Sufism

[The Hindus] totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa. On the whole, there is very little disputing about theological topics among themselves; at the utmost, they fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or their property on religious controversy.

—Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni1

It can be maintained that the strictly monotheistic religions do not naturally lend themselves to mysticism; and there is much to be said for this view. Christianity is the exception because it introduces into a monotheistic system an idea that is wholly foreign to it, namely, the Incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. Such an idea is repulsive to the strict monotheism of Islam as it is to that of the Jews.

—Professor R.C. Zaehner2

The general view is that most of the [Sufi] orders … can be classified as either

un-Islamic or antimodern.

—Professor Annemarie Schimmel3

When Islam wishes to show a gentler, more tolerant side it will frequently make use of the Sufis. The Sufis present a kind of Islamic-themed mysticism, and have traditionally been in the vanguard when Islam sought to expand its influence outside the Middle East.4 By presenting a more open form of Islamic practice the Sufis show a compatible and tolerant face of Islam to the world. But Sufism itself is anomalous within Islam and is extremely vulnerable to accusations of heresy and attacks from the followers of literal Islam. The Sufis often find themselves on the receiving end of Islamist violence once their usefulness is at an end.

MYSTICISM AND ISLAM

It is difficult to define Sufism with precision because there is no set of beliefs or practices common to all self-identified “Sufi” communities in Islam. As religious scholar Carl Ernst puts it:

All that we describe as Sufism is firmly rooted in particular local contexts, often anchored to the very tangible tombs of deceased saints, and it is deployed in relation to lineages and personalities with a distinctive local sacrality.5

Thus, Sufis in Morocco may do things Sufis in Pakistan would never have any interest in, and Sufis who follow traditions laid down by Abu Yazid may hold beliefs which are very different from those held by the followers of Chishti.

With these reservations in mind, we can describe Sufism in general as Islamic mysticism. As a mystical tradition, it has certain qualities which it shares with other forms of religious mysticism. The most notable feature Sufism shares with mysticism generally is the search for a spiritual experience of union with God or what we might call ultimate reality. This experience relies upon a belief in the immanent existence of God or ultimate reality in all things.6 In the words of one of the great students of the world’s mystical traditions:

By this perpetually-renewed casting down of the hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group … you are to begin with that first form of contemplation which the old mystics sometimes called the ‘discovery of God in His creatures’ … [until one finds] the ardent self-expression of that Immanent Being whose spark burns deep in your own soul.7

Mysticism builds upon this idea of something larger than the individual or group—a fundamental unity which underlies things. Nearly every world religion has a mystical tradition, and some have more than one.

In the case of Islam, the fundamental beliefs of mysticism run directly counter to the fundamental religious creed. Islam is radically monotheistic or what scholars sometimes call “dualistic.” This means that God (Allah) is understood as radically other and separate from man. The mystical notion of “discovering God in His creatures” contradicts the Islamic conception of God. Islam is also radically legalistic. This means that its focus is on right action as laid down by the authoritative texts of Islam (the Qur’an and the Hadith). The notion of a spiritual experience of oneness or unity with God is opposed to the Islamic view that man is the slave of God. When a 15th century Sufi poet expresses the view “that God is everywhere, inherent in everything,” this is close to heresy.8 For orthodox or literal Islam, it is heresy.

Nevertheless, as the perennial existence of mystical traditions demonstrates, there seems to be a common human desire for experience with the divine. Sufism is an attempt to address this perennial desire within an Islamic context. But by its very nature, this places Sufism beyond the pale of orthodox Islam. As Professor R.C. Zaehner argues, “[Sufism] is so radical a distortion of orthodox [Islamic] doctrine as to constitute a separate religion.”9

The question arises of where Sufism came from if it is such a distortion of or departure from ordinary Islam. One source is the mystical tradition of pre-Islamic Persia (many of the early masters of Sufism were Persians). But another major source of influence identified by Zaehner is India—specifically the mystical traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism.

