Spirituality and total submission to The Almighty are the key to individual contentment and the nurturing of a just, contented society.
This is the crux of the book, ‘Irfan-o-Tassawuf’, authored by Nargis Murtaza, which was launched at the Arts Council on Monday evening.
The book is based on the lectures of Hazrat Salahuddin Nader Anqa on Sufism which he delivered at foreign universities in the 1990s decade.
According to Nargis Murtaza, Nader Anqa was well-versed in astronomy, philosophy, neon therapy, and other modern physical sciences but said that he taught that all these would be futile if we did not get in touch with the ultimate reality this endless universe, God.
“One can only attain knowledge by discovering oneself,” she said, adding that this was the key to immortality.
She said that the impact of Anqa’s teachings could be gauged from the fact that today there were over 500,000 followers of his spread across the globe.
Dr Faiza Zehra of the University of Karachi said that in spiritual life the sole gate of perception was Tassawuf. It comes about by “Khidmat-e-Khalq” (service to mankind) and shunning carnal thoughts. “It is essential to have a Pir in Tassawuf,” she said.
Irfan-o-Tassawuf, she said, was the core of the teachings of all prophets and religious figures.
However, she said, the frantic search for power and pelf had diluted man’s drive for spirituality. Knowledge, she said, was the heritage of all prophets.
Professor Shahida Hassan said that even in the Western world today, Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, was a highly authentic and revered figure. She quoted Hazrat Nader Anqa’s writings on astronomy, quantum physics, architecture, and physics and said that today one is confused by things which one often considers a negation of the spiritual in modern science.
But, she said, self-discovery, something advocated by the mystics, removed all those doubts. She said that in the modern world, we were drawing away from spiritual teachings.
Hence the social disruption, the suicides, exploitation of the weaker nations by multinationals, the destructive arms race, and other such manifestations of godlessness.
Noted Urdu scholar Sehar Ansari said that man today was struggling for peace. “Today man is in search of his soul,” he said.
He reiterated that today there were 500,000 followers of Nader Anqa and congratulated Nargis Murtaza on her venture.
Islamic scholar from the University of Karachi, Dr Abdul Rasheed, said that if we wanted to send the message of love and peace to the West, we must arrange lectures on spirituality and universal love there to tell that violence had nothing to do with Islam, that religion did not teach us to discriminate against non-Muslims. “Today there is a need for our Islamic scholars to go to the West and tell them what Islam really is.”
Nader Anqa, he said, had given the world an ideal recipe for a harmonious society. “We have to tell the world that Muslims and non-Muslims are equal.”
The proceedings were conducted by senior journalist Agha Masood who quoted Karl Marx and Naom Chomsky at many-a-juncture to support the views of the speakers.
