CONTEMPORARY SUFISM
What is Sufism? Contemporary views vary tremendously, even among Sufis them-
selves. Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture brings to light the
religious frameworks that shape the views of Sufism’s friends, adversar ies, admirers,
and detractors and, in the process, helps readers better understand the diversity of
contemporary Sufism, the pressures and cultural openings to which it responds, and
the many divergent opinions about contemporary Sufism’s relationship to Islam.
The three main themes: piety, politics, and popular culture are explored in relation
to the Islamic and Wester n contexts that shape them, as well as to the histor ical
conditions that frame contemporary debates. This book is split into three parts:
•
Sufism and anti-Sufism in contemporary contexts;
•
Contemporary Sufism in theWest: Poetic influences and popular manifestations;
•
Gender ing Sufism: Tradition and transfor mation.
This book will fascinate anyone interested in the challenges of contemporary
Sufism as well as its relationship to Islam, gender, and the West. It offers an ideal
starting point from which underg raduate and postgraduate students, teachers, and
lecturers can explore Sufism today.
Meena Sharify-Funk is Associate Professor and Chair of the Religion and Cul-
ture Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
William Rory Dickson is Assistant Professor of Islamic Religion and Culture at
the University of Winnipeg, Canada.
Merin Shobhana Xavier is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy
and Religion at Ithaca College, USA.

CONTEMPORARY
SUFISM
Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture
Meena Sharify-Funk, William Rory Dickson
and Merin Shobhana Xavier

First published 2018
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Names: Sharify-Funk, Meena, author. | Dickson, William Rory, 1979,
author. |Xavier, Merin Shobhana, author.
Title: Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture / Meena
Sharify-Funk, William Rory Dickson and Merin Shobhana Xavier.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035714| ISBN 9781138687288 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138687301 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781315542379 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sufism. | Islam and culture.Classification: LCC BP189.S444
2018 | DDC 297.409/051--dc23
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by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK

For Abdul Aziz Said, who taught generations of students that “the whole is
reflected in its diverse parts and from its parts the information of the whole can
be constructed.The total is greater than the parts but only when the parts are
taken into account.” He is also known for saying, “When we empathize with each
other, we discover that human life or the human predicament is so similar in its
deeper significance and issues, whatever our society, religion, culture, or gender.
When we begin to empathize we also start to lear n the patterns of human con-
nection. For the whole world needs the whole world.”

CONTENTS
List of figures
ix
Acknowledgments
x
Introduction
xiii
1 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
on contemporary Sufism in the West
1
PART I
Sufism and anti-Sufism in contemporary contexts
33
2 Heart or heresy? The historical debate over Sufism’s
place in Islam
35
3 Contesting Sufism today: Contemporary Sufi and anti-Sufi
responses
62
PART II
Contemporary Sufism in the West: Poetic influences
and popular manifestations
99
4 Sufism in the eyes of the West: Colonialists, Romantics,
and Transcendentalists
101
5 The era of Rumi: Contemporary Sufism and popular culture
140

viii Contents
PART III
Gendering Sufism: Tradition and transformation
183
6 Perfecting the self: Female Sufi saints in Islamic history
185
7 “Women of light”: Contemporary female Sufi leaders
213
8 Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity and complementary
contradictions in contemporary Sufism
245
Index
262

FIGURES
7.1 Cemalnur Sargut Hoca at one of her many public
speaking events
217
7.2 Shaykha Nur Artiran at the Şefik Can International
Mevlana Education and Culture Foundation
217
7.3 Devi Tide, Head and Vice President of the Sufi Healing
Order of North America, Australia, and New Zealand
218
7.4 Shaykha Far iha Friedrich leads dhikr at the Masjid al-Farah
in Manhattan, NY
220

One need not revisit the works of Plato to affir m that dialogue is among the
most foundational pur poses of the academy – dialogue not just as a method of
inquiry but also as a living encounter of seekers after knowledge and understand-
ing. At its best the moder n academy emulates this classical pur pose, offering a space
where scholars can come together to be in meaningful relationship and to sus-
tain conversation over subjects of shared significance. This book is an expression
of this tradition, and represents the culmination of countless conversations over
many years – conversations not just among the co-authors themselves but also with
mentors who have themselves modeled what it means to be in relationship and in
dialogue, and to produce scholarly work through collaboration with others. The
authors are deeply thankful for this example, and for the opportunity to be part of
this collaborative, dialogical tradition.
Meena Shar ify-Funk is grateful to have lear ned this approach to scholarship
while working with her g raduate school mentor Abdul Aziz Said, and to have had
the opportunity to car ry it forward in her work with William Rory Dickson and
Merin Shobhana Xavier. Professor Said, who taught generations of students that
“the whole world needs the whole world,” modeled dialogue as a path to mutual
learning, discovery, and insight not just through his many co-authored works but
also in his dynamic seminar classrooms and manner of engaging each new visitor to
his office. Meena is forever indebted to his Mesopotamian spirit and heart.
She also would like to convey her deep gratitude to her Beloved parents, Nancy
Shar ify and Majdeddin Sharifi-Hosseini whose love and unending support enabled
Meena to dream the life she is honored to live. Meena also humbly bows to her
dear brother, Robert, for believing in her as a wr iter. She will never forget, after
shar ing her first poem with Robert around the age of 8, how he looked at her
with big astonished eyes and a loving heart then affir matively said, “You wrote
this!?!” Meena would also like to acknowledge the following beautiful and equally
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments xi
brilliant friends and colleagues: Hamil Taver nier, Judi Barber, Srimati Kamala, Sri-
mati Karuna, Yvonne Seng, Michel Desjardins, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Peter
Mandaville, Ayse Kadayifci, and Margar ita Pareja-Stoyell.
William Rory Dickson would like first to thank Meena Shar ify-Funk for her
ever-inspiring mentorship, beginning as his graduate school supervisor and continu-
ing to the present. Rory is grateful that Professor Shar ify-Funk has kindly shared
Professor Said’s path of dialogos with him, and is deeply honored to be included in
such a wonderful and enr iching tradition of scholarship. Meena’s Shirazi spirit con-
tinues to inspire him to explore the hor izons. Rory is grateful to his parents, Bev
and Kevin Dickson, for their amazing support and good cheer over the years, and he
feels remarkably lucky to have them. Special thanks go to Professor Carlos Colorado
for intrepid guidance and support as Rory’s Department Chair at the University
of Winnipeg. Rory is grateful for the friendship, travel, and collaborations with
Merin Shobhana Xavier, Rachel Brown, Zabeen Khamisa, Amar nath Amarasingam,
Naniece Ibrahim, and Sharanpal Ruprai, all of whom enrich his life profoundly.
Mer in Shobhana Xavier extends her g ratitude to her g raduate school mentor,
Meena Shar ify-Funk. Meena’s focused cultivation of her student’s whole being and
her boundless energy continues to amaze Shobhana, and she is honored to share
this jour ney with her. Shobhana also thanks William Rory Dickson, who has been a
notable intellectual partner and collaborator in thinking and writing about Sufism,
not only in this project but also in many others. She is deeply indebted to Meena
and Rory for what they have taught her about Sufism not only through the dialogos
but also through constant laughter. Special thanks are due to friends and colleagues:
Leanne Roncolato, Mike Martell, Alex Roomets, Zabeen Khamisa, and Amar nath
Amarasingam and Maxie, Shane, Atlas, and Will Bai Martin. Shobhana also honors
the resilient women in her family, especially her mother, Suganthy, who escaped
a civil war with her young girls in her ar ms, and her sisters Reaka and Majura
(Akka) – their resolve continues to be a source of courage and strength in her own
life. Shobhana thanks the faculty members in the Department of Religious Studies
at Franklin & Marshall College, especially the Department Chair John Moder n,
for their sustained support during her time there. And last but not least, Shobhana
(Chithi) is most grateful to Nila Mohan, whose arr ival during the completion of
this book ignited in her a new sense of wonder, love, and imagination.
All three authors are indebted for the great support and guidance to the many
wonderful colleagues at Routledge Publishers such as Andrew Weckenmann, Rob-
ert Langham, Sophie Rudland, and Eve Mayer. In particular, we are grateful to
Sarah Gore for all her brilliant assistance and for helping us to bring this book to
fruition.The authors are also indebted to the wonderful copy-editors Karen Green-
ing and Pat Baxter.
All three authors would also like to thank wholeheartedly the four female Sufi
leaders who graciously provided their thoughts for this book: Shaykha Nur Artiran,
Shaykha Far iha Fr iedrich, Cemalnur Sargut Hoca, and Devi Tide. We also would
like to thank Selcuk Cemoglu, Abdul Rahim, and Canguzel Guner Zulfikar for
assisting in communicating with these teachers respectively. Our g ratitude also goes

xii Acknowledgments
out to Kabir Helminski for introducing us to Nur Artiran and Ayse Kadayifci for
introducing us to Cemalnur Sargut. We are also grateful for Jan Potter’s assistance
in connecting us to Devi Tide, for helping us understand the role of women in
the Inayati Order, and for offer ing productive insights that have enr iched the text.
Thank you, Jan, for your kind wisdom and guidance.
There are not enough words to describe the authors’ g ratitude toward Nathan
C. Funk who has been a beautiful host, conversation partner, and editor.The authors
would also like to thank Mikael, for shar ing his love, kindness, and joyful diversions
from the stress induced by scholarly deadlines. We love you, Mikael!
Elysia Guzik was instrumental in the completion of this manuscript. We thank
you, Elysia, for all of your fine-detailed editorial comments and unwaver ing support.
Ultimately, we are unable to express enough gratitude to all those who have
helped us throughout our lives and in the development of this book. Its faults and
limitations are truly our own.

INTRODUCTION
The kaleidoscopic diversity of Sufism’s contemporary expressions defies easy defi-
nition. Sufism today is a lucrative resource for tour ism and an embattled quest for
a sense of the sacred that transcends boundar ies of religion, ethnicity, and gender.
Sufism can be discovered as a popular form of poetry in Wester n bookstores, on
smartphone apps, and in pithy quotations on social media, or it can be excavated
in the history of Islamic anti-colonial resistance movements. Contemporary views,
from inside and outside of Sufism, vary tremendously. On the one hand, Sufism
is often a form of universal spirituality that is in har mony with diverse cultural
outlooks and personal aspirations. On the other hand, Sufism has been, and con-
tinues to be, highly contested as an expression of Islam. Muslim attitudes vary from
strong affirmation of Sufism as the heart of Islamic faith and piety to the negation
of Sufism as a form of infidelity. As a result of these highly divergent readings of
Sufism, complex dynamics are unfolding simultaneously. Classical Sufi poets such
as Jalaluddin Rumi (d. 1273) and Shamsuddin Hafiz (d. 1390) have attained iconic
status in spiritual and literary circles of North Amer ica and Europe, even as radical
Muslim political groups denounce formerly mainstream for ms of devotional spir-
ituality as saint worship and destroy Sufi shrines in South Asia, North Africa, and
the Middle East.
Turkey, like many other contexts, illustrates the contested nature of contem-
porar y Sufism. For instance, many urban Muslim professionals in Turkey are redis-
cover ing Sufism as an alter native to both conventional secularism and traditionally
patr iarchal for ms of religious practice. Meanwhile, visitors to Turkey often retur n
home with tokens of Sufism, such as little statuettes of Sufi “whirling dervishes.”
There is a certain irony in Sufism’s popularity as a symbol of Turkish culture, as
Sufi orders remain officially banned in the country, a car ryover of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk’s (d. 1938) sweeping secular ization of Ottoman society. Sufi orders were
integral to the Ottoman imperial state and military structures, in addition to the

xiv Introduction
empire’s cultural and intellectual traditions. Hence, Sufism was something that Atat-
urk believed needed to be abandoned and even repressed for Turkey’s moderniza-
tion to be effective. Nevertheless, Sufism has been recognized by Turkish officials
as a popular cultural her itage that acts as a ready source of tour ism income, making
the whirling dervish a contemporary Turkish icon. Sufis continue to operate in
Turkey, though they often register as cultural organizations or centers of religious
dialogue to avoid the legal problems associated with the official ban on Sufi orders.
Just as Turkish Sufis are associated in the popular imagination with dance –
colloquially described as “whirling” or “turning,” – so too has dance been a key
signifier of contemporary Sufism in a host of other contexts ranging from Amer ica
to Pakistan. In the San Francisco Bay Area countercultural scene of the late 1960s,
Sufis were readily associated with a troupe of “Sufi dancers” and a “Sufi choir” that
perfor med widely in the region. Led by “spiritual teacher of the hippies” Sam-
uel Lewis (d. 1971) – or “Sufi Sam” as his young followers called him – the Sufi
“Dances of Universal Peace” were something of a fixture in the Bay Area. Sufi
dancers and singers, utilizing chants from a var iety of religious traditions (including
some of the Arabic Names of God or asma’ al-husna), performed at Grateful Dead
concerts and were featured in the psychedelic–spiritual scene that character ized so
much of the Bay Area youth culture during that era. Some scholars have noted the
contrast between the Sufi dancers of the 1960s and more orthodox Muslim Sufis.
And yet the eclectic dancing of Sufi Sam’s followers finds some parallels with sim-
ilar phenomena in Muslim-major ity contexts, such as the weekly dance known as
the dhamaal at the shrine of Lal Shabaz Qalandar (d. 1275) in Sindh, Pakistan.
For centur ies, the dhamaal has welcomed all, and the shrine courtyard where
the ritual takes place is a space where identities of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and
religion coalesce: women and men, Muslim and Hindu, all whirl together to the
growing intensity of the drum. In a time of reactionar y extremes, such spaces seem
to draw the hatred of those tied to a monolithic vision of religion and identity.
Tragically, the shrine was struck by an ISIS suicide bomber in February 2017.1 The
attack killed many men, women, and children, illustrating the danger Sufis and their
spaces face in many Muslim-majority settings, which are fraught with sectar ian ten-
sion, outside military intervention, and reactionary militancy. Such incidents further
highlight the violence so often associated with anti-Sufi movements.
It is not only anti-Sufi movements that threaten Sufism: arguably the struc-
tural changes wrought by modernity itself make the disappearance of certain Sufi
expressions an almost foregone conclusion. Lal Shabaz Qalandar, for example, is
named after the wander ing Sufi mendicants known as Qalandars from the classical
era – Sufis who reject social conventions and respectability. The Qalandars fre-
quently contravened orthodox sensibilities while maintaining that their wander ing
and ascetic lifestyle represented a deeper expression of the soul’s utter intoxication
with God. The integration of traditional landscapes into the systems of the mod-
er n economy has often meant the disappearance of wander ing dervishes like the
Qalandars; highways, suburbs, and shopping malls seem to offer less space for such
lifestyles than the forest paths and villages of agrar ian economies. Their stories told

Introduction xv
to local children are replaced by satellite television and social media, while their
traditional wisdom and healing are replaced by popular televised preachers and
moder n medical systems.
Dance has proven to be an endur ing expression of Sufi teachings in its var-
ied geographies and temporalities, and yet contemporary Sufism is not limited to
embodied for ms of dynamic meditation and celebration. Sufism has also been at
the heart of Islamic movements that were formed to offer military resistance to
European invasions throughout Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia dur ing the
19th century. The colonial projects of the Br itish and French empires have had a
significant impact on the history of Muslim societies and hence Sufism, including
its contemporary forms, cannot be understood apart from this impact. Sur pris-
ing traces of this colonial-era legacy of European invasion and Sufi military resis-
tance can be found in the Amer ican Midwest, in Iowa. There, we find the town of
Elkader, the only town in Amer ica named after an Arab and a Sufi.
‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri (d. 1883) was a Sufi leader and head of the Algerian
military resistance against the French invasion of the 1830s. He rose to global fame
due to his remarkable success on the battlefield, despite being significantly out-
gunned by the moder n French military, in addition to his qualities of chivalry and
generosity. He was ever willing to engage in prisoner exchanges and truces, and
ensured the humane treatment of French captives. ‘Abd al-Qadir became a hero
not only to Alger ians and Muslims but even to Amer icans, who read about his
exploits in popular magazines, and who shared a cultural memory of their own
fight against a European empire with the Amer ican Revolution. After his French
capture and exile to Damascus, however, ‘Abd al-Qadir’s fame truly came into its
own. Anti-Christian r iots broke out, and ‘Abd al-Qadir requested French arms to
help protect local Christians, working to safely channel thousands to safety. When
he died, The New York Times lamented the loss of “one of the foremost of the few
great men of the century.”
2 Consider ing his popular ity among Americans, it is
perhaps not sur prising that an Amer ican town was named after ‘Abd al-Qadir. His
legacy, as in all of these other examples, brings us to the crossroads of contemporary
Sufism and its many complexities.
What is the relationship of Sufism to colonization, and to the residue of colo-
nialism in contemporary times? What are the interpretative debates over Sufism
and Islamic authenticity, and to what extent have they changed in moder n con-
texts? What are the var ied understandings of universalism within Sufi traditions?
How has the contemporar y practice of Sufism been shaped by the rise of anti-Sufi
movements among Muslims? What are some ways in which non-Muslims have
encountered and understood Sufi traditions through texts? What sense can be made
of Western cultural reactions to Sufi texts, particularly in the for m of poetry, from
Hafiz in the 18th century to Omar Khayyam (d. 1131) in the 19th century, and
Rumi in the present day? How is contemporary Sufism gendered? How does this
gender ing manifest both continuity with and the transformation of past traditions
surrounding spiritually author itative female Sufis, and reflect understandings of
metaphysical realities?

xvi Introduction
Emerging as a var iety of Muslim ascetic, devotional, and esoteric practices in the
9th and 10th centur ies, Sufism is often descr ibed as Islamic mysticism or spirituality.
Traced to teachings given by the Prophet Muhammad to his closest companions,
including the hidden meaning of the Qur’an, Sufism first took shape in small circles
of seekers.These circles gradually developed into larger communities, in places such
as Khorasan and Baghdad. Later, Sufism took more for mal expression through an
expanding system of orders, saints, and shrines, together with literature of mystical
philosophy and poetry, that would define the classical Islamic tradition and shape
medieval Muslim empires. However, Sufism’s centrality dur ing the classical per iod
of Islamic histor y stands in marked contrast to its cur rent ambiguous (and in many
contexts, fraught) place within the larger contemporary Islamic paradigm.
“Contemporary” can mean either of the same time or of the cur rent time. We
use the ter m here to refer to Sufism today, in the 21st centur y, but also in reference
to the contemporary or modern per iod, which for the purposes of this book we
consider as beginning in the mid-18th century. This was a time when European
powers began their expansion into central Islamic lands, inaugurating a new era in
Islamic history, one that was marked by Muslim engagement with and responses
to new European-der ived modes of economy, state, science, and technology. It is
our contention that the contemporary cannot be adequately grasped without an
understanding of how cur rent trajectories have their roots in past developments that
continue to reverberate in our own time. Contemporary Sufism, then, is defined
by a) its per petuation of classical Sufi principles and practices, and b) its ver nacu-
larization of these principles and practices in light of contemporary contexts and
histor ical circumstances.
The structure of this book
The book begins by providing a genealogical overview of the production of knowl-
edge on contemporary Sufism. We offer a survey of the field as reflected in the
English-language scholarship, produced largely in Europe and more recently in North
America. Following this introductory over view, the work is divided into three main
sections, which are thematic in nature. Although we could have selected a var iety of
dynamics shaping the contemporary expressions of Sufism, we have chosen three
that have been formative to the global transfor mations taking place in Sufism today.
First, we consider Sufism’s relationship to Islam and the development of anti-
Sufi inter pretive movements. Wester n observers frequently find themselves befud-
dled by intra-Muslim tensions and conflicts. This section explains one of the most
important tensions that is cur rently playing out in Muslim societies: the contesta-
tion over Islamic authenticity by pro- and anti-Sufi Muslims. This section further
unpacks the histor ical forces that set the stage for the cur rent debate, focusing on
the r ise of a variety of movements that oppose Sufism, to varying degrees, including
the 19th-century Salafiyya in the Middle East. The focus then shifts toward Islam’s
most sustained and influential anti-Sufi theology,Wahhabism.

Introduction xvii
The second section of the book explores the relationship between Sufism and
the West. It first situates the backdrop of the European encounter with Sufism
during the colonial period, especially as Europeans were attracted to Persian poetic
traditions and to devotional practices such as those of the whirling dervishes.These
initial European encounters with Sufism resulted in the perception that it did not
originate from Islam but rather found its genesis in Judeo-Christian, Hindu, and
even Buddhist spiritualities. Early European scholars of Sufism, later known as Ori-
entalists, created an enduring legacy that is critical to contemporary understand-
ings of Sufism in the West, especially as its presence in popular culture continues
to grow.
The third and final section looks at the inter pretive debates over gender and the
questions of female author ity in Sufi and Islamic communities. After briefly outlin-
ing different roles of women within traditional Sufi cultures, this section explores
the ways in which the subject of women’s spiritual leadership within Islamic com-
munities is being engaged and contested in present contexts. Testimonies from four
present-day female Sufi leaders provide a vehicle for reflecting on contemporary
Sufi thought, culture, and practice, and illuminate how classical metaphysical prin-
ciples are being understood in relation to issues such as the role of women in Sufi
communities.
Before considering the three themes that structure the main text, in Chapter
1, we situate the field of contemporary Sufism in historical context by mapping
the knowledge production on Sufism in the West, academic and otherwise. After
highlighting premodern European encounters with Sufi texts and traditions, we
turn to focus on the Orientalist framing of Sufism, which would have a lasting
impact on Western impressions of and engagements with Sufi literature and prac-
tice. In general, Orientalist scholars would, through translation and commentary,
create a base of knowledge on Sufism in European languages filtered through
a Romantic and perennialist framework, fostering a broader sense of Sufism as
a wisdom transcending religion and Islam. This largely de-Islamicized Sufism
would then act as a resource for later Western artists, interpreters, and Sufi teach-
ers. By the mid-20th century, however, scholars began to revise earlier theories,
with increasing connections between Sufism and its Islamic sources facilitated by
greater access to Sufi texts and traditions. It was during this period that Islamic and
Sufi studies matured as a developed discipline of study, with its base in the West
shifting somewhat from Europe to North America – first, with the proliferation of
area studies and, later, religious studies departments. The final decades of the 20th
century would witness a pivot in scholarship as social scientific paradigms helped
to usher in a focus on studying lived Sufism, as opposed to an almost exclusive
textual focus inherited from Orientalist traditions. Despite a number of mid-20th-
century scholars predicting Sufism’s decline within the conditions of modernity,
Sufi orders and groups have demonstrated resilience in modern, globalizing con-
texts. This has meant that contemporary Sufism has drawn concerted scholarly
attention in recent decades.

xviii Introduction
Part I Sufism and anti-Sufism in contemporary contexts
Chapter 2 explores the historical roots of one of the most visible theological
debates playing out in the contemporary world. This debate is fundamentally a
contest between two sorts of Islam – one grounded in Sufism, and the other
vehemently opposed to Sufism as a corrosive heresy. The contest between Sufi
and anti-Sufi Muslims is playing out in almost every Muslim-majority society
and local Muslim community, the outcome of which is shaping the future of
Islam. Although the majority of medieval Muslim jurists and theologians affirmed
Sufism’s orthodoxy, there were notable opponents of Sufism in the premodern
period. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), in particular, believed that philosophical Sufism
was an extra-Islamic contagion weakening Islamic civilization from within.
Ibn Taymiyya’s views remained on the margins of Islamic thought for centu-
r ies, though they were revived in 18th century Arabia by the reformer Ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab (d. 1798). Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab took the trajectories of Ibn Taymiyya’s
anti-Sufism further than Ibn Taymiyya had, condemning Sufi Muslims as apostates
who should be fought and killed by his followers, who he believed were the only
true Muslims on earth. Labeled “Wahhabis” by other Muslims, this initially vio-
lent movement would be domesticated and consolidated in Eastern Arabia, laying
the groundwork for a new sort of Islam, one with an unprecedented opposition
to Sufism. Wahhabism would have an influence far beyond the borders of Arabia,
eventually coinciding with and in some cases amplifying the theology of influ-
ential South Asian Islamic movements, including the Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadith,
and the Salafiyya movement in the Middle East. The collapse of traditional forms
of religious authority during the colonial period facilitated the spread of Wahhabi
Islam, and its derivatives, globally. Simultaneously, the disintegration of Muslim
empires that were closely intertwined with Sufism left Sufis without a base of
material or political support, and vulnerable to attack. These developments then
set the stage for the current contest between Sufis and anti-Sufis over the nature
of Islamic theology, practice, authority, and authenticity.
With the historical background of the current Sufi/anti-Sufi conflict in place,
Chapter 3 begins with the global proliferation of Wahhabi thought and activism
in the 20th century. This development was sponsored by the discovery of oil in
Saudi Arabia. The Saudi–Wahhabi religious establishment used the influx of pet-
ro-dollars to fund the export of Wahhabi missionaries, scholarship, and literature
around the world. Muslim communities found themselves inundated with a new
version of Islam, radically critiquing Islam’s classical formations, and Sufism in
particular, as deviant. Branding themselves “Salafis” in reference to Islam’s first
generations, Wahhabi scholars and their works have radically marginalized Sufism
in contemporary Islamic discourse, with Sufi teachings, practices, and sites coming
under concerted attack. The now frequent destruction of Sufi shrines, whether
in Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, or Syria, by Salafi–Jihadi groups, is an outgrowth
of the spread of Wahhabism globally. Sufi-oriented Muslims have responded by
reasserting Sufism’s centrality to Islamic theology and practice. In North America,

Introduction xix
for example, popular Sufi Muslim authorities such as Hamza Yusuf, Hisham Kab-
bani, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Omid Safi all oppose the well-funded efforts of
Salafi organizations to rewrite Sufism out of Islamic history and thought, though
each comes from different intellectual backgrounds, ranging from traditionalist to
reformist or progressive.
Part II Contemporary Sufism in the West: Poetic influences and
popular manifestations
Just as Muslims were questioning Sufism’s place in Islam, European colonialists were
situating Sufism as a phenomenon outside of Islam, a perspective that would further
influence anti-Sufi movements. According to these early colonialists, the poetic
tradition of love-intoxication that Sufi poets such as Rumi metaphorically evoked
were not Islamic in nature but rather set apart from Islam. Islam was thought to be
too legalistic to foster such mystical illuminations. It also meant that Persian literary
traditions were privileged as being Sufi, while Arabic and Turkish Sufi literary tra-
ditions were often discounted. Both Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s (d. 1832) and Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s (d. 1882) enthusiasm for the Sufi poetr y of Hafiz are exem-
plary here. It is Hafiz’s understanding of Sufism as a universal phenomenon that
influenced Goethe, the Ger man philosopher, poet, and diplomat, and his master-
work, the West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan).3 This universal understanding of
Sufism would then spread to Amer ica through the works of Emerson, the poet who
led the Transcendentalist movement in the middle of the 19th century. It was such
spiritual and philosophical tendencies that were already percolating in Amer ica
that led to the reception of the South Asian Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927) and
his ministr y to the West. This chapter, then, situates how colonial encounters with
Sufism through travel and poetry have resulted in popular perceptions of Sufism
as solely outside of the theological or legalistic traditions of Islam, in many ways
setting an histor ical precedent to the contemporary popularization of Sufism and
the Rumi phenomenon in the 21st century.
The seeds of Wester n interest in Sufism were planted in the colonial era, and
led to the iconic status of histor ical Sufi personalities such as Hafiz, Sa’di of Shiraz
(d. 1292), and Khayyam in the West today. Rumi’s fame has skyrocketed in North
Amer ica because of publications, endorsements, and the commodification of Rumi
poetr y, which has manifested widely in popular and mater ial cultures.The popular-
ization of Rumi in the West raises philosophical quer ies on the nature of Sufism. Is
Sufism an esoter ic system deeply dependent upon Islamic theology and law and/or
is it an ever-transforming, fluid reality that is based on a fundamental principle of
universalism? Cor respondingly, is the popular mater ial culture sur rounding Sufism
in the contemporary West antithetical to classical Sufism that denudes Sufism and
thus Islam of its true nature? Regardless of how one answers these questions, such
diverse productions of Sufism have nonetheless struck a chord in Wester n cul-
tural contexts, and have generated interest in classical Sufis and their philosophical
understandings, particularly in more universalist expressions.

xx Introduction
Part III Gendering Sufism: Tradition and transformation
The question of Sufism’s legitimacy is not only unfolding with the proliferation
of figures like Rumi in popular culture in the West. It has also emerged in ter ms
of the relationship between Sufism and women’s roles. Some premoder n Islamic
discourses have marginalized women as deficient in intellect and religion, and rel-
egated most women to the private sphere. As a result, Sufi women did not typ-
ically occupy public leadership roles in the more institutionalized for ms of Sufi
practice. However, a wide range of Muslim women have been recognized as saints
or inspirational figures. The veneration of Sufi female saints can be found through-
out Islamic history. Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801), sometimes descr ibed as the first
Muslim saint, played a profound role in infusing Sufi spirituality with an ethos of
self-abandonment through love for God. Sufism offered women opportunities for
religious status and influence that transcended social and cultural limitations, with
some even considered to be “men” in their spiritual accomplishment. Chapter 6
explores the philosophical and metaphysical discourses underlying diverse views of
women and the feminine in Islam. It further explores diverse examples of female
Sufi personalities, from classical through to colonial periods, consider ing the ways
in which their legacies infor m contemporary Sufi practice and thought.
Drawing upon the rare testimony of four contemporary female Sufi leaders,
Chapter 7 explores their definitions of Sufism, their understandings of the teacher–
student relationship (murshid–murid) as connected to their own unique experiences
of training within particular orders, and their personal reflections on their respon-
sibilities as female leaders of Sufi orders in contemporary contexts. These particular
leaders – two from Istanbul, Turkey, and two from Amer ica – were chosen, as they
represent a spectrum of approaches to Sufism and a var iety of classical Sufi lineages
and orders (i.e., Mevlevi, Inayati [as connected to the Chishti], and Jerrahi).They also
come from a diverse ar ray of cultural contexts.Through their var ied experiences of
leadership, they are actively shaping contemporary Sufi traditions in local and global
realities. Even though these leaders are not meant to comprise a comprehensive
over view of gender and Sufism, they offer fascinating insights into traditional Sufi
concepts, practices, and questions of authority and authenticity within Sufism.
Having navigated the terrain of contemporary Sufism, in the final chapter,
Chapter 8, we conclude by offer ing summaries of what was discussed in each of
the three sections and their significant conclusions, especially as they pertain to the
outlook of contemporary Islamic thought and identity.We also explore the concept
of “complementar y contradictions” as a way to understand patterns of connections
within the emerging field of contemporary Sufism. This chapter further situates
the limitations of our research and makes recommendations for future studies and
further directions for research.
Recognizing the contested nature of Sufism, in ter ms of author ity, authenticity,
and gender, this study brings to light the histor ical, interpretative, and conceptual
frameworks that shape the views of Sufism’s friends and adversar ies, admirers and
detractors. In the process, we seek to help readers better understand the diversity

Introduction xxi
of Sufism, the pressures and cultural openings to which Sufism has responded in
moder n times, and the many divergent opinions about contemporary Sufism’s rela-
tionship to Islam. In what follows, we illustrate the var ied dynamics that contempo-
rary Sufis encounter, using localized examples to bring to light global issues. Before
consider ing these issues, particularly in terms of anti-Sufism, popular culture, and
gender, we begin by offer ing a histor ical over view of the production of knowledge
on Sufism as it has developed in the West. In consider ing the var ious kinds of lit-
erature produced in the English language on Sufism, we contextualize this work
by mapping the broader academic and popular discourses from which it emerges.
The following chapter, then, consciously though not comprehensively, points to the
kaleidoscopic diversity of writings on Sufism, which together constitute the literary
manifestations of contemporary Sufism in English-speaking contexts.
Notes
1 ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (also referred to as the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant or ISIL), has referred to itself more recently as the Islamic
State (IS), as the group has branches in a number of global contexts, including Yemen,
Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Arab governments tend to refer to them as DAESH,
after the Arabic acronym of their name, which also has a pejorative connotation.
2 John Kiser, Commander of the Faithful:The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader (Rhinebeck,
NY: Monkfish, 2008), 323.
3 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan) (Stuttgart: Cotta,
1819).
Bibliography
Kiser, John. Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader. Rhinebeck,
NY: Monkfish, 2008.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan). Stuttgart: Cotta,
1819.

In most major North American bookstores, physical or online, one can usually find
several books on Islam, often alongside a somewhat larger number on “Easter n
Religions.” In either case, there are nor mally a few books on Sufism. Sufism is
situated either as an aspect of Islamic spirituality or as one of the many mystical tra-
ditions of the East, alongside Hindu Vedanta or Kundalini Yoga, and Zen or Tibetan
Buddhist meditation-based paths. English-language books on Sufism in particular
range from academic, historical over views of Sufism, such as Carl W. Er nst’s Sufism,1
to books wr itten by Western Sufi teachers, including Hazrat Inayat Khan’s (d. 1927)
The Heart of Sufism or Kabir Helminski’s The Knowing Heart.2 Outside of religious
categor izations altogether, there are usually var ious translations of the poetry of the
famous Persian Sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi, including Deepak Chopra’s The Love
Poems of Rumi, Maryam Mafi’s Rumi’s Little Book of Life, and Coleman Barks’s The
Essential Rumi.3 In particular, Barks’s artful and contemporary renditions of Rumi’s
poetr y have helped make it a bestseller in the West. Regardless of whether we con-
sider books from academic, religious, or literary genres, a map of the contemporar y
literature on Sufism that is available in the West leads us back to an older tradition
of Western inter pretation (largely grounded in Orientalism) and the intersection of
imper ialism, romanticism, and perennialism that it represents.
Literature on Sufism has been available in the West at least since the 15th cen-
tury. However, Sufism would not gain widespread public recognition in Europe
and North America until the mid-20th century. It is only since the 1970s that
scholars of Sufism began to contend with Sufism as a lived tradition, as opposed to
a textual artifact or an ossified carryover of classical Islamic civilization. These later
studies have tended to capture the localized manifestation of Sufism in regional
contexts, such as Sufism in Pakistan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, or Amer ica. More
recently, scholars have begun to chart the increasingly transnational and politicized
nature of Sufism.4 Twenty-first-century studies of Sufism not only highlight local
1
CONTEXTUALIZING THE
PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
ON CONTEMPORARY SUFISM
IN THE WEST

2 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
Sufi communities, movements, and brotherhoods (tariqas) but further explore how
these movements form networks of affiliation across borders, nationalities, and cul-
tures, transfor ming Sufi rituals, theologies, and philosophies in the process. To help
contextualize this trajectory taken by the field of Sufism, this chapter provides an
histor ical outline of European and North Amer ican encounters with Sufism, Sufi
texts, and traditions.
This outline also further contextualizes our own work on contemporary Sufism
by offer ing an overview of the development of Wester n understandings of Sufism
in general and the field of contemporary Sufism in particular. Neither meant to
be exhaustive nor a literature review, we consider the varied for ms of knowledge
produced on Sufism in the West (academic and popular works about Sufism, and
works of Sufism by Wester n Sufi teachers) to paint a picture of how Sufism has been
wr itten about and constructed in the Wester n imagination. In doing so, we capture
a diverse set of authors who together represent the range of approaches to, and
genres of literature about, Sufism. These authors include not only academic schol-
ars but also practitioners, poets, and Sufi teachers whose works have added to and
shaped the idea of Sufism in the Wester n milieu, which has influenced the broader
global perception and practice of Sufism. Our choice to include “non-academic”
productions of knowledge in this over view of Wester n wr itings on Sufism is a
deliberate one. A more expansive approach to a survey of this literature conveys to
readers the different modes that have influenced the varying approaches to Sufism
that are discussed in the subsequent chapters. Some threads of this nar rative are
picked up and elaborated upon in this book’s later chapters (particularly Chapters
4 and 5). We will see that a persistent aspect of Sufism’s appeal in the West results
from its reframing as a universal, perennial tradition of transformative wisdom that
transcends dogma and religion. Although conceptions of the universal and formless
nature of wisdom have been important constitutive elements of Sufism throughout
its histor y, these conceptions have traditionally been framed in Islamic ways, using
the vocabulary of the Qur’an, Hadith, and the conceptual framework offered by the
medieval Islamic intellectual traditions. In contrast, Wester n inter preters of Sufism
have in many ways reframed its universalism in Western ter ms, largely situating it in
terms of the spiritual perennialism and universalism that came to the fore dur ing
the Renaissance, and was later taken up by Romantic and Orientalist inter preters.
Orientalism and the study of Sufism
Sufism did not emerge as a broadly acknowledged category of religion in the West
until the late 18th century, largely as a result of the access to Easter n or “Oriental”
traditions that colonial rule afforded. Although now an anachronism, “the Orient”
was a ter m that Europeans and North Amer icans used in previous centuries to
evoke “the East”: the regions of the world we now refer to as North Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia.5 First used in France in the 1830s, the ter m Orientalism
came to refer primar ily to the academic discipline that crystalized in the 18th
and 19th centuries and was concer ned with the study of the languages, cultures,

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 3
religions, and peoples of the Orient. Since Edward W. Said’s (d. 2003) watershed
study Orientalism, the ter m is used now as a critical label for this academic disci-
pline, and for the broader cultural phenomenon of European fascination with the
Orient.6
Using Michel Foucault’s (d. 1984) work on the production of knowledge (and
its inevitable relationship to power) Said suggested that Orientalism was not just
an academic discipline or cultural imaginary but a “Wester n style for dominat-
ing, restructur ing, and having author ity over the Orient.”
7 Although Orientalism
has roots in ancient Greco-Roman and medieval Christian engagements with the
cultures of the Middle East, it emerged as a paramount element of the (primar ily)
Br itish and French project of controlling the Middle East, North Africa, and Cen-
tral and South Asia dur ing the 18th, 19th, and 20th centur ies. For Said, Orientalism
was a network of notions about the Orient that for med a coherent “body of theory
and practice” with considerable material support. This system of knowledge acted
as a lens that refracted an accepted, homogenizing vision of the Orient at all levels
of European society, a vision that justified and hence per petuated Wester n domi-
nance of the region.
Said’s Orientalism is a r ich, subtle, and cr itical over view of European literature on
the Orient: whether engaging the philological works of Sir William Jones (d. 1794),
Napoleon’s (d. 1821) employment of Orientalist scholars to assist in his invasion
of Egypt and make it more palatable to Egyptians, or depictions of the Orient in
Gustave Flaubert’s (d. 1880) novels, Said draws out the ways in which Europeans
constructed the Orient as a place to control, categor ize, romanticize, or racialize.
His work is particularly à propos when dealing with Orientalists like Er nest Renan
(d. 1892), who mar ried a sense of scientific mission in the study of the Orient with
an incor r igible racism and anti-Semitism:
Read almost any page by Renan on Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, or proto-
Semitic and you read a fact of power, by which the Orientalist philologist’s
author ity summons out of the library at will examples of man’s speech, and
ranges them there sur rounded by a suave European prose that points out
defects, virtues, barbar isms, and shortcomings in the language, the people,
and the civilization.8
Said’s work has been recognized as one of the more significant and influential cul-
tural studies of the 20th century, and his insights remain essential to making sense of
contemporary Wester n understandings of the East and Islam. Said’s analysis brought
to the fore ways in which Western discourses on the Orient functioned to justify
and per petuate Western super ior ity and dominance. He ingeniously foregrounded
how scholarship on Islam has histor ically intersected with the needs of empire, and
the ways in which this patter n can persist within contemporary discourses on Islam
in the West, such as is found in his criticism of Bernard Lewis’s writings on Arabs.9
In the 1970s, Said observed that in the United States, “the Middle East experts who
advise policy makers are imbued with Orientalism almost to a person.”
10

4 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
Alongside recognizing these insights, Said’s thesis has since been cr iticized for, in
a sense, doing to Orientalism the very thing that he suggests Orientalist discourse
did to the Orient: offer ing a homogenizing and reductive vision of the phenome-
non. In making his case for Orientalism as a Wester n tradition that car icatures the
Orient while highlighting Western r ightness and super ior ity, Said tends to overlook
some of the sympathetic, positive Wester n scholarly engagements with the Ori-
ent. Where he does address such positive Western interventions, Said can at times
reduce them to relations of power, or situate them as mere products of the Orien-
talist interpretive framework, as one might suggest he does to a degree in his oth-
erwise r ich, sympathetic analysis of the French scholar of Islam and Sufism, Louis
Massignon (d. 1962).11 As a result, a somewhat homogenized and monolithic pic-
ture of European Orientalism emerges, one that fails to fully account for the more
var ied, dialogical encounters between Westerners and Easter ners that make up the
totality of the historical picture (though it should be said these are not entirely
neglected by Said).12 Although the moder n per iod began as one character ized by
Western dominance, influence was not a one-way street, and just as the West would
transfor m the lifeways of the East, so too would the East transform the culture of
the West, despite an uneven playing field.
Precolonial European encounters with Sufism
First, it is useful to recall those European exper iences of Sufism and the Orient that
took place outside the context of European dominance, especially as these expe-
r iences would shape the contours of later Orientalism. In Chapter 4, for example,
we consider the life and work of Ramon Llull (d. 1315), a Spanish Christian phil-
osopher and mystic. Born in Mallorca just years after its return to Christian hands
following three centur ies of Muslim rule, Llull’s environment remained shaped
by Muslim culture and thought. A devout Christian committed to proselytizing
Muslims, Llull studied Arabic and read Muslim religious and philosophical texts.
He even wrote works in Arabic, some of which show clear signs of Sufi influ-
ences. The extent of this influence is such that Er nst refers to Llull’s understanding
as a “Christian Sufism.”
13 Integrating Christian theology with Neoplatonism and
Sufism, Llull’s thought would prove instrumental in the esoter ic revival dur ing the
Renaissance in 15th-century Florence.
While subtle Sufi influences were at play in Florence, an anonymous Latin work
entitled Treatise on the Customs, Conditions, and Wickedness of the Turks (1480) played
a major role in infor ming European perceptions of the Orient in general and of
Sufism in particular, even ear ning Martin Luther’s praise.14 As we will see in Chap-
ter 4, the work was actually written by George of Hungary, a Dominican who was
captured by the Ottomans during their conquest of Transylvania. He was subse-
quently sold into slavery in Turkey, where he would become a Sufi practitioner
for over a decade before retur ning to Europe and repenting of his Islamic practice.
Mark Sedgwick suggests that George is “the first Western Sufi who is known by

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 5
name,” and that his Treatise on the Turks contains “the earliest known discussion in a
Wester n printed work of Sufis and dervishes,” in addition to the first translations of
Sufi poetry into a Wester n language.15 In contrast with later European encounters
with Sufism that take place within a context of Wester n dominance, George expe-
r ienced Sufism during the ascendency of the Ottoman Empire, at a time of Islamic
expansion into Europe. As a European observer, George was profoundly impressed
by Ottoman society, and wrote not from a position of contempt but rather of admi-
ration for what seemed to him to be quite a natural Ottoman superior ity (though
one that could only be explained as diabolical in or igin, from his late medieval
Christian perspective).
George attempted to explain the frequent Christian conversions to Islam in
the Ottoman Empire, descr ibing worldly reasons such as admiration for Ottoman
military and political achievements, and attraction to the sophistication of the elite
Ottoman culture. He suggests that religious reasons for conversion include the
appeal of Islamic theology and the remarkable piety of Sufi dervishes. George relays
that Sufi practitioners are “so exemplary in all their words and actions and display
so much piety in their manners and movements that they seemed to be not men
but angels.”
16 He further distinguishes the Sufis and dervishes from the ‘ulama, the
jurists of Islam, introducing an idea that becomes central to later Orientalist works:
that Sufis, like Christians, decenter the divine law and instead emphasize the cen-
trality of love and spirituality.
In the 16th centur y, the French would enter into an alliance with the Ottomans
against the Hapsburgs, giving French officials and scholars intimate access to Otto-
man society. This exclusive access to the Ottoman world allowed the French to take
a pioneering role in the Wester n study of Sufism and Islam. This for m of Orien-
talism, however, developed not in the context of Western imperial dominance but
in a context of alliance. Sixteenth-century French writings on the Ottomans (and
Sufism) by knight Antoine Geuffroy (d. 1556) and diplomat Pierre Belon (d. 1564)
tend to emphasize the positive aspects of Ottoman culture, and the ways in which
it resembles the cultures of France and Rome. Here we see a discourse on the
Orient and Sufism that emphasizes similar ity and equality rather than categorical
difference and infer iority.
Later, in the 17th century, French writers like the royal geographer Nicolas
de Nicolay (d. 1583) would further cement the European impression that Sufi
dervishes were largely lawless spiritualists, while Arabist François Pétis de la Croix
(d. 1713) would link Sufism to “mystical theology.”
17 This connection was elabo-
rated upon later in the century by another French Arabist, Barthélemy d’Herbelot
(d. 1695), in his encyclopedic work the Bibliothèque orientale, where he suggests,
quite accurately, that Sufi mystical theology is “the intimate union with the Divine
in the heart of man detached from love for things of the earth, and transported
beyond himself.”
18 Prior to the colonial period, then, Europeans had a variety of
sources on Sufism, with some giving quite accurate pictures of Sufi thought and
practice.

6 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
Colonial-era encounters with Sufism
Beginning in the late 18th century, we see a str iking shift in East–West relations.
Previously, a situation of imper ial competition held where none could gain an
upper hand. This situation dissolves as moder n technology allows Europe to gain
uncontested global dominance. Marshall G. S. Hodgson (d. 1968) calls this the
“Great Wester n Transmutation,”
19 a ser ies of social, political, economic, and tech-
nological changes that inaugurates the moder n era. Hodgson notes that this shift or
transmutation (implying something more drastic, ir reversible, and total than mere
transfor mation) was epochal. Whereas in the previous millennium the imperial
powers of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia existed in a condition of basic par ity,
with new ideas and social structures diffusing g radually over centur ies, and allowing
the culture that encountered them to absorb them without losing its integrity, the
r ise of European industr ial technology rapidly accelerated the pace of change, such
that transfor mations that would previously have taken centur ies now happened in a
matter of decades. The rapid expansion of European power around the world gave
little chance for non-European cultures to gradually absorb and assimilate the new
technologies, social structures, and philosophies. Hodgson highlights the trauma
this rapid social change entailed – usually under the aegis of European conquest –
and observes that, “the millennial parity of social power broke down, with results
that were disastrous almost everywhere.”
20
The broader political, military, and cultural context within which Europeans
encountered Sufism shifted decisively in the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
shaping a new form of discourse on Islam, as so acutely outlined by Said.As we will
see in what follows, some of the central figures in the establishment of Sufism as a
subject of study in the West were Br itish and French scholars who were affiliated
to imper ial projects, much as Said highlights. However, as mentioned above, one of
the cr itiques of Said’s work on Orientalism is that he does not adequately consider
the important colonial-era scholarship that occurs outside of imper ial projects, nor
does he fully address the generally positive, sympathetic engagements of Europeans
with Islamic thought.
Perhaps most significantly here, in Orientalism, Said does not sufficiently consider
the r ich legacy of Ger man scholarship on the Orient, including the foundational
works on Islamic literature by German philologists like Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall
(d. 1856), and Johann von Goethe’s (d. 1832) remarkable poetic engagement with
Islamic texts, as we discuss in Chapter 4. These Wester n encounters with the East
have been described as a form of “affirmative Orientalism” by sympathetic and anti-
imperialist European writers, who sought a more dialogical relationship between
Western and Easter n thought, and even a mutually enriching transfor mation.21 Such
West–East encounters cannot be reduced simply to a relationship of power and dom-
ination, but represent an attempt by Westerners to deeply comprehend and integrate
non-Western traditions, a seeking of a genuine synthesis.
Altogether, these var ious strands of Orientalism, including its imper ial affiliations
and more dialogical manifestations, come together in the person of William Jones. A

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 7
Welsh philologist and lawyer, Jones was a remarkable polymath who would become
one of the most prominent intellectuals of the English Enlightenment.With friends
like Edward Gibbon (d. 1794), Edmund Burke (d. 1797), and Benjamin Franklin
(d. 1790), Jones was plugged into elite Anglo-Amer ican networks, through which
he would disseminate his passion for the Orient. Jones’s access to Sanskrit and
Persian was greatly facilitated by his work as a judge for the Br itish East India Com-
pany (the de facto ruler of much of India at the time), beginning in 1784. For Jones
then, the Orient was a career: a people and place he exper ienced from the vantage
point of a colonial administrator. It was also a repository of some of humanity’s
most profound wisdom, philosophy, religion, literature, and culture.
Besides his groundbreaking work in highlighting the patter ns of connection
among Latin, Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit (i.e., the discovery of the Indo-European
language family), Jones was an accomplished poet, comparative religionist, and legal
scholar. He founded the first lear ned society and journal devoted to the study of
the Orient, the Asiatick Society of Bengal, and its jour nal Asiatick Researches. Mehdi
Aminrazavi remarks that it is “nearly impossible to overemphasize the importance
of Sir William Jones in transmitting Oriental history and literature to the West.”
22
Through various journals, and later through his collected works, Jones would intro-
duce readers in Br itain and North Amer ica to Persian and Sanskrit philosophies and
literatures, transfor ming the European cultural archive. He was clearly an admirer
of Eastern cultural for ms, evaluating Sanskrit as a language superior to Greek and
Latin, and holding traditional Indian and Persian for ms of literature, medicine, and
law in high esteem. In his quest to catalogue the intellectual riches he had found,
however, Said argues that Jones sought to “gather in, to rope off, to domesticate the
Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning.”
23 In Jones we
see both (a) genuine passion and admiration for the literatures and languages of the
East, and a desire to transmit their profundity to the West to foster a sense of global
humanity, and (b) a desire to categor ize, catalogue, and control, to map the intellec-
tual and linguistic ter ritory of the East to facilitate effective Br itish rule.
Jones’s passion for the Orient intersected with a growing movement among
Wester n intellectuals, poets, and politicians. His translations of Sanskrit and Persian
literature, philosophy, and poetry provided a r ich resource for Europeans to engage
in their own creative endeavors, an engagement that was led, in many respects, by
the Romantic movement. A key aspect of this Romantic appreciation of Orien-
tal thought was perennialism. The Perennial philosophy or philosophia perennis was
an intellectual framework developed during the Renaissance, one that suggested
that underlying the var ious philosophies and religions of the world was a singular,
perennial wisdom.24 Perennialism would prove to be an attractive framework for
the comparative religion project of which Jones was such an important part. He
saw as the goal of much of his work, “to recommend universal toleration by show-
ing that all nations, even those deemed most idolatrous, agree in the essentials of
religion.”
25 In the philosophy of the Persian Sufi poets and the scr iptures of India,
Jones saw shared patter ns with Plato in the West, and even came to believe that
the fountainhead of Western philosophy drew his ideas from the East, wr iting that

8 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
“Plato drew many of his notions (through Egypt, where he resided for some time)
from the sages of Hindustan.”
26
As we will explore further in Chapter 4, Jones’s understanding of Sufism was
framed by the unusual and remarkable Dabistan-i madhahib (School of Sects).
Although the Dabistan’s author is unknown, the text was most likely written in
the late 17th century. It offers a chronological cr itique of the var ious religious
systems that the author encountered in Persia and India. The text descr ibes Sufis
as universalists who transcend all religious affiliation: “The Sufi is by no necessity
bound by creed; no faith nor religion fetters his choice; he befriends the idol and
the temple of the idol, and is no stranger to the mosque.”
27 Hence Jones saw in
Sufism a quintessential expression of perennialism. This perennialist take on Sufism
would take hold among English inter preters, including Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833)
and Lieutenant James William Graham (d. 1845). Graham was an officer under
Malcolm (a brigadier general in the Br itish colonial ar my), and wrote the first
English work devoted solely to Sufism, A Treatise on Sufism, or Mahomedan Mysticism
(1819), which per petuated the idea that Sufis rejected the law and rituals of Islam,
and that Sufism bore a distinct affinity to Neoplatonic and Hindu thought. Graham
asserted that “a person of any religion or sect, may be a Sufi.”
28 Malcolm’s History of
Persia emerged in part from his conversations with a Persian jurist and opponent of
Sufism, Agha Muhammad Ali. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Malcolm perceives Sufi
transcendence of the outward religious for ms of Islam as, per Ali’s view, a decep-
tive subversion. Malcolm’s negative perception is somewhat exceptional among
Western interpreters; however, Jones’s more positive evaluation of Sufi perennialism
would prove influential even through the 21st century. As we will see in Chapters
4 and 5,Western intellectuals, poets, and popular audiences have tended to perceive
Sufism as something profound and positive to the degree that it has been separated
from Islam. The extent that Sufism was understood as an accessible, universal, non-
dogmatic spirituality is the extent to which it could be embraced as an appealing
alter native to mainstream Judeo-Christian religiosity.
Later, German theologian Fr iedrich August Tholuk (d. 1877) would offer a
more extensive and nuanced account of Sufism with his Latin work, Sufismus, sive
theosophia Persarum pantheistica (1821), published when he was just 22 years old.
Using primar ily Persian sources, alongside some Arabic and Turkish works, Tholuk
acknowledged Sufism’s roots in the early Islamic tradition and, contra Jones, Mal-
colm, and Graham, rejected the thesis of Sufism’s Greek or Indian origin. However,
he still maintained that Sufism fell outside the boundaries of Islam proper, as a
tradition that began monotheistically, but soon developed into a pantheistic doc-
tr ine.29 Sufism remained, for Tholuk, something of a “foreign plant in the sandy soil
of Islam.”
30 Written in Latin, Tholuk’s work would have a limited readership. The
English perennialist understanding of Sufism would prove to be a more endur ing
(if less grounded) perspective in the West.
Popular 19th-century theor ies of race would further entrench the Western sense
that Sufism was something separate from Islam. Renan, for example, believed that
Semitic peoples were racially incapable of producing sophisticated philosophy and

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 9
mysticism, being mired instead in dogmatism and legalism. As such, all genuine
mysticism was thought to be Aryan in or igin, whether Indian, Persian, or Greek.
Islam, as a quintessentially Semitic religion, could not on its own have produced
Sufism then, but must have absorbed it from extra-Islamic sources. Br itish Orien-
talist and imper ial agent Edward H. Palmer (d. 1882) and Dutch scholar Reinhart
Dozy (d. 1883) both suggested that Sufism was Indo-European or Aryan in origin,
with Palmer wr iting that Sufism was a development of the “primeval religion of
the Aryan race.” For his part, Dozy argued that the Qur’an was a moral and practi-
cal text, but failed to offer principles of spiritual development and even proved an
“obstacle to mysticism.”
31
It is not until the 20th centur y that we find Western scholars, better acquainted
with the history, literature, and practice of Sufism, cor recting earlier perspectives,
counter ing racialized theor ies of Sufism’s Aryan or igin, and noting Sufism’s early,
indigenous development within Muslim societies. Hungarian scholar of Islam Ignaz
Goldziher (d. 1921) countered Renan’s negative assumptions of Semitic peoples,
arguing for the philosophical, imaginative, and cultural complexity of Islam, and
bemoaning the extent to which European intellectuals had fallen for the “scientific
dogma” of race, as found in Renan’s work. However, Goldziher perpetuated the
prevailing consensus that Sufism was largely the product of extra-Islamic influences.
He argued that Sufi her meneutics were not so much drawing out the spiritual
r ichness of the Quranic text, but rather using it as a pre-text upon which they
imposed their own non-Quranic worldview.32 It would be left to Br itish Orien-
talist Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (d. 1945) and his student Arthur J. Arberry (d.
1969) to offer more nuanced studies of early Sufism that would acknowledge its
extra-Islamic influences (Persian, Neoplatonic, Christian, etc.) while asserting its
ultimately Islamic or igin and character.
Nicholson, the grandson of biblical scholar John Nicholson, was a student at
Cambridge University in 1887.33 He would go on to hold Chairs of Arabic and
Persian between Cambridge and University College London.34 He was a scholar
of Persian and Arabic, translating a number of Sufi texts, including Rumi’s massive
Mathnawi, and writing an influential, scholarly introduction to Sufism, The Mystics
of Islam.35 He set about putting to rest the thesis of Sufism’s Aryan origin, first in his
essay “A Histor ical Enquiry Concer ning the Origin and Development of Sufism”
arguing that Sufism was “the native product of Islam itself.”
36 For instance, Nichol-
son traced “theosophical Sufism” to Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri (d. 859) whose teachings
he did not think could be simply accounted for as der ivative of Egyptian thought
(i.e., hieroglyphics, alchemy, astrology) and/or Vedanta or Persian, or as an Aryan
response to Islam.37 In his Mystics of Islam, Nicholson also frames Sufism as Islamic.
He wr ites in this text, “Even if Islam had been miraculously shut off from contact
with foreign religions and philosophies, some for m of mysticism would have ar isen
from it, for the seeds were already there.”
38 However, Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh
contend that despite Nicholson’s departure from previous European scholars in his
framing of Sufism, in acknowledging its Islamic or igin, he continued to maintain
the “view that Sufism as a whole was not an organic outgrowth of ‘pure’ Islam”

10 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
primar ily because of the stereotype held at the time that Islam was mainly a legalis-
tic tradition.39 Nicholson’s student Arber ry would pick up from where his mentor
left off.
Arber ry met Nicholson in 1927, when he was a student of Arabic.40 It was their
relationship, one that lasted until Nicholson’s death in 1945, which ignited Arber-
r y’s lifelong interest in Sufism. Arber ry further traveled throughout the Middle East,
including Egypt, where he taught Greek and Latin at Cairo University for two
years beginning in 1932.41 He was also positioned at the India Office for a decade,
working as an editor and founder of several magazines.42 Arber ry was eventually
hired by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London,
where he held the Chair of Persian and then Arabic, like his mentor Nicholson.43
Arber ry strongly felt that Britain would “benefit to strengthen her ties with the
Muslim countr ies,” which led him to encourage Oriental studies and his efforts in
the establishment of a Middle East Centre at Cambridge, not only for academic
study but also for cultural knowledge.44 Arberr y also published prolifically on Islam
and Sufism. He is known for his translation of the Qur‘an,45 in addition to over
sixty books, articles, and reviews on Arabic and Persian studies.46 They include
Introduction to Sufism (1942) and Sufism (1950), and translations of many of Rumi’s
works, such as the Ruba‘iyat (1949), Discourses (1961), Tales from the Masnavi (1961),
and eventually The Mystical Poems (1968), which consisted of fifteen volumes – one
that he completed in his retirement.47 Despite his numerous publications on the
topic, Arber ry held that Sufism’s classical age of mystical virtuosity had passed, with
contemporary Sufism a shadow of its for mer self, vaguely suggesting past glor ies.
As is apparent from the titles of Nicholson’s and Arberry’s works, however, Sufism
was conceived of as a distinctly Islamic phenomenon, in contrast with the earlier
works of Jones, Malcolm, and Graham. Nicholson, for example, defined Sufism as
“the religious philosophy of Islam,” and argued that it could not be understood in
isolation from the “outward and inward development of Islam.”
48
The early 20th century witnessed a turn in Wester n appreciations of Sufism
toward acknowledging its Islamic character. This happened not only among Br itish
academics like Nicholson and Arber ry but also among French scholars, most nota-
bly Louis Massignon, whom Said calls “the most renowned and influential of mod-
er n French Orientalists.”
49 Massignon’s interest in the Orient developed at a time
when the French presence in North Africa was growing. As a result, he traveled to
Algiers in 1901, which was his first encounter with the Muslim world.50 He began
studies at the Sorbonne in Paris that same year, which initially included a regional
focus on India and the study of Sanskrit.51 However, after a visit to Morocco, he
switched to focus on Arabic, which led to further training in Cairo.52 Massignon
read widely. He integrated “urban sociology, structural linguistics, psychoanalysis,
contemporary anthropology” into his work, wr iting in an aesthetically rich way,
which Said character izes as “one of the Great French styles of the centur y.”
53 Mas-
signon would also prove to be one of the century’s most accomplished scholars of
Sufism. He wrote a definitive multi-volume biography of the famous Sufi martyr
of 10th-century Baghdad, Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922), a thesis project for which he

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 11
completed archaeological work outside of Baghdad (which was at the time under
Ottoman rule), and for which he drew “effortlessly on the entire cor pus of Islamic
literature.”
54 Patr ick Laude notes that Massignon’s relationship with al-Hallaj was
no mere “scholarly rapport,” but rather “a spiritually seminal, intimately personal
and life-alter ing encounter that pertains more to the realm of living relationships
than to that of archival study.”
55 Although deeply sympathetic to Islam and spiritu-
ally connected to one of its great mystics, Massignon remained a devout Christian,
and even became a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church later in his life.56
In his influential Essai sur les origines de la lexique technique de la mystique musalmane,
Massignon argued, more explicitly than Nicholson, that Sufism developed out of
Islam’s ascetic tradition, and convincingly demonstrated the role of the Qur’an in
shaping Sufi ter minology.57 Annemar ie Schimmel (d. 2003) suggests that it is with
Massignon’s work that “the Islamic roots of early Sufism were expounded for the
first time.”
58 He openly cr iticized the anti-Semitism underlying some of his con-
temporar ies’ analyses, descr ibing them as “pro-Aryans” and “anti-Semites” for sug-
gesting that “Semitic peoples absolutely lack the aptitude for the arts and sciences,
concluding that there is an ‘Aryan’ or igin of mysticism in the so-called Semitic
religions.”
59 Together, the works of Nicholson, Arber ry, and Massignon ushered in a
new era of scholarship on Sufism, one that more systematically recognized Sufism’s
overall character as an Islamic phenomenon.60
The beginnings of Western Sufism: René Guénon and Hazrat
Inayat Khan
Alongside Nicholson, Arberry, and Massignon, French esoter icist, Sufi, and influen-
tial author René Guénon (d. 1951) affir med the Islamic (and Arabic) character of
Sufism dur ing the early 20th century. He argued that:
The completely gratuitous supposition of a foreign or igin – Greek, Persian,
or Indian – is in any case for mally contradicted by the fact that the means of
expression of Islamic esoter icism are intimately linked with the very consti-
tution of the Arabic language ... The truth is that ‘Sufism’ is as Arab as the
Koran itself, in which it has its direct principles.61
Unlike 20th-century Orientalists, however, Guénon approached Sufism not as a
subject of study or even a personal passion, but as a path of transfor mation that he
adopted wholeheartedly, eventually taking on the name ‘Abd al-Wahid Yahya and
living in Cairo as a devout Muslim. In his wr itings, Guénon focused the perenni-
alism and romanticism of the Orientalists through the lens of Western esotericism
and traditionalism. Laude highlights the three main themes of Guénon’s works,
namely (1) a concer n with articulating a universal metaphysics underlying diverse
religious expressions; (2) defining esoter icism as distinct from exoter icism; (3) ana-
lyzing var ious religious symbols, drawing out their universal implications.62 Having
participated in Theosophical, Masonic, and gnostic movements in Par is, Guénon

12 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
sought to recover the universal metaphysics of humanity’s primordial tradition (the
Renaissance’s prisca theologia and philosophia perennis), whose wisdom he believed
could still be found preser ved in esoter ic teachings. Guénon began increasingly
to locate these teachings within traditional religious for mations. With his growing
distaste for Paris’s occult groups, Guénon began to sympathize with traditionalist
Catholics at the Sorbonne, who argued for the efficacy of tradition as a means of
preser ving spiritual authenticity. Guénon eventually moved away from Catholicism,
however, and became a practitioner of Sufism.
Besides focusing on themes of universal metaphysics, esoter icism, and symbol-
ism, Guénon’s works offered a trenchant critique of Western moder nity. In a way,
he represents another for m of “affir mative Orientalism,” in that he hoped that a
transfor mative “Easter nization” of the West could save it from itself. In his fourth
work, Orient et Occident, Guénon suggested that the pending collapse of Western
civilization could be assuaged with the help of Oriental metaphysics and religion.63
For Guénon, the modern, Western world was a materialistic deviation from the
great premodern or “traditional” civilizations, such as Indian, Chinese, and Islamic.
These civilizations preser ved the universal metaphysics and transfor mative spiritu-
ality of the primordial tradition, and as a result maintained contact with the divine
truth and experienced a certain civilizational equilibrium and health. Although, on
the surface, the modern West seemed to offer philosophical, social, scientific, and
technological progress, it was in fact premised solely on mater ial development, and
thus moved away from traditional principles, “leading to the atrophying of sacred
knowledge, social fragmentation, conflict, and the eventual dissolution of human
civilization.”
64
Guénon was initially drawn to the non-dualistic metaphysics of the Advaita
Vedanta tradition within Hinduism, which he believed to be the most explicit artic-
ulation of metaphysical truth. He was not simply seeking to lear n metaphysical
principles, however, but to be initiated into a spiritual path that allowed for the
individual realization of these principles. This search for authentic initiation would
eventually lead Guénon to Ivan Aguéli (d. 1917), a Swedish-born convert to Islam,
Sufi, and impressionist painter. Aguéli, or Shaykh ‘Abd al-Hadi Aqili as he was also
known, managed a bookstore in Par is that was something of a nucleus for the city’s
intr icate and varied network of seekers. Aguéli was also a representative (muqaddam)
of Shaykh Ilaysh al-Kabir (d. 1921), a Maliki scholar, Shadhili Sufi master, and
student of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought in Cairo.Through Aguéli, Guénon began to cor-
respond with al-Kabir, becoming a Muslim as a result and taking the name ‘Abd
al-Wahid Yahya.65 Although he continued to venerate Hindu Vedanta as the most
explicit expression of primordial, metaphysical truth, Guénon would come to see
Islam as the final revelation of the primordial tradition before the end of the world,
one that was particularly accessible to Wester ners due to its shared emphases with
Christianity and the ease with which one could convert.
Guénon wrote prolifically, publishing almost thirty books. Although his wr it-
ings do not encourage conversion to Islam, Guénon’s personal example proved
to be a model for many who believed, with him, that Islam represented the most

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 13
vibrant, accessible manifestation of the primordial tradition for Westerners. Hence,
a number of Traditionalists, particularly among Western academics, became Sufis,
leading to an academic–Traditionalist–Sufi nexus in Europe and North America,
a school of thought that has continued to be influential in charting the manner in
which Sufism and Islam have been translated for Western audiences. In particular,
Traditionalist wr itings emphasize themes of authenticity. Guénon and his followers
believe that genuine metaphysical truth, initiation, and spiritual transfor mation can
only be accessed within orthodox, traditional religious for ms. Consequently, they
tend to distinguish sharply between heretical, syncretistic for ms (e.g ., Theosophy is
oft-decr ied in Traditionalist works) and orthodox ones, which are usually thought
to have an exoter ic or outward path of ritual, r ite, and law, and an inward path of
esoter ic truth. This approach has infor med a significant body of academic work
on Sufism by Traditionalist scholars like Titus Burkhardt (d. 1984), Martin Lings
(d. 2005), and Seyyed Hossein Nasr (who will be discussed further in Chapter 3),
in addition to William Chittick, Sachiko Murata, and Ibrahim Kalin. Although not
directly affiliated with Traditionalism as a school of thought, a number of Wester n
Muslims, including popular preacher and scholar Hamza Yusuf, have been influ-
enced by Traditionalist writings to varying extents.
Interestingly, around the same time that Guénon was developing an understand-
ing of Sufism as the esoter ic truth within Islam, a Muslim Sufi master and musician
from India began teaching a more universal form of Sufism in Europe and North
Amer ica. Between 1910 and 1926, Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927) traveled through-
out North Amer ica and Europe giving talks and musical concerts, and establishing
his Sufi Order (later called the Sufi Movement), which would remain the predom-
inant for m of Sufism available to North Amer ican seekers until the 1960s. Inayat
Khan began initiating Amer ican seekers into Sufism following his arr ival in New
York in 1910. In 1912, he moved to England, where the Theosophical Publishing
Society published his first book on Sufism in the West.66 The book offered tra-
ditional Sufi teachings, presented as “the pure essence of all religions and philos-
ophies,” much in the same way that Swami Vivekananda (d. 1902) had presented
Vedanta and how D. T. Suzuki (d. 1966) would later represent Zen. Universalizing
the mystical essence of a religious tradition was a common pattern, one that pre-
sented transformative paths using Western motifs popular ized by Theosophy and
other similar movements. In London, Inayat Khan would further establish his “Sufi
Order of the West,” which would frame traditional Indian Sufism within a univer-
salistic Theosophical framework.
Inayat Khan’s universalism was further rooted in the cosmopolitan culture of
Indian cities like Hyderabad, where Muslim and Hindu practices, spiritualities,
philosophies, and cultures had inter mingled for centur ies, dissolving ready-made
borders of religious identity. Inayat Khan was trained in the Chishti Sufi order, an
order particularly known for its openness to Hindus and its comfort with inte-
grating Hindu practices into Sufism. He set out west, at the behest of his Sufi
master, who advised him to go to Europe and North Amer ica to “harmonize the
East and West” with his music and Sufi message.67 However, Inayat Khan had long

14 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
been fascinated by the West, learning Western musical instruments at a young age
and even dressing in Wester n three-piece suits, making him somewhat conspicuous
among the Sufis of Hyderabad.68 Like many Orientalists and Romantics in the
West, Inayat Khan set out across the world to both transform and be transfor med by
his encounters, with a shared sense of a call to join East and West in a new universal
synthesis. The Sufism he would eventually teach “reflects a synthesis of traditional
Islamicate and moder n Wester n motifs,” as Inayat Khan “creatively adapted tradi-
tional Indo-Islamic categories to the concer ns of late moder n Western inquirers
and disciples.”
69
Both Guénon and Inayat Khan embraced perennialism, the belief that there
was a singular truth underlying the world’s various religions. However, Guénon’s
perennialism was filtered through a conser vative traditionalism, meaning that this
underlying truth, for Guénon, could only be accessed through the outward religious
for m within which it was encapsulated: thus, Sufism could only be authentically
realized within the bounds of Islamic practice and law. In contrast, Inayat Khan’s
perennialism was shaped more by Theosophy, with its eclecticism, anti-dogmatism,
and sense of a new era that was dawning. For Khan, Sufism was not only a particular
path of spiritual transfor mation rooted in Islamic traditions, it was also the “message
of the time,” a universal truth offer ing a timely cong ruence with the dawn of a new
age transcending differences of race and religion (i.e., for ms), as envisaged in Theo-
sophical teachings. Guénon’s and Inayat Khan’s respective presentations of Sufism,
through publications and teachings, built upon the now dual understandings of
Sufism taking shape in Wester n scholarship: either as the mysticism of Islam or as a
universal mysticism transcending religion altogether.
From text to context: The shift to studying living Sufism
In contrast to scholars like Nicholson and Arber ry, who distinctly remained out-
siders to their subject of study, and those who, like Guénon, became committed
insiders, the mid-20th century witnessed the emergence of several Wester n scholars
of Sufism who fell somewhere between these two possibilities: evincing a deep,
personal connection to Sufism, though without for mally attaching themselves to a
Sufi order or converting to Islam. Certainly, Massignon can be counted here, as he
was someone who was deeply rooted in Catholicism and yet profoundly shaped by
his spiritual relationship with al-Hallaj.70 Dur ing Massignon’s audience with Pope
Pius XI, the Pontiff even playfully called Massignon a “Catholic Muslim.”
71 Henry
Corbin (d. 1978), one of Massignon’s foremost students and even his successor of
sorts, would further prove to be among those scholars with a deep, personal con-
nection to Sufism alongside Shi‘a esoter icism. Laude notes that unlike English and
Ger man scholarship on Islam, some of the most prominent French studies of Islam
have focused on its inner dimensions, namely the esoter ic traditions of Sufism and
Shi‘ism.72 Corbin is paradigmatic here, as his life’s work was devoted to interpreting
these esoteric Islamic traditions, and further drawing out the connections between
Sufi and Shi‘a strains of inner Islam. Corbin would prove to be, like Massignon,

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 15
a passionate and inspired interpreter of Sufism. As with his teacher’s devotion to
Hallaj, Corbin would immerse himself in the works of Sufi figures like Suhrawardi
and Ibn al-‘Arabi, with The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism and Alone with the Alone.73
Corbin began his intellectual career as an expert on Martin Heidegger and
German phenomenology.Through Massignon, Corbin encountered Sufi and Shi‘a
metaphysics, which were to become his lifelong passion. Corbin studied in Istanbul
dur ing the Second World War before taking a professorship at Tehran University.
Succeeding Massignon at the École pratique des hautes études in Par is, Corbin
would spend half the year in Par is and half in Tehran for the remainder of his
career,74 in a sense physically representing his intellectual synthesis of East and West.
Also like Massignon, Corbin read widely, integrating various psychological, philo-
sophical, and metaphysical perspectives into his creative interpretations of Islamic
esoter icism. His idiosyncratic interpretations of Islamic esoter icism were both
admired for their depth and brilliance, and cr iticized for at times obscuring rather
than illuminating the original works. Corbin’s oeuvre unsur prisingly made him a
good fit for Eranos, one of the 20th century’s most interesting academic milieus.
At the behest of theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto (d. 1937) and psy-
chologist Carl Jung (d. 1961), Olga Froebe-Kapteyn (d. 1962) established the Era-
nos center in Ascona, Switzerland, to, as Jung suggested, ‘bring together East and
West.’
75 Eranos would host annual gatherings of world-renowned scholars of reli-
gion and myth, psychologists, and scientists. Annual conferences were attended by
such luminar ies of religion and psychology as Gershom Scholem (d. 1982), Jung,
Otto, and Mircea Eliade (d. 1986). In 1949, Corbin was invited to replace Mas-
signon as a speaker at the conference (as Massignon refused to abide by the confer-
ence’s apolitical or ientation). Through his participation in the Eranos conferences,
Corbin would help disseminate elements of Sufi philosophy and spirituality among
Wester n intellectual elites of the post-war per iod.
Although Corbin’s work on Sufism remains some of the r ichest produced during
this period, the maturing of Wester n scholarship on Sufism in the latter half of the
20th century is best represented in the life and legacy of Annemarie Schimmel.
One of the 20th century’s most influential scholars of Islam, Schimmel ear ned her
first doctorate in Islamic studies by age 19, spoke at least seven languages, and wrote
more than eighty books. Her works range from introductions to Sufism, such as her
seminal Mystical Dimensions of Islam,76 to works on famous Sufi figures, the Mughal
Empire, numerology, calligraphy, and even the place of cats in Islamic cultures.
Emerging out of the German Orientalist tradition, Schimmel evinced a war mer
appreciation for Islamic cultures and Sufism than many of her predecessors, per-
haps falling more into the tradition of Goethe’s Romantic engagement with Hafiz.
Unlike Nicholson, for example, who never actually traveled to a Muslim-major ity
country, Schimmel taught in Turkey, traveled and established friendships through-
out Muslim lands, and made Pakistan a second home of sorts, much as Corbin had
done with Iran. The fact that a street in Lahore is named after her speaks to the way
in which her sensitive, relational approach to scholarship on Islam, and Sufism in
particular, bridged cultural divides.

16 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
Schimmel’s more immersive approach was part of a larger shift among Western
scholars in the 20th century away from the Orientalist model of studying Islam and
Sufism, which remained primar ily text- and language-based, to one based more in
travel study. John O.Voll notes that, “Following World War II, scholars in the West
began a major reconceptualization of the disciplines and methods to be used for
the study of non-wester n societies.”
77 Whereas many an ar mchair Orientalist may
have never actually visited a Middle Easter n country or even met someone from
the Middle East, scholars increasingly tur ned toward area studies in the middle of
the 20th century, which fostered a sense that time spent in the region one studies
was an integral means of gaining knowledge of the said area. This is not to say
the European Orientalist tradition of Islamic studies, focusing on texts and lan-
guages, was simply abandoned. It too was transmitted to North Amer ica dur ing
the mid-20th century, when scholars like Hamilton Gibb (d. 1971) moved from
Oxford to Harvard to establish the Center for Middle Easter n Studies, Gustave von
Grunebaum (d. 1972) led the Center at the University of Califor nia, LA, and Franz
Rosenthal (d. 2003) started at Yale University.78 Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell
Smith (d. 2000) established North Amer ica’s first Institute of Islamic Studies in
1952 at McGill University. In 1967, Schimmel established the Indo-Muslim Stud-
ies program at Harvard University, offer ing a closer regional specialization within
American Islamic studies.
As some of the above examples indicate, dur ing the 1970s, Islamic studies largely
shifted from area studies to religious studies departments, alongside departments
of anthropology and sociology. The pursuit of language studies related to Islamic
cultures was assisted in the US dur ing this per iod by the gover nment’s interest in
having experts in languages relevant to Cold War politics, which made funding
available to scholars who were interested in master ing languages like Arabic and
Persian. Besides public support for area and language studies, Marcia Hermansen
observes that the respected place of religious studies within liberal arts cur ricula has
meant the proliferation of religious studies departments and academic positions in
private liberal arts colleges. This has, in turn, fostered “a broader scope for offer ing
courses on Sufism,” and hence “training in such an area would seem more likely
to lead to employment,” creating an economic base for the pursuit of the study
of Sufism in the Amer ican academy.79 This economic imperative intersected with
a growing cadre of “seekers” among baby boomers, who, in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, embraced a number of transplanted contemplative traditions rooted in
Zen Buddhism, non-dualistic Hindu traditions, and Sufism. As such, many of those
North Amer icans who would become scholars of Sufism were themselves also
practitioners of the tradition.Together, all of these factors have combined in leading
to a situation whereby from the 1960s and 1970s onward, “the major ity of western
experts in Sufism were no longer based in Europe, but in North Amer ica.”
80
Representative of this North Amer ican shift, Schimmel’s student Carl W. Er nst
is a leading scholar of Sufism, with his work focusing on South Asia and Iran.
Along with colleague Bruce Lawrence, Er nst has helped further establish the aca-
demic study of Sufism in the North Amer ican milieu. Lawrence has been for mative

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 17
in crafting the Islamic Studies program at Duke University, which is now being
directed by Omid Safi – another scholar with personal ties to Sufism, including
a connection with Sufi teachers, like Cemalnur Sargut, who we discuss further
in Chapter 7.81 Duke University is closely aligned with the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill (or the Duke–UNC–Emory tr iangle). Islamic and Sufi
studies have been shaped there by Er nst, Lawrence, and Safi, among others. Er nst,
though a student of Schimmel, has not only continued work in translation (as
Schimmel often did) but also forged his own path by taking a more political-social
cr itical approach to studies of Sufism and Islam. Students who have come out of
the Duke–UNC-Emory tr iangle have included Zia Inayat Khan (the grandson of
Inayat Khan and current head of his Inayati Order), Robert Rozehnal (founding
Director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University), and Scott
Kugle. Kugle is now a Professor of South Asian and Islamic Studies at Emory Col-
lege, where, alongside Rkia Cornell and Vincent Cornell, a robust program of Sufi
studies focuses on South Asia (Kugle), North Africa (Vincent Cornell), and women
and sexuality (Rkia Cornell).
The University of Chicago has long been a center of religious studies in North
Amer ica. This is a legacy of Eliade’s time there, where he established the compar-
ative history of religions and methodology, trained a generation of scholars, and
largely shaped the field in the 1970s and 1980s.82 Although Eliade was not particu-
larly interested in Islam in his work, he was familiar with Traditionalist wr itings, and
shared many overlapping concer ns, including symbolism, comparative mysticism,
and esoter ic traditions. His approach lent itself to the study of Sufism, and as such
he has also played an important role in developing studies of Sufism. Michael A.
Sells, who teaches in the Divinity School at Chicago, has written extensively on
Sufi literature, poetry, and figures (i.e., Ibn al-‘Arabi).
Just as religious studies departments gained their place in the North Amer ican
academy in the second half of the 20th century, Guénon’s Traditionalism would
make its way across the Atlantic, intersecting closely with the for mation of reli-
gious studies and Sufi studies in particular. In 1981 Fr ithjof Schuon (d. 1998) – a
Swiss-Ger man author, mystic, and Sufi teacher – moved to Bloomington, Indiana.
Although Guénon laid the intellectual groundwork for Traditionalism, it was his
associate Schuon who would further articulate the Traditionalist perspective while
considerably expanding its influence. Over twenty of his books (written in French)
have been translated into English. His works, though cover ing a var iety of religious
traditions, all purport to descr ibe the perennial wisdom at the heart of human
religious history.
Unlike Guénon, Schuon became a Sufi teacher or shaykh, and founded a branch
of the Shadhili-‘Alawiyya known as the Maryamiyya. In 1932, Schuon spent three
to four months at an Alawi Sufi center in Algeria, meeting with Shaykh Ahmad
al-‘Alawi (d. 1934) a number of times. Upon retur ning to Europe, Schuon began
initiating fellow Traditionalists who were themselves eagerly seeking a spiritual lin-
eage within which to practice. In 1965, Schuon had a vision of the Virgin Mary,
whom he saw as an incar nation of both divine mercy and perennial wisdom.

