Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Manipulation of Sufi Terms 113
life of piousness a last unfortunate sinful action or thought may occur
that casts the worshipper in the eternal flames of hell. Being about to
die, the worshipper is in the incapacity to repair his works or beliefs
and as a result he will die in spiritual torment.^56 But makr and the fear
thereof occur in other situations as well. The worshipper who is visited
by a spiritual state may be afraid that through Divine deception his
spiritual state is unreal. That is why, according to al-Qushayrī, even
the saints are only rarely completely free of fear. The kind of fear that
almost always remains is the fear of God’s deception during a spiritual
state. Al-Qushayrī illustrates this with the image of a saint who enters
a delightful garden and all the birds greet him as a friend of God. For
fear of God’s deception, al-Qushayrī warns, such miraculous events
should be approached with utmost caution.^57 What the murīd ought to
fear is the deception (makr) of the overwhelming wellbeing he experi-
ences in a spiritual awakening that in his belief constitutes an end to his
ignorance. In mainstream Sufism this feeling of wellbeing is mislead-
ing. But to Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya the misconception of many Sufis
has more serious consequences. It has to do with the fear of spiritual
precariousness and the trickeries that play on the minds of the murīds.
It is not a Divine deception that causes error, he observes, but the mys-
tic’s proper delusions.^58
2.4. Fear and MonismFear of God and hope for felicity are excluded from the monist proj-
ect. These sentiments are described as base instincts of worshippers
that attempt to avert loss of earthly pleasure and seek to gain felic-
ity in the hereafter. What the mystic wayfarer however should dread
56 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī explains that three groups in particular can be affected
by Divine deception: the people whose ideology was flawed or who were
arrogant, those who denied God’s miraculous signs and the miracles of His
saints (friends), and a third group consisting of three; one who is showing of
(mutaẓāhir); corrupt (fāsiq) and an obstinate addict. All these are faced on the
doorstep of death with the revelation of truth (kashf al-ghiṭāʾ), but their soul
being about to leave its corporal vessel (the point of exit is situated at the level
of the throat – ḥulqūm), they want to repent but are physically unable to carry
it out; al-Makkī, Qūṭ al-qulūb, vol. 3, pp. 80–81.
57 Al-Qushayrī, Risāla fī ʿIlm al-taṣawwuf, pp. 530–531.
58 “How many”, he regrets, “did turn away from God in their quest for spiritual
states,” Ibn al-Qayyim, Madārij al-sālikīn, vol. 1, p. 553.
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