A First-Person Journey into Qur’anic Wisdom and Islamic Mysticism Jabril Omar Hakeem Abu Hussein Muhammad REVISED EDITION — OPENING INSTALLMENT Editorial Preface I approach this work as a journey of reading, questioning, and spiritual reflection. The earlier manuscript combined discussions of the Qur’an and jihad with extensive material drawn from Jewish Kabbalah. In this new edition I have chosen a different subject: Islamic teachings about divine unity, revelation, the refinement of the self, and the traditions of contemplation commonly called tasawwuf or Sufism. This is a new adaptation, not a claim that the Qur’an contains the doctrines of the Zohar or that Islamic spirituality descends from Kabbalah. Where the earlier manuscript explored the sefirot, Ein Sof, or tikkun, I must build a fresh account using Islamic concepts in their own context, rather than substitute one sacred name for another. I write in the first person as an author and student of these questions. My “I” expresses the perspective of this book; it does not pretend that I witnessed events centuries before my birth, or that an interpretation of a religious text is an established empirical fact. Qur’anic references below are given by surah and verse. Their descriptions are paraphrases, not quotations from a particular English translation. Historical descriptions and my spiritual reflections are kept distinct. 1
al-Qaeda When I encounter the word jihad, I begin with its Arabic sense of exertion or striving. In Islamic traditions it can describe moral and spiritual effort, the work of speaking or acting responsibly, and, in defined legal and historical circumstances, armed struggle. The meaning changes with speaker, time, and context. I therefore do not use jihad as a synonym for secret wisdom, mysticism, sorcery, or terrorism. I also recognize that Muslims disagree about particular interpretations and applications of the term. I distinguish that broad religious vocabulary from modern jihadism, a term used in scholarship for certain political and militant movements that invoke selected interpretations of jihad. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda belong to that modern history, not to the formative period of Islam or the origins of Sufi practice. Bin Laden helped establish al-Qaeda in the late 1980s amid the networks formed around the Afghan war. Al-Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011. I name these events for historical clarity: neither a modern armed movement nor its violence defines the range of Islamic belief or the lives of Muslims. My interest in spiritual striving is instead directed toward the questions of conscience that many Muslim writers have explored: What do I do with pride when it appears in my thoughts? How do I distinguish an honest act from a performance for others? What does remembrance of God demand of my treatment of another person? These are not substitutes for the separate history of armed conflict. They are the opening questions of a book about inner discipline and religious imagination. 2
The Meaning of the Journey I begin with a question that is deceptively simple: how can a finite human being come to know anything about the One who exceeds every image that the mind can make? The question does not drive me away from the world. It returns me to it. I wake, eat, speak, remember, and forget; my ordinary habits become the very field in which I examine what I believe. I do not expect a secret diagram to resolve this tension. I begin with tawhid, the affirmation of God’s oneness, and with the Qur’an as the central text through which Islamic theology and devotion develop. Surah al-Ikhlas (112) speaks of God’s oneness and incomparability. I take this not as permission to describe the divine essence in elaborate images, but as a caution against making my imagination the measure of God. I may contemplate the signs of creation, but I cannot place the Creator inside the categories by which I sort created things. My inquiry therefore calls for humility. I can study, reason, and pray without claiming possession of the mystery I seek. The Qur’an also directs my attention outward. In 3:190–191, reflection on the heavens and earth is joined to the remembrance of God. I read that relationship as a discipline of attention. The night sky, the course of a season, and the fragility of my own body do not function as a secret alphabet whose letters I can manipulate. They prompt me to ask what it means to be alive, responsible, and dependent. I am not the center of the cosmos; I am one of its witnesses. 3
I distinguish the Qur’an from my explanation of it. The text holds a foundational place in Muslim life, while interpretations of its passages have been developed in different schools, regions, and centuries. I cannot make every commentary speak with one voice. Nor can I treat an inward reading as if it erased a verse’s language, setting, or outward implications. An ethical reading has to answer for its method. The difference between the outward and inward dimensions of religious life matters to me. A gesture of generosity has a visible form, yet its inward quality depends in part on intention. Prayer is enacted through words and movements, but it can also become a test of whether I am attentive or distracted. Islamic traditions have long discussed this relationship through terms such as zahir and batin, the apparent and the inward. I use those terms carefully: a search for inward significance is not a license to ignore the