Everyone thirsts for a sense of belongingness, but what does it take to achieve true unity in a modern society? In this episode, Rosina-Fawzia al-Rawi ar-Rifa‘i speaks on holistic structures of existence, self-knowledge through conscious embedding to life, the inner and outer nature of the cosmos, and the oneness of all beings. Rosina has a PhD in Islamic studies, allowing her to share unique and never-before-seen insights into the world as seen in the lens of Islam and Arab culture. Join us in today’s episode as we explore the world through her eyes.
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Holistic Structures Of Existence With Rosina-Fawzia al-Rawi ar-Rifa’i
We have with us, Rosina Fawzia Al-Rawi Ar-Rifa’i. Welcome, Rosina.
Thank you. As-salaamu alaykum.
I’m used to calling you Fawzia. Is that okay to call you Fawzia?
Yes. My original name is Fawzia. It is the name of my grandmother and then my mother said she would like to add the name of her mother as well. They then added Rosina. Some call me Rosina and some Fawzia, but I’m more known as Fawzia.
It’s beautiful to have you here. We’re very excited to speak with you. I’m going to begin by reading your bio. Dr. Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi Ar-Rifa’i was born in Baghdad and spent her childhood in Iraq and Lebanon.
Her grandmother initiated her into the culture and traditions of the Middle East where belly dancing played a major part as an expression of the world of the feminine. Fawzia Al-Rawi holds a PhD in Islamic Studies. She completed her Arabic, Islamic, and Ethnological studies at the Universities of Vienna and Cairo
She then spent twelve years in Jerusalem where she brought up her children and worked at the Institute for the Promotion of Palestinian Agriculture and the University of Jerusalem while deepening both her theoretical and practical knowledge of Sufism under the guidance of Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Ar-Rifai.
She has been living in Vienna with her husband and their three children since 2001. Fawzia Al-Rawi has been teaching Sufism for over twenty years. She holds workshops in various countries and works particularly with women.
Her teaching draws on a wealth of experience from a bicultural environment which uniquely enables her to build a bridge of understanding between different cultures, open a space where these can meet, and thus contribute to peace. She has published several books in Arabic, German, English, and French.
If we have met before, you have probably heard me quote from or read from the book, Divine Names: 99 Healing Names of The One Love. I use this book daily and love it. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to speak with you. I’ve taken classes with you before. It’s always a delight, a pleasure, and an expansion for all of the senses. Thank you for being here, Fawzia.
Thank you for your kind words.
I want to also introduce Amany, my co-host here. Amany has a Master’s in Comparative Philosophy of Religions. She did her Postgraduate Degree in Islamic Studies in Sufism. She did her dissertation on the Studies of Ibn Arabi.
She spent twelve years as a translator for my spiritual teacher, Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Al-Jamal Ar-Rifa’i. For the last twelve years of his life, she was his translator. She is a Founder of the Universal Chaplaincy Program, which I have been a student of and graduated from that program as well. She is my co-teacher in the Ocean of Sound. Welcome, Amany.
Thank you, Mistura. As-salaamu alaykum, Fawzia. Welcome. We’re excited to have you. I will start with a simple question. What sparked your interest in studying Arabic and Sufism and the spirituality of Islam?
The longing feeling like a fire in my chest started very early when I was ten years old. Whenever I would go to my mother and tell her, “There’s something burning in my chest and I don’t know what to do,” she would tell me, “Go and drink water to calm it down.” I understand that there is something else than just the obvious. At the same time, my surroundings couldn’t understand what is going on.
Usually, when you go through that, there comes a period in time when I decided to close my heart. I said, “Everything is too overwhelming. Let me close my heart.” This stayed for a couple of years. When I decided to open it up again, I discovered how difficult it is. It is much easier to close the heart and open it up again.
This process of wanting to open my heart again brought me to Sufism in a way. I do come from a family that has that tradition. If you don’t do things consciously, the tradition is there. You have to experience it yourself. You have to live it yourself so that it becomes yours.
It’s not enough to be in a Muslim or Christian family. You have to live and experience the religion. That was a longing. That’s how it started with little things in life. Interestingly, one of the strongest experiences that brought me on the path was when I was in Egypt.
