30– Not to the least extent did the imprisonment bear on the philanthropy that Imâm Rabbânî ‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’ held towards the Sultân. Pleased with what he had done to him, he would always pronounce benedictions over him. As a matter of fact, some of the companions of the Imâm ‘quddisa sirruh’ had a design against the Sultân, which was very well within their power. Yet the Imâm prevented them, showing himself to them in their dreams as well as when they were awake, and advised them to pronounce benedictions over the Sultân. “Hurting the Sultân will cause harm to all the people,” he would say. Readers of Maktûbât will see these facts in all their clarity in the letters which he wrote to his sons from the dungeon.
31– Sultân Selîm Jihânghîr Khân’s son, Shâh Jihân ‘rahimahullâhu ta’âlâ’, rose against his father. He had a powerful army and was sincerely backed by most of the commanders who were apparently on his father’s side. Yet the advantages he had proved short of bringing him victory. He told his story to one of the time’s Awliyâ and asked for benedictions. The Walî said: Your victory depends on the benedictions on the part of the four poles (highest Walîs and scholars) of the present time. Three of them are with you. Yet the fourth one, who is the highest one, does not approve of your attempt. That exalted person is Hadrat Imâm Rabbânî Mujaddid-i-alf-i-thânî ‘quddisa sirruh’. Shâh Jihân went to the Imâm and begged the great scholar to invoke a blessing on him. The Imâm ‘quddisa sirruh’ counselled him to give up the plan to overthrow his father, saying, “Go to your father, kiss his hand and apologize! He will soon pass away and the sovereignty will be yours.” Shâh Jihân listened to his advice and gave up his plan. A short time later, in 1037 [1627 A.D.], his father passed away, whereupon he attained his wish, sovereignty. Then, how could one ever believe the jealous plotters’ slander that Imâm Rabbânî disobeyed the Sultân and flouted the laws?
32– Imâm Rabbânî ‘quddisa sirruh’ had spent two or three valuable years in the fortress, when the Sultân began to feel remorse for his wrongdoing. Having him taken out of the prison, he showed him kindness. In fact, he became one of his true disciples and faithful friends. He ordered him to stay for some time among the army. Later, he set him free and, with deep reverence, sent him to his homeland. When Imâm Rabbânî ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’aleyh’ was back home, he had attained grades and states thousands of times higher than the spiritual positions which he had been occupying (before imprisonment). With the exception of his blessed sons and his successors whom he educated, no one can be privy to the occult and secret spiritual facts and ma’rifats permeating through his letters which he wrote in the aftermath. Those valuable letters of his complement the three volumes of Maktûbât.
33– Such afflictions and disasters befell not only the greatest Awliyâ, but also prophets ‘alaihim-us-salawâtu wa-t-taslîmât’, so that today’s Awliyâ and devoted Muslims will find solace in them and the afflictions and disasters that the ignorant witness to befall the contemporary Awliyâ will not be construed as symptomatic of iniquity (of the people who suffer them). Historians, who are unaware of this subtlety, write only about the pleasant facts concerning the Awliyâ, withholding some events which reflect their human demeanours. This sparing policy misleads their uncritical readers into visualising them as impeccable and angelic creatures; and, ergo, a most trivial sight of human weakness which they observe on a person who is said to be a pious and devoted Muslim or a Walî causes them to think otherwise, which in turn means that they cannot get a share from the spiritual gifts the blessed person has been endowed with, since you cannot acquire any blessings from a person about whom you have a bad opinion. Some people go even further wrong by gossiping about those pure Muslims. They do not know that Allâhu ta’âlâ hides His beloved slaves under the screen of human mediocrities. As a matter of fact, He declares, “I hide My beloved ones. Not everybody can recognize them.” Imâm Rabbânî ‘qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ sirrah-ul ’azîz’ offers a number of explanations on this subject in Maktûbât, while, on the other hand, Muhyiddîn Arabî ‘quddisa sirruh’ states in his book Futuhât that a peccadillo that breaks the heart and humbles the nafs is more useful than an act of worship which inflames the nafs and brings pride to the heart.
34– Having attained his loftiest aspirations, Imâm Rabbânî, Mujaddid-i-alf-i-thânî, Ahmad Fârûqî ‘quddisa sirruh’ reached the grades which Allâhu ta’âlâ bestowed on him, and thereafter, when the time which Allâhu ta’âlâ had foreordained, (i.e. the taqdîr-i-ilâhî,) came, he accepted the invitation extended by Azrâîl ‘alaihis-salâm’ (Angel of Death ) and attained the Refîq-i-a’lâ (Allâhu ta’âlâ) on the twenty-ninth day, Tuesday, of the blessed month of Safer (the second Arabic lunar month) in 1034 [1624 A.D.]. He was buried in the cemetery of Sihrind. May Allâhu ta’âlâ bless his soul with peace and his grave with plenty of nûr! May He make us attain the barakat of his valuable breath and his love! May He guide us to his shafâ’at and join us with his lovers who will assemble under his banner on the Rising Day! Âmîn.
35– People have different habits, different predilections, different wishes, and different thoughts. Therefore, not only as he was alive did he have admirers as well as adversaries, but also after his passing away two different groups of people held two opposite opinions about him. Whereas one group explicitly praised him, another followed the line of criticism. The antagonistic attempts, however, let alone choke his universally renowned ma’rifats, merely betokened evanescent snowflakes on a river. Or, rather, they contributed to his reputation, for, every attempt on the part of his adversaries to scatter poison his admirers counterplotted against with a variety of antidotal confutations. This reciprocal struggle proved fructiferous enough to give birth to more than seventy books specially devoted to this subject. One of them, perhaps the greatest one, the booklet Atiyya-t-ul wahhâb fâsila-t-u-bayn-al-hatâ wa-th-thawâb, a masterpiece composed by Muhammad Uzbekî Makkî, put the adversaries to a crying shame from which they should not have had the face to raise their heads. After the imâm’s passing away ‘quddisa sirruh’, many scholars lauded him and wrote very useful and important books. One of them is Mawlânâ Abdullah Itâqîzâda ‘rahimahullâhu ta’âlâ, the Muftî of Mekka-i-mukarrama, the Shaikh-ul-Islâm, and the Imâm-ul-’allâma. We have not translated the passage from his book which occupies a few pages of the Arabic version.
36– A profoundly learned scholar who praised Imâm Rabbânî ‘rahimahullâhu ta’âlâ’ after his passing away is Ziyâeddîn Mawlânâ Khâlid ’Uthmânî Baghdâdî ‘quddisa sirruh’, a leader of ârifs, a guide to truth, a paragon of the highest attainable spiritual grades, an owner of physical and spiritual perfections, and an ocean of knowledge. The following paragraph is a paraphrased translation of the couplets in the ninety-fourth page of his Persian divan, in which he utters the delicacies of his lofty soul:
“Yâ Rabbî! Please do forgive me for the sake of the haloes in the eyes of Ahmad Fârûqî ‘quddisa sirruh’; a wayfarer of that endless path; a leader of the owners of knowledge; a source of the occult secrets which are neither perceptible to the human sight nor attainable with mind; an owner of greatness beyond the human cognizance and which Thou, alone, knowest; an ocean where meanings foam and crest like waves; a chief of a world where material beings or places do not exist; a source of nûr whose lights illuminate India; a beloved slave for whose sake the city of Sihrind was transmuted into the valley where Mûsâ (Moses) ‘alaihis-salâm’ received the Word of Allâhu ta’âlâ; a document to prove the greatness of the religion of Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’; a light for the assembly of the keen-sighted; a commander of the army of absolute piety; a master who not only has attained unthinkable spiritual heights but also guides those who follow his path! Please do overlook my black face! So ruthlessly have I abused myself, innumerable are the faults I have committed, and so disloyal have I been in my promise. Yet the endlessness of Thine ocean of forgiveness and compassion makes me feel hopeful. Thine infinite Kindness, alone, do I rely on. For, ‘I am the Forgiver,’ Thou sayest.”
37– Another scholar who praised him was Hadrat Sayyid Tâhâ Hakkârî ‘quddisa sirruh’, a profoundly learned savant, a virtuous Walî-i-kâmil, a possessor of innumerable karâmats (wonders, miracles), and the highest of the Awliyâ educated and trained by Mawlânâ Khâlid Baghdâdî ‘quddisa sirruh’.
38– Another scholar who praised Imâm Rabbânî ‘quddisa sirruh’ was Sayyid Abdulhakîm Efendi ‘rahmatullâhi ’aleyh’, a gem of scholarship and an ideal perfection among the Awliyâ. He states as follows in a letter that he wrote to a devoted Muslim: “Dhikr, and so the effect of dhikr, is a deep sea. No one has reached down its depths. It is a such rough ocean that the entire world is quite unaware of any one of its waves. It is such a vast mass of water surrounding the world that the entire universe would not be able to comprehend it. Dhikr is a spiritual state that occurs in the hearts of those who make dhikr. It is something impossible to describe, to write about, to explain.
“A person who knows Allâhu ta’âlâ becomes speechless. He cannot find words to describe what he is experiencing. He becomes overwhelmed with bewilderment. He is quite oblivious to the world and to other people. As Allâhu ta’âlâ is the Person whose dhikr is being made, likewise, He, alone, is the Person who makes dhikr. He, alone, is capable of making dhikr of Himself. Who are poor creatures to make dhikr of Him? However, He commands His human creature to make dhikr of Him in order to tinge his own attributes with the (Attributes of Allâhu ta’âlâ termed) Sifât-i-ilâhiyya. Every person (who makes dhikr) finds an amount of consolation proportional to his abilities in that endless and wavy sea. Ways-al-Qarânî contented himself with a drop from that ocean. Junayd Baghdâdî was satisfied with a handful from that sea. Abdulqâdir-i-Geylânî only reached the shore of the sea. Muhyiddîn-i-Arabî took pride in a jewel taken out from the bottom of the sea. And Imâm Rabbânî acquired a great share from it ‘rahimahumullâhu ta’âlâ.
“The letters alif, lâm and he (pronounced as he according to the International Phonetic Alphabet), which serve in the formation of the word ‘Allah’, i.e. the very great word representing a Person, -who is not comparable to any other being,- are means and vehicles that lead to the tenor. Dhikr is not, in itself, to pronounce these letters. Dhikr is the spiritual state produced through the word, ‘Allah’. The word is called dhikr out of necessity to symbolize, and not in the actual sense.
“For the same matter, the expression (termed) Kalima-i-tawhîd is not dhikr, either. Yet, with respect to its being pronounced and its meaning, it serves as a means for dhikr, which, in reality, is a state of heart and spirit which comes into being from saying it repeatedly with the heart. Attainment of that spiritual state depends on the expression.”
The above-cited translation of the passage from the letter, which is considerably much longer, is an elaborate, eloquent, concise, and at the same time detailed and thorough praise and laudation of Imâm Rabbânî ‘qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ sirrah-ul ’azîz’.
Sayyid Abdulhakîm Efendi ‘quddisa sirruh’ would frequently say, “Ba’da kitâbillah wa ba’da kitâb-i-Rasûlillah, afdal-i-kutub Maktûbât-est,” during his lectures, and the same statement is written in several of his letters. This statement translates into English as follows: “After the Qur’ân al-kerîm, which is the Book of Allâhu ta’âlâ, (and which therefore is the highest and best of all books,) and after the book Bukhârî, which is a compilation of the hadîth-i-sherîfs, i.e. the utterances of Rasûlullah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’, (and which naturally, is the second highest and best book,) the third highest and best book written in the Islamic religion is the book Maktûbât, (which is a compilation of the letters written by Hadrat Imâm Rabbânî).” [Whereas Mathnawî (Mesnevî), written by Jalâladdîn-i-Rûmî (Celâleddîn-i-Rûmî), is the most valuable book telling about the ma’rifats and the perfections in the grades of Wilâyat attained by the Awliyâ-i-kirâm, Maktûbât, written by Imâm Rabbânî Ahmad Fârûqî, is the most valuable and the highest of the books explaining both the perfections and the ma’rifats in the grades of Wilâyat and the ma’rifats and the kamâlât (perfections) and the subtleties peculiar to the grade of prophethood.]