18 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
In 1967,Victor Danner (d. 1990), Professor of Religious Studies in Bloomington,
IN, established a Maryamiyya center there, which became the most important cen-
ter of Schuon’s order, and facilitated the intersection of Sufi Traditionalism with
academia. Seyyed Hossein Nasr remains the leader of the most prominent branch
of the order, and is generally seen as Schuon’s successor. Although his connec-
tion to the Mar yamiyya was less publicized, Huston Smith (d. 2017), one of the
most well-known scholars of religion in America, was a practicing member of the
Maryamiyya, as well. Traditionalist influence in North Amer ican religious studies
generally facilitated a scholarly interest in mysticism, comparative mysticism, and
religious philosophy, and hence Sufism was something that many Traditionalists
pursued as both a personal practice and scholarly research. Summar izing the influ-
ence of Sufism on scholars of the subject, Her mansen comments, “most scholars
of Sufism in American universities are themselves Sufis, crypto-Sufis, or religious
persons from other traditions who are sympathetic to Sufism.”
83
William C. Chittick, a Professor of Asian and Asian Amer ican Studies at Stony
Brook University, was a student of Nasr’s in 1974. Chittick has numerous publi-
cations on Sufism, Ibn al-‘Arabi, and Rumi. Sachiko Murata, who is mar ried to
Chittick, also studied in Tehran, though the Iranian Revolution forced them both
to leave Iran. Murata is also a Professor of Asian Studies at Stony Brook University,
where she teaches courses on Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. One of
her for mative works on Sufism has been The Tao of Islam.84 She has also helped to
develop the study of the inter relationships between Sufism and Far Easter n thought
and practice.
Scholars of Sufism, including Chittick, Murata, Corbin, and Toshihiko Izutsu
(d. 1993), were prominent figures within the field who taught at the Imper ial
Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. Others, like Alan Godlas and Leonard
Lewisohn, were influenced by the scholarly networks that intersected in Tehran
during this era. They then retur ned to Amer ica to teach at institutions of higher
learning, such as in Islamic studies programs.85 After 9/11, Nasr’s and Chittick’s
books on Sufism and Islam proliferated, in effect attempting to reclaim Islam from
the violent and reductive portrayals of Islam in the popular media.
Scholarship on Sufism beyond the academy
Sufism was growing not only as an academic subject of study or even a path of
personal transformation, but, in the 1960s and 1970s, was also gaining some cachet
as a for m of popular literature. Much of Sufism’s broader popular ity dur ing this
per iod is due to the remarkable books published by Idries Shah (d. 1996), including
The Sufis and The Way of the Sufi.86 Combining Sufi teaching tales with psychology
and claims of Sufi or igins for a great many Wester n and global cultural phenom-
ena, Shah wove together a number of idiosyncratic threads to produce books that
made for compelling and entertaining reading.Although claiming to be the “Grand
Sheikh of the Sufis,” Shah did not provide details on the nature of his connection
to Sufi teachers and teachings, and his works drew sharp cr iticism from scholars,

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 19
including Schimmel, who generally dismissed Shah as an “unser ious” author if not
a charlatan.87 Nevertheless, his books helped cement the impression among an
English readership that Sufism was not simply an ancient philosophy and poetr y
but a living wisdom that was still accessible. An exemplary example of Shah’s influ-
ence is seen with his relationship with the Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing
(d. 2013). Lessing was a prolific British author who wrote extensively on topics
that ranged from education, women’s r ights, racism, and more.88 She was also inter-
ested in Islam, particularly Sufism, which she explains “transcends the boundar ies
between many or all religions to the point where it is argued that a person can be
a Sufi without having an Islamic identity,” adding that Sufism is “the substance of
that current which can develop man to a higher stage in his evolution.”
89 Lessing
viewed her teacher, Shah, as a “moderate and liberal Muslim,” who influenced her
wr iting and spiritual path as early as the 1960s.90
The latter part of the 20th century saw the establishment of publishing houses
devoted to disseminating the teachings of Sufism, in both their classical and their
contemporary iterations. Traditionalist works, many on Sufism, were published by
presses like World Wisdom, which is exclusively devoted to works in a perennialist
vein, whether by Schuon or his affiliates. Fons Vitae also prints works connected
with Traditionalist authors, though this press is more closely focused on publishing
classical Islamic and Sufi texts. Fons Vitae’s publications capture the broad nature of
Traditionalist thinkers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Noteworthy here is Thomas
Merton (d. 1968), a Cistercian monk from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky
and a wr iter, known especially for his book The Seven Story Mountain (d. 1948).
Merton was visited by a Sufi teacher by the name of Abdeslam (d. 1980) from
Morocco and was heavily influenced by Sufism. Merton also cor responded with
a Buddhist student of Schuon’s, Marco Pallis (d. 1989), who exposed him to Tra-
ditionalist wr itings, which Merton found closely paralleled his own path. Mer-
ton’s relationship with Sufism led to a Thomas Merton ser ies by Fons Vitae, which
includes titles such as Merton & Sufism: The Untold Story and Thomas Merton on
Sufism (a CD collection).91
Shah’s teachings were disseminated by Octagon Press (which further published
older translations of classical Sufi texts), while Threshold Publishing, established
by Kabir and Camille Helminski, teachers within the Mevlevi Sufi order, acted as
another venue for Sufi teachings in English. Inayat Khan’s movement, now led by
his grandson Pir Zia Inayat Khan and renamed the Inayati Order, also runs their
own press, known as Suluk Press, Omega Publications, which exclusively publishes
classic and contemporary books on Sufism.They also publish works by Inayat Khan
and his children, Vilayat Inayat Khan (d. 2004) and Noor Inayat Khan (d. 1944), in
addition to Zia Inayat Khan’s teachings on Sufism. Other presses include the Fel-
lowship Press, which publishes wholly the teachings of Muhammad Raheem Bawa
Muhaiyaddeen (d. 1986), a Tamil Sufi teacher who came to Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
vania in 1971 and established the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship. The Nur Ashki
Jer rahi Community, a branch that traces its lineage to the Turkish Sufi teacher
Muzaffer Ozak (d. 1985), who came to Amer ica to teach, also has an independent

20 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
press known as Pir Press, which issues works on Ozak and his teachings, as well as
Ibn al-’Arabi.
Another voice in Amer ican Sufism is that of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a student
of Ir ina Tweedie (d. 1999), who was a teacher of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya
order. The Golden Sufi Center in the Bay Area, out of which Vaughan-Lee is based,
also houses its own press, which features Vaughan-Lee’s teachings but also works of
his teacher, Tweedie, not only in English but also in Ger man, French, Italian, Span-
ish, and Bulgarian. These presses are by no means limited just to North America,
but are globally prominent. Anqa Publishing is an independent publisher based in
the United Kingdom that focuses specifically on publishing the teachings of Ibn
al-’Arabi, while Beshara, another UK-based movement, inspired by the teachings
and leadership of the Turkish teacher Bulent Rauf (d. 1987), similarly publishes
works on Sufi traditions.
Sufi activists have also added to the proliferation of literature on Sufism, espe-
cially in North Amer ica. Noteworthy here is Nahid Angha, a Sufi scholar, lecturer,
and human rights activist. She is the co-director and co-founder of the Interna-
tional Association of Sufism, and founder of the Sufi Women Organization (SWO).
Angha is the daughter of the late Shah Maghsoud (d. 1980), a Persian Sufi teacher
of the Uwaiysi way. Aside from her prolific activism on women’s r ights and inter-
cultural and interfaith work, she has also published books on Sufism, such as Prin-
ciples of Sufism (1991). The Kuwaiti-American Sufi Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (who
will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 3) and his wife Daisy Khan are
other examples of activists who are also contr ibuting to the construction of Sufism
through literature and public lectures. Rauf ’s fame rose to national attention with
the proposed ground zero mosque, but his views on Islam and Sufism can be found
on TED talks and books, such as Moving the Mountain: A New Vision of Islam in
America.92
Toward contemporary Sufism
With the methodological tools offered by the social sciences and religious stud-
ies, scholars began to focus more on Sufism as a lived tradition from the 1970s
onward. Initially, Western scholars largely understood contemporary Sufi orders
as car ryovers from an earlier era, disappearing or soon to be, as Muslim societies
moder nized. Associated with the rural, superstitious, and mystical, social scientists
initially saw Sufism as something that, like other for ms of “folk,” “local,” or “pop-
ular” religion, would dissipate in light of modern processes of rationalization and
industr ialization. Arber ry associated contemporary Sufi orders with “the ignorant
masses,”
93 while Clifford Geertz (d. 2006) and Er nest Gellner (d. 1995) suggested
that Muslims were abandoning the rural, miracle-working saints in favor of urban
intellectuals offer ing a scr ipture-based, rationalized for m of Islam.94
Michael Gilsenan’s pioneer ing study of the Hamidiyya-Shadhiliyya in Egypt
helped revise the ongoing theory of Sufism’s decline, in highlighting a Sufi order
that was actually expanding dur ing this time (though he believed most were in

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 21
decline).95 This suggested that some Sufi orders could adapt and thrive in moder n
urban centers, even if this was somewhat exceptional. Valer ie Hoffman’s research on
Sufism in Egypt in the 1980s would reveal that the number of Sufi orders overall
was expanding, and although much of this was found among those situated in low
socioeconomic statuses, Sufi orders such as the Burhaniyya were successfully draw-
ing interest from urban elites.96 Since the 1990s, scholars have largely abandoned
the thesis of Sufism’s inevitable decline, and have begun to chart the various ways
in which the practice of Sufism is adapting to contemporar y contexts, drawing
attention to the increasingly transnational and politicized nature of Sufism. Recent
studies not only highlight local Sufi communities, movements, and brotherhoods
(tariqas), but further explore how these movements for m networks of affiliation
across borders, nationalities, and cultures, thus transfor ming Sufi rituals, theologies,
and philosophies in the process.97
The field of contemporary Sufism critically engages with and unpacks every-
day Sufi practices, philosophies, and theological tenets within the climate of a
modern era. Such studies have also taken further reg ional, and at times anthropo-
logical, approaches, as seen in the scholarship of Rozehnal, Anna Bigelow, Carla
Bellamy, Afsar Mohammad, and Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger.98 Although not all
regions and works are included in this brief summary, the latter examples are
illustrative of the kind of work being done on Sufism in regions such as Africa,
Europe, and Southeast Asia. At the same time, these regions have expanded to
include what is traditionally understood as the Western world, such as Europe
and Amer ica. For instance, Pnina Werbner and Robert Geaves, in their respec-
tive studies, employed a spatial focus to chart mig ration and diasporic patterns
of Sufism in Britain, with a special focus on South Asian Sufi communities.99
Other scholars, such as Hermansen and Gisela Webb, have been formative in
helping people think about Sufism as it has unfolded in the American context.
Hermansen and Webb have focused less on Sufism as an alternative or New Age
spirituality and more as an expression of Islamic spirituality, though noting the
range of emphasis (or not) on Islamic identity among American Sufis.100 Whether
analyzing Sufi literature in North America (Hermansen), providing a close his-
tory of a particular Sufi group (Webb), or using sociological analytic tools (both),
these scholars have drawn out the intellectual and cultural frameworks in the West
with which Sufism interacts. Hermansen, for example, has considered some of the
ways in which Sufi leaders frame their teaching of Sufism in North America in
psychological ter ms, using Western psychology as a kindred framework for trans-
lating Sufi contemplation into terms that are digestible to North Americans.101
Additionally, both scholars have personal connections with Sufi traditions. Webb,
who has written extensively on the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, has been
influenced by Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and has participated in his Fellowship com-
munity. It is these broader global trends of Sufism that have led to works by Nile
Green and Mark Sedgwick, who have respectively mapped the histor ical and
intellectual legacies of Sufism from premodern to modern times, and from East
to West.102

22 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
Conclusion
The production of knowledge on Sufism in the West can be traced as far back as
the medieval per iod. However, it was during early colonial encounters that Euro-
peans began to develop a more distinct and focused sense of Sufism, a sense that
was later refined in the Wester n academy, by scholars with and without affiliations
to Sufism as a practice. Starting with figures like Llull (a Christian missionary)
to Traditionalist Sufi teachers like Guénon, the knowledge production of Sufism
has been immensely var ied, ranging from scholarly translations to anthropological
and sociological studies.This knowledge production has not been without political
implications. The critique of Orientalism, which Said helpfully inaugurated, is pre-
cisely that the discipline tended to reductively represent the “Orient” for political
purposes. This of course further complicates the knowledge produced on Sufism,
especially by Orientalists, whose legacy was felt centur ies later in the Wester n acad-
emy’s perception and study of Islam in general. Perhaps its greatest strength and
contribution as a discipline was Orientalism’s emphasis on studying languages and
texts, a trajectory that has in many ways continued in departments of Islamic studies
and Near Easter n studies.
Later European scholars of the Orient tended to share the thesis that classical
Sufism peaked in the medieval period as a sophisticated mystical philosophy,
and degenerated into superstition and corruption after that. This general trend
persists in a sometimes unspoken assumption that Sufism today must somehow
be less authentic than its historical counterparts, or that Sufism practiced in con-
temporary Istanbul or New York is in some ways less authentic than Sufism prac-
ticed in what are thought of as more ‘traditional’ contexts, perhaps a rural North
African village, or the Sufism found in the classical texts of masters. However,
with the rise of social sciences, we see a shift in scholarship during the 20th
century toward analyzing contemporary social phenomena. Collectively, these
studies have presented Sufism through a particular framework shaped by Western
intellectual trends and methodologies, color ing Sufism in particular ways in the
imagination of those in the West. This coloring continues to influence the ways
in which Sufism is encountered, constructed, and imagined by Sufis and non-
Sufis alike.
Despite the proliferation of scholarship on lived Sufism, the plethora of recent
studies within the field of contemporary Sufism have yet to be synthesized into a
coherent over view that highlights key trends that are cur rently shaping Sufism in
the modern world. Significantly, while the theological debates that are shaping con-
temporar y Sufism and its place in Islam have yet to be adequately articulated, this
understanding is necessary to interpret contemporary Islam as a whole, as well as
to make sense of Sufism’s place within the contemporary Islamic paradigm. Rather
than opine about Sufism’s historical ‘peak’ or its cur rent authenticity, we seek in this
work to provide an over view of Sufism’s lived expressions, and to highlight patter ns
of connection that define the contemporary scene, starting with the first theme of
Sufism and anti-Sufism.

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 23
Notes
1 Carl W. Ernst, Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition of Islam (Boston, MA:
Shambhala, 2011).
2 Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Heart of Sufism (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1999); Kabir Helmin-
ski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2000).
3 Deepak Chopra, ed., The Love Poems of Rumi (New York: Penguin Random House,
1998); Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, trans., Rumi’s Little Book of Life:The Gar-
den of the Soul, the Heart, and the Spirit (Charlottesville,VA: Hampton Roads Publishing,
2012); Coleman Barks, trans., The Essential Rumi (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
4 See, for example, Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenberg, eds., Sufism Today: Heritage and
Tradition in the Global Sufi Community (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).
5 Although some scholars have shifted to using the terms “West Asia” or “Western Asia,”
in North America the term “Middle East” remains the most common referent for the
region encompassing Egypt, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, the Anatolian peninsula,
and the Iranian plateu.
6 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York:Vintage Books, 1978).
7 Ibid., 3.
8 Ibid., 142.
9 Ibid., 314–321.
10 Ibid., 321.
11 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. 25th Anniversary edition. (New York: Penguin, 2003) (all
subsequent mentions refer to this edition), 274, describes Massignon as “less a mytholo-
gized ‘genius’ than he is a kind of system for producing certain kinds of statements,
disseminated into the large mass of discursive for mations that together make up the
archive, or cultural mater ial, of his time.” Said continues that he does not think such an
analysis is dehumanizing nor reductively deter ministic, signifying that it can certainly
appear to be such. For a study of more affirmative, integrative Western engagements
with the Orient, see J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and
Wester n Thought (New York: Routledge, 1997).
12 In his preface to the 25th Anniversary Edition of Orientalism, Said, perhaps responding
to such critiques, makes a point to affirm that,“there is a difference between knowledge
of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, care-
ful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge – if that
is what it is – that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and
outr ight war,” xix.
13 Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1997), 122.
14 Luther would even go on to write an introduction to the German translation of the
book. Sedgwick notes that the original Latin version of the Treatise of the Turks (Tracta-
tus de moribus, conditionibus et nequita Tercorum) went through twelve printings between
1481 and 1550, while the German translation was printed eleven times between 1482
and 1531. Mark Sedgwick, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (New York:
Oxford Univer sity Press, 2017), 71, 77.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid. Remarking on its profound influence, Said notes that d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque
“remained the standard reference work in Europe until the early nineteenth century. Its
scope was truly epochal.” Said, Orientalism, 64.
19 Marshal G. S. Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World His-
tory (Cambr idge: Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1993), 70–71.
20 Ibid.
21 Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment, 8 .
22 Mehdi Aminrazavi, “Introduction,” in Sufism and American Literary Masters, ed. Mehdi
Aminrazavi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014), 3.

24 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
23 Said, Orientalism, 78.
24 Charles Schmitt notes that although there is no agreed-upon definition of the Perennial
philosophy, the term “is usually taken to indicate that some sort of continuous theme
r uns throughout the history of philosophy, that certain enduring and lasting truths are
recognizable in the philosophical writings of all historical periods.” Its emergence has
been traced to a delegation of Byzantine scholars present for the Council of Ferrera
(1438–1439), held to discuss the possible reunion of the Roman and Easter n Churches.
Georgios Gemistos Plethon (d. 1452), a Neoplatonist scholar of the Byzantine delega-
tion, suggested to Catholic Florentines that “all Greek philosophies could be har mo-
nized and that a profound knowledge of Plato could become the basis of religious
unity.” Plethon caught the ear of Florence’s prince Cosimo de’ Medici (d. 1464), who
would become a patron of Platonic and Hermetic thought during the Renaissance.
Charles B. Schmitt,“Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” Journal of
the History of Ideas 24, no. 4 (1966): 505.
25 Michael J. Franklin, Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist 1746–
1794 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), ix.
26 Sedgwick, Western Sufism.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh, “Sufism in Western Historiography: A Brief Overview,”
Philosophy East and West 66, no. 1 (2016): 197.
30 Annemarie Schimmel quoting “another nineteenth-century scholar,” “Foreword,” in In
the Garden of Mrtyles: Studies in Early Islamic Mysticism, ed.Tor Andrae and trans. Birgitta
Sharpe (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987), viii.
31 Khalil and Sheikh, “Sufism in Wester n Histor iog raphy,” 198.
32 Ibid., 200.
33 Raja Lahiani, Eastern Lumaries Disclosed to Western Eyes: A Critical Evaluation of the Trans-
lations of Mu‘allaqāt into English and French (1782–2000) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 57.
34 Ibid.
35 Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, trans., Mathnawi (London: Luzac & Co., 1925–1940);
Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (London: George Bell & Sons, 1914).
36 Reynold A. Nicholson, “A Histor ical Enquiry Concerning the Origin and Develop-
ment of Sufism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (April
1906): 305.
37 Ibid., 309–315.
38 Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, 20.
39 Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh, “Sufism in Western Historiography: A Brief Overview,”
Philosophy East and West 66, no. 1 (2016): 194–217, 201.
40 S. A. Skilliter, “Obituary: Arthur John Arber ry,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Afri-
can Studies 33, no. 2 (1970), 364.
41 Lahiani, Eastern Lumaries Disclosed to Western Eyes, 59.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 A. J. Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955).
46 Lahiani, Eastern Lumaries Disclosed to Western Eyes, 59.
47 Ibid.; A. J. Arberry, Introduction to Sufism (London: Longman, 1942); A. J. ArberrySufism:
An Account of the Mystics of Islam (New York: Dover Publications, 1950); A. J. Arber ry,
trans., Ruba‘iyat of Jalauddin Rumi (London: E. Walker, 1949); A. J. Arberry, trans., Dis-
courses of Rumi (London: John Murray, 1961a);A. J.Arberry, trans., Tales from the Masnavi
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1961b); A. J. Arber ry trans., The Mystical Poems of Rumi
(Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1968).
48 Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, 1–3 .
49 Said, Orientalism, 104.

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 25
50 Jean Jacques Waardenburg, Muslims as Actors: Islamic Meanings and Muslim Interpretations
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 158.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Said, Orientalism, 266.
54 Ibid.
55 Patrick Laude, Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guénon, and Schuon (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 2010), 1–2.
56 Ibid.
57 Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines de la lexique technique de la mystique musalmane
(Paris: Geuthner, 1922).
58 Schimmel, “Foreword,” ix.
59 From page 64 of Massignon’s Essai, as translated by Leonard Lewisohn, “Persian Sufism
in the Contemporary West: Reflections on the Mi‘matu’llahi diaspora,” in Sufism in the
West, eds. Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (New York: Routledge, 2006), 60.
60 By the end of his life, Massignon was a Professor of Sociology of Islam at the Collège
de France in Paris, Director of Religious Studies at the École pratiqu des hautes études,
and a member of the Arab Academy in Cairo. For more, see Dorothy C. Buck, ed., Louis
Massignon: A Pioneer of Interfaith Dialogue (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2017).
61 René Guénon, Insights into Islamic Esoterism and Taoism, trans. Henry D. Fohr (Hillsdale,
NY: Sophia Perrenis, 2001), 4.
62 Laude, Pathways to an Inner Islam, 14.
63 René Guénon, Orient et Occident (Paris: Les Editions Vega, 1924, 1983).
64 William Rory Dickson, Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transforma-
tion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015), 71.
65 Laude, Pathways to an Inner Islam, 9 .
66 Hazrat Inayat Khan, A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty (London: Theosophical Publish-
ing Society, 1914).
67 Donald A. Sharif Graham, “Spreading the Wisdom of Sufism: The Career of Pir-o-
Murshid Inayat Khan in the West,” in A Pearl in Wine: Essays on the Life, Music and Sufism
of Hazrat Inayat Khan, ed. Zia Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, NY: Omega, 2001), 127.
68 Zia Inayat Khan,“A Hybrid Sufi Order at the Crossroads of Modernity:The Sufi Order
and Sufi Movement of Pir-o -Murshid Inayat Khan” (Doctoral dissertation, Duke Uni-
versity, 2006), 56–57.
69 Ibid., 7, 11.
70 H. A . R. Gibb (d. 1971) wrote in his obituary for Massignon that the French scholar
exhibited both “a masterly use of established tools of academic research” and “an indi-
vidual intuition of spiritual dimensions.” As quoted in Said, Orientalism, 265. Massignon
would also be critiqued for Christianizing Islam in his works as much as he Islamized
his Christian spirituality in his own life.
71 Laude, Pathways to an Inner Islam, 11.
72 Ibid., 1–2.
73 Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publica-
tions, 1978); Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn
Arabi, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969).
74 Ibid., 12.
75 See Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century,
trans. Chr istopher McIntosh (New York: Routledge, 2014).
76 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975).
77 John O. Voll, “Changing Western Approaches to Islamic Studies,” in Observing the
Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities, eds. Mumtaz Ahmad,
Zahid Bukhari, and Sulayman Nyang (Herndon,VA: International Institute of Islamic
Thought, 2012), 28–52 [31].

26 Contextualizing the production of knowledge
78 Marcia Hermansen, “The Academic Study of Sufism at American Universities,” in
Observing the Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities, eds. Mumtaz
Ahmad, Zahid Bukhar i, and Sulayman Nyang (Herndon,VA: Inter national Institute of
Islamic Thought, 2012), 88–111 [89].
79 Ibid., 90.
80 Alexander Knysh, as quoted in ibid., 91–92.
81 Safi is now the Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, and a Professor in the
Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
82 During this time, Fazlur Rahman, who held the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service
Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago, also helped to develop the
Near Eastern Studies program that would produce some of the most influential North
American scholars of Islam, including Michael A. Sells, Amina Wadud, and Tamara
Sonn.
83 Quoted by Mumtaz Ahmad in “Islamic Studies in American Universities: Conversa-
tions, Discourses, and Dialogues with Scholars,” in Observing the Observer: The State of
Islamic Studies in American Universities, eds. Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid Bukhari, and Sulay-
man Nyang (Herndon,VA: Inter national Institute of Islamic Thought, 2012), 219–251.
84 Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992).
85 Yannis Toussulis, Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of Sacred Psychology (Whea-
ton, IL:Theosophical Publishing House, 2010), 30–31.
86 Idries Shah, The Sufis (London: The Octagon Press, 1964); Idries Shah, The Way of the
Sufi (London:The Octagon Press, 1968).
87 See, for example, James Moore, “Neo-Sufism:The Case of Idries Shah,” Religion Today
3 (1987): 4–6.
88 Mahmudul Hasan, “Discovering Doris Lessing: Convergences between Islam and Her
Thoughts,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33, no. 2 (2016): 25–49 .
89 Ibid., 41.
90 Ibid., 43. Mark Sedgwick, in his chapter “The Reception of Sufi and Neo-Sufi Litera-
ture,” in Sufis in Western Society: Global Networking and Locality, eds. Ron Geaves, Markus
Dressler, and Gr itt Klinkhammer (London: Routledge, 2009), classifies the works of
Idries Shah and Doris Lessing as examples of “Neo-Sufi literature.”
91 Rob Baker, Henry Gray, and William C. Chittick, eds., Merton & Sufism: The Untold
Story: A Complete Compendium (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999); Fr. Anthony Ciorra,
ed., Thomas Merton on Sufism (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae), 2012, CD collection.
92 For more, please see Rosemary R. Corbett, Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and
the “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Univer sity Press, 2016);
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , Moving the Mountain: A New Vision of Islam in America (New
York: Free Press, 2013).
93 R. J. Arber ry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (New York: Dover Publications,
1950), 122.
94 Julia Day Howell and Martin van Bruinessen, eds., Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam
(London: I.B.Tauris, 2007), 8.
95 Michael Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).
96 Valerie J. Hoffman,Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC: University
of South Carolina Press, 1995).
97 Howell and van Bruinessen, eds., Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam; Julia Day Howell
and Martin van Bruinessen, eds., Sufis in Western Society: Global Networking and Locality,
eds. Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, and Gritt Klinkhammer (London: Routledge, 2009);
Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenberg, eds., Sufism Today: Heritage and Tradition in the
Global Community (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).
98 Joyce Flueckiger, In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South Asia
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006); Carla Bellamy, The Powerful

Contextualizing the production of knowledge 27
Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (Berkeley, CA: Univer sity
of California Press, 2011); Anna Bigelow, Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Mus-
lim North India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Robert Rozehnal, Islamic
Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century Pakistan (London: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2009).
99 Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (London: Hurst,
2003); Ron Geaves, The Sufis of Britain: An Exploration of Muslim Identity (Cardiff: Car-
diff Academic Press, 2000); Ron Geaves and Theodore Gabriel, eds., Sufism in Britain
(London; Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
100 For more, please see Marcia Hermansen, “Sufism and American Women,” World History
Connected, November 2006, http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/4.1/her-
mansen.html; Marcia Hermansen, “Literary Production of Western Sufi Movements,”
in Sufism in the West, eds. Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (New York: Routledge, 2006),
28–48; Marcia Hermansen, “Global Sufism: ‘Theirs and Ours’” in Sufis in Western Soci-
ety: Global Networking and Locality, eds. Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, and Gritt Klink-
hammer (London: Routledge, 2009), 26–45; Marcia Her mansen, “South Asian Sufism
in the United States,” in South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation and Destiny, ed. Charles
Ramsey (New York: Continuum, 2012), 247–268; Marcia Her mansen, “In the Garden
of American Sufi Movements: Hybrids and Perennials,” in New Trends and Developments
in the World of Islam, ed. Peter Clark (London: Luzac Oriental Press, 1997), 155–178;
Gisela Webb, “Third-wave Sufism in America and the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship,”
in Sufism in the West, eds. Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (New York: Routledge, 2006),
86–102; Gisela Webb, “Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary American Spiritu-
ality: The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship,” in Muslim Communities in North America,
eds.Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane I. Smith (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1994), 75–108; Gisela Webb, “Negotiating Boundaries: American Sufis,” in The
Cambridge Companion to American Islam, eds. Juliane Hammer and Omid Safi (NewYork:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 190–207; Gisela Webb, “Teaching with Pictures:
Three Paintings of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen,” in Windows on the House of Islam, ed. John
Renard (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 290–296.
101 Marcia Hermansen, “What’s American about American Sufi Movements” in Sufism in
Europe and North America, ed. D. Westerlund (London: Routledge, 2004), 36–63.
102 Sedgwick, Western Sufism; Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (West Sussex: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2012).
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2004.

PART I
Sufism and anti-Sufism
in contemporary contexts

There is a str iking incong ruity in contemporary Muslim discourse on Islam.
Interested readers, new mosque attendees, and even scholars may find themselves
quickly confused when it comes to the subject of Sufism. According to some Mus-
lim authors, Sufism is the spiritual core of Islam, its “heart” and “soul.”
1 For many
Muslims, even discussing Sufism as something separable from Islam seems odd, as
what we call “Sufism” is considered to be Islam, pure and simple. Other Muslim
preachers, however, loudly war n from the pulpit and the page about the “devia-
tions,” “misguidance,” and “dangers” of Sufism.2 These opponents of Sufism portray
it as an un-Islamic cor ruption of early Islamic teachings, something Muslims are
to be wary of and even actively oppose. Too often, sensationalistic stereotypes of
Sufism act in the place of a genuine understanding of the tradition and its pervasive
historical role in Muslim societies – a history that in many cases is being totally
erased from Islamic nar ratives. For some Muslims, Sufism is seen as a form of her-
esy so starkly contrasting nor mative Islam that Sufis are anathematized as the most
obvious sort of nonbelievers. Sufism is either the best of Islam or its most perni-
cious imitator and infiltrator.
Tragically, amid the instability of postcolonial Muslim societies, it is not only ink
that is spilled over Sufism. Ar med with a toxic mixture of theological and polit-
ical motivations, suicide bombers target Sufi shrines in Pakistan, while al-Qaeda
affiliated movements bulldoze ancient Sufi sites in Mali and Iraq. Some Muslim
gover nments ban Sufi literature and persecute Sufis. Weak states and unfinished
theological debates are woven together into a larger cr isis of political legitimacy in
Muslim societies.These tensions, though exacerbated by recent developments, have
deep roots in the soil of Islamic thought. Sufism’s place in Islam has shifted over
the centur ies, from the margins, to the center, and back again. As we will see later
in this chapter, for centuries Sufism was seamlessly integrated into ever y facet of
Muslim life, with Sufis functioning as key allies and teachers of sultans, Sufi poetry
2
HEART OR HERESY? THE
HISTORICAL DEBATE OVER
SUFISM’S PLACE IN ISLAM

36 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
and music for ming a mainstay of Muslim cultural life, and with Sufi orders shaping
Muslim devotion from Morocco to Indonesia, while Sufi-infused guilds shaped the
trades in Muslim societies. Regardless of its place within the larger Islamic com-
munity, debates over Sufism take us to the heart of what it means to be Muslim.
This chapter outlines Sufism’s historical shifts, familiar izing the reader with its
moving place in Islamic history, and setting the stage for consider ing the contem-
porary debate over Sufism’s place in Islam. The debate over Sufism hinges on ques-
tions of metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, and authority:What is the nature
of God? How can we gain knowledge of God? What is the nature and purpose of
being human? Who inher its the Prophet Muhammad’s author ity and charisma?
The different ways in which Muslims have answered these questions led to distinct
inter pretive traditions, traditions that had largely cr ystallized by the 10th and 11th
centur ies CE. We focus on two of these interpretive cur rents as they developed
within Islam’s major ity Sunni sect (ahl al-sunna wa’l jama‘a).3 The two traditions
can be described broadly as Sufi and anti-Sufi inter pretations of Islam.4 Neither
are homogenous schools of thought, but both are marked tendencies that have
maintained an intellectual and practical coherence throughout much of the history
of Islam. With each attempting to author itatively define Islam, the contestations
between them have had, and will continue to have, profound effects on the nature
of Islamic thought and the place of Islam in the moder n world.
Early Islam and the emergence of Sufism
From where did Sufism emerge? As there is no histor ically incontrovertible answer
to this question, we can only consider the most prominent theses as to its or igin.
They are important to review here, as deter mining the nature of Sufism’s genesis
has profound implications for its claims to Islamic authenticity – claims which
frame contemporary debates. Muslim opponents of Sufism decry its extra-Islamic
or igin, while Sufis themselves trace their way to the Qur’an, the Prophet, and his
closest companions (al-sahaba).
Before considering the histor ical or igins of Sufism, it is important to highlight
here an aspect of the Quranic nar rative of prophecy that has long informed Sufi
understandings of their path. The Qur’an refers to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
and Jesus as Muslims, as those who submit to God.5 Islam, in this more universal
Quranic usage, is a ter m that includes humanity’s heritage of divine guidance.6
For Sufis, if Sufism is simply the inner aspect of Islam, then Sufism is as old as
humanity, the ever-present path of transfor mation found in the company of rev-
elation. It follows that Neoplatonism, Zoroastr ian mystical traditions, Jewish and
Christian contemplative paths, can be thought of as aspects of earlier revelations
(i.e., earlier versions of Islam, in this more universal meaning), from which Mus-
lims can legitimately draw and integrate into the path of Muhammad (i.e., a path
that is foundationally synthetic in nature, if by “synthetic” we mean synthesizing
and drawing out the essence of previous revelations). For Sufis who take this more
universal understanding of Islam/Sufism as their point of departure, questions of

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 37
historical or igin become somewhat secondar y. Consider ing the importance of the
historical question for cur rent debates regarding Sufism’s relation to Islam, however,
it is cr itical to start here.
Histor ians of Islam, seeking to locate the roots of mystically oriented Islamic tra-
ditions,7 have generally concluded that they grew largely from indigenous sources,
with important exogenous influences. This of course does not make Sufism an
exception within the wider Islamic tradition. Although Islam was born in Arabia,
it matured as a law, theology, and spiritual path in Damascus, Cairo, and Bagh-
dad, as much as in Mecca. These Middle Easter n metropoles were melting pots of
Greek and Persian, and Jewish and Christian cultural for ms as much as they were
Arab. Like Sufism, Islamic theology and philosophy developed in conversation with
the confluence of cultures that defined the larger Middle Easter n region. Mus-
lims tended to embrace, synthesize, and refor mulate extant traditions of learning in
light of the Qur’an’s universalizing monotheism.8 Premised on an absolute unity
(tawhid), Islam’s monotheism has been inter preted as manifesting (or not) in the
world in different ways, leading to bifurcated opinions of Sufism. Like religions
before it, Islam’s institutionalization would inspire ascetic, cr itical responses empha-
sizing spiritual integrity and transformation in contrast to author itative discourses
tied to political power.
The term Sufism (tasawwuf) itself likely or iginated as a reference to Muslim
ascetics who wore wool (Arabic: suf).9 Although monasticism never took hold in
Islam, with Muhammad’s life of activism and family being exemplar y for Muslims,
early sources show that asceticism (voluntary poverty, frequent fasting, abandoning
sleep for noctur nal prayer vigils) was a widely held ideal among early Muslims. The
first recorded application of the label “Sufi” to an ascetic was in the 8th century.10
The ter m did not gain traction in mainstream Sunni Islam until later in the 9th
century, when Sufi circles in Iraq came to prominence. Does the relatively late
emergence of the ter m tasawwuf mean that Sufism itself was a later development?
Abu al-Hasan al-Bushanji (d. 960) famously opined that Sufism is “a name without
a reality. It used to be a reality without a name.”
11 It is possible (and given later
developments, likely) that proto-Sufism existed as a pietistic, esoter ic strain in Islam
since the religion’s inception, only later taking for m and crystallizing as a semi-
autonomous school of thought and practice.
The most immediate endogenous sources of Sufism are Islam’s early ascetic
movement and the esoter icism of proto-Shi‘ism.12 As Islam became the religion
of a newly minted Arab Empire in the Middle East, devout Muslims began to feel
that the Quranic imperatives of frequent worship and non-attachment to worldly
wealth and achievement were being lost. Known as zuhhad (ascetics) and ‘ubbad
(worshippers), some Muslims gained renown and notor iety for their poverty, fast-
ing, fear of divine punishment, and frequent worship. Most famously, Hasan al-Basr i
(d. 728) embodied the early ascetic ideal, preaching repentance and the denial of
the self ’s appetites. Simultaneously, the early Imams of Shi‘a Islam espoused doc-
trines that would find parallels in Sufism, including the granting of divine author ity
to a set number of individuals close to God, and the esoter ic inter pretation of

38 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
the Qur’an.13 Whereas for Shi‘a Muslims these divinely appointed guides were
exclusively from the Prophet’s family, Sufis saw this role as a more widespread
possibility, including any believer, perhaps one anonymous and quite hidden from
public notice.14
Exogenously, Christian asceticism and Neoplatonism appear to be the most
likely influences on Islamic mysticism, though Buddhism may also have played a
role in this regard. Islamic asceticism closely resembled the Christian asceticism that
was prevalent in Egypt and Syria.The numerous accounts of Muslim and Christian
ascetics interacting lend credence to Christian influences here. The practice of
wear ing wool has a probable Christian or igin. The numerous shared emphases of
later Islamic mystical philosophy with Neoplatonism, and the explicit reference
of Sufi or Sufi-related writers to Greek and particularly Neoplatonic thought, make
this connection well established. However, as evidence of Neoplatonic influence
comes later in the development of Sufism, Greek mysticism is an unlikely source of
Sufism, though it is undoubtedly a notable influence on how Sufism (particularly
its unique ontology and cosmology) came to be articulated. Later Sufi biographers
and historians, wr iting in part to establish Sufism’s Islamic credentials against its
opponents, traced Sufism’s or igin to the Prophet Muhammad.
They suggested that the Prophet shared with his closest companions a living
wisdom based on unwaver ing consciousness of God and a unitar y understanding
of reality. The existence of this extra-scr iptural transmission is indicated by Abu
Hurayra’s (a companion of Muhammad’s) famous saying: “I have committed to
memory two vessels (of teachings) from the Messenger of God: One of them I have
widely disseminated; but as for the other, if I had disseminated it this throat of mine
would have been cut!”15 This saying resembles others by Muhammad’s companions
that Sufis have highlighted, indicating this deeper teaching reser ved for his closest
followers. For most Sufis, this deeper wisdom was believed to be transmitted most
fully from the Prophet by his cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), a
figure at the epicenter of Shi‘a Islam as well.
As this transmission of extra-Quranic teachings continued from master to dis-
ciple over generations, and as var ious doctr ines and practices associated with it
became increasingly codified, the ter m tasawwuf was developed to refer to those
Muslims who focused on intensifying devotion based on these inward teachings.16
Although we cannot histor ically confir m this nar rative of a personal transmission of
wisdom and author ity from Muhammad to his close companions, the fact that both
Shi‘a and Sufi Muslims developed esoter ic traditions relatively early – in many cases
shar ing lines of transmission and closely resembling one another in many respects –
certainly strengthens the case that such a nar rative has historical grounding.
In the easter n Iranian province of Khurasan, circles of devotees emerged in
the 9th century who focused on avoiding religious hypocr isy. In some cases, they
did so through engaging in blameworthy actions (malama or “drawing blame”) to
ensure neither public nor personal renown, better secur ing devotion as free from
the snares of egoic fulfillment and pride. Centered in Nishapur, they were known
as the “People of Blame” or Malamatiyya, and they would later be considered as

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 39
progenitors of Sufism.17 Hakim al-Tir midhi (d. ca. 908) was an eminent scholar,
theologian, and sage (hakim) in Khurasan with whom later Sufis like Ibn
al-‘Arabi engaged as an early master of their path. Some of al-Tir midhi’s letters
to prominent Malamati teachers debating their approach remain extant. Malamati
emphases on self-denial and rejecting social status and convention would even-
tually lead to some quite radical, antinomian Sufi tendencies, as found with the
Qalandars.18
As Sufi circles came to prominence in Baghdad and Khurasan, they drew the
wrath of some theologians and jur ists, who accused Sufis of atheism, heresy, and
believing in reincar nation.19 Increasingly, anti-Sufi theologians were associated
with the Hanbali movement. Founded by Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), Hanbalism
became Sunni Islam’s most socially conser vative and theologically literalistic school
of thought. Besides his scriptural and theological literalism, Ibn Hanbal was also
known for cr iticizing early Sufis for their innovative spiritual practices and for
their use of amorous language in descr ibing their experience of God.20 Hanbalis in
general wanted to preser ve the letter of the law and the literal meaning of scr ipture,
condemning innovations in religious practice (bida‘a) and esoter ic or allegor ical
inter pretations of scripture (tawil), things with which Sufis were associated. This is
not to say that Ibn Hanbal was an outr ight opponent of Sufism, and there is some
evidence that he respected the devotion and piety of some Sufi-related figures. Not
all later Hanbalis were opposed to Sufism either. Some Hanbalis were renowned
Sufis themselves, including ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166) and ‘Abd Allah Ansari
(d. 1089). Hanbali thought has several shared emphases with Sufism, including an
emphasis on religious integrity and piety, and a cr itique of worldliness. However,
the Hanbali tendency toward legalism and literalism led to a number of Hanbali
cr itiques of Sufi emphases on the spirit of the law and the esoter ic possibilities of
scr ipture. It is not sur prising then that Sunnism’s most concerted anti-Sufi move-
ment would later emerge from the Hanbali school of thought, with its historical
iterations including Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 1328) and Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s (d. 1792)
anti-Sufi perspectives, discussed later in this chapter.
The Sunni synthesis: Sufism and Shari’a
Despite some early opposition, Sufis eventually succeeded in convincing Muslim
rulers and jurists that theirs was a legitimate ‘ilm or “science” within Islam. The
10th century saw a number of histories of Sufi masters and systematic accounts
of Sufi doctrine, works that cemented Sufism’s place as a respected Islamic
discipline.21 Just as jurists specialized in the law, Sufis argued that they specialized
in the inward correlates of outward practices, things like purifying one’s intention,
developing genuine virtues, tackling psychological issues like the dangers of self-
aggrandizement through worship, and purifying one’s soul so that one may draw
nearer to God.
The Sufi success in this regard is best epitomized by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
(d. 1111), perhaps Sunni Islam’s most famous theologian, who is often given the

40 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
honor ific title hujjat al-Islam, or the “proof ” of Islam. His most influential work,
“Reviving the Religious Sciences” (Ihya ‘Ulum al-Din),22 is the foremost repre-
sentative of the medieval Sunni synthesis of Islamic jur isprudence and mysticism.
Al-Ghazali successfully made the case to Muslims in general that following the law
and rituals of Islam alone was not enough, but was fulfilled only by cor respond-
ing inward states of piety. It was these states that Sufis cultivated and categor ized,
developing a legitimate expertise in this most important realm of religion.23 Just as
there were scholars of the outward laws and rituals of Islam, so there were schol-
ars of the inward states, virtues, and intentions. Sufism then, as the science of the
inward, became understood as absolutely integral to proper Muslim practice, and
its respected place within Sunni Islam was secured until the early modern era.24
The centur ies following al-Ghazali saw the growth of Sufism, particularly as
a collection of religious orders that took root in almost every cor ner of Islamic
civilization, from Andalusia in the West to India in the East. Just as schools of
Islamic law for med around the teachings of figures like Abu Hanifa (d. 767) and
Malik (d. 795), systems of Sufi practice for med around famous Sufis like ‘Abd al-
Qadir al-Jilani, Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi (d. 1168), and Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili
(d. 1258). Each system or tariqa (literally “path”) was built around a lineage of
masters who increasingly systematized teacher–student relations, initiations, and a
path of spiritual practice. The orders offered Muslims frater nity, education, music,
literature, and spirituality, and were essential to Islamic life in the medieval period.
Sufi shrines, where Sufi masters were bur ied, united var ious strata of Muslim
societies as sites of shared piety, especially as central Muslim societies recovered
from the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century. In a great many con-
texts, what we now call Sufism was Islam, without any sense of qualification or
separation. Peasants, nomads, craftspeople, scholars, and sultans all relied on Sufis for
religious guidance, blessing, training, and credibility. It was Sufis who would spread
Islam in Central Asia, Africa, and India, Sufis whose patronage secured the Islamic
legitimacy of Muslim gover nments, and Sufis who were thought by many to be the
genuine heirs of the Prophet and the friends of God.
Ibn Taymiyya and the medieval roots of modern anti-Sufism
By the medieval per iod, being a Sufi was respected as a legitimate religious expres-
sion, one that was essential to the institutions of power and author ity in Muslim
societies. However, it did not follow that Sufism was something entirely uncontro-
versial after the 12th century. Sufi epistemology and ontology would prove chal-
lenging and even unacceptable for some Muslim theologians and jur ists. Generally
known as the ‘ulama (literally “the knowledgeable”), Muslim jur ist-theologians
based their claims to author ity on an in-depth knowledge of Islam’s scr iptural
sources and the (legal, exegetical) inter pretive traditions that surrounded them.
Though Sufis and the ‘ulama often functioned in complementar y ways, with each
respecting the other’s realm of expertise, there was always the potential for ten-
sion between epistemologies based on the agreed-upon meaning of scr ipture and

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 41
tradition, and those premised on inner exper ience of spiritual realities – what Sufis
called “unveiling” (kashf) or “gnosis” (ma‘rifa). Al-Ghazali described some of the
jurists as the ‘ulama al-zahir, those who specialized in the outward sciences of the
law and in some cases rejected the possibility of an inward science of spiritual states
and knowledge of God.25
For Sufis, rational and textual for ms of knowledge, though valid as far as they
went, were in a sense secondary to this immediate, intuitive knowledge of spiritual
reality.This kind of knowing was something shared by both prophets and saints (in
Arabic the awliya or “friends” of God), according to the Sufis. Although prophets
were exclusively given revealed laws and scriptures, for Sufis, access to a direct
exper ience of God and the realm of spiritual for ms was something more prolific
among Muslims: a certain sort of prophetic exper ience was available more widely.26
This view has a basis in the Qur’an, which descr ibes different types of revelation,
not all of which involve prophets. Der ivatives of the Arabic root wa-ha-ya such as
wahy (“revelation”) occur in reference to God guiding bees to their homes (16:68)
or to God guiding Jesus’s apostles to believe in him and in God (5:111).27
For the ‘ulama al-zahir, whose claim to authority was based on cor rectly inter-
preting scr iptures, the claims of others to have gained knowledge from the very
source of the scr iptures themselves could be perceived as a direct threat to their
author ity and potentially destabilizing for the conclusions they worked out regard-
ing the nature of God and how humans relate to Him. And, indeed, Sufis often
proclaimed that they, not the jurists and theologians, had author itative knowledge
of what the Qur’an and Muhammad’s way meant, based on ma‘rifa: this more direct
and profound sort of knowledge that trumped scholarly methods.
Those ‘ulama who were most concer ned about the potential for claims of Sufi
gnosis to contest and destabilize orthodox religious inter pretations tended toward
textualism, or scr iptural literalism. They tended to be affiliated with Hanbalism’s
most conser vative wing. Foremost among these was the Damascene jurist and
scholar of Hadith (sayings of Muhammad), Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). A con-
troversial figure, Ibn Taymiyya was widely respected for his voluminous lear ning,
integrity, and shar p mind. He wrote broadly, composing “hundreds of works on
numerous topics including theology, political theor y, Qur’anic exegesis, jur ispru-
dence, and mysticism.”
28 However, Ibn Taymiyya was opposed by many for his
iconoclasm, literalistic theological views, and vehement polemics, for which he
was imprisoned on a number of occasions, the last of which led to his death. In
particular, his statements that God’s “hands,” “face,” and “descent” as descr ibed in
the Qur’an were literal (haqiqi) attr ibutes brought charges of anthropomor phism,
while his invective against almost every conceivable interpretation of Islam besides
his own ear ned enemies in numerous quarters. Although he had populist appeal
among Damascenes, the scholarly class tended to be skeptical if not embar rassed by
Ibn Taymiyya’s particular brand of invective.29
It is important to highlight the larger historical context within which Ibn Tay-
miyya developed his religious polemics. Just as Muslim forces were able to push out
the Crusaders from central Muslim lands in the late 12th and early 13th centur ies,

42 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
they faced an almost unstoppable threat from the east. Led by Genghis Khan
(d. 1227), the Mongols sacked and destroyed some of the most renowned centers
of Muslim civilization and religious learning, including Bukhara (1220), Samar-
kand (1221), and later the center of the Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad (1258).30 The
destruction of Baghdad marked the end of the Abbasid caliphate, and hence the end
of a per iod of relative political unity in Muslim societies. The caliphate was not to
be resur rected until nearly 300 years later, when, in 1517, the Ottomans assumed
this title.31 The interim per iod was marked by a contested reconfiguring of Muslim
political and religious author ity, a process that Ibn Taymiyyah sought to shape.
Writing in a time of crisis, Ibn Taymiyya wanted to save Islam from what he
believed to be its greatest enemies: the external threat posed by the Mongols
and the internal threat posed by heretics of all kinds, most notably Sufis. For
Ibn Taymiyya, just as external invaders fragmented Muslim political power, Sufi
excesses, innovations, and deviations threatened to dissolve the coherence of Mus-
lim doctrine and law. In an important sense, the two threats are connected in Ibn
Taymiyya’s thought: internal incoherence and corruption invite external domina-
tion by foreign foes. He wanted to reinvigorate Islam by defining its theological
and geographical borders more clearly, purging it of corruptions and deviations,
and inspiring Muslims to fight for their faith against non-Muslims and Muslim
hypocrites.
Whether external or inter nal, Ibn Tayimyya understood Islam’s greatest threats
to or iginate with non-Arabs.The Mongol destruction of the ‘Abbasid caliphate was,
in a sense, the nail in the coffin of Arab dominance within Islam. Persians and Turks
were increasingly coming to the fore as Islam’s most prominent representatives
and standard-bearers. Islam’s post-Mongol era would be shaped by Turkish, Persian,
and South Asian dynasties, with the concomitant role of their respective languages and
cultures. Ibn Taymiyya’s “anxiety about cultural and linguistic pluralism” situated
these non-Arabs as threats to the pure Islam of the Arabs.32 He held that Arabs
“are in themselves superior” to non-Arabs, an innate super ior ity amplified by the
Prophet being Arab, and the Qur’an an Arabic text.33 His anti-Sufi polemics were
related to his sense that certain kinds of Sufism were non-Arab cor ruptions of early
Islam’s Arabic purity. He even went so far as to suggest that because the Prophet,
his companions, and the other early generations of Muslims (al-salaf al-salih) spoke
Arabic, all Muslims should speak it regardless of their mother tongue, so as to better
follow the Prophet and early Muslim generations.34
For Ibn Taymiyya, his project of revivifying Islam meant grounding it fir mly in
its Arabic source texts: all authentic knowledge must be confir med by refer r ing to
the clear meaning of the Qur’an and Hadith, only filtered by the recorded opin-
ions of the first r ighteous generations of Muslims (salaf), a principle that fostered
his noted hostility to esoter ic claims of knowledge and inter pretive frameworks.35
Although Ibn Taymiyya did not oppose Sufism outr ight and was himself a mem-
ber of a well-known Sufi order,36 his works targeted central aspects of Sufism,
laying the intellectual groundwork for later, more sustained anti-Sufi movements.

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 43
He criticized the Sufi veneration of saintly masters and the prayers made at their
shrines as compromising Islam’s pure monotheism, which was supposed to limit
veneration and prayer to God alone. He rejected the Sufi use of music and belief
in saintly miracles as blameworthy innovations in Muslim religiosity. However, the
major ity of Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-Sufi polemics were directed toward a single Sufi
master and his intellectual heirs, whose epistemologies and ontologies contrasted
shar ply with Ibn Taymiyya’s own.
More than any other figure, Ibn Taymiyya was concer ned about the growing
influence of Ibn al-‘Arabi. For his comprehensive synthesis of Quranic commen-
tary, Islamic philosophy, and Sufi cosmology, Ibn al-‘Arabi had gar nered the title of
the shaykh al-akbar or “Greatest Master.” Hailing from Andalusia, his many works
(around 400 of which we are aware) became widely accepted in Sufi circles as quint-
essential expositions of the deepest truths of the Islamic tradition. Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
students, beginning with Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi (d. 1274), were at the intersection
of the var ious facets of the post-Mongol Islamic intellectual tradition, engaging in
debates with Islam’s most famous philosophers and theologians, wr iting expository
commentaries on the most renowned Sufi poetry, and gaining influential positions
heading Islamic academies under the new Turkish dynasties that were taking hold
in the Middle East.The Ottomans in particular favored Ibn al-‘Arabi and promoted
his works, fostering the proliferation of his views throughout the Islamic heartland
in the post-Mongol period.
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s doctr ine was later referred to as wahdat al-wujud, or “oneness of
being.” Although he never used the ter m, and his early followers rarely did, it is
widely accepted that the ter m accurately reflects his oeuvre. As this ter m suggests,
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought has profound ontological implications (though its precise
relationship to ontology is contested). Ibn al-‘Arabi frequently asserted that God,
as sheer, infinite being, was the only truly existent: nothing substantially existed
except for God, meaning that the world and all creatures, to the degree that they
did exist, were disclosures (tajalliyat) or deter minations (ta ‘ayyun) of God’s being.37
To the degree that they were not God, they were pure illusion, hence Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
descr iption of all things as huwa-la-huwa or “He/Not He,” simultaneously God and
not God, or being and illusion.
For Ibn Taymiyya, this doctr ine was a reprehensible innovation (bida‘a) in belief,
profoundly deviating from the monotheism of the early Muslim community, evinc-
ing instead a heretical confusion of the Creator and His creation. Ibn Taymiyya
wrote a number of works to this effect (most notably The Exposition of the Falsity
of the Unity of Being and the Refutation of Those Who Adhere to It)38 distinguishing
between authentic Sufism, which he deter mined to be the pur ification of the soul
through scrupulous observance of the shari‘a, and its inauthentic counterpart, what
he called philosophical Sufism (tasawwuf al-falasifa). Ibn Taymiyya associated philo-
sophical Sufism first and foremost with Ibn al-‘Arabi.39 He was so concer ned with
the deleter ious effects of this radical Sufi ontology that he suggested its prevalence
was a greater calamity for Muslims than the Mongol invasions.40

44 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
Two visions of Islam
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-‘Arabi represent well the two inter pretive trends examined
in this chapter: anti-Sufism and Sufism. Each has played a seminal role in shaping
these interpretations. Ibn Taymiyya’s works established the foundation for modern
anti-Sufi understandings of Islam, and the revival of his thought by Wahhabi-Salafi
movements makes him one of the most influential Muslim theologians within
contemporary Islam.41 Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought is widely credited with more fully
extrapolating the implications of the Sufi understanding of Islam than had been
done previously, ver itably shaping the contours of the post-Mongol Islamic tra-
dition.42 Ibn al-‘Arabi’s views continue to shape contemporary Sufi thought and
Shi‘a metaphysics, and to inspire a spectrum of contemporary Muslim inter preta-
tions from progressive and feminist to traditionalist. Before moving to discuss later
histor ical developments, it is worth consider ing at greater length the precise nature
of each of these understandings of Islam, delineating clearly the key issues on which
they diverge.
Scholar of Islamic thought Ebrahim Moosa argues that “conflicts between com-
peting discourses within a religion are often not disputes over a common language
as much as they are clashes between entirely different ‘grammars,’ or networks
of ideas.”
43 We can thus conceive of the intra-Islamic debate between Sufis and
anti-Sufis as the “contesting g rammars of religion.” This debate is not simply over
different interpretations of religious sources, but is rooted in different ways of being
religious, ways that are in tur n founded on contrasting ideas about what religion is,
or what is the nature of the object/subject of religion.
The central difference between these two religious “g rammars” is their under-
standing of the nature of God. Put simply, Sufis and anti-Sufis have two separate
networks of ideas regarding the meaning of the word “God” (or Allah in Arabic).
Ibn Taymiyya and his intellectual followers exclusively emphasize the uncompro-
misingly transcendental (tanzih) nature of God. God is a being, the supreme being
without question, but a being nonetheless, clearly distinct from creation, residing in
the highest heaven above. Because God is a being transcendent to us, we relate to
Him, according to Ibn Taymiyya, primar ily through obeying His commands. True
religion is apprehending and following these commands in the Qur’an and Sunna,
and the true heirs of Muhammad are the scholars who preserve and disseminate
these commands.
In contrast to Ibn Taymiyya’s legalistic theology, Ibn al-‘Arabi holds that God is
simultaneously transcendent and immanent (tashbih), with both aspects emphasized
equally. Quranic verses such as “Wheresoever you turn there is the face of God”
(2:115) are taken literally, and the world is understood to be God manifest. God is
not a being but the being. God is being as such and hence the only truly existent.
This vision of God’s closeness and ubiquity has had profound theological impli-
cations. If God is purely transcendent, then intimacy with Him is possible only by
following his will and command; if, however, God is also immanent, then intimacy
with Him is possible in a much more immediate, exper iential way.The sacred is not

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 45
limited to a being in the highest heaven, but is found fully available in creation as
a whole and indeed within the human self: all of existence functions as a ser ies of
symbols or signs of God’s presence. The three “books” according to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s
teachings are the Qur’an, the cosmos, and the self – all three are signs of God man-
ifest, and hence all three need to be, in a sense, “read” so that the presence of the
Author can be perceived and encountered.
Sufi theology has tended to venerate the Prophet Muhammad not merely as a
Messenger of God, but as a manifestation of divine light (nur), and the Perfected
Human (insan al-kamil), manifesting all of God’s Ninety-Nine Names.The Prophet
Muhammad then is the archetype of the human being who has fully realized their
function as a mir ror reflecting the totality of God’s qualities. Muhammad’s true
heirs are not simply the scholars who can articulate legal rulings based on source
texts, but those who transmit some of the divine light and blessing inherited from
Muhammad into the world: these are God’s friends, the Sufi saints. These individ-
uals channel divine energy (baraka) from God to their followers, enlivening their
hearts, enlightening their minds, while in body and even after their death. Hence
the bur ial shrines of saints are thought to continue to emanate light and blessings
to all who partake of their presence there.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and the birth of modern anti-Sufism
Although Ibn Taymiyya had a limited impact on the wider Islamic intellectual tra-
dition for some time following his death,44 his concer ns over cor ruption and theo-
logical deviance among Sufis were shared by a growing number of Muslims in the
16th and 17th centur ies, including many Sufis themselves. The official patronage
Sufis enjoyed gave them a wealth and power that eventually allowed for for ms of
cor ruption to take hold.45 In varying contexts, Sufis became thought of as exploit-
ative landlords, loafers avoiding productivity to live off of state-r un endowments,
and charlatans profiting from the uneducated.These negative manifestations would
be noted by European observers, as we discuss further in Chapter 4. As a result, the
refor m of Sufism had been a project in which Sufis themselves were increasingly
engaged. Many contemporary Muslims perceive Sufism to be a deviance from the
dynamism of early Islam and a cause of the decline of Islamic civilization. And yet,
in contrast to this widespread perception, Sufis were central to religious reform and
revival in Islam’s later centur ies.46 From the 16th to 19th centuries, Sufi refor mers
worked to pur ify Sufism of passivity, superstition, cor ruption, and overly specula-
tive theology. Famous Sufi refor mers include Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624), Shah Wali
Allah (d. 1762), and Ahmad Tijani (d. 1815). These reformers have been descr ibed
as “Neo-Sufis,” a ter m first used by contemporary scholar and philosopher Fazlur
Rahman (d. 1988) to refer to how their ostensibly novel approach to Sufism left
the inward-looking passivity and metaphysical speculations of older Sufism and
embraced “the activist impulse of orthodox Islam.”
47 However, scholars have since
suggested that the distinction Rahman draws between these newer orders and older

46 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
ones is too stark, and that Sufi revivalism overlapped more with earlier Sufism than
it deviated from it.48
Sufi revivalism49 was largely successful in reviving social vitality, emphasis on
Sunni religious law, and political activism in a number of Sufi orders in South Asia,
North Africa, and the Middle East. However, Sufi refor mers would eventually be
outpaced by an unlikely reviver of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought in an overlooked cor ner
of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Najd.The stark bar renness of the Najd was
perhaps mir rored in Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s articulation of an Islam
devoid of poetry, philosophy, legal pluralism, and most significantly, Sufism. His life
and thought is important to consider here because of the paramount influence of
Wahhabism within contemporary Islam. Scholar of Islamic law Khaled Abou El
Fadl observes that “It is unequivocal, however,” that Wahhabis “have influenced
every puritanical movement in the Muslim world in the contemporary age.”
50
Abou El Fadl uses the ter m “pur itan” to refer to the uncompromising absolutism
of conser vative refor m movements in Islam, movements that share an opposition to
Sufism and a theological grounding in Wahhabism.
As an aspiring theologian and jur ist in Medina, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was troubled
by the popular religious practices he saw in Arabia, with sacred trees being venerated
and the shrines of saints acting as popular pilgrimage destinations. Whereas some
Muslims saw an unproblematic proliferation of diverse practices and others saw
problematic practices that could be gradually refor med, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab saw a
sea of superstition, cor ruption, and even idolatry, all masquerading as Islam, requir-
ing a total revolution. It is not suprising then that Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was drawn
to the works of Ibn Taymiyya. He shared with his medieval mentor a her meneutics
of literalism, an intolerance of intra-Islamic pluralism, an Arab chauvinism, and
a xenophobic despisal of non-Muslims and their influences. Pre-Islamic cultural
customs and foundations were seen not as complementary to Islamic teachings,
but dichotomously opposed to them, meaning that Muslims had to choose either
Islam or culture, rather than a culturally contextual Islam. He read the Qur’an as a
text with obvious meanings (zahir) to be apprehended and applied, discounting and
condemning expositions of the text’s hidden, layered meanings (batin) so loved by
Sufi inter preters. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab viewed Islamic source texts as, collectively,
“an instruction manual to a virtual utopia modeled after the Prophet’s city-state in
Medina.”
51 Islam was not a dynamic, plural tradition to be debated and engaged,
but a r igid, singular system to be straightforwardly applied. This quest to recreate
the purity of the first Muslim community was an absolute one, requiring the utter
condemnation of views, cultures, and persons that stood as obstacles to recreating
the early Islam of the Prophet and his companions as descr ibed in the Hadith liter-
ature. Surveying the religious practice of his Ottoman-r uled sur roundings, he saw
Islam’s pure monotheism hopelessly compromised by saint veneration, folk super-
stitions, and philosophical Sufism.52
Although inspired by Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab took the tenor and
trajectory of his thought to unprecedented conclusions: Muslims in general and
Sufis in particular had not simply deviated from the path of the early Muslims, as

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 47
Ibn Taymiyya had charged, but instead had fallen into idolatry (shirk) and hence
could no longer be considered Muslims at all.The cherished (if contested and lim-
ited) theological pluralism of medieval Sunnism, whereby a variety of schools of
law and theology were accepted as orthodox, was categor ically abandoned. For Ibn
‘Abd al-Wahhab, there was only one cor rect for m of Islam, and those who deviated
from it in any way were not simply wrong, but nefar ious enemies of truth. He fre-
quently refer red to respected Sunni jurists with whom he disagreed not simply as
misguided, but as “satans,” for only inhuman miscreants could oppose the one, true,
obvious understanding of Islam.53 He made long lists of actions or beliefs that made
a Muslim a nonbeliever, and readily condemned Muslims as apostates and enemies.
Unlike any previous Sunni thinker, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab rejected Sufism com-
pletely, seeking to purge it entirely from the Islamic tradition. His willingness to
declare fellow Muslims to be nonbelievers, a practice known as takfir, set him apart
from the nor m within the medieval Sunni tradition. Sunni theologians such as
al-Ghazali expressed an abhor rence for takfir (at least in regard to fellow Sunnis), and
attempted to draw the borders of nor mative Islam widely, duly acknowledging the
legitimacy of difference of opinion within these borders.54 This approach allowed
for a broad “Sunni consensus” to for m around a plurality of legal and theological
approaches. As his movement gained traction, however, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s chal-
lenge to this medieval Sunni synthesis was about to make its debut not only in
Arabia but throughout the Muslim world.
If the major ity of Muslims in Arabia were in fact idolators and apostates, rea-
soned Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, their blood and property were licit: they could be
fought and killed legitimately, and their property seized. After implementing his
str ict inter pretation of Islamic law in his hometown in the Najd (destroying bur ial
shrines of Muhammad’s companions and reviving corporal punishments), he set
his sights on the peninsula as a whole. In 1746, with the support of a local ruler,
Muhammad Ibn Sa‘ud (d. 1765), Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab formally declared a jihad
against the sur rounding Muslims of Arabia.55 The Wahhabis only descr ibed them-
selves as Muslims, seeing those who refused to accept their understanding of tawhid
as nonbelievers. The jihad brought much of the peninsula under his notably harsh
r ule. By the early 19th century, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s followers had taken over the
holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where they slaughtered opponents and continued
to destroy Islamic holy sites deemed idolatrous. Shi‘a Muslims in particular were
deemed far beyond the pale, as was made all too clear when the Wahhabis sacked
the predominantly Shi‘a city of Karbala in 1802, destroying the city’s holy sites and
massacr ing thousands of its inhabitants.56
Further, following Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab counseled against
befriending non-Muslims, and instead encouraged hostility toward them: Mus-
lims were not to greet non-Muslims, offer them condolences, wish them peace,
or honor them.57 Non-Muslims, in both Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s
wr itings, are dangerous contaminants, who are to be dominated, humiliated, and
converted.58 Abou El Fadl summarizes that, “‘Abd al-Wahhab espoused a self-
sufficient and closed system of belief that had no reason to engage or interact

48 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
with any other, except from a position of dominance.”
59 This intolerance of non-
Muslims and their religions stands in stark contrast to the openness demonstrated
by Ibn al-‘Arabi’s frank acknowledgment of the truth found in all religions, beliefs,
and views.60
The Ottomans were shocked by the success of the Wahhabi movement. Most
of the Ottoman ‘ulama respected Sufism and in many cases were Sufis themselves,
well-versed in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought. They condemned the Wahhabis as extrem-
ists and heretics.61 The Wahhabi seizure of Islam’s two holiest sites, the Haramayn
of Mecca and Medina, forced the Ottomans to act and restore their prestige as
the guardians of Islam.62 Under Ottoman purview, an Egyptian ar my was sent to
destroy the Wahhabi state. Although the state was successfully crushed by 1818,
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ideas had already spread. He wrote very little, mostly ar rang-
ing short collections of Hadith such as his famous Kitab al-Tawhid or “Book of
Monotheism.”
63 But his simple call to purify Islam of idolatry, restore it to the
pristine pur ity of prophetic monotheism and str ict obedience to prophetic nor ms
(usually by a literal reading and application of Hadith), resonated with Muslims
from North Africa to India who were engaged in projects of Islamic reform and
revival.While Wahhabi ideas had spread to cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Delhi by
the mid-19th century, the Wahhabi movement gained political traction in Arabia
again, this time with the help of the Br itish, who sought to displace Ottoman
influence in the Middle East. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s vision of an Islam emptied of
legal pluralism, Sufi spirituality, esoter ic hermeneutics, and philosophy had found
its foothold in the world.64
European colonialism, Salafism, and the end of Sufi normativity
Beginning in the late 17th centur y, the three most powerful Muslim states – the
Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires – increasingly found themselves cor nered
by the rapidly expanding power of European states. In response to Wester n pres-
sures, these Muslim empires attempted to refor m their bureaucracies and militaries
in light of European models. Ultimately, however, they failed to keep up and fell far
behind as European societies underwent what amounted to a moder n transfor ma-
tion. With unprecedented advances in science, economic production, and military
technology, colonial powers such as Br itain, Holland, Russia, and France found
themselves essentially unmatched in their quest for global dominance. They gained
footholds in South Asia and the Middle East, with the British controlling Bengal
and the French controlling Egypt by the end of the century. Growing Western
influences would radically and in many cases traumatically reshape Muslim societies
as they began to fall under the direct rule of European powers.
The gradual European control of Muslim societies came to a head in the 19th
century with the near total collapse of Muslim political power on the world stage.65
European colonial powers sought not only to control but also to remake much
of the Muslim world in their own image. European rule of Muslim societies saw
the gradual dissolution of traditional Muslim institutions such as the sultanate, the

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 49
madrasa system of Islamic theological colleges, and the network of endowments
(awqaf) and patronage that funded Muslim religious institutions.66 The basic struc-
tures of premodern Muslim societies were largely dismantled and replaced with
either European or European-der ived systems of gover nment, law, and education,
representing a profound histor ic, cultural, and existential break with the past.
As Sufi orders were deeply woven into the fabric of precolonial Muslim soci-
eties, the European dissolution of the old order in many cases displaced them as
well. Sufis were found across all segments of Muslim societies, and their responses
to European domination were as var ied as they were for Muslims as a whole. Most
Sufis quietly carr ied on with their lives and devotions regardless of political circum-
stances. Some Sufi leaders, such as ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi (d. 1883) in Alger ia and
Shamil Dagestani (d. 1871) in the Caucasus region, organized concerted military
resistance to European invasion and rule.67 Although Sufi resistance was ultimately
quelled, the potential for Sufi orders to mobilize Muslims made an impression on
Wester n powers: Sufis appeared to many British and French colonial officials as the
stalwart representatives of Islam’s old order in the face of the political collapse of
Muslim states. Despite this impression among European author ities, the failure of
Sufi resistance and their eventual collaboration with colonial powers shook Muslim
confidence in Sufism.68
Under colonial rule in the 19th century, institutional centers upholding the
classical Sunni synthesis of Sufism and shari‘a were rapidly losing g round, falling
into ir relevance, or disappear ing completely. The ‘ulama were no longer needed
as administrators, being replaced by lawyers and moder n bureaucrats. In India, for
example, in order to make Islamic law more amenable to Br itish administration,
William Jones proposed codifying Islamic law. Warren Hastings (d. 1818), who was
effectively the first gover nor-general of India, liked the idea and proceeded to have
a small number of Islamic legal texts translated into English and set up as author i-
tative. British judges could then rule based on these texts, effectively codifying
Islamic law for the first time in its history.This rendered Muslim jurists superfluous,
transfor ming Islamic law from a heterogeneous system of debate among an inde-
pendent class of jur ists to a homogenous system based on a small number of texts
applied by state officials.69 As we discussed in Chapter 1,William Jones was not only
a colonial official but also a scholar and translator of Islamic texts, who was deeply
interested in Sufism.
Although Sufi orders in some cases flour ished under colonial rule, even gaining
influence in some contexts, their success often included collaboration with colonial
author ities. Even when Sufis did resist European invasions, their eventual failure to
forestall European domination caused many Muslims to look elsewhere for a revival
of Islam. The scene was set for new claimants to Islamic authority to step forward,
for new discourses of Islam to emerge, challenging traditional Islamic author ity and
authenticity. One of the most influential Muslim intellectual movements to develop
dur ing the colonial era, in this respect, became known as Salafism.
Much of our cur rent notions on the r ise of Salafism or the Salafiyya can be
traced to the work of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable scholars of Islam

50 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
and Sufism, Louis Massignon (discussed in Chapter 1). In an attempt to make sense
of and categor ize several prominent Muslim refor mist thinkers who (a) shared
some theological emphases with the Wahhabi movement but (b) retained a desire
for a moder n, rational Islam, Massignon suggested the ter m Salafiyya as a suitable
label. In the journal Revue du monde musalman (1919), Massignon proposed that the
Salafiyya were a reformist movement among Muslims largely disseminated by Jamal
al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905). Later he would
add ‘Abduh’s student Rashid Rida (d. 1935) as one of the progenitors of the Salafi
movement. Massignon saw their thought as a somewhat per plexing mixture of
progressivism and “semi-Wahhabi” leanings.70 His application of the ter m Salafiyya
to al-Afghani, ‘Abduh, and Rida made sense in that these authors tended to look
to the salaf as models of an or iginal, authentic Islam to be revived. And yet neither
al-Afghani nor ‘Abduh labeled themselves Salafi: instead they associated themselves
with an age-old tradition in Islam of revival and refor m (tajdid and islah). Rida
would, however, articulate the theology of his teacher ‘Abduh as of the madhhab
al-salaf (school of the pious predecessors), a ter m that premodern Hanbali Muslims
sometimes used for the thoughts of Ibn Hanbal in general and for the theological
literalism of Ibn Taymiyya in particular, to distinguish this approach from the more
mainstream Sunni Ash‘ar i school of theology, which tended toward rational inter-
pretations of God’s attr ibutes.71 Rida would have had an even harder time articu-
lating al-Afghani’s theology as of the madhhab al-salaf, as al-Afghani’s thought was
an idiosyncratic synthesis of rationalism, elements of Sufi philosophy, and Islamic
refor m and revivalism. Regardless of their theological differences, we can consider
these three influential thinkers in ter ms of their shared cr itique of Sufism (though
Rida would align more closely with Wahhabi anti-Sufism than either al-Afghani
or ‘Abduh ever did).72 Despite the difficulties in neatly fitting these three disparate
Muslim reformers into the category “Salafi,” Massignon’s use of the ter m Salafiyya
for these thinkers has stuck, and largely shaped the study of contemporar y Islam.73
Hailing from Eastern Persia, activist, intellectual, teacher, and author al-Afghani
was struck by the gap between European and Muslim societies. Having lived in
Afghanistan, Egypt, and Turkey, he saw the paramount role that European, and in
particular Br itish, power played in the Muslim world. He was distraught by the
inability of Muslim societies to offer a coherent resistance to the global dominance
of the Br itish Empire. Al-Afghani believed that Muslims needed to wake up to
the cold reality of European domination, and take the necessary action to counter
it. He suggested that Muslims embrace Europe’s technology, but that they do so
on their own terms, uniting around a renewed sense of shared Islamic identity.
Although enamored with aspects of Sufi philosophy, on the whole, al-Afghani saw
everyday Sufism in Muslim communities as an embarrassing, retrograde medieval
obstacle to Muslim advancement. He criticized the Sufis of his day for abandoning
Islam’s inherent rationality in favor of passivity, esotericism, and blind obedience to
tradition.74 To some degree, al-Afghani projected European cr iticisms of Islam onto
Sufism, partially scapegoating it. Unlike Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, however, al-Afghani
did not reject Sufism as such, and was open to more rational interpretations of Sufi

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 51
texts. Al-Afghani’s pan-Islamism mobilizes Islam as an identity around which Mus-
lims can rally to respond to European domination. This Islam, however, to function
this way, needs to discard the var ied local Islams that took root over centur ies, and
understandings of Islam that situate it more as a spiritual state or journey.
‘Abduh and later Rida would take up Afghani’s cause, disseminating his ideas in
Egypt and throughout the Middle East. ‘Abduh became the Grand Mufti of Egypt
in 1899, based out of the venerable al-Azhar University, one of the oldest Islamic
universities. Although he did not label himself a Salafi or see himself as a part of
what we now consider to be the Salafiyya, ‘Abduh favored a retur n to the Islam
of the salaf (the pious early generations of Islam). He was keenly aware of Euro-
pean cr iticisms of Islam as fatalistic, backward, and superstitious. ‘Abduh proposed
that Islam as it cur rently existed may war rant such cr iticisms, but the Islam of the
salaf was a religion of reason, moral refor m, activism, and progress. Interestingly,
‘Abduh’s Islam sounded a lot like cur rent European ideals of “advanced” as opposed
to “primitive” religion.
Indeed we see similar movements among Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in South
Asia, calling for a return to the textual sources and early traditions of their religions,
emphasizing rationality, moral refor m, and unifying around this new streamlined
version of their tradition. For example, Buddhist reformers like Shaku Kozen
(d. 1924) proposed reviving the pure message of the histor ical Buddha, a message
purged of superstitious and divisive doctr ines and practices.This new, rational, uni-
tary Buddhism would then foster a global Buddhist solidarity and help the Japanese
counter European power. Similarly, the Brahmo Samaj was founded in 1828 as
a Hindu refor m movement, one that “promoted Hinduism as universal, mono-
theistic, rational, and grounded in the authority of scr iptures rather than popular
practices.”
75 Salafism, then, can be understood as part of a larger response to West-
ern discourses on religion dur ing this per iod, discourses that took on a particular
cogency in contexts of colonial dominance.
In contrast to his “Golden Age” of Islam, ‘Abduh criticized what he deemed
to be contemporary Sufi excesses, including saint veneration and the ontologi-
cal unity character istic of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s school of thought.76 Although ‘Abduh
was initially quite positive toward what he deemed to be true Sufism, he became
increasingly concer ned throughout his life and public career over Sufi innovations
and deviations from the shari‘a.77 With his role as Egypt’s highest religious author ity
(1899–1906), ‘Abduh’s perspectives on Sufism were influential not only in Egypt
but also in Syria, Tunisia, and Alger ia, where ‘Abduh made visits to promote his
version of reform based on the ideal of a return to the salaf.With his Syrian student
Rida, ‘Abduh also launched an international journal, al-Manar to disseminate their
refor mist project.
Notably, in 1904, as Grand Mufti,78 ‘Abduh published a fatwa (Islamic legal rul-
ing) declar ing the practice of intercession, or praying through an inter mediary
(tawassul), to be a har mful innovation in Islam (bida‘a), one that led to idolatry
(shirk).79 Tawassul involved prayers asking the Prophet Muhammad or deceased
Sufi saints to intercede with God on one’s behalf. Although the major ity of Sunni

52 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
scholars had affir med its per missibility, ‘Abduh reflected Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn
‘Abd al-Wahhab’s understanding that this practice was not found among the salaf
and should be opposed.As tawassul was particularly associated with Sufism, ‘Abduh’s
fatwa against this practice had important implications for Muslim opinion regarding
Sufis in Egypt and the larger Arabic-speaking world.80
Like ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida was drawn to the works of Ibn Taymiyya. Rida would
popular ize Ibn Taymiyya’s thought through his thirty years at the helm of al-Manar,
which played a growing role in spreading anti-Sufi cr itiques in the Arab world and
beyond. Ibn Taymiyya’s Arab chauvinism also played well among the emerging Arab
nationalist movement. Although initially closer in his thought to al-Afghani and
‘Abduh’s pan-Islamism and reformism, Rida would later in his life pivot towardWah-
habism, emerging as a key public supporter of the ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Sa’ud (d. 1953)
led Wahhabi takeover of Arabia in the 1920s. He used the reach of al-Manar to
defend the Wahhabis, agreeing “to publish (and sometimes add commentar ies) to
any text that celebrated the orthodoxy of the Wahhabi movement,”
81 in response to
the worldwide Muslim alar m over their comeback and fears of religious militancy
(tashaddud fi’l din). However, Rida maintained reservations about the Wahhabi cler-
ics and they him, disagreeing most pointedly on whether, as Rida believed, modern
science and philosophy were tools that would strengthen Islam or, as the Wahhabis
believed, for ms of heresy and disbelief. Rida never fully abandoned his refor mism
and belief in the need for Muslims to embrace modern science, technology, and
philosophy. Overall, though, we see Rida increasingly shift toward Wahhabism in
the 1920s, moving away from embracing theological diversity in Islam in favor of
calling Muslims to retur n to the creed of the salaf and actively opposing Shi‘a and
Sufi leaders (people with whom he had previously been willing to work). Notably,
Rida’s al-Manar published a ser ies of seven anti-Shi‘a articles in 1927, condemning
shrine visitation (an activity important for both Shi‘a and Sufi Muslims) in partic-
ular just as the Wahhabis were engaging in “heavy-handed efforts to impose their
version of Islam on the Shi‘i population of the [Saudi] kingdom.”
82 Rida still called
for pan-Islamic unity, and a broad-based struggle to restore a united Islamic polity
headed by a caliph. However, now his program was no longer based on Islamic ecu-
menism: for Rida, Islamic unity was now reframed as Salafi unifor mity.83
Together, the emerging Wahhabi and Salafi nar ratives attempted something of
an erasure of Sufism from Islamic histor y, downplaying its role in medieval Islam.
Sufism was opposed either as a for m of shirk (idolatry and heresy) or as a backward
superstition holding back Muslims from advancing their civilization. European
scholarship on Sufism was widely translated into Arabic and Persian and avidly
read by Muslim elites.84 As previously discussed (and elaborated upon further in
Chapter 4), the Orientalist separation of Sufism from Islam – in claiming a Greek,
Persian, or Hindu origin – bolstered the argument of Salafis and others that Sufism
was in many ways a contaminant from outside of the Islamic tradition. Although
anti-Sufism gained traction across the Muslim world in the 18th and 19th centur ies,
taking shape in a var iety of revivalist movements, Sufism’s place in Islam would only
be truly threatened on a global scale in the 20th century.

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 53
Conclusion
The contemporary controversy over Sufism’s place in Islam can only be understood
in histor ical context. Whether one considers Sufism to be the heart of Islam or its
most per nicious and persistent heresy, these positions are rooted in much larger
historical trends. For Muslims who see no separation between Sufism and Islam,
they invoke the centur ies within the classical per iod in which Sufi orders, practices,
poetr y, and philosophy were intimately intertwined with every facet of traditional
Muslim life. In contrast, many Muslims today, even if they do not identify as Salafi,
have a general sense that Sufi beliefs and practices are antithetical to Islam. Their
views too are rooted in centuries of Muslim thought, and in particular the revival
of anti-Sufi inter pretations in recent centur ies.
The proliferation of contemporary anti-Sufi perspectives has been shaped by
(a) theological movements within Islam that have sought to pur ify the religion
irrespective of outside forces (the Wahhabi movement); and (b) the colonial con-
text, whereby European understandings of Islam inspired Muslim reactions. These
reactions tended to offer a streamlined Islam that scapegoated Sufism as the bearer
of superstition and cor ruption, leading to the decline of classical Islamic civilization
(the Salafiyya and affiliated refor mers).
As Muslims faced the chaos of a collapsing caliphate dur ing the colonial period,
it is not surprising that many would tur n to Ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim thinker who
himself grappled with the chaos and fragmentation (both political and religious)
of the post-Mongol per iod. The hyper-coherence that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab offered undoubtedly resonated (and still does) with Muslims looking for
stability in religion and politics. Although arguably reductionist in its excision of
Sufism and Islamic philosophy, this vision had the appeal of a simple (or simplistic)
clar ity, which offered Muslims an easily replicable Islam that could be mobilized in
the cause of reaffir ming Islamic identity, law, and political formations. In Chapter 3,
we will see how this anti-Sufi vision of Islam would gain a global foothold in the
19th and 20th centur ies, radically alter ing contemporary Islam and Sufism’s place
within it.
Notes
1 See for example, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity
(San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002).
2 Muslim preachers (da’is) who identify as Salafi tend to see counter ing Sufism as a key
pillar of their mission to promote an “authentic,” “pure,” “original” Islam. Popular anti-
Sufi preachers are generally found among the Saudi or Saudi-trained clergy, among the
most popular including ‘Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz (d. 1999), Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999),
Muhammad Ibn al-Uthaymeen (d. 2001), Jamaal al-Din Zarabozo, and Bilaal Phillips, to
name just a few.
3 Literally translated as “the people of [Muhammad’s] way and the major ity,” the ahl
al-sunna wa’l jama‘a, or Sunnis, make up the majority of Muslims (cur rently estimated
at around 85%). Sunnis are generally defined as those Muslims who accept the religio-
political legitimacy of Muhammad’s first four successors (Abu Bakr,‘Umar,‘Uthman, and
‘Ali). Under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties that followed these, a “Sunni consensus”

54 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
formed around four schools of law (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi, and Hanbali), two schools of
theology (Ash‘ari and Maturidi), with a general acceptance of Sufism as the spiritual/
inward aspect of Islam.
4 The term “anti-Sufism” was given academic currency by Elizabeth Sirriyeh in her help-
ful work Sufis and Anti-Sufis:The Defence, Rethinking, and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern
World (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999).
5 For example, “Say, We believe in God and what has been sent down to us and in what
was sent down to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and in what
Moses and Jesus were given, and in what the prophets were given by their Lord – we
make no distinction between any of them – and to Him do we submit” (Qur’an 2:136).
6 For more on the Quranic narrative of prophecy, see the section “God’s Messengers” in
Daniel A. Madigan, “Themes and Topics,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an, e d .
Jane Dammen McAuliffe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 79–96.
7 Although the appropriateness of using the term “mysticism” to describe Sufism has been
challenged (in part due to the Christian origin of the term), if we define mysticism
broadly as an approach that seeks a direct experience of God or cultivates spiritual states
of being, then we can comfortably describe Sufism as the mystical approach that devel-
oped within Islam, though acknowledging that Sufism cannot be reduced to mysticism.
8 For an insightful overview of how Muslims integrated Middle Eastern patterns of law,
governance, and religion, see Jonathan Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society
in the Near East: 600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9 In his famous 11th-century Persian manual of Sufism, Kashf al-Mahjub, ‘Ali al-Hujwiri
(d. 1073) summarizes the current theories on the etymological origin of the word tasaw-
wuf. He relates that some say it is derived from the Arabic word for wool, suf, as early
Sufis wore wool as a sign of renunciation. Others say the word comes from safa, mean-
ing purity. Some connect tasawwuf to the Greek word for wisdom, sophia. Al-Hujwiri
remains unsatisfied by any of these options, and concludes that no one can, with cer-
tainty, determine the origin of the name. Refer to ‘Ali bin ‘Uthman al-Hujwiri, The
Kashf al-Mahjub: An Early Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. R. A. Nicholson (New Delhi:
Adam Publisher s, 2006), 30, 34.
10 The first person to be called a “Sufi” in the early sources is an Iraqi named Abu Hashim
(d. 767).The ter m initially had a disreputable connotation, refer ring to marginal, political
dissenters, not yet associated with mysticism. Refer to Christopher Melchert, “Origins
and Early Sufism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13.
11 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2007), 100.
12 The ter m Shi‘ism comes from the Arabic term Shi‘at ‘Ali, which means the “party” or
“faction” of ‘Ali, referring to the Muslims who believed that Muhammad had designated
his cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali as his successor. This movement of supporting ‘Ali as the
Muslim community’s r ightful leader evolved in Islam’s first centuries into a sect that
believed that religious and political authority were joined in the person of the Imam.
The Imam is believed by Shi‘a Muslims to be a divinely appointed guide for Muslims,
beginning with ‘Ali, and being passed on through his bloodline to his sons Hasan, then
Husayn, and on through their descendants. The majority of Shi‘a Muslims believe that
the twelfth Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi went into occultation in 941 ce and will return
to earth prior to the return of Jesus. Ismaili Muslims believe that the Imams continue to
this day, with their leader the Aga Khan the current Imam.
13 Due to the simultaneous emergence of Sufi and Shi‘a literature in the mid-9th century,
it cannot be histor ically established which came first. However, both Sufi and Shi‘a
Muslims trace esoteric interpretations of the Qur’an to Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765). Al-Sadiq
is further considered an Imam or divinely appointed guide by Shi‘a and a key figure in
the transmission of Sufism by Sunnis, with some further considering al-Sadiq to be a
qutb or axial pole of the spiritual universe (Melchert,“Origins and Early Sufism,” 15). For

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 55
more on al-Sadiq’s commentaries, see Farhana Mayer, Spiritual Gems:The Mystical Qur’an
Commentary Ascribed to Ja‘far al-Sadiq (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011).
14 For more on Sufism’s relation to Shi‘a Islam, see Rebecca Masterton, “A Comparative
Exploration of the Spiritual Authority of the Awliya’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi Traditions,”
American Journal of Islamic Social Science 32 (2015): 49–74.
15 Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 1, Book 3, No. 121 . As quoted by James Winston Morris, “How to
Study the Futuhat: Ibn ‘Arabi’s Own Advice,” in Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi: A Commemora-
tive Volume, eds. Stephen Hirtenstein and Michael Tiernan (New York: Element Books,
1993).
16 Rabia Harris,“Introduction,” in The Risalah: Principles of Sufism (Abu’l Qasim al-Qushayri),
ed. Laleh Bakhtiar, trans. Rabia Harris (Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications, 2001), xx.
17 The first author to write on the Malamatiyya was ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 1021)
in his Risalat al-Malamatiyya. This work remains the only early source describing the
Malamatiyya. Notably, al-Sulami himself was from Nishapur, and his maternal grandfa-
ther was a disciple of a Malamati teacher, Abu ‘Uthman al-Hiri (d. 910). For more on
the Malamatiyya, see Sara Svir i, “Hakim Tir midhi and the Malamati Movement in Early
Sufism,” in The Heritage of Sufism, Volume 1, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld,
1999), 583–613.
18 For more on the Qalandars, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish
Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City, UT: University of
Utah Press, 1994).
19 Ali Hassan Abdel-Kader, The Life, Personality and Writings of Al-Junayd (Kuala Lumpur:
Islamic Book Trust, 2013 [1976]), 37.
20 Christopher Melchert, “The Hanabila and the Early Sufis,” Arabica 48 (2001): 353.
21 Notable works here include al-Sulami’s (d. 1021) Tarikh al-Sufiyya and al-Sar raj’s (d. 988)
Kitab al-Luma’.
22 Fons Vitae has published a number of short works translating parts of al-Ghazali’s Ihya
‘Ulum al-Din. See for example, Al-Ghazali, Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in Divine Prov-
idence, trans. David Burrell (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2001) and (with Hamza Yusuf),
Marvels of the Heart: Science of the Spirit (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2010). Fons Vitae has
focused much of its recent publishing on reviving al-Ghazali’s thought as a relevant con-
temporary expression of a Sufi-infused Islam.
23 Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 2005), 239.
24 Ghazali wr ites, after concluding his spir itual, existential explorations, “I knew with cer-
tainly that the Sufis are those who uniquely follow the way to God Most High, their
mode of life is the best of all, their way the most direct of ways, and their ethic the pur-
est.” R. J. McCarthy, Al-Ghazali’s Path to Sufism: His Deliverance from Error (Louisville, KY:
Fons Vitae, 2006), 56.
25 For example, in April of 2016, the University of Exeter hosted a conference entitled
“Sufis and Mullahs: Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World,” which high-
lighted the role of the ’ulama al-zahir or exoter ic jurists and theologians in opposing Sufi
understandings of Islam.
26 For instance, Sufis predicate the possibility of encounter ing God in this world on the
Quranic and subsequent Hadith traditions describing the Prophet Muhammad’s ascen-
sion or the mi’raj (17:1). His ascension through the seven heavens, and in some traditions
the descent through the seven hells, becomes a paradigm of the Sufi quest, in particular
as it is at the end of this ascension that Muhammad accesses the divine. It is this model
that would be utilized by the Sufis in their jour ney in seeking to unite with the divine.
27 For more on the Qur’an’s discussion of revelation, see Yahya Michot, “Revelation,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2008), 180–196.
28 Elliott Bazzano, “Ibn Taymiyya, Radical Polymath, Part 1: Scholarly Perceptions,” Religion
Compass 9 (2015): 100.

56 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
29 Scholars have long debated Ibn Taymiyya’s influence, though there is some agreement
that his impact on the broader Islamic intellectual tradition was muted for centuries
following his death. Although he remained an important point of reference for later
Hanbalis, especially in Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya’s real import for the Islamic tradition
would only become apparent in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ibid., 101.
30 For a concise summary, see Tamara Sonn, A Brief History of Islam (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004), 73.
31 Sonn, A Brief History of Islam, 74.
32 A. Kevin Reinhart, “Fundamentalism and the Transparency of the Arabic Qur’an,” in
Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, eds. Carl W. Er nst and
Richard C. Martin (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 97.
33 Ibid., 101.
34 Bazzano, “Ibn Taymiyya, Radical Polymath, Part I,” 102.
35 In his treatise on Qur’anic interpretation, Muqadimma fi usul al-tafsir, Ibn Taymiyya sug-
gests four exegetical steps: (1) See if a Qur’anic verse can be interpreted by another;
(2) Refer to Hadith; (3) Examine statements by the Prophet’s companions (sahaba); and
next (4) Examine statements by the Followers (tabi’un), the generation after the Prophet
and his companions. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Chapter 9: The Tasks and Traditions of
Interpretation,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 197.
36 See George Makdisi, “Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadari Order,” American Journal of
Arabic Studies 1 (1973): 118–129.
37 In his own works, Ibn al-‘Arabi uses the term tajalli or self-disclosure of God, whereas
his school of thought as a whole also used ta‘ayyun, in a similar respect, following the
terminology of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s most influential disciple Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. For more
on Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology, see William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles
of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Cosmology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997). For
more on Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi’s thought, see Richard Todd, The Sufi Doctrine of Man:
Sad al-Din al-Qunawi’s Metaphysical Anthroplogy (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
38 Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition:The Making of a Polemical Image
in Medieval Islam (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 89.
39 See, for example, Wael B. Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians (New York:
Oxford Univer sity Press, 1993).
40 Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians, xii.
41 Despite Ibn Taymiyya’s per vasive influence on contemporary Salafi groups, including
some of the most extreme (ISIS execution videos and literature make liberal use of Ibn
Taymiyya’s religious rulings), it is important not to draw too straight a line from Ibn Tay-
miyya to such groups. A number of scholars have lamented the reductive way that Ibn
Taymiyya is perceived by both his modern followers and his modern opponents, both of
whom, in many cases, fail to acknowledge the subtlety, range, and depth of this thought.
Bazzano, “Ibn Taymiyya, Radical Polymath, Part I,” 103–106.
42 Illustrating Ibn al-‘Arabi’s paramount influence, Alexander Knysh obser ves that almost
ever y significant Muslim thinker since the 13th century has made a point of defining his
position on Ibn al- ‘Arabi’s orthodoxy or lack thereof. Knysh, Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic
Tradition, 1 .
43 Twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951) expanded the use of the
word “grammar” to include not simply the rules of syntax but also the rules of meaning.
For Wittgenstein, grammar refers to the network of ideas that underlie a shared sense of
what constitutes meaning in language. In other words, we only understand one another
because we share a grammar, or a set of ideas about what is meaningful speech. For a
useful overview of Wittgenstein’s thought, see Anat Matar and Anat Biletzki, “Ludwig
Wittgenstein,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2014),
140. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein; Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of
Imagination.