I was living in Egypt and studying there. I was approximately 19 or 20. I was passing in the street and there was a very old man sitting there. On a box, he had a jar of tea and two cups. He was selling tea. Somebody passed by and knocked it over and the glasses broke. The only thing this man said was, “Al-hamduli’llah.”
That sentence shook my whole life because I could see he had nothing else but these two cups, and his only answer to what happened was Al-hamduli’llah. It was as if time stopped and I entered another space. These little things touch one and keep one moving, searching, and longing.
For those who don’t know, Al-hamduli’llah means Praise be to God.
He was praising him for the things that were giving him the capacity to make some little money and survive. Praising instead of cursing or being angry was so overwhelming. This sentence changed my life.
That’s beautiful.
It’s often little things that have an effect on us. Sometimes big things, but sometimes even these little things can be life-changing.
It's often the little things that have an effect on us. Sometimes big things do, but even little things can be life-changing. Share on XI have read your book also about Arabic letters and belly dancing. Can you briefly tell us about this experience? It was a wonderful book. I loved it.
Thank you. The Arabic letters, as you know, the calligraphy plays an important role in the Islamic tradition. Letters and forms are repeated in nature. It holds us in a space of light and darkness. There is always a space between them, and yet they are connected.
To understand, live, and experience that when the sun comes through the darkness and the shapes, we learn from ourselves. As you know, in the letters and also in the Arabic architect, the architect is always there and the letters are there to remind us. Everything is done as a remembrance. Everything is done so that we understand that we are embedded in nature and the universe.
Everything is a trace of Allah. That is the beauty of the letters and signs. That is the beauty of experiencing, flowing with darkness and light, and understanding that both things are necessary to elevate into a higher consciousness or grow a consciousness or what we call self, and then combine the soul and the nafs.
You have a program that you teach that’s called The Holistic Structures of Existence. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
I always look at how I can bring unity and oneness closer to people, especially people who live in a modern society. It is different if you are living in a traditional society. Everything has good and bad, or lightness and heaviness.
Being in a modern society, you don’t feel it in yourselves that everything is connected. I thought that if we enter more into the structures, we feel, see, and experience that there are specific structures everywhere, in us and around us. They keep on repeating themselves in different ways, shapes, and tastes, but they’re always the same.
We find them in ourselves and outside. That made me work with structures and open spaces where you enter into these structures and feel how you are also part of them. It was like playing between the ocean and the drops.
When you wrote your book, the beautiful names of Allah, you spoke a little bit about the Arabic language and drove into that. Was there a spark or a-ha moment that happened to you, or something was revealed to you through the process of writing that book?
After the Prophet Muhammad, Sala allahu alayhi wa salam, one of the great souls that touch me most is Ibn Arabi. It’s not that I have entered into his studies. It’s just that I feel very much connected. I remember once, I was so sad and I was telling myself, “Why can’t I have the knowledge of Ibn Arabi? Why can’t I understand things like him? Where is he and where am I?”
There was a time when I was like that. A couple of days later, a lady came to me carrying a little bag and she said, “Somebody has come to me and has asked me to give you this bag.” I said, “What is it about?” She said, “This person was at the grave of Ibn Arabi. He has taken a little stone from his grave and put it in that bag, and he asks me to give it to you.”
I still have this little bag. It’s very precious to me. It is a stone from Ibn Arabi’s tomb in there. I keep it close. Through that, my interest in letters started and I understood that each letter is connected to an element. The combination of letters, for example, the divine named al-Athim is a balance of all elements. It is used like the divine name Halim for strengthening the basic of our existence, which is the skeleton.
These ideas opened more interest. I entered into that subject more and more. It is also to see Ibn Arabi combines every divine name that is connected with a specific letter. He says the letters are, in a sense, veils, and yet they are of ways of opening. It’s like when we say surah in Qur’an. It’s a sur or a wall.
You keep on repeating and reading. You are circling around the wall until one moment comes and one brick falls down, and then you get the light from that surah. In that sense, it’s an experience. It is unique for every human being. You cannot compare and yet in the essence, they’re all very similar.
Beautiful, Mashallah.
Can you say more about the letters and the elements? How do the elements contribute to the formation of the meanings and the deeper meanings in the names?
Every letter in the Arabic alphabet has an element. Every letter has also a number. We have the inner alphabet and the outer alphabet. The outer alphabet is the alphabet we learn in school. The inner alphabet is built up according to numerology, so Abjad Hawaz and so on. It’s a bit different.
