Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT t 249
rather than to explain or define it. As Ghazali was later to remark,
the Sufi life “cannot be learned but only achieved by direct experience,
ecstasy, and inward transformation.”
In Christianity, the rule governing the community of ascetics can
be either “constructed,” as it was in the case of a Basil, a Benedict,
or an Ignatius of Loyola, or else, as in the case of the Franciscans,
inspired directly by the living example of the founder. Sufi orders
almost universally followed the second paradigm. The sainted man
who stood at the head of the file of Sufis was not so much a
founder as a paragon or paradigm around whom followers collected
in the original khanqahs in the hope of sharing, by association
and imitation, his baraka, the blessing or grace he possessed.
The rule evolved from an attempt to recollect and emulate at least
his behavior. But two things must be noted. The rule did not come
from the saint, as it did in Christianity, and it required no one’s
formal approval or approbation. In Christianity, there was no “order”
until it was approved, and, in the West, approved by the highest
authority, the bishop of Rome.
The Sufi initiate took an oath of allegiance (baya, the same word
used for the pre-Islamic oath of fealty to the tribal sheikh and then
to the earliest caliphs) to the founder of the order and to his present-day
earthly successor and deputy, the current link in the same
spiritual chain (silsila) that led uninterruptedly back to the saintly
founder. The initiate in a Christian religious order made three permanently
binding vows to God: one of personal poverty, one of
celibacy, and one of obedience to the rule, as expressed in the will
of the superior. It is precisely in this matter of the oath/vow that
the difference between the Christian monk and the Sufi becomes
clearest. The latter swears allegiance to an individual, the former
to a rule, or an ideal. Even more telling, perhaps, is the fact that the
Sufi initiate receives, again at the baya, the wird, or prayer formulary
proper to his order. Part of the wird is like the monks’ “office”
and will be recited in common and in public at the dhikr of the
tariqa. But part too is personal and secret. The secret formulary is
imparted to the Sufi initiate, is expanded by degrees, and will become
complete on the occasion of his final oath of allegiance.
Members of a zawiya met regularly for a “session” (majlis) where,