Ramadhan Mubarak! :)
Mostly, I love the quote from Imam Malik, said near the beginning: Real knowledge is a light God puts in the hearts of the believers. And it is this that makes me comforted, because especially in today's world where confusion and misinformation reign, one cannot rely only on one's limited intellect to discern truth or goodness from everything else. So we should seek for divine guidance in whatever matter.
Like, a few days ago, I came across some video of this young guy, presumably an imam, speaking in front of an audience, denouncing Sufism; I mean, like, seriously, denouncing it entirely! I was horrified. And he black-listed a series of prominent western Imams one of which is Hamza Yusuf and also T.J. Winters and Zaid Shakir (all of whom I regard highly, and who aren't even Sufi shaykhs in the first place! O.O) and he also mentioned the Naqshibandi tareeqah and my jaw dropped closer and closer to the ground. And he dissed the entirety of Imam Busairi's Qasida Burda??? I mean, seriously! Nutso! And the scariest thing is, he spoke very rationally and should I have not been so heavily exposed by my own family to the ideas of Sufi and Salafi, rituals and spirituality, and how they all work hand-in-hand, I might have been swayed by what he said.
Sufism isn't wrong! To think it's wrong is so misinformed, I don't know what to say. To say the whole of Sufism is wrong is to condemn some of the greatest people, some of the best Muslims to have ever been born -- and that's just plain stupid. This kind of behaviour is similar to the demolition of sacred mosques and tombs just because of a fear that people would worship graves instead; or not putting the name of the Prophet s.a.w. anywhere in Saudi for fear of... what, exactly? Shirk? Utterly ridiculous! In that case, is our syahadah shirk, since we have to mention the Prophet s.a.w.??? We have to say it all the time, you know. Where is your brain, people! Or rather, where is your heart.
:( I was always against the idea that people could be deliberately evil. Why would you want to choose evil? But things like this make me wonder, because it seems insidious, and like a deliberate attempt to stamp down on any sort of love for the Prophet s.a.w. (which is in fact part of our aqidah, isn't it?), on any sort of reverence for our great scholars, without whom we would be utterly lost, and on any sort of struggling unity that our ummah is trying to forge again today. I went to track down the video and found a site with more videos all of that same one person, whose name and qualification aren't really clarified. Also, all the resources come from Saudi; and I'm sorry, but that's one of the places I don't really trust. I was thinking, Ah, sounds dubious already!
Haiyah, I don't know, but it turns out Ami Ali is right. :( May Allah and Rasul s.a.w. guide us.
And one of my all-time favourites:
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