Can you question your shiekh? What if he says or tells you to do something you dont want to do? Do you have to blindly follow them? How did you find your shiekh and what makes you trust them?
I am planning to take bayah from a Sheikh and he also mentioned that I have to provide my parents name during the process; just wanted to verify if this is okay
In dhikr, is the mind supposed to be “actively” contemplating the name? Or is the goal to put aside the mind entirely? I have read that the point is to produce certain vibrations which align with Allah as He manifests at every moment, but silent dhikr also exists, so where would the vibrations be coming from then? I have gotten to very deep places in Dhikr and the strongest experiences have been ones where i let the heart do the recitations. But it is not an easy thing to reproduce. Or rather, it’s so easy that the mind makes it complicated.
In summary, I am unsure if I should be trying to silence and mind and just sort of passively “feel” the recitations, or if the mind should always be poised and active in the recitations. And if the latter, how dos this work without the mind constantly over intellecrualizing everything and trying to reduce the experience to a formula?
I'm 39. I sweep floors, take out garbage, move mattresses and furniture, and put furniture together at a HomeStore in New York. Monday through Friday. That's where my body has been. My mind has been somewhere else for a long time.
This didn't start yesterday. It started in 2008.
I was working at Best Buy when I got accepted to Morgan State University to study business administration. I cashed out my 401k, quit my job, and lived off that money for about three months before it was time to go. For the first time in my adult life I felt like I was moving toward something instead of just showing up somewhere. That feeling, I never forgot it. And I spent the next 18 years chasing it back.
I tried almost everything. Options Trading. Infinite Banking. MLM. Hired VA’s for Real Estate Investing. Credit repair company. Courses. Mentorships. I put real money and real time into all of it. None of it worked the way I needed it to. Not because the ideas were bad. Because I was too accessible and I wasn’t fully committed. You can't build a free life while everything around you is designed to keep you dependent.
In 2020 I moved back into my mother's house. I was supposed to stay for a week. It's 2026 and I'm still here.
I've wanted my own space since I was in single digits. At 16 I knew you could legally live on your own and that’s all I wanted. I already had a car that got totaled by a Church bus while I had a car full of passengers (totally my fault). Everyone in the accident was ok. So coming back at my age, after everything I'd tried, wasn't just inconvenient. It was the kind of thing that sits in your chest every morning when you open your eyes. But in those years I did a lot of learning, growing, and applying what I learned. Those years were some valuable lessons.
The moment everything changed happened on an ordinary day. I was getting ready for work, got into it with my mom over something small, and walked out the door frustrated. Walking to the bus, I asked myself out loud… Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? I'd already been looking at apartments and places to live other ways to get housing in NY and other parts of the country. Everything was too expensive or time consuming or I just didn’t qualify. And I didn’t want to feel stuck anymore.
Then a specific Island in the Caribbean just dropped into my mind. Not gradually. It was a download. It was Ilham (which is the Arabic term for divine intuition, inspiration, or a spiritual prompting cast directly into a person's heart or mind by Allah.) answering the question I'd just asked.
I pulled out my phone right there on the street. Looked up the dollar conversion rate. I looked up the cost of living. It lined up almost exactly with what I was already spending living at home with no rent, just a phone bill, food, transportation, dog food, and the money I was saving. The math made sense in a way nothing had in years.
I started reaching out to rental agents that same week. I was having real conversations. Then one listing came through: a fully furnished apartment, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a balcony. $545 a month. To my surprise the apartment ended up being $540 with 3 bedrooms 1 unfurnished. I was really excited about that because I could practice my katas unencumbered.
I went to the bank to get the money so I could Western Union the agreement money for the lawyers. When I was walking there I saw $20 folded up on the sidewalk on a busy main street. I was stepping on it and when I was it looked like a dance, right left right left right left. I took that $20 on the concrete as confirmation. Allah sent me the idea. Allah sent me the place. And then He sent me a confirmation sign on the pavement.
I signed the lease. Paid the deposit. Bought the one-way ticket. At that point it stopped being a plan and became a fact.
Most people close to me have been supportive. Some are bittersweet, I get it, they're going to miss me and I understand that. A few voiced their concerns about my safety. My mom and one of her friends don't believe in it. Initially my mom said she was "excited" and “happy” for me, that change is good, but I can feel the skepticism underneath it. That's okay. I'm not doing this for belief from anyone else. I built my entire life on trying to earn permission from circumstances that were never going to give it.
So I stopped asking.
I'm not terrified. I'm not even nervous in the way people expect. I'm at peace. This feels spiritually correct in a way that none of the courses, the mentorships, the companies, or the plans ever did.
