I believe I’ve heard it as “The missteps (kha6a’) of the shaykh may be better than the ‘correct views’ (9awab) of the murid.” [excuse the really bad translation] To put it in context, of course, the Shaykh was talking about the murid asking the Shaykh about something and the Shaykh “missing the point” of the question, only to be revealed later that it was the murid asking the wrong question, and not the Shaykh giving the wrong answer.

May this reach you in the best state of health and iman. Ameen.

Excellent post sidi. Keep up the good work.

masalama

As salam alaikum Yursil

Very good post, masha’Allah. I’d like to draw attention to something related:

“The reality is that Salafis are not strong legalists sticking to Shariat closely, they are literalists. Salafis end up taking some unnecessarily harsh positions of law, yes. This may make them seem superficially very stringent about Shariat. Though, at the same time, it is their wide interpretive possibilities that also end up with very lax opinions towards the law.”

Perhaps we can add here that it is from salafi positions that the entirely new idea of ‘halal’ banking system, based merely on paper money, is regarded also as islamic, but it entails to adapt Islamic laws of money and transactions to the capitalist and banking system anyway. Some of their most important ulamas belonged to financial comitees of ‘islamic banks’.

Is it not strange that, for example, giants such as HSBC and Citibank have also developed ‘islamic banking divisions’? One of those people even said, straighlty, that after all, islamic banking is not really so different to ordinary banking (usury) as people would think.

Of course, he was talking about that ‘islamic banking’ that is allowed by many salafi figures.

Salams

Nureddin

if this is the argument that he brought, ok then, my bad, there is no need to throw insults about this. But is this article not going on and on about the same Sufi-Salafi ordeal?

and Allah Knows best

To Zaazaan,

Hate to point out the obvious, but,…isn’t that the ENTIRE point of Yursil’s post? The “Middle Way” being the Prophet (SAW)’s way,? As you said, – the “Str8″ path? It sounds to me like your comment has all the familiar symptoms of an futile argument in childbirth. Painful but in this case the fruit of labor is not worth the effort.

It really does not matter in the end, on the day of judgment we weill not be asked this, rather we will be asked if we followed the str8 path, that of Rasulullah (Sallallahu ‘Alaihe Wa Sallam), more thought should be given to this.

As usual, this is so timely. I had just the other day been commenting to someone else that this specifying “this group does this, that group does that” is pretty superficial and a way of boxing people in that may often not even be a complete or accurate portrayal of the group or how they would identify themselves.

I know Muslims who speak of “The Middle Way” who I have great respect for. Many of them are “traditional” Muslims who believe in or practice tasawuff as well. To them (and to me), the concept of The Middle Way is that it is the medium path, based on adherence to the Qur’an and Sunnah, with guidance from those who know. The two extremes, to our thinking, are the secular (individual freedom, I can do what I want to do, I don’t answer to anyone) and the extremists (those who turn spirituality into something that suits their own blackened hearts).

However, I do also know of those who are what you describe here: those who don’t know anything about the middle way but refer to it as though it is something they are following. Those who think middle way means being “moderate” in the sense that they can pick and choose and discard those elements of the deen that are uncomfortable for themselves. I think this is a great number of Muslims (and people of other faith traditions have this issue as well). It is true that much of our modern lives is at the extreme pole of one or the other side, mostly on the lax side where we just leave off elements of our practice. We know that there are some others who have gone to the other pole and believe it is their duty to kill all non-Muslims, to engage in behavior that is destructive, and they believe this is part of their deen.

I really like the quote and sentiments posted by UmmLayth on this matter. And I think Saifuddin hits it quite directly when he says the problem is that we elevate our own desires and ideas above those who have gone before us. We have to come to terms with the simple fact that we, in essence, know NOTHING. We are not hafiz of Qur’an, we have not dedicated decades of our lives to memorizing hadiths and their chains of transmission, much less the science of determining the quality/validity of those hadiths or their interpretation. We are very much mired in supporting the worst ideas of our nafs; we are sluggish to pray, lazy to work on our issues, argumentative with anyone who disagrees with us, quick to judge, slow to help a fellow human in need. We spend more time in front of our computers and televisions than anything else. And yet we want to trust our own judgments on what we should be doing and tell others what they need to be doing. SubhanAllah.

Our current lifestyles are extreme and steeped in extreme ignorance. Until we begin to work on our own, with proper guidance, we cannot effect any change elsewhere and have no business worrying about what others are doing. I believe it was Dhul Nun who said something to the effect of “the one who sees their own faults cannot see the faults of another” because we have plenty of our own issues to address that if we took even a tiny portion of our time to devote to that work, we would have no time left to wonder what another is doing.

as-salaamu ‘alaikum, good post! Very strong! MashaAllah to you! Especially when you wrote,

“When Imam Ghazali (R) found he couldn’t trust even his sense of sight or touch, why are we so comfortable in trusting our own judgement in finding the best path for us?”

Ooof! Look at that! The Truth; Haqq! We keep putting ourselves, our own opinions at a higher station than those that went before us. This is not real, we are imagining things. Without a connection to the inheritors of the Holy Prophet, Sayyidina Maulana Muhammad (alayhi as-salatu wa salam) what can Muslims accomplish? That is like trying to pray jumu’ah with no imam! And on top of that everyone is reading the surah of their choice aloud. Imagine that, it would be chaos, different surat; different speeds; different volumes. Chaos, then perhaps the women would decide,

“Hey if everyone is doing as they like, I will too.”

An now women move into the men’s area imitating the bad manners of the men, chaos. Figuratively, this is close to what we are looking at in terms of leadership for this ummah. And how long will this last? More importantly, how much longer do we have to do something about it?