The Libertine (al-ibahi)

Libertine's Friend: badna nifisdak.
Me: I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.
Libertine: He's saying he wants to corrupt you, so you'll be corrupt like us.

Said the muqaddam, go sit with the brother and he will teach you your religion. We sat with him hoping to gain knowledge of the Path. When we asked him the simplest question, he hemmed and hawed and it became clear he was quite ignorant of the Path. So he suggested that we ask some of the brothers the same question. By the time we finished we had six different answers. At his suggestion, we returned to the muqaddam and asked him the same question. His answer, to say the least, was weak tea. Seven different answers, each different from the other.

A few months later, I borrowed a book from my brother-in-law, read the line in question and understood it from the first read. Every one of the seven answers was wrong.

We had discovered that we were sitting among an ignorant people.

Now the brother began to talk about drinking and sex. Nothing but drinking and sex. It appears the muqaddam had put us with a libertine (not that we knew what a libertine was as we were ignorant at that time). This is wrong on so many levels.

First, this is not a nice thing to do.

Second, the libertine is your brother in religion. If you see him in error, you should try to correct his misunderstanding, not use him against your enemies. At the very least, you should warn others about him.

Finally, and this is really the most important point, it points to a complete ignorance of Islam, never mind Sufism.

For the belief that one can misguide, or guide someone for that matter, speaks of shirk. For Allah alone guides and misguides him whom He pleases.

Thankfully, Allah protected us from their evil designs.

I asked the libertine why he was not making an effort to travel the Path. He replied that he had already finished the Path. My cousin, who was there at the time and had only joined the tariqa three months earlier, said that he too had also finished the Path.

It occurred to me at that point that I was in the company of idiots.

Notes:
The libertine is one who falsely imagines himself to have achieved a high spiritual station and rewards himself by breaking the Shari'a. This is an enhancement of ego. Sufism lies in the other direction. It is a diminution of ego leading ultimately to the death of the ego. (We elaborate on libertinism in a later post).

If you could get rid of yourself just once,
The secret of secrets would open to you.
The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe,
Would appear on the mirror of your perception.

                                                                —Rumi