THE INDIAN INFLUENCE ON ABU YAZID

Abu Yazid (804-c874) was an early Sufi master and one of the most influential on later Sufism. His master, Abu Ali, is described as a man from Sindh. Zaehner argues that this description refers to the Sindh region in northwest India which was the first to be conquered by Islam in the 8th century. Through his master, Abu Yazid came under the influence of “a totally alien stream of mysticism,” and through Abu Yazid himself, Vedanta ideas, according to Zaehner, “became part and parcel of later Islamic mysticism.”10

In Abu Yazid’s day, the Hindu teachings of the Upanishads were passed down primarily by oral tradition from masters to their disciples. Anyone demonstrating knowledge or influence of the Upanishads must almost by definition have received it from studying with a master. In Abu Yazid’s case, there are two examples of this influence. One example is found in his sayings, which contain “closely parallel passages” which are found “nowhere else except in the Upanishads and are utterly characteristic of them.”11 The other comes from Abu Yazid’s behavior. It is a saying in some of the Upanishads that the one who has attained wisdom may act like an idiot—that is, that a sage may behave in a defiantly unconventional or transgressive manner.

Zaehner points to the example of a later Sufi mystic, Abu Sa’id Abul-Khayr, who for 40 years was a strict observer of the religious law. But after he obtained liberation or what he himself called “freedom,” he began to demonstrate his transcendence of the religious law by his increasingly outrageous behavior. A similar pattern may be observed in Abu Yazid, whose early sayings are more conventionally pious, then give way to extravagant claims of being identical with God in his later years.12 Not only that, Abu Yazid likewise presents himself as “beyond the religious law, beyond all ritual acts of piety. He does not go to Mecca, Mecca comes to him.”13

Buddhism was also an influence on Sufism. The penetration of Islam into India coincided with a flourishing period in Buddhism. Consequently, the religious influences upon Sufism involve a mixture of Buddhist literature as well. One notable example includes the famous story of the blind men and the elephant from the Buddhist Udana which appears in the works of Sufi mystics Tahwidi, Ghazali, and later in the poet Rumi. The point of the story in the Udana was to mock religious dogmatism—a viewpoint which suited Sufi interests quite well as they became increasingly impatient with dogmatic Muslim theologians.14

Another example includes a passage from the Udana which describes the liberated state of the sage by an analogy with streams flowing into the ocean. The streams do not shrink or overflow the ocean, and just so the monks who pass into a state of nirvana do not increase or shrink the state itself. Abu Yazid composed a paraphrase of this same passage:

You see how many rivers flow with a splashing, chattering sound, but when they draw near to the sea and mingle with it, their splash and chatter is stilled, and the sea has no experience of them nor do they increase in it … man is like the torrent and the sea.15

USING SUFISM AS A MEANS OF CONVERSION

Sufism was useful to orthodox Islam as a way of converting people raised outside the Abrahamic faith traditions. This was particularly notable in India, where Sufism’s impact came in the 12th and 13th centuries after the Sufi orders had been established and consolidated in the Islamic world. A key figure here was Chishti, a Sufi leader who arrived in Delhi in 1193 and later settled in Ajmer. Chishti and the Sufi order he founded “became a nucleus for the Islamization of central India.”16 Thanks primarily to Chishti saints, “whose simple and unsophisticated preaching and practice of love of God and one’s neighbor impressed many Hindus,” there were some conversions in this period.17

Once enough of a population had accepted Islam, the orthodox typically introduced Sharia law and exclusivist theology, demanding acceptance of this harsher brand of Islam on pain of death or oppressive taxation through jizya. In this way, Sufism was used as a Trojan Horse. Once enough people were converted within a given area, the game was up. And once Sufism had served its usefulness, the Sufis too were oppressed along with the rest.

At the same time, Sufis themselves have not been opposed to taking up the sword and participating in jihad. In India, for instance, Sufis were often some of the most fanatical and fundamentalist activists on behalf of Islamic imperialism. Not only did they raise no objections to the genocide of Hindus, they encouraged it. Amir Khusrau, who is sometimes presented as a “secular Sufi saint” of medieval India nevertheless wrote:

Happy Hindustan, the splendor of religion, where the [Islamic] law finds perfect honor and security … The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire.18

