The excellence of man is for him to develop true cognisance of the Divine and true insight, i.e. the insight one receives through faith—an insight that is accompanied by the light of Allah and guides man on every path. Without this, a person cannot be safe from the possibility of deception, and by habit or custom, such a person will oftentimes, even happily, consume a deadly poison. The sufi leaders and inheritors of shrines throughout the Punjab and all across India consider the height of their divine understanding and excellence to be limited merely to the songs of qawwali reciters, raising slogans of هو حق, and hanging upside down.
Moreover, the ignorant masses, who worship these sufi leaders witness these things, and look to these people to find the satisfaction and comfort of their soul. Observe closely, for if these people do not actively deceive others, in the least, they are themselves deceived. These acrobatics have nothing to do with the true relationship between man’s servitude (ubudiyyat) and God’s divinity (uluhiyyat); for if this true bond exists, it emits a light and brilliance, producing a pleasure the like of which cannot be compared with any other joy.
I say with the purest of intentions, and God knows my intentions well, that if such exercises were a means of worshipping God, attaining divine understanding and a means for the soul to attain to excellence, then we ought to consider acrobatic performers to have attained to the pinnacle of divine understanding. The British have progressed even more remarkably in such tricks and acrobatics; but despite their advancements in this field, the level of their understanding of God is that they are non-believers or atheists altogether, and those who do believe in God, deify a weak, helpless human being who was born from the womb of a woman, Mary. These people have left aside belief in One God and believe in three, one of whom they believe was accursed and stayed in hell for three days.
O you who are wise, reflect! O you who possess a pure nature, contemplate! If hanging upside down, or musical instruments like the tabla and sarangi were the means by which divine insight and human excellence was attained, why have the British—who are experts in the art, and who produce new and innovative instruments of sound and music—stumbled, either rejecting God completely or subscribing to the concept of trinity, even though they are deemed to possess developed minds in the field of invention and innovation? Moreover, do reflect and contemplate that if this is the means by which understanding of God is attained, then those who perform at theatres, in fact all singers and dancers, must be godly and excellent individuals of the highest degree! Alas! These people have no idea as to what constitutes true understanding of the Divine. They are unaware of what constitutes human excellence and are unable to see the share of Satan in these things.