The Fourth of six Discourses on Safar,
9th August 2008,
The Jumu’a Mosque of Cape Town, South Africa
Please be very still, and look at your Qur‘ans, and concentrate.
The last time, we were discussing the Safar of the Qur’an. This time we are going to look at the Safar to the Ayats – to the Signs of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. Let us now look at the result of this event of the Qur’an’s descent onto the heart of the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and thus its presence permanently in the heaven of the Dunya. We will look at Surat al-Isra‘ (17:1):
In the name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful
Glory be to Him who took His slave
on a journey by night
from the Masjid al-Haram to the Masjid al-Aqsa,
whose surroundings We have blessed,
in order to show him some of Our Signs.
He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.
Glory be to Him who took His slave on a journey by night
This reference to His slave confirms that his journey was bodily. Now, look at the beginning of the phrase.
Glory be to Him who took His slave on a journey by night
“Glory be to Him” is indicating Allah. In Arabic it is called Dami al-Ghayb – the pronoun of absence. It is referring to Allah by a pronoun of absence. The one who is not present is a grammatical term. In other words it is not a physical presence. It is referring to Allah in a very high manner. “Glory be to Him” is the pronoun of absence.
Glory be to Him who took His slave on a journey by night
The “His” is also a pronoun in the third person, the pronoun of absence. The grammar of this gives us, in speaking of Allah, an absence in an absence – there are two references to absence. This is Ghayb al-Ghayb. This indicates to us the highest, exalted nature of what is happening.
Glory be to Him who took His slave on a journey by night
The Messenger here is specifically mentioned in his station of ‘slave’, of ‘Abd. He is then taken to the two places of Sujud:
From the Masjid al-Haram to the Masjid al-Aqsa,
So he is taken to the two places of Sujud, the Masjid being the place of prostration. Sujud is slavery. But the two Mosques, however, indicate the highest. The two Mosques indicate the place of sacredness, of purity – Haram, and distance – al-Aqsa.
Here we see that Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, has placed Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, in his lowest condition of his humanness, of being slave, and the slaveness is Sujud, and He has taken him, nevertheless, to the highest and most exalted places – the Haram and the Aqsa. One is set aside as sacred, and the other is far, distant.
Now, of the Signs, Allah tells us in Surat al-Fussilat (41:53):
We will show them Our Signs on the horizon and within themselves
until it is clear to them that it is the Truth.
Is it not enough for your Lord that He is a witness of everything?
Here we see the first aspect of these Signs, because we are coming to look at what was this event that took place on the Night Journey.
We will show them Our Signs on the horizon and within themselves.
Hold on to that, and we will go to Surat adh-Dhariyat (51:20-21):
There are certainly Signs in the earth for people with certainty –
and in yourselves as well. Do you not then see?
What we are seeing, is that Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, is bringing Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, into a condition of consciousness, of knowledge – of Ma‘rifa of himself from two aspects. One which is Signs on the horizon, and then Signs which are in himself. So let us go to Surat an-Najm (53:1-9):
In the name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful
By the star when it descends,
your companion is not misguided or misled –
nor does he speak from whim.
It is nothing but Revelation revealed,
taught him by one immensely strong,
possessing power and splendour.
He stood there stationary – there on the highest horizon.
Then he drew near and hung suspended.
He was two bow-lengths away or even closer.
So the two bow-lengths is one of the Signs of the horizon, of the created world, of Allah’s creation. “Or even closer” is the station of election and love. In the next Ayat we find:
Then He revealed to His slave what He revealed.
This represents the night meeting of the self of his self – of the self of the self of Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, with the absence of His absence. Do you see? “He revealed to His slave what He revealed” represents the night meeting of the self of the self of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, with the absence of His, Allah’s, absence – with the innermost reality that we can speak of, of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala.
This is confirmed by the next two Ayats:
His heart did not lie about what he saw.
What! Do you dispute with him about what he saw?
The heart does not lie, for it is a Ma‘rifa that has been given to Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and known thus only to the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Allah tells him that the heart does not lie. The next Ayat is: “What! Do you dispute with him about what he saw?” Now, it is a Ma‘rifa known only to the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, in his inwardness, so it cannot be denied, or confirmed. There cannot be any proof brought against it or for it. We find that this is confirmed by the Ayat:
His heart did not lie about what he saw.
Here we come upon something very interesting. Allah says in the Qur’an – and this is translated by all the translators as “His heart did not lie,” but this is not actually the correct, precise meaning of the Arabic, because the Arabic word here is not Qalb, but Fuadh. This is another matter. Fuadh is not the same as Qalb. Fuadh, in the Ruhalmani Tafsir, is the breast. He says: “Or we could say it is the ‘inner heart’ or the ‘heart of the heart’ because the root of Fuadh, Fa-A-Dh, is ‘he struck his heart’. The other meaning of the root is ‘to shoot a gazelle’. The gazelle, in the language of the Arabs and of many peoples, is the treasure, it is the most precious matter of the hunt. So:
His heart did not lie about what he saw.
The next Ayat says:
What! Do you dispute with him about what he saw?
That Ayat puts it above any idea that it could be questioned, because it is a Ma‘rifa known only to the Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and is not accessible to denial or confirmation. This is the indication that this event was something which gave the highest knowledge to Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, what our ‘Ulama of Tasawwuf call Ma’rifatullah. It is a recognition, but we see that what it indicates here is the core of his being in the state of annihilation from the cosmos, but going from a knowledge of the horizon to this other knowledge which is in the heart. Then we find that even to speak of the heart is not enough. Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, says in Surat al-Hajj (22:46):
It is not their eyes which are blind
but the hearts in their breasts which are blind.
Just as there is the heart which is blind, there is also the heart that sees, there is the heart of Ma‘rifa. Of course, that is not a seeing with a sensory seeing, but a knowledge of a much more exalted and incomparable kind. So, this matter of the Night journey, the Isra‘ of Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, indicates his high and highest station among men, based on his slavehood – utterly determined by his slavehood – as we have seen from these Ayats.
We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, to give us a knowledge of the Qur’an and benefit from it.
