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ṢūfĪ Thought And Practice
Sufism can be described broadly as the intensification of Islamic faith and practice, or the tendency among Muslims to strive for a personal engagement with the Divine Reality. The Arabic term Ṣūfī, however, has been used in a wide variety of meanings over the centuries, by both proponents and opponents of Sufism, and this is reflected in the primary and secondary sources, which offer diverse interpretations of the term. Western observers have sometimes obscured the issue by referring to Sufism as “Islamic mysticism” or “Islamic esotericism.” Such terms are vague and often imply a negative value judgment, and they encourage people to consider as non-Ṣūfī anything that does not fit into preconceived categories. The original sense of Ṣūfī seems to have been “one who wears wool (ṣūf ).” In the eighth century the word was sometimes being applied to Muslims whose ascetic inclinations led them to wear coarse and uncomfortable woolen garments. Gradually it came to designate a group who differentiated themselves from others by stressing certain teachings and practices of the Qurʿān and the sunnah. By the ninth century the gerund form taṣawwuf, which means literally “being a Sūfī” or “Sufism,” was adopted by some representatives of this group as an appropriate, though by no means the only, designation of their own beliefs and practices. Other terms were and continue to be used (on the Western preference for “Sufism,” see Ernst, 1997, chapter 1).
In general, Ṣūfīs have looked upon themselves as Muslims who take seriously Allah’s call to perceive his presence in the world and the self. They generally stress inwardness over outwardness, contemplation over action, spiritual development over legalism, and cultivation of the soul over social interaction. Theologically, Ṣūfīs speak of Allah’s mercy, gentleness, and beauty more than of the wrath, severity, and majesty that play defining roles in both fiqh (jurisprudence) and kalām (apologetic theology). Sufism has been associated with specific institutions and individuals as well as with an enormously rich literature, not least poetry.
Given the difficulty of defining Sufism, it is not easy to discern which Muslims have been Ṣūfīs. Being a Ṣūfī has nothing to do with the Sunnī-Shīʿī split, nor with the schools of jurisprudence. It has no special connection with geography, though it has played a greater role in some locations than in others. There is no necessary correlation with family, and it is common to find individuals who profess a Ṣūfī affiliation despite the hostility of family members, or people who have been born into a family of Ṣūfīs and consider it an unacceptable form of Islam. Men and, less commonly, women, become Ṣūfīs; even children participate in Ṣūfī ritual activities, though they are seldom initiated formally before puberty. Sufism has nothing to do with social class, though some Ṣūfī organizations may be more or less class-specific. It is closely associated with popular religion, but it has also produced the most elite expressions of Islamic teachings. It is often seen as opposed to the state-supported jurists, yet jurists have always been counted among its devotees, and Sufism has frequently been supported by the state along with jurisprudence. The characteristic Ṣūfī institutions — the “orders” (ṭarīqah) — do not begin to play a major role in Islamic history until about the twelfth century, but even after that, Ṣūfīs were not necessarily affiliated with an order.
A Working Description
Specialists have reached no consensus as to the nature of Sufism. Those who take seriously the self-understanding of the Ṣūfī authorities usually picture Sufism as an essential component of Islam. Those who are hostile toward Sufism, or hostile toward Islam but sympathetic toward Sufism, or skeptical of any self-understanding by the objects of their study, typically describe Sufism as a movement that was added to Islam after the prophetic period. The diverse theories of Sufism’s nature and origins proposed by modern and premodern scholars cannot be summarized here. One can only suggest that most of Sufism’s own theoreticians have understood it to be the living spirit of the Islamic tradition. One of the greatest Ṣūfī teachers, al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), summarizes Sufism’s role in the title of his magnum opus: Iḥyāʿ ʿulūm al-dīn (giving life to the sciences of the religion).
Understood as Islam’s life-giving core, Sufism is coextensive with Islam. Wherever there have been Muslims, there have been Ṣūfīs. If there was no phenomenon called “Sufism” at the time of the Prophet, neither was there anything called “fiqh” or “kalām” in the later senses of these terms. All these names came to be applied to fields of learning and institutional forms that appeared once the tradition became diversified and elaborated.
