“God Loves Me”: The Theological Content and Context of Early Pious and Sufi Women's Sayings on Love1 (original) (raw)
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God Loves Me: Early Pious and Sufi Women and the Theological Debate over God's Love
Maria Dakake argues in her article, ‘Guest of the Inmost Heart’ that Sufi women imagined God in domestic terms as the ideal faithful lover, provider, and protector. Based on my research of pious and Sufi women from the 7th to 10th century, I support Dakake’s important observation; but I also suggest it needs to be opened up to more complicated notions of “domesticity” that take into account the connections made between patriarchal social norms and the divine personality as well as the historico-theological context of the women’s sayings on divine love which touch on the problem of anthropomorphism and the push and pull of popular and elite theologies. This article contains selections from my book in progress on early Pious and Sufi women.
"Guest of the Inmost Heart": Conceptions of the Divine Beloved Among Early Sufi Women
In the works of Su love mysticism, the Su seeker is often represented as a male lover in relation to God as the symbolically However, women themselves were not infrequently the practitioners of the mystical path in Islam, and it is clear from the words attributed to them that female Su s developed their own image of the Divine Beloved as the symbolically masculine object of their female desire. In this paper, I examine short poetic pieces and sayings attributed to Su women in both hagiographical and biographical works in an attempt to identify a speci mysticism, re ecting a distinctly and traditionally female experience of loving and spiritual longing.
Religion and Gender, 2024
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Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies, 2016
The longing for intimacy and closeness to God has perennially been one of mankind’s most pronounced characteristics. Those worshipers within the Islamic tradition that particularly focus on the interior aspects of the faith and endeavor to reach the transcendent, are commonly referred to as Sufis. Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, has devised copious theological materials and practical disciplines to attain its goal. It can be furthermore suggested that one of the ideas that appears to be most predominant in Sufi theology is characterized by the notion of love. This article examines how Sufism understands the concept of love, its close relationship to the attainment of knowledge and if it indeed succeeds in enabling humanity to achieve nearness with God.