Rabia ran through Basra carrying fire in one hand and water in the other, to burn Paradise and douse Hell, so people would love God for God alone
Rabia's famous street performance illustrates her demand that love of God be stripped of all transactional motive, freed from both fear of punishment and hope of reward.
Attar's Tadhkirat al-Awliya preserves this image of Rabia running through the streets of 8th-century Basra holding a lit torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. She explained she wanted to burn down Paradise and douse the fires of Hell so that worshippers would stop serving God out of fear or desire for reward and instead love God purely for God's own sake. Rabia, a former slave who became one of the earliest and most influential Sufi voices, is credited with originating what later tradition calls disinterested love (mahabba) - devotion untethered from any transaction. Her teaching reoriented Islamic piety away from a legalistic economy of reward and punishment toward an ethic where the Beloved alone is sufficient motive for worship.
O God, if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship You for Your own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting beauty.
Farid ud-Din Attar compiled the Tadhkirat al-Awliya in the 12th-13th century as a hagiographic anthology of early Sufi saints, and it remains the primary source through which Rabia's teachings survive.
Tadhkirat al-Awliya
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- What Sufism says about love
Attar records Rabia walking through eighth-century Basra with a torch in one hand and a bucket in the other, meaning to burn Paradise down and put Hell out. Her point was that people should love God when there is nothing left to gain and nothing left to fear.
- What Sufism says about wanting to be admired
Attar records her crossing eighth-century Basra with a lit torch and a bucket of water, to burn Paradise and put out Hell so worship would stop being transactional. Rabia was a former slave and is credited with originating disinterested love. The tradition keeps the contradiction without resolving it: a highly public performance staged against public motives.