Who Was Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi?

An Introduction to His Life and Work by Luqman Nieto

Talk delivered in Istanbul on 26 October 2026

Who was Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi? This is a question to which you will find many answers. Each person who met him, and each whose life he influenced—and continues to influence—could tell you something different.

Was he a Sufi Shaykh? Was he a political theorist? Was he a philosopher? Was he an ‘ālim? Was he a teacher? A grandfather—even though he did not have children of his own?

To me, he was, and still is, all of that. I was raised under his guidance, attending the educational institutions that he founded under the care of his fuqara. I also had the good fortune of meeting him and living at his house at different times, and I received direct instruction from him.

And yet, if you ask me, his innermost essence remains a secret. Because he was, first and above all, a man of Allah—a man whom Allah took from the most unexpected circumstances and used literally to do His work. And he gave himself completely to Him.

Only someone like Shaykh Abdalqadir could really know who Shaykh Abdalqadir was.

What I will attempt to do is to present you with an overview of his life and work. This will be, of course, my own understanding of it—an informed understanding built on years in the company of his fuqara and steeped in his teachings.

What you will not find here is a dry, academic presentation trying to be “objective”. Of course, Shaykh Abdalqadir was a man, and of course he made mistakes. Don’t I? Don’t you? But even when he erred, he did so while his intention was solely to be in the service of Allah and His Messenger.

If there was one thing remarkable about him, it was his love for Allah and His Messenger and his relentless service to the Deen. From the time he became a Muslim to the moment he passed away, he did not do anything except for Allah and His Messenger.

He never called people to himself. In fact, he used to say that he was pointing to the sun and calling people to it, yet people kept staring at his finger. This was true of many people who followed him and of everyone who criticized him.

That was because his personality was large—larger than most of us have ever seen. That was true even before he became a Muslim. Bob Dylan said he was the most interesting person in London, and London, at that time, was half the world. Perhaps that’s a good point at which to start.

The Most Interesting Man of London

Born Ian Stewart Dallas in Ayr, Scotland, in 1930, the man who would become Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi began his adult life at the center of European high culture, the dramatic arts, and the intellectual avant-garde.

He was raised with a deep consciousness of his Highland lineage and nurtured on Goethe, Shakespeare, and German existential philosophy. Dallas trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the University of London. By his twenties and thirties, he had achieved renown as a playwright, BBC screenwriter, and cultural figure.

He collaborated with key artistic icons of the mid-twentieth century—writing classic adaptations for television starring Stanley Baker and Sir Alan Bates, working closely with Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, and acting in Federico Fellini’s cinematic masterpiece 8½ in Rome.

From this time, we have several plays that were published in the Collected Works of Ian Dallas as well as other later works under the same name. Reflecting on this compilation, Hajj Abdulsabur Kirke wrote that it “is an account of a journey. One man’s journey, told from many angles, yet at the same time a vivid reflection of the journey of a whole society as it emerged out of the period of world war spanning from 1914 to 1945, and culminated in that situation which we see in the world today.”

Indeed, the author confirms as much in his introduction to the volume he says: “My desire is to submit my work to those fellow travelers who seek maps to make sense of their life’s journey.”

Even before entering Islam, Shaykh Abdalqadir was a wayfarer searching for the Truth. He never spoke much of the time before he became a Muslim, yet he never disowned it. During an interview conducted by Riyad Asvat in 2012, he reflected:

“All the dreadful things I did, all the appalling things I did, took me to the point where I had to ask serious questions. So it was not by my virtue I became Muslim, but by a wonderful series of wrong actions for which I am always grateful!”

What led a man thriving in the cultural environment of 1960s London to ask serious questions, and what kind of questions were they? I believe it is best to let that very same man answer.

The Book of Strangers

The Book of Strangers was the first work that Shaykh Abdalqadir wrote after becoming a Muslim. Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley, who is in fact one of the characters in that book, told me that it is an almost factual account of his journey to Islam and his meeting with Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib—with one small exception: in the book, it all takes place in a single journey, whereas in Shaykh Abdalqadir’s life, it occurred over two separate trips.

On the first trip, Shaykh Abdalqadir entered Islam. That was in 1967. Traveling to Morocco, Ian Dallas declared the shahada at the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez before the Imam Khatib ‘Abdalkarim Da’udi and Allal al-Fassi, taking the name Abdalqadir.

