A certain Bektashi dervish was respected for his piety and appearance of virtue. Whenever anyone asked him how he had become so holy, he always answered: ‘I know what is in the Koran.’

One day he had just given this reply to an enquirer in a coffee-house, when an imbecile asked: ‘Well, what is in the Koran?’

‘In the Koran,’ said the Bektashi, ‘there are two pressed flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah.’

A scholar said to a Sufi:

‘You Sufi often say that our logical questions are incomprehensible to you. Can you give me an example of what they seem like to you?’

The Sufi said:

‘Here is such an example. I was once traveling by train and we went through seven tunnels. Opposite me was sitting a peasant who obviously had never been in a train before.’

‘After the seventh tunnel the peasant, tapped me on the knee and said: “This train is too complicated. On my donkey I can get to my village in only one day. But by train, which seems to be traveling faster than a donkey, we have not yet arrived at my home, though the sun has risen and set seven whole times.”’

A man who had spent many years trying to puzzle out meanings went to see a Sufi and told him about his search.

The Sufi said:

‘Go away and ponder this – IHMN’

The man went away. When he came back, the Sufi was dead. ‘Now I shall never know the truth!’ moaned the puzzler.

At that moment the Sufi’s chief disciple appeared.

‘If,’ he said, ‘You are worrying about the secret meaning of IHMN, I will tell you. It is the initials of the Persian phrase “In huruf maani nadarand´- “these letters have no meaning.”

‘But why should I have been given such a task?’ cried the puzzling man.

‘Because, when a donkey comes to you, you give him cabbages. That is his nutrition, no matter what he calls it. Donkeys probably think that they are doing something far more significant than eating cabbages.”

A wandering dervish ran to where a Sufi sat deep in contemplation and said:

‘Quick! We must do something. A monkey has just picked up a knife.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the Sufi, ‘so long as it was not a man.’

When the dervish saw the monkey again he found, sure enough, that it had thrown the knife away.

A young man, done a certain boatman a kindness was presented by him with a tiny crystal fish.

He lost it and, in his despair at losing such a rare and beautiful object, was incensed when he saw another man around whose neck was a coed on which hung a crystal fish.

The youth took the man to court, and had him convicted of theft. At the last moment, when asked if he had anything to say before conducted to prison, the man said:

‘Ask any boatman of this country – we all have such emblems, and mine is my own. It does not belong to this youth. I have two eyes and a mouth too, but they are not his either!’

‘Why did you not speak up before?’ asked the magistrate of the boatman.

‘Because there is more merit for all mankind if the truth is arrived at by the exercise of sense by all parties from the beginning, than if one has to prove something which might just, after all, not be capable of proof.’

‘We must all learn, however,’ remarked the judge

‘Alas!’ said the boatman, ‘if learning is considered to be dependent upon the production of proof, we only have one-half of knowledge, and we are surely lost!’

The Kishtiwanis, to which School this boatman belonged, were noted for their habit of emphasizing that people spend most of their time either jumping to conclusions or else taking no notice at all of facts.

Abdullah bin Yahya was showing a manuscript, which be had written, to a visitor.

This man said: ‘But this word has been incorrectly spelt.’

He at once deleted the word and wrote it in the manner of which his guest approved.
When the man had left, Abdullah was asked: ‘Why did you do that, considering that the “correction” was in fact inaccurate, and you wrote the wrong word where the original one had been right?’

He answered: ‘That was a social occasion. The man thought he was helping me, and thought that the expression of his ignorance was an indication of knowledge. I applied the behavior of culture and politeness, not the behavior of truth, because when people want politeness and social interchange, they cannot stand truth. Had I stood in relation to this man as teacher to student, matters would have been different. Only stupid people and pedants imagine that their duty is to instruct everyone, when the motive of the people is generally not to seek instruction, but to attract attention’

Once upon a time there was a cow. In all the world there was no animal which so regularly gave so much milk of such high quality.

People came from far and wide to see this wonder. The cow was extolled by all. Fathers told their children of its dedication to its appointed task. Ministers of religion
adjured their flocks to emulate it in their own way. Government officials referred to it as a paragon which right behavior, planning and thinking could duplicate in the human community. Everyone was, in short, able to benefit from the existence of this wonderful animal.

There was, however, one feature which most people, absorbed as they were by the obvious advantages of the cow, failed to observe. It had a little habit, you see. And
this habit was that, as soon as a pail had been filled with its admittedly unparalleled milk — it kicked it over.

‘The Day of Calamity will be infinitely nearer when I have influential men and scholars singing my praises; for without any doubt they will be doing so for their own sake and not for the sake of our work!’

Sufi Ajmal Hussein was constantly being criticized by scholars, who feared that his repute might outshine their own. They spared no efforts to cast doubts upon his knowledge, to accuse him of taking refuge from their criticisms in mysticism, and even to imply that he had been guilty of discreditable practices.

At length he said:

‘If I answer my critics, they make it the opportunity to bring fresh accusation against me, which people believe because it amuses them to—believe such things. If I do not answer them they crow and preen themselves, and people believe that they are real scholars. They imagine that we Sufis oppose scholarship. We do not. But our very existence is a threat to the pretended scholarship of tiny noisy ones. Scholarship long since disappeared. What we have to face now is sham scholarship.’

The scholars shrilled more loudly than ever. At last Ajmal said:

‘Argument is not as effective as demonstration. I shall give you an insight into what these people are like:

He invited ‘question papers’ from the scholars, to allow them to test his knowledge and ideas. Fifty different professors and academicians sent questionnaires to him. Ajmal answered them all differently. When the scholars met to discuss these papers, at a conference, there were so many versions of what he believed, that each one thought that he had exposed Ajmal, and refused to give up his thesis in favor of any other. The result was the celebrated ‘brawling of the scholars’. For five days they attacked each other bitterly.

‘This,’ said Ajmal, ‘is a demonstration. What matters to each one most is his own opinion and his own interpretation. They care nothing for truth. This is what they do with everyone’s teachings. When be is alive, they torment him. When he dies they become experts on his works. The real motive of the activity, however, is to vie with one another and to oppose anyone outside their own ranks. Do you want to become one of them? Make a choice soon.’

We welcome the scholars who want to understand the Path.

What of the others? They think that we do not welcome them, but it is in reality they who do not welcome us.

They cannot do so while they retain such strange conceptions of the Way.

I refer to two kinds: those who say: ‘We deny the value of Sufism,’ and those who say: ‘We accept Sufism, but this is not it.’

Of the two, those who reject the Sufis are better than those who pretend that the people whom they do not like cannot therefore be Sufis.

The former class is deluded by others into believing that Sufis are useless: and anyone may be deceived by others.

And the latter class are those who are deluded by themselves into imagining something which is not correct.

No scholar can decide who is or who is not a Sufi. People trying to do something of which they are incapable should always be a lesson to us.