In historical terms, it is useful to think of Sufism on two levels. On the first level — which is the primary focus of the Ṣūfī authorities themselves — Sufism has no history, because it is the invisible, life-giving force of the Muslim community. On the second level — which concerns both Muslim authors and modern historians — Sufism’s presence is made known through observable characteristics of people and society or specific institutions. Ṣūfī authors who looked at Sufism on the second level wanted to describe how the great Muslims achieved the goal of human life, which is nearness to Allah (qurb). Their typical genre was hagiography, which aims at bringing out the extraordinary human qualities of those who achieve divine nearness. In contrast, Muslim opponents of Sufism have been anxious to show that Sufism is a distortion of Islam, and they have happily seized upon any opportunity to associate Sufism with unbelief and moral laxity (see Carl Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism, Albany, 1985, pp. 117ff.).
The frequent attacks on Sufism have many causes, not least of which is the social and political influence of Ṣūfī teachers, which often threatened the power and privileges of the jurists and even the rulers. Although the great Ṣūfī authorities set down guidelines for keeping Sufism at the heart of the Islamic tradition, popular religious movements that aimed to intensify religious fervor sometimes disregarded Islamic norms and were often associated with Sufism. Whether or not members of these movements considered themselves Ṣūfīs, opponents of Sufism were happy to claim that their excesses represented Sufism’s true nature. The Ṣūfī authorities themselves frequently criticized false Ṣūfīs, and the dangers connected with losing contact with the ahistorical core of Sufism could only increase when much of Sufism became institutionalized through the Ṣūfī orders (see, for example, the criticisms by a sixteenth-century Ṣūfī in Michael Winter, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt: Studies in the Writings of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, New Brunswick, N.J., 1982, pp. 102ff.). If Sufism is essentially invisible and ahistorical, the problem faced by those who study specific historical phenomena is how to judge the degree to which these deserve the name. The Ṣūfī authorities typically answer that the criteria of authentic Sufism are found in correct action and correct understanding, and these are rooted in the Qurʿān and the sunnah.
As a Qurʿānic name for the phenomenon that often came to be called Sufism, some authors have chosen the term iḥsān, “doing what is beautiful,” a divine and human quality about which the Qurʿān says a good deal, particularly that Allah loves those who possess it. In the famous ḥadīth of Gabriel, the Prophet describes iḥsān as the innermost dimension of Islam, after islām (“submission” or correct activity) and īmān (“faith” or correct understanding). Iḥsān is a deepened understanding and perception that, in the words of this ḥadīth, allows you “to worship Allah as if you see him.” This means that Ṣūfīs strive to be aware of Allah’s presence in both the world and themselves and to act appropriately. Historically, islām became manifest through the sharīʿah and jurisprudence, whereas īmān became institutionalized through kalām and other forms of doctrinal teachings. In the same way, iḥsān revealed its presence mainly through Ṣūfī teachings and practices (see Murata and Chittick).
By codifying the sharīʿah, jurisprudence delineates the manner in which people should submit their activities to the instructions of the Qurʿān and the sunnah. Kalām defines the contents of Islamic faith while providing a rational defense for Qurʿān teachings about Allah. Sufism focuses on giving full due to both submission and faith, so it functions on two levels — theory (corresponding to īmān) and practice (corresponding to islām). On the theoretical level, Sufism explains the rationale for both faith and submission. Its explanations differ from those of kalām both in perspective and focus, but they are no less carefully rooted in the sources of the tradition. On the practical level, Sufism explains how Muslims can strengthen their understanding and observance of Islam in order to find Allah’s presence in themselves and n to the details of the sunnah and by focusing on the remembrance of Allah (dhikr), which is commanded by the Qurʿān and the ḥadīth and taken by Ṣūfī authors as the raison d’être of Islamic ritual. Dhikr typically takes the form of the methodical repetition of certain names of Allah or Qurʿān formulae, such as the first Shahādah. In communal gatherings, Ṣūfīs usually perform dhikr aloud, rhythmically and sometimes with musical accompaniment. In some Ṣūfī groups, these communal sessions became the basic ritual, with a corresponding neglect of various aspects of the sunnah.
At this point, Ṣūfī practice became suspect not only in the eyes of the jurists, but also in the eyes of other Ṣūfīs.
Like other branches of Islamic learning, Sufism has been passed down from master (typically called a shaykh) to disciple, and the chain of transmission (silsilah) leading back to the Prophet has been considered an important part of the master’s credentials. His oral teachings give life to the articles of faith, and without his transmission, methodical performance of dhikr is considered invalid if not dangerous. The typical initiation rite is modeled on the handclasp known as bayʿat al-riḍwān (the oath-taking of Allah’s good pleasure) that the Prophet made with his Companions at al-Ḥudaybīyah, referred to in the Qurʿān, surahs 48:10 and 48:18. The rite is understood to transmit an invisible spiritual force or blessing (barakah) that makes possible the transformation of the disciple’s soul. The master’s fundamental concern — was as in other forms of Islamic learning — is to shape the character (khuluq) of the disciple so that it conforms with the prophetic model.
