Suhbat
Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
02-23-2008
Masjid al-Iman, Oakland, California
[Shaykh Hisham addresses the students of a class on Islam taught by Professor David at University of Santa Clara. The students gathered at Masjid al-Iman in Oakland on a Saturday as part of their class practicum and attended dhikr afterwards.]
Shaykh Mahboob mentioned the ladies can sit by the door so they can get quickly to the door. They can reach the food quickly. [everyone laughs]
Ladies can sit where they want. Human beings are one family.
Nawaytu al-arba`een, nawatu al-`itikaf, nawatu al-khalwah, nawatu ar-riyadah, nawaytu as-sulook, nawaytual-`uzlah lillahi ta`ala al-`adheem fee haadha’l-masjid.
Thank you Professor David, and God bless you and your students. It is an honor to be here. You came here long drive and I came long flight. I came from Arizona since last week.
I think it took about the same time. You came from Santa Clara and I came from Arizona but we had one goal. Our one goal is to meet. The most important is not the way we come but the intention. The ways to God, it is said, in Islam are infinite as the number of breaths.
So it is said in every breath, whether inhaling or exhaling there is a way to find ourselves. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, other , all religions, came to say one thing: not more. You can go to your university and look into the library in the area of religions and you will find all these thousands and thousands of books and all say what? There is a creator, there is God. So our goal is God, Allah .
People from beginning were searching. The first man and the first lady, on earth, were looking for their Lord to worship. Even the pebble, even Satan. Satan also believed in God because he was in Paradise was he not, even in the bible, even in the torah, Satan because of his sin he was sent to earth. But he was in Paradise. So that means he was believing in God but he did a sin so that God sent him to earth.
One big saint in Islam, one day he was coming to his heart a certain inspiration or certain information, because many of us, most of us when we are sitting by ourselves we have inspirations that come involuntary to the heart. Does Satan has … because in Holy Qur’an it says Allah says, “My mercy encompasses everything” and in the saying of the Prophet where Allah says “My mercy overrides My anger.”
So it means the mercy of God is more powerful than anger, more powerful than anything else. So it came to his heart that since God’s mercy encompasses everything does it encompass Satan or not. That is a puzzle to him and until today it is a puzzle.
So I want to say that in all religions, our goal and hope and target is how to find our place in the presence of God. Your students are coming to hear about and to find God here or in a church or in a synagogue or in a temple. The importance is where to find your Lord. If you find it in Islam, if you find it in Christianity; if you find in Judaism; it is good. The most important is to put your feet in the right place.
Islam, if we are going to speak about Islam, is so simple. It is not so complicated. It is something that is asking you to balance in your mind everything. Whatever is good you do. Whatever your mind says is not good, leave. It is not so complicated. People might come to you and say to you something and someone else might say something else. But it is so simple - what you see good you do and what you see is not good, don’t do.
That is what the Prophet when he came with the message of Islam, he came telling his people one thing: Believe in God. Is there anything else? So that is why he said, “Whoever said ‘la ilaha ill-Allah’ enters Paradise.” There is no ilah, no deity; there is no God but our Lord and our creator - that is Islam. Whoever says that, enters Paradise. Do you say that? Of course everyone of you says that. Then the rest is so simple. The rest is you pray or you don’t pray. It doesn’t mean you are not a Muslim. When you say la ilaha illa-Allah it means you are a Christian if you believe in Christianity; if you believe in Judaism you are a Jew. So what you believe in you follow.
You cannot come to someone and dictate on him all Islamic teaching [in one moment], Islam came in 23 years. No one will take that. You cannot do that in Christianity either. You cannot implement to apply all of Christianity on people all at once, it is very tough. It is the same with Judaism. And so what is important is the spirituality of the religion. That is what is common between us.
When the Prophet came, he taught that in Islam there are 17 bad characters. And in all religions there are 17 bad characters. And religion came to purify us of these 17 bad characters. These 17 are the tree of disasters. The tree that all these bad branches are growing on it. If you cut the trunk all these bad characters will fall down. And I put a book on that issue, on that title, which we call it the self-realization it is a Sufi science. It is there and I explained these 17 bad characters which you can find in any religion that you are studying.
But from a Muslim perspective, I like to mention it might be many people don't count them because many people are not aware of their presence because they are there and it is good to know them. The first of them - which is most deadly one - is anger. Because when someone is angry he is like drunk. He will not accept anything. When someone becomes angry from anyone he is drunk. He may kill someone and he doesn’t know what he is doing. That is the main reason people kill each other.
So anger is the main bad character of that tree. Look when we had that terrorist attack on America, what is the reason for it? These people are angry. Might be they are angry with their own selves even. So they want to pour that anger here. So when someone is angry they might do any kind of terrorist act. So what we have to do with the young generation? We have to teach them to be tolerant and to be patient.
