Discovering God

Exercising ijtihad based on anything else is, from the religious point of view, both unscholarly and unacceptable. Tazkiya at Every Moment There is the general misconception that tazkiya is a temporary course of action or, that to achieve it, some particular words or phrases have to be recited at fixed times. But this ritualistic form of tazkiya is unnatural: nothing can be achieved by resorting to such short-term methods. The truth is that, just as one inhales oxygen at every moment—there being no temporary way of inhaling— tazkiya too is a continuous process. The real tazkiya is that which continues at every moment. For instance, in this couplet by a Persian poet: Bar mazar-e-ma ghariban, nay charaghe, nay guley, Nay par-e-parvana raqsad, nay sadai bulbule (I being a poor man, there is no lamp, no flower on my grave, no fly hovers around my grave, no nightingale chirps at my grave). When a couplet like this comes to mind, you should first think how deep a state of ignorance the poet is in. He is thinking of the lamp and the flower at his grave. But the real problem is that, after death, one reaches another world, the demands of which are different from those of the present world. In that world certain superior qualities