The Jaʿfarī Counsels & Principles of the Path

 

Our master Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Jaʿfari says [1]:

The counsel to you, o brothers, is what our master Muhammad, the messenger of Allah ﷺ, has counseled his nation with, and what our shaykh, Imām Sayyidī Salih al-Jaʿfarī, Allāh be pleased with him counseled. It is appropriate that we counsel each other as the Real, Glorified is He, says “By the time, indeed man is in loss, except those who believe and do pious actions and counsel to the truth and counsel to patience.”

Thus, we counsel you and ourselves, summarily to do all actions of truth and the most important of them are:

  1. It is incumbent on you to read the Qurʼan. As it is the rope of Allah that connects to Him and it is the light of the hearts and its foundations. So build your heart with the Qurʼan, by reciting it, memorising it and reflecting upon it.
  2. It is incumbent to gain deep understanding in the religion. Through it is unbridled goodness. Whoever Allah wants good for he gives them deep understanding of the religion. Fiqh is the secret of worship and the pillar of its soundness, so gain its knowledge, o murīd, as it will cause you to worship Allāh based upon reality (haqīqa) through your knowledge of sharʿīa. Allah, the Exalted said, “Then We have made you follow a course (sharʿīa) in the affair, therefore follow it, and do not follow the low desires of those who do not know.” (Qurʼan 45:18)
  3. It is incumbent on you, o murīd, to have fear of Allah, mighty and majestic, secretly and openly. Know that He is with you by His knowledge and power, encompassing you with His grace and might. So realise within yourself the statement His Prophet (ﷺ): “Fear Allah wherever you are and follow a bad deed with as good deed and it will wipe it away…” Taqwa is the counsel of Allah, mighty and majestic, to us and those who came before us, as He, the Exalted says: “We have counseled those who were given the book before you and yourselves to fear Allah.”
  4. The perfection of all of that and its completion and the fruit of taqwa and the result of worship is beautiful character and good interactions (with people). As he said ﷺ, “The religion is good interactions, so let your character be the fruit of your worship and your interactions in your life be the epitome of purity of your ego and cleanliness of your heart.”

We were commanded from the perspective of our upright religion that we honour our elders and have mercy on our young, and we respect each other. Likewise, we have been commanded to establish consultation among us. And, “The religion is sincere counsel” is our motto, and a goodly word is our guidance to our murīds. Commanding the good and forbidding the evil with love, truthfulness and sincerity is our methodology. We are bound by the firmest bond and strongest connection like our exemplar and shaykh, which is brotherhood. Like His saying, Exalted is He, “The believers are but brothers.” And His saying “You became, by His blessing, brothers…”. Our shaykh, may Allāh be pleased with him said, “Love for the sake of Allah has no parallel. Patience with people is not in the capacity of man.” He also said, “Brotherhood in religion is stronger than brotherhood of blood relations as the religion joins between Arab and non-Arab alike.”

We have presented to you, o truthful murīd and intelligent admirer, these pure Jaʿfari counsels which our shaykh laid out for us in the introduction to his book, Kanz al-Saʿāda wa al-Daʿwa al-Mustajāba”, where he also says:

Know that from the principles of our path are:

  1. To recite everything for the sake of Allah, the Exalted, and it is necessary to have the permission of the shaykh who gave you the covenant. It is not permitted for the murīd to take the covenant from a student murīd on behalf of the shaykh. Likewise, it is not permissible to take as a shaykh other than the shaykh who you took the covenant from, even if he is a contemporary of the shaykh.
  2. From the principles of the path, it is not permissible for the murīds to direct themselves to a place with the intention to gather for dhikr or other than that except with permission of the shaykh*. Nor is it permissible to make a murīd on the same level as the shaykh. The shaykh alone is responsible for the upbringing and spiritual travel (sulūk) of the murīds. It is not permissible for anyone to travel a path other than the path of the shaykh.
  3. It is not permissible from the murīd to inform anyone about his visions, in dreams or other than that, other than the shaykh so that he may guide him regarding what he saw.
  4. It is necessary for the murīds to be mindful of the manners of the path. In the path, the student murīds are all equal. It is not permissible to prefer one of the brothers except by the order of the shaykh, and the shaykh doesn’t do that except when on a long journey such that at that time he will appoint as a deputy whosoever he will from among the murīds.
  5. From the manners of the path is that they present all affairs to the shaykh in order that he take responsibility for its direction himself.

[1]Miftāḥ al-Dukhūl li-Ṭarīqa al-Jaʿfarīyya pgs. 35-41.

[*] see FAQ