If truth be told, a potential mystic is torn between demands to quench his intense natural thirst and disposition (fitrah) for incessantly worshiping his Creator and Lord, which has been implanted in every human being as part of God’s plan for His creation, and between the verity that the fullness of the absolute truth was not always readily available, or easily accessible, in a mystic’s own life and in the lives of others.
For one reason or another, a world of impediments or uncertainties could stand between a seeker of utter and absolute truth and that truth itself.
Although God, the only source of the only truth, ensured that all nations, tribes and communities had prophets, warners and guides, yet constantly throughout history it was the practice of a majority of people to go up against and dispense with their prophet’s teachings, or to tamper with and significantly change them, or to simply ignore, or take them lightly, eventually forgetting them.
It was always that relative shallow personal and communities’ interests and aims took precedence over the absolute interests and aims of the absolute truth.
As a result, numerous prophets were succeeding each other in order to revive the extinguished or completely distorted truth, only for the same to be turned off, obscured or warped again after they had gone.
As the time was passing, however, conditions were ripening and a momentum was gradually building up for the final messenger and prophet of God, Muhammad, to come and, while authenticating earlier prophets and their divine messages, invite the whole of mankind to the final mode or version of the total and only truth.
But that truth God has promised that He Himself will guard against those unfortunate fates that were befalling earlier prophets and their revealed messages.
It was a time for the truth to start shining in its full glow once and for all, and for falsehood to be irrevocably eclipsed and utterly rescinded.
It goes without saying that the truth is only one, and so is God its source. Islam is the truth which God made man’s permanent companion on the earth as soon as he was sent to it, on account of that truth being meant for him.
Islam propagates the unity and oneness of God, of the truth, and of the meaning, purpose and providence of life and man. It likewise endorses diversity of approaches, means and modi operandi for conveying and putting into operation the truth and its life systems as warranted and necessitated by the huge scale of time and space factors diversity.
The ultimate revealed truth which was man’s companion from Adam, the first man and prophet on earth, to Prophet Muhammad, the seal of prophets, echoes the disposition of the heavenly paradigm from which it emanated.
This everlasting unity of prophethoods and Islam’s faith, God emphasizes time and again in the Quran, affirming, for example, that:
We did not send before you any messenger but We revealed to him that there is no god but Me, therefore serve Me. (21: 25)
So, therefore, unlike most forms of mysticism where a mystic basically alone undertakes a spiritual journey seeking the Divinity and the supreme and transcendent Being, while evolving certain practices intended to sustain him on his journey and to nurture his newly acquired experiences, in Islam, on the other hand, God reveals Himself, His Will, Word and Providence, to man.
God “comes” to man, so to speak, inviting him to undertake a clearly projected and mapped spiritual journey of his own, with clearly marked benchmarks, stations and conditions, towards a spiritual summit where a solid relationship between a true believer and God based on mutual love, is then formed.
As a result of such a spiritual relationship, or a meeting, and even a “union”, a guided believer’s will, thinking and performance paradigms become in total agreement with Allah’s Will and Word.
That is to say, a believer’s total being submits itself in servitude to Allah, relentlessly worshiping Him in his words, deeds and thoughts, and selflessly serving the interests of the truth alone, even if that be at the expense of his own personal whims and interests.
Unlike most forms of mysticism where a mystic pursues and tries to experience the absolute truth in a basically one-way traffic relationship, authentic Sufism, conversely, signifies that a believer favorably responds to the spiritual calls, “advances” and “drawing near” of the truth by making his own initiatives, “advances” and “drawing near”, so that a spiritual meeting and a “union” between the two is ensured and expedited.
Definitely, this “advancing” of the truth and believers, and their “drawing near” towards each other in Islam, as well as their eventual unification representative of a single will, purpose and objective, ought always to be a starting point for studying the Sufism phenomenon – and the truth of Islam in general — and its fundamental differences with the religious and philosophical mysticism phenomenon.
Mysticism originally entailed such concepts as “mysteries”, “secrets”, “secret cults” and “vague speculations and beliefs”.
