The Story of Ahmadiah Idrisiah Tariqah, from Singapore to Milan;

Taken from http://www1.aucegypt.edu/faculty/sedgwick/

Tag names:

Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini,

Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini,

Frithjof Schuon (Martin Ling's teacher),

Martin Lings alias Shaykh Abu Bakar Sirajuddin

Rene Guenon,

Sidi Abdul Rasyid ibn Sidi Muhammad Sa’id Al-Linggi,

Sidi Ahmad Ibn Idris al-Idrisi (the great grandson of Sidi Ahmad Ibn Idris, also known as ibn Idris)

The Ahmadiyya ---> Not to be confused with the ahmadiyya of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

In about 1949, Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini (1926- ), a wealthy young Italian who had read Guénon's Crise du monde moderne, visited its Italian translator, Evola. Evola told Pallavicini that his own interests were more in temporal than spiritual power, and referred him instead to Burckhardt. In 1951, Pallavicini became Muslim at Burckhardt's hands and took the Alawi tariqa, and the name of Abd al-Wahid Yahya.(98) Having earlier broken with Schuon over the vexed question of the validity of Christian initiation, Pallavicini visited (in 1971) the zawiya in Singapore of the Ahmadi shaykh Abd al-Rashid ibn Muhammad Said (1918-92), an Azhari alim [scholar trained at the prestigious Azhar mosque-university in Cairo] as well as an important shaykh.(99)

The Ahmadi zawiya and the dhikr [communal invocatory prayer] very much impressed Pallavicini, who took the Ahmadi tariqa. During the six months he spent with his new shaykh, Pallavicini learned the Ahmadi awrad [office; litany].(100) Although he could only understand Abd al-Rashid through an interpreter, he also had numerous conversations with Ali Salim, later Abd al-Rashid's khalifa [deputy].(101) On one occasion, Abd al-Rashid suggested that they should pray for the conversion to Islam of Pallavicini's parents. Pallavicini demurred, saying that they were all right as they were, as People of the Book, and could expect to go to Heaven as non-Muslims - a Guénonian view more than an Islamic one. In order to resolve their disagreement, the two wrote to the Azhar for a fatwa [opinio, ruling] - which, unsurprisingly, supported Abd al-Rashid.(102)

---> The Religion of the People of the Book is recognised in Islam as valid, for Islam simply means Submission to God and to do so, one is required to follow His Prophets among whom are Moses and Jesus. The real issue today is whether or not the Christianity and/or Judaism of today is still exactly the same as the religion of Jesus and Moses respectively; refer to Misquoting Jesus by Biblical Scholar Bart D Erhman for details. In history we know of Unitarian Christians who reject the Trinity just like Muslims, and the scientist Isaac Newton was one of them. Refer to An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture is a dissertation by the English mathematician and scholar Isaac Newton. First published in 1754, 27 years after Newton's death, it reviewed all the textual evidence available from ancient sources on two disputed Bible passages, at 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16.

In the King James Version Bible, 1 John 5:7 reads:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

Using the writings of the early Church Fathers, the Greek and Latin manuscripts and the testimony of the first versions of the Bible, Newton attempted to demonstrate that the words "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," in support of the Trinity doctrine, did not appear in the original inspired Greek Scriptures. He then traced the way in which the spurious reading crept into the Latin versions, first as a marginal note, and later into the text itself. He argued[citation needed] that it was first taken into a Greek text in 1515 by Cardinal Ximenes on the strength of a late Greek manuscript corrected from the Latin. Finally, Newton considered the sense and context of the verse, concluding, "Thus is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of 'the Three in Heaven' you interrupt and spoil it."

Historical background

Newton did not publish these findings during his lifetime, likely due to the political climate. Those who wrote against the doctrine of the Trinity were subject to persecution in England. As late as 1698 the Act for the Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness made it an offense to deny one of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office, employment and profit on the first occasion, and imprisonment for a repetition. Newton's friend William Whiston (translator of the works of Josephus) lost his professorship at Cambridge for this reason in 1711. In 1693 a pamphlet attacking the Trinity was burned by order of the House of Lords, and the next year its printer and author were prosecuted. In 1697 Thomas Aikenhead, an eighteen-year-old student charged with denying the Trinity, was hanged at Edinburgh, Scotland.

It can also be proven that certain verses in the Bible that propagates Trinity were actually added centuries after Jesus, hence the issue today is the originality of the religion<---

Either before or despite this dispute, Pallavicini was given an ijaza by Abd al-Rashid.(103) Given that the two earlier ijazas of which we know which were received by Guénonians were somewhat unusual, it is interesting to see how Pallavicini came to receive his. Abd al-Rashid is only known to have given four other ijazas, and of these only one was to someone who was not a long-established Ahmadi, the Director of Dakwah [calling to God] in Brunei, already an important Muslim dignitary. Pallavicini was a very different case, and seems to have been a departure from Abd al-Rashid's normal practice.

