The tension between world-affirmation and world-transcendence (not rejection) is dramatized vividly in the life and sayings of Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya (d. 185/801), a freed slave from Baṣra.’ Rabi’a becomes the touchstone for a developing set of values that were to be the ethical ground of Sufism. The values included the affirmation of the divine unity interpreted as a relational absolute in which only the divine beloved is a matter of interest, or even consciousness; trust-in-God, interpreted as a refusal of all need for the goods of creatures; and acceptance, interpreted as a relentlessly active acceptance of divine will to the point of refusing to ask the deity for anything other than “its will being done.”
These values were consolidated in Rabi’a’s radical affirmation of the virtue of sincerity. In one story, she is portrayed as running down the path with water in one hand, fire in the other. When asked why, she states that she will douse the fires of hell and burn paradise, so that no one will ever love the beloved for any other reason than sincere love, devoid of fear of punishment or desire for reward.