When i was a young teenage girl trying to water her soul in the secular desert of suburban America, mystical poetry became one of the most formative influences on the deepening of my relationship with Allah (swt), and one of the biggest fuel sources of my love for Him. I was about ten years old when i wrote my first love poem to God, but i kept it largely hidden as i wasn’t sure whether religion permitted me to love Him… all i knew was that i did.
As my grasp of religion deepened in unison with my love, i experienced a dilemma familiar to many lovers. My heart felt deeply distressed by the gulf i perceived between the infinite beauty, gentleness, and mercy of the Creator i loved, and the cold cruelty with which He was often framed by many of the orthodox teachers and scholars i crossed paths with throughout my adolescence. The Lord i met on the tongues of the orthodox seemed ever eager to punish, as if His mercy were a distant universe leagues beyond the grasp of the average sinner. Yet the Lord i met in the verses of the Qur’an seemed almost eager to forgive; to dispense justice in tandem with His mercy, not in opposition to it.
I found these conflicting perspectives painfully difficult to reconcile. I felt out of place among both the pious and the godless, but the poetry of Hafez-e Shirazi and Maulana Rumi became the oasis that my weary heart had long been seeking. Within their verses, i was delighted to find a perfect mirror of the sentiments i had secretly hidden in my chest from infancy. One story in Rumi’s Mathnawi, in particular, left an eternal imprint on my heart, and soon became one of the poems i cherished most: Moses and the Shepherd. The central theme of the tale echoed my pain at the cold rigidity of the orthodoxy, and i identified deeply with the shepherd: a simple, unlearned lover whose deepest yearning was to love her Beloved, even if imperfectly.
————————
About four years ago, my heart leapt with joy one day as i came across a flyer for an upcoming event at a local university: an academic panel on Maulana Rumi. I eagerly drank in the details, but the sight of one name made me freeze: Shaykh Yasir Qadhi. I felt a reflexive surge of discomfort, followed by a visceral wave of anger: why would they invite a Salafi scholar known for his extremist, bigoted views to a panel on one of the greatest mystics of all time? My heart revolted at the thought. I calmed myself down and reasoned that they must be inviting him for the sake of academic balance. Perhaps he would be there to offer a religious critique of Sufism, or to balance the panel’s esotericism with a dose of orthodox cynicism. I grumbled at the prospect, but resolved to enjoy the event regardless.
The day of the panel dawned, and i took a seat near the back of the packed auditorium, quietly hoping that one of the speakers might talk about my beloved Moses and the Shepherd. As each of the panelists spoke of their particular love for Maulana Rumi, i listened in a state of rapt, unshakable awe. Every person chose a particular poem or concept that they resonated with most from Rumi’s works, and proceeded to discuss it with a heart-melting blend of sincerity, insight, and passion.
As the panel began drawing to a close, it was Shaykh Yasir Qadhi’s turn to speak. I waited with bated breath, hoping that his rhetoric wouldn’t be excessively hurtful or cruel. After humbly praising the previous speaker, Shaykh Yasir shared that he would be reciting one of the most well-known poems from Maulana Rumi’s mathnawi… Moses and the Shepherd. My heart skipped a beat. I nervously wondered whether he was about to tear apart the poem that had felt like a spiritual home to me since my teenage years. Shaykh Yasir mentioned that he had studied the poem in his Farsi class at Yale, and said he would be reciting some of the lines in Farsi. As a poet, i found this detail respectful and impressive on his part, and his unexpectedly humble demeanor instantly softened my heart.
He began by introducing the poem thusly: “the poem is about a mythological meeting of Prophet Moses (as) and a shepherd, and it symbolizes the constant tension or struggle that tasawwuf- the path of love- faces in light of the law. Moses represents the law; he represents the jury consult; he represents theology. And the shepherd represents innocence and love, and trying to find your own way to God.”
He then recited the first few lines of the poem, in which Maulana Rumi depicts the shepherd’s passionate dialogue with God. After reciting these lines in an ardent, reverent tone, Shaykh Yasir paused and offered the following remarks: “[The shepherd] is speaking to God in a manner that typically does not come from educated clerics, it doesn’t come from the nobility. For Rumi, he represents the pure, unadulterated love of innocence.”
He then shared the lines that follow, in which Moses (as) overhears the shepherd’s dialogue with God and rushes to make takfir of him, furiously scolding the shepherd for speaking to God in such a blasphemous, irreverent manner. Moses declares that the shepherd has lost his way, abandoned his faith, and gone astray. At this point, Shaykh Yasir paused to explain Moses’s behavior: “Moses barges in as the strict disciplinarian, embodying the clerical law, sending the stereotypical “fire and brimstones” on all those who move a hair’s width away from that law. And when Moses finishes his tirade, the shepherd is broken, humiliated.”
Shaykh Yasir then shared the shepherd’s response, who begins tearing at his clothing with grief in response to Moses’s harsh condemnation. “So now we have the standard trope of the legalist, the jury consult, literally turning people away through his wanting to adhere to the law- this is the motif of the law versus the seeker of love.”
At this point, Shaykh Yasir launched into the turning point of the poem: the part where God condemns Moses’s harshness. In this part, God is shown tenderly defending the shepherd and his blasphemous words. Here, Shaykh Yasir noted: “the religion of Love is distinct from all other religions… it is the religion and way of the lovers of God. So Moses is reprimanded by the Divine, just like he himself reprimanded the shepherd. And now Moses feels regret and remorse, just like he caused regret and remorse in the shepherd. And so the tables have turned.”
