The Sufism Of Molana Rumi
Mevlana, indeed, expressed a deep desire for a direct experience of God’s presence, but, he clearly did not claim to witness God in a literal sense. Mevlana speaks of transcending the boundaries of the material world and delving into the mysteries of the spiritual realm. However, he does not clearly claim to have knowledge of the unseen in the traditional sense, his work often offer a deep understanding of metaphysical concepts and spiritual realities. (Chat GPT)
I think that was, why Mevlana Maududi stated that; “Tassavuf is only the intense love of God and his messenger, which therefore, results in the strict obedience.” Mevlana Rumi’s views were solely based on the love of God. Unlike, the views of Hz. Ibn al-Arabi, which were more philosophical. Also, he never mentioned Hz. Ibn al-Arabi in his works. There were many sufis before ibn al-Arabi. Such as, Hz. Hasan al-Basri.
Tasawwuf among Muslims has four distinct periods with the first period being a reaction to Fiqh and loss of reality of religion among the scholars because of dominance of law and jurisprudence. There can be no objection to Tasawwuf as far as this first period is concerned. Then second period started from Junaid Baghdadi etc. with its focus on asceticism and poverty as being a desired mode of living. For first period and to some extent, for the second period, the statement of Molana Modudi is understandable and makes sense. Then In later periods, this gradually turned into search for the spiritual reality based on personal experiences which ended on Ibn-e-Arabi where it took its complete shape as a parallel philosophical ideology or as a whole system of thought. During all this period and even in later times, there can be certain individual Sufi Scholars whose personal understanding of Tasawwuf might be different to the whole system of thought which emerges from Tasawwuf or they could be more inclined to any one of the earlier periods of Tasawwuf, and Molana Rumi could be one of them. Since I have not covered everything he wrote, so I cannot comment on his approach. But our critique is on the whole System of thought which emergies from ‘Tasawwuf‘ in the name of Islam and not on the individual personalities. If that system of thought exists then the critique would stay relevant and if it doesn’t then the critique would stand irrelevant on its own . To know more about the four distinct periods of Tasawwuf , please refer to the video below from 12:31 to 15:01 and from 25:03 to 35:19 https://youtu.be/IZ_Syet7_sg?si=ROh7opJCBtbzugd8&t=751
One should not be called Mawlana , when his concepts are contradictory to Islam, this guy Rumi may be a great Poet, but surely not at all a good Islamic preacher or scholar. He was a believer of Reincarnation.