Eternal Wisdom: Writings on Religious Thought & Civilization
Foreword by
Dato’ Prof. Dr. Baharudin Ahmad, Malaysia
Review by Dr. Heather Smith, Founder, Mystical Meditation Foundation, UK
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Review
Preface
- Research Papers
Why modern intellectuals may not reach the truth?
- Essays
Echoes of the Self
The Pursuit of Happiness
How do you recover from trauma, tragedy, suffering, setback or misfortune in life?
What is Spirituality? Why is it so Unpopular?
The Secret
Where is it written in the Book?
Whose Ego Is It, Anyway?
The Pandemic Within
Million Dollars Vs 1 Rupee
The Lost Glory
Fragments of Infinity
The Peak of Self Effacement
Psychotherapy and Faith
The War You Don’t See
Westernization & Islamization in the Wake of 2025
Is Religion a Delusion?
The Venture of Life
The Silent Revolution
The Greatest Gift of All
The Illusion of Greatness
Where is the Love?
The Veil of Success
A Love Story
The Price of Truth
The Hidden Treasure
A Manifesto for the Muslim World
- Articles
Sufism: The Misunderstood Islam
Critical Analysis of Modern Islamic Scholars: Philosophical, Epistemological, Scientific & Spiritual Problems
- Posts
Why Modern Muslims Struggle to Understand Sufi Literature
Human Nature: Islam & the Harsh Realities of the World
The Two Models of Islam
West & Islam: Thought of the Day
Philosophy and Theology
30 Benefits of Following a Shaykh
An Ideal Model for Muslim Universities
Spiritual Philosophy of Tragedy & Suffering in Life
Why God must be loved unconditionally
Allama Iqbal’s “Khudi” (Selfhood) – Most misunderstood concept
How to unite Muslim Ummah?
Why 5 times prayers are not helping Muslims?
Sunnah – What is lacking today?
Tazkia-e-Nafs (Purification of the Self)
A Deep Introspection
10 Things to do in Ramadan
Is Religion a Personal Matter?
- Ideas for Thesis Topics for Masters & PhD Students
- Sayings/Quotes/Aphorisms
- Book Review
“Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam” by Sir Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal
Where is it written in the Qur’an?
Imagine a wonderland within a forest where an extraordinary treasure lies hidden. At its entrance lies a book containing instructions on how to proceed within the wonderland. After reading the book, you gain an idea of what life in the wonderland will be like and how you will reach the treasure.
However, once inside, as you follow its paths, you encounter many signboards, signposts, keys, and hints not recorded in the book—things known only to one who has actually explored the wonderland. Only when the explorer follows these additional instructions—inscribed within the wonderland but absent from the book—does he gain a clear understanding of the hunt.
Furthermore, although the wonderland’s door is small and the book outside has limited pages, the wonderland itself is unbelievably vast, and the search within is an endless journey that leaves him extremely weary and exhausted, so that he falls and rises many times.
Because he does not give up, the wonderland reveals to him numerous clues and signs—far more than the instructions in the book outside. The explorer discovers two things he did not know before: first, that his clothes are in fact extremely filthy; second, that to attain a shortcut to the treasure he must first rid himself of that filth. The more he removes the filth, the faster his progress becomes. After diligently following all these additional, special instructions for a long time, he finally reaches the treasure, cherishes it, and thanks the owner of the wonderland for making it possible.
After finding the treasure, when the explorer emerges, he tells the world how he searched inside the wonderland—the do’s and don’ts of the process; what signals he received inside; how long and tiring the search was; how difficult it would have been without the special instructions not written in the book; how often he battled his own willpower; how and where the traps were laid; how he avoided falling into them; how he trusted the clues and signals along the way; how he had to cleanse himself again and again; and how, in the end, he finally found the treasure.
The people who do not go inside at all and only read the book from the outside can never fully understand how to find the treasure. These people quarrel with the explorer, label him a liar, astray, a fool, and accuse him of presenting new ideas not written in the book. Why? Because they have never been inside the wonderland. They have never undertaken that pursuit. They have never borne the aches and pains of the search. They are completely unaware of the filth on their clothes. They have not purified themselves at all. They have never been given any special clues and signals. They have not exhausted themselves in the hunt. They are simply outsiders. Only the insider knows the real method of attaining the treasure. These outsiders can, at best, only engage in guesswork. Their level of understanding is extremely limited, whereas only the insider has real knowledge of the treasure.
After witnessing this harsh treatment, the explorer falls silent, realizing that these people are entirely incapable of understanding him, and he stops sharing the finer points of the craft with everyone; instead, he offers counsel only to a seeker who approaches him in trust. Those who trust him and possess pure intent and keen resolve to attain the treasure also enter the wonderland and discover that not only was the book outside true, but the explorer’s insights were also correct, and there was in fact no contradiction at all between the book and the explorer’s wisdom. They experience that, without the explorer’s guidance, they cannot attain the treasure if they rely only and solely on what was written in the book outside the wonderland.
