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Maulana Sheikh Nazim and our Grandsheikh. –(or) - Clutching the coat tails.

                 When I was younger I read and studied a great deal.  Not only religion - Quran and Hadith, but also European knowledge, positivist, objective knowledge, as they called it at the university.  Also I met several shaykhs and learned people; but my heart was not at peace until I met our Grandsheikh.

                 When he was speaking – ah!   He was illiterate; but with his words he gave Divine Knowledge, knowledge that I could trust one-hundred percent.  I was at peace in his meetings.

For forty years I was with him, and for forty years I tried to follow him.

                 I am the weakest person, but my intention was to follow him;   I felt as though I was an ant with a broken leg trying crawl from Damascus to Mecca;  that is how I saw myself in our Grandshaykh’s presence.  But my hope was to follow him - as my Prophet says:  ‘the value of actions is according to the intentions behind them.’  Therefore I hope my Lord, Allah Almighty will send me to where Grandsheikh is, to the Divine Presence – even though I am like that little ant. 

I accepted Grandshaykh as Allah Almighty ordered in the Quran;

Wattabi'  sabila man anaaba ilayy 

 “Follow the way of him who has turned to Me (in love)”^-[1]

This is my intention.  I intend to follow him, and I am interested only in that point.  I left all my ‘knowledge’ and intended to follow his way to Allah Almighty.

Now I am reading to you from his teachings.  As much as I have trust I him you may have trust in me.  However much I am clutching his hand, you may clutch my hand as strongly.  However much I am weak with him you also will be weak with me.  (In like manner) the Prophet (peace be upon him) was strongly with his Lord and the Sahabas^[2] were strongly with the Prophet (peace be upon him).

            Any time you are looking at a man who is clutching strongly at the Prophet’s ‘coat-tails’ you may trust in him; and however strongly you are believing in one man (your sheikh) people can trust in you also. This is important.  When you have trust in me, (another) will have trust in you, and another will have trust in him (or her) also.

This is the reason you must keep a relation with a person strongly in love with Allah.

Then that love may come to you as well.

See Mercy Ocean  pp62/63  (This is the end of a talk given by Shaykh Nazim to his early followers, in Damascus)

His lineage on his father's side traces its roots to Sayiddina 'Abdul Qadir Jilani founder of the Qadiri Sufi Order.  During his childhood in Cyprus he sat with his grandfather, who was a Shaykh of the Qadiri Tariqat, and received the Qadiri Tariqat.

His lineage from his mother goes back to Sayiddina Jalaluddin Rumi, founder of the Mevlevi Sufi Order and from his mother's side he received the Mevlevi Tariqat.

Every night after completing his high school studies, he would devote his time to studying the Mevlevi and Qadiri Tariqats and was conducting the Qadiri and Mevlevi circles on Thursday and Friday.

He studied Chemical Engineering, in Istanbul and  during his first year there met his first spiritual Shaykh, Shaykh Sulayman Arzarumi,(d 1948), a Shaykh of the Naqshbandi Order.  He attended the gatherings of this Shaykh to learn the discipline of the Naqshbandi Order in addition to his other two orders, the Qadiri and the Mevlevi.

Shaykh Sulayman eventually told him, ‘Your secrets and your trust and your spiritual guidance are not with me. I only held you as a trust until you were ready for your real Shaykh, who is also my Shaykh, Shaykh `Abdullah ad-Daghestani.  He is holding your keys. So go to him in Sham. (Damascus)'

Grand Shaykh Abdullah Daghestani swiftly initiated him into the Naqshbandi Order and continued his rigorous training for some 30 years.

Grandshaykh, before he passed away said in his will, "By the Order of the Prophet (s), I have trained and lifted up my successor, Nazim Effendi, and put him through many seclusions and trained him in severe training and I am assigning him to be my successor. I am seeing that in the future he will spread this Order through East and West. Allah will make all kinds of people, rich and poor, scholars and politicians, come to him, learn from him and take the Naqshbandi Order at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st Century. It will spread all over the world, such that not one continent will be devoid of its sweet scent."

In the year after Grandshaykh (q) passed away in 1973, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim went to London. Many young people, especially the followers of John Bennett, came to meet him. So many people began coming to hear him that he established his first center there in 1974.  Now he has followers from Brunei to Argentina.

Shaykh Nazim walks the middle path recommended by the Holy Prophet , enabling him to tread a fine line between the secularist government and the Islamicist group. This brings happiness and peace to the hearts and minds of both the common people and the intelligentsia.

Derived from the beautiful book by  Shaykh Hisham al-Kabbani.  Follow  link to www.naqshbandi.org and from there follow link to biographies.