A Sin Beyond Handshaking: The Inside Story Of Darikatul Tijjaniya

One day as a kid I approached my father to ask for financial aid on behalf of my friends to organize a Mualud event. He refused to offer any contribution. I felt bad and began suspecting my father out of childhood naivety on why would he refuse to offer his assistance in the service of Allah and His Prophet. I was always confused. Later I was to find out the truth why he has been frowning at anything he believed to be innovation in Islam.

Darika is a scourge in the flesh of our religion. Here are people who could tell you about their physical contact with God every day, specifically at any time they want to. Their position is elevated beyond ordinary realm where Inyass is competing with Muslims’ holiest icon, Prophet Muhammad (ASW).  Inyass’s position has superseded that of any prophets’, from Adam to the seal persona of the prophethood.

Inyass can bring back dead to life, heal all sort of ailment and if you are true believer, you can hypothetically travel through the air and visit the Holy Mosque or drop at any place you like around the world, courtesy of your strong conviction.  As a believer, you do not need to open a book to learn, the power of your belief in Sheik is capable of filling your breast with knowledge such as Physics, Theology and Arts, knowledge other people hurt their nerves to acquire. For your to earn a close intimacy with God, you only need to be a religious singer and not an intellectual pursuing knowledge about Islam and other disciplines.

My head has been swirling, wondering if these people have ever heard about the existence of science where a person is required to present empirical evidences to prove their claims. I find it hard to believe how one can learn knowledge without reading a book or someone teaching them hypothetically. Prophet Muhammad had not read nor written a book, but was reported to have acquired his knowledge through Angel Jibril and sometimes through revelation. One exception here is that revelation is the province of the Prophets (prophet in Islamic sense). We might need to ask if Inyass is also a prophet. But this question is rendered useless because Inyass has already  been elevated to the status of God. 

Their belief is built on the fringe of Platonic Theory of Form and the cave analogy. But Plato is somewhat using ideal reason to defend his belief to say that God is a Mysterious Power utterly transcendental and beyond human comprehension. For Hakika, it is beyond Platonic transcendentalism. Plato as a pagan left what he couldn’t understand as Mysterious Power when he reached the dark-alley and gave in. But Hakika goes to say that God is a reflection of everything we see in the physical world. Few days ago, my friend told me that he’s a God, I was a God and a dog that came to pass-by was also a God.

What the scientists and Platonic Theory of Form called Mysterious Power is what Hakika called Inyass, a God manifesting in human nature. Though they claim that it is not everyone that can acquire this knowledge except who bares their mind and allows it to be absorbed freely. I doubt a simple reading of Plato is enough for one to understand his ideals without being confused.   

For one to get to such mysterious knowledge, they say, one should undergo a mystical process, secluding themselves in the dark room reciting some gibberish incantations under the supervision of another Sufi who has already attained a superior status through similar process. The disciple will enter his indoctrination process with a long bead as a manual calculator. The believer will start his recitation, and the supervisor would subject the disciple in to severe starvations that would last the period of the seclusion, feeding him with pieces of date and little amount of water. After the disciple spends some days in the dark room, he would be tested whether he is fully transformed or not. The supervisor would pick up a piece of material or anything insight and shows it across the face of the disciple. If the disciple gets it correctly and calls the object by its name, then it is not the right time to release him for he is yet to be transformed and must continue on the process of seclusion, reciting, and starving until the disciple calls everything insight as God which the supervisor waves in his face, then the knowledge of Hakika is fully instilled in his mind. He sees everything as God, the dog, the shit, the urine and every filthy substance can fit the status of God. The belief is that you are not a true adherent unless you recite and recite and fervently and furiously chant till you are celled mad and crazy. A lot of people have gone insane through this madness.

After going through this transformation, a disciple has achieved a sainthood position not because he is above making error or committing sins but earning a privilege of committing all kinds of criminalities and immoralities. He is required to commit sins to make a balance between his righteous actions and his sins because if one does not commit sins, the vast reward he accumulated during his transformation process will overweigh his reward and therefore will invalidate it. Sins like stealing, sodomy, fornication, skipping and ignoring Salat and abusing the Prophet are nothing but neutralizing agents for counterbalancing.   

Believing in Iyass has relieved the believers from the burden of having to maintain faith in Allah. Inyass is an omnipresent guardian and omnipotent protector whose pictures are being posted above the door to prevent burglary in the houses of the believers, and also pasting his image on the vehicle is a genuine safeguarding against possible accident. Above all, believing in Hakika will salvage one in the Day of Judgment where the Sheik would emerge to outwit Allah to transport his followers to the Paradise in the big pocket of his gown. Inyass gives and takes away life to anybody he so wishes. He makes rich or poor anybody he wishes depending on the devotee’s faith and the whimsical desire of the Sheik. Inyass is a beginning without end. Inyass is a father of God and in turn is a God himself and anybody can become God if he follows the right channel.

