Am I Near, or Far?

Imam al-Ghazālī relates in his Iḥyāʾ an account of Mūsā (peace be upon him), who asked Allah: "My Lord, are You near, so that I may speak to You intimately, in a whisper — a-qarībun anta fa-unājīka — or are You far, so that I might call out to You — am baʿīdun fa-unādīka?" Mūsā was speaking to Allah on Mount Sinai, Jabal al-Ṭūr, where the revelation came to him, and Allah answered that He sits beside the one who remembers Him — not near or far in terms of distance, but that close to whoever remembers Him constantly. Mūsā then asked whether dhikr might be made even in a state of major ritual impurity, janābah, when a person might otherwise hold back out of a kind of reverent fear; Allah replied that He is to be remembered in every state, whether in janābah or not. This is counted among the greatest gifts given to a believer — that the heart should remain always in a state of dhikr.

ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn al-Ḥasan al-Isnawī al-Shāfiʿī, one of the great scholars of the thirteenth Islamic century^***, notes in his riddles that a person in a state of minor impurity, without wuḍūʾ, is barred from certain forms of dhikr — as, for example, in the Shāfiʿī school, one may not listen to the khuṭbah of the Friday prayer without wuḍūʾ, ritual purity being a condition of its validity as part of Jumuʿah. For dhikr of Allah elsewhere, however, no such condition applies. Imam al-Qushayrī, in his Risālah, a fine treatise on taṣawwuf, relates an account from one of his narrators, who entered a forest and found a man engaged in the remembrance of Allah, attended by a great beast — a lion, watching him. Approaching, he asked, "O servant of Allah, what are you doing? What is this beast doing beside you, not touching you?" The man answered that he had asked Allah to set one of His creatures to watch over him, so that he would notice if he ever grew heedless of dhikr — he had made this a condition of his supplication, and Allah had accepted it: were he to stop remembering Allah, the beast would destroy him. It is a strange way to seek help, and not a supplication that ought to be made.