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
