Shah Jalal ad-Deen is arguably the greatest and most celebrated Islamic personality of the Bengal region. He is an example of a scholar, saint and leader who balanced spirituality and struggle in a life dedicated to service of others and calling people to Islam's noble and peaceful message. He was also of Yemeni descent and eventually settled in Sylhet, the spiritual capital of Bangladesh and the region from where most of Britain’s Bangladeshi Muslims hail.

Below is a link to a talk given by Shaykh Habib Ali al-Jifri of Yemen concerning the life of Moulana Jalal ad-Deen. The talk was given in the heartland of the British Bangladeshi community which is concentrated in East London.

Hadhramaut to Sylhet to Whitechapel - LMC

the problem with anti-madhhabism

[revised edition with footnotes]

© Abdal-Hakim Murad, Source: www.masud.co.uk

The ummah's greatest achievement over the past millennium has undoubtedly been its internal intellectual cohesion. From the fifth century of the Hijra almost to the present day, and despite the outward drama of the clash of dynasties, the Sunni Muslims have maintained an almost unfailing attitude of religious respect and brotherhood among themselves. It is a striking fact that virtually no religious wars, riots or persecutions divided them during this extended period, so difficult in other ways.

The history of religious movements suggests that this is an unusual outcome. The normal sociological view, as expounded by Max Weber and his disciples, is that religions enjoy an initial period of unity, and then descend into an increasingly bitter factionalism led by rival hierarchies. Christianity has furnished the most obvious example of this; but one could add many others, including secular faiths such as Marxism. On the face of it, Islam's ability to avoid this fate is astonishing, and demands careful analysis.

There is, of course, a straightforwardly religious explanation. Islam is the final religion, the last bus home, and as such has been divinely secured from the more terminal forms of decay. It is true that what Abdul Wadod Shalabi has termed ‘spiritual entropy’[1] has been at work ever since Islam's inauguration, a fact which is well-supported by a number of hadiths. Nonetheless, Providence has not neglected the ummah. Earlier religions slide gently or painfully into schism and irrelevance; but Islamic piety, while fading in quality, has been given mechanisms which allow it to retain much of the sense of unity emphasised in its glory days. Wherever the antics of the emirs and politicians might lead, the brotherhood of believers, a reality in the initial career of Christianity and some other faiths, continues, fourteen hundred years on, to be a compelling principle for most members of the final and definitive community of revelation in Islam. The reason is simple and unarguable: God has given us this religion as His last word, and it must therefore endure, with its essentials of tawhid, worship and ethics intact, until the Last Days.

Such an explanation has obvious merit. But we will still need to explain some painful exceptions to the rule in the earliest phase of our history. The Prophet himself (pbuh) had told his Companions, in a hadith narrated by Imam Tirmidhi, that "Whoever among you outlives me shall see a vast dispute". The initial schisms: the disastrous revolt against Uthman (r.a.)[2], the clash between Ali (r.a.) and Talha, and then with Mu`awiyah[3], the bloody scissions of the Kharijites[4] - all these drove knives of discord into the Muslim body politic almost from the outset. Only the inherent sanity and love of unity among scholars of the ummah assisted, no doubt, by Providence overcame the early spasms of factionalism, and created a strong and harmonious Sunnism which has, at least on the purely religious plane, united ninety percent of the ummah for ninety percent of its history.[5]

It will help us greatly to understand our modern, increasingly divided situation if we look closely at those forces which divided us in the distant past. There were many of these, some of them very eccentric; but only two took the form of mass popular movements, driven by religious ideology, and in active rebellion against majoritarian faith and scholarship. For good reasons, these two acquired the names of Kharijism and Shi'ism. Unlike Sunnism, both were highly productive of splinter groups and sub-movements; but they nonetheless remained as recognisable traditions of dissidence because of their ability to express the two great divergences from mainstream opinion on the key question of the source of religious authority in Islam.

Confronted with what they saw as moral slippage among early caliphs, posthumous partisans of Ali (r.a.) developed a theory of religious authority which departed from the older egalitarian assumptions by vesting it in a charismatic succession of Imams. We need not stop here to investigate the question of whether this idea was influenced by the Eastern Christian background of some early converts, who had been nourished on the idea of the mystical apostolic succession to Christ, a gift which supposedly gave the Church the unique ability to read his mind for later generations. What needs to be appreciated is that Shi'ism, in its myriad forms, developed as a response to a widely-sensed lack of definitive religious authority in early Islamic society. As the age of the Righteous Caliphs came to a close, and the Umayyad rulers departed ever more conspicuously from the lifestyle expected of them as Commanders of the Faithful, the sharply-divergent and still nascent schools of fiqh seemed inadequate as sources of strong and unambiguous authority in religious matters. Hence the often irresistible seductiveness of the idea of an infallible Imam.[6]

This interpretation of the rise of Imamism also helps to explain the second great phase in Shi'i expansion. After the success of the fifth-century Sunni revival, when Sunnism seemed at last to have become a fully coherent system, Shi'ism went into a slow eclipse. Its extreme wing, as manifested in Ismailism, received a heavy blow at the hands of Imam al-Ghazali, whose book "Scandals of the Batinites" exposed and refuted their secret doctrines with devastating force.[7] This decline in Shi'i fortunes was only arrested after the mid-seventh century, once the Mongol hordes under Genghis Khan had invaded and obliterated the central lands of Islam. The onslaught was unimaginably harsh: we are told, for instance, that out of a hundred thousand former inhabitants of the city of Herat, only forty survivors crept out of the smoking ruins to survey the devastation.[8] In the wake of this tidal wave of mayhem, newly-converted Turcoman nomads moved in, who, with the Sunni ulama of the cities dead, and a general atmosphere of fear, turbulence, and Messianic expectation in the air, turned readily to extremist forms of Shi'i belief.[9] The triumph of Shi'ism in Iran, a country once loyal to Sunnism, dates back to that painful period.[10]

The other great dissident movement in early Islam was that of the Kharijites, literally, the seceders, so-called because they seceded from the army of the Caliph Ali when he agreed to settle his dispute with Muawiyah through arbitration. Calling out the Quranic slogan, "Judgement is only God's", they fought bitterly against Ali and his army which included many of the leading Companions, until, in the year 38, Imam Ali defeated them at the Battle of Nahrawan, where some ten thousand of them perished.[11]

