Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
I dont know, havent come across a sufi condemning shariah. By the way how exactly is drinking wine different on orders from their peers different as compared to people committing terrorism on orders from their ameers? If you see around you these cults are every where in pakistan, sufis or otherwise.
yes, almost al the sects have hardliners.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
When I was in the university one thing used to bug me a lot and that was barelvis and deobandis used to pray together behind each others imams. Ahl e Hadith used to pray separately that means they didn’t consider others to be Muslims. This is the hatred what every one has against the others and then we consider “all” muslims to be one big Ummah.
Masla Wahdat ul Wajood Aur Dr.israr Ahmad Tahir ul Qadri Tariq Jameel Ke Aqaid 3/6 - YouTube
Kiya Barelvi Deobandi K Peechay Ahle Sunnat Ki Namaz Ho Jati Hai? - YouTube
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
ok here is what i get. tassuwaf is just like another school of aqeedah, or just like school aqeedah was introduced, so the tassuwaf is. tassuwaf was hidden from the view and it was openly practised untill before 1 or2 hundred years, yet you could not find any source that suggets that it was there since the appearance of Islam.
Brother ...
Tassuwwuf is the branch that deals with Ihsan ...
Aqeedah is the branch that deals with Iman ...
Fiqh is the branch that deals with Islam ...
None of these branches (Islamic sciences) were there since the appearance of Islam ... It is unwise and unfair to require tassuwwuf to be there from the beginning when the other two were not there from the beginning ... What happened in each case was that a need arose and the scholars decided to react to that need and the schools for those sciences began ...
The reason why the aqeedah sciences were started was because the scholars found there was a need because of stray opinions and Muslims being confused by the much more advanced Hellenistic philosophers so to counter their onslaught our scholars used their tool and refined them to bring Islamic credal discourse on to a level playing field and also quell the confusion from the non-Muslim philosophers and remove the internal inconsistencies of faith as they developed namely the Mu'tazillites, Jahmis, and Batinis, etc ...
The reason why the fiqh sciences were started was because the scholars feared oral narrative traditions could be poisoned with lies and as Islam spread they needed to preserve Arabic too so grammar was developed ... Qaadis needed very specific training do specialist learning for them was also formulated hence you have the beginnings of the fiqh schools that developed much later than the first appearance of Islam ...
Tassuwwuf developed again from the need seeing that people were acquiring understandings in various ways poetry, etiquettes and sciences in nobility were initiated to preserve the model character ... Materialism spearheaded the Sufi forms to counter-balance the dominant wave ...
Now none of these sciences would have been needed if the prophet (SAW) or the Shahabah (RA) were still alive today ... We would just ask a question and the answer would mean we follow ... And neither were any of the Sahabah (RA) concerned with making Islamic Sciences ... But all of these sciences can be extracted from what is preserved ... So the record that we have ...Qur'an, Seerah, Ahadith, etc are all there to bring out points that lend weight to a given science ... Aqeedah is drawn from our Sahih collections, because aqeedah is ahkam (hukm), Islamic law is a mixture of ahkam and fadzail, as is Tassuwwuf ... The science is concerned over the aspects of the complete narrated record that lends weight to the ideas of purification of the heart, inner meaning of dreams, conduct and internalising beliefs making them consistent with our actions through self-analysis and continual improvement ...
An example of the difference in understanding between the scholars of fiqh and the scholars of tassuwwuf comes together if you ask what should be done to a person who is unmindful of Allah (SWT) in his prayer ... The faqih will answer "so long as there was a moment of intent towards Allah (SWT) the prayer is valid ... The Sufi would say "flog him for having such bad manners that he stands before his Lord and is unmindful of Him ..."
the faqih's words carry legal status ... Because his focus in his science, i.e. fiqh, is to extract rulings ... However, the focus for the Sufi is to focus on the reality of state and the importance of the heart to be aligned to Allah (SWT) ... If our purpose is to Know and Worship Allah (SWT) ... The Sufis argue from the basis that anything less than constancy in that God-directedness is not as per our purpose in 'reality'... Notice both these positions are extracted from the Qur'an and Hadith ... One position is notably distant and the other involves our hearts ... The punishment for the crime for zina where only the culprits know about it ... according to fiqh is "nothing" so long as they both keep their mouths shut... But in tassuwwuf the penalty to pay is to offer "repentance" ... Because the whole idea of tassuwwuf is about how to cancel our sins when we fall in to them and how to overcome our sinful natures to make our natures desire and lean towards doing good ...