We call fourteen of the letters, light letters. We also call parts of the letters, moon letters or sun letters. Those who assimilate the next letter are called the sun. The ones who stay separated and have their own pronunciation are called moon letters.
Through the letters, we also understand the basic of nature. The basics of nature are the four elements. They’re brought together through cold and hot, and humid and dry. Out of that, nature comes. It is also an indicator that the divine names or the archetypes are the traces that Allah has put into existence so out of them, manifestation forms.
The closer we come to that essence, the more we become universal human beings, meaning nothing is alien to us anymore. We see in everything the traces of Allah. The world becomes a reminder and not a destructor of Allah.
That’s beautiful. When people practice dhikr, what would you recommend to them? Is it the way they pronounce the letter? How do they become conscious of that connection to nature and the sacred nature of the letters, feeling it and being one with it and their bodies?
It is also a tradition that we have that we connect every part of the body with a letter. On the other hand, it is not easy for a non-Arab to pronounce some of the Arabic letters. What is important when we pronounce divine names is to stick to the sound code more than pronouncing the letters right.
For example, if you have the divine name Qahhar, the Qaaf is not easy to pronounce for many. If you pronounce it like a K and say, “Kahhar,” it is not a problem in that sense, but the important is that you take the code sound of the name, you then stay in the vibrations.
What we do when we repeat the divine names is we become receptive. We start with the breath then we put on the breath the divine name. We then open ourselves to be receptive to the vibration and the meaning of that name so that the name calls us and takes us, and is then revived in us.
That’s why the Prophet, Allahu alayhi wa salam, says that the ones who have gone deeply through the divine names enter paradise. Meaning recognizing the divine names in us. They are sealed with the name Allah and recognize them in everything around us.
We have the great honor as human beings to be the carriers of all of the divine names. That’s why we can connect to an ant, a tiger, a tree, or the clouds. We are the soul of the universe. That’s why we can bring harmony and disharmony. We seem to be more talented in disharmony.
Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by sound code versus speaking the name?
The Arabic language has fourteen sound codes of forms as we call them. Every form has a different meaning. Some of them are obviously active to the outside and the passivity is hidden. Some of these codes are actively passive to the outside and the activity is hidden. It’s like majesty and beauty. In majesty, the beauty is hidden, but it is there. In the names, it’s the same thing. The different codes have an effect on us. This is what I mean by the codes.
Do you mean the meanings?
It’s not only the meaning but Fa’l and Fa’al. It’s our masdar.
We’re connected to the masdar, the source, or the root?
Yes, the different roots.
I’m thinking of people who are new to the topic who don’t necessarily understand. When you say the sound code, you mean the root which is usually a three-letter combination.
There are also words with more, but generally speaking, there are three radicals or consonants as you call them. These flow into a form. In Arabic, there are fourteen forms. Every form has an effect and understanding. That’s what you call the code.
Would you tell us one example?
For example, the three radicals of K, T, and B. These are three radicals that flow in a form. For example Fa’al. When the three radicals flow in, become katib. Katib is a form or a sound code that is active.
If it flows into a form that is maf’ool and maktoob. That’s a code that is passive. Something is being done with you and through you. If you stick to them, and you understand the meaning of a divine name, then you get that code.
You have the divine name Qadir and the divine name, Qadeer. There’s a difference. You have the divine name Ghaffar and the divine name Ghafur. Both are the divine name of forgiveness. Ghaffar is a general attitude of being forgiving. My general attitude towards life is that I am ready to forgive. I’m ready to understand and forgive. This is with Ghaffar.
Ghafur is another code, which is completely different. You cannot run around in life with Ghafur. Ghafur is there to bring you deep down to an essential wound you carry in yourself, and bring the healing capacity of forgiveness to that wound. That’s what I’m saying about the codes.
It’s like when I think of the emanation of our creation consciousness through sound and through the vibration of sounds. What you’ve put together here is a picture for my mind of these sound vibrations that carry the different elements, and bring them together in different forms where they then have a different action in the creation based on how they’re pronounced based on the codes.
The codes have elements. It can affect our body, which affects our motion, and affect our way of thinking eventually.