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 57
44 This is not to say he had no impact. His prominent students include Ibn al-Qayyim
al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) and Ismail Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), both of whose works of Qur’an
commentary, Hadith scholarship, and spirituality have pride of place in Hanbali thought.
45 Marshall Hodgson suggests that over the centuries the Sufi orders had become “bur-
dened with the weight of endowed property and popular superstition.” Marshall G. S.
Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization:Volume Three,
The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1974), 159.
46 Itzchak Weismann,“Sufi Fundamentalism Between India and the Middle East,” in Sufism
and the “Modern” in Islam, eds. Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (New York:
I.B.Tauris, 2007), 115.
47 Fazlur Rahman, a pioneering modernist thinker within Islam, has written a classic intro-
duction to the religion, Islam, 2nd Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1979), 206.
48 See, for example, R. S. O’Fahey’s “Foreword,” in his Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris
and the Idrisi Tradition (London: Hurst and Co., 1990), 1; and R. S. O’Fahey and Bernd
Radtke, “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered,” Der Islam 70 (1993): 52–87.
49 Revivalism is usually a term used as a translation for the Arabic terms tajdid and islah,
which mean, respectively, revival and reform. These terms signify a longstanding Islamic
theological tradition which holds that Islam is revived in each age.
50 Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (San Francisco,
CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 45.
51 Ibid., 47.
52 Invoking Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab considered the Ottomans to be equiva-
lent to the Mongols, who had invaded Muslim lands and then converted to Islam. The
Mongols’ Islam, for Ibn Taymiyya, was corrupt and insincere, and hence Muslims could
oppose them as they would nonbelievers. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab essentially replicated Ibn
Taymiyya’s anti-Mongol rhetor ic and applied it to the Ottoman Turks. Ibid., 51.
53 Ibid., 47.
54 See, for example, Sherman A. Jackson, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam:
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
It is important to note that although al-Ghazali was careful to curate a broad Sun-
nism, this did not stop him from anathematizing philosophers and Shi‘a Muslims in his
writings.
55 Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications Inter na-
tional, 2002), 20.
56 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Volume Three, 161.
57 Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft, 49–50.
58 Muhammad Umar Memon, Ibn Taimiya’s Struggle against Popular Religion: With an Anno-
tated Translation of His Kitab iqtida as-sirat al-mustaqim mukhalafat ashab al-jahim (The
Hague: Mouton & Co., 1976), 216.
59 Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft, 50.
60 According to Ibn al-‘Arabi, the world is nothing but the kaleidoscopic self-revelation of
God, in myriad, ever new and changing forms, then each religion and belief is simply
another form of God. He counseled his readers to recognize God in each form, and not
limit him to any one system of belief or thought. For more on Ibn al-‘Arabi’s views on
religions other than Islam, see William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the
Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
61 In particular, Ottoman writers associated the Wahhabis with the Khawarij, the early sect
that broke away from the majority Muslim community, declar ing all who did not share
their understanding of Islam to be nonbelievers who could be fought, following which
they engaged in a “campaign of banditry” against Muslims. Algar, Wahhabism, 21.
62 Ibid., 28.
63 Ibid., 9, 13–17.

58 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
64 As will be discussed further in Chapter 3, although not a direct outgrowth of Wahha-
bism, the Ahl-i Hadis (Ahl al-Hadith in Arabic) movement in the Indian subcontinent
shared many emphases with Wahhabi theology: members of the Ahl-i Hadis (“People of
Hadith”) movement vocally opposed not only shrine and saint veneration but also main-
stream Sunni jurisprudence, as corruptions of the pure Islam found in the Qur’an and
Hadith. For a good, br ief discussion of the movement’s activities in 19th century South
Asia, see Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2008), 141–149.
65 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume Three, 134.
66 John Walbridge aptly summarizes the break up of Islamic charitable endowments during
the colonial period as “a sort of colonial fencing of the commons.” John Walbridge, God
and Logic in Islam:The Caliphate of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011),
161.
67 Ira. M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
ver sity Press, 2002), 587.
68 Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis, 34.
69 Wael B. Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (New York: Cambridge Univer sity Press,
2009), 86.
70 Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Refor m in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Columbia University Press 2016), 38–44 .
71 Ibid., 30.
72 If we are to label these three thinkers Salafi, it is important to add the qualifier “modern-
ist” or “refor mist” as in “modernist Salafi” or “Salafi reformism” to dissociate them from
the current usage of the term largely in reference to the contemporary representatives
of Wahhabi thought, for whom the term Salafi is most commonly used now among
Muslims. Scholars tend to refer to “traditionalist Salafism” or “Salafi literalism” when
refer ring to this more theologically conservative brand of Salafism. We will look more
closely at Tariq Ramadan’s distinction between “Salafi refor mism” and “Salafi literal-
ism” in Chapter 3. See Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23–28. For the similar usage of “modernist” and
“traditionalist” Salafism, see Jonathan Brown, “Scripture in the Modern Muslim world:
The Quran and Hadith,” in Islam in the Modern World, eds. Jeffery T. Kenney and Ebrahim
Moosa (New York: Routledge, 2014), 13–34 .
73 It is worth noting here that the Salafiyya movement or Salafi refor mism was a broad,
disparate movement throughout Muslim lands in the late 19th and early 20th centu-
r ies. Although generally receiving less scholarly attention than al-Afghani, ‘Abduh, and
Rida, other figures with shared emphases include Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898),
Tahir al-Jaza‘ir i (d. 1920), ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi (d. 1916), and ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Kawakibi (d. 1902).
74 Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis, 72.
75 Michael Muhammad Knight, Why I am a Salafi (Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2015),
178.
76 ‘Abduh’s dislike of Ibn al-‘Arabi was such that he refused to per mit the publication of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. Ibid., 150.
77 Reflecting the ways in which ‘Abduh valorized Sufism as an ideal, he remarked, “There
is no tradition that could be compared to Tasawwuf in its ethics and purification of the
soul ... by eroding this tradition we have eroded our religion.” Muhammad ‘Abduh. The
Complete Works, Volume 3 (Cairo: Al-Shorouq 1993), 551.
78 A mufti is one who gives Islamic legal rulings or fatwas, and a Grand Mufti is usually
the head mufti in a state or region. In Egypt, the Grand Mufti, based in al-Azhar is the
highest religious authority in the country.
79 Sirriyeh, Sufism and Anti-Sufism, 149.
80 This did not mean that ‘Abduh was an unqualified supporter of Wahhabi theology and
indeed he remained critical of the movement, “for running counter to the intellectual

Debate over Sufism’s place in Islam 59
and social objectives of Islamic modernism” and failing to embrace “science and civili-
zation.” Lauzière, The Making of Salafism, 63.
81 Rida received a number of letters from concerned Muslims who remembered the Wah-
habi excesses of the late 18th and early 20th centuries, which offended Muslim sensibili-
ties around the world, to which Rida offered responses that acknowledged the problems
with the movement while defending their overall trajectory. Ibid., 65–67.
82 Ibid., 80–83.
83 Derived from the Arabic khalifa, the term refers to a “successor” or “representative,” and
was used among early Muslims to refer to the leaders of the community who succeeded
Muhammad. Later Muslim dynasties would claim the caliphate.
84 Sirriyeh, Sufism and Anti-Sufism, 18.
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The 20th century has witnessed an unprecedented marginalization of Sufism
within Islamic communities. Dur ing no previous era of Islamic history have Sufis
come under such concerted and widespread attack, with their very place in Islam
coming under question. The recent destruction of Sufi shrines is only the most vis-
ible manifestation of a much wider attempt to purge Sufism from Islam. Whether
in Mali or France, the United States, Iraq, or Pakistan, anti-Sufi movements have
established themselves, in many cases displacing Sufism from its previously assumed
place in the lives of Muslims. The r ich traditions of Sufi art, architecture, poetry,
music, and philosophy that shaped Muslim life and thought are erased from histor-
ical memory and purged from nor mative conceptions of Islam. This displacement
occurs as mosques are stocked with free literature that either totally neglects Sufism
or war ns against Sufi deviations. As a number of scholars have observed, many pam-
phlets found in mosques offer a reductionist, homogeneous picture of Islam, one
divorced from historical context, Muslim diversity and debate.1 A single strand of
Islamic thought is presented as the only sort of Islam there is, erasing Sufism from
the picture entirely. Alongside the proliferation of this for m of “pamphlet Islam,”
local preachers the world over are offered scholarships to study Islam at well-funded
Salafi schools, such as the Islamic University of Medina, and retur n from their
studies with a mission to convince their communities to abandon Sufi practices,
again promoting a particular inter pretation as the final word on Islam.Well-funded,
aggressive Salafi militias form in conflict regions and intimidate and silence Sufis.
Globally then, Sufism becomes at the very least suspect, and in many cases actively
opposed, maligned, and proscr ibed.
To continue our discussion of Sufism’s place in Islam, we begin by noting that,
as in the premoder n per iod, contemporary debates over Sufism are ultimately
debates over orthodoxy: Which Islamic beliefs and practices are legitimate? What
counts as Islamic? What does it mean to be Muslim? As anthropologist and scholar
3
CONTESTING SUFISM TODAY
Contemporary Sufi and anti-Sufi
responses

Contesting Sufism today 63
of religion Talal Asad has suggested, orthodoxy is always a reflection of who has
the power to establish their understanding of Islam as “nor mative,” “official,” and
“orthodox.”
2 Most major Islamic sects and schools of thought have produced insti-
tutions of author ity, the representatives of which simultaneously claim orthodoxy
for themselves while classifying other sects as heretical. As power shifts, so too does
orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, then, is more dynamic than it is often portrayed to be by its
proponents, and there are of course a number of competing claims to orthodoxy.
Who has the power to fund, establish, and promote institutions, teachers, and litera-
ture as orthodox? The success of a particular interpretation of Islam (and its impact
on Sufism) is closely tied to this question, as we see in this chapter.
The 19th century witnessed the erosion of classical Sunni Islam’s religious and
political institutions. European encroachment increasingly threatened the Ottoman
Empire, which ruled over Islam’s heartland in the Middle East and North Africa.
Ottoman rulers struggled with the imperative to moder nize and Wester nize, against
conservative pressures to maintain traditional author ity structures dominated by
the ’ulama and Sufi orders. Military failure and ter r itory loss eventually forced the
moder nization of the Ottoman military, justice, and education systems. In 1826, the
Ottomans dissolved and repressed the famed Janissar ies (dominated by the Bektashi
Sufi order).That same year, the system of religious endowments (awqaf) that funded
institutions of Islamic jur isprudence began to be brought under direct gover nment
control and gradually dismantled.3 The Ottoman free trade agreement with the
Br itish in 1838 opened Turkish cities to European merchants, money, and cultural
influence. Under Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid I (d. 1861) a series of far-reaching refor ms
known as the Tanzimat (“reorganization”) were inaugurated. Though prefaced
with references to Islamic sources, the Tanzimat refor ms “aimed to create a legal
and administrative system along Wester n, and more specifically French, lines.”
4
The ‘ulama were increasingly replaced with moder n bureaucrats while shari‘a
courts were sidelined in favor of state courts with Western-style legal codes. Islamic
law became subsumed under state law (qanuns), losing most of its wider social sig-
nificance in regulating Ottoman life by the end of the 19th century. In the 20th
century, whether due to colonial rule or indigenous reform efforts, the shari‘a was
reduced to family law in the vast major ity of Muslim lands, from Alger ia to Malay-
sia.5 Despite the displacement of Islamic institutions, Ottoman sultans still claimed
leadership of Muslims as caliphs.The collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the
First World War, however, precipitated the r ise of the secular Turkish state and the
dissolution of the caliphate in 1924. The abolishment of this longstanding symbol
of Muslim political unity, alongside widespread weakening of the institutions of
Islamic law, meant that Muslims now lacked centralized author ity to a degree rarely
seen in Islamic history. Classical Sunnism had lost much of its institutional basis,
opening up space for orthodoxy to be redefined.6 Since that time, many Muslims
have longed for the return of a symbolic center to the Muslim ummah, which the
caliph is thought to represent.
As Muslim societies struggled to gain their independence from European rule,
questions regarding Islam’s role in the state, society, and spiritual life were paramount,

64 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
with few obvious answers.The Islamic tradition’s encounter with modernity set off
an “epistemological crisis,” challenging Muslims to integrate, assimilate, or reject
European Enlightenment thought and its concomitant political for mations.7 Grand
projects of secularization, Westernization, and nationalism in the first part of the
20th century (in countr ies like Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan) gave way to a
religious backlash and revival in the second half of the century. The sound defeat of
Arab states by Israel dur ing the Six Day War in 1967 signified for many the failure
of secular, nationalist leaders in the Middle East to bring about the promised pros-
per ity, power, and cultural dynamism. Muslims were increasingly tur ning to Islam
as an archive of symbols, principles, and cultural nor ms that could be mobilized to
inform projects of social and political revival. Simply put, could Islam function as
the ideological underpinning of a modern state and civil society? The 1979 Islamic
revolution in Iran coincided with a global movement among Sunnis that sought to
recreate the moder n state on a purely Islamic basis. With the growth of revivalist
movements like the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) in Egypt and the
Jama‘at-i-Islami in Pakistan, visible signs of Islamic piety along with calls for Islami-
cizing the state and culture returned to public life, as much on university campuses
as in mosques. With the al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya – or “Islamic Awakening” as it was
widely referred to in the 1980s and 1990s – Islam was back on the world stage,
with debates over its nature amplified by its renewed social and political cur rency.
Contending Islamic paradigms
What sort of Islam was being revived? Muslim tradition suggests that a reviver (Mujad-
did) emerges each century to revitalize Islam, to keep it vibrant, authentic, and purified
of ossification and heresy. Muslims of various or ientations have claimed their respec-
tive luminaries as the prophesied centennial reviver. In the 20th century, however,
revivalist movements have tended to utilize a Salafi–Wahhabi paradigm, often filtered
through popular preachers. The displacement (though by no means disappearance)
of the ’ulama created something of a vacuum in author ity that has been filled by a
cacophonic chorus of voices vying to define what exactly Islam is and what an Islamic
society should look like. The most prominent voices in Muslim societies today tend
to be lay activists, whose voices “echo from speakers in mosques, cars, computers, and
television sets,”
8 while “their pamphlets, books, essays, and columns pervade book-
stores, newsstands, and the Internet.”
9 These new voices are in many ways reshaping
how Islam is conceived, transmitted, and practiced. Abou El Fadl notes that:
The vacuum in authority meant not so much that no one could author-
itatively speak for Islam, but that virtually every Muslim with a modest
knowledge of the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet was suddenly
considered qualified to speak for the Islamic tradition and Shar i’a law ... As
these self-proclaimed and self-taught “jur ists” reduced the Islamic her itage
to the least common denominator, Islamic intellectual culture witnessed an
unprecedented level of deter ioration.10

Contesting Sufism today 65
Broadly speaking, the Islam of the revivalists combined a largely Wahhabi theo-
logical or ientation with a reductive approach to Islamic texts, doctr ines, and prac-
tices. Much of Islam’s classical theological–philosophical tradition was shorn to
make way for an Islam that could be easily mastered and applied by nonspecialists.
The contrast between this new, revivalist for m of Islam and the classical Islamic
tradition, with its fusion of jur isprudence, philosophy, and Sufi spirituality, are con-
sidered here in terms of their approaches to the Qur’an, their contrasting under-
standings of key Islamic doctrines, and their notable differences in how Islamic
knowledge is understood and transmitted. These differences underpin the larger
debate today over the meanings of Islam and being Muslim, and how Sufism fits
within these meanings.
Contrasting hermeneutics of the Qur’an and Hadith
As most revivalist leaders came from technical and professional backgrounds, they
lacked the sophisticated inter pretive tools developed over centur ies by Muslim
jurists and theologians. Jur ists operated under the assumption that before the Qur’an
could be interpreted and applied (as opposed to merely read for inspiration), the
inter preter must have a mastery of the Arabic language, a thorough knowledge
of the histor ical context in which each verse was revealed (asbab al-nuzul), and a
mastery of jur isprudential methodology (‘usul al-fiqh), which allowed for one to
resolve conflicts between verses or between the Qur’an and other source texts.
The basics of Greek philosophy, particularly logic, for med a key aspect of jur istic
training, further informing classical interpretations.11 A set of skills thought to take
decades to fully develop, this extensive background was, for most premoder n Mus-
lims, the prerequisite for a legitimate Quranic her meneutic. Even when applied,
however, the interpretation was always considered somewhat tentative, at best a
close human approximation of the Divine meaning. Contrary to this approach,
revivalist Muslim thinkers tended to read Islamic texts somewhat along the lines
of technical manuals: a set of straightforward instructions, accessible to all, with a
singular, readily apparent meaning, to be apprehended and then car r ied out. For the
Qur’an to be approached in this manner, its meaning must be flattened out, so to
speak, reduced to its surface appearance. This semantic “flattening out” of the text
has some of its methodological roots in the thoughts of Ibn Taymiyya (as discussed
in Chapter 2), who tended to equate literalism with true belief, arguing that God’s
attr ibutes as descr ibed in the Qur’an, such as His “hands” and “face,” must be taken
to be “literal” (haqiqi) attr ibutes. He considered any metaphor ical interpretation to
be a deviation from the approach of the salaf and a dangerous destabilization of the
text’s clear meaning.12
As scholar of Islam A. Kevin Reinhart aptly observes, “the sustaining myth of
the fundamentalist her meneutic is that the text of scripture is transparent.”
13 From
the revivalist or “fundamentalist”14 perspective the Qur’an can be approached ahis-
tor ically, as a text whose meaning is clear and readily applicable with only a basic
knowledge of Arabic needed. The socio-historical context of the text, the lexical

66 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
ambiguities and possibilities inherent in the Arabic, issues of logic, all must be set
aside as simultaneously extraneous and dangerous. The contextual, linguistically
indeter minate nature of the Qur’an is denied, with the exploration of its linguistic
possibilities essentially erased as unnecessary to delve into, further fraught with the
possibility of wander ing astray. In contrast to the revivalist desire to nar row the
semantic field of the Qur’an, Sufis have traditionally held that the text is “an ocean
without shore,”
15 the semantic possibilities of which are to be found not only in
the application of linguistic, historical, and rational methods, but further excavated
through contemplation.16 This contemplative approach to the text’s deeper mean-
ing was not thought to be suitable for all, however. Ibn al-‘Arabi admonishes his
readers to, “plunge into the ocean of the Qur’an if your breath is sufficiently pow-
erful. If not, limit yourself to the study of the commentar ies on its apparent sense;
but in this case do not plunge, for you will perish.”
17
The or ienting principle of Sufi hermeneutics is an understanding that real-
ity is composed of both the apparent (zahir) and the hidden (batin).18 Similarly,
the Qur’an has its apparent meanings, which can be accessed through linguistic
and histor ical study (‘ilm), and its ocean of hidden meanings, which are accessed
through contemplation (ma‘rifa). Contemplative knowledge “unveils” the Qur’an’s
inexhaustible depth, a depth that includes and transcends its surface appearance.
For Sufis, this process is the “inter pretation by allusion” (tafsir bi-l-ishara), in which
the text’s polysemous possibilities are symbolically “extracted” through an inward
listening.19 Ibn al-‘Arabi even went so far as to suggest that the meaning of the
Qur’an is new each time it is recited by the one whose heart is open to its descent
(nuzul). Even if the Arabic language is not understood, the meaning of the Qur’an
for the particular person reciting it at that moment descends upon their heart. This
means that the text can have a potentially infinite range of meanings that do not
in all cases cor relate with the outward sense of the text.20 However, it is important
to point out that Ibn al-‘Arabi’s hermeneutic was equally concer ned to take ser i-
ously the letter of the text, to ensure that the various inner meanings of the Qur’an
were drawn out of its literal meaning, with close attention paid to the linguistic,
grammatical implications of each verse, an approach aptly descr ibed as “esoteric
literalism.”
21
Revivalists summar ily dismissed Sufi her meneutics as unnecessar ily opaque lay-
ers of inter pretation that needed to be excised for the Qur’an’s practical message
to shine forth and fix political shortcomings in Muslim societies. This dismissal was
a convenient inter pretive paradigm for moder n professionals who were untrained
in Islam’s classical sciences. Sufi and jur istic Quranic inter pretations infor med by
Aristotelian logic, Persian poetry, and Neoplatonic metaphysics were rejected as
deviations from Islam’s early pur ity, rather than valued as natural outgrowths of it,
or doors through which to access it. In sum, for the sacred texts to be instrumen-
talized for moder n programs of social and political refor m, their meaning had to be
reduced to their surface appearance.
Alongside the Qur’an, revivalists have tended to take authenticated Hadith
reports of what Muhammad said or did at face value, rather than as probable reports

Contesting Sufism today 67
that must be carefully interpreted using Islamic legal methodology before being
applied. Traditionally, Muslim interpreters simultaneously valued authenticated
(sahih) Hadith as the most reliable indicators of the Prophet Muhammad’s way
or Sunna, while approaching them with caution in their attempts to formulate
Islamic theology and law. Within the classical Sunni tradition, the only source texts
that were thought to offer certain knowledge of God’s words or the words of
His Prophet were the Qur’an and a small number of Hadith, both of which were
transmitted by so many people from generation to generation that a conspiracy of
fabrication would be well-nigh impossible.These multiple (mutawatir) lines of trans-
mission offered, for early Muslim scholars, a guarantor of authenticity. However,
the vast major ity of Hadith reports that were transmitted by the first generations of
Muslims descr ibing what Muhammad said and did have only one or two lines of
transmission (ahad) – that is, they were passed down from one or two individuals to
the next over generations until recorded by a Hadith collector (often two or three
hundred years after the Prophet’s death). Muslim scholars have hence suggested
that even the most r igorously authenticated line of transmission (list of names of
transmitters, each of whom is historically researched and ver ified) could only offer
probable knowledge of the Prophet’s words and actions, not certain, as, without the
“checks and balances” offered by numerous lines of transmission, some sort of forg-
ery was still possible, even if considered unlikely. This probable knowledge offered
by Hadith with singular lines of transmission (isnad) was deemed to be of sufficient
strength to allow for the use of Hadith to determine Muslim law and practice
(though generally not issues of belief), though early Muslim jur ists differed among
themselves over the precise extent to which these Hadith could be used and how.
For example, the founder of the Maliki school, Malik Ibn Anas (d. 795), suggested
that authenticated Hadith could end up being a source of misguidance for Muslims
if those reports were not understood in the context of the wider Muslim tradition
of practice (‘amal), especially as preser ved by generations of knowledgeable elders
in the Prophet’s city, Medina. Abu Hanifa (d. 767), founder of the Hanafi school in
Kufa, Iraq, was skeptical of much Hadith literature, and preferred to base his for-
mulations of Islamic law on the Qur’an, the most widely transmitted Hadith, the
teachings of the companions of the Prophet who settled in Kufa, and the r igorous
application of human reasoning.
In contrast to the circumspection with which these early for mulators of Islamic
law approached and utilized Hadith, the contemporary revivalist movement has
tended to assume that authenticated Hadith can be taken as offer ing unconvertible
knowledge of Muhammad’s Sunna that can be employed with ver y little critical
inter pretation. As an early example of this approach, the South Asian Ahl-e Hadith
(or Ahl al-Hadith – literally “the people of Hadith”) movement promoted a revivalist
her meneutic in the 19th century. This movement encouraged nonspecialist Mus-
lims to der ive their religious understanding directly from source texts without the
mediation of expert inter pretation, whether Sufi or jur istic. Like the Wahhabis, the
Ahl-e Hadith were admirers of Ibn Taymiyya, translating his works into Urdu.They
condemned a var iety of Sufi practices (supplication at graves, invoking the Prophet

68 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
in prayer, festivals for Sufi saints, wear ing of amulets, celebration of the Prophet
Muhammad’s birthday, distr ibuting food during religious festivals), as heretical and
even idolatrous. In general, the Ahl-e Hadith embraced a literalist her meneutic of
Hadith in seeking to purify Islam of non-Islamic contaminants, intersecting with
the Wahhabi movement as progenitors of contemporary anti-Sufism.22
Illustrating the Ahl-e Hadith methodology, Shah Isma’il al-Shahid’s (d. 1831)
Urdu tract Tawqiyat al-iman suggests that “to comprehend the Quran and Hadith
does not require much lear ning, for the Prophet was sent to show the straight path
to the unwise.”
23 Jonathan A. C. Brown, scholar of Islamic thought, observes that
this manifesto has been widely read since its wr iting almost two centuries ago, first
in cheap printings and now online: “it remains one of the most accessible religious
texts to lay Muslims in South Asia,”
24 disseminating the notion that source texts
are transparent, and can be readily understood and applied by nonspecialists.25 The
filtering of Hadith through jur isprudential methodology and/or Sufi contempla-
tion – so character istic of the Hanafi and Sufi-infor med Islam that has dominated
the South Asian Muslim scene for centuries – is totally rejected with this approach,
which assumes that Hadith offer immediate, conclusive “proof ” resolving all con-
ceivable religious questions.
The phenomenon of young Muslims attempting to “cor rect” each other over
their practice of Islam by brandishing Hadith as offer ing the final say are often
completely unaware of the interpretive complexity that has traditionally framed
Muslim reading and application of these texts. This rather simplistic usage of Had-
ith was affirmed by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s works such as Kitab al-Tawhid, which
present Hadith with very little attempt to situate them as against other Hadith, the
practices of early generations of Muslims (including the rulings of early caliphs and
elders), or the methodological frameworks developed by the likes of Malik and Abu
Hanifa. Although this approach has some continuity with Hanbali thinking,26 Han-
balis developed a more critical and methodologically sophisticated her meneutics
of Hadith than a great many contemporary anti-Sufi revivalists appear to evince.
Contesting theologies: Understandings of Tawhid and Islam
As with their approach to source texts, the revivalists of the 20th century similarly
nar rowed the interpretive scope of Islamic theology. Islam’s central doctr ine, tawhid,
is useful to consider as an illustration here. Literally meaning “unification” or “to
make one,” it is the central message of the Qur’an and hence Islam’s foundational
doctrine. Usually translated as monotheism, God’s oneness is the basis of Islam’s
var ied schools of thought and sects. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab in particular emphasized
tawhid as the str ict limitation of veneration to God alone, without any sort of inter-
mediary. Hence, any veneration of holy people or places is, for Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab,
tantamount to shirk or idolatry. The social implications of this understanding of
tawhid are best represented by the Wahhabi emphasis on al-wala’ wa-l -bara’. This is
the principle of loyalty (wala’) to Islam and Muslims alone (true monotheists), with
the concomitant distancing from (bara’) and disavowal of non-Muslims (idolaters),

Contesting Sufism today 69
their beliefs, customs, and practices.27 The outward manifestation of this doctrine
includes an emphasis on meticulously maintaining the outward signs of Islamic
adherence (beards and ankle-length pants for men, and head and face cover ings for
women, for example) while disavowing non-Muslim styles and nor ms, and further
pur ifying Muslim society from anything that smacks of a non-Islamic contaminant.
Infor med by this aspect of Wahhabism, revivalists tend to seek social unifor mity.
Harkening back to Ibn Taymiyya’s anxiety over theological, cultural, and linguistic
pluralism, revivalists promote a program of purging Islamic societies of their long-
standing layers of religious, cultural, and linguistic plurality. This approach shares
much with 19th-century European conceptions of culture utilized in the service
of ethnic nationalism. Although analytically inaccurate, these conceptions resonate
dur ing a time of cr isis and, perhaps unsur prisingly, have been used by Muslim
revivalists, who equate Islam with culture in this sense. They include the notion
that culture is “homogeneous,” “uniformly distr ibuted among members of a group,”
“timeless,” with an individual’s identity consisting of “but a single culture.”
28 For
revivalists, then, Islam is a complete cultural system, free of “inter nal paradoxes and
contradictions,” changeless and hence applicable in the same way in all contexts,
with authentic Islam similar for all Muslims, being their sole identity.29 Shi‘a prac-
tices, Sufi orders, culturally particular for ms of Islam, are all rejected as contrary to
the unified, changeless, and total nature of authentic Islam. Divine unity is read as
social unifor mity. Contradiction is denied rather than seen as complementary.
Missing here, arguably, is an appreciation of the way in which oneness requires
multiplicity. Sufis have long considered tawhid in ter ms of both absolute oneness
(ahadiyya) and in terms of the “manyness of oneness,” or oneness diversified by its
relation to manifold creation (wahidiyya). In this second sense of tawhid, according
to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s school of thought, the pure unity of God’s essence is modified by
its var ied relations to creation. This modification is represented by the diversity of
Divine Names, each of which expresses a particular form of God’s essence modi-
fied by its relationship to a created being.30 The social implications of this layered
metaphysic include an understanding of social oneness that preser ves diversity, a
“unity within diversity” as opposed to unifor mity. Histor ically, this approach has
manifested in the remarkable r ichness of cultural diversity and artistic expressions
found within Islamic contexts shaped by Sufism. For example, Sufi missionar ies
were paramount in the spread of Islam in non-Arab regions, and tended to foster
an integration of local culture with Islam, leading to distinctly African, Turkic, and
South Asian Islamic for ms.
The revivalist use of the state to enforce religious unifor mity is important to men-
tion here as well.The notable diversity of premoder n Muslim societies was not only
doctrinally based but also logistical in nature: it was simply unfeasible for any Mus-
lim state prior to the moder n per iod to enforce religio-cultural uniformity. Urban
centers where empires were based could enforce orthodoxy with more effectiveness,
though imperial author ity decreased significantly in rural areas and outlying prov-
inces. The technologies of the modern state, however, enable revivalists to enforce
monolithic religious nor ms with a scope previously inconceivable in Islamic history.

70 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
As with tawhid, the meaning of Islam is nar rowed significantly in revivalist dis-
course. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Qur’an’s descr iption of Moses, Jesus, and
Abraham as Muslims opens up Islam semantically to include the larger human his-
tory of divine guidance. Islam, then, can be read as including much of Judaism,
Christianity, and, potentially, all pre-Islamic religious traditions. Sufis have tended
to interpret Islam in this broad sense, leading to an openness toward other religions
as previous expressions of Islam, and an acceptance of non-Muslims as people who
may be saved, or may benefit from Islamic spiritual teachings regardless of their
faith background.31 For modern revivalists, however, Islam is reduced to the histor-
ical teachings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad. This fosters a general sense
within revivalist circles of other religions being outside of the fold of truth and salva-
tion. Combined with the doctr ine of wala’ wa-l-bara’, other religions become rather
dangerous contaminants to be contained, avoided, and opposed. Furthermore, intra-
Islamic diversity is seen in the same light, with any practice or belief deemed to fall
outside of the “saved sect” being actively countered. The meaning of “Islam” then
is nar rowed from referencing humanity’s spiritual heritage in general to referencing
the doctr ine and practice of one particular sect within the Islamic tradition.32 As we
see in Chapter 4, it is precisely these universalistic perspectives within Sufism that
attracted European Orientalists, colonial officials, poets, and philosophers.
Pedagogy and the transmission of Islamic knowledge
As a result of their hermeneutics and doctr ine, revivalists tended to offer a radically
simplified Islam, one harkening back to the “fundamentals” and sources of the
religion, claiming to bypass the complexities of medieval jur isprudence and philos-
ophy. Islam was repackaged as a total program that could be replicated and followed
regardless of context, with the promise of solving contemporary problems in indi-
vidual, family, and social life. As an outgrowth of the Salafi and Wahhabi movements,
the revivalist program is largely rooted in Ibn Taymiyya’s project of pur ifying Islam
from contaminants and accretions. However, revivalists tended to selectively stream-
line Ibn Taymiyya’s theology to make it fit within the paradigm of modern political
ideologies: much of the range and complexity of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought is missing
from revivalist mobilizations of it.
The desire to per petuate the essence of Islam as lived by its first generations
(salaf) was a desire that Muslims in general tended to share. The question was how
this essential, early Islam was to be accessed and lived. For revivalists, accessing
the Islam of the salaf was thought to require simply reading early Islamic texts as
manuals for individual practice and social policy. This text-based approach was a
profound shift away from the premoder n emphasis on the importance of religious
learning within a personal, face-to-face teacher–student relationship. One’s teacher
was further supposed to have had a similar face-to-face learning exper ience that
could be traced back to the Prophet, a chain of knowledge transmission, which, like
a recorded chain of Hadith transmission, was known as an isnad. Following a com-
plete program of study, a student would be given a for mal ijaza, an author ization to
teach, premised on the isnad.33

Contesting Sufism today 71
This premodern pedagogy of the ‘ulama assumed that accurate textual knowledge
was only available within the context of practice. This practical context was (ideally)
one in which a habitus of refined etiquette, humility, restraint, and mercy for med
the container into which knowledge was poured. This habitus was believed to be
the intangible aspect of the prophetic Sunna that was passed down from teacher to
student over generations, a living tradition that helped secure scr iptural interpreta-
tions from straying into extremes. The medieval madrasa system was built upon this
principle of personal transmission of knowledge in a context of practice. An early
scholar of Hadith, Ibn al-Mubarak (d. 797), is reported to have expressed this ethos
in noting that, without a secure chain of transmission, “everyone would talk as they
please.”
34 He suggested that seeking religious knowledge without an isnad was like
“trying to get on to a roof without using a ladder.”
35 For Islamic revivalists, however,
this emphasis on intangible transmission smacked of Sufism, and was largely aban-
doned in favor of a more modern, mater ialistic approach that saw knowledge not as
transmission but as information, information that can be accessed by apprehending
the apparent meaning of a text. This more individualistic approach is one largely
divorced from the pedagogical training emphasized by the classical tradition.
Summarizing the contemporary Islamic scene
Tariq Ramadan, in his Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2005), breaks down
the complex landscape of contemporary Islam into six major tendencies, all of
which will be discussed at length throughout the remainder of this chapter. The
following is a concise summary of the var ious perspectives competing to define an
authentic Islam for the 21st century. Familiar ity with these broad tendencies will
help readers in understanding the dynamics of contemporary Islam and Sufism’s
place within it.36
1. Scholastic traditionalism
Scholastic traditionalists seek to preserve and transmit the medieval crys-
talization of the Islamic tradition, as represented by the classical schools
of jurisprudence, usually with some recognition of Sufism as the inward
dimension of Islamic law and theology. Following medieval legal luminar-
ies, scriptural commentators, and spiritual specialists it is thought to be the
most reliable way to access the message of the Qur’an and Sunna.
2. Salafi literalism
Salafi literalists seek to bypass the traditional schools of jurisprudence
and access the Qur’an and Sunna directly. They tend to interpret scrip-
tural sources literally, using proof texts from scripture to justify Islamic
beliefs and practices, and reject those deemed un-Islamic. Salafi literalists
strongly oppose Sufism as a corruption of early Islam (the Islam of the

72 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
righteous, first generations following Muhammad, the salaf al-salih), which
they want to revive. This interpretive tendency is usually traced to the
teachings of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and hence Salafi literalists are often
referred to as Wahhabis, though they reject this term.
3. Salafi reformism
Salafi reformists also seek to return to the source texts and dynamism of
early Islam. In contrast to Salafi literalists, however, they seek to interpret
source texts in light of the rational “ends” or “intentions” of the law, rather
than its literal application. They attempt to use reason to reinterpret source
texts in light of contemporary sociopolitical circumstances. This trend
emerges out of the al-Afghani, ‘Abduh, and Rida’s Salafiyya movement.
Although generally more open to Sufism, many Salafi reformists retain
‘Abduh and Rida’s concerns about Sufism.
4. Political literalist Salafism
Marrying Salafi literalism with political activism, this brand of Salafism
seeks to establish an “Islamic state,” overthrowing secular governments
in the Muslim world and opposing Western influence. Most notoriously
represented by groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria), this more militant tendency is sometimes referred to as “jihadism,”
or more recently “Jihadi-Salafism.” Political literalist Salafis strongly oppose
Sufism and have taken violent action against Sufis and Sufi shrines.
5. Liberal reformism
Liberal reformists seek to advance Muslim societies in light of modern,
Western developments. Source texts are interpreted in light of modern phi-
losophy and science, and Islamic practice situated within secular notions
of privatized religion. Sufi texts are at times valued by liberal reformists as
sources of spiritual inspiration, but Sufi orders are generally seen as anach-
ronistic carryovers from Islam’s old order.
6. Sufism
Sufis tend to be represented by the various Sufi orders and groups found
throughout Muslim societies. Source texts are interpreted in light of con-
templative practice, with the inner life taking some priority over life in
the world. Although Islamic law and theology is usually adhered to, this
adherence is understood through the teachings of the particular Sufi
leader with which one is affiliated. Hence, these elements of the Islamic
tradition may be de-emphasized in favor of a focus on mystical practice
and development.

Contesting Sufism today 73
The spread of anti-Sufism in the 20th century
Logistically, revivalist Islam’s anti-Sufism gained a powerful global momentum in
the 20th century with Saudi Arabia’s organized and remarkably well-funded cam-
paign to finance and promote Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s vision of a pur ified Islam. As
we will see in this chapter, largely under Saudi auspices, Islamic revivalism (Salafi
refor mism) was fused with Wahhabi theology (Salafi literalism), a phenomenon
that today is usually simply referred to as Salafism. A global campaign funded by
Saudi Arabia’s immense petroleum wealth made itself felt across Muslim societies
and communities, ushering in a transfor mation of Islam in the moder n world.The
growing persecution of religious minorities, including Sufi and Shi‘a Muslims, Jews,
and Christians, at the hands of Salafi/Wahhabi militias and der ivative movements
in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Pakistan illustrate journalist Patr ick Cockburn’s
contention that “the ‘Wahhabisation’ of mainstream Sunni Islam is one of the most
dangerous developments of our era.”
37 As a global society, we are cur rently expe-
r iencing the effects of this transformation, and will likely continue to do so for
decades to come.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s anti-Sufi theology made headway following his death,
though it was significantly curtailed with the Ottoman-led destruction of the first
Wahhabi state in Arabia (1745–1818). The remnants of the Saudi–Wahhabi move-
ment regrouped in their home base in the Najd, making Riyadh their new cap-
ital, from which they began again to expand their influence in the peninsula.38
Saudi and Br itish interests coincided, as both sought to advance their interests in
the region and weaken the Ottomans. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab mobilized latent Arab
nationalism in the peninsula against the Ottomans. In 1865, the Br itish began sub-
sidizing the Saudis (among other contenders to power in the peninsula) – a rela-
tionship that would only grow throughout the 19th century. The Saudi–Wahhabi
alliance proved more powerful than its competitors in Arabia, notably following
the establishment of the Ikhwan or “brotherhood” (not to be confused with Egypt’s
Muslim Brotherhood) an effective, fanatical Wahhabi fighting force in 1912. In
1915, the Br itish signed a treaty of “friendship and cooperation” with the Sau-
dis, involving primar ily money and arms. With British aid, the Saudis again con-
quered Mecca and Medina in 1925. The Wahhabi enforcers began again enforcing
their vision of Islam, focusing heavily on outward confor mity to their under-
standing of Islamic nor ms. They demanded that men g row beards, women cover
up, musical instruments be prohibited, and sacred shrines in the region, including
those of the Prophet and his companions, be destroyed.39 The Ikhwan proved at
times too much even for the Saudis to control, however. Upset by the Saudi alli-
ance with the non-Muslim British (as a violation of bara’ or disavowal of non-
believers), and the restr ictions it imposed on their ability to expand and enforce
Wahhabi Islam, the Ikhwan rebelled in 1929, and were only subdued with Br itish
military help.40
Wahhabi influence was not contained within Arabia dur ing the first decades of
the 20th century. Scholar and for mer Sufi Mahmud Khattab al-Subki (d. 1933),
for example, became “the most eminent exponent of Wahhabism in Egypt of

74 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
his generation.”
41 His many writings utilized the works of Ibn Taymiyya to attack
Sufi doctr ine and practice. He founded the al-Jam‘iyya al-shar‘iyya in 1913, an orga-
nization that fought with Sufis for control of mosques and religious foundations,
putting Egyptian Sufis on the defensive.42 Wahhabi perspectives were also making
headway in South and Southeast Asia, with per iodicals and organizations cropping
up in British India and Dutch Indonesia cr iticizing Sufism as a deviation from early
Islam.43
In Arabia,Wahhabism’s future was secured in 1932 with the establishment of the
Saudi Arabian kingdom. Although the Saudis at times came into conflict with Wah-
habi cler ics, they maintained a close alliance, in which the Wahhabi religious estab-
lishment was given the power of the state to enforce their str ict religious nor ms
domestically, and in turn Wahhabi cler ics offered religious legitimation to the Saudi
monarchy (which tended to abandon Wahhabi principles in its international alli-
ances). Now consolidated in Arabia, the stage was set for Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ideas
to develop a truly global reach.
Following the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Arabian Peninsula in the
1930s, and the resulting accumulation of oil wealth, the Saudi state began a cam-
paign to export Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s call to purify Islam of Sufi innovations
throughout the world, in many ways fundamentally altering the religious land-
scape of Islam. This dissemination of Wahhabi thought in the latter half of the
20th century has occurred through a variety of channels. Saudi money (both
public and private) has financed Islamic colleges, schools, mosques, and charities
around the world, supported Islamic conferences, and funded the writing and dis-
tribution of books.44 It should be pointed out that Saudi society, leadership, and
charitable organizations are by no means homogeneous promoters of Wahhabi
theology.The Saudis have been incredibly philanthropic in recent decades, fund-
ing a wide range of cultural, religious, and charitable projects around the world,
many of which range across the spectrum of liberal, progressive causes, alongside
more traditional religious ones. Although the social effects of Wahhabi theology
have drawn concerted criticism from a variety of perspectives, it is important not
to reduce the complexities of contemporary Saudi society, culture, and politics to
this theology.
Wahhabism, however, has been promoted as a result of the Saudi religious estab-
lishment’s desire to spread their inter pretation of Islam, and also due to the Saudi
gover nment’s interest in utilizing Wahhabism as a tool of foreign policy.The 1960s
saw the emergence of an “Arab Cold War,” between Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasr’s (d. 1970)
secular nationalism in Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s conser vative combination of mon-
archy and Wahhabi Islam.45 The Saudi establishment believed that the export of
Wahhabi Islam could function as an important ideological bulwark in their strug-
gle against regional rivals who were mobilizing around Arab nationalism, secular
socialism, and later revolutionary Shi’ism, their three main ideological rivals in the
Middle East in the latter part of the 20th century.
One of the most important channels though which these goals have been
accomplished is an organization known as the Muslim World League (Rabitat

Contesting Sufism today 75
al-‘Alam al-Islam).46 Established by a group of Muslim scholars and politicians in
Mecca in 1962 to counter the spread of communism and secular nationalism, the
League has grown to become “the most important non-governmental interna-
tional Islamic organization.”
47 From its inception, the League was a potent fusion
of Salafi literalism (Wahhabism) and Salafi reformism, joining the two most preva-
lent forms of anti-Sufism within a single organization. Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti,
a descendant of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, was the first head of the League.48 Other ini-
tial members included the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna’s
(d. 1949) son, Sa‘id Ramadan (d. 1995), alongside the founder of the Jama‘at-
i-Islami, Abul Ala Maududi (d. 1979). These outgrowths of the Salafi reformist
movement, also referred to as Islamists, form a key pillar of anti-Sufism in the 20th
century.
Rooted in the older Salafi refor mism (Massignon’s Salafiyya) of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood or
Ikhwan al-Muslimeen and the Jama‘at-i-Islami have made an important contribution
to marginalizing Sufism. Islamist movements have emerged as considerable chal-
lengers to secular states in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.With their
claim to offer Muslims a vision of a genuine Islamic state, in contrast to state struc-
tures modeled after those of nonbelievers, Islamists have what for many Muslims are
powerful claims to Islamic authenticity, claims that have great appeal considering
the cor ruption, weakness, and religious and political confusion of the post-caliphate
and postcolonial eras. Olivier Roy defines Islamism as consisting of “the activist
movements who see in Islam as much a political ideology as religion.”
49 Islamists
believe an Islamic state is necessar y for the wholeness of Islam to be established
on earth, and hence direct their efforts toward establishing a “purely” Islamic state,
based on the Qur’an and Sunna. Led by modern professionals, Islamists hope to
fuse a homogenized Islamic law with the moder n state, render ing the ‘ulama mostly
redundant. The spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic elements of the histor ical Islamic
tradition are downplayed, while revamped political elements are cor respondingly
foregrounded, leading to an Islam that is as much, if not more, an ideology than a
spiritual path. Brown notes that Islamists promote the revivalist sense of the sim-
plicity and transparency of Islamic source texts, making them easily applied by
non-experts: “For Islamists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Islam was
blessedly simple, common sense and ripe for personal and social implementation
with no need for ulema.”
50
The idea that a modern state could be made “Islamic” was first developed by
Abul Ala Maududi, a South Asian revivalist thinker who founded the Jama‘at-
i-Islami in Lahore in 1941.51 Maududi was inspired by great Sufi revivalists
(mujaddids) of the Mughal period, Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) and Shah Wali Allah
(d. 1762).52 Although Maududi came from a family descending from a branch
of the Chishti Sufi order53 and became thoroughly acquainted with Sufi philos-
ophy in his religious education, he understood legitimate Sufism as simply the
love of God and the Prophet shown through strict obedience to their commands
(along the lines of Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding of Sufism). Despite allowing for

76 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
this circumspect form of Sufism, he maintained that Muslims should abandon it.
Maududi wrote:
Just as a pure and lawful thing as water is prohibited when it is deemed to be
har mful to a patient, similarly the cult of Tassawuf, though allowable, needs to
be eschewed and laid aside. For through it the Muslims have become addicted
to a kind of intoxication which has lulled them into sleep and sapped them of
life and reality for centur ies.54
Mir ror ing Karl Marx’s (d. 1883) famous cr itique of religion as the “Opium des
Volkes” or “opium of the masses,” Maududi saw Sufism as a key obstacle to the
revival of Muslim political power. His pragmatic opposition to Sufism was appre-
ciated by the Saudi-Wahhabi sponsors of the Muslim World League. As a found-
ing member of the first council of the League, Maududi was clearly comfortable
with Wahhabi perspectives on Sufism, if he did not str ictly share them. Maududi’s
influence has been channeled not only through the Jama‘at in South Asia but also
through organizations founded by Jama‘at members around the world, including
the Islamic Circle of North Amer ica (ICNA) founded in 1971.55 ICNA contin-
ues to administer mosques, hold conferences, publish literature, pursue char itable
operations, and release public statements on issues of concer n to Muslims around
the world.
Arabic language teacher and religious activist Hasan al-Banna (d. 1949) founded
the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) in Egypt in 1928. Al-Banna estab-
lished the Brotherhood as an activist movement to counter Wester nization and
bring Egyptian society back to Islamic nor ms and practices, though it would soon
have a global impact. Like Maududi, al-Banna believed in a highly circumscr ibed
for m of Sufism.56 Reflecting Salafi criticisms of Sufism, al-Banna suggested that
Sufis were responsible for bringing outside contaminants into Islam, such as Greek
and Persian philosophy, cor rupting the pur ity of Islamic belief.57 Further more,
Banna saw Sufism’s focus on the inner world as leading to an inevitable neglect
of the outer world, foster ing a political and social quietism that betrayed Islam’s
activist impulse and hobbled Muslim refor m efforts. Later, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966),58
one of the Brotherhood’s most influential and controversial thinkers, would char-
acter ize Sufism as a “medieval relic” that served to keep Muslims fragmented by
affiliation with var ious orders, and resigned to their social and political fates. For
Qutb, Sufism helped foster the ignorance and superstition (jahiliyya) that medieval
Islam had succumbed to: it was an archaism that kept Muslims from regaining civ-
ilizational dynamism and power. Qutb’s call for Muslims to overthrow states that
were not fully implementing God’s rule, and to replace them with a modern state
that enforced a homogenized Islamic law, formed the ideological basis of Political
Literalist Salafism.
Al-Banna and Qutb’s largely negative views of Sufism have, like Maududi’s,
gained considerable traction through worldwide institutional reach. Along with
League involvement and the funding it bequeathed, Brotherhood members and

Contesting Sufism today 77
similarly affiliated Muslim revivalists have gone on to establish Islamic education,
welfare, and advocacy organizations around the globe.
Muslim Brotherhood members were instrumental in establishing some of North
Amer ica’s first Muslim organizations, including the Muslim Students Association
(MSA), founded in 1963, and the Islamic Society of North Amer ica (ISNA),
founded in 1982.59 Contrary to the increasingly prevalent Islamophobic conspir-
acy theor ies, however, this early Brotherhood influence on these organizations in
no way means that such organizations were simply offshoots of the Brotherhood or
the League, or that their members were exclusively affiliated with these Islamist/
revivalist movements. Although founding members often came out of revivalist
movements or were influenced by them, later MSA and ISNA leaders came from
a variety of Muslim orientations and by no means did revivalism have a monopoly
on Muslim organizations. However, anti-Sufi perspectives were initially present in
these organizations through Brotherhood and League influences. For decades, these
perspectives continued to shape the atmosphere of North Amer ican Islam, which
was in many contexts hostile to open expressions of Sufism.
Notable here is the influence of Ismail Al-Faruqi (d. 1986), a Palestinian political
refugee and immig rant to the United States who worked as a philosopher, religious
studies professor at Temple University, and Muslim activist. With his Islamic world-
view shaped by studying with revivalist preachers at al-Azhar dur ing his time in
Cairo in the 1950s and his exper ience of MSAs in Amer ica, Al-Faruqi would foster
a vision of Islam that was shaped by Salafi literalist and Salafi reformist understand-
ings.60 His vision would in turn help define the orientations of North Amer ica’s
pioneer ing Islamic organizations, significantly marginalizing Sufism among Mus-
lims in Canada and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. By the mid-1980s,
the MSA had over 300 chapters and almost fifty thousand members, making it one
of the region’s most important Muslim organizations. Locally, the dissemination of
perspectives like Al-Faruqi’s coincided with the settlement of “more revivalist Mus-
lim inter national students in the US [and Canada]”61 in the 1970s and 1980s who
helped establish a more extensive institutional framework for Muslims in North
Amer ica. Under the influence of Al-Faruqi and other revivalist perspectives from
the Middle East and South Asia, MSAs alongside other national Muslim organi-
zations in North America tended to present Islam as a homogeneous system, one
that was threatened by cultural and religious diversity, rather than enriched by it.62
In the 1980s, Al-Faruqi began working with Abdulhamid Abu Sulayman on a
project to address the “cr isis of the Muslim mind.”
63 Like the Salafiyya of the late
19th and early 20th centur ies, Al-Faruqi and Abu Sulayman saw Muslims as having
fallen behind the West in terms of civilizational advancement and knowledge.They
believed that as “thought naturally precedes deeds,” the revival of Islamic civiliza-
tion must begin with an articulation and application of “sound Islamic thought.”
64
They ter med their project of intellectual refor m the “Islamization of Knowledge.”
Its goal was nothing less than restor ing the ummah (global Muslim community) to
a place of power and prominence on the world stage. This could be done first by
recognizing that the European Enlightenment was actually an appropriation and

78 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
misapplication of Islamic principles of rational and scientific investigation: whereas
Muslims ensured that these principles stayed within the boundar ies of revelation,
the secular European distortion of divinely guided scientific principles led to the
discontents of modernity. Muslims and particularly North Amer ican Muslims were
thus tasked with recovering this knowledge and “restoring its Islamic roots.”
65
Hence the natural and social sciences could be Islamicized, a process that would
restore them to their or iginal har monization with divine revelation, offer ing a new,
alter native paradigm that would allow Muslims to build societies that were both
authentically Islamic and moder n. As their “Islamization of Knowledge” project
took shape and gained influence through a growing institutional base in Amer ica
that was devoted to its enactment,66 Al-Faruqi and Abu Sulayman tended either to
ignore Sufism or consider it “decadent, deviant, and superstitious.”
67
Beyond the North American context, the Muslim World League, alongside var-
ious public and private Gulf donors, has funded Salafi/Wahhabi missionar y activity
through scholarships offered for preachers (da‘is) to study religion in Saudi Arabia.
Frequently, these studies are pursued at the Islamic University of Medina, which
some have acerbically labeled “Wahhabi U,” referr ing to the university’s premier
role in creating Wahhabi missionaries. Following their training in Salafi understand-
ings of Islam, these missionar ies export their newly acquired Salafism back to their
communities of or igin, which in many cases has involved developing concerted
movements to pur ify local Muslims’ religious practice of any “innovations” or cul-
tural/traditional corruptions, usually associated with Sufism.68 The Muslim World
League has set up offices in and sent missionar ies throughout the Middle East,
Africa, North Amer ica, and South Asia. The implanting of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s
vision of Islam in these places has led to tensions between the new, monolithic
version of Islam and the usually quite heterogeneous and Sufi-or iented Islam that
was already present.69
The League’s activity has had a noticeable impact around the world, transplanting
Wahhabi-informed understandings of Islam in regions dominated for centur ies by
Sufi orders, often with a cor responding amplification of intra- and inter-religious
tensions. For example, beginning in the 1960s, League funding supported leading
political and religious figures in Northern Niger ia. The region’s chief judge, Abu-
bakar Gumi (d. 1992), established the Society for the Eradication of Innovation
(bida‘a) in 1978, institutionalizing anti-Sufism in the region.70 League promotion
of Wahhabism in Nigeria has contr ibuted to the recent attempt at implementing
Islamic law in norther n Niger ian states (interacting with a number of local, his-
tor ical factors as well), exacerbated tensions with Christians, and helped foster the
eventual rise of the militant Salafi Hausa group Boko Haram. Saudi funding for
mosques and Islamic organizations in the region has unsur prisingly made the Saudi
implementation of Salafism a desired model for some Niger ians. Scholar of con-
temporar y Islam Sarah Eltantawi shares an excer pt of an interview with a Niger ian
interlocutor who stated simply, “I wish Niger ia could be like Saudi Arabia,” which
she notes is an opinion shaped by widespread Saudi funding in the area in recent
decades.71 Similarly, starting in the 1970s, Saudi funding to Yemen’s Ministry of

Contesting Sufism today 79
Education brought Salafi preachers and doctr ines into the country, exacerbating
tensions between Sunni and Shi‘a tr ibes in Yemen, and between Salafi and Sufi
mosques and schools.72 Scholar of Islam and politics Noorhaid Hasan observes that,
“the development of the Salafi movement in Indonesia is inexorably related to the
r ising influence of Saudi Arabia in the global politics of the Muslim world.”
73
For ms of Salafism have further taken hold in Pakistan and Afghanistan, regions
previously dominated by Sufism, as Saudi Arabia has funded and supported Islamist,
Salafi movements there. In the 1990s, for example, the Saudis shifted their funding
from Maududi’s Jama‘at-i -Islami to the Ahl-e Hadith, which received “millions of
dollars and developed a publishing empire with worldwide distribution,” creating
“Salafi establishments in Pakistan” with global impact.74 Pakistani alumni of the
University of Medina have further contr ibuted to the establishment of Salafism in
Pakistan. Although rooted in the Deobandi madrasas75 dotting the Pashtun belt in
Northwestern Pakistan, the Taliban movement became increasingly Salafi and anti-
Sufi oriented as it gained power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Its connections
with the Saudi political and religious establishments grew, as Saudi cler ics approved
of the Taliban’s str ict enforcement of Islamic laws and punishments, its opposition
to Sufism, prohibition of music, destruction of statues and shrines, and persecution
of Shi‘a Muslims, all reminiscent of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s reforms in Arabia. Their
punitive implementation of Islamic laws flew in the face of Afghanistan’s tradition-
ally tolerant, heterogeneous Islam, which accommodated a variety of Sunni, Sufi, and
Shi‘a orientations.76 Traditionally prevalent Sufi orders, such as the Naqshbandiyya-
Mujaddidiyya, have been all but pushed out of Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and
Pakistan in recent years, with the r ise of the increasingly anti-Sufi Taliban.77
Interestingly, the Deobandi movement itself or iginated among students of the
Sufi saint Hajji Imdadullah Muhajir (d. 1899). Imdadullah was a leader of the Chishti
order, which was traditionally associated with an emphasis on inter-religious har-
mony, char ity, and pacifism. Imadadullah, however, supported the Mutiny against
the British in 1857. Following the consequent Br itish sacking of Delhi and his exile
to Karachi and then Mecca, Imdadullah advocated for Sufis, as the true heirs of the
Prophet, to take over g reater leadership of the South Asian Muslim community,
as the Mughals declined under growing Br itish dominion.78 For Imdadullah, the
practice of Sufism led to the “rectified heart,” a state of inter nal spiritual pur ity and
power that was “the locus for mystical experience, religious author ity and social
refor m.”
79 His students established the Deobandi movement to solidify and per pet-
uate the classical Islamic tradition among Muslims in India. As the Muslim political
order collapsed under colonialism, the Deobandis sought to maintain Islamic iden-
tity and culture through a fusion of scholasticism and Sufism. This fusion would
be increasingly broken, however, in the later 20th century as some branches of the
Deobandi school of thought became increasingly Salafi literalist in or ientation, as
evidenced by the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Besides the organizational spread of Salafi literalist influence since the 1960s,
the 1990s saw the emergence of online Salafism, which proved to have a power-
ful presence within Islamic cyberspaces. Scholar of Islam online Gary Bunt notes

80 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
that “Wahhabi-influenced material has emerged in diverse online contexts from a
var iety of cultural and linguistic sources,” and acknowledges that “there is a sense
that Wahhabi and Salafi discourse has a prominent role in cyberspace.”
80 Salafism
has indeed proven to be appealing online and, as sociologist of Islam Olivier Roy
observes, “due to its universal quality and de-terr itorialised, de-culturised character
[Salafism] has become a highly powerful model of identification and is eminently
suitable for the creation of new virtual communities.”
81 For many young Mus-
lims who find the culturally particular Islam of their parents to be less relevant to
their quest for identity and community in a globalizing world, Salafism offers a
neat, clean, “pure” Islamic identity divorced from cultural per mutations, and further,
with its claims to represent the only true version of Islam, that of the “saved sect”
(al-firqa al-najiya), it provides a sense of having exclusive access to salvific truth. Most
Salafi websites include articles that are wr itten almost exclusively by Saudi religious
author ities – such as the late Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Shaykh Abdullah Ibn Baz
(d. 1999), his student Muhammad Ibn al-Uthaymeen (d. 2001), and the late Hadith
specialist Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999) – who are the cur rent scions of Ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab’s teachings.82 With archives of fatwas (religious rulings) and articles on
the “pure” Islam of the Salafi manhaj (program or path), these websites designate
a significant amount of their content to castigating deviant sects, which include
most prominently Shi‘a, Sufi, and modernist perspectives, as well as those of Sunni
followers of the traditional legal and theological schools. Such websites draw sharp
lines between the authentic Islam of the salaf and all other sorts, which are anath-
ematized, further exacerbating sectarian tensions in mosques, communities, and
countr ies. Relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are also often strained by
the online spread of Salafi literalism with its emphasis on wala’ wa-l-bara’. Echoing
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s call to sever ties with non-Muslims, fight them, and “g row
closer to God by hating them,” Ibn Baz “ordered Muslims to withhold their g reet-
ings to non-believers and cultivate hatred for them.”
83 Taken together, the com-
bined influence of anti-Sufi preachers, literature, mosques, madrasas, and websites,
funded by tens of billions of Saudi petro-dollars, has been immense.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS
Perhaps nowhere is the Salafi doctrine of wala’ wa-l-bara’ more viscerally evident
than in the Political literalist Salafi movement, including most notor iously the
al-Qaeda organization and its der ivatives like ISIS. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s program
of hating and fighting non-Muslims (including all Muslims who fall outside the
fold of the saved sect of “true Muslims”) comes to modern fruition with such
organizations. It is important to point out, however, that the curators of Ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab’s teachings among the ranks of the Saudi clergy would suggest that
Political literalist Salafi groups represent a misguided, hyper-politicization of liter-
alist Salafism. However, Political literalist Salafis share an almost identical concep-
tual universe with literalist Salafis, significantly in terms of wala’ wa-l-bara’ though
they diverge in ter ms of how this doctrine is to be implemented in practice. The

Contesting Sufism today 81
doctr ine of “loyalty and disavowal” was first amplified by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s
grandson Sulayman al-Shaykh (d. 1818), who suggested that the litmus test of
true belief is where one’s love and loyalty, and one’s hatred and opposition, lie. If
one is loyal to and loves Muslims and all things authentically Islamic, while hat-
ing and opposing non-Muslims and all things un-Islamic, only then, according to
al-Shaykh, is one a true believer. Later Wahhabi scholars made the implications of
al-Shaykh’s position more explicit in stating that one is not a Muslim “until one
disavows the people of unbelief and declares to them that they are unbelievers
and that one is their enemy. If that does not happen, one has not declared the reli-
gion.”
84 Declar ing tawhid is incomplete unless it includes openly condemning and
opposing unbelief (kufr).
In the 20th century, this doctr ine took an even more militant form, as it was
increasingly tied to disavowing non-Islamic political formations. Influential Saudi
dissident Juhayman al-‘Utaybi (d. 1980) concluded that true belief as manifest in
wala’ wa-l -bara’ is a three-stage process that involves openly condemning idolatry
and idolaters, emig rating (hijra) to a gather ing place free from shirk, then fighting
idolaters.85 Al-‘Utaybi’s doctr ine was taken up by the Palestinian-Jordanian Salafi
scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who remains one of the al-Qaeda movement’s
key ideological architects. Al-Maqdisi, however, further adopted Maududi’s and
Qutb’s belief that obeying non-Islamic laws and gover nments was tantamount to
shirk. Hence, Muslims are obligated to condemn all states that are not fully imple-
menting God’s laws, declare their enmity and opposition to them, and then make
jihad against these states to destroy their idolatry and to establish a state where the
laws are solely God’s. For Maqdisi, this is an integral part of wala’ wa-l-bara’ and it is
obligatory upon all Muslims to pursue it.86 Maqdisi has been largely condemned
by the Saudi religious establishment for espousing a hyper-politicized and militant
form of Salafism that they see as both theologically ung rounded and politically
dangerous, generally referred to as “Qutbism” after the revolutionary Islamism of
Qutb. More broadly, scholars have tended to refer to the jihad-or iented Salafism of
al-Qaeda and ISIS as Jihadi-Salafism.
Maqdisi was an influential teacher of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (d. 2006), the
founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which would eventually morph into ISIS. Hence
ISIS, in many respects, represents an attempt to fully implement Maqdisi’s doctrine
of wala’ wa-l-bara’. To do so involves opposition to and fighting against all for ms of
idolatry. With Sufism long considered a for m of idolatry by Wahhabi theologians,
Sufism is something that, for ISIS members, must be openly condemned, hated,
and opposed for Muslims to demonstrate their true belief.The ISIS destruction of
Sufi shrines, then, is a logical expression of wala’ wa-l -bara’ as articulated by Maqdisi,
al-‘Utaybi, al-Shaykh, and ultimately, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab.
North American Sufi responses to anti-Sufism
The influence of the Muslim World League, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the
Jama‘at-i-Islami on mosque administrations, national organizations, and annual

82 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
conventions in North Amer ica, though never total or determinative, generally
succeeded in the 1980s and 1990s in creating an Islamic environment in which
Sufism was understood to be something inauthentic, impractical, and cor rupt. The
early 2000s saw a significant shift in the largely anti-Sufi tenor of North Amer ican
Islam. Following the discovery of the predominantly Saudi-Salafi origin of the
9/11 hijackers, Saudi char ities, religious organizations, and Salafism in general drew
powerful scrutiny from American intelligence agencies and media commentators,
and a general crackdown on militancy was pursued both by the United States gov-
er nment and by the Muslim community. One of the fallouts from this crackdown
was an opening for other Muslim perspectives to gain public voice and recognition.
Whereas before 9/11 Salafi/Wahhabi views, explicitly or implicitly, infor med many
Muslim understandings of Sufism at the mosque, community, and national organi-
zational levels, the atmosphere shifted after 2001, as a certain sort of Salafi perspec-
tive (Political literalist Salafism) was quite clearly implicated in the attacks. Many
Muslims were mobilized to more concertedly and vocally counter those aspects of
Salafism that facilitated dichotomizing perspectives, and an openness and desire for
a wider ar ray of Islamic inter pretations emerged.87
Hisham Kabbani is a leading shaykh of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani (more recently
renamed the Naqshbandi-Nazimi) Sufi order, based in the United States, though
with or igins in the Caucasus region, Cyprus, and the Middle East. Upon ar r ival in
America in the late 1980s, Kabbani discovered the anti-Sufi tenor of a great many
mosques and Muslim organizations. As a result, he became a vocal opponent of
the Salafi–Islamist nexus in North Amer ica prior to 9/11 and made a number of
public statements war ning of the secur ity dangers posed by extreme or militant
perspectives within this nexus.88 Some of Kabbani’s war nings were in their own
r ight dichotomizing, equating any trace of Salafism or anti-Sufism with trenchant
extremism. His overall concer n, however, was in a sense vindicated by the tragic
events that transpired in September 2001. Shortly after 9/11, ‘Abd al-Hakim Murad
(a Br itish convert to Islam, scholar, and popular speaker) observed that Kabbani was
“brushed aside as a dangerous alar mist” by Muslim organizations for war ning of the
danger of extremism. Following the 9/11 attacks, he speculated that such organiza-
tions “are no doubt beginning to regret their treatment of him.”
89
Sufi claims to a represent “traditional Islam” or the “Sunni consensus,” offered
by classical scholars like al-Ghazali, intersected with a growing perception among
North Amer ican Muslims that Sufism represented a balanced, spiritual, and open-
minded inter pretation of Islam, and increased its appeal. Highlighting the con-
nection between Salafi literalist theology and ter ror ism (and the lack thereof with
Sufism), Murad observed that “no-one has ever heard of Sufi ter ror ism.”
90 Sufism
went from being a bad word, something often unspeakable in public Muslim
forums, to something more frequently affirmed as an integral part of a traditional,
tolerant, and orthodox Sunni Islam. Sufi or Sufi-infused perspectives are now more
openly discussed at Muslim events such as the annual ISNA conference in Chicago.
In Canada, the popular annual “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” (RIS) convention in
Toronto is character istic of this trend toward an Islam that is more comfortable with

Contesting Sufism today 83
aspects of Sufism and at home in North Amer ican society.The RIS website claims
that the convention, first held in 2003, “aims to promote stronger ties within the
North Amer ican society through reviving the Islamic tradition of education, tol-
erance and introspection, and across cultural lines through points of commonality
and respect.”
91
Some of the most popular speakers at RIS conventions include proponents of
Scholastic traditionalism, the classical Sunni synthesis of jur isprudence, theology,
and Sufism. Proponents of this “traditional” or “classical” Islam in North America
include Hamza Yusuf, Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, Umar Faruq ‘Abd-Allah, and Zaid
Shakir – all associated to some degree with Yusuf ’s Zaytuna Institute. The most
famous, however, is Yusuf, an Amer ican convert to Islam and char ismatic speaker.
Anthropologist and scholar of Islam Zareena Grewal descr ibes him as follows:
Yusuf developed a national reputation with Muslim Amer ican counter
publics as a gifted orator with flawless Arabic and a shar p wit. His striking
command of Wester n philosophy and the classical Islamic sciences, punctu-
ated by pop-culture references and his pitch-perfect recitation of Arabic scr ip-
ture became his signature, ear ning him a reputation as a speaker that could
draw thousands in any city he traveled to in North Amer ica and wester n
Europe.92
Yusuf founded the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, Califor nia in 1996 in the hopes
of reviving knowledge of traditional Islamic sciences (‘ulum), such as the jur ispru-
dence of the four Sunni schools of law (madhhab, p l . madhahib), the theology of the
traditional schools of kalam, and the spirituality developed by the masters of Sufism.
In 2009, Yusuf and Shakir collaborated with Hatem Bazian of the University of
Califor nia at Berkeley to found the first Muslim post-secondary institution in the
United States, Zaytuna College. Located in Berkeley, Zaytuna College offers Bach-
elor’s programs in Islamic law and the Arabic language, maintaining the emphasis
on the classical tradition.93 In 2015, it became the first accredited Muslim college
in the United States. As Salafi literalists reject almost the entirety of this traditional
Sunni synthesis (including the madhhab system, the schools of theology, and Sufism),
the Zaytuna approach for ms an important alter native to anti-Sufi versions of Islam,
one with powerful claims to Sunni authenticity.
This Zaytuna approach has further spread through weekend- and month-long
“Deen Intensives,” or rihlas (“journeys”) offer ing intensive training in classical
Islamic jurisprudence, theology, and spirituality.94 Since gaining a following as a
charismatic speaker in the 1990s,Yusuf has become one of Amer ica’s most influen-
tial Muslim leaders, having a particular appeal with youth and college-aged Muslims.
Although some of his harsh political rhetoric in the 1990s drew criticism following
9/11, Yusuf has since made a concerted effort to tone down ang ry, dichotimizing
tones in his preaching, arguing that Muslims need to move away from the “dis-
course of anger” and build bridges with non-Muslims.95 Though strongly oriented
toward Islamic jur isprudence and generally theologically exclusivist, teachers and

84 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
scholars associated with Zaytuna tend to be much more open to interfaith dialogue
and American democratic culture and values than some of their Salafi counterparts,
and further more contribute to nor malizing Sufism as an integral part of a holistic
Islamic practice.
One of Yusuf ’s main teachers, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, is a globally respected
“scholar of scholars” in Islamic legal methodology (‘usul al-fiqh) and theology. Hail-
ing from Maur itania, Bin Bayyah is a Professor of Islamic law at the King Abdul
Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and has served on a var iety of Islamic legal
councils around the world. Like his Amer ican student Yusuf, Bin Bayyah promotes
a for m of Scholastic traditionalism, and suggests that only through the mediation of
Islam’s venerable traditions of jur isprudential scholarship and Sufism can Muslims
recover a holistic Islam that can counter the influence of extremists and revive
Muslim faith and societies. Recent years have seen Bin Bayyah spearhead a num-
ber of projects to counter the messaging of Political literalist Salafi groups and
the global violence they have fostered. He is President of the Forum for Peace in
Muslim Societies based in Abu Dhabi, through which Bin Bayyah has gained a
profile in the West as a peace activist. In his address to the United Nations Assembly
in September 2014,Amer ican President Barack Obama commended the Forum for
Peace and Bin Bayyah as offer ing an antidote to extremism, quoting Bin Bayyah
as asserting that, “We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon
peace.”
96 In 2016, Bin Bayyah led over 200 Muslim scholars in the creation of the
Marrakesh Declaration, which calls on Muslims to protect the r ights of religious
minor ities in Muslim societies, develop inclusive conceptions of citizenship based
in Islamic jur isprudence, purge educational curr icula of extremist mater ial that
exacerbates tensions between Muslims and others, and work collaboratively with
non-Muslims to address pressing global issues.97
Compiled by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan, The Muslim
500:The World’s Most Influential Muslims is an annual list ranking the world’s Mus-
lim leaders, political and religious, in terms of their overall influence, theological
or otherwise. Regardless of the stock that one puts into such lists, in 2017, Bin
Bayyah was ranked as the ninth most influential Muslim in the world, with Yusuf
ranking thirty-third on the list, reflecting perhaps his more American-based influ-
ence in contrast with Bin Bayyah’s global profile, especially in Muslim-majority
countries. Just a bit further down one finds Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ranked fortieth
on the list.98 Although not a popular preacher like Yusuf, nor a jurist and cleric
like Bin Bayyah, Nasr remains one of the most prolific and well-known scholars
of Islam in the English language. Like those affiliated with Zaytuna, Nasr has been
a proponent of traditional Islam, which he distinguishes from the Islam of “secular
modernizers” and “fundamentalists.”
99 Nasr describes himself as a Traditionalist,
referring to the Perennialist school of thought founded by René Guénon and
Frithjof Schuon, described in Chapter 1. Like Yusuf and Bin Bayyah, Nasr advo-
cates for a maintenance of the various forms of knowledge, art, and morals of
traditional Islamic civilization, including Sufism. Following 9/11, Nasr published
The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity to “explain the authentic teachings

Contesting Sufism today 85
of Islam.”
100 In the text, he emphasizes the spiritual life, beauty, and compassion
that flow through “authentic,” traditional Islam, which he contrasts with Salafi,
Islamist, and modernist reactions to Western encroachment and influence. As a
well-respected scholar and authority on Islam, Nasr’s writings contribute to estab-
lishing Sufism as a nor mative part of Islam. Although his books are easily accessible
in big-chain bookstores, the question remains about the extent of his influence
among Muslims.
Nasr’s influence within the Muslim community may be limited by his affiliation
with Traditionalism/Perennialism, which many Muslim theologians construe as an
unorthodox, esoteric school of thought premised on religious pluralism. As a lead-
ing figure within Fr ithjof Schuon’s Sufi order known as the Maryamiyya, Nasr is
an advocate for the legitimacy of the world’s major religious traditions as authentic
paths to salvation and enlightenment. This situates Nasr well to engage with North
Amer ica’s religious diversity as a Muslim who sees truth in other religions, rather
than contamination and danger. Besides publishing extensively on Sufism since the
1960s, Nasr has trained generations of Islamic studies scholars who have gone on to
produce influential translations and works on Sufism and Islam in their own r ight.
Through Nasr, Traditionalist understandings of Sufism have per meated the Wester n
academy. Recently, Nasr led the development of the Study Qur’an project, which
offers the first English translation of the Qur’an that includes an extensive range of
classical commentar ies, including some by classical Sufi authors.101
Alongside the Scholastic Traditionalism of Yusuf and Bin Bayyah and the eso-
ter ic Traditionalism of Nasr, liberal refor mist tendencies infor m what is sometimes
called “Progressive Islam” in North America, a movement found primar ily among
Muslim academics and activists. In Omid Safi’s cogently edited collection of essays,
many of the contr ibuting authors share a combined scholar/activist or ientation,
seeing their scholarly work as closely interfacing with their critical activism against
oppressive structures in North American and global contexts, especially within
Muslim communities.102 These scholars have been influenced by Sufism, galva-
nized by the spread of Salafism/Wahhabism, or both. Safi notes in the introduction
that “progressive Muslims need to problematize, resist, and finally replace the life-
less, nar row, exclusivist, and oppressive ideology that Wahhabism poses to Islam.”
103
Many progressive Muslim activists believe that Sufism must be an integral part of
any Islam that seeks to recover and develop Muslim traditions of humanism, justice,
and dialogue. Safi writes that, “as much as any g roup of Muslims, the Sufis have
attempted to cultivate this interpersonal ethic at a communal level.”
104 Progressive
Muslims, or what Ramadan calls “Liberal Refor mists,” pursue an agenda of lib-
eralizing Muslim discourse on women, LGBTQ issues, social justice, and under-
standing religious others. Liberal refor mists such as Omid Safi,Amina Wadud, Far id
Esack, and Sa‘diyya Shaikh challenge Salafi literalists, Scholastic Traditionalists, and
esoter ic Traditionalists, and cr itique static notions of tradition, romanticizations of
the past, and failures to engage fruitfully with contemporary thought and culture.
Refor mists seek to foster a more dynamic approach to tradition that utilizes tra-
ditional resources to address contemporary issues of justice, seeking in particular

86 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
to engage with Islamic thought to foster social justice, cr itique dominant power
structures in Western and Muslim societies, and encourage solidar ity across lines of
identity.
This shift in the North Amer ican Muslim community toward a wider diversity
of perspectives, including implicit and explicit Sufism, has not necessarily meant
a shift in wider perceptions of Muslims. Centuries-old stereotypes of Muslims as
typically Arab, fanatical, and prone to violence have left a lasting imprint on the
cultural archive of Wester n images of Islam.The trope of the Arab or Muslim fanatic
is too frequently invoked in literature, media, and film, reinforcing this reductive
car icature of Muslims, influencing Amer ican public opinion, and even foreign and
domestic policy. Part of Said’s work in Orientalism (discussed in Chapter 1) was to
highlight how such stereotypes are only the latest manifestation of an older Orien-
talist tradition rooted in the colonial era, a tradition of situating Islam and Muslims
as infer ior to the West, usually by reducing them to a ser ies of singular, static tropes.
Hence what we might call discourses of neo-Orientalism offer repackaged ver-
sions of older forms of “othering” and patronizing Muslims as somehow inherently
oppositional and infer ior.105
Following 9/11, these older stereotypes have been compounded by fears and
anxieties about Muslims, leading to a sort of anti-Islamic or Islamophobic106 cottage
industry, per petuated by talk radio, cable news networks, politicians, and authors
who tend toward sensationalism in stoking fears about Islam.107 The entirety of
the Islamic tradition is frequently reduced to the most sensational acts of violence
car r ied out by Muslims who represent a fraction of a percentage of the worldwide
Muslim population. With titles like Richard Spencer’s Stealth Jihad: How Radical
Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,108 it is not difficult to see how
a mood of fear and suspicion increasingly sur rounds Muslim communities in the
West. Such writings have been further analyzed as a genre called “clash literature,”
a post-9/11 phenomenon building off Samuel Huntington’s famous “clash of civ-
ilizations” thesis that post-Cold War conflicts would take place along civilizational
lines, particularly between “Islam” and “the West.”
109 This literature, found in the
works of authors like Bruce Bawer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Mark Steyn, tends to jux-
tapose a faultless, morally super ior West against a “monolithic, authoritar ian, and
mysoginistic Islamic culture,” which threatens, through immig ration, to destroy the
West from within.110
The proliferation of these views and their intersection with extremist terror ism
has led to an increasingly dangerous social situation for Muslims in Europe and
North America. In 2016, hate cr imes against Muslims in the United States were
at their highest levels since 9/11.111 Additionally, regular polls conducted among
North Amer icans and Europeans show that negative perceptions of Islam are shared
by upwards of 70% of respondents.112 Within Islamophobic literature, images of
ISIS-inspired ter ror ism, violent protests, stonings, and burqas coalesce into a hard-
ened view of Muslims as extremists who are inevitably drawn to violence, imbuing
the hijab-wear ing neighbor, for example, with a misplaced menace. In her fore-
word to talk-show host and author Er ik Stakelbeck’s The Terrorist Next Door,113

Contesting Sufism today 87
conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin writes that “the so-called ‘tiny
minority’ of ‘fringe’ radical Muslims who support violent jihad is actually a main-
stream legion of hundreds of millions that hides behind the deceptive banner of the
‘Religion of Peace.’”
114 With an image of “hundreds of millions” of violent Mus-
lims deceptively claiming to “come in peace,” uneducated readers are mobilized
by fear to oppose mosque building and Muslim immig ration and integration into
Wester n societies. Far ish A. Noor, a Malaysian political scientist and human rights
activist, succinctly sums up the tenor of this anti-Islamic rhetor ic taking hold in
recent decades:
The line was simple and clear: Muslims were a hidden menace to the West;
they could not be trusted; they should not have been given the same dem-
ocratic r ights as others (on the grounds that they were bound to abuse it);
and they have a pathological hatred of the West which cannot be understood,
rationalized, or engaged with.115
For their part, fringe Political literalist Salafi groups have fanned the flames of such
generalized mischaracter izations of Islam, melodramatically calling for an Islamic
state in Britain, or the imposition of Islamic law in the West, for example.116 Drawn
by the lure of sensationalism, Western media too often focus on such fringe groups,
magnifying their significance beyond their actual, minimal influence in the Muslim
community, and usually failing to adequately highlight the ways in which Muslims
have reported and opposed such groups.Whether perpetuated by fringe Muslims or
the growing cadre of Islamophobic wr iters and commentators, nar ratives of Islam as
an inherently violent, subversive ideology put pressure on Sufis, like other Muslims,
to prove their moderation. Sometimes, this happens in an atmosphere of assumed
guilt until innocence can be demonstrated; at other times, the dyad of the good
Muslim (the liberal or Sufi) and the bad Muslim (conservative or revivalist) is rein-
forced, which collapses the intr icacy and diversity of Islamic history.
As an illustration of this phenomenon, we can consider the difficulty that a
prominent Muslim imam and Sufi shaykh recently faced in lower Manhattan. Feisal
Abdul Rauf has been the imam of a Sufi-or iented mosque, the Masjid al-Farah, in
New York City’s lower Manhattan since 1983. (In Chapter 7, we will discuss Sufi
shaykha Far iha Friedrich, who leads a Sufi order based out of the Masjid al-Farah.)
Abdul Rauf is a Sufi teacher within the Shadhili-Qadiri order, and has a circle of
students with whom he meets weekly.117 He has spent decades pursuing serious
interfaith dialogue, winning awards for his efforts and friends in Jewish, Christian,
and other religious communities. Abdul Rauf has wr itten extensively on the com-
patibility of Islam with core Amer ican values, and is a clear opponent of extremist
movements.118 The US State Department has included him in one of its exchange
programs as a representative of the US overseas, where he worked to define Islamic
moderation by “translating Islamic traditions into Amer ican idioms.”
119 Rosemary
R. Corbett, scholar of Islam and race in America, descr ibes Abdul Rauf ’s overall
message as follows: “Islam is part of an ethical tradition or iginating with Abraham

88 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
(the biblical patr iarch common to Judaism and Christianity) and, of all the gover n-
ments in the world, Amer ican liberal democracy best embodies this ethic in social
for m.”
120
Despite Abdul Rauf ’s extensive interfaith and Amer ican gover nment work
and his deeply pro-Amer ican message, Abdul Rauf faced accusations of extrem-
ism and ter ror ist association in prominent American media dur ing the summer of
2010. His proposed community center and mosque (called the Cordoba House
in reference to the religious pluralism of medieval Muslim Spain), located blocks
away from the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York, drew widespread condem-
nation and accusations of Islamic triumphalism. Although the project was publi-
cized for months without controversy, conservative blogger Pamela Geller invoked
conspiracist Islamophobic tropes, suggesting that Abdul Rauf ’s community center
was, despite its benign appearance, in fact a symbol of “Islamic supremacism,”
121 a
mosque signifying Muslim dominance and victory after the 9/11 attacks. Her post
was picked up by Republican Cong ressman Peter King, who called for Abdul Rauf
to be investigated for ties to extremism, igniting weeks of national media coverage
and debate, with extended protests against the center in Manhattan. Many media
commentators on the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” issue (this framing falsely
implying that the mosque was built “on” the site of the attacks, rather than blocks
away) failed to make any sort of distinction between the fringe Political Literalist
Salafi Muslims who carr ied out the attacks in 2001 and the vast major ity of Mus-
lims who abhorred the events of September that year, let alone Abdul Rauf, whose
work for the US gover nment and pro-Amer ican views seemed to be drowned out
in the media, political, and public outrage. Further, few commentators showed any
understanding of Sufism and its role in shaping Abdul Rauf ’s life and work. Like
Sufis in bygone centur ies, Abdul Rauf ’s spirituality has infor med a life of social
engagement, leadership, and intercultural bridge building in the Muslim commu-
nity.Yet, he was imagined to be a subversive extension of al-Qaeda by many Amer-
icans, whose image of Islam was shaped by the widespread Islamophobic discourse
and “clash literature” in the United States.
Conclusion
The 20th century witnessed the dissolution of almost every traditional for m of
Muslim author ity – political and religious – and their replacement by Western
models of gover nment, law, and morality. Muslims have since grappled with the
overarching question of how to structure their societies and maintain Islamic tra-
ditions while assimilating some aspects of the technology, for ms of knowledge, and
political for mations that emerged from the European Enlightenment.The collapse,
or at least marginalization, of traditional Islamic structures of author ity during the
colonial and postcolonial eras has allowed for non-experts – often physicians and
engineers with little training in the classical Islamic sciences (‘ulum) – to for m
movements that speak for Islam and claim to offer programs for the revival of the
faith and Muslim societies. Islamic revivalism has been a phenomenon that, led by

Contesting Sufism today 89
non-experts, has tended to gravitate toward Salafi literalist and Political Literalist
Salafism, as these interpretations of Islam largely reject the Scholastic Traditionalism
of Islam’s old author ity structure, which is premised on the mediation of Islamic
source texts by trained jur ists and Sufis.
Salafi/Wahhabi interpretations of Islam gained ground, however, not only due
to this appeal but also due to the immense funding made available by Saudi Arabia’s
oil wealth. Saudi cler ical networks interfaced with Islamist movements to form
global organizations to disseminate versions of Islam that are profoundly anti-Sufi
in nature. The consequent spread of the Wahhabi/Salafi theological, political nexus
has led to a total erasure of Sufism in numerous global contexts, both textually from
Islamic history and literature, and physically in the destruction of Sufi shrines and
the killing of Sufis in places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Mali, Libya, and Pakistan.
Whereas, as we saw in Chapter 2, Sufism used to infor m ever y level of Islamic
thought, practice, culture, and politics dur ing the classical Islamic period, it has in
recent centur ies found itself increasingly cor nered by well-funded and politically
aggressive anti-Sufi movements.
In North Amer ica, anti-Sufi influences were present dur ing the for mation of
the Muslim community’s national organizational structure in the 1960s and 1970s,
fostering an environment that was generally hostile to Sufism in the 1980s and
1990s. Following 9/11, however, Muslims were simultaneously more suspicious of
anti-Sufi or Salafi movements due to their affiliation with the terror ist attacks, and
more open to alter nate claimants to Islamic authenticity. Scholastic Traditionalists
such as Yusuf and Bin Bayyah have hence gained a more prominent voice as pro-
ponents of an Islam that integrates classical jur isprudence and theology with Sufi
spirituality. In North Amer ica, Sufism has acted as a bridge that unites a var iety of
contemporary Muslim inter pretive trends. Liberal refor mist, Scholastic Traditional-
ist, and esoter ic Traditionalist Muslims all share a sense of the need for Muslims to
embrace aspects of Sufism in forming a balanced, spiritually open, and peace-loving
Islam, one that is able to counter extremisms and foster pluralistic, inclusive Mus-
lim societies. The conspiracism and paranoia of Islamophobic discourse, however,
downplays this movement, and casts the Muslim community as a whole under
a cloud of suspicion (as Abdul Rauf exper ienced when depicted as an extremist
attempting to build a “conquest” mosque in New York).
Despite such suspicions of Islam, Sufism continues to have great appeal for West-
erners, though often to the degree that it is separated from its Islamic context and
or igin. As we will see in the chapters that follow, Sufism has had a deep influence
on popular culture in the West, as a de-contextualized, “universal” spirituality or
poetr y, rarely associated with the broader Islamic tradition. The history of Wester n
perceptions of Sufism are important to consider in depth, as they largely frame
contemporary Sufism’s place in cur rent discourses in Europe and North Amer-
ica on mysticism, spirituality, and Islam. In particular, the colonial era’s separation
of Sufism from Islam set the stage for a simultaneous hostility toward Islam and
enthusiastic embrace of Sufism, g iving “Wester n” Sufism a very different hue than
its counter part in most Muslim societies.