He then returned to England, having not yet met Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, and began speaking of Islam among his friends and inner circle. But he knew there was more. He knew that there was a living tradition of knowledge that formed an unbroken chain all the way to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. The following year, he set out for Morocco once more, this time accompanied by Rufus Bewley, who on that very journey embraced Islam and took the name Abdalhaqq.

In an interview in Granada in 2012, Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley recalled one of the moments that inspired him to enter Islam. He and Shaykh Abdalqadir were walking along a hill in the city of Fez accompanied by a French professor who had become a Muslim. Seeing a shepherd tending his flock, the professor went over to exchange a few words. When he returned, they asked him what was said.

The professor explained that when he asked the shepherd where he was coming from and where he was going, the man replied: “Indeed, we come from Allah and to Him we return.” Shaykh Abdalhaqq was so impressed that such an apparently simple man had this truth so deeply integrated into his daily life that it became one of the catalysts for him to enter Islam.

This stood in stark contrast to the cultural milieu of the London they had left behind. At the beginning of The Book of Strangers, Shaykh Abdalqadir describes the intellectual atmosphere in which the main character of the story lives:

«Their ‘knowledge’ cannot teach them how to live in the world. Their learning process is focused on one fragmented aspect of life, and the culture does not provide them with whatever necessary information or practice would unite their activity in the world with the flow of life around them.»

He continues by describing those who are supposed to be the elite of that system. He says:

«They teach, but they know nothing. They think, but they do not reflect. They have an unending stream of opinions and ideas; their sentences flow on endlessly, well constructed and clear. They talk and they talk. Their brain activity does not teach them to walk and to sit and to cross a room and to drink a glass of water. Life remains an enigma and a struggle to them, and death an arbitrary end.»

If The Book of Strangers is a thinly veiled biographical account, then by the same token, we can understand that its author is describing, albeit in a dystopian future, the very atmosphere that he himself had lived in. This is the realization that led Ian Dallas to ask “serious questions”.

That simple shepherd, with his honest and straightforward answer, knew better than all the sophisticated intellectuals of London in the 1960s: “We come from Allah and we return to Him”.

It was in search of this knowledge that Shaykh Abdalqadir set out to meet Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib. That encounter is narrated in the book; though according to Shaykh Abdalqadir, it was Shaykh Muhammad who found him, not the other way around. Recounting a moment spent with Shaykh Muhammad, he writes:

“He listened with courtesy beyond manners, with an attentiveness that was altogether radiant. At one point he sat in silence, utterly absorbed, withdrawn, bathed in the Divine Presence. Light poured from him and filled our hearts.”

At another time, he records the description that the Muqaddim of the desert gives of their Shaykh:

“He seems to do nothing, but look at the activity that emanates from that stillness. You are here, and I am here, and there are many, many more who come and go and are transmuted. But he does nothing. He is . . . gone. You see, when he speaks, he speaks by Allah and for Allah. When he moves, it is by Allah and for Allah. He is a clear mirror which reflects only the Divine Presence. He is the perfect slave of his perfect Lord. He is the Nur al-Muhammadi, the Light of Muhammad.”

According to the book, and corroborated by the accounts of many of the fuqara, after a brief period at the zawiyya, Shaykh Muhammad gave a carpet and a pile of his Diwans to Shaykh Abdalqadir and told him: “Take Islam to your people”. And that is exactly what Shaykh Abdalqadir did.

Before we continue, I would like to mention something about Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib. He had long wanted to take Islam to Europe, inquiring as to which country would be best. In the 1960s, he sent a copy of Sahih al-Bukhari with a personal note to the sister of King Hassan II, who was traveling to England as ambassador. Shaykh Abdalqadir was the answer to his himma. In The Book of Strangers, the author writes:

“I felt for the first time acutely aware of a whole network of spiritual energies, of a web of lovers moving through the ancient city, outwardly invisible but inwardly connected.”

Published in 1972, The Book of Strangers serves as both a scathing diagnosis of modern technocratic society and a chronicle of Shaykh Abdalqadir’s spiritual path.

Following the instruction of his Shaykh, he went back to England and began an intense work of da‘wa. The following year, during Ramadan in 1971, he brought a group of young Western Muslims to the zawiyya in Meknes. Some of them stayed, but Shaykh Abdalqadir returned to London to continue his work and established a zawiyya in Bristol Gardens. It was there that the «strangers» of the modern world began to gather, remaking their lives through prayer, service, and the remembrance of Allah.