Although the first Kharijites were destroyed, Kharijism itself lived on. As it formulated itself, it turned into the precise opposite of Shi'ism, rejecting any notion of inherited or charismatic leadership, and stressing that leadership of the community of believers should be decided by piety alone. This was assessed by very rudimentary criteria: the early Kharijites were known for extreme toughness in their devotions, and for the harsh doctrine that any Muslim who commits a major sin is an unbeliever. This notion of takfir (declaring Muslims to be outside Islam), permitted the Kharijite groups, camping out in remote mountain districts of Khuzestan, to raid Muslim settlements which had accepted Umayyad authority. Non-Kharijis were routinely slaughtered in these operations, which brought merciless reprisals from tough Umayyad generals such as al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. But despite the apparent hopelessness of their cause, the Kharijite attacks continued. The Caliph Ali (r.a.) was assassinated by Ibn Muljam, a survivor of Nahrawan, while the hadith scholar Imam al-Nasai, author of one of the most respected collections of sunan, was likewise murdered by Kharijite fanatics in Damascus in 303/915.[12]

Like Shi'ism, Kharijism caused much instability in Iraq and Central Asia, and on occasion elsewhere, until the fourth and fifth centuries of Islam. At that point, something of historic moment occurred. Sunnism managed to unite itself into a detailed system that was now so well worked-out, and so obviously the way of the great majority of ulama, that the attraction of the rival movements diminished sharply.

What happened was this. Sunni Islam, occupying the middle ground between the two extremes of egalitarian Kharijism and hierarchical Shi'ism, had long been preoccupied with disputes over its own concept of authority. For the Sunnis, authority was, by definition, vested in the Quran and Sunnah. But confronted with the enormous body of hadiths, which had been scattered in various forms and narrations throughout the length and breadth of the Islamic world following the migrations of the Companions and Followers, the Sunnah sometimes proved difficult to interpret. Even when the sound hadiths had been sifted out from this great body of material, which totalled several hundred thousand hadith reports, there were some hadiths which appeared to conflict with each other, or even with verses of the Quran. It was obvious that simplistic approaches such as that of the Kharijites, namely, establishing a small corpus of hadiths and deriving doctrines and law from them directly, was not going to work. The internal contradictions were too numerous, and the interpretations placed on them too complex, for the qadis (judges) to be able to dish out judgements simply by opening the Quran and hadith collections to an appropriate page.

The reasons underlying cases of apparent conflict between various revealed texts were scrutinised closely by the early ulama, often amid sustained debate between brilliant minds backed up with the most perfect photographic memories. Much of the science of Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) was developed in order to provide consistent mechanisms for resolving such conflicts in a way which ensured fidelity to the basic ethos of Islam. The term taarud al-adilla (mutual contradiction of proof-texts) is familiar to all students of Islamic jurisprudence as one of the most sensitive and complex of all Muslim legal concepts.[13] Early scholars such as Ibn Qutayba felt obliged to devote whole books to the subject.[14]

The ulama of usul recognised as their starting assumption that conflicts between the revealed texts were no more than conflicts of interpretation, and could not reflect inconsistencies in the Lawgiver's message as conveyed by the Prophet (pbuh). The message of Islam had been perfectly conveyed before his demise; and the function of subsequent scholars was exclusively one of interpretation, not of amendment.

Armed with this awareness, the Islamic scholar, when examining problematic texts, begins by attempting a series of preliminary academic tests and methods of resolution. The system developed by the early ulama was that if two Quranic or hadith texts appeared to contradict each other, then the scholar must first analyse the texts linguistically, to see if the contradiction arises from an error in interpreting the Arabic. If the contradiction cannot be resolved by this method, then he must attempt to determine, on the basis of a range of textual, legal and historiographic techniques, whether one of them is subject to takhsis, that is, concerns special circumstances only, and hence forms a specific exception to the more general principle enunciated in the other text.[15] The jurist must also assess the textual status of the reports, recalling the principle that a Quranic verse will overrule a hadith related by only one isnad (the type of hadith known as ahad), as will a hadith supplied by many isnads (mutawatir or mashhur).[16] If, after applying all these mechanisms, the jurist finds that the conflict remains, he must then investigate the possibility that one of the texts was subject to formal abrogation (naskh) by the other.

This principle of naskh is an example of how, when dealing with the delicate matter of taarud al-adilla, the Sunni ulama founded their approach on textual policies which had already been recognised many times during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh). The Companions knew by ijma that over the years of the Prophets ministry, as he taught and nurtured them, and brought them from the wildness of paganism to the sober and compassionate path of monotheism, his teaching had been divinely shaped to keep pace with their development. The best-known instance of this was the progressive prohibition of wine, which had been discouraged by an early Quranic verse, then condemned, and finally prohibited.[17] Another example, touching an even more basic principle, was the canonical prayer, which the early ummah had been obliged to say only twice daily, but which, following the Miraj, was increased to five times a day.[18] Mutah (temporary marriage) had been permitted in the early days of Islam, but was subsequently prohibited as social conditions developed, respect for women grew, and morals became firmer.[19] There are several other instances of this, most being datable to the years immediately following the Hijra, when the circumstances of the young ummah changed in radical ways.

There are two types of naskh: explicit (sarih) or implicit (dimni).[20] The former is easily identified, for it involves texts which themselves specify that an earlier ruling is being changed. For instance, there is the verse in the Quran (2:142) which commands the Muslims to turn in prayer to the Kaba rather than to Jerusalem.[21] In the hadith literature this is even more frequently encountered; for example, in a hadith narrated by Imam Muslim we read: "I used to forbid you to visit graves; but you should now visit them."[22] Commenting on this, the ulama of hadith explain that in early Islam, when idolatrous practices were still fresh in peoples memories, visiting graves had been forbidden because of the fear that some new Muslims might commit shirk. As the Muslims grew stronger in their monotheism, however, this prohibition was discarded as no longer necessary, so that today it is a recommended practice for Muslims to go out to visit graves in order to pray for the dead and to be reminded of the akhira.[23]

The other type of naskh is more subtle, and often taxed the brilliance of the early ulama to the limit. It involves texts which cancel earlier ones, or modify them substantially, but without actually stating that this has taken place. The ulama have given many examples of this, including the two verses in Surat al-Baqarah which give differing instructions as to the period for which widows should be maintained out of an estate (2:240 and 234).[24] And in the hadith literature, there is the example of the incident in which the Prophet (pbuh) once told the Companions that when he prayed sitting because he was burdened by some illness, they should sit behind him. This hadith is given by Imam Muslim. And yet we find another hadith, also narrated by Muslim, which records an incident in which the Companions prayed standing while the Prophet (pbuh) was sitting. The apparent contradiction has been resolved by careful chronological analysis, which shows that the latter incident took place after the former, and therefore takes precedence over it.[25] This has duly been recorded in the fiqh of the great scholars.