The mindset shift didn't arrive. I manufactured the circumstances that made it impossible to go back.
19 days.
I'm asking in this sub, because the other Islamic will largely argue from Salafi perspective.
What did the Fuqaha of the Asharis and Maturidis say about this?
In my understanding the allowance is for men to marry Christians (including trinitarians, as they are acknowledged as such in the Quran) and Jews is unconditional, as per the texts of Allah so long as they are non-promiscuous (chaste, but not necessarily virgin).
Later Fuqaha said the child must be raised Muslim, and ideally such marriages should not occur in societies where Muslims are the minority - however this is a guidance. I believe the Malikis said such marriages become Makruh, but not Haraam, as making it haraam would entail abrogating Allah's word.
My question is - what did our traditional Fuqaha, ideally from the last 2-3 centuries, say about the wisdom behind men marrying Kitabiyyat?
In todays age I can see lots of issues regarding the children's upbringing if this were enacted in the West.
Does God love us unconditionally?
So a few days ago I made a post here talking about how many tareeqas claim their Shaykh is a mujadid. There was one mureeda of a certain order who said their order would never make such a claim. I was intrigued and asked the name of the order and they happily gave me me the information including a URL.
After about a day or so, this mureed decides to look up my post and comment history and tells me...
I sent her energy right back to her and tgave her a nasty response. They promptly blocked me. About one day later I get a message from Reddit saying that I've received a warning.
Today I received a message that the warning has been lifted after a review. A very small victory, but it shows you how petty this person was. I find this attitude prevalent in all belief groups. Its the all-too-common holier than thou attitude. The layers of self-righteousness this person went through to try to one-up me is unbelievable.
Discuss. Can someone be so sinful that they should never contact a Shaykh?
Peace be upon you, I grew up in a non religious Muslim sunni household household, and eventually I started looking into sufism and I'm fascinated by the core of it.
Can someone please give me introduction to become a sufi and connect with the Devine
Salam do you have some great meaning of great sufi awliya ?
Here ✨SHAYH MURCI THE POLE.OF HIS EPOCH✨ THE HEIR OF ABUL HASSAN SHADHILI
AND HIS UNDERSTANDING OF
Quran
“What is this in your right hand, Moses?” He answered, “It is my staff, on which I lean and with which I cut down leaves for my sheep; it also serves me for other purposes.” God said, “Throw it down, Moses.” He threw it down, and behold, it became a creeping serpent. God said, “Seize it! Do not be afraid! We will restore it to its former state” (2 Corinthians 20:17-21). God similarly said to the saint, “What is this in your right hand?” “It is earthly life,” the saint replied, “on which I lean and with which I cut down leaves for my sheep”: his sheep are his limbs. God then asks him to throw away this earthly life, to withdraw from it completely; the saint then discovers that it is only a creeping serpent. Then God commands him to seize it and not to be afraid. The saint takes it back without feeling any harm, because he does so in the same way he threw it away: with God's permission and in obedience to His order.
I just wanted to say I admired Sufism as a shia for its spiritual and cultural contributions to Islam however wanted to ask what are your views on the rituals that happen on shrines in south asia like the practice where a malang nearly takes his eye out with a dagger while dancing
Hello there. I am not a Muslim. I am simply a seeker who studies metaphysics from many traditions. This is part of a text I wrote against one of Ibn Arabi's main concepts, Ayan al-Thabita. I'd like to hear and evaluate any objections, in case you have them. Thanks.
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Ibn Arabi's doctrine of the a'yan thabita ('immutable entities') represents one of the most ambitious attempts in the history of metaphysics to reconcile divine immutability, omniscience, individuality, and temporal becoming within a unified ontological framework; an attempt, in effect, to provide existence with a definition. Ibn Arabi claims that what he teaches is directly derived from disclosure (kashf), rather than induction. As you read the following paragraphs, it should become clear whether that is indeed the case.
His doctrine seeks to preserve God's eternal and unchanging knowledge while simultaneously accounting for the multiplicity and mutability of created existence. According to this framework, contingent beings possess eternal intelligible identities within divine knowledge prior to, and alongside, their manifestation in temporal existence (three-dimensional spacetime). Temporal becoming is thus not ultimately constitutive of beings themselves, but rather the unfolding manifestation of already eternally known identities. Simply put, he asserts a metaphysical scheme by defining immutable entities as beyond-three-dimensional, abstract "extra-spacetime things," wherein temporal change becomes merely the sequential apprehension of a complete atemporal structure, known only to his conception of God. Yet despite the seeming elegance of this metaphysical architecture, the system encounters serious philosophical difficulties once phenomenological immediacy, lived temporality, and the ontological structure of freedom are taken seriously as primary rather than derivative.
