بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
WRONG(ED) SUFIS
You were looking for something you didn't even know you were looking for. For a known answer to an unknown question. The question introduced itself to you disguised as the answer. The answer that was all along with you not seeing what the question is. Sometimes finding the question to an answer is far more bewildering than finding the answer to a question.
Then one day you look in the mirror and find all the questions to all the answers and all the answers to all the questions. When you witness your mystified reflection in a pair of mystifying eyes, you travel from the depths of oceans to the heights of skies to fathom one simple yet hard to grasp truth.
There is no mystery, nor is there a mystique.
Realizing something mysterious like this, your heart flutters with joy of knowing, whirls with the winds, swirls with the waves, sways with the fires, celebrates his existence among the stars, and dances and eternal dance with life itself.
Wow that was beautiful really! Thank you for sharing your profound experience with me because something similar recently happened with me to.
So last year my beloved khala (aunt) ask me to paint something I just couldn't bring myself to. Although it was unsettling for me, I persuaded myself to be professional and keeping my personal beliefs and values separate to my work as it was not contradictory to my world view as a whole. I therefore decided to paint the dancing sufi she asked for and started preparing for the painting.
I had bought the canvas, planned the composition, selected the colour palette and other intricacies. The painting was all ready in my head's studio however, for obvious reasons, I kept delaying it. Thankfully her visit to Pakistan was also postponed and my cognitive dissonance (posing as procrastination) was provided with some extra hours to wrap my head around the perplexing woolen robes of sufism.
Side note: Nationalism, activism, feminism, shiaism, sunnism..... Adding ism to a word, in today's age, ironically destroys the original meaning of the respective word and all the ideologies and movements attached with it, reducing it philosophical significance to nothing but rags.
Take any other ism and you'll see the same thing happening to its victim(s); the words themselves and the minds being forced to accept the altered meanings.
"Sufi (n.)
in early use also Sofi, Suffi, Sophee, etc., "member of a Muslim mystical order," 1650s (earlier Sufian, 1580s), from Arabic sufi, literally "man of wool" (i.e., "man wearing woolen garments," as opposed to silk), from suf "wool." "
"According to Klein, so-called from the habit of "putting on the holy garment" (labs-as-suf) to devote oneself to mysticism."
This was my conceived picture of a Sufi. A person wearing wool, whirling mindlessly, bringing nothing to the table, doing not even the bare minimum for humanity, no purpose, no sense of obligation towards the earth and lost in the idea of finding Allah.
Until recently then I was exposed to a new meaning which made a lot more sense and created a better image of a 'Sufi' in my head which further eased my way into putting that with respectable image on the canvas. The picture of a Sofie painted for me looks something like this.
Sufi:
"...some forms show influence of Greek sophos "wise," which was formerly thought to be perhaps the origin of the word. Related: Sufic.
also from 1650s"
"The word Sufi is derived from the Arabic word al-tasawwuf, which means “divine. wisdom.” It has also been suggested that the term Sufi is a derivation of the Greek word for. wisdom, sophia."
As in in philosophy
Philosophy: love for wisdom
Philia: love, affection
Sophia: wisdom
"Middle English: from Old French philosophie, via Latin from Greek philosophia ‘love of wisdom’."
Turns out garments of a Sufi were never about wool, nor did it ever had anything to do with any other fabric. A sufi's dress is woven with the thread of ilm and adorned with the gems of sharing their ilm.
In olden times, the highly educated personalities were addressed as Sufis; literally scholar. They were great scholars and researchers of different branches of ilm and contrary to the mainstream belief, were not always associated with religion or spirituality.
Sufis were the ones who brought us closer to our Creator. Their sharp intellect were well aware of the principals of preaching and their meticulous nature presented word of God in a way that was easy to understand and accept. These wise and learned helpers of the Lord didn't find it appropriate to fight with the culture, instead they used the culture as a tool to connect with the psych of the folks, unlike the extremist, corrupt, and ignorant mullahs that were owned by the governments, who made a living by selling false gods to the general public and fed off the fear of these false gods by induced in the souls of common wo/men.
Besides, notable personalities like Al-Sufi (Abd al-Rahman Al-Sufi), Jabir (Jabir ibn Hayyan) and Hallaj (Mansur Al-Hallaj) were not sufis (sufi word here is used in its traditional meaning). Al-Sufi was a great astronomer and Jabir was a great scientist, mathematician, philosopher, chemist, and an expert of many other sciences.
However religious people of the day were his enemies as they failed to understand that these sciences are a part of religion.
This is why he used to attend classes of Imam Sadiq (as) late night hiding himself from other students of Imam. These people burned and destroyed his home and laboratory many times. So when he died, he was buried by non Muslims as a sufi.
Just like Bulleh Shah etc...
Therefore his name has never been recorded in any book of Shia and Sunni Rijal as their scholar.
Only Ibne Nadeem has listed his books. But when in the 17th century, a French scholar collected his books from all over the world, printed the list, translated some of his books and western scholars accepted him as father of chemistry only then Shia and Sunni scholars started quarelling for owning him as a student of Imam Jafar (as) or Jafar Al-Barmaki.
Same was the case with other scholars.
I always used to think if abandoning this world is so noble, why didn't Prophet (saww) do it?
On the other hand not only all the prophets were the very part of their respective societies, they worked hard for improving the living conditions of their people, be it condition of the mind or the outside world. All they wanted was to see the world grow, prosper and people becoming free and independent. Not one prophet left the society to find 'divine' wisdom, neither did the sufis. We got it all wrong about reality of sufis and wronged them in most painful ways, forgot and erased their valuable contributions in various disciplines.
Us Muslims glorified fantasy over reality, visionless dreams over hardwork, brain fog over critical thinking, miracle over science, fate over destiny and punishment over forgiveness and grace. We intentionally or unintentionally betrayed our great scholars, thinkers, explorers, researchers, scientists, and philosophers who sacrificed their lives so we can exist and thrive, dumped them down to a mere weak-willed thing with no purpose.
After understanding the manipulations and politics around this word, I rewrote its meaning for me.
Sufi:
A noble thinker who is powerful enough to create new paths, is the very heart of her/his community and extends their services to other communities, strives endlessly to educate nations and reminds individuals of the strength they possess.
When we were young, school taught us to extract answer from the question. Now we need to teach ourselves coming generations to create the questions for existing answers, that will bring forth mental clarity we need to progress and to develop our society.
Date: 27-1-2024.
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