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
sufis of Qadri cult believe that sharia is what you murshid ask to do. comparatively modern qadri sufis condemn sharia. a sufi Hafiz muhammad ijaz said that you should follow your peer even if he ask you to drink vine while offering prayer. all the cults are found in punjab except suharwardi cult , i guess. chisti and naqshbandi cult are followed by some groups from deobandi and brelvi school of thought . but apprently i didnt find any difference among three cult being followed in punjab. deobandi sufis tends to avoid music though.
First of all brother a Tariqah does not qualify as a cult ... And secondly if a murshid asks his mureeds to go against the shari'ah that is grounds to leave him ... Why not get proper information about tassuwwuf from people who claim to be from it rather than bringing second hand information? Music is a different matter ... A very detailed discussion is given by a Shadhili Shaykh named Nuh Ha Meem Keller ... And the first sentence he says is 'in the general sense music is forbidden' ... So sincerity is important here ... I was looking for a way to remove bad characteristics, anger and arrogance and I didn't find the non-Sufis presenting me with solutions to them ... So if what you say is true that all the good things that Sufis do are already found in Salafis ... Then please use that 'sincerity' to gain correct and ratified information about others ... Go to the Sufi scholars and ask them ...anything less than that is unfair.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
What I also did was to study aqeedah ... I inspected it to see if there are any prohibitions in tassuwwuf ... Nothing ... I mean logically there are known awliya and great scholars who were Sufis ... Imam Al-Ghazali, Imam Bukhari, Imam Nawawi, Abdul Qadir Al-Jaylani (known wali) ...
and this ...
Imam Abu Hanifa:"If it were not for two years, I would have perished." He said, "for two years I accompanied Sayyidina Ja'far as-Sadiq and I acquired the spiritual knowledge that made me a gnostic in the Way." [Ad-Durr al-Mukhtar, vol 1. p. 43]
Imam Malik: "whoever studies Jurisprudence (tafaqaha) and didn't study Sufism [tasawwafa] will be corrupted; and whoever studied Sufism and didn't study Jurisprudence will become a heretic; and whoever combined both will be reach the Truth." [the scholar'Ali al-Adawi , vol. 2, p 195.)
Imam Shafi'i:"I accompanied the Sufi people and I received from them three knowledges: ... how to speak; .. how to treat people with leniency and a soft heart... and they... guided me in the ways of Sufism." [Kashf al-Khafa, 'Ajluni, vol. 1, p 341.]
Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal: "O my son, you have to sit with the People of Sufism, because they are like a fountain of knowledge and they keep the Remembrance of Allah in their hearts. they are the ascetics and they have the most spiritual power." [Tanwir al-Qulub p. 405]
In the story of the Boy and the King of the People of the Ditch ... Who did the boy meet in the cave? He found a monotheistic Christian (pre-Islam) ... He was a Gnostic and he taught the boy about how to rely on Allah (SWT) and the boy became so firm he became a wali - that is a person who had been given the gifts of karamaat.
the most blatant support for tassuwwuf is the empirical evidential nature of it ... When I first attended dzikr gatherings I started to get dreams, and I could feel a spirituality that I had never felt before ... I started to learn how to absorb myself in His Name and as a result my own pre-occupation with myself started to diminish ... This life is littered with self fuelling stimulus, like Internet, movies, fast food, advertising, etc so it is important to continue practices that bring us back in to balance.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
First of all brother a Tariqah does not qualify as a cult ... And secondly if a murshid asks his mureeds to go against the shari'ah that is grounds to leave him ... Why not get proper information about tassuwwuf from people who claim to be from it rather than bringing second hand information? Music is a different matter ... A very detailed discussion is given by a Shadhili Shaykh named Nuh Ha Meem Keller ... And the first sentence he says is 'in the general sense music is forbidden' ... So sincerity is important here ... I was looking for a way to remove bad characteristics, anger and arrogance and I didn't find the non-Sufis presenting me with solutions to them ... So if what you say is true that all the good things that Sufis do are already found in Salafis ... Then please use that 'sincerity' to gain correct and ratified information about others ... Go to the Sufi scholars and ask them ...anything less than that is unfair.
As for as types of Sufism is concern, there are two general types of Sufism, type1 and type2. you may belong to type1 Sufism. But i have different argument for either type Sufism. Maybe you didn’t notice the difference of my argument i given to you and my argument for those people Muqa and Ali was talking about. And the Sufis belong to type2 persistently claims that they are right unlike you are trying to prove type1 is right. As for as I know the tassuwaf and people belong to it have never tried to highlight this difference on any front. That makes me feel that the boundary between these two types is faded.