90 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
Notes
1 See for example, Michael Muhammad Knight’s “Return to Pamphlet Islam” in Why I
am a Salafi.
2 “Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require, or adjust correct prac-
tices, and to condemn, exclude, under mine, or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain
of orthodoxy.” As cited in Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar, “Formations of
Orthodoxy: Authority, Power, and Networks in Muslim Societies,” in Rethinking Islamic
Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, eds. Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin
(Columbia, NC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 185.
3 Wael B. Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (New York: Cambr idge University Press,
2009), 95–96 .
4 Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt against the West and the Remaking of
Asia (Toronto, ON: Doubleday Canada, 2012), 64.
5 Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law, 115.
6 Shi‘a Muslims, however, have generally maintained traditional authority structures to a
greater degree, whether we think of the role of Shi‘a clerics within the Iranian state or
the living Imam (Aga Khan IV) of the Ismailis.
7 Vincent J. Cornell, “Reasons Public and Divine: Liberal Democracy, Shari’a Funda-
mentalism, and the Epistemological Crisis of Islam,” in Rethinking Islamic Studies: From
Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, eds. Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin (Columbia,
NC: Univer sity of South Carolina Press, 2010), 29.
8 Zareena Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of
Authority (New York: New York University Press, 2014).
9 Ibid.
10 Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York:
HarperCollins, 2005), 38–39 .
11 For more on this subject see John Walbr idge, God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of
Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
12 Bernard Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” in Global Salafism:Is-
lam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press,
2009), 38.
13 Kevin A. Reinhart, “Fundamentalism and the Transparency of the Arabic Qur’an,” in
Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, eds. Carl W. Er nst and
Richard C. Martin (Columbia, NC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 103.
14 Although there are a number of issues with using the ter m “fundamentalism” in refer-
ence to Islam, scholars of religion have argued for the term’s analytical usefulness when
adequately defined. Bruce Lawrence defines fundamentalism as “the affirmation of reli-
gious authority as holistic and absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction;
it is expressed through the collective demand that specific creedal and ethical dictates
derived from scripture be publicly recognized and legally enforced.” See Cor nell, “Rea-
sons Public and Divine,” 26.
15 Michel Chodkiewicz, An Ocean without Shore: Ibn ‘Arabi, The Book, and the Law, trans.
David Streight (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993).
16 For an example of a Sufi approach to the Qur’an, see Annabel Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics:
The Qur’an Commentary of Rashid al-Din Maybudi (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006).
17 Chodkiewicz, An Ocean without Shore, 22–23.
18 Erik S. Ohlander, “Early Sufi Rituals, Beliefs, and Hermeneutics,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2015), 57.
19 Ibid., 59.
20 Chodkiewicz, An Ocean Without Shore, 25.
21 Toby Mayer, “Theology and Sufism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic
Theology, ed.Tim Winter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 282.

Contesting Sufism today 91
22 Mariam Abou Zahab, “Salafism in Pakistan: The Ahl-e Hadith Movement,” in Global
Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia Uni-
ver sity Press, 2009), 128.
23 Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Is Islam Easy to Understand or Not? Salafis, the Democratiza-
tion of Interpretation and the Need for the Ulema,” Jour nal of Islamic Studies 26 (2015):
117.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibn Hanbal, for example, is reported to have said, “A flawed Hadith is preferable to me
than a scholar’s opinion,” arguing that even if singularly transmitted, a Hadith with an
authenticated isnad required acceptance and implementation. Jonathan A. C. Brown,
Misquoting Muhammad:The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Lon-
don: Oneworld Publications, 2014).
27 Joas Wagemakers, “The Transformation of a Radical Concept: al-wala’ wa-l -bara’ in
the Ideology of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious
Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 81–82.
28 Cornell, “Reasons Public and Divine,” 31–32.
29 Ibid.
30 Guiseppe Scattolin, “The Key Concepts of al-Farghani’s Commentary on Ibn
al-Farid’s Sufi Poem, al-Ta’iyyat al-Kubra,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 39
(2006): 48.
31 For more on Sufi perspectives on other religions, see William C. Chittick, Imaginal
Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1994).
32 For more on universalism within Islam, see Patrick Laude, ed., Universal Dimensions of
Islam (Bloomington, IN:World Wisdom, 2011).
33 Olivier Roy notes the explicitness with which some Islamic revivalists reject the isnad/
ijaza tradition, quoting London’s radical cleric Abu Hamza, who writes: “The people
who have bestowed ijaza give us nothing but headache ... What’s the use of all this
‘Islamic’ knowledge if it’s not bringing anything positive to Muslim people and Islam?”
Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 166.
34 Ebrahim Moosa, What is a Madrasa? (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 2015).
35 Ibid.
36 For Ramadan’s breakdown of these six trends, see Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and
the Future of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23–28.
37 Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New
York:Verso, 2015).
38 Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications Inter na-
tional, 2002), 37.
39 Ibid., 43–44.
40 Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft, 65.
41 Frederick de Jong,“Opposition to Sufism in Twentieth-Century Egypt (1900–1970): A
Preliminary Survey,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested:Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and
Polemics, eds. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Boston, MA: Brill, 1999), 315.
42 Ibid., 316.
43 See Martin van Bruinessen, “Controversies and Polemics Involving the Sufi Orders
in Twentieth-Century Indonesia,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of
Controversies and Polemics, eds. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Boston, MA: Brill,
1999), 705–728.
44 Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), 574.
45 Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, 48.

92 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
46 See Reinhard Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen
zur Geschichte der islamischen Weltliga (Leiden: Brill, 1990).
47 “Muslim World League,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, www.oxfordislam-
icstudies.com .
48 Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, 49.
49 Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Har vard University Press,
1994), vii.
50 Brown, “Is Islam Easy to Understand or Not,” 120.
51 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 3.
52 Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2008), 250.
53 Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 10.
54 Marc Gaborieau, “Criticizing the Sufis: The Debate in Early-Nineteenth Century
India,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested:Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, eds.
Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Boston, MA: Brill, 1999), 452.
55 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 353.
56 Al-Banna described the Brotherhood as “a Salafiyya message, a Sunni way,” and “a Sufi
truth.” Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1993 [reprint of original, 1969]), 14.
57 Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, 216.
58 For more on Qutb’s life see Sayyid Qutb, A Child from theVillage, trans. John Calvert and
William E. Shepard (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004). For good examples
of his thought, see Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications, 1993), and
Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, trans. John B. Hardie and Hamid Algar (Oneonta,
NY: Islamic Publications Inter national, 2000).
59 GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America, 352.
60 Perhaps one measure of this influence can be found in the fact that Al-Faruqi translated
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s Kitab al-Tawhid into English. See Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wah-
hab, Kitab al-Tawhid: Essay on the Unicity of Allah or What is Due to Allah from his Creatures
trans. Ismail al-Faruqi (Al-Aain, United Arab Emirates: Zayed Welfare Centre for the
New Muslims, 1990).
61 Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country.
62 Ibid.
63 See Abdulhamid A. Abu Sulayman, Crisis in the Muslim Mind, trans. Yusuf Talal DeLo-
renzo (Herndon,VA: Inter national Institute of Islamic Thought, 1993).
64 Tahar Jabir al-’Alwani, “Foreword,” in Abdulhamid A. Abu Sulayman, Crisis in the Mus-
lim Mind, trans.Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo (Herndon,VA: International Institute of Islamic
Thought, 1993), ix–x .
65 Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country.
66 The “Islamization of Knowledge” project would lead to the foundation of the Inter-
national Institue of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a Muslim think tank based in Washington,
DC, and the American Islamic College in Chicago.
67 Mumtaz Ahmad, “Islamic Studies in American Universities: Conversations, Discourses,
and Dialogues with Scholar s,” in Obser ving the Observer: The State of Islamic Studies in
American Universities, eds. Mumtaz Ahmad, Zahid Bukhari, and Sulayman Nyang
(Herndon,VA: Inter national Institute of Islamic Thought, 2012), 234.
68 Nuh Ha Mim Keller, a Shadhili Sufi teacher and scholar of Islamic law, described the
Islamic University of Madinah as “Wahhabi U” in an interview with the Voice of the
Cape radio station in Cape Town, South Africa. See “The Current Crisis – Formulat-
ing a Response: Interview with Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller,” www.masud.co.uk/
ISLAM/nuh/voc_interview.htm.
69 Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis:The Defence, Rethinking, and Rejection of Sufism in
the Modern World (Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 158.

Contesting Sufism today 93
70 Ibid.
71 Sarah Eltantawi, Shari‘ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution (Oakland, CA:
University of California Press, 2017).
72 Daniel M. Varisco, “Proxy Morons: The Demolition of Yemen,” www.menatidningen.
se/english/proxy-morons -the-demolition-of-yemen.
73 Noorhaidi Hasan, “Ambivalent Doctrines and Conflicts in the Salafi Movement in
Indonesia,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 170.
74 Abou Zahab, “Salafism in Pakistan,” 130.
75 In 1867, Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (d. 1880) established an Islamic college in
Deoband, near New Delhi. The curriculum focused on training in classical Islamic
law (according to the Hanafi school of thought), with ancillary studies including logic,
philosophy, and a strictly orthodox for m of Sufism, one rejecting shrine veneration.The
Deobandi program essentially promoted a standardized Islam for India, grounded in the
classical Sunni legal-theological tradition, with branch colleges throughout the subcon-
tinent. By 1967, there were 9,000 Deobandi madrasas in South Asia. Deobandism tends
to be conservative in orientation and primarily middle-class in its base. Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: The Power of Militant Islam in Afghanistan and Beyond (New York: I.B. Tauris,
2008).
76 Ibid.
77 For an excellent account of how Sufis have been pressured by anti-Sufi groups in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, see Kenneth P. Lizzio, Embattled Saints: My Year with the Sufis
of Afghanistan (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2014).
78 Scott Kugle, Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam
(Chapel Hill, NC: Univer sity of North Carolina Press, 2007), 223, 259.
79 Ibid., 260.
80 Gary R. Bunt, iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 2009), 34–35.
81 As quoted in Roel Meijer, “Introduction,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious
Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 13.
82 Exemplary (English sites) here are: “Fatwa-Online,” www.fatwa-online.com; “Troid,”
www.troid.org; “Islam Against Extremism,” www.salafipublications.com; “Islaam.com,”
www.islaam.com; and “SalafiManhaj,” www.salafimanhaj.com .
83 Meijer, Global Salafism, 10.
84 Wagemakers, “The Transformation of a Radical Concept,” 88.
85 Ibid., 90.
86 Ibid., 92–95.
87 GhaneaBassiri observes that, post-9/11, “American Muslim organizations came to rep-
resent a wider spectrum of Muslims’ diversity, in terms of theology, politics, and gender,
in the American public square.” GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America, 365.
88 See, for example,“Islamic Radicalism: Its Wahhabi Roots and Current Representation,”
Kabbani’s Islamic Supreme Council of America, www.islamicsupremecouncil.org/under-
standing-islam/anti-extremism/7-islamic-radicalism-its-wahhabi-roots-and-cur rent-
representation.html.
89 Abdal Hakim Murad, “Recapturing Islam from the Terrorists,” www.masud.co.uk/
ISLAM/ahm/recapturing.htm.
90 Ibid.
91 “Reviving the Islamic Spirit,” www.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/index.php.
92 Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country.
93 See the Zaytuna College website, “Academics,” www.zaytunacollege.org/academics/.
94 See the Deen Intensive Foundation website, www.deen-intensive.com/index.php.
95 Richard Scheinin, “American Muslim Scholar Declares:Terrorists Are Mass Murderers,
not Martyrs,” San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, CA), September 16, 2001.
96 See The White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks As Prepared for Deliv-
er y by President Barack Obama, Address to the United Nations General Assembly,”

94 Sufism and anti-Sufism in context
September 24, 2014, http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09
/24/remarks-prepared-delivery-president-barack-obama-address-united-nations- .
97 See the “Mar rakesh Declaration,” www.mar rakeshdeclaration.org/marrakesh-declaration.
html.
98 See “The Muslim 500: The World’s Most Influential Muslims,” http://themuslim500.
com/the-top-50.
99 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity (San Francisco,
CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 108.
100 Ibid., xiii.
101 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard, and
Mohamed Rustom, eds., The Study Qur’an: A New Translation and Commentary (New
York: HarperOne, 2015).
102 Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).
103 Omid Safi, “Introduction,” in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, e d .
Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 8.
104 Ibid., 14.
105 Said was particularly critical of Bernard Lewis in this respect, for perpetuating prob-
lematic Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. See, for example, Edward Said,
Orientalism (New York:Vintage Books, 1994), 314–315.
106 Differentiating Islamophobia from criticism of Islam or Muslim groups, scholars have
defined Islamophobia as “unfounded hostility towards Islam” that manifests as “fear and
dislike of most Muslims.” Islamophic discourse presents Islam as singular and unchanging,
sharing almost nothing with other faiths and cultures, inherently barbaric and irrational,
and bent on global domination and oppression. Todd H. Green, The Fear of Islam: An
Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 9, 12-15.
107 See, for example, Carl W. Er nst, ed., Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
108 Richard Spencer, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or
Bombs (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2008).
109 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72 no. 3: 1993.
110 Meena Sharify-Funk, “Per vasive Anxiety about Islam: A Critical Reading of Contem-
porary ‘Clash’ Literature,” Religions 4 (2013): 443.
111 Green, The Fear of Islam, 1 .
112 Ibid.
113 Erik Stakelbeck, The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government is Deceiving You about the
Islamist Threat (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2011).
114 Michelle Malkin, “Foreword,” in Erik Stakelbeck, The Terrorist Next Door: How the Gov-
ernment is Deceiving You about the Islamist Threat (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing
2011).
115 Farish A. Noor, “What is the Victory of Islam? Towards a Different Understanding of
the Ummah and Political Success in the Contemporary World,” in Progressive Muslims:
On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 322.
116 Ibid.
117 Although initiated into the Halveti-Jer rahi order by Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak, Abdul
Rauf was later given the task of bringing a branch of the Shadhili-Qadiri order to
America, by a Moroccan general he met in 1997. For more on Abdul Rauf ’s Sufism,
see Brad Gooch, Godtalk:Travels in Spiritual America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 2002),
351–361.
118 See, for example, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with
America: A New Vision for Muslims and the West (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancsisco,
2004).
119 Rosemary R. Corbett, Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the “Ground Zero
Mosque” Controversy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017).
120 Ibid.
121 Pamela Geller’s blog, “Atlas Shrugs,” http://atlasshr ugs2000.typepad.com/.

Contesting Sufism today 95
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edited by Roel Meijer, 81–106. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Walbridge, John. God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason. New York: Cambr idge
University Press, 2011.
The White House Office of the Press Secretary. “Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by
President Barack Obama, Address to the United Nations General Assembly.” Septem-
ber 24, 2014. http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/
remarks-prepared-delivery-president-barack-obama-address-united-nations.
Zaytuna College. “Academics.” www.zaytunacollege.org/academics/.

PART II
Contemporary Sufism
in the West
Poetic influences and popular
manifestations

As the tradition of tasawwuf was being pushed from the center to the margins
of Muslim civilization by anti-Sufi movements, non-Muslims – and in particular
European colonialists – began to draw (or pull) Sufism into their own Wester n
cultural context. This would lead to the presentation of Sufism as something other
than Islam. For Orientalists, Sufism was largely understood as being different from
Islam, whereas most Muslims, histor ically, did not see any such difference.1 Ori-
entalist scholarly interest in non-European religions unfolded dur ing the colonial
period and was framed within a Christian, and specifically Protestant, lens and fur-
ther filtered through European Perennialism and esoter icism. While not all Orien-
talists were involved in imper ial and colonial endeavors, some of the key figures of
the Orientalist project were engaged in colonial activities. These scholars tended to
focus on the regions that their nations had colonialized, such as South Asia and parts
of the Middle East. For other wr iters and artists, their diplomatic and trade relations
with empires, such as the Ottomans in Turkey, also led to cross-cultural exchanges.
Histor ically, in European and North American contexts, the idea of an “Orient”
basically meant “the East” or, more broadly, the “non-West.” In this vast region –
generally refer red to as the “Orient” – European scholars encountered new cul-
tures, histor ies, and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastr ianism, and
Islam.2 As we explored in Chapter 1 “Orientalism” is a ter m that has been used
in var ious ways, first to descr ibe a for m of academic inquiry that was devoted to
understanding the languages, cultures, and peoples of the “non-West”; and later as
a critical label for this academic enter prise of studying non-Western peoples, based
on the conviction that it was inherently biased, distorting, and har mful. There was
a var iety of scholars, artists, and gover nment officials who either labeled themselves
or were labeled “Orientalist.” One of the ways that Orientalist scholarship affected
Wester n and later Muslim understandings of Sufism was to effectively separate it
from Islam.
4
SUFISM IN THE EYES OF THE WEST
Colonialists, Romantics, and
Transcendentalists

102 Contemporary Sufism in the West
The ter m “Sufism” itself was a word coined by 18th-century European scholars,
most of whom were connected with the East India Company, the British institution
established in India dur ing its imper ial control of the region. The construction of
Sufism as an “ism” placed it in the “tableaux of modern Wester n ideolog[ies].”
3In
naming the tradition, colonial explorers and scholars defined the framework of the
thing they named.4 It is the process of this construction of Sufism in the European
and Orientalist paradigms that this chapter explores.5 This framing of Sufism by
Europeans was taking place just as Muslims were questioning Sufism’s theological,
legal, and metaphysical place in Islam (as laid out in Chapters 1–3). This interest in
Sufism by non-Muslims would further propel anti-Sufi Muslim movements. These
two processes – that is, the push and pull factors, as they were – unfolded concur-
rently, adding complexities to the trajectory that Sufism would take in colonial and
postcolonial contexts.
Orientalists’ definition of Sufism emerged within a context of longstanding
Western stereotypes of Islam. European images of Muslims as fanatical war r iors and
dry legalists have roots as far back as the Crusades, when Christian knights and war-
r iors fought the “infidels” in the Holy Land. Negative perceptions of Muslims are
best represented in the rhetor ic of Pope Urban II’s (d. 1099) fiery speech in 1095
that helped mobilize Crusaders. In calling for the Franks (Crusaders) to reconquer
Jerusalem, Urban II descr ibes Muslim Turks as destroying church altars with “filth
and defilement” while they are “pleased to kill others by cutting open their bellies,
extracting the end of their intestines, and tying it to a stake.”
6 Over time, Euro-
pean travelers and diplomats encountered Muslims and their texts, and developed
an image of the Prophet Muhammad as a charlatan and a fraud, in addition to an
image of his followers as violent war r iors.7
Gradually, European scholars concluded that Islam was far too legalistic to fos-
ter the mystical illuminations and universalistic tones that they discovered in Sufi
poetry. Although some early interlocutors like Johann Wolfgang Goethe (d. 1832)
perceived the way in which Sufism, with its metaphors of drunkenness and love,
was connected to the Islamic tradition more broadly – notably in his treatment of
the famous Sufi poet Hafiz (d. 1390) – many Orientalists did not think that Sufism
was inherently Islamic. Sufism, then, in the Orientalist analysis, largely came to be
seen as a for m of perennial truth that had origins beyond Islam, and just happened
to be absorbed by some Muslim practitioners. Sufism, in the literary and scholarly
works of Orientalists, was largely ahistoricized for a European audience. The Euro-
pean understanding of Sufism dur ing this per iod was particularly influenced by
the reading and translating of Persian poetry, more than Arabic and Turkish texts.
For the colonial scholars, mastery of the Persian language, with its literary beauty,
offered a critical currency in their administrative positions. The same capital did
not exist with gaining proficiency in Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, unless it
was used for Christian apologetics. In their readings of Persian texts, most Oriental-
ists understood and compared Sufism to Christian mysticism, which was compati-
ble with Neoplatonic frameworks (a shared emphasis between Sufis and Christian
mystics); but they also related Sufism to Eastern traditions such as Hinduism and

Sufism in the eyes of the West 103
Buddhism. This comparative approach further disconnected Sufism from an Islamic
particular ity while emphasizing its universality.
European encounters with Sufism did not simply result, however, in the refram-
ing of Sufism. Sufi ideals, worldviews, and poetry also transformed European and
Amer ican intellectuals and literary figures in new and fascinating ways. Two key
figures stand out in this symbiotic relationship: namely, the Ger man author Goethe
and the Amer ican poet, essayist, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist move-
ment (discussed later in this chapter) Ralph Waldo Emerson (d. 1882). These two
individuals’ engagements with Sufi poetry and personalities, particularly the Persian
poets Hafiz and Sa‘di (d. 1291), offer exemplary illustrations of how Sufi traditions
became distilled through translation, but also transfor med European spiritual and
literary movements. In contrast to a var iety of Orientalists, Goethe and Emerson
engaged with Hafiz in a substantial way, and their own works and worldviews were
powerfully influenced by his poetry. Hafiz’s ir reverent, satirical, joyous, and at times
individualistic poetry, with its cr itique of religious moralism and institution, reso-
nated strongly with Goethe and Emerson, whose Romantic tendencies matched
closely with the tenor of Hafiz’s poetr y. Though their encounter with him was in
many ways exceptional, neither Goethe nor Emerson spent time in places like Iran
and Turkey, and hence did not develop a keen sense of how Hafiz’s poetry was
interwoven into the everyday lives of Muslims. Sufism, though deeply loved by
many European and American intellectuals, remained somewhat removed from the
lived practice of Muslims in their understanding. The Europeans who did interact
with Sufis in their travels were far more mystified by their exotic and wild tenden-
cies, and did not associate the universal poetry they came to exper ience in textual
traditions to their wander ing mendicancy. In general, colonial encounters, whether
through travel, business, or poetry, resulted in popular perceptions of Sufism as a
philosophical and poetic tradition outside of Islamic theology and law, which set
the precedent for the contemporary popularization of a for m of universal Sufism
in the 21st century in the West.
Before Orientalism: Ramon Llull and early medieval encounters
with Sufism
Premoder n encounters between Muslim and non-Muslim civilizations unfolded
through trade, diplomatic relations, or through times of war, while translation of
Muslim textual sources was another for m of cultural and religious exchange. One
of the earlier instances of the translation of the Qur’an dates back to 1142 in the
Iber ian Peninsula, when Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), an Abbot of Cluny, began
translations of the Qur’an at the request of Spain’s Emperor Alfonso VII (d. 1157).8
As translations of the Qur’an became available, interest also grew in the figure of
Prophet Muhammad. In the 15th century, Flavius Mithridates (d. 1489), a Jewish
convert to Christianity, who also taught Kabbalah to Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494),
translated the Qur’an into Latin, while including Arabic.9 The Qur’an was trans-
lated several times and stories found in the Qur’an of Prophet Muhammad even

104 Contemporary Sufism in the West
influenced some Europeans. For instance, the Mi’raj, Prophet Muhammad’s mysti-
cal jour ney to heaven, inspired Dante Alighier i (d. 1321) in his La Vita Nuova and
The Divine Comedy (completed in 1320), despite the fact that Prophet Muhammad
was placed in the eighth level of hell in his The Divine Comedy. Both of these texts
remain seminal in the canon of Italian literature.10 Prophet Muhammad persisted as
a cur ious and problematic figure for Christians as his life and legacy were antithet-
ical to the finality of Christianity while his followers, through their empires, were a
threat to the Christian ter ritor ial domain.11 These Quranic translation efforts, then,
unfolded with the intent of using the translated text as a tool against Muslims, who
were perceived to be enemies.12 As the translation efforts of the Qur’an continued
and spread throughout Europe, there were further renditions of other Islamic texts,
such as philosophical, medical, and scientific tracts and poetr y, which were also
reaching the hands of non-Muslims.13 Of particular interest here are Sufi texts.
One of the earliest documented instances of exchanges between Sufi and Chris-
tian traditions is found in the figure of Ramon Llull (1232–1315). Llull, a Christian
philosopher, theologian, and mystic, is regularly invoked in medieval Christian–
Muslim polemics. He was born in Mallorca, Spain, just as James I (d. 1276) con-
quered the Iber ian Peninsula from the Muslims in 1229.14 Llull served in the royal
court until he had a visionary exper ience that led to a “transcendent conversion,”
transfor ming him into a “per ipatetic scholar, evangelist and missionary, ... [and],
theological theorist.”
15 This propelled his ventures into theological inquiry and the
publication of numerous texts in the languages of Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. His
works would play a key role in the revival of Neoplatonic mysticism dur ing the
Renaissance and beyond. Llull lived in an era when plans for the second Crusade
were brewing, led primar ily by Pope Clement IV (d. 1268) in 1266 and King Louis
IX (d. 1270) of France (ruled from 1226–1270). This was unfolding just as the call
for the Reconquista of the Iber ian Peninsula was also being projected. In this larger
sociopolitical climate, Llull, who was a follower of St. Francis of Assisi’s (d. 1226)
teachings, took on the position of instructor of the Franciscan friars in Arabic study
at the monastery of Miramar in Mallorca.16 During this time, he wrote one of his
seminal treatises, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, presumably for the knights caught
on the battlefield. In his understanding, knights and clergy were urged to engage
with Muslims to convert them spiritually or kill them in battle.17 His philosophies
of proselytization were not merely rhetor ical; he actively mobilized to enact his
goals of converting Jews and Muslims, who were a nor mative feature in Spain’s
landscape. He was also known to have entered into public debates with Muslims.18
He traveled to North Africa on three separate occasions to convert nonbelievers,
particularly Muslims. Dur ing two of his tr ips, he was jailed and eventually forced to
flee.19 He was stoned while preaching Christianity, which led to his eventual death
and martyrdom. Llull occupied two different worlds: one of the Arab Muslims and
the other a Wester n Christian world. With such a liminal position, scholars refer
to him as a “personification of paradox.”
20 Llull’s fierce anathema against Muslims
has been noted in the scholarship on him, but the degree to which his works were
transfor med by the Islamic sources he r igorously mastered is still heavily debated.

Sufism in the eyes of the West 105
It was Llull’s deep investment in the proselytization efforts that prompted him
to be versed in Islam, particularly in the traditions of Sufism. These Sufi literar y
and metaphysical traditions also seeped into his own works. Annemarie C. Mayer
suggests that Llull was interested in establishing a “single faith and a single universal
religious law (vera religio)”; but to do so, he needed to contend with the differences
between the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.21 One of the ways he
tried to compete with the challenges of Judaism and Islam was through exploring
the doctr ine of God, which he did by studying all three of Abrahamic religions’
mystical, rational, and philosophical traditions. His comprehensive understanding
of these traditions is most evident in his text, Book of the Gentile.22 In this text, he
engages with the attr ibutes of God in Muslim theology (i.e., schools of kalam) but
also as discussed by the Sufis. He focused especially on the teachings of the pres-
ences of God (hadrat), connected to the traditions of Ibn al-‘Arabi. Llull did the
same with Jewish traditions to assert the “compatibility” of the monotheisms.23
Llull’s Book of Contemplation, which was wr itten in Arabic, and Book of the Lover
and the Beloved are “the result of his admiration for the language of Sufis and Sufi
dhikr.”
24 In the Book of the Lover and the Beloved, love becomes the way of the mystic
path for Llull, as he wr ites: “The Lover asked his Beloved if there remained in Him
anything still to be loved. And the Beloved replied that he had still to love that by
which his own love could be increased.”
25 This particular text is part of a larger
novel entitled Blaquerna, the name of the protagonist of the text. In one instance,
Llull writes:
While Blaquerna considered after this manner, he remembered how that
once when he was a Pope a Saracen related to him that the Saracens have
certain religious men, and that among others are certain men called Sufis,
who are most prized among them, and these men have words of love and
brief examples which give to men g reat devotion.26
Llull was aware of the “certain men called Sufis” who were ver y pious, and was
likely well read in their works. Llull’s Llibre dels Cent noms de Déu (Book of the One
Hundred Names of God), wr itten in Catalan (not Arabic) is one text where we see
again the extent to which Llull was heavily influenced by Sufi theologies. This
particular text mir rors the traditions of the asma al-husna or the beautiful names of
God.27 The text includes an introduction for the Pope, and one hundred chapters
which discuss the qualities of God.28 Each chapter ends with benedictions to God,
Jesus, and the Virgin Mary,29 as follows:
In each of the hundred names of God, we aim to put ten lines of verse,
which can be recited in the same manner as the Psalms are recited in the
holy Church; and we do this because the Saracens recite the Koran in their
mosques, for which reason these lines of verse can be recited according to
the manner in which the Saracens recite [theirs.]
... I therefore advise that
each day one should say the Hundred Names of God and should carr y them

106 Contemporary Sufism in the West
around on one’s person in written for m. Once one has said a chapter, one
should utter this laud ...; Praise and honour to the essence of God and to His
divine Persons and to their Dignities. And let us call to mind and love Jesus
the Nazarene and the Virgin Mary, his mother. This laud is uttered in the
same way as is the Glory Be to the Father in the Psalms.30
According to interpreters of the Qur’an, only ninety-nine names are revealed in
the sacred text and the hundredth name of Allah remains mysterious and beyond
the reach of those in ordinary states. So even the title suggests a level of superior ity
mastered by Llull in presenting a Christian version of a Sufi tradition. In creating
a text (out of a Quranic tradition of the names of God), Llull aims to show that
the beauty espoused in the Qur’an is not divine in nature but can be replicated,
as he does, by a human being. This mastery of poetics and style of the Qur’an is
purposefully attempted to be matched in the Catalan style, rhythm, and prose by
Llull’s version of the names of God.31 This particular text also indicates how Islamic
practices influenced Christian ones.
Llull was influenced by Greek philosophy (Platonism and Neoplatonism) and
the Arab philosophers, such as al-Kindi (d. 873), al-Farabi (d. 950), and Ibn Sina (d.
1037), in addition to Sufi thought. Though much of his particular Sufi influence is
hard to map, it has been suggested that Llull was influenced by al-Ghazali.32 Llull
wrote the Compendium of al-Ghazali’s Logic, which is a summary of al-Ghazali’s
Maqasid al-falasifa, and the text itself is wr itten in Arabic, Latin, and Catalan.33 Aside
from reference to al-Ghazali, Llull does not directly cite any specific Arabic sources
in his wr itings.34 It is for this reason that there has been much debate regarding
Llull’s exact sources of inspiration, especially in regards to Sufism. Scholars point to
Ibn al-‘Arabi as a possible source of Llull’s intellectual themes, especially his notions
of presences or God’s attr ibutes.35 Another source of possible influence includes
the Ikhwan al-Safa (the Brethren of Pur ity).36 Still, it is these Sufi elements that
have led scholars, such as Carl W. Er nst, to categorize Llull’s thought as “Christian
Sufism,” though as we can see, the extent of these elements is debatable. Annemar ie
Schimmel also points to Llull as the “first [to have] contact” with Sufism among
the Europeans.37 Llull’s “Christian Sufism” in many ways “prepare[d] the ground
for Wester n reception of Sufism” in the centur ies to come.38 This link is particularly
evident in the impacts Llull had on Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499) and Giovannia Pico
della Mirandola (d. 1494), who would engage with Neoplatonism, Her meticism,
and Kabbalah, all of which would be seminal for later esoteric and philosophical
trends in the West, including the Perennialism of Jones and Guénon, the Romanti-
cism of Goethe, and the Transcendentalism of Emerson.39
Aside from Llull, there are other recorded instances of Sufi literary texts in
European literar y worlds prior to the beginning of colonialism. For instance, the
famous 9th-century female Sufi figure Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya was also one of the first
figures that Jean de Joinville (d. 1317), Chancellor of King Louis IX in the 13th
century, introduced into European writings. Joinville used Rabi‘a as an example of
“Divine love” in his treatise. This classical Sufi figure will be discussed further in

Sufism in the eyes of the West 107
Chapter 6.40 These early encounters with Sufism and Islam were not restr icted to
Christian theologians. For instance, Arabic Sufi literature influenced Maimonides’s
(d. 1204) son, Abraham Ibn Musa (d. 1237), who claimed that Sufism originated
in Judaism.41 Greek philosophical traditions, especially Neoplatonism and ideas of
“emanationism,” were shared resources among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mys-
tical traditions.42 These resources led to interest by Jewish Kabbalist and Christian
mystics in Sufism (and vice versa) in early and late medieval per iods.43 Not only
were philosophies and texts transmitted across religious borders, but in the 15th
and 16th centur ies, Europeans were wr iting about their encounters with Sufis and
their practices.
Dervishes and non-Muslims in Ottoman Turkey
Martin Luther (d. 1546) is most known for igniting the Protestant Reformation
with the nailing of his ninety-five theses on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517,
just as Selim I was demanding the caliphate from the Mamluks. During Luther’s
time, the Ottomans were expanding in power and Turkish Muslim presence was
a growing reality. Due to his immediate climate, similar to Llull, Luther also had
a compartmentalized relationship with Islam and Sufism. He was convinced that
the religion of Prophet Muhammad was false and destructive, both spiritually
and politically.44 However, Luther believed that it should not be refuted based
on sensationalistic falsehoods, but genuine understanding. Hence, he was greatly
appreciative of a Latin work that highlighted the impressive virtues and religious
discipline of the Turks, but ultimately condemned them.45 Luther wrote the intro-
duction to this book, Treatise on the Customs, Conditions and Wickedness of the Turks,
which was first published in 1480.The text itself was written as a caution against
being beguiled by the apparent piety of the Sufis, the dervishes.46 The text is cred-
ited to George of Hungary, a Dominican friar sold into slavery in Anatolia under
Ottoman rule, where he became a Sufi but later reverted back to Christianity.47
George is arguably the first Western Sufi, but by no means the last. Wojciech
Bobowski, known as Albertus Bobovius Leopolitanus (d. ca. 1675) in Latin or ‘Ali
Ufki in Turkish, was a page and musician in women’s quarters (seraglio) in the
Ottoman palace. A book by the title of The Inner Palace (Seray-i Enderun) (1665)
is attributed to him, in which he describes his experiences in the seraglio. What
is fascinating about Bobowski is that although he was to become a well-known
author and translator, because of his language abilities in Ottoman, Arabic, Latin,
Italian, French, German, Polish, and maybe even more languages, it is likely that he
converted to Islam and even entered the Helvetiye Sufi brotherhood. There does
not seem to be a sense that he reverted or converted for the sake of survival, unlike
friar George.48
When Christian Europeans met Sufis in Ottoman Turkey, their exper iences var-
ied. However, one common theme found in these early primary sources is the
gravitation toward the “dervishes” because of their use of music and dance. Guil-
laume Postel (d. 1581), a French linguist, astronomer, and diplomat was interested

108 Contemporary Sufism in the West
in spirituality. His exper ience of the dervishes unfolded dur ing the time of the
French King Francois I (r. 1515–1547) and Suleiman the Magnificent of the Otto-
man Empire (r. 1520–1566). In Postel’s wr iting, one can note precisely this atten-
tion to the practices and rituals of dancing and music that he noted dur ing a dervish
ceremony:
They begin by bowing the head, and all the body, one toward the other,
saying “alla, alla, alla, alla, alla” so many times and repeating it for so long that
they fall as if they were stunned, and they say that their spirit takes the prayer
to God. In Syria and Anatolia or Turkey there are some who begin to whirl
so powerfully while repeating “alla, alla” etc. that a pirouette could never
imitate them; so that finally they are all stunned and remained as if dead, in
ecstasy, and they say that their spirit goes with God.49
Postel’s attention to detail, especially of the “pirouette” and the “bowing the
head,” calls to mind the practices of whirling and dhikr of the Mevlevis. The
“dances” of the dervishes were commonly described in the works of many Euro-
pean travelers to Ottoman Turkey as they were exotic in the eyes of foreigners.
Pietro della Valle (d. 1652), a Roman antiquarian, composer, and musicologist,
also recorded similar practices. Between 1614 and 1626 he traveled to the Holy
Land, the Middle East, and North Africa, including Istanbul (Constantinople).
In one of his letters from the European quarter of Istanbul, he descr ibes a visit
to a mosque, where dervishes “danced” and whirled while “repeating loudly the
word Hu.”
50
Charles de Fer riol (d. 1722), an ambassador of Louis XIV (d. 1715) to the Otto-
man court, was heavily influenced by the paintings and engravings of Flemish artist
Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (d. 1737), and included descr iptions to some of his works.
Ferr iol goes on to wr ite about these works in the book he published in 1715,
Recueil de cent estampes:
This eng raving represents the temple of the Pera Dervishes, which is a dome;
it is clear and well parquetted: there is a gallery where the music is performed.
We have added here the musical notation of the air which the musicians play
in order to make the dervishes turn: they turn with open ar ms and seem in
ecstasy: the young turn at an incredible speed. The Super ior and the elders
tur n more slowly, and when they are tired they place themselves on their
knees with their faces to the ground. It is music that animates them; they
claim that it is in some way divine: many have assured M. de. Ferr iol that,
without the music, they would not be able to perfor m three tur ns without
falling, while they turn for nearly an hour.51
Here with Ferriol’s descriptions, mainly of the eng ravings produced of whirl-
ing dervishes by Vanmour, there is early indication of the interest in music and
dancing that becomes a fascination for Europeans who encountered the Mevlevi

Sufism in the eyes of the West 109
tradition, one that will continue well into the contemporary period, especially
with the popularization of Rumi in the West. Music and dance would then be
central to facilitating interest in Sufism, especially by musicologists from Europe.
Others, such as Giambattista Toderini (d. 1799), are an example of the attention
to Ottoman music that motivated some European travelers. Toderini was a Jesuit
abbot who arrived in Istanbul in 1781, during which time he wrote his Lettera-
tura, which among many things appealed to musicologists who were interested in
Ottoman music. Toderini includes discussions with Mevlevi dervishes and even
explores musical instruments, such as the ney (classical Middle Eastern flute), not
only in the Ottoman context, but also within the Arab–Persian context.52 He
wr ites:
The Mevlevi dervishes, who are named in this way after their founder, having
introduced the dance as a religious devotion in their orator io, practice music
assiduously, and are among the best musicians. They play wind instruments,
and kettledrums, as I saw when I was at their whirling dances.53
Toderini was also very inquisitive of the practices he was observing. In one instance,
he wr ites the following:
We need to ask what the Mevlevi sema was likely to have represented for
Ottoman hosts. Was it a perfor mance of which they were especially proud?
Why did Ottomans think that European visitors would have enjoyed such a
ceremony or been impressed by it? And for their part, why were Europeans
almost invar iably fascinated? What did they see in such rituals?54
From as early as the 16th century, then, European travelers, diplomats, and schol-
ars positioned in Istanbul encountered for ms of whirling and Turkish Sufi music.
This set the trajectory for one of the most seminal ways in which Sufi practices
were disseminated to Europeans – that is, through music and dance. Dervishes were
influencing music and making appearances in paintings and even as characters in
novels and plays (vaudeville) in Europe, such as in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (d.
1781) play Nathan the Wise (1779), a trend that would only continue well into the
21st century.55 The latter for ms of engagement were just the beginning, while new
forms of scholarship on the Orient led to more intensive translation efforts for Sufi
poetr y. Sufi poetry continued to find its way to European audiences slowly through
the 16th centur y. The earliest to mention Persian poetry in English was George
Puttenham (d. 1590) in 1589.56 Puttenham included four unnamed “Oriental”
poems in “The Art of English Poesie,” while Sa’di’s Gulistan, which was translated
by the Dutch Orientalist Georgius Gentius (d. 1687), was available in Latin as early
as 1654.57 These somewhat sporadic European encounters with Islamic culture and
text (and more specifically, Sufism) would give way in the late 18th and 19th cen-
tur ies of the colonial era to a more concerted European engagement with Muslim
societies and their Sufi traditions.

110 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Orientalists and Sufism: Scholarly constructions and poetic
transmissions
Early translations and interpretations: Jones, Malcolm,
and Wilberforce
Sir William Jones (d. 1794) is often given the epithet of the “Father of Orientalism,”
because of the extensive scholarly writings he left behind on this topic. Many of
Jones’s works, as well as others like him, were an outgrowth of their affiliation with
the East India Company under the Br itish Crown in India. Jones went to India as a
judge in 1784, and was posted to Bengal and Calcutta. Dur ing his posting, he used
philology and literar y studies to pursue his intellectual endeavors.58 Jones rendered
pre-Islamic poetry into English and introduced his readers to Indian and Persian
literature.59 Jones reported back to England and Amer ica through forums such as
the Asiatic Researches and Asiatic Miscellany, shar ing his encounters of the cultures,
peoples, and poetic traditions of the East.
During this per iod, Persian became a language of social and economic cur rency
and cor respondence, whereas Arabic language study was already established by this
per iod. For instance, Simon Ockley (d. 1720), the Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of
Arabic at the University of Cambridge, felt that Arabic was important in under-
standing Hebrew since, unlike Aramaic and Syriac (other languages of biblical
exegesis), it was still a living language.60 Another reason for Arabic study was also to
understand the Qur’an. Ockley writes:
It is by no means unsuitable that the theologian should read this book, which
has subjugated so large a portion of the globe; his duty is to know not only
the things that are true but also in order that he may be able to refute and
contradict them.61
During Jones’s time in the East India Company, however, Persian became a
language of more interest, primarily because it was viewed as a language of
India or the East. Persian was not only studied in India by the British but also
in England in institutions of higher lear ning, such as Oxford.62 Special fonts
were created in manuscript printing presses to ensure the production of Persian
classics, while schools were established to promote Persian language training for
civil servants.63
In 1771, Jones told his students that they should practice Persian by translating
selections from Sa‘di’s Gulistan into English. This text became one of the primar y
sources of instruction for civil servants in Br itish India at Fort William College,
which was founded in 1801, and Haileybur y College in England, which was estab-
lished in 1806.The first selections from Sa‘di’s Gulistan were translated in 1774 and
were seen as “nothing particularly striking ... recommending justice and humanity
to princes, which in regions of the East, can never be too much inculcated.”
64 Sa’di
was already known at this juncture. Renaissance scholars had introduced him to
Europe through Latin translations as early as 1651.65 Men of the Enlightenment

Sufism in the eyes of the West 111
era – such as the wr iter, histor ian, and philosopher Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
(d. 1778) and the author, scientist, and statesman Benjamin Franklin (d. 1790) –
found his works attractive, and even tr ied to pass off verses of their poetry as missing
chapters from Sa‘di’s poems.66 Sa‘di was translated by numerous figures, such as the
Br itish explorer, translator, and writer Sir Richard Burton (d. 1890), and would also
be invoked by Emerson, who will be discussed further below.67
This openness to the traditions of the East was not unifor mly held by all of the
Europeans who were engaging with the Orient:
Of late years some wr iters of the French nation, partly from an affectation of
singular ity and partly with a view to depreciate the religion of Christ, have
set up the Arabians and the doctrines of Mahomet, as it were in opposition
to the people of Europe ... They have represented the nations of Arabia as
a civilized, polite people who possessed the arts and sciences at a time when
Europe was bur ied in ignorance and barbar ity.68
There was still a growing sentiment that the cultures of the East were uncivi-
lized, especially the Arabs. Yet, figures like Jones viewed certain languages, such as
Sanskrit, and later Persian, as occupying a class of their own. In Jones’s 1786 third
presidential address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, one sees how languages of Asia,
such as Sanskrit, became associated with a larger worldview:
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure;
more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exqui-
sitely refined than either, yet beating to both of them a stronger affinity,
both in the roots of verbs and in the for ms of grammar, than could possibly
have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could
examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some
common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.69
Persian was grouped with Indian and European languages as a “common source,”
as alluded to above. Over time, these groups of languages came to be viewed as
Indo-European or “Aryan” (“noble”) languages, while Hebrew and Arabic were
categor ized under the Semitic language family. These categor izations of languages
would become racially infused, particularly by Wilhelm von Humboldt (d. 1835),
the Prussian minister, education refor mer, and linguist.70 These language categor ies
further reinforced the thesis that Islam was a religion based on the Semitic language
of Arabic, and was hence different from the Persian Indo-European language, which
also happened to be the main language of the Sufi poetry exper ienced by Euro-
peans. This is evident in how Jones defines Sufism. For him, Sufism was a “meta-
physical theology, which has been professed immemor ially by a numerous sect of
Persians and Hindus, was car r ied in part into Greece, and prevails even now among
the lear ned Muselmans, who sometimes avow it without reser ve.”
71 For Jones, like
many who came after him and similarly engaged with Sufi poetry, Sufism was a

112 Contemporary Sufism in the West
universal tradition that was not limited to Islam. This particular outlining of Sufism
is essential, then, to Sufism’s reception among Europeans who, be they influenced
by Deism, Spinozian philosophy, or pantheism, felt that Sufism fit the model of
what they were looking for.72
As Jones’s reading of “Oriental” texts grew more pervasive, he became an enthu-
siastic advocate of the profundity of Islamic scr ipture and literature:
In no language, Hebrew excepted, are there more pious and sublime addresses
to Being of beings, more splendid enumeration of His attr ibutes, or more
beautiful descr iptions of His beautiful works, than in the Kuran (Arabic), in
the poems of the Sa‘di, Nizami, Firdausi (Persian).73
The collected letters of Jones shed light on his sources and the poets he was
attracted to, which led to his positive evaluation of Sanskrit and especially Persian,
and even his perceptions of Sufism. In his letters, Jones quotes extensively across
different religious traditions, philosophies, and cultures, refer r ing to Confucius as
the “Chinese Plato” and relating stories from the Arabian Nights. He also expresses
his commitment to lear ning different languages, such as Chinese, Latin, Persian, and
Arabic. From the collected letters, one can glean that he corresponded extensively
with a number of significant histor ical figures. The first mention of Persian poets
in Jones’s letters appears as early as 1768 in his cor respondence with Charles Rev-
iczky (1737–1793), a Hungarian-born diplomat. The editor of the letters, Garland
Cannon, explains that it was Reviczky who was “responsible for Jones’s interest
in Persian poetr y, especially Hafiz.”
74 In a letter to Reviczky dated to April 1768,
Jones wr ites, “Our Hafiz is most assuredly a poet worth to sup with the gods; every
day I take pleasures in his work, which daily gives me more delight by its char ms
and attractive style.”
75 Throughout their cor respondence over the years, Reviczky
mailed Jones Latin renditions of Hafiz’s Persian poetry. It is through these letters
that Jones’s love for Hafiz and also for Persia continued to grow. For Jones, Hafiz
was the “‘Persian Anacreon’ because many of the ghazals (odes) in his Divan (col-
lection) are panegyrics and drinking songs.”
76
Jones was not alone in noting the similar ity between Hafiz and the Greek Ana-
creon. John Nott (d. 1825), an English physician, also translated portions of Hafiz’s
poetry in Select Odes from the Persian Poet (1787).77 In his “Preface” to the ghazals of
Hafiz that Nott translates, he writes:
Whether Anacreon borrowed the gaiety of his Odes from the Persian Gazel
or whether Hafez enr iched his native language by an imitation of the Teian
bard, I will not venture to deter mine. The similar ity of sentiment is often-
times wonderful. And perhaps it may be said of both, that they both wrote
not so much to the understanding, as to the heart.78
Nott was even unsure who inspired whom. Such presentations of Persian poets
like Hafiz, as embodying universal themes beyond the Persian context, led to

Sufism in the eyes of the West 113
“depriv[ing] [Hafiz of] his nationality,” which further universalizes the traditions
with which he was associated, such as Sufism.79 This literary interest resulted in a
complex relationship between the Orientalists and Persian poetry. John D.Yohan-
nan wr ites:
The dual loyalties of the late eighteenth centur y, on the contrary, moved the
first Orientalists to present the Persian poets in the more or less familiar garb
of eighteenth-century poetics.The result was that at first a considerable injus-
tice was done to the genius of two of Persia’s three greatest poets, Firdausi and
Hafiz. The third, Sadi escaped with no violent distortion.80
Still, there is a sense that these early encounters of the poems of the East were inspi-
rational for figures like Jones. He wr ites:
Yet I cannot but think that our European poetry has subsisted too long on
the perpetual repetition of the same images, and incessant allusions to the
same fables ... and if the languages of the Easter n nations were studied in our
great seminaries of lear ning ... a new and ample field would be opened for
speculation; we should have a more extensive insight into the history of the
human mind; we should be fur nished with a new set of images and simil-
itudes; and a number of excellent compositions would be brought to light,
which future scholars might explain and future poets.81
Jones’s perennialist conceptualization of Sufism may have been a result of his
reading of the Persian text Dabistan-i madhahib. The author of this text is still
unknown, but it was likely written between 1645 and 1658. In the Dabistan, Sufism
is framed as a “supra-confessional” universalistic tradition and a form of Neopla-
tonic philosophy, which is what Jones thought of Sufism.82 Lieutenant James Gra-
ham (d. 1845) wrote a brief unpublished paper in 1819. Graham continued Jones’s
conceptualization of Sufism as a universal tradition. The two authors framed Sufism
within their own milieu, which was shaped by Romantic and Perennialist tenden-
cies, as previously discussed. This particular text was then used by Major-General
Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) in his seminal work on Persia.83
Malcolm wrote a two-volume study entitled The History of Persia from the Most
Early Period to the Present Time. It was printed in London, in 1815. Malcolm was a
soldier-diplomat, who served as a gover nor of Bombay from 1827 to 1830.84 He
was one of the for mative administrators and “ideologues” of the East India Com-
pany, and wrote nine books along with articles, pamphlets, and poetry, mostly to
do with “Asian topics.”
85 His Sketch of the Political History of India86 was one of
the most consulted texts on India by the Br itish Empire, while his The History
of Persia contributed significantly to European understanding of this region near
India.87
In his The History of Persia, Malcolm dedicates some space to the topic of Sufism.
He begins by placing the “Sooffees” of Persia within the “Mahomedan” tradition.

114 Contemporary Sufism in the West
He estimates on good account that there are “between two and three hundred
thousand persons” who are “Sooffees in Persia.”
88 Malcolm adds:
The great proportion of the Sooffees of Persia are not to be distinguished
from the other part of the Mahomedan population. They are in fact required,
when in the first ranks of this mystic faith, to confor m to the established reli-
gion: and the gradual and unseen manner in which men are led into infidel-
ity, is justly stated, by Mahomedan divines, to be one of the greatest dangers
that attend this delusive doctr ine.89
Even in situating Sufism as Islamic (at least superficially), Malcolm considers it to
be a pernicious corruptor of the true faith from within. He wr ites in a footnote
a word of caution regarding Sufis, proposing to help local opponents of Sufism
eradicate the tradition:
As the Soofees have at this time extended their belief to an alarming extent,
and obtained many foolish and credulous converts who adopt their faith, and
dress in their fashion; as all this is contrary to the interest of the true religion,
and has occasioned much thought to the wisest of our state; as you also have
urged us much on this subject, we have taken the ill into consideration, and
have wr itten to all our gover nors and officers to punish these offenders if
they do not recant; to take from them all which they have plundered from
weak men; and, if the proprietors of this wealth cannot be found, to distr ibute
it among the poor. We have, in short, ordered, that the sect be extirpated and
put an end to in order that the true faith may flourish.90
Here, the Persian Sufis to whom Malcolm refers war rant negative attention due to
their fashion and their habits of misleading innocent people, which results in puni-
tive legal responses. The text also seems to indicate that local anti-Sufi sentiments
were influencing European perspectives on Sufism, as Malcolm is made “ill” by what
the locals have infor med him of these “Soofees.” Still, despite this cautious outlook,
Malcolm goes on to discuss the poets of this tradition, particularly “Ferdosi” and
“Nizamee” as “epic poet[s],” while Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, and Sa‘di are also referenced
as poets who “rank the highest.”
91 He writes of Rumi and Hafiz the following:
The author of the Musnavee is generally called the Mollah of Room; while
Hafiz is usually known by the title of Khaujah. The Persians conceive that
the for mer far surpasses the latter in penetration and judgment. I have heard
their opinion of these two celebrated Sooffee poets illustrated by the follow-
ing anecdote – “A learned person,” they say, “was asked how it came that the
author of the Musnavee and Hafiz, two Soofees, had expressed themselves,
in the commencement of their works, so oppositely on the subject of divine
love; Hafiz having said, ‘The path of love appeared at first easy, but afterwards
proved full of difficulties:’” – while, according to Jellâl-u -deen, “Love at first
appeared like a murderer, that he might alar m all who were without his pale.”

Sufism in the eyes of the West 115
The lear ned man replied, with a smile, “That which the Moollah saw at first
was only found out at last by the Khaujah.”
92
Malcolm here is presenting a bifurcated Sufism; the literar y Sufism of Rumi and
Hafiz is appreciated, while everyday embodied Sufism is viewed as per nicious. It
is the theme of love as it is found in the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz that Malcolm
highlights in the comparative anecdote above. In refer r ing to the poetry of Hafiz
and Rumi, love and beauty are universal themes that were appealing and relatable
to the Oriental translators; it is these themes that non-Muslims would consistently
invoke when it came to Sufi poetry. Malcolm continues, “Many of these poems
are remarkable for harmony of numbers and luxuriance of imagination; but they
all abound with the most extravagant and hyperbolical passages.”
93 The beauty and
lyricism of the poems were not lost on Malcolm; they existed in the realms of
“imagination.” Malcolm adds further:
Many discussions have ar isen regarding the real and mystical meaning of the
wr iters of this class, and particularly of Hafiz, whose Odes are chanted as
songs, to excite the young and the dissipated to pleasure, and recited as hymns
to remind the old and the devout of the rapture of divine love ... among
the many classes of Soofees, the natural feelings which man has on earth, and
the immortal longings of the soul after its Creator, are deemed inseparable:
and, with a poet of this persuasion, it was likely that the subjects should be
so blended, as to render it impossible to distinguish when he meant to sing
earthly or of heavenly joys.94
Again, the noticeable trend between figures such as Jones and Malcolm, who
were positioned in India as civil servants, were the poems of Sufis, primarily Hafiz,
who was given the epithet of “the Pr ince of Persian Poets.” Sa’di and Rumi were
also receiving attention, as collectively their poems were far more universalistic
in nature. Jones and Malcolm found the emphasis on love a pleasing theme; such
intimacies and romances of the divine were far more appealing than any “Moham-
madan” legalism they associated with Islam. These two examples illustrate how
Jones and Malcolm found pathways into the Sufi tradition, mainly through litera-
ture. As Malcolm illustrates, whereas Sufi poetry was lauded, the practice of Sufism
was condemned. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Salafi refor mers (al-Afghani and
‘Abduh) similarly valued some Sufi texts and ideals, though in practice they tended
to be cr itical of lived Sufism as superstitious and backward. Orientalist and Salafi
perspectives on Sufism were mutually influential in creating a broader trajectory
that has shaped contemporary Sufism.
These trends are also noted with other figures, particularly as they engaged with
Persian sources. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel H.Wilberforce Clarke (d. 1903), who
was part of the Royal (late Bengal) Engineers and a life member of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Br itain and Ireland and member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He
was the author of the Persian Manual, and one of the early translators of The Bustan-i
by Sa’di, The Sikander Nama-i-Nizami and Divan-i Hafiz. He also translated Shaykh

116 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Shahabuddin Suhrawardi’s (d. 1234) A Dervish Textbook: From the ’Awarifu-l-Ma’Arif,
Written in the Thirteenth Century. In A Dervish Textbook, Clarke suggests that:
The term sufi was first adopted by Abu Hashim, a Syrian Zahid (d. 780
A.D.); in his time was built the first takya (convent). But some say that the
seed of sufiism [sic] was sown in the time of Adam, germed in the time of
Nuh, budded in the time of Ibrahim, began to develop in the time of Musa,
reached maturity in the time of Christ, produced pure wine in the time of
Muhammad.95
As discussed in Chapters 1–3, Sufis themselves have long emphasized the universal
meaning of Islam and hence Sufism. Here, Clarke draws the lineage of Sufism back
to the first prophets of the Abrahamic tradition, starting with Adam, transforming
with Noah,Abraham, Moses, and Jesus and becoming fully developed with Muham-
mad. He explicitly highlights this universal strand of the Sufi tradition. Clarke goes
on to add that, “The Sufis (men of heart; men looking behind the veil; inward men)
developed the Greek mysticism” and mentions “Faryabi ... Abu Ali Sina ... Ghaz-
zali ... Ibn Rashid” as key figures in this development.96 For Clarke, Sufis teach,
“God to be the One, the Necessary Being, the only Reality, the Truth, the Infinite,
the First Cause (source of all action, good and evil).”
97 Of Clarke’s 1891 translation
of Hafiz’s Divan, Paul Kane wr ites that it was “the strangest of all the translations
(a bewildering mixture of verse and prose commentary that only a late Victor ian
could have produced).”
98 Clarke’s translation of Hafiz would be followed by one of
the “best-known translations” by the English writer, traveler, spy, administrator, and
archaeologist Gertrude Bell (d. 1926) in her Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897).99
Jones’s framework of universal Sufism is further confir med with Malcolm’s text
on Persia, though his work is receptive to Sufi poets, and not necessarily the mis-
chievous Sufis themselves, whose cheeky behaviors seem to have created tensions
with local communities. Clarke’s text also highlights how some Sufis have framed
their approaches in universal ways, which further affir med the European reception
of Sufism as such. Scholarship on Sufis by Europeans is not homogeneous, but
captures the emerging categories in the study of Sufism – that is, textual and poetic
versus encounters of Sufi communities were solidifying even early on. Sufism per-
meated culture and religious practices in diverse ways, and Europeans were meeting
most of these facets of Sufism. Edward William Lane (d. 1876) and John P. Brown
(d. 1872) further showcase Sufis, not through textual traditions but through their
everyday life, which concretized the popular perceptions of Sufis that were already
present in the European imagination.
The travelogues of Lane and Brown
Europeans traveling through the Middle East and other Muslim societies also came
to encounter fascinating figures that offered the allure of the exotic. Early instances
of such meetings have already been documented above, especially under the

Sufism in the eyes of the West 117
Ottoman court and the presence of whirling dervishes. European travelers came
face to face with dervishes, some who whirled, others with a propensity to chant,
dance, and sing in rituals. Most of them did not associate these exotic figures with
nor mative Islam. Edward William Lane, the Arabic lexicographer, had a number of
encounters with such enticing “dervishes” or wander ing mendicants. His descr ip-
tions can be found in his An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyp-
tians, which was wr itten during his time in Egypt from the 1820s to the 1830s.The
first edition of this book alone sold over 6,000 copies and was a foundational source
of infor mation in the study of Egypt.100 Lane set off to Egypt on July 18, 1825, due
to issues of personal illness but also to cultivate his growing interest in Arabic (he
was initially pursuing studies in mathematics).101 He writes:
I was not visiting Egypt merely for my amusement; to examine its pyramids
and temples and grottoes, and after satisfying my curiosity to quit it for other
scenes and other pleasures: but I was about to throw myself entirely among
strangers, among a people of whom I have heard the most contradictory
accounts: I was to adopt their language, their customs, and their dress; and in
order to make as much progress as possible in the study of their literature, it was
my intention to associate almost exclusively with the Muslim inhabitants.102
Much of the text is dedicated to describing his daily activities, such as how he
changed his attire (from British to Turkish outfits) and his wander ings through the
cities of Cairo and Alexandria and many more. He was also acquainted with Shaykh
Ahmed, a bookseller who, prior to this occupation, was interested in nothing but
(writes Lane) “zikrs; which consist in the repetition of the name and attr ibutes,
&c [etc], of God, by a number of persons, in chorus; and in such performances
he is still often employed.”
103 According to Lane, Shaykh Ahmed was part of the
“Saadeeyeh durweeshes” who were apparently popular for “devour ing live ser-
pents” and Shaykh Ahmed was himself a “serpent-eater.”
104 Lane’s descriptions of
this Sufi shaykh he encountered in Cairo also highlight a gravitation toward two
ter ms in discussions of Sufi traditions: (1) fakir (Arabic faqir) and (2) dervish, which
both loosely translate to “poor man.”
105 European travelers from as early as the 16th
century associated the dervishes with Catholic monks or friars, which with Luther
further marginalized them among Protestants, as noted above.106 By the 18th and
19th centuries, these dervishes became more “sensational[ized],” because they were
documented by European travelers throughout Ottoman Turkey, who noted their
“dancing, whirling and howling.”
107 This is evident in the work of Alexander Pope
(d. 1744), an English poet best known for his translation of the epic Homer. In his
Essay of Man, Pope wr ites of the “eastern priests,” which Er nst suspects is referr ing
to the whirling dervishes associated with Rumi’s order (Mevlevi) in Turkey:108
Go, wondrous creature! Mount where science guides.
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,

118 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his follow’r s trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As easter n priests in giddy circles run,
And tur n their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach eter nal wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!109
Pope saw these “easter n priests” as the “deluded followers of Plato” r unning in cir-
cles with their faces to the sun, which was likely a misinfor med descr iption of the
Whirling Dervishes perfor ming dhikr.110 These descriptions of “dervishes” are seen
further in the works of John P. Brown, another Orientalist.
Brown, in his “Author’s Preface” to The Darvishes or Oriental Spiritualism, which
was composed in Constantinople, wr ites “that the Spiritual Pr inciples of the Dar-
vish Orders existed in Arabia previous to the time of the great and talented Islam
Prophet cannot be doubted.”
111 Brown gleans from the works of Lane and Malcolm
in writing his own treatise on the “darvishes”. His text is quite comprehensive. In
skimming his chapter titles alone, one can see a range of topics from the early Abra-
hamic prophets, “On the Origin of the Dervish Orders,” and customs and practices
of different orders. Brown explains that “Islamism” or Islam or iginated with the
“perfect submission” of Abraham with his willingness to sacr ifice Isaac to God.
He describes that, “the spiritualism of the Darvishes differ[ed] in many respects
from Islamism” since it had its “or igins in the religious conceptions of India and
Greece.”
112 He mainly uses Turkish, Arabic, and Persian sources to introduce Sufism
to his readers.113 He is convinced that many of his Christian readers may find the
darvishes “unfavorable” but he holds strongly that they are “liberal and intelligent,
sincere, and most faithful friends.”
114 Brown explains that these spiritual guilds are
between Indian Jogis (yogis) and Islamic traditions:
Placed between the Pantheism of the Indian Jogis and the Qurān, which is
sometimes an infor mal copy of the Bible, their philosophers, named Sūfis,
have established a pantheistic school appropriate to Islām ideas – a sort of
esoter ic doctrine of Islamism, which must be distinguished from Indian Pan-
theism, though indeed it presents only the er rors of the Ve d ānta and the
Sānkhya. “Pantheism, as a moral doctr ine, leads to the same conclusions as
mater ialism – the negation of human liberty, the indifference to actions, and
the legitimacy of temporal enjoyments.” In this system, all is God, except God
Himself, for He thereby ceases to be God.115
Brown includes numerous illustrations of dervishes, such as a “Bektash Dervish
Inhaling Hasheesh,” “Dervishes of the Mevlevee Order,” and “A Rufa’ee Dervish in
an Ecstatic State.”
116 In his discussions of the “howling dervishes” (the Rufa’ees), he
provides a list of the “Esmá el Husná, or the ‘Beautiful Names of God:’ ninety-nine

Sufism in the eyes of the West 119
in number.”
117 Brown also incorporates large sections from Lane’s The Modern Egyp-
tians, who also wrote extensively on these “dervishes,” explaining that nothing more
needs to be said of the dervishes than what has already been explained by Lane:
Durweeshes are ver y numerous in Egypt, and some of them who confine
themselves to religious exercises, and subsist by alms, are much respected in
this country, particularly by lower orders. Var ious artifices are employed by
persons of this class to obtain the reputation of super ior sanctity, and of being
endowed with the power of perfor ming miracles. Many of them are regarded
as welees [walis].118
Brown, in quoting Lane, goes on to highlight traditions of the “Rifá‘eeyeh’,” refer-
r ing to their “turbans” and their “wonderful feats” such as
pretend[ing] to thrust iron spikes into their eyes and bodies without sustain-
ing injury; and in appearance they do this in such a manner as to deceive any
person who can believe it possible for a man to do such things in reality.119
He adds further, “they also break large masses of stone on their chests, eat live coal,
glass &c.; and are said to pass swords completely through their bodies, and pack-
ing-needles through both their cheeks, without suffer ing any pain, or leaving any
wound.”
120 Highlighting these examples of dervishes as radical and fanatical figures
with wild practices contr ibuted to making them an integral feature of the landscape
of the East. For European travelers, they were the token representation of exoticism
on par with yogis and mendicants from other religious traditions. Lane and Brown
documented Sufi practices, such as r ituals of mawlids,121 dances, and dhikrs, but also
their miraculous and phenomenal feats, such as eating snakes and self-mortification.
These models of Sufi fraternities, such as the activities of the Rifa‘i mentioned by
Lane and Brown, would become a “necessary subject for European colonial adminis-
trators.”
122 Sufi orders were the local community establishments in the various regions
occupied by the Europeans.They became significant interlocutors between the colo-
nized and colonial administrators.123 Studies of Sufi orders’ activities and rituals, then,
were not only for the sake of intellectual curiosity (as they initially began), but also
became a requirement for colonial administrative control and success. However, Ori-
entalists’ scholarship on Sufism was not relegated to administrative realms, as these texts
on Sufism – especially the poetry translated by the likes of Jones and Nott – mig rated
to European audiences. In its new locality, Sufi poetry began inspiring the new gen-
eration of Romantic poets who were coming of age in a post-Enlightenment Europe.
The Romantics and Sufism
The era of Romanticism (ca. 1780s–1830s) – broadly known as a literary and aes-
thetic movement that emphasized individualism, freedom of thought, emotion, and
creativity – was ignited by the French Revolution.The falling of the Bastille on July
14, 1789, was marked by political revolutions and “resistance to massive despotism,”

120 Contemporary Sufism in the West
which led to new intellectual discussions on democracy and freedom.124 These
political shifts inspired a new generation of thinkers, leaders, and poets, who “were
reacting against political and cultural centralization.”
125 As political changes in
France spread throughout Europe, there were also growing interactions between
European and non-European countries through colonialism. Orientalists were
relaying their experiences through their travelogues and translations of texts, as
captured above, which led to the r ise of new literar y traditions, motifs, themes, and
figures in France, Ger many, and Britain. This movement redrew new geographical
and literar y imaginar ies of Muslim, Indian, and Chinese worlds.
The distinguishing aspect of the Romantic Age was the ser ious effort given
to language study, especially Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Sanskrit. This interest in
language developed in part as a requirement for colonial administration. However,
it was also rooted in the Romantic movement’s concer n with spiritual and emo-
tive themes in literature. Romanticism emerged after the Industrial Revolution in
Europe and tur ned inward, emphasizing emotion as central to human experience
and spirituality.With regard to Islamic traditions, Romantics had an
ambiguous attitude to Islam: on the one hand, it offered a convenient symbol
of the tyranny that they all sought to overcome; but on the other, it offered
an alternative to the compromised or cor rupted political and social systems
of Europe.126
It was not Islam that was merely suspect of corruption and delusory ideas, this was
seen as the tendency of all religions, and thus Romantics emphasized a far more
spiritual, inner or ientation toward the world.
The early Br itish Romantics were swayed by tales such as Arabian Nights and
the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl’s (d. 1185) Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Ibn Tufayl’s
book was the first Sufi text to be popularly known in the West, but it was not so
much known as a Sufi text as a philosophical one.127 Persian poets and mystics,
such as Omar al-Khayyam (d. ca. 1123), al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191), Far id al-Din Attar
(d. 1221), Sa‘di, Rumi, and Hafiz were familiar in different parts of Europe.128
Islamic works “helped the British Romantic poets not only in finding their own
voices, but also their themes, metaphors, symbols, characters and images.”
129 Br it-
ish poets like William Blake (d. 1827), William Wordsworth (d. 1850), Samuel
Taylor Coler idge (d. 1834), George Gordon Byron (d. 1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley
(d. 1822), and John Keats (d. 1821), known as “The Big Six,” were seminal figures
who were reading Orientalist translations, such as the ones discussed above.
For instance, Jones’s translations of Hafiz made their way to Byron and other
Romantic poets.130 Shelley was translating Plato’s Symposium from Greek to English,
but he was also gleaning from Hinduism, Kabbalah, and Her meticism, and Persian
Sufi poetry, especially the works of Hafiz.131 Neoplatonism was a facilitator for
cross-cultural exchange between the Romantics and Persian Sufi poets.132 Although
centuries separate these different theological, philosophical, and mystical movements,
there are “archetypical themes” that are shared between these cultures which are
too hard to dismiss.133 Some shared motifs include death (annihilation), unity of

Sufism in the eyes of the West 121
religions, and the feminine, which can be found in the poems of Khayyam, Shabistar i
(d. after 1340), Hafiz, Rumi, Blake, and Coler idge.134 For instance, Leonard Lewisohn
compares the theme of annihilation (fana’), a central motif found in Sufi literature,
such as in Shabistari’s Garden of Mystery with the Romantic poet William Blake:
Go! Take this “self ” which bars the path;
Each moment engage yourself in faith anew.
Inside us all the lower soul’s an infidel:
Rest not content with this Islam of outer for m.135
One can note a similar theme of annihilation in Blake’s Milton (1804):
I will go down to self annihilation and eter nal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate
And I be seiz’d & giv’n into the hands of my own Selfhood.136
New figures, characters, and imager ies appear in English literature: “the wan-
derer ... the mystic ... lonely travelers, seaports, islands, caves, ... caravans, and
desert filled ... landscape.”
137 These imager ies are repeatedly invoked: the seeker
and her/his place in nature and its interface with the divine are what stand out in
the works of the Romantics and Transcendentalists. They are also what drew these
groups to Sufi poetry, particularly that of Hafiz.These metaphors and themes were
influenced by what was being read. Lord Bryon provides us with his reading list:
Turkey. – I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut and Prince Cantemir besides a
more moder n history, anonymous. Of Ottoman history I know every event ...
Arabia. – Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime poetical passages, far
surpassing European poetry. Persia. – Ferdousi, author of Shah Nameh, the
Persian Illiad, –Sadi, and Hafiz, the immortal Hafiz, the oriental Anacreon.
The last is reverenced beyond any bard of ancient or moder n times by the
Persians. Who resort to his tomb near Shiraz, to celebrate his memory. A
splendid copy of his works is chained to his monument.138
Lord Byron’s reading list includes numerous Muslim sources, but from the Persian
world, it is Hafiz, the “immortal Hafiz,” on which he expends additional notes,
compar ing him even to the Greek poet Anacreon, as Jones and Nott had done
before him. Other British Romantic poets such as Blake also embody the “mys-
tic” and are “understood in a Sufi context where the erotic is blended with the
divine.”
139 Andrew War ren challenges the thesis that the young Romantics, Byron,
Keats, and Shelley, were only writing in “Orientalized settings” because that was the
fad of the day.140 For War ren, the young Romantics were far more sophisticated in
their methodology of employing the Orient:
The Orient – self-critically understood by the Young Romantics – was a
histor ically deter mined phantasmatic projection of the West’s own fears
and desires, and provides a setting in which to explore and cr itique the

122 Contemporary Sufism in the West
epistemological, existential, and above all political limits of their own solip-
sistic imaginations. It is simultaneously an escape from and retur n to the self,
a vicious circle.141
In this inter pretation, Islam was a “spiritual resource” for Romantic writers, and
Sufism in particular played a role in this stimulation.142 Perhaps no other example
but Goethe, and his relationship with Hafiz, could capture this powerful shar ing of
words and worlds.
The poets of the East and the West: Hafiz and Goethe
In May 1799, the Austr ian Joseph Hammer was in Istanbul, Turkey, working as a
translator for the Turkish court.143 Hammer was born in Graz, Austria, in 1774 into
a Catholic family.144 In 1816, he mar r ied Caroline Heinkstein, a Jewish convert
to Catholicism.145 From his mar r iage, to his interests, travels, and work – such as
his History of the Ottoman Empire (1827–1835), the “Assassins,” and “The Mithraic
cult” – one sees in Hammer a relative openness to religions beyond his own. Ham-
mer ascended up the social ladder by inher iting property from the Purgstall fam-
ily in 1835.146 As a baron, he took on the name Hammer-Purgstall, and moved
to south Austr ia with his wife, who died unexpectedly on May 15, 1844.147 The
death of his wife commenced a new project, the Prayerbook. In the first pages of
this text dedicated to his wife is the Surah al-Fatiha (The Opening), the first chap-
ter of the Qur’an and the oft repeated prayer of Muslims. In his own memoir,
Hammer explains that the Prayerbook was “suitable to be prayed by members of all
religions.”
148
Islamic influence on Hammer extends beyond his texts and publications, but
can also be noted in his ar istocratic estate, where Arabic inscr iptions, such as the
names of Allah or the Surah of Joseph (Yusuf, Qur’an 12:64), are found on entry-
ways. There are even walls inscr ibed with the name “Hafiz”: a name alluding not
only to God’s quality or the one who has memor ized the Qur’an but also Hafiz,
the poet Hammer translated.149 Throughout his time in Istanbul and in his life in
Vienna, Hammer continued to collect manuscr ipts, which he stamped with the
Arabic insignia: “as-Sayyāh, as-Sāmir Yūsuf Hāmir” (The Itinerant, the Night Con-
verser Joseph Hammer).150 This is quite indicative of the transfor mations Hammer
exper ienced in his interactions with the Arabian Islamic world, one that is no lon-
ger unilateral but symbiotic for him. As Jeffrey Einboden expresses:
Fashioning his new persona in poetic terms, this seal is not only innovative in
style, however, but also in spirituality, characterizing Hammer as “The Itinerant,
the Night Converser” – ter ms that seem to typify the Austrian as a wander ing
dervish, engaging in holy rambling and repartee. Self-descr ibing as a mystic
traveler and talker, Hammer’s stamp itself travels into new regions of religion,
speaking a fresh Sufi identity through a complex act of code shifting ... Hammer
no longer renders his Ger man reader in the pages of his Muslim transla-
tion, but instead renders his own German name into Muslim expression,

Sufism in the eyes of the West 123
with Europe’s translator of Sufi poetry himself translated into a slide of Sufi
poetr y.151
This transfor mation into the world of Sufism would “reshape wester n poetry, exer-
cising a for mative impact on Romantic Orientalism.”
152
In June 1799, Hammer began copying and writing commentar ies on Hafiz’s
Diwan and he continued until he had a Ger man “rendition” of Hafiz’s Persian work
in 1806.153 He published two volumes of translations in 1812 and 1813, which
included over 500 of Hafiz’s ghazals. In the preface to his work on Hafiz, Hammer
explains his intention for translating this particular work:“he wished less to translate
the Persian poet [for] the German reader, than the Ger man reader [for] the Persian
poet.”
154 From his for mative translation of Hafiz’s Diwan, his personal transfor-
mation and inscr iptions in architecture, one sees how Hammer redefined his rela-
tionship with the Islamic world and not only brought aspects of it to his Austr ian
homeland but also set the path to help transmit Hafiz to the rest of Europe and
eventually America.155 However, Hammer’s engagement with Islam, and especially
Hafiz, would be felt most profoundly with a Ger man figure.
On January 30, 1800, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) opened Mahomet:
Transuerpiel: in Fünf Aufzügen (Mahomet: A Tragedy in Five Acts), a tragedy in Weimer
Theatre, which was a Ger man translation of Voltaire’s or iginal staged in 1741 and
published in 1774. Goethe was a Ger man playwright, poet, and philosopher.156
This particular play was staged just as Napoleon’s troops were entering into Egypt
and Syria in 1798 and 1799.157 In contrast to many Western Orientalists whose
interest in Islam was limited exclusively to Persian Sufi poetry, Goethe came to this
Persian Sufi poetry after a general interest in Islam. Goethe’s interest in Islam soon
focused in on the poetry of Hafiz. Goethe claims that it was Hammer’s Diwan that
enabled him to first “grasp the inner nature” of Hafiz.158 Though Hammer’s text
provided the ability to enter the world of Hafiz, Goethe was deter mined to access
Hafiz directly and so set out to learn Arabic and Persian.159 For Goethe, Arabic was
seen as the “primordial” language. His interest in Arabic started early in his life, but
he retur ned to it later to engage with Islamic texts, notably the Qur’an.
The West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan) of Goethe is divided into twelve
books, which include two titles: one from the East and the other from the West.160
Early on in the second book, in a section entitled “Sur name,” Goethe uses fictional
characters that parallel Hafiz and himself. The two characters, “Hafiz” and “the
Poet,” are in conversation with one another, using the Socratic method to engage
with existential questions. Goethe begins:
Poet:
Tell me why, Muhammad Shamseddin,
you are “Hafiz” to
worthy folk.
Hafiz:
For asking, you

124 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Mer it thanks. I answer, then:
Legacy of the Qur’an
I unaltered carry on
Hallowed in my memory
And, by acting piously,
Daily every injury
Ward away from me and those
Who the Prophet-word and see
Treasure and their duty heed.
So my name the people chose.
Poet:
Hafiz, it would seem to me
That, I needn’t yield to you:
Like another I will be
When I think as he would do.
We are quite alike, I see.
Taking in an image of
Value from the Book I love-
As upon a cloth that He
Image of the Lord impressed-
I revived in quiet breast
(Quelling foe, denier, thief)
With the image of belief.161
It is the parallel image of the Poet and Hafiz that is noteworthy from this passage,
as Goethe writes, “We are quite alike.” In examining this excer pt, Einboden writes,
“Mirrored as tandem twins, German and Persian poets occupy opposing positions in
this cultured dialogue, yet they also emerge as identical in their nominal substance.”
162
The focus is on the “heart,” which acts like a mir ror and reflects similar ity more
than difference. Goethe emerges as a German “Hafiz,” with both poets meriting this
shared “name due to their mutual memory and captured ‘retention.’”
163 Goethe’s
interest in Hafiz does not emerge out of a vacuum, but ar ises out of his engagement
with the Qur’an. The Qur’an, which he cites from as early as 1772, was of interest,
and is invoked again and used in 1819 in his “Notes and Essays.”
164 Goethe writes:
Is the Qur’an from eternity?
That I will not ask.
Might the Qur’an created be?
No answer- a thankless task.
That is the Book of Books need be
My Muslim faith made clear to me.165
It is precisely this synthesis of textual encounters that has resulted in scholars, such
as Ziad Elmarsafy (2009), to suggest that “Goethe’s oscillation between poetry and

Sufism in the eyes of the West 125
prophecy as literar y paradigms,” was immensely significant for the literary trans-
lation of Sufism and Islam throughout Europe.166 A return to the Islamic sources,
especially the Qur’an, becomes more and more prominent in the last days of
Goethe’s life.167 The Divan would be republished again five years before the death
of Goethe to include new poems, including the following on the Qur’an:
Of old the sacred Koran did they cite,
They named the verse and chapter ever blest,
And each good Muslim, as was but was at rest.
The modern Dervish nothing better knows,
But prates of old and new with endless zest;
Each day our most admired disorder g rows.
O sacred Koran! O eter nal rest!168
Goethe not only really struggled to understand the meaning of the Qur’an but also
tried to process his relationship to the Prophet Muhammad himself.169 Goethe’s
relationship to these Islamic sources was facilitated by his engagement with Hafiz.
Hafiz led Goethe to the Qur’an at the end of his days. Goethe’s encounters with the
Islamic sources of the “East” placed him in a particular interface, which is captured
in the following:
He who knows himself and others
Will also recognize that the
or ient and the occident are no
longer separable.170
He further wrote, “If Islam means submission to God, then we all live and die as
Muslims.”
171 These literary cultural exchanges were not limited to Goethe, but
involved numerous German Romantics such as Fr iedrich Schlegel (d. 1829), who
wrote under the pen name Novalis. He was also engaging with Arabia, Islam, and
Muhammad at the same time. Still, it was due to Goethe’s German translation of
Hafiz in his West-Eastern Divan that Ger many and Europe had come to know
Hafiz as “the sweet singer of Shiraz” and even the name Hafiz became “a nom de
plume.”
172 Hafiz and the Sufi poets did not remain only in the European realm and,
in fact, they would travel further West across an ocean to Amer ica.
American Transcendentalism and Sufism
Sa‘di’s Gulistan, Hafiz’s Divan, Khayyam’s Ruba’iyyat, and Firdausi’s Shah Nameh,
were all available to English audiences in some for m by 1790.173 As these texts
were being made available for European readers, they were also making their way to
Amer ican intellectuals.The American Museum of 1792 was the first popular source in
the United States to have a printed (an “uncredited”) publication of Hafiz entitled,
“Ode Translated from the Persian of Hafez,” which was Nott’s or iginal translations

126 Contemporary Sufism in the West
from 1787.174 This particular text was then followed by the “Tale of Hafez” which
was included in the New York Magazine or Literary Repository (1790). It comprised a
story of two characters, Hafiz and Sa‘di, and though the tale was not representative
of these poetic figures, it does indicate the popularity of these names by this time
in New York.175 This growing interest in Sufi poetry converged with a seminal
spiritual and intellectual movement known as Transcendentalism.
The Transcendental movement began in New England in the 1830s. Mem-
bers of the movement asked, “what is there beyond the individual?” and “what is
universal?” Responses to these questions resulted in a range of approaches in the
movement that came to be known as Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism as a
movement, then, was in no way unifor m. Those who pursued social refor m (i.e.,
emphasis on the outward) mobilized around the for mation of communal societies,
such as at Brook Far m in 1841. George Ripley (d. 1880), a social refor mer, Uni-
tarian minister, and jour nalist, was one of the main figures behind this approach.
There were those who were far more invested in introspection and stressed self-
refor mation. These ideas can be seen in Ralph Waldo Emerson (d. 1882), and in
Henry David Thoreau (d. 1862), the poet, philosopher, and abolitionist known for
his work Walden.176 In Thoreau’s Walden, we see him removed from society living in
a cabin in the woods in search of the meaning of life. He retreated to Walden Pond
for two years, two months, and two days.177 He emphasized the solitary, contempla-
tive life while in communion with nature. The link between European Romantics
and American Transcendentalists, however, is most evident in the figure of Emerson.
The Concordians and the Sufis: Emerson, Whitman, and Hafiz
Emerson met Coler idge, a leading English poet of the Romantic movement in
England, before he died. Reputedly, during this visit, Emerson purchased a copy of
the Qur’an.The Ger man Romantic influence of Hammer-Purgstall was also crucial
for Emerson. He acquired Hammer-Pursgtall’s Ger man translations of the Divan
in April 1846. Emerson began to translate the texts into English five months later,
with poems such as “From the Persian Hafiz” and “Ghaselle: From the Persian of
Hafiz,” both of which were published in 1847.178 Emerson was also influenced by
the poems of Sa’di and eventually Khayyam, but it was the poetry of Hafiz that had
the greatest impact on his own poems. Of Sa‘di, Emerson wr ites that he “speaks to
all nations, and like Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Montaigne, is perpetually
modern” and viewed the Gulistan as a Bible of the world, with “universality of moral
law.”
179 In a lecture given by Emerson in 1854 entitled “Poetry and English Poetry,”
he lists five paradigmatic poets: Homer, Milton, Hafiz, Hibert, and Wordsworth.180
Emerson began to share his translations among his fellow Concordians, who
were also wanting to read more Sufi poetry.181 Emerson seems to have known
about Hafiz well before this, however. In his essay “History” (1841), Emerson men-
tions Hafiz for the first time.This early encounter may have been due to his reading
of Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan (1819).182 Goethe’s and Emerson’s encounters with
Hafiz closely “parallel” one another.183 Where Goethe found a “kindred spirit”

Sufism in the eyes of the West 127
in Hafiz, Emerson followed suit, “enthusiastically” translating the Persian poet.184
Both also adopted “similar stances toward the religious and esoter ic dimension of
Hafiz’s work.”
185 Emerson translated over seven hundred lines of Persian poetry,
most of which were by Hafiz. He would then publish “Persian Poetry” in The
Atlantic Monthly in 1858, wr iting:
Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to
some of the attr ibutes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace and Bur ns, the insight of
a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to
either of these bards. He accosts all topics with an easy audacity.186
Like the early translators, Emerson compares Hafiz to the likes of Anacreon, while
stressing the mystic’s ability to offer deeper knowledge of nature, which for Tran-
scendentalists was a manifestation, if not a reflection, of God. In Emerson’s essay
on Nature (1849), he calls for solitude but also the need to look to the stars: “But
if man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those
heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.”
187 These themes
are found not only in Emerson but also in works by his students such as Thoreau
and Walt Whitman (d. 1892), who emphasize the soul of the human being as the
site of spiritual encounter (“over-soul” or “private-man”), notions which also tie to
themes found in Sufism, such as the insan al-kamil or the perfected human being,
where the human being is the microcosm of the cosmic macrocosm.
Emerson was also drawn to the themes stressed by Hafiz’s poetry:
Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mor nings and music, to give
vent to his immense hilar ity and sympathy with every for m of beauty and
joy; and lays the emphasis on these to mark his scor n of sanctimony and base
prudence.188
Again, as noted with Goethe, and even Brown, Emerson was moved by the themes
represented in Hafiz’s poetry, but also the notion of “beauty and joy,” which appealed
to the Transcendentalist goal of seeking the emotions of the heart and feeding the
soul. Emerson adds of Hafiz:
The other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of
profound thought. We accept the religions and politics into which we fall,
and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole
web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles, – that the
mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. It indicates this respect
to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and
reverend, and therefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion.189
Here Emerson calls attention to Hafiz’s ability to transcend the “imbecility” of
conventions, such as religion and politics; it is Hafiz’s “ir religion” that makes him
a “reverend” and “stable” figure of emulation. The appeal of Hafiz is precisely due

128 Contemporary Sufism in the West
to his religious ambiguity, one that has been noted from early Orientalists to the
Transcendentalists:
Scholars and cr itical interpreters, including translators, tend to fix Hafiz along
a spectrum that ranges from a worldly savant with a savage distrust of religi-
osity on the one side, and a dedicated Sufi writing esoter ic verses requiring
an initiated understanding on the other.190
This pattern of interpretation was evident in Hammer-Purgstall, who was Christian
but also religiously fluid, as was Goethe. Both sought for a truth beyond religious
confines, and both found the same irreligious affinity with Hafiz, one removed from
Islam and Christianity, reflecting a universal truth. Their approach is one that was
again shared by Emerson in his reading of Hafiz. From 1864 to the end of his life,
Emerson maintained his readership in Hindu philosophy, Neoplatonism, Oriental
mysticism, and Persian poetr y.Among these topics, Hafiz remained one of his favor-
ite figures, citing his “cheerfulness” even in his last journal entr ies and letters.191
The American Transcendentalists’ exposure to Sufi poetry was not limited solely
to poetry of Persian Hafiz. In his Leaves of Grass (1855),Whitman uses the love motif
found in Hafiz, the same motif that appealed to figures like Emerson and others
before him. However, more than Hafiz, it is Rumi’s voice that abounds in Whitman’s
poems. In “A Persian Lesson,” which was or iginally titled “A Sufi Lesson,”Whitman
uses the “g reybeard Sufi” Rumi to speak for him and his longing for the divine:
Finally my children, to envelop each word, each Part of the rest,
Allah is all, all – is immanent in every life and object
May-be at many and many-a-more removes – yet Allah,
Allah, Allah is there.192
Whitman’s mysticism was influenced by Rumi’s own worldview, which is evident
when compar ing Whitman and Rumi’s poetry:
Whitman: It is the central urge in every atom,
(Often unconscious, often evil downfallen,)
To retur n to its divine source and or igin, however distant,
Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception
Rumi:The motion of every atom is towards its or igin;
A man comes to be the thing on which he is bent.
By the attraction of the fondness and yearning, the soul and the heart
Assume the qualities of the Beloved, who is the Soul of souls.193
Here in the first stanza, by Whitman, it is the centrality of the “atom,” as a site of
human or igins that is stressed, a theme found in Rumi’s poem. The Mathnawi of
Rumi was gaining attention as some of its couplets were being translated. The

Sufism in the eyes of the West 129
Mathnawi is a vast compendium of poems, six books in total, which had not been
fully translated at this time. For Muslims, the Mathnawi is often refer red to as the
“Qur’an in Persian.” This particular text gained more attention in the 20th cen-
tur y, the topic of Chapter 5. In the 19th century, figures such as the Reverend
Edward B. Cowell (d. 1903), English translator of Hafiz and Professor of Sanskrit at
Cambridge, also translated portions of Rumi’s Mathnawi. Cowell’s “The Mesnavi of
Jelaleddin Rumi” appeared in the London-based The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1848.
Cowell also translated Khayyam, the Persian poet Qasim-i Anwar (d. 1433),
along with Buddhist Mayahana texts. Cowell taught Persian to Edward Fitzgerald
(d. 1883), whose translation of Khayyam’s poems would become more popular
than Hafiz. Initially, the poem was privately published, just 250 copies in 1859,
but sales had increased by the 1880s and onwards.194 Cowell had issues with some
of Khayyam’s poetry, and consequently was fonder of Rumi.195 The extent of
Khayyam’s influence can be seen in Mark Twain (d. 1910) (also known as Samuel
L. Clemens), F. Scott Fitzgerald (d. 1940), T. S. Eliot (d. 1965), and Ezra Pound
(d. 1972) – the latter named his son Omar Shakespeare Pound. In writing about
Fitzgerald’s translation of Khayyam,Yohannan wr ites, “In its less than one-hundred
year history it has achieved a greater fame for Khayyam than his or iginal verses
were able to do in over eight hundred years.”
196 This interest in Khayyam led to
the for mation of Omar Khayyam Clubs of England and Amer ica, who endorsed
goods such as chocolates, cigarettes, and tobacco, while numerous illuminated ver-
sions of Fitzgerald’s translations of Khayyam also came into print.197 Khayyam’s
poetr y completely permeated popular culture and the imagination – every reader
saw Khayyam’s poetry as what they sought, be it Sufism, Arab philosophy, or even
“hedonism.”
198
Students of Emerson, like Whitman, continued to read and translate other poets
of the East, precisely because of the shared appeal of universalism found in Sufi
and Islamic poetry. Sufi literary traditions became “entrenched” in the Amer ican
literary and spiritual milieu, a reality which would continue into the 20th and 21st
centur ies with the explosion of interest in Rumi’s poetry.199 William Rounseville
Alger (d. 1905) from Boston, Massachusetts, in his The Poetry of the East (1856) is
another example of an Amer ican Unitar ian minister with interest in religions of
the Orient, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sufism. He was influenced
by the translations of Sufi poetry from Jones, Hammer-Purgstall, and Goethe.200
He includes in his compendium of Oriental poems those of Firduasi, Hafiz, Sa‘di,
who he wr ites are “as familiar on the banks of the Rhine and beneath the lindens
of Vienna, as they are ... amidst the kiosks of Shiraz.”
201 He refers to the works of
Malcolm’s History of Persia and the Protestant theologian August Tholuck’s (d. 1877)
work on Sufism in his compendium of the poetry of the East. For Alger:
The Sufis are a sect of meditative devotees, whose absorption in spiritual
contemplations and hallowed raptures is unparalleled, whose piety penetrates
to a depth where the mind gropingly staggers among the bottomless roots
of being, in mazes of wonder and delight, and reaches to a height where the

130 Contemporary Sufism in the West
soul loses itself among the roofless immensities of glory in a bedazzled and
boundless ecstasy.202
Alger’s text showcases for us that by the mid-19th century, these prominent Sufi
texts, especially poetry, were ubiquitous in the Amer ican spiritual circuit, partic-
ularly in Boston. For them, the female Sufi personality Rabi‘a was known as a
“celebrated Mohammedan saint,” and was an exemplar of ecstatic love in Sufism.
But so is “Dschelaleddi Rumi” or Jalaluddin Rumi, the universally acknowledged
“head and master” and the “g reatest mystic poet of the whole Orient, the oracle
of the devotees, the nightingale of the contemplative life, the lawgiver in piety, the
founder of the principal order of Dervishes, and author of the Mesnavi.”
203 Alger
goes on to introduce the “Mesnavi,” wr iting that “From the banks of the Ganges
to the Bosporus it is the hand-book of all Sufis, the lawbook and ritual of all the
mystics.”
204 In a collection that includes titles such as “Goethe’s West-Oestlicher
Diwan,” “The Ramayana,” “The Shah Nameh of Firdousi,” and many more, the
Sufis (and Rumi in particular) receive much attention.205 In compar ing the works
of Oriental poetry and the poetry of the translators from whom he is bor rowing,
Alger wr ites that “the imaginations of the two countr ies are, after all, not so differ-
ent as has been supposed.”
206 Alger continues:
During the past year the United States gover nment has imported from Pal-
estine several specimens of a tree called the Carob, or St. John’s Bread [locust
bean],and employed skillful arbor icultur ists to try and see if it cannot be
made to grow and yield fruit, even in a clime and air so remote from its own
... Who knows but the effort may be successful, and lead to the transplan-
tation and acclimation in Amer ica of hundreds of the r ichest indigenous
growths of Asia? And so might the present humble work – seeking to import
into the West, and exhibit there, some specimens of the Thought, Sentiment,
and Fancy of the East – be but a forerunner of many abler works in the same
direction, which shall be worthier representations, in our English speech, of
that wonderful Oriental poetry, whose most characteristic treasures are as
sparkling with the splendor of imaginative genius, and as odorous with the
fragrance of exquisite sensibility, as though they had been “strained through
star ry strata and the musky loam of Paradise!”207
Conclusion
Contemporary Wester n fascination with Sufism has significant historical prece-
dent, which extends as far back as the 13th and 14th centur ies. From Ramon
Llull’s “Christian Sufism” to early travelogues of diplomats and linguists in Otto-
man Turkey, the European encounter with Sufism is deeply rooted. First, there is a
textual transmission, often mediated by Neoplatonic traditions, and proselytization
efforts in which Christians were engaging with Islamic scholarship of the Qur’an,
Arab philosophy, theology, and Sufism. These textual exchanges, such as with Llull,

Sufism in the eyes of the West 131
resulted in an impact on Llull’s own framing of Christianity, including meditative
practices on the names of God which he included in his treatise. While other early
European travelers under Ottoman rule such as the Dominican friar George of
Hungary also engaged with Sufism, sometimes they were forced to do so. However,
most were drawn to the musical traditions, especially the dancing performed by the
dervishes. Their beauty of movement and incantations (dhikr) drew wide attention
among musicologists and artists. Paintings and renditions of these cur ious dancers
appeared throughout Europe, in plays and novels.
These early instances of exchanges only continued with the development of
Orientalist scholarship, particularly as it emerged with Jones. His early translations
of texts from Easter n religious traditions, including Sufi ones, showed an inclina-
tion toward Persian texts. Jones’s reading of the Persian text Dabistan and other
poetr y, especially that of Hafiz, also led him to frame Sufism as a phenomenon
outside of traditional and legalistic Islam. It was a universal tradition, but it was also
associated with Persian and Turkish cultures, and was not an Arab one. Aside from
the literary transmission that was taking place by Orientalist scholars, travelogues
of Persia and Egypt, such as by Malcolm and Lane, continued to supplement the
textual exchange with mystifying renditions of cur ious “Soofees” who wandered in
woollen robes with begging bowls, and lived antinomian existences defying social
and religious nor ms.These two extremes – one of Sufi poetry as attractive and uni-
versal, and the other of Sufis as wild wandering mendicants who employed austere
practices (e.g ., snake handling) – became the two poles that represented Sufism to
non-Muslim Europeans and Amer icans.
The reception of Sufi poetry, though, had a seminal influence on Romantic
figures, such as Goethe, and among the Transcendentalists, including Emerson and
Whitman. The Sufi poetry of Hafiz, Khayyam, and Sa‘di was not only being trans-
lated but also deeply resonated with European and American translators. Goethe
proved to be a unique exception, however, in the type of engagement he had with
Sufism. His relationship with Islam and Sufism was interrelated, but his relationship
with Islam is not one that is often recalled in the history of these civilizational
encounters. As Sufi poetry made its way into American societies, names such as
Hafiz regularly appeared in popular Romantic and Transcendentalist literature.The
ideals of transgressing religions, and the seeking of a deeply personal experience of
the divine, appealed to figures like Emerson who were seeking to refor m Chris-
tianity in the Amer ican landscape. As Alger’s final quote in this chapter indicates,
Oriental poetry, which included Sufi poetry, was fully imported into the Wester n
intellectual, spiritual, and popular landscape. It had preceded the ar r ival of Sufi
teachers from the East and even Sufi-Muslim immigrants who came to America
in the early 20th century.These literary transmissions of Sufism were foundational
to the development of European and Amer ican spiritualities, but it was a Sufism
that was not Islamic in nature. It was a universalistic, pantheistic, esoteric, and indi-
vidualistic Sufism, which was primar ily mediated by poetry.The latter transmission
of Sufis through literary traditions also meant that aspects of Sufism – such as
music, dance, and dervishes – seeped into the popular culture and imagination.

