The First Light

The first thing Allah created was the light of His Beloved ﷺ. Everything else in existence is a manifestation of that light.

This is what the Arifeen, the great knowers of the Islamic tradition, have taught for more than a thousand years. It is the understanding elaborated by Ibn Arabi in the Fusus al-Hikam, developed by Abd al-Karim al-Jili in his treatise on the Perfect Man, and sung in the Qasidat al-Burda of Imam al-Busiri in every Muslim land. The First Light sets it out in full, in plain English, for readers who have inherited the doctrine devotionally but have never seen it laid out whole.

The book begins where many thoughtful Muslims now find themselves. We were raised inside a picture of reality in which matter came first and everything else followed after it. That picture has been quietly coming apart for a hundred years, taken apart not by theologians but by physicists, and what has emerged is a world whose visible surface rests upon something unseen.

The Arifeen never needed this, and their certainty does not depend upon it. But it is worth noticing when a discipline built entirely on measurement arrives, by its own methods, at ground the knowers occupied long ago.

Inside you will find:

• The Nur Muhammadi and the Haqiqat al-Muhammadiyya explained from their sources
• Why the Pen, the Throne and the Tablet all come after the Muhammadan Light
• What Hadir wa Nazir does and does not mean, and why the distinction matters
• The heart as the true instrument of perception, and how salawat polishes it
• A full glossary of Arabic terms, with Qur'anic verses given in Arabic and English

Written for the believer who wants both the love and the reasoning, and who has never been persuaded that faith requires putting the mind away.