The Death of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib and the Meeting with Shaykh Fayturi

In 1972, Shaykh Abdalqadir set out to perform the Hajj with a group of new Muslims, intending to meet Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib in Mecca. However, Shaykh Muhammad died while on his way to Hajj that year in Blida, Algeria.

The death of Shaykh Muhammad was a heavy blow to everyone, especially to Shaykh Abdalqadir. The Shaykh had made him his muqaddim (representative), and while he had gathered a substantial number of people around him, it had always been in connection with their teacher. When he passed away, they felt orphaned.

But Shaykh Abdalqadir had understood something clearly. As Sayyiduna Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, said after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him: “Whoever among you used to worship Muhammad, then Muhammad is dead. Whoever used to worship Allah, then Allah is alive and cannot die.” The work continued.

The decade between 1972 and 1982 was one of intense work and da‘wa. The community grew, and the Ihsan Mosque was established in Norwich. Shaykh Abdalqadir traveled extensively to the U.S. as well as Spain and other countries, and established a zawiyya in Berkeley, California. There, he wrote The Way of Muhammad.

This is another seminal text from this period of Shaykh Abdalqadir’s life. According to Shaykh Abdalhaqq, this book came out of the passionate love that Shaykh Abdalqadir had for the Messenger of Allah. It explains and reveals the inner dimensions of following the Prophet, both inwardly and outwardly, and the path of those who undertake that journey. Another notable book from this period is his masterpiece of Sufism, The Hundred Steps.

The Hundred Steps was written after Shaykh Abdalqadir was called by the wali of Allah, Shaykh al-Fayturi of Libya, who placed him into khalwa (spiritual retreat). This happened in 1976. Before that, Shaykh Abdalqadir had traveled through various parts of the Muslim world looking for a guide. But once again, it was the Shaykh who found him.

Shaykh al-Fayturi was an inheritor of Shaykh al-‘Alawi, who was also a master of the Darqawiyya—similar in that respect to Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib. For this reason, Shaykh Abdalqadir spoke of having united both branches of the Darqawi tariqa. Shaykh al-Fayturi sent a representative from the Libyan embassy to find Shaykh Abdalqadir and invite him to visit.

I have been told that before departing, Shaykh Abdalqadir gathered a group of the fuqara who were with him as the muqaddim of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, and told them that he had found a man whose hand he wished to take. I am not sure whether this was before their first encounter or after having met him once, but that hardly matters. What is important is that he consulted them.

One of the senior fuqara of Shaykh Abdalqadir recounted something the Shaykh told him: “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. But if you want to travel far, travel together.” Keeping good company and maintaining community were central teachings of Shaykh Abdalqadir, and he held them in the highest regard. He considered those who were with him his companions on the path, and therefore sought their counsel.

Shaykh al-Fayturi put Shaykh Abdalqadir into khalwa and said to him: “This will not take long; you are already cooked.” Indeed, he was kept in retreat for only three nights—the same amount of time that Shaykh al-‘Alawi had kept Shaykh al-Fayturi in khalwa. It is narrated that when Shaykh Abdalqadir came out of khalwa, it rained copiously in the area, which had been experiencing a severe drought.

It is also transmitted from him that when he came out of khalwa, he asked Shaykh al-Fayturi what to do next. Shaykh al-Fayturi said two things: “Now there is no hand above your hand,” and, “After being in Mecca, you can only go to Medina.”

Root Islamic Education

In 1982, Shaykh Abdalqadir delivered a series of lectures in the U.S. out of which grew the book Root Islamic Education. This book was Shaykh Abdalqadir’s research into what it really means to follow the “Book and the Sunna”—or, in other words, what transpired in Medina at the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him, that produced the social miracle of Islam.

In the preface to this book, he writes: “It is clear that in Madinah at the time of the Salafi communities man was at his greatest and the social contract at its healthiest and most balanced.”

Shaykh Abdalqadir proposes in this book that Muslims cannot separate belief from acting correctly, and that acting correctly means acting according to the limits set by the Creator and exemplified by the Sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and his companions. This would seem obvious to most, but he saw that its implementation was lacking amongst Muslims. How was it lacking?

It was lacking in the mu‘amalat—that is, in the implementation of the regulations that pertain to the social contract. The nature of money and wealth, the nature of power and its relationship to the individual, the nature of social relations such as marriage and inheritance—the very fabric of the social paradigm had been subverted in the lands where Muslims lived.