132 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Dervishes were on stages in Ger many and France, and appeared in novels by writ-
ers such as Oscar Wilde (d. 1900). Clubs that formed around these figures, such as
that of Khayyam, also used their organizations to endorse goods, like chocolates
and tobacco. In many ways, the stage was set for what would ultimately unfold in
the 20th and 21st centur ies. While Hafiz and Khayyam were the leading figures of
this era, Alger, who is quoted at the end of this chapter, pointed to Rumi as the
next Sufi figure to r ise to prominence. Rumi would not only take Sufi poetry in
the West to new heights, but in so doing, he would pervade all aspects of popular
culture, from the Hollywood big screen to social media forums, with millions of
followers in tow.
Notes
1 Carl Ernst, Sufism:An Introduction to the MysticalTradition of Islam (Boston, MA: Shambala
Publications, 1997), xvii.
2 Ibid., 1.
3 Algis Uždavinys, “Sufism in the Light of Orientalism,” Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 6, no. 2
(2005): 114.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Alexander Knysh, Islam in Historical Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2016), 356. For
more, please see Maya Shatzmiller, ed., Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria
(Leiden: Brill, 1993).
7 For more on this, see Kecia Ali, The Lives of Muhammad (Boston, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2016).
8 Ziad Elmarsafy, The Enlightenment Qur’an:The Politics of Translation and the Construction of
Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 1.
9 Ibid., 3.
10 In his Islam and the Divine Comedy (1926), Miguel Asin Palacios examines the symbolic
similarities between Ibn al-‘Arabi and Dante, suggesting the influence the former had
on the latter.
11 Ali, The Lives of Muhammad.
12 Elmarsafy, The Enlightenment Qur’an, 5 .
13 Exemplary here are the works of the famed philosopher and physician, Avicenna (Ibn
Sina) (d. 1037). His treatises on healing and medicine, such as The Canon of Medicine,
which includes instructions for physicians on treating patients, were regularly translated
and consulted by Christian monks in monasteries and continue to have traction in the
medical world today.
14 José Bellver, “Mirroring the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity:
Ramon Llull’s Cent Noms de Déu as a Christian Qur’an,” Intellectual History of the Islam-
icate World 2 (2014): 287–304 .
15 Ramon Llull and Noel Fallows, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, new ed. (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 1.
16 Ibid., 2.
17 Ibid., 10.
18 Ramon Llull, The Book of the Lover and Beloved, trans. Allison E. Peers (London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1923), 8.
19 Bellver, “Mirror ing the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity,” 291.
20 Llull and Fallows, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, 1 .
21 A. Mayer, “Ramon Llull and the Indispensable Dialogue,” Quaderns de la Mediterrània 14
(2010): 53–59 .

Sufism in the eyes of the West 133
22 Ibid., 55.
23 Ibid.
24 Fatiha Beniabbah, “The Idea of Human Unity in Ibn Arabi and Ramon Llull,” Quaderns
de la Mediterrània 14 (2010): 32.
25 Llull, Lover and Beloved, 18.
26 Lola Badia, Joan Santanach, and Albert Soler, Ramon Llull as a Vernacular Writer: Commu-
nicating a New Kind of Knowledge, new ed. (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), 296.
27 Bellver, “Mirroring the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity,” 292.
28 Ibid., 294.
29 Ibid.
30 Badia, Santanch, and Soler, Ramon Llull as a Vernacular Writer, 296–297.
31 Bellver, “Mirroring the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity,” 294.
32 Beniabbah, “The Idea of Human Unity in Ibn Arabi and Ramon Llull,” 32.
33 Bellver, “Mirroring the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity,” 290.
34 Ibid., 291.
35 Beniabbah, “The Idea of Human Unity in Ibn Arabi and Ramon Llull”; Bellver, “Mir-
ror ing the Islamic Tradition of the Names of God in Christianity.”
36 Ibid.
37 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina
Press, 1975), 7.
38 William Rory Dickson, Between Transformation and Tradition: Living Sufism in North Amer-
ica (New York: SUNY, 2015), 67.
39 Ibid., 68. For more on these transmissions, please see also Mark Sedgwick, Western
Sufism: From the Abbassids to the New Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
40 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 7. Alexander Knysh in Islamic Mysticism: A Short
History (Leiden: Brill, 2000) has suggested that the imagery of the torch and pitcher of
water was often noted in early French stor ies, some to the 14th century, while another
was by the French Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus (1582–1653) in his book published in
1961, entitled, La Caritee ou le purtraict de ay vraye char ite historie tiree de la vie de Saint-
Louis (Paris, 1641).
41 Carl W. Er nst, “Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism: Problematizing the Teach-
ing of Sufism” in Teaching Islam, ed. Brannon M.Wheeler (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 115; Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 57.
42 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 50–68; Ernst, “Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism,”
115. These premodern examples of non-Muslims’ experience with Sufism can also be
found in South Asia, especially with the Chishti Order, particularly because of inter-
action with a living Sufi teacher or saint. Sikhism, the tradition that emerged with the
figure of Guru Nanak (d. 1539), is another example of the degree to which Sufism
in South Asia inter mingled with Bhakti traditions of Hinduism and Islam. The Sikh
sacred text, Guru Granth Sahib, includes within it songs (ragas) from the gur us that led
the community after the first guru, Guru Nanak, but it also includes Sufi poetry. The
15th-century poet and mystic Kabir (d. 1518) is another example of the interface of
Hindu and Muslim traditions of South Asia. Kabir was an antinomian figure. Beyond
knowing that he was from Varanasi and born sometime in the 15th century into a
family of weavers, much of his biography is hagiographic. He has been claimed by
Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. Much of what is known about him has been passed down
via written compilations of his oral poems, which encourage all to be seekers of truth.
Most have also experienced Kabir in the Sikh sacred text known as the Adi Granth,
where some of Kabir’s teachings are also included.
43 Ibid.
44 Luther described the religion of Muhammad as a “doctrine of works and the sword,”
suggesting that “with lies,” Muhammad “kills souls and murders bodies,” Sarah Henrich
and James L. Boyce, “Martin Luther – Translations of Two Prefaces on Islam,” Word &
World 16, no. 2 (1996): 254.

134 Contemporary Sufism in the West
45 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 71.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Giovanni de Zorzi, “In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes: Reports by Euro-
pean Traveler s from the Sixteenth Century to the Eighteenth Century,” Mawlana Rumi
Review 6 (2015): 43.
49 G. Postel, quoted in Zorzi, “In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes,” 37.
50 Pietro dellaValle, quoted in Zorzi,“In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes,” 39.
51 Charles Ferriol, quoted in Zorzi, “In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes,” 54.
52 Zorzi, “In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes,” 60.
53 Torderini, quoted in Zorzi, “In Constantinople among Music and Dervishes,” 61–62.
54 Ibid., 65.
55 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 115.
56 Mehdi Aminrazavi, “Introduction,” in Sufism and American Literary Masters (New York:
SUNY, 2014), 1.
57 Ibid.
58 John D.Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England, 1770–1825,” Comparative Liter-
ature 4, no. 2 (1952): 137.
59 Samar Attar, Bor rowed Imagination: The British Romantics and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).
60 A. J. Arberry, Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1960), 11, 14.
61 Ibid., 14.
62 Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 138.
63 Ibid., 139.
64 Quoted in Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 141.
65 Ibid., 143.
66 Ibid.
67 John D.Yohannan, ed., A Treasury of Asian Literature (New York:The John Day Company,
1956), 10.
68 Quoted in Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 137.
69 Tomoko Masuzwa, The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism was
Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005),
150.
70 Dickson, Living Sufism in North America, 36.
71 Quoted in Dickson, Living Sufism in North America, 37.
72 For a thorough discussion of these trends, please see Sedgwick, Western Sufism.
73 H.Wilberforce Clarke, trans. The Dı̄vān -i-Hā fiz (Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks, 1998), xii.
74 Ibid., 5.
75 Quoted in Garland Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones, Vo l . 1 (Oxford: Oxford
at the Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1970).
76 Anacreon was a Greek poet who lived from ca. 582 – ca . 485 bce. Yohannan, “The
Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 143.
77 This text contains over eight pages of names of “subscribers.” It also includes a letter
of dedication to “His Grace the Duke of Richmand, Master of General of Ordnance,”
in his preface. Nott further acknowledges the translation efforts of Count Revifki, Mr.
Richardson, and Sir William Jones. He adds, “We would alike recommend a more inti-
mate acquaintance with the Persian tongue. And we lament whilst years are bestowed in
acquiring an insight into the Greek and Roman authors.” John Nott, Select Odes, From
the Persian Poet Hafez (London:T. Cadell. 1777), v.
78 Nott’s texts include the Persian original (in Persian script), English transliteration, and
Nott’s own translation, with occasional footnotes. Nott, Select Odes, ix.
79 Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 144.
80 Ibid., 143.

Sufism in the eyes of the West 135
81 Jones, quoted in Yohannan, “The Persian Poetry Fad in England,” 142.
82 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 111; Carl W. Ernst, “The Dabistan and Orientalist Views of
Sufism,” paper presentation, “Sufism East and West: Mystical Islam and Cross-Cultural
Exchange between the West and the Muslim World,” International Workshop in Mem-
ory of Professor Annemarie Schimmel, Erfurt University, Erfurt, Germany,April 15–17,
2016).Thank you to Professor Carl W. Ernst for sharing this paper with us.
83 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 110.
84 Jack Harrington, ed., Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India (New York: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2010), 1.
85 Ibid., i.
86 John Malcolm, Sketch of the Political History of India from 1784 to 1823 (London: John
Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1811).
87 Ibid.
88 John Malcolm, The History of Persia from the Most Early Period to the Present Time (Delhi:
Gyan Books, 1815), 423.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., 422.
91 Ibid., 540.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., 541.
94 Ibid.
95 Shahbuddin Suhrawardi, A Dervish Textbook: From the ’Awarifu-l -Ma’Arif, trans. H. Wil-
berforce Clarke (London: Octagon Press, 1990), 1.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Paul Kane, “Emer son and Hafiz:The Figure of the Religious Poet,” Religion & Literature
41, no. 1 (2009): 115.
99 Ibid.
100 Arber ry, Oriental Essays, 87.
101 Ibid., 88–89.
102 Quoted in Arberry, Oriental Essays, 89–90.
103 Ibid., 94.
104 Ibid., 95.
105 Ernst, Sufism, 3 .
106 Ibid.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid.
109 Mark Pattison and Alexander Pope, eds., Essay on Man, 6th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1881), 38.
110 Ernst, Sufism, 3–4 .
111 John P. Brown, The Darvishes or Oriental Spiritualism (Haarlem, Holland: Grafische
Industrie, 1868), v.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 Ibid.
115 Ibid., 8.
116 Ibid., 310, 379, 119.
117 Brown, Darvishes, 116–119.
118 Lane, quoted in Brown, Darvishes, 244.
119 Ibid., 245.
120 Ibid.
121 Arabic ter m for birthday. Sufis usually honor the birthdays of Prophet Muhammad and
Sufi saints. This was especially the case in places such as Egypt.
122 Ernst, Sufism, 5 .

136 Contemporary Sufism in the West
123 Ibid., 3–4.
124 Mohammed Sharafuddin, Islam and Romantic Orientalism: Literary Encounters with the
Orient (London; New York: I.B.Tauris, 1996), xvii.
125 Ibid.
126 Ibid., xxi.
127 Ibn Tufayl’s novel, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, published in 1160/1170, was translated from Ara-
bic into Hebrew in 1349, then into Latin by Pico della Mirandola. It would go on to
be translated into English, Dutch, German, and other European languages. For more,
please see Samar Attar’s study, Borrowed Imagination.
128 Attar, Bor rowed Imagination, xvi.
129 Ibid.
130 Yohannan, A Treasury of Asian Literature, 343.
131 Lewis Lewisohn, “English Romantics and Persian Sufi Poets: A Wellspring of Inspira-
tion for American Transcendentalists,” in Sufism and American Literary Masters, ed. Mehdi
Aminrazavi (New York: SUNY, 2014), 16.
132 Lewisohn, “English Romantics and Persian Sufi Poets,” 17. For more on this, please see
also Sedgwick, Western Sufism.
133 Lewisohn, “English Romantics and Persian Sufi Poets,” 18.
134 Ibid., 16.
135 Ibid., 29.
136 Ibid.
137 Attar, Borrowed Imagination, 6 .
138 Quoted in Attar, Bor rowed Imagination, 14.
139 Ibid., 112.
140 Andrew Warren, The Orient and theYoung Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 3.
141 Ibid.
142 Jeffrey Einboden, Islam and Romanticism: Muslim Currents from Goethe to Emerson (Lon-
don: Oneworld Publications, 2014), 7.
143 Ibid., 47.
144 Ibid., 50.
145 Ibid.
146 Ibid., 51.
147 Ibid.
148 Ibid., 53–54.
149 Ibid., 56.
150 Quoted in Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 49.
151 Ibid., 50.
152 Ibid., 47.
153 Ibid.
154 Quoted Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 48.
155 Ibid., 50.
156 Ibid., 18. Goethe’s Mahomet is an example of what Einboden calls “transnational trans-
lations”: it is “a German rendition of a French drama with an Arabian setting.” See
Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 18.
157 Goethe and Napoleon met each other on October 2, 1808, and Napoleon even took
some of Goethe’s early fiction with him as he entered Muslim lands. See Einboden,
Islam and Romanticism, 21.
158 Ibid., 59.
159 Ibid., 60.
160 Ibid., 69.
161 Quoted in Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 70–71.
162 Ibid., 71.
163 Ibid., 72.
164 Ibid.

Sufism in the eyes of the West 137
165 Ibid., 75.
166 Elmarsafy, The Enlightenment Qur’an, ii.
167 Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 77.
168 Quoted in Einboden, Islam and Romanticism, 78.
169 Katharina Mommsen, Goethe and the Poets of Arabia, trans. Michael M. Metzger (Roch-
ester, NY: Camden House, 2014), xi.
170 Quoted in Attar, Borrowed Imagination, 2014.
171 Ibid.
172 Yohannan, A Treasury of Asian Literature, 343.
173 Aminrazavi, “Introduction,” 4.
174 Ibid.
175 Ibid.
176 Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields,
1854).
177 Many spiritual seekers of the 1960s, who will be discussed in Chapter 5, were reading
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience at the time of the counterculture movement and were
influenced by his ideas of nature.
178 Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz,” 113.
179 Yohannan, A Treasury of Asian Literature, 10.
180 Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz.”
181 Aminrazavi, “Introduction,” 4.
182 Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz,” 113.
183 Ibid., 114.
184 Ibid.
185 Ibid.
186 Ibid., 118.
187 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (Boston, MA; Cambridge: James Munroe & Company,
1849), 5.
188 Ralph Waldo Emer son, The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
(Boston, MA: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1858), 728.
189 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works (London; NewYork: George Routledge and Sons, 1883),
482.
190 Kane, “Emerson and Hafiz,” 115.
191 Mansur Ekhtiyar, “Emerson’s Interest in Persian Mysticism,” in Sufism and Literary Mas-
ters in America, ed. Medhi Aminrazavi (New York: SUNY, 2014), 69.
192 Quoted in Ghulam M. Fayz, “Images of the Divine in Rumi and Whitman,” Compara-
tive Literature Studies 17, no. 1 (1980): 35.
193 Ibid.
194 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 122.
195 Yohannan, A Treasury of Asian Literature, 21–22 .
196 Ibid., 285.
197 Reportedly, one of the more expensive illuminated versions of Khayyam’s poetry in
translation (valued at an estimated £1,000) went down with the Titanic in 1912. Sedg-
wick, Western Sufism, 122.
198 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 123.
199 Aminrazavi, “Introduction,” 3.
200 William Rounseville Alger, The Poetry of the East (Boston, MA:Whittemore, Niles, and
Hall, 1856).
201 Ibid., 12.
202 Ibid., 64.
203 Ibid., 66.
204 Ibid.
205 Ibid.
206 Ibid., 19.
207 Ibid., 92.

138 Contemporary Sufism in the West
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1881.
Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina Press,
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Sedgwick, Mark. Western Sufism: From the Abbassids to the New Age. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2017.
Sharafuddin, Mohammed. Islam and Romantic Orientalism: Literary Encounters with the Orient.
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Suhrawardi, Sheikh Shahbuddin. A Dervish Textbook: From the ’Awarifu-l-Ma’Arif. Translated
by H.Wilberforce Clarke. London: Octagon Press, 1990.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston, MA:Ticknor and Fields, 1854.
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Review 6 (2015): 36–66 .

On September 6, 2007, UNESCO declared it the inter national Year of Rumi in
commemoration of the 13th-century Sufi saint’s birth. Dur ing this tr ibute, Rumi
was cited as “one of the greatest poets, philosophers, and scholars of the Islamic civ-
ilization.”
1 Exhibitions of Rumi’s texts and art were displayed, while a UNESCO
medal and stamps were issued in honor of Rumi and distr ibuted to post offices in
Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Inter national conferences were also held. Years later,
a BBC headline asked, “Why is Rumi the best-selling poet in the US?”2 William
Dalrymple would invoke a similar sentiment in asking the pertinent question: how
did Rumi “myster iously [morph] from a medieval scholar of Islamic law, or fiqh,
into an Amer ican New Age guru”?3 Long venerated by Sufi practitioners and Mus-
lims more widely as a figure representing the pinnacle of Islamic spirituality, today
Rumi shows up in yoga intensives, coffee-table books, smartphone apps, cafes, and
pithy social media quotations, just to name a few examples.
Rumi’s fame has skyrocketed in North Amer ica due to publications and
endorsements by var ious scholars, translators, poets, and politicians. Coleman Barks
has completed renditions of nearly twenty-two volumes of his poetry in the last
three decades alone. This popular ity has been further perpetuated by numerous
other figures in var ious cultural spheres. Eli Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love is one
such example.4 This novel incor porates a fictional story of Rumi’s encounter with
his enigmatic teacher Shams, all the while juxtaposing this classical relationship
of a teacher and his student with a moder n story of an Amer ican housewife, Ella
Rubenstein, who finds love again through an unlikely source. Shafak’s book on
Rumi has sold over 750,000 copies and has won several literary awards in France
and Ireland, while remaining an all-time bestseller in Turkey, where it has been used
to promote Rumi tourism.
Rumi has also reached Hollywood. There is even a biographical film cur-
rently in production. However, an early discussion of casting blockbuster actors
5
THE ERA OF RUMI
Contemporary Sufism and popular
culture

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 141
like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. to play Rumi and Shams has
proven controversial. Oprah Winfrey, with her television series Belief, has devoted
several episodes to Sufism, Rumi, and the whirling dervishes.5 On one of her other
talk-show programs, Super Soul Sunday, she recently featured the Amer ican Sufi
teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee of the Golden Sufi Center in California.6 In their
interview, Vaughan-Lee uses love, the Ninety-Nine Names of God, and Rumi to
descr ibe Sufism to Oprah. Oprah, whose voice reaches masses globally, has also
become a proponent of Sufism, Rumi, and love as a means of spiritual awakening
and attaining peace. Rumi has been embraced by the self-help world, spiritual
seekers, and the New Age movement. He has also been welcomed by the North
Amer ican gay community as a symbol of love. Rumi has even made his way into
the world of catwalks and fashionistas, with the designer Donna Karan taking inspi-
ration from his work, while Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the famous American hip-hop
artists and moguls, named one of their twins Rumi, after being inspired by the
13th-century poet’s life, poems, and legacy.7
This popularization of Rumi in the West raises philosophical queries on the
nature of Sufism and its presentation as a universal and supra-confessional tra-
dition. As is evident thus far, this universal framework for the Sufi tradition did
not develop in a vacuum, but has been the historical reality of Sufism’s reception
by non-Muslims across time and space, especially through literary cross-cultural
transmissions. Rumi’s popularity and his subsequent commodification have come
at the helm of other such similar Sufi poets. Every century of Western readers
has had a prominent and renowned Persian poet to call their own: “In 1800 it
was Hafiz, in 1900 it was Omar Khayyam, and in 2000 it is Rumi.”
8 The waves of
admiration and esteem for these poets have been due not simply to their mastery
of the word but also to a reflection of the ways in which their ideas were recon-
ciled with the prevalent sensibilities of the time: “Hafiz was interpreted to fit with
the mood of Romanticism, Omar Khayyam with the aesthetic movement,” and
Rumi to suit contemporary ideas of spiritual oneness and universality.9 For the
contemporary audience, Rumi’s poetry transcends culture, religion, and history,
finding expression in the varied means offered by the commercial market. In each
era, Sufi poetry manifests in the West through the particular possibilities offered
by the times, whether we think of Omar Khayyam poetry clubs or Rumi smart-
phone apps.
Tur ning to the proliferation of Rumi in the West, this chapter explores the
depth and breadth of this popular ization, which includes film, music, and social
media networks that are devoted to Sufism. The chapter unpacks the cr iticism that
the popular ization of Sufism, especially through mater ial culture, commodification,
and an active presence online, dilutes Sufism and thus robs Islam of its true nature.
Instead of reducing moder n disseminations of Rumi (and Sufism) to adulterations
of a “pure” tradition, we seek a nuanced analysis of Rumi’s contemporary popu-
lar ity that takes into account the histor ical precedent set by Rumi, and other Sufi
figures, wherein their teachings permeated all spheres of society, not just the explic-
itly “religious.” This chapter hence analyzes and explores the diverse perspectives,

142 Contemporary Sufism in the West
practices, and products that the “universal” inter pretation of Sufism has fostered in
the modern period, through the case study of Rumi.
The moder n popular ization of Rumi is, however, complicated by the polariza-
tion of Sufism as the “antidote” to militant movements in Muslim societies. This
assumption can negate Sufism’s or igins in Islamic and Quranic ethos, and reduces
the diversity of Islamic and Sufi traditions as a whole, as discussed in Chapter 3.
Scholars including Safi and Er nst have tr ied to showcase some cor relation between
the r ise of Rumi before and after 9/11. There is a sense that Rumi plays a “recon-
ciliatory” role promoting an Islam of “love” and peace in stark contrast to the “age
of ter ror” portrayed in news media, hence adding further popular ity to Rumi in
a post-9/11 milieu.10 Rumi’s path to fame in the West, however, was planted well
before 9/11. In 1997, Er nst told the Christian Science Monitor: “I think it’s extremely
interesting that at the same time, politically speaking, there is this intense, ideo-
logical confrontation with Islamic fundamentalism ... this spirituality that Rumi
represents has obviously touched a very deep ner ve in the Amer ican psyche.”
11Itis
this contrast between the growing popular ity of Rumi (a Muslim saint) alongside
the spread of Islamophobia that remains far more cur ious, but has also refashioned
Rumi as a mediator and builder of bridges across an assumed cultural dissonance.
This, nevertheless, does not resolve the conundrum that the same Amer ican cultural
context in which Islamophobia seems to be growing is the one wherein Rumi is
the bestselling poet.
In both Muslim and non-Muslim spaces, Sufism and its r itual aspects – such
as music and dance – penetrated culture, trade, and public spaces. Histor ically, and
in its transmission process, Sufism has not been an exclusively Muslim endeavor.
Sufism’s appeal among non-Muslims has been dependent on a universal outlook,
one that was actively embraced and promoted by Muslims such as Rumi. Rumi’s
poetics of love and longing have captured the imagination of Western seekers of
a life-affir ming spirituality, and it acts as a creative and spiritual catalyst for a var i-
ety of artists, wr iters, and entrepreneurs in the West. While Sufi personalities and
practices of var ious for ms have been introduced and interwoven into the fabric of
the contemporary West, in recent years Rumi has become the exemplar of not just
American Sufism but also the spiritually plural Amer ican landscape at large.
The making of the “Rumi phenomenon” in America
The phrase “Rumi phenomenon” was first coined by the scholar Amira El-Zein.
For El-Zein, the phenomenon situates Rumi within the broader movement of
“spiritual consumption” in the United States. She places this popular ity within
what she ter ms “New Sufism” – a variation of the “New Age” phenomenon that
unfolded in the Amer ican spiritual landscape and was similarly led by a year n-
ing or questing impulse.12 Similar to El-Zein, Franklin D. Lewis uses the phrase
“Rumi-mania” to situate the poet’s Amer ican popular ity.13 The ter m “New Age
movement” was used by sociologists studying the r ise of new religious movements,
particularly in the Amer ican context in the 1980s and 1990s.14 Participants in these

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 143
movements re-emerged from the countercultural spiritual scene of the 1960s and
1970s. Many were responding to the US gover nment’s involvement in theVietnam
War, while others were active in the civil and women’s r ights movements. In the
midst of all these social changes and culture of active protests, many of the younger
generation were also leaving churches and synagogues – the religious institutions
into which they were bor n – and began to gravitate to new religious movements,
especially those with Easter n origins. As Robert Wuthnow documents, beginning
in the 1960s and 1970s, Amer icans shifted from a “spirituality of dwelling,” based
around community churches and temples, to a “spirituality of seeking,” centered on
an individual quest for personal transfor mation.15
As noted in Chapter 4, the Amer ican landscape was well fertilized with tra-
ditions from the East, especially through textual transmissions. Theosophical and
esoter ic movements were growing, while interests in world religions also led to
conventions such as the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, just
as “metaphysical” understandings of Christianity were also emerging in the Amer-
ican context.16 These developments laid the groundwork for living teachers from
Sufi, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions to cultivate communities in Amer ica in the
20th century. The American context was one that included interest in poets like
the Lebanese Christian mystic Khalil Gibran (d. 1931), but also growing interest in
Catholic saints such as St. Francis of Assisi and St.Teresa of Avila (d. 1582), alongside
Hindu, Buddhist, and Zen philosophies. Rumi, and other Sufi poets such as Hafiz,
existed within this broader spiritual milieu in Amer ica, though Rumi’s poetry
would attract a spotlight in ways that some of these other mystical figures did not.
“Jalaloddin Barks”: Coleman Barks and the making of Rumi-mania
In 1976, Robert Bly gave Coleman Barks a copy of A. J. Arberr y’s translations
of Rumi and told him to “release these from their scholarly cages.”
17 In a sense,
Bly seemed to suggest that Barks transport Rumi from the context of Orientalist
translations into a more popular and contemporary idiom. Here, we can see how
Orientalism created the textual resources from which later interpretations would
develop. However, Bly, in asking Barks to “release” Rumi’s poems from “their schol-
arly cages,” implied that Orientalist translations were limited by their context, and
that Rumi’s poetry needed to be ver nacular ized in a new way to be accessible to
contemporary audiences. Barks “felt drawn immediately to the spaciousness and
longing in Rumi’s poetry” and “began to explore this new world...”
18 which set
Barks to work on prepar ing Rumi’s words in “... casual Amer ican free verse.”
19
Bly, born in Minnesota in 1926, was a poet, author, editor, and translator who
wrote more than thirty books. As a translator, through works such as Mirabai, he
introduced Indian, European, and South Amer ican poets to a wide American audi-
ence.20 Bly also translated (and co-translated) poems of Hafiz and Rumi, and often
perfor med poetry readings, as featured in films such as Rumi: Poet of the Heart.21
Barks was a literature Professor at the University of Georgia. He began to
self-publish some of his renditions of Rumi’s poetry and was eventually picked

144 Contemporary Sufism in the West
up by other publishers.22 Barks’s translations of Rumi’s poems in 1997 sold over
a quarter million copies. The Essential Rumi, a collection of Barks’s renditions of
Rumi’s poetry, sold 50,000 copies in the first six months alone, and made it onto
Billboard’s Top 20 list. It is the number one bestseller on Amazon (US) in Ancient
and Classical poetry, while the same translation made The Huffington Post’s “11
Must-Read Books by Muslim Authors” in 2016. Comparatively, Pulitzer Pr ize
winners barely sell 10,000 copies of their books – how is it that Barks’s rendition of
Rumi’s poetry into “Amer ican verse” gained such popular ity?
In the preface to The Winged Energy of Delight,23 Bly explains why he thinks
Rumi is popular among Amer icans:
Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable librar y of
poetry than a person. In his poems, Rumi often adopts the transparent “you,”
using it so beautifully that each of us feels as if we too were being spoken to.
Coleman Barks has echoed that tender “you” so brilliantly in his translations
that we will never get over our g ratitude ... When I started reading Rumi,
all at once I felt at home. I think many readers of his work have that feeling.
It’s almost as if his poems resonate in some echo chamber that we retain in
memory.24
Though Barks self-published smaller volumes of Rumi’s poetry, it was The Essential
Rumi, published by Har perCollins in 1995 (which initially printed 250,000 copies),
that has been one of the most successful poetry books published in America in the
1990s.25 Barks worked with John Moyne and other scholars on this project. Barks
has attr ibuted his style of translations to the inspiration of Bly, Kenneth Rexroth
(d. 1982), and Ezra Pound – individuals who followed the “aggressively unaca-
demic translation.”
26 It is this style that has resulted in Barks’s ability to “create an
American Rumi: one who speaks across the centuries with a voice as direct and
imperative as a tug on the shirt.”
27
Many translations of Rumi’s poetry have been available in the West, primarily
from scholars such as Arberry, who supplied the version that Bly first gave to Barks.
Yet, it is not these close translations that have popularized Rumi, but the free verse
method employed by Barks. Barks’s translations of Rumi have received criticism,
especially from “linguistic” and “academic” perspectives.28 Elena Furlanetto, as well as
El-Zein, point to Barks’s lack of training in Persian. Furlanetto calls attention to the:
Rumi phenomenon as a discourse on the “Orient” produced in the West for
the West, from which the “Orient” itself (the place- and time-specific value
of Rumi’s poetry) has been completely left out – as if Rumi had “migrated”
from the Islamic tradition to Americanness, losing the relevance of the or ig-
inal Persian along the way.29
A cr iticism that has been offered by numerous scholars, such as Lewis, is that
Barks “teleport(s) the poems of Rumi out of their cultural and Islamic context

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 145
into the inspirational discourse of non-parochial spirituality” and thus is a for m of
“spiritual colonization” as Safi has suggested.30 Although this is one way to frame
the way in which Rumi has been presented, Barks feels differently about the Rumi
he has channeled. Although Barks has received strong criticism from Western aca-
demics for his lack of training in Persian and somewhat decontextualized (or recon-
textualized) presentations of Rumi, some scholars in Iran have been appreciative of
the way in which Barks has been able to communicate the message of one of their
“own” – a Persian, Muslim saint and poet who remains beloved in Iran. In 2006, the
University of Tehran awarded an honorary doctorate to Barks. Barks was initially
reticent to accept the honor as he does not work in Persian (Farsi), but eventually
agreed after asking that his mentor Bly also be recognized. Though Bly was not
awarded a doctorate, he was also acknowledged by the University of Tehran, and
the two Amer ican authors descr ibe having a wonderful time in the country in
Rumi: Bridge to the Soul, Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart (2007).31
Barks explained in an interview with Time magazine in 2002,
I’m actually a little embarrassed by the New Age. I want people just to stay
with what they love, what they really know. I don’t know why my own ver-
sions are so popular, but maybe hopefully it’s because something is coming
through and recognized as truthful.32
Jerome W. Clinton wr ites that the answer to the question of why Rumi (especially
Barks’s version of Rumi) has received such popularity is to be found:
[F]irst, in the recent burgeoning spiritual consciousness of many Amer icans,
and, second, in the happy alchemy of the right translator appear ing at the
r ight time. The success of The Essential Rumi is viewed by the publishing
industry as simply one item in the more general phenomenon of the success
of works on spirituality, an outr ider to the impulse that has kept Scott Peck’s
The Road Less Traveled and Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul on best seller lists
for years.33
It is Barks’s ability to recast and transmit Rumi in a way digestible to North
Amer icans (which was not accomplished by those who came before him) that
has played such a significant role. “Barks was the first to come to the task as both
a practicing Sufi and an established poet, and the first to place translating Rumi
at the heart of his own work,”
34 so much so that Clinton christens Barks “Jalal-
oddin Barks” ( just as Fitzgerald, known for his translation of Khayyam gained the
epithet of Fitz Omar).35 Barks is a student of the Tamil Sufi teacher Muhammad
Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (d. 1986), who is bur ied in Pennsylvania, US. In sev-
eral interviews, Barks shares that it was the encouragement and relationship with
his own Sufi teacher, Bawa, that drove his work on Rumi further. Perhaps Barks’s
own deep relationship to Sufism and Rumi, and his training in poetr y, in addition
to his Amer ican identity has proved to be the ideal composition to be a translator

146 Contemporary Sufism in the West
of Rumi’s poetry. At the same time, Amer ica, both spiritually and culturally, was
primed to receive Barks’s Rumi.
Barks has been featured on numerous documentar ies on Rumi, and television
specials such as Bill Moyers’s PBS show Journal, which further catapulted Barks’s
and Rumi’s popular ity. In 2005, Barks accepted an invitation from the gover nment
of Afghanistan to visit Rumi’s birthplace, thus gaining notice not only in the West
but also in the land of Rumi himself. Since gaining his fame, Barks has embraced
speaking and poetry reading engagements across the globe. For instance, in Toronto,
Canada, on November 3, 2012, an event entitled Remembering Rumi was hosted by
the Inner Garden, a Toronto-based community organization interested in spiritual-
ity. This particular event dedicated to Rumi took place in the Eastminster United
Church, and featured Barks reading from his translations of Rumi to the music of
Garo & Fr iends, a band dedicated to the works of Rumi, while whirling dervishes
perfor med. Barks has become popular for such readings of his poems of Rumi,
which attract a wide sector of individuals, from Muslim Sufis to non-Muslim Sufis
and everyone in between.
Rumi as the main character: Novels, comics, and popular literature
Barks’s works on Rumi and their popular consumption have opened the doors for
others to attempt what he has done.Whereas Barks produced renditions of Rumi’s
poetry, others have used other for mats, such as Rumi-inspired novels. Some notable
examples include Muriel Maufroy’s Rumi’s Daughter,36 Connie Zweig’s A Moth to
the Flame,37 Nahal Tajadad’s Rumi:The Fire of Love,38 and Roger Housden’s Chasing
Rumi.39 Figures such as Rumi and Hafiz also appear as inspirations and reincar nated
characters in contemporary novels, such as Manoucher Parvin’s Dardedel.40 This
novel is wr itten in full verse, in keeping with the tradition of Hafiz and Rumi, but
is based in contemporary New York. As Parvin descr ibes it, “a Persian dish cooked
in Amer ica.”
41 Other novels based on Rumi also abound, including Rabisandkar
Bal’s A Mirrored Life.42 This book was or iginally written in Bengali and translated
into English. However, the most popular novel thus far, especially in Amer ica, is Elif
Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love.43
Of Turkish decent, Shafak was bor n in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She writes in
English and Turkish, and splits her time between London and Istanbul. The theme
of Sufism is woven throughout most of Shafak’s twelve books, especially her first
Turkish novel, Pinhan,44 and her more recent novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.45 The
Forty Rules of Love follows two stor ies: one in present-day Boston, and the other in
13th-century Konya. The for mer follows the story of Jewish-Amer ican housewife
and literary agent Ella Rubenstein and novelist Aziz Zahara, whose relationship
mystically parallels that of Shams and Rumi. In an interview, Shafak explains how
the following authors cultivated her interest in Sufism:
My interest in Sufism began about 16 years ago when I was a college student.
At the time I was intrigued by the subject. As years passed I kept reading.

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 147
Annemar ie Schimmel, Idries Shah, Coleman Barks, William Chittick, Karen
Armstrong, Sachiko Murata, Kabir Helminski ... I see Sufism as a tapestry
of colors and patterns. In my novel Sufism is not introduced as a theoretical,
abstract teaching. It is a living, breathing, moving, peaceful energy. I am inter-
ested in what Sufism means for us in the moder n world. I wanted to bring
out how Rumi’s philosophy appeals to us today, even when we seem to be
miles and centur ies and cultures away from it.46
The Forty Rules of Love is estimated to have sold over 750,000 copies. It was a
bestseller in Turkey and has also received inter national acclaim. The novel drew
attention across many news outlets, such as the UK-based newspaper The Indepen-
dent: “Challenging truisms of the fundamentalist Islamic or ient and the consumer-
ist Judeo-Christian occident, the novel proposes Sufism as a quest for spirituality
which can fill the void at the heart of both.”
47 Above, Shafak indicates her personal
relationship with Sufism, which she has been explor ing for years, but it is the pop-
ular reception of her work that has framed Sufism as the solution to Islam. Rumi
and Sufism get caught between these larger religious and civilizational contests of
representation, as will be noticeable throughout this chapter. Rumi and Sufism
continue to gain popularity only as they are r id of their religious and cultural
or igins – an Amer icanized Rumi, it seems, is not one who is openly Muslim and
Persian. Furlanetto has explained that Shafak’s book “domesticates Sufism for an
Amer ican readership,” which is further affirmed as Shafak uses Barks’s translations
of Rumi poetry throughout the text.48
Shafak’s role in such a reproduction of Rumi is also a complex one. In her TEDx
Talk, “The Politics of Fiction,” which has close to two million views, Shafak draws
attention to her broader literary agenda of writing for the East and the West.49
For her, this project has been aided by engaging with Rumi and Shams, but more
importantly by the movement of the whirling dervishes. Whirling entails fluidity
and ease, which allows for unity, not separation; a symbiosis that Shafak hopes the
East and the West will have with each other.50 For Shafak, Rumi symbolizes the
essence of Sufism for the contemporary period, not only in her wr iting endeavors
but also in her personal life.
Rumi’s presence in the world of literature is not restricted to poetry and novels.
It also involves picture books for children. Children’s books such as Elephant in the
Dark are inspired by Rumi’s “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”
51 The same author
wrote The Secret Message, based on a poem by Rumi.52 Daybreak Press Global
Bookshop, a community-based organization in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a
focus on faith, social justice, and women’s empower ment, also has a children’s book
ser ies, called “Tales from Rumi,” which includes ten books dedicated to Rumi.
Some titles are Three Pieces of Advice, The Camel and the Mouse, and The Lion and
the Rabbit.53 These books are used to teach ideas of ethical values and love, while
stressing the spirituality for children.
Rumi’s poetry has inspired the works of other children’s authors, such as Lilian
Kars. Kars’s book More Than a Me was inspired by the following quotation from

148 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Rumi’s poem: “You are not just a drop in the Ocean;You are the entire ocean in a
drop.”
54 The publishing press wrote the following of the book:
That idea is what More Than a Me is all about and Mathew James, alongside
[with] Lilian Kars and Steffie Padmos, are happy to help continue to spread
Rumi’s message and encourage his legacy to live on through the adventures
of Little Drop and the children that read them.55
On the same page, the following descr iption of Rumi is included:
A writer of both poetry and prose, his work is der ived from unity with the
Beloved. He believed strongly in his faith and was undeniably a Muslim
scholar. He also believed strongly that music and poetr y would bring a person
closer to God ... there is more than just a religious view that can be found
within his words.56
Perhaps the most popular children’s book on Rumi is by the celebrated illustrator
Demi, or Charlotte Hunt. Bor n in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Demi has over 300
books to her name. Most of her popular works have been published with Wisdom
Tale Press. Some of her more recent books are of spiritual figures across cultures
and religions. They include Francis of Assisi, the Jain teacher Mahavira, and Attar’s
The Conference of the Birds. Others have also included stor ies of the lives of Prophet
Muhammad and Buddha. Influenced by Persian and Turkish miniature style paint-
ings, Demi tells the story of Rumi in her children’s book Rumi:Whirling Dervish.57
The popular ity of these books is not only because of their engagement with differ-
ent cultures and traditions, but also because of their orientation toward a spiritual
ethos, which is enjoyed by parents and teachers. In many instances, these children’s
books on Rumi appear on the blog pages of mothers who share parenting tips,
including which books to purchase for their children.
Versions of Rumi’s poems also exist for young readers (such as Ali Furat Bil-
kan’sTales from Rumi,58 which is partially illustrated), while Rumi comics (online and
in print) have further become popular. Sufi Comics, which began as an online comic
series on Sufism, has now printed an e-version comic on Rumi by Mohammed Arif
Vakil and Mohammad Ali Vakil, two Indian brothers who grew up in Dubai and
moved to Bangalore in 2002. Their ser ies 40 Sufi Comics, which started from the
brothers’ blogging Islamic stories through comic str ips, has been published in ten
languages.They went on to publish the Wise Fool of Baghdad (2012)59 and the third
in their graphic representation series on Rumi.60 They used American translator
Andrew Harvey’s translations of Rumi’s poetr y, while also including passages of the
Qur’an after every section. In an interview with The National, the brothers explain,
“Rumi is often quoted in social media as a writer of love poems, but his verses did
not portray love between two people – they spoke of his yearning for God.”
61 Arif
goes on to explain that, “Some people have told us they read a single comic strip in
the mor ning and have a positive message to carry with them all day.”
62 Their comic
on Rumi was featured at the Comic Con convention in Bangalore in 2014.63

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 149
Rumi, along with al-Ghazali and Ibn Sina, has also been featured in var ious
ser ies of the online Existential Comics.64 One popular comic from the online comic
ser ies Zen Pencils was Rumi’s “The Guest House,” again taken from Barks’s version
of this particular poem.65 The discussion thread on this particular comic is fasci-
nating to follow, as discussants share their exper iences of Rumi, especially through
Barks, while also shar ing var ious resources on whirling and much more. From
Shafak’s works to those of Demi and comic books, Rumi’s poetr y and his message
are showcased in var ious print and written media. In most of these incidences,
Rumi is framed as a Sufi personality, but in other cases, Rumi has transfor med into
a “self-help guru.”
“Keep calm and read Rumi!” Rumi, self-help books,
and spiritual biographies
Andrew Harvey is a poet and novelist who lives in Nevada, US.Aside from being an
author of texts that deal with spirituality, meditations, and much more, he is also the
founding director of the Institute for Sacred Activism. Harvey was born in South
India in 1952 and studied at Oxford University. He has authored such texts as Son
of Man,66 The Return of the Mother,67 and A Journey in Ladakh.68 In his The Way of
Passion,69 Harvey writes that
Rumi is increasingly seen for what I believe he is – not only our supreme
poet – but also an essential guide to the new mystical Renaissance that
is struggling to be bor n against ter r ible odds in the rubble of our dying
civilization.70
Harvey uses the translations of Arberry, Nicholson, Edward Henry Whinefield (d.
1922), and Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch (d. 1999); the latter translated Rumi into
French. He explains that he is:
A disciple of Divine Mother who is working with all religions and all mysti-
cal traditions with simplicity and unconditional Love to transfor m humanity
at this moment and to give humanity a chance in this time to find its spiritual
truth again and transfor m the terr ifying conditions that threaten us all. I am
teaching Rumi because in my journey with, in, for, through, and by Mother
Meera, by through, with and in the Divine Mother, I have found that my
noblest guide and most precise inspiration has been Jalal-ud-Din Rumi.71
In his introduction to Teachings of Rumi, Harvey writes:
Rumi now commands in the West what he has long commanded in the
East – an unassailable position as the most poignant and vibrant of all cele-
brators of the Path of Love and as a supreme witness, in a way that transcends
all national, cultural, and religious boundaries, to the myster ies of Divine
Identity and Presence.72

150 Contemporary Sufism in the West
He compares Rumi to the “intellect of a Plato, the vision and enlightened soul-
force of a Buddha or a Christ and the extravagant literary gifts of a Shakespeare,”
and also Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, and Kabir, who were the “very few univer-
sal beings that the world religions have produced who [have] possessed and lived
Love in its splendor.”
73 For Harvey, a “Return of Rumi” will provide hope for the
“human race and preser ve the planet.”
74 Though one may think Harvey appeals to
a “New Age” audience, he is actually cr itical of this movement and the placement
of Rumi within it. For him, the New Age is one of “narcissism,” “lazy greed of
appropriation,” and lacks “concer n for political, social, and environmental issues,”
which has led to a misrepresentation of Rumi or what he calls the “Rosebud
Rumi.”
75 This Rumi is a “Califor nian hippie-like figure of vague ecstatic sweetness
and diffused ‘war m-hearted’ brotherhood, a kind of medieval Jer ry Garcia of the
Sacred Heart.”
76 So who is Rumi for Harvey?
Rumi is indeed an ecstatic, the greatest of all celebrators of that ecstasy that
streams from the Presence of Love. He is also ... the canniest, shrewdest,
most unsentimental, and sober of teachers, very un-New Age in his refusal to
deny the power of evil, his candor about the limits of all worldly and earthly
enlightenment, his Jesus-like suspicion of all for ms of wealth and power, and
his embrace of the sometimes terr ible and prolonged suffer ing that authen-
tic transfor mation must and does demand. This r igorous, fierce, author ita-
tive Rumi, the veteran of the wars of Love, is what our spiritual renaissance
deeply needs to listen to and lear n from.77
Harvey has an active presence on social media, but his presence is not limited to
transmitting texts. He also facilitates numerous online and in-person seminars on
Sufism and Rumi. He is one of the faculty members and directors leading a course
called Mystical Andalusia: Garden Amidst the Flames, Ibn Arabi, Rumi and the Dances of
Oneness as part of Wisdom University in Spain in 2017. The course, which could
count toward university credits if registered students are interested, is mainly open to
anyone who is able to pay the tuition. The course includes travels to pilgrimage sites
related to Ibn al-’Arabi, Sufism in Spain, and dance (whirling) associated with Rumi.
The following course descr iption is provided on the university’s main website:
Although they lived nearly 1,000 years ago, Ibn Arabi’s path of gnosis and
Rumi’s vision of sacred passion can galvanize our hearts and minds in our
time of complexity, turbulence and uncertainty. Dive into their transfor ma-
tive knowledge of the divine and practice of love and surrender through the
Dance of Oneness. Immerse yourself in a sacred field of empower ing grace
that supports you in living with reverence and light from your deepest pas-
sion in the very midst of life. Ignite your creative flame, g round and embody
your passion and what makes you most ALIVE through a weaving of sacred
dance set to world music, whirling, zambra/flamenco, free-style dance, chant-
ing, meditation, yoga, Sufi teachings and poetry, history and philosophy.78

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 151
Banafsheh Sayyad, founder of Dance of Oneness, is also teaching the course with
Harvey. More will be said of her below, when we turn to whirling as a central aspect
of Rumi’s popular ity.
Harvey, who has been featured in the NewYork Times,TedEd, The Huffington Post,
BBC and ABC, also hosts an online program known as “A Year of Rumi.” For a one-
time fee (i.e., between $10 and $40), you receive “lessons” each day for 365 days.79
According to the website, over 20,000 people have participated in this virtual Year
of Rumi program. Several participant testimonials are included on the website itself:
Rumi brings me closer to God than I have ever been. I feel as though Rumi
lives within me and I, him. I hope to find through this course that Rumi can
help me let go and let God. – Courtney.
I have found that every time I read a Rumi poem it immediately resonates
with my soul, my spirit. I used to be in quest for the perfect Rumi poem;
however, I have found that each are so loving and beautiful that they are
expanding inside of me. The more I take them in the more they grow and
deeper the feelings of these gems go inside my soul, my spirit. There is a
personal jour ney commencing for me and I find that there are few words to
adequately explain what I am feeling but that of the feeling of joy. – Tammy.80
Harvey also hosted a free virtual event called “Dancing in Rumi’s Footsteps: How
His Poetry & Wisdom can Liberate Your Soul’s Passion & Heart’s Ecstasy”:
In this exciting free teleseminar event, mystic scholar Andrew Harvey, who’s
wr itten and edited more than thirty books, will bring alive the core spiritual
teachings of Rumi and the mystical initiation he exper ienced – and allow
you to see his breathtaking body of work through fresh eyes. This evening
event will be a poetic call to action of the sacred heart that illuminates your
own spiritual transfor mation. Andrew will reveal what we all can lear n from
the words of this great seer and lover of life.81
Events such as these online seminars by Harvey have resulted in new for ms of
accessibility, especially in cyberspace. Access to the poetr y of Rumi has increased
significantly from the early 1990s, when Barks was one of the key figures creating
Amer icanized versions of Rumi’s poetry. Barks’s renditions have led to more trans-
lators attempting a similar process, as evidenced above by what Harvey is doing.
Barks and Harvey not only provide access to Rumi via the texts that they write
but also run courses and speak at poetry readings.These larger events and the more
textual traditions such as novels and comic books that have resulted from the works
of Barks and Harvey have led to more attention for Rumi, especially from figures
who are also considered to be popular “gurus.”
For instance, the best example of this is evident in the figure of Deepak Chopra,
the spiritual teacher and public figure who also published a text on Rumi, entitled
Rumi – Thief of Sleep.82 Other spiritual teachers, such as Joseph Arouet, have also

152 Contemporary Sufism in the West
tr ied their hand at a similar market: the one of self-help books. Arouet has authored
popular texts such as A Beginners Guide to Rumi,83 Stress Free Living & Sufism,84 and
Stress Free Living and Buddhism.85 Yahiya Emerick, an Amer ican convert to Islam,
with his Complete Idiot’s Guide to Rumi Meditations, further captures a similar senti-
ment.86 He is also available in a self-help audiobook version aimed at stressed New
York commuters.87 These figures, from Barks to Harvey and Chopra, have become
experts in the popular realm of Rumi and his poetry, and thus are seen to be spe-
cialists on Sufism at large. However, many academics remain cr itical.Their popular
approach is evident in documentar ies such as Rumi Returning88 and Rumi: Poet of the
Heart,89 wherein Rumi is compared to Buddha, Jesus, Shakespeare, and Plato, and
is discussed by Harvey, Bly, and Barks. Finally, as descr ibed above, the ways through
which Rumi is being made available to the wider public just begin to point to
Rumi’s influence in broader Amer ican society.
Sufism and the arts: Music, Rumi tours, and the big screen
Rumi and visual art
When Barks first began translations of Rumi’s poetry, he was approached by
Michael Green, a Sufi artist. Barks met Green at the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellow-
ship, as both were students of Bawa. Barks and Green collaborated on a new project
that led to The Illuminated Rumi.90 Green explained the beginning of this project
in an interview:
There’s this guy ... and I get to know him and his name is Coleman Barks
... I lear ned he’s a professor of English down south [at] some university. And
at one point I lear ned that he’s done some renditions of a poet named Rumi
who I’d never heard of, no one had heard of at that time. And I think he gave
me a copy and then I learned six months later the whole thing is, I mean he
self-published a book on translating a Persian poet you sell twenty copies.
And he had sold like five thousand copies, he completely sold out and did
another edition and then sold it to a publisher. And Rumi kept going b u m p,
bump, bump and each time it was like well it won’t do better than this. But in
any case, I approached him and said why don’t you and I collaborate? And I’ll
“illuminate” and I used that word as opposed to illustrate, Rumi.And I played
around with it for a while until I just suddenly realized that my model was
the illuminated manuscr ipts, both Persian and Christian, which you know,
had the ... gospel here and the picture here.91
Published nearly twenty years ago, Barks and Green’s The Illuminated Rumi con-
tinues to sell well, though it is not a bestseller at present, as it was when it was
initially published. Green’s “illuminated” Rumi has been so successful that it has
been used for annual calendars, g reetings cards, and jour nals, all of which can be
purchased on Amazon or through Amber Lotus Publishing, which sells other spir-
itually inspired products, as well.92

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 153
Green produced a second illuminated Rumi book,93 which did not achieve the
same publishing success of the first project. The second book was not in collaboration
with Barks, though Green did use Barks’s translations of Rumi’s poetry. Green felt that
this may have been because of the publishing press and its advertising strategy. In his
illuminations, Green employs classical Islamic geometric patterns, floral repetitions, and
religious symbolism, while also super imposing images and graphics of modern Hindu
and Buddhist gurus, Christian saints, and figures from Asian and Persian miniatures.
One of the central messages repeated in Green’s works is the principle teaching that he
attributes to his shaykh (teacher) Bawa:“The ‘I’ is an illusion, God alone is real.” Green’s
Rumi-influenced illuminations extend beyond books. They can also be seen in his
Green Barn studio, or what he likes to refer to as his “ashram.”This space continues the
theme of Rumi while combining English and Arabic calligraphy with the added flavor
of Pennsylvania barn culture. It has transformed the scale of Green’s Sufi- (but mostly
Rumi-) inspired works into installations of varying sizes, some which are wall paint-
ings, while others are spatial installations (i.e., hang ing canoes and drums). He also uses
the studio as a performance space for his musical group, the Illumination Band, of whom
more will be said below. Green purchased the barn, located near the burial shrine
(mazar) of Bawa, which Green himself designed and which remains one of the few Sufi
shrines in America. Green reworks impressions and motifs drawn from his immediate
landscape in Pennsylvania: the rolling hills, the remnants of old barn doors and pieces,
while exploring and transforming Native American traditions.The influence of Rumi
in popular culture, as in Green’s illuminations, signals the role material culture plays in
the introduction of non-Christian forms of spirituality into American popular culture.
Green is not the only artist who has used Rumi’s work, though he is one of the
more popular ones in North America. Companies such as the online shop Pixels sell
Rumi t-shirts and sweaters with quotations attributed to Rumi, and Rumi artwork
by such artists as Mawra Tahreem and Bill Wakeley on t-shirts and iPhone cases.94
Start-up companies like Etsy (founded in 2005 and based out of Brooklyn, NewYork)
provide an online marketplace for people from around the world to sell creative and
unique items. A quick search for “Rumi” leads not only to clothing but also to wall
art, jewelry, laptop stickers, scarfs, cups, bags, dervish cookie cutters, bookmarks, Rumi
prayer flags, and much more – in fact, close to 2,000 items – for purchase.95
These artistic interests in Rumi have also led to festivals, such as the Rumi Fes-
tival held by the Beshara School, a Sufi organization based on the teachings of Ibn
al-‘Arabi in the UK. For instance, this particular festival was a:
... gather ing of artists, scholars, and lovers of truth, celebrating the life work
and contemporar y relevance of a giant of world spirituality and literature.
Its programme is intended to reflect the wholeness and diversity of Rumi’s
vision, at once challenging and generous, ser ious and playful, spiritually aspir-
ing while being firmly planted on this earth.96
The event included the installations of Turkish painter Ismail Acar, who focuses
on many aspects of Turkish culture, including whirling dervishes. The festival

154 Contemporary Sufism in the West
comprised theater, dance, and a var iety of visual arts based on Rumi. Other similar
such Rumi festivals are now the nor m across the US and the globe. For instance,
the eighth Oslo Inter national Rumi Festival that took place January 29–31, 2015,
advertised itself as having its “feet planted in both the traditional and the contem-
porary.”
97 Dur ing the first two-day Rumi Festival in Toronto, Canada, at Trinity
St. Paul’s Centre, for mer Gover nor General Adrienne Clarkson and her partner
John Ralston Saul were guests at the opening night.98 The festival was opened
by Barks with his readings on Rumi while Noman Siddiqui, Director of Nor-
mans Land Promotions and an award-winning composer, performed Turkish music
during Barks’s recitations.99 Some of the funds from this event were used to aid
those affected by the flooding in Pakistan in 2010. Another common feature of
these festivals is the appearance of whirling dervish perfor mers. In fact, Rumi has
become synonymous with whirling dervishes in the popular North Amer ican
imagination.
Whirling with Rumi and Sufi tourism
“Whirling Dervish” has made it into the everyday ver nacular, though the defi-
nition found in Urban Dictionary does not capture the origins of this tradition.
According to Urban Dictionary (a satirical online dictionary popular with youth),
a whirling dervish is “a person whose behavior resembles a rapid, spinning object.
These actions are often spastic fidgeting and incessant babbling.The actions of the
whirling dervish are ir ritating and annoying, often exhausting other people in the
immediate vicinity.”
100 Despite the use of “whirling” as an adjective and its odd
entry into ever yday language usage, the tradition of whirling was historically asso-
ciated with Rumi’s Mevlevi Sufi order, which for med after his death.
As noted in Chapter 4, many Europeans who traveled to Ottoman Turkey were
deeply fascinated by the tradition of whirling and the accompanying music. This
tradition of traveling to see dervishes in Turkey has only become far more common
because of growing interest in Rumi.Today, most online tour companies and guides
offer var ious popular ized versions of a “Whirling Dervish Show in Istanbul.” This
contrasts Turkey’s 1925 ban on Sufi movements and centers, such as those of the
Mevlevi order, after becoming a secular nation-state at the end of the Ottoman
Empire. One of the activities that unfolded in the Mevlevi order’s centers was the
sacred music-based ceremony known as sama‘. In 1953, sama‘ was per mitted to
take place as a cultural celebration commemorating Turkey’s great poet, Rumi. In
so doing, Sufism, at a state level, was viewed as a for m of Turkish cultural dance. In
1964, UNESCO invited a small group of whirling dervishes to Par is for one of the
earliest visits by the Mevlevis outside of Turkey. According to Shems Fr iedlander
(the award-winning graphic designer, accomplished photographer, painter, poet,
and author on Rumi and Sufism) who photographed this event, this was
their first European tr ip, Selman Tuzon and Suleyman Loras sat on the
Sheikh’s red post as nine semazan [whirling dervishes] turned to the music of

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 155
several dervish musicians. This event signaled the beginning of a widespread
interest in the West in the remarkable works of Rumi.101
Turkish tour ism campaigns have now capitalized on this Wester n interest, where
whirling concerts are held at restaurants all over Istanbul and sold to unknowing
tour ists as the authentic exper ience. Rumi’s tomb in Konya is the second most
visited tour ist attraction, only after Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, which was the seat
of the Ottoman sultans.102 Kevin Gould, a travel writer for The Guardian, has been
traveling to Konya almost every year since 1983. Some estimates of these tour-
ists suggest nearly two million annually, including Turks, Iranians, and Western-
ers. Gould advises his readers to stay in Konya and have the real exper ience with
authentic cuisine and tea, as you make your way to Rumi’s tomb, which is officially
treated as a museum.103 Numerous Turkish online travel blogs advertise “The Sufi
Mystic Experience and Rumi” and offer you lodging at dargahs (Sufi centers) and
opportunities to learn how to whirl. The most popular time for the Rumi tour to
be taken is dur ing early December, just so that it is timed with the ’urs of Rumi.
Dur ing the death anniversar y commemorations, the Rumi Festival takes place in
Konya, unfolding over ten days and attracting people from all over the globe, and is
televised.104 The practice of whirling has been listed as an “intangible her itage” by
UNESCO.105 Academics, including Duke Professor Safi, also organize the “Illumi-
nated Tours” to Turkey dur ing the summer. Travel guidebooks, such as Istanbul the
Guide, include Shafak (discussed above) and her work on Sufism, as another feature
of traveling to Rumi’s land. The guidebook further contains Turkish scholars such
as Esin Celebi Bayru, a twenty-second generation g randdaughter of Rumi and
Vice President of the Inter national Mevlana Foundation, as a means of advertising
the authentic experience of Rumi’s life and death.106 Those who travel on these
jour neys have var ied stories, reasons, and backgrounds.
Karen Cavanagh, who was raised a Catholic, was featured in a 2013 episode of
the Belief ser ies on the Oprah Winfrey Network, entitled, “How Rumi’s Teachings
Saved Cavanagh’s Life.”
107 In a surfing accident, Cavanagh suffered a broken neck
and a traumatic brain injur y. While in the hospital in a coma, she reputedly had a
mystical exper ience where she remembered the lines to one of Rumi’s poems:
I have lived on the edge of insanity, wanting to know reasons
Knocking on a door
It opens I have been knocking from inside.108
When she woke from her coma, she pursued this experience by joining a whirl-
ing g roup.Though she was initially unable to whirl, over time she surprised even
her doctors and began whirling with the help of a teacher. Since then, Cavanagh
has traveled to Turkey, where she was officially initiated into a Sufi order.109 The
follow-up episode, entitled “Turning,” was completed two years later.110 It finds
Cavanagh identifying as a whirling dervish in Konya,Turkey.The episode features
Cavanagh and many others turning in Rumi’s tomb. In the episode, Cavanagh

156 Contemporary Sufism in the West
explains that she found more similarities between Islam and Christianity than
differences, yet for her, turning was not only for healing but now also part of her
faith.
Whirling or turning and its association with Rumi have been another important
way in which Sufism has been made popular throughout the West.Whirling work-
shops have now become a regular feature of many Sufi groups. For instance, the
Toronto Samakhaneh is a group that is affiliated with the Threshold Society led by
Kabir and Camille Helminski, who are based in Louisville, Kentucky. In one such
whirling workshop, a group of more than ten people participated at the Jerrahi
Center – another Turkish Sufi group in Toronto, Canada. Many of those present
came from var ied backgrounds. There were South Asian and Iranian Muslims, in
addition to non-Muslim European Canadians who were spiritually interested in
Sufism.The Helminskis hold similar whirling events as a way of teaching the public
about Sufism and Islam. These events are coordinated with larger networks, such
as the Salaam Network, an interfaith group that works to combat Islamophobia in
Louisville.111 In such instances, Rumi becomes a means of dissolving fear and differ-
ence, and of working toward unity, while many who participate in these workshops
have their own personal spiritual, religious, and cultural connections to Sufism.
Whirling has also become part of a larger fusion of mystical dance. For instance,
the Iranian dancer Banafsheh, who was introduced above as a co-director of Har-
vey’s Sufism course in Spain, is an example of a dancer who has fused whirling,
Flamenco, Tai Chi, Gurdjieff movements, and other Persian dance with what has
been refer red to as the synthesis of “ancient for ms with postmoder n punch.”
112
Banafsheh has been called an “innovator” of Sufi dance, due to her blend of spir-
ituality and the moder n, a blend that has been limited neither to the East nor to
the West. Harvey says of her dance the following: “As an embodied mystic of the
Divine Feminine, Banafsheh’s presentations are not perfor mances but transmissions
which transfor m your vision of dance forever. Dancer and dance become one ini-
tiatory flame of grace.”
113 She has perfor med her fusion dance from Los Angeles to
New York City, to Canada, Europe, and Turkey. With Harvey, Banafsheh produced
a documentary that “traces Rumi’s journey of the Soul in Dance.”
114 Additionally,
Banafsheh offers many workshops across the globe, such as “Dance of Oneness:
Body of Light,” “Call to Love:Workshop and Perfor mance at House of Religions,”
and even a session on tantric dance. But she is not the only one.
Tanya Evanson is a Montreal based poet, perfor mer, producer, educator, and
program director of Banff Centre Spoken Word. She tours inter nationally, has
released records and books of poetry, and has won recognition and awards for
many of her works of spoken word. Evanson is also a student of Sufism, and has
been classically trained and initiated since 2002. She studied for fifteen years
under the Turkish Rifa’i Marufi Sheikh Sher if Baba Catalkaya and the Canadian
sama’ master Raqib Br ian Burke. Evanson perfor ms her whirling with Iranian-
American/Canadian g roup Niyaz and the Turkish DJ Mercan Dede, as well as
Rumi Canada and the Vancouver Rumi Society. Evanson also regularly hosts
“Sema Space,” Sufi whirling meditation sessions in Montreal, Canada, along with

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 157
workshops such as “Sacred Steps: Sufi Whirling Meditation” with fellow Persian-
Canadian semazan (whirling dervish) Farzad AttarJafar i. Both Evanson and
AttarJafar i are regulars on the whirling dervish circuit across Canada, especially in
Toronto, where they perfor m and teach at public centers such as the Aga Khan
Museum and Harbourfront Centre, and Sufi centers such as the Jer rahi Sufi Order,
mentioned above.
Musical expressions of Rumi
Today, in Montreal’s Festival du monde arabe, mystical Sufi music of Iran and whirl-
ing dance are part of public perfor mances that also honor Sufi poets like Rumi
and Khayyam. The performance is an exchange of Sufi and indigenous traditions,
known as OktoEcho and Nistamikwan. The event descr iption states the following:
“A true hymn to life, Transcestral express[es] the common and everlasting quest for
harmony between man and nature, inspired by sacred dances drawn from the ances-
tral traditions of Sufis of the Arab world and indigenous people of Canada.”
115 This
show featured Métis vocalist Moe Clark, Moroccan singers Anouar Ber rada and
Laila Gouchi, indigenous pow-wow group Eye-Hey Nakoda, Innu throat singer
Nina Segalowitz, Innu poet Joséphine Bacon, and whirling from Evanson and Bar-
bara Diabo. Here again, one begins to see the intersection of Sufi dance rituals as
perfor mances that fuse with new local cultural traditions and her itages, such as
Canadian indigenous traditions and music. A similar trend is evident in Green’s
artistic works descr ibed above, which integrated the religious traditions of rural
Pennsylvania with Rumi. Rumi is not only being transmitted through various
media, but in the process, he is also woven into the language of the local spiritual,
artistic, and cultural traditions.
Another way that Green has impacted the spread of Sufism into popular culture
is through the creation of the Illumination Band. Green explained the or igins of this
Rumi-inspired band:
We decided once upon a time to do a special Coleman concert in Philadel-
phia. And they had a big hall I think at the University of Pennsylvania and
Coleman had developed a routine which is pretty close to the way that ...
any evening all across South Asia there are groups of Sufi musicians that meet
and do Rumi poetry, they sing it and it was drawing on that, so he always
reads with music. And the quality of Coleman’s rendition of Rumi, which
is American, and the emotional – there’s a longing quality in Rumi – it just
completely meshed .... Rumi meets gospel bluegrass. I mean I took the
poem and then it had to rhyme.116
Green went on to express that “If Allah wills, I still want to hear their music in a
west Texas taver n and then somehow it gets out that it’s a Muslim!”117 This idea
of putting Barks’s Rumi to music has resulted in another format, but one that, as
Green explains above, is what happens in Sufi shrines in South Asia and beyond:

158 Contemporary Sufism in the West
concerts of Sufi music.These practices have also taken root in the Amer ican context.
However, instead of being accompanied by South Asian instruments or singing in
Persian or Urdu, now the songs are sung in English to Amer ican style music. And, as
Green points out, what could be more American than bluegrass and gospel music?
Chopra collaborated on an album to set to music a selection from the “arousing”
Rumi poetry translations by Barks, with his verses mouthed by such American
Hollywood stars as Madonna, Goldie Hawn, and Demi Moore.118 The CD includes
thirty-six tracks, with titles including “Valentine to Rumi,” “Dying to Love,” and
“The Pr ivileged Lovers.” The cover blurb of this CD descr ibes it as all about “Pas-
sion. Music. Romance. Transcending the boundar ies of ecstasy, it creates a musical
tr ibute to the Act of Love.” Other celebrities have also been apparently inspired by
Rumi, such as Sarah Jessica Parker who is reported to do her aerobics to rock ’n’
roll arrangements of Rumi.
Rumi’s poems are not just voiced over to music. Rumi has also been the muse for
many musicians.Accomplished Canadian composer and educator Raymond Mur ray
Schafer is one such example. In the 1960s and 1970s, he started expanding his musi-
cal horizons, and the sources of his inspirations were described as a “r ich and unorth-
odox diversity,” especially as they were deeply affected by “eastern thought.”
119 This
led to a Canada Council-sponsored visit to Persia and Turkey in 1969, and the result-
ing Part 1 Lustro of Divan i Shams i Tabriz from Rumi’s poetry, which was composed
in 1970.120 He would be inspired by others for later compositions, including verses
from Rabindranath Tagore (Beyond the Great Gate of Light, Part 3 of Lustro), while
sounds of the sea and poetry of Hesiod, Homer, Melville, and Pound in Okeanos and
The Tibetan Book of the Dead have become part of other Lustros.121
Charles Lloyd, the famous saxophonist and jazz artist, is another example of a
musician who has paid tr ibute to Rumi. The first track of his Canto, released in
1997 and over sixteen minutes long, is entitled “Tales of Rumi.”
122 Newer versions
of this composition have included collaborations with Zakir Hussain, the Indian
music producer and tabla player. Other concerts featur ing Rumi have also taken
place. For instance, in September 2008, the Los Angeles Philhar monic perfor med
a show at the Hollywood Bowl called “A Celebration of Rumi, The Sight and
Sound of Mystic Persia.” Special guests of the show included the celebrated cellist,
Yo-Yo Ma, and the Silk Road Ensemble. The show included Persian musicians
and vocalists, whirling dervishes from Syria and Iran, and Rumi’s poetry recited to
calligraphic “projections.”
123
Chris Martin, lead singer of the Br itish award-winning band Coldplay, explained
that the fourth single from the band’s 2015 album, A Head Full of Dreams, was
inspired by Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House.” Martin explained that this particu-
lar poem by Rumi helped him through his breakup with partner and Hollywood
actress Gwyneth Paltrow. He was “depressed and overwhelmed” and the poem
offered him a solution. Martin says,
It kind of changed my life. It says that everything that happens to you is
OK ... It’s about every feeling that you have being a gift. Self-doubt and

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 159
depression as well as all the joyful feelings are all useful if you can harness
them.124
Part of the lyrics to the song also evokes a classical Sufi image of the conference of
the birds who go on a journey to find a guide who in the end turns out to be their
own inner most selves.
One of the album’s tracks, “Kaleidoscope,” actually features Barks reading Rumi’s
“The Guest House.” Barks’s voice appears on the track, as he reads Rumi’s poem
over a “loft piano-led instrumental.” The imagery of the “Kaleidoscope” points to
the “exper iences a human being has in their lifetime. Rumi tells the reader to wel-
come all the ‘guests’ and to be grateful for them, however good or bad they may
be.”
125 The short track then blends into then-US President Barack Obama sing-
ing “Amazing Grace,” with audio from the funeral of Charleston, South Carolina
shooting victim and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. Elsewhere, Martin has said
his reading of Rumi has led to more ser ious interest in Sufism, including reading
other Sufi sources, such as Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, to which the lyrics
from the Guest House allude.126 He is even seeking Sufi teachers to continue on
his jour ney of spirituality. The reviews of Coldplay’s newest release have said that
Martin is on a “hippie” tr ip.127
This popular ity of Rumi among bestselling musicians is not unique. Perhaps one
of the earliest musicians who assisted such crossovers of sacred music and poetry
into the popular imagination was none other than the famous Qawwali singer
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (d. 1997). Qawwali music, which emerged uniquely in the
South Asian context, was inspired by Sufi poets, such as Amir Khusrow (d. 1325),
Hafiz, Rumi, Bullah Shah (d. 1757), and many more. It became the language of
popular devotion, even for non-Muslims. Khan introduced Qawwali to many West-
erners, and was highly cr iticized for using Qawwali songs for a Coca-Cola adver-
tisement. However, the cr iticism did not stop him. He produced two soundtracks
with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam for the Hollywood film Dead Man Walking in 1995
and worked with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ
in 1988. When asked about his entry into a commercialized world, Khan said that
such platfor ms only presented the opportunity to spread the universal message of
Sufism to larger and more global audiences.
Music and dance have long been present in Sufi spaces. On Thursday nights they
can be exper ienced at the shrine of the 13th-century saint Nizam al-din Awliya (d.
1325) in New Delhi, India. Sufi forms of musicality have proliferated in the South
Asian context, notably with the singer and songwriter A. R . Rahman, a practicing
Sufi and a Grammy Award-winning musician. He has produced Sufi music and
Qawwali for numerous films, especially in Bollywood and now in Hollywood.
What is happening, then, with Sufi music – specifically of Rumi’s poetry and its
articulation through jazz and popular music, such as with Lloyd and Coldplay – is
a ver nacular ization of Sufism in the Amer ican context. This can be seen as a con-
tinuity of the ways in which Sufism has histor ically existed in social and economic
contexts, and continues to exist in many Muslim societies today.

