Voices of Islam (72 page)

God said in the Holy Qur’an:

Glory to (God) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who Heareth and Seeth (all things).

(Qur’an 17:1)

This verse describes the important journey that the Prophet Muhammad made between the Prohibited Mosque in Mecca and the Temple in Jerusalem

The Importance and Meaning of Prayer in Islam
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(referred to as the ‘‘Farthest Mosque,’’
al-Masjid al-Aqsa
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), a journey that in one moment bridged three divinely revealed religions.

SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KA‘BA

One of the distinctive characteristics of Islamic ritual prayer is that the worshipper is obliged to keep his vision, both external and internal, concen- trated upon the
qibla.
The focus of every worshipper is, and must be, a holy place. People whose understanding is purely external believe facing the Ka‘ba is of intrinsic value.

Those with a mystic understanding know that the Ka‘ba represents the spiritual pole of this world, around which all creation turns. Looking at photographs of the Ka‘ba taken from above, we see the worshippers moving around it in perfectly arranged concentric circles. This assembly gathers in imitation of the heavenly kingdom, for all these circles have one center regardless of their distance from it. At the spiritual level, that center is the Divine Presence. While each worshipper faces the Ka‘ba’s walls of stone and mortar, these are not the focus. If we remove the four walls, what do we find? Each person facing someone else. In this is a deep and subtle secret that we leave for the reader to ponder.

When the spiritual seeker realizes his or her station on the circle of the People of the
Qibla,
he enters what is known as the Circle of Unconditional Lovers (
da’irat al-muhibbin
). That is the circle of Muslims at the fi level in the way of God: the level of love. Such love is not related to any desire, but is a purely Platonic, spiritual love between the believer and his or her Lord. God is the center of the circle, and the believers are each a point on its circumference. Each has his or her own connection to the center. That means each has his or her own direction,
qibla,
toward the Divine Presence. As this connection becomes apparent to the believer, that radius becomes like a tun- nel into which the seeker begins to step from the circumference of the circle. Upon making his first steps into that tunnel, he begins to discover countless negative characteristics within himself. As he discovers one characteristic after another, he begins to eliminate them, progressing down the tunnel to become a ‘‘seeker in the circle of lovers on the spiritual journey,’’ progressing ever nearer to the
qibla
at the center. In the metaphysics of Ibn ‘Arabi, the re- nowned mystic scholar speaks of a spiritual hierarchy in which the emanations from the Divine are received by a single human receptor who is the leader of all these circles of lovers and through him spreads to the rest of humanity, each according to his or her degree or station. This individual represents the Prophet in his or her time as the perfect servant of God. Thus, under one spiritual leader, all are moving constantly closer to the Divine Presence.

In the Sufi understanding, which delves deeply into the mystic knowledge and symbolism of Islam’s outward forms, it is said that the Prohibited

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Voices of the Spirit

Mosque represents the heart of the believer. Thus, the inner direction of prayer is toward the sanctified heart. What is the sanctified heart? At the first level of spirituality, the sanctified heart is the heart that is purified of all wrong thoughts, negativity, and dark intent. This level is called the Level of the Secret (
sirr
). Once that secret is opened within the sanctified heart, the seeker moves to the heart of the heart, known as Secret of the Secret (
sirr al-sirr
). This is the level of purifi from any attachment to worldly desires. Beyond these levels of the heart are ‘‘the Hidden’’ (
khafa
) and ‘‘the Inner- most’’ (
akhfa
) levels, representing further stations of purity, in which the heart becomes ever more removed from attachments, turning away from all that is worldly to focus instead on the spiritual realm of the Hereafter. At the highest level, the heart turns away from even that and begins to focus solely on the Divine Presence.

These are levels of achievement. On the spiritual dimension, the believer’s focus is to reach a perfected level of character, to learn from it and to be enlightened from it. In order to progress beyond our state of ignorance we must strive to learn and educate ourselves. This can only be accomplished by keeping the company of enlightened individuals who have successfully traversed the Path of God, to God, and who are granted the ability to guide others. God says:

O ye who believe! Fear God and be with those who are true (in word and deed).

(Qur’an 9:119)

God is aware of every heart. The Holy Qur’an states:

Those who struggle for Us, We will guide them in the right ways, the ways that are suitable to them.

(Qur’an 29:69)

The polished heart of the sincere and true believer (
sadiq
) is a receptacle for God’s Heavenly Lights and Divine Blessings. Such a person is like the sun. When the sun rises, the whole world shines from that source of energy and light, the light of mystical gnosis that makes all things visible. For that reason, the Prophet said, ‘‘The heart of the [true] believer is the House of the Lord.’’

Covering

The Islamic schools of jurisprudence concur that it is essential (
wajib
) for both men and women to cover those parts of their bodies during prayer which should ordinarily be kept covered before strangers. For men, this

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includes what is between the navel and the knee. For women, it is the entire body, except the face and hands.

As we have said, the purity of what covers the body is essential for the prayer to be acceptable. In one of the first revelations to the Prophet Muhammad, God says:

And thy Lord do thou magnify! And thy garments keep free from stain! And all abomination shun!

(Qur’an 74:3–5)

The body is not the only thing that must be covered in prayer. During
Salat,
the worshipper is commanded to look only at the location where he or she will prostrate, not to the left or right. In this way, one covers one’s gaze and directs oneself to the Vision of God, for the Prophet said:

The perfection of religion (
al-Ihsan
) is to worship God as if you are seeing Him and if you do not see Him, know that He sees you.
31

Thus, the gaze of the believer must be veiled at the time of worship from everything other than God. This derives from a spiritual understanding of the Verse of the Veil in the Holy Qur’an, in which God says:

Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their mod- esty: that will make for greater purity for them: And God is well acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty
...
.

