Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age

Lloyd Ridgeon

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781472529190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age explores the dynamics at play between what are usually understood as two very different forms of Islam, namely Sufism and Salafism. Sufism is commonly understood as the peaceful and mystical dimension of Islam whereas Salafism is perceived as strictly pietistic and moralist, and for some it conjures up images of violent manifestations of Islam. Of course these generalisations require more nuanced investigation, and this book provides a number of case studies from around the Islamic world to unpack the intricate relationship between the two. The diversity of the case studies that focus on Islamic groups in India, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and South East Europe reflect the multiplicity of relationships that exist between the Salafis and Sufis. The specific case studies are framed by an introduction that provides essential historical background and definitions of the terms, and also by general studies of the Sufi–Salafi relationship which enable the reader to focus on the large picture. This will be the first book to investigate the relationship between Sufism and Salafism in such a wide fashion, and includes chapters on "traditional" Sufis, as well as from those who consider that Sufism and Salafism are not necessarily contradictory.

1

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism*

Itzchak Weismann

Islamic fundamentalism is a product of modernity. Its constitution as the hegemonic discourse of modern Islam was accomplished in the course of the twentieth century over against two Others: the external Other of the West and the internal Other of tradition, especially its mystical aspect – Sufism. The article claims, however, that the fundamentalists’ critique of Sufism as backward, superstitious and apolitical involved the collective forgetting of the leading role that Sufi reformist brotherhoods had filled in pre-modern Islam and in their own upbringing. In this light, the Salafi discourse and popular socio-religious movements such as the Muslim Brothers appear as modern transformations rather than negations of Sufism. On the other hand, contemporary Sufism has constituted itself as the modern Other of the hegemonic Islamic fundamentalism. The fundamentalist estrangement from Sufism, and Islamic tradition at large, engendered a dialectics of unenlightenment culminating in the present radicalization of Islam.

Entering the mosque you’ll see large masses and hear tumult and uproar. You’ll see people who put chains and iron collars on their necks. Some of them naked and some wear tatters and rags. Filth and dirt fill them. Their braided hair is so stuck that water cannot wash it. Vermin graze in their bodies. …

Then they rise up to what they call dhikr, ‘as stricken with madness by Satan.’ Their recollection is nothing but growling and mumbling, neighing and grumbling, mixed with cries and faint noises, groans and sighs … women and men, old and young, take part in all this. This is the party of the recollecting awliya – ‘the friends of God.’¹

Going back to and interpreting afresh the fundamentals of religion – the Qur’an, the Prophet’s Sunna and the politico-religious model of the ancestors, al-salaf al-salih or the imams – lies at the heart of Islamic intellectuals’ response of the past century and a half to challenge modernity. The Sunni and Shiʿi ‘fundamentalist’ discourse of authentication has been accompanied by a critical re-evaluation of the religious doctrines and practices of the intervening centuries, now lumped together and essentialized under the newly constructed rubric of tradition. Drawing on previous strands of opposition to mystical conceptions of Islam, most forcefully articulated in the writings of the medieval theologians Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and uncompromisingly enacted by the pre-modern Wahhabi movement, it was particularly ‘Sufism’ that came under fire. Sufis are habitually denounced today as deviators from the true path of Islam, held responsible for its so-called decline, and depicted as a major impediment to its adaptation to the conditions and needs of the modern era.

The animosity shown by successive generations of Islamic fundamentalists towards Sufism has long been noted and amply documented. In the past, scholars who worked within the Orientalist paradigm understood such animosity in linear terms, as part of the progressive, though never completed, substitution of a modernizing Islam for backward superstitious beliefs and rituals that had become obsolete.² More recent studies have demonstrated that reality is more complex. It is now evident that in pre-modern times sharia-minded Sufism was a major factor in the efforts at renewal and reform of Islam,³ and that subsequently Sufism itself has in many ways actively modernized itself.⁴

Capitalizing on this ongoing research, and within the framework of the general dismantling of the Orientalist paradigm, this chapter seeks to develop a new model for analysing fundamentalist–Sufi relations.⁵ I argue that Islamic fundamentalism and contemporary Sufism have helped construct as well as conceal each other as modern subjects, that along with the bitter polemics and confrontations a measure of discursive and institutional continuities exists between them, and that their mutual estrangement facilitates the present radicalization within Islam. This dialectics of rejection and acceptance is in my view an important key to understanding the inner evolution of modern Islam, a corollary to its similarly dialectical attraction–repulsion attitude towards the West.

