YOUR FOOD WAS NOT COMING TO YOU BY WAY OF HALÂL

As is related in the book entitled Tadhkira-t-ul-Awliyâ and written in the Persian language, some people told Ibrâhîm Adham ‘quddisa sirruh’ about a young man worshipping in ecstacies day and night. He visited the young man and stayed with him as his guest for three days. Observing the young man closely, he saw that the man’s states and manners were even more unusual than they had been rumoured to have been. He marvelled at the young man’s sleepless and enthusiastic piety versus his own oblivious nonchalance. He wanted to know whether the man was a sheer vanity misguided by the devil or a true worshipper. When he turned his attention to the man’s food, he saw that the food was coming to him through ways that were not halâl. He said to himself, “Allâhu ekber, all these zealous and pious manners of this young man are being prompted by the devil,” and invited the man to his place. When he served the youngster some food of his own, an abrupt change took place in his behaviour, all his zeal, willingness and readiness to worship being gone completely. When the youngster asked Ibrâhîm what he had done to him, he explained, “Your food was not coming to you by way of halâl. So, whenever you ate something the devil also entered your stomach. So, all your apparently zealous piety was being provoked. The food I offered to you comes by way of halâl. So, when you ate it the devil was no longer able to get inside. This state you are experiencing now is genuine.” Eating food that comes by way of harâm darkens the heart and makes it sick. The same book quotes Zunnûn-i-Misrî ‘qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ sirr-ah-ul’azîz’, (d. 245 [860 A.D.],) as having stated: “Four syndromes are symptomatic of the heart’s having been darkened: “The person involved will not take any pleasure from acts of worship. 2– Fear of Allah will not occur to him at all. 3– He will not take lessons from what he observes. 4– He will not comprehend when he reads and learns.”