He laughed wisely, his eyes crinkling with affection. ‘The name is not important in the search. We are all too obsessed with words, names, labels. In order to avoid all these complications, I prefer to call it irfan, which means spiritual knowledge. The ultimate goal of irfan is to gain ma’arifah, knowledge of the Divine. Irfan and ma’arifah come from the same meaning of “knowing”.’ As soon as he said the words, I knew that it was what I had been searching for all this time.
According to Mohamed, everything in relation to the Divine seemed to come in threes. The first thing to know about the universe was that every dimension was made up of three points – two extremes and one middle point of balance.
‘Think about courage,’ explained Mohamed. ‘This is an excellent quality. Most people think of it as “good” and then say that it has an opposite, cowardice, and say that it is “bad”. But courage is not part of a pair, it is part of a “three”. At one end is indeed cowardice – the absence of courage, but at the other extreme is foolhardiness, an excess of courage to the point of madness. Courage is the middle path – the right balance of knowing yourself and your situation. When you set out on your path as a Muslim, you must know that your goal is to avoid extremes, and to be a human being of the middle path. This is called the siratul mustaqeem.’
Knowledge was also of three kinds. The first type was knowledge that you gained by what people told you, second-hand knowledge. That was the starting point for all of us: teachings from parents, school, lectures, books, conversation. Mohamed explained that this was comparatively weak, all just hearsay. It only gained weight based on the authority of the person delivering the message.
Then there was the knowledge of seeing with your own eyes. This was always much stronger knowledge – after all, seeing is believing. This was how most of us constructed our world. I thought about the authority given to those who were at the scene of an event. Those who saw something knew it for sure, while someone who only heard about it could never be completely certain.
‘The ultimate level of certainty,’ he went on, ‘is the knowledge that you have tasted for yourself. No-one can ever persuade you away from something you have experienced yourself. And if you have experienced it, your knowledge carries the greatest weight of all. People respect knowledge that comes through experience: that is why they stop and listen to such individuals. Someone who speaks from experience creates a resonance that someone who speaks only from book knowledge will never achieve.’
I interjected, ‘That’s why we say “practise what you preach”, because that is the only way to have an impact.’ I wondered what my behaviour revealed about me. Did it reflect good manners and did it inspire others to the same?
‘Exactly!’ He threw his fist up passionately into a small air-punch. ‘And that is why the Prophet Muhammad caused such a stir with his words. When he explained the importance of good manners, kindness and etiquette, people listened because he practised it himself. His behaviour was so exquisite, we’re still listening today. More importantly, if you want to achieve ma’arifah, real knowledge of Love, then the Prophet’s words have the greatest impact because he had seen the Divine for himself.’ Seeing was not with the eyes, but the heart. That is why love underpinned all our experiences.
‘In fact he had tasted it. He had experienced Love in its purest form himself, and that is the final stage of knowledge.’
I looked perplexed. This was all so complicated. And what was all this about ‘tasting Divine love’?
My confusion was apparent, so he tried to explain. ‘Imagine someone tells you that there is a fire in the next room.’ I found out later that he was quoting this from a well-known philosophical example. ‘You may believe them, you may not. What they have told you is the first level of knowledge.’
I nodded, understanding the idea of second-hand knowledge.
‘Imagine if you walked into the room and saw the fire yourself, then you would know for sure that a fire is there. But imagine you actually sat in the fire, then you would have certainty of what fire is. You would have tasted and experienced it yourself.’
I gazed intently at him, slowly realising that simply knowing was not enough. That was far away from understanding the secrets of the universe – the secrets of Love that I had been searching for. I wanted to ‘taste’ it myself.
‘These are like the three kinds of knowledge of the Divine. If you reach the truest heights of experience, you can be utterly lost in it. That is when you will reach the place that the “I” that you are, or the “I” that I am, is completely annihilated. You have reached a stage called fanaa. Once you go through that stage of getting rid of the separation between you and what is around you, you reach baqaa, the eternal remaining. That is the immortality that we all yearn for.’ The elixir that so many myths had been written about to meet that human longing to live forever was right at our fingertips. But to get there, the journey that Mohamed was describing was at once passionate and perilous.
The verses echoed the statement that a person speaks when they declare that they want to become a Muslim. First, ‘There is no god.’ This is the nothing. ‘Except the Divine.’ This is the everything that remains after the material world we see around us.
I recalled some verses from a chapter called ‘The Loving Compassionate One’ from the Qur’an: ‘Everything will end in nothing.’ It was a stark and sobering truth that all human beings agreed upon. The verse continued: ‘And the face of the One that cherishes will remain forever, full of majesty and honour.’ Our souls would also remain forever as part of the One.
Mohamed continued to speak passionately. ‘The arrogance of the “I” separates you from the Divine and puts veils between you. The bigger your ego – the more we all talk about our superiority as human beings – the further we recede from the secrets of the Divine and the universe. You have to remove the barriers between your heart and the Divine. Be Nothing in order to be reborn into everything.’
This was starting to veer into unnerving terrain. Be nothing? But the words made perfect sense. After all, wasn’t getting close to the Creator a natural progression from believing in the Divine?
So I asked the question that critics of the mystical path raise: ‘What about the rules?’ I enquired. ‘What of limits, guidance, laws and rituals? This is all embedded into our learning of Islam. You can’t just abandon those for this goal of annihilation.’
He smiled. ‘That is the misunderstanding that people have about belief and inner meaning. The idea of losing our pride and reaching this point of annihilating your inner demons is not about fluffy love and chanting.’
I raised my eyebrows in mock offence on behalf of those he appeared to dismiss so easily: ‘Those people who follow the inner path are also trying to the best of their abilities to reach God.’
‘But the inner is meaningless on its own,’ he responded. ‘In order to reach the point of “knowing”, you have to be able to live in the physical world around you. You have to be in harmony with the environment and with other human beings. That is what is meant by being a balanced human being. To do that you need to follow rules of behaviour and laws, otherwise how can you live peacefully with other people?’
I nodded in agreement. It was true that by interacting with others, you learnt how to be a better person.
‘You need law, compassion and love.’ We were back to the threes, I smiled to myself.
‘There are three paths,’ he explained. This time I laughed out loud at his numbering.
He looked up at me, surprised that I found humour here but pleased that I was paying such close attention.
‘The first is shari’ah, a word thrown around in all discussions about Islam but without people really understanding what it means. Shari’ah is not something vulgar that means chopping off hands and locking up women.’
He was right. I was always deeply hurt when shari’ah law was described in a category along with mediaeval horror stories. It was used lazily as verbal shorthand for ‘back
ward’ Islam. In day-to-day parlance shari’ah was used to refer to the legal code that was used in local law and which jurists spent many years studying, just as they might study British law in universities and at the Bar. Such local law varied across the Muslim world due to the different interpretations that scholars placed on the sources of law, as well as the different perspectives and needs that their cultures required.
‘None of this is the shari’ah that we are concerned with at the moment,’ Mohamed pointed out. ‘On the big picture scale, shar’iah means the principles on which the universe is organised, the Divine code. It’s how the whole amazing world around us works, and the physical as well as spiritual laws that make it all hang together.’
‘So would a commonsense law like “what goes around comes around” be part of shari’ah?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, of course. It is also a commonsense rule that “one good deed leads to another”. It’s one of the rules of the world we live in. How the universe operates and stays balanced: that is shari’ah. And when Muslims say they want to live by shari’ah, it just means following the “outer” code so that you are in harmony with everything around you.’
This made it quite clear – shari’ah offered guidelines for yourself as well as for managing your interactions with others. It prescribed how to look after your own body in the best possible way. The idea of eating only meat that was halal meant eating good wholesome food. Fasting helped you to keep in shape and detox. Not drinking alcohol kept your body healthy. Not being intoxicated allowed you to see clearly and be in control of your actions at all times, all the while being able to have a direct clear-headed conversation with the Divine. Shari’ah also explained some things relevant to personal life as a Muslim: how to pray, how to marry, how to fast. Finally, shari’ah regulated how you lived with other people: not stealing or killing, trying to fight for equality and justice, treating people well, observing your duties and responsibilities to the people and environment around you.
Mohamed then put into words one of the great challenges for people of faith: ‘The hardest thing about shar’iah is the basic idea of working towards justice and equality. That is the whole point of the rules. People just think it’s about the rituals, but that is one element that builds up into the greater outer code. Muslims seem so obsessed with the details that they forget the point of observing the details: to reach the final goal of a just society and happy human beings.’
I was tiring of this obsession with rules. I had followed a lot of rules, but how would they offer me freedom? As though reading my thoughts, Mohamed said, ‘Shari’ah is only the stepping stone to tariqah, the way you do things. It’s not enough to stick to the letter of the law: you have to apply its spirit too. That is why kindness and compassion are so critical.’
This reminded me of Karim and his lightning story. He could have just told me that he wasn’t interested rather than spinning me along and then suggesting his preposterous story that lightning had intervened. Or Khalil, who had rejected me before we’d even met because I was too short but wanted to meet me anyway; and then took my money from me.
It was easy to forget that along with what you do, it is how you do it that is important. It is the difference between following the rules begrudgingly and softening life with a smile, a small kindness, generosity, compassion. If you fulfilled your duties by the book, you had only observed the method, the shari’ah. Tariqah was the manner in which you carried out your responsibilities. Tariqah was doing things in the best way possible.
Mohamed became most alive and passionate when we spoke about the third way: haqiqah.
His eyes lit up. ‘This is when you truly know the Truth. You can taste the Divine and witness it. This is the inner path, where the soul has already been freed by following the shari’ah and the tariqah, and now it can soar into the arms of the Beloved.’
Beloved? Who spoke about God as the Beloved? It sounded very romantic, but maybe that was the idea. There were many names to describe God. God was Just, Compassionate, Merciful. God was Beauty, Majesty and Life. I agreed that he was also Love. But really, who used an affectionate name like Beloved?
