Peckham Mosque
A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytaani ‘r-rajeem. Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmaani ‘r-Raheem.
Nawaytu ‘l-arba`een, nawaytu ‘l-`itikaaf, nawaytu ‘l-khalwah, nawaytu ‘l-`uzlah,
nawaytu ‘r-riyaadah, nawaytu ‘s-sulook, lillahi ta`ala fee haadha ‘l-masjid.
Ati`ullaha wa ati`u ‘r-Rasoola wa ooli ‘l-amri minkum.
Obey Allah, obey the Prophet, and obey those in authority among you. (4:59)
Madad yaa Sayyidee, yaa Rasullulah, yaa Rahmatan lil `Alameen, yaa Shaafee’ al mudhnibeen, yaa Rasulullah, yaa Habibullah, yaa awwala khalqillah wa Khaatimun Rasoolillah! as-salaatu as-salaamu `alayka yaa Rasulullah! alfu alfu salaatu wa ‘s-salaam `alayk yaa Habeebullah! alfu alfu salaatu wa ‘s-salaam yaa Awwala Khalqillah wa Khaatimi Rusulillah!
Nothing can be achieved without a support. It is very rare to find anyone in this dunya achieving anything without a support. In any walk of life people try to find means to support themselves, to get a business or work or research in a lab or other. They need to find ways of support for their documents, theses, education and work. Everyone is trying to find the one who can support him; someone that has value, fame, intelligence or honor. And there are many who claim that they have fame or honor, that they can support you. But later you find in your work or business that they are not correct. There is an Arabic idiom they say to the thief, “Swear on the Qur’an,” and he says, “Mashaa-Allah I am safe now.” Because he is a thief, he can swear on the Holy Qur’an as he likes, he doesn’t care. People who have a little bit of mind or emotion know they cannot do anything without a support. That’s why we say and keep saying, “Ya Rabbee, You are a witness to what we are saying and that we are asking madad, support from our shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani (q) to support us. If he doesn’t support us, we are lost.”
Once there was a crowd of 5000 people and Mawlana (q) asked me to address them. Some people may have liked it and some not. It is in my mind and I’m sharing it for it to be in yours. He said, “He doesn’t need anyone, (he said about me) as long as you think he is in need of you. I am supporting him, my support from the Prophet (s) comes to Grandshaykh (q) and from Grandshaykh (q) to me. He doesn’t need anyone to support him.” So it means we need a support and that is why we say, “Madad Yaa Rasullulah (s).” We ask support from Prophet (s.) We say, "Madad Yaa Sayyidee, Yaa Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani (q),” We ask support from our shaykh (q,) in order that Shaytan will not play with us. Because Shaytan is ready and waiting. When he sees us heedless, he attacks immediately. How many moments in your life are you heedless? It is not that you are heedless one day and not the next. In every moment of our lives we are heedless.
The proof is in the story of Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir Jilani and his mureeds. Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir Jilani asked his mureeds to slaughter a chicken or rooster, cook it and bring it to him. But it had to be done in a place where no one would see them. They were very happy to obey the order of their shaykh. If Mawlana were to give an order, I believe all of you would immediately execute it because of your love, and your faith in the shaykh. But there are moments in your life when you are heedless and you might not listen although you love to do what he asks. But he will never give an order, because he knows it is difficult for you. So Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir Jilani said, “I want you all to slaughter a chicken or rooster for me in a place where no one sees you.” They did what they were asked and came one by one, bringing the chicken, slaughtered and cooked. Only one did not come until Maghrib time. And he had the rooster with him, alive. The shaykh asked him, “Why did you disobey my order?” What did he say? “Why did you disobey my order?” What does that mean? There is a hint here: does the shaykh not know why this mureed disobeyed the order? Why is he asking him? ‘Why did you disobey my order?’ Doesn’t the shaykh know that this man did not slaughter the rooster? As if the shaykh is veiled! The shaykh wants the mureed to say it, so the others can hear. He is not ignorant, he knows what is going on.
Grandshaykh (q), may Allah (swt) bless his soul, always used to say to us, “Don’t try to hide from me. When you are moving in your bed at night I can hear it like thunder. Even if you are in the east and I am in the west.” But it is not appropriate for the master to go through these things and mention them to his mureeds. He keeps it in his heart. Because he knows the reason people are coming to him.
So Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir Jilani asked, “Why didn’t you slaughter the chicken?” The mureed said, “Oh my shaykh, you said to slaughter it in a place where no one can see me. Wherever I turn my face in that village, desert or jungle, I feel your presence. I feel the presence of the Prophet (s), I feel the Oneness of Allah (swt) around me. So how can I slaughter and so disobeyed your order? You said not to slaughter it in a place where someone can see me. I didn’t find a place empty from you or from the Prophet (s) or from Allah (swt).”
That one is not heedless. Out of the many students of Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir Jilani in that meeting, he did not find, except one who wasn’t heedless. The rest were heedless. Therefore, it is important to ask for support, because without the support of the shaykh, we become more and more heedless. We are already heedless. If we were mindful our faith would be strong, and if our faith was strong it would be like the faith of that mureed. So evaluate yourself. We can evaluate ourselves, we don’t need anyone to evaluate us. Are we heedless or not? If we are not heedless we can see the presence of Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) here. Are we seeing him? Speak the truth. We cannot. If we can see, we can feel or we can hear the presence of the Prophet (s).
We can feel the Divine Presence. Why? Because the Prophet (s) mentioned in an authentic hadith that Allah (swt) when He loves someone, gives him ears he can hear with and eyes he can see with, kuntu sam` ahu ‘lladhee yasma`u bihi wa basarahu ‘lladhee yubsiru bihi. He will be his ears that he can hear with and his eyes that he can see with. He will be his tongue and give him power to speak with it. Are we like that? We are not. So why then do we behave in a way which is not appropriate? What are we trying to achieve in this meeting and in meetings with Mawlana Shaykh (q)? That is why we have to know that Shaytaan is behind the door, he cannot come into the masjid. We have to believe that. At the moment we exit we are in trouble. Don’t exit from Allah’s house:
وَأَنَّ الْمَسَاجِدَ لِلَّهِ
inna 'l-masaajidu lillaah.
Masajid are for Allah (swt) not for anything else. (72:18)
You come to me and say, “I’m seeking your help. Help me, doctor, help me to buy a place and make it a masjid for Allah (swt.)” I say to you, “Yes. I’m happy my money is going towards making this place a masjid.” You buy the place and after a while it becomes an apartment building. How do you think the one who gave it is going to feel? The one who gave from an open heart, to make a place for Muslims to come and pray and fast and build up their spirituality. And instead it turns into apartment buildings and unacceptable terrorist schools. So that person who gave, how is he feeling? He is unhappy. Is he happy? He is not happy. He gave for Allah (swt) and Sayyidina Muhammad (s.) And Mawlana (q), may Allah (swt) gave him long life, bought them for Allah (swt) and Sayyidina Muhammad (s,) in order that people can have access to them. But they have been blocked. The one who donated the money is not saying anything, although he has been hurt. And the one who searched for and bought the place, being patient, is not saying anything either. But haqq has to appear:
وَقُلْ جَاء الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا
wa qul jaa’ al-haqqu wa zahaq al-baatilu inna’l-baatila kaana zahooqa.
And say: "Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish. (17:81)
Sayyidina Muhammad (s) ( Mawlana stands) allahumma salli `alayka ya Sayyidee yaa Rasoolullah ya rahmatan li 'l-`alameen, came with the message of Islam, came with haqq. But he didn’t expose it until Sayyidina `Umar came and said, “Yaa Rasoolullah , are we on haqq or not?” He responded that they were on haqq, and so he said, “Why do we have to give adhaan hiding ourselves?” He went on the roof and made the adhaan from there.
We are waiting for that haqq to come insha’Allah, not to see the truth and close our eyes. When you see the truth, you carry pain. When you are on haqq you will be stabbed hundreds of times. Sayyidina Bilal (r) was on haqq. What did the unbelievers do to him? They tortured him, to curse Prophet (s) and to deny Allah (swt). They tortured him day and night with all kinds of torture. In that period there were no human rights. And today they speak of human rights but where are they? Not human rights, Shayateen’s rights! Whoever is Shaytaan, has rights. Whoever is a perfect human has no rights in dunya. But in heavens, Ahkirah, he will have all the rights. So Sayyidina Bilal (r) was under the rights of Shayateen, he was being tortured. No one stopped them except the Prophet (s.) How many people in Islam are being tortured and stabbed? What happened to `Umar (r)? He was stabbed and killed. Sayyidina `Uthman (r) was stabbed and killed, Sayyidina `Ali (r) was stabbed and killed. Hassan wa ‘l-Husayn, `Ashooraa is coming, stabbed and killed. The grandchildren of the Prophet (s). Who dared to kill them? They dared. And they were the closest to them, to Sayyidina Husayn and they killed him. Of course Yazeed killed him, we blame him. But those who killed him more, were those who were looking after his affairs and promised to support him and then ran away.
Like some people, when we brought someone to stop the Priory from falling into the hands of others. That one ran way, disappeared and doesn’t show himself. Today when they have a problem, and we told them many times to be careful, the first one to be a runner, the one in the cartoon, ‘roadrunner,’ he threw it on someone else and ran away. Khafadoo li Sayyidina ‘l Husayn, they put him down, they betrayed him. Who? Those who invited him to come and free them. As soon as he came to Karbala, they pulled out. These people know right from wrong, they know their benefits. They don’t care to keep buildings as mosques, instead turn them into apartments. Why? Because of heedlessness. When someone is heedless, he can do anything haraam. When someone is not heedless, with Allah’s help he does everything halal.
