'I follow the way of love'

 A few precious moments of Sufi wisdom might save our souls in these corrupt and troubled times

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

Grace and goodness are gone. Faith, fidelity nor love is practised. Brother fights brother. When unity is undermined, will the world not fall apart?

According to the Sufi, the world will never fall apart - no matter what. It is the human condition that is in disgrace and not nature. In the midst of a mess it is pretentious for human beings to claim that they are trying to rescue the world. Instead, they should try somehow to rescue the self because dignity must first return to the individual before it reaches society.

For the Sufi, the worst times - of the kind we are going through now - are also the best times for individuals to realise that dirt has seeped deep into their beings. The best battle between the mean and the magnanimous begins within the self in the true spirit of jihad. The Sufi sees no solution in battling over God to achieve good.

Remembering the words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz who died in 1984, helps start us on the right
spiritual path:

Jab koi baat banaaye na bane
Jab  na koi baat chale
Jis ghadhi raat chale
Jis ghadhi maatami, sunsaan, siyah raat chale
Tum mere paas raho
Mere qaatil, mere dildaar, mere paas raho...

(Just when nothing seems to work and nothing helps As far as the eye can spy when there is nothing but a breast-beating void, More silent and darker than night Then my foe and my friend, you must stay with me)

Sufis prefer poetry as their medium of expression. Islam emerged out of an oral tradition practiced by nomads all over the world. Writing was avoided and teachings were transmitted orally through tales and fables as caravans camped at different sites. The Koran follows the same style. In fact, the word Koran in Arabic means to recite. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, a newspaper is called Koran.

Combined with the influence upon Islam of pre-Islamic poetic traditions of the Persian court and reaction to the prosaic interpretation of the Koran by strict, rational legalists, the Sufis chose poetry to share their experiences of love with the world. Prose is the language of philosophers, theologians and religious jurisprudence. The language of the Sufi is different from that of the judge. The Sufi does not see himself as the custodian of truth. He expresses himself as a lover of truth. His desire is to explore intensity through poems that are said to be closer to the heart of human awareness than any other form of expression.

My heart embraces every form,

Pasture for gazelles

Convent for monks

Temple for idols

Kaaba for pilgrims

Tabula of the Torah

Pages of the Koran.

I follow the way of love

And where love's caravan takes its path

There is my religion, my faith...

(Ibn Arabi, Spanish Arab, 13th century)