But send an enquiry demanding for clarification and they would tell you it’s knowledge that comes to your mind through sheer faith and strong conviction and that which can be crippled by any slight doubt and contemplation. Set your mind free and the knowledge will gush forth through it and the mystery will fling open. A believer does not need to go to school or ask question about whatever the Sheik has said, this is considered as a wrong move capable of crippling the entire process which in turn can cause problems to the believers that will prevent the mystery from unveiling to crush the barrier that prevents one’s mind from seeing the reality. This belief of discouraging intellectuality and the ultimate requirement of blind acceptance have adverse consequences on the Darika.

The Salafiyya sect has rigorously encouraged teaching and learning and built their philosophy in pursuing knowledge that allows asking questions,  a total migration from the normative approach adopted by the Dariqa. The Salaf established schools that will accommodate the changing circumstances with religious orientation, laying their arrangement and system closely resembling the version of missionary schools. This arrangement brought about a radical change in which young men would grow up armed with Islamic ideals with a mixture of western education, thus allowing them to function in the secular  Nigerian society and have comparative advantage over their Dariqa counterparts. 

This is where I have serious disagreement with people who blame the Salaf scholars like Sheik Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, Ja’afar and their schools as the hatchery for breeding extremism in northern Nigeria, willfully ignoring the contribution of their teachings and thoughts that aided people integrate with modern Nigeria and the challenges of interacting with the wider world and its attendant circumstances while still maintain their religious identity. This will continue in Kano for long, since many people are gravitating from traditional mode of teaching Islam instituted by the Dariqa towards a progressive, open and broader perspective of practicing Islam.

With Sheik, you do need to waste your time worshipping God. You yourself will one day be a God when you aspire, defending on the level of your conviction. What else do your pursue in worshipping God or otherwise. When you find yourself in Hell it is because God has arranged it to be your destiny a long time before world was created, a period when all creations existed in vacuum. Even in Hell, your are still serving God and doing His bidding and therefore you will come to terms with blazing fire and  burning and will no longer feel the pain. Do you have any worry, for example, while staying in your mother’s womb?  In this situation, there is no clear difference between Heaven and Hell since they are seen as two different ways of reaching similar destination, serving the bid of one God. Those in Paradise will one day get bored and need some changes from their environment. After all it will pall on you to spend such infinitive time living in one and repetitive circumstance.

This Darika has a way of uniting humanity where life is viewed as a single entity. Whether you’re Christina, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, pagan, agnostic, animist or even atheist, you are only serving God and wherever one happens to be in the hereafter is a divine position where human being is destined to serve His Creator. Everything is pre-determined by High Power and whatever you are doing is another worship, only that those with little mind that did not undergo certain spiritual process could not understand.

Human being is a helpless creature controlled by the power of Inyass and life is viewed to lose any meaning and therefore adherents will worship God without expectation of reward or fear for punishment. When you are in Hell you are still serving Inyass as a God and you are no less important than another person in Paradise. You are all serving the same Being and you won’t have any burden and feel the pain of the Hellfire. Such is your destiny. The mysterious power you call Allah as a Muslim, or the Holy Spirit as a Christian or Nature as a scientist, whatever you call it according to your belief is one thing ultimately melting in the unification of One Being in the form of Inyass. Life is the spillover from the concentric circle of one essence and origin, and this mysterious power is the soul of Inyass. 

When a believer is deeply absorbed into the communion, the barrier that stands in his way will crush and he would be possessed by divine power and have a direct contact with the reality. What a believer sees in the dark room is a version of Plato’s theory of cave where people are confined in one place with their vision away from the reality, seeing the images of truth reflecting as shadow.  After a believer spends a great amount of their life in darkness, their eyes will be dazzled by the rays of the reality when they are taken outside to the sun. Although Plato stopped here and did not mentioned what lies beyond this, Inyassiya would tell you that that reality is the spirit and soul of their Sheik. According to Faira, that power is Inyass which reverses in the form of life through the spirit of the Sheik upon reaching the last stage of the transcendentalism which the entire humanity shares his spirit in flesh and soul. Therefore everything is God. Thus inadvertently, everything that exists, animate or inanimate and whatever religion one is practicing, he is unconsciously practicing Hakika by breathing the life of Inyass.

