HAJI! SO YOU ARE UPSET

He narrated: "One night as we entered the Masjid al-Khif with the companions, we saw Haji Sayyid…. Sitting there with all the Tehrani and Irani friends. He was very upset at the state of the pilgrims and the condition of the thoroughfares in regard to matters of ritual purity and impurity. It appeared that some water had splashed on him, while entering the Masjid al-Khif and that had made him most upset: "'O God! O Lord! All that we wanted was to offer just two rak'ahs with ritual purity in Your mosque, but look! Would these Arabs and these people in this state of theirs allow us to do even that!"

I took him to the task, saying to him, "A disciple left his teacher to visit a Sage.(very wise man). The Sage asked him: "What did your teacher teach you?" The disciple said: "Our teacher has taught us to observe the acts of obedience and to refrain from ins."

The Sage said to him: "That is purely Magian dualism! Didn't he tell you to devote yourselves to Allah and to attend to Him by abandoning everything other than Him?"

"'My dear sir! Why do you alter the religion of God?' Why do you distort the Shari'ah? Why do you cut the people from God, and entangle them with their rituals? Is not the religion of the Messenger of Allah an easy and lenient one? Didn't he say: ' I have been sent with an easy lenient Shari'ah, one which is not cumbersome.'?

"Haven't the Messenger of God and the Imams said: 'Everything in whatever form at whatever time and place, is clean except when you are certain of its being unclean?' But you reverse the matter and say: 'Ewverything is unclean until it is ascertained to be clean.'

"Why don't you leave the people alone? Why don't you leave them alone with their Prophet and their easy and lenient faith? Why do you bar the way of attention to God and undivided devotion to Him? Why do you lock His open door.?

"All those who perform the Haj - right from the Miqat where they assume the Ihram until the time of Taqsir and the sacrifice, when they emerge from the Ihram - must have their attention turned towards God, so that they see and hear no other than God, and their mind is not taken off a moment from God. The rites and the acts must not be viewed in isolation: they, including tawaf, prayer and the rest of the rites, are assignments which are to be carried out in the natural course, and throughout these rites the goal should be God, and not the rite itself, One's hearts and mind should focus on God, not on the validity or invalidity of rites. That is the very dualism which conceals the One God from sight and puts the two gods of valid and invalid actgs in His stead.

"Right from the point of Miqat until emergence from the Ihram, you separate these unfortunate people from God. From the moment they assume the Ihram, you make them nervous lest something should splash on one's body or taint one's Ihram, lest one's shoulder deviate from the direction of the House, lest one should drift out of the Mataf while making the Tawaf, lest one's prayer should become invalid, lest one's Tawaf al-Nisa should be performed in an invalid manner and lest, as a result, one's wife should remain unlawful for one until the end of one's life.

"None of these things exist in the Shari'ah. This same usual prayer that the people perform is correct. Their Tawaf is correct. You make them invalid and stamp them with the seal of annulment. And you imagine the splash of those drops of water of a doubtful character as unclean. With such an approach, the people's Haj is wasted entirely. The Haji, who should be constantly with God from the Miqat until the conclusion of the rites, to emerge, with Taqsir and Halaq, from his undivided attention to God and the sacred state of Ihram with God, is distracted from God from the very beginning of Ihram, and this distraction, anxiety, and nervousness saty with him until the conclusion of the rites, and it is only on getting through with the rites that he takes a sigh of relief and then finds God.

"All the cautions that are observed in such cases and which require attention to the rites themselves and distraction from God, are all wrong. Where do we find this kind of difficult and cumbersome caution in the Shari'ah of the Messenger of Allah or during the lifetime of the Messenger? The primary principle is the absence of hardship, the absence of Haraj and the absence of harm. Our primary principle, in the Noble Qur'an, is: "…. And devote to Him with utmost devotion." (73:8) that is, cut off yourself totally from all, and turn to God."