Disobeying God While in a Specific Place

Taken from Muhyi din Ibn al-‘Arabi's, The Mysteries of Bearing Witness.

Disobeying God While in a Specific Place

When you disobey God Almighty while in a specific place, do not leave that place until you have performed an act of obedience and an act of worship there. Then if it testifies against you when it is asked to testify, it will also testify on your behalf. Then you can leave that place.

The same applies to your garment. If you disobey God while wearing it, then, as I mentioned to you, worship God while wearing it. The same applies to what leaves you when you clip your moustache, shave your pubic hair, clip your nails, comb your hair and clean dirt from yourself. None of that should leave your body except while you are pure. God Almighty mentioned that such things will be asked about you and your state when they left you.

The minimum worship which you are able to do in all of this is to ask God to turn to you, following His command, so that you are performing an obligation by obeying the command of God. That is His words, “Your Lord says, ‘Call to Me and I will answer you’” (40:60). Then He says in this verse (ayat), “Those who are too proud to worship Me,” where worship here means supplication. This means those who are too proud to supplicate, i.e. too proud to show humility and need. Supplication is called worship, and worship is humility, humbleness, and neediness. “They will enter Hell abject,” i.e. abased. When they do what they are commanded, God will allow them to enter the Garden mighty.

One day I entered the bathhouse before dawn to wash. There I met my friend, Najm al-din Abu-l-Muali ibn al-Luhayb. He summoned the barber to shave his head and I called out to him: “Abu-l-Muali!” He said to me immediately before I spoke, “I am in a state of ritual purity. I know what you wanted to say.” I marveled at his presence, swift understanding, his observation of the place and circumstances and what he knew of me in that. I said to him, “May God bless you. By God, I would not have called to you were you not in a state of ritual purity. Supplicate for me when you head is shaven.” Then he had his head shaved.

This sort of thing is overlooked by people. They say, “When you disobey God in a place, then move from it,” because they fear that the place will remind you of the disobedience and you will find it pleasant and commit another wrong action in addition to the first. They only say that out of compassion, but they have overlooked a great knowledge. Obey God in it and then move from it so that you will combine what they said with what I have instructed you. Whenever you remember an error you committed, repent of it when you remember it, ask God’s forgiveness and mention God there according to what that act of disobedience was. The Messenger of God (may God bless him and grant him peace) said, “Follow a bad action with a good which will wipe it out.” God Almighty says, “Good actions remove evil ones” (11:114). But you must possess criteria in that by which you know the relative weights of evil actions and good actions.