Western Sufism From the Abbasids to the New Age

by Sedgwick, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780199977642
• ISBN10: 019997764X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-11-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Western Sufism is sometimes dismissed as a relatively recent "new age" phenomenon, but in this book Mark Sedgwick argues that it has deep roots, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In fact, although the first significant Western Sufi organization was not established until 1915, the first Western discussion of Sufism was printed in 1480, and Western interest in Sufi thought goes back to the thirteenth century. Sedgwick starts with the earliest origins of Western Sufism in late antique Neoplatonism and early Arab philosophy, and traces later origins in repeated intercultural transfers from the Muslim world to the West, in the thought of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and in the intellectual and religious ferment of the nineteenth century. He then follows the development of organized Sufism in the West from 1915 until 1968, the year in which the first Western Sufi order based on purely Islamic models was founded.

Western Sufism shows the influence of these origins, of thought both familiar and less familiar: Neoplatonic emanationism, perennialism, pantheism, universalism, and esotericism. Western Sufism is the product not of the new age but of Islam, the ancient world, and centuries of Western religious and intellectual history. Using sources from antiquity to the internet, Sedgwick demonstrates that the phenomenon of Western Sufism draws on centuries of intercultural transfers and is part of a long-established relationship between Western thought and Islam.

Author Biography

Mark Sedgwick is Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies and Coordinator of the Islamic Cultures and Societies Research Unit (ICSRU) at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I Mystics, 833-1328
1. Neoplatonism and Emanationism
2. Arab Neoplatonism to Ibn Arabi
3. Jewish and Christian Neoplatonism to Meister Eckhart

Part II Dervishes, 1480-1899
4. Dervishes as Angels, Deviants, and Mystics
5. Deism and Pantheism
6. Universalist Sufism
7. Dervishes as Epicurean and Fanatical

Part III The Establishment of Sufism in the West, 1910-33
8. Transcendentalism, Theosophy and Sufism
9. Towards the One: Inayat Khan and the Sufi Movement
10. Tradition and Consciousness

Part IV The Development of Sufism in the West, 1950-68
11. Polarization
12. Idries Shah and Sufi Psychology
13. Sufism in the New Age
14. Islamic Sufism

15. Conclusion

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index