Now, the central problem concerns the ontological status of the allegedly immutable identity. The Akbarian framework presupposes that behind the flux of temporal manifestation, there exists a stable intelligible identity eternally known by God. However, phenomenological analysis reveals that such identity is never encountered directly in lived experience. What is immediately given is not an eternal intelligible structure; rather, what is actually given are shifting orientations of consciousness, discontinuous modes of self-disclosure, fluctuating affective conditions, and unstable forms of self-recognition. Temporal existence, simply put, does not present itself phenomenologically as the expression of a fixed intelligible identity. It presents itself as a process of ongoing unfolding without a final stabilization. Earlier modes of selfhood tend to lose all phenomenological immediacy and survive merely as abstract conceptual traces reconstructed retrospectively through memory and symbolic narration. One's childhood self, for example, is no longer lived as an immediate ontological presence, but only as an objectified abstraction. The continuity connecting these states is therefore not directly experienced, but conceptually imposed after the fact. Consequently, the immutable entity cannot be straightforwardly identified with lived subjectivity itself. It emerges instead as a retrospective metaphysical inference superimposed upon temporal becoming and the totality of the field of relations therein.
Ibn Arabi implicitly privileges an externalized totality over lived temporality. He interprets temporal change as merely perspectival, in which birth, development, and death are understood not as genuine becoming, but as different cross-sections of a completed atemporal structure. Yet this model fundamentally conflicts with the phenomenological structure of existence itself. Human temporality is not lived as the traversal of a pre-completed totality. Rather, existence discloses itself through openness, indeterminacy, anticipation, anxiety, rupture, and existential projection. The future is experienced not as ontologically fixed, but as radically open. The attempt to reinterpret lived becoming from the standpoint of an externalized totality therefore risks falsifying existence by converting first-personal openness into completed objectivity. What is originally lived as existential freedom becomes retrospectively redescribed as the mere unfolding of an eternally complete structure. Here, metaphysical totalization thus subordinates phenomenological immediacy to abstract intelligibility.
This tension becomes most acute in relation to the problem of freedom. The Akbarian doctrine presupposes that every being possesses a determinate immutable reality eternally present within divine knowledge. However, lived subjectivity discloses itself not as determinate identity but as transcendence beyond determination. Freedom is not experienced merely as a property among others, nor simply as the capacity to select between alternatives, but as the irreducible excess of subjectivity over every fixed content. Consciousness perpetually surpasses its own determinations and refuses complete objectification. In phenomenological immediacy, the self does not encounter itself as an eternally fixed intelligible entity, but rather as the very movement of transcendence beyond all finalized identity. Thus, a statement such as "I am I, and I am being restricted against the freedom that I am" expresses an ontological insight fundamentally incompatible with the doctrine of immutable entities. Freedom here is not accidental to the self but identical with its deepest mode of ontological actuality. Therefore, any attempt to reduce subjectivity to a completed intelligible structure can only appear as a negation of the very freedom constitutive of existence itself.
The problem cannot be solved merely by claiming that freedom itself belongs to the immutable entity. Why? Because freedom, as a concept, is intelligible precisely through its non-belonging to any fixed structure and through its self-identity. The Ibn Arabian stance simply risks rendering the system unfalsifiable in the first place. If rebellion, transcendence, protest, suffering, and existential dissatisfaction are all already eternally inscribed within the immutable structure, then freedom becomes merely theatrical rather than ontologically real in given actuality, because every possible objection becomes absorbable into the totality. The subject's sense of openness and transcendence is redescribed as merely another predetermined moment within an already complete eternal structure. Yet genuine freedom seems to require more than mere pre-containment within a timeless intelligible totality. Simply put, freedom requires the possibility of ontological openness not reducible to already completed intelligibility. Otherwise, subjectivity itself collapses into the execution of a script whose totality is eternally fixed from the outset in the mind of God.
The moral implications of this problem are even more disturbing. Human beings experience limitation, constraint, suffering, and impossibility not merely as neutral features of existence, but as lived contradictions against the freedom constitutive of subjectivity itself. Restriction is experienced phenomenologically as violence against one's own ontological structure. If God structures reality through eternally fixed immutable identities while subjectivity experiences itself fundamentally as freedom constrained by imposed conditions, then a severe tension emerges between divine omniscience and the concept of freedom itself. Either the restrictions constitutive of temporal existence are genuinely imposed upon freedom from without, thereby implicating the divine order in the production of existential contradiction, or else the experience of freedom already amounts to a structural failure; which is absurd, since it is the very condition that makes any system intelligible in the first place. The system appears trapped between determinism and the negation of lived subjectivity.
