Oludamini Ogunnaike:The transcendent ethics of tarbiya: Ibrahim Niasse’s maqāmāt al-dīn al-thalāth (Islam,Iman,Ihsan): Islam, African Publics, and Religious Values-

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A 2014 Pew Charitable Trust study found that Sufism is more popular in West Africa than any other region in the world, and this fact is due in large part to the efforts of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975), the founder of the largest branch of the Tijāniyya, the most popular Sufi order in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current estimates put membership of Niasse’s branch of the Tijānī order, called the Fayḍah, around 100 million, making it one of the largest Sufi movements in the world. The popularity of this movement is largely due to its unique method of spiritual training, or tarbiya, which is supposed to bring disciples to the realization of ma‘rifat Allāh (direct knowledge of God) much more rapidly and with less difficulty than other regimens. While the exact process and litanies of this method are kept secret, Niasse has described the process in several works—one of the most influential of which is the short treatise entitled “The Three Stations of Religion” (Maqāmāt al-dīn al-thalāth). In this paper, I briefly present the way in which this treatise is used in contemporary tarbiya among Niasse’s disciples and what this tells us about the relationship between ethical texts and ethical practice and the relationships among ethics, epistemology, and ontology in Sufi anthropology. I will conclude with a brief discussion of Tijānī (and broader Sufi) ma‘rifa-based moral epistemology, contrasting the ethical paradigm exemplified in Niasse’s treatise with contemporary virtue, deontological, and consequentialist ethical paradigms.

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Shaykh Ibrahim’s “Three Stations of Religion” describes the ternary from the ḥadīth of Jibrīl—Islām, Īmān, and Iḥsān—as three consecutive stations (maqāmāt) of the spiritual path. Islām: repentance (tawba) , integrity (istiqāma), reverence (taqwā),; Īmān: sincerity (ṣidq) , pure devotion (ikhlāṣ) , serenity (ṭumaʾnīna); Iḥsān: observing (murāqaba), witnessing (mushāhada), and Knowledge (maʿrifa).

Amazon: The Stations of The Religion: A Description of the Steps of Spiritual Wayfaring (Suluk): Ibrahim Baye Niass, Ibrahim Dimson, Zachary Wright (Translator) amazon.com

A concise explanation of the Hadith of the Angel Jibril. This explanation was sent as a letter to one of the students of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, after requesting that the Shaykh explain it to him. A description of the steps of Spiritual Wayfaring (Suluk)