profiles2The takbeer is recited and the silence of the congregational prayer is filled with a sole anguished voice heard quivering and beating back tears whilst reciting, holding it’s breath  several times to pass a cry, breathless, as the lover faces his Beloved in prayer. A small man so great in capacity – a beacon of irfan (gnosis), purity, taqwa (God consciousness), humility and sincerity – Grand Arif Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi Bahjat leads this congregation.

A man attached to his God in an uncommon way from childhood so that, by his own will to obey his Lord’s demands and to abstain from forbidden experiences in this world, he began to have experiences from beyond this world in prayer and in daily life. The man for whom the earth wept on 17 May 2009 (21 Jamadi Al-Ula 1430) as he left this world and returned to his Beloved.

Ayatullah Bahjat’s greatness was prophesised before he was born, before his father was even married. When his father as a youth fell seriously ill and family members  gathered around him, one member heard a voice saying ‘Do not worry, he will be fine, because he is going to be the father of Muhammad Taqi’. In 1915, Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi was born into a religious and pious family in the city of Fuman, north of Iran. His mother died before he had even reached the age of two. His father who was a reciter of eulogies on the Ahlul Bayt (as) helped ingrain in him his love for the Ahlul Bayt (as).

Becoming a student of theology on the completion of his primary education, Ayatullah Bahjat moved to Karbala at the young age of 14, moving to the seminary in Najaf four years later. It was there that he studied under some of the greatest Shia Muslim ulama (scholars) and under the teacher whom he stayed with the most and learnt the secrets of mannerism and mysticism from, the giant amongst spiritual   masters, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Qadhi Tabatabai. After 15 years he returned to the city of Qum, Iran, and continued his studies under Grand Ayatullah Burujerdi.

When teaching, Ayatullah Bahjat worried deeply about the damaging effects of knowledge, such as pride and becoming close-minded. He always urged his students to put their knowledge into practice, that they practise self-purification. He was known to never waste a moment of time, spending his free time, or in fact making time, for meditation and contemplation. He never missed his late-night prayers and spent a long time weeping in the night. His humility was evident in the simple lifestyle he adopted and the secrecy by which he treated his special favours.

When he was due to lecture somewhere he requested his name not to be given, and only after a lot of pressure from others did he give permission for his works to be published. A piece of advice which was the answer to many questions asked of him, which he once gave to visitors, shows the essence of his faith and the strength of the minor sins we commit:

“Do not commit sin. Do not commit sin. Because when you do it knocks you back one thousand steps”.

These steps are the steps one takes on their journey of ascension to Allah (swt); to reach the level such a great ‘arif reached means refraining from all that Allah (swt) has forbidden so that one can taste the divine favours that Ayatullah Bahjat tasted. It was refraining from sin and his advice to pray on time that Ayatullah Bahjat felt so passionately about.

Ayatullah Bahjat’s soul, having refrained from sin, had passed so many stations of mystical wayfaring that he had knowledge of what is concealed to common folk.  The words of remembrance constantly on his lips were Al-Sattar (The Concealer), for he wanted Allah (swt) to conceal from him the defects of those sitting around him so that as the sacred promise is: “Allah will change their evil deeds into good deeds” (25:70).