160 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Turkish DJ Mercan Dede has been performing Sufi music with whirling der-
vishes, including Evanson and Canadian Sufi group Niyaz, alongside techno music
across Turkey, Europe, and North Amer ica. Using traditional Turkish music, espe-
cially the nay, and readings of Rumi’s poetry, Mercan Dede has created tracks such
as “Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi” and “Dream of Shams.”
A quick search for “Rumi” on the music application Spotify results in numerous
albums, from Rumi Symphony Project: Untold by Hafez Nazeri128 to Chopra’s two
albums on A Gift of Love – Music Inspired by Love Poems of Rumi. The search also
brings up categor ies of music, including “Rumi inspired instrumentals,” “Persian
fusion music,” “Rumi dancing,” and “Rumi music.”
Spoken word poetry is another expression of this perfor mative art and music
scene. Spoken word poets such as Evanson and the Toronto-based Sheniz Janmo-
hamed are examples of spoken word artists who have perfor med at Sufi poetr y
events. This again truly captures the traditions and practices of Sufi poetry and art
in cultures such as Iran, Turkey, India, and Pakistan, where Sufi poetry is recited and
shared in the public sphere. Rumi is no longer a Persian or a Turk, or even a Muslim
or a Sufi; he is the voice of longing, one that dialogues with new voices resulting
in new registers and tones in the local language – in this case, Amer ican music.The
question and problem of commodification of the sacred has been histor ically pres-
ent, but the use of the ver nacular register to disseminate the Sufi message has also
been embraced, especially by those who are practicing Sufis. However, the problem
begins to ar ise when Rumi is not fully contextualized – an issue that has come up
in recent news with his biopic set to hit Hollywood.
#RumiWasntWhite: Rumi on the big screen
Rumi’s proliferation throughout Amer ican popular culture is not limited to music,
but includes Hollywood films, such as the 2010 star-studded film Valentine’s Day.129
The film follows numerous love stor ies as the characters try to make it through
Valentine’s Day. One character, Alfonso Rodriguez, played by the Amer ican come-
dian George Lopez, is regularly quoting from Rumi throughout the film. In his
advice to his friend Reed Bennett, played by the Amer ican actor Ashton Kutcher,
Alfonso quotes wisdom from Rumi to help him navigate love and its meaning on
this particular Valentine’s Day.
Rumi’s popular ity among Hollywood superstars has also made him a spokes-
person for new for ms of commodities. For instance, with fragrance brand Etat
Libre d’Orange, Br itish actress Tilda Swinton created a fragrance inspired by Rumi.
“Like This,” a perfume named after the title given by Barks to a translation of one
of Rumi’s poems, has notes of “yellow mandar in, g inger, pumpkin accord, immor-
telle, Moroccan neroli, rose de Grasse, vetiver, heliotrope, and musk.”
130 Swinton
describes the perfume on the website as follows:
I have never been a one for scents in bottles.
The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 161
“If anyone wants to know what ‘spirit’ is, or what ‘God’s fragrance’ means,
lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close.
Like this.”
This is possibly my favor ite poem of all time. It restores me like the smoke/
rain/gingerbread/greenhouse my scent sense is fed by. It is a poem about
simplicity, about human-scaled miracles. About trust. About home. In my
fantasy there is a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland – after the drink
saying Dr ink Me, after the cake pleading Eat Me – where the adventur ing,
alien Alice, way down the rabbit hole, far from the familiar and maybe some-
what homesick – comes upon a modest glass with a ginger stem reaching
down into a pale golden scent that humbly suggests: Like This...131
The release of the new perfume was accompanied by a promotional video of Swin-
ton reading Barks’s translation of Rumi’s “Like This.”
132
In June 2016, news came out from Hollywood that David Franzoni, the script-
wr iter of the award-winning film Gladiator and producer Stephen Joel Brown were
at work on a script about the 13th-century Muslim poet and scholar, with Leonardo
DiCaprio in talks to play Rumi and Robert Downey Jr. as Shams. Since the news
of the Hollywood filmmaker’s plans have been released, cr iticism has come from
numerous filmmakers, jour nalists, and activists about the continued issue of diver-
sity and “whitewashing” that has plagued Hollywood, and the lack of knowledge
on the topic by filmmakers. Franzoni explained that Rumi is “like a Shakespeare.
He’s a character who has enor mous talent and worth to his society and his people,
and obviously resonates today. Those people are always worth explor ing.”
133 Still,
online petitions were signed (reputedly over 14,000 signatures) and calls were made
directly to Franzoni and Brown indicating that their casting choices were “ludicrous
and offensive,” especially as Muslim actors are typecast in Hollywood for roles as
terrorists or ang ry Arabs, while a film about Rumi would be played by a white male
actor.134 The Iranian jour nalist and film cr itic Reza Sedigh told Al-Monitor:
Perhaps a figure such as [medieval Persian poet] Omar Khayyam might have
been of more interest for Hollywood, since his poems and manner are closer
to moder n times. For instance, Khayyam said, “Be happy for this moment.
This moment is your life.” So when faced with the question of why Hol-
lywood has gone after Molana: Do Wester n producers comprehend Easter n
mysticism? What understanding do they have of Masnavi [one of Rumi’s
most prominent works of poetr y]? And can they reach the necessary under-
standing [of these things]? Unfortunately, the answer is “no.”
135
With news of Franzoni’s plans to make the film of Rumi, the “cultural tug of
war” over Sufism had taken to the big screen. People took to Twitter, Facebook,
and many other social networks, creating the hashtag #RumiWasntWhite. At the
heart of most of these posts were concer ns of authenticity over Rumi’s national and

162 Contemporary Sufism in the West
ethnic identity, more than his religious one, and they came from all cor ners. Some
tweets included:
Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan. He was Afghan. Hollywood, get it
r ight if you are gonna make a film. #RumiWasntWhite (@mariamanini,
June 2016).
White people ruin Ramadan 2016 by announcing their “Rumi” movie.
#RumiWasntWhite. (@aamer_rahman, June 2016).136
The identity of Rumi was not being contested only through the lens of Holly-
wood and its “whitewashing,” but it was also one of national politics. Iranians, for
instance, called out Turkey for its “appropriation.” The film was also in talks to be
shot in Turkey, which has further worsened ongoing contestations over the legit-
imate nationality and ethnicity of Rumi. Recently, Tehran and Ankara reputedly
sought to register Rumi’s Masnavi Ma’navi, as a “joint national her itage” with UNE-
SCO, which then resulted in “outrage” in Kabul.137 The Afghan gover nment then
“appealed” the claim to UNESCO and sent a further message to Ankara through
the Afghan Foreign Minister and called for protests to reclaim Rumi’s true national
and ethnic identity.138 Rumi has been declared the national poet of Iranians,Turks,
and Afghanis. Thus, between Hollywood and Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran, Rumi’s
identity was being contested, culturally, ethnically, nationally, and religiously, while
ten years earlier when the Year of Rumi was announced by UNESCO, there were
worldwide celebrations in places like Canada and Iran.
At the heart of the initial social media outcr y was that it again signaled issues of
diversity and lack of representation in Hollywood casting. Rumi, like other poets
before him, became a symbol of a larger societal issue. He became the voice and
platform from which change was called for. The question was then not about com-
modification (or “Rumification”) of Rumi and his life. In fact, the amount of films
and mini-ser ies on Rumi in Turkey and Iran alone are hard to count.139 For film-
makers from South Asia to the Middle East, engagement with Sufism and key Sufi
personalities like Rumi are quite common.140 So, the issue at the heart of the Rumi
biopic was not simply if DiCaprio was the r ight lead, but one that has been unfold-
ing for centur ies: Where is Rumi from, or better yet, to whom does he belong?
Now, instead of just Iranians, Afghanis, Turks, and other Muslim (Persian-speaking)
nations claiming him as their own, Hollywood has also thrown in their own bid to
reflect him in their own image.
Rumi: An icon of LGBTQ activism
Rumi’s name also appeared in the Netflix series The Get Down by Baz Luhrmann,
framed as the story behind the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx. The character played
by Jaden Smith is an aspiring g raffiti artist who tags his work with “Rumi.” How-
ever, the character in the show actually claims the tag “is about an alien with a top
hat who wants to go to the opera but never does.”
141 What is additionally interesting

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 163
about the character of Smith (i.e., Rumi) is his relationship with another g raffiti artist
by the name of Thor, with whom he has a special connection. These two characters
engage in sexual and gender experimentation, which was received positively by the
LGBTQ community. Now, whether the show’s wr iters meant for the characters of
Rumi and Thor to model spiritual (and not necessar ily sexual) intimacy Rumi and
Shams is hard to say. However, it does signal another significant way in which Rumi
has been framed in the 21st century in the West, particularly in terms of his rela-
tionship with his master and teacher Shams. Rumi and Shams reportedly engaged
in an intensive sohbet, or spiritual conversation, and shared presence.They spent long
per iods of time together, which histor ically was inter preted as a shared experience
of spiritual, metaphysical intimacy. However, among contemporary members of the
LBGTQ community, this intimacy has been inter preted as physical as well.
Rumi has even been hailed as one of the torchbearers (according to one book
on the subject) “of homoeroticism and spirituality.”
142 On blogs such as “5 Queer
Muslims in History,” Rumi is often featured with Shams, while Rumi and Shams
appear on the list of “5 Queer Couples in Islamic History.”
143 Similarly on the
“Gay Community Forum” on Beliefnet, many post about Rumi as empower ing
LGBTQ identity, r ights, and spirituality.144 Similar blogs are wr itten on “The Wild
Reed: Thoughts and Reflections from a Progressive, Gay, Catholic Perspective.”
145
Other forums, such as “Maulana Rumi Online: Rumi on Gays and Lesbians” and
“thepersiancloset” also focus on Rumi as a means to affir m diverse identities.146
These forums regularly quote from Barks or Harvey’s translations of Rumi. Rumi
is featured on websites like “LGBT History Month,” and the “Jesus in Love Blog,”
which is a space for “LGBTQ spirituality and the arts. Home of gay Jesus and queer
saints. Uniting body, mind and spirit. Open to all.”
147 On September 30, 2016, in
honor of Rumi’s birthday, this site posted a blog entitled, “Rumi: Poet and Mystic
Inspired by Same-sex Love.”
148
Some tea with your Rumi? Culinary delights
and architectural inspirations
Rumi has also been the inspiration for a number of cafes and restaurants, such as
the Rumi Rose Garden Cafe & Market in Vancouver, Br itish Columbia, described
as a “Sufi tea house and so much more ...”
149 The cafe has more than fifty custom
blended teas, speciality Turkish coffees, and traditional Middle Eastern foods and
sweets. The market also has regular grocery and other household items.You can go
in to meet a friend, work on your laptop, or grab a drink. Most of those who work
at the cafe are volunteers. It is a space for anyone, who may enter for “tea, medita-
tion and the Sufi light force.”
150 As the website elaborates,
Our mystic theme allows you to feel the war mth and positive energy of tra-
ditional Middle Easter n culture with beautiful aroma, music, books & food.
No need to travel the distance to the Middle East, you have a Café like this,
r ight in your back yard!151

164 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Though as you explore further, you find that the space is not only for food and
good tea; it is a “Rumi Rose Garden” or a “spiritual oasis”:
Take a seat in the Sufi Tea House and nurture your heart and nour ish your
soul with a cup of aromatic coffee or tea while listening to the soothing
rhythms of Sufi mystical music. Browse the Sufi bookstore and find treasures
for the spirit including a comprehensive selection of titles, CDs, oils, incenses,
meditation, and healing gift items and much more.152
The cafe’s brand of Rumi Rose Teas promotes wellness and healing, and the teas
are aromatically pleasing.They have teas for colds & flu, weight loss, boosting of the
metabolism, and much more. All are part of ancient herbal and Sufi traditions of tea
making and traditional medicine, according to the Rumi Rose tea official website:
Our Specially Blended Sufi Healing Teas, are in the Names of The Most Holy
and Most Celebrated Names in the Divinely Presence.We hope that by men-
tioning their names and drinking in their honor you will be filled by the All
Mightys Grace, Majesty and Blessing of these Holiest of Holy Souls.153
The tradition of teas and coffee is deeply embedded within the history of Sufism
and the Middle East. The website provides histor ical articles that map these uses of
tea and coffee in Sufism.154 The cafe is affiliated with and run beside the Naqsh-
bandi Nizamiyya Sufi Way.The website also includes a “Rumi prayer”:
Giving Thanks: Praising the devine [sic] is sweeter than the bounty itself. One
who cherishes gratitude does not cling to the gift. Giving thanks is the true
meet [sic] of Gods bounty; the bounty is its shell. For giving thanks car ries
you to the heart of the beloved. Abundance alone brings heedlessness, Giving
thanks gives birth to alertness ...
The bounty of giving thanks will satisfy and elevate you and you will be-
stow a hundred bounties in return. Eat your fill of Gods delicacies.155
This particular Rumi establishment is unique in that it is part of a Sufi order
and the larger institutional spaces of the Naqshbandi Sufi tariqa. Most other Rumi-
themed cafes and restaurants in Canada and the United States do not have such
connections.
Rumi and Sufi themed restaurants are also found in America, such as Café Rumi
in Califor nia and Rumi restaurants in Illinois and Colorado. In Atlanta, Georgia,
Rumi’s Kitchen is a popular Persian restaurant. On the website of the restaurant, the
following descr iption is provided:
Welcome to Rumi’s Kitchen, the premiere Atlanta location for Persian cui-
sine. We are named after one of the most famous and well-read poets in
the world, Jelaluddin Rumi. Rumi was a 13th-centur y Persian poet whose

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 165
visions, words and life teach us how to reach inner peace, happiness and love.
We invite you to Rumi’s Kitchen where fresh, healthy food, attentive Persian
hospitality, and an atmosphere with love await you.156
Similar restaurants called Rumi can be found in New Zealand, Australia, Great
Br itain, Pakistan, and India. In Montreal, Canada, the menu of Rumi, a restaurant
that specializes in Middle Easter n cuisine, is graced with a poem of Rumi’s: “I am
drunk and you are insane.”
157 The owners wr ite the following about the restaurant:
Rumi was founded and created with the inspiration that in our world what
people desire the most is to retur n to the essential.The poetr y of Rumi calls
people back to Organic and to the authentic. In this spirit Rumi invites
guests to exper ience the authentic cuisine and ambience of the Middle East,
Central Asia and North Africa – known by many today as the cuisine of the
Sufis.158
Just as Rumi has inspired food and restaurant culture, so too have Rumi’s words
led to inspiration among designers and architects. Walter Knoll, a Ger man design
company, even has a chair named “Rumi” because of the ar mchair’s design reso-
nance with the flow of a whirling dervish.159 In 1961, this chair made its debut
and was meant to link tradition with modern lines.160 The Califor nia Institute
for Earth Architecture (CalEarth) has also been inspired in its architectural design
by the poetry of Rumi. The “Rumi Dome,” named after the Iranian-born archi-
tect Nader Khalili’s (d. 2008) favorite poet, Rumi, was built by students with no
masonry exper ience, while the Rumi Dome at Hesper ia Lake was built as part
of a Museum and Nature Center project planned by the city of Hesper ia in the
mid-1990s.This Rumi Dome is larger than the one that is part of CalEarth. Khalili
calls his structures “tangible poetr y.”
161 However, more than food, architecture,
film, and music, Rumi’s true popular ization is indicated by his presence on social
media.162
There is an app for that! Rumi on social media
The proliferation of Rumi has taken a social media tur n. Rumi’s enthusiasts can fol-
low him on Instagram. Kieron Monks, in a CNN article on the whirling dervishes,
wr ites that “the ecstatic poetry of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi could have been
wr itten for the social media age, rather than the 13th century, such is its pithy and
quotable nature.”
163 Rumi’s presence on social media has exploded. For instance,
the Instagram accounts “rumi.quotes” and “r umi_poetry” have over 125,000 fol-
lowers and nearly 50,000 followers, respectively.164 The Facebook account “Rumi
Quotes” has close to 700,000 likes, while the main page dedicated to Rumi (@
melvana) has over two million “likes.” “Rumi Hugs” has almost 140,000 likes, and
“Rumi the Master of Love” has 40,000 likes.165 These Facebook groups employ
memes in which images of whirling dervishes, Rumi, or other nature-based photo-
graphs are super imposed with a quotation attr ibuted to Rumi, such as:“Be humble

166 Contemporary Sufism in the West
for you are made of earth, Be noble for you are made of stars.” The owner of the
page has included the following quotation in the “short description”:
Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or
idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.166
Such attr ibuted quotations (likely from var ious renditions by Barks) constantly
appear and reappear alongside beautiful pictures. Rumi also has a number of
English Twitter accounts, with owners tweeting Rumi quotations.These quotations
also appear on numerous blogposts, such as yourtango.com, which included “20
Love Quotes from Ancient Mystic [sic] that Are Crazy BEAUTIFUL.”
167 Others
include “Five Inspirational Rumi Statements to Say Every Day”168 and “35 Rumi
Quotes From His Poems About Love and Life.”
169 Additionally, all of the restaurants
and cafes, such as the Rumi Café mentioned above, are on the main social media
platforms.
Rumi’s quotations further appear as captions on individual Facebook, Insta-
gram, and Twitter pages alongside engagement and wedding photographs, and on
wellness, mental health, and spiritual and religiously or iented groups – it is endless.
Now one can also easily download the many Rumi-related smartphone applica-
tions, which directly provide you with daily Rumi quotations. For instance, a quick
search on the Apple store results in apps such as “Rumi Quotes: A Selection” or
“Rumi Love Quotes: A Selection” (Appricot Limited), which are collections of
over a hundred quotations by Rumi from E. H. Whinefield’s translations. “Rumi
& Mathnawi” by Konya Metropolitan Municipality gives you access, from your
iPhone or iPad, to the Mathnawi in twenty-one different languages.
Rumi has been retweeted and reposted on many social media accounts. There is
often cr iticism that online affiliation and activities do not always reflect offline lived
practices. It is difficult to fully assess the degree to which many of those who are
active followers of Rumi are aware of his religious and cultural backgrounds, and
how they are incorporating Rumi into their personal lives. However, we can con-
clude that Rumi has become a shared commodity and source of inspiration.Though,
like previous examples, there are a range of ways in which social media adds another
dimension for some who are active in Sufi communities. For instance, the Facebook
group Rumi Poetry Club held its seventh annual Rumi Festival in 2016 at a library
in Salt Lake City, Utah.The following was included as the event descr iption:
The 13th-century Persian poet and spiritual master Jalaluddin Rumi is an
inspiring voice for a life based on love, peace, cooperation, good heart, and
open mind. This festival will feature recitations of Rumi’s poems, Rumi-
inspired photographs, a special talk titled “What You Seek is Seeking You,”
and Sufi whirl dance. Come and celebrate the poetry and spiritual path of
Rumi, letting his words and wisdom ser ve as a guide to awakened living and
compassionate culture.170

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 167
Rumi’s presence on social media highlights the extent to which ever yone has
heard of Rumi, but many are not quite sure about who he really is. This trend is
comically captured in Jesse Ball’s sixth novel, a coming of age thriller entitled How
to Set a Fire and Why.171 Ball has published both novels and poems, and this sixth
publication incor porates Rumi into the storyline, at least in passing. In it, the main
character Lucia, an adolescent girl, responds thus when her high school psycholo-
gist starts quoting a poem from Rumi dur ing a therapy session:
We sat there for a while, and then she said she wanted to read me something.
She got some shitty poem by Rumi and read it to me. There is a candle in your
heart ...
I laughed, and she asked me why I was laughing.
I said, you small-minded bitch, you think that is poetry?
Of all Rumi’s goddamned poems, you pick that one? Did you find it in
some psych-nonsense anthology? That has to be his worst poem, and it isn’t
even translated well. How does it feel to wade around in life so hopelessly?
You are just mired in shit.You’re so limited.
I laughed some more. Of all the poems, that one.
She was looking at me in shock. I think she was actually speechless, so I
gave her some more.
Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane.
What?
I said, that’s Rumi. Or didn’t you know?172
Conclusion
In an era in which dervish culture, cave-dwelling her mits, and mendicancy, espe-
cially in Muslim-major ity nations, are disappear ing, it is curious that elements of
Sufi culture and practice are being transformed and manifesting in new spheres.
Traditions have changed, but as Shahab Ahmed has shown in his study What is
Islam?, the assumption that traditions such as Islam have merely existed in a neat
singular ity maintained by “legitimate” author ity is not actually representative of the
tradition as a whole.173 In particular, Sufism’s role in Islam’s complex process and
ongoing development has been overlooked. Rather than reduce Islam to particular
legal traditions or discourses of orthodoxy, Ahmed points out that Islam has also
been counterculture, it has been deviance, it has been heterodoxies, it has included
not only those who speak from the pulpit but also those who have spoken from
the margins.174 As noted, orthodoxy is a moving target. Sufism was mainstream
Islam for centur ies, but in modern times Sufi traditions are associated with heresy.
Religious traditions then, be they Islam or Sufism, have shifted, changed, and trans-
formed over time. Such shifts are exactly what have taken place in the contempo-
rary dissemination of Rumi’s poetry. These shifts in inter preting Sufi poets are a
part of a broader histor ical process, which includes Hafiz and Khayyam. These pat-
terns of transfor mation raise challenging questions: has the spirit of classical Sufism

168 Contemporary Sufism in the West
been saved or lost in the West? How much is the West contr ibuting to or detracting
from global Sufism and its preser vation? What is your relationship to Sufism when
you sit in a Rumi chair, or wear “Like This,” or retweet a Rumi poem?
Histor ically, Rumi’s spirituality and poetry impacted a var iety of social spheres
during his life and long after his death. He embodied Muslim culture, but opened
it to Jews and Christians, as evidenced by their participation in his funeral. At the
same time, Rumi was seen as a deviant figure. He defied social nor ms. His rela-
tionship with his teacher Shams of Tabriz caused controversy and startled religious
scholars and juristic sensibilities. Rumi’s complex life, as a theologian, jur ist, hus-
band, father, student, and more, indicates not a linearity but rather a multiplicity,
including both orthodoxy and heterodoxy. His work has been central to Muslim
literary traditions and social nor ms, but it has also been marginalized. His followers,
especially in Turkey during its secular nation-building process, were banned, and
only recently have Rumi’s teachings been accepted as part of Turkey’s cultural her-
itage, but not necessar ily as a spiritual or religious one.
Rumi, in many ways, represents ever y aspect of Sufism as it has histor ically
developed. Rumi was Muslim. He was a trained scholar and a preacher, which
he inher ited from his father. He was a father and husband. His early life was not
defined by mendicancy and antinomian habits. However, an encounter with an
enigmatic Shams altered it all in a matter of seconds, as the stor ies are told. An inti-
macy developed between the two of them that cannot be fully captured by labels.
This intimacy has inspired a number of contemporary expressions. For example, it
has appealed to the members of the LGBTQ community, who have transfor med
Rumi into a social activist for Queer Muslims and non-Muslims. He is the social
outcast they seek – one who knows the language of love but also of pain, suffer ing,
and deep longing, both of the human and divine sort. Social deviancy has been the
claim of many Sufis across time and space, from Arabia to the Middle East to Asia.
Sufis have defied religious, class, gender, and sexual nor ms, challenging the conven-
tions of respectable society.
Rumi’s mystical experience with Shams and the divine opening provided
by him also led to artistic expressions. Rumi, as one nar rative goes, was walking
through the bazaar and found himself entranced by the noises of the hammer
molding the iron sword. He began to see a reality around him that was different
from the one he for merly knew and was overtaken by the beauty and love of God
that manifested everywhere around him. He began to turn. Music, especially of
the nay, captured in sound the deep longing he felt within his being. Words and
rhyme manifested through Rumi were captured by his son Sultan Walad (d. 1312),
and with his growing number of students. In the generations following Rumi’s
death, his students would codify his teachings into the spiritual path of the Mevlevi
Sufi order. Groups like the Mevlevi danced. They listened to music. They wrote
poetry to express their deepest longing of their Beloved. Histor ically, Sufi poetry
and music were perfor med at court palaces under the Mughals and the Ottomans.
Coffeehouses in the streets of Istanbul also attracted similar figures and for ms of
perfor mances.Traders exper ienced the same as they stopped for rest at caravanserais.

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 169
Some of these practices were exclusive and restr icted only to the initiated, but other
times such was not the case. Sufi poetry, music, and movement permeated all aspects
of society. What is happening then with the expression of Rumi poetr y through
contemporary musical for ms like jazz is in many ways a ver nacular ization of Sufism
in the Western context. As the famous early Sufi Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 910) was
reported to have said, water takes on the color of its container. Rumi’s mystical
Persian Islamic poetry has thus been colored by a contemporary Wester n literary,
cultural, and spiritual hue. As such, this can be seen as a continuity of the ways in
which Sufism has historically existed in social and economic contexts. From food
to architectural spaces, to poetry, music, and dance, Sufis have utilized these spheres.
The question, then, is not whether these manifestations are new, but whether
they reflect a continuity, and whether the message of Sufism is being diluted. On
the one hand, the answer is no. Sufism did develop histor ically in Islamic cul-
ture and society. It was framed by the Qur’an and the exper iences of the Prophet
Muhammad. Figures who defined classical Sufism were all Muslims, at least from a
theological, cultural, and legal perspective. That being said, the message of Sufism
and the mode in which it has been transmitted have not been histor ically uni-
form, especially as Sufism spread beyond the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle
East. For classical Sufi thinkers, such as Ibn al-‘Arabi, the goal of Sufism tran-
scended particular Sufi practices and conventional Islamic religiosity. Sufis, like Ibn
al-‘Arabi, drew from the Qur’an and its teachings on tawhid, a universal paradigm
embracing religious plurality. The language of universality was employed by Sufis,
such as by Hafiz and Rumi, even though they ar r ived at that language through
Islamic sources and their Muslim identity. It is this language of universality that has
drawn Wester ners to Rumi, and which has led to a particular commodification of
Rumi in many spheres of society.This commodification is one aspect of the trans-
lation process of Sufism into American culture. If we treat this as the only way in
which Sufism has entered the Western religious and cultural landscape, then there
is definitely a reductive understanding of the broader presence of Sufism in the
West. Diminishing Rumi’s presence in the West purely to commodification limits
the full understanding of what Sufism in the West actually entails. Wester n Sufism
includes immig rant Muslims, Amer ican converts to Islam via encounters with Sufi
teachers, and non-Muslim Sufis committed to Sufi teachers from Muslim-major ity
contexts, to name a few. Western Sufism also manifests in public intellectuals and
scholars of the traditions, pilgrimages to Sufi shrines and the popular consumption
of Rumi. Taken as a whole, these var ious expressions are reflective of the diversity
of Western Sufism and its contribution to contemporary Sufism. Rumi, then, can
be inter preted as both a gate to the broader phenomenon and also the essence
of it. Many agents ver nacular izing Sufism in the West are active members of Sufi
orders, like the Threshold Society and the whirling dervishes, who participate in
interfaith community events, though the audience is diverse and may not have
formal affiliations.What is certain with the popularity of Rumi is that he is not just
the best-known Sufi in the West, but he is also a representative of contemporary
Wester n spirituality.

170 Contemporary Sufism in the West
Notes
1 “800th Anniversary of the Birth of Mawlana Jala-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi,” UNE-
SCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), http://
portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php -URL_ID=39343&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_
SECTION=201.html.
2 Ibid.
3 William Dalrymple, “What Goes Round ...,” The Guardian, November 4, 2005, www.
theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview26.
4 Eli Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).
5 “How Rumi’s Teachings Saved Karen Cavanagh’s Life,” Belief, Oprah Winfrey Network,
October 23, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YysO4-KO8H0.
6 “Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey & Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,” Super Soul
Sunday, Oprah Winfrey Network, April 26, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ZjYnthG36f8&list=PLFD5424BCA355123A.
7 Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi – Past and Present, East and West:The Life,Teachings and Poetry of
Jalal Al-Din Rumi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000); Sadie Bell, “What to Know about Rumi
the Poet Beyoncé and Jay-Z Named Their Baby After,” Billboard, July 14, 2017.
8 Michael Axworthy, A History of Iran (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 115–116.
9 Ibid., 116.
10 Ibid.
11 Quoted in Alexandra Marks, “Persian Poet Top Seller in America,” Christian Science
Monitor, November 25, 1997.
12 Amira El-Zein, “Spiritual Consumption in the United States: The Rumi Phenome-
non,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 11, no. 1 (2000): 73.The New Age movement
has roots in the American counterculture of the 1960s but took shape in the 1980s as a
generation of seekers mobilized around various spiritualities. Scholarship is divided on
whether there were coherent aims during the New Age movement, and whether there
was even a New Age religion, while others have called attention to the lack of institu-
tionalization and authority as being the common denominator of this era.
13 Lewis, Rumi – Past and Present, East and West.
14 Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement: Religion, Culture, Society in the Age of Postmodernity
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
15 Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2000).
16 Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit. A Cultural History of American Meta-
physical Religion (New Haven, CT:Yale Univer sity, 2008).
17 Robert Bly, “Reading Rumi in an Uncertain World,” Wings Press, n.d ., www.wings-
press.com/book.cfm?book_ID=18.
18 Ibid.
19 Marks, “Persian Poet Top Seller in America.”
20 Robert Bly, Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004).
21 Rumi: Poet of the Heart, film, directed by Haydn Reiss (New York: Magnolia Films,
1998).
22 His (Barks’s) publications of Rumi include, but are not limited to, Delicious Laughter
(Athens, GA: Maypop, 1990), Like This (Athens, GA: Maypop, 1990), Feeling the Shoulder
of the Lion (Putney,VT:Threshold Books, 1991), The Essential Rumi (San Francisco, CA:
Harper, 1995), and The Hand Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia (New Lebanon, NY:
Omega: 1993).
23 Robert Bly, The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations (New York: HarperCollins,
2004).
24 Bly, “Reading Rumi in an Uncertain World.”
25 Ptolemy Tompkins, “Rumi Rules!”Time, September 30, 2002.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 171
28 Elena Furlanetto, “The ‘Rumi Phenomenon’ between Orientalism and Cosmopolitan-
ism: The Case of Elif Shafak’s ‘The Forty Rules of Love,’” European Journal of English
Studies 17, no. 2, (2013): 202.
29 Ibid., 203.
30 Tompkins, “Rumi Rules!”; Ali Rozina, “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of
Rumi,” The New Yorker, January 5, 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/
the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi.
31 Coleman Barks, Rumi: Bridge to the Soul, Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
32 Tompkins, “Rumi Rules!”
33 Jerome W. Clinton, “Review Article: Rumi in America,” Edebiyát 10 (1999): 149–154.
34 Ibid., 153.
35 Ibid.
36 Muriel Maufroy, Rumi’s Daughter (London: Rider Books, 2004).
37 Connie Zweig, A Moth to the Flame:The Story of the Great Sufi Poet Rumi (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
38 Nahal Tajadad, Rumi:The Fire of Love (New York: Overlook Books, 2008).
39 Roger Housden, Chasing Rumi: A Fable about Finding the Heart’s True Desire (San Fran-
cisco, CA: Harper, 2002).
40 Manoucher Parvin, Dardedel: Rumi, Hafez, & Love in New York (New York: Permanent
Press, 2015).
41 Ibid.
42 Rabisandkar Bal, A Mirrored Life: The Rumi Novel, trans. Arunava Sinha (New York:
Vintage Books, 2015).
43 Shafak, Forty Rules.
44 Elif Shaf ak, Pinhan (Istanbul: Dogan Kitap, 1998).
45 Elif Shaf ak, The Bastard of Istanbul (New York:Viking, 2007).
46 “The Forty Rules of Love: An Interview with Bestselling Author Elif Shafak,” n.d .
www.elifsafak.us/en/roportajlar.asp?islem=roportaj&id=26.
47 Alevi Adil, “The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak,” The Independent, July 8, 2010,
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-forty-rules-of-love-
by-elif-shaf ak-2021678.html.
48 Furlanetto, “Rumi Phenomenon,” 204.
49 Elif Shafak, “The Politics of Fiction,” TED, July 2010, www.ted.com/talks/elif
_ shafak_the_politics_of_fiction.
50 Ibid.
51 Mina Javaherbin, Elephant in the Dark: Based on a Poem by Rumi, illustrator Eugene
Yelchin (New York: Scholastic Press, 2015).
52 Mina Javaherbin,The Secret Message, illustrator Br uce Whatley (New York: Disney-
Hyperion, 2010).
53 These are by Nefise Atcakarlar: The Camel and the Mouse (Minneapolis, MN: Daybreak
Press, 2015); The Lion and the Rabbit (Minneapolis, MN: Daybreak Press, 2015); Three
Pieces of Advice (Minneapolis, MN: Daybreak Press, 2015).
54 Lilian Kars, More Than a Me, illustrator Steffie Padmos (Chelmsford: Matthew James, 2015).
55 Anthony, “Spotlight: Rumi – How a 13th Century Poet Inspired More Than a
M e ,” Matthew James Publishing, July 26, 2016, http://matthewjamespublishing.com/
spotlight-r umi-13th-century-poet-inspired/.
56 Ibid.
57 Demi, Rumi:Whirling Dervish (New York: Mar shall Canvendish Children, 2009).
58 Ali Furat Bilkan, Tales from Rumi: Mathnawi Selections for Younger Readers (Clifton, NJ:
The Light, 2011).
59 Mohammed Arif Vakil and Mohammad Ali Vakil, Wise Fool of Baghdad (Bangalore,
India: Sufi Studios, 2012).
60 Mohammed Ali Vakil and Mohammed Arif Vakil, Sufi Comics: Rumi Begin that Long
Journey into Yourself (Bangalore, India: Sufi Studios, 2014).

172 Contemporary Sufism in the West
61 Priti Salian, “In Sufi Comics: Rumi the Persian Poet’s Life and Verse Get the
Comic-Book Treatment,” The National, September 9, 2014, www.thenational.ae/
arts-lifestyle/books/in-sufi-comics-r umi-the-per sian-poets-life-and-ver ses -get-the-
comic-book-treatment.
62 Ibid.
63 “Sufi Comics: Rumi,” Sufi Comics: Comics for the Soul, n.d., www.suficomics.com/rumi/.
64 “Islamic Holdem,” Existential Comics, n.d ., http://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/
Rumi.
65 Gav, “190. Rumi:The Guest House,” Zen Pencils, February 18, 2016, http://zenpencils.
com/comic/rumi/.
66 Andrew Harvey, Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/
Putnam, 1999).
67 Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother (New York: Jeremy P.Tarcher/Putnam, 2013).
68 Andrew Har vey, A Journey in Ladakh: Encounters with Buddhism (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000).
69 Andrew Har vey, The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi (New York: Penguin Putnam,
2001).
70 Ibid., 2.
71 Ibid.
72 Andrew Harvey, The Teachings of Rumi (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1999), xiii–xiv.
73 Harvey, Teachings of Rumi, xiv; Harvey, Way of Passion, 2 .
74 Harvey, Teachings of Rumi, xiv–xv.
75 Ibid., xv.
76 Ibid., xv.
77 Ibid., xv–xvi.
78 “Mystical Andalusia: Garden amidst the Flames,” The Wisdom School, n.d ., http://wisdo-
muniversity.org/Andalusia2017.htm. The “required readings” for this course includes
Barks, The Essential Rumi, 1995; Harvey, The Teachings of Rumi; Stephen Hirtenstein, The
Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn ‘Arabi (Oxford: Anqa Publish-
ing, 1999); and Banafsheh Sayyad’s The Dance of Oneness (Andrew Harvey and Sayyad
Banafsheh. In the Fire of Grace: Dancing Rumi’s Journey of the Soul. DVD. AR: Banafsheh
Dance. Self- published, 2011.)
79 Andrew Harvey, “A Year of Rumi,” Daily OM, n.d ., www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/
courses/courseoverview.cg i?cid=35&aff=92&ad=2016041313&img=4.
80 Ibid.
81 Andrew Har vey, Dancing in Rumi’s Footsteps, n.d ., http://theshiftnetwork.com/
DancingInRumisFootsteps.
82 Shahram T. Shiva and Deepak Chopra, Rumi – Thief of Sleep: 180 Quatrains from the
Persian (Chino Valley, AZ: Hohm Press, 2000).
83 Joseph Arouet, A Beginners Guide to Rumi: Truth, Happiness, and the Path of Peace (Self-
published, 2016).
84 Joseph Arouet, Stress Free Living & Sufism: The Journey Beyond Yourself (Self-published,
2015b).
85 Joseph Arouet, Stress Free Living & Buddhism:Your Guide to Mindfulness (Self-published,
2015a).
86 Yahiya Emerick, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Rumi Meditations (Royersford, PA: Alpha,
2008).
87 Dalrymple, “What Goes Round....”
88 Rumi Returning: The Triumph of Divine Passion, film, directed by Kell Kearns (Philadel-
phia, PA: A Heaven on Earth Presentation, 2007).
89 Rumi: Poet of the Heart, film, directed by Haydn Reiss (New York: Magnolia Films,
1998).
90 Coleman Barks and Michael Green, The Illuminated Rumi (NewYork: Broadway Books,
1997).

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 173
91 Michael Green, interview with Merin Shobhana Xavier, March 4, 2016, Coatesville,
PA: Michael Green Barn Studio.
92 Examples of greetings cards and calendars made by Amber Lotus Publishing Press (n.d .),
can be found at: www.amberlotus.com/sufi/.
93 Michael Green, One Song: A New Illuminated Rumi (Philadelphia, PA: Running Press,
2005).
94 For more, please see: “Rumi Hooded Sweatshirts T-Shirts,” Pixels, n.d., http://pixels
. co m/shop/sweatshirts/r umi; and “Rumi Art iPhone 5 Cases,” DesignerPrints, n.d .,
http://designerprints.com/shop/iphone+5+cases/rumi+art.
95 For more, please see “Rumi,” Etsy, n.d ., www.etsy.com/ca/search?q=Rumi.
96 “The Rumi Festival,” Art Aware, June 12, 2013, http://aidaforoutan.blogspot.
ca/2013/06/the-rumi-festival_17.html.
97 “Oslo Inter national Rumi Festival,” 2015, www.r umi.no/english/.
98 Scott Stockdale, “Toronto’s Rumi Fest,” Canadian Charger, November 10, 2010, www.
thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=669.
99 Ibid.
100 “Whirling Der vish,” Urban Dictionary, n.d ., www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?
term=Whirling%20Dervish.
101 Shems Friedlander, The Whirling Dervishes (Albany, NY: State University of New York,
1992), 22.
102 Kevin Gould, “Konya, in a Whirl of its Own,” The Guardian, Apr il 10, 2010, www.
theguardian.com/travel/2010/apr/10/konya-turkey-jelaluddin-rumi-der vish.
103 Ibid.
104 Kashfi Halford, “Whirling Dervishes at the Rumi Festival in Konya – A Photo Essay,”
The Guardian, December 18, 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015
/dec/18/whirling-der vishes-at-the-r umi-festival-in-konya-a -photo-essay.
105 Kieron Monks, “Lord of the Dance: The Sufi Mystic Who Has Got the World Whirl-
ing,” CNN, November 30, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/11/30/travel/r umi-revival/
index.html.
106 Josh Bruce Allen, “Rumi in Modern Times,” Istanbul the Guide, June 23, 2015, www.
theguideistanbul.com/article/rumi-modern-times.
107 “How Rumi’s Teachings Saved Karen Cavanagh’s Life,” Belief, Oprah Winfrey Network,
October 23, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YysO4-KO8H0.
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid.
110 “Before & After Belief: How ‘Turning’ Continues to Help Karen Heal,” Belief, Oprah
Winfrey Network, October 23, 2015.
111 Anna Rohleder, “Sufis Show Mystical Side of Islam,” LEO Weekly, December 7, 2016,
www.leoweekly.com/2016/12/sufis-show-mystical-side-islam/.
112 Victoria Looseleaf.“A Steaming Hot Stew of Music and Moves,” Los AngelesTimes,April
14, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/14/entertainment/et-looseleaf14.
113 Facebook page of Sayyad Banafsheh. https://www.facebook.com/BanafshehSayyad/.
114 “In The Fire of Grace,” DVD, Banafsheh Sayyad, http://banafsheh.org/index.php/
product/in-the-fire-of-g race-dvd/; Andrew Harvey and Banafsheh Sayyad, In the Fire
of Grace: Dancing Rumi’s Journey of the Soul, DVD (AR: Banafsheh Dance, 2011).
115 For more on the Festival du Monde Arabe de Montreal, n.d ., please see: http://festivalarabe.
com/event/14-ads-transcestrale/.
116 Michael Green, interview with Merin Shobhana Xavier, March 4, 2016, Coatesville,
PA: Michael Green Barn Studio.
117 Ibid.
118 Deepak Chopra and Friends, A Gift of Love, CD (New York: Rasa Music, 1998).
119 “R. Mur ray Schafer : Biog raphy,” Canadian Music Centre/Centre de Musique Canadienne,
www.musiccentre.ca/node/37315/biography.
120 Ibid.

174 Contemporary Sufism in the West
121 Ibid.
122 Charles Lloyd, Canto, CD (Oslo, Norway: Rainbow Studio, 1997).
123 Iraj Gorgin, “Rumi Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Sep-
tember 27, 2008, www.rferl.org/a/Rumi_Live_At_The_Hollywood_Bowl/1292078.
html.
124 Larry Bartleet, “Coldplay – 15 Revelations from Chris Martin’s Recent Interviews
Ahead of ‘A Head Full of Dreams’ Release,” NME, November 20, 2015, www.
nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/coldplay-15-revelations-from-chris-mar tins-recent-
interviews-ahead-of-a -head-full-of-dreams-release-767334.
125 “Kaleidoscope by Coldplay,” Songfacts, n.d ., www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=38774.
126 Farid-Ud-Din Attar, Conference of the Birds: A Seeker’s Journey to God (Boston, MA:
Weiser Books, 2001).
127 Bartleet, “Coldplay.”
128 Hafez Nazer i, Rumi Symphony Project: Untold, CD (New York: Sony Music, 2014).
129 Garry Marshall, Valentine’s Day, film (Burbank, CA: War ner Brothers Pictures, 2010).
130 Angela, “Etat Libra d’Orange Like This Fragrance Review,” Now Smell This, April 26,
2010, www.nstperfume.com/2010/04/26/etat-libre-dorange-like-this-frag rance-review/.
131 Tilda Swinton, “Like This,” Etat Libre D’Orange, n.d ., http://etatlibredorange.com/
en/boutique/like-this-en/.
132 Tilda Swinton, “Like This,” Etat Libre d’Orange, n.d ., uses translations from The Essen-
tial Rumi by Barks. This promotional video can be accessed on Youtube via this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKVRJj7aVOk.
133 Zahra Alipour, “Why Iranians Are Turning against Leonardo DiCaprio,” Al-Moni-
tor, June 27, 2016, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/or iginals/2016/06/rumi-molana-
hollywood-film-leo-dicaprio-iran-reactions.html.
134 Ibid.
135 Ibid. Interestingly, there is already a Hollywood film on Khayyam, entitled, The Keeper:
The Legend of Omar Khayyam, directed by Kayvan Mashayekh (Springdale, AR: Han-
nover House, 2005).
136 Quoted in Chiara Palazzo, “Leonardo DiCaprio as Persian Poet Rumi: Gladiator Screen-
writer Faces Cries of Hollywood Whitewashing,” The Telegraph, June 8, 2016, www.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/08/leonardo-dicaprio-as-persian-poet-rumi-gladiator
- scree nw riter-fa/.
137 Frud Bezhan, “Cultural Tug-of-War Erupts over Persian Poet Rumi,” Radio Free Europe
Radio Liberty, June 10, 2016, www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-rumi-poet-turkey-iran-unesco
/27791137.html.
138 Ibid.
139 International filmmakers, such as Iranian filmmakers Dariush Mehrjui and Mojtaba
Raei, have been working on a film on Rumi and Shams since 2009 in English, based on
Saeedeh Ghods’s novel Kimia Khatoon (Tehran, Iran: Cheshmeh Publications, 2004).The
project was halted because of their inability to draw investors and money to the project.
Several attempts to revive this particular project through different avenues, such as with
the Cinema Organization of Iran along with Turkey, also failed because of lack of funds.
140 For instance, Nacer Khemir, a Parisian-Tunisian, is an example of a filmmaker, with
films such as Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated his Soul (Tehran, Iran: Behnegar,
2005). Similarly, films like the Bollywood historical epic on a Mughal emperor named
Jodha Akbar, directed by Ashutosh Gowariker (Mumbai, India: UTV Motion Pictures,
2008) also captured much of Akbar’s relationship with Sufism, and featured Qawwali
music by A. R. Rahman and whirling dervishes.
141 Bill Bradley, “Jaden Smith is Playing a Time-Traveling Jaden Smith in ‘The Get Down,’”
Huffington Post, August 31, 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jaden-smith-is-play-
ing-a-time-traveling-jaden-smith-in-the-get-down_us_57b22d61e4b0a8e15024dc69.
142 Dalrymple, “What Goes Round ....”
143 Afdhere Jama, “5 Queer Muslims in History,” LGBT Muslims: Infor mation on Sex-
ual Diversity in Islam, Febr uary 5, 2015, http://islamandhomosexuality.com/5-queer
- muslims-history/.

The era of Rumi: Popular culture 175
144 LGBTQ is an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer, and
is used by members of the community as self-identification but also for rights-based
discourses and movements. This acronym has been quite fluid in recent years, and has
become more and more nuanced. Variations of this acronym include other letters in
efforts to be more inclusive of the diverse gender and sexual identities of human beings;
for example, “I” stands for intersex; or an additional “T” for Two-Spirited, an identity
used by indigenous communities (i.e., LGBTQIT or LGBTQ+).
145 Michael J. Bayly,“Rumi and Shams:A Love of Another Kind,” The Wild Reed, December
17, 2011, http://thewildreed.blogspot.ca/2011/12/rumi-and-shams-love-of-another-
kind.html.
146 “Rumi,” The Persian Closet, April 1, 2013, https://thepersiancloset.wordpress.
com/2013/04/01/rumi/; “Rumi on Gay and Lesbians,” Maulana Rumi Online, n.d .,
http://sologak1.blogspot.ca/2013/04/rumi-on -gays-and-lesbians.html.
147 “Jalal al-Din Rumi,” LGBT History Month, n.d ., http://lgbthistorymonth.com/
jalal-al-din-rumi?tab=biography; “Rumi: Poet and Sufi Mystic Inspired by Same-sex
Love,” Jesus in Love Blog, September 30, 2016, http://jesusinlove.blogspot.ca/2016/09/
rumi-poet-and-sufi-mystic-inspired-by.html.
148 “Rumi: Poet and Sufi Mystic Inspired by Same-sex Love,” Jesus in Love Blog, September 30,
2016, http://jesusinlove.blogspot.ca/2016/09/rumi-poet-and-sufi-mystic-inspired-by.html.
149 Official website of the Rumi Rose Garden Café & Market, n.d ., www.rumirose.com/.
150 Ibid.
151 Ibid.
152 Ibid.
153 Rumi Rose Teas official website, www.rumiroseteas.ca/.
154 Coffee has long been associated with Sufi ritual practices, on par with smoking tobacco
and drinking wine, which garnered Sufis a bad reputation. Ralph S. Hattox, in his
Coffee and Coffeehouses: Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle, WA:
University of Washington, 1988) argues that some of the earliest instances of coffee use
were by Yemeni Sufis for dhikr, who treated it as a “sacred drink” for aiding in their
meditative discipline (74).
155 Official website of the Rumi Rose Garden Café & Market, www.rumirose.com/.
156 For more, please see Rumi’s Kitchen, n.d ., www.rumiskitchen.com.
157 Sarah Musgrave, “Casual Dining: Rumi,” Montreal Gazette, October 18, 2011, www.
montrealgazette.com/life/Casual+Dining+Rumi/5569430/story.html.
158 “Restaurant Rumi,” Resto Montreal, n.d ., www.restomontreal.ca/en/1982/Rumi.
159 “Rumi,” Walter Knoll, n.d ., www.walterknoll.de/en/products/rumi-chair.
160 Ibid.
161 Nader Khalili, “Calearth Superadobe Structures,” CalEarth (California Institute of
Earth Architecture), n.d ., www.calearth.org/superadobe-structures-calearth/.
162 In Islamic societies, architecture has been deeply influenced by metaphysical cosmolo-
gies and philosophies of Sufism and Islam at large. For instance, architects like Hassan
Fathy, known for his experiment of reconstruction of a rural town in Egypt (captured
in his book Architecture for the Poor [Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973]),
is one such example. Fathy has gleaned heavily from Sufi poets such as Rumi. For
more, please see Nader Ardalan, “From Within: On the Spiritual in Art and Architec-
ture,” in Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality, eds. Thomas Bar r ie, Julio Ber mudez, and
Phillip James Tabb (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015).
163 Monks, “Lord of the Dance.”
164 Rumi.quotes, “The Art of Knowing Is Knowing What to Ignore,” Instagram, April 29,
2017, https://www.instagram.com/rumi.quotes/?hl=en; rumi_poetry, “He also made
the key”Instagram, June 10, 2016, www.thepicta.com/user/rumi_poetry/462085622.
165 Rumi Quotes, Facebook post, July 16, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/RumiQuotes/;
Rumi Hugs, Facebook post, July 14, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/Rumi-
Hugs-232019736889590/; Rumi the Master of Love, Facebook post, July 16, 2017,
https://www.f acebook.com/Rumi-The-Master-of-Love-1632689780290780/;
Rumi, Facebook post, February 24, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/RumiPage/.

176 Contemporary Sufism in the West
166 “Rumi” Facebook post, July 16, 2017.
167 Kathryn Brown Ramsperger, Your Tango, “20 Love Quotes from Ancient Mys-
tic Rumi That Are Crazy Beautiful,” July 27, 2016, www.yourtango.com/2016
293238/20-beautiful-love-quotes-from-ancient-mystic-rumi.
168 Sameena Mughal,“Five Inspirational Rumi Statements to Say Every Day,” Her Daily, Sep-
tember 12, 2016, http://herdaily.com/life/25809/five-inspirational-rumi-statements/.
169 Jeffrey I. Moore, “46 Rumi Quotes from His Poems about Love and Life,” Everyday
Power, March 16, 2014, http://everydaypowerblog.com/2014/03/16/rumi-quotes/.
170 “2016 Rumi Festival,” Now Playing Utah, www.nowplayingutah.com/event/2016-
r umi-festival/.
171 Jesse Ball, How to Set a Fire and Why: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2016).
172 Ibid., 96–97.
173 Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Pr inceton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2017).
174 Ibid.
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PART III
Gendering Sufism
Tradition and transformation

Some have argued that the globalization of Sufism, which has been discussed in
the previous chapters, has meant greater opportunities for women’s involvement
in the tradition. Contemporar y Mevlevi Sufi master Sulayman Loras (d. 1985), for
example, began teaching women to whirl in North Amer ica, breaking with cen-
tur ies of tradition limiting this r itual to men. However, this idea that Sufism offers
more opportunities for women in the West has also been exaggerated, overlooking
the historical precedents of feminine involvement and leadership in Sufism, and
the ways in which women are taking leadership roles in non-Western contexts. To
make sense of these histor ical precedents, this chapter first explores the classical Sufi
concepts of insan al-kamil (perfected human) and awliya’ (friends of God) and their
relationship to gender. Thereafter, the chapter offers representative examples of the
ways in which these ideal principles were actualized by Sufi women. This chapter
is not meant to be comprehensive but rather offers brief examples of female Sufi
personalities in each distinct per iod of Muslim history as a means of contextualiz-
ing the contemporar y.
The contemporary era has offered women opportunities to take on public
roles within Sufism that were previously the preserve of men, and yet contempor-
ary women’s activities in many ways perpetuate the rich history of women saints,
teachers, and practitioners of Sufism. Sufi female personalities were influential in
the development of the var ious aspects of the Sufi tradition, from developing its
principles and practices to transmitting knowledge, and being recognized as saints,
spiritual teachers, and authorities.The ways in which “women” are discussed in the
history of Sufism rest on two theoretical approaches: (1) a metaphysical one; and
(2) an histor ical and anthropological one. In comparing the conclusions drawn
from these theoretical frameworks to the study of Sufi women, historically there
is a consistent trend that the feminine, as an ideal principle, does not necessarily
equate with the feminine as a social subject in the societies women occupied.
6
PERFECTING THE SELF
Female Sufi saints in Islamic history

186 Gendering Sufism
Where the ideal feminine, especially as a saintly and perfected manifestation of
the divine, is elevated in Sufi metaphysical and philosophical thought by male
Sufi writers, this positionality did not necessarily equate to gender egalitarian
access to spaces (public or private) and rituals in the day to day life of Muslim
women.
That being said, women, as many recent studies have unearthed, negotiated this
complex positionality that relegated them on a biological level to the margins but
elevated them on a spiritual level. Sufi women’s social and familial gender expec-
tations were negotiated in their perfor mance of leadership roles. Thus, where Sufi
men’s stor ies did not necessitate that their spiritual identity be gendered as mas-
culine, Sufi women’s stories did. Despite these complexities and the intersections
at which Sufi women engaged in spiritual and pious work, they maintained roles
as leaders and were seminal in the development of Sufi institutions, teachings, and
devotion. They were a part of the story of Sufism much as their male counter parts.
Yet, it is precisely their ability to occupy saintly and leadership positions that chal-
lenged the social and gender nor ms of the day, that further attracted cr iticism of
Sufism as an Islamic spiritual tradition. Sufi women’s roles histor ically and in con-
temporar y contexts attracted further vitr iol from anti-Sufi camps. At the same time,
it was one of the qualities that appealed to non-Muslims, including Orientalists, as
a tradition that was contrary to the stereotyped vision of women as lacking agency
or a voice in Islam.
Insan al-Kamil: The perfected human being
Like the Bible and the Torah, the Qur’an states that humans are created in the
image (surah or form) of God. Relating this idea of manifesting the divine for m to
Quranic teachings about God’s Ninety-Nine Names (asma al-husna), Sufis have
long understood the core of their practice to involve each person’s conscious culti-
vation of their capacity to fully reflect all of the divine qualities present within the
Names. For every spiritual virtue and existential principle there is a corresponding
divine name, because all of creation reflects its Creator. Unique among the created
beings, however, humans have the capacity to comprehensively reflect God’s nature
in all its fullness, encompassing qualities as diverse as majesty, beauty, patience,
strength, wisdom, fir mness, gentleness, love, subtlety, and peace, among many others.
Although God alone possesses these qualities in their fullness, human beings have
the potential to manifest them in an integrated manner through assiduous spiritual
practice and divine grace.
While direct knowledge of God (‘ilm al-laduni) is ultimately a divine gift
that cannot be attained through devout practice alone, full spiritual realization
requires constant awareness of God’s presence and can be reached by any prac-
titioner, whether male or female, through the cultivation of sensitivity to God’s
immanent (tashbih) and transcendent (tanzih) presence. Significantly, the Sufi goal
of becoming a complete or whole and perfected human being (insan al-kamil)
is not understood to be a gender-specific state of being, and indeed requires

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 187
integration of divine qualities that might be considered “feminine” as well as
“masculine.”
Sufi personalities like Ibn al- ‘Arabi descr ibed the process of aspiring toward
divine perfection by taking on God’s qualities as takhalluq bi akhlaq Allah, which
translates literally as “character izing oneself with the characteristics of God” or
“becoming perfect in God’s perfections.”
1 This is certainly one way to understand
the entirety of the Sufi path: a gradual process of embodying more and more of
God’s qualities, like generosity, justice, forgiveness, patience, wisdom, love, etc. As
one invokes and more importantly lives and embodies these qualities, the aspirant
fulfills more of the or iginal human disposition (fitra) of innate goodness, which
is a function of being created in the image or for m of God. The fully realized
human being or insan al-kamil (perfected human), manifests all of God’s qualities,
reflecting God’s wisdom, compassion, and guidance into the world. To reach this
station of perfection, however, the human has to be emptied of all created qual-
ities, annihilated (fana‘ ) with respect to egoic character istics, to clear the ground
for God’s qualities to manifest and subsist (baqa‘ ) and thereby per mit a contingent
sense of identification with the Divine. Gender is notably absent within the Sufi
understanding of the perfected human. In other words, being male or female is no
more relevant to being descr ibed as the perfected human than is identity linked to
culture, nationality, ethnicity, economic status, or any other social qualifier.
An interesting example of this genderless aspect of insan al-kamil is found in
the wr itings of Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765), one of the most important early commen-
tators on the Qur’an, as well as a renowned mystic, a scholar of religious sciences,
a descendant of the Prophet, and, for Shi‘a Muslims, the sixth Imam. According to
al-Sadiq, insan al-kamil is connected to the idea of the al-haqiqa al-muhammadiyya
(“the Muhammadan Reality”) or nur muhammadiyya (“the light of Muhammad”) as
inspired by a Quranic passage known as “the Light verse” (24:35):
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth; the likeness of His Light is as
a niche wherein is a lamp – the lamp in a glass, the glass as if it were a glitter-
ing star – kindled from a Blessed Tree, an olive tree that is neither of the East
nor of the West, whose oil well nigh would shine, even if no fire touched it:
Light upon Light; Allah guides to His Light whom He will. And Allah str ikes
similitudes for man, and Allah has knowledge of everything.
Early Muslim scholars such as al-Sadiq suggest that the lamp (misbah in Arabic) in
this verse is actually a symbol for Muhammad. Schimmel descr ibes this reading of
the text in the following terms:
Through him the Divine Light could shine in the world, and through him
humankind was guided to the or igin of this Light. The for mula “neither of
the East nor of the West” was then taken as a reference to Muhammad’s com-
prehensive nature, which is not restr icted to one specific people or race and
which sur passes the boundaries of time and space.2

188 Gendering Sufism
It is with this more universal meaning of Muhammad that we find al-Sadiq explain-
ing why other prophets like Mary, Moses, Joseph, and Abraham are also “muham-
mad.” In this case, they are descr ibed as such based on the meaning of the name, as
“one who is praised” and not by gender. Thus Nur Muhammad can be conceived as
the light of prophetic guidance manifest not just in the histor ical Prophet Muham-
mad but also among the other prophets, who, like Muhammad and indeed Mar y,
are praised (muhammad) for their state of total submission to God and transmission
of the divine word.3
From a Sufi perspective, Islamic conceptions of divine as well as human perfec-
tion transcend the qualities and conceptions of masculinity and femininity that can
be ascribed to the universe of created things. Reality in its many-ness is replete with
differences and distinctions, and many of God’s Ninety-Nine Names can them-
selves be categor ized as taking on a masculine or feminine character. God as such,
however, surpasses such characterizations in his all-inclusive nature, despite the use
of a masculine pronoun to refer to his transcendent reality. Similarly, individuals
who, whether male or female, come to realize God’s oneness through recognition
of his presence within the many-ness of his manifestation, ar r ive at a state of com-
pletion that is beyond a gender binary.
Gendered qualities encompassed by the perfected human
While God’s perfection (kamil) integrates all of the diverse qualities manifest within
God’s many names, the Names themselves have traditionally been divided into
two specific categor ies associated with gender: transcendent or jalal (majestic and
incomparable) names and qualities, on the one hand, and immanent or jamal (beau-
tiful and loving) qualities, on the other. By characterizing names of God as being
jamaliyya and jalaliyya and associating these qualities with creation and with God’s
relational presence in lived reality, commentators developed a cosmology in which
jalal names and qualities were connected to the masculine principle and jamal names
and qualities were linked to the feminine. Jalal names included character istics of
strength, fir mness, inaccessibility, bringer of humility, abasement, and death. In con-
trast, jamal names encompassed love, peace, forgiveness, subtlety, g ratitude, and life.
Placing contemplation of God’s beautiful names at the center of Islamic spirituality
underscored the link between worship of a transcendent God and discovery of his
immanent presence in a world where the names of God are quite literally scattered
throughout creation, so these principles are found ever ywhere. Significantly, Sufi
personalities emphasized contemplating both jalal and jamal qualities of God, and
thereby encouraged cultivation of “masculine” as well as “feminine” ways of relat-
ing to the all-inclusive divine reality. Influential Sufi writers such as Ibn al-‘Arabi
cr iticized the “jalal only” perceptions of divinity found in theological frameworks
that excluded feminine and beautiful principles present within the Qur’an, and
went so far as to state that “the Kalam [exoteric theology] stresses God’s incompa-
rability so much that it negates the possibility of love between human beings and
God.”
4

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 189
To counterbalance the “jalal only” tendency that sometimes took root within
outwardly focused for ms of religiosity (for ms that were often the most male-or i-
ented), many Sufi personalities sought to develop the feminine or jamal aspect of
spirituality, both as a creative and theophanic principle through which a spiritual
aspirant becomes receptive to the divine, and ultimately as a necessary aspect of
cosmological creation.5 Ibn al- ‘Arabi, for example, suggested that all souls are fem-
inine, and that all of creation in fact is female in relation to God, in a state of total
receptivity.6 Other Sufis character ized saints as “brides of God,” and refer red to
death as their soul’s wedding night. Traditions stating that “my soul is a woman”7
similarly embellished on this theme in ways that idealized the receptive quality as
present within idealized figures such as the Virgin Mary. Such positive valuations
of the feminine principle were further developed by Ibn al-‘Arabi in his commen-
tary on a prophetic Hadith concer ning love for women, and explained that lov-
ing women is itself a highly refined way of contemplating God. His poetic works
such as Tarjuman al-Ashwaq (“Interpreter of Ardent Desires”) made extensive use of
the feminine principle when descr ibing moments of spiritual realization. The next
chapter (Chapter 7) will explore similar invocations of the feminine, as seen in the
thought of many contemporar y Sufi female leaders.
Gendered “Friends of God”
Even while descr ibing a spiritual path for which both masculine and feminine
principles are indispensable, Sufi character izations of the complete or perfected
human being imply a state within which jalal and jamal qualities become integrated.
As the individual comes to manifest all of God’s Names, they become marked by
comprehensiveness and perfection and are thereby able to act as a representative of
God on earth.This means car rying out tasks of guardianship and protection of life,
as envoys of God or as what the Qur’an qualifies as “Awliya’ Allah” or “Fr iends of
God.”
8
The intensive spirituality required to reach such an elevated state has been
understood as nothing less than the perfection of the Islamic faith and its very core,
hence later Sufis could lay claim to being the true “Heirs of the Prophet,” or inher-
itors of the fullness of prophetic knowledge. Sufi traditions ascribe to the “Friends
of God” responsibility not just for preser ving the pur ity of Islam but indeed the
spiritual integrity of the world itself.
In Arabic, the singular ter m “walī ” suggests qualities not just of friendship but
also of guardianship, and the integration of these qualities is at the core of Islamic
conceptions of sainthood. Even as they act as “friends” of God, the awliya’ (plural
form) are also differentiated from other people in their capacity for “guardianship”
(walaya/wilaya) in relation to the created world. Al-Junayd described this role in the
following manner:
God has select ones among His worshippers and pure ones among His crea-
tures. He has chosen them for friendship, selected them [for] His graciousness

190 Gendering Sufism
and [thus] set them aside for Himself. He has made their bodies to be of this
world, their spirits of light, their ideas of spirit, their understanding of the
throne of God, and their intellects of the veil.9
According to al-Junayd, the awliya’ “are the instruments of God through whom
God guides humanity to Himself and the springs with which He showers His
mercy on His creatures.”
10 Later Sufis would insist that their entire path was pre-
mised on the existence of this select group of guides brought close to God, who
in tur n share their knowledge, light, and blessing with their close disciples, with
Muslims, and with all people and creation in general.Those who respond to God’s
guidance and draw closer to Him are given commensurate responsibilities to carry
out on His behalf, in a manner similar to that suggested by the Quranic concept of
khilafah, or vicegerency (2:30), according to which the pur pose of human life is to
act as a custodian of the created world on behalf of God.
Early Sufi writers reflected extensively on the concept of walaya. Generally artic-
ulated as a dual trajectory – one toward God, whereby the walī is brought close
to God and experiences near ness and intimacy, and one toward creation, through
which the walī helps in car rying out God’s tasks on earth, as a caretaker, protector,
and transmitter of grace and wisdom. Significantly, Sufis did not see sainthood
as an exclusively masculine spiritual station and maintained that the quality of
wilaya could be bestowed by God upon anyone. In particular, anyone who under-
takes moral purification and spiritual discipline of the Sufi path can exper ience an
unveiling of esoter ic knowledge, including access to the hidden meanings of the
Qur’an, transmission of blessing (baraka), and even exper ience of miraculous gifts.
At least in principle then, anyone can be a walī, even if only a select few find within
themselves the spiritual discipline and dedication required to make the journey. It is
these qualities of the walī, their ability to access the inner meanings of the Qur’an,
miraculous gifts, and baraka that anti-Sufi interpreters have questioned or denied
(as discussed in Chapter 2).
In light of this last point, classical Sufi writers descr ibed a hierarchy of differently
ranked saints watching over the world, and it was Ibn al-‘Arabi who further spec-
ified that this saintly hierarchy consisted of both men and women. With respect to
the different ranks within this hierarchy, he stipulated that “each category that we
speak of contains both men and women,” such that any of the saints, from the high-
est qutb (spiritual or axial pole) to the lowest of the thirty-five levels of sainthood,
could be occupied by women as well as men. As Ibn al-‘Arabi affir med in multiple
instances, “There is no spiritual quality belonging to men to which women do not
have equal access.”
11
A brief historical overview of Sufi women
Paradoxically, the elevation of femininity as an ideal in Islamic cosmology and the
widespread affir mation of female “Fr iends of God” did not erase conventional
understandings of gender in Islamic societies. Women’s contr ibutions often took

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 191
place behind the scenes, and women infrequently assumed public roles. The public
sphere, with its religious and political institutions, tended to be male dominated.
Why? One theory to explain this concer ns the institutionalization of Sufism and
its increasing ties to gover nment and the ‘ulama. As Sufism transitioned from infor-
mal social and spiritual networks to more institutionalized for ms, we see a general
patter n of male domination of these institutions. Organized Sufism thereby tended
to follow patterns that were also present in fiqh and kalam, and largely fell into
line with premodern gender nor ms whereby men were associated with the public
sphere and women with the private.
Scholars such as Laury Silvers and Amila Buturovic attr ibute the lack of for ma-
tive and classical literature on Sufi women to sociopolitical nor ms that restr icted
women’s leadership within the public sphere. Rather than take on for mal lead-
ership of Sufi orders, women asserted themselves within prescr ibed female roles
as mothers, wives, and daughters connected to Sufi males. This does not mean,
however, that women were passive or completely marginalized from Sufi practice.
As Silvers notes:
Pious, mystic, and Sufi women were engaged socially with one another.They
visited each other at home, met at gatherings, travelled to spend time with
each other, passed along accounts of each other’s knowledge and practices,
worshipped with one another, and caught up with each other’s news.12
Though not nearly so well documented as men’s activities, Sufi women’s engage-
ment with one another was a vital part of Sufi culture and practice. As Buturovic
states,“Sufi women’s participation in the mystical path has never been simple: rather,
it has been predicated on their ability to navigate through social constructions –
Sufi and non-Sufi alike – of gender and public/private space.”
13
Despite the institutionalized tendency to amplify men’s voices, women had a
continuous presence in Sufi orders and in the living and teaching of Sufism. As
stated by Schimmel:
Women played a positive role in Sufism. Even though the early ascetics were
rather negative in their statements about women, it was a woman who intro-
duced the concept of pure love into Islamic mysticism, and has been vener-
ated for this reason throughout the centuries. One meets women in almost
every avenue of Sufism. They act as patrons of Sufi khanqahs and as shaykhas
of certain convents.They have been venerated as saints and accepted as spir-
itual guides. This symbol of the woman-soul who embodies the highest
ambition of the God-seeking human being, has been popular in the Sufi
tradition of Indo-Pakistan. As mothers, many mystically inclined women
have deeply influenced their sons who in turn became leading masters of the
Path thanks to their early education.The role of women for the expansion of
mystically tinged Islamic thought in the countryside and down to the low-
est levels of population cannot be over rated; they were the most important

192 Gendering Sufism
depositories of mystical lore and the simple, unassuming faith in God and
the Prophet.14
In what follows, we point to specific examples from the for mative, medieval, and
colonial per iods of Muslim history that help illustrate Schimmel’s observations.
Formative period: Female ascetics and male biographers
The first four centur ies after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 are commonly
described as the formative per iod of Sufism. Dur ing this per iod, Islam transitioned
from its status as a seemingly minor new Arabian religious movement to a major
force in world history – the basis for the polycultural and wide-ranging empires of
the Umayyads (661–750) of Damascus and the Abbasids of Baghdad (750–1258).
Although Sufi thought and practice were not absent from major urban centers of
these empires, many early developments are understood to have transpired along
the margins of empire among ascetics and mystics who sometimes prefer red the
isolation of the desert to the luxur ies and temptations of cities. Over time, however,
a widespread and diffuse culture of Islamic spirituality and esoteric thought devel-
oped coherence, in no small part through work of great Sufi biographers who trav-
eled extensively to gather, compile, and record stor ies and teachings of exemplary
Sufi masters.The manuals produced by these Sufi biographers, often in the for m of
encyclopedic guidebooks, preser ved records of the early Sufi way of life as well as
accounts of essential practices, and became catalysts for molding the future of clas-
sical Sufi traditions. From these works the authors were able to convey a variety of
themes as well as genres, including descr iptions of Sufi rules of conduct and nor ms
of pious behavior, accounts of Sufi rituals and ter minology, and hagiographic stories
of leading Sufi personalities, both men and women.
Scholarship explor ing the presence as well as absence of Sufi female figures
in Sufi biographies and compendiums has helped us to understand how women
were included and at times neglected in these early, defining works. For instance,
Silvers points out the stark difference between biographical collections wherein
one or two notable Sufi female figures are depicted (e.g ., al-Qushayri’s al-Risala or
al-Hujwiri’s Kashf al-mahjub) versus that of other collections which offer a diversity
of figures, male and female, who represent different Sufi inclinations and regions of
the Muslim world (e.g ., Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami’s [d. 1021] Dhikr al-niswa
al-muta’abbidat as-sufiyyat and Abu al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzi’s [d. 1201] Sifat al-safwa, as
well as Muhammad Ibn Sa’d’s [d. 845] Tabaqat al-kubra).15
One female Sufi saint who is mentioned in most Sufi biographical collections
is Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. Due to the advanced nature of her spiritual states many
Sufis held that there were none who were equal to Rabi‘a. Biographers like Attar
considered her to be far above her contemporar ies and later Sufis and hence she
was given the title the “Crown of Men” (Taj al-Rajal).This “reverse gender ization”
is found in many of the biographers’ works in which women were said to have
reached a state of perfection that transcended their “woman-ness” through rigor in

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 193
mystical devotion.16 Sufi authors articulated the courage necessary to go through
the trials of the spiritual path and the rigors of self-denial as a for m of manliness –
to be a true man, or a manly and masculine man, was to be one who faced these
challenges. By this logic, a woman who undertook the spiritual path successfully
could be considered more masculine than the vast major ity of men.
Attar’s praise for Rabi‘a exemplifies this tendency to celebrate distinguished Sufi
women as “more manly than men.” In his famous work Mantiq at-tayr (Conference of
the Birds),Attar offers the following ecstatic praise for Rabi‘a’s status:“No, she wasn’t
a single woman. But a hundred men over ... From foot to face, immersed in the
Truth, effaced in the radiance of God, and liberated from all superfluous excess.”
17
Attar expands on the rationale for this praise of Rabi‘a in his Memoirs of the Saints:
That noble recluse who dwelled behind the cloisters of God’s elect, a matron
of sanctity beneath sincer ity’s veil, on fire with love, totally consumed with
year ning, arduously enraptured by God’s proximity, that apostle of Mary’s
pur ity, acknowledged by all men was Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyyah, God’s mercy rest
upon her.18
Associating Rabi‘a with the Virgin Mary, Attar portrays her as having achieved a
spiritually active or “masculine” state of ascetic world-renunciation – of complete
and loving dedication to the realization of God. He affir ms her spiritual station by
attesting that, “Both in ter ms of her spiritual transactions and gnosis of God, Rabi‘a
was unexcelled in her time and was accredited by all great men of her age.”
19
Offering similar praise, ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492), a famous Persian Sufi poet
and commentator on Ibn al-‘Arabi, said the following about Rabi‘a: “If all women
were like the one we have mentioned, then women would be preferred to men.”
20
Such statements are very telling. In conferr ing upon Rabi‘a titles such as “The
Crown of Men,” Sufi authorities who celebrated her spiritual excellence as an expo-
nent of divine love alluded to another tradition that states, “When a woman walks
in the way of God, she cannot be called a ‘woman.’”
21 Though society may have
favored men over women in conventional understandings of status and presumed
capacity for leadership, Sufi Muslims granted exemplary spiritual women an “hon-
orary male” or “more masculine than men” status. In the relevant Arabic and Per-
sian literature, such women were often referred to respectfully as “men” – as rajul
and mard. Such designations underscore the complex role of women in the theory
and practice of mysticism, particularly consider ing the manner in which the noun
“man” was often used nor matively to designate any individual who ear nestly strove
toward God, without making any direct reference to the gender identity of the per-
son in question. Nevertheless, this “reverse genderization” can be cr itiqued from a
contemporary standpoint as perpetuating the valor ization of the masculine as repre-
senting the pinnacle of spirituality, while the feminine is something that is in a sense
shed on the spiritual path, despite the fact that male Sufi author ities aspired to the
“feminine ideal” or the spiritual state of the bride in their approach to seeking God’s
love. In contrast, Rabi‘a’s status as a spiritually realized woman was affir med in ter ms

194 Gendering Sufism
of the feminine as she was descr ibed as a “second spotless Mary.”
22 This links Rabi‘a
to the notion of the insan al-kamil, which, as we discussed above, is a genderless
notion of human perfection. This linkage to Mary is made as Mary was considered
both the insan al-kamil and the Nur Muhammad, highlighting one of the ways in
which medieval Islamic metaphysics transcended the dualities of gender categor iza-
tions. As we will see in Chapter 7, contemporary female Sufi leaders invoke Mary
and continue to be inspired by her as a feminine archetype of spiritual perfection.
Though Rabi‘a took on archetypal status and appears to have set a pattern for
spiritually realized women, she was not the only Sufi woman to receive praise as an
exemplar whom wise men ought to emulate. One of these early Sufi women was
Fatima of Nishapur (d. 849), of Khurasan. Her famous student Abu Yazid al-Bistami
(d. 874) once said of her:
In all of my life, I have only seen one true man and one true woman. The
woman was Fatima of Nishapur. There was no station (on the way) about
which I spoke with her, but that she had already experienced it herself.23
Like few other exceptional women, she received elevation to the ranks of honorary
men by being called ustadh (meaning “teacher” or “master” in the masculine form,
as opposed to the ustadha). As related by the prominent Sufi scholar Dhu’-Nun
al-Mesr i, “I have never seen anyone more excellent than a woman I saw in Mecca
who is called Fatima of Nishapur ... She is a saint from among the friends of God,
the Glor ious and Mighty.”
24 She also is known for stressing upon Dhu’l-Nun that
the life of a Sufi is not to be found in supernatural states but in living spirituality
through pious practice and thought.
Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Fatima of Nishapur are among the eighty-four women
recognized in one of the most interesting Sufi biographical collections, Abu ‘Abd
ar-Rahman al-Sulami’s Tabaqat as-Sufiiyya (Categories of the Sufis). Intr iguingly, these
Sufi women are detailed in the book’s appendix, Dhikr an-niswa al-muta’abbidat
as-sufiyyat (The Book of Sufi Women), which offers an account of Sufi women famous
for their sanctity, miracles, and wisdom. Rkia E. Cor nell, translator of al-Sulami’s
statements concer ning these Sufi women, points out that the appendix was sep-
arated from the or iginal work soon after al-Sulami’s death and was thought lost
until rediscovered in 1991. As one of the earliest manuscripts on Sufi women, the
book contains descr iptions of women from Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and begins with an
introduction attesting that these women were spiritual exemplars:
Masters of the realities of the divine oneness, recipients of divine discourses,
possessors of true visions and exemplary conduct, and followers of the ways
of the prophets.25
Other women mentioned in al-Sulami’s work are Mu’adha al- ‘Adawiyya, Hafsa
bint Sirin, and Hukayma or Halima of Damascus. Mu’adha founded the first school
of female asceticism in Basra and was credited with initiating the way of disciplined

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 195
servitude to God.26 She was praised by Hasan al-Basr i (d. 728), who reportedly
deemed her an author ity on the spiritual path.27 Her method stressed the princi-
ple of servitude through “prayer, fasting, and the perfor mance of night-vig ils.”
28
Tawakkul (trust in/reliance on God) “was also a central part of her doctr ine.”
29
She further “used to pray six hundred prostrations (rak‘at) every day and night and
would read her nightly portion of the Qur’an in the standing position.”
30 Desirous
of meeting death while in prayer, she refrained from sleeping during the night and
wore “only thin garments” to enable the cold to keep her awake.31
When overcome by the need for sleep, she would get up and wander around
the house, saying, ‘Oh Self! Eter nal sleep is ahead of you. If I were to die, your
repose in the grave would be a long one, whether it be sorrowful or happy!’32
She once said to a woman whom she had nursed as a child:
Oh daughter, be cautious and hopeful of your encounter with God, the Glo-
r ious and Mighty, for I have seen that when the hopeful person meets God,
he is made worthy by his devoted servitude, and I have seen the God-fear ing
person hoping for safety on the day when humanity stands before the Lord
of the Worlds!”33
Hafsa bint Sirin (8th century) had memor ized the Qur’an by the age of twelve34
and was known for “her unique ability to inter pret” its teachings.35 She would say
to her young students: “Give of yourselves while you are still youths. For I see true
spiritual practice only among the youths!”36 Her spiritual practice included an
emphasis on prayer, fasting, and Quranic recitation, and she spent most of the hours
of her day in her private place of worship leaving only upon the “full light of day”37
(in the mor ning) and retur ning in time for the noon prayer. “She would recite half
of the Qur’an every night and would fast every day,”
38 except for certain holidays
(e.g., the Eid).39 It is related that although the oil of her lamp would sometimes go
out while she was praying in the night, it “would continue to illuminate her house
until daylight.”
40
Hukayma or Halima of Damascus (9th century) was a descendant of the Prophet
Muhammad and an important Sufi figure in Syria. As with Rabi‘a, some biogra-
phers confer red the masculine title for a teacher, “ustadh,” upon her, as she was
considered as having transcended the social limitations of her femininity with her
renowned expertise in the for mal Islamic sciences and matters of doctr ine.41 Attest-
ing to the wisdom implied in her name, which means “Dear Sage” or “Dear Philos-
opher,” Rabi‘a bint Isma’il related the following stor y about a visit with her:
I entered Hukayma’s room while she was reading the Qur’an and she said
to me, “Oh, Rabi‘a! I have heard that your husband is taking another wife.”
“Yes,” I said. “How could he?” she replied. “Given what I have been told
about his good judgment, how could his heart be distracted from God by

196 Gendering Sufism
two women? Have you not learned the inter pretation of this verse: ‘Except
one who comes to God with a sound heart.’”
42 “No” I said. Hukayma said,
“It means that when one encounters God, there should be nothing in his
heart other than Him.”
43 As I left Halima, I was so deeply moved by her
words that I rocked back and forth as I walked in a kind of trance, but felt
embarrassed at my condition – that a passerby might think me drunk.44
Taken together, these early Sufi female personalities were recognized as individuals
who were steeped in the ways of gnosis (ma‘rifa), and in Sufi principles and prac-
tices of renunciation, moral conduct, spiritual motivation, love, and str ict ascetic
practices, which gar nered notoriety that their male counter parts preser ved their
nar ratives in compendiums of Sufi lives.
Some nar ratives of Sufi women interestingly worked within given gender con-
straints, but subverted them by challenging the purported masculinity of men, sug-
gesting that there were few, none, or even only “half ” a real man among them.
Husayn Ibn Mansur has a sister who laid claim to manliness on his path. She
was also beautiful. She would come into Baghdad with half of her face cov-
ered by a veil and the other half exposed. A g reat one came to her and said,
“Why do you not cover your face entirely?”
She replied, “You show me a man, and I will cover my face. In the whole
of Baghdad there is only half a man, and that is [my brother] Husayn. Were it
not for him, I would leave this half uncovered also.”
45
In contrast to some of the perspectives articulated above, Sachiko Murata invokes
the metaphysics of submission and femininity, in observing that “when people rec-
ognize themselves for what they truly are,” they “will have no choice but to sur-
render to God willingly” and that, “male or female,” those who submit will become
“a woman of light.”
46 Hence the various metaphysical or ientations offered by the
Islamic tradition include a play of gendered possibilities, not only the genderless
perfected human, the masculine woman, or emasculated man but also the man as
woman, in a state of surrender.
Medieval period: Female teachers and Sufi orders
The female Sufi personalities of the for mative period inspired generations of classical
Sufi women and the development of Sufi piety in the medieval period from the 12th
to 16th centur ies. This per iod witnessed the crystallization of the various ’ulum, o r
sciences, of Islam. By this time, diverse aspects of Islamic learning were for malized
within coherent schools of thought, and institutionalized within private and publicly
funded centers of lear ning. For Sunnis, Islamic law was now accessed through the
four established schools of legal methodology (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali),
while Islamic theology was taught according to the Ash‘ari and Matur idi creeds.
These established schools of law and theology were increasingly disseminated

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 197
through networks of madrasas (endowed colleges of Islamic higher lear ning), which
trained the ‘ulama (the religious scholars who now staffed administrative hierarchies).
By the medieval per iod, Sufism too had become accepted as one of the sciences
of Islam, the science of the inward, of spirituality and psychology (‘ilm al-batin), as we
discussed in Chapter 2. In this age of increasingly institutionalized Sufi orders, there
was a tendency for Sufi spirituality to per meate mainstream Islamic practice. While
the vast major ity of women influenced by Sufism will remain unknown to history,
the lives of a var iety of Sufi female personalities have nonetheless been recorded.
Some followed ascetic ways isolated from society, while others became recognized as
teachers while also fulfilling their roles as mothers, daughters, and sisters.
Dur ing the for mative per iod of Sufism, many leading male Sufi personalities
had female teachers; this phenomenon did not cease in the medieval period. Like
al-Basr i and Dhu’l-Nun before him, the great metaphysician Ibn al-‘Arabi also
claimed to have benefitted from female spiritual mentors. As descr ibed in his Ruh
al-Quds (“The Spirit of Holiness”) and al-Durrat al-Fakhirah (“The Precious Pearl”),
Ibn al-‘Arabi was influenced by two of his most venerated teachers in al-Andalus
(medieval Muslim Spain): Shams, “Mother of the Poor,” and Nunah Fatima Bint
Ibn Al-Muthanna. While studying with numerous Sufi teachers, Ibn al-‘Arabi spe-
cifically mentions that some of the most realized of souls were his female teachers.
With respect to Shams, he is known for stating that “among people of our kind
I have never met one like her with respect to the control she had over her soul.”
The following is also an account by Ibn al-‘Arabi about his female teacher, Shams:
In her spiritual activities and communications she was among the greatest.
She had a strong and pure heart, noble spiritual power and a fine discr imina-
tion ... She was endowed with many graces. I had considerable experience
of her intuition and found her to be a master in this sphere. Her spiritual state
was character ized chiefly by her fear of God and His good pleasure in her,
the combination of the two at the same time in one person being extremely
rare among us.47
Ibn al-‘Arabi ends the biographical section of his Ruh al-Quds with another female
teacher, Nunah Fatima Bint Ibn al-Muthana, whom he met in her nineties. She was
said to have had a particular relationship with the opening chapter of the Qur’an,
the Fatiha, whereby she related to the chapter as a living being that could quite lit-
erally be sent to follow and guide those who were in danger of wander ing astray.48
Upholding her as a spiritual exemplar, Ibn al-‘Arabi descr ibed Nunah Fatima in
the following ter ms:
Although God offered to her His Kingdom, she refused, saying, “You are all,
all else is inauspicious for me.” Her devotion to God was profound. Looking
at her in a purely superficial way one might have thought she was a simple-
ton, to which she would have replied that he who knows not his Lord is the
real simpleton. She was indeed a mercy to the world.49

198 Gendering Sufism
In Ibn al-‘Arabi’s account, self-control and awareness of God were among Nunah
Fatima’s foremost qualities. He relayed a story in which she prayed for an individual
who had struck her with a whip and left her in a state of anger. Recognizing the spir-
itual danger of this state, she sought refuge from her anger in prayer and asked for God
to “not censure him because of [her] feeling against him.”
50 Ibn al-‘Arabi went on to
describe how the Sultan had intended to punish this same individual for other wrong-
doings but Fatima’s prayer interceded with this wish and he was spared execution.51
These early experiences with profound women must have influenced Ibn al-‘Arabi
not only to proclaim that the experience of walaya is fully available to both women
and men without gender restrictions but also to encourage women in their pursuit
of spiritual reality. As reflected in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s magnum opus, Futuhat al-Makkiyya
(The Meccan Openings), he is known for stating that women could attain any spiritual
station, including the hierarchy of the saints. It is also reported that fourteen out
of the fifteen students to whom Ibn al-‘Arabi conferred the khirqa (or the patched
frock of dervishes on the spiritual path) were women. In Teachings of Sufism, Er nst
shares how Jami’ wrote an appendix entitled, “On the Remembrance of the Women
Knowers of God Who Attained the Levels of the Men of God,” in which he recol-
lected a passage from Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Futuhat al-Makkiyya concer ning the number of
“Substitutes,” one of the highest levels in the world’s spiritual hierarchy of divinely
realized persons.52 Upon reporting that “Forty souls” have attained this rank, Ibn
al-‘Arabi was asked to clarify his answer in terms of gender. He then answered that
he had not used a masculine pronoun “Because there are women among them.”
53
Another prominent medieval example of a female Sufi ascetic teacher was Lala
‘Aziza of Seksawa, whose tomb is still a place of pilgrimage in the High Atlas
Mountains of Morocco. As recorded in Uns al-faqir wa ‘izz al-haqir (The Convivial
Company of the Wandering Poor and the Honorable Strength of the Contemptible) by Ibn
Qunfudh (d. 1407), ‘Aziza, who was his teacher, was known for her saintly presence
and power:
‘Aziza blessed me with her goodness. I studied with her awhile ... She was
a teacher and had a number of followers, both men and women; they were
involved in worship and in search for the divine ... ‘Aziza was eloquent in
her speech, in her knowledge of the Qur’an and Arabic ... People were
always crowded around her. I never saw her but that she was doing good. She
is filled with God’s generosity.54
Ibn Qunfudh also described an encounter between ‘Aziza and al-Hintati, the gov-
er nor of Marrakesh and a commanding general who was attempting to conquer
south Morocco with his 6,000 men:
‘Aziza walked out of the safety of the foothills and onto the harsh Mar-
rakesh plains and stood—alone—before the great general and his ar my.
She confronted al-Hintati with her words and her own faith. She spoke of
God’s demands for justice, the pull of the good, the wrong of harming God’s

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 199
creation. The general was overwhelmed by her. He later described the event
to Ibn Qunfundh: “O religious teacher! This one—she is a wonder. She
answered me before I could ask anything of her. She knew what was going
on inside of me ... my internal thinking, my ideas. I was not able to counter
her argument, to reject her requests.”
55
Elaine Combs-Schilling affir ms how this stor y of ‘Aziza is still retold after six hun-
dred years and how ‘Aziza’s tomb is a sanctuary and it is still used as a space for
mediating conflicts. Even dur ing the colonial age and the independence war with
France, her tomb was a safe haven where many people would seek peace and calm
in the midst of the conflict.
‘Aziza talked the general out of his conquest. She convinced him to leave the
people of Seksawa unharmed. He marched his ar my back to Marrakesh, and
she retur ned to the mountains. The story of a woman who dared to stand up
to a general and his ar my, ar med only with her faith. Down through the cen-
tur ies people have sought refuge there, people fleeing the excesses of central
power or local conflicts, people falsely accused of crimes, people who have
done great har m.56
In addition to great female ascetic Sufi personalities who prefer red the deserts to
imper ial cities, there also were scholarly personalities who left their legacy not
through stor ies and aphor isms but through metaphysical poetry and writings. Per-
haps the most well-known Sufi female mystic and scholar as well as prolific poet
and writer in the medieval era was ‘Aishah al-Ba‘uniyah (d. 1517) who “composed
more works in Arabic than any other woman prior to the 20th century.”
57 Hav-
ing been born into a family of religious scholars and poets, many of whom were
devout Sufi members of the Qadiri Sufi order in souther n Syria, al-Ba‘uniyah also
studied with Sufi male leaders and some of the well-known scholars of her time.
In particular she was known as a copyist, and in the process of her work she was
influenced by the famous Sufi treatises by Yahya Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (d. 1277),
Kitab al-Adhkar (The Book of Recollections), and ‘Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Jurjani’s
(d. 1414) Kitab al-Ta‘rifat (The Book of Definitions).
Similar to the biographical works of al-Kalabadhi, al-Qushayri, and al-Sulami – all
of whom she quotes from their collections – al-Ba‘uniyah’s own book of reflections
was composed, entitled al-Muntakhab fi Usul al-Rutab fi ‘ilm al-Tasawwuf (Selections
on the Fundamentals of Stations in the Science of Sufism). In this work, al-Ba‘uniyah
“compares Sufism to a tree with many branches, yet having four essential roots
or principles: repentance (tawba), sincerity (ikhlas), recollection (dhikr), and love
(mahabba)” (Homer in 2014, xvii).The following is an excerpt which ends her book
of Sufi principles:
God looked with favor on a folk,
So they stayed away from worldly fortunes.