My conceptualization of the complex interaction between Islamic fundamentalism and Sufism in the modern era is threefold. First, there is a need to define what the concept of Islamic fundamentalism actually refers to. This will serve as the point of departure for exploring the fundamentalist critique of Sufism. In the second part of this chapter I ground the discussion in a general theory of modernity. This entails, on the one hand, a deconstruction of the prevailing notion of ‘the Sufi tradition’, and on the other hand, a review of the conditions that led to its substitution by Islamic fundamentalism. The last part of the chapter is an analysis of the dialectical relationships characterizing the modern Sufi–fundamentalist interaction. Here I excavate the Sufi roots of Islamic fundamentalism, identify paradigmatic moments in the separation of the two trends, uncover the fundamentalists’ collective forgetting of the Sufi legacy, and last but not least, explore the Sufis own strategies of modernization.

The interactive relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and Sufism is tested against some of the major religious intellectuals and movements on both sides of their dividing line. Focusing geographically on the Middle East and South Asia, two of the major centres of Islamic reform in the modern era, I examine in the fundamentalist side the Ahl- and Salafi trends, the Muslim Brothers and Jamaʿat-i Islami movements and some Jihadi groups. On the Sufi side my examples are mostly taken from the Naqshbandiyya, arguably the most orthodox and activist Sufi brotherhood in Islamic history.⁶

Part 1: The fundamentalist phenomenon

A new trend

The concept of Islamic fundamentalism has recently come under increasing criticism owing to its Western Christian origins and because of the negative connotations it acquired in the mass media and public opinion. There is also much confusion as to the nature of the phenomenon, the temporal and spatial territories it covers, and which of the multitude of religious thinkers and movements should actually be included in it. Is Islam essentially fundamentalist, as some diehard Orientalists and zealot Islamists would imply?⁷ Or shall we restrict the application of fundamentalism, as many tend to do, to the present militant wave of Islamic resurgence, the followers of Qutb, Khomeini and Osama b. Ladin?⁸ In between, to what juncture in the trajectory of contemporary Islam shall we trace the beginnings of Islamic fundamentalism: the eighteenth-century ultra-orthodox Wahhabiyya?⁹ The late-nineteenth-century Modernism of Afghani and ʿAbduh?¹⁰ The post-First World War Salafi trend of Rida?¹¹ Or perhaps the mass politico-religious movement of the Muslim Brothers of the 1930s and 1940s?¹²

Such criticisms notwithstanding, the concept of Islamic fundamentalism seems to be useful as a comparative device and, more importantly for our context, it evokes the literal meaning of the phenomenon at hand. A notable example of the advantages as well as hazards of the latter approach is provided by Euben. According to her, ‘Fundamentalism refers to contemporary religio-political movements that attempt to return to the scriptural foundations of the community, excavating and reinterpreting these foundations for application to the contemporary social and political world.’ She further clarifies that her definition is meant to emphasize fundamentalism’s political nature, limit its application to scriptural religious traditions and characterize it as a modern response to modernity.¹³

Yet Euben’s definition suffers from serious lacuna. It overlooks the long period, eventually the greater part of Islamic history, that passed between the contemporary modern world and the era of the scriptural foundations of Islam. This neglect, which is largely due to her focus on the external relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and modern Western rationalism, leads her to uncritically accept the basically fundamentalist ideology that depicts Sufism, and latter-day Islam in general, as its non-political ‘other-worldly’ antithesis. It is precisely this dichotomous view that the present chapter seeks to challenge. I argue that Sufism has always had a political ‘this-worldly’ dimension, and that any understanding of Islamic fundamentalism must take into account its inner relationship with Sufism and the Muslim tradition at large.

My working definition is accordingly as follows: ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ refers to the contemporary religio-political discourse of return to the scriptural foundations of the religion as developed by Muslim scholars, mystics and, increasingly, lay persons and movements, which reinterpret these foundations on the basis of their living traditions for application to the socio-political and cultural realities of the modern world. This definition shows that fundamentalism has become the hegemonic religious discourse in the contemporary Muslim world, shared by practically all elements in the Islamic arena. After all, few Muslims would deny either the obligation to adhere to the scriptures or the need to adjust to modern realities. ‘Fundamentalism’ in this respect is the Islamic form of modernity.

