Malamatiyya

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The Malāmiyya (ملامتيه) are a category of persons, who, in the mystical branch of Islam, sometimes known as Sufism, represent, according to prominent Sufis like Ibn al-'Arabi, the highest category of occulted or hidden Sufi Saint. They have also been associated with various splinter groups within Sufism that arose in Khorasan in the 9th century AD (2nd–3rd centuries AH), originally under the impetus of Hamdūn al-Qassār but this association only gives a partial understanding of individuals 'known' by this rank. They are also sometimes known as the Malamati Malamatiyya or malamiyyah, all terms being variable derivations from Malamiyya. The legendary figure of the mysterious "Green One", al Khidr, is also often associated, as it is in the famous Qur'anic meeting with Prophet Moses, with those whose substance is concealed from men and who, in teaching Moses, breaks with conventional ways of acquiring true knowledge of God.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Malamatiyah, a Sufi (Muslim mystic) group that flourished in Samanid Iran during the 8th century. . . . often referred to the Qur'anic verse "I [God] swear by the reproachful soul" as the basis for their philosophy. This verse, they said, clearly praised a self that constantly reproached and blamed its owner for the slightest deviation from the world of God. The reproachful self in Malamati terminology was the perfect self." The idea of complete inward perfection, against the backdrop of outward worldly dissonance, representing the asymmetrical arrangement of a hierarchical relationship that both unites and separates the Creative Being to and from all its cosmic productions.

The Arabic word malāma means "to blame". The element of 'scandal' or 'embarrassment' associated with blame serves only to conceal or make much more difficult the genuine discernment (or 'firasa' in Arabic) between false Malamatis and true ones; for the genuine Malamati's scandal is eminently involuntary, impersonal and altogether superficial whereas the scandal of a false Malamati is deliberate, personal and wholly destructive in substance. According to Annemarie Schimmel, "the Malāmatīs deliberately tried to draw the contempt of the world upon themselves by committing unseemly, even unlawful, actions, but they preserved perfect purity of thought and loved God without second thought" (Schimmel 86). Schimmel goes on to relate a story illustrative of such actions: "One of them was hailed by a large crowd when he entered a town; they tried to accompany the great saint; but on the road he publicly started urinating in an unlawful way so that all of them left him and no longer believed in his high spiritual rank" (quoted in Schimmel 86). In contrast to Schimmel's contention that such acts are "deliberate", with the sole object of provoking reactions from people, a psychologizing morality appears to have replaced that of genuine Sufi Kashf "unveiling" or 'insight'. This cannot therefore be an accurate depiction of the views held by prominent Sufi authorities on the actual and not merely apparent motivation of such acts.

In fact, the Malāmatīs are considered, by one of the better known Sufi Masters, Ibn al-'Arabi, as the penultimate Sufis, people whose deep inward piety is concealed not only from the eyes of men but ultimately from themselves, the attachment to the perception of one's own piety constituting a formidable barrier to genuine cardiac self-realisation. The Malamati is one for whom the doctrine of "spiritual states" is fraught with subtle deceptions of the most despicable kind; he despises personal piety, not because he is focused on the perceptions or reactions of people, but because as a consistent involuntary witness of his own "pious hypocrisy", God in turn wishes to keep him preserved and sheltered in divine occultation. The Malamati "sins" on the outward shell of his being whereas the "pious" but ignorant man sins in the kernel of his. The nature of this sheltering may be occasioned by a "public fall from grace" or a scandal that involves the disapprobium of fellow sufis and pious Muslims. God's hidden saints on earth are therefore known as God's "chosen friends" or Wali (plural Awliya ) and whether they be known superficially to mankind or altogether hidden, an enigmatic divine preference nevertheless veils their actual inward majesty from the jealous eyes of common and hardened men. The actions of the malamati are therefore matters of Divine Providence, at the very highest degree possible, and consequently have nothing to do with individual will, decision-making or psychology. For Sufis like Ibn al-'Arabi and Ibn al-Farid the paradox of the Malamati lies in the mystery of Divine Jealousy and Reproach, helping to keep the majestic and adamantine substance of the Malamati soul hidden from jealous eyes of fallen and decadent men. Farid, in one of his Odes quoted by R.A. Nicholson in his Studies in Islamic Mysticism, describes the Malamiyya thus: "My fellows in the religion of love are those who love; and they have approved my ignominy and thought well of my disgrace". Ibn al-'Arabi, by contrast, calls the Malamiyya "the most perfect of the gnostics", those who "know and are not known".

The Malāmatiyya were first written about by Abu ‘Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulamī and Shaykh Abu al-Hasan al-Hujwīrī in the 11th century AD (4th–5th century AH). Sulamī is much more positive about them than Hujwīrī, who according to Schimmel mistakenly accuses them of spiritual ostentation, saying: "The ostentatious men purposely act in such a way as to win popularity, while the malāmatī purposely acts in such a way that people reject him. Both have their thought fixed on mankind [as opposed to God] and do not pass beyond that sphere" (quoted in Schimmel 87). But as already observed, the term Malamati if used to denote a set of unconventional, unorthodox or even antinomian practices, includes involuntary acts that do not arise from individual self-will or decision-making and therefore cannot serve to define the term as is commonly perceived by the rudimentary standards of popular Islamic mysticism or Sufism. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic sincerity, between outward "spirituality" and subtle wordliness is a sharp one from a Malamati point of view; the additional demarcation is confirmed by the most learned of the greatest Sufi Masters, as the single most important distinction in movement towards the penultimate stages of the Sufi spiritual hierarchy.

The term Malamati therefore denotes the spiritual rank or mark of certain chosen and quite exceptional individuals in contradistinction to their worldly professions or "psychological" stations and states, which often but not exclusively reflect the poor and the scandalised. The Malamati are, on account of their occulted station, "God's pillars on earth", saintly souls who imbibe a mysterious presence "in the world" albeit hidden helping to sustain the actual and not merely theoretical presence of God.

In their actions, the malamati bore much resemblance to the Greek Cynics, such as Diogenes of Sinope and Dionysius the Areopagite, as well as to certain of the Eastern Syriac Christians, such as Isaac the Syrian. Within the Islamic tradition, some of the tales concerning Nasreddin bear some similarity to the practices of the Malāmatiyya, insofar as Nasreddin's wisdom is rather well hidden behind a foolish façade.