{"id":249,"date":"2011-12-01T05:12:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T03:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/?page_id=249"},"modified":"2012-11-12T23:52:14","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:52:14","slug":"longing-for-the-beloved","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/english\/hazrat-sayyid-ahmed-er-rifai-ks\/excerpts-from-his-books\/longing-for-the-beloved\/","title":{"rendered":"Longing for the Beloved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Know that Allah has qulls (servants) whose hearts are full of His love! They watch for the arrival of death because of their longing for their Beloved. They detest staying too long in this world. Before passing on from this world, there is no rest for them. They grow sad if they stay a little too long. Their longing to become free of this world is more intense than a scorched man\u2019s thirst for cold water. When their death approaches, the angel of death, with seventy thousand angels, brings them the greeting of Allah. As Allah commanded: \u2018they are the people whose souls the angels purely take by saying: \u2018<em>Greetings to you! In reward for the good deeds you have done, enter heaven!\u2019\u2019<\/em> (Qur\u2019an, An Nahl 16:32)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Therefore, the angel of death comes to the mumin (the true believer of Allah)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0with a gracious fragrance and with his most gracious face. The mumin says \u2018Welcome,\u2019 to him and asks why he has come. The angel says: \u2018I have come to take your soul in whichever way you wish!\u2019 The mumin asks the angel to take his soul in prostration. The angel of death does it as he has wished.\u00a0 After this, the guardian angels approach the mumin. One of the angels tells the other: \u2018He was our friend and our brother. Now is the time to part with him.\u2019 The guardian angels tell the mumin: \u2018May Allah grace you, may He forgive you! What a gracious brother, what a gracious mumin you have been! How graciously you have held on to your nafs!\u2019 And they send him on his way.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u2018O the nafs who has reached peace! Return to your Rabb with having r<\/em><em>\u0131<\/em><em>za (contentment) for Him and with Him having riza for You!\u2019<\/em> (Qur\u2019an, Al Fajr 89:27-28)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Upon this, the mumin comes to himself and his soul tells his body: \u2018Go away from me with grace. While you were in the world, you loved goodness and good people; you hated evilness and evil people. I have been submitting you to Allah.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Know that Allah has qulls (servants) whose hearts are full of His love! They watch for the arrival of death [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":227,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-249","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/249\/revisions\/976"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifai.org\/sufism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}