A paragraph from this seminal work clarifies this perspective:

“To place the demands of a machine culture over the survival of man, and to prefer systems control over human transactions is against the Kitab wa Sunna in a clear and demonstrable way. The Messenger of Allah, blessings of Allah and peace be on him, did not create machines, but rather he left behind men who were, in their time and ever since have been, lights to inspire, and demand following, by men of heart and intellect.”

He further argues that: 

“It is our conviction that the key to an authentic Islam, salafi wa’l madani, lies in a powerful, uncompromising ‘aqida, an activated fiqh (knowledge of sources, judgement, execution of sentence), and an arabic tongue. Equally, we see that the survival from destructivist jewish control-systems and technique-enslaving politics lies simply with the rejection of the credit system on which present monetary theory works, the refusal of promissory notes (paper money), and the end to the banking system completely.” 

In these two paragraphs, Shaykh Abdalqadir speaks of what constitutes the social fitrah. We are accustomed to using this term to refer to the innate human nature that makes man turn toward the Creator, but as Shaykh Abdalqadir points out in a much later work, The Interim Is Mine, the fitrah is not only an individual disposition, but also the corresponding social paradigm that emerges from it.

In The Rapallo Declaration (1992), Shaykh Abdalqadir states that Muslims have been deprived of Islam. By that, he meant that the social paradigm is what enables man to live a life of complete devotion to Allah—Glorified and Exalted is He (Subhanahu wa Ta‘ala)—without the dualistic disaster that separates body and spirit.

We need to understand this because it is the key to understanding much of Shaykh Abdalqadir’s work. By addressing the separation between ‘ibadat and mu‘amalat, between belief and action, Shaykh Abdalqadir is addressing the central dogma of scientific materialist society: the false dualistic understanding of the split between body and soul that led Western Europe to reject entirely the spiritual nature of the human being, and therefore, to reject God.

In an interview conducted by Riyad Asvat in 2012, Shaykh Abdalqadir stated:

“In the Qur’an we find that it says: Purify yourself with the Zakat. In as much as Tasawwuf is purification of the self, this means you cannot have it unless you have Zakat. So you cannot talk about ‘states’ and ‘stations’, you cannot talk about dhawq, you cannot even dare to talk about fana and baqa when you do not have the fundamentals of the Zakat. You cannot have Sufism in a bordello. That is really the point.”

For Shaykh Abdalqadir, and for those of us who follow his teachings, establishing the zakat in the correct manner—under a Muslim ruler and taken from real wealth: gold, silver, and tangible commodities—is a spiritual task. It is not politics; it is love for Allah and His Messenger and a desire to see the Din implemented so that man can achieve his highest potential and purpose: to know his Lord. It is, if you will, the politics of love.

This was the revolutionary understanding that was expressed in the book Root Islamic Education. Under this banner, Shaykh Abdalqadir established communities around the world that would strive to follow the Din completely. Toward the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there were communities in England, Spain, Germany, South Africa, the United States, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as smaller gatherings in many other places.

Shaykh Abdalqadir placed great emphasis on establishing mosques where the community would gather to worship. He said: “You enter Islam by the door of the Mosque, not the Zawiyya.” He organized conferences to uphold Maliki fiqh, not out of mere adherence to it, but because Imam Malik was the Imam of Dar al-Hijrah—the Imam of the place to which the Prophet (ṣallā Llāhu ‘alayhi wa-sallam) made hijrah and where he established the Din. And he recorded it, as we know, in the Muwatta, which the Shaykh had translated.

I want to quote a talk given by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley that further explains this:

“He saw that the Din had been destroyed and corrupted and subverted not by force of arms, but by the fact that half of the Din was no longer practiced. That the books of fiqh were full of ‘ibadat, but they were full of mu‘amalat as well. And the mu‘amalat were nowhere to be seen. The transactional element of Islam was nowhere to be seen. And he saw that Islam had been destroyed by the imposition of financial techniques, usurious financial techniques, which Allah hates and which Allah has declared war on. This was the weapon that was used against the Muslims, not the force of arms.

And in order to combat that, he understood that it was necessary that the link between salat and zakat, which had been broken, had to be restored. The link between ‘ibadat and mu‘amalat had to be put back if the Din was going to be made whole again. And so he spent the last 30, 40 years fighting for that to happen. That the spiritual life of Islam here in the mosque must be combined with the life of the market outside the mosque.”

