capacity for organization. To achieve his ends, he imparted training to his
disciples and then sent them off to different regions to propagate the true
teachings of Islam
His focused thinking resulted in his concept of
wahdat al shuhud
, which is
considered to be his greatest contribution to the theoretical expositions of
tasawwuf
.This concept was worked out as a logical proposition grounded in
the orthodox Qur’anic understanding of
tawhid
.His aimwas to bring
tasawwuf
more in line with the teachings of the Qur’an and the
hadith
, for he felt it
came dangerously close to yogic practices and Vedanta philosophy. To this
end, he strove to harmonize Sufi teachings with the
shariah
and his efforts
were certainly rewarded. The correction of practices labelled un-Islamic
was a side effect of his striving. Thus, he admonished people to follow the
straight and narrow path of orthodoxy. Innovations (
bidat
) were looked
upon with disfavour. Listening to music, dancing and worshipping the saints,
practices common in the then Muslim society, were forbidden to his
followers, who successfully carried out the reforms outlined by him.
In his times, under the influence of Vedanta philosophy and Ibn ‘Arabi’s
doctrines of ‘the oneness of being’, the mystics adopted the concept that
God and the universe were, in essence, one and co-eternal, and that the
universe was not the manifestation of the attributes of God, but the Reality
Himself made manifest as the universal consciousness. The world was
identified with God. Ibn ‘Arabi held that there was no existence save the
existence of God. God was both the Ruler and the ruled, the Creator and
created. The world was the result of the manifestation of God and not a
creation of God. To Ibn ‘Arabi, the mystical union did not amount to
‘becoming’ one with God, rather it was the realization of a union that
already existed.This was also the concept of God inVedic philosophy. In the
Vedic view of life everything was God, and of the same essence.
Such a concept, according to Ahmad Sirhindi, was not compatible with
Th e Na q s h ba n d i Or d e r 174