The Sufi Shaikh Sirhindi (1564-1624) himself came to India with the explicit goal of “purifying” Islam from the influences of Akbar the Great. He wrote a number of letters to the Mughal emperor demanding him to return to the path of Sharia and expel all Shias and Hindus from his government. In one letter, he wrote, “They [the non-Muslims] should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and uphold the honor and might of Islam.”19 Another prominent Sufi from the 18th century, Shah Waliullah, actually wrote letters to the ruler of Afghanistan frantically begging him to invade India and put down the Hindus.20

SUFISM AND ISLAM—SHANKARA AND MUHAMMAD COMPARED

To illustrate the limitations of the mystical tradition within Islam, we should consider the exemplars and founders of Advaita Vedanta and Islam, Sankara and Muhammad, respectively. Sankara is the great exemplar of classical Brahminical thought. Both men have a monotheistic conception of God. For Sankara, this is his doctrine of Brahman as “one without a second.” Brahman is the sole reality. The apparent separateness of all the things and beings of the world are understood as illusory or as an apparent transformation of Brahman, the true reality. The individual self and the ego are compared to an imagined perception of a snake where there is only a coil of rope. In other words, the self is a case of “mistaken identity.” Even God the creator himself is understood as part of the illusory order of existence. There is no creator separate from the creation—these words are merely superimposed upon the sole, monistic Brahman.

The image of pots made of clay is also used to describe the relationship between the self and Brahman. When a pot is broken, it reverts to its basic substance, clay. When the individual self is realized as Brahman, only Brahman remains. The position is summed up by Zaehner in these words:

In the Vedantin hierarchy of being, only the One exists absolutely: the Lord and all that proceeds from him are produced by cosmic “illusion” or “ignorance” and the proof of this is mystical experience which, it is maintained, is at its highest the realization of the absolute unity of being.21

In comparison with this view, Islam simply has no equivalent to Brahma. Allah is essentially an active God—a God who deals with men rather than a timeless absolute into which the human soul can be absorbed in mystic rapture.22 Islam reiterates the Old Testament view of God as absolutely other, who created the world at the beginning of time and will judge it at the end. The proper relationship of man to God in Islam is one of submission and obedience to the divine will. There is no scope for identity between the devotee and Allah.23

Sankara relegates god and all deities to a relative and ultimately illusory order of existence. Nevertheless, he retains the ideal of loving devotion to a deity as an appropriate preparatory move on the spiritual path. Compare this view with the Sufi doctrines of Abu Yazid and others. Once Abu Yazid had attained revelation, he had no hesitation in saying:

Verily all creatures are beneath the banner of Muhammad, but, by God, my banner is more exalted than the banner of Muhammad. My banner is of light, and beneath it are all the prophets that have ever appeared among Jinn or men.24

Such a view is simply blasphemous in Islamic terms, but Abu Yazid’s statements make perfect sense from the standpoint of Sankara’s non-dualist philosophy.

An even more significant contrast can be drawn between Sankara and Muhammad over the question of epistemology. For Sankara, knowledge—specifically self-knowledge— was paramount. He states the case for primacy of knowledge over action:

Action cannot destroy ignorance, for it is not in conflict with ignorance. Knowledge

alone destroys ignorance, as light destroys dense darkness.25
But for Muhammad, jihad in the service of Allah was paramount, and knowledge consisted in being cognizant of and obedient to the commands of Allah:

Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or victorious, on him we shall bestow a vast reward.26

The lives lived by these two men illustrate their difference in outlook. Sankara was a celibate monk who spent his life in meditation and discourse—that is, seeking knowledge. Muhammad was a trader and a warlord who spent his life in acquisition of women, wealth, and worldly power. His life was virtually the opposite of a mystic’s life.

OPPOSITION TO SUFISM WITHIN ISLAM

From its beginnings, Sufism has been viewed skeptically by orthodox and literalist forces in Islam, which have traditionally been the most dominant. One of the great early Sufi figures was al-Hallaj, a Persian seeker and poet who made a journey to India and points east in the late 9th century. He returned to Islamic lands with teachings about personal sanctification and poems about the immanence of God in the human heart. He was apprehended by the authorities in 912 and executed ten years later, becoming one of the earliest Sufi martyrs.27

Another key figure in Sufism is Ibn Arabi, a 12th century author whose writings became the very “apex of mystical theories” in Sufism. From the very start his writings were targeted by orthodox Muslims and they “have never ceased attacking him.”28 Despite Ibn Arabi’s personal reputation for piety, his writings were unable to persuade the orthodox simply because their beliefs left little room for “independent theological thought” like his.29

