Hold Fast to the Awrād

Counsel of al-Sayyid al-Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Ghanī b. Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (ḥafiẓahu Allāh)
Shaykh of the Jaʿfariyya Aḥmadiyya Muḥammadiyya Ṭarīqa in Egypt and the Islamic world

What does it mean when a murīd loves the Mashāyikh, attends the Ḥaḍra and serves the legacy of the path, yet struggles to remain regular in the daily awrād and ṣalawāt? In this counsel, al-Sayyid al-Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) addresses precisely this question. His emphasis is not upon condemnation, but upon understanding what the awrād actually represent: a continuous bond linking the murīd to the spiritual methodology and tarbiya of Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu). Readers can consult the original counsel in On the Awrād — original PDF.

The question, is not simply whether one has completed a daily devotional task.

It is: What kind of relationship are the awrād cultivating within the murīd?

The Shaykh Does Not Close the Door

One of the most reassuring teachings in this counsel concerns the murīd who has become inconsistent.

A question is put to Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh):

If a murīd stops regularly reading the awrād and ṣalawāt, has he been cut off from the Shaykh?

Has the Shaykh closed the door upon him?

The answer is clear: No.

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) explains that closing the door upon the murīd is not from the character of the Shaykh.

The danger lies elsewhere.

It is the murīd who can weaken his own connection by repeatedly turning away from what he has been given.

This is an important distinction.

The Mashāyikh do not teach the seeker to despair.

A lapse is not the end of the path.

A period of inconsistency is not a declaration that one can never return.

The door remains open.

The question is whether the murīd will walk through it.

“O My Son, Keep Reading My Awrād”

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) cites a striking verse from the poetry of Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu):

“O my son! Keep reading my awrād regularly…”

The force of the verse lies in the word regularly.

• Not occasionally.
• Not only when spiritually uplifted.
• Not only at gatherings.
• Not only during periods of enthusiasm.

The wird is meant to accompany the murīd through ordinary life.

This is where constancy acquires its meaning.

Anyone can be carried for a short while by enthusiasm.

Tarbiya begins to show itself when devotion becomes part of one’s life even after the initial enthusiasm has faded.

Love Must Become Practice

Another question described in the counsel comes from people who say, in effect:

We love the Mashāyikh.

We attend the Ḥaḍra.

We read and spread the turāth of the Shaykh.

We listen to madīḥ.

But we are deficient in completing the awrād and ṣalawāt regularly.

This reveals an important distinction between affection for the path and living the path.

Love is precious.

Serving the heritage of Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) is precious.

Attending gatherings of remembrance is precious.

Reading about the Shaykh and making his teachings known are all noble works.

But the awrād occupy another place.

They are personal, daily and nobody can perform them on your behalf.

A person may speak publicly about the Shaykh.

He may share his teachings with hundreds of people.

Yet the wird eventually asks him a private question:

What happens when it is only you, your Lord, and the remembrance you have been given?

The Continuous Connection

Drawing upon the teachings of Sayyidī Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu), Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) describes the awrād as:

al-Ṣila al-Muttaṣila al-Muwaṣṣila

—a continuous connection that joins and conveys the murīd along the path.

This gives the daily wird a deeper significance.

It is not simply a devotional checklist.

It is one of the means through which the murīd continually places himself within the spiritual method he has received.

Each day he returns to the same source. Each day he renews the practice. Each day he remembers why he entered the path.

The bond is strengthened through repetition.

Not because Allah Most High needs our repetition, but because we do.

The human heart forgets.

The wird makes it return.

The Ḥaḍra and the Wird

Sayyidī Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghanī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) gave a memorable image for the relationship between the different practices of the ṭarīqa.

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) relates that he compared the connection to an electrical wire, beginning in the Ḥaḍra and extending into the awrād.

The image is powerful because the two practices complement one another.

The Ḥaḍra is communal.

You stand among your brothers.

You hear the remembrance.

You hear the praise of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

You participate in the collective life of the path.

The wird is different.

You may recite it alone in your room.

