Book Five
STORY XI.
The Muslim who tried to convert a Magian.
A Muslim (Mosalman) pressed a Magian to embrace the true faith.
The Magian replied, “If God wills it, no doubt I shall do
so.”1 The Mosalman replied, “God certainly wills it, that
your soul may be saved from hell; but your own evil lusts
and the Devil hold you back.” The Magian retorted, using
the arguments of the Jabriyan or “Compulsionists,” that on
earth God is sole sovereign, and that Satan and lust exist
and act only in furtherance of God’s will. To hold that God
is pulling men one way and Satan another is to derogate
from God’s sovereignty. Man cannot help moving in the
direction he is most strongly impelled to go; if he is
impelled wrongly he is no more to blame than a building
designed for a mosque but degraded into a fire-temple, or
a piece of cloth designed for a coat but altered into a pair
of trousers. The truth is, that whatever occurs is according
to God’s will, and Satan himself is only one of His agents.
Satan resembles the Turkoman’s dog who sits at the door of
the tent, and is” vehement against aliens, but full of tenderness
to friends.”2 The Mosalman then replied with the
arguments of the Qadarians and Mutazilites, to prove the
freedom of the will and consequent responsibility of man
for his actions. He urged that man’s free agency and consequent
responsibility are recognized in common parlance, as
when we order a man to act in a certain way,-that God
expressly assumes man to be a free agent by addressing
commands and prohibitions to him, and by specially
exempting some, such as the blind,3 from responsibility for
certain acts, that our internal consciousness assures us of
our power of choice, just as outward sense assures us of
properties in material objects, and that it is just as sophistical
to disbelieve the declarations of the interior consciousness,
as those of the outward senses as to the reality
of the material world. He then told an anecdote of a man
caught robbing a garden and defending himself with the
fatalist plea of irresponsibility, to whom the owner of the
garden replied by administering a very severe beating, and
assuring him that this beating was also predestined, and
that he therefore could not help administering it. He concluded
his argument by repeating that the traditions,
“Whatever God wills is,” and “The pen is dry, and alters
not its writing,” are not inconsistent with the existence of
freewill in man. They are not intended to reduce good
action and evil to the same level, but good actions will
always entail good consequences, and bad actions the
reverse. A devotee admired the splendid apparel of the
slaves of the Chief of Herat, and cried to Heaven, “Ah!
learn from this Chief how to treat faithful slaves!” Shortly
after the Chief was deposed, and his slaves were put to the
torture to make them reveal where the Chief had hidden
his treasure, but not one would betray the secret. Then a
voice from heaven came to the devotee, saying, “Learn
from them how to be a faithful slave, and then look for recompense.”
The Magian, unconvinced by the arguments of
the Mosalman, again plied him with “Compulsionist”
arguments, and the discussion was protracted, with the
usual result of leaving both the disputants of the same
opinion as when they began. The poet remarks that the
contest of the “Compulsionists” and the advocates of man’s
free agency will endure till the day of judgment; for nothing
can resolve these difficulties4 but the true love which is
“a gift imparted by God to whom He will.”5
Love puts reason to silence.
Love is a perfect muzzle of evil suggestions;
Without love who ever succeeded in stopping them?
Be a lover, and seek that fair Beauty,
Hunt for that Waterfowl in every stream!
How can you get water from that which cuts it off?
How gain understanding from what destroys understanding?
Apart from principles of reason are other principles
Of light and great price to be gained by love of God.
Besides this reason of yours God has other reasons
Which will procure for you heavenly nourishment.
By your carnal reason you may procure earthly food,
By God-given reason you may mount the heavens.
When, to win enduring love of God, you sacrifice reason,
God gives you “a tenfold recompense;”6 yea, seven hundred
fold.
When those Egyptian women sacrificed their reason,7
They penetrated the mansion of Joseph’s love;
The Cup-bearer of life bore away their reason,
They were filled with wisdom of the world without end.
Joseph’s beauty was only an offshoot of God’s beauty;
Be lost, then, in God’s beauty more than those women.
Love of God cuts short reasoning, O beloved,
For it is a present refuge from perplexities.
Through love bewilderment befalls the power of speech,
It no longer dares to utter what passes;
For if it sets forth an answer, it fears greatly
That its secret treasure may escape its lips.
Therefore it closes lips from saying good or bad,
So that its treasure may not escape it.
In like manner the Prophet’s companions tell us
“When the Prophet used to tell us deep sayings,
That chosen one, while scattering pearls of speech,
Would bid us preserve perfect quiet and silence.”
So, when the mighty phoenix hovers over your head, 8
Causing your soul to tremble at the motion of its wings,
You venture not to stir from your place,
Lest that bird of good fortune should take wing.
You hold your breath and repress your coughs,
So as not to scare that phoenix into flying away.
And if one say a word to you, whether good or bad,
You place finger on lip, as much as to say, “Be silent.”
That phoenix is bewilderment,9 it makes you silent;
The kettle is silent, though it is boiling all the while
Notes:
1. Note the true believer is here represented as using the arguments
of the Qadarians or Mutazilites for free will, as
against the Jabriyan or fatalist argument put into the mouth
of the Magian.
2. Koran xlviii. 29.
3. Koran xxiv. 60.
4. The Prophet said, “Sit not with a disputer about fate, nor
converse with him.”
5. Koran iii. 66.
6. Koran vi. 161.
7. “And when they saw him they were amazed at him, and cut
their hands” (Koran xii. 31).
8. It is supposed to bring good fortune.
9. Bewilderment is the “truly mystical darkness of ignorance”
which falls upon the mystic when the light of absolute Being
draws near to him, and “blinds him with excess of light.”
See Gulshan i Raz, p. 33, and notes.
Source : Sufism.ir