This emphasis on the establishment of the Din in its totality was not without consequences. Shaykh Abdalqadir’s discourse changed and began to be much more focused on the outward sciences, even leaving Tasawwuf aside at one point. Many people who followed him left because they did not understand this change. Many scholars criticized him because they had no understanding of usury. Much of the support that he had evaporated. But he was relentless in his pursuit. Remember that it was all with the same purpose: so that men and women could come to know Allah.

In 1981, a large part of the Spanish community settled in Granada, where a strong foothold remains to this day. Shaykh Abdalqadir had an apartment in the Ribat that was established in San Gregorio Alto, in the Albaicín, and would often come to teach. But he was also traveling and had no permanent residence.

During this time, many people entered Islam, among them my parents. He emphasized that becoming a Muslim, and taking the Din seriously, was a complete affair. Your entire life had to change. ‘Ibadat and mu‘amalat, body and spirit, had to be united. This was the key teaching from the book Root Islamic Education. But for some people, this was too much. There were some divisions within the community, which led Shaykh Abdalqadir to relocate to Córdoba in 1983.

I have an analogy to offer that might help in understanding those times. Shaykh Abdalqadir took a group of people from the most diverse backgrounds and uprooted them completely. That was because the soil in which they were planted before was full of poisons, and in spiritual terms, they were young saplings.

Those poisons were the false propositions of a dualistic, atheistic, and materialist worldview. If the fruits of these young saplings were ever to mature soundly—both spiritually and materially—they needed replanting in fertile soil. That soil was Islam. Yet, as every gardener knows, not every sapling survives transplantation.

Between 1984 and 1988, Shaykh Abdalqadir lived in Madrid, Mallorca, and Freiburg in Germany. In 1986, the Murabitun World Movement was founded in Madrid (about which we will mention a bit more later), marking a change for his communities from a traditional tariqa model toward a civic entity led by an amir. This shift was a direct extension of his conviction that mu‘amalat and ‘ibadat had to be united.

His time in Freiburg proved intellectually rich; it was there that he engaged deeply with German thinkers such as Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, and Goethe—the latter the subject of his famous fatwa affirming the poet’s Islam. Materially, however, it was an austere period. While in Freiburg, he lived with almost nothing.

In 1989, learning of his hardship, the Spanish community sent a delegation with gifts, provisions, and financial support. Shaykh Abdalqadir received this gesture as a sign to return to Granada, where he took up residence.

Central to this era was the founding of Medina al-Zahra, an ambitious project to establish a village where the Din could be lived in its communal totality. Creating an autonomous “Muslim village” was a vision Shaykh Abdlaqadir had long nurtured. The project ultimately did not endure, for reasons too many to recount here. Yet I don’t think the failure was one of intention, but perhaps that neither the circumstances nor the people were quite ready.

In 1994, Shaykh Abdalqadir moved to Achnagairn, Scotland, where he established his headquarters. Achnagairn was a zawiyya and a community in its own right.

Throughout all of this time, Shaykh Abdalqadir had contact with many people throughout the Muslim world. For example, he was close to the first President of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegović, during the Bosnian War, and advised him. He also sent a delegation to Albania to serve the people there in their needs—such as medical care—while also reminding them of the Din.

He was also appointed an ambassador for Chechnya during the Chechen war. Years later, as late as the mid-2010s, he received a delegation from Chechnya in South Africa. He maintained contact with Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Universiti Sains Malaysia for his literary contributions to Islam in 2001.

In 1996, Shaykh Abdalqadir visited Turkiye and met with Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. Following their meeting Erbakan held up a gold dinar minted by the community in Granada and stated that this was the currency of the Muslims. During this visit, Shaykh Abdalqadir also led one of the first public Dhikras in a mosque since the founding of the Turkish Republic—at the historic Yavuz Selim Mosque. How this came to pass is remarkable in itself, as Dhikra gatherings remained strictly prohibited by law. Throughout his life, Shaykh Abdalqadir always had a particular fondness for Turkiye and the Turkish people.

There were many books that followed Root Islamic Education and continued expanding on its main premises. For example, The Return of the Khalifate, a historical work on the end of the Ottoman Devlet and how this was achieved not by military defeat, but by economic engineering on the part of Western banking families; Technique of the Coup de Banque, an insightful account of how financial power has come to dominate politics, rendering it almost symbolic, and how it is based on the illusion of fiat wealth; and Sultaniyya, an intoxicating and liberating proposition about the nature of sovereignty in an Islamic society, free of centralized state control.

