A Moslem seeker after God

by Samuel Marinus Zwemer

Not mine the praise in that or this,

Thine is the praise in both, I wis.”

The Moslem mystics, or Sufis, however, received their name through Abu Khair, who lived at the end of the second century of the Hegira. His disciples wore a woolen garment, and from the word suf, which means wool, they obtained their name. In the next century, al-Junaid (A. H. 297), one of Al-Ghazali’s favourite authorities, was the great leader of the movement, which spread throughout Islam. It was a reaction from the barren monotheism and the rigid ritualism of Islam. This kind of orthodoxy did not meet the needs of the more imaginative mind of the Eastern races who accepted Islam. The preachers of the new doctrine travelled everywhere and mixed with men of all conditions. In this way they adopted ideas from many sources, although always professing to base their teaching on the Koran and Tradition.

According to Nicholson, the Mystics of Islam borrowed not only from Christianity and Neoplatonism, but from Gnosticism and Buddhism. Many Gospel texts and sayings of Jesus, most of them apocryphal, are cited in the oldest Sufi writings. From Christianity they took the use of the woollen dress, the vows of silence, the litanies (Zikr), and other ascetic practices. Their teaching also has many interesting parallels which Nicholson summarizes as follows: “The same expressions are applied to the founder of Islam which are used by St. John, St. Paul, and later mystical theologians concerning Christ. Thus, Mohammed is called the Light of God, he is said to have existed before the creation of the world, he is adored as the source of all life, actual and possible, he is the Perfect Man in whom all the divine attributes are manifested, and a Sufi tradition ascribes to him the saying, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen Allah.’ In the Moslem scheme, however, the Logos doctrine occupies a subordinate place, as it obviously must when the whole duty of man is believed to consist in realizing the unity of God.”[72]

Neoplatonism gave them the doctrine of emanation and ecstasy. The following version of the doctrine of the seventy thousand veils, as expounded to Canon Gairdner by a modern dervish, shows clear traces of Gnosticism. “Seventy Thousand Veils separate Allah, the One reality, from the world of matter and of sense. And every soul passes before his birth through these seventy thousand. The inner half of these are veils of light: the outer half, veils of darkness. For every one of the veils of light passed through, in this journey towards birth, the soul puts off a divine quality; and for every one of the dark veils, it puts on an earthly quality. Thus the child is born weeping, for the soul knows its separation from Allah, the one Reality. And when the child cries in its sleep, it is because the soul remembers something of what it has lost. Otherwise, the passage through the veils has brought with it forgetfulness (nisyan): and for this reason man is called insan. He is now, as it were, in prison in his body, separated by these thick curtains from Allah. But the whole purpose of Sufism, the Way of the dervish, is to give him an escape from this prison, an apocalypse of the Seventy Thousand Veils, a recovery of the original unity with The One, while still in this body.”[73]

In regard to Buddhist influence, Professor Goldziher has called attention to the fact that in the eleventh century the teaching of Buddha exerted considerable influence in eastern Persia, especially at Balkh, a city famous for the number of Sufis who dwelt in it. From the Buddhists came the use of the rosary (afterwards adopted by Christians in Europe), and perhaps also the doctrine of fana or absorption into God.

“While fana,” says Nicholson, “in its pantheistic form is radically different from Nirvana, the terms coincide so closely in other ways that we cannot regard them as being altogether unconnected. Fana has an ethical aspect: it involves the extinction of all passions and desires. The passing away of evil qualities and of the evil actions which they produce is said to be brought about by the continuance of the corresponding good qualities and actions.”[74] The cultivation of character by the contemplation of God in a mystical sense was the real goal. To know God was to be like Him and to be like Him ended in absorption or ecstasy.[75] One of their favourite sayings was that attributed to God by the Prophet, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, so I created the creation in order that I might be known.” Just as the universe is the mirror of God’s being, so the heart of man is to the Sufi the mirror of the universe. If he would know God or Truth he must look into his own heart.

To quote Al-Ghazali himself: “The aim which the Sufis set before them is as follows: To free the soul from the tyrannical yoke of the passions, to deliver it from its wrong inclinations and evil instincts, in order that in the purified heart there should only remain room for God and for the invocation of His holy name.

“As it was more easy to learn their doctrine than to practise it, I studied first of all those of their books which contain it: The Nourishment of Hearts, by Abu Talib of Mecca, the works of Hareth el Muhasibi, and the fragments which still remain, of Junaid, Shibli, Abu Yezid, Bustami and other leaders (whose souls may God sanctify). I acquired a thorough knowledge of their researches, and I learned all that was possible to learn of their methods by study and oral teaching. It became clear that the last stage could not be reached by mere instruction, but only by transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the moral being” (p. 41, “Confessions”).

“Among the teachings of the Sufis was that of the preëxistence of Mohammed the Prophet in the Essence of Light. According to the Traditions, ‘I was a prophet while Adam was yet between earth and clay,’ and ‘There is no prophet after me,’ Sufis hold that Mohammed was a prophet even before the creation and that he still holds office. This identification of Mohammed with the Primal Element explains the names sometimes given him, such as Universal Reason, the Great Spirit, the Truth of Humanity, the Possessor of the Ray of Light—the Nur-i-Muhammadi—from God’s own splendour.”[76]