The chief school of Arabian philosophy, that of al-G͟hazzālī (A.H. 505), passed over to Ṣūfīism by the same reasoning which led Plotinus to his mystical theology. After long inquiries for some ground on which to base the certainty of our knowledge, al-G͟hazzālī was led to reject entirely all belief in the senses. He then found it equally difficult to be certified of the accuracy of the conclusions of reason, for there may be, he thought, some faculty higher than reason, which, if we possessed, would show the uncertainty of reason, as reason now shows the uncertainty of the senses. He was left in scepticism, and saw no escape but in the Ṣūfī union with Deity. There alone can man know what is true by becoming the truth itself. “I was forced,” he said, “to return to the admission of intellectual notions as the bases of all certitude. This, however, was not by systematic reasoning and accumulation of proofs, but by a flash of light which God sent into my soul! For whoever imagines that truth can only be rendered evident by proofs, places narrow limits to the wide compassion of the Creator.”
Ṣūfīism (says Mr. Cowell) has arisen from the bosom of Muḥammadanism as a vague protest of the human soul, in its intense longing after a purer creed. On certain tenets of the Qurʾān the Ṣūfīs have erected their own system, professing, indeed, to reverence its authority as a divine revelation, but in reality substituting for it the oral voice of the teacher, or the secret dreams of the Mystic. Dissatisfied with the barren letter of the Qurʾān, Ṣūfīism appeals to human consciousness, and from our nature’s felt wants, seeks to set before us nobler hopes than a gross Muḥammadan Paradise can fulfil.
Whilst there are doubtless many amongst the Ṣūfīs who are earnest seekers after truth, it is well known that some of them make their mystical creed a cloak for gross sensual gratification. A sect of Ṣūfīs called the Muhābīyah, or “Revered,” maintain the doctrine of community of property and women, and the sect known as the Malāmatīyah, or “reproached,” maintain the doctrine of necessity, and compound all virtue with vice. Many such do not hold themselves in the least responsible for sins committed by the body, which they regard only as the miserable robe of humanity which encircles the pure spirit.
Some of the Ṣūfī poetry is most objectionable. MacGuckin de Slane, in his Introduction to Ibn K͟hallikān’s Biographical Dictionary, says:—“It often happens that a poet describes his mistress under the attributes of the other sex, lest he should offend that excessive prudery of Oriental feelings which, since the fourth century of Islāmism, scarcely allows an allusion to women, and more particularly in poetry; and this rigidness is still carried so far, that Cairo public singers dare not amuse their auditors with a song in which the beloved is indicated as a female. It cannot, however, be denied that the feelings which inspired poetry of this kind were not always pure, and that polygamy and jealousy have invested the morals of some Eastern nations with the foulest corruption.”
The story of the Rev. Dr. ʿImādu ʾd-dīn (the eminent native clergyman, a convert from Islām, now residing at Amritsar) is a remarkable testimony to the unsatisfying nature of Ṣūfīistic exercises to meet the spiritual need of anxious soul. The following extract from the printed autobiography of his life will show this:—
“I sought for union with God from travellers and faqīrs, and even from the insane people of the city, according to the tenets of the Ṣūfī mystics. The thought of utterly renouncing the world then came into my mind with so much power, that I left everybody, and went out into the desert, and became a faqīr, putting on clothes covered with red ochre, and wandered here and there, from city to city and from village to village, step by step, alone, for about 2,000, or (2,500 miles) without plan or baggage. Faith in the Muḥammadan religion will never, indeed, allow true sincerity to be produced in the nature of man; yet I was then, although with many worldly motives, in search only of God. In this state I entered the city of Karuli, where a stream called Cholida flows beneath a mountain, and there I stayed to perform the Ḥisbu ʾl-bahār. I had a book with me on the doctrines of mysticism and the practice of devotion, which I had received from my religious guide, and held more dear even than the Qurʾān. In my journeys I slept with it at my side at nights, and took comfort in clasping it to my heart whenever my mind was perplexed. My religious guide had forbidden me to show this book, or to speak of its secrets to anyone, for it contained the sum of everlasting happiness; and so this priceless book is even now lying useless on a shelf in my house. I took up the book, and sat down on the bank of the stream, to perform the ceremonies as they were enjoined, according to the following rules:—The celebrant must first perform his ablutions on the bank of the flowing stream, and, wearing an unsewn dress, must sit in a particular manner on one knee for twelve days, and repeat the prayer called Jugopar thirty times every day with a loud voice. He must not eat any food with salt, or anything at all, except some barley bread of flour lawfully earned, which he has made with his own hands, and baked with wood that he has brought himself from the jungles. During the day he must fast entirely, after performing his ablutions in the river before daylight; and he must remain barefooted, wearing no shoes; nor must he touch any man, nor, except at an appointed time, even speak to anyone. The object of all this is, that he may meet with God, and from the longing desire to obtain this, I underwent all this pain. In addition to the above, I wrote the name of God on paper 125,000 times, performing a certain portion every day; and I cut out each word separately with scissors, and wrapped them up each in a ball of flour, and fed the fishes of the river with them, in the way the book prescribed. My days were spent in this manner; and during half the night I slept, and the remaining half I sat up, and wrote the name of God mentally on my heart, and saw Him with the eye of thought. When all this toil was over, and I went thence, I had no strength left in my body; my face was wan and pale, and I could not even hold myself up against the wind.”