200 Gendering Sufism
In love and devotion, they worshipped Him;
They surrendered themselves with the best intention.
They gave themselves up to Him in love
And passed away from existence with nothing left behind.
Then with kindness and compassion, he turned to them
And revealed to them His essence,
And they lived again gazing at that living face
As His eternal life appeared.58
Al-Ba‘uniyah’s scholarship and mastery of Sufi lexicography can also be experi-
enced through her works of mystical poetry which have been collected in her
wr itings: Diwan ‘Aishah al-Ba‘uniyah and Fayd al-Fadl wa-Jam‘ al-Shaml (The Ema-
nation of Grace and the Gathering Union). A variety of key Sufi concepts, such as dhikr
(remembrance of God), fana‘ (annihilation of lower self) and baqa‘ (subsistence in
God), are explored in the 370 poems in Emanation of Grace to penetrate different
mystical states and stations as well as highlight significant Quranic themes.
As is witnessed in the works of al-Ba‘uniyah, the predominant tendency dur ing
the medieval per iod was for a Sufi aspirant to adhere to the teaching of particular
male Sufi personalities within a specific Sufi order, and to reverentially follow the
traditions of that teacher and order. While most hagiographic literature concer ns
nar ratives about male Sufi masters like ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani and Nizam al-Din
’Auliya (d. 1325), one also finds stor ies about the great women in their lives, partic-
ularly mothers, daughters, and sisters. Some of these stor ies involve women stepping
beyond their expected social roles.
Most Sufi orders, for example, are organized around spiritual lineages that pass
from fathers to sons or male devotees.The Rifa‘i Sufi order, however, diverges from
this tendency by tracing its spiritual chain of transmission to Zaynab bint al-Rifa‘i
and Fatima bint al-Rifa‘i – the daughters of its founder, Ahmad al-Rifa‘i (d. 1178).
Zaynab and her mother, Rabi‘a bint Abi Bakr, are both mentioned in the biograph-
ical collection, The Garden of the Guardians and the Extract of the Deeds of the Upright,
by Abu Muhammad al-Witr i (d. 1512). Rabi‘a bint Abi Bakr was described as “the
perfect knower of God” and was given the title by Ahmad Rifa‘i of “mother of
the faqirs [the humble servants].”
59 As for Zaynab bint al-Rifa‘i, al-Witr i offers the
following descr iption:
[A]mong the saints was the patient, humble lady, the one who recollected
God, the perfect woman saint, the pure knower of God, the pious God-fear-
ing one, the hopeful luminous one, the one who took precedence over saintly
men, through her lofty qualities and her illustrious spiritual states, the mistress
of sublime degrees, the mother of men, my lady Zaynab.60
As previously discussed about earlier female Sufi mystics like Rabi‘a and Fatima of
Nishapur, Zaynab too was descr ibed as “though she had been created a man” by her
own father, Ahmad Rifa‘i.61

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 201
Another very well-known example of an influential Sufi female medieval figure
can be found beyond the Middle East, in Mughal India. A member of the royal
family, Lady Jahanara (d. 1681), was the daughter of the Mughal emperor Shah
Jahan (d. 1666) and of Empress Mumtaz Mahal (d. 1631) (for whom the Taj Mahal
was built).The brothers of this “Sufi princess” were Dara Shikoh (d. 1659), himself
a significant Sufi personality, and Aurangzeb Alamgir (d. 1707), who would eventu-
ally rise to the Mughal throne.A devout and pious disciple of the Chishti Sufi order,
Jahanara’s wr itings attest to her devotion as an imper ial princess to the Sufi path
and way of life.62 In contrast to followers of mendicant orders who took a vow of
poverty to pursue their spiritual practice, Jahanara maintained her elite status while
engaging in the dervish practice of using dhikr to connect with the divine.
In her collection entitled The Confidant of Spirits, Jahanara conveys her personal
commitment to Sufi living. Utilizing the ter m faqira (spiritual poverty and humil-
ity), Jahanara acknowledges her spiritual calling as a Sufi. This ter m was eventually
invoked in the inscr iption at her tomb, which reads: “The annihilated faqir Lady
Jahanara ...”
63 In this work, she acknowledges that it was “with the aid of fortune
and ascendant victory”64 that she was able to make her pilgrimage “from the capital
Agra in the company of my g reat father toward the pure region of incomparable
Ajmer”65
–
where the tomb of Mu’in al-Din Chishti (d. 1236) was located – during
Ramadan in 1643. She evocatively describes her mystical exper ience of visiting the
tomb as follows:
Having entered the dome, I went around the light-filled tomb of my
master seven times, sweeping it with my eyelashes, and making the
sweet-smelling dust of that place the mascara of my eyes.
At that moment, a mar velous spiritual state and mystical exper ience
befell this annihilated one, which cannot r ightly be wr itten. From extreme
longing I became astonished, and I do not know what I said or did ...
If the sincer ity, love and spiritual concentration of this annihilated one
demanded that I should not go back home after having gone all the way
to that blessed and gracious place, the cor ner of secur ity – what can be
done?
The Beloved has placed a noose on my neck,
And he pulls me wherever he wishes ...66
Significantly, medieval India produced female spiritual masters (known as “Bibis”)
and men (refer red to as “Babas”).The gender-inclusive aspects of this spiritual cul-
ture have not necessar ily unfolded progressively over time. It is ironic that in this
day and age no women are allowed to enter the inner sanctum of Nizam al-Din
‘Auliya’s shrine in New Delhi, given that Nizam al-Din himself was known for
frequently visiting the Sufi female shrine of Bibi Fatima Sam. To him, she was “a
man sent in the for m of woman.”
67
Lives of women in medieval periods, such as above, convey how women subverted
public and private realms and cultivated metaphysical principles of masculinity and

202 Gendering Sufism
femininity in their interactions and disciplines. For instance, Lalla, a 14th-century
yogini and poetess of Kashmir “used to walk around naked because there were no
men before whom she could feel embar rassed.”
68 Lalla, then, came upon Sayyid
‘Ali Hamadani (d. 1385), a Kashmiri Muslim saint, and “then she put on clothes.
She had never before met a man, only people in masculine for m who were in
fact women.”
69 Although many scholars have focused on the piety of antinomian
women, their pious dress and behavior can be understood as forms of social devi-
ance. Many dervishes, particularly those known as qalandars, expressed pious protest
not only through the self-denial of renouncing property and mater ial wealth but
also through a rejection of institutions, employment, mar r iage, and family. Such
non-confor mism included seemingly “deviant” for ms of behavior and appearance,
associated with a per ipatetic homeless life of “voluntary poverty and mendicancy.”
70
Just as Lala ‘Aziza of Seksawa practiced civil disobedience by confronting a military
force, so too did Lalla and al-Hallaj’s sister challenge gender nor ms by subverting
expected feminine attire.Thus, the “anti-establishment” conduct of many dervishes
earned both praise and blame, and in some cases dervishes were regarded as the
“mouthpiece of social cr iticism.”
71 These for ms of civil disobedience and social
cr itique of Islamic law and society garnered critique from anti-Sufis, as discussed
in Chapter 2. Simultaneously, as these negotiations were unfolding within Muslim
societies between orthodoxy and heresy – at the helm of which were often women –
Orientalist encounters with dervish culture72 created a culture of fascination and
exoticization which further propelled Sufism toward a non-Islamic context.
In his examination of saints’ bodies and legacies of piety, Scott Kugle also
explores the life of the North African saint Sayyida Amina bint Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi
in 16th-century Fes.73 In particular, Kugle reflects on the legacy of this majdhub
(“attraction to god”) as her devotion unfolds in what has been labeled “popular”
and “official” Sufism (or “good” and “bad” Sufism).74 Sayyida Amina, for instance,
negotiated her practice of Sufism within her relationships with her family (private)
and also among jur ists and scholars (public). Kugle writes:
This symbiosis might mean that all saints, women and men, break patr iarchal
nor ms, since the goal of sainthood itself is to cultivate an integrated person-
ality that transcends gender divisions.We should pay as much attention to the
“effeminacy” of male saints as we do the “empower ment” of female saints, for
it may well be that in each male saint is an inner woman, such that the man
is a walī, not a man like other men.75
Age of colonization: Sufi females and the call of resistance
Whereas in Europe the coming of the moder n age is primar ily associated with the
intellectual discoveries and social dynamism of the Renaissance and Enlighten-
ment per iods, the same period brings different associations to mind in traditionally
Muslim lands. For Muslims, the advent of modernity meant the beginning of col-
onization rather than emancipation, as virtually all traditionally Muslim terr itories

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 203
fell under European occupation and imper ial administration by the end of the First
World War. Political subjugation to countr ies such as Br itain and France marked a
great histor ical as well as existential rupture, and created a fundamental change in
the basic ter ms of reference for Muslim culture and politics. Muslims found them-
selves enter ing a new era with an historically unfamiliar, subordinate status; they
were now forced to “catch up,” refor m, and undertake adjustments in all areas of
life – political, legal, economic, intellectual, and social.
In the colonial per iod from the 17th to 20th centur ies, as traditions of Sufism
were being reshaped by anti-Sufism and Orientalism, women continued to be pres-
ent in all walks of Sufi life and practice. In some cases, Sufi women even ser ved as
leaders of anti-colonial resistance. Two prominent Sufi women were Nana Asma’u
(d. 1864) and Lalla Zaynab bint Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Abi al-Qasim (d. 1904).
Asma’u was one of West Africa’s most important religious teachers and commu-
nity leaders. She was the daughter of Usman dan Fodio (d. 1817), a Sufi shaykh of
the Qadiri order and the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate – the capital of which
was located in what is today norther n Niger ia. Dan Fodio, known as a reviver of
Islam, preached an integral Islam based on the Qur’an, the Sunnah of Muham-
mad, Islamic law, and the practices and doctr ines of the Sufi path. He was heavily
influenced by the works of the medieval synthesizers of the Sufi tradition, such as
al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi.76
Though also a political and indeed militar y leader, dan Fodio came from a fam-
ily of religious scholars in the Fulani clan, and his scholarly and saintly reputation
were such that he became known simply as the Shehu or Shaykh.Although the local
Hausa kings were Muslim, dan Fodio openly preached against their cor ruption,
abuse of the poor, and deviance from Sunnah. In 1804, he was exiled with his family
for this political stance.The Shehu came to envisage his task like that of the Prophet
Muhammad: first to escape the oppression of those resisting the establishment of
Islam, and then to fight to secure a realm safe for the religion’s practice.To this end
dan Fodio launched what would become known as the Sokoto Jihad, a struggle
against local colonial and Muslim rulers to eradicate corruption and idolatry, and
to establish the teaching and practice of Islam in a large region that is now divided
among several modern African states.
Like her father, Asma’u was well-versed in the breadth of the Islamic tradition,
including the Qur’an (which she had memor ized as a child), the sayings of the
Prophet Muhammad (Hadith), and the doctrines and practices of the Sufi path. She
was fluent in the local Hausa, Fulfulde, and Tamashek languages, as well as Arabic.77
Although traditions of Islamic scholarship were frequently the preser ve of men, the
dan Fodio family made sure that male and female members alike were thoroughly
educated. Her father set an important precedent for African Muslim women, in
cr itiquing the cultural resistance to female education in the region.78
Counting her father and grandmother among her teachers,Asma’u was tutored in
the many handwritten books that the dan Fodio family carr ied with them in goat-
skin satchels. She would eventually become a well-known religious scholar, holding
popular classes for both men and women. Increasingly, Asma’u would draw students

204 Gendering Sufism
from all over the region, particularly women, who knew they had a welcoming but
r igorous teacher they could approach. Although women did not customar ily travel
alone, Asma’u argued that they be allowed to do so for the sake of religious study.79
Educating women would become one of Asma’u’s lifelong causes. For those
women who could not travel due to the demands of mar r iage and young chil-
dren, Asma’u pioneered a distance education model, whereby she personally trained
older women and younger girls (those without family duties) in a ser ies of religious
lessons including Qadiri Sufi values and the basics of Islamic doctrine and practice.
These women, known as the Yan Taru (“The Associates”) would then travel in small
groups to remote rural areas, bringing education to women who would otherwise
be totally isolated from such opportunities:
The Yan Taru organization was comprised of women who were past their
child-bear ing years, and thus freed from domestic responsibilities, as well as
socially free to travel on their own. It was customary in the region for girls
to move to their husbands’ homes at the start of puberty, settle in, and finish
maturing in their new homes, even before consummation of the mar r iage.
This meant that they were focused on their new domestic roles and unavail-
able to attend education classes outside their homes. For the majority, who
lived in rural areas, there were no schools to attend in any event. To address
this need, which was made more severe in the after math of jihad battles as
society was beginning to mend, Asma’u began to prepare mature women to
act as extension teachers for rural women. The lesson plans through which
she taught them were her poems.80
Asma’u’s reputation for lear ning g rew, and she comfortably engaged with other,
usually male, scholars of renown across Africa. Asma’u’s Yan Taru model of distance
education outlived not only herself but even the Sokoto Caliphate. This model of
traveling religious educators remains active in contemporary West Africa, and is still
used by Qadiri women.81
Asma’u was also famous for her poetry and prayers, wr itten in Hausa, Fulfulde, and
Arabic, which elegantly expressed religious teachings, the history of her family and
the Sokoto movement, her grief over lost loved ones, and her longing for God. In the
following excerpt of her prayer Tawassuli Ga Mata Masu Albarka, she eulogizes famous
Sufis, and particularly Sufi women, for the inspiration they provide in her own life:
My aim in this poem is to tell you about Sufis
To the great ones I bow in reverence.
I am mindful of them while I am still alive
So that they will remember me on the Day of Resurrection.
The ascetic women are all sanctified
For their piety they have been exalted ...
I remind you how they yearn for God.
I swear by God that I love them all

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 205
In the name of the Prophet, the Messenger of God.
The scent of their yearning engulfs me.82
In the prayer, Asma’u continues to descr ibe the virtues of the Prophet’s mother,
wives, and daughters, as well as female Sufi figures from early and later per iods of
Islamic history. In her book, Sufi Women, she includes the names of Sufi women
who are cited in a 10th-century biographical work by al-Sulami. Asma’u would
translate the lives and sayings of these histor ical Sufi women into all three languages
(Arabic, Fulfulde, Hausa), to make them accessible to all groups.83
Asma’u herself would become an exemplar of female piety, learning, mystical
acumen, and communal leadership in the age of colonization and in contemporary
times, especially as Africans were moved by transatlantic crossing for use as slaves
in the Amer icas; their religious practices, such as Sufism, were transmitted during
their forced mig ration. Jean Boyd and Beverly Mack, in their 2011 study, highlight
how the same model of education that “inspired” Asma’u was transmitted among
Muslim Amer ican women via the transatlantic slave trade route.84 For instance, by
the late 20th century, an African-American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
reclaimed their ties to the Sokoto Fodio family by studying works of Shehu dan
Fodio and following the r ituals of the Qadiri order.85
Another prominent daughter of a Sufi shaykha in the era of colonization was
Lalla Zaynab bint Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Abi al-Qasim (d. 1904) of the Rahmani-
yya Sufi Order in Arab-Berber Alger ia. Rahmaniyya Sufi Order was established by
M. Ibn M. Ibn Mas’ud b. ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Fasi (d. 1878), who traveled to Mecca
in 1850 and built a Sufi shrine (zawiya) there. In 1897, Lalla Zaynab would succeed
her father, Shaykh Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, as the order’s leader. Similar to
Asma’u, Lalla Zaynab was supported by her father to also receive advanced religious
education that transfer red Sufi teachings, doctr ines, and traditions to her.
Politically, Julia A. Clancy-Smith descr ibes Lalla Zaynab’s position – along with
that of her father – as follows:
In a war of cultures, cultural weapons – and not militant opposition – proved
the most formidable defense. And one of the most intrepid war r iors in this
bloodless battle was a woman, precisely because the colonial edifice was
conceived of as an imperial man’s world ... Contrary to what is frequently
asserted – that colonized women lost power and status – it can be argued
that the contradictions of the French regime offered opportunities, under
certain conditions, for women to offer nonviolent resistance. Thus, Zaynab’s
confrontation with French author ities indicates that women could be polit-
ical agents as well as social actors even in a system of dual patriarchy. “But
it is principally her audacity that renders this woman remarkable,” observed
Zaynab’s main opponent within French officialdom.86
Led by Captain Crochard, the French colonial administration attempted to dis-
place her from her leadership position. Increased Bureau Arabe interference

206 Gendering Sufism
occurred because of her gender, which resulted in the installation of her male
cousin, Muhammad bin al-Hajj Muhammad, as her father’s successor. Just as
Zaynab’s father was being prepared for his funeral, her cousin, Muhammad b.
al-Hajj Muhammad, along with a group of supporters, went to the zawiya of
the shaykh, where they were “confronted by a resolute and hostile Zaynab, who
refused to acknowledge his moral and spiritual author ity.”
87 Zaynab “forbade” the
students and caretakers of the zawiya “from obeying her cousin’s orders, denied
him entry to the center’s library, books, and buildings, and imposed a sort of
lockout by taking possession of the keys.”
88 Clancy-Smith suggests that Zaynab’s
“objections” to her cousin was likely a result of his impiety – which made him
an unsuitable inheritor of her father’s author ity – and the suspicious nature of
the “apocryphal” letter that was presented by Captain Crochard to support her
cousin’s succession.89 Despite this conflict over succession, Zaynab still received
her father’s baraka, which was “fused [with] grace, blessings, supernatural powers,
and char isma.”
90
Nile Green points out that Sidi Muhammad, Lalla Zaynab’s father, significantly
challenged “the old Sufi patterns of patr iarchy” by having Lalla Zaynab succeed
him as the head of the Rahmaniyya Sufi Order zawiya.91 She also then was known
for transmitting Sufi teachings to the Swiss woman Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904),
whose short stor ies in French for med the European counterpart to Qut al-Qulub
(Nourishment of the Hearts) by Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 996).92 Eberhardt, known as
a “passionate nomad,” similar to the Traditionalist scholar Guénon, was studying
Arabic and Islam in Algeria. She eventually mar r ied an Algerian Muslim soldier,
converted to Islam, and was initiated into the Qadiri Sufi order by Lalla Zaynab.93
Eberhardt’s propensity to cross-dress and transgress sociocultural nor ms likely
found resonance with Lalla Zaynab, who too was fighting patr iarchal authority
and colonial structures. These two women, one a female Sufi saint and the other a
Western convert, and their relationship with Sufism in Alger ia dur ing the colonial
era, capture the complex intersection of Sufi tradition, colonial milieus, and gender
dynamics.94 The common understanding of spiritual transmission of a Sufi lineage
is usually from a male teacher to a male student. However, Lalla Zaynab’s reception
of her father’s baraka challenges this traditional model of transmission, and is further
problematized with her own decision to transmit this baraka to another woman
despite her European descent and convert status.
Last, it is important to note that, unlike Asma’u, Lalla Zaynab was celibate. As an
unmar ried woman, she was regarded as an ascetic, and from this acquired a status
which ultimately provided spiritual authority, the ability to move freely, and social
autonomy:
The choice to remain unmar r ied can increase a woman’s power over herself,
making her equal in status to a man.This issue in part explains the celibacy of
women such as Rabi‘a and others, who are shown interacting as equals with
men in early Sufi nar ratives. A case for this comes also from the story of a
Sufi woman named Lalla Zainab ... Women’s celibacy is indexed also to the

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 207
preser vation of virginity as a marker of purity, which does not have a similarly
valor ized male equivalent.95
Devoted to car ing for those in need, Lalla Zaynab led her order’s social and educa-
tional services.Venerated for religious devotion and humility as well as sophisticated
knowledge, she became an icon of female spirituality and leadership within her
Arab–Berber context. Some even attributed to her the capacity to work miracles,
and even in postcolonial Alger ia, Clancy-Smith reports, “Zaynab endures as the
stuff of pious legends and lore.”
96
Conclusion
As we will see in Chapter 7, modern social formations, which have largely dis-
solved the gendered division of the public and private social spheres, have opened
up public teaching roles to women, to an extent not possible in premodern con-
texts, where male control of public life was assumed as nor mative, and public
roles, especially leadership ones, were largely perceived to be socially inappropri-
ate for women. However, as this chapter has illustrated, male dominance of public
life did not translate into male dominance of Sufi spiritual hierarchies: women
have long been thought of as having exactly the same spiritual potential as men,
or even more, with the same capacity for human perfection, and for occupying
the various positions of spiritual guardianship and authority in the hierarchy of
saints. This theoretical spiritual egalitarianism translated into the actual presence
of women in the biographies of Sufi luminaries. Women have been recorded as
being among the foundational figures of the Sufi tradition as a whole, and as
acting spiritual guides to some of Sufism’s most renowned male masters. Their
spiritual accomplishments earned them “honorary male” status, or even superla-
tive maleness, speaking both to a (at least theoretical) gender fluidity and at times
superiority, and to the ways in which Muslim women navigated the conventional
valorization of maleness.
Despite the widespread assumption of female privacy in premodern Muslim
contexts, notable Sufi women emerged as public leaders, transcending gender divi-
sions. Even for those women who functioned within socially sanctioned roles of
mother or daughter, their spiritual author ity and accomplishment were recognized
as for ming an integral part of the histor ical transmission of Sufism.
Additionally, Sufi women’s hagiographies, some of which have been conveyed
above, indicate the transgressive nature of their piety and spiritual disciplines. His-
tor ically, these figures and their nar ratives have been presented in terms of their
gender and spirituality. However, their lives can also be conceptualized in ter ms of
social critique. A Sufi woman not only aspired for a spiritual transfor mation of the
inner self, but also ultimately of the outer world, as espoused in the ideal of insan
al-kamil, which defined the path of Sufism for men and women.
After outlining the metaphysical understanding of the feminine ideal within
Sufism, this chapter has considered how this ideal manifested among various

208 Gendering Sufism
histor ical Sufi female personalities in several premodern periods. However, in the
end the insan al-kamil is a genderless category, being expressed in different forms of
Sufi authority, including sainthood, which both women and men manifested. This
examination showcases the complex relationships and spheres that Sufi women
negotiated, be it in ascetic self-renunciation, in familial and court cultures, or
through metaphysical and biological for ms. The stor ies of these Sufi women illus-
trate the contradictory and complementary nature of Sufism which continues to be
lived among female shaykhas in the contemporary world.
Notes
1 William C. Chittick, “Worship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology,
ed.Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 235.
2 Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in
Islamic Piety (Lahore, Pakistan:Vanguard Books, 1987), 124–125.
3 Farhana Mayer, Spiritual Gems:The Mystical Qur’an Commentary Ascribed to Ja‘far al-Sadiq
as Contained in Sulami’s Haqa’iq al-Tafsir from the text of Paul Nwyia (Louisville, KY: Fons
Vitae, 2011), liii.
4 Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992), 78.
5 Jamal Elias, “Female and the Feminine in Islamic Mysticism,” The Muslim World 78,
nos. 3–4 (1988): 209–224; Murata, The Tao of Islam; Annemarie Schimmel, My Soul Is a
Woman: The Feminine in Islam (New York: Contiuum Publishing, 1997); Sa’diyya Shaikh,
Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender and Sexuality (Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 2012).
6 Murata, The Tao of Islam.
7 Schimmel, My Soul Is a Woman.
8 “The friends of God – for them there is no fear, neither do they grieve” (Qur’an 10:62).
9 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, “Walayah According to al-Junayd.” In Reason and Inspiration in
Islam: Theology, Philosophy, and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. Todd Lawson (London:
I.B. Taur is, 2005), 65.
10 Karamustafa, “Walayah According to al-Junayd,” 69.
11 Michel Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn
‘Arabi (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 98. The concept of qutb (literally mean-
ing “pole” or “axis”) symbolizes the idea of a spiritual center and higher state of reality,
which in Sufism is associated with a specific human being.
12 Laury Silvers, “Early Pious, Mystic Sufi Women,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sufism,
ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (Cambridge: Cambr idge University Press, 2014), 48.
13 Amila Buturovic, “Between the Tariqa and the Shari’a: The Making of the Female Self,”
in Feminist Poetics of the Sacred: Creative Suspicions, eds. F
. Devlin-Glass and L. Mcredden
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 135.
14 Annemarie Schimmel, “My Soul is a Woman,” in Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure, e d .
Camille Adams Helminski (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publishers, 2003), 99.
15 For more about the absence of Sufi women from early biographical writings, refer to
Silvers, “Early Pious, Mystic Sufi Women.”
16 Elias, “Female and the Feminine in Islamic Mysticism”; Buturovic, “Between the Tariqa
and the Shari’a,” 144; Arezou Azad, “Female Mystics in Mediaeval Islam:The Quiet Leg-
acy,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56, no. 1 (2013): 81.
17 Javad Nurbakhsh, Sufi Women (New York: Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi Publications,1990), 15.
18 Margaret Smith, Muslim Women Mystics (Oxford: Oneworld Publishers, 2001), 21.
19 Nurbakhsh, Sufi Women, 16.

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 209
20 Schimmel, My Soul Is a Woman, 78.
21 A. J. Arberry, The Seven Odes (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1957), 40.
22 Smith, Muslim Women Mystics, 21.
23 Camille Adams Helminski, ed., Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure (Boston, MA: Sham-
bhala Publishers, 2003), 47.
24 Rkia E. Cor nell, trans., Early Sufi Women: Dhikr an-Niswa al-Muta’abbidat as-Sufiyyat
(Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999), 144.
25 Ibid., 48.
26 Ibid., 61.
27 Ibid., 268.
28 Ibid., 61.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 264.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 266.
34 Ibid., 270.
35 Ibid., 62.
36 Ibid., 270.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 274.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 59.
42 Qur’an 26 [ash-Shu’ara’], 89.
43 Cornell, Early Sufi Women, 126.
44 Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism, 35.
45 Murata, The Tao of Islam, 326.
46 Sachiko Murata,“Women of Light in Sufism” (paper presentation, Congreso Internacio-
nal sobre Mistica Femenina “Mujeres de Luz,” Avila, Spain, November 1999).
47 Ibn al-‘Arabi, Sufis of Andalusia (The Ruh al-Quds and al-Durrat al-Fakhirahi), trans. R. W
.
J. Austin (Sherborne: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), 142.
48 Ibid., 143.
49 Ibid., 143–144.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 For an overview of conceptions of the spiritual hierarchy within Sufism, refer to Carl
W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1997). For a detailed
account of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s cosmological hierarchy, refer to Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints.
53 Carl W. Er nst, Teachings of Sufism (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1999), 180.
54 M. Elaine Combs-Schilling, “Lalla Aziza,” October 20, 2008, http://lallaazizasante.
unblog.fr/.
55 Ibid.
56 M. Elaine Combs-Schilling, “Sacred Refuge: The Power of a Muslim Female Saint,”
Fellowship: Islam, Peace, and Nonviolence 60, nos. 5 –6 (1994): 17.
57 Th. Emil Homer in, trans. Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ‘A’ishah al-Ba‘uniyah (d.
923/1517) (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 7.
58 ‘A’ishah Al-Ba‘uniyah, The Principles of Sufism, ed. and trans. Th. Emil Homerin (New
York: New York University Press, 2014), 159.
59 Abu Muhammad Al-Witri, “The Garden of the Guardians and the Extract of the Deeds
of the Upright,” in Teachings of Sufism, ed. and trans. Carl W. Ernst (Boston, MA: Sham-
bhala Publishers, 1999), 190.
60 Ibid., 191.
61 Ibid.

210 Gendering Sufism
62 Ibid., 194.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., 197.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., 198.
67 Ibid., 187.
68 Murata, The Tao of Islam, 326.
69 Ibid.
70 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period
1200–1550 (Oxford: Oneworld Publisher s, 1994), 14–16.
71 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975), 111.
72 As discussed in Chapter 3, in the works of Edward W. Lane and John P. Brown.
73 Scott A. Kugle, Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam
(Chapel Hill, NC: Univer sity of North Carolina Press, 2007), 81.
74 Dervishes who were believed to be particularly inspired, through an all-consuming
absorption in divine contemplation and loss of conventional awareness, frequently
earned the title majdhub (“utterly attracted to God”) or majnun (roughly, “possessed by
divine madness”). Such terms were applied to a dervish who lived in union with God,
experiencing the “ecstatic rapture by losing himself in God” (see Shems Friedlander, The
Whirling Dervishes [Albany, NY: State Univer sity of New York, 1992], 156). Sufi poets
such as Nizami (d. 1209) used symbolic narratives in which losing one’s own identity
through intense preoccupation with a beloved figure led to the ultimate state of union
with the divine Beloved. Others spoke of hayra, an experience of bewilderment or mys-
tical perplexity, and similarly affirmed the loss of ordinary “sanity” as a basis for deeper
spir itual realization.
75 Kugle, Sufis and Saints’ Bodies, 120.
76 Beverly Mack, “Nana Asma’u: Nineteenth Century West African Sufi,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
190.
77 Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism, 137.
78 Mack,“Nana Asma’u: Nineteenth Century West African Sufi,” 192.As also mentioned in
Jean Boyd and Beverly Blow Mack, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u: Scholar and Scribe
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 185: “Asma’u’s father is known for
having admonished men for preventing their wives and daughters from leaving their
homes to pursue their studies, stating explicitly that a man who did not educate the
women in his family was not a good Muslim.”
79 Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism, 139.
80 O. N. Ukpokodu and P. Ukpokodu, eds., Contemporary Voices from the Margin: African
Educators on African and American Education (Charlotte, NC: Infor mation Age Publishing,
2012), 101.
81 Mack, “Nana Asma’u: Nineteenth Century West African Sufi,” 194.
82 Adams Helminski, Women of Sufism, 140–141.
83 Ukpokodu and Ukpokodu, Contemporary Voices from the Margin, 100–101.
84 Jean Boyd and Beverly Mack, “‘Be Sure of God’s Truth’: Nan Asma’u,” in Feminist Writ-
ings from Ancient Times to the Modern World:A Global Sourcebook and History, ed.T. K .Wayne
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 158–159.
85 Ibid.
86 Julia A. Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encoun-
ters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994),
216.
87 Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint, 235–236.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.

Female Sufi saints in Islamic history 211
90 Ibid., 243.
91 Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012),
201.
92 A foundational collection of Sufi practices that would inspire such early medieval Sufi
figures as al-Ghazali (see Green, Sufism, 201).
93 Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint, 244.
94 Ibid.
95 Shahzad Bashir, “Islamic Tradition and Celibacy,” in Celibacy and Religious Traditions, e d .
Carl Olson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 135–147.
96 Julia A. Clancy-Smith, “The ‘Passionate Nomad’ Reconsidered: A European Woman in
l’Algerie Francaise (Isabelle Eberhardt, 1877–1904),” in Genealogies of Orientalism: History,
Theory, Politics, eds. Edmund Burke and David Prochaska (Lincoln, NE: Univer sity of
Nebraska, 2008), 203, 265.
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One of the significant discussions unfolding among scholars and practitioners of
contemporary Sufism is the extent to which women are actively involved in Sufism.
Whether as leaders or through their participation in rituals and spaces, the “r ise of
women” in a number of Sufi-related contexts has been observed by scholars and
Sufi leaders. Histor ically and today, the role of women in Sufism is often positioned
against the place of women in Islam at large, where women are stereotypically
reduced to silent and passive agents in predominately patr iarchal Muslim cultures.
For instance, Sufism has been thought of as a means by which women may access
religious spaces (e.g ., shrines) in ways they have been unable to in other contexts
(e.g., mosques). Although in some cases, Sufi contexts have facilitated the greater
participation of women, this statement can be exaggerated to suggest by contrast
that “Islam” in general marginalizes women. In many ways, these portrayals of Islam
have been influenced by Orientalist scholarship, which at the same time transmitted
a universal for m of Sufism to the West, which then attracted non-Muslim interest,
especially among women. Thus, these popular understandings in the contemporary
context tend to presume an essential oppression of women in Islam, and an ele-
vation of women in Sufism, which further polar izes Sufism and its relationship to
Islam. The notion that Sufism offers greater agency to Muslim women than more
conventional Islamic contexts (a notion both partially true and false) is another
example of a contradiction that is being examined throughout this chapter.
Chapter 6 highlighted ways in which consider ing the status of women within
Sufi and Muslim contexts is not simply a matter of marginalization or “empow-
er ment,” but is far more nuanced, as women negotiate and occupy a spectrum
of spheres in their enactment of Sufi traditions. To speak of Sufi women in con-
temporary contexts, then, is not to foreground an anomaly but to capture the
continuity of women’s participation in the formation and transmission of Sufism.
7
“WOMEN OF LIGHT”
Contemporary female Sufi leaders

214 Gendering Sufism
Contemporary Sufi leaders, such as the ones discussed below, evoke and transmit
classical metaphysical teachings.
This chapter captures four Sufi female leaders who are having an impact as
global authorities of contemporary Sufism. Two are from Istanbul,Turkey, and two
are from Amer ica. Despite their different Sufi lineages and cultural contexts, these
four Sufi leaders evoke similar classical Sufi principles and practices, while main-
taining their own particular understandings of them. We explore these principles in
light of three crosscutting themes: (1) their definitions of Sufism; (2) the teacher–
student relationship (murshid–murid); and (3) their responsibilities as female leaders
in the contemporary context.The voices of these female leaders and practitioners of
Sufism suggest that although the ways in which women’s roles are being expressed
are changing in some respects, the nature of leadership within Sufi communities
continues to revolve around the transmission of spiritual blessing (baraka) and the
shar ing of a worldview that seeks unity beyond the polar ities of male and female,
heaven and earth.
Whereas the previous chapters offer histor ical contexts of contemporary Sufi
phenomena, this chapter offers readers a visceral sense of what contemporar y
female Sufi leaders themselves think of their tradition through their own voices and
rare testimonies. These particular leaders were chosen as they represent a spectrum
of approaches to Sufism, they come from a diverse ar ray of lineages and cultural
contexts, and they are actively shaping contemporary Sufi traditions through their
var ied exper iences of leadership. These different leaders offer windows into the
broader phenomenon but are not meant to comprise a comprehensive over view.
The following biographies introduce these leaders and set the stage for consider ing
their respective responses to our questions on defining Sufism, teaching Sufism, and
the role of gender in Sufism.
Nur Artiran is a current master (shaykha)1 of the Mevlevi order founded by Jalal
ad-Din Rumi, having succeeded her teacher, Şefik Can (d. 2005).2 Daniel Dyer, wr it-
ing about his trip to the Şefik Can International Mevlana Education and Culture
Foundation in September 2013, which was led by Kabir Helminski and Camille
Adams Helminski, described Nur Artiran as “one of Turkey’s most respected spiritual
teachers.”
3 She is President of the Şefik Can International Mevlana Education and
Culture Foundation (based in Istanbul), and a board member of the Universal Sufi
Council (based in Wassenaar, the Netherlands). Fascinated with mysticism since she
was a child, Nur Artiran has wr itten scholarly articles and contr ibuted to Şefik Can’s
book, Cevahir-i Mesneviyye.4 She has also presented at local and international confer-
ences (e.g ., Zenith Institute Sufi Summer Camp, International ’Alawiyya Sufi Associa-
tion, International Cong ress of Turkish Culture), and on radio and television prog rams.
Far iha Fr iedrich co-founded a branch of Halveti-Jer rahi Tar iqah in 1983 with
Nur al-Anwar al-Jer rahi (also known as Lex Hixon) (d. 1995) after receiving a trans-
mission from Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak (1916–1985, Istanbul). Together, al-Jerrahi
and Fr iedrich have developed a branch of the Jerrahi order known for its liberal
openness to adaptation and change, alongside its emphasis on the importance of
traditional for ms of practice and relationship. Friedrich is the current spiritual leader

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 215
(shaykha) of this branch, known as the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order (NAJSO),
based in New York City.The NAJSO traces its her itage to Pir Nureddin al-Jer rahi
(b. 1678, Istanbul), who established the Halveti-Jer rahi order in 1704.
Cemalnur Sargut Hoca is a prominent Sufi teacher (Hoca) of the Rifai-Jerrahi
order. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and taught chemis-
try for two decades. She also received her religious education from Samiha Ayverdi (d.
1993, founder, Turkish Women’s Cultural Association), who encouraged her to give
lessons on Rumi’s famous work the Masnavi and whom she succeeded as the asso-
ciation’s cur rent president. Cemalnur publishes works on Sufism and Quranic com-
mentary compilations (which include the writings of famous Sufi figures from the
classical tradition). A list of her selected works can be found in her biography (www.
cemalnur.org). She sees Sufism as a “common language” that people of various cul-
tural and religious backgrounds can share.To further this humanistic vision of Sufism,
Sargut has established academic Chairs of Islamic Studies at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, and at Peking University, Beijing. Additionally, in March 2017,
the Kenan Rifai Center of Sufi Studies was inaugurated at Kyoto University in Japan.
Devi Tide is for mer Executive Director of the North Amer ican Secretar iat of
the Inayati Sufi order and is cur rently Head and Vice President of the Sufi Healing
Order of North Amer ica, Australia, and New Zealand.5 Tide has contr ibuted to
workshops in India, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and North Amer ica, partic-
ipating in programs in such organizations as the United Nations and the Harvard
Mind Body Institute.
Each of these leaders responded to questions about women and Sufism in a
distinctive way.While their testimonies did not exhaust the potential range of posi-
tions on women and Sufism – voices could have been found, for example, arguing
in favor of more traditional for ms of gender segregation and separate spaces for
female leadership – the women interviewed provided fascinating insights into ways
in which women have found opportunities for leadership in contexts shaped by
multiple cultural currents. In North Amer ica, for example, early Sufi spaces were
primarily constituted by people who had adopted Sufi practices and worldviews
while still moving within the framework of the major ity culture.This reality began
to change as immig rant communities from traditional Islamic contexts established
a presence on the continent. This presence introducing new discussions and a cul-
turally var ied set of Sufi exper iences has included the explicitly universalist Inayati
Order associated with the Chishti Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan and a cultur-
ally mixed Sufi order of Turkish or igin, the Jer rahis, whose lineage was introduced
to the United States by Muzzafer Ozak in the 1970s.
Though practicing in lands where Sufism has been rooted for hundreds of years,
female Sufi leaders in Turkey also engage diverse cur rents of thought and cultural
or ientation – some modernist and secular in character, and others Traditionalist or
revivalist. This gives Sufism in metropolitan centers such as Istanbul a distinctive
character – situated as it is upon the boundary between Europe and Asia. The
experience of negotiating between moder nity and tradition nonetheless resembles
experiences in many other settings where Sufism is practiced.

216 Gendering Sufism
Living Sufism today
As we have noted in previous chapters, tasawwuf or Sufism can be defined in a var i-
ety of ways. Because the ter m has multiple meanings, questions about the nature
of Sufism elicit different answers. When asked to comment on the meaning of
Sufism, most of the contemporary female Sufi leaders who were sur veyed for this
chapter represented their own unique understandings and exper iences while also
evoking beliefs and practices that are widely shared. Crosscutting themes in their
descriptions included: a strong emphasis on the importance of actually living and
embodying Sufi ideals and practices; character ization of coming to know deeper
or higher levels of one’s own spiritual self as a moral imperative; affirmation of the
aspiration to realize the oneness and unity of being; and a belief that ultimately
Sufism is the path of love.
Though the female leaders consulted for this chapter did not hesitate to offer
interpretive reflections on contemporary issues, most were also quite active in artic-
ulating the bases for their understandings of Sufism in traditional sources. In essays
entitled, “Tasawwuf (Sufism),” and “Tasavvuf:The Way to Acquire the Art of Being
Human,” Cemalnur Sargut Hoca’s style and aphoristic sayings about Sufism mir ror
those of early Sufi biographers (see Figure 7.1).6 Like al-Sulami or al-Qushayri,
Sargut of the Rifai-Jerrahi Sufi order7 shares different definitions of Sufism offered
by classical Sufi personalities (e.g ., Junayd al-Baghdadi, Beyazid Bestami [d. 849],
Suhrawardi, and Ibn al-‘Arabi) while also weaving in her own commentary about
particular aspects of Sufism.8 Thus, Sufism for Sargut is not only equivalent to “eter-
nal life and adab (good manners) in every kind of avhal (state)” but it can be “moral-
ity” itself as well as “real freedom.”
9 Ultimately for Sargut, “Sufism is not something
to talk about but rather; it is an inner journey which requires to be practiced.”
10
Sargut adds to this statement in another essay by stating, “Tasawwuf is not teaching
but a way of living and this is explained by insan-y-kamil [Perfect Human: spiritually
complete, highly enlightened and matured human being].”
11 As previously men-
tioned in Chapter 6, insan al-kamil is a genderless concept and is frequently used by
most Sufis as the ideal model toward which to strive in becoming a Sufi.
This emphasis on Sufism as “a way of living” is also found in the thoughts of
Shaykha H. Nur Artiran (see Figure 7.2)12 of the Mevlevi Sufi Order13 in her
response to a question about how she would descr ibe Sufism:
Countless books on Sufism have been wr itten over the centur ies by experts
approaching the topic from both inner and outer perspectives. Naturally, this
research spans a very large domain because Sufism is indeed a very deep and
a myster ious topic. In addition to this, everybody comprehends according to
his or her own capacity. But in the simplest ter ms, in language everybody can
understand, we can say: Sufism means a human being’s recognition and knowledge
of his/her own Self, with the consequence that he/she lives his/her life with awareness,
experiencing the depth of life and being conscious of the purpose of creation [emphasis
added].14

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 217
FIGURE 7.1 Cemalnur Sargut Hoca at one of her many public speaking events
FIGURE 7.2 Shaykha Nur Artiran at the Şefik Can Inter national Mevlana Education
and Culture Foundation

218 Gendering Sufism
This choice to define Sufism in existential ter ms, in relation to realizing one’s
own true self and dimensions of human experience, resonates with classical and
contemporary articulations about Sufism that underscore essential realities and real-
ization more than outward for ms and specific r ituals or methods. Traditional Sufi
conceptions of the self are expressed in language that resonates with contemporary
psychology. Scholars of contemporary Sufism have noted the interface of Sufism
and psychology, as Sufi teachers have embraced psychological models as contem-
porary tools for expressing traditional teachings.15
When asked the same question about what Sufism is, Devi Tide (see Figure 7.3)
of the Inayati Order16 affir med similar themes, while adding that the Sufi way is
awareness that is connected to “awakening”:
I do not think there is an “ism” here.The Sufi path is one of awakening.Awak-
ening does not have a cur riculum or a body of rules. For some, awakening takes
on a spiritual dimension – the perennial philosophy that is as old as the striving
of the human heart.There are some people who call Sufism the religion of the
heart. Its secret certainly lies within the opened and awakened heart.17
In speaking of the “awakened heart,” Tide alludes not just to teachings of Haz-
rat Inayat Khan, the founder of the Inayati Order,18 but also to widespread Sufi
traditions that descr ibe cultivation of the heart as the basis for accessing and com-
prehending spiritual realities. Tide rejects expressing Sufism within the modern
str ictures of ideology (“ism”) and systematization (“cur r iculum”), and invokes the
perennial philosophy, a concept that we have seen in previous chapters has been
central to the Western framing of Sufism.
FIGURE 7.3 Devi Tide, Head and Vice President of the Sufi Healing Order of North
America, Australia, and New Zealand

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 219
Many classical Sufi traditions liken spiritual practice to the “polishing” or pur i-
fication of the heart, with some likening this process to the removal of rust from
a mir ror. Thus, in many spiritual teachings, this idea of an awakened heart is con-
nected to the process of pur ification. For Sargut, this “cleansing of one’s nature”
is essential when defining Sufism: “Once you are cleansed of the desires of your
animal soul (nafs), your dead body gets quickened and acts as mir ror where Allah
the Truth (Haqq) becomes manifest.”
19
In including this teaching within her definition of Sufism, Sargut establishes a
connection with teachings about different levels of the human soul, which might
be likened to steps upon a spiritual ladder that leads from a dominance of coarse
sense-perceptions and egocentric desires toward much higher levels of spiritual
refinement wherein the soul finds peace. At these higher levels the heart becomes
pur ified from outward distractions and desires, and becomes the center from which
the soul mir rors and perceives God.
Sufi teachers have long taught that this process of pur ification or awakening is
advanced by processes of remember ing God and one’s own true nature. Pur ifica-
tion through remembrance of God ultimately enables a practitioner to exper ience
the unity of being, wherein consciousness of oneself as an entity existing in sepa-
ration from God disappears and God is seen reflected in all of reality. Histor ically,
many Sufis have connected this realization with unity and wholeness – an idea that
the respondents echoed when describing Sufism as a way of living that enables us
to remember that we all are parts of a greater whole. The following testimonies
demonstrate the consistency of themes concer ning an all-encompassing oneness or
wholeness that embraces all of existence:
Sufism means realizing the truth and essence of all things, independent of
their exter nal appearances, shapes and features. It is to see the single principle,
within multiplicity in this world. (Artiran)20
Its secret certainly lies within the opened and awakened heart. Sufism sees all
religions as part of one faith, the faith that we share in the Divine, described
carefully by each religion – one God – no matter how each religion descr ibes
it. To the student of Sufism each person is part of one human family, no
matter the amount of pigment in their skin, or their location in the world.
We are all part of one living whole, shar ing in the same breath.The Sufi sees
the world as precious, an expression of the Divine, the Beloved, the Source.
To the student of Sufism we are all part of one living Universe, one vibrant
Whole. (Tide)21
Sufism is the art of becoming human (who is created with the attributes of
metals, plants and animals). Today, if the religions can be viewed through the
unifying glasses of Sufism, it becomes apparent that they complete one an-
other. It then can be realized that everything consists of One. From this point
of view, the differences are accepted as the mir rors which reflect the beauty
of the One. The warless societies which are cr ied for are only secured by the
people who have completed their inner struggles. (Sargut)22

220 Gendering Sufism
Shaykha Far iha Friedrich (see Figure 7.4) of the Ashki Jer rahi Sufi Order23
emphasizes that this tradition of the encompassing oneness of divine reality – a
unity that embraces diversity – is the heart of the message her teacher helped to
nurture in Amer ica: a tradition that in itself embraces “the plurality of traditions,”
in accordance with the visionary synthesis of the 13th-century Sufi personality Ibn
al-‘Arabi:
You have the great gnostics: someone like Ibn ‘Arabi, who says that the
more different points of view you have about the Supreme Reality the more
mature you are. He speaks of the different traditions. This entire tradition is
the tradition of all the prophets. We say that there are 124,000 at least, pro-
phetic beings, representing both East and West. If you really start to think
about it you realize this is a universal tradition.24
This idea that the oneness of God embraces both the multitude of existent things
and the many different religious standpoints for comprehending God’s oneness was
a major theme of classical Sufism, and received much emphasis in the teachings
of the female Sufi leaders consulted for this chapter. Sargut articulates a resonant
point by stating that Sufism’s “ultimate goal ... is to practice the concept of unity,
or oneness (tevhid or tawhid in Arabic), which signifies respect for differences.”
25
From a Sufi perspective, divine unity both transcends and includes the many-ness
of creation, and is best affir med through the capacity to perceive har mony amid
diversity of things and perspectives.
Such a unifying perspective, many Sufis propose, is not possible without divine
love. As stated by Fr iedrich, “Love refines our soul and draws it deeper into aware-
ness of its eternal mystic union with God.”
26 As a culmination of thought about
FIGURE 7.4 Shaykha Fariha Friedrich leads dhikr at the Masjid al-Farah in Manhattan,
NY

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 221
Sufism, all of the Sufi female teachers sur veyed mentioned that Sufism is, in its
essence, divine love. The following quotations are illustrative:
Sufism is the place where mind has left and love has arr ived. The Sufi is
one who sees without looking, understands without being told and advances
without walking. Sufism is not a science, but a way of life. Everything in the
outer world can be lear ned through scientific study, but Sufism can only be
lear ned exper ientially, by living. Most deeply, Sufism is Divine Love. It is to
die before dying. It is to become nothing, nonexistent – and to reach real
existence within that nonexistence. (Artiran)27
Tasavvuf [tasawwuf] is to bur n with the fire of love; in other words, to be in
love with the Creator. Such divine love teaches us the fact that He is the
only existent being, the ultimate. He is the oneness of being (vahdet-i vujud)
[wahdat al-wujud]. All beings belong to Him. (Sargut)28
This is why Sufism is called the Path of love. We approach God,Who is love,
and Who is already closer to us than our own life vein although we do not
see Him, through love. (Fr iedrich)29
Even while articulating that Sufism is a way of love and that God’s essential qual-
ities can be understood through love, classical Sufis have also taught that the path to
realizing and becoming a channel for God’s love is a demanding one – a path that
requires the sacr ifice of one’s own sense of independent, ego-directed existence in
addition to an inward death and rebirth of the self. In this spirit, several of the teach-
ers invoked the traditional Sufi injunction to “die before death” as a prerequisite for
spiritual realization, freedom from the lower ego, and awareness of higher reality:
Tasawwuf is freedom. Real freedom is being freed from the self/ego (nafs). A
human being can by no means be considered as free while he is a slave of his
inner self. (Sargut)30
Sufism is the place where mind has left and love has arr ived. The Sufi is
one who sees without looking, understands without being told and advances
without walking. Sufism is not a science, but a way of life. Everything in the
outer world can be lear ned through scientific study, but Sufism can only be
lear ned exper ientially, by living. Most deeply, Sufism is Divine Love. It is to
die before dying. It is to become nothing, nonexistent – and to reach real
existence within that nonexistence. (Artiran)31
For centuries, Sufis have maintained that humans are capable of knowing God,
and yet veiled from divine reality by gross and subtle layers of self-identity that must
be shed to realize divine love. To “die before death,” then, is to submit oneself to
spiritual disciplines and to the demands of an inward path. In foregrounding this
teaching, the Sufi women teachers reaffir m what they regard as the heart of the
traditional Sufi worldview.

222 Gendering Sufism
The significance of living Sufism: Transmission, teachers,
and role models
Besides defining Sufism in relation to unity, divine love, and realization of God
through a path that requires effacement of the ego, another prominent theme that
emerged among these four Sufi female leaders was the significance of receiving
spiritual transmission and blessing from teachers who embody living Sufism in
principle and practice. Sufis believe that the blessing of teachers, known in Arabic
as baraka, has the power to spiritually transfor m those who encounter it. In Sufism,
transmitting knowledge from one person to another is connected to the idea of
silsila or the lineage of the order, a lineage of spiritual author ity and blessing traced
back to the Prophet Muhammad and finally to Allah, as the lineage’s baraka ulti-
mately comes from God.The earliest example of a silsila goes back to the 10th cen-
tury, when Ja‘far al-Khuldi (d. 959) suggested al-Junayd had inher ited his teachings
from previous generations going back to the companions of Muhammad and the
Prophet himself.32 By the medieval per iod, the role of the shaykh/a in relation to
his/her students was being compared to that of the Prophet in relation to his fol-
lowers. ’Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani (d. 1131) reportedly said that “one who does
not have a shaykh does not have a religion.”
33 Within the Naqshbandi Sufi order, it
was believed that before the Sufi practitioner can be annihilated from God (fana‘ fi’l
Allah), they must be first annihilated from their master (fana‘ fi’l Shaykh).34
When asked about their training, most of the female leaders evoked the tradi-
tional Sufi relationship between a teacher and a student. Framing the principle of
“dying before dying” as a culminating step of the spiritual path that becomes pos-
sible through cultivating a deep and trusting relationship with a spiritual teacher or
shaykh, Friedrich emphasized that the transfor mative work of Sufism is not solitary.
Rather, it unfolds through commitment to work with an advanced practitioner in
service to God:
We approach God through coming near to the Shaykh. The Shaykh is the
magnet and the doorway to God. Through the Shaykh we come to our self
and we come to God. The final step is the “dying before dying.” We die to
our self in order to find our Self.Then we abide in Allah with the qualities of
Allah, the diamond within the water, the light within the light. [T]he fore-
most “training” on the Sufi path is the heart to heart connection between
Shaykh and Disciple. When we receive initiation into a Sufi order we take
the hand of the Shaykh, which in reality is the Hand of Allah. Through this
“re-commitment” to Allah, this saying “Yes!” to Allah, as we did in Pre-eter-
nity, we are re-bor n into the life of the spirit. Our breath becomes praise, our
life becomes ser vice, and our heart becomes a rose-garden for the lovers. We
receive the teachings and guidance inwardly, even though the outer teaching
is also given. As soon as we take hand our heart is subtly connected to all the
Shaykhs of the lineage, and to the heart of the Shaykh of shaykhs, the beloved
Muhammad, and to his blessed family and noble companions and followers,

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 223
peace be upon them all. From that moment on, goodness flows ceaselessly
to us.35
For Fr iedrich, the “Shaykh-Disciple relationship is the backbone” of Sufism.36
From this one relationship, a whole “mystic community of lovers of God who share
the radical desire for complete union with God” is formed and exper ienced.37
Friedrich goes into considerable depth in shar ing her exper ience with her Sufi
teachers – first Ozak, a teacher of Turkish origin who brought Sufi teachings to the
United States in the 1970s, and then with Hixon, a fellow disciple of Ozak who
took the spiritual name Nur al-Jerrahi. She descr ibes how spiritual fellowship with
a teacher and other seekers reminds the student of Sufism’s goal: divine love and
union with God, as quoted at length in what follows:
My exper ience in the Sufi path began with meeting Shaykh Muzaffer in
1978, may the Beloved reward him with the highest stations of love. It actu-
ally came just before the outer meeting, when a new kind of spiritual love
began flowing in my soul – which I attr ibute to his radiance reaching out
to me. Or we could say that it was Allah prepar ing me for the great jour ney
of return with my Shaykh. At that time I was drawn to read the Gospels of
Jesus which were familiar to me as I was bor n into a French Catholic family,
but I had never before felt the intensity of love radiating from the spiritual
presence of Jesus, may he be embraced in Divine peace. I experienced Jesus
as the Prophet of love, drawing souls back into the Source through the power
of love.When I actually met Shaykh Muzaffer in the body, sur rounded by his
dervishes, I felt that I had met Jesus and his disciples, literally. Jesus was present
before me. Here began the training of my soul. It was awakened by love and
refined by love, and polished by the fire of hardship in separation from the
Shaykh, even by the fear of separation.
What was offered by Muzaffer Effendi was nothing less than the majestic
generosity and beauty of Divine love, which healed all wounds and fed all
hearts. Everything was in that love. I would gaze at his face and his noble
body and imbibe the subtle Divine teachings through every gesture and ex-
pression – how he sat, how he walked, how he spoke, how he prayed, how
he loved. All the guidance one needed was there in him. Keeping compan-
ionship with the beloved of the Beloved is the true training. And within this
tent of love our love for the Beloved grows, and our love for the beloveds of
the Beloved increases. Our love and compassion for humanity grows from
this root of Divine Love experienced personally and directly in a perfected
human being.
After Shaykh Muzaffer Effendi passed into the Realm of beauty in 1985,
the guiding position of the American lineage came to Lex Hixon, Nur al-
Jerrahi, an equally astonishing being, a radical saint of modern times. He
conducted a radio program on WBAI for 13 years in which he interviewed

224 Gendering Sufism
spiritual guides. For many of those years he drove an old VW bus, distrib-
uting his magazine, In the Spirit, leaving stacks of them with the doormen
of apartment buildings of NYC. After Effendi passed, I and a core group of
other American dervishes renewed our beyat [oath of allegiance] with him
and became his community, which eventually evolved into the Nur Ashki
Jerrahi Community. Nur was a Western mystic, fresh and deeply inspired,
with overtones of Jesus and his blessed mother Maryam, Mar ia Magdalena,
Ramakrishna and the tradition of the Divine Mother, Gaudapada, Kierkeg-
aard,Theresa the “Little Flower,” Mevalana Jelaludin Rumi, and other rad-
ical mystics. He empowered women in every tradition he became involved
in. In our Tariqa we have many women leaders, the fruit of his love to the
Divine Mother. Upon meeting his Shaykh, Muzaffer Effendi, he became
completely devoted to the Prophet of Allah and his blessed family with
all of his being. His initiation into Sufism gave Nur the keystone for his
immense spiritual vision of unity and multiplicity, radical and absolutely
necessary for modern humanity if we want to find peace with each other.
He was also the one who said that the definition of the “dervish” is “the
other”.
38
The Nur Ashki Jer rahi Tar iqat is modeled on his and Muzaffer Effendi’s
vision and “meshreb” [teaching style]. We – myself, Shaykha Amina and the
other Guides in our Order – are really following Nur and Effendi, as radical
new vessels of the Nur Muhammad and of the light of Pir Nureddin Jer-
rahi, may his soul be sanctified. We have been given g reat spiritual freedom
through the himma [spiritual aspiration] of our Pirs, and through the fact that
our Tar iqat is growing in Amer ican soil. We inher it the spiritual freedom of
the Amer icas together with the innate but often untapped freedom of Sufism.
Freedom is essential for spiritual development.39
As this nar rative makes clear, expressions of Sufism in a North Amer ican context
exhibit both traditional and innovative characteristics. Fr iedrich’s discourse offers a
synthesis of classical Sufi teachings filtered through the values and motifs of Western
cultural traditions. In her invocation of a “spiritual freedom,” we can see echoes
of Romanticism and Transcendentalism, movements that emphasized the impor-
tance of the individual’s freedom to stake out their own identity and spiritual life
as against dry confor mity and conventionality. Even as effort is made to construct
spiritual communities for teaching and fellowship in accordance with longstanding
Sufi concepts such as murshid (teacher or guide) and murid (seeker), the for ms of
practice reflect aspects of the larger context and often seek a fuller manifestation of
past Sufi tendencies to affir m spiritual diversity and provide scope for the feminine
principle. For Fr iedrich, the Americas offer a context particularly suited to foster ing
spiritual diversity and the expressions of the feminine. In addition to noting Hixon’s
esteem for multiple currents of mystical thought and practice, Friedrich also stresses
the fact that her teachers sought to advance the role of women in the public life of
her community:

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 225
Nur [Hixon] appointed women. Nur had more women responsible for the
tariqa than men. He was very conscious about that. He felt that women
were... more like Mar y Magdalene. They were more present. They were
more receptive to the message and more capable of actually representing it. I
guess what he found in men was a certain resistance and rigidity, more of an
adherence to the outward for m, to the law, and a kind of stiffness that didn’t
make them as adaptable as woman – at that time – to flow with the mystery
of love. After all, this is the path of love. It is not a path of rites and rituals and
laws. It’s the path of love. That is what Shaykh Muzaffer brought and really
made very clear.40
Friedrich offers an alter native gender ing of Sufism to the “reverse gender iza-
tion” discussed in Chapter 6, where Sufi women were considered to be “real men.”
In contrast to this premodern play on gender, Friedrich suggests that men must, in
a sense, become “real women,” if femininity is defined as receptivity, flexibility, and
an ability to embrace the path of love. Fr iedrich’s approach connects more with
Murata’s invocation of all as “women of light,” and Ibn al-‘Arabi’s suggestion that
all are feminine in relation to God. She further articulated this confluence between
Sufism and femininity as follows: “See the mystical traditions are a wonderful place
for the feminine temperament. They are – they’re more receptive, more intuitive,
more spontaneous. A lot of qualities associated with women are part of the mystical
path.”
41
In comparison to Fr iedrich, who came to embrace Sufism as an adult, Artiran
descr ibes her training as “a way of life” into which she was born. Although her path
toward a Sufi teacher progressed from within a Turkish Islamic cultural context, her
descr iption of a profound spiritual relationship with her teacher mir rors Fr iedrich’s
account in many respects:
I never wanted to be a Sufi leader, and I never received special training to
become one. Sufism is my way of life; moreover, one does not become a Sufi
to become a leader. Sufism is a path to nonexistence, not to existence. But
we can talk about some of the obvious factors that brought me to my present
situation. I am so grateful that my ancestors were Sufis for many generations,
consequently I was born and raised in a Sufi family.
Have you heard of those Sufi manners that some people try to acquire
at a later age? I was taught those manners from birth. Imagine a child who
does not live a daily life like other children, but receives a spiritual education
starting from the age of three or five. Of course at that age I did not know
this was a special kind of education, my life consisted of the things I was
taught and what I saw around me. Because there were Sufis all around me, I
did not know that there was any other way of life.This education was natural
to me as a child, it had its foundation in what I mentioned before: complete
surrender, faithfulness and unconditional love, leading to sincere ser vice and
to Divine Love.

226 Gendering Sufism
After my childhood, my role models were my first Shaykh, whose disciple
I became at a very young age. After his death, I am ver y proud to have be-
come the spiritual daughter of my beloved teacher Şefik Can Dede.Although
my beloved Şefik Can Dede is my second teacher, in reality that great human
being is my beginning, my end, my seen and my unseen. No words can de-
scribe this spiritual way of life. For this poor one my beloved Şefik Can Dede
was a sacred mir ror: whatever image I saw in his mir ror, I wished to realize
sincerely and bring to the full in my life.
Although he was a priceless treasure, he was deeply humble. He showed
unlimited tolerance and he was full of love that embraced all. He was com-
passionate and merciful, soft and subtle. His gracious presence was an import-
ant role model for us all, not just for me.42
Both Fr iedrich and Artiran descr ibe the profundity of their relationship with
their shaykh, refer ring to their spiritual master as a “prophet,” “mir ror,” and as a
being within whom one’s own being is dissolved (fana’ fi’l shaykh), illustrating the
ways in which the classical Sufi model of the master–disciple takes form in the
contemporary context. This master–disciple relationship, and the transmission of
author ity, was not modified due to gender. Both Fr iedrich and Artiran received
the transmission of spiritual authority from Turkish Muslim men, neither of whom
saw gender as any sort of bar r ier to the highest for ms of Sufi practice, knowledge,
and mastery.
Alongside Fr iedrich and Artiran’s formal training and inclusion in the order
model, Artiran further descr ibes the informal teaching role that women have so
often played in Sufism classically, as we discussed in Chapter 6. Here, she descr ibes
her mother as someone who functioned in this capacity:
My late beloved mother was my first role model. She was indeed an import-
ant Sufi lady. Initially, it was in my mother that I saw and lear ned the essential
virtues in Sufism that I continually repeat: sur render, faithfulness and service.
Other members of my family also helped these virtues take root and deepen
in me, because these virtues were naturally visible in their natures.43
In her own response to a question about key Sufi principles and practices that
help a person become a leader, Tide chose to emphasize specific teachings of her
Inayati Order’s founding teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and placed less emphasis on
her personal relationship with spiritual teachers from within that order. However,
Tide was the personal secretary for many years to Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (son and
successor of Hazrat Inayat Khan). She has commented dur ing seminars about the
importance of this relationship in shaping her spiritual jour ney. In the process, she
sought to foreground essential principles of her teacher’s Sufi vision of divine unity
and the path to realization:

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 227
These 10 Sufi Thoughts are a great help to me:
1 . There is one God, the Eter nal, the Only Being; none else exists save God.
2 . There is one Master, the Guiding Spirit of all souls, who constantly leads his/
her followers towards the light.
3 . There is one Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scr ipture
which can enlighten the reader.
4 . There is one Religion, the unswer ving progress in the r ight direction towards
the ideal, which fulfills the life’s pur pose of every soul.
5 . There is one Law, the Law of Reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless
conscience together with a sense of awakened justice.
6 . There is one Family, the human family, which unites the children of earth
indiscr iminately in the parenthood of God.
7 . There is one Moral Pr inciple, the love which springs forth from self-denial,
and blooms in deeds of beneficence.
8 . There is one Object of Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its wor-
shipper through all aspects from the seen to the Unseen.
9 . There is one Truth, the true knowledge of our being within and without,
which is the essence of all wisdom.
10. There is one Path, the annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the
mortal to immortality and in which resides all perfection.
These “10 Sufi Thoughts” are found in the first volume of writings by Hazrat Inayat
Khan, in which he descr ibes them as “compris[ing] all the important subjects with
which the inner life of man is concer ned.”
44 While Inayat Khan’s for mulation of
the essentials of the Sufi worldview is unique, it reflects a range of Sufi teachings
that have long been emphasized within Sufi communities. Principle 1, for example,
evokes the previously discussed principle of divine unity (in Arabic, wahdat al-wu-
jud), while Pr inciple 2 suggests the Sufi practice of seeing God in one’s teacher and,
by extension, in all teachers, messengers, and prophets. Pr inciple 3 reflects a Sufi
understanding of nature as God’s self-manifestation through his creation (“Where-
soever you tur n there is His face”45) and Quranic themes to look upon nature and
reflect. Pr inciples 4, 5, and 9 reflect the Sufi understanding of universalist themes
within the Qur’an that underscore God’s generosity in sending messengers to all
peoples,46 and the tendency of many Sufis to prioritize essential principles over
legalism and honor truth wherever it can be found. Pr inciples 6 and 7 reflect teach-
ings about humanity as a single community (ummatun wahidun, an expression found
in Qur’an) and love as a moral and metaphysical principle. The final principle,
concer ning the “annihilation of the false ego in the real,” communicates core Sufi
teachings concer ning the basis for spiritual transfor mation, including the previously
mentioned idea of “dying before death.”
In discussing her spiritual role models and teachers, Tide emphasizes a hallmark
theme of her Inayati Order – the spiritual har mony of world religions and wisdom

228 Gendering Sufism
traditions – while offer ing what might be framed as a modern perspective on spir-
itual leaders: that ideals of perfected spiritual realization notwithstanding, they are
still incar nated in human for m, capable of mistakes and misjudgments despite their
maturity and inspiration, and continually seeking to grow:
My role models come from many areas in the world. They are people who
have lived in har mony with the 10 thoughts above. Some are Pir-o-Murshid
Inayat Khan, the Dalai Lama, Great Grandmother Rose Pere (a great Maor i
healer and Elder), Pir Vilayat Khan, Mother Theresa – there are many
more. What all the people who inspire me have in common is the desire to
continue to grow throughout their life, to be open to all ideas and paths.They
have respect for all, they lead with love and kindness. They all make mistakes
and yet it doesn’t hold them back. They are willing to grow and evolve from
mistakes. They care.47
Tide’s inclusion of models from a var iety of religious traditions reflects a univer-
salism that is character istic of the Inayati Order and longstanding Wester n under-
standings of Sufism, going back to Orientalist framings of the tradition. However,
as we have also discussed thus far, the universalism of Wester n framings of Sufism is
in many respects a ver nacular ization of the universalism present within the classical
Sufi tradition. As classical Sufi universalism has traditionally been framed in Islamic
terms, it appears to be something different from “Western” or “neo” or even “New
Age Sufism,” when in fact Western and classically Islamic for ms of Sufism share a
universal, pluralistic ethos – one that simply gets expressed using different ideational
and cultural frameworks.
The close teacher-to-student relationships cultivated in Sufism, and under-
standings of spiritual grace mediated through lineages of teachers spanning gen-
erations, are comparable to frameworks for spiritual mentorship and growth in
many religious cultures, including those found in Hinduism, Buddhism, mystical
Christianity, and Kabbalistic Judaism. Such relationships differ significantly, how-
ever, from expectations sur rounding moral or spiritual growth in most secular,
religious moder nist, and revivalist contexts. In addition to signaling an ecumenical
approach to acquiring spiritual wisdom that honors truth in many different for ms
and articulations, Tide also speaks to a rather delicate issue that arises when Sufism
is practiced in Wester n contexts where there is a focus on the potential misuse of
traditional author ity, and religious frameworks for social organization are subjected
to greater scrutiny. For Tide and many other contemporary participants in Sufi
spiritual culture, acknowledging the potential for leaders to make mistakes is an
important consideration even in relations with revered spiritual teachers. This per-
spective highlights the need for teachers to enable growth in autonomy, maturity,
and personal responsibility among those who come to them in search of a spiritual
path.
Though Tide was the only leader who signaled a need to respect the limits of
teachers in addition to their virtues and spiritual integrity, all of the respondents

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 229
shared how their teachers become role models for communities of people who
seek to walk upon paths of saints – understood in Sufi and Islamic traditions as
“friends of God” (awliya’; singular walī).Artiran emphasized this central importance
of role models – both contemporary and classical:
After the training I received from my venerable teacher Şefik Can Dede, my
role models became our beloved Master Hazrati Mevlana Celaleddini Rumi
and our exalted Prophet. I mentioned my beloved teacher Şefik Can first
because if a person does not take his or her Shaykh as a role model first, it is
difficult to know our Master Hazrati Mevlana’s path and to take one’s place
in our exalted Prophet’s community, and consequently to know our Lord.
First we tr y to be close to our Shaykh and be like our Shaykh.Then through
his matur ity and sincere spiritual friendship, we can learn to come into rela-
tionship with the saints, and find a path to our Sustainer. Our ultimate goal
is to attain the ethical and moral standards and the character of our Exalted
Creator. Our teachers are the important role models and special guides that
propel us towards this state.48
Sargut echoes this point, emphasizing that “the ultimate point in tasavvuf [Sufism]
is sainthood or being Allah’s friend (walī) .”
49 To this end, she places herself in con-
versations with classical Sufi personalities such as Junayd al-Baghdadi, Beyazid Bes-
tami, Suhrawardi, Ibn al-‘Arabi, and Rumi by evoking sayings of these renowned
teachers and drawing sustenance from their life stor ies and writings.
Offering a distinct interpretation of this practice of relating oneself to exemplars
past and present, Fr iedrich comments on her personal embrace of wisdom from
many sources, and on the transfor mative capacity of mystical love to break down
r ig id bar r iers that are associated with gender and sectarian allegiance:
The Prophets, friends and lovers of God who are helping to guide me in the
Islamic tradition are mostly men who have been feminized by Divine love –
as there is very little record of the women friends of God.The closest are my
Shaykhs Effendi and Nur, then Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi and Ibn ‘Arabi and
‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani and Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Beyazid Bestami and Attar
and Ruzbihan Baqli, and other beautiful inspiring beings not mentioned
here. I love all the mystics from every sacred tradition – they all are guides
into the Heart. More recently I have been delving into women Christian
saints and contemporary Christian visionar ies such as Mathew Fox. Over
all whom I love is the Prophet of Allah and his blessed family, ‘Ali, Fatima,
Khadija, Hasan and Huseyn, and Hazreti Maryam, may they all be eter nally
embraced in mystic union.50
Again here, Fr iedrich offers a play on gendered conceptions of Sufism, both
acting within a longstanding Islamic tradition of genderizing Sufi practitioners
in a var iety of ways, and offer ing her own take on it. Just as female Sufi saints

230 Gendering Sufism
are masculine in their courageous victory over the lower self, so too are the
“prophets, friends, and lovers of God,” men who are feminine in ter ms of
their love of God. Fr iedrich’s reference to the feminine nature of the Sufi path
is captured in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s principle of “feminine superiority” in human
creation.51
Contemporary female Sufi leadership: Responsibilities
and the role of the feminine
The examples set by these female Sufi leaders signify continuity and change in
religious culture. Although change is easily recognized in the for m of increased
prominence for women in public roles that have been predominantly held by men,
the points of continuity are also striking: the honor ing of spiritual teachers, the
discussions of long-established spiritual principles, the convening of meetings and
r ituals around which traditional Sufi life was organized.While broad generalizations
about the impact of women’s leadership on Sufism would seem untenable, given
the small number of leaders consulted and the diversity of cultures, the testimonies
of these women suggest that growth in women’s roles within contemporary Sufi
communities often implies renewal and expansion in understandings that guide
collective practice. The following commentar y by Fr iedrich, concer ning responsi-
bilities as a teacher and leader, illustrates this point:
My primary responsibility as a Sufi teacher is to love – to love Allah and
Allah’s family, which is constituted by all created beings. To love His Mes-
sengers and Fr iends and Servants from every sacred tradition, peace be upon
them all. Pr imar ily to love the Messenger Muhammad, together with his
wives and family and companions, and to follow his way to the small degree
that I am capable of.
My responsibility is to see the Divine within the being of every dervish,
and also to detect where they are hindered by their limited self, their ego.
My responsibility is to support and encourage the dervishes on their way
and in their spiritual struggle.
My responsibility is to remind them to turn to Allah for all their needs and
to praise and thank Allah for the ceaseless good of their existence.
My responsibility is to inter pret their dreams in a way that elevates their
soul and hastens their way.
My responsibility is to support their mutual love for each other.
My responsibility is to pray for them.
My responsibility is to work on my own spiritual growth and deepening,
and to maintain prayer and tasbih [immanence of God].
My responsibility is to study the Quran and Hadith to the small degree
that I am able, and to find the deeper inter pretations and the more universal
application, both for dervishes and for peace within our human family.

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 231
My responsibility is to offer the communal Zikrullah [communal prayer
and chanting] once a week on Thursday for the dervishes and for all those
who wish to drink from the divine Love manifesting there.
My responsibility is to greet all those who come to our gatherings, from
whichever spiritual background, with love. And to answer their basic ques-
tions about the nature of Islam and Sufism. And insha’allah [God-willing]
give them a taste of the Way of unity and love.
My responsibility is to str ive to be a true human being and a grateful
servant of Allah and humanity, and a vessel for the light of Shaykh Muzaffer
and Shaykh Nur.
My responsibility is to remain aware that all the miracles of transfor ma-
tion that happen in the dervish hearts comes from Allahu ta‘ala [God, Most
High] through the grace of our Pirs. (This is an important addition because
without this awareness one can become proud. It is also an article of faith in
the Shahada [first pillar of Islam recognizing God as One and Muhammad as
His Messenger] – All good comes from Allah.)
My responsibility is to remain humble and to listen.52
Virtually all of the responsibilities cited by Friedrich connect to traditional roles,
preoccupations, and principles of Sufi practice. At the same time, the manner in
which these roles, preoccupations, and principles have been articulated also com-
municates what might be described as a universalist or inclusive sensibility, particu-
larly with respect to open affir mation of wisdom and spirituality in other traditions
and the need “to find the deeper interpretations and the more universal applica-
tion” in traditional sources such as Qur’an and Hadith.This imperative to find the
more universal inter pretations of Islamic source texts is a reflection of Fr iedrich’s
spatial and temporal contexts. Based in the Tribeca neighborhood in Manhattan,
Friedrich teaches Sufism in one of the world’s great multicultural cities, a nexus
for the global flow of people, under conditions often referred to as globalization.
Hence this imperative reflects this time, this era of global convergence, and the need
for resources that enable us to understand our diverse backgrounds in a context of
unitar y mutuality.
The female Sufi teachers answered the question of responsibilities in a var iety of
ways, of course, with Tide offer ing the following succinct perspective:
I am a Kafayat (senior teacher and healer). I oversee the work of the Healing
Order throughout North Amer ica, Australia and New Zealand. I travel the
world reminding people of our interconnectedness with each other and all
life, and I offer retreats and teach healing practices that awaken the innate
healing capacity within each of us.53
As a leader within a community that places high value on the most universal
and inward teachings of Sufism and the lineage of teachers such as Hazrat Inayat

232 Gendering Sufism
Khan and his son Pir Vilayat Khan, Tide and other members of her community also
feel little pressure to embrace or adapt to social nor ms from their root teacher’s
or iginal cultural milieu. As discussed in Chapter 1, Hazrat Inayat Khan came out
of a South Asian context, and conscientiously reframed Sufism to fit with the dis-
courses that were already in place in the West, such as perennialism and especially
its Theosophical mode. For Tide and other members of the Inayati Order, most of
whom are based in Wester n cultural contexts, ideas of gender equality are fir mly
established. One of the most important cr iter ia for spiritual practice concer ns the
capacity to recognize truth in many different names and for ms. Tide emphasized
these universal themes:
Not all Sufi schools are the same. Ours has a universal teaching that cel-
ebrates the golden thread of truth running through all the world’s faiths,
and ways of harmonious living, without giving precedence to any one of
them. I don’t find my gender a problem with my brothers and sisters of
any faith.
To me it does not matter what a person’s religion or gender or country
or philosophy is – or how much pigment is in their skin. If they live from
that awakening that comes deep within the heart, they will recognize another
who is doing the same. There will be love and respect. There will be kind-
ness. There will be interest in the unique way that the Divine has manifested
through this person. The awakened heart is the key to a peaceful world, a
world in harmony.To joy in life.54
From the earliest days of the Inayati Order, women’s participation has been
central to the social development and organizational advancement of the spiritual
community. Women are actively involved, playing leadership roles in matters of
worship and institutional decision making. Hazrat Inayat Khan occasionally stated
that women were destined to lead the way in the evolution of society and spiri-
tuality. He acted on that conviction by conferr ing high initiations on his women
students; the inner circle of students to whom he gave the most responsibility
for the unfoldment of the order were virtually all women (murshidas). Pir Vilayat
affir med his father’s approach, as does Pir Zia. (The contemporary Inayati Order,
at least since Pir Vilayat assumed leadership in the 1950s, does not publicly use the
titles confer red in higher initiations. Pir Vilayat felt that the use of such titles gave
unnecessary weight to hierarchical concer ns.)
Hazrat Inayat Khan’s early women students made noteworthy contributions
to Sufism in the West. A few dedicated women took careful notes of virtually all
of the lectures that he gave during the intensive summer schools, usually held in
Suresnes, now a suburb of Paris. Such notes formed the basis for the first twelve
volumes of his teachings. Several women wrote books about Inayat Khan that are
still treasured. Mevrouw N. Egeling (Murshida Fazal Mai) played a pivotal role in
helping Inayat Khan and his family became settled in Suresnes in 1922. She was
initiated as a cheraga (ordained leader of the Universal Worship) in 1922 and started

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 233
the first Sunday Universal Worship service in the same year. She was also initiated
as a Shefayat andKefayat, higher positions in the Healing Order, and led healing
services.
Kismet Dorothea Stam assisted Inayat Khan in many ways. She accompanied
him and took notes dur ing many of his lecture tours in Europe and Amer ica, and
served as a reporter for various European and American newspapers. Kismet han-
dled much of Inayat Khan’s cor respondence and explained the practices he gave to
initiates. She was the sole person to accompany him on his last journey to India,
where he died. Shortly after the Inayat Khan’s death, she wrote Rays, a meditative
book that offers anecdotes about Inayat Khan’s personality and his interactions
with others.55 Kismet lived at Suresnes for ten years after Inayat Khan’s death, and
worked on notes from his 1926 American lecture tour. Other Sufi books that she
wrote include Fragrance from a Sufi’s Garden, Sufi Lore and Lyrics, and Musings from
a Sufi.56
Perhaps the woman who has had the most endur ing and powerful influence
upon the Inayati Order is Noor-un-nisa (translated as “the Light of Woman-
hood,” but often simply known as Noor) Inayat Khan, Inayat Khan’s daughter
and Pir Vilayat’s sister.57 Born in 1914 while Inayat Khan and his family were in
Russia, Noor watched over her three younger siblings, became an accomplished
musician like her father (she played the harp), and wrote children’s stories. Her
book, Twenty Jataka Tales, published in England in 1939, is a poignant retelling of
traditional Indian stor ies of the Buddha’s past lives as self-sacrificing animals.58
Hazrat Inayat Khan’s death in 1927 had a devastating impact on her mother and
the entire family, and Noor virtually took over the care of her young sister and
brothers.
When the Second World War broke out and Europe was in extreme danger,
Pir Vilayat and Noor, who had always been close, had intense conversations about
what their moral duty was. They decided that, despite their belief in nonviolence,
they had to do something to support the fight against the Nazis.While Pir Vilayat
became a minesweeper on a ship (a dangerous job), Noor joined the Women’s
Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and eventually was accepted for the Special Oper-
ations Executive (SOE), an intelligence group. Shy by nature, Noor was sent to
occupied Paris as a radio operator, an extremely perilous mission. Eventually the
only SOE radio operator left in Paris, Noor refused to be evacuated because she
believed it was her duty to stay and maintain crucial communications for the Allied
forces. She had to constantly change locations for transmitting her messages, which
meant carrying her heavy equipment from place to place and assuming disguises
from time to time. After many courageous acts, Noor was eventually betrayed,
captured by the Nazis, and finally was sent to Dachau, where she was tortured and
interrogated. Noor refused to reveal anything to the Nazis, despite her horrendous
treatment. Her final exclamation before being shot to death in September, 1944
was “Liberté!”
Noor has been given numerous posthumous recognitions by many European
countries.Visitors can find a plaque at Dachau that commemorates the sacr ifice of

234 Gendering Sufism
Noor and those who were executed with her. Commemorations for Noor can also
be found in the Remembrance Hall in the Museum at Dachau, St. Paul’s Church in
Knightsbridge, the Memor ial Gates to the Commonwealth in London, the agricul-
tural school in Gringnon where she began transmitting, and at her childhood home
in Suresnes.59 On November 8, 2012, a commemorative statue was also placed in
Gordon Square in London. It stands near the house in which Noor and her family
lived and was unveiled by Pr incess Anne. In addition to books wr itten about her,
Shrabani Basu’s Spy Princess60 and Jean Overton Fuller’s Noor-un -nisa Inayat Khan,61
a docu-drama about the life of Noor entitled Enemy of the Reich was released in
February 2014.62
Saida Henriette Willebeek le Mair, an early Dutch initiate, attended virtually
all of Inayat Khan’s summer schools, in addition to other lectures. After his death,
she captured the atmosphere of his presence in delicate, evocative paintings that
she paired with selected texts from his lectures. She painted these illustrations
from memory in 1930; a few of them are allegor ical.63 Nargis Jessie Dowland
(Khalifa Nargis) was a distinguished English student of Inayat Khan. She handled
much of the Sufi organizational work in England, and he entrusted her with editing
and publishing many of his lectures. Nargis wrote several books, some of which
have been republished in two volumes as Path of the Seeker, Book One and Path of the
Seeker, Book Two.64 Incisively written, they touch on a number of themes that are
relevant to issues facing today’s spiritual seekers.
Looking at a cross section of the contemporary leadership of the Inayati Order,
one sees at least as many women as men in responsible positions. The cur rent
Executive Director of the Order is Jennifer Alia Wittman, who comes with an orga-
nizational background. Wittman assumed this position at a time when the order
was looking at structural changes to assist the organization in moving effectively
into the future. Chair of the Board of Directors for several years during this plan-
ning period was Linda Amina Hall, a business owner with a social-work educa-
tional background. Amina has recently assumed the role of Head of the Universal
Worship,65 one of the major activities of the order. Taj Inayat, a long-time spiritual
leader of the order (and mother of Pir Zia), ser ves as Vice President of the Board.
Taj pioneered the organization of retreat centers for the order and continues to lead
both individual and group retreats, in addition to online training courses, seminars,
and workshops. Aziza Scott served as Director of Retreat Guide Training and was
Vice President of the Esoter ic School for decades; she continues to lead spiritual
retreats internationally.
Sar ida Brown, based in England, is another contemporary woman who is taking
an active role in the Inayati Order. She is Vice President of the inter national Sufi
Healing Order and plays a significant role in its work. Gulrukh Patel, who currently
serves as the International Coordinator for the Inayati Order, facilitates commu-
nication networks and organizes such large projects as the Inayati Order’s Zenith
summer camp in the Alps. Anna Less has done much work through the Healing
Order, and ear ned a doctorate in Chinese medicine in China. She is currently an
Inter national Executive Director of the Abrahamic Reunion, a peacemaking g roup

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 235
that works to bring together people from the four major religions (Muslim, Jewish,
Christian, and Druze) of Israel and Palestine.The leader of the Ziraat activity, which
focuses on the cultivation of consciousness using symbolism from the natural world,
is Kainot Shar ifa Norton. She leads seminars and workshops that focus on the
need to support ecological work along with spiritual development. Saphira Linden,
a long-time leader in the realm of theater and the arts as tools for psychological
healing, continues to offer cutting-edge workshops. Many of these women (and
others, too numerous to mention) have published scholarly articles and books. San-
dra Yasodara Lillydahl has, for many years, led Omega Publications/Suluk Press in
publishing spiritual works based on the writings of Inayati leaders alongside classical
Sufi works. Zar ifa Mangold was Co-Leader of the Kinship Activity of the Order
for many years, and works to develop initiatives to bring people together on many
levels. In addition to these women and many others, the list of leaders of the Inayati
Order shows a strong presence of women.
In compar ison, as a Turkish Sufi leader, Artiran engages a cultural context in
which women have made significant str ides in recent decades, even as less progres-
sive attitudes toward women’s leadership persist. Her answer to a question about
women’s leadership roles reflects this context and makes active references to Islamic
principles and sources:
Actually it is very easy to find the answer to this question but for some reason
people do not want to see and attain the truth, preferr ing to view the exalted
religion of Islam only within the confines of tradition and culture. The cre-
ation of the human being is very clearly descr ibed in the Holy Qur’an in the
Baqara Surah, Ay a h [verse] 30 in the following way: “I am going to create a
representative.” The Exalted Creator is not saying, I am going to create a man
or a woman. The Exalted Creator says, “I am going to create a representa-
tive.” The Exalted Creator calls this created human being “honored creation”
(eşref-imahlukat), without assigning a gender. Further, men and women are
held as being completely equal in all spiritual responsibilities.
If men only were created as the honored creation, then it would be possi-
ble to think that women are different, and to believe that there is something
lacking in women. But it is not possible to see any fault in any of Allah’s
creation, particularly not in a human being who is the essence and the Truth
of all the Universes. To think that woman could be lacking or inadequate as
regards to spiritual status is not to acknowledge Allah’s creative powers, and
the truth and the real value of the human being.
There are certain women in the world whose level of spiritual attainment
men could not reach. This is very widely known. Closeness to Allah is not
limited to just men. To live as a ser vant of God a life full of Love, is not con-
fined to men or to women. If women are still viewed differently from men
fourteen hundred years after Islam began, this simply indicates that opinions
and thoughts, traditions and cultural practices from ignorant times in the past
are being carr ied over to today.

236 Gendering Sufism
It is quite the reverse in our elevated religion of Islam, which in its essence
is such a noble tradition! Such a noble culture! Islam has two meanings: one
is sur render and the other is equality and balance. How is it possible for a
religion which acknowledges equality and balance in everything in the en-
tire creation, to see inequality and imbalance between men and women who
are the most sacred among all of God’s creation? The truth lies in the fact
that the problem is not that the religion of Islam is deficient or wrong, but
that people are lacking and misled in their interpretation and understanding
of Islam.66
Artiran’s reflection above, on the egalitar ianism found in creation, captures the
ongoing negotiations enacted by women in Sufism. On the one hand, Quranic
principles such as the creation nar rative of the first humans indicates the genderless
nature of God’s representatives on earth, which is further highlighted in meta-
physical ideals of the insan al-kamil and the awliya’. However, as captured in the
histor ical examples relayed in Chapter 6, the sociocultural milieu in which women
practiced Sufism affected the ways in which they were able to participate in the
tradition. Thus, where metaphysical notions of the feminine elevated the feminine
ideal, women as a biological and social categor y simultaneously relegated them to
the margins of Sufism. This dual conceptualization of the feminine for med the
complex ter rain wherein Sufi women lived out their identity and leadership, a
contemporary reality within which leaders like Artiran further exist. In summary,
Artiran articulates an Islamic argument for recognizing the equality of women and
appropriateness of the roles they increasingly play within Turkish Sufi communities
such as her own.
The traditional Mevlevi whirling ritual (the sema‘ ), for example, was for centu-
r ies the exclusive preser ve of men.67 This changed, however, in the 1980s, when a
Mevlevi master from Istanbul named Shaykh Suleyman Loras Dede (d. 1985)68 first
author ized women to participate in this iconic r itual of the Mevlevi Sufi order. As
discussed in Chapter 6, Loras was part of the UNESCO event in Par is that invited
whirlers for the first time in 1964. He then taught whirling to Amer ican students
during his visit in 1976 to the Institute for Conscious Life in Los Angeles. Two
of Loras’s students, Kabir and Camille Helminski, were initiated into the Mevlevi
order in 1980 and have sought to car ry forward his understanding of the tradition
in Western contexts. In 1990, Kabir was designated as one of the first Mevlevi
shaykhs in North Amer ica by the head of the Mevlevi order in Istanbul. Kabir and
Camille established the Threshold Society to transmit Mevlevi teachings; it now
has branches in six countr ies, with approximately 200 active members. Continuing
the trajectory established by Loras, the Helminskis have maintained elements of
traditional Mevlevi Sufism while adapting others to better fit with North American
nor ms. Women and men are both taught the whirling practice, and some of the
gender divisions found in more traditional contexts are not maintained. Although
the practice of women whirling is something new in the contemporary era, the role

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 237
of women as practitioners and teachers of Sufism is something that is continuous
throughout Sufism’s history. For instance, both Fr iedrich and Artiran use whirling
dur ing their dhikr ceremony.Though whirling, as discussed in the previous chapters,
has been popular ized in the global context, the ritual of whirling also remains a
central feature of Sufi traditions and is evoked by women and men.69
Sargut offered another unique answer to the question of women’s leadership
roles in Sufism:
I think the guide can be neither a woman nor a man. The guide must be
someone who has sur passed the gender ... of course, the woman will not
lose their femininity and the man won’t lose from their masculinity, but ...
the guide can only be the one who does not bring their gender to the fore,
the one who doesn’t remember it.The one who knows their student as their
child ... even if they are of the same age, the one who knows the student as
a child and struggles for them ... in truth, I believe that a guide is one who
serves their student.70
Sargut’s response can also be in reference to what she regards as the most essen-
tial issue: the capacity for sainthood. As Sargut has stated elsewhere, “The ultimate
point in tasavvuf is sainthood or being Allah’s friend (walaya) ... everyone can be a
walī, or have that proximity and sincer ity.”
71 In making this point, Sargut implicitly
points to the acknowledged presence of women saints in Islamic history who were
not judged according to their gender but according to their spiritual devotion and
presence, including decisive figures, such as Rabi‘a, who left her legacy upon the
whole tradition.72 Given this established point that women can be saints, questions
about women’s capacity for leadership appear unnecessary per her understanding.
Sargut’s understanding of female leadership reflects what we explored in Chapter
6 about the Rifa’i order and how it traces its spiritual chain of transmission not to
the sons of the founder but to the daughters, Zaynab bint al-Rifa’i and Fatima bint
al-Rifa’i, both revered spiritual leaders and mystics. Additionally, Sargut mentions
that her female teacher, Samiha Ayverdi (d. 1993), was “the greatest student” and
“the one who resembled [Kenan Rifai, the founder of her Sufi order] most.”
Despite counter-trends of religious fundamentalism and associated efforts to
reassert exclusive male author ity in many different cultural and religious milieus,
the tendency of women to take increasingly prominent roles within Sufi commu-
nities appears likely to continue. Fr iedrich offered extensive reflections on the sig-
nificance of “feminine wisdom” within contemporary Sufism and mystical practice
more generally:
It is great to be a woman guide at this time when the feminine wisdom is
essential to help our human family out of its conflicts and conundrums. So
many of our challenges can only be resolved with the inclusivity, compassion,
wisdom, tender ness, humbleness and spontaneity natural to the feminine soul.

238 Gendering Sufism
Women and men working together, joining their strengths and their visions,
is absolutely necessary to save the human family from self-destruction.
Within the Islamic tradition, we as women can help to overcome the
terr ible sectar ianism ruled by ego that has damaged the beautiful seamless
tapestry of the Prophet’s teachings. Today, to continue maintaining the di-
vide between Shi‘a and Sunni, men and women, East and West, Muslim and
non-Muslim (as though we knew), believer and non-believer (as though we
knew) is absolutely harmful to the Divine consciousness invested in the hu-
man being. It under mines faith and it can bring us to the destruction of the
human race. Yes, women guides in all walks of life are absolutely needed at
this time.
And we need Sufism, the Mother of all wisdom traditions.We are enter ing
a new time, the time of the Mother, the era of love.73
While it is possible to stake out passionate positions on the topic of female
leadership, Artiran adds that keeping the spotlight on Sufi spirituality and practice
should remain the primary concer n:
First I would like to sincerely say that I do not define myself as a leader. All
I know is that I would like to take the infinite love, respect and friendship in
my heart, with which God has honored me, and share it with these beautiful
people around me without asking anything in retur n. I would like to be a
friend that they can trust in this world; a soul, a mother, a father or a brother
or sister when they need one. Apart from this, of course, there are very special
moral perfections that I would like my students to acquire.
First, I would like them to be free spirits in both the material and spiritual
realms. I would like my students to acquire inner depth and become repre-
sentatives of individual and societal peace, love, and respect. I would like them
to see without looking and understand without being told anything. I would
like them to become individuals with high moral standards, to become role
models. This is a very significant spiritual jour ney, therefore it is important
to have these character traits, to act with patience and calm, and to apply
what they hear and see to their own lives. Like I humbly expressed at the
beginning of our interview, it is not possible to learn Sufism from books or
from listening or watching. One can only acquire the morality of Sufism by
living, through exper ience, not from how much we hear, how much we see,
or how much we read, but by how much we feel, how much we live – that
is how these high moral accomplishments become ours.74
Here in Artiran’s response, she even evades the epithet of being a leader, and
rather sees her position as espousing a holistic approach that is in complete service
to her students. Aside from wanting her students to acquire key moral training, her
main objective is to be a friend, the same ideal of awliya, or the friends of God, a
state women have occupied histor ically.