Hakika ideology like Plato’s theory of Form, is a belief where life is conceived as an arranged hierarchy and order of things in attaining the supreme knowledge or Being or the reality. That says you cannot reach God without the intervention of some Sheiks, which we as purist Muslims strongly oppose.  The theory goes into contemplation of existence built closely but unconsciously on the epistemological and ontological metaphysics of Plato which investigates the mystery of how life came to being. This is the simple explanation they could not offer as a consequence of their being allergic to deep reasoning and thinking stemming from their discouragement of intellectual pursuit in the first place which leads them resorting to blah blah and insult and abuse when you question their belief. Darika Sheiks could not stand close investigation over their doctrines and are stubbornly incapable of allowing reasons to speak for them. Invite the Sheiks for public disputation and they would start sweating in pain and discomfort, disinfecting and decontaminating their belief to reduce the enormity of its sinfulness. You are assured the next morning to hear an audio has been released cursing and abusing anybody who opposes their Sheik and their doctrines.

Darika, you are advised to systematically document this belief and doctrine and therefore should separate it into a different entity and stop staking legitimate claim on Islam. Islam is an orderly religion with a vast body of knowledge and exegesis explaining every bit of matter from the works of great scholars of the first generation to their subsequent followers and those who followed in their footstep. Islam has every explanation to offer on every mystical point. That’s why we are recommended to recite some supplication whenever we feel our faith waiver over the metaphysics of God. Darika also has the right to their doctrine and do the same since they are sharing close  relationships with the  Abrahamic religions and freethinking, so that  once they separate it from Islam and assign a different name to it, it could be systematically studied in the departments of Comparative Religion in colleges and universities.

The truth is that, Dariqa is grand deception run by religious masterminds residing in a a world, shadow and complicated, which ordinary followers would not understand since they are forbidden to ask question and pursue knowledge for themselves. But many people have dug up and found what are the core values of the Darika. Ibn Taimiiya lived a long time before Inyass and has elaborately outlined the features of Sufis in his book Jawarihil Ubaidiyya. The Sufis are lazy people feeding public with ignorance and live cadging off from the donation offered by their followers. I grew up to hear the story of my neighbor telling us that people came to watch them and threw stones on them whenever they were praying and clasped their arms over their chest, believing that they have come with a strange religion during the early stage of Salafi movement in Kano. Now I’m proud of the fact that we had never formerly organized Maulud during our adolescence the way it has been receiving great fanfare in this generation. I witness struggles with the Darika adherents in the cemetery always trying to force people bury a dead in line with their doctrine, chanting abracadabra of the Salatil faith which they say is worthier six thousand times than the Holy Qur’an.  

Kano is a dangerously built society where such Sheiks live comfortably, threatening to harm anybody who dares to challenge their philosophy. They are dubious people who claims to be the true followers of the prophet but contradict the teaching of the Prophet in every possible way, from Salat to the  phony Maulud, secretly sneaking in the unIslamic doctrines of their Sheik. Those who would hurl assertion without substantiating it with a proof from Qur’an or Hadith other than a line of song from one singer or another. They are those who claim to be the bloodline  of the Prophet and continue to deceive people that they have the power of putting off fire through the will of their mind while still helplessly incapable of assisting to save shops going up in flames when there is a fire disaster breaking in Kwari or Sabon Gari Market.

What they have been hiding is gradually unearthed with years of educating people about the true Islam. It’s not anything new for a person who is acquainted with intellectualism and the spirit of knowledge to learn the true motive of the movement, in their belief to undermine the authenticity of Prophet Muhammad.  It has been written in the books of Ibarhim Inyass. 

Those who suddenly turn around to deny such doctrines are simply uninformed followers, guarded by their leaders, leaving them to bask in ignorance about the core values of their belief. Sharing the knowledge is selective among the followers and the few who accessed the knowledge are now oversharing it. If you condemn this blasphemy from your position as  a mere  follower believing this is not the true doctrine,  you’re actually deceived into the sect for this is actually the belief among the top leadership and the few who have the opportunity to be close to them. You either quit the sect or continue to stay, but you are advised to no longer have to hide your feeling. The top clerics who have been reading Inyass’s publications for long have known the doctrine and never disclaimed it before this time or distanced themselves from the Sheik.  If you choose to remain in Darika, you are still sharing beliefs with those abusing the Prophet. No such thing as non-practicing vegetarian. 

Buhari’s case should rest. Here we have people who claim true Islam but keeping a nubile girl as Sayyada, shaking hands and even going inside her for blessing. For Buhari’ case, what I simply can’t buy is the idea that shaking illegitimate female is not a sin like the way Darika has moralized it. I strongly believe it is a sin but I also believe that Buhari did not win his election on Muslim Party of Nigeria platform. Of course under secular democracy I have so many ways of advancing my religion. I believe in quality not quantity of thinking so as to be able to get the world power structure into my favour.  However, citing examples of the world Muslims leaders is not a reason to valid their action as legally acceptable in Islam.

(@abubakarsulai13)