An excerpt from one of his letters translates into English as follows: “... who has read and partly understood the book Maktûbât, which is the most useful book from worldly as well as religious points of view and whose compeer in the Islamic religion has not so far been written... .” He, (i.e. Abdulhakîm Efendi,) would say, “A person who knows a little Persian (Fârisî) language will understand Maktûbât better if he reads the Persian version. For the Turkish version rendered by Müstekimzâde Süleymân Efendi is both complicated and erroneous.” Müstekîmzâde Süleymân Efendi, a disciple of Muhammed Emîn Tokâdî, passed away in 1202 [1788 A.D.]. His grave is adjacent to that of his master at Zeyrek, Istanbul. The book Maktûbât was printed various times at various places. A splendid edition was made in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1392 [1972 A.D.]. It consists of two volumes. The first volume contains the first part, and the second and third parts are incorporated in the second volume. The two volumes were reproduced in pulchritudinous copies in Istanbul by offset process for which best quality paper was used. A Persian abridgement of Maktûbât was rendered in 1080 [1668 A.D.] by Muhammad Bâqir Lahôrî, an eminent one among the hundreds of Awliyâ educated and trained by Muhammad Ma’thûm Serhendî, one of the blessed sons of Imâm Rabbânî. The abridged version, entitled Kanz-ul-hidâyât by the author himself, is of a hundred and twenty pages and contains twenty hidâyats (subtitles). It was printed in Lâhôr in 1376 [1957 A.D.] The same blessed Walî wrote another book, entitled Urwa-t-ul-wusqâ, in the Fârisî language.
Inheriting from Rasûlullah, he was
mujaddid alf thânî;
A mujtahid in all sciences, he was in Tasawwuf Ways
al-Qarânî.
He spread Islam worldover,
illuminated every Believer;
Awaken the unaware did the most exalted Imâm, Rabbânî.
All tenets in Islam he knew well,
the Sharî’at he obeyed well;
Rank with unbelief as the entire world was, like Abû Bakr was
he.
All received fayz from his sohbat,
commanders and governors alike,
He descended from ’Umar Fârûq, true people give
testimony.
A BIOGRAPHY of
SAYYID ABDULHAKÎM EFENDI
1281 [1865 A.D.] — 1362 [1943 A.D.]
This book, SAHÂBA ‘the Blessed’, was written by the great Islamic scholar Ahmad Fârûq-i-Serhendî ‘rahmatullâhi ’aleyh’, and revised by Hadrat Sayyid Abdulhakîm Arwâsî.
Immured within the smothering haze of complacency pampered by a smattering of science somehow acquired in the name of knowledge, we were bluntly unconscious of the existence of great Islamic scholars and their gigantic works, and especially of the so many highly exalted savants and Walîs who were compared to the Israelite prophets ‘salawâtullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaihim ajma’în’, and all we possessed in the name of religious knowledge was a precariously diminutive assortment which consisted of whatever we had heard from our parents and which was being gnawed away piecemeal by the storms blowing around us; and the pitiable situation would have become no better, if not worse for the sake of most unflagging optimism, had it not been for Sayyid Abdulhakîm Efendî ‘quddisa sirruh’; a great genius, a gift that Allâhu ta’âlâ bestowed upon the Turkish nation and who made us hear about the names of innumerable Islamic books each and every one of which is a treasure of values and virtues and a key to the eternal felicity, and who caused us to attain the fortune of reading and understanding their contents which have a curing effect on psychopaths; a savior of the innocent and credulous people who had been fooled into lethal heresies and perdition by the sequinned fallacies of unbelievers and renegades; a learned psychotherapist who forearmed the younger generations with panacea by making people suffering from mental perplexities taste the existence of Allâhu ta’âlâ, the superiority of our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ and the inner nature of îmân and Islam; the refreshing morning breeze that swept away the clouds of unbelief and apostasy which had been blackening the hearts and obscuring the sacred path of our noble ancestors; a sun of knowledge and ma’rifat that cleared the horizons of the gloom of irreligiousness that had thoroughly enveloped the sources of îmân; a noble descendant of the Best of Mankind ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ and a profoundly learned Walî possessed of an expertise in all the subtle particulars of the four Madhhabs and in the sublime facts about the (spiritual grades attained through various paths and called) Wilâyat. It has therefore been seen fit to present a brief biography of that virtuous worldly and next-worldly guide and thereby to leave a keepsake for those happy people who have had the fluke of reading his books.
