Since the principle of Unity governs all facets of Islamic life, the quest for spirituality in Islam is therefore not restricted to some narrowly conceived domain, apart from the general life of the community; what distinguishes the spirituality of Islam from the religion taken as a whole, then, is “the dimension of depth or inwardness”, so that the forms of the religion are interiorized, rather than opposed; and the journey from the form to the essence which it expresses can be conceived as the movement from the outward to the inward, the periphery to the centre, which is the locus of realized Unity. This is a good definition of Islamic spirituality.
Brohi’s essay, (“The Spiritual Significance of the Qur’an”) which stresses the relationship between simple, obediential faith, on the one hand, and the realisation of higher levels of being and truth, on the other. Man is initially called upon to obey the Law, and submit to the Will of God, this constituting the essential condition for the awakening of man’s “inner resources”; these are ingrained in Fitrah’, the original nature of man, which calls upon man to transcend himself, Quoting from the Qur’an on the spiritual stages through which the soul must pass in its struggle against its earthly tendencies, and commenting upon various aspects of the relationship between man and God, Brohi concludes thus:
“.. a man who witnesses the awakening of his inner resources also witnesses within himself, by a gift of direct awareness, the true meaning of religious truths that he had earlier accepted on premises of faith”.
“There is no Islamic spirituality possible without the Sunnah, for the gate to the higher worlds was opened for the Islamic sector of humanity by the prophet alone during his nocturnal journey. It is He alone who holds the key to those gates and who alone can guide the Muslim on the path of spiritual realization” (p102). This is a firm rebuttal to those calling themselves ‘sufi’, whilst claiming to have no need of the Sunnah, in the name of an ostensible commitment to essence over form.
“Only a science such as the Sufi science of the soul can succed in curing the soul’s diseases and in being an effective psychotherapy. Only the Spirit can cure the soul of its ills…”
“In death, man finds nothing but his own attributes, no longer veiled by the corporeal body but revealing themselves to him in forms appropriate to his new abode .. Man awakens to the realities of his own words, acts and moral qualities; his moral substance whether good or evil, assumes corporeal shape. Everything that had been hidden in the lower world becomes outwardly manifest”.
“The experience of death for the microcosm corresponds to the coming of the Hour for the macrocosm. Hence the Quranic accounts of the end of the world can also be understood as referring to the death of the individual”.