obligations of other people or to invent meanings without restraint. The Self as a Place of Striving I do not need to imagine an enemy beyond myself to find struggle. My first difficulties appear within ordinary decisions: the temptation to win admiration rather than offer help, the impulse to answer criticism with anger, and the comfort of believing that my motives are always pure. Islamic writers describe the nafs, the self, in several ways, and the Qur’an presents different conditions of the soul. I do not reduce those discussions to a single psychological formula. I use them to ask how the self may be educated through awareness, repentance, and action. In 91:7–10 the Qur’an connects the soul to moral discernment and speaks of its cultivation and corruption. I hear a demand for responsibility, not a guarantee that I can become perfect through willpower. The work begins again whenever I fail. Repentance, tawbah, 4
acknowledge what I have done, repair an injury where possible, and turn toward a different way of living. Spiritual writing becomes empty for me if it does not reach the lives of others. Remembrance, Prayer, and Presence Dhikr, the remembrance of God, gives a name to one practice of returning attention. The Qur’an urges remembrance in many places, including 13:28. Forms of dhikr vary across Muslim communities, and some Sufi orders employ repeated divine names or formulas under the guidance of a teacher. I need not present every form as universal. The practice invites me to notice how quickly I forget what I profess to value. Returning is not a dramatic revelation; sometimes it is the quiet decision to stop, listen, and remember. I place prayer alongside remembrance rather than treating either as a shortcut to extraordinary powers. The point of worship in this book is not domination over unseen forces. It is a relationship of devotion and an opportunity for ethical transformation. The Qur’an’s account of the divine nearness in 50:16 becomes a source of reflection, yet I resist interpreting nearness as a physical location. Classical Muslim theologians and mystics have described divine transcendence and nearness in different ways. Their differences should sharpen my care with language. 5
As I turn to Islamic mystical history, I encounter a range of persons and writings rather than a single hidden society. Early Muslim ascetics emphasized restraint, worship, and accountability. Over time, Sufi authors developed vocabularies of spiritual stations, passing states, love, knowledge, and companionship. Later communities organized around teachers and lines of transmission. The histories of these groups are varied, and their practices are sometimes disputed by other Muslims. I will not collapse those disagreements into an imaginary uninterrupted school. Al-Ghazali’s writings offer one influential attempt to connect outward religious learning with the reform of inward intention. Ibn al-Arabi’s works pursue different and often more speculative questions about existence and divine self-disclosure. I read them as distinct thinkers, not interchangeable authorities. Their writings invite inquiry; they do not replace the Qur’an. The language of divine love, too, requires context. Poetic union and nearness are not automatically literal claims that God and a human being become identical. What I Mean by the Veil The veil in my title is a metaphor for the limits of perception and the habits that cloud judgment. It is not a claim that I can remove every boundary between the human and the divine. I may mistake noise for insight and secrecy for depth. I may also mistake the familiar for the whole truth. A disciplined journey requires both openness and correction: I read, compare, reflect, and remain willing to say that I do not know. I now understand the direction of this book more clearly. I will examine the Qur’an’s account of signs, the discipline of the self, the history of Sufi thought, the questions of divine unity and love, and the ways that contemplative practice touches responsibility in ordinary life. I 6
pursue these questions. The path begins with honesty about what the texts say, what interpreters have argued, and what I myself am trying to understand. Editorial and Source Notes Adaptation note: This opening is a newly composed Islamic mystical adaptation inspired by the original manuscript’s inquiry into hidden meaning, contemplative practice, and the search for the divine. It is not a sentence-by-sentence rewrite of the 582-page source. The original opening discusses Kabbalah, sefirot, Ein Sof, tikkun, and Merkabah; those are Jewish historical and theological subjects and are not renamed here as Islamic concepts. Qur’anic references for further checking: 112:1–4 (divine oneness); 3:190–191 (reflection and remembrance); 91:7–10 (the soul and moral cultivation); 13:28 (remembrance); 50:16 (divine nearness). Interpretive remarks here are paraphrases, not a published translation. Background reading: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, “Mysticism in Sufi Islam” (2015); Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies, “Jihad” (2018 version); Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sufism”; and standard historical accounts of al-Qaeda and the September 11 attacks. No comprehensive fact-check of the source manuscript has been performed. 7
A First-Person Journey into Qur’anic Wisdom and Islamic Mysticism Jabril Omar Hakeem Abu Hussein Muhammad NEWLY WRITTEN ADAPTATION — CHAPTER 2 1
Fleepit Digital © 2021