Re: What is sufism
There are many things in Shari’ah that merely stated for us do certain things … but there is very little in the way of how to reach certain levels.
Iman is the domain of definition … Definitions are meanings of words and concepts … They help us correctly allocate the right position of ‘a thing’ … In relation to ourselves and to each other. Iman is about recognition and about understanding … When we say the kalimah … We need to understand and accept it to have ‘Iman’ … Conceptual requirements.
Islam is the domain of the ‘acts’ and “physical effects” of belief … It is the social interaction of believers and that is covered by shari’ah and fiqh … They tell us what we must “do” … Physical requirements.
Now Ihsan certainly does linguistically mean excellence, benevolence, perfect, etc … As it stems from hasan, which means ‘good’, Ihsan being the superlative But the meaning of Ihsan should be taken from the Hadith I quoted … And that states “one should see Allah although He is Unseen” (paraphrased) “or at least feel the Presence of Allah (SWT)” … This is an example of haal, “state” or spiritual condition. It is about the “adab” respect we emanate in a mode of “being” … It is linked to character and it is rooted in the spiritual domain and resides at the level of the soul. Tassuwwuf is hence the science of reaching such perfection that we can start to feel and become more and more conscious of Allah (SWT) and build a greater and greater semblance with prophetic character.
If you see Shari’ah will be unable to achieve that … Shari’ah is all about do’s and don’ts … It will tell us to be patient … But not how to be patient … For fiqh - only rulings are extracted from the Sunnah, I.e. This allowed and that is not … However for tassuwwuf “methods” are extracted from the Sunnah on how to achieve patience … Same goes with anger … There is no Shar’iah ruling for a Muslim who gets angry … He is not called a sinner until he DOES something … But anger is a state of being … And dealing with that is learnt from tassuwwuf … Pride or arrogance … Again we are told not to do it, but how can we rid ourselves of it effectively? We need tassuwwuf … Much of the fear of death and love df dunya is a result of lack of tassuwwuf … People do not realise how to attain those levels of being … They think praying regularly is enough … As can be seen by the many scandals we can see prayer is not enough … The Khawarij suffer from poor state and poor character as with many groups … Because they don’t know how to deal with their “demons” … Tassuwwuf teaches us that … The proper attitude of the daiee (inviter) is learnt from tassuwwuf, the servitude to RasoolAllah (SAW) and ultimately to Allah (SWT) can only be learnt by tassuwwuf … People may not even call it tassuwwuf … But that is what it is … When they do tazkiya, when they look for zikr or awrad or du’a and things like this … They are engaging in a type of tassuwwuf … I hope that helps.