“Turn your back in repentance to Him, and fear Him: establish regular prayers, and be not amongst those who join gods with God, those who split up their Religion, and become (mere) Sects,- each party rejoicing in that which is with itself!”
-Surah Rum 31-32

Muslims are so bewildered and confused these days by the massive amount of trivial differences that exist between different Islamic “sects”.  At the end of the day everyone should realise that it is our “burning” for God that matters.  I love this poem…read it and you will understand what I mean by “burning.”

 Moses and the Shepherd
Jalaluddin Rumi

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, “God,”
where are You? I want to help You, to fix Your shoes
and comb Your hair. I want to wash Your clothes
and pick the lice off. I want to bring You milk,
to kiss Your little hands and feet when it’s time
for You to go to bed. I want to sweep Your room
and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats
are Yours. All I can say, remembering You,
is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh.”
 
Moses could stand it no longer.
“Who are you talking to?”
“The One who made us,
and made the earth and made the sky.”
“Don’t talk about shoes
and socks with God! And what’s this with Your little hands
and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like
you’re chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows
needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God!
Even if you meant God’s human representatives
as when God said, ‘I was sick, and you did not visit me,’
even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent.
 
Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name
for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima,
it’s an insult. Body-and-birth language
are right for us on this side of the river,
but not for addressing the Origin,
not for Allah.”
 
The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed
and wandered out into the desert.
A sudden revelation
came then to Moses. God’s voice:
 
You have separated Me
from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite,
or to sever?
I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
…
It’s all praise, and it’s all
right.
It’s not Me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshippers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning,
burning.
Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn
are another.
 
Don’t impose a property tax
on a burned out village. Don’t scold the Lover.
The “wrong” way he talks is better than a hundred
“right” ways of others.
 
Inside the Kaaba
it doesn’t matter which direction you point
your prayer rug!
The ocean diver doesn’t need snowshoes!
The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine.
Only God.
So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!
It doesn’t need markings.
 
God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses. Vision and words,
which cannot be recorded here, poured into
and through him. He left himself and came back.
He went to Eternity and came back here.
Many times this happened.
It’s foolish of me
to try and say this. If I did say it,
it would uproot our human intelligences.
It would shatter all writing pens.
 
Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildered footprints,
in one place moving straight like a castle
across a chessboard. In another, sideways,
like a bishop.
Now surging like a wave cresting,
now sliding down like a fish,
with always his feet
making geomancy symbols in the sand,
recording
his wandering state.
Moses finally caught up
with him.
 
“I was wrong. God has revealed to me
that there are no rules for worship.
Say whatever
and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy
is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world
is freed.
Loosen your tongue and don’t worry what comes out.
It’s all the Light of the Spirit.”
 
The shepherd replied,
“Moses, Moses,
I’ve gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped
out of itself. The Divine Nature and my human nature
came together.
Bless your scolding hand and your arm.
I can’t say what has happened.
What I’m saying now
is not my real condition. It can’t be said.”
The shepherd grew quiet.
 
When you look in a mirror,
you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.
The fluteplayer puts breath into a flute,
and who makes the music? Not the flute.
The Fluteplayer!
 
Whenever you speak praise
or thanksgiving to God, it’s always like this
dear shepherd’s simplicity.
When you eventually see
through the veils of how things really are,
you will keep saying again
and again,
“This is certainly not like we thought it was!”
 
Mathnawi II 1720-96, from This Longing: Poetry, Teaching Stories, and Selected Letters, translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne (Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1988), pp. 19-22.

I left out one line in the poem because some people will not understand it.  Also, when the shephard says that his Divine Nature and Human Nature have combined, he is merely discussing this authentic hadith:

Abu Hurayra said that the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, said, “God Almighty said, ‘I have declared war on anyone who shows enmity to a friend of Mine. My slave does not draw near to Me with anything I love more than what I have made obligatory on him. And my slave continues to draw near to Me with superogatory actions until I love him. When I love him, I become his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which he walks. If he were to ask Me for something, I would give it to him. If he were to ask Me for refuge, I would give him refuge.’” [al-Bukhari]

That is one of my favorite ahadeeth…ever.  MashAllah.

Form vs Meaning:

Our body is the outward form, our soul is the inner meaning.

Ritual prayer, Fiqh, and Aqeedah is the form, our love, humility, and devotion to God is the meaning.

I was trying to explain this to someone one day…and they totally missed my point…I was trying to build bridges and they probably thought I was debating because they became a bit defensive.

Instead of finding differences that separate, people are supposed to be finding similarities and expound upon that.  Why do people bicker and expound upon the small stuff?  I don’t get it…

The fact that Muslims have fragmented is really depressing.  It has come to the point where Muslims refuse to marry others based on their “belonging to Sunni…Shia…salafi…sufi..etc.”  How do you think the Prophet (pbuh) would feel if he knew that young Muslim brothers and sisters of his Ummah could not marry and sometimes even befriend each other based on these differences?  I honestly think this is sign of the end times.

However…one of my most trusted friends told me that you should marry someone who you are “spiritually compatible” with.  I will never forget it and I completely agree.  Otherwise there may be some problems as the husband and wife try to grow spiritually together.  The only problem is…how can you judge someone’s spirituality?

Let’s shift the focus from others to myself.

Do I easily get offended by mild things? Do I often complain to others about how *I* feel?  Do I immediately display my upsetness to others when I have been hurt?  Do I walk away immediately?  Am I unable to behave rationally and contain my composure?  Does it take me a while to accept the apologies of others?

If I have said “yes” to any of the above, then I am diagnosed with the disease of the EGO.