Shaykh Yasir then described the conclusion of the poem, in which Moses is seen running to find the shepherd to apologize. Instead of rebuking Moses or merely accepting his apology, the shepherd leaves Moses stunned, revealing that he had left the spiritual station from which Moses was speaking a long time ago.
Shaykh Yasir then passionately concluded with this beautiful summation: “And now, the shepherd imparts wisdom to Moses, and this is a motif that obviously theologians would not like, but it is a standard motif in spirituality: that when you’re truly on the path to God, spirituality transcends the law, and spirituality can teach the law something. So now, Rumi becomes the teacher of Moses, and says to Moses that your words mean nothing to me, I’ve gone beyond even the lote tree- and the metaphor of the mirror and the flute is quite clear: when you look in the mirror, you don’t see the mirror, you see yourself. When you blow into the flute, it’s not the flute that is playing, it is you and your own breath. Meaning: all of us are instruments of God. There is no ‘other’- there is only you, and there is God, and there is not even you when you understand who God is.”
“And so, what Rumi is saying is: we are all instruments of God, each one is doing what God wants him to do, and the primary moral of the story, out of the many morals, is that what God values the most is sincerity and pure love. And while the way of the jurists and the theologians and the law-givers is good, they should understand that they do not do justice to God. And their rebuking others also does not do justice to God. There are multiple ways, and what combines all of them is the sincerity and love for God.”
By the time Shaykh Yasir finished, i felt an awe beyond anything i could have ever predicted or deemed possible. From the unprecedented sincerity, humility, and understanding with which he had discussed the poem, i sensed that the man i had just listened to was no longer the imposing Salafi scholar once known for his rigid, exclusionary dogmatism. This was a man whose heart had awakened, who had clearly reflected on and begun to unpack the error of his ways with a sincerity and humility seldom seen in the world. In all my life, i had never seen such a rare blend of humility and courage as i witnessed in those ten minutes.
In the Q&A after, Shaykh Yasir shared that he had been reexamining many of his beliefs in recent years, and humbly acknowledged that he would have typically identified with Moses in the story, given his legalistic, dogmatic training. As he alluded to his evolution and the growth he had undergone that had led him to question and unpack his prior perspectives, it suddenly occurred to me that i had been waiting a very long time for this moment. I sensed that if he was willing to be so courageous in publicly questioning the Salafi beliefs he had spent much of his life promoting, this suggested he had a sincere fidelity to truth that might incline him to reexamine all of his biases… and no bias is so strong in the heart of the average Sunni as the seemingly universal animosity felt toward Shi’as.
As a Shi’a of Pakistani descent, i had been aching for that to change for one simple reason: for as long as i could remember, the Shi’as in my ancestral homeland had been in danger; every few years seemed to bring a fresh surge of anti-Shi’a violence and extremism. If just one prominent Sunni scholar with global reach could speak against that, perhaps fewer of my people would be killed..
I had a sudden intuitive feeling that Shaykh Yasir might someday be the one to take a firm stance against sectarianism and perhaps even become an ally to Shi’as. The thought seemed preposterous in the moment, yet it made perfect sense to my heart; it felt like the inevitable trajectory of such a humble, honest, and inquisitive heart. I imagined that a heart as awakened as his would inevitably come to be as troubled by the disunity of the ummah as i was. I then had an even stranger thought: for over a decade, i’d been yearning for the possibility of a peaceful Shi’a-Sunni dialogue that might finally begin bridging the divide between our communities. What if Shaykh Yasir could be the one?
As soon as the thought entered my mind, i pictured it as if it were already playing out in front of me: Shaykh Yasir Qadhi sitting with our Shaykh, engaged in a unifying dialogue designed to bring Shi’as and Sunnis together. The moment felt like a memory- it was so clear i could almost touch it. I felt a sense of urgency as i imagined it… but how could i make it happen? I didn’t have that level of influence- and even if i did, i’d be too shy to use it. I felt so strongly about this vision, i considered walking down the crowded auditorium after the panel to invite Shaykh Yasir to my masjid as a potential first step, but i couldn’t bring myself to do it. Still, i reasoned- if i could just help the right dominoes align, perhaps God would make it happen when the timing was right.
As it turns out- that time is tonight, inshAllah 🙂
————————
On the day of that panel four years ago, i recorded the ten minutes in which Shaykh Yasir spoke and have re-listened to that recording countless times ever since. Last Ramadhan, i briefly thought i had accidentally deleted the clip, and i cried. As strange as it might sound, that simple audio clip is one of my most prized possessions. I love it so deeply for what it represents: the reality that every human soul contains infinite room for expansion- and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to witness that expansion play out in front of our very eyes.
The beautiful thing about spiritual alchemy is that it doesn’t just change the person experiencing it- every witness, too, is imperceptibly altered. I learned an incredibly valuable, humbling lesson that day: no soul is ever too dogmatic to be fundamentally altered and transformed by Love. In the moments before hearing Shaykh Yasir speak, i had become the Moses in the story: unwilling to consider that there could be a hidden shepherd, a latent lover, even within the rigid heart of an orthodox theologian. I have tried my best to never make that mistake again… i now look for the unmet lover within every rigid soul, and i am always, always eager to be surprised by the goodness that lies in wait.
x r
Lilac Muse 