When the Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) left this world, he left behind a religion, Islam, which was remarkable for its homogeneity and simplicity, its comprehensiveness and the ease with which it could be practised, all at the same time. Although political differences and schisms started appearing during the period of the Khulfai-i-Rashideen, the homogeneity and simplicity of Islam continued undisturbed upto almost the beginning of the eighth century A.D. The dawn of this century brought about two far-reaching developments in Muslim history - the consolidation of the Omayyad caliphate and the rapid and remarkable territorial expansion of the Muslim empire. The working of the Omayyad Caliphate seemed to indicate a greater involvement in the day-to-day affairs of this world at the cost of the God - consciousness which had characterised the period of the Khulfai-i-Rashideen. The expansion of the area of Muslim rule on the other band brought into the mainstream of life, a large number of alien influences from the Christian and Persian world which began to affect the thinking of Muslims. In actual fact these influences started adversely affecting the homogeneity of their religion as it was being practised till then.
As the eighth century progressed, the two developments mentioned above gave rise to the emergence of two distinct and divergent interpretations of Islam which ultimately took the form of two divergent paths of Shariat and Tariqat. Before proceeding further it might be as well to define the above two terms in the sense in which they have been used in this article. The path of Shariat is considered to be the path Ravenfields of a purely legalistic interpretation and exposition of Islam, emphasis on its outer forms and rituals, and the finer details of the performance of Ibadat and the day-to-day duties of this world. The path of Tariqat, on the other hand, lays all possible emphasis on the development of a consciousness of God, or living in His presence all the time, on faith in the Hereafter without any mental reservations, on an unshakeable belief that this world and all its pleasures and comforts are not the ‘be all’ and ‘end all’ of human life, but only a transient phase from which man graduates to a higher form of existence.
The best exponents of the first alternative interpretation of Islam namely Shariah were the five great Fuqaha who had laid down the broad guide-lines for the establishment of their own schools of Shariat, namely Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik, Imam Shafai, Imam Ahmad bin Hambal and Imam Jafar Sadiq.
As for the path of Tarqiat, the two greatest names in the early development of this form of Islam are Ibrahim bin Adham (d.777 A.D.) and Rabia-al-Adwiyya of Basra (d.776 A.D.) The remarkable thing about these early travellers on the path of Tariqat is that they were completely orthodox Muslim in regard to their beliefs and practices. What did differentiate them from other Muslims, however, was their fervent piety and quietism carried to the extreme. The other important point to be noted is that there was not even the remotest sign of any foreign influence in the thinking of these early Sufis. However, after the passing away of these early exponents of devotional mysticism which was clearly an integral part of the Islamic message, came a new generation of Sufis in the ninth century who were deeply influenced by Greek and Aryan philosophies and introduced to the travellers of the path of Tariqat speculative and pantheistic modes of thinking which were clearly not a part of the real message of Islam.
Some of the important personalities who laid down the direction in which the path of Tariqat was to move, further and further away from the original message of Islam, to name only a few, were, Abu Sulaiman-al-Darani, Dhun-num-Al-Misri, and Bayazid Bistami. It were these Sufis who developed the concept of Fana-fillah and Baqa-Billah, Software something which is alien to the orthodox interpretation of the message of the Quran.
However, the greater tragedy to befall the Muslims was the development and propagation of the thesis that the Holy Quran had two shades of meaning. One was the obvious and was meant for the ordinary mortals, but there was another deeper shade of meaning which could only be understood by a select band of elites to whom it was to be transmitted through special lines of succession. While the path of Tariqat was thus being turned more and more away from the central path of Islam, the controllers of the path of Shariat were busy in similarly diverting it away to the opposite side by reinterpreting the requirements of Shariat to suit the needs and wishes of the establishments of their times.
At the same time the new class of Fuqaha who succeeded the five Imams, started such hair-splitting elaboration of Shariah and the introduction of such totally uncalled for rigidity in interpreting the requirements of Shariah that it paralysed all initiative the and all thinking on the part of individual Muslims. Worst of all they diverted the attention of the average Muslims from developing and maintaining a living consciousness of God, which is the very essence of Islam. This they did by creating the impression that the meticulous observance of the requirements of Shariah was all that was there in Islam.
