Between them, joining and dividing, a barrier which they shall not pass.
When He hath graciously fostered the egg under His wing,
Infidelity and religion disappear: the bird of Unity spreads its pinions.”
The great Persian mystic, Abū Saʿīd ibn Abi ’l-Khayr, speaking in the name of the Calendars or wandering dervishes, expresses their iconoclastic principles with astonishing boldness:
“Not until every mosque beneath the sun
Lies ruined, will our holy work be done;
And never will true Musalmān appear
Till faith and infidelity are one.”
Such open declarations of war against the Mohammedan religion are exceptional. Notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the gulf between full-blown Sūfism and orthodox Islam, many, if not most, Sūfīs have paid homage to the Prophet and have observed the outward forms of devotion which are incumbent on all Moslems. They have invested these rites and ceremonies with a new meaning; they have allegorised them, but they have not abandoned them. Take the pilgrimage, for example. In the eyes of the genuine Sūfī it is null and void unless each of the successive religious acts which it involves is accompanied by corresponding ‘movements of the heart.’
A man who had just returned from the pilgrimage came to Junayd. Junayd said: