Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

252 Umar F. Abd-Allah
attributes to its concern for the life of body and soul as two complementary
aspects of a single phenomenon:
[Islamic] religion and law belong to two distinct orders, yet they
integrate themselves into each other in turn because they are
intimately united by the common goal they share, which is the
well-being of man. The principles of the faith regulate the internal
form and determine what man ought to believe in pursuing eternal
life. The positive law imposes discipline upon human activity and,
in this, directs it toward those precise mundane foundations and
becomes the necessary complement – the body – of that organism
which is made up of the faith and the soul. 60
The masters of mainstream Islamic Sufism insisted upon the law. 61
A Moroccan Sufi master, Muh _
ammad al-‘Arabı al-Darqawı (d.1845),
wrote:
Whoever desires that Freedom show him her face, let him show her
the face of servitude [to God]. This means having upright intentions,
truthful love, a good opinion of others, noble character, and careful
adherence to what the law commands and prohibits without any
alteration or change. [Freedom] will then show him her face, and veil
it from him no more. 62
Traditional Western scholarship sometimes supposed that rigorous
adherence to Islam’s outward (legal) tenets was antithetical to the
spiritual pursuits of Muslim mystics. There were, without question,
strong antinomian Sufi strains on the periphery of Islamic spiritual
history, but the mainstream tradition associated with Junayd, one of
the earliest mentors of Sufism, insisted upon adherence to the law. In
the eyes of the Junaydı Sufis, their spiritual discipline corresponded to
Islam’s third and highest dimension, that of ih _
san (human perfection),
and, therefore, was ‘‘the life-blood of Islam’’. Junayd said: ‘‘This
knowledge of ours [Sufism] is built upon the foundations of the
Qur’an and the Sunna.’’ 63
Historical evidence shows that early Sufi notables took both law and
spiritual teaching seriously, and the endorsement of the law remained
central to mainstream Sufi tradition. The characteristic genius of
Islamic mysticism was its ability to strike a balance between the law
and spirituality, and to insist upon the complementary nature of the
‘‘exoteric’’ and ‘‘esoteric’’ dimensions of Islam. 64 Shat _
ibı, one of the
most illustrious of medieval Islamic jurisprudents, censured his juristic
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