The common thread in all these works, and many others pertaining to this period, is a systematic study of the origins of Western modernity, its expansion, and how it has affected Muslims.

A key insight that Shaykh Abdalqadir proposed is that the true nature of Western modernity is not to be found in metaphysics, but in the legalization, expansion, and normalization of usury and paper money. It is this which lies at the foundation of Western modernity and which serves as its engine. There is, of course, a philosophical discourse to justify it—the Enlightenment, progress, and evolution—but that which rules and dictates our lives is the nature of the financial system. I think that today, few people would seriously argue against this, although few are still capable of seeing how it is the very engine of our societies. That is because, as Shaykh Abdalqadir writes at the beginning of his book, The Time of the Bedouin:

“A version of reality has been instituted which accords with the power elite’s programmes of the expropriation of personal wealth, and its relocation in inter-connected corporate and statal structures.”

The Time of the Bedouin

Before we continue with the implications of this work, I want to mention an important subject from the period leading up to this book: the term Murabitun.

In 1987, Shaykh Abdalqadir asked my father to organize a public presentation of the Murabitun World Movement in Seville; this followed its founding in 1986 and its first presentation in Bilbao earlier in 1987. During the following years, Shaykh Abdalqadir’s communities identified with this name. The Movement’s purpose was to offer an actionable agenda to Muslims worldwide to aid them in the full implementation of Islam—that is, in establishing the zakat and thus rejoining ‘ibadat and mu‘amalat.

This was not a tariqa, although many of those who adhered to it were fuqara of Shaykh Abdalqadir. It was an open invitation for Muslims of any background, anywhere, who shared the conviction that in order to see the Din of Islam implemented and to see Muslims thriving, we had to reject usury, because Allah has declared war on it.

As is the nature of all political movements—and this was a political movement—they have a lifespan. That does not mean that the ideas and principles behind it were right or wrong, but that their articulation was designed for a particular time and place. By the mid-2000s, this term had lost currency even among its own adherents, because the time and place had changed. But commitment to the Din had not; only a different articulation was needed.

In 2002, Shaykh Abdalqadir moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where there was already a community. His arrival invigorated the community, which subsequently expanded as many people settled in that city. Under his guidance, the Jumu’ah Mosque of Cape Town was established. During the following two decades, Shaykh Abdalqadir led an intense life of teaching and guidance, not only for his fuqara, but for countless people who came to visit him.

Throughout his entire life, Shaykh Abdalqadir had an intense concern for the well-being of his fuqara, the Muslim Ummah, and the entirety of humanity. This manifested in many different forms. For example, once I went to visit him at his house and he asked me how I had arrived there. I answered that I had come on a motorbike, and he told me to sell it immediately. “What could I say to your father,” he asked, “if something happened to you?” I was a youngster and had little to offer, and I was not among those particularly close to him, but he had a sense of responsibility for me.

On another occasion, he called me to his room the night before I was supposed to leave and asked me to stay. He was concerned that I was leaving without any idea of what I was going to do with my life. This was one of the very few times that I sat in front of him as a murid in front of his Shaykh, and the advice he gave me I will never forget. After scolding me, he said, however: “You will be fine whatever you do, and the only advice I can give you is what Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq told his fuqara: Submit to Layla, go wherever She goes, follow the winds of Destiny, turn when they turn.”

I am sure that many of those who met him could recall similar anecdotes. Despite his tireless schedule and continuous intellectual output, he had guests for coffee at 11:30 and lunch at 13:30 almost every day. He was involved in advising people all over the world and always had personal concern for everyone around him, even the gardener.

Shaykh Abdalhaqq has narrated how once, in the midst of one of the Maliki Fiqh conferences that took place in Abu Dhabi—and at a time when they were having some organizational issues—Shaykh Abdalqadir suddenly took a phone call and spent a long time listening to and advising a man who needed him on the other side of the world.

I believe it is out of this concern that his series of political works emerged. We could say that after becoming Muslim, he was concerned with rectifying himself and gaining direct knowledge. As a result, we have books such as The Book of Strangers, The Way of Muhammad, and Indications from Signs. Then, he was concerned with the Muslims and the state of the Ummah. As a result, we have books such as Root Islamic Education, The Return of the Khalifate, and Sultaniyya. And finally, he was concerned with humanity as a whole. As a result, we have books such as The Time of the Bedouin, The Engines of the Broken World, and his last work, The Entire City.

