Stain Your Prayer Rug with Wine 211ity was created in the image of the Divine. Humanity, then, is God
made manifest; it is God objectified through love.
When Sufis speak of their love for God, they are not referring
to the traditional Christian concept of agape, or spiritual love; quite
the opposite. This is a passionate, all-consuming, humiliating, self-
denying love. As with Majnun’s love for Layla, Sufi love requires the
unconditional surrender to the Beloved’s will, with no regard for one’s
own well-being. This is love to the point of utter self-annihilation;
indeed, that is its very purpose. Love, according to Attar, is the fire
that obliterates the ego and purifies the soul, and the lover is he who
“flares and burns.. .”
Whose face is fevered, who in frenzy yearns,
Who knows no prudence, who will gladly send
A hundred worlds toward their blazing end,
Who knows of neither faith nor blasphemy,
Who has no time for doubt or certainty,
To whom both good and evil are the same,
And who is neither, but a living flame.Like most mystics, Sufis strive to eliminate the dichotomy between
subject and object in their worship. The goal is to create an inseparable
union between the individual and the Divine. In Sufism, this union is
most often expressed through the most vivid, most explicit sexual
imagery. Thus Hafiz wrote of God, “The scent of Your hair fulfills my
life, and the sweetness of Your lips has no counterpart.”
Some of the most captivating use of sexual imagery in Sufism can
be found in the writings of the aforementioned Rabia of Basra
(717–801). Orphaned at a young age, Rabia became a slave and the sex-
ual property of her master. Yet, she longed throughout her life to expe-
rience mystical union with God, sometimes going without sleep for
weeks at a time in order to fast, pray, and meditate on the movement of
the universe. It was during one of these nightly meditations that her
master first noticed a blinding nimbus of light shining above her head,
illuminating the entire house. Terrified, he immediately set Rabia free,
allowing her to go into the desert to pursue the Way. There, in the