RABIA’S HEART OF ONE LOVE Noor Yusuf
Introduction
Rabia al-Adawiyya I first discovered when I was very young. From the moment I read about her, I was instantly enamoured with an admiration that has never faded. She is among the earliest of the Awliya (the Friends of God) and the most celebrated. There are many ways in which the Awliya took their example from the Holy Prophet Muhammad (upon him peace): his attendance to community, his service, his kindness to people, his leadership and strength of character. These are all creation-facing. The aspect that Rabia so profoundly embodied of him (s), was not something that faced creation, but something that faced Creator. I will relate here some of the narrative of Rabia and how she embodied the Prophet’s (s) intimate relationship with his Lord, and his love for Allah. Rabia is considered the progenitor of the Sufi way of divine love. Of ecstasy and rapture and deep longing for union. At this time, the way of wilaya – Friendship with God – was very much about ascetism and fear; not a fear
of distress, but a fear of the magnificence of Allah. There were those who would sway, like the living warriors left of Badr, out of an ever-present consciousness of their Lord and His might. This way of being, the weeping, the sobriety, came itself as a reaction to the changing of the times in the short centuries after the passing of the Prophet (s), where people increasingly began to turn to the trappings of materialism and ever more heedlessness. Many of the righteous felt the need to return to the way of the Sahabah, to live forsaking the world, preferring the poor to the rich, and the meek to the powerful. What’s more, it was also a pietistic movement in response to some of the worst tragedies to befall to Muslim people in our early history; of them all, the devastating shock of Karbala and the egregious loss of life of the family of the Holy Prophet (s). So this primary path of being God-fearing was the way of the earliest Awliya. And no doubt they loved their Lord with every fibre of their beings but, before anything, they looked to
Fellowship & Fairydust
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