The work presented here was originally written for delivery at a Mawlid celebration in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 2011. It concerns ma[rifat-Allāh, the experiential knowledge of God, sometimes translated as gnosis or cognizance. Ma[rifa is often considered the essence of the Sufi path, for it meant to aualize the last stage of the Islamic religion: after al-islām (submission) and al-īmān (faith) comes al-iḥsān (excellence), "to worship God as if you are seeing Him, and if you are not seeing Him, know that He is seeing you."
The work presented here was originally written for delivery at a Mawlid celebration in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 2011. It concerns ma[rifat-Allāh, the experiential knowledge of God, sometimes translated as gnosis or cognizance. Ma[rifa is often considered the essence of the Sufi path, for it meant to aualize the last stage of the Islamic religion: after al-islām (submission) and al-īmān (faith) comes al-iḥsān (excellence), "to worship God as if you are seeing Him, and if you are not seeing Him, know that He is seeing you."
