"Know that you have two shaykhs.
1- Your external shaykh is the Qur'an and the Sunna.
2- Your internal shaykh is our Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani رضي الله عنه, may Allāh be pleased with him, and he is with you always. But the means are only the means, and the goal is [Allāh] as I have said:
Hide your secret. Bury what Allāh has entrusted with you from the secret of His lordship, until Allāh makes you appear. He who would be a shaykh before the existence of permission from Allāh has lost his religion and his [portion in the] world, and he will be degraded among the sons of his species.
If Allāh makes you appear, no one can prevent His gift. But the love of appearance before its [proper] time severs the very appearance of Divine favor, since the ego has a portion therein. So if Allāh has obscured you, then obscurity is better for you. and if Allāh has made you appear, then that is better for you.
Do not want anything except what Allāh wants. For whoever wants to appear [before the people], he is the worshipper of appearance, and whoever wants to be obscured [from the people], he is a worshipper of obscurity. But whoever wants nothing except what Allāh wants is a true worshipper of Allāh.
The one who knows Allāh is he who has left his own desires for the desire of the Real."
-Shaykh al-Islam al-Hajj Ibrahim Niasse رضي الله تعالى عنه
(Jawahir al-Rasā'il 1:5.)
Translation by Dr. Zachary Wright. Copied from Nick Orzech
Forwarded fromAnatomy of Sufism
July 25, 2026 50
