ESTABLISHMENT OF TASAVVUF AND MORAL EDUCATION

M. Yaşar Kandemir

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    If they ask, "What does Allah want from us?" we could give this short answer: "First He wants you to believe in your Creator, then He wants you to be one of those with excellent character." Here we have to remember a well-known hadith. Once Sufyan Ibn Abdullah came to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace.
   He said, "Oh Messenger of Allah! Make me know Islam so intimately that I won't ever have to ask you another question about it."
   The Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, replied,
   "Say, 'I believe in Allah,' and then be upright." (MUSLIM, Iman 62) This saying of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, rests upon this ayat: "For those who say 'Allah is our Lord' and who do righteousness, there is no fear or grief." (Ahkaf 46/13)
   It can be seen that both Allah and His Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, teach man faith. The first three generations, which were praised by the Prophet as the "best of generations" and other Muslims after them, actually did become the world's most moral people.
   They carried what they had gained from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, as a trust to the four corners of the world and taught the entire world about Allah and noble character. They brought peace, tranquillity, and genuine humanity to the places they went to. The morality they learned and taught is a reinforced morality. They became the evidence against moral systems that are not reinforced by faith..
   For centuries the Muslims had the most noble characters and those were their happiest and strongest periods. Today Muslims are among the world's weakest and unhappiest people The reason for this is that Muslims have not made space in their lives for their exalted moral foundations. This really brings us to the inevitable question of moral education.
   Muslims first learned moral education from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace. He learned it from Allah. Allah prepared him as a teacher of character. He brought him through a most excellent moral training.. At the end of this education He said to him, "You have the most noble character." (Qalam 6/84) For hundreds of years Islamic teachers of morality showed their students first and foremost the life of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace. Whatever subject they were teaching, they said, "Look, in this situation, this is what he did." They themselves did everything with his permission. They vigorously preserved Islamic ahlak. This is how it all began.
   As for those proposing moral theories not based on the deen, they were content with recommending their point of view to others. That is, they did nothing more than philosophize. They didn't have any real experience to tell them whether their recommended morality could be lived or not. So those who came along afterwards criticized the points of view of the earlier ones, actually promoting their own views and conceptions instead. But since these conceptions had never been lived or adopted, they amounted to nothing.
   The success of the moral education and instruction advanced by the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is based on the fact that he personally lived everything he said. That moral system was then applied for hundreds of years after, with great fastidiousness by those who came after him.
   "If you ask, "What do we do now?" the answer is this: The vitality of the moral principles from the Qur'an and the hadith are protected and preserved with the same vitality just as they were. There is always a new opportunity to live and to promote these unsurpassed moral principles and once again to bring people to the felicity and peace of which they are so in need.
   Now, let me examine the connection between tasawuf and moral education. It is possible to divide people into three groups. One group is like the angels. They don't harm anyone. One group is following Shaytan. They aren't going to leave the state they are in. They can only be brought to discipline by the power of law. There aren't many people in either of these two groups. The greatest number of people are in need of attention and education and of being shown the right and the good. In fact, no matter how effective the eduation is, people need, for their whole lives, to be shown the good and the right by one who knows it better than they do, who lives an upright life himself, one who can bring them to an untroubled state and keep them under perpetual vigilance. This is what tasawuf is for. Its objective is to ensure the realization of Islamic morality in the community. To this end they aim to observe their members for their whole lives and bring them to the state of being useful to others, in order to ensure the realization of Islamic morality in the community. And they are successful.
   There are those who are fixated on some bad and unsuccessful examples found among the Sufis. It is wrong to think that tasawuf consists of bad examples because of every exception to the rule. The badness is not in tasawuf, it is in people. The experts of tasawuf are trying to reduce this badness.
   Today's problems can be traced to insufficient moral education in general and in particular to the deficiencies and unhealthiness of tasawuf education. It is necessary that every institution, beginning with the government, which is thinking about providing education, make an adequate intention and then research this way. We are not required to find something new, something we've never had before. The power we need to bring us to excellence is within us already. It is to consider the guidance of Allah and His Prophet as our own, and to choose it.

 

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