The Inner Dimensions of the Sunnah

The Inner Dimensions of the Sunnah
By Sahibzada Asim Maharvi
chairman@chishtiya.org

There is a great misunderstanding about the sunnah of our Beloved Prophet (S); especially about the dimensions of the sunnah and the implication of the word sunnah.We have reduced Islam to a cult and consequently we have fallen prey to dogmatism( accepting without question) and ritualism. The sunnah such as a certain type of dress, wearing of a beard, and having more than one wife, is viewed in the same way.

Sunnah means “way of Life” which implies that which the Holy Prophet (s) practiced. The ritualistic approach is responsible for our lack of understanding of what Islam stands for. All human activity, individual or social, consists of an inner and outer side of life. If a person wears a particular type of dress, which places him in the category of “Ulema”. Therefore, people are inclined to think that person is a holy person. They may not know the person or his character or inner aspects of his life. They may kiss his hands, which is fine, but, is this what Islam stands for?

Islam has emphasized the spirit first and the body next. In the human personality itself the primary importance belongs to the spirit or the soul. It is the soul, which sees, hears, talks, which the body is only a medium for it. In the same manner the inner aspects of life are fundamental. Islam has to come to build up those inner dimensions of Life.

The inner and outer aspects of life must harmonise, therefore the outer aspect of life have also been emphasized—not as such by Islam, but by the later Fuqaha or jurists. For instance, the Holy Prophet (S)  said that you can wear any dress as long as you do not violate the principle of  Haya ( modesty, decency) and you do not imitate the religious dress of any other community.

Now, examine this principle.Look at the fact that the Holy Prophet(S) would wear the same type of dress that Abu Jahl or Abu Lahb wore. Why? If there had to be sanctity in dress then why did the Holy Prophet(S) not prescribe a new dress which God Almighty had prescribed for Muslims? Why, as God’s Prophet did he continue to wear the same dress that he wore before and the same that was worn by the Kuffar of Arabia? Why? This is a very important point to bear in mind.When people came to see him and presented him with  Roman gowns and Yeminite gowns from Christian and Jews, he put them on and made use of them. Why?

Present day Muslims cultivate an uncommitted attitude towards Islam. In my life I have visited many countries including USA, Europe, Africa, almost  in every Muslim community everywhere , some religious people say that if you wear a quardrangular Kurta, a triangular pyjama and two pointed or hexagonal cap then you are following Sunnah. I am amazed by this saying because the Holy Prophet(S) never wore any such dress and neither did the Khulafa al Rashidin ( Righteous Caliphs). Where did they get this sunnah? It is quite alright that when we wear an English or western suit then we are damaging our own dignity. There is no doubt about it, but this is not a distinctive point between Islam and Kufr.

If all English or Americans were to embrace Islam would you want them all to wear your pyjama? Therefore, distinctions ought to be there, but all factors have to be taken into consideration. Similarly in the case of beard. The Holy Prophet ( S)  had a beautiful beard, but Abu Lahb also had a beard, most Christians and pagans of Arabia also had flowing beards because Gillette and other blade manufacturers were not yet in existence. So , if the Prophet had a beard and a person imitates him in keeping a beard out of love for him, it is then an act of piety. But then after that he is walking the razor’s edge because after keeping this signboard of love for the Holy Prophet ( S) , he has to be very careful in his behaviour not to insult the memory of the Holy Prophet ( S) by keeping that beard.

Furthermore, our religious thought of today is based on the assumption that as long as the uniform of  Muslims is there, no training as Muslims is required. The uniform is regarded  as more important than training in our religious thought. If a country distributes uniforms to people and does not train them in military science, what do you think will happen to this army in times of war when only people with uniforms are sent to the battle front? This is exactly what Muslims are doing everywhere. Uniforms with no training are like ”putting cart before the horse”.

The Sunnah is an outward manifestation of an inner quality. The inner quality as given  in the Holy Quran is taqwa. This is the umm al fadail, the cardinal virtues, also called taqwa-Allah—to fear God and to revere Him in His Majesty. The emphasis is to keep God always in mind and be conscious of accountability before God.This is taqwa. The word taqwa is from waqa – to avoid what is wrong.It is primarily an attitude of negation in order to avoid what is wrong which is the first step towards affirmation as in the Kalima.It starts with negation of all else “La ilaha”---no god; “illa Allah” but Allah !

Similarly in taqwa it is the negative aspect, not to do any evil that is most important. Unless you clean your slate, the writing of the positive actions of your life on the tablet of your heart will not come. It will all be confusion. Imam al Ghazzali (ra) and other great thinkers have said: “ The sunnah starts by imitating the Holy Prophet ( S) out of love for Allah and love for fellow human beings,” Biw, what is the sunnah of the Holy Prophet ( S) with regard to love for God? Of course, it is so comprehensive that nobody can describe it, but let us take few examples:



The Holy Prophet ( S) used to stand for prayer at one place during the night, while all others were sleeping. His beloved wife, Umm al muminin Aisha Siddiqah (ra) said that he would sometimes stand still for hours until his feet would become swollen and the capillaries in his feet would brust and blood flowed from his feet. Has anyone of us prayed like this? Is this not  regarded as sunnah of the Holy Prophet (S) ? When he read from Quran in the prayer, althought he would read it silently, a sound used to come from his chest as if it was big kettle in which something was boiling. So, he would pray and utter whatever he recitied with all his heart and total personality. We perform he salah like an exercise, devoid of any spirit and then we consider it to be the sunnah.