Sayyid Abdulhakîm bin Mustafâ Arwâsî ‘qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ asrârahumâ’, one of the greatest scholars in the (chain of scholars called) Sôfiyya-i-aliyya and a model of excellence among those scholars who faultlessly practised their religious knowledge, was a personified treasure of faculties well above his colleagues and contemporaries in the accomplishment of Islamic services such as terwîj-i-dîn and nashr-i-’ilm and seha-i-tâbi’ and in the enactment and practice of the shar’i sherîf-i-Ahmadî ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’.
He was born in Başkal’a (Bashqal’a), a town within the limits of Van, (an Eastern Turkey) province, in 1281 [1865 A.D.]. He received an ijâzat [a diploma] in the earlier half of the hijrî year 1300. Not only did he receive an authorization from the Allâma Sayyid Fehîm ‘quddisa sirruh’ in sciences such as ’ilm-i-sarf and nahw (the Arabic grammar); mantiq (logic); munâzara (argumentation); wadi’, (which means, literally, posture, attitude, legislation); bayân (expression, discourse); ma’ânî (lexicology, semantics); bedî’ (rhetoric); kalâm (speech, branch of science helpful in understanding the Qur’ân al-kerîm); usûl-i-fiqh (methodology employed in fiqh); tafsîr (explanation of the Qur’ân al-kerîm); tasawwuf; nush-i-li-l-muslimîn; iftâ-’alal madhhabîn; ’ulûm-i-hikamiyya, or hikmat-i-tabî’iyya, [which covers sciences such as physics and biology]; hikmat-i-ilâhiyya; riyâdiyya (mathematics); hay’at [astronomy]; and ’ulûm-i-zâhiriyya. The same profoundly learned scholar taught and gave him full authorization in the orders of Tasawwuf such as Mujaddidî; Qâdirî; Kubrawî; Suhrawardî; and Cheshtî. His father was Sayyid Muhyiddîn, whose father was Sayyid Muhammad, whose father was Sayyid Abdurrahmân, who was at the same time Sayyid Fehîm’s father’s father ‘rahmatullâhi ’alaihim ajma’în’. That his paternal chain traces back to Alî Ridâ bin Kâzim, one of the twelve imâms ‘rahimahumullâhu ta’âlâ, is written in the registers of canonical lawcourt in Iraq, which is a document bearing the blessed signature of Sayyid Abdurrazzâq ‘quddisa sirruh’, a grandson of Sayyid Abdulqâdir Geylânî ‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’.
