Today's Mutasawwuf Woman as reflected in the Life of Samiha Ayverdi
Samiha Ayverdi says that, “Tasawwuf is the path that brings the collection of opposites, which is man’s constitution, into wholeness through spiritual integration. The improvement of everything depends first on man putting himself in order.” When the armour of wholeness manifests in man’s body, he no longer feels the need for happiness, has fear of suffering pain, nor does he have ambition for status or money. Neither do grudges, enmity, nor friendship based on profits remain. These are all daggers of the nafs (ego). The reason for our coming into this world is wahdet, unification, to become a united whole in the meaning of Allah. To become one within multiplicity, common spiritual values need to manifest which are only made possible by those freed individuals, who account only to Allah, those who have been freed from enslavement to their nafs, who discern their Beloved Allah’s names and attributes in their interaction with every created being.
Such people who convey to their surroundings this group of sublime qualities are deemed spiritually rich by Samiha Ayverdi. The qualities of certainty of faith, sincerity of heart, fairness, honesty, generosity, abnegation, self-sacrifice, beautiful morals, love of country, wisdom and spiritual knowledge are eternally valued by everybody under the blue vault of heaven. It is apparent that the eye that knows how to see oneness, is the fruit of a gönül(mind & heart) that knows how to respect multiplicity. Hadrat Ali says, “Before reaching the state of jam (gathering all things together in Allah), tafriq(distinguishing things as being separate) is blasphemy (kufr). After achieving this state of jam, lack of tafriq becomes unbelief”. Samiha Ayverdi represented jam maqam (station). Her gönül (mind-heart) could never be vindictive towards the cruel, but yet she would fight cruelty. We see that she also felt the necessity to reprimand the cruel. That is why she spent all her life struggling earnestly. She wrote letters and at times when she gave us bittersweet warnings in a manner most befitting our temperaments, it never crossed our minds to feel hurt because we knew that the warnings of Allah’s beloveds are really His blessings as shown in the Quranic verse, “The hand that is hitting is mine”.
Can one disagree with Susanna Tamaro, who wrote in her book Follow Your Heart, “How wrong it is for those who have not ended their fight within themselves to carry the flag of an ideology or an –ism”? Justifying Tamaro, Samiha Ayverdi shows Islam as the only solution in saying, “Islam is the religion that unravels the driving bonds of human passions thus freeing mankind from enslavement. It is the religion that melts and refines faults in the pot of critical thinking and self-control. It is also the religion that gives mankind the ardent yearning and enthusiasm for a sublime goal.”
For those beautiful people, who have known how to become the ‘Josephs’ of this era, it is a must that they carry the flag of their beliefs and set an example in all their behaviour (hal). It is very appropriate for a woman to become a Joseph i.e. to establish unity within by marrying her aql (mind) to her nafs (soul) thus ensuring the dominance of the spirit in the body. However, in most religious books the feminine quality symbolizes the nafs (soul) (e.g. Roman: 21, And one of His signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest in them). Nafs, on the other hand, is also the egoism that separates human beings from others. Man symbolizes aql (intellect). Both aql and nafs can be catastrophic if they have not been perfected because they only say “I”. When they are exalted, they become exquisite because they don’t say “I” but “you”. When nafs is free from saying “I” and becomes confident in Allah, and if Allah is content with her, woman reaches such a high level that Our Prophet says of her, “Women are victorious over the wise and the good hearted.” It is likely that here the Prophet means that the female who reaches the maqam of safiyya (the station where the spirit becomes manifest) becomes dominant over the male aql and gönül (mind-heart) illuminated by nur (divine light). In his Mathnawi, Rumi explains this maqam like this, “She (woman) is a ray of God she is not that (earthly) beloved she is creative, you might say she is not created.” (Mathnawi I: 2437, translated by Nicholson)
Islamic tasawwuf studies and exalts women in two ways: firstly in her perfected feminity and secondly in her motherhood. The freedom of her feminity teaches a woman to control her human, earthly characteristics. Otherwise a woman or man who cannot attain this state resembles a time bomb that can explode unexpectedly. According to Samiha Ayverdi, woman becomes the mysterious force by being a procreator. Together with those to whom she has given birth, woman gathers and unites the family within traditional order by carrying within her being the clues of how to balance society and replenish the family nest. The force that drives woman within the family to be patient, cautious, dignified, solemn, compassionate and especially diligent among many other empowerments is what she transmits to her children through the training system of manners and ways of behaviour called ADAB (good manners).
With this adab woman establishes and embodies within her temperament and spirit a philosophy of life where she herself becomes a monument of society’s wisdom and civilization. Thus, woman follows a superior path which enables her to distinguish between right and wrong, between peace and danger and between the harmful and the useful. The institution of the family is organized around the functions of the ‘mother-female nucleus’ which is the strongest inner structure of society.
If a man or a woman does not have good manners and behaviour and is unable to distinguish the manifestation of Allah in every created being then they cannot feel happy nor can they make anyone else happy. It is so fortunate for a woman to be able to become a mother because motherhood, similar to being a teacher, provides her with the opportunity to train herself while training her child.
Anyone, be it male or a female, whose nafs has been perfected achieves the level of an entity above gender (er), purified from all sexual qualities. Mothers are more fortunate in this respect. Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi describes such an entity as “completion and refinement after being freed from the darkness of one’s desires and humanity through the light of reasoning and spiritual training.”