Our degenerating attitude deforms and deshapes the original practice and spirit of the sunnah. A person who rests in the afternoon claims he is following a sunnah of the Holy Prophet ( s) since he did the same. But remember, the Holy Prophet ( s) was the most industrious and hardworking person ever born in the history of mankind. He used to work the whole day and worship most of the night, and in order to worship during the most of the night he would take about half an hours rest during the day. We sleep the whole night until the fajar prayers and we sleep in the afternoon and then claim to be following the sunnah. How can we expect a reward from Allah Almighty? It is an insult to Islam and to the practice of Holy Prophet (S).

People also say that the Holy Prophet ( s) used to like perfumes, so we put on eau de cologone after baths. Allah Akbar. We have been told in the hadith:

The essence of wisdom is fear of Allah.

If you have the fear of accountability before God, you cannot do anything wrong. It is only when we become “ghafil” or absent minded that we we loose sight of the fact that God is watching us and He is going to call us to account or may see the fruits of our good deeds. This is the starting point of sunnah. Human values are built in your inner self. Truth, justice, beauty, honesty, progressiveness, dynamism, optimism, courage and wisdom are all the inner values. This is the sunnah of the Holy Prophet (s).

Once these inner values have been built, then it becomes an obligation of love that a person’s inner self becomes an image of the Holy Prophet’s (s) personality. Naturally his outward form will also reflect the outer personality of the Holy prophet (s). But to try to build the outer is like having a timber wall where the wood is infested with white ants. Painting is only done on the outside and not inside. Subsequently, the white ants are eating the wood and such a structure will not last. If the wood is healthy it will stand even without painting the outside.

If my heart is not mumin it cannot be the repository of the highest human qualities as embodied in the sunnah of the Holy Prophet (s). Otherwise, I am more concerned about the external adornment and deceive others and myself. That is not the way to follow Islam. We should start from the heart. Islam came to change the heart. We are told in the Quraan about the functions of the Holy Prophet(s):

He it is who has sent unto the unlettered people a prophet from among themselves, to convey to them His messages and to purify themselves, and to impart to them the Book and the wisdom—whereas before they were indeed in error.

(Q 62:2)
Look at the order of merit.The first is the communication of the message as it comes from God. The second is reformation and purification ( tazkiyah). Of the entire personality of his followers and only after that was he in a position to impart to them the knowledge of Al-Kitab and wisom, Al-Hikmah. Our instiutions of theology have nothing to do with tazkiyah. They teach theology to anybody and only emphasise the external. It is putting the cart before the horse.

The sunnah is actually the transformation of the heart, on the basis of all those human values which reached their perfection in the Holy Prophet(s). The start is from the innerself and has to be built up first; then the external manifestation of those great qualities will automatically come.

The inner dimensions of the sunnah is intimately linked with tasawuf or what is known as Sufism.

Islamic Spiritual Healing & Talismanic Science of Taaweez

ISLAMIC SPIRITUAL HEALING

By
Sahibzada Asim Maharvi
chairman@chishtiya.org



“There is no disease that Allah has sent down, except that He has also sent down its treatment.”

The present-day thinkers all agree that previous age was “age of faith “and the present age is the “age of doubt. Our youth is the caught in the cross-fire of ultra-conservatism and the ultra-modernism. To elders conservatism is virtue and to youth it has become vice. The entire universe is conservative only fundamentally and it is changing all the time. The philosophy of change is based on the pursuit for knowledge----to fly on the wings of the knowledge to even greater heights, the quest for discovery and to probe all those resources which are here. Human probing brought technological changes and development which further not only changed the cultural mentality and a great psychological change in focus towards metaphysical and spiritual reality. Today most people think that human being is essentially flesh and bones! Islam does not say this! The Holy Quran declares that the essential human being is a space less and timeless being created in the transcendental world. The human essence is not the material, but spiritual.

In the Islamic worldview everything-----including the heavens and the earth and all that is in between--- is seen as a manifestation of the creative aspect of Allah Almighty to Whom everything living or non-living, submits. At the heart of this is the concept of Tawhid, the Unity of God, embodied in the first part of “Shahada”, the testimony of faith. La ilaha illa`Lalah (There is no god but Allah).Everything in Islamic civilization, including the health sciences, has sprung forth from this fundamental statement which is an expression of the transcendence of divine unity. To proclaim that there is no god but Allah is to testify that there is an essential unifying principle behind the apparent multiplicity of the universe which, in Islam, is not restricted to merely the observable and perceptible reality but goes beyond to the realm of the Unseen.


