Praying, fasting or paying alms to the poor. These are religious practices that a lot of religious people do. However, it would be wrong to assume that simply carrying out these practices is the sole purpose of the life of a believing person. All the things that people do serve a higher purpose, namely allowing spiritual growth and developing closeness to our Creator.
In Islam, this is the point where one can refer to ‘Islamic Mysticism’ or ‘Sufism’. Sufism is a way of understanding religion rather than a ‘sect’ or a distinct way of thought belonging to a restricted group. Sufism is focused on raising the nafs, the breaking of the individual ego, and being in a state of full consciousness and abidance in Almighty forever. Therefore one’s existence completely dissolves in acknowledgement and recognition of the existence of Almighty. Many works of famous Sufi mystics such as Rumi, Hafez and Shams Tabrizi describe how one can grow closer to God through His remembrance and working on the inner self. There is however one woman who is particularly known for representing the status and power of believing women. She is the first female Sufi Saint of Islam, Rabia al-Adawiyya, also known as Rabia Basri.
“I am going to light fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell so that both veils (…) may completely disappear (…) and the servants of God may see Him, without any object of hope or motive of fear. What if the hope of Paradise and the fear of Hell did not exist?”– Rabia al Adawiyya Through her way of life, traditional gender roles and the status of wealth in society were being questioned. Her life as an independent, influential and intellectual woman showed that wealth and status are not acquired through financial resources, but rather through richness in spiritual value and control of the ego. One needs not to be a man or rich to therefore have a higher status in the eyes of Almighty. Rabi’a led a life in which she had completely detached herself from all other desires but the love for God. She showed in this way that having this personal bond was something that both men and women are capable of striving for and that any man and woman can live this free path of life. It was her high-spiritedness with which she put man around her in her place, among which by rejecting many marriage proposals she received: “God can give me all you offer and even double it. It does not please me to be distracted from Him for a single moment. So farewell. She emphasized that, in order to be completely devoted to Almighty, one needs to understand that the relationship between man and Almighty is a personal and unselfish one, not bound to any traditions. She is an example of one, who left no room in her heart for any love or hatred for anything or anybody else but Almighty.
