Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
Essays | Recipes | Gallery
The Asma'ul Husna (the names of God) is the performance of Allah's duty, the duty of His compassionate qualities, the duty which He performs for His creation. The world says that the Asma'ul Husna are His wilayats, His miracles. What is duty to Allah is a miracle to the world. This is the Asma'ul Husna. This is the duty which we have to do. We must do the work of Allah's compassionate qualities. Taking the form of Allah's qualities and doing Allah's duty is the Qur'an. Everything else must be sacrificed.
Cut away everything else with:
wa la ilaha ill Allahu wallahu akbar
wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi
wa huwal 'aliyul-'alheem. Ameen.
Glory be to God, and all praise is to God,
and there is no God except Allah,
and God is Greatest,
and none has majesty
and none has power to sustain except for God,
and He is the highest, the supreme in glory. Ameen.
Sacrifice everything else. Having sacrificed, having performed the qurban on everything else, what remains is the Qur'an. Qurban is not slaughtering chickens and cows and goats. There are four hundred trillion, ten thousand beasts in the heart which must be slaughtered. They must be slaughtered in the qalb. After these things have been slaughtered, what is eaten can then be distinguished as either halal (permissible) or haram (forbidden). Everything that is seen in the world is haram. What is seen in Allah alone is halal. Please eat that.
from Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Kathleen Seidel
Sources of previously published material by other authors used by permission, and print sources for images, may be found at http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook.