Mawlana [Abdullah al-Fāiz al-Dāghestāni ق] said there was a wretched man from whom people never felt safe, not with regard to their possessions, not with regard to their lives and not with regard to their reputations for 37 years. At last the man died. People exulted. It was like a festival day for them. When they all gathered to bury him his bier could not be moved and they could not carry him forward from his place. They kept trying but to no avail. It was as if he was stuck to the ground. They said, "What is this ordeal? Alive and dead he is such a weight on us?" The news reached our liege lord 'Abd al-Khāliq al-Ghujduwāni - Allah sanctify his secret - who came and tried to lift the bier but again it would not move. He asked the villagers, "Who here knows of any good deed that this man did?" They replied, "We never saw anything but affliction from him. Praise to Allāh, he is dead so that we can rest easy!" Then he asked his wife and children. They said he had another wife. They sent for her and when she came the shaykh asked her the same question. She said, "Praise be to Allāh that he died, for I never saw any good coming from him ever!" But he kept asking her with such severity that he reminded her of something in her heart. She felt fear and she said, "He came to me one day and said, 'Woman, today something happened with me and I am still wondering how such a thing occurred. I was in my usual occupation’ — he was a highway robber — ‘and I saw a man carrying a box. I greeted him, although I never greet anyone nor do I return anyone's greeting, then I walked with him and I asked him about the box. He said it was honey and that he was going to visit Shaykh ‘Abd al-Khāliq al-Ghujduwānī because he attended the khatm at his place, and after the khatm the Shaykh treats everyone to honey. So I carried the box for him and walked with him a certain distance. I gave it back to him at the parting of the roads and I greeted him, and I regret not taking the box from him, and I am wondering what happened to me.’”

When Shaykh ‘Abd al-Khāliq al-Ghujduwānī heard this he exclaimed, “Glory to Allāh! O my nurturing Lord, this is Your servant, he served me, and You have promised us that whoever rises to serve us will not be shamed, not in this world and not in the next.” At that time they saw the bier moving and rising, and they started walking behind it as it was above their heads and they could not touch it. Thus, with even a small service, there is a promise from Allah that He will not put to shame whoever serves the Awliya and whoever loves them. This man did not know any love but he now have this service to his credit according to this foundation. Our liege lord ‘Abd al-Khāliq al-Ghujduwānī was well-pleased with this service and on the spot it became an answer from Allah. All the people walked behind him. They said, “This is the miraculous gift of al-Ghujduwānī.”

When they entered him into the grave, green leaves came down from the sky. On each of them were written the names of those that were present and on them the promise of Paradise! Whoever got that green leaf on that day rose to bliss. At that time that man’s tongue spoke in clear Arabic: “O my master al-Ghujduwānī, these people all were harmed by me, and this is their witness, but because of a small service done to you, I had a generous gift, and with this generous gift I asked my nurturing Lord to grant bliss to all that had been harmed by me. My nurturing Lord told me to make this request and then He granted it!”

What a matter, something wondrous. It is not known how He will grant mercy to his servant or how He will lavish generosity on him. Why did we retell this? Because we do not know that Allāh has put goodness into every servant…

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

Our master the Shaykh (Abdullah al-Fāiz al-Dāghestāni ق) recounted that in the time of the Prophet — upon him the blessings and peace of Allah — on a certain night at a late hour, Jibril came down with an important matter from the presence of Allah to His Messenger. In light of the gravity of the matter the Messenger of Allah sent word for Bilal to call out to the people so that they would gather in the noble Mosque. The time was late. The Companions became alarmed and were asking themselves, are we under attack by the enemy? When they gathered, the Messenger of Allah conveyed to them the command of his nurturing Lord, namely:

"O Muhammad! convey the news that whoever brings up the report of something that has already passed and has been dead and buried—even if it took place two hours before — and fitna flares up because of it, then that will be a reason for incurring the curse of Allah and of His Messenger. It will be the awakening of fitna. Fitna is dormant, Allah has cursed whoever awakens it! This is the matter that Jibril has brought and which he has ordered to be announced on the spot, before the morning, so that no one should bring up the report of something that is already buried and gone."

On that night our liege lord Abu Bakr al-Siddiq placed the stone in his mouth. He could not speak unless he removed that stone and he would not remove it other than to eat, sleep or pray. The rest of the time he would put it in so that he would not speak or mention something. Allah then informed His Messenger about it and told him to tell Abu Bakr to remove the stone from his mouth because his tongue had become a lisān sidq (tongue of truthfulness), and nothing would come out of it but truthfulness. As for us, how many a stone must we put into our mouths so that we might guard our tongues? And once word comes to us that our tongue has become a lisān sidq — at that time we may speak whatever we wish.