The techniques of naskh identification have enabled the ulama to resolve most of the recognised cases of taarud al-adilla. They demand a rigorous and detailed knowledge not just of the hadith disciplines, but of history, sirah, and of the views held by the Companions and other scholars on the circumstances surrounding the genesis and exegesis of the hadith in question. In some cases, hadith scholars would travel throughout the Islamic world to locate the required information pertinent to a single hadith.[26]

In cases where in spite of all efforts, abrogation cannot be proven, then the ulama of the salaf recognised the need to apply further tests. Important among these is the analysis of the matn (the transmitted text rather than the isnad of the hadith).[27] Clear (sarih) statements are deemed to take precedence over allusive ones (kinayah), and definite (muhkam) words take precedence over words falling into more ambiguous categories, such as the interpreted (mufassar), the obscure (khafi) and the problematic (mushkil).[28] It may also be necessary to look at the position of the narrators of the conflicting hadiths, giving precedence to the report issuing from the individual who was more directly involved. A famous example of this is the hadith narrated by Maymunah which states that the Prophet (pbuh) married her when not in a state of consecration (ihram) for the pilgrimage. Because her report was that of an eyewitness, her hadith is given precedence over the conflicting report from Ibn Abbas, related by a similarly sound isnad, which states that the Prophet was in fact in a state of ihram at the time.[29]

There are many other rules, such as that which states that ‘prohibition takes precedence over permissibility.’[30] Similarly, conflicting hadiths may be resolved by utilising the fatwa of a Companion, after taking care that all the relevant fatwa are compared and assessed.[31] Finally, recourse may be had to qiyas (analogy).[32] An example of this is the various reports about the solar eclipse prayer (salat al-kusuf), which specify different numbers of bowings and prostrations. The ulama, having investigated the reports meticulously, and having been unable to resolve the contradiction by any of the mechanisms outlined above, have applied analogical reasoning by concluding that since the prayer in question is still called salaat, then the usual form of salaat should be followed, namely, one bowing and two prostrations. The other hadiths are to be abandoned.[33]

This careful articulation of the methods of resolving conflicting source-texts, so vital to the accurate derivation of the Shariah from the revealed sources, was primarily the work of Imam al-Shafi'i. Confronted by the confusion and disagreement among the jurists of his day, and determined to lay down a consistent methodology which would enable a fiqh to be established in which the possibility of error was excluded as far as was humanly possible, Shafi'i wrote his brilliant Risala (Treatise on Islamic jurisprudence). His ideas were soon taken up, in varying ways, by jurists of the other major traditions of law; and today they are fundamental to the formal application of the Shariah.[34]

Shafi'i's system of minimising mistakes in the derivation of Islamic rulings from the mass of evidence came to be known as usul al-fiqh (the roots of fiqh). Like most of the other formal academic disciplines of Islam, this was not an innovation in the negative sense, but a working-out of principles already discernible in the time of the earliest Muslims. In time, each of the great interpretative traditions of Sunni Islam codified its own variation on these roots, thereby yielding in some cases divergent branches (i.e. specific rulings on practice). Although the debates generated by these divergences could sometimes be energetic, nonetheless, they were insignificant when compared to the great sectarian and legal disagreements which had arisen during the first two centuries of Islam before the science of usul al-fiqh had put a stop to such chaotic discord.

It hardly needs remarking that although the Four Imams, Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, al-Shafi'i and Ibn Hanbal, are regarded as the founders of these four great traditions, which, if we were asked to define them, we might sum up as sophisticated techniques for avoiding innovation, their traditions were fully systematised only by later generations of scholars. The Sunni ulama rapidly recognised the brilliance of the Four Imams, and after the late third century of Islam we find that hardly any scholars adhered to any other approach. The great hadith specialists, including al-Bukhari and Muslim, were all loyal adherents of one or another of the madhhabs, particularly that of Imam al-Shafi'i. But within each madhhab, leading scholars continued to improve and refine the roots and branches of their school. In some cases, historical conditions made this not only possible, but necessary. For instance, scholars of the school of Imam Abu Hanifah, which was built on the foundations of the early legal schools of Kufa and Basra, were wary of some hadiths in circulation in Iraq because of the prevalence of forgery engendered by the strong sectarian influences there. Later, however, once the canonical collections of Bukhari, Muslim and others became available, subsequent generations of Hanafi scholars took the entire corpus of hadiths into account in formulating and revising their madhhab. This type of process continued for two centuries, until the Schools reached a condition of maturity in the fourth and fifth centuries of the Hijra.[35]

It was at that time, too, that the attitude of toleration and good opinion between the Schools became universally accepted. This was formulated by Imam al-Ghazali, himself the author of four textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh,[36] and also of Al-Mustasfa, widely acclaimed as the most advanced and careful of all works on usul, usul al-fiqh fil madhhab. With his well-known concern for sincerity, and his dislike of ostentatious scholarly rivalry, he strongly condemned what he falled ‘fanatical attachment to a madhhab’.[37] While it was necessary for the Muslim to follow a recognised madhhab in order to avert the lethal danger of misinterpreting the sources, he must never fall into the trap of considering his own school categorically superior to the others. With a few insignificant exceptions in the late Ottoman period, the great scholars of Sunni Islam have followed the ethos outlined by Imam al-Ghazali, and have been conspicuously respectful of each others madhhab. Anyone who has studied under traditional ulama will be well-aware of this fact.[38]

The evolution of the Four Schools did not stifle, as some Orientalists have suggested,[39] the capacity for the refinement or extension of positive law.[40] On the contrary, sophisticated mechanisms were available which not only permitted qualified individuals to derive the Shariah from the Quran and Sunnah on their own authority, but actually obliged them to do this. According to most scholars, an expert who has fully mastered the sources and fulfilled a variety of necessary scholarly conditions is not permitted to follow the prevalent rulings of his School, but must derive the rulings himself from the revealed sources. Such an individual is known as a mujtahid,[41] a term derived from the famous hadith of Muadh ibn Jabal.[42]

Few would seriously deny that for a Muslim to venture beyond established expert opinion and have recourse directly to the Quran and Sunnah, he must be a scholar of great eminence. The danger of less-qualified individuals misunderstanding the sources and hence damaging the Shariah is a very real one, as was shown by the discord and strife which afflicted some early Muslims, and even some of the Companions themselves, in the period which preceded the establishment of the Orthodox Schools. Prior to Islam, entire religions had been subverted by inadequate scriptural scholarship, and it was vital that Islam should be secured from a comparable fate.

In order to protect the Shariah from the danger of innovation and distortion, the great scholars of usul laid down rigorous conditions which must be fulfilled by anyone wishing to claim the right of ijtihad for himself.[43] These conditions include:

(a) mastery of the Arabic language, to minimise the possibility of misinterpreting Revelation on purely linguistic grounds;

(b) a profound knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah and the circumstances surrounding the revelation of each verse and hadith, together with a full knowledge of the Quranic and hadith commentaries, and a control of all the interpretative techniques discussed above;

(c) knowledge of the specialised disciplines of hadith, such as the assessment of narrators and of the matn [text];

(d) knowledge of the views of the Companions, Followers and the great imams, and of the positions and reasoning expounded in the textbooks of fiqh, combined with the knowledge of cases where a consensus (ijma) has been reached;

(e) knowledge of the science of juridical analogy (qiyas), its types and conditions;

(f) knowledge of ones own society and of public interest (maslahah);

(g) knowing the general objectives (maqasid) of the Shariah;

(h) a high degree of intelligence and personal piety, combined with the Islamic virtues of compassion, courtesy, and modesty.

A scholar who has fulfilled these conditions can be considered a mujtahid fil-shar, and is not obliged, or even permitted, to follow an existing authoritative madhhab.[44] This is what some of the Imams were saying when they forbade their great disciples from imitating them uncritically. But for the much greater number of scholars whose expertise has not reached such dizzying heights, it may be possible to become a mujtahid fi’l-madhhab, that is, a scholar who remains broadly convinced of the doctrines of his school, but is qualified to differ from received opinion within it.[45] There have been a number of examples of such men, for instance Imam al-Nawawi among the Shafi'is, Qadi Ibn Abd al-Barr among the Malikis, Ibn Abidin among the Hanafis, and Ibn Qudama among the Hanbalis. All of these scholars considered themselves followers of the fundamental interpretative principles of their own madhhabs, but are on record as having exercised their own gifts of scholarship and judgement in reaching many new verdicts within them.[46] It is to these experts that the Mujtahid Imams directed their advice concerning ijtihad, such as Imam al-Shafi'i's instruction that ‘if you find a hadith that contradicts my verdict, then follow the hadith’.[47] It is obvious that whatever some writers nowadays like to believe, such counsels were never intended for use by the Islamically-uneducated masses. Imam al-Shafi`i was not addressing a crowd of butchers, nightwatchman and donkey-drovers.

Other categories of mujtahids are listed by the usul scholars; but the distinctions between them are subtle and not relevant to our theme.[48] The remaining categories can in practice be reduced to two: the muttabi (follower), who follows his madhhab while being aware of the Quranic and hadith texts and the reasoning, underlying its positions,[49] and secondly the muqallid (emulator), who simply conforms to the madhhab because of his confidence in its scholars, and without necessarily knowing the detailed reasoning behind all its thousands of rulings.[50]

Clearly it is recommended for the muqallid to learn as much as he or she is able of the formal proofs of the madhhab. But it is equally clear that not every Muslim can be a scholar. Scholarship takes a lot of time, and for the ummah to function properly most people must have other employment: as accountants, soldiers, butchers, and so forth.[51] As such, they cannot reasonably be expected to become great ulama as well, even if we suppose that all of them have the requisite intelligence. The Holy Quran itself states that less well-informed believers should have recourse to qualified experts: So ask the people of remembrance, if you do not know (16:43).[52] (According to the tafsir experts, the people of remembrance are the ulama.) And in another verse, the Muslims are enjoined to create and maintain a group of specialists who provide authoritative guidance for non-specialists: A band from each community should stay behind to gain instruction in religion and to warn the people when they return to them, so that they may take heed (9:122). Given the depth of scholarship needed to understand the revealed texts accurately, and the extreme warnings we have been given against distorting the Revelation, it is obvious that ordinary Muslims are duty bound to follow expert opinion, rather than rely on their own reasoning and limited knowledge. This obvious duty was well-known to the early Muslims: the Caliph Umar (r.a.) followed certain rulings of Abu Bakr (r.a.), saying I would be ashamed before God to differ from the view of Abu Bakr. And Ibn Masud (r.a.), in turn, despite being a mujtahid in the fullest sense, used in certain issues to follow Umar (r.a.). According to al-Shabi: Six of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh) used to give fatwas to the people: Ibn Masud, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ali, Zayd ibn Thabit, Ubayy ibn Kab, and Abu Musa (al-Ashari). And out of these, three would abandon their own judgements in favour of the judgements of three others: Abdallah (ibn Masud) would abandon his own judgement for the judgement of Umar, Abu Musa would abandon his own judgement for the judgement of Ali, and Zayd would abandon his own judgement for the judgement of Ubayy ibn Kab.[53]

This verdict, namely that one is well-advised to follow a great Imam as ones guide to the Sunnah, rather than relying on oneself, is particularly binding upon Muslims in countries such as Britain, among whom only a small percentage is even entitled to have a choice in this matter. This is for the simple reason that unless one knows Arabic,[54] then even if one wishes to read all the hadith determining a particular issue, one cannot. For various reasons, including their great length, no more than ten of the basic hadith collections have been translated into English. There remain well over three hundred others, including such seminal works as the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal,[55] the Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shayba,[56] the Sahih of Ibn Khuzayma,[57] the Mustadrak of al-Hakim,[58] and many other multi-volume collections, which contain large numbers of sound hadiths which cannot be found in Bukhari, Muslim, and the other works that have so far been translated. Even if we assume that the existing translations are entirely accurate, it is obvious that a policy of trying to derive the Shariah directly from the Book and the Sunnah cannot be attempted by those who have no access to the Arabic. To attempt to discern the Shariah merely on the basis of the hadiths which have been translated will be to ignore and amputate much of the Sunnah, hence leading to serious distortions.[59]

Let me give just two examples of this. The Sunni Madhhabs, in their rules for the conduct of legal cases, lay down the principle that the canonical punishments (hudud) should not be applied in cases where there is the least ambiguity, and that the qadi should actively strive to prove that such ambiguities exist. An amateur reading in the Sound Six collections will find no confirmation of this.[60] But the madhhab ruling is based on a hadith narrated by a sound chain, and recorded in theMusannaf of Ibn Abi Shayba, the Musnad of al-Harithi, and the Musnad of Musaddad ibn Musarhad. The text is: "Ward off the hudud by means of ambiguities."[61] Imam al-Sanani, in his book Al-Ansab, narrates the circumstances of this hadith: "A man was found drunk, and was brought to Umar, who ordered the hadd of eighty lashes to be applied. When this had been done, the man said: Umar, you have wronged me! I am a slave! (Slaves receive only half the punishment.) Umar was grief-stricken at this, and recited the Prophetic hadith, Ward off the hudud by means of ambiguities."[62]

Another example is provided by the practice of istighfar for others during the Hajj. According to a hadith, ‘Forgiveness is granted to the Hajji, and to those for whom the Hajji prays.’ This hadith is not related in any of the collections so far translated into English; but it is narrated, by a sound isnad, in many other collections, including al-Mu`jam al-Saghir of al-Tabarani and the Musnad of al-Bazzar.[63]

Another example pertains to the important practice, recognised by the madhhabs, of performing sunnah prayers as soon as possible after the end of the Maghrib obligatory prayer. The hadith runs: Make haste to perform the two rakas after the Maghrib, for they are raised up (to Heaven) alongside the obligatory prayer. The hadith is narrated by Imam Razin in his Jami.