If molding the character of students and disciples was a universal concern of Muslim teachers, the Ṣūfīs developed a science of human character traits (akhlāq) that had no parallels in jurisprudence or kalām, though the philosophers knew something similar. Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), Sufism’s greatest theoretician, described Sufism as “assuming the character traits of Allah” (Chittick, 1989, p. 283). Since Allah created human beings in his own image, they have the duty to actualize the divine traits that are latent in their souls. This helps explain the great attention that Ṣūfī authorities devote to the “stations” (maqāmāt) of spiritual ascent on the path to Allah and the “states” (aḥwāl) or psychological vagaries that spiritual travelers may undergo in their attempt to pass through the stations.
Ṣūfī theory offered a theological perspective that was far more attractive to the most Muslims than was kalām, which was an academic exercise with little practical impact on most people. From the beginning, the kalām experts attempted to explain Qurʿānic teachings in rational terms. In keeping with the inherent tendency of reason to discern and differentiate, kalām fastened on all those Qurʿānic verses that assert the transcendence and otherness of Allah. When faced with verses that assert Allah’s immanence and presence, kalām explained them away through forced interpretations (taʿwīlāt). As H. A. R. Gibb has pointed out, “The more developed theological systems were largely negative and substituted for the vivid personal relation between Allah and man presented by the Koran an abstract and depersonalized discussion of logical concepts” (Mohammedanism, London, 1961, p. 127). Ibn al-ʿArabī made a similar point when he said that if Muslims had been left only with theological proofs, none of them would have ever loved Allah (Chittick, 1989, p. 180).
The Qurʿān speaks of Allah with a wide variety of terminology that can be conveniently summarized as Allah’s “most beautiful names” (al-asmāʿ al-ḥusnā). For the most part, kalām stresses those names that assert Allah’s severity, grandeur, distance, and aloofness. Although many early expressions of Sufism went along with the dominant attitudes in kalām, another strand of Ṣūfī thought became predominant by the eleventh or twelfth century, focusing on divine names that speak of nearness, sameness, similarity, concern, compassion, and love. The Ṣūfī teachers emphasized the personal dimensions of the relationship between the divine and the human, agreeing with the kalām authorities that Allah was distant, but holding that his simultaneous nearness was more important. The grand theological theme of the Ṣūfīs is epitomized in the ḥadīth qudsī (holy ḥadīth [tradition]) in which Allah says, “My mercy takes precedence over my wrath,” which is to say that Allah’s nearness is more real than his distance.
If kalām and jurisprudence depended on reason to establish categories and distinctions, the Ṣūfīs depended upon another faculty of the soul to bridge gaps and make connections. Many of them called this faculty “imagination” (khayāl) and understood it to be the soul’s power to perceive the presence of Allah in all things. They read literally the Qurʿānic verse, “Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah” (2:115), and they found a reference to imagination in the “as if” of the Prophet’s definition of iḥsān — “It is to worship Allah as if you see him.” Through methodical concentration on the face of Allah as revealed in the Qurʿān, Ṣūfīs attempted to remove the “as if” and to achieve “unveiling” (kashf), the generic term for supra-rational vision of Allah in the world and the soul. Ibn al-ʿArabī asserts that unveiling is superior to reason, but he also insists that reason provides the indispensable checks and balances without which it is impossible to differentiate among divine, angelic, psychic, and satanic inrushes of imaginal knowledge.
The most characteristic emphasis of the Sūfī teachers is on the need to love Allah. One of their favorite Qurʿānic passages is surah5:54: “He loves them, and they love Him.” Typical Qurʿānic rhetoric highlights Allah’s greatness and human smallness, Allah’s wisdom and human ignorance, Allah’s lordship and human servitude, but here the Qurʿān attributes love to both sides—even if Allah’s love necessarily precedes human love, just as grace precedes good works. It was lost on no one that the goal of love is union with the beloved, and this led to endless meditations on the nature of the nearness that is to be achieved by responding to Allah’s love. It was understood that Allah already loves human beings, so much so that he is nearer to them “than the jugular vein” (surah50:16), but, for human beings to love Allah in return, they must heed the call in the verse, “Say [to the people, O Muhammad!]: If you love Allah, follow me, and Allah will love you” (surah3:31). Here is the rationale for following the sunnah: lovers of Allah are attempting to achieve an intimate nearness. This is made explicit by the often quoted authentic ḥadīth qudsī, “My servant draws near to Me through nothing I love more than that which I have made obligatory for him, and My servant never ceases drawing near to Me through supererogatory works until I love him. Then, when I love him, I am his hearing through which he hears, his eyesight through which he sees, his hand through which he grasps, and his foot through which he walks.”
