Today I want to talk about some of the technical terms within Sufism, what they mean and how they become implemented.
All of the religions have laws and these laws usually have a name. In Catholicism they’re called the Canon Law that means the law of the things that are permissible and the things that are not permissible. In Islam it’s called the Sharia; the things that you can do and the things that you can’t do. In Judaism it’s called Halacha, and what these laws do is prescribe when you pray, when you eat, what you eat, relationships between people, relationships at the time of death and the way that estates are distributed. Because, at one time, the religious law was the only law, because all of the states were religious states, for instance; Iran is now the Islamic Republic of Iran which means that their laws are their attempt at governing by the laws of Islam. Saudi Arabia is absolutely that way. In Jerusalem, in the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem, there are special courts that are Islamic courts that deal with, for the most part, marriage and divorce, and inheritance. And they do what they think is necessary to maintain the integrity of the community.
Now, in Sufism, Shariat is considered the first step of understanding what is expected of you, and that means conformance to the laws, and the laws are usually defined as that which it tells you to do in the Quran and the Sunnah, which means the way of the Prophet. In other words, if the Prophet did certain things these have been recorded and they’re called Hadith, and Hadith tell you what the Prophet did under certain circumstances, and you are supposed to follow those circumstances.
There are movements within Islam that claim that you have to go back to the way of the time of the Prophet, and that there is no modernity in the world, and that all modernity is innovation, and is inappropriate for your behavior.
Within the Shariat, and when the Shariat is treated as the whole of the law, as opposed to a part of the law, what often happens is severity takes over, and all of a sudden everything gets enforced in an incredibly harsh, severe way. And the response by those enforcing the Shariat is: these are God’s commandments and it is incumbent on us to enforce them, and since you have broken God’s commandments, we can do to you what is instructed to be done under these circumstances.
But Sufism doesn’t stop at the Shariat, Sufism starts with Shariat. I’m talking about the law, and the first level of the law is the Shariat, the instructions as to what to do. In Sufism the devotees are already in compliance with the law. They don’t cheat on their wives, they don’t rob from people; they act appropriately. They do the right things, but they’re interested in more than just doing the right things. They want to establish a relationship between God and man. And there were teachers who came along who set forth organizations wherein they said, “We will teach you how to form a relation between God and man.” These are called Tariqats.
A Tariqat is a way…