Human personality is composed of the different shell circling the very essence of human being called “Soul”. The soul appears as a centre of light in intense motion. Now this intense light is guarded by five shells, the bodily or physical shell, the electronic shell, the psychical shell, the astro-psychical shell and astral shell. Now all these shells are governed by different realties. The bodily shell, when it is sick you use herbs or medicines to treat it. If the electronic shell is sick, electronised medicine and practise like reflexology and Chinese technique of acupuncture are used for healing. The psychiatrist use different techniques to help treating the sickness of psychical shell which applies to the mind only, which in turn is a physical ailment. The psycho-astral shell is governed by certain symbols or by certain letters of alphabets. The astral shell is governed by numbers.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Dhahabi in his “Kitab al Tib” ( Book of Medicine) put emphasis on holistic medicine-involving physical, moral, psychological and spiritual aspects of being—is the essence of Islamic medical tradition which traces its foundation to the revealed Book of Allah, the Qura`n , and to the Hadith, the sayings of the Holy Prophet of Islam.

Scientific research teaches that the process of healing involves the physical as well as the spiritual and psychological domains of human existence. The tradition of spiritual healing in Islam is based on the recognition of the effect of spiritual health on the physical body. The body itself is seen as mere receptacle for the spirit, which alone constitutes the immortal part of human existence. The body is healthy if the spirit is healthy, and the spirit is healthy if it is not in conflict with the Divine Writ. The submission of the spirit to the Divine commandment produces a harmony in the soul and the body which makes all the limbs and the organs function properly.

Prayer can cause recovery from the pain of the heart, stomach, and the intestines. This is because prayer diverts mind from the pain and reduce its feeling, whereby power to repel pain is strengthened. Doctors try all means to strengthen this power—sometimes by feeding some kind of medicine and sometimes by inspiring hope and fear. Now prayer with concentration combines most of these means of benefit, because it at once installs fear, self effacing humility, Love of God and remembrance of last day.

The great Muslim scientist Ibn-eSina or Avicenna honoured in the west with the title of “Prince of Physicians”, based his system of Medicine on the equilibrium of the four humors, blood phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These four humors were then related to the four elements such as fire, air, water and earth of the natural world. Avicenna believed that the human spirit has been constituted with the power of restoring balance in the body, and that the task of medicine is merely to aid this process. The process of regaining health is therefore, greatly facilitated by the use of practices which produce spiritual healing.

The spiritual healing is related to the cosmic orders in the universe through the doctrine of the correspondence between the all levels of reality, the intelligible hierarchy , the heavenly bodies, the order of numbers, the parts of the body, the letters of the alphabets which are the “elements” of the Sacred Book,etc. The seven cervical and the 12 dorsal vertebrae correspond to the seven planets and the 12 signs of Zodiac, as well as to the seven days of the week and the 12 months of the year. The total numbers of the discs of the vertebra, which they consider to be 28, correspond to the letters of the Arabic alphabets and the station of the moon.

The early Sufis or the Islamic spiritual scientist developed the science of “Ta`wiz”. Ta`wiz is always based on a verse of Holy Quran or sometime on accepted prayer. For the sickness of psycho-astral shell, Ta`wiz are written in letters of alphabets and for astral shell the numerical value is calculated according to the “Abjad” system. Abjad is the special system in Sufi sciences, in which each alphabet has been assigned with a certain numerical value. After calculating the numerical value of certain Ayyats, or verse of Holy Quran, than that number is divided into 6, 10, 8, or 5. These numbers are written in the special forms or formulas. Sometimes Ta`wiz are written in squares, triangle and sometimes with different materials. Certain Ta`wiz are written on specified days, time and sometime by the position of the houses of the planets.

The spiritual medicine of Ta`wiz is very effective and interesting thing, it not only treat the physical, mental, psychic or spiritual sickness it also strengthens its powers for what has not yet happened, it works like a Tonic. One thing which is very important to remember is that like other medical sciences, this talismanic science is handed over from a teacher to a student. Only those able students who are qualified enough to diagnose the spiritual disease are the spiritual doctors. If an unable person will try to copy the numerical order or copy the shape of the Ta`wiz and give it to anyone it will not work, and it might be harmful also. This is purely Talismanic and that is the reason that it has not got any copy rights.



Sahibzada Asim Maharvi, born in Maharsharif, Pakistan. Belongs to the family of great Sufi Saint of later Chishti order Hazrat Khwaja Nur Muhammad Maharvi Chishti (R.A).Educated and trained in spiritual Sufi atmosphere since childhood. Early study travels to Central Asia, Russia, Europe; United States of America met different Sufi Masters of various Tariqa and got the honour for being in their service.is a leading columnist  on Tasawuf, he conducts TV shows for spiritual healing, translated the traditional Sufi Poetry and has written two books on the Biography of great Sufi Saint Shah Suleyman Taunsvi, translating the book on Zkir and meditation “ kashkol-e-Kalemi” of Hazrat Shah Kalim Ullah Jahanabadi.

Contact: +92-300-5532553
Or e-mail: asimsahibzada@maktoob.com