By the end of the day, what will count is Taqwa and our aamaal.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
As an aside, have you seen neil degrasse tyson’s analysis of fall of Baghdad and Islamic scientific knowledge where he attributes most of it to Al-Ghazali’s influence? How much do you agree with him?
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
Here is some material, I found on this matter:
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Imam al-Ghazali and The Effect of Islam on Science. | Yusuf Chaudhary
Personally, I think the Abbasid way of governance and their pompousness was in itself a disaster formula and its very naive to make a scholar like Imam Ghazali a scapegoat for their wrong doings.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
As for as types of Sufism is concern, there are two general types of Sufism, type1 and type2. you may belong to type1 Sufism. But i have different argument for either type Sufism. Maybe you didn’t notice the difference of my argument i given to you and my argument for those people Muqa and Ali was talking about. And the Sufis belong to type2 persistently claims that they are right unlike you are trying to prove type1 is right. As for as I know the tassuwaf and people belong to it have never tried to highlight this difference on any front. That makes me feel that the boundary between these two types is faded.
By the end of the day, what will count is Taqwa and our aamaal.
Interesting paragraph from Reza Aslan's 'No god but God':
the most important difference between Sufism and traditional religious mysticism is that the latter tends to remain permanently attached to its “parent” religion, while Sufism, though born from Islam, treats its parent as a shell that must be cast off if one is to experience direct knowledge of God. In other words, the formal religion of Islam is the prelude to Sufism, rather than its prominent motif. Islam, like all religions, can only claim to point humanity to God, whereas Sufism’s goal is to thrust humanity toward God.
**
This does not mean that Sufism rejects Islam and its religious and legal requirements altogether. Despite the occasionally violent Shi‘ite and Sunni accusations to the contrary, Sufis are Muslims. They pray as Muslims. They worship as Muslims. They use Muslim symbols and metaphors and follow Muslim creeds and rituals. To quote the esteemed Sufi Shaykh of the Rifa’i Order in Jerusalem, Muhammad ash-Shadhili, “If you want to walk in . . . the Way of the Prophet, you must be a real Muslim . . . one who gives everything to his God to be His slave.”**
That said, Sufis consider all orthodoxy, all traditional teachings, the law, theology, and the Five Pillars inadequate for attaining true knowledge of God. Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God’s essence. *As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? *
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
As for as types of Sufism is concern, there are two general types of Sufism, type1 and type2. you may belong to type1 Sufism. But i have different argument for either type Sufism. Maybe you didn’t notice the difference of my argument i given to you and my argument for those people Muqa and Ali was talking about. And the Sufis belong to type2 persistently claims that they are right unlike you are trying to prove type1 is right. As for as I know the tassuwaf and people belong to it have never tried to highlight this difference on any front. That makes me feel that the boundary between these two types is faded.
By the end of the day, what will count is Taqwa and our aamaal.
Can you elaborate as to what you mean by class 1 and 2 of Sufis?
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
To put the blame of dargha, mazaar culture on Sufism is equivalent to blaming Islam for all the evil deeds of Taliban.
For example, if after couple of generations Hindu Indians start worshipping Sachin Tendulkar as god of cricket (if stories about building a temple with his statue come true) then that won't be the fault of Sachin Tendulkar since I don't think he ever asked for such title nor asked his fans to worship him. So no matter what his zealous fans do to his image in future, nothing would change the fact that he was a great guy, a legendary cricketer who made absolutely historic contributions to the great game of cricket. Same is the case with Sufis who brought the message of Islam to the subcontinent.
Sufism got easily hijacked by local culture and practices since the Sufis historically did not wage a war or launched violent opposition to local practices the way you see current day so called Islamic 'scholars' attacking everything that wasn't around in 7th century Arabia as biddah this and biddah that.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
To put the blame of dargha, mazaar culture on Sufism is equivalent to blaming Islam for all the evil deeds of Taliban.
For example, if after couple of generations Hindu Indians start worshipping Sachin Tendulkar as god of cricket (if stories about building a temple with his statue come true) then that won't be the fault of Sachin Tendulkar since I don't think he ever asked for such title nor asked his fans to worship him.
Sufism got easily hijacked by local culture and practices since the Sufis historically did not wage a war or launched violent opposition to local practices the way you see current day so called Islamic 'scholars' attacking everything that wasn't around in 7th century Arabia as biddah this and biddah that.
The question that is still unanswered after 130 posts of the discussion: whether it was possible for Islam to gain such level of acceptance in sub-continent without adapting the local culture and customs by preachers (Sufis)?