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 239
Conclusion
While the emergence of tendencies toward greater scope for women’s leadership
promises to have an impact on the Sufi tradition, all of these female Sufi leaders
emphasize that this is not something that should be regarded as alien or contrary
to the spirit of Sufism and Sufi ideals, or to the heart of Islamic teachings. Just
as we see a notable shift in women’s roles as public representatives of Sufism, we
also find these same women highlighting the continuity that their contemporary
leadership maintains with premodern Sufi teachings, practices, and representatives.
Perhaps, then, the growing prominence of women will only serve to underscore
what is most endur ing and genuinely distinctive about this tradition of contem-
plative engagement with life and its individual and communal aspirations toward
transcendence.
Notes
1 There are different variations of the ter m shaykha, some being sheikh and cheikha.
2 Hülya Küçük, in “Female Substitutes and Shaykhs in the History of Sufism:The Case of
the Mawlawiyya Sufi Order from Its Early Phase to the Eighteenth Century,” Mawlana
Rumi Review 4 (2015): 106–131, notes that Artiran is an exception to the general rule
that women are only allowed to enter the Mevlevi order as novices. Esin Celebi Bayru,
the twenty-second generation descendant of Rumi mentioned in Chapter 5, similarly
signals a revival of women’s leadership in the Mevlevi order, as she serves as the unofficial
head Mevlevi shaykha, aside from taking part in state-sponsored Rumi commemorations
(see Küçük,“Female Substitutes and Shaykhs in the history of Sufism,” 127).
3 Daniel Dyer, “A Day with Nur Atriran,” September 2013, http://sufism.org/articles/a-
day-with-nur -artiran. For more information about Camille Adams Helminski, see Hülya
Küçük,“A Brief History of Western Sufism,” Asian Journal of Social Science 36 (2008): 314.
4 Şefik Can, Cevahir-i Mesneviyye (Self-published, 2001).
5 See information about this branch of the Inayati Order at “Sufi Healing Order North
Amer ica,” http://sufihealingorder.org/.
6 Cemalnur Sargut, “Tasawwuf (Sufism),” in Sufism: A Celebration of Love, eds. Ajita
Kaura, Nur Zahir, and Ref aqat Ali Khan (Bhopal, India: SAARC Writers in Literature,
2012a).These two essays and all essays by Sargut were given to the co-authors to use
for this chapter. Unless references are provided, most essays by Sargut are unpublished
works.
7 Cemalnur Sargut is a devotee of Kenan Rifai (d. 1950), who was initiated into four Sufi
order s: the Rifaiyya, the Qadiriyya, the Mawlawiyya, and the Shadhiliyya.
8 In addition to her writings, Cemalnur gives spiritual lectures on Rumi’s Masnavi and
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s (d. 1240) Fusus al-Hikam. Her lecture at the Baraka Institute can be found
at: Trent T. Gilliss, “Living Tassawuf with Cemalnur Sargut,” On Being, May 24, 2012,
www.onbeing.org. She has also led groups of women followers to take part in Rumi
Festival in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
9 See Sargut, “Tasawwuf (Sufism).” Sargut would also share in an email message with
the authors on June 23, 2017, that “Tasawwuf means to live the beautiful conduct of
the Prophet Muhammad, which is the beautiful conduct of Islam, and to be a living
example. The person who lives this faith and beautiful conduct heads toward their own
reality (haqiqa) and learns, through their own vessel, to respect and love all of the created
that are each names of Allah.” Sargut explores this particular definition of Sufism in an
unpublished essay entitled, “Akhlaq (Moral Virtues).”
10 Cemalnur Sargut, “How to Apply ‘Tasavvuf ’ Sufism in Ordinary Human Life” (personal
unpublished essay, 2012b), 4.

240 Gendering Sufism
11 Sargut, “Tasawwuf (Sufism),” 26.
12 H. Nur Artiran served as the assistant to her spiritual master, Şefik Can (1909–2005),
who was “Sertarik,” the head of the Mevlevi Shaikhs, and “Mesnevihan,” who was offi-
cially authorized to teach on Mathnavi. Her first Islamic mysticism work was in 1983,
based on Niyaz-i Mısri’s Diwan (collection of poems). She has prepared “Cevahir-i
Mesneviyye” (The Ore of Mathnavi), “Mesneviden Hikayeler” (Stories from Mathnavi),
“Okullar icin Mesnevi’den seçmeler” (Selections of Mathnavi for Schools), and “Mevlana’nın
Rubailerinden Secmeler” (Selections of Mevlana’s Rubaiyat) for publishing. Her past pub-
lications are “Asq Bir Davaya Benzer” (Love Needs Proofs) in 2011, “Herkes Seni Terk
Etse Asq Terk Etmez” (Everyone Can LeaveYou, But Not Love) and “Nun Kapisi” (The
Door of “Nun”) in 2014. They consist of spir itual talks from Rumi and other g reat
Sufi Masters. She continues her global work as the founding President of the Şefik Can
Inter national Mevlana Education and Culture Foundation. She is also founding member
of the World Disability Union, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Inter-
national Mevlana Foundation, Board of Directors of the Universal Sufi Council based in
the Netherlands, and Advisory Board of the Global Future College based in Paris.
13 Mevlevi Sufi Order was fir st established by Jalal ad-Din Rumi’s son, Sultan Walad, in
Konya, and then would expand with appointed leaders in various regions of the Middle
East. It would flour ish under the Ottoman Empire with over 114 tekkes (Sufi gathering
places) in cities such as Mecca, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo,Tabriz, and even Belgrade and
Athens.Throughout the order’s history, and especially in its early years before state inter-
ference restricted women’s participation, female saints and shaykhas have been appointed
and have occupied leadership positions (for more on this, see Küçük,“Female Substitutes
and Shaykhs in the History of Sufism,” 126).With the fall of the Ottomans and the rise
of the secular republic under Ataturk, in 1925, all Sufi organizations, including the Mev-
levi order, were declared illegal. Many tekkes were converted into mosques, museums
(i.e., the main tekke [or Mevlevihane] in Konya [where Rumi is buried] is a museum and
tourist destination), or dialogue center s. In the 20th century, a number of individuals
were initiated to be leaders of the Mevlevi Sufi Order, one being Şefik Can, the teacher
of Artiran. The Şefik Can Inter national Mevlana Education and Culture Foundation is
one of the better known dialogue centers in Istanbul and is the place where most activ-
ities take place under the leadership Artiran.
14 Nur Artiran, email message to authors, November 23, 2016. The authors would like to
thank Selcuk Cemoglu and the Mevlevi community of Şefik Can for their kind assis-
tance in translating Artiran’s or ig inal Turkish answers into English.
15 Robert Frager, or Regip al-Jerrahi (a Jerrahi shaykh based in California) for instance, has
been a key figure in the development of transpersonal psychology in America.
16 According to infor mation in Pir Zia Inayat Khan’s latest book, Mingled Waters: Sufism and
the Mystical Unity of Religion (New Lebanon, NY: Suluk Press, 2017), “The Inayati Order
is an inter national organization dedicated to spreading the Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat
Khan, who introduced Sufism to the Western world in 1910. Its objective is to realize
and spread the knowledge of unity, the religion of love and wisdom, so that the human
heart may overflow with love, and all animosity caused by distinctions and differences
may be rooted out.”The Inayati Order, previously known as the Sufi Order International
and before that as the Sufi Order of the West, has centers throughout North America,
Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.These centers offer a variety of activities, including
the Universal Worship (a worship service celebrating many of the revealed religions of
the world on one altar), the Esoteric school, the Healing Order, Ziraat (an activity that
focuses on the cultivation of consciousness using symbolism from the natural world), and
activities promoting the kinship of all humans. Spiritual retreats and intensive seminars
are offered in many locations. The Suluk Academy, founded by Pir Zia, is an intensive
spiritual school with a two-year curriculum. For more information about this order, see
“The Inayati Order : A Sufi Path of Spiritual Liberty,” http://inayatiorder.org/.
17 Devi Tide, email message to authors, December 10, 2016.

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 241
18 Born into a distinguished musical family in Baroda, India in 1882, Hazrat Inayat Khan
was an accomplished musician and mystic by the time he was a young man. His spiritual
teacher, Abu Hashim Madani Chisti, encouraged him to go to Europe and America to
“harmonize the East and the West” through his music and the wisdom of Sufism. From
1910 until 1926, Inayat Khan traveled throughout North Amer ica and Europe, teaching
what has been called the “quintessence of Sufi teachings.” He believed that humanity was
on the cusp of awakening to the inherent divinity of the human heart and the underly-
ing unity of spiritual paths. After establishing many Sufi centers in North America and
Europe, Inayat Khan returned to India in the fall of 1926. He left behind many initiates
and a significant body of spiritual teachings that blended traditional Sufi teachings with a
new vision of a potential human realization of the oneness of the collective human heart.
Inayat died in India in February 1927; his dargah may be found in the neighborhood of
Nizamuddin al-’Awliya in New Delhi.
19 Sargut, “Tasavvuf:The Way to Acquire the Art of Being a Human,” 4.
20 Artiran, email message to authors, November 23, 2016.
21 Tide, email message.
22 Cemalnur Sargut, “How to Apply ‘Tasavvuf ’ Sufism in Ordinary Human Life” (personal
unpublished essay), 4.
23 Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order is a branch of Halveti-Jerrahi Sufi order of Istanbul, Tur-
key. It was founded in the 1980s by Nur al-Anwar al-Jer rahi (Lex Hixon) and Fariha
Friedrich. They were disciples of Shaykh Muzzaffer Ozak (Ashki) al-Jer rahi (1916–
1985), who was the nineteenth successor to Hazreti Pir Muhammad Nureddin al-Jer-
rahi (1678–1720), the founder of the Halveti-Jer rahi Sufi Order. The Nur Ashki Jerrahi
branch has its headquarters in NewYork City. For more information about this order, see
“Nur Ashki Jerrahi Community,” http://nurashkijerrahi.org/.
24 Fariha Friedrich, interview by William Rory Dickson, November 18, 2010, Masjid
al-Farah, New York City, NY.
25 Sargut, “Tasavvuf:The Way to Acquire the Art of Being a Human,” 2.
26 Fariha Friedrich, email message to authors, September 20, 2016.
27 Artiran, email message.
28 Sargut, “Tasavvuf:The Way to Acquire the Art of Being a Human,” 1.
29 Fariha Friedrich, email message.The authors would like to thank Abdul Rahim for all of
his assistance in facilitating our email communications with Friedrich.
30 Sargut, “Tasawwuf (Sufism),” 25.
31 Artiran, email message.
32 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism:The Formative Period (Berkeley, CA: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2007), 116.
33 Ibid., 117.
34 Annemarie Schimmel, Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Cen-
tury Muslim India (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 70–71.
35 Fariha Friedrich, interview by William Rory Dickson, November 18, 2010, at Masjid
al-Farah, New York City, NY.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Friedrich, email message. Friedrich, in her correspondence, also suggested that those
interested can “explore Shaykh Nur’s vision in his book,” Atom from the Sun of Knowledge
(New York: Pir Press, 1993).
39 Friedrich, interview by William Rory Dickson
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Artiran, email message.
43 Ibid.
44 Inayat Khan, H. The Inner Life,Volume 1 in The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Geneva:
Inter national Headquarter s Sufi Movement, 1979), 13.

242 Gendering Sufism
45 Qur’an 2:115.
46 Qur’an 16:36.
47 Tide, email message.
48 Artiran, email message.
49 Sargut, “Tasavvuf:The Way to Acquire the Art of Being a Human,” 9.
50 Friedrich, email message.
51 Ibn al-‘Arabi’s metaphysics have proved to be a resource for contemporary interpreters,
not all of whom read him in the same way.Whereas some Traditionalist interpreters read
Ibn al-‘Arabi as offering a vision of stabilized gender complementarity as reflective of
cosmic duality and ultimately God’s Names, more progressive interpreters like Sa’diyya
Shaikh read Ibn al-‘Arabi as offering a strikingly contemporary understanding of gender
that challenges gender essentialism. See Sa’diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn
‘Arabi, Gender, and Sexuality (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012),
202; Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic
Thought (Albany, NY: State Univer sity of New York Press, 1992).
52 Friedrich, email message.
53 Tide, email message.
54 Ibid.
55 Kismet Dorothea Stam, Rays (The Hague: East-West Publications, 1927).
56 Kismet Dorothea Stam, Fragrance from a Sufi’s Garden (London: Luzac & Co., 1934); Kis-
met Dorothea Stam,Sufi Lore and Lyrics; Musings from a Sufi (London: Luzac & Co., 1936).
57 Taj Inayat, Pir Zia’s mother and spiritual leader in the Inayati Order, commented in The
Crystal Chalice (New Lebanon, NY: Sufi Order Publications, 1978), 47: “The real mean-
ing of purity is not washing something away, but returning to one’s original condition
which is light.The effect of Noor-un-Nisa’s spirit is like having a bath of light.” A refrain
of a poem to Noor written by Sufi Elizabeth Rechtschaffen, quoted in The Crystal Chal-
ice, 54–55, suggests the sublime experience of her presence:
Noor-un-nisa, I have seen you
Veiled in starlight with your father,
You have shown my soul a thousand times
The ecstasy of pain. And I bow before your beauty,
Yes, I bow before your beauty
Like a white rose in the rain.
58 Noor Inayat Khan, Twenty Jataka Tales (London: Inner Traditions, 1985).
59 Shrabani Basu, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, NY: Omega
Publications, 2007), 4117.
60 Basu,Spy Princess.
61 Jean Overton Fuller, Noor-un -nisa Inayat Khan (Rotterdam: East-West Publications,
1971).
62 Enemy of the Reich:The Noor Inayat Khan Story, film, directed by Rob Gardner (February
2014; Paramount Pictures).
63 Published as The Flower Garden of Inayat Khan by East-West Publications (1978).
64 Nargis Jessie Dowland, Path of the Seeker, Book One; Path of the Seeker, Book Two (New
Lebanon, NY: Suluk Press, 2015a and 2015b).
65 The Universal Worship emerged as the religious framework of the Inayati Order (for-
merly Sufi Order of the West). Beginning in 1921 as the Church of the All, the Sunday
ser vice involved a candle being lit for each of the world’s religions, with passages of
diverse religious scriptures being read. The Church of the All was developed by Hazrat
Inayat Khan and Sophia Saintsbury-Green (d. 1939), a senior member of the Theosoph-
ical Society in England. Alongside Theosophical influences, the Church of the All was
inspired by the League of Nations and the model of pluralism and univer sal cooperation
it represented. For more, see William Rory Dickson, Living Sufism in North America:
Between Tradition and Transformation (New York: SUNY, 2015).
66 Artiran, email message.

Contemporary female Sufi leaders 243
67 After the 17th century, women’s perfor mance of sema’ was permitted, but only as a way
to console their exclusion from leadership positions (see Küçük,“Female Substitutes and
Shaykhs in the History of Sufism,” 126).
68 Artiran’s teacher, Şefik Can, was recognized as a Mesnavi Han, a Shaikh of the Mathnavi.
He was a close friend of Suleyman Dede and inherited his precious copy of the Mevlevi
Wird, which Kabir Helminski, in turn, inherited from Şefik Can. Celalettin Çelebi, the
head of the Mevlevi Order, would have been the one to give them ijazets.
69 If interested in learning more about Sulayman Loras and his Mevlevi community, see
Shakina Reinhertz, Women Called to the Path of Rumi: The Way of the Whirling Dervish
(Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press, 2001).
70 Cemalnur Sargut, email message to authors, June 23, 2017.
71 Cemalnur Sargut, “Tasavvuf: The Way to Acquire the Art of Being a Human” (personal
unpublished essay), 9.
72 As Hülya Küçük points out in “Female Substitutes and Shaykhs in the History of
Sufism,” 125, Rabi‘a “was deemed a model for female Sufis.” For more information
about Rabi‘a, see also Hülya Küçük, “Menakibu’l-Arifin’de Rabia ve Rabia Timsali,”
Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası 144, no. 4 (2007): 87–93; and Margaret Smith, Rabi‘a the
Mystic and Her Fellow Saints in Islam, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambr idge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984).
73 In a November 18, 2010, interview with William Rory Dickson, Friedrich added: “The
tariqa is a wonderful place for women to come forward. In the Islamic culture, you get
Amina Wadud leading prayer in St. John the Divine, in that little chapel on the side, and
there were death threats. She had to hide away in her home. That’s the nice thing about
Sufism. It’s kind of protected. It’s within its own walls. It will take time, but I have no
doubt that women will have all the functions that men do.”
74 Artiran, email message.
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The ter ms “contemporary” or “modern” connote – in the broad sense given to
them by the regnant liberalism of Wester n societies today – the “latest and greatest”:
if the arc of history is understood to be one of improvement, development, and
linear progress, then what is moder n and contemporary is by definition super ior
to what came before.1 There is, then, a positive evaluation built into the term
“contemporary.” There have also been reactions to this bias in favor of what is new
or novel. The 19th-century Romantic movement, for example, tended to value
the ancient, the classical, and the traditional as bastions of authenticity, virtue, and
beauty, in contrast with the shallow, systematized, and ugly moder n.
Interestingly, interpretations of contemporary Sufism have been, in many cases,
framed by these dichotomous evaluations of the opportunities and limitations
offered by moder nity. The anti-modernism of the Romantic movement has influ-
enced both Orientalists and Wester n Sufi Traditionalists.Western Sufi Traditionalists
tend to view the moder n era as increasingly closed off from spiritual possibility, and
primar ily an era of mater ialism, destruction, and decline. Cor respondingly, Orien-
talists tended to see Sufism as something that was waning, and was best accessed in
classical texts of philosophy and poetry. Thus, Traditionalists and Orientalists both
limit the possibilities of contemporary expressions of Sufism, with a sense that
Sufism’s time is long past, or that modernity cannot offer a vehicle for the expres-
sion of sacred principles. On the other hand, female Sufi leaders engaged within
this study felt that the moder n era was the era of the Feminine, a temporality
toward which humanity has progressed, within which traditions unfold new pos-
sibilities that are compatible with their underlying essence. From their perspective,
moder nity is not an era only of morbidity and dismay, but – at least potentially –
also the dawn of a new time whose gender realignments reflect the Sufi tradition’s
deeper reality as experienced in the cosmic primordial era.2
8
CONCLUSION
Discourses of authenticity and
complementary contradictions in
contemporary Sufism

246 Gendering Sufism
In general, scholars need to be cr itical of modern tendencies to read history
through a singular lens. This moder n histor ical tendency toward singular ity can
foster a cor respondingly monolithic sense of Islam, and in so doing it also singu-
larizes the nar rative of Sufism. In this book, we have sought to avoid such singular
nar ratives, whether progressive or traditionalist in nature.We have tr ied to resist the
temptation either to idealize the contemporary as an advancement of or improve-
ment upon the past, or to romanticize the past as a lost golden age without its own
limitations and failings. Contemporary Sufism, then, is conceptualized neither as a
shadow of its for mer self nor as its truest and most advanced expression, but as a
manifestation of enduring ideals in relationship with the particularities of cur rent
global dynamics and contexts. Hence, to address the phenomenon adequately, we
need to appreciate the way in which contemporary Sufism is simply Sufism, with
the same ideals and practices that it has always had. However, it is contemporary
in that these ideals and practices are taking a particular for m in relation to the
dynamics shaping global cultures today. Within the framework used in this book,
we have explored key themes in terms of their historical and recent manifestations,
to highlight the ways in which contemporary Sufism represents both continuity
with and contradiction of the past.The explicit and implicit ways that Sufism today
represents past ideals and contradicts them is precisely what makes contemporar y
Sufism “contemporary.”
As we have seen throughout the different sections, the core of the dynamics
framing the varied expressions of Sufism today is the question of authenticity. For
instance, the contemporary debate over Sufi and anti-Sufi understandings of Islam
manifests longstanding debates among Muslims over the most authentic way to
inter pret and express the teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad,
and concer ns core definitions of Islamic legitimacy and identity. As we explored in
Chapters 2 and 3, this debate hinges on the deepest questions of the Islamic tradi-
tion, including the nature of God (transcendent, immanent, or both?), the Qur’an (a
text made up of apparent or hidden meanings?), and the form of sacred knowledge
(experiential or textual?). These contrasting understandings of Islamic authenticity
are playing themselves out today in a global debate over Sufism, with some protag-
onists maintaining that Sufi modes of knowledge and practice represent the heart
of Islam, even as others argue that Sufism represents a foreign interpolation that
must be erased to preser ve Islam’s authenticity. Contemporary Sufism is uniquely
defined by having to negotiate this questioning of its Islamic authenticity to an
unprecedented degree, including in many cases the active erasure of Sufism from
history and the destruction of Sufi sites and bodies.
Perhaps ironically, just as Sufism finds itself marginalized in many contemporary
Muslim contexts, it emerges as a source of “authentic” Easter n or “Oriental” spir-
ituality in the West, an ancient wisdom tradition that transcends religion and the
particular ity of Islam. Especially dur ing the colonial period, Western intellectuals
and officials saw in Sufism an appealing for m of poetry, philosophy, and mysticism
that could be reframed as a universalistic resource for Western artists and spiritual
seekers, a process that led to the de-Islamification of Sufism in the West. However,

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 247
this is not to say that universalism is something foreign to Sufism, as in fact univer-
salistic perspectives have long been central to Sufi conceptions of religious truth,
though this universalism has traditionally been framed using Islamic rather than
Wester n esoter ic or Theosophical ter minology. Either way, seekers and scholars
in the West engage with the question of what Sufism authentically is (universal,
Islamic, or both?) and whether or not Wester n engagements with Sufism (e.g .,
Barks’s translations of Rumi) are authentically Sufi.
Another way in which Sufism is vetted in contemporar y contexts is in con-
sideration of whether it is a textual or a contextual tradition. When Sufi textual
traditions are treated as more legitimate than contextual practices such as shrine
veneration or whirling, a hierarchy of cultures and privileged types tends to follow.
For instance, historically, Persian poetry was deemed far worthier of engagement
by Orientalists than literary productions from other Islamic languages, as the Per-
sian language had administrative value in varying colonial contexts and was further
privileged as an Indo-European language. These dynamics in the privileging of
certain languages of Sufism in non-Muslim textual engagements can be contrasted
with Ibn Taymiyya’s attention to an Arab-only for m of Islam that r ids Islam of any
other cultural residue in its practice. Modern ethnic and linguistic nationalists have
also engaged in such debates over authenticity, with Persian nationalists celebrating
the literature and spirituality expressed in Persian, transfor ming Rumi and Hafiz
into national figures, and Arab nationalists laying claim to their own Sufi literature –
for instance, that of Ibn al-Far id – as an expression of a larger national soul. Such
ethnolinguistic identity issues have preoccupied not just Orientalists and Islamic
revivalists as they considered the status of Sufism, but also thinkers involved with
nation- and state-building projects that continue to unfold today.
It is necessary, then, to move beyond these ethnolinguistic fields to capture the
different locales of Sufism, especially in the moder n era. Sufism is not the preser ve
only of Arabs and Persians, just as Islam is not the preser ve of these regions where
it histor ically or iginated. Rather, as Schimmel has indicated, shifts have unfolded in
the development of Islam historically, including the emergence of diverse traditions
such as “Mecca or iented” and “India or iented” approaches to Islam in South Asia.3
We might now add “Amer ica oriented” and “Europe or iented” as categor ies which
need not be treated as dilutions and therefore less legitimate for ms of Islam or
Sufism. Histor ically and in cur rent times, Sufism has taken on the hue of the many
different regions into which it has entered. These adaptations and transfor mations
within the tradition have in tur n been vetted to determine their authenticity.Thus,
the theme of authenticity and who has the power to vet this authenticity con-
tinue to be seen throughout varying geographical, religious, and structural for ms of
Sufism. Though concer ns about authenticity have taken on added salience in mod-
ern times due to processes such as colonialism, the emergence of nation-states, and
globalization, the question of authenticity is by no means an exclusively moder n
concer n. Rather, it has followed Sufism throughout its development.
Whereas the first two themes identified in this book, concer ning the unprece-
dented spread of anti-Sufi understandings of Islam and the development of Sufism

248 Gendering Sufism
in the West in new for ms, frame powerful dynamics affecting contemporary Sufism,
the selection of gender and Sufism as our third theme may seem less obvious to
some readers. However, questions of gender have been foregrounded in the mod-
er n or contemporar y per iod with an urgency and prevalence not always found in
prior per iods, and questions of gender have unsur prisingly been engaged not only
by contemporary scholars of Sufism but by Sufis themselves. These questions too
hinge on the issue of authenticity. Although some Muslim author ities have ques-
tioned women’s religious acumen, Sufi teachers like Ibn al-‘Arabi have suggested
that the highest for ms of human realization are equally and authentically available
to women. The gender ing of human spirituality within Sufi discourse has provided
textual resources for champions of both positions, in distant and recent histori-
cal per iods. Insofar as holistic religious expression is generally understood to be
one infor med by such gendered perspectives, engagement with them is a dynamic
component of the contemporary politics of authenticity, and under pins claims to
religious author ity.
As we can see, the three overarching themes of Sufism and anti-Sufism (Chapters 2
and 3), European and Amer ican (non-Muslim) encounters with Sufism (Chap-
ters 4 and 5), and female author ity and presence (Chapters 6 and 7) are framed
by questions of authenticity that lie at the heart of contemporary Sufism. Each of
these sections offers a snapshot of contemporary Sufism, highlighting the histor ical
tensions, moods, and processes that are shaping the global phenomenon. These are
not (and cannot) be exhaustive, but rather are illustrative, acting as windows onto
contemporary Sufism. Sufis have long held that the sacred manifests in a profound
plurality of ways, and this book has attempted to shed light on a few of the ways
in which sacred Sufi principles have manifested, whether in counter ing anti-Sufi
discourses and movements, in shaping the arts, mater ial culture, and social media, or
in contemporary explorations of gendered realities.
Key findings of chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 1 situates this work within the broader history of knowledge production
on Sufism that has taken place in Western contexts, both academic and otherwise.
We began by providing an histor ical outline of European encounters with Sufi
texts and traditions, focusing on the formative role played by Wester n for ms of
knowledge on Sufism that developed during the early colonial per iod (late 18th
and early 19th centur ies). It was during this period that Wester n study of the East
crystalized as an intellectual discipline (and broader cultural phenomenon) known
as Orientalism.The Orientalist framing of Sufism tended to filter it through a West-
er n perennialist lens, largely separating Sufism from Islam.This separation, rooted in
racialized theor ies of mysticism and the limited number of Persian texts to which
early Orientalists had access, would help foster a broader Western embrace of Sufism
as a perennial wisdom transcending religion and Islam, allowing a de-Islamicized

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 249
Sufism to find a place in Western spiritualities, art, and literature. By the early 20th
century, however, scholars like Nicholson and Massignon, with greater access to
Sufi sources, revised earlier theor ies of Sufism and acknowledged its Islamic or i-
gins and character. Dur ing this period, we also saw the development of lineages of
Sufi practice in the West. Just as early academic treatments of Sufism were shaped
by perennialism, so too were the first for ms of Sufi practice: whether we think of
Inayat Khan’s Theosophically framed universal Sufism or Guénon’s Traditionalist
understanding of Sufism as the esoter ic aspect of Islam, Western Sufism tended to
be premised on a conception of universal truth shared across religious traditions.
Academically, Islamic and Sufi Studies took shape in the mid-20th centur y, shifting
to North Amer ica with the establishment of area studies departments and later reli-
gious studies departments, a trajector y represented in part by Schimmel. The later
20th century would see a tur n in scholarship to studying lived Sufism, as opposed
to an exclusive textual focus, one inher ited from Orientalist approaches. It is out
of this turn that the field of contemporary Sufism emerges, which then set the
scholarly backdrop to situate the three broader themes addressed by the subsequent
chapters.
Chapter 2
In Chapter 2, we offered a genealogical over view of the roots of one of the most
profound and far-reaching developments within the historical Islamic tradition.
The r ise of anti-Sufi movements in almost every Muslim context within the past
200 years has set off a global debate among Muslims concer ning the place of Sufism
within Islam. This has largely resulted in an histor ically unprecedented marginal-
ization of Sufi modes of thought, practice, scr iptural inter pretation, and religious
association. Although unprecedented in its scope, anti-Sufism has been a significant
aspect of the Sunni Islamic tradition since its coalescence in the 10th and 11th
centur ies. Followers of Ibn Hanbal perpetuated a suspicion of esoter ic readings of
the Qur’an, innovative rituals of remembrance, and theologies of love, intimacy,
and the omnipresence of God. The anti-Sufi elements of Hanbali thought were
brought together acutely in the 14th century by Ibn Taymiyya, who directed many
of his polemics toward the school of Ibn al-‘Arabi, which had come to represent
for Ibn Taymiyya a per nicious, transgressive force threatening the coherence of
Islamic doctrine. Combining a suspicion of interpretive pluralism, non-Arabs, and
un-Islamic contaminations, Ibn Taymiyya created a body of work that would be
resur rected and amplified in the 18th century by the progenitor of contemporary
anti-Sufism: Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. Unlike any prior thinker, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab
sought not to refor m or limit Sufism, but to erase it completely from Islam. The
Wahhabi movement presented an exclusivist, pur itan Islam devoid of poetry, phi-
losophy, and most significantly and vehemently, Sufism. Tones of Wahhabi anti-
Sufism were picked up by Salafi refor mers like ‘Abduh and more strongly Rida.
Their use of print technology and international networking helped spread and
nor malize Wahhabi theological cr itiques of Sufism, alongside their own suggestions

250 Gendering Sufism
that everyday Sufism was a retrogressive force holding Muslims back from civiliza-
tional revival counter ing European dominance.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 built upon this histor ical over view by delving deeper into the ways in
which anti-Sufism contrasts with Sufi modes of theology, scr iptural inter pretation,
pedagogy, and religious practice, and breaking down these opposing “g rammars” of
religiosity as the underlying structure of this debate over Sufism within contem-
porary Islam. Following this, we offered an account of how the grammar of anti-
Sufi Islam was mobilized as part of a global movement to change the face of
contemporary Muslim thought and practice. The Br itish–Saudi alliance of the late
19th and early 20th centur ies allowed for the Wahhabi tradition to gain political
traction within Islam’s heartland in Arabia, and the discovery of oil in the 20th
century allowed for Wahhabism to be not only consolidated within Arabia but also
promoted and disseminated throughout the world.This spread of anti-Sufi Islam in
places like Niger ia,Yemen, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Europe and North Amer ica has
put Sufis on the defensive in the 20th century.This defensive footing and margin-
alization has been one of the most significant dynamics of contemporary Sufism,
affecting its presentation and practice globally.
Contemporary dislocations inspire a search for a singular, authentic, stable Islam,
and Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn ‘abd al-Wahhab’s promotion of just such a var iety of
Islam has a timely appeal. This, combined with the financial resources in the Gulf
needed to promote such a perspective, means that supply and demand correspond,
and hence the spread of a monolithic, Arabic-or iented Islam as the only real or
authentic version. This allows for little in the way of diversity, contradiction, or
ambivalence, and little room for Sufism – whether expressed in Arabic, Persian,
or any other language. Sufism is seen as the quintessential “other” to this pure
Islam, something inevitably local and cultural in manifestation, disconnected from
the textual tradition. Public and private backing, supported by oil wealth, has fur-
ther propelled anti-Sufi sentiments. In their most extreme manifestations, anti-Sufi
sentiments have been expressed in the destruction of Sufi shrines by Islamist jihadi
movements, such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Chapter 4
Just as Sufism was being pushed from the center of Islamic societies to their mar-
gins, it was gaining momentum as a non-Islamic tradition among non-Muslims.
Chapter 4 captures this histor ical engagement with Sufis, especially through
encounters with textual and lived traditions by non-Muslims, many of whom were
Orientalists. Though early histor ical interactions prior to Orientalism were also
highlighted, including those of Llull and travelers to the Ottoman lands, the era of
the most systematic engagement with Sufis was signaled by Jones, whose engage-
ment with Sufism was defined by the textual legacy of Persian poets, such as Hafiz.

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 251
Orientalists’ interest in Sufi poetry (by Jones and Malcolm) captures some of the
dynamics of non-Muslim Europeans’ relation to Sufism. For instance, figures such
as Jones and Clarke found an affinity with the literary and philosophical traditions
of Sufism because of its themes of universalism, love, and unity. At the same time,
travelogues, such as those of Lane, showcased another trend emerging among these
early encounters of Europeans with Sufis, that is, the exoticization of Sufis for
ascetic practices which garnered them labels such as “howling dervishes.”
These early representations of Sufis per meated the broader imaginary of Euro-
pean culture which was then influential in the literary and artistic productions of
the era, especially of the Romantic movement. Exemplary here are the figures of
Hammer-Purgstall and Goethe. Both figures were dynamically inspired by Hafiz’s
poetr y, thus indicating, as was the case with Jones, that the reception of the liter-
ary traditions of Sufism by non-Muslims did not simply transform Sufism in the
West but also transfor med Wester n inter preters of it. Eventually, these same literar y
traditions made their way to Amer ica, further influencing movements such as the
Transcendentalists. Figures like Emerson and Whitman were enamored with the
works of Hafiz. For instance, Emerson placed Hafiz on par with other wr iters such
as Homer and Milton, and praised him as the prince of Persian poets. In Amer ica,
poets such as Hafiz, Khayyam, and Rumi were receiving much positive reception
in literary and spiritual circles to the extent that clubs were for med; the Omar
Khayyam Club even sold chocolates and tobacco, an early example of commercial-
ization of Sufism in the West.The reception of Sufi literary figures by an Amer ican
audience, just like the European and Orientalist examples, illustrates the role of
European and Amer ican audiences in not only the reception of Sufism but also its
redefinition. This conceptualization of Sufism by non-Muslims took place within
a universal framework wherein Sufism was not solely an Islamic tradition but one
that existed beyond the confines of Islam. Framed as a universal tradition beyond
Islam, Sufism provided a ready source of influence for European and American
spiritual and literar y movements. Sufism was not only passively received in the West
but also actively embodied and transfor med by its Western enthusiasts and practi-
tioners. The preeminent example of this active reception and ver nacularization of
Sufism today is the ever-g rowing popular ization of Rumi in the West.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 contextualized this Wester n popular ization of Rumi as part of the
broader trajectory of the histor ical reception of Sufism by non-Muslims.This chap-
ter examined the expansive popularization of Rumi through film, music, architec-
ture, cafes, social media, and much more, and in so doing it cr itiqued the perception
that the commodification of Rumi in the global West has adulterated Sufism’s
pur ity. Instead of this commonly held cr itique of the popular ization of Rumi, this
chapter illustrates how, as was histor ically the case, Sufism was not relegated only
to the private mystical exper ience but per meated public spheres. In the process, it
was also commodified and ver nacularized in diverse cultural milieus. As such, the

252 Gendering Sufism
example of Rumi’s popular ity in the West is representative of the histor ical and
sustained role that Sufi poets (Hafiz, Khayyam, and Sa’di) have played in var ious
contexts, including in the construction of a contemporary plural spiritual land-
scape in Amer ica. Movements like Theosophy and Transcendentalism, in addition
to some of their New Age successors, have all engaged with Sufi poetry as a spiri-
tual resource. Thus, the question of Rumi and of Sufism in the West is not simply
of whether these manifestations are new, but how they reflect a continuity of trans-
lation, transmission, and transfor mation of Sufi texts, philosophies, and traditions.
Still, is that which is being translated and commodified Sufism?
As much of this chapter indicated, the answer to this question is not simple, but
captures a complementary contradiction. On the one hand, the proliferation of a
de-Islamicized and commercialized Rumi in the West is not Sufism, because Sufism
developed in Islamic culture and society, where it grew out of the traditions of the
Qur’an and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad, and it developed as a cr itique
of mater ialism in the formative per iod of Islam. On the other hand, the message
of Sufism and the modes in which it has been transmitted have not been unifor m;
figures like Ibn al-‘Arabi, Hafiz, and Rumi embraced a universal paradigm of reli-
gious pluralism which was rooted in their inter pretation of Islam. It is this language
of universality that has drawn Westerners to Rumi, which has led to the commod-
ification of and devotion to Rumi discussed in this chapter. What Rumi’s popular-
ization in the West captures are competing discourses of authenticity, especially as
they relate to who can authentically claim Rumi (i.e., based on ethnic and religious
identities). What is happening, then, with the expression of Rumi poetry through
contemporary musical for ms like jazz is in many ways a ver nacular ization of Sufism
in the Western context. As the famous early Sufi al-Junayd reputedly said, water
takes on the color of its container; Rumi’s mystical Persian Islamic poetry has thus
been colored by a contemporary Wester n literar y, cultural, and spiritual context. As
such, this can be seen as a continuity of the ways in which Sufism has always his-
tor ically existed in social and economic contexts. From food to architectural spaces,
to poetry, music, and dance, Sufis have entered and used these spheres. These shifts
in inter preting Sufi poets are part of a broader histor ical process, which includes
Hafiz and Khayyam. These patterns of transfor mation raise challenging questions:
has the spirit of classical Sufism been saved or lost in the West? How much is the
West contr ibuting to or detracting from global Sufism and its preservation? What is
your relationship to Sufism when you sit in a Rumi chair, or wear the “Like This”
Rumi perfume, or retweet a Rumi poem?
Chapter 6
In Chapter 6, we explored women’s involvement and leadership in Sufism through
examples of how Sufi women throughout history have actualized the classical prin-
ciples of insan al-kamil (perfected human) and walaya (friendship of God).We began
our discussion by describing each principle, noting aspects of both the absence of
gender from these concepts and gendered qualities expressed by them. We went

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 253
on to provide a brief histor ical over view of Sufi women. This over view observed
that while institutions and literature about Sufism tended to amplify men’s voices,
women actively participated in Sufi culture and practice – albeit, often within the
socially sanctioned roles of their times. We then offered short biographies of Sufi
female saints and ascetics from the for mative per iod, such as Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya,
Fatima of Nishapur, Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya, Hafsa bint Sirin, and Hukayma or
Halima of Damascus; Sufi female teachers, mentors, and poets from the medieval
period, including Shams, “Mother of the Poor,” Nunaah Fatima bint Ibn Muthanna,
Lala ‘Aziza of Seksawa, ‘Aishah al-Ba’uniyah, Zaynab bint al-Rifa‘i, Fatima bint
al-Rifa‘i, and Lady Jahanara; and Sufi women who resisted colonial occupation,
namely Nana Asma’u and Lalla Zaynab bint Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Abi al-Qasim.
We concluded that these women illustrate how Sufi ideas about spiritual egali-
tar ianism have also been lived by women who subverted social constraints about
gender and became foundational in transmitting Sufism through their leadership
and spiritual guidance.
Chapter 7
Chapter 7 followed the historical examples presented in the preceding chapter by
introducing four contemporary women Sufi leaders and practitioners, from two
countries (Turkey and Amer ica) and from different lineages: namely, Nur Artiran,
Cemalnur Sargut, Far iha Friedrich, and Devi Tide. These women represent public
roles that have, in many cases, been histor ically held by men. By reflecting on the
rare personal testimonies that these women shared with us, we examined defini-
tions of Sufism, the relationship between teacher (murshid) and student (murid) ,
and the responsibilities of female leaders in contemporary contexts. These leaders
responded to how women have found leadership opportunities while negotiating
dynamic cultural cur rents and schools of thought.They emphasized the importance
of living Sufi ideals, coming to know deeper or higher levels of one’s spiritual self,
aspiring to realize the oneness of being, and believing that Sufism is the path of
love. Their insights also suggested that amid changing social landscapes, leadership
in Sufi communities remains or iented toward transmitting spiritual blessing (baraka)
and seeking unity that transcends dualities between male and female.
Complementary contradictions and the making
of contemporary Sufism
Dur ing the 1960s and 1970s, there was something of a consensus among social
scientists and scholars of religion that modernization was leading inevitably to sec-
ularization: that as societies globally industrialized and developed rationalized for ms
of gover nment and economy, non-rational for ms of human thought and organi-
zation (religion) would become redundant.4 This estimation of religion’s inevita-
ble decline formed the broader intellectual context within which we see scholars
dur ing this per iod suggest Sufism’s regression as a living tradition of practice.

254 Gendering Sufism
In an era of rapid globalization and moder nization and the resulting per meation
of technology into every sphere of life, mid-20th-century scholars suggested that
a tradition such as Sufism (one developed by mendicants, ascetics, and contempla-
tives, especially of the Sufi brotherhoods) would inevitably disappear.5 Sufis and
their ritual practices were popularly perceived, by anti-Sufis, Orientalists, and social
scientists alike, as backward, rural-based, superstitious, and ultimately antiquated.
And thus, the continued proliferation of Sufism in the contemporary era, wr ites
John O.Voll, “in general is neither expected nor predicted.”
6 Predictions of Sufism’s
imminent demise have proven premature, as Sufi orders, g roups, and infor mal net-
works have shown substantial resilience in moder n, globalized contexts, making
use of earlier organizational structures, such as the brotherhoods or orders, while
effectively engaging in the tools offered by social media and popular culture.
Thus, the question is not to deter mine if Sufism is alive and well. In many ways,
this book has captured how it is thriving throughout literary, economic, and social
spheres. Rather, the question is to deter mine some of the broader tendencies that
are apparent within Sufism on a global scale – tendencies that can be better under-
stood, we suggest, by framing them in ter ms of complementary contradictions. The
concept of complementary contradiction highlights the complexity of competing
discourses of authenticity within Sufism and Islam, and allows us to consider the
var ious discourses of authenticity together without dismissing some of them.
The phrase “complementary contradiction” is an English translation of a ter m
found within the Wird of Ibn al-‘Arabi, a for mula of daily invocations or private
devotional prayers said dur ing the day or evening.7 This phrase is found, in particu-
lar, in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Fr iday evening prayer. Within this prayer, Ibn al-‘Arabi writes,
of God, “You unite the complementary contrar ies, for you are the Majestic, the
Beautiful,” and later wr ites:
I ask of You, by the mystery with which You unite the complementary con-
traries, that You bring together for me all that is disunited of my being, in
such a union that I may contemplate and witness the Oneness ofYour Being.8
In these cases, “complementar y contrar ies” is the English translation of the or ig-
inal Arabic phrase, jama‘ta bayna-l mutaqabilati. In Arabic, this phrase literally means
the union, gather ing, or joining between things facing each other in opposition,
hence opposed or opposite from one another, and yet facing each other as in con-
versation or dialogue – indeed der ivatives of qa-ba-la, the tr ilateral root of the last
word, can mean conversation or meeting. Hence, the opposites or contrar ies are
complementary in that they are facing one another and in dialogue with one another,
and have in their natures the possibility (or ultimate necessity) of being united or
joined. For Ibn al-‘Arabi, this notion of complementary contradiction is a defining
feature of God and reality (and for him there is no ultimate difference between
the two). God unites opposites: God is the beautiful (jamal) and the majestic (jalal) ,
God is the one (wahid) and the many (kathira), God is the hidden (batin) and the
apparent (zahir), God is both changeless essence and ever dynamic, changing for m.

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 255
And, as the reality of the human self and the cosmos are expressions of God, they
too express complementar y contradictions.
This concept, rooted in Sufi metaphysical conceptions of God, can be used as an
historical and theoretical tool to help capture the plethora of opposing discourses
on authenticity that undergird contemporar y Sufism, in that where moments of
dissonance (contradictions) are readily apparent, what is unfolding simultaneously
is also coherence (a complement). Further more, the contradiction and the comple-
ment sustain each other. In other words, where scholars of Sufism have often seen
a contradiction between how Sufism is lived in “classical” or “traditional” times and
places and how it is lived today, we suggest in this book that such contradictions
are often more complementary than is acknowledged: surface contradictions often
reveal deeper patterns of continuity when examined more closely.Thus, difference,
newness, and change, alongside continuity and patterns of connection, need to be
emphasized for a r icher, more accurate picture of the phenomenon to emerge.
Contradictions, though seated opposite to one another and hence in some sense
opposing, are also facing one another in dialogue and conversation.
A helpful illustration of these sorts of contradictions and their relationship to
change and continuity is the phenomenon of anti-Sufism within contemporary
Islamic thought. In many respects, the opposition to Sufism, its theological cr i-
tique, histor ical erasure, and in some cases active repression, is unprecedented.There
is truly a confluence of histor ical circumstances in the contemporary world that
foster both (a) a desire for a streamlined Islam easily mastered by nonspecialists,
offer ing a “pure,” “authentic” de-ver nacular ized Islamic identity; and (b) the fund-
ing and political impetus from Wahhabi institutions, private elites, and clergies, to
promote an anti-Sufi understanding of Islam. Salafism is in a sense a movement
opposing the many ver nacular izations of Islam – opposing, that is, the spatial, cul-
tural, and temporal translations of Islam – even as it aspires to shore up a strong
sense of corporate Muslim identity in the midst of rapid social, technological, and
political change. Both the desire for such an Islam and the well-funded efforts to
propagate it have marginalized Sufism to a degree previously unfathomable. How-
ever, although there is a noted contradiction here between contemporary Sufism
and its classical predecessor, which tended to enjoy a centrality in Islamic thought
and practice, there is also great continuity: anti-Sufism, as we have shown, is a par-
adigm within the Islamic inter pretive tradition that goes back to the formative era,
with Hanbali opposition to esoter ic her meneutics and innovative spiritual practice,
and taking further shape with Ibn Taymiyya’s attempt to forge a hyper-coherent
post-Mongol-invasion Islam.
Another example of a complementary contradiction is found in the debate
among Sufis and scholars of contemporary Sufism over “universal” and “Islamic”
Sufism. Within the classical Sufi tradition, we find a universal paradigm espoused by
Sufi figures like Rumi and Ibn al-‘Arabi, a universalism that is expressed in Islamic
ter minology. Although this Islamic expression of Sufism has been contrasted with
contemporary universalistic expressions, in light of the concept of complementary
contradiction, we can see that it is not so much a competition between universal

256 Gendering Sufism
and particular forms of Sufism, but alter native conceptions or framing of Sufi uni-
versalisms. The essential understanding of divine truth as a for mless essence that
includes and transcends a var iety of for ms of expression is a universalism shared by
both Wester n Sufis and more classically trained Muslim Sufis; however, the for m in
which this shared universalism is expressed is different: Sufi universalism is either
ver nacular ized in ter ms of Western esoter ic traditions, renaissance perennialism,
and romanticism, or expressed in ter ms of the Qur’an and Islamic philosophy. Even
in the way in which Sufism is perceived as a universal tradition, there is some
contradiction. From Traditionalist schools to Sufi movements in Amer ica, there is
a dissonance in how the universalism of Sufism may be embodied.Yet, it is in this
universalism, regardless of the way in which it particular izes, that we find a point of
continuity between var ious expressions of Sufism: the complementar y aspect of the
contradictory ways that Sufi universalism takes shape.
For instance, in the study of Wester n Sufis, a number of scholars have highlighted
a contradiction with Rumi’s thought as embodied in his or iginal Persian poetry.
Pointing out that this original poetr y is infused with references to Islamic sources,
folk cultures, and intellectual traditions, these scholars note that Barks’s contempo-
rary Wester n renditions of the poetry tend to remove references that would be lost
on most non-Muslim readers, simultaneously making Rumi’s poetr y more acces-
sible and less Islamic. There is indeed a contradiction here, as scholars r ightly point
out, yet in this work we also highlight how this contradiction may be more com-
plementary than is usually acknowledged: Barks’s English renditions of Sufi poetr y
arise out of Barks’s personal engagement with Sufi masters and practice, and he
himself is aware of the politics of translation and its limitations. At the same time,
his works have been recognized in countr ies such as Iran, where he was awarded an
honorar y doctorate at the University of Tehran in 2006.
Another case is seen with the socio-structural changes brought about by moder-
nity and the r ise of feminist movements around the world, which have opened new
avenues for female leadership in society more broadly, and within religious organi-
zations in particular. Sufism is no exception, and women have assumed some lead-
ership roles in the contemporary era that were rarely held by them in premodern
contexts. However, there is a growing body of scholarship recovering the history of
female Sufi figures and their impact on the formation and per petuation of the Sufi
tradition dur ing the formative and medieval per iods. As we explored in Chapter 6,
classical metaphysics offered a number of gendered possibilities, with the perfected
human (insan al-kamil) generally conceived of as genderless in essence, something
fully available to both women and men, while the feminine was at times valor ized
as the ideal state for humanity and the spiritual aspirant.Thus, contemporary Sufism
exhibits both (a) an opening of possibilities of practice for women with the rise of
female Sufi leaders, in contrast with some of the gendered limitations around the
roles of women in the premoder n per iod; and (b) a per petuation of the place of
women as formulators and teachers of spiritual transformation. The sense of the
contemporary as liberating is consequently partially cor rect and partially incor rect:
the contemporary has offered opportunity, though it is not as though there is no

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 257
continuity between female Sufi leadership in premodern and moder n contexts –
just as much has changed, much remains the same in this respect. At the same time,
conceptions of freedom in moder n times (e.g., sexual or gender) do not necessar-
ily equate with the same for ms of freedoms in premodern times. Consequently,
questioning Rabi‘a or Noor’s liberation within the framework of contemporary
forms of gender r ights, without the consideration of their full spiritual, social, and
cultural understandings of themselves, results in the marginalization of Sufi women
according to our limited disciplinar y lenses.
In terms of the female Sufi leaders interviewed, none of them reinforced easy
dichotomies between “traditional” or “classical,” and “modern,” “contemporary,”
or “progressive.” The sense of a conflict between the two was largely absent,
as each female Sufi leader offered a sort of synthesis of traditional teachings
with contemporary sensibilities, in their own way. Accordingly, there is indeed a
way in which contemporary female Sufi leaders have perspectives that stand in
contrast to earlier understandings, and yet in many cases there is not a sense of
conflict with tradition but rather its continuing, organic transmission. Sufi female
leaders share a sense of being stewards of tradition, honoring, being shaped by,
and transmitting the past, while adapting it to suit the sensibilities and needs of
the present.
Reflections on possible trajectories for future scholarship
This study is not intended to be exhaustive in its analysis of contemporary Sufism,
but to begin an engagement with contemporary Sufism, particularly to point to its
broader historical parameters and its influence in the present time. As such, as all
projects go, there are limitations that we hope future scholarship can remedy. First
and foremost, we are offer ing a view of contemporary Sufism from a particular
vantage point that has been defined by the available English-language literature and
by a North American context.We acknowledge that contemporar y Sufism goes far
beyond the English-speaking scholarship and teachings, especially consider ing the
range of European, Middle Easter n, South Asian, and Southeast Asian (to name a
few) traditions of scholarship in a multitude of languages.Thus, this study highlights
trends within contemporary Sufism through the lens of Wester n scholarship on the
subject, though there are of course a number of other lenses through which the
subject can be (and should be) accessed and understood.
What is more, the sections in this study offer broad over views that capture wider
historical shifts but are limited in illustrating the particular contexts in which these
processes unfold. For instance, although some discussion of how anti-Sufi move-
ments are taking shape in differing locales is offered, more in-depth case studies on
local manifestations of anti-Sufism can considerably flesh out our understanding
of this dynamic. Future scholarship grounded in ethnographic studies can help
highlight the var ying nuances of contemporary Sufism “on the ground” and their
relationship to the broader processes as descr ibed in our study. Close studies of
particular Sufi groups can help illustrate precisely how processes like anti-Sufism,

258 Gendering Sufism
commercialization, or changing gender dynamics influence the trajectory of Sufi
thought and practice in particular contexts.
Related to this is the role of sectarian interpretations in shaping Sufi practice.
Although we did not explore Sunni–Shi‘a dynamics and how they relate to shaping
contemporary Sufi practice, there is r ich ground for further scholarship to explore
this issue. For instance, the growing Ismaili community in North Amer ica, espe-
cially in Canada, is exemplary here. Institutions such as the Aga Khan Museum in
Toronto, Canada, and the Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, Canada, have become
foremost public intellectual forums in hosting various artistic and cultural concerts,
shows, and movies that have highlighted connections with Sufism and Shi’ism,
especially Rumi. Ismaili institutional promotion of Sufism is one example that can
showcase how contemporary Sufism is manifesting through identity for mation and
transnational activism within a Shi‘a community.
Additionally, though we considered a number of examples of Orientalists
and translators, especially non-Muslim Europeans, more histor ical examples of
cross-cultural encounters and transmissions need to be assessed for the complexity
of these encounters to be thoroughly examined. While we closely considered the
nature of Rumi’s popularity in the West, further study of the lived reality of Rumi
cafes and restaurants, and the ways in which the participants who engage in these
activities relate to Rumi and Sufism is possible. Researchers can ask, for example:
How is Rumi viewed and engaged with in everyday life by his enthusiasts? What
is their relationship to Sufism when they perfor m Rumi yoga or share a Rumi
meme? For instance, a discourse analysis of how Rumi manifests in self-help litera-
ture or online is possible. How has Sufism (and Rumi) been domesticated to make
it comfortable or accessible in North America when otherwise it may be dismissed
or feared due to stereotypes of and realities in the Middle East?
Though we have pointed to some female voices in the final section of this analy-
sis, these voices are not comprehensive, but rather illustrative. More women’s voices
need to be captured to fully represent the nature of women’s roles and authority
within contemporary Sufi communities, such as those in non-official capacities, as
women have histor ically held significant influence through these positions. Focus-
ing on alter native sources for scholarship beyond the textual can help unearth
previously marginalized presences and influences among women practitioners of
Sufism. In particular, we recommend expanding the study of female Sufi voices
beyond North Amer ica and Turkey, to highlight diverse dynamics at play in the
var ied contexts within which Sufism is practiced.
Another reality brought to the foreground in this book is the transnational and
global nature of contemporary Sufism. Sufism, and more generally Islam, has been
transmitted to the West. The varying manifestations of Sufism in Wester n contexts
signal how the transnational and global nature of religiosity implicates identity
for mation, the nature of women’s author ity, and the perfor mance of ritual, piety,
and spaces, as these are no longer defined by national (terr itor ial) borders but
rather transcend them. Sufi philosophies and texts are not only transmitted through
human contact but also tweeted via online spaces, and thus age-old binar ies of rural

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 259
versus urban or local versus global approaches to Sufism need to be problematized,
as transmission and transformation of Sufism are not unfolding within linear trajec-
tor ies but through multiple waves simultaneously.
Finally, more scholarship needs to account for and explore the transnational
nature of Sufi orders that encompasses both local distinctions and similar ities.
Undertaking such comparative case studies may be a productive exercise that will
reveal how certain regional for ms of Sufism, such as South Asian Sufism or Turkish
Sufism, influence American and European forms of Sufism, especially during an
era of mass mig ration and diverse displacement. The field of contemporary Sufism
would benefit from more scholarship on refugee exper iences of Sufism in Wester n
countries. For instance, how will Sufism be affected by the movement of refugees
into European and North Amer ican societies? There also needs to be a ser ious
treatment of Sufism as it is already unfolding in Amer ica and Europe. Amer ican and
European Sufism cannot be treated passively but must be seen as actively contr ibut-
ing to the making of contemporar y Sufism in the global context.
Concluding thoughts
Rumi once wrote about a popular Sufi tale of two inter national teams of artists
vying for the title of the best artists in all the land.The story begins with the sultan
summoning them to his palace, and offer ing them both walls on which to display
their artistic mastery.The first team sets to work, getting a hundred different colors
of paint from the king, while the second team insists they need nothing but polish-
ing tools to burnish their wall. Both teams work on their masterpieces, and on the
day of revelation, the sultan inspects the first team’s wall and is profoundly moved
by the kaleidoscope of colors, the likes of which the sultan has never seen before.
When it is their time, the second team reveals their wall, and it is simply a mir ror
reflecting the work of the first team’s myriads of colors. The sultan is even more
awed at what he sees. Sufis have suggested that this story illustrates some of the most
important metaphysical principles underlying Sufi understandings of reality. The
one hundred colors given by the sultan can be seen to represent the endless and
perpetual multiplicity of existence, the r ich var iety of manifestation that character-
izes our world.The mir ror can represent the heart polished by the remembrance of
God, a pure reflective surface that, without distortion, reflects the multiplicity and
beauty of each for m in existence. As the king, however, finds the reflected image
super ior to the first, Sufis have proposed that the polished heart not only accurately
reflects the beauty of multiplicity, but transcends it, seeing the unitary source of
beauty of which the multiplicity is a dynamic manifestation.
A number of themes emerge from this popular fable, which can be used to
understand the complementary contradictions of contemporary Sufism. The colors
and hues of the painting captured in the tale above, and the light which illuminates
and reflects onto the burnished mir ror, capture the plurality and unicity of con-
temporary Sufism and its many traditions of piety, politics, and popular culture.The
plethora of manifestations of Sufism, whether global or local, offer var ied hues of

260 Gendering Sufism
Sufi traditions that have been reflected and refracted over time and space. As seen
in different Sufi understandings of reality, this many-ness does not precede or unpin
the reality of oneness. Rather, there is an ongoing dynamic of “complementar y
dimensions of a single reality.”
9 The unity of being is intertwined with the perpet-
ual fluctuation and transmutation of an absolute time.This property of time as per-
petual transformation is known as taqallub.10 Thus, the burnishing of the wall, like
the polishing of the heart, mir rors the endless Self-disclosures of God that can never
be experienced in the same for m twice – creating an inevitable unpredictability.11
Unpredictability has long been a character istic and even a valued virtue among
Sufis and the larger tradition of Sufism itself.We can think of the teaching tales of
Rabi‘a, where she sur prisingly upstages a renowned ascetic and scholar, or tr ies to
bur n down paradise and put out the fires of hell to secure the worship of God for
her own sake. Or we can recall al-Hallaj, whose travels, political engagements, and
public statements were so unpredictable as to be considered dangerously shocking,
war ranting his execution in the minds of political and religious author ities threat-
ened by what he might say or do next. Sufism itself is something that, in small and
often marginalized teaching circles of 10th-century Khorasan or Baghdad, would
not have seemed much of a contender to define the Islamic tradition for almost a
millennium thereafter. And yet the medieval per iod witnessed just this prominence,
the effects of which reverberate to the present day. The second painting team’s
method of bur nishing their canvas into a mir ror also captures the unpredictabil-
ity that has character ized Sufism. According to Ibn al-‘Arabi, God Himself is by
definition totally unpredictable, as God’s Self-disclosures in the cosmos are never
repeated, always being totally new – or contemporary. If the essence of reality is by
definition beyond the human mind’s capacity to predict, then the forms that spring
from this source will be multiple and dynamic. Sufism too can be thought of in
this way, histor ically, as a tradition with an essence that is by definition unpredict-
able. Change and diversity appear inherent to the tradition itself, and need not be
conceptualized as deviations from a stable, unchanging essence. Rather, the essence
by nature is engaged in a perpetual pattern of dynamic disclosure. Put otherwise,
humans are constantly acting as the nexus where principles are synthesized with
circumstances, leading to ever new syntheses that express the same principles in
potentially unlimited for ms.
If Sufism, like the cosmos, can be character ized by unpredictability, then past is
precedent: just as Sufism has sur prised observers and scholars histor ically, its future
manifestations cannot be easily anticipated, and scholars are arguably best situated
to address Sufism if receptive to the ways that this living tradition sur prises with its
dynamism and variety, without thereby failing to perceive the threads of connec-
tion and continuity that remain. Contemporary Sufism is a living tradition, con-
stantly ver nacularized by its inter preters in ways that reflect the living dynamism of
human reality more broadly. As our shared reality is always escaping categor ization,
academic frames, no matter how sophisticated, will always fall short of capturing the
living dynamism of our world, both exter nal and inter nal. Scholars of Sufism, like
scholars of any field, can best respond to this condition by humbly acknowledging

Conclusion: Discourses of authenticity 261
the inherent limitations of any analytical framework, pointing to rather than defin-
ing, suggesting rather than dictating, the meaning of a phenomenon that escapes a
final word.
Notes
1 This, in some sense, goes back to the great debate between the “ancients and the mod-
erns” during the Renaissance, when the question of whether the ancients knew better
was more pressing than it would be in the Enlightenment period, when the moderns
appeared to have won the debate. Today, however, a revival of the religious, indigenous,
and ancient in the face of modern ecological and social fallout may lead to revisiting this
debate in a more global way.
2 Known as the “Covenant of Alastu” from the Qur’an, this time refers to the moment
when God asks his creation (Adam) “Am I not [alastu] your Lord?” To which (he)
replies “Yes!”
3 Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (London:
Reakton Books, 2004), 107.
4 See for example, Peter Berger’s discussion of secularization in The Sacred Canopy: Ele-
ments of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967).
5 John Voll, “Contemporary Sufism and Current Social Theory,” in Sufism and the “Mod-
ern” in Islam, eds. Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (London; New York: I.B.
Tauris, 2007), 282 [281–298].
6 Ibid.
7 Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, Awrad al-Usbu (Wird, The Seven Days of the Heart), trans. Pablo
Beneito and Stephen Hirtenstein (Oxford: Anqa Publishers, 2000), 115.
8 Ibid., 115.
9 William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity
(New York: State of University New York Press, 1994), 15.
10 The word taqallub is an intransitive verbal noun derived from the root qalaba, which is
also connected to the qalb (“heart”).
11 Self-disclosure comes from tajalli, “ Tajalli is the process by which the Absolute, which is
absolutely unknowable in itself, goes on manifesting itself in ever more concrete forms”
(see Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
[Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983], 152).
Bibliography
Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York:
Anchor Books, 1967.
Chittick, William C. Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. New
York: State of University New York Press, 1994.
Izutsu, Toshihiko. Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts. Berke-
ley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.
Schimmel, Annemarie. The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture. London:
Reakton Books, 2004.
Voll, John. “Contemporary Sufism and Current Social Theory.” In Sufism and the “Modern”
in Islam, edited by Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell, 281–298. London; New
York: I.B.Tauris, 2007.

INDEX
‘Abbasid 42, 192
‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’ir i xv
‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani 200
‘Abd al-Rahman Jami 193
‘Abd al-Wahid Yahya 11, 12; see also
Guénon, René
‘Abduh, Muhammad 50–2, 249
Abdul Rauf , Feisal 20, 87–9
Abi Bakr, Rabi‘a bint 200
Abou El Fadl, Khaled 46–7
Abrahamic Reunion 234
Abu al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzi 192
Abu Hanifa 40, 67–8
Abu Hashim 116
Abu Hurayra 39
Acar, Ismail 153
adab 216
Afghanistan 79, 89
Aga Khan Museum 258
Aguéli, Ivan 12; see also Shaykh ‘Abd al-
Hadi Aqili
Ahl-i Hadith xviii
‘Aishah al-Ba‘uniyah 199–200
al-‘Adawiyya, Rabi‘a 106, 130, 192–5, 200,
253
al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din 50–2, 115
al-Albani, Nasir al-Din 80
al-Azhar University 51
al-Banna, Hasan 75–6
al-Basri, Hasan 37, 195, 197
al-Ba’uniyah, ‘Aishah 253
al-Bistami, Abu Yazid 194
al-Bushanji, Abu al-Hasan 37
al-Farabi 106
Al-Faruqi, Ismail 77–8
Alger, William Rounseville 129
Algeria 49, 51, 63
al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid 39–41, 47, 106, 149,
203
Algiers 10
al-Hajj Muhammad, Muhammad b. 206
al-Hallaj, Mansur 10–11, 14, 260
al-Hujwir i 192
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi 86
Alighieri, Dante 104
‘Ali ibn Abi Talib 38
‘Ali Ufki 107; see also Leopolitanus, Albertus
Bobovius; see also Bobowski,Wojciech
al-Jer rahi, Pir Nureddin 215
al-Jilani, ‘Abd al-Qadir 39–40
al-Jurjani, ‘Ali ibn Muhammad 199
al-Kabir, Shaykh ‘Ilaysh 12
al-Khuldi, Ja‘far 222
al-Kindi 106
Allah, Shah Wali 45
al-Makki, Abu Talib 206
al-Qaeda 35, 72, 80–1, 88
al-Qunawi, Sadr al-Din 43
al-Qushayri 192, 199, 216
al-Rifa‘i, Ahmad 200
al-Rifa‘i, Fatima bint 200, 253
al-Rifa‘i, Zaynab bint 200, 253
al-Risala 192
al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya 64
al-Sa’ud, ‘Abd al-Aziz 52
al-Shadhili, Abu al-Hasan 40

Index 263
al-Shahid, Shah Isma’il 68
al-Subki, Mahmud Khattab 73
al-Suhrawardi, Abu al-Najib 40, 120
al-Sulami, Abu Abd al-Rahman 192, 194,
199, 205, 216
al-Tir midhi, Hakim 39
al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab 81
America 140–8, 151–3, 156–8, 160, 164,
169, 220, 223–4, 233, 236
Aminrazavi, Mehdi 7
Andalusia 40, 43
Angha, Nahid 20
anti-Sufism xviii, xxi, 40, 45, 50, 52, 68, 73,
75, 78, 81–2, 248–50, 255, 257
Aqili, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Hadi 12; see also
Aguéli, Ivan
Arabia 111, 118, 121–2, 125
Arabian Nights 112, 120
Arabic xiv, xix, xxi
Arberry, Arthur J. 9–11, 14, 20, 143–4,
149
architecture 165
Armstrong, Karen 147
Artiran, Nur 214, 216–17, 253
Aryan 111
Asad, Talal 63
asbab al-nuzul 65
ascetic 37–8, 191–2, 253–4; see also
zuhhad
Asiatic Society of Bengal 111, 115
Ataturk, Kemal xiii, xiv
Attar, Farid al-Din 120, 192–3
Aurangzeb Alamgir 201
avhal 216
awliya’ 185, 189, 190
awqaf 49, 63
‘Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani 222
Ayverdi, Samiha 215, 237
‘Aziza, Lalla 198–9, 202
Bacon, Joséphine 157
Baghdad xvi, 10, 37, 39, 42, 48, 192, 196
Bal, Rabisandkar 146
Banafsheh 151, 156
baqa‘ 187, 200
baraka 45, 190, 214, 222
Barks, Coleman 140, 144–7, 149, 151–4,
157–61, 163, 166, 247, 256
Basra 194
batin 46, 66, 254
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Muhammad Raheem
19, 21, 145, 152
Bawer, Bruce 86
Bayru, Esin Celebi 155
Bazian, Hatem 83
Bektashi 63
Bellamy, Carla 21
Belon, Pierre 5
Berrada, Anouar 157
Beyazid Bestami 216, 229
Beyoncé 141
bida‘a 39, 43, 51; see also innovations
Bigelow, Anna 21
Bilkan, Ali Furat 148
Bin Bayyah, Abdullah 84–5, 89
Blake, William 120–1
Bly, Robert 143
Bobowski,Wojciech 107; see also Leopol-
itanus, Albertus Bobovius; see also ‘Ali
Ufki
Boko Haram 78
Brahmo Samaj 51
British 3, 6–10, 19
British East India Company 7
Brown, John P. 118–19, 127
Brown, Jonathan A. C. 68, 75
Brown, Sarida 234
Buddha 148, 150, 152
Buddhism 38, 51, 101, 103, 129
Bukhara 42
Bullah Shah 159
Bunt, Gary 79
Burhaniyya 21
Burke, Edmund 7
Burke, Raqib Brian 156
Burkhardt, Titus 13
Burton, Sir Richard 111
Buturovic, Amila 191
Byron, George Gordon 120–1
Café Rumi 164
Cairo 37, 48
CalEarth 165; see also California Institute
for Earth Architecture
California Institute for Earth Architecture
165; see also CalEarth
caliph 52
Can, Şefik 214, 217, 226, 229
Cannon, Garland 112
Cantwell Smith, Wilfred 16
Caucasus 49
Cavanagh, Karen 155
Chishti xx, 13, 75, 79, 201, 215
Chittick, William C. 13, 18, 147
Chopra, Deepak 1, 151–2, 158, 160
Christian xv, xvii, 102
Clancy-Smith, Julia A. 205–7
Clark, Moe 157

264 Index
Clarke, Lieutenant Colonel H. Wilberforce
115–16, 251
classical period xvi
Clinton, Jerome W. 145
Coler idge, Samuel Taylor 120–1, 126
colonialism xix, 2, 4–8, 22, 202, 247
Combs-Schilling, Elaine 199
comics 148–9
Concordians 126
Confucius 112
Constantinople 108, 118; see also Istanbul
contradictions 245, 253–5, 259
Corbett, Rosemary R. 87
Corbin, Henry 14–15, 18
Cordoba House 88
Cornell, Rkia 17, 194
Cornell,Vincent 17
Crochard, Captain 205–6
Crusades 102
culinary 163
Dabistan 8
Dabistan-i madhahib 113
Dalrymple, William 140
Damascus 37, 192, 194–5
dance xiv, xv
Danner,Victor 18
Dara Shikoh 201
dargahs 155
Dede, Mercan 156, 160
de Ferriol, Charles 108
Della Valle, Pietro 108
Demi 148–9; see also Hunt, Charlotte
de Nicolay, Nicolas 5
Deobandi xviii, 79
dervish 107–9, 116–19, 122, 125, 130–1,
251
dhikr 105, 108, 118–19, 131, 192, 194,
199–201, 220, 237
Diabo, Barbara 157
DiCapr io, Leonardo 161–2
Divan xix, 112, 115–16, 123, 125–6, 158
Divine Love 220–3, 225, 229, 231
Dowland, Nargis Jessie 234
Downey, Robert Jr. 141, 161
Dozy, Reinhart 9
Dyer, Daniel 214
East India Company 102, 110, 113
Eberhardt, Isabelle 206
Egeling, Mevrouw N. 232; see also Mai,
Murshida Fazal
Egypt 1, 3, 8, 9–10, 20, 21, 64, 73–4, 76
Eliade, Mircea 15, 17
Eliot, T. S. 129
Elmarsafy, Ziad 124
Eltantawi, Sarah 78
El-Zein, Amira 142, 144
Emerson, Ralph Waldo xix, 103, 106, 111,
126–9, 131
Eranos 15
Ernst, Carl W. 1, 4, 16, 17, 106, 117, 142
Esack, Farid 85
esoteric 247, 249, 255–6
esotericism 11–12, 14–15
Etat Libre d’Orange 160
Europe xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, xix
European 2–7, 9, 16, 22
Evanson, Tanya 156–7
exotericism 11
Eye-Hey Nakoda 157
fana‘ 187, 200
faqira 201
Fatima of Nishapur 194, 200, 253
fatwa 80
female ascetics 192
female authority 248
female leaders 215–16, 222, 237–8
female teachers 196–7
feminine 224–5, 230, 236–7
Ficino, Marsilio 106
fiqh 140, 191
fitra 187
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 129
Flaubert, Gustave 3
Florence 4
Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter 21
formative per iod 192, 196–7
Forum for Peace in Muslim Societies 84
Foucault, Michel 3
Franklin, Benjamin 7, 111
Franzoni, David 161
French 3–6, 10–11, 14, 17, 20
French Revolution 119
Friedlander, Shems 154
Friedrich, Fariha 87, 214, 220–6, 229–31,
237, 253
Furlanetto, Elena 144, 147
Geaves, Robert 21
Geertz, Clifford 20
Geller, Pamela 88
Gellner, Er nest 20
gender xvii, xx, xxi
Genghis Khan 42
Gentius, Georgius 109
George of Hungary 4, 107, 131

Index 265
Geuffroy, Antoine 5
ghazals 112, 123
Gibbon, Edward 7
Gibran, Khalil 143
globalization 247, 254
gnostic 11
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von xix, 6, 15,
102–3, 106, 122–31, 251
Golden Sufi Center 20, 141
Goldziher, Ignaz 9
Gouchi, Laila 157
Graham, Lieutenant James William 8, 10,
113
Grateful Dead xiv
Green, Michael 152–3, 157–8
Green, Nile 21, 206
Grewal, Zareena 83
Ground Zero Mosque 88
Grunebaum, Gustave von 16
Guénon, René 11–14, 17, 22, 206, 249; see
also ‘Abd al-Wahid Yahya
Gumi, Abubakar 78
Hadith 2, 41–2, 46, 48, 65–8, 70–1, 79–80,
189, 203
hadrat 105
Hafiz, Shamsuddin xiii, xv, xix, 102–3,
112–16, 120–9, 131–2, 141, 143, 146,
159, 167, 169, 247, 250–2
Hafsa bint Sir in 194–5, 253
Hajji Imdadullah Muhajir 79
Halveti-Jer rahi Tariqah 214
Hamadani, Sayyid ‘Ali 202
Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph von 6, 122–3,
126, 128–9, 251
haqiqi 41, 65
Haqq 219
Haramayn 48
Harvey, Andrew 149–52, 156, 163
Hasan, Noorhaid 79
Hastings, War ren 49
Hausa 78
Hawn, Goldie 158
Heinkstein, Caroline 122
Helminski, Camille Adams 19, 156, 214,
236
Helminski, Kabir 1, 19, 147, 156, 214, 236
Hermansen, Marcia 16, 18, 21
her meneutics 65–6, 68, 70
Hermeticism 106, 120
Hesiod 158
hijab 86
hijra 81
Hinduism xiv, xvii, 12, 101–2, 120, 129
Hixon, Lex 214, 223–5
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 6
Hoffman,Valerie 21
Hollywood 158–62
Homer 158, 251
Housden, Roger 146
Hukayma or Halima of Damascus 194–5,
253
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 111
Hunt, Charlotte 148; see also Demi
Huntington, Samuel 86
Hussain, Zakir 158
Iberian Peninsula 103–4
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, xviii, 39, 45–8, 50,
52–3, 249–50
Ibn al-‘Arabi 12, 15, 17–18, 20, 39, 43–5,
48, 51, 105–6, 150, 153, 169, 188–90,
193, 197–8, 203, 216, 220, 225, 229–30,
248–9, 252, 254–5, 260
Ibn al-Farid 247
Ibn al-Mubarak 71
Ibn al-Qadi, Sayyida Amina bint Ahmad
202
Ibn al-Uthaymeen, Muhammad 80
Ibn Baz, Shaykh Abdullah 80
Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad xviii, 39, 50, 249
ibn Musa, Abraham 107
Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi,Yahya 199
Ibn Sina 106, 149
Ibn Taymiyya 39–47, 50, 52–3, 247, 249–50,
255
Ibn Tufayl 120
ikhlas 199
Ikhwan al-Muslimeen 64, 73, 75–6; see also
Muslim Brotherhood
Ikhwan al-Safa 106
‘ilm 39, 66
‘ilm al-batin 197
‘ilm al-laduni 186
Imam 187
Inayat Khan, Hazrat I, 1, 11, 13–14, 19, 215,
218, 226–7, 232–3
Inayat Khan, Noor 19, 233–4
Inayat Khan, Pir Vilayat 19, 226
Inayat Khan, Zia 17, 19
India 7–13, 102, 115, 118
Indonesia 36
innovations 39, 42–3, 51; see also bida‘a
insan al-kamil 45, 127, 185–7, 194, 207–8,
252, 256
insan-y -kamil 216
Iraq 35, 37
ISIS xiv

266 Index
Islamic Circle of North Amer ica
(ICNA) 76
Islamic revolution 64
Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA) 77, 82
Islamic University of Medina 62, 78
Islamophobia 142, 156
Istanbul 214–15, 236; see also Constantinople
Izutsu, Toshihiko 18
Ja‘far al-Sadiq 187
Jahanara 201, 253
jalal 188–9, 254
Jama‘at-i -Islami 64, 75, 79, 81
jamal 188–9, 254
Janissaries 63
Janmohamed, Sheniz 160
Jay-Z 141
Jerrahi xx
jihad 72, 81, 86–7
jihadi xviii, 250
Joinville, Jean de 106
Jones, Sir William 3, 6–8, 10, 49, 106,
110–13, 115–16, 119–21, 129, 131,
250–1
Junayd al-Baghdadi 216, 229, 252
Jung, Carl 15
Kabbalah 103, 106, 120
Kabbani, Hisham xix
Kafayat 231
kalam 105, 188, 191
Kalin, Ibrahim 13
kamil 188
Karan, Donna 141
Karbala 47
kashf 41
Kashf al-mahjub 192
kathira 254
Keats, John 120–1
Khalil, Atif 9
Khalili, Nader 165
Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali 159
khanqah 191
Khayyam, Omar xv, xix, 120, 141, 145, 157,
161, 167, 251–2
khilafah 190
Khorasan xvi, 38–9, 194
Khusrow, Amir 159
King Francois I 108
King, Peter 88
Konya 155, 166
kufr 81
Kugle, Scott 17, 202
Lalla Zaynab bint Shaykh Muhammad ibn
Abi al-Qasim 203, 205, 253
Lane, Edward William 116–19, 131, 251
Laude, Patrick 11, 14
Lawrence, Bruce 16–17
legal methodology 196
Leopolitanus, Albertus Bobovius 107; see
also Bobowski, Wojciech; see also ‘Ali
Ufki
Less, Anna 234
Lessing, Doris 19
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 109
Lewis, Bernard 3
Lewis, Franklin D. 142, 144
LGBTQ 162–3, 168
liberal reformists 72, 85
Lillydahl, Sandra Yasodara 235
Linden, Saphira 235
Lings, Martin 13
literalist 68, 71–2, 76–7, 79–80, 82–5, 87
literature 143, 146–7, 153
Lloyd, Charles 158–9
Llull, Ramon 4, 22, 103–7, 130–1, 250
Loras, Suleyman 154, 185
Luhr mann, Baz 162
Luther, Martin 107
madhhab 83
Madonna 158
madrasa 71, 79–80, 197
Mafi, Maryam 1
mahabba 199
Mahal, Mumtaz 201
Mahavira 148
Mai, Murshida Fazal 232; see also Egeling,
Mevrouw N.
Maimonides 107
majdhub 202
Malaysia 63, 87
Malcolm, Sir John 8, 10, 110, 113–16, 118,
129, 131, 251
male biographers 192
Mali 89
Malkin, Michelle 87
Mangold, Zarifa 235
mard 193
ma‘rifa 66
Martin, Chris 158–9
Marx, Karl 76
Maryamiyya 17–18, 85
Masjid al-Farah 220
Masnavi 161–2, 215
Masonic 11
Massignon, Louis 4, 10–11, 14–15, 249

Index 267
Mathnawi 128–9
Maududi, Abul Ala 75–6, 79, 81
Maufroy, Muriel 146
mawlid 119
Mayer, Annemarie C. 105
Mecca 73, 75, 79
medieval 40, 46–7, 50, 52, 103–4, 107,
196–7, 200–1
Medina 46–8, 67, 73, 78–9
Melville 158
mendicants 254
Merton,Thomas 19
metaphysics 66, 194, 196
Mevlevi xx, 19, 108–9, 117, 154, 168,
185
Middle East xiii, xvi, xviii, 2–3, 6, 10, 16,
63–4, 74–5, 77–8, 82
Milton 251
Mi’raj 104
Mirandola, Giovannia Pico della 103, 106
misbah 187
Mohammad, Afsar 21
Mongols 42
Moore, Demi 158
Moosa, Ebrahim 44
Morocco 36
mujaddid 64, 75, 79
Murad, Abd al-Hakim 82
Murata, Sachiko 13, 18, 147
murid xx, 214, 224, 253
murshid xx, 214, 224, 232, 253
music 141–2, 146, 148, 150, 152, 154,
157–60, 163–5, 168–9
Muslim Brotherhood 64, 73, 75–7, 81; see
also Ikhwan al-Muslimeen
Muslim Students Association (MSA) 77
Muslim World League 74, 76, 78, 81; see also
Rabitat al-‘Alam al-Islam
mystical theology 5
nafs 219, 221
najd 46–7
Nana Asma’u 203, 253
Napoleon 3
Naqshbandi 164, 222
Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya 20
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein xix, 13, 18, 84
neo-Orientalism 86
Neoplatonism 4, 102, 104, 113, 130
New Age 140–2, 145, 150, 252
ney 109
Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne 9–11, 14–15,
249
Nigeria 78
Nishapur 38
Niyaz 156, 160
Nizam al-Din ’Auliya 200–1
North Africa xiii, 2, 3, 10, 17, 22, 75, 104,
108
North America ii, xiii, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix,
77–8, 81–3, 85–6, 89, 249–50, 257–9
Nott, John 112, 119, 121, 125
novels 146–7, 151, 167
Nunaah Fatima Bint Ibn Muthanna 253
nur 45
Nur Ashki Jerrahi 19, 215
nuzul 66
Obama, Barack 159
Ockley, Simon 110
Orientalism 1–6, 12, 22, 101, 103, 110,
123, 143
Orientalist xvii, 245, 247–8, 250–1, 254,
258
Ottomans xiii, 4–5, 63, 101, 107, 109, 154,
250
Otto, Rudolf 15
Ozak, Muzaffer 19–20, 214
Pakistan xiv, xviii, 62, 64, 73, 79, 89
Palmer, Edward H. 9
Paris 10–12, 15
Parker, Sarah Jessica 158
Parvin, Manoucher 146
perennialism xvii, 1–2, 7, 8, 11, 14
Persia 37, 42, 50, 52
Persian 1, 7–11, 16, 20, 102–3, 109–15,
120–1, 123–9, 131, 141, 144–8, 152–3,
156–8, 160–6, 169, 247–8, 250–2, 256
Pétis de la Croix, Francois 5
Plato 7–8, 102, 104, 112, 118, 120
Platonism 106
poetry 102–4, 109–13, 115, 119–21, 123–4,
126–32, 245–7, 249, 251–2, 256
popular culture i, xvii, xx, xxi
Postel, Guillaume 107–8
Pound, Ezra 129, 144, 158
precolonial 4
prog ressive xix
Prophet Muhammad 148, 169, 188, 192,
195, 203
Puttenham, George 109
Qadiri 199, 203–6
Qalandar, Lal Shabaz xiv
qalandars 202
Qasim-i Anwar 129
Qawwali 159

268 Index
Qur’an 2, 9, 11, 64–8, 70–1, 75, 85, 102–4,
106, 110, 122–6, 129–30, 186–90, 195,
197–8, 203, 246, 249, 252, 256
qutb 190
Qutb, Sayyid 76, 81
Rabitat al-‘Alam al-Islam 74–5; see also
Muslim World League
Rahman, A. R. 159
Rahman, Fazlur 45
Rahmaniyya 205–6
rajul 193
rak‘at 195
Ramadan, Sa‘id 75
Ramadan, Tariq 71, 85
Refor mation 107, 126,
reformist xix
Reinhart, A. Kevin 65
Renaissance 2, 4, 7, 12
Renan, Ernest 3, 8–9
resistance 202–3, 205
Reviczky, Charles 112
revival 247, 250
Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) Conven-
tion 82–3
Rexroth, Kenneth 144
Rida, Rashid 50–2, 249, 254
Rifa‘i 200
Ripley, George 126
Romantic xvii, 245, 251
Romanticism 106, 119–20, 141
Rosenthal, Franz 16
Roy, Olivier 75, 80
Rozehnal, Robert 17, 21
Ruba‘iyat 10
Rubenstein, Ella 140, 146
Rumi Dome 165
Rumi, Jalaluddin xiii, xv, xix, xx, 1, 9–10,
18, 109, 114–15, 117, 120–1, 128–30,
132, 140–69, 214–15, 224, 229, 247,
251–2, 255–6, 258–9
Rumi Rose Garden Café & Market 163
Sa‘di 103, 110–12, 114, 120, 125–6, 129, 131
Safi, Omid xix, 85, 142, 145, 155
sahih 67
Said, Edward W. 3 –4, 6–7, 10, 22
St. Francis of Assisi 143
St. Teresa of Avila 143
Salafi 62, 64, 70–3, 75–85, 87–9
Salafism 48–9, 51, 72–3, 76, 78–2, 85, 89; see
also Salafiyya
Salafiyya xvi, xviii, 49–51, 53, 72, 75, 77; see
also Salafism
sama‘ 154, 156
Samarkand 42
San Francisco xiv
Sanskr it 7, 10, 111–12, 120, 129
Sargut, Cemalnur 215–17, 219–21, 229,
237, 253
Saudi Arabia xviii
Sayyad, Banafsheh 151
Schafer, Murray 158
Schimmel, Annemarie 11, 15–17, 19, 106,
147, 187, 191–2, 247, 249
Schuon, Fr ithjof 17–19
Sedgwick, Mark 4, 21
Sedigh, Reza 161
Segalowitz, Nina 157
self-help books 149, 152
Sells, Michael A. 17
sema‘ 236
Shadhili-‘Alawiyya 17
Shadhili-Qadiri 87
Shafak, Eli 140, 146–7, 149, 155
Shah, Idries 147
Shah Jahan 201
Shaku Kozen 51
Shamil Dagestani 49
Shams 140–1, 146–7, 158, 160–1, 163, 168,
253
shari‘a 49, 51, 63
shaykh/a 191, 205, 214–17, 222–3, 226
Sheikh, Shiraz 9
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 120–1
Shi‘a 37–8, 44, 47, 52, 187
shirk 47, 51, 52, 68, 81
silsila 222
Silvers, Laury 191–2
Sirhindi, Ahmad 75
Six Day War 64
Smith, Huston 18
social media 140–1, 148, 150, 162, 165–7
Sokoto Caliphate 203–4
South Asia xiii, xv, xviii, xix, 3, 16
Spencer, Richard 86
spir itual biog raphies 149
Stakelbeck, Er ik 86
Stam, Kismet Dorothea 233
Steyn, Mark 86
Sufi Healing Order of North America, Aus-
tralia, and New Zealand 215, 218
Sufi orders 191, 196–7, 200
Suhrawardi 216, 229
Sulayman, Abdulhamid Abu 77–8
Suleiman the Magnificent 108
Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid I 63
Sunna 67, 71, 75

Index 269
Sunni 36–7, 39–40, 46–7, 49–51
surah 186
Suzuki, D.T. 13
Swinton, Tilda 160–1
synthesizing 36
ta‘ayyun 43
tafsir bi-l-ishara 66
Tajadad, Nahal 146
tajalliyat 43
Taj al-Rajal 192
Taj Mahal 201
takfir 47
Tales from the Masnavi 10
Taliban 79
tanzih 44, 186
Tanzimat 63
taqallub 260
tar iqa 2, 21, 164
tasawwuf 37–8, 43, 216, 221
tashbih 44, 186
Tawakkul 195
tawassul 51–2
tawba 199
tawhid 37, 47–8, 68–70, 81, 220
theology 67–8, 70–4, 82–4, 89, 188, 196,
250
theosophical 9, 11, 13–14, 143, 247, 249
Tholuk, Friedrich August 8
Thoreau, Henry David 126–7
Threshold Society 156, 169
Tide, Devi 215, 218, 253
Tijani, Ahmad 45
Toderini, Giambattista 109
Topkapi Palace 155
tourism 140, 154–5
traditionalism 71, 83–5, 89
Traditionalists xix, 13, 17–18, 245
Transcendentalism 106, 125–6, 252
travelogues 116, 120, 130–1
Turkey xiii, xiv, xx, 50, 101, 103, 107–8,
117, 122, 130, 140, 147, 154–6, 158, 160,
162, 168
Turkish Women’s Cultural Association 215
Tuzon, Selman 154
Twain, Mark 129
Tweedie, Irina 20
‘ubbad 37; see also wor shippers
‘ulama 5, 40–1, 48, 49, 63–4, 71, 75, 191,
197
‘ulum 196
Umayyads 192
UNESCO 140, 154–5, 162
universal 36–7, 51
Universal Sufi Council 214
Urdu 67–8
Usman dan Fodio 203
ustadh 194–5
‘usul al-fiqh 65, 84
Vakil, Mohammad Ali 148
Vakil, Mohammed Arif 148
Vanmour, Jean-Baptiste 108
Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn 20, 141
Vedanta 1, 9, 12–13
Vietnam War 143
Virgin Mary 189, 193
visual art 152, 154
Vivekananda, Swami 13
Voll, John O. 16, 254
Voltaire 111, 123
Wadud, Amina 85
wahdat al-wujud 221, 227
Wahhabism xvi, xviii
wahid 254
wal aya 189–90, 198
walī 189–90, 202
Walter Knoll 165
Webb, Gisela 21
Werbner, Pnina 21
whirling dervish xiii, xiv, xvii, 141, 146–8,
153–5, 157–8, 160, 165, 169
Whitman, Walt 126–9, 131
wilaya 189–90
Willebeek le Mair, Saida Henriette 234
Winfrey, Oprah 141, 155
Wittman, Jennifer Alia 234
Wordsworth, William 120, 126
worshippers 37; see also ‘ubbad
Wuthnow, Robert 413
Yemen 73, 78
yoga 140, 150, 258
Yohannan, John D. 113, 129
Yusuf, Hamza xix, 13, 83–5, 89
Zahara, Aziz 146
Zahid 116
zahir 41, 46, 66, 254
zawiya 205–6
Zaytuna Institute 83
Zoroastrianism 101
zuhhad 37; see also ascetic
Zweig, Connie 146