The Amazing Story of A Sufi Woman

For those who may need a new dose of inspiration in their spiritual life, just drop by this site of a book manuscript on the life of a living sufi woman in Syria. It is an amazing story of sufi dreams and what absolute faith in God can do to a person. I keep reading her stories hopefully to get a sprinkling of her spiritual strength in the face of life's trials. Below is an excerpt of one of her stories:

My mother-in-law, may God have mercy on her (she had passed away by the time this interview took place) told me one day ‘You and my son must leave this house. You don’t have the money to pay for it.’ This house was the property of my husband’s father and there were six sons and four daughters. Each one wanted to take his or her inheritance portion after selling the property. The boy takes two parts and the girl takes one. This is the way inheritance is. It would be haram to go against this. She told me ‘Either you give me 450,000 lira (Syrian pounds) in ten days or you have to be out of the house. It’s not right that you stay here while the others have nothing of the house.’ [This equaled about US $10,000 at the time. It might seem like a modest sum for an apartment with three bedrooms, but it is not in an expensive part of the city. In any case, it was an enormous amount for Amat al-Latif, who lives on her husband’s meager salary as an instructor in Islamic religion at a government secondary school.] This is the Shari’ah. She was right; it would be haram to go against this. I told her ‘Please don’t be angry with me’ and I kissed her hands. She was crying and I was crying too. I told her, ‘My faith in God Most High is strong and if He wills, I will find the money to pay for the house.’ ‘How on earth will you do this?’ she asked me, ‘You have nothing (brought no wealth into the marriage), and your husband has no resources to pay. Where will he get this money from?’ I said, ‘God, may He be glorified, is the true possessor of all wealth. His treasury is vast. Four hundred and fifty thousand lira – that is nothing to Him! He will give it to me. He is Generous.’ ‘Fine,’ she said, and she went out to go home to her own house. That night I didn’t tell my husband anything about what had happened between his mother and me. So that night I stayed up after ten o’clock and prayed two cycles of prayer for God Most High, I took hold of my masbahah (prayer beads), and I recited the Fatihah one hundred times. I said, ‘Oh God, by the secret of the Fatihah, Oh Most Merciful, Oh Most Compassionate, You are the One Who created me. I am now grown old, a woman of forty years with ten children. I am in a desperate state. I am powerless, Allah! You are the One Who Conceals, the One Who brought into being the heavens and the earth. I want nothing of this world but that if you let me live the next ten days that I be allowed to stay in the house I have lived in, not to be thrown out. Oh Allah. By Your Prophet and his daughter Fatima, grant me the 450,000 lira.’ So I started to weep and pray for peace and blessings on the Prophet and plead with God. And I stayed this way until the dawn prayer, weeping and praying on my prayer carpet. I slept for a moment sitting up but I didn’t lie down one minute.....

To read the whole book manuscript by Barbara von Schlegell.