FREEDOM OF MAN THROUGH FANĀ’, BAQĀ’, AND RIḌĀ: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON CLASSICAL SUFI SOURCES

Classical Sufi thinkers argued that true human bondage is not external but internal—rooted in the soul's passions, habits, and attachments to everything other than God. This article examines the liberating process of fanā’ (annihilation of the ego), baqā’ (subsistence in divine will), and riḍā (contentment), which together lead to genuine tawḥīd (divine unity) and the highest state of servanthood. Drawing on primary works of al-Muḥāsibī, al-Sarrāj, al-Kalābādhī, al-Makkī, al-Qushayrī, al-Hujwīrī, al-Ghazālī, and al-Suhrawardī, the analysis fills a gap in scholarship by addressing this triad through the axis of freedom and tawḥīd based on classical sources.

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Abstract

Although the question of freedom has been addressed in Islamic theology (kalām), jurisprudence (fiqh), and philosophy, in all these traditions freedom has remained fundamentally an external category. Classical Sufi thought approached this question from an entirely different perspective: for the Sufis, the primary bondage of the human being originates not in external constraints but in the domination of the soul’s passions, habits, and attachments to everything other than God (māsiwā). This article analyses the liberating process constituted by the triad of fanā’ (annihilation), baqā’ (subsistence), and riḍā (contentment) in classical Sufi thought, and examines how this process leads to genuine tawḥīd (divine unity) and the highest state of ‘ubūdiyya (servanthood). Fanā’ is the threshold at which inner bondage is dissolved; baqā’ is the reconstitution of the transformed will in alignment with the divine will; riḍā is the station that renders this alignment permanent. When all three are completed, genuine tawḥīd is realised, and the human being attains the deepest freedom — liberation from every bond, both interior (anfusī) and exterior (āfāqī). Drawing on the primary Arabic works of al-Muḥāsibī, al-Sarrāj, al-Kalābādhī, Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, al-Qushayrī, al-Hujwīrī, al-Ghazālī, and al-Suhrawardī, this article addresses a gap in the existing literature: no independent study has yet analysed this triad through the axis of freedom and tawḥīd based on primary classical sources.