Surviving the oppressions and massacres perpetrated by the Armenians, who were emboldened when the Russian army reached a spot only an hour’s march from Başkal’a on the first day of the blessed month of Rajab, 1332 [1914 A.D.], Sayyid Abdulhakîm Arwâsî and seventy of his kith and kin, women, children and all, set out on a middle-eastern migratory odyssey which carried them via a number of Iraqi and Anatolian towns and cities such as Ruwandiz, Erbil, Mosul, Adana and Eskişehir, and which eventually ended in the township of Eyyûb Sultân, Istanbul, in the early Shawwâl of 1337 [1919 A.D.]. First they were accomodated in the Yazılı Madrasa, a school building in the market-place. Then he was appointed as imâm in the mosque called Murtadâ Efendi, which was in the vicinity of Idris Köşk at Gümüşsuyu. He had made hajj twice before the migration. He has a number of letters in the form of pamphlets. Among them are such extremely valuable masterpieces as his work telling about the commencement of religious practices such as Mawlîd and the using of the (prayer beads termed) Tesbîh and their canonical lawfulness; his booklet entitled Râbita-i-sherîfa; his book entitled er-Riyâd-ut-tasawwufiyya, which he wrote during his career as a mudarris [professor] of Tasawwuf in the Islamic university called Madrasa-i-mutahassisîn during the reign of Sultân Wahîdaddîn Khân; his books Sahâba-i-kirâm (Sahâba ‘the Blessed’) and Ajdâd-i-Peygamberî; and his work on the Islamic jurisprudence; in addition to his poems in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. He neither ventured into politics, nor involved himself in any political complications. He was against all factions, especially those which were being carried on in the disguise of mystic orders. He was never heard to mention words such as ‘shaikh’ and ‘murîd’ after the enactment of the law banning tekkes. Not only was he himself an ideal model in strict law-abidingness, but also he would always advise his company to follow his example. However, his sermons on the pulpits of various mosques of Istanbul such as Eyyûb Sultân, Fâtih, Bâyezîd, Bakırköy, Kadıköy and Ağa, Beyoğlu, wherein he reiterated his disapproval of a group of impostors who were exploiting the Islamic values for their worldly advantages, incurred the ire of the iniquitous rogues, who had recourse to calumniation in counteraction. So vigorous was the smear campaign they waged against him, that eventually he was arrested in his home in Istanbul on the eighteenth of Ramadân, 1362, which coincided with the eighteenth of September, 1943, a Saturday, and transported to Izmir, where he was first lodged in a hotel, Meserret, and then moved to a private house. After an almost three months’ sojourn there, he left for Ankara on the tenth day of Zilqa’da, Monday, and, arriving in the city on Tuesday, he went to his nephew Fârûk Işık’s place, where he stayed bedridden for eighteen days. It was eighteen minutes before sunset, twelve according to the adhânî time and six-thirty by the zawâlî time, on the twenty-ninth of Zilqa’da, 1362, which was the twenty-seventh of Teshrîn thânî [November], Saturday, 1943, when he attained his eternal palace in the Hereafter. A light earthquake was recorded during the night. That day his blessed corpse was taken to his son-in-law Ibrâhîm’s house at Keçiören, where he was washed and shrouded, the (prayer termed) janâza salât was performed, and the blessed corpse, (which had served one of the darlings of Allâhu ta’âlâ for eighty-one years,) was interred at Bağlum, a township twenty-four kilometres north of Ankara, at sunset. Husayn Hilmi Işık was the lucky person who was honoured to join the janâza salât for him, to enter his blessed grave, and to undertake the duty of talqîn. (Please see the thirteenth through nineteenth chapters of the fifth fascicle of Endless Bliss for information about death and terms, duties and services connected with death.) His grave is on the north-eastern part of the cemetery, which in turn occupies a gentle slope some fifty metres west of the township. Beside the entrance to the mosque of Bağlum is the blessed grave of Hadrat Sayyid Burhânaddîn Mûshî. May Allâhu ta’âlâ make his rank even higher! May He make us attain his shafâ’at! May He bless us with reading his books, following the path he guides, and always reaping spiritual fruits from his blessed soul! Âmîn.
Let each Muslim weep and shed
tears of blood,
For Sayyid Abdulhakîm has left the world!
Âlim-ul-âmil and Walî-i-kâmil he was,
And a wealth of sublime, occult secrets.
All were suddenly orphaned, so
destitute
Are now, both Islam and truth, no doubt.
My eyes reject what they themselves see;
Has that noble received the Divine Command ‘Be’?
The earth danced with joy
throughout the night,
And embraced him the next day, with delight.
Alas, our blessed Sun has declined;
Unique is the time that his being defined!
He was, in his latest days, so
grief-stricken,
Afflicted with pains’n sorrows, a sign for the woe-be-gone;
By the Islamic world it must be seriously taken:
Apathy whose issue with bloody tears cannot be undone!
