Qassidas of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba: The Hidden Masterpieces of Sufi Islam

A Senegalese saint turned poetry into a people’s blueprint. We dive into the world of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba and the Muridiyya, where inner practice fuels outer service and the heart becomes the true center of worship. Ron Brown builds with a guest who bridges Islam and Sufism with lived clarity, showing how Bamba’s poems carry theology, ethics, and law in cadences that ordinary people can remember and embody.

We explore how the Baay Faal transform work into worship—building mosques, feeding communities, and wearing bright patchwork as a living symbol of remembrance. Along the way, we unpack Abjad numerology, magic-square talismans, and the science behind dhikr, revealing how repetition and rhythm shape attention, character, and even neural pathways. Angels are reframed as angles of perception; prayer becomes a practice that cleans the lens of the mind. From the seven stations of the soul to practical litanies for anger and sleep, the conversation grounds mysticism in daily life.

Senegal’s Sufi landscape also opens doors to wider connections: from Farad Muhammad and resistance to sterile formalism, to music that carries sacred teaching across languages—Wolof, Arabic, French, and English. If you’re hungry for a path that honors the Qur’an while embracing African wisdom, community service, and poetic craft, this is a guide to living Islam from the inside out. Listen, reflect, and ask yourself: how can your work become worship, and your worship become a well for others?

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage And Intros
• 2:20 Who Is Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba
• 8:15 Sufism’s Purpose And Roots
• 12:40 Truth, Farad Muhammad, And Protest
• 17:30 Inner Practice Over Outer Form
• 23:05 Muridiyya And The Baay Faal
• 28:40 Work As Worship And Service
• 33:10 Music, Poetry, And Cadence
• 38:20 Acrostics, Numbers, And Abjad
• 44:30 Senegal’s Scholars And Legacy
• 50:05 Titles, Training, And Respect
• 55:10 Talismanic Science And Geomancy
• 1:01:00 Angels, Mind, And Neural Pathways

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:12

What's going on, everybody out there? It's Ron Brown, LMT, the People's Fitness Professional. We got uh the brother in here in the building this evening to build with us about a brother that he talks about a lot. Sheikh Amadu, hold on. How let me pronounce it right. Shake Amadu Bamba?

SPEAKER_04: 0:36

You was on point, guys.

SPEAKER_01: 0:39

Okay, okay. Just just making sure. Just make it sure. How you feeling this evening, brother?

SPEAKER_04: 0:45

Man, all was good. I'm just like just finished reading the book. I shake up and do bumba. So I got my spiritual practice in before the live stream came on.

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

That's peace. That's peace. That's peace. I I like what you got. You got the nice uh what we call that a koofy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03

Yeah, this is one of my favorite ones, man. I try to keep it to where that diamond is like right smack in the middle where the third eye is, you know. I don't know where it out centered.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14

Indeed, indeed. You know, man, you're you're a very you're a very um interesting Muslim brother because um man, I watch you on Facebook sometimes. You know, you get real deep with numerology, if that's what you call it. Um I mean you've you're universal. I I would say you're a universal Muslim brother. Thank you. You you're a universal uh uh uh Muslim brother. I've never seen that ever. You know what I mean? Like you you say peace to the God, you know what I'm saying? Uh uh uh um you you don't you don't argue about the information. You go you'll go, okay, you see it that way. I see it that way too. And then you'll take us into Sufism or something like that. Like you'll take us into Islam, and that is peace right there. I love that about you. You know what I'm saying? I love that about you. It could be um, you know, not only your practice, just your you know, your vast knowledge of the of the culture and the and the religion of Islam, you know what I'm saying? So um I really appreciate that, brother. Um, so now with no further ado, let's talk about Sheikh Amadou Bamba. Let's talk about him a little briefly and then let's go into um you know uh the poet at this poetry, right?

SPEAKER_04: 2:40

Yeah, poetry, um this Arabic word called uh Hasidah, which just what we call in English is a poem or a litany or a pangyric, something like that. Uh he writes a lot of those uh with uh in accordance with topics like uh jurisprudence, um, which is um like your um the the core uh the core core beliefs of the Islamic religion, Tawheed, uh the divine oneness of Allah, um Adab, like ethics and morals and whatnot. And I'd say about 99% of them all uh rhyme or have a particular metric or cadence to it, so that no matter how deep they are, the way he writes them and formulates them, they're they're easy to remember because when you read some of them, they kind of come off sing songgy because they they rhyme. Even if you break a line in half, it rhymes at its halfway point with the end point. So the way he formulates it is like he makes it easy for people to get what would seem like real, real deep teachings. But the way he formulates it makes it real easy to digest and sometimes easy to remember because sometimes I'll catch myself listening to some instrumentals, and one of the poems that I have by him memorized, I'll be like, this instrumental matches up with the same cadence from this one poem from Shakespeare and Obama, and I'll be in here freestyling this poem by Shakespeare Obama over rap instrumentals because uh how mathematically composed they are the way it's almost like he was uh if rap would have been in existence in Senegal at that point in time, I think he would have been probably one of the highest MCs in the game. But I gotta pull this up. Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 4:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 4:32

I don't know if anybody's ever heard of this or read it, but I think I might have sent the link to you. Um the essays on the life and chiefness of Master Farr Mohammed. Yes. I know that's not Sheikh Aqualibamba's like water brother starting there. But if um if anybody's ever read that book or got it and get back in it, because in chap chapter two is about the exact same person we're talking about today. Um if we get, which I'll um, I'll see if I can uh send the link for that PDF. But in chapter two, uh essays of life and teachers of Master Far Muhammad, they give us pretty much an intro to what we're talking about. He said, um, Sufism is the mystical element of the religion of Islam, which is indeed true. The Sufis may be considered a special class of teachers uh whose responsibility is to maintain and transmit hidden and deeper knowledge contained within the Islamic scripture. Their movement, according to Nashra Fatimid, was expressed in outward form as a protest against the formalism of orthodoxy in Islam and gradually develop into a rebellion against the decadence, corruption, and tyranny of a Sikh materialistic society. Pause. Doesn't that not sound exactly like what Pastor Far Mohammed Pakistan came over here and gave us something to get us out of that exact same situation? Right. Just over here. Right?

