Foreword - The Nature of Sufism: An Ontological Reading of the Mystical in Islam (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
The Nature of Sufism: An Ontological Reading of the Mystical in Islam
Routledge, 2021
This book explores how Sufis approach their faith as Muslims, upholding an Islamic worldview, but going about making sense of their religion through the world in which they exist, often in unexpected ways. Using a phenomenological approach, the book examines Sufism as lived experience within the Muslim lifeworld, focusing on the Muslim experience of Islamic history. It draws on selected case studies ranging from classic Sufism to Sufism in the contemporary era mainly taken from biographical and hagiographical data, manuscript texts, and treatises. In this way, it provides a revisionist approach to theories and methods on Sufism, and, more broadly, the category of mysticism.
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.
Understanding Sufism: Contextualising the Content
2014
This thesis addresses the problem of how to interpret Islamic writers without imposing generic frameworks of later and partly Western derivation. It questions the overuse of the category "Sufism" which has sometimes been deployed to read anachronistic concerns into Islamic writers. It does so by a detailed study of some of the key works of the 13th century writer Ibn 'Ata' Allah (d.
Explores notions of so-called orthodoxy and heresy around Sufism in Orientalist writing, and engages Medieval Muslim voices to complicate and nuance these categories.
Insights into Sufism: Voices from the Heart
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020
Sufism has long constituted one of the most powerful drawcards to people embracing Islam. This book considers a broad range of questions relating to Sufism, including its history, manifestations in various countries and communities, its expression in poetry, women and Sufism, and expressions among popular spirituality. In addition, the volume challenges the long-held view of Sufism as being necessarily peaceful, through a consideration in one paper of Sufis engaging in violent Jihad. The book works at the interface between the scholarly and the practical, using rigorous methodology to ensure that its findings are reliable, while also giving attention to how Sufi thinking impacts the daily lives of Sufis. This represents an original and important dimension of this study, given the significant role played by Sufis throughout Islamic history in enriching discussion of intellectual and charismatic questions, as well as informing popular practice among "Folk" Muslims.