--->I have asked some old timers of the Tariqah about Sidi Abdul Rasyid and his giving off ijazas, they all said Sidi Abdul Rasyid rarely gave out ijazas, and only about 4 such cases were known; one of the ijazas was for Almarhum Ust Abdur Rahman Al-Kaff, the other for Almarhum Ust Osman Yusuf.<---

It is impossible to say why Abd al-Rashid decided to give Pallavicini an ijaza,(104) but shaykhs in any tariqa do sometimes give ijazas for their recipients to 'grow into.' Another partial explanation is that Abd al-Rashid was perhaps reverting to an earlier Ahmadi practice, evidently followed at some times by his father, of distributing ijazas almost wholesale. At any rate, Pallavicini's ijaza, unlike Schuon's, seems to have been entirely regular; on this basis his tariqa might almost be classified as 'standard.'

On returning to Italy, Pallavicini went first to Rome; he had at that time no particular intention of doing anything with his ijaza.(105) It was not until the end of the 1970s that a fortuitous combination of circumstances led to the establishment of an Ahmadiyya in Europe. Pallavicini became involved in Muslim-Christian dialogue and so became famous, and used his fame to spread the Guénonian message. One of the high points of Pallavicini's involvement with this dialogue was the Day of Prayer held by Pope John Paul in Assisi on 27 October 1986, at which representatives of twelve religions met together to pray for peace.(106) Ten delegations represented Islam; Pallavicini went with the CICI, the main Islamic organization in Rome, made a speech to a 'round table of the representatives of religions,' and issued a press release.(107) Pallavicini became a popular interviewee for the Italian newspapers,(108) reflecting the role he had played at Assisi, both because a much interviewed person becomes newsworthy anyhow, and because at this time the position of Islam in Italy was changing significantly. By 1990, Pallavicini had become the most interviewed Muslim in Catholic papers, a sort of Muslim 'de confiance.'(109) He was even being described by the major newspaper Corriere della Sera as shaykh 'of one of the most important Sufi brotherhoods.'(110)

Shaykh Abdul Wahid Pallavicini with Pope John Paul II

During his Muslim-Christian dialogue, Pallavicini did not try to proselytize for Islam, but found that many of those persons with whom he was trying to carry out an inter-religious dialogue became Muslim (and Ahmadi), so that in the end the 'dialogue with Christians' became a 'monologue of Muslims.'(111) By 1996, three buildings in Milan housed Pallavicini's Milan home, the Centro Studi Metafisici 'René Guénon,'(112) the zawiya of the Ahmadiyya in Italy, the Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione sull'Islam (AIII),(113) and Sintesi (a small publishing house).(114)

Pallavicini's followers see themselves more as members of the Centro Studi Metafisici than as Ahmadis. During their monthly meeting in January 1996, time was divided more or less equally between considering their next step in a new round of the old controversy over the validity of Christian initiation (being held with a Greek Orthodox Guénonian in the pages of the Guénonian publication Vers la tradition),(115) and such recognizably Sufi activities as prayer, dhikr, and communal living in the zawiya. This dual identity - as Ahmadi Muslims and as Guénonians - persists at other times. Various Ahmadis spend much time attending almost every conceivable possible forum to spread the Guénonian view, but also perform the normal Muslim duties and the Ahmadi awrad. The strong identity of Milan Ahmadis as Guénonians combines, in many cases, with a somewhat weak identity as Muslims. Milan Ahmadis are separated from most other Muslims not only by disputes, but by geography and language. This is not true of Pallavicini himself or of his son Yahya, both of whom have contacts with the Islamic world and with various sections of the Ahmadiyya, but it is true of almost everyone else. It is less true, in contrast, for the Western followers of al-Haqqani, who are inevitably in contact with the significant numbers of immigrants among his followers in the West, and who may also from time to time visit their shaykh in the Muslim world, as well as seeing him on his regular visits to the West.
Were it not for the dual identity of its followers, Pallavicini's Ahmadiyya could be described not only as a standard tariqa, but also as traditional. The Milan Ahmadis are all Muslim, and no significant variations of the Sharia are known; their practice is orthodox and their silsila recognized. The spread of the Ahmadiyya from Singapore to Milan differs little from the spread of the Ahmadiyya from Singapore to Brunei or the Naqshbandiyya to Germany.

Pallavicini himself was evidently accepted as an Ahmadi shaykh by Ahmad ibn Idris al-Idrisi (a descendant of Ahmad ibn Idris, fount of the Ahmadiyya) when they met in Dubai, since Ahmad ibn Idris al-Idrisi instructed Pallavicini to give the Ahmadiyya to his son Yahya, then aged fifteen.(116) The dual identity however produces conflicts in the area of Transcendent Unity, both in doctrine (Pallavicini's recognition of the validity of Christianity, if not of Christian initiation) and in practice (a tendency to urge Italians to return to Catholicism rather than to become Muslim).

Sections of the Muslim community in Italy, then, clearly rejected Pallavicini's Ahmadiyya as being (in our terms) other than traditional, but this rejection took place within a particular context. At about the same time as it attacked Pallavicini, however, Il Messagero dell'Islam also ran a full-page article with the title: 'Sufism is not Islam!'(121) This view is itself also far from traditional: it is characteristic of the Salafi reformers and their descendants, and while it may now have become part of a strong current within the Islamic mainstream, rejection of Pallavicini on the grounds that he is a Sufi is inconclusive. Some of the further grounds for Pallavicini's opponents' rejection of him, however, are indicative: his views on the status of Christianity, for example, are Guénonian rather than Islamic

Pope Benedict 16th greeting Shaykh Yahya Pallavicini

Shaykh Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini and the Italian Ikhwans at Masjid Kassim with Ust Hasbi