In the name of eternity that has
embraced his soul,
I have summarized a life that’d make a history.
A croud without him is a carcass without a soul;
Islam bemoans, and heavens weep over this story!
Mehmet Timuroğlu
THE TWO MOST BELOVED
DARLINGS of MUSLIMS
(INTRODUCTION)
Allâhu ta’âlâ has pity on all the people on the earth. He sends useful things to everybody. He shows them the ways to protect themselves against harms and to attain happiness and salvation. In the Hereafter, He will be magnanimously kind, forgiving those whom He chooses of the Muslims who are to go to Hell on account of the sins they have committed in the world. He, alone, creates every living being, keeps every being in existence, and protects all against fears and horrors. In the name of such an omnipotent being, Allah, we begin to write this pamphlet.
We offer our hamd (praise and gratitude) to Allâhu ta’âlâ. If a person thanks any other person at any place, at any time, in any way and for any reason, the thanks paid, in its entirety, belongs to Allâhu ta’âlâ by rights. For, He is the sole creater of all, the single educator and trainer, and the one and only maker and sender of everything in the name of goodness. He, alone, is the owner of power and authority. No one can think of doing something good or bad, or have the will or desire to do so, unless He creates the idea. The choice that a slave exercises between doing good or bad to another is a mere nullity unless He, too, wills it and gives the power and the chance to do so. When some of His slaves whom He likes wish to do something bad, He does not will it and does not create the malevolent action. Therefore, only benevolent deeds proceed from such slaves. On the other hand, when His enemies, who have already somehow incurred His Wrath, will and desire to do evils, He, too, wills and creates those evils. Such iniquitous slaves have enslaved themselves to their nafs, and they never wish to do something good. Therefore, malevolence is the only product that comes out of them.
We present our salât and salâm (benedictions and salutations) on Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, the most beloved Prophet of Allâhu ta’âlâ. We invoke blessings on his Ahl-i-Bayt and on each and every one of his Sahâba ‘radiy-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’anhum’.
Allâhu ta’âlâ commands Muslims to cling to the Qur’ân al-kerîm and to unite around the Qur’ân al-kerîm. The Ashâb-i-kirâm, who were perfectly obedient to all the commandments, united together, loved one another and became brothers. Allâhu ta’âlâpraises them for this brotherly love among them in the Fath-h sûra. Unity engenders power. Disunity causes ruination. Let us be like the Ashâb-i-kirâm. Let us adopt their high moral values. Let us love one another. Let us unite in the path guided by the Qur’ân al-kerîm. Let us not believe the lies fibbed by those separatists who have deviated from that true path. Let us do good to everybody. Let us be soft-spoken and gently smiling with everybody and try to promulgate Islam’s honour worldover. Obedience to the government and to the laws is incumbent upon every Muslim. It is a grave sin to cause fitna or chaos. Differences of Madhhab should not be grounds for fighting. Some foreign bureaus are publishing books in all languages for the purpose of sowing discord among us. Defiling thehadîth-i-sherîfs, misinterpreting the âyat-i-kerîmas, and concocting sad stories, they are deceiving the young people.
In order to expose the plots for undermining Islam from within and to refute the slanders and lies that the plotters have fabricated, the Islamic scholars have written thousands of books for a thousand years, thereby protecting the Muslims from falling victim to the guided extinction stalking them. One of those useful books is Qurrat-ul-aynayn, written in Fârisî by Shâh Waliyyullah Ahmad Sâhib ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’aleyh’, a great scholar of India. Hadrat Shâh Waliyyullah was born in Delhi in 1114 [1702 A.D.], and passed away there in 1176 [1762 A.D.].
All the arguments in the book owe considerable corroboration to the long and detailed documentary proofs written in the book Tuhfa-i-ithnâ ’ashariyya. In the seventh chapter, for instance, after confuting the wrong meanings which some people attributed to five âyat-i-kerîmas and twelve hadîth-i-sherîfs in their futile efforts to prove that Hadrat Alî should have been the first Khalîfa, it says, “According to the schol