Because of the traditional pious fear of distorting the Law of Islam, the overwhelming majority of the great scholars of the past - certainly well over ninety-nine percent of them - have adhered loyally to a madhhab.[64] It is true that in the troubled fourteenth century a handful of dissenters appeared, such as Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim;[65] but even these individuals never recommended that semi-educated Muslims should attempt ijtihad without expert help. And in any case, although these authors have recently been resurrected and made prominent, their influence on the orthodox scholarship of classical Islam was negligible, as is suggested by the small number of manuscripts of their works preserved in the great libraries of the Islamic world.[66]

Nonetheless, social turbulences have in the past century thrown up a number of writers who have advocated the abandonment of authoritative scholarship. The most prominent figures in this campaign were Muhammad Abduh and his pupil Muhammad Rashid Rida.[67] Dazzled by the triumph of the West, and informed in subtle ways by their own well-documented commitment to Freemasonry, these men urged Muslims to throw off the shackles of taqlid, and to reject the authority of the Four Schools. Today in some Arab capitals, especially where the indigenous tradition of orthodox scholarship has been weakened, it is common to see young Arabs filling their homes with every hadith collection they can lay their hands upon, and poring over them in the apparent belief that they are less likely to misinterpret this vast and complex literature than Imam al-Shafi'i, Imam Ahmad, and the other great Imams. This irresponsible approach, although still not widespread, is predictably opening the door to sharply divergent opinions, which have seriously damaged the unity, credibility and effectiveness of the Islamic movement, and provoked sharp arguments over issues settled by the great Imams over a thousand years ago.[68] It is common now to see young activists prowling the mosques, criticising other worshippers for what they believe to be defects in their worship, even when their victims are following the verdicts of some of the great Imams of Islam. The unpleasant, Pharisaic atmosphere generated by this activity has the effect of discouraging many less committed Muslims from attending the mosque at all. No-one now recalls the view of the early ulama, which was that Muslims should tolerate divergent interpretations of the Sunnah as long as these interpretations have been held by reputable scholars. As Sufyan al-Thawri said: ‘If you see a man doing something over which there is a debate among the scholars, and which you yourself believe to be forbidden, you should not forbid him from doing it.’[69] The alternative to this policy is, of course, a disunity and rancour which will poison and cripple the Muslim community from within.[70]

In a Western-influenced global culture in which people are urged from early childhood to think for themselves and to challenge established authority, it can sometimes be difficult to muster enough humility to recognise ones own limitations.[71] We are all a little like Pharaoh: our egos are by nature resistant to the idea that anyone else might be much more intelligent or learned than ourselves. The belief that ordinary Muslims, even if they know Arabic, are qualified to derive rulings of the Shariah for themselves, is an example of this egotism running wild. To young people proud of their own judgement, and unfamiliar with the complexity of the sources and the brilliance of authentic scholarship, this can be an effective trap, which ends by luring them away from the orthodox path of Islam and into an unintentional agenda of provoking deep divisions among the Muslims. The fact that all the great scholars of the religion, including the hadith experts, themselves belonged to madhhabs, and required their students to belong to madhhabs, seems to have been forgotten. Self-esteem has won a major victory here over common sense and Islamic responsibility.[72]

The Holy Quran commands Muslims to use their minds and reflective capacities; and the issue of following qualified scholarship is an area in which this faculty must be very carefully deployed. The basic point should be appreciated that no categoric difference exists between usul al-fiqh and any other specialised science requiring lengthy training. Shaykh Sa`id Ramadan al-Buti, who has articulated the orthodox response to the anti-Madhhab trend in his book: Non-Madhhabism: The Greatest Bida Threatening the Islamic Shari`a, likes to compare the science of deriving rulings to that of medicine. "If ones child is seriously ill", he asks, "does one look for oneself in the medical textbooks for the proper diagnosis and cure, or should one go to a trained medical practitioner?" Clearly, sanity dictates the latter option. And so it is in matters of religion, which are in reality even more important and potentially hazardous: we would be both foolish and irresponsible to try to look through the sources ourselves, and become our own muftis. Instead, we should recognise that those who have spent their entire lives studying the Sunnah and the principles of law are far less likely to be mistaken than we are.[73]

Another metaphor might be added to this, this time borrowed from astronomy. We might compare the Quranic verses and the hadiths to the stars. With the naked eye, we are unable to see many of them clearly; so we need a telescope. If we are foolish, or proud, we may try to build one ourselves. If we are sensible and modest, however, we will be happy to use one built for us by Imam al-Shafi'i or Ibn Hanbal, and refined, polished and improved by generations of great astronomers. A madhhab is, after all, nothing more than a piece of precision equipment enabling us to see Islam with the maximum clarity possible. If we use our own devices, our amateurish attempts will inevitably distort our vision.

A third image might also be deployed. An ancient building, for instance the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, might seem imperfect to some who worship in it. Young enthusiasts, burning with a desire to make the building still more exquisite and well-made (and no doubt more in conformity with their own time-bound preferences), might gain access to the crypts and basements which lie under the structure, and, on the basis of their own understanding of the principles of architecture, try to adjust the foundations and pillars which support the great edifice above them. They will not, of course, bother to consult professional architects, except perhaps one or two whose rhetoric pleases them nor will they be guided by the books and memoirs of those who have maintained the structure over the centuries. Their zeal and pride leaves them with no time for that. Groping through the basements, they bring out their picks and drills, and set to work with their usual enthusiasm.