During the tenth century, things went from bad to worse, as numerous heresies based on local beliefs and superstitions raised their head, and doubt and uncertainty gripped the mind of Muslims. On one side the rigidity of the Shariah approach led to the writing of such books as "Kitab-ul-Hil." consisting of devices to circumvent the requirements of Shariah Law without apparently disobeying them. The most well-known such device is the transferring of all your property in the name of your wife for one month in a year so that you should not be liable to pay Zakat because the property had not remained in your possession for one full year. The acceptance of such blatantly false devices and the popularity of their use was due to the fact that the travellers on the path of Shariah, had by then lost all consciousness of God, and the fear of God and the Day of Judgement, which are the central pillars on which the edifice of faith or Iman is built by Islam. Without such faith the Shariah laws appear to be no better than man-made laws, which everyone feels free to circumvent if he can. On the other side, the travellers on the path of Tariqat moved further and farther away from the beliefs and norms of conduct laid down in the Quran, propelled by political confusion and frustration on one hand and a mixture of speculative philosophy and Persian heresies on the other.
In this period of confusion and decline of proper understanding of Islam came Imam Ghazali (1050-111 A.D.) one of the greatest scholars and teachers of Islam who placed the path of Tariqat on a proper footing by bringing it back to the central line of correct belief and faith from which it had deviated. Ghazali’s greatest contribution to the Islamic thought of his time was to reintroduce the element of fear of God in his moral teachings, something from which both the followers of Shariah and Tariqat had deviated over the centuries. In reconciling faith with reason, he brought the Muslims back from aimless scholastic speculation to an in-depth study of the Quran.
Imam Ghazali’s was the last attempt to bring these two paths of Shariah and Tariqat back to the true centre of Islam, but after him came the debacle and fall of Baghdad, and end in the accompanying environment of fear and disorganisation, the two paths moved farther away from each other as well as from the true centre of Islam. The travellers on the path of Tariqat shedding off the prescribed rituals of Islam embraced such heretical practices as tombworship and the personality cult of saints. The wayfarers of the path of Shariah on the other hand made the Shariah more rigid and developed the cult of blind taqlid by notionally closing the door of Ijtihad. This position has more or less continued till the present day. While the middle path of true Islam has been bereft of many travellers, the two deviations which have moved farther and farther away from the centre remain occupied by throngs of people who think they alone are following the true path of Islam.
It is now time to review the above developments in Muslim history, the directions and divergencies, the fruitless wanderings away from the true path by the Muslim Ummah in the light of three significant verses of the Holy Quran. The first is Verse 143 of Surah Baqar wherein it is stated, "Thus have We made of you an Ummah justly balanced. That you might be witnesses over the nations and the Apostle a witness over yourselves". The second are Verses 1 and 2 from Surah-i-Kehaf which state, "Praise be to God, who hath sent to His Servant the Book, and hath allowed therein no crookedness: He hath made it straight and clear in order that He may warn the godless...." The third is Ayat 17 of Surah Qamar which states "And We have Course indeed made the Quran easy to understand and remember....." This verse is repeated four times as a refrain in Surah Qamar. In his commentary on the first verse reproduced above, Allama Yusuf Ali writes "The essence of Islam is to avoid all extravagance on either side. It is a sober practical religion". Further he says, "The mission of Islam is to curb the Builder extreme formalism of the Mosaic law, and the extreme other worldliness professed by Christianity". Yet amazing as it may seem, this is exactly what the Muslim Ummah did leaving the middle path of moderation which was true Islam, to wander away, some on the extreme right of religious formalism and others on the extreme left of other-worldliness.
The Quran’s directive that the Muslims behave as the "Ummat Wusta" remained unfulfilled. Of the second Verse, Allama Yusuf Ali’s comments are that ,"The Quran is above all things straight, clear and perspicuous, and its directions are plain for everyone to understand." And yet from an early stage in the life of the Muslim Ummah some people started finding hidden meanings and double meanings in the Quran, leading to schisms and deviations which should never have occurred if they had given serious attention to the second and third Verses of the Quran quoted above.
For there is no denying the fact that while during all these centuries Muslims have deviated both to the right and to the left of the middle path of Islam, the true message of Islam has been there all along for all to see. The true middle path of Islam is neither the soulless formalism of Shariah nor the self-centred other-worldliness of Tariqat, but the high road of living in the sight of God a full and meaningful life in this world, without getting lost in it.
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