. It’s like you have a clay foundation. Now days we

talk about DNA and so on. But then you have a lesson. You have a history. You are taught

about what you are going to do. A very great statesman of the last century and books had

been written about him, was a struggling failure. So he was a great statesman but the

whole thing was a failure. He failed. He caused the deaths of millions. But one must

complete their destiny. One of the things Shaykh Ibn Arabi said is, “when the veil is

lifted, it will be understood that a man sends himself to heaven and sends himself to hell.”This is not a denigration of Allah, it’s a lifting of the veil of how it happens. This is why

the Qur’an every single time it mentions the destiny of the life of man, it talks about

weighing the balance, does it not? Now who’s putting stuff on the balance? Is it not you?

What you do with your life, is what your life was. What you’ve done and then it’s

weighed, and there’s so many secrets about it. He told us about a prostitute, who was for

the jannah because her compassionate rescuing of a kitten from a well. Is that not true?

It’s in the Sira. For Allah, one act of compassion weighs a thousand things. But what

you’re doing is constructing a life. You’re constructing the weights and measures that

will determine what the outcome is and this means that then you need Suluk to be guided

as to what is important. You have to learn that your danger is not your weak point, your

danger is your strong point. More people fall off the cliff of their greatness than fall off

the stone of their weakness and helplessness. You have to be careful, very careful. You

have to have this ‘Wara’. This is Wara. Wara is not something that is missing a prayer,

it’s about every move your make. Some of the very great men of this science, you see,

were people who start by measuring the day. And they would start by looking at the end

of the day, and ask what have I done today, what have brought today? What’s on the

balance? What is good and what is bad? And then they narrow it from prayer to prayer.

Then they narrow it to the moment. So they were in fact every moment of the day just

being so careful. You see when you talk about the faqir who is disciplined and careful, it’s

not that he is this great and pious person. That he’s a good man, a nice man. It’s about

this carefulness in relation to other people. It’s that the Adab of giving is less than having

the Adab of knowing how to be thanked. Correct? Not to spoil it. It can damage you

when you feel exalted and raised. You see things are different from what you think. One

of the great people of this science was Sidi Ali al Jamal, rahimullah of Fez, and he wrote a

book which our Hajja Aisha translated, and he actually tells you how the whole business

of human affairs works. He tells you how the world runs. Now he had very few Fuqara

and he had one student. But his teaching is enormous, it’s tremendous, unequal. But he

had one man who came to him. One man came and knocked on his door. Fez was full of

Ulama, full of intellectuals and one man knocked on his door, Mawlay al-Arabi Ad-

Darqawi. And he said to him, ‘Let me in’. And there was Sidi Ali al-Jamal, busy around

the courtyard of his tiny little Zawiyya and he came and stayed with him and what did Sidi

Ali al-Jamal do? Mawlay Arabi Ad Darqawi was a dynamic personality. He was a star. He

said, ‘go out into the streets and help the convicts shovel up the shit from the lavatories.

And he turned around and said to him, ‘Oh yes come back, put on a comical straw hat

that will make you look like an idiot. So he was shoveling filth and wearing the straw hat,

it was humiliating, and people said, ‘Mawlay Arabi, what’s going on? Are you ok? He

couldn’t handle it so he then went and got another straw hat and put it on top of that one.

So they said well he’s gone mad, and then he could relax. My second Shaykh, who was aShaykh of Baraka and illumination, Shaykh al Fayturi rahimullah, he had been with people

of the path for a long time and a great Shaykh came from Mauritania. And he was a very

great Shaykh and all his Murids were Shaykhs. He only had Shayukh, he only taught

Shayukh because he didn’t take any beginners. And he said, ‘I want to go with him.’ So

his fuqara said, ‘the Shaykh said you can come, and we leave tomorrow but if you want to

come with us you have to follow the rules. The first thing you have to do, is divorce your

wife, give her your house and give her all your wealth so that she is secure, and bring only

a burnouse and he said well can I have my books and they said no just Qur’an, nothing

else. So he went with this man, and he was very harsh and the Shuyukh whom he taught

treated him worse. When they arrived in a town they were sent out to beg. So he would

get money for the Shayukh who arrived in town because they had no money in order to

feed. And he had to beg in the town. Then they prepared the food, and one day the

Shaykh would say, ‘that’s delicious, that’s wonderful’. The next day he would say, ‘What

is this rubbish?’ and then throw it in his face. He went with him for three years until one

day, the compliment and the insult were the same, and then at that moment, the Shaykh

died. At that point they’d arrived in Damascus. He was from Benghazi, the Shaykh. He

said, that it was the end of the world, because I had gone through all this training and

destroying my Nafs and now I’m nothing and now there was nothing, and he was walking

the desolate streets of Damascus and a man from Libya said, ‘Fayturi, how nice to see

you, there’s a wonderful dhikr tonight you must come.’ He said, ‘I will have nothing to

do with dhikr, I’m finished with the whole thing.’ ‘I’m completely ruined, I have no

money, I’m stuck in Damascus, and I can’t even get back to Benghazi.’ The man said,

‘but you know there is a very important Shaykh from Algeria, Shaykh al Alawi. This man

is different, I think you will find benefit. Please come. And he said it’s at this Zawiyya’.