There is a real danger that Sunni Islam is being treated in a similar fashion. The edifice has stood for centuries, withstanding the most bitter blows of its enemies. Only from within can it be weakened. No doubt, Islam has its intelligent foes among whom this fact is well-known. The spectacle of the disunity and fitnas which divided the early Muslims despite their superior piety, and the solidity and cohesiveness of Sunnism after the final codification of the Shariah in the four Schools of the great Imams, must have put ideas into many a malevolent head. This is not to suggest in any way that those who attack the great madhhabs are the conscious tools of Islam’s enemies. But it may go some way to explaining why they will continue to be well-publicised and well-funded, while the orthodox alternative is starved of resources. With every Muslim now a proud mujtahid, and with taqlid dismissed as a sin rather than a humble and necessary virtue, the divergent views which caused such pain in our early history will surely break surface again. Instead of four madhhabs in harmony, we will have a billion madhhabs in bitter and self-righteous conflict. No more brilliant scheme for the destruction of Islam could ever have been devised.[74]

from Imam Ghazali’s Ihya Ulum al-Din

(Revitalisation of the Sciences of Religion)

Abridged by Abd el Salam Haroun, Revised and Translated by Dr Ahmad A Zidan

© 2001 www.Muhammad.com, Version 1.0

Chapter Two

States at Each Stage of the Ritual Prayer

The Call to Prayer

When you hear the call to prayer given by the Muezzin, let yourself perceive the terror of the Summons on the Day of Resurrection. Prepare yourself inwardly and outwardly to respond, and to do so promptly. Those who are prompt in answering this call are the ones who will be summoned gently on the Day of the Great Review. So review your hearts now; if you find it full of joy and happiness, eager to respond with alacrity, you can expect the Summons to bring you good news and salvation on the Day of Judgment. That is why the Prophet used to say: “Comfort us, Bilal! For Bilal was the Muezzin and prayer was the joy and comfort of the Messenger.

Ritual Purity

When attending to ritual purity in the things that envelop you, do so progressively; your room, then your clothes, then your skin, do not neglect your inner being, which lies at the heart of all these. Endeavor to purify it with repentance and remorse for your excesses, and a determined resolution not to commit them in future. Cleanse your inner being in this way, for that is the place to be examined by the One you worship.

Covering Private Parts

You cover the private parts; i.e. prevent certain areas of the body from being exposed to human view. But what about the shameful areas of your inner being, those unworthy secrets of your soul, that are scrutinized only by Allah Almighty. Be conscious of these faults. Be discreet about them, but realize that nothing can be hidden from the sight of Allah, High Exalted. Only through repentance, shame and fear will they be forgiven.

Facing The Qibla

As for facing the Qibla, in doing so, you turn your external face away from all other directions and toward the House of Allah, High Exalted. Do you then suppose you are not also required to turn your heart away from everything else, directing it towards Allah Almighty? What an absurd notion, since this is the whole object of the exercise! The Prophet said: “When a man stands up to pray, directing his desire, his face and his heart towards Allah, he will come out of that prayer as on the day his mother gave him birth.”

Standing Upright

As for standing upright, it means holding oneself erect – in body and in spirit – in the presence of Allah. Your head which is the highest member of your body, out to be bowed down as a reminder of the need to keep the heart meek and humble, free of arrogance and pride.

Intention

When forming the intention, resolve to be responsive to Allah by performing the prayer in obedience to His command, by doing it properly, by avoiding things that invalidate or mar it, and by doing all this sincerely for the sake of Allah, in hope of His reward and in fear of His punishment, seeking His grace and favor by His leave.

Takbir

As for the Takbir (the words: Allahu Akbar), your heart must not gainsay the words on your tongue. If you feel in your heart that there is something greater than Allah High Exalted, though your words are true, Allah will attest that you are a liar.

Opening Invocations

When making the opening invocation be very wary of distinguished polytheism in yourself. It was concerning those who worship for the sake of human as well as Divine approval that Allah revealed in the Koran:

“…whoever seeks to meet his Lord, then let him do righteous deeds, and never associate any other in worship with his Lord” (Chapter 18 verse 110)

When you say: “I take refuge in Allah from accursed Satan,” you should be aware the devil is your enemy and that he is waiting for an opportunity to alienate you from Allah. Satan is envious of your ability to commune with Allah, and to prostrate yourself before Him.

Reciting the Koran

Where recitation of the Koran is concerned, we can distinguish three types of people: (a) those who move their tongues unconsciously, (b) those who pay conscious attention to the movement of the tongue, understanding the meaning while listening as if to a person outside themselves; this is the degree of ‘those on the right’, (c) those who start from awareness of the meaning, then use the tongue to give expression to this inner consciousness. The tongue may act as interpreter for the inner feeling, or as its teacher. In the case of those nearest to Allah, the tongue is an interpreter.

Bowing Down

According to Ikrimah, Allah is referring to the postures of standing, bowing, prostration and sitting when he says: “The One Who sees you when you stand in prayer, *And when you pray among those who prostrate.” (Chapter 26 verse 218-219) Bowing (ruku) and prostration (sujud) are accompanied by a renewed affirmation of the supreme great of Allah. In bowing you renew your submissiveness and humility, striving to refine your inner feeling through a fresh awareness of your own impotence and insignificance before the might and grandeur of your Lord. To confirm this, you seek the aid of your tongue, glorifying Allah and testifying repeatedly to His Supreme Majesty, both outwardly and inwardly.

Then you rise from bowing, hopeful that He will be merciful towards you. To emphasize this hope within you, you say: “Allah hears those who give thanks to Him.” Acknowledging the need to express gratitude, you immediately add: “Grateful praise to You our Lord!” To show the abundance of this gratitude, you may also say: “As much as the heavens and earth contain.”

Prostration

Then you go down in prostration. This is the highest level of submission, for you are bringing the most precious part of your body, namely your face, down to meet the most lowly of all things, the dust of the earth. If possible, you should make your prostration directly on bare ground, this being more conducive to humility and a sure sign of self abasement. When you place yourself in this position of lowliness, you should be aware that you belong there. You are restoring the branch to its root, for of dust you were created and to dust you shall return. At the same time you should renew your inner awareness of Allah’s majesty, saying: “Glory to my Lord Most High!” Repeat this to add confirmation, for saying it only once is not sufficiently emphatic.

When your inner feeling has clearly been refine, be confident in hoping for Allah’s mercy. For His mercy quickly flows towards weakness and lowliness, not towards arrogance and vanity.

As you raise your head, say “Allahu Akbar!” and ask for what you need, making the supplication of your choice, e.g. “My Lord, forgive and have mercy! Overlook my faults of which You are aware!”

You then make a second prostration, reinforcing your submissiveness.

Sitting and Testifying

When you sit to make the testimony (tashahhud), sit decorously. Declare that all the prayers and good works you perform are for the sake of Allah, and everything belongs to Him. Such is the meaning of al-tahiyyat. Be inwardly aware of the Prophet, and on his noble person, as you say: “Peace be upon you, O Prophet, as well as Allah’s mercy and blessing.” Be sure that your salutation will reach him, and that he will return an even more perfect greeting to you. Then salute yourself and all Allah’s righteous servants. Then testify to the Unity of Allah, High Exalted, and to the mission of Mohammad, His Messenger, on him be peace and prayers. By repeating this two-fold testimony, you reaffirm the covenant of Allah, and assure yourself of its protection.

End of Supplication

At the end of your ritual prayer, you should offer a traditional supplication, imploring and entreating with meekness and humility, confidently hoping to be heard. Let your supplication include your parent and the other believers.