Spectra of Ṣūfī Theory and Practice
One way to make sense of the great variety of phenomena that have been called Sufism in Islamic history is to look at the types of responses to basic Islamic theological teachings, the first of which is tawḥīd, the assertion of Allah’s oneness that is expressed most succinctly in the first Shahādah, “There is no Allah but Allah.” The centrality of this statement to the Qurʿān and later discussion of the nature of Allah can hardly be overestimated. If the characteristic Qurʿānic way of speaking about Allah is to mention his most beautiful names, the characteristic way for Muslims to understand the significance of these names has been to meditate upon them in terms of the formula of tawḥīd. If Allah is merciful and just, then there is none merciful and none just but Allah, and if he is the Real (al-ḥaqq), then there is none real but Allah. The formula of tawḥīd simultaneously asserts the absolute and exclusive reality of the One Allah and the relative, contingent reality of everything else, for any mercy, justice, life, knowledge, and power that appear in the universe can be nothing but the signs (āyāt) and disclosures of that One Reality (see Murata and Chittick, chap. 3).
Allah is one in himself but many in his names, and each divine name throws light on the nature of reality, whether the absolute reality of Allah or the contingent reality of the world. Allah knows not only himself but also all things, and his omniscience provides the link between his own oneness and the world’s manyness. Knowing all things for all eternity, Allah commands them to come into existence: “His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Be!’, and it comes to be” (surah36:82). The result is an indefinitely diverse universe, within which Allah reveals scriptures that differentiate between true and false, right and wrong, absolute and relative, and all other qualities that have a bearing on human salvation.
Oneness and manyness represent two poles not only of reality but also of thought. Imaginal thinking tends to see the oneness and sameness and identity of things, while rational thinking focuses on manyness, diversity, and difference. A creative tension has existed between these two basic ways of looking at Allah and the world throughout Islamic history. Kalām authorities and jurists have generally emphasized the rational understanding of Allah’s distance, and Ṣūfīs have countered with the imaginal perception of Allah’s nearness. On occasion the balance between these two perspectives has been broken by a stern and exclusivist legal-mindedness on the one hand or an excessively emotional religiosity on the other. In the first case, what is lost is participation in the inner realms of love, and in the second, the necessity for the divine guidance provided by the prophets. In modern times, the two extremes are represented by various forms of fundamentalism on the one hand and deracinated Sufism on the other (for a case study, see Mark Woodward, Islam in Java, Tucson, Ariz., 1989, especially pp. 234ff.).
Within the theory and practice of Sufism itself, a parallel differentiation of perspectives can be found. Many expressions of Sufism vigorously assert the reality of Allah’s omnipresent oneness and the possibility of union with him, while others emphasize the duties of servanthood that arise from discernment between Creator and creature, absolute and relative, right and wrong. In order to describe the psychological and spiritual accompaniments of these two emphases, Ṣūfīs offer various sets of terms, such as “intoxication” (sukr) and “sobriety” (ṣaḥw), or “annihilation” (fanāʿ) and “subsistence” (baqāʿ). Intoxication is to be overcome by the presence of Allah and to lose one’s ability to discriminate among creatures. It is associated with intimacy (uns), the sense of Allah’s loving nearness, and this in turn is connected with the divine names that express Allah’s love and compassion. Sobriety in contrast is associated with awe (haybah), the sense that Allah is majestic, mighty, wrathful, and distant, far beyond the petty concerns of human beings. Allah’s distance and aloofness allow for a clear view of the difference between servant and Lord, but his nearness blinds the discerning powers of reason. Perfect vision of the nature of things necessitates a balance between reason and imaginal unveiling.