Motherhood is the ability to create paradises. Therefore, in the world motherhood is the only opportunity through which to find paradise. The Prophet emphasizes the significance of motherhood in his great hadith, “Paradise lies under the feet of the mother.” Rumi in his Mathnawi (Vol. 6, 3257) says, “Though a mother's tenderness is (derived) from God, (yet) 'tis a sacred duty and a worthy task to serve her” (translated by Nicholson). Motherhood can also be explained as being the manifestation of Allah’s rahim (attribute of mercy) through the being of the Prophet. From this perspective Hazrat Ismail Hakkı Bursevi explains the Prophet’s being ümmi by saying that the word derives from “üm” meaning mother and suggests that He is the mother of all the created. Rumi writes in his Divan-ı Kebir (2237) that “The anger of the Prophets [anbiyaa] is like the anger of a mother; it is an anger full of patient forbearance (‘hulm’) for the sake of the pretty-faced infant (‘tifl-i khuub-ruu’)” (translated by Ibrahim Gamard). According to Rumi, what is manifested in a murshid is also motherhood as murshids are no different from mothers. The milk of every teacher is the same but the student desires to be breastfed only with its own mother’s milk. Milk is the reflection of Allah’s meaning through the murshid. (It is the wine of Kevser.) Breastfeeding suggests spiritual closeness. In the Mathnawi where Moses’ mother is described as a murshid, the quality of motherhood represents the insan-ı kamil (perfected human) guiding his child.(1) Again in the Mathnawi, “It is the feminine nafs that is incapable of withstanding the suffering of divine love not the nafs of the entity above genders.” (2)
As motherhood adds high values to a woman, she succeeds in achieving her spiritual meaning. Woman becomes a masterpiece in her existence if she can free her nafs from its enslavement to hatred, ambitions and extreme attachments thus revealing her qualities of elegance, generosity, compassion, compromise and sacrifice (being able to say “you” before “I”). Woman is a golden pot provided that she does not boil dirty cloths in it.
In order for this to happen, a woman should possess these following beautiful traits: she should not get offended by a friend’s minor warning i.e. she should not leave her friend alone just because she thinks she did something wrong -because according to Allah her action may be correct. Whenever a friend makes a mistake, a woman should feel as if she has made that mistake herself because she knows that people are integral to each other in this world. She does not ask for Allah’s wrath by trying to please His servant. She does not try to please another by transgressing Allah’s approval (rida, contentment). Her delight in her gönül (heart-mind) is only found through emptying her heart of all evil, fury and hatred towards her sister believers. If she achieves this state, then she can even make friends with wild animals. If a woman does not come to know her own shameful behaviour and faults, then her every moment becomes a waste of time. She knows that having a few good manners (adab) is much better than having a lot of knowledge and she also knows that empty talk and gossiping will be her downfall. Her friend is the one that holds her back from her sins, saves her from shameful experiences and who shows her the right way to Truth. A woman comprehends the fact that the one who does no favour for others in this world will receive no favours in the hereafter. She knows very well that worship does not involve becoming a recluse or eating dry bread and wearing old clothes. Although she could divulge in earthly riches and desires, she is not carried away by them. Again she knows very well that the thickest veil over the gönül (heart-mind) is to become too busy with Allah’s creatures. She serves but does not expect to be served. She knows her servanthood, her nothingness and her neediness. She refrains from actions that she may later on regret.
With her dignity in her acz (nothingness) and her being a role model by living in all the above mentioned beautiful traits, my teacher, Samiha Ayverdi has showed and taught us the mutasawwuf Muslim women we presumed that we had never seen such as Hz Hatije, Hz Fatima, Rabi'a al-Adawiyya and Ibn Arabi’s murshide Fatma binti el-Musenna. How happy we are to have been able to see and observe in our teachers the Prophet’s sahabes. To the unaware who say “I cannot combine tasawwuf into my lifestyle”, my teachers have showed and taught that tasawwuf is a way of life that can be lived by everyone. I bow before Hatice Cenan who said, “You should love people. You have infinite treasures of forgiveness and compassion within you. That is why you should love not only people but all the created with the same untiring enthusiasm and unending desire. You should generously spend your treasure and should love them as if you are one with them in both their bad and good deeds. You should be with them in their increasing during birth until their decreasing during death”. I also bow before Samiha Ayverdi, Nazlı Sultan; the first female Turkish philosopher, Semiha Cemal, the mutasawwuf writer, Safiye Erol and my mother, Meşkure Sargut. I thank them by attempting to be like them.
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(1) “Give him milk, O mother of Moses, and cast him into the water: be not afraid of (putting him to) the trial. Whoever drank that milk on the Day of Alast 6 distinguishes the milk (in this world), even as Moses (distinguished and knew his mother's milk). If thou wishest fondly for thy child's discrimination (and recognition), suckle (him) now, O mother of Moses” (Mathnawi II: 2969-71, Nicholson translation).
(2) “This ‘Humayra’ is a feminine word, and the Arabs call the (word for) "spirit" [jaan, can] feminine [[ta’niith]]; But there is no fear (harm) to the Spirit [[jaan]] from being feminine: the Spirit [ [ruuh]] has no association (nothing in common) with man and woman. It is higher than feminine and masculine: this is not that spirit [[jaan]] which is composed of dryness and moisture”.(Mathnawi: 1974-6, translated by Nicholson)