Mohamed then told me something that I had heard thousands of times before, but this time it changed my life. ‘Allah says that He created the human being in order to be known. To be known requires someone or something to do the knowing.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘Allah also says that He created the human being in order to be loved. To be loved requires someone or something to do the loving.’ I waited, wanting to hear how it all came together. ‘For God to be known, to be loved, someone or something has to do the loving and do the knowing of the Creator. Human beings are the best of all creatures, and they exist to know and love the Divine. We’ve been created for the very simple and single purpose: to love.’
I had found my place, my meaning. I now understood how my search for the one, my Prince Charming, made sense as part of my search for the One, the Beloved. I was a human being who was made to Love, we all were.
Through all the searching we did in our modern lives, through films, music, books, arts, life and dreams, we were all looking for the same thing, whether it had a human, Hollywood or Divine face. It was a sense of completion that came from being in balance with our surroundings. It came from giving love and being loved.
Every human being has a yearning for a partner, a companion, a lover. For what is a heart without someone to love it? What is life without someone to share it with? And that is why I knew, with certainty, that I would find the one. I knew that my heart was fashioned from the intricacies of love, and I had plenty of love to give. All I had to do was find him. What I hadn’t known until now was that this cry inside for love, for him, was also a search for Love and for Him.
Love is the Divine principle, and to Love is to Know. That is why the human heart can contain the secrets of the universe.
Quantum Theory
Searching for a husband had distracted me from exploring my own inner world. As a human being my focus should have been on making my spirit blossom. Finding a companion and getting married was part of that journey towards flourishing as a person: that was the Islamic thinking behind marriage. But I had focused too much on the outer search for Mr Right, convinced that this was the best way to fulfil my responsibilities. As a result I had put my inner life and spiritual development on hold. The conversations with Mohamed had ended all of that, and I had made a quantum jump in the journey of discovery.
Slowly, I began to truly live my life once I realised that my companion and my faith were intertwined. I still had value as a human being without him, and I could keep learning and growing as an individual. He would appear when I was ready, and we would begin a journey together, hand in hand. Unshackled from the ideas held erroneously in my mind, I gradually started to open my heart to the potential of life around me.
Talking to Mohamed helped me to open these doors that had stood in front of me for many years. He unlocked a different kind of freedom for me, inner freedom. I did not want to marry him because of the gratitude of a student for a teacher or because of a crush on someone sharing knowledge. Instead, I felt that this was a man I could go on a spiritual journey with. He would be able to take care of me materially and spiritually. The more I spoke to him, the more certain I became that this was a man with whom I could spend the rest of my life.
Little by little, he was recovering from his heartbreak, yet I felt too nervous to broach the subject of my idea with him. My parents had known about him all along, and in any other circumstance I would have asked them to take the formal route of approaching his family through a matchmaker. Given his delicate situation, we all felt that he might feel cornered if his family was involved.
I confided in Jack at work, and asked his advice. ‘You can help me, you’re a man, just like Mohamed,’ I pointed out to him. ‘What should I do?’
I explained to him that Mohamed had asked his friends to start on the process of introducing him to women wi
th a view to getting married. After his meetings with them, Mohamed would lament to me how the women were wrong for him, picking out their flaws one by one. But he never asked me if I would like to consider him. I waited, hoping.
I consoled myself with the fact that he was still emotionally vulnerable and that he would have rejected me for the same reason he rejected all the other women: because he wasn’t ready. He felt that the more women he was introduced to, the more quickly he would recover from his loss. This made me angry. These women were meeting him with hope and open hearts, and he was using them to provide solace for his pain. I should have taken note.
Jack listened carefully and then paused dramatically before he delivered his opinion: ‘If you really like him and you think that he is the right husband for you, then you should tell him.’
‘But it’s obvious that he doesn’t like me, otherwise he would have said!’ I wailed.
‘Would he? Maybe he feels just like you and is scared to say anything.’
I pouted. Jack continued. ‘Think about it like this. If you want a job or a house, you’ll go after it, won’t you? Think about how much effort people put into their careers. On the other hand, when it comes to their personal lives – and, after all, a partner is the most important part of your life – they are passive and just hope it “happens”. You have to make it happen.’
I was surprised that his wisdom was so similar to that of the Aunties. I could hear their voices. ‘Good men are hard to find, my dear, you need to grab him.’ It was clear that their advice would also be to prioritise finding a partner above all else. Tradition and common sense were of the same opinion in this case.
I felt chastened. Even though I had followed the process for so many years, I hadn’t yet understood the key universal principle behind it: to think clearly and rationally about how to pursue the right partner. I had let the ideas of all the traditions that I was part of dictate my behaviour. Notions from Hollywood to Bollywood that ‘the man has to do it’ and that ‘it should just happen’ had taken root inside me much deeper than I had imagined.
Love in a Headscarf Page 21
