Opposing Sufism Entails Rejecting Esotericism in Principle
By Dr
Muhammad Maroof Shah
11 Sep 2020
Ottoman Sufis were often criticized for engaging in bidʿa or innovative interpretations of Islamic texts by their orthodox
opponents
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Nothing in
Islamic culture makes sense except in the light of Tasawwuf. It was not till
the 19th Century, under the influence of Orientalists, that Sufism began to be
considered non-indigenous to Islam. Let us unfold these observations. Sufism
understood as inner/spiritual dimension of Islam/Ihsan and defined in terms of
key aspects by various Masters – “attention without distraction,” awareness of
the present moment, doing everything in style or with an eye on beauty,
sincerity of purpose, guarding against Nafs and all its guises,
exclusive attachment to the Real, cultivating love/gnosis, science of
stations/virtues, science of realization of freedom, Adab, giving everything
its due, seeing everything in terms of beauty, journey within from the
self/ego/psyche to the non-self/Self/Spirit, to be truly oneself or just to be
and share the treasure of one’s being or presence – has been of vital
importance for understanding Islamic culture and much of
intellectual-religious-spiritual heritage of mankind.
Almost all great Muslim philosophers,
sages, saints, poets, theologians, Imams/Mujtahids/revivers and seminal Ulema
of all schools of thought have been/could be described as Sufis of sorts. Name
ten greatest or most influential figures of Islamic history from the first
formative phase to our times and seven would be Sufis and other three not
untouched by it. Tasawwuf/Irfan is central or of significant interest to great
missionary Sufis who helped in preaching of Islam, great Sufi figures
associated with major shrines from Nizamuddin to Ajmer to Lahore to Sirhand,
great early figures of Deobandi, Barelwi and Ahle Hadith schools in the Indian
subcontinent, the greatest of modern Muslim thinkers from Iqbal to Nasr, the
greatest scientists from Jabir ibn Hayan to Ibn Sina to Khayyam and to the
greatest Sira writers, historians, theologians, novelists, poets, literary
critics, artists and philosophers of the 20th Century. The Sufis have been
central to ethics and its education in the Islamic world. Major texts that have
been taught to this day are written by mystically oriented writers. As long as
people are moral, Sufis would be revered as ideals.
Muslim lives have traditionally been shaped
by Sufi doctrines, rituals and legends. Take great art works from the Taj Mahal
to Alhambra, great heritage of music and poetry that has nurtured us all and
our ancestors – and we can’t explain without the vivifying and central role of
Sufism. Hardly any sermon could avoid invoking them. From birth to death all
kinds of ritual foods, initiations into different life stages, marriages, Niyaz,
Urs and khatam functions, sacred relics (Tabarukat) display, science
of invocations, chants, faith healing sessions and much of medicine, deciding
dimensions of houses and their locations, choosing spouses and names of
children, visiting our dead and celebrating their memories, giving away charity
and functioning of shrines and most of waqf institutions, layers of our turbans
and designs of our carpets, all are indelibly marked by Sufism. We can’t wish
it away. Sufism is in the very air we breathe. You can oppose a few things but
others you are all the time consciously or unconsciously celebrating. Name one
critic of Sufism who is completely free of its significant influence.
Exiling Sufism as deviant would require one
to invent new history, raze much of architecture, destroy all shrines, ban Sufi
music and much of art, ban such figures as Hazrat Abdul QadirJeelani, Ghazali,
Shah Waliullah and Mujaddid Alif Sani, not to speak of Ibn Arabi from public
consciousness and consign Sufi poets including such world figures as Saadi,
Hafiz, Rumi, Khusru, Bedil and Ghalib to dustbin besides dropping such
philosopher-Sufis as Ibn Sina and Farabi, Suhrawardi and MullaS adra and our
Iqbal and drastically editing out much of such influential figures as Khomeni,
Shariati, Azad and Hasan-al-Bana all of whom engaged with Sufism/Irfan. Even
the likes of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim will have difficulty to find a
place as they are Sufis in practice and have written volumes in critical
appreciation of it. Amongst the great Imams of fiqh and hadith, most figures
who had connections with Sufis or have been more or less practising Sufis and
dozens of Quranic exegetical works inflected by certain elements of Sufi
exegesis will have to be proscribed.
Opposing Sufism would entail rejecting
esotericism in principle, privileging or even absolutizing letter/literalism at
the cost of analogical, anagogical and symbolic interpretations; rejection of
the science of Tawil besides many traditional sciences that have a
metaphysical foundation, ignoring metaphor, myth and symbolism; reluctance in
tasting something from the higher realities/heaven or suspecting
existential/experiential participation in the meanings of revealed wisdom and
denying value and claims of such perennially established spiritual
practices/therapies as meditation or contemplation. In fact, as Pakistani
scholar Shuja al-Haq has noted, “Sufi tradition is seen as a representation of
the tradition, of a way of seeing and living, that formed the core or nucleus
of pre-modern corpus of knowledge” and Pakistani historian, K K Aziz showed in
the classic The Meaning of Islamic Art how Sufism is at the heart of the
beautiful and the creative we experience everywhere in the Islamic culture.
Sufism for
the Masters is not an ideology, a system of propositions or a new religion or a
speculative enterprise or optional journey within oneself (Saer-I-Batin)
but an invitation to explore for oneself serious questions regarding ultimate
things one seeks to know and keep moving upward on the path of
moral-intellectual-spiritual beauty/perfections. No disputes with anyone. It is
to taste the joy of being a nobody and the peace of silence. The spirit of
Islamic canon as of all scriptures besides the plain sense of many Quranic
verses and hundreds of authentic prophetic traditions including significant
number of sacred traditions (Ahadees-I-Qudsi) are best explained by Sufi
interpretation – they constitute embarrassment for anti-Sufi/non-Sufi
approaches.
Original
Headline: Is opposing Sufism feasible?
Source: The Pak Observer
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