"In each of us is Christ, waiting to be born."
Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and the Christ.
Jalal al-Din al-Rumi says, "We are talented doctors because we are followers of Christ. "This is how Rumi saw Jesus, the son of Mary, a mercy of God and a great healer capable of curing all ills with his breath. Yet, Rumi is not the only Sufi poet to credit Christ as the most outstanding Sufi as well as being influenced by him. Indeed, many Muslim mystics have mentioned Jesus and his miracles in their books and poems, accompanied by words of divine love. How did the Muslim mystics see Jesus and his mother?
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Umm al-Nur... Mother of Light... How did the Sufis see the "noble pregnancy"?
The Virgin Mary, the Mother of Light, inspired many Sufi poets because of her extreme purity and noble pregnancy, to which Islam devoted great narration. They mentioned in their poems the time of pregnancy according to the word of God. In the Islamic heritage, Mary has become the symbol of the human spirit destined to give birth by the word of Allah. Indeed, God has chosen her and purified her among all the women of the world in the Islamic faith.
As it says in Surah Al-Imran, "When the angels said, “O Mary! Surely Allah has selected you, purified you, and chosen you over all women of the world.“ (42)."
Thus, she and her child became the only ones on earth untouched by Satan, according to the belief of the Sufis. Annemarie Schimmel, a German orientalist specializing in Islamic and Sufi studies, notes that the jurist-Faqeeh- Ibn Hazm - who died in 1064 - had recognized that Mary attained the rank of prophecy.
In her book "Mary and Jesus in Islam and Islamic Mystic Tradition (Sufism)," Anne Schimmel states that the environment in which Mary (the Virgin) grew up was a hermitage in the Temple of Jerusalem. The Qur'an refers to this as the "mihrab," a term applied to the kiblah of prayer inside mosques. Whenever Zakariya enters with her, he finds a provision with her, so she says, "This is from God." Schimmel notes that Sufi poets praised Mary as a "Virgin". She is, therefore, pure in their poems, conceived without defilement, without carrying within her the taste of the first sin. The Qur'an refers to this in Surah Al-Anbiya': "And ˹remember˺ the one who guarded her chastity, so We breathed into her through Our angel, ˹Gabriel,˺1 making her and her son a sign for all peoples. (91)."
As for the Shaykh of Sufism, Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi, he saw the birth of Jesus from Mary without a father as an analogy to the emergence of the female from the male at the beginning of creation without the need for the mediator of the mother. He related by saying, "How can a female appear from the male without the mediator of the mother (as was the case with Eve), so it was necessary for a male self to appear from a female without the mediator of the father so that the balance of the activity of the divine creation would remain preserved in some way." Thus, Mary became the female who can energize creation through her direct presence with the divine. In Sufi poetry, Mary has become a symbol of the earth, flowers and holy water.
"The Complete Sufi." Here is what they said about Jesus' prayer and his solitude.
Anna Marie Schimmel says that Sufis considered Jesus to be the Knower of the greatest name of God, or at least by the letters of that name. She adds that the Sufi poets knew that prayer had an extraordinary power, especially if it was recited by a sacred being such as "Jesus."
For Anna Marie Schimmel, Jesus was, according to Sufism, the embodiment of the perfect human being and the "True Guide." They saw in him the greatest mystic because of his embodiment of human qualities, such as: "purity, goodness and integrity." Stressing that Christ enjoyed a high status among Muslims since he was the predecessor of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and the spirit that was breathed by the angel Gabriel to his Virgin Mother. Indeed, the Birth is considered a fundamental doctrinal issue for Muslims. According to the author, it is mentioned in the Qur'an in more than one place, and Jesus had this status despite some doctrinal differences between Muslims and Christians regarding "crucifixion and sonship of God."
In the book "REVIVAL OF RELIGIOUS SCIENCES -- Revival of Religious Sciences," volume three, by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, one of the most famous Muslim scholars of the fifth century AH, he indicates that Jesus had attained the highest ideals of asceticism. He is known for his self-control, good behaviour and control of his desires. He tells us in a saying attributed to Jesus, "He who lies much, his beauty fades, and he who quarrels much with people, his human morals collapse, and he who misbehaves tortures himself."
Sufis also described Jesus as extra austere...
Sufi scholars saw Jesus as the paradigm of the "complete mystic," in which one must strive to attain what one has attained. In every human soul, there is a Jesus waiting to be born so that his soul can rise according to what they saw. Farid al-Din al-Attar says in this regard that man needs a second birth to put his feet on the edge of the Kingdom. That is why they believed in his prayers that he had a special power capable of curing diseases and reviving the dead because he resides in the fourth heaven, according to some of them.
As for Jesus' last miracle, "a table descended from heaven," Sufi poets celebrated it as an indication of God's grace and pleasure. It is the hoped-for and blessed spiritual food. Food and drink for the soul are compared to the pilgrimage to the Kaaba for the poor. A means of sustenance that one wishes his tongue had tasted. In her book, Anna Marie Schimmel has deliberately included the full texts of what the Sufi poets saw in Jesus to highlight the image of Christ that Muslims revere.