Islam Isn't for the Weak

Hameeduddin Farrahi writes:

"To the Arabs, 'SABR', never referred to what is frail and feeble – something accustomed to the weak and meek. On the contrary, it is the basis of power and determination. It is abundantly used in this meaning in classical Arabic."

Javed Ghamidi writes:

‘In the Arabic language, the word 'SABR' is used to firmly set one’s self on one’s view while protecting one’s self from worry, frustration and anxiety.’

Hatim al Taee states:

"Many are the seas of death on which are bridges of swords.
We showed SABR with our swords against all their torments and tortures until they cooled down."

(www.monthly-renaissance.com, translated by Shehzad Saleem)

"If you have fever and flame like the sun,
step forth into the vastness of the sky;
burn up mountain and bird, garden and desert,
burn even the fishes in the depths of the sea.
If you have a breast worthy of an arrow,
live like a falcon, and like a falcon die;
immortality is in the breadth of life—
I do not ask of God for length of days,

What is the law, the religion, the rite of life?
Better one instant a lion, than a century a sheep.

Life is fortified by cheerful resignation;
death is a magic talisman, a fantasy.
The man of God is a lion, and death a fawn;
death is but one station for him of a hundred.
The perfect man swoops upon death
even as a falcon swooping upon a dove,
The slave dies every moment in fear of death;
the fear of death makes life for him a thing forbidden;
the free servant has another dignity,
death bestows upon him a new life.
He is anxious for the self, but not for death,
since to the free death is no more than an instant.
Transcend the death that is content with the grave,
for that death is the death of brute beasts;
the true believer prays to the Holy God
for that other death which raises up from the dust.
That other death-the goal of the road of love,
the final Allahu Akbar in love’s battlefield.
Though to the believer every death is sweet,
the death of Murtada’s son is something other.
The warfare of worldly kings is for rapine,
the believer’s warfare is the Sunna of the Prophet.
What is the believer’s warfare? Flight to the Beloved;
quitting the world, choosing the Beloved’s street,
He who proclaimed to the peoples the word of love
said of warfare that it was ‘the monasticism of Islam’.
None but the martyr knows this subtlety,
for he has purchased this subtlety with his blood."

(Muhammad Iqbal, Javid-e-Nama, translated by Arthur Arberry)

This vital way of appropriating the universe is what the Qur'an describes as Iman. Iman is not merely a passive belief in one or more propositions of a certain kind; it is living assurance begotten of a rare experience. Strong personalities alone are capable of rising to this experience and the higher 'Fatalism' implied in it. Napoleon is reported to have said: 'I am a thing, not a person'. This is one way in which unitive experience expresses itself. In the history of religious experience in Islam which, according to the Prophet, consists in the 'creation of Divine attributes in man', this experience has found expression in such phrases as 'I am the creative truth' (Hallaj), 'I am Time' (Muhammad), 'I am the speaking Qur'an' (Ali), 'Glory to me' (Bayazid). In the higher Sufism of Islam unitive experience is not the finite ego effacing its own identity by some sort of absorption into the infinite Ego; it is rather the Infinite passing into the loving embrace of the finite.

As Rumi says:

'Divine knowledge is lost in the knowledge of the saint! And how is it possible for people to believe in such a thing?'

The fatalism implied in this attitude is not negation of the ego as Spengler seems to think; it is life and boundless power which recognizes no obstruction, and can make a man calmly offer his prayers when bullets are showering around him.

(Muhammad Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam)