The Method of Acquiring Knowledge Among the Salaf: Learning from Scholars, Unlike the Sufis Whose Method Is Inspiration

The Shaykh : We do not believe that there is a path for seeking knowledge other than the one known to everyone, which is that the ignorant person receives knowledge from the scholar. We have no path claimed by some of those who affiliate themselves with certain Sufi orders, whereby a person who is illiterate, who neither reads nor writes, can receive knowledge by means other than the established method of acquiring knowledge, which they call inspiration. Inspiration, in the view of many Sufis, is almost akin to revelation. It is regrettable that we must mention this bitter truth: that Imam al-Ghazali mentions something of this path of inspiration at the beginning of his book "Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din". He states that a person, through his struggle against his self, his monitoring of his Lord, and His granting him success in his seclusion, may receive through inspiration knowledge of things he did not know. He also mentions a specific method: sitting in a dark room, placing one's head on one's knees, closing one's eyes, and sitting there in threefold darkness—the darkness of the room, the darkness of closed eyes, and the darkness of the direction one faces—contrary to the method of acquiring knowledge, while waiting for something of the revelation they call inspiration to descend upon him. From this comes the phrase repeated by many of the early and late Sufis, namely their saying: "My heart has informed me about my Lord". None of them says, as the hadith scholars say, "So-and-so informed me from so-and-so," nor does any of them say, as the jurists say, "So-and-so said in his book from so-and-so." Rather, they immediately say, "My heart has informed me about my Lord."