What we’re asking Allah when we repeat the divine names is to be guided from the inside and to be healed. In us human beings, healing means to become human. We are not born as human beings. We become human beings.
Allah has sent great souls to this world in order to teach us how to refine and purify ourselves so that we become truly humans, universal beings, or complete human beings. That’s why we always talk about the Insan al-Kamil.
Allah has sent great souls to this world to teach us how to refine and purify ourselves. That way, we become universal and complete human beings. Share on XThat is the complete human being.
You can also say the perfect human being. The perfect human being is the one that brings Al-Awwal, Al-Akhir, Az-Zahir, Al-Batin together.
Are you now working with something new in relation to this topic? Can we have a sneak peek?
I would love to join you in your work. I find your work wonderful. It’s exciting to hear that you are working so deeply with Ibn Arabi, the letters, and the sounds. That would be an honor. I keep on working with them, but I would like to enter deeper into the letters. That’s a big longing.
As we say, “It’s an ocean without a shore.” There are more treasures when we dive deeper.
That is so beautiful to hear, Fawzia, because I’ve learned so much from your books, your classes, and your dhikrs, from just being in the recitation. I’ll tell you a secret. At night when I’m sleeping, I play on a very low sound of the recitation of the names. I’ve downloaded the slow recitation of the names from your website. I play that at night when I’m sleeping along with some other surahs, prayers, and things like that.
Now, I know why you’re shining.
I’m listening to your voice in the recitation, studying, and putting that together. I love to learn from the experience and meditation, and to be in the experience of what awakens. I also put things into spreadsheets and charts. Amany can tell you that I’ve made a spreadsheet of what I’ve learned from Amany, from you, from Ibn Arabi’s teachings, and from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s class. I got this big gigantic spreadsheet.
That will be very helpful for all of us and for people, in general.
You must be very talented in organization.
Yes, she is.
It is a gift. We’re saying earlier about skimming the surface or the ocean without shores. You might take for granted how much you know, and there are others like us who are skimming that surface and dipping a toenail. There is just so much. You’ve got a wealth and Amany has got a wealth, and I am this kid in a candy store who has come here to learn.
Everything that I hear from both of you, I am in awe, in wow, and in wonder. I think there’s another place to dive in. I want to invite you to share that realization that even though you maybe are only this deep in this vast ocean, there are others that are just starting to notice that there is an ocean. There’s a wealth in what you share.
Thank you. That is very kind.
That is fascinating. Your teachings about how the letters appear in the body. One of the things I’m curious about is how letters appear in the body, how they represent that connection to where the sounds are made, and the language of nature in the universe. Also, how it is all connected and how it can awaken us to that vastness of information that’s contained in the microcosm of the macrocosm.
Can you say a little bit more about that? What you’ve given us was a beautiful picture of connectivity there. I wonder if maybe you can say something more about that or give an example of the letter in the body, the elements, the nature, the cosmos, or some connectivity there.
The body is the vessel that carries everything. Making the body sensitive is quite essential for the development of our spirituality, just like humor is important when you walk the path. Sufi tradition works not only with the letters, but they connect them with parts of the body in order to make the body more receptive to Allah’s light that he has put in us, and also his guidance.
The body is the vessel that carries everything. Making the body sensitive is quite essential for the development of our spirituality. Share on XMost of these things are connected to the pineal gland. The pineal gland is one of the most important glands because the harmonic system and the nerve system come together in the pineal gland. The Sufis, in general, love to work with the harmonic system with the glands because they know that they have an effect on the energy of the body.
At first, the mind is under the control of the nafs if we do not practice the opening of the heart. When the heart then is filled with light, it attracts the mind. The mind surrenders to the heart. The heart then is connected to the spiritual heart, and the light of the soul inspires the mind. That means the heart becomes the guidance and the mind translates that guidance into existence.
Only then comes the body and surrender to the soul. If we practice with letters and the level of the body before that, then it is like a support. It helps us to go faster. You have some traditions. For example, you start with the light letters, the Muqattaʿat or the fourteen letters.
There are practices where you start from the navel up to the solar plexus with the alif. You then separate the lam left and right. You then go from the back up on the head with the mim. The solar plexus is the part under the navel. There lies most of our desires and longings. That’s why you often say the spiritual path is that short. It is from the navel to the heart.
