When overpowered, sometimes swear oaths renewing the covenant and affirming the compact. They say things like, “By your rightful due, I will not gaze at other than You, I will not speak to other than You, and I will not leave Your covenant!” By virtue of tawḥīd, these oaths are idle talk and negligence in the witnessing of Unity. How can it be the servant’s place to give himself worth, to fancy that he is someone, or to consider his own words to have such status that he can swear an oath to Him? Rather, what is fitting for the servant is to welcome His rulings with beautiful approval. Whether He summons or drives away, he should not protest and not turn away. He should not speak of the realities of union and separation. He should take what He gives, and accept what comes. He should know that in reality it is He who is lovingly kind to perfection and it is He who determines and governs in every state.
5:89 God will not take you to task for an idle talk in your oaths, but He will take you to task for the oaths you have bound. The expiation thereof is the feeding of ten indigent people with what you usually feed your own family, or clothing them, or freeing a slave.
Wisely said “O closer to us than ourselves, O more lovingly kind to us than ourselves, O caresser of us without us by Your generosity—not because of our worthiness, not because of our works. The burden is beyond our capacity, the practice not proper to us, the favor not within our ability. Whatever we have done has damaged us, whatever You have done subsists for us. Whatever You have done in our place You have done by Yourself, not for our sake.”
Expiation in the Shariah is well-known to the folk of knowledge—freeing slaves, feeding people, and clothing them. So also, in the tongue of allusion, expiation in the Tariqah is of three sorts: expending the spirit by virtue, expending the heart in the soundness of intention, and expending the soul by constant effort. If you are not able to do this, then abstain and fast from prohibited and blamable things.
