Sword of Futuwwa - The Nobility of the Ahl al-Bayt: ep.1 - Imam Ali - The Exemplar of Futuwwa

Futuwwa is understood as spiritual chivalry and knighthood. It is the path of the spiritual warrior. One cannot be a true warrior without this spiritual dimension because the real enemy is the enemy within. This enemy is the devil within you that sits on your heart when you become heedless of God. When it is seated on the throne within your heart, then it incites and commands your own ego against you.

Imam Ali كرم الله وجهه was known also as the Knight of Islam, the spiritual warrior; as the disciple of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, who taught him directly the way of the spiritual warrior, the Sufi tradition of Futuwwah, that is, spiritual chivalry and manliness, traces its lineage back to Imam 'Ali كرم الله وجهه as its master. What is especially pertinent about this tradition in today's time is the pragmatic application of spirituality. Without principles and objectives, it remains too vague to be of any value, and is often appropriated by the ego. And without application, then the principles are reduced to mere ideas and theory, unreal things. Principles necessitate action, and thus, this world is a place of testing.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad explains the practical and necessary effect of authentic spirituality as exemplified in Imam Ali كرم الله وجهه.

Unless there is an inward transformation occurring in which we are beginning to prefer the hereafter, the higher, the transcendent over the immanent, the material, the ego, then it is not authentic spirituality. The ego is rooted in the impulses towards survival, and which the intellect falsely turns into a self. The ego, the false self then, is a self-absorbed sort of entity, and as long as we are in this state, the genealogy of our ideas, our thoughts, our identities, our beliefs, all of it originates in validating one's ego. We exist as selfish beings driven by caprice and greed, by material advantage at all costs.

What the Prophetic lineage represents is the letting go of all of this, and the exchanging of illusion for Reality.