SPEAKER_01: 5:58

Yes, sir. Hold on. Before you continue, Sister Akkad, again, thank you, thank you for the$10. I really appreciate you. She said, truth is the only life that will save us. Truth is the only life that will save us. Peace, peace.

SPEAKER_04: 6:14

Now check out when the bumba is quoted there and said that out of all things that have existence, truth is the only thing that exists forever.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

Now let's let's get let's now let's get into uh now. So you were building on uh uh you know uh Elijah Muhammad bringing us the teachings to pretty much bring us out of uh like mental slavery, hell, etc. Right? That's where you were going with that. Okay, now um continue.

SPEAKER_04: 6:49

I said um the various definitions of this word Sufi, which I think we went over in a previous video, which have different origins. Sufis trace the word back to an Arabic root meaning purity, like brethren of purity. Sound familiar? Right. Uh referring to one who had is a pure in heart or one of the elect. And others say it means wool, etc., etc., because they always wear these long wool uh cloaks and garments and whatnot. But if we go a little forward to get to the African connection, to make the connection to Master Far Muhammad, they mentioned that one of the greatest Sufi mystics of all time was the African philosopher uh Thul Noon al-Mistri from the 9th century A.D. And although he was born a Nubian slave, he became a model of a Renaissance man because he was well versed in philosophy, law, literature, alchemy, ancient Egyptian history, and hieroglyphics, one of the most important things, I guess they might have used him for. But his writing showed a very deep knowledge of what we now call Egyptology. And people look at Dhu'n as the first Sufi Sufi uh tube. And uh a tube is an Arabic word that means like the the pole or uh some uh a person or being that uh a thing stands on. So the foundation of Sufism uh coming out of Egypt stands on what Dul Nun possessed in the ninth century, is uh what he's saying, which is true. Now I say the Sufis by Idris Shah, they note that Dul Nun founded this dervish order of uh builders. Hmm. Dervish order of builders, you don't say some builders, which had some significant impact on present-day Masonic orders. Now, in Senegal, the most famous Sufi was Sheikh Apanubamba to bring it all together. Apanubamba founded this Murik Brotherhood in 1886, and it's a branch of the Kaderia Sufi order, which started a little bit further up in um Morocco, Mauritania area. And it started out in the same way. It started out as a rebellion against the orthodox practices of Islam because they were uh restrictive to the Africans and their indigenous thought processes, uh rights, beliefs, and practices and whatnot. And Sheikh Apano Bamba took Islam and gave them the inner dimensions of it. So on the outside, you can go to Senegal and it looks just like a Muslim country. But 90% of the people around you are in some Sufi order, some Sufi fraternity, some Sufi brotherhood of some sort. Even though they might look and carry on like Orthodox Muslims, they they know how to whip up a talisman like nobody's business. You know. But he emphasized that the spiritual work is the most important part of the Islamic journey, not so much as the strict, rigid, I have to go make this these prayers, I have to do this this way, I have to do it that way. He meant he mentioned that the spiritual part, the inner dimensions are more important because now the person has a connection with Allah. He's just not doing it because the Imam that drives a nice car said that I have to do it. He's doing it because he feels a connection and he feels motivated and energized. So he did that in a way that it doesn't really devalue the importance of Orthodox Islam and prayer and whatnot, because they still pray, they still go to the mosque and Ramadan and all that. But he he he he mentioned this saying to uh to work as if you were you would never die and pray as if you would die tomorrow, which kind of puts you between a rock and hard praise, right? Like praise if you're gonna die tomorrow and work as if you're never gonna die. So it makes them focus on the inner aspects. So to work, he taught is to uh pray, right? We we get taught it's all right, you can make your hajj to Mecca. By all means, please do so, because every good Muslim is supposed to. But in most Sufi orders, especially with Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, he emphasized the inner dimensions. So he teaches us about the importance of the heart. That's where the true Kaaba is. So we're not taught to make the Hajj to Mecca, but more so the tuba where Bamba is buried, not to make it seem like we're venerating Sheikh Akmanubamba, but out of uh respect for the teachings that he gave, because he's the one that told us that the true center of Islam, the true Kaaba is right here in the heart. This is where I'm supposed to circumambulate and keep this guy clean. Make sure I don't get it.

SPEAKER_01: 11:36

Sounds like more science to me.

SPEAKER_04: 11:38

Right. You see, it all it all lines up. Right. So, like all of them brotherhoods from like Sufi quarters, they form around a similar uh leader. They call him a sheikh. Whereas over here we had Masterfart Muhammad or honorable Malays Muhammad, noble, you know, similar Islamic titles, kind of kind of reappropriated in a Western way. But all of them came to gave us a similar degree of these same teachings. Like, yeah, you can be a Muslim by all means, yeah, go to the mosque, pray, you know, get get good with your practice, but don't forget about the inner dimensions, because you can have the whole Quran memorized and you can make your five-daily prayers every day, and you can own the biggest gas station on the south side. But if you treat black folks like crap and they come in there, it don't matter. If you if you make it all your all your prayer of the day, if you're treating another human being like crap, you know the inner dimension, make sure that people don't do that as as Muslims, along with the other everyday things that they do.

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

That's a fact. So now let's let's talk about the uh the poems, right? So well well, you would you were talking, you know, I wanted to give a little brief history about Sheikh Amadou Bamba. Uh uh, you know, if if you want to maybe expound a little bit on his history and um what what drew what is drawn you to him so much? Because you have we have so many different great teachers and and things. Uh what what made you pick up his uh his teachings?

