As the Sufis would say, this is seeing from the heart's eye.
For a host of South Asians, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has long been the face of Qawwali, the ecstatic Sufi music form. Its lyrics are characterised by love poetry addressed to the Divine or His earthly intercessors, and it is sung in a uniquely stylised and rhythmic form of Hindustani classical music. In the shrines of Sufi pirs, where it has been performed at least since the fourteenth century, it frequently, even today, induces some of the listeners to dance ecstatically and go into trances or what is termed as "hal", where they achieve the desired spiritual communion with God. These highly conspicuous men, dishevelled, dazed, and as if stoned on very potent drugs, are the darwishes or faqirs, sometimes tied to the shrine, sometimes wandering restlessly from one place to the other. And they are part of the larger body of Sufis, who embody the inner dimensions of Islam.
Sufis have long represented, what is termed, as the "soft" face of Islam, not always positively. Some modern commentators venture so far, perhaps misled by the excesses of the Persian poets, as to characterise them as secular torch-bearers and free-thinkers, who have gone outside the fold of their traditionally "hard" Islamic core. Many Muslims, both modern and orthodox, also associate Sufism with obscure and superstitious practices of saint worshipping, devotional Pir cults, magic, miraculous cures, and wild parties of singing and dancing that verge on heresy. Most have long held Sufism, with it's attendant beliefs, to be primarily responsible for Muslims not taking their rightful place in world history.
To be sure, Sufis are profoundly religious, and, by and large, very devout Muslims. Since at least the ninth century, Sufism has existed alongside the more normative, scriptural Islam, and exerted tremendous hold over it's followers all over the Islamic world. Who are these men, who sing and dance in mad abandon, and are still apparently of very strong religious orientation?
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Economists, and modern city life, have for long conditioned us to believe in the primacy of self-interest in everything that governs our life. We all want a well-paying job, a swanky 3-BHK apartment, and the next new VTEC engine powered car. We are all "rational" creatures, yes. But ten thousand years of human history of settled life tells us that we are much more than that. We also have a deep yearning for the presence of sacred in our lives. We want meaning, real or created, in the absence of which we can quickly fall into despair. Albert Camus was quite right to postulate the problem of suicide - whether to live without hope or divine order - as the one governing the most fundamental of human conditions.
Mysticism, as an internalized form of religion, has offered sacred meaning of life to many without the entrapment of external ritual or doctrine. All major religions have this branch that is slightly tangential to the majoritarian discourse, and which, even while appropriating the core doctrines, makes the religion more accessible and attractive to the commoners. Mystics bring interiority into religions, which get typically hijacked after brief early creative periods by literalists and dogmatists, who place far too much emphasis on ritual purity, outward piety and "correct" behaviour. Hindus have had their Bhakti saints, Christians the desert fathers of the East, and Muslims their Sufis.
Sufism is thus a form of Islamic mysticism, in which believers seek communion with God within the framework of Islam. The core of Sufism is in the idea of abandonment of man by God, and a fierce longing to be reunited with Him. It originated in the eight century as a reaction against the obscene wealth and splendour of Umayyad Caliphs. The first Sufis were pure ascetics who discarded all material attachments and led intense, lonely lives, committed to meditation of God. Hasan al-Basri, the patriarch of Muslim asceticism, for instance, was a witness to the Umayyad conquests, and was distressed by the hypocrisy he saw between the professedly pure ideals of Islam, and the very material richness that adorned the Caliphs. He, and the other early ascetics, essentially, in protest, withdrew from the world they saw as profane.
Extremely individualistic and interesting, there is nevertheless an undercurrent of great sadness in these early mystics. They shunned family life, preferred celibacy, lived with minimal material goods, and advocated strict renunciation of the world. An early ascetic Fudayl reflected this aversion of people when he proclaimed:- "When night comes, I am happy that I am alone, without separation, with God, and when morning comes I get distressed because I detest the view of those people who enter and disturb my solitude". The most significant early influence was from the Christian ascetics living lonely in the mountains of Lebanon and Iraq, with Jesus being the ideal ascetic. The patched woollen cloak that they wore as an emblem of their poverty, wool or "Suf", gave this set of ascetics the distinctive name of Sufis.
Rabia al-Adawiyya (d.801), the woman saint from Basra, perhaps made the most fundamental early contribution to the doctrine of Sufism when she introduced the idea of "selfless love" into the austere teachings and gave Sufism the hues of true mysticism. Once, in the streets of Basra, she was asked why she was carrying a torch in one hand and a ewer in the other, she answered:-
"I want to throw fire into Paradise and pour water into Hell so that these two veils disappear, and it becomes clear who worships God out of love, not out of fear of Hell or hope for Paradise." This was love for love's sake, without any expectations of rewards, in this or the afterlife. Paradise and Hell are thus ultimately Created entities, designed to keep oneself away from the divine. This quite delightfully made afterlife irrelevant, even while not denying the existence of it.
Post Rabia period, the ninth century, saw perhaps the most original and creative period of Sufi thought. It established the basic set tenets that governed the later, more systemized orders. Dhu'n-Nun (d. 859) brought love of life and created beings into the realm of Sufi thought, from it's renunciation by the earlier ascetics. He wrote short, charming poems about the "rustling of the trees, splashing of the waters, voice of the birds", in which he sensed a unity of all of God's creation. His writings impressed a generation of later medieval Persian poets with it's baroque imagery and deep devotion.
Bayezid Bistami (d. 874) was the first to describe the mystical experience in terms of the image of the miraj, the heavenly ascension of the Prophet. He was also the first to describe mystical intoxication in it's ultimate experience of "fana" or annihilation of the self. This was the state of complete immersion in the divine in which no trace of the ego remained to separate the Human from the Divine. This was the ideal of divine love and intoxication subsequently sought by both liberal orders of Chishtiyas, as well as ecstatic sufi orders of Qalandars and Malamatis.
These early pioneering ascetics are rounded off by the enigmatic figure of Mansur al-Hallaj, the Persian mystic, who was sent to the gallows for uttering the apparently blasphemous cry, an'al-Haqq, literally, "I am the Absolute Truth". This has been compared for its roots with Upanishadic "Aham Brahma Asmi", though historical evidence is tenuous at best. Hallaj's death became a symbol for mystical reunion with God for Sufis. It is ultimately with the death of man, both literally and metaphorically, that he reunites with God, the Ultimate reality. So, the biggest celebration in any sufi shrine even today is the death anniversary of the Sufi Pir, "Urs", literally "marriage with God".
The basics of Sufi doctrine - renunciation, poverty, love, recollection, death - thus got defined in these early centuries. How these beliefs became systemized and entered into the everyday life of common Muslims is what I would cover in the next part.