(Qur’an 24:30–31)

The emphasis in these verses is on lowering the gaze, meaning to guard the eyes from looking at what is forbidden or impure. In the outer sense, this means to refrain from looking with lustful desire at other than one’s spouse, for the Prophet said, ‘‘The two eyes are two adulterers.’’
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In this regard, a renowned contemporary Sufi saint, and my teacher and guide on the spiritual path, Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, relates the story of a judge (
qadi
), called by a woman to annul her husband’s marriage to a second wife. The judge asked the plaintiff, whose face was hidden by a face veil (
burqa
), ‘‘Why are you asking me to prevent something permitted in Islamic Divine Law?’’ The first wife replied, ‘‘Your honor, were I to remove my face-veil you would wonder how someone married to so stunning a beauty could seek another woman’s companionship!’’ Upon hearing this the judge swooned. When he came to, his associates asked him

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Voices of the Spirit

what had happened. He replied, ‘‘On hearing this woman’s reply, I had an epiphany. How is it that our hearts turn to all manner of worldly interests, when God Himself is asking us to be with Him alone?’’

The next verse says:

they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordi- narily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty
...
.

(Qur’an 24:31)

calling on women to veil their beauty from other than the men in their imme- diate family, to protect them from men who are all too easily overpowered by desire, and to protect men from their own weaknesses.

Esoteric commentators state that ‘‘women’’ here symbolizes attachments to the worldly life. The spiritual meaning of this prohibition then is that, when coming before the Lord of Creation, the seeker must veil himself or herself from all distractions of the worldly life and focus on the One to Whom prayer is directed.

At an even higher level of spiritual understanding, the word ‘‘women’’ refers to the Divine Attributes of Beauty. Thus, the worshipper is advised to call to mind the Divine Attributes of Majesty, and not become lost in the Attributes of Beauty, which may lead the seeker to lose his or her balance in approaching the Divine Presence.

In the Holy Qur’an, God also said:

O Children of Adam! wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer (
masjid
).

(Qur’an 7:31)

Here, believers are called upon by God to wear their best and most attrac- tive garments when going to pray. The call to manifest ‘‘beautiful apparel’’ at the ‘‘place of prayer’’ can be interpreted as well to be an instruction to adorn the mosques and beautify them, keeping in mind that:

The places of worship (
masajid
) are for God (alone).

(Qur’an 72:18)

The three major holy mosques of Islam—al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and al-Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem—are all highly ornamented with gilding, decorative calligraphy, mosaic tiles, inlaid wood, brilliant lamps, and other decorations. All

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other mosques are connected to these for, as we have said, when worshippers stand to pray in any mosque, they must face the Ka‘ba, God’s Holy House.

God said, ‘‘Neither My heavens contain Me nor My earth. But the heart of My Believing Servant contains Me.’’
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The heart, too, then is a mosque, and for this reason it also must be decorated. The ornamentation of the heart involves removing everything that distracts one from the worship of God and replacing these impurities with love of the Divine, as we have seen earlier. Anything that brings impurity to the heart extinguishes the light that God has placed there. This is a form of tyranny, for the Arabic word for tyranny (
zulm
) also means darkness. Thus, any darkness which veils the heart from God’s Holy Light is a form of oppression. This darkness cannot be removed except through repentance and seeking the intercessory prayers of the Prophet. This is why the aforementioned verses about modesty are followed closely by:

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there were a niche and within it a lamp: the lamp enclosed in glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! God doth guide whom He will to His Light: God doth set forth parables for men: and God doth know all things.

(Qur’an 24:35)

‘‘God is the Light’’ does not mean that God is light, rather The Light is His while God’s Essence is unknown. The created cannot know The Creator except by means of His Beautiful Names and Attributes, His Descriptions. God’s saying ‘‘He is the Light of the heavens and earth’’ means that whatever is found in the heavens and earth contains that light.
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Since we are from earth, that light is within each of us, for God, being the Just, bestows on all with Divine Fairness. Shaykh Ibrahim Hakki, a renowned Ottoman scholar of the Qur’an, said:

Without a doubt the complete potential for perfection is found within every human being, because God the Most High has placed His own Divine Secrets within the essence of man, in order to manifest from the Unseen His Beautiful Names and Attributes.
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Therefore, as the Prophet said, ‘‘Human beings are born of a natural disposition,’’
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meaning each human being carries that light of primordial faith and predisposition to submission before God.

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Voices of the Spirit

Therefore in the Prophet Muhammad, being the epitome of humankind and its highest standard bearer, is found the perfect manifestation of the human embodiment of Divine Grace and the corporeal manifestation of Divine Attributes. It is due to the Prophet’s utter submission, in the state of perfect servanthood, that made him the perfect receptacle for Divine Appearances. That is, the Muhammadan Reality (
al-haqiqa al- Muhammadiyya
) reflects the heart of the Divine Essence, since the Prophet’s heart moves without restriction in the orbit of the 99 Divine Names and Attributes. He has been blessed by being adorned with the 99 Names inside of which is a glowing pearl which has yet to appear. Thus, many commenta- tors assert that the ‘‘Light of the heavens and earth’’ referred to in the above verse is the Light of Muhammad, whom God created from His own Divine Light, and it is this light which shines in the hearts of believers, for the Light of the Prophet is the source of the light of all believers.