SPEAKER_04: 13:15

You know it was uh uh uh all at conjunction in life. I was I was going through Islam and had just bumped into Sufism. Uh brother at the Masjid, uh Dawood had introduced these Sufis and this deep mystic poetry to me. And I had never heard of it at that point, but at that same point in time, I was doing my ancestry uh family tree building and whatnot, going back five and six generations. And on my mother's paternal side is where I found uh an actual Sen Belize connection. Like some Wolof ancestry, some Serre, uh Mandinka, some Fulani ancestry because of how we get mixed over here. And right around that same time, I'm bumping into you know all these Persian and Arab Sufis, and the Abbas thought, like, well, where are all the black Sufis at? And type that in online, and that's when I bump into Sheikh Afundubamba. And, you know, I don't know, I hate to hate to like sound like an average black person, but it was like, was I on the pop up from there? Because I saw him presenting something that was still Islamic, still Islam, but it was it was deeper than anything that the Orthodoxy had to offer. And it also wasn't so uh you know strict and rigid that it demonized and and uh you know popped down about any traditional, like African traditional practices, uh spiritual traditions and things like that. Because if I go to the mosque with these big big prayer bees on, man, they already gonna know. They already gonna start whispering to themselves, like in Sufi order and yada yada, and they do all that extra stuff, but it's it's still Islam.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

You know what's funny how I was on a plane with a uh uh Islamic brother. He was reading the Quran and uh you know he started crying and stuff like that because you know some someone he knows just passed away. And you know, you know, I was like, you know, telling him, you know, it'll be okay, you know, just kind of consoling him a little bit. And uh, you know, then we get to talking about Islam, and then I when I spoke up when I spoke on upon Sufism, he looked at it was like it was Sufism is like whatever.

SPEAKER_04: 15:33

It's like an innovation, yeah. Yeah, most of the Orthodoxy kind of look down upon it because it's like they I'll speak from that perspective when they say, like, oh, they uh add on a lot of extra stuff to the practices and they do a lot of things that aren't um a part of the the practices in the sunnah of the prophet and whatnot. But remember how we mentioned last time that you know we'll we'll if I would have been there, I could have taken that and then quoted a Quran verse in Arabic just to see how he would have uh accepted it, right? Like right there in that same very moment for him to look at you and be like, oh, Sufis, mm-hmm. They do all that, all that zikr and they have the big old long prayer bees. Why do they sit there and do all those long prayers over and over? You just turn around and tell them, which is uh barely Allah and his angels send blessings or send prayers upon the Prophet. So sending prayers upon the Prophet or mantras of where is the power, things of that nature. Oh, you who believe, send prayers upon him also in abundance. That's straight from the Quran. So if the Quran's telling me to do my mantras and prayers in an abundance, like not to stop at a particular number, why they just deal with 99 and the Quran says keep on praying, like the Bible says, pray without ceasing. It don't tell you a specific specific number to pray to, just tells you to pray, you know, have a spiritual practice because the world is crazy out there, huh?

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

For sure. Now, the uh this brother uh Ron Rondo Ellisworth uh says Tasa Wolf. Well, I don't know what that is. Uh you know what that word is. Oh, same same thing.

SPEAKER_04: 17:27

Uh Tasawuf is like the Arabic word for what we call Sufism. Like if you look in the middle of it, the S-A-W-U-F, that's what we get the Sufie from, kind of forcing it back into Arabic. Uh Tasaw is like the act of or of being a Sufi, and a Sufi is one who practices as Sawuf. But yeah, he's part of the general understanding of Islam before I like how you wrote it at certain power bases. We don't talk about the Abbasids and the Umiyads and the Ottomans, by the way. But a previous teacher told me that there had to have been an inner dimension for the outer dimension to form around it, just like how we were created, right? We in triple darkness, and then this little fleshy lump forms and starts to beat out of nowhere, out of nowhere, right? And then the body forms around it. So, like that fleshy lump, that heart where it all starts at, that's Sufism or Tasawf. And then the body that forms around it is Islam. So he spot on it had to have been there in order for that to be a structured form of it in existence.

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

I like how you put that. So you said this uh fleshy form that basically came out of no out of nowhere, quote unquote, right? And then the flesh was formed around it, and that flesh is Islam.

SPEAKER_04: 18:52

Also, Allegheny, because like Suf is just like Jesus and a lot of the other prophets, their wordsmiths was one of the things they mentioned in that book about um uh Master Far Muhammad in the next chapter, which is why um, like sometimes they mention some people can look at some of the lessons from like Sufism and from certain weapon traditions and can only see them at the circus level because of how they're worded. They look like they're supposed to be read just that way, you know, memorized just that way and regurgitated just that way. But if you look at the Supreme Wisdom and go through all the chapters, you realize everything has a particular number in each particular chapter. But that ain't kabbalistic, bro. I don't know what is. So each chapter has a certain amount of numbers in it, and each of them certain numbers equate to an alphanumeric pattern, also. If you were to read them or figure out the pattern all in order, it's probably a hidden message within the numbers, if it's because they're numbers right now. So if they were to be flipped into their numerical format, you could figure out that it might be a hidden message just within the numbers without even reading what he wrote in the book.

SPEAKER_01: 19:58

You know what? Now you're gonna now you got me to now you got me to thinking.

SPEAKER_04: 20:03

So so that's one thing I love about Bumba, man, because that's why he that's how he writes. Like, um, I'll see if I can pull up an example a little later on, but he writes uh his poetry on what's called an acrostic. So not only do they rhyme and then they they explain deep concepts um in a in a you know condensed manner, he'll take the title of uh of a poem like Albaraka, the blessing, for example. And it's like an eight-line poem, but he'll use the first letter of each letter of the title of the poem, like ba ka. So the first line, the third line, fifth line, and the seventh line will all be those letters. The first line's a B, second line will be an R, the third line is a K, and so forth with the H. And he would use those letters to start the sentence. So in some cases, you can read his poetry from right to left or left to right, and also vertically, up and down, if you know that certain letters at the beginning of each odd numbered line all spell a word together. And I'm pretty sure that if Shekov and Bamba mentioned in chapter two of essays on the life and teachings of Master Part Muhammad, that a lot of the wisdom we got, whether it be the NOI, whether it be 5%, whether it be the Morris Highest Temple of Black Peace Stones, it don't matter, can also be studied in a similar way. If we pay a little bit of extra attention to the numerical order, of if there's any sub-numbers, how many numbers appear in a particular chapter, what letter equates to that particular number, you know, that there might be something hidden that is not really taught out loud in the book because it had to be written in such a way to where the true teachings are hidden, but enough is given so that the people are able to dive into it and hopefully find it themselves. And abjad, that right there, that's it, that's spot on. That's the uh essentially the Arabic equivalent of what people know as um Jimatria. Like the A is a one, the B is a two, C is a three, but that same system in uh in Arabic. Uh it's just this is just like a Muslim to take something and blow it up. I don't mean to make that a joke, but that this the system works like three different ways with uh with Abjad. But for uh the intro with Sheikh Afghan Dubamba, he was uh he was born in 1853 in uh in a family of judges and uh marabouts or grios. And uh a marabu is and a grios like a keeper of sacred wisdom in uh in West Africa. Uh they have uh Kadare Sufi scholars on his father's side, the Kadare Sufi order from Sheikh Abdul Kata Jelani from uh northern Africa, I believe he's uh Algeria, and his mother's side from uh Tijani uh Sufi scholars have a prominence in Senegal and Nigeria. Um Maribou, like you say, is a Muslim saint or a holy man. And a Grio is a keeper of oral and sacred and written tradition, but he kind of emphasized all of those into one with how he wrote. Uh he was born around the time of I say shake Antijoke would have been a very, very young child uh around his time in history. If anybody's ever heard of like uh Sheikh Antijoke. Uh Sheikh Anta Joke was actually um the adopted son of Sheikh Ibrahim Fall, who was one of the best disciples of Sheikh Apanoubamba. So even Sheikh Antijoke has a background in Sufism uh in West Africa. Because, you know, most don't know because it blew my mind when I figured it out. Uh Sheikh wasn't his first name, you know. Now I know Sheikh is a title you get, you know, going through the degrees and stuff. Anta isn't even his first name. Anta is the name of Sheikh Akman Dubamba's older brother, who Sheikh Anta Joke trained under. And it's also the name of Sheikh Akman Dubamba's father. So he was given Sheikh Akman Dubamba's father's name as a blessing to have to go in through the system. So Joke is literally all he kind of has left. I hate to say it like that, but Joke is his clan name, but Sheikh means he's he's a straight-up Islamic and Sufi scholar. And Anta makes his connection with Sheikh Akman Dubba's older brother and his father, because they both carry the same exact name. Blew my mind because the people in Senegal know who they are, because if you go to Sheikh Anta Joke University, there's a big statue of him on the outside, right? In a pure Muslim country, but on the outside of his statue, they're the uh the cartouches of all the pharaohs that he did all of the scientific work on to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were black during that time frame in history when the Egyptologists were trying to paint them white. But if you if you try to put that in a in another Muslim country, the statue will get knocked down because it's first it's a statue, it's a depiction of a person which is haram in Islam, right? And then you have the cartouches of these black pharaohs around the statue, which is also an image that depicts something that's also haram in Islam. The Arab country wouldn't have that. But the Senegalese do, because they understand, they know where they came from, right? But they also know that the system that they practice that we call Sufism still has fringe aspects of comedic sciences in it, too, so they don't trip over the fact that Sheikh Anta Jok has a statue out there with comedic pharaohs' names around it on the outside. Some of them can probably explain those hieroglyphs.

SPEAKER_01: 26:05

So would you say that Islam has its hierarchy and its own uh like trainings and systems to you know give your get titles or give people titles such as sheikh and etc.

SPEAKER_04: 26:23

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um you can see it sometimes in demosogy, like um it's used as a term of endearment, like uh what's up, bro? Man, what's up, homie? Every now and then you'll get like a salam or like um imam, but the person that's trying to shake my hand know that I'm not an imam. They just know I read Quran a lot, you know. They always see me reading Quran, so they'll call me Imam is like a term of endearment or you know, kind of a little joke. Or if they know I try to study a little deeper and you know, still play it safe every now and then. It's uh salaamu alaikum shaykh, you know. It's just a you know kind of something to say, but they they they know that's why they say it. Like I see something in you, you know. You you doing something we usually don't do in here, you know. You're doing a deeper practice than anybody else in the mosque is doing right now. Like you know a little something. Let me shake this bro hand and grip him up real quick and see where he what he what he does with his stump. And it blew my mind the same as this. You made to realize that it kind of works the same in there. Which what's verbalized and said backwards is different. You know, of course they come from Arabic, but a lot of the a lot of the stuff you might see over here in situations like that line up exactly what was done on that side.

SPEAKER_01: 27:43

Gotcha. We uh this is another who's uh Bay Fire. What's that?

SPEAKER_04: 27:55

Baifal. That's the uh the disciple of Sheikh Alpha Nubama I mentioned that um that adopted Sheikh Antajo. Uh Baifal or Sheikh Iber Fall. Uh he married Sheikh Antajo's mother uh in the Sufi group that uh was born from under him. They call themselves uh Baifal, which is still still based in Senegal, still stem from the teachers of Sheikh Apnubamba, but they uh they embody one of the greatest disciples of Sheikh Apnubamba and take the name of that disciple as the name of that particular branch of the order.

SPEAKER_01: 28:40

So, what would be the difference between Islam and synagogue and Islam in let's say in an Arabic country?