However, later when Christianity embarked on integrating certain Greek traditions and beliefs into its own corpus of doctrines and religious ceremonies — including the technical vocabulary of the Hellenistic mysteries — imbuing them with its own typical spiritual character and identity, the term “mysticism” became virtually a Christian identification.
Hence, the modern usage of the word has to do with the history of the Christian tradition more than with any other religious tradition.
Mysticism, by definition, has no – or at best, has extremely little — place in Islam because in Islam there is no room for mysteries, myths and legends that often defy human intelligence, or for secretive aspects of the fundamental truth which can be attained only by a few and due to some special and supernormal means and ways.
Likewise, there is no such thing as supernatural holy men, gurus or saints who only can achieve a state of perfect enlightenment and piety, monopolizing then the truth and the mysterious channels, ways and techniques with which the former can be achieved.
In Islam, furthermore, there is nothing simpler, plainer and clearer than the truth. What is more, there is no better secret to a happy and meaningful life than sheer simplicity, sincerity, transparency and honesty, with others and, more importantly, with one’s own self.
There is nothing that symbolizes these notions better than the notion of light, just as there is nothing that symbolizes the opposites better than the notion of darkness.
Surely, the life of a true believer is a simple, straightforward and a clearly defined affair, from the beginning till the end.
Minimalism in form and appearances, and profundity, wisdom and luminosity in substance, meaning and purpose, it stands to reason, are synonymous with the lifestyle of a believer.
A true believer, furthermore, has nothing to hide, camouflage, mystify or veil when it comes to his relationships with his Creator and with his very self and his consciousness.
There is nothing in his life that is susceptible to hesitation, skepticism, superstitions, mysteries and unnecessary fears.
In contrast, he is very confident of, and happy about, what and who he is, and what he normally does. He does not hesitate even for a moment to exhibit to his self, his intellect, and to the spiritual forces of existence, the truths about himself and about his life undertakings.
Thus, the notion of light (nur) is very important in Islam. Allah has likened Himself to light in a Qur’anic chapter called al-Nur, which means Light.
In it, Allah declares that He is the Light of the heavens and the earth (24: 35).
A parable of His light is then presented in a breathtaking style. The Quran also identifies divine revelations with nur or light which helps people to walk and persevere on the right path.
Accordingly, the main job of prophets was to guide people from darkness to light (5:15, 44).
The term nur in the Quran is used to express physical, moral and spiritual vision. [1]
The job of Satan, on the other hand, is to deceive people and (mis)lead them from light to darkness (2:257).
The whole of existence on earth is thus a struggle for supremacy between the forces of good and evil, truth and falsehood, enlightenment and ignorance, civilization and backwardness, vision and blindness, light and darkness.
It was exactly because of this that when prophet Musa (Moses) was asked to make an appointment between himself and Pharaoh’s magicians for a duel between the truth and falsehood, he chose a day of “the Festival” demanding that all the people gather in the early forenoon (20:59).
Prophet Musa thus wanted everyone to be present as a witness to the triumph of the truth, and to do so in the early forenoon when the light of the day is at its brightest, and when the faculties and minds of the people are sharpest and most perceptive, so that the truth could be unmistakably witnessed by all and could be accepted by whosoever willed to do so of his or her own accord.
Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi elaborated on this:
“Islam abhors darkness. It has no mysteries, no secrets and tolerates no paradoxes or ambiguities. Its aim is always perfect clarity, perfect vision, perfect obviousness and distinctness.
It has never used or accepted the symbolism of the womb. Its revelation was not something born in darkness, shrouded in mystery, beset with ambiguity. The Prophet often received the revelations in presence of the public.
Its advent never required or accompanied the slightest lapse of consciousness. On the contrary, the Prophet’s consciousness was always tauter and clearer under the impact of revelation.
That is why Islam never entertained or tolerated any dilation of consciousness, any drunkenness, any psychotropia as having anything to do with the vision of the Holy, with religious experience.” [2]
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1 Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi, Islam and Architecture, in “Fine Arts in Islamic Civilization”, edited by M.A.J. Beg, (Kuala Lumpur: The University of Malaya Press, 1981), p. 109.
2 Ibid., p. 109-110.