Efforts to moderate Islam motivated by Sufi beliefs have likewise run into problems. Akbar the Great tried to foster a religious eclecticism in the Mughal Empire partly based on Sufi ideas, but his efforts didn’t survive him. In the end, “Akbar’s religious tolerance was, in its practical consequences, scarcely compatible with Muslim law, and the orthodox became highly suspicious.”30 Dara Shikoh, the son of later Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, was himself highly reputed as a mystic and religious pluralist. But Dara fell prey to his orthodox Muslim brother, the emperor Aurangzeb, who had him executed.31

Sufism has produced features in Islam that contradict its own stated official beliefs. One example concerns venerations of the Prophet and Islamic demands against idol worship. Through Sufi influence, certain extra attentions are sometimes paid to things concerning the person of Muhammad.32 One example involves a shrine in Srinagar that has been built up since the 17th century around the veneration of an alleged hair from Muhammad’s beard. Thousands of Muslims visit this shrine every year to offer their prayers and catch a glimpse of the hair. When the relic disappeared for a week back in 1963 there were riots and street protests over it.33

Another example involves grave worship and prayers to saints. The Hadith explicitly forbids Muslims to build places of worship over the graves of religious men (that is, shrines).34 Nevertheless, the practice of making pilgrimages to shrines of saints and scholars is common in Sufism, particularly in South Asia. The Sufi master Chishti’s tomb in Ajmer, India is a popular destination. Sufi shrines are often targeted by adherents of literal Islam on the grounds that they are forbidden.

In recent years, adherents of literal Islam have launched repeated efforts to destroy Sufism. As a general rule, wherever Islamists gain power Sufism is persecuted or driven underground.35 Many of those who follow literal Islam see their religion as in crisis, corrupted from within by Sufism and other “innovations” and from without by secularism and the West.36 In Tunisia, the so-called “Arab Spring” uprising led to the destruction or desecration of 39 Sufi shrines between 2011 and the start of 2013.37 In Sudan in 2012, there was a violent exchange between Sufis marking the birthday of Muhammad and Islamists who objected to the practice as un-Islamic.38 As mentioned above, Pakistan has seen particularly violent anti-Sufi activity in recent years. In October 2010, 17 pilgrims to Sufi shrines were killed and 100 others injured in multiple bombing attacks by the Pakistani Taliban.39 In a particularly brutal 2010 atrocity, suicide bombers killed 42 and injured 180 at a Sufi shrine in Lahore.40

In the early 20th century, a revivalist Islamic scholar named Muhammad Iqbal produced a very influential essay called The Development of Metaphysics in Persia. In this work, he discusses the history and legitimacy of Sufism. In doing so, Iqbal advances several of the claims also made in this chapter. He acknowledges that Sufism is the product of non-Arab influences such as Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and non-Islamic Persian mysticism. He describes the Arab mind as non-speculative and legalistic—a view which is reflected in the Qur’an and the Hadith and which contrasts sharply with the metaphysical and speculative nature of Indian and Greek thought. Most interestingly, however, Iqbal goes on to defend Sufism as orthodox on the basis of a verse in the Qur’an which refers ambiguously to some sort of wisdom imparted to Muhammad which was not included in the Qur’an because of its esoteric nature. The Sufi claim to Islamic legitimacy rests, Iqbal says, upon this vaguely-defined wisdom. It was a clever attempt by Iqbal, but it has never found much acceptance among Islamic theologians. Instead, any departures from the literal words of the Qur’an and the Hadith are considered suspicious at best and blasphemous at worst.

Despite Iqbal’s claims, literal Islamists such as Yusuf Hijazi have no problem characterizing Sufi practices as “pagan” with “little resemblance to the Islam left by our Prophet.”41 Quoting an influential imam, Hijazi insists, “That which was not religion at the time of the Messenger and his companions … is never to be religion today.”42 This is the viewpoint of literal Islam, and a few fanciful interpretations cannot help Sufism stand up against this critique. Wherever literal Islam gains power and influence, Sufis and Sufism end up being purged.