This concern was a preoccupation with guiding himself and others to the Truth of Existence—to Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He—and avoiding the pitfalls, both in this life and the hereafter, of disbelief. While expanding the boundaries of his concern, he never at any point abandoned what came before. It is the sign of a great man who is on an upward trajectory to go from one stage to the next.

I want to comment on something before continuing with The Time of the Bedouin, which marks an important milestone in Shaykh Abdalqadir’s opus. He signed this, and the following books that continued advancing his analysis of the modern world, as Ian Dallas. It is the same name that he used throughout his life for signing books whose themes were not directly related to Islamic topics, but which were written, nonetheless, from the perspective of a Muslim—for example, The New Wagnerian and The Ten Symphonies of Gorka König.

I understand this as an indication that these works were addressed to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and that he sought to make them accessible starting with the name of the author. It is commonly known that the Prophet, peace be upon him, spoke to people in the language they understood and avoided putting them off. In fact, Allah tells us in the Qur’an to call people to Allah with the best words—meaning, in the best manner. I do not know of any of Shaykh Abdalqadir’s fuqara who ever had a problem with this; we all recognized that it was the same man speaking about the same thing.

One of the early fuqara in Spain told me that, when Shaykh Abdalqadir was living in Granada, he would give a discourse every day. People would make an effort to attend, but if you happened to miss one, the person you would ask about it was Mohammed del Pozo. And his answer was invariably the same: “The Shaykh spoke about Allah and His Messenger,” he would say in his calm voice. And he would repeat it again. Only after insistence would he recount the discourse as he heard it.

Shaykh Abdalqadir always spoke about Allah and His Messenger. No matter what subject he wrote on, it was always an invitation to know Allah and to follow the Messenger. In order to do that, articulated for this time, he also had to speak about the era that we are living in and how it is different from previous ones. I believe this is part of the reason for writing his political works.

The central argument of The Time of the Bedouin is that modern political democracy is a deceptive façade designed to mask the true locus of power: an interconnected, non-elected oligarchy of central bankers, corporate monopolies, and technocrats. Traceable directly to the French Revolution of 1789, this modern system destroyed the traditional, organic structures of society—such as monarchies, guilds, and independent communities—leaving the isolated individual completely exposed to state bureaucracy and financial expropriation through usury (riba) and unbacked paper and electronic currency.

Shaykh Abdalqadir argues that because politics has been reduced to a managed script run by media and financial elites, genuine political renewal cannot emerge from within the system. Instead, historical transformation will come from the rise of “the Bedouin”—a term used to describe those living on the edges of the total control grid of the banking-technocracy and endowed with a high spiritual energy. When these individuals come together, bound by the love of Allah and His Messenger, then a new nomos will emerge.

Shaykh Abdalqadir, signing as Ian Dallas, commences this book with the following statement:

“A version of reality has been instituted which accords with the power elite’s programmes of the expropriation of personal wealth, and its relocation in interconnected corporate and statal structures.”

The rest of the book, and the following three books of his political works—The Interim is Mine, The Engines of the Broken World, and The Entire City—are an exposition of what constitutes this version of reality that has been instituted in every field, from politics to science and from philosophy to economics. To do this, the Shaykh says, the oligarchy has borrowed:

“The evaluations and vocabulary of the emergent scientific method of materialist evolutionism”.

Meaning that, in order to hide the expropriation of wealth and its concentration in fewer hands, a version of reality with the language of scientific materialism has been used to construct a worldview that is dualistic and, therefore, deterministic, and which encompasses every one of us.

In order to break free from this worldview, Shaykh Abdalqadir proposes, in his last book, The Entire City, that we need to go beyond political, emotional, and psychological analyses, to where the very essence of language breaks down. Then, we can begin to encounter the Real.

The Path of Love

It is important to note that, at the same time that Shaykh Abdalqadir was writing these books, he was delivering a series of weekly talks during the Dhikras which became The Book of Tawhid, The Book of Hubb, The Book of ‘Amal, and The Book of Safar, which were later collected in the volume Discourses.

