Is Sufism Bida?
The following article
aims to answer this question (taken from the webpage of Nuh Ha
Mim Keller).
How would you respond to the Claim that
Sufism is bid'a? (c) Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995
I would respond by
looking to see how traditional ulama or Islamic scholars have
viewed it. For the longest period of Islamic history--from
Umayyad times to Abbasid, to Mameluke, to the end of the
six-hundred-year Ottoman period--Sufism has been taught and
understood as an Islamic discipline, like Qur'anic exegesis
(tafsir), hadith, Qur'an recital (tajwid), tenets of faith (ilm
al-tawhid) or any other, each of which preserved some particular
aspect of the din or religion of Islam.
While the details and
terminology of these shari'a disciplines were unknown to the
first generation of Muslims, when they did come into being, they
were not considered bid'a or "reprehensible innovation"
by the ulema of shari'a because for them, bid'a did not pertain
to means, but rather to ends, or more specifically, those ends
that nothing in Islam attested to the validity of.
To illustrate
this point, we may note that the Prophet (Allah bless him and
give him peace) never in his life prayed in a mosque built of
reinforced concrete, with a carpeted floor, glass windows, and so
on, yet these are not considered bid'a, because we Muslims have
been commanded to come together in mosques to perform the prayer,
and large new buildings for this are merely a means to carry out
the command.
In the realm of knowledge, books of detailed
interpretation of the Qur'an, verse by verse and sura by sura,
were not known to the first generation of Islam, nor was the term
tafsir current among them, yet because of its benefit in
preserving a vital aspect of the revelation, the understanding of
the Qur'an, when the tafsir literature came into being, it was
acknowledged to serve an end endorsed by the shari'a and was not
condemned as bid'a.
The same is true of most of the Islamic
sciences, such as ilm al-jarh wa tadil or "the science of
weighing positive and negative factors for evaluating the
reliability of hadith narrators", or ilm al-tawhid,
"the science of tenets of Islamic faith", and other
disciplines essential to the shari'a. In this connection, Imam
Shafi'i (d. 204/820) has said, "Anything which has a support
(mustanad) from the shari'a is not bid'a, even if the early
Muslims did not do it" (Ahmad al-Ghimari, Tashnif al-adhan,
Cairo: Maktaba al-Khanji, n.d., 133).
Similarly ilm al-tasawwuf,
"the science of Sufism" came into being to preserve and
transmit a particular aspect of the shari'a, that of ikhlas or
sincerity. It was recognized that the sunna of the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) was not only words and actions, but
also states of being: that a Muslim must not only say certain
things and do certain things, but must also be something. The
shari'a commands one, for example, in many Qur'anic verses and
prophetic hadiths, to fear Allah, to have sincerity toward Him,
to be so certain in ones knowledge of Allah that one worships Him
as if one sees Him, to love the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) more than any other human being, to show love and
respect to all fellow Muslims, to show mercy, and to have many
other states of the heart. It likewise forbids us such inward
states as envy, malice, pride, arrogance, love of this world,
anger for the sake of one's ego, and so on.
Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi
relates, for example, with a chain of transmission judged
rigorously authenticated (sahih) by Ibn Main, the hadith
"Anger spoils faith (iman) as [the bitterness of] aloes sap
spoils honey" (Nawadir al-usul. Istanbul 1294/1877. Reprint.
Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d., 6). If we reflect upon these states,
obligatory to attain or to eliminate, we notice that they proceed
from dispositions, dispositions not only lacking in the
unregenerate human heart, but acquired only with some effort,
resulting in a human change so profound that the Qur'an in many
verses terms it purification, as when Allah says in surat al-Ala,
for example, "He has succeeded who purifies himself"
(Qur'an 87:14). Bringing about this change is the aim of the
Islamic science of Sufism, and it cannot be termed bid'a, because
the shari'a commands us to accomplish the change.
At the
practical level, the nature of this science of purifying the
heart (like virtually all other traditional Islamic disciplines)
requires that the knowledge be taken from those who possess it.
This is why historically we find that groups of students gathered
around particular sheikhs to learn the discipline of Sufism from.
