Letters ( revised ) | The Twenty-Ninth Letter | 476
(447-527)
All Muslims, especially the virtuous and perfected ones, have a place in the mosque according to their degree; they are seen and attention is paid  to them.  If they perform  actions  and works  as taught  by the injunctions  and sacred truths the All-Wise Qur’an in accordance with the sincerity and divine pleasure which are a fundamental of Islam, and if through the tongue of disposition they recite Qur’anic verses, they will then be included in the prayer: “O God, grant forgiveness to all believing men and to all believing women,” which is constantly uttered by everyone  in  the  World  of  Islam.  They  will  have  a  share  of  it  and  will  become connected to all the others in brotherly fashion. However, the value of this will not be apparent to some of the people of misguidance  who are like harmful beasts and to some idiots who are like bearded children. If a man disowns all his forefathers, the source of honour, and all the past, the cause of pride, and abandons in the spirit the luminous highway of his righteous predecessors, which they considered  to be their point of support, and if he follows his own whims and passions hypocritically seeking fame and following innovations, he will fall to the very lowest position in the view of all the people of truth and belief.  In accordance  with: “Beware  the  insight of the believer, for he sees with the light of God,” [2] however common and ignorant a believer may be, even if his mind does not realize it, his heart looks coldly and in disgust on such boastful, selfish men.

And so, the man carried away by love of position and rank and obsessed by the desire for fame – the second man, descends to the very lowest of the low in the view of that numberless congregation. And he gains a temporary, inauspicious position in the view of a few insignificant, mocking, raving loafers. In accordance with the verse,

 

Friends   on   that   Day   will   be   foes,   one   to   another   –   except   the righteous,(43:67)

 

he will find a few false friends who will be harmful in this world, torment in the Intermediate Realm, and enemies in the hereafter.

As for the first man, even if he does not expunge the desire for position from his heart, on condition he takes sincerity and divine pleasure as his guiding principles and does not make rank and position his goal, he will attain a sort of spiritual rank, and a glorious one at that, which will perfectly satisfy that desire of his. The man will lose something insignificant, very insignificant, and find in place of it many, very many, valuable and harmless things.


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[2] Tirmidhi, Tafsir Sura, 156; Abu Nu’aym, Hilyat al-Awliya, iv, 94; al-Haythami, Majma’ al-Zawa’id, x, 268; al-‘Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa’, i, 42.

No Voice

Letters ( revised )