SPEAKER_04: 28:51

Well that we still got the word bifall up, because that's a perfect example, because uh in a in an Arab country, you won't you won't see people missing daily prayers, you know. But if you were to go to synagogue, there'll be a particular group of people that you probably don't ever see go to the mosque. And the by the byfal of those particular groups of people, the ones that probably never go to the mosque. There's some that do pray, but they get way into the inner dimensions, like that. Um my work in service is a form of prayer teaching from earlier that they pull from the Quran, they they expound on that and can make connections with certain hadith that mention, like, oh, if so-and-so builds a masjid or a mosque for the glory of Allah, he gets the blessings for uh every person that prays in a different spot in that mosque. So those byfal are the ones that are building the mosque that everybody's praying in. You know, they're the ones doing the work and the community service, but there's some that need to get built. They're the ones that get called on. When the Orthodox and some of the other Sufi orders are fast and doing wrong. Ramadan, the byfal are the ones that are cooking the food for the other ones to break their fast with. So they're, I won't say they're outside of the uh outside of Islam because to a to an Orthodox Muslim, it looks like they are. But they've they've essentially just transcended the uh the orthodoxy. I've heard some say, like, uh, and hope nobody takes this as a form of disrespect, but some said that the five daily prayers are for people who forget Allah, they can be reminded. So go ahead and get yourself back straight, you know, get back in line. But for those that don't forget Allah, like the the the byfal kind of uh build the mind and the character to be like there's no point of uh there's no point in praying. Wow, whoa, whoa, okay. That is interesting. I mean, for the to come out like that, but like there's a story of uh of a disciple noticing that about this uh Sheikh Iball and that he doesn't pray. So he goes running back to uh Sheikh Afanubamba, and then he tells him, like, hey, Sheikh Iba Fal like, why is he not praying? He's telling everybody he's a Muslim, but like he's not praying. And Sheikh Afadubamba knows why, because by following Sheikh Ibafal reach this the a station to where like they're they're just beyond. That's just kind of the only way you can describe it. They're just beyond all that. Like surface levelism, orthodoxy, they're beyond all that. So Sheikh Afadubamba tells this guy, all right, so go back to go back to Sheikh Ibraf and tell him that I told him to start praying. So this guy runs back to him and tells him that Sheikh Afadubamba told you to start back praying. And Shaykh Iba Fal throws his hands up and says, Allahu Akbar, and he starts making prayer after prayer after prayer after prayer, nine stop in the story. Like started praying, tapped in and did not stop. When he got done with the prayer, he said, Allahu Akbar and started over again. And this frightened the guy that told him this, or he goes running back to Sheikh Abu Bamba is like, I told him what you said, but he's he just started praying and praying and praying, and he won't stop. So Sheikh Abu Bamba tells him, like, this is why the bifall don't pray. Like, they're constantly in remembrance of Allah. You're gonna plug them into a source like that. What's reality to a person when you when you when they're constantly in remembrance of Allah and you plug them directly into the a way that you can draw on and force and source and power from God? He won't be he won't build the mosque if we if we let him start praying. So the fact that they're doing all this work in community service and doing all the things that the others can't do is a form of prayer because those things are also prescribed in the Quran. So now run back to him and tell him I told him to stop praying. Uh, with what he which he does.

SPEAKER_01: 33:06

Now, um the byphal, uh I like this subject here. The brother says Ron Du says uh they wear bright colors too.

SPEAKER_04: 33:17

And I love the meaning behind it too. Um, if if anybody ever has time to look those, these two uh brotherhoods up in Senegal, the Murid and the Bifal, it's um it's like if we look at it from like an old school Sufi perspective, it's like the path of sobriety and the path of intoxication, like not drunk intoxication, but like you are wrapped up, you're caught up in divine remembrance of Allah to where certain Orthodox practices just don't do it for you anymore. You have to dive deeper. So you'll see a lot of the murid in Senegal wearing all white, solid colors and whatnot, because of that singular divine focus. But with the byfal, they wear a lot of uh bright colors, patchwork and and whatnot, because of that same level of remembrance. They see that same essence, that same light from the people who wear all white, but they see that from all other different perspectives. So, like how you were saying earlier, like kind of kind of universal. The byfal are probably like that because they're universal. They're still Muslims. I wouldn't dare tell one of them, oh bro, you're not making prayer, you're not a Muslim, because I'll be the first to say it, they're definitely way more universal than me. They understand the Quran at a level that I can't comprehend, probably.

SPEAKER_01: 34:39

It says, I'm reading this here. Uh, Senegalese Muslims believe that hard work is the way to heaven. Hard work and then just working. Just like as you said, as you said earlier, they would be the ones that build the mosque and and and and and uh make the food for the people after uh fasting for Ramadan, right?

SPEAKER_04: 35:04

Indeed. Almost kind of like how we get taught over here, like Elijah, Master Far Muhammad taught us the importance of getting ourselves some land over here, too. You know, but you gotta work to be able to get the land. When we get the land, we gotta work to be able to maintain the land. So, you know, there's this connections for uh for days. Just uh I think from the Senegalese perspective, there they they come off a little bit more uh orthodox looking because of the dress, you know, I kind of carry themselves and whatnot. But they have the children.

SPEAKER_01: 35:33

Right here, they look like Rastafarians. Right. Did you what do you say about that? I'm looking at something now.

SPEAKER_04: 35:43

They look like rosters, they have dreadlocks and you know that may be a hidden connection because the bifol are also uh pretty uh pretty big in the in the music industry over there. Like the music industry probably ain't as you know the same as big as uh ours over here. But nine times out of ten, if you see uh a Senegalese person with dreadlocks with a microphone in front of them, like either either bifall, they're they're real, real industrious.

unknown: 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 36:10

Okay, so that's how they take that that work. That work is is is blown up into uh a different uh perspective in a different dimension. So now they take that same work that this one would have done to build the mosque, and they take the teachings, they take the ethics and morals, they take all their inner dimensions, even some of their deep teachings, and they put it in their song lyrics. Yeah. So not only are people listening to some good sound and vibrational music, they're also listening to some music that has the essence of some of these teachings encoded in it, also, the same way as Sheikh Aquani Bumba did with writing his poetry. Like finding a way to get the message to people. If people don't want to read a book, I'm gonna write a song and make the song sing songgy and catchy. I'm gonna make the song about focusing ourselves back on what we need to do as a people, or donating to the needy, helping the you know, down and out, donating to shelters and whatnot, topics like that. It's always included in their songs.

