CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Is a religion of peace that requires absolute total submission to the will of Allah. However, a believer cannot truly be a faithful one except that he follows and submits wholly to the commandments of Allah without personal interest. When a believer harbours in himself anything contrary to whole reliance and submission to Allah, he has definitely crossed the right path and Shaytan will be his guide and without the total submission to the will of Allah the of a Muslim is incomplete. This is alluded to in the Qur’an thus:
Oh you, who believe, enter into Islam completely and perfectly and do not follow the footsteps of Shaytan. Indeed he is to you a clear enemy.1
Moreover,Islam envisages for man a discipline for his life as a whole, material as well as spiritual, but there is no denying the fact that owing to differences of individual temperaments, certain people would specialize on certain things and not in others. Even if one were to concentrate on spiritual side of one’s existence, one would still remain more or less attached to the other occupation of life for one’s nourishment, for the sake of society of which he is a member in his celebrated expose of his teaching on faith and submission and the best method of these two, prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) defined this last point in the following terms:
The man said: Now tell me about Goodness. Muhammad (S.A.W) said; it is to worship Allah as though you see him, for he sees you although you do not see Him.2
This work examines the study of the Sufi concept of Dhikrparticularly in Patigi Local Government area of Kwara state.
Patigi is a name of town located to the North East part of Ilorin Kwara state capital on a small hill (meaning Patigi in Nupe). It was one of the important towns in Kwara state.
Patigi served as a gateway to the North, it has a large market center for all the goods coming from North or from the South (Yagba and YaragiMarket)….