While such tariqas or groups, past and present, have emphasized
different ways to realize the attachment of the heart to Allah
commanded by the Islamic revelation, some features are found in
all of them, such as learning knowledge from a teacher by precept
and example, and then methodically increasing ones iman or faith
by applying this knowledge through performing obligatory and
supererogatory works of worship, among the greatest of latter
being dhikr or the remembrance of Allah.
There is much in the
Qur'an and sunna that attests to the validity of this approach,
such as the hadith related by al-Bukhari that: Allah Most High
says: ". . . . My slave approaches Me with nothing more
beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My
slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I
love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he
hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he
seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks me, I will
surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely
protect him (Sahih al-Bukhari. 9 vols. Cairo 1313/1895. Reprint
(9 vols. in 3). Beirut: Dar al-Jil, n.d., 5.131: 6502) --which is
a way of expressing that such a person has realized the
consummate awareness of tawhid or "unity of Allah"
demanded by the shari'a, which entails total sincerity to Allah
in all one's actions. Because of this hadith, and others,
traditional ulama have long acknowledged that ilm or "Sacred
Knowledge" is not sufficient in itself, but also entails
amal or "applying what one knows"--as well as the
resultant hal or "praiseworthy spiritual state"
mentioned in the hadith.
It was perceived in all Islamic times
that when a scholar joins between these aspects, his words mirror
his humility and sincerity, and for that reason enter the hearts
of listeners. This is why we find that so many of the Islamic
scholars to whom Allah gave tawfiq or success in their work were
Sufis. Indeed, to throw away every traditional work of the
Islamic sciences authored by those educated by Sufis would be to
discard 75 percent or more of the books of Islam. These men
included such scholars as the Hanafi Imam Muhammad Amin Ibn
Abidin, Sheikh al-Islam Zakaria al-Ansari, Imam Ibn Daqiq al-Eid,
Imam al-Izz Ibn Abd al-Salam, Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, Sheikh
Ahmad al-Sirhindi, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Bajuri, Imam al-Ghazali,
Shah Wali Allah al-Dahlawi, Imam al-Nawawi, the hadith master
(hafiz, someone with 100,000 hadiths by memory) Abd al-Adhim
al-Mundhiri, the hadith master Murtada al-Zabidi, the hadith
master Abd al-Rauf al-Manawi, the hadith master Jalal al-Din
al-Suyuti, the hadith master Taqi al-Din al-Subki, Imam al-Rafii,
Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Zayn al-Din al-Mallibari, Ahmad ibn
Naqib al-Misri, and many many others.
Imam al-Nawawi's attitude
towards Sufism is plain from his work Bustan al-arifin [The grove
of the knowers of Allah] on the subject, as well as his
references to al-Qushayri's famous Sufi manual al-Risala
al-Qushayriyya throughout his own Kitab al-adhkar [Book of the
remembrances of Allah], and the fact that fifteen out of
seventeen quotations about sincerity (ikhlas) and being true
(sidq) in an introductory section of his largest legal work
(al-Majmu: sharh al-Muhadhdhab. 20 vols. Cairo n.d. Reprint.
Medina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, n.d., 1.1718) are from Sufis who
appear by name in al-Sulami's Tabaqat al-Sufiyya [The successive
generations of Sufis].
Even Ibn Taymiyya (whose views on Sufism
remain strangely unfamiliar even to those for whom he is their
"Sheikh of Islam") devoted volumes ten and eleven of
his Majmu al-fatawa to Sufism, while his student Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya wrote his three-volume Madarij al-salikin as a
detailed commentary on Abdullah al-Ansaris Manazil al-sairin, a
guide to the maqamat or "spiritual stations" of the
Sufi path. These and many other Muslim scholars knew firsthand
the value of Sufism as an ancillary shari'a discipline needed to
purify the heart, and this was the reason that the Umma as a
whole did not judge Sufism to be a bid'a down through the ages of
Islamic civilization, but rather recognized it as the science of
ikhlas or sincerity, so urgently needed by every Muslim on
"a day when wealth will not avail, nor sons, but only him
who brings Allah a sound heart" (Qur'an 26:88). And Allah
alone gives success.
