Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul by William C. Chittick

Author:William C. Chittick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

SUFISM

One of Nasr’s subtexts is the relevance of Sufism to the contemporary situation and the catastrophic results that modern-day Muslims suffer by ignoring or rejecting it. For a great variety of reasons, people become suspicious at the mention of Sufism. In contemporary America, it is often associated with gullibility, sentimentality, and New Ageism. In the Islamic world over the past century, many Muslims have taken Sufism as a demonic presence that must be driven out if Islam is to enter the modern world, and today it is anathema to fundamentalists.

The fact is that relatively few modern-day Muslims have any idea of the historical role that Sufism has played, even though they are likely to have strong opinions on the topic. A colleague who teaches at Harvard recounts with amusement that a young Egyptian studying at MIT took a course with him on al-Ghazālī, who has universally been recognized as one of the greatest masters of the Islamic sciences and who is credited with authoritatively establishing the central role of Sufism in Islam. At the end of the semester, the student submitted a paper beginning with the sentence, “Islamic tas. awwuf does not exist” (tas. awwuf being the Arabic term for “Sufism”). This opinion, despite its incoherence, is widely held among Muslims, and the historical record is considered of no account.

Those Muslims who consider Sufism alien to Islam often draw support from the works of the early Orientalists, who saw it as a clear example of borrowing from other religions (after all, they imply, the Sufis were loving, open-minded, and well-intentioned people, so they could hardly have been real Muslims). Despite the fact that fundamentalists attack Western studies of Islam generally and Orientalism in particular, they are happy to accept this untenable theory of Sufism’s origins.

Even specialists in fields like Religious Studies or Islamic Studies will sometimes remark, “Oh, but he’s a Sufi,” meaning, “You know, you do not have to take him seriously, because he’s a mystic,” or, “Sufism really has nothing to do with Islam, so don’t pay attention to him.” Yet for Nasr, and for the grand authorities like al-Ghazālī, the diverse beliefs, practices, and institutions of Islam that are apparent to outside observers make up Islam’s body, and Sufism provides its life-giving spirit. From this standpoint, Muslim modernists and fundamentalists, who violently reject the Sufi tradition, are trying to breathe new life into Islam’s body, and this life can only be drawn from alien sources. The discussion here, of course, is not about the history of the word ṣūfī (and its derivatives), since the term came into regular use only in the third/ninth century, but about what Nasr and many of the great authorities of the past have understood by the term when they employ it.

Although Nasr has written eloquently and persuasively about Sufism’s centrality to the Islamic tradition, he cannot repeat these remarks in everything he writes, and even if he could, many observers reject this understanding of Sufism’s role in Islam, so they feel no need to consider his position.

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