The wonderland is the path of Islam. The treasure is the unveiling of Allah. The book outside is the Qur’an. The explorer is the Sufi, saint, sage, or mystic of any age. The clothes are souls. The stains of filth are the desires of the world, the ego, lust, and caprice. The people who reject the explorer are the opponents, critics, rivals, and mockers of Sufism.
This leads us back to the epistemological framework of Islam. There are two distinct types of knowledge—textual and experiential. Textual knowledge is the literal word of the Qur’an—what is written in the Qur’an, which even a child can see. Experiential knowledge is the deeper, higher, slightly hidden, and more advanced dimension of the same text—what is outwardly not apparent in the Qur’an, which only a person who has actually followed and practiced the letter and spirit of the text for many years can decipher. The text is for the masses, whereas the experiential domain is only for those who have undergone it. The text is the talk of the path. The experience is the walk on the path.
This sums up the dilemma of 2025.
Every day we see innumerable books being published, new research papers appearing, vast amounts of digital content on websites, new YouTube lectures uploaded to channels, advances across different fields of knowledge, new academic disciplines in universities, and new subjects in colleges and schools, and so on. Yet the person of highest wisdom, the Holy Prophet (SAW), said (Sahih Muslim 2671a): “It is from the conditions of the Last Hour that knowledge will be taken away and ignorance will prevail (upon the world).” How can we reconcile these two seemingly opposing facts?
This brings us back to the fundamental question: What is knowledge in the first place? Anything that brings you closer to the real purpose of life is knowledge. Anything that takes you away from it is ignorance. Anything that neither benefits nor harms you is mere information. What is the purpose of life? It is nothing but to unveil Allah. Today, what the world calls “tons and tons of knowledge” is either information or disinformation. Only that small part of it is true knowledge which aligns with the essence and spirit of the Qur’an.
How can we know if something is really in line with the Qur’an? Even an AI system can instantly determine whether something is written in the text of the Qur’an or not. The real criterion is whether something leads and points us to the experiential domain, because while the text is undeniably embedded in the experience, the text alone does not guarantee yielding the experience, and without the experience the seeker remains a mere spectator or member of the audience rather than a player facing the heat on the ground.
While Islam is certainly that which is written in the Qur’an, Islam is also that which is apparently not written in the Qur’an. This dimension is revealed only to those who have undergone the process of spiritual purification (tazkiya al-nafs). Here, people often ask a vital question. What if there is a direct contradiction between what is written and what is not written? The answer lies in the irony of this contradiction itself. The person of experiential knowledge sees no contradiction between the two sources of knowledge, while the person of text alone views both as opposites. This reminds us of the famous saying of the “gate to the city of knowledge,” Hazrat Ali (RZA): “Man becomes the enemy of that which he does not understand.”
Hazrat Ali (RZA) is the same person who did not feel pain while a weapon was removed from his body during prayers (salah). Can we do that as well? No. Why? Textually, his performance of salah was exactly like ours. Experientially, his salah was beyond our imagination. Hazrat Umar (RZA) wrote a letter to the stagnant River Nile, which then began to flow. Why can we not do the same? We have thousands of commentaries on the text of the Qur’an, while he had only one text—because he also possessed the experience of the text. This experiential domain is the silent dimension of the Sunnah, which is not found in books of sīrah (biographies of the Holy Prophet, SAW) because the authors themselves lack that dimension. History teaches us the days of the Sunnah, while Sufism teaches us the nights of the Sunnah. Here, we are reminded of one of the titles of the Holy Prophet (SAW), given by Hazrat Ayesha (RZA): “The Walking Qur’an,” where experience reached its pinnacle.
If the literal text of the Qur’an were sufficient to guide humanity without exception, there would not have been any astray sects or deviant schools of thought, because all of them quote the Qur’an to establish their claims. In the past, the Kharijites—among the worst misguidances to afflict Muslims—used the Qur’an to justify their murder of Hazrat Ali (RZA), the fountain of wisdom. They were not atheists or non-Muslims. They had the Qur’an in their hands. There has been no influential founder of a misguided version of Islam who did not use the Qur’an as his textbook. In fact, their entire claim to superiority was based on insisting that they used the Qur’an to derive their erroneous concepts. Why? Because they disconnected themselves completely from the man of the Qur’an (Sahib-e-Qur’an), who has both text and experience.
So, “where is it written in the Qur’an?” It is not written—yet written—and only the chosen ones can read it, not those marked by arrogance, shallowness, superficiality, impurity, or an undeserving, unworthy spirit so common in the modern age.