The Light April 2018 04

April 2018 The
Light 3
The Holy Qur'an points out to us
the clear ways which can make
a man attain to a true
knowledge of God and fill him
with such fear of Him as keeps
him away from sins.
Mysticism and Sexuality in
Sufi Thought and Life
by Valerie Hoffman-Ladd
Source: Mystics Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 3 (September
1992), pp. 82-93 Published by:
Penn State University Press
without lust, for this habit will after all make
him stumble. On such occasions, the Quran requires
that a man's eyes should be half closed,
for this is the only way in which a man can remain
pure in heart. Perhaps the advocates of a
misnamed liberty would object to such a
course, but experience shows that this is the
only right course. The free intermingling of the
two sexes and their freely casting looks at each
other are productive of great mischief and no
good has resulted from them. To allow men and
women whose hearts are not yet purified, and
who are yet under the control of their sensual
passions, to freely mingle with, and look at, each
other is to intentionally push them down into
the pit. The Quranic teaching in the attainment
of a condition in which a man does not venture
upon transgression and his love of God becomes
so great as to suppress his sensual desires, and
the realization of such a state depends upon a
perfect knowledge of God. The Holy Quran
points out to us the clear ways which can make
a man attain to a true knowledge of God and fill
him with such fear of Him as keeps him away
from sins. By following the Holy Quran a man
becomes the recipient of Divine revelation, sees
the heavenly signs, receives the knowledge of
future from God, has a zeal in his heart for union
with God which he prefers to every other connections
receives knowledge from God beforehand
of the acceptance of his prayers and a
mighty torrent of Divine knowledge flows in his
heart which sweeps away all sinful tendencies
before it. But when we go to the Gospel, it points
out a method for release from the bondage of
sin which is contrary to reason and does nothing
to remove the causes of sin. (Return to contents)
I Shall Love All Mankind.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20717124
(Note: There is a great misunderstanding
among the Muslims about the position
of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
They fail to realise that he was a sufi
who claimed to be a reformer in Tariqa
(mysticism), as well as Sharia (formal
aspects of Islam). It was common for
the Sufis to use as metaphor the relationship
between a man and a woman
to try and describe the relationship between
a man and Allah. The Holy
Quran refers to this as well. It states
that when a man becomes truly righteous,
he becomes Mary and is born
again as a truly holy person. We produce
below a paper by a non-Ahmadi
American scholar, which discusses the
use by the Sufis (such as ibn-i Arabi, Al
Ghazali ect.) of such metaphorical terminology.
It was not written as a rebuttal
to the objections against Hazrat
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad but serves this
purpose as well.)
In 1982, a British sociologist wrote of his
amazement to discover that a Lebanese Sufi
shaykh's mystical insight often had to do with
knowledge of his followers' sexual conduct
(Gilsenan 116-120). In my own research among
the Sufis of Egypt, 1 I found that a true shaykh’s
inner knowledge included not only this, but the
spiritual meaning of the sexual act itself, a secret
that is guarded by the shaykh from all but a
few of his followers who are spiritually mature
enough to accept it. Revelation of the secret to
those who are not spiritually ready renders a
person susceptible to divine wrath in this world
and in the world to come. Far from being a separate
dimension of life, sexuality is linked to
mystical experience in a number of ways in the
philosophy of Ibn al-Arabi, which has exerted