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Dr Ovamir Anjum
Translations from Ibn Al-Qayyim’s Madarij Al-Salikin (Steps of the Seekers) |
The Author Of Al-Manâzil states:
By this definition, then, the essence of adab is justice. And Allah knows best.
[Al-Harawi] states:
It [adab] has three levels:
(1) Restraining fear from turning into
despair;
(2) Preventing hope from becoming complacency;
(3) Stopping bliss from provoking audacity.
By the first he means that [adab] does not allow fear to grow to a point where it becomes hopelessness and despair from Allah’s mercy, for that is blameworthy fear. I have heard to say Shaykh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, Allah have mercy on him: “The proper limit of fear is that which prevents you from acts of disobedience to Allah. What goes beyond that is unnecessary.” The fear that falls to despair is bad etiquette toward –and ignorance of– the mercy of Allah, the Exalted, which has predominated over His wrath.
As for the second, the prevention of hope from becoming complacency is that one’s hope should not reach the point where one feels security from chastisement, for None feels secure from Allah’s plan except the losers [Sûrat Al-Aʿrâf, 7:99], and such is another extreme. The definition of hope is “what makes worship pleasant to you and prompts you toward the journey,” which is like the wind that pushes the sailboat. If it stops, so does the boat. If it turns violent, it capsizes the boat. If it blows in proper measure, however, it sails the boat to its destination.
As for the third, “stopping bliss from encouraging audacity,” it is something only the strong and strong-willed can accomplish, those who are not so overwhelmed with happiness as to forget gratitude, nor with grief as to neglect patience. As it has been said by a poet:
Joy does not outdo their thanks
Nay, nor affliction their patience
The human self (nafs) is a companion of Satan and resembles him. The gifts of Allah descend into the heart and the soul. The self (nafs) ever lies in ambush for these gifts and is bent on taking its share of them, turning them into its own conquest. Whosoever is lenient with the self and ignorant of it allows it to fulfill its designs. Thus, what is supposed to be a divine gift to the heart and the soul –and a strength for it– turns into the conquest of the self, as well as an instrument of that conquest. And the self therefore rebels, for it sees itself as self-sufficient.
[As Allah says,] The human being is indeed rebellious, for he sees himself self-sufficient. So then –when one acquires some wealth– how much more rebellious would the nafs be if it thinks that it has attained much higher things, such as knowledge, the state [of ecstatic presence before Allah], inner awareness (maʿrifa), or divine disclosure? When these things become the attainments of the self (rather than of the heart and soul, as they are intended to be), the servant deviates from the path inevitably to a blameworthy extreme and displays audacity, or ecstatic utterances (shadḥ), or other such signs.
By Allah, how many souls have been spiritually murdered, looted, and wounded in this way and are left wondering: “Where did you come from? How did you attack?” The least that occurs as a result of this is that the door of any further bliss is closed. That is why it has been the way of those with inner knowledge and insight, when they are given such divine gifts, to err on the side of humility, self-criticism, and investigation of their shortcomings. They look to the one closer to Allah and nobler than themselves in His eyes –who, when he entered Makkah on the Day of the Opening, his head was bowed, so much so that it touched the back of his camel at a time when it is the wont of the human being that his happiness, victory, and triumph own him and raise him to the heights of the sky.
The real man is thus one whose adab protects his [spiritual] openings and his provision that is sent by Allah from being stolen by his nafs; and helpless is the one who is generous to his nafs. And what an unseemly generosity, and what a foolhardy charity!
And from Allah alone help is sought..