I was reading the notes of Grandshaykh (q), may Allah (swt) bless his soul, and Mawlana Shaykh (q) of 10th of Shabaan, 1391, nearly 40 years ago. Most of you were not born yet. Grandshaykh (q), may Allah (swt) bless his soul, had hundreds and thousands of followers everywhere; in Daghestan, Turkey, Amman, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia. A lot of mureeds. A lot of miracles used to happen then. We were young and he used to say, “I have only two mureeds,” from these thousands, might be millions. Why millions and not thousands? We didn’t see millions, might be more that millions, because I will tell you a nice story.
One day in the 1940s, about 70 years ago, Grandshaykh (q) was sitting in an association of `ulama. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim’s students then were mostly youth, but Grandshaykh `AbdAllah ad-Daghestani’s students were elderly, 50 years old and above, and they were scholars. That is how it was. Grandshaykh (q) was sitting in his house as a professor may sit, in a room large enough to fit 50-60 people, surrounded by the scholars. He tells this story.
A lady came from England to visit Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q). She came in, escorted by Mawlana’s special barber who lived near the Ibn al-Arabi Mosque in Damascus. An uncovered lady, coming up to him, doesn’t speak Arabic, Turkish, or Daghestani language, and all these people were looking, wondering where is Shaykh `AbdAllah (q).
When the barber introduced her, immediately, she came over to Grandshaykh (q) and kissed him. You know, in western countries there is no barrier between men and women; this is their culture, they don’t know more than that. The `ulama were all in shock. But what could Mawlana do? In any case, he called after Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) to translate and Mawlana coming quickly, sat down. He was young. Grandshaykh (q) with his big stick, like Sayyidina Musa’s stick. Did you know that when he was young, Hollywood offered him to be the main actor in a movie about Sayyidina Musa (a)? They came to him in Cyprus to ask if he would accept to play the role in a movie. He refused. These people who claim to know Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) know nothing; they only know about their pockets. They might have some spies here, for sure!
So Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) came and sat and that lady started telling her story to Grandshaykh (q) and everyone else sitting there. She said, “Oh my shaykh,” she doesn’t know him, “Teach me what you taught the Indian lady from Bombay.” Everyone was looking, ‘What is she speaking about? Who is this Indian lady? And they don’t know!’ So she told her story.
She said, “One day, 3 or 4 years ago, a letter came by post to me from a lady in India but without a return address. She was speaking about spirituality, tasawwuf. I was surprised as to how she got my address. I never knew her, but I received this letter. I opened it and it had a very nice description of spirituality and moral behavior and excellence, so I kept the letter. I thought someone gave her my address or perhaps that she knew me. After a month another letter arrived. And the next month yet another letter, and like this for a whole year. All of them related to spirituality. I learned a lot from her. And these are the letters I received in one year, twelve of them. The next year, I began to receive letters from her saying that she had a shaykh, a master who comes to her every week and teaches her tasawwuf, and she writes his suhbah. And these are the twelve letters about that shaykh of whom she wrote, and I don’t know who he is as she didn’t mention his name. The third year she sent me a letter saying, ‘My shaykh is Shaykh `AbdAllah ad-Daghestani (q) who comes every week and visits me in my home in Bombay.’”
And who is listening to that story? All these `ulama came out of the place; they couldn’t take it anymore. ‘How? He never left us, never went to Bombay, he never knew how to go except when he went to Mecca and Madina twice by plane, and that’s it. He never went out of Syria, very rarely to Amman. How did he go there?’ And who is telling us the story? Grandshaykh (q) is telling me the story, in my notes long time ago, more than 40 or 50 years ago.
And the lady continued, “I was so anxious to know where that shaykh was. And I received another letter, this time with the address. She sent the address, and as soon as I got it I was so happy! I made a trip to Bombay, all the way to that address. And I knocked at the door. It was in a jungle, no one opened it. Someone from afar said that the lady had died but that she had a daughter somewhere. ‘You go ask her daughter.’ Oh my shaykh, I went and found the daughter and I asked her. She said, ‘Yes my mother used to have a session every week with a shaykh that came here, white beard, old man, hundred years or more, and taught her about Sufism.’ I asked where that shaykh was and she said, ‘I don’t know, I only know one thing, that he lives in Damascus by Shaykh Muhiyuddin Ibn `Arabi.’”
That lady became a Muslim. She took a plane back to London and from London to Damascus, went to Shaykh Muhiuddin ibn Arabi asking for Shaykh `AbdAllah. The first person she met turned out to be the barber of Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q). He took her to Grandshaykh and she said, “Oh my shaykh, I want you to teach me what you taught her.”