I was reading Sibt e Hasan's book where he wrote that when a king (probably from Khilji dynasty) asked a clergy person how to deal with Hindu subjects? The answer was 'kill them, confiscate their properties. If Hindu is asked to bring silver, he should provide gold and Muslim army should spit in mouths of non-Muslim subjects'. It was a demand then that as Hindus are neither Muslims nor Zimmi, so they all should be massacred.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
The question that is still unanswered after 130 posts of the discussion: whether it was possible for Islam to gain such level of acceptance in sub-continent without adapting the local culture and customs by preachers (Sufis)?
I was reading Sibt e Hasan's book where he wrote that when a king (probably from Khilji dynasty) asked a clergy person how to deal with Hindu subjects? The answer was 'kill them, confiscate their properties. If Hindu is asked to bring silver, he should provide gold and Muslim army should spit in mouths of non-Muslim subjects'. It was a demand then that as Hindus are neither Muslims nor Zimmi, so they all should be massacred.
Well Islam did adapt to local Arab culture, didn't it? Prophet sww and sahaba karaam still led an Arab lifestyle which was compatible to Islamic teachings. What happened when they moved to Madina? I think they were ever so respectful and flexible towards local practices and way of life.
Would've it been possible to for Islam to spread in Arabia if Quran wasn't in Arabic?
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
Well Islam did adapt to local Arab culture, didn't it? Prophet sww and sahaba karaam still led an Arab lifestyle which was compatible to Islamic teachings. What happened when they moved to Madina? I think they were ever so respectful and flexible towards local practices and way of life.
Would've it been possible to for Islam to spread in Arabia if Quran wasn't in Arabic?
exactly. Prophet followed Arab Culture and he mentioned this association in positive words at many occasion. Like on an occasion , when a person was scared in his presence, he relieved the person by saying that 'I'm also son of an Arab mother, who used to consumed dried meat'.
Islam comes against Cultures when they lead to bias attitudes.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
Peace kakaballi
The main reason for the decline of the Golden Age was this:
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
First of all brother a Tariqah does not qualify as a cult ... And secondly if a murshid asks his mureeds to go against the shari'ah that is grounds to leave him ... Why not get proper information about tassuwwuf from people who claim to be from it rather than bringing second hand information? Music is a different matter ... A very detailed discussion is given by a Shadhili Shaykh named Nuh Ha Meem Keller ... And the first sentence he says is 'in the general sense music is forbidden' ... So sincerity is important here ... I was looking for a way to remove bad characteristics, anger and arrogance and I didn't find the non-Sufis presenting me with solutions to them ... So if what you say is true that all the good things that Sufis do are already found in Salafis ... Then please use that 'sincerity' to gain correct and ratified information about others ... Go to the Sufi scholars and ask them ...anything less than that is unfair.
One more thing left that i should have responded to.
salfis are more rigid then hanafis on the whole. but i personally have come across several saflis that are very kind in dealing and preaching unlike majority of salfis. So they do share these qualities. Similarly i also have come across several hanifis who are equally rigid as majority safis is.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
One more thing left that i should have responded to. salfis are more rigid then hanafis on the whole. but i personally have come across several saflis that are very kind in dealing and preaching unlike majority of salfis. So they do share these qualities. Similarly i also have come across several hanifis who are equally rigid as majority safis is.
I think rigidity is not allowed in preaching. Prophet was also told to remain soft and it was told that if Prophet dealt with people in harsh manner, no one would have followed him. Rigidity comes when people do something (including preaching) for satisfaction of their ego.
I do agree that good or bad people do exist in every school of thought and generalization leads to misconception most of the times.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
Mongol conquest by itself was not responsible for decline of Muslim golden age. It was the closing of Muslim mind which was the main reason. Read about the debate between Rationalists (Mutazilites) and Traditionalists (Asharis). Asharis under leadership of Ghazali totally obliterated rationalist thought in Islam, and made religion a set of belief system which should be accepted without questioning. That is closing of mind in a nutshell.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
Can you elaborate as to what you mean by class 1 and 2 of Sufis?
both types believe in tassuwaf. basic difference is type 1 does not use music to preach whereas type 2 does.
i used to think that type 2 believe "no sharia without Tariqah" but after reading psyah's posts it seems type 1 too believes the same.
but it confuses me, might be the reason is sufis from same silsila could belong to different school of thought.
Re: Is Sufi Islam a compromise with Indian Culture?
both types believe in tassuwaf. basic difference is type 1 does not use music to preach whereas type 2 does. i used to think that type 2 believe "no sharia without Tariqah" but after reading psyah's posts it seems type 1 too believes the same. but it confuses me, might be the reason is sufis from same silsila could belong to different school of thought.
But again music is such a controversial and undecided issue and people still have varying opinion on it.