The Prophet said to his first calipha Abu Bakr, “Anger is like disbelief.” It is as if you are denying the existence of God. When you get angry, you don’t accept God even. You only accept what your ego is telling you, like drunken people. So that is the main problem today between Muslim people and between others.
So if we go forward we go to the second thing. That is love of this world. To love this life and forget everything about the spiritual aspect of your life and to love only the materialistic life and not giving any time to your children and family, only your belief and your time is so taken in how much you can make to live a very fancy life style. You will forget the poor and forget to be charitable or generous and forget to be a loving person. Your whole mind is on running after this life; how much I can make and how much I can own.
So you might cheat your other people your brothers and sisters; you want everything in this dunya and you don’t want to share anything with anyone. Even in the same family. That is even the father against the children and mother against the father and … that is why you see the breaking up of families and the breakup of the relationships.
Sometimes I go to the airport and tears come to my eyes. Really I was crying. You see these young children with the hostesses. Really one time I was crying. There was a mother at the gate with one boy and one girl. The boy was 2 or 2 and a half, and the girl is 5 or 6. And she is at the gate and she is with the children and they are crying between her hands and the hostess has to take these children to see their father in Washington. And the children don’t want to leave the mother and they are crying at the gate of the plane and they are crying and they pull them onto the plane because they have to go to see the father.
When you see their situation you ask “why I am living this style of life? What is going wrong?” There is something going wrong between human beings today. There is no more love and no more discipline. There is only love for sex. Sorry to say that. [Today] Love is built on sex. You have teenage girl and teenage boy they go together to date each other ; it is no longer based on love to build a family.
That is a problem that is caused by love of the world to fall into this disaster. You see after 2 or 3 years they go ,each one way.
So Islam came to build discipline for such things because just as we have a body we have soul. And that must be fed just as the body is fed. That is why we pray in the mosque and synagogue and the church.
And the third one is malice and I don’t want to explain all of them. You get malice from other people. You begin to hate them and to be against hem you don’t want them to be successful you only want yourself to be successful you only want goodness for yourself.
Fourth is jealousy. You become jealous from everyone and from everything. Even sometimes people get jealous from their wives. Why do the children love her more than me? Or it might be she has better job than me. Or the women get jealous from the husband. And that is a big problem. And that is a problem in all religions and in Islam as well.
Fifth you have ujb, vanity. You feel that you are proud of yourself. You think yourself better than everyone. O no, Allah said in Qur’an “wa fawqa kulli dhi `ilmin `aleem - Above every knower there is another knower.” Above every professor there is another professor and above that one there is another professor, always in education it stops. There must be someone above the one who is educated. So it never ends.
Sixth is stinginess, al-bukhl. Allah gives you, give. Open your hand. These are all bad characters that we have.
If everyone will think about themselves, do we have these characters or not? [yes] We have them. No one can say “I don’t have.” Everyone has. You are stingy with everything, even with a smile. What did the Prophet (s ) say? “Idkhaal as-suroor ila qalb al-mu’min min al-iman. For you to make someone happy and smile to him is from faith.”
If I make him to smile it is from faith. Because if he smiles and I smile back then we create a relationship like brother and sister.
Take the smile, how it is so effective. The Prophet said “The smile is like charity.”
It will be considered as a sadaqa, a charity. Look today, we say, “nadhra fabtisaman fa hub fa zawaaj.”
And this is not Islamic but it is poetry or a joke, first a boy and a girl, first nadhra, a glance, she looks and he looks and they say something which is catching their attention. From the first look like a magnet. What happened if that magnet went through? They smile to each other. Then ibtisaman. Then a date. Then love; then marriage.
That smiling makes people happy with you.
Then seventh is avarice. Once I was in a Muslim country and I met with the prime minister of that country. And he explained to me that there is one country that has lot of money and it is invested in many savings accounts in western banks. And they are very strict they don’t accept to take interest. So that one went to a meeting of nations, the OIC and he said to them, “why don’t you invest that money in our banks and we give you a guarantee on return and you will put that interest to go to African countries?” They said “no, we don’t take interest.” 300 million dollars is lost every year because this is the way they think about Islam. So that prime minister was so angry, he was the head of OIC at that time, he was so upset he was screaming and yelling.
At least if they were generous, they would say “take it. “But no. They are not taking it but they are letting someone else benefit from it.
Let us change the subject now. Let us discuss the problems of human beings. Economic and politics is disastrous. Really human beings are suffering.
8th is jubn, to be a coward. When you take a decision you take a decision. When there is something that is true don’t keep quiet. The Prophet said, “who sees something wrong try to change it by hand by writing first, and if you were not able, then by your lisan, by tongue, then by speaking up, and finally if you were not able, then by the heart” and that means by praying to God to change that situation.
