Women of Light in Sufism Here I want to discuss another side to the feminine reality, and that is its connection with the reality of “light,” which is one of the important Qur’anic names of God. According to the Qur’an, “God is the light of the heavens and the earth.” What I would like to suggest is why femininity is essentially luminous, why, in other words, it reflects directly the divine light that fills the universe. In short I want to talk about what can be called “the light of woman” and how women – and men as women become “women of light.”
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All human beings, both women and men. have the same goal in life. It is to know the supreme Light and to become illuminated by it.
In order to recognize God as Light, they need to recognize themselves as light. In a famous prayer, the Prophet said,
O God, place in my heart a light, in my hearing a light, in my eyesight a light, on my right hand a light, on my left hand a light, before me a light, behind me a light, above me a light, below me a light, and make me into a light.
In this prayer, the Prophet is asking God to show him the light that he possesses in himself because he was created by the Supreme Light. Only when we find light in ourselves can we recognize God as Light.
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We should pray to God in the words of Muhammad, “O God, show us things as they are.” All human beings, both women and men. have the same goal in life. It is to know the supreme Light and to become illuminated by it.
To recognize the supreme light, people need to recognise themselves. They have to know who they are and how they are situated in relation to Ultimate Reality. “Whoso recognizes himself recognizes his Lord.” In order to recognize God as Light, they need to recognize themselves as light. In a famous prayer, the Prophet said,
O God, place in my heart a light, in my hearing a light, in my eyesight a light, on my right hand a light, on my left hand a light, before me a light, behind me a light, above me a light, below me a light, and make me into a light.
In this prayer, the Prophet is asking God to show him the light that he possesses in himself because he was created by the Supreme Light. Only when we find light in ourselves can we recognize God as Light.
Let me come back to the issue of “woman.” What is it that establishes a relationship between woman and light such that we might speak of “women of light”? In Sufi terms, such a woman would be someone who has been so transformed by knowledge and practice that God has given her a light in her heart. In her hearing, in her eyesight, and so on. God has, in short, “made her into a light.”
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When the soul is understood as a hierarchy of levels, its highest level is the intellect, and the intellect, in Islamic terms, is a “light.” The Prophet said, “The first thing that God created was my light,” and he also said, “The first thing that God created was the Intellect.” The Sufis call this first light the “First Intellect” and “the Muhammadan Reality”
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When the Prophet asked God to “make him into a light,” he was asking God to make the light of the highest level of his being, the intellect, dominate over all the lower levels of his being, including his body. When he asked God to place a light in his heart, in his eyesight, in his hearing and in all his bodily members, he was asking God to disclose to him the essential light of his own reality, which was the first thing created by God. The Prophet is showing other human beings, who were created from the same essential light, that they can only reach the perfection of themselves and truly recognize themselves if the hidden light of their own essence, flows out from the center and overcomes their darkness.
Another famous prophetic saying can suggest something of the nature of the light that the Prophet asked God to shine down upon him. This is the saying that explains what happens when the servant performs all the duties of servanthood by recognizing his or her own slavehood to God. When the servant comes forward to God by practicing as God has asked him or her to practice, this calls down God’s love. In this hadith, the Prophet tells us that God says, “When I love My servant, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he grasps, and his foot with which he walks.” Remember that the speaker of these words is God, the Light of the heavens and the earth. When God loves His servant, the servant is infused with God’s light. When God infuses the servant with His loving light, the servant hears with God’s light, sees with God’s light, walks in God’s light, and grasps with God’s light. In other words, God has placed a light in his eyes, a light in his ears, a light in all his bodily parts, and has made him into a light.
In order to understand the nature of light, we need to think a bit about light’s opposite, which is darkness. The Light of lights is God, and light is intelligence, awareness, and the source of all perception and understanding. It follows that “darkness” is the absence of God, the absence of intelligence, and the absence of perception and understanding. However, nothing can be totally absent from God or from these qualities, or else it would not exist. This means that God’s only opposite is nonbeing itself, which does not exist. So, God has no opposite. In other words, there is no such thing as “absolute darkness.” However, there is such a thing as “absolute light,” and that is God.
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Thus, in Qur’anic terms, to be a true muslim is to submit oneself freely to God and to have receptivity toward God’s guiding light. The first thing that is demanded of someone who wants to be a true muslim is to accept freely and joyfully that one is a “woman” in the sense that I am using the word. One cannot be fully human without surrendering oneself to God, which is to say that one cannot be fully human without actualizing the light of femininity. By surrendering oneself to God, one “comes forward” to God and turns away from all the darkness of femininity, which rises up when one comes forward to the world instead of to God.
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Wow! The Light is Shining so coincidentally on Nur-un-Nisa, the Woman of Light, my Name says it all!
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