Furthermore, the notion that "existence belongs to God" intensifies rather than resolves this enormous problem. If existence itself belongs properly to the divine while contingent beings merely receive manifestation, then individual freedom appears ontologically secondary and derivative. Yet phenomenological immediacy discloses freedom not as borrowed participation but as the innermost structure of subjectivity itself. The self experiences itself not merely as a passive manifestation of divine existence, but as an internally absolute center of existential orientation struggling against conditions imposed upon it. Temporal existence is lived as an attempt at stabilization against contingency, dependence, and external determination. The subject's freedom therefore cannot simply be reduced to a modality of divine manifestation without undermining the phenomenological reality through which subjectivity itself becomes intelligible at all.
I don’t know if this is the right community, but I try my luck.
I genuinely don’t know what to think anymore and I need outside opinions because this whole situation feels insane.
I’m 24, from an Afghan family, raised Muslim, but I’m personally not religious at all. I’ve always been a very logical person. I stopped believing in religion really young because I just couldn’t connect to it and I’ve always tried to approach life rationally. Stuff like black magic, evil eye, spiritual attacks and all of that always sounded ridiculous to me whenever my family talked about it.
About 2 or 3 weeks ago my boyfriend broke up with me completely out of nowhere. We weren’t toxic, we weren’t constantly fighting, nothing like that. He became severely depressed. Like genuinely mentally unwell. He had to start therapy, got put on antidepressants and even moved in with his married sister because he couldn’t function alone anymore.
From one day to the next he completely shut down emotionally. He stopped wanting the relationship, stopped talking to me and basically disappeared from my life entirely.
I’ve been completely broken ever since. And I mean genuinely broken. I’ve had breakups before but this one drained every bit of life out of me. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t function. I’ve basically just been lying in bed for weeks trying to survive and watching breakup advice videos trying to cope somehow.
Now this is where things start getting weird.
There’s this woman in my extended family, technically my dad’s cousin, who has a son and has been trying for months to get me to marry him. I know this probably sounds strange to non-Afghans but in Afghan culture this stuff is pretty common. The weird thing is that ever since they started seriously pushing for this marriage, my boyfriend’s mental health started getting worse and worse.
I never connected those things before. Ever.
But today my parents had a massive fight because apparently this family tried AGAIN for the fourth time to come ask for my hand even after I rejected them multiple times.
Then my mom told me things I had literally never heard before.
Apparently months ago my parents were at my uncle’s house and found bizarre stuff hidden in the basement. Skulls, weird symbols in paintings, pictures of demonic-looking things. My mom even said she saw symbols that looked similar to a Star of David which confused her because they’re Muslim too. My dad confronted my uncle and he basically brushed it off and said it belonged to his wife and told him to leave it alone.
The uncle where they found all this stuff is apparently very close to the same cousin whose son wants to marry me.
Then my mom told me something else that completely messed with my head.
A week ago, because she was worried about how broken I’ve become after this breakup, she secretly drove to another city to speak to a religious woman. She asked her what was wrong with me because I suddenly became emotionally lifeless after the breakup.
And according to my mom, the woman immediately told her to stay away from a specific man in our family because he had helped another woman “separate” me and my boyfriend so her son could marry me instead.
I KNOW how insane this sounds. Trust me. If I read this post written by someone else I’d probably think they were losing it too.
But I’m honestly shaken because I’ve never been exposed to this kind of thinking before. I built my life completely differently from my family. I’m not religious, I go to university, I’ve always been independent, I openly had a boyfriend even though that’s considered a huge taboo in my culture. I’ve always rejected this entire worldview.
So now my brain is stuck between thinking this is all just coincidence and grief making everyone irrational or wondering what the hell is actually going on.
I honestly don’t even know what I’m asking for here. Maybe perspective. Maybe someone from a similar cultural background who understands this kind of situation.
I just feel deeply disturbed and emotionally exhausted.
As a sufi non naqshbandi what is your opinion on Shaykh nazim haqani?
Thanks salam
I would like to learn Sufism's approach on marriage life. Shykh Nazim Al Haqqani emphasized man to marry soon.
So I was wondering is it mandatory to have children in Tariqa's way?
What if the couple want to devote their life to spirituality and dedicate their life to work and serving all living beings?
I am a revert, and I recently came across Advaita Vaidanta? Does this world exist? is different from God?
