ESSENCE OF KHAWAJA GARIB NAWAZ (RADI ALLAHU TA'ALA ANHU)

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty (R.A.) is the famous sufi saint of Ajmer, India, and founder of the Chishty sufi order. To really understand a person and who he/she is and why he/she is who he/she is, one needs to simply understand the essence of the person. The essence of this saint is clearly evident in his title GARIB NAWAZ which means the one who shows kindness to the poor. In his lifetime, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishty (R.A.) showed kindness to every kind of poor person from the king to the pauper. One must ask what is so important or great about showing kindness to the poor. Poor is not only one who is materially less well off. Indeed that will be a limited and myopic definition. Poor is indeed one who is less than well off in everything from wealth, character, manners, faith, hope, piety, fertility etc. In reality a person can be adequately endowed, more than adequately endowed or less than adequately endowed. A poor person is one who is in the last state.



When a person A meets another person, B, who is poor, it can only naturally bring out the worst in A. If A is a materially and monetarily endowed while B is poor, then when A meets the poor B, A naturally will feel superior, arrogant, selfish and stingy. Only if A is kind enough can he/she go overcome all these negative feelings in order to extend a helping hand to poor B. Help, we can conveniently understand as any level of assistance, however help is truly something that is nothing less than when it is either the best that we can give or the best that the person can receive.



In our daily lives we are rarely in the above circumstance in Singapore. Instead we meet person B on a always, daily basis and regularly. These Bs are not less than adequately endowed in material or money but in manners, self-restrain, hope, character, faith, feelings etc. Again when we like person A above meet person B poor in these ways, it only brings out our worst naturally. We get angry, jealous, revengeful, egoistic, zealous etc. Only if we have the kindness in us can we show it to person B.

The greatness in showing kindness to the poor does not comes from the act itself per se but the ability to do it after overcoming the natural lower self and lures of Shaytan. We rise above our baser self to a noble state. When we meet the poor B which consequently brings out the worst in us, when we respond by holding that worst in us back and instead throwing out kindness then we truly are noble. However that state is possible only when we give up this temporal world for the eternal world. This happens when we live with a life scale weighing priorities not in terms of benefit, money etc but dunia vs aahir whereby we evaluate everything on basis of the benefit it brings to dunia life and the life hereafter, hereby prioritizing on the option that yields greater benefit for the life hereafter. When we experience person B, when our worst comes out instinctively and when we allow it to happen then we have given greater priority to dunia life. This is because the limited benefit of that response can only be received in dunia even though there is an equal punishment in dunia for that while there is absolutely no benefit and only punishment in the aahir for choosing that response. We can only value aahir more than dunia when we fully and truly understand beyond uncertainty the merits of aahir and the limitations of dunia. Here we need knowledge to reach this state. We also can only pursue aahir more than dunia when the rebel within us dies after gaining that knowledge of aahir.

Therefore when a person reaches of the state of being kind to the poor, he truly has reached one of the highest state a man can possibly reach and he truly can nothing less than a Friend of Allah.