بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
إِنَّمَا ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ بِٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ ثُمَّ لَمۡ يَرۡتَابُواْ …
Innamal muu’minoonal lazeena aamanoo billaahi wa Rasoolihee summa lam yartaaboo …
[Know that true] believers are only those who have attained to faith in God and His Apostle and thereafter have had no doubt …
Al-Hujurat (The Private Chambers) 49:15, in part
Believe without the need for proof!
I would like to share a little-known teaching account about the eminent theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, which underscores the superiority of belief over reasoning. It may well be difficult to establish whether Razi had become a practicing Sufi towards the end of his life or not. There even exists a letter from Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ʿArabi, who, impressed by his imaginative faculty (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila), ended up advising (and probably praying for) Razi to try to reach the stage of gnosis and contemplation, even going so far as to tell him that in heaven, medicine and geometry will not be of much help to him. He certainly became sympathetic to Sufism, especially in his later life, when he started writing deeply spiritual poetry. Quite a few of his books have esoteric ideas as well.
The build-up to the incident, as the story is told, involves Razi meeting the Sufi saint Najm al-Din Kubra in a gathering and being very condescending and belittling to Sufis in general. He boastfully claimed that his religious knowledge surpassed everyone else’s, and went on to say that he knew a hundred proofs of the existence of God. Najm al-Din replied calmly:
The answer shocked Razi, and he begged the saint to be allowed to enter on the Path under his direction.
After some days of vigil and prayers, the saint asked Razi to lie down and started reciting a prayer and moving a white shroud from his feet towards his chest. Razi suddenly stood up, shouting at the top of his voice, “I cannot, I cannot!” He felt as if all the knowledge of which he had been so proud was slowly leaving him, and he could not bear it. The saint replied that the purpose of the exercise was to remove all bookish knowledge from him so that he would be freed from its burdens. Thereupon Razi agreed to resume the process. Again, as the saint was pulling the shroud up to Razi’s chest, he sprang up again, screaming (لا أطيق), “I cannot stand it!” This time he begged the saint, saying that it was unbearable for him to rid himself of everything he had so painstakingly acquired over the years. So the saint asked him, “What then do you want from me?” Razi replied, “Just help me navigate the test when my time is near.”
This anecdote is narrated in Fritz Meier’s Die Fawa’ih al-gamal wa-fawatih al-galal des Nagm ad-Din al-Kubra (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1957), pp. 45–46, and according to another version in Ahmad Ibn Mustafa Tash Kubri Zadah’s Mawsu’at Mustalahat Miftah al-Sa’adah wa-Misbah al-Siyadah fi Mawdu’at al-’Ulum (Hyderabad, 1329 AH, vol. 1, pp. 450–51), it is rather during this retreat that Razi is supposed to have received the inspiration that guided him in the composition of his great commentary on the Qur’an.
A further popular account continues that the two went their separate ways and Razi returned to his hometown thousands of miles away. One day when Najm al-Din Kubra was doing ablution (wudhu’) with a pot in his hand, he suddenly became agitated and in the process hurled the pot towards the wall in front of him and yelled, “O Fakhr al-Din! Say, ‘I believe in my Lord without the need for proof.’” After that he calmed down a bit, then smiled, and continued his ablutions. The disciples were shocked at this, and noted the date and time, but they could not bring themselves to ask the saint for an explanation of all that happened. Several months passed, and the disciples of Razi came to their town and they were able to confirm that the date and time of Razi’s passing coincided with the incident of the wudhu’ pot. The disciples of Razi confirmed that the theologian was much agitated at the time of his passing and kept mumbling for a long time, and just before he passed away he exclaimed, “I believe in my Lord without the need for proof!” He then grew calm and relaxed, and passed away smiling.
Finally the disciples gathered around the saint Najm al-Din and asked for the secret behind all this. He said that at the time of death Razi was confronted by Iblees (the Devil), who challenged him to prove the existence of God. As Razi started to give proofs, he was met with strong refutations each time. When he reached ninety-odd proofs, Razi realized that his proofs were running out and his logic was betraying him at a very critical juncture of his life. Thereupon the saint came to the rescue by telling Razi what he said, and thus Iblees was left defeated and Razi died with true faith.
Source Note
Ibn ʿArabi’s letter to al-Razi is available in a manuscript-based English translation by Mohammed Rustom. It does not by itself verify the Kubra/shroud or deathbed narratives. The Meier and Tash Kubri Zadah references given above await collation, and the later story of the ablution pot and Iblees has not been independently established.
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