Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World

by Sirriyeh; Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780700710607
• ISBN10: 0700710604
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1998-10-21
• Publisher: RoutledgeCurzon

Summary

Despite its continuing appeal in the Muslim world, Sufism has faced fierce challenges in the last 250 years. This volume assesses the evolution of anti-Sufism since the middle of the eighteenth century and Sufi strategies for survival. It also considers the efforts of a few significant Muslim intellectuals to contemplate a future for a mystical approach to Islam without traditional Sufism. Many studies of Islam in the modern period have focused on the attempts of Muslim 'modernists' or 'fundamentalists' to come to terms with western modernity, and Sufis have often been marginalised in the process. Elizabeth Sirriyeh redresses this neglect by assigning to Sufism a central place in the broader history of Islam in the modern world and by examining how changing understandings of Sufism's role in modern conditions have affected Muslims of all shades of opinion.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Abbreviations	xiii
Sufis and Their Critics Before the Impact of Europe	1	(26)
The Mood of Decline	2	(2)
Sufi Reformers: Shah Wali Allah and Ahmad b. Idris	4	(7)
The Spirit of Mass Reform Within the Tariqas	11	(11)
Rejection of the Tariqas: the Arabian Wahhabis	22	(5)
The Challenge of European Anti-Sufism	27	(27)
The Lesser Jihad	29	(14)
The Greater Jihad and Worldly Constraints	43	(11)
Traditional Sufism or a Religion of Progress?	54	(32)
Sufism and European Thought in the Nineteenth Century	54	(5)
Early Islamic Modernism and Sufism	59	(15)
Sufi Orders and the Ottoman Version of Pan-Islamic Regeneration	74	(12)
The Sufism and Anti-Sufism of the Salafis	86	(26)
Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), Sufi and Anti-Sufi	86	(12)
Muhammad Rashid Rida, Anti-Sufi (1865-1935)	98	(4)
The Salafiyya in the Arab Lands	102	(10)
Strengthening the Soul of the Nation	112	(28)
Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924)	112	(12)
Muhammad Iqbal (1876?-1938)	124	(16)
Contemporary Sufism and Anti-Sufism	140	(33)
Sufi Tariqas, 1950s-1960s: Decline and Continuity	140	(5)
The Tariqas and the Contemporary Islamic Revival	145	(8)
State Anti-Sufism	153	(8)
Radical Rethinking of the Way	161	(12)
Conclusion: Many Ways Towards the One	173	(3)
Bibliography	176	(7)
Index	183