These books offer a clear way for those who have arrived at the edge of language, and therefore of psychological identity, to construct a new understanding of how Creation works. This is, if you will, the true version of reality. In The Book of ‘Amal, Shaykh Abdalqadir offers an approach of how to arrive at this understanding:

“It would not be correct to negate Imam al-Ghazali, who is our great teacher, but without denying what he said (that ‘Ilm al-Mu‘amala is necessary before ‘Ilm al-Mukashafa), I would actually say that the opposite is true: ‘Ilm al-Mukashafa precedes ‘Ilm al-Mu‘amala.”

What Shaykh Abdalqadir is indicating here is his own path to knowledge. He is not rejecting that of Imam al-Ghazali, whom he calls our “great teacher”. He is saying that Imam al-Ghazali arrived at mukashafa through knowledge of the mu‘amalat, because the mu‘amalat in his time were fully established; the social praxis of the Islamic ethos was intact. Shaykh Abdalqadir indicates that he arrived at mu‘amalat from mukashafa. Meaning that illumination brought understanding of action. 

This is a recognition of the unity of existence: mukashafa and mu‘amalat are one. You will arrive at one through the other. There is no duality in existence; there is only Allah. Shaykh Abdalqadir used to say that he only got to Allah by Allah. In The Book of Hubb, he writes:

“Muwafaqa is Compatibility. Imam al-Ghazali says that Muwafaqa is the prior condition of the Path of Love. In other words, you have to be compatible with it. It suits you. This is part of the secret of the Khatam, of the Destiny. The Destiny is a hidden thing, but at the same time it of course manifests through events – the event of the person and the event of the action. Allah says in Surat as-Saffat (37:96):

Allah is the Creator of you and your actions.

So it is a secret of the Destiny which is hidden even in the genetic pattern of the individual.”

Shaykh Abdalqadir is quoting al-Ghazali, but is speaking out of experience. Hidden in his genetic pattern was muwafaqa—compatibility with the Path of Love. He exuded this compatibility from his youth as a playwright and manifested it through his sincere search for Allah, and, once he had found Him, through his unwavering love for His Messenger and His Message. It was his destiny. He was a light calling to a light.

He was a man who walked the Path of Love to its outermost reaches, until the “Fire of Allah had reached his heart” (Qur’an 104:6–7), until “the annihilation of the presence of the experiencing lover”, as he himself described in The Book of Hubb. Then he returned, as Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib describes in the qasida The Gift of the Ism al-A‘zam: “to the traces of existence, bringing a Robe of Honor which proclaimed his wilaya and glory”.

In the same book, Shaykh Abdalqadir writes:

“Baqa’, properly speaking, in Ruhani terms, is the beginning of the Deen and its transmission. Our Master is the Master of the Mi’raj, of the Night Journey. What is the result of the Night Journey if it is not the guidance, if it is not the Furqan?”

Throughout his life, Shaykh Abdalqadir dedicated himself to serving Allah and His Messenger. It was based on this that he offered guidance and it was based on this that he offered Furqan, discernment and understanding. First to himself, then to his Fuqara, then to the Ummah and finally to humanity. 

I want to repeat here the description of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib given by the Muqaddim of the desert, as recorded by Shaykh Abdalqadir in The Book of Strangers—for he became that which he admired:

He seems to do nothing, but look at the activity that emanates from that stillness. You are here, and I am here, and there are many, many more who come and go and are transmuted. But he does nothing. He is . . . gone. You see, when he speaks, he speaks by Allah and for Allah. When he moves, it is by Allah and for Allah. He is a clear mirror which reflects only the Divine Presence. He is the perfect slave of his perfect Lord. He is the Nur al-Muhammadi, the Light of Muhammad.

Shaykh Abdalqadir built and dismantled institutions, projects, and movements because he knew they were only tools to form men and women. They were the means by which our intentions were manifested in action, but they were never the goal. The goal was always to leave behind illuminated men and women—men and women who know their Lord, like those he encountered when he met Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib. This was the example of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

Shaykh Abdalqadir showed us clearly the path he walked and taught us how to follow it in order to achieve what he wanted for us. One of the fuqara told me that shortly before he died, he said to him: “You cannot get lost; I’ve left you a map!” But a map is pointless sitting on a shelf. A map is useful only if you are on the move, walking the path. And that, we must do ourselves.

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi returned to his Lord on the 22nd of Dhu al-Hijjah 1442 (1 August 2021), at the age of 90, at Dallas House in Cape Town, South Africa. 

May Allah have mercy on him, and may he be united with those he loved.