Marifah- Knowledge and Realization

Marifah.net has been doing good work, putting out translations of classical works that not only inform, but also refute many of the ideological positions taken up by modern Islamic groups.

For the uninitiated, the word marifah means gnosis. The gnostic discipline exists in almost all religious traditions. In the Islamic sense, the light of gnosis,

...will reveal itself to him such that matters that had been blindly accepted on faith become as if he sees and witnesses them (for himself). This is true gnosis which obtains only after the fetters of formalized doctrine are undone and the bosom is expanded by the light of God the Exalted. [1]

Central to the gnostic belief is that theological and philosophical debate rarely bring about certainty in faith. Doctrines are formulated by men and sometimes present a veil between the receiver of doctrine and God. The greatest testimony of this was in the way Islam spread in the past. New converts flocked to to the Sufis, rarely to theologians or jurists.

Unveiling is realizing the truth behind the message, and this is the ultimate goal of revealed religion. Realization accumulates through direct experience of life itself. The meanings of words might change in the process of discovery, but only in the sense of tearing away their abstractness. Certainty is born.

While the process of unveiling provides insights, the unveiler must never fool himself into thinking that it takes the place of revelation. It does not and never will.

How apt is the name marifah in an age when people have forgotten the power of internalized truths. Their search for certainty expands ever outwards, discarding this ideology and embracing that, never realizing that in the process, they are fleeing further and further from themselves.

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Notes:
[1] R. M. Frank, Al-Ghazali and the Asharite School, 1994.