You and Allah

Allah sees you.

This is the teaching of the people of tasawwuf.

Allah sees me. Allah is with me. Allah is the Witness of my acts.

Know that Allah is looking at you. You are not looking at the

universe, or at shuyukh or deciding that is your way or this

way or that way. There is no way.

There is only one way. That is the way. That you are going from

birth to death. This is the only tariqa there is.

And what is important is what you do on this journey. Do you acquire

benefit or do you throw it away?

You see, this is what this singing is all about. That what is dark can

be replaced with light. It is cleansing. It is purifying. It is cleaning.

It is polishing. So the heart becomes clear instead of muddy. It is

like when the snow melted and brought with it the earth. The water

became dirty because it was turbulent. But when the water settled

and everything is calm then all that muddyness disappears and

the water becomes clear like a mirror.

But it is not to see this face, as you can see that in an ordinary mirror,

in the outward sensory world. But to gaze into the mirror of the heart

is to see the secret of the self. So the gazing into the heart becomes

like drinking lights. There is no escape. If it is knowledge you want.

There is no path except the path of those great people.

What has happened is that islam has come back. It was here in Europe before.

You may say that you dont want anything to do with it and that and that

is fine. It doesnt matter. That is not interesting. What is interesting is who are

these people who want to know? Its not a phrase. It was Madinah.

And the light of Madinah was not its houses or its streets.

The illumination of Madinah were its people, its men and women, the companions

and their families. This is the source of it. This is the well. This is the oasis.

You get knowledge according to your desire and you get knowledge based on

what you are able to handle. It is not about personalities, about this shaykh

or that shaykh. It will only confuse you.

It is about You and Allah.

If you are not muslim then good bye, go away, there is nothing I can say to you

as your intellect has not worked. But if you are muslim, then what will you

do with it? It is like saying you will dress up as in fisherman’s clothes and

then not go down to the river. So you will be completely dressed in the entire

kit and then not go down to the water? No, you have to take it! You have

to take the maximum of your own capacity. This is more difficult for the men

than for the women. In this age men are not in jihad, the men are not fighting.

The men are all at home. And until the men say: “I am not able to live in darkness,

I want to know”. And these men nowadays come to the shaykh and ask him

to do this magical transaction.

But No! If you want change YOU must change your life.

The first thing you have to do is to break the habits. Break this norm. You have

to crack this robot behaviour of how you live, the way you live. Re-sculpture it!

Re-shape it! Do that you do not become fixed in the illusion that you exist and

are some kind of idol that will be here forever.

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi al-Murabit

Moral

Obeying the shari’ah is not being a “good boy”. Obeying the shari’ah is seeing that the social nexus is one which is in conformity with that which has been determined by the Rasul, salla Llahu ´alayhi wa sallam, in Madinah and by his sahaba and confirmed by and expanded by the khulafa ar-rashidun. These are our duties, and this is what now is placed on You and You are the people who must do it. Yo…u must remember. You cannot escape back into a private world of Your own project. The private project has to be subjected to the ruhani project of re-establishing legal transactions in every aspect in dunya which in itself will provide you with a correct moral behaviour of man among other men, a man in relation to women, and the women among other women and women in relation to men. This will come by that and not the other way around. You cannot be “good”, morally good, in a society where the transactions are morally bad. It is not possible. This is our duty. This is our responsability. It has fallen to your hand and on your shoulder. We ask Allah to give you strength. We ask Allah to open this land to the teaching of the people of Madinah so it is re-established all over Africa.

-Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi al-Murabit

Embrace life!

“You, Yourself, is a piece of music never to be played again”.

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi al-Murabit

What is Life?

“By Allāh! Your life did not start when you were born. It began when you recognized Allāh.”

– Imām Ibn ‘Atā’illāh al-Iskandari

There is no escaping this

Your Lord is to you what you are to Him
And there is no escaping this
You will not do other than you intend
You will not hold Him to be other than
What He holds you to believe
For you are confined in His confining of you
So let your belief in Him soar
Out of all association
That He may release you out of all forms
And all worlds
Realise that you know nothing of Him
Till you surrender your nafs to obliteration
And achieve the goal

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Nobility as insight

“No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man”

– Thomas Carlyle

The khidmah and raising up of people

That people serve others. Their hearts are moved. The hearts are alive and awake and say “Look at these people, they need help, these children are not educated. Look at these children, they have no doctors. Look at what is happening, it is unjust and we must put it right”.
These hearts that serve others. This is the beginning of a change. But there is a higher stage which is that you say “I have to serve Allah, and how do I serve Allah?”
The first stage is that the child says “I need it and I take it”.
The second stage is that the man says “They need it and I give it”.
The third stage is “I need Allah, we are needy, we need Allah”.
Once you know that you need Allah then you call on him.
And that is not the end of the affair.
That is the beginning of the affair.
Because these ones who call on Allah with sincerity will turn the world upsidedown.
These are the people that will make the world new.

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Total picture of man

It is Sufism that insists on the total picture of a man both outwardly and inwardly in a state of transmission. Once the muslim denies the inner realities of the states and Stations we will examine shortly, he does not have to have his own motives examined. Once he has denied the inner reality, he has denied his own and yours, then it is a step to his dismantling the Sunnah-pattern that gives flesh and blood to that inner reality. In a short time he is using the language of duality – and then he tells you that it does not matter that you have beard, that you sit on the ground and sleep on the level of the floor, and eat with three fingers from one plate, and greet the stranger and feed the guest, and so it goes on until in the end why should you bow and why should you prostrate and why should you fast, and where is the Garden and where is the Fire, and what is an angel, and what is a Messenger, and what reality has any of the whole business when you live a bourgeois life utterly enclosed in the insane rituals of consumerism and reputation-tokens? It is in the beginning of this process that the sufic tradition insists on the complete social reality of an Islam which never ceases to extol poverty, simplicity, and measure, in behaviour and possessions, and which calls for kindness and good words between men, respect for women, and affection for the young and the old. It is Sufism, as a guardian of the islam of the Companions, that demands a radiant city as the setting for a man of knowledge to experience his gnosis. The Sufi’s place is in the Community.

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi in his book Way of Muhammad

Khidmah

It is in you, it is from you, it is to you, it is by you. Know it! Knowledge is light!

For all you visitors. This place is for you. You can come and go as you wish, when you wish, as you wish.
All of you, feel at home here. If there is any flaw in our courtesy towards you you must excuse us.
Please, if there is more you want to know, if there is more you are interested in knowing, if there is more
you desire, if this means anything to you, please let us meet and continue this. I am here for you.
I at at your disposal. When you want. As you want. I have no other purpose in life. I have no other work.
You are my work. Ahlan wa sahlan. Marhaban. Welcome!

– Sidna Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Service to the people

“We must replace ideas (dead ideologies) in the zone of hopelessness (modern state) with actions (‘amal) in the zone of SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE.”

– Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir As-Sufi