Ninth is indolence, to be lazy not to do anything. Islam came to teach you not to be lazy. The enemy was coming to fight the Prophet and the people came to him and said, “Do we plant our plants .” He said, “plant your plants.” Don’t stop because you expect to fight the next day. Islam recommends people to work, not to be lazy.
Today you see so many people lazy and on the street drunk, not working.
Tenth is arrogance. People see themselves themselves too high; you cannot talk to them.
Eleventh is ostentation.
Twelfth is attachment.
Thirteenth is superiority.
Fourteenth is heedlessness and laziness.
Fifteenth is anxiety.
Sixteenth is depression.
Seventeen is the rest of the bad characteristics, which are more than 750.
So professor, I would like to say to the student s and to myself, because I am a student, “Don’t think I know more than you. You know more than me. I am trying to study and I am trying to learn and religion is something that is above us.” And as time is moving and passing in every moment look at the long needle, it is moving. The second needle is moving 1 after 1 after 1. You are losing from your life, as the clock is ticking, your life is less. As the second is moving your life is less. Don’t think you are living longer. No your life is becoming less and less and less. If you don’t prepare for that day, because we are all religious people, all those people who believe in religions, they have to know that one day they are going to be called back.
So what we have to do? We have to prepare for that day. How to prepare for that day? To be good in the community. Extend hands to everyone to build bridges with everyone. I hope we will be able to give a message of love; that we love you. And you also love us. You came to here and we came to you in order to build a better community. This is the message that every Muslim should carry and every religious person from other religions should carry in order to build bridges together.
I will tell you a story today. Someone put in my hand something and I looked at it and it is very nice. I wondered why he gave it to me. Then I thought this might have a significance for tonight. I didn’t tell him that there is a meeting tonight today for a school. I realized there are signs that are sent from time to time. There is a superpower that is supporting us. There are a lot of superpowers coming on all of us. Don’t think we are left along, there is too much energy coming from the cosmos that is showering us with a beautiful feeling of intimacy and familiarity. I said, “God is great - He is showing me a sign.” Then before we came here that same man gave me something in my hand and I said “This is confirmation of what he gave me before.” Then I said, “I am blessed tonight with meeting these people tonight. “ I kept it in my pocket ,I was so happy. It was something extraordinary for someone to give me.
Another time someone else gave me something . That is something that makes us to feel we are not alone. Give that to the professor to know we are not alone - there is something beyond us.
And he gave me this. What was in it? And it is coming all the way from Rome, it is from the Vatican. You can pass it around - it is the Virgin Mary. Pass it around as this shows us we are not alone. Show the students. That person gave it to me without knowing anything about this meeting.
We believe in that and we believe in Moses who came to the people of Israel to take them to the promised land. And if you have any questions you may ask.
Q: how does one become a Sufi.
A: I t is very simple. Say, “I am a Sufi, I am a Sufi, I am a Sufi.” I explained it last week, that when the archangel Gabriel came to the Prophet and asked him, “what is religion?” And he answered, “There are 5 pillars which are the basics, to accept God as the creator and to accept the messengers and the Prophet Muhammad as a messenger. To pray the prayers to fast Ramadan and to pay charity and to go for pilgrimage.” Then he didn’t stop and he asked him, “what are the six pillars of faith?” Then he said, “you have to believe in God and His books and His angels and His Prophets, (in plural), and in Bible, the Psalms and Torah,” and then he asked about the state of ihsan. And that is purification of the self. That is to worship God as if you are seeing him and if not then know He sees you.
When you begin to reach the third level that is where you begin to have experience in Sufism. In the time of the Prophet he used to teach his Sahaaba how to purify their nafs. Later the word term tasawwuf was given to the process of purifying the self. Later after 125 years it became known as the science of purification of the self. And Sufism/tasawwuf. That is how it was created and how it came.
Q: I understand that in Sufism there is need for a spiritual guide. When did you know you are a spiritual guide for the community?
A: I have to share that? I have to share it?
Professor David: Only if you want.
A: I am… my master is my guide. And he is the guide for everyone. Not in this community that you are seeing. It is a … bigger than this community - we nearly have in every country around the world we have centers in different cities and we are… we cannot count and we don’t have exact figure of our community and we belong to the Naqshbandi Sufi order and these Sufi orders come in millions around the world in Indonesia it is like 100 million. So the community is what you are seeing here is an example of the bigger community. So I represent my master – he is the guide. I am not the guide. I only hope to be a sincere servant to God and to be a sincere servant at the door of the Prophet and a sincere servant at the door of my master.
