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"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-Ansari's Manazil al-sairin, a guide
to the maqamat or "spiritual
stations"
of the Sufi path.
These
and many other Muslim scholars knew first hand 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. "
-Taken from Sidi Masud's web page.
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