Salutation

Finally, and with the intention of concluding your prayer, address your salutation (salam) to the angels and the others present. Feel a sense of gratitude to Allah, High Exalted, for having enabled you to complete this act of worship. Imagine that you are saying farewell to this prayer of yours, and that you may not live to see another like it.

States Conducive to Perfecting

The Life in Prayer

These qualities can be expressed in many ways, but they are well summed up in six words, namely: awareness; understanding; reverence; awe; hope; shame.

Awareness

By conscious awareness we mean that state in which one’s mind and feelings are in no way distracted from what one is doing and saying. Perception is united with action and speech. Thoughts do not wander. When the mind remains attentive to what one is doing, when one is wholeheartedly involved, and when nothings makes one heedless, that is when one has achieved conscious awareness.

Understanding

Understanding the meaning of one’s words is something that goes beyond awareness, for one may be conscious of making an utterance, yet not be aware of the meaning of that utterance. What we mean by understanding, therefore, is an awareness that also includes comprehension of the meaning of one’s utterance. People differ in this respect, not sharing a common understanding of the Koran and the glorifications.

How many subtleties of meaning we have come to understand in the course of ritual prayer! Things that had never occurred to us before.

It is in this context that prayer becomes a deterrent to indecency and mischief, for the understanding it brings is a positive obstacle to vice.

Reverence

As for reverence, this is something beyond both awareness and understanding. A man may address his servant in full awareness of his speech, and understanding the meaning of his words, yet without reverence, for reverence is an additional element.

Awe

As for awe, it is over and above reverence. In fact, it represents a kind of fear that grows out of the latter. Without experiencing fear, one will not stand in awe. There is an ordinary fear of things we find repugnant, like scorpions or bad temper, but this is not called awe. What we call awe is the kind of fear we have of a mighty king. Awe is the kind of fear induced by a sense of majesty.

Hope

As for hope, this is unquestionably something else again. There are many who revere some king or other, and who are in awe of him or afraid of his power, yet do not hope to be rewarded by him. In our prayers, however, we must hope for the reward of Allah, High Exalted; just as we fear His punishment for our faults.

Shame

As for shame, it is something additional to all the rest, for it is based on the realization of one’s deficiencies and the apprehension of sin. It is quite possible to conceive of reverence, fear and hope, without this element of shame.

Chapter Three

Internal Prerequisites of Prayer:

Actions of the Heart

The Need for Humility and Conscious

Awareness

Many Koranic Verses and Traditions could be cited in evidence of this, including the words of Allah Almighty: “…and establish prayer for My Remembrance” (Chapter 20 verse 14)

The obvious force of the imperative is to make something obligatory. Since heedlessness is the opposite of remembrance, how can someone who is heedless throughout his prayer be performing it in remembrance of Allah? The Almighty warns us in the Koran.

“…do not be of those who are heedless.” (Chapter 7 verse 205)

Here we have taken a negative imperative, with the obvious force of a prohibition. Allah High Exalted also says:

“…until you can understand all that you say, (Chapter 4 verse 43)

This explained the reason for debarring those who are intoxicated from the mosque, but the term intoxicated applies be extension to those who are wholly preoccupied with temptations and worldly thoughts.

When the Prophet said: “The prayer is nothing but submissiveness and humility…” he used a particularly definite and emphatic construction in Arabic.

The Prophet said: “If a man’s prayer does not deter him from indecency and mischief, he gains nothing from Allah but remoteness.” Heedless prayer does nothing to deter a man from these vices.

The heedless are alluded to in the Tradition: “Many of those who pray derive nothing from their prayers except weariness and strain.”

The Prophet said: “A man gets credit only for that part of his prayer of which he is conscious.” This is confirmed by the Tradition: “When performing the prayer, one is conversing intimately with one’s Lord.” Speaking in a state of heedlessness is certainly not what is meant by intimate conversation with Allah Almighty.

To Clarify matters further, let us consider the contrast between ritual prayer, on the one hand, and Zakat, fasting and pilgrimage on the other. A man may pay his Alms without being consciously attentive, yet the very act of parting with money runs counter to greed and is hard on the lower self. The case of fasting is similar; since it subdues the natural forces and breaks hold of the passions, which are the tools of Allah’s enemy Satan, its purpose may well be achieved in spite of heedlessness. As for Pilgrimage, it presents physical hardship and difficulty and involves painful struggle, whether or not its actions are performed in full awareness.

In contrast to these other religious duties, ritual prayer consists only in remembrance, recitation, bowing, prostration, standing erect and sitting down.

and other forms of worship. It is unique in having capital punishment as the penalty for its abandonment. I do not believe that ritual prayer enjoys all this special dignity by virtue of its external motions, unless these are linked to the purpose of intimate communion with Allah. That is what has priority over Fasting, Zakat, Pilgrimage and so on; indeed, over sacrifices and offerings which entail self-denial through financial outlay. As Allah High Exalted says:

“It is not their flesh that reaches Allah, nor their blood, but that which reaches Allah is your piety…” (Chapter 22 verse 37)

What is meant here by ‘devotion’ is a quality that gains control over the heart, disposing it to comply with the commands it is required to obey.

What, then, of the ritual prayer, if its actions are without purpose?

You may say that I am going against the consensus of the jurists, if I make the validity of prayer dependent on conscious awareness, since they stipulate such attention only at the initial ‘Allahu Akbar’. But the jurists do not concern themselves with the inner life or the way of the Hereafter. Their job is to formulate the outer rules of religion, with reference to external physical behavior. As for what is beneficial to the afterlife, this is beyond the scope of jurisprudence, since no consensus can be claimed.

Sufyan al-Thawri, an early legal scholar, is reported as saying: “Without humility and awareness, one’s prayer is invalid.” It is related that al-Hasan said: “Any prayer performed without conscious awareness is a short cut to punishment.” According to Mu’adh ibn Jabal: “A man gets no credit for a prayer in which he deliberately notices those on his right and left.”

According to an authenticated Tradition, Allah’s Messenger said: “Though he performs the whole prayer, a man may be credit with no more than one sixth or one tenth of it. A man gets credit only for that part of his prayer of which he is conscious.” If this had been transmitted on lesser authority, it would surely have become a dogma, so why should it not be taken seriously?

Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd said: “The scholars are unanimously agreed that a man gets credit only for that part of his prayers of which he is conscious.” According to him, there is actually a consensus to this effect.

In short, conscious awareness is the very spirit of ritual prayer. Attentiveness to the initial ‘Allahu Akbar’ represents the bare minimum required to keep the spark of this spirit alive; of Allah we beg His gracious support!