SPEAKER_01: 37:07

So can you give me an example of the song now?

SPEAKER_04: 37:13

See we go to Legio L I D I O P He has Arbeit Zion, yeah. Zion and if not Zion, probably um Jah Love by Lee Joke. Because uh in that one he uses um a couple different versions of Praise God uh in the song lyrics in the chorus. So you'll hear him say, like Alumdalilla, Praise Allah, Praise God, Praise Ja, things like that throughout the song. And he's by far straight from Senegal, but every now and then you'll you'll you'll catch a Bible verse thrown out every now and then, or you'll you'll catch him big up a reggae artist every now and then. Every now and then he'll he'll flip from English to French to Wolof all in the all in the same exact song. But if it if it wasn't for Shake Off, Dubumbo already have written poetry like that, you know, he probably wouldn't have had the motivation to do the same thing in song for him.

SPEAKER_01: 38:39

Wow. Okay. So now uh poems. I think I see it here now. I don't know, it's just gonna give me a copyright streak. I doubt it though.

SPEAKER_02: 38:53

This is a Mahaibol naffi.

SPEAKER_04: 38:59

Yeah, I have that book. Um that's uh that's actually one of the sides of one of the writings from Sheikh Apnubamba. Yeah, Mahai Bulnafi Madayh Shafi, or the the useful gift that brings healing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 39:14

So uh I can you I I'm trying to find an example of these poems here.

SPEAKER_04: 39:41

S S I D A. I see the lyrics. Call it one of my favorite channels in regards to the poetry, because they'll upload the the Arabic for those that can read the Arabic and they they transliterate the Arabic on screen for for those that you know can't read the Arabic, they can still kind of try to uh read along and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01: 40:21

Now with this with these poems, how do you use these poems? Is uh do you use it to raise your own vibration? Um, do you use it just to listen or do you listen do you do you uh use it to like help you with your studies? What's what's the purpose of the of uh the poems?

SPEAKER_04: 40:43

Depending on the depending on the phone, uh I guess you can say some are multi-versatile, but the majority of his are all prayers on the prophet. But he does have some that are like prayers of protection and whatnot. Uh shaitan, that's uh the name of a poem, but that that phrase means I seek the protection of Allah against uh the accursed Satan or the accursed shaitan. But the way he the way he writes the poem, it it does it comes off poetic, it comes off sing songgy. But if we were to like break down like word by word in each line what each what each word means with context and bring it over into English, it shit.

SPEAKER_01: 41:36

I think I gotta go to uh a couple of lines here in this so besides the bifile in in the um what'd you say mem um Madrid or Memor not Madrid Memorid? Memoriz Mourid. Morid Morid. Besides the Morid and the Bifal, what other Sufi groups you would you know put in the kind of like the same category?

SPEAKER_04: 42:07

In that part of the world, the Tijani, uh T-I-J-A-N-I, the Tijani Sufi order. They're um they're big in Senegal, also, but you'll catch the the largest portions of their movement a little bit further south, from like Guinea, uh on down to Nigeria, uh not much further south than that. But they were also uh they also traced themselves back to I don't know if Ahmed Tijani was a quote-unquote hey rare, but not, but he was from Algeria, the supposed founder of the order. But the the guy that that order is named after didn't really found it per se. It was founded by uh uh uh African guy from Guinea, uh El Hajj Umar El Fujal. He went and started up under that Sufi teacher after he took to take his Hajj to Mecca and he came back to West Africa with the Sufi teachings. So other than the Baifal, the Mordadia, and the Tijani, those are the main three uh I focus on only because, you know, not to down any others, but when I look at them, I see people who look like me. You know, when I when I look at them, I or even if I'm around, I don't I don't feel alienated or left out, or you know, other than the fact that sometimes some only speak wolof. You know, I don't I don't know woolof, but but other than that, I don't I don't feel different. I don't feel like I need to be any less of a person who's into African traditional religions to be around them just because I'm a Muslim. You know, I don't have to uh tuck my talismans, you know, because Muslims do like roll over talismans. That's that's black magic. Like, nah, it's protection for people like you.

SPEAKER_01: 43:55

Right. So so in in Sufism, they use talismans, you're saying. Definitely.

SPEAKER_04: 44:06

Almost not the same as uh the stuff in the Kabbalah, it's just done from uh from an Arabic perspective and point of view in Quran versus you using Arabic and you used with some of the same formulas.

SPEAKER_01: 44:17

So so this would be uh liking to um uh Yoruba, um not Yoruba, but uh uh occult, occult science. Yoruba and um um, yeah, well I'll keep saying Yoruba, so that's the word. So let's get keep with that then.

SPEAKER_04: 44:33

Yeah, so like I mean that's a solid connection too, because what uh what they do, you can find the same thing in Sufism, like with the Yoruba and Ether, you know, the they'll do divination and draw the lines, one line, two lines, the one dot and two dots in the sand to determine the Odo and do divination. That's geomancy. But that exact same thing is done within Sufism, it's just not talked about a whole lot. It's just I don't I'm not gonna say it's kept hush, hush. It's just uh kept until the the disciple reaches the level to where they can, you know, get into it. So would it Yeah. I'm sorry, go ahead. So no, let's just say just uh because because if not, sometimes some of those things can be a little bit too deep for someone if they're still orthodox minded. You know, you kind of have to get, I don't want to say broken away from the orthodox mind, but the person would have to be trained to be more susceptible to understanding deeper truths and realities than just the surface level of orthodoxy before you get into stuff like talismans and whatnot. Like the the cover of my last book, that was uh that's just just a straight up straight up talisman.

unknown: 45:44

That's it.