Major Durie Osborn, in his Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad (p. 112), says: “The spread of this Pantheistic spirit has been and is the source of incalculable evil throughout the Muḥammadan world. The true function of religion is to vivify and illuminate all the ordinary relations of life with light from a higher world. The weakness to which religious minds are peculiarly prone is to suppose that this world of working life is an atmosphere too gross and impure for them to live in. They crave for better bread than can be made from wheat. They attempt to fashion a world for themselves, where nothing shall soil the purity of the soul or disturb the serenity of their thoughts. The divorce thus effected between the religious life and the worldly life, is disastrous to both. The ordinary relations of men become emptied of all divine significance. They are considered as the symbols of bondage to the world or to an evil deity. The religious spirit dwindles down to a selfish desire to acquire a felicity from which the children of this world are hopelessly excluded. Pre-eminently has this been the result of Muḥammadan mysticism. It has dug a deep gulf between those who can know God and those who must wander in darkness, feeding upon the husks of rites and ceremonies. It has affirmed with emphasis, that only by a complete renunciation of the world is it possible to attain the true end of man’s existence. Thus all the best and purest natures—the men who might have put a soul in the decaying Church of Islam—have been drawn off from their proper task to wander about in deserts and solitary places, or expend their lives in idle and profitless passivity disguised under the title of ‘spiritual contemplation.’ [[ZIKR].] But this has only been part of the evil. The logical result of Pantheism is the destruction of a moral law. If God be all in all, and man’s apparent individuality a delusion of the perceptive faculty, there exists no will which can act, no conscience which can reprove or applaud. The individual is but a momentary seeming; he comes and goes like ‘the snow-flake on the river; a moment seen, then gone for ever.’ To reproach such an ephemeral creature for being the slave of its passions, is to chide the thistledown for yielding to the violence of the wind. Muḥammadans have not been slow to discover these consequences. Thousands of reckless and profligate spirits have entered the orders of the derweshes to enjoy the licence thereby obtained. Their affectation of piety is simply a cloak for the practice of sensuality; their emancipation from the ritual of Islam involves a liberation also from its moral restraints. And thus a movement, animated at its outset by a high and lofty purpose, has degenerated into a fruitful source of ill. The stream which ought to have expanded into a fertilising river, has become a vast swamp, exhaling vapours charged with disease and death.” [[FAQIR].]
(For further information on the subject of Eastern Mysticism the English reader is referred to the following works: Hunt’s Pantheism; Tholuck’s Sufismus; Malcolm’s History of Persia; Brown’s Darweshes; Oxford Essays for 1855, by E. B. Cowell; Palmer’s Oriental Mysticism; De Slane’s Introduction to Ibn K͟hallikān; Bicknell’s Translation of Ḥāfiz̤ of Shīrāz; Ouseley’s Persian Poets; Vaughan’s Hours with the Mystics. Persian and Arabic books on the subject are too numerous to mention. ʿAbdu ʾr-Razzāq’s Dictionary of the Technical Terms of the Ṣūfīs was published in Arabic by Dr. Sprenger in Calcutta in 1845.) [[FAQIR]; [ZIKR].]
SUFTAJAH (سفتجة). The delivery of property by way of loan, and not by way of trust. It is forbidden by the Sunnī law. (Hamilton’s Hidāyah, vol. iii. p. 244.)
SUHAIL IBN ʿAMR (سهيل بن عمرو). One of the most noble of the Quraish, and one of their leaders on the day of the action of Badr. He was taken prisoner on that occasion. He embraced Islām after the taking of Makkah. He is said to have died A.H. 18.