       When Solomon leaves the palace, the jinni takes over as king: when patience and intellect go, your ego incites to evil.  (Rumi; Diwan 5798)

       The sensual ego is blind and deaf to God. (Rumi; M IV 235)

Over the years I have learnt to not be sensitive.  I still have a long way to go.  Sensitivity implies that we give ourselves some worth–when in reality we are worth nothing.  This is what humility entails: that we are mere creations of water and clay that depend solely on God for our survival.  How can we even claim to be worth anything when everything we have is granted to us temporarily from Him?

So about this EGO:

Alhamdulilah, I took a class last semester with Professor Chittick, who is one of the best scholars of Islam in the west today.  I am so grateful to God that he and his wife both teach at my university, I don’t understand why more students don’t take advantage of these treasures of knowledge.  Anyway, in his class we studied his translation of Rumi’s poetry.  The book is entitled, “The Sufi Path of Love”.  In this book we learned that the majority of man’s problems come from within his own breast–from his own EGO.  Satan can only tempt us and whisper to us; but when we commit a sin, we do it from our own selves.

Most of the pain, suffering, anguish, and worry that comes from living in this world is a result of our ego.  We give ourselves some worth.  We think, “How dare that person talk to me that way?  Who does she think she is?  Does she know who *I* am?”  and “How dare that person behave that way with me, after all that I have done for her?”  and “How dare my parents speak to me that way?” and “How cruel is life that I have been so mistreated by it?  Why is my life so difficult?  What have *I* done to deserve this pain?”

Keyword to problems: I

Who is I?  What is I?  I is the source of my problems–the ego.  The ego thinks it has value: that it deserves only good because it does only good.  The ego wants to be treated well, the ego thinks that it deserves everything that God has bestowed to it.  The ego thinks that whatever talents it has comes straight from the ego itself, rather than God.  The ego is proud of its successes, and praises itself.  The ego gets upset and offended when others insult it.  In fact, it becomes furious!  It thinks, “HOW DARE they call me that…when I am all glory and beauty!?!”  Big mistake.  God is the source of all glory and beauty.  The ego talks about its mood and feelings constantly, instead of speaking about God.  The ego talks about what makes it feel good, such as specific food, people, and environments…instead of the dhikr, scholars, and the environments that soothe the fitra.

So once a person realizes this, he/she has already begun to trod the path of annihilation of the ego.  When someone calls you stupid, you should think, “I am stupid, in relation to God I am worth nothing.”  You should accept your flaw and move on.  If someone upsets your mood, you should think, “Who am I to think that I deserve to be treated well?  I am nothing, and worth nothing in comparison to God.”  If someone behaves ill toward you, you should think, “Who am I?  Am I worth anything that people should behave well towards me?  Who am I to get offended, am I giving myself self-worth?”  If someone doesn’t call you, you should think, “Who am I…to deserve a phone call?  I should be the one calling first to express my gratitude.”  If someone ignores you, you should think, “Who am I, that I think I deserve to be paid attention to?”  My friend advised me once to not expect equality from others:  give and serve others but expect no payback.  If people look down upon you/me, we should take it as a blessing because it only serves to increase our humility.

My friend’s favorite Ustadh would tell people when they apologized to him, “Don’t worry about it.  Who am I?  You could slap me and I still wouldn’t be worthy.”  MashAllah, this is humility.

I remember Shaykh Hamza Yusuf once said that one of the four Mujtahid Imams would make dua to Allah whenever he got into an argument/disagreement that he would be the person who was wrong so that he could submit to the other person.  SubhanAllah, who makes dua that they are the loser of an argument?  It’s ALWAYS vice versa.  This is the humility that modern leaders lack.  I get discouraged when I see Muslim leaders refuse to accept apologies or ignore people for more than a few days.  It really saddens my heart.  The ego is spreading its poison everywhere.  Who are we to think that we are so special that we refuse to accept the apologies of others and ignore people?

I really love my mom.  She thinks just like me.  A person’s good character and humility is more precious to God than knowledge that is not acted upon.  My mom told me the hadith story of a woman who used to pray avidly, but still threw garbage in her neighbor’s yard.  Due to this one improper action, all of her good deeds were ignored by God and she had to suffer in Hell.  No matter how much knowledge a person gains, no matter how many prayers and halaqahs they give, if they have poor character and hurt others through their actions, no one can judge whether they are going to Paradise/Hell or not.  Leave it up to God.

No doubt, humility is a hard trait to embody.  This is why some shaykhs would have their students become beggars for a few years.  They wanted their students to learn what REAL humility is.  This is also why some shaykhs tell their students to NEVER use the word “I” when describing themselves, but to use the phrase ”this Faqir”.  A faqir is a despondent, poor, and needy soul/person.

If you continue to think this way, your life becomes much happier and productive, inshAllah.  You will be grateful to God and others a lot more.  After all, there is a hadith that says, “Whoever has not thanked others, has not thanked God.”

       The whole Koran describes the wickedness of egos: Study the Holy Book! Where is your insight?  (Rumi; Mathnawi VI 4862)
       Concern yourself not with the thieflike ego and its business.  Whatever is not God’s work is nothing, nothing! (Rumi; Mathnawi II 1063)

The goal of Tasawwuf is to remove this burdensome ego and purify the heart from all spiritual diseases by adhering to the Qur’an (Koran) and Sunnah–which includes the remedies prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself.  In fact, according to a hadith, the person with an atom’s weight of arrogance will not enter Paradise.  The path of Islam is thus a path of removing all slivers of arrogance and filth within our souls.

So remember: sensitivity=self worth=ego

The bird that escapes from the trap of its ego has no fear, wherever it may fly.  (Rumi; Diwan 7327)