Shaykh Sharifuddin ad-Daghestani

Shaykh Sharifuddin ad-Daghestani (may God sanctify his innermost being), the thirty eighth Shaykh in the Naqshbandi Golden Chain, said the following:-

When Shaykh Sharifuddin was young, he used to go with his friends to collect wood. He didn’t cut the wood from trees like his friends, only collecting the dry wood from the ground. This made his father upset with him, so he went to Shaykh Abu Ahmed as-Sughuri to complain that the boy was collecting dry, useless wood. The Shaykh said to him, “Why don’t you ask him why he does that?”

When asked, the young Sharifuddin replied, “How can I cut green trees when they are reciting the Dhikr of ‘la ilaha ill-Allah’? I prefer to collect the dead branches, so as not to burn the branches that are reciting Dhikr.”