… Rumi Fa’ani … Iqbal Ba’qi …

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“All that dwells on the earth is annihilated and there subsists only the face of your Lord, the possessor of majesty and generosity.”

Surrah Ar-Rehman, 26-27

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Fa’ani is annihilation, the third step on the Sufi path: one who is dead in worldly attributes and alive in divine attributes, only. Complicated talk, perhaps.

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After roaring expansion in Eurasia, during the medieval era, the thirteenth Gregorian century brought Islam’s political downfall, an affliction it never quite recovered from. This seems to be the course of events in human race: happy times produce extravagance, monuments and babies; troubled times produce criminals, angst and poets. While it cost Islam many lives and lands, the disturbed times produced Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, goading his falling people into rhymes of mystical uplifting and spiritual love.

After ruling the subcontinent for centuries, the Muslims lost it to the foreign powers. While the explicit enemies were Mongols in Rumi’s time and the British in Iqbal’s time, the common implicit adversary for Iqbal, and his spiritual guide Rumi, was decentralized leadership and struggle for power. What added to Iqbal’s uneasy times were the fall of Khilafat, a puppet icon of Islam’s once flourishing history, stagnation of Muslims’ collective intellect, and the academic and professional progression of Hindus the Muslims once flaunted in ruling.

Rumi, in his writings, employed the term ‘qalandar’ to describe a Sufi who has achieved the highest state of annihilation (fa’na) from himself, and all that is left (ba’qi) is the Self. Typing this out on an electronic keypad, in the twenty-first Gregorian century, I wonder if I even know what they mean, all these words I just put down. Isn’t “Qalandar” the word you hear from qawwalis, pseudo-qawwal pop stars, and at pseudo-oriental-drum-banging-burger-class-hangovers of spirituality?

The trick of learning from associations is so mechanical that when readers, who are striving to be authentic believers, see these two words (fa’ani, qalandar) coming from one author, they tend to suspect his ideology.

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I, myself, have always had problems digesting ‘fa’ani’ and my simplistic understanding of it. Does it really mean Sufis aspire to reach such a height of proximity with God that they would annihilate themselves from the world, including the rights of their body and those who depended on them? Is this really what Allah Subhana Wa’tala refers to in verses twenty-six and twenty-seven of Surah Rehman? Or, is Fa'ani just annihilation from the wonts and wants of your nafs, your lower self?

Iqbal, although an enthusiastic follower of Rumi’s spiritual teachings, rejected the Sufi concept of Fa’ani. As R.A. Nicholsan puts it,

“As much he (Iqbal) dislikes the type of Sufism exhibited by Hafiz, he pays
homage to the pure and profound genius of Jalaluddin, though he rejects the
doctrine of self-abandonment taught by the great Persian mystic and does not
accompany him in his pantheistic flights.”

Iqbal’s negation of fa’ani rescues Islam from the seemingly Buddhistic theories of annihilation and self-desertion. He condemned ‘fa’na’ as a concept, which was a complete antithesis to his theory of ‘khudi’ and what he considered “more dangerous than the destruction of Baghdad” (an ironic quote for these times, isn’t it?).

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Rumi employs the term ‘mirror’ for a ‘fa’ani’ and one wonders what that means. My understanding (simplistic, like I said) is that annihilation should be from justifications and explanations of our iniquities. The mirror-self of the fa’ani should be so pure that it should reflect sin as sin, and not diffuse your inner eye into working out a defence mechanism to find excuses for your misdeed. Like Rumi says of one who has annihilated,

“He is neither this, nor that: he is plain”.

It is that pursuit for ‘plainness’ which may bring Rumi and Iqbal on the same table of Fa’ani.

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