The works of knowing consist in certitude in eternal truths, the tenets of faith of orthodox Islam. They will be treated first, since they alone guarantee the validity of everything else in one’s religion.

The tariqa is a deepening of faith, a putting of things in their true perspective until eternal truths are more palpable than the transient world around one. According to Ibn al-‘Arabi, the path may be described as “knowledge (‘ilm) become perception (‘ayn)”; or in the words of our sheikh, “reflection (i‘tibar) becoming stronger than eyesight.” These works include:

Belief in Allah

One must know that Allah is one, without any co-sharer in His entity (dhat), attributes (sifat), actions (af‘al), or rulings (ahkam). One must also know that “there is nothing whatsoever that is like unto Him” (Koran 42:11): His entity does not resemble anything, nor anything resemble Him. Created things, for example, are bound by time and space, while Allah is the Creator of time and space, and transcen­dently beyond them, for which reason He cannot be “in” any particular place, as anthropomorphists believe; or “everywhere,” as some of the unlearned believe; or “nowhere,” as atheists believe, meaning thereby to negate His existence: He is transcendently beyond all these descriptions, which apply to created things.

“Belief in Allah” also entails knowing that He has no co-sharer in any of His attributes. For example, the divine attribute of wujud or ‘being’ belongs to Him alone. Nothing is, besides Allah and His attributes and His actions and His rulings. This is what is meant by the Sufi term wahdat al-wujud or ‘oneness of being.’ It should be understood, not only to enlighten ignorant critics, but because it is the metaphysical counterpart of ma‘rifa or ‘knowledge of Allah’ that is the basic emphasis of the Shadhili tariqa. As Sheikh ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi explains in his Idah al-maqsud min wahdat al-wujud, oneness of being does “not mean that the created universe is God, for God’s being is necessary (wajib al-wujud) while the universe’s being is merely possible (ja’iz al-wujud), that is, subject to nonbeing, beginning, and ending, and it is impossible that one of these two orders of being could in any sense be the other; but rather, the created universe’s act of being is derived from and subsumed by the divine act of creation, from which it has no ontic independence, and hence is only through the being of its Creator, the one true Being” (Author: Reliance of the Traveller, 1020).

So wahdat al-wujud or ‘oneness of being’ entails that nothing exists except Allah, His attributes, His actions, and His rulings, while created being, as manifest to us, cannot be identified with His entity or attributes, but only with His actions and rulings. In short, our metaphysic is not pantheism, because the world is not Allah. Spinoza’s definition in the Ethica of God as “simple substance” (pantheism properly speaking), has nothing to do with the experience of those who possess ma‘rifa. Rather, the world’s existence is through Allah, in Arabic bi Llah, the point under the Arabic letter ba’ being both a point of ontic connection and a point of demarcation. The whole experiential training of the tariqa may be said to elucidate this point. The matter is between Lord (Rabb), and slave who is through Lord (‘abd bi Rabb). The feet of some of those who attempt to travel the high path of ma‘rifa, particularly without a true sheikh, may slip on this point, and the fall is a long way down; for which reason the traveller must not be ignorant of a second tenet of faith:

Belief That Everything Besides Allah Is Contingent

It is plain that the material world which we see is not, according to the teachings of our tariqa, the entity (dhat) of Allah (“Allah Himself ”), or a divine attribute, but rather is His creative act and rulings (ahkam). In point of being, the created world may be said to have “two faces.”

One face is towards Allah, in respect to which created things are “obliterated,” absolutely indigent to Him, nothing in themselves, inseparably connected to His beginninglessly eternal attributes of knowledge, will, and power. As ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi puts it, they are “outwardly creation, inwardly command.” For nothing that exists lacks a state of being, and no state exists that lacks a divine attribute that governs it and determines its hukm or ‘ruling,’ meaning the reality of its case, “what” it really is. The rulings (ahkam) of Allah thus flow over created things, manifesting His attributes in them and determining their specific relations to others; for example, the ruling for this thing is that it is larger, the ruling for that thing is that it is smaller; the ruling for this man is that he is a believer (mu’min), the ruling for that is that he is an unbeliever (kafir); the ruling for this act is triumph in the next life, the ruling for that is ruin; and so on. The rulings of Allah govern and weigh all things, materially and spiritually, and when things are considered apart from them, nothing remains, not a single relation. That is, in and of themselves they are nothing. “Their substance (madda),” our sheikh notes, “is nothingness (‘adam),” which also describes their temporal past, present, and future: what they were, what they are now (by their intrinsic poverty and total ontological dependence on another), and what they return to—all are pure exteriority from what really is. The Koran describes them in terms of this essential attribute as “perishing,” in Arabic halik, an active participle that literally refers to the present, and only figuratively to the future:

“Everything is perishing except His Countenance. His is the ruling, and to Him you return” (Koran 28:88).

The other face is towards us, as manifestation and appearance, in respect to which created things are “affirmed” (thabit) and temporal, for which reason all Muslims acknowledge that the ruling for the world, “everything besides Allah,” is that it is contingent and came into being after it did not previously exist. In other words, its ruling is that it is a slave, and Allah created it.

The distinction between the two aspects, expressed in the key aphorism of Ibn ‘Ata' Illah “Things are affirmed by His affirmation, obliterated through the soleness of His entity,” is essential to understanding why, in the mushahada or ‘spiritual vision’ of our tariqa, Allah alone is Manifest (Dhahir) in the universe, while never identified with created things, which are only the sites of His manifestation (al-madhahir). Though essentially ecstatic, the aphorism distinguishes the “affirmation” (thubut) which things possess from the “being” (wujud) they do not. Those who follow the path must know the difference and acknowledge their ruling.