SPEAKER_04: 45:44

It's a three by three talisman and and each of the squares is a particular number. And the way the if a person were to use that to make a particular talisman period, they would start off with number one and enter a code and number two, enter a code and number three, number four, number five, number six, seven, eight, and nine. But it's all um I don't mean to dispel it all like some look at it as straight magic. Like if you enter certain signs and symbols and magic squares and certain numerical orders, you can literally, you know, imbue certain angelic forces and create a talisman. But to simplify it, like what it what it is is just a harmonious arrangement of numbers. If I if I add all three of those rows up, they'll all equal the same number. If I add them all straight up and down, they'll all equal the same number. And there's only one way for numbers to be arranged in a three by three square for them to all equal a particular number, which is the mathematical science. But when a cult is infused with that mathematical science, you know, sometimes you know things can get a little deep.

SPEAKER_01: 47:02

Now, let me ask you this: what do you say to people who say angelic forces don't exist?

SPEAKER_04: 47:10

Each is on, because um, I I try to look at it a little bit deeper than like what it's described as over here, because English ain't that descriptive. I'm I'm figuring that out, studying Arabic nowadays, because the the the way you can break down one Arabic word and it takes a sentence to describe this Arabic word. I don't know many English words you can break down and it takes that much to describe what that word means in English. It takes a lot more to describe what a word means in a foreign language than it does in English, it seems. But again, like not to dispel it, but some sometimes I think shock value uh can be the best teacher. Because if you look at somebody like Manley P. Hall, like somebody like super occult like him, and like the secret teaching of all ages, when it gets into like embryology and you know, the the study of the inner workings of the human body and what each of the particular organs on the inside of the body part does in correlation with its religious equivalent and like biblical stories and whatnot. The angels are just different perspectives that the mind is able to perceive based on how many neural pathways that are connected from the mind stretching its own tensile ability. So the angel is just an angle, it's just another perspective from the mind to be able to see and perceive a thing. I know it could probably be explained a different way from another occult system, but I'm I'm I'm not one of the ones that kind of believes in like angels with wings flying around and whatnot. There's always something deeper than what is described in the book.

SPEAKER_01: 48:43

Yo, you gotta break that down one more time, brother. Yo, yo, you gotta say that one more time because uh I was thinking the same thing. The same thing, you know, like uh the Western world makes everything like I would say Western science, right? Well I'd say Western world. The Western world will push spookism and then turn around and say that's spookism, you know what I'm saying? You know, so um how did you how do you explain that again? Like, what's angels to you? And the Manley P.

SPEAKER_04: 49:22

Hall, sorry for cussing Manley P. Hall fucked me up because if it weren't for him, I don't think I would have gotten as deep into Sucasm as I did. Because bumping the Manly P. Hall a little early on the journey, but to see him describe like embryology or how certain body parts uh function, and then he overlays those of pretty much everything. It's just all like prosecution science, but how certain body parts function in correlation with certain uh biblical or religious stories, that the the angels were uh angles or different viewpoints, different perspectives that the brain is able to achieve, uh neural pathways that are able to uh connect to to make connections within the mind. So now there's a new solid connection in the brain that's able to work. You know, so for somebody that's like, oh bro, that's spookism. Like, I'll just, you know, somebody's deflated and you're like, yeah, man, let's be a homesteader. They're nothing but your own brain, bro. If you can't get it, then that's easy.

unknown: 50:19

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 50:20

Right. You know, it's all the thing when they want to get a cult occult with it, like it's either all solar, stellar, lunar, or something to do with the human in the human body. So that that gets rid of all of the spooky stuff because it's definitely stars, there's definitely a sun, it's definitely a moon, and it's definitely a human body right here. So ain't nothing spooky about that stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 50:43

Right. Now, how do you reach those levels to where you can basically take your mind or brain to another level to where you could start to open up different pathways to see things that the average person can't do meditation, prayer, and things like that?

SPEAKER_04: 51:04

Definitely. Um, I can bounce back and say it's definitely a lot of the teachers from Sheikh Kaku Nubamba. Um, he wrote poem The Select of Jinnan, uh, The Pathways to Paradise. And in a few places in it, he'll give like some spiritual practices, like, um, oh, you who believe uh it would behoove you to uh to recite uh Bismilah or Rahman and Rahim 21 times before you go to bed, reciting Bismillah or Man and Rahim 21 times before going to bed is like a described as a form of spiritual protection for any uh like evil or demons or nightmares or things of that nature that may come and hurt or harm a person. So if a person's beliefs, you know, and stuff like that, it will probably be described like that. But from a science of the mind perspective, it's just like, no, before I I drift off into consciousness, the last thing my mind is thinking about is something from a higher reality, something spiritual, something deep. So I'm not going to sleep worrying about what I'm gonna do tomorrow, Lord, how I'm gonna feed these kids, Lord, I gotta get the oil changed in the car. You know, I went to sleep with something spiritual, something deeper. So it not to deflate it, you know, but it can always be explained in a way to where the person's like, oh, I'm just making myself not trip. You know, that's why I ain't had no nightmare in a long time. Because I try to say a little prayer or something before I go to sleep. And the last thing I think of be something, you know, spiritual or something deeper than the crap going on outside, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 52:37

And the actual fact. So now um I want to go into um so the hidden masterpieces of Sufi is Islam, we're already going into that right now. Um, can you give me an example of maybe so okay. Coming from the 5% age, I don't know if any 5% is on right now, um, but 5% is the ones that I've been around, some of them. Um uh uh it's like um anything that can be well that's that's basically the science of the teachings, right? Anything that can't be shown and proven is not reality, right? So prayer isn't something that is done and it's not a practice in a five percent nation, right? Prayer is like looked at like prayer, really? You know what I'm saying? So can you give me examples of of of of of the benefits of prayer and who would you be praying to?

