on the basis of his own judgment, without revelation confirming Umar’s words through the Messenger, no heed would have been paid to his experience, nor would religious law be founded on his discernment.”
Do you not see that, when the Messenger died, someone of higher rank than Umar said:
“Which sky would shelter me, and which earth would bear me, if I spoke about Allah’s Book according to my own opinion?”
And he said what he said concerning collateral inheritance.
Al-Siddīq says this, yet am I now to defer to a shaykh of a Sufi lodge who secludes himself with a beardless youth during his listening sessions, listens to singing by a beardless youth and a free woman, eats his fill of what is unlawful, and dances like a bucking horse? He neither consults the jurists nor bases his conduct on transmitted teachings, but speaks on the strength of a personal experience. His followers say:
“The shaykh must be allowed his own way.”
But what place is there for any such way alongside revealed law? Has the Sharia left anything for anyone to add? Did it come for any purpose other than to overturn customs and dismantle established ways? Nothing is more harmful to the Sharia than the speculative theologians and the Sufis.
The former corrupt minds with fanciful intellectual doubts, while the latter corrupt deeds and demolish the governing principles of religion. They love idleness, gathering for pleasure, and listening to sounds that distract from earning a livelihood and obeying Allah. The former embolden young men and adolescents to engage in speculative inquiry, excessive questioning and objections, and to scrutinize the Sharia for contradictions.
We have never known the righteous predecessors to engage in the practices of these Sufis. Rather, their conduct was marked by earnestness, not frivolity. Nor did they resemble the speculative theologians: they neither probed into hidden matters nor pursued speculative inquiry. Rather, they were servants who submitted and accepted the authority of revealed law in matters of belief, earnest and open in their deeds and acts of obedience.