To my Shaikh with Love

By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, "Hadrat Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali: A Great Sufi Writer" - Pakistan Observer - Islamabad, Pakistan
Saturday, january 31, 2009

The scholarly Professor Afaq Siddiqui, a prolific writer on mystical dimension of Islam, has recently published a concise and an interesting biography of Nawab Iftikhar Ahmad ‘Adni CSP (d. 2004 CE), titled ‘Adni Baba, thus adding an account of this great writer, a poet, a high flyer of the Pakistan Civil Service, and above all a great sufi master, to his popular biographical series of publications, Hadrat Baqi Billah, Sachal Sa’in and Shah Latif, the well-known saints and seers of the sub-Continent.

Of particular interest are the revelations the ‘Adni Baba has brought to light in the letters exchanged between him and Akhtar Mirza regarding their Shaikh, the religious mentor, Hadrat Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali Ludhianvi (d. 26 January 1997), his states and stages in tasawwuf and position in the mystical hierarchy.

Some six years before his demise, a decade ago, Hadrat Abu Anees confided in ‘Adni Baba that he was one of the three Muwahhids (the strict believers in One-ness of Godhead) worldwide, usually one each in Pakistan, India and the other Muslim territories. Now the Muwahhid alone discerns completely, and no one else, the Almighty Allah’s commands in operation and that none else except Him has any power over any ‘good’ or ‘evil’ whatever.

“Towards the end of his life Hadrat Abu Anees held the ultimate position of the Qutüb al-Aqtâb, the head of the living Awliya Allah,” claims ‘Adni Baba through his dialogue with the Shaikh as the letters have it. Earlier on Hadrat Abu Anees commented on pejoratively unpleasant political stalemate in an interesting statement in his Dar-ul-Ehsan Monthly, May 1971, that ‘the days are not far off when Pakistan would sway a uniquely important position internationally’ which euphemism he repeated and reiterated on Pakistan Television (1990).

The Shaikh felt it necessary to repeat himself on account of the ambivalent national statesmanship he had witnessed during the intervening years of the political hegemony in Pakistan, thus putting the mind of an average and faithful patriot to rest.

Along side the glad tiding, Hadrat Abu Anees has in his Maqâlât-i-Hikmat (The Words of Wisdom) Volumes 1-30 made pertinently cogent suggestions on the character-traits required of nation building. He stressed in no uncertain terms the important role of such attributes as unity, tolerance, forbearance, honesty, love, affection, truthfulness and selfless service to humankind over telling lies, back-biting, carrying tales, carping, jealousy, greed, avarice, hypocrisy and injustice. He laid a great emphasis on simple and modest living; modesty and humility being the cornerstones of Islam, he vouchsafed. To add, the believer must engage in dhikrullah (invocation of Allah the Almighty), extol his Creator profusely and hold His most beloved, the last and final Messenger (peace be on him) to mankind, as his own.

He records an anecdote in his Maqâlât that when the great plague spread in 1918 in the sub-Continent the imperial administration felt impoverished to control and stampede it. A man of God went along to another who, hearing the news, got alarmed at the catastrophic epidemic, and between them they organised a session of continuous dhikrullah, saying: “As Allah the Almighty, unbeknown, is not pleased with us, we will endeavour to bring Him round!” “Where the medics and paramedics had failed with the calamity, the men of God succeeded to arrest it”, claimed Hadrat Abu Anees.

By and large the believers, especially those at the helm of affairs, are surreptitiously gullible about their credentials and values that the Shaikh wrote: “He who is a follower has become the leader, otherwise all this (malaise) would not have come to pass.”

Further, in the foreword to the English rendering of his Maqâlât Volume 1, he has maintained: “I am not immune to the evils around us and I have commented here and there in my writings on the ills of the society for those who would care to read and help putting things right for the glory of Islam and the Muslim Ummah.”

To concur, Katherine Pratt Ewing, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, USA, visited Hadrat Abu Anees in 1977 and a few years after, on return from her research study, she wrote in a tribute to the Shaikh: “The presence of a living representative of the sufi traditions, who possesses all attributes of the original sufi pirs further reinforces the position that the pirs were not mysterious, magical figures of the mystical past, but were pious men. They performed for their era what living sufis can do to day for ours.”

Hadrat Abu Anees has, undoubtedly, left a rich heritage for such guidance for emulation by the generations to come.

Hadrat Abu Anees’s philosophy of life revolved round his firm belief in Tawakkal al-Allah (trust in and fear of Allah the Almighty). He often said: “If someone has everything of the world, but has no Deen (Faith), he has, in fact, nothing with him. However, if he has the Faith, but nothing of the world, he has, indeed, everything for him.”

Hadrat Abu Anees’s successors are carrying out his tasks of self-less service from both Dar-ul-Ehsan and Camp- holding eye-camps biannually and helping to removal of cataracts, the wretched eye ailment of the tropical countries. The hospital at Camp Dar-ul-Ehsan founded by the Shaikh covers some one hundred and twenty five thousand square feet of space affording some twelve hundred beds. Between the two hospitals hundreds of thousand more procedures have been undertaken during the last decade.

Both Dar-ul-Ehsan and Camp- are the zawiyyahs (seminaries) in the making where the late Shaikh’s three pronged mission of Da’wah-o-Tabligh al-Islam, dhikrullah and selfless service to mankind are concurrently in operation.

Not only that, the Shaikh had, in his life time, set up five hundred and seventy Marakaz (Centres), home and abroad, some more active than the others, which are carrying out unstintingly his sacred mission. Some more are being established all over.

Additionally, because of some of the Shaikh’s major works having been rendered in to English and published in the United Kingdom under the supervision of the contributor of this article, an awareness of his teachings having thus been achieved somewhat, his life and precepts are currently being researched at one of the London and Huddersfield Universities. The contributor has as a result of some three years research study compiled a voluminous biography, ‘to my Shaikh with Love’, to be published early in the New Year, with the Shaikh as a centrepiece and an embodiment of Islam incarnate for the purpose of Da’awah-o-Tabligh al-Islam in the industrial West.

Professor Mark Halstead, Head of the International and Community education, Huddersfield University, writes in his foreword to the biography: “Hadrat Abu Muhammad Barkat Ali was an ascetic, a man of great learning, a linguist, a philosopher, a mathematician, a jurist, a chemist, a herbalist – but above all a Sufi master who lived for others and strove for closeness to God. Anyone interested in the path to spiritual enlightenment through the discipline of Sufi practices will find inspiration in this book.”

To explain, Hadrat Abu Anees never accepted any titles for him except Mutawakkal-il-Allah who by definition treads on the path of Tawakkal-il-Allah, not bound by any other means. He is on record, saying: “My living is like birds that wake up in the morning hungry and sleep at night satiated, saving nothing for the morrow.” Also, he writes: “Free yourself for the world and attend to the Creator Whose best grace to the servant is the service to His creatures, inclusive of all and sundry.”

He has often quoted the following of the tradition of the Holy Prophet: On the Day of Judgement Allah the Almighty will address people thus: “I was sick. Did you care for Me?” To some he will say: “I was hungry. Did you give Me food?”(To others He will say): “I was naked. Did you give Me clothes to wear?” People will say: “You were the Master and Sustainer of the whole world. When did we need to care for You, feed You and clothe You?”Allah the Almighty will say: “Did you care for the sick? Did you give food to the hungry? And did you clothe the naked?”

Hadrat Abu Anees concludes: “All creatures belong to the family of Allah the Almighty. Service to the creatures is service to Allah the Almighty. How can we serve Allah the Almighty otherwise?”

In order to alleviate pecuniary stringencies of the poor as above, Hadrat Abu Anees had unfailingly reminded his devotees and above all the readers to attend to the Holy Prophet’s saying: “O the Son of Adam! You call this as your wealth. Repeat, you call this as your wealth! (The fact of the matter) is that your wealth in it is only that much as you have eaten and consumed, only that much as you have worn to rags, and that which you have given away (in charity) and accumulated for afterlife.” This drove the First Caliph of Islam to charge the believers the Zakat to the extent of the camel’s nose string. Thus affording savings for the Second Caliph to raise a large Muslim Army with this money to conquer and rule the largest ever Muslim empire.

Hadrat Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali has been a great Sufi master, in whose being spirituality reigned most high. He was an ethicist and at once a great educator and philosopher of Islam. He spoke several languages including Arabic, English, and Persian in addition to his Urdu mother tongue and wrote several voluminous books on traditional Islam and modernism. His corpus of major books need to be studied and researched in depth, thus helping to bridge the gap and bring about better understanding of Islam by the masses especially those in the industrial West.

In the end ‘Adni Baba has been the Khalifah (Successor) of the sufi poet Dhahin Shah Taji (d. 1984) as well as a trustees (mutawalli) of Camp Dar-ul-Ehsan appointed at the death of the Shaikh’s right hand man, Khan Abdul Samad Khan. When ‘Adni Baba died in 2004, Lieutenant General (Retd.) Khalid Latif Moghul took over his positions as a mutawalli at the Camp- and Chair of Pakistan Writers Co-operative Society, Shahra Quaid-i-Azam, Lahore.

The General had a long and close association with the ‘Adni Baba and was a trusted confidant of his Shaikh Hadrat Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali.

The writer is Senior Lecturer at Huddersfield University.