بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
A man in the circle said: “Mawlana, I have heard our own path called Shādhulī, and I have heard the Imām Ghazālī’s path spoken of as though it walked a slightly different road within the very same ḥadīth. Is that a true saying, or a loose one? And if true — which road is nearer the goal?”
The shaykh spoke as follows:
On the hadith having two eyes, not one
Jibrīl, peace upon him, asked the Prophet, peace and blessing upon him, what iḥsān was, and he was answered:
أَنْ تَعْبُدَ اللهَ كَأَنَّكَ تَرَاهُ، فَإِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ تَرَاهُ فَإِنَّهُ يَرَاكَ
“That you worship Allah as though you see Him; and if you do not see Him, then He sees you.”
Two clauses — not one clause said twice for emphasis, as a father repeats a warning to a slow child. The scholars of the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta’, put the matter with welcome plainness: the highest reach of iḥsān is that the believer worship his Lord as though beholding Him with the heart’s own eye; and if that is beyond him, he falls back to the next station, which is to worship knowing that God beholds him, that nothing of his secret or his open state escapes notice.1
Note their order. They do not present the two as equals set side by side. One is named the ghāya — the far end, the summit — and the other is what a man does when the summit is not yet his.
On the station that is named, and on which is named higher
The first clause has an old name: mushāhada, the witnessing. The second: murāqaba, the watching-over. You will find no Sufi scholar disputing that both belong to iḥsān — the Prophet, ‘alayhi al-salat wa al-salam, named them in one breath, after all — but you will find them quite willing to say that one stands above the other. Aḥmad Zarrūq, a Shādhulī scholar of a great rank, set the whole matter out in a single passage of his Qawāʿid al-Taṣawwuf:2
أَحَدُهُمَا أَنْ تَعْبُدَ اللَّهَ كَأَنَّكَ تَرَاهُ، وَإِلَّا فَإِنَّهُ يَرَاكَ. فَالْأَوَّلُ رُتْبَةُ الْعَارِفِ، وَالثَّانِي رُتْبَةُ مَنْ دُونَهُ. وَعَلَى الْأَوَّلِ يَحُومُ الشَّاذُلِيَّةُ وَمَنْ نَحَا نَحْوَهُمْ، وَعَنِ الثَّانِي يَحُومُ الْغَزَالِيُّ وَمَنْ نَحَا نَحْوَهُ
“One of the two is that you worship Allah as though you see Him, and otherwise, that He sees you. The first is the rank of the ʿārif; the second, the rank of one beneath him. Around the first the Shādhuliyya revolve, and those who follow their way — and around the second, al-Ghazālī revolves, and those who follow his way.”
Sit with his wording, for it is exact where careless speech would blur. Rutbat al-ʿārif — the rank of the gnostic — for the first. Rutbat man dūnahu — the rank of one below him — for the second. This is not two paths of equal footing standing side by side on level ground. It is a stair, and Zarrūq tells you plainly which step is higher. Mushāhada is not merely different from murāqaba; it is its completion, the flowering of what murāqaba plants as seed.
On why al-Ghazālī himself is not embarrassed by this
Do not think this shames the Imām Ghazālī, God be pleased with him, as though a fault had been found in his teaching. Open his Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, in the book he gives over to murāqaba and muḥāsaba, and you will find him take up this very ḥadīth and build from its second clause a whole ladder of discipline for the ordinary seeker:3
فَإِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ تَرَاهُ فَإِنَّهُ يَرَاكَ إِشَارَةٌ إِلَى حَالِ الْمُرَاقَبَةِ؛ لِأَنَّ الْمُرَاقَبَةَ عِلْمُ الْعَبْدِ بِاطِّلَاعِ الرَّبِّ سُبْحَانَهُ عَلَيْهِ
“‘If you do not see Him, then He sees you’ is an indication of the state of murāqaba, for murāqaba is the servant’s knowledge that the Lord, glorified is He, observes him.”
He knew precisely what rung of the ladder he was building. He built it because most men need the rung before they can reach the room above it. A man does not leap onto a roof; he climbs a stair to it. Al-Ghazālī, may God be pleased with him, is the master builder of the stair. That is a mighty service, and no small one — but it is still the stair, and not yet the room.