A lot of people encounter Illuminationism (Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq) through scattered references to Suhrawardi, Henry Corbin, or later Persian philosophy, but have trouble finding an actual path into the tradition, especially one that includes practice, devotion, and lived spirituality rather than only abstract metaphysics.
So I wanted to put together a starter bibliography, translations in particular, for anyone interested in learning about practical Illuminationism in English.
This list is intentionally weighted toward accessible translations and texts that can actually be used, not only studied academically.
Many of these texts are fortunately available through Archive.org, which has become an invaluable resource for preserving and making accessible rare philosophical and mystical works, especially for readers outside major academic institutions. For many independent readers, it is often the best first place to begin searching for difficult-to-find materials.
This is the most important development for English-speaking engagement with practical Illuminationism in decades (it is very new, published 2025!!, and freely available).
For a long time, many people interested in Suhrawardi encountered only the philosophical system via a very scholarship/reception-focused lens: hierarchies of light, angelology, metaphysics, epistemology, relationship to Peripateticism, etc. What remained much harder to access in English were the devotional and operative dimensions of the Ishraqi tradition.
Wahid Azal’s translation changes that dramatically.
It opens access to:
And crucially, I say again: it is freely available to the public. It also makes the manuscripts it's based on visually available.
A genuine debt of gratitude is owed to the translator for making this important material accessible in English at all and their scholarship.
Archive link:
https://archive.org/details/prayers-to-the-orient-of-light
If you want to understand what lived or practical Illuminationism may have looked like historically, start here!
Translated by John Walbridge & Hossein Ziai
The foundational Illuminationist philosophical text in English, what people have gone to when looking for the philosophy of Illumination. Second part of this is the key for practical lived Illuminationism.
This is the central metaphysical work of the tradition:
Available here for purchase (and many other places): https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo3641907.html
Translated by Tosun Bayrak
Much shorter and more approachable than The Philosophy of Illumination.
Good as an entry point before diving into the previous text.
Available here:
Translated by W. M. Thackston Jr.
One of the best introductions to the symbolic and experiential side of Suhrawardi.
Contains visionary narratives and initiatory-style recitals:
These texts matter because Illuminationism was never “just philosophy.” The visionary imagination is central to the tradition.
Probably the single most influential modern work on the experiential and symbolic dimensions of Iranian Illuminationist spirituality.
Themes include:
Deeply influential for modern engagement with Ishraqi thought.
Essential for understanding:
One of Corbin’s major works.
Probably the best modern scholarly introduction to Suhrawardi’s system as a whole.
Very useful overview text.
Check out this amazing video on Illuminationism from Let's Talk Religion for a quick intro ahead of the texts*:* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbD8vfzsEHA
Suggested order:
That progression lets you encounter the tradition as:
rather than only as abstract metaphysics.
Would also love recommendations from others here, especially lesser-known translations, Persian materials, or contemporary practitioners/scholars working seriously with Ishraqi traditions.
The West didn't just translate his Poems, they removed The words Allah, Muhammed, Quran, Angles, Prophets from his Poems that were in every single paragraph of his poetry and turned him into some kind of Secular Spritual Buddhist monk
Remember he was a Pious Muslim Saint who prayed 5 times a day, prayed tahajjud, fasted, sacrificed Animals
The West has made Sufism look like some kind of Religionless and Godless Buddhism like religion
Excerpt from Mufti Ahmed Khanpuri’s speeches and notes.
Abdullah bin Masood (rad) reported: “I was beating a servant-boy of mine when I heard a voice from behind me,
‘Know, O Abu Mas’ud, that Allah has more power over you than you have over him.”
I turned around and it was the Prophet (saw).”
Who is Abdullah bin Masood (rad)?
The Prophet (saw) said, “Whoever would like to recite the Quran as fresh as it was revealed, let him recite like Ibn Umm Abd, i.e. Abdullah bin Masood (rad).”
(Ibn Majah 138)
He is a noble companion of the Prophet (saw). Yet this warning is being given: ‘Allah has more power over you than you have over him.’
Some people believe their knowledge and worship make them immune to criticism. In their minds, they think, ‘I have done so much worship, I have reached an elevated state. My anger and ill treatment of others will not harm me.’
It doesn’t matter how they treat their spouses, families, brothers, sisters, other muslims as if there is no accountability? They annoy and oppress others.
With remorse, Abdullah bin Masood (rad) freed the slave.
Even then, the Prophet (saw) didn’t praise but reprimanded him saying, “If you had not done so, you would have been burnt in the Hellfire.” (Muslim 1659)
Have we surpassed the Companion (rad) that we are beyond reproach?
Are we so proud that we don’t need to refine our character?