• After Fajr.
• After Maghrib.
• After ʿIshāʾ.

Nobody may know whether you completed it.

There may be no one there to encourage you.

And precisely because of this, the daily awrād reveal something of the sincerity and discipline of the seeker.

What Happens in Private Matters

Public spiritual activity can be easy to maintain because other people are present.

The awrād expose another dimension.

They ask for constancy without an audience.

The murīd opens the book.

He begins the Ṣalawāt al-Jaʿfariyya.

He remembers Allah.

He invokes blessings upon our Master, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

He does this not because anyone is watching, but because this is part of the covenant of his own spiritual life.

There is something particularly formative in this privacy.

A path lived only in gatherings remains incomplete.

The real test is whether remembrance follows the seeker home.

Begin the Day with Ṣalawāt

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) draws particular attention to the beauty of beginning the day with the Ṣalawāt al-Jaʿfariyya upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

• Before the noise of the world enters the heart, the murīd sends blessings upon the Beloved of Allah ﷺ.
• Before messages.
• Before work.
• Before business.
• Before argument.
• Before distraction.

The tongue begins with ṣalawāt.

What a different orientation this gives the day.

The murīd may still face difficulty.

He may still encounter stress.

But he has begun beneath the fragrance of remembrance and love of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Different Murīdīn Have Different Himma

The counsel also makes an important distinction between murīdīn.

Two people may enter the ṭarīqa on exactly the same day.

Yet their spiritual effort may not be equal.

One may possess greater himma — greater spiritual aspiration.

He throws himself into the awrād.

He is diligent in dhikr.

He follows the methodology with conviction and love.

Another remains connected to the path but gives less of himself.

Both may still be murīdīn.

But their relationship to the practice will not necessarily bear identical fruits.

This is not difficult to understand.

Two people may sit in the same class with the same teacher and the same textbook.

One studies every day.

The other opens the book occasionally.

The teacher may love and care for both.

But the students have not responded equally to what they were given.

So it is with spiritual aspiration.

Do Not Measure Yourself Against Others

The point, however, is not to compare yourself obsessively with another murīd.

That itself can become a distraction.

• One person may have more time. Another may have different responsibilities.
• One may possess naturally strong discipline. Another may have spent years struggling to establish it.

The useful question is not: “Am I doing more than him?”

It is: “Am I responding sincerely to what I have been given?”

The path is not a competition between murīdīn.

The struggle is with one’s own heedlessness.

The victory is returning more faithfully to Allah.

Tarbiya Is the Concern of the Shaykh al-Murabbī

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) also gives an important reassurance concerning tarbiya.

The murīd does not need to become preoccupied with analysing his own spiritual rank or attempting to map every stage of his development.

Tarbiya, he explains, proceeds through different phases, much like the raising of a child.

The murīd’s responsibility is to follow the guidance he has been given.

The methodology of tarbiya belongs to the Shaykh al-Murabbī.

For the Jaʿfarī path, Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) is the Ṣāḥib al-Nahj — the master and possessor of its spiritual methodology.

He established the Jaʿfariyya Aḥmadiyya Muḥammadiyya Ṭarīqa as its own spiritual path.

Its tarbiya is therefore sought through the methodology he transmitted, rather than through constant anxiety about unseen spiritual states.

The murīd’s task is simpler: follow faithfully.

Discipline Before Spiritual Curiosity

A person can spend enormous amounts of time asking:

• What is my spiritual state?
• How advanced am I?
• What stage of the nafs am I in?
• What is my relationship with the Shaykh?
• Has something unseen changed?

But there is a more immediate question:

Did I read my wird today?

This counsel redirects attention from spiritual self-analysis to spiritual practice.

The seeker does not need to manufacture a sense of progress.

He needs discipline. And the fruits belong to Allah.

The Wird Is for Your Benefit

The Mashāyikh do not benefit from our recitation.

Allah Most High is utterly free of need.

The benefit is for the murīd.

Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (ḥafiẓahu Allāh) explicitly reminds the seeker that the reward of following the guidance of the Shaykh and the special relationship cultivated through the awrād are for the murīd’s own benefit.