To be given to represent or speak on behalf of the master, the guide, it needs a lot of workshops and seclusions and experiences you have to go in in your life. I hope I can reach one day to satisfy what my master and my shaykh wants to see from me. And I hope that one day the Prophet will be happy with what we are doing.
So to be a guide in this Sufi tradition is not so easy and it is not so simple. It mean you have to dedicate your life completely only for that purpose. That is why I had a Bachelor of Chemistry from the University of Beirut and then I studied medicine and then I dropped everything and then I went in this way and went through too many different kinds of training that allowed me to represent my master around the world. This is how it happened.
Q: I wanted to know if you can explain a little bit about fana and how to know when you reach that point and what is that experience like?
A: fana in Arabic it means in English what? You now the Arabic so it must mean you know the English.
Q: unification with God.
A: fana is annihilation in the Divine Presence. It means no more existence to yourself in the presence of your Lord. It means you have annihilated your ego completely and you are like a dead person, no way, not any kind of something that your mind will ask you to do. You drop everything and you reach the level of submission that is the meaning of fana. So will give you an example through a story and then you can understand.
One of the big saints in Islamic tradition and he was one of the great Sufis, like 900 AC. His name is Bayazid al-Bistami and he is very well-known. He was praying until he was able to hear voices with his ears, not through his heart like many of us say, we can sometimes have inspiration or revelations through the heart but we cannot hear them. But this was like someone speaking to him, he was hearing angelic voices from the Divine. So in his experience and in his way of approaching and worshipping and doing all he can do in his life to reach that state, he was asking God, “O God open for me Your door in order that I can enter the Divine Presence!” and then he heard a voice saying “O My servant” which he is hearing through an angelic vehicle. Saying “O My servant, My door cannot be opened to you until you make yourself a dump; a dump to My servants. You cannot come to me through your worshipness when you worship you get the benefit is it not for My benefit. You want me you have to help My servants. That means you have to direct everything to My servants. When you fast and pray it is for yourself. You have to make yourself a dump for My servants. “
“A dump? Of what? It means go and carry the difficulties and problems of My servants in your community in order that I will open for you My door.”
[shaykh’s phone rings] Someone is ringing. That means something..
So to reach maqam al-fana you have to sacrifice yourself for sake others. Like Sayyidina Umar, the second caliph of the Prophet . When the first caliph passed he chose him to be his successor. Then he came home and he was crying.
I asked many Americans “where is Minnesota?” and they don’t know . now they know Iraq better then their own country. There is in Iraq are two rivers ad-Dijla and al-Frat. So two people were taking ablution by the river. And one of them slipped in and he was drowning and he doesn’t know how to swim. And the other was looking at him and involuntarily he jumped into the river although he doesn’t know how to swim. So they became two there and both drowning. So the first asked the second, “Why did you jump in?” He said, “O my friend when you fell in I was feeling the same feeling you are feeling.” That is why in fana you are feeling with everyone what they feel. Then there was a third one who jumped in order to save both of them.
So maqam al-fana is feeling with everyone around you. You feel how he is eating, drinking and behaving and you try to work with him or her in order to become a better person in the community so it is very difficult to reach that level and it is there and many saints who reached that level and God has opened to them. Then after they reached the level of fana, they went to a level called baqa. After going into annihilation you will be sent back to live with people and to reflect back that station to the people living in your community.
Any more questions?
Q: I was just wondering if you can tell me about the people you brought with you. Is there a specific purpose? Can you tell me anything about that.
A: I didn’t bring anyone with me. They came by themselves.
No. usually people come by themselves, because they are already initiated in that Sufi order in that Sufi tradition and we have one master and when I travel from one place to another we have big communities and they come to attend the session. The people you see here are from the community in this area. I didn’t bring anyone special with me. I am part of them and they are part of me and we are all to one master. So if I go to any area, Chicago, New York, Washington, or if I travel overseas in countries where there are a lot of people there might be 20,000. One time 250,000 came; they have to have big stadium in Jakarta in order to accommodate the people. This Sufi order is so well-established around the world and always condemning terrorism and radicalism and we are exposing terrorism and Islamists around the world; this is our work.
Last question.
Q: I was just wondering what you feel different the Naqshbandi order is from the other Sufi orders? What is its defining characteristic?
A: I don’t think there is something special. We say all the ways take you to the windmill. So all the ways take you to the same place. As she said maqam al-fana, that is the annihilation in the Divine Presence and all Sufi orders have their own ways [to reach it]. And It depends from one Sufi order to another who is the main master for which it is named. But all of them come from the teaching of Islam and the teaching of the Prophet . There are differences which are minor ones in the way of recitation of God’s name. We believe God has 99 Names and more and so it is a different way of reciting these names and different way of reciting from the Holy Qur’an: what part you recite on Monday and Tuesday, etc.. Might be different between this Sufi order and that Sufi order.