This definition also helps us fix the temporal trajectory of Islamic fundamentalism, which on the basis of socio-religious criteria may be divided into three to four phases. The first, which by reference to nationalist theory I call proto-fundamentalism, emerged in the later part of the nineteenth century, in the wake of the consolidation of the Western colonialist onslaught. Its main representatives were the ‘ulama’-cum-religious intellectuals of the Ahl-i Hadith movement in India¹⁴ and of the Arab Salafi trend.¹⁵ These were divided into reformists, who kept to scriptural religious discourse, and modernists, who were ready to adopt outright Western ideas and institutions.¹⁶

Rashid Rida, who is habitually described as the founder of the Salafiyya, actually marks its transition to the second phase of Islamic fundamentalism. His principal contributions to the fundamentalist cause were the religious journal he founded and edited for thirty-five years and the innovative political ideal of the Islamic state he formulated in the aftermath of the First World War and the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate.¹⁷ The major fundamentalist factor from the interwar period on, however, was the popular movements of the Muslim Brothers in the Middle East and Jamaʿat-i Islami in South Asia. The Brothers incorporated the Salafi message into their more comprehensive self-definition,¹⁸ while the Jamaʿat envisioned an all-out battle against both Western influence and traditional culture.¹⁹ The combination of religion and politics offered by these movements forms the backbone of Islamic fundamentalism in its stricter sense.

The next phase refers to the post-independence era, during which Islamic fundamentalists were often persecuted by authoritarian regimes and as a result were partly radicalized. The radical new teaching is epitomized in Sayyid Qutb’s concept of the return of the jahiliyya (pre-Islamic barbarity).²⁰ Under his spell a wealth of vanguard groups sprang up which turned to violence and terror in their struggle against ‘unbelieving’ regimes.²¹ In Iran, the radical Shiʿa combination of Imam Khomeini’s novel doctrine of wilayat-i faqih (rule of the jurist) and ʿAli Shariʿati’s modernist social reinterpretation of the Qur’an underlie the Islamic revolution.²² Today scholars usually apply the term fundamentalism to these militant vanguards, though it is more accurate to describe them as its radical offshoots. Osama b. Ladin and Al-Qaʾida belong to an incipient fourth phase of Salafi-jihadism, which since the turn of the twenty-first century strives to move the battle against infidelity to the global arena.²³

Finally, a word is due on the Arabian Wahhabiyya. As a pre-modern phenomenon, the original movement of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab should not be counted as part of Islamic fundamentalism as here defined. Still, one cannot overlook the considerable influence the Wahhabi doctrine has exerted on the formation and evolution of the fundamentalists. The Wahhabis were rehabilitated as true believers by the leaders of the present Saudi state.²⁴ In the heyday of Arab authoritarianism, the Saudis gave shelter to persecuted Muslim Brothers in the common struggle against unbelief, and subsequently, as the term Wahhabi itself became contested, both the Wahhabi establishment and the sahwa (Islamic awakening) opposition laid claim to the title of Salafi-Wahhabism.²⁵

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Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Contributor List
• Introduction
• 1 Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism
• 2 Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer: A Preliminary Investigation into the Anti-Sufi Polemics of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil (1913–70)
• 3 Mapping Modern Turkish Sufism and Anti-Sufism
• 4 The Shrines of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad and his Son in ʿAqra: Current Challenges in Facing Salafism
• 5 The Political Participation of Sufi and Salafi Movements in Modern Morocco: Between the ‘2003 Casablanca Terrorist Attack’ and the ‘Moroccan Spring’
• 6 Sufis as ‘Good Muslims’: Sufism in the Battle against Jihadi Salafism
• 7 Mystical Traditions and Voices of Dissent: Experiences from Bengal
• 8 Representing the Detractors of Sufism in Twentieth-Century Hyderabad, India
• 9 Barelwis: Developments and Dynamics of Conflict with Deobandis
• 10 The Contested Milieu of Deoband: ‘Salafis’ or ‘Sufis’?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright