How much is too much

[Abba]

There is this unwritten but well spoken rule in Tasawuff of obeying the Sheikh without asking questions.

Like i was once told that if one is asked to pray on cloth soaked with pig's blood he shud do it.

Sheikh appears to command each and every aspect of mureed's life, personal, family, job etc.

But i was just wondering how much is too much. Specially after knowing this incident.

A girl married newly by her parents to a nice gentleman. The girl is follwing a Sheikh and so are the parents of the girl. The girl tried relentlessly for his husband to become a follower of the same Sheikh, but he refused. He did not follow anyone. So one day she says, she cannot live with him anymore if he is not a follower of her Sheikh and gets a divorce and later marries another person who is "peer bhai".

What does Fiqh/tasawuff say about this.

[Muawiyah]

obedience is only in ma'roof, Rasoolullah Sallallahu `alyhi wa Sallam took baya'h from the Muslim women that they will not disobey him in ma'roof, even though it is impossible that the Rasool Sallallahu `alyhi wa Sallam would ask someone to do something wrong. Neither shaykh nor ruler nor parent should be obeyed in sin.

[Hamood]

There is this unwritten but well spoken rule in Tasawuff of obeying the Sheikh without asking questions.

Like i was once told that if one is asked to pray on cloth soaked with pig's blood he shud do it.

Sheikh appears to command each and every aspect of mureed's life, personal, family, job etc.

But i was just wondering how much is too much. Specially after knowing this incident.

A girl married newly by her parents to a nice gentleman. The girl is follwing a Sheikh and so are the parents of the girl. The girl tried relentlessly for his husband to become a follower of the same Sheikh, but he refused. He did not follow anyone. So one day she says, she cannot live with him anymore if he is not a follower of her Sheikh and gets a divorce and later marries another person who is "peer bhai".

What does Fiqh/tasawuff say about this.

Your last paragraph makes it seem like the mureeds are at fault here rather than the Shaykh.

[Abba]

^ I guess both are

[lumumba_s]

You have to look at things in context and according to the standards of the rijal, as not everyone who claims to be a shaykh is indeed one. Being authorized is one of the many condition for validity, not the only condition.

As the mashaykh say, "A shaykh who will order his murids to do something haram, or makruh is not a shaykh, they are a shaytan." As Shaykh Nuh Keller writes in his Reliance of the Traveller, one of the Sufis in Jordan who he used to keep the company of told everyone, "If you see me step outside the masjid with the wrong foot, then immediately stop following me."

Not everyone who claims to be something is, and the shari'ah is above the neck of every man.

In terms of your story, I do not see where the shaykh is at fault, and I am always wary of generic "Sufi" stories. What does a anonymous incident with an anonymous shaykh and anonymous murids have to do with Imam al-Junayd, Abul Hasan al-Shadhili, or Imam `Abdullah Hadad (or Shaykh Nuh, Habib Umar or Shaykh Zulfaqir for that matter)? And perhaps the husband was antagonistic towards her practices and there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wanting to marry an individual with similar views, practices and inclinations. People marry and divorce for much more mundane reasons.