President

As salaamu wa alay kum wa rahmatullahi wa barakath, By the grace of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala I have had the opportunity to meet many top Ulamah and true Mashaiikh of our time and continue to do so, yet, whenever I used to meet these true servants of God, I didn’t feel anything new, any out of body experience as they say…when people would praise a man to the skies, one naturally tends to expect some high voltage stuff to happen whenever you meet them. No such things happened. That’s until I met Maulana Sa’ad Kandhlevi (damath baraka tuhum) and Maulana Safeeullah Khan Saheb (may Allah have mercy on him). And this post is about the latter. Maulana Safeeullah Khan Saheb a.k.a ‘Bhaijaan’ The Late Maulana is the son of another great pious Shaikh, Maseeh al Ummah Maulana Maseehullah Khan Saheb (may Allah have mercy on him). Meeting him a few years ago was one of the most pleasant-est experiences of my life, though the late Shaikh was ill and was hardly able to even move let alone walk, and as we later found out we had been extremely lucky to not just meet the pious Shaikh but to have even done musaafa with him (I remember the feeling, his hands perhaps due to old age, were very soft). What happened next is a lesson for all the existing and future generation of Ulamah’s the sort of who refuse to get down from the mimbars [pulpits in the masjids] and think twice before rubbing shoulders with laymen yet offer umpteen advices at the drop of a hat - as we went into the Shaikh’s office, and from what I saw even for those few minutes, I could write a story or two about minimalism, with the Shaikh sitting in what looked like nothing but only a little more than a rough-cut mat. After exchanging greetings (he greeted us as if he was expecting us) we introduced ourselves and informed him as to how we came to meet him (we were in khuruj)…we requested him to make dua for us, he said and I’m paraphrasing: “You are in the path of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, you too make dua for me” – when ourEmir expressed his humility and shyness in making dua in front of the great Shaikh himself, the late Maulana Safeeullah Khan Saheb said: “Nobody knows who’s duas are going to be accepted and when they are going to accepted, so make dua for me” (Dua kiski qabool hoti hai aur kab qabool hoti hain kisiko pata nahi) and went on to further add: “Only after death would one come to know what was a person’s status before Allah” (Marne ke baad hi pata chalega kiska kya maqaam hai Allah ke paas)” and after that he made our Emir and all of us make dua for him, the Shaikh expressed gratitude saying “JazakAllah” and proceeded to make dua for us. This Shaikh was special, there was something about him that I would not be able to express in words. But as we didn’t have much time and more so because we didn’t want to take much of his precious time, we asked for his permission to leave. Ever since then it was my fervent desire to spend a few weeks in his service, but that was not to be as the the pious Shaikh left us in 2012. May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala grant him Jannat ul Firdaus. The following are some pics I later acquired a few months later, note that I have blurred the faces in most of the pics. For more pics visit: http://theijtema.com/2013/03/27/miftah-al-ulum/