At that moment he thought, there might be some Cuscus at the end of it maybe I will

come for a little bit. And so he went and Shaykh al Alawi was sitting there and the people

who came in came and greeted him. And when Fayturi saw al Alawi he took his hand and

he kissed the hand of the Shaykh and went into the circle and they had a dhikr like you

had tonight. Something that there’s nowhere in the world except among the people of

this high spiritual perfection, which you have. And at the end of the night, he was

completely changed and he went up to him and said, ‘please Shaykh, I want to be your

Murid.’ And the Shaykh said, ‘yes yes yes that’s fine, we will see you here tomorrow.’

Fayturi said, no no, I’ve gone through a lot and I’m not making any mistakes this time

round, I want to take your hand.’ And Shaykh Alawi said, ‘well, when you came in,

didn’t I take it? It’s already done.’ And he called his mukaddam and said, ‘we’ll put him

in khalwa tomorrow, it won’t take long.’ And in three days he reached Fa’na and

achieved what he wanted from Fayturi. This was another thing you see, the other thing is

what you read in the books you see. The other thing was the application of something as ifyou could train people. It’s not like that. It is to awaken in people their highest potential

that they want to help each other, they want to support each other. They’re not

concerned about themselves at all. They’re not measuring the minutes. They’re not

thinking about themselves because they’re to busy thinking about other people. And its

people who think about others who are the ones who have to think about Allah. Because

we know that the human situation is horrible. Someone said, ‘I’m a humanist.’ I said ‘no

you’re a Kane and Abelist’. They’re the two sides of Adam, alayhi salam. There’s not

much fun in that. The one is going to kill the other one and the one does the killing can’t

even bury him without Allah teaching him how to bury him. That’s humanism. Look, this

concern for the brothers is the core of Tasawwuf. This is Futuwwa. This is what we have.

This is why this is the best dhikr taking place in the world today. You are the best fuqara

in the world today. Allah has a high place for you. This world and the next. You are

people of success. Not people of failure. You are people of triumph, you are people of

expansion. Allah’s Fadl, a Shaykh of our Tariqah used to say, the Fadl of Allah lies in

increase. Were on a path of a master whose way is increase. Allah will increase you. He

will increase you from now until the day you die. You will not miss a meal. You will not

go without help. Wherever you are, a hand will reach out and pick you up when you fall

down. This is the core of the matter of Futuwwa because you’re the best of people and

you do not boast. It’s your secret. And when you see another person who’s got it, and

that is the brother you have. That is Asabiyya on which great civilizations are built. You

are the people on which great civilizations are built. You are the people who gave

evidence that politics is for slaves. The political class are the slaves of the slaves of wealth.

And they have nothing for anybody. Least of all themselves. They’re all miserable. Look

even the awards they get are a mockery. A man gets an award for peace but he’s at war

with two nations. Killing men, women and children on a daily basis and he gets a prize

for peace. This is not who you are. You have to realize who you are. You are the ones

whom Allah has chosen because you are with the one Allah chose. That is Mustapha. The

one chosen by Allah, Subhana wa ta Ala. And we follow him. We follow him so we are

safe. We are secure. There’s nothing to fear. And if you have fear, then you must balance

it with hope and that will rescue you. Like when Shaykh Muhammad ibn al Habib,

entered the Sufic path, when he first met one of the Sufis in Fez and asked if he could stay

in his house and he said ‘Marhaban.’ And his first encounter of Futuwwa was when the

man went up the steps, he went Khawf; Raja; Khawf; Raja; Fear; Hope; Fear; Hope. This

is it. This is how the world works. This is how it will survive. Khawf; Raja. This is

another way of living. This is what our business is. It’s something tremendous. It’s not

Tariqah. It’s to be in the company of the very best people, and the very best people love

Allah, and the very best people love Rasulullah, Sallalahu alayhi wasalam, and they look

after each other. They have concern for each other. This is the greatness which you haveinherited. From that moment when Allah collected you to be in this gathering, and if you

don’t believe me look to the song of Abu Madyan al Ghawth. The fuqara, they are the

sultans, they are the kings. When will my eyes have sight of them? When will my ears of

have news of them. This is the body of the people of Futuwwa. Of nobility. You are the

nobility of the world in your time, from this moment until you are dead, and Allah will

never leave you, never abandon you. He will keep his promise. It’s guaranteed and

you’ve got it. We thank Allah for the gift of Islam. We thank Allah for the gift of Rasul,

Sallalahu alayhi wasalam. We thank Allah for the gift of the Awliya. We ask Allah subhana

wa ta Ala, to expand our community. To give healing to the whole world by our

community. We ask Allah subhana wa ta Ala to feed the world by our generosity. We ask

Allah subhana wa ta Ala, to raise up the people around us in every place. We ask Allah

subhana wa ta Ala to make our tongues supple with remembering Allah telling people,

“This is from Allah, this is from Allah, This is from Allah.” We ask Allah subhana wa ta

Ala for great Baraka to be showered upon this whole community tonight. Something with

a light that will go through all our life and never forget it. That He blesses the Futuwwa

of this noble gathering. We ask Allah subhana wa ta Ala for the strength and the love to

raise up the Muslims of Cape Town, who’ve been abandoned by the political class,

who’ve been abandoned by the christians who’ve been abandoned by the athiests. Give us

the strength and the love to embrace and raise them up and share with us the joy of the

Tariqah of Sayiduna Muhammad, Sallalahu alayhi wa salam. Al Fatiha.