The contrast between sobriety and drunkenness, or between the vision of one-ness and the vision of many-ness, reverberates throughout Ṣūfī writing and is reflected in the hagiographies of the masters. Those who live in intimacy are boldly confident of Allah’s mercy, and those who live in awe remain wary of Allah’s wrath. Drunken Ṣūfīs generally de-emphasize the sharīʿah and declare union with Allah openly, and sober Ṣūfīs observe the courtesy (adab) that the Lord-servant relationship demands. The sober fault the drunk for disregarding the sunnah, and the drunk fault the sober for forgetting the predominant reality of Allah’s mercy and depending instead upon reason. Those who, in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s terms, “see with both eyes” keep reason and unveiling in perfect balance while acknowledging the rights of both the sober and the drunk (Chittick, 1989, pp. 356ff.).
Expressions of sobriety and intoxication often have rhetorical purposes. Ṣūfīs wrote for the purpose of edification, and teachers attempted to inculcate psychological attitudes depending upon the various needs that they perceived in their listeners. An author who disregards rational norms has not necessarily been overcome by the divine wine — if he had, he would hardly have put pen to paper. So also, sober expressions of Sufism do not mean that the authors know nothing of intoxication — typically, sobriety is described as a station that is achieved after intoxication.
Sober Sufism tends to employ prose and to provide rational explications that are ideal for manuals of doctrine and practice and for keeping an eye on the opinions of jurists and kalām experts. It has usually attracted the more educated Ṣūfī practitioners, who were willing to devote long hours to studying texts that were no easier than works on jurisprudence, kalām, or philosophy. The attention that it pays to all sorts of juridical and theological issues can quickly prove tiring to any but those trained in the Islamic sciences.
Drunken expressions of Sufism predominate in Ṣūfī poetry, which is ideally suited to descriptions of the imaginal realm of unveiled knowledge. In the best examples, such as Ibn al-Fāriḍ in Arabic, ʿAṭṭār, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, and Ḥāfiẓ in Persian, and Yunus Emre in Turkish, the poetry gives rise to a marvelous joy and intoxication and conveys the sense of the divine presence in creation through the beauty of the language. Such a vision of things flies in the face of juridical and theological discourse, and it is often expressed in ways that shock the pious. Drunken Sufism has always been popular among Muslims of all classes and persuasions, and even the most literal-minded jurists are likely to enjoy the poetry while condemning the ideas (for a good study of the role of poetry and music in contemporary Sufism, see Earl H. Waugh, The Munshidīn of Egypt: Their World and Their Song, Columbus, S.C., 1989).
For many Western observers, whether scholars or would-be practitioners, “real” Sufism has been identified with the drunken forms that denigrate the external concerns of uncompromising “orthodox” Islam. It is seldom noted that many of those who express themselves in the daring poetry of union also employ the respectful prose of separation and servanthood. In any case, most Ṣūfī teachers have attempted to strike a balance between sobriety and drunkenness, or reason and unveiling. If sobriety is lost, so also is rationality, and along with it the strictures of islām and īmān; if drunkenness is lost, so also is love, spiritual vision, compassion, and iḥsān.
The classic example of the contrast between drunk and sober is found in the pictures drawn of Ḥallāj (d. 922) and Junayd (d. 910). The first became Sufism’s great martyr because of his open avowal of the mysteries of divine union and his disregard for the niceties of sharīʿa-oriented propriety. The second, known as the “master of the [Ṣūfī] sect” (shaykh al-ṭāʿifah), kept coolly sober despite having achieved the highest degree of union with Allah. Another example can be found in the contrast between two of the greatest teachers of the Ṣūfī tradition, Ibn al-ʿArabī and his contemporary Rūmī (d. 1273). The former wrote voluminously in Arabic prose and addressed every theoretical issue that arises in the context of Islamic thought and practice. His works are enormously erudite and exceedingly difficult, and only the most learned of Muslims, those who were already trained in jurisprudence, kalām, and other Islamic sciences, could hope to read and understand them. In contrast, Rūmī wrote over 70,000 verses of intoxicating poetry in a language that every Persian-speaking Muslim could understand. He sings constantly of the trials of separation from the Beloved and the joys of union with him. But the contrast between the two authors should not suggest that Rūmī was irrational or unlearned, or that Ibn al-ʿArabī was not a lover of Allah and a poet. Among Western scholars, Henry Corbin argues forcefully that Rūmī and Ibn al-ʿArabī belong to the same group of Fedeli d’Amore8, devotees of the divine beauty present in all of creation who can be compared to Dante’s companions (Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī, Princeton, 1969, pp. 70–71, 100–101).