This corrects a subtle misunderstanding.

The murīd is not doing the Shaykh a favour by reading the awrād.

He is being given a favour through them.

• The wird is provision.
• The ṣalawāt are provision.
• The discipline is provision.
• The connection is provision.

If he neglects them, the loss is his. If he returns to them, the benefit is his.

Consistency Reveals What We Truly Value

Most people make time for what they consider indispensable.

• We eat.
• We sleep.
• We check our phones.
• We answer messages.
• We attend appointments.
• We meet deadlines.

Yet remembrance is often asked to survive upon whatever fragments of time remain.

Consistency in the awrād reverses this.

The seeker says:

This also matters.

In my actual day.

In my actual schedule.

In the minutes and hours Allah has given me.

A spiritual path becomes real when it enters time.

The murīd’s calendar begins to testify to what his tongue claims to love.

When You Fall Short, Open the Door Again

Perhaps the most important practical lesson in this counsel is that inconsistency should lead to return, not despair.

If the Shaykh does not close the door, why should the murīd stand outside convincing himself that the door has been closed?

You may have missed days. Return.

You may once have been more diligent. Return.

You may feel embarrassed by your weakness. Return.

You may have spent months away from a practice you once loved. Return.

Do not transform a period of weakness into a permanent identity.

The path remains before you.

Open the awrād. Begin again.

“Hold Fast to the Wird”

Among the verses cited from Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) is a command whose simplicity contains the entire lesson:

Hold fast to the wird and listen to my words.

The verse continues with the image of the heart becoming illuminated through it.

This is where the counsel ultimately leads.

• Not to anxiety.
• Not to obsession with one’s rank.
• Not to comparison.
• Not to despair over previous shortcomings.

But to constancy.

Hold fast. Read. Return tomorrow. And then return again.

The secret of consistency is that what seems small on a single day becomes immense when carried faithfully across years.

One morning of ṣalawāt may appear small. A lifetime of beginning one’s mornings with blessings upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is something else entirely.

One completed wird may appear small. Years of turning to Allah every day gradually carve remembrance into the life of the seeker.

The murīd is formed not only by the extraordinary moments he experiences, but by what he quietly does again and again.

Let the Wird Become Part of Who You Are

There comes a point when discipline begins to become identity.

At first you force yourself to open the awrād.

Later, you feel something is missing if you leave them.

At first the practice must be fitted into your life.

Eventually it becomes part of the structure of your life.

This is one of the fruits of constancy.

The wird ceases to feel like something external that has been imposed upon the day.

It becomes one of the places within the day where the seeker recognises himself.

He is a servant remembering his Lord.

A lover sending blessings upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

A murīd walking the path transmitted by Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu).

And a seeker who, despite every lapse and weakness, continues to return.

May Allah Most High grant us himma, discipline and sincerity; may He make His remembrance beloved to our hearts and make us constant in the awrād and ṣalawāt entrusted to us. May He benefit us through Sayyidī Shaykh Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu) and Sayyidī Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Jaʿfarī (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu), preserve Sayyidī Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī (ḥafiẓahu Allāh), and increase us in love and following of our Master, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Terminology

Awrād — regular portions of remembrance, ṣalawāt and supplication undertaken consistently by the seeker.

Ṣalawāt — prayers invoking Allah’s blessings and peace upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Murīd — a seeker or disciple undertaking spiritual training within a ṭarīqa.

Shaykh al-Murabbī — the spiritual guide responsible for the cultivation and training of the murīd.

Tarbiya — spiritual cultivation, formation and training.

Himma — spiritual aspiration, resolve and determination.

Ḥaḍra — a gathering of remembrance of Allah, ṣalawāt and praise of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Turāth — the inherited scholarly and spiritual legacy of the Mashāyikh.

Madīḥ — poetry or recitation in praise of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and, in appropriate contexts, the righteous.

Ṣāḥib al-Nahj — the possessor or founder of the particular spiritual methodology or path.