Everyone was surprised and I am not going to say what he taught her. I will leave that portion for next time; it is hidden. But with his greatness, and why did I tell this story? Because there are shuyukh who have millions of mureeds. No one knows, you only see your brothers and sisters around you and say these are the mureeds. No, there are mureeds by dreams, or they say bimillahi’r-Rahmaani’r-Raheem and go to that mureed, like that British lady. She didn’t know Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) or Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q). She knew no one. She went to India to meet that lady who had died and they told her the shaykh was in Damascus, to go and find him there. Grandshaykh (q) gave her three things to do and she returned to her house and dedicated her life to doing that. She came once and also sent letters to Grandshaykh (q). She died, she didn’t live long. She dedicated her house for teaching spirituality. Who is that lady? Allah (swt) knows, except this story.
How was Grandshaykh (q) going to her every week? With what? With Haqiqatu ‘t-Tayy, the Reality of Moving through Space. For awliyaaullah there are no dimensions; the three dimensions disappear. There will be dimensions of time, through which they move and that is very quick. They don’t move through normal ways. When permission is granted from Prophet (s) to show miracles, they show them, they have no problem with it. But not every time are they given permission from Prophet (s) to show miracles. They don’t like it; they like to act normally. That is why when Mawlana (q) speaks, he says, “I have power. If I touch a button people change.” But he never touches a button, and he can touch thousands of buttons to change us, but he is touching very few of these buttons because there is no permission.
Once Mawlana’s eldest son was married, before this wife, to his cousin who had kidney problems. They implanted a kidney which they took from her brother. So my wife told her father, “Oh my father, pray for her. We believe that your prayer will cure her, with Allah’s permission.” He said, “I will pray my daughter, but don’t expect me to take the sickness away, because she is my family now, so if I do that I am obliged in front of Prophet (s) to do for the entire ummah that whoever has that sickness has to be cured and she will be cured.” So awliyaaullah are responsible if they perform a miracle without permission. When permission is granted they can.
Don’t think that Mawlana prefers some mureeds over others; all mureeds are preferred by him, because he looks at everyone in the same way. And those who appear close to Mawlana might be far from him. It may be that people go to Mawlana for two weeks and do not get to see him. They may feel unwelcome. No, they might be the best-welcomed through his heart. But don’t think that those who are inside doing this and that are near. You don’t know who is near or not near.
Once Grandshaykh (q), may Allah (swt) bless his soul, was relating that forty priests took shahada with him in Damascus. They were connected with certain monasteries there. He told them to keep their Islam secret, because it would create problems for them. When I heard the story, I wondered how I could get to see one of them. The people sitting with Grandshaykh (q) didn’t care. They were happy to sit near Grandshaykh (q) and these people who took shahada were not coming there, which meant the ones sitting close were better than them. It came in my heart that Grandshaykh (q) should show me one of them. That left me, but many months later, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) asked me, “Hisham what are you doing?” I was in Damascus. He asked me to come with him and we went by bus (although we had a car), all the way downtown to Damascus.
There is a clothing market there, where he wished to buy something. We went walking, and Mawlana Shaykh (q) never turned his face left or right. I asked, “Mawlana, what are you buying, you are not looking at these shops with all their stuff outside. You are not looking at anything. You are looking at your feet and moving.” Suddenly he looked straight ahead. I looked, because as he was walking he was looking at his feet, which is the adab, and I saw a priest coming from the other side. In Damascus, the priests wear black turbans. He was coming and we were facing him. I saw him enter a store. I didn’t ask Mawlana anything and when we arrived at that store, Mawlana entered also. ‘Alhamdulillah,’ I thought, ‘now we will see the priest,’ but he was not there. The owner shook Mawlana’s hand and then pushed open a walled shelf, behind which there was a room and in it was the priest, sitting there. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) had a letter from Grandshaykh (q) which he gave to that priest. Mawlana looked at me and said, “This is one of the forty that Grandshaykh mentioned.”
So you might see a person on the street, giving you salaam and not know him. He might be higher in the eyes of the shaykh. That is why we must not be heedless; if we have open eyes then we can see the realities. Awliyaaullah’s eyes are open and can see realities. We are asking that Allah (swt) will grant us without our `amal, only by His grant and mercy, to have open eyes and ears. To see haqq and stand for it, and to see baatil and stand against it. In Arabic we say, the one who sees baatil and keeps quiet and sees haqq and does not stand for it is Shaytaanun akhras, a dumb devil. He sees the truth but doesn’t care for it.
May Allah (swt) with this blessed evening laylatu ‘l-jumu`ah, grant us from His endless mercy for the sake of His beloved, Sayyidina Muhammad (s) and the sake of our shuyukh, especially our sultan, Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani (q).
Bi hurmati ‘l-habeeb, bi hurmati ‘l-Fatihah.
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