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

In the hereafter our scrolls will be unrolled and the human being will look at his scrolls right away. For each human being seventy scrolls are recorded against him in his world. In the hereafter his scrolls are unrolled, and the matter of the hereafter is not like the matter of this world — you open the book and you read the first page from the first line to the last, then you turn the page and so forth, no. Over there, there is immediate totality. The vision of the human being will be total and all-inclusive. He will appear, look and read all his life in a single gaze that encompasses all his life.

At that time it will be said to him, what is your judgment concerning that man? He himself will judge himself so that there can be no injustice, just as Fir'awn passed judgment against himself. Two angels came to him in the form of human beings and asked him, "Our king sent us to you to ask you about a slave that ran away from him after he had immersed him in his bounty. What is his requital?" He replied, "To drown in the sea!"

When they decided to leave, to leave no doubt to Fir'awn, they said, "We want a document signed and sealed by you because our king might not accept from us a mere verbal report. So give us a paper sealed with the ruling." They took the paper and they showed it to him at the time he was drowning, saying to him, "This is your judgment against yourself."

Therefore, on the Day of Resurrection, there will be no leeway for the servant to object and say, "this judgment does not suit me, this is injustice."

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

To understand the strength of Allah we must first have belief in Allah. So the very first obligation is that we must believe in the power of the All-True, in His power over everything and this is the most elementary belief in Allah. Mawlana al-Shaykh (‘Abd Allah al-Daghistani ق) told me the story of a man who was making ablution while the muezzin was raising the call to prayer. There was by him one of the possessors of a spiritual state who was also making ablution. The latter saw a sesame seed and said, “Glory to Him Whose affair is so great that He can cause the universe with all its immensity to enter inside a sesame seed without reducing its size and without increasing the size of the sesame seed!” The other man said, “This is the speech of mad people. Allah has power to do that, but He must increase the size of the sesame seed of reduce the size of the universe.”

As soon as he uttered this statement his foot slipped and he fell into the water gutter. He disappeared from the place of ablution and reappeared at the shore where all the water drains end up, but he was in the form of a donkey. A man ran to him, held him by the ears, hit him, rode on top of him and kept him in his possession for seven years, using him in his service. After all these years passed the donkey came one day to drink at that same shore. Its foot slipped and he reappeared at the same spot where he had made ablution seven years before, finding the same man next to him again, and the muezzin had not yet finished raising the prayer. Immediately he said, “I repent and return to Allah! Now I know.” The possessor of the spiritual state asked him, “Is He qādir muqtadir (Able, All-Able) or not?”

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

… another example there to clarify that the ma‘rūf, even something minimal, directs the servant—even if he is an unbeliever — to faith, and from wretchedness to bliss. It is related that there was in Baghdad a Zoroastrian who worshipped fire. In one of the days of Ramadān he saw one of his small children eating a piece of bread so he disciplined him, saying, “Are you not ashamed to eat during the day of Ramadān while the Muslims are fasting?” This is what he happened to do. After the man died, he was seen in Paradise and he was asked, “How did you enter Paradise when you used to be a Zoroastrian?” He said, “Allah honored me with faith because I prevented my child from eating on one of the days of Ramadān and I even disciplined him although he was not legally tasked, and I did that out of respect for Islam, and that was accepted in the presence of my nurturing Lord, so He guided me to Islam.”

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

… our liege Lord ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb was seen in a dream after he moved from this world and he was asked: “What has Allah done with you, O Umar?” He said, “He forgave me.” He was asked, “By what special deed?” He said, “One day I saw in one of the alleys of Medina the Illuminated some children tormenting a bird so I compensated them and set the bird free.¹ Because of this deed, my nurturing Lord has forgiven me.” Everyone considers that our liege Lord ‘Umar — Allah be well-pleased with him — [soared] because of his immense services in the time of the Messenger of Allah — upon him the blessings and peace of Allah — or his caliphate after his time and his Companionship to the Messenger, but he did not mention any of that; and Allah said, “I granted you mercy because of the bird.” This is a sufficient teaching for the intelligent one that he should not leave out anything of the ma‘rūf (good deeds) if he is able to do it.

