Tradicionalista

This is a quote from Habib Ali al Jifri’s Book: Wayfarers to God. Buy it on Guidance Media. It’s a read you won’t regret inshaAllah.

I’ll be posting lots of gems from this book inshaAllah. It’s hard for me not to post the whole book!

“…The portrayal of tasawwuf as falsehood, error, shirk, disbelief, and a plot conspired by non-Muslims, means that the people of tasawwuf are people of error, wrongdoing, and shirk- which then implies a lack of confidence in the Qu’ran and a lack of trust in the Qu’ran and sunnah. Why? Because all of our chains of transmission - in our receipt of the Book and the sunnah- include imams of tasawwuf. In an ijaza (license to teach) for one of the recitations among the seven or ten recitations of the noble Qu’ran, it is impossible to report a chain from a sahih hadith, without one of the imams of tasawwuf making up a part of the chain. If they are all in error and all mushriks and people of evil then our receipt of the Qu’ran would be in doubt. This is because our Qu’ranic chains of transmission would then consist of people who are said to be in error and are said to be evil- may Allah protect us from that. It is not possible for anybody to quote a single chain today that leads back to Bukhari or Muslim- to all the books of Hadith-save that chain is adorned with Imams of tasawwuf…If our generations were to research, they would find that all versions come through people of tasawwuf, and thus if they were people of error, then no version of the Qu’ran and sunnah would be reliable and trustworthy. This aspersion goes to the very heart of the Qur’an and sunnah, because it impugns the chain through which we received them. Therefore it is incumbent of Muslims to become aware of this matter.” (p. 74)

I was reflecting upon this passage and I came up with a variety of thoughts. First off, I like, many others had a negative view of Sufism/ tasawwuf before I learned exactly what it was and that it’s derived from the Qu’ran and Sunnah. But my experience is very different. I am not coming from a background of people who denounced it as shirk and the sorts. I was more confused about it. I had the idea first that they were the people who didn’t follow the rules of religion like they drank alcohol, didn’t pray etc. I had nobody to tell me otherwise and I was just confused. Little did I know, those people give a bad name to Sufism and that Sufis actually follow law to the letter mashaAllah.

Then my second encounter with Sufism much later on in life. I asked someone that I looked up to what Sufism was all about. She told me they were “weird” and “really conservative.” She was talking without knowledge and I didn’t know that so I took her word for it. Maybe the Sufis she did know of were “weird’ but still she could have told me that she didn’t know what Sufism was! Muslims have like this disease where they can’t say they don’t know! Oh Well. When I did find out what Sufism was, I was pretty upset that I was in the dark about it for so long.

Habib Ali al Jifri is right. Sufism cannot and should not be ridiculed the way it is. We need to inform people what it actually is and what it’s not.

Habib Ali al Jifri also addresses the non-law abiding Sufis and how this is not an argument against Sufism. It’s like the old”there are bad hijabis so that’s why I won’t wear hijab” argument. That is not an argument against hijab.

“Yes, there are some that have been attributed to tasawwuf- many of whom have been associated with tasawwuf in our times- that have fallen into error and deviated from the way, but that does not warrant aspersions against all Sufis. We have already mentioned that many scholars and narrators of Hadith - and others linked to Hadith have fabricated Hadith about the Envoy of Allah ( May Allah bless him and give him peace) and invented lies about him. Should we then denounce all Hadith, because amongst those dedicated to Hadith, are those who invent lies about the envoy of Allah?… No! The same applies to tasawwuf, we do not denounce it.” (p. 75)

Allahu Alim.

Fatemeh Keshavarz has just written a book called Jasmine and the Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran.

I don’t own the book-yet but I’ve read through the first couple of chapters and I love it.

her whole motive of this book is to counter what she calls the “New Orientalism”

Orientalism used to be when Westerners would visit the Middle East and come back with stories of how bad it is. The new orientalism is when Middle easterners themselves write these stories and get the sympathy and support of Westerners. They often talk about how oppressive it is or how bad the life there is, and the random Westerner takes them as an authority because they are from those lands. Even though these new orientalists’ stories are true, they often offer a very slanted picture of a particular country. In Fatemeh’s case, she speaks about Iran. She says that books like Reading Lolita in Tehran offer a very slanted picture of her country and she wanted to write one book that is positive about her country.

Here is an interview with the author, Fatemeh Keshavarz.

Buy Jasmine and the Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran.

Finally a positive book about the Middle East.