The work presented here was originally written for delivery at a Mawlid celebration in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 2011. It concerns ma[rifat-Allāh, the experiential knowledge of God, sometimes translated as gnosis or cognizance. Ma[rifa is often considered the essence of the Sufi path, for it meant to aualize the last stage of the Islamic religion: after al-islām (submission) and al-īmān (faith) comes al-iḥsān (excellence), "to worship God as if you are seeing Him, and if you are not seeing Him, know that He is seeing you." show more