On an older witness to the same ranking
Nor is Zarrūq the first to draw the line so sharply. A century before him, Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī — that great muḥaddith and scholar of the Ḥanbalī school — reached, in his own commentary on this very ḥadīth of Jibrīl, a conclusion that reads almost as Zarrūq’s blueprint. In his Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, expounding this same sentence, he preserves a saying he traces to certain gnostics among the Salaf themselves:
وَقَالَ بَعْضُ الْعَارِفِينَ مِنَ السَّلَفِ: مَنْ عَمِلَ لِلَّهِ عَلَى الْمُشَاهَدَةِ فَهُوَ عَارِفٌ، وَمَنْ عَمِلَ عَلَى مُشَاهَدَةِ اللَّهِ إِيَّاهُ فَهُوَ مُخْلِصٌ
*”Some of the gnostics among the Salaf said: whoever acts for God upon witnessing Him is a gnostic (ʿārif); and whoever acts knowing that God witnesses him is sincere (mukhliṣ).”*4
Set that beside Zarrūq’s own words, my sons, and see how closely they meet. ʿĀrif for the one who witnesses. A lesser name — mukhliṣ, sincere, no small standing, but not gnosis — for the one who only knows he is watched. Ibn Rajab did not write to defend the Shādhuliyya; he had no Shādhulī cause to serve. He was simply reading the same ḥadīth with the same care, a hundred years before Zarrūq ever picked up his pen, and the ladder he found in it has the very same two rungs.
On what this means for the man standing in prayer
So when you stand for your prayer, my sons, know which door you are going through. The first door, which is the gate to the staircase, is the one al-Ghazālī opens so wide and so carefully, is this: He sees me. You decide to walk towards and through it; and you will find yourself examining your intention, fleeing the love of being seen by men, guarding your heart’s most hidden corner, for you stand before One from whom nothing is hidden. This is real work and no seeker is excused it.
But there is a second door, further in. That door, you do not walk towards – rather, you are pulled to it. That door does not instruct you to watch yourself more closely; rather, you are overcome with gazing towards Him that you simply stop making yourself the object of your gaze anyway.
Murāqaba is the knowledge of being watched. Mushāhada is the witnessing itself. The one guards the house; the other is why the house was built. Do not mistake the landing for the room.
Go now, and remember your Lord much.
- Dār al-Iftāʾ al-Miṣriyya, “مِنْ عَلَامَاتِ الدُّخُولِ فِي مَقَامِ الْإِحْسَانِ” (“On the Signs of Entering the Station of Iḥsān”), setting out mushāhada as the ghāya (far end) of iḥsān and murāqaba as the station reached in its stead. Full URL: https://www.dar-alifta.org/ar/ourreligion/details/6184/%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D8%AE%D9%88%D9%84-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%85%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%AD%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86
- Aḥmad Zarrūq (d. 899/1494), Qawāʿid al-Taṣawwuf wa-Shawāhid al-Taʿarruf, the passage distinguishing mushāhada (Shādhulī) and murāqaba (Ghazālian), quoted and preserved among the record kept of the work’s most-cited lines. Full URL: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6540486
- Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, Kitāb al-Murāqaba wa-l-Muḥāsaba, on murāqaba as the servant’s knowledge of divine observation — full text as preserved at al-Maktaba al-Shāmila. Full URL: https://shamela.ws/book/9472
- Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī (d. 795/1393), Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, commentary on the second ḥadīth (the ḥadīth of Jibrīl), preserving the saying of certain gnostics among the Salaf distinguishing ʿārif (mushāhada) from mukhliṣ (murāqaba). Full text as preserved at Wikisource. Full URL: https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/جامع_العلوم_والحكم/الحديث_الثاني
- Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī (d. 795/1393), Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, commentary on the second ḥadīth (the ḥadīth of Jibrīl), preserving the saying of certain gnostics among the Salaf distinguishing ʿārif (mushāhada) from mukhliṣ (murāqaba). Full text as preserved at Wikisource. Full URL: https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/جامع_العلوم_والحكم/الحديث_الثاني
