IN THE PATH OF THE ANCESTORS THE BĀ ʿALAWῙ ORDER AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SHAPING THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 1 (original) (raw)
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How else can any past, which by definition comprises events, processes, structures, and so forth, considered to be no longer perceivable, be represented in either consciousness or discourse except in an "imaginary" way?
Sufism in the Modern World - Special Issue of 'Religions' (2024)
MDPI, 2024
Since the advent of the “modern” age, the main mystical trend of Islam, namely Sufism, has become the target of novel, multifaceted criticism in the Muslim World. The strong denunciation of “folk” Sufism by Muslim purists and fundamentalists of the eighteenth century onwards—who often consider mystical Islam to be a major part of, and reason for, the deviation from an imagined, pristine Islam—was followed by a fresh wave of Sufi antagonism by a group of Muslim modernists and secular thinkers from the nineteenth century, who regard Sufism as something belonging to the past and thus incompatible with the present. Notwithstanding these intense and multifarious critiques, Sufism has remained an active part of Muslim life and culture in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority areas, even extending its presence to new spheres such as Europe and America. The current Special Issue analyzes and examines different aspects of such vibrant activity and scrutinizes the dynamics of the beliefs, practices, institutions, interpretations, conceptualizations, and aesthetics of Sufism in the modern world. It offers its readership a broad and multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary vitality of mystical Islam and addresses the issue through various academic fields such as religious/Islamic studies, intellectual history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, gender studies, and minority studies. Contributors to this volume have demonstrated that Sufism, like Islam itself, should be understood and studied “in context” and with regard to its constant change-in-continuity.
Many historians have delved into the history of Sufism’s inception, growth, and diffusion throughout Islamic countries over the centuries. Different from mainstream Sufism scholars who prefer to investigate the evolution of early Sufi doctrine and practices, Knysh attempts to analyse the picture of Islamic mysticism in relation to the historical and socio-political context where it originated. Therefore, he avoids any debate regarding the concepts of mysticism itself. Using this approach, he came to the conclusion that Sufism’s practitioners continually reinterpreted its concepts in light of the historical setting of each generation. In other words, instead of being one-united pattern, there has been internal diversity of Islamic mysticism, whereas disparate opposite views occurred from time to time.
sianJPerso-Islamic philosophy. The two volumes, while reprinting a fair amount of material (some of which is of dubious quality), do present much new material to the reader. They do facilitate teaching and understanding, as long as they are used carefully and critically. The Anthology is thus a major contribution and once it is complete (in five or six projected volumes), it will no doubt transform the way in which we perceive and study philosophical traditions in Persia.