SPEAKER_04: 53:46

I was just reading this before. Boom. In a hadith reported by Suleiman Ben Siraj, it says that I was sitting with the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, when two men began to argue and curse at each other, and the face of one of them turned red, and the veins of his neck were swollen from immense rage. So the prophet said, I know of a phrase that if he were to say that heartfeltly, his rage would vanish. And that phrase is, I owe the Bilahim and I sweat the Rajim, or I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the accursed. So the prophet said this to the man, and the man was still mad. So the man says, What does this have to do with carrying anger? So the prophet says, and well, since anger comes from the shaitan, anger comes from the Satan, anger comes from your lower self that's inflamed right now, you should seek refuge with Allah, your higher self. Right? So it's it's still oriented the person to look within. So, like, even in that particular instance, the shaitan is the person's inflamed ego or the person's inflamed lower self that's allowed to rise up. So, yeah, definitely seek protection against that. But in that case, the Bilahi menashita regime is looked at as an incantation or a prayer in Islam and in Suthism. But it has a, you know, it has pragmatic meaning, you know. If we don't allow it to continuously be looked at through like a super religious or orthodox lens, and we don't kind of hide the esoteric layers, because a lot of times, like the esoteric layers are what people need to make these connections. Like we need to see ourselves in the story so we make connections. Like, I need to know that if I if I embody some some of these qualities and character traits, that makes me one who possesses praiseworthy character, and one who possesses praiseworthy character in Arabic is Muhammad. Not saying I am the Prophet Muhammad, but like it means that you possess praiseworthy characters. So it's it's a that name is a is a it's an action verb, it's an embodiable trait. Yeah. But if a person's too orthodox, you say that to them, they're like, nah, brother, you can't do that. You can't say that. Nah, you can't say that.

SPEAKER_01: 56:14

Now, what is uh naff?

SPEAKER_04: 56:19

That's the Arabic word for uh that the ego or uh lower self. So I think what we mentioned in the last one, the um the seven stations of the of the soul. So the the nafs or the soul goes through seven successful stages, almost like the seven uh chakras in the eastern uh traditions and whatnot. And it in itself is still a path of purification, like it's it's also like a bit of Sufism hidden within Islam because the we'll just say, like, for the first chakra or this first station of the soul, where the nafs is, it's the soul that's inclined to do evil. So this person just doing wrong. You don't know why. At the second station, now it's the naps or the soul that is self-reproaching. So now it's like, why am I doing all this bullcrap, man? Like now it's starting to check itself. At the third station, now it's the naps of the soul that's inspired to do good. So now it didn't check itself enough to where it's like, all right, bro, I'm done with all that back there. Now I'm gonna try to do good. And right there is the most important step because the fourth chakra is the heart. We were hitting on that earlier, right? So sometimes that's the hardest spot to get to because you really do have to chop off some stuff down here, you know, to be able to rise up to the heart space. But at that point, the person is the soul at peace. And Sufism, that's what's that's where Islam begins. So if the person's still attached to the ego and the lower self and they run around saying they're Muslim, you can look at him and say, Yeah, no, yeah. I ain't gonna say it out loud, but you know, the person's carry their actions. But now that the person's at peace, they'll start to act and carry themselves differently at the fourth, at the fifth, it's the sorry the soul that is pleased with Allah, at the sixth, the soul that Allah is pleased with, and at the seventh is the unification. Right? So now you realize man and Allah are one at the seventh, you're not in the body no more. You're transcended, you went beyond.

SPEAKER_01: 58:31

Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_04: 58:32

So if that ego or that lower self is not purified at those first three steps, and it's allowed to rise up, that's that's when people start acting devilish. Because that, you know, like that that Hadith was saying, the the ego rises up, and that ego rises up, it comes from Satan, it comes from the devil, or it is the devil. Yeah. It's like there's white devils and black devils, they're Mexican devils and Chinese devils and Japanese devils.

SPEAKER_01: 58:57

Actual fact. That's a fact. Indeed, indeed. So um, you know, uh, we're running out of time here. Um, this was a great build. I want to, I wanna, man, there's so much I want to talk to you about, brother. Man, uh, I want to talk about devils, I want to talk about shaitan, I want to talk about what is a law, you know. I want to get in depth into their word because the way you explained uh angels and how that works with the brain and you know how, you know, uh uh uh you know, exercising or um, I don't want to say exercising, but I'm I would say uh developing certain neural pathways in the brain to be able to see certain things that you weren't able to see before, that was a great explanation because uh, you know, I'm I'm heavy into you know uh uh uh anatomy and science and things like that. So if you could, you know, speak in a from a scientific perspective and bridge bridge the The gap between the two, philosophy and science, you know, I you know, I I I could I can grasp that. You know, you can definitely wait. Indeed, indeed. So thank you for coming out coming out this evening. Um, glad to have you on. We're great, you know, we'll greatly appreciate you coming back on again to talk in depth about a lot of those things there. Um uh if you have anything to say, you have any uh you know handles you would like to put out there for people to find you, you can now.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:32

Um I guess it's uh camelback because the Muslims don't piggyback off the last thing you just say are the camelback. Uh the uh the occult anatomy of man, uh short book by Manly P. Hall probably be right up your alley, man. Anatomy of man. Uh the occult anatomy of man. Describe some of those uh those same uh uh inner dimensions of the human body in the way that we were describing the brain from earlier. Gotcha. I think the the the occult anatomy of man is a snippet from the um the um secret teaching of all ages. So if you got that bigger book, it's in it's in there too. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:15

All right, thank you for coming out this evening. I really appreciate you, brother. And uh thank you to the chat for coming out this evening. Great podcast. We uh peace, peace. Uh uh, Sister Aquet, thank you, Sister Aquet, Rondu, peace to you, man. You need to every time this podcast is on and we'll talk about Islam. Please come on, brother, because you come with the fire too, man. Peace, peace, peace. And let me run this commercial before I'm out of here. Peace.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:53

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