With the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the ever Merciful. 

I worry so much about the thorn that I fail to see the beauty of the rose. And when I finally notice the rose, I am so engrossed in its beauty that I fail to realize the mastery of its Creator.

Far too often, we pay so much of attention to the little details that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Once, an Aulia Allah was passing by an island on a boat. He noticed a man repeatedly rolling down a hill. He stopped and enquired of the man as to why he was rolling down the hill. The man replied that he was reading his ‘namaaz’.

The Aulia Allah taught him how to read namaaz correctly and resumed his journey. While the Aulia Allah was on the boat in the middle of the sea the man comes running up to him. He stops the Aulia Allah and enquires of a detail that the Aulia Allah had missed.

When the Aulia Allah sees the man running on water he realises that the man had reached an elevated state. Although he prayed incorrectly, his intention was pure and because of this, he had reached a lofty state.

Although the length of our beard or the number of times we pray a day or the manner in which we make our wuzu is important, this, ‘Sharia’ is not the deciding factor in us being good in the eyes of our Creator.

What is important is our intention, and what is within us which is what ‘Tarika’ is all about. The Prophet (SAW) has said that the worth of a deed lies in its intention. 

Once, Hazrath Junaid Bagdadi (RA) entered a city. The inhabitants of the town heard that a pious person was coming and they all gathered to meet him. It was during the month of Ramadan and Hazrath Junaid Bagdadi (RA) was fasting.

When he saw the throngs of people waiting to welcome him he took out a date and began to eat it. The people turned away from him in disgust saying: “How can he be a pious man if he is not fasting.” He was not hungry and he did not want to fool the people, but he was concerned about himself.

Perhaps he would have pride in seeing that so many people looked up to him. Many of the Aulia Allah that lived in society sometimes appeared to be dirty vagrants for the same reason. They hid themselves so that whatever they did was not for show but it was genuinely for Allah SWT.

A sufie poet says: “break the tazbee, bust the jug for wuzu, tear up the musallah but pray to Allah privately, privately.”

and, from the Holy Quran  – “Call on your Lord with humility and in private….” 7:55 

No sufie master would say that ‘tarika’ is not related to ‘sharia’ but he would instead say: “just as the best milk would produce the best batter, so too would the best sharia produce the best tarika”. ‘Sharia’ and ‘tarika’ are not opposing teachings. ‘Sharia’ pertains mainly to external rituals, while ‘tarika’ stresses on deriving the inward blessings of these external rituals. ‘Tarika’ takes precedence over ‘sharia’ because it affects our innermost being, and the Aulia Allah would not hesitate to outwardly sacrifice ‘sharia’ for ‘tarika’ like the way Hazrath Junaid Bagdadi (RA) did.

Having an outward pious look could lead to a person having pride and like shaitaan all his good ‘ibadat’ (prayer) would amount to nothing.

During the last two hundred years, there were movements in Islam that opposed “tarika” or the sufie way and instead these movements sought to stress “sharia” or the outward practices of Islam.

Unlike the aulia Allah that sought to hide their piety, these people want to impress on others their piety with their “holy” looks, lengthy prayers and their pious talk.

These people wear lovely ‘kurta’s’ with turbans adorning their heads, they grow big beards and on the foreheads there are dark marks indicating to all that they pray five times a day – They stick a miswak in their top pockets to show all that they are following the sunnath. In their hand, they have a ‘tasbee’.

All in all, they try to intimidate people with their superficial Islam so that people would look up to them. Coupled with their outward impression of piety, they pick faults on the way others practice the religion and in this way they make themselves out to be knowledgeable. This is ‘bidath’, that is ‘bidath’ and in this way they create doubts in people’s minds and cause division in Islam.

These people are so engrossed with themselves that there is no place left for looking up to someone else. To them, there is no such thing as following a pious person and some of them even oppose paying tribute to the founder of Islam even after Allah instructs us to revere him.

The test of pride is not in bowing down to Allah. The test of pride is in bowing down to another creation that is better than us. The example of this is the story of shaitaan.

There is not a spot on the earth’s surface where he did not bow down to Allah SWT but he refused to bow to Adam (AS) when Allah instructed him to do so because he thought that he was better.

Acts of piety can quite often make a person have pride and feel superior to others. They become totally engrossed in themselves.

“Seest thou such a one as takes for his god his own passion (or impulse)….” 25:43 

Although the Aulia Allah do not make a display of their “sharia” it does not mean that they disregard it or that they do not follow it. On the contrary, their “Taqwa” (piety) is something else.

They imbibe religion totally into their lives and they live it all the time, no matter what they are doing. There are different types of “Zikir” such as repeating a “word” loudly and then there are those that are silent and then there are those “zikirs” that take place without the lips moving and then there are those that take place from the inner most depths of the person that is making the Zikir (Zakir).

Such is the zikir of the Aulia Allah that it takes place all the time even while they are doing other things and no one would know, because their lips do not move.

In sharia, you pray 5 times a day, but in tarika you pray all the time. In everything they do, even sleep, they remember Allah SWT while we, even while praying for that short while, forget that we are praying to Allah SWT and think of everything else instead.

For us, a sin is missing a prayer, for them, a sin is forgetting Allah SWT for a moment.

In sharia, you give two and a half percent and keep the rest for later because you have little faith that Allah would provide. In tarika, you spend the rest and barely keep enough for your immediate needs because you have certainty of faith that Allah SWT is the provider and the sustainer.

Basically every moment of their lives revolves around their Creator.

At first a person might earnestly pray to Allah but with time and without realising it his ‘niyath’ (intention) changes. It is for this reason that a spiritual guide or Pir O Murshid is important because they will teach you the “Tarika” to Allah. End.

Peace and salutations be upon Muhammad Salallahu Alayhe Wasallam 

Published by Anjuman e Waris e Mohammedi 2010. Author: Mohammed Hassan Gaffoor (WhatsApp +27849101486)

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