You start with the alif, and others are symbolic for many meanings such as lam and mim. You then go to the two points in which we emotionally keep, on the body level, our memories of the past and the future. This is with the lam. You go with that energy up to the mim. The mim is being pressed on the upper part of the head. That means the pineal gland is activated.
You then have the divine named Jami or the one that collects everything. That’s how you can work with the letters This is an old tradition. For example, there is alif lam mim ra, or goes into the back. It means pushing the heart from the back again to open, to learn, and to surrender through the breath with which you touch the bodily heart.
That’s beautiful and deep. I’m relating it to how I am reflecting also in the alif lam mim like connecting it to nature. Every particle, star, or planet has a center or an invisible axis which is the alif, and has a wobbly motion which is the lam. It has a rotation that returns to the original point. For us, it’s returning to Allah. Everything is returning to Allah.
It seems like we are in the microcosm of the macrocosm. Even our body and how it works resemble something in nature too. That is a beautiful approach. Can you share with us the response of how people feel the effects and how they report that effect to you? It’ll be interesting to know the effects to encourage other people to step into these practices.
It depends very much on the temperament of the human being. Some human beings are gentle and receptive like flowers. Some human beings are more like stones. Everyone plays an important role. If you wouldn’t have stones in the world and only flowers, everything would be shaking.
Every human being takes it and experiences it differently. The beautiful thing is that everyone experiences and feels the difference. As with everything else, it’s a matter of practice. The more we play on the string of an instrument, the more we enter and become one with it, feel it, and feel the vibrations. It’s the same thing with letters. The more you practice, the more you are open.
It applies as an instrument of that sound. Any parting words that you would like to offer to anyone who wants to dive deeper into these studies?
Our path is a path in the middle of life. We don’t have a path that says retreat from life. It says, “Be in life. Be an active member.” That means we use everyday life with all the signs, forms, colors, and meeting points as a place for growing and falling in love.
At the end of the day, what we are trying to practice all the time is to be in a constant state of love. We were born for that. Through love, we find a way back home. Our path is a path to find our orientation back home by letting everything remind us of home.
It’s by finding and understanding that the little grass that we look at is as precious as the biggest planet in the universe. This attitude brings us closer to Allah. Forms, signs, and letters may all bring us inspiration and experiences that bring us closer to what we truly are and by that to Allah. In sha’Allah.
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you.
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you and seeing you, especially to you, Amany. Masha’Allah. I wish you all the best on your path. Maybe one day we’ll come and work together. It would be an honor.
Thank you so much, Fawzia.
Important Links
- Rosina Fawzia Al-Rawi Ar-Rifa’i
- Divine Names: 99 Healing Names of The One Love
- Amany Shalaby – LinkedIn
- Universal Chaplaincy Program
- Ocean of Sound
- The Holistic Structures of Existence
About Dr Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi Al-Rifai
Dr Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi Al-Rifai was born in Baghdad and spent her childhood in Iraq and Lebanon. Her grandmother initiated her into the culture and traditions of the Middle East where belly-dancing played a major part as an expression of the world of the feminine.
Fawzia Al-Rawi holds a PhD in Islamic studies. She completed her Arabic, Islamic and ethnological studies at the Universities of Vienna and Cairo. She then spent 12 years in Jerusalem where she brought up her children and worked at the Institute for the Promotion of Palestinian Agriculture and at the University of Jerusalem, while deepening both her theoretical and practical knowledge of Sufism under the guidance of Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Al-Rifai. She has been living in Vienna with her husband and their three children since 2001.
Fawzia Al-Rawi has been teaching Sufism for over 20 years. She holds workshops in various countries and works particularly with women. Her teaching draws on a wealth of experience from a bicultural environment which uniquely enables her to build a bridge of understanding between different cultures, open a space where these can meet and thus contribute to peace.
She has published several books in Arabic, German, English and French.
About Amany Shalaby
Amany served for twelve years as interpreter and translator for Sidi Shaikh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal, who was the Imam for al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Head of the Sufi Counsel in Jerusalem for thirty years. She translated twenty books on Islamic spirituality, written by the Shaikh. Shaikh Muhammad al-Jamal taught that there is only one Divine message for humanity: It is the message of unity, love, peace, mercy, justice, and freedom for all.