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

… another example that shows how Allah will forgive everything from a person’s past life because of a small deed is the story of the prostitute from Mūsā’s people. She was travelling from one country to another and had reached a water well. She saw a dog there that was licking the sand in extreme thirst. She took pity on it, went down into the well, drank from it, then filled her shoe with water and tied it up with her scarf. Then she gave the dog water to drink. Later, when she reached the town of one of the Prophets of the Israelites, Allah revealed to that Prophet, “Give glad tidings to so and so that I have forgiven her all her sins because of the mercy she showed to that dog.”²

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

Mawlana Sultan al-Awliya Shaykh ‘Abd Allah Fa’iz al-Daghistani ق said of this matter that when the Proof of Islam Imām al-Ghazzālī died, the awliyā were looking at his spiritual presence as it was ascending in the sky from the same station the Messenger — upon him the blessings and peace of Allah— had ascended from, and they were asking themselves: “Perhaps Imam al-Ghazzālī reached this rank because of his prayer, or his night vigil prayer, or his fasting, or the books he wrote, or his spiritual directives, or his simple living,” etc. But confirmation from Allah Almighty did not come to any of them, until the Divine call came that, “My servant Imām Ghazzālī obtained this rank because of a simple, partial deed, namely that he was writing an epistle in a hurry on the night of the noble Mawlid (birth of the Prophet—upon him blessings and peace of Allah), when a fly alighted on the edge of the paper and started to drink from the ink so Imām Ghazzālī stopped writing and did not kill it or shoo it away, as a mark of respect for the Prophet — upon him the blessings and peace of Allah — and his birth, noting to himself that this fly had been created for his sake. And by reason of this simple deed I have given him this station so that he would climb up to the station of the fardāniyyīn (solitary ones).”¹

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

Our liege lord Jamāl al-Dīn al-Ghumūqī had two sons in the Russian empire whose rank was high. The news reached him that they had both died. Our liege lord the Shakykh called their mother and told her, "My lawful wife, if a human being gave you two jewels and placed them in trust with you then requested that they be returned, would you be deeply affected by giving them back to him?" She said, "No, I would have no right to be deeply affected or upset. Rather I would return them without any reserve." He said to her, "The two boys that were entrusted to us, their owner took them back. But receive glad tidings that He took them back both with hearts most pure," i.e. in a state of belief, although they were with the Russian empire. And there is a secret here. We are wrong to look at things and say, "this is ours." This is the common people's way of looking, and that puts you under a burden. As for him that says, "this thing is a trust and now its owner has taken it back," he will rest. The reverse will be light for him.

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀

In what will certainty consist? There was, in the time of Imām Hasan al Bașrī (21-110 AH / 642-728 AD), the Imām of the Tābi‘īn (Successors), a man named Habīb al-‘Ajamī ("the non-Arab"), one of the major people of Allah ﷻ. Habīb al-‘Ajamī was studying with with Hasan al Bașrī because he was weak in Arabic, but Allah ﷻ opened up for him the strength of belief in his heart together with the strength of certainty. One day, Imām Hasan al Bașrī came to visit Habīb al-‘Ajamī where he lived. Habīb brought him two loaves of bread which he disposed in front of him for him to eat. At that very time someone knocked on the door. It was a beggar asking for something for the sake of Allah ﷻ. Habīb al-‘Ajamī took back the two loaves from in front of the Imām and gave them to the beggar. Seeing this, Imām Hasan al Bașrī said to him, "If you had a little bit of knowledge you would have taken one loaf and given it to the beggar, and you would have left one load for the guest." Habīb al-‘Ajamī did not reply anything. A few moments later someone knocked at the door again. Lo and behold, a slave was standing there, holding a large tray on which were all sorts of delicious dishes, and in the centre a pouch full of gold. Habīb al-‘Ajamī placed the food in front of Hasan al Bașrī and said to him, "You are an Imām and this food is suitable for you, and if you had a little bit of certainty you would have know that whatever expenditure you spend then He shall replace it (Saba' 34:29), because my nurturing Lord is watching and He does not abandon His servant." This is the meaning of yaqīn.

Another day Habīb al-‘Ajamī passed by Dilja (Tigris) river and found Imām Hasan al Bașrī sitting there. He asked, "Why are you sitting?" He replied, "I am waiting for a boat to cross the river." Habīb al-‘Ajamī said, "Such as you is in need of a skiff?" Get up with me and let us walk on top of the water, bismi-l-Lāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahĩm," whereupon he crossed the river from one bank to the other. Seeing this, the Imām wept. This is yaqīn, for in the basmala there is such a power, but our own conviction has not reached that level so that we might say it and walk on top of the water.

Translated from the Arabic by Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad ﵀