In Ṣūfī texts, there are two basic and complementary ways of describing Sufism. If the drunken side of Sufism is stressed, it is contrasted with jurisprudence and kalām; if sobriety is stressed, it is viewed as the perfection (iḥsān) of right practice (islām) and right faith (īmān). The great theoreticians of Sufism, who speak from the viewpoint of sobriety, strive to establish a balance among all dimensions of Islamic thought and practice, with Sufism as the animating spirit of the whole. These include Sarrāj (d. 988), Kalābādhī (d. 990), Sulamī (d. 1021), Qushayrī (d. 1072), Hujwīrī (d. 1072), Ghazālī, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 1166), Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar Suhrawardī (d. 1234), Ibn al-ʿArabī, Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1256), and ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī (d. 1334/1335). In contrast, the practice of everyday Sufism, especially in its popular forms, tends to appear in an antagonistic mode with legalistic Islam, though this is by no means always the case (see, for example, Jonathan Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, Princeton, 1992, especially chap. 3, which demonstrates that Ṣūfīs and jurists have sometimes been indistinguishable).
Sufism In The Modern World
In the modern period, many Muslims have sought a recovery of authentic Islamic teachings and practices, not least to fend off Western hegemony. Some have responded largely in political terms, and others have tried to revive Islam’s inner life. Among most of the politically minded, Sufism became the scapegoat through which Islam’s “backwardness” could be explained. In this view, Sufism is the religion of the common people and embodies superstition and un-Islamic elements adopted from local cultures; Islam must reclaim its birthright, which includes modern science and technology, by the eradication of Sufism. Until recently, most Western observers have considered the modernist reformers to be “Islam’s hope to enter the modern age,” but this view has been tempered by the increasing awareness that fundamentalism and extreme forms of Islamist political activism are the logical conclusions of modernist thought. In the meantime, various Ṣūfī teachers have been working to revive the Islamic heritage by focusing on what they consider to be the root cause of every disorder — forgetfulness of Allah. (For information on contemporary Ṣūfī organizations and related subjects, see the website of Alan Allahlas at the University of Georgia, Allahlas.myweb.uga.edu).
Parallel to the revival of Sufism in the Islamic world has been the spread of Ṣūfī teachings to the West. In America, drunken Sufism was introduced in the early twentieth century by the Chishtī shaykh and musician, Inayat Khan (1882–1927); his teachings were continued by his son, Pir Vilayet Inayat Khan (1916–2004), who was a frequent lecturer on the New Age circuit. In Europe, sober Sufism gained a wide audience among intellectuals through the writings of the French mathematician and metaphysician René Guénon (d. 1951). More recently, hundreds of volumes have been published in Western languages addressed both to Muslims and to non-Muslim seekers of Ṣūfī wisdom, and these reflect the range of perspectives found in the original texts, from sobriety to intoxication. Numerous websites have also appeared, usually championing one order or one shaykh over others. Much of this newly available material has been produced by authentic representatives of Ṣūfī silsilahs, but much has been written by people who have adopted Sufism in order to justify teachings of questionable origin.
Contemporary representatives of sober Sufism writing for a Western audience emphasize knowledge, discernment, and differentiation, typically while stressing the importance of the sharīʿah. Best known in this group is Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998), who was a shaykh of the Shādhilīyah-ʿAlawīyah order of North Africa. The main thrust of his more than twenty books is a theory of world religions based on the idea of a universal esotericism, the Islamic form of which is Sufism. Titus Burckhardt (1908–1984) represents a similar perspective, though many of his writings are more explicitly grounded in traditional Ṣūfī teachings. Martin Lings (1909–2005), who also published as Abū Bakr Sirāj ed-Dīn, presents a picture of Sufism that is intellectually rigorous but firmly grounded in explicit Islamic teachings. The Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933) stresses intellectual discernment more than love and insists that there is no Sufism without the sharīʿah. The books of the Turkish Cerrahi leader Muzaffer Ozak (1916–1985) present sharīʿa-oriented Sufism that is much more focused on love than on intellectual discernment. The Naqshbandī master Nazim al-Qubrusi stresses love and often discusses the shari’atic basis of Sufism. The Iranian Nīʿmatallāhī leader Jāvād Nurbakhsh has written several useful anthologies of classic Ṣūfī texts; his own perspective is from the side of intoxication, with emphasis on the oneness of being and the achievement of union with Allah. Even more from the side of love and intoxication are the works of Guru Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (d. 1986), who presents a synthesis of Sufism and Hindu teachings.
Sufi Thought And Practice
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Last Update: 04/2021