Medication Conducive To Inner Serenity

As a believer, one must magnify Allah High Exalted, in fear and in hope and in humble awareness of one’s shortcomings. There can be no relaxation in any of this once faith has been achieved, although one’s intensity will depend on the strength of one’s conviction. Any slackness in prayer is surely caused by mental distraction, divided attention, failure to be whole hearted in communion, and a heedless attitude to worship. Random mental activity is the thing that distracts us from prayer; it must therefore be dispelled so that a feeling of serenity can be acquired. To remove the symptom we must treat the cause, so let us find out where it lies. Stray thoughts may be prompted by something external, or they may arise from within.

As for external causes, our attention is caught by anything that happens to engage our eyes or ears. We begin to take an interest in it. Then one thought leads to another and the process goes on and on. Seeing gives rise to thinking, then one thought becomes the cause of another. Sensory impressions do not divert those who intention is strong and whose aspiration is lofty, but they inevitably distract the weak. The remedy lies in cutting off these causes by lowering the eyes, praying in a room, leaving no distracting objects in front of one, or reducing one’s range of vision by praying close up to a wall. One should avoid performing the prayer on the street, in places where there is artificial decoration and on colored carpets.

That is why very devout people used to worship in a small dark cell, where there was just enough room for prostration, for it is easier to concentrate in such conditions. Those who were strong would attend the mosques, keeping their eyes downcast and confining their gaze to the place of prostration. They considered their prayers to be perfect when they were unaware of the people to their right and left. Ibn Umar would allow no object to remain in the place of prayer, not even a copy of the Koran. He would remove any sword he found there and erase any writing.

Internal causes pose a more serious problem. One’s worldly concerns may be many and varied, so that the mind does not dwell on a single subject but keeps flying from one direction to another. To lower the eyes is then to no avail, for plenty of distractions have already got inside. The way to deal with this is to make a deliberate effort to comprehend the meaning of the words one is reciting in the prayer, concentrating on this to the exclusion of everything else. It is helpful to prepare for this before the initial consecration, by reminding oneself of the Hereafter and that one is standing in communion in the awesome presence of Allah Almighty, and under His scrutiny. Before consecration for prayer, one should empty the heart of all its cares, leaving oneself free of potential distractions.

Allah’s Messenger once said to Uthman ibn Abi Shayba: “I forgot to tell you to cover up the cooking pots that are in the house, for there should be nothing in the house to distract people from their prayers.” This is a technique for quieting the mind. If mental agitation is not stilled by this tranquilizer, the only recourse is a putative that will strike at the roots of the malady. That is to say, one must examine the distractions that prevent the attainment of inner serenity. These will undoubtedly be traced to one’s pressing concerns, which have become so important simply because of one’s base desires. One must therefore discipline the lower self by abstaining from those desires and by severing those ties. Anything that distracts us from prayer is the adversary of our religion; the army of Satan is the foe. To hold it in check is more troublesome than driving it out, so let us drive it out and be rid of it.

The Prophet once prayed while wearing a cloak with an ornamented border, a gift from Abu Jahm. He removed it when he had finished his prayers, saying: “Take it back to Abu Jahm, for it distracted me from my prayer. Bring me Abu Jahm’s cloak of course wool.” The Messenger of Allah Once had new laces put in his sandals. When their newness attracted his attention during the prayer, he had them removed and the worn laces put back. According to another Tradition the Prophet once found himself admiring the beauty of a pair of sandals he was wearing, so he made a prostration and said: “I have humbled myself before my Lord, so that He will not be displeased with me.” Then he went out and gave the sandals to the first beggar he met. He then told Ali to buy a worn pair of tanned leather sandals, which he put on his feet.

Before it was declared unlawful for men to wear gold, the Prophet used to wear a gold ring on his finger. As he stood in the pulpit one day, he threw this ring away, saying: “It distracted me, a glance towards it and a glance towards you.”

It is related that Abu Talha once prayed in his garden where there were trees. He was attracted by the sight of a honey bird and he spent so long following its movements as it flew about seeking an opening in the foliage, that he forgot how many cycles of prayer he had completed. He told the Messenger of Allah about the temptation to which he had succumbed, then said: “O Messenger of Allah I offer my garden as a charity. Dispose of it as you wish.” According to a different source, he was distracted by the pleasant sight of the bees, buzzing round the fruit as he prayed in the garden. He mentioned this to Uthman, saying: “I offer it as a charity. Use it for the sake of Allah.” Uthman then sold the garden for fifty thousand.

Such conduct was intended to eradicate cause of mental distraction and to atone for deficiencies in prayer. This medicine tackles the root of the disease; it is the only effective remedy. As for the gentler measure we proposed, such as calming oneself and concentrating on understanding the words used in prayer, they may be useful when passions are feeble and cares are only marginally distracting. But it is useless to try and calm oneself when the pressure of desire is strong, for it will attract you and you will attract it until it gets the better of you. You will be cause up in this process throughout your prayer.

Consider this analogy: There was a man beneath a tree. He wished to collect his thoughts, but the sparrows disturbed him with their chirping. He would chase them with a stick and then resume his train of thought, but the sparrows would come back and he would have to scare them away with the stick once again. Eventually someone told him: “This is like being a slave at the wheel, going round and round forever. If you want to escape the vicious circle, you should fell the tree.” So it is with the tree of base desire. Thoughts are attracted to its ramifying twigs and branches, just like sparrows to real trees. Flies are attracted by filth and chasing them becomes a full time occupation, for they just keep coming back. Random thoughts are like flies.

Our base desires are numerous and human beings are seldom free of them. They all share a common root, namely, love of this world. That is the origin of every fault, the basis of every shortcoming, the source of all corruption. Filled with the love of this world, a person becomes so attached to it that he fails to make provision for the Hereafter. He then has no hope of experiencing the pure bliss of communion in prayer. Those who delight in this world can take no delight in Allah, nor in communion with Him. A man aspires to that which gives him joy, so if his pleasure lies in this world, he will surely seek it there. Nevertheless, one must continue to strive, turning the heart back towards prayer and reducing the causes of distraction.

This is bitter medicine, so bitter that we instinctively recoil from taking it. The sickness remains chronic and the disease becomes incurable. Great men have endeavored to perform two cycles of prayer without having any internal conversation about worldly matters, only to find themselves unequal to the task. No hope, then, for the likes of us! If only we may be safe from temptation during half of our prayer, or one third, so that our deeds are at least a mixture of good and bad.

In short, the worldly and spiritual aspirations in the human heart are like water poured into a cup full of vinegar; as water goes in, an equal volume of vinegar inevitably goes out and the two can never combine.

Please do not attribute any spelling mistakes, typos etc to the Shaykh, the translator or the book that this article is from.