Sayyidina Bayazid al-Bistami (q) was walking with his followers when he saw a lady coming from the other side, and as soon as they approached he hugged her. They were near a house and he entered the house with the lady and closed the door.
His followers fell into speculation, saying, “What happened? Is this the conduct of a wali? This is not a wali, he did something wrong.” Except there was one person, who stood at the door waiting for his shaykh to come out.
Sayyidina Bayazid said, "What are you doing, my son?"
He said, “I am waiting to do khidmah."
“Where are your brothers?”
He said, "My job is only to be waiting, ready to serve you, and it is not my job to know what my brothers are doing. My entire focus is on you, exclusively!"
Sayyidina Bayazid said, “Come inside, my son. The others had bad thoughts, but this is my sister. You are the only one that understood and you didn’t mind whether this was my sister or not. You were only concerned about when I would open the door and when you could do khidmah. Bring two witnesses and marry my sister.”
So that mureed became his khalifah. This is a very important lesson: don't play with awliya! If that happened to us, we would only look backward (to find dirt), to